Lionel Shriver Hails Daily Sceptic as Vital Lifeline
In the Christmas issue of the Spectator, Lionel Shriver has thanked her anti-lockdown allies in the media and elsewhere for helping her to “maintain my sanity and my faith in humanity”. In particular, Shriver has applauded the Daily Sceptic – and has an unbreakable habit of combing through our daily newsletter during her morning routine.
Beginning the second week of the U.K.’s original lockdown, our own Toby Young has doggedly put out a free daily newsletter, which is still the first thing I read when I get up. Lockdown Sceptics has now morphed into the more broad-based the Daily Sceptic, but under both titles the newsletter has encapsulated new scientific studies at odds with stock narratives, excerpted dissenting articles and provided a forum for isolated prisoners of quasi-police states like Australia. The bulletin has furnished hyperlinks to thousands of blogs, interviews, podcasts and essays that collectively reassure us not everyone is a robot or an idiot, and civilisation isn’t, or not completely, kaput. That newsletter is meaty enough to last through a large, strong coffee and compelling enough that some mornings the coffee gets cold.
Shriver has also heaped plenty of praise on the Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, the Spiked team, and many others.
On the Telegraph podcast Planet Normal, Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan have managed a beguiling balance of hard-hitting commentary and jocular repartee. They’ve never let up on NHS neglect of non-Covid patients and disappearing face-to-face GP appointments. Through my headphones in the kitchen, their congenial company has seen me through mounds of chopped onions, bulbs of peeled garlic and bags of individually shelled pistachios, even during the long months when asking friends over to help me eat all this stuff was against the law.
Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption has tirelessly advanced the case that subjugating democracy to public health tyranny puts the West in a grave political danger bound to persist beyond the pandemic. Ever temperate, articulate and urbane, Sumption bears a faint resemblance to my husband, who never twigs that I mean the comparison as a big compliment.
Every week, professional curmudgeon Peter Hitchens has given grumpy, disgusted and deliciously disdainful interviews on Talkradio. He’s even appeared in legacy media, in the rare instances a discouraging word about illiberal, epidemiologically inane Government policy is allowed on mainstream shows. Hitchens’s primary shortcoming is a belligerent conviction that he’s the only person standing up to the new authoritarianism. Look around you, Peter. You may spurn the helping hand, but you have confederates.
The crew at Spiked, among them Brendan O’Neill, Fraser Myers and Tom Slater, have remorselessly produced Covid content against the grain; ditto the faux-naïf self-styled nerds at Triggernometry. True to its name, UnHerd has consistently run pieces that contest received coronavirus wisdom, and I’d particularly commend terrific recent essays by Paul Kingsnorth (‘How Fear Fuels the Vaccine Wars’) and Matthew Crawford (‘The New Public Health Despotism’). Along with many other freelancers, Ross Clark, Matt Ridley and Douglas Murray have swum against an exhausting tide of ideological uniformity.
The oncologist Karol Sikora has warned about the dire consequences of blinkered obsession with Covid for cancer patients. Epidemiologists such as Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan have put reputations on the line to interrogate ‘known facts’ in their profession. Shockers, even a handful of British politicians have stuck up for their constituencies’ civil rights, including MPs Steve Baker and Sir Desmond Swayne (“Masks are about sending a message — well I don’t like the message!”).
Worth reading in full.
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Brava, Lionel! And you, too, have played a good part in maintaining my sanity. If you’re reading this, your reading at the Spectator carol service moved me to tears. I’m only sorry I didn’t manage to thank you in person afterwards.
Excellent piece. I have spread it all over.
Much respect for this fantastic author.
Thank you Ms Shriver and I must say by and large I share her recommendations.
She does appear to have omitted the redoubtable team at UK Column and of course the fantastic team at TCW.
I cannot be sure about the omissions because her article is behind a pay wall but it’s a great mention for Toby and the team here at DS.
And I agree, DS has helped me to maintain sanity throughout these Orwellian times.
No she doesn’t mention Kathy Gyngell and TCW or the UK Column. More’s the pity. Daniel Miller has very good piece in TCW today.
Yes, Daniel Miller’s article is top class. I have shared it to those family and friends who still have me down as a nutjob conspiracy theorist. If I can just open a few cracks….
