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Rishi Moves into Poll Position
In the race to succeed Boris, Rishi Sunak moved into poll position yesterday with a cash giveaway that was widely welcomed in the press. The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey is in no doubt whose star is rising, and whose is falling.
“Where’s Boris?” is a refrain that has dogged the Prime Minister throughout the coronavirus crisis.
It even featured on the front of last week’s Spectator, as the magazine he once edited asked: “Where is the man we thought we voted for?”
Never has Mr Johnson been more conspicuous by his absence than at Thursday’s hugely significant Commons statement by Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor.
As Mr Sunak introduced his winter economy plan, which will replace the furlough scheme with a new Job Support Scheme, the Prime Minister (and First Lord of the Treasury) was nowhere to be seen on the front bench.
He later emerged at a police station in Northamptonshire (as seen in the video below), where he busied himself meeting new recruits, sitting in a police car with flashing lights and watching a first aid demonstration involving plastic dummies.
Worth reading in full, although, according to Christopher Snowdon in the Spectator, Rishi is driving the nation to ruin.
Meanwhile, some members of Team Rishi are no longer bothering to conceal which horse they’re backing.
Toby contributed to a Michael Crick report for Mail+ yesterday about Boris’s future in which Crick concluded that Boris would probably cling on for a few years before being ousted in a bloody coup.
Prime Ministers aren’t like ordinary people. To get the job requires a persistence, a stamina, a tenacity, that the rest of us don’t have and therefore they’re not very inclined to give up the job either. And if I look back at the seven Prime Ministers of my adult lifetime, from Jim Callaghan to Theresa May, people forecast way ahead of time that they hadn’t got much longer in the job and yet they held on. And I suspect that Boris Johnson will hold on for a few years yet.
I wonder…
Government’s Graph of Doom “Wrong”, says Oxford Epidemiologist
“Wrong” – that’s the verdict of Oxford professor of theoretical epidemiology Sunetra Gupta on the infamous graph presented on Monday by Chief Scientist Sir Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Chris Whitty as part of the Government’s justification for ramping up restrictions. The Telegraph reports.
Speaking to Allison Pearson on the Telegraph‘s Planet Normal podcast, she said: “I think it is wrong. I was quite surprised that such a graph would be presented to the public. It was qualified even by them as being not even a prediction, so it’s very hard to understand the logic of that. Why would you present something that’s not even a prediction?
“Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to predict with any accuracy exactly what’s going to happen. I don’t think mathematical models are very good at that. But this is not even a prediction. It was just following a line of thinking in which the doubling time would remain what it has appeared to be over the last week for an extended period of time.”
On Tuesday, Boris Johnson admitted that the virus may actually be doubling between seven and 20 days.
If the latter was the case, it would mean around 8,000 cases by mid-October, although the latest figures show the UK has already reached more than 6,000 cases per day, described as “near record” figures.
Record reported, yes. But as James Naismith, Professor of Structural Biology at Oxford, points out: “The sudden jump is likely to reflect issues in the testing system reporting.”
In fact, if we look at the graph of cases by date of sample there is little sign of growth over the past week. Of course, recent days will be revised upwards as more swabs are processed and the backlog clears. But even so, the lack of growth is noteworthy – particularly when the recent increase in the number of tests (the immediate cause of the backlog) is taken into account.
And still the Government fails to show on its dashboard a graph of the positive rate, which as Our World in Data notes, is a “crucial metric for understanding the pandemic”.
What possible excuse could there be for not including such important data in the UK Government’s coronavirus dashboard? Is it because it doesn’t look nearly so scary, and so is no good for inducing fear and compliance?
As it happens the positive rate has increased a bit during September, from 0.6% on August 26th to 1.2% on September 8th and 1.7% on September 22nd (the latest date for which we have data). That means it doubled in 13 days to begin with and since then, 14 days later, only increased by a further 42% (100% would be doubling again). So it initially doubled at around half the rate of the Government’s “every seven days” and then slowed down, though did pick up again a bit in the past week (growing 30% between September 15th and September 22nd, a doubling time of around two and a half weeks if it continues). This suggests the current level of growth is not exactly “exponential” and may already be beginning to peak. Of course, we will have to wait and see what comes of the latest rise. But the question at this point is why the Government is making a show of dubious projections of exponential growth from raw case data and not setting out the much less troubling reality.
Sunetra Gupta is clear about where things are headed.
Prof Gupta, who has argued that a large number of people could have already been exposed to the virus, said: “The fate of this virus is going to be principally determined by what fraction of the population is either immune or already has some form of resistance to it.
“The proof is in the pudding. It’s a question of whether when infection rates rise, death rates will rise. We’ve seen a summer with very low infection rates despite quite a lot of mixing. So that indicates that there is a level of herd immunity in place.”
Sick Children Turned Away by Covid-Only NHS
There was a scandalous story in the Evening Standard yesterday – sick children are being turned away from two London hospitals because they’re preparing for an anticipated surge of Covid patients over the winter.
Sick children will be turned away from A&E at two major London hospitals throughout the winter to enable them to focus on treating adults with Covid.
The paediatric A&E at the Royal Free, in Hampstead, will close at the end of the month. The children’s casualty unit at University College London Hospital, in Bloomsbury, will remain closed, having initially shut to under 18s in March.
It is not known when they will reopen but the closures are said to be “temporary”. The Royal Free and UCLH have been designated as “surge sites” for the feared second wave of Covid patients.
So let me get this straight. An actual child in need of emergency medical care will be turned away by an NHS hospital just in case a notional person in their 80s with a serious underlying illness catches coronavirus and needs a bed? Even though the risk of the hospital’s critical care capacity being overwhelmed if the NHS returns to normal is very low?
This is absolute madness.
As Cases Rise in Belgium, Restrictions are EASED
In what is being hailed as the first move of its kind in Europe, the Belgian government is responding to rising cases by easing restriction rather than tightening them. Ross Clark in the Spectator has more.
If there is one country which has influenced the Government’s toughening of Covid restrictions over the past fortnight it is Belgium. It was Sophie Wilmes’ government which, faced with a resurgence of Covid cases in late July, came up with the idea of placing a limit on the size of social gatherings – five rather than the six which Boris Johnson went on to impose in England six weeks later. It was the Belgian government, too, which came up with the idea of setting a curfew for pubs – 11pm rather than the 10pm which will come into effect in England, Scotland and Wales today. At the same time, Belgium extended the compulsion to wear a mask to most public places.
So did those measures do the trick in Belgium? Not quite. Daily confirmed cases rose from around 600 a day at the end of July to peak at just over 900 a day in the middle of August. They then fell back to around 400 a day at the beginning of September – before a further resurgence. On Wednesday, there were 1834 new infections.
But here’s the thing. In spite of rising cases, Belgium is now relaxing its restrictions rather than tightening them. This week it has announced that people will now be able to meet up in groups of 10 rather than five. The quarantine period for people self-isolating will be reduced to seven from 14 days and masks will no longer have to be worn everywhere in public – though they will still be required on public transport, shops, cinemas and on some crowded streets.
This is still a highly restrictive regime, so in that sense nothing to write home about. Belgium hasn’t been transformed into Sweden or Tanzania. But it indicates a shift in outlook and strategy, away from suppression at all costs to something more nuanced. It appears the idea is to make the restrictions more bearable and sustainable. But perhaps the inner logic of the shift will mean it turns into more before long.
Stop Press: The UAE’s National newspaper has run a report headed “Sweden’s ‘herd immunity’ model gains momentum in Europe“, citing as evidence the recent soliciting of advice from Sweden’s epidemiologists by British and Irish governments. And also Professor Carl Heneghan’s remarks to the BBC that he detects a “shift in policy” and a “move towards Sweden,” with more focus on personal responsibility and acceptance that cases will rise. And also the comments of a leading virologist in Denmark, Kim Sneppen, professor of biocomplexity at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, this week: “There is some evidence that the Swedes have built up a degree of immunity to the virus which, along with what else they are doing to stop the spread, is enough to control the disease… They may now be finished with the epidemic.”
