2021-01-08

Can the government and “our” NHS please start taking advice from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service and the Campaign for Truth in Medicine, rather than Bill Gates and his big pharma mates (and their proxies)? Then we might get somewhere! If not, why not?

Yes, money talks doesn’t it??

Ps Sir Graham Brady for PM (well who else have we got? realistically?)

Beat me to it, you sod!

Wasn’t even close this time! The competition has been quite hot recently though.

PS Someone I knew from near Sheffield, we used to call Bungle. I preferred Rainbow though (not THAT rainbow, the proper one)

High Hugh – I was originally called the Headingley Bugle but started putting it like this Bu(n)gle. Somehow the brackets got dropped, probably a mistake, always dropping things and bungling up!

Sir Desmond?

Or Esther McVey, who I have seen in action pre-lockdown and consider her the real deal.

But Sir Graham is the one to get things done imo

I second that.

He seems to have the heart but I’m not sure he has the weight.

Here here I totally agree Hugh

I don’t really care who they have as PM. LibLabCon, SNP, PC, Green, DUP or whoever is sat in that place are beyond the Pale as far as I’m concerned, with apparently sixteen honourable exceptions. Until the remainder are gone, and the existing party system is replaced by one of Direct Democracy, I refuse to consent to or co-operate with, whatever vile government exists, of whatever political colour.

Charles Walker?

Indeed. He has the most empathy. He is clearly very pained by the restrictions that are being imposed. His latest speech a couple of days ago was really good.

The 8pm Ceaucescu silence was inspiring

I could touch it, feel it, smell it, a whispering death

‘ We woke up one morning and the guards had gone ‘ Concentration Camp survivor

10% and rising of the Met not turning up for work anymore

It’s starting to unravel and the pig dictator will not be able to ravel it again

I smell freedom

Same here, not a peep from those in the summer who did as they were instructed and took to their doorsteps for the clapathon. Your last point? Here’s hoping.

I’m reposting this from late night just for you kh, hope it brings some cheer.

The promotion of informer culture has been one of the most dispiriting aspects of this.

Agreed

And that engenders extreme mistrust.

Quintessential totalitarianism.Oppression works best when the victims oppress themselves – and one another.

In German-occupied France, poison pen letters were extremely frequent. Of course there were people who denounced their neighbours to the Germans or to the French police (almost the same thing). Then the Liberation happened and people sent in denunciations of others for collaborating. It may well have been the same people writing both types of letters at different times.

Keep a note of the lockdown zealots because they will flip when the worm turns
They must not be allowed to get a way with it
Use
Archive.today for any posts/profiles to keep a record forever

If this thing ever finishes and we win, I advocate we shave all the hair off the lockdown zealots

Plus scalp?

I believe that the generally adopted name for these people in WW2 was quisling . after Vidkun Quisling who founded a fascist pro Nazi party in Norway.

Agreed, it has surprised me. I did think about yesterday’s piece in LS about the a person snitching on a recently widowed lady in a small village and just thought how bloody bonkers are some people that they dob in their extremely distressed and grieving neighbour for a minor breach in the rules to the callous, faceless bureaucracy that is government.

That’s great, thanks karenovirus. Like he says these COVID puritans are very brave behind your back. They never, ever say anything to your face. Mind you, it was ever thus. Had quite a number of snarky reviewers on TwatAdvisor who, bizarrely, weren’t quite brave enough to air their complaints in person. One such (nice to my face, nasty online – though got a rocket back for his hypocrisy) actually returned the other week. He thinks I don’t remember him, but I do!

I do think that what is required is some sort of movement to be created for small businesses to get together to provide some sort of support for each other. Trouble is here, we are the lone proponents of the lockdown sceptics’ cause.

So true. That “friend” who posted about his disgust at the “covidiots” not wearing masks couldn’t even say it in my face and instead just posted his rant on Facebook.

People who virtue signal on their social media platforms and grass others to the police should be careful. They will get their comeuppance at some point especially when the day of reckoning comes.

This is the trouble, people will spill their bile online but are too cowardly to say anything to your face. I know a few like that. I now just ignore most social media. Facebook & twitter are now like poison.

Exactly. Facebook especially is the worst – loads of virtue signalling and enables people to say things that they wouldn’t say in person.

I doubt the whole lockdown charade would have happened if it wasn’t for the internet. If there were no zoom calls, ordering shopping online, working at home online, social media etc then I think the covid edifice would have fully crumbled by now. The internet has allowed this rubbish to carry on for this long.

What about the thousands of people who embraced working at home and shopping online?

They’re all right Jack, thank you very much.

I wasn’t having a poke at anyone who works from home/shops online. The point I was making was that the internet has allowed the whole “stay at home” thing to go on. If we didn’t have the net I doubt they’d have been able to keep people locked down for that long if they had to leave home for work, shopping etc and people didn’t have the ability to do everything online.

I’ve been saying that for some time – with the last Big Virus event being 2016 (and, even in that few years to 2020, the Internet has become yet more prevalent) and that is the difference imo as to why Lockdown happened this time – but not for previous ones.

Its mass media in general as well as the net, the last big pandemic we had in the UK, Hong Kong flu in 1968 in which around 80k people died, my parents remember it. We only had 3 tv channels, daily newspapers and the radio. The papers usually just stated the facts and that was that. Thus it wasn’t known about that much or heavily publicized. Now with 24/7 news coverage and the media running fear porn it has sent the general public into a frenzy.

A couple of years ago I was falsely accused of sexual harassment in a Facebook post by a (then) friend. I wasn’t named in the post but it included the phrase “he knows who he is”. But the accusation was so out of line with what had actually happened (nothing different from previous interactions we’d had), that I didn’t realise at all that it referred to me, until an exchange of personal messages a few days later. “Unfriending” on both sides duly followed, but I also knew her mobile number and sent a message suggesting that it was worth checking the law on defamation of character. From other sources I think she deleted the FB post but there is at least one person (an associate of the accuser) who pointedly ignores me now (in real life). However there are others who I have reason to believe know of the original accusation but are still fine with me, so I’ve limited the damage. It illustrates exactly your point about people spewing bile on social media rather than having a word in private.

You shouldn’t have to put up with people like that.

A brick through the window would be good for openers.

And what will follow will make them wish that they’ve never grassed on their neighbours or virtue signalled on social media.

Oh you really don’t want to be on some Facebook pages. I pity the poor admins, for instance, of the I Love Pembrokeshire Facebook page – given the number of times recently someone puts up stuff appropriate to the page (eg photos of nice countryside etc) and …bang…..up comes a Covidian (or two) wanting to know if they’ve taken those photos since Lockdown started or before…..grrrr.

I had a friend like that we’d text a few times discussing the situation so he knew my stance then last week did a full on rant on FB saying those that disagree with the government and scientists and don’t follow the rules are ignorant selfish bastards and finished it with just wear a mask you dumb f**KS
So I immediately text him and gave him a piece and told him I will be replying on his post and lo and behold he deleted it ,he text me back to apologise but I haven’t replied and won’t be either

My”friend” did apologise too and I replied but I don’t really talk to him all that much anymore.

It looks like many people on here (me included) now have fewer friends than was the case before the battle lines were drawn. Very strong feelings have been expressed that make resumption of old friendships just about impossible. I’m certainly not about to be very forgiving towards those who I regard as collaborators. So, if the tyranny ever ends, I would like to think it would be possible to organise a bit of a Sceptical ‘do.’ for all the faithful freedom lovers and determined dissenters. It would be good to meet some of the fine LS people who’ve kept the flag flying, provided rationality/data/stats/humour/hope and generally made the isolation considerably more bearable than it would otherwise have been.
Anybody got a big field?

I have eight acres of grass and a very large shed. And a sea view. Everybody will be welcome.

Early in lockdown Toby had a permanent and ever growing list of businesses that had reopened
I discovered two outdoor cafes from that and frequent them still.

Perhaps he could create a similar list of businesses that refused to bow to the nonsense, displayed notice of contempt for it or only adhered to the strict requirements of the law.

I had an interesting facebook exchange with the landlady of my favourite pub/microbrewery yesterday. I was ordering some takeaway food for Friday evening, and bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t add any beer to the order. She told me that she’s challenging the ruling, on the basis that she’s operating a brewery and should be able to sell her wares. We’ll have to see how that story develops…

I have been wondering why the Federation of Small Businesses has not been more prominently active defending their members’ interests. Their small businesses have been bearing the brunt of the ‘government’ misconceived actions.

Hancock clearly in retreat saying that restrictions can be lifted once X% are vaccinated with no reference to cases or even deaths (from the main article).

Oh please let it be so. Has he realised he’s pushed it too far and is now backing off? The ideas quoted above are really quite mild and almost could be lived with. I don’t mind a social norm of mask wearing “like the Far East” because we know that really isn’t the case there and the Great British public will drop it like a hot potato as soon as possible. Not his usual psychopathic dictatorial stance at all.

I am no expert on psychology but if they were smart they would row back on the stuff from time to time, merely for tactical reasons. The constant “doom, doom, doom” frightens people but eventually starts to exhaust them and creates potential scepticism – it isn’t like corpses are piling up in the street, even as the high street goes bust.

They may be rowing back. However, the Push/pull seesaw is a psychological manipulation tactic to keep the victim weak. I believe that’s what’s going on here, and reckon narcopath Wankok is playing us.

Hancock may be playing the weak-kneed Alistair Haimes, but he’s not playing me. Those who are now apparently falling for the propaganda concerning the second wave and for the worse than dodgy vaccines were never real sceptics to begin with and I have to wonder about their real motives. Perhaps calling them bedwetters, would be a fair description.

The engineered “pandemic” has been about vaccines from day one and it seems that these conjured up products will have very little do with protecting the people from any form of a respiratory illness. Their real purpose is ‘highly likely’ to be something much more sinister.

Somehow those running this “pandemic” event knew all along that there would be a second and perhaps even a third wave of Covid-19, though even a second wave would have defied all what was previously known about about wild coronavirus infections.

If thinking people aren’t yet suspicious about what’s going on, then it seems that they have been sleeping through the past nine months. These same people have effectively abdicated responsibility for the welfare of both themselves and their families and are highly complicit in the utter shit, that’s now coming for all of us.

How did these experts know that there would be a second and third wave? Did a little birdie tell them?

Ferguson’s computer said so.

Giving small short term concessions is part of the N. Korea brainwashing game, it leads people to think greater concessions might be made if only they cooperated a bit more.
That’s probably a bit too subtle for hancock though.

Trouble is that soon after they row back they turn round and become more vengeful and spout more screwy demands.

They wear masks in the Far East because of pollution.

And they’re causing social issues as well.

When he was doing the press rounds yesterday, there was one revealing exchange in which Hancock seemed shocked to hear that his legacy would be to be remembered as one of the key proponents of the repeated lockdowns. He’d obviously laboured under the misapprehension that he would be forever revered for his role as the “the man who had delivered vaccines to the nation”. The fact that he’s so obviously and completely out of touch tells you all you need to know about our political leaders and their advisors.

Have you got a link to that?

Yes, I always think of him as Boris’s tethered goat. He’s only kept in post to be a target and take the flak.

He lives in a bubble. Like most of us.

Yes I detected a climbdown too, perhaps he has experienced a lot of hate mail OR he knows he will be the fall guy when the truth comes out.

I actually want to kill him. And I am not a psychotic murderer.
I actually knows someone who knows him (their kids go to the same school). I dont know how he hasnt stabbed him to death yet.

You could look at him for long enough to kill him? You’re one up on me there then – as I am a visual person and so couldn’t look at him for long enough to do so (ie because he’s ugly and I hate anything/anyone that is ugly and literally can’t look at them if I can help it) LOL.

Careful there. You’re dealing with a Gorgon. Need special PPE, not available from China, perhaps Greese has som old stock? Check eBay.

I get the feeling he knows his days are numbered.

By Election in West Suffolk soon hopefully, as one of his constituents it would give me great pleasure to get him kicked out.

And before that, removed from the cabinet and consigned to the back benches.

Better still. Taken to the International criminal court for crimes against humanity.

The Hague is going to be a very busy place in the coming years.

I’m actually sick of Matt Hancock, he is a slimy little creep and useless as health secretary.

Oh sweet sweet smell of roasting pork.

The police statistic is interesting – they are relatively well-paid, have more powers than nearly everyone else in lockdowns and a proportion of them, the worst ones, get a kick out of all this. If nonetheless the Covid circus is starting to get to them there is hope yet.

The police are in the main utterly imbecilic. it’s part of the entrance exam. Plus you have to take pleasure in hurting people. I despise everyone who works for the state no matter what job they do. These people are fascists who take the money i earn and spend it themselves claiming they need to force me to pay for services they are supplying. They are just the Mafia

This is plainer to see than ever

In London during the 70s and 80s hardly any coppers were local, they were always asking people the way.
High flyers came in from the provinces for the enhanced career opportunities working for The Met and provincial failures were taken on to provide the street muscle.

Did you ever watch Heartbeat? That was how one of the characters exited the programme – a visiting DCI from the Met was very impressed with one of the local policeman’s work that he engineered to have him transferred the Met as a DI which he quickly accepted following the death of the doctor he was planning to propose to.

A factor as to why so many met officers were not from London was that provincial forces didn’t recruit very often whilst the met was always recruiting. A friend of mine applied for the met.

Didn’t you post once that you’d worked on mine-hunters in Rosyth?

Ever since the College of Policing was set up and the oath changed

My late father in law was a force trainer and he would be utterly appalled at the way modern policing has gone – they’re scruffy.arrogant and far to handy
Very few know how to talk to people or how to de escalate confrontations
This is the perfect example

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9123839/Coronavirus-Scotland-Three-people-charged-assaulting-police.html

A good mate of mine, one of the most decent, gentle, human beings I’ve known (he fuckin detested bullying of any kind), is an ex-armed copper who was part of a personal protection detail to a very high profile diplomat.

This diplomat used to frequent one of those central London old boys clubs and on one occasion he witnessed a recent ex PM getting his arse chewed out by one of the members (metaphorically, although they may very well indulge literally but he didn’t say). He was aghast that someone would speak so disrespectfully to him like that in front of everyone.

Being the professional that he was, he never disclosed what was said throughout the evening but he was certain of one thing:

“Buddy, if you think the Prime Minister and the government are running the country, you are sorely mistaken.”

I remember a case in the USA where either a serving policeman or a potential police recruit was penalised because he did too well on an intelligence test. While plainclothes detectives might have something going on upstairs many uniformed cops in my experience are not bright and might feel threatened by people who are.

LOL – as I recall looking up the respective IQs of myself and my younger brother one time. Up came our chances re getting into the American armed forces (courtesy of Google). He is only 80 IQ and came up as = they wouldn’t take him on because they would wonder if he would literally understand orders. I then looked up my own IQ (ie 130 IQ) and they wouldnt have taken me on either (as, in my own case, = I’d understand the orders alright – and be questioning them LOL). So I guess they want the average IQ – of 100.

Probably swinging the lead and “on the sick”. A bit like a lot of NHS staff atm.

I feel retrenchment coming up, followed by retreat and capitulation dressed up as victory, bozo the classisist will know some examples.

Crassus being torn a new arse by the Parthians?

I like that historical example.

Sic semper tyranis

Perillos and the Brazen Bull.

The bed of Procrustes for Boris.

Does it do too fat, as well as too short and too long?

archive.today
Keep a record of the collaborators whenever you can
They will swear blind they were on the right side

Jason and the Argonauts?

Pyrrhus most obviously. Quietly pushed off home after the battle of Beneventum. “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”

Let’s hope so

Psychologically mistimed. Now is not last year and people are tired of this thing. They call it “war” but by 1915 the patriotic enthusiasm of 1914 had died down though mutinies had not yet started.
I wonder if it was promoted again as a trial balloon to see if they could get the performing seals act again? If so, the response was disappointing for them.

Hence hancocks sudden backtracking.

Grant Shapps was on the Today Programme this morning, all about people having to test before coming into the country. A nice little earner at £150 a pop and with calls to make it the same internationally that will price a large proportion of people from foreign travel so they will want it firmly in place before they cave.

heard him on talk.. JHB seemed a little too chummy and gave him an easy ride

Not literally I hope lol.

Will devastate airline industry. That is certainly what the Greta fanatics want. But is it really what the public wants?

Public wants cheap flights to cheap resorts with lots of booze and sun.
When not zombified, that is.

Was dead quiet last night, plus parents told me their village & street was silent at 8pm. I’ve noticed ITV showed a report this morning about a street clapping (some in masks) but it looks staged to me. I think people are fed up and the mood is now turning.

The silence of the lambs

Like I’ve said here and elsewhere, it may be sluggish, but the tide turned some time ago. We are catching the waverers, who will always be waverers of course, but we can now expect the tide to run faster and stronger as time passes.

No no no no no! No!
Sorry to nitpick first thing in the morning – but the marvellous painting gracing this Newsletter isn’t depicting the Charge of the Light Brigade riding into the ‘Valley of Death’ – this is the Union Brigade with their “terrible white horses” (Napoleon) who charged the French columns of D’Erlon at Waterloo and destroyed them utterly.
Sorry – it had to be said. After all, honour to whom honour is due!

Easy mistake to make though.

You know, the Guardian once mistakenly showed a picture of one of those steamy volcanic springs in Iceland in an article about some of the more polluted areas of the planet(as I remember it). The person (or should that be “peroffspring?”) later wrote a penitential piece about how wonderful Iceland is (genocide against Down’s Syndrome babies notwithstanding).

Well, goodnight!

G’Night, Hugh!

Iceland is wonderful.

The misattribution of the painting was the first thing I saw about the column today and after almost having stroke (I know we live in the twilight of Western culture but really!), was going to say the same thing but you beat me to it. (Sorry, this was actually a reply to Viv but I don’t know how to delete it and put it in the right place).

Heck, I didn’t know that! I love a corrective statement with my morning tea! Thank you!

Well, the Waterloo Bicentennial was only five-and-a-bit years ago and we were given en articles galore then. Since my memory is still working better than that of the common-or-garden snowflake which only goes back to Tuesday, of course I remembered. ‘Tis one of the seminal paintings, after all.
Not that I’m accusing the owner and editors of these august pages of, ahem, suffering from memory-deficit.

I went on a tour of the Waterloo battlefield in August 2019, which seems like an eternity ago but is not even 18 months past.

It’s BC. Before Covid.
Or WN. When Normal.
Takes an effort now to remember it.

This tale seems relevant now.

At last after he had left the town, he found in a little meadow on the right a small bivouac fire made by some soldiers. He stopped by it to warm himself and said to General Corbineau,
“Et bien Monsieur, we have done a fine thing.”
General Corbineau saluted him and replied,
“Sire, it is the utter ruin of France.”

Jardin Ainé; Equerry to the Emperor Napoleon

And then there was the TOTP episode that had Jocky Wilson (Darts player) as a backdrop for a song about Jackie Wilson (soul singer) by Dexys midnight runners.
Think it was called Jackie Wilson says.

Last year the early morning radio 2 presenter was doing a culture slot
‘Ooh look, a fab new lifestyle about the brilliant Denis Nielson, isn’t he fantastic! Yes it says here Dennis Nilson one of the country’s wors t . . ser..ial um kill..ers. . .’
Cut to music.

“Next up – John Wayne Gacy, and how some Americans fill up the empty spaces under their apartments.”

had to look him up .. Next week an episode of Brookside about how to level off your patio .

