Broadcasting regulator Ofcom has come under fire this week for labelling scepticism of official statistics and statements as “misinformation” during the Covid crisis. The Telegraph has the story.
The broadcasting regulator has been accused of stifling “rational criticism” of the response to Covid by labelling scepticism about Britain’s approach to the pandemic as “misinformation”.
Amid major controversy over whether official statistics were overstating the prevalence of coronavirus, Ofcom described the idea that there were “a lower number of cases in reality than is being reported” as a “common piece of misinformation”.
It also emerged that the regulator warned broadcasters in the early days of the pandemic that it was prioritising investigations into programmes or news reports featuring advice which “discourages the audience from following official rules and guidance”.
The disclosure will lead to renewed concerns about the approach of the regulator, as the Government seeks a new chairman who can “provide proper scrutiny and challenge”.
Conservative MP Steve Baker described the approach as “dangerous”, stating: “To label any kind of rational criticism as misinformation is unscientific, and a frank rejection of enlightenment values which would catapult us into a new dark age.”
According to the Telegraph, Ofcom has prepared dozens of papers detailing surveys it has carried out relating to Covid, each of which includes a section titled “Misinformation related to Covid”.
One paper drawn up in October 2020, shortly before official statistics were used to justify a second national lockdown, stated: “The most common piece of misinformation respondents came across in the last week (from a select list) is ‘face masks/coverings offer no protection/or are harmful’… One in five (20%) of respondents reported coming across claims that ‘The number of deaths linked to Coronavirus is much lower in reality than is being reported’ … A similar proportion (18%) came across claims about a ‘lower number of cases in reality than being reported’”.
The description of scepticism about masks and official data as “misinformation” appeared to overlook political and scientific debates over both issues.
Some Government advisors had warned that people could be put at risk of infection as a result of face masks being worn incorrectly, or those using face coverings failing to follow social distancing rules. Separately, many MPs were critical of the Government’s use of statistics to justify further restrictions.
In December, Office for National Statistics (ONS) data – which showed soaring coronavirus cases before the second lockdown – was quietly revised down and suggested that cases were largely plateauing at the time.
Separately, formal guidance issued by Ofcom to broadcasters on March 27th, 2020 warned: “Ofcom is prioritising cases relating to the Coronavirus which raise the risk of potential harm to audiences.
“This could include, for example: inaccurate or materially misleading content in programmes about the virus or public policy on it; health claims about the virus which may encourage the audience to respond in a way that would be harmful to themselves and others; and medical or other advice which may be harmful if followed, or discourages the audience from following official rules and guidance.
“Ofcom will consider any breach arising from harmful Coronavirus-related programming to be potentially serious, and will consider taking appropriate regulatory action, which could include the imposition of a statutory sanction.”
Ofcom issued a statement responding to the criticism:
Ofcom has a statutory duty to promote media literacy. This research into Covid news is one of the resources we use to better understand how people receive and act on information about the pandemic.
The list of claims that could be considered false or misleading is provided to us by Full Fact, and help us understand how often people encounter these types of claims. The survey is refined as new information comes to light.
The starting point of every decision we make on content standards is freedom of expression and the guidance we publish supports broadcasters in providing accurate information.
Broadcasters are at liberty to share views which differ from or challenge official authorities on public health information or that disagree with their approach in tackling Covid.
It’s alarming that the UK broadcasting regulator is relying on “fact-checking” organisation Full Fact to inform what it should suppress. Full Fact, which self-importantly describes itself as “the UK’s independent fact checking charity”, is a notoriously biased organisation which has a history of partisan interventions in political debates. Its major funders include Google, Facebook and George Soros – all known for their highly partisan political activism. 70% of its 2019 declared funding was from Big Tech companies.
