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Yet Another Bloody U-Turn
Boris often sings the praises of the first-class education he received at Eton and Oxford. But the most valuable lesson he ever received was when he was taught to drive. After all, that’s where he learnt how to do a U-turn.
The Prime Minister has now performed so many reverse ferrets he’s in danger of swallowing his own tail. Yesterday brought news of his latest pirouette – on face masks in schools.
Since he returned from his camping holiday in Scotland, Boris has been on a mission to persuade parents it’s safe to send their kids back to school.
“The risk of contracting COVID-19 in school is very small and it is far more damaging for a child’s development and their health and wellbeing to be away from school any longer,” he said on Sunday.
But now he’s changed his mind – apparently influenced by Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to make face coverings mandatory in Scottish secondary schools. Henceforth, kids aged 11 and older will have to wear masks in local lockdown areas. Not so safe, then. Talk about mixed messages! The Prime Minister’s default response whenever he’s asked a question of vital national importance is to launch into his Vicky Pollard impression: “No but, yeah but…”
Let’s be clear: the risk posed to children by COVID-19 is vanishing-to-zero. As the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Jenny Harries said on Monday, kids are more likely to be killed in a road traffic accident than die of coronavirus – and that may be overstating it. To date, only two children between the ages of 5 and 14 have succumbed to the virus.
Some parents are worried about their kids catching it in school and then passing it on to vulnerable adults. Rest assured, that risk is negligible, too. Earlier this year, China and the World Health Organisation issued a report saying they hadn’t found a single case of a child transmitting the disease to an adult.
The bottom line is children aren’t vulnerable to this disease and they don’t pass it on. Why can’t Boris just stick to that clear, simple message?
He had an opportunity to reassure parents and he’s blown it.
The Mail is incandescent about this latest bit of dilly-dallying, while the Sun blames Gavin Williamson. The Telegraph says Tory MPs are furious about the endless U-turns the Prime Minister has performed – seemingly more responsive to Nicola Sturgeon than he is to Parliament. The only supportive article I could find was this piece by Angela Epstein in the Telegraph – and the comments below the line from sceptical readers are a joy to read.
As someone who helped set up four schools – one secondary and three primaries – I know just what a nightmare it will be to make children wear masks. How will teachers know which child is talking out of turn? How will they respond when a child claims to be exempt? Will children who turn up at the school gate without a mask be sent home? Or stuck in isolation?
Don’t take my word for it. Calvin Robinson, the teacher who appeared in a recent Department for Education’s advertising campaign to recruit more teachers, described the endless problems this will create in schools in an interview on Radio London last night.
When is Boris going to show some leadership? His response to this national crisis has been the opposite of Churchillian.
He’s more like the nodding dog in the insurance advert than the wartime leader.
The Year Evidence-Based Medicine Died
A senior research scientist in a pharmaceutical company with over 15 years’ experience in drug research and development, both in biotech and large pharma, has emailed to express his despair about mandatory face masks in schools.
I was moved to write when I read with utter dismay about the decision for masks to become mandatory in Scottish schools, with the rest of the UK probably not far behind.
As a scientist, for me face coverings are emblematic of what has gone completely wrong in our approach to COVID-19. Face coverings are not some “jolly jape” or “what’s the harm” thing, they are an invasive treatment that has been imposed on the entire population based on weak scientific evidence. They also have potential to cause harm both to individuals and the environment; how long before disposable cloth “jelly-fish” start washing up on our beaches? I also believe that in some circumstances they could actually increase the risk of transmission. Simply stating over and over that face-coverings help “stop the spread” without any data, seems to me to smack of “if we say it enough, it will be true”, rather than sound clinical science.
What is so utterly ridiculous is that the potential risks/benefits of face coverings are completely testable with appropriately designed studies and if this was a normal clinical intervention then there would be a justified expectation of just such testing before being was rolled out. I’ve seen people say that holdouts against masks are akin to those who wouldn’t wear seatbelts. But the big difference is that seatbelts were subjected to precisely this kind of rigorous testing, and there was a lot of evidence that they worked, before they became mandatory. Such evidence for face coverings simply does not exist, or has not been published, so scepticism is justifiable given that it is a significant societal change to mandate wearing a face-covering in most public spaces.
Graham Martin et al summed this up in a recent paper: “Well-intended population health interventions can do harm, but the downsides of mandatory face-covering policies have to date been under-conceptualised and under-studied.”
Given the general chaos in policy making, the imposition of lockdown itself and the ongoing issues surrounding screening highlighted by people such as Prof. Heneghan, it appears to me that 2020 is the year that evidence-based medicine died.
Rod Liddle on the BBC
Rod Liddle’s column in the Sun today – about the Rule Britannia row – is a corker.
All those ghastly people waving their Union Jacks. Singing Land of Hope and Glory and Rule, Britannia!. Nasty Little Englanders who probably voted for Brexit.
It’s the one night of the year when the BBC’s left wing bias is dropped for an hour or two.
And the licence-payer for once gets what they want. An evening of enjoyable, uplifting patriotism.
The BBC holds Middle England in utter contempt – and has done so for a long while.
It cannot tolerate anything which doesn’t fit into its woke agenda. And it’s why support for the BBC diminishes daily.
It has lost touch with the values of the people who pay for its existence.
Still, there’s one bright side to all this. It’s saved me £157.50 per year.
I will not pay the licence fee any more. Not ever again.
Why should I pay for an organisation which hates and despises everything I believe in?
Meanwhile, Vera Lynn signing “Land of Hope and Glory” has topped the iTunes charts.
Economists: “The Scientists Got it Wrong.”
Hat tip to Jeffrey Tucker, the Editorial Director of the American Institute for Economic Research, for sending me this excellent paper by four economists. Called “Four Stylized Facts About COVID-19“, it cites four things we know about the virus and its transmission that suggests the initial policy response across the world was wrong. Here’s the abstract:
We document four facts about the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide relevant for those studying the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on COVID-19 transmission. First: across all countries and U.S. states that we study, the growth rates of daily deaths from COVID-19 fell from a wide range of initially high levels to levels close to zero within 20-30 days after each region experienced 25 cumulative deaths. Second: after this initial period, growth rates of daily deaths have hovered around zero or below everywhere in the world. Third: the cross section standard deviation of growth rates of daily deaths across locations fell very rapidly in the first 10 days of the epidemic and has remained at a relatively low level since then. Fourth: when interpreted through a range of epidemiological models, these first three facts about the growth rate of COVID deaths imply that both the effective reproduction numbers and transmission rates of COVID-19 fell from widely dispersed initial levels and the effective reproduction number has hovered around one after the first 30 days of the epidemic virtually everywhere in the world. We argue that failing to account for these four stylized facts may result in overstating the importance of policy mandated NPIs for shaping the progression of this deadly pandemic.
Worth reading in full.