Stop Press 2: Belgium has moved away from the PCR test as the main measure of the epidemic, presumably over reliability concerns. From now on, decisions about whether to tighten or relax restrictions will be mainly based on hospitalisations.
Scottish Students Banned From Going to the Pub
Our heart goes out to students at Scottish universities. Nic Sturge-On has banned all students in North Korea Scotland from going to the pub. The BBC has more.
Universities Scotland said the new guidance that had been agreed with the Scottish government was a “necessary step at this crucial moment of managing the virus in the student population, to protect students and the wider community”.
The new rules state that all universities will “make absolutely clear to students that there must be no parties, and no socialising outside their households”.
They go on to say: “This weekend, the first of the new tighter Scottish government guidance, we will require students to avoid all socialising outside of their households and outside of their accommodation.
“We will ask them not to go to bars or other hospitality venues.”
Extra staff will be brought into student accommodation to watch for any breaches of the guidance and to support students who are self-isolating.
Stop Press: Students at the University of Edinburgh have told of the ‘prison-like’ conditions they are having to live in:
First-year students living in the university’s catered accommodation Pollock Halls have endured being surveilled by staff as they eat alone at single desks at the JMCC cafeteria. …
First year student Florence Carr-Jones added that the dining hall feels like “exam invigilators patrolling the space”.
She added that outside of dining times, “security guards roam the halls in the evenings knocking on noisy doors, threatening fines and suspensions”.
Liberty added: “There are huge queues to get into the dining hall and staff lead students to tables so you don’t even choose who you sit next to.”
Plus: Watch this threatening video from Principal of University of Glasgow Anton Muscatelli
NHS Track-and-Trace App Doesn’t Work on iPhone 6
After today’s news that the NHS’s cutting-edge app doesn’t work on the iPhone 6, we asked our track-and-trace app correspondent to give us an update.
The latest version of the NHS COVID-19 app was available from yesterday, getting the prestigious home screen position in the Apple App Store. It has already done something amazing for me. It has made me feel a twinge of sympathy for Matt Hancock. One of the reasons this app is four months late is because it had to be changed to use the much vaunted “Apple and Google approach”. More specifically, it uses the ExposureNotification feature which respects your privacy by not sharing your data with the app’s authors, the Government. The problem is that Apple only provide that feature in iOS 13.5 or later and iOS 13.5 is only available on iPhone models 6s or newer. So the app cannot do its exposure notification thing if you have the plain iPhone 6 or older. If you try to install the app from the app store it won’t let you and there is nothing that Matt Hancock and team can do about it. It is true that less than 3% of iPhone owners still use the five year-old model 6, but from a PR point of view it is unfortunate that they are more likely to be older or less well-off. As Mr Hancock must surely be getting used to by now, even small percentages of large numbers, such as the number of iPhone owners in the UK, mean headline grabbing statistics: around 750,000 people could be excluded.
So Matt finds himself on BBC Breakfast trying to encourage us all to download and use the app but having to tell Charlie Stayt: “Only a very small proportion of people have phones that don’t have the latest iOS software. The best thing that they could do if they want to get the app, of course, is to upgrade.” Oops. Upgrading in this case means not just downloading the latest software – those phones won’t do that – it means buying a newer phone, as Charlie well knows: “What, buy a new phone? In terms of reaching those most at risk, for example, those who have the least money are the least likely to have newer phones and […] older people will have less sophisticated phones, maybe don’t have phones at all. Surely those are some of the people you would most like to reach?”
Yes indeed Charlie, but you and everyone else in the media were not making that point back in June when you were pressuring the Government to use the Apple solution which we knew back then would have this problem. To be fair, I also said on this site that if you must build an app then use the Apple/Google technology, but I also made the case that track and trace apps are not the panacea that politicians and the media make them out to be. They will always be problematic. The evidence from many countries this year has borne that out but the Government and the media have largely ignored it. Even with the latest phone the Times is reporting that one in three alerts from the new app will be false positives. This is just another data point for us sceptics to say, “We told you so!” But is anyone listening?
Less Than a FIFTH Adhere to Self-Isolation and Quarantine Rules
A new preprint study finds that in the UK just 18% of persons with Covid symptoms adhere to self-isolation, and only 11% adhere to quarantine if contacted by NHS Track and Trace (Hat tip Adam Kucharski). And this is what the Government is spending hundreds of billions of pounds on and thinks is the way out of lockdown?
Postcard From Zanzibar
A reader has sent us a postcard from Zanzibar. Sounds lovely. How do we get there?
Salamu (Swahili for Greetings) from Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania best known as the birthplace of Freddie Mercury, where we are bathed blissfully in sunshine, trade winds and, best of all, mask free.
While many countries in Africa locked down, Tanzania realised very quickly that with a median age of 20, half that of Europe, the cure being worse than the disease would be an inevitable consequence of shutting down the economy. They kept their economy open.
It was a wise decision. In a country of 56 million people, only 516 cases of CV19 have been registered and 21 deaths. Given that there is no formal healthcare reporting system, it is inevitable that these numbers are under-reported. However, as 2.5 million people die every year in Africa from another infectious disease (Tuberculosis), the Tanzanian Government and healthcare community thankfully enjoy a sense of context about risk management sadly lacking among the bureaucrats and government advisors our taxes pay for.
Alas, the local economy has still be shell-shocked. As global supply chains breakdown, tourism falls off a cliff, foreign aid and non-governmental agencies shut down, the most poor and vulnerable are back to what they know best. Subsistence living and seeking aid from ‘developed countries’. Ironically, these are the same so called ‘developed’ countries whose lockdowns have caused the very economic catastrophe ‘developing‘ countries are now suffering from.
Not content with presiding over a historic economic collapse at home; the same ‘experts’ whose gold plated salaries, pensions and healthcare benefits our taxes pay for, have also been the architects of a lockdown syndrome that will condemn another 100 million people to living below the global poverty level of $1.90 a day, while causing an additional five million global deaths from illnesses ranging from malaria and tuberculosis to heart disease and cancer.
Yet, as always, the locals here laugh, sing and see the bright side of life. Freedom from an entitlement mentality and the hysteria of main stream media has its upsides!
Tanzanians understand that the only way we are going to dig ourselves out of this catastrophe is if ordinary people insist the governments we elect make balanced and transparent decisions based on integrated health and economic data… and not just the ‘do no harm’ mantra of doctors.
Wish you were here? Flights and hotels are cheap. Planes and airports empty. The local people will welcome you with nothing more infectious than open arms, gracious hospitality and a healthy appreciation that life is all about living, not obsessing about the avoidance of dying.
Hakuna matata!
Starvation in Madagascar Exposes Selfishness of Lockdowns
The argument that I hear perhaps most often from lockdown zealots is that lockdown is the compassionate course of action because it protects the vulnerable and doesn’t sacrifice them for the sake of the economy. People before profits. Yet as I try to point out to these well-meaning but misguided souls (rarely with much success), the truth is that lockdowns themselves kill vulnerable people, and very likely a great deal more than they’re saving. The point of herd immunity is not to be indifferent to the vulnerable but to protect them by building up a community immunity quickly while they shield, and not doing lots of other damage at the same time.
In the Spectator this week, Jo Deacon reminds us why this is true, with an account of life in Madagascar.
Like many countries, Madagascar has gone into lockdown. People rush to make it home before curfew, their face masks dangling around their chins. Children play together in the dust outside the locked school gates. The hotels and restaurants are empty, swimming pools drained. Health checkpoints have been set up by the side of the road and people jostle each other as they wait in line for their temperature to be taken before entering town. In the developing world, a cut in income quickly translates into increased malnutrition, inability to pay for basic medicine, and death from starvation or entirely treatable illness. So far, just over 200 people have died from Covid in Madagascar, a country with a population of 27 million. The lives lost due to the indirect impacts of Covid from famine, decreased vaccinations and medical care are likely to be orders of magnitude greater. I was recently telling my youngest son the story of Hansel and Gretel and the wicked stepmother who led them away to die in the forest as they could not afford to feed them any more. There is nothing allegorical about this tale to a Madagascan: it is something we see daily.
