“Don’t Put Children’s Lives on Hold” – Ofsted Head
Amanda Spielman, HM Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills, has written a powerful opinion piece for today’s Sunday Telegraph urging the Government not to close schools indefinitely.
There is a real consensus that schools should be the last places to close and the first to re-open, and having argued for this since last spring, I welcome it. Because it is increasingly clear that children’s lives can’t just be put on hold while we wait for vaccination programmes to take effect, and for waves of infection to subside. We cannot furlough young people’s learning or their wider development.
The longer the pandemic continues, the more true this is. Ofsted’s work in recent months has shown the cumulative effect of prolonged disruption on many children. We found some younger children had forgotten how to hold a pencil or use a knife and fork, and had regressed in basic language and numbers. In older children, we noted increases in eating disorders and self-harm, and anti-social behaviour problems at some schools. Social media and online gaming replaced in-person interaction more than ever before during lockdown, with all the risks that brings. Children are more sedentary and less fit.
Some commentators suggested that this reflected failures of parenting. And pre-pandemic I have, for example, expressed concern about the increasing numbers of children starting school in nappies and without the most basic social skills.
Yet we must recognise that families have been severely disrupted. The support for parents that normally comes from grandparents, other family members and from friends is largely cut off by Covid restrictions. In much of the country playgrounds and other community facilities like swimming pools have been closed too. Many of the specialist services for children with health and education needs are suspended or very limited. All this is making the job of parenting harder than usual.
In fact the disruption to schooling has shown us quite how important schools are in our society. Schools exist precisely because we collectively believe that there are things that all children should learn but which we cannot expect all parents to teach. In them teachers don’t just teach, they also create the environment in which children willingly learn even the things they don’t know they need to learn, and get satisfaction from it. They are also a powerful equaliser: while children are at school, the disparities in the circumstances of their home lives are minimised.
When children are forced into remote education by Covid, these disparities aren’t just about family income or deprivation, or even about having laptops and good broadband. Our work has shown how much parents’ capacity to support remote education can vary depending on their jobs and their other caring responsibilities, such as for younger children. Even for children with stable and supportive homes, good access to technology and dedicated teachers, learning outside the classroom has been patchy. Surveys of both teachers and parents reveal the difficulty of keeping children engaged with online work, motivating them to get up at school time, and knowing whether they are actually learning when they do tune in.
Lastly, when we remove schools from the picture, not only does learning suffer, but risks of abuse, neglect or exploitation increase. Schools have become society’s collective eyes and ears, keeping a caring watch over those who need it most. Teachers are often the first to spot signs of things going wrong at home.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The NEU, Britain’s largest teachers union, has urged its members not to return to work tomorrow – although, it also says they should be “available” to teach vulnerable children and children of key workers. How can they be “available” to those children if they don’t return to work?
Stop Press 2: Another teachers union, the NASUWT, has written to Gavin Williamson demanding that all schools close.
Scrap GCSEs and A-Levels, Say 2000 Headteachers
As night follows day, headteachers are now demanding that GCSEs and A-levels be scrapped again this year. Why? To protect their staff from being infected with a virus that, if you’re under-70 and healthy, is less deadly than seasonal flu. (For chapter and verse on that stat, see the Stop Press beneath this post.) The Sunday Times has more.
Head teachers have warned that GCSE and A-level exams cannot go ahead this summer after plans for reopening schools for the spring term were thrown into chaos.
Most primary schools in England are due to open tomorrow, followed by a phased start for secondary schools a week later with GCSE and A-level pupils returning first. The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, still insists that teenagers must sit the national exams.
However, a network of 2,000 head teachers in 80 local authorities will today insist that teachers, pupils and parents should not be put at risk of contracting COVID-19 in order to protect the GCSE and A-level timetables.
“Wider public health, pupil and staff safety should be prioritised ahead of examinations,” said the head teachers from the WorthLess? campaign group.
“Public safety should not be risked or driven by an inflexible pursuit of GCSE and A-levels.”
Not worth reading in full, unless you want to end up beating your head against the wall.
Are there “Wards Full of Children” in English Hospitals?
A tweet from Radio Live 5 containing an extract from an interview on New Year’s Day with a nursing matron went viral yesterday, clocking up over two million views. The nurse, Laura Duffel, claimed to have a ward full of children with Covid at her hospital. The interview was widely cited by lockdown zealots looking for a reason to close all schools across the country. Mary Bousted, joint head of the National Education Union, quote-Tweeted it, adding: “This is incredibly serious.”
But is it true? I asked the senior doctor who writes regularly for Lockdown Sceptics to investigate.
On New Years Day, Adrian Chiles interviewed Laura Duffel on Radio 5 live. I understand Ms Duffel is a nursing matron at Kings College Hospital.
Ms Duffel said that her hospital has ‘a whole ward’ full of children with acute Covid and that her colleagues in other Trusts are in the same position. This is a very alarming statement. Coming from such a senior nurse, it demands to be taken seriously as it marks a significant change from the previously known disease profile.
Children can be affected by Covid in unusual ways – the most alarming is a hyperacute vasculitic syndrome, similar to a disease called Kawasaki syndrome. This can make children quite ill. They can also develop respiratory symptoms like adults although hitherto this has been uncommon except in vulnerable patients like cystic fibrotics, or children on active chemotherapy for cancers. Such sick children tend to be admitted to specialist paediatric hospitals, particularly if they have underlying complex medical conditions.
I have reviewed at the latest figures from Kings College Hospital reported on December 29th.
On December 29th there were 474 Covid inpatients at Kings.
433 patients were in adult beds. A further 41 were in ICU beds (total 474)
If there had been any children with Covid in the hospital on December 29th, one would expect the total number of reported Covid patients to be greater than 474 to reflect the balance of patients in paediatric beds. So, if we assume the figures are accurate, there were no children suffering from acute Covid in Kings on December 29th.
If that is the case, it implies that a “whole ward” of children suffering from acute Covid were admitted at one London Hospital between December 29th and December 31st. A ward normally holds 20 to 30 patients. Truly alarming news.
For comparison, the 389-bed Great Ormond Street Hospital, London’s premier paediatric hospital, had six Covid inpatients on December 19th with one in a mechanically ventilated bed. The highest number of patients in GOSH was 11 reported on December 23rd.
Birmingham Women and Children’s Hospital reported 11 Covid inpatients on December 29th – it’s unclear how many of these patients were children.
Alder Hey paediatric Hospital in Liverpool had zero Covid inpatients.
I have been unable to find any other commentary or official data either from the UK or elsewhere in Europe or the US suggesting that hospitals have seen a dramatic upsurge in acute paediatric admissions with Covid-related symptoms. Nor have I heard this from other hospitals on the medical grapevine.
To put the known Covid risk to children into context, the ONS death statistics show that in the whole of 2020, there were 19 deaths in patients under 19 years old where COVID was mentioned on the death certificate out of 76,669 total Covid deaths (0.025%). Of these patients, 11 were aged 15-19 (essentially young adults). There have been eight deaths of children aged between 0 and 14 years – 0.01% of the total.
If Kings College has had 20 or so otherwise healthy children admitted with acute Covid in the last 48 hrs, and other hospitals in London have had similar admissions, this is something the nation needs to be aware of.
Of course, there may be misunderstandings here. The figures released from King’s on December 29th may not include paediatric wards for example, so there may in fact have been a substantial number of Covid positive children in King’s not obvious in the figures.
I am aware that some hospitals have converted their children’s intensive care units for adult patients, so perhaps a paediatric ICU full of adult patients has been misconstrued as a “ward full of children”.
Maybe Ms Duffel’s definition of “a whole ward” is substantially less than 20 patients. Or possibly her definition of a child with Covid may not imply a very sick patient, but a child admitted for another reason who has tested positive but is actually asymptomatic for Covid – as almost all children are.
Or maybe there is another explanation.
Either way, I think the public deserve to know.
Stop Press: An article by an anonymous 32 year-old trainee paediatrician at a London hospital on the Telegraph‘s website yesterday afternoon said the hospital was expecting to admit fewer children this winter than last winter.
Stop Press 2: The BBC has distanced itself from the interview, quoting numerous paediatricians saying there’s been no increase in children being admitted to hospital with Covid.
Stop Press 3: Damian Roland, a Paediatric Emergency Medicine Consultant and Honorary Associate Professor at Leicester University, described the Radio 5 Live tweet as “misinformation”.
