Latest News
Could This be Boris’s Poll Tax Moment?
Good comment from Scotty below yesterday’s update. I wonder if he’s right?
I feel slightly more optimistic about the mandatory muzzle edict after having a day to digest the news. Something is telling me that as this ramshackle shitshow of a Government lurches from one idiosyncratic, trigger-happy ruling to the next, a great fire of utter resentment for them will start to burn across our land.
From bizarre quarantine orders to the locking down of Leicester, to the continued assault on the high street and small businesses by this dehumanising, rotten command to suffocate on our own exhalations as we traipse around these places. Add to that the inevitable nastiness that is already present on the likes of Twitter, but will invariably spill out into wider society as we enter a new shaming culture perpetrated by hysterical muzzealots.
Your average punter will become very pissed off with it all, very quickly I’ll bet.
I feel this will gradually precipitate a trickle of scepticism towards these oppressive measures within the general public, and the flock will start to slowly thin. People previously cowed into silence may soon find their voices. Organised “boots on the ground” protests and crowd-funding appeals for legal challenges may suddenly see their numbers and coffers swelled respectively. Those suffering from mental health and anxiety issues may find solace within boards like these, growing our community. Growing our influence.
Boris et al are continually poking the bear, stress-testing the nation to see just what else they can take from us, or force us to do in order to serve their warped New Abnormal agenda. With each new diktat, with every further assault on our civil liberties, they are collectively sticking their heads into the mouth of a crocodile.
It’s only a matter of time before we hear a satisfying “snap.”
Tesco, JD Sports and Lidl have all announced they won’t enforce the new edict. The police have basically said the same. Beginning to look like Boris has over-reached…
One reader emailed me a well-crafted expression of rage: “Do you know how to tell if a politician is lying? Answer: their lips move when they speak. That’s probably why they love masks so much.”
And if masks-in-shops doesn’t push people over the edge, this surely will:
Bonfire of Conservative Party Membership Cards
Poppy in the comments has announced that the face nappy edict has prompted her to rip up her Conservative Party membership card – and she’s not the only one, according to the Independent. I know how she feels.
I finally cancelled my Conservative party membership, along with a strongly-worded email to CCHQ. Feel sorry for the poor sod who will have to read it who likely doesn’t care but I sincerely hope that CCHQ is getting quite a few of these emails and it will create an overall mood that the party is starting to haemorrhage its support. That’s the one place we can really hurt them – at the ballot box.
It was the mandatory masks which was the final straw. I tried to hold on as long as possible because I know I’m an asset to the party (early twenties, female) but every time I opened my wallet and saw my membership card, I actually felt a sense of shame that I was supporting a government that has perpetuated such a monstrous fraud on the British people and who are Conservative in name only (CINO). They are a government which no longer align with my principles, what with enormous public spending and some of the most draconian laws ever enacted in peacetime. Enough is enough.
For some readers, it’s not just membership cards that will be torn up as a result of this policy.
The latest news regarding face masks is as you imply, arguably impossible to accept. Face nappies for all. I am now planning to sell up and move to Alderney in the coming months because I cannot believe what has happened to the spirit of this once great nation. Even quite recently we were characterised by “Keep calm and carry on”. All we stand for now is abject fear, pathetic bed-wetting anxiety and a supine willingness to accept loss after loss of personal liberty. Even as the virus disappears!
I am now ashamed of my British passport. I would swap it for a Swedish version in a heartbeat.
UK Government Guide to Arts and Crafts
There’s some helpful advice on the UK Government website about how to make a face mask. No, I’m not making this up.
Looking forward to the follow-up: How to make a tinfoil hat.
Burkhas Optional, Face Masks Mandatory
A reader has sent me a brilliant piece of satire: it’s a slight adjustment to Boris’s famous Telegraph article from two years ago on why he didn’t think the Burkha should be banned. It’s exactly the sort of piece he would have written about face muzzles if he was still a humble Telegraph columnist and not Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Here’s a taster:
If you tell me that masks are oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that they are weird and bullying to expect folk to cover their faces, then I totally agree.
So I was a bit surprised to see that on 24th July the UK Government joined no other European countries (except for Scotalnd) – in imposing a ban on not wearing masks in shops, on public transport and maybe in Offices too – those items of headgear that obscure the face. Already a fine of £100 has been made law. Arguments have broken out over mask wearing. Opinion is divided and there will be demonstrations, on both sides of the argument. What has happened, you may ask, to the UK spirit of live and let live?
If you tell me that the Mask is oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect human beings to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice. I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like they have nappies glued to their faces; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any government to encourage such demonstrations of “virtue” and “fear”.
I am against a law requiring the mask to be worn because it is inevitably construed – rightly or wrongly – as being intended to make some point about fear.
I’ve given it a permanent slot on the right-hand side in the section entitled: “Masks: How Effective Are They?”
Worth reading in full.
Responses to Mad Woman on the Train
Yesterday, I announced a competition. It was in response to this email from a reader:
I’ve just received a stern telling off for not wearing a mask on the tube by a crazy masked lady with a posh voice telling me she’s lost six (I tell you six!) family members to the “virus”. I must admit I was left a bit lost for words but obviously still mask free. What should my response have been?!
The best suggestions I’ve received are:
“Would you like to join them?”
“I’m so sorry for your losses – let me give you a hug”
“Come any closer, and you’ll have lost seven!”
“Lucky them!”
“Did they die of Covid or with Covid?”
“To lose one family member to Covid may be considered unfortunate. To lose six smacks of carelessness.”
“It’s called natural selection. Deal with it.”
“Are you sure they’re not just hiding from you?”
“And the crazy coincidences don’t stop there. I’m with the Guinness Book of World Records. How can we contact you?”
“Good Lord, what’s the name of the family doctor? Shipman?”
“Don’t worry; they’re not really lost, you just don’t recognise them behind their masks.”
And the winner is:
“I am so sorry to hear that you have lost so many family members to this virus, you have been incredibly unlucky. I am a person in the vulnerable category, however, with COPD, who has just come out of a 12 week quarantine and very unlikely to have a virus to pass on. Moreover, the Government has said that people like myself are exempt from wearing masks and, as they restrict breathing and reduce the oxygen to the lungs, it would certainly not be a good idea for me to be wearing one. In any case, I have had enough of solitary confinement and want to get a life. So I choose to take the risk!”
Well done to Martin Martinez.
A Dentist’s Stepfather Writes
Interesting email from a reader about the horrendous conditions dentists are being forced to work in:
My stepdaughter is a dental nurse. In March their surgery was closed but she stayed on during lockdown to cancel all appointments and field phone calls, although the most help she could offer was to refer patients to a “Dental Hub” who could do nothing useful except extract a molar or hand out antibiotics.
A couple of weeks ago they opened with all the ridiculous requirements including wearing medical quality masks. They had training to use these which included a testing helmet that looked as if they were headed for another planet (but aren’t we all)!
Last week she had a nasty bout of bacterial tonsillitis (probably bacterial because it responded immediately to antibiotics) and was in bed for one day and off for three (for which she gets no pay – with three kids to support).
My guess, but a logical guess, is that the well fitted mask caused this bacteria to fester and make her ill. Who knows what other ill effects these things can induce. It certainly didn’t “protect” her in any way.
Postcard From Leicester
A reader from inside the plague-ridden city of Leicester has got in touch.
Greetings from Leper City – the new European pariah. Much rumour and nonsense with the police here being very sensible for the most part and not doing anything particularly intrusive. I have yet to see any checks – just a few random signs noting that it is essential travel only. I have moved daily from the city to the county without any problems.
But the lockdown has clobbered local businesses – many bought stock etc ready to re-open, many were teetering on the edge and have now fallen flat. And all because of a rise in positive tests from the city. The BMJ had an interesting piece arguing against local lockdowns.
Most in the city think the lockdown was a political gesture to show a strong decisive Government taking action. It was based on rising numbers of positive tests results (not on hospitalisations or deaths – there has been no increase in either). The reason for the rise in positive test results? Simple – lots more tests were done in the city. There is no spike – we are simply finding people with the virus who are otherwise fit and well.
More on the Academy of Medical Sciences Report
A reader has been taking a closer look at report published on Tuesday showing 119,000 people will die from COVID-19 in hospitals this winter unless we… blah, blah, blah:
Have you noticed in the AMS Report of July 14th that on p.36 it specifically recommends the provision of “alternative accommodation” (among other facilities), which it makes clear would be ideally targeted at “socio-economically disadvantaged communities, including some BAME communities who are more likely to live in multi-generational households”.
How would that work? Where does the alternative accommodation come from? What would it be? Some nice empty flats? Or maybe a disused army camp? How do you get people to move out of their homes? The implication is that multi-generation households will be split up if the AMS experts (listed on four pages!) have their way.
In the next few lines comes the recommendation that ‘supporting people to enable them to comply with Covid-19 advice and guidance’ be laid on. “Supporting” and “comply” – if ever a pair of words had an ominous tone it was them.
On the face of it the passage has a reasonable and pragmatic tone to it. But as I read them I felt a chill down my spine. Is it possible, just possible, that here we have the first traces of how a sector of our population might be selected for relocation to ‘alternative accommodation’ in the interests of the welfare of the state? Is it just me or does that have echoes of trucks at night, boots on cobblestones and knocks on the door? Would it, like face masks, be “obligatory”?
I’m not suggesting for one moment our liberal-minded government of luminaries and visionaries would ever dream of such a thing, but I really do wonder why some of our scientists don’t have the wit to listen to themselves sometimes. The path to totalitarianism isn’t one that falls over a precipice but is instead a gentle and easy slide downhill conducted obliviously by people who have convinced themselves they are the embodiment of moral rectitude.