The United Nations expects in the region of 71 million people to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020 because of the global response to COVID-19. Meanwhile, the official death toll with the disease is yet to reach a million.
In the UK we have had just over 53,000 excess deaths so far in 2020. In 2014-15 the excess winter deaths were 44,000. Nobody even noticed the 2015 epidemic, yet in 2020 with only around 9,000 more deaths – a 20% increase – the public has been terrorised into surrendering their liberty and sanity. Countries like Sweden, Tanzania and Belarus show that the death toll probably wouldn’t be any higher without lockdown.
However well-intentioned, there is nothing compassionate about lockdowns.
Glasgow Nightingale Hospital To Be Dismantled – As Restrictions Increase
A reader has written to say that a family member who is part of a Scottish engineering firm noticed yesterday on the website for Public Contracts Scotland that a tender had gone out and contractors found for the dismantling of Glasgow’s Nightingale Hospital. Is there any clearer sign of the incoherence, if not outright mendacity, of the Government’s strategy, that it will increase restrictions while clearly having no expectation of hospitals being overwhelmed. The bubble must burst soon, surely.
The Government’s Internet Censorship Bill
In his latest Spectator column, Toby has written about the case of Kristie Higgs, the 44 year-old Christian administrator who was fired by a secondary school for posting a message on her private Facebook account criticising the sex and relationship education curriculum at another school.
There are two free speech issues at stake here. The first is whether an employer’s social media policy, limiting what employees are allowed to say on Facebook and other platforms, can legitimately be extended to private conversations, particularly when the employee has taken steps to disguise her identity. On the face of it, that looks like a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to privacy. The second is whether Kristie’s comments constituted “illegal discrimination” as defined in the UK’s Equality Act 2010. Did they create an ‘”intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” for LGBT colleagues, even though they wouldn’t have known about them if they hadn’t been circulated by someone trying to get her into trouble? Or is she permitted to express such views by Article 10 of the ECHR, which protects the right to freedom of expression?
Kristie’s legal team can also appeal to the Equality Act, which makes it illegal to discriminate against employees for their possessions of various “protected characteristics”, including religion and belief. Her lawyers will argue she lost her job because she expressed her belief about the immutability of natal sex. However, when Maya Forstater’s lawyers made that argument in an employment tribunal last year – she was sacked for refusing to use trans women’s preferred pronouns – the judge said her gender critical beliefs weren’t “worthy of respect in a democratic society”.
Kristie’s treatment is obviously deeply concerning for believers in free speech, but there’s another aspect of her case that worries me. According to a recent white paper, a Bill will soon be brought before Parliament empowering Ofcom to regulate the internet. Under the proposals, Ofcom will be able to impose punitive fines on Facebook for not removing content that political activists find “offensive”, even if it doesn’t fall foul of any existing speech laws.
Twitter already bans users for misgendering trans people, so it won’t take much of a push for all the social media companies to ban people for criticising trans ideology.
The Free Speech Union recently published a briefing paper about the Government’s proposed new internet censorship law that you can read here. The fact that Ofcom will soon be regulating social media is one of the reasons the Free Speech Union is taking Ofcom to court over its censorious “coronavirus guidance”, published on the same day as the country was placed under full lockdown, which cautions broadcasters against challenging the advice being issued by “public health authorities”, i.e. the state. If you’re concerned about the erosion of free speech, please donate to the Free Speech Union’s “Litigation Fund” here.
Round-Up
- “More than 40 Tory backbenchers back rebel bid to force vote on future lockdown measures” – Graham Brady’s rebellion appears to have the votes it needs to bring the Government to heel
- “Under cover of coronavirus, the Tory government is bulldozing basic liberties” – The Guardian‘s John Harris asks why the left has been silent until now on the Government’s assault on our civil liberties
- “Hydroxychloroquine And The Burden of Proof” – A thorough new examination by the Economic Standard of the evidence supporting the efficacy of HCQ in treating COVID-19
- “No, 90% Of Coronavirus Tests Are Not ‘False Positives’ And This Is Why” – The Huffington Post attempts a refutation of Lockdown Sceptics in a weird article that starts by conceding Toby and Carl Heneghan are right and finishes by asking its reader if they’re still “not convinced”. Main point: most being tested are symptomatic. Hmm, on what basis? And there are a lot of colds going round…
- “Boris has no plan, no credibility and yet he dares blame the VOTERS for the mess we’re in. Thank goodness most people will decide for themselves where we go from here – and sod his police state” – Janet Street-Porter goes full sceptic in the Mail
- “Who in their right mind would download Matt Hancock’s Covid app?” – Ross Clark in the Telegraph hits the nail on the head: “I don’t see what is in it for me to volunteer to be fined £10,000.” Er, quite
- “Questions to the government CV 19 advisers” – John Redwood MP with characteristically understated scepticism
- “Now the Government wants to cancel Christmas for students – what crackpot policy will we have next?” – Judith Woods in the Telegraph bewails what has become of the Conservative Party with its miserly, crazy ideas
- “I was right about Bonkers Boris, right about Covid, right about the lockdown” – Laura Perrins is feeling justly vindicated on Conservative Woman. Also, in their poll 87% say Whitty and Vallance should be sacked
- “Local lockdowns could soon be triggered by a ‘traffic light’ system based on coronavirus infection rate” – More barmy ideas, and still the fixation with the raw case numbers continues
- “Covid must be handled with effective risk management, not erratic risk avoidance” – Labour MP John Spellar joins the ranks of sceptics
- “COVID-19: open, reasoned, detailed, discussion of the options is overdue and welcome” – Thoughtful piece in the BMJ by Raj Bhopal, Emeritus Professor of Public Health at
HMP PrisonEdinburgh - “The Moral Case for Reopening Schools – Without Masks” – Excellent piece by John Tierney in City Journal. By “schools” he means universities and by “reopening” he means ending Covid restrictions
- “Britons face virtual worldwide quarantine as four more countries are added to UK Covid travel ban list” – Uh oh. Boris and Hancock have got the travel darts out again
- “The Spectator, the Co-op and cancel culture – a cautionary tale” – Fraser Nelson reveals what happened when the person who controlled Co-op’s Twitter account over-reacted to a few people telling the Co-op not to advertise in the Spectator
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Instant Aura” by Rishi.
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 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.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today is the turn of Harry and Meghan – or “Woko Ono”, as she’s known to Harry’s exasperated friends. On Tuesday, the couple formerly known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex urged US voters to reject Trump hate in the forthcoming US Presidential election. The BBC has more.
“As we approach this November, it’s vital that we reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity,” the Duke said as he sat on a bench alongside Meghan.
He also reminded Americans to be discerning in the content they consumed online.
“When the bad outweighs the good, for many, whether we realise it or not, it erodes our ability to have compassion and our ability to put ourself in someone else’s shoes,” he said.
“Because when one person buys into negativity online, the effects are felt exponentially. It’s time to not only reflect, but act.”
100%, copper-bottomed gobbledegook.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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 £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it 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.
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).
The Care Home Scandal – A Call For Evidence
Lockdown Sceptics has asked an award-winning investigative journalist, David Rose, to investigate the high death toll in Britain’s care homes. Did 20,000+ elderly people really die of COVID-19 between March and July or were many of them just collateral lockdown damage? With lots of care homes short-staffed because employees were self-isolating at home, and with relatives and partners unable to visit to check up on their loved ones because of restrictions, how many elderly residents died of neglect, not Covid? How many succumbed to other conditions, untreated because they weren’t able to access hospitals or their local GP? After doctors were told by care home managers that the cause of death of a deceased resident was “novel coronavirus”, how many bothered to check before signing the death certificate? The risk of doctors misdiagnosing the cause of death is particularly high, given that various safeguards to minimise the risk of that happening were suspended in March.