Jackie Wilson said

Jackie Wilson…. sympathy for the BBC.. So difficult to tell Jackie and Jockie apart. Imagine the woke complaints from BLM if that happened today

Thanks.

The painting is “Scotland Forever!” by Elizabeth Thompson. It’s in Leeds Art Gallery:
‘”Scotland Forever!” is an 1881 painting by Lady Butler [Elizabeth Thompson] depicting the start of the cavalry charge of the Royal Scots Greys who charged alongside the British heavy cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 during the Napoleonic wars.’

Yes. They won, crushing an arrogant enemy who had wasted Europe.

Why does the LS movement keep painting itself into this corner of heroic defeat? We do have a powerful ally: the truth. The regime is losing support because people do have memories, they know the story does not add up.

I know people who have been shitting themselves for a full year, who have realised that they can’t keep living like that. They’re still scared and disorientated, but their faith in the official narrative is gone. It must feel a little like being on the losing side in a war. They have made huge sacrifices and know it has all been a waste, but at least they are ready to start living normally again. The regime is no longer a saviour in many people’s eyes, it’s just an obstacle to moving on.

Its often hard to be someone who knows the truth when the whole world seems to be wrapped up in the lies and disbelieves you but it does seem people are starting to have the blinkers removed.

Hmm, well, much of Europe was despotic and he did liberate and introduce significant constitutional improvements (although clearly at high cost). Of course, he was the enemy but post his fall British and other Govts (e.g notably Russia, with long term consequences) were able to roll back and double down on repression of dissenters through early 19C. Just saying, it’s complicated…

The Napoleonic regime in Spain was certainly far better than the awful dead hand of the Spanish Bourbons, which returned after Napoleon’s fall.
Napoleon was by no means all bad.
Unlike some I could mention.

Despite his arrogance and egotism.he was vastly better than the ancien regime and he did curb the excesses of the Revolution. He badly miscalculated in Spain though. No matter how poorly the Bourbons ruled, the French were seen as foreign invaders and the people rallied against them. Spain was a quagmire for the French armies, who were embroiled in a tenacious guerrilla war whose atrocities were preserved in Goya’s etchings.

Not white horses but grey. The 2nd Royal North British dragoon’s aka the Scots greys. They formed part of the union brigade alongside the 1st Royal Dragoon’s and the 6th Inniskillen dragoon’s under general Ponsonby.

Really appreciate the article “London Hospitals Really Are in Crisis”. This is the only source I trust for news like this. I still believe Lockdowns are the wrong answer but the problem is obviously serious. It’s also an indicator of the high quality of news presented here.

It’s also a warning. If you get ill in London, for God’s sake make sure you’ve (also) got Covid, or you’re doomed.

Just insist on a PCR test at 40 cycles… you’ll have covid alright.

Your “in-house senior doctor” supplies 7 graphs relating to ‘Covid’ with one from Zoe in the middle. Since reference to ‘Covid’ depends on nonsensical RT-PCR test, those 7 are not worth putting in this blog. The Zoe one, while more interesting, is still merely about symptoms which could be flu. Your doctor finishes with their opinion on whether lockdowns work or not. ‘Expert opinion’ is the lowest form of medical evidence and your doctor is no expert. Ivor Cummins points to 25 papers showing lockdowns do not work – this is what we should be looking at, not the opinion of some no-doubt hard pressed, stressed front line worker.

On the subject of using up Pfizer stocks before their sell by date (main article).
They should put Weatherspoons in charge since Tim Martin’s Business Plan is buying up soon-to-be out of date beer in large quantities and shifting it, cheap, to the punters who want it.

I’m afraid that is an urban myth -see https://protzonbeer.co.uk/features/2012/09/16/beer-taxes-stop-crippling-pubs-says-w-spoon-boss-in-plea-to-government and “On his pricing policy he laughed again and, before I could pose the question, said: “You’re going to ask me about ‘short dated beer’ – well, we don’t do it.” This is the persistent rumour that Wetherspoon buy beer that’s close to its sell-by date from brewers. “The beer we sell is the freshest you can get. We buy 90 to 95% per cent of Greene King’s production of Ruddles. Beers from micros sell faster than anyone else’s and we take beer from 50% of the country’s micros.”

Even Tim Martin couldn’t get me jabbed although I shall be back at The Leading Light drinking his beer and eating his food as soon as possible.

I’ll only be back once the muzzles have gone and I can sit at the bar if I so choose .

Good writing by Toby but, Toby, comrade, don’t give them a crumb. You told Emily Maitlis you were wrong when you were not and now you’re saying what a good thing the vaccine is. We don’t need a vaccine since the kids are generating herd immunity and we certainly don’t need dodgy ones – is David Cameron involved? Keep up the good work. LS is the first thing I do in the morning!

Toby needs a slap around the chops. This new found defeatism stinks right when end is in sight. Whether it is fatigue or not, I don’t know but I don’t like it right when we are on the cusp of victory.

I do think the other side is starting to feel the pressure.

Solidarity to you mate/comrade/friend – choose the one you prefer.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

Wellington

“What is best in life?”

“To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

OK that’s fiction, but a lot better than Wellington’s twaddle.

His most memorable comment for me was describing his own troops as “the scum of the earth”. Nelson was never so crass about RN sailors, as far as I am aware.

Wellington also said that the ‘scum’ ‘made fine fellows’ in the end.

Yes let’s crush our foul zombie enemy. But if you read the descriptions of the field of Waterloo next day, you can certainly see Wellington’s point. And he had seen many, many battlefields. And he never lost a battle.

That’s Conan innit?

When I saw the interview by Emily Maitlis I could not believe what I was seeing when Toby apologised for something which he could so easily have defended and justified with expert evidence he has been publishing on here for months. Was it a rabbit in headlights moment? That’s the problem we are up against. Just when you think lockdown sceptics have taken two steps forward in their battle something like that happens and we go back at least two steps.

I confess I didn’t read every ATL article in detail today but glanced through trying to identify the salient points being made. In some places I wondered if I’d mistakenly ventured onto a pro-lockdown site: pro-vaccine sentiments; meaningless statistics; promulgation of the idea that all the hospital admissions are directly caused by covid; no acknowledgment that any surge in hospitalisations could be, at least partially, lockdown collateral; failure to make the important distinction between cases and infections. I’m sure there are other examples but it’s very odd and doing ‘our cause’ no good whatsoever.

Mr Young should have listened to dozens of Maitlis interviews to properly prepare himself for her attacks. And how to parry them.

If the surge in hospital admissions can be caused (partially or otherwise) by the lockdown itself, why are admissions dramatically increasing in recent weeks when we have just entered lockdown a few days ago? Why were hospital admissions significantly declining the longer the first lockdown endured – shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

You seem very entrenched in your views and tribal. All about the “cause” as opposed to actually getting to the truth.

It’s certainly no time to wobble.

Yes, I was alarmed by his enthusiastic vaccine stuff.

I am not sure if this is allowed to be mentioned these days but at one time there was discussion about the vulnerability of Black and Asian origin people to Covid. Is this still the case or is this not discussed anymore? Living in Devon I note that many of the local authority areas with low ‘case’ rates are areas that are probably lower in average for BAME people, although they are also more rural which may have an impact.

Shock horror devastation.
Remember that the ultra-lefties simply adore Covid, their key to world domination. Darling Covvie just couldn’t be racist. It just isn’t possible for this splendid totalitarian virus to be racially selective, no sirree.

I have just managed with some difficulty to pick through some Public Health England data, looking at total registered deaths since March 2020, the % of deaths with Covid mentioned on the death certificate;
People of Asian origin 29%
People of White origin 18.5%

I don’t have statistics but I know Turks and Kurds in London and they have been hit quite hard by Covid.

Vitamin D deficiency is higher the darker the skin

bloody racist vitamins

but you know ‘mentioning covid’ means nothing

Hi Annie, honoured to address you. : )

On the Worldometers site, looking in the USA, there is data for at least some states which shows demographic breakdowns.

Black ethnic people around 50% more likely to suffer serious effects than white.

Economically disadvantaged about 50% more likely to be affected than rich.

And of course, older people, and those suffering other significant ailments, also more in the firing line. And obese players…..

Keep up your good work. Exemplary.

Asian diabetes rate is 2x White folks.

Annie, so-called lefties and righties come together on Covid. Could I please ask you to stop slandering Socialists (for the many not the few) like myself? Thanks.

Sorry. It’s true that extreme left and extreme right ‘ come together in situations such as this. Both are equally loathsome. But it’s generally the lefties who play the race card.
Early on in the bollox, a Grauniad journalist was heard to say ‘If Britain isn’t racist, how is it that so many Black and Asian people are dying of Covid?’

Right at the start there were assumptions in some quarters that Covid was mainly dangerous only to Chinese and not much of a danger to others (this was also accompanied by speculation that it was biological warfare directed at China). Then it hit Italy even though it is possible that was another strain.

100s of thousands of Chinese guest workers in northern Italy but that probably accounts more for Transmission rather than ethnic bias from the virus.

Yes, in this country Chinese are close to WB; Indians next with lowest Covid rates-they have smaller families and more professional jobs (more than WB) but all Asian communities have many more community contacts-ie giving away food and eating together is very important so unsurprising all Brit. Asian rates are higher.

I saw the remark about Italian VitD levels being extremely low in hit area. That’s surprising unless it is an ethnic difference in immigrants. Is that the case?

Somebody mentioned very high levels of atmospheric pollution.

I think they steered it towards obesity which is apparently more prevalent in some BAME communities.

Not however accompanied by any campaign to make people lose weight, and lockdowns make keeping the pounds off harder.

If this was all about health; the government would have encouraged us all to eat healthily & sensibly, go out & excercise, get Vitamin D, socialise as well as resurrecting the good “catch it, bin it, kill it” adverts.

With regards to obesity being more prevalent in some BAME communities, I had a colleague who was of Pakistani origin and she admitted that she preferred East Asian & SE Asian food than Indian/Pakistani because it was healthier and much more balanced especially with the mix of meat and vegetables.

The powers that be have essentially been trying to f**k us up healthwise while pretending to do the opposite – cops harassing people who go on long walks and encouraging people to shop neighbours who take a walk twice a day rather than once, lockdowns, closing gyms, educational establishments, turning us into a nation of depressed couch potatoes with weight problems. Even more than before, at any rate.

That’s what doesn’t make sense – why are tennis courts, swimming pools, gyms shut? Gym particularly are very useful at this time of the year when its cold, damp and gets dark early.

As for cops harassing people who go on long walks I can only speculate that they have managed to solve all the crime in this country. As I’ve said on Twitter, its odd that with Covid rule breakers they’re as quick as a flash but take 10,000 years when it comes to knife crime, grooming gangs, theft, assault, etc.

PHE had millions, a lot of which it delegated to local authorities but health campaigns have been ineffective. We have the second highest obesity rate (after Malta) in Europe. A country like Japan with few deaths has very few people who are obese.

I think the ethnic minorities are more likely to be vitamin D deficient which many believe is a factor in bad outcomes with covid

They have much lower levels of vitamin D likewise the elderly in care homes who spend all their lives indoors. It is so startlingly evident to me why these two groups have been hit the hardest, I find it outrageous that it hasn’t been properly addressed.

Obese and diabetics also more likely to be Vitamin D deficient than the general population.

Hi all, I think one over looked factor is the consumption of vegetable seed oils in culinary traditions of various groups. See here…

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2020/09/sars-cov-2-loves-linoleic-acid.html?m=1

Ivor Cummins book Eat Rich and Live Long is worth a read especially with regard to vegetable seed oils. Olive oil is the way to go with oils!

Steve, Ivor Cummins had 3 doctors on and one attested to 25 BAME doctors dying in 5 weeks. A message went out to have vitamin D supplements and there has not been 1 death since. Good old Ivor, eh?

I think Ivor Cummins’ recent podcast interview with retired scientists/doctors on the subject of vitamin D probably nailed this phenomenon; it seemed to satisfactorily explain how a deficiency in this vitamin/hormone was an indicator for susceptibility, and darker-skinned demographics in cold northern climes were almost inevitably unable to synthesize it naturally in our often gloomy climate. No hint of racism, but some would jump on the bandwagon.

No secret that multigenerational households spread the virus more easily plus Asian elders’ health is poor compared to those born in this country, who mirror everyone else. Older folk who migrated unfortunately often had TB in their youth and have scarred lungs.

You have to recognise the work exposure profile for ethnic minorities, inner city dense population distribution which coincides with higher infection rates and the comorbidity profile such as diabetes and CHD, lower VitD. All skew the stats.

I read that the initial impression of BAME vulnerability was a byproduct of population demographics within the M25. As cases rose in the regions and more demographic data came in, the effect disappeared.

The bit about using up Pfizer vaccine reminds me of the anecdote about (I think it was) Blenheim Palace. Apparently, each day’s uneaten food always used to be put outside the gates in huge bins for the benefit of the poor. It was not until the 1920s that a low-born but wealthy Duchess suggested that the savoury matter might be put in a different container from the sweet.

Likewise, end of day. Jabbing centre opens door and bins full of expired vaccine are put out for the benefit of the Great Unjabbed And one day, a lowborn jabber suggests that at least the Pfizer should be put in a different container from the AstraZeneca.

That was Consuelo Vanderbilt. When she moved in following her marriage in 1895, she was horrified at the food all mixed together and put a stop to the practice instead requiring that everything should be separated and let the poor help themselves.

Alasdair Haimes has abandoned his scepticism and his common sense and embraced fear and propoganda.

Typo: Alistair, not Alasdair.

More properly should be Alas-dear.

To be honest he was never a real sceptic. I heard him on a podcast with James Delingpole ages ago. He is not even political in the most general sense. He is just a numbers man…all maths and no trousers. Hs scepticism was not borne out of the principle that it is wrong to lock up healthy people to save ill people…which for me is what it is ultimately about. Ironically I teach maths but this is not really about numbers at all its about moral principles.

For me it’s about not robbing people of their rights. These cannot be removed for any reason. Criminals temporarily lose their freedoms while paying their debt to society, but not even they lose their rights.

I agree absolutely….in some ways we are treated worse than criminals and our crime is…..to want to work and live a normal life. Thats why I could never vote for any of these existing parties again. For me they have abused and violated my rights in a way that can never ever be forgiven.

Same. I don’t trust the numbers but, ultimately, they make no difference to my opinion. You simply don’t remove the basic human rights of the entire population as a means of disease control, in free societies. This was accepted right up until last year when most of the world decided that following the lead of a ruthless, totalitarian regime was a great idea.

Exactly and that was why I was opposed to this crap not just from day 1 but from second 1 on the 23rd March 2020. All those who accepted the first lockdown on the basis that ‘we did not know much about it’ (a position I got sick of hearing Talk Radio presenters come out with) are fully complicit in this deadlock situation where they will be very reluctant to ever allow us to come out of this and also it will be their immediate response to any new virus or ‘mutant variation’ of it.

The movement from being opposed to lockdown restrictions to being in favour of them strikes me as so strange that I find it difficult to believe it is the result of an impartial evaluation of evidence. Rather, attention to the evidence would be likely to move someone in the opposite direction (Julia Hartley Brewer, for example). Whatever the difficulties the NHS may have, lockdowns are clearly not the solution. At best such measures may push the problem into the future, but even then at the cost of creating many more health problems, resulting in an NHS that is even less fit for purpose.

The NHS problem is not the virus. It is a lack of capacity. This problem did not suddenly happen last year. It has been a deliberate policy choice that goes back decades. However, to stay with recent history, back in 2016 Exercise Cygnus concluded that in the event of a pandemic the NHS would be overwhelmed. The obvious policy response to that conclusion would have been to have increased NHS capacity. The government decided not to do so. Even last year, when Boris Johnson was introducing the lockdown to flatten the sombrero, the government did not use the time to enhance NHS capacity, rather it engaged in a piece of political theatre: the building of the Nightingale hospitals. And here we are, a year after the government could see the coming pandemic, and the NHS has less capacity, not more.

The current cries that the NHS is about to be overwhelmed are no more than the previous iterations of this trope. They provide emotive rhetorical cover for political decisions: decisions that are irrational, irresponsible, incompetent and counter-productive when assessed against the criterion of saving lives. Lockdowns kill.

The government’s responses to the virus have caused, are causing, and will continue to cause more harm than the virus ever could. But it is even worse that this because government policies are wilfully killing people. Whereas, nature is amoral, government policy decisions are always and necessarily moral choices. Those in favour of lockdown policies, notwithstanding the if it saves just one life rhetoric, are supporting policies to kill people, and to do so in massive numbers.

So so true, these problems manifest every year. Here’s the NHS Providers briefing: The real story of winter 2018/19

https://nhsproviders.org/media/644175/the-real-story-of-winter-2018_19.pdf

They highlight that last year Brexit fighting and the General Election kept them off the front page, but the usual winter overload/crises occurred. All the warnings are there yet nothing has been done. Instead their NHS bureaucratic incompetence is to be solved by locking us up!!!

Timidity. There has been an increasing barrage of hostility to people who question the BS, and some people will cave.

At Boris Johnson’s press briefing yesterday, Simon Stevens was particularly vicious in his attack on people taking pictures of empty hospital corridors. He made no attempt to dispute the authenticity of the pictures. He just attacked people who have put them on the Internet as dangerous and he made a point of painting an emotive picture of a nurse who has bravely struggled through a twelve hour shift battling the dreaded virus. Posting such pictures was an insult to her.

If I recall correctly, it has been stated that the 2017/18 winter was one of the worst for the NHS being “overwhelmed”. I remember that time with searing precision because it was the time my poor mum was subjected to NHS ‘care’. At no time – in the hospital she was in – did I see any evidence of stressed-out staff or the hospital overflowing with patients. In fact, most of the time, it looked quite empty.

As sceptics we naturally prefer fact over fiction and emotional hyperbole. Unfortunately we have to swallow our disgust and use the same approach to get our message across – it’s not as if we need to invent or exaggerate the examples of lockdown suffering. Not that we have a MSM platform to use sadly.

Especially those like Hames who have no serious political philosophy whether of Left or Right.

Is it not also due to the testing regime that dictates everyone within a “ten mile” radius of a positive test case must lock themselves away for ten days? Thus heavily depleting the availability of front-line staff. They have shot themselves in the foot and are now wondering why the foot hurts so badly.

The CEO of the NHS hospital trust where my wife works recently outlined a change in the rules for staff self-isolation. From mid-December (presumably as the NHS finally recognised that it was going to be up shit creek in January), staff have been told that, in order to go for their proscribed period of self-isolation at home, they have to provide evidence of contact with a confirmed Covid-19 infected person, at a time when they have not been protected by the approved PPE.(Obviously, there could be competence/disciplinary implications if they admit this.) It seems to be a belated attempt to end a very popular scam for the staff…

No excuses for lockdown. Not ever. Under any circumstances.

A little disappointing to see the choice of articles on this site today. Both basically suggesting a major problem. We have enough of that with every single newspaper and TV channel in then country with the possible exception of talk radio thanks.
Yes Covid can kill the vulnerable, yes into can add to the strains on a winter NHS, but the whole point is, the response is utterly disproportionate and most importantly, taking more lives than it saves whilst at the same time terrorising a nation with unnecessary and cruel measures such as masks, banning families and closing schools.

Exactly. Prepare for the NHS to be overwhelmed by the greater demands of dealing with the lockdown victims

It won’t be given the same attention by the MSM. So Sceptics need to.

