News Round-Up
- “Children will only get Covid vaccines if vulnerable” – Under guidance due to be issued on Monday, Covid jabs will only be offered to children between 12 and 15 who are deemed vulnerable to Covid or who live with adults who are immunosuppressed, according to the Telegraph
- “Boris Johnson cancels plans for Churchillian Freedom Day launch” – The Prime Minister Boris Johnson was planning to give a Churchillian speech at a location associated with the wartime leader to celebrate the ending of Covid restrictions, according to the Daily Mail, but it has been cancelled due to the climb in cases
- “Unvaccinated less likely to have jab if Covid passports become mandatory, says expert” – An ORB Survey of more than 2,000 people who had not yet taken the jab found that the prospect of vaccine passports made 44% of them less likely to accept it, according to the Telegraph
- “Independent Sage is run by Left-wing group including anti-Brexit activists” – Independent SAGE, the group that has regularly criticised the Government for not locking down hard enough, is run by the Citizens, according to the Telegraph, a group founded by Carole Cadwalladr, a well-known anti-Brexit conspiracy theorist
- “Tube lines suspended and partly closed as staff ‘pinged’ by Covid app” – The Metropolitan Line was suspended and the Piccadilly and District Lines partially closed, according to MailOnline, after control room staff were instructed to self-isolate
- “Covid growth rates are slowing in eight of England’s 10 hot-spots” – The third wave is slowing down in many of the country’s hotspots, but experts fear that infection rates could speed up in the rest of the country, according to MailOnline
- “Boris promised freedom… Get ready for the next lockdown ” – Tomorrow is ‘Freedom Day’, but Dan Hodges of the Mail On Sunday does not think we’ll get to enjoy our newly granted freedoms for long
- “Freedom-loving Boris can’t stop flirting with authoritarianism – and it’s all our fault” – In his latest Sunday Telegraph column, Dan Hannan blames the mood of the British public for Boris Johnson’s new found authoritarianism
- “The young were overlooked during the pandemic. Now it’s happening all over again on the way out” – “For young adults awaiting their second jab, there’ll be months more of quarantine and Covid tests,” says Kate Andrews in the Sunday Telegraph
- “The Most Dangerous Plague” – Dr Hugh Willbourn offers three indications to identify a sound and positive way forward in the over-policed world that will follow lockdown
- “Swathes of England fans report coming down with ‘Wembley variant’ after Euro 2020 final” – Large numbers of football fans have tested positive following the Euros final, according to the i. Some fans said that “pretty much everyone” they knew who were at the stadium on Sunday are now self-isolating
- “Anger as England extends restrictions on France travel” – The U.K. Government’s decision to place France in a new ‘amber plus’ category has caused widespread anger and frustration, France 24 reports
- “England’s lifting of Covid lockdowns is a danger to the entire world, experts warn” – Zero Covid fanatics gathered at a virtual summit on Friday, according to CNBC, where they criticised the U.K. Government’s plans to ease COVID-19 restrictions as unethical and dangerous for the whole planet
- “This isn’t freedom day. It’s lockdown outsourced” – “With different rules for different companies, Freedom Day is going to be chaos,” says Charlotte Lytton in the Telegraph
- “I believe the real purpose of masks is social control” – “How far tomorrow looks like a real Freedom Day will be up to all of us and our determination to return to normal life,” says Graham Brady in the Mail On Sunday. “It is time for us all now to start using our own judgment”
- “We’ve de-clawed Covid… now give our freedom back” – “The very limited nature of the freedom we will receive tomorrow will leave many dissatisfied and disappointed,” says this Mail On Sunday editorial. “If we are to recover as a society and an economy, Ministers are going to need to be more confident of their own success”
- “Visions of the future” – Writing for LeftLockdownSceptics, Raminder Mulla describes three potential scenarios for what society might eventually look like, post “freedom day”
- “War and Covid: The Flickering of Civilisation’s Lamp” – Omar Khan takes a look at Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw’s play about a “cultured, leisured Europe” drifting towards destruction in the First World War, and finds parallels with the world today
- “Doctors urge teachers to reject Covid vaccination for children” – The Conservative Woman reproduces a letter addressed to teachers from the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance about the ethical concerns about vaccinating children
- “Tess Lawrie explains why the vaccine rollout must be halted” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Neville Hodgkinson explains why Dr. Tess Lawrie wants the vaccine rollout to be paused
- “That Nurse Who Asks Questions” – In the latest episode of the Real Normal, Lord Rickmansworth and Don interview Jenna Platt, a nurse and anti-lockdown activist
- “Darkness has ascended upon the enlightened country” – By completely cutting off the unvaccinated from their daily life, Emmanuel Macron has segregated the French territory into two categories, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, with the latter being stripped of all its rights, says Julien Yvon in Bournbrook