David Rose would like Lockdown Sceptics readers to share any information they have that could help in this investigation. Here is his request:
We are receiving reports that some residents of care homes who died from causes other than Covid may have had their deaths ascribed to it – even though they never had the disease at all, and never tested positive. Readers will already be familiar with the pioneering work by Carl Heneghan and his colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, which forced the Government to change its death toll counting method. Previously, it will be recalled, people who died of, say, a road accident, were being counted as Covid deaths if they had tested positive at any time, perhaps months earlier. But here we are talking of something different – Covid “deaths” among people who never had the virus at all.
In one case, where a family is deciding whether to grant permission for Lockdown Sceptics to publicise it, an elderly lady in reasonable health was locked in her room for many hours each day in a care home on the south coast, refused all visitors, deprived of contact with other residents, and eventually went on hunger strike, refusing even to drink water. She died in the most wretched circumstances which were only indirectly a product of the virus – and yet, her death certificate reportedly claims she had Covid.
I’m looking for further examples of 1) elderly people who died as a result of the lockdown and associated measures, but whose deaths were wrongly attributed to “novel coronavirus”, and 2) those elderly people who clearly died from other causes but whose deaths were still formally ascribed to Covid because they once tested positive for it, even after the counting method change.
If you have relevant information, please email Lockdown Sceptics or David directly on david@davidroseuk.com.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
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 hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here.
And Finally…
One of the few bright spots in the last six months has been the comic videos of Andrew Lawrence. Not only is Andrew scathingly sceptical and heretically un-woke, he’s also very funny. This is his take on the news that Sir Patrick Vallance has a £600,000 shareholding in GlaxoSmithKline. Conspiracy theorists will love it…
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First!
Tsk.
Error
Two thirds in a week, not bad
The few have become the many
Now we all know what it’s like to be fucked and abandoned by the pig dictator
LoL I just woke up for a widdle and I can’t believe people have commented already!
Take comfort in the fact that the bedwetters didn’t get up for a widdle
I saw the pixies when I was in college… Fun show. 🙂
These updates drop at about 7:00pm my time, so if I wait until morning, there’s about 1200 comments and I’m way behind!
You’ll have to become a night owl in order to join us larks!
Or change time zones
tell all Your college friends about this site this affects all of us what this Government is doing
One of my fave bands 🙂 Well, they were. Their new stuff is wank
(Frank is NOTHING without Kim)
and you checked the comments page while having a widdle! 🙂 🙂
Hope she washed her hands!
I didn’t! Oh my god, am I gonna die??!?
I am one of those sad, sad indviduals who checks their phone as soon as they wake up. Even if it’s at 3am and I’m half asleep :/
Dammit!
Those of us who have escaped to foreign lands have an advantage
Britain is a foreign land at the moment.
Quite, we are now the Socialist Republic of EUtopia.
‘ Exposure Notification Feature ‘
What? It tells you when your fly is undone?
Rishi V. johnson. Please don’t tell me the extension of the nonsense just reflects a power struggle within the conservative party.
Was johnson got at during his stay at Chequers before lockdown, like Gorbachev isolated on the Black Sea as the communist old guard tried to stage a coup?
You ride out the shitstorm boris and I’ll take over when it looks good.
i have come to the conclusion that Johnson and his whole cabinet of shit must now go and Labour
The people of Britain are living under a brutal dictatorship
The BBC runs a story that a rat has won an award
Note to me. Ring this morning and reserve a special place in hell for them
You’re way late, a whole suite is waiting for them and the fires are stoked every morning.
Do you have booking reference number?
Sadly no, but I’m told the booking is non-cancellable and the dates can’t be changed: from now to eternity. And they will be greeted at the gates if Hell by special Covid Marshal Demons, who will hand them fiery, non-disposable face masks that can never be taken off.
.
Indeed. I also saw somewhere that the ‘Docs4OpenDebate’ letter signed by nearly 2000 anti-lockdown doctors and health professionals in Belgium has been censored as ‘false information’ on Facebook. Is this true? I deactivated my Facebook so I can’t check but it’s absolutely outrageous if so.
Facebook sensors EVERYTHING, they are working in LOCKSTEP you see, along with all other media platforms, as demanded by the Rockefeller institute back in 2010.
https://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf
The link is blocked for me.
humm interesting, have you got your ISP’s family content filter on by any chance?
No, in Russia and it seems the website where it is hosted is blocked.
humm interesting. Try a vpn? you should be able to find this document pretty easily anyway from somewhere else. This is what you are looking for. A must read.
I deactivated FB over 2 years ago for banni g and deplatforming people for speaking the truth.
there needs to be an alternative to facebook and twitter these two companies deserve to die
Covid is the new woke. Unless you’re onboard with the accepted narrative, it’s false/fake news. No one wants to hear anything that upsets their worldview and safe space.
Matt Handcnut won an award? When? What for?
The Telegraph is being disingenuous when it says ‘cases are at near record levels’.
Back in March ‘cases’ were people who were genuinely ill, needing to be hospitalised and in some cases dying.
Now, as we all know, the vast majority of cases are of people so asymptomatic they don’t even know they have it.
You seem to be suggesting that they are thick as shit. Where on earth did you get that idea
They are doing what Gates tells them to do and that is bad news for us. Johnson, Hancock and some others wear the mask of incompetence as cover for what they are really up to. Gates is all about depopulation through vaccination. He must be laughing his socks off.
Gates cannot say a sentence without giggling and chuckling his way through it, neither can his evil wife.
We’ve noticed that too and Dave Cullen dissects it brilliantly here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3iVEK1USe4 (watch from 10 minutes in for Bill Gates but the whole video is excellent, if you haven’t already seen it.)
And now Fatboy Johnson has started emulating his ‘master’ (see his body-language in the Nuremberg Rally speech on Tuesday). MW
That is a very good watch that video. Scary as hell.
Hopefully history will repeat itself and Nuremberg Rally will lead to Nuremberg trial.
Easily achieved with pharmaceuticals. Makes him seem benign and cheerful to the masses.
That gleeful giggling doesn’t suggest anything benign to me!
Not sure about depopulation through vaccine. Certainly we will get it through social distancing.
We are being trained to see other humans as dangerous infectious creatures to be avoided. I cannot image the damage this is doing to young people now and in the long run. But I fully expect a severe drop in births this year and in the coming years.
They were talking about all the right things if the aim is to keep the lockdown pantomime on the road.
Question is why do almost all the MPs go along with it? They are not all thick.
Shares in vaccine companies
Their careers
Happens when you change all the definitions midstream and rely on the fact that people are still under March assumptions.
I saw a chart in a local paper today that tried to prove that our cases have fallen due to masks. Infuriating as hell, because I know people won’t even question it.
That’s all part of their clever plan, our fault if things go bad, they claim the credit if they don’t.
“the vast majority of cases are of people so asymptomatic they don’t even know they have it.”
That’s why testing is SO important!
We must TEST TEST TEST!!!
(sarc warning :-\)
“We must test, test, test – or there will be MILLIONS who will suffer the unspeakable horror of a having no symptoms! People will be REMAINING WELL in droves! Do you plebs not understand this?”
It’s good ‘propaganda speak’ learned at the best schools in Russia.
Jeremy Vine back in line.
Todays phone in was all about how sad people were that their nan couldn’t download the NHS app because she’s got an old phone or none at all.
Yesterday’s about the 10pm pub curfew wasn’t about whether it was a useful thing to do but whether or not pub goers had themselves to blame for ignoring social distancing. (They were, apparently ).
I hate Jeremy Vine. His show is like brain-floss, He is the idiot’s Idiot. I cannot listen to any more than about 5 seconds of JV, utterly moronic.
