Pubs to Reopen in April – But Can’t Serve Alcohol
No, you didn’t read that wrong. According to the Telegraph, the Government is considering a temporary “booze ban” as part of its reopening plans.
Pubs and restaurants could reopen as soon as April if they agree not to sell alcohol under options being discussed to allow the widespread relaxation of coronavirus restrictions after Easter.
The Telegraph can disclose that a temporary “booze ban” is being considered as part of the Government’s roadmap for lifting lockdown, which will be unveiled on Feb 22nd.
It is understood the move is being discussed to allay concerns from Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and others about the effect of drinking on social distancing.
Under the three-stage plan for lifting restrictions, some outdoor socialising is expected to be allowed in March and schools are set to return.
It is hoped that hospitality can then reopen in April and that all of the most vulnerable will be vaccinated by May, in time for the local elections.
Something tells me this won’t go down very well with publicans…
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, the Times is reporting that Boris has suddenly become one of the most fretful, cautious people in the Cabinet.
Any day now a folder will land on Boris Johnson’s desk. Inside will be longed-for data that will determine the nature of the next six months and very possibly his entire political legacy.
Public Health England’s best assessment of the effectiveness of the vaccination programme so far will in effect set the parameters for the nation’s exit from lockdown. The assessment shows the jabs are working as expected in protecting people from infection. It may also show encouraging signs on transmission as well as early real-world data on reduced mortality and hospital admissions. If so the prime minister can plot a spring unlocking and promise a glorious summer.
Insiders say he remains fretful. “He’s the person in the room saying, ‘Are you sure? I’m not as convinced as you are about this.’ It’s the scientists who are having to say, ‘It’s looking good.’” Critics would say his caution is overdue and there has been a tragic cost to his previous over-optimism but there is no denying his determination to avoid another false dawn.
Johnson met the executive of the 1922 Committee, a small group of the most senior Tory backbenchers, in his Commons office after PMQs on Wednesday. The group includes some of the most prominent lockdown sceptics in parliament, such as Sir Graham Brady and Steve Baker.
“He was very, very cautious,” a source said. “He described the road map as tentative and said that the NHS remains under severe pressure. He said above all that the government wants to avoid another lockdown.”
A Tory strategist puts it more bluntly. “The prime minister is acutely aware that there cannot be any reverse ferrets as the lockdown is eased, especially after the success of the vaccine programme. That would be a political catastrophe.”
Worth reading in full if you can stomach the bad news.
But there’s a glimmer of hope. According to MailOnline, a “battle royal” is about to commence as Tory MPs urge Boris to lift all restrictions by May 6th, when, according to Hancock, everyone over 50 will have been offered the vaccine.
The PM is under renewed pressure to step up the reopening of the country after the government accidentally revealed that the top nine groups – around 32million people – should be covered by the spring.
Ministers had previously refused to confirm a timetable, but the Cabinet Office cited it as a reason elections in England can take place on May 6th.
Senior Conservatives seized on the optimism to reiterate calls for a quick relaxation amid fears over the huge impact on education, the economy and other health issues. Mark Harper, who chairs the Tory MP lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group (CRG), said: “These top nine groups account for around 99% of those that have died from Covid and about 80% of hospital admissions.
“It will be almost impossible to justify having any restrictions in place at all by that point.”
Mr Johnson is set to unveil his road map out of lockdown towards the end of the month, with hopes the return of schools from March 8th can be followed by allowing mixing outdoors, with bars and restaurants freed up over the summer.
There was a barrage of other good news today, with the R number dipping below the critical level of one, research showing the AstraZeneca jab seems effective against the Kent variant, and the UK regulator saying it was not detecting significant side-effects. Another 19,114 people were reported as testing positive, down a third on last Friday, and the grim daily death toll was down 18 per cent week on week at 1,014.
Another 484,596 vaccine doses were administered in 24 hours, maintaining the impressive pace – with just under 11million people now inoculated.
A flurry of good news, but before you start popping the champagne, be warned: Neil Ferguson is on the warpath.
The competing pulls that Mr Johnson faces were underlined this afternoon as the Government published stark modelling from Prof Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College.
Considered by SAGE on January 14th, the paper assumed that there will be a phased easing of lockdown between March and July, and warned that a “rapid ramp-up” of vaccinations to “at least” 3 million doses a week is “critical to avoid exceeding national hospital capacity after the current wave”.
The Government is currently maintaining around that level. But the report added: “This would still lead to an additional 130,800 (103,200 – 167,600) deaths between now and June 2022.”
The Imperial team suggested that its findings meant “a more cautious approach to gradually lifting (lockdown measures) may need to be considered than the ones modelled in this report”.
But Professor Lockdown’s modelling appears to be based on the assumption that about 50,000 Covid patients would be in hospital by mid-February, before dropping towards the end of the month. In reality, the figures never exceeded 40,000 and have now dropped to about 30,000 already.
Worth reading in full.
France Rejects Third Lockdown
France’s Prime Minister has said “Non” to another lockdown. Looks like it’s Boris who is the cheese-eating surrender monkey. MailOnine has more.
France has rejected a third lockdown because the “economic, social and human” costs can’t be justified, Prime Minister Jean Castex said.
During a press conference on Thursday, Castex said stabilising new infection rates and an impending vaccine roll-out means the Government can hold off from imposing new nationwide measures.
France’s daily infection rate is just marginally lower than the UK’s with the country reporting 316.47 cases of Covid per million people on Thursday compared to Britain’s 331.09.
But the UK’s infection rate is currently plummeting amid a rapid vaccination programme, while cases in France have been slowly trending up in recent weeks.
French virus experts have repeatedly warned that a third national lockdown is “inevitable” as new and more-infectious variants of the virus take hold – with the UK strain likely to become “dominant” by March.
That has led to fears that cases could suddenly and rapidly increase – as happened in Portugal where the health system has near-collapsed since the New Year.
But Castex said another lockdown could only be enacted “as a last resort”.
“The situation today does not justify such a move,” he added.
If, however, the health situation deteriorates, the government would “not hesitate to do what is necessary”, he said.
Worth reading in full.
Hancock to Seize Control of the NHS
Both the Times and the Telegraph are reporting that ministers are about to take control of the NHS – an odd story, given that I assumed the Government was in control of the NHS already. Is this an elaborate ruse so Hancock can avoid the blame for the NHS’s blunders, such as the still high rate of in-hospital infections? Here’s the Times‘s version of the story.
Ministers plan to take more control over the NHS with laws to block the closure of hospitals and overrule bosses in the biggest health reform for a decade.
Powers to put fluoride in water, impose health warnings on sausages and order the NHS to prevent obesity will be handed to the government under plans to be announced within weeks, The Times has been told.
At present only councils can add fluoride to water, with six million people in England drinking fluoridated water. Ministers want it extended nationwide, to cut tooth decay. They have become frustrated with local leaders who have little incentive to spend the money needed when they are not responsible for dental health.
The reforms will also scrap forced privatisation and competition within the NHS. Dozens of new management bodies will be given control over billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. The move is a reversal of 2012 reforms by Lord Lansley, then the Health Secretary.
NHS chiefs say that changes to allow GPs, hospitals and social care to work together will improve patient care. The Government is facing questions, however, about why it is embarking on a big reorganisation during a pandemic. A white paper will be published this month with plans to push the reforms through by April next year, in a drive that is alarming some on the NHS front line.
Worth reading in full.
Is the ONS’s Infection Survey Data Wholly Reliable?
There follows a guest post by Will Jones.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released the latest of its weekly infection surveys yesterday.
Last week, the data had dismayed and surprised observers by concluding infections remained high despite NHS and ZOE data showing a steep decline.
This week, ONS data comes more into line with the other data sets.
However, there are some curious things about it that are worth flagging.
The first, as Dr Clare Craig points out in this tweet, is that the percentage modelled as testing positive for England overall is greater than the percentage testing positive in each age group.
On the face of it this isn’t mathematically possible and suggests there is something wrong with the way the percentages have been calculated.
The second question is why the ONS differs so hugely from ZOE when they are modelling essentially the same thing – namely, Covid infections in the community. Compare the above graph with the ZOE one below (taking note of the different time periods on the bottom – the ONS graph starts on December 20th, which is about halfway across the ZOE graph).
Two things jump out. First, why does the ONS have two humps with a larger one in late December, when ZOE has a single peak in mid-January and no December peak? The ZOE graph shape broadly matches the NHS test and trace cases shape, but the ONS one differs markedly.
