News Round-Up
- “Why some will never ditch the masks – and think they’re better than you for it” – Even if our two tribes – mask devotees and mask burners – don’t go to war, history suggests face coverings are unlikely to disappear quietly, writes Harry de Quetteville in the Telegraph.
- “Vaccination is the new dividing line in Republican politics” – Although the 2024 presidential election remains two years away, the Republican Party’s moderate position on COVID-19 management has coalesced into supporting vaccination but opposing mandates, with Trump adopting this position – though with a large part of the Republican base against vaccination, some, such as Ron DeSantis, are trying to keep a foot in both camps, writes Oliver Bateman in UnHerd.
- “Why Johnson will make life harder for the unjabbed” – Tom Penn in TCW Defending Freedom suspects the move away from vaccine passports is only skin deep.
- “Preventive Ivermectin: international scientific review confirms 68% efficacy in SUS study” – TrialSite News reports on a new study which concludes: “Regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation, and mortality rates.” Find the study here.
- “Hospital patients to be moved into hotel to free up beds amid ‘enormous pressure’ on NHS” – Up to 15 patients will receive care at a city centre hotel in Norwich in a pilot scheme that will last three months, the Telegraph reports.
- “How lockdown sparked a wave of anxiety among Britain’s children” – “It must have filled them with anxiety, to see their mother and father reduced to impotent and marginalised figures,” writes Cristina Odone in the Spectator.
- “Rublev says Australia let him in country with Covid and he ‘isn’t testing anymore’” – Tennis star Andrei Rublev has revealed he was allowed into Australia with Covid despite the ugly Novak Djokovic row, reports the Sun.
- “A lost generation: fears India’s long-running school closures will hit long-term development” – Draconian Covid lockdowns mean many children have missed out on large chunks of education – schools closed in March 2020 and some didn’t reopen until 18 months later – and many will never return to school, reports the Telegraph.
- “Covid test firm urges end to tests for travellers” – Collinson, which also runs airport lounges and other travel services, thinks tests are bad for business, reports the BBC. What a difference it makes when a company has an incentive to stop providing its unnecessary product.
- “How Bolivians Defeated Socialist Government’s Vaccine Mandates” – On January 19th the administration of socialist President Luis Arce canceled the requirement of proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to enter any public establishment or place of commerce, reports the Epoch Times.
- “Covid death rates fell over Christmas as ministers debated new restrictions” – There were 56.3 Covid deaths per 100,000 in England with the virus on the death certificate last month, and 69.3 in November, data show, according to the Telegraph.
- “The catastrophe of the Covid models” – How SAGE’s junk science brought us to the brink of lockdown, writes Christopher Snowdon – back in sceptical mode – in Spiked.
- “Biden’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers Blocked Nationwide” – President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees was blocked on Friday by a federal judge, reports the Epoch Times.
- “It’s time to topple the failed lockdown elites” – The wrong people have been in charge since 2020. Scrap the last remaining restrictions and let us take back control of our lives, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “Defend Free Speech – Justice for Debbie Hicks” – Donate to support Debbie appeal her conviction for filming in an empty hospital in 2020.
- “The very concerning data from Scotland” – Daniel Horowitz in BlazeMedia reports the concerning data that shows vaccines failing to protect people from Covid.
- “Elderly man’s escape attempt from care home Covid lockdown using bedsheets ends in tragedy” – Mario Finotti, 91, died after he tied bedsheets around his waist and clambered out of the window in northern Italy, reports the Telegraph.
- “A ban on conservatories is exactly the sort of idiocy that could finish off Boris and ‘Net Zero’” – Instead of kowtowing to eco extremists, the Tories should be taking practical steps to reduce energy costs, writes Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph.
- “Fallen Icon” – Paul Homewood reviews Susan Crockford’s book about the fib told by Sir David Attenborough in 2019 about walruses hurling themselves off a cliff, supposedly due to climate change but in fact for a completely different reason.
