Why We’re All Sceptics Now
As the Afghan data breach lurches from scandal to farce, it’s worth remembering there was a time when respectable people actually trusted the institutions meant to serve them, rather than feared being betrayed by them.
We believed our borders were safe and secure. We sent our children to school and assumed the curriculum was written by grown-ups. We voted and believed our MP, however flawed, acted in good faith. We paid our taxes, watched the BBC, clapped for the NHS, cheered our team. We believed the experts.
Those days are gone.
Scepticism is no longer a fringe reflex. It’s a rational, self-preserving stance for anyone who’s been paying attention. Because nearly every pillar of public life – politics, media, academia, the police, corporations, even science itself – has been exposed not just as fallible, but as actively self-serving, coercive, and too often contemptuous of the people it claims to serve.
The Afghan Betrayal
Start with a symbol: the Ministry of Defence leaking the names and locations of Afghan interpreters and our own soldiers. People who risked their lives for us. Men we promised to protect. Instead, through staggering negligence and incompetence, we painted targets on their backs.
And what was the institutional instinct? Not accountability but a cover-up worthy of Comrades Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un.
Collapse by a Thousand Cuts
Trust hasn’t eroded. It’s been strip-mined.
Polling by Ipsos and YouGov shows fewer than 30% of Britons trust MPs to tell the truth. Just 37% believe public institutions act in the national interest. Trust in the media is now lower in Britain than in the United States, birthplace of the National Enquirer.
What changed?
The 1970s were rough. Strikes, inflation, decline – yet the system still felt like it belonged to us. Governments changed. Ideas clashed. But the social contract held.
Then came 2008. Bankers torched the economy, were bailed out and walked away with bonuses. No jail time. No reckoning. Families lost homes and livelihoods. The public saw the truth: if you’re powerful enough, failure carries no penalty.
MPs’ expenses confirmed the pattern: moat cleaning, duck houses, property scams. A few red faces. Fewer resignations.
And then came Covid.
We were told it was temporary. We were told the science was settled. We were told we were all in it together. But behind the slogans lay arrogance, censorship and cowardice.
Three years on, even official reviews admit that the human cost of lockdowns — mental illness, missed cancer diagnoses, economic devastation — was far worse than anticipated. Over 400,000 children are now persistently absent from school. NHS backlogs are at record highs.
Dissenting scientists were smeared. Journalists silenced. While we postponed funerals, politicians partied behind closed doors, enjoyed a bit of tonsil tennis and deleted their WhatsApps. Science became a slogan. Public health became a pulpit. That’s not democracy, it’s technocratic authoritarianism in a lab coat.
Yet no one in power has apologised. No one has been held accountable.
The Gospel of Net Zero
With Covid losing its grip, a new dogma took hold: Net Zero.
Same pattern. Catastrophic forecasts, elite sermons and ordinary people footing the bill. Whether it’s gas boiler bans, meat taxes or EV mandates on an unready grid, environmental policy has become a morality play. Ideological, punitive and oddly selective.
We’re not against clean air. We’re against economic masochism dressed up as planetary virtue.
While the UK agonises over wood-burning stoves, China approves a new coal plant every week. Who benefits? Not us.
Ask questions and you’re branded a ‘denier’. But it’s not denialism to want evidence-based policy. It’s common sense.
Broken Trust, Across the Board
Policing? Public confidence is at generational lows. Burglaries go unsolved. Knife crime is rising. The Palestinian and Rainbow flags are de rigueur. But misgender someone on social media or wear a Star of David and you’ll feel the long arm of the law on your shoulder or get a knock at your front door.
The NHS? Most patients still encounter decency and dedication on the front line, but behind the curtain the system exists largely to preserve itself. The unions, dressed up as professional associations, behave like political action committees, not custodians of public trust. Accountability is non-existent. Excuses are contagious. Just ask anyone who’s waited six hours in A&E to be told there’s no doctor available – but there’s no shortage of DEI consultants on full-time pay.