Second, why do the estimates for the age groups differ so much between ONS and ZOE? ZOE shows clear age stratification, with older age groups showing lower infection levels and shallower curves. The exception is the youngest age group, the under-20s, which stays largely flat just above the over-60s since early December.
The ONS, on the other hand, shows the age groups all criss-crossing, and in particular the school-age lines surging, in mid-December, suggesting an epidemic in schools. This apparent epidemic among schoolchildren would have influenced the decision to close them at the start of the year.
Yet this school epidemic simply doesn’t exist in the ZOE data. Is it because ZOE data are based on symptoms, whereas the ONS data are based on positive PCR tests (with Ct cycles possibly up to 45) so will not exclude false positives or those no longer sick or infectious?
Whatever the explanation, there are clearly questions that need answering, particularly by the ONS. This is important because the ONS survey is treated by the Government and media as an accurate picture of the state of the epidemic. But what if that picture is more than a little bit wonky?
A Nurse Writes…
We’re publishing an original piece today by a woman who worked for four decades in the NHS as a nurse and midwife and now volunteers at a hospice. She thinks the coronavirus crisis has exposed our unwillingness to confront our own mortality. In particular, our obsession with extending people’s lives as long as we possibly can, regardless of whether they want to carry on living or not.
We are bombarded daily with carefully curated news reports that seem designed to induce fear and sentimentality often linked to the deaths of the frail and the elderly that exhort us to comply with the latest Government messages, one of which, trying to appeal to younger people, is “Don’t kill Granny”. Journalists delivering these reports appear to be looking over their shoulders to avoid censure by Ofcom. why else would they never challenge the received orthodoxies of the Government as they would if it were any other type of policy? Meanwhile, was anyone asking Granny what she wanted? These are taboo matters that cannot easily be aired in public as we live in a society of people who refuse to accept their own mortality until they might find themselves at this point and then wish that those around them would demonstrate more courage and compassion and wisdom in how they care for them. A recent episode of Hospital on BBC 2 featured Barnet General Hospital, which has been especially overwhelmed by COVID-19 as Barnet has the oldest demographic in London. It was difficult viewing but with a discerning eye I was fascinated to watch a lovely lady in her 80s, who had been found collapsed on the floor at home and had been diagnosed with a cardiac problem, not COVID-19. She said directly to camera she thought it was her time, that she was dying, that she believed in God and was essentially at peace with this. The young doctor treating this patient then speaks to camera after noticing how peaceful she is and interprets what she has said for the viewer: “She is in a delirium.” It seemed that the doctor could not accept what the patient had said and dismissed her ‘peace of mind’ as being ‘out of her mind’! This patient then spent the next few weeks in an acute bed being pushed to rehabilitate to a point when they realised that she would not be able to go home and live independently and so sent her off to a nursing home where no doubt currently she has become a prisoner of the state like so many others without being permitted to see loved ones. They call this a success story.
Worth reading in full.
Another Lockdown Tragedy
A reader has got in touch to tell us her elderly mother’s story. This is becoming a familiar refrain.
Firstly thank you for what you do – I have been reading since the beginning when, after the first few weeks of not knowing whether this really was a very bad virus, when we were all naturally cautious, it became clear that the collective marbles had been lost and the populace was being driven barmy.
One of those who bought into the narrative in its entirety was my 83 year-old mother who lived in Wales. Hers was a quiet life, she loved doing her jigsaws, seeing grandchildren and great grandchildren and popping into town on the bus with my father, 87, to do some shopping and have a coffee.
She was at that stage in reasonable shape for a woman her age although her lungs were slightly compromised from a bad bout of pneumonia many years before. In those halcyon days if either of my parents was ill and couldn’t get to the surgery, a doctor would visit their home.
The messages emerging from the press conferences of doom hit them hard. Contact with the GP became increasingly difficult, the surgery taking days to return calls, if they did at all. My mother became so frightened that she simply stopped going out in March 2020 and allowed no-one in the house. Her physical and mental health began to decline, quietly, behind those closed doors. Yes, parcels of food were being dropped off from the end of the garden path, so they were in no danger of starvation, but my parents live on a busy road and it is not possible to have a conversation and find out what is actually happening. No nice middle class garden to safely socially distance here, unlike most of those in the Westminster bubble who are calling the shots.
To cut a very long story short, in the beginning my mother would chat from the doorstep and then slowly she receded until she could just be spotted over my father’s shoulder in the distance at the foot of the stairs. It then transpired that her lungs had become very bad, the GPs had not seen her for months and months and she was having nightly panic attacks. Neither she nor my father were getting any sleep and the situation was deteriorating fast, culminating in an attack where the ambulance was called. The ambulance took many hours to arrive and she was whisked into hospital. This was November 2020.
That was the first hospital visit. When I called them and managed finally after many attempts to speak to the ward they informed me they had done a covid test. I laughed and said she hadn’t been out or let anyone into the house since March. If she got covid it would be the hospital that gave it to her. Little did I know how true that would be.
The hospital kept her in to stabilise her oxygen levels and was clearly in a big hurry to get her back home because of the risk of hospital acquired infection, as her pcr test was of course negative. As a result her discharge to home was chaotic, rushed and very badly managed indeed.
Unsurprisingly therefore it was only a matter of a short interval before another 999 call and another hospital admission, this time to a different hospital. This was where things became much worse. For several days at the beginning we had no idea where she was or even if she was still alive.
What ensued was a disgrace, she was moved to a total of four different wards, deteriorating all the time, with no continuity of care and very little access by us, her family, to information about her condition. Days would pass, particularly at the weekends, when the hospital simply didn’t pick up the phone. Or they transferred my call and the ward didn’t pick up or they cut off the call.
No-one was allowed to visit at any point. We were not allowed to speak to her as she didn’t have a mobile phone and the hospital had no facility to cater for such events. Indeed we were made to feel irresponsible for bothering the staff by calling to ask what was going on.
And then the inevitable happened and she and all the occupants of her ward tested positive for covid.
Still no visitors were allowed until they made the decision that she was in her last hours and a very very limited number of family members were allowed to say goodbye.
After my mother’s death I contacted the hospital trust involved to complain about everything they had done – and not done – but was told they would not investigate my concerns without my father’s consent, which I was not prepared to bother him with in his grief.
And my mother, who had various lung problems was of course put down as a covid death.
It is clear from your correspondence that this is happening all over the country. Yet another tragedy of inhumane treatment of an elderly person at the end of her life.
London Loses 10% of Population During Crisis
There’s a shocking story in the Telegraph claiming that almost 10% of Londoners have left the city since the start of the pandemic.
Even when the last Covid restrictions are lifted from London, there may be a little less bustle on its streets and elbow-jostling at its drinking dens.
One startling estimate that has caught the eye of economists warned the capital’s population may have plunged by 700,000 during the pandemic. That would equate to an 8% drop and be the first slump in London’s population in more than 30 years.
The capital has been the victim of decades-long migration trends suddenly reversing. But will that spell trouble for its economy?
London’s population has been hit by a double whammy of both native and foreign-born workers moving out as office work has shifted online and industries have been temporarily shuttered.
The home working revolution has tempted office workers out of London with many seeking cheaper rents.
Meanwhile, some foreign-born workers that are vital for industries shut down by the pandemic, such as hospitality and tourism, are believed to have moved back to their countries of birth. There are signs that populations in Eastern European countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, have risen markedly during the crisis as their brain drains reverse.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: New York City has also experienced an exodus, with its population falling by 126,355 in 2020. The New York Post has more.
Postcard From Goa
We’re publishing another contribution to our series “Around the World in 80 Lockdowns” – this one a “Postcard From Goa” by Will Smith. Although there’s nothing resembling a lockdown in Goa. We’ll let Will explain.
India has almost no meaningful welfare state. It is true to say, your family is your welfare. In India, after a brief lockdown in March and April of last year, I believe the Modi government realised that such a strategy was untenable. People had to earn money to feed themselves. Putting it bluntly, people had to work in order not to starve. And therein lay the reality for India. However much you might want to signal to the people you were taking action and trying to protect them, the truth is you simply can’t lock down a nation like this for long without devastating consequences. In other words, India was trapped between crap and crapper in a way that richer nations weren’t. In such a situation, what is left but to not lock down? And if that is your only option, then you must deal with the fear of Covid in a different way. If you can’t persuade people you can keep them safe, better not to have them worrying too much that they’re not safe, right?
