The brevity of this post is out of proportion to the enormous importance of the subject. But I want to let you know I am thinking and working on it.
It is a recognised pattern for dictatorship to commence with emergency measures designed to combat a threat. Those emergency measures then become normalised and people exercising arbitrary power find it addictive. A new threat is then found to justify the continuation
It is by no means clear to me that it is a rational response to covid-19 to tear up all of the civil liberties which were won by the people against authority through centuries of struggle, and for which people died. To say that is not to minimise the threat of covid-19. It is also worth pointing out that a coronavirus pandemic was a widely foreseen eventuality. People keep sending me links to various TV shows or movies based on a coronavirus pandemic, generally claiming this proves it is a man-made event. No, that just proves it is a widely foreseen event. Which it is.
The lack of contingency preparedness is completely indefensible. It is partly a result of the stupidity of Tory austerity that has the NHS permanently operating at 100% capacity with no contingency, and partly the result of the crazed just-in time thinking that permeates management in all spheres and eliminates the holding of stock.
It is incredible to me that the UK is willing to throw away some £220 billion and rising on Trident against a war scenario nobody can sensibly define, but was not willing to spend a few million on holding stock of protective clothing for the NHS against the much more likely contingency of a pandemic. What does that say about our society?
Anyway, we are where we are. Nobody knows how deadly this virus is. There have not been, anywhere, sufficient reliable large general population samples to know what percentage of people who get the virus will die. We just do not know how many people in the UK have had it and not got seriously ill. My suspicion is that in a couple of years time it will be discovered the mortality rate was under 1%. But I do not know, and I do not blame the government for making worst assumptions in the absence of reliable scientific evidence. Personally, I am obeying lockdown and would advise others to do so too until the situation is clearer. But I do not want to see the police harassing people for going on a long walk or posting a letter. It really is a problem to have police empowered to stop and question a citizen for just walking in the street. It is also a problem that Peter Hitchens is being reviled for saying, in essence, little more than that. When you can’t criticise restrictions on liberty, you know society has entered a very dark phase indeed.
I would feel much more comfortable if they were open about what they do not know. All the excuses for not testing people rather than admit they did not have the tests rather rattles trust. The ability of the rich and well-connected to access tests also rattles trust.
But none of this justifies rule by fiat – if Parliament cannot sit, I personally believe it would benefit the nations of the UK to have no new laws for a while. There are too many laws already. It does not justify banning political gathering. I don’t recommend anyone to gather, and I don’t imagine they would gather, but the evil of banning political activity is much more serious than the danger of four lonely people in Solihull getting together to talk about coronavirus restrictions.
It certainly does not justify banning jury trials, which the Scottish government has just dropped from today’s Bill after a revolt led by Joanna Cherry. The bill still weakens the defence in trials by allowing pre-taped video evidence and dispensing with the right to cross-examine. If the accusers had been allowed to get away with their lies in the Alex Salmond trial without cross-examination, the result might have been very different. For God’s sake, if you cannot do justice, suspend it. Do not dispense rough justice.
This article is entirely free to reproduce and publish, including in translation, and I very much hope people will do so actively. Truth shall set us free.
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I only personally know of one person, who’s death has been associated with Coronavirus, and his death happenned very recently. He was quite a character. He was sitting in the pub only a few weeks ago drinking a pint of beer to celebrate his 91st Birthday. We know his daughter really well. Unfortunately, she thinks she has got it now, to add to her problems – a few weeks ago, she tripped in a hole in a hospital car park, and is in an airboot. Fortunately My wife and I live in a wide community of friends, who we meet regularly, cos we all like live music, and we all like to socialise, regardless of our politics, race, religion, jobs, surnames which we rarely discuss or know. We just know each other by our first names, and our personalities, as if were all kids in a school playground.
And when it all goes wrong, we help each other out for free. We go round and give them what they need…Even if we are not allowed to meet closely and hug like we normally do….until we get used to it again.
We do parties too, but have got to keep it a bit quiet at the moment.
Nice house. When can we come round?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBShN8qT4lk
Tony
It’s not just that patients who die with Covid-19 are being implied to have died FROM this coronavirus.
The 21-year-old Chloe Middleton who sadly died in Slough on 19 March was widely reported to have died “having contracted” Covid-19, but in actual fact she did no such thing. She didn’t even have Covid-19! Some c*** of a coroner said her death was a coronavirus incident (I assume they meant Covid-19) on the strength of her having had a cough before she suffered the heart attack. I repeat: this woman was not infected with Covid-19.
I wonder whether any effort was made to resuscitate her.
In India and Pakistan there’s a very brutal repression of normal human activity.
Beatings and other humiliations.
Look at what’s going on in Albania, with very few cases. This dictator may have worked with Blair.
Or the Kosovo coup because the leader didn’t want to close down economic life
Meanwhile, in UK, legal things are better than Europe generally, and much better than seems to be going on in Eastern Europe, and Austria.
UK/Ireland peeps have submitted to the new rules and are carrying on as normally as they can in the circumstances.
You’re allowed to go for a walk or other exercise.
You’re allowed to go for groceries etc.
Or medical stuff.
The UK and Ireland peeps have obeyed the rules.
Without needing the big stick
But yeah
Could the big stick come here.
Could there be interruptions to food and energy supply, for example.
Over the past few weeks we’ve all experienced shortages at the supermarket.
Blamed on hoarding and panic-buying by the peeps.
And yet, now they’re all well stocked, and moaning about not enough footfall, cos the whole population, their customers, are under virtual House Arrest
Peeps should share info on what goes first in a buying panic.
Media have given the impression that it’s bog roll and hand cream.
No.
It’s paracetamol.
Peeps aren’t stoopid.
A lot of the people posting comments on this blog would be well advised to ponder the words of the late Professor Al Bartlett who opined that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”
Perhaps his observation may inspire some to take a closer look at the exponential function and understand its role in the current fevered climate – a climate in which the coronavirus fever appears to be merely one of a number of fevers vying for primacy.
My favourite tweet of the year so far was from Tim Ireland, without whose encouragement this blog would never have come into existence. He tweeted that it was extraordinary that Grant Shapps could not grasp the concept of exponential growth, even though he used to run pyramid schemes.
craig,
exponetial growth does not work like you think.
you worry me writing that.
You should visit Kerala, a very rural and lovely place, where population growth has stabilised, after exponential growth…or even look at official statistics of significant population declines in Western Civilisations
Tony
I don’t understand you, Tony. A pyramid scheme is a very good example of exponential growth. If it succeeds.
until, as like with a pandemic, it runs out of susceptible victims.
@Tony. As I am sure you are aware in the real world all exponential growth must ultimately decay into linear growth. In the reasonably near future this will be seen with regard to Coronavirus infection rates, and at some time in the future it will be seen in debt growth rates.
There are reasons to believe that the current exponential nature of debt growth will cause far more harm than the current exponential Coronavirus growth rate.