The clergy? The Church of England, that moral custodian of the nation’s soul, spent decades shielding abusers and silencing victims. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse exposed a culture where safeguarding came second to self-preservation. Over 390 clergy were convicted. When the shepherds protect the wolves, what faith can the flock possibly have left?
Academia? Once a haven for heretics and hypothesis, now churns out zealots with degrees in grievance. Their professors, long since tenured into irrelevance, cheer them on as they chant for Palestine.
The Royal Family? The Queen was constant, dutiful. Her son is best known for tampon talk. Her grandson monetises his grievances on Netflix.
Talking of celebrities, they tweet about poverty from infinity pools, moralise about climate change from private jets and posture about working-class struggles in gifted couture.
Meanwhile from the Olympics to the World Cup to Hollywood, people cheat, dope, bribe and show levels of moral turpitude more associated with Caligula than our two Bobbys, Charlton and Moore. Yet they still expect applause, sponsorship deals and lecture slots at the UN.
We used to have heroes. Today more and more just become zeros while continuing to accumulate obscene levels of wealth.
The hypocrisy isn’t just offensive. It’s industrial.
A Parallel Universe
What ties all this together isn’t ideology or even incompetence. It’s the total absence of consequence.
Ordinary people still play by the rules. They wait their turn, follow the law and pay their taxes. But the elites who write those rules live in a parallel universe, where failure is rewarded, shame optional and accountability reserved for others.
So yes, we’re all sceptics now. Not because we’re bitter. But because we’re paying attention.
Can trust be rebuilt? Maybe, but not with apologies, hashtags and press releases.
Because if the people who follow the rules lose faith in the rules and the establishment, what’s left?
Nothing but the sceptics. And we’re not wrong.
Clive Pinder is a recovering global executive, accidental columnist and mildly repentant political provocateur. He now writes about hypocrisy, hubris and humanity. Find him on Substack.
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“So yes, we’re all sceptics now. Not because we’re bitter. But because we’re paying attention.
Can trust be rebuilt? Maybe, but not with apologies, hashtags and press releases.”
I don’t know if bitter is the right word, but I am certainly angry.
I don’t think trust can be rebuilt. Ultimately if you allow people to have power over you, it will corrupt them. I trust my wife and kids, and a few very close mates and work colleagues, people I have known and observed up close for decades. Nobody else has my unreserved trust.
Spot on. In both 1997 and 2024 the Socialists gained big majorities, the second by accident and look at how radical they are. It’s now widely accepted that the Blair creature completely destroyed our system of governance and all problems can be traced back to that period. The government we have now, with 10, million votes are unwinding the will of the people based on 17 million votes on Brexit. They are radical communists who make Corbyn look like a democrat.
It’s happening all over Europe, their time is up and they are now trying to stay in power, if they can’t they want to create so many problems that a future government will have to be draconian. Anyone who has ever read up on Oliver Cromwell will understand what happened, He stood up to the King and then the Roman Catholic Church followed by a corrupt parliament. He is misunderstood because he took on the entire establishment and won. That’s why he is hated so much and gets so much bad press. I’m afraid we are in a similar situation.
Socialist got its start in 1945. I suggest you read up on the post-war Marxist-Socialist Labour Government which socialised and collectivised our economy and society and subsequent Conservative Governments accepted this as “the new normal”.
And if you read up on the situation in the 1960s/70s thanks to Labour Governments you will have a sense of déjà-poo – seeing the same shit: increased tax and spend, increased inflation, unemployment going up, out of control welfare spending, public service workers striking and demanding more and more, economic crisis, capital flight, “Brain Drain” our best people going abroad, social breakdown.
Had enough people read history, what is now happening under a Labour Government would have come as no surprise, and the fact that the Conservatives, with a few tweaks, and frills, carry on the same Socialist policies as Labour and this would not be seen as recent development.
Trust most certainly cannot be rebuilt by those who destroyed it in the first place.
Which is why Badenough and the Pretendy-CONs will never be trusted. If the Not-a-Conservative-Party wants to regain trust, it is going to have to dispense with ALL the charlatans who destroyed it: including Hague, Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak and all the other MPs who have served as Ministers in the Party since 2010.