The result has been a lot of lip-service type rules. We all carry our raggedy old cloth masks in a back pocket, stick them on when we go in a shop where the owner is wearing one, don’t bother otherwise. Not too serious, right? But what about this one? If you get a cough or a fever, if you think you might have something, the reality is it’s best not to say anything. The default is to carry on and hope you get better. If you take the official government test and are positive, you’ll be moved to a quarantine hospital; 100 beds to a room, no medicine, no oxygen or any medical equipment really, a couple of floor standing fans if you’re lucky, and, well, fingers crossed. Meanwhile your family is placed in isolation. In India of course it’s not unusual for three or even four generations to be living in the same household. Think about it. That’s a lot of breadwinners out of action for a lot of dependents who rely on them. Rather than the official test, therefore, take the unofficial black-market test. If it’s positive they won’t inform anyone except you and then you can choose. In my experience most will be somewhat responsible and isolate at home. But everyone else in that household will go on as normal. And who are you to blame them? What would you do?
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post asking why case numbers are plummeting in India.
Round-up
- “Do Lockdowns Work?” – Christopher Snowdon replies to my piece in Quillette responding to his piece in Quillette. This one will run and run
- “Covid Superstars #3 – Dr Susan Michie” – LeftLockdownSceptics profiles the Stalinist lockdown enforcer
- “How Ottawa utterly botched Canada’s COVID vaccine acquisition” – Despite spending more money on this pandemic than anyone else, Canada is lagging behind almost every other developed nation in vaccination numbers, according to the National Post
- “Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?” – Stephen L. Miller with a depressing prognosis in Spectator USA
- “When will it be the right time to ease lockdown?” – Ross Clark in the Express reveals that the Government consensus around when to lift lockdown (after the most vulnerable have been vaccinated) is beginning to break down
- “The Government should apply a greater sense of urgency to unwinding lockdown” – Good leader in the Telegraph, urging the Government to get on with it
- “The cost of being a lockdown sceptic” – Great piece in the Critic by Alexander Adams
- “To say going to school simply ‘benefits’ children is cruelly misleading” – Molly Kingsley in the Telegraph on the ongoing cruelty of school closures
- “Boris Johnson cannot afford to be overly cautious about lifting lockdown” – Patrick O’Flynn urges Boris to stiffen his backbone
- “Graham lands deal for £100m School of Public Health” – Story in Construction Inquirer revealing that Imperial College London is building a £100 million public health centre at its new campus in White City
- “Experts predict quarantine hotels could be with us ‘until next summer’” – Annabel Fenwick Elliott in the Telegraph says industry experts are pessimistic about the quarantine hotels being a short-term measure
- “Mother of boy filmed verbally abusing Chris Whitty confiscates his PlayStation” – The Guardian reports on the mother’s reaction to her son’s TikTok video of him calling Chris Whitty a liar. Contrary to the claims made by the lockdown fanatics – who blamed this bit of rudeness on sceptics – it doesn’t sound like the lad is a regular visitor to this site
- Lockdown Sceptics contributor Prof David Patton responded on Twitter to Snowdon’s response to my response to… well, you get the idea
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “How Soon” by Henry Mancini, “Alone Again” by the Damned, “Lonesome Town” by the Cramps and “Freedom” by David Gray.
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 Lockdown Sceptics 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 story of the demise of Donald McNeil, the New York Times‘s star Covid reporter. He used the n-word on a 2019 educational trip with schoolchildren and, even though the New York Times investigated the incident after several complaints were made at the time – and reprimanded McNeil – the story resurfaced in the Daily Beast last week, an outrage mob formed up and McNeil has been forced to resign. In addition to stepping down, McNeil has issued a self-flagellating apology that – as Andrew Sullivan points out – reads like a confession procured by the Khmer Rouge. Fox News has the story.
Two days after the Beast reported on a letter written by more than 150 Times staffers expressing outrage at the paper’s handling of the McNeil claims, McNeil wrote a letter of his own to staff explaining what transpired on the 2019 educational trip and announcing his exit.
“On a 2019 New York Times trip to Peru for high school students, I was asked at dinner by a student whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur,” McNeil began the letter, which was obtained by the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple. “To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur myself.
“I should not have done that. Originally, I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended. I now realise that it cannot. It is deeply offensive and hurtful. The fact that I even thought I could defend it itself showed extraordinarily bad judgment. For that I apologise,” McNeil wrote.
After expressing an apology to the students on the trip, the 66-year-old reporter acknowledged that his “lapse of judgment” has hurt his colleagues and the institution itself, which “puts its confidence in me and expected better.”
“So for offending my colleagues – and for anything I’ve done to hurt the Times, which is an institution I love and whose mission I believe in and try to serve – I am sorry. I let you all down,” McNeil concluded.
The New York Times also has a version of the story.
Stop Press: I wrote a piece for yesterday’s Critic about the mistreatment of a 74 year-old man by a loneliness charity. His sin? Not finding Black Peter offensive.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And 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.
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.
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 and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.
Stop Press: We’ve been sent a report by Stephen Morris, the General Secretary of the Workers of England Union (WEU), about a recent case involving an NHS receptionist who was facing the sack because she refused to mask up.
An NHS receptionist joined the WEU as they were due to attend a third sickness absence interview, the letter stating they could be dismissed. The employee had medical conditions which meant they could not wear a mask or face shield and had been off work since the wearing of mask legislation came in.
During the meeting, the Manager and HR adviser went through the processes to justify the decision to terminate the member’s employment, unable to wear a face mask or shield, no reasonable adjustment could be made, no alternative roles available.
The WEU adviser raised the point that, neither the WEU or employee had seen a copy of the risk assessment on the employee to show what the risks were, what reasonable adjustments had been considered, or what other roles had been looked at, so they could not properly defend the member’s position. The NHS Manager and HR Adviser confirmed they do not usually give out risk assessments, and that none had been done in this case.
The WEU then pointed out that face screens create a greater risk of cross contamination due to droplets going from the mask to desks and keyboards, therefore transferring to door handles, light switches, and other equipment as the employee moves about, meaning a greater cleaning regime would be required, and without this risk assessment the employer was now failing every employee, even those who wore face screens and masks. This may also be a case of disability discrimination due to the failure of the employer to do proper assessments.
The Employee was not dismissed (or sanctioned), and the employer has had to go and do appropriate risk assessments!
The member was delighted with the outcome!
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 Toby’s 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. 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.
Scottish Church leaders from a range of Christian denominations have launched legal action, supported by the Christian Legal Centre against the Scottish Government’s attempt to close churches in Scotland for the first time since the the Stuart kings in the 17th century. The church leaders emphasised it is a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion.” Further information available here.
There’s the class action lawsuit being brought by Dr Reiner Fuellmich and his team in various countries against “the manufacturers and sellers of the defective product, PCR tests”. Dr Fuellmich explains the lawsuit in this video. Dr Fuellmich has also served cease and desist papers on Professor Christian Drosten, co-author of the Corman-Drosten paper which was the first and WHO-recommended PCR protocol for detection of SARS-CoV-2. That paper, which was pivotal to the roll out of mass PCR testing, was submitted to the journal Eurosurveillance on January 21st and accepted following peer review on January 22nd. The paper has been critically reviewed here by Pieter Borger and colleagues, who also submitted a retraction request. UPDATE: The retraction request has been rejected.
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
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
Sandstone, a Scottish publisher, is bringing out a collection of Nic Sturge-on’s speeches called… wait for it… Women Hold Up Half the Sky. Odd choice of words, given it was a phrase coined by Mao Zhedong, the 20th Century’s most murderous dictator, responsible for between 15 and 55 million deaths.
Why is Sandstone publishing this book, given that it’s unlikely to sell more than 100 copies? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that Sandstone has received large subsidies from Creative Scotland, a funding arm of the Scottish Government, amounting to a cumulative total of £410,029.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
On 15 January 2021 Janet Street Porter asserted that Captain Tom Moore had been vaccinated, https://web.archive.org/web/20210115051730/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9149803/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Im-not-afford-fly-Dubai-jab.html
European Leader Reacts to CCP Lockdown Reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwnF4oAUoVc
European leader reflects on the debacle!
