Latest News
Refusing to wear a mask in public should become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving or not wearing a seatbelt, the President of the Royal Society has said.
Venki Ramakrishnan called for everyone to be required to wear a mask in all indoor public settings, rather than only on public transport, and criticised confused messaging from the Government. This follows the publication of two Royal Society reports, one of which purports to show that wearing masks reduces transmission of the virus, and the other of which documents how far the UK is trailing behind other countries when it comes to face coverings.
Wearing a mask did not bother our Italian, French or Spanish neighbours; none of whom were used to wearing one before the pandemic, yet now do so routinely.
So just treat it as another item of clothing that is part of the new normal and wear it whenever you cannot socially distance safely. It is the right thing to do, and a small price to pay, to help keep infections down and the economy open in the pandemic.
The message has not been clear enough, so perhaps people do not really understand the benefits or are not convinced of them. Whatever the reasons, we need to overcome our reservations and wear face coverings whenever we are around others in public.
It used to be quite normal to have quite a few drinks and drive home, and it also used to be normal to drive without seatbelts. Today, both of those would be considered antisocial, and not wearing face coverings in public should be regarded in the same way.
If all of us wear one, we protect each other and thereby ourselves, reducing transmission. We lower the chances of future surges and lockdowns which are economically and psychologically disruptive, and we increase the chance of eliminating the virus. Not doing so increases the risk for everyone, from NHS workers to your grandmother.
I’ve had a look at the Royal Society paper that supposedly confirms the effectiveness of masks. It’s unimpressive. Note the threadbare evidence on which it bases its sweeping conclusion:
We have found only two randomised control trials in the primary literature on the use of face masks to reduce onward transmission; one was underpowered, and the other showed significant reduction when adjusted for actual mask usage in a posthoc analysis.
Congratulations Venki Ramakrishnan. You win bedwetter-of-the-week
81% of Care Home Residents Asymptomatic
This is pretty extraordinary. According to a UK Government study, 80.9% of residents in care homes for the over-65s in England who tested positive for COVID-19 were asymptomatic.
A reaction to the study in the Science Media Centre contains this gem from Sarah Harper, Clore Professor of Gerontology at the University of Oxford:
Our early conclusions that younger people were generally asymptomatic, but older adults were less likely to be, has now been questioned. This survey further emphasizes that the disease is complex and its progress and impact still unclear. There has been a general assumption in some media reports that COVID-19 was a death sentence for all older people – this study emphasizes that many older adults as well as younger people can have the disease mildly.
So COVID-19 is not a death sentence for the over-65? Who knew?
Well, Dr Scott Atlas does. The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center has given an interview to Fox News in which he says that for those under 70, the mortality rate for COVID-19 is lower than it is for seasonal flu.
Meanwhile, Boris has put his foot in it by suggesting care home managers are to blame for the high death toll in the sector. The prime minister said on Monday that “too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures”.
That’s a bit rich, considering the Chief Executive of the NHS ordered hospitals to discharge as many patients as possible in March without checking first to make sure they weren’t carrying COVID-19. Given the number of infectious people flooding into care homes as a result of that diktat, I’m not sure following more rigorous social distancing policies in these settings would have made any difference.
Latest ONS Data Shows Deaths Below Five-Year Average for Second Week in Row
Readers will recall that last Tuesday the ONS data for Week 25 showed that the number of people dying in England and Wales had fallen below the five-year average, suggesting that some of the people who’ve died from coronavirus would have died later in the year anyway. The same is true for the ONS data for Week 26 (June 20th – 26th).
The number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 26 June 2020 (Week 26) was 8,979, this was 360 deaths lower than Week 25.
In Week 26, the number of deaths registered was 3.4% below the five-year average (314 deaths fewer), this is the second consecutive week that deaths have been below the five-year average; the numbers of deaths in care homes and hospitals were also fewer than the five-year average (103 and 815 deaths lower respectively), while the number of deaths in private homes was 745 higher than the five-year average.
Of the deaths registered in Week 26, 606 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, the lowest number of deaths involving COVID-19 in the last 13 weeks, accounting for 6.7% of all deaths in England and Wales.
Another notable feature of the latest ONS data is that the number of deaths involving novel coronavirus is falling in every English region save for the North East, with the total declining for the 10th consecutive week.
Bailout For Luvvies
Quite decent of the Government to put a £1.57 billion bailout package in place for theatres, galleries and museums, considering how few people in those institutions vote Conservative.
Will Gompertz, the BBC’s arts correspondent, had this to say about it:
The rescue package has been warmly welcomed by many arts leaders, some of whom said they thought it to be at the upper end of what had been hoped for. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, who has been under pressure from the arts and heritage sector to deliver a meaningful funding solution to a crisis brought about by COVID-19, feels vindicated that his behind-closed-doors approach to negotiations with the Treasury has paid off.
As always, the devil will be in the detail. The Government has not specified how the money will be divided between competing art forms or regions, nor how the application process will work. There will be winners and losers.
And then there’s the elephant in the auditorium: when will the rules around social distancing in performing arts venues be relaxed to allow the show to go on?
Many theatre producers are baffled by what they see as “one rule for them, and one rule for us”, approach by Government, particularly when it comes to travel. Why is it OK for people to sit side-by-side on a train or plane for hours but not in a theatre, which they argue is a much more controllable environment? As far as they are concerned, that is the billion dollar question.
That last point is a good one. Rather than handing out taxpayers money to these folks, wouldn’t it be better to just let theatres, galleries and museums re-open?
Simon Dolan Loses First Round
Disappointing news: Simon Dolan’s attempt to have the Government’s draconian coronavirus restrictions declared unlawful by the High Court has not been successful. Sky News has the story.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Lewis said that the rules in force on 2 July – the day of the hearing in the case – “did involve a restriction on the freedom of assembly and association”.
But he added: “The context in which the restrictions were imposed, however, was of a global pandemic where a novel, highly infectious disease capable of causing death was spreading and was transmissible between humans. There was no known cure and no vaccine.
“There was a legal duty to review the restrictions periodically and to end the restrictions if they were no longer necessary to achieve the aim of reducing the spread and the incidence of coronavirus. The regulations would end after six months in any event.
“In those, possible unique, circumstances, there is no realistic prospect that a court would find that regulations adopted to reduce the opportunity for transmission by limiting contact between individuals was disproportionate.”
Sounds like Mr Justice Lewis has drunk the Covid Kool-Aid.
Simon is considering an appeal. In the meantime, you can visit his Keep Britain Free website here.
National Geographic Says Covid 50 to 100 Times More Deadly Than Flu
There’s an extraordinary piece in the National Geographic – wildly alarmist, even by the standards of the mainstream media. It includes this incredible statement:
Using a more sophisticated calculation called the infection-fatality rate, paired with the past few months’ worth of data, the latest best estimates show that COVID-19 is around 50 to 100 times more lethal than the seasonal flu, on average.
So what exactly is this “more sophisticated” way of calculating the IFR? Apparently, they’re the ones made by University of Wollongong epidemiologist and self-described “health nerd” Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz.
Scientists can use two strategies to estimate the infection-fatality rate, explains Meyerowitz-Katz. They can estimate the number of infections using serology studies, which test people for antibodies against the coronavirus. These tests can reveal whether a person has been infected even if they don’t show symptoms. Or, researchers can use statistical methods to infer the total number of infections based on what’s known about the number of confirmed cases and the estimates for asymptomatic infections.
“Serology studies generally produce lower estimates of infection-fatality rates, and statistical models tend to be higher,” Meyerowitz-Katz says.
Meyerowitz-Katz’s has shown his workings-out in a blog post for Medium.
For my part, I’ll stick with the CDC’s estimate of 0.26%, about 2.5 times higher than the IFR of the average seasonal flu. Here’s how the CDC reached that figure, as summarised in USA Today:
In May, the CDC published a document titled “Pandemic Planning Scenarios,” with estimates about the virus to help modelers and public health officials. It included estimates of the death rate for infected people who show symptoms and of the percentage of people who were infected but asymptomatic.
The CDC document stressed the values are estimates, not predictions of the effects of the virus, and don’t reflect the impact of changes in behavior or social distancing.
“New data on COVID-19 is available daily,” the document said. “Information about its biological and epidemiological characteristics remain limited, and uncertainty remains around nearly all parameter values.”
The document includes five scenarios. The first four are varying estimates of the disease’s severity, from low to high, while the fifth represents the “current best estimate.”
The range of estimates put the fatality rate for those showing symptoms between 0.2%-1%, with a “best estimate” of 0.4%.
It also places the number of asymptomatic cases between 20%-50%, with a “best estimate” of 35%.
By combining the two estimates, the estimated overall fatality rate of those infected with the virus – with and without symptoms – would be 0.26%.
Laura Dodsworth’s Art Project
Artist and photographer Laura Dodsworth has started documenting the impact of the lockdown through a variety of different mediums. She’s written about the project in Spiked:
A choir of lockdown luvvies bemoan the demise of the arts, while arguing that lockdown didn’t start early enough, wasn’t strict enough, and shouldn’t be ending now. Of course lockdown was going to kill the arts, along with many other industries and livelihoods. In the end, if we want to resurrect the arts world, the only hope is to depart the Theatre of Death, staggering, blinking, into the daylight. It was quite a show, but it’s almost over – daily deaths are now in the double figures in the UK.
You can visit her website here.
Why Aren’t More People Going to the Pub?
According to a poll, only 5% of Britons have visited a pub since they re-opened. Why so few? Presumably because the above Times cartoon sums up how many Britons are feeling, having been subjected to months of unrelenting ‘death porn’ by The BBC.