It is an excellent piece and should by scattered as a pamphlet from the sky across the country and forecd down the thoats of our craven MPs
I found this heartening:
“There are nearly 20million unvaccinated people in Britain (including young children). Having resisted the government death fugue thus far there is little possibility they are going to get back on the train and no realistic possibility that this government can suppress all of them. The logistical capacity for political repression on this scale simply does not exist.”
If only I could get my family and others close to me to read his excellent and well researched article before more harm is done to them, but I fear they are too far gone now.
How do we know there are nearly 20 million? Genuine question. I know the official line is 5 million. It would be very reassuring to know our numbers were in fact higher.
It’s from some Govt stats on vaccination numbers and I actually read it was more like 24 million. The 5 million is simply adults who have taken no doses at all. The 20 million quoted also includes children and those who have taken only one dose. Of course not added to this figure are those who are saying no to a booster. Whilst they appear to to be queuing around the block for the latter almost everyone seems to know someone who is saying absolutely not. So this is far from a fully vaccinated country and it never will be and hence their very transparent desperate coercion as the digital ids and other nefarious plans cannot work with a good third of people not being injected.
Indeed. We are the control-group they don’t want.
The elephant in the room as regards unvaccinated, are those people who aren’t officially in the country. I doubt most of those have had the jabs – there’s another few million to add to the tally.
Early on in this nighmare last year, when there appeared to be very little dissent at the time but when I knew we were entering a very dark place, I saw an interview on YT with Lionel Shriver, on Spiked. For the the first time I felt I wasn’t going mad. She was the first voice I’d heard to speak out against this, and it give me courage to do the same, and encouragement to do find others who felt the same.
Breaking news! I presume that this is also to prevent us following DS.
You think that’s a joke? It was pointed out when masks became a thing that Covid can enter through tear ducts.
That was a bit too difficult to contemplate at the time so was quickly dropped; just like domestic cats as carriers, dropped even earlier but just waiting for some knob to start up again..
The eyes have ACE2 receptors
Face coverings are purely there for PR scaring purposes.
They do nothing against something of viral size.
Ye …it appears that this still has to be repeated every day. for those incapable of understand/ing the implications of the ‘simple truth’ it contains
Yes, I remember that and I think that I am right in thinking that there was an MSM article at the time with an actress (maybe Joanna Lumley) wearing a pair of goggles in a plane!
Talking about Joanna Lumley.. she ain’t one of us..
She’s one of them..
No, she clearly fancies herself as a member of the privileged luvvy elite! Vert sad.
And you are right about the cat story. However what about reindeers? Wouldn’t want Christmas to be a superspreader event on account of Santa and his sleigh! (Only kidding!)
Many it appears have already done this on their own personal initiative!
There are none so blind as those who cannot see through all this BS
No – it beats the German response to the promises of National Socialism which at least offered tangible’ benefits’ and affirmation of individual identity “through membership of the collective” to adherents to buy or seduce their allegiance.
This sis jus a self-destruct agenda disguised as ‘sauve qui peut’ – ‘vax’n mask or die’. Not very appealing really to any psychological undamaged, thinking person.
Yes – you can get a special blind fold that stops you seeing the truth but you can still see the BBC News at 10
Stopped watching the BBC in its entirety in March 2020 and TV altogether in April 2021 and more delicious still …. cancelled my TV licence.
Our house has been BBC-free for 6 years! No regrets!
Isn’t there a push for us to view the world through a VR headset via the Metaverse?🙄 Coupled with a government approved face covering we’ll only exist in our own tiny world…apparently. On a positive note loads of people today out and about – no naps. No problems, everyone just getting on with life with two fingers up to the establishment, and all the rest.
‘Coupled with a government approved face covering we’ll only exist in our own tiny world…’
Sounds like EM Forster’s The Machine – a prescient short story.
Most don’t need those blindfolds.
I would also recommend the UK Column who continue to provide robust questioning of all the narratives – covid, climate change, our rotten goverment and opposition etc. Also Neil Oliver and Dan Wootton on GBNews.
I also listen to Mike Graham on TalkRadio, who is capable of some smart pin-down questions and no holds barred, as is O’Sullivan. Hartley-Brewer is OK, but reminds us every time that she’s been jabbed etc. The unpleasant and singularly rude Whale and Max, are “vaccine” shills of the “hold ’em down and jab ’em” school of terrorists.