Canadian and UK Censorship Madness – “Not all truthful statements must be free from restrictions”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQHGImGaANE
Piers Corbyn arrested for poster
But then in the latest version they changed the wording and removed Captain Tom’s name. The way they cover their backsides increases the perception that they are lying. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9149803/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Im-not-afford-fly-Dubai-jab.html
Winston Smith was hard at work
It says “Updated 3 Feb.” It does not say they made a factual correction, which appears to mean it was factually correct on 15 January and it is factually correct now.
Yes, there was a report on Sky News recently saying he’d had the first dose of the vaccine. It was on yotube, but it’s mysteriously vanished from there (haha).
Reuters have fact-checked the claim that Captain Tom Moore had been vaccinated and found it to be false. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccine-death/fact-check-captain-tom-did-not-receive-and-was-not-killed-by-the-coronavirus-vaccine-idUSKBN2A52KP
Do you think the Daily Mail and Sky News will be banned for spreading coronavirus misinformation?
It is true then.
I do not take anything the corporate media say at face value. But the concerted attempt to pretend that they never said he had been vaccinated, and that this claim originated on social media and was false, is highly suspicious.
I agree. And the silence. I mean in days gone by a retraction piece was issued.
Everything is touched by the invisible hand of control right now. Must not deviate from the path.
The media have been bought out and that fact makes their factchecking completely untrustworthy.
The purpose of the so called fact-checkers is to defend the official narratives from challenge.
Echoes of the anti-Trump campaign:
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
“The solution…. was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place.”
Just like censoring anything not approved regarding CV19, treatments, medical doctors, side effects of any vaccine….
Its a lovely little knot the fact checkers have got themselves into. The vaccine/gene therapy gives no protection against covid only lessens symptoms – they say, not me.
So obscuring the fact he was jabbed in defence of an ineffective medical intervention seems only to served the continued disinformed consent of millions of others.
Are fact checkers a guilty party deserving of tial?
No more than Julius Streicher.
Are we to be able to read the ticker? It is blurred and illegible.
I’ve seen the video. The sky presenter says he got the jab. Now how could that be fake news? Either they lied then or they are lieing now.
I saw it too. Can verify what you say. It’s vanished now.
Thanks, only asking since a cap would be good to share. The image with unreadable ticker isn’t. I’ve no doubt there’s a rotten stench.
Also notice the white pawn statue I joked about a few days back has been mentioned. A Tom statue for BLM to decry, and to then be appeased with a black pawn of suitably virtuous and controversial past.
Late last night, I was browsing Mail Online and checked the comments on the Captain Tom story. The worst comment, with more than 300 red arrows stated that CT had received the jab as reported on Sky News. I replied that I had also heard Sky News reported that CT had been jabbed and made some other comment about the fact that this could no longer be found on the internet and that the MSM were hiding the truth. When I looked about five minutes later to see if my comment had been printed, I saw that the original comment had been pulled. DM are doing this a lot more recently. Usually the late night comments don’t get removed until the morning, so they must have extra staff on the job…
You can say many many things that are considered as being against the grain right now. Lockdowns bad, NHS complicit, SAGE bought out. But the push to drive all possibly negative views on the vaccines from public view is so evident.
It says to me they’ll want to make it outright illegal soon. To be in any way opposed to the saintly vaccine will be met with jail time. I would be confident they are working on this.
Meanwhile, the VAERS info is available.
There’s a whole army of trolls on there in the evenings, so additional censorship staff makes sense.
Bernician has said the same.
Wouldn’t load.
Here’s the before and after, as shown on UKC:
https://youtu.be/BP2LqZ65M5M?t=663
Just because they call you a conspiracy theorist, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong…:
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
“Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”
Disinformation = information we don’t want you to know.
And yet, what do I find everywhere – or nearly – in the media?
Shrugs or silence.
An ADMISSION, in INTERNATIONAL MEDIA, of conspiracy, and no-one cares.
Pubs with no beer!
Prime Minister with no brain!
The Hydroxychloroquine coverup
https://rumble.com/vdibv5-the-hydroxychloroquine-coverup.html
*******************************************
V for Vendetta – the Movie and the Present / UKs Hannah Dean Banned from Hospitals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9RiB0S8LVc&list=WL&index=30
【Fight for Hong Kong】 by Miles Guo, New Released MV by Himalaya UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJYoz-bWWhk
TAKE DOWN THE CCP – Chinese Communist Party
Dungford imposed that last December, before closing the pubs along with everything else in time for Christmas.
But then, Dungford is barking mad.
Churchill stated that Prohibition was “an affront to the whole history of mankind.” The item talks about Johnson being fretful and cautious, Many things were said about Churchill but I do not recall cautious and fretful being among them.
It is really weird that Johnson has become the face of totalitarian authoritarian big government. The proposed changes to the NHS seem more like Kruschev’s USSR and the complete opposite of what I would have liked to see.
We are told we are going to have elections in May, big deal, vote for dumb or dumber.
Agree about NHS. Last March one of my first thoughts was this might mean someone has the guts to completely change the way the NHS works and is funded, I was wrong sadly. Still would have been a perfect opportunity. What’s proposed is pathetic tinkering as usual.
The Wizard of Oz:
https://youtu.be/YWyCCJ6B2WE
There’s a back story to the drama relating to financial shenanigans and deceits of the time, but there are core archetypes that resonate.
Note that this hugely popular film has not had multiple remakes.
I read that it was one of the last truly family and community minded films to come out of Hollywood.
They can then wash there hands and withdraw support to the hospitality trade whilst hobbling them. Given Nut Nut’s plans to put “environmental” taxes on meat and dairy products I imagine extra tax will be levied on alcohol to keep Greta and Attenborough happy.
Sounds like an opportune time to invest in root-beer.
Yes that’s the mindset that feeds the money to the money that feeds on us.
IE Looking for personal profit above all else.
But then the correctness agenda is setting top down social ‘goals’ above profit so as to destroy the Economy under Green deals and etc.
However the point is the top down social conditioning that ratchets everything around the ‘one virus to rule them all’, hence questioning the fundamental basis of virus theory – as a genuine exploration of honest account. Not only reveals lack of scientific veracity, but the nature of a mind-capture that is predisposed to react from the belief that it is self-evident.
Otherwise you are merely pleading within a prison for better conditions.
That the funding of world banks and taxed populations can be directed to focus within specific framing of ‘bought science’ is the way Big Money controls the narrative or mind by which priority is given or denied. Priority to ‘bio-obscurity’ and obfuscation technology can be immensely lucrative (rewarded). Exposing the obscuring of fact
If you just want you narrative reality to ‘normalise’ you are a sitting duck for the targeting.
Its the other way around. Lockdown = sectioned. And your mindset is default ‘infected’ with unconscious bias, to be restructured with a bit of ‘nudging’, vacca-cination and flouride. What could possibly go right?
Without the global bankers this fire could not burn. Therefore it is actively supported by those who hold the ultimate system of supply and choke-control to a ‘stakeholder’ level, that is then supply of the next level in the pyramid.
So the worship of possession and control is the god of ‘Private Agenda’ set in place of freedom to align in true needs lived, shared and fulfilled.
The plot always was mad, but to the private bubble seeking to evade full disclosure of lack of substance along with masking deceits to cover it, it is the only way to save ‘their world’.
MPs have always hated pubs. They see it as dens of iniquity where all drunk and disorder issues take place. They do not understand that the pub is a self regulated part of the community. It is a place where people are served responsibly and told when enough is enough. Violence is often rare as the punters tend to police each other and look out for their own.
It was labour who started the first hatchet job of the pubs with the beer duty escalator. Budget after budget that cunt Darling increased duty even though he was advised less tax was coming back and pubs were closing at a rate of 35 per week.
Make no mistake they want rid of your local pub. Of course they don’t want rid of their Westminster pub. Rules for thee not for me.
Spot on, and don’t forget how they left their own bars open within the Palace of Westminster during the original lockdown. Self-centred twats!
It shows how detached the elite are from normal people.
(a) How could pubs be viable businesses without serving alcohol? *
(b) People, particularly the young, will just “tank up” at home before going out to the alcohol-free pub.
(c) Even non-drinkers can get boisterous when with a group of friends – social dynamics plays at least as big a part as alcohol.
* What next? – churches can open but no praying, preaching or singing?
Schools can open but no teaching? That’s back to normal for them. (Cheap joke, apologies to any good teachers reading this!)
In Iceland, where alcohol is prohibitively expensive ( literally), it’s normal to get tanked up before you go out for the evening.
And in the remoter areas of Sweden, I’n told, they brew their own alcohol and it’ll blow your head off if you aren’t careful.