>You should visit Kerala, a very rural and lovely place, where population growth has stabilised, after exponential growth…
The reason why population growth has “stabilised” in Kerala was because nearly all the men of an age to father children have had to go off to work in the Middle East to earn a living.
And also exponential virus spread.
I like a bet and many times I will do an accumulator ( more in hope than in anger).
Personally I’ve never cracked it big but my brother did once and won 18k from 5 races.
All the Frankie Dettori supporters won small and big fortunes when he won his 7 races at ascot and good luck to them – a positive tale.
The analogy here is that despite the odds against an event happening it is always theoretically possible that the more you have a bet (gamble ) the more chance is that you will win ( or lose ) and events/probalbilities are basically yes/no – on/off etc.
Hence – the more people you meet – the more your chance of getting Covid -19 – the less people you meet the less chance.
Even if you think it’s all a load of bollocks that is the numerical fact.
Here’s the historical thing:( you can’t comment on the Guardian for fear of scaring the children and horses).
There is a reason why hospitals are full of the sick and particularly elderly between the months of October and March in any given year and that is:
These people cannot afford to heat and keep their homes and themselves dry and warm during these months and their houses develop Rising – Climbing – call it what you like damp and the bacterial spores that this gives rise to and they develop respiratory diseases that land them in hospital with pneumonia- bronchitus etc etc.
Basically if they could heat their homes better they would not need to go to hospital and occupy ( sounds very German to me like invaders ) beds.
Bed Blockers is a terrible vindictive phrase which the media uses,
I could include better eating but that is part of the whole and should go without saying.
I wiil say this and it is highly unlikely that that useless article Toby Young will ever read this – but just in case:
” The Elderly ” ( whom he wants to ” let Go ” have worked in the past as carers – child raisers – Nurse – care Workers – Doctors – sewage Workers and the roll call of usefulness to Society could go on.
They are the unsung extremely valuable contributors to a better society.
Toby Young and his fellow Right Libertarian thinkers/opiners by contrast have given minus zero to society.
They contribute nothing but hot air in the Spectator isuing forth juvenile opinion ( if that ) and like Goldman Sachs they are takers not contributors.
In fact there is more social worth in a Sewage Workers little finger and a nurses eyebrows than Young and his fellow Hard Right ” Philosophers ” contribute to anything of value or usefullness to humanity and Johnson et al are not too far from that usefulness either.
I don’t usually swaer on line but sometimes there are poepl in life who really should have been ” Spaffed up the Wall”
Johnson is one and Young is certainly another.
Useless to society is a difficult epithet to apply to anyone but these idiots take the biscuit – they really do.
This might be trye is soludly packed urban environments, but is not the case in rural areas were a local tracing of contacts to the very few casualties in a transparent way, should make a much earlier lifting of this lock down could be contemplated.
Contacts of the casualty could all be tested and those found negative should receive a certification on their mobile to say so.
To say that we the population have the solution in our hands by washing them and staying at home is abrogating the Goverments failure and responsibility.
But shifting blame to look good seemingly is the only game in Torytown.
“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
I posted elsewhere some time ago that –in view of possible runaway climate change– COVID-19 would give many of us a chance, hopefully in time (pun intended), get to know how an exponential function ‘works’.
It’s just beauty, in a way.
Hemingway (above) is most apt.
Unfortunately, when some people grasp the idea of the exponential function, they fail to understand that in nature most things do not follow such a curve for long. Otherwise they would run out of universe surprisingly soon.
A common variation is a curve that starts out by increasing exponentially, then starts to level out resulting in an overall “S” shape. This is known as a logistic function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function, and is far more common in nature. Cases of a given disease often grow according to a logistic function, and the critical question then is how long growth continues exponentially, and when it levels out.
What people should actually study is asymptotic curves, Bell Shaped curves and any other number of curves. All have phases of exponential growth in them, some have exponential decay in them too.
China’s coronavirus cumulative deaths data follow an asymptotic curve, including an exponential phase in it. Daily deaths have an exponential growth phase and an exponential decay phase.
I quite agree with Craig that it’s a waste of money to spend billions on trident, when it’s no longer relevant to the defence of Britain. The Russians have no interest in a a soviet-style attack – why waste money on something which is not a danger?
Those with authority and power to spend billions are unable or unwilling to employ such lucid, rational, commonsensical analysis. Instead, they will make a twisted cause-and-effect argument along the lines of “Aha! As soon as we drop our defenses, The Enemy will immediately perceive that we are now vulnerable to a ‘soviet-style attack’, and take measures to implement it.”
In 1980 or so I worked for a minor (vinyl) record/tape distributor. Shady men would drive up to the warehouse in vans or trucks full of cartons of “hot” bootleg LP recordings, or plastic trash bags full of bootleg cassette tapes.
N., the owner, would frequently buy this illicit product, even when our LP/tape buyer inspected it and informed N. that the item(s) were poor-selling material that had already “stiffed”; they were commercially worthless, and invariably ended up cluttering up floor space. According to the buyer, N. would always overrule him on the grounds that: 1) the price was right, and 2) if he didn’t buy it, some competitor would.
It’s not an exact analogy, but the mindset is the same.
“The Russians have no interest in a a soviet-style attack…”
Actually, the USSR had no interest in such an attack either. Why on earth would they want to attack Britain?
What the Soviets were doing was to defend their country against yet another massive sneak attack, like that launched by the Nazis in 1941. That was the rationale for the “Iron Curtain”: they temporarily took over some of the countries that had joined Germany’s attack (whose aim, remember, was genocide). By doing so, they created a substantial buffer zone which they felt the massive Soviet and Warsaw Pact armed forces would be able to defend.
Western Europe has launched at least four potentially annihilating attacks on Russia: the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, the French under Napaoleon (accompanied by most of Europe), and the Germans under Hitler. In contrast, Russia has never attacked Western Europe except to end a war in which it was attacked first.
Today the concept of nuclear deterrence is even more idiotic than ever. The Russians can destroy all life in the UK within about one hour, with a tiny fraction of their arsenal. But they don’t want to, and wont unless we attack them first. Without nuclear weapons we would be unable to attack them, which is our best assurance of safety. (A British conventional attack on Russia would be swatted as a man swats a fly).
What about the two attacks on Poland in 1918 to 1920 – aimed not only at expanding Soviet territory west but also explicitly at Germany to kick start a bolshevist revolution there and beyond if possible?
And there is overwhelming evidence that Stalin had prepared an enormous invasion force to attack Europe (fascist and democrats alike, he wasn’t fussy) at the latest by July 1941. The enormous Soviet formations captured en masse often as they were deploying in their frontier jumping off points and the huge stocks of armaments, munitions and logistical equipment held close to the frontier and captured intact were also evidence of this.
The Soviet forces were spectacularly defeated in the opening stages of Barbarossa by a technically inferior force because they were deployed for attack and not defence ie. not in depth.
The expert on this is Victor Suvorov – much maligned by mainstream historians – so you know he’s close to the truth.
