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Free Speech Union Asks Ofcom to Withdraw Censorious Coronavirus Guidance or Face Judicial Review
In my capacity as the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, I wrote to the Chief Executive of Ofcom Dame Melanie Dawes on April 24th to complain about its reprimand of Eamonn Holmes. According to the regulator, the breakfast television presenter had said something that “could have undermined people’s trust in the views being expressed by the authorities on the Coronavirus and the advice of mainstream sources of public health information“. Holmes’s sin, in Ofcom’s eyes, was to say on ITV’s This Morning on April 13th that any theory running counter to the official Government line – such as the one linking 5G masts to COVID-19 – deserved to be discussed in the mainstream media. This was in spite of him saying the 5G conspiracy was “not true and incredibly stupid”. Ofcom said this view – the view that such theories deserved a public hearing, not that they were in any way right or plausible – was “ill-judged and risked undermining viewers’ trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence”.
In my letter to Dame Melanie, I pointed out that if Ofcom is going to prohibit views being discussed on television that might risk undermining viewers’ trust in public authorities during this crisis, that could easily be extended to anyone challenging the Government’s official line on a number of issues, not just the link between the virus and 5G masts.
For instance, would Ofcom have reprimanded a broadcaster that challenged the advice of Public Health England, issued on February 25th, that it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected”? That advice was supposedly based on “scientific evidence”, yet as we now know it turned out to be wrong and the fact that hospitals discharged elderly patients back into care homes without first confirming that they were not infected with COVID-19 is one of the reasons that, according to the ONS, as of 1st May, 37.4% of all Covid deaths in England and Wales have occurred in care homes.
As I said in my letter, given that bad advice and misinformation about the virus is being disseminated in the public square, both by Government quangos like Public Health England and conspiracy theorists like David Icke, the best way to minimise harm is not to prohibit public discussion of that advice and information, but to encourage it, so that members of the public (and care home managers) can make informed decisions about what advice to follow and what information to believe.
To take the example of the theory Eamonn Holmes was referring to, if broadcasters aren’t allowed to discuss whether there’s a connection between 5G masts and the symptoms associated with COVID-19 – and present its exponents with the overwhelming evidence that there is no such connection – people are more likely to believe the theory, not less. They will think, “If it’s untrue, why is discussion of it being forbidden by a state regulator?” As the US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in his famous Whitney v. California opinion in 1927, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies… the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” In other words, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
In addition to Ofcom’s rationale for reprimanding Eamonn Holmes being based on the mistaken belief that the most effective way to persuade people that conspiracy theories and fake news are untrue is to forbid their discussion, there’s a further problem, which is the arbitrariness with which Ofcom applies that principle. If Ofcom is going to provide itself with a license to prohibit discussion among its licensees of anything likely to risk “undermining viewers’ trust in advice from public authorities” then why did it not reprimand those broadcasters who publicised the fact that Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the key scientists advising the Prime Minister on how to respond to the pandemic, broke social distancing rules to spend time with his girlfriend? Surely, that was more likely to undermine “people’s trust in the views being expressed by the authorities on the Coronavirus and the advice of mainstream sources of public health information” than any discussion of the theory linking 5G masts to coronavirus?
Of course, no sensible body would seek to restrict the reporting of Professor Ferguson’s breach of the lockdown rules, least of all the Free Speech Union. But that reporting engages precisely the same issue identified by Ofcom, namely, it had the potential to reduce the public’s trust in the Government’s advice.
So how does Ofcom distinguish between matters which, when broadcast, reduce trust but are nonetheless legitimate in its eyes, and those which are not? It does not say. Yet Ofcom hasn’t reprimanded any broadcasters for publicising or discussing Ferguson’s behaviour. Given how arbitrary Ofcom’s application of its own rules is, how can broadcasters reasonably be expected to comply with them? What Lord Sumption said about the law in a Supreme Court judgement issued last year applies to Ofcom’s rule prohibiting discussion of views that could undermine viewers’ trust in public authorities: “The measure must not therefore confer a discretion so broad that its scope is in practice dependent on the will of those who apply it, rather than on the law itself. Nor should it be couched in terms so vague or so general as to produce substantially the same effect in practice.”
Ofcom’s reprimand of Eamonn Holmes was based on a guidance note it issued to broadcasters about the coverage of the coronavirus crisis on 23rd March, the same day the Government imposed the lockdown, confining people in their homes unless they had a “reasonable excuse” to be outside. The right to free speech was among the few civil liberties not suspended by the Government that day, but Ofcom took it upon itself to curtail it anyway.
In my letter to Dame Melanie, I asked Ofcom to withdraw its reprimand of Holmes and issue a press release affirming the importance of freedom of expression, and provide assurances that in future it will not seek to stifle the expression of dissenting views about coronavirus or the Government’s response to the pandemic. It has not done so. Therefore, I’ve written a follow-up letter – a letter before claim sent pursuant to the Pre-action Protocol for Judicial Review under the Civil Procedure Rules – asking Ofcom to withdraw its guidance note. If it does not, the Free Speech Union will ask the court for permission to apply for a Judicial Review of the guidance.
The right to free speech is one of our most precious liberties – perhaps the most precious of all – and the fact that we’re in the midst of a public health crisis is a reason to protect it, not curtail it. All of us, whether scientists, politicians or ordinary citizens, are doing our best to understand the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2 and how best to minimise the harm it causes, both directly and indirectly. There are, at present, no settled views about any of these issues, certainly no consensus among scientists that can be described as “the science”. Allowing everyone to express their views on these matters freely, without the threat of being sanctioned by a state regulator if those views happen not to accord with those of the Government or other public authorities, is the best way to achieve that understanding.
This could get expensive. If you want to help by donating to the Free Speech Union, please click here.
Leaked Report by Civil Servant at German Ministry of Interior
Many readers have emailed me to draw my attention to the leaked report by a German civil servant at the Ministry of Interior accusing the German authorities of over-reacting to the pandemic and, in all likelihood, causing more harm than they’ve prevented. Among other things, the report says:
- The dangerousness of COVID-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.
- The people who die from Corona – and, by extension, those we are supposedly protecting from the virus by locking down whole populations – are predominantly those who would otherwise die later this year, because they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies can no longer cope with any random everyday stress (including the approximately 150 viruses currently in circulation).
- Worldwide, within a quarter of a year, there have been no more than 250,000 deaths from COVID-19, compared to 1.5 million deaths (25,100 in Germany alone) during the influenza wave 2017/18.
- The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.
- A reproach could go along these lines: During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of fake news.
This is great stuff – there’s lots of strong support here from an authoritative source for the sceptical case. But can I remind those readers who’ve drawn my attention to this document that I covered it – extensively – when it was first leaked some three weeks ago. Indeed, there is an entire page in the right-hand menu entitled “Leaked analysis of the impact of the lockdown by a senior official at the German Ministry of the Interior” that contains a detailed summary of the document.
I don’t mean to sound irritable. The reason readers are flagging this up is because the report is finally beginning to get the kind of traction in the mainstream media that it should have received three weeks ago. I can’t complain about that.
Are Black Lives Matter Activists Guilty of Promoting a Conspiracy Theory?
As readers of this site will know, I resent the fact that dissenters from Covid orthodoxy, including me, are often labelled “conspiracy theorists“. For instance, if we give any credence to the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology as opposed to a wet market, we’re accused of disseminating “fake news” or trafficking in “misinformation” or, to use the WHO’s phrase, contributing to an “infodemic”. And that makes us a danger to the public, apparently. After all, if ordinary citizens begin to doubt the official Covid narrative being pumped out by public authorities across the world, including advice about social distancing, won’t they then put themselves in harm’s way? (As if being imprisoned in their homes hasn’t put them in harm’s way). Indeed, that’s often the rationale doled out by Big Tech companies and the mainstream media for silencing anyone who challenges Covid orthodoxy.
But those same custodians of what is and isn’t acceptable for people to read don’t seem nearly so circumspect when it comes to the claims of Black Lives Matter activists, even though the narrative they’re promoting – in its most extreme form – is a conspiracy theory. I don’t mean the claim that young black men in America (or Britain for that matter) are the victims of racial prejudice – that’s not a conspiracy theory, obviously. I mean the more specific claim that the US criminal-justice system is riddled with systemic, institutional racism. That may have been true 50 years ago, and may have been true in some US states as recently as 25 years ago. But the evidence it is still true today is pretty threadbare.
As the African-American social scientist Roland Fryer has pointed out, when it comes to the extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – blacks and Hispanics are no more likely to be shot than whites in similar circumstances. As for racist white police officers being responsible for the systematic murder of young black men, a 2018 study for the Public Administration Review found that white officers are no more likely to use lethal force on minority suspects than minority officers. In fact, a 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects.
Moreover, there isn’t much evidence that black men are more likely to be convicted of the same crimes or receive tougher sentences for committing those crimes than white defendants when you control for things like previous offences, aggravating circumstances, whether or not they enter into a plea deal, and so forth. And the same is true of the UK, as this article by David Goodhart in ConservativeHome makes clear.
The murder of George Floyd was certainly horrific and the white police officer who killed him may have been racist. But you cannot draw sweeping conclusions about all US police officers or the criminal-justice system in general from the behaviour of one police officer. Nor can you from just looking at other black men who’ve died in similar circumstances or by reviewing video footage on social media of African-Americans being attacked by police officers. Before you come to a conclusion, you have to look at all the evidence in the round. And while much of that evidence is incomplete, and the records that do exist are often contested, no fair-minded person reviewing that evidence would conclude that there is a conspiracy within the US criminal-justice system –whether conscious or unconscious – to murder or imprison young black men.
Yes, a higher percentage of African-American men are arrested and incarcerated than white men, but that’s because they commit a disproportionate amount of crime, not because the criminal-justice system is systemically racist. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, even though they make up just 13% of the population. As the Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald put it in the Wall St Journal:
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.
Yet the same Big Tech companies and mainstream media platforms that have been so quick to jump on “conspiracy theories”, “fake news” and “misinformation” when it comes to COVID-19 haven’t made the slightest attempt to suppress the BLM conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they’ve bent over backwards to lend it credibility, such as Twitter including the words “Black Lives Matter” on its official account.
Anyone challenging the idea that the American police force is riddled with racists intent on killing young black men is immediately targeted by hashtag activists and outrage mobs. More often than not, if you point out that African-Americans aren’t more likely to be the victims of lethal force than whites once the circumstances have been taken into account, you are branded a racist. On Tuesday, an announcer for the NBA who’d worked for the Sacramento Kings for 22 years was fired because at the weekend he tweeted “All lives matter”. Obviously a Klansman in disguise.
If I worked for Google or the New York Times – even, possibly, the BBC – I would in all likelihood lose my job just for writing this post. After all, what possible motive could I have for pointing out the paucity of the evidence underpinning the BLM narrative other than abject racism?
The irony is that unlike some of the wilder shores of Covid dissent, which strike me as pretty harmless, the BLM conspiracy theory really is dangerous, as we can see from the chaos that’s erupted in America’s cities. I know that many of the protests start out peacefully – some of them remain peaceful – and when they do descend into violence it is sometimes due to the involvement of outside agitators pursuing their own anarchic, hard-left agenda. But there can be little doubt that the sense of grievance and injustice linked to the dubious claims pumped out endlessly by BLM activists and their fellow travellers in the media is partly fuelling the unrest.
And, of course, the biggest victims of the chaos unleashed by this conspiracy theory are – and will be – minorities. I don’t just mean that the shops and homes destroyed by the rioters are more likely to be owned or occupied by minorities than whites. I mean that the police will inevitably pull back from trying to maintain law and order in minority neighbourhoods as a result of the protests and the rioting, thereby increasing the likelihood that minorities will be the victims of crimes in the future. (This Milwaukee police officer tells it how it is.)
To give just one example, on May 26th and 27th, Chicago residents surrounded and threw bottles at Chicago Police Department officers trying to arrest two gun suspects. One was the likely perpetrator of a shooting that had just hit a five-year-old girl and two teenage boys. The other had just thrown his gun under a car. The bottle-throwers immediately surrounded the squad car that suspect was in and tried to free him.
In short, Big Tech and the MSM – not to mention all the celebrities, politicians, corporations, academics, journalists, etc. who’ve fallen over themselves to endorse the BLM narrative – have actively promoted a dangerous conspiracy theory, and energetically disseminated fake news and misinformation in support of that theory, even though it has contributed to a wave of violence and civil unrest that has resulted in the immiseration of minorities. All this in the name of being ‘woke’.
I sincerely hope the Black Lives Matter protests currently taking place in London and elsewhere don’t descend into violence and that rioting doesn’t erupt in Britain’s cities over the next few days. But if it does, the virtue-signalling promoters of this conspiracy theory will be partly to blame.
Stop Press: If you want to read a couple of academics fleshing out the idea that the BLM narrative is a conspiracy theory, I recommend this article by M.L.R. Smith and Niall McCrae.
Michael Levitt Interview
Good interview – on YouTube, no less – between the Australian broadcaster John Anderson and Michael Levitt, Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford and joint winner of the 2103 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Levitt does all the talking (sound issues clear up quickly) and explains his involvement, thinking and predictions right through from the beginning of January up to the present day. He talks about his concern with Professor Neil Ferguson’s modelling, as well as his efforts to contact Ferguson to convey those misgivings. Ferguson didn’t return his emails.
He also talks about herd immunity and the fact that some people seem to have a natural immunity to the virus, meaning seroprevalence surveys, which just measure the percentage of the population that has acquired antibodies to the disease, don’t provide an accurate gauge to how close we are to achieving herd immunity. He is sceptical about the overall utility of lockdowns and suspects that the loss of life resulting from them will be greater than any potential saving.
This a good, wide-ranging discussion and a must-see for anyone who wants to familiarise themselves with an analysis of COVID-19 by one of the world’s top scientists.
Is Coronavirus Refusing to Die in Sweden? Fraid not, Vultures!
One of the most unedifying spectacles of this crisis has been watching lockdown zealots gleefully swoop on any news suggesting the death toll in Sweden is higher than its neighbours. This, in spite of the fact that the Norwegian Prime Minister has apologised for not following Sweden’s example and the recent leaked emails showing that Denmark’s most senior public health officials advised the Danish Prime Minister not to impose a lockdown. Even our very own Professor Lockdown – Neil Ferguson – admitted under questioning by a House of Lords Select Committee yesterday that Sweden had achieved the same result as the UK when it comes to suppressing infections, but without a lockdown. (More here and some good stuff here, including a transcript of Matt Ridley cross-examining Ferguson about the wildly inaccurate Swedish projections his model spat out).
And last weekend brought even more bad news for the Swedish death toll vultures. There were no Covid deaths AT ALL reported in Sweden on Sunday, the first time that’s happened since March 12th.
The epidemic is petering out in Sweden, as it is everywhere else.
Minutes of SAGE 18 on March 23rd
A reader has challenged my blog post on Monday claiming the lockdown was a political decision, saying that if you look at the minutes from SAGE 18, the meeting which took place on March 23rd, the same day the full lockdown was imposed, it’s clear that the Government was “following the science”.
I took a look and don’t agree. As with the meeting of March 18th, there’s more stuff about not yet being able to assess the impact of the social distancing measures announced on March 18th, not much about them being insufficient: “SAGE noted that social distancing behaviours have been adopted by many but there is uncertainty whether they are being observed at the level required to bring the epidemic within NHS capacity.” However, there is some talk of the effectiveness of those measures: “Footfall in London transport hubs reduced by 80-90% over the weekend, but in retail and food outlets has decreased by a smaller margin.”
There is some other interesting stuff in there, however. For one thing, the attendees seem quite worried about the negative impact on public health of the measures already introduced. “Actuarial analysis is required to estimate deaths caused indirectly by COVID-19, including those caused by the social interventions,” says one of the minutes. Another says: “Given the clear links between poverty and long-term ill health, health impacts associated with the economic consequences of interventions also need to be investigated.” And: “In due course, analysis of the effects of the interventions on other causes of death should be undertaken.”
