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Happy Boxing Day!
For the three days over Christmas – starting yesterday – we’re publishing a pared down version of Lockdown Sceptics so we can have a bit of time off over Christmas. Cartoonist Bob Moran has very kindly given us three original cartoons which we’re running on consecutive days and, below them, we’re including a round-up, as well as an And Finally…, but little else.
Happy Christmas to all our readers. Thanks for all your links, stories and suggestions, as well as your comments below the line and in the forums. Lockdown Sceptics is really a collaboration between our small team, the writers who contribute original material, and the readers who post comments or email us at lockdownsceptics@gmail.com. To date, we’ve had over 21,000 emails and we do our best to read them all.
Back in April, when I set up this blog, I imagined I’d be signing off about now. Turns out, that was a bit naive. God knows when this madness will end, but at least there are some comforts in this digital camaraderie. Readers often get in touch to say Lockdown Sceptics has kept them sane. The feeling’s mutual.
Trouble Down Lab
The Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab has been hit by an outbreak of coronavirus, according to Sky News.
Positive cases have been reported in three of the four scientific teams at the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Laboratory, as well as among administrative and warehouse staff at the site.
It is not known how many people have been affected by the outbreak, but around 20 people in one 70-person lab team are currently isolating, according to a worker at the laboratory who asked to remain anonymous.
The outbreak has placed considerable strain on the lab, which has been asked to process 70,000 tests a day in order to keep up with rising demand.
The source said that 47,000 were processed on Tuesday, adding: “No chance we’ll ever hit 70,000 a day the way we’re going.”
The lab worker also raised concerns about the safety of the lab, saying that rules put in place to keep staff safe were being broken in order to meet targets – a claim the Department of Health and Social Care denied.
Sky News understands the Lighthouse Lab is supposed to have a bubble system in place in order to keep staff separate, following a recommendation from the Health and Safety Executive, which visited the site recently.
Yet according to the source, the bubble system is not being respected with workers at the short-staffed lab being moved between groups, risking further cross-contamination.
The lab worker said there had also been mixing in the building’s lobbies and at the canteen.
Staff at the laboratory have been offered an unlimited number of tests and new staff are tested when they arrive.
The lab worker said that new recruits had been sitting in the canteen while they waited for their test results.
According to the lab worker, one new warehouse staff member received a positive test result after they had sat in the canteen during a period when a whole lab team had been in there for a break.
“The whole thing’s a joke,” they said.
Worth reading in full.
This outbreak won’t come as news to readers of Lockdown Sceptics. Last month we ran a piece by Lighthouse Lab whistleblower Dr Julian Harris flagging up health and safety breaches at the Milton Keynes facility.
Read that piece again here.
The Queen Lifts Our Spirits
No, she didn’t say that. In fact, this year’s Christmas message from the Queen was another triumph. Robert Hardman in today’s Daily Mail has more.
Even for the most experienced monarch in history, this was a tall order: how do you sum up the worst year in living memory without leaving the nation in floods of tears or reaching for the Off switch?
The only solution, therefore, was to accentuate the positives. And that is what the Queen did yesterday in an exceptionally upbeat Christmas message – one which also turned out to be the most multicultural of all time.
From beginning to end, here was a montage of warm-hearted or inspirational scenes, many of them illustrated by images from the Duchess of Cambridge’s Hold Still photography campaign. The only mournful moment consisted of the Queen herself paying homage at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
What began with the magnificent sight of the Band of the Household Cavalry playing the National Anthem on horseback outside St George’s Chapel concluded with the Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir belting out one of the jauntiest numbers in their Christmas repertoire: “Joy To The World”.
Running through it all was the theme of selflessness, of what the Queen called ‘the kindness of strangers’.
Worth reading in full.
And in case you missed it, you can watch it again here.
A Hospital Worker Writes…
A hospital employee has sent us an email that contains an interesting detail about the PPE he and his colleagues are expected to wear.
I work at one of the main hospitals in Oxford, and the vast majority of the people that I work with just blindly believe everything they hear from the media. It’s so frustrating and annoying.
I along with everyone else who works at the hospital continued to work right through the peak of the pandemic (no social distancing, no face masks) with not so much as a sniffle.
I do know a couple of people who died during that time, whose deaths were almost certainly because of Covid. However, as you and others have pointed out, the vast majority of people either don’t know that they’ve had it, or, if they did have it, they lived to tell the tale. A few of my close work colleagues did have the virus, and the were knocked for six because of it, but they’re now back at work.
Anyway, aside from writing to you to say: thank you for all your hard work, I wanted to let you know if you didn’t already, that all of the masks, gloves and gowns that we are using and have been using for most of the pandemic come from… China 🇨🇳
Just thought how crazy it is that the very country where the virus came from is where so many millions of pounds of tax payers money is going to pay for the PPE.
As one of my Northern colleagues (who is also a fellow no masker) said, “They’re really rubbing our faces in it. Literally.”