Yes, mainstream historians have been engaged in a commie plot to suporess the overwhelming evidence of Stalin’s intention to take over Europe. People like Beevor and Hastings were actually awarded knighthoods for it by other commie stooges.
J Galt
April 1, 2020 at 23:28
“What about the two attacks on Poland in 1918 (sic) to 1920 – aimed not only at expanding Soviet territory west but also explicitly at Germany to kick start a bolshevist revolution there and beyond if possible?
https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Polish-War-1919-1920
“Although there had been hostilities between the two countries during 1919, the conflict began when the Polish head of state Józef Piłsudski formed an alliance with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura (April 21, 1920) and their combined forces began to overrun Ukraine, occupying Kiev on May 7. In June the Soviet Red Army launched a counteroffensive, reaching the former Polish border by the end of July. In a wave of revolutionary enthusiasm, Soviet forces advanced through Poland to the outskirts of Warsaw (early August). The western European powers, fearing that the Russians might succeed in establishing a Soviet government in Poland and perhaps proceed to Germany, sent a military mission, headed by the French general Maxime Weygand, to advise the Polish army. Piłsudski devised a strategy of counterattack, and in mid-August the Poles forced the Russians to retreat.
An armistice was signed in October 1920. The Treaty of Riga, concluded on March 18, 1921, provided for the bulk of Ukraine to remain a Soviet republic, although substantial portions of Belorussia (Belarus) and Ukraine were ceded to Poland.”
Victor Suvorov’s ‘Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?’ is a very interesting book indeed, but the fact is that it was Germany who attacked the USSR in 1941.
There’s also the 80 – 106 bn Train Set, between London & Birmingham, HS2, and the new Central Heating boiler at Hinkley Point, thats another £xxx billion.
@ Pyewacket April 2, 2020 at 01:25
HS2, not a great idea, especially with only 10 people allowed per carriage…spacing, you know.
Paul, I believe there is also the issue, expressed by some; that the trains don’t actually stop at many places in between.
The only real issue with HS2 is the cost; otherwise going somewhere at reasonable speed is just the norm these days (as anyone who uses HS lines on the continent regularly will appreciate, including Eurostar). The cost, three times that of French TGV lines per mile, is mainly inflated by the amount going into Tory pockets. One area is unrealistic overspecification, much, much higher than French TGVs (benefiting construction contractors), and the other massively generous compensation to Tory landowners. If the project were being done reasonably, there wouldn’t be a problem for you to complain about.
And, of course, there never was such a ‘Soviet style attack.’ Trident is merely the latest in a series of weapon systems whose primary purpose is to transfer wealth from the people to the capitalists.
The UK’s so called independent deterrent is nothing other than a con to get the UK taxpayer to pay the US for hosting part of the US’s nuclear arsenal on UK subs.
The current situation has revealed starkly that we are totally unprepared for any major eventuality. The emperor has no clothes is an apt analogy. Every single one of the G7 except Japan is struggling with the virus and the aircraft carriers and tridents are not going to save us. Maybe also that is Japan is doing better than the others, they don’t have these toys.
It was never bought to attack Russia, it was to pay menaces money to big bully America.
You really do need to understand that the US MIC is an organised crime syndicate and all the secondary members of NATO have to pay menaces money or else.
Craig Says –
” It is incredible to me that the UK is willing to throw away some £220 billion and rising on Trident against a war scenario nobody can sensibly define, but was not willing to spend a few million on holding stock of protective clothing for the NHS against the much more likely contingency of a pandemic. What does that say about our society?..
And It’s very unfortunate that the Evil Trident Subs routinely Spoil my great views upon MY River.
Re protective gear …And Vital Ventilators – Artist Taxi Driver –
” I am begging you .. begging you just tell me this isn’t real.. tell me please.. Oh my GOD!!! ?
Fucko and his Tory Clown army.. what is this? –
https://twitter.com/chunkymark/status/1245363226335903744?
It is no secret that our political deities desire a NWO, and something akin to what we are currently experiencing is a likely medium though which such a desire will be achieved. Afterall, L.H. Mencken states; “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” in his book “The defense of women”. What we are experiencing now is not novel, and we have been warned about such aspirations of evil minded men, but do not be alarmed for if there exists the throne of a superior universal Deity, greater than our earthly pretenders claim to have title to I am comforted by the fact that although these times may be dark and satanic, any though of an approaching Armageddon to comfort the soul is some way off, ” And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. King James. Yet the following events protrayed by the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse give some insight into future world events, Revelation 6:5-6: When the Lamb opened the third seal… I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand… Saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages…….” that’s how events might pan out through food shortages, insofar, that money would be a useless commodity in a time of hyper inflation, and Revelation 6:7-8: … And I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” here we see the complete breakdown of society, where the political elite are described like Beasts, beastly, without moral compass. If such things are yet to befall mankind then what we are having to deal with now will be nothing like what the sages in times past foresaw of the calamities yet to rain on our parade.
What unscrupulous, authoritarian, entrepreneurial leader wouldn’t see a pandemic as an opportunity to increase their power/control; make money for themselves & friends; get rid of ‘high cost-benefit folk’ from society (eg elderly, terminally ill, poor homeless etc) paving the way for tax & service cuts. I’d be surprised if they did otherwise.
Indeed, and added to that, fear and control of huge populations, what’s not to like! Not demeaning seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic, and dreadful that so many have died and will die, but had UK EngGov acted responsibly much much earlier, lockdown may have been avoidable. Britnat Gov still being irresponsible, so it’s all working to plan. Restrict peoples’ movements, smaller businesses are collateral.
Revoking devolution could well be their next ploy, imagine, all that oil for the taking, a bit of gold to boot, plenty land and seas, a few able folk for factory and cannon fodder, and wave bye bye to Scotland.
Welcome to North Britain.
Very glad ScotGov U-turned on the no jury trial idea, what the heck was the person (s) thinking re that!? Love to know who was behind that idea….
You got to hand it to the Tories.
They seem to have hired a new PR man.
They know so well how to deflect attention from themselves and accuse the common person (nodding the head mindlessly).
If you are out of work, you are lazy, and don’t deserve any help.
If you get sick, you are economically useless, and don’t deserve any help.
Now we have:
If you go outside, you are responsible for the deaths of others.
When will the British stop licking arses and kick them into hellfire instead?
You can bet that governments and business interests are going to use this pandemic to further consolidate their political and economic power over the plebs and introduce democracy limiting measures that will remain in place indefinitely.
It will be justified as necessary for “our safety and security” and to “rescue the economy”. The powerful never let a crisis go to waste.
On the positive side, perhaps the people affected (i.e. all of us) will learn how to organize themselves collectively again and fight back in earnest. Isolated and alone we do not stand a chance and as for waiting passively for a Corbyn or a Sanders to appear and lead us gently to victory, well, that’s working out splendidly exactly as I predicted.
As the American statesman and abolitionist Frederick Douglass said “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
I think and hope you are correct that the mortality rate of those infected will turn out to be under 1 percent. A sensible and reasonable approach keeping perspective on the extent of the current threat seems beyond our risk-averse liberal elites, however.