- “Sex, trans rights and the Scottish census” – The National Records of Scotland is facing a judicial review over its census guidance which states that transgender people may answer the question on sex as they identify rather than in line with their biology, writes Stephen Daisley in the Spectator.
- “Picador cancels poet Kate Clanchy’s books” – UnHerd reports that the author Kate Clanchy and Pan Macmillan have parted company “by mutual consent” and the publisher will cease distribution of all her work, following criticism of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me for not being racially sensitive enough – even though it introduced poets from migrant and refugee backgrounds. The revolution eats its own children.
- “Excellent news. My employer will not be taking disciplinary action against me for my social media activity championing the human rights of boys and men. My thanks to everyone for their support” – Some good news from ‘The Glass Blind Spot’.
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I don’t know what’s going on over here. But suddenly the daily fishwrap has rediscovered its balls.
Below, the front page of today’s West Australian. Friday’s was even more aggressive, if anything: 658 Days And He’s Still Not Ready.
Pity the West wasn’t so skeptical about Masky Mark more often over the last two years…
Following in the footsteps of UK Daily Telegraph as discussed here yesterday ?
Has Australias tsunamis of government covid, lockdown and latterly vaccine propaganda advertising started to dry up or is your press demanding more funding or ‘we’ll be publishing more stuff like this’ ?
Could be – I have to admit a lot of that stuff is under my radar. As for the newspaper’s about face, I figured the editor had travel plans that got sunk by the announcement on Thursday.
The Times leader yesterday was pouring scorn on the lifting of restrictions stating that Boris was taking an “unhealthy gamble”. They are furious that the mask mandate is being dropped and welcomed the fact that many schools are going to keep it in place. They are beyond the f*cking pale.
Times muppets. They really should talk to their former Indy reporter Oliver Wright about big pharma corruption.
Twinned with Jacinta and the hobbit -er- hermit kingdom.
Roundup “why some people will never ditch the masks and think they are better than you for it”. Telegraph (paywall). As a child of the 1960s I attended High Church of England Sunday morning service (and later a couple of years Low Protestant north London. Yawn). It always amused me that every single woman aged over about 30 years (ie really Old) not only wore a hat but seemed to compete with each other about how utterly useless those items were in terms of providing protection against the weather as hats were supposed to. They were not necessarily very fancy, certainly plainer than Wedding Hats, just utterly useless at protecting the wearer against rain, sunshine or the wind but so what? They were indoors anyway so even more pointless (chaps took their hats off in Church). If anything they made the old women look even older and frumpy than they already were (yuk). It became clear that their sole purpose was female to female competition, although I had no idea what the rules of that competition were the Top Hat wearers would know and so look down on the dowdy losers. For many years, decades even, pointless indoor hattery was… Read more »
I think that some context is needed here. Hats were used for centuries as a sign of social status, if you could afford to wear a hat every day then you were wealthy. The taller the top hat the wealthier the wearer was. Servants and the working classes went to church and probably had only one set of Sunday best clothes including one hat. Hat wearing was therefore a sign of equality on the one day a week that all classes mixed in a social setting. This probably existed until the Second World War. The habit of wearing a hat to church continued into the 1960’s because the wearers were of an age that had grown up in the era of hat wearing. Older women even continued to wear them to work, as shown by a character in Call the Midwife. My grandmother, born 1903, wore a hat to church and other social events, as did her sisters. My mum, born 1930, never wore a hat. A cap was part of my school uniform, and I think I wore one to Sunday school. Caps and hats still form part of the uniform of our local endowed schools. Using the height… Read more »
Sounds like an excellent theme for a sociological thesis, I can almost hear Laurie Taylor telling us about it on Thinking Allowed
The tradition of women covering their heads in church has, I believe, its origins in Biblical teaching, and continues in some denominations among mainly older worshippers. My own experience of it, beyond the C of E, is in Catholicism and the Orthodox church. The other side of the tradition was for men to uncover in church. When I was younger, it was also tradition that women did not attend funerals, to which male mourners wore black bowlers. Those niceties have disappeared entirely. Whilst the origin is religious observances (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_head_covering), and as you point out, “coverings” over the centuries have become a melange of fashion, fashion competition and class statements. As you also say, the custom began to fade away in large part, at around the same time as daily hat-wearing by younger women started to do so; which I would put around the 1960’s and the societal changes that occurred then. Wearing something hat-, shawl- or mantilla-like as a respectful religious observance has no relationship to the wearing of masks or “face-coverings” in Christian religions. As much as bishops may pipe on about masks being a sign of brotherly or sisterly love and care, it has long been considered important… Read more »
The last time I remember that women did not attend a funeral was when my FIW died in 1975.