I always thought that the NHS was stupid to go along with this. Did no one ever raised the point that if they were to be overwhelmed, it would be from those who had untreated illnesses, mental health issues, victims of domestic violence and substance abuse?

And don’t forget mask wearing that can lead to a whole host of problems – chest infections, bacterial pneumonia, dermatitis, impetigo and a raft of psychological problems.

Being constantly on the edge of collapse is how the apparatchiks of NHS/Moloch maintain their funding and power.

And my own cynical view is also that, because of the fear propaganda, many people are phoning the emergency services if they have the slightest hint of a cough or shortness of breath or panic and it suits the government’s agenda to take as many of these people to hospital as possible. They are then checked over and ‘kept in for observation’ (adding to the hospitalisation numbers) just in case it is the ‘dreaded’ covid whereas a year ago, if they had even been seen in hospital, they would have been sent home and told to take a paracetamol.

Exactly. Whatever happened to the old days when the doctor simply says: “I can’t do anything for you. Go home, rest, take plenty of liquids, take nourishing meals and paracetamol every 4 hours?”

All sense of proportion and common sense has gone out of the window.

I think those masks are already causing dire health problems, gauging from how listless many of the local shop staff are, they have a real sicky look about them. The masks have also caused absolute foul breath in some.

Hence why I’m seeing more and more supermarket staff claiming exemption.

I wish more would on both sides, its horrible to watch people suffer in the damn things.

Agree entirely Danny.

The inhumanity of lockdown. Not only a stupid policy, not only a failed policy, but also a crime against humanity. No excuse for it and no forgiveness for it, ever.

Agree Nick, totally inhumane.

The article from the doctor is enough to tell me this is extremely serious. I was in hospital on Wednesday, for half a day and the panic was palpable. Lockdown, test and trace, face nappies has caused this shit but shit it is. We do ourselves no favours in terms of making that point, down the line, by denying that this shit, unlike anything we have actually seen so far, is real. They have cried wolf and cried wolf but now the wolf is at the door. Lockdown won’t make the situation better, only nature will do that, but I don’t think lockdown can make it any worse as long as people are going to take the snake oil, which I think they are.

It is, of course, The Scots Greys, pictured at Waterloo charging in a brilliant action by The Union Brigade.

The Brigade took 50% casualties throughout that day in capturing two Eagles.

The gallant 600, at Balaclava, in the Crimea, took 40% casualties in one charge, seven Victoria Crosses, and then back home for tea on his steam yacht, Dryad, moored in Balaklava harbour, for their commander, Lord Cardigan.

There was some probably unfounded speculation that Cardigan did not take part in the Charge at all. He certainly did not bother to look after his surviving troops after it ended.

‘“I’ve been in a serious affair, and my brigade is almost destroyed. My opinion is that Lt General (Lord Lucan) ought to have had the moral courage to disobey the order…I led the attack…the shower of grape shot and round shot for ¾ of a mile was awful…almost every officer, but myself was either killed, or wounded, and how I escaped, being in front, and more exposed than anyone is a fearful miracle and I am most grateful to the Almighty for such an intervention of Divine Providence. I considered it certain death, but led straight and no man flinched…”

Letter to his brother-in-law, Lord Howe, three days after the battle

In his defence, he was 56 years old and a sick man at the time; had remonstrated with Lucan at the idiocy of the orders.

Neither he, nor Lucan or, certainly, Raglan, should have been in command of anything at that stage. The Cardwell reforms eventually followed on from The Crimean War.

Let us hope for something similar for the NHS after this far greater debacle

Cardigan’s splendid charger, Ronald, also survived the action. His head may still, today, gaze quizzically out at the world from its position in the hall of Deene Park, Lord Cardigan’s country house

The purchase of officers’ commissions was gradually ended after the war. It had been seen as conducive to social stability but could result in well-heeled fools commanding troops.

The Crimean War is an interesting parallel of command incompetence similar to this present medical weird out

In this context, interesting to speculate on how membership of SAGE is obtained; not by money, certainly, but, just as certainly, by some other currency; the results a great deal more damaging than any nineteenth century military action.

Reform of the NHS is required, forthwith:

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Niemietz-NHS-Interactive.pdf

Supposedly, these people are experts – science-led etc. If there is corruption it is of a different kind from the sale of officers’ commissions.

The Cardigan phenomenon might well be endemic in the NHS. A well heeled middle class person has a rather middlingly- thick child. Said child goes to university to get a “Something Studies” degree then becomes an NHS “manager”. Not quite the same as buying a commission but similarly well heeled opportunism. The NHS is stuffed with admin people whose main strength is walking around with a lanyard.

or they become a politician.
one thing about crimea. Out of that came the best medical statistician this country has ever seen .
Here’s question for you.. in this context who was Athena? . Answers on a postcard to Neil Ferguson, Imperial College.

The entire public sector management is suspect. Like I said, it hasn’t changed much since Crimea.

The sale of Officers commissions was not in fact corrupt, supported by the Duke of Wellington

‘The late illustrious Duke of Wellington had left a memorandum upon the subject, in which he seemed to look upon the system of purchase somewhat in the light of a political institution, and defended it on the ground that it brought into the army men of the higher classes who had a stake in the country, and were not likely to take part against its authorities or its institutions.’

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1856/mar/04/sale-of-commissions-in-the-army

Appointments to SAGE are not financially corrupt either but certainly seem to suffer from that other unhealthy corruption: ‘cronyism’

Wellington defended it as conducive to social stability. He was a member of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and that moulded his attitudes. I think Cromwell also cast a long shadow. Wellington died in 1852 – had he lived to witness the Crimean War perhaps it would have changed his attitudes.
Politics certainly played a part. I believe it was impossible to purchase naval officer rank in the same way in the Royal Navy, but naval officers had to know how to operate a ship and were not allowed to be moneyed incompetents. Moreover the RN was unlikely to march on Whitehall but the army might.

Influence and career peddling by a back scratching in-gang

So much of the traditional discipline of scientific thought has been undermined by political or commercial pressures. As Toby mentions in his article today, so much of the evidence presented to SAGE, NERVTAG etc. has never even been subject to peer review. Even if it had, it’s obvious that the authors would ensure that the peer reviewers would all be selected from the same “Band of Brothers” which is, essentially, a good description of SAGE itself.

True, but the best parallel to lockdown strategy is the war in the trenches 1914-17.Big offensive after big offensive turned out a bloody failure. The reaction: the last offensive wasn’t big enough, let’s have a bigger one, the next one will be so big it will work. But it doesn’t, and men bleed, but not the men who planned the offensive.

C. S. Forester likened this to a bunch of ignorant savages trying to get a screw out of a piece of wood. They hit it harder and harder and harder, to no effect. It occurs to none of them to try unscrewing it.

As somebody posted here the other day, third lockdown is like the third Battle of Ypres.

Yes the phrase “Lions led by donkeys” springs to mind.

Except it’s now sheep led by donkeys.

Not much has changed, tbh

It was a convenient place to dump your younger sons who weren’t going to inherit your estate.

Are GP’s surgeries being paid a flate rate per vaccine jab?
Will that incentivise them to work at weekends?

Probably and
Did I see something about not working Sundays? Or was that just for before Christmas after Boris had promised 7 days a week for the rollout?

Wonder if that’s why they’ve suddenly decided to widen the age range for flu jabs …

Yes, £10.00 more than for the annual flu jab X2 = nearly £50.00 per vaccinee.

And it seems they don’t want to share it with pharmacists. Nooooo that would be too logical.

I think it’s 15 pounds for every shot.

They won’t need to work weekends because once the couple of million cowards and hypochondriacs are injected no one in their right mind is gonna take the vaseline. Then what will these cunts do i wonder?

Probably not, but it will certainly encourage them to vaccinate people from lower risk groups at the expense of the vulnerable, hence the stories today about the Pfizer vaccine being given to random NHS administrative staff to avoid it going to waste.

So Toby, “Disgraced” President of the United States is it? Buying into the propaganda then without actually delving into the details. The illegality is still there. Maybe take some time and realise that the crowds who were in DC were there because they can see the steal. 4 states by default have enabled voter laws outside their consitutional remit. And that’s not even accounting for the other fraud practices

As he for Alastair Haines he is weak. When the facts change I change my mind. Well Alastair facts in science are something you can audit and they still come up the same. It all depends on how you measure stuff.

The problem is that nothing has changed, the data upon which this whole edifice is built is like sand. As John Lee pointed out, you don’t know if anyone labelled as Covid has Covid or if that is the major factor in their illness of death.

There’s a simple test: looking at mortality if you did not know or have heard about Covid what would you think about the deaths this winter as different? Of course you wouldn’t.

In fact if there was no response to the panic of “Covid-19” the spike in March April wouldn’t be there because you wouldn’t have reduced beds, changed care pathways and sent older people with general respiratory problems back into care homes. You may have had a hump but then the start of the flu season was weak as was 2019.

The sad fact is that people are looking around for extraordinary reasons when the real reasons are mundane and non-sexy.

But in doing so taking a wrecking ball to the economy and society

In all probability he was got at. It seems to happen quite a lot. The Establishment send out the attack dogs and some people buckle under aggression. Such a shame.

There was that prick Hopson yesterday on Talk Radio. He was seen off appropriately.

Yes, JHB gave him every encouragement to complain to Ofcom if he felt that Talk Radio’s coverage was biased or factually incorrect, but he was far too intesterest in trying to belittle her. The man is a turd.

He unfortunately isn’t a Man from Missouri. You simply ask how was that measured? Show me.

Its happened in every conflict in history…some people are just weaker than others. I was subject to verbal attack the other day by 2 maskoids at the same time who did not even know each other. I know some people would have buckled under that but I did not. Its everyone’s choice.

Excellent post by Toby today (happy new year, everyone), missing one vital point: that the very practices of isolation (including lockdown), distancing and mask wearing severely DAMAGE the human immune system, thereby making it MORE likely that people cannot fight off seasonal viruses, the SARS-Cov-2 one in all its strains included. The human body has an excellent immune system. To function well, even in elderly and vulnerable people (in all but the medically immunosuppressed), it needs a regular work out. In other words it needs to be continually exposed to bacteria and viruses to keep it flexing its muscles, otherwise it will atrophy. When you stop people mixing – especially when you keep the young away from the old (the young expose the old to mild viruses in little loads) – you damage a normal function in their body. Maybe you even make them vaccine dependent (though I’m not a conspiracist so I’m not suggesting this is being done deliberately). I’ve never worn a mask, when lockdowns happen I go out every day and handle everything I can in supermarkets, I hug whomever will let me hug them, and I even licked the grass in Hyde Park once to prove a point to someone. Anything to expose my body to a bit of bacteria to keep my immune system in check. I breathe uninhibited at all times… another essential part of staying healthy. Masks do far more harm than good… common sense will tell you that. I go outside for as long as possible every day and breathe fresh air. Anyway. I’m going to continue doing everything I can to stay healthy and keep my immune system strong. That’s me, bravely using my best judgement and knowledge, just doing my part to PROTECT THE NHS!

I agree. If I’m healthy, I don’t need to bother the NHS. I did need to bother them in April 2020 when I spent a day in hospital after a series of violent panic attacks, caused by Lockdown anxieties.

Very good point! The mental health crisis caused by the barbaric practice of isolating people is far more catastrophic. It’s taking perfectly healthy people out of action. I’m emotionally supporting many people suffering from severe panic attacks, some having suicidal thoughts. These were mental strong, healthy people before this war on humanity. I’ve had a lot of experience in trauma release (from a practical and academic perspective). I feel very fortunate that I understand how to deal with trauma (release it!) But most people don’t, are not being given help, and are suffering extraordinary stress. STRESS KILLS PEOPLE. Stay strong. Your community here supports you!

Again you’ve hit the nail on the head.

Underrated post

Lol why have lockdowns when you could just have everyone go and lick the grass great comment-
but I strongly suspect that Xi Jinping’s lockdowns are indeed carefully calibrated to inflict maximum damage to the immune systems, ensuring the pandemic is never recovered from. All measures currently favoured -lockdowns, distancing, masks- fly in the face of all accepted good medical practice and general life advice prior to March 2020. And the monomaniacal focus on lockdowns and vaccines is to the exclusion of everything that might boost the immune system, as you say. This has been refined through experiments with the Uighur I’m afraid.
keeping everyone isolated will have catastrophic and tragic health impacts even more than we have now down the line.

Nope. “Our” governments did this to us and chose to. Whatever the disputed origins of this thing are, governments outside of China could have behaved differently. It is also noticeable that if they imitate the Chinese it is only the draconian stuff they imitate. When the Chinese loosen up, they do not follow suit.

Excellent point. I am also convinced lockdowns harm the immune system and the longer they go on, the worse the damage becomes. I have tried to find evidence to support this, but most of it is vague, probably because it would take years of research post lockdown to analyse.

There’s no evidence they save lives (even that mythical ‘one’) but plenty of evidence that they; increase relative mobility of the vulnerable, slow onset of herd immunity, slow the evolution of less harmful strains, increase spread by concentrating people.

Hear hear! Another point is that keeping people isolated will FORCE a virus to evolve to become more infectious – it has to do this to keep on spreading.

Yes, this is exactly what Patrick Vallance said in March when I held out hope that the UK would stand alone in doing the sensible thing and accepting “herd immunity” (the original kind led by the human immune system) would ensure the virus eventually diminished in severity, as it has with all other coronaviruses. Sadly herd stupidity took hold, driven by online hysteria (“you can’t just LET PEOPLE DIE”), and we ended up ruled by mob mentality… MANY MORE will die as a result. But hindsight is 2020, right?!

Terror of Piers Morgan screeching at them on telly played a major part I think. The hapless Whately was repeatedly thrown against him like the 1/5th North Staffordshire Regiment against the Hohenzollern Redoubt at Loos (with similar results).

Exactly – they are forcing all the viruses to find new ways to get at us.
Coupled with the rusty immune systems of the work from home crowd and we are looking at a cataclysm

People need to mingle and exchange germs to actually charge their immune systems. Social distancing is actually counter productive.

Completely agree, we are not biologically attuned to this way of life. We have immune systems for a reason. I’m much the same as you; never wear a mask, am not over hygienic (e.g. incessant hand sanitizing) and have a job working outdoors in a dirty yard where we all mingle. My immune system is in top form and its staying that way regardless of what those twats in parliament say/do or try to push on me.

The new normal: New virus, lockdown, vaccine, repeat.

The most powerful figure is that the number of people who died from COVID-19 in English hospitals in 2020 who were under 60 with no underlying health conditions was 388.

Tell this to most people and their eyes go wide.

This should be on the top of the page, every day, updated for 2021.

When people are being arrested in their own homes for uploading pictures of empty hospitals, if the Establishment are willing to destroy people’s credibility and livelihoods they are capable of anything.

Well the “establishment” are all bought with money or child abuse, both probably. These people are child murderers wither they do it for pleasure or sell weapons they know will be dropped on innocent people they don’t give a fuck. Why would they care about the British people? Now we are one planet Britain can go fuck itself and bought and paid for child abusers in Parliament are just doing the bidding of the evil shadow government.

Disgusting what has happened in Scotland. Just seen it on Mahyer Tousi’s channel. Police actually turning up to a woman’s home to investigate a gathering after a neighbour snitched that they’d seen someone going in. Turns out it was the woman’s daughter who’d just been released from a hospital operation (or something along those lines) and I think she was living there but the police just came in, caused a scene and arrested the woman and I presume her partner. Horrible Nazi behaviour.

I think we should spend less time talking about whether the NHS is overwhelmed or not and spend more time talking about whether lockdown should even be in the toolkit of options for dealing with this.

I don’t see lockdowns are ever justified – surely we would need a higher burden of proof than the NHS is having a wobble at least. Locking people in their homes is just not an appropriate way to manage demand in the NHS.

Indeed. Just think how much the NHS could have been beefed up with the money that has already been spaffed on this shitshow. But then, it occurs to me that unlimited funds could be thrown at the NHS and it would still not be able to cope. Problem is it is woefully badly managed and unless it undergoes fundamental reform, it will ever be thus.

There are lots of improvements that could probably be made to the NHS and the democratically elected government can enact them. Just because it hasn’t doesn’t mean we should all be locked in our homes. It doesn’t work on a fundamental rights basis (my rights are not contingent on the current pressure on a government service) and certainly doesn’t on a cost/benefit analysis as you allude to.

When I said “it will ever be thus”, I meant they will continue to peddle the notion that it can’t cope no matter how much money they throw at it. I wasn’t suggesting that until they are – as they see it – sufficiently funded, lockdowns are an appropriate action – bloody hell, far from it. I am probably one of the most vociferous anti-lockdowners you could meet, and not just because, with each passing day, my business is being wilfully destroyed, but because I believe in liberty and freedom.

I’m not disagreeing with you – more trying to reinforce the point!

Apologies, been up since before cock crow and mis-read!

I have to get up at 5am to work before homeschooling then go back to work. But I am one of the lucky ones in that my job is safe til summer. I really have no complaints.

Also, it faces unlimited demand. Its very successes ensure its ultimate failure.The more people it keeps alive long after Nature has called time on them, the more expensive their care becomes. And the more sophisticated drugs become, the more they cost. The NHS will NEVER be able to ‘cope’.

Further, people do not look after their own health: they look to the NHS as a safety net and take no personal responsibility. Unhealthy lifestyles contribute to chronic illness but then unhealthy lifestyles have been actively promoted by bodies such as PHE and others (who, are often financed by the food industry. The 5-a-day fruit and veg thing was actually a marketing campaign based on no evidence whatsoever). These diets are anything but healthy, i.e. the demonisation of fat, promotion of high carbohydrate diets and the denial that alcohol is a major contributor to many diseases (not a popular view, but it is true). If the NHS wanted to cut disease, they could do so easily. We now have a National Disease Management Service.

Having seen how NHS/Moloch keeps the elderly alive I shall be taking the Laphroaig/Swale option when the time comes. Timing and courage critical of course, let’s hope they don’t fail me.

Good points!

Yes for decades we have been told that the way to help the NHS was ever increasing sums of taxpayers money. Now thats no longer enough. Now the taxpayers have to be put under house arrest too!

At a very early point in the pandemic, Rishi Sunak wrote off the historic debts of the various NHS trusts, thereby throwing away any hope that they could be used in the future as a lever to encourage reform. As a mechanism, it was hopelessly naive – any new money should surely have been ring-fenced to improve current performance?

Exactly. This site has become way too bogged down in details about hospital admissions, cases and testing. We should be opposing lockdowns on basic principles of public health and human rights and the disruptive effects of lockdowns on societal functioning, which should be preserved to the maximum possible extent in an epidemic.

EXACTLY!! if we were to send the entire population to the gas chambers on their 60th or 50th birthday, along with everyone who has a chronic or terminal condition, it would do wonders for relieving the pressure on the NHS. the ends do not justify the means. if the NHS can not cope when people get sick then this means the NHS is useless and not fit for purpose, and it’s the NHS that needs to go, not the people. this deification of the sacred NHS has to stop

This is the point…I am sick of hearing about the bloody NHS as if its god. When I was a young adult you hardly ever heard about it…now its a national obsession…thats partly why we are in this mess.

Exactly, the NHS has been Deified. The clapping, symbolic mask wearing and reciting “stay at home” diktats are just like religious rituals. Covid 19 is now a cult.

The plan is working – how to destroy the NHS as a symbol, so it can be piratised for US-style operations?