Yes …but sadly very deeply depressing – not for those of a nervous or suicidal disposition!
You’re not wrong there! They do fantastic work but it can be a hard watch sometimes.In fairness though they have tried to balance the doom and gloom with some positivity recently. I always say if you can survive an episode of UKColumn you can survive anything!
Old Nietsche- “What doesn’t kill you makes you stromg” again!
UNN and “No More Lockdowns” are very good. David Clews has worked tirelessly against all this.
Also “The Light newspaper, Dr Chris Martenson, “Peak Prosperity” videos, “Natural News” with health ranger Mike Adams (sometimes) and all the other doctors: Malone, McCullough, Vanden Bossch, Fleming and Yeadon, and various others. A good overview in Robert Kennedy Jr’s book on Fauci of the honour list of international heroes (US skewed) though there are some missing!
Also Rand Paul has entertained us with his excoriating interviews of Dr. Fauci
I think Jordan Peterson has also put his head over the parapet.
And I missed out “The Epoch Times” well worth a visit.
“Gateway Pundit” for the real news of total meltdown USA!
News from Tunisia: the government says that from 22 December a vaccine passport will be required
In other words if two or more unvaxed people come together to demonstrate against this rule, they will be breaking it. They will be committing a crime. It doesn’t matter how far they stay apart from each other, or whether they’re masked, because, quite simply, vaccine passports will be required at demonstrations.
I don’t know whether an unvaxed person will be allowed to be treated in hospital, or to visit an ill relative in hospital.
Unvaxed schoolteachers will stop being paid on 22 December.
Yet there is no worldwide conspiracy?
Jeez.
The median age in Tunisia is 32.8 years.
Here, here !
It’s “hear, hear!”
Sorry to be a pedant but I am a well-meaning one and you may find this info useful.
Quite right, here, here it should be “hear, hear”.
To be honest, who knows what is right and wrong anymore? Maybe misspelling words is a valuable form of resistance to the system? 🤪
No, it isn’t, it’s ignorance.
It’s not. Misspelling, it’s misuse. 😀
No, it’s the opposite; lowering standards, including spelling and grammar, is all part of the plot to undermine our people, our culture, and our standing in the world.
I haven’t been a frequent contributor below the line, but I too have found this site a huge support to my sanity during this from very early on, when it seemed that the only people who shared my views were on the other side of the Atlantic (Tom Woods, Dave Smith and other libertarian podcasters in particular). This showed that I wasn’t alone in this country, and has introduced me to others, like the Irreverand podcast. And IRL, I’ve found the more you speak to normal people, the more you learn that there are loads of people who feel the same way but have been frightened into silence.
I had so many conversations with real life people during lockdown one who seemed to agree with my sceptical point of view that I kept on thinking that it would all collapse at any minute.
Yet here we are 18 months later with perhaps just a few more not complying with masks and quite prepared to have another Xmas sacrificed.
I work in retail, and it’s pitiful the amount of people complying with masks. I walk around all day without one and no one bats an eyelid and couldn’t care less, but they are just not brave enough to do it themselves.
Many will simply take no notice whatever of anything lying politicians and Media are saying.
Zero media except for a little Damn Wooton (slowly increasing his challenge to the narrative if sadly not he Vax) on GBNews is a useful strategy.
How did people in the DDR deal wit constant low level harassment by the Stasi – we need lessons!
We are now slowly entering DDR territory.
Tom Woods is excellent, definitely worth listening to.
‘ jocular repartee.’
Oh how we jocular reparteed (dunno) as they loaded us on the transports
I’d like to give a shout out to the BBC’s Nick Triggle who has been a surprisingly champion of “hold on a second” contextualised reporting. I avoid their doom-peddling site like the (actual) plague, but whenever I’ve stumbled across Triggle’s reporting 2nd or 3rd hand, it’s been refreshingly different from the screeching autism of the Branch Covidians. I held my breath and went in today to do a compare and contrast: Here’s Ben King, Business reporter, dutifully howling about the wave of “sickness” sweeping the nation. However, the actual examples he’s able to come up with show employees exploiting more free holidays, or employers somehow managing to work through this deadly disease despite being so “sick” with it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59674616 vs Nick Triggle it is also important to remember restrictions don’t stop the epidemic – they just prolong it.That can be used to buy time. Last winter the lockdown allowed the rollout of vaccines.But with more than 80% of the most vulnerable boosted, the benefits of a lockdown are much lower this time.The costs, however, are the same – perhaps greater considering what people have endured so far in terms of the harm to jobs, mental health and education. Clearly the… Read more »
From the start, Nick Triggle’s pieces have, on average (ie some exceptions) been more ‘balanced’ than most.