Full Fact claims to be an “independent and impartial charity with a cross-party board”. But David Scullion did some fact-checking of his own for the Critic in February and found this was not true:
The organisation claims to have a board of trustees with “members from the three main UK-wide political parties”. There is a Labour Peer (Baroness Janet Royall), a Lib-Dem peer, (Lord John Sharkey) but their former Conservative Party member, Lord Richard Inglewood, no longer sits as a Tory. When I asked Full Fact who their Conservative member was they pointed out that one of their trustees donates to the Conservative Party and that they have “representatives of different political parties” on their board. This is different wording which allows for the fact that they don’t, or aren’t sure whether they have a Conservative Party member amongst them. I pointed out that a donor was different to a member, but I did not receive a reply and the text on their website was not corrected.
Noting the departing editor was an ex-Mirror and Buzzfeed reporter, Scullion concludes: “Full Fact is a charity with a small output of research compared to its size, funded primarily by big-tech and staffed to a large extent by former public sector workers or ex-reporters from left-wing media.”
Full Fact defends its work by arguing no one has to listen to it: “We don’t ask people to take our word for any conclusion we make. We provide links to all sources so that readers can check what we’ve said for themselves.”
But it’s not entirely true that we don’t have to take their word for it. They have a “Head of Advocacy” whose job it is to lobby Government to force people to accept what they say, or as they put it, to secure “changes from those in governments, parliaments, the media, internet companies and beyond that influence people’s exposure to bad information and its harms”.
Bad information – as defined by Full Fact. What could possibly go wrong? Somehow I don’t think they’ve understood how free speech works.
Giving biased organisations like Full Fact any influence at all over what people may and may not say in a public debate is a serious threat to free speech. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab once laid into the organisation after a particularly egregious political intervention, saying: “Who said Final [sic] Fact is the final arbiter of what the public get to see as the truth? There’s no God-given right, set in law. It doesn’t sound to me like they like the competition.”
Perhaps the Government should bear that in mind when they allow the state broadcast regulator to be steered by such an organisation.
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Should be called f-Offcom
What about ComOff-it?
In March 2020, after all my IT colleagues and I had been sent home and we were talking together on one of those incessant video conference calls about “the pandemic”, I mentioned that the daily death toll, being reported to all of their smartphones, did not seem all that exceptional to me, and explained my simple rationale and arithmetic. Two of the eight quickly denounced me as a conspiracy theorist. The remaining six either remained totally silent or quickly ganged up on me. Then I knew it was serious.
OFCOM got away with this because people believe everything when it comes to them from authority. Sad fact.
Ah well…
That’s a T-shirt/Pinterest/banner quote right there:
“People will believe everything when it comes to them from authority”
Never believe anything that you are told and only half of that what you see.
That’s what my grandmother used say bless her, except substitute “told” with “read”. We need more wise heads like her’s, a lot more – unfortunately.
“Heard it through the grapevine” Marvin Gaye. 1969. “People say ‘believe half of what you see son, and none of what you hear—“
Question everything, whatever happened to that?
Modern schooling.
Very similar experience here. I was shouted down by very smart people who had outsourced their rational thinking faculties.
Sadly, I think all of us who held our ground during this dystopian time share these experiences. There’s some satisfaction in the fact that at least some of the outrageously brazen lying and manipulation the public has been subjected to is now coming to light.
Too late for those old friendships now destroyed, alas.
Or the dead or injured or mentally disturbed.
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Should add that this is a quote from Albert Einstein.
Two of the eight quickly denounced me as a conspiracy theorist.
‘The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.’ – George Orwell
Interestingly I looked up your quote and it isn’t Orwell: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/11/george_orwell_is_stealing_my_work.html
same experience with me I posted something from ONS that stated Flu/pneumonia killed more people than Covid in July and August. A soon to be ex friend countered with something from Foolfuct directly criticising the ONS.
So not only does the factchecker advise OFCOM it also attacks the Govt’s own statistics.