Round-up
- “A very Covid Christmas: Six million MORE people move into tough Tier 4 restrictions TODAY – bringing the total to 24million” – MailOnline reminds us of today’s bad news
- “Happy Christmas, the Brexit war is over!” – Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail on the good Brexit news
- “The music that makes Christmas” – Douglas Murray in UnHerd on why cancelled services, or services without carol signing, won’t take away the beauty of Christmas music
- “Why my church doors are staying open” – Giles Fraser says he won’t be closing his church this Christmas
- “CDC to Require Negative COVID-19 Test for Air Travellers from the United Kingdom to the U.S.” – The CDC has said travellers from the U.K. will need a certificate showing they’ve tested negative within 72 hours of departure. Without the documentary proof you won’t be allowed to board the plane
- “Covid kicked us all off the featherbed of civilisation” – William Boyd in the Times says we’ve gone through Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief in 2020, but in reverse
- “Reasons to be cheerful at the end of this bleakest year” – Gerard Baker is remarkably upbeat after the terrible year we’ve had
- “You’ve been spotted at Gran’s, go directly to jail” – Giles Coren and his family are so bored this Christmas they’ve created a Covid version of Monopoly
- “Professor Neil Ferguson: People don’t agree with lockdown and try to undermine the scientists” – Professor Lockdown continues his comeback tour with an interview in today’s Times
- “The economics of unused gift cards” – Interesting article in the Hustle about who benefits when Christmas gift cards go unredeemed
- “Spiked’s heroes of 2020” – Spiked‘s heroes include J.K. Rowling, Nick Cave and Lord Sumption
- “A beacon of light in the gloom” – Michael Fahey in the Conservative Woman looks at the few bright points in a dark year
- “17 Remedies for 2021” – Psychologist Dr Hugh Willbourn has 17 tips for how to convert lockdown believers to scepticism
- “The drug that gives ‘instant immunity’ to coronavirus?” – MailOnline reports on a new superdrug being trialled by the NHS
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Three today: “Sheep” by Pink Floyd, “Where’s the Revolution?” by Depeche Mode and “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” by the Beastie Boys.
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.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Alternatively, you could just promote the site in the way this enterprising reader has done: a decal in his front window.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, it’s the turn of June Sarpong, the BBC’s Director of Creative Diversity, who is interviewed in the Telegraph.
From humble beginnings, and via a career as a TV presenter, Sarpong, 43, has earned a place on the BBC executive board and the power to ring-fence £100 million of licence fee money for “diverse and inclusive content”.
When she was appointed in October 2019, diversity was a buzzword. A year later, it’s at the centre of the culture wars. Ms Sarpong has just released her third book, The Power of Privilege: How White People Can Challenge Racism.
White privilege is a hot button issue recently, and the women and equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, claimed it was a “dangerous trend” in race relations and said any school that teaches it as fact is breaking the law.
But Ms Sarpong is in no doubt that white privilege is a fact of life. “There is unfairness baked into our system,” she says, and while the “elite white male” is at the top of the tree, even the white working class has an advantage over people from black and Asian backgrounds.
To be fair to Sarpong, she says she supported the BBC’s reverse ferret on not singing “Rule Britannia” at this year’s Proms and claims not to know what the word “woke” means, which is quite endearing.
But there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a bit galling to be lectured on “privilege” by an ex-children’s television presenter who now earns £75,000 a year for working three days a week.
“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 masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here. Alas, he’s now reached the end of the road, with the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his appeal. Dolan has no regrets. “We forced SAGE to produce its minutes, got the Government to concede it had not lawfully shut schools, and lit the fire on scrutinizing data and information,” he says. “We also believe our findings and evidence, while not considered properly by the judges, will be of use in the inevitable public inquires which will follow and will help history judge the PM, Matt Hancock and their advisers in the light that they deserve.”
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review in December and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
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.
Quotation Corner
We know they are lying. They know they are lying, They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Joseph Goebbels (attributed)
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
You may have seen this already, but if not you’re in for a treat. Translator Peter Prowse created a very funny skit about more and more consonants being banned as the tiers ratcheted up, and in this version two American listeners have recorded their reactions. Top satire from Prowse.
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Morning all, I think I’m still in tier2land, able to go out and about but unable to cross the border.
Morning. Happy st. Stephen’s day!
Made it to midnight mass yesterday. I could count the masked on my fingers. Of one hand. A lot of exemptions at our church! 🙂 I even managed to get in a bit of carol singing (not so) sotto voce.
Sadly, looking at the comments, it seems there weren’t many churches like that. Hoping to have a carols gettogether with some people from church some time during the Christmas season, all being well. In some ways, I’m relatively lucky, with a church that is very much on our side, and only minimally affected by this nonsense at work. I feel so angry about those who have lost everything though due to these crimes against humanity, and not least those in care homes with no family, who have been deprived contact with the outside world for months.
One post said that by far the biggest number of deaths was among the poorest in care homes. Eugenics anyone?
From what I’ve heard, the politicians struggle to understand their own rules. Why should we be expected to follow them, especially when it is a minority of mp’s who vote for this stuff (if they vote at all)?
Sounds like a wonderful evening. In my early childhood I attended a magnificent spired medieval church that we stole from the Catholics.
All stained glass windows, marble tombs of the local Gentry, oodles of brass fitting, Regimental flags, a proper choir, bits of Latin with genuflecting and a civil war canon ball lodged in the main door. I would have made the effort to go to midnight mass there just for the spectacle even if not actually believing.
I lost my faith when we moved to London and had to go to a 19C suburban CofE place with nothing to look at exempt the Psalm numbers. Boring.
Beauty in churches – and in life – is so important. I hate to think of the effect that the indefinite suspension of so much of our cultural life is having on people.
I was just looking at my ticket for a play I went to earlier this year before lockdown at our local theatre, a splendid evening’s entertainment thoroughly enjoyed by the audience. Been closed since March, and find myself wondering when I’ll be able to go there again (and under what conditions). Thinking about it, it must surely qualify as a catastrophic loss, what we have been denied this year, and I fear many sectors will never recover.
Our church used to be beautiful. Merely to go in there lifted the heart and nourished the soul. Seven hundred years of hope and faith were written into its windows and walls and furnishings. Prayer and music added, day by day and week by week, to the continuity of faith, hope and charity.
Now it’s the Tenby Temple of St Grovel in the Coward Covid Cult of Living Death. Stripped if its accoutrements, festooned with hideous yellow police tape, even the font cordoned off as a token that the future of the Christian faith in our town has been deleted. Frequented by quavering goons who cringe away from their fellow sacks of viral poison and mumble into their face knickers, words they don’t mean about a saviour in whose promises they do not believe.
If your church is still Christian, pray for those of us whom Covid cowardice has cast out.
Will do. Fearlessness is a big thing at our church but sadly Bob’s cartoon was more accurate and the angel might as well have said “be afraid” rather than “do not be afraid” (mentioned 365 times in the bible), judging by the actions of some churches.