100% Also suspect many of the remaining supporters and members are not so closet socialists, certainly not conservative
One of my most worn out (borrowed) phrases these days is “It takes years to build trust and seconds to destroy it”. It’s a mammoth task to rebuild trust. It would be bad enough with just one area of been let down but the list grows each day.
“clapped for the NHS”
No!
“The NHS? Most patients still encounter decency and dedication on the front line,”
No! The NHS is not the front line. The general public going about their lives are the front line. How would it be if a battle field hospital was called the ‘front line’, and where are battle field hospitals usually found? Somewhere away from the front line. Calling the NHS the front line was a psychological trick to switch our world back to front and bring about changes in behaviour, as imagined by self important people with excessive academic tendencies. We became the field hospital and the NHS the patient that we had to sacrifice for and care for. War is peace etc.
‘Ordinary people still play by the rules.’
Ordinary people still believe Covid to have been a ‘pandemic’ and, pitifully, banged pots!.
Ordinary people still believe a government run health service is a good idea, believe that governments can run things when all the evidence is the other way.
Ordinary people believe that mankind is entirely responsible for changing the climate.
We sceptics are in a tiny minority,
‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard’
H.L Mencken (or any member of the Westminster/Whitehall sh*t show)
Plus ca change……
Agreed. In my experience, we most definitely are not all Sceptics now.
Watch your own back, care for those whom you love. And don’t believe a word they say.
Hope, strength and tenacity to those who think and judge for themselves.
“And don’t believe a word they say.”
My first reaction when the Afghan story was released – Bollox.
Andre Walker posted a YouTube video yesterday evening saying exactly the same thing although we differ on the reasons. I still believe this is simply the import of an army – trained soldiers.
Whenever officialdom puts out a story we have to understand that it hides a different intent and meaning.
The Sheeple – let’s face it, the Rona taught me that 80% are brain dead. Don’t care about degrees, titles, money and their never ending egos.
The system is broken.
Most of ‘the science’ is junk (not just virology, but most other domains as well).
Government, media, the National Death Service, ‘the science’ all revealed to be nothing more than criminal mafia within a totalitarian dystopia.
This article is 100% in line with my experiences, observations and conclusions about the current state of Britain.
The level of deception, lying, manipulation and hypocrisy is beyond anything I ever imagined.
But look on the positive side: we have become skeptics. They can’t fool us anymore. We know they are lying.
10-20% have critical thinking skills, can recognise patterns, untruths and illogicalities.
The rest are easy prey for the state and any lie that shows up on the idiot box or in the ‘education’ system.
Eddukayshun, surely? Pay attention in the back!
Does anyone remember this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXRWNq26ZLs
Woman arrested for taking mother out of care home
She was obviously scheduled for euthanasia.
Can trust be rebuilt?
Not until our rulers give up their anti-whitism, anglophobia, and hatred of all things British.
Trust cannot ever be re-built.
We need a reset but not the one planned for. The thousands of perps involved in this act of treason and starting with Bliar must be cleared from the planet, if not they will rise again like Himalayan Balsam.
Matt Goodwin@GoodwinMJ All of these things happened in the UK in the last week —in one week. -we learned the state and two big parties actively coordinated to cover-up importing thousands of Afghan migrants, many of them dangerous, with no oversight, no democratic vote, while gagging the press & imposing billions in costs onto the taxpayer who was kept in the dark -the British people are being forced to pay another £12 billion a year on welfare for 1.3 million people who are not British and most of whom do not work and contribute -we only got this data because independent campaigners forced the state to release it. The state did not want to release it. -asylum-seekers have continued to sexually assault British girls, reflecting the fact foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely than Brits to be arrested for sexual offences -the establishment has given an MBE, an award, to a man who called on Muslims to boycott the police over the rape gang revelations -a Labour politician, Jess Phillips, went on national media and once again downplayed the fact we have a specific problem with sexual abuse and misogyny within Muslim communities -a British schoolgirl was sent home… Read more »
‘While we postponed funerals, politicians partied behind closed doors, enjoyed a bit of tonsil tennis and deleted their WhatsApps.’