If you assume that 80% of the UK population (circa 52 million) contract Coronavirus and that it has a mortality rate of 1% then you are looking at 52,000 deaths. If roughly half the people in intensive care die then that implies an intensive care demand of 104,000 patients.
Assuming that this all comes to pass in a short period of time (say 4 months) then this equates to an annualized intensive care demand of 312,000 beds. The UK has around 6,000 intensive care beds. Numbers of this magnitude will overwhelm the health service (any health service anywhere) and this will result in a currently unquantifiable number of further deaths as a consequence of sufferers Coronavirus and of other diseases and injuries being unable to access medical treatment. In the event that a significant number of medical professionals succumb to Coronavirus then this could exacerbate a shortage of qualified and experienced medical staff thus resulting in a further number of, as of today, unquantifiable deaths.
Given such a background it is not obvious what would constitute a “sensible and reasonable approach”
But the average time a person remains in intensive care is generally only a few days. If the figure of 6,000 ICU beds is correct and the average stay is even a whole week, that equates to an annual capacity of (oddly) 312,000 patients!
Currently it is, on average, a few days for those that recover, but substantially longer for those that ultimately die. Some very difficult triage decisions will need to be made.
Decimal point alert! 1% of 52 million is ten times bigger than 52,000.
indeed you are correct sir. Apologies for any confusion
In Ian Flemings On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (that’s the good one with Diana Rigg, George Lazenby and Kojak), the plot of which is Blofeld’s plan to bring agricultural bio-terrorism to the UK, the code name for Bond’s mission is Corona. That raised an eyebrow, but understandable given that the mission involved Bond being disguised as a herald from the College of Arms. Even odder is that the code name was changed from Bedlam to Corona. You couldn’t make it up. The story even features Bond’s father-in-law, the head of the Corsican mafia making use of an OAS helicopter (more than one in the film) to assist Bond. So there you have it assistance from the remnants of the left behind secret French army, Corsican mafia, bio-terror, bedlam and Corona……
If one is interested in history Professor Jeremy Bale has written on the enormous influence of what he describes as the decentralised network of action groups set up by ex OAS members in exile after the loss of Algiers and failure to topple the French 5th Republic. See The Darkest Sides of Politics, I: postwar fascism, covert operations and terrorism.
Sturgeon’s ruthlessness, her ambition is so much without restraint, that she is unlikely to be comfortable dealing with the middle-man monkey, the Britnat Government in London, she’d deal direct with the Washington organ-grinders the sundry acronym bodies, the think tanks and foundations over the pond, she’d have no time for clowns like Johnson, or his cabinet of misfits, or any of the domestic spook agencies. She whinges, wheezes and groans like a set of bagpipes, but who is calling the tune?
Here’s one for all you conspiracy theorists and borderline paranoiacs out there, of which I appear to be one.
If the law to allow pre taped evidence without cross examination goes through, would that tie in with a “double jeopardy” series of renewed charges being brought against Alex Salmond. Yes, I know that certain criteria have to be met before double jeopardy can be applied, but one of them is that if “new and compelling evidence” becomes available. Cynical old me, but I think that the little charmers in the anti Salmond coterie of the Scottish government and civil service might be able to dig up a new witness or two, whose evidence wouldn’t be cross examined under these rules.
The Scottish Criminal Bar Association was quoted thus, re the proposed (and temporarily rejected) changes to criminal proceedings, describing them as “at best a knee-jerk reaction to an as-yet unquantified problem, instigated by panic, and at worst something far more sinister”. Are we looking down the barrel of a situation where a group of co-ordinated complaints against an individual can be used without question to convict a helpless defendant? Something is deeply rotten in our government.
The amount of conspiracy theory in this comment thread is depressing. Those claiming that the international CoVID-19 crisis is a plot are lacking basic political awareness. The wealth and power of the very few is (I would say mis)appropriated from the majority through “economic activity” ie. production and consumption; this is called “making a profit” and is fundamental to capitalism. The last thing the rich and powerful want is all the wage slaves / “consumers” confined to their homes rather than working and spending.
Yes, the corporate media have sensationalised the pandemic. They always sensationalise, for precisely the same reason that Google and YouTube personalise your search results and video suggestions – it’s just bait, to lure you the audience into the presence of advertising, from which the profit is made – capitalism again.
Each time you promote a conspiracy theory you are providing cover for capitalism. I’m not particularly opposed to capitalism, but I think its effects, good and bad, need to be properly understood by the electorate, and letting it run the “news” media effectively neutralises democracy.
Who knows about conspiracy. Not me. But Clark I do not entirely agree with you. Profits of disaster capitalism can be made in crashes, there may be some who would like to see the end of the welfare state, this whole thing may turn out to be short lived so we wonder what the fuss was about, or the virus and or the economic consequences may be long lasting, there are those on the left and right who may welcome MMP and the consensual approach to the relinquishing of liberty does, as Craig points out, require shock and fear. Conspiracies may be very difficult to detect but also to implement unless participants know to keep their mouth shut and at the same time do not quite understand what they are part of and at the same time the directors keep a loose grip and only indicate a direction, which I would surmise would be likely to lead to many unintended consequences. Just guessing.
@Clark – I do not buy the weight you give to the notion of “conspiracy theory”, but I will try to answer the point I think you are making in your first paragraph. Capitalists invest in constant and variable capital and in return they get these reproduced and they also get surplus value which is realised as profit. I think we agree on all of that. But merely paying working class people to eat or to carry out “makework” doesn’t make any surplus value or profit. Nor does printing money and paying it to themselves. The time has come when capital wants to reduce the size of variable capital and indeed also the overall stock of nominal capital which doesn’t contain as much “real value” as it is supposed to, having been pumped up with fictitious “value” by the craziness brought by the extreme expansion of finance capital – which is to say, debt and funny money. Why, we might ask, was variable capital bigger than they needed? Part of that is to do with factors such as the power of individual parts of capital invested in, for example, the medical sector. Another part is cultural. The time wasn’t ripe for culling elderly people and other parts of the population who were surplus to requirements. There would have been too much resistance. It now is. Many minds have been crushed in the past few decades and especially by the plague of smartphone addiction. Peter Hitchens may write this or that, but there has been no collective resistance. There is an unprecedented level of stupidity in society, making normal what only a generation or two ago would have been classed as village idiocy. A war is on – a worldwide class war, with only one side fighting.
A more sensible theory would be that right-wing governments are confining people to their homes in an attempt to protect the elderly, a majority of whom believe the corporate media and vote for the right.
Clark
Thank you for your sanity and rationality. A conspiracy theory is born from an observation that something is not right about the information given to us. We have both emotional and rational types of intelligence and both can trigger the need for further investigation. All information about covid 19 has so far come from a trusted source for me, the WHO and the Chinese government.
