2020-07-04

Did Leicester need to be locked-down – or did testing panic the government?

What has happened to the city shows that, if you don’t want to be locked down, try not to get tested

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/04/did-leicester-need-locked-down-did-testing-panic-government/

A couple of members of the Cabinet are reported to have even gone so far as to demand that the city be closed off with roadblocks.
But what if it is all an illusion – the rise in recorded cases purely a result of more people being tested? A report by Public Health England isn’t sure, concluding: “Evidence for the scale of the outbreak is limited and may, in part, be artefactually related to growth in availability of testing.” The report revealed that the rise in cases was purely down to “Pillar 2” tests – tests carried out in the community, which have increased rapidly in recent weeks. In Leicester, it transpires, four mobile testing units have been deployed.

………………….

The perverse moral of the Leicester story is that, unless you want to be locked down, try not to get tested. The more people in your town who get tested, the more confirmed cases there will be and the more likely the Government will panic and close you down. The people of Leicester are being punished for faithfully trooping into those mobile testing units.

Britain’s Leicester lockdown is an unjustifiable travesty, based on shoddy figures and a bungled report

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/493770-leicester-lockdown-wrong-data/

Key bits
………………
The lockdown was not based on a report , but rather the whisperings and rumours surrounding a report, which was released only on Wednesday evening. This report is by Public Health England – specifically a crack department of people who have given themselves the spiffy name Rapid Investigation Team, as if they are Power Rangers in spectacles.

These boffins got worried when they expected testing over a 10-day period in Leicester to reveal 582 infections, but – shock horror! – 711 were recorded. Hardly a spike.
………………….
It’s getting to the point where I’m having to cite Professor Sunetra Gupta in every article, and her statement (of what should be the obvious) that case numbers are too dependent on the level of testing to be relevant, and only the number of Covid-19 deaths should be important.
………….
Back to the report, which states “The rise in pillar 2 diagnoses is probably linked, in part, to the availability of testing to the general public … rather than a true increase in the number of new infections occurring.” In other words, plain English ones, this is all bunkum, because what’s increasing is the number of tests and not the true level of infections. Someone should tell Public Health England that the number of positive Covid-19 tests bears only the flimsiest of relations to public health.
…………………..

………………………………………..
In conclusion, there was patently no cause to lock down the people of Leicester, just as previously there was no real cause to lock down Britain, unless you wanted to kill more people through a deep and lasting recession than Covid-19 ever will.
As Mr Lari has pronounced , Leicester is “a whole city locked down on wrong data” , and the only two possible reasons for that are gross incompetence or a nefarious ulterior motive. Perhaps we’ll be able to deduce which by whether we see a spate of sackings as a result of this latest omnishambles. And I know who I’d start with, Prime Minister.

PHE certainly has a lot to answer for – and the pill*ck whose bright idea it was!

Andrew Lansley

That’s a dirty word (or two).

A more accurate headline …

Did Leicester need to be locked-down – or did testing panic the government – or did the government plan it this way ?

John,
Leicester has been made an example of . . . . .

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/03/police-and-health-officials-visit-garment-factories-in-leicester

Or a different kind of threat?

Absolutely. I merely pointed out that neither option in the Tele’s headline (that you posted) was, imho, the true one.

Exactly.

Do not.
Get tested.
Ever.

Don’t get a test. Protect your community. Screw Hancock.

((With a chainsaw))

Wouldn’t fancy him. Even with a nappy on both ends of him.
Yeeeeuch.

Yeah, but if I add “figuratively” it’s just not as snappy. You’re the wordsmith ‘round here.

Do not
Have a
Vaccine
Ever

A panicking government? Bit of a pattern forming here.

I’m hoping they recognise how bright we really all are and actually this REALLY IS why they’re doing it [“please for goodness sake DON’T get tested”] but they do need to show, however, another story to the rest of the world. Is that way too optimistic?

Elderly Florida Man Charged With Committing Aggravated Battery To Maintain Social Distancing

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article243927527.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMP5XYEDjw8

Wokeness: the return of Medieval madness

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/29/wokeness-the-return-of-medieval-madness/

Come on Spiked. That’s harsh on the medieval!

More police to patrol Leicester this weekend than on New Year’s Eve

https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-07-03/more-police-in-leicester-this-weekend-than-new-years-eve-to-ensure-pubs-stay-closed

Sounds like they knew they were provoking trouble when they singled out Leicester for punishment!

When I heard Bradford and Oldham might be next in line to be re-imprisoned, I did feel a sense that they were ‘poking with a big stick’ to try and agitate the communities in those towns….

The communities that have paid no attention to lockdown whatsoever??? While most of us have been very sensible….

Are you being funny or have you simply come to the wrong place?

Far, far higher numbers of police than were assigned to any city in the midlands or north to investigate the grooming gangs

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-07-03/uks-first-purpose-built-socially-distanced-restaurant-to-open-as-englands-lockdown-eases

UK’s first purpose-built socially distanced restaurant to open | ITV News

Oh dear, baby Grant is back…..

Dip his dummy in golden syrup snd shove it in his gob, it works with some of them.

Try later, he/it’s a bit giddy at the moment…..

Honestly Grant – please have a point. So far, as far as I can tell you’re just annoyed that anybody dares to disagree with Nicola Sturgeon. You’re not going to persuade anyone by coming in here and calling us all crackpots. Please feel free to go somewhere else and tell them we’re all crackpots instead.

Could you kindly pull
Your bottom lip over your forehead and swallow?

Cancelling history: Red Guards and philistines are running riot across the Western world

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/cancelling-history-red-guards-and-philistines-are-running-riot-across-the-western-world/

Piers Morgan slammed for hypocrisy after blasting pubs opening but supporting son’s BLM protest

 https://www.rt.com/uk/493738-piers-morgan-hypocrisy-son-blm-protest/

Nobhead.

I presume you mean Piers Morgan.

7 police officers injured breaking up illegal London rave as revelers pelt cops with bottles, forcing them to retreat (VIDEOS)

https://www.rt.com/uk/493788-police-attacked-london-rave-havelock/

The scene: Hyde Park, man found sticking blu tac to the railings.

Man 1: Why are you sticking blu tac to the railings?
Man 2: To keep the crocodiles away.
Man 1: But there are no crocodiles in the park?
Man 2: Shows you how effective it is.

Frustratingly many of my conversations with lockdown fundamentalists seem to take this form.

You sound to have had a good day Toby. Thanks for giving us the account by Guy de la Bédoyère. Absolutely brilliant!

Seconded. Guy is extraodinary my empty lonely home rattled to the sound of laughter at this

“Crawford interviewed a nurse who was keen to warn her “that a lot of people are going to die being ignorant and ignorance is never a defence… and they’re going to be an example to the rest of the country” as well as countries like Britain. “If they don’t take this serious [sic] they’re gonna die… point blank.” Then bizarrely the nurse added “and they’re gone get sick”, but presumably not necessarily in that order prior to the inevitable death she was promising,”

I saw the same Crawford fear-tale, Guy’s excellent colourful descriptions do not do it a disservice. Accurately dismembered. Thank you Guy.

Reminds me of Lasaraleen in The Horse and his Boy : ‘Anybody I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that kept on bread and water for six weeks’.

Scottish Nationalists at Scottish/English border.

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/stay-fk-away-convoy-scottish-nationalists-attempt-blockade-english-border-2904148

The Scottish warm welcome seems to be forgotten in corona panic. Irrational irrationals acting irrationally. The government destabilising is working.

I’m afraid that anyone who does normal stuff (like cross the border from England to Scotland, or go to the pub) is going to have to get used to being accused of spreading the plague.

I mentioned in a previous post we have a circulating story of 7 recent cases in a local town (Northern Scotland) being due to ‘English Contractors’.
I can see where this is going, and it is very concerning.

I hope Leicester doesn’t erupt into civil disobedience. This will only play into the hands of that bagfull of arseholes.

Civil disobedience is not to be ruled out and will likely become increasingly necessary as the government tries to impose further baseless lockdowns. What isn’t needed is violence.

I notice that the article mentions some calls on the Sturgeon to condemn these energúmenos (Spanish word, meaning roughly ‘ nasty aggressive git possessed by a devil’, no English equivalent).
Did she?

I haven’t seen anything to that effect.

Itis a wait ‘n’ see… damning in itself the way I look at these things.

Sturgeon might be trimming her moustache – it is Saturday. Or doing other stuff.

The English equivalent is sturgeon.

Sadly typical of the mindset of the average SNP voter, it seems. With her talk of closing the border or imposing quarantine on visitors from England the Dear Leader is egging these people on. She has clearly forgotten that Scotland has (or had) a tourism industry…

And while we’re on the subject of the SNPeople’s Republic, a strange think happened at the Post Office today. I went in to buy some Euros, only to be told that they weren’t allowed to sell me any. Is this part of Kim-Jong Nik’s plan to hold us all hostage until we agree to vote for independence?

If anyone is planning a tunnel under the border, let me know a.s.a.p.

It’s not a Nazi comparison. It’s a North Korea comparison!

Oh dear Grant, me thinks it’s you that’s retarded….

Was just thinking grant isn’t out tonight… I bet grant is miffed in Scotland somewhere. Is it raining where you are grant?

The experience I have is SNP voters will condemn these people at the border/but without a fullstop go on to say the actions are completely right in the sense that English men and women deserve it. And anyway Nicola is doing great and is doing much better than Boris. Then, after me pointing out English men and women have no say on what goes on, and a tussle back and forth about how Westminster not the people do bad things, the conversation will end. To be replayed next time, no matter what subject sparks it.

I’m sure other SNP voters must discourse more broadly but not those I meet.

I think this is because nationalism is based on emotion, rather than reason. It’s politics as a substitute for religion. What grates with me is that the spectacular achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment, when Edinburgh was the ‘Athens of the North’, came about because of the Union. Prior to that the Scots had spent all of their time fighting the English, or each other, to the neglect of everything else. Unfortunately, that seems to be the SNP’s vision for the future…

Interesting to read. I think you are right about the cult-like aspect, this does come through in conversation.

You are doing very well to discern any future plan. In my view the nationalist cause is doomed because of the chronic lack of diversity any current future prospects hold. An SNP police state. Perhaps, sympathetically to the conundrum of acheiving independence one party must unify the votes. But that is a hell of a scary prospect given the intellectual vacuum of the SNP, the Murrell household.

There is not a depth of talent shown by the ‘leadership’ I would like to see going into a situation of self government.

Sorry, off page topic.

Good point!

I was in the Highlands of Scotland during the in/out referendum of 2014, It was appalling to see out “in” voters got treated, most we spoke to would not admit in public that they wanted to remain within the union.

We stayed in a village on the night of the vote, during Wednesday night before the vote, “YES” was painted on the roads in the village at various points, in letters approx. 1M tall, every lamppost in the village also got a “Yes” poster. Just to push to point on on voting day.

The one house which had a “no” poster on a pole in the garden was trashed on the Wednesday night / Thursday morning. By trashed they uprooted every plant & flower, and trampled the garden. throwing the flowers etc. into the road.

I am sure some SNP voters are much nicer.

It was indeed as you say. Yes graffiti up, No posters and signs torn down. There is a noticable difference in noise between the two sides.

For the record still no condeming comment from sturgeon about the anti border crossing demonstration earlier.

It’s Saturday.She’s probably having her hair done.

Hence the surprise when the vote went against. The one place they couldn’t terrorise people was in the voting booths.
I expect the Sturgeon has fixed that by now.

A known issue in Scotland is the quiet unionist, like the quiet Conservative when there are lots of SJWs about.
We know most Natzis are rabid mouthbreathers who think the world own them a living so the rational take the low conflict route and wait for the privacy of the polling booth.

Does the SNP’s knuckle-dragging faction not realise that Berwick is the commercial centre for the east side of Berwickshire and that much of the movement across the border is by Scottish Borderers. Of course the clue is in the names Berwick and Berwickshire but perhaps that’s a bit too complicated for them.

The Spiteful Nannying Party will do anything to attempt distraction from their own incompetence.
Every bit of govt they are allowed to mismanage performs worse than in England.
Scottish NHS – worse than England.
Scottish Public Health – worse performance.
The same is true of trsansport education police fire etc etc.
The BBC in Glasgow is complicit in the Natzi worldview, never asking awkward questions about new ferry’s being built for example.

New Zealanders worry about cost of beating coronavirus

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-zealanders-worry-about-cost-of-beating-coronavirus-qk6pvjqfl
…………………………
“Is New Zealand prepared to hold itself in its state of near total isolation for the indefinite future?” asked the paper, written by Ms Clark, Sir Peter Gluckman, the country’s former chief science adviser, and Rob Fyfe, the former Air New Zealand head.
“While we pin our hopes on a vaccine, it could be much further away than the hype suggests. Can we afford to wait out another year, two years or even more in almost total physical isolation? And at what cost? This is not just affecting tourism and export education but also the many ways in which New Zealand projects and leverages its place in the world.
“At what point will New Zealand accept less than absolute elimination [of the coronavirus]?”

Easily in but not easily out, as the lobster said in the lobster pot.

I have a couple of friends in New Zealand. They are leftie liberals (like me before all this started) so their reaction a couple of weeks ago to the people coming into the country who were then given exemptions to leave their quarantine hotels and potentially spread the virus, was quite shocking. They were fully supportive of all people coming into the country being guarded by the army, in barracks, at gun point. I never expected those sort of sentiments to come out of their mouths. They want the borders closed indefinitely and don’t care about tourism or business – they can be self sufficient for as long as needed. They are truly terrified.

Why do you choose this site to pollute Grant? Run off and infest the Beano….

I protest. The Beano was a jolly good comic.

AFAIK, the NZ bedwetters intend to close the borders for at least 5 years or until a vaccine is proven.
After all if it saves one life.

The notion that a populace used to frequent earthquakes is incapable of rational relative risk appraisal is bizarre.

‘Anti-vaxx’ influence means up to half may not take coronavirus vaccine

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/anti-vaxx-influence-means-half-may-not-take-coronavirus-vaccine/

An aside: Where does ‘vaxx’ come from shouldn’t it be ‘vacc’? The term ‘double cross’ is derived from the roman numerals ‘XX’.

American term Anti- vaxxers

Probably like the ‘fridge’ abbreviation for refrigerators: note the added d.

How many people are going to buy a frig?

A vaccine against the deadly virus that has swept the globe….

Get a grip!

Professor Heidi Larson, anthropologist and director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said…

Is it me or is that a dubious/ominous job title?”

It is probable that even if a high quality vaccine is available, the number of people who get voluntarily vaccinated in Czechia will be rather low, which is not sufficient to develop herd immunity,” he warned.

Thank you but people are quite capable of developing herd immunity by themselves.

She’s a very special one –

Founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, Heidi Larson, says that questioning vaccines is Hate Crime !

Thing is grant. You sound about as grown up and mature as me. I mean to say your comments make you sound foolish and slightly unwise or not bright. I think I get away with it because I say things with reason and obvious thought.

You seem slightly behind ghe standard. Have you had a really tough few months and perhaps you too are a victim of the lockdown ? Are you well grant?

No, Grant is just a moron. it gives it/he a h*rd on to come here and shriek a bit of abuse in perfect anonymity…it’s probably being bullied at school.

And GrantM is a 2 year old man-child…

Our GrantM sounds like he’s desperately flailing around trying to secure a knock out punch, whilst realising his whole reality is disappearing around him as the deadly mist of Corona evaporates before his eyes…

Or he/she/it is a piss-poor bot….

John Carpenter wrote a book about The Thing.

Are you actually Bill Gates Grant?

I think its best to describe the ‘anti vaxx’ movement the same as pro choice. I am not against vaccines or people that will be first in line for the c19 one. However i believe there are better ways to protect myself than being exposed to an infection grown on another animal and then injected into me.
Think about that for moment you take a vaccine to avoid the same infection. It just doesn’t make sense to me, wouldn’t being healthy to fight infections when nature intends make more sense?

If you remove the fear of “but what happens if you don’t get the vaccine” which plays into the same safe programming as “we need to lock down to protect everyone”. Its just blatant guilt tripping by powers that have an interest in you choosing what they want. If someone tells a human being at a cross road “go this way”, “its safer”, more than likely they will choose the safe road, its human nature.

Apart from the people on this site because they will know that’s its Bill Gates

Sky News: Nigel Farage appears to break quarantine rules with pub photo after US trip

https://news.sky.com/story/nigel-farage-appears-to-break-quarantine-rules-with-pub-photo-after-us-trip-12020998

“ There are calls for an investigation ,,,,,” says sky. but from who? it doesnt say. maybe the reporters mother in law….. but the implication is that people are concerned that Farage shortened his quarantine by 7.1%

just seen below …. Davey making a cheap political point

That’s great publicity! Hopefully others will follow Farage’s example!

According to Nigel, he had a test and it was negative!

But remember, just because the test is negative doesn’t mean you don’t have CV19.

Just as, if it’s positive it doesn’t mean that you do.

Did we need another reason not to vote for the LibDems? Well, no, but here’s one anyway.

“ Ed Davey, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, reported Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage to Kent Police for having a pint in a pub on Saturday.” By Davey’s calculations Nigel should still have been in quarantine. For goodness sake.[source: Breitbart]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-53293055?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/coronavirus&link_location=live-reporting-story

Dentist Leitch at it again.

Coercive control in action from an unelected man prostituing his profession for political end.

Honestly, why would anyone pay attention to him for any reason other than advice on root canals, of which he’s about as interesting?

The SNP agenda of demonising England and the English is working, it would seem.

Been going on for years.Remember Alex Salmond’s thugs terrorising people before the last independence referendum?

SNP thugs are now trying to stop cars at the border on the A1. Silence from Sturgeon, of course.

I would take anything that Alex Crawford says with, not just a pinch of salt, but the entire salt factory! Last year she did a report on how climate change (man made of course) meant that the levels of the Zambezi river in Zambia were at their lowest level for 25 years. Her video showed the mighty river reduced to a mere trickle. However, if she had just taken her camera around the corner and crossed over the bridge into Zimbabwe, she would have seen a pretty impressive volume of water still tumbling over the Victoria falls, sending up a plume of spray that could be seen for miles around.
We know because we were there just days before her report in October-the dry season!

An inconvenient truth, as they say!

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/dec/12/alex-crawford-scarred-seeing-death

Should explain her Reports . . .. .

She was also in the lead telling us that the so called “Arab Spring” was a genuine democratic revolution as opposed to a push for power by the pro-Caliphate MBrotherhood

It might of been a conspiracy to mislead…

I hadn’t realised that her report on the Victoria falls had caused such a furore. There were a number of articles and letters in African papers taking her to task and accusing her of spreading fake news. Bookings were cancelled as a result of her report, in an area which relies greatly on tourism for income and employment.
Obviously her Covid report isn’t the first time she’s been economical with the truth!