That narration rings bells about an experience I had during a Zoom committee meeting around the same time. We had, in March, agreed to abandon rehearsals for a while until the information clarified. I think no-one considered that to be about a brief interregnum at a stage when figures such as the IFR were unknown. However, following that decision, I had become very wary of the sort of reporting being done by the BBC. It clearly bore all the hallmarks of a propagandised narrative to anyone with a smidgen of media literacy. As a result, I had taken pains to go back to base mortality data (population standardized) for a quarter of a century – in order to test the thesis that this was the ‘unprecedented event’ that was on the billboard. Of course – it was far from that. Deaths were running at a level that were surpassed by a quarter of infection seasons in the years surveyed. Even I was surprised at the size of the disparity. In the Zoom meeting, I raised this (very simple) hard fact. The response was as if I’d placed a turd on the dinner table. Like you – that’s when I realized… Read more »
The conspirators “conspiracy theorists” PR strategy was so successful, because it played on arrogance – “I’m not a conspiracy theorist” – and insecurity – “People will think I’m stupid and mad unless I go with the mainstream”.
No wonder they so often look as they are trying to suppress a smirk when they appear – Fauci in particular, Hancock of course too.
You know… i’ve been thinking about this whole vaccine thing… What if the plan isn’t to just carry out a massive genetic experiment on the population? What if the plan is to separate the sheeple from the free thinkers? What if this vaccine is actually a vaccine, but not for covid? What if it’s a vaccine for something much, much worse coming later, which is meant to take out all those that refuse to comply?
I’ve thought about this, it seems highly improbable. If 90%+ (the sheep) are protected from a novel and lethal virus, it would be unlikely to be able to spread effectively.
However, there are two other similar very scary scenarios:
You probably couldn’t design “vaccines” reliably to go one way or the other. There is a huge element of randomness at play. Totalitarians would probably prefer the second scenario, to filter out the trouble-makers (free-thinkers). Eugenicists would probably prefer the first scenario as it filters out the weakest (non-thinkers).
It doesn’t have to be a virus that spreads naturally. Doesn’t even have to be a virus. Plenty of ways to distribute pathogens to the population.
Either way, it’s a thought experiment, nothing more.
Personally, I’m beginning to favour the former possibility. Particularly given that many of the actors in this endless farce are known eugenicists (Gates, Wellcome Trust, et al).
A third possibility is that the vaccine not only compromises people’s natural immunity making them more susceptible to illness and premature death, but also further dumbs down the population, a bit like fluoride in the water, making them more compliant and easy to manipulate. Let’s face it, we don’t really know what kind of shit they’ve put in these injections.
I’m already seeing evidence of that in the jabbed people I encounter
My expectation is that eventually everyone will be coerced to accept first gen vaccines. Once a digital ID is introduced & Access / transaction control governed by having a valid VaxPass, the unvaccinated will almost be subject to house arrest since there’ll be almost nothing they can do. I saw an official document from the French govt about emergency “Ring vaccination”. Any ‘case’ is targeted by a medical & police team ring vaccinating everyone within a given radius of the ‘case’. Those refusing vaccination are told not to leave their homes. If this was insufficient then, for the greater good, refusers were to be taken into protective custody. In an Italian Govt document, the argument was made that refusers were irrational & could be sectioned under their mental health act. I don’t see any way to prevent this kind of dystopian end result if VaxPass goes live. Later, I speculated that “top up / variant vaccines” could be used to deliver a gene sequence which would lead to delayed onset lethality of a condition consistent with whatever the govt tells us is washing around the planet. Some people have gone to tremendous amounts of trouble to get us to this… Read more »
Yes very scary. The digital vaccine passport was always the end game.
That is why it is so sad that Peter Hitchens and others got the experimental gene therapy despite the fact that the covid survival rate is in excess of 99.9%.
In around April 2020 Peter Hitchens wrote the following:
“I saw an official document from the French govt about emergency “Ring vaccination”.”
Presumably this counts as “conspiracy theory” for the moment, until the first time it’s used, when it will become “old news” and then “standard practice”.
Another illustration of the disastrous results of treating fairly routine respiratory viruses as though they are diseases like ebola or smallpox, enabled by modern technology and vastly increased state powers.
If everyone is coerced, it’s game over. We can’t permit that. I hope you are wrong. We’d have to hope that not everyone gets damaged/killed by the vaccines and we’d have to hope that some black swan event happens that stops the globalists ever carrying out their full plan. What I can’t cope with is the sheer stupidity of people that think all this is for the greater good. It’s the biblical great delusion.