That might present problems to Tories, eager for their criminal capitalist ponzi schemes not to be discovered by Huawei, but their stress is my comfort. Covid 19 is melting the rock and the souls of the slaves of Mammon like liquid lava. But to me it is the first time I have ever seen the possibility of our being saved from Thatcherite madness, the unstoppable exploitation of the planet for the sake of greed.
One day Thatcherite will be a word for a so far undiscovered metal found in a meteorite, an alien substance that has never before existed on this human planet, a green light to greed. The earth can finally breathe now that oil has stopped suffocating it. As you say, the powers that be a paralysed by the unforeseen awfulness of a double crisis, 1/ the crisis of ending their meaningless pursuit of worldly wealth which will have no benefit in their afterlives and 2/ the collapse of their tacky timber railway bridge over the canyon of politics. Without their total whacky fake reality of MSM and government education programming, everything has to be rethought.
in other words , in spite of the deaths,, mine maybe as well, this is a first drink of hope after crossing a desert of life with a long empty water skin, in a God made oasis. A beautiful gushing of the reality of life. After nemesis , Ate, the total destruction of the Tory distortion of the meaning of life.
God is Great!
You want to be careful about putting undying trust in the WHO. It is just as corruptible as the IPCC and OPCW.
If the goons in Langley or anywhere else for that matter want the WHO to take a particular party line, it will.
Because if it doesn’t, the funding streams from the US Government get pulled.
@Clark – You are giving too much emphasis to “politics”. In your first paragraph you criticise a low level of political awareness but then what you say next isn’t about politics. I thought that was good, because you are right that the rulers prioritise profitmaking above everything…but now you go back to politics. This isn’t about politics. A “this is about votes” explanation for the lockdown has difficulty reaching the threshold for serious consideration…
Many people’s spirits are being broken. Yesterday was 1 April. Were there even any April Fools’ Jokes?
That was plausible until I saw India join in the party.
I have not the slightest doubt thousands die daily in India of the most easily preventable diseases and conditions such as diarrhoea., probably tens of thousands. India’s elite give not the slightest damn.
The streets of Mumbai and other huge Indian cities are awash with abandoned children most of whose fate is of little or no concern to India’s elite.
And yet now they go into overdrive to “protect the elderly”.
Please….
What is truly depressing is the amount of people who are desperate to believe the fairy tales they are told by “trusted sources”.
J Galt
Great point
The caste system never cares about elderly not of their caste.
Just like gps in this country
Kinda gives the game away.
@ Clark April 2, 2020 at 00:02
Conspiracies have been with us since mankind evolved from apes/monkeys.
The rate of automation and AI is progressing at exponential rates, like a virus. The Banksters and other Rulers don’t need armies of workers now, they are seen as ‘useless eaters’. The belief that they have plans to cull humanity, keeping only the workers they need, makes absolute sense, given that their lack of any morality or empathy is a given.
Do you really not believe that countries around the world have Biological Warfare Departments?
If you grant that they do, do you not think they will make use of them to further their ‘interests’?
How many cases have come to light, of the US, and indeed Britain, experimenting with dangerous chemicals,
germs, pathogens and radiation against it’s own troops and indeed it’s own civilian population?
And that the US has Grade 4 Biological Labs spread around the world, in Africa, Georgia and elsewhere?
Remember, Europeans used biological warfare against the Indigenous Canadian and American Indians; the US used biological warfare against North Korea and China in the Korean War; and the US used biological and chemical warfare agents against Cuban people, animals and crops.
It is a very heavy burden to understand just how evil our rulers are, but the truth is plain to see, with the interminable aggressive wars based on lies, and the unspeakable barbarisms unleashed on human beings by ‘our’ military forces. Making like an ostrich is really no answer.
J Galt: Suvorov (a Pseudonym, that of a legendary Russian General, his real name is known and he was quite a minor figure) makes for an interesting read, but his principal evidence really is that the Russians had built a number of light tanks from which the tracks could be removed and it could run at about 40-50 kph on good quality roads, like the autobahns. It is not terribly convincing, but I think not just Germany but all of Europe feared that Stalin might come, or pretended so, sometime 41-42. I think the red horror pre-Stalin was a far greater menace and terror to all of western-Europe and to ethnic Russians than Stalin ever was. He did have a short window of opportunity to leave Germany to fester and make a dash for the Channel coast, even to pre-empt, to Dunkirk, the D-day forces, and never took it. He might then though have found himself fighting on two fronts, the meat in the sandwich, with the Germans in his rear and the allies to the fore, and was too canny to be caught that way.
Craig says this is how it starts, what we all want to know is when and how and if it will ever end.
Thank you for your interest in this, however I would say Mr Suvorov’s evidence goes a wee bit beyond the light tanks.
He describes in voluminous detail the order of battle of the Worker’s and Peasant’s Red Army in the weeks and days leading up to the end of June 1941. From “Front” down through Army, Corps, Division, Brigade and even Regiment, detailing specialist units and their function, he describes in detail the transport, logistical and deployment arrangements throughout the various Fronts and in the Soviet rear – all backed up by extensive sources.
The Red Army was in late June 1941 in the final stages of preparing the largest Invasion the world had ever seen, packed up front in jumping off areas or deploying in same or in transports approaching same. This explains the utterly chaotic soviet reaction to invasion.
The soviet forces were by far the largest and best equipped in the world. If they had been deployed in defensive posture in depth – as they had been until 1939/40 – they would have easily seen off the Germans. Hitler and the OKW knew that and would not have attempted invasion with their poorly equipped scratch force if that had been the case. Barbarossa was a desperate gamble by a Hitler fast running out of options.
Enormous as the losses were however it proved only to be a temporary setback for the Soviets, in the end Hitler had been outwitted by Stalin in 1939 and his and Germany’s fate had been sealed then.
J Galt
April 2, 2020 at 11:27
“… Mr Suvorov’s evidence goes a wee bit beyond the light tanks. “
I agree: it does indeed.
Furthermore.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Finnish-War
“During the 1920s the Finnish government, wary of the threat posed by the Soviet Union, pursued a defense alliance with Estonia, Latvia, and Poland. However, that effort was squelched when the Finnish parliament chose not to ratify the agreement. The Finnish-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1932 was directed at the same concern but failed to quell Finnish fears of Soviet expansionism. Following the invasion, defeat, and partitioning of Poland by Germany and the Soviets in 1939, the Soviet Union sought to push its border with Finland on the Karelian Isthmus westward in an attempt to buttress the security of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) from potential German attack. To that end, the Soviets also endeavoured to gain possession of several Finnish islands in the Gulf of Finland and to secure a 30-year lease for a naval base at Hanko (Hangö). The Soviet proposals for those acquisitions included an offer to exchange Soviet land. When Finland refused, the Soviet Union launched an attack on November 30, 1939, beginning the Russo-Finnish War.”
The 2020 Edinburgh festivals, including the Fringe, have been cancelled 🙁
So has the Climate Change shindig in Glasgow. That will keep carbon emissions down for the giddy green conference circuit, at any rate.