Many times this year I thought about how there was a huge opportunity for the CoE to spread the message of Be not Afraid, and it totally bottled it.
I haven’t counted, but ‘Fear not’ is one of Jesus’ most repeated sayings. Fear breeds masking ‘defences’ that then DO the think and thing they say they are against – and deliver the mind of fear unto, even as they know not what they do.
Love shines its true nature through our willingness to accept no substitutes. For the masking in virtue must cover the sense of lack that fear insinuates by division.
Seven hundred years of hope and faith were written into its windows and walls and furnishings
Yes, but that doesn’t change because of what they’ve done. They can’t erase Truth. They can try, but eventually Truth will reassert itself. And I firmly believe that Truth emerges from the Individual, not from the Group.
As I’ve written on here before, I’m not one for revealed religion. To my mind an old church is consecrated not by ritual but by the innumerable souls who’ve sat there back through the centuries and talked with themselves as they’ve dealt with hopes and fears much like our own. That’s why I like only small, very old churches in the middle of nowhere, with no one else in them.
You mentioned yesterday late that you’ve been in academia Annie – do you mind me asking what branch?
PS – I’m posting under a new name – until I can get my old one back
I was a Cambridge research and teaching fellow for a short time, in mod. and medieval languages. Believe me, I know all about academic spite.
Thanks – I guessed it was something like that from your previous posts. I’ve long thought that the best history books are not by academics and not by journalists, but by laymen writers, for want of a better term.
I have history I want to get published, but do not want to get involved in academia, and yet it is going to be very hard to do so without involving academia.
Hi Annie – while you were at Cambridge in the Languages dept., did you know Dr Oliver Padel, the Cornish place-name historian?
I suppose at Churchill its a question of Spite Lives Matter.
Another thing about academics is how in all other walks of life, whether it be the courts, armed forces, Parliament
or whatever, they want to impose modernity, abandon ancient costumes, discard Latin nomenclature and generally have nothing to do with the past except to condemn it. If you’ve ever been to s graduation ceremony with its fancy gowns and hats, Latin tags for this and that and traditions stretching back nearly 1000 years, you’ll know academics are the biggest hypocrites around!
Yes. Truth is never threatened – but our awareness and willing alignment in truth can be temporarily covered over. Wholeness (of being) extends as the willingness of our receiving and so is always a relational expansion. The modern idea of the Field given tangible or visible expression by particular relational resonance points to an all pervading quality that gives rise to the appearance of an object model of an imaged rendering of an Infinite Universe. What the masked off sense of separating fear discards is Everything. But of course Everything is only cast out of the mind of guilt’s conviction that fear is true and truth is made victim or sacrifice to the strut of illusion made ‘real’. Self-illusion recognised as such is an imagination without substance – for it joins us not with all that Is. But self-illusion protected and given priority over truth is wanting illusion to be real, and so choosing to deny what is First, from which all else follows in like kind. At some point attack on truth is recognised as self-betrayal. Persisting illusion past such an honesty of being sets the sin of a spiritual death to a world of blind fears set in… Read more »
Faith, hope and charity has been replaced with fear, hate and calumny.
There was An Archbishop on R4 Xmas Eve morning being pressed to apologise for closing all the churches. Despite trying to hide behind what he claims was the law he did concede that more access could have been permitted.
He did not apologise.
I am afraid our institutions have really let us down. The law, government and the church have all failed miserably. I suppose it’s because they have no fear of revolt. People just blithely put on bits of cloth around their face and comply. The right to religious assembly is actually written into the American constitution and they still shut the churches down. And most of them are baring arms. Police go and crash a baptism and close it down, doesn’t even make front page news. No fear!
If we had such a thing, yours would surely qualify as Featured Comment. Brilliantly, eloquently put.
The deceit appeals to false sympathies as the call to self-denying sacrifice. Sacrificing for others is operating as false religion.
A true giving does not measure as ‘virtue’ gained – but gives as virtues selfless extension.
The holiness is the consecration.
What is given to God and received in like kind is not IN the world.
The clearing out of the Temple is of all that has no true belonging or alignment with a true devotion.
So may love of God (love of Love) wake in the heart that masked in fig leaves and thorns.
‘And WHO told you you were naked?’ said the Lord.
As far as I’m concerned, if it hasn’t been debated in Parliament and enacted through being passed through both chambers and sent for Royal Assent, then it isn’t law. So I ignore it.
Is The Queen capable of giving Informed Assent given all the phoney science and propaganda flying about?
In addition, I believe in the inalienable right of resistance to tyranny. That applies even to law that is formally valid. Indeed, no liberation struggle has ever succeeded, as far as I know, without breaking the law as it then stood.
Sounds like your church was a lot better than mine, Hugh. I made my way there after I’d met with a few friends for an illicit beer in a shed. Natty chairs, a single dim strip light and a door turned on its side and propped up on some boxes for a table – good stuff.
Anyway, at church I was the only parishioner relying on God for deliverance from harm, rather than a moist rag. I rather get the impression the church was glad for the ludicrous distancing regime as it helped give the impression that the congregation wasn’t dwindling almost to nil. Hardly surprising given the quality of the service you get now. No singing, no jubilation, no neighbourly love, just thank the NHS and please leave your God outside the building…
From the roundup ’17 remedies for 2021′
Recommended reading for those who feel they are wasting their time talking facts and figure to lockdown believers among friends and family.
The Aldous Huxley quote deserves to be in Toby’s quotation corner.
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all powerful executive of political bosses and their army of business managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned . . .”
Joseph Goebbels said something very similar.