Very much agree with this, I have been making the same prediction on here for a while now.
The inevitable side-effects that will eventually start to make people ill will undoubtedly be blamed on another virus, which will then need more ‘vaccination’. Sadly, people will be so scared and desperate, they’ll line up in their droves to get jabbed with more poison.
My thoughts also. They tried to make the “Vaccines” as safe as possible (they failed though) to lull people into a false sense of security, then put the bad stuff in one of the “boosters”. Well that’s what I’d do if I was a psychopathic control freak.
1. Vaccine development using GoF research goes array in Wuhan. Short cover up attempted. 2. Word gets out to the inner circle the virus being used infected a few workers. 3. It becomes unavoidable that a more general awareness of a virus outbreak becomes known. Overall IFR still not clear. So time for the big players to get involved and the red button is pressed. Getting Trump out under the panic of the virus and election gaming also adds weight to this train. It becomes unstoppable. 4. The opportunists behind the Great Reset know what this means. Preparations are put into action. 5. As the Diamond Princess numbers show, the virus has a non threatening IFR. However two things are now significantly in play: 1) the lab leak must be covered up given the funders lead right back to the Pentagon and the entire Deep State spiders Web 2) the Great Reset is now in motion. Build Back Better will be the way to a creat techno facist super structure. No going back. They’ve show their hand. 6. Everything is now dependant on leverage. Hype the fear through the corporate captured state actors, get power into the public health (big… Read more »
Nice one. All who do not comply will be targeted. The end goal is the implanted chip, although the nanoparticles circulating around the body from the vaccine are excellent for controlling people from Skynet. And the atmosphere has been sprayed with chemtrails (AI nanoparticles) for years now too. The digital ID is of course critical too. This is fascism and it is here now.
Another sleepless night for me wondering the same thing. I’m torn as to who is behind it and why though: 1) The Chinese. They developed the virus (using US money admittedly, so that points to possibility 2, below), and told people the make up of the S1 protein to design vaccines around. China is crowded and shooting for world domination. It would be easier to dominate the US and Europe if a large chunk of the population there is dead. So release the virus and then a couple of years later, a second virus that would unleash ADE on everyone vaccinated. You need to have a targeted approach though tagging people with a vaccine or else your own population will die. The Chinese have been suspiciously quiet about their own vaccination programme. 2) Bill Gates and others shooting for depopulation. Fund the GoF research in China, create a mild virus, generate terror through paid for MSM, unleash your S1 vaccines that limit fertility (and/or maybe kill a bunch of people with ADE and a second virus). Again, it’s the vaccinated that get it. And that’s the only reason why you’d push the not-at-risk to take these vaccines. Maybe it’s both… Read more »
I spent a little time on the same question but came up disturbingly with the main actors being “The Five Eyes” (US, U.K., Can, Aus, NZ).
Obviously I don’t mean their democratic governments, but a supranational elite, using the global intelligence capabilities within 5Is to execute the plans. All roads do seem to lead to Gates (of hell).
This documentary steered me towards the US, adding other countries as we approach the present day,
https://youtu.be/d3WUv5SV5Hg
Chinese are no more evil than we are. Granted they don’t share our ethics, but the ethics of our modern political and social elites seem ever closer to those of the Chicoms.
What we did and are doing in Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere is every bit as evil as anything the Chinese do, just justified in different ways that (many, perhaps most of us) are willing to accept, by and large. Different ethics.
The Chinese form of domestic government is arguably more evil than ours, but again the difference seems to be reducing rapidly.
I like #1 a lot. But #2 is good too. At the highest level there is a global government already. We know this from the UFO/space wars, all the various players (US, UK, Russia China) work together on space matters.
Oh no, not “under fire”? They must be quaking in their boots. Naughty naughty. Oh well it’s not like they are conspiring to conceal a genocide or anything like that, nothing to see here, move along. Keep calm and carry on Brit morons. UK is the pits. Nothing land. Nothing.
Here is an in depth look at the work of Full Fact in smearing those who are rightly invoking the Nuremberg Code to highlight the vaxx crimes being committted in broad daylight.