We Will Mock You
This YouTube video by Media Bear ridiculing Covid hysterics – and BLM protestors for good measure – is fantastic.
Glad to see there are some young people not buying the bullshit.
Letter From Care Home Dated March 23rd
A reader has passed on the letter she received from her mother’s care home in Bagshot on March 23rd, the day the full lockdown was imposed.
This is with a great sadness I have to say that I have been informed by our Doctor today that NHS hospitals will not accept people over 70 years old if they have been tested positive with COVID 19, which means that these residents will be treated here, at Sunrise of Bagshot, and in case of deterioration they will go straight into palliative care. In these unprecedented times due to COVID-19 outbreak the NHS has no choice but to make tough decisions. I want to reassure you that we are doing everything possible to keep our residents safe and well protected.
At this moment we are working with Doctor to sign DNR forms for all of our residents. In order for us to complete this, I would ask you to send me a confirmation email if you agree for this to happen if your parent/loved one doesn’t have one.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this with Doctor, please let me know and I will arrange telephone conversation.
Thank you for your understanding.
Horrendous. But at least this reader’s care home had the courtesy to consult her about the DNR form…
Civil Servants Are Very Busy… Sunbathing
Got an email from a reader who’s understandably angry about public sector employees refusing to return to work because it’s “too dangerous”.
Your daily update is the highlight of my day. I’m a self-employed bookkeeper who also runs payrolls so I’ve been working throughout the nonsense. I’ve been increasingly exasperated at the ridiculous restrictions placed upon us. I thought you might like to know of the worst instance I’ve heard of. My husband is a retired army officer who is now employed by the MoD on a large army base in Hampshire. The entire civil service staff were sent home in March and most have since been issued with laptops. They have a Friday morning ‘coffee’ on Zoom where they discuss whether they will be sunbathing or carrying out DIY during their office hours. Most have decided it’s “too dangerous” to return to work. Today I’ve been told that Army HQ have decreed that no more than 25% of staff should attend the office at any time (regardless of office space – the civil service is not known for cramped conditions!). I am beyond angry as I and all my small business clients have worked throughout as their livelihoods depend on it , as have supermarket staff. Our council (Wiltshire) is impossible to reach and my efforts during the course of my work to communicate with HMRC have been utterly fruitless. There are retired people in my lane who have been ‘shielding’ since March and are now so frightened they are on the verge of mental Illness. They haven’t even been out of the village as it’s “too dangerous”. This is surely a result of the ‘stay at home and save lives’ propaganda from the BBC which is their only source of information.
Kim-Jong Dan Not Quite a Dictator (Yet)
It seems I may have overstated things yesterday when I said Kim-Jong Dan was going to extend the State of Emergency in Victoria for another 18 months. A reader has written to point out the news isn’t quite that bad.
Re. the comment on Dictator-Dan – he is seeking a 12-month extension to the State of Emergency powers which reach their six-month legal maximum on Sep 16 (not yet extending for 18 moths). If he gets the extension it allows him to reinstate his rolling four-week lockdowns/restrictions on the advice of the Chief Health Officer and no one else. BUT the legislation must pass the Victorian state upper house and his party (Labor) only has 17 of 40 seat, so not yet a done deal for Danny The Dictator.
Looking For a PA
I’m looking for a part-time personal assistant to help me and the Chief Operating Officer at the Free Speech Union. Pay isn’t bad: £25/hour. Eight to 14 hours a week. More details, including how to apply, here. Please forward the link to anyone you think might be interested.
Round-Up
- ‘The crisis is the response to coronavirus, not coronavirus‘ – Arch sceptic Alan Jones, the voice of reason on Sky News Australia, interviews Adam Creighton
- John Anderson interviews Dr Jay Bhattacharya – The former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia interviews Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford and long-standing sceptic
- ‘The origin story of COVID-19 lockdowns‘ – Jordan Schachtel on how a draconian, illiberal policy adopted by a totalitarian country was copied by governments around the world
- ‘Here come the Covid Detention Centers‘ – Lee Rockwell on New York State bill A99 which will allow the authorities to take an individual “suspected” of being infected to a detention centre
- ‘Flipping the Covid switch‘ – Latest blogpost from arch-sceptic Omar Khan in which he tries to understand how the world succumbed to mass hysteria
- ‘Sociology of Masks and Social Distancing‘ – Sociologist Randall Collins explains why face masks lead to more social conflict
- ‘When will our surgeons be allowed to do their jobs?‘ – Allison Pearson on the NHS’s Covid obsession. Hospitals are deserted, yet the NHS faces a possible patient backlog of almost 10 million by Christmas
- ‘August heatwave fuels rise in deaths, as COVID-19 fatalities fall to lowest level since before lockdown‘ – Telegraph reports on the latest ONS data. Deaths from all causes rose above the five-year average in the week ending August 14th for the first time since mid-June, but Covid deaths continue to fall
- ‘Woman, 75, in Nottingham was “first person to catch coronavirus in UK”‘ – A Nottingham woman tested positive on February 28th and died a few weeks later. Was she really the first, though?
- ‘Perth woman who hid in truck to enter WA from Victoria cops harshest penalty yet‘ – A Perth woman who hid in a Victorian truck to sneak into Western Australia without quarantining has been jailed for six months, the toughest penalty handed down for the charge since the COVID-19 pandemic began
- ‘COVID – What have we learned?‘ – Latest blog post from Dr Malcolm Kendrick
- ‘The Tragic Hydroxychloroquine Debate and Dr. Fauci’s Denial of Evidence‘ – Great post from Dr Mikko Paunio, an epidemiologist and contributor to Lockdown Sceptics
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “High Street Blues” by HCB, “Dead Cities” by the Exploited, “From Riches to Rags” by Travis Orbin and “Hot For Teacher” by Van Halen.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, 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 30,000).
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).
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…
In my monthly column in Spectator USA, I argue that Donald Trump should seek inspiration from an unlikely source in his forthcoming re-election campaign.
To win in November, Trump should seek inspiration from President Alexander Lukashenko, the 65-year-old autocrat who has ruled Belarus since 1994. He trounced his liberal opponent in the presidential election in August with 80 percent of the vote.
I’m not suggesting Trump emulate Lukashenko’s methods. Among other things, the man dubbed ‘Europe’s last dictator’ disqualified his three main political opponents at the beginning of the race, imprisoning two of them. He has never won an election with less than 75 percent of the vote, although none have been found to be free and fair by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an election monitoring body. His defeated opponent this time round — Svetlana Tikhanovskaya — was initially detained by the authorities, during which she recorded a hostage video conceding defeat, before fleeing the country.