But this email from a reader also contains a clue. Going to the pub is actually a miserable experience, given all the pointless rules that have put been in place.
Just back from a very unpleasant experience this evening, meeting old friends at my local pub in Kingston, the Druid’s Head. As I entered the pub, a young girl aged about 20 insisted I “scan the QR code” or text my details to their mobile number for “NHS track and trace”. It was farcical! When I explained I was joining a group of friends, she took ages looking on her iPad to confirm the booking before I was allowed entry.
As I joined my old friends (sadly all of them are hugely pro-lockdown), they would not shake my hand and my mate’s gf would not do a usual hug to greet me. She was paranoid I might touch her beer and infect it
I was allowed to order drinks at the bar, but could not carry them to our table. Only bar staff were authorised to do this. As if in some way, this increases the risk of spreading Covid. Of course, they had the obligatory Perspex screens on the bar (with massive gaps to pay through).
As you can imagine conversation was riveting. My friends blamed Boris for not locking down earlier. My mate’s gf said very defiantly, “We are going to be living like this for a VERY LONG TIME!” Almost as if she wanted to live this way forever.
My mate and his gf had a bottle of antibacterial spray on the table. I’m not exaggerating when I say they must have used this about ten times in the space of an hour. Constantly, obsessively spraying and rubbing their hands with it. I joked and said, “Careful, you‘ll run out in an hour!” They weren’t amused.
As we left the pub, they would not touch any door handles and only used their elbows to open doors. As we said our goodbyes outside, they offered me some of their hand spray. When I said no, they looked shocked. “But you’ve touched things!” they exclaimed. Then they tried to forcibly spray my hands! WTF! The look of horror on their faces because I refused their spray. They could not believe I would dare refuse it. It was neurotic behaviour to the nth degree. I despair.
Feeling thoroughly depressed now. My mental health has taken a battering for what should have been a fun catch up. I won’t be seeing them again in a hurry. Please tell me this is just a nightmare and not real.
Meanwhile, the poor residents of Leicester are being grassed up by the locals when they sneak out to pubs in neighbouring areas. Apparently, the giveaway is when they cheer Jamie Vardy scoring a goal.
The Barrel of a Gun
On Saturday night, when I’d had a few too many, I produced a slightly unhinged Twitter thread about the Cultural Revolution. Here it is for those who missed it.
1/ Thought I’d do a thread about reasons to be cheerful about the Cultural Revolution. All of these are variations on the same theme: the Red Guards have seized cultural power, but not political power.
2/ It’s a coup in which the revolutionaries have secured the public broadcaster, but not the military. They don’t have a monopoly over the legitimate use of force – they can’t murder or imprison counter-revolutionaries, just cancel them – and that means the coup will fail.
3/ Take universities, art schools, dance schools, drama schools, colleges of further education, etc. The coup has been 100% successful in those institutions. There’s literally zero tolerance for any dissent from Woke orthodoxy across the HE sector.
4/ But the timing of the revolutionaries isn’t great. >50% of those institutions will shortly be facing an existential crisis because of Covid. Travel restrictions will mean fewer non-British students, exacerbated by the fact that EU nationals will no longer get the fee break.
5/ And a lot of students who’ve accepted places will defer for a year, what with lectures and tutorials delivered online, campus social life hampered by stupid social distancing rules, nightlife in university cities non-existent. So most universities are facing a perfect storm.
6/ >50% won’t survive unless they can attract more students in 2021 and persuade the Govt to bail them out. So what do they do? They make it crystal clear that if you’re not a member of a victim group you’ll be demonised from day one. Make a pass at a girl? You’re a rapist.
7/ Voice the mildest dissent from the BLM policy agenda – you think it might not be a great idea to defund the police, for instance – and you’re a racist. Say you think JK Rowling might have a point and you’re a transphobe.
8/ At a time when the sector needs to attract as many new students as it can – and persuade a Conservative Government to bail it out! – it has doubled down on hard Left anti-capitalist gobbledegook and created an aggressively hostile environment for anyone to the right of Corbyn.
9/ So the good news is at least half of these Woke-us Dei religious seminaries will go bankrupt (assuming the Govt holds it nerve). The pipeline the cult has been using to pump lobotomised activists into the workforce is about to be bombed.
10/ The Professor of Whiteness Studies at the University of Central Bedfordshire will lose his £120,000-a-year, taxpayer-subsidised job and end up driving an Uber, where his ability to make converts will be confined to drunk couples snogging on the back seat.
11/ What about schools? The coup has been 100% successful in schools, too. Private and state. So many people have sent me documentary evidence that their children’s schools are now teaching the BLM Gospel, with heretics being burnt at the stake, I’ve stopped collecting it.
12/ So children will be bombarded with anti-British, Neo-Marxist propaganda from 9am to 3.30pm five days a week. They’ll be taught that British history is an unbroken litany of oppression, exploitation and self-deception. The message will be: “Hate your country and yourself.”
13/ But with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet – teachers, comedians, the BBC, the Premier League, Hollywood, etc. – most teenagers are bound to reject this dogma. Counter-cultural revolutionaries like Jordan Peterson will have the added glamour of being outcasts.
14/ And the more Woke the metropolitan elite becomes, the more likely right-wing populists are to win elections. Working class voters see this puritanical self-flagellation (we’re such sinners!) for what it is – a way for high-caste whites to differentiate themselves from them.
15/ It’s an expression of snobbish contempt dressed up as a self-righteous crusade. And the more left-wing parties embrace this nonsense, the more they alienate traditional working class voters. I think Trump will win in November.
16/ So absent an actual coup, the High Priests of the Intersectionality Cult will never obtain political power. And even though the process will be slow, right-wing politicians will gradually turn off the financial faucets that are funding this religious movement.
17/ Another asset for the counter-revolutionary side is that the people the Red Guards go after are often the smartest people in their fields/professions. Brilliant academics, teachers, actors, community organisers, comedians, etc., are being cancelled every day.
18/ And the upshot is that they become highly-motivated Generals in the counter-revolution. In the Soviet Union, picking off the Communist Party’s most gifted opponents worked because they were imprisoned or murdered. But just cancelling people isn’t nearly as effective.
19/ So this Maoist moment in which the Red Guards seem to be sweeping all before them could be a last hurrah. They’ve seized an important bridgehead, but haven’t secured their supply lines. It’s the French Revolution without the guillotine.
20/ I don’t mean to sound glib. I know 100s of good people are being blacklisted every day at the behest of rage mobs. It’s McCarthyism on steroids. But take heart. Join the resistance. Our opponents have immersed themselves in Foucault, but not Machiavelli. We will win.
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:
- ‘We need a cholera-style investigation to fully understand spread of COVID-19‘ – Excellent piece by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine arguing that we need a more forensic, on-the-ground investigation of how the virus is transmitted, using John Snow’s investigation of the London cholera outbreak in 1854 as a model
- ‘Coronavirus could cause 35,000 extra UK cancer deaths, experts warn‘ – The BBC reports on the findings of DATA-CAN, the Health Care Research Hub (HDR UK) for Cancer, but the headline is misleading. It should say “Lockdown could cause 35,000 extra Uk Cancer deaths”
- ‘The New Truth‘ – Great piece in the Tablet about why it’s impossible to debunk the claims of Woke activists with science and reason
- ‘The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals‘ – Interesting preprint suggesting a genetic explanation for why BME people are more susceptible to coronavirus. You don’t mean… it can’t be… that it is has nothing to do with ‘systemic racism’?!?
- ‘England & Wales 2020 Mortality Statistics in Context‘ – Excellent analysis of the 2020 excess deaths data for Weeks 1- 25 by Robert Wilson for Hector Drummond Magazine. He finds that of the 54,365 total, 9,463 were not due to COVID-19, but due to the effective closure of the NHS to non-Covid patients
- ‘Three pubs are forced to close because customers test positive for coronavirus‘ – The Mail reports that three pubs have had to close after customers tested positive for the virus
- ‘Pupils shun extra wellbeing lessons‘ – Quite right, too. They get enough touchy-feely gobbledegook on the BBC
- ‘Cash crisis leaves 13 universities on brink of collapse‘ – Story in the Times based on a report by the IFS. Only 13? I think it’ll be closer to half the total (see my Twitter thread above)
- ‘Revealed: the high-risk COVID-19 cities where going out is on the rise‘ – Handy guide to those cities where it’s still possible to have fun, based on requests to iPhones for walking directions. Top of the list is Bradford, followed by Portsmouth, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester
- ‘The tyranny of cancel culture‘ – Good piece by Brendan O’Neill in Spiked saying Trump is right about the “political weapon” of “cancel culture” – the totalitarian thirst for “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees”.
- ‘Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID-19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line‘ – Interesting paper from Professor Michael Levitt, among others, confirming that the rise and fall of infections and deaths follows the same pattern wherever the virus breaks out
- ‘Letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University‘ – Read a letter the Free Speech Union has written to Professor Stephen Toope, V-C of Cambridge, asking for clarification about what speech is protected under the University’s free speech policy, given that it appears to be one rule for Dr Gopal and another for Dr Starkey
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
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 re-opened, 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. Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all. 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. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Note to the Good Folk Below the Line
I enjoy reading all your comments and I’m glad I’ve created a “safe space” for lockdown sceptics to share their frustrations and keep each other’s spirits up. But please don’t copy and paste whole articles from papers that are behind paywalls in the comments. I work for some of those papers and if they don’t charge for premium content they won’t survive.