I visited the pretty Northumberland village of Corbridge this afternoon in search of a tea shop. Few open and those that were offered take away only. So I didn’t bother and went instead to the tourist shops to make a purchase of something I didn’t need to support them. All the shops were festooned with signs not to enter unless you wish to make a purchase, don’t pick items up, two customers at a time. I gave up, on the way back to the car I passed a massive Amazon Prime delivery van delivering to a local. Presumably the irony will be lost on the burghers of Corbridge who don’t understand that to make discretionary purchases one has to be wooed not dragooned.

This person has been tweeting his/her experience in various pubs. Worth a read and many comments were highly entertaining:

https://twitter.com/EndUKLockdown1

Pub 3 sounds ok! Shows it can be done.

Yes. And I think it will be similar to the supermarkets in the sense that one pub in a chain will not be representative of others, common sense or ridiculous rules will be entirely down to the particular manager of the premises.

Did you see this on the same account?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1279360417903542273
It all sounds very phony and rehearsed. Presume it was recorded pre-Ferguson.
Boris looks huge, no wonder he was ill!

However, that makes me wonder how he’s managed to get fitted for his nice new bespoke size smaller suit while in lockdown!

Agree and looks like even within a chain like Weatherspoons it varies from pub to pub.

Just spotted this. Raises a lot of interesting points (sorry, paywall):
ONS data released last month showed that doctors and nurses did not have higher rates of death involving Covid-19 compared to the rate among the wider population of the same age and sex.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/03/nhs-cleaners-porters-coronavirus-super-spreaders-hospitals-data/

Sir John Bell, who oversees the Government’s antibody testing programme , said domiciliary workers in some hospitals were found to have “sky-high” levels of antibodies compared to doctors and nurses who treated patients in intensive care.

Do you think maybe low income and associated lifestyle might have something to do with this?

People working in elementary jobs faced the greatest risk. Of those, there were more security guard deaths than in any other profession at 74.0 per 100,000, or 104 deaths. The data showed that, compared with the wider rate among people of the same sex, those working in the lowest-skilled occupations had the highest rate of death.
“These data are already prompting hospitals to think differently about who might be most at risk from coronavirus,” Sir John said. “We mustn’t forget about valued NHS staff just because they’re not on the front line.”

So much for all those heroes!

Dutch government states COVID-19 IFR is between 0.32 and 1.00%

On 25 June 2020 the Dutch minister for Health, de Jonge, gave an answer to a set of questions of the PVV party. Question 11 was: What is the IFR in the Netherlands? The official answer was:
“The infection mortality rate was calculated at 0.32-1.00%, when calculating 0.32% the registered deaths (underestimation) and the Pienter-corona study were used. The excess mortality (possible overestimation) and the Sanquin study were used to calculate 1.00%.”

So by using official Dutch statistics the worst they now could come up with was a range of between 0.32 and 1%. That is still probably way too high, but note that the lower end is already much lower than the previous lower number, which was approx. 0.6%.

That last number was based on the assumption that there had been approx. 1 million COVID-19 cases in the Netherlands already (=the same Sanquin study finding mentioned in the answer), with 6100 registered deaths. So the lower range has already been cut by 50% in quite a short period of time.

So, down to 0.32 and counting. Oddly enough however the special corona law is still being pushed by the government…

Another important fact is that the RIVM, the Dutch national version of say PHE, stated on 4 February 2020 that the IFR for the 2017-2018 flu season had been 1% in the Netherlands. That means that even at the current official high end (from the answer to question 11) of the range the Dutch COVID-19 IFR is already within the range of a nasty flu season.

So essentially the Dutch government has already admitted that COVID-19 is pretty much as deadly as a nasty flue! (Remember when you were not allowed to say that or else baby seals uh I mean grandmothers would die? Well, in the Netherlands now we can!)

Original Dutch and source:
Vraag 11.
Wat is in Nederland de Infection Fatality Rate (het aantal doden gerelateerd aan het aantal besmettingen)?
Antwoord 11.
De infection mortality rate is berekend op 0.32-1.00%, waarbij bij het berekenen van 0.32% gebruik is gemaakt van de geregistreerde doden (onderschatting) en het Pienter-corona onderzoek. Voor het berekenen van 1.00% is gebruik gemaakt van de oversterfte (mogelijk overschatting) en het Sanquin onderzoek.

Link to original file as supplied by ministry to Dutch parliament: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/documenten/kamerstukken/2020/06/25/beantwoording-kamervragen-over-het-artikel-helpt-ventileren-tegen-corona-nederland-negeert-duits-advies-frisse-lucht/beantwoording-kamervragen-over-het-artikel-helpt-ventileren-tegen-corona-nederland-negeert-duits-advies-frisse-lucht.pdf

Interesting. CDC IFR currently 0.4.

Back in mid-May, the Swedish epidemiologist Johan Giesecke was interviewed by Sky News. He was challenged on his IFR assertion as being ‘like flu’ (0.12 – 0.2).

He said: no, that was wrong, it’s higher, more like 0. 4.

In the words of the song: Reasons to be cheerful, Part 3…

It is “interesting” (but I have more negative terms for that…) to see how governments are actually publishing more and more data and numbers showing not only that the COVID-19 IFR is many times lower than previously stated but also that the COVID-19 IFR is probably even lower than the 2017-2018 flu.

You’d think that governments would be very happy about that: “Phew, well, that looked bad for a moment, but great news, not much to fear any longer. Yeah, baby, yeah! Rock and roll! Common people, let’s undo the damage, go back to work, undo the regulations, we’ve surviiiiiiiiived!” But nothing of that, not at all.

It is as if our governments crave bad news. But at the same time they publish these data themselves. Which is why I still believe in the incompetency theory and not a conspiracy theory: a competent but evil government would have falsified the data to show this was the end of times or have published no data at all (and make up an excuse for that), while a competent but benign government would have not been stuck in this to begin with (or else would now have apologized for making a mistake). But fools simply stumble forwards…

Do we like Vernon Coleman, I don’t know anymore, I’ve been to ‘spoons….

https://youtu.be/IRmIY9oWRP8

What’s your problem with him?

I have no problem with him, I’ve never come across him before in my professional heathcare career.

I sort of know the name, but I tend to not use Google with controversial subjects because they doctor the truth.

Most people use the internet to find out ‘facts’ and most people don’t own or read books anymore. My knowledge of history and heathcare is from books or experience.

I tend trust people here, what’s his providence/history?

He’s great! Check out his other videos. He knows his stuff. Former GP. Been researching this stuff for years.
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVa8maJb5JU&list=PL1R4LBpVXfdcSRZlbnr98zDDngufWZaV0&index=41&t=0s

Hes a demented old coot who got blacklisted and disgraced long ago and like a charlatan he is using the pandemic to spread lies and fear to try and get back into the spotlight. He’s a fraud who needs help bigtime

He is (or used to be) a tad litigious, Grant. How good is your vpn ?

Please. He can’t spell VPN.

“He’s a fraud who needs help bigtime” Grant, welcome back!!!!

I am fond of the term old coot – i hope one day to rile some young whippersnapper up so bad that they expel air from their mouth making the sounds “you old coot!” As I work on getting older I am fashioning and honing my personality so that one day I too will be an old coot! Sadly I’m too young at present and be called “coot!” is simply is not the same.

Ah, GrantM, if I met you, I would embrace you and help you to go to sleep, night, night

You’ve just made everyone on here want to believe everything he says!

He is pretty open in his videos about his history. 1970s first book. His website too holds a lot of info.

As a GP he was in trouble for writing inaccurate sick notes – hiding reason for sickness (pregnancy privacy from employers). A year later that aspect taken from the sick note for the precise reasons he was writing inaccurately.
He took himself off register in disgust at some point. Has been an author since.
He was on mainstream as expert guest but he says they stopped calling him since he is able to win debates in under two minutes, not the pharmacutical company way.

For wiw personally I highly rate him, based on gut instinct and my level of intelligence. Plus he says Monsanto is worst company in the world which is okay by me.

It will be nice to hear the professional view from others.

Former GP who resigned because of the control of medicine by the drug companies, and the way he wrote sick notes to protect his patients, and became a whistle-blower. Slightly eccentric but very straightforward and seems to know his stuff. Obviously very near the truth at times because his videos are often removed by the censors.

You’d do well to find someone who’s written more books than Dr VC.

Thanks all

Who’s going to pay for this? Business expenses – ie consumer ultimately pays?
And what about the staff who’ll be laid off? This is hardly a solution!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/04/hotel-buffets-make-way-private-dining-spaces-plans-address-hygiene/

Hotel buffets are being phased out under major revamps to address hygiene concerns, with guests given private dining rooms in their rooms instead….

Insiders say businesses are now planning a complete revamp of in-room facilities, which could see guests order food from their beds via an app and delivered by an android to avoid human contact….

Rooms will be redesigned so they can be changed around during the day to accommodate meal times and then tables and chairs packed away or removed entirely by staff, robotic or human, in preparation for sleep.

Ugh!!

That’s going to be the death of the hotel industry. Of course this will be all expensive so the costs will be passed on to the customer which means high prices and it sounds like a dystopian and soul destroying experience.

There is a reason why buffets are popular – they allow people to have and to try a variety of dishes and there’s also the social aspect of it all not to mention people watching and wondering what are they having? Ooohh….I’ll try that on my next trip to the buffet.

It’s the whole experience of dining which is different from the usual ala carte and table service.

Jesus wept.

For people living out of a suitcase for work purposes, it’s going to make the experience very isolated. It’s positively alienating.

If they really think they need to do all this for a sustainable future, that’s longterm thinking for a future I’m not liking the sound of!

Are they really so scared of a bad cold virus, or do they know something we have yet to find out about?

I’m normally (old normal) on the road for work every other week and in a hotel room for a couple of nights. I can’t say I’m particularly interested in meeting people and I usually eat in the hotel restaurant specifically because it’s the least awkward place to sit if you’re eating on your own. But I do enjoy spending an hour or so reading a book in the hotel bar and ordering beers up to my room would be nothing like the same.

We really need to get back to actual normal. This stuff is just nonsense.

Sitting alone in a hotel restaurant is not unusual. And you are still part of the world as it goes on around you.
Being incarcerated in your room and served by robots is something else entirely!

Agree. I have traveled on my own at various times mostly for work or study purposes and while I have no qualms about eating on my own, I like people watching and even making small talk with the waiter or even the manager. The experience above will be very depressing.

It’s rather alarming that all because of a bad cold virus the solutions bandied about are designed to drive humanity apart and reduce human interaction further. Why? There’s something rather dodgy about the whole thing..

Well said. The more of thse adaptations we see the further we get from this being an accident by virus.

In my view. This is planned, a coldly planned changing of our lives, brought in by the excuse of the virus.

I do not say the virus was planned – but planned for. This whole response waiting developed and in the wings for such a time as now.

These sort of proposals is what feeds into conspiracy theories and you know that we are living in strange times when even sane people think they’re plausible.

Planned………look up your nearest looney bin and check yourself in it ASAP

So. You live in Scotland and you are grumpy. What else do you have to say for yourself?

A ‘grumpy numpty’

No, just a troll.

Exactly!

When I am on holiday I don’t have a big meal at lunchtime to save money and have more time for attractions and have a big meal in the evening. A breakfast buffet where I can eat as much as I want helps to fill me so that I don’t need a big lunch.

Lockdown and post lockdown measures it seems are designed to prevent interaction between people. Under lockdown venues where people socialize such as pubs, restaurants, concerts, festivals and theatres have been closed. Workers are encouraged to work from home which prevents workers interacting with each other. Until recently we couldn’t meet people outside our households and there are still restrictions in place. In room meals discourages guest interacting with each other in hotels.

The utter stupidity of this is unreal. All we need to do is go back to normal as it was before. If we have a second wave then we go back to being locked down again, we have lost nothing really as we are still locked down. If there isn’t a second wave then happy days and we continue as normal.

I don’t see why the experts aren’t suggesting this, this complete aversion to any risk at all is so stupid, and isn’t even risk averse as still there is significant non COVID-19 deaths happening due to reduced NHS services and people still too scared to visit the hospitals.

But it’s clear from the stats that the threat is completely over. What are they really preparing for?

Yes, and why are they still gagging the doctors and the media. What’s gets me is that there is no dissent from any politicians, all through Brexit there was multiple leaks and dissenting voices, yet those on all sides are not speaking out at all.

It is all very worrying.

Prepping ? They’ve got what they want, now they are focussed on trying to preserve it.

I think hotel windows were designed for a lot of that to be slung through.

The guys actioning this kind of expenditure need to be in some loop of confidence to be installing reworked ‘experiences’.

They need to know
A) things are never going back.
B) people are going to adapt to their inventions.

The variable I see they do not control is that people might not react to such contrived bullsh*t as intended.

There’s a lot of arrogant control in this.

Immortality beckons ! The chance to be the first person in history to proposition, or assault, a robot or android doing room service.

Rather than presenting data in a table on Twitter, we will direct you to our website when it is updated each day with a more detailed dataset:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public

Conveniently opaque?

624 positive tests out of 284,000. Mostly in pillar 2 (I hate myself a little for using that term) and so not sick enough for hospital. 163 positives in hospital (NB – not necessarily in hospital for COVID symptoms, although apparently you’re only allowed to go to hospital nowadays if you have COVID symptoms or you have a baby coming out of you).

This is beyond a joke now, surely? Why can’t people see that?

What are you missing matt? I ask provocatively!

Why are the safe guarding officials letting this be? Where are the MPs and the Lords? Where are the police even protecting our freedoms, our traditions, our ways of life?

Agendas, agendas (and each of the organs you mention have their own agenda).

While the people are supine and the press indulges itself in an orgy of fear every day, none of the rest will do anything. My point was why aren’t _more people_ paying more attention? Take our dear friend GrantM. “Genuine risks”; “legit scared”. This is a moron, sorry, person, who has actually bothered to come here (albeit in an effort to be irritating). If this is the most important event in most people’s lives to date – and lets be honest, it’s hard to imagine anything else being front and centre – why the hell aren’t they paying more attention?

It is a darn good question. It would be lovely if none skeptics would engage in debate to explain their side of things.

I pick up a sense mr and mrs J Public do have critical thinking skills, finely tuned at that, but the media blackout and lack of internet skills (internet is just facebook right?) mean that accessing information and opinion to feed their critical faculties isn’t happening.

Short conversations with people has produce my thinking here. People have mostly scceoted they know little, and better safe than sorry logic takes them along with thr government line.

It’s a big ask for some without scientific understanding to become sherlock and work the propaganda out when they are living through extraordinarily stressful days.

Everyone is onboard with the politicians lying to us, thats a given. But how and why some people cannot get at.

A 3 part question I’d like to ask Whitty et al in public:
– taking into account the circulation of a new coronavirus, am I more likely to contract a viral infection (any viral infection) tomorrow than I was on 6th July 2019, if I go about my daily business as normal?
– given the answer above, have the risks of death increased measurably for the average person in this country today as compared to the same time last year?
– preempting the answers to both questions being “no” or “nearly no”, why are we expected to behave as if our personal risk is now unmanageable?

I have a rough stab at an answer to the second question, by the way. The peak of deaths was on 8th April, during week ending 12th April. Total excess deaths, compared to the 5 year average that week were a little over 12,000. Assuming that this means that there was a day 4 weeks earlier when the virus was most freely circulating, along with all of the other viruses in the world and a UK population of 67,000,000, this suggests that when the outbreak was at its worst, on any given day, the average individual’s risk of contracting a viral infection that would cause or contribute to their death increased by around 0.000025%.

Do you know, personally I’m quite comfortable incorporating that increase in risk into my life and taking it in my stride.

(NB – That’s very rough maths and I’m sure that someone can find problems with it. All I’ve done is divide weekly excess deaths by 7 and then take that as a percentage of the population)

Hum-dingers Matt.

– taking into account the circulation of a new coronavirus, am I more likely to contract a viral infection (any viral infection) tomorrow than I was on 6th July 2019, if I go about my daily business as normal?

No.

I wonder if Witty C may talk to you along the lines of this particular cronona virus isn’t going to kill you, but it is ~likely
~ it *will* transfer from you eventually to a vulnerable person who it *will* kill.

These numbers are so infinitesimally small as you say I find it incomprehensible Witty C isn’t calling time on this.

The ‘indenpendent SAGE’ group this morning are advocating for covid-zero in UK. That very statement has me thinking who this group are dependent on. There’s a clever behavioural ploy if both SAGE groups are being handled by same apparatus, playing off each other.

Thanks for your thoughtfulness matt, you really add to my understanding.

By the way, I missed this, but was apparently in an article in the DT in the last few days.

GOSH has reported a 1000% increase in admissions for non-accidental injuries in the last 3 months.

Just stop and think about that for a minute and then look me in the face and tell me that lockdown was worthwhile because it meant your granny might live a few months longer.

I think the reason the average person isn’t paying attention to the sceptic case is a straightforward example of the ‘loss aversion’ subset of cognitive biases. See D Kahneman, among others.
The content and direction of cognitive biases are not “arbitrary” and can be controlled. Monetary incentives and informing participants they will be held accountable for their attributions have been linked to the increase of accurate attributions. UK govt reducing furlough will be a step on that path.
(Training has also been shown to reduce cognitive bias. Research participants exposed to one-shot training interventions, such as educational videos and debiasing games that taught mitigating strategies, exhibited significant reductions in their commission of six cognitive biases immediately and up to 3 months later.
However – can’t see this or any other government trying that one out any time soon – although it could presumably be integrated into CBT therapy on the NHS!)

Our friend GrantM is your typical Twitterati. Anyone who has an opinion which isn’t far left or even to the left is a racist.

One reason for apparent Covid 19 infection rise in the US: The Atlantic reported back in May that CDC was conflating antibody and virus test figures, and that this has particular implications for highly populated states such as Texas:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/

You’d think the NHS would have saved a fortune from all those operations and tests they have refused to do recently.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/04/nhs-chiefs-in-standoff-with-treasury-over-emergency-10bn

NHS bosses have accused the chancellor, Rishi Sunak , of breaking a pledge to give the health service “whatever it needs” after he refused to provide a £10bn cash injection needed to avoid it being crippled by a second wave of the coronavirus.
They have warned ministers that without the money the NHS will be left perilously unprepared for next winter and the second spike in infections which doctors believe is i nevitable . Nor will they be able to restart non-Covid services or treat the growing backlog in patients needing surgery.

Suspiciously hyperbolic argument!

The Treasury is insisting that the NHS commits to keeping the waiting list – which currently stands at 4.4 million people – down to certain levels by certain dates through private hospitals doing agreed numbers of procedures. It believes that much of the £1.2bn spent so far has been wasted because many hospitals did worryingly few operations in the early stages of the pandemic.

Interesting game of hardball being played here!

I’m not sure this is a Mexican stand-off the government is likely to win. I really struggle to understand why the NHS might need the extra cash on top of what’s been ploughed in so far, but unless the cabinet manage to grow a pair (or find a whole pair between them) in the next few weeks, it seems inevitable that they’ll cave.