From the roundup.
Nice of Janet Street Porter to catch up with what we’ve been saying for months about the effects of ineffective lockdown.
Pity she ends by saying that only a vaccine will save us but nothing about herd immunity.
She’s a c*nt, who cares what she thinks?
Why do you think she’s a c*nt?
Don’t knock her, at least she’s speaking out.
I don’t always agree with JSP but she does seem to speak her mind and to be unafraid of going against the prevailing orthodoxy.
I wouldn’t knock her even if you paid me.
It’s a start and it bought the trollbots out in full force, so she must have worried someone.
Long time lurker. Just joined tonight, so, hi all; thanks for keeping me sane.
I know this was posted yesterday, but this has to be at the top of the comments so everyone, who hasn’t seen it, sees it.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1308655561081225217
Welcome!
Welcome Ceriain.
I missed that yesterday.
Probably already been said but does that mean people who land at airports have a different Covid or is the test different or is that “challenge” the same everywhere as they keep denying ?
Welcome to the land of the sane!
Welcome to this oasis of sanity and rationality!
Welcome to the House of Sanity! Carl Vernon pointed this out on one of his YouTube vids. Why ISN’T this being discussed?
Thank you all for the lovely welcome.
That’s just mental. So tests not reliable at airports but a-ok for locking cities down.
What really stands out, apart from the mendacity of these government thugs, is the low calibre of the news reporters and interviewers. A follow up question is screaming out to be posed and yet nothing.
The media is worse than useless.
they know what a FPR is when it suits them!
Hello, trouble sleeping so I tried counting Covid stats, if it is of any interest;
Stats for NHS England;
Serves population 56 million
For the 7 days 16th to 22nd September
Total number of ‘Covid’ patients admitted to English hospitals 1571
Total number of ‘Covid’ patients recorded as in English hospitals
Went up from 894 on16th to 1335 on 22nd a rise of 441
For these 7 days the number of Covid deaths was 116
That leaves 1014 admissions not accounted for by deaths and the rise in total numbers in hospital.
I can only assume that these 1014 were patients who got better and were discharged and went home.
I have heard Hapless Hancock talk despairingly about the numbers being admitted to Hospital but really that needs to be offset against the people getting well and being discharged.
Also I note that the increase over these 7 days is somewhat less than the doubling he talked about
They are testing everyone admitted to hospital
They are not admitted because of covid
Involved in a road accident and admitted?
‘ We’ve tested you and you have covid’
‘ No i don’t I’ m here because I got run over by a bus’
‘ Listen mate, if we say you got covid then you got fucking covid. Now shut the fuck up and eat your mashed potato’
What if our bus run over person dies five days later from their injuries?
Yep, right first time, they a are recorded as a hospital covid death
Remember where you heard it first
THERE ARE NO HOSPITAL COVID DEATHS
Also explains ‘covid’ patients on ventilators
Haha first belly laugh today
Twenty three of those cases from the University ward here, might have brought it from home but more probably from socialising, ‘partying’ or, horror of horrors, moving around campus in groups of more than the magic number SIX.
Being students few if any of them will become ill let alone ‘need’ to be hospitalised but in the current atmosphere who knows what might be done to bump up the numbers.
and upto 60% of covid patients didn’t have covid when they were admitted.
Probably out after 10pm in large groups of 7
How many people on a ward?
The UK is the only ciuntry that never reports statistics for Covid recoveries. You just stay coviddy fir ever and ever.
Uplifting update, today.
I could see the dominoes falling, soon.
Hopefully not the dominoes of the surveillance state that is being set up crashing onto us and suffocating us…
One of the things that is most disturbing about this entire period is the way it has changed how we feel about death. My father died of complications arising from the flu, but I never would have dreamed of saying that society should put itself on hold to prevent the spread of the flu virus. I wrote a post about it here: https://medium.com/@civitasperegrina/death-in-2020-666a97057d35
Exactly the same for me my Mum died Xmas Eve 2017 of complications from contracting flu while in hospital she also like vast majority of had other underlying issues and was near to end of life ,so when a smart arse tells me “you wouldn’t think that if you lost a loved one to this disease” they get my reply and you see them backtrack pretty quickly
I know a now long-retired GP who would freely tell you that for years GPs referred to pneumonia as “the old person’s friend”.
There are PhDs in pyschology/sociology/philosophy to be written in years to come about how distorted our view of mortality has become and how it has become subservient to a more holistic view of what it means to be human and the value placed on lifelong mental and physical “wellness”.
It is truly fascinating. In its quest for extension of life our society is actually dehumanising itself.
I suppose it is rational in so far as dying is intrinsic to being human. These tech billionaires aggressively pursuing the indefinite prolongation of life, like Ray Kurzweil and his team at Google, know that their consciousness can only live on in a non-human form, so they probably have no qualms about abandoning humanity. Society as a whole seems to be moving in that direction also. People seem to want to live even if the cost is abandoning their humanity.
Error
I have argued the very same thing. My mother died from a flu – her health was severely compromised already – and it never occurred to me to hold the person who may have passed the bug onto her responsible. That is life. Or at least it was…
Note to Mrs Dick
Early to bed tonight
Big day ahead of you tomorrow
https://tomwoods.com/ep-1741-harvard-medical-school-prof-martin-kulldorff-lockdowns-not-the-answer/
Interview with Prof Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School. He says most infectious disease epidemiologists actually agree that an age-targeted approach to covid would be better, but they are drowned out by “vocal” scientists from other fields.
Will Jones obviously not a fan of F1. It’s POLE position dude.
I assumed that was an attempted pun – something to do with polling support from other Tories?
I noticed and wondered too!
Pret have started asking those without a mask to put one on having previously had a no mask, we won’t ask policy. I said I’m exempt and they asked for my “document”. I said there are no “documents”. I took it up with the manager and they suggested that I wear a badge. I then told them about the Equality Act and the sad history of certain parts of society having to wear badges.
Gosh, that is truly shocking! Asking you to wear a badge that is so bad and so sinister.
Hitler got rid of ‘mentality retarded’ and physically disabled people before he went for the Jews with enthusiastic assistance of the medical profession, eager to pursue their eugenics programs.
I watched a documentary on this a few days back. The nurses and doctors in Germany were complicit in killing all these people and a lot of young children, as well as forced sterilisation. They did all this without any dissent, much like we are seeing during this COVID.
It made me wonder if this was the same thing that has happened with all the elderly that died during March – June, and they’re just as complicit in not speaking up and allowing all these non COVID excess deaths.
Care homes got a lot of bad press when stories of deaths there came out early on.
They were blamed for putting profits over safety.
That came to an end when NHS culpability was revealed.
The Corona Boat floats on a sea of death and it has a deep draught.
Aren’t these the same people complaining that encouraging people to work from home is going to destroy their business? Couldn’t happen to a more deserving company as far as I’m concerned.
Yes but there is no other way, ask my son who is exempt from face nappies because of panic attacks and works in retail.
There is always another way.
Yes a nice yellow star would seem appropriate
With exempt written in the centre
And a film will, play in all cinemas: The Eternal Exempt.
Or a pink triangle. Either is fully effective at demonising a small section of the population; it begins with one section, and it never ends.
Film it next time and tell them they have broken privacy and disability laws
Rather bizarre that they’re complaining about declining revenue because of offices shut and non-existent train travel and now they’re trying to drive away paying customers.
Do they not realise the inherent contradiction here?
If that’s the case then they deserve to go bust. Shame as I will miss their savoury croissants and flat white.
Yes keep out of Pret, which nows seems ready to go bust.