There’s also some evidence that it was beginning to dawn on SAGE that COVID-19 is a predominantly nosocomial disease. There’s a reference to “nosocomial hospital clusters” and one of the action points is “NERVTAG and DSTL to investigate spread of COVID-19 in hospitals”.
Interestingly, the minutes also say that any restrictions on travel into the country “would have a negligible effect on spread”.
On reading that last point, it’s hard not to agree with Allison Pearson, who produced a long list of things she’s sick of in today’s Telegraph. These include: “Sick of a 14-day quarantine for airline passengers, starting next Monday, which is being introduced three months too late as if specifically to lay waste to a £200 billion aviation and tourism industry which provides work for four million men and women.”
Jolyon Maugham Threatens Government With Court Action
Jolyon Maughan, the notorious anti-Brexit campaigner who killed a fox with a baseball bat on Boxing Day, announced yesterday that a solicitor acting for the Good Law Group – his anti-Brexit campaigning organisation – has written to Matt Hancock, challenging the manner in which an emergency parliamentary procedure was used to pass the Lockdown Regulations (and then amend them three times). The solicitor says the Good Law Group is not looking for trouble, but reserves the right to challenge the legislation by way of a Judicial Review if Hancock doesn’t provide him with an adequate justification.
Fortune makes strange bedfellows…
BBC Hit Job on Belarus
Last week, the BBC World Service has broadcast a ridiculously one-sided report about Belarus. The presenter, Lucy Ash, casts doubt on the official statistics, arguing that it cannot possibly be true that 1,000 new people are being infected each day and only five people are dying. In fact, an infection fatality rate of 0.5% would be twice as high as the official estimate of the CDC (0.26%). In shocked tones, she reports that the WHO recommended the Government close non-essential businesses and schools and yet – can you believe it? – the advice has been ignored! Most scandalously of all, she reports, 3,000 soldiers marched “check by jowl, unmasked” to celebrate the defeat of Germany in the Second World War on VE Day. Ash interviews a veteran who describes the President’s cavalier response as “criminally pig-headed”. Another interviewee compares the viral outbreak in Belarus to Chernobyl, suggesting it will be the death-knell of President Lukashenko’s autocratic regime.
The author of the “Postcard From Belarus” which I published on this site last week is not impressed.
In every way possible the reporter painted a picture of doom, strongly implying that everyone here believes that Lukashenko has got it wrong and is risking everyone’s lives with a deadly virus. The programme made out that the Government had taken no action to prevent the spread of the virus when, in fact, it introduced port-of-entry screening on January 23rd, closed museums, theatres and galleries, protected care homes, has introduced a test-and-trace system that actually works and insists that anyone who tests positive, or who’s been in contact with them, self-isolate for 14 days. The presenter failed to interview a single person who believes a full lockdown might not be the best policy, and failed to interview anyone who’s in favour of the action taken here (which I would say is the majority).
Towards the end, Lucy Ash states: “Fox-like cunning may not be able to pull Belarus out of its slump. Higher energy prices and fewer exports to China were already taking their toll before the Coronavirus outbreak. Lukashenko has promised higher salaries to medics tackling the pandemic and tax breaks to affected businesses, but many complain it’s too little too late.”
An interviewee then explained that Belarus’s economy has been fragile for the last 10 years, saying Lukashenko is in trouble economically.
You might think that would be a good moment to speak of the devastating impact a nationwide lockdown would have had on an already fragile economy, but no!
A letter of complaint from my Belarusian correspondent is on its way to the BBC.
Coronaphobia: Anatomy of a New Disease
I spotted an amusing post in the comment thread beneath Monday’s update. The comic motif is that coronaphobia is a clinical condition, much like COVID-19, that scientists are still struggling to understand, and the comment purports to be from a medic summarising what we know about the disease so far. Here’s an extract:
Completely sane individuals typically develop prodromal signs (mild tremor, sweaty palms, nervous laughter, inappropriate public behaviour involving clapping of the hands). We know that about 10% of symptomatic individuals will recover rapidly with a prompt return to sanity and illicit liaisons. But a much greater proportion go on to develop fulminating symptoms of the condition.
Acute symptomatology is variable and generally rapid in onset. Social withdrawal is present in almost all cases, with many sufferers being fearful of leaving the home. Current knowledge indicates that diagnosis can be made in the presence of a triad of symptoms; these are:
– Movement disorder (the swerve phenomenon is most commonly described, which usually affects the individual when attempting to mobilise to local shops but Philips et al. described a subset who leap over walls or fences to escape approaching pedestrians).
– Chronic naso-perioral dysmorphophobia which compels the wearing of a facial covering; early reports indicate that in approximately half of cases the nasal region is spared in which case the mouth alone may be covered, and the nose left uncovered.
– Delusional complex. As yet, this is not well understood, but it is proving fertile ground for research. Montmorency et al. have explored key delusional elements and these are the best available aid to diagnosis. They describe cases exhibiting delusional narratives related to the 14th century period with obsessive elements involving rats (sometimes fleas may be described upon them), itinerant peasants, peak district villages and nursery rhymes. In other cases, affected individuals may describe mushroom shaped clouds rising high into the sky, men riding on white horses, or dragons with four heads emerging from the North Sea.
Worth reading in full.
Welsh Health Minister Warns Lockdown May Have to be Reintroduced
Some lockdown measures may have to be reintroduced in the winter, according to the Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething. Quite surprising, given that he’s also admitted the lockdown itself may be responsible for some deaths. The minister said some people were not getting the medical care they need because they’ve been worried about going to hospital. Although, that can’t be the only reasons since non-urgent surgery and appointments were cancelled in Wales in March to maximise capacity to deal with the expected onrush of COVID-19 patients – who never materialised, obviously.
Mr Gething said daily attendances at A&E departments in Wales are a third lower and the biggest decrease in activity had been among children under 16, where activity had more than halved.
Meanwhile, 11 Conservative MPs in Wales have called on Welsh ministers to explain the “scientific basis” behind the decision to allow more activity outdoors – but only within a five-mile radius of your home. (That’s been possible in Wales since Monday). The Welsh Government said any changes to the lockdown are based on the latest “scientific and medical advice”, but it’s been heavily criticised by Welsh Conservatives, who have accused the Welsh Government of ignoring the needs of rural communities.
A letter penned by Ynys Mon MP Virginia Crosbie, and signed by all Welsh Tory MPs barring the Welsh Secretary Simon Hart and Wales Office minister David T.C. Davies, asked for the scientific basis for the travel rule and interpretation of it “given that in England there is no restriction on how far you can travel”.
The letter also asked if any assessment had been done of the public health impact of an “overextended lockdown” in Wales, and of any mental health and educational impacts from delaying reopening the economy.
One of my Welsh readers, a lifelong Labour voter, is so impressed by the letter he’s going to be voting Tory from now on.
I have written to my local MP, Sarah Atherton, the Tory who broke down Wrexham’s red wall to congratulate her. As a traditional left-leaning individual, that’s something I thought I’d never do!
“Thank you for challenging this nonsensical ruling, which needlessly shackles Wales and its inhabitants, cripples our economy, and frankly creates antagonism between us Welsh and our English cousins,” he wrote. “As a result of the ridiculous dictates from the Welsh Assembly I will not be voting for Labour again and nor will my wife. I hope that you provide the leadership for Wrexham to help get us out of this mess with minimal damage.”
I voted Corbyn last election, for my sins. Thank God Labour didn’t get into power in England, or you’d be wearing the same shackles as us Welshies.
New Paper by Finnish Epidemiologist Mikko Paunio
Today I’ve published a second paper by the Finish epidemiologist Mikko Paunio, this one pointing out how inaccurate the WHO’s initial analysis of coronavirus was. It’s called: “The WHO’s Erroneous Risk Assessment“. It begins:
At the heart of the WHO’s risk assessment at the start of the pandemic was the assumption that only 1% of those infected would show no symptoms.
The claim that few of the infections would be symptomless – and thus that everyone would become ill and that many people would die – paved the way to weeks of horror stories on the BBC, CNN, and in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. And even more sober outlets like the Financial Times and the Economist followed suit, with little by way of analysis of what was actually known. In fact, the WHO’s claim was quickly rebutted by a member of its own Infectious Disease Catastrophe Committee, but too late to prevent panic spreading. The result was a lockdown across much of the world, the collateral damage from which will do far more harm than the virus.
A major serological survey from Spain now shows how wrong the initial WHO risk assessment was.
I’ve put this piece, along with Mikko’s earlier piece, in the right-hand menu in a new section called “What is the Infection Fatality Rate”?
French Designer Solves Problem of Social Distancing in Restuarants
A French designer has come up with an innovative solution to the problem of how couples can enjoy romantic dinners while still observing social distancing rules – they can wear giant transparent lampshades on their heads!
This is not a joke. Christophe Gernigon, who invented the device, is calling it the “Plex’Eat”. His design will go into production next week, and he says he’s already received interest from France, Belgium, Canada, Japan and Argentina. Reuters has more.
But perhaps the giant lampshades won’t be necessary. There was a nice comment from a reader in Paris in the comments beneath Monday’s daily update, suggesting things are beginning to return to normal in the world’s most romantic city:
Hello from Paris. Reading the comments here, I get the impression that the UK is perhaps a fortnight or so behind what is happening here. There has been a sea change over the last couple of weeks, which is particularly visible today. I just popped down to my local supermarket to buy a few pints of milk, passing on my way two crowded café terrasses with smiling (unmasked) people enjoying the glorious Spring sunshine and each other’s company. The parks are open again. I strolled through the Tuileries gardens this afternoon and one could almost imagine that this Corona madness had been a bizarre nightmare. There are still masked people in the streets, but their number is diminishing daily as, it appears, the lights are coming on again in people’s minds. There are noisy motorbikes and loud teenagers and fire alarms. I never thought I would appreciate urban noise so much! Hold in there, UK friends, freedom is coming!
A Doctor Writes…
Great comment under Monday’s update from a disillusioned NHS doctor. Here are a couple of paragraphs:
As the first three weeks passed, I saw first hand quite how quiet the hospitals were, and how few non-COVID patients we were seeing. Whole wards were empty. On some days, I saw more suicide attempts than COVID. Combined with this was the growing body of information regarding the lethality of this coronavirus – the likely IFR, the propensity for mortality in high-risk groups, but not in the young, and the clear evidence of the profound and deleterious effects of lockdown on the population. My mindset shifted, and I no longer saw lockdown as a necessary evil, and coronavirus was no longer an existential threat. I naively assumed that society was having the same realisation. This was not the case.
Over the last few weeks I have become increasingly frustrated and horrified by what has occurred. I cannot understand how we can continue such a wholesale curtailment of freedom, without any real backlash. I am livid at the lack of treatment for cancer patients, and quite how little society seems to care about anything other than Covid. I believe that the effects of lockdown will be far, far more significant than Covid. I am also angry about the fetishisation of the NHS, clap for carers, the TikTok videos and all of the nonsense that has taken place around this. I am involved in none of it, and resent my colleagues that are, because they should know how undeserved that praise is, and how much they are letting down patients.
Worth reading in full.
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘America Is Unified Only in Its Outrage‘ – Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg asks why Black Lives Matter isn’t up in arms about the 40,000+ deaths in care homes, many of them African-Americans
- ‘The Guardian continues project fear over distancing report‘ – Good post on the Lockdown Truth blog about the Guardian‘s alarmist hand-wringing over reports that the Government may replace the two-metre rule with a one-metre rule
- ‘Tourism bosses warn “catastrophic” quarantine will force them to axe up to 60% of staff‘ – The Telegraph reports that up to 60% of the workers in the travel and hospitality sectors will be laid off if next week’s quarantine goes ahead
- ‘Matt Hancock under fire over incomprehensible testing targets‘ – Hancock has been criticised by the head of the UK Statistics Authority for fiddling the figures
- ‘Boris Johnson’s former prep school shuts permanently because of coronavirus impact‘ – Ashdown House closes its doors, blames the pandemic. Surely the first of many private schools to close, given social distancing rules
- ‘Architect of Sweden’s coronavirus plan warns UK not to hold out for a vaccine‘ – Anders Tegnell cautions that waiting for a vaccine is an unsustainable strategy
- ‘BAME coronavirus patients up to twice as likely to die from coronavirus, according to Public Health England report‘ – Not genetic, says PHE
- ‘I refuse to abide by these bonkers rules any longer‘ – Corking column by Allison Pearson in the Telegraph
- ‘NBA announcer Grant Napear fired over “All Lives Matter” comment‘ – I linked to this story above. Might be a good idea to stay off Twitter until the atmosphere has become a little less febrile
- ‘An interview with Daniel Hannan‘ – The former Conservative MEP makes the case against lockdowns in an interview with Students For Liberty
- ‘Governments and WHO changed COVID-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company‘ – Guardian investigation reveals that some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, including the Lancet, appear to have been duped by a little-known US healthcare analytics company that employs a sci-fi writer and a nude model. This is the company behind the “studies” that led to the WHO calling a halt to its hydroxychloroquine trials
- ‘Child and adolescent mental health in a post-lockdown world: a ticking time bomb?‘ – One of the world’s leading suicide researchers calls for an immediate end to the lockdown
- ‘Is living without risk really living at all?‘ – Excellent column by Lionel Shriver in the Spectator
- ‘Covid has all but left London. Why?‘ – Matthew Parris asks a good question
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A few weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It takes me about nine hours a day which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. Alternatively, you can support the site by going to our shop and buying a T-shirt or a mug. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
I don’t think I’ll have time for an update tomorrow – sorry! – but will post again on Friday.
And Finally…
Do have a listen to the latest episode of London Calling with James Delingpole and me. Among other things, we discuss Nicola Sturgeon’s increasingly authoritarian tone and wonder if Nic Sturge-un is related to Kim Jong-un…
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I feel embarrassed to be Welsh by the antics of the glorious government there. My parents still live in the North, an area rather ignored by the South Wales based government. A second lockdown would kill much of the economy for sure. I am glad at the minute that I am an ‘expat’.
It’s been pretty obvious for some time that both the Welsh and Scottish governments are just creating trouble and division because they can. I did read a news report somewhere that Guernsey’s government are something of lockdown-escape leaders though and are powering ahead?
Greetings from another inmate of the Welsh gulag.
I used to believe a lot of the stuff about Wales needing autonomy. Now I’ve seen what a Welsh Labour ‘government’ can do with that autonomy I an totally sickened and disgusted. What need of wicked English to oppress the Welsh when they can grind their own faces in the dust?
Another Welshie here (well I’m English born but anyway…). Totally agree with you. I have voted Welsh Labour in the past but will not be doing so again (God knows who I’ll vote for in the future – Monster Raving Looney most likely).
The five mile rule is patently ridiculous and completely unscientific. As I pointed out in my email to my AM, if you live in Cardiff then within a five mile radius of your house is likely to be 500,000 people. In my county there are only 95,000 residents in total. So if the five mile radius rule is to reduce the number of people you are likely to encounter, those living in Cardiff should be restricted to the end of their road, not five miles.
Incidentally within a five mile radius of my house are only forests, fields and villages with boarded up pubs. Oh and Chapels, but you can’t go in those either.
Grandpa Drakeford means well I’m sure, but he has been fatally infected by coronaphobia, for which it seems there is no cure. And devolution has been shown to be the giant pup that it is.
You’re very kind to Comrade Drakeford. I think he’s a Stalinist bully.
Completely agree with your other points. Wales is Covidhysteria cubed.
I agree, Drakeford is a bully and to set those sort of conditions in Wales indicates that he knows little about the country of which he is First Minister. My nearest town is 9 miles away so apparently I am not allowed to shop for food!
And yet we have not has a single death from or with C19 in this area!