That fits in with my experience and chronology. The wearing of trousers by women to funerals was also frowned upon, and that was the case 20 years ago.
There was that story a few months back wasn’t there, about the Romanian experience, where if you went into a rural church with a mask on, you would likely be scolded for being disrespectful.
Do “covid” marshals get to wear hats, or do you have to be a full “vaccine” marshal?
It’s true. I remember all my aging great aunts that visited ALWAYS wore hats that they never took off! Even my mum in the early 70s always wore a head scarf to go shopping – I don’t know why, as she never had an elaborate hair style, just long straight brown hair, and she wasn’t old either.There’s a scene in Sir John Betjeman’s wonderful documentary Metroland where he encounters a group of “beautifully be-hatted women” at a lunch in a manor house. “Dear things” he called them…
In the 50’s and 60’s, the majority of working class women hardly ever took their “pinnies” off and even had a “best” one to wear when they weren’t working. I remember sitting next to one woman in a cinema wearing her best “pinnie”.
It was theoretically about modesty. In some Catholic churches women still wear mantilas. Conversely, men are supposed to go bare-headed. For all its apparent arcanery, I much prefer it to the modern trend of pretending that men are the same as women (and nonsense such as the “pink stinks” campaign).
There was a case some years back in one of the “wee free” presbyterian churches in Scotland where dispute arose about women wearing hats in churches, and in the end, one side went off and formed their own separate church.
Doctors demand investigation of vaccine-related child deaths
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/doctors-demand-investigation-of-vaccine-related-child-deaths/
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That first piece by de wetterville has no place here. Shame for you for not noticing the mask propaganda dressed up as opinion. The article claims that the evidence is strongly in favour of mask effectiveness which we all know is untrue.
ITEM: “Rublev says Australia let him in the country with Covid and he ‘isn’t testing anymore’” – Tennis star Andrei Rublev has revealed he was allowed into Australia with Covid despite the ugly Novak Djokovic row, reports the Sun. Reading between the lines of the report, Rublev must have been vaxxed, otherwise he would have been unceremoniously turned around and sent home at the Arrivals Lounge. Although he tested positive for Covid (whatever that means), he was waved through because he was a Good Little Covid Citizen who had had the jab and was therefore deemed to not be a risk to ‘good order’ by acting as an insurrectionist icon to unvaxxed Australians. An unvaxxed (but legitimately exempt) Novak, on the other hand, although immune to contracting and transmitting the virus because of naturally-acquired immunity, was deemed a clear and present danger to public order because of his defence of freedom of medical choice (and the platform of World No. 1 ranking). By not signing up to the vaxx as the spectacular final act of the Australian government’s Covid-management theatrical production, Novak’s very presence was calling into question the government’s entire pointless, unscientific, draconian and damaging response to the virus. So, ‘got Covid… Read more »
And then there’s Serbias Nahfukya to Rio Tinto. Should have bought popcorn when I was shopping today.
Always thought there was more to the story than we’re being told. Feels like it’s being held up as a means of ensuring there is a divide between people, regardless of whatever the real story is. Also that it’s a fantastic opportunity to remove the best player from the competition and let players from other countries (ie Australia’s sponsor) go up the rankings.