No alcohol means most people won’t bother. The are going to leave their beer at home for an overpriced lemonade down at the pub, no I don’t think so.
10 stabbed in London
A little light relief from the daily slaughter by the state
It would appear that they are actually admitting that they couldn’t organise a piss up in brewery
Don’t know what the fuss is about. The plan worked fine in Wales when they did it. Encouraged a massive 10% of pubs to reopen for business as coffee shops.
In Nazi Germany, in Berlin at least, there was a drive against alcohol in establishments (I forget why – either wartime austerity or Hitler’s teetotalism). They got round this by serving alcohol in coffee cups.
Good morning all.
Light relief of a different type to Cecil’s – The Marsh Family version of the Bonnoe Tyler classic, Totally Fixed Where We Are.
https://youtu.be/vYmSAMcwXA8
(No spology for reposting. We all need a good laugh af something other than pubs with no alcohol).
Well, they have changed their tune. I will be surprised if BBC Breakfast decides to showcase this one.
I am aware that they have done other, less supporting of our views, but hey, the sheeple don’t look beyond what is right in front of their noses. This one gives off the right message.
Get us out of this lockdown madness
Madness?
At best, this is a foreplanned shakedown racket by Big Pharma, holding the populations of the world at knife-point in order to palm off an unnecessary ‘vaccine’, dangerous to boot. In this they are aided by the financial institutions who are covering up another collapse and transfer of tax payer’s money upwards. In order to do this psychological warfare is being carried out by peoples’ own governments. Gates has monopolized the media, legacy and social. The medical profession is a coward. So is the scientific profession.
This is the worst crime against humanity in human history, given the scale.
A far worse scenario is that this gene therapy is an experimentation on the human race in order to prepare the way for the mandatory and undeclared introduction of nanotechnologies that will hook people up to a social credit cloud,
Madness?
This is full scale EVIL.
The Good Club, Operation Lockstep, The Great Reset: Agenda 21 to 30.
nope – still the family of a university lecturer still able to work from home on full pay taking the piss out the situation and still following the government line – that vaccine will rescue us all and only then will everything be back to normal. And as the wife is also an ex teacher I doubt whether those kids are suffering from lack of schooling.
A clichéd performance phoned in from Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21.
Loved that thank you
I’m sorry but they are just playing into the narrative that the lockdowns are well-meaning and that nothing foul is at play.
I find it PATHETIC entertainment that looks really stupid.
As lovely as the children may be, this is a family whose mother and father are apparently lacking the natural ability to recognise bad intent for their sake and do a little research into Operation Lockstep and the coming agenda. Pathetic.
Or think of the space ship in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that has been on the launch pad, with its passengers in suspended animation ‘for your comfort and convenience’, for centuries because it never got its delivery of little lemon-scented sachets hers for wiping your hands.
On the other hand Golgafrincham was wiped out because the telephone sanitisers had been ‘sent ahead’ on Ark Fleet Ship B.
Yeah, they all died of a disease contracted from an unsanitised telephone.
I used to think that was a really way-out idea, but a zombie would quake with terror at it.
Good morning Annie. Always nice to see you here.
The point is, that severe NPIs can only ‘flatten the curve’ in the short term, and cannot have significant long term impact on the spread of the disease and number of deaths.
Twelve months ago this was recognised by 99% of the world of public health, which has since been consumed by deranged, fanatical and totalitarian thinking (even from self-anointed ‘classical liberals’).
I am yet to see one concrete estimate of how many lives the lockdowns in Britain have saved.
The estimate of lives saved is: Ferguson’s computer generated half a million minus the alleged hundred thousand which equal four hundred thousand lives saved.
What’s a ‘concrete estimate’?
There can never be a reliable figure for the number of people who didn’t die when they would have died if it wasn’t for universal incarceration. The idea is ridiculous, just as the whole shitshow is ridiculous.
It’s all based on Ferguson’s virtual reality contiguous cull model. I can give you a concrete estimate with equal validity: 0. I’ll add in negative effects and crank the handle again: -300k. Happy? 🙂
Life is not saved, it is merely death delayed.
If they can classify everything as Covid to keep the fear narrative going then pub owners can just rebrand alcoholic beverages. Beer now identifies as mineral water. Whiskey is now mint tea. Wine identifies as grape juice…
And if you get drunk within 28 hours of imbibing plain water, your state will be attributed to drinking neat whiskey.
Then a sudden rush of people falling flat on their faces after drinking mint tea will lead to another lockdown without end whilst the cause is sought.
But don’t drink the mint tea on a park bench. That’s a picnic.
It sounds like “The Frankie Drake Mysteries” set in Prohibition Era Toronto. “Cold tea” is the popular drink in bars and cafes- clearly brown alcohol- and Frankie has an alcohol still in her wardrobe. They drink Martini style cocktails at home.
Reminds me of many years ago (probably still happens now) visiting my parents who had been seconded to work in an alcohol-prohibited country in Asia. There was a large community of ex-pats who frequented certain local restaurants where beer and wine were served in teapots to be consumed in teacups, just in case prying eyes might be passing by.
My mother told me that the genteel ladies enjoying their cucumber sandwiches on the lawn would ask if their guests wanted cream in their tea. What was poured from the teapot was whisky.
No position is extreme enough for some of them…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/05/rishi-sunak-government-pandemic-chancellor
It’s just the Grauniad. Usual fetid garbage. But it does make me wonder if Magic Money Sunak is more of a friend than I thought.
The Irreverend duo are now on You tube.
How long, I wonder, before somebody denounces them as true Christians and they are taken down, and probably sacked by Dustbin Jellybaby?
Until then, enjoy.
https://youtu.be/FwyfW7S3N9E
They are the the nearest thing to true Christians I have heard in a long time. Wouldn’t be allowed on any BBC religious programming that’s for sure. Brilliant podcast. Highly recommended.
“Dustbin Jellybaby”
🙂
For the first time in my life I’m actually looking forward to the local elections this year, should they not be subjected to a last minute cancellation of course.
With holidays being made illegal this year, pubs being morphed into juice bars and inevitable restrictions on household gatherings set to persist throughout the year, anybody believing this will be a summer of freedom is hopelessly misguided. With the Times confirming that Boris is the snivelling coward we all know him to be, even the vaccination of all over 50s won’t return our civil liberties intact.
I truly hope the government has believed the clearly fraudulent opinion polls, and that they go into these elections confident that the bulk of the public will show their support for the restrictions with their votes. The reality will come as a seismic shock to the Tory top brass.
And when this inevitably leads to politics snatching the reins from public health, how long before doom-mongers such as Whitty, Ferguson, Vallance and Van-Tam are given the unceremonious boot out the door?
Boris only cares about Boris. Crush the Tories in May and we’ll start to see real change.
Crush the tories and let in lockdown-forever-Smarmer? You crazy or something?
It’s not a general election. Farage will have his party up and running, and Richard Tice (party chairman) has been very vocal on lockdowns and PCR fraud. Say what you want about him but Farage is a cunning political opportunist. Labour will back the cancellation of summer – voters will be reminded of this when campaigning starts.
Your average Joe probably won’t be motivated to vote, but I suspect many, many thousands of people incensed with the damage done to their businesses, their children and their livelihoods will.
I’m confident that the result will be a positive one.
Either going to have to hold our noses and plump for one party
or enter into an LDS alliance where various parties carve out a niche around the UK
Splitting the anger vote helps no-one
Whether he knows it or not, Farage’s work is only half done. Next job destroy the Conservative Party.
I too think they are in for a very nasty electoral shock. Great. I say this as a former Conservative voter and a natural conservative. From now on I am going to vote for whatever party I judge will do the most damage to the Conservatives.
Labour and the rest are irrelevant. There’s a political reset coming, and right now no one knows how it will end.
I was a Conservative party member until recently. I would love to see them destroyed but I suspect the only choice I will have will be to spoil my ballot. I doubt I’ll see a true anti-lockdown candidate to vote for. I’d love to be wrong.
If necessary, I will quite happily spoil my ballot paper, and sign it ‘A former Conservative voter’.
Totally agree! from a former labour/lib dem/green voter.
Yep, this is now way beyond pre-covid party political squabbling. The whole damn lot of them have to go.
Toby said on here months ago that he was now politically homeless. Same here, except that I’m not actually homeless. I believe fervently in the destruction of all the current mainstream parties. That at least is a political home of sorts.
I hope you’re right. We certainly need a viable third option!