And awarded lucrative contracts for PPE etc to their chums.
But it should be obvious we’re not all sceptics now. Most of the public continues to be gullible, and it has a very short memory – getting ever shorter just as attention spans get shorter. It amuses itself with celebrity TV, computer games, televised sport, pop music streamed ad lib., foreign holidays. ‘Bread and circuses’ is the order of the day.
Don’t forget cheap drugs, alcohol, the general lowering of all standards of behaviour, makes me feel as if I just stepped out of ark
Unfortunately most people aren’t sceptics but rather frightened little souls who see the failures of the system but still want its protection because they fear the plebs more than they do the elites.
When you can get banged up for 3 years for a tweet, they’re right to be frightened of the consequences.
It’s from the same playbook as every other left-wing revolution, none of which might have happened if people hadn’t just gone along with things until the tipping point came and they descended into chaos.
What’s unknown, for the moment, is how far from the tipping point we are…
Most people aren’t even aware you can get banged up for a tweet, or don’t believe its only that.
My point is that too many people actually fear the tweeters more than they do the state. Your typical normie is more concerned about the yobs and things getting out of hand and the police losing control than they are about state overreach.
Hard to believe but that’s what I observe.
Yes practically everyone here has seen the propaganda churned out by an eager and compliant MSM and Western “governments –
Covid Clown World.
Neocons (maybe even Trump’s been turned?).
Climate Change.
Soros/NWO – thus Ukraine – and China’s next (see neocons).
The lovely ever so benign EU.
And all of the above to try and preserve US/Western/Rothschild hegemony.- which is of course being ruined by Putin, following in the steps of Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Burma, Sudan, Syria, Bolivia and of course themain enemy, China
We were lied to every day, we are still lied too every day.
All so true… and yet not the first breakdown of trust.
Go back to the Black Death – no class or occupation was spared thus breaking the trust in the social order. Over the next several centuries the Divine Right of Kings was upended, the shenanigans of the Church were exposed, and eventually the Enlightenment resulted in the trust switching to reason.
Perhaps the current resurgence of Romanticism displacing the primacy of reason for that of emotion will hold sway for a time. Many people still have some trust in the big lies they are told. But I suspect it will not last for anything like centuries, and may even be fading now as reality becomes clearer.
“Catastrophic forecasts, elite sermons…” Sounds like the end of Errollyn Wallen’s The Elements, premièred on 18th July 2025 at The Proms. Perhaps Apocalyptic Poetry is de rigueur when writing choral works to a BBC commission, as part of their gaslighting?
Erratum: the piece was Vaughan Williams’s oratorio Sancta Civitas, based on text from Revelation.
Errollyn Wallen’s works are not often mistaken for Vaughan Williams’s!
“We’re not against clean air. We’re against economic masochism dressed up as planetary virtue.”
Yes and Fossil fuels are not making the air dirty and CO2 is not a pollutant. Compare the two graphics below.
And another perspective comparing CO2 emissions and deaths from general air pollution. Notice the colours used. One is emissions and the other deaths and the same reddy brown colour is used.
Sadly, as we found during the scandemic and documented here on DS, when arguments are made on an emotional level, not amount of facts will change anyone’s mind. You have to fight back at the emotional level, if that’s even possible.
Cynics and sceptics might be close friends, but I’m cynical about the heading. I suspect that most people don’t want to lose faith in bureaucracy and professionalism, and are quite gullible. In other words, lots of them don’t want to think too much and are not real sceptics.
Thanks for your thoughts. Here are mine on your insights. Oscar Wilde said a “cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. I suggest a sceptic is a citizen who’s been lied to once too often.
Yet there is still one paradigm that many here cannot contemplate, an absolute truth, if you will, that support for a military power that is currently launching strikes across a region is to be accepted, lauded and praised without question regardless of those human beings under those bombs.
One might ask are we are all sceptics now when we are not sceptical of that?
Can you tell us of which “military power” you speak?
Could it be a military power that we are not allowed to question the righteousness of that nations actions?
The 2008 financial instability was primarily caused by excessive money caused by politicians and inattentive regulators egged on to allow unsafe loans at the instigation of – er, politicians.