I think the NHS needs to be scrapped completely and replaced by a more continental style medical service which is more fair, more efficient and better run. The NHS has become the medical equivalent of British Leyland.

‘As the now disgraced President of the United States said, the cure is worse than the disease’

Tut tut Toby, wait until Delingpole sees that.

Also not necessary or appropriate. You insult the millions of Americans that voted for him thus falling into the Maitless approach.

Trump is a hero. America has been stolen from the people by the same people that brought the world the middle east wars, 9/11 and all these fake muslim terrorists. I predict a rise in war, terrorism and more lockdowns from these clowns. It’s a crazy world when Trump stood alone as the saviour of the West. I say this without any irony nor am i kidding. Anyone denying the election wasn’t stolen is either lying and being paid to say that or so fucking stupid they’re probably a socialist. We are in for a dark night of the soul under these people

Socialism distancing, as one wit – JP Sears – recently put it.

Indeed, warp speed to restart all the profitable worldwide conflicts increasing when Proconsul Harris kowtows to Emperor Xi. The peace agreements in Middle East would be enough to secure anyone else’s legacy let alone a Peace Prize or two.

It wont be Proconsul Harris for very long. Biden will be deemed to be unable to fulfil the office of President on medical grounds possibly dementia or he will trip over his dog and break his neck. then it will be President Harris!
This w hole presidential election farce has been pre-planned, pre-arranged and pre-paid. Welcome to the United Socialist States of America.

With Hilary as VP…. She finally gets what she wants (almost) and the leftards celebrate

Trump was robbed

You dont even have to be a Trump supporter to see that election as corruption on a giant scale. Toby will never see that though …he is terrified of losing his modest foot in the door of the mainstream media. James does not call him a cuck for nothing.

Toby should just have left the ‘disgraced’ out. He has enough work on his hands with Free Speech and Lockdown.

I agree. It jarred with me to see him include that ‘disgraced’ and why use it when the statement he is referencing is 100% what this site stands for?

What has happened in USA now is terrifying, many feel as we do about Trump and the massive election fraud but you’ll never see it in the bent MSM. How do we make our voices heard?

Agree, it was a stolen election.

Unless something happens in the next 2 weeks to overturn what went on yesterday then we’re all doomed.

Is this a cunning plan to get all the enemies in the open including his allies who were stabbing Trump in the back the whole time he was President so they can be arrested as they have shown themselves openly to be enemies of the people or is this the end for good and we’re all screwed?

I was reading a piece the day of the Georgia reruns, with one Dem canvasser claiming that their office had signed up 125,000 new supporter, most of whom would be using absentee votes, becuase they don’t have to produce ID at polling stations. They took a lesson from Labour about postal votes and how the minority community leaders love them.for the ability to influence block voting.

Disgraced only in the eyes of the mass media – the legacy mass media. If I was disgraced in their eyes, I would consider it an honour.

I’m a Socialist (for the many, not the few) and agree totally.

I think its going to be an even more bitter London Calling next tuesday…cant wait!

How close to Herd immunity?

Looking at the governments ‘cases’ map, zoomed in to local level, you can see pockets of blue in inner London, as well as some in Birmingham. These appear to be more cosmopolitan areas, perhaps areas which had experienced more cases early on and might now be close to Herd.

I have also read that around 60% of school children may have already developed immunity. This suggests they are very close to herd and closing schools a completely useless strategy.

However, apparently we don’t do any measurements about herd, T cells etc these days, so we’ve no idea. I could be wrong. If anyone has any data on this please share your.
.

I think we are at herd immunity. The progression of the virus is as you would expect for a normal seasonal winter virus that is endemic. Zoe shows 70,000 new infections per day and we would expect 400,000 infections per day of all cold/flu variants. It is just one (a major one) of the 200 or so respiratory illnesses that go round in winter and kill 40,000 extra (comparing Dec-Feb to other months) every year.

Lockdowns are an emergency measure for a deadly pandemic. Not a tool for propping up the NHS. This isn’t a deadly pandemic or national emergency therefore lockdowns are being imposed illegally by our government.

End of.

Prior to this year there was a scientific consensus that lockdowns should never be used as a pandemic control measure. The deadliness of a pathogen is not really relevant. In fact, the more deadly the pathogen the more likely an epidemic is to die out quickly without intervention.

Lockdowns should go back into the textbook as something never to be done.

This is what worries me the most. If we don’t win the argument against lockdowns then they’ll be used again in the future.

The truth is our braindead politicians have simply no idea on how to run things, they are like headless chickens. None of these measures make any sense whatsoever.

They only make sense in the narrative of ‘The Great Reset’ and if they don’t want us to believe in that ‘crazy tin-foil hat conspiracy’ theory then they need to stop this shit show down and fast.

I wouldn’t worry about any “great reset”. What appears to be happening is incapable & incompetent governments around the world are acting in groupthink with covid-19 (probably inspired by the lockdown tactics used in China) and a few nefarious chancers like those in the WEF are hoping to use the ongoing fiasco to push their own agenda. Much of it will eventually fail because of human nature and the fact humanity is too diverse be be run as a technocracy. I’m not a conspiracy theorist anyhow, just a realist.

Lockdowns are not needed. Ever. In a truly deadly pandemic, there would be absolutely no need for the government to mandate people staying at home as people would do this anyway.

This is so true.

SAGE minutes ceased referring to a pandemic probably May/June time. It has been called an epidemic consistently since then.

Let’s put some reality back in this.

Firstly, I have gone through the NHS stats produced yesterday morning and, as at 3 January 2021, there were 1,074 patients in critical care in London. That compares to 741 on the same day 3 years ago, and if you adjust for the population of over 70s (who represent around 80% of deaths every year) that is equivalent to around 800 in terms of today’s population. The national figures show 3,981 this year and an equivalent 3,528 on Jan 3 2018.That’s without even looking at Jan 2015 where the equivalent national figure was 3840. And as I’m sure you’re all aware, G&A occupancy is well below its level for previous years.

So coming back to the London figures, the NHS crisis is about 274 people out of a population of 9 million, of whom an estimate of 20% (55) are under 75, and that is the reason our children can’t go to schools, we are under house arrest and normal life has been cancelled. Not to mention the horrendous toll in unemployment, mental illness, poverty and death from other causes. Taking into account the growth rate in critical care patients over the last two weeks that may go up to 1,200 at the peak, but also could be far lower as London seems to be close to or past its peak.

If this were treated as a normal illness and NHS staff were not forced to self-isolate on the basis of no symptoms and highly unreliable tests, there would be far less pressure on the NHS, but that is not even the issue. Are we seriously saying that the NHS in London is overwhelmed by under 300 people, and a total of just over 1,000 in critical care. It is beyond negligent that this should happen, and there are no words to describe the revolting and sick response by the government.

It is blindingly obvious that lockdowns don’t work, compare the graphs of Sweden to UK, Italy, France etc and the graphs of Brazil to Peru. Even the countries that applied them early (Germany, Poland etc) are now ‘catching up’ in terms of deaths per million. The argument for lockdowns is self-serving and disingenuous and people promoting it are a disgrace.

The excess deaths in England and Wales for week 51 were around 502 (on a population and age adjusted basis) and for week 52 (to December 25th) around 500-1000, difficult to say precisely for that week because of the bank holidays, and for the whole year about 30,000, 1 person in 2,000 when about 1 in 100 die every year anyway.

Let’s get real – anyone who supports a lockdown should be feeling shame this morning. The government’s response to the pandemic is revolting.

Superb post.

Yes, thank you, time for the ‘managers’ at NHS/Moloch to fall on their swords like the chap on the doors at US Capitol.

Now that’s the sort of crisp summary I’d like to see on lockdown sceptics every morning. Thank you for digging out those stats & presenting so clearly.

I’m also viscerally anti-imprisoning healthy people because I think it goes beyond where a state can and should properly act. I agree with Jonathan Sumption that it’s illegitimate in a democracy to apply criminal law to who I meet with, what I wear, and where I go.

That’s why I had panic attacks for the first time since I was a child when the first lockdown was announced (thank goodness for a supportive husband), despite us not being financially affected. The horror of all those affected – domestic violence, small business owners, loneliness… Almost unbearable, but at least I have young children to distract me.
But I felt totally alone. Comfortable middle class people, relieved to be able to watch Netflix in place of their commute, just didn’t think like that. *I* was the immoral one.

The penny’s dropping with more people now, but still with far, far too few. It’s still weirdly acceptable to say “I approved of the first lockdown but not the later ones”. But that set the percent for how the state could act! If it’s ok to lockdown in some circumstances, trust the government to find plenty of relevant circumstances.

Yes, the idea that it’s somehow OK for 130 million people to starve to death highlights the immorality. As with thermageddon the world’s poor must suffer so we can feel safe and virtuous.

What’s even more immoral are the comfortable middle classes in the developing world who support lockdown even at the cost of their poor counterparts and are tone deaf to the mental health impacts of lockdowns, social distancing and enforced mask wearing. That’s the reason why I’m done with my family for awhile now – their inappropriate responses and remarks to my perfectly harmless gestures such as thanking them for Christmas presents and asking them how they’re getting hints at their having swallowed the propaganda whole and allowing for no dissent. The final insult was my brother-in-law telling me to stay at home because a friend died of Covid. While I wouldn’t take lightly someone dying at a young age, I would query whether it was actually Covid or something else.

At the risk of sounding callous, I wouldn’t shed tears for my family if they run into financial difficulties and my nieces develop psychological problems as a result of all this. They made their bed and they can lie in it.

Lockdown is a comfortable middle class policy, for those of us who actually have to go out and work (my job can’t be done at home) and live in flats with no garden etc its no fun and a violation of human rights.

If all stats are confirmed, this should appear as a permanent piece on the right-hand side and (with all due respect and gratitude) Laurence should be Toby’s spin doctor the next time MSM want to humble him on telly. This government is a fucking disgrace and is treating us like thick subservient cunts. My greatest fear is they, along with Starmer’s cluster-fucks, know we’ll never vote for these spineless pricks again thus under Klaus’ direction they’ll never give us the chance.

Stacey Rudin’s piece in today’s extras should be an international heads up to anyone supporting or condoning any type of lockdown. How can any of this bullshit be remotely acceptable.

I still think lockdowns are wrong and always have been wrong. They don’t work in any material way and they cause more harm than good. It really is that simple.

In any other year, if the NHS was at material risk of being overwhelmed by a combination of a virulent strain of flu, cold weather, and the usual winter ailments, any calls to shut down the entire country just to stop it from being overwhelmed would have been met with understandable derision.

There is absolutely no excuse. This disease has been circulating for a year now and scientists have known for months that it is seasonal. Sir Patrick Vallance himself admitted back in March that a long spring lockdown would just delay the proper peak of the disease until winter, when everyone is already weaker and there are fewer healthcare resources – and yet that’s exactly what we did, and had summer restrictions to boot as well. The government have had ample time to prepare the NHS for what they knew was going to happen, but instead of doing that, they have just used the information to spread fear and panic. If this really is a ‘wartime’ situation, then why can’t the government make a massive mobilisation effort to scale up beds, get required medical staff out of retirement to volunteer, buy treatments in bulk so that patients can be discharged quicker? If the political will is there then surely it can be done? Surely shutting down the entire country is the nuclear option, so why is it being treated as the only option?

There is a reason why full lockdowns of entire countries have never before been used to stop the spread of the disease. They don’t save any lives and cause more harm than good. Again, it really is that simple.

Not really a full shutdown though what we have. Production, Construction, Haulage and big retail all fully firing. All I might add include big Conservative donors. The cynical might conclude that might be a factor in the government’s shutdown selection, or shutting them down so close to tax year end would hugely dip the tax take after April. Remember 29% is due back on last years grants. Choke of 3 months income in construction and HMRC would potentially lose much of that.

I did hear the rapist’s dad this morning indicating he would love a hit at some of the sectors the government has so kindly allowed to trade.

I am appalled at this ‘Protected the NHS’ mantra, like it was some frail elderly relative of whom not much can be expected. As I have mentioned before, if I pay a plumber £5000 to fit a new bathroom and end up having to defecate in the garden because the toilet does not work I do not say ‘oh well never mind we must protect the poor plumber, no, I will give the plumber merry hell until they get back and do the job for which they were paid! With this current crisis why are the NHS top brass not all on the carpet, being dressed down and getting final warnings for failing to do the job for which they are paid very highly?

The current NHS model is fatally flawed we cannot carry on like this, being made to suffer for a bloated organisation that seems incapable of organising an inebriated celebration in a place of alcohol production.

Me too. If this (NHS) isn’t sorted out over the summer heads should do more than roll, they should be on spikes. No more lockdowns after this one.

Be careful criticism of the NHS may soon lead to the police breaking your door down

“Protecting the NHS” is one of the biggest albatross around the British public’s neck. I always thought that the NHS was there to serve us not the other way round.

Trouble is the NHS is stuck in the late 1940s-early 1950s and has never kept us hence why we’re in this mess. Meanwhile we’re spoon fed propaganda about how wonderful it is and any dissent or suggestions of reform is always shut down by cries of “we will end up like America” as is the USA is the only other comparable health system (same argument is used against suggestions of reform in the BBC). If the NHS is so wonderful why haven’t other countries especially those in the Commonwealth have copied it?

When this is over, there really needs to be a root and branch reform of the NHS or perhaps put it out of its misery and let us move to a system similar to France or Germany. Let’s face it, the NHS to me seems to be practically begging to be euthanised at this point.

Absolutely right…I am sick to death of the bloody NHS.

I get sick of insurance companies in other fields ripping me off and refusing to pay claims. Charlatans.

Half the world uses a variant on a government-run medical system because no-one’s found anything better (or less bad) that can cover a country’s healthcare needs on about 10-12% of GDP. One reason the UK NHS is pathetic is that it only pays 8-9% of GDP.

The German system will deny people treatment for serious conditions if they don’t have an adequate insurance record. Happened to a friend’s brother. They’ll be means-tested until their savings have mostly gone. A slightly less cruel version of the US system.

Indeed – people seem to forget that the S in NHS stands for Service, just like the Civil Service – they work for US, WE pay THEIR wages… It is almost punishable by death (well actually it is punishable by death) to criticise the NHS, akin to saying you eat live babies. The mismanagement and abuse of the system by staff is eyewatering – I know of a nurse who books two weeks’ holiday, then does her job as “bank” staff (on three times the money), goes back to work for a couple of days, gets signed off sick for two weeks and goes on holiday…. I also have a mate who offered to supply his local NHS trust with surgical gloves at £5 a box (whilst still making a profit), the response was “no thanks, we’ll stick with our supplier at £9 a box”…

Good post. Mrs TJN and I have been having that exact conversation over breakfast.

There’s all that they could have been doing to prepare for what is happening now. But we find that the NHS has some 5k to 10k fewer beds than this time last year. Isn’t that literally criminal?

There’s loads they could be doing right now to try to get on top of this, but there’s no sign they’re doing it.

Fundamentally, once we’d got to about mid-April last year covid wasn’t a difficult problem to understand. Enough information was in. What was needed was clarity of thought and the moral courage to see it through. Both have been woefully lacking.

One difference between Mrs TJN and I is that I get very worked up about it, I chew it over constantly, whereas she can compartmentalise it.

It seems to be acknowledged now that the key reason reason that they’ve reduced the number of available beds is because they never planned for the hospitals to be full of sick patients. If this was line from “Yes Minister”, that would have had the audience rolling in the aisles!

A true sceptic might suggest they’ve reduced the beds knowing full well what they’re doing.

My right to do what i want is more important than not overwhelming the NHS. I could give two fucks about the NHS. Anyone supporting the destruction of society, our rights and all the rest of it is a direct threat to me and will be treated as such if the need be. Just saying all you fuckers supporting the tyranny might face those who’s live’s they’ve destroyed

Yes this is the real nub of it…utterly sick of the NHS being put before people’s jobs and businesses and general ability to enjoy their lives. It is now a form of ‘health fascism’. Every stupid Tory feels obliged to worship the NHS just in case they are pilloried by the Labour Party. They might as well just join forces,,,they really are no different.

No one should be willing to surrender their rights, liberties and freedoms which grandad’s generation fought so hard in WW2 to protect.

Waiting at the bus station yesterday. The bus came in, empty except for the driver and a small girl sitting on the bucket seat behind the driver, intent on an ipad. I got on, nobody else did, the small girl stayed in place. As the bus wended through miles of suburbia I gradually twigged.

As I got off:
Me (indicating small girl, to the bus driver):”Is that your childcare?!”
Bus driver (ruefully): “yeah.”

Evidently bus drivers don’t count as key workers.

Interesting also that some teachers are complaining that the number of key worker children in schools has rocketed compared to spring, a good sign I think as the novelty of furlough wears off and the reality of redundancy hits home; it may also show that parental fear of the virus is dropping like a stone.

Dog walking yesterday I met 3 neighbours on my block. Had long chats with them all. One said she and her husband had gone back to work they are so bored. On previous lockdowns they did WFH.
While working they use a dog walker who visits their home, a tiny boost to the local economy , so 3 people usefully working.
No masks at all and the only pavement dancing was us trying to stop our dogs on leads doing the maypole dance around us.
Also no clapping. We are all fed up.

that has serious implications from an insurance point of view. The child was not a fare paying passenger etc . I admire the drivers initiative but i hope he does not have an accident

I suspect Alastair Haimes was “got” at, perhaps by those he works with or whose funds he manages. And perhaps he couldn’t resist the kudos of writing for the Spectator. From Twitter exchanges in the spring, he did not believe – based on robust data – that lockdowns worked. That said, he was always more centrist and circumspect than his promoters would have you believe – I remember being surprised by the wetness of some of his comments on the Delingpod last summer.

Speaking of the Spectator, what a hopeless disappointment that’s been. A combination of getting too close to their sources, logical data analysis not being their strong point, and a desire by management to massively grow readership by becoming more “mainstream”, has hollowed out the quality of their journalism.

In short, thank goodness for lockdown sceptics!

He may have been “got at” but I suspect it’s more likely he was suffering from the pressure of being vilified by all and sundry, and with the vaccine sees an end in sight, and is justifying his change in position to himself as the data having changed.

yep, he just had a wobble

You are being kind.

Well he should have his wobbles in private!

Yep, perhaps “got at” sounded too conspiracy theory. I meant something similar: your friends shrinking from you; perhaps your wife disagreeing with you; your fund management colleagues & major clients implying your views were unacceptable…
But on top of all that, to have such a high profile article in the Speccy implies someone senior/influential involved.
Anyway, wholly disappointing either way.

he’ll kick himself. he should have stuck to his guns.

I doubt if Hames was got at….he was never really there…I thought he was politically clueless on the Delingpod. This is not about numbers anyway..its about moral choices.

As for the Spectator its gone…I never bought it anyway…I think I always suspected what it was really like underneath….its just pure Establishment. Look at the way Liddle caved in when things got tough.

Re: Suggestions For Researchers

I live close to a major shopping area in Newcastle upon Tyne. I frequently use the large Tesco store. It probably employs 200 to 300 people aged 18 to 70. Until well into the summer the checkouts did not have plastic screens nor wear masks generally worn.

Every Tesco employee would have been exposed to the virus either from colleagues or from the public between early March and say July. Their working lives were unaffected by Lockdown rules.

I am on chatty terms with several of the people on the check outs. I know them well enough to ask if they have had Covid and how many of their Tesco colleagues have had it. I have been doing this since mid March.