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 usually takes me several hours to do these updates, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here. (Please don’t email me at any other address.) I’ll try and get another update done on Thursday.
And Finally…
You can listen to James Delingpole and me putting the world to rights in the latest episode of London Calling. I spend the first few minutes enthusing about Hamilton, having seen it for the first time on Sunday night. This was the filmed version of the Broadway production on Disney+, obviously, not the actual musical.
When Hamilton made its debut in 2015, it was considered a liberal work of art and enthusiastically celebrated by President Obama. But given the escalation of hostilities in the culture war since George Floyd’s death and the leftwards shift of the Overton Window, it now plays like a pointed rebuttal of the BLM narrative.
Part of that narrative, don’t forget, is that American history began in 1619, not 1776, and the Revolution was fought not to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression but so rich Southern landowners could continue to profit from the slave trade, given its imminent abolition in the British Empire. According to this version of US history – the one institutionalised by the text books of Howard Zinn and taught in every American high school – African-Americans were never participants in America’s story, only its victims. The Founding was not a huge step forward in the recognition of the universal rights of man, but a lynchpin in the system of white supremacy. The Founding Fathers were not philosopher-kings, but evil capitalist slave-owners.
How refreshing, therefore, to watch a musical in which the Founding is portrayed as the beginning of American history and celebrated as an event in which Americans of all different races participated. In Hamilton, the African-American cast members aren’t victims; rather, they are leading participants in America’s origin story. It’s a recasting of that story to make it fully inclusive and multicultural, which is the opposite of the white supremacist script that BLM activists want everyone to stick to. And the central character is the First Secretary of the US Treasury, the engine of American capitalism.
Needless to say, Lyn-Manuel Miranda, the wunderkind impresario who wrote Hamilton, is already coming under fire from Woke activists. You can read a summary of this attempt to cancel Hamilton here. I fear it won’t be long before Disney+ withdraws the film and issues a grovelling apology. Watch it while you can.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/07/nearly-failed-simple-covid-test/
How I very nearly failed the simple Covid test
ONE OF THE COMMENTS:
David Martin
7 Jul 2020 6:39AM
I cannot help but suspect that the increased rate of testing in Leicester has led to to the local shutdown there. More testing means, unsurprisingly, that it will be found that more people will have the virus.
What has not been made clear is how many of those testing positive in Leicester are really ill and how many simply have a mild form of the disease.
I would be more than a little reluctant to submit to a test because an increase in the number of infections is used by those in authority, it seems, to spread fear in society and take actions which further restrict our freedoms.
I would go as far as to say rather being a selfish thing to refuse the test, it is a sensible thing to do to avoid adding to this monster that has been created by a government that is seriously out of its depth.
I love that people are starting to get this other than us
Spotted this in the comments:
No way will half the nation get up before 9am on a day the otherwise have no need to do so.
Well, I’m damn sure I won’t at least – This must be what’s mean by an ‘Intrusive’ technique.
That was my immediate reaction too!
This is unreal. https://www.lockdowntruth.org/post/how-to-respond-to-an-outbreak
Hahaha.
HUGO RIFKIND – In-your-face rulebreakers are out of control
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/in-your-face-rulebreakers-are-out-of-control-2m8rfg7hj
AGAIN THE COMMENTS!
Unfortunately even the comments are behind the paywall.
Would you be able to give us a brief gist, without cutting-and-pasting?
Here are some of the best, sorry for the delay! Right Flanking 1 DAY AGO The bottom line Hugo, is that most people now know that COVID doesn’t threaten them. They’re not that worried if they get it. And they’re right to think that because the truth (that the government doesn’t like to publicise) is that your chances of dying from COVID or even being seriously ill from it are minuscule unless you are in a very small subset of the population that is vulnerable. And it’s that dawning of realisation that coronavirus isn’t Ebola or smallpox or bubonic plague combined with a increasing suspicion that the authorities have both overreacted and been incompetent that leads to a little rebellion, an urge to regain control of your own decisions and risk assessment. And my guess is that the more the busybodies exhort people to wear a mask or keep you distance or keep working from home the more likely it is that they won’t. · Moor Park 1 DAY AGO Odd – I can’t remember Hugo having a go about social distancing at the BLM mob, or the Met police clapping on Westminster Bridge. Both of these rule-breaking incidents occurred when the virus was… Read more »
Thanks. Even though some of them seem to accept the need for the anti-social distancing measures, the overall tone is encouraging!
Spot on first comment. Good that they’re bringing up those clapping on Westminster bridge – that was the first time I noticed they were being selective with the “guidelines”
Did you miss Neil Ferguson and Dominic Cummings giving two fingers to the guidelines?
The Westminster bridge clapping happened before Professor Lockdown and Cummings gave their own two fingers
While Simon Dolan lost the first round.
It basically confirmed that the Public Health Act, used to close the country, was “legally used” according to the judge.
However Section 20 on that act says the council needs to compensate any business it closes due to controlling infection diseases.
It needs a group litigation pile on with businesses all suing their council.
But the Councils are not using the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. I know this as I’ve been in communication with a few local authorities around this way and have had some replies and waiting for more – all the correspondence has been posted on here as and when they happen. They also admit guidelines are not law and not enforceable but they will do it anyway. They cannot also supply any risks assessments done to back-up their pre-opening checklists, operating restrictions etc. The council Environmental Health Officers visit premises, give verbal “advice” and basically browbeat and bully the owner/operator into adhering to whatever they are told to do by the EHO verbally on threat of being shut down. But the councils do not have the power to do this verbally as the legislation says everything MUST be in writing and a sous ay the local authority has to pay compensation too cover any monetary losses caused by the restrictions. There is also a long list of protocols to be followed prior to restrictions being placed onto the business including tests (which don’t exist), written notices as per the Secretary of Health’s format (don’t exist), notices signed by… Read more »
I spoke to a lawyer and while they said on the face of it, the council are liable it will take a test case to sort it out. The “lockdown compensation” train is just starting.
I think it will take a law firm to get some people together and start it. As you say individually the council are just avoiding the issue and swatting away the small business owners who have been thrown under the bus.
All said small business owners need to do is organise and unite.
I wonder if doing that would be a better approach for Simon Dolan than going back to a bought-and-sold judge?
Good idea!
I would suggest it to him, but I’m sure he knows what he is doing. Plus I’m not on Twitter/fb etc.
I will suggest it! An Annie may mail at a Simon!
A US style ‘class action lawsuit’ should be on their mind for last orders, methinks
They might have all these procedures internally to shut the business down but the act itself is faulty straight forward. I hope the Council’s and government and half the cabinet spend the rest of their days getting pummelled in court. This disaster our handling is right up there with tony Blair and his “dodgy dossier war”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/06/government-stop-publishing-daily-tally-people-tested-coronavirus/
Government to stop publishing daily tally of people being tested for coronavirus
So we can’t blame future stupid lockdowns on increased testing. I never knew trust could decline to negative territory.
But it reads the other way round. If they’re testing people more than once and publishing the number of tests done, rather than the number of people tested, the number will be much higher.
Baroness Harding, …. defended the decision not to test close contacts of those with the virus, arguing that it might undermine instructions to self-isolate.
Then what’s the point of testing??
Her name rings a bell. Covering up child abuse iirc
Nowt to do with child abuse. She was CEO of Talk Talk which had a major security breach where the details of their customers were compromised. Was fined by the Information Commission.
whoops sry who am I thinking of..
Seems insupportable as the French say. If you test positive, surely an incentive to isolate? If you test negative, why should you isolate anyway if the test is any good?
If they claim it takes a couple of day for the newly infected to show positive on the test, then delay the test (which will be the normal case anyway). But surely it’s an incentive to have a test if it allows you back out again if you are negative.
This could be also part of a plan to stop media sensationalism.
My theory is that Boris and the gangs plan is to now insist they did what they could, without admitting the lockdown was a shambles, while slowly they unlock the country regardless of any media pressure. And the best way to avoid the pressure is to make reporting on numbers harder.
They can of course occasionally let slip some figures as justification for some local lockdowns to appease the more fearful members of the public, or leak some reports to justify any actions they are taking if they agree with them.
Has Bill gates approved the government’s escape route?
That was also my theory up until a week or so ago, after but the Leicester lockdown (with the suggestion that it won’t be the only one) combined with what appears to be increased media agitation for compulsory mask-wearing over the last few days, I really don’t know what the government’s plan is and am not sure they do either…
I have a horrible feeling that the WHO report on airborne transmission (on the BBC’s site today) will be used as the trump card to justify compulsory masks. The only “logical” reason for this (from a narrative-maintaining, political damage-limitation perspective) is an attempt – likely a futile one, regardless – to appease the many voices in the media who think the unlocking is “reckless”, “too soon”, etc. etc. by doing something that appears to be cautious and “following the science”.
Plus think of the economy. Since we no longer make many cars or aero engines, compulsory masks will be a major growth industry.
In the Dolan case, given the Government admitting that there was no legal requirement for schools to close and SAGE advice being that school closure/ openings do little to transmit the Wuhan Flu – simple question – why haven’t at least some schools had the balls to reopen ?
Or have I missed something?
Good point!
Easy. Teachers unions all hate the Tories and they are all sitting at home on full pay.
And teachers hate teaching, so what would you do?
Insurance.
Lots of small businesses round our way want to reopen, but can’t because there us no way they can implement the guidelines.
Yes, guidelines. That’s the fiendish part of it. It isn’t law, so the government isn’t responsible, but if you don’t obey the guidelines, your insurers won’t cover you, so you can’t operate.