But in one respect, at least, Trump should take a leaf out of Lukashenko’s book. The barrel-chested populist is an unapologetic COVID skeptic. Belarus was one of only two European countries that didn’t impose a full lockdown, Sweden being the other, with Lukashenko urging his fellow citizens to avoid infection by drinking vodka and taking saunas. The Belarusian football league was the only one in Europe not to shut down, providing soccer fans across the continent with a much-needed weekly fix. In May, with Belarus’s COVID death toll still in double digits, Lukashenko congratulated himself on not succumbing to the global panic.
“You see that in the affluent West, unemployment is out of control,” he told supporters at a mass rally. “People are banging on pots. People want to eat. Thank God, we avoided this. We didn’t shut down.”
This was the rallying cry of Lukashenko’s presidential campaign: that the threat posed by COVID-19 had been wildly exaggerated by his bedwetting opponents and it was thanks to his innate common sense that Belarus was weathering the storm better than other countries. And Trump could make a similar argument. True, he wasn’t able to prevent Democratic governors from imposing severe lockdowns in states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan. But insofar as he was able to stay the hand of Republican governors and use the bully pulpit of the White House to pour scorn on the panicky pronouncements of public health panjandrums, he showed real leadership.
Of course, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are trying to portray Trump’s handling of the crisis as a catastrophic mistake and pin America’s high COVID death toll on him. But if you look at deaths per capita, the US fares better than Belgium, the UK, Spain, Italy, Peru and Chile. Yes, America’s economy shrunk in the second quarter of 2020, but by just 9.5 percent, the second-lowest contraction in the G7. (The UK figure was 20.4 percent.) Trump can claim, with some justification, that the US has fared better than most during this global pandemic and that he’s entitled to some of the credit.
Worth reading in full.
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Yes
Bugger….
No
just missed out
You may have heard in the news that Stanley, Co Durham had an outbreak ‘of cases’. Well, at the start of the week a Covid Testing Centre was set up in the town’s car park, taking up about a third of the available spaces. I thought I would pop along to take a look and perhaps take some photos.
I parked around the corner and walked along the side of the site. I managed to get off one photo before a young man came up to me.
‘Are you alright he said’
‘Very well thank you’ I replied.
‘It looked like you were talking a photograph’.
‘Well, it’s news’, I replied.
‘We would rather you didn’t, as some people might not want their picture taken’.
‘But they are wearing masks, no one can recognise them’, I replied (couldn’t resist a cheap shot).
‘Well, I can’t stop you he said’.
But I decided not to push it as he had been very polite.
There were about four cars queuing to get in and it otherwise seed pretty deserted. You can see people sitting around in the Gazebo.
If you are interested, you can see the photo here:
?dl=0
I know we’ve asked this question before – but why on earth are people volunteering to be tested? Don’t they realise that they could contribute to a local lockdown?
A tragic lack of cognitive ability.
Of course not. They’ve been scared out of their wits. They probably got a bacon roll from a local cafe that was owned by someone whose brother bought a second hand clock from a random off the local buy sell page on Facebook. And guess what? That individual, it turned out, visited Leicester two months ago to buy some clothes and, you know what, they got the Covid-19.
I’m off to spray myself in Mr Sheen
What’s the Leicester comment about, smart arse?
It’s not clever. I’m not laughing.
I don’t suppose you’ve ever laughed that much. Cheer up Gary.
In the words of Take That, “let it shine”,
Sumfink for free innit
Yes, just like our “free” health system. I think the useless PCR test is charged to the tax payer at £120 a pop… nice work if you can get it…
4 million per day.
KERRRRRCHING!
Or, if over 70 and test positive, they risk being refused admission to hospital.
They’re advertising voluntary testing for school kids here in Uppsala (Sweden) – no idea what the take-up is like and if it is the PCR or antibody test they’re offering. Not sure how widely they’re advertising – I just saw it on Facebook..
Security staff at my local testing station say people still turn up to take selfies, they do what they can to stop that.
Seems my small city has sprouted a second one in a sports stadium, no publicity about it, could be just for those about to go for a hospital appointment* which are slowly starting to gear up.
*test obligatory.
They have no authority to stop people taking photos. They have no authority at all, for anything. They should be told to f.off.
That parking lot is a privately controlled space, though. So they do have the right to stop you, as long as the owner authorised them.
Are pubs privately controlled spaces?
They used to be. But that would have made tobacco prohibition more difficult. So now they’re a bit of both.
So they adjusted the law to suit their agenda.
Oh yes.
Only if you’re actually standing on their land when you take the photo. If you’re standing on adjacent public land you’re entirely outside of their jurisdiction.
As long as your take your picture from public land there is fuck all they can do about it.
Not going to lie, the red tent signalling the Covid testing station in my small town was on my route to my parents’ house. I saw ONE car there the whole of the lockdown and I must have passed it three to four times a week for months.
Bet it provided loads of positive tests
Mrs Tenchy went shopping to Leeds last week. Drove into the Park&Ride car park without realising the whole site had been taken over for a testing centre. She then had to struggle to find somewhere to park in the city centre.
It looks like I will not be teaching in school next term as I refuse to teach in a classroom where the pupils are wearing masks.j
Is the mandate only in corridors and only in areas that have a higher infection rate (i.e. locked down areas)?
For now
To me it seems as if the government has found a way to give a non-mandate mandate. In corridors only in schools in locked down areas is practically nowhere.
The government is trying to look like its doing something without actually doing anything, just to appease the hysterics.
But they have given free rein to heads to introduce masks as they see fit and it’s already happening .
Yep, passed the buck.
Children are now at the mercy of the most hysterical, selfish teachers.
And at the mercy of a minority of seriously stupid parents.
Not this parent though Cheez, as soon as the masks are mandatory the kids are coming out of school and being home educated.
@Arnie there is a letter template here that you might find helpful.
https://usforthem.co.uk/letter-to-schools-re-facemasks
From memory, that’s nearly all of them.
They’ve given free rein to everyone everywhere to insist on masks, forever, and the government can say it’s not their fault.
They have given an irrevocable licence to health and safety fascism
The genie cannot be put back into the bottle, ever
Even if the government removes all the mask laws, organisations will impose their own rules
And human beings will defy them.
Well we will, anyway. 🙂 BTW, Annie, I posted on yesterday’s thread about kids being ‘fucked up’ by what’s going on and quoted from ‘This be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin (They Fuck you up, your Mum and Dad etc.). I wondered if you would fancy doing a job on it. I think it’s made for you! MW
I’ll have a try!
Damn right.
There is a way to resist this. If a school mandates masks, any parent can write to the Head and ask him or her to confirm that wearing a mask carries no health risk to their child.
Unless the Head is a kamikaze he (or she) will not give any such reassurance. And on the basis of that I would feel perfectly comfortable sending my child to school with no mask and a note from home saying that the Head can’t guarantee it won’t be harmful to my child.