Maybe they need to insist that the expenditure so far is accounted for before they’ll part with another penny.

Councils are claiming huge loss of money while they’ve been covviding from home with no services to provide.

It seems this might be an oppotunity the public sector sees to write away pre-covid hidden debts.

Leaders at councils will be expecting their six figure salaries to go up to seven figures with the extra funding

Just goes to show that however much you spend, it is never enough. Like most other people, those who run the NHS really need a lesson in basic household economics.

Sheesh how much more money does the behemoth known as “our NHS” want?! They had Nightingale hospitals built for them in two weeks flat, with masses of new equipment (actually, where did all that equipment come from at such short notice?) they’ve done nothing except deal with Covid plus some emergency patients for the last 3 months, have ignored cancer patients, and generally spent a lot of money. Yet they want more?!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in the NHS it’s that no matter how much money there is it will be wasted.

One, example was that the trust I worked for brought 3,000 computers all of which had faulty hard drives. The trust instead of playing hard ball with the supplier just wrote the computers off. These were £1,000 computers you could buy from PC World, but because the company was an authorised supplier to the NHS we paid £3,000 for each PC, therefore writing off £9 million.

This was just one of many projects that were just written off. No heads rolled for it, and money just still came flooding in for other projects. This is why it riles me when I see all these idiots on social media complaining about government funding for the NHS and constantly asking for more money. They have never seen how the NHS works, if they did they would have a far different opinion.

Wow. I’ve experienced the wastage myself but nothing like to this scale, and it was still enough to make me rage. One of my mates working in nhs procurement used to tell me about the rush to spend the annual budget at the end of each financial year in order to secure the same or greater budget next year. If they spent efficiently and saved money, they were ‘punished’ with a lower budget next term. So they’d just spend with impunity. He used to buy a new office chair, furniture etc. Every year! For everyone in the office! !

This was back in 2001 as well, so you can imagine how much that £9 million would be worth now.

Another project we did back the was a roleout of tablets to consultants and all management in the trust. This was before any kind of decent tablet like iPad. These tablets were cutting edge at the time and they were around £10k each, there must’ve been 300 staff that had those. Once again not fit for purpose, so written off at a cost of £3 million.

The next project I worked on was Electronic Patient Records, this was the mother of all write offs: £10 billion!!!!!

This is regularly trotted out at a college I worked at and one I know of that is supplied, ‘spend it now or lose it’ at the end of the year.

I saw the same thing as a teacher with a stockroom overflowing with last year’s requisitions but needing to keep up to the budget or lose it.
Later the same, working in a council department – “how can we spend the surplus of last year’s money so we get some more for next year?”
Stupid wasteful policy, introduced by people who weren’t on the front line and hadn’t a clue!

This is the Civil Service disease, it is endemic throughout the public sector and at every level.

It’s even worse when other departments are short of funds but can’t get any.

A few years ago I went back to the family home for Christmas. There was a brand new laptop, sitting around in its box, still wrapped in cellophane. I asked my mum about it and she said “oh, you know how it is – you get to the end of the year and there’s budget left over, so you have to spend it on something.”

No, mother, I don’t know how it is. I spend a lot of the last 6 weeks of the year chasing money in and making sure everything has been invoiced that possibly can be, because if my P&L doesn’t look healthy enough, I get sacked.

Alternative anecdote – I knew a senior IBM procurement guy who had once been seconded to the police for a few months. He was amazed to discover that, despite the fact that every police uniform across the country was virtually identical for every force, every single police force bought they’re own uniforms, with no kind of coordinated procurement. He estimated that the waste was in the 10s of millions as compared with an efficient centralised procurement policy (and believe me – if you want to see an efficient centralised procurement policy in action, look at IBM).

Your mum is right, if budgets aren’t spent then the next year’s budget is reduced by the unspent amount. That goes in the NHS and in Councils.

Yes, I’m aware – I just find it stupefying. And even more so that no government in the last 40 years has spotted the fact that simply reversing the incentive would be an excellent way to save money and improve efficiency. The first place I look when I’m trying to work out how to change the way that departments and people I’m responsible for behave is incentives. It usually turns out you’re incentivising the wrong thing and So making the right thing irrelevant. It’s a really simple fix.

There is just utter stupidity at councils. When I moved to live my girlfriend I got a job at a council. In the four years I was there I saved them over a million pounds in consultancy as I did it all for them, so they didn’t need to pay external companies.

I then got any offer from another company but I was happy at the council so I asked them for a 10k wage rise, and did a breakdown of all the savings I made for them. The decision was that they couldn’t justify a £10k rise so I left. So once I left they had to then go back to external companies for all the consultancy. Utter stupidity and a waste of taxpayers money.

My friend, straight out of uni with no accounting or book-keeping qualifications, got a job auditing the NHS accounts. She found a £5m error in her first audit – this was after qualified accountants had peen paid several times her salary to check and verify them.
That was back in 1995, when £5m was worth considerably more than today – and just one NHS trust out of hundreds!

Much of the public sector is the same. Best to overspend so your budget is not reduced.

On the other hand, my DiL has just become a pc and is having to buy her own satnav – for the police car! She has her own car, so it’s not as if she’s taking the police car home. Wouldn’t you think there’d be a joblot fitted as standard?

You must actually have to try extra hard to buy a new car without an inbuilt satnav nowadays.

She needs one that clearly shows the name of the street she’s on.

Sure that’s not just her new colleagues havin’ a larf ?

In car satnav can be a serious amount, a lot of the time in the thousands, whereas a TomTom or Garmin is around a £100, and can be moved from one car to another if one has to be repaired. Does she get the money back for the satnav on expenses?

Doesn’t seem so.

Absolutely. One single illustration I witnessed was hoardes of NHS staff rumbling on with the worst microsoft os computers for a decade after the system was oboslete from professional life elsewhere.

The vast amount of hours lost to unproductivity and lost work due to that single situation was enormous, to say nothing of the stress such poor equipement causes.

The waste is all encompassing.

The other things is the extremely high amount of staff who are off sick. Bad back and stress were the main excuses. We used to have staff who would be on sick then come in after 5 months as 6 months of triggered a review where the could be laid off, they would work for 1 month, then go off again on full pay and the process would rinse and repeat.

It got so bad where I was that they had to do a Management of Change which cost half a million pounds, so that they could make these staff positions not relevant any more, and everyone would have to re-apply for the new jobs. It was an unbelievable waste of time and resources having to undertake all the whole interview process and the employment process.

Happening all over just as you say.

I had to laugh when they announced the NHS world-beating track and trace system. My local NHS trust can’t even communicate effectively between departments!

Oh please God, don’t mention the software we have to use and the time spent on its constant failure. Windows 7 baby, want to be efficient? No, sorry the NHS doesn’t have any money!! My unit employs two people to manage our IT rather than pay for an upgrade – windows 7 on the shittest dell computers.

which of course is why the NHS got hit by that virus a year or so ago.. Hardly affected anyone else as no one else still uses v7.. Hadnt the NHS forgotten to apply upgrade patches (assuming that it is still supported)

To confirm shittest dell computers is the precisely correct description. They ought to swab some of the nastier keyboards in an effort to find material for the covid vaccine.

Balls, rather. Balls, balls and bollocks.
They’ve been predicting waves and spikes non-stop for weeks. Now they want real money to deal with an imaginary future spike. Meanwhile, people with real illnesses are left to suffer and die.
I hate the NHS.

I concur. Don’t know if you saw about Shrewsbury and Telford Health Trust, 41 years of cover ups and gagging staff, over 1,200 cases of malpractice being investigated.

Good God, 1,200 cases? Now I hope all that become public

https://news.sky.com/story/shrewsbury-and-telford-hospital-trust-could-face-criminal-charges-after-maternity-scandal-12018053

I also should’ve said sarcastically “Clap for the NHS!

Or do you mean ‘crap’…

And of course, the majority of nurses, doctors, etc do incredible things routinely in their daily job despite full knowledge of the management discussed above.

I hate the NHS, and that’s considering they saved my fathers life, well the people in the restaurant did that, but they gave him a bed for a bit after, no explanation for the heart attack, a internal defib and more poisonous medicine – no issues since, he was probably dehydrated from the meds and poisioned by the statins and god knows what blood pressure medicine.

They routinely talk down to me, push me out the door, go to drugs first every time and seem to care little for prevention or quality of life.

Feeling blue, here’s a business card, self refer and they will see you in 3 months. Can’t move, here’s a physio’s business card, self refer and they will see you in 6 months.

Joke squad – maybe they will stitch you up if you’re injured but beyond that don’t count on it.

A friend who is a nurse showed me a picture of an empty cancer ward which was cleared for COVID-19. It wasnt used, much like the nightingale hospitals.
We get 165,000 deaths per year from cancer.
The NHS is a healthcare rationing system. But increasing its resources doesnt seem to leave more healthcare to go round..

One of the IT staff at the hospital I’m doing work for at the mo was telling me he walked into a ward to connect some cables. He connected the cables and walked out but on coming out he was asked why he was in the COVID-19 ward. He didn’t know it had been designated a COVID-19 ward and there was no one in there so still looked unused. He was also not told to self isolate which is very odd with him being potentially exposed to COVID-19.

No, you hate the government, the NHS isn’t making these decisions. Maybe PHE, but not the NHS it isn’t a thing, it’s a collective of many services organised, funded and controlled by governement. So infantile.

I think that the NHS costs around £4,500 per working person in the UK. This figure will obviously rise in the short term, when many workers will become unemployed and require benefits to sustain themselves and their families. It’s hard to see how we can afford for it to rise further. Eventually the UK becomes mainly a health service, with a dwindling economy attached to it.
With the NHS you often eventually get very good care, but it can be a nightmare getting there. I worry about having to use it. Private cover is so expensive in the UK.
I am so bored of the politics of the NHS. I wish it could be neutralised as a political issue. Every election Labour says the Convervatives would scrap “our NHS” and replace it (fat chance!) and the Conservatives counter with spending promises. It never seems to end.

My experience says that acute care is very good (putting aside waiting times in A&E) and chronic care is appalling.

It’s completely unsustainable and was since long before this ‘crisis’. One of the reasons it is is that they won’t take insurance payments for treatment even from people who are insured (and a large number of the employed population are insured through work). I’ve offered my insurance details before when my kid had to go to A&E and then have a minor op (he shut his finger in the door. Nail removed a week later, nail bed cleaned) they weren’t remotely interested.

If we could move away from a culture where using private insurance was frowned upon and the NHS can’t be bothered with the paperwork to a culture where you use Insurance where you can and state funding otherwise, there would be far more money in the system. Premiums would go up and probably fewer people would be given health insurance as a default benefit, but the overall effect would be hugely beneficial.

And if we could then find a way to genuinely incentivise trusts to be efficient (for example by providing bonuses for having cash left over at the end of the year or by allowing budgets surpluses to rolls over) we might actually end up with a healthcare funding model that works.

M y experience says that acute care is very good (putting aside waiting times in A&E) and chronic care is appalling.

Agree – though my DiL recently broke her wrist and A&E set it wrongly. Fortunately she has BUPA and it was reset. There’s some nerve damage and she’s very lucky it’s not serious. She’s still going for physio (private!) months later.

Care for chronic conditions is appalling and will make them worse, especially the dietary recommendations. I was recently given a sugested diet for BP. I returned, pointing out that the recommended breakfast contained the equivalent of 16 teaspoonsful of sugar and the day’s total was 50 teaspoonsful. The nurse commented that maybe I didn’t want to try following the diet then? I said I’d rather have slightly elevated BP than diabetes thanks!

One of the worst claims I saw was a guy who came in for a hernia operation.

He had the op and was discharged to go home. After a few days he said there was a pungent smell in his bungalow, so he got his brother to clean the whole kitchen as he thought it was something in there.

A couple of days later the smell was still there and he collapsed and was rushed to hospital.

He was immediately operated on and they found that the blood supply to his testicles had been cut during the hernia operation. The smell in his bungalow was actually his testicles rotting because of Gangrene which had to be removed!

Unless it was a dreadful emergency, I wouldn’t go anywhere near an NHS hospital. I’m not even registered with an NHS GP. Haven’t been for over 20 years now and I’m much healthier than friends who appear to be on a never-ending cycle of drugs. I’m a qualified clinical herbalist, and whilst I’m not against drugs if necessary, I am totally against the hold that Big Pharma have on medicine in the West.

The NHS has been “perilously unprepared for next winter” ever since 1947. Amazed it still manages really.

Pub open for weirdos: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/04/we-feel-totally-safe-east-london-drinkers-savour-taste-of-freedom

Weirdos. Yeah shame those who are legit scared. What a wonderful bunch of sociopaths you are turning out to be

You’re just boring now.

Grant – I love you, I wish I was you! So inspiring!! {puke}

Don’t give it too much attention, it’ll burst!

We can but hope.

It does make you realise if Grant is on the ‘other side’, then all on here are definitely on the right side. But Grant is too stoopid to realise…

Not sociopaths. Quite the opposite.

“legit scared” Says it all really, spoken like a real twerp

just realised who it is … Student Grant from Viz
https://www.flickr.com/photos/combomphotos/6140877288

Good cartoon:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2020/jul/04/boris-johnson-gets-britain-building-again-cartoon

A very rare occasion when the GroanAid more or less captures reality.

The cartoons are often very good.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/02/is-the-uk-government-misleading-the-public-on-covid-tests/

Is the UK government misleading the public on COVID tests?

the UK’s statistics collectors were recently required to move from their original basis of counting people tested to counting tests performed instead. This, obviously, resulted in increases in the headline numbers of tests right through the course of the epidemic. It also, unfortunately, meant that all the daily numbers of tests done in the UK prior to April 26 th got wiped. And, while this move did bring the UK more into line with many other countries’ reporting procedures, countries such as Canada, Japan and the Netherlands are still reporting by people tested. So, my guess is that this move (likely both difficult and expensive), the over-reporting of test numbers, and the poor presentation of the data that Sir David criticizes, have all come about because of political pressure from those who want the numbers to look as good as possible. Sigh.

Is the UK government misleading the public on COVID tests?

YES

Just been watching the F1 from this afternoon. All these people look so stupid doing interviews with masks and other PPE on.

I find it quite comical as well that they are always mentioning social distancing yet Hamilton was part of the BLM protests right next to thousands of protests, and some other drivers were pictured in St. Tropez where it was rammed with people.

Seems like massive overkill all this protection, we’ve had no major spikes in the areas where there were protests, block party, beaches, shopping areas, etc but this farce continues.

Deaf veiwers can no longer follow their sport. As they trip over their own virtue signalling it is good to mention.

Sigh. Educate yourself.

He/it can’t. He/it’s not back to small school until at least September

August. It’s in Scotland.

Is GrantM (M for moron) really Nicola of Sturgeon?! Now it’s/he’s all beginning to make sense!

I think he works for her, at least.

You’re unlikely to get a response. The sole purpose of it’s existence is to do its masters bidding.

I’m not sure if it is flattery to be offered up such a cunningly poor troll. It knows all the woke triggers but assembles them in such a stickle brick kind of way.

If it was smooth I would take it as a good sign the discussions are causing thought.

I demand a better class of troll. This one’s broken.

I don’t think you mean racism, I think you anti-racism.

The problem is that Sky are using this as PR. I think I can say that we on here are all anti-racism, but the problem we have is that at the moment to be anti-racism means you have to support Black Lives Matter which is a Marxist political group who has hijack anti-racism but their other views such as anti-Semitism is is offensive, and things like defund the Police do not hold up to scrutiny.

What needs to happen and I’ve said this to SKY is that a new neutral non-political campaign needs starting possible called “Anti-Racism Matters”. This would then allow a more inclusive support of Anti-Racism, that is based on your political designation and wouldn’t divide as it does at the mo by trying to make white people ashamed of things that happened by previous generations that we had no control over.

I think this would be a great thing to happen to bring all races together in a combined effort!

I should also say that rather than just throwing the racism name out there, you should be grateful to be on such a great site where the headline is just not read and reacted on. There is a lot a great members on this site who actually research what they are posting about and provide the evidence for it by linking to it.

I thank all the people on here for being so enlightened, and Toby for providing this site that brings some sanity during this period of madness.

Eh?

Grant M probably just another of the agent provocateurs who pop here, whose main target is Toby.

He’s really, really bad at it.

Hello GrantM, I’ve missed you, I’ve spent all day in the pub with my missus and we aren’t dead yet, hic!

We are going on a crawl tomorrow, see you in hell.

Alabama students throwing ‘COVID parties’ to see who gets infected: Officials

https://abcnews.go.com/US/alabama-students-throwing-covid-parties-infected-officials/story?id=71552514

That’s the first proper bit of scientific testing so far!

Isn’t that fire chief’s mask racist ?

I took a trip on the Thames clippers today (the London ferries), a nice little jaunt down the river. It was marred by social distancing – one of the crew was a bit of social distancing and mask zealot – the same one on both legs actually. Now, the bar was open and it has to be said there was a bit of an atmosphere brewing with this crew member pushing his luck with groups who had already had a bit too much to drink – I sense trouble brewing in this country……

Trouble is indeed brewing…I just can’t understand how so many can’t or don’t see this coming

Not sure if it is ‘too much to drink’, if it means people standing up for themselves against the bulls**t.

When the weather turns you can bet that there will be some violence. If a member of staff from a shop, pub, restaurant or museum chucks people out and force them to queue in the pouring rain or howling wind all it takes is one disgruntled customer to slam his/her fist into that member of staff and mayhem could follow.

Covid-19 Isn’t Killing Cash. People Are Hoarding More of It
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-02/covid-19-isn-t-killing-cash-people-are-hoarding-more-of-it?srnd=premium

Excess all-cause mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe – preliminary pooled estimates from the EuroMOMO network, March to April 2020

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.26.2001214?emailalert=true#html_fulltext

That’s interesting. What’s causing the comparatively significant increase in the 15-44 bracket shortly before the COVID peak? Apologies – haven’t read the whole thing. They may explain it.

(I say comparatively significant, because we’re talking about a few hundred)

This part might be relevant to your query (I’ve bolded the pertinent line):

The cumulative excess mortality from week 1 to week 18/2020 reached a total of 185,287 deaths (all ages), including 24,438 (13%) in persons aged 65–74 years, 55,226 (30%) in persons aged 75–84 years, and 88,598 (48%) in persons aged ≥ 85 years. The cumulative deaths in the younger age groups reached 14,339 (8%) in 45–64 year-old persons and 1,843 (1%) in 15–44 year-old persons. This period of the year includes a part of the usual influenza season. In comparison, the cumulative excess deaths (all ages) by week 18 reached 55,441 in 2019, 110,483 deaths in 2018, 83,009 deaths in 2017 and 29,849 deaths in 2016 (Figure 2B).

Thank you. Not sure though – ‘flu is less discriminate than Covid, but I would have thought the 15-45 age range was still the least likely.

Bearing in mind that 1843 is the total across 24 countries (76 per country). It’s not a huge amount. I don’t know the actual figures for flu to compare with but the numbers don’t seem unreasonable to me.