It’s not true, but I can see how it could easily be misinterpreted that way. As long as the venue is complying with all the nonsense Covid secure rules, they don’t get fined. These include, I assume, the new rules about staff wearing masks (note, exemptions still apply), but nobody but the punters get fined if the punters don’t wear masks. I assume the confusion is deliberate and an attempt to get shops and hospitality venues to enforce mask wearing more enthusiastically. I’m much more concerned about making a trip to the pub mask less than I ever have been about making a trip to a shop bare faced. I think this is partly because I actually have some kind of human relationship with the staff at my local (albeit very casual), so I’m going to feel more guilty if I claim exemption. I do have (very mild) asthma and so a legitimate technical exemption, but I have absolutely no idea whether this actually makes it difficult for me to wear a mask because I’ve never tried, so I am in fact lying if I say I’m exempt. I’ll probably build up to giving it a go over the weekend… Read more »
DON’T DO IT! You will feel like you have compromised your integrity. It’s not worth it.
I disagree. I think the rules, designed to terrify people, should be broken, as an act of civil duty. I would feel I was compromising my own integrity if I did willingly wear a mask.
Here’s chapter-and-verse from Law or Fiction on this very issue: Who will enforce this? In practice, controllers of premises have been responding to threatening behaviour from Environmental Health officers, telling them that health and safety laws require them to keep their premises “Covid Secure”. (We have a contrary view: Risk assessments: an important chink in the lockdown armour, but the threats have been and remain effective in practice.) Employers and controllers of premises seem likely to require face covering to be worn and an individual who objects will need to be acquainted with the reasonable excuse exemptions above and Low mood – a reasonable excuse to ignore coronavirus restrictions. Police, police community support officers, TfL officers, and any other person designated by the Secretary of State for Health are the ‘relevant persons’ who can issue Fixed Penalty Notices in theory. Significantly, unlike other regulations, ‘relevant persons’ do not include persons designated by Local Authorities. The enforcement of wearing face covering will, therefore, be mostly by fear and intimidation but with likely very few fines being issued. [ ] The regulations do not and cannot trump discrimination law [ ] What should businesses do? Businesses and their staff are best advised not… Read more »
I’m glad you have cited this. Today I went on my first tube journey since this lunacy started and decided I was going to tough it out without a mask. I have followed the links from the mask section of the daily LS updates about masks and the law but it wasn’t until I was on the train that I discovered the Law or Fiction website. What a find. Exactly what I had hoped to find. Anyway, I went for a long return tube ride and didn’t even get a second look, so never had to have an argument or show someone the documentation to prove that THEY would be the party breaking the law.
Nevertheless, I didn’t see a SINGLE person on the train (and I walked past many carriages) not wearing a mask of some kind. Two or three below the nose but that was it.
It is quite incredible how many people are clearly incapable of investigating this for themselves. I simply don’t believe they all approve of the ‘rules’.
This is part of the fucking Cressida Dick “nudge” element of this monstrous psy-op; as she herself said, she hoped it would be enforced by people shaming each other. Not her exact words, but the clear intention was there.
Almost certainly it is and true to form for this shifty and shitty government.
Are you sure about business responsibility? They have not been thus far.
They are not. Please see my reply to Matt, above. MW
Just backtracked and read that, thank you Miriam-sometimes-AlanG.
If Pret continue doing this, they will close down altogether. Already had to close branches and sack staff.
I’d have told them that they risk a £9,000 fine under the 2010 Equality Act which OVERIDES the diktats under the Coronavirus Act, for discriminating against me – LaworFiction has an excellent procedure you can download or copy if any business is pushing their bloody luck with you, which you can call them out on. And I would have told them (politely) where they in future can keep their sandwiches!
As I said the other day, when I go to the shops I’m now taking copies of the Law or Fiction pages as well as my exemption badge. So far I haven’t needed to produce the pages.
One suspects the Pret in Trafalgar Square won’t be doing this tomorrow …
Went to Itsu today. Much better experience. No questions and their staff use visors not masks, so at least you get a smile. By the way, central London is almost dead now. Restaurants closing having just reopened and gained a small toe hold that has now been obliterated. With that and the closure of UCH and Royal Free A&E to CHILDREN, I’m waiting for the backlash. Once children start dying because of overcrowding at the Whittington or because the ambulance takes too long to get them there, maybe the public will realise that this can’t go on.
One to boycott!
If I am challenged by anyone apart from the few lovely business-owners that I normally frequent, I show my lanyard and shout “I am exempt! What part of that don’t you understand?” It is highly effective. I will not be challenged by “sheeple”.
Raj Bhopal’s response to the two open letters should be front page news in the mainstream media.
VACCINE WON’T SAVE US
Vaccines will not be proven to be safer for children and young people than the infection for some years, if ever. Two adenovirus-based vaccines have already been shown to have important side-effects that mimic COVID-19 infection — i.e. fever, pain, fatigue and headache – the side-effects have been glossed over. The side effects are occurring in 70-80% of fit people in the young adult and middle age groups. We really must know whether it is effective in people over 70 years. A vaccine is not going to be a panacea. There will be resistance and it will be contested, including in the courts, as by sheer coincidence people will die or become seriously ill shortly after receiving the vaccine and will blame it.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3702/rr-2
so 80% of fit young people have no symptoms of the disease but 80% have side effects from the cure?
Double plus good
Yay, they will then go to be tested, be found to have dead virus, and be locked up, along with their fsmilies and colleagues and anyone else they’ve been seen with.
Which is why many medics resist pressure to take the normal annual flu vaccine.
Interesting to see their position to any Covid vaccine they might come up with.
And reports are that the vaccine will, at best, be 50% effective or only reduce the symptoms. At best.
Am I missing something? How is it a good thing that Sunak becomes PM? He’s been complicit and his scheme is costing millions and will now only support viable businesses yet the unviable ones are only so because of their lockdown policy, i.e. the government has made them unviable!
It’s my daughter’s 16th birthday today. Never would I have thought that we’d still be in local lockdown or any kind of lockdown. She can’t have friends or family round so we’re having to be creative to do something nice for her where they can all meet up, which I think she’ll enjoy but it’s not the same.
I’m finding it hard to stay positive, as a Christian I anchor my hope, faith and trust in Jesus as He is unchanging, this is great but it is still a struggle!
My thoughts exactly, and wasn’t he stating the source for the economy and jobs would have to adapt to the new normal. This chap is not our friend. Also a Christian, but we don’t even have the church supporting us against the current assault on our liberties and society, at least in the old iron curtain days, Poland especially had the Church’s support.
Too true, alas. The treachery and cowardice of the churches is the worst blow the present tyranny has dealt to Christians.
That one made me laugh. Well done.
My nan got told by her friend that she is not a “good Christian” for not wearing a mask after 50 odd years of going to church. Did not take that very well!
HUH, funny how Christians cannot see the unbridled EVIL at work. I thought Christians had a finely tuned sense of Evil. Isn’t that the whole point of it??
You could argue that they are no longer Christian, when they show so little faith.
Many “Christians” are merely virtue signallers.
The Churches sold their souls for the biblical thirty pieces of silver.
The Church has never closed its doors.
Christians have met through times of peace and war.
I agree that Sunak is not an improvement. No one who has held a senior cabinet position during this crisis is worthy of the job. Whilst I’m sure some of them privately disagree, and are bound by collective responsibility. But if the way this has been handled isn’t a resigning matter – what would be?
Jesus is with us.
Jesus didn’t tell people to hide away in gibbering terror of death.
Jesus didn’t turn away sick people today in case other people got ill tomorrow.
Jesus didn’t hide behind a mask.
Jesus didn’t tell people to treat their neighbours as walking bags of disease.
Jesus accompanies us through danger, persecution and even death.
The church may have abandoned us, but Jesus has not.
Stay with him.
Toby linked to this a while back. Good read. Especially as this is largely a British forum, makes me think of “the great divorce” and “screwtape letters.” More the latter.
https://mchurley.com/an-enemy-hath-done-this/
Screwtape must be planning the biggest party Hell has ever seen, and looking forward to dining on Roast Archbishop of Canterbury.
I’m not sure Satan will allow casual visitors, but if so, please may I have two tickets to watch him fry?