I think that’s an excellent approach and the one I would take if mine were still school age
My eldest grandchild, 4 years and 8 months, is starting school next week. I am dreading the government saying that primary school children will have to wear them. To think of her muzzled wold make me weep. My daughter tells me that they have staggered start and finish times to lessen the chances of people coming into contact with one another. So you could quite easily have 3 children all at the same school all starting and finishing at different times.
Family friend has more than one child at the same school, different age groups, yes, you are right, staggered start [& finish] times. Parents not allowed to wait with children in school playground or other parts of school grounds. So drop one child off, leave premises, wait 10-15 minutes, drop child #2 off, etc, etc. Est. 20-30 parents were permitted to use the car park, for various reasons eg. health ailments, mobility issues. – nobody allowed to do that now, to maintain social distancing… everybody is however permitted to congregate all together in large groups directly next to the school gates, & those who previously parked inside the school will have to find somewhere to park, & in some cases deal with the health issues that make life difficult eg. walking potentially long distances to the school gates…I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this…..
Absolutely… but the problem is it really puts your child in the spotlight.
Yeah, Channel 5 News Lined up four kids all saying they were OK with masks. Probably primed. But shameful all the same.
Then keep the child away from the school.
Excellent! I was going to just lurk today, but this deserves a response. If they DO give the assurance, every single cold, sniffle, spot, runny nose, sore throat, &c you can sue them over. Remember to ask them to confirm it in writing…
Yes, I think that’s a good idea. If anyone could post in one place any articles of the health risks of masks that would be useful
Here’s one article:
https://principia-scientific.org/neurosurgeon-face-masks-pose-serious-risks-to-healthy-individuals/
Which was always the intention when they started emphasising Public Health a decade or so ago.
It was already happening before. Individual schools were demanding masks even when the government guidance said they were not recommended.
Takes just one tweet to make it all over schools and all over the country.
I think you are right there. It is mostly for show. Like the £3,200 fine limit for travelling on public transport without a mask which is never going to be imposed.
A bit like increasing the fines for frequent non-compliance of the mask lores. Smoke and mirrors. Problem is they’ve pulled this trick once too often and their slight of hand is becoming very obvious.
It’s not nowhere here – it will affect my granddaugher!
We have a very clever virus that knows not to infect classrooms but corridors and public spaces.
Where pupils are on the move and in close contact for less than a second, masks are clearly vital!
Yes, Johnson has got it right again, he never fails to impress.
Good on you. You could do it and start on the inside. More ground to be gained that way.
You’d ruin your career for the near future but it would certainly make headlines if, in your class, you simply told student sto take them off as your policy.
It’s people like you that stood up and were counted in 1930’s Germany, in communist East Germany, and on numerous other occasions where good eventually triumphed or evil.
Who was that nurse in pre-communist China famous for
‘Girls, take off your shoes’
Shoes that were deliberately designed
to deform girls feet in pursuit of some religious or cultural fantasy.
And if the Beeb announced today that cutting off girls’ toes would protect against Covid, out would come the choppers.
Inn Of The Sixth Happiness (movie).
‘Take off your bindings”
That was Gladys Aylward.
Foot binding was much worse than uncomfortable shoes. A horrific practice in which the foot was literally broken and folded back on itself before being tightly bound. Even if the girls took off their bindings it would probably have been too late to make any difference without reconstructive surgery.
It was a form of hobbling. Apparently men found the “lotus feet” highly erotic.
Horrific!
Off the top of my head I knew it was about feet, didn’t have time fof a quick Google until a bit later.
Is anyone asking you to do so?
Excellent piece on John Redwood’s Diary today – Freedom NOW.
It looks like he’s beginning to become, of all things, a sceptic.
Can he and his colleagues force a reverse in the Government’s current insane policies and direction; even help to take this government down?
Let’s raise a glass: ‘All power to his elbow’.
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/
Hopefully, he’s also saying this to his colleagues. Not much use just putting it on his website.
As of today, we have now had four Tory MPs speaking out against Boris. Poster on Telegraph (assume a CCHQ stooge) trying to link it to the anti-Brexit wing of the party. Not true though, as the four Tories are Marcus Fysh (Brexiter), Huw Merriman (Remainer), John Redwood (Brexiter), and highly significantly, Charles Walker (Remainer, and deputy chair of the 1922). The letters are starting to arrive on Sir Graham Brady’s desk, I suspect.
Boris has got to go regardless. Even if they get a grip on him and do manage to alter course, he obviously can’t be trusted with the keys to a Ford Escort, never mind the bloody country !
Five months too late. I hope we are not going to forgive this car crash shit show of a party because now, after five months, four of them are saying something.
Definitely not, Ovis.
Haven’t forgiven them for delaying Brexit either.
Today is the day Germany has officially become a fascist state again.
Berlin’s government has forbidden the planned demonstration on 29.8., with a purely ideological reasoning.
Proper Democracy in Germany lasted 71 years and two weeks, from 14.8.1949, to 28.8.2020.
The 1.2 million plus crowd at the last demonstration are not likely to be cowered, are they?
A lot of people have already organised hotels, travel etc. Berlin will see an influx of tourists going for a walk, probably dressed in T-shirts with slogans on.
I suggest they should do protests in every little and large town, if you cannot congregate in one place, at least do it all at the same time. That way they can also reach more individuals, as MSM hardly mentioned the last demo on the 1.8.
I have confidence in my fellow German that they will tackle this government and democracy and common sense will win.
Merkel? Christian Democrat? Pfttt!
Come and demonstrate in London! I was going to stay at home until the mask lunacy spread, so come hell or high water I will be in London. Freedom-lovers from absolutely ANYWHERE will be welcome!
(Same date btw, Sat 29th August)
PS If you cross the Channel by rubber dinghy, you might even get free accommodation out of it!
Or a Partnership. Apparently most of those folk are highly qualified Lawyers & Doctors!
See you there!
Bet they wouldn’t have forbidden a BLM demonstration though.
Well someone not long ago identified as a baby grand piano… can these protestors not identify as anti-racism activists?
This is something I wrote in June:
https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/06/british-prime-minister-channels-churchill-as-he-surrenders-to-gates-and-the-vaccine-cartel.html
I’d forgotten about this. Thanks for the reminder.
He’s not just a blunderer then. In it up to the ears!
My protest t-shirt with Vernon Coleman’s slogan arrived in the post today.
As I could not find any preprinted t-shirts for sale online I hacked the UK Government propaganda image using Inkscape, changed the text and uploaded it to ShirtPot, a design your own t-shirt web site in which I have no vested interest (thought I’d mention that to avoid any doubt :).
I have uploaded the png images here if you decide to create your own t-shirt or hoodie. One has a transparent background (which I used on my yellow shirt) and the other a yellow background. The 1858 x 1906 pixel resolution prints out perfectly fine on A4 which appears to be the image size used on my t-shirt. If you need the image to be larger, i.e. have a higher resolution, then I suggest you look for help from a pro designer which I am not.
In any event, feel free to use the images as you wish.