Not huge in absolute numbers, but given that we’re talking about proportionate excess above ‘normal’ it _is_ odd.

When you look at the EuroMOMO chart for the whole of Europe it shows a mild flu season in 2019 and an almost non existent flu season in 2020. If these were similar to previous years then the coronavirus deaths would be much lower.

Furloughed workers gain protection from redundancies with new rules to claw back taxpayer money
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/07/04/furloughed-workers-gain-protection-redundancies-new-rules-claw/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

Wow. That is a very, very bad idea long-term.

This will make some firms more likely to go into administration. If they don’t have the custom/business to remain viable and they can’t cut costs by making people redundant then the most likely option would surely be liquidation.

Exactly. I’m sure there are a number of cases where a company has cynically furloughed a group who were about to be made redundant anyway – and as a taxpayer, I’d like that money back, please – but that will be a tiny minority. If they are going to go after companies for this, I hope they’re really sure that they’re only going after the cynical.

All part of the plan…..

When furlough was introduced, I saw numerous issues with it. Which firms should be entitled to it. Should furlough be only given to businesses legally unable to operate such as restaurants or businesses which can operate but suffer a loss of trade. For instance, takeaway can operate but they loose business if there are no pub goers. With so many businesses being unable to operate, vast numbers of workers are entitled to furlough at enormous cost. If businesses are legally unable to operate, should furlough be given to suppliers due to lost business. If a business has foreign suppliers, furlough will not cover them.

The purpose of furlough is to prevent job losses but money is wasted if jobs are lost. Employers may have no choice but to make staff redundant and not because of malice. For instance, a clothes shop may have to close if people are used to buying clothes online and in supermarkets and don’t go back to old habits. Should employers pay back furlough money if they have no choice but to staff redundant.

We’ve started bringing furloughed staff back in the UK, because we now actually have stuff for them to do. If we’d been faced with a decision in March/April between having to keep people on the payroll with nothing to do and no idea of when we might have useful work for them, I’ve no doubt at all we would have made the furloughed staff redundant.

The economy did go into hibernation to an extent – there was a huge artificial reduction in economic activity. With money circulating less quickly and with no certainty at all over how long it was going to last, furloughing employees was the responsible thing to do both for the employees and in terms of fiduciary duty. This applies to sectors that weren’t officially shut down as well as to those that were.

That far, the furlough scheme worked. There will be a large number of people who still have a job now and in the next few months, who would have taken a redundancy package 2 months ago without it.

The problem now is that there aren’t many sectors, if any, that will quickly be going back to the level of revenue or activity they had at the beginning of February. People will be on furlough who don’t have useful work to go back to and their employer can’t afford to keep them on the payroll.

But if you soak the employer for a repayment of the furlough money as well as the redundancy payment, you kill the books. And in some cases you kill the business. And once again, it will be the smaller businesses that suffer and die the most. Large corporations with a fighting fund will be fine, but irritated, but small companies will go under. And if the government means it as a raid on big companies (Corbynite but possible) then you’ll just end up with those companies making more redundancies than they otherwise would have done.

I feel furlough acted as a safety valve. Without furlough to protect jobs would people have tolerated businesses being closed. If people do loose their jobs people may feel the government has at least tried protect jobs through furlough. I understand that furlough didn’t apply to workers who started a job after the sixth of April.

Furlough only covers 80% of your wage. Some have argued this is compensated by no travel costs to work but you still have considerably less salary and how many have coped on this salary. There is the issue of stress being worried if you loose your job.

Regardless of whether people get their jobs back, large numbers of people being temporarily unemployed creates numerous issues. If people are on furlough they may be reluctant to spend money as they are worried about losing their jobs. If people are away from work businesses loose out. Public transport providers loose business without commuters. If establishments have no workers there is no demand for things like bottles for water coolers, stationary, toilet paper etc. Establishments may pay for services they don’t use with no workers eg a company may have a contract with a cleaning company but there is nothing to clean up without workers. Shops and coffee shops may get less trade with no people going to and from work.

Is it easy to adapt being at work again after a long absence

Not so much a safety vslve as an anaesthetic. Incarcerating people and depriving them of their livelihoods would have led to instant revolt. Paying them to do nothing led to instant zombification, which is what Hangcick and the other hell-hounds wanted.

Furlough would have worked well if the lockdown had only been for 3 or 4 weeks. However, to drag lockdown out for several months leaves us in a very different situation.

Oh no, Rishi just realised furlough is only viable in the short term, and shit the bed!

This is his personal incarnation of the covid double-down.

“We’ll be needing that money back now guys! ” — After months of telling business they didn’t need to pay it back! – disguised as a way to ‘protect’ jobs it’s basically just a way to make employers actually bear the brunt of the cost by forcing them into financial difficulty when they can’t restructure around reduced capacity/profits, because if they do they’ll get penalised by the gvt. Tut tut. Those naughty businesses, wanting to he able to run themselves!

Cue the riots.

Carry on up the pub

you have just made yourself a BLM target, as you refer to hundreds of zulu warriors as pissheads.
and to be pedantic, its not a carry on film.
but it is still quite funny

They’re a bunch of savages.

So many damn zulus.

I mean, so damn many zulus.

Thausands of ’em!

True but after a few hours in the pub it made me chuckle

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/04/state-will-never-improve-people-continue-hero-worship-employees/

We can’t go into this economic crisis with an outdated, broken administrative machine

Hawk, I wish you’d give some idea of the article content, rather than just posting a link! The Telegraph is behind a paywall and not everyone is a subscriber.

Hannan makes some good comments, including :
Our public health institutions are failing, but as long as we clap for them, there’s no reason for them to raise their game

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/seven-year-covid-trail-revealed-l5vxt7jqp

Revealed: Seven year coronavirus trail from mine deaths to a Wuhan lab

https://www.aier.org/article/rand-paul-is-right-about-experts/

Rand Paul Is Right About Experts

Hello all, new commenter here but been hovering for a few weeks.

Despite being very sceptical in general (about most things that become unquestionably popular tbh) I am wondering about this Texas report as according to the Texas dashboard their covid related ICU admissions have gone up a lot.

I haven’t yet tried to look up how Texas initially dealt with lockdown or what appears to be driving ICU admissions so will take a look into this but does anyone on here have any insight on this?

Thanks for your excellent work on this issue of lockdown madness, Toby Young.

At some point it would be good if you did a deeper analysis on whether anything nefarious is going on.

I know you put it all down to incompetence, but I’m struggling to believe anyone can be as incompetent as our government and media have been over the last 4+ months.

What the hell is going on? It’s terrifying.

No Mask No SNP
i ain’t no ant i ain’t no bee
i don’t need Sturgeon
to rule over me

i’m setting off on my Harley D …

Melbourne locks down tower blocks as cases rise
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-53289616

Authorities in the Australian city of Melbourne have confined people living in nine housing estate tower blocks because of an outbreak of coronavirus.

The 3,000 or so residents of the blocks are being told not to leave their homes for any reason for at least five days.

At least 23 cases of infection were found on two estates in recent days.

23 cases may seem low but can quickly become infinity due to exponential growth and then everyone dies. I’ve run the model a few times and it’s the same result every single time. The most worrying thing is that the result is the same nomatter what preventative measures we take. 1% of infinity is everyone.

Now look at the foolish people in Sweden walking around as if this virus isn’t going to kill them all. Instead of locking everyone down they’re out drinking and living their lives as if death isn’t already stalking them. I’ve already proven that 1% of infinity is everyone.

Just because their death rate has dropped doesn’t mean the modelling is wrong. 1% of infinity is everyone. There must be some other explanation as to why they’re not all dead yet. In this case I think that there must be something wrong with reality.

But didn’t you hear that Sweden’s Prime Minister has ordered a parliamentary inquiry into the thousands of deaths caused by the no-lockdown policy? Well, perhaps you didn’t, because that isn’t exactly what the PM said ….

https://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2020/07/lockdown-advocates-hate-sweden-for-good.html

I was wondering if you’re aware, as a Canadian, that the Swedish strategy is practically identical to that of British Columbia. Do you know if this has been discussed anywhere in Canada, or even anywhere in the world?

The reason I ask is because I read an article a while back lauding the success of the British Columbia approach and noticed how similar it was to that of Sweden. Even the background of Bonnie Henry mirrors that of Sweden’s Anders Tegnell in that they were both hands on in helping to fight Ebola which appears to have guided their overall strategy.

Just curious if you can add any perspective from across the water on this.

So, Independence Day ! God Bless all Yankee Doodles !

Went to Farmers’ Market this morning. Pretty quiet, drizzle probably to blame.

(Every other stall seemed to be selling organic goat’s cheese – much to OH’s delight.).

One-way system redundant and ignored by all. No tapes this week. Pleasant, good humour everywhere.

Two stall holders wearing masks out of about 20. Told one of them wasn’t planning to buy from a masked seller – he took it off, put it in the bin, grumbled about how unpleasant they were, and I bought a sausage roll.

OH then went off to buy 0.5 kilo of chocolate-dipped mulberries (I am now in penury), and I went off to pub for consolation.

Sign in – went for Mathew Handcock.

Sanitiser – No thanks, allergies.

Then moved towards courtyard (there were a dozen or so mostly occupied tables indoors, but one can’t smoke there apparently) with 8 tables, all empty. Hold on sir, we need to escort you to a table. Honestly. Harassed looking geezer arrived, opened door, and said Which table. Sat at one, pint of Harvey’s please. He came back with beer on a tray, which I had to put on table. Produced tenner, he couldn’t take it he said, please put it on the tray. Which I did, then because of the breeze, he put thumb on it. He then came back with change, which he tipped from the tray into my hand. Much hilarity, cursing, and general damming of Johnson’s eyes.

Pint was exquisite. (Anyone into real ale, Harvey’s is where it is truly at.).

Then saw, walking past, a woman with her daughter, aged about 4 or 5, both masked. Was truly astonished by the fury I felt rising up. Have not been so angry for years.

Left pub over the 2’ wall next to the No exit gate. Dissipated fury by accidentally colliding with council’s “2m apart” notices. Quite flimsy they were – ratepayers cheated once again. Had to stop this when OH appeared, discussion about the effect on other people, she embarrassed, me suggesting it might encourage others to similar acts of criminal damage.

Then went to seaside café on Toby’s list – not great, yards and yards of queuing ropes outside, order at one window, collect at another, forgot sugar, so repeated the hassle. Coffee was good though.

Sussex lad by chance JohnB? Harvey’s is very good walked past their shop in Lewes yesterday, too early for trading. But will visit for the Christmas top up

Have lived here, north of Lewes, for 40 odd years, Skippy. But a Scouser at heart still.

My report from the front line: the pub.

I worried that going out tonight would be my endorsement of operating theatre ‘covid culture’, but I needn’t have worried.

My friend and I found a pub where you didn’t need to book (although you could) and the landlord laughed off suggestions of showing ID upon entry (a bloke on his own offered his driving licence). However , service was exclusively by the pub’s own phone app and table service, and you had to ‘create account’ including your bank card details. Each order included your table number, so I don’t think there would be much trouble tracing you if ‘they’ wanted to punish you for your recklessness in going there.

The guy making pizzas in the open kitchen was wearing a mask but not gloves. He kept adjusting his mask with his fingers. The waiting staff were wearing gloves but not masks.

Here were the positives:

• it felt ‘normal’ upon going in;
• there was music; not a deal-breaker for me normally, but I was pleased to hear it (I didn’t mind what it was tonight) at a reasonable volume; no one was worried that it might cause people to talk loudly – heaven forbid.
• the guy who welcomed us in wasn’t wearing a mask, and didn’t stand 6 feet away from us;
• there were normal-looking people there. Just one couple in his-and-hers masks who left quite early.
• the toilets were totally normal – I was genuinely surprised at this. Almost as if there was still sanity in the world.
• there were no perspex screens anywhere as far as I could tell
• sure, there were some missing tables (this is normally a packed pub) but the ambience was still OK. Like a Sunday evening perhaps.

We drank four pints each and arranged to meet there next week.

Various other pubs we tried were not so encouraging. One pub with a landlord whom we had previously thought was a proper ‘character’ told us that he wasn’t opening any time soon because it was ‘too dangerous’.

And another thing. As a married man I’m not supposed to notice this sort of thing, but there was some top totty in there.

You know the rules- pictures or it didn’t happen!

I guess those of us without smartphones won’t be able to order anything in these type of pubs…

Ok

Thanks for this report from Texas! Few media outlets are reporting the facts on the ground there, only the fear. Here in Oregon we’re being subjected to the same situation: increased testing resulting in increased “infections” and now all we hear is fear.

The headlines, fed by our cruel Governor Kate Brown, all focus on “cases” and not recoveries or even deaths, because as with Texas and elsewhere, we also have too few bodies to support her “alarm.”

Her brutal shaming of anti-maskers and brutally shameless fearmongering are on full display– at this point she’s not even attempting to be nice to us. I would try to sound the alarm about what’s happening here, but our state media has been useless and everyone else on the entire West Coast is going through various degrees of this hell.

So all I can say, is, Oregon, Texas, the UK and the whole world: dissent, resist, and do not stop asking questions!

Oyez! Oyez! Our gallant café heroine has pride of place in Peter Hitchens’ Mail on Sunday column:

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

It may not be everybody’s favourite rag, but it gets around…

Three cheers for kh; I think it must be her. So pleased that she’s managed to breach the MSM barrier.

Hi Annie & wendyk, sorry, only just seen this – thanks for posting. Yes, it is me!

Congratulations kh! You deserve a freedom gong.

I suspect in the words of Peter Hitchens I will. from some quarters, get a whole heap of slime chucked over me!

We’ll all have to visit.

Well done kh1485!!!!

That answers my question above, lol

I LOVE YOU

Anyone read this?

Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army
The longer actors and others in the arts are deprived of their livelihoods, the more clandestine activity will spread
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/culture-is-going-underground-meet-the-rebel-army

Among the first to arrive was a Labour grandee…. Then others drifted over: academics, musicians, writers, a nurse. For one night only, the gym had been turned into a makeshift theatre. The audience, of up to 30 people, had congregated to flick a collective V at the social distancing measures, and to watch A Hero of Our Time, a three-hander adapted by HUNCHtheatre from the 1840 novel by Mikhail Lermontov. Inside the ‘theatre’, it was as if the past four months had been a very weird dream. Audience members kissed one another on the cheek without compunction, shared wine, and finally settled shoulder to shoulder on the floor to watch. There was not a face mask in sight.

…One of the organisers of last week’s clandestine play, who would rather not be named, has been taken aback by the ‘overconformist attitude’ that has swept the arts world since the start of the pandemic. ‘People have signed over their health to the state, as if they can’t make up their own minds about what risks to take. Staying indoors isn’t living. Life under lockdown has been reduced to a Zoom meeting — it’s unhealthy and atomising. I find it hilarious that the left wants to be on the side of Tory laws and regulations.’ When asked if she worries about audience members infecting one another and going back into the community, she points out that ‘everything is risk; life is risk. The most important thing shouldn’t be safety’.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that very refreshing.

Interesting snippet from yesterday’s phone conversation with young family member, who works in London: she has a specially made mask, given to her by a friend, which she uses when on the tube.

She has never washed it, but is well and enjoying a successful career.

I suspect that this behaviour is being replicated far and wide.

She also told me that normal activities are resuming rapidly in London, and that she and her boyfriend-who works from home- were reunited many weeks ago.

Furthermore, they’ve booked a motoring holiday in France without any difficulties and will be taking his car on the ferry from Dover in a few weeks’ time.

Meanwhile, up here, while we languish under the grip of She Who Must Be Obeyed, we witness with despair, the utterly disgraceful scenes at the border.

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/stay-fk-away-convoy-scottish-nationalists-attempt-blockade-english-border-2904148

https://www.effiedeans.com/2020/07/is-there-border-between-england-and.html

All ye happy English pub-goers, please raise your masks and gasp out a toast to First Minister Quackaduck, who with true Welsh joylessness is ensuring that no Cymro can sip so much as a ginger beer in any form of hostelry whatsoever.

The joys of devolution. I used to think it was the way forward, but now, all we see is point scoring, divisive nonsense and confusion.

Took you a while to catch on to Blair I assume.

No actually, it didn’t. I always thought of him as the consummate trickster figure, but formed my own opinions on devolution, which have changed, as opinions do, mainly because of recent shenanigans.

wendyk

I always knew devolution was a route to disaster. In 1997, canvassing for the referendum on devolution was postponed due to the death of Diana but the evening before postponement two eager young female canvassers came to my door exhorting me to vote YES! YES! I shouted NO! NO! and ordered them out of the building (it was a tenement with communal stairway) so my neighbours wouldn’t be bothered. They refused to leave, saying they had a “right” to be there. I explained that they were on private property (the stairway) of which I was joint proprietor with the other owners and I had every right to order them away. The mask (oops, sorry) slipped and they became really, really nasty, swearing and threatening but eventually left.

You’re right, I confess now Gillian. At the time I -naively-thought it would lead to greater stability, improved local representation and a redress of grievances.

As it turned out, I was wrong and I loathe what the Nats are doing up here.

I had hoped that cooperation would come to the fore in these disruptive times; how wrong I was!

If things were honest and fair the No side would get a go with the Yes word, physcology and all than. No, we don’t want to stay in the United Kingdom vs yes we do!

Folk would have to quickly change their banners and respray the graffiti!

I always wondered how the 2014 referendum would go with those answers reversed. Let’s be honest, “Should Scotland Be An Independent Country” must cause one hell of a civil war inside every Scot, unless already 100% convinced one way or t’other. And naturally so.

My husband said the same thing – he now regrets voting yes to Scottish devolution. Everyday we are thankful that we moved out ages ago!

Wise choice

It is. It’s a shame about my father-in-law still living in Scotland but he’s respected our decision and is actually fed up with the insanity coming out of Holyrood.

Goodness, read the comments section on this article. It’s heartwarming. Pretty much everyone on our side in avoiding the “new abnormal”. Poor Rishi has a problem …..

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/07/04/super-saturday-proves-like-damp-squib/

Yes, you are right on this. I really do think those shops that treat their customers like lepers will suffer and, quite frankly, they deserve to.

Although our trade was not up to usual levels yesterday (although that could be weather-related and because I was offering a reduced menu), everyone who visited my shop yesterday (bar two mask-wearers) acted as normal and actually said they wanted things back to normal. No real swerving, a bit of gel-use (customers’ own) – yuk but, other than that, for us at least, a normal Saturday.

NB: Had a bit of argy bargy yesterday with a friend who finds my lockdown-scepticism alarming. She has ‘lung problems’ (though it’s only recently that she has mentioned this) and is completely OK with the economy being shut down – “you have to protect people” though she doesn’t seem to appreciate the economic armageddon coming our way. These ‘lung problems’ didn’t stop her coming into my shop, even though she truly believes this thing is on a par with the Black Death. I continue to be amazed by this type of reaction. I mean, if you really believe it is so virulent, why do you go into a shop where you believe you really can catch it so easily? I really am at a loss as to understand the reasoning they employ.