The Failed Strategy of Lockdown Sceptics: We Appealed to Reason, not Emotion
There follows a guest post by Dr David McGrogan, Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. A painful read for people in our camp, but hard to disagree with. I’ve given it a permanent slot on the right-hand side under “Are Sceptical Voices Being Suppressed?”, but it’s so good I’m publishing it in full below.
It must surely now be evident to all of us ‘sceptics’ that we have failed. Despite our efforts, the message simply has not got through. While there is clearly a sizeable minority of the population who feel as we do, it really is only a minority. This has been brought home to me very strongly while away visiting family over Christmas. While most of my relatives and old friends have been happy to meet up, they are simply uninterested in getting to the bottom of what has happened over the past year. If the virus comes up in conversation at all, it is only in reference to overcrowded hospitals, discussed with sad shakes of the head and much tut-tutting.
We have to face facts: most people simply accept the mainstream narrative, and with the prospect of the magic spell of a vaccine in the offing, there is little incentive for them to change their minds. The thinking of the great majority of our fellow citizens can be summarised as: a few more months of this and then it will be spring, things will be back to normal, and we can forget about all of this.
Why is it that so few of our fellow citizens seem willing to even listen to arguments which we find so convincing? There are undoubtedly lots of reasons, but I think it is at least in part due simply to a failure of strategy on the part of sceptics. That is, we have made arguments that are either factual or which appeal to our love of liberty. Neither of them has had much traction amongst the populace.
First, the problem of making the factual case. I am an academic, somebody who discusses ideas and encourages students to investigate and debate facts for a living. So this has been a very bitter pill for me to swallow indeed. But the reality is that most people are just not actually interested in finding out the truth for themselves. They are much more interested in conforming with what they perceive to be what one could call the ‘moral truth’ – the prevailing moral norm. The prevailing moral norm of 2020 is: lockdowns are the ethically right thing to do because they keep vulnerable people safe. To argue against that moral norm is, by definition, both immoral and abnormal. This is the most salient factor in governing behaviour in our society right now.
Lockdown sceptics have made all kinds of important, well-reasoned, fact-based arguments against the lockdowns and other restrictions that have been imposed upon us. The problem of ‘deaths with’ COVID-19; the many issues with the accuracy of PCR tests; the overinflation of the IFR; the comparisons to other diseases; the excess death charts; the fact that the NHS is always nearly overwhelmed every year. None of it has cut through, because most people just don’t respond to fact-based argument. They respond to what they consider to be the moral truth. More importantly, they really don’t respond to fact-based argument if that would mean owning up to being immoral and abnormal. If in order to change your mind you have to become a pariah, then human psychology 101 provides a quick answer: you won’t change your mind.
Second – and this is an even bitterer pill, perhaps the bitterest of all – we have the failure of our liberty-based arguments. We have made all kinds of appeals to freedom and civil liberties during the past year. But the brute fact is that most people apparently couldn’t give two hoots about freedom when the chips are down. Security and safety are what matter. The moral truth for our compatriots is not that the Government rode roughshod over our liberties this year. The moral truth for them is that the Government justifiably deprived us of our liberties to keep us safe – and we’re grateful for it. We can bemoan this and debate the reasons for it all we like. But it’s the world in which we live.
Our task now, then, is to lick our wounds and think about strategy for the next time this all happens. This pandemic is over biologically and will soon be over politically. I fully expect Hancock, Gove, Johnson and their cronies to ride a wave of optimism into the summer that will give them the only thing they really want, the only thing they really crave – a boost in the opinion polls. But there will be other crises like it. New viruses will emerge or be discovered – it has happened enough times since the SARS outbreak of the early 2000s to demonstrate that is an inevitability. We have to be ready. And we have to be ready not just with facts and statistics or arguments in defence of liberty (although those are of course important). We have to be ready with a moral truth of our own.
What we need to emphasise, in other words, is not reason, or not reason alone, but emotion. We quite clearly live in an emotional age – one in which “don’t kill granny” is a more effective argument than any Ivor Cummins video. So emotion has to be emphasised. What do lockdowns mean emotionally? They mean suicides. They mean depression and anxiety. They mean school closures which harm children’s life chances. They mean rising inequality. They mean cancelled hospital treatments. They mean poverty and economic devastation in the developing world. They mean lack of hugs and family and social warmth. It is not that we haven’t talked about all of these things. But we haven’t talked about them enough. We have to acknowledge that while we have all manner of fantastic knock-down factual arguments and statements of principle against all of this nonsense, people aren’t interested to hear them: nobody wants to be knocked-down, fantastically or otherwise. People want to conform with what they perceive to be a moral truth. So we have to set about generating that. We have to start talking not about numbers or rights, but about the human tragedy that lockdown has created. We need stories about real people, real sadness, real misery, real illness. It’s not charts, graphs, numbers or science that will convince people. It’s establishing a moral truth that matters.
Early on the in pandemic, the television news was almost nothing but emotion. Stories about young people, children, and key workers getting sick and dying. People weren’t interested in ‘the science’. They were interested in how awful the virus was and how scared they were of something happening to them or a loved one. How different things might be now if there had also been regular stories in the news about people who had lost a loved one due to a failure to get medical treatment, people sent into downward spirals of depression due to social deprivation or job loss, children whose development has been damaged by lack of education or socialisation, people with severe mental health problems deprived of face to face treatment, and so on? Maybe this is the sort of thing that is now required, in recognition that this war has been lost, but that others will follow.
Stop Press: A new study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests the reason those of us who question lockdown restrictions are treated with such contempt is because efforts to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 have become moralised. That is, people don’t assess the efforts of governments and scientists to mitigate the impact of the virus as they would any other policy, weighing up the costs and benefits. Rather, they regard the minimisation of loss from COVID-19 as a moral imperative that outweighs all other considerations. Ethan Yang has written an interesting comment piece on this study for the AIER blog.
Karol Sikora: Sceptic of the Week
Owen Jones launched a vicious attack on Professor Karol Sikora in the Guardian a couple of days ago. His sin? To be a lockdown sceptic. That’s “dangerous”, according to Jones, who has been an enthusiast for placing the entire country under house arrest since March. Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked, has written a rebuttal.
It isn’t only COVID-19 that is mutating. So is cancel culture. This nasty strain of censorship is spreading, intensifying, becoming ever-more poisonous and harmful to the body politic. The more coronavirus spreads, the more the virus of cancellation spreads too, with packs of censors and neo-Stalinists now demanding the silencing and punishment of anybody who deviates even slightly from the consensus on COVID-19. Just consider the current efforts to destroy the reputation of Karol Sikora.
Professor Sikora is the cancer expert who has been questioning the Covid consensus for the past few months. He has queried the need for harsh lockdowns and kicked up a necessary fuss over the NHS’s suspension of various forms of medical treatment, including for cancer. In the fog of fear about COVID-19, Sikora has shone a light of hope. We’ll get through it, he says. Don’t live in dread, he counsels. Let normal life, and normal medical treatment, continue as much as possible, he’s advised. Has he always been right? Of course not. Show me the man who has. He suggested there wouldn’t be a second wave. In May he said that, come August, things will be ‘virtually back to normal’. That was wrong. String him up! Get out your rotten tomatoes. Pelt this speechcriminal who made a prediction that was not correct.
For the supposed crime of not being entirely right about the course coronavirus would take, Professor Sikora is now public enemy No1 in the eyes of the lockdown fanatics. Leading the mob, as is so often the case these days, is Guardian columnist Owen Jones. From the very start of the Covid crisis, Mr Jones, like many other privileged millennial leftists, has relished the authoritarianism of the lockdown. In March he expressed delight at being ‘placed under house arrest along with millions of people under a police state by a right-wing Tory government’. Yes, if you are well-off, middle class, capable of working from home and cancer-free, lockdown was probably a riot. For other people, however, it wasn’t. Professor Sikora’s chief sin was to express this truth – to say that lockdown will exact a wicked toll on many people – and now privileged beneficiaries of lockdown like Mr Jones are out to destroy him for it.
O’Neill concludes by reminding us how important free speech is – particularly during a national crisis.