Thanks, I’ll have a read later.
Thank you for this link. It is well worth a read and expresses my feelings exactly. I am encouraged that there are so many Christians, here and in the current fight for freedom. On Saturday 29th August, thousands of us prayed the Lord’s Prayer.
Thanks for this Annie, it’s really helpful, especially the bit about turning away the sick in case others got ill tomorrow. The leaders of my church have convinced themselves that meeting on Zoom is still meeting and that we’re not being told to go against what God commands us to do since the government’s intention is for the common good, it’s hard to watch how naive they are being and that they can’t see how cruel lockdowns are.
Church services on zoom feel like a mockery of the real thing. I felt perfectly safe in my church in March, a large building with just a few worshippers. I’m so happy we are open again. It took me a month to get there, though as they were so scared of giving lifts and the fact I’m exempt from masks.
Thanks Annie
Amen. Please tell that to my wife’s friends.
Sadly ironic that it is the hospitality industry that usually soaks up unemployment “until I get a proper job”.
Not this time it won’t.
Very good point karen. I suspect we’ll see a lot of window cleaners/gardeners/odd-job people/etc. springing up.
There’s always the prospect serving the community by being a Covid Marshal and you get to choose whether to wear a brown or a black shirt.
Rather dubious about Sunak especially as he’s been bleating on about the “new normal” which will pretty much set us back to the Stone Age.
The Church has been a disgrace and a run in I had with a verger reinforces my view that they are nothing but a mouthpiece of the state.
Very sorry about your daughter and I do hope she has a good birthday despite the circumstances.
Thanks, I agree, even the independent evangelical body my church is effectively a mouthpiece of the state, their desire to follow the rules and be exemplary means that they’re circumventing what the bible teaches. It’s heartbreaking to watch.
I believe that even the Catholic church has gone the same way.
They remind me of the Pharisees and Saducees jockeying for position to see who is seen to be the best in following the Law of Moses to the letter. They’ve forgotten the message that Jesus preached.
Makes you yearn for the Second Coming to remind this lot of what their actual job is supposed to be.
Yeah, it is pharisaical.
So, not only is a new political party needed, but a new church as well.
I suggested to the minister here that he should hold outdoor meetings, a la John Wesley. (This was back in the summer.)
A group of like-minded people could start a church – don’t even need a minister to start with.
I’m sure she’ll have a great time. We’ll do all that we can to make sure that she has a nice day, my wife is pretty amazing at that sort of stuff. Thankfully we home educate so we don’t have to worry about all the nonsense going on in schools, some of my daughter’s friends have already been sent home because there has been a ‘case’ in the class or something! It’s probably just a cold for goodness sake!
Exactly. Well done you and agree she will have a great time.
I did think that what are the odds that these “cases” are just the usual colds that young people get every time school reopens?
All the more reason why schools and universities should be banging the drum of taking vitamin C, D and zinc as well as eating well, being outdoors, playing, sports,
No, the message is stay in your room all day, stay away from everybody, eat tinned food, pasta and noodles until a vaccine is produced.
That will produce a nation of obesity sufferers who will be at greater risk of dying from COVID. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for the Establishment.
That, unfortunately, is so true.
I have to say that Steve Baker is my choice for PM. A Christian, an intelligent sane empathetic man and the main person fighting for our civil liberties in Parliament. I am going to be praying for him and all those in Parliament that are on the side of freedom and not big pharma. I am also praying all the plans of the evil tyrants and those scaring the population witless, boomerang back on them. 🙏🏻
I think we are living through revelation, seeing the world as it really is, with 20/20 vision.
Yeah, I really feel for her. I’m trying to remain positive, my wife is so much better at it than I am and will make it amazing, I struggle to hide my anger and frustration at having to bend around this nonsense.
The problem is the present government in its entirety. Rearranging the deckchairs on SSTitanicUK won’t help one bit. All cabinet members are complicit in the Bill Gates inspired Covid-19 ultra scam and they should all be locked away awaiting trial for treason and possible death penalty. It really is that bad.
Buying one of Toby’s Exempt lanyards has to be one of the best investments I have ever made. On Monday we flew from Manchester to Corfu. The missus insisted that I wear a mask on entering the airport (my Defund the BBC mask which I’ve only worn 4 times in the past – three of which was to get my hair cut). But when security swabbed my [Ipsos MORI standard issue] rucksack and said they’d found traces of explosive on the swab, I removed my mask and stuck to just wearing my lanyard. I had to be re-scannedby one of the security chaps – he was fine with me not wearing a mask, chatting away and joking with me – even holding the lanyard out of the way whilst waving his magic wand arround. On the flight with easyJet there were plenty of reminders to wear your mask over the Tannoy. But the crew were delightful towards me, and we were in Row 2, so not exactly hidden away. In the sleepy village of Arillas noone, in shops, bars or restaurants have raised an eyebrow, even though most other tourists are doing the brainwashed thing. So a big thank you… Read more »
A hearty second to that, The mere thought of being nappied makes me start to choke, and without the information gleaned here about exemptions and lanyards I’d have become a total recluse. LS has saved my life, at least any life worth living.
Me too. Lanyard had changed my life. Husband and teenage sons complete sceptics now thanks to this site. Husband was ‘spoken to’ in Waitrose last night by two shop workers. Store was empty. They said they were now speaking to everyone not wearing a mask. He put them straight that he is exempt and does not need to explain why or wear a badge. They said he should wear a lanyard.
Interesting comment earlier up the line about how we never hear of anyone recovering? I would love to see a simple daily/monthly/yearly dashboard with these numbers:
patients in hospital with Covid (by age)
deaths from Covid (by age)
deaths with Covid (known co-morbidities, by age)
deaths with Covid (obese)
patients recovered/sent home
I take huge comfort from the graphs posted here showing low death rates currently. I am staggered at how many people I speak to who genuinely believe we are all at risk of death.
Just got back from the beach. Whitty et al’s idea of controlling the virus is just as daft as the missus telling the sea to get back after our towels got wet 🙂
My local corner shop has been a bit of a bastion of sanity. The owner was clearly fearful at the beginning (and he was clearly suffering from some kind of cold virus back in early April), but he’s kept going, kept himself stocked even when the cash and carry had its shelves stripped. Most importantly, despite going in once a day at least, I’ve only ever seen one person (the local vet) in there with a mask on.
So I was worried what I’d find when I went in yesterday.
But there he was, no mask, no mention of masks, all as normal (except he’s moved to a smaller size of olive oil bottle, which I pointed out is fine for the extra virgin stuff, but no good for the cooking stuff).
Anyway, my point is, he’s clearly not worried about snitches and nor should you be, KH. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll have pride of place in the Hall of Sane when all of this is over.
Similar at my convenience store, the younger partner now wearing a visor while stocking shelves, the older one without a mask, probably claiming exemption (who am I to ask !).
Please, let’s all shop in places like that as much as we possibly can.
Or, of course, you could go to Asda and be ‘greeted’ at the door by a posse of thugs who will thrust a mask on you and demand that you pay for a packet of the filthy rags when you leave.
And surprise, surprise….Made in China!!!!
In other words, its all virtue signalling crap.
What are the odds that when this is over, they will be so embarrassed with their virtue signalling that any photos of them in muzzles will be deleted and the bins will be full of discarded masks that are no longer needed?
Like just before the fall of Communism the public bins were full of destroyed Party Membership cards
That is a good precedent.
I don’t think we’ll ever take them off again now, this is here to stay permanently.
Exactly and it was a good rant! 👍
I don’t think self reflection is their strong point.
These dicks will frame their bastard masks on the wall in their hallways.