By September I gathered that less than 10 had reported in sick with Covid. Some had been quite ill but none that I heard of had needed hospital treatment. One or two had reported long Covid problems.

One lady said that she was surprised that so few of her colleagues had caught Covid.

Allowing for inaccuracy in my figure one thing is quite clear. Of a hundred or more people who were repeatedly exposed to the virus the great majority were either immune to it or had the disease asymptomatically. I got the same picture when I spoke to people who work at other local stores.

I think this is a gives clear indication of the effect on society if we had continued as normal in March and not imposed a Lockdown. Dealing with Covid would have been manageable for the NHS. Most people would not have shown symptoms of the disease. For a time extra resources might have been needed to be diverted to ICU units. I have been opposed to lockdowns from the start.

One reason I know covid was going round the store in March is because I am sure that is where I caught it. Fortunately I had the Prince Charles version (I am of a similar age) not the Boris Johnson one. Go to bed immediately and sleep as much as possible is my recommendation to those who get it.

I don’t know about you but I don’t buy this “asymptomatic” business. They didn’t catch it. The test they have been using is flawed and not fit for purpose. Our politicians have been led up the garden.

I agree, i don’t buy it either. Are there any other diseases that are known that you can have and pass on to others but never show any signs or have symptoms of? Perhaps there are, does anyone know?

Covid is strangely media-driven. The other great plagues in history were killing people very obviously in large numbers. Plagues, the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-20 etc. Although even reports of the latter were widely censored until WW1 was safely over.
If the MSM weren’t devoting most of their coverage to it most people would hardly know it was there.

I think the term “Hysteria” was coined for situations like this.

I can’t think of any. I’ve never heard of colds and flu being spread asymptomatically, and most common cold bugs are coronaviruses.

It is accepted that it is possible to have a viral infection asymptomatically. It was estimated that about 72% of the passengers on the cruise ship Diamond Princess had covid but had not displayed symptoms.

CT scans showed that some of these asymptomatic people had marks on their lungs called ground-glass opacity. This means, apparently, that the corona virus had caused internal damage but produced no symptoms.

I accept, of course, that the PCR test gives a significant percentage of false positive results.

The issue is how infectious are asymptomatic people? In some cases I think they must be shedding enough corona virus to transmit the disease.

Fair play to Toby for publishing the piece by the London Doctor. Unfortunately, we are in a perfect storm because of the stupid decision to maintain the lockdown in the late spring/ summer. We are seeing exactly the scenario that Vallance predicted, allied to the scenario that Whitty predicted whereby any (negligible imho) suppressive effect of lockdown would be completely negated by demoralisation/ fatigue/ understandable non compliance. Neither of them factored in that a third of NHS staff would be absent because of the ridiculous test and trace system and the side effects of the vaccine. And they certainly won’t have factored in that crying wolf, with dodgy data, for months on end would exacerbate the non compliance.

The lockdown has caused this dire situation, of that there is no doubt, and any lockdown now is not going to stop the spread of the virus, although it might suppress the virus on its downward trajectory as it did, pointlessly, in the summer, thereby kicking the problem down the road, into the winter.

But, whether or not this lockdown is going to work, and I very much doubt it will, I support it out of solidarity with those decent NHS staff who are flogging their guts out. Yes there are still plenty of lazy pricks in the organisation and it needs to be completely reformed, but right now, if it helps those people on the front line to know that the country is making a massive sacrifice to support them then that is what I will do.

But no one should be under any illusion, the reason we are in this mess is because of the lockdown, Sweden shows yet again that the decision to try and stop the virus was utterly futile and has made matters worse.

I agree with you Will. Right from the very beginning it was made clear that the initial lockdown was to allow the NHS to gear up because lockdown would inevitably push the peak further down the road. Instead of taking the summer lull as an opportunity to build capacity, increase herd immunity and prepare people for the the inevitable winter uptick (vitamin D etc) the government created false hope then launched into an insane suppression strategy. Test and trace and false positives has resulted in huge numbers of NHS staff having to isolate unnecessarily and often repeatedly. People think we are experiencing a second or third wave but what this is now is the first wave with bells on. To mix metaphors, it’s the can the government kicked repeatedly down the road in the forlorn hope that the vaccine would ride to the rescue before the chickens came home to roost!!

Yes the NHS is very sick, as is our world. They were infected by an insidious Virus that works by exploiting one of our basic Sins, that of Sloth.
And where did this Virus come from? From a certain William Henry Gates III , the same one that is now playing Doctors and Nurses.

Remember the days of DOS, Windows 3, Windows 5, Microsoft Word and then Microsoft Office, well such well intentioned tools fell into the hands of Bureaucrats, and all of a sudden Management could retreat from the “Coal Face”, “Front Line”, “The Shop Floor”, – call it what you like – to behind a wall in a comfy office divorced from reality, beavering away producing impressive Power Point Presentations, Spread Sheets with detailed data base generated predictions, all whilst the unfortunate foot soldiers have to meet deadlines both financial and production based on purely theoretical outcomes. This is bad enough in manufacturing, but in a Behemoth like a government agency or the NHS it resembles a pathogen such as Rabies.

Our NHS has been managed to meltdown while governments have squandered billions that should have been invested in Hospitals, Medical staff and equipment (think pipes that can carry sufficient Oxygen you “Might” need in an emergency). But I suppose it looks OK on the lovely Power Point Shows, and meticulous Excel spread sheets.

“ But, whether or not this lockdown is going to work, and I very much doubt it will, I support it out of solidarity with those decent NHS staff who are flogging their guts out”

I am confused. Elsewhere you’ve said trying to stop the virus is futile and makes matters worse, but you also say you support the lockdown. Doesn’t make sense to me.

You talk about non-compliance but from what I have seen that’s not the case – mask compliance is high, most people who can are working from home, almost all businesses that are forced to close have done so, and private socialising is down hugely – sure some are doing it but not many. I don’t think it is credible to say that non-compliance has made a significant difference.

The fact is that short of a complete shutdown, lockdowns are futile so supporting them is unhelpful.

Those NHS staff flogging their guts out hve signed up for that, and any difficulty they face is down to govt stupidity, incompetence, lack of planning, evil etc etc. I don’t see how supporting a lockdown helps them at all.

I can’t agree with you on the part about supporting it out of solidarity with some good people working hard given the damage it is causing and the futility of the policy.

Why make so many suffer for an empty gesture?

‘But, whether or not this lockdown is going to work, and I very much doubt it will, I support it out of solidarity with those decent NHS staff who are flogging their guts out………but right now, if it helps those people on the front line to know that the country is making a massive sacrifice to support them then that is what I will do.’

NO NO NO NO NO NO….

Sentimental hog wash! What sort of person under stress in their job would be helped by knowing the rest of the country suffering the misery of lockdown, businesses bankrupted, children denied education, suicides. Who is this selfish narcissist of whom you speak? Most NHS workers I know are sick of the lockdown effects themselves.

Spot on. I’ve never come home after a hard day at work and thought, ‘ah, if only everybody else was having a hard time, that would make me feel so much more energised’.

The piece above the line about the control group and making comparisons between groups to see the impact of lockdowns (“Suggestions for researchers”) highlights what to me has been one of the most remarkable aspects of this whole nonsense – the lack of any interest from SAGE and others in finding out anything useful about the virus and how it spreads. After nearly a year, if you look at their public prouncements they come out with nothing even vaguely defnitive. Almost as if they don’t really care and they are sticking to their original script and bending the data to fit it.

Outstanding update today I thought. Well done to Toby for a great piece, he must be feeling the heat at present. One point on the doctor’s update though, the figures for patients in ICU never seem to distinguish between those there for covid and those in there for other reasons that simply tested positive. Surely this is critical data that needs to be made available?

No-one knows who has Covid. There is no reliable test!

That’s been the major issue throughout and something I was at pains to point out to Sir Desmond when I wrote to thank him. I doubt he needed me to tell him that, though. The shame is there are at least 630 other MPs too dense to realise it.

Stop the testing! Even in a control area. See what difference it makes to hospitalisations and deaths.

Congratulations to drakeford for identifying a previously undestroyed section of the economy, kitchen showrooms. What an absolute bastard.

It isn’t just the showrooms. It’s all the kitchen fabricators, the stonemasons and fitters, and the plasterers, electricians, tilers and plumbers who will be short of work.

If I want to go for a drive but I don’t have enough fuel for the journey I would say the problem is that I don’t have enough fuel. I wouldn’t say that it’s because I want to go on a journey that’s made the shortage of fuel a problem and I certainly wouldn’t ban myself from driving so that it would never be a problem again.

So when the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed due to a reduced number of beds and staff shortages it is pretty clear what the problem is.

In this case it’s not a case of simply refuelling because that would take too long and perhaps it’s a good idea to not take this particular journey but let’s not pretend that the problem is anything other than a lack of fuel.

The problem with the NHS is the NHS. Staff, management and unions. Very similar to British Leyland, and the NCB. Look what happened to them, we still have cars to drive and our homes are heated. Watch out NHS, you’re next.

We hope so and not a moment to soon.

Undoubtedly but there are still some bloody good people who work in the organisation.

And like all Stalinist-Socialist organisations many bloody bad ones – some of whom produce dance videos in empty hospitals.

Absolutely no doubt about that, just a shame not many of them are in charge of running it. Reform of the NHS doesn’t do away with the good ones – they are propping it up – but it would give them the chance to be part of a better model apart from the current incompetent bureaucratic blob.

https://twitter.com/rwjdingwall/status/1347450930367778816?s=20

Not to mention the ethics of ICL coming on TV talking about the worst cases without caveats. Or that some of these models are the equivalent of saying in the next ten years it will rain on between 3 and all days of that period. (3 orders of magnitude)

There is another interesting article on this site concerning vaccine hype:

https://www.coronababble.com/post/covid-19-vaccines-is-the-hype-justified

https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/Article/2020-07-19-the-oxford-covid-19-vaccine

After yesterday’s fiasco when taking M-I-L for her jab, I thought that I would look into the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine for myself. It’s difficult for me, as a non-scientist, to understand but unlike Ferguson, I do have biology O level!

It struck me that, as this type of vaccine has been in development for years so was able to be modified once they had the genetic code for Coronavirus, it has been tested using chimpanzees. How will the animal activists feel about that?

Secondly, yesterday there was no social distancing going on between patients and staff, not just those administering the jab, in spite of the hands, face, space mantra. Forms and clipboards were passed between staff and no-one was being encouraged to sanitise their hands. They did ask some people to pull up their mask but, as I said yesterday, no-one commented about our maskless faces, nor the fact that M-I-L had a mask hanging off one ear.

I think that this is all theatre, just as the masks were introduced to make people feel safer about going shopping, vaccinations will make people feel safer about rejoining society once restrictions are lifted. I do hope that I am right.

It could be dangerous theatre too with a ‘vaccine’ which is being tested on the general public.

https://principia-scientific.com/what-vaccine-trials/

There is at least one peer reviewed scientific per about the attempts to develop a SARS vaccine. It resulted in the creation of antibodies but upon exposure to the actual virus the animals all died of multiple organ failure. This led to the paper’s authors warning of any attempt to develop a vaccine for human use. I believe the phenomenon of hypersensitising a person by way of a vaccine is called “pathogenic priming.” And Covid-19 is actually SARS 2.0

Chien-Te Tseng , Elena Sbrana , Naoko Iwata-Yoshikawa , Patrick C Newman , Tania Garron , Robert L Atmar , Clarence J Peters , Robert B Couch “ Immunization with SARS coronavirus vaccines leads to pulmonary immunopathology on challenge with the SARS virus,” PLoS One 2012;7(4):e35421.doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035421. Epub 2012 Apr 20

That is one scary paper

All theatre, yes

Masks introduced to make people feel more like there was a deadly threat, not safer

I read a great analogy – ME wearing a mask to keep YOU safe is like ME wearing gloves to keep YOUR hands warm

Face knickers don’t make the zombies feel safer. They feel less safe, and more vinductive against those with human faces.
Which shows that they work exactly as intended.

Face masks are evil

It’s a slave rag
Just like the Islamic one

Yes, Julian and Annie, I made the point months ago that you wouldn’t want to visit Johannesburg, the murder capital of the world, if you had to wear a bullet proof/stab vest for your visit.

anti-empire.com has the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme with “Do You Know Our Lord And Savior The Vaccine?”

One of the most telling things about this whole debacle is that it shows up the fantasists and the realists. The fantasists are currently running the show believing in all types of devils and reading the entrails only to shout the sky is falling.

The realists are pointing out this very fact.

The missus usually has BBC on. She’s isn’t originally from the UK so to her it’s just noise.

I was actually a little taken aback with Jon Sopel reporting on the Capital Hill walkabout. He actually compared and contrasted the Antifa riots in Washington to the demonstration the other day showing they weren’t the same thing. Maybe, just maybe a little chink of the idiot armour is starting to show as the MSM are realising the monster that is awakening.

I was told the joke once that the Celts are prone to flare ups and passions but with the English, watch out. They may look calm but when they finally lose their shit you get a 100 years war.

I think generalisations about nations are risky though like most generalisations there is some truth to them. The English for example have sometimes presented themselves or at least thought themselves to be particularly fond of liberty. The dread contagion and all the things that go with it suggest this is not the case. Another generalisation, that they are somewhat conformist and find it hard to go beyond complaining, seems more true.

Sopel is one of the very worst. Yt used to hold a video of him in news studio acting like god towards a guest. Even his fellow presenter was astonished with a gasp of Jon! To which sopel just doubled down.

That’s why I was so surprised. The man drips so much hate for Trump he could sell it as butter

I think that last sentence is a perceptive point. History seems to show that the English are pretty laid back, will go along with things in their own quiet way, be patient patient patient, and then when they’ve had enough suddenly turn. And at that point someone has a formidable enemy. Here’s hoping.

Thats whats most likely happening, we English have got a long fuse but do eventually reach a breaking point. I now thankfully think we are close to that blow point with the third lockdown.

Flu Vaxx’s have never stopped transmission, for some people (30% maybe), with weak immune systems they ‘may’ reduce symptoms. 60 years of data proves this. They also injure and in some cases kill.

So what happens when they finally admit the obvious that jabbing you is unlikely to do much except injure or be neutral in 70% of the pop? Will that be good enough for Hands-in-pants to end the dictatorship?

For sure that’s where it will end up. At every turn any real analysis is drowned out by the marketing push

In the future when people suggest we fund the NHS more generously we have a great excuse not to! Demand can be managed by restrictions on the public. Surely there can be no downsides.

Maybe automate the system. In the mornings log onto the NHS dashboard – if admissions or occupied beds are below some threshhold you can go to work, if not work from home.

Your car computer can be directly linked to the NHS. Some days it just won’t start!

etc

Don’t feed the dragon of totalitarianism.

Please. Be careful what you wish for, even if you didn’t actually wish for it.

Well, there are some people who think the move to e-vehicles is all about that (control through IT), and nothing to do with saving the planet.

Not a car driver myself.

The Mandy Boy is a dead cock walking

The lazy, living on past glories Spectator have given the genocidal maniac a platform

The moment he most looks forward to? “When I have the duty to declare that the Coronavirus Act is no longer required, upon medical advice. That will be a great moment: when we repeal these draconian laws.”

‘Upon medical advice’ yep, getting his retaliation in first as we say round here. Well ‘it was the medics that dun it’ won’t wash. You could have stopped them and you didn’t

Or ‘when we repeal these draconian laws’ Makes it sound like the draconian laws were nothing to do with him. Listen Butt, as we also say round here, they are your draconian laws and it will be you that pays the price

As they once sang on the football terraces round here

‘We’re coming for you, we’re coming for you
Mandy Cock, Mandy Cock
We’re coming for you’

The snivelling lying little toe rag Twatt Handycock is never going to be able to move freely in public again. The same goes for his compatriots…..

Yeah he is my MP and if I saw him in the street it would take a lot of willpower not to give him the Doc Marten treatment. Loathsome little turd.

We need a more accurate test to tell if the subject is infectious or not. Why spend billions trying to fight something that is not there or not a risk to others?

Because this long ceased to be about a virus. The cockup theory no longer fits and hasn’t fitted for ages. It’s a coup. A globalist coup.

You’d think, wouldn’t you? Except the “scientists” and politicians don’t seem very interested in reality

If we accept that the Virus is now endemic isn’t it obvious that testing for it in general population is going to find a lot of it! This was my first thought last summer when thinking about the likely situation we now have. Have we ever mass tested for an endemic pathogen before??

Just wanted to suggest a different painting for the top of today’s LS page, please. (This may already have been pointed out in comments earlier this morning.)

The painting showing at the moment is called “Scotland Forever” by Lady Butler, and is of the Scots Greys charging at Waterloo in 1815 – not the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854.

There is a classic painting of the latter which I have found on alamy.com

Many thanks. And thanks for the vital work you do each day.

crickle crackll..sclii..

It’s me again, from the future. Tier 9. Otherwise known as lockdown 11. We are not allowed shoe laces. Or windows. Everyone is cold. Burglaries are up. When walking or running our shoes fall off. At first they came for the laces but I did not speak up because I had velcro fasteners. All the old people have vanished. They said it was covid but Findus crispy pancakes now taste very strange. Boris has moved his new girlfriend Greta into number 10…

Crickle crackle.. spplllittttt ccc…

Is Greta old enough? Is this not an abomination against the laws of God and man?

She is now 18. Old enough for Boris.

“In Tier 12. Have begun to have sexual fantasies about Greta whose appearances on TV are increasingly frequent. This is probably a token of my complete moral collapse. Along with the cannibalism.”

Correction: too old for . . . well, let us just say, too old for many of our elite class.

18 and presumably anorexic cos she looks about 12.

18 and flatter than day old Pepsi
so she still ticks the yew tree box for the House of Commons

They will never get rid of windows. They want to reintroduce the window tax. That way, we will all be incentivesed to remove our own windows leaving them blameless, while we are tax avoiding bastards.

BBC TV

8pm next Thursday

The silence of the lambs

“A neighbour reported me to the police for holding a dinner party. I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti…”

Hi, Hannibal.

Telegraph is all American today. Not a peep about the UK. What a strange conservative paper it is.

Well, I’m now fairly sure vaccination won’t be mandatory as the inlaws have just had their first ones and the medics/GPs seem incapable of recording it properly or tracking their follow up. The idea that I might need a digital certificate of vaccination to get into a gig or a sports event in future is laughable. There’s no way they could organise something like that. You’d just have to say you’ve had it.

A ray of hope!

that’s what i’m hoping for that their sheer incompetence would limit the rollout of digital-id / proof of vaxx etc. Do they issue a card or something to say they’ve had a jab?

Yes. There is a record card which was supposed to show the follow up date but they’ve left it blank because they’re unable to book people in now.

I think if they do ever introduce digital passports to get into gigs/on holiday etc the program will be hacked apart within days and convincing counterfeit apps will spring up everywhere. People will find ways around it. I’m not worried as this government are useless, just look at the failure of the test and trace app.

I read somewhere that in German-occupied Poland during WW2, something like one ID document in every eight was fake. In occupied countries resistance groups often churned out fake documents. Not just ID but ration coupons etc. The black market was also active in that regard. In Berlin the black market started producing hammer and sickle insignia and even Stars of David in spring 1945, sensing a change of management.

Exactly people will always find ways around authority and control. I’m actually starting to feel like a member of the resistance!