Dissent is always good; but in an era of unprecedented authoritarianism it becomes essential. When officialdom assumes control over every aspect of our lives – our social lives, our family lives, whether we can go to work, even whether we can leave the house – then it is absolutely right to question things, constantly, unflinchingly. No one should ever feel comfortable with the suspension of freedom. They should be talking about it and challenging it every hour of every day. Whether their challenges are ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ is not the most important thing here – the most important thing is that we maintain a culture of criticism in response to the most extraordinary climate of authoritarianism any of us has ever experienced.
Dogma is the enemy of progress. Dissent – however irritating the police, the government and the Guardian might find it – is the guarantor of progress. It is the means through which all of us, including society more broadly, entertain the possibility that we are wrong. That lockdown is a mistake, that giving teenagers puberty-blockers is an error, that the Earth is not in fact at the centre of the solar system. Dogma protects even immoral policies and incorrect thinking from criticism by demonising dissenters; dissent, on the other hand, helps to shine a light on the wrongness of certain political strategies or ideological beliefs by encouraging criticism and scrutiny. Even where dissenters are wrong, factually, the climate they help to create is of enormous benefit to society and to mankind.
We must defend freedom of speech in this crisis. Our lives are locked down – and many people accept that as a temporary measure – but our minds should never be locked down. Free thought and free speech are the great guards – our only guards, in fact – against the ossification of public debate and the creation of new, potentially damaging orthodoxies and policies. If we allow free thinking to die alongside the economy, millions of people’s jobs and those cancer patients who were neglected for months on end, then society will be the poorer for a very, very long time. So carry on, Positive Professor. Dissent is now the duty of every individual who wants to ensure that freedom is still breathing when this cursed lockdown is lifted.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt came to the defence of Karol Sikora, Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghan and Mike Yeadon on Twitter in response to a Tweet that relied on data about Covid hospital admissions to purportedly show the second wave is bigger than the first. In fact, if you measure the impact of each wave in terms of excess deaths, the second wave is far, far smaller.
Round-up
- “I got Covid for Christmas. I’m not going to lie, it was quite scary” – Jeremy Clarkson tells of his bout with the virus in his Sunday Times column
- “Lockdown pups sent packing by families with no time for walkies” – What are people like? A dog is not just for lockdown…
- “Guess where Professor Lockdown got his ideas … China’s police state” – Peter Hitchens lambasts Neil Ferguson in his Mail on Sunday column
- “Barbadians demand Love Island star Zara Holland and her boyfriend are thrown in jail for flouting Covid laws” – After the boyfriend tested positive, the couple tried to flee the island
- “Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers is in trouble AGAIN – for the second time in 2021” – Piers Corbyn has been arrested twice in 2021 for participating in anti-lockdown protests
- “Piers Corbyn announces he is running for London Mayor” – Undeterred, Piers is taking on Sadiq Khan in May
- “Why does the press continue to swallow Government spin on Covid?” – Michael Curzon in Bournbrook Magazine asks a pertinent question
- “Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts” – Alarming story in the New York Times claiming the Government is going to mix and match different vaccines, giving people the first dose of one then a second dose of another
- “The New York Times‘s UK vaccine clickbait” – Debunking of the above story by Steerpike in the Spectator
- “Some healthcare workers refuse to take COVID-19 vaccine, even with priority access” – The LA Times has interviewed some heathcare workers who aren’t going to take the vaccine
- “UK can lead the world in 2021 with a pioneering lockdown exit plan” – Janet Daley in the Telegraph sets out her exit plan
- “With the worst possible PM at the worst possible time, Britain’s got no chance of a happy new year” – a cheery New Year message from
the GrinchAlastair Campbell in the Sydney Morning Herald - “Bojo Tweets Praise for the Great Reset. Strap in Everyone, 2021 is Going to be a Wild Ride” – James Delingpole reads rather a lot into Boris Johnson’s use of the phrase “build back better”
- “Vitamin D and Viral Special with Dr. David Grimes et al” – Ivor Cummins’s podcast
- Dr Thomas Aigner, a Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Tuebingen, has resigned from the Academy of Sciences in Mainz in protest at its support for Germany’s lockdown policy
- “Proof Of Vaccination Will Be ‘Essential’ In Ontario: Health Minister” – The Huffington Post reveals that Ontario residents who choose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine could face certain restrictions
- “Protestors flood Toronto streets, demand end to lockdowns” – The Post-Millennial reports on a protest in Toronto yesterday
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen, “Stop Playing With My Mind” by Daniel Bovie and Roy Rox, “No Time For Tears” by Little Mix and “The Waiting” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums as well as post comments below the line, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the reaction of woke viewers to the BBC’s screening of Grease on Boxing Day. The Mail on Sunday has more.
In the film’s final scenes, student Sandy ditches her good- girl image for skin-tight PVC trousers and takes up smoking so she can impress Danny.
It prompted one outraged Twitter user to write: “Grease is far too sexist and overly white and should be banned from the screen. It is nearly 2021 after all.”
Another furious viewer complained: “Grease sucks on so many levels and the message is pure misogyny.”
A third user agreed, saying: “Grease is just the most sexist piece of s***.”
One scene that caused particular offence to youthful viewers was when Putzie, one of Danny’s friends in the T-Birds gang, positioned himself on the floor to look up the skirts of two female students at the fictional Rydell High School.
Other viewers complained about the lyric “Did she put up a fight?” in the hit song “Summer Nights”, when Danny describes seducing Sandy.
“So turns out Grease is actually pretty rapey,” wrote one aghast viewer, while another said: “Misogynistic, sexist and a bit rapey.”
Sensitive viewers also targeted female characters for criticism.
Rizzo was accused of being a bully when she ridiculed Sandy’s good-girl image as she sang “Look At Me I’m Sandra D” in front of her friends in the Pink Ladies gang at a slumber party.
Others were angry that Rizzo was ‘slut-shamed’ for sleeping with various men, particularly when she had sex with T-Bird Kenickie without a condom.
After thinking she might be pregnant, Rizzo was ostracised, prompting the character, as played by Stockard Channing, to sing about the reaction: “There are worse things I could do than go with a boy or two.”
The ‘snowflakes’ were also unimpressed with Vince Fontaine, the radio announcer who hosted the dance-off at Rydell High.
As the character flirted with Pink Lady Marty, he told all dancers that there were no same-sex couples.
The film is, after all, set in 1958 – 45 years before homosexuality was universally decriminalised across the United States.
Nevertheless, the glaring lack of LGBT awareness angered one young Twitter user, who complained: “All couples must be boy/girl? Well Grease, shove your homophobia.”
Another simply wrote: “Grease peak of homophobia.”
The lack of non-white faces in the cast angered some.
One went so far as to question the broadcaster’s decision to air the film and expressed surprise that it was shown without a disclaimer.
One viewer wrote: “I caught the end of Grease, the movie, and noticed there were no black actors or pupils at the high school.”
Another added: “Watched Grease on the BBC, surprised they let it go, full of white people.”
On and on it goes. It’s just as well the BBC didn’t show Zulu instead.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Mail on Sunday‘s Arts Correspondent lambasts BBC comedians for celebrating our departure from the European Union by insulting Nigel Farage and comparing Brexit to cancer.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (takes a while to arrive). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and my Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. But the cause has been taken up by PCR Claims. Check out their website here.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject and Runnymede Trust’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
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Happy New Year
Hang in there guys
Best wishes Hawk
Will do my best.
So how bad is it going to get? Will there be an economic crash? And will they really carry on with this nonsense through the year. It sounds like they’re having problems with vaccinations already!
Ignore the press re vaccination
We are ahead of the curve. People I speak who know what is going on
I can see the Oxford vaccination taking off this month
The press sit at home watching Netflix and writing articles
The Sunday Times
Front page re post code is incorrect
Hospitals In Britain Stretched to Capacity?
Every year NHS hospitals are stretched to capacity, and they keep reducing the number of beds. A claimed bed shortage is now the government’s justification for tyranny. – Tony Heller
https://newtube.app/TonyHeller/wT8uHfr
It’s not as if the Guardian doesn’t know.
From Toby’s main article yesterday.
PETER HITCHENS: Guess where Professor Lockdown got his ideas … China’s police state!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9106799/PETER-HITCHENS-Guess-Professor-Lockdown-got-ideas-Chinas-police-state.html
As Peter Hitchen says never stop writing your MP – it’s the only protest we’ve got.
https://www.writetothem.com/
Pass every fact you have to them – Pass every fact you have to them – forward every article from Lockdown Sceptics
Has anyone kept a timeline of the whole sorry affair, starting with the ‘3 weeks to flatten the curve’ in March, or even further back?