In the end, it’s hearts and minds that win people over, more than facts and figures. The trouble is, they think that we don’t care, that we are being selfish, putting people’s lives at risk etc., sadly not helped by a supine msm which has largely gone along with project fear (probably for financial reasons). I suspect there is also a political element to all this. The November edition of the critic ran interesting article on the matter (Welcome to Covidworld).by academic philosophers Ian James Kidd and Matthew Ratcliffe.They say how there are reasoning biases, that certain facts are not up for debate, how people place their flag in different worlds of reality, and end by talking about a “widespread decontextualisation that attends Covid-19”. Of course because of the aforementioned politics, figures and facts may be dismissed without a second thought for political reasons. To a degree, I can understand the fear factor – as an angry young biker I used to yearn for a world without cars because my daily reality was bad drivers making my life unpleasant. Only when it became more unpleasant not to have a car was I forced to reconsider. I still hold out hope… Read more »
I fear that Huxley and Goebbals were right, and that many of our population have learned to love lockdown… being paid by the government to stay home watching TV and ordering fast food. Wasn’t there something in an old 60s film about “learning to stop worrying and love the bomb”?
Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’. Peter Sellers starring in three separate roles.
“Department of health denies pcr-test center lab rules being broken”
Are they by any chance anything to do with the people who recently denied that vitamin D was not proven to boost immunity from viruses?
Pontius Pilate is quoted as asking “truth – what is that?” It seems like all these years on, some people still don’t know.
Oh, and professor Pantsdown – please, just do one! Do you have any idea how many deaths you and your mates in Big Pharma are responsible for?
If the rules weren’t broken, and the lurgy still spread, what use are the effin’ rules?
A Daily Mail comment sums up the idiocy of the lockdown goons:
‘The lamb spends its entire life in mortal fear of the wolf, but in the end it is slaughtered by the shepherd.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9088217/British-scientists-trial-new-Covid-antibody-therapy-patients-INSTANT-immunity.html
People often have a poor grasp of risk. Also the media hysteria has led to people think Covid has killed far more people than it actually has.
I also love the fact they have to trot out the number of deaths today and cumulatively and CASES. What a cure is not strong enough to sway your argument. There is nothing like good journalism and this is nothing like good journalism.
That profile of Ferguson in The Times this morning finally provides the clue for the clueless professor’s modelling endeavours.
Turns out he’s proud of not having had any education in biology, not even O-level biology.
Well, of course one can regard the world as being best described by maths and models. However, even someone with only O-level biology would know that the real, biological world doesn’t behave like a maths model.
But at least now we know why Ferguson’s mathematical models have never modelled the actual reality on the dirty, messy ground that is life. They/he cannot.
As for virologists: well, that dirty messy thing we call life doesn’t take place in a lab either.
And there was me thinking epidemiologists (I think that’s how he’s been described,amongst other things) were medically qualified statisticians or similar.
That may explain why I,with my nearly 50 year old O level Biology felt instinctively that it was not reading right what we were told after the first few weeks when I wasn’t seeing people collapsing in the strret and feeling I was transported back in time to the real plague times.
Why do they continue to give this man air?
In the private sector he would be tagged as a loser and unemployable given his track record.
Imperial College is lavishly funded by Bill Gates and you can bet old Bill isn’t complaining about Ferguson.
The ologists are taking over.
The idiot half child Mandy Cock came up with the mutant virus bull
As a result 5,000 foreign truck drivers are detained without trial in the South East. They have little food or water and are extremely angry
I am told the British police are too scared to approach them and foreign troops are on the ground to placate the drivers
I’m told these drivers are vowing to never return to the UK
Truck drivers on the continent are refusing to come to the UK
Food shortages are inevitable
It has been worrying me in case truck drivers try and do their own little individual boycotts of going to and from between Britain and the Continent after the way they are currently being treated at Dover. Fingers crossed that it will be the usual “sound and fury” of a moment that I’m so used to hearing from people and then 99% of them back down (because they were only mouthing off) and proceed to carry on as per normal.
BBC online reports 5,000 lorries, 10,000 tests (?) of which 24 positive+, they don’t say scary mutant so presumably standard Covid.
How many drivers out of 5k might normally have flu in the middle of winter ?
In other words.. 10,000 lorries. They can’t keep their lies together.
Even at 5000, 24 positives.. most of which I am sure are asymptomatic.. and still the penny doesn’t drop with most people.
Many do not seem to have any grasp of arithmetic.
Guys… the false positive rate for the LFT test is 0.4%. So ALL these 24 positives are possibly false positives.
The British police have other priorities, like arresting carol singers.
there were massed police in riot gear trying to confront the lorry drivers when it started and some scuffles.. However when the police realised the Romanian and other foreign drivers were a different kettle of fish to lone women at a peaceful lockdown rally they shat themselves and made a hasty retreat ….
There have been sporadic riots in parts of Europe, sometimes triggered by something particularly egregious committed by the authorities. For example a couple of weeks ago an Albanian policeman shot dead a youth in Tirana moving around at night despite lockdown curfew, and riots then damaged several government buildings. The government arrested the policeman to placate the rioters.
And your chicken shit roadblock is not much cop at stopping a 10,000 big ass hgvs. Big bear this is rubber duck and we’re about to put the hammer down!!!!
Sacrilegious!
Yes, there’s bounty payable on every song sheet confiscated.
Looks like deliberate sabotage. Brought to you by Merkel, Macron, Boris & Co.
Our daughter and her partner managed to break out of Gulag Cardiff and come to us for Christmas day but they had to avoid drinking and set off to return in good time so that their car did not turn into a pumpkin halfway across the Severn Bridge! utter madness.
But anyway my daughter was saying that she had picked up that there were a number of people in Welsh hospitals who had had covid and recovered but were being kept in hospital as they kept testing +ve despite getting over the illness some time ago. I am guessing that these may well be older people who would need some assistance to be discharged. Indeed across the country I understand that hospitals are having difficulty discharging elderly recovered covid patients as they need assistance and support to be discharged and this is hard to do at this time, the old NHS problem of bed blocking.
This is of course all anecdotal but it would be interesting to know just how much of the problem of the NHS being overwhelmed is down to ‘bed blockers’?
very true
I posted yesterday about a woman whose mother had contracted Covid in hospital, recovered, given a release date but subsequently tested positive+ again and is isolated in hospital over Xmas despite her daughter being able to care for her at home.