Can insurance be crowd- funded?
Some have reopened.
Tories are evil therefore everything they might suggest, do the opposite. That’s basically the thought process.
Indeed that is a fine plan.
Apparently the majority of teachers actually hate kids, and don’t care about their education.
Who knew?
Probably doesn’t seem much point now. Normally, summer hols would start after next week. If anything’s been put in place for catching up in August, I don’t think we’ve been told much about it, other than a bit of noise in the press about free meals. Doesn’t mean to say schools haven’t been quietly getting on with preparing stuff though.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-wants-wealth-tax-to-pay-for-coronavirus-crisis-tdwctnnm3
Labour wants wealth tax to pay for coronavirus crisis | News | The Times
Now there’s a surprise.
What wealth? Thanks to anal retentives like them and the government, they’ve destroyed wealth. Inconvenient that.
Apparently several billionaires have increased their fortune by millions during this fiasco. It would be very fitting to start with them but I wouldn’t hold much hope.
Nor me. They’ll be offshore anyway.
Nah, ain’t gonna happen. They’ll leave and of course what about Labour’s donors? They won’t be able to bite the hand that feeds them.
Who cares if they leave?
An Inconvenient Truth.
I’ve no problem with that.
Why? Also, define”wealth”
Wealthy is having more money than me. That do you?
It does and it’s exactly what I thought the real answer would be. Thank you for the honesty.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pupils-shun-extra-wellbeing-lessons-8hmfngfbl
Pupils shun extra wellbeing lessons | News | The Times
THE COMMENTS!
Could you include a couple please Hawk?
· Here are some of the best, sorry for the delay! · Midlander 1 DAY AGO ‘…expected pupils to show emotional issues…’ Oh please. Children are resilient – they are not going to be traumatised by a few months off school. What is with this endless search to identify non-existant emotional damage? In encouraging this constant navel-gazing, we risk a generation of fragile, vulnerable children, unable to cope when life throws up a real problem. · Canada Goose 1 DAY AGO The late Vera Lynn’s generation lived through six years of uncertainty, separation from loved ones – children evacuated, mainly menfolk away fighting, death, destruction of homes, loss of jobs and hoped for futures. They came out of it and built the Welfare State and the NHS. All we’ve been asked to do is sit on the sofa for three months. Get a grip. · John Woodhouse 1 DAY AGO Why are so many people trying to talk us into a mental health crisis. If it continues, folk with real mental health issues are going to be missed in the deluge. It’s ok to be sad and bitter if things go wrong. It’s a natural reaction. It’s not ok to be constantly sad when there is no… Read more »
The people who run the Wellness Industry need help.
Plus of course they want the counseling contracts with the local schools. Pfui!
A report on Simon Dolan’s court case in the Critic:
https://thecritic.co.uk/no-right-answers-only-judgments/
Excellent article.
As it says, roll on the public enquiry.
My mental health is starting to take a real battering too. I have lost so many friends to bedwetting, still refusing to come out of their houses.
Get some new friends! The world contains many sane people, but you have to look for them! Sanity starts on this site, spread the word, dump the zombies, live again!
Lockdownitis may be incurable, at least for some.
I suspect a strong element in this is the balance of control between the conscious and subconscious mind. The subconscious is firmly controlling the sheep. A strong instinctive self-defense mechanism has kicked-in, similar to the kind of response you may get if you tell the same people that having fewer children might be more effective than paying for carbon-offset gas. When this instinct defends itself as the truth becomes clearer, we will probably find that the LS enemies become targets. We are still just animals mostly.
The fear message is very effective. Weeks before I discovered this place, I’d been working out that it was largely nonsense and the fear seemed completely unjustified. To be honest, mostly because only two weeks in I was beginning to think that we only had a couple more weeks before economic disaster, so I went looking. I’m completely confident that I know more about this bloody virus than most, but I do still watch the BBC regularly and so my monkey brain still tries to tell me to be scared.
Give up the bbc big guy
Why do you pay these pricks to propagandise and control you?
bbc has a long history of allowing and covering up CHILD ABUSE
I’m getting there. But what would I do without my hour in the morning of raising my blood pressure over a cup of coffee?
you’d have a lower blood pressure without listening to the bbc that’s for sure!!
I restrict myself to about ten minutes of BBC a week. This is just to remind myself, that it is still as bad as ever. I know it shouldn’t, but it still surprises me, when I notice that the Beeb still manages to sink ever lower.
Ha! I think my blood pressure is always high now with occasional lulls reading through comments such as these
Have a look at the Guardian comments section. At least you can raise your blood pressure free!
If that merely makes you despair, there’s the Telegraph. Some of the commenters are so smug and self-righteous they must raise my BP at least 10 points.
Remember Jimmy Saville, OBE, Jim’ll Fix It?
chief wizard pedo in the bbc at the time. plenty under him and still knocking about at the bbc
Like you I keep an eye on the BBC, usually first port of call to see what they are up to now. The propaganda seems to be getting more and more transparent. Similarly to you, even though I know the facts, at the end of a BBC article I still sometimes panic and think “I wonder if I have got this all wrong”. The thought normally persists for no more than two seconds before logic overcomes it. Sheep never have this doubt. Like blind support for their football team and hatred of the local rival supporters, or voting for the red/blue team blindly every election, their faith overrides all else.
Glad it’s not just me thinking that after seeing hysterical story after one another. But that’s the thing, if enough evidence would come to the fore proving us wrong, we would accept it! Whereas all the lockdown luvvies no matter what emerges is simply irrelevant to them.
‘Faith’ is the word. Toby, could you re-publish that excellent article on Covid as the new, intolerant, persecuting religion?.
The message is certainly strong. I had a bad dry cough around April time, not something I’d normally bother about, but this this one made me think about what would happen if I died. I have a 4yr old daughter so it matters a bit more that I try to stay alive these days. I spent the night sleeping on my front and the next day realised that I was just being daft over a wee cough.
The good news is that I’m still here and fully recovered but I was definitely affected by the constant fearmongering.
You might have had the infection. I had a weird sudden chest infection in mid March. It was v. mild, didn’t stop me going about my business (wasn’t one of those “hibernate under the duvet for two weeks” things). Lasted no more than 2 or 3 days. But it wasn’t imaginary.
My son and DiL were both ill in January. She had a couple of weeks off work with a bad cough but she is normally susceptible to bad chest infections. He just felt “off” and assumed his out-of-sortsness was due to post-Christmas detox!
Too true, particularly as lists of Covid symptoms are careful to include those of every trifling ailment known to mankind.
I catch the odd clip. No lizard brain engages. I just get RAGE. BLAZING RAGE. Seriously I have to leave rooms where the BBC is happening because things get thrown – much bigger things than the flipflops I started with.
Went to the pub on Sunday and was surrounded by three monster tv screens screens all spewing out the BBC COVID NEWS. Had to leave and I went half a mile down the road, only to find the next pub hadn’t reopened. Went home.
I hate pubs and cafes that have the rolling news going on in the corner! It’s completely unnecessary and, worse, it draws your eye and distracts from the conversation.
Hang in there. Losing friends by being sceptical on so many things we are told to believe does get easier.
Here’s a cracking quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that helped me recently:
‘Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people’
I learnt who my real friends were. Some of them are still pretty scared, but they understand more than most that we can’t give into fear fully. Heck a few visited my home a few nights ago and one of them I didn’t expect to at all as him and his girlfriend have been a bit more paranoid than most.
Many of my so called friends basically gave up/in, without questioning anything publicly, and seem annoyed by any challenges to the main stream media story. At least 1 was a hypocrite and saw another friend 30+ miles away during the midst of lockdown whilst publicly decrying anyone breaking it.
‘We have found only two randomised control trials in the primary literature on the use of face masks to reduce onward transmission; one was underpowered, and the other showed significant reduction when adjusted for actual mask usage in a posthoc analysis.’
‘Congratulations Venki Ramakrishnan. You win bedwetter-of-the-week.’
‘Bedwetter-of-the-week’? This must be one of the understatements of the year! This apparently eminent scientist with his flimsy evidence and ill-formed opinions will doubtless provide the fig leaf for the Government soon to force us into muzzles everywhere outside our own homes.
It’s good to point to the weak research but as many people including me pointed out BTL on the previous post, just follow the money!
This is absolutely not ‘bedwetting’ but something much more sinister. The epidemic is over but the totalitarianism continues.
Every morning it’s still a fresh new hell. So our apparently Nobel Prize winning Prof’s argument is:
You’re right – when authoritarianism like this comes from the influential elite, it’s worse than bed-wetting.
Wasn’t it in the same announcement that he said the earth is flat, you can get sunbeams from cucumbers, lead can be turned into gold, and snake oil is a sovereign remedy for chickenpox?
Follow the science!
The earth is not a perfect sphere, which is the conspiracy.
I called him (Ramakrishnan) a gobshite on yesterday’s page, and compared him to Josef Mengele and Ewen Cameron. See no reason to change my mind.
Nullius in verba, Scoldilocks The Doom Goblin and her death cult are losing traction so this is next.
Uptick for Scoldilocks!
Stolen but still a good one! I think Doom Goblin captures her essence and has a nice Troll element too.
Good stuff. I think I heard ‘the Tinpot Despot’ on UKColumn too.
Should it be “Quack Doctor of the Week”?
And yet on 6th July, following a FoI request, the Department of Health have admitted they hold no evidence to show that face masks or face coverings prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. So why wear a mask?
Have you a link to that Carrie?
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/evidence_supporting_the_use_of_f
Someone posted it on Toby’s Twitter account this evening. I found the above link by googling..