Since “most” are a totally unbalanced pack of hysterical monotonal lies and propaganda … where does that place him?
Wow.
Someone is reasonably sane there, but I’m surprised he hasn’t been shown the door, clutching his P45. Perhaps it’s true that a Beeb job is a job for life, or else he’s there to be the token “balance” i.e. the 1% against the 99% government propagandists.
I assumed that he was working his notice, but he’s hung in and stuck with it.
Not perfect, he does still accept the newspeak of “cases” and “epidemic”, but you’ll see the same sloppy language here.
What he’s never done, that I’ve seen, is to give in to the terror narrative and stop asking questions and providing context.
Even last year he was quoting (actual) epidemiologists saying “We’re just going to have to get used to the idea that we’ll all catch SARS-COV-2 several times during our lives”, which I’m sure triggered some meltdowns among the Covidians.
What epidemic is this then?
He’s not the Messiah, but he’s somewhat in a Daniel in the lions’ den.
And what a winner of a name!
Yes – I agree. Nick Triggle has generally tried v. hard to be balanced and no doubt has come under a lot of pressure to toe the line.
I tell everyone I know to read this. I love that while there are opinions shared in the articles, they’re generally backed up with links to the studies those opinions are based on. Proper old school reporting. No hiding facts away for only those that can be bothered to go searching. How the mainstream media haven’t been pushed harder despite multiple historic cases of their utter BS is beyond me!
The Media are acting under orders. we have a censored press and need to get used to it. Believe absolutely nothing any MSM journo and politician says and you can’t go wrong.
Just look at the extraordinarily abusive and hysterical rant by A. Neil l – a formerly respected Editor – in the Daily Mail.
The successful imposition of the “Big Lie” is exactly why we are where we are.
Gates has interests in just about all British media outlets as do Black Rock and Vanguard..
I was f***ing incensed by the questions from the MSM at Boris’s press conference yesterday.
Laura Kuenssberg: “If you’re not going to introduce tougher restrictions now then when are you?”
Robert Peston: “Why aren’t you telling people to not go to pubs and restaurants over the Xmas period?”
Jesus H Christ! It beggars belief.
Only invite the lobotomised to ask questions. ‘Boris, what is 2 + 2 and what do you think my Nan would like for Christmas’. This is on a par with the sorts of questions the North Korean media ask Kim Jong-un!
They are far from lobotomised. I am sure they know exactly what they are doing.
Hopefully they’ll get a tour of a suitable wall Ceausescu style.
So do more and more of us every day!
And I sincerely hope they live to regret it at some point!
This pair, along with a number of others shouldn’t be surprised if they end up barred for life from some establishments.
Kuenssberg – always self-regarding, stupid and myopic – now just sold out? Who knows – or cares?
Why watch any of them? These people no longer live in my world. They have betrayed journalism.
They pollute our minds with their drivel.
I agree. No TV news allowed in our house.
No radio news allowed in our house.
No newspapers allowed in our house.
And despite the above I am much better informed than most people and it’s all via the alternative news sites such as DS, TCW, UK Column, Off-Guardian, Natural News, Technocracy, Daily Expose etc.
The drivel put out by MSM is just that – Drivel.
Funny but it was either Dan Wooton or Nigel Farage who said EXACTLY the same thing on GB News last night!!!
They are our enemy!
I’m a Spectator subscriber. In the early months of ‘this’, when even Rod Liddle had swallowed it whole, you, Lionel, were the first chink of light. Thank you.
Even Rod Liddle lol.