Well done!!! That slogan should be disseminated far and wide!
I think we could do with a site with lots of these kinds of things. Something we can just print off and stick over the multitude of covid propaganda that’s infesting our towns and cities!
Great idea.
Might be worth sending that to Simon Dolan – sure he would like it!
That’s a great T-shirt. I’d have a black one.
Second opinion needed from one of our friends in Scotland. When Boris was on holiday last week, was it hot and sunny? Just watched him being interviewed on Sky, and if I’m not mistaken, he seems to be sporting a ‘healthy glow’ around the hairline near the left hand parting. Some of the holiday in Greece, I wonder!
Wind burn?
Carpet burn after one of his weekly sessions with Nicola “S*rap-on” Sturgeon”?
Please! Am in the middle of afternoon tea… lol
drinking too much Irn Bru
He was in Devon, Appledore, yesterday, pissed down all day.
Should have needed that bobble hat it if were sunny!
The dictator was educated? Who knew?
Dragged up not brought up
Drugged up
Nice to see the seatbelt example cited – after all, the Isles report on the impact of seat belts
concluded that a law making the wearing of seat belts compulsory “has not led to a detectable change in road death rates”. (source http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2007/01/04/seat-belt-legislation-and-the-isles-report/)
Now here’s a funny thing. I’ve been getting out to quite a few events since the end of May, when they started to happen unofficially. They’ve all been a great breath of fresh air (no pun intended) without all the mask bollocks, people shaking hands and generally being normal. However, when people have discussed these events online before or after they happen, they often mention how social distancing will take place or how it did take place, when it didn’t.
It’s a very odd thing to lie about. Why do people feel the need to pretend to be distancing? Are they scared that there will be a presumption of irresponsibility? They’re clearly scared of something and it’s not the virus.
The people I know who are in favour of the lockdown, social distancing and mask wearing, all broke the lockdown rules, observed social distancing erratically and mostly do not wear masks and when they do, wear them incorrectly. As far as I can tell, they are in favour of such measures for other people.
Agreed. I’ve seen the same thing here. I think it’s nothing more than virtue signalling. Back in the early days our neighbours asked my wife if we went outside to clap for the NHS and were shocked we didn’t. Obviously, if they were outside clapping they’d have seen we weren’t there.
If it isn’t on Facebook it didn’t happen
Yes, for the great unwashed, which never includes themselves.
Probably the same people who would plod around the village behind the large crucifix waving candles even though they did not know what they were supposed to believe.
I think it’s called Totemic.
“Enjoyed the Dumwell Folk Festival and Fete at the weekend, socially distanced of course”
Wankers.
Yes I see this all the time. Assurances that social distancing will be in place and then completely ignored. They’re just doing it to cover themselves I reckon.
Also, we all know how some people react if you tell them you don’t do social distancing. Sometimes it’s easier to avoid that and just to pretend that you do.
It’s like transgenderism. Everybody knows it’s a lie but pretends to go along with it to avoid the shouting (and possible police investigation).
Possibly they are scared of a lecture like I got from several people on my blog for saying I didn’t wear a mask for medical reasons and saying they were concerned. The only way to silence them was to say “I distanced”, which is something I always do as I dislike feeling crowded.
“I didn’t inhale”
If you spend most of your time fiddling on your smartphones and shy away from interacting with others then you are already practicing social distancing. I noticed this many times in the Starbuck’s café that I frequent in Montreal. People even walk down the street, twiddling their thumbs on the keypad, eyes fixed on their phone, not looking where they’re going. Almost had a few headon collisions with some of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swaW8J2Nx1E
This was posted yesterday, but think it’s definitely worth a second laugh!
https://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/woman-visiting-the-beach-complains-too-many-people-are-visiting-the-beach/
I’ve just been talking to a visitor from Essex (I’m in Norfolk) complaining about all the visitors here! (A bit like people stuck in a traffic jam complaining about the traffic.) She said she was staying for a fortnight and hoped that after the Bank Holiday “they would all go back”.
I hope I managed to keep a straight face throughout.
In the case of clubs, like for instance Cycling UK, of which I am a non-lycra wearing and non-helmet wearing member, I think they do it just so it looks like they are following the rules, and they don’t necessarily obey them when out cycling. But just the fact that they say it annoys me intensely and puts me off going. Cycling UK, the old CTC, has got far too politically correct lately so I probably won’t be renewing my membership anyway.
No apologies for promoting the anti masks in schools petition at change again. http://chng.it/vzhWKjtL6M
Signatures have been climbing steadily since last night. Call me paranoid but every concession that is made to hysteria is just another descent on the slippery slope.
Pity they used change.org
It’s the one way ratchet effect.
If you give them a mm they will take it all.
The biggest requirement is for automatic time limits on all laws.
Repost as topical Toby’s page.
According to my Chambers 20C dictionary:
‘To wear” eg facemask.
1) ‘to be dressed in’
2) ‘TO CARRY ON THE BODY’
and to my surprise, “to edge, guide, conduct as sheep into a fold (Scot):
“to tolerate, accept, or believe.”
Lots of room for mischief making there,
” but I am wearing it miss it’s in me pocket”
,” but I am wearing it miss, I believe in it hundred percent”
conduct as sheep into a fold.
Yes indeed.
Well spotted Annie
It also means this: ‘damage, erode, or destroy by friction or use’.
“I am wearing it miss, look it’s nearly all gone!”
by Alex, of A Clockwork Orange.
1. “No time for the old in-out in-out, love. Just came to check the meter.”
50 years later,
“No time for the old in-out in-out, love…
I forgot my mask.
Or something like that.
I disagree with the pharmaceutical researcher who wrote to you, Toby. He says:
What is so utterly ridiculous is that the potential risks/benefits of face coverings are completely testable with appropriately designed studies
I don’t think this is true. Testing of individuals cannot show whether we need there to be transmission of viruses between people in order to keep our immune systems ‘topped up’ – this could be something that only shows up years later. Nor can testing show the long term psychological effects, or the potential for illnesses from breathing in fibres and chemicals from dubious materials that have not yet been imported etc. etc.
Arguing whether masks ‘work’ based on testing is a red herring – and an argument that opponents of masks could easily lose. If the virus is gone, anyway, then it’s pointless. And even if masks do cut transmission of the virus, this may not be beneficial in all circumstances. There are also unquantifiable, untestable downsides. It’s the wrong argument to be having.
Not entirely. Masks do active harm to the people who are forced to wear them for long periods of time, and this is what we should be focusing on. Even if masks really were effective, there are many downsides to mandating their constant use. If they aren’t effective (and they’re not), then the government is harming people for no good cause. In addition to this, we need to be asking why public health officials are so cavalier about the dangers of mask use. Very few of them have anything to say about this, and it appears to me to be a weak point with them.