I don’t know if anyone on here has heard of The Bournewood Judgement which effectively became the basis for the Mental Capacity Act. A quickish summary is that J, someone with Learning Disabilities lived in an Adult Placement -i.e.with a family (a bit like foster care). They were the main carers. When they went away on holiday or for weekends or whatever, a couple who were long-standing friends were assessed by the Local Authority and approved as being the stand-in carers. This arrangement worked well for some years. Until J, being cared for by the stand-in carers, had a significant seizure incident and had to be admitted to hospital. He recovered within a day or two and should have been discharged. However, the NHS Hospital Trust refused to allow him to be discharged to the stand-in carer’s so he remained in hospital becoming very upset and agitated because he was clearly showing he wanted to go home. The main carers returned from their break and immediately sought legal advice. The Court found that the NHS had illegally deprived J of his Liberties and caused him major distress. Now it seems to me that the use of the Mental Capacity Act,… Read more »
I have often heard that the lack of social and community care means that elderly people stay in hospital as they have nowhere else to go.
I think whenever governments go on election-winning NHS spending sprees, they usually spend the money inefficiently and it doesn’t necessarily expand capacity.
Oh so true James007. I’ll give you some bona fide examples. in 1990 the NHS and Community Care Act was introduced. It identified the responsibilities of the NHS and of Social Care. The NHS was responsible for funding Continuing Health Care cases, Rehabilitation assessment and recovery services (in dedicated centres where the recovering patient would stay and have OT, Physio and other rehabilitative services), for community Physios and OTs to ensure people could have their rehab at home if they chose to and other NHS services and to fund the Community Equipment Stores with more equipment and newer more modern equipment. They got a huge amount of extra money for this. What actually happened was that the NHS failed to fund rehabilitation services for Older People making every excuse under the sun, the same with Continuing Healthcare funding. They axed to virtually nothing the community OT and Physio services and unashamedly used millions and millions of pounds of public money on themselves. So, Social Services were left to fund rehabilitation beds, introduce OTs into their Adult Service Teams and fund a lot of CHC care cases without a penny more money and suffering the cuts on LA’s imposed by David… Read more »
Why are these silver tops and their kids not demanding a second test done with a LFT? mind you if it was me and it was my mum I would have just gone and got her out. It’s not exactly the scrubs is it?
Oh, and anyone who can, please do something for new year.
What a disgrace putting Scotland, of all places into lockdown for Hogmanay. I wonder how they’ll take that?
Lying down, the poor wee scottie poltroons.
Speaking to a Scottish friend don’t think the Scots will take a blind bit of notice of what our Nicola says. So many Scottish people against her but the media narrative would have us believe otherwise.
Suppinely worshipping St Nicola chanting the mantra “Thank you for keeping us safe” sadly .
Some good news for those whose relatives are being tortured in ‘care’ homes:
https://johnscampaign.org.uk/post/jcs-how-to-guide-on-care-home-visits-after-19-december-2020?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Update25152078onGovernmentGuidanceHasFailedCareHomeResidentsAndTheirFamiliesDecember252020&utm_medium=email
I still haven’t seen my mother, who has dementia, since she went into a care home 6weeks ago. My first “window visit” last week was cancelled as a couple of residents have tested positive, though neither have any symptoms. The home is closed for a month, until January. Even so, visits can only happen during a couple of hours on some weekdays, so working family members are pretty much excluded unless they can get time off.
So she has been through this major change with no support, and no understanding of why family people she saw daily are no longer around.
We are having to sell her house to pay for her care and it feels as if she is dead, yet she isn’t – she has been removed and detained, isolated from her family, and we have no way of ascertaining if she’s Ok beyond a weekly phone call in which they tell us what she’s had for breakfast.
Another early start. When you wake up and hear the latest round of garbage on the news, you can’t get back to sleep. Spent most of yesterday in extreme annoyance at the waste of a year. Spoke to my 96 year old father – sharp as a nail – he gets it completely, understands reality better than people half his age. Why aren’t the young out there, having fun – what a pathetic excuse for Christmas it was yesterday. Hopefully people realised we’re being taken for a ride by a PM who’s not up to the job. All those life years lost to cancer, heart disease, depression, suicide. All those young people (and the older and even the very old like my Dad) wasting 9 months of 2020 and God knows how much of next year. The old (not my Dad) are waiting for the vaccine. That reduces their chance of dying by around 1 in 15, even for the over 85s – how stupid of them – they’ve given away a year voluntarily, virtually all of them won’t have another 14. It’s pathetic that people comply, and it’s the height of negligence, negligence so bad it’s evil, that the… Read more »
I’m now pleased my mum and her siblings and their partners all passed away peacefully before having to endure this stress in their twilight years.
I share your sentiments, but I’m slightly less ‘lucky’. My 96 year old mum died in July after 4 weeks in a care home. Heart attack caused by the stress and anxiety of being locked up. I’m now glad that she did not live longer as she would have been so upset by now. As would we be, knowing the lack of meaningful visiting etc at care homes.
Well said. I’ve been amazed at how supine many people have been especially those small business owners who having built their businesses over the years with blood, sweat and tears have keeled over without much of a fight.
As for the young they’re fighting the wrong fight – quick to jump on tiresome American imports that have nothing to do with the UK but have been silent and yes cheerleading on the erosion of our civil liberties.
If and when they do wake up they will realise that it will be too late. Way too late.
No leadership. When I was a kid my views were guided by Boland, Bowie, Freddy. My newspaper challenged me and made me look at both sides of the argument. I would watch TV and see the issues debated by both sides with world class presenters challenging their bullshit. I saw Sid and John swear their tits off on TV and it was the presenter that got sacked. There was music in the streets and revolution in the air! Now they blindly follow censored social media.
He’s certainly beneath contempt.