The promises, broken promises, etc etc etc?
Got to be an interesting read, surely??
PW.
I’ve been keeping a lockdown diary from March 21st. Not very good, and there are plenty of things I will have missed out, but I thought it would be interesting for future reference, and have noted for posterity some of the things which have upset me. Typical comments from the early days – “grandma’s birthday ruined”, “a drive to go for a walk is banned”. I dare say there will be people who have done it properly. I hope so anyway. I was angry from the start as they closed the churches to everyone.
I’m on page 119 now (though probably not much more than 100 words per page).
Anybody’s guess what page I’ll be on when this is over…
Thanks Hugh,…I was thinking more of a general timeline based on Government/Media statements….”eat out to help out” seems light years away now….we had a few days in Norfolk in late August and took advantage of that scheme once, only after our daughter pointed it out to us!
“eat out to help out” – it didn’t take them long to change their mind did it? And they expect us to follow all this…
How about a page titled „today I stopped complying with the covidiocy“?
Well – I found the people wearing masks quite amusing at first but when they eventually decided in July that it should be compulsory in shops, I thought I was blowed if I was doing that having managed without through a peak in April and then a drop to less than 100 deaths/week. I did note this though from April Fool’s day (I think almost all were fools by then). “Only 2000 NHS staff tested. Care home residents appear abandoned to their fate – stories of exhausted care home workers travelling between care homes, the infected in care homes to remain there. Not allowed to hospital. God help Grandma [who was in a care home then]” This must never happen again.
I have stopped wearing masks and would urge you all to do likewise.
I never started Janette….I have never minded being set apart from the crowd and in a perverse way I enjoy it. I just look around at the sad maskoids and think how utterly pathetic they look mumbling to each other through steamed up glasses. I just breeze in with a big smile on my face and yes I get some envious looks. Every now and again I see another unmasked face and always let on to them….its a bit like being in a secret club. Being a fairly big guy (not fat!) deters most people from challenging me but you still get the odd idiot.
I got chased around Tesco Belmont, Hereford a few days ago by the little lad on the door that does the greeting for my non-mask status. I’m 6′, male and pretty athletic. I sent the lad away with a “I have a reasonable excuse under the regulations” because I refuse to state I have an ‘exemption’. A few aisles later I was challenged by the 6′ 3″ security guard. He was also sent away with same conversation. I half expected an encounter with West Mercia’s finest before I left the store. However we were still in Tier 1 that week and I think they were busy chasing away hordes of Tier 3 Bristolians and people unfortunate to live under the alcohol-free fist of Dictator Drakeford.
Interesting…. I am not too far away in South Shropshire and my mother was born in Hereford and Bob Chadd from the department store was my great uncle. Always loved Hereford Cathedral and the river and the Castle Grounds. I have not encountered anything as bad as you had but I’m sure its only a matter of time. I have had aggro from 2 customers but I have just told them I am not answerable to them.
Sounds like a good idea Hugh, especially being able to vent your hurt and upset with the written word. I am not a regular church goer but I have always loved midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The minister volunteered closing before it was mandated. Just a pathetic sign on the door and on the corner notice board, ‘please keep safe’. I was told not to feel depressed about it, but I wasn’t depressed I was furious. I just don’t understand how a minister can stand up in a church professing his faith in God and ministering to his congregation when he has got that claptrap on his noticeboard. It was the most unholy Christmas I have ever experienced and I won’t be setting foot in that church again.
I feel exactly the same; I now feel reluctant to renew a sense of community with those who have accepted the church’s willing adoption of State panic. Dr McGrogan’s piece today seems to nail the possible reasons; Lockdown is the ‘ethical’ thing to do and so we must be ‘morally correct’ at all costs.
Does my head in Jane. I think you are right, somehow I think they are doing themselves out of a job. Having said that, the amount of incense that man burns in there would kill anything, including corona.
maybe this can act as a purifying of the church, sorting out those who are willing to take a stand from those who are Christian in name only?
I seem to remember reading that smoking used to be used as a way of slowing the spread of these bugs.
My anti-lockdown church has already had trouble with the police (hence me keeping a bit tight-lipped), I think they are going as far as they dare. Did you ever see that film, “Dusk ‘Til Dawn”? A horror-comedy with a preacher having to help a couple of crooks when exorcism was required/ He eventually told them ” I’m a mean mmm… man of God”, having initially lost his nerve. That’s what we need, people to stand up and be counted. (Love midnight mass btw, even if I wasn’t a regular, I’d probably still go to that. Ours was probably as normal as we could get away with).
I’ve done the same. More my thoughts and emotions, but a very powerful indicator of where I’ve been this last year, and now moving forward.
Me too!
A brilliant analogy! But sadly, so, so true….I’ll stand by….
Not me but I was watching a Timeline documentary on the London plague of 1665 and the ineffectual measures taken against it.
An unattributed quote
‘For a thousand lives taken by the pestilence ten thousand more were taken by locking the people in their homes’.
They rehashed the ‘doubling every few days’ for Mutant .2 Kiddie Killer just last week.
I worry about my fellow humans when they swallow these blatant lies. The lockdowns failed to stop or reduce the usual winter respiratory illnesses. To keep the lie going that we need more of the same, “mutant strain” was the obvious excuse. I have fully accepted (sadly) that this lockdown will continue until spring when respiratory infections naturally reduce.
Re-read Animal Farm. It’s exact, so pber history – written a century in advance.
The Rule of the Pigs.
A relative said last before this year I should read Orwell. She now says I should wear a face covering or I don’t care about others. No accounting for some…
It’s a two weekly rolling barrage of propaganda and lies.
Couldn’t agree more NN, and they are all singing from the same hymn book even here in Australia. I think our march to what the UK is going through is only just beginning and we will be in the same place this winter. I would love to be disproved.
My husband reminded me that when all the testing/moonshot bollocks was proposed, the idea was that it would enable those testing negative to live a normal life. Then they dreamed up “asymptomatic transmission” and it just helped to lock us all down again. Mass testing has to stop, test on admission to hospital only.
This site, lockdownsceptics.org, is a timeline. Every day’s posting, all the round-up links and all the comments are kept and available to all. I really hope Toby and team have some robust back-up measures in place. I expect there are going to be a lot of people who would like this evidence to disappear. I have suggested lodging the site’s contents at the Churchill College Archives Centre, along with Churchill’s and Maggie’s papers, for future historians to study.
Also, UK Column has been a rolling news timeline in videos and their website.
I’m a bit of a diarist, and this year, or certainly since late February, I have made sure to write down each day what’s going on in the news re Covid, and how it’s affecting the lives of my family. I want it all to go down in history, like those who kept diaries during the war.
I already read back in it to the spring, and am amazed at how, so early on, so many people, many of them medical professionals, spoke out about their scepticism. I very quickly became sceptical too, because my common sense told me that things just didn’t sound right.
I seem to remember the Guardian were ordered to erase some information, I think relating to Assange. Their position was, it’s all backed up anyway, it won’t make any difference. I would hope it was the same for this. In any case, the Nazi scum tried to cover their tracks as well, and we still had successful prosecutions from the first Nuremberg trials. No, I don’t think the government and big pharma will be able to comprehensively cover their tracks.
There is a timeline of the W.H.O. beginning in October/November 2019, or thereabouts. I have been following LS since it began and have cut and pasted hundreds of people’s comments and links to articles since then. Go to the Gates Foundation website and check their timeline. They proudly display it like a tickertape at the bottom of the page.
Tom Blackburn linked to a piece in the NY Times (at the end of yesterday’s btl) about child starvation in a number of countries being caused by the “global pandemic” (government lockdowns really). For me, this is one of the most shameful aspects of the nonsense we’ve been enduring since mask, and we should make sure any zealot who says “granny killer|” knows what their lockdowns are causing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/opinion/sunday/2020-worst-year-famine.html
Thanks. Judging by David McGrogan’s comments, this is just the sort of thing we need. The trouble will be convincing them it’s happening because of government lockdowns rather than a “global pandemic”.
Of course you could compare this large scale starvation with the tiny number of children who have died from cv (and few if any of their teachers after catching it from their pupils).