Liar and coward Johnson will be relieved the conference is cancelled.
Clark (if I tweak your nose sometimes, it’s ‘cos I like you), it’s the young glued to their smartphones who’re locked in to the corporate-security-state aka mainstream media, seeking titivation, and of course social-media, which is already as manipulated and controlled as disturbingly as the aforesaid msm, and a fair number of the forty-fifty somethings thinking they’re hip and cool aping the yoof with their ubiquitous devices. Who are tracked, eavesdropped, filmed even by their devices, as is anyone they encounter in their travails. I’ve a mobile-phone, it’s ancient, it’s only kept for dire emergencies, I have to call my home number every few months to keep it active. I still find people walking around gabbling away it seems to themselves, very odd indeed as well as rude, will the novelty of these damned things ever wear off?. The saddest thing is people walking their dogs, phone in hand staring at it, or yapping on it, into it, what can possibly be so important, more important than everything else around them. And the dog trudging along, wanting to play to frolic, wanting even just its presence acknowledged, a pat on the head and a rub, spoken to, just for them. If anything else, for the sake of the dogs, and the children, ditch the bloody phones and talk to real living flesh people (and animals) again, make eye contact. It’s dehumanising us. Even if there are no pictures, it did happen. What was wrong with kids having two tin-cans and a length of taut string, or morse-signalling using a shonky torch, never ready?
I couldn’t agree more with you, Tony M. Yes – when smartphone users are walking their dogs, when they are walking in the countryside, when they eat meals, when they are with those who are closest to them, at all times they choose to remain leashed, compulsively fidgeting as they check in with the cryptostate. How can they relate to flesh-and-blood other people, to what makes different types of environment special and different, even what makes this urban street different from that one, to all the smells and sounds and colours and feelings and faces? Dogs must be well p*ssed off about this, even as they continue to love us. This is indeed the background, the numbness that capital feels safe to rely on in this upheaval. And WE AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET.
If Marx was alive today he would have said “Smartphones and TV sets are the opium of the people”.
It will start when someone in a hiviz jacket, wielding a clipboard decides it will start.
Boris is no more capable of organising a tyranny than Trigger from ‘… Fools and Horses’ is. Dominic Cummings might be getting a bulge in his pants but that is all it is, a fantasy.
Just goes to show how dense our political masters are. Shame on us.
Federal prosecutors allege train engineer Eduardo Moreno, 44, of San Pedro intended to hit the ship, saying he thought it was “suspicious” and did not believe “the ship is what they say it’s for.'”
https://twitter.com/elizabeth_joh/status/1245496804575031297
Conspiracy theories are not harmless…
the wildest (freest?) minds will consider him a martyr.
I hope my detailed and accurate response is restored.
—
[ Mod: The reason for the suspension of your comment was explained, and the rule is common knowledge amongst the regulars here. ]
There was that German pilot who ran his plane into an Alp. Much the same, no? They attributed that to mental problems. Is that not the same here?
I wouldn’t presume to say that people who believe in wild conspiracy theories are by definition mentally ill…
(If for no other reason than that I haven’t opened a copy of the DSM since it was still DSM IV.)
MODS: There was no relevant thread at the time I first posted this, as you are no doubt aware.
—
[ Mod: We are aware that the thread you were directed to was started on 25 March 2020. We are also aware that your comment was posted on 2 April 2020 – just over one week later.
It’s not clear what point you’re trying to make.
In any case, the 9/11 rule still stands and has been in effect for many years. ]
“ramping-up” = https://time.com/5813780/uk-coronavirus-tests/
Ministers were on Wednesday night unable to answer basic questions about when Britain’s testing regime for coronavirus is to be increased dramatically in scale to allow the country to plan anything!
Former health secretaries and medical experts said the Government’s handling of the issue was “ridiculous” deadly is another word for it!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/01/government-unable-explain-coronavirus-testing-failures-lockdown/
what UK needs, and is surely ‘ramping-up’ is a lot more spin, PR, nudges…. watch for them.
Martinned,
You really are a terribly poor shill.
You need to do better to convince anyone here.
O, don’t worry, I’ve long since given up on convincing anyone here. I come here just for my own amusement, when I’m bored. It has all the practical utility of talking to a wall…
Or using it as a urinal.
Sorry, you seemed to be asking for that one.
Sorry to say folks but this is a coup d’état of sorts. The Corona virus is a case of the emperor has no clothes. It’s bollocks. The BBC has successfully brainwashed you.Say goodbye to your liberties. The dregs of humanity will now crawl out from under their stones Stasi style.
James thank you for this. I am of the understanding that an unashamed, planned power grab by a government to bring in totalitarianism and fascism is known as a bloodless coup. Well, you’re right, we have one right here. If anyone here looks at what Tory MPs, Bozo Adolph, Matt Hancock and other useless Tories, it’s all there in their narrative. Any dissent will be quashed. Changes are going to be made to Parliament to prevent them holding the Executive to account following their successful attempt to block a dangerous no deal Brexit, the house of lords will be abolished because of their amendments to the Brexit bill which stymied the Government, the abolition or severe containment of the Supreme Court because they upheld that the prorogation of parliament to enforce Brexit was illegal, the end of encryption on the internet so the Government can see everything you are doing online (Pritti Patel), the Police being given greater powers of arrest, the payment by the Foreign office of £1m to Integrity Initiative (Yep while Bozo was the Foreign Secretary) to run a massive smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, the use of our security services to interfere with elections, the exclusion of large sectors of the Press from No 10 briefings – only those perpetrating government propaganda will be allowed. I could go on. People on this site already have a high level of awareness of these things as does Craig. It was all there before this virus. This has just made the Coup effective with a Prime Minister (sorry did I say PM I meant to say Prize Moron) in hiding allegedly with the virus but no such thing – just hiding from the public in his luxury house so he doesn’t have to be accountable, asked awkward questions and be challenged. Matt Hancock (Massive Hypocrite I meant to say) also. Shame on them. But hey, that’s how Coup’s work isn’t it?
James it has started
People criticising other people for NOT STAYING IN
Despite they themselves shopping with 60 other people in a box with recycled air
But lets blame the guy walking his dog twice a day in an empty area
And while they twitch their curtains the corrupt bastards at the foot of our ills,along with a compliant msm,deflect the blame away from themselves.
Humanity is fucked
I predicted over a week ago that once bodies start piling up faster than published Government Statistics can hide them, the Government would start to clamp down on Independent News reporting – branding it as Fake News – and instructing loyal citizens to pay attention to ‘trusted, authorative’ (i.e. government friendly) media.
We saw the first intimations of this at the weekend in the form of a ‘Don’t Feed The Trolls’ Public Safety Task Force being established.
This now appears to be escalating with BBC News reports yesterday having pieces on why we should not trust unauthenticated ‘rumours’ and to question the ultimate sources, giving some fairly obvious examples of what not to trust.