Incidentally, the Report uses the word “surveillance” SEVENTY times.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” George Orwell, 1984
Or even better
“Sanity is not statistical.” (Also Orwell)
Better Safe Than Sorry
Amusing email from Trevor Parker, a reader in Welwyn Garden City:
Don’t forget to put your mask on though if you’re heading to the shops!
I’m taking no chances though. I’m also carrying an umbrella.
And wearing a snorkel and lifejacket (I can’t swim and we haven’t had a flood here in Welwyn Garden City since….well, ever….but you can’t be too safe, now can you?)
Also I have (in the name of safety) erected a mosquito net around my bed.
And I am carrying a maritime grade fog horn around the supermarket with me from next Friday onwards, which I will be sounding at 20 second intervals, just in case there are any ships nearby and it might possibly be foggy, here, 50 odd miles from the sea. But better to be safe than sorry, eh?
And I’m going to make sure from next Friday that my car will have it’s snow chains on. It’ll protect me from losing control in the snow and ice, and it’ll protect others from me by stopping me sliding into them.
And these are all in the name of safety of course, and I expect I will just have to carry on doing them until a vaccine is found for SARS-CoV-2, which at the soonest will probably be mid-winter some time (of course, many months after there have been any cases reported).
NHS England Reports Zero Deaths From Covid for July 13th – 14th
On Monday I predicted that the day would come this week when NHS England reported zero deaths from COVID-19 and that day has arrived. The data released yesterday for new deaths by NHS England is showing a total of 22, with the oldest death being reported from Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust on April 27th. There are zero deaths reported for the last 24 hours (or at least, specifically, for the period 4pm 13 July 2020 – 4pm 14 July 2020).
But don’t forget to mask-up.
A Paramedic Writes
Depressing email from a paramedic. I’ve verified his identity.
I work for an out-of-hours service in the south of the UK. We receive cases from 111 and then ring patients to discuss their problems and then either give advice over the phone, send them to a clinic to be seen in person or, if elderly or infirm, send a car to see them at home. One of the services we provide is recognising death, allowing bodies to be taken away to funeral homes before the GP fills in the death certificate.
I cannot give exact details to maintain the family’s privacy but I was recently called to a lady who had died of cancer at seventy-two. Her husband seemed particularly unsettled so after I had seen her and filled out the paperwork we sat down across from one another at the dining-room table. I took off my mask so we could speak freely and asked him what was nagging at him.
The husband said he wanted his wife’s death to be recorded as from cancer and not Covid as his wife had been due to receive immunotherapy when the lockdown began but she had been told, flat, that her treatment was to be postponed indefinitely. A senior medic personally rang her and told her that he had been instructed not to continue treatment of his patients and that nothing could be done, even the oncology unit waiting-room had been turned into a makeshift Covid ward: there would be phone calls every six weeks or so to see how she was. In the second of these phone calls two months later she was told that immunotherapy was available up in London “but that is was probably too late”. She was dead within weeks.
I’ve had to sit at a lot of families’ dining-room tables over the years to give bad news, previously on ambulances in London and now in a civilian car, at all times of day and night. Some have remained with me and others not but never before have I had to try and explain how an entire system has failed. Everyone understands that eventually the human being degrades and dies, that terrible accidents can happen, that there are too few ambulances for everyone but this is the first time that I’ve had a patient’s relative question the entire system.
My having to sit across from a man who simply cannot understand how in a just society treatment can just be turned off by fiat from some manager in an office somewhere isn’t the most terrible thing that has happened in the past few months. However, for the rest of this man’s life he will wonder how entire wards filled with staff, equipment and medication can just be binned at only the prospect of deaths rather than with hard evidence, that known illnesses can be superseded by the potential of others, based solely on modelling.
Dick Delingpole’s Shop
Listeners to London Calling, my weekly podcast with James Delingpole, will have heard us talking about the merch store set up by James’s brother Dick. It sells an array of sceptical products, including the above mug. You can access the shop here.
While you wait for you cup to arrive you can sign this petition.
Don’t Want to Wear a Mask? Problem solved
These handy lanyards are available from Amazon for the very reasonable price of £4.95. Purchase here.
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:
- ‘FOX 35 INVESTIGATES: Florida Department of Health says some labs have not reported negative COVID-19 results‘ – Numbers of new cases in Florida are being exaggerated by a factor of 10, according to a Fox News investigation
- ‘Mental Resilience Can Help You Through the Coronavirus Pandemic; Here’s How to Build It‘ – Useful piece in the Wall St Journal. Although it’s behind a paywall so it may not actually help
- ‘Marc Quinn’s new BLM statue in Bristol will be taken down, says mayor‘ – Rich white Londoner tries to leap on Black Lives Matter bandwagon in provincial city. What could possibly go wrong?
- ‘Boris Johnson promises independent inquiry into coronavirus response‘ – But he hasn’t named the date. Funny that. Chances of it reporting before the next General Election? Zero. Meanwhile, the All Party Parliamentary Group on coronavirus is launching its own inquiry
- ‘Forget about that overseas holiday: Qantas cancels all international flights until MARCH next year‘ – Christ on a bike. Glad I don’t live in Australia
- ‘COVID-19 intensive care mortality rates have fallen by a THIRD since the start of pandemic, study claims‘ – Doctors are getting better and better at treating critically ill patients with Covid
- ‘Chair of Met Police Federation Says It Will be “Impossible” to Enforce Mandatory Face Masks in Shops‘ – Good
- ‘A postcard from Florida: “It’s hard not to feel like we’re in a free fall”‘ – Has the Telegraph nicked an idea from Lockdown Sceptics?
- ‘COVID theater: the upcoming gauntlet of dubious air travel safety measures‘ – A disturbing glimpse into the future of air travel
- ‘About 5,000 heart attack sufferers in England missed out on lifesaving hospital treatment due to pandemic‘ – Scandalous story in Medical Express
- ‘25 times cancel culture was real‘ – For those that say cancel culture is a figment of conservatives’ imagination, check out this list in Spiked. I’m no. 24
- ‘Resignation Letter‘ – Bari Weiss has resigned from the New York Times and written a J’Accuse-style letter that hits the spot
Theme Tune Suggestions By Readers
Just one today: “Faith No More – Everything’s Ruined” by RHINO.
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 – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Remember, there are some business that are still not allowed to re-open. Got this depressing email from a reader:
I have a family run nightclub that’s been closed now for nearly four months with no income coming in the overheads and insurance on the building and other costs that I can’t cancel are mounting up.
We must be one of the only sectors that are still ordered to remain closed but with no extra financial support. I would appreciate it if you could do a section for businesses that still remain closed to highlight my plight.
Now I read face masks could stay until next summer which is a nightmare for my business and is absolutely ridiculous. I despair.
Note to the Good Folks 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.
I know it becomes difficult to navigate the comment threads after 24 hours. One alternative to continuing to post below my updates is to move to the forum on Lockdown Truth. The creator of that site has extended a warm welcome to everyone here (and he’s launching a crowdfunder to mount a legal challenge against the face mask edict which you can read about here).
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 48 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. I’ll try and get another update done soon.
And Finally…
If you want a laugh, this YouTube video is very funny. Definitely worth clicking on.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
FYI, good folks, we’ve added some forums to the site, as you’ll see in the top menu. We’ll see how it goes but it’ll hopefully be a little less tangled and messy than navigating the comments here. The topic for this Latest News post is here: https://staging.dailysceptic.org/forums/topic/16th-july-2020/
Brilliant, thanks very much for doing this Ian!
Forgive me for the dumb question, do we need an account/login of some sort to use this forum?
Yes, it looks like it
I just logged in with my LDS password
Thanks Ian, hopefully will make life easier
Cool I will be there once I get back to me desktop
In theory, it sounds like a good idea to have discrete forums but not so sure about in practice. Essentially there is one theme here: is scepticism towards the official narrative on the response to Covid justified or not? It’s a rapidly changing scene each day as new evidence comes in and as the official line changes. Everything is intimately interconnected eg how T cells work affects one’s view of the herd immunity thesis which in turn affects one’s view of the official position on second spikes and so on. This single comment thread may be somewhat anarchic at times but it meets the demand for open and honest debate that enables people to connect up the related themes.
I agree. Even though the volume of posts has been steadily increasing, I still find a single thread with a variety of connected topics much more appealing. There are often a number of wonderfully written posts on subjects that would be quite difficult to categorise and I for one would probably miss them if they were in a topic forum.
I am comfortable knowing that I am never going to read everything posted, but hey, I’m a lockdown sceptic, so am happy to live with the risk.
Exactly – we are generally risk-savvy and intelligent folk who can negotiate the rapids!
Huzzah! We’ve got a mention in the Graudian. I’m just off to dunk my head in a vat of hand sanitizer to celebrate.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/15/mask-discourse-is-the-latest-stupid-episode-in-our-endless-coronavirus-hell
The “hell” of the situation is entirely the fault of panicked over-reactions, the virus itself is scarcely noticable. If a virus like this had spread to this extent just a few decades ago we’d have not been able to see the casualty counts under all the other causes of death which were common back then. Why do we, upon having made some progress as a society on increasing life expectancy, make those extended lives worthless by wrecking their quality under the draconian weight of insane over-reactions to a cough that any prior generation would have ignored.
Absolutely correct. I had a ‘debate’ on another site with an individual who asked what the fuss was about wearing a ‘bit of cloth’ on your face for 20 minutes a week if it made others feel better (he stopped short of using the ‘if it saves just one life’ nonsense). He couldn’t see that people didn’t want to wear them because a) why now b) it defies all logic and common sense and c) IT’S BASED ON JUNK SCIENCE. His reply? I’m suffering from ‘Lockdown Derangement Syndrome’. There is just no reasoning with these people
For me, anyway, the “fuss” is mainly because of the real harm done by wearing a mask, in promoting the fearfulness that is the driving force of this ongoing disaster.