For the first time in my life and like others who’ve posted I’m actually ashamed to be Welsh. Drake ford grew up on my street and according to my Mum once babysat for me. It’s unbelievable that coming from a rural, market town like Carmarthen, he could introduce such imbecilic rules. No basis in science or rationality and no appreciation of the discriminatory impact in more isolated homes and villages. My eighty year old mother now cannot drive the 7 miles to visit my Dad’s grave ( one of her few ‘ pleasures’ in LD) . I completely agree it’s exercising power for the sake of it and simply to differentiate from England. Not that our government is any better- still doubling down on LD measures ( bonking law, mandatory mask wearing). Serious ly, can it be lawful to introduce laws which carry financial penalties without any debate in Parliament- just gets announced on BBC with one week’s notice. What has happened to our civil liberties lawyers???? One friend suggested I wear a patch over my eye as that could constitute a’face covering’ and this from the party whose slogan was Take Back Control…what has happened to us. I seriously… Read more »
I think Scots are having the same problems with fishy Nickers.
(Can I make that joke, Toby?)
My father-in-law still lives in Scotland (we moved out 4 years ago) and reading about the shenanigans of the Scottish government makes both of us shake our heads in despair. The other day we both thought that even if we still lived in Scotland we would be unable to visit him because She Who Must Be Obeyed has forbidden it.
Agreed Annie and Bart.
I was always something of a believer in self government for Wales, although I’ve now spent most of my adult life out of the place, but this troublemaking on part of both the Welsh and Scottish administration is going to stoke tension….
I voted No to devolution, and how right I proved to be!
Would that the English had been able to vote on that. I’d have voted no, mind you… we still need somewhere to build prisons and power stations 😉
Scotland though? Byeeeeee.
My husband said the same thing – he remembers voting yes to devolution but over the last few years he thinks that devolution hasn’t exactly worked.
Tucker Carlson on Fox news made the point mediocre politicians enjoy the power imposing lockdowns give them. The heads of the Welsh and Scottish governments are an example of this.
Entirely.
Agree. I’m also disappointed that David TC Davies didn’t sign the letter to the Welsh Assembly. He’s usually not afraid to speak his mind and give Welsh Labour a kicking.
DTCD does a very good job of seeming to be reasonable, professional and effective, but down the years he has a long history of being nowhere on the important issues.
I enjoyed the interview with David Starkey two weeks ago where he told us the great panic happened on Sunday 15 th March with the doubling of covid deaths, possible French closure of frontiers and rumours of Northwick Park hospital being overrun.
Today I learnt of the effect of this panic locally. Every hospital Chief Exec in England was told on the Monday morning 16 th March presumably after a cabinet meeting to STOP all routine operations with immediate effect. People who were ready for surgery for the afternoons list , who had been waiting in pain for a new hip for months were told to get dressed and go home.
Since then most hospitals have been virtually empty .
Boris and Hancock needs to answer for this , I also think Whittey and Vallance need to be held to account as well.
Just where is the humanity? Similarly the forced closure of dentists – the associated pain and trauma for those unlucky enough to have tooth problems over these months should have been unthinkable for any caring politician: but who in Parliament has stood up for these sufferers?
It would certainly have been unthinkable for any politician to have suffered in that way himself.
I was hoping the Westminster Conga would have them coming rapidly to their senses but Sharma’s sudden “illness” will no doubt restore our non-Parliament again. Also the chance for Boris to have another 3 week’s holiday? Clever!
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-nhs-is-letting-down-thousands-of-patients The NHS is letting down thousands of patients by Max Pemberton Could we have caused more harm than good with our attempts to prepare for a Covid influx? From magazine issue: 30 May 2020 “I’m embarrassed every Thursday. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. The outpouring of love for NHS workers at 8 p.m. each week has been touching. Who wouldn’t want to be clapped and cheered? But quietly among ourselves, many of us in the health service have increasingly felt it’s misplaced. I’ve come to dread it. It makes me wince. The fact is that the NHS is currently letting down thousands upon thousands of patients. When the dust has settled, I fear that we will be responsible for the death or morbidity of countless people. Since the pandemic hit, entire NHS services have completely stopped. I fear that this will have catastrophic consequences for the health of the nation. What’s more, as ill health is inexorably linked to poverty, it will affect the poorest the most. Many of us in the health service, as we look around at our near-empty hospitals and blocked-out diaries, are asking if we have gone too far. Has the fear of the… Read more »
The way the virus is going it’ll have disappeared by winter or at least be at sufficiently low levels to ditch all this nonsense. Once the economic reality hits along with the dark, cold nights and all the other ailments that come with winter (and with a health service having closed down for half the year, creating a massive backlog), I don’t think people will stand for social distancing anymore. By that time we’ll have far bigger fish to fry.
Methinks from all my reading that the viral load is pretty low already. I mean you’ve only got to look at the graphs. I’m sure Dr. John Lee with Dellingpole used to term ‘It’s all over’. (Can’t find it though, it’s a 75′ interfview.)
‘the term’ not ‘to term’. Anyone know how to create an edit button?
The virus has never posed a threat sufficient to justify this nonsense. Personally I feel that no government should have the power over its citizens to be able to ever impose a lockdown whatever the threat a virus poses – but if the virus did pose a real threat I could at least understand it.
I hope you’re right, this social distancing is just ridiculous. Now the public has to wear masks on public transport. It just gets worse.
Most people are too stupid to notice.
Or traumatised and brainwashed. Which amounts to the same thing.
I subscribe to the Spectator, this week and last weeks were particularly good.
Well, apparently we’ve to clap for BLM instead of the NHS tonight. Great smokescreen!
I’ll join the Islamist terrorists before I’ll do that!
(And I’m no particular fan of Islam.)
Thank you for your post . I’m a patient who has to visit a central London hospital every week for blood tests and an genuinely shocked to see the whole of the outpatient floor closed. For the last 11 weeks it’s pretty much been me and 4 phlebotomists with nothing to do. I feel sorry for the security guard who sits at the entrance with a mask but he has nothing to do and barely sees a soul. Previously there were some 10 clinics on the floor overrun with patients and standing room only outside the blood test clinic. Surely important conditions are being missed. I myself have been told I need a brain surgical procedure at the National Hospital but all investigative procedures have been cancelled until further notice. So I’m left waiting and wondering in limbo as to whether I have something serious or not and that could be treated. Meanwhile my best friend’s daughter (15) has been told that she can return to school on 15th but only for 2 hours per week. Why is no one politician up in arms about this? Why aren’t doctors, who I’m sure care deeply about their patients, speaking out? I… Read more »
Whitty and Vallance started off well. My impression in the very early days was that they were minded towards mitigation with aggressive shielding of high risk individuals. Then things started to change around the time of the Ferguson model in mid-March. Vallance started to become less convincing, and I wondered whether, as a former research scientist in Big Pharm, he had been captured. The first (or maybe second) press conference after Whitty returned from his CV quarantine was interesting with regard to the body language between the two of them, with Whitty at one point interjecting ‘at odds’ with the line Vallance had taken on a specific question. Roll forward to today’s conference, which I found very scary, in that both of them were ‘unimpressive witnesses’ – posters on the previous thread pointed to the (deliberate) errors in response to various answers. Boris is a dead man walking in my view – when the dust settles on this he is going down one way or another. Hancock is unimportant – he is just the useful idiot in all this.
I definitely get the impression that Whitty thinks this is all a load of nonsense but cannot speak out because he is ‘muzzled’ (!) by his government paymasters. I know he’s let slip several times that the virus isn’t dangerous and he’s done various lectures on pandemics in the past which rubbished a lot of the measures that our own government has taken, such as banning travel – ‘utterly useless’ in his own words, as well as acknowledging the incredibly detrimental effect of closing schools (effects which the government are now ignoring) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=rn55z95L1h8&feature=emb_logo at 48:45
Definitely agree. A couple of weeks back, Witty went through his risk analysis again. He actually started to say, the majori……..many people won’t even catch it. The Ferguson model is based on 80% getting the disease whereas we now know that 40-60% have acquired immunity already.
Yes, I think Whitty has been very uncomfortable about the whole thing for several weeks now.
Vallance, on the other hand, is still the snake going full speed ahead.
I got that feeling too – they all seem to be reciting a script and it just doesn’t ring true. Hancock seems the most convinced of it all and keeps a straight face while rattling off more and more ridiculous lockdown rules while saying we are easing them – eg no bonking, kissing with face masks on, etc etc. I wish Monty Python could have a go at doing a skit it it would be hilarious.
Actually saw a young couple trying to kiss while wearing muzzles the other day. Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I would have laughed until I cried.
I would have pointed and laughed till I cried.
Should have sneakily taken a picture!
I don’t think Handjob is at all convinced about the covid problem, or he wouldn’t throw out so much nonsense that is obviously invented on the spot.
You’re right about the straight face. I noticed how he worked on that dropped jaw technique way back when the PPE scandal was first emerging.
Hancock will never have a better opportunity in his life and he’s loving every second of it. I imagine that, when he got the call appointing him as health secretary, he was disappointed, but now thanks his lucky stars.
However, he’s going to be destroyed by any sensible enquiry. He just doesn’t realise it yet.
“Boris and Hancock needs to answer for this , I also think Whittey and Vallance need to be held to account as well”
Agreed, but who’s going to lead the charge?
Whitty seems to have developed cold feet about the policies but Vallance is forging ahead with his agenda. He’s the one to watch, as he confidently spouts a lot of fearmongering disinformation, which of course the MSM then blow out of all proportion.
This is where I have got really annoyed with the Thursday clappers. Utter madness to be applauding and exalting an organisation that is failing to care for thousands of people. What happened to first do no harm? Now we have more madness with Grant Shapps announcing face rags are to be compulsory on all public transport. This government is prolonging this thing until…regardless of science, medical opinion, and actual virus behaviour data. I long for the day being sceptical and pushing back against the injustices and nonsense of this whole covid19 thing, replace complacency and compliance.
I propose a little experiment. It would need a number of volunteers and three willing pubs, but I bet it would be workable.
Take three pubs, of comparable size and location.
Take three groups of people, if comparable composition. (Volunteers, ibviously.)
Pub A operates the six-foot rule.
Pub B operates the three-foot rule.
Pub C operates normally, like a pub.
After, say, three weeks you check for Covinfections.
Result should clear away a lot of the garbage.
BTW, bags I be in Pub C along with Lord Gumption, David Starkey, Peter Hitchens and others.
Great idea. I know which one I would rather drink in, not because I like being near people (I don’t) but because the atmosphere would probably be pretty dire in A and B.
Bit like going to that BBQ the nutty doctor on the BBC was on about where you set an alarm for the guests to go and wash their hands every hour and you send people home quickly in case they get too drunk and start having fun.
I don’t like being too near people either. I just don’t think we should be forced to avoid them like, um, the plague.
Mind you, enforced contact is just as bad. If just one good thing comes out of this bloody farce (no oath intended), I think it will be the permanent demise of the horrible compulsory handshaking orgy during Anglican communion.
Which reminds me. Of course I don’t think that any tinpot tyrant should be able to tell grandparents when to hug their grandchildren,but I do think the grandchildren should have a say. As a child I simply loathed being hugged by assorted relations.
That will not be permanent, handshakes before communion will be back. I advocate reversed social distancing. Mandatory hugs every time you make eye contact.
You wouldn’t get away with that nonsense in a genuine comedy sketch, would you?
I’ll take Pub A. I don’t mind a little sacrifice for the greater cause.
Pub B might be the better bet then. Pub A quickly ends up sacrificing the very existance of the pub when it can’t get enough people to make a profit. B could be run pretty normally, especially if you recognise the 1 metre rule as an idealised thing for people in long term proxmity, not something to panic about every time someone walks past someone else for a moment. And open the windows, fast flowing air from outside makes viral transmission even less likely.
I think pub A should be situated in a densely-populated area. All customers’ voices are to be amplified very loudly. Then when the neighbours complain, the excuse could be that the customers had to shout at each other through a PA system because they weren’t close enough to speak normally.
The deafening singalong was spontaneous because everyone was having such a good time …..
I’ll take pub B in the following of the science.
What science?
But Annie, haven’t we seen that experiment already…”Take three supermarkets…. of comparable size and location…”.
The idea was to re-create somewhere nice, not supermarket purgatory!
Point taken!
I’d be interested to know which pub the most fights break out in.
I’d bet on Pub A because self-righteous stressy people plus alcohol.
Which pub has the cabal behind all this in it to test their theories? I’ll go there, drunken violence would not be ruled out against the sanctimonious traitors they way I feel today.
Caesar complaint about the Britons liking a drink and a fight from what I recall of my history, let’s test it to see if it is still the same in perfidious Albion.
Peaceful protests please. We’re trying to get the pubs open!
Can I book a place in pub C too please?
Two problems with your awesome plan:
a) Shortage of effective tests to prove if anyone actually did succumb.
b) Shortage of virus still surviving to be passed on in the first place.
Eek.
Still, there would be three pubs open!
The scandal of WHO, Lancet and Big Pharma’s attempt to crush HCQ is getting bigger by the day. It is possible that HCQ will not be effective for Covid-19 in the end but for Big Pharma, MSM, BBC, Lancet, WHO to go to such length to discredit a cheap drug is extraordinary. To create a bogus company owned by one of the authors and as in this twitter:
“Fake is even an understatement. The data was completely made up, the company that made it up has a few employees (one according to its website is a porn star and the other is a caterer) and it is owned by the study’s principle author.”
Kudos to Guardian getting the story correct and also including a science fiction writer in the Board
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine
https://www.medicineuncensored.com/a-study-out-of-thin-air
Hold your hat, the winds are blowing for WHO! Just now WHO to start trial again when the scam was exposed!
https://twitter.com/JamesTodaroMD/status/1268225570715971584
The Lancet has an awful lot to answer for in this sorry tale. The editorial team needs to be subject to subpoena – suspect Mr Trump is the one most likely to do it. In US-style discovery, all manner of things could be disclosed if dates are set from 1 January 2020. As I have said on earlier threads, the 72 hour turnaround of submissions for a supposedly leading international academic journal should raise alarm bells with policy makers, particularly those impressed by Professor Ferguson and his model. In my area, the only journals that even come close to a 72 hour turnaround are ‘unranked’ for the purposes of research funding exercises. I referee for leading international journals in my field and anything less than 6 months is pushing it.
The WHO are following the Science Fiction.
Ah that’s made us chuckle, thanks!
Personally I think that whether that particular drug is any use or not is a sideshow. What really matters is that most patients need no drugs at all, and that the lockdowns have been causing damage out of all proportion to what this pesky virus can do. Any talk either way about HCQ distracts from the tragedy of draconian lockdowns.
I think if its possible that a dose of HCQ every few days could have actually protected the vulnerable but that was actively covered up and instead they were predictably killed by negligent policy that would be pretty big scandal/crime in addition to the lockdown itself.
It is hard to believe any of this is real sometimes. I think we need to reinstate capital punishment specifically for the prosecution of the crimes that have been perpetrated over the last few months.
I’m afraid that ‘hanging is too good for them’ has been drifting through my mind.
Normally I’m against capital punishment because of the horrible possibility of hanging the wrong person, but there would be no chance of that in the present case.
Every press conference an admission of their guilt.
It’s quite alarming how murderous we’re sounding.
When I read about Whitty undermining Boris’ stated desire to lessen the 2m rule, my thought was “He needs taking out!”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/boris-johnson-says-he-wants-to-relax-2-metre-physical-distancing-rule
I was rather shocked at myself. What is this doing to us all?!
As a pharmacist I was amazed at the concern over HCQ safety. HCQ is a safer version of chloroquine, which is available in the UK without prescription for malaria prevention. It has been a P not POM medicine for decades. Most common side effect is nausea. Of course need to prove efficacy in covid but safety has never been an issue for this drug, especially if it could help in serious disease.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pandemic-sent-1-5-billion-children-home-from-school-many-might-not-return-11591179919
The Pandemic Sent 1.5 Billion Children Home From School. Many Might Not Return.