Good interview with Denise Welch questioning the msm narrative: https://youtu.be/OorfiaOqQnA
Yeah fair play to her. You can see she’s pissed off too
EXCELLENT PAGE AGAIN TOBES! Check out your sanity aural companion BEDWETTERS PODCAST! Please send you stories to us also! https://bedwetters.buzzsprout.com/
Just listened to all three episodes so far, well done!!
Cheers Bart! Glad you liked it!
Love the logo
Send hundreds of copies of this logo to PM Boris.
Haha! He’d never see them. Cronies wouldn’t allow it.
The Daily Fail states as fact:
Cotton masks lower the risk of infection by 54 per cent and paper masks by 39 per cent.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8665307/Teachers-lash-school-face-masks-U-turn.html
Yer what???
Those teachers are great aren’t they. They couldn’t go back to work because it wasn’t “safe” then, as soon as it is safe and silly masks are added, all will be chaos and impossible to manage.
Give me strength……………………
I have no time for the way teachers behaved back in June but I do not envy them should classroom masking become a thing.
20% of the class determined to be as uncooperative as possible, whether through commendable skepticism or bloody mindedness, 20% convinced ‘we’re all gonna die if maskless’ and the rest veering(?sp) one way or the other.
Can’t see much teaching getting done.
Besides, the more opposition to mask-wearing the better, no matter who it comes from.
In some of my classes (when I was a youngster) naughty boys used to hum if they thought the lesson was boring – the idea being that their lips weren’t moving so the teacher wouldn’t know who it was. With masks they could do a lot more than hum!
54 per cent of what exactly? Infection? So how does that number translate to me, in a shop 2m apart from someone who has a minimal chance of being infected given the fact of little so called cases, which may not be real cases. Then, do they even have symptoms, and even then they may not be shedding enough virus to any significance for long enough to get it into the air. And such studies are inconclusive so a margin of error is advisable.
But forget that. I feel 54 per cent safer and that’s all that matters.
Masks prevent virus transfer the same way that underwear prevents smell transfer.
More “divide and conquer”. It’s the same old thing: give people free stuff so they agree with you, but now with a 2020 corona twist. The country is in economic freefall and people don’t want for the lockdown to end because it’s nice being on paid vacation for months on end. Meanwhile, people that have lost their jobs or are about to due to massive layoffs can’t make their case because the furlough class is calling them all “anti science”, “dangerous”, “ignorants”.
A great deal of the measures employed by the government are aimed at dividing people and setting them against eachother. This has got to stop.
Presumably it would be quite easy to record that zoom coffee morning.
Nobody in the public sector laid up at home on 100% is in fear of losing their jobs.
If bojo was a real leader he would use the opportunity to root out those that are not really needed , perhaps part of Cummings’ plan.
It’s going to stop. Furlough will end, and many of us stuck on furlough (some of us hate it btw, fear for employment prospects, etc) will be joining those laid off. Then because we can no longer afford so large a public sector, most of those gloaters will be joining us too.
Btw, if this shitshow continues much longer, there will be massive hunger/starvation in this country, as well as the Third World. I’m beginning to doubt that I, and many of my countrymen, will still be alive at the end of next year.
More covid hokey cokey from the woeful Johnson. Is it just me who thinks he can’t be so bad and maybe he’s trying to manufacture his own demise? Or worse, undermine the government to delay/postpone Brexit? (Always an EU ploy to interfere in national politics)
I think he’s really that bad. He got spooked by Ferguson and the media hoo-ha and hasn’t really recovered since.
Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt. His initial idea was to go with herd immunity and I was very impressed. What happened to change his mind? Who knows?
Bojo has brains but lacks balls. The one without the other is useless.
Brain, no brawn.
Our local MP Marcus Fysh would appear to be a full on sceptic! From his twittery thing. No @BorisJohnson
this is utterly wrong. Masks should be banned in schools. The country should be getting back to normal not pandering to this scientifically illiterate guff
What’s he been doing for the last five months?
Here’s another graph. This one visually compares tests with positive results on the same scale. Deaths are on there also but you can’t see them very well as they as so small.
You could try a log scale.
Well I want to shock the general public. I’ll probably save this one for a physical poster!
Not sure why, but when I open this link the timescale along the bottom isn’t visible, nor are the values on the vertical axis.
Hello Truth,
ok, you were asking for ideas to get the message over – I think you have hit on a winner with this graph.
Personally I like it on linear scale – shows more clearly how small the positives and deaths are compared to the giant wall of tests. But if you want to save space….
Get it out on Twitter and see if we can get some more converts….
See you all on the 29th, noon, Trafalgar Square !
Cheers
Thanks
I have a bigger plan for this and others like it. I’ll let you all know soon as I’ll be asking for more help!
LDT,
could you add axes/legend to the graph and save it into some format that is more easily portable (eg, jpeg, pdf, powerpoint or whatever ?)
would help with getting it out more widely.
Cheers
Bill
This graph really brings home to scale of the deception! Yes, agree it would be helpful to have some idea of timescale.
It was shown very clearly in an FT link in the round up a couple of weeks ago, I have a screenshot of the graphs to show people, if the conversation gets that far.
That’s brilliant
“If this was a normal clinical intervention then there would be a justified expectation of just such testing before being was rolled out.”
This comment about masks from the research scientist (above) is spot on. We are seeing the perversion of the most basic risk/harm principles in medicine.
The very same people expect their food, water and power to be available to them once considered safe for use, but see no hypocrisy in applying supposition or hypothesis as if it is fact for masks.
Excellent comparison!
But this isn’t medicine. This is telling the healthy population to wear something on their face.
The danger with regarding it as “medicine” is that some experiments may, indeed, show that it reduces transmission of the virus. So what? Who has decided that that is what we must do? If that principle is established, then further, potentially unlimited, restrictions on freedom logically follow.
If I kill you now that may prevent you killing 1,000’s with Covid in the future.
The ultra-woke and ultra-unrealistic zero-Covid Gen Y is ruining the whole world now, with the help of the cowed Xers and Boomers they have intimidated, and of the passive, unindidualistic and incapable to think critical themselves GenZ.
This mankind does not want to and as such does not deserve to live free anymore.
I despair as I have 40 years minimum more of life, its becoming unbearable and I fear for our future.
That said I am glad that Mr Bart and I have no children. We would be indicted for genocide and/or crimes against humanity. However I have two nieces and its worrying how they will grow up considering the insanity that they have been inflicted with.
Nothing to do with the old farts who voted for Mr Toad, then?
Do get real.
This old fart that voted for Mr Toad regrets having done so, because he lacks character and we probably always knew that, but I would contend the problem is that he has given in to forces, by being weak, rather than leading the lockdown nonsense, and those forces are arguably part of a strand of thinking that the PM ought to be on the opposite side of
You keep repeating this obvious logical fallacy despite it being pointed out to you repeatedly.