Yes – zealots can’t conflate the 2 issues. “What we are doing here isn’t killing those kids is it?” – they don’t see the connection.
(should read “since March” obvs. – bu then again…)
The selfishness of lockdown cretins simply flabbergasts me, given the sanctimonious hypocrisy that goes with it.
As Lord Sumption has said it is highly selfish of some fearful people to think its ok to eliminate the freedoms of others. Its the zealots who are the real selfish ones and boy have I pointed that out to them including some in my wider family. Needless to say I received fewer christmas cards this year but stuff them if thats what they want to be like. They seem to think its ok to spout their views but you are not supposed to respond. As Corporal Jones used to say…’they don’t like it up ’em’.
“Don’t panic, Captain Mainwaring, do not panic…they don’t like it up’em, they do not like it up ’em! Fix bayonets – charge! (Private Frazer) – you’re not going to charge the damn virus are ye?” Ye might as well charge the virus with a bayonet as do some of the tuff that they’ve been doing!
Send James O’Brien links to these stories. Kay Burley as well. Anyone you can think of.
Oh is he that LBC idiot who thinks he’s clever. If you could post a link at the top of tomorrow’s btl (or get omeone else to do so?) Yes I’m afraid I really am that lazy…
We are being dictated to by savages
They deserve to be treated as savages
Are you suggesting that Bozo’s use of “build back better” was an accident?
I’d say more incompetent than accidental.
There was a story in the news this week that the PM’s aides have been aghast at his inability to stick to a script, combined with his inability to deliver a downbeat message. The result is that whenever he has to deliver a negative message, he insists on including something nebulous, upbeat, and undeliverable. “World Beating Track and Trace”, “the Vaccine Cavalry”, and “Build Back Better” are prime examples.
Except ‘build back better’ is globalist scum lingo signifying the intention to kill the plebs for the planet. Yours is a nice story though, it is just it is more theatre to make you think those responsible for this are not following the plan.
Hospitals In Britain Stretched to Capacity?
Every year NHS hospitals are stretched to capacity, and they keep reducing the number of beds. A claimed bed shortage is now the government’s justification for tyranny. – Tony Heller
https://newtube.app/TonyHeller/wT8uHfr
The pirates will find all the new facilities most convenient.
To loot and sell.
Presumably they will be able to claim asylum there, and then be transported hither at our expense.
That’s a joke. Obviously that will never happen.
Stuffing bent EU fishing arrangements etc. that played a big part in driving them into piracy. The fact it was a failed state obviously didn’t help.
Maybe, just maybe, the closure of schools might get some lockdown zealots to think, “is the price too high? ”
Then they’ll remind themselves “No. This is needed, until we’re all vaccinated.” and get ready to mask up, once more.
Schools were closed most of lsst year and the zealots didn’t give a f..k.
They really dont care…childrens’ futures are expendable to extend the lives of those in gods waiting room.
No chance. They love it.
One of the most depressing aspects of this whole thing has been seeing how people with fairly humdrum middle management jobs have fallen over themselves to “take action”, even where their roles have nothing to do with public health or health and safety. It has given purpose to their sad, banal lives, and they’ve developed a taste for it.
Strange how academics have argued for decades about why ordinary Germans so casually went along with the Nazi propaganda, isnt it? If you keep people confused they will end up just shrugging their shoulders and getting on with their own survival. Orwell nailed it, with his ” …we have always been at war with Eurasia”.
It was a major mystery when I was a child…no I see very clearly how easily it happened. I am just disgusted at the behaviour of millions in this country…proud to be British? You have got to be joking.
They exploited it as an opportunity for marketing, a reason to glut your inbox and push their presence in your face. They banked on virtue-signalling and installing covid theatre winning customers.
Many of them over egging the pudding or jumping on the gun – all to virtue signal and profit from the misery of others (expanding product ranges to include the Holy Gunk and fashion muzzles for a start)
Stalin Dungford’s plan to put a stop to all economic activity in Wales is going really well:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/major-chains-been-wiped-out-19549764
One shop in Tenby already has. It was a prize kow-tower. No grief.
You should pin one of your notices up on his shop door explaining why he went bust and why its karma….I hope he/she enjoys his universal credit.
Yes, I intend to.
Vote Marxism…. get Marxism
Vote Tory get fascism 🙂
Now now you two lol keep it clean!
Tory? Boris? Marxist?
Can medical experts please tell us: if a
victimpatient gets a first dose of this (RNA-tweaking?) Pfizer-jab, and a (delayed) second dose of the (dead-virus?) A-Z jab, how are the two of them likely to interact?This is certainly what I’ve been wondering. The “cocktail effect”. Worse by far to mix vaccines than mix drinks and, given the vax reactions we are already seeing, then goodness knows what effects there might be from combining the pair of them in the same person.
Withnail : Liar. What’s in your toolbox?
I : No, we have nothing. Sit down.
W : Liar. You’ve got antifreeze.
I : You bloody fool, you should never mix your drinks!
[Withnail laughs hysterically and falls to the floor, then vomits on Marwood’s feet]
I am certain the reply will be “no data available”. Because that is very much the reply to all questions that have been about these vaccines, because the reality is they haven’t a clue!
Yes, the obvious question which no one seems to want to discuss, let alone postulate an answer.
A further one is what happens if the gap between first and second jabs is so long that a third jab may be necessary? Does anyone have any idea of the implications of this? Is it safe??
No answers of course. Just keep playing media politics.
Any possibility of a vaccine resistant mutation as a result of delayed or mixed vaccines. I can’t believe they are advocating it to pregnant women when studies have not been completed on potential side effects, crossing the placenta. If the vaccine can enter the foetal blood system, as an extreme auto immune response has been discussed as a possible negative affect, what could be the outcome on a newborn if the child contracts a normal cold, or indeed when it receives the normal child vaccines.
Yes, more pertinent questions to which no answers are forthcoming. Anyone who isn’t already in a very high risk group would be nuts to get these jabs.
As would anyone who is in a high risk group.
Nobody knows. It’s a giant experiment.
And it’s illegal.
COVID TEST Sweden has been in the news more than typically in 2020 because of its absence of a lockdown to deal with of COVID. On the ‘Worldometer’ COVID website where did it rank out of 48 European countries in COVID deaths per 1,000,000: Highest deaths/ million ? 8th highest 18th highest Schools are being shutdown in January because of the risk of children and teachers getting Covid. How many children under 20 died after a positive COVID test in England and Wales over the first 51 weeks of 2020: 20 in 10,000 (0.2%) 20 in 1,000,000 (0.002%) 20 (0.00013%) President Trump received huge criticism earlier this year for saying that children were virtually immune from COVID. How many Americans out of 103,000,000 under 25 have died of COVID up to week 48 this year: 459,000 (0.45%) 4,590 (0.0045%) 459 (0.00045%) Sticking with America, on the CDC (Centres for Disease Control) website, they estimate the number of excess deaths caused by COVID. How do they adjust for the very significant increases in population and age over the last five years: They stratify the population into 5-year age groups, and adjust for the increase in each group They stratify the population into… Read more »
the formatting has been corrupted but there are 9 questions with 3 multiple choice answers each
Very clever idea – well done
A quiz format could have an impact on people
Terrific letterbox drop idea.
I agree, a good idea in principle, but this version is far too longwinded and complex. And the numbering format needs to be sorted out. Stick to a few simple facts to get the interest of waiverers.
Some people believe that millions have died. Mind boggling.
Yeah. Multiple choice. Make it look as innocent and cancel proof as possible.
Answers – all of the above – we’re all gonna die! (Gibbers with panic)
Great idea the quiz. I like the letterbox drop comment too. All it would need it a zealot / hysterical (emotinal) trigger type headline and intro to get the so called majority to start to engage with it. Not a lockdown truth piece… However, whilst I see open compliance out and about, talking to anyone reveals they aren’t necessarily happy with it. The majority of people aren’t vocal at all in any form, on social media and in public or person. The kind of skewed data where we have the lockdown zealots looking like they are the majority is the same in many things. Remain looked much bigger than leave, the look on Camerons face… Cancel culture seems to be huge at the moment, but is a small resistance with a big mouth. The French resistance wasn’t very big at all, not that you’d have known after the war with all their supporters… The blm movement looked huge, for a while. extiction rebellion too, seems to be shrinking in numbers, efforts and support too. The majority are to be found in the middle and are more like us than we think :>) I’m up for delivering leaflets to help, just… Read more »
‘Cancel culture is a small resistance with a big mouth’- The loudest voices are the paid trollers – some of the (at least) 20,000 people who are employed to go online and ‘shame’ people about whatever the latest bit of mind control is – they’re not the general public but they’re there to mess with our heads. The best way to stop them? Ask them how much they’re paid and politely suggest they find a better means of employment – it’s worked for me..