- “France to require 24-hour negative Covid test for unvaccinated travellers from U.K. & five EU countries” – As of next week, anyone visiting France from the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Greece or the Netherlands will have to present a negative PCR or antigen test that was taken less than 24 hours before departure, according to RT
- “All of Britain put on Denmark red list – apart from Wales” – Denmark’s Foreign Ministry advises against travel to all parts of Britain apart from Wales, Nation Cymru reports, the first time an EU country has differentiated between the U.K.’s four nations for the purpose of entry requirements
- “Nearly 1,000 people infected with Covid after Utrecht festival” – Nearly a thousand people who attended the July 3rd-4th Veknipt festival in Utrecht have tested positive, according to NL Times. The organisers are surprised, as there were many Covid security protocols in place
- “Mykonos bans music in bars after England players filmed in restaurant singalong” – The Greek island of Mykonos has banned music and singing in bars after four England players were filmed singing “Sweet Caroline”, according to the Telegraph, and introduced a night-time curfew
- “Disney moves 2,000 jobs from California to Florida’s business-friendly climate” – The Walt Disney Company will be moving 2,000 jobs from its California HQ to Florida, the Post Millennial reports. CEO Bob Chapek has criticised California’s lockdown restrictions, which kept Disneyland closed while the park in Florida was open
- “Harvesting the Sickening Fruit of Lockdowns” – Peter C. Earle looks at how lockdown restrictions have led to an increase in overdose fatalities for the AIER
- “Protest convoy of trucks at Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge following changes to COVID-19 rules” – Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge were blocked off by about 100 large trucks who were honking their horns loudly, the Weekend Australian says, in protest against the latest Covid measures
- “If the premiers are keeping us safe from the virus, who is keeping us safe from the premiers?” – Writing for Spectator Australia, James Macpherson takes aim at Dan Andrews, Premier of the State of Victoria, after he described anti-lockdown protestors as shameful
- “Meet the Covid billionaires” – “Redistribution of wealth is alive and well within the Covid pandemic,” says Alexandra Marshall in Spectator Australia. “Just like old school socialism, the loose change of the working class has been siphoned into the pockets of global bureaucracies, big business, politicians, and union heavyweights”
- “Freedom Day? More like Groundhog Day” – GB News’s Neil Oliver is unimpressed by ‘Freedom Day’
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” ‘Lifting lockdowns a danger’ – zero Covid fanatics”. (CNBC)
“Zero Covid New Zealand sees sky rocketing child hospitalisations due to immune systems depressed by lockdowns” (Jordan Schachtel, yesterday’s roundup).
Harming children is not just one cost among many, it should be far and away our first priority to protect children. And this shambles has harmed children in so many ways, including suicides, far more than any good it might supposedly have done them. It is the zero Covid idiots who have questions to answer.
Neil Oliver has proven himself to be an intellectual giant amongst the MSM journalists currently infecting our national psyche.
He really is a gem isn’t he?
I think he’s wonderful. He’s a better person than I. He clearsightedly argues the principles and doesn’t name call like I do!
He is a Cullinan diamond.
Swathes of England fans coming down with Wembley variant:
“‘It seems like everyone behind that goal was riddled as everyone in the ESTC [England Supporters Travel Club] has Covid or is isolating,” one tweeted.’
‘“Every man, woman and their dog riddled with the Wembley variant,” said another.’”
Utter codswallop! Another psyops managed tactic to deter people from attending large events.
How many have died?
More schizophrenia from Dan Hodges. A few months ago he was telling anyone who’d listen to “ignore the Covid sceptics”(!) and predicting that we’d have our 2019 freedoms back by now.
Well, at least he has taken on-board some lessons from all the failures!
Hodges has a long history of not learning….
Just read the lead article on the BBC website about the cabinet waiting to be told whether they need to isolate.
Johnson knows he had a meeting with Javid but has not yet been told by Track and Trace that he was a close contact.
Let’s all bow down to the power and wisdom of the marvellous Track and Trace system that must be obeyed. It is so brilliant that we can totally rely on it to tell us the bleeding obvious.
Utterly brainless.
Ha their holiday starts next week right? Hope they all have to isolate and it gets ruined. Serves them right.
Re vaccinating only vulnerable 12 – 15 years, no doubt the parents will be inundated with letters and texts stating their child is classed as vulnerable by virtue of ???, is therefore at risk and should have the ‘safe and effective’ injection.
The same ploy has been used to coerce countless adults into believing they should be injected.
I got texts and a letter stating that due to my underlying health conditions, I should make arrangements to be injected. I have no underlying health conditions. Manipulative, cheating, dangerous liars.