Where does the vaccine death reduction figure of 1 in15 for the over 85s come from? It obviously suspect and it cannot have a reliable source.
There have been just under 6% ‘excess’ deaths on an age adjusted basis in 2020 per the Institute and Faculty of actuaries, so around 36,000.
Assuming all these are COVID (which is a ridiculously high level as there were well over 1 million fewer emergency procedures on the NHS this year):
There were 230,434 deaths aged 85+ this year in England and Wales (to week 50 per ONS) of which 30,807 were COVID-related. But the number of COVID related deaths is over twice the excess deaths.
So taking 30,807/2/230,434 gives 1 in 14.96 deaths in this age group caused by covid. If all of these were prevented by the vaccine (again, a very bullish assumption) then you get to the 1 in 15 figure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-d6IJzZSjg
China And The Great Reset: What You Need To Know
https://www.weforum.org/partners/#search
So how many of these morons are being manipulated by green lobbies and China?
MSM full of Brexit brave new dawns, blast off Britain,full throttle Britain,boomtime Britain bulls××t.
At the age of 72, I’ve heard it all before.
All everybody wants is their freedom back.
That’s all WE want. The zombies want perpetual slavery.
Having persuaded one of the Covid believers to stick to their arrangement to come round here for a meal today – I am fully expecting an anxious look to cross her face when she spots the latest book I’ve had through/am about to read is “Combating cult mind control” – Steven Hassan. Or will she not even realise that the cult I’m thinking of is the “Cult of Covid” beneath which we should all genuflect (apparently!)? It took me a lot of doing to persuade her into keeping our arrangement (this being Wales and Dripford having said we’re not allowed anything on Boxing Day). I really had to hammer home the logic that a few hours difference between Christmas Day and Boxing Day (during which neither of us are expecting to see anyone) makes no difference at all and that, if she was going to let anyone down, she should have let down the Christmas Day friend she went for a meal with (who has a husband), rather than the single friend (me – no husband) and anyway I’d bought the food already. Felt like I’d had to guilt trip her into still coming round – so that I do… Read more »
Good for you – and you’ve made her think. Hopefully the start of better things to come. Have an enjoyable day.
Do we want our illusions back?
IE: Consider that a corrupted zombie economy was kept up as a quantitative illusion but is now under controlled demolition under quantitative lubrications and UBI preparation.
If the corruptions are deep seated and sytemic – and rendered as an unconscious bias or invisible normal, then the consequence is only masked by the narrative.
IE: we are meeting consequences that cannot be altogether evaded but can be repackaged like toxic debt, into complex financial, social and psychic-emotional packages by the Ingenuity of the mind’s ability to cling on to a sense of false possession and coercive control – as for its very life.
YEH BUT IT WAS WORTH IT, EH JUDE?
F××KING GREAT, NOW FOR THE THE YEAR!!!
Best medicine!
There were a few reports yesterday of log in difficulties.
16 real live people in an actual place ? Splendid ! Time is an absolute guarantee for hangover recovery.
I confined my solitary attack on Laphraoigh to light manoeuvres only as I need to be out and about today.
I did learn that the traditional old fashioned Coaching Inn at the heart of the city was open for Chistmas lunch and was fully booked at £50.00 a head. Not my kind of thing but each to their own.
So! We have a story of “antibody therapy” above. Well if this doesn’t frighten you I don’t know what will. The article doesn’t state much information about it but claims to make people who haven’t had the vaccine immune “immediately” for between 6-12 months. How can that be? After all the vaccine is said only to give two months immunity and that isn’t proven either. Nor does either treatment stop the new super duper scary variant. SO WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT? This is obviously a seasonal virus at worst and at best a virus on its way out and that’s being dragged on by stupid (although planned) lockdowns and all that go with it. What has been shown. As many as 30% of the UK had some sort of immunity to this in early 2020. The virus spreads on the wind, rendering breathing as the main cause of catching it, so ZERO point in lockdowns etc. Meaning most of us are most likely immune. Viruses mutate… ITS A GOOD THING! Now it spreads easier (allegedly) which means more should become immune quicker. It is not been shown to be more deadly. A few more mutations (which would happen quicker… Read more »
When you hear reports of these vaccines being peddled around the world, presumably making shedloads of money for the drug companies , it is hard not to at least consider that there is more going on here than meets the eye.
My working life was spent with the agricultural and horticultural industries and you do not have to look hard to see how the big chemical companies manipulated things so that agriculture and horticulture became completely dependent on chemical assistance. It is as if we are now being programmed to get to the stage where we feel that human existence is only possible with chemical assistance.
Well they have been saying this to us for years and so I will now throw it back in their faces;
*************SAY NO TO DRUGS***********************
Saw a report about how Indias small farmers (majority of the population) are being bought/bullied out of their small farms so the land can be prarified and covered in chemicals.
It’s already been done in Cambridgeshire but an earlier version caused the 1930s American dust bowl.
As a child in Cambridgeshire I remember the ‘fen blow’: huge clouds of desiccated peat dust being blown off the fields, along with the seed that bad been sown in it. The sky turned black, and dust drifts blocked the roads.
And peat fires in the fields, with firemen sinking up to their waists in smouldering peat.
End of the fertile black fens.
Then in winter, huge floods because the water meadows had been ploughed up.
And the whole county drenched in agricultural poison.
That’s why the much-touted “plant-based diet” will destroy the planet.
Yes indeed. Many food plants are in any event inherently toxic and in the modern world they are heavily sprayed with an assortment of man-made poisons. Yummy.
Just look at the Holme post at the Great Fen site:-
https://www.greatfen.org.uk/about-great-fen/heritage/holme-fen-posts
As the peat has almost gone this is one eco thing I definitely approve of.
Also I well remember the Fen blows and stubble burning.
You can tell the peat has gone when the trees at the bottom appear (or bog oaks as they are known)
Seeds of Destruction by F William Engdahl
The pig dictator wants the people locked up in tier 4 not to protect the people from a virus but to protect the pig dictator from the people
Ditto the Dungford.