And we never do this for influenza, an infection, children are 20 times more likely to die from.
Left wingers, MSM, Hollywood what are you saying to millions of girls in Africa who might never come back to school ending up exploited, in prostitution, and oppressed?
Regarding Ofcom and the ongoing censorship by officialdom, the quote from Game of Thrones is more relevant than ever:
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
Perhaps it could be reworded: ” When you censor someone’s speech, you’re not proving that he’s guilty of fake news; you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say…and that he might be correct.”
Over on Breitbart, James Delingpole has written a scathing article about Boris’s government going full-steam ahead with its Green New Deal, to kill off what remains of our economy in the wake of the unnecessary CV19 lockdown.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/03/britain-unleashes-green-new-deal-to-kill-whats-left-of-the-economy/
Come on, Toby, we need a new political party. There’s no electoral difference between the four main parties (yes, I’m including the deluded Greens in this), and they’re destroying this country at a rapid pace. Can anyone think of any decision this current government has made that’s made any sense???
If this lot have their way we will be back to the Stone Age if we haven’t already.
Yes, just one: Boris has vetoed Corbyn’s attempt to get Bercow into the Lords!
Yep, that’s about it, I think. They’re about as “Conservative” as New Labour.
Greetings Fellow Sceptics!
Following on from my bus journey to Golders Green yesterday, today I went shopping at Waitrose in Finchley Road – it was fairly quiet, no one way system and people were pretty much ignoring the spots on the floor. The staff were carrying on as normal – no masks (save for 1), a few wearing gloves but apart from that it was fairly OK.
A few masked zombies but it was nice to see the older customers carrying on as normal.
Postscript from yesterday’s post:
I forgot to mention that I walked past a primary school yesterday and it was refreshing to see the kids and parents carrying on with no social distancing, no teachers were wearing PPE either.
Granted this was home time so Lord knows what its like during lessons and breaks.
That’s heartening to know.
It is but I suspect because its a private school either parents won’t stand for that sort of social distancing nonsense or the teachers themselves are dedicated to their job and said that they won’t do their jobs if they have to wear PPE. Or both.
Most of the people I SEE are behaving normally, what worries me is that there might be an unseen majority of cowardly zealots still holed up in their homes where we don’t see them and yet still capable of influencing the mainstream media from there.
That’s true and that’s why we have to keep up the pressure to the point that the zealots become a minority that no-one listens to.
A bit of a random question but out of interest, is there anyone else who hasn’t had any symptoms of Covid-19 at all? I’ve heard lots of anecdotal reports both on here and elsewhere on the internet of people having mild symptoms and thinking they’ve had it. Back in late February, my 15-year-old sister was bedridden with a pretty nasty respiratory virus which had all the same symptoms as Covid-19, and a week later my dad got a cough/breathlessness and my mum totally lost her voice – worse than she’s ever lost it before. They’re all convinced they had it. I wasn’t living with them at the time but I must have come into contact with the virus because I used public transport a lot, worked in an open-plan office, went out shopping every weekend, etc.
I just feel a bit left out really (haha) – either I am lucky enough to have avoided infection, or maybe I am one of the elusive asymptomatic infectees…
Yes, neither I nor my wife have had any covid symptoms. Whether asymptomatic or just resistant (we both had BCG jabs at school – which has been suggested to give some immunity) or simply spared, I have no idea!
I’ve felt rather queasy with headaches at times. My brothers and their families probably both had the virus earlier in the year, so I’ve probably been exposed to it at least. Of course, having spent over 3 years doing litter picking in my spare time, I may have developed some useful resistance!
I had some kind of cold-like thing in late Feb/early March, my Mrs had something milder, my young adult daughters, nothing.
I believe my nephew had it in December. All the symptoms and doctor first said flu, then bronchitis and finally pneumonia. The only one in the family who had symptoms, despite lots of exposure, was his grandmother who had a heavy cold.
Nada here. A few in my household were flattened by something in December but nothing other than that. I have taken no precautions other than washing my hands as often as I always have done. I have flouted rules, touched railings and opened mail without disinfecting it too.
You’re kidding me. People aren’t actually disinfecting mail?
I’ve heard of people refusing to touch mail for three days.
We’ve seen a man disinfecting his dog (well, wiping it over) after it had wandered off to greet another dog, as they do.
My neighbours stopped feeding rubbish “treats” to my cat for a while, and he didn’t come in stinking of fabric softener, which was great.
I had some kind of viral infection in very early March, which I’m not sure was CV19. The symptoms didn’t quite fit, i.e. raised temperature for just two days, weak and slightly nauseous for a few more, but no typical sore throat or breathlessness, just a very long-lasting cough.
You’re just 21, so should be physically fit and healthy, so you may have been in contact with it and never had any symptoms at all. If so, county yourself lucky.
No, but there again I’ve been following the advice of “stay alert” from day one. Where I live is in West London-when I got on the tube in the morning on the Piccadilly line I had the choice of taking the tube that had come from Heathrow Airport which contained newly arrived passengers and had added commuters in Hounslow or one that had come from the Uxbridge branch. The choice was easy as the Uxbridge trains were lightly used. As the Heathrow trains were packed as sardine cans and given the WHO advice (?) about 1 meter and 15 minutes close contact the choice was easy to make.
Hi Poppy I’ve been very impressed by the passion of your previous posts. The trouble with the thoughts that we may have “had it” is that the symptoms can be so similar to an ordinary cold or flu, which, of course, are rife through the winter. Briefly, my son and his wife visited us on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day and, on New Year’s Day, she was in a terrible state with Covid-like symptoms, as my son had been before Christmas. He traced his illness back to a client of his, with whom he had close contact, who had visited a friend in Hong Kong in mid-December and had been ill on her return, as had her husband to the point of being hospitalised. Now that we know from the positive test in late December in Paris that the virus was in Europe so long ago, and therefore in China way before then, all this “fits”. But flu comes from abroad too! Neither my wife nor I had any illness, despite prolonged contact with our son and his wife, but we did have flu jabs in December, which suggests it may have been flu. My son’s wife’s parents had… Read more »
That’s what I initially thought too, and it would explain why my 15 year old sister got the infection far worse than my parents did – flu has been around a lot longer than Covid-19 so there is a chance my parents had some immunity to that and my sister does not. But they all insist that the symptoms were those of Covid – again, it seems that we still know so little about the symptomatic nature of this virus.
I think my 10 year old may of had symptoms back February half term. I know kids are less likely to get it and to have symptoms but it was like he had a really bad cold. The last couple days of school he was quite tired and said it was sore breathing sometimes. He was meant to be in a swimming competition on the Saturday which he ended up not doing as he was quite ill. Then although the tiredness eased he developed a really bad cough which he had for around 3-4 days. Alot of kids from his school also had bad coughs around the same time.
I only really remember so much as I’m lucky that he’s not a kid that gets ill alot. And what with it being half term and swimming competition which he was upset he couldn’t do.
My daughter thought she had it back at the beginning of March. She bought a covid-19 test kit and sent in her sample. Much to her disappointment, it came back negative today.
Neither I nor my husband nor any of my numerous sisters have had anything approaching the symptoms, and like you, I feel left out!!!
My daughter had the symptoms back back in early March. She bought a covid-19 antibody test as she really wanted to know if she had caught it. The results came back today – negative.
The tests aren’t 100% reliable (yet).
The results took 3 months? Very useful – not!
My wife and I had an unusual flu-like illness in February,we felt very unwell for about a week and I know of at least five other people who had a similar illness in the period from early December to March.I’ve only had proper influenza twice in my whole life and the illness this year,whatever it was,was nowhere near as bad although it was quite unpleasant.
My mum had a cough back in November which left her with really wobbly legs and feeling totally drained, she said it was as if she’d had flu but not. Maybe that was it. My sister had a sore throat and felt sick just prior to lockdown. I had a sore throat and cough in February picked up from a work colleague who had a cough, but his girlfriend had been in bed for a week with what sounds like the virus.
To be honest we”ll never know unless they actually find a test that works.
Probably had them all ! Given they cover and fucking well overlap with everything from the common cold to stress. Oh, had a dry mouth as well… Must have been covid.. 😉, and of course not the after effects of copious amounts of alcohol I had on a weekend away in Germany at the end of February.
What a crock of devious shit this has all been
Almost the whole of our village (N. Wales) was ill in early December with similar symptoms. We think we caught C19 from the Chinese students at several local private schools.
At my younger son’s school a few kids came down with ‘a bug’ in mid January (several went skiing over Christmas). He developed what looked like Chicken Pox in late January, but as he had that as a child, we assumed it must be Shingles – fairly unusual in a teenager, and it didn’t look like classic Shingles. The doctor (from overseas) questioned whether it was Shingles and asked the partner for a second opinion. She diagnosed Shingles and he was given an anti-viral. He was poorly for about a week with headache, temperature and upset stomach. Elder son started university in London last autumn. He was (very unusually for him) ill enough with a cough, temperature and loss of appetite to visit the doctor. He was told it was a virus, but not sure what. However, on returning home from university in mid-March he suffered loss of smell and taste (not recognised as a CV symptom at that stage), a slightly raised temperature for about 36 hours, but no cough. Two friends on the same course and living in the same halls returned overseas and were tested for CV on arrival. Both tested positive, so I assume my son’s… Read more »
I had a heavy cold in January which actually lasted 2 weeks. Whether that was a symptom or not, I don’t know but what I remember was that it was very cold and damp early in this year.
Asymptomatic infection appears to be incredibly common. Anecdotally, I know of several people who have been swabbed as a result of infected contacts, who have been found to be COVID positive. This is vastly borne out in the literature. Certainly, first hand, the symptoms I experienced when I had COVID were in no way classical, and in any other year I would have paid them no mind whatsoever- it was only my extensive reading on possible presentations, and the ability to be able to get a swab as a key worker (combined with a healthy level of hypochondria!) that meant I could be tested. At no point did I fulfil the criteria on the NHS website to have COVID- and if I’d followed their guidance, I’d have gone to work and likely infected patients. I note they’ve now amended the information to include anosmia, but honestly this is 1. too little too late and 2. completely ignoring the asymptomatic carriers. I would also caution in putting too much emphasis on antibody testing. When it was first announced I thought it would be a panacea for this crisis- we could truly establish the number affected- but it’s becoming increasingly clear… Read more »
Cassandra, PCR is not a diagnostic test. The gold standard test is a blind screened blood sample with a recognised virus present.
The inventor of the PCR test has been saying this for years when it was used for HIV.
Interesting- that was what we were told back in med school- although I am more than willing to accept that sometimes when teaching students, a simple lie is may well be preferred over the complicated truth.
I shall have a search and a read up! 🙂
Kary Mullis is the name to look up, Cassandra. Nobel prize for devising PCR test. Totally opposed to its use in diagnosis.
Med school = hypochondriac. Interesting!
We knew about the anosmia two months ago. Matt Handjob says he had it.
They’ve just flagged it up again – maybe to coincide with hayfever season:
Fumes given off by Britain’s rapeseed crops are causing flu-like symptoms such as headaches, wheezing, streaming eyes and runny noses, according to health experts. … Beverley Adams-Groom, of the National Pollen And Aerobiology Research Unit, said the fumes are known to irritate the airways.
‘These compounds cause a very strong smell and trigger flu-like symptoms in some people,’ she said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-458357/Runny-eyes-wheezy-chest-Blame-Britains-crops-rapeseed.html
I had a dry cough around February time. It’s the worst cough I’ve had in a long time, probably ever, and lasted a few days. That’s it though, could well have been just a cough but seems a bit coincidental.
Not had any symptoms myself , my partner is a type one diabetic so was supposedly high risk , she was sent home from work a week before the lockdown by her company. She was concerned at first so we did hunker down for the first two weeks ( even though i am a total cynic and don’t believe anything that comes from the establishment or MSM ) anyway after a couple of weeks my partner realised this is really nothing worry about so she started heading out as much as possible. Sorry going off point here My main point regarding whether i or anyone else i know had symptoms is that from October till the end of January myself and the rest of my work crew ( Electricians ) where eating in the Regency Cafe in Pimlico ( best greasy spoon in London btw ) which is a major tourist attraction for Chinese tourists , they literally head there straight from Heathrow still with their suitcases . So Basically we where sitting next to Chinese tourists every day for four months during the height of the wuhan epidemic . One of the guys was very ill with flu for… Read more »
My wife had symptoms in early March that I dismissed at the time as a cold, but in retrospect maybe I should have dismissed it as Covid instead. Mostly it was pretty mild cold symptoms, but her sense of taste changed (not something anybody was talking about at the time) and she was exhausted for a couple of days after the other symptoms went away. No temperature though. She’s absolutely certain that’s what it was (and she was at the time), but who knows? Either way, whatever it was, I didn’t catch it, or at least, if I did, it didn’t give me so much as a sniffle.
The son and most people he worked with and a bad hacking cough and feeling like shit (only way to describe it) for weeks in Nov/Dec last year.
They all swear now it was coronavirus going by the symptoms.
I too had a very bad bug at Christmas, which I believe was Covid. Nasty sore throat followed by two weeks of debilitating continuous dry coughing. Took weeks to get over properly. Never had any cold or flu like it before.
Sounds like the same one.
Even though we were in close contact with the son and his girlfriend and ate at the restaurant they work at neither of us have had anymore than a sniffle for one day.
Might be all the vitamin C and D3, wholesome food and good nutrition (including alcohol for me) we take as a matter of course an have done for years.
Or just got lucky and had no symptoms which would be strange for the wife a she used to catch everything going until she ramped up the Vitamin C. No scientific proof, just saying that is what we have observed.
My husband was pretty poorly mid-February; he had a bad fever and a dreadful cough, he couldn’t get out of bed for a couple of days, which is completely unlike him! We just thought it was a bug but with hindsight perhaps it was Covid-19. I think I had a bit of a cold the following week, but was nowhere near as ill as he was. I had flu once, years ago, and felt as though I could die, my husband said his symptoms weren’t as bad as that.
Only anecdotal of course, but I live in Central London and I would say about 80% of my friends and business contacts have either had symptoms, or had a family member or colleague who had symptoms (and therefore probably have had some exposure).
I got it skiing in Switzerland in late February. Of our group of five, 2 had mild flu like symptoms, two lost sense of taste/smell (including me), and one had no symptoms and/or just didn’t get it. I didn’t get a test but my girlfriend, who works in healthcare, tested positive.
My mother and mother in law (87) had all the symptoms in December. In my office 2 of my colleagues came down with it and took a good few weeks to feel anything like normal, I lost my sense of taste and smell for two weeks, my son came back from uni absolutely jiggered, no energy for a week and he felt as though someone was sitting on his chest having had a high temp and sore throat the week before he came home, daughters had headaches, most of the rest of my family have had various degrees of symptoms.
Tha’s nobbut a spring chicken Poppy. You’ve probbaly had it and didn’t even know at the time.
My son thinks he had it in January – felt strangely rough for a few days.
A friend had a raging temperature in January but was diagnosed with pneumonia. It was cleared up by antibiotics – or was it?!
Every day that goes by I get more and more angry with the current situation. Early on I wrote to my MP to state my case. After a particularly bad day in the office (stupid sneeze boards stapled to our desks) I was at an all time low. Out of the blue I received a call from said MP. I don’t want to say who is he, as we spoke in confidence, but he is a front bencher. Anyway I was delighted to hear that he agreed with me! Also that he admired Lord Sumption’ writing and commentary on the subject. He then went on to admit that politically they couldn’t reverse the lock down. The stumbling block was the public fervour that remained in place and also the fact the CMO and CSA were advising against any easing. Despite that fact that many ministers including Boris also wanted an end to it! However the conversation lifted my spirits as it confirmed what I already knew – I was right to think the way I did! 10 days have gone by and alas things have gotten no better! After hearing that my youngest son was stopped from… Read more »
This confirms my suspicion that while the politicians are accountable, the public is the real problem.