Fact Checkers: Coronavirus Vaccines Have Nothing To Do With The Nuremberg Code
https://covidtruefacts.blogspot.com/2021/05/fact-checkers-coronavirus-vaccines-have.html
Thank you TFCF great video so good I’ve sent it to my brother and my cousin who are both fully on board.
Thanks, Will, for an article that takes a sceptical approach. A nice change from the bovine cud-chewing of Covidian silage, as performed by other contributors ATL.
Will’s a star. It’s amazing how he manages to produce such a huge output of quality work.
Every time there’s an article with his name on it you know it’s worth reading.
Who knew that Government regulation could be so sinister? That big state, ‘Der Grosser Reich’, might one day turn on us all…….?
That would be everyone…….all of us participants, one way or another, in the totalitarian kitsch, mawkish ‘planet me’, overmighty public sector, of Blair’s Britain.
We are all complicit in this grotesque overreach….
It seems yet a again a libdem is involved. Nick Clegg is happy to be seen as the face of lies and hypocrisy.
He is smiling all the way to the bank
I’m looking forward to seeing him dangle from a lamppost.
You are clearly an optimist.
I tend to the pessimistic, so I foresee him in the Lords rather than facing justice. It’s clear that there is no reliable justice in this life. For that, we have to hope for an afterlife of some kind.
Here here
Someone we know used to work with Clegg.
He apparently believed that if he went to the gym then it meant he could get away with smoking more.
Yep, that’s how smart our betters are!
Presumably criticism of OFCOM is misinformation too?
This censorship and shutting down of any deviation from the official narrative is more destructive than the virus.
And the gullible lap it up.
And has been increasing for decades.
Last time I looked FullFact had it’s office in the Mall a stone’s throw away from Whitehall. A devotion to facts scarcely requires such a central location.
OFCOM need to start with the SAGE lies then as they are the biggest liars in the news these days with their concocted nudges
I smelled a rat when I Googled Mike Yeadon to try and get his latest pronouncements on matters, since I regard him as the touchstone of truth, reason and erudition on the Covid debacle. Up popped ‘Full Fact’ with an unrebutted hatchet job on Dr Yeadon. Cursory research yielded the backers of Full Fact as big tech Google, Facebook, along with Soros. Goes to show NOTHING shout be taken at face value. The buggers have their tentacles enveloping all information outlets.
Rather use DuckDuckGo or Swisscows, they do not censor what you can see and do not keep your details
As others have pointed out, if you try DDG, you’ve a chance of finding unredacted material.
I don’t have a monopoly on the truth & as I often say, “this is not my crime”, so I can’t be sure where it’s going.
But I know my basic biology, this year marking the 40th since I began my training (which never ends). On careful examination, I am absolutely certain that every one of the central narrative points about the virus & measures to take are not only incorrect, but lies. I respect the advisors to govts. They’re not stupid. They know everything that I know. In U.K., we even trained & worked in the same information ecosystem. We’ll have owned the same set texts for foundational biology, such as Essential Immunology, by Ivan Roitt. I’ve still got my second edition. Vallance, Semple, Horby, Landray, Farrar, Whitty will almost certainly have had their copies. So a lot of the nonsense they come out with, I’m quite sure they know isn’t true. That’s lying when you do it knowing it’s untrue.
With the politicians, I can’t make that claim, because they’ll say whatever they’re briefed to say.
Yes. I have always been a user of an Occam shave on every explanation I can come up with – a reluctant believer in conscious motivations when simple asininity will do.
But that general position began was destroyed when the most blatant lie opened the government’s document consulting on emergency licensing of the snake oil. It opened with a statement that this was an ‘unprecedented’ event.
Nothing could be clearer in being a direct lie; simple historical analysis rebutted the claim, and even a statistical neophyte could work that out.
Essentially, the government case was hoist by its own very plain petard. But people just tied on a blindfold and turned away.