They were going to ban people from cheering for Novak if he stayed weren’t they? Utter madness. Now I know what a witch hunt looks like anyway. I suppose some minister can’t wish away $32 million of damages in the name of good order?
Roundup “Vaccination new dividing line between Republicans” Unherd. Ron DeSantis is a very useful Sceptic ally but, whatever his personal vax status, his views on whether other people should be voluntarily vaxed are neither here no there. Similarly President Trump* accusing DeSantis of being “gutless” for not revealing his vax status is a ridiculous position for someone claiming to support conservative values including freedom of choice and speech. That information belongs to DeSantis and nobody else. Anybody’s decision to be vaxed, boosted or otherwise should be entirely a matter of personal choice (used to be called ‘Conscience’) and entirely outside the political arena. The concept of legally compelling (Mandating) anybody to take any form of medical intervention is but a short step from Eugenics, formerly a favourite of the Nazis, certain US States and, perhaps surprisingly, Scandinavia which should be vigorously opposed by anyone claiming to be a decent human being whether they support vaxxing for themselves or not. I choose not to use marijuana (spoils the booze IMHO) but have no opinion about other people making a different choice. I do have an opinion about using the law (or other forms of coercion) to oblige people to use marijuana… Read more »
I think what you say here holds true for established vaccines or other personal choices where the risks and benefits are well understood and the costs are borne by the user or if publicly funded are reasonable bearing in mind efficacy and what else the money could be spent on. I believe strongly in freedom of choice and feel uncomfortable telling other people what to do, however unfortunately the covid vaccine issue is inevitably political. It seems highly likely to me that without political intervention, the covid vaccines we have would not have been developed or trialled in the timescales they have been, nor would they have been given an emergency license, nor would the long term trials have been compromised by eliminating the control group, and nor would the vaccines have been given free of charge to billions. Obviously we are where we are and if there are those who genuinely feel they are of medical benefit I guess it’s OK for the to be given the chance to have them, but as for the mass vaccination of the not-very-vulnerable the whole program should never have been started and should be scrapped immediately. I think having an opinion on… Read more »
The next president, he must have got confused and forgot the other three letters…
Your comment about cannabis makes no sense. Its only when you heat it that it has psychoactive effects and can be made like CBD oil. Cannabis has so many incredible health properties, it used to be number one in our world for medicinal remedies and all sorts of uses including clothing, materials, oils, food, paper. It is a miracle plant that is like no other on Earth – a true gift from God. But we are denied all this because our criminal overlords and the corporate no soul cesspit doesnt want it because of the competition to their synthetic toxic shite market. It doesnt mix well with alcohol because alcohol is a poison.
Right at this moment, if the people of the world *actually* realised and fully grasped and internalised, without resistance, what has really happened, there would be tremendous, unprecedented upheaval on a global scale.
I’ll be civil and measured.
The evil psychopaths have already injured and killed untold millions.
And I’m now expected to be happy because we won’t be expected to wear a mask? Like we were back to 19th century immunology?
The virus was always merely the vector for the delivery of the spike protein.
It is the latter, a contrived, engineered toxin, that will quietly kill millions in the years to come without any suspicion or blame for the vaccine. We are merely seeing the tip of the iceberg now, only months into their extermination program.
Professors Bhakdi and Burkhardt have already proven this. Yeadon and Malone know and have publicised this.
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/bhakdiburkhardt-pathology-results
Dr Chetty discusses it very clearly.
https://rumble.com/vsbtyb-dr.-shankara-chetty-on-what-is-really-going-on..html
I will be happy when the evil psychopaths responsible for this are arrested and face the full consequences of the law for their heinous crimes.
Until then, I completely discount all their noise.
The butterfly effect has been set in motion. And nothing can stop it now.
What planet is he on (and do covid vaccines work there?)