True enough, but if MPs disagree they need to have the courage to say so.
Apparently there have been rumblings from Welsh Tories. And about bloody time.
Both of them? That’ll terrify the hundreds of socialists in Welsh politics.
The public have been whipped into a frenzy of fear by the media death campaign eg using crisis actors in the ‘nhs’
This whole thing stinks to high heaven
I don’t disagree… but most of us here very quickly came to our senses, if we even missed a beat in the first place.
Far too many people are not revising their opinions when the facts change.
Very good to hear your MP agrees with us, Paceyjg. Thank you.
Fantastic letter, I hope your MP hangs his head in shame and has sleepless nights night after night, as I do, over all this. What on earth can their excuse be for going on with this? It seems that this MP thinks the public is much too dim to accept the truth. Perhaps – almost certainly in many cases – he is right. But that isn’t an excuse, it’s an monumental moral failure. Not one MP in this country deserves public office. Most aren’t fit for any job at all.
Sounds like a load of BS. They can’t hide behind the CSO and the CMA. It’s the government that are supposed to make the decisions!
If Boris really wants to end the lockdown, why appear at the press briefing flanked by the dissenting CSO and CMA?
It’s nonsense – or cowardice of unprecedented proportions.
OOps, sorry Pacey. I should make it clear that your letter is great but I think your frontbencher’s excuse was a load of BS.
Well said, and just how I feel regarding the Conservative party.
If they had the courage of their convictions, as we know now from the SAGE minutes, they wouldn’t have gone for lockdown in the first place. I don’t envy the cabinet for the decision they have in front of them now. It must be clear by now that this is all a nonsense, but public opinion, the press and the opposition are noisily terrified every time they tried to make a change (far more so than in any other European country). If Boris followed the Norwegian Prime Minister and went on screen to say it was a mistake… at this point, everyone would think it was a trick.
I am actually quite impressed, Toby (and I like to think that’s not easily achieved). I have bee banned from mainstream media sites as “racist” for pointing out crime statistics in the way you do here. The truth, it appears, is “racist” in our warped and twisted society. It takes real courage to take on the antiracists – much more than it does the coronaphobes, even over such a relatively easy target as the BLM zealots. Good stuff! Just to push it a little further: “The murder of George Floyd was certainly horrific and the white police officer who killed him may have been racist.“ This was not necessarily a murder, and actually is quite unlikely to have been a murder at all, imo. I think it’s very unlikely the policeman in question will get a fair trial – juries are as influenced by hysteria as anyone and there will be huge pressure on any court to convict, if only to avoid the likely riots resulting from an acquittal. But it seems pretty unlikely that there was intent to kill here. The internet suggests the policeman is being charged with “third degree murder”, which is a… Read more »
George Floyd told police he was struggling to breathe before an officer put a knee on his neck
Prosecutors detail the final moments of Floyd’s life as he begged for air.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/george-floyd-told-police-he-was-struggling-breathe-officer-put-n1218556
He may have been having a heart attack even before he was handcuffed, if this report is correct, in which case it wouldn’t even have been manslaughter. I’ve heard it said that he had a couple of drugs in his system which could have brought on a heart attack, including fentanyl.
If true, it’s a shame the police officers didn’t realise before trying to restrain him, though I’m sure the far left would have found something else to protest against.
I’d much prefer not to have to speculate on this kind of complex matter, but clearly the deluded masses, including virtually our entire media and political classes of “opinion leaders”, have already leaped to a grossly prejudiced presumption of the facts that is wholly unwarranted by any information they can possibly have.
And rather than being open to discussion, the vast majority are not only fixed in their opinion but are viciously hostile towards anyone raising any doubt about their assumption.
The very definition of bigotry.
I think in general it’s best to establish as much of the truth as possible before passing judgement – that’s what courts are for.
The whole business is very sad. I don’t know what the answer is, and to be honest I can’t see one coming any time soon, but I don’t think the path we’re on is the right one.
It’s really for the Americans to sort out, in my view. I think we have enough problems of our own. But I agree that a lot of the stuff people come out with on this subject is muddled, to put it mildly, and muddled thinking tends to be a general habit that leads to, for example, acceptance of unworkable solutions to overestimated problems.
The reality is of course that many of the people leaping to these conclusions, in public at least, are not interested in the truth of such events, but rather in how useful they can be for pushing their own agendas. The rest are just blind followers of the kind who gobbled up the corona fear-porn..
One question that the MSM is not answering, if the 2 of them worked together as security at a nightclub why did the victim not say the policeman’s name during the incident?
https://kstp.com/news/george-floyd-fired-officer-overlapped-security-shifts-at-south-minneapolis-club-may-28-2020/5743990/
It’s all a bit strange, but the flurry of public displays of ‘solidarity’ and virtue marketing have helped me pick out the kinds of companies i will no longer give my business to, specifically those wheedling sops who used the opportunity to pop up from nowhere after having done nothing useful for months, just to say they will donate some of their earnings to a ‘worthy’ cause. Business can’t have been too bad for them these last two months then, eh?
Those worried about not being able to have sex with somebody outside your own household, under The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020 which were brought into force from Monday 1st June, I may have found a legal loophole:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/558/pdfs/uksi_20200558_en.pdf
It says: “7.—(1) During the emergency period…no person may participate in a gathering which takes place in a public or private place—
(a) outdoors, and consists of more than six persons, or
(b) indoors, and consists of two or more persons.
It then says you can be exempted, if “the gathering is reasonably necessary” and includes —
“(i) for work purposes”
Here’s the loophole: As long as one party pays for sex, this would fall under prostitution which is legally a form of work, and therefore exempt from the restrictions. Remember, in Great Britain, prostitution is legal as long as you don’t solicit.
Alternatively you could both start a business together (perhaps setup a limited company) and therefore every time you meet up it would be “for work purposes”.
I hope this is of some comfort to anyone concerned. 😆
Nice dodge and slightly kinky.
In truth, encouraging prostitution is no more un-“Conservative” than most of the rest of this government’s actions, so they probably won’t have any problem with that anyway.
There’s nothing unconservative or immoral about the world’s oldest profession. A prostitute doesn’t get half your stuff, all your money and your kids at the end of your transaction.
Or have sex outside. At least the neighbours won’t be able to snitch to the plod about having someone over to stay in their house illegally…
Oh, this is crazy!! How can we accept that the government can say who we can or can’t invite to stay in our home if we wish!? Just ignore them. It’s a ridiculous law that should be ignored, unless you’re hooking up with an eighty-year-old with existing health issues, in which case, good luck to the both of you.
Or you could say you had a desire to commit sexual assault on a random person but your friend offered a safe alternative. That would count as reasonably necessary to me.
Joking aside, do we really think the police would be paying any heed to this new law? Some of the dodgiest people I know are in law enforcement.
Surely the dodgiest people are the curtain twitchers who would actually report someone staying the night?
Does that mean that prostitutes don’t have to wear masks, while hairdressers do?
I’ve not seen this mentioned at all in the comments, but has any seen the Week 21 ONS figures released on Tuesday?
There is now a death involving COVID-19 listed in the “COVID-19 Weekly Occurrences” table shows one “Death involving COVID-19” in Week 7 (1st Feb 2020 – 7th Feb 2020) that is for a Male in the 75-79 year old range.
I checked the Week 19 figures but this death does not appears, and I checked the Week 21 figures and this is when it appeaed.
Now this is very strange, as the first death we have all been told was on the 2nd March 2020, but this death in the latest figures took place between the 1st Feb 2020 and the 7th Feb 2020.
So, with the experts saying death 3-4 weeks after initial infection, this means that this person would’ve been infected between the 11th January 2020 and the 17th January 2020.
Why has this all been hushed up, and we’re still being told the 2nd March 2020 was when the first death took place.
Sorry, i should’ve put Week 20 is when the death appeared in the figures, in the 3rd paragraph.
This tallies up with the theory that the virus has been around for far longer than we originally thought, but is it possible for them to retroactively fiddle with the death stats as well? It wouldn’t make sense to fiddle with stats as early as February though, because as I said that lends weight to the theory that the virus has been spreading silently for ages and is thus less deadly, going against the government narrative.
How many flu and pneumonia deaths for week 21? Add it onto the 40,348 up to week 20.
Flu & Pneumonia not reported. They won’t be known until the full figures for May 2020 are published. For April there was around 25,000 deaths, compared to the 5-year average of 33,500, so down by 8,000-9,000
Actually, after finding the exact figures for both months there is a grand total of 28,358 that include “Influenza and Pneumonia”.
For deaths that only had ““Influenza and Pneumonia” on the death certificate, there were 7,997 deaths in April (weeks 14-17), and 4,704 deaths in May so far (weeks 18-21). So, a total of 12,701.
For deaths that had ““Influenza and Pneumonia” and also mentioned COVID-19 on the death certificate, there were 9,963 deaths in April (weeks 14-17), and 5,694 deaths in May so far (weeks 18-21). So, a total of 15,657.
Just to put that 28,358 deaths into perspective, they was a total of 43,047 COVID-19 deaths during weeks 14-21.
So, “Influenza and Pneumonia” was involved in 65.88% of all the deaths.
Disregard that last percentage.
With their being 15,637 deaths that had ““Influenza and Pneumonia” and also mentioned COVID-19 on the death certificate, this mean that 36.37% of the 43,047 COVID-19 deaths during weeks 14-21 involved “Influenza and Pneumonia”
So what did the rest of the Covid-19 patients die from? Did they just die WITH the virus?
No, there will be very few that just died of COVID-19. 90.4% in March & April had pre-existing illnesses that were listed on the death certificate with COVID-19. The other thing is that no one seems to be dying of “Old age” anymore, so even though 60% were over 80 years old, there was no listing of “Old age” on death certificates like there was before COVID-19 appeared.
Also, the breakdown of the % of COVID-19 deaths during weeks 14-21 are as follows:
80+ year old, which is 59.83%
70-79 Year olds were 22%
60-69 Year olds were 9.56%
50-59 Year olds were 4.46%
0-49 Year olds were 1.93%
I’ve screenshotted the part of the table it’s in.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is certainly the sort of question that one of the journos should ask at the daily press conference (some hope!). CV was made a ‘notifiable disease’ on 5 March 2020. Why would the government want to reclassify a death to before it was recognised as a cause of death in law? If there are blood samples lingering somewhere from people who have died several months ago, and the timeline for the outbreak in China can be confirmed as several months earlier than the official narrative (French and American athletes at the Wuhan military games have said they were unwell with a mystery illness in early October 2019, and the Cambridge University team estimate that the first mutation of the virus could have been in September 2019), then it is further supporting evidence for Professor Gupta vs Professor Ferguson. Unlock now!
Well… This is dynamite, isn’t it? Either the illness was around a lot longer ago than we were told and it was hushed up, or a government agency has been fiddling with official statistics, or it’s a mistake (how?). Can anyone suggest a suitably high-profile person who could take this up with a government figure, or get it into the MSM?
I have just read in New Scientist (which hss gone all Coviescared, BTW) that almost no autopsies have been done on Covid victims because the pathologists are too scared to do them. So we know practically nothing about how the virus affects the body.
There is speculation that it may attack the brain, but surely this must involve some confusion with Coronaphobia.
I think it has affected Boris Johnson’s brain. It would have affected Hancock too, but he is brainless.
From the Facts about Covid website (formerly A Swiss Doctor etc…) This was in April I believe. ‘Germany: The German Robert Koch Institute now advises against autopsies of test-positive deceased persons because the risk of droplet infection by aerosols is allegedly too high. In many cases, this means that the real cause of death can no longer be determined. A specialist in pathology comments on this as follows: “Who might think evil of it! Up to now, it has been a matter of course for pathologists to carry out autopsies with appropriate safety precautions even in the case of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, PRION diseases, etc. It is quite remarkable that in a disease that is killing thousands of patients all over the world and bringing the economy of entire countries to a virtual standstill, only very few autopsy findings are available (six patients from China). From the point of view of both the epidemic police and the scientific community, there should be a particularly high level of public interest in autopsy findings. However, the opposite is the case. Are you afraid of finding out the true causes of death of the positively tested deceased? Could it be that the numbers… Read more »
Hello Annie,
There have been post-mortem examinations done in Germany and Switzerland.
My own ‘lockdown’ hero is Professor Klaus Pueschel of the University Medical Centre in Hamburg. He ignored the advice of the Robert Koch Institute (the German Government’s medical advisors) that it would be ‘too dangerous’ to carry out autopsies on COVID-19 patients and has, with his team, done around 150. As far as I am aware, ALL of the victims examined to date have had comorbidities, some of which were previously undiagnosed.
Professor Pueschel stated in an interview with the Hamburger Morgenpost on 6th April that ‘no-one has died of COVID-19 alone’. He also said that the ‘lockdown’ was out of all proportion to the threat posed by the virus, and predicted that the ‘pandemic’ would be little more than a blip on the annual mortality rates (which will probably be true in Germany, which has avoided our care homes fiasco).
Most of the articles relating to his work are in German, but Der Spiegel did publish one in English on their international website:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/learning-from-the-dead-what-autopsies-can-reveal-about-covid-19-a-6d9db1d4-1a47-4603-843a-94c949a29161
Hope this is of interest.
It most certainly is.
Thank you.
I wonder what proportion of Covid victims in Britain have been safely cremated so that no investigation will ever be possible?
A work colleague who had it said she was very very sick and that it spread into her other organs (eg kidneys) and took a long time to get rid of. She was otherwise healthy and slim and around 48. I had close contact with her before she got it and had very strange headaches and dizziness but was still fine to go to work. So not sure. I never get the flu though so it was unusual for me.
There have been rumblings about autopsies by the Royal College of Pathologists. See below:
https://www.rcpath.org/uploads/assets/c75b94a2-99e2-4ce4-86bcf0a7e61fdb03/Letter-Death-Investigations-Committee-regarding-about-statistics-on-deaths-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic-12-May-2020.pdf
Thank you for that. The letter should be required reading for everybody.
Among other excellent points, they point out that autopsies would improve knowledge and hence help to improve treatment.
Not rocket science, just common sense.
Which is rarer than diamond dust right now.
….. Many studies worldwide have shown that, when apost mortem examination is carried out, major discrepancies may be identified between the certified clinical cause of death and the cause of death determined at a post mortemexamination. One manifestation of this is that a clinical cause of death may fail to determine the difference between someone dying with COVID-19 infection as opposed to someone dying of it.Given these factors, death certification data upon which epidemiologists are relying and using to contribute to Government policy is likely to be flawed…..
Wow!
Also, the five high profile child deaths that were all over the MSM, are still not showing in the figures, and this is two months since they happened.
I have met a brick wall of silence in my investigation into these deaths, all I get is “we do not discuss individual cases”.
It was in the community in Paris by end December 2019 (confirmed by test on old sample). Inconceivable that it took 4 further months to reach UK but as it hadn’t been identified no one was looking for it. And anyone hospitalised with it before March would not have been isolated, no ppe used, so very easy to start a nosocomial outbreak in the hospital.
Well today is a sad day, my wife received her paperwork through from The Dept. for Employment or whatever they are called. She has signed on the dole.
As a professional she has had periods out of work in the past but we just work through until she is back in work. This time it feels different, she is applying for work within a 50 mile radius of home, so far only one response to an application and that was a thanks but no thanks, “we had so many people apply”.
At 55 she has competition from younger less experienced, but lower cost people in her field of expertise is going to be tough.
We shall see. We are not complaining, we have our health, and each other.