It is time to start leaving certain people behind imo. Harsh though it is… It is the government that have created this fear culture and it is for them to dig everyone out

Just to add – I’ve spent months trying to ‘sell’ the truth and most aren’t interested. They just want what confirms their own views so I’ve decided to leave them to it.

Plenty of pictures of the inside of pubs, house parties and general mingling will be taken and uploaded. If people want to live like self-flagellating monks eating smart price Asda beans from food parcels, that’s their choice but I’m not being judged a second longer.

I agree. My friend looked at me with horror as though I was advocating mass murder or something.

I really did struggle to get her (someone who is always invoking her late grandfather’s memory as one who fought for freedom) to understand what has been taken from us. When she denigrated those who may have gone to the pub yesterday, I expressed hope that people would go out en-masse because then the oft-parrotted ‘second spike’ that won’t materialise will expose this fiasco for the con-trick that it is.

So let me get this straight. Your friend wants us to sacrifice everything – jobs, careers, our children’s education – so she can feel “safer”? And she is not prepared to let other people run their lives as they see fit within the bounds of (sensible) law?

Ohhh kaaayyyy

Er … yes. Until she wants a hot chocolate ….!

Can we blame the teletubbies? I mean to say, holy f***!

I think the whites dressing up in chains and whatnot as part of the BLM protests are the modern day flagellants. Flatulents I call ’em.

You’re not the only one:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/29/wokeness-the-return-of-medieval-madness/

MSM and government.

Regarding your opening paragraph, it will very quickly become second nature to customers which shops to avoid due to the sheer hassle and which are welcoming. Even pro lockdowners, as evidenced by your friend yesterday visiting your shop, they subconsciously won’t want the hassle of a shop festooned with dos and don’ts. Next time your friend alludes to the economy being unimportant ask her how she thinks the NHS is funded.

This is my point: the disconnect (sorry, hate that word but can’t think of any other right now) between what they are saying and their actions.

So, they believe this thing is on a par with the plague but they still ‘risk their lives’ to go into a shop they don’t need to go into. I don’t get it. It’s almost as though they don’t want to admit they have got it wrong.

Like I said to her, if people were dropping dead in the street in front of me or if supermarket staff were dropping dead at a rate of knots, I could understand the fear, but they’re not so I don’t.

On your last point, I have said this to her. She just ignores this very obvious fact. I think she believes in the government’s money tree!

Cognitive dissonance kh; it’s gone viral!

Sure has. Had a bloke in yesterday for a takeaway coffee and he said that we have to get used to living in a “different world now” God, my heart sank.

Unfortunately, because I am unable to keep my gob shut, I said that I wanted my “old world back” I suspect he won’t be returning … oops!

Pub for me and the missus today. I’ve already warned friends also attending that trying to infect me with their panic is strictly vorboten. The first person to mention ‘second wave’ is getting the next round in!

Good for you! We all want our old world back!

No loss to you. Lose one zombie, gain ten humans.

We won’t have to avoid zombie shops for long because they will no longer be there.

This whole thing, from deaths of the useless to the collapse of businesses which won’t adapt, has been Darwin in action all the way through.

kh1485 – you are definitely one of the lockdown heroes! We had the leper treatment in a shoe shop yesterday; we won’t be back. Businesses need to decide whether toeing the Government line is more important than the survival of their business.

Thanks. I know, it’s the same here. I’ve never seen so many bloody signs in my life. The one that really got me was the one on Age UK (a charity I hold in contempt anyway). Loads of “Welcome Back” signs (like we have all been on some lovely little holiday) and then the bossy-boots stuff next to it “Queue here, do as you are told” stuff …

Of course, you could always point out that the government, and lockdown, really really let the most vulnerable down by dumping them into care homes without testing first.

And you can point out that without an economy, nobody gets protected. Hungry people are dangerous people.

Yep, I said all that and it just doesn’t compute. Like Bart says, how to get through to these people, I really don’t know.

Oddly enough – or I, in my innocence, thought it was odd – Age UK have never evinced the slightest concern about the torture and murder in care homes.

I’m in the same boat as you – I know of people who are fellow sceptics and I feel that I can have honest conversations with them. It’s refreshing that I can be myself around them. Much like on this site.

However there are others I know who are still afraid – obsessing about infections, the R thingy, the so-called “second wave” and have fallen hard for the MSM and government propaganda, rather ignorant about basic science and history and have not really cottoned on to the fact that the lockdown and antisocial distancing has not saved anyone but rather made everything worse. The fact that my workplace is looking into voluntary redundancy has not really woken these people up.

I’m seriously wondering what it will take to wake these people up. Anyone know?

Why should we care? Think of the life, or rather the shadowy non-life – that they have doomed themselves to. Let them have it.
We are angry, we are frustrated, but by God, we are alive and we remain human.That’s worth everything.

Hear, hear!!!

Skimming the article and the comments – it doesn’t surprise me. Many people have been staying away from shops because they’re being treated like lepers. Looks like pubs, restaurants and visitor attractions are finding out that the public are giving them the cold shoulder treatment precisely for the same reason.

They’ll change when they work this out – if it’s not too late for them by then.

Notice the people queuing at Alton Towers are more than 2m apart. How’s that for successful conditioning?

I’ve recently had a reply from my MP to my email of a little while ago (titled ‘‘A society tearing itself apart: which side are you on?’) lambasting the lockdown.

He says that ‘at all times the Government has followed the advice of relevant experts when introducing the various measures.’ By which he means mainly (but, as he points out, not exclusively) SAGE, and he refers me to the SAGE meeting minutes. The fact that SAGE did NOT recommend a lockdown has escaped him. In essence, he maintains the government line that they were acting on scientific advice.

He points out: ‘I hope you will agree that there would rightly have been criticism of the Government if it ignored the guidance of these kinds of experts and took decisions based on political expediency.’

I nearly choked on that one.

But the comment which really left me gobsmacked: ‘The fact that covid-19 cases have been so low in the South West is owed to the decisions the government have taken in terms of social distancing.’

Words fail me. And I’m sure that my MP is one of the more intelligent current occupiers of the House of Commons (not a high bar, I grant).

The Establishment must not be allowed to write the history of this fiasco.

Their SOP I’m afraid, mine was similar and was to a completely different question, something of a pattern developing!

If I was a party in the parliament I would be deeply concerned about the SAGE SPI-B document found here: (pdf, mirrored here)

https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/covid-coercion-boris-johnsons-psychological-attack-uk-public

“On 22 March, in preparation for a SAGE meeting to be held the following day, SPI-B published a document * (pdf, mirrored here) * entitled Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures,”

In that PDF SPI-B put forward a plan, a conspiracy, to increased levels of personal threat across the public in order to have more compliance with government covid19 rules/law/whatever. To me, a layman, this amounts to evidence of a conspiracy to cause terror. It needs to be proven the government acted on this advice.

Is it possible to ask to be referred to the parts of the SAGE minutes where the MP believes SAGE advocated lockdown? Might a goose chase through the minutes alert them to the fact of the thing. As you say, they must not be allowed to spin the history of this.

Along with many other criticisms of his letter, I’m replying to him citing Toby’s post of 11 June which lays out the argument that SAGE did not recommend lockdown before 23 March.

At least you got a reply even if it was toe the line bullshit.

Many thanks for your recent correspondence – please do not hesitate to contact me again on any issue where you feel I may be of assistance.

They will though. This is why we need our own narrative and keep on plugging away.

You’ve seen this? Girl refuses to take the knee before football match, gets praised by a rugby fan, and then his club (Pontypool) promptly bans him for life.

Here’s the girl:
https://twitter.com/TheVietGwent/status/1278096083101667328

Here’s the whole story:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/07/04/you-wont-be-missed-rugby-fan-life-ban-criticising-marxist-blm/

There won’t be anything to watch soon. And why were those girls taking the knee in the first place?

What a girl and what a rugby fan … two more to add to the (small) list of heroes amidst all this craziness …

just read some of the tweets . according to one tweet, she actually knelt for the “taking the knee” but then stood for the national anthem .. So not quite the same story.
What it does say is that the other woke girls in the team care more about their virtue signalling than they do for their own country if they think kneeling to the racist BLM movement overrides standing for their national anthem

Oh, that’s disappointing.

Worth naming and shaming Ben Jeffreys , the CEO of Pontypool Rugby Football Club .

Just heard this on the radio: “Drunk people won’t be able to social distance” God, you really couldn’t make this stuff up.

Jeez……what an idiot!!

My second reaction was: good!

too true – it is hard to lean on someone and tell them they are your best friend from a metre away

Slightly O/T, but is it you mentioned in Hitchen’s column this week? If so, well done you.

Yes, it was me – thanks. I was just so outraged and couldn’t believe that it has come to this. I thought it may be something PH would be interested in. He is one of my heroes in all of this.

I thought it was you. Well done for giving it more attention! What a disappointment the police are.

One of the appalling symbols of how the police has changed was seeing Westminster Bridge packed with police cars with their emergency lights on during lockdown, supporting “our NHS”. Used to be a professional non-political organisation, focused on maintaining public law and order.

You’re right. When I highlighted the drug-dealing/taking in the park outside my shop, I was roundly set upon by the police – “well, if you don’t like it, talk to your MP” was the surly response I got (and I’m not paraphrasing). Then when I pressed the issue, I was asked if I really wanted to “ruin” a young drug-taker’s/dealer’s life by getting them prosecuted. So I said that it wasn’t me ruining their lives. I was then informed that they “enter into a contract” with these young people. I presume as in”if you promise to be a good boy, we won’t press charges”. As PH says there is no ‘war on drugs’, the police have capitulated. But hey, serve a near-blind lady a cup of tea inside and, well, that’s another story.

Regarding Sky news and Texas, the clue to the problem may be this:

‘Harris Health System officials said that capacity limits at both of its public hospitals have forced doctors to transfer coronavirus patients elsewhere, including sending some to hospitals nearby.

The Sunday note to the staff at Lyndon B. Johnson said that the hospital had reached maximum occupancy in its COVID-19 units. That day, nearly 50% of the patients tested for the virus had it, more than double the rate from a week before.’

That doesn’t sound too clever…..

But, in any case (do you know how big Texas is? Population 29 million, bigger than France) :

‘Even as new cases and hospitalizations soar, the number of daily deaths in Texas has remained relatively low. On Tuesday, the state reported nearly 7000 new cases but only 21 deaths. All told, New York state has reported nearly 25,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. Texas has 2500..’

‘….the CEOs of four hospitals in the medical center abruptly dialed back their earlier warnings……. They said they hadn’t meant to alarm the public. The hospitals still had room to add ICU beds, they said, both to treat COVID-19 and to continue caring for other patients.’

Texas Tribune

So the usual combination of nosocomial infections and authorities creating blind panic about not so much…..

As a result of:

‘Some have suggested the surge in cases could be due to increased testing access.’

But, in any case, as M. Guy points out above:

‘Data from several counties and health experts confirms the trend in younger people testing positive across Texas.’

Texas Tribune

So I wonder what was it that first attracted the Democratic Party supporting anti Trump sky news to this story in a U.S. Presidential election year….?

‘ Experts said the spike in COVID-19 cases in some southern U.S. states could impact Trump’s chances of re-election.’

And where does that story come from? Xinhuanet:

And what is Xinhuanet?

Xinhua News Agency or New China News Agency is the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China.

You know the rest……….

Regarding Sky news and Texas, the clue to the problem may be this:

‘Harris Health System officials said that capacity limits at both of its public hospitals have forced doctors to transfer coronavirus patients elsewhere, including sending some to hospitals nearby.

The Sunday note to the staff at Lyndon B. Johnson said that the hospital had reached maximum occupancy in its COVID-19 units. That day, nearly 50% of the patients tested for the virus had it, more than double the rate from a week before.’

That doesn’t sound too clever…..

But, in any case (do you know how big Texas is? Population 29 million, bigger than France) :

‘Even as new cases and hospitalizations soar, the number of daily deaths in Texas has remained relatively low. On Tuesday, the state reported nearly 7000 new cases but only 21 deaths. All told, New York state has reported nearly 25,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. Texas has 2500..’

‘….the CEOs of four hospitals in the medical center abruptly dialed back their earlier warnings……. They said they hadn’t meant to alarm the public. The hospitals still had room to add ICU beds, they said, both to treat COVID-19 and to continue caring for other patients.’

Texas Tribune

So the usual combination of nosocomial infections and authorities creating blind panic about not so much…..

As a result of:

‘Some have suggested the surge in cases could be due to increased testing access.’
But, in any case, as M. Guy points out above:

‘Data from several counties and health experts confirms the trend in younger people testing positive across Texas.’

Texas Tribune

So I wonder what was it that first attracted the Democratic Party supporting anti Trump sky news to this story in a U.S. Presidential election year….?

‘ Experts said the spike in COVID-19 cases in some southern U.S. states could impact Trump’s chances of re-election.’

And where does that story come from? Xinhuanet

And what is Xinhuanet?

Xinhua News Agency or New China News Agency is the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China.

You know the rest……….

If Texas still has people presenting at hospital in higher numbers then they are likely at an earlier stage of the cough than we are, and vulnerable people are at risk. Sweden (and up until the 23rd march the UK) have shown the way, sensible mitigation and NO lockdown, to ensure the health system is not overwhelmed.

Maybe Texas can do a better job of protecting the vulnerable than we have (or Sweden, who have been honest about it – self criticism is essential to learn and improve things).

France’s population is 66M, more than twice the size of Texas. You can find stories speculating on the so called ‘spike’ in infections (actually more tests of not very ill positives) affecting Trump’s election chances in every country round the world, not just China. And believe it or not, the pandemic is not all about Trump, even if he thinks it is. Like he thinks everything else is.

My apologies for the imprecision of my English in my comment above.

I yield to no-one in my admiration of La Belle France.

My meaning was that Texas is bigger than France, but with a smaller population, which makes the extremely minor common cold coronavirus epidemic in Texas a complete non story for the Democratic Party supporting anti Trump sky news any other year except a U.S. Presidential election year.

Of course the ‘pandemic’ is not about Trump. But Britain’s state broadcaster, sky news, China and many other anti Trump global news broadcasters definitely see in the ‘global pandemic’ a chance to torpedo the (inimical to their interests) Trump re-election campaign.

Trump represents a threat to Chinese global interests and he still represents a very real threat to any return to the White House for the Democratic Party. Both the bbc and sky news have a relationship with Democratic Party supporting corporations in the U.S.A.

The ‘pandemic’ and its hysterical coverage, in Britain, and all over the world, won’t be going anywhere until after 03 November.

can’t argue with any of that

Ah, see what you meant about Texas now, would agree. Trump – distrust of and opposition to him aren’t just a commie plot, though, plenty of rational people listen to him and go ‘Whaaat!’! As for Covid news, I’d put money on there being plenty of shock horror coverage after 3 Nov, as it returns in the northern hemisphere over the winter, along with flu, colds etc, regardless of what happens in the US election.

In terms of the popular vote, Clinton received a greater share than Trump in 2016. Trump is divisive, as is our own Prime Minister.

And, of course, his enemies, most of whom may very well not be ‘commies’, as you put it, will do all they can to ensure that he is not re-elected.Those include the British state broadcaster and sky news.

Part of their strategy is undoubtedly to keep the minor common cold coronavirus epidemic right up there as the key U.S. news narrative since the overreaction, much of it in Democratic Party run states, has damaged the U.S. economy, on whose performance Trump was relying for re-election. Because they are global news broadcasters, that clearly influences the news narrative around the globe.

China, for exactly the same reason, is playing its own part in keeping the coronavirus centre stage via the WHO, their poodle.

“China’s potential of becoming a major WHO contributor must necessarily be an alluring prospect for the UN agency,” said MERICS expert des Garets Geddes.

Observers also point out that cooperation between the WHO and China has been on the rise, be it along China’s “Health Silk Road” initiative or in support of the WHO’s goal of universal health coverage by 2030.
“These are projects that matter to Tedros and the WHO,” said des Garets Geddes. He also stressed that China’s growing economic and diplomatic clout allows Beijing to influence political decisions and build coalitions across the world. “This is especially true in the ‘Global South’ — an important region for the WHO. The World Health Organization needs to have China on its side……”

‘….Critics also point to Taiwan’s continued exclusion from the WHO as evidence of Beijing’s influence.’

https://www.dw.com/en/what-influence-does-china-have-over-the-who/a-53161220

Where China sees the coronavirus as working in its interests, it will harness WHO and any other levers to continue that work:

‘ Beijing’s say is growing not only at WHO, but also in the health policies of more and more countries. This also is an important area in China’s Belt and Road initiative and its activities in African countries. It may be doubted whether Beijing always acts in the best interests of its partners. “Chinese health aid allocation is poorly related to direct health needs of African countries,” French researchers last year concluded.’

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/

However it is devoutly to be hoped that the economic damage of this lockdown will be sufficiently apparent by November so that all European governments will eschew any further lockdowns and use their so effective media briefing techniques to ensure that the inevitable further ‘Influenza Like Illness (ILI)’ outbreaks (that happen every year in Northern Europe December-April) are kept firmly in perspective, if not completely ignored, as they were, more often than not, previously.

I consider it highly unlikely, for that reason, that the coronavirus will possess anything like the prominence it currently has, as a news story, after 03 November.

From the DM:

In Leicester… police say there are ‘more officers on duty than on New Year’s Eve – to prevent people attempting to sneak out of the city in order to reach the pubs outside the lockdown zone.

Boris’s Britain.

Keep an eye on the sky, I’d expect to see policc drones – catching thirsty people ‘trespassing’ as they Great Escape their way to the Duck and Hound.

Gulags. We really are run by bastards.

A d how many people managed to sneak out? Everybody who wanted to, is my guess.

Nature Journal. Heidi Larson, who directs the Vaccine Confidence Project, a group that monitors public trust in vaccines, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Talks about governments requiring vaccines to allow you to work. Not fanciful, she is talking about that. She is also realising the game is up and the covid is on the wane.

They also have to sell you the idea they can fast-forward 7-10 years of vaccine testing into months.

If tbey are testing inadequately then ‘thinking carefully’ equals ‘a conspiracy’ since they could reasonably know improperly tested injections may cause harm.

Apologies if already covered yesterday.

“Overall, most people support vaccines, points out Gellin, and are likely to do so in this pandemic. Still, global vaccination rates have plateaued in the past two decades, Larson says. Both she and Gellin worry that another reason for public suspicion about a COVID-19 vaccine might be the speed of its development. “We should be very clear and transparent about the development process,” says Gellin. “Otherwise, when it shows up, people will ask ‘how can we be sure no shortcuts were taken?’”