At the top of the link it says they do not have the information requested…
Thanks Carrie – how dishonest of them.
From one of the above papers, this was the best of their “proof” I could spot. See paragraph 13 here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892043/S0484_Transmission_of_SARS-CoV-2_and_Mitigating_Measures.pdf
The whole report reads like thir advice is based on a bunch of hearsay and copying other countries. Doesn’t sound very scientific to me!
Because I say so!
WHO have done a complete about turn and guess what, the virus is transmitted in air…
Link, please?
Viruses are not transmitted in air.
If that were true then they could lock us up forever…
There should be two separate categories.
Bedwetter of the Week
And Shill/Liar of the Week (most weeks this would have to go to Handjob, I concede, but there are often a few heavy contenders)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-uk-news-professor-chris-whitty-no-masks-advice-a9374086.html
So 4 months on:
Still not sure how many are asymptomatic
Still not sure if you can catch it twice
Still not sure what the ifr is
Despite tonnes of data that means we do know all of these.
But yep, somehow enough “research” has been done for a complete U turn on facemasks. Which coincidentally keep the fear factor high.
They must think we are absolute idiots.
Unfortunately, most (other!) people prove them right.
A revolting article from Dublin’s Irish Times. It is interesting though to get a glimpse into the mechanics of the propaganda machine used to manipulate the public into accepting ever increasing restrictions on their liberty. You have to wonder if there is any end to this totalitarian madness.But they seem hell bent on pushing it as far as they can.
Oh yuk!
I can’t stand ads, so I don’t listen to radio and my tv licence died, so I’ve no idea what “normal” people voluntarily subject themselves to day in and day out. No wonder they’re so compliant.
Same here. I’ve seen the effect of unremitting Coronaporn on people who used to be quite sane.
Am I the only person who’s given up watching Channel 4 and all its baby channels because of the revolting little message in the top left-hand corner? I know I’m not missing much, because most of their programmes are hogwash anyway, and those that aren’t get repeated.
Instead, I watch Dr Finlay’s Casebook on YouTube, harking back to the days when doctors cared about people.
You are doing the right thing, but if you really need to know you can always visit the BBC website. On second thoughts, best if don’t bother.
Thanks. I can get the same nonsense at a glance from the Grad. I usually have a look first thing so I know what’s the lie of the day.
I can see why you make light of it Toby, but Leicester people being treated like lepers by the rest of the country is not funny. Friends and family have had their holidays cancelled. Both of my sisters and my sister’s best friend are all now unable to go on holiday due to cancellations.
How’s those plans for your trip to Venice coming along BTW?
As the Telegraph article hints, it is not actually illegal (at least not as yet) for people from that part of the world to leave the red zone. The only limit is that they cannot stay overnight anywhere overnight outside the zone.
The police were apparently stopping motorists leaving the zone and asking them where they were going at the weekend. However, they cannot stop them from going to pubs if they want to. I was told this by my sister, who thought they were doing it as a deterrent.
At the weekend seven of the eight the Leicester city testing stations were located in a small area in the high density Asian part of the city. The local newspaper was today headlining that the textile industry was not to blame for the “surge”.
How well liked is the local paper? Is it doing a good job given the exceptional circumstances of lockdown you are in?
I mean do the police actual have the right to know where they are going at all? As far as my understanding of traffic stops goes you don’t have to tell them where you are going or coming from, but you do have to provide registration details and your name.
Is this part of new COVID laws that were forced into effect that the police/state has to know where you are going at all times?
The plan is to monitor and record everyone’s movements/location 24/7. This will be achieved by an implanted/injected chip and through saturation coverage of 5G. Of course, Bill Gates is in on this one.
A lot of signs seem to point that way and there’s certainly no evidence to prove otherwise.
Listen to Toby’s video ‘this is why we need FreeSpeechUnion.org’
https://twitter.com/SpeechUnion
Aaaaaaaaand there it is. The reason why any and all discussion on this topic is banned. The reason why no one must challenge the party line. Because doing so means we can work together and understand this virus. They don’t want that. They want us scared of the dark. They want this virus to be a boogeyman. You can’t be scared of what you know. But the unknown is a rope around your neck that leads you in any direction they desire.
‘complex’? How about ‘far less dangerous than we have led you to believe’?
A hoax that’s called.
You only need to look at a few graphs of the official stats to see that its progress is perfectly clear!
Pleased to note even the Grim Reaper is taking time out to chill and down a few pints now, this explains the falling death rate
re “The Barrel of a Gun”1/ Please tell me that The Professor of Whiteness Studies at the University of Central Bedfordshire isn’t real
2/ The Cancelled Generals also have a new recruiting office available on Parler. Cancelling isn’t as effective as it was.
For the great and glorious history of Whiteness Studies, you could start at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies –
Or, for a piquant contrast, you could feast your eyes on this:
https://www.bcu.ac.uk/social-sciences/research/identities-and-inequalities/research-clusters/black-studies
No wonder so many of our young people are such clueless wankers. If you brain hasn’t been turned into grey mush by the time you leave school, your time in one if these these so-called universities will most certainly finish the job.
Prof of Whiteness Studies sounds like something straight out of a Discworld novel.
I just wanted to point out that even as I was going through massive pains to come up with my best estimate of the U.S. rate, the CDC beat me to it. I came up with 0.004 and if you look at their current best estimate, it’s the same number. They released it before I published my blog post, and I feel silly having gone so far to “prove” what the CDC had already said. With our current numbers of “deaths” and “cases/infections” (they aren’t clear on that) 130,000/3,000,000 = 0.043 so both the CDC et. al. (and me) are aiming lower than that already. They estimated 23M have been infected which is how they came up with the guess of 0.004. Note that is less than half the 0.01 for seasonal flu. Here in Oregon we have 200 “deaths” (80 outside LCFs) and 10K “cases” which gives us a rate of 0.02. However, in the last two flu seasons we had one with 530 deaths and one with 14,344 infections. Did we even notice? Nope, the state hummed on as usual. It’s all madness, even in places where the virus barely dipped a toe in the water. Everyone everywhere… Read more »
Surely you need to x 100 to get a percentage for your figures and they would be based on CFR rather than IFR. 200 deaths from 10K cases is 2%. Sorry to question your figures but I though seasonal flu is also 0.1% not 0.01%.
Ah, that’s what I thought as well, but the actual math didn’t work out using the 100x. I was confused so I just used the actual numbers rather than multiplying by 100. My understanding is that seasonal flu is 1%, or 0.01. I’m NOT good at math and I always appreciate a second opinion, thank you!
Not a problem and completely concur – it is all madness! I go by the 0.26% IFR as all indications suggest it is pretty spot on so in line with a bad flu season but absolutely no reason whatsoever to inflict what they have on us all.
Two of Toby’s posts today work together in a really interesting way – the 81% asymptomatic rate in care homes and the National Geographic piece on the “use a computer to think of a number and then double it” approach to the IFR.
I’m quite sure that the main reason so many elderly were shipped out of hospitals into care homes was that everyone assumed that, if you were old and you had the virus, you must be sick and if you weren’t sick, you couldn’t have the virus. It’s understandable (though not forgivable) in the context of what we thought we knew at the time.
Meanwhile, if even the elderly, even the supposedly most vulnerable, have the viral infection at such high rates without noticing, then the IFR must be laughably small.
0.04 sounds low, but now credible.
But thank god the schools are mostly closed and the theatres can’t reopen and we all have to suffer being treated as lepers in every other walk of life, because imagine the Armageddon we would be facing if we carelessly let something that lethal sweep through the population!
Uptick for the sarcasm. My favourite weapon too. It’s the lowest form of wit, but amazing how many heads it sails right over.
Well, sorry if I offended you. I thought it was blunt enough to smack most people in the face, rather than sailing over their heads.
I think that’s the second time you’ve called me out for sarcasm. I apologise that I offend you so.
He gave you an uptick. So probably wasn’t offended. Crossed wires ?
Er… yes. Sorry. Site has been playing up for me and so when I read Nick’s comment I had zero apparent upticks, so I took it as snark.
Sorry Nick.
So nice that on this site people apologise when there is misunderstanding, and that there is no cancel culture 🙂
Armageddon. I suggest now would be a fine time for the Ruski’s to invade if they are going to. Aparently they floated a couple of ‘warships’ past our island in the earliest days of lockdown if I recall, front page news. I suspect they thought, nah not today – too easy.
Otherwise, I fail to see much point to all the Russia this and that. It’s as though our ‘leaders’ need us to have monsters under the bed, but only show us one at a time.
..especially as the British army is to be shrunk by 20%..
But what’s 20% of hardly anything.
lol
Point 18 in your Twitter thread is the one that bothers me most. We may not have got there yet, and maybe murdering the non-woke will stay a step too far, but imprisonment – I wouldn’t bet against that happening!
Apparently, Tom Hanks has no respect for me for not wearing a mask. Oh no!!! How am I going to sleep at night? Condescending, virtue-signalling tosser.
What respect have I for Tom Wanks?
Oh dear, that will make you Sleepless in ???????? !
CHAZ
But he removed his own tooth with an ice skate!!! On no that was in a film. Actors should zip it, they pretend to be people for a living.
They should have left him on that desert island.
Cruelty to islands!
They should have saved him rather than Private Ryan.
Is he the UN Ambassador for mask wearing?
It’s always been his burning ambition.
You should defer to Forrest Gump, what’s wrong with you?
lol
Was he in Dumb and Dumber?
Apparently, when life is like a box of chocolates some actors end up being the strawberry cream.
