The number of settings in which life will continue as it is now after ‘Freedom Day’ keeps growing. Most recently, students at the University of Oxford have been told that rules on mask-wearing and social distancing will remain unchanged after July 19th due to high infection rates in the county.
The number of positive Covid tests in Oxford has been on the up in recent weeks, but deaths remain low, with zero deaths having been recorded in seven of the last 10 weeks and no more than three deaths recorded in the other three weeks.
University leaders haven’t let this stop them imposing tough lockdown restrictions. In an email sent to staff and students on Tuesday (and kindly forwarded to us at Lockdown Sceptics by a reader), Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, the Principal of Somerville College, said measures would remain “until further notice”.
Please note that, whilst the Government has confirmed plans to lift Covid restrictions on Monday, July 19th, the University’s policies on social distancing, face coverings and working from home will not change due to the high rates of Covid in Oxford. We will therefore continue with our Covid restrictions in College until further notice and, for the moment, we will not be allowing visitors.
On its website, the University warns that “Covid remains a real threat to many people in our community and… the pandemic is not yet over”. Students are instructed to continue following these measures:
- Continue social distancing – assume two metres within University buildings unless told otherwise.
- Keep washing your hands.
- Keep wearing a face covering (unless you’re exempt).
- Get tested – twice a week, with Lateral Flow Devices (LFDs); and take a PCR test if you have symptoms or have received a positive LFD test result or have been advised that you are a close contact of someone who has a PCR-confirmed case of Covid.
- Continue to follow the self-isolation guidance.
If we can’t banish these restrictions from one of the country’s – the world’s – most learned institutions, what chance have we got of scrapping them from pubs and restaurants?
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hint: we don’t.
I’ve just written this to my mailing list of 200 MPs: (I just put it in the title because they will never read it otherwise)
“Rich Conservative MPs vote to force poor care workers to take the experimental vaccine and are now in breach of the Nuremberg Code. Reiner Fuellmich will see you in court.”
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
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Dreaming spires?
DELUSIONAL, more like.
Wasn’t it Oxford who banned beef “for the climate”?
Not to be outdone Cambridge also banned lamb.
Yet Carl Heneghan et al. are from Oxford so it’s not all bad.
I wonder what Morse would think
“Get me another pint, Lewis, it’s your round.”
Universities may turn out to be the last bastion of covidianism.
This will happen all the time in many settings because the govt and the rest of the cabal have opened Pandora’s Box and they wouldn’t know how to close it even if they wanted to, which they clearly don’t
There’s a lot of ideas so stupid only an academic would espouse them.
We are treated how we allow ourselves to be treated.
It’s up to the students, they don’t have to put up with this nonsense. Imagine universities trying to pull a stunt like this in the sixties.
Mass walkout would solve it pretty quickly I’m sure
Sadly Oxford students seem to care more about a statue of some guy (Cecil Rhodes) who died well over 100 years ago than they do about their basic rights in the here and now. Maybe they deserve everything that they get.
They don’t deserve to be at Oxford.
On the contrary, With Oxford as it now is, it’s exactly what theyvspdeserve.
I recall a very effective ‘sit-in’ in my university in the ’60s.
Yes. I’m wary of getting too nostalgic, but I remember Ed Thomson and the Warwick sit-in against the growing corporate influence on universities.
I doubt if even he could have envisaged the take-over that has taken place and the current massive influence of big money.
I rather think that the anti-social dons are quite enjoying the lack of student interaction. I am sure that they will fight to keep their lives as free of students as the possibly can for as long as they possibly can.
In that vein, I doubt any of this pushback against returning to normal at universities has anything to do with the minimal risk that COVID-19 poses. And you know that the academics know that the risk is minimal as well.
They have just become a bit fond of their new student-free lifestyles.
Dons have much in common with their more lowly teacher brethren. A built in disinclination to do the job, that they are paid to do, seems endemic to both.
I agree; as a retired teacher I am thoroughly ashamed of serving teachers. The excuse so many use is that if they become infected by a pupil they might carry the infection to their own elderly parents/relatives. When I say I did not realise your parents live with you, there is generally an embarrassed muttering because, of course, their parents have been stuffed in a ‘home’ somewhere and they rarely visit.
Oh dear – we seem to be into a passage of prejudiced rote bollocks and simplistic generalizations – worthy of a Covidiot brain.
See the actuality in my comment above.
Surely pandemic?
I’m an academic and I don’t think it’s that my colleagues want to be free of students. Most academics these days really do take teaching very seriously and rarely try to minimise it – in fact in my dept we repeatedly decide to offer more teaching, increasing our contact hours from year to year. The problem as I see it is that academics are the hardcore believers in Covid, in lockdown, in distancing, in masking, in testing and tracing and jabbing and stabbing. If the problem were laziness, it would be infinitely less intractable. We are instead dealing here with a professional group utterly captured by the narrative. It’s a matter of faith and religion.
At some point in time, “benefit of doubt” has been used up and one can reasonably assume that people want to do what they are doing. In this case, it would be “blindly and haplessly try to imitate whatever they do in China because your Chinese students expect/ demand that and to hell with everybody else.”
As member of the “everybody else” group, I find that very much disagreeable.
“dons are quite enjoying the lack of student interaction”
No they’re not. One of my close family has talked about it a lot – and has hated it. He couldn’t wait to get back to face-to-face interaction.
Don’t make lazy assumptions.
There’s a lot of difference between anecdote, coincidence and empirical evidence
I live in Oxford. It is a Remainer Central and a bastion of the Woke. We should expect nothing less concerning Lockdown. The City is utterly invertebrate.
And there is a Hub of the WEF (Hitler) Youth there too.
Lots of green fanatics as well. All crowned by a lefty Council.
greens support big pharma rather than natural remedies and orthomolecular medicine? Well blow me down!