The original Stalin died in his bed. Wales’s shabby imitation may not be so lucky.
yes – a Mussolini or Ceausescu solution would be far better. and more theatrical
And a much better example “pour encourager les autres”.
The original Stalin died on the floor in a pool of his own piss.
Comrade Beria ensuring the second rate doctors who had survived purges had no access until he was properly dead.
Ah, Beria. Now reincarnate as Gething.
Wasn’t Beria shot, afterwards? No bloody gratitude, these Commies.
The others ganged up on Beria believing he might be even worse than Stalin.
This is how gangster dictators meet their ends.
See the film “Death of Stalin”, brilliant.
Available on BBC I player at the moment. Watched it last night.
Yes. Beria played by Simon Russell Beale brilliantly. Captured the ‘benevolent malice’ beautifully.
I’m waiting for the “Death of Johnson”.
Oh and whilst we are talking about Dripford – Internet rumour today is he has left his wife – for another man. Is this fact or hope of something/anything (ie besides the son he has got and what he got up to)?
He probably wants to know what it feels like to have done to him what he has been doing to the poor Welsh for the past six months.
Well we are still here after Christmas Day, here spent alone, first time for many years. A Zoom service with our church in the morning, splendid Christmas lunch of spatchcock and trimmings. After lunch a family Zoom gathering which may have been the low light – they started discussing the covid themed presents they had received (really!) then the after party quiz, cracker jokes which hadn’t come out of crackers. I felt somewhat out of it, but hey ho it is only Christmas. Slightly late walk in the woods, loads of people out there working off their lunch and quite a few Happy Christmases exchanged, normal people doing normal things.
Still no explanation for the daily 30k plus positive test results per day and the media have now gone remarkably quiet on the MK breakout. Off to Tesco later, hoping they have some fruit and veg.
Tesco had loads of fruit and veg along with everything else – apart from bakery bread as that was closed so had to have the artificial stuff. Quite quiet as well but looks as if lots got new masks for Christmas, yuk…
On another matter, let’s have a look at the US – I’ve spent some time analysing their COVID death figures. The laughably tell us 338, 263 people have died of COVID so far this year. Now the CDC, which I thought was a reputable organisation, claims “Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (66%) excess deaths attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino persons.” Well, firstly, I’ve looked at the numbers and make the total excess deaths for that period around 252,000. What explains the difference ? Around 50,000 ‘excess’ deaths are the result of the population growing and ageing. There were 22,574,000 people over 75 in the US as at 2019 (more now) compared to 20,166,000 in 2015, an increase of 11.9%. Surely the CDC must have taken that into account. Well, I quote directly from their website: “Fourth, using the average numbers of deaths from past years might underestimate the total expected numbers because of population growth or aging, or because of increasing trends in certain causes such as drug overdose mortality.” In other words, they’ve ignored… Read more »
Must be a different strain if it kills young adults disproportionately🤫
“The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years…. ”
We need to be careful about how we interpretate such claims. I have no idea what the figures are, but suppose deaths increased from 0.01 to 0.02% of the population in that category. That means they doubled but still a low and insignificant number of people.
That is ON PURPOSE. Everyone is reading off of the same playbook: Terrify the populace, destroy small businesses, wreck the economy, bankrupt massive amounts of people, bring in the NWO’s Great Reset. And if they kill a few thousand people along with it, even better.
It’s disgusting.
Drink plenty of water and don’t bang the door!
so glad that parody of a christmas is over. I hate christmas anyway but yesterday was a day to stay in bed.
anyway. today’s editorial refers to the “Queen’s” speech. Obviously not her’s. Be interesting to know who actually wrote it as it was straight from the government propaganda playbook. And i am still wretching when i think of the “NHS” choir.
If you do watch this, also watch the “Alternative Queen’s Speech” on C4 Far more reflective of what the Queen probably wanted to say .. and not the usual C4 woke stuff.
Also, when you have seen it make a note in your diary to watch another C4 programme on Monday
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/deep-fakes-can-you-trust-your-eyes
which will make you think next time you watch a government video
Agree 1000%. Just heard a few sentences and thought blatantly obvious it was not written by HM she has more style.
It was blatantly obvious. Did Charlie write it.
Edit not working
I’ve just edited a message so it is working (unlike a week ago when edit went down for all) . you need to be logged in to edit . However i understood that over the last couple of days functionality changed so you have to be logged in to post. In which case it is a puzzle but seems to be your end
Can’t see it as I don’t want their app, just for balance I never watch government videos because they are bound to be lies.
The Queen is a leech, like her whole line, both backwards and forwards.
https://rm.coe.int/090000168071e407
”Overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly over-rated by WHO”
This was the swine-flu pandemic. We never seem to learn from our mistakes.
They learned that they don’t have to stop just because they’ve been caught out lying.
Enough people will still believe them do they carry on regardless.
Also see Solzhenitsyn quote #1
Was the same modelling too if memory serves?
BBC R4 giving over 8-9am to Lewis Hamilton sharing his Crimbo musings so it’s off to the community radio station for me.
Listening to Boris’s Brexit deal press conference, he talks about tough measures now so that the virus can be defeated by the spring “At least that’s what the scientists are telling us and they seem confident in that “
Are we being prepared for numbers of positive tests going down rapidly in January because they will be using the LFTs instead of PCR? Et voila, lockdowns worked!
I think they will try to do that and then declare at least temporary victory. I don’t think they can keep this going forever. Even the British might rebel.
Toyah Wilcox’s vague hint about something happening in mid-January might have been the result of a tip-off. Anyway we will see.
If Toyah W is tipping off then whatever it is will presumably be known to the spooks unless they’re just as incompetent as the rest of government.
But I live in hope thaty there will be more widespread protest and not just a simmering resentment.
As the american comedian Rich Hall said:”When the British get really angry..they write a letter”.