It is all unravelling, in ways that were fairly obvious at the time: a) most deaths simply brought forward by a few months, in the same way as catching any infection when very elderly and frail b) the largest single cause of deaths actually triggered by infections caught in hospitals and care homes c) ventilation (remember how it was all the government’s fault that we didn’t have enough?) positively harmful d) NHS and care homes running a mile from any accountability e) public policy dominated by people with no interest in a functioning economy (as long as they can shop online) f) a public sector on 100% pay and naturally not keen to go back to work.
It really is the revenge of the guardians. All employed by the State and quite happy to trash the economy.
And when more people begin to find out their jobs and livelihoods are gone, and they discover people like us, only too happy to tell them why, then the anger will begin. And the recriminations. And the blame…
Oh I hope so……..
It will happen.
We will sit and watch them tear each other to pieces, expose one another’s lies, denounce one another’s cruelties, and make one another crawl and eat dirt, and we will laugh and enjoy every moment if it.
Going to get a good tin of biscuits in for the show.
It looks like our university research system could do with a hearty scorched earth policy. That’s before moving on to the university brainwashing no sorry learning aspect of Toby’s tweets.
I think it’s time for bed, because the quote that’s in my head is Arnaud Almaric at the massacre of Béziers: “kill them all. God will find his own”.
I wouldn’t go that far, but from another angle it does ee-awaken my sympathy for the Cathars as a persecuted minority. I now know something of what they went through.
Hi the other half and I think that a lot of the psyop fear-mongering and social conditioning has been to make everyone easy to control when the ‘poop hits the oscillator’ as James Pilato (Media Monarchy) puts it.
Unless they plan to release a new virus in the autumn, I can’t see how the government are going to be able to get away from the fact that the deaths for this year will be statistically normal and that the lockdown with all its effects will have been for nothing – the ONS data is already showing deaths have now dropped under the 5 year average. Most in the vaccine world are saying it is likely to be January before any vaccine programme will be brought in, so how are the government going to string out all the restrictions from now till then??? When no one is dying from the virus any more?
No problem, Carrie. Reports over the last few days of a new swine flu and cases of bubonic plague in China. Given the level of fear already whipped up, it won’t be hard to convince people that these are also a serious threat and we should stay indoors wetting ourselves in fear.
I don’t know. This is interesting. Nobody (other than those here) seems to have any sense for numbers of deaths in context. 40+ thousand deaths sounds like a big number and it’s been used to set the narrative that Covid is a death sentence. The new narrative is that people are catching the virus. Therefore, naturally, they’re going to die, because it’s a death sentence (and if they don’t die, their granny surely will). Now that nobody is talking about numbers of hospitalisations/ICU admissions/deaths anymore, I’m just not sure how people are going to start to realise they’ve been conned unless there’s a major and heavily publicised media story about it.
Even the BBC is now quoting the 35,000 possible cancer deaths due to lockdown figure. Surely most people, even zealots, can do the simple math and realise that that’s nearly the number who have supposedly died ‘of’ covid?
And that that’s JUST cancer.
Yep, add the 16,000 or so excess deaths that were not marked down as due to Covid and you have 51,000 deaths due to the lockdown, which is already higher than the official Covid death count.
Perhaps not a new virus, but a new vaccine!
If the MSM report seasonal flu-like illness and deaths like they have for C19 then easy for the twats at HM GOV to insist we carry on with this farce to save NHS and unnecessary deaths. If you think about it how could they not. A hamster wheel of madness.
Easy when most people don’t have that information!
They are also being constantly bombarded with carefully selected words. The word “pandemic” is still routinely used by reporters. Blaming covid rather than the lockdown for the economic repercussions. It’s a constant dripping of misinformation and semantic hyperbole.
Sometime between last Wednesday and Thursday, positive test results were suddenly upgraded from being “cases” to being “infections”.
Officially, an “outbreak” consists of two positive results from the same location. Most people don’t know that and imagine an outbreak to consist of dozens of people dropping dead in the street.
“When no one is dying from the virus any more?“
No-one died “from“ covid. People passed away WITH a cold virus.
Get it right. Or wear your mask!
😘
I have to wear a face mask at work at all times, or full PPE during procedures. It’s really unpleasant, and so far from normal. It makes communicating difficult, especially with the elderly and those with accents. It makes you short of breath if you have to talk for a while, so you don’t. They also make reading facial expression impossible and simply the pleasure of seeing someone’s face has gone. From March to mid June we were forbidden to wear face masks on corridors or anywhere off the wards. We had to wear them with suspected and covid positive patients when providing personal care only. Then they became mandatory on all parts of the ward, but not outside them. Then when all bar the tiniest number of suspected covid patients were left we had to start wearing them everywhere on site, under government instruction. If I walk from my bike rack to the door of the building without one, with no one around I get shouted at by a security guard. If I choose to go out to sit on the grass for my lunch, I have to wear one and only remove it to eat and put it… Read more »
Hang on, you’re a nurse called Cruella?
Yes. That is odd.
Chin up. You’re better than they are, because you are right and know you are. They are still cowering in the dark, they will find their way. Eventually. But you, you are among the pioneers. To doubt yourself is natural. But you are not alone. We are here.
Thank you. Onwards!
Our daughter works in a hospital and she says wearing masks is bloody awful,last week when it was hot one of her colleagues passed out due to wearing one and my daughter and another member of staff came close to it.She has a bad headache a lot of the time,it makes her eyes,sore she gets a rash from the mask and generally feels very tired.The staff had a meeting with Occupational Health about their concerns but it went no further.There is a big ‘do as I say not as I do’ divide between management levels and the rest of the staff,Senior Sisters and Surgical managers often don’t wear face masks.
She used to really enjoy he job but I can see she has totally lost heart in it,she dreads going to work now.To add to the misery of the masks the NHS Trust has brought in major changes at her hospital under the Coronavirus legislation so as to avoid public and staff scrutiny and consultation,they say the the changes are only temporary but no-one believes that.Those that clap and collect money for the NHS really need to know how little the management care about patients and staff.
Can they not report their trust to the HSE? The fact that you have staff passing out and your daughter is getting bad heaches, sore eyes and skin rashes is a very bad sign and is a major breach of H&S policy.
Can you maybe ‘faint’ from wearing it one day? Or develop ‘asthma’ or some other get-out condition? GAD?
fucking idiots i would boycott them.
Poor you. Just hang on in there, but express your discontent whenever and wherever and to whomever you can. Don’t let them think you agree ir have accepted it. Think like a rebel, even if you are prevented by the totalitarian shits from acting like one.
One day all this idiocy is going to start to crumble. And when it goes, it will go quickly.
Don’t despair, folks. We are all in it together, against THEM. You are not alone.
Thank you. I will, and I do protest. I love my job but do loath so much about the NHS. The incompetence, lack of commitment etc. The trouble with the diefication of our health service is that it is now exempt from scrutiny and criticism at a time when it’s inadequacies have been laid bare. The NHS has made it clear that it is unable to continue to function when faced with a pandemic and that a legitimate solution in this situation is to abandon it’s duty of care to the public. Having demonstrated ourselves incapable of planning, or implementing effective strategy despite a lot of evidence that this shit happens fairly regularly we now expect the public to celebrate our 72nd year! How can we be thumping our chests!!??
Thank you for the encouragement, I will think of it when I march past Barry the boorish security guard!
Thank you one very much for your posts. I get the impression from speaking to people I know in the NHS that you are fair from being alone in your views.
The NHS is a mess and its got very little to do with funding. When we get the Non Player Characters saying that its either the NHS or the US system, they couldn’t be more wrong. The UK and US systems are both outliers in the world of healthcare systems. So much so that no other country has copied either. I read the book below a few years ago. It shows that many other countries have interesting and better ways of managing their healthcare. More importantly, they have better health outcomes than we do. Its a real eye opening book and highly recommended.
‘The Welfare of Nations’ by James Bartholomew
https://tinyurl.com/y7mkmjkz
Thank you again Cruella for sharing your frustration. I’m truly sorry that the job which you love is made so difficult by the bureaucracy and the mess.
The patients truly make up for the frustration, I just wish we could serve them better. I have heard about this book, it looks like a worthwhile read. Thank you.
An other “must read” is: Humankind – a hopefull history by Rutger Bregman. A book published in 2019 and a revelation. I think it also shows that the whole Covid-19 pandemic might very well be an example of a nocebo effect…
Can you tell me if the NHS has used hydroxychloroquine at all and if it is generally thought by staff that using ventilators is not the right policy and can do more harm than good in a covid patient?
Thanks
Remember the German commander in Dad’s Army: YOU are on the list!
And he will be, with all the other Covibullies.
Here’s what I intend to say if necessary: “Wearing a mask gives me panic attacks”. It immediately turns me into a victim, and in today’s world victims must always be believed.
I feel for you, Cruella. I’m writing this sat next to my day old daughter, wondering what kind of crazy world I’ve brought her into.
I was muzzled and my hands sanitised as soon as I entered the hospital, much to my disdain. Everybody in the hospital, from the receptionists to the workers in the WH Smith kiosk were muzzled.
I really feel for first time mothers in such places, they can’t even receive a reassuring smile from a midwife or nurse – add that to the fact that their anxiety may be further increased by having to repeatedly ingest one’s own CO2 for the duration of the stay, I can’t say it would be remembered as a happy experience.
They made you wear a mask while you were giving birth?
My partner gave birth via caesarean section. I had to wear a mask in the theatre but she was allowed to temporarily remove it, a small mercy related to oxygen intake I guess.