However much you might desperately want to, you cannot, as a matter of simple logic, hold people who voted for this government responsible for the coronapanic unless you can point to a plausible alternative government that might not have perpetrated the coronapanic if they had not voted “Conservative”.
Give it up. This panic has not been driven by any “far right”, nor by “Conservative” politicians in or out of office. It’s a consensual hysteria on the part of pretty much the entirety of our political elites, from Labour left to “Conservative” “right”, and the criticism from all senior Labour and LibDem politicians has almost entirely been for not panicking harder and earlier.
The “Conservative” government are still collectively and personally responsible for their own actions, and should suffer the consequences, but there is a lot more blame than just that to go around.
It’s not a ‘logical fallacy’ – just a fact that political initiative has been in the hands of the right-of-centre for a long time.
“This panic has not been driven by any “far right”, nor by “Conservative” politicians in or out of office”
… and I thought that the panic-mongers were the ones in denial of reality!
Stop whining about the outcome of this simple situation just because it doesn’t suit the narrative. I didn’t invent it – it is just is a fact now this outcome has come home to roost. Pretending that it’s all a consequence of left-wing Fairies at the bottom of the garden doesn’t stack up
The complicity of the Blair-Starmer centre-right establishment and also the mickey-mouse ‘left’ doesn’t alter the main fact.
OK, so I assume you voted Labour in 2001. So you are complicit in the illegal 2004 Iraq War. Hope you can live with that.
Just as all directions are south from the North Pole, all directions are right from the Left Pole. Hope the weather’s OK. You’ll be telling us next that the tax avoiding, Confederate supporting Guradian is right wing.
“Centre right”??? Seriously??
What exactly and specifically makes Blair or Starmer “centre right”??
Blair was a Trotskyist. Starmer is far left but better at hiding it than Corbyn was.
The Left have moved so far to the left they think anyone vaguely to the right of them are “centre right,” and the centrists, classic liberals, classic conservatives are “far right extremists.”
This forum is beginning to resemble twitter.
There was (still is?) an attraction at the first Disneyland, in sunny Southern California, called Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Lots of fun. PM Johnson’s? Not so much.
If they wish to live as slaves, that’s up to them. It’s not all of them. Perhaps this is where, in evolutionary terms at least, the human race is about to divide.
Or, even better, this is when people wake up to the shit, stand up to authority overstepping its boundaries, and we carry on as before.
The Rod Liddle comments on the Proms debacle is just Liddle being his usual dimwit self.
A pity, because, there’s many of us with a brain who dislike this exercise in mock worthiness.
But when I see “the BBC’s left wing bias” I know I’m dealing with the simple-minded. An organisation which spent the pre-election period promulgating anti-Corbyn propaganda in excelsis is hardly ‘left wing’ – as any previous research shows.
As to the whole unnecessary display of nonsense re. ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ – it’s worth remembering – to put it in perspective that this issue has no connection with other stuff like Brexit – or Lock-Up. Post-referendum, the traditional stuff was sung with great gusto by pro–EU promenaders waving EU flags!
So let’s just stick to the knitting, rather than confuse matters with idiotic assertions using this serious crisis as a hat-peg for hanging the hobby-horse.
Well I think the BBC has a left-wing bias and I don’t consider myself simple-minded. But I would say that, wouldn’t I? They were anti Corbyn, but pro the Left wing Tories.
Anyway, I agree it’s a distraction and not important right now, and I can’t get excited right now about the Proms and Liddle is pro-lockdown, so not worth bothering with at present
I think the BBC are the enemy though, as they are IMO way more pro-lockdown than the government. They are not simply doing the government’s bidding I don’t think – they are pushing them. We may never know the truth.
Leaving aside possibly irrelevant arguments about whether the BBC is left or right wing, does it not seem to you that they are pushing a strong lockdown line independent of what the government says?
“But when I see “the BBC’s left wing bias” I know I’m dealing with the simple-minded. An organisation which spent the pre-election period promulgating anti-Corbyn propaganda in excelsis is hardly ‘left wing’ – as any previous research shows.“ Repeating this canard that the BBC is “not left wing” does not make it any less obviously untrue. It’s not remotely plausibly in dispute that, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you, the vast majority of BBC staff support the Labour or LibDem parties, and that almost none of them support the “Conservatives”. Moreover many accounts have emerged of the few self-identified conservatives finding the culture within the BBC extremely hostile. Here’s Jeremy Paxman in 2017: “If you asked me what the politics of most people at the BBC are I should say that most people voted Remain, that most people were Labour/Liberal Democrat. I should say that by and large they were liberal with a small l on social issues. I should say that they were people who detested certain kinds of right-wing behaviour…” For sure, there can be no honest dispute that the BBC wholesale has enthusiastically joined the left’s literal insanity over Trump. Your error seems to be based mostly on… Read more »
I can’t confirm the truth of this, but years ago I heard that the BBC advertised mainly in the Guardian when seeking production staff, but mainly in the Telegraph for technical staff.
I believe Peter Sissons (in later years) virtually tore into the BBC more than once, as having a fundamental left-wing bias, sometimes simply parrotting The Guardian’s opinion du jour, and having zero tolerance for seeking diverse opinions or data on many topics, such as climate change.
i dont think it is a left/right thing.. It is more a liberal / conservative (small l and c) or metropolitan / non metropolitan split.
after all traditional working class labour voters are anathema to these people
That’s exactly what left/right means. The left is broadly (there are particularist exceptions) radical (liberal in that sense, not in the anti-authoritarian sense), internationalist, and anti-religious while the right is conservative, patriotic, religious.
People on both left and right can be either liberal (in the sense of being anti-authoritarian) or authoritarian to varying degrees. Americans tend to use the term liberal in the previous sense, Brits in this sense.
What left/right absolutely is not is a class divide. Class itself is a leftist concept (obviously) but there have always been working class conservatives and elite leftists. The matter was complicated in the early C20th by socialist appeals to material working class interests – populism, as they would call it if anyone other than their side were doing it.
Being anti Corbyn does not necessarily make someone right wing. It just means they don’t want to elect a Marxist, or to see the Labour party wiped out in an election.
You are wrong. The anti-Corbyn propaganda had much more to do with the fact that he was in many ways a genuine old-fashioned socialist instead of a woke identity politics robot. Opposing Corbyn in that sense was not in any way conservative, it was a complaint that he was not enough of a prog freak to please the superfluous intelligentsia. I despise all these people, but you cannot say the BBC has no left-wing bias because it opposed Corbyn when Corbyn, to them, is a Menshevik in the way of the Bolsheviks. Failing to connect meaningful issues makes you blinkered. The Proms issue is important because it is another attack on something ordinary people value. Why do this? Why is it so important to the BBC to flip the bird to the entire country at this particular point in time? They aren’t helping to unite and strengthen the nation in any way, but they are kicking people when they are down. This is coming from the same people who were visibly disappointed by Brexit, and who have been shoving woke crap down the throat of the nation in revenge. If you don’t see any connections here, your analytical skills are… Read more »
I was listening to the Today Programme when some drudge said “Britains never shall be slaves…” sent the message that it was alright if others were and that at the time Britain was ‘up to its neck in the slave trade’ or similar.