Those banks that got into trouble simply did what banks do when the regulations are inadequate. Certainly punishment was inadequate but who it was that should be punished is not limited to bankers.
”Why we’re all sceptics now.” I disagree. There’s a fine line between being a sceptic and being a cynic, and there are certainly posters on here who fall undeniably into the latter category. It’s important not to get the two mixed up. The cynics stand out a mile, especially when you’ve been around the DS site for a few years and are a regular. They are the ones who appear to be triggered by certain topics, their tone is one of consistent pessimism and they generally emanate negativity. They use the same words and phrases, structuring their comments in the same way, repeatedly. I always get the impression they’re sat at home, stewing in their own bitterness, feeling resentment towards others who take a more lighthearted view and positive attitude to life and all of its inevitable challenges, and they come across as individuals I know I wouldn’t warm to in real life, probably because their entire online aura is one of being completely defeatist and highly critical of others, if not outright hostile, with a penchant for deriding anybody who doesn’t agree with their viewpoint. There’s no variability with the cynics. They’re one-trick ponies, broken records and grinders of… Read more »
Thanks for engaging Mogwai. Hard to have a genuine conversation with someone who hides behind a pseudonym but appreciate your thoughts. Calling people “joy-sucking Blue Meanies” for not sharing your sunny outlook doesn’t exactly scream open-mindedness.
Scepticism isn’t bitterness, it’s what happens when trust is burned too often. If that feels cynical, maybe ask why. Then consider the fact that we get the politicians we deserve!
You can go right ahead and misinterpret my post any which way you like, Clive. I assume you’ll take issue with all the other posters on here that ‘hide behind a pseudonym’…
If I misinterpreted your post, I apologize. Please tell me what I misunderstood.
”Scepticism isn’t bitterness.” Where did I say it was? My entire comment was regarding cynics, due to not wishing to turn my post into an essay but also because I’d no intention of patronizing the majority of people on here who are legitimate sceptics by explaining what the word means. Deliberately misrepresenting what somebody is saying is disingenuous and a lame attempt at one-upmanship. ”Calling people “joy-sucking Blue Meanies” for not sharing your sunny outlook doesn’t exactly scream open-mindedness.” That’s your interpretation of my post and you’re welcome to disagree, challenge or tear it to shreds, but my comments remain. Unlike certain individuals on here I’m not arrogant enough to presume to speak for others, like a self-appointed spokesperson or moderator, so my opinions are based on my observations from posting on here for four years now, and mine alone, but I’m not a ”my way or the highway” type of person. I also don’t think making snarky comments about people hiding behind pseudonyms does you any favours either, because ( should you wish to acknowledge this ) 99% of people on the DS site are using them. I’m only assuming those who are using names are not using their… Read more »
I think scepticism will lead you to being at least a bit cynical. I guess the main thing is to recognize that sometimes people do good things for good reasons.
I suppose many comments I post here reflect a degree of negativity, but I think that’s because this is largely a political forum and I don’t see much positive in the political future. But in my personal life, I can assure you I am having an absolute blast – but it doesn’t make for very interesting copy. My guess is that a lot of people on here are enjoying life much more than their posts necessarily reflect, for similar reasons.
Off roller skating now.
Yes, my scepticism is rapidly turning into cynicism, if it hasn’t already!
In my book a sceptic is someone who asks the question ‘why’. This defined as the mark of intelligence by my long gone physics teacher. A cynic – and I might be held to be one – suspects an ulterior motive behind events. Whether the ulterior motive is good or bad then becomes the subject of debate, but cannot happen if the motives are hidden.
e.g. Reduce speed limits to save the NHS (in Wales) but is it really to push Net Zero by reducing fossil fuel usage, or is it to improve air quality or all of the above? We can never know for sure. So, sceptic or cynic?
Should the book ‘1984‘ be moved from the ‘fiction‘ section into the ‘proven fact’ section?
Non-fiction will do.