“Why is Ofcom Suppressing Covid Information Based on the Advice of a Biased ‘Fact-Checker’ Funded by Google, Facebook and George Soros?” Because all of the modern speechcrime laws and censorship practices directed against coronapanic dissent are based upon precedents, attitudes and practices introduced in the late C20th campaign to demonise and exclude un-pc political opinions – “racism”, “homophobia”, etc. That’s why the suppression of covid speech-crime looks so similar to the ways “racist” and “homophobic” etc opinions were and are suppressed, organised in similar ways and often (as in this case) by related organisations and people. The antiracists and other identity lobby zealots built the political prisons that are now used against those of them that have become dissenters on the coronapanic and vaccination fascism. The towering irony is that left liberals of exactly the kind who enthusiastically supported the demonisation and exclusion of “hate speech” often used to pontificate that “nobody is free unless everyone is free”, and portentously quote “first they came for the …” etc, but were too self-obsessed, stupid or hypocritical to see that the totalitarian laws and attitudes they were building would one day be turned on them. So we see all the tricks of… Read more »
.
Agreed. I find odd the claim that “No ones safe until everyone’s safe”,
The vast majority of the population were safe anyway. The total population lethality after claimed multiple waves is what 0.3%?
We lose roughly 0.9% of the population every year!
And we know that PCR testing plus the absurd 28d attribution methodology definitely exaggerates the death count.
0.3% is, I think a massively over-inflated for population Covid lethality.
Even the government figures are around 0.002%.
Best estimates suggest that the actual role of Covid is about one fifth of that : 0.0004% by my reckoning.
Just because someone someone accuses another of being a conspiracy theorist, doesn’t mean the theory is wrong or that there is not a conspiracy. Its simply a secret undertaking by a group of people to do something harmful. Seems we may have a conspiracy.
.
A conspiracy theory is just facts, or opinion, someone doesn’t like.
Didn’t Mr $oros, call himself ‘god like’?
Yesterday, I saw an interview with Dr Peter McCullough, one of America’s most published cardio renal specialists & editor of reviews in CV medicine, declared ‘misinformation’ by one of these ‘fact checkers’.
McCullough was referring to this paper:
As can be seen, dozens of contributors were involved in drawing up then global best practise guidelines for treatment of non hospitalised covid19 patients. Usually, there’s a Mayo Clinic guideline or one from the American Medical Association for absolutely every medical condition, even if it says ‘there is at present no consensus…’ This time, Mayo & AMA remained silent, six months into the crisis. McCullough worked with centres round the world so you’ll find the findings of those who’d championed hydroxychloroquine (such as Didier Raoult & Zev Zelenko) or ivermectin (Pierre Kory & others) as well as the finding that addition of zinc amplified the effects of HCQ (as had been seen with SARS (2003) in in vitro experiments) plus anti inflammatory corticosteroids such as Budesonide (I recall a study involving Prof Peter Barnes in London, who I know well, in that one). Also Azithromycin (a generic antibiotic which also has anti inflammatory activity). The Fact Checking people are unqualified to assess the strength or otherwise of the material. The names I found Fact Checking me, for example, had no scientific qualifications but had an Eng Lang degree from Oxbridge. It’s insulting as well as criminally dangerous. McCullough has no… Read more »
It all betrays a gaping black hole : the blanking of the mention of alternative prophylaxis or treatment.
To any intelligent person , this would raise a massive question mark about the overblown promotion of an unproven medication in place of any alternative, by a network of conflicted interest groups.
Nothing is certain in life – but, assessing available data, I decided early on that I’d prefer trusting to Ivermectin than risking a trial concoction that was beginning to display an extremely dodgy safety profile. This decision has only been confirmed by further emerging information.
Question I don’t know the answer to – is ivermectin or HCQ specific to covid or do they also work for other respiratory diseases like flu?
How is it that the organisation supposed to ensure impartiality and fairness in the media has now become a censorship body preventing any questioning of government policy?
It was always an organisation set up to impose the Overton Window on broadcasters and other information services. It’s just that you notice it now because it’s aimed at things you care about rather than things you don’t.
Time for Recovery have just done an excellent article on the role Ofcom have played in censoring MSM, by Jon Dobinson. As he informs us:
‘Worse, the Government is quietly planning to hand far more power to Ofcom by asking it to regulate all digital and social media. The UK is hosting a special G7 summit this week to coordinate the shutting down of online dissent internationally.’