I couldn’t object much to a mask in theatre, but if they’re lapping masks on women and their partners as they go into the maternity wards…
Where’s the humanity of the health system gone? Is this because they’ve recognised that the bloody thing spreads mostly through hospitals?
Honestly, it’s a kind of madness. It’s as if large parts of society have joined up together all at once to pull their civilisation down ‘round their ears.
(Sorry – that last part has very little to do with you, Scotty. Congratulations on your new daughter!)
Masks are justifiably routine for surgery – but on the wards??
What’s the effect on a brand new baby when it’s constantly surrounded by a load of masked faces?!!!!!!
Total agreement Cruella. I’m an NHS neurology clinician facing more and more restrictions which stop me providing proper care for my patients. The outpatients department is used for something else so there are no rooms to see patients. Queues are growing and growing, patients suffering and nobody seems to care. Some will have tumours or serious neurological conditions which won’t be picked up and treated. We who question are seen as complainers, inflexible, not open to change…There’s a massive push towards doing all appointments by phone, thus relying on the verbal skills of the patients alone. The elderly, brain injured, neurologically impaired and learning disabled don’t have these verbal skills. Assessing patients medically means examining them, observing them, reading body language etc and I’m worried for my job if I diagnose wrongly because I’m forced to work with both hands tied behind my back. I wanted to continue my career a few years longer until retirement but I don’t think I can face the blind disregard for safe practice and I really don’t know what the underlying agenda is. How can you check for facial droop if the patient has a mask on?
Thank you for your insight here. That is a terrifying situation that you describe. It’s such a tragic irony; your patients are being “protected” from a virus that may only mildly affect them, but the hysterical response to said virus by the government and NHS officials is depriving them of the kind of care that could save their lives.
Heads must roll for this most appalling incompetence…
This sounds like insanity. I don’t envy you. Is this the NHS pen pushers driving this nonsense?! I am astounded more medical professionals aren’t speaking up.
They risk their careers if they speak up. Remember the letter Toby published from a doctor in Leicester a couple of days ago?
Yes, it contradicts everything we had previously established as best practice, namely to use evidence to weigh risk and provide the patient with their best option. I have no idea how you can do your work like that, it must be soul destroying. Have you written to the chief executive? Raised your concerns for patient safety and documented when you feel your ability is compromised by distancing rules? I have found the failure of my most senior medical colleagues to question, or challenge most distressing. I had trusted them implicitly before to try their best for each individual and now find that they have fallen in my estimation. I think they, like so many wealthy people are protected from the reality of the diasater meted out on people and will only realise the consequences when they have to eyeball the multitude of individuals they have let down in the months to come. I think they probably know this really which is why they refuse to dig down and question the narrative, as it provides them with the excuse they need and removes individual responsibility.
Thank you to you and TJS123 for posting about what you’re going through at work. I hope it is some comfort to you to know that people are reading this and realising, if they did not already, just how bad things are in the NHS and how distressing it must be to be prevented from doing your jobs properly.
I agree with you, Cruella. Write to your CEs and other bosses and document everything. Keep notes (if you have the time and energy!) Make it clear that they will never be able to hide behind ‘we didn’t know’. Who knows, it might give some of them pause.
p.s. Leave those cute little dalmations alone!
The Tablet article is excellent. Disturbing, but excellent. Bit pretentious in places, but don’t let that put you off (“Marrying the technical nomenclature of rational proof to the soaring eschatology of the sermon, it releases adherents from the normal bounds of reason”. In plainer English: “They like to sound rational but if that doesn’t work they switch instantly to Maoist screaming”.)
This is the most worrying bit: “The organs of reason and expertise have one by one, pledged their cultish loyalty to this new faith.” Once the institutions are not longer rational, what happens then? And here’s the depressing answer: “In all revolutions, the new thing struggling to be born makes use of the old system in order to overthrow it.” Key word being “revolution”. So not so much 1984 as 1789. Great.
‘The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals‘
“Interesting preprint suggesting a genetic explanation for why BME people are more susceptible to coronavirus.”
Hang on. Black people don’t have Neanderthal DNA. The study says the genes are mainly expressed in South Asians (~30%) and Europeans (~8%).
So it says the opposite of the quote.
I’d always understood that Neanderthal DBA was most common in Europeans and Cro Magnon DNA I. East Asians. May be wrong.
You’re both right, it’s not about Africans. The headline is misleading.The concluding para of the paper reads: ‘Among the individuals in the 1000 Genome Project, the Neanderthal-derived risk haplotypes is almost completely absent in Africa, consistent with that gene flow from Neandertals into African populations was limited and probably indirect (Chen et al. 2020). The Neandertal haplotype occurs in South Asia at a frequency of 30%, in Europa at 8%, among admixed Americans at 4% and at lower frequencies in East Asia. The highest frequency occurs in Bangladesh, where more than half the population (63%) carries at least one copy of the Neandertal risk variant and 13% is homozygous for the variant. The Neandertal variant may thus be a substantial contributor to COVID-19 risk in certain populations. Currently it is not known what feature in the Neandertal-derived region confers risk for severe COVID-19 and if the effects of any such feature is specific to current coronaviruses or indeed to any other pathogens. Once this is elucidated, it may be possible to speculate about the susceptibility of Neandertals to relevant pathogens. However, in the current pandemic, it is clear that gene flow from Neandertals has tragic consequences.’ It is an interesting… Read more »
The abstract of the Ellinghaus paper says the work showed an association with chromosome 3, where ‘SLC6A20 encodes a known interaction partner with angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)’, which has to do with the Cov 2 spikes. (The other association signal at chromosome 9 was located at the ABO blood group locus and a blood-group-specific analysis showed higher risk for A-positive individuals and a protective effect for blood group O. The latter seems not to have turned out to be significant though, don’t at present know why.)
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2020283
There’s a more detailed map, on which this one seems based, at Page 38 here:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2020283/suppl_file/nejmoa2020283_appendix_1.pdf
81 % of care home cases aymptomatic might be a surprise to the public who watch corona porn on sky and the BBC. I can add that in the three local EMI ( geriatric dementia ) homes which had covid19 outbreaks in April the fatatlity rate was less than 30 % of those with positive tests . Everyone of these residents was over 80 and all had multiple significant co morbitidies .
Today whilst checking on lab results in the office I listened to the BBC radio news . The headline was of course the Brazilian President having been diagnosed with covid19. The newsreader was so thrilled mentioning that Brazil had the second worst number of covid deaths ( forgetting it is a country of over 200 million ) . Can you imagine the excitement of BBC staff if Presdent Trump had Covid19 ?
Out of interest, in those care homes, were residents with breathing problems offered oxygen? (I don’t mean ventilators, I mean oxygen via cylinder and mask/nose ‘prongs’) One criticism in Sweden has been that care homes did not offer symptomatic patients any oxygen or anything that could be described as ‘treatment’ – they put people onto palliative care (morphine), effectively killing them… This has been reported by relatives of such residents..
They were all very elderly and had advanced dementia. . None displayed respiratory distress , and anyway if they had a ordinary bacterial chest infection with respiratory compromise you just would never consider giving oxygen for obvious reasons. It would be cruel.
I understand about the residents with dementia. The people referred to in Sweden were not dementia patients and there are some cases where the relative found out that palliative care had been started, objected, the palliative care was then stopped and the person made a full recovery!
Can I ask you all to keep an eye on this please:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zoki1xUKuY15JmPujZXd-mMjXn0K_2GM/view
It should be a pdf from PHE and is a damning piece of evidence against the tests but seems to suddenly be in perpetual updating mode – or have I just picked a bad time to look for it?
I just managed to look at it – and I downloaded it too just in case it disappeared 🙂 Haven’t read it yet though.
Thanks Edna. I can look at it if I download it.
Downloaded here no problem. Not sure how relevant it is.
It shows the covid tests are a pile of shite.
Maybe Toby can add it to his next update?
I’m fairly sure it was posted by someone on LS, with some comments, thus:
‘Updating PHE COVID-19 Diagnostic Test Protocols 11 April 2020‘
‘…….some discordant results have been identified.’
‘Summary of the initial results:
1. There is considerable diversity of molecular platforms, reagents, kits and assay performance conditions in PHE and NHS laboratories providing SARS-CoV-2 molecular detection
2. There is evidence of quality assurance difficulties for key reagents due to global supply chain issues
3. Shortages of swabs and transport medium have led to local variations in sampling practice which may impact on assay performance through the introduction of inhibitors into biochemical reactions
4. There is no evidence of viral genetic drift as a basis for altered sensitivity of assay
5. Enzyme performance from external suppliers has degraded compared with original validation performance.’
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zoki1xUKuY15JmPujZXd-mMjXn0K_2GM/view
In short, covid 19 diagnosis as late as 11 April was all over the shop, hopelessly unreliable.
So the lockdown was based on an incompetent piece of modelling, data from China which changed its case definition 7 times between February and March, data from Italy which downgraded its covid 19 mortality figures to 12% of the original figure, and diagnostic tests which were hopelessly flawed.
‘Why aren’t more people going to the pub?’ Well I got turned away from one of mine for refusing to have my temperature taken and since they’ve all been doing it around here that’s that for the time being. And now, shock horror, three pubs (I think it’s three) out of thousands have closed again after opening Saturday because someone in each tested positive, allegedly. The BBC (yeuch) even said that one of the pubs had even seen the results of infected person, which sounds suspicious already – why would you need to see the results? Loads of people are going to test positive. So here we go again, one infection, everything closed down. These are not people showing symptoms. They are not cases. Up until now I’ve handled lockdown mostly in good humour, but I’ve cracked. Now I despair. Doubly so because the mask narrative is being pushed and pushed relentlessly. It’s going to be mandatory. So how is that going to work in pubs and restaurants? And how’s it going to affect people like me who can’t wear the damn things? Am I now under house arrest forever?