Liddle was a real pantywaist at the beginning of the covid apocalypse
Yes… it’s been a lifeline for me too!
from Guido
“The first and currently only hospital patient to die with Omicron was unvaccinated, according to a close relative appearing on LBC this morning. Speaking to Nick Ferrari, the stepson of the man who died earlier this week claimed that he had been taken in by “conspiracy theories”, and refused to take the vaccine despite being in his early 70s:
According to the latest figures, there are currently 15 people in hospital with Omicron, an increase of 5 since Tuesday…
”
70s. not Omicron but old age
He’s unnamed so it means nothing, no sad faces, what are we supposed to believe these days, when a vaccinated person dies, its cause of death unknown in many cases
Not old age, that cannot be a cause of death in anyone under 80. There has to be other reasons, unfortunately CoViD19 can appear.
You mean be invented by fake PCR tests?
How well did LBC check the relationship? A man who said he was the stepson of…
Indeed – more Omicron BS on the way! Take cover!
I knew a man who talked to a man who claimed to know the Omnicorpse….
I most certainly don’t believe the corpse was unvaccinated. If it had been, Bozo, Witless and the rest would be screaming the fact from the rooftops.
I think we can safely put this story into the “Propaganda” bucket.
Even if that’s true, did he have any other conditions? If someone is suffering from a terminal illness then being spiked isn’t going to make them immortal.
I agree with Lionel.
I have just had the most horrible experience whilst out shopping. I was in Aldi, without a mask. I went to one fixture and there was an elderly couple all masked up. The husband said come away he’s not wearing a mask, taking a step back. They asked why I wasn’t wearing a mask, I said nothing at that point. Further down the aisle I said I was exempt, the wife asked where my lanyard was, I said I didn’t need one, she said that I did. My parting question was whether she wanted me to wear a yellow star, she said whatever you want.
you should have complained to the management that you were being harrassed and pointed them out, LOUDLY
or tell them they have qualified for the role of Blokleiter and congratulations!
Actually there was a shop worker refilling shelves who was also not wearing a mask. In fact there were several working maskless
Had a similar scrap in a store last year. I was able to end it with “If you’re going around telling people to wear masks, pull your one up over your nose first”.
The line is always “Why do I need one? Doesn’t yours work?”. That generally throws them off balance.
And if they come back go with “Well wouldn’t you be well advised to get one that does work? FFP3 masks are available. Stop being so tight”.
And if they talk about outbound then go with “So you’re infected then. Why are you outside infecting people rather than home in bed?”.
It’s good practice for when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come round.
Your exemption, which is in itself a declaration of past medical problems is nobody else’s business.
Depending on the challenge my response will be firm but rude.
NHS staff are the worst – duckin awful some of them.
I sat in an empty GP’s waiting room earlier this week. I was there 15 minutes before the receptionist noticed i wasn’t wearing a mask (neither was she behind her plexiglass) When I said I’m exempt she asked where my badge or lanyard was. My response was to ask if she was a Nazi, as they liked to stick badges on people too.
Excellent .
Just tell them it’s none of their business and ask them to fuck off. Don’t be silent, this will come accross submissive and plagued by a bad conscience. Don’t be polite, either. It is none of their business and if they don’t know this yet, they’ll have to learn it.
She obviously doesn’t look in the “Forums” (not comments) here then.
Just as well really.
“maintain my sanity and my faith in humanity”? Hmm, I’m not sure that those two are compatible.
Shame about the vast majority of the rest of teh telegraph’s output, especially on the Pandemic. Bear in mind, like The Grauniad, The Telegraph has a ‘special’ section that now ‘reports’ on the Pandemic (headed up by Paul Nuki) that has previously been funded (2017 I think – more than enough to cover costs for 5+ years) by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundadtion to the tune of $3M+. Why do you think that the paper still is mainly behind the government response and the fearmongering (the word ‘surge’ appears so often now) whilst pretending to be on our side in a few parts of the paper – likely just to placate readers who are increasingly being censored. I know many (I’m a former subscriber of 20 years, getting out 18 months ago)wish to (at the end of their annual subscription) or will (rolling monthly subs) leave very soone because they are increasingly peed off at the coverage and general tone of the paper. That the paper is making it very hard to cancel (I must’ve been lucky) whilst simultaneously offering a rolling programme of bribes, ahem, I mean financial incentives to stay or join show that they are starting… Read more »
The DT receives £3.5 million to ‘advocate’ Gates’ World Health Policies ( sic) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – you are paying for and reading Gates advertorial propaganda in every edition.