Nasty lot.
Just as bad or worse now in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Here is some information for you. I personally do not know anybody who has died of Covid-19, but I do know of people who have died of the experimental gene therapy, and others who have had terrible side-effects and probably now have long-term health issues to contend with.
The UK is being run by profoundly evil people and they must be stopped. This is no ‘conspiracy theory’, it is conspiracy reality.
I know of just two covid19 deaths, both via an older relative. Both were seriously ill before the virus.
Through my immediate family circle in England I know of four people who’ve died shortly after vaccination & in all cases it sounded consistent with blood clots. The oldest was 80, but a fit guy who cycled daily, the youngest was late 50s, previously well, who died of DVT, cardiac & Stroke clots.
I feel compelled to say that I am the exception in my own family and in laws. 30 strong of jab eligible adults. Youngest is 19. Without exception, they’ve take the snake oil and I’ve refused. Including my own father with a history of heart and general vascular issues.
Nobody has had any side effects. Yet. Second jabs to come for most of them. My brothers sister in law did have a very serious anaphylactic reaction. She’s been advised not to go for number 2.
As for Covid, I know 4 people who have had symptoms and spent no more than 3 days in bed at worst. I know nobody who died.
This experience is lost on my family. Who seem to think reality is what is told to them via the tele screen rather than their own experiences.
Ofcom, google Sharon White who was the CEO of Ofcom and has been replaced by some civil servant Dame Melanie Dawes.
Sharon White is now Chairman of The John Lewis Partnership just hope my pension’s safe! Mind you I doubt I’ll need it in the Gulag.
It is concerning but also obvious that most MSM outlets play the game all too willingly. Why aren’t the Sundays pouring over the Fauci emails rather fawning on the government’s vaccine initiatives? The level of infantilism is staggering. The people who brought you the virus brought you the vaccines.
I came to the horrible conclusion that media isn’t gagged by OFCOM, but are willing players in the game of deceit, That’s why no one has broken ranks after 16 months. I do find it astonishing that no public anchor has resigned. I’ve been in regular contact with two well known names. Even as I developed the horrifying thesis I now have about where this is going, one says they’re remaining in a post, trying to persuade their boss to open up the range of voices interviewed & the other tells me they’re planning to vanish when on holiday & live in Costa Rica. No help expected from that quarter. The politicians are useless. I’ve briefed dozens & I think I got through to a handful (no more than 6 out of 60) had to their credit, they’ve consistently voted against the whip. But we can see it’s hopeless. There’ll be no revolution in Westminster. There are no “Allies” & no neutral countries, so it’s down to us. Shockingly, the majority of U.K. academics won’t speak out even now. I’ve been in touch with 7 or so professors of immunology & only one is public, and even they’ve gone quieter.… Read more »
Everything you say here makes sense. I wonder, though, whether it is not just a case of individuals being frightened of their current boss, but rather frightened of never being able to work again if they speak out. There will only ever be a tiny number of extraordinary people who are able to put their values and concern for humanity above the immediate needs of themesleves and their family.
Yes, and this seems to be why most people who are saying something are retired, not dependent on an income from an employer.
One aspect, I note, comes from comparisons of (a) gongs and titles and (b) funding dependency between academics who promote the government line, and those willing to speak out.
The other thing to say is that academics are not all good ‘scientists’ in the root sense of rational thinkers in the pursuit of knowledge. Many are just as susceptible to the Big Fear Con as is the general public. I have an example within my own family : a well-qualified Fellow, researcher and lecturer at a major university. But, whilst sceptical about detail, he will bend over backwards to put government in a good light. The motivation is not self-seeking in any material sense – it is to do with psychological comfort.
Everything, simply everything, even now, the passage of time points to ‘them’ knowing something ‘we’ don’t. It must be big but I seriously doubt it could be kept quiet with the numbers of people involved. Not all of them need money above life itself. They can’t all be simply that thick after climbing all over each other on the way up the slippery pole. But most of all, it can’t just be the worst ever disease to strike mankind since … oh … 2008. So what is it?