The messaging around a vaccine will also need to be carefully thought out. If there’s already fewer COVID-19 infections by then, it’s going to be a hard sell, says Larson. “The thing that’s going to change people’s minds is if the government says that if you have the vaccine, you can go to work”, she says.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01423-4

“We should be very clear and transparent about the development process,” says Gellin. “Otherwise, when it shows up, people will ask ‘how can we be sure no shortcuts were taken?’”

She is assuming that you can condense 7-10 years into six months without any short cuts. If this is true, why does it normally take 7-10 years? Are they just deliberately dragging it out? Think of the lives that must be being lost while they pretend to be developing the vaccine for all that time.

In reality, they will clearly have to take short cuts – or just develop a very weak, near-placebo vaccine. And this is why we shouldn’t expect them to be ‘clear and transparent’ about the development process.

Marion said this yesterday:  “Lockdown sceptics, of which I am one, of course, may think that this is off topic, but vaccinations are a big part of all this” (the Lockdown).

Agree. The vaccination agenda underpins the lockdowns and so-called 2nd wave threats worldwide.

We should be able to have an honest debate about vaccines, the pros and cons. Also to have trails that compare vaccinate against unvaccinated. All of this has to do with freedom of speech and protection of our rights and liberties

The ‘lock’ down has been designed to be un’locked’ by the vaccine. The 17 mintute interview on BBC breakfast of Bill Gates flapping his insane arms about at the start of the lockdown made vaccines the clear direction.

Ask any person believing in the lockdown and they will tell you something of a vaccine on the horizon. It’s part of the story.

Apologies to Marion and others for missing this yesterday.

Alliance for natural health say the same thing, and have a video and downloadable A4 on their website which is definitely worth handing out to people. Video is excellent too!
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/the-uncertain-promise-of-a-covid-vaccine-the-video/

Just watching Match of Day from last night. .Gary Lineker . what a tosser. showing one of the rounds of applause for NHS – 72 years ,, what a momentous occasion. Gold = 50, Diamond = 60, polished turd = 72) he says” ..to the health workers who sacrified so much………” and they had to show the footballers taking the knee for every game… At least in the championship – the home of proper football – they have now knocked that on the head.

on a more serious note after my early morning rant…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8490171/DAN-HODGES-tragic-footballs-Black-Lives-Matter-goal-gift-racists.html
very interesting article about the Premier league and BLM

My OH and I have exchanged several emails with Sky sports customer relations re BLM and not one of the three replies (all from different people) has answered our questions.
1 Do commentators and pundits have a choice as to whether they wear BLM insignia or not?
2 Does Sky sports recognise that BLM has a political agenda and have Sky read that agenda?
3 Has Sky consulted its paying customers as to whether they approve of watching sport which espouses the BLM cause?
4 There are many worthy causes out there so how does Sky decide which causes it will support and to which will it give free publicity?
The replies all witter on about tackling racism in sport, which we have made clear should be a priority, but not by using a Marxist organisation like BLM to do it.

Gmtv and itv haven’t had the common decency to reply my concerns about their coverage of the protests.

I’ve done the same, I can tell you now that they will not be dropping support for BLM. They said they don’t really care what their customers think. So, I just cancelled everything. Took me two hours though on the phone!

72 years – is that the age of the NHS, or the waiting-list for a hip operation?

Some years ago, before it got too commercialised, I used to visit Goa in India for 3 weeks every February. On the beach there were inevitably a number of British people who had come over to Goa to have a hip or knee operation at the main hospital there. They said it was a fabulous hospital (in those days, don’t know what it’s like now) spotlessly clean, wonderful nursing staff, and the surgeons had been trained in the U.K. The reason it was spotlessly clean was that there wasn’t any social security in India, so everyone had a job of sorts. In this case, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning . . . absolutely everything. Armies of cleaning staff. The British people would have their operations, and then spend a couple of weeks recuperating on the beach in the sunshine.
Everyone was a winner, The hospital of course charged more to the British for their services, and those extra charges helped to cover the medical care for their own countrymen who could not afford to pay much. The British patients got wonderful care, and recuperated on a lovely beach.
The cost of the operation was so little in comparison to U.K. private hospital prices. And it took the pressure off “Our NHS” . . . who as usual were light years behind with huge waiting lists. I knew some people who even flew out there for dental treatment.

Perhaps he thinks we won’t survive to see the 75th.

I am amazed he has not only survived in the public domain, but seems to have moved effortlessly upwards.

Very interesting article about the Leicester lockdown – as written by a “muslim community leader” . this echoes various comments contributors have made on this site over the last few days
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8490305/I-tell-exactly-Leicester-lockdown.html

My take on reading is that the writer is asking for more control over the way people live their lives.

That would be Shariah, then.

This Mail article – from the inside of the Leicester Muslim community – is well worth reading.
The point (inadvertently) made is that Leicester’s BAME community – about half the city’s population – have in effect ‘done a Sweden’ since mid-April but in the worst living and working conditions imaginable.
Yet, 10 weeks later, have the city’s hospitals been overwhelmed and are people dropping dead in the streets – No.
So what was the merit of maintaining the lockdown after it was clear that the NHS was not going to be overwhelmed – ie early April?

I agree. Here’s a bloke saying the Lockdown wasn’t observed at all (‘in name only’) so if this thing was so virulent how come they weren’t dropping like flies? He cites an owner ‘visibly unwell’ still going to work. So how come he didn’t infect all his workers? The article’s sub-text seems to say Lockdown was ineffective, ironic given the intention of the piece was to achieve the opposite and suggest more draconian action was needed.

My take was a predictable evasion of personal responsibility, in favour of ‘they should have done more’.

From today’s Telegraph:

‘Pubs shut their doors to the public on their first day of trading in months after violence escalated on Saturday night…Nottinghamshire Police arrested four people after reports of antisocial behaviour at “a small number of pubs north of the county”‘.

Well I suppose hacks were never going to say that it all went reasonably well. Mayhem and disaster is what they want, and what they hype if necessary.

4 people????? that’s a quiet Saturday night in most places

Violence escalated from what? Zero, surely, they’ve been shut for fourteen weeks, for crying out loud…

I’ve got to say I’m disappointed. From all the papers and MSM reporting this morning it seems that last night was a damp squib. Isn’t it worrying that people have been scared into submission that they genuinely believe if they don’t behave they will all be locked up again? If only the scenes in SoHo were widespread, it would be encouraging, but sadly it looks like we won’t have many people disobeying all the stay safe nonsense anytime soon. On the other hand maybe it’s because people like us decided to stay home because it’s not worth going out to be told how to enjoy yourselves.

The fearful, seeing last nights revelry in London, will be expecting a second wave (5th time lucky!) – when that doesn’t happen more and more people will venture out, the fear will dissipate – the old normal will return….

Thats the comment i have heard here… “those wreckless people enjoying themselves”, frankly a scripted download of a thought plucked straight of the 10 oclock news. Quickly countered by look at the proestes, beaches and raves no subsequent increase weeks later.

Two weeks from today i hope scripted thought evaporates. Sooner or later people will see they’ve been had.

When you’ve got people calling for lockdowns because of beach littering, I guess the pressure to comply is very real. I’ve started turning the table on these chumps – holding a mirror up to their psychopathic views.

eg. What?.. you want to lock an entire population up, including children, on the OFF CHANCE you might get a virus which is HIGHLY UNLIKELY to be deadly. Are you insane?

The selfishness and wrecklessness is all theirs.

The other way of solving beach litter is to bring people up properly so that they take their litter home with them.

Absolutely

Or empty your bins regularly.

Exactly. The councils didn’t help. Seaside and litter go together. Always have done.

It helps if the government doesn’t force pubs and cafes to do takeaway only, thus generating tons of unnecessary litter!

Need to start the *Keep Britain tidy’ campaign again..

I just tell them they’re welcome to lock themselves down, but don’t tell me how to run my life. I don’t tell them. You want to wear a mask and look like a twat? Help yourself. You want to jump into the road to avoid someone on a narrow pavement? Watch out for traffic. But don’t tell me how to live my life.

Looking forward to their anger when that day comes, as come it will. As I love telling the Johnson fanboys and fangirls on other sites: tick-tock.

Too late by then. The ground has already been conceded.

That’s it. None of this is elevated above a turf war, it’s just been the illusion of a spook bug as someone wonderful above said.

Nick rose. Anything we can do to direct the anger in the right direction is worthwhile.

I don’t think so – the beach goers, BLM protesters, ravers, LFC supporters, etc – don’t give a shit about the scary virus – its just a matter of time before the majority move on….

Encouraging

They can manufacture a second wave…
Look at Leicester.

There is a lack of hospitalisations and deaths in the manufacturing process
(evidence)

Wankock has blithely ignored that – and Marr of course didn’t think to question it.

When they see we aren’t dropping dead in the streets from the Spook Bug, they’ll come round. End of furlough will help too.

Unfortunately end of furlough = no money to go out – for many…

I know. That’s why they’ll come round. Reality always wins.

..which is why they’ve brought in a law of no gatherings over 30 people… can’t protest then..

The hostelry I went to wanted to take my temperature. I declined. When i remonstrated with the masked member of staff whom I know well that their precautions were out of proportion he just shrugged and said he didn’t want to argue with me. After I got home I realised it was quite intimidating talking to someone in a mask. They can see my face, but I can’t see theirs. I have no idea what expression they are pulling. Why would I want to spend money sitting in an establishment like that? Why would they think I’d be stupid enough to want to? I’m pretty sure that if you went back five years most advocates of wearing masks would have found women wearing burkhas or niqabs intimidating and would have complained or made some disparaging remark.

I find people who don’t think to remove their sunglasses when talking to me are bad enough. Mask plus sunglasses would be a great way to intimidate people.

Taking people’s temperatures is unethical, it is private and personal information. Will they be taking your pulse next?

I see it as positive in a way. Maybe it shows that people won’t bother to go with all the nonsense in place, so they will have to quietly drop it. I accept I’m probably being over-optimistic though…

Hancock praises people for acting responsibly as pubs reopen in England. UK health secretary said overall he was pleased with behaviour as hospitality sector reopens.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/matt-hancock-praises-people-for-acting-responsibly-as-pubs-reopen-in-england

Patronising git!

I just have to say one more time how much I loathe that man!

Seconded. He has a smirking face that one could never tire of punching!

Also agree re MH. He’s enjoying himself far too much

The thought of giving him a good, hard smack is just so satisfying!

Hancock’s Half Hour would be better, and far more entertaining.

Does anyone remember how funny it was?

I do. I loved it, particularly the radio version.
Hancock was funny and knew it.
Wancock is farcical and doesn’t know it. Yet.

I call him Shuttlecock, as he wavers this way and that

Say it once more, for me!

I’m sure I’ll actually be saying it many more times!

Is that what constitutes news these days? A non-entity’s opinion?

Your last sentence, that’s it exactly. Our local asked us to ring before popping in to make sure there’s a table free. We usually stand at the bar to chat to whoever is around, including bar staff. Why should hubby and me sit at a table together with a drink? We can do that at home. If hubby goes out on his own, as he is won’t to do, he’s not going to sit at a table on his own! Does no-one understand how pubs work?

Yesterday we visited the small Scottish town of Callander. In the best of senses it was likke travelling back in time. The main street was very busy and shops seemed to be doing great trade. People happily walked past each other without the farcical swerving and jumping into the road; masks were not being worn. Truly a breath of fresh air and hopefully much more representative of Scotland than the authoritarian nonsense of Sturgeon and her acolytes.

The one exception was a shoe shop which had its entrance partially blocked by a chair with hand sanitiser on it ; for those who ventured beyond this hazard the two masked staff members immediately demanded to know whether you have a mask followed by a warning that you must wear one next week. We left – they had no other customers

We went to Largs mid-afternoon yesterday. The place was rammed. The only signs of the “new normal” were the queues outside Nardini’s ice cream parlour (the restaurant was closed and wasn’t even doing takeaways) and outside the chip shops.

We saw one or two masks and only a couple of instances of bed wetting behaviour (one couple almost walked into a wall as we (a group of 6) walked past them). I loudly enquired if they put rubber sheets on their beds.

As normal, because we had our puppy, we had loads of chat with other dog owners, no apparent social distancing being observed.

Great stuff… thanks Mark and Guirme for posting. People know what’s what without getting all fancy and skeptical about it – our human spirit is out there!

I can hear the recalculations in holyrood already…

They’ll probably lock both places down for daring to enjoy themselves. It’s like having the Puritans in charge.

I agree. Whenever I see a representive from the BID I slap on a huge smile – they hate it.

I bet they do! You’ve found their weak spot :o))

Thanks to both Guirme and Mark for your reports on the battlefield so to speak. I get the feeling that the vast majority of people want their lives back but there’s a vocal group of cowards who are still afraid of the virus and shaming people for not antisocial distancing and the like

The one exception was a shoe shop which had its entrance partially blocked by a chair with hand sanitiser on it ; for those who ventured beyond this hazard the two masked staff members immediately demanded to know whether you have a mask followed by a warning that you must wear one next week. We left – they had no other customers

Bit in bold – bet it didn’t occur to the staff why there were no customers coming in. I would definitely give them a wide berth.

I hope there were a couple of communal masks hanging on the chair for those people who don’t have one – rent a mask – great idea

Communal masks sounds a good way of spreading something.

Note there are no ‘hazardous waste’ bins for disposal of masks…

When shops first reopened, there were some pretty silly guidelines for shoeshops – but no mention of masks!

It seems to me that people are making things up as they go along. Not helped by ignorance of how the law really works – that guidelines don’t make a law and hence can be adapted or ignored.

One, two, buckle my shoe,
Three, four, block up the door.
Five, six, bullying tricks.
Seven, eight, no sales to date.
Nine, ten, shoeshop’s gone, then.

Annie thanks for that you got laugh out of us.

On my way into work this morning, and to psyche myself up, I listened to one of my favourite songs: It’s All Gone by Chris Rea. It has a great tune and the lyrics are poignant at the best of times but they seem particularly apt right now.

We certainly seem to be well along the Road to Hell!

From a sceptic friend of mine who lives in melbourne:

“We are back in lockdown as well! second wave!
So many people know it’s a hoax, but so many ‘sheeple’ believe they are helping by complying…….DER!
The ramped up testing is showing more cases for the statists, but no more deaths. Go Figure!
Now we have police and military in the suburbs.  “Marshall Law”  by stealth.”

Same shit as here and Spain and the USA.

Living a bit further north of Melbourne but when your quarantine security guards decide to get vertical with the guests they’re supposed to protect and then because they’re underpaid go drive Uber’s and the go to religious ceremonies involving hundreds, your infection control is non existent. Melbourne has had more local cases last ten days than last ten weeks. The poor and under privileged are now suffering through the political class being completely ignorant of what’s going on. Not good.

And yet people still don’t think there’s a hidden agenda.

Going back to yesterday’s debate on conspiracy, I certainly agree that there certain trends and strands of thinking that have been brewing for decades, pushed by various interest groups, that are beginning to converge and have seized upon this “crisis” in order to make a leap forward with their plans, who do not have our best interests at heart but instead wish to prolong this crisis to serve their own ends. One could call that a conspiracy.

It’s mainly the love of power, power deriving from a fearful populace who want to be kept safe.

Yep, I’ve thought for a while this is just the next step towards a one world totalitarian Government, too many coincidences building up over the years.

I’ve worked overseas for 33 years and my wife really liked travelling but we both agreed about 5 years ago the signs were there for the end of mass tourism and travel for the masses for the coming green agenda.

A discussion at work a few years ago came up with the scenario of passports and who would get what type:

• there would be a one world centrally issued passport or travel pass scheme
• the very, very rich, politicians, media luvvies part of the “club” etc would get one that allowed unlimited travel without restrictions
• those of us requiring travel for work would get one but with caveats and restrictions
• the masses would be price out of the market then stopped travelling except for rationed trips they had to earn and justify

Looks like it\s heading that way.

The ICAO is actually in charge of passport standards etc, not national Governments who can only decide on the colour. I found this out when the UK Government were blaming the EU on the maroon colours and the EU pointed out that the British passport could have been any colour including blue.

https://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/PKD/Pages/default.aspx

Will have to research but I’m sure the ICAO and IMO are both “hidden” arms of the UN.

And this UN arm gives the European Governments and the Commission their orders:

https://www.unece.org/info/ece-homepage.html and https://www.unece.org/oes/nutshell/member_states_representatives.html

A good example is the “world car” that act manufacturer is now promoting/making so every model is these are in every country.

Can’t disagree Julian. And I don’t care if people call it a ‘bellyflop’ if they don’t want to call it ‘conspiracy’ because there are other people who also are fearful, fearful of being seen to be gullible and in David Icke territory less they be ridiculed. And that’s worked very well: I don’t want to be associated with Icke either. And a lot of my (very) intelligent friends have waged that accusation against me. And I just want to say: look what’s happening, don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if it’s love of power, love of money, or love of your fucking toenails. If it’s taking away your freedom, your right to determine how to live your life and if it’s done covertly then it is a ‘bellyflop’ .Had this discussion with my brother yesterday and he is bemused because he doesn’t know why people seek power. I went way back to Genghis Khan and up to present day to illustrate that they do. The ‘why’ is debatable, but the fact is that they do and that means taking control over you. Why are the Saddams, the Hitlers, the Pol Pots, the Stalins tyrants and not philanthropists? Why aren’t they benevolent despots? Because tyrants feed on fear and being in control. They’ve bought into the ego’s promise of achieving happiness through power and the visible subjugation of others satiates them. Just look at the little Nazis who have emerged from this fiasco to illustrate how even at the lowest levels people seek power over others.

Yesterday in Sussex was horrible. Only managed a 9 miles walk along the coast. Today is MUCH better. I shall assess the town and what it offers. Dinner last night in the local Malmaison. Very good cheer.

Excellent walk in the Lakes: Ambleside-Skelwith Bridge-Colwith Force (impressive after all the recent rain)-Langdales-Elterwater-Rydal Water-Ambleside. Damp, but some sunshine. Most places in Ambleside had signs asking people to respect social distancing, saw nothing too extreme.

I know I broke out from Gwlag Cymru two days early, but sod ’em.

I’m very envious!

Those signs come off very easily and rip apart easily too.
Bagged six this morning. Not that anybody was taking the slightest notice of them, but it’s the principle of the thing.
None of the ones I ripped earlier has been replaced.

Playing the Long Game

There are generally two approaches to trading the stock market, a medium/Long term strategy or day trading.

The former involves taking a position and waiting long enough to see if your assessment works in your favour and hopefully ends with a positive result.

The latter involves reacting to random fluctuations in share prices. It’s very hard to predict as the movements are mostly random.

The general concensus is that day trading is gambling and the majority of people who do it lose money. The smarter approach is playing the long game to allow for the ups and downs to even out over time but to capitalise on a general upward trend (which is what your analysis should have led you to expect).

Now consider the way the world has approached the COVID-19 crisis. Most of the world has opted for the day trading approach changing their strategy every time there is new information or the data suggests that things are moving in the wrong direction. R rate over 1? React. Spike in cases? React. Every random fluctuation that directs away from the desired outcome must be acted upon. Actions must be taken to minimise loss at every twist and turn.