Conservative Woman has been crawling with them BTL this last couple of days. Sickening!
Funded by Soros?
This lady Duffel should be arrested, as should Ferguson, who set this greater threat to children mutant virus in motion, without clear evidence.
Putting parents in fear of their children’s mortality is too much. This charade is a coordinated left-wing attempt to stop all exams again this year. That we have a government packed with ministers consumed by fear and an opposition controlled by Public Unions make their chances of getting what they want almost certain.
Bunter’s reshuffle should rid all those paralysed by fear in his government. Gove is first to come to mind. He is running fast out of time.
agreed
Even the Reich ministry for propaganda and public enlightenment has chucked that Duffel bitch under a bus. She should be arrested.
More likely to be made a Dame I’m afraid.
Gove seems to have been completely bought off…wonder how much he was offered?
Gove has always been a self-serving slimy little toad.
And those are his best points.
I am well to the left of Jeremy Corbyn but want my grandkids at school, Jezza voted against lockdowns so can you please stop this left/right nonsense?
Encouraging to see Amanda Spielman speaking out in the Sunday Telegraph, as covered in today’s editorial.
There are many experts who have strongly criticised or questioned the government/sage policies but…
WHY has noone inside the cabal broken ranks and made a stand against it? There must be a great many insiders aware of what is going on.
HOW can we persuade some of these people to act on their consciences and break ranks?
Targeting these people (contacting them individually?) could be the catalyst for things to change?
Seems we need a modern day version of Mata Hari – ready to sleep with the enemy for the sake of the common good (well our common good in this case). Don’t look at me – I live in Stalag Wales and the thought of even being in the same room as Drakeford for a second time has probably just put me off my breakfast…as I’m still regretting not accidentally on purpose spilling a drink over him when he was pointed out to me as “likely next leader of Welsh Assembly”.
Dibs on Marianna Spring
Desmond Swayne for health minister!
The people have not suffered enough
They still have Netflix and Strictly (whatever that is). They can still get a bucket of lard delivered to their home each evening. Life is good
As sure as night follows day the gulags and summary execution will be imposed
Even then they will not be stirred
They will still denounce their families and friends as they do now
Eventually it will be their turn to stare down the barrel of a gun or freeze in a gulag
As they face their maker they will still be unable to fathom out how they got there
According to Solzhenitsyn when people who considered themselves the most committed Communists and most highly loyal to Comrade Stalin yet still found themselves in the Gulag instead of changing their point of view they continued to be loyal because the party is always right.
Mothers would write to their children ‘confessing’ their guilt because only after denouncing their parent could the child progress in the radiant workers paradise.
“Long live Comrade Stalin!” (Makarov clicks)
Just looking at the Lewisham website.
For the week ended 31/12/20, ‘cases’ in London have come down by 16,000 (5%) from the previous week (subject to revision). Presumably now the schools in London can go back ?!
sorry, that should read the rate of increase in cases has gone down by 16,000 (about 20%)
Today’s newsletter is an important one, the article about Dr David McGrogan’s, analysis of lockdowns is perceptive and seems to get to the heart of the matter. We lockdown sceptics might as well be talking Martian or Klingon for all the effect it has, I am afraid that it is true that facts data and rational analysis have little impact or effect on many people. In my view this has been made far worse by the aching vacuum and crass inability at the centre of our government. Hence we have stories like the one in today’s news above of the nurse proclaiming about the number of sick children and we have jumped up health tyrants and computer modellers making pronouncements as if they were running the country, which in effect they are because, at the centre of Government we have a vacuous inept man of straw, with no clear strategy and no intellectual ability to analyse what is happening and no leadership ability to stamp his authority on anything. To escape from all this i sometimes watch old WW2 films on TV, the contrast between the character of the various Governments and leaders at that time and the current situation… Read more »
I agree. The David McGrogan article is very good. Would add one thought: fear. That is the key ingredient. The population (including me) got very afraid in March, based on the images on TV. Right through human history, collective fear has been associated with deeply irrational, authoritarian and single-minded behaviour. That behaviour then becomes moralized and quickly becomes religious in its fervour. It cannot be questioned and anyone who does is a traitor. Various witch doctors, or priests, or governments emerge to orchestrate things. They always position themselves as having the answers and they have limited incentive to reduce the fear. They tend to ramp it up. Perpetuating it increases their power. But, everyone (including themselves) believes they are acting in the best interests of humanity. They also tend to be popular. Lots of historical parallels exist. We all believe now that WW1, the Nazis, Bolsheviks, Salem Witch Trials, Lynchings and McCarthy (for example) were bad periods of history where big evil mistakes were made. But, at the time they were all popular phenomena and emerged from fear. WW1 generals were not reviled during the war, for example. The Earl Haig Fund is testament to that. Revulsion only came later.… Read more »
Yes, the article is good – but it echoes the exact same sentiments posted on here several times by many of us. It’s above the line, and he’s a professor, but that’s about the only difference. I can’t recall when but I posted something about logic and facts not working and needing to use some of the dark arts of fear – suicides, cancer deaths, dementia deaths, starvation – in other words, using the same kind of propaganda techniques that have been used against many populations.
The issue we will always have with that however is that people will still be more scared of what they see as an immediate threat. The second issue is that none of the mainstream media are making any sort of consistent focus on the dangerous & harmful outcomes of lockdown. The third issue we have is that even now, some of the key proponents of lockdowns are marking their own homework and pushing more nonsense about how many lives they have saved. Imperial have done that recently and been criticised for it – see – Model used to evaluate lockdowns was flawed (medicalxpress.com)
McGrogan is,I suspect,quite right.
In my hopefully reasoned conversations with other people on the virus I find they are already sceptical or rigidly in tune with the government propaganda and I am reduced to saying to the latter then show me your plague wagons and mass graves for all the dead.
It does little good as they seem to feel comfortable with the herd.
I should know as my wife is one of them.
Unfortunately,I find myself slipping into unquestionong ways: just who is Owen Jones? I’m afraid as soon as I hear he writes for “The Guardian” I am prejudiced against him despite not reading what I presume to be his divel.
Never mind,I coukld be living in Wales or Scotland.
Anything like that happens here they are pilloried on social media and castigated by these MPs in the daily presser. Gosh I feel for you kh, I don’t know how anyone does it in hospitality. In our area all cafes, restaurants and clubs were closed down except for takeaway at their discretion over Christmas and new year, but the health minkster (that’s a typo but I like it) went on a rant on tv because no one was there to answer the phone to help the contact tracers. From Jan 1 a $5000 fine if cafe/restaurant/haidresser hasn’t set up track and trace through Services NSW. I don’t think these politicians have any kind of grasp on reality.
Where are you and can I come?
If all LS lived in your pretty town kh you would have more customers than Starbucks and Costa etc amalgamated!
Did he attempt to rebutt the truth of what your notice actually said? I suspect not. Well if I was passing your cafe and saw that notice I would become a weekly regular!
Yes I find the same as the good Doctor above said.
I am writing to a couple of MPs here in Sydney and I would like to quote some of what Dr McGrogan says. It is very good. I am trying a different tack this time. These MPs are behaving like arrogant upstarts. I think they have forgotten who votes them in and need to be reminded. Do you think it is ok to quote him? We don’t watch news anymore. We are re-experiencing the joy of Heartbeat, Nigella Bites, and MASH.
I think you are free to quote anyone whose views are freely available.
I’m with Biker: old Lovejoy is therapeutic. Ye Olde Englande circa 1985, indeed ‘an age’ ago.
My much older brother sat next to Ian MacShane at junior school.
Say no to the vaccines and that may well scupper them.
To date has there been a single case of a contested covid fixed penalty notice going to trial in the the magistrates courts?
When I refer to a trial I mean a case where the individual pleads not guilty and the State has to produce witnesses to prove the case
The regime trumpets fines imposed. However it appears that these cases relate to people who have given false names and addresses and have therefore not answered any of the paperwork.