Sorry to disappoint but my best guess/model/prediction is that 80% to 90% of the population are Covidians and they will vote for the party of their Saviour…… the new Churchill
But they may well be too scared to leave the house. Those of us happy to go out aren’t particularly keen on them are we.
I fear you are spot on…the brainwashed sheeple will back dePiffle and his CCPoid corrupt, weak rabble. Or some will vote for that twat, max headroom.
i will consider the best way to vote to hurt the Tories. I’m now fully with Peter Hitchens on this – there won’t ever be a decent Liberty party until the Tories are destroyed. It’s taken me a long time to understand that.
We had a clean sweep out of con on the town council and a change from con to lab control at Swale which felt like a thrilling revolution for a while. The new lot are just as hopeless of course with the appalling Perkin moaning about ‘spoons and wittering on about vegan food at town council events (opt out for our French twin town lucky old them!). My plan is to vote for anyone who makes Whately doubt that she really is in one of the safest seats in UK. Canterbury has gone lab (“those students!”) so it’s possible. Voting for lab anti-Semites will be a struggle but these are desperate times. Let’s hope RUK can come up with some options.
There is usually a decent Independent to vote for. The one I voted for last time came first!
The problem is that (at least near me) there is no information available on candidates. It’s such a safe red-party area that even the red candidates can’t be bothered to send flyers or put anything online about themselves. So I end up having to pick a random independent (if any are available) or spoil the paper. I really hope there is a reform candidate, but they may not waste their time in my area.
Heritage, Reform, Reclaim, Indies. The hope is you get at least one of them otherwise yes spoiling is the only option. The best entry for these embryo parties is into local government where they can build up a support base and infrastructure and make themselves heard. Very hard to get even 1 MP without local activists and support.
SDP!
No way!
Look up communitarianism and you’ll know why to avoid them.
Two seats in our small town won by a tory and an independent.
Not sure if its that high. I only know one lady who is a believer everyone else can see what a balls up the fat pig dictator has made of it and will never vote for him again. Everyone I know hates Starmer! So we are all party less.
Crush them all and vote Reclaim (if they are allowed to stand), or “spoil” the ballot paper.
Yes! Labour even for lockdown fanatics! I don’t want that! And the unions keeping kids out of school for another year? I’m sorry to say so but this is bloody hopeless!
don’t hold your breath, will you. I think even the pretence of democracy will be dropped now – it virtually already has been
I’ve pretty much decided to spoil my paper by writing SCUM across the list of candidates. Unless there’s a fringe party which I consider deserves my vote.
You guys have Dominion voting machines? Asking for a friend…
Does anybody know what happened to Mike Yeadon on twitter?
Thanks. It seems he perhaps signed off. Fed up of being smeared and life targeted.
Twitter is such a cesspool, I don’t know why anyone would want to use it. Isn’t Mike Yeadon working with the new HART group anyway? He’d be better off focusing his energy there..
He’s gone. He’s also stated he has lost a lot of business since this all began.
Mayo will see this as a victory.
I am disgusted.
And it should prove why Twatter should not be the forum for debate or social comment. Its just a load of dumb schoolchildren bickering without any intelligence. What this whole issue has proved is we have no outlet for sensible debate just idiotic childish name calling and sjw backstabbers. Where is the forum for LS views? Democracy my arse!
Probably not just London that is losing population in this country. I suspect we’re going to see a pretty wholesale redistribution of population and the longer Bloody Lockdown goes on for then the more this will be so. Personally I moved a few years ago from a small/nice city (one of the provincial ones) to elsewhere in the country. So I’ve been following property for sale closely ever since in both areas (mine and the area I now live in). Back in the early 2010’s the only home computers I noticed in property details in my provincial city were clearly used in the vast majority of cases by the owner for themselves personally. In the last few months I am noticing a LOT more computers in peoples homes for sale in that city by far (ie in those estate agent details) than I ever used to and it’s very clear many of those computers are being used for work, rather than personally. My strong suspicion is that many people even in smaller/nicer cities are now trying to move to elsewhere in the country. To me – for people to even move from a pleasant small city just goes to show… Read more »
True, I live ‘elsewhere in the country’ There is a massive influx and house prices are going through the roof
Funny that. My area over the last few years have seen an influx of people moving back into London because they couldn’t afford living in the country plus the commuting.
That to me would be explicable by the fact that living in a more country-ish type area is dearer in some respects – eg if heating isn’t mains or solar panels it will be dearer, there’s having to have a car (courtesy of poor public transport – though of course lots of people who don’t need one have one anyway) and so on. But if one focuses down on about the last 6 months I think a different picture emerges – ie once people (both us and the sheeple) clicked that Bloody Lockdown seems to be going on for an awful lot longer than 3 weeks.
I Don’t think the “city” will be the place of work anymore. Any big business will be looking at their work still being carried out and asking, why do we need that head office in London? My wife works in Harlow and has been WFH for a year. They have closed half the site down, got rid of the canteen. If she ever goes back her fancy electro pass and access key has been programmed to buzz if she goes closer than two metres from a colleague. Yes that would make me rush back. They have sold off half their swish London office.
How do I audition for the role of a Covid victim on the “can you look them in the eye?” TV adverts?
I can look mournful in a face nappy. I can look pitiful in a face shield. I can look reproachful in bed. I can even, if required, say “you killed Captain Tom, and now you’re killing me.”
Study lots of pictures of very sad puppies. Project yourself deep into their dear little souls.
If this isn’t too far-fetched, when wearing my exemption badge and passing a door monitor I try to look like a person who might have breathing difficulties if my face was covered.
My own take on this is is “Oh so they’re now in process of tying the NHS up into as neat a bundle as they can manage are they? All the better to have it ready to sell off (probably to US big business”. But why the imposing fluoride in water onto those fortunate enough to be safe from that currently (thank goodness it’s just England that will be affected if they do that…and I’m safe from that here in Wales).
For most of the time since the inception of the NHS the UK has had a Conservative government. Their record is no worse than Labour. This, and the fact that the NHS has reached peak cult status this year, make it highly unlikely the government is preparing for a sell-off.
Tony Blair for all his faults didn’t totally wreck the health service. The real NHS disaster started with Cameron et al.
The PFI was and is an unmitigated disaster.A lot of shiny new hospitals were built with smaller capacity and a massive ongoing maintenance bill.This was Blair’s legacy to the NHS
It needs selling off. We need a completely different model and full accountability of management.
Would you buy a very ill-used NHS/Moloch from this lot?
I thought science had found so many bad effects of fluoride on the body that adding fluoride to water was a thing of the past.
https://search.mercola.com/results.aspx?q=Fluoride#stq=Fluoride
You know that. I know that. But there’s probably lobbyists being paid to say otherwise. Add yer average British level of inefficiency and apparatchiks in place in the relevant Water Boards just doing what they’ve always done…
Yorkshire Water stated back in 2000 that they had no intention of fluoridating the water.
They know it’s toxic and they’d be criminally liable. They’ll only add it if HMG forces them to.
The original studies on Fluoride back in the early 20th Century established that areas with a natural background level of Fluoride observed substantial dental health benefits. Fluoridation, where it is applied, just aims to replicate those natural levels found elsewhere, and never approaches the levels identified as causing adverse health effects. (And I’m normally sceptical about this type of universal medication!)
Not true!
The fluoride added to water supplies is not the same substance as that found naturally.
The additive is actually a toxic by-product of the aluminium industry, which is very difficult to dispose of legally and cheaply.
There’s a lot of lobbying for fluoridation. Now you know why!
Absolute nonsense.
You are as mad as a box of frogs.
Cheezilla is quite correct. Where do you get your information from?
Suggest you read Christopher Bryson’s “The Fluoride Deception” (2004) which has some 110 pages of sources/notes.
Run the hares
Today children we will be looking through the round window
The fairy story will be read by unnamed source
This hilarious fairy story is a tale about pubs without beer and about sausages
Smiling Ted is a little upset that you have been laughing at his very serious scary stories about mutants
Todays funny stories are here to make you feel sad and frustrated. The stories were created by a special unit funded by your mums and dads. The unit wants you to spend the day clicking and ticking on social media (whatever that is)
At teatime unnamed source will deny that such things were ever said. The newspapers will not report this as they will be too busy producing tomorrows guff for the plebs
Children did you know that unnamed source is a euphemism for lying cunt?
Children do you know what a euphemism is? No of course not, you haven’t been too school have you
I read that and thought it would be tragic if it were true. Just seems way too specific and slightly absurd: Sausages. How we laughed.