It absolutely is virtue signalling on an epic scales. However, many are doing it unconsciously. Been having a back and forth on a local blog site with a lady who wants people with exemptions to consider not shopping (click and collect) or wearing a visor (yes, for the most deadly disease we’ve ever known). I think she should be the one to stay home and get a delivery but here was what the last exchange was. Its indicative of the thinking out there: Her: “Upside down thinking. The 95%who support mask wearing however reluctantly should click and collect so that the 5% can do what they like/ When there are doubts and it is a matter of life and death you should encourage people to err on the side of caution. You are prioritising personal choice over potential risk. Do you think that everyone who doubts the value of masks should feel free to not wear one then and if so does this apply to all restrictions?” Me: “No. The 95% you cite is a little disingenuous. The compliance level was minimal until the boss mandated it. So if everyone was all about the science (the WHO changed their guidance… Read more »
Last bit is spot on – the muzzles don’t exactly inspire confidence. If they were then why are shops, pubs and restaurants still ghost towns? Not to mention rumours that its now hard to get delivery slots again? Could it be that more and more people refuse to kowtow to this nonsense any longer?
I looked into buying in bulk and the cost was 12p per mask, but you can imagine with the supermarket buying power they probably pay less that 5p per mask. No wonder supermarkets want you to wear them they’re making a huge profit on them.
Yes, I find car parks are littered with discarded masks, surely a health hazard in itself.
I spotted 9 on a one mile walk yesterday
I had the same suspicion when the National Gallery jumped the gun and “recommended” then even before they were made mandatory and it was confirmed when I received an email from them informing me of their latest merchandise and yep, you can buy muzzles from them featuring 3 paintings from their permanent collection.
Sick.
“Excuse me madam, I just saw you handle your mask, you will need to replace it, they are available at the tills, £5.00 for 5”.
I’ve actually felt a change of atmosphere since the changes.Definitely more dirty looks in the shops for going maskless
I just forget everyone else’s bitching and concentrate on what I am doing. Unless they are paying for my goods they can mind their own😎
That always cracks me up!
Great post!
My wife’s church-going friends are all bed-wetters of the first water. When the time comes for the Stasi round-up, they will eagerly help each other into the cattle-cars and make sure that the cattle-trucks are labelled Auchwitz to make sure they don’t inconvenience their lords and masters. Such people deserve everything that is coming to them.
A nice winning article about a shop in America that displayed a no masks in ere sign, had a flirt with trouble, but ended up very much on top -lawfully. A nice tip is where to display the mandatory signsge.
https://muchadoaboutcorona.ca/small-business-outwits-masking-bylaw/
You don’t cook with extra virgin ?!?! I am aghast. 🙂
Only really any good for dressings or sweating down onions; far too low a smoke point.
I mainly use it for haloumi, at low-medium heat. But always happy to learn. For seriously hot stuff, I use coconut oil. Feeling peckish now …
My OH would throw up at the thought of halloumi! If you need any inspiration, I have a boeuf bourguignon bubbling away in the slow cooker for friends coming round tonight….
Bozo is just being kept in place to take the blame.
Boris he is like a big frayed at the seams old teddy bear, once loved by everybody but now threadbare and soggy, with dried up Weetabix ground into his fur.
He is one step away from the bin but he can’t be thrown out for sentimental reasons. He is still a popular toy in the toy box and many people like to haul him around by his tattered ears and occasionally punch him in he fat soggy belly as a stress reliever. So he still has a useful role.
thought that was handy cocks job
No. Hancock is there to be punched, hard, in the stomach as a voodoo totem, in the hope that it transfers to the intended victim.
In addition, to the ban on socialising, Scotland is not allowing uni students to go home as they will now be classed as different households. Are there not some 17-year-olds at Scottish unis? There certainly are at Irish unis – I have to go through yearly garda vetting because some of my students are minors, so what are the legal ramifications here? Declaring yourself head of a household as a minor in the US requires legal emancipation… This seriously needs a legal challenge. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18745882.students-across-scotland-told-not-return-home-visit-families/?ref=twtrec
Scots do start uni at 17 because their highers are shorter than our ‘A’-levels (one year as opposed to two) but their degrees are longer (four years as opposed to three).
Imagine being a fresher at a Scottish university. You haven’t really met anyone apart from the five people you’ve been put into accommodation with, and you aren’t sure you like them very much. All your interaction with tutors so far has been on screen in your bedroom, you can’t go to a pub and therefore meet other people you might like better, and you can’t go home to mum and dad for the weekend (or jack it all in and decide it’s not worth it) as it’s a separate household. This is now their reality – a prison cell, not a bedroom! We are going to see 18 year olds committing suicide over the next few weeks at this rate.
Aye, but we have to make sure there are enough gender neutral toilets in the university’s buildings – we don’t want someone to feel bad, do we!
I hope not, and instead when they are getting desperate they realise they do have the choice, just pack up and go home. Of course they aren’t breaking any laws, as you are allowed out of lockdown “to escape injury illness or risk of harm”
Quite a few already have, I have met three random people who have told me that they know a family who has had their 17-18 years olds kill themselves recently. I don’t get out much either. The suicide rate among youngsters WILL be going up EXPONENTIALLY.
That would be very sad.
But as 18 year olds, the ‘law’ deems them fully functioning adults, entitled to vote, drive cars, serve in the military, etc. Personally, I think students who are seriously affected by this shite (as we all have been, and still are) will learn an awful lot about life, authority, responsibility, personal autonomy, and where their true priorities should lie. This probably should have been taken care of a tad more at school and at home, but better late than never. 🙂
I wonder if, at last, she has miscalculated the mood on this one.
There’s an angle (if the opposition can be bothered) that she has put money – fees and hall rents – above health. Which is exactly what she accuses UK government of.
Good to see a glimmer of sanity in the Grauniad. It’s liberally spattered with leftspeak, but any attempt to point out that the lefties’ natural election fodder is being hurt by the present bollox is greatly to be welcomed.
I would have liked to read that piece in the roundup but it’s behind a subscription barrier. Damned if I’ll give the graun my details.
Disappointed that Sweden haven’t increased gatherings to 500 but Tegnell still talking more sense than anyone else. Doubtless to the lockdown fetishists will be crowing about how Sweden is now, finally heading for its nemesis but I still think they will have a long wait. Especially as the prospect of a remotely functional vaccine recedes ever further over the horizon.
You couldn’t make it up !
Well, who’d have guessed it – the geniuses of the world health establishment having failed dismally in schoolboy mathematics now fail their biology 101 practical. They tried to beat a virus with washing hands and paper masks – 4 billion years of evoluation ain’t that stupid !
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/24/new-coronavirus-mutation-could-evolving-get-around-mask-wearing/
It is turning into a….. cold and guess what spreads colds? People touching their faces all day because they are wearing masks.
So by wearing masks we have increased the prevailence of the mutated virus, although the conclusion of the Telegraph article is not enough was done to stop the spread of the virus early .
Just wondering, how long will it be before the cretin masses start up their weekly Thursday night NHS worship again?
Won’t get much support if the people I talk to are typical.
We could try to relaunch it ourselves just to prove the point.
Saturday jobs are a great way of easing youngsters into adulthood. With your encouragement perhaps this young lady will learn a very valuable lesson indeed: decide what you believe to be right and stand by it – that she doesn’t have to be scared of a few weak-minded critical voices.
First visit to our local pub last night. Guess what? Landlord is a sceptic. He has to follow the rules but much rolling of eyes and acknowledgement of how ridiculous the rules are. Telling us about his 90 year old grandma who refuses to hide in her home and taking advantage of her bus pass merrily takes bus journeys round the county most days.
Sadly, however, he and his wife have decided to get out of the pub game. Their lease ends in Feb 2021 and they won’t be renewing. Doubtful anyone will take it over in the current climate so the village loses its pub. How many more pubs will end up closing unless Boris comes to his senses?
TPTB will be delighted, especially if the pubs that are left continue to be banned from allowing people to meet, discuss, debate etc at the bar.
Thousands. Thousand have already closed anyway. Pubs are DEAD, it’s all by design. We cannot be allowed to freely associate.
Good for granny. 🙂
Whereabouts please, spingler ?