In the Great Escape film, Donald Pleasance and his team of skilled forgers appeared to perform miracles producing all the necessary travel papers. In reality, many of the guards had been quite happy to be bribed to provide them with original documents to copy. (By the time fo the escape, it was so blindingly obvious that something dramatic was about to happen that the camp management expressly told the senior British officers not to do anything silly. The rest, sadly, is history.)

Plenty of fake docs will be available on the interwebs
Do not panic

Correct, government IT programs always fail spectacularly and expensively. That’s why for years we all had to be Prince II practitioners if we wanted project management work in either the public or private sectors. It was supposed to give a framework to avoid such cock ups. Whether it would have or not, needless to say I’ve never known a client follow it.

The fact they always fail so spectacularly is why I’m not bothered by all the talk about technocracies, great reset, digital ID/vax records, covid passports etc. Every one will be an expensive flop and many are just pie in the sky.

Friend of mine in IT is also confident these agendas will fail for the moment because of technical/logistical reasons.

But I would not underrate the future danger. I think it is clear there are powerful forces pushing digital vax IDs, etc. and a lot of money is being thrown at developing technologies to make these realizable.

Well we’ll see, but I think we’ve got a reason to be optimistic. The government recently threw over £12 billion at the test and trace app and that has flopped completely. You can throw all the money you like at establishing a digital surveillance state but if people refuse to play along its a waste of time.

Tricky to make it mandatory when the regulatory documents state it is not to be used by individuals under 16, pregnant women, individuals with immune system issues, people with allergies … It seems that the only people it suits are those who are least at risk from the virus.

A huge Thank You to all concerned with today’s ‘Lockdown Sceptics’. This is a really excellent edition.

I hope serious consideration is given to turning ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ into a fully blown online newspaper in due course.

Mr Young is brilliant, intrepid and immensely hardworking, a rare combination. We are so very lucky to have someone of such calibre so committed to this matter.

The splendid picture at the head of the page refers to a brilliant cavalry action during the Battle of Waterloo. The Commander that day brought in a program of reform to the British Army as a consequence of his experiences.

The caption to that picture is taken from a poem written about a later cavalry action during the Crimean War. That war was followed by further swingeing reforms to the British Army.

There is no question now but that the organisation and leadership of the NHS and its associated bureaucracy, particularly SAGE, and most particularly the SAGE membership recruitment system, is in similar need of root and branch reform, for it has been responsible for a national and international calamity, lives lost, on a scale unimaginable during either the Napoleonic or Crimean Wars.

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Niemietz-NHS-Interactive.pdf

Clap silence for carers. DM has an article and the comments are almost universally reporting no clapping.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9123391/National-landmarks-capital-light-blue-celebrate-NHS-frontline-workers.html

Thats because the NHS has never been so useless since its inception which was somewhere around 1936. (I know it came in in 1948). My wife has now gone blind whilst waiting for a consultation in the NHS. I can’t believe how useless they are.

The pre-war government set up the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) to deal with the possibility of casualties from bombing.

Sorry to hear that.
These criminals need to be held to account.
and they will be

they won’t, you’re deluded

The organisation has more managers than beds.It has become a safe haven for megalomaniac, checkbox-ticking mediocrities.

That is shocking but not the only similar case. I’m so very sorry that our leaders let her and many others down so badly. I am personally ashamed for having voted Conservative. I now have no political home unless the new parties take off successfully.

We have effectively been a single party state since Blair was selected for leadership of New Labour. TINA at last.

You have failed to partake in the great clap, that is 200 points off your social credit score

This barrister, Adam Wagner, is worth following on Twitter:

Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) / Twitter

He dissects the difference between guidelines and laws re. the new lockdown ‘rules’.

I don’t think he is a sceptic per se, but he has already highlighted some instances of the police over-reaching, e.g. Derbyshire force at a National Trust site the other day and Chorley.

Thanks. Great recommendation. Here’s a great post about genocide he has shared… https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1347094765637140481

Thanks for that. Good recommendation,

In Lockdown1.0 the Lancs police were flying the helicopter over Rivington area and Winter Hill on the bank holidays. I suspect they’ll be using drones this time round – I was followed by one as I was walking the streets at night (10:30pm) recently and I’m pretty sure it was police. I couldn’t see any markings in the dark, but it was a serious piece of kit, not a toy.

There are plenty of places to walk without going to the most popular spots so I’ve avoided Rivington Pike, and I’ve discovered some good walks which (oddly!) have lasted longer than the guideline 60 minutes. They can’t be everywhere, even with aerial surveillance.

One day in April I came across a police car tucked away in a country lane and thought I’d be questioned. No problem though, the WPC was interested only in her knitting! A reminder that they are human, just like us.

She probably didn’t want any trouble. Why are they so reluctant to challenge traveller sites – because it’s work, stressful and trouble. Easier to fine middle class people speeding in their Audis.

The rantings of the junta are getting more hysterical (the empty hospital video rant being a good example)

It’s taking on the feel of ‘Downfall’

“Der Angriff Fergusons was ein Befehl!” (Johnson throws coloured pencils in fit of rage)

Boris’s Downfall. 2 months old, but still hliarious!… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4bzwNH7XnM&feature=youtu.be

Israel leading vaccination programmes, copy Israel, now

Change made:
Botswana, Israel (and Jerusalem), Mauritius and Seychelles will be removed from the exempt list at 4am Saturday 9 January.

Copy Israel? You mean Handycock should bomb Damascus? I mean, Bashir al Assad invented covid-19, right?

Israel is supposedly leading the world in its vaccination programme. They expect to be the first country to use a vax passport (internally), and then England says they have to quarantine if they come here from Saturday.

they’re behind the whole thing anyway, surely? No wait, wrong forum.

Actually, the Israel model is highly appropriate – the violent suppression of the indigenous population by the elite, and expropriation of assets. The UK security services have always had close links

They have registered the Pfizer and Russian vaccines. The plebs get the Pfizer (and die at similar rates to elsewhere) while the nobs get the Russian vaccine (allegedly).

The Bozzer says that nobody will be more than 10 miles from a vaccination centre so how come our nearest one is 15 miles away?

Obviously the responsibility is on you to move! You people keep letting our beloved leader down!

Does anybody know where I can get some sackcloth from, I think that I can manage the ashes.

You can’t mean Bozzer is wrong?

No, he was obviously advised by Wankcock,Witless,Vacuous,Fungalson and many others too numerous to mention.

This new wording was quietly inserted into the Gov UK coronavirus lockdown rules a couple of days after they were published:

“If you (or a person in your care) have a health condition that routinely requires you to leave home to maintain your health – including if that involves travel beyond your local area or exercising several times a day – then you can do so.”

Of course, no reference to it (or indeed several aspects of the rules) in actual legislation.

But I’m curious – what kind of health condition would require “leaving home beyond your local area or exercising several times a day”?

Anxiety? “I need to see the sea”…

Maybe husbands taking a break from the nagging wife. Wives taking a break from the ranting husband?

Partners having enough of partners of all types?

hahahaha I know the feeling…

You don’t need to go into detail. You just say:

‘I am going to work’
‘I am tending to someone vulnerable’
‘I am escaping abuse at home’
‘I am going for medical treatment’

Police can’t probe further. And you cannot be detained without arrest. Always have your camera running.

I’m manufacturing Vitamin C.

Not if you are human. Along with some birds and guinea pigs, humans are one of the few animals that do not manufacture their own vitamin C. You mean D. Like other animals we make D when exposed to sunlight.

Gorillas make several grams of vitamin C per day but sunlight isn’t required for C manufacture. Besides, at this time of year you make very little D.

Did I say that – typo.

I hadn’t occurred to me that there may be a statutory minimum level of Vitamin D manufacture. There are rules for everything these days.

Thanks for that advice.

I’m surprised that they haven’t tried to introduce something similar to the French system, where you have to carry a piece of paper stating the reasons why you’re away from your home, along with the expected duration of your jaunt.

Poor eyesight. It’s ok to go for a long drive to test your eyesight regularly.

This is a joke in case I get accused of inciting insurrection.

But only if you go to Barnard Castle.

If you or your child have a child with a disability or special needs. Some young people with autism or anxiety disorders cannot stay cooped up indoors all day. If travelling to open flat ground to enable use of an adapted trike or wheelchair for example. Actually, taking two short walks for older people with arthritis could be much better than one long one.

That’s interesting. A friend of mine and his daughter both suffer anxiety and I have been advising them on whether they can drive to the coast tomorrow for their exercise.

Police arresting people in their own homes in the UK, for spending time together! can you believe they want this to go around the world. What audience are they hoping for?

I’m now in my 70s and when I gave up ice climbing 15 years ago, I took to visiting SE Asia and have a very special person there who keeps asking me when I am coming. I am sad because I can’t but I still have my short curved ice axe by my french windows and if the police do come, the first poor deluded sod will get the pick straight between the eyes!

Morning all, there is clearly a long way to go and no doubt a lot more government inflicted pressure but I am more positive today than I was at the start of the week

A) the big tell for me is the demand for key worker places at school – last in March / April lots of parents (including me) were withdrawing their children and pretty much made the decision to close the schools almost for government. This time round the demand for key worker places is very large – appreciate there is economic necessity and people now know what they are taking on with home schooling – but whether they realise it or not we are fundamentally programmed (with tiny minority of exceptions) to protect our children and instinctively a lot of people are saying this isn’t a risk.

B) looking around where I live there is no difference in activity (if anything more) than there was in December

C) the lack of clapping and actually the fierceness of the pushback when it was proposed is a hopeful sign – but it took at couple of weeks to get going last time – so let’s see if they try and run it again next week – given how quickly the TV companies gave it air time suspect it had been planned for longer than it was public.

D) The ramping up of the fear and frequency of fat dictator on our screens – four times in five days – they are not mugs they know they are losing the narrative in terms of people’s behaviour and general view now of the levels of personal risk.

There is clearly going to be three or four weeks of NHS overwhelmed issues but after that there is nothing left to cry wolf over – how many people will buy the next “super ninja mutant scare” ?

The government have overplayed their hand, people have had enough with the nonsense

Only at the margins – not the core.

Good morning Norfolksceptic,

I can absolutely confirm point A is true.

My daughters Primary opened to everyone on Monday with a 73% attendance rate (as confirmed by the interim head). So approximately only 1/4 not sending their children in.

Since opening for children of keyworkers only, they initially wanted children to attend every day regardless of whether the keyworker parent was working every day or not, or had another parent WFH.

Yesterday that changed to, please can you let us know which days you actually need your child to be at school to accommodate all the requests for places we have had.

Best regards

Simon

Hopefully more people are waking up as looks like the threat of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Virus didn’t really have much effect.

Plenty of meat ATL today. Funnily enough I bet a Lockdown Zealot won’t bother to read something like “London hospitals really are in crisis” if it was presented to them.

evening all
just a reminder from yesterday.
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/01/07/children-scream-as-police-enter-home-without-permission-and-wrestle-parents-to-ground/
aren’t our police wonderful .
mind how you go

a sign of things to come maybe

My IP/Internet has been hacked several times and I just don’t know how to fix it

Dixon of Dock Green was sometimes discussed in the 1980s as it was clear police did not particularly fit the ideal of that show (I doubt if they ever did). The Sweeney came out in the 1970s and was considered particularly graphic at the time.

Life on Mars.. “Give yourselves up, you are surrounded by armed bastards.”

I’m not sure if this is true https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9125789/Are-police-taking-Covid-crackdown-far.html seems to have the same footage but no mention of a child returning from hospital.

note there are two videos. a short 1.09 as per the mail site and a longer 4.45 version on the site i linked to . there is reference to a child with epilepsy

Is the government going to start killing us off? Serious question.

The sceptics or everyone?

I think the sceptics are ripe fodder for the cull personally.

We will (sceptics) be at best a public health hazard and at worst a psychiatric in-patient. I’m not joking.

Your final point is perceptive. This is what I feel. Any real kickback could potentially be used against someone in that way and that, having had experience of how the psychiatric industry works, truly terrifies me.

Too many ‘thought-crimes’ under the Mental Health Act 1983, only a period of ‘care’ in a ‘Joy Camp’ (now ‘Nightingales’) will ‘cure’ sceptics. Soldiers and nurses ready, courtesy of the Ministry of Love

If they gave us safe passage to our own town where we could all live – I would take it

They started last March. with the care home policy.

archive.today
keep a record of the collaborators wherever possible
Just pop the url in the top; press go and it will save forever

I have much respect for Alistair Haimes. I saw him turning on Twitter a while ago.

I feel I understand two other motives that may be related to becoming centrist.

1. Assume freedom. Without question. As soon as we talk about freedoms being taken away, we talk as if we never had them to begin with.

2. If now is the moment we are told there is a solution (and what possible other solution could there be apart from a vaccine if natural herd immunity is deemed too cruel), then as he says, after vax complete this goes away.

Finally I see something else too, although, I may be wrong in his case…

To take a strong position, one must have tools and flex to move from it. He uses data well. He says he is seeing something different now and this is changing his thoughts about an approach.

It is easy for most of us to submit to confirmation bias; we know lockdowns don’t work and we want to prove it through any means possible. But we don’t really have the means to prove it. We can just talk about how the cases/tests/hospitalisations/deaths are not captured/reported appropriately. And that is very hard. Partly because were being rational and interpretation and aka us is can differ. And party because some of this could be fraud as suspected by Yeadon and Fuellmich etc

So I actually quite like Alistair’s approach because

1. It doesn’t play war; strengthening the dominant narrative
2. It shows balance and consideration
3. It demonstrates we are waiting for said solution as promised
4. It will keep the behavioural psychologists and mass media on their toes… ha ha ha!!

So, I’m for balance. And I’m for not energising the opposition in ways that they will use against us.

This is the last lockdown. I agree with Alistair.

I’ve thought hard about this and I agree that we now need to stop banging on about the NHS and move quickly ( as 2 others have said here already) to a highly critical position on collateral damage. We need to spread all the data we can on the cost of lockdowns in both monetary and human terms.

I think everyone needs to do whatever they feel is right. However, sociologically, group-think and tribes behave in odd ways. I do feel the sceptics will be further branded as dis-information nutters and so it would be worth considering long term strategies too.

“ becoming centrist”

This isn’t some moderate., balanced position.

Let’s tell it as it is – it’s accepting falsehood as reasonable – i.e capitulation to lies.

The masses of hysteria and ignorance have demanded pointless testing when people enter/return to UK. The government have seen the opportunity and granted them their wishes. So;

lots of extra expense,

when returning from the family holiday – what happens if one of your kids has a false positive,

but don’t worry – my crystal ball tells me that you will be able to forgo the test if you have a vaccination certificate – (the opportunity mentioned earlier)

Yep. Just another pointless business/freedom breaking measure. No benefit to public health here.

It will be popular with the public though, many of them believe you can stop an already endemic virus by closing the borders. They also believe that stopping/curtailing travel from areas with LESS covid (or maybe more accurately, fewer positive tests), can reduce rates here.

Don’t get it. But then I don’t get much of what the public thinks these days.

In a world where intelligent people still believe in gods we’re totally and utterly fucked. People will believe any old shite and they will also try and shit in your mouth to shut you up. There is no hope. The only way out of this is too switch off the control grid. Ultimately the total destruction of the mobile phone and internet will free us from this Technocratic nightmare. No one wants to face it but we walked into this because we all like to sit on our arses looking at pish on a screen instead of living and now to continue with this type of life they are gonna kill those of us who just want to live our lives as we see fit. if you’re not a Libertarian at this point you are the problem

The utter failure of Clap For Carers 2 is good news for us as make no mistake Boris will be very aware of what this means for where the public mood is at the moment as that’s pretty much all he cares about. I fully expect the BBC to double-down on it next week though and push the clap for all it’s worth.

This could be a clap trap. <sorry>

Apology accepted.

I doubt if anyone will notice it on top of all the other claptrap.

The last clap was just mass virtue signalling, basically the two minute hate inverted and dressed up as showing obedience and love for the sacred NHS. I never took part in it, I’d rather they’d reform the damn thing, cut out the mass bureaucracy and give it the proper resources to cope with all the seasonal lurgees we get every year.

The first crap clap was during a balmy spring. This one is during a cold winter.

The definition of ‘covid patient’ is a patient, in hospital for any reason, who has recently given a positive PCR result.

WE are all aware of the impact the crisis has had on the normal functioning of the NHS within the past year. There have been hundreds of thousands of missed cancer treatments and screenings.

This graph from NHS England via the BBC

This situation continued through the summer and into Autumn.

My point is that at some point hospitals are going to start getting occupied by many people whose missed cancer treatments/screenings within the past year, have led to a situation where their symptoms are such as to require urgent admission.

Perhaps that is beginning.There must now be quite a few people,in whom cancer would have beeb detected or treated in Spring and Summer, who are now suffering the negative consequences of that.

I don’t know how much of a lead time there might be, but sooner or later there must be an impact.

That ~50% drop in 2020 is horrific in its implications, even if ultimate diagnoses don’t fall in precise ration.

A doctor friend who works in a hospital says ones of the reasons why the numbers of people in hospital with Covid is high is that there is a new policy meaning they have to wait 14 days to send any patient who has had Covid back to a care home from when they first test positive for Covid in the hospital. This means you have scenarios where a patient is admitted to hospital for a non Covid reason then test positive for Covid and then block a bed for 14 days even if the issue they were admitted for has been resolved and their Covid symptoms do not require hospital treatment. This adds up very quickly and is putting a lot of pressure on beds. These types of patients also require a high level of care putting extra pressure on the staff. I can see why they don’t want to send Covid positive patients back to care homes but it would be interesting to get more detail on what these numbers looked like

Interesting. Increasingly it seems tha most of these ‘pressures’ are self-inflicted.

Indeed they are. It was foolhardy to get rid of the convalescent homes where vulnerable patients were for rehab before they were discharged home. This crazy decision has resulted in the many being bed blockers. We need to bring back this sort of facility where groups of patients can be cared for and safe environments before being sent back home or to a care facility.

It beggars belief that NHS management did not think through these foreseeable problems and put in place mitigation measures during the summer.
In the case you document, the patients are well but need to be isolated. So a solution that suggests itself is to have convalescence wards for this purpose.
And while they are in a regular ward for 14 days they are at risk from further infection.

I have tended to become more cynical.

Why , when the whole summer period demonstrably took pressure off the NHS with exceptionally low infections, was the opportunity not taken to prepare for a normal autumn rise?

Just incompetence – or planned myth-making about a non-existent resurgence?

Summer was a particularly happy time for those at the local NHS Trust, where my wife works. The place was largely deserted, with even some clinical staff being encouraged to WFH, to the point where many staff working at the hospital found the working conditions unnatural and stressful. My wife’s hospital didn’t get invited to contribute to the TikTok videos, but she walked into the Physiotherapy department one day and found them entirely focussed on teaching each other how to juggle!

Don’t forget they also kindly move such patients to the red zone. Thereby increasing the chances a positive test becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Yes.

I think the statistical waters are going to become increasingly muddied from now on

My post below on missed cancer treatments and screenings points out one reason why this is so.

However, there must also have been many cardiovascular events – heart attacks and strokes – during the past ten months, which because they were not optimally dealt with, will require more hospital treatment than they would have done under normal conditions.

I would also expect social isolation start to take a toll on people’s health as time goes on, leading to even more admissions.

Of course, many of these will produce a positive PCR, leading to them being classified as ‘covid patients’.