While this initially appears to be plain, reasonable common sense, I suspect that this is the thin end of the edge which is then going to be driven in & hammered into place, and would anticipate further developments to include the introduction of creeping censorship of social media, intimidation of independent bloggers, website content filtering & blocking and the like.
The motivation for this the, would as always, be the preservation of the Government and it’s reputation rather than the well-being of the general population, given that once all this is over there is likely to some form of backlash in the public’s opinion of the Government’s handling of the crisis.
The more that bodies pile up, the nastier such regulation is likley to become. They would not want a repeat of the 1945 General Election.
Reading through today’s news:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/stark-warnings-part-of-governments-new-coronavirus-messaging
“… Guidance on official government social media output is being provided by Ben Guerin from election-winning New Zealand political consultancy Topham Guerin, according to Whitehall sources, suggesting a more aggressive approach than that usually adopted by civil service-produced campaigns.
His outfit is known for their use of online adverts that aim to cut through the cacophony of social media using simple, blunt messaging while also attracting controversy for stunts such as rebranding the Conservative press officer account as “Fact Check UK” while posting about the leaders’ debate in the last election.”
So we now know where to Check Facts then.
Los
Yesterday I got a message with a video of someone saying ‘ trust me this breaking news, people are going to Coventry hospital, being injected against flu and pneumonia and dying within hours ‘
The accent was kinda Midlands-Asian. The tone was mischievous wind-up. I’m sitting beside the M6 motorway and somehow the skeletons driving seem to be putting on a good show of flat-out speed.
The poor buggers sitting at home might be more shareable and twitchy, but by the sound of it, more people are going g to die in road accidents today than covid 19.
Los, brilliant. That means sites such as these, Peter Hitchins and OffGuardian are getting the message across slowly but surely. However, since the BBC is the official state Government Propaganda Machine whose reporting is highly suspect and has been proven to lie to cover up Government lies and incompetence (inserting into the news footage from 2016 Remembrance Day service of Bozo to protect him from public scrutiny because he was clearly still drunk, disheveled and got everything wrong. Might seem a minor one but its hugely important). There is a catalogue of this type of conduct from the BBC over the past 5 years. The MSM, well they are the purveyors of fake news on a massive scale and of propaganda and lies just to protect this bunch of idiots we call a Government. So, who should the public believe – the BBC the State Propaganda Organisation run by the Ministry of Truth, the MSM who are failing to report impartially, properly and with all the facts, figures, difficult questions, analysis and investigative journalism. I trust the investigative online journalists such as Craig, Peter Hitchins, OffGuardian and other what I called trusted sources of information, including the scientists. At least these sights have a range of pro and against opinions and debate is intelligent, well thought out and evidenced.
There is one possible silver lining to this Covid – 19 crack-down. Most people don’t give a toss what happens, as long as it doesn’t affect them (I find this attitude all the time when I try to discuss serious issues, and I’m sure others do too). Now, after some weeks of this, maybe, just maybe, the same people will understand I was right when I told them it would affect them eventually. Perhaps they will begin to see we are all in this together, Syrians, Palestinians, Yemenis, Greeks and Gypsies.
Be sure of one thing, things are going to get a lot worse, though hopefully there will be lull before the next storm.
Paul, posting here from lockdown in Lombardia, Northern Italy.
The region here has a case fatality rate of over 13% (CFR)
A reasonable paper, from a political scientist, who has a familiarity with numbers, is given in English here:-
https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/covid-19-and-italys-case-fatality-rate-whats-catch-25586?
In summary he thinks that the actual CFR rate is trending to just over 1% in Italy, due to the unknown number of people infected, and the different regions testing in their own ways. The author considers that currently around 3% of Italy has had the virus. However as neither UK nor Italy are testing like South Korea et al, who knows – and I don’t mean WHO knows…
Positive news, Italy has passed the peak, I haven’t heard a single ambulance zip by this morning, amongst the loud bird-song – and life looks like it will be opening back up soonish – by May. I guess UK will remain in stasis until June, unless the PM and his team recover, in which case it might all be over by Christmas?
Italy….https://www.winterwatch.net/2020/04/strained-resources-citizen-sleuths-investigate-the-cronyvirus-pandemic/
We’ve heard about exponential and asymptotic functions, but the real killer is the step function. Has anyone noticed that oil has traded at $9 dollars a barrel recently. That means it has fallen of a cliff, a step function. While the Saudis are desperately trying to commit commercial suicide, the US shale industry (and Canada’s tar sands) is about to enter God’s waiting room. Trump has to either to become the funeral director or invoke Lazarus.Both options in an electoral year are not vote catchers. The laughing bystander is of course Putin whose wealth fund could sustain $10 a barrel for several years. But the eventual effect, where coronavirus is the midwife, is to kill off the petrodollar. Printing money is good only in the competitive market of toilet roll manufacture.
America showed Russia
the middle fingersanctions, well, Russia shifted to euros and yuan, instead of dollar. It is also very clever that the government purchased gold instead of american paper. Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs have been barking all year long on how much profit Russia is losing.Generally speaking, I notice Western people pop up everywhere with their opinion, confident that it is the only true one. For the Russian, this patronizing tone is smth ‘catching the eye’. I see this attitude here and there, even in the most insignificant cases someone appears with his undisputable advice. Very self-confident and impolite.
What are you talking about? The entire Russian economy, and by extension the Russian regime, is being held up with petrodollars. Crude oil trading at $20-$30 (which is where it is at the moment) for any length of time is pretty much the only thing that might bring down Putin.
looks like your info is a bit outdated 🙂
spring 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-29/russia-is-stocking-up-on-gold-as-putin-ditches-u-s-dollars
summer 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-25/putin-s-gold-bet-is-paying-off-big-time
winter 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-16/russia-s-40-billion-gold-buying-binge-is-slowing-down
2 days ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/bank-of-russia-to-halt-domestic-gold-purchases-from-april-1
The only thing dumber than not diversifying your economy away from oil is to invest billions in gold. WTF is the point of that? It’s certainly not the same as making the economy less reliant on oil. (Although I guess it is a few more billion that can be used to pay/bribe people…)
giving undisputable advice, Martinned? 🙂
Monster, I have said to a lot of people about the price of oil having tanked some six weeks ago. I question why we haven’t seen this translated to a serious drop in prices at the petrol station. And then this virus comes along.
Bezos, the richest man in the world* according to Forbes with net worth of $131billion, wants others to help his Amazon workers. YCNMIU
Jeff Bezos, World’s richest man, wants your donations to help Amazon employees
https://mronline.org/2020/03/24/jeff-bezos-worlds-richest-man-wants-your-donations-to-help-amazon-employees/
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2019/03/04/this-is-the-richest-person-in-the-world/
Mary, scandalous truly scandalous. He should be spending his money on helping his workers himself not asking others to help. How much is he spending on all those worthless TV ads?
One of the many fingers in the big pie at the ExCel Centre aka Nightingale Hospital.