They can’t keep it going because they can’t afford the same money next financial year. No more goodies. Cash gone.
They’ll just print more.
40% of all US dollars in circulation printed this year!
Interesting this came from Toyah. I remember 20 years ago her husband wrote on his online diary that she was so ill with flu he had a doctor do a home visit. The doctor told him that the flu that year was so deadly he had to make decisions on which patients to save. Armed with this knowledge I remember the occasional story at the same time of temporary morgues-a story referenced several times here.
How long have you been following the science bozo ? Hasn’t worked so far has it you Sausage Roll.
Johnson is not an innocent bumbling victim of naughty scientists, though he is obviously preparing that defence.
Yes he is going to stab a whole raft of people in the back in 2021
If only they had told me he will say
‘I’m just as angry as you are,’ he will say.
funny how the French were happy to lift the border closure on result of a negative LFT. If they were that concerned why not insist on PCR?
The “instant cure” with antibodies may explain the strange adverts that have been on the radio for the past few months, asking for males who have had CoViD19 to donate plasma as it could save lives. Why only males? Could the antibodies be rejected by the recipient?
DJT’s will go for premium prices.
The antibodies being tested were isolated from recovered patients. The cells are then cloned and produced in a bioreactor. They won’t be rejected by the recipient. Unlike the vaccine response and infection response, these are single clones. It is possible that a virus strain may mutate some the antibody does not bind. That is the case for one of the two antibody cocktails from Regeneron abs possibly this one too.
On the way to the operating theatre in Christmas Eve, I remarked to the Porter how quiet the hospital was “about normal” he replied, so catching up on the waiting list? “No, theatres are closed till Tuesday after you” many COVIDs in? “about10” (out of 500 beds)
So, as ever, if you really want to know what’s going on, ask someone who really knows!
Hope your op went smoothly and wish you all the best for recuperation.
Which hospital please? It is important that we have the full facts – as far as we can get at them.
I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea but had a fantastic Christmas
Exactly the same as last year, except the village pub was not open
However hundreds of the villagers gathered outside the pub at lunchtime with their bottles, cans and glasses. Hugs, handshakes and kisses. Huge smiles on everyone’s faces
Not a mask in sight
People driving or walking by waved, clapped, or tooted their horns
Then lunch with the OH, children and grandchildren
No Stasi around
Excellent Cecil, middle England at its finest.
Will the pub survive to be open next Xmas? Loads won’t.
Options
1 Follow the rules go bankrupt
2 Open, make some money to hide away. Don’t pay the fines or the rates, bills, etc. Go bankrupt. Disappear with the loot
Cheers, Cecil! Hope you drank confusion to Dungford and his Supreme Coviet.
I see they’re using lateral-flow tests for the poor sod lorry drivers to try to clear the Macronic backlog quickly.
The government’s got form in this area. They use CPI for whenever the Treasury is handing out rate increases to the plebs, but the higher RPI when upping their own pensions and payments.
So – if you want speed in reducing a Covid problem, you use lateral flow, but if you want numbers to justify the scam, you use the PCR.
And nobody need ever notice.
How to explain the widespread, often mulish, obeisance to idiocy: lockdowns, militant maskism etc? Neo McCarthyism? 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition. (The American Heritage Dictionary) Militant lockdown has many similar characteristics: accusations of disloyalty replaced by accusations of ‘killing grandma’, similarly scant regard for evidence, suppression of online opposition; so, strikingly similar in many respects The Washington Post agrees: ‘Today’s “cancel culture” is nothing more than McCarthyism in a woke costume.’ And the best argument, the clincher, against militant lockdown is that used against McCarthy: ‘The Army-McCarthy hearings….Army counsel Joseph Welch demanding to know: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” But McCarthyism lives on: ‘As recently as 2003, conservative provocateur Ann Coulter (an on-again, off-again Trump ally) published the book ‘Treason’, arguing that McCarthy was right and his critics were not only wrong but, as the title suggests, traitorous.’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/joseph-mccarthy-movement-trumpism/2020/12/04/d6e807ee-3460-11eb-b59c-adb7153d10c2_story.html So this total weird out will, in one sense, never go away, because it is, in fact, like McCarthyism, a symptom of something if possible even more sinister:… Read more »
There was some discussion on McCarthyism here yesterday and I later came across this on my YouTube feed.
Seems McCarthyism was a replay of what happened after WW1.
(The museum and YouTube channel is American).
Yesterday a German billionaire announced ‘You are not alone’
Really? When were you last round here helping out then?
£350 million, 372= on Times Rich List 2020.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-rich-list-the-queen-net-worth-jbg329flv
Calling her German is a bit ‘one-drop rule’.
Christmas highlights:
Eating, drinking and walking with my close, sceptic, family
Facilitating the reunion of a sceptic mother and daughter who’d been separated by distance
Getting the game “Herd Mentality” from a sceptical family member
I feel for any sceptics whose families are being divided by this madness and hope they can find some sceptics to spend time with; it’s important to stay sane and healthy
I was perplexed by TY’s comments on the Queen’s Christmas message. I didn’t watch it, but from what I’ve read it sounds pretty disappointing. She’s always seemed like a natural stoic, but we really needed her to show stoicism in the face of the virus and not in the face of lies and tyranny and madness. I like to think I’m not one of life’s complainers and people who are get on my nerves, but it’s one thing being stoic in the face of things you can do nothing about (rain, illness) and quite another tolerating hysteria because you don’t want to seem churlish.
I am glad you had what sounds like a good day, Julian. I always appreciate your comments on here.
Agree re: the speech.
watch C4 “the Alternative christmas speech ” for an antidote
Glad you had a good Christmas Julian and well said.
Regarding the speech: I so agree with you and I had to grit my teeth when she mentioned “kindness” because I’ve really not seen much of that this year. I know we have to be kind and all that but I’ve reached the point where I would be more than happy to shoot or hack to death someone who goes on about “kindness” or “be kind.”