PCR and the 28 day rule (for classification as a covid patient), really are the gift that keeps on giving-

Why arent they using the Nightingales for these people? That would be the obvious solution. They are not ICU and are very low maintenance. Yet another NHS cock up that is feeding the problem.

Whenever someone asks about the mothballed Nightingales they are told “lack of staff”. What happened to the army of retired medics who signed up to help last year? I know it’s recently been commented upon that there is a 21 page questionnarie for them to complete, which begs a further question, why was it made so difficult for them to help out …

It has been suggested that student nurses and doctors could be used to either staff these or back fill.

I think a better solution would be to add a convalescence ward to each hospital where space permits. This could either be some sort of prefab building where there is space in hospital grounds or reopening mothballed wards. The hospital I worked at up to 2014 regularly had one or two ward empty to keep costs down. I’d like to know how many such wards there are across the country.

They can’t staff the Nightingales and they never could. They were a combination of vanity project and a response to the cries of “something must be done”.

Another expensive white elephant in a whole pack of expensive white elephants.

The use of PCR+ results is also a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the larger proportion are not unwell (the precise proportion is hard to establish – but it vastly magnifies apparent illness).

This is all on top of the major reduction in ward beds, and the effects on staff absence.

Truth told, PCR testing has created an uncontrollable monster (which, of course, from one perspective, was its aim).

.
Yes – bang on!

If they want to keep this going for years, then unfortunately that is statistically possible – without any real pandemic.

All you need is a somewhat higher death rate, provided by lockdowns and their knock-on effects, many of whom will inevitably ‘test positive’ and hey presto you have got yourself a neverending pandemic.

The only real question is:

“Do the authorities want it to end”?
.

… and, of course, the one flaw in the plan is that the deaths have not emerged. A fact that the MSM will not expose you to.

The soution seems so simple.Use LFT and new PCR test with Ct value.If you are hardpressed send them back with a neg LFT.If not use a LFT and PCR test with Ct and send them back. C-19 are only infectious up to 10 days.Why can’t they sort out this with an intelligent testing system? How can we have bedblockers with remnants of non viable virus givng meaningless PCR test?

100%

As you say – it seems simple. But, of course – to be cynical – it doesn’t produce the desired outcome.

No rational system would be using PCR given what is known.

That’s a very good take on it.

Not a popular viewpoint on here I suspect, but I think Alistair Haimes is correct; the situation has changed and we should adapt.
For me, the fundamental reasons for being a lockdown skeptic were:

1. Lockdowns don’t work.
2. There was no exit plan.

Point 1 is still valid. But it’s pretty obvious that overwhelming evidence isn’t nudging the viewpoint of most people, who seem to be driven by some sort of emotional and perhaps irrational response. We’re flogging a dead horse with this.

Point 2 has changed. The vaccine program gives a route out. This is where we should focus our energy; trying to hold our politicians to account in terms of a lockdown rollback plan that gets us back to normal as soon as possible.

We can spend the next few months trying to show the folly of what’s already happened, with endless data that shows lockdowns don’t work or we can start to make our voices heard on setting exit dates and exit measures.

Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe lockdowns don’t work and that covid has been monumentally mismanaged. I am someone who has not complied throughout – never worn a mask, kept my offices fully open, never tracked and traced, had birthday parties and a normal Christmas, etc. But I don’t see any value in being the person who says ‘I told you so’ a couple of years down the line. Don’t lose sight of the prize – we want our liberty restored.

The problem with this is we cannot have our liberty restored if this strategy is seen as viable in the future.

We will forever have the threat of restrictions hanging over our heads as a response to respiratory viruses.

This is the key point…lockdowns are now ‘on the statute book’ and they will be used as the default policy from now on to deal with viruses. To just push for the vaccines is pathetic short termism. It does not deal with the real problem…..its not just that lockdowns dont work it is that they are WRONG IN PRINCIPLE.

The issue with that is that if people believe the lockdowns were effective there will be no resistance if and when they are proposed in the future. Not that there will be anyway it seems.

I agree. But that’s tomorrow’s battle. Work to get our liberty restored and then in calmer times address the fact that lockdowns don’t work. It’s simply wasted effort at the moment

My argument is that any liberty bestowed on the nation, by the government, because of the vaccine, is not liberty.

And it will stop people listening when the real battle starts to highlight that it is lockdown, masks, T and T, scientists crying wolf with lies and, quite possibly, all of the above precipitating a more virulent mutation than would have happened with a GBD approach, that has caused this crisis. But this is much more of a crisis for the NHS than anything seen, outside of a few London hospitals, in March and April; that it is self inflicted is immaterial right here and right now.

I think you underestimate the fact that people look at what is right in front of them. When the vaccine comes and people are no longer terrified, and the MSM aren’t churning out fear and panic every day, but reporting on all the harms that ‘Covid’ (ahem), has caused, then the anti lockdown message will gain traction and will be in the ascendancy. As more comparative ‘real life’ data and analysis becomes available, and the emotion recedes, the lockdown zealots will be on the back foot sooner than they would like. The vaccine is a double edged sword for them.

Exactly, it is time to bide quiet now.

I don’t get that logic. Strip away the PCR noise and where are we at? It’s so hard to say, I think your argument is based more on a pragmatic approach to getting away from lockdowns rather than actually wanting to be convinced of the situation.

Yes, numbers may be high in hospitals. However, we need to ask if we had lateral flow for example, how many more staff would be avaliable, how many more beds, would there be more discharged at a faster rate ebecause of testing negative?

The PCR is the killer here. We are in a constant fog and we may see a light, but for me it’s not an exit, it’s a train coming straight towards us

Suddenly, I’m seeing echoes of the official panic narrative.

What are the facts?

Mortality shows this to be an average autumn-winter infection season. Nothing exceptional happening.

… and yet the NHS is being treated as if there was an exceptional viral epidemic event in progress.

No there isn’t. There is an exceptional political event in progress to which the Alastair Haimes of this world decide to lend there new-found assent.

I generally agree, but we have to make sure that ‘Lockdown’ is never the solution to anything like this ever again. Unless it’s something hugely deadly like Ebola where a short sharp one might have some clear and tangible benefit.

No, not even for Ebola. If there was an Ebola outbreak and people were dropping dead in the streets do you think it would even be necessary for the government to tell people to stay indoors?

“ The vaccine program gives a route out.”

Apart from the obvious dangers that have been much discussed – the under-tested snake-oil syndrome, driven by non-medical interests, there is another major danger in taking this naive stance.

We have seen totally barmy NPI measures being swallowed by the public on the basis of a false narrative. The over-use of putative vaccines in the interests of the industry then becomes the next stage in this coup. The unquestioning submission becomes endless.

I have seen enough in nine months to know that there are no limits to the cynical exploitation of the populace.

Do you really think that vaccinations offer an exit plan?

Hasn’t it already been made clear that restrictions – masks, SD – will remain?

There will be rows aplenty within the corridors of power about who thought it was a good idea to reintroduce Seal Clapping Thursday which backfired badly.
They know public support is at its lowest, some at least will be scrabbling to escape the fuhrerbunker before the end comes.

It will be interesting to see if those in power will turn up the propaganda up a level and try to get the clapping started again next week or let the idea rest.

We could do with several weeks bad weather to really make the public fed up and questioning why the establishment didn’t prepare better for the winter.
Many people are selfish and only care about when job losses, depression and suicides happen to people close to them particularly if they have a comfortable life. Don’t think the population will be happy if their vaccines are delayed either.

The vaccine program will be repeated periodically. Acceptance of it is acceptance of the idiotic policy that drove it. Don’t be naive.

The truth is the truth. This has been an omnishambles from day 1 of using hypothetical models and vague data to convince you that the Devil is amongst us.

If you have tried this for any other safety critical system you would be in jail. Do not lose sight of that.

That’s right the template is set now. If someone coughs in China from something newish we lock down until a vaccine is developed and distributed. The emergency legislation will remain on the statute books in some form under the justification of needing to act quickly in the interests of public health without the delay of democratic process. The liberties have gone. They will be able to turn them on and off as they like from now on.

… and it’s no good blaming China, even though they are laughing all the way to the bank, with an increasing GDP as they mop up.

garry,
See my reply to David T below. Another aspect to our way forward may be to 1) confirm that the current NHS crisis is at least in part self inflicted 2) campaign on the basis of specific reforms to NHS management with concrete solutions that could be implemented in time for next year.

Step 1 should be possible when NHS activity data sets are published in the coming weeks, supported by anecdotal evidence from insiders.
Step 2 would requires some inside knowledge and business analysis skills.

A key part of this is maintaining a constructive spirit and focusing on organisational and management solutions.

And for those that refuse the vaccine? Liberty remains I hope

Yes the vaccine program offers a way out but at what cost. I cannot support what is basically a mass trial of a new therapy masquerading as a vaccine. It merely ameliorates the symptoms and does not confer immunity. The vast majority are being led to believe it will make them immune.

Doesn’t matter a hoot what they believe, so long the Fascists think they have been successfully fooled.

Fear not fellow sceptics, as that famous WW2 quote goes ‘ you know you’re directly over your target when the flak is at its heaviest’. The Governments attempts to scare the 15m people it needs to be vaccinated, to get itself out of the mess it’s got itself into, is already failing. Who else can they blame but the Lockdown Sceptics, I think when they lift the protesting ban they will be surprised at the numbers who turn out to reform the NHS /No more lockdown marches. Boris and his mates can feel the ides of March creeping ever closer, they know their political careers are fatally wounded and they are lashing out at those they see as the cause. We should celebrate being ‘cancelled’ and wear it as a badge of honour.

Herd Mutiny

In one way I want them to find their 15m vaccinees asap because as soon as they reach a respectable number the government can claim Victory and let us get back to normal.

On the other hand the easier it is made for them them the more likely they are to do it again so a nice nest egg for them and thei big pharma mates.

The quote gave me a little lift. Thank you

you’re fucking dreaming pal. Fuck sake. This isn’t going away and is gonna get worse. To remain a free person is gonna take bottle. We are gonna have to deal with the state thugs trying to ram the vaseline up our arses and trying to lock us in our house and deny us the ability to move. Make no mistake within two years we will have armed revolutionaries fighting the state. I too sometimes get the feeling that maybe this is a losing battle for them and we’ll get back to normal but in reality our nation has been taken over by people who take their orders from fuck knows who but one thing is for sure we didn’t elect them, we elected people who sold out to them and they ain’t going back. By 2030 you won’t anything and you’ll be happy.

“ Make no mistake within two years we will have armed revolutionaries fighting the state.”

I actually believe you are probably correct on this. They are pushing so hard that it is inevitable some will see no other way to respond.

The problems with that are threefold (at least).

First, innocents will die and many more will suffer.

Second, it will make things far worse, in many ways, before it can possibly make them better.

Third, there’s no guarantee in the real world that the right side will win such a struggle. They didn’t in, for instance, revolutionary Russia, or China. Any illusions that Brits are any longer (if they ever were) unusually moderate or liberty-inclined have been harshly and incontrovertibly dismissed by the snitches, the abusers of and apologists for power, the demonising calls for suppression and punishment of dissenters.

If the totalitarians keep pushing as they seem inclined to do, there might be no choice, or we might get it anyway. But violence is not an attractive option.

Usually when things start to get stupid its often a sign that the dam is breaking

Morning all.

Observations from my few days in the office, I’ve only been in for a couple of hours 1st thing – 07:00 – 09:30ish.

My sceptical colleague is struggling and is fed up with traveling with the masked sheople and has let off a few tirades when at bus stops and on the bus. Also tells me every bus has all the windows open and they are freezing, every time he closes one the bus driver either insists it is opened or the driver stops the bus and opens it. Told him to stay strong.

He has managed to find a couple more of us within the office and 1 of his team as started to question things but is in fear of being bullied by her other colleagues. Told him to encourage her to question, question, question and seek out the actual facts and ignore MSM.

A few builders in the building, mostly masked albeit for show, pointless, get rid of the disgusting things, they are all young fit tradesmen.

Local testing centre empty each day I’ve driven past, although I have driven past about 09:30, hardly queuing around the block, 3 goons on the door standing around freezing and playing with their phones. Good!

Over and out for now.

roger – have a good day!

My local test centre now asks that you sit in your car and do the test yourself. Pro level science

Up yours, eh?

This test centre is in a local library on a busy road with no parking facilities.

Strange place to have it but no doubt the local council are being well paid for staging it.

Ours is in the municipal car park, which is also closed to motor traffic for the duration.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to explain why the mantra ”ventilate ventilate” isn’t at odds with the wearing of muzzles in the open air.

Day time TVs very own Martin Lewis tweeted avec cool about his shiny brand new covid-distance tag. The tweet has now been deleted -slated? Here is a screen capture of the influencer’s brag he presumably no longer wants people to see.

https://twitter.com/MaizyDaizyZzzz/status/1347476425310404608?s=20

That is hilarious.

If they are spending money on and implementing these things, does it mean anti social distancing is here to stay?

Obviously there’s a possible logic to what you say. Also I can remind you of Sinclair C5 and add to that the BBC are usibg tv tax to tag their 22 thousand staff. Does the BBC set the trend for anything of such nature?

I would guess these tags will record the number of ‘bumps’ to feed into management.

One thing however, whatever tge outcome of the tag it does seem quite a large gamble to adopt on the back of incompetence.

The Biased Bullshitting Covidians days are numbered anyway. The bleeping SD tags is just the latest in a never ending line of idiocy (all the woke drivel etc). I’m so glad they are starting to get defunded, their coverage over the pandemic has been nothing short of alarmist.

Debbie Hicks, the lady who was arrested in her own home for filming an empty hospital has been arrested again. The treatment she received was barbaric. It was a stark difference to the ‘kneeling’ that took place when BLM were demonstrating.

‘I’m sure you all heard I was arrested in Parliament Square yesterday.
Three of us were lined up in the freezing temperatures yesterday in the middle of parliament square for an hour with hands cuffed behind our back. We were then held for a further 2-3 hours outside Kentish Town Police Station – with the cuffs still behind our backs. When I was finally taken in (about 3:30-4pm) I was detained for about 4 hours without the offer of food or water and ignoring my overly swollen hands from the prolonged wearing of cuffs and where I couldn’t remove my jewellery.The nurse said they looked ‘fine’.
I had the shakes you get when you’ve been out in the cold too long and managed to warm up after about 4 hours.
They ignored me ringing the bell. I demanded a solicitor and complained after excuses there was a ‘computer glitch’ they sent the superintendent – who was very apologetic and agreed my hands were in a state. I finally spoke to the solicitor I had asked for at about 10:30 and he was very good and very concerned about my welfare. They let me out just before midnight without charge (it’s a non chargeable offence) pending ‘investigation.’
I was then taken care of by some amazing women that expressed and gave outmost kindness and love. I have genuinely never had this from people before and I was overwhelmed.
The other lady who was arrested is amazing and experienced the same abuse of her rights in custody and detention.
I finally got home this afternoon and have had a good sleep.
Once again, please don’t let these things scare you. They arrested us to scare others.
Boris was really scutinised about the real numbers in hospitals at a press conference today and was really on the backfoot.
Keep finding ways to open up the cracks and you must get out in huge numbers – it’s easier for them to arrest when you don’t show up.
We MUST be there for each other’

“ Three of us were lined up in the freezing temperatures yesterday in the middle of parliament square for an hour with hands cuffed behind our back. We were then held for a further 2-3 hours outside Kentish Town Police Station – with the cuffs still behind our backs. When I was finally taken in (about 3:30-4pm) I was detained for about 4 hours without the offer of food or water and ignoring my overly swollen hands from the prolonged wearing of cuffs and where I couldn’t remove my jewellery.The nurse said they looked ‘fine’.
I had the shakes you get when you’ve been out in the cold too long and managed to warm up after about 4 hours.
They ignored me ringing the bell. I demanded a solicitor and complained after excuses there was a ‘computer glitch’ they sent the superintendent – who was very apologetic and agreed my hands were in a state. I finally spoke to the solicitor I had asked for at about 10:30 and he was very good and very concerned about my welfare. They let me out just before midnight without charge (it’s a non chargeable offence) pending ‘investigation. ’ ”

This is of course exactly the kind of harassment and low level physical abuse routinely dished out to dissenters in authoritarian regimes (among whose numbers we must now count our own)

There is no doubt that the hypocrites in charge of applying these policies (for these kinds of things do not happen by accident, they are merely set up to be “deniable” by the perpetrators and by the authorities who permit and encourage them) will all have spent plenty of time piously denouncing such practices by enemy governments.

Contemptible, hypocritical scumbags who should be treated with contempt henceforth by any civilised person. There are clearly many of them at all levels, but short of full trials or a “reconciliation” process, we can identify for certain Cressida Dick, Priti Patel and Sadiq Khan as being prime suspects..

The police wouldn’t dare to treat BLM protestors this way. This is the kind of inhumane treatment given to POWs. Still there are endless people defending the police saying there are lots of good officers – I don’t hear any condoning this.

Why do you seriously need to keep 2 women in handcuffs for hours out in the cold other than for an unlicensed form of punishment (fortunately it is harder for the police to give physical punishment beatings now like they used to due to camera footage). Under Khan, Patel and Dick anything seems to go.

exposure to temperature extremes of hot or cold, or indeed being kept wet, and being made to stand or sit on narrow ledges for long periods, was on the repertoire of Stalin’s gulags – as detailed by Solzhenitsyn. sleep deprivation or being confined to tight spaces will be next, you’ll see

Indeed. I suspect the Met officers are trying to get protestors to urinate themselves for some type of unofficial punishment or sadistic reasons some people particularly in high office have weird fetishes.

On Monday, I attended a ‘Day of Prayer for the Pandemic and Brexit’ at our local Church. It was a rather dispiriting day with the usual stale platitudes, but in my ‘feedback’ I mentioned that someone had prayed for ‘those who had been left alone while dying’ and other things like that. And why had they been left alone? Because some feather-bedded overpaid bureaucrat had decreed it that’s why. In this country we used to applaud those Christians who stood up against cruel and unjust laws and this is what you have done so all credit to you and all contempt to those who sit back and simply mouth pious phrases.
I have never felt so much contempt for politicians and those in ‘authority’.
Off to distribute some ‘Back to Normal’ postcards shortly.

At the end of Vernon Coleman’s videos, he usually signs off with “you are not alone, more and more people are waking up and once they are awake, they don’t go back to sleep” so it is disappointing that Alistair Haimes has ditched his scepticism.

Maybe he never fully awoke in the first place.

It would be hard for me to go back to a “the government know best after all and they have everyone’s best interest at heart, they really want to end lockdown and give us our freedoms back so we should continue to lock ourselves away until we are all vaccinated” position.

This might be because I never held that position in the first place – it always sounded a bit bonkers to me.

Maybe Vernon Coleman is wrong (he’s wrong about everything else in the known universe as we are all told). We’ll visit this site one day to find “Lockdown Sceptics 8-Jan-2031: This site is closing down because we were wrong about everything. We agree with SAGE”

“He gazed up at the enormous graph. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of facts were hidden beneath the models. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the scientific breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved SAGE.”

I’ve just read the Alastair Haimes item in the Spectator.

Let’s not wrap things up : it is so flawed as to represent a white flag of anti-intellectualism, not a considered revision of opinion.

Suddenly, evidence-based analysis is thrown out the window with a capitulation to all the main myths from SAGE and government – based on a naive trust in a massively rushed set of vaccines.