Hello Dave,
You have my sympathy. Sadly, your wife will not be alone. I work in the construction industry. I anticipate a flurry of activity once ‘lockdown’ ends, as people complete projects that have been on hold. Thereafter, I think we’ll be in for a very long lean period. I’m expecting to be out of work within a year – on the scrapheap at 58. Still, at least I’ll have my medal from Boris for the sacrifices I made in the war on COVID-19. That’ll help me feed my kids…
Very sorry to hear what has happened to your wife. I work in the museums and heritage sector which will be in for some very tough times with the economic recession and the proposed “social distancing” measures.
I dread to think of what will happen as people are made redundant, sign up for the dole then struggle to get any new job.
I’m furloghed. I’m 64 and a widower. I’m pretty sure I will have no job to go back to. Thank goodness I own my house outright, but it’s going to be a lean lean time.
I can’t help thinking that we should all be out now, marching on Downing St like the BLM protestors. I’m not sure though that we have the same impetus as it’s only estimated that the lockdown could lead to 60000 unnecessary deaths from cancer, heart issues, organ failure and suicide. If only we could find something important enough to get everybody angry, something that’s actually happened in this country to drive people out onto the streets to protest at the way we’re being treated?
There are two reasons why we cannot march like the BLM fantasists, or not to any useful effect at this stage..
First we lack the numbers. As with coronaphobia, the BLM/antiracist delusion is shared by the vast majority. Like coronaphobia (and for quite similar reasons and by quite similar people) it has been indoctrinated into the population by the mainstream media, but that’s been going on for decades now and is even more deeply embedded.
Second, unlike theirs, our view is actual dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy, and will be responded to as such. There would be as strong and physical a police crackdown as necessary, and no sympathy whatsoever in the media. What reports there were would emphasize the badthink nature of any demonstrators to ensure there would be no popular sympathy.
It’s night and day. The difference between true dissent and reinforcement of prevailing official dogma. If there is a parallel between BLM and coronapanic demonstrators, it would be with a bunch of people demonstrating against lifting the lockdown “too quickly” and full of hysterical banners about “saving the NHS” and “protecting teachers”..
Sad but very, very true. Makes me want to weep.
Yes indeed. Report on the BBC news website about the legality or otherwise of protests, no mention of the anti-lockdown protests, obviously. It tentatively concludes they are illegal “on paper”, then goes on to report the below. So the UK police leadership have pretty much taken sides in this one, and guess which side they are on. So if we do have a mass protest, we need to make sure there are at least 3,000 of us, seem like we’d kick off big-time if challenged, and failing that quote that the right to protest is part of democracy. I’ll be writing to the National Police Chiefs Council, shortly. “Chief constables today talk about their public duty to “facilitate” demonstrations – and that they only turn to force – such as bringing in riot police – if they believe they are going to have to quell trouble. And it seems pretty clear that the police don’t want to break up peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations even though, on paper at least, they would breach coronavirus laws. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick told the London Assembly on Wednesday that her officers faced a difficult situation last Saturday… Read more »
These comments by senior policemen are obvious flat out lies, because they clearly did not “facilitate” the small anti-lockdown protest, and there clearly was no trouble that they needed to “quell” when they made arrests.
These people are politically motivated liars. Anyone who doesn’t see it is simply deluded.
I tend to agree. What makes me angriest is that I don’t think these people really care about BLM or whatever, they just feel the need to say they do, for fear of opprobrium or worse. The same goes for, for example, the PM.
Doubtless there are people who deeply and sincerely hold such beliefs, but I think they are stil in the minority. In reality a small but significant number of manipulative people have managed to turn somewhat extreme views into the accepted mainstream – accepted at least in terms of lip service if not accepted into people’s hearts and souls – at least not yet.
The BLM protests are providing a very useful smokescreen for now.
I wonder why on earth they would think that attempts to break up the BLM protests would lead to “very serious disorder”, whereas they had no qualms about doing so when faced with a hundred middle-class and mixed age white Britons a few weeks back.
I’m not up to the task of deciphering this conundrum.
Someone may need to commit suicide in public.
Horrifically, I’m being serious.
Tbh, I’d consider it. My children are grown up and independent. I consider my main duties in life done. I have only increasing contempt for the people of my nation. Nobody lives forever.
Not saying I’m enthusiastic about the idea….
Not volunteering for that one, but sometimes I feel I’m getting close to wanting to commit murder in public. The list of potential victims is long.
Long and growing.
Hara-kiri in front of Number 10 or outside the Houses of Parliament?
It has crossed my mind… and I would if I thought humanity was worth saving from itself. But I don’t. I just want it ALL to burn now.
Pfft, people will be dying in their thousands due to lack of medical care and they’re happy to accept them as collateral damage.
Public suicide would probably be met with cries of “burn the witch”, “another one for the Darwin awards” and “Granny killer”
Even more horrifically, I think you may be right.
“Oh that mad bitch killed herself, Darwin award lolololololol!”
Truthfully, yesterday I would have volunteered. I was so bad, so down, so depressed, it would have been a welcome relief. Today I just want to fight someone.
Stick with today’s mood,Carrie.
IT WILL END. AND THERE WILL BE A RECKONING.
Really? I hope so. But today I’m in the same mood Carrie was in yesterday. It’s suddenly hit me and I’m really low. In a way LS doesn’t help. I’m glad it’s here – don’t get me wrong – cos I’m sharing with like-minded people. At other times, like now, it makes me feel so helpless. And I spend too long here and I don’t see any end to it. yet, if I wasn’t here I’d feel lost. God I am angry and depressed today. I really want a reckoning. But as someone else said here about a week ago, it never happened with the banks in 2008, why would it happen with this?
Folks. Take a deep breath. Shut down all devices with links to the Internet.
Find some space where Nature rules. Flowers bud, bees buzz, birds sing, etc. Nature is completely sane. So are you. Only Covid Man in this world is vile. Cut him out of the picture, and refresh yourselves.
Echoes of the Vietnamese monk that set himself on fire. An image that still haunts me.
Takes some bottle to go that way. Pistol to the side of the head I could do.
Used as an album cover by Rage Against the Machine.
Take the Power Back!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqkMsXcHQYg
The upcoming Austerity measures and cuts that will soon be in place is something that should be being focussed. The banking crisis austerity was never out the news or social media either the claim of 500,000 deaths.
We’re in a bigger mess financially now than the banking crisis, so we could be looking at 1-2 millions austerity deaths.
Chester Zoo told to prepare to remain closed ‘indefinitely’ putting the future survival of the zoo at risk
https://www.chesterzoo.org/news/chester-zoo-told-to-prepare-to-remain-closed-indefinitely-putting-the-future-survival-of-the-zoo-at-risk/
Love that zoo from the TV series. A beacon of enlightened zoo keeping and conservation.
Wicked, wicked, WICKED.
https://apnews.com/3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae
China delayed releasing coronavirus info, frustrating WHO
How about this one:
https://www.facebook.com/matthancockofficial/photos/a.523654854422238/2010641649056877/?theater
No wonder he’s perfected his straight faced look while he spouts all those lies and waffle.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/02/two-metre-social-distancing-rulebased-outdated-science-may-have/
Two-metre social distancing rule based on outdated science that may have largely overestimated coronavirus risk
What do they mean ‘may have’? It’s bleedin’ obvious innit?
Still, they can’t police it unless they run around with tape measures so who cares? (Except the poor retailers who are losing business. Sorry, I empathise with them. I’m just talking about defiance.)
I can rebel against it quite happily but unfortunately businesses can’t and I feel seriously angry on their behalf and on behalf of their customers!
Talking of customers, did you see this latest insult to normal people?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/mcdonalds-parking-row-council-tells-homeowners-cannot-park-outside/
Unless you’re the CSO!
“It’s not an absolute [that] beyond two metres is safe and slightly less is not safe, there’s a graduation across that, and so roughly at a metre it’s somewhere between 10 and 30 times more risky than at two metres,” Sir Patrick told the Downing Street press conference on May 28.
That man must go!!
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-can-t-neil-ferguson-s-imperial-model-be-replicated-
Why can’t Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model be replicated? | The Spectator
He answers the questions looking downward like a little boy who’s been caught doing something naughty.
And he’s tidied himself up. Guilty man in the dock!
Ok, the fraudulent death certificates are the biggest scandal ever, and it’s happening everywhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdDUyHdfC7A&list=WL&index=3 — This is Dr Pam Popper again (brilliant in her incandescent rage). At 13:20 she starts talking about death registration in Washington State, and the figures are staggering- Washington State health authority has confirmed that the state is classifying deaths from other causes as deaths from covid, in other words, they are falsifying death certificates. Including gunshot wounds, now being classified as covid.According to one report, 82% of the death certificates looked at list covid-19 as one of the causes of death [but not the primary cause], 5% don’t list it as a cause but as a contributory factor, so 87% of the death certificates in Washington are probably inaccurate. When asked about the report, Emperor [Governor] Inslee stated that it was “dangerous, disgusting malarkey” and went on to talk about conspiracy theories — well, apparently the department of health is part of the conspiracy because THEY provided the data! Here’s a quote from the department of health’s website: ‘Our current dashboards reflect anyone that has died from Covid, irrespective of cause of death. Those numbers will be adjusted. We are… Read more »
“Sound familiar? Italy revised their deaths down to 12% of the total.”
I’m reminded of this glorious performance, certainly unequalled by anything produced by any of our pathetic eunuch politicians.
I love him. What a legend.
Bloody marvellous. Tanto di cappello!
The Spanish government claimed zero deaths for 2 days running despite authorities in the autonomous regions notifying them daily of deaths in their regions. The government themselves claimed there were 64 deaths in Spain over the past week but the total death count went up by 1. The method of counting deaths has changed 8 times.
I mean, wtf?!
It makes a nonsense of the public record. How is anybody ever meant to disentangle the actual figures from the misreporting, for future posterity, and to make proper assessment when tackling any further outbreaks?
And that’s not to mention the thousands of cases where families will never truly be able to know the cause of death of one of their relatives.
It’s repugnant that this lackadaisical attitude to clinical reporting has been allowed.
I am now beginning to view the lockdown as a coup. It’s not a Tory or a right-wing coup, but a parliamentary coup. They are all 650 of them in on this. I practically begged my (Labour) MP to oppose the Coronavirus Act, not that he was in the least bit interested in what I had to say on the matter. I’m not saying that they deliberately planned this. Politicians are opportunistic creatures. These slavering hyenas and vultures will very happily feast on the decaying corpse of British democracy, severely injured as it has been by the virus of mainstream media fearmongering and pornography. I am sure that the example provided by the civil servant of the German Ministry of Interior is exactly mirrored by what has happened here. Only here, our intrepid gaolers have been more careful to hide their tracks. Any doubts that this is a coup this ought – in my view – to be dispelled by the news that the freedom to criticise the government regime over this lockdown has been throttled by Ofcom. I recognise that it may seem an exaggeration to view this as a coup. But I am… Read more »
I had thought that Brexit was the most important issue to concern Britain, but now I must agree with your views and now believe that this ‘coup’ (or whatever it is) is now considerably more important than Brexit. I NEVER saw that happening!
As a remainer I agree with that. Never thought anything worse than Brexit was likely to happen, thought there would be no more dangerous whitehall powergrab over people’s rights coming, then we get the lockdown. And the EU did nothing to protect us from it whilst we were still in the transiation period and under their courts, I voted remain because I liked it when the EU blocked whitehall attempts to further undermine civil rights, with the EU’s failrue to act at this most terrible time I’m no longer much bothered either way about the leave-remain debate.
Toby added a quote recently along the lines of ‘the future of politics will no longer be along the lines on capitalism vs socialism but will be democracy vs paternalism.
This made me think about the number of Common Purpose ‘graduates’ who are employed in our quangos, public services, universities and the BBC.
The current woke fad smacks of paternalism, we know how you should think and we will shame you until you think like us.
Common Purpose used to claim that they were providing leadership in a post-Democratic world.
Well, here we are!
It’s a coup. It may not have started out as one, but it is now. Our basic freedoms have been taken away and we now live in a police state. What makes me more angry than anything (and I’m pretty angry at most of it) is that the great British public have compliantly surrendered all their rights.
And the MPs are being very handsomely paid to stay away and not do their job.
It has all the hallmarks of a coup, but it isn’t a deliberate coup for the same reason that conspiracy theories never really add up: there’s no evidence to suggest that any government is competent enough to be able to achieve something so clever on purpose.
I’m utterly verklempt. We’ve stopped cancer treatment, encouraged people to stay at home when it’s clearly damaged their health. We’ve stopped children getting an education, and stopped any recourse of freedom for children from abusive homes. We’ve locked people inside with abusers, forced people to spend weeks in essentially solitary confinement. We’ve prevented isolated and at risk people from having any human contact. We’ve intruded into private lives, and allowed interference to an Orwellian degree. We’ve ruined vast sectors of the economy, destroyed so many small businesses, pursued a policy that will result in hundreds of thousands- millions being unemployed. We’ve allowed neighbours to snitch on and police neighbours, encouraged hostility. We’ve prevented free movement, closed borders, filmed people with drones for taking a walk?! We’ve told everyone that we must accept a new normal, based on social distancing, based on a lack of human touch for millions. We’ve curtailed so many basic human rights and we are willing to continue to do so indefinitely. Because of COVID. Because the threat of COVID is apparently so great that the ends justify the means. Meanwhile there are pictures of tens of thousands of people protesting in London today with… Read more »
Hear, hear. The future is looking increasingly bleak, with further insults-plus-injuries to come in the form of the quarantine of arrivals and the even more insidious and deadly Net Zero project. The ruins of this country may well make WW2 seem a picnic!
Are the government trying to wreck the economy on purpose? Makes me wonder sometimes.
Well, some political hot potatoes like Heathrow 3rd runway will no longer be a problem for hmg once they have destroyed all the airlines. In France, the airline bailouts were contingent on reducing internal flights so no competition with trains. One example of the ‘new normal’. Thank god I’m not young.
While at the same time, boats of migrants enter freely and illegally, 167 just today..
Totally agree with you iv moving between extreme anxiety and extreme anger and I’m starting to depise a spineless individual who couldn’t manage a piss up in a brewery
Me too Nic,yesterday I was so full of anger I felt like I was about to burst but today I have had an increasing sense of doom and hopelessness,I have to say that at times today I have felt close to tears.I could never in my worst nightmares imagined that the whole planet could be pushed to the edge of disaster,for no apparent good reason,so quickly.Growing up in the 1970s and early 80s I was used to the constant fear that we all might be vapourised by a Hydrogen bomb at any moment and it was frightening but there always seemed hope and the feeling that good people were trying to prevent it from happening,but now there seems to be no hope and no good people in a position to stop this madness.
I remember that… ironically, I’m now turning to the prospect of nuclear armageddon – or a meteor strike – in hope rather than fear.
I spent the whole of yesterday verging between extreme anger at how our lives have been decimated in a few short weeks, to being in floods of tears and the deepest depression and shaking with anxiety. Patel’s announcement of quarantine threw me over the top. I need desperately to get out to my family home in Greece, be with them again, and bring some important things back to the U.K. as I’ve accepted that my time there will be almost non-existent this year and probably next as well because of flight costs and lack of availability. If I don’t get out there very soon, I may never see one family member again as their health has deteriorated badly.
It’s just madness. I can’t believe we’re living through this time. Is it really the case that our leaders are psychopathic enough to put their own popularity and careers first, at the expense of totally decimating the economy and practically the entire way of human life? I know the social media age makes it very hard for politicians to make unpopular decisions but God almighty, some of these measures are straight out of a Black Mirror episode.
I was feeling this way until I saw the BLM march in London today. It goes against so much of what the BBC, SKY etc have tried to indoctrinate us with. I understand there will be more marches at the weekend. It will be hard for the media to spin this away.
It really won’t. Let them burn it all down and then feed themselves out of the ashes.
It’s a total farce I agree.it’s woke liberal madness gone wrong.
There are only two options: resist or give up.
I am seething at both the hypocrisy of the media, campaigners and authorities over this, and also at the ‘Taking the knee’ submission of our police.