I wonder if they’ll just make the vulnerabilities up like they did with the adults or if they’ll actually do a proper study on the children who have died/been hospitalised. Some of these extremely ill children won’t survive the jab which is heartbreaking. Many of the others will have been suffering from a cocktail of poverty – poor diet, overcrowding, lack of exercise and vitamin D, air pollution. It also makes me sad that the new way to help protect these disadvantaged children is going to be a vaccine they shouldn’t need!
I wonder how inflated the ‘vulnerable’ numbers are with people who had cancer 30 years ago for example and are forever on the list even though they are healthier than ever now.
ITEM: “Protest convoy of trucks at Sydney Harbour Bridge and Anzac Bridge following changes to COVID-19 rules”. The truckies’ protest was organised by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) over the snap decision to close construction sites and to further restrict drivers from working in ‘non-essential’ industry sectors. The TWU are also threatening a ban on deliveries to South Australia unless the new rule by the SA Police Commissioner requiring them to be nasally swabbed roadside every single time they cross the SA border is scrapped. It’s about time the unions showed a bit of fight against lockdown restrictions. As a four-decade workplace union rep (shop steward in your lingo) in the secondary school system and the public service, I have been appalled by the meekness of the unions during the Covid nonsense, too easily bought off by furlough. The TWU’s latest muscle-flexing does pose an interesting conundrum for the Covid-hysterical left. Will their support for lockdown override their once-axiomatic support for blue-collar trade unionism? The way the woke-left have thrown the industrial working class under the bus over recent decades tells us they won’t be cheering on the TWU. ‘Which side are you on?’, as we used to sing on picket lines, would get a… Read more »
The left doesn’t represent workers anymore.
Mass gatherings producing mass positive tests…Oh FFS I thought it was widely understood by now that the ‘tests’ were not worth the paper they’re written on. Even the school kids are awake to that! Someone tell Javid! Does he have kids?!
Found this nice definition of a biofascist on urban dictionary:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Biofascist
“Refers to members of the ruling class, elected officials and their little totalitarians who use Covid-19 to consolidate and grow their power and wealth through lockdowns, social distancing laws, mask mandates, censorship, shaming and intimidation, all under the guise of care and concern for humankind, which they [apparently] have and you don’t.”
Might be nice to give it a thumbs up on urban dictionary website. 🙂
I have just watched Neil Oliver on the video clip above, I agree wholeheartedly with what he has to say. I will not cover my face, nor social distancing. Enough of my life has been stolen from me by this weak and grossly inefficient government.
His introduction and discussion on masking was brilliant and deserved a much bigger audience. In general, the channel’s technical and production standards are so poor most people I know won’t go near it.
They should give it another go.
It is a great deal more genuine, balanced, than any other channel on offer.
Mr Hannan is correct. Huge swathes of the public enjoy authoritarianism….but it is not the entrepreneurs, the independent minded small businessmen, of whom there are about 16 million in this country, who embrace authoritarianism….how could it be…their very existence relies on freedom.
No, it is the state sector, also about 16 million strong, that supports authoritarianism……because their very existence relies on authoritarianism.
That is the battle. Blair recognised it and opened the borders, 400,000 net increase annually (and the rest!) in the population since 1998, accompanying increased public sector employment. He did not do that to increase Conservative voters (although that, like many of his schemes, particularly devolution for Scotland, appears to have gone hilariously awry!).
So it is no surprise that the Conservatives have just lost two by-elections they could not lose.
The surprise is that this government is too stupid to realise that the voters supporting this rise in authoritarianism will never vote Conservative….and those who do not support this rise in authoritarianism will now never vote Conservative either….under this leadership.
It’s Sunday and the church bells are tolling…..they are tolling for you, Mr Johnson…….
But who could we vote for? Where is the opposition? There is none. Keir Starmer may as well not exist. Pathetic!
The only real opposition has been within the Tory party. Graham Brady for PM!
Precisely why the turnout at the recent by-elections was so low.
There is a long time to run until the next general election but the conservative party, unless it changes direction or leadership, will not be able to get its vote out.
Many Conservative councillors will lose their seats next year. The noise will be deafening…..but are there any Conservative MPs without a tin ear?
And yet at the last set of elections in May they did OK, albeit because the other parties did quite badly.
If people are drfting away from the Tories I don’t think many of them are doing it because they’ve realised it’s a scamdemic. Maybe you know more disaffected Tories than I do – I hope so! Almost everyone I know thinks covid was an exceptional danger. I know more people who are fed up with lockdowns now and probably would not want any more, but will accept them. People I know who hold the sceptic position – almost none.
‘Although last week’s local elections were an overall success, worryingly, we saw a series of surprising losses in once safe seats.’