This is the level of nonsense that has to be heard coming out of their mouths at all times. Got to keep plugging the message. I doubt that the puppets saying these things believe it either but it’s hard to disagree when the masters are dangling a huge pay cheque in front of you…or twisting your arm so hard you can hear it snapping.
Yesterday there appeared to be a hint that Meatloaf died following vaccination, when in fact he refused to be vaccinated or wear a mask.
As far as I am aware, and as indicated in this DM article, his vaccination status has not been confirmed. He had expressed views opposing masks and vaccine mandates.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10429447/Meat-Loaf-mocked-stance-pandemic-policies-following-death.html
Probably was spiked then (or the media has been unable to find out either way). If he was unspiked and they knew it they’d be using this to promote the pro-vax agenda, as usual.
Roundup last item.
Not a Twitt so I know nothing about the Glass Blind Spot imbroglio but would suggest that “Excellent news” comes when the employer can no longer even consider taking disciplinary action against EyeisBloke for social media activity (presumably private and not knocking the employer directly).
Hospitals using hotels is not new, a hospital in London certainly used to place some of their patients who were due to have several days of cancer treatment in the hotel opposite as it was cheaper than a hospital bed! These patients were otherwise well and didn’t really require to be in hospital except for their treatment.
Right at the beginning of Lockdown One they designated the stand alone new hotel at our regional airport, 7 miles out of town, as the Covid recovery unit but it was never used.
Spotted a neat piece of social engineering on the evil Beeb at lunchtime Friday. It was about an alleged housing crisis on the Scilly Isles, resulting in there being no available accommodation for a newly recruited GP (no mention of what happened to the previous one). The blame was put squarely on sale of properties as second homes or holiday lets, but the solution being proposed was essentially to forcibly move all the elderly residents to the mainland ‘for their own safety’. I think we are going to see a lot more of this sort of thing in the near future.
It also made me think about what’s happening in places like Tonga, and perhaps this is TPTB trying to sequester little paradises for themselves while eventually forcing the rest of us to accept substandard living arrangements in purpose built eco buildings ‘to save the planet’.
As I recall, the favourite holiday destination of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Wilson was the Scillies.
Yep, land grabbing is what it’s called. A few years they wanted to relocate a whole town in Wales away from the sea in case it flooded (it never had) “for their own safety”, you see. Get everyone out of the countryside and into “smart” cities…for their own good.
The use of an hotel in Norwich for hospital purposes strikes a sour note in this part of East Anglia. We had two “cottage” hospitals, established in late Victorian and Edwardian times, both of which have been closed down in the last decade, to be used for housing and other purposes. They were able to offer a lot of services, including X-rays, and both were heavily-supported and funded by two groups of “Friends”. The one here, where my grandmother nursed before the First World War, was invaluable. For example, my nonagenarian father-in-law, after some uncaring treatment at the local District Hospital, was able to recuperate there, and my equally aged mother-in-law could visit whenever she wanted, to feed him and otherwise give the attention that 6 decades of marriage merited. When it closed, various promises of replacements were made by the NHS, which in the end turned out to be a couple of reserved beds in a local old people’s home, where patients, including friends of mine not much older, were sent to die. Oddly, the accumulated Friends funds disappeared, sequestered by the NHS. The urge to be “big” and centralise, abandoning all notions of local services and destroying them,… Read more »
I grew up near Devizes in Wiltshire. We had 4 hospitals in Town. A District a Geriatric a Maternity and a psychiatric hospital. All 4 closed down and were never replaced. The District Hospital became a minor injuries centre and a place for hearing tests. The nearest 24 hour A&Es are 20 miles away. We had 6 of those in the County now there are 2. There is no transport to take those who need to go to hospital for an appt or surgery so its relatives if you have any or a village friends scheme or a taxi. The taxi fare to the big hospital in Salisbury is £55 from the village, it’s more to Swindon and Bath.
These last two years is going to be the subject of PhD dissertations for the rest of the century. It will probably create new sub-fields in psychology.