Sweden on the other hand opted for the long game. They analysed the situation and chose a strategy that would give them an expected and desired outcome. Reality is never perfect and there have been some downturns but the overall strategy and outcomes are panning out as expected.

Perversely Sweden has been vilified for taking the traditionally considered “smart” approach whilst the day traders are thought to be doing the right thing.

There are now more and more calls for total eradication of the virus as the best and only way to minimise losses. In trading terms this is effectively saying it’s safest not to trade at all.

The definition of a long term investment is a short term investment gone wrong . I’ve got a few of those!

Sounds like the situation a lot of lockdown countries are in now.

Ditto!

I think your analogy to the market is apposite.

October is always an interesting month, and with the recent Fed-fuelled rally in the US, the second quarter was the best since 1987. Some of us remember October 1987, not so much for the hurricane, but for the crash. Of course there is also October 1929. Interestingly, many of the big names in the US have suggested the recent rally has been due to private investors and day traders – much like early 1987 and 1929 albeit the instruments played are slightly different. If this all goes ‘t… up’ in October it will coincide with the end of various schemes and likely surge in unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic.

A perfect storm?

Haven’t seen BobT’s name on comments for a few days. Has his Caribbean Island opened up again and he’s gone back to work?

He was about the only one giving much info about overseas development and coming out of lockdowns other than people we know directly we are in contact with.

Looking through MSM this morning while bored and various reach engines about 99% of what turns up about the rest of them old is these atndard “we’re all going to die”, more testing needed, more cases found, more lockdowns and so on and from UK, Spain, USA, Australia, New Zealand. Its seems there its of the world does not exist.

Almost nothing about countries going back to normal.

All very strange and a bit worrying. More and more like the news from Airstrip One.

Italy is getting back to normal though there are still restrictions in place and a lot of mask wearing. They have been for a few weeks where we are now I think.

‘A lot of mask wearing’ is not getting back to normal. (Plus they are useless.)

Indeed, certainly wasn’t my intention to suggest otherwise. But most business and venues are now open, with distancing.

There was quite a heated race conversation I recall and not sure he has been back since.

Yes, there was. I didn’t always agree with what he said, but his views seemed genuine. I think it’s positive to listen to others with different views, who are able and prepared to argue for them rationally, and agree to disagree, without ad hominem attacks. It seems harder and harder to come by such debate.

Missed that one, must have been busy that day.

I don’t recall whites having the monopoly on being arseholes – they come in all shapes, sizes, colours, creeds, sexes and religions.

I always find it’s good to debate with people of opposing views, I amy change their mind, they may change their mind or we agree to differ but living in a bubble devoid of challenge leaves you brain dead like politicians, media movies, SJWs and so on.

Come to think of it, Mark I has been MIA for a few days too.

Any driving instructors here?

…. instructors, will clean their cars between clients, before a lesson ….
Ridiculous! They often work to pretty tight schedules anyway.

Both candidates and examiners will be required to wear face coverings during exams, but the rule does not apply to lessons.

Driving examiners are such delicate flowers!

If I was a driving examiner I’d wear my mask over my eyes

Wow, I feel like there are not enough police in the land to put on the masonic white gloves and check for dust in each footwell before lessons!

Weren’t there rules/laws/whatever written to say instructors and pupils should not turn to look at each other in lessons – for the same reason people are unsure if hairblowers are safe – …spittle!
– People talk louder if hair dryer is on..can’t make it up, sky news yesterday.

Do not forget two police officers are fine in a car together. The virus knows they are essential works so does not pass between them.

Coronia!

I’m starting refresher lessons tomorrow, so I can buy a car and not rely on public transport (so much for the green revolution). Instructor is insisting on masks, could be interesting if my glasses steam up.

He did refer to extra cleaning, was glad when me and the Mrs booked lessons one after the other so that’s one less clean he has to do.

Why do I feel that driving whilst wearing a mask is very unsafe? Face coverings even worse!

Yes, you could open a window (for whatever reason ,but maybe just because you are hot due to the mask) and the mask could fly up and cover your eyes… what is the insurance position then, if an accident is caused by following the rules re mask-wearing?

So the virus can tell whether it is a lesson or a driving test then????

You better believe it.

Not only that, it can tell if you’ve passed or not!

Coronia!

How do you fit a sheet of Perspex between left & right side of cars? I see a business opening.

Good lord where are we heading.

This morning on BBC news one of the anchors stated how good it is now that “we” have access to hair stylists. I guess we are not supposed to have noticed that they have had access to hair stylists all along.

Anyone who happens to get interviewed in a vox pop for TV should make that point!

Anyone else finding the mask narrative being pushed and pushed and pushed somewhat disconcerting? At the beginning of this mess the official line was that masks were unnecessary and probably ineffective. Now, when there have been dozens of studies produced (some going way back) confirming their ineffectiveness this lack of efficacy is being ignored and the ‘done thing’ is to wear a mask. Isn’t this the most sinister thing of the lot? Masks willingly – even enthusiastically – worn, subjugation complete as the non-wearers are vilified. I had friends on Facebook (don’t go there anymore) castigating me for railing against masks. Intelligent friends. They don’t work you morons and you have willingly given up the little freedom that you had left.

I find mask wearing inexplicable. But they are a fashion item too, a status symbol, among millennials. We can only hope that, like most fashions, they fade.

Here in sanity corner, I’m afraid we rather take the mick out of mask-wearers (though not the older people who have been scared witless in to wearing them, only the wokerati, with their supercilious “ooh, look at me being virtuous in my Seasalt bandana mask, protecting you, you ungrateful piece of filth …”

Hey don’t knock Seasalt – that’s the company that agreed to my suggestion that their face coverings should carry a health warning!
(I’ve found Joules wearers more wokey actually!))

I’ve just ordered a Joules jumper, but I’ll be sending it back

Why? Does it not fit or did you decide you were against face coverings?

Oops just seen your post about you niece!

#Against face coverings

I was being sarcastic, didn’t realise they actually did face coverings!

I hope that a number of these millennials go abroad this summer and experience their contemporaries in other countries, mask-less and yet not dropping like flies. The desire to fit in while on holiday (or at least not stand out), and maybe to flirt other young people they may meet (!), will likely lead them to stop wearing masks. When they return to the UK, still healthy, they may just question why masks are mandated in the UK – we can but hope!

It’s a form of virtue signalling and yes a fashion accesory that they parade about to show how “in” they are. Hopefully this will be a flash in the pan and they will cringe and look embarrassed as they look back at their selfies.

..especially if they continue to wear masks while on holiday in countries where masks are not mandated!

It’s an emblem, a sign, a badge of conformity and trust in ‘those who know best, despite the evidence’.

Awful herd behaviour, combined with an underlying disapproval of the free thinkers.

As noted in my first comment on this thread, my niece is obliged to wear hers when on the tube and dealing with clients directly, rather than remotely, but she’s never washed hers.

She doesn’t really think it’s necessary and is quietly undermining the entire rationale by not washing it!

(The other day, she was asked to wear plastic shoe coverings, to prevent a possible viral sole incursion: unbelievable.

Surely basic common sense would show that breathing freely without obstruction is far more beneficial than donning a useless piece of material.

This is what I’ll be showing anyone who questions why I’m “only” wearing a midge net in shops.

https://www.dignity.dk/en/dignitys-work/health-team/torture-methods/torture-by-asphyxiation/

Excellent! That should stymie the mask muppets. Good for you.

Common sense is in short supply, it seems!

I am a mask-refusenik but I’ve managed to wangle a haircut on 13th without one. I now know that even the Govt doesn’t mandate them if the hairdresser wears a plastic visor so I don’t know why my salon insists on them; ‘probably appeasing the terrified.

Anyway, breaking the habits of several months, earlier today I forced myself to start cleaning up the ghastly tip aka our house. As an asthmatic, I need to wear a dust mask, and I won’t say how long it is since I last put one on but it was sometime in the Old Normal. I hate wearing the bloody things but actually it still came as a shock how unpleasant it was. My face was soon hot and clammy, the elastic bits cut into my head and soon I couldn’t breathe properly or make myself intelligible to my OH without taking it off which I was more than happy to do – frequently!

Granted, it was a proper dust mask and not an old T-shirt or a designer virtue-signalling job but it really hit me that you really must have a highly-developed martyr complex to go around muzzled up.

Anyway: Ordeal over, the house is cleaner and my resolve not to go near this ritual public humilation is ever stronger!

Dust masks are horrid, but consider wearing one if (God forbid) you ever actually have to don a mask
Reason: they are intended to let in everything except dust, and to let out absolutely everything you breathe out, so as to ensure that absolutely no dust particles are retained.
So you can have a good, secret laugh at the zombies. Make sure you breathe out in their direction, just as hard as you can.

Brilliant! Thanks, Annie. It would be almost worth wearing one for a short while just to do that. . . .

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/18561496.30-people-limit-gatherings-new-coronavirus-lockdown-rules/

Don’t know if this has been posted, but 30 people allowed in back garden / house now.

I might need a bigger house, and some more friends

And a bigger garden…

Sounds like a possible reaction to the recent illegal raves and house parties.

Seems to be the aftermath from the Simon Dolan court case on Thursday.

I’m going to need a lot more friends to meet that number.

Well worth a read – well done the journalist and the Watford Observer. Clear and concise.

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Greetings Fellow Sceptics!

Had to log into my Facebook account to reply to a message and had the misfortune of seeing a few people I know share photos from the so-called Super Saturday which was a damp squib then proceeding to shame those in the photos for enjoying themselves and not antisocial distancing. Yet they are happy to share articles and hashtags bemoaning the lack of government support for the arts and how venues are in financial danger not realising that the very measure they support – antisocial distancing will hasten the demise of the performing arts and venues that they claim to care about.

Jesus wept.

Yes, I’ve seen the same. One idiot posted a photo from Soho on fb and suggested that they should share the same fate as Leicester. The fact that there has been no spike in cases due to the BLM protests and that London is probably very close to herd immunity doesn’t seem to register. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell goes on in these people’s heads? Do they honestly expect people to put up with all this anti-social distancing indefinitely? Anyone who knows anything about human nature should know that such an approach is unsustainable.

Well said. From what I recall reading, there has been no new cases in London for nearly 2-3 months now, the last recorded case was way back in April. I always ask people do you really think social distancing is sustainable in the long run and funny thing is they do a U turn and say “no” but still go on and on about it has to stay while there are infections and that a vaccine is found. The amount of contortions people do is baffling.

Well and truly brainwashed, lol.

Unfortunately they are and I realised that age is not a barrier – those who I expected to know better, alas, didn’t

I had a chat with a friend yesterday, who is concerned that pubs etc are opening too early. Her justification – that there were only 50 recorded cases on 11 March, whereas infections are currently well into the hundreds. Therefore, since it wasn’t “safe” in March, it’s even less “safe” now – and lockdown has been for nothing. Which rather than meaning lockdowns don’t work (quite apart from the fact that no one was being tested back in early March) obviously means that lockdown needs to be continued indefinitely. I attempted to reason with her, but could see it had no effect.

I’ve found myself in the same situation as you and learned that its nigh on impossible to change the minds of people like that. Its basically like trying to get blood out of a stone.

I am coming to the conclusion that being hit in the pocket via the end of the furlough scheme, looming redundancies and tax rises is the only way that these people will wake up.

Sir David King has been on Sky this morning promoting his alternative SAGE views. He comes across to me as someone who arrogantly believes he knows best. He does not seem to alter from his views as the anecdotal evidence becomes overwhelming, and he is unable to see the big picture. My understanding of science is that it is always fluid, scientist need to be able to be persuaded and to alter their understanding through argument and new data/evidence – and able to admit that they were wrong, nothing wrong with that in science, it’s essential.
For these reasons I don’t think Sir David is ideal scientist material. Sky and others are dishonest not to allow other scientists, with different ideas, onto their program to challenge ”the science”.
Lets have a televised professional debate between these different scientists with different views – where evidence and data can be presented and compared so that more realistic scientific knowledge may evolve.

A bit of transparency from the people, whose ”We know best” mentality, are controlling our lives – I don’t want to be controlled by ”experts”.

Has research been done into the provenance of the self appointed alternative SAGE. Has hallmarks of a placed opposition to my basic brain.

See Guido – profile of many of the self-appointed members:
https://order-order.com/2020/05/04/not-independent-activist-stuffed-shadow-sage/

Thanks! No less than expected, I don’t agree with the guido fawkes premise they are anti gov. But what do I know? Self appointed folk always rancour – and no denying they’ve got form.

Scientific advice should be graded based on risk profiling much like financial advice.

As I relayed a few days ago, a fund manager in NY many years ago heard to say ‘if I underperform by 10% I get sacked; if I outperform by 10% I get sacked’!

I watched it too. He has a very unpleasant persona. Sophy Ridge is a dreadful interviewer, but to allow him to say ‘we at Alternative SAGE are just saying what real SAGE would want to say if they were allowed to comment publicly’ before going on to have a dig at Sir Mark Walport should have been challenged. He of course has form as his hands are all over the disastrous Foot & Mouth policy of the early 2000s, ably supported by the modelling of Neil Ferguson. Of course, it’s not Sir David’s fault he missed the Nobel Prize for Chemistry!

I find Sir David King’s narrative, that SAGE members have to say what the government wants them to whether they believe it or not, very odd. Most members of SAGE and its subgroups are there either as volunteers or on secondment from other jobs. If they were told to say something they believed not to be true, there would be no reason for them not to resign and say so in public.

I’ve not met the current GCSA, but I have met his two predecessors, and several of the CSAs, and none of them struck me as the sort of person who would be likely to be bullied into ruining their scientific reputations by saying things they believed to be untrue.

I can only assume that Sir David, as a former GCSA, is going on his own personal experience in suggesting that science advisers say things they don’t believe for the money?

Well, they may not need bullying – they may just want to “get on”, or they may be covering up for previous mistakes, or they have a certain agenda or set of beliefs which leads them to see things in a certain way. Scientists are human and presumably not immune from the human weaknesses that afflict us all, and I would think it’s nigh on impossible to be completely objective.

All these things are possible. I’m just not sure why Sir David King thinks that all the present CSAs and other SAGE members are in it for the money, or power, or status, when he himself was in exactly the same position under a previous government. Either he genuinely agreed with everything the Blair government said between 2000-2007 (which would cover the Iraq War and the WMD, for example), or he too kept quiet for one of the reasons that he now ascribes to his successors.

As far as I can remember, SAGE have managed to get a fair few public comments in over the last few weeks…

You would think given that the stakes were so high on both sides (possibility of lots of deaths vs. wreck the economy etc) that the govt should have encouraged different groups to come forward with opposing views, and made the different groupings debate it and judge who they thought had the most compelling argument. And this process should have continued throughout this period, to take account of evolving views based on the latest information.

Precisely because the stakes are so high, you want real debate, dissent and questioning, not everyone blindly following just one view, and viewing dissent as heresy or unhelpful. We’ve had nothing of the sort, in the media, from government and from Parliament.

Sir David King thinks that we are all going to have to move to Antartica, as it will be the only habitable land by the end of the century.

Well, we could get him to move there, along with a bunch of telephone sanitisers, and promise to follow after a bit. And stay put. And laugh.

Think tank?! Does this sound a bit like the old camel is a horse designed by a committee?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/05/sunak-considers-500-vouchers-for-all-uk-adults-to-spend-in-covid-hit-firms

I do find this bit rather worrying: transactions could be made with the use of mobile phones

I ignored the lockdown from day five. What can the govt do if everyone just decides after evaluating their own risk to get out and about. We are not the Property, Chattels, Serfs or Slaves of the govt. I am a free man and I will decide my own risk and act accordingly. It is the govt’s responsibility to advise of those risks not run project fear to frighten people into complying.

…. there are fears that some initial vaccines may not be effective ….
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/04/uk-ponders-joining-eus-coronavirus-vaccine-scheme

So are they going to keep jabbing us till they get it right?!

And very why not? If I tilt my head to the right, close one eye and squint you, Cheezilla, look like a human pin cushion.

ANH (Alliance for Natural Health) have a good video and downloadable A4 on their website, regarding vaccine safety and the questions that people need to ask. It is well-written and could be given to anyone, as it asks the right questions, without being overtly anti-vaccine..

https://www.anhinternational.org/resources/documents/uk-vaccine-transparency-manifesto/

If followed honestly, this manifesto would be the end of vaccines. Full stop.

A local story part of a national scandal. Care home death and a concerned family asking why their family member was moved into a care home against their wishes.

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/disgusted-scottish-health-secretarys-letter-uses-wrong-name-midlothian-pensioner-needlessly-moved-hospital-nursing-home-where-he-picked-covid-19-and-died-2904051

I know it is the Mirror but the head of NHS is defending what they did:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nhs-chief-defends-sending-potential-22304229

Thanks Offlands. Mirror I grant you but the men in suits say 20 years of fruitless talking comes to catch up with them.

It is surely only a matter of time until people wake up to how much suffering and death has been caused by the policies of care around hospitals and carehomes.

The excuse that the men in suit didn’t know guv isn’t so great really, looks a bit lame really, a little bit insulting perhaps. Depending on if you have a soul or not.

I am not sure they ever will. I am dismayed at the number of people I know still 100% buying into everything, eagerly following at the cost of their own livelihoods willing to turn a blind eye to the extreme harm being caused by these measures and ultimately their willfull ignorance and compliance.

The only people I know who can see through this saw through it very quickly. The rest are looking like terminal cases to me now.

I agree with this. Most lockdown-zealots only seem to care for their own skins, even now when there is virtually no chance of getting sick, even if you’re older. These are the people who look blank or even get defensive of angry if you mention the scandal of the care home deaths or the destrucion of our economy and culture.

To me this is the most sickening aspect of the whole thing. I will never wonder again how decent German people were persuaded to go along with the Nazis’ policies.

Could be. If you’ve (one) gone along with the scam and lost everything I can see it being pretty hard to realise you’ve been had.

But I’m still positive there’s a human spirit about. And looking beyond our shores there are going to be plenty of examples where countries have essentially rejected the scam to a greater or lesser extent.

I echo Miriams comment about how Nazi Germany happened – always a puzzle from history for me but not anymore. Didn’t our leaders since ww2 do well not to employ such operations on the public until now.

It feels to me as if we’ve taken a step or two further down the road this time. However, I hope it’s not wishful thinking on my part that the narrative is now starting to collapse. I don’t think they will quite get away with this one. I expect the PTB will have learned their lessons and it’s definitely a wake-up call for those of us prepared to wake up (as opposed to being ‘woke’ )

Don’t you get a horrible feeling that the zombies would stand and clap as ‘super-spreaders’ were loaded on to trains bound for extermination camps?
It isn’t a remote analogy. Nazi propaganda regularly referred to Jews as deadly bacilli infecting society.

before c19 it was incomprehensible

Got bored for the roast to cook so put a complaint in about the latest batch of Government adverts. You only get 500 characters so cannot put much:

They are deliberately lying on the adverts so that they can mislead people into thinking that a “positive test” is an active and on-going case of covid-19 when it is not. A positive test only means antibodies have been detected, nothing more.

https://www.asa.org.uk/make-a-complaint/quick-report.html

I noticed several whole page adverts appearing recently which are hugely emotive. Things like a picture of an old boy saying “I self-isolate to keep you safe” and another of someone with the caption “I wear a mask for you …” or words to that effect. They make my blood boil.