They had the cheek to go on about how Cummings has damaged the lockdown, while supporting blatant, mass breaking of the lockdown for political ends.
Awesome post. Your anger is justified and shared by many here.
Critics are preaching to the converted! Pointless! This site now has a regular following and hundreds of posts every day, which is great! But, by and large, we all agree with each other. I don’t think many lockdown believers read this site, right? So, critics are preaching to the converted! All the while, the lockdown believers cosily shelter-in-place on the websites of the BBC, the Guardian and the FT, to name but a few. And, by and large, they all agree that lockdown is the only way, it should have happened sooner, and we should keep at it indefinitely. So, everyone is talking in their own cosy echo chamber. A bit pointless, right? So, should the next stage be to take the discussion to the Lion’s den? To the websites of the BBC, the Guardian and the FT, to name but a few? Perhaps we can inspire some silent-critics on there to break their silence. Or would that be a rather futile effort? Just stirring the pot a bit could be fun, eh? However, I would argue that doing that individually would probably be pointless, as you’d just get buried under a pile of nasty.… Read more »
No, that seems a pretty good idea to me.
Good idea – but I can see many being banned from these ‘homes of free speecch’!
The cost of doing business…
And being banned from mainstream media sites for expressing opinions, you might not be surprised to hear, is something I’m fairly familiar with.
The main thing is to keep your own temper under control. It might not stop you getting banned – life isn’t fair in that way, but it will mean they will have to cynically abuse the rules to do so.
Which they will not hesitate to do. Consider the demographic who are most likely to be working for The Graun or The Times doing comment moderation.
Of course. consider the very obvious response of Facebook employees to their boss declining to censor the POTUS, ffs! And declining to censor him, what’s more, for a perfectly reasonable statement of enforcement of the rule of law that nobody with half a brain would look twice at.
One site described my anti-lockdowm comments as “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” in a reply to my post, then wiped my post out completely (a far worse fate than a ban, if you’re banned you just make a new account but at least people can see your old comment). The trick will be to make sure that our posts don’t get removed, go for sites where moderation is minimal or late enough that plenty will have read our views before they get memory-holed.
I got banned from The Verge for linking to a video of Bill Gates talking about how he expected a 20/1 return from his vaccine investments in an article where they were saying how amazing he was.
Not dumb at all. I do post occasionally, challenging stuff on the kind of sites you mention, and trying to stick to facts, stick to topic, be polite etc. I very rarely get any answers.
Every comment section I have come across has so many bedwetters with such illogical and vexatious arguments, I’m convinced half of them must either be paid trolls or plain old sockpuppets.
Present company excepted, people who post on social media are probably a bit odd and ought to have better things to do, so hopefully things are not as bad as they seem.
Most people I have spoken to in real life just seem apathetic.
Good idea. This site however is not pointless. It keeps me sane. And sadly, my own sanity is the only thing I’m endeavouring to retain with any alacrity – simply because I know from years of being ‘that person’ that preaching to the unconverted never works.
It also helps to clarify thinking. I wish some pro-lockdown people would come on and give us a good argument. I keep trying to pick arguments with them, in various places online and in person, but so far they either turn out to have a massively factually incorrect idea of the dangers, or just get abusive, or kind of switch off and say “we haven’t got a choice” – it really is a case of “does not compute” for them, they shut down.
Yes, clarifying thinking is exactly it. Being forced to write out an argument in a situation where it will face scrutiny, even friendly scrutiny, is a very useful discipline.
You cannot argue with the devout, because in their hearts they know their position cannot withstand rational scrutiny.
This site is wonderful for our sanity, great for shraing detaield explanations of why lockdown is wrong and providing good arguments to use in debate with zealots (at lest with any zealots capable of to-and-fro debating), but posting here won’t reach the people who are unsure and wavering in their views, making some effort to preach to the unconverted elsewhere can be worthwhile.
Yes, we can do both!
To be fair, having spent an hour or two here, going to the comments at the Grad is quite a shock to the system and definitely proves that this community is the antidote to insanity.
We just have to keep dripping away to the best of our ability.
Me too, and it’s led me to read no end of interesting and informative stuff, even if I don’t understand half of it!
It’s a good idea but I would concentrate on the Mail and the Sun, which are already about 50:50 in the comments on the subject of the lockdown.
The Telegraph is already turning skeptical and nobody cares about Guardian readers, least of all the government as those guys will never vote Tory anyway. They can carry on bleating about Covid forever as they already do about climate change.
FT and BBC are worth a shot though.
I think the sun is probably more 60 40 in our favour now… The mail…urgh! Can’t bear it.
Get to the guardian as well, as there was always a pre-existing army of folk who loved nothing more than sticking the boot into weasels like Owen Jones
I do post in the Telegraph and you are right, the comments sections are fast becoming very sceptical. The tide is certainly turning there, especially the outrage against the quarantine on return from abroad. I do get shouted at on that, but it’s always the same two idiots. I’ve also tried posting in the Express and Daily Mail but both can be hard going because there’s little chance of rational discussion. FT is certainly worth a shot.
I wonder if anyone in government actually reads the comments? I’d hope they do in the Telegraph.
I’ve just read many of the comments below the Allison Pearson article in the DT and it seemed to be the same four or five names coming up all the time writing about how the lockdown saved lives and was absolutely worth it and should have been imposed earlier and more stringently. Very disheartening that so few challenged these self-righteous nutcases. Because I don’t watch any tv or listen to any radio I suppose their support of this nonsense surprised me – I was certainly sickened by it. As others have written often in the comments on this great site, I come here to be reassured there is some sanity left in the world, but after reading all those crazy DT comments I feel that we are far from winning this battle.
Marion, if you haven’t seen this video dicussion (“lockdown is not the safe option’) have a look, it reassured me to see such a sensible discussion
https://youtu.be/tfXqbIPMgxU
There will almost certainly be people paid to influence the discussion within the comments sections of mainstream media. There will also be people who believe what they are saying and may well have come to their own conclusions from studying the data themselves.
It is useful to have discourse with the latter but it is often made difficult because of the existence of the former.
That’ll be trolls embracing the government line. Of my neighbours (quite a few) I have met no-one who thinks LD is a good idea and have met many (several getting on for their sixties) who think the official line is balderdash. (Trying to be polite here.) By the way no Thursday night blow jobs around where I live. (Given up being polite.)
That’s the sort of info that’s useful to share here.
I recently signed up to the 3-month trial with the Torygraph and found some kindred spirits responding to Allison Pearson’s article.
I’d been using the dreadful Grad because there’s no paywall and I don’t have to navigate a shedload of adverts to see what the MSM propaganda is up to.
However, the links to more useful places to comment are very welcome. Thanks.
I agree in principle but people also come here to vent, experience a bit of banter and humour. I already try and make my MP, any lockdown supporting MSM, lockdown supporting scientist, my daughter’s headmistress, as miserable as possible using formal letters, social media, etc.
I think people are doing what you suggest in their own way but I don’t disagree with you.
In my opinion, rebellion and social unrest is just around the corner anyway. The government knows it, and if it happens even before furloughs end and redundancies start I wont be surprised.
In a perverted way I think some of them want rebellion. Hence the lengthening of the revision interval. Each new batch of measures is being given time to reveal itself as more farcical than the last, so that people will ignore them. Relaxation by the back door.
Crazy? The whole bloody business us crazy anyway.
Yes… I do think this is true. A way of saying that ‘the people have decided’ and oh look, cos we killed so many people unnecessarily through fear porn and lack of hospital access ( will be classed as covid of course), those numbers keep coming down…. It’s a disgrace quite honestly
Or they’re wanting us to rebel so they can bring in those 20,000 troops?
We do have a lockdown zealot troll who appears here daily under the guise of “Anoymous”. However instead of constructive debate, it is just abusive and usually involves swearing and/or poor spelling. Not sure why they bother?
I want him back – might be Piers Morgan in disguise
Trolling is not my thing. He/she hasn’t been back.
Has anyone had a decent discussion with anyone on the “other side” of this issue?
No nor my son and his mates.
They bluff, bluster and threaten with insults then when faced with facts disappear.
Real people tend to go quiet then come back and say “sorry” or “can I have more facts?” as is happening on the son’s social media.
I don’t do it, just comment on pages like this. Just about given up on the Daily Wail, not worth it dealing with the trolls, 77th and idiots anymore.
Have been doing it already with my mates who are fairly apathetic. They know it’s all shit but until it harms them directly… Well, it’s frustrating. At least they are not fearful sheep.
FB I can’t stand at all. Hadn’t used it for years anyway.
I don’t get Twitter at all, shouty shouty but make your points and you do have anonymity.
YouTube MSM news streaming… Now I can say 100% that it has turned. Absolute anti lockdown house party going on.
I’ll post this link yet again -3rd time, sorry guys!, don’t miss this opportunity… Tell these fuckers what you think
https://renewnormal.co.uk
Thanks for that link. A ‘renew normal’, no less! I’ll just take ‘normal’, thank you, and right away, please.
People who live their lives on facebook deserve all they get.
I’m afraid I never really understood the point of twitter, except that many tweeters seem to be very nasty, small-minded individuals who must be pretty awful in the flesh.
Keep talking to your mates. Or to anyone.
You can tell a Covhysteric immediately, no point talking to the brain- dead. But I am increasingly encountering the straight look, the gleam in the eye, the cautious outreach, that means a sceptic at least in bud, if not yet in flower.
Spread the word.
I think it’s a great idea. Personaly I’d target the Guardian as it does have quite active comment sections (probably because it’s free) and there are some people on there that desperately need informing. You’ll have to be careful with the wording though, keep it factual and related to the article otherwise, from experience, it’ll be removed within minutes
No, it’s a good idea. I frequently post on the Guardian site, and the Sun and Daily Mail as well.
Good idea. Any action at this stage might help us vent our feelings. Collectively we might start to shift opinion. I can’t think anyone’s going to believe lockdown is a good idea indefinitely. Wait until October comes.
Letters to the editor of your local paper are also really worthwhile. And I was involved in another contentious issue, and we did this all the time, turned the comments around. Although boring as it sounds, writing letters to organisations, businesses, ministers, committees, or whatever, is what changes things.
Remember that not just sceptics can see the posting here… as soon as we link to a page, in anyway suggesting an organised ‘attack’, half of the people in that post will just turn to the “Toby Young’s Tory Trolls” line.
I’ve been ripping it up on the Telegraph site on a daily basis. Got perma-banned from The Times comments section because I lost it at some bedwetting boomer woman who I felt would be best served by being beaten to death with her own severed leg. Can’t bring myself to mingle in the cesspits of the Graun and the Mail.
Really? So, if we were to post a link to a discussion in the Telegraph for instance, they’d know about it and follow the trail back here?
The Tellygiraffe admins/moderators certainly could, yes… and any old punter could just come here, search for Telegraph.co.uk and see which story each link leads to. It’s a piece of cake.
I tried putting commentary into the “Lion’s den” early on in the Panicdemic, especially went for local news sits carrying outraged reports of lockdown violations, or the one or two stories about P. Corbyn’s early protests. Easy to set up a temporary email address and use it to sign up as a commenter on those sites, but not many readers seem to look at the lone comment or few which stands up for liberty against lockdown. Still as your proposal is a mass effort of many people making such comments then they might be able to get more noticed.
I post quite regularly on various comments sections of MSM. Off the top of my head, NY Times, BBC News, Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Sun are ones I’ve probably posted on most.
From experience it’s easy to spot when there’s a collective effort from a group who are clearly linked in some way. It’s particularly noticeable if when they’re all posting in the same time frame.
It’s probably better to just follow the links to stories from here and post as individuals whenever we happen to be on.
The Daily Mail seems to be predominately anti lockdown now judging from the highest rated posts in the last week or so. Not many people seem to comment in The Sun, perhaps their readers are more interested in looking at the pictures than voicing opinions. The Guardian is a mixed bag depending on the topic of discussion as is the BBC news. NY Times I only look at every now and then.
I am putting together a single A4 sheet (I can print out at home) which I can hand to colleagues & others with links to hard facts about the situation, I do not want to use work email as I could receive backlash and possible action from my employer.
What should I include on the sheet
I am going to link to this site of course, UK Column, various videos from Vernon Coleman etc.
I just want to get people thinking.
This has got some good stuff on it: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/05/a-library-of-useful-links-on-the-virus-panic-for-thinking-people.html
There’s a good list of evidence-based facts on the Swiss policy research website: https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
The Swiss doctor link above was the original source for all info!
It’s very comprehensive!
Some of the ‘5/10/12/15 experts’ pages on http://www.off-guardian.org are very good indeed, Dave. A few weeks ago now, they were.
Chief twat Boris Johnson said today that when the weather turns, there should be no visits to other properties under any circumstances. I think him and his dick head mates should be worried about the weather though. At the moment, its red hot and people have the opportunity to go out and meet up, to wherever outdoors they see fit. However, when it gets cold and wet, I’d guess and hope people will begin to lose it and cause problems. We are, by nature, social beings – we can’t on a whole live without socialising. We need pubs, restaurants, entertainment venues, sport, etc. We’ve coped without these because its been hot – we want to be outside so its slightly more bearable. Therefore, to encourage widespread rebellion, I think it needs to piss down. When we can’t go the park, or beach, or sit in gardens, that’s when people will struggle. There’s no other outlet. If (or when) government really try and crack down on people going to other properties as there is nothing else because the weather is shit, then maybe the people more accepting of lockdown will start to realise, that without the sun and dry weather, our… Read more »
Yup, I have always thought the good weather contributed to “lockdown” being tolerable/making it seem like a holiday.
You are right. Plus I have hayfever so….. bonus.
Yes we have had nearly non stop dry sunny weather since this began nearly3 months ago . in another 3 months it will be nearly autumn cold wet autumn that’s when all this will really hit home and coupled with mass unemployment and poverty ,the shit will really hit the fan.
In the comments of another article on this blog I discussed with someone the effects of a winter versus summer lockdown. At the moment queuing to go into shops may be tolerable in warm dry weather but what happens in cold wet weather. A problem with a lockdown is that you haven’t got pubs, restaurants, libraries and limited shops to go into if the weather turns bad.
Totally agree. If we’d had terrible weather, there would be outrage. Imagine you’re on 80% of your wages, being paid to sunbathe during the day and watch Netflix in the evening. All the while you have a mortgage holiday and much welcomed break from the usual stresses of every day life. Would you want that to end?
Except when you are lucky enough to have a job you actually enjoy, then it is so f*cking enraging. And when you spent a lot of your early life subjected to what frankly should be descriebd as abuse, but more commonly goes by the name of health and safety procedures in certain types of healthcare establishment, and now see the whole country going insane with that kind of “you can’t make decisons because you have to be safe” thinking.
This is exactly the argument I was making earlier which is why I’m so pleased the weather is finally turning. Can you imagine how awful this lockdown would have been had it coincided with the February deluge and floods?
Not that it isn’t already awful but I imagine there would have been much less willing compliance.
Aha. Willing compliance.
You know that at the start, SAGE assumed that there would only be about 75% compliance at best?
That’s why they deliberately set out to terrify the sheeple.
And by God it worked. No dry knickers in the whole of Britain, except ours.
Was bad enough in march/April quite honestly
Don’t forget those poor people whose homes were flooded haven’t been able to get their houses fixed – and are still locked down in them!
Honestly, at this point, I hope it fucking snows.
It would be a side effect of Covid no doubt though.
I did say a couple of days ago that bad weather will cause the lockdown and social distancing to fall apart. Can you imagine a day where its chucking down with rain and people desperately trying to get inside a supermarket to shelter? No way will they be able to force customers out into the street in the pouring rain or cold weather there would be mayhem if that happens.
What does he mean ‘when the weather turns, there should be no visits to other properties under any circumstances.’ I thought that was already the case and what’s the weather got to do with it? I am speechless in my confusion. It seems to me that the damn thing (virus) has gone, wtf is he talking about? Can you reference where he has supposed to have said this, it is complete lunacy?