Self preservation and greed. Both highly underrated. 2008 should have seen a complete global financial collapse but continued courtesy of rinsing the taxpayer via government bailouts. Poor Lehman Brothers biting that bullet. No one went to jail. The recent repo market collapse should have been even worse. Wow, the headlines, remember them? Irrespective of the alleged desires of a handful of powerful families and philanthropists to save the planet, the international financial system has been fucked for at least 13 years and they’re now at the point the ponzi scheme is not only going to collapse, but this time, Joe Public aren’t going to be so forgiving. Take the WEF as a case in point. These companies have thrived on selling us stuff we don’t necessarily need, using resources, polluting, wasting, and filling their coffers only to now be smacked across the face by their collective conscience and declare saintly motives for imposing the changing of everyone’s ways? It should be called WTAF. These people: the bankers, the techies, the resource rapists and makers of crap want try and control the fallout without getting their hands dirty and succumbing to survival of the fittest. The fallout is Joe P discovering… Read more »
They’ve tried economic collapse, and now pandemic. The higher death toll in 2008 over 2020 can’t JUST be bankers throwing themselves out of windows. Give it another few years and they’ll try badly dressed aliens. Or something that will need World Government.
“To label any kind of rational criticism as misinformation is unscientific, and a frank rejection of enlightenment values which would catapult us into a new dark age.”
I think you’re on to something there, Steve.
Mentioned this before but I used to know one of the prominent “Full Fact” drones. A smug, uber-privileged little weasel who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could kick.
No, you don’t need premises on the Mall to research facts, you may need them to privilege your views.
Just looked up their address. What those plucky little independent guardians of the Truth According to Soros must pay in rent blows the mind. Unless they just get it gratis from some kindly benefactor of course…..
It’s not even as though their analyses are strong. They rely on 99% of their audience being impressed by references to scientific papers while not actually bothering to read those papers. For the core case in favour of lockdowns and masks they rely on some old papers that have since been overtaken by events. To justify lockdowns they refer to Flaxman et al (Nature, June 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7 which looked at correlation data from a set of European countries during the spring 2020 outbreak. But in autumn 2020 lockdowns were implemented much earlier in the curve and they then did not show the same correlation effect with declining transmission and case numbers that was interpreted as causation, particularly not in Central and Eastern Europe. To justify mask wearing they use Chu et al (Lancet, June 2020) https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9.pdf which was a literature review, mostly of studies that predated the pandemic. Most of the studies were tiny (Fig 4), much smaller than the studies of ivermectin that are routinely scoffed at. They said “our findings continued to support the ideas not only that masks in general are associated with a large reduction in risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2” but “in view… Read more »
Of course what ruins lives and damages democracy are bureaucrats who claim to have a monopoly on truth, and attempt to silence criticism.
Ofcom as a regulator is accountable to Parliament. Its role in engineering the saturation Covid propaganda that we have endured from our news media for the past 18 months should not be under-estimated. As for full facts, its interventions have been entirely one sided which calls into question whether it has any right to charitable status.
There’s an old saying ” You don’t bite the hand that feeds you ”
Full Fact
Zoe
Imperial College
and many more…
How long before Ofcom morphs into the Ministry for Truth?
“Ofcom has a statutory duty to promote media literacy.”
… and in that it has conspicuously failed, by stifling critical awareness and scientific information.
Only one solution : disband it on grounds of incompetence and dysfunctionality.
Cancel your BBC licence.
Fullfact seem to be backed up on FB by a little band of supporters whose profiles, when you look at them, seem very scant and implausible.
Full Fact is a registered charity… and is mostly funded by FaceBook and Google.
https://fullfact.org/about/funding/
Ministry of Truth ring to it, no?
What a surprise! A few unelected powerful elites that control FB, Google, YT etc also control the regulatory bodies as well as our democtically elected politicians and the MSM.
Guess it’s all going to plan for them and we are all truly stuffed.
There has never been a better time to focus on our own beliefs, religion and spritual being whuch is beyond their control (at the moment).