The one our local radio plays ad nauseous about the “care worker” who tests positive and self-isolates is driving me bonkers – trying to be emotive and pressurise me into “doing there right thing”.

The right thing is to string up everyone from Bill Gates down and let the world go it’s merry way without centralised psychopaths in charge.

The virus has all but bloody gone (in its potency anyway) so what’s the real reason for these campaigns? Clue: rhetorical question.

LOL. Just more of the same strategy the govt has been using since March. Shaming, fear, heroes/villains.

I don’t suppose there was an advert of a child saying, ‘I forwent on my education for nothing’ or someone in a psychiatric unit with the caption, ‘I got sectioned because of this government’.

Ignore, Ignore, Ignore

That’s my kinda Three.Part.Slogan!

The “I wear a mask for you” ones are the most rage-inducing of the lot. The people who don’t find it so must surely be a different species…

That advert should be renamed as “I wear a mask because I’m a virtue signalling twat” because its not about other people. If they want to carry on breathing their CO2 fine but to insinuate that they’re doing it for me is patronising and insulting.

I wish we could put out some alternative ones of our own..but where? They’d likely be taken down..

Thanks Carrie, you’ve just given me an idea:

“I run my business as normal because that’s what my customers want”

Ah, these simple, straightforward, honest, sensible people. How governments hate them.

Could you get a poster made for the window of your business with that slogan, and some identical small flyers, and do some kind of mail drop? or at least get flyers put up in say, the windows of local newsagents? Might get you some new business!
What would be clever would be to in some way copy the style of the ‘official’ posters, maybe in the font or something, so that they actually look like they are official government-produced ones

That’s an idea …

We are putting a sign in the window tomorrow, saying “Welcome, please come in” because quite a few people have hovered by the door wondering what to do; they’ve been so easily conditioned not to go into shops!

NB: In the two days’ trading since we were ‘allowed’ to re-open, we have had not one single person offering their contact details nor have we been asked for hand sanitiser. One lady did ask me conspiratorially if she could use the toilet (it’s all so bloody sad).

That bloody ‘I wear a mask for you’ one constantly pops up on websites and I think,’that’s nice,but I won’t be wearing one for you’.There is also the constant ‘thanks to our NHS and Keyworkers’ crap that scrolls across my car radio when Jazz FM is on.

Another one just popped up on DT website,’Enjoy summer safely,whatever you’ve missed enjoy it again safely,follow Covid 19 secure guidelines’,jesus wept !.

Who came up with that awful phrase, “Covid-secure”?

Awful. Who wants to go to a cafe decked out like an operating theatre?

SAGE or that behavioural group, whatever it is called, I should think..

I had one come up next to my e-mail with a photo of a black police officer inviting me to join the Met! Perhaps I had been watching too many helpful videos from Det. Serg’ Insp’ Officer Peter Piss-Pott of Twat Valley Police!

Do we stand a chance with figures like these:

The majority of the British public think pubs have reopened too soon and the country should brace for a second peak of coronavirus cases, a poll has revealed.
Analysis carried out by polling agency Opinium found that 52% of Brits think the hospitality sector has gone back into business too early.
It comes as pubs and restaurants reopened on Super Saturday, with images showing vast crowds flouting social distancing rules in London and across the UK.
Over half of those surveyed by Opinium, 55%, said they are braced to go back into full lockdown before a coronavirus vaccine becomes available.

And a massive 73% of people think there will be a second outbreak of COVID-19 this year.

The government’s disapproval rating is at 49%, with just 30% approving of its performance during the pandemic.

A total of 52% think the government under-reacted to the situation, while just 30% believe it has reacted proportionately.

52% think the government under-reacted!!!! Speechless

Do we believe these surveys, or are they just quoting them knowing people would check they are genuine? The aim is clearly to try and coerce people into ‘checking their thinking’ (hate that phrase), ie to make people question whether their own judgment is right, or whether they maybe ‘ought to’ think as those in the surveys do…

You can get polls to say anything. Save your sanity and ignore!

They are simply duckspeakers: it isn’t the brain speaking, it’s the larynx. And ‘provided the opinions quacked out are orthodox ones’, the pollsters are happy.

Control,control, control. Advertising is another form.

An early pioneer of advertising many years ago defined advertising as ‘creative persuasion’.

That’s why i boycotted Classic FM – all those adverts were simply manipulative and misleading. Then BLM came along and put paid to me ever supporting them.

Sir David King chairman of alternative SAGE is favoured by the BBC and Sky as he towes the ” official ” left line . He was wheeled out last month to warn against opening schools , because it would lead to a second spike .

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/coronavirus-june-1-too-early-for-schools-to-reopen-says-group-of-scientists/

He is very much a political scientist and his area of specialisation 30 years ago was chemistry not medicine . You might as well ask Alistair Campbell to comment. He is 80 years old and a great fan of Tony Blair .

His legacy is the response to Foot & Mouth in the early 2000s, ably assisted by the modelling of Neil Ferguson. His preferred legacy would have been the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, but he was a tad unlucky!

No-balls prize for witchcraft would be more in his line.

Is this ‘Rona panic as simple to divide as left/right?

In my experience age appears to be the biggest driver, the most zealous group of lockdown fanatics being your 50-70 age group. The older age group 70+ are sagely cracking on.

There is a marked correlation with political leaning . All the people that I know who are hiding in the wardrobe for the next 5 years only leaving if rubber gloved and masked up tend also to be those people who last year were wearing their yellow ” Bollocks to Brexit ” badge.

haha… Fair enough. Guess it depends where you live. I’m finding the exact opposite…

I’ve noticed the same with people I know.

I’m 67 and all my left-leaning contemporaries are wetting their knickers as are all the left-leaning writers we (used to) read. There don’t seem to be any exceptions.

We have an interest in public transport and we get screaming emails from the RMT union about how dangerous it is to relax 2m on trains and they were the ones desperate to get all passengers in muzzles. I usually reply and ask them why they are so desperate to destroy their own industry.

At the same time, I live in a High Peak village where many people are right-ish, monarchist and great supporters of UKIP and the vast majority of them are also brainwashed and terrified. There are some shining exceptions but I don’t know their political leaning.

We are now convinced that for many people this whole thing has been their finest hour – maximum drama, victimhood and virtue-signalling with a chance to indulge in a cult-like self-abnegation. We think that some people are actually loving this and this ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ (or whatever it is) will be the hardest to de-programme.

So for me, not a right-left split – just brainwashed v. not brainwashed, I’ve said before, I think we failed to get the memo because we don’t go near social media, don’t have a TV and we tend to be natural sceptics who tend to assume any announcement from any Government will be suspect!

I think its more a questioning/unquestioning thing. most people can’t be arsed going beyond the headlines.

If a group of scientists all hold the same political ideology, it does suggest group think and that scientists with the wrong ideology aren’t welcome.

group think = bad science

That sounds right Major

tbh – I’m not that overly interested into delving into the demographics of it all. That would be falling into the same trap as BLM etc. To paraphrase the government’s own propoganda – ‘this panic affects all people from all age groups’

Hence the ‘97% of scientists agree climate change is man made’ needs to be set in context. It is really 97% of the scientists who got funding based on their support for the favoured political stance that climate change is man made agree. Of the original scientist pool of the early 2000s, how many are still involved in academic research? Many were cast adrift in earlier funding rounds!

At one time, the University of East Anglia was employing an artist full-time to draw pictures of climate change.
Fact. Cross my heart.

UEA were the ones doctoring the hockey stick graphs, weren’t they ? Someone should have gone to prison for fraud for that one.

Yes – and VERY bad government!

I’m finding the left-right divide really interesting. I’ve always considered myself midly left wing/liberal (though perhaps more accurately apolitical), and vaguely on the side of Remain, but it appears I became right wing overnight back in March…

I’ve also found throughout this whole debacle, and to a lesser extent previously, that my right wing friends are far less judgemental and willing to listen or engage in debate. The left wingers on the other hand are dismissive, if not outright hysterical, at any suggestion that lockdowns etc aren’t worth it, and will “cancel” people at a moment’s notice for saying the wrong thing. It’s almost like the two sides have swapped places!

You echo my previous leanings/experiences almost exactly A.C. It’s not really a left/right thing anymore. I’ve now seen the pain a government can rain down on its own people. Suppose I’m an anarchist now

My experience entirely. With you on all counts. Politically I always identified myself as ‘of the left’. Can’t do that anymore. I’m not ‘of the right’ either, nor centre so directionless I guess. ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ The left don’t stand for liberty anymore.

Exactly, I don’t have a clue who I would vote for if there was an election tomorrow. I’m a nothing!

I remember a jokey article by Bill Bryson deriding the state motto of New Hampshire: ‘Live free or die.’
To me, this is no longer a joke. It’s a sensible exhortation.

Not sure who Bill Bryson is, but he sounds like a right twat.

maybe you should look him up before hurling insults

Took your advice. I couldn’t track down the derisive article, but did find this …
“All you really need to know about Bryson is that he was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, but now speaks with a British accent.”.

More or less my feelings too. Up to this year I would have considered myself more or less left-wing (in a non-woke way, if that’s still allowed), but after the liberal media’s response to the virus and lockdown ( all the mainstream media, to be fair, but the BBC, Guardian and Independent seem to have been the worst) combined with the acceleration of identitarian culture warfare and “cancel culture” from June onwards, I’m really not sure where I stand anymore.

Yes, me too. Remain, liberal left leaning. Suddenly I seem to have changed sides! I do feel though that some left wing friends support lockdown because they believe they should rather than exercising independent thought.

Strange you should say that, I never though I would ever lean towards being on the right of the political spectrum.

like me you were centrist but the goal posts have moved and you’re no longer standing in the centre circle.. and even though your opinions have not changed, they suddenly put you in the oppositions penalty box

Yes, I feel like I’ve been standing still, but everything else has moved around me.

I think left/right is a bit out-dated but we all use it as a shortcut.
One alternative I like is the “somewheres” vs “anywheres” (David Goodheart). Somewheres have a sense of belonging to a place. They appreciate tradition, respect the history of their country. They value individual liberty as well as personal responsibility. They think that regional and national identities such as being “Cornish” or “English” for example have some meaning.
“Anywheres” don’t give a toss about all that and want more globalism. Anywheres like authority and big public sector institutions. They LOVE experts to tell us what to do, especially academics.
Somewheres don’t have any political representation.

times a few more thumbs up

Love this.

I actually hate this.

It posits that intellectuals can’t be attached to place/identity as strongly as the stuck-together working classes.

Obviously the sensible person accounts for grey areas but it’s used in too shorthanded a way, and henceforth becomes reductionist. I always hear this argument bandied about by neo-liberals for e.g. when they brand the ‘Somewheres’ as Little Englander gammon.

It also pisses me off as I regard myself as a person of Many Somewheres whereas this hypothesis puts me firmly in the Anywhere camp.

It should be and is way more complicated than that. (Tbh I think the author of the book always intended it to be, but it’s never used like that any more. Brexiteers = Somewheres Remainers=Anywheres for e.g. whereas I think we all know this is bollocks).

Basically I hate anything that tries to split people into two camps on purpose because it can be (and usually is) used for evil ;D

My solution for the political parties?

The Common Sense Party versus the everyone else AKA The Batshit Crazy Parties lol
No in all seriousness. I don’t know. Personally I’d like a *genuinely* old school (what I regard as ‘common sense’ anyway) left of centre party that didn’t subscribe to woke bullshit whilst wanting to regulate a capitalist economic structure sensibly. That doesn’t exist any more and hasn’t since BLiar trashed proceedings.

If such a party existed though I’m sure it would also appeal to many on the moderate right- as I’m beginning to realise we’re basically the same other than on ow to run the economy. But if we can all agree on capitalism as the base- which I’m pretty sure all moderates can at this juncture- then the rest shouldn’t be too hard to sort out surely?

Apart from an 80 seat majority in the House of Commons.

The division that seems to me the most useful at present is Authoritarian/Libertarian.

Lol me too. Although….. Actually I think my baptism into neo-nazism came a few years back when I refused to buy a man tampons, and I’ve only got worse since……

Lets face it, politics ruin everything. Including responses to viruses. Especially in the US in the middle of a freaking election year and the US president is the most hated man in history

really? the most hated man in history? I think he is an ar*shole but i think you will see that Hitler was not that popular nor was Stalin and they were probably hated by more people than Trump

Hang-cock must be on the longlist, at least.

Try and find in the MSM Trump’s recent sell-out rally in Arizona. You won’t.

Try and find in the MSM where the rally before that then Police actually shut the stadium gates and walked away leaving most of the ticket holders outside and unable to get in. The the MSM showed photos of a mostly empty stadium and said he was unpopular. You won’t see this reported either.

He is very, very popular across most of the demographics of the US population but the leftie controlled MSM won’t report it.

no, Trumps just mis-understood

Up early today Grant? P*ssed the bed did you?

Well, in my experience, it is the 50-70 age group that is most sceptical (Toby Young, Peter Hitchens, me and my wife included).

For every Toby Young, there are 10 Matt Hancock’s though. I’m inclined to go with what the Major said

I’m in your posited ‘lockdown fanatics’ age group, and I can assure you I and my contemporaries are sceptics!!! In my experience it is younger people who have swallowed all the lies…

Sorry Tom, I fall (along with a great many friends/neighbours) in your 50-70 group and they are largely sceptics. My approach/experience is a little simpler than yours, you’ve probably had a colleague at work who is so poorly prepared for life you wonder how they survive, that’s my take on it. If you know somebody who regularly gives you a chuckle because of strange things they do/don’t do you’ve found your lockdown fanatic. They have little self awareness, they can’t calculate risk reasonably and are scared of their own shadow. Age has little to do with it, except your point on the over 70’s, they’ve seen it all before, as one said to me “I remember the good old days, when we all had polio or rickets’. They’ve seen it all before and know you can’t run away from a virus.

Like I said… maybe it depends where you live. I don’t care either way

I think this is a comment worth posting. Not to irritate by naively bragging, but! Yet again it seems the trust your gut instinct about these boffins works, I was right again!

Don’t be awed by these guys professor status and the bookshelves behind them! Just from their human characteristics with what they are saying and asking always *why* is he saying this, and who is allowing him to.

I’m perhaps not talking to anyone of the commenters here.

i think King also follows the party (i.e. BBC) line re the Climate issue and similar spouts pseudo scientific comments for which he has no qualification

Seems to be the UKs answer to Fauci

http://tmp.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/what_did_dr_fauci_have_to_say_in_2009_about_the_deadly_h1n1_pandemic.html

Noticed earlier that some medical types are following this discussion.
Question: Why is Covid 19 not attenuated by relative humidity?
Is it not more probable that it is a contact transmitted virus like Norovirus?
After all we were originally told its not a flu ad nauseum.

It may be affected by humidity, evidence not strong as yet though:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20064923v1

AFAIK the evidence is that it is not attenuated by humidity.
All other flu viruses cannot spread in the high humidity seasons in the southern US, Brazil etc.
As these are still experiencing Covid 19, that means that either Covid 19 is the only respiratory aerosol spread virus on the planet not affected by humidity or that it is spread primarily by another method.

Doesn’t follow. It’s a lungs to lungs virus, unlike norovirus, which is faeces to mouth to gut. But both can live on cold hard surfaces, cardboard, other human beings, whether deposited from someone’s hand (norovirus) or by a sneeze, mucous (colds, covid). It’s highly contagious, sunlight and humidity kill/disperse it quicker, but it can still pass from person to person. Even in Brazil. Like a summer cold.

From what I’ve been reading the primary vector is contact and it is not especially contagious otherwise the Diamond Princess would have shown a lot more cases.
It didn’t despite them being hot housed in perfect conditions for over 2 weeks.
Evidence is that the primary method of transfer is fecal contamination, especially prevalent in care homes.
From what I’ve read “every single airborne (aerosol-transmitted) virus is responsive to the inverse of absolute humidity. That is, as the mean temperature rises aerosol viral infection efficiency is suppressed. This is why we have a flu season”
Covid is active depite high humidity in southern US states indicating it is not primarily an aerosol borne disease, normal flu and colds decline when flu season ends.
Whole article about it here:
https://market-ticker.org/cgi-mt/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker

I’ve been reading:
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2)(England) Regulations 2020
which have just come into force.
Is there a lawyer in the house? It seems to me that you can now have up to 30 people in your private house (para 5.1.b.i ) – all the provisions re risk assessment etc relate to public gatherings under 5.1.b.ii and iii.
I must be misreading the Act – it’s densely worded to say the least – but it seems to be a sea-change in the law that’s received little attention.

Simon Dolan has tweeted about this – you are correct. Let the house parties commence. Personally I wouldn’t want 30 people in my house even in ‘normal’ times but I know that young folk like to socialize with friends

and there was me (a new septuagenarian) thinking 28 would make up a nice 7 tables for bridge

Amazed it isn’t 33…

This virus is clever, you know … not dangerous if 30 people meet, but suddenly if 31 people meet it is lethal..

Another question – why is 30 people (of potentially all ages) in your own house *not* a risk, but a class of 30 kids in a school too dangerous to be allowed???

My dear Carrie, you are trying to apply a bit of common sense.
Isn’t that illegal these days?

Maybe this is to facilitate that.

smileymiley posted a link a while ago, to a very good summary of the new law in that esteemed journal The Watford Observer. More on the case than the BBC.

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/18561496.30-people-limit-gatherings-new-coronavirus-lockdown-rules/

But you can’t have a wedding reception with 30 guests… totally illogical ‘rules’ as ever..
I’m guessing the new law is to prevent mass protests when the furlough scheme ends.. or against local lockdowns, mandatory vaccination, or indeed against any other new laws that people might object to…

I’ve a work medical booked for next week so made booking at the usual GP’s clinic I use as he does these privately.

I have to pay myself and claim back from the company so I asked the receptionist “do you want cash as normal or is it card only?”

Her reply was “we have a card machine but prefer cash”.

I guess they’ve not heard that cash is dirty and will kill you.

If the GPs are not worried about handling cash why the big hoohaa about it in the big shops and on the council’s pre-opening checklists?

And ask yourself why they prefer cash for these private certificates. A lot of businesses like cash for the small transactions they don’t put through the books. See “ash cash”.

cash is king

Shocking collection of guff in the DT. But look at the comments!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/05/lockdown-really-worth-telegraph-writers-experts-give-verdict/

To the right of the article was Matt’s latest cartoon:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/matt-cartoons-july-2020/

Brilliant!

Brilliant!