Yes, it is difficult to keep hopeful.
Rather, the situation reminds me of one of those horror films in which a group of disparate people are caught in a terrible situation and, as each sub-group tries to get away, they fail, returning with knives in their back or with terribly mutilated faces and die as others watch on horrified. Never mind, you think, the main couple keep going and just manage to survive, until, just as they seem to have got away, they trip and fall into a trap filled with upwardly pointing knives
Thanks a lot Ian! That’s just the sort of cheering up we need right now.
Channel 70 on Freeview one of your favourites by any chance?
Nope – just a touch of reality to add to the gloom caused by our appalling government!
The Telegraph are referring to this one person as a “superspreader” LOL!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/07/customer-testing-positive-coronavirus-forces-three-somerset/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget
What’s amazing is that the business owners are saying he did the right thing to report himself. Clearly, they deserve each other!
The three pubs closing is a major non-story if you read the details. One pub closed because a customer later tested positive, the second because a delivery driver tested positive, and the third because a friend’s wife (or something equally far-fetched) tested positive. But the way it’s been reported suggests that they’ve all suffered enormous outbreaks as a result of being open for one day. People seem to have forgotten the relatively long incubation period of the virus – just this morning I heard two ladies discussing how people had got infected from going to the pub at the weekend…
I’d read it as one asymptomatic positive test result could temporarily disable a business.
I found the article by that swiss virologist very eye opening – the very idea of ill but not ill is new and not likely.
People are either symptomatic, pre-symptomatic or mild (and failed to notice some mild symptoms) but the idea of anyone being truly asymptomatic is apparently nonsense. More likely those who are truly symptom-less and dont get symptoms, were quite simply immune and fought off the virus attempt to infect – and the positive is false.
This. I definitely think there is a significant minority, if not a slight majority, of people who are exposed to this ‘beast’ and simply bat it off without even experiencing any kind of immune response – because they don’t have to. Again completely alike the good old common cold – with any one strain certain people will get really ill and certain people won’t even get it at all even when in close contact with ill people. Everybody’s different.
Another thing The Science seems to have overlooked…..
Where’s the spike from the half a million people sat on Bournemouth beach the other week? Agh…no spike, surprise surprise !!!
Dont get worked up, make yourself ill, isnt thst a scene from Brave New Fahrenheit 451 World?
FWIW I fancy a small spark might bring the silent into the light. I sense many unhappy but without a connecting purpose of action.
I think it’s building up though. They’re going to make that little push too far.
I want to punch heads for you.
My car mechanic was just telling me he isn’t taking his 5-kid family to the coast for their customary summer holiday. As he pointed out, nothing’s really open.
Anyone testing positive would not have been infected at the pub – they’ve only been open a few days..
It could easily be a fake fire alarm-type hoax, in which case, I hope the perpetrator brags about it and gets suitably dealt with.
What gets me is that one of the pubs said they’d open after doing a deep clean. That’s going to run up extra costs. Surely, they just have to close for 72 hours? Works for shoes!
Did anyone seriously think this WASN’T going to happen? As the virus continues to diminish in the Real World (see CEBM Oxford’s daily updates and some of the graphs on Hector Drummond’s blog) so The Agenda demands that the paranoia be whipped up.
Back to critical thinking.
People who were in the pub on Saturday have now tested positive for Coronavirus (on Monday latest, since it was reported on Tuesday’s breakfast news.
I won’t even give it the credit to say it doesn’t pass a sniff test. It’s crawling with maggots – you don’t need to bring it close enough to sniff to realise it’s off.
Either there is no journalist or editor working for the BBC or ITV who has the intellectual capacity of a 5 year old, or they’re doing it on purpose.
Of course they are doing it on purpose
Many (esp bbc) ‘journalists’ are ‘intel’
I don’t buy that but I do think they’re enjoying themselves too much an they’re incapable of doing their job properly.
Do some more digging
Op mocking bird for starters.
Both!
Any deep clean would only take a day or so. Unless they are steaming all the carpets and surfaces, which is a colossal overreaction. Even then, that still no longer than 2 days. Take that from someone who used to work as a cleaner in a hospital (with a good hygiene record) many years ago.
The other day I had a shouting match with my mum, who concluded our argument with “BUT YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, SO WHY ARE YOU SO ANGRY!”
I replied, “*BECAUSE* I CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!!!!”
This is the difference between us and them, people. I honestly think most of the non-zealoty, Comfortably Unbothereds actually know this is all bullshit, they know. It just doesn’t impact them personally, so they don’t get riled up about it. And they don’t understand those of us who do, even if we’re not impacted particularly negatively ourselves. In short, they lack the bigger picture cognitive function and quite frankly the empathy they often accuse us of not having. They don’t CARE.
And that’s what’s so depressing. People are dying – NOT OF COVID – and they Just. Don’t. Care.
Perfect summing up of my own thoughts. I give more of a shit for the things that actually have little effect on my life but are still wrong.
I know I’m becoming a bore on the subject. I met up with my brother the other day and a few minutes in he said “I agree with a lot of what you say, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Fair enough, I suppose. The destructive stupidity of the situation is making me obsessive and angry. The fact that I know nobody else who is obsessively angry about the situation even though it’s completely obvious that they should be makes me even angrier. The fact that I can’t do anything about it is just the icing on the cake.
Frustration is a dangerous thing!
I frequently get the “But what can you do about it? You might as well relax and accept it.”
Well, I find it hard to relax about it when I know that when the smug sheeple finally wake up to what’s been going on under their noses while they relaxed and accepted it, we’ll all be deep in the shit and it will be too late.
What’s that quote about evil thriving while good men do nothing?
We might be frustrated but at least we’re doing what we can. We’re keeping ourselves informed, setting an example of old normality where possible and trying to inform others as opportunity permits.
Emotionally blackmailing people to force them to wear muzzles needs to be resisted at all costs…..
Oh dear, justification for forcing people to wear masks has just popped up on my phone, from Yahoo Mail:
“There’s emerging evidence of airborne virus transmission says WHO”…
Here we go….
lol. Here we go.
Turn yer phone off pal!
I know! I don’t even know why I’ve started getting updates from Yahoo, it’s that constant drip of project fear….
I can see the advent of compulsory masking coming ever closer, and I don’t know what to do about it. I know what I want to do, and that is to resist it – with violence if necessary. But sadly when you get to my age, your body just does not recover from the inevitable police brutality anywhere near as well as it would have done 50 years ago. I also note that ‘dying a martyr to the cause’ does not feature anywhere on my bucket list. Not that it would end up that way anyway, they would just find a tame police doctor that will claim that broken teeth and bones, bruised skin and a ruptured spleen are all classic symptoms of coronavirus and instead of being a martyr I will end up another statistic to add to the ‘evidence’. It is sad, but I feel I will be of little use come the revolution.
Making tea in the back room is as vital as everything else. Without tea there is nothing to fight for. Metaphorically speaking.
I think you might be surprised how much inspiration you give with thoughts and experirnce.
Thank you for your kind words, and indeed thank you to all who responded to my post.
Making tea? Hmm. I am sure this revelation will get me ‘cancelled’ but I have to admit that I don’t drink tea!! I suppose that doesn’t preclude me from making it though, ‘each according to his abilities’.
Off topic I warn you, but one thing I have noticed about getting older is that whilst the body slowly deteriorates, the mind refuses to believe that it has done so and thinks you can still do what you used to do when you were 20. This results in some embarrassing, if not occasionally dangerous situations. I have decided that the only way to cope with this is to train your brain to accept the body’s shortcomings, so later on today I am going to replace that old and tattered poster of Che Guevara from my bedroom wall and replace it with one of Victor Meldrew.
That will be a start anyway.
Hahaha – but I don’t believe it!
Just pretend not to be fully with it. That’s what the mainstream thinks of us anyway.
Yes. Definitely comes in handy sometimes.
Not good https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8498503/British-officials-consider-telling-people-wear-face-coverings-public-Matt-Hancock-says.html -at least the comments are against it
Not seen Matt Hancock wearing a mask – why should we wear one when he does not?
At least they’re enabling comments, so the public has chance to express its disgust at the idea.
The weaselly Grad allowed no comments.
Wow the sheer amount of comments saying no to a “new normal” and mandatory masks is actually inspiring. It’s renewed some of my hope in the British public.
If made to I will write on my mask “THIS IS FASCHISM IN OPERATION:
I’d suggest ‘666’
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here’s what I intend to say if necessary: “Wearing a mask gives me panic attacks”. It immediately turns me into a victim, and in today’s world victims must always be believed.
For now at least, it is actually quite easy to disobey some of the mask wearing diktats. On public transport, the regional transport authorities have put print at home exemption badges on their sites. I know TFL have one along with Network West Midlands. No questions asked. The NWM one states clearly it is to be considered proof of exemption. You could probably get away with waving these around if businesses try to enforce masks.
Here is an example:
https://www.networkwestmidlands.com/media/3407/wmn_facemask_exemption_printathome_v2.pdf
I’m in my 30’s still and completely feel where you are coming from. My 4-year-old dislocates my joints by giving enthusiastic high 5’s… imagine what an overzealous police officer arresting me would do! It’s incredibly demoralising when the will is strong but your body fails you.