Is that the same as Future Shock Syndrome (going Futsie)? Borag Thung Earthlets. I’m heading off this mad planet…
When I made so bold (on another site) as to suggest that some of us were unhappy with the idea of being compelled to wear masks, and explained why, someone responded by telling me “go and get the disease — the world will be a better place without you.” No, there is no reasoning with ‘believers’.
What kind and caring people. These mask wearers are brimming with compassion for their fellow human beings.
As someone once said (I paraphrase) : “Think how bright the average person is. Then remember that 50% are even more stupid.”
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin. It has never been more true.
No question of if; it has – three or four times. The country was being led by actual leaders back then…
The little runt ends up gasping for breath with his glasses steamed up so’s he can’t see, but he’s got no problem with face nappies, they’re fine!
‘I want to be arch and say something about how coronavirus will just ignore mask non-wearers for the next 10 days just to be polite, but realistically more shops will be open by the end of July, so it does make some kind of sense, even if it took us weeks to get here.‘
Is this his justification for the arbitrary 11 day gap between announcement and enforcement? Hilarious! I wouldn’t listed to a word he says.
Jeepers that some weight of thought Joel Golby lugs around with him! He would dunk all his thoughts and head into a vat of handsantiser… I wonder if someone told him to do so and keep it dunked he would. Guardian were reported to be having a bit of a trim of staff shortly. With thoughts as puny as, “This is all awkward for me, because I’ve maintained a long streak of impeccable politics simply by doing and saying the exact opposite of what Toby Young is mad about this week, and him threatening not to vote Tory if they enforce entirely sensible public health policy leaves me in a quandary. I’m not happy about it, but I think that means I’m voting blue at the next election”, it might be right to see Joel’s article as the wrintings from under one setting sun. Emotional trending twaddle is no match for scentific reasoned thought, especially in such dangerous times. Not only barking up a wrong tree, Joel appears to me to be yapping up a preformed flatpack of thought in a Swedish furniture shop.
A fair article I’d say. By using terms like “mandatory face nappies” and “bed wetters”, we make it easy for people to dismiss the arguments rather than take on board the fact that centralised dictat is an open goal for the law of unintended consequences. We won’t win by name calling.
We won’t win any discussion anyway.
I think this is a very important point. I’m uncomfortable with mocking those who have a different opinion on this.
Our side of the debate is weighted with logic, reason and fact. But the other side is swayed by something much more primal – fear. Fear of death, no less. We should not be antagonising those manipulated by the peddlers of this fear – whoever they turn out to be. We should show by example that the Fearful are misled, by struggling to live our lives in the Old Normal and showing them that we do not fear and that we are all safe.
The mutual enemy of us and the Fearful is playing the tried and tested tactics of divide and rule. Mask wearing is a way of turning society against itself, and diverting attention away from the real villains of this story. All of us, masked or unmasked, are on the same side, herded into the same pen. Only together can we eventually break out of our pen and all be free of the Fearmongers.
It is simply the natural reaction when abuse is being hurled, and no facts are getting through that you sometimes resort to name calling out of despair just to make you feel better, just as they do by preaching so aggressively.
I agree with this, reason doesn’t work against mortal fear. From quite early on I’ve thought that the lockdown will continue until either the fear or the money runs out, the trouble is that the fear is being perpetuated by the Government.
Agree. I was thinking this today, after reading that some customers complained about Tesco relaxing the one way system, instead of being delighted they wanted more restrictions. If these people had something real to worry about, this virus would be put into perspective, but with the magic money tree furloughing many people, their focus is not distracted by fear of losing their house, having no income etc. I wonder if the government had been less generous and the threat of economic meltdown had been properly felt, people would have been demanding an end to the restrictions.
But the money is running out – and people are starting to notice.
I agree Aiden.
Cowardice should be called out.
It’s not cowardice. It’s indoctrination. The fact that the left always write like immature teenagers (I had a hangover! What a lark!) doesn’t alter the fact that they are basing their decisions on the facts that they believe to be true.
The real blame lies with the media and those who manipulate them. I stopped believing the media when I saw that the goverment was lying about the death toll. I realised that everything was designed to keep us afraid. But if you only look at the BBC and your social media circles then you’re never going to know any of that.
It’s actually government propaganda. People’s autonomy, commonsense and sense of proportion have been harmed by it. They were probably at a disadvantage before all this happened due to health and safety culture, ‘if it saves one life’ arguments, consumerism, materialism and addiction to social media likes.
But – cowardice is unseemly, a moral failure. It is not possible to arrive at this position by calculating risk. It is only possible by contemplation of what is dignified behaviour in the face of danger. Doubtless, people have been tripped up by the ambience they live in and triggered by psychological manipulation, but facing life with courage and fortitude would have provided the necessary defence against this. Being called out could be just the thing that shocks people into sanity.
You may be right. Many don’t really think that there are actually people who don’t share there BBC news way of thinking. They need to be made aware that other views exist. A few polite words is unlikely to fix their myopic view of the Covid world. Better not to ask me why I am not wearing a mask.
The truly reprehensible cowardice is that shown by our political leaders – first to panic in the face of media and public pressure, rather than doing what they probably believed to be right, then to stick to their story to save their skins when it became clear they had blundered.
They faced difficult decisions at the start, but those are the decisions they sought to have the power to make when they tried for high office. But the decision to admit you were wrong should be easy, if you’ve got any morals.
“Called out”? A weak Americanism at best. How about “Cowardice should be lambasted”, or something similar?
Don’t prescribe my speech. I love America and I have no problem using its expressions, or anyone else’s.
A nappy is designed to take / absorb / hold whatever is expelled on to it, so ‘face nappy’ not a bad phrase.
Nappy comes from napkin – something one now uses to wipe ones phizz.
It perfectly apt, whichever way you use it…
You seem to be wanting us to roll over to superstitious ignorance and gross stupidity. As Mario rightly hints below, we won’t win any plaudits by talking reasonably with mask wearing zombies, so being nice is not a worthwhile option. This whole mask fiasco is about something far more sinister than just smothering ourselves with a useless bit of cloth. We are now clearly being primed up, so that we clamour for an unnecessary and likely a very dangerous vaccine. The vaccine dangers may well be intentional and of course they will push hard to make it compulsory. We are sailing in uncharted waters.
Well, having read his self congratulatory blurb, he’s obviously misnamed his ‘Brilliant, Brilliant’etc,etc,etc.
Why are Guardian writers so irritating?
The only one I can read without exploding is Larry Elliott
“Why are Guardian writers so irritating?”
It’s a prerequisite of the job
Because they smug, arrogant and think that they are the guardians of all wisdom.
Simon Jenkins is a surprisingly independent and thoughtful writer at the GroanAid – how he can bear to be in that company is beyond me!
Endorse that about Simon Jenkins, he has had some good things to say. Perhaps a little confession on my part – I was a guardian reader. Not I WAS. Now I can’t bear most of it. Once Toby said he needed a new political home and I too feel politically homeless.
Same here Wendy, the Grauniad seems now to be mainly opinion peices hastily thrown together. I can recommend the Saturday FT, it is well written contains lots of interesting foreign news that no-one else bothers to cover and the magazine is top rate. Of course it is still MSM, with its own agendas but I really dont want broadsheets to die out totally.
I want to like the FT, but dip into their comments boards and it has become another guardian-like cesspit of twits who use their choice of newspaper to signal their importance as an “intellectual”. Thoroughly depressing. I suppose they can’t choose their readers, but when their readership is that twisted, their articles will be twisted to match.
I was a Guardian reader, but we’re going back nearly twenty years. Been pretty lame for at least the last fifteen.
I subscribed to The Guardian Weekly in Montreal in the 70s and early 80s. Loved it. Used to buy The New Statesmen and New York Review of Books as well. If anyone is looking for lots of great articles and book reviews from the 60s 70s 80s and 90s, The New York Review of Books archives is the place to go. A years subscription is all it takes to access all of them.
Yes you’re quite right; I’d overlooked his contributions.
Why read the Guardian ever, or for that matter watch Big Brother Corporation tv?
I looked up where masks are being worn across Europe and Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands have not made face masks mandatory. I consider saying we shouldn’t be having a discussion about face mask wearing another call to close down a discussion. We are trying to raise an issue and a lively discussion should not be belittled and people made to feel like murderers when there are valid reasons for anger over this measure.
Well I didnt ask anyone to wear a face mask to save me, so they can do one with their martyr virtue signalling
Neither has France
If you tell me wearing a mask makes the slow reopening of the high street safer and easier for everyone involved, fine, I’ll put on a mask.
We believe you, Joel. Basically, you’ll think what you’re told to think and do what you’re told to do. Meanwhile Hancock says masks may be with us till next summer.
The alternative is not the slow re-opening of the high street. It’s the immediate re-opening of the high street, and those who are ill stay away until they’re better. In other words, normality.
hancock wont be there next summer
Let’s hope.
He should be in prison and he can take Johnson with him. They have killed thousands and have decent people’s blood on their hands.
Agreed, but never going to happen
This is the thing. Sheep like Joel think it’s either masks or nothing ever goes back,and they fail to grasp at all that we are all quite keen for everything to simply go back immediately, because it’s not necessary to run scared or try and eradicate this.
The questions of: is any of this proportionate? Do we *need* to expend trillions in money and sacrifice life as know it to eradicate this virus?
These don’t seem to be being asked, or answered honestly, if they are being asked.
As for the suggestion name calling is unhelpful, it should be pointed out Joel inaccurately claims there’s no science behind our refusal, which is provably false and either way, it should be on those championing masks to prove conclusively a very definite and justifiable reason for mandating them, which the have spectacularly failed to do.
You don’t win arguments with logic, nor with name calling, once emotion has taken over.
The thing is, these people cannot be reasoned with using normal measures. They simply are not in control of their minds – fear of death is in control. I am currently having some success with a friend using subtle coercion. You have to slowly nudge people into situations that they would have otherwise avoided, where they realise for themselves that they are actually safe. Hard work though, and manipulating people this way doesn’t feel nice. The ones that own up to being fearful for themselves are easiest to free. The ones who fool themselves into thinking they are saving others through their obedience, are more difficult.
Yeah there are a LOT of people lying about wanting to continue with these things to help others. You can pretty much guarantee the vast majority of people are looking out for numero uno, and think if they can convince enough other people to do the same, it helps numero uno again.
The difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is honesty… I’m not going to go out of my way and put my life on hold to help others beyond doing things that are reasonable and justified – ie, dont go round coughing on people, sneezing on people, coughing into the open etc – all these things I (and most people) do as a matter of basic courtesy anyway.
Like you say, those who are honest with themselves that they’re just scared for themselves, will most easily come round once they accept the risk is minuscule. The others are pretty much lost causes for ever now, for they can never logically come back down from their high horse without admitting it was nonsense.
“once they accept the risk is minuscule”
But there seem to be a lot of people who do NOT want to hear and take on board that the risk is minuscule. If it is minuscule to them, they immediately go into the “you can make a senior sick and cause her death” argument. The “you are for others” argument, where the others are the ones with greater risk.
You can say, “Then they need to be quarantined, not the healthy” until you are blue in the fact, but in the end you are left with the impression that the Panicked ones *enjoy* being panicked and trying to force others to acknowledge that it is *right* to be panicked. Objectively correct (much citing of the CDC, a billion-dollar insitution) and also ethically and morally right.
If you are not panicked and acting like it, you are an immoral, selfish lout. It is this mentality that makes me the most nervous about this whole situation, where it is leading. Too many people are enjoying this fake emergency, for too many neurotic reasons. They seem to enjoy the jolt that hysteria gives them. They feel more *alive*. EEK.
There will always be another virus to take its place. This puritanical fearmongering must be curtailed and reversed as soon as possible..
The better alternative would be that a bunch of you get together and ceremonially re-write the magna carta… you can even force Johnson to sign it at sword-point if you’d like.
“One month ago, going to the beach was fine, but a protest was not.”
This is not an argument I heard from anyone. What planet are these people living on? The beach alarmists were the ones saying the protests were fine. Us sceptical minded folks were criticising the hypocrisy, not the protest itself!
And now we can point to both and say ‘errr guys, wheres your infamous 2nd surge caused by either of those things?’
Yes, I thought that was backwards. The protests were fine; it was going to the beach that brought out the scolds.
It is not the police who should be defunded, it is Public Health zealots and all the Quangos that feed them.
I do hope Joel looks in here to see what the reaction is. If so, I want to put him right about this paragraph: What are you really mad at, here: a small piece of cloth on the front of your face, or the virus that’s kept us all indoors since mid-March? I’d like to eat a flapjack in a cab some time in the next century. Please help me achieve that dream by shutting up about masks and then wearing a mask. Joel, you’re not stupid. Why can you not see that mask wearing isn’t going to speed up the return to the old normal? It’s just the opposite: mandatory mask wearing is a permanent erosion of your liberties. Remember “three weeks to flatten the curve”? This is the same. The people you deride who are resisting it are trying to avoid a slide into ‘the new normal’. Has this phrase passed you by? What do you think people mean by it? You’re never going to be eating flapjack in a cab once it has been established that most cab passengers are willing and keen to wear masks FOREVER. Your only hope is that more perspicacious people than yourself… Read more »
Japanese people wear face masks whenever they have a cold or flu, when on the bus / train at work, shopping or in the hospital etc.
They also practice social distancing much more than westerners.
Therefore if facemasks and social distance have the effect the govt keep telling us about, the Japanese flu incidence should be a lot lower.
Wrong – facemasks in the biggest realworld trial over the past decade make the Japanese seasonal flu outbreaks worse than USA / Scandinavia, most of Europe and pretty much level pegging with UK.
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza-pneumonia/by-country/
And not only that but face mask wearing in Japan has thrown in a host of psychological problems among the young especially men.
Link, please.
Articles written pre-2020: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/mask-appeal “Mask appeal: The addiction of surgical masks in Japan …if you stay in Japan long enough, you would realise that the Japanese love affair with the surgical masks goes beyond health and hygiene – to the realm of psychology and even pathology. While many wear the mask as a defence against allergens, some use it as a cover-up, a shield against social situations that trigger anxiety….. ….for some Japanese, wearing masks has become an addiction. Mr Yuzo Kikumoto, who set up professional counselling service Kikiwell in 2006, was the first to coin the term “mask dependency” in a paper he wrote in 2009. People were wearing surgical masks not for the purposes they were intended for, he wrote, but because they had grown used to living behind the anonymity of a mask. The situation has got even more serious in recent years, Mr Kikumoto told The Straits Times. The number of mask addicts seeking counselling at his practice has increased by 50 per cent since 2009, he said. Sufferers are mostly in their 30s to 40s, with women making up slightly more than half of the number , or 60 per cent. “While some people used… Read more »
Good on the psychology but, unfortunately, at the end it recommends wearing a mask if you need to ‘reduce anxiety’!
I don’t want to make a fuss about mask wearers, so long as they don’t want me to join in on their stupid fetish. Live and let live.
Another one here:
https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/more-japanese-youth-wearing-surgical-masks-to-hide-their-face
Re. No deaths for 13th and 14th, Down here in Devon were currently at 13 days and no new Covid-19 deaths and yet nearly everyone is wearing a mask and the disgust that flows forth from them towards the few people like myself who dont is unreal and just a little bit hilarious
The whole of London has been in the low single digits for weeks now. Until this fucking mask announcement things *had* been heading back towards a more relaxed experience, tesco was majority unmasked, one way systems were gone, no queues (tho I only go late evening to avoid those anyway), everything in stock at last etc The day after announcement was shopping day, and the % of mask wearers had suddenly jumped considerably, whether that’s because these people had literally been hiding until that point, or a bunch of people who had been feeling more and more safe are now suddenly scared again is unknown, but it feels like a giant step backwards to me – certainly not this claimed step back to normal.
Thanks!
A giant step backwards is what was intended.
It’s the ones who have been hiding away, thinking that will ‘save’ them, that are now emerging expecting to see streets littered with corpses wearing their masks and pointing fingers.
It’s called Dehumanization. Makes it easier to divide people into us and them.
Hardly any bother with masks in the north of England town in which I live.
Here in Suffoilk I went to a farm shop (one) and the supermarket (also one). Talked to my neighbour (over 80) and she is convinced they are a good thing, but then she believes everything she sees on the BBC. I’ve tried to convice her that she won’t instantly die if she goes out, that there have only been eight cases here, that it’s dying out all over the country and hardly anyone is dying of it (if they ever did) but it fails to sink in.
Met yet another person who had the same covid-like illness (flu-like symptoms and prolonged cough) back in December. We far far outnumber the folks that actually had diagnosed covid and I gather that is true for many other parts of the country, including Devon (see above)
The Premier of Quebec, Canada, announced two days ago that he and his team were working on changing our habits and that the exercise would continue for a long time to come.
God help you. Or, if the québecois have any backbone, God help him.
They have had their backbones removed like most westerners.
This past month I have been sitting on a wall just beside the state run liquor store, reading books on jazz, listening to DJ loops and Space music on a cellphone, watching the wheels go by (miss you John) and observing. After almost four months of lockdown some people still swerve as far away from me as possible when they pass by and most of them are wearing masks. I started wearing a mask yesterday because it takes about 35 minutes to walk to the street that I love the most, Saint Lawrence Boulevard. Now I just wait at the bus stop near my building, flag a bus, then get on at the rear door. There is no one to check your pass because the ticket validation police have been banned since April. Free transport! Otherwise I can’t stand masks. I cover my nose when the bus arrives, then lower it once I’m on the bus. After about thirty seconds the act of breathing becomes labored and uncomfortable. Recently an automated female voice has been included as part of our transport experience. The voice repeatedly tells us every few minutes to put on our masks. I mutter fuck off inside… Read more »
“Sanity is not statistical.” For all his sense much of the time I have to disagree with Orwell on that. Sane behavour is that which is backed up by statistics. Right now, and ever since it started spreading actually, the statistics, the real ones not the made up numbers coming from models, show covid is not worth worrying about. The real world is a messy place, common sense sometimes fails, complex models with braindead assumptions often fail, idelogically based “it must be the case” statements are almost always wrong… but stats by the very nature that they are observed data and hence as close as feasibly possible to being always right. Sanity is very much statistical, and the stats say lockdown hurts more than covid, so the sane thing is, and always has been, defiance.
I think he had government statistics in mind.My admiration for Orwell has grown in this crisis.Not just a writer but a prophet.
I can feel it in my bones that Archpishop Jellybaby is about to pronounce that face nappies are a Christian duty.
The C of E has already become a temple of the evil Covid counter-religion.
Reminds me of The Last Battle, where the Ape tries to conflate Aslan and Tash and ends up being eaten by the latter. I hope Jellybaby disagrees with Tash.
I’m so disappointed in the CofE. As a reasonably regular worshipper I’ve not attended Zoom once since this all started. They’ve become unconscionably politicised. My faith is really being tested.
Zoom simply does not work for me, I wondered if I was alone. Church meens a communion of people.
I know the archbishops are political appointments, but I dont see why he has to tow the line and follow every bandwagon.
I have the same problem with Zoom. I stopped joining in Zoom Pilates because it felt alienating. Also, isn’t it interesting that any concern for the pupils’ safety, normally pursued obsessively in community settings, seems to have evaporated online? The tutor can only see postage-sized images of the class so people could actually be damaging themselves by doing exercises wrongly but it doesn’t seem to matter. As for church, I (used to) play the organ at a dissenting chapel. The minister does on-line services and wanted me to record a couple of hymns for him. I have decided that I just can’t be part of it. As I keep saying, I don’t belong in the New Normal. The churches’ pathetic attitude is just one of many disillusionments for me. Jesus apparently touched lepers but many Christians haven’t even got the courage to speak out against this. That said, ‘traditional’ congregations are mostly elderly, middle-class and terrified. Many of them really have been in self-isolation for months. Anyway, I don’t see change coming any time soon I can offer a couple of rays of hope Two of my husband’s brothers are evengelicals. One is a lockdown zealot but the other has… Read more »
I agree with every word that you’ve said. The state is effectively behaving in a Stalinistic way effectively outlawing communal forms of worship. It’s a well known fact that church goers have a higher life expectancy relative to society. And the fact that the CoE has been so spineless is yet another failed institution. I argued long before the lockdown that the CoE should disassociate from the state. I won’t be going back until that happens.
Which confirms my atheism.
It’s alright, God doesn’t believe in Rowan!
He;s a globalist infiltrator, in all walks of establishment worldwide
Not so.
The Christian leadership have been unexpressibly lacking throughout haven’t they. Entirely missing from the national discussion when solace and comfort and compsssion are in short supply. Without exaggerstion the Christain leadership have been shameful. I believe manyChristains and other religious people have been magical in their care for others. Christian leaders, no.
Love your reference to The Last Battle, Annie – I’ve often thought that the great majority of the population are like the dwarfs after they’ve been chucked into the stable. They have convinced themselves so much that they know what is real, that they can’t see the beautiful world around them. This whole mad episode is summed up for me by the words “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs“. We’ve no choice but to leave them to it.
Save lives! Stop the spread!
Nipping out for a pint of milk there Wendyk?
looks like she’s off for a haircut I’d say
I was hoping I might finally get an appointment with my dentist; thought this might do it!
Just got to find an extension for the breathing apparatus!!
…and hope no one stands on your tube! It’s a risky business a trim and a pop out to shop.
Indeed! I’m planning on doing another bare-faced-boogy later on so wish me luck!!
Had to remove the hazard protection suit:worried that it might not qualify for insurance pay out !
My option for being safe ……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe93CLbHjxQ
Seems appropriate
I touched on this in the comments earlier in the week. Silver lining being that cracks are starting to show in the party. Gove on Marr then the other MP disagreeing in parliament this week. The only thing that makes me smile on the news now are redundancies and political missteps. Chickens coming home to roost thank God for self employment – not had a penny of this funny money and do my want it either!
My local MP who I’m not going to name as correspondence between us is confidential agrees that masking in shops is wrong. Disappointing that he has not gone public but I bet he is not the only one.
Such a lot of wimps in parliament now!
Conservative?
No, you have not had a penny – but you can be certain you will be amongst those who have to pay for it going forward!
Hi Toby, re the cutting up of cards. My husband emailed his local party to cancel and got a desperate call back the same day begging him to stay part of the part and inviting him to all kinds of groups etc. Apparently the guy he spoke to (off the record) agreed that it was a step too far and said he was getting a lot of angry people calling…
Never back down.
Whilst I completely accept that a huge percentage of the population will be silently against muzzling, the fact that shops can refuse you entry sans mask is the problem. It is the conflict on the door. We can quote whatever human rights violations or even exemptions we like, but if the kid on the door at your local Tesco is adamant, then we don’t get entry. That is why this is so dangerous in my opinion as it could well become normalised. I am in the situation whereby I cannot afford £100 fines (no matter how unlikely) have no exemption other than self diagnosing extreme distress which runs contrary to all of my morals, but will not wear a mask. If I go shopping with my young daughter, wearing a mask would either act as a constant reminder of the fragility of life and that everything she sees is a killer, or that her Dad will cave to something repellent just because everyone else does. Neither of those are life lessons I am prepared to give. But on the other hand, I am also not prepared to just give up and never leave the house again. I was happy that… Read more »
I’m not sure that they can refuse you entry if you have a medical excemption.
I’m going to be using one of the “I’m exempt” cards. What are they going to do? Ask to see a doctor’s certificate? I’m pretty sure that would be illegal.
Unfortunately, any shop can refuse entry to anyone on pretty much any grounds (as long as they’re not insisting you do something illegal). You can challenge them on it, but it’s not an instant process – the security guard can quite literally just chuck you out, it is private property after all.
They could dictate that everyone must enter the building by hopping three times if they wanted, it’d be equally daft, but they could (I think)
They can’t refuse to do business with you on grounds of what might be considered a ‘protected’ characteristic, such as a disability. That would be within the realms of discrimination.
Indeed, but my point is to win that would require a post-event challenge and taking them to task. Given that the security body on the door, or the poor sap stood there trying to turn people away, will be unaware of the actual law and think their job depends on not letting unmasked people in, they will likely stand their ground and kick you out – regardless of who is correct from a legal stand point.
Stay calm, tell them you are exempt in terms of the ‘law’ on masks – can’t see how they could issue you a fine.
Read yesterday’s comments on the facts and how to.
People were asking yesterday about GPs providing mask ‘exemption certificates’. Wonder if anyone saw this yesterday: http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/gps-fielding-large-number-of-questions-about-face-masks-in-shops/20041160.article GPs fielding large number of questions about face masks in shops GPs have been inundated with questions from patients about the new requirement to wear a face covering in shops in England from next week. Several GPs have said that they have been approached by patients asking for exemption letters but the Department of Health and Social Care has told Pulse people will not need GP notes. A number of people are exempt from the requirement which comes in from 24 July due to age, health or equality reasons. Fines of £100 can be issued to those who flout the rules but the Department of Health and Social Care told Pulse that people who are exempt will not require a GP note to prove their case. Government guidance on the new regulations urged people to ‘please be mindful and respectful of such circumstances noting that some people are less able to wear face coverings’. In England the public must already wear face masks on public transport and in hospitals, although it is still only advisory for patients visiting GP practices. The Department for Transport previously… Read more »
“! Awaiting for approval”? First time that’s popped up.
It sometimes happen especially if you’re putting several links.
Oh. I can see, now, that a couple of names are linked, and (cripes!) the links work. Completely unintentional on my part. Normally, whenever I get as far as ‘Pulse’, it only ever lets me look at the first page. Can’t normally travel any further than that. Why it would be behaving differently on this occasion I don’t know. I’ve just tried editing the comment, but it won’t let me! Trying again…
Still no joy, so here’s the bit I was keen to post, as I thought it might be helpful to some:
People were asking yesterday about GPs providing mask ‘exemption certificates’. Wonder if anyone saw this yesterday in ‘Pulse’:
GPs fielding large number of questions about face masks in shops
GPs have been inundated with questions from patients about the new requirement to wear a face covering in shops in England from next week.
Several GPs have said that they have been approached by patients asking for exemption letters but the Department of Health and Social Care has told Pulse people will not need GP notes.
A number of people are exempt from the requirement which comes in from 24 July due to age, health or equality reasons.
Fines of £100 can be issued to those who flout the rules but the Department of Health and Social Care told Pulse that people who are exempt will not require a GP note to prove their case.
Government guidance on the new regulations urged people to ‘please be mindful and respectful of such circumstances noting that some people are less able to wear face coverings’…
I hope it will be Boris’ Poll Tax moment. But have Tory MPs got any balls? Give evidently knows this is a mistake and could take over and do a better job.
Boris looks unstable and unreliable and I think his huge changes of direction will probably be repeated during Brexit and on other matters too. I don’t trust him an inch.
Johnson is standing on a cliff edge. He was still polling at 39% in favour of him on YouGov in May. I’d be surprised if it was even half that percentage now. And to think I helped to vote him into office …. mea culpa!
Sadly suspect if he is replaced it won’t be with anyone more sceptical than him, in fact probably the opposite.
If Gove has more say, and his views on masks from the Marr show, we might get more sense
Gove has gone along with all of this shit so far. I suppose he may be mildly better than the PM, but they are all damned in my eyes.
If the PM is replaced, it will be over failures in execution like not locking down early enough, or not providing enough welfare, or maybe care homes. Care homes was a scandal, but it’s all just a distraction from the Big Lie that the virus was/is a major threat. We’re a million miles away from getting that message through to anything like enough people to make it have any weight.
Talking to relatives in NZ, they are locked down as a country, can’t travel and some media are reporting that people are getting restless they want to travel but hear about Europe and muzzles and dont want any of that. So the conclusion is that the majority are against but the loud mouths are using propaganda, as they did in the war, to say they are winning
An awful lot of exceedingly rich people have moved to New Zealand lately. Any connection?
It’s all about the coming war, says my son, who lives there and builds bunkers for the incoming super rich.
Sadly, I think you’re correct.
Over the last 20 or 30 years or so (as long as I’ve been paying attention to politics) we never learn the right lessons. The first one being, the government is wrong about everything.
He needs to think carefully about why he’s on the cliff edge, if it is his poll tax moment, he should do what Thatcher did and reverse, quickly. The bubble they live in is giving him the wrong message, if he thinks that people will go out more with a mask he is very much mistaken, rather the opposite.
Moi aussi, but if you catch the wrong train it’s best to get off at the next station.
YouGov he may have been 70% then.
Doubt it will be a poll tax moment. There’s no movement with any profile around which mask opposition can coalesce.
A friend’s son is going to Uni at UCL in September – just checked and masks will be mandatory on campus when loving around, though optional at “workstations” as long as distancing is feasible. Suspect most/all Unis will be the same.
The thing to emphasise to people is that THIS WILL NOT END unless public opinion changes. They will be wearing masks everywhere, forever. A lot of people still think the “pandemic” is going to end, because, well, it must. It’s still an extended “flatten the curve” or “beat the virus” to them. Before they get used to it even more, drum it into people that there is no exit from this unless we make it.
Why do they want everyone in a mask, are they just weirdo’s running the show now
To perpetuate the fear and the coronamyth, and to be able to pretend that when no second wave comes, it was the government that protected us from it with its wise policies. If you are a politician you want power, and keeping the population in a state of fear gives you almost absolute power. Not weird at all – just human nature.
Well it is still weird, most humans in open societies wouldn’t think of covering up a face. Wonder what the men of a certain religion think of having to copy their wives into subservience
Not weird, but wicked.
Or to make us all so fearful or fed up that we’ll accept any new vaccine as the price of our freedom, regardless of side effects and nanoparticle monitoring.
You of course, have given the right answer, The UK government has been in bed with Bill Gates since day one, if not longer.
One word: ‘control’. Twas ever thus.
Two words ‘control’ and ‘vaccines’ and exceedingly dodgy vaccines at that.
Indeed. I feel for the young, and the old, who value freedom, reason, and who know what it is to be truly alive, and to face life as adults rather than overgrown children.
And in the world population its a handful of these bastards, how
On the upside I guess we wont have to see those bewildered looks soon to get annoyed about as we simply wont be able to see anyones expressions. Yay :/
YES!!!
Some of the old folks here have been out walking their dogs all througout the lockdown, but there’s a LOT of paranoia among some of the others, quite unneccesarily considering the lack of actual cases.
In a way I feel lucky, due to the incompetence of many (but not all) doctors in my past I am going to be dead soon and frankly i am looking forward to the “merciful release” from this complete and total fuck-up which I don’t see ending any time soon, or ever
Agree with you. I recently told Mr Bart that its good we don’t have children as we’ve been committing a crime against humanity by bringing a child into this crazy world with all its attendant insanity.
He he – I like the idea of ‘loving around’ at University (though the masks would be an impedance)!
‘loving around’? More than face covering needed!😃
Mandatory when “loving around?” I would think that would be quite difficult. Poor students.
The virus, such as it was, has actually now gone well away. We now need Boris and his set of crazies to do the same thing.
I hope it will be too, but then I never voted for the bellend in the first place. At the same time, I think you’re overestimating Gove somewhat. I’m not sure there’s a single person across any of the parties I’d want running the country right now, given that not a single politician has actually had the decency to stand up, strongly, for our freedoms and rights throughout this. That’s 650 of them, silently letting us become an authoritarian state.
Facemask flim flam to distract from the manslaughter of 20,000 in the care homes
There’s certainly a lot being hidden behind the scenes. Whenever something to stir up the masses happens, the bigger picture is in the background somewhere. They have to keep this going for longer because the World Financial Reset isn’t finished perhaps? In the U.K. they’ve poured money into the system, into peoples’ pockets via huge furlough schemes etc and now need them back out to spend it.
Yes, the UK government has much blood on its hands.
New Jargon alert: “Pause Shielding”. Not ‘stop’ or ‘end’ but “pause”.
Not accidental. Nudge psychologists have been at work.
Yes, well spotted. Drum it into the lockdown/mask zealots/lazy neutrals – this is FOREVER. Are they happy with that?
I see ‘pause’ everywhere now; whatever happened to suspend or stop?
You harsh lover of abruptness and clarity wendyk! Stop! I fancy ‘pause’ on this occaision is to give the flavour that ‘play’ will be pressed and lockup will be once again clamped down around us.
It still amazes me when I walk around that I don’t see strings attached from most other people’s hands going up into the sky. I never thought people could be this transparently manipulated.
Like “reimagining the police” coming from the Democrats in America.
Reimagining anything. Yes. Scotland home of heather, broth and haggis is full of social engineers reimagining this and that. Purile, elitest and controlling language. Elitest in the sense that the public cannot know what is meant by the ambiguous phrase without indoctrinisation into that particular meaning – which can then be easily shifted from as required.
Sturgeon, like Boris needs to be charged with murder.
Here is the creepy summary of the Great Reset, which is what this is all really about: The contextThe Covid-19 crisis, and the political, economic and social disruptions it has caused, is fundamentally changing the traditional context for decision-making. The inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems –from health and financial to energy and education – are more exposed than ever amidst a global context of concern for lives, livelihoods and the planet. **Leaders** [??] find themselves at a historic crossroads, managing short-term pressures against medium- and long-term uncertainties. The opportunityAs we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of **leaders** [??? ] across the Forum’s **communities** [???], the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being. ++++++++ Right. This is total boilerplate BS from self-appointed dictators such as Klaus Schwab (founder of the WEF). No mention of .… Read more »
The caption competition made me laugh, thanks for the replies – will keep them in mind for when I travel.
Great Sceptics page by Toby today. At some points I was almost crying with laughter; at others I was almost crying from anger.
There’s no way I had the time to read all the 1500+ comments from yesterday, so seeing some of the highlights here was great.
Goes to show that it would be possible to write a Sceptics page from readers’ comments alone. Some great wits on here. And some astute and informed commentators.
Without doubt, I’d say the Sceptics are winning the humour battle. And humour is a powerful weapon.
I saw this in a comments section on the Off Guardian site. It is a recent letter sent by a GP practice to all patients. It is reassuring to see that the reception staff will “care navigate” (WTF!) you to the appropriate service. The tenor of the document is that we are still in the middle of a public health crisis and that you will only be allowed into the surgery (“health care facility”) under sufferance and in exceptional circumstances. Good to know that the main doors will be open to patients invited to attend from 20th July. Patients will be grateful that at least they can get in to the surgery if invited! As you may be aware, the two Ledbury Practices are merging in just a couple of weeks’ time, but have already been sharing premises for a few months now, so the following guidance is for patients of both practices. As part of our restoration measures, St Katherine’s Surgery premises will open the main doors again with effect from Monday 20th July 2020 for patients who have been invited to attend a face to face appointment with a clinician. The waiting room has been adjusted to… Read more »
‘Care navigate’ is particularly ugly isn’t it. Beware the NLP in the person who writes it, is my opinion.
It’s just wank English.
It’s got a comittee behind it. Not in the GPs surgery.
George Carlin’s comments on PC language spring to mind. I’m not even sure what that is supposed to mean. I get the feeling that the automaton that wrote this particular piece may have thought it sounded overly harsh and needed a nice word in there and just randomly insertered. Obviously “navigate with care” actually has meaning but makes no sense in this context.
It’s probably easier to agree with Sam, below, and not overthink it.
The NLP bit comes in with the brain that writes the words unquestioningly. I do not mean to say the phrase itself radiates hypnosis among us.
As we all known he NHS is choc-full of like terminology. The campaign for clear English might have a heart attack should it ever look at the NHS. There are managers who make it their business to put in this tagged, framed way of thinking.
It is minor and not of significance to the grand scheme of things. Yet there we are, a puke phrase that may introduce anxiety in a care setting.
This is a public notice. ‘Navigate’ conjures up stress levels in many. “I’m not good at maps”, say a sadly large number of people. It is not appropriate for the situation.
Yes the NHS is certainly full of ridiculous terminology like this and nursing text books contain the most stupid of phrases although most nurses I’ve met are barely literate anyway and far too stupid to notice.
How about ‘show you to your place/room’?
Accurate, precise, succinct and simple. I remember when life used to be a little like that…
We had this shit imposed on our “health centre” with non-medically qualified receptionists used to triage patients and keep them away from the doctors at all costs.
Eventually they reneged and started treating patients with less contempt but then most of the doctors left en masse. Before she went mine complained bitterly about “Big Brother”, she even showed me an example – when she requested an HbA1c the computer asked “is patient diabetic?” and if she typed no it said “test denied!” So an accounting clerk trumps a doctor.
My GP Surgery sent out texts telling us that winter flu jabs (Sept + October) would take place in The (trading estate) Centre, it’s actually the cattle market, nice!
I live in London and received an email from John Lewis yesterday telling me they were opening their Oxford Street branch where I used to regularly shop, as from today. They asked for comments and I replied that I would not be shopping there until they stopped complying with the nonsensical government strictures which are unenforceable and merely guidance. I sent them the relevant guidance link. I made clear that whilst these rules for shopping with them which they are in perfectly entitled to have are place I will not be shopping with them for the forceable future particularly as one cannot try on clothes and it was not environmentally friendly to make two journeys when one would suffice. Also pointed out that since the bulk of our Christmas shopping is done there we will no longer be patronising them if this nonsense remains in place. Questioned why if other stores will not be in forcing the wearing of facemasks why they are not following suit. Said given their financial difficulties they should have a long hard think if they want to attract customers. Suggest others should write in the same vein.
http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/lockdown-laws-in-england-have-been-revoked/
I received the same email but deleted it. Will try to fish it out and tell them I will be boycotting them as well.
Well done! Same here.
Shout out to @kh1485
Went to the Waitrose near my work for the first time in 4 months – again didn’t have any issues. Apart from the hand sanitiser on the door and the obligatory poster, it was pretty much like the last time I was there back in March.
Then I went to pay and found that every other self service till was blocked off to facilitate antisocial distancing.
It will be interesting to see how it will change again with the muzzle rule. I read somewhere that the other big supermarkets won’t be enforcing it but with Waitrose does anyone know?
If that’s the case then it will be a boycott for me. I’ll have to check with M&S as well but I read someone on Twitter that someone had contacted their head office and apparently they’re not enforcing it either.
Not surprising given their CEO has called out Hancock on his dodgy stats re shop workers and the virus.
I’ve not been confronted about not wearing a muzzle but someone butted into a remonstration I had with a Nando’s employee after I told him that I do not wish to download an app, place and order and pay via said app. The tosser told me that there’s a global pandemic.
I retorted that only 0.000000000004 per cent of the global population had it so it hardly qualified as a pandemic then added that not everyone had a smart phone and even if they did they don’t want endless apps cluttering their phone. He shut up after that.
Its tempting to keep a swathe of leaflets in my bag and start handing them out. Or I’m thinking of wearing a sandwich board during my breaks, it could be a great conversation starter with colleagues.
The response would probably be – I couldn’t accept one of your leaflets because it would probably be carrying the virus.
I could spray the leaflet with antibacterial spray in front of them.
Give them one, good fact or pithy statement, e.g. “Look at all these staff, they’ve been fine throughout”, and then do the walk/head thing.
Head butt them. (Wow, I’m getting angry.)
Carl Vernon is great on the ‘it’s only a bit of cloth’ line (oh, and his views on the demise of the high street ring true, even if they’re a bit depressing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3dujTFv6z4
I am and will be. And if someone levels an accusation at me my retort will be ‘You’re killing your granny by getting in a car so I hope you bloody walked here.’ Though I might use riper language.
I wrote to them, enquiring on behalf of individuals with two conditions.
Asthma, and I noted the Asthma Society stating that government advise that sufferers are not required to wear a mask.
https://www.asthma.org.uk/about/media/news/face-covering-advice-for-people-with-asthma/
… and with the assumption of Section 1 Part 4 of the Public transport act, Distress caused by Mask.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/592/regulation/4/made
Nothing encouraging in the reply, but if they don’t accept this card: https://hiddendisabilitiesstore.com/hidden-disabilities-face-covering.html
… and turn away an Asthma Sufferer, I’ll certainly share the publicity with you good folk.
My reply from Waitrose read
As an Asthma sufferer myself, I can appreciate your concern. We are currently awaiting detailed guidance on this and once we have an update you will will find it here: https://bit.ly/3fCcUQo
I am sorry I am unable to provide you with any further information, however if there is anything I can do to assist you further, please do let me know.
010 I am sorry I am unable to provide you with any further information
020 however if there is anything I can do to assist you further, please do let me know.
030 Goto 010
ha! compuar sez noh
Too right Sam. It’s like after the half hour in which the call center fails to do what you request, and someone concludes with “Is there anything else I can help you with today?” which always requires questioning the word “else”, perhaps with the response, do “Did you mean, is there anything you can help me with?”
Talking of people blindly following a script (does that sound familiar), I always end my conversation with “Great, that’s everything I need, thanks.” And call centre person *still* asks “Is there anything else…”
I’ve been considering your code, Sam. If you find yourself without a job thanks the lockdown, we’ve discussed at length that Imperial College are jolly keen models. Worth asking there? Your code could be the basis of a highly predictive model of behaviour relating to Covid-19. And it is somewhat more concise than some I’ve seen 😉
That code is way more sophisticated than the Imperial model and probably more accurately reflects the behaviour of SARS-CoV-2.
However, with news of the lay offs at the BBC and Guardian, I expect there to be a lot of new programmers out there competing for our jobs.
A whole new career beckons! Bugger this Captain of the Watch stuff!
Hopefully you get a reply and that they will be following the likes of Tesco and Morrisons. If not then they’re not getting my cash.
The speed at which muzzles have been adopted as a global symbol of Covid solidarity is quite unsettling. In Western societies in particular, there is a trendy new kind of virtue-signalling in town. The kind that confers a great deal of righteousness to the wearers of muzzles, that broadcasts to the rest of the world “I am a good person. I am compliant. I am selfless.” Social media is no doubt a significant motor behind the sanctification of these wretched face nappies and those who obligingly adorn them. It’s no surprise to see that the bulk of those championing muzzles include the usual glut of impressionable millenials, a group more likely to conform to whatever generates likes and retweets rather than something that runs counter to Covid groupthink. Politicians, high profile celebrities and even the social media companies themselves are busy cajoling the masses into muzzle conformity, whereas sceptics like ourselves are othered. We’re branded as arrogant, selfish granny killers, bad citizens who put our personal gripes ahead of the “greater good.” They will churn out the same stale tropes when they encounter heretics such as ourselves, “it’s just a mask,” “I’m sure you’ll find a ventilator more comfortable,” and… Read more »
Well said Scotty! Not helped by social media where they post selfies of themselves in their muzzles going “look at meeee!!!! I’m so virtuous, I care about people, I want you to be safe.” From what I see in my social media accounts, its not only the millenials who are guilty of this but even older people who ought to know better but either are a) keen to get down with the yoof or b) have swallowed the propaganda whole and are not financially impacted or c) both “Bollocks!” is what I say to all of that If they want to muzzle themselves fine but do not expect me to conform to them. I have read the information and made my choice. I respect their choice they should respect mine. Trying to debate with these people is like trying to draw blood out of a stone, I can cite figures and stats until kingdom come but they’ll wheel out the same old tired tropes. As I’ve said in this site before, the only thing that would wake this lot up is when they’re finally hit in the pocket and stomach via job losses, bankruptcies and tax raids on their pensions.… Read more »
The thing I find sad is that some of our very long-term friends can be included in the list above. mainly group (b). They just seem to see all this virus stuff as merely another daily thing to comply with, like it’s just a temporary blip and they can’t see what’s really underneath it all. I don’t want to see them hit financially but I fear (oops, that word) that it might be essential to fire up the fighting-neurones. I’m in the pensioner bracket, almost, and I don’t want to see my savings being raided either, but I think we’re all going to get hit one way or t’other.
Exactly. Or if they see it, they’re in denial and think that they’re conforming for the greater good. Its depressing to see people especially the old having been brainwashed into submission.
We all have to pay one way or the other and I’m sorry to say this but rich pensioners should not be exempt. I used to live in Edinburgh and begrudged the fact that my season ticket kept increasing year on year due to “inflation” but in reality its for the likes of me on my not so good pay having to subsidise the rich living in places like Stockbridge, Morningside, Portobello, Dean village, etc.
Of course rich pensioners shouldn’t be exempt and if I were one I would accept such a notion. Poor pensioners trying to exist on £700 a month, not so much.
Agree. When I lived in Edinburgh, Mr Bart and I always wondered why the free bus travel was not reserved for poor pensioners.
I can understand older people wearing them if it makes them feel safer, but seeing younger people, and especially children wearing them is just lunacy.
Its the same youngsters who were on the BLM marches…they did not realise they were supporting an evil communist organisation. They really are brain dead.
That won’t wake them up. One of humanity’s biggest problems, individually or collectively, is admitting they were wrong. That’s why we give plaudits to those who do: they are such an exception.
Unfortunately you may be right. This crisis has allowed me to see the best and the worst (more of the latter) in people.
People become very attached to a particular narrative. Over time it gives them warmth and pleasure and even an identity in the eyes of others. Shifting position may lead to the opprobrium of others in their chosen circles. They may be ignored at dinner parties!
I dont even bother to engage with them now I just ignore them completely. If they get really in my face I tell them to FO and mind their own business. If they want to get physical they will regret it with me. To (mis) quote Mrs Thatcher….’you mask if you want to’.
The Masked Martyrs, they are not wearing them to save themselves but to save You. Honestly the media can virtue signal anything now
I would never go on one, being dead is far preferable to living in a world populated by people like you.
Probably, but I also use guns,knives and poison depending how the mood takes me. Talking about that I wouldn’t buy any of those eclairs if I were you.
lol
“you’re actually killing people by not wearing a mask.”
“As I haven’t worn a mask since this all began, and there were no CV19 deaths for a couple of days, I’m not sure where you’re getting your information from that anyone is being killed, least of all by me.”
You can only kill people if you have it, and most people don’t
(for very small values of “kill”)
I’m seeing this meme more and more on Facebook – I mute anyone who shares it because I don’t need that sort of virtue-signalling judgemental smugness in my life. But it struck me that if I, as an anti-masker, where to post something similar with arguments against mask-wearing, I would be lambasted and pilloried. I wonder where this shareable meme first originated – 77th Brigade perhaps?! When I wear a mask in public and in the shops , I am saying: I know that I could be asymptomatic and still give you the virus. No, I don’t “live in fear” of the virus; I just want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I don’t feel like the “government controls me”. I feel like I’m an adult contributing to public safety in our society and I want to teach others the same. If we could all live with the consideration of others in mind, the whole world would be a much better place. Wearing a mask doesn’t make me weak, scared, stupid or even “controlled”. It makes me caring. When you think about your appearance, mild discomfort, or other people’s opinion of you, imagine a loved… Read more »
This kind of attitude is why I suspect the mask regulations – however unpopular and hard to enforce they turn out to be – won’t end up being scrapped or watered down, as the equally farcical (though not as universally Orwellian) 2-week quarantine for overseas travel has been.
Lots of people WANT masks, as you say, and would be furious at the goverment for going back on their decision. (Never mind that most of these people would be unlikely to vote for them anyway). Travel quarantine, on the other hand, is just a frustrating inconvenience for people, with no opportunities to virtue-signal and much less accumulation of politicised pro- and- anti- arguments, so even the most committed pandemic-zealot isn’t going to waste much time defending it.
Agree with you, and very well put.The mask-wearing mania is reminiscent of and related to Gleichschaltung, in Hitler’s Germany. An innovation little understood by most who discuss the foundations the Third Reich’s totalitarianism that was central to introducing and maintaining total social control.