These ‘false details’ cases will have then been ‘proved’ in the defendants absence based on the paperwork
I suspect the regime is avoiding contested trials as it’s going to open a can of worms and could lead to the legislation being declared unlawful
Strange…. no such case reported after 10 months of fixed penalty notices
The Hansard web-site states that 330 different Coronavirus statutory instruments have been laid before Parliament since this hoo-haa started. If you do as you are entitled and reject a fixed penalty notice and opt for a court case the police have to draft a full set of paperwork which then has to go to the CPS for consideration of a court case being brought. I am not sure how many people issued with fixed penalty notices have rejected them and requested a court case? I imagine that going down this route takes up a lot of Police and CPS time.
The whole legal side of this nonsense has been appalling I have twice written to Suella Braverman MP and Attorney General about the way the law is being used but have had no reply. It is indicative of the way this government works that Parliament enacts 330 Statutory Instruments and yet we hear nothing from the Attorney General whose main claim to fame seems to be keeping entirely invisible. Although I do sometimes wonder if she and the likes of Rishi Sunak are keeping themselves clear of the current mess ready to step in at some stage?
Agree, but not one contested case in the Magistrates Court? That can’t be by accident. That would have to be a policy imposed from on high
She’s hardly so invisible as the former Attorney General, our absent without leave MP.
Braverman? Funny name for a member of the Poodle Parliament.
I still remember when they abandoned all ongoing lockdown prosecutions in early summer saying the Police had used legislation only applicable in Wales. That was complete rubbish, it was because they knew no actual crime had been committed.
Some poor English sod was fined for the dreadful crime of driving to Tenby to but a bouncy castle. Don’t know whether he paid up or not.
There was mention here ?2? weeks ago of a pro bono lawyer succeeding in getting a student’s 10k fine withdrawn.
I don’t know if this was in a magistrates court though.
To any teacher applauding the shutdown (from a fellow teacher):
“Never talk to me again about your concerns about the vulnerable and the isolated in your classes.”
That is the wickedness of it, the parents with sharp elbows will reap the rewards while the most disadvantaged will become ever more so.
Always the way, thermageddon too.
It’s the same the whole world over,
It’s the poor that get the blame,
It’s the rich that get the pleasure,
Ain’t it all a bloody shame.
‘rich’ should be replaced by ‘professional middle-class’
That precisely the point Danny all they do is ‘talk’ especially at their dinner parties and its all virtue signalling. When it comes to their actions they show its all empty words.
Dear Toby,
Re Laura Duffel-Bagge and other cases – it seems to me that Lockdownsceptics is increasingly playing the role of fact-checker of Covid misinformation disseminated by the establishment itself. This is a good thing and should be reflected in the website’s name and banners.
Have you checked out Guardian and Independent articled by a Dr Samantha Batt- something or other, Twitter celeb (and clearly an aspiring novelist) who gleefully describes “feeling a 20-year old’s ribs cracking as she tries to resuscitate him…”.
This is Covid Porn and needs to be called out as such.
Similar to Brighton council last night calling their actions in closing schools “brave”.
You just know they get all excited about making “the tough choices”, and rolling their shirt sleeve shirt up. Goes with their box set at home of The West Wing and biography of Napoleon on the
Bookshelf.
From holiday in Cuba with a green screen backdrop of the Royal Pavillion?
What is a Green Screen backdrop?
It’s a computer technique where someone stands in front of a green screen. The computer can then project any kind of background desired. Used in the movies and now on Zoom fairly often.
Lie detector more than fact check.
The second needs the first (us) to do its job…
Is the NHS gagging order only for people spilling the beans in one direction. Shouldn’t Laura Duffel Bag etc be sacked?
I think you are quite correct.
The NHS has a history of bullying all who fall foul of it: chirp up publicly about it’s agenda supporting it and you’ll probably be marked for favour if you’re lucky but God help those who publicly “betray” the NHS cult.
“If only you had been!” was your reply I hope.
Or “re-educated”….
last nights Casualty was totally covid porn / propaganda. although most watchers will think it was a documentary
Now theres a surprise….did they not show Holby doctors making a tik tok video?
Despite universities, democracy, Orwell, advances in medicine, PPS degrees from Oxford, Solzhenitsyn, the industrial revolution, men and women of the law, the holocaust, and computing, we have not progressed beyond burning witches
Or sacrificing children to Moloch/NHS.
Orwell did not progress beyond Orwell. He informed a British government department about people he suspected of having Communist sympathies and sometimes threw in surmises about them being homosexual.
I think there was some progression in the latter 20th century. And then came Facebook and we reverted to chimps.
PETER HITCHENS: Guess where Professor Lockdown got his ideas … China’s police state
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9106799/PETER-HITCHENS-Guess-Professor-Lockdown-got-ideas-Chinas-police-state.html
““The New York Times‘s UK vaccine clickbait” – Debunking of the above story by Steerpike in the Spectator
”
He didn’t debunk it.
Well worth watching. Vernon Coleman’s latest update on brandnewtube :https://brandnewtube.com/watch/make-no-mistake-this-is-genocide_kJBRkPY1j7MupJl.html
Why has he turned off comments ?
Due to invasion by the 77th. He refuses to give them a platform.
Out of curiosity, does anyone have the real deal on whether we’re experiencing a genuine second wave or just a casedemic? And whatever it is, what’s behind it? Dry Tinder or extended testing?
In my view there was a failure of courageous leadership at about the time Boris was ill, as soon as the number of weekly registered deaths came back to within 25% of the long term average and hospitals were doing OK they should have dropped all lock-down measures and let things sort themselves out over the summer period. In my view all our lock-down measures have done is kick the can down the road and they have now come back to haunt us at a time when the NHS is normally busy with respiratory diseases in any case.
Which was predicted here and elsewhere at the time.
Hard to say until we get more recent excess mortality data.
I suspect there is some slight excess (maybe 2-300/day) over prior 5 years, less so compared to prior 10 years. So essentially a casedemic with added ongoing endemic seasonal COVID knocking out those susceptible to respiratory infections (who would ordinarily get flu and suffer, maybe even die)
This was the trend until mid December anyway.
Who cares? They’re full of it whatever they say or do.
‘It must surely now be evident to all of us ‘sceptics’ that we have failed.’
Nope.
We have only just started.
https://www.thebrexitparty.org/letter-to-secretary-of-state-for-health/
https://cormandrostenreview.com/cease-and-desist-order-fuellmich-drosten/
Talk of failure is unhelpful. On one side, we have Lockdown Sceptics, including any number of extremely distinguished figures, and Reform UK, on the other side, we have all the major political parties in Britain, health and teaching unions, the state broadcaster, the entire apparatus of governments at home and overseas, the WHO, the Democratic Party……..
The real casualties? 250 million returned to extreme poverty worldwide, 10 million unemployed in the U.S., 1 million extra unemployed in this country…….
Failure simply is not an option.
Maybe but a long way to go, do we know where we are with any organised political opposition? The Brexit/Reform party and Laurence Fox’s party (does it still exist?) have not really captured my enthusiasm and have a lot of work to do if they are going to make any progress.
There are local elections in May, will there be any lock-down opposition candidates?
It remains to be seen.
The various May elections will concentrate minds, bring matters to a head. That is the sole purpose of the government’s aim to complete vaccinations by Easter!
The good news, for entertainment value at the very least, is that Piers Corbyn is standing for London Mayor in May on a platform of ending “Covid con rules” and “reverse discrimination against people who refuse to wear a mask or take the vaccine”
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/piers-corbyn-announces-he-is-running-for-london-mayor/01/01/
Organising a quiz show could be an option?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9myHhpS9s
Go Piers
I’m starting to think the May elections will be cancelled.
Postal vote only, with some role found for Dominion voting machines
Unlikely, if only because the Scots Assembly leader believes she is on the crest of a wave. Inconceivable that she will postpone, so England cannot; Re London, Corbyn splits the left wing vote so unlikely that will be postponed either. Also hospitalisations will be heading South so excuses will sound increasingly hollow. Even the Speaker might start to come over a bit ‘mad Bercow’
Reckon the only possible chance of any opposition is if Reform and Reclaim (why give themselves the same name in effect) decide to work together. Nigel’s lot probably isn’t viable at all in areas of the south and Laurence’s crew is, as far as I can see, still too specialist in traditional views for many. Together though, as both are anti-lockdown, they could get noticed.