NHS Nightingale: BDP on the first nine days converting the ExCeL centre
https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/nhs-nightingale-bdp-on-the-first-nine-days-converting-the-excel-centre/10046749.article
Clever wheeze of Cummings/Levido to name it after Florence Nightingale, the Lady With The Lamp.
BDP http://www.bdp.com/en/about/about-bdp/
Mary, here’s a view from someone who was inside the Conservative tent. Shocking but not in the least surprising. Should be required reading for everybody, particularly those who have been fooled some of the time.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/03/31/behind-closed-doors-johnson-and-his-cabinet-do-not-applaud-the-nhs-they-ideologically-oppose-it/
Colm Herron
It’s good that a young and impressionable Tory has achieved ‘ woke ness ‘ . I got there in 1978 when I listened to Thatcher talking the same tripe.
Strange how that tripe has not evolved intellectually in 40 years., for all the stink tanks and academics and awksford drawls. Like a perpetual motion machine that has no mechanical friction or load.
If one excludes the consequences of ones actions from consideration, it’s amazing far an idea can travel.
Like a rocket on its way to distant galaxies.
I have hated the Tories all my life but there is nothing more despicable than the useless, low life scum of the SNP. My MP is Mhairi Black a dysfunctional headcase who was raised in a middle class household in a middle class suburb (Ralston). She sounds like an extreme parody of the worst sink estate in Scotland which is disgusting. The business of taking the sex show drag queen to a primary school illustrates that the SNP aren’t progressive, they’re low life. Salmond, by his own admission is utter low life whether he was found not guilty/proven of specific offences.
Unlike SNP members I am left wing and was thrilled to see Boris Johnson extracting us from the EU.I like him very much. Not going to judge him on this horrifying mess which in my opinion has been mainly caused the the anti government and fear mongering corporate media.
‘I like him very much.’ That say it all about Mr McCoo. Brexit was apparently all that mattered.
Not totally. The first thing Johnson did as London mayor was to hugely increase the minimum wage for GLC employees.
He has implemented a Keynesian economic policy which means he is to the left of Sir Tory Starmer. Let’s see how that plays out. He absolutely has to fix universal credit before I give him my full support mind you.
What did Boris do that’s so Keynesian?
Infrastructure
Budget 2020: Chancellor will promise ‘record’ infrastructure spend
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51823021
Not all spending increases are Keynesian.
Eric CKoo
Darling boy, the cost of housing goes up faster than the increase in minimum wage. People can now afford to buy more food, so long as they’re happy to occupy a doorway in a central location.
But the value of that doorway is going up so fast it will probably be flattened to build more executive homes.
Mr Johnson killing 2 birds with one stone.
Rah rah. Good show. His 11 million pound mansion has a temperature and after one week is magically worth 22…
Giyane added to which the rate of inflation has been seriously manipulated. The Government are not doing anything to reduce transport costs, reduce the continuous rise in food prices, reduce rents to proper market levels not the inflated ones they currently are (renting is now more expensive than taking out a mortgage). They are not investing in building more affordable housing, they are not investing in education, they are not investing in supporting our young people in their transition from school, to university where it is desired or to employment. In fact, they axed the Employment Support Allowance which enabled young people to remain in College until I believe it was 20yrs of age to undertake further training. They are not investing in creating jobs or supporting business and so on and so forth. Eric Ckoo has little understanding of Keynsian economic theory doesn’t he? The Labour Party Manifesto in the last election is what Keynsian economics look like.
Eric, fix universal credit hell no. They are intent on further benefit cuts. For seven years now serious flaws have been highlighted in UC. It is accountable (admitted by the DWP and a Tory MP) for over 150,000 deaths from hypothermia, starvation, suicide and a 500% increase in homelessness because the Local Area Housing allowance only pays 75% of any rent – the claimant – out of £78 has to contribute 25% of their rent – given the phenomenal cost of living – nobody but nobody can afford this – in a similar way – people who are currently mortgaged to the hilt will suffer repossession of even the impact of a 1% rise in interest rates. There is nothing Keynsian about this Government’s economic policy. It is still austerity, austerity austerity and they have only made minor changes to UC. I know, I have had to sign on having just been stood down from my job due to this Government’s idiotic and disproportionate response to CV-19
Eric..”left wing” ? What party would that be ? Surely not something called “Labour” ?? Yer a sad wee socialist.
What kind of political dafty are you grafter ?
I have never voted.
Well I’m an SNP member and you don’t describe me – I’m not in favour of drag queens in primary schools – only in pubs where they can be a bit of a laugh for adults only. Neither was I brought up in a middle class household, either in Ralston or elsewhere.
A left winger that admires Boris Johnson the sad victim of the fear mongering corporate media – that’s certainly a novel point of view.
By the way are you in anyway related to the Ayrshire based McCoo Coo painting Empire now sadly defunct – not enough demand for McCoo’s apparently.
It isn’t by any means a unique point of view. However, Boris is a unique politician. Along with Cummings he wiped the floor with the entire British mainstream political, legal and journalist class several times. Particularly delighted to see Johanna Cherry, Gina Miller (and her fox bludgeoning legal) team swept aside.
I had no problem with the SNP until Sturgeon and her centrist, idiotic identity politics and Brexit fantasies came along. I am not a unionist like Boris.
I was describing Mhairi Black, not you, BTW
I will say the SNP’s strategy of spending the last 3 years trying to reverse Brexit was an enormous mistake. Well perhaps mistake is not the correct word….
It was fairly simple – how could you demand a Scottish Independence referendum should be respected whilst not respecting the European referendum?
But some would say “the Brexit result was obtained by subterfuge and cheating”.
Well so what, that’s the way of the world – you’re not going to change that – I’m afraid in this world you have to outwit or even outcheat the cheaters!
Eric, Boris is indeed a unique politician. He has a severe narcissistic personality disorder, is a pathological liar (having been sacked from two jobs for lying), he has never in his life accepted any responsibility, not even to his many children, he will not face the public or be accountable to them, he is currently hiding in one of his luxury houses not because he has allegedly been diagnosed with CV-19 (fake news in its own right) but the reality is, he has messed this whole thing up, he has tanked an economy that was already in recession which a No Deal Brexit would tip it into a full blown Depression (the recession being due to the serious mismanagement of the economy by 10 years of Tory Govt), as Mayor of London he wasted £43m of taxpayers money on the Garden Bridge which was never built and the Government has now refused to publish the report to protect the company that took all the money, he allocated a business grant to an American woman (that is only meant for British entrepreneurs) under the serious suspicion that they might be intimately involved, he is hiding from any public scrutiny by hiding and by staging ridiculous press conferences attended only by his favourite presstitutes, he is not leading this country in anyway, he is hiding away from the responsibility of a Prime Minister not taking an active leadership role. He is a champagne charlies, a buffoon, an idiot and just look at his conduct as Foreign Secretary, paying Integrity Initiative £1m of public money to run an intense smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, Her Majesty’s Leader of the Opposition. He’s a unique kind of politician ok he is a charlatan, a fraud, a pathological liar, dishonest and ill-equipped for any office other than a toilