Latest News
Zero Hospital Deaths in English Hospitals Yesterday
Several people tweeted out this graph yesterday, accompanied by the news that zero deaths were recorded by NHS England on August 19th. While that’s true (I checked the NHS England website this morning), it isn’t the first time that’s happened as I’ve reported on Lockdown Sceptics many times before. In the past, the zero figure has subsequently been updated as recorded deaths for the day in question start trickling in. Will be interesting to see if that happens for August 19th, but I suspect it will.
Hospital Admissions Over-Counted
Must-read story in the Telegraph. According to an analysis done by SAGE, people admitted to hospital in March and April were counted as Covid admissions if they’d ever tested positive for the disease, regardless of how much time had elapsed between the test and the admissions and regardless of the actual reason they were being admitted. Science Editor Sarah Knapton has more.
An investigation for the Government’s Science Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) found that people were being counted as Covid hospital admissions if they had ever had the virus, and were added to those being admitted directly due to it.
Government figures show that, at the peak of the pandemic in early April, nearly 20,000 people a week were being admitted to hospital with coronavirus (see graph below), but the true figure is unknown because of the problem with over-counting.
The oversight echoes recent problems with the data for Covid-19 deaths, in which it emerged that thousands of people who died of other causes were being included in coronavirus statistics if they had once tested positive.
Professor Graham Medley, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, asked by Sage to look into the situation, told The Telegraph: “By June, it was becoming clear that people were being admitted to hospital for non-Covid reasons who had tested positive many weeks before”.
“Consequently, the NHS revised its situation report to accommodate this.”
The investigation led to a readjustment of how the figures were compiled at the beginning of July.
On Thursday night, experts warned that the miscalculation was particularly concerning because the number had been used to reflect the current state of the epidemic.
Professor Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “The admissions data is a crucial point. I’d say it is more important than the death data because it is the best marker of the impact of the disease.”
Worth reading in full.
Vicar of Dibley Moment
There’s a nice story in East Anglian Daily Times about a parish council that was forced to hold a meeting in a car park because four of its members can’t use Zoom.
In a situation that could have come straight out of the script from the Vicar of Dibley, Tostock Parish Council decided it had to meet in the car park because four of its nine members don’t have the computer equipment needed to hold a Zoom meeting. There are also fears that the broadband in the village is not good enough to host an online meeting.
Worth reading in full, although the bedwetting comments of councillors worried about catching Covid from standing in a car park for 10 minutes are a bit depressing.
SAGE Advisor Cannot Calculate Risk
This tweet from Catherine Noakes, Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds, is revealing. Why? Because she’s a member of SAGE. Surely, as a scientist, she should know that her chances of dying from COVID-19, given that she’s under-65, are lower than dying in a road traffic accident? Indeed, people of all ages are six times more likely to die of flu or pneumonia at the moment, according to the ONS. Did Professor Noakes refuse to go to restaurants during the winter of 2017-18? There were 50,000 excess deaths that winter, likely due to seasonal flu and unusually cold weather. That’s more deaths than there have been from Covid to date.
With bedwetters like this advising the Government, no wonder we’re in such a pickle.
Head Teacher Orders Five Year-Old Children to Wear Masks
A head teacher in Milton Keynes is insisting that all children at his school, including those as young as five, wear masks or face shields when they return in September. The Milton Keynes Citizen has the story.
Warren Harrison, chief executive officer of the Premier Academy’s Eaton Mill primary school in Bletchley, issued the order in a newsletter to parents on Monday.
He had previously warned parents that if they’re not taking Covid-19 seriously they need to find another school, advising them to: “Maybe try Hogwarts”.
In his newsletter, Mr Harrison slams the government for “doing everything on the hoof” and says the Premier Academy is acting with “common sense, logic and reason” in its face mask initiative.
This is against the UK Government’s guidelines. Won’t stop him, of course. Best hope is if a parent brings a lawsuit against the school.
Meanwhile, please sign this ThemForUs petition urging primary and secondary schools not to make face masks mandatory.
Windswept Testing Facilities
A reader has been in touch to tell me about his testing experience when he came back from his hols.
I returned this morning from a holiday in the United States with my family. We’d been staying in Vermont (1,533 total positive tests state-wide since mid-March; 58 deaths with Covid) and on the island of Nantucket (49 positive tests since March 16th; one death) so naturally as likely plague-carriers we’re required to quarantine on our return to the UK.
When we got home I thought we might as well get tested in anticipation of the government finally seeing reason and changing the ludicrous rules currently in place and went online to see what testing options were available. The first search result was a drive-through NHS test down the road, and it said ‘testing for all patients’. Not overly keen on tossing away six hundred quid unnecessarily, I called the number which rang through to a call centre in Northern Ireland. To my astonishment, after asking me why I wanted to test myself and family (I said because we’d been travelling), the operator said it was a waste of time but yes, even if we had no symptoms and were not essential workers we could have one. He then identified 3 drive-in test sites within 11 miles and offered an appointment at any of them for the same day. I chose the nearest, and he said we could have any time slot we wanted the same afternoon (I was calling a little after midday).
We drove to the site, which was the entire car park of a Leisure Centre – closed of course. There were 11 uniformed and nappied NHS-badged staff, two tents and not another soul the whole time we were there. Everything was deeply efficient and the staff were extremely nice – relieved to have something to do. It took about 20 minutes for the whole family to self-administer the tests in the car, and we drove off leaving them to the deserted car park. That’s the way the money goes.
Round-Up
- ‘Stop New Normal‘ – New anti-lockdown website
- ‘Be careful Boris: your backbenchers are running out of patience‘ – Good column by Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph
- ‘Team BoJo’s five months of cackhandedness‘ – Blistering piece by Patrick Benham-Crosswell in the Conservative Woman
- ‘Pandemic rescue package takes national debt over £2trn for first time‘ – Alarming story in the Times
- ‘WHO says Europe can combat spike in infections without full lockdown‘ – Encouraging story in France 24, although knowing the WHO it will change its mind about this tomorrow
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Comedy of Errors” by Joe Saunders.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few months 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 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 (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). 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! If they’ve made that clear to customers with a sign in the window or similar, so much the better. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Oct 3rd to Oct 13th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £3.99 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now over 29,500).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: Toulouse has become the first French city to insist on mandatory face coverings in all outdoor settings.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is a lot of work (although I have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending me stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here. If you want me to link to something, don’t forget to include the HTML code, i.e. a link.
And Finally…
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That Headteacher should not be overseeing our children’s’ education
He shouldn’t be in education; probably better suited to HR!
I think he’s more suited to being a sadistic prison warden.
He needs to be one of the inmates
He’s a CEO of an academy, unlikely he has any teaching qualifications.
Just being in prison would do.
The growth of kerrchingg! academies has correlated with the elevation of a lot of dodos with sharp suits and pointy shoes to headship.- now often entitled with pseudo-management terms such as ‘chief executive’.
There idea of education is that of a baked bean factory with trendy slogans on the wall.
He is a sadistic prison warden, disguised as an educator.
If you read the full article in the Mirror he sounds like he’s using the opportunity to score some political hits against Tories (deserved, to be fair) and couldn’t give a shit about the kids at his school.
His entire newsletter might as well be a Labour public broadcast, not once does he talk about the mental welfare of children, exemptions, possible negative effects of masking, the actual risk they face (or lack therefore, more to the point) – it’s just all about taking digs at gov and feeling smug about himself. Really shocking stuff, the guy should be removed from his post immediately, he is a danger to others.
I just read the full article. I’m now incandescent with rage. That headmaster is an absolute arsehole of the highest order – and he’s on a salary of £140k, one of the largest in the country.
“and he’s on a salary of £140k, one of the largest in the country.”
That’ll be why he’s a Labour supporter.
No – the kerrrching! factor is an embedded Tory policy – quite forseeable in its results..
Petty point scoring you Lord Lucan, will only have the government smiling. Did you ever hear of “divide and rule”. Well of course you did, but you decided to take no notice.
Bet he doesn’t live in Bletchley, or anywhere else he might be within punching range of a dad.
Pfft.
The man is insane.
Young kids are really good at calling out idiocy when they see it. Lots of children will refuse to muzzle up and as for the 2 metre rule… good luck with that one!
My little one went back to school in June. Social distancing and bubbling died that first day, the teachers soon gave up trying to police the impossible.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Mr Harrison’s school a few days in, I have a feeling things will not be going to plan.
Calls himself a ceo. Ffs.
There’s only 1 photo of the scrote on googleimages – very suspicious.
But God forbid that parents do it, right?
I don’t use this word lightly.. he is a c..t!
The parents all individually need to go to the police and report him for assault on their children. Or harm with intent. Or causing actual bodily harm. I am sure there are several offences which relate. There is a very good and active parents organisation in Germany which is fighting attempts to introduce masks in schools.
It’s child abuse pure and simple. He should be in jail.
Too many red marxists infiltrated the establishments now
Cath Noakes clearly needs to get out more.
The picture of a school operating like that is inhuman. What we are doing is very misguided and very sad.
Misguided and sad doesn’t cut it. Criminally insane is more fitting.
Yes, yes, yes
Psychopathic, might be better.
I was just reading her tweets and comments when it suddenly flashed up that they were protected. Has she just done this?
Great cartoon!
DT readers are finally waking up to the Covid scam. Bojo is getting a right kicking, deservedly so. A couple of the comments blame NHS and PHE but overwhelmingly Bojo and Hancock are in the firing line
Has anyone discovered if Bojo has gone on holiday to Greece yet if he reads the DT he might not want to come back.
One comment with over 200 upvotes:
” Boris has blown it. The eminent people who said he was an untrustworthy vacuum were right, sadly. I voted for him as a lifelong Tory but never again, ”
ouch
Me too, what twats .
Johnson and Hancock are simply doing what Gates wants them to do. Compulsory genocidal vaccine is coming, if these “twats” think they can get away with it.
Of course, the grossly stupid still think that theirs is an opinion worth sharing.
Quarantine him for an undetermined length of time upon his return.
On the end of a rope
I think that all these pro lockdown folks should all be compelled to live in a Greta Thunberg/Extincition Rebellion/Public Health England/Green World for a year or two.
Preferably at the Tower of London. He can be another visitor attraction.
Good morning all. Any happy stories to share? I could do with a dose of positivity today.
Not many I’m afraid. Our plumber is a hardcore sceptic, though he does also believe people are being turned into lizards. Actually, thinking about the BS we see spouted, maybe he’s not that far wrong….
I saw 4 unmasked shoppers in Aldi last night. First time I have seen a bare face in there. I felt utterly joyful and grinned idiotically at them all!
We went to Morrison’s late on a Sat. night no one on door ,being later not a great many shoppers a few without masks staff , some masked others not, and hearing a Capt. Beefheart track being played! had a great chat with a bloke restocking the veg. about the Capt. Of course he pulled down his mask to chat!
My brothers and I saw The Yardbirds with Jimmy Page and Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (former home of the Oscars) in 1966. Safe as Milk. Zig Zag Wanderer. He turned to painting later in his life.
Jealous. Did you get to Monterey Pop, Richard ?
No, but I saw Cream with my two brothers at the Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, September4th, 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-_zfrER5KI
I saw the great Captain & his Magic Band in 1974, supported by Henry Cow.
…..for a minute I thought I was on the John Peel group on Facebook.
My local Aldi had several unmuzzled shoppers on Wednesday evening. Usually it’s just me.
Grinning at people is the best antidote we’ve got.
Same yesterday in main dealership, neither office or workshop staff or customers in waiting room masked up.
I had a different experience.The sales staff were all unmasked but no tea or handshakes.One of the backroom staff came to get my driving licence and wouldn’t touch it.I had to place it on a piece of paper.When he returned it he held it on said paper and let it slide onto the desk.Surreal
Yeah, they had removed the coffee maker, apart from that pretty good.
We had our septic tank emptied yesterday, and a very pleasant chap. Had a great chat on our past expat experiences in the Middle East, needless to say in his line of work surrounded by bacteria, there was no social distancing or masks during our exchange.
septic tank workers, they LOVE IT…lol
Most people these days look they ARE septic tank workers.
And here you are today, in the sceptic tank!
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Great story You’d think in his line of work he’d be in a full hazmet suit wouldn’t you?
The normal pub I mentioned a while ago that closed due to a non-local snitch complaining is back open as before due to local pressure. A big win.
Hooray!
Drop the snitch down a well. A deep one.
Annie, for a devout Christian there’s something very Old Testament about you ……
Those are the best kind of Christians…
YAY!
On Tuesday I met up with an old colleague who greeted me with a handshake and hug, and I quickly realised he was sceptical about this whole business as well. Very heartening.
Last night I visited a local country pub. Everything was delightfully normal – not a sign of test and trace, perspex, tape, stickers or one-way systems. I thanked the landlord for providing such a haven of normality amongst all the madness. I will be going back.
Did it happen to be anywhere in warwickshire?
Sadly it’s in Hertfordshire. We should set up a database of sensible pubs!
The danger with announcing where they are is some vindictive snitch will inform on them and they’ll be closed down.
I know of a pub where they don’t bother with these silly rules but it’s 70 miles away!!
Happy stories – I guess taking my step-daughter for her first haircut in 6 months is a happy story? Well she was very happy anyway. My step-son’s got into University, despite the fact he was cheated of finishing his College course back in March. Very happy! And his Uni doesn’t seem to be heavy on the social-distancing by the looks of their FAQs on their website – they’re doing all they can, it seems, to make the Uni experience as fun and exciting as possible in September, despite restrictions.
Got my tyres changed on Monday. The mechanics weren’t too bothered about masks and whatnot. The guy at the front desk was wearing one for appearance’s sake, as far as i can tell, but didn’t tell any customer that they needed masks or anything. Once you get past all the things they have to do, like put up signs about facemask, it was actually a pretty normal experience.
Now, if i only hadn’t ordered Goodyear tyres, that would have been great…
Went for breakfast in the local cafe. No masks and the only sign was “Remember we don’t have a card machine”. Saw the local shop had the no mask, we don’t ask, poster up. The builder at home, which was why a breakfast out day, punctuated the banging with his views on the total stupidity of everything that was happening. Nearly 1.00 pm, was out for three hours, and didn’t see one mask
I went to the pub last night my favourite local ever and it was…..fairly normal. Phew. There was a fair ground in the park. Nice to see and hear but it was a socially distanced faircround, book in advance, fenced off site, masked up security guard at the gate and “keep two seats apart, scream if you wanna go faster!” The riders weren’t wearing face masks and neither were the ride operators. Your £10 ticket bought unlimited rides. Phew….
Screaming is allowed? Good heavens, where were the police?
Masks wearers are a very real problem. These compliant people are giving the government enough confidence to do something yet more stupid. Making vaccination, with Gates’s hardly tested genocidal brew, compulsory is something HMG will try to do, if it thinks the public is just too dumb to resist being culled.
Went to hospital consultant a few days ago. This was a real test of my resolve, for I had waited a year for this appointment and didn’t want to blow it by not wearing one of those disgusting face-things. Fretted about it a week. So, that morning, I decided to ring the hospital department to see how the land lied. I said ‘I don’t wear a mask’ (I didn’t say ‘I’m exempt’ – too yellow star for me). Sweet girl at the other end – ‘No problem’ she said; ‘just speak with the person on the door then, if you want, you can wait outside and we’ll come and get you; but if you want to wait in the waiting area, no problem.’ So I just turned up; but there was a mask-Nazi on the door who was about to say I need a mask. ‘Don’t wear one’, I interrupted. ‘Girl on reception says to come in. I have an appointment with … – at… ‘ And am overheard – another door person (much to the Nazi’s disgust) says ‘Hello Mr Bertram, we are expecting you. I’ll show you to the waiting room.’ It was easy as that. No need… Read more »
That’s good to know. Thanks.
More unmuzzled fellow passengers in my carriage on the way back home from work. Its been slow and uneven but it seems to be steady.
Sorry, I’m a bit late. Yesterday had a lovely afternoon with my neighbours, in a pub garden. The pub was totally cool and unfussy, no taking of details either. And our neighbours who were very scared of covid in the beginning, have now turned tail and see it for what it really is. We walked through the park and had coffee at the cafe – loads of people enjoying the sun, no naps. Then walking through town – loads of napless walking around. So all in all a good time.
A few good reads on AIER (American Institute for Economic Research) recently:
https://www.aier.org/article/governments-are-faking-it-and-copying-each-other/
https://www.aier.org/article/intellectuals-politicians-and-pot-commitment/
https://www.aier.org/article/pathological-and-parochial-altruism-in-the-age-of-fear/
AIER has been one of the best sources of reasoned, in-depth sceptical analysis of the current madness, especially from a political, economic and social angle. The first two, especially, are a good attempt at trying to figure out why so many governments have rushed to implement the same measures worldwide, and keeping them going against all the evidence.
They’re written from a US-focused perspective, but a lot of the points apply to the UK and the rest of the world!
AIER has had a lot of good stfuf since the start.
Zero Covid Deaths In English Hospitals Yesterday
Local Live Online editor had better be awake or their copy will read
“None of the deaths occurred in XXXX county or XXXX county next door.” as per every day for 8 weeks.
“that was the riskiest thing I’ve done in a long while” !!!?
Literally incredible. The fact that such a statement could come from a professor, and someone who is on the board of supposed “experts” advising the government on policy in response to the now passed epidemic, is both astonishing and a very good explanation for how we came to be in the mess we are in.
If the “professor” (as I think we must term someone making such a stupid statement on such an important issue) is in fact a safety obsessed neurotic, then I suppose it could theoretically be true that going for lunch in a restaurant could be “the riskiest thing she has done” for a while, but her biggest risks would be things like food poisoning, getting mugged or involved in a traffic accident on the way there or back, etc. Catching covid, let alone suffering serious consequences, would be well down the list, among other vanishingly small risks ordinarily routinely ignored, such as getting struck by lightning or having a tree branch fall on her head..
Do you think she believes what she is saying to be true?
Seems unlikely to be something she wrote as propaganda. Possible in theory, but even less plausible I think than the idea she actually is that irrational, because I see educated, intelligent people all the time in my social circles who are that dominated by irrational fear.
The fact is that the fearmongering has been omnipresent and highly effective, and fear is, indeed, the mind killer. It is just as dangerous to reason and to rationality as we were always told. And once you have stopped reasoning, it doesn’t matter a whit how intelligent or educated you are.
Have an uptick for the Bene Gesserit “fear is the mind killer” reference.
True wisdom, as we have just had demonstrated very forcefully to the whole world, from the Bene Gesserit (ok, ok, from Frank Herbert).
Not the only person to have warned us against the very trap the entire wold just fell into. We can hardly claim we weren’t warned:
“Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it’s contagious.”
Jimmy Stewart (a wartime bomber pilot as well as an actor)
“Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.”
Stefan Zweig
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
Rudyard Kipling
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
— Seneca
“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
— Edmund Burke
Great, thanks for these.
Fear – false evidence appearing real!
Stefan Zweig was a wonderful writer. Beware of Pity is one of my favourite novels.
Check out the reviews!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beware-Stefan-classic-B-Format-Paperback/dp/1908968370/
I’m reading a lot more fiction now and minimising the time I waste on the news, since most of it is insultingly transparent propaganda anyway. (Hello, BBC!) Entering the world of an absorbing novel is very good for the psyche; not escapism, but a refreshing retreat from Covidmania. Ditto listening to great music.
I’ve thought as well that Covid has been like a global Gom Jabbar, revealing the humans from the animals.
Well I find it easier to believe she wrote it as propaganda than think she is stupid enough to actually believe what she said.
Motivation is always the hardest thing to be sure of, it could certainly be either. But which is worse for us, in its implications?
Both are bad, but if she knows it’s BS then it’s much worse for us because that means she is pursuing an evil agenda and not just a victim of her own fears, which she could be possibly talked out of
Both are are likely bad for the rest of us.
Intelligence seems to have nothing to do with Civid mania. The latter effortlessly overrides the former.
That’s why we constantly find ourselves howling ‘WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?’ They aren’t people any more. They have surrendered ‘their fair judgement, without which we are pictures, or mere beasts’.
That is my view, either way though, she is a dangerous pos.
Yes, I see many much more intelligent and better educated people than me (in STEM subjects!!) unable to assess the risk. It is not about logic, common sense or intelligence. I’m still thinking about what it is really about …. maybe fear of death, suggestibility, inability to think critically, desire to conform. Who knows but I see so many people who really should do better obsessing about bubbles, rules and God knows what else.
You may be right, but no matter. She is either dangerous or dangerous and stupid. Either way we need rid of her.
Good question…Yes. Or she is virtue signalling her compliance to the cult of covid
Her words stink of virtue signalling.
As a part of the official Covid psyop, she has to do, what she has to do. I wonder how she managed to eat her meal while wearing her mask.
Having worked with and to several similar personalities in similar positions, I have no doubt she is genuine, if a little condescending. I think she expects her readers to be even more scared than she is. The main problem is that like all SAGE members she has a significant personal investment in the current situation, just like a general who can neve understand why people want wars to end.
Note that she is utterly protected economically from the lockdown and has gained a strong sense of self-importance from her position. Would anyone be following her before 2020? Now she has an audience of the worried we’ll to nurture. Vanity can be a strong driver.
Last year I turned 40. In the midst of my midlife crisis I decided to take up skateboarding.
Turns out I’ve been doing more risky things than that by going to pubs, restaurants and church. If I’d known that last year I would have maybe left the skateboard thing alone.
How`s the skateboarding going? are you any good? have you
mastered any tricks?
It’s going all right. No tricks yet. In February I could do an ollie. Then I lost the knack and can’t get it back.
tomorrow’s headline: “Thanks to covid, Ed can no longer do an ollie”
Sounds like the caption of a Gary Larson cartoon 🙂
Yes, real thrill-seekers go to restaurants where people don’t wear masks now, it seems.
#stunning&brave
Ha! Cool!
Much respect. Inspirational stuff. I considered taking skateboarding up when I was 30 but decided that I was far too clumsy. Since then though, cycling and skiing has resulted in four trips to A&E and two surgeries! Maybe I should reconsider skateboarding now that I’m 50 ….
There’s a skateboard park two streets from where I live, just under the Jacques Cartier Bridge. It was enclosed by a metal chain link fence from April to July. A basketball court just a five minute bicycle ride away from my apartment was also closed to the public. WTF!
The public that doesn’t own any wirecutters ?
Cowardly wankers.
It’s not cowardly to feel fear. It is cowardly to let fear override your reason, which is what they have done.
When she gave evidence before the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee in May, she stated that the science for the two metre social distancing rule was the precautionary principle.
In other words, no science.
Though in fact, of course, we all know the truth behind the 2m rule imposition because an insider spilled the beans months ago:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/07/government-has-terrorised-britons-believing-coronavirus-will/
“Prof Dingwall said he had been told by a senior public health specialist that “we knew it was one metre but we doubled it to two because we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was and we could not trust them to observe it so we doubled it to be on the safe side”.”
The one metre World Health Organisation recommendation was equally just made up.
It’s all incremental but stuff like this brings people onside as it is clearly ludicrous. What worries me is the hardcore shitbags who hear this and double down on their fear. It all goes back to the SAGE m̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶r̶o̶l̶ behavioural science from March. In trying to illicit change in the “complacent”, they failed to consider the impact the “hard-hitting emotional messaging” would have on the non-complacent.
If nothing else, these scientists are very, very clumsy.
Risk assessment.
We have a busy main road that narrows to go under a railway bridge, on one side there is no pavement, on the other is a narrow tunnel for Pedestrians.
Last year a woman was crushed to death trying to walk the non pavements side.
Council put up barriers and signs trying to stop people doing that, there are pedestrian crossings nearby either side of the bridge.
4 young women are huddled around the sign having evaded the barrier , waiting for a gap in traffic to dash through.
They are all wearing masks in the open.
They are not the only ones because they have come from nearby Aldi, Iceland or Matalan
crazy…really crazy
It also says a lot for the life she has lived so far, it must have been as boring as watching paint dry. What a total muppet. Risks? It’s just amazing I am still here. So many close calls with the grim reaper I have lost count.
I hope the twitter replies were strong.
A low threshold for risk.
She wrote that for attention. That’s it.
When AIDS first loomed on the horizon it took forever for the ‘safe sex’ message to get across. Nobody I knew was practising it then and condoms were not an ubiquitous thing in the eighties. If this woman had been around then she would probably have put a padlock on her vagina and campaigned for mandatory celibacy.
This is the inevitable consequence of decades of the relentless advance of health and safety policies. We have become risk intolerant (as a society).
Most of us on here, for example, grew up riding in the back of our parent’s cars without seat belts and here we are. And yet, most children today not only don’t need to be told to buckle up, but will feel extremely uneasy if they’re not strapped in. And parents of course could get into some serious trouble for it.
It’s a different world and it’s going to get worse. I expect at this rate in a decade or two contracting any sort of cold or flu will be intolerable. We will be so thoroughly tracked, traced and vaccinated that people will be terrified at the prospect of contracting any sort of respiratory infection.
We (sceptics) are all fast becoming relics I fear.
a must watch;
https://plandemicseries.com/
Apologies if anyone posted this yesterday – a splendid Spanish doctor explains to newsreaders why they are misrepresenting the covid narrative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwlkumcRf6w
yes – it was referenced by Toby yesterday and links also posted on here several times. Definitely worth a watch and worth repeating for those that missed it
I watched a television advertisement earlier today. It contained images of people wearing masks. The voice-over asserted: This is not a mask. It is freedom. This is not a mask. It is solidarity. The closest the so called advertisement actually came to trying to sell me something was at the end when the word Vistaprint appeared.
Best to avoid all tell-lie-vision I find. Thanks for the heads up
though, I have used vistaprint in the past.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
I was just to type that quote…
Great minds.
But does 2 + 2 = 4
(just testing)
Complain to them – I have.
Corporations act as parasites in any situation which they can turn to their advertising advantage. It always makes me laugh that advertisers are called creatives.
We use Vistaprint for our annual family calendars. No more.
Make sure you let them know why!
Nor me.
Work Shall Make You Free
I saw that yesterday too – I thought it was government propaganda until vistaprint was mentioned at the end. My husband is currently reading 1984. Big Brother calls this doublethink – where 2 contradictory ideas are conflated into one. How can anyone think that freedom is achieved by restriction??
There is government propaganda in Quebec. I saw four large posters yesterday showing 30 something males and females wearing masks and looking defiant. One said Conviction. Another Solidarity. Another Courage.
This was a brand new government produced propaganda poster, subsidized by us, the taxpayers. At the bottom of the poster was this government’s motto ‘Votre Gouvernement’ (Your Government). Our Premier was marketing director for Quebecair. Now he’s marketing East Germany 2.0.
Blimey, that’s sinister!
Exactly
Another company to add to the boycott list!
Sent them this short e mail
“Recently saw your nonsense advert on the TV re: the wearing of masks. Won’t be buying any more products from you”…
Wow – boycott Vistaprint!
I just went on their website to find an email address. Was shocked to see that they are selling
back-to-school kid-friendlymasks. Seems they are also supporters of child abuse.https://youtu.be/DoJ4OGiA1qs
I am off to for a run. The anger after watching that should see me a personal best
Thanks for that. I now know what to watch out for so I can imediately hit the mute button.
I’ve added my Thumbs Down, currently running at nearly 1000 more than the Ups
It could do with a few more I think 😉
Words just fail me with that idiotic tweet from Sage member Cath Noakes! Does she really feel in danger in a restaurant? No wonder government is making stupid decisions with people like her advising them.
I can recommend a restaurant for her where she’ll feel totally safe. There’s only room for one – no dirty other people – and it’s got soft padded walls. Lovely! Best of all, she’ll get regular meals, three times a day, spooned into her mouth by Nursie.
Two metre spoon, of course.
made of plastic, slipped under the locked door. Seriously this woman should not be allowed to give any more advice on anything of any importance ever again.
With a two metre spoon?
I don’t understand why she went in the first place if she thinks it’s sooooo dangerous.
Well, well:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8650513/Coronavirus-EIGHT-biggest-killer-four-times-people-dying-dementia.html
You mean to say, COVID19 is not the deadliest pathogen to strike Homo sapiens in all our history?
It’s awful. I mean, the treatment involves… have to steel myself… being sent home!
It never was. That was hype. And it did the trick.
Interesting that the Flu/Pneumonia are half what they are normally. Wonder how many of those were diagnosed as Covid in the absence of a test but in the presence of symptoms.
The other half (at least)
Some good comments too.
Now that all the chickens are coming home to roost, don’t you all feel the teeniest bit smug on here? Having to bite my tongue, when speaking with friends who thought I was the one who had got this completely wrong, is going to give me a lisp!
There are still too many entrenched zealots for my liking. Idiots who will not budge.
Set fire to them 😇
Pot commitment, as AIER recently established.
No, not smug. Just very, very sad that we were right. It’s not a great feeling. Back in March I hoped I’d be wrong, and that by the end of summer we’d be out of lockdown.
The ONLY way we can beat this is with the power of saying NO.
Even if it means being locked away for 6 months for hugging a friend.
Before we win, we will have to be prepared to suffer.
Similarly, definitely not smug, more like despair in that we turned out to be right but nobody in charge is listening, instead they’re just doubling down repeatedly with less and less excuse for it. The fear + compliance propaganda has also created a significant minority of people (probably a small minority of the overall population but a much bigger one in terms of online/social media presence) who are fully signed up to the official narrative and angrily denounce anything that seems to challenge it (this situation is a lot worse in the US) In the UK, at least, it feels like the only way out of this is for people – from MPs down to ordinary citizens – to stand up to it. Businesses and charities also. Maybe there will be some progress once Parliament starts up again next month. It seems totally crazy that they are allowed to take a “summer holiday” in this situation, but it’s another excuse to delay the day of judgement by a few more weeks at least… The longer this goes on the worse the inevitable backlash/fightback will eventually be. But this Government seem to now be irrevocably committed to their attempt to keep… Read more »
First they laugh at you, then they hate you, then they fight you, then you win.
-David Icke.
But then they will still be trumpeting a second wave and long covid. I agree that a bit more of this sort of info emerging is very heartening, though.
What I’m most worried about is that facts don’t seem to matter any more.
There have been so many “no clothes” moments and yet the reaction just seems to be to tweak the narrative (deaths -> cases etc) and apply yet more nonsensical authoritarian controls.
They are so lost in their cult of groupthink! What on earth is it going to take to make these idiots see sense?
Judging by the example of Germans, only a complete, humiliating and absolutely obvious catastrophe.
Followed by another 30 years during which the then still influential collaborators and
denialists slowly pass away.
But they will say that if it hadn’t been for lockdown etc etc
The Covid paranoiacs I know (2 couples) are actually doubling down – “self isolation before the second wave…”.
I guess we won’t be meeting up soon (if ever).
Jeez. I wonder if I should prepare myself for this from my family. I already find their brainwashed, believing everything they are fed by mainstream media state incredibly tiring and depressing. Wake up already!
I haven’t felt this yet but I sense the façade is cracking…..
Take your new found smugness to Trafalgar Square on the 29th of August.
Boris has actually been quite clever about this. Hitler identified his supposed ememies by making them wear a Star of David, but in today’s pc society that would be discriminatory, but making everybody wear a ‘mask of covid’ cannot be deemed to be so yet serves the same purpose and still allows you to target the dissenters.
Round up the COVID19 unbelievers and put them in re-education camps.
It’s for our own good…
That wont be long in coming.
The new nazis – kind to animals, the planet and minorities, but no change on civil rights.
A bit like in the old days: the AA man didn’t salute to warn of a speed trap.
Lots of holiday makers going homeward a day early.
Having spent 3 months locked indoors during the best spring/early summer in memory (during which I was out & about, key worker).
Now they find themselves unable to make plans for foreign travel due to johnsons continuing reckless lockdown so they come here for a bit of holiday and it’s Pissing down with rain in August.
You would have to have a heart of stone….
Why would anyone have a Covid test after returning from holiday and pay 600 quid for the opportunity to get yourself quarantined?!
As for the headteacher and the SAGE member, those kind of people have no business being in any position of responsibility. It’s about time people like that learnt to understand relative risk and grew a backbone to replace the flaccid one they currently have.
I think the deal is the £600 gets you out of doing the quarantine. Effectively a bribe.
Of course it’s easiest just to say you will quarantine and then not do it. This is truer to the spirit of most of what the government is doing anyway.
Except for neighbourhood Karens – you’ll get snitched.
Like a lot of things, this depends on where you live.
Why would you tell snitchers you were going on holiday? And more to the point where? Surely people on here don’t have snitchers as friends?
Only if you test negative?
You have about a 99.5% chance of testing negative.
Hitler had no business being in any position of responsibility….but there you go.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768532?guestAccessKey=950260ad-620b-40e1-a9a8-9db2293ef17e&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_jama&utm_term=3601763795&utm_campaign=article_alert&linkId=97486210This is the editorial article July JAMA by Redfield Director CDC which is the primary document behind all mask wearing now in the western world. Adopted like sheep everywhere “Now, there is ample evidence that persons without symptoms spread infection and may be the critical driver needed to maintain epidemic momentum”“Others may think it is premature to promote community masking until research has been completed that measures the effectiveness of cloth face coverings to prevent exposure specifically to SARS-CoV-2. Laboratory studies will be difficult and costly because they require capacity to safely manage this biosafety level 3 pathogen. Any type of community-based randomized trial will be complex to deploy in the right setting (a community with active infection) at the right time (when infections are increasing) to produce actionable results quickly. In the absence of such data, it has been persuasively argued the precautionary principle be applied to promote community masking because there is little to lose and potentially much to be gained. In this regard, the report by Wang et al provides practical, timely, and compelling evidence that community-wide face covering is another means to help control the national COVID-19 crisis.”“Like herd immunity with vaccines, the more individuals wear cloth face coverings… Read more »
Two words that should set off alarm bells – no, for once, not Bill Gates – Goldman Sachs!
“there is little to lose and potentially much to be gained”
Seems to be the general approach of medical types advocating this, wilfully ignoring ALL the things to lose by doing this (won’t list, we know them all, the list is long) and claiming there is MUCH to be gained, when in fact their best attempts to list gains are that it _might help reduce_ transmission except, where there are no infected people it literally does nothing and just costs all the downsides. Twats.
Also they claim they help avoid the need for a return to lockdown… there was never a need, there will never be a need, to return to that for C-19 anyway, so fuck off with your mask lies you cunts.
And were they at the same time setting up mask production companies? Lots of dosh.
“there is little to lose and potentially much to be gained”
By the people – the politicians, the “scientists” – prescribing the measures.
Much to be lost by all the rest of us.
“It is probably safe for individuals and safe for others to drive alone… without a face covering”
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry… that explains the masked drivers with nobody else in the car – they’re not taking any chances with the “probably”!
It’s utter madness what some academics are saying. What effing planet do they live on?!
Eagerly waiting for the first serious accident caused by a muzzled driver suffering from hypoxia and/or hypercapnia. The legal ramifications will be fascinating.
Yes, I used to be a nice person but now I’m hoping for events like this to happen! Bring on the maskne, fungal infections, halitosis, dental rot, and people passing out in the car.
Yes but I don’t want to be the one coming from the other direction!
The precautionary principle only works if you can be fairly sure there are no unintended consequences which could make the problem worse, otherwise it’s better to live with uncertainty. Surely those academics should know that.
Does the precautionary principle ever work?
Off the top of my head, it would make sense if you were trying to avoid a nuclear war.
A friend of mine, an enthusiastic mask wearers & bedwetter of the 1st rank, has come down with a nasty viral respiratory infection. Now, I don’t know that it’s because of the mask wearing but I wouldn’t bet against it.
Am I being unfeeling if I admit to a fleeting sense of schadenfreude.
No you’re not! These brain dead twerps don’t deserve any sympathy. I’m saving mine for all the poor souls that are going to suffer from delayed treatments for other, more serious illnesses. Why is a ‘covid casualty’ any more important than any other casualty?
There are logical reasons that mask wearing might increase risk of infection.Handwashing is almost the only thing effective in reducing transmission.If constant fiddling with the face masks makes it possible contamination of fingers and perhaps not available hand washing.This is a serious concern(not just schadenfreude).The recent increase of cases in France and Spain AND mask wearing might be that possibility together with more accepting crowds etc than doing the same thing without mask.
I saw a news report about train fares yesterday where two masked passengers were asked their opinion, both touched the middle of their masks within the few seconds they were on screen, everyday I see people holding the material of masks in their hands – possibly safe in the knowledge they’re part of the 99.98% of the population that aren’t infected. I’d love to see the scientific research showing unhygienic wearing and handling of face masks is beneficial!!
Thanks Swedenborg – I’ve now read the Redfield, Wang and Greenhalgh articles and tried to understand them as best I can (as a complete layman).
My head is spinning but those studies alone (despite your comments) seem enough to convince the intelligent layman that masking is effective to prevent spread of the virus. Not what I wanted to see.
Are the papers as clearly refutable as you say? Or is belief in the efficacy, and on the other hand the damage, of masking just an article of faith, on our side as well as theirs?
If it’s a question of belief and not science, we move into religious territory, where one man’s angel is another man’s devil, and the rational man bows out.
You have to careful comparing mask articles for Health Care Workers with masks for General population. They are two completely different ball games. Many of the pro mask articles cite those studies. The hospital setting is completely different .Change of masks, handwashing in between competent handling of masks. Masks for general population. No technical knowledge to put on safely. No change of masks. No handwashing after touching etc. These are two different worlds. The studies referenced are all retrospective observational studies which always have the risk for bias, you easily find what you want to find. You are more likely to publish a positive study than negative. You need a prospective (look into future)study with two different groups exposed(RCT) one with masks one without, at the same time ie same stage of the pandemic. None has been published for C-19. But for a similar virus, influenza, several such RCTs have been done showing no effect of face masks for the general public. I confess I haven’t read Trisha G(who is not a virologist, more a politician) article which I think uses the precautionary principle i.e. if it had an effect it would be good if everybody used it. I think… Read more »
Are we going to completely ignore the guy that snuck into an empty hospital, took photos, and got 3 months in jail for it? Are we also going to ignore how the Daily Mail was writing about hospitals filled to bursting under photos of empty hallways?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8184413/Man-jailed-sneaking-local-hospital-witness-coronavirus-Facebook-post.html
Didn’t know about it until your post, or didn’t remember it. That is pretty shocking. Any journalist take this up at the time or were they just happy to make it difficult for amateurs to compete with them?
“Are we also going to ignore how the Daily Mail was writing about hospitals filled to bursting under photos of empty hallways?”
Note the captions in the current story:
Corridors appeared eerily quiet as NHS staff packed into the wards to help sick patients, as Stevenson carried about his business despite strict Government orders to stay at home
and
With the hospital battling against the strain of increasing Covid-19 patients, Stevenson sauntered through will documenting his journey for social media
Be interesting to know what the true situation was in Stoke Mandeville on 30th March.
That story was dated 2nd April, though,so presumably the guy’s been out for a while. And how did he get arrested and convicted so quickly (even given he apparently admitted the offence) in the midst of a supposed crisis where courts were not operating normally?
Here’s a full interview with the guy:
Liberty Bunker
Looks like the guy was just too nice and cooperative, a bit naive, so he got railroaded.
He was very naive. Sounds like he fell for all their tricks.
Great! I was going to ask someone for an update on him.
Seems pretty chirpy. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.
Though I bet if he’d insisted on a lawyer and refused to plead guilty, I bet he’d either have had the charges dropped or still be waiting for the process to get moving. Really there should be scope for an abuse of process or similar suit, because they clearly took advantage of him in a way that the courts had supposedly said they were going to stop doing..
“The corridors were eerily quiet as staff packed into the wards…”. Hmm.
…to practice Tik Tok dance routines?
EVERYONE please go over to @CathNoakes and take her up on this tweet:
“Very pleased we’ve been awarded @UKRI_News
funding to evaluate #covid risks on public transport. Looking forward to working with @Martin_Lopez_Ga
@MarcoFelipeKing
@ITSLeeds
and colleagues at @imperialcollege
@CambridgeMaths
Newcastle, @PHE_uk
Manchester, dstl & DfT. More soon.”
THE MORE FUNDING, THE MORE FARCE!
And no doubt the more MASKS!
Certainly looks like more modelling and we know how they make all that up.
Seems fear pays well…
Indeed, a friend of mine works at a University in Psysiology and has bagged himself a research grant (way back in April) for something Covid related. His girlfriend also bringing in some Covid funds though I couldn’t work out what she was actually doing from what he said – She’s another Phd who went into academia – big money, lots of holidays, hardly any work to do. If you’re in the ‘right’ sector within Academia at the moment it must be like you’ve won the lottery, non-stop funding for Covid related studys.
And of course all that mostly wasted largesse will come out of our pockets in the end.
for years global warming has been the gravy train . academics have been able to get grants from all over for doing research into any tosh as long as it was pro climate change. Which is why the BBC and the grauniad can forever come up with rubbish scare stories that start with “scientists say………”.
Now it is Covid.
Oops didn’t see your comment!
probably contemporaneous! and if it’s worth saying it’s worth repeating!..
I am going to think about the effects of climate change on covid – something like “how hospital staff sweat more when wearing useless masks because of global warming” . I reckon that’s a 20 week study and a £500 per week grant
You’re not experienced enough at this – a year and a half, at £1000 a week. 🙂
Covid obviously the new climate change scam
She makes it sound like a jolly with all her mates. Do these people ever grow up?
Who puts these incompetent muppets in charge of counting things? They can’t even define what they’re looking for.
It wasn’t incompetence it was deliberate
What has this country come to when my 91 year old step father, who uses an inhaler every morning to counter his COPD doesn’t realise that it is actually dangerous for him to wear a mask in church. A church, I would add, that can seat 200 and rarely sees a congregation of more than 20 yet forces everyone to wear face nappies and does not allow singing or, even more ludicrously, the playing of the organ. How in the name of all that is holy have we ended up here?
Saw a post online from someone recently, a friend in the US. They gist of it was: they keep you away from schools. they keep you away from the churches. they keep you away from community centres; why? because that’s where people go to vote!
The droplets might fly into one ot the organ pipes and be shot into the air when the organist opens a stop?
From a story by H. P. Lovecraft ‘The Last Test’. Dr. Clarendon is the stereotype mad scientist prepared to experiment on any living creature including his sister..
“yes it may be horrible but it’s glorious too. The pursuit of knowledge, I mean. Certainly, there’s no slovenly sentiment connected with it. Doesn’t nature kill constantly and remorselessly, and are any but fools horrified at the struggle? Killings are necessary. They are the glory of science. We learn something from them, and we can’t sacrifice learning to sentiment. Here the sentimentalists howled against vaccination! They fear it will kill the child. Well, what if it does? How else can we discover the laws of disease concerned?”
I’m convinced that Nyarlathotep is behind all this. He is, after all, a big fan of Masks.
Hi – for anyone on Facebook there is a group “Save Our Rights UK – A Real Democracy” with about 18k members which seems a good contact point on the lockdown and surrounding issues. It seems quite active – not with the analysis and erudition of this site obviously but may be interesting to some of you folks.
There are some local groups arranging meetups and nice picture of group in kent/surrey area who met up recently
i’ll try and post link here but if doesn’t work can search on the name above.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1121423668218275
I think there is quite a lot of different groups now forming on various platforms bringing peopel in touch – people sick of the bullshit being fed to us…
I’ve joined the group – looks OK but nowhere near as good as this LS comments section. I mainly use Facebook for my music, art & photography interests. As other FB users will have noticed, their advertising algorithms relentlessly promote companies selling masks, the more expensive the better. Comments below such posts (presumably filtered) say what a great product they are. But I did see something a bit different on FB today, an advert for the posh magazine Country Life with a headline something like How Covid Has Changed Everything. The comments below were about 90% sceptical or anti-lockdown, apart from a few idiots still parroting lines from about 4 months ago like “Don’t want to wear a mask? You won’t like a ventilator much”. I won’t insult our intelligence here by bothering to demolish that ludicrous statement.
& this is what we are up against, an 80 year old has went to the local rag to complain about his local carvery
Stupid old tit.
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/toby-carvery-willerby-unsafe-hull-4443487
And on the same page:
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/second-wave-way-oxford-university-4443414
Hmmm. I wonder if that’s general Toby policy. Sounds like a sane venue.
If only the old farts and bedwetters, including the yummy mummies intent on masking their little ones, would just stay behind their sofas, the rest of us could get on with our lives.
Is it any wonder some people are so frightened when you’ve got utter morons like this ‘advising’ governments?
Now Cath IS a bedwetter.
Idiot, walking or driving to the restaurant was far more risky than the chance of ctaching covid while there. The fools really have got it in to their heads that covid is the only danger in this world, otherwise they’d recognise that almost everything else we do day to day is more dangerous and we never worry about it. And I bet she was all for obeying the lockdown lunacy, yet she doesn’t mention the risks she posed to herself through vitamin D deficiency though.
A Toby Carvery customer has vowed to never go back during the pandemic as he felt they were “not taking regulations seriously”.
I’m sure he’ll be sorely missed…
I applaud your articulation 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
The Brexit Party was a single cause party – that succeeded in its aims (though personally I disagreed with them).
How about a similar single issue party against COVID19 measures?
Farage might be the man to lead it. Not sure where he stands on bat flu, though. I bet he’s a sceptic.
I think (from one of his articles in the Telegraph a few months ago), unfortunately he was in favour of lockdown. On that, he follows a line of people who have disappointed on their lockdown stance – Melanie Philipps, Rod Liddle and Dominic Lawson, to name a few. Unless he has seen the light, we need to look elsewhere!
Farage is controlled opposition,any time he has an opportunity for real change he has backed away.He is used by the deep state to sweep up disaffected voters ,remember If he had stood his candidates in the election then we wouldn’t be in this mess
You can hardly plausibly claim brexit isn’t “real change”
“If he had stood his candidates in the election then we wouldn’t be in this mess“
Not a chance of that being true.
Really, he seemed disappointed when the Brexit vote happened,then immediately stepped down.He only appears when there is a chance of a movement that could affect real change and a government with a slim majority is a different animal than one with a 80 seat one.
Brexit is only the start.Instead of going to Washington via Brussels we just go direct now.
He said lockdown was done wrongly he is a skeptic.
CONvid 19
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1046-6
Is pre symptomatic spread a major contributor to COVID-19 transmission?There is a Chinese article suggesting thisThe authors above in this recently posted letter above don’t believe this
“Although a request for viral shedding data was denied by the Guangzhou Eighth People’s Hospital, we believe that there could be potential issues with the interpretation of the data.”“The model also predicts that infectiousness starts at 1.56 days before symptom onset but peaks at 2.32 days before symptom onset, but, because this is not biologically possible, one would have to assume that 1.56 days is both the start and peak of infectiousness, which is also a biologically implausible scenario.”“Although many factors are involved with transmission efficiency, it appears that asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission measured by direct contact tracing studies is lower than that predicted by COVID-19 transmission models” This is a complicated paper but of importance as the paper they criticize is heavily involved in the asymptomatic spreading agenda(mask wearing agenda)
https://youtu.be/D5Z6wdu1eI0
I think it is that study Dr John Campbell refers to briefly here.
Lockdown Sceptics has become a valued source of sane information and I thank you for your hard work in keeping up with the daily task of bringing it all together. Just one thing – your use of the term ‘bedwetter’ undermines the intelligent and appropriately exasperated tone of most of your editorial content. Images of anxious children and urine soaked sheets are distasteful, and the playground bullying tone strikes a wrong note. People are in the grip of fear and anxiety, conditioned by the scaremongering approach of government and media, much of it in the realms now of the delusional. This is a serious collective mental health as well as political issue, not a matter of personal weakness or stupidity, though people’s vulnerabilities are certainly bring manipulated.
Kind of, but whatever you call them, it’s going to have negative connotations. Their intelligence is less; their minds are weaker and more easily manipulated…
About the most positive thing I can call them is the ‘less enlightened’…
No… my mother follows the official narrative to the letter. Her intelligence is not less, her mind is not weaker, though she certainly has been manipulated.
She is of a generation that trusts everything the ‘experts’ and ‘trusted’ sources like the BBC have fed her. Any why not? In a sane world, experts should be trusted – they have utterly betrayed their positions of responsibility.
“experts” really have ABUSED their positions of responsibility and abused all of us too for their own financial gain. It’s just sickening.
I’m trying to think of any experts I trust fully. I can’t say there are any, at the moment! ‘Expertise’ refers to a low level, shop-floor, learned-on-the-job, narrow-minded, ‘skill’. I think Nicholas Taleb talks about this: your taxi driver is an ‘expert’ but there should be no such thing as an expert economist because economics is not a ‘job’ that you ‘get the hang of’ through practise or reading text books. The mistakes happen when you give ‘experts’ the power to run the world. Their vision is too narrow.
Absolutely Barney McGrew, this reminds me of a wonderful book called “The Master and his Emissary” by Iain McGilchrist about right and left brained thinking. We’re in a world that is far too left brained, everything broken down into smaller and smaller disconnected parts but the real treasure is in seeing the overall picture, the whole. We’ve become a nation of narrow experts who all think they’ve got the whole picture.
Economists, funnily enough, have made sensible predictions throughout the covid panicdemic, often highlighting the harms of lockdown, and how even during an “emergency” greatest threat to society is the threat of panic to infrastructure, not of covid to health. Plenty of economic research groups have seen and published the truths which epidemiologists were blind to. We mustn’t condemn experts in general, many do know what they’re doing, we need to condemn safety-ists in experts clothing and those fools in Ferguson’s field who don’t realise that the model is as much the data as the map is the territory.
My parents are also in this camp. I call them brainwashed.
I think back to a time long ago when I consulted an ‘expert’ in WW2 historical artifacts and his humility and brushing off of the expert label was telling. “I may have knowledge but I will never possibly know everything on this subject…I will still have much to learn even as I take my final breath in this life.”
I guess people rely on and trust experts because there’s not a chance in hell they can be bothered to look into things for themselves.
Sorry, I disagree. A large part of the reason we are in this mess is because of the stupidity, gullibility and laziness of the general public. If they could only put in the time and effort to think a bit and seek out sources of information other than the mainstream media then maybe enough pressure could be put on the government to put an end to this insanity. Most people on here are exasperated at this situation and calling people “bedwetters” is pretty mild really in the circumstances.
Yep, I quite agree, most people lack critical thinking skills, coupled with the innate desire to conform.
It’s almost like it’s been thought through….. 🤔
I shall call them whatever I like.
unfortunately too many people only take their news from MSM (some people actually believe the BBC) or from twitter. They wont even consider that their is an alternative
Indeed. My step mother cautioned me on using the internet for information while she watches MSNBC daily and displays obvious signs of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The television is right, the internet is wrong.
Too true. As a true crime buff, I’m often seeing comments indicating the principles underpinning the entire justice system of western civilization – namely, innocent until proven guilty in court, & the right to be judged by a jury of one’s peers – be completely thrown out, in favour of just asking some random on Twitter (ideally a leftist, because a leftist knows best) to sum up in a few characters, what any verdict & applicable sentence should be.
Bedwetter is too kind a word to describe the inexcusable level of conformity that these people display.
I think the term adds a flavour of the farcical nature of the Covid Secure mindset and acts as a counterpoint to the reality of Orwellian nightmare imposed on us. These pages have had me chuckling as well as being prepared to man the barricades.
After what we’ve been called, bedwetter is mild!
I find myself agreeing after being called a granny killer, QAnon Karen etc. the other day for merely engaging in a scientific debate on mask wearing. The ad hominem attacks on me were beyond the pale. While I don’t like the term bedwetter either, I must agree that those of us here have been called much worse. Should we go high when they go low? I’m past being nice; there is too much riding on this.
true!
Doesn’t it partly depend on who we think reads this site?
Personally if I were trying to persuade someone over to my point of view, I wouldn’t start by calling them names, unless I thought that might shock them to their senses.
But if we’re assuming it’s mainly sceptics who read this site, it possibly doesn’t much matter what they are called.
The zealots and those with agendas are the enemy who will probably never agree with us, the fearful and apathetic who have just been brainwashed probably deserve a measure of disapproval, but also, without wishing to sound patronising, some measure of pity.
I think we’re entitled to express our frustration.
For sure, and I share that frustration and anger.
I would love to be able to direct those who some of us have called ‘bedwetters’ to this site, but I am reluctant to because we have insulted them for their mistake in following the official narrative. How do we bring the misinformed round to the truth of the matter if we mock them?
Bear in mind that if we mock them, we are playing into the hands of those who seek to rule us by dividing us. We are doing their job for them. And that is the intention.
If mask wearers hurl abuse at us, attempt to shame us, treat us with contempt, we respond with compassion. We turn the other cheek. Otherwise we have already lost.
I try to limit the name calling but totally understand why it happens. It’s the greatest challenge to not look down on folks who eat up the official narrative.
We need two sites, one were we can let out all our anti-lockdown fury, one to tempt in the undeicded neutrals. Undecided neutrals by the way aren’t bed-wetters, I reserve that phrase for those who have really fallen hook line and sinker for the coronapanic narrative. The actual bed-wetters can’t be brought round to our way of thinking, but they are much rarer than undecided people.
Yes, I agree. We’re all better than that.
We should direct our attacks against the purveyors of the fear (who have been using expert psychological propaganda to achieve their nefarious aim), not those who fall for the confidence trick.
I prefer to call them the sheeple or the brainwashed. I think the connotations for the term bedwetters detract from our argument.
Brainwashed is a slightly more neutral term, and more accurate. But again, if you want to persuade someone, would you start by telling them they have been brainwashed, or that they have been misinformed and perhaps they would like to hear some alternative information. It’s horses for courses, and each case is different. But generally people who feel threatened or insulted just get defensive and stop listening.
I kind of agree, and I don’t use that term myself, maybe “scaredy-cats” if I need a short word. Likewise I refer to masks rather than the emotive muzzles. But above everything else I believe in freedom of speech, so any expressions that people want to use are fine by me.
Just passed a throng of trade unionists (an indignation of trade unionists) flag-waving not far from the town centre. There about thirty of them – I was happy to see they were all huddled together and best of all, I noticed none of them muzzled. Obviously the Covid is Socialist and avoids those waving red flags.
Glad to see even more evidence that being a sheeple vs. a sceptic has nothing to do with left vs. right.
However, left-wing woke mask-zealots would probably consider those trade unionists as far right because they are not masked up…
Yes, it’s quite amazing how small minded the zealots are. I was a New York Times, Washington Post liberal until all this went down. I should say I’m socially liberal and on the fiscal conservative side and have voted for both parties historically, but what I’ve discovered through all of this is that I am now a one issue voter and my issue is FREEDOM. There was never that much light between our 2 main political parties, and there still may not be, but my libertarian instincts from my teen and young adult years is back in force. It’s very disconcerting to be called a QAnon Karen for merely providing links to scientific research on the inefficacy of masks in preventing virus transmission. While I always hated the “woke” far-left progressives and think Trump is a malignant narcissist with dementia, I’m finding myself wondering who I’d vote for if I were American. But at 55 I pride myself in being able to remain objective and see this insanity for what it is, even if that means aligning myself with folks I’d never have imagined and with whom I don’t necessarily agree on everything. I think that’s what we all have… Read more »
Great post! I am on the right side of politics, or shall I say, libertarian. There is nothing more important in life than FREEDOM. Talk to Eastern Europeans, Cambodians and Venezuelans and you will understand why. This is exactly what the globalists are trying to prevent, left and right coming together to defend what all human beings should cherish.
In regards of Trump, if you are a one issue voter, in spite of his shortcomings (narcissism, boastfulness, macho style etc) he believes in freedom.But let’s agree we first need to win this together, then we can friendly debate left vs right over a glass of beer!
You are the Canadian me.
Or I am the British you.
One or the other.
I’m a libertarian like you too, but left and right wingers really cannot understand how you can be anything but a left winger or right winger. They cannot get their heads around the idea of freedom being your top issue.
Judging by the responses others on here have had from their MP’s it seems they don’t feel themselves accountable for any of the oncoming economic misery going to be visited upon us shortly. I’ve not yet had a response from my two local MP’s but I expect it’ll be 100% condescending drivel similar to what others have had sent back to them here. With this in mind i’m wondering if it’s time to appeal to our MP’s more base instincts, ie survival? It’s been obvious for a long time now that this thing has pretty much blown over and yet our MP’s quietly sit on their hands and let the Govt do whatever it wants regards Covid-19. I think the way to go from hereon in is contact them with all the evidence in hand (NHS England) and state that come the next election we’ll be standing against them. Not only that, we’ll be showing our fellow consituents the evidence which they ignored which could have saved both their jobs and lives of friends and loved ones, ie Cancer patients and diagnosis, missed operations etc. The data is going to be completely damning and it’s obvious the majority of the… Read more »
Everything is worth a shot though we would need more numbers to make it really stick
If there was a credible political party that looked like it would take votes away from the incumbents, it would be a lot easier. But that party does not yet exist, though sooner or later it will need to be founded if we want to have any chance of getting out of this. The only ready-made party is the Brexit Party, but they are no use re the lockdown
I’ve made clear to my MP on a number of occasions that I voted for her and am a natural supporter of her party, but that she had crossed a red line and I would not be voting for her again, but she doesn’t care because she has a huge majority and I expect very few others, so far, have written to her to say this
Oh yes. Recommend 12-bore.
Just to be clear, I was meaning we should stand as independent candidates.
Or as suggested, someone could kinda merge the Brexit Party with a anti-Lockdown party. Bloc Party? I think that’s already taken! 🙂
I am a remainer, but right now I’d vote for f*cking Farage if he was standing against lockdown.
Do any politicians consider themselves to be accountable? It’s rare for one to resign because of a major cock-up that has a major affect on the country.
I’m sure every MP has every intention of investigating the possibility of considering accountability….!
…In the fullness of time, as Sir Humphrey would insist.