We know that the Spectator has been got at – and here’s the result. If I was a telephone scam merchant, I’d really want this guy’s number!

So on a positive note, my daughter is back at school and the school was fairly busy this morning.

On a negative note, they plan to keep the windows open all day. Great strategy to prevent 5 year olds getting runny noses. ‘Pro level science’, as I saw posted below.

I thought schools were all closed. Is that not the case?

They are open to children of “key workers” (I hate that term). The good news is that many more people seem to have decided that they are “key” this time around, as every class is open, albeit at reduced numbers, as opposed to everyone lumped into one or two “bubbles”.

I’d like to think it’s a good measure of rising opposition to school closures, but there’s no doubt some hypocritical “rules for thee and not for me” thinking going on too.

It seemed to be business as usual at my local primary school yesterday. It wasn’t what I’d been led to expect.

Some information about what is going on at the Excel Nightingale:
https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/
From Diamond Geezer, who does a daily blog of his travels, he lives in Tower Hamlets. No close up photos of the interior and it is a little unclear what is actually going on there. Interesting that has been used as a film studio during the summer months.

Is the argument that witty and Vallance were right all along, or that the historical science is and that they got lampooned by the modellers and behavioural scientists into lockdown based on emotional logic and now the chickens have come home to roost?

We’ve known that this virus is on par (IFR) with a bad flu but he immune nativity of the population is larger thus hospital pressure in respiratory viral season will be higher. By simply ignoring this fact and ignoring trying to increase safely (as possible) community immunity we’ve simply exacerbated the usual winter with this new virus trying to rely on the vaccine which was always going to come too late. Relying on masks (with almost zero efficacy) and lockdowns which paradoxically increase the vulnerable mobility and put them at greater exposure to the virus in the community and nosocomially. Seems to me the result is the worst possible outcome, and as Witty and Vallance both said, something to avoid from day 1.

Here is what Vallance said on March the 12th 2020:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-scientist-warns-coronavirus-lockdown-risks-more-deaths-a4386661.html

“If you completely locked down absolutely everything, probably for a period of four months or more then you would suppress this virus,” he told Sky News.

“All of the evidence from previous epidemics suggests that when you do that and then you release it, it all comes back again.
“The other part of this is to make sure that we don’t end up with a sudden peak again in the winter which is even larger which causes even more problems.

“So we want to suppress it, not get rid of it completely which you can’t do anyway, not suppress it so we get the second peak and also allow enough of us who are going to get mild illness to become immune to this to help with the whole population response which would protect everybody.”

Thanks Will. Seems like a failed experiment happened between March 12th and now. I wonder if they’ll be uttering to themselves ‘i told you’ but scientific unorthodoxy tried to save everyone without thinking whether this was possible or even right.

If only we had a control population to compare with…

What you’ve quoted from Vallance above makes no sense to me whatsoever

It’s a bit out there but a lot of what is said here, especially in the 2nd half of the clip is true of what is happening now.

R.I.P Rik Mayall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrHmXt1jgtw&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR12AuhsSdyn5pKpqzPveEgl42AX7h8uHQbUXhmpwwcBV4Q6Lj8Whsrqa-M

He knew!

https://twitter.com/willdhislop/status/1258457955189641224?lang=en

The ghoul Sridhar seems to have made an utterance on SkyNews. Partrick Heningsen points out some devi truth, others chip in with fair comment too. All in all and pleasing little twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/21WIRE/status/1347468336746143746?s=20

What the utterance was as highlighted by SkyNew was, “We’re in quite a deep pit and so we have to have a more proactive strategy” Impressive language from esteemed Devi Sridhar. Reveals what is going on in her head to describe all around us as quite a deep pit.

I don’t agree with Devi’s strategy of maximum suppression or zero covid (although I’m not sure if she is pushing for the latter these days). I think it’s too late for that and I get the impression she thinks that too.

I don’t think she’s evil just because she believes in a different strategy. We all probably have a similar objective of getting to the other side whilst minimising the damage and both sides have a different emphasis on what damage is more or less acceptable. Let’s not fall into the trap of painting everyone on the other side of the argument as the most extreme example.

She is right that we are in a deep pit and that is because the government have had no real strategy other than to see where the numbers take us whilst waiting for the cavalry to come save us.

In some ways I’d have preferred it if they had chosen either zero covid or the focussed protection route as then there would have been a clear objective either way. Instead what we got was a real time guess and check experiment to see what worked and what didn’t, adding bits here or taking away bits there depending on how the virus spread.

She’s evil because she is driving us towards a relatively more evil society (a technocratic medico-totalitarian dystopia, basically, in which all the things we formerly thought were “rights” are now privileges to be withdrawn by government at need), and she has from the start misrepresented her qualifications to say the things she has said and the advice she has given and grossly lied about the dangers she has used to rationalise her proposed “solutions”.

We are not in a particularly “deep pit” societally. We are going through a period of increased pressure on our healthcare system due to a new endemic winter respiratory virus, and a small number of people will die or suffer bad health problems in the course of it. The misrepresentation of it as a “deep pit” and an “emergency” is precisely the kind of exaggeration always used by totalitarians and power-seekers when they try to take extraordinary power for themselves or for their proposed reorganisation of society.

We disagee. She have had her soul sucked out and in entwined totally with the fraud of it all. She is in direct sicophantic communication with genocide tedros. Here mission in academic life has been to set up the global dept at edinburgh and serve the purpose she now does. This is much much deeper that a strategy she is not qualified to preside over. The manoeverings she has made to date are to serve the grand purpose. Alcohol going missing from our social lifes is something long in the making with sridhar at times present in that attack.

Not everyone with a PhD is very clever (I’ve got one).

Where is your opposition to lockdown on principle? Is it just about what ‘works’ for you?

Don’t understand your questions.

She makes the 1000 people did of Covid today error every time.

Excellent from Conservative Woman.

” Today’s talking point: How many (or few) Covid deaths near you?”

In my area six deaths from the virus since March and this is in London. It would be most helpful if Sceptics readers could post on this site the situation in the localities.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/todays-talking-point-how-many-or-few-covid-deaths-near-you/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/deathsinvolvingcovid19interactivemap/2020-06-12

20 in my area which I believe covers around 60k people.

8 in my postcode, though I see that they only have data up to the end of November at the local level (not that I am imagining there has been a huge increase since then).

14 in my area.

Cant tell yo the covid-19 deaths but can tell you (ONS data) the monthly all death stats for a City of 260,000 souls.

Mar 1
Apr 115
M -15
J -17
Ju 12
A -17
S 11
Oct -11
Nov 4

The figures are a comparison with 2019, The minus figures show a decrease in deaths. You can see in Apr that there is a big increase.

4 in my little area. Last census showed population of around 10000, so that is 0.04%.
current UK death rate around 9.5 per 1000 that is 0.95%
or put is another way… last year we should have had 95 deaths and we had 4 “covid” deaths – so around 4% of deaths were attributed to covid.

I went back through the local paper’s obituaries just to see if anybody I know had died and I hadn’t heard about it. I went back to last January and honestly there was absolutely NOTHING out of the ordinary about the numbers of dearly departed who sadlidied.

Meantime, this is how “cancel culture” operates (in this case on the coronapanic) to warp and distort the very foundations of what we think we “know” in our societies – dissenters hounded and pressured via their employers and harassment even of their families to shut up and stop saying controversial things:

“ Unfortunately we were forced to cancel..because he was strongly advised by his university to maintain silence and not speak publicly — to step back from this issue. I learned from a source that his university was heavily assailed by many complaints. Other scientists who have signed the review criticizing the PRC [sic – PCR obviously]..test, the “Retraction Request Letter”, a critique that got worldwide attention, have also been bombarded with attacks, their relatives are being called at night, and their universities assailed. Some are at risk of losing jobs. Even former employers are being harassed .”

https://twitter.com/naomirwolf/status/1347267414652641280

First the tory party came for the poor, but I was not poor so I did not speak up. Then they came for the unemployed, made some of them work for free, but I was not unemployed and I agree with the Daily Mail that they are all scum, so I did not speak up. Then the tory party came for the sick and disabled, made it difficult for them to get benefits, even killed some of them, but I didn’t give a shit about those fakers. Then they closed everything down but I was able to work from home so happy days. Then they closed all the pubs but I get my wine from Waitrose so again happy days. Then they came for the schools but my sharp elbows made sure Jemima and Edward got A’s for the exams they did not take. Then all the business closures started to affect my job and I couldn’t go anywhere unless I had a rushed unnecessary vaccine and my wife’s cancer was missed and I couldn’t hug my mum in the care home and finally I woke up.

They may well be the ‘evil’ party the left have been saying for years, unfortunately the other options such as Labour as equally as bad. I would like to see government massively reduced in size so they are unable to impose this type of tyranny on the population again – wishful thinking. I am sure new state roles will be found for the ‘covid marshals’ to make a nuisance of themselves.

Kier Starmer- lockdown more, lockdown sooner.

I hate to break it to you but it was the Labour party that turned on the poor. Under Thatcher you got your money no questions asked it was Blair that brought in all the bullshit and outsourced it to some corrupt people to skim off a fortune for the state. Anyway there should be welfare of any kind whatsoever.

Blair introduced The Jobseekers Allowance which brought in sanctioning of benefits for not looking for work hard enough and other minor rules breaking. This has brought misery to millions. The Tories extended it and made it even worse. Food banks everywhere. The UK has the highest child povery levels in Europe.

Both parties are evil.

More excellence from Conservative Woman. The You Tube video made our day.

https://youtu.be/trnpediKoyw

Yes, saw a twitter item about the same subject yesterday:

The British Government has released rules for sex during the new COVID-19 lockdowns. The rules state you should wear masks during the act, avoid kissing, and avoid any face-to-face contact. They even said “your best sexual partner is yourself or someone within your household”.

Person posting this said something like: now they’re telling us we must wank or do incest!

but dont kill grandma…..
a friend of mine told me he was into flagellation, necrophilia and bestiality
I told him it was pointless – he was flogging a dead horse

I believe this was actually from the Terence Higgins Trust.

They sound a barrel of laughs!

So. What happens if none of this works? So far the latest lockdown actually seems to have made things worse rather than better. It’s been in operation since Tier 4 was expanded to nearly everywhere, as Toby points out – I refuse to believe that pubs selling takeaway in the middle of winter has any effect on anything.

The vaccines will not prevent the spread. Will they prevent hospitalisations? Maybe. But they may even increase bed occupation if they – and they hopefully will – help people to survive.

The vaccine roll-out already seems to be a hopeless muddle.

I suspect an every-increasing tightening of the screws until disaster of one sort or another shatters the illusion.

They will just stop reporting on it when it is convenient
Just like the kids in cages during the Obama/Biden years

It’s a given that it’s not going to work

If these vaccines actually DO harm certain people, then for a while the hospitals really will be ”overwhelmed” – at least till all the over 70s have been weeded out and disposed of, the the bodies shovelled into the plague pit, and the younger ones (and the hospital staff) have recovered.
Is that another chapter of the Great Reset?

Quietly stop doing PCR tests and move to lateral flow.
Problem solved and crisis over.

Ernesto Araujo, Foreign Affairs minister, Brazil. He gets it.
“Brazil is a founding member of the UN, and hence, is committed to its basic principles: peace and security, cooperation among nations, respect for human rights, and fundamental freedoms,” Araujo told the UN.
“COVID-19 must not be taken as a pretext to advance agendas that extrapolate from the constitutional structure of the UN system,” he added.
The Brazilian minister went on to say, “Fundamental freedoms are not an ideology. Human dignity requires freedom as much as it requires health and economic opportunities.
“Those who dislike freedom always try to benefit from moments of crisis to preach the curtailing of freedom. Let’s not fall for that trap.
“Totalitarian social control is not the remedy for any crisis. Let’s not make democracy and freedom one more victim of COVID-19.”

Good chap.

Researching emigration to Brazil right now,

Source?

https://www.technocracy.news/brazil-slams-wefs-great-reset-totalitarian-social-control-is-not-the-remedy-for-any-crisis/

ta

Excellent words.

He’ll be accidentally bumping into a covid tipped umbrella any day now.

REAL TIME EXPERIENCE:
Walked into local bakery. One woman inside with a young child and a baby in a pram. I adore babies, don’t see enough of them anymore. Stood in front of pram cooing at baby who smiled and smiled at me. Mother engaged pleasantly with me, telling me the baby’s name. Shop assistant finally notices my unmasked face…
SHOP ASSISTANT: Have you got a face covering?
ME: (usual weary tone): I’m legally exempt, thank you.
The baby mother speaks from behind her hideous mask.
MOTHER: I wondered whether I would be exempt whilst pregnant but I wasn’t.
ME: Yes! Yes, of course you were. You are exempt. You are always exempt if you have small children because the sight of masks is psychologically damaging to them.
HER: No it’s not!
ME: Yes it is!
HER: (pointing to baby): He’s never known any different and he’s fine!
(Penny drops in me…)
ME: Okay, of course you need to think that. I’m sorry. What I’m suggesting would mean you are harming your children. I’m not suggesting that. But they ARE psychologically damaging to children.
HER: That’s rubbish and insignificant compared with protecting these poor people in this shop.
ME: But masks have not been proven to be effective.
HER: Yes they have, you just don’t want to hear it.
ME: They have NOT!
SHOP ASSISTANT: Please don’t raise your voice to customers.
(Moral of the story: brainwashing is a highly effective strategy. Every religion relies on it and there’s no arguing facts with religious zealots as in – a man can’t physically be dead for three days then come back to life. One-on-one confrontation is not an effective strategy for dismantling it. We need more power in numbers. Spread the truth through other means.)

Note to self: beware the “innocent” remarks of mask wearers trying to catch you out.

I’m really upset by this exchange. Scared to go in the bakery again (it’s the best in town, it would be a shame to have to avoid it). But most of all in despair. What can we do? Wait until the inevitable end?!

A particularly difficult situation as it might be seen as you getting between a mother and her infant.
Otherwise known as
‘You callin’ me a bad muvva! ?’ syndrome.

I actually got that once when I said to a mum she should not be smoking next to her baby. I just : Yes, that is correct. So now what ? Silence, complete shock, but like I said before I’m a 6 foot 3 former rugby player, soldier so I guess he figured the odds are not in her favor.

I know. I realised my mistake as the words were coming out of my mouth! Well, maybe I did make her think. Maybe she will look into it…

Having a baby is no more magical than doing a shit that’s why any fucking mong and their dog has kids. Most people are terrible parents. Just a bunch of fucking retards dropping more retards into the soup

You go back to the bakery without a mask and continue living like you did untill now. Ignore the mass brainwashing , why would you suffer because they are all fucking insane. You put your point across, she proved she is an idiot ( fact: no pier review study in the last 13 years has proven ANY efficacy of mask in preventing infections) and you still got you iced bun.

Thank you. I will. I must not give in to fear…

It was the WHO who made the point back in the summer (I wish I’d kept the link) that masks are ineffective except in that they remind people to obey the rules.

Face masks: WHO stands by recommendation to not wear them …
Search domain http://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.htmlhttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html
30 Mar 2020(CNN) World Health Organization officials Monday said they still recommend people not wear face masks unless they are sick with Covid-19 or caring for someone who is sick.

Do what the left is very practised at doing.Throw the guilt trip back at them.
Say something like
” Well as long as you are happy with the psychological damage your child is getting and the liklihood of developing violent behaviour – as you have no ambitions for your kids it won’t matter”
The progs have been using the guilt trip for years, twist their own weapons against them

You were a victim of your own kindness, generous spirit and common sense. YOU are the normal person here and never forget it. When all this is over you will have the satisfaction of being able to look in the mirror and like what you see—-unlike the vast majority it’s sad to say.

I have Jewish ancestors who were killed in the holocaust. Sometimes I’m doing this because they gave their lives to show that we must stand up – to our death beds – for what we believe is morally right. The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. I see your point. It hurt (both me and the mother) but I DID something. And we must persevere. I would not have survived this madness without the constant support and sanity shown by this community on LS. Thank you!

I agree with you. I have been staggered to learn, via a friend, how those he knows in the Jewish community are not standing up to this. Infact, bizarrely, they zealously try to enforce it on others and abuse them for not agreeing.

Sorry you had a miserable experience. Very, very sad that mothers with babies don’t realise what harm they are doing.

Seriously? You talk of the a Jewish community as if it was a homogeneous blob. Why should the Jewish community stand up to this anymore than any other religious community? I know it is hard for us to countenance but the people on the other side also believe they are standing up for what is morally right.

The point being made was that Jewish people [in general, implicitly] should be particularly sensitive to this kind of thing because of the precedent of the experience in Nazi Germany, and kh reported a friend saying that he was shocked that “those he knows” in that community are not doing so. (By the way I understand there are many in the New York Jewish community in particular who have been making exactly that point very loudly and forcefully, to their great credit).

Is this really a problematic suggestion?

Is there something wrong with suggesting that cultural, religious or indeed racial groupings have particular historical experiences (eg slavery) that will tend to colour their current attitudes? That seems basic common sense to me. It’s not denying that there will be individual differences in any such community, nor does it inherently empower those who seek to claim unwarranted supposed entitlements from such historical experiences. It’s a generalisation, which are necessary things for almost any useful conversation about the world.

Thanks Mark, your response is far more elegant than mine.

No I didn’t. If you had read some of the vile things they were saying about people like me, you would understand. My point is that every January we are bombarded with messages such as “this must never happen again” but something similar is happening. I am not anti-semitic.

You never know – you may have sown just one little seed. I hope so. You’re very brave.

One of my favourite films of all time is Stephen Spielberg’s ‘Schindlers List’ I must admit that I can’t watch it too often as, whilst inspiring in one sense, it is thoroughly depressing in another. But the message is clear: When evil is being done it takes great courage and indeed the risk of self sacrifice to be one of the ‘good men’.

After the event of course, everyone feels that they would like to have behaved like Oscar Schindler. But what matters, and only matters, is how do we behave when we ourselves are tested? How do we behave when those about us are doing wrong or are just going along with it for an easy life?

We may not be faced with having to save concentration camp victims but in our own small ways we are having to face down our fears and stand against the baying crowd. Well done to you for your actions…..Brownie points from me!

I am finding this more and more…whats so pathetic is that people think they are well informed when all they do is watch the news.

My next door neighbour died in November from a brain tumour. His treatment was cancelled for three months from March of last year. This did not stop him and his wife from clapping the NHS at the time. His wife (now his widow) was NOT outside clapping last night, neither were any of our other neighbours who were enthusiastic clappers first time round. Our area was deathly quiet.
Undoubtedly the days of free pizzas, hero worship and idolisation of a service that was non existent have paled somewhat even to the most hardy of lock down zealots. And don’t forget of course the dancing nurses, supposedly at a time of national crisis!! Even stupid people aren’t stupid all of the time and the government are realising just that.

Fantastic to see this morning around 50+ people, mostly family with younger kids all mixing and sledging in the fresh snow just on the field outside my house. No one masked, kids having great fun and parents all chatting closely.

Where is this? I want to be there! I’m so bereft of human contact, especially the smiles of children.

Scotland.

Excellent that’s what I like to hear.

where is this? call the police!!!!!

Got help them if they are in Derbyshire!

Won’t be long before Krankies Karens and Kapos turn up to ruin some more childrens lives after the maltreatment of a child with epilepsy they indulged in yesterday. ( Memory holed already?)