Pschologically it’s worse than the Soviet era, at least the citizens knew their systems were totally corrupt. In the past 25 years we’ve discovered that we’ve been completely misled, mistreated and treated like idiots. Blair knew what he was doing when he destroyed our system of governance and the disgusting creature still struts around the world stage preaching his crap. Angry is not strong enough.
At what point, I wonder, did the Soviet citizens understand that their systems were totally corrupt?
Or, for that matter the Cubans, the Argentinians, the Angolans, the Haitians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the… well you get the point.
Where do you suppose we are in that arc, and what is the common denominator in their corruption?
in Central Europe I think most people knew straight away. Some who were communists and on the corrupt socialist slippery pole were beneficiaries and celebrated their supposed freedoms, in reality the freedom to persecute. But I do know from good friends who lived in those times that it was bad and people lived in fear, were very poor unless they were functionaries of the state. There is a very good Czech film called “In the Shadows” it has English subtitles and well worth watching if you can find it. I do know people whose friends caused problems by simply complaining and then disappeared without trace, quite literally. They were scared to utter a word because they would have suffered the same fate. When systems break down some people are convinced that everything is ok, they just follow and do their masters bidding. The authorities and their functionaries are now engaged in intimidatory tactics very similar to what the Socialists did in that period. So we are in that place now because people are scared to talk in case they are held, generally as a warning to others not to step out of line. But in my opinion it’s necessary to… Read more »
I would add that in the film I mentioned, “In the Shadows”, there is one part where the government devalued the currency, people were throwing worthless money out of the window and shouting something like “they’ve done it”.
This is the reality, they simply don’t care and will take control using any method they can. Be warned this is reality, the film is fictional but it’s based on solid reality.
And the system is slowly tightening the technological net around us, making it more difficult to circumvent any system…
It does make me wonder whether the so called leak was a deliberate act by someone who has infiltrated the MOD. Let’s face it the DEI nonsense has been embraced by our entire political class so there is no knowing what is likely to happen.
The government/s have been far too willing to let in millions of people and allow mass illegal immigration, so there is no way to tell whether the system has been infiltrated. My estimate is that it has been and it’s a deliberate act by the government to undermine the trust so that they can engage in even more intimidation of the people.
“When government fears the people, we have liberty. When the people fear the government, we have tyranny”. Thomas Jefferson (I think!)
thank you. A beautiful summary of life today.
“What changed?”
Blair …. and the deliberate deconstruction of our Constitution.
Excellent article and so on point, can trust be regained? , personally no, I dont trust the media, the government, the NHS, anything and anyone, apart from my partner.
Not sure what the Palestinian / Israeli question has to do with, for example, Net Zero. It seems to be assumed that if you’re sceptical of the global warming narrative then you are also someone who supports the Israeli govt in all that they do. It seems that the Daily Sceptic has become tribal and no longer simply sceptical and questioning, the reason I started originally to support it during lockdown. Now it has started to take a “side” on certain issues and it’s predictable which side it will be on most political issues. I would rather it was a magazine that was simply sceptical and questioning with regard to everything that governments, of whatever political stripe, might want us to believe.
You can find all that on the BBC.
If St Greta believes something, that’s a very good indicator for me to mistrust.
Perhaps you forget but the Gaza / Palestine supporters were out in force and celebrating before Israel had even responded.
I for one think Israel has a right to respond, and I don’t take what we hear in the news at face value. Hamas are as evil as they come and they deserve destruction. Their propaganda is being lapped up by the credulous.
We should all be sceptical on these topics. Don’t leave just because you disagree with someone. Echo chambers help no one.
So I’m staying out of the Israel argument and focusing my ire on the government supposedly running this country.
I think more people are getting their information from the various blogs and websites that have evolved over the last decade or so, many of them as a response to CoVid, attacks on freedom, climate change and the sheer mediocrity of what passes for those in Government, together with a well-developed mistrust of the usual media outlets.
Many sources on the web are well informed, well-reasoned and can be cross-checked. It’s easy enough to filter out the loonies.
All round it is a much more balanced, varied and informative source than the mainstream media all singing from the same hymn-sheet handed them by “Government” and “Authority” and “The Science”.