The hospice nurse’s piece is fantastic. Way too mature, unfortunately, for our death-phobic, medicalised culture.
She’s absolutely right of course. I know this more than most – as my own father was kept artificially “alive” for more than 30 years – as his health just went down and down ad infinitum and yet still they kept up the artificial interference (for which I was never quite sure how much was his own choice to unnaturally prolong his life – as he was an atheist and didn’t want to leave my mother on her own). I managed to agree with my erstwhile brother and sister-in-law that our mother was just to be “kept comfortable and painfree” thankfully and she wasn’t an atheist (ie so not scared of death). Thanks to the nurse for putting up those details re living will. I used to have one previously – but had to bin it when I found the NHS were withdrawing artificial nutrition and hydration and that that was painful for the recipient. Will check it out to see if it’s possible for me to spell out in exact detail what I would or wouldn’t be prepared to have (ie no life-prolonging treatment – but they WILL do artificial nutrition/hydration if need be) and I want to put… Read more »
Thanks Eliza. I just wanted to say that although you are correct to bring religion into this discussion, being an atheist does not mean being fearful of death. I am atheist and I assure you I do not fear death at all. I am totally comfortable with the concept of ceasing to exist, and would similarly want my life to end at the humane point. Why are pets are given this right but not people? There is a big difference between being an atheist because it is logical and becoming an atheist because you can’t be bothered with religion. I would expect that most atheists who got there through deep thought, do not fear death. The people that replaced old religion with new religions like social media virtue signalling are the ones presently running around like headless chickens. Saying that, I think lack of religion is a big part of the covid problem. I used to think that the world would be a better place without religion, but I now appreciate that people are not ready for it. It turns out that most people cannot function in a decent way when faced with perceived risk of death, especially if they… Read more »
I suspect most people who claim to have a principled objection to religion are in fact objecting to something else entirely – namely dogma, superstition, irrationality. These things often appear under the guise of religion, but they are not only found there, -as we are now seeing only too clearly- and it seems to me they are to some extent endemic in the human psyche and will never be entirely rooted out
I am an atheist and have no fear of death. In fact, I’d rather it right now compared to this shitshow that society has become.
I have been wondering how atheists feel about it – because it’s such a different outlook to my own. I understand why I obviously feel a bit anxious about the transition process to an afterlife. But I am 101% sure there will be an Afterlife and it will be a much much better place than here and I will start by celebrating being free from Earth. So thanks for explaining that – as I do try and think about how an atheist would feel about this – but can’t get my head round it, because it’s so different to my own thinking.
I’m an atheist, although brought up as a Quaker. I am not frightened of death but a little scared of dying, especially if the medical profession are any way involved.
That sums it up for me too. I’m an atheist as well and I don’t really think about what happens after death — don’t know and don’t much care. Like you, I’m way more afraid of dying at the hands of the medical profession than of death itself. Even as a very young person I was more afraid of getting old than of dying. Now that I’m middle-aged I’d say this still holds true. As a person who needs to be in control, becoming older and infirm signifies a lack of control to me. This has been brought home by what has happened to people in LTC facilities, even the high-end ones.
I’m not afraid of dying but I’m absolutely terrified of the medical profession forcibly prolonging my life when there’s no quality left.
Reminds me of an old villager, dying in hospital some years ago. Our rector went and visited him in hospital (imagine the pathetic little clergyworms doing that now!), and the serene old man told him, with simple dignity, ‘I’ve made my peace with God.’
I pray I will be able to say the same.
My favourite is the French writer Rabelais, who said he was going in search of a great “perhaps”. The hint of even a doubt of an afterlife was somewhat revolutionary for 1553.
I believe the hospice nurse’s piece holds true for Germany, too. The system shows “love and care” as a facade, but then hospitals were closed in 2020. Health care workers who are critical of the jab, get kicked from their jobs. Ward managers are under a lot of pressure, because government wants everybody to get the vaccine. But it’s not only the system’s fault, since people seem to be under the impression, they will live forever, when everybody does what the “experts” say. Or, they’re simply afraid of pain, death and dying. Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown. Maybe a suppressed guilty conscience, and the fear of judgement from God? (Coincidentally, the transhumanist vision of mankind seems to stem from a fear of life and death, a fear of the human body, the free expression of the body, and therefore aims to get rid of the human body, and achieve immortality. That’s just my impression.) The way the pandemic is handled by goverments and MSM has just hightened this fear of pain,death and dying. It’s incredible, how people would rather see society collapse, and how they rather turn against “deviants”, than let everybody decide how to live based on… Read more »
So I see the much fabled “R” rate is now lower than since July.
A time when there was a certain level of normality, meeting families, “eating out to help out”, going to the cinema, holidays, just sitting in a cafe etc.
Yet now we will be arrested for sitting on a park bench, schools are still barred and some terrified people don’t leave their home at all.
Where’s the outrage?
There’s been the odd small article saying the R rate isn’t really that important it’s all about ‘case numbers’ positive tests or whatever.
And yet when the R(ubbish) rate was high, it was totally,wholly,utterly, entirely, absolutely crucial.
Hi Annie! I wish I had you as a friend so we can curse and moan and philosophise together! Here, in my bit of country, the sheep are in force and all my friends have been brainwashed! Yesterday I saw some friends outside by chance, who actually said: we could go for a walk but in pairs!!! I thought they used to have a brain! I despair and I have no one here on my page!
We have the same problem. So many brainwashed sheep we’ve not been bothering with anyone really. We have literally one sane couple in town that we’re friends with that we meet for dinner every few weeks. Everyone else is either a complete Covid sheep or lives over an hour away and we’ve not had the energy.
I would love to have another couple to see! The current Mr Mutineer and I seem to be alone.
They switch effortlessly between cases, deaths, hospitalisations, infections, R0, modelled figures, actual figures, fictitious figures. Whichever is the highest at the time gets the top billing.
The R rate may be down but the head up your R’s rate is running at an all time high, lead by wittering witty concerned about people drinking and being sociable.
“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
As I’ve said before the people going from medical school into Public Health were the ones who never frequented the college bar or behaved like students at all. James Delingpole’s description of Chris Witty at school is accurate I’m sure.
Killjoys and control freaks.
excellent.
Maybe Shitty is bogus, concocted from a few fake holograms, like Comrade Ogilvy.
It’s the boiling frog metaphor- the ‘new normal’ as we slowly fade away..
forgive me, but I don’t give a fuck about the bloody R rate
Fabled is right, R is an invention of modellers
A discredited government advised by the discredited imperial college. Time to get the pitchforks.
The state taking more health care practices into its own hands should worry everyone.
Why fluoridate the water? You aren’t meant to consume fluoride ffs! Something isn’t right about that. Especially mixed with experimental vaccines.
Does no one else see this as a worrying sign?
They will also tackle obesity? Oh really, how?
Seriously if you think we live in a free country you are very wrong.
This is also the problem with socialised healthcare. This isn’t about patient care its about tightening control, slowly everything will move towards one state.
As much as it will annoy some people in these comments to say…but this is communism. The kind that gives an illusion of choice but all the cards are held by one player; the state.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I know – my mind boggles at the thought of putting fluoride in water. It’s quick and easy enough to read the facts as to whether to do that or no – and then decide it’s a bad idea and not do it for goodness sake. Or have we got some vested interests firm or something somewhere raking in the shekels if they do that – and they are paying for good lobbyists to push their case to earn more money for themselves (whoops…sorreee….silly me…I mean to “improve the health of the public” – yeah right….).
I an stunned by the NHS proposals, the very opposite of what I think is needed and the opposite of what I would have thought we would have seen from a Conservative Government. Perhaps they are going to change their name to the Conservative Protection Party, CPC, it would all fit together quite well, all in all this is frightening stuff.
The Mass Medication Party. They are all MMP MPs.
The fluoride announcement is very sinister
the inconvenient tooth…
Yes. Triggered some very loud alarm bells for me.
Fluoridation of the water supply is very concerning. Fluoride is soluble so it can’t be filtered out and if you boil the water you just end up concentrating it. It has an effect on the brain so in order to really avoid it you either need an expensive reverse osmosis system fitted or buy bottled spring water.
What could possibly go wrong?
Reverse osmosis is actually not that expensive. We had a system installed in the kitchen for under 300$. Filters are about 70/ year. Bottled water was running us 20$ a week.