Ian Duncan Smith 15 May 2021
The last elections were a case of select the least worst option. Labour were perceived as being worse than the Tories, particularly in Amersham where Labour lost 90% of their voters despite local opposition to HS2.
Well, that’s from IDS so not necessarily what the leadership are thinking. I suppose they may feel a little pressure now from people which is why they are doing this fake freedom day where they pretend all restrictions are being lifted knowing very well they won’t be because they’ve been briefing organisations to continue with them. But I don’t think that’s going to push them into any kind of admission that the whole thing has been a huge mistake, and that admission is the only thing that really matters.
Any pressure on these nincompoops is good pressure:
‘Both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak will be now be fully self-isolating after being ‘pinged’ by the NHS app, despite Number 10 initially saying they were part of a scheme that meant they were partially exempt.’
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-07-18/covid-boris-johnson-and-rishi-sunak-pinged-by-nhs-app-but-will-not-need-to-fully-self-isolate
I beg to differ again I’m afraid, my friend. I’d much rather the elites obviously took the piss than conformed to their own stupid rules.
As I said, they will never ever admit they got covid completely wrong, and that is the only thing that really matters. I suppose it’s possible that they will quietly try to drift us back to normality, and not use these mad interventions ever again, but I think that’s pretty unlikely and even if they did, life in the UK is now irrevocably compromised by the madness, and if they were to lose the next election we’d be in even more serious trouble.
I don’t think relying on the government to get us out of this is wise. We face a decades long battle to restore some kind of sanity – a battle that we may well lose.
They are not conforming to their own stupid rules until made to do so, and they have just been made to conform, amidst a great deal of ill mannered but irresistible tittering…..It is by no means a long step now to complete laughing stocks………..
I readily concede that this country has reverted to some kind of statist comfort zone last experienced here in the 1970s
But we moved on from there to a period of unparalleled prosperity
As have said before, the next U.S. President will be a lockdown sceptic, and what happens in America never stays in America….
This is a long game but the issue is not in doubt
I envy your optimism/positive vision of the future
I take no comfort from seeing our leaders being laughed at or pilloried for the wrong reasons. We’ll just get some even more joyless loon who actually sticks to the rules probably.
The US has surprised me in how it seems to have moved on, even under Biden. I think we’re clearly a long way from the US in most of the rest of the rich world with regard to the value we place on personal freedom and responsiblity and the divide between what is the proper province of the state and what is private and personal.
Where I live it is solid Tory and solid Covidian. Place where I’ve seen most covid non-compliance – Labour-voting poor areas of North London.
Are you saying there are 16 million people in this country who run businesses? It seems high but maybe you’re right.
I know lots of people who are employed in the private sector who are fully bought into the narrative, and it seems to me most big firms have also embraced it quite willingly.
I would agree that the places that have moved on most fully from covidianism tend to be places where there is still some vestige of the idea that the state should be as small as possible, but the number of such places is vanishingly small and almost exclusively in the USA.
It seems true that more of the opposition in the media and parliament to the nonsense has come from people on the political right, but we’re such a small number that we make little difference. I don’t think the PM will be quaking in his boots about a few freedom loving nutters like us, sadly.
16.8 million employed in (6 million) small to medium sized enterprises.
There is plenty of tacit opposition, but not many of these can afford to take a stand as they are the ones taking the most punishment.
That is why they will never again vote for the Conservative party under this leadership.
Anecdotally yes I would agree people employed in such enterprises or self employed more likely to want to get on with life, from what I have observed. Big businesses, not so much.
But have we got an alternative? And if that is so the answer may be a worse case scenario.
The alternative is currently self isolating in No. 11
” Large numbers of football fans have tested positive following the Euros final, according to the i. Some fans said that “pretty much everyone” they knew who were at the stadium on Sunday are now self-isolating ”
And is ever the cry “AND WHAT?”
This would be a good one to try and follow up on because unless there’s a large uptick in serious illness in this cohort, what do we have?
Herd immunity (he said, stating the obvious)
I had time and respect for Mr. Oliver until this week. His defence of his knee taking GB news colleague, IMHO, was unacceptable.
The Bozzer and the Saj WILL self-isolate.
Pity it’s not for ever.
‘Large numbers of football fans have tested positive…’ i.e. people have a positive PCR test. Thats what happens when you volunteer to get a test.
There were approx 60K fans at Wembley for one match but what about the numbers who were at Wimbledon every single day for a fortnight?
Presumably they simply didn’t bother to get a test or perhaps if you are a tennis fan are somehow immune? What a crock …
I thought that the crowd at Wembley and Wimbledon had to be either double jabbed or show a negative test?
If so, then surely everyone was “safe”, so how has anyone now become a case?