Backtracking the following day the Today presenter flatly denied that any such claim was being made.
“The anti-Corbyn propaganda had much more to do with the fact that he was in many ways a genuine old-fashioned socialist instead of a woke identity politics robot.“
Exactly – it was a civil war within the left that the BBC took sides in.
Corbyn was also targeted because his foreign policy views were regarded as unhelpful to certain power agendas, and it’s quite likely there were state dirty tricks involved, utilising the BBC, but this was on top of the leftist civil war issue that has been ongoing since the 1970s, pretty much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1067&v=5UYnfr541ho&feature=emb_logo
Michael Levitt 11 min the only part I’ve watched. Ionnadis also in this long video .20th Aug discussion from California. Long video with treatment, epidemiology and different aspects of C-19 with many invited speakers
When Ionnadis was interviewed back in late March, I honestly thought that would be the beginning of the end of the hysteria. I’m still dumfounded that we’re still in this shithole months later.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.23.20179796v1.full.pdf
SARS-CoV-2 specific memory B cells frequency in recovered patient remains stable while antibodies decay over time
“We found that symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 patients mount a robust antibody response following infection however, the serological memory decays in recovered patients over the period of 6 months. On the other hand, the B cell response as observed in the SARS-CoV-2 specific memory B cell compartment, was found to be stable over time.”
Thanks for the link. This is the first one I’ve seen looking for B-cells rather than T-cells. B-cells’ main job is to make antibodies. Once they’ve started doing that they’re called “plasma cells” (for some reason probably historical). Your body has a few tricks for keeping the antibodies hanging around in the blood for a while, one of which is for some of the plasma cells to live for much longer than usual so they actually just carry on producing antibodies to keep the levels topped up. These are “long lived plasma cells” (and they go and live in your bone marrow). They found that the rate at which antibody levels dropped was correlated with the amounts of these long-lived plasma cells, as you might expect. An even longer-term kind of immune memory is memory B-cells and memory T-cells. These two systems work together, so the presence of memory T-cells (which were found for SARS1 to last at least 17 years) implies memory B-cells as well. But this study actually found the memory B-cells for SARS2 and that the levels were stable over time (they probably last many years). These memory B-cells don’t produce antibodies but they remember how to.… Read more »
I forgot to say, the other interesting they found, which also seemed to be the case for SARS1, was that high levels of antibodies were also associated with inflammation and disease severity. The cause and effect may be quite subtle here though. If you have a severe disease due to some other reason– high viral load perhaps– you would expect to find more antibodies in response to that. But it certainly wasn’t lack of antibodies causing the severe disease.
It does however also seem to be that case that “Th1” dominated responses (fewer antibodies, more killer-T cells and interferon-gamma) are associated with milder disease and also with more effective vaccines for this kind of thing.
I was subjected to some illogical lunacy at a National Trust property last Saturday and have just written to them to complain: Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to complain about your cafe staff at Osterley House and Gardens and the “Covid 19 safety” procedures in said cafe. My husband and I visited Osterley Gardens last Saturday (22 August) and before entering the gardens, I went to the cafe to buy 2 coffees and a shortbread. I was not wearing a face mask/covering as I am exempt and whilst your staff served me without any question, I felt unwelcome by them and I sensed that they were looking at me as if I was a disease-ridden bio hazard. After making the purchase, I handed my hot drinks loyalty card to be stamped but the woman at the counter refused to stamp the card, not really citing any reasonable or logical excuse. I can only assume that it had something to do with your “safety” protocols. She asked me if I wanted my receipt instead so I can have my card stamped when I return (which I suspect will not be for a while) and I didn’t want any argument so I… Read more »
You add further justification to my decision to resign my membership of this nasty, cowardly, craven organisation.
Mr Bart and I have been debating about getting a National Trust membership or not but given the lunacy we’ve been reading, we’ve decided to pass.
I once worked for NT in the IT Dept and was shocked at the amount they spend on IT and marketing/analytics. Maybe the current situation will make them review their spending priorities. AFAIK they are making redundancies but don’t know which parts of the organisation they will be in.
From the article I linked to a response to Cecil B, a lot of the redundancies will be with the curatorial, conservation and visitor services departments.
Is the cafe at Osterley still just self service with a very limited menu (it was still closed when I visited in July). On visits in the past a lunch in their stable cafe was a highlight of the day but I guess it is nothing like this at the moment. I foolishly let my subscription direct debit go through so it looks like I am in for another year but if it carries on like this it will be the last time.
It still has a very limited menu, you had to go to the counter to order your drink but self service for everything else – everything wrapped in plastic or takeaway containers.
Suspect covid will be used as an excuse to close everything down and sell off the assets. New housing estates coming to an area near you soon
The NT is planning to alter a lot of their properties according to this article:
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/national-trust-restructuring-plan-job-cuts
So turn a lot of properties into commercial venues and shut out the public. Get rid of most of the staff in the process. Not wasting the crisis.
Friendly advice : people always make these letters too long. All you need to say is “stamp my card or else I’m not coming back. There’s no government law against stamping a card.”
Well said. I could have made a fuss but I could not be bothered especially as I saw the sheep behind me in the queue all muzzled up. I lost the will to live when I saw that.
i notice C4 just started new series with George Clarke “National Trust unlocked” where he takes the opportunity of visiting an NT property during lockdown and so he is completely alone .
Looks like the way NT is carrying on, it wont be long until those few remaining members get the opportunity to enjoy this isolation experience themselves
Indeed. As it stands now just as I won’t shed a tear if certain businesses go bust, won’t be doing the same either when the likes of the National Trust go in the way of the dodo. They only have themselves to blame.
When they sell off the assets, as a member, will I be entitled to a share? (wot like building societies dun)
Maybe you should write to them and ask that. Plus what happens if they have to file for bankruptcy.
Same here. I’ve gotten that look on public transport and certain shops and I simply state back which causes them to look away.
Strange things in Brazil
https://twitter.com/CFMorais65/status/1285963106334769153/photo/1
The excess death has disappeared but massive deaths of C-19 still reported in Brazil although declining a bit of cases and deathsOne comment
“This same pictures is evident elsewhere – all cause mortality returns to normal within 8-10 weeks, then falls below expected. Meanwhile, daily Covid deaths continue to be reported. Obviously, we cured heart disease and cancer while no one was looking!”
I am starting to lose more and more faith in common sense everyday.
I am sure they’ll be mandating masks outside next. When did the country flip from mocking hypochondriacs to being run by them?