Here is a summary. People already do it, but with no good weather, I’d assume pressure to do this more will increase.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/boris-johnson-coronavirus-meeting-indoors-warning-weather-a4459161.html%3famp
I have been praying for rain for weeks, for this very reason.
We had some rain in the North today, less people out and about than at any time during the draconian abuse of human rights which will go down in history as the lockdown-2020-blunder.
I think we need a rainfall of biblical proportions for the lockdown and social distancing to be discredited.
I would have people around, or go to visit other people’s houses, if they would actually agree with me!
Boris keeps saying we are at war.
During “the war” pubs, theatres etc were still open, you could meet your friends as much as you wanted – just behind the blackout curtains.
This is even worse, this war is against us, no-one else, and civil wars are always the worst when it all comes apart.
<< buys shares in umbrella companies >> 🙂
Good idea to discuss government ability to control the weather too ?
I can control the weather – everytime I say “I’m going to do the garden” or “light the BBQ” it seems to cloud over and rain.
Please send some my way. My garden got a bit of heavy drizzle yesterday, first rain for weeks, but it wasn’t enough.
Get some today? Here on the Shrop/Staffs border been tipping it down all morning, garden drains backed up and Im going to have to wade through the water to clear them.
During all those weeks of nice weather I had a BBQ, started cooking, felt something and looked up and it rained – only a passing shower for 10 mins but still later from the sky onto the beer can chicken.
A bit, on and off. Just some proper rain for a few minutes, then mostly sunny but too windy to enjoy it.
Maybe I need to get a magic barbecue like yours?
All well and good for midget haystacks to say, but some people need a bit of human contact
Chief twat Boris Johnson said today that when the weather turns, there should be no visits to other properties under any circumstances.
He really is pushing us! What’s he up to, I wonder?
btw MrMasonMills is back- some interesting tweets!
Worrying more like..
I’m not making any particular point with my post today, but rather I’m hoping to find a sizeable portion of lockdown sceptics who agree with me.
Is anybody else driven raving mad by these awful lockdown adverts currently showing every two minutes on TV? I know companies need to keep their marketing output current, but each and every one of them follows almost the same pattern: clips of lots of silly people having a whale of a time at home, set to terrible music. I can only imagine the idea is to portray the greatest assault on our civil liberties as one big party – something to be celebrated, embraced, remembered with a fondness.
Meanwhile on planet Earth, domestic abuse cases are exploding, isolated elderly people are slowly losing the will to live (literally) and as each day passes trapped in this mire, our future living standards and prospects look bleaker and bleaker. I understand none of these issues would help sell a product or service, hence why they are completely ignored. However, I just feel that in light of these awful, insidious effects of the lockdown, these happy-clappy adverts are completely tone deaf.
Totally agree. I try not to watch TV but the ad breaks are religiously muted in our house. They disgust me.
Bearing unavoidable adversity with fortitude is admirable, cheerfully committing national suicide is reprehensible.
They serve to reinforce the delusion that this is the “new normal” and that it’s OK.
Your last sentence sums it up perfectly. I think these adverts are not just wholly irritating – they are dangerous. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but the way that they attempt to normalise and sugarcoat one of the most appalling periods of suffering since WW2 is thoroughly sinister and chilling.
My thoughts exactly. I don’t watch the BBC for obvious reasons, and the commercial channels are too risky because of the upset I feel when these adverts are on. “In the uncertain times, more than ever, we are here to support you”.
TV output is absolutely disgusting. There’s one on Spanish TV called “Balcony Stories” showing people doing wacky things while under house arrest. All accompanied by a cheery coommentary that reminds me of You’ve Been Framed. Wrongful mass imprisonment is not only totally normal but fun is its deranged message.
I can certainly understand your position, but I haven’t experienced it simply because I haven’t watched tv (other than specific recordings on the internet), for a decade or more.
I haven’t regretted it, but you do find yourself more and more out of step with received opinions on many issues, which makes you realise just how important and how effective the propaganda impact of tv is.
I don’t watch tv either, for the same reasons. I think that’s why I can still think for myself and why I often feel out of step with everyone else who does. I will watch Netflix or Prime, choosing my own content, but mostly I prefer to read and listen to music. I avoid all radio stations that have news or government adverts. I have been amazed how my neighbours have changed during the last 12 weeks, even those I would have thought were sensible. They all quote from tv. It’s awful. I feel like I am standing aside watching a car crash in slow motion, divorced from it all yet affected by it through no fault of my own. I am depressed, in tears and anxiety ridden on many days now, the black dog hangs over me, so imagine how bad I would be if I watched that trash and got involved with it.
Absolutely Mark. I haven’t watched tv for for years either, but still get startled/shocked at times by the extent to which it controls people’s conversation, and thereby their thinking.
I think a lot of people just don’t realise how much and how powerfully they are being actively propagandised just by watching soaps, or news programs.
Agreed, but I stopped watching them a long time ago.
If your equipment will record, record any programmes you want to watch and watch them a bit later, zapping through the ads. Saves a lot of rage.
Yep, it’s not just you; they boil my blood. Companies taking advantage of the situation to peddle their products on people. I find the one about Microsoft Teams with the doctor going saying he can share x-rays particularly infuriating for some reason.
Couldn’t stand them the day they arrived… But just understand that these are advertiser opportunists just wanting the one thing they have always wanted… Making money.
These guys get paid fortunes to make us part with our cash
Took em a couple weeks after lockdown started to start appearing.
The most odious one was the Microsoft teams one with the 4 way video conference and some idiot in the top right corner, indoors, on a video conference… With a fucking mask on. Haven’t seen that one since… Don’t think it’s a coincidence given mask wearing is falling rapidly in Uk
Once this thing turns our way, give em a couple of weeks and it will change again.
I don’t need avderts to sicken me, I get sickened by actual skype meetings in person, at those moments when someone asks “how is your lockdown going” ad expects you to make a positive response with some vague bullsh*t about “caring” and “protecting”. They don’t like hearing the truth, the lockdown is the most damaging over-reaction in living memory, when I respond with it instead.
I don’t have a telly but I used to listen to Classic FM, had to stop due to the irritating hourly news bulletins, patronising adverts and the last straw was the BLM post on their Facebook page. I messaged them to inform them why I had unliked their page – ironic that they get worked up over something that happened abroad and nothing to do with the UK yet are silent over the erosion of our civil liberties and proposals that could usher the demise of the cultural sector which includes orchestras and opera companies.
I gave up my TV licence a few years ago, and don’t listen to radio at the moment.
Not on Facebook either, and gave up on Twitter after being banned 3 times.
Absolutely agree. They are sickening
Haven’t had a telly for 10 years. Bliss.
Has anyone considered submitting evidence to Management of the Coronavirus Select Committee? Apply some pressure from an alternative source ie within
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/81/management-of-the-coronavirus-outbreak/
Had a quick look at this. Would it be worthwhile coordinating a submission from this website? May help us to look less like loonies who forgot to swallow their corona medicine.
PS. Reading the comments above I am now thinking I should change my moniker which I selected because I believed we were just victims of colossal incompetence and that they had got their knickers in a twist and didn’t know how to backtrack without exposing their ineptitude. The longer it goes on, the less sure I become.
That’s what I was thinking. I’ve submitted evidence to a Select Committee before and it is fairly straightforward. Would rather Toby lead however as he has documented this shit show studiously from the start.
Have you looked at who’s on the committee? Don’t waste your time!
Down here in darkest, fear-gripped Wales, I’ve been a sceptic since Day 1 (my word would have been cynic) and spent the first six weeks of this infernal lockdown wondering if there was just me and my eldest son, who dared think or worse, speak, views contrarian to government sponsored group think. Imagine my joy therefore, to stumble across lockdown sceptics and discover that there’s an entire community of doubters!!? It was a life-changing moment and massive thanks to Toby who has shown remarkable resolve, wit and courage swimming against the tide when the MSM has so pathetically laid down the tools of its trade – probing questions, challenging thinking, exploring back story. Last night (or maybe the night before – things have been blurred for three months now) I switched on Sky and such is our bananas world that because they have so little blood-curdling fear-filled Terror TV to send our way at the minute, they decided to show their “highlights reel” of the death and destruction Covid-19 spewed over New York in April/May, complete with slo-mo close-ups of Uncle Albert and Auntie Jean (or worse, grandma or grandpa) on a ventilator, or maybe even, breathing… Read more »
Couldn’t agree more…rishi had his hand forced tho I reckon by the govts policy. Had no other choice. Not that it Shld continue, end furlough and get back to normal!
Thanks Phil, perfectly put. This website is my little island of sanity too.
Or Boris could just say “Sorry. Mistake. As you were.”
Excellent post Phil, I’ve had these same thoughts from the beginning. I’ve mailed them to my MP & The Prime Minister but with no response.
It makes my blood boil that they cannot see what is going wrong!
Fantastic post, summed up just about everything I have felt for the past 3 months. When you get to wonder about the possible pre-planned future agenda of it all, it gets even worse.
I am sniffing down every avenue on that. It’s always about money, everything is
Many words and all to the point.
Stick with it, Phil. THIS WILL END.
AND THERE WILL BE A RECKONING.
As for the verdict of history … cataclysmic.
Maybe David Starkey has already written it. Can’t wait to read it. This time next year, or very probably sooner.
Your words are Churchillian………if only our Churchill wannabe leader could think and express himself like you we would be in a much better place.
Hello Phil,
Top notch post. Just wish we had some more like you up here in the SNPeople’s Republic. The whole ‘lockdown’ fiasco has been utterly depressing. Like you I have been a sceptic from the beginning – I actually wrote to the PM on day one of the ‘lockdown’ to express the view that Government policy was being dictated by sensationalist reporting in the media. Since then the whole experience has become ever more surreal.
The worst thing is that it was never about ‘saving lives’ or ‘protecting the NHS’ – it was all about saving the Government from the negative headlines that would have ensued if intensive care stations had been overwhelmed, as they were in Italy. Well, they’ve managed that, but at what cost? Our kids, and their kids, will probably have to pay for it…
I live in Wales and reading that Drakeford has threatened more lockdown in winter is making me feel utterly desperate! Living alone as I do (not by choice) I survive the long dark days and nights by going to my weekly dance class and meditation group plus a few parties and dinners with friends and neghbours. Without that to look forward to I don’t know what I’ll do, but the thought of continued (or resumed) imprisonment fills me with a terror I have never felt before in my life. Since it began I drive quietly off to walk (sometimes with a friend or two) in nearby little-frequented woods and beaches – not so possible or desirable during the winter months. Nor is sitting with a friend in the garden which brightens my days….I am horrified of this happening and would consider escaping to a foreign country except that I wouldn’t want to twiddle my thumbs in exile for months. I have an elderly neighbour living in an old caravan who is unwell and given to periods of depression. I truly believe he would probably commit suicide if this happened. Interested to know which part of Wales other people, including… Read more »
I live in Cardiff, like you, the threat of future lockdowns terrifies me. I would be interested in linking up with like minded people.
Thanks for replying Kath. However I live in far West Wales so distance would be an issue.
Brilliant post!
Thank god for people like you, Toby. Keep up the good fight.
Conservative Freedom Party (.com) taking shape, slowly…
Any ideas welcome.
Drop the conservative bit
Well it’s meant to be a conservative party… 🙂
But there is already a party with that name (although it is not conservative I agree) so not a clear message. The Freedom Party. It can have a conservative manifesto.
Yes, I did think of the Freedom Party, but it used to exist in this country in BNP form (disbanded 2006). Freedom Party.com was also not available as it’s based in the USA!
Wholeheartedly agree
Are we thinking of a manifesto?
It’s very early days. I’m just setting it up out of frustration really, but if it helps people reject LibLabConGreen it will be worth it.
Lots of people like me have no one to vote for so willing to consider a new party.
So long as the party is very careful to stand solely to individual liberties, and not waste time with any point scoring causes or absurd harking back to old days (sure some liberties were betetr but plenty of things were worse, we need a betetr future not a recreation of some historical age). The rights of individuals NOT to be subjected to surveillance, censorship, limitation of movement, interference with property, or bureaucratic busy-bodying in the name of health and safety, any kind of “compliance”, or any kind of counterterrorism. Reduction of powers for the authorities must be the only goal. And don’t suggest anything silly like bringing back death penalties (too much power for an untrustworthy legal system) or closing borders, both are violations of liberties.
Maybe name it something like The “Right To Take Risks” party?
I’d definitely vote for a non-racist populist party that promotes British culture and the prosperity of this country’s citizens (rather than some meaningless GDP figure) – so young families can look forward to bringing up their kids in decent accommodation with a garden.
I’m a Tory councillor but I won’t be standing again as I can’t represent a party I will never vote for again.
Can’t you stand as an independent? There must be lots of your constituents who feel like you and they need someone to represent them.
Some suggestions:
At this stage in our history we need to move to a written constitution because the unwritten one has been trampled underfoot.We need to enshrine free speech principles in a written constitution – similar to the USA but even more strongly I would say.
Incorporate petition and referenda procedures into your constitution so that no longer can governments bamboozle the public.
Make it clear that you believe in a core British culture based on free speech and free mixing of all citizens.
Jonathan,
I just took a quick look at your policies. Your anti LGBT agenda will alienate millions. I know you previously expressed this is due to your Christian faith, but any party that truly wants to champion “freedom” for its citizens, would not ban LGBT rights or gay marriage.
I think you need to decide – do you want a party that promotes traditional conservative values or real libertarian-style freedom. At the moment your policies are very much treading in UKIP and Brexit style territory.
Maybe it will. There are gay people who oppose the same sex marriage act. For example, Dr Corbett in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SNxvtV7C7g&t=3849s
That boat has sailed. There is absolutely no point in trying to re-criminalise gay marriage…that is not a fundamental threat to our liberty. Lots of other things are.
The problem with a liberty-oriented party is that without shared basic principles it is impossible to agree on the most important issue, which is what are the proper bounds of liberty. I suspect we, even just considering England, are no longer a nation in that sense.
I would suggest either making it a traditionalist conservative party that prioritises liberty within those terms, or make it a single issue anti-lockdown party that is otherwise a broad church – pretty much what UKIP tried to do on euroscepticism. And still, as with UKIP, you will have to exclude many who will not tolerate sharing a platform with others.
Couldn’t agree more RDawg. We mustn’t let our cause of liberty be contaminated by such petty rubbish as discriminating against what consenting adults wish to do, that would be just another form of nanny state, only with a classically religious agenda rather than the quasi-religious agenda that health-and-safetyists use to intrude on our freedoms.
There’s nothing wrong with UKIP and Brexit! lol
I don’t think UKIP has opposed LGBT rights on gay marriage in recent years and being in the EU is hardly a libertarian project!
Of course if you, RDawg, are a true libertarian, presumably you support polygamy, polyandry and other forms of non-conventional marriage. Let us know!
.
Quite frankly I could not give a toss what any group of consenting adults wants to do, as long as it does not adversely affect the freedom or rights of anyone else.
Same sex, multi-sex, mult-partner , hell they can even marry a fucking goat so long as there was some way of knowing that the goat had consented.
Note that I also don’t care if it offends me, as if it does then I also have the right to criticise them
Call it the Citizens Party. “Conservative” is now a meaningless term. Nearly all Conservatives appear to support – at least in what they say – “equality of outcome”, an entirely Marxist idea.
The idea of being equal citizens – with the same rights and duties – seems to me a more positive way forward.
Above all, any new truly populist party needs to commit fully to the free speech principle – which means you defend the right of others to speak freely even if they are quite obnoxious. Without free speech, democracy is a shell concept.
If a party can’t defend that principle (and the current Conservative Party clearly cannot) there is not much hope for liberal democracy and you might as well shut up shop.
Freedom Front?
Too much like National Front. No thanks!