I have thankfully broken the habit and feel better for it!
A good number of readers can’t get away from the traditional ‘format’ of the newspapers (a bit like the ‘reports everything’ media outlet like a dept store) and know that all the other papers are as bad and much more expensive (like the Times) or worse (more sensationalist) like the tabloids.
Many people are lazy and just want all their news from one newspaper and the rest from one TV outlet.
That’s also why you are rarely, if at all, allowed to comment on Nuki’s articles.
Yep, rather like all the woke articles or those about US politics.
IMHO the hatred for Trump within the paper, esp. from the US news desk is palpable, where they will, in my view publish practically anything to push the MAGA lot out of US politics and get the GOP back under full ctronl by the Establishment – even if that means Biden and his nutty, useless, crocked and creepy lot ruining that nation in just a year.
That the paper also seems (to me and it appears many here) to do the bidding of the Globalist cabal from the WEF whilst silencing reader dissent is very sinister indeed.
It’s very uplifting to hear 🙂 Sadly, several of these heroes are jabbed…commiserations!
Voted democrat. Just saying.
I thought her columns agonizing about how to vote were quite interesting
Spiked has been largely shilling the vax and the establishment clinical show-trials, while rubbishing early treatment. Not good.
I agree.
Actually, Brendan O’Neill put out a piece a couple of months ago titled:
“Why shouldn’t residential care home workers face mandatory vaccination?”
That was it, the last straw and I cancelled my subscription immediately.
Look into how they are funded. There is a good reason they say nothing remotely controversial. They support mandatory vaccinations and are constantly attacking ‘anti vaxxers’ which means anyone who doesn’t want the jab by their definition. Also any one who mentions the obvious shadowy influence of Bill Gates, The World Economic Forum and Rockefeller Foundation is a conspiracy theorist.
A kindred spirit. The Daily Sceptic has been a lifeline for me. I knew at the start that my, already fragile, mental health was at risk and worked hard at putting things in place to help protect myself. Discovering DS was wonderful!
Remember: we are the sane ones.
Sanity is not statistical.
Off Guardian, TCW, The Corbett Report, Mark Passio, Whitney Webb, Alan Watt are amongst the thousands of people who should be given credit above the Establishment figures such as Peter Hitchens and Lord Sumption who are just there to soften up the moderate sceptics into surrender. Peter Hitchens surrendered close to a year ago, if he was even genuine opposition in the first place.
Hitchens was jabbed at the first opportunity. I gave up on him when he did that.
Yes – and said he did it so he could travel freely! How’s that going, Peter?
This is unfair. Peter Hitchens continues to speak out quite regularly on the subject. You don’t need to be anti-vaccination to oppose these restrictions. Of course people should not be discriminated against for refusing to take the jab but hard line approaches only reduces the number of potential allies whose support we need in order to bring this madness to an end.
I’m a big fan of Shriver’s writing and for a while her column (and Liddle of course) were the only reasons that I kept on paying for the Spectator…unfortunately the tone of the magazine got more and more conformist as the pandemic proceeded, and I’ve now cancelled my subscription.
Totally agree .. I am very appreciative of Tony and his team for all the work they do, it has certainly helped me. Also I found a local ‘Stand in the Park’ group and recommend this to anyone .. it’s good to meet and talk to like minded .. find if there is a stand near you ..
https://www.astandinthepark.org/
Whoops .. obviously mean Toby !!
As an update to my post earlier today, I just looked at the Telegraph’s ‘reporting of today’s COVID ‘information’, and aside from the usual scaremongering headlines, they also falsely said in the ticker feed that the number of deaths (146) is ‘up’ 30%.
That is either a grave error or an outright LIE. Taking every possible but reasonable measurement:
7 day rolling average would have fallen as the number who died ‘with’ COVID on 9th Dec was 115, today’s figure is also 115 (to the decimal is it slightly lower). The day-to-day comparisons, both 7 days ago to today (148 > 146) and yesterday to day are also falls (165 > 146).
I cannot think of any other metric to properly evaluate the figures other than them.
Great writer with a penchant for common sense.