I wrote to the principals of the Reform, Reclaim & Heritage parties some months ago, suggesting that they combine resources to form a unified alternative to the status quo ….. answer came there none …. tumbleweed. I think Nigel, Laurence & David have a desperate need for individual notoriety, in spite of their broadly similar manifestos.
Agreed.
Beating ourselves over the head is pointless.
But let’s use emotion by all means.
Biker has lots.
Biker is our R. Lee Ermey and some of us are Gomes Pyles
Dr David McGrogan’s brilliant analysis in today’s blog really hits the nail on the head for me. I’ve been scratching my head since March as to why the majority of people think the Government are doing the right thing with lockdowns etc, or need to do more, why people are so accepting of this extremely disproportionate response and so accepting of what is clearly propaganda and illogic. And so hostile to scepticism. McGrogan says, basically: emotion, safety and security override reason and facts. ‘Moral truth’ rules.
I found this oddly calming, as for me it explains so much.
O tempora! O mores!
Whilst I agree with everything McGrogan says, I also believe it is too late to bring in emotive issues.
I belong to a forum centred on walking the Camino de Santiago. Early on in lockdown, there was great concern for all the businesses connected with the flow of pilgrims, many of whom have certainly gone bust. On one thread, someone posted about the problems not being due directly to covid, but government response. The immediate and huge response was, it’s a pandemic, stupid. Covid caused everything. Even now, you’ll be howled down if you suggest that government response has anything at all to do with it, unfortunately.
Start bringing up emotive issues, and all people will say is, what do you expect, it’s a pandemic, isn’t it?
I understand why he says that sceptics should use emotional issues as a counter-measure. However, I share your view against doing so, but I think for a different reason. For me, it’s reason and facts which matter most in this zeitgeist, not emotion.
It seems we are playing a longer game. History is never kind to those with emotional driven responses, often describing them as hysterical or mania…
Do they realise it’s only a “pandemic” because the definition of a pandemic was changed? What does it actually take to get through to thee people? Same old story, I suspect – hearts and minds that matters, not facts and figures.
With the headlines about how many more people will die as a direct result of the restrictions, how does the moral truth not do a 180 though? We have been aware of these consequences and have been trying our damnedest to stop them from happening for months. How can they not see that what they are doing is the exact opposite of moral? That their twisted morals are helping to kill these people.
A very good question, CGL, and a big puzzle for me too, except I now see, thanks to David McGrogan’s piece, that it is as it is, a phenomenon of human psychology which is very hard to counter. Someone posted here recently that the propaganda and misinformation stimulated their ‘lizard* brain’: the deep survival instinct, by terrifying people.
(*No, not the Lizards who allegedly run the planet secretly!)
Another fascinating philosophical piece in today’s post, this one by Dr David McGrogan.
I will offer a diagnosis: the great majority of people in this country, no matter what the level of their formal education, are intellectually bone idle.
Including our PM. He may be a classics graduate but the basics of the science are not too difficult if people with a reasonable intelligence level just make the effort. Most just won’t and in the PM that is unforgivable. We should not to have to weaponise emotion.
Philosophy of freedom in the corona crisis PHILIP KOVCE AND THOMAS MORGENROTH-JANUARY 1, 2021 https://dasgoetheanum.com/philosophie-der-freiheit-in-der-coronakrise/ (active foot notes and article in Deutsch) While for some the restriction of civil liberties in the name of solidarity and protection against infection cannot go fast and far enough, others consider the corona pandemic to be more or less hot air and strictly reject state measures to combat it. Thomas Morgenroth and Philip Kovce look for a way out of this messy situation – and find it in ethical individualism. All over the world, states are currently drastically restricting the fundamental rights of their citizens – on the grounds that this is the only way to get the corona pandemic under control. In Germany, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina recommended a “hard lockdown” in an ad hoc statement on December 8, 2020. It was “absolutely necessary from a scientific point of view,” the statement said.1 A few days later, the federal and state governments actually agreed on corresponding measures.2 However, skepticism seems to be warranted when scientists consider interventions in fundamental rights to be ‘absolutely necessary’. In any case, it is remarkable that the philosopher of science Michael Esfeld, who teaches in Lausanne… Read more »
Tweeted by Corona Ausschuss SEE ALSO ETHICS Where is human dignity today? JANUARY 1, 2021 Should the German Bundestag determine an ‘epidemic situation of national importance’ or the Swiss Federal Council a ‘special’ or ‘extraordinary situation’, it is necessary not to restrict liberties collectively but to strengthen them individually. For this purpose, risk groups should not be defined statistically, i.e. in the abstract; rather, each individual should assess himself very concretely as a risk person – or not. Anyone who sees himself as a person at risk can initially take care of his own free will to keep his distance and avoid contact (‘free social distancing’). Where this is impractical in the public sphere or in professional life, he can mask himself. Furthermore, he can be vaccinated if possible. Protective masks and vaccinations should be financed from public funds. In addition, all persons at risk should be granted the right to impose a lockdown on their own at any time (‘free lockdown’). After registration with the authorities, they would be entitled to a kind of pandemic income for the period of voluntary quarantine in the event of a loss of income, the amount of which would have to be based… Read more »
Protect those genuinely at risk, if they want protection.
Lock up the zombies, feed them through the keyhole.
Liberate the humans.
See how long the zombies want to go on being zombies.
Or piss on them through the key hole lol.
Considerable; thanks for sharing. Would take years to bring about, I fear. Much of the horror we are now enduring seems based on short-termism, and the notion that ‘we will soon be out of this and be able to go back to normal’.
“violates the principles of scientific and ethical honesty”
Which is what I’ve been saying since day 1 about modellers and scientists extrapolating beyond the bounds of their arguments.
For application to the real world you have to ethically honest.
Yes, exactly mhcp Here is a much shortened DEEPL translation from the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina article .. but you get the picture https://www.leopoldina.org/uploads/tx_leopublication/2020_12_08_Stellungnahme_Corona_Feiertage_final.pdf Coronavirus pandemic: Use the holidays and new year for a hard lockdown BLAH. BLAH,BLAH Social contacts should be reduced to a very narrow circle BLAH. BLAH BLAH The current situation remains serious and threatens to worsen.BLAH BLAH BLAH Despite the partial lockdown in place since early November The health care system and even the large hospitals are not equipped to handle .. These are very unfavorable starting conditions for the holidays and winter. The Christmas season and the turn of the year, with their traditionally increased and close social contacts, harbor great risks for a further deterioration of the infection situation………. The degree of contact reduction in Germany is not sufficient………. As the following figure shows, the current partial lockdown falls far short of the first lockdown in terms of effectiveness. In Germany, during the first lockdown in the spring, contacts were reduced by about 63%. blah blah The dynamic model underlying the graph describes the time course of infection dynamics and takes into account the feedback mechanism between infection dynamics and behavioral changes (B. F.… Read more »
It’s a good example of the fallacy of Artificial Intelligence. Not that intelligent after all.
Odd that the DM does not seem to be accepting comments online about the Peter Hitchens article.
It never accepts comments on his articles.You have to go to his blog site on Facebook.
He never allows them. You can comment under his blog instead.
Thanks for that.
Mail on Sunday as he points almost every day, confusing online I accept.
Duffel Bag has a whole new meaning
It’s “Duffel-Bagge” 😉
Duffer Bag. And an old one too.
Cholesterol is a favourite. They can use it to threaten you with ststins and god knows what else. Bilge.
Carry on eating what you like eating.
Pre Covid a medic/health adviser was preening theyself on R4 for reaching the target of the public reducing their intake of good/bad cholesterol
Asked what effect this had had on public health
‘None that we can find but it is tremendous that we reduced consumption . . .’
Obsessed with attaining projected targets.
That scam was orchestrated by the seed companies, who benefited from the switch from natural fats to seed-oils, and the grain-based diet, loaded with HFCS.
Big Pharma profited slightly later, from the resultant huge push to GMOs and glyphosate, not just from their drug “therapies”.
My wife who has never touched a cigarette in her 72 years was once told by a doctor to “Pack up smoking”.
My wife’s Aunty Minnie was also told to pack up smoking by her doctor – when she was 96!