Isn’t Oxford also a hotbed of Muslim grooming gangs? A coincidence I’m sure
That’s at Oxford Brooks I’m told
The majority of taxi drivers are of one particular religion.
Oxford ‘Remainer Central’? Perhaps.
But the imposition of Covid measures comes from Westminster and a Brexit Central government.
This thread is notching up a record in dozy comments!
be that as it may, why would greens support big pharma?
Surely the Ling Vac started weeks ago?
It seems much more likely than “restrictions” will get scrapped “in pubs and restaurants” than at politically “hard left” insititutions with a highly unionized workforce like universities. However, considering that “studying” isn’t exactly free in the UK, students should have some leverage here: If your university considers you a barely tolerable health risk to itself, study elsewhere.
I don’t think it’s got anything to do with intelligence and common sense. It’s all to do with power and funding of these institutions. We’ve seen that some of these allegedly esteemed scientists would sell their granny if it meant getting more money from the government or BMGF.
How can the finest scientific minds possibly be of the opinion that muzzles work?
You can believe anything if it suits you to do so, and also I think health is a vulnerable area for people. No matter how clever and rational you are normally, if you feel threatened you may stop thinking straight. Most people don’t really think much about risk, even though they are always at risk of something, they get used to it. When a new personal, invisible risk is presented to you, it takes a bit of getting used to. Possibly the group most immune to coronapanic might be soldiers, especially elite forces used to extreme risk and pressure and operating with a lot of autonomy – the ability to think straight under personal pressure would be strongly selected for in this group.
The finest scientific minds won’t sit in the university administration. :-). That’s more something for the dullest apparatchiks who ever failed when trying to have a career as scientist.
They’ve deprived their fine minds of oxygen all these many masked months, and can no longer think.
Oxford can just go rot then. Weirdo’s.
What is it about academic institutions that fosters such unintelligent behaviour among the intelligent? Funding, perhaps?
The ivory tower. Little real world experience.
My great niece is at Oxford, having had just one term actually there. She has already broken for the summer break. Surely they are not intending to still have the restrictions in October when they all return..
Yeah, they will. Imperial will be warning of half a million deaths over Christmas unless we do Exactly As They Command.
Not the only place. Halsway Manor in rural Somerset, which is the national centre for Folk Arts, has announced it is keeping da rulz the same after July 19th. Reduced numbers on courses, lots of sanitiser, keep 6ft apart, wear masks when moving around, and take a test before going there on any courses. I presume they are allowed to remove their muzzles when playing wind instruments or singing, but who knows?
Anyone who pays for another year of “tuition” is a mug.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon:
Labour Life peer
Former Vice President of the Party of European Socialists
Visiting Professor at Imperial College
A Trustee at Full Fact
Say no more.
Baroness Bullshit seems more apt.
“neigh, the world’s“
Is there a horse in the house?
[That should be “nay”, I think, unless I’ve missed some subtle pun.]
Quite a withering put down there Mark 😉
Please, you’re reining undeserved praise on me…
Oh,fetlock!
Sh-hocking!
I’ll be dam-ed!
The university system has helped drive the Covid programme. Most of them are compromised institutions. At a senior level academic and administrative level, universities are plugged in to the deep entities that are running the show. Most of the people who work in universities are actually thick and deluded no matter how many qualifications they have. Lockdowns have made f**k all difference to their lives. The whole sorry system needs to be dismantled.
A veritable bastion of leftism. Not surprising Tony [The High Priest] Blair, wants these places of Worship built everywhere: the long fucking march through the institutions; a fabulous ploy! Big contributions and donations from the Chinese Government, as well…..I think the Tutors and Students, both, will Pray for harder and more frequent lockdowns. And zero Covid, on top, for good measure. Before resting their weary and exhausted little heads, on seriously bitter, salty, tear-stained pillows. God bless their little cotton socks !!
If you were an investigator looking for the criminals who are pulling the strings, you would find them via Oxford University. No organisation has been more instrumental in promoting this evil than the supposedly intelligent people at Oxford University. It’s an establishment breeding, brainwashing, recruiting and manipulation centre. It is a stain on the country.
Better change OU’s colour from Dark Blue to Yellow, as in “Yellow Peril” and “Tory Back Colouration”.
There’s a lot of talk about the patents at the moment. This came out quite early in the scamdemic and seemed to have a lot of interesting information but I don’t know anything about the presenters.
Q is for the Queen’s QinetiQ – Coronavirus Patent – Huge Discovery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_bdHn5GM
The students have already paid up. Paying customers in the real world have the option of not paying and going elsewhere.
Some real galaxy brains there
… but certainly not here in this thread! A parade of gormless resentful prejudices. Could be 77th Brigade on a coach outing!
Well stop boosting the total.
Yet another reason not to waste £60k on a snowflake degree.
I’ve just written this to my mailing list of 200 MPs: (I just put it in the title because they will never read it otherwise)
“Rich Conservative MPs vote to force poor care workers to take the experimental vaccine and are now in breach of the Nuremberg Code. Reiner Fuellmich will see you in court.”
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Going to Oxford from a rural Northumberland comprehensive in the mid 90’s was probably the most exciting point of my life. So depressing to read this.
Working for the institution in the early 1990s was one of the more depressing experiences of mine.
Penny dropped yet ATL?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/13/vaccine-passport-firm-says-system-could-redeployed-national/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/13/fall-vaccine-uptake-means-passport-policy-designed-threat-has/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/13/anyone-thinks-covid-certification-would-temporary-measure-fooling/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/07/12/macron-raises-possibility-mandatory-jabs-french-citizens-face/
Say no to vaccine passports and mandatory vaccines.
Parliament Square, Monday 19th July @ 12pm