Are the police permitted, by law, to force someone to divulge a medical condition?
No. Even the shops and your employer isn’t allowed to ask that, its protected by medical confidentiality and privacy laws.
Yes I read that too today, I wasn’t aware they couldn’t or shouldn’t ask you so it’s fairly easy replying ” I can’t for health reasons” .
.
The thought of a vaccine terrifies me. I don’t want to have a vaccine so am I going to be labelled as a murder. Are we really going to force a population who are not affected by this illness to be mass vaccinated. It seems wrong to me
I also am frightened by the promotion of vaccines, but am hopeful that there will be enough of a pushback to scupper the enforcers. Meanwhile I have ordered my Delingpod lockdown sceptical mug and T shirt.
I WILL NOT HAVE THE VACCINE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. sorry about shouting!
Not only that but I suspect by now most people are already immune
‘NHS England Reports Zero Deaths From Covid for July 13th – 14th’
We have confirmation…yet it’s nowhere to be seen in MSM. Bet your arse I’ll be sharing the hell out of it though!
Can anyone help with an easily accessible + readable link that I can actually share regarding this? CEBM has changed their layout which isn’t exactly helpful. And the NHS England graph isn’t all that clear either
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
Go to the Covid19 total announced deaths
It doesn’t clearly state the dates of the 13th, 14th + 15th on the graph? I just want it to be clear so people I share it with can’t argue with me
Doesn’t seem to be user-friendly.
Why should Ihave to download this?
I want to see the figs on a webpage.
this isnt the first time, the first time was last week. follow professor Carl Heneghan on twitter, he does daily updates.
I will be sharing too. With the added note, why aren’t msm telling you the good news- they were happy to tell you the bad.
Where is this, please? NHS figs out yesterday show 9 deaths on 13th? Or am I missing something?
They may have occurred in the preceding week or more, but we’re announced on that date.
Another useful resource is on twitter, a statistician who posts under @RP131. He posts a load of graphs usually in the late afternoon after PHE , ONS ,NHS etc do their daily releases.
The one to look for is what he calls his “new style pivot” which shows the daily announced deaths by they date which they actually occurred.
So for instance yesterday NHS England announced 22 new deaths in hospitals for the 24hrs up to July 14th, but none of them actually occurred on the 14th. The others mostly occurred in the previous 5 days.
Didn’t Matt Hancock claim 88 deaths or something like it? ( I watched him but failed to concentrate)
I posted late last night on the lunacy of Blackburn with Darwen council’s announcement yesterday with regards to emergency measures because of a ‘spike’ in cases. Amongst other nonsense, one of the measures is for people to ‘bump elbows’ if they are not from the same household, followed by ‘we won’t be offended if everyone does this’.
https://theshuttle.org.uk/introducing-new-local-measures-to-control-virus-spread/
I have slept a little since but the figures quoted are still puzzling me. The briefing states “The borough is currently at a rate of 40 cases per 100,000, making us fourth highest.”
The population is just under 150,000 so this extrapolates out at a total of 60 cases or 0.04%.
What am I missing? Why is this cause for concern?
Simple answer : It isn’t.
Hello, not commented for a while. Been away for a few days now that hotels have reopened. There seems to be a bit of a regional difference to the bedwetting! Somerset seems to be functioning in a relatively normal manner but Devon seems very different!
Worried about the face mask stuff… I fear where this will end. Got a message from my friend yesterday saying he will refuse to go to work if they introduce them to our office. I will too but how many others will? Getting more and more frustrated with people just accepting all this nonsense without critical thought, they are as complicit as the government.
Pubs: I went to two last night and both were so normal I could have cried with joy. One was a Wetherspoons where we had food with friends. They have put up discrete screens but we could order at the bar ….and arrived without a booking. No forms to complete. Staff were welcoming and treated us like people and not gross vectors of disease. Next place was a free house and was like before, just a small poster about distancing and the staff doing door handle cleaning.
Unfortunately the Council has felt the need to spray the pavements and benches with keep 2 metres apart or bench for one person only which looks horrible and insulting.
I’ve been in 5, the 3 that I went in Somerset were like normal, albeit a few less tables, one in Devon we sat outside but my partner said when he went into order they were all panicked with the sign in book etc, the other one also in Devon had signs everywhere, we were briefed when entering, tables marked off, floor markings, one way system in place, it was not great.
Only the comfortable places will get business.
Maybe the pubs will be the only places happy with the new rules on masks in shops as it will be about the only place we can go to feel like normal. I will just go to the pub more and spend the money I save by not shopping.
Yes I was thinking that. No shopping for me but some pubs will be good places. We walked past many open restaurants which looked welcoming. I feel I want to go the restaurants and pubs just to feel normal. Shops will be horrible places for me. I wonder if certain shops might do okay if it is young people who are keen to wear masks and shops where an older shopper goes might do worse. Young people tend to have less money to spend though than older so if older people are avoiding the horrible shopping experience perhaps some shops will have a rethink.
The irony with that logic is that many shops spend millions trying to lure the young despite having less money to spend while at the same time alienate the older customer who has more money to spend. This is one reason why the fashion industry is in such trouble not to mention that it is such a cut throat and saturated sector.
The lockdown, antisocial distancing and now the mandatory muzzles will hasten their demise.
Pizza Express last night. Free dough balls with a ‘main’. Menu on app if you don’t remember it! Very physically spaced. Several groups people not all tables occupied. Empty by 9.15. Prices up. 3 pizzas, 2 puds bottle wine. £72. Great to see the staff again but for how long will it continue? I know the chain is already in trouble but they’ve got a mountain to climb without people spending.
Wethy’s are doing it right, meeting the implied obligations of the (non-statutory) ‘guidance’, but not pushing anything at you, other than bizarre queuing. They are also reducing beer prices, even though the vat cut doesn’t apply.
Just listening to the radio, talksport. You cannot escape the Covid Government warnings to not share misinformation, ping, don’t feed the beast etc. Laughable advertising given the unbalanced panic reporting we have had to endure month after month. Do the Government not have a responsibility to provide some encouragement, balance, positivity? Weakest most half-witted politicians in my lifetime, but imagine the next lot will be even worse.
Latest story is the England cricketer not allowed to play as he has broken Covid rules, you would think he had fallen into a vat of plutonium the way its reported.
I said months ago when I was first forced to work from home that this was the first snowflake pandemic, as I sit at home months later, with some staff now jobless and redundant, nothing has changed my mind.
Stay at home, stay alert, look forward to higher taxes and a miserable life. I voted for the Buffoon, never again.
how have they got so many people in with the power to go along with it, money?
that or secret society membership or blackmail
Quite laughable after the leaks they’ve done throughout, and even on Sunday you have Gove saying “No mask”, the on Monday Boris announcing “Mandatory Masks”. You don’t get better misinformation that this!
I don’t remember ever hearing of something so ridiculous. This is a fit 25 year old fast bowler, not an 85 year-old with clapped out lungs. Hardly a death sentence if he got CCP Virus, which is bitten by a snake territory anyway.
The tragic report of the man who lost his wife after her cancer treatment was cancelled is one of many such, sadly. I wonder if this is a phenomenon worldwide (withdrawal of healthcare except for coronavirus), or if this is exclusively a UK scandal.
I think its global as I vaguely remember an article about developing countries where their good work in bringing down cases of illnesses such as malaria is under threat because of the preoccupation with Covid 19. That article quoted a government official who said that Covid is the least of their problems.
It is extremely sad. He and many others will have to carry that sadness and anger for the rest of their lives. So many lives have been and will be turned upside down by U.K. response to Covid and it’s continued fear reporting of winter deaths people will continue to avoid hospitals and treatments cannot get back to normal because of restrictions.
If you want to investigate how covid is affecting our cousins across the pond, check out Dr Pam Popper’s website and frequent video updates. I think the same is happening in pro-lockdown States. Maybe UK column has information on what is going on on the Continent. As for elsewhere, I’m not sure.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/lockdown-deaths-not-covid-deaths
Lockdown Deaths, Not Covid Deaths
Really worth the moments to read.
Another subtlety of their strategy which may go under the radar if not pointed out. As mentioned by a commenter yesterday, dritfted out on msm this morning, there is going to be an announcement on Monday about the status of the vaccination trials. This, in my opinion, is a deliberate trailing of the announcement to give people a sense of majesty about the vaccine. The of PR for vaccination must be to lift the desire for vaccination out of the hum drum and into something special.
It’s propaganda being used this morning and on through the weekend.
Linked to this, Richard Horton (editor of The Lancet) just interviewed on CNBC this morning. He has a book out that he has been plugging, and there will be a paper in The Lancet on Monday about the vaccine trials. Shameless promotion of the ‘new normal’, Big Pharma and industry working together with government, how scientists must speak truth to power (the right sort of scientists, of course!) and how ‘selfless’ the Chinese academics have been in working to solve the CV pandemic. The interviewers are all pretty clued up from a firm/financial markets perspective, so did probe how the paper on HCQ that had to be retracted by The Lancet was chosen. As I have said before, his role needs to be investigated, by which I mean, all email traffic since the start of the year. Suspect the Americans will issue subpoenas at some point.
Searching ‘Richard Horton (editor of The Lancet) just interviewed on CNBC this morning’, on a google brings up an interesting selection of recent comment in the press by Richard Horton. Critical of Britian’s response and defending Chinese efforts. I shall seek out CNBC this morning.
I think the vaccine propaganda is to encourage the idea that face nappies won’t need to be worn for ever as long as we submit to being injected with something that, simply, cannot have been as rigorously tested as normal vaccines.
Yep. Front page in the DT this morning