Nothing to do with socialised medicine. The USA is the most fluoridated country in the world. Mainland Europe doesn’t do it.
Birmingham has been fluoridated a long time. >30 years ago, I helped with a campaign against water fluoridation in the E Midlands, which is supplied by Anglian Water. We discovered that unfluoridated East Anglia had lower dental decay levels than B’ham. Also Anglian Water was rather concerned about being sued if it added something unnecessary to the tap water.
John thank you for being involved. Fluoridation should never happen
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/10/20/fluoride-and-brain-development.aspx
Great post!! The Fluoride Action network (FAN) in the US has been fighting water fluoridation for years – last June a court caseThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also does not have any safety data on fluoride intake and its effects on the brain. During the fluoride trial against the EPA, which took place in June 2020, Michael Connett, an attorney for the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) who is leading the lawsuit, asked the EPA to identify all studies that demonstrate or support the neurological safety of prenatal fluoride exposure.They produced a single study from 1995, in which the neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride was assessed in rats. Ironically, this study actually shows that neonatal fluoride exposure is neurotoxic, and EPA scientists confirmed that this was indeed the case.The Fight Against Water Fluoridation ContinuesHopefully, FAN’s legal action against the EPA will result in the elimination of fluoride from U.S. water supplies. We still have a ways to go though. As it stands, the judge in the case has asked FAN to allow the EPA to reassess the evidence before he makes a ruling.—Clean pure water is a prerequisite to optimal health. Industrial chemicals, drugs and other toxic additives really have no place in… Read more »
Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More about the dangers of Water Fluoridation
I encourage you to visit the website of the Fluoride Action Network and visit the links below:
The major beneficiaries of the coronavirus responses are the billionaires. Since March they have seen their wealth increase by trillions of dollars, whilst ordinary people have been stripped of the same amount. This transfer of wealth is the exact opposite of communism.
The „free healthcare“ thing, anyway. I remember Charlie Gard a few years ago. Ok so his situation was unlikely to be helped, but what right does the NHS have to say you can’t take your own kid to another country for experimental treatment USING MONEY YOU RAISED YOURSELF??? They weren’t asking the NHS to pay for it. FREE means CONTROL
People often speculate on the reasons for the closures of public spaces, particularly social meeting hubs like pubs & cafes & social distancing etc.
Could this be why? State of society – how we got here – WHAT CAN WE DO? towards the end Denis Rancourt, offers the explanation. Which is of course to prevent organisation & dissent against the empire builders (globalists) working in groups not only makes it harder for them to control but gives us more confidence.
And allows the Deep State to steal elections. Mail in ballots etc. Databases flipping votes in their millions to get the answer they want.
I stopped having faith in “free & fair” elections decades ago.
Two bus billboards yesterday that’s summed up the lunacy.
First was the “act like you have it” NHS one.
Next to it, was an advert for the Samaritans and their suicide helpline.
No connection there?
In the Telegraph yesterday there was a description of the quarantine hotel rooms. In the list of contents was ‘Samaritans contact details’.
Who knew that the hotels would be like Beachy Head? “Last chance to not top yourself!”
Now remembering an activists summer school that included influencing the media many years back now – and one of the things we were taught was that when a newspaper didn’t dare tell the truth about something they would sometimes deliberately put a suitable (unrelated of course – not…..) article right beside it, so that people would look across and draw their own conclusions. But the newspaper was in the clear and couldn’t be sued for libel or in any way punished for what they had just said – by that juxtaposition of articles. Crafty.
Time to reissue “A pub with no beer” by Slim Dusty.
Ask your grandparents or even your great grandparents.
If nothing else my home brewing and wine making skills have improved as a result of lockdown, you can ban alcohol but you cannot ban yeast – no more than you can eradicate SARS-Cov2 … but that’s another story!
I guess a hip flask will become the must have accessory
Chorus:
Well it’s lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the camp fire at night
Where the wild dingos call
But there’s nothin’ so lonesome
Morbid or drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer
I have this on7″ record. It belonged to my parents. Loved it as a child because it had the word “bum” in the lyrics
The piece by the hospice nurse is one of the most sensible and humane things I have ever read.
A friend who is taking part in the ONS study was alarmed when he was told that one of his samples had shown positive. Since he hadn’t been out of his house apart from the occasional stroll he didn’t see how he could have picked up an infection.
He decided to have a further test a day later (which was permitted under government rules) and unsurprisingly it turned out negative. On contacting T&T he was told he still had to isolate and he got rather cross. The tracers were adamant, he had to remain isolated “to be on the safe side”!
When he asked what clinical skills the decision makers had he was told they had none and it was government rules.
It is good to see the science being followed so closely.
For what it’s worth my advice to your friend is do not engage with the dictatorship at any level and in any circumstances
Agreed. It’s indeed a dictatorship, and engagement will only bring trouble. The kind of engagement that the SOE executed with The Reich may yet come to pass in the New West – but who will ever emerge as the New Allies in this awful New World?
Thanks for feedback.
Hopefully he has now learned a lesson – so stupid to take part in any of these studies because the chances of having to isolate is very high.
Only when it suits them. When the WHO said lockdowns were a last resort it was somehow ignored by many governments, who treated it like locking down was Standard Operating Procedure.
Remember the ciggy joke?
‘Those warnings on cigarette packets frightened me so much that I gave up reading.’
Update from the only serious zero covid country and trying to stay that way https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-is-it-luck-top-health-boss-caroline-mcelnays-theory-on-lack-of-community-cases/O2WL24U6CHTAN3TPPKVJ6X6HPM/ A new case in the community,this one in Hamilton.Luckily for NZ this was an ex Pullham Hotel Isolation person,who together with all others released from that hotel has self isolated in the home in Hamilton, (as all olther ex-Pulham persons due to community cases.orignating from Pullham Hotel). This just shows the tremendous difficulties,if you are serious of zerocovid.All these now 5 community cses have all been in quarantaine for 14 days at Pulham hotel and all had 2 neg and released. Then they developed symtoms in some cases after being released. They have had a stroke of luck as no further spread arund them(article above) Why does this happen? Two neg tests,could it still be false neg? Or could it be possible with silent non detectable carriage of the virus and then expresssing itself due to unknown climatological reason? This has been discussed about the Antartic outbreak of common cold and also discussed with the South Americn sailors 4 weeks in the pacific and outbreak.This was also part of Hope Simpson speculation of sudden outbreak of influenza in several different localities on the same latitude.… Read more »
The sailors story is interesting, ‘comfort boat’ with AIS switched off making the rounds of the fishing fleet? Narco subs? Lots of lonely ocean out there.
Agreed the talk of ‘zero covid’ is arrogant, naive and ill-considered, having worked in Agriculture and Horticulture and now in wildlife conservation one thing it has taught me is that we only know a small part of what is going on, we cannot control nature but we can work with it. It amazes me that so many people seem to think that by virtue of our actions SARS-Cov2 is going to disappear! maybe it will? maybe it wont? we need to be humble it is not totally within our control.
The upper atmosphere is full of viruses and all sorts of stuff; they come and go, to my mind respiratory viruses are like Ruby Tuesday;
She would never say where she came from
Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone
While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes
I somehow have a feeling that when the winter comes NZ and Aus will have surge of cases anyway, which will be of course clear sign that isolation works as intended.
They will just change the test protocol when it becomes politically expedient
I also think they have to be like their Asian neighbours. A large degree of pre existing immunity. But because rtheyve gone zero Covid early, they’ll never know and everything looks like a success. It’s a bind alright
Twitter strikes again. Mike Yeadon’s account seems to have disappeared. Can anyone shed any light?
Some one deleted it!
Is he now being held in one of the airport prisons?
Well they can’t have us reading anything that’s actually true, can they?
He is apparently accused of expressing the wrong ideas. George Monibot has been particularly vocal in attacking Yeadon on the virus, but has in the past few days switched to accusing him of racism. https://twitter.com/georgemonbiot?lang=en
Far right extremist is the go to slur
A Morning Star article today by Kevin Ovenden complains of “outright fascist forces” in the Netherlands behind lockdown protests putting themselves “at the centre of popular frustration”. He doesn’t bother to ask how the left cannot do that – but then again frantic love of lockdown is not going to bring the masses out.
I don’t mind betting I could find russophobic tweets by Monbiot but that wouldn’t count as racist, would it?
Did they serve beer in the bars?
It’s worse if you have two heads and only one of them is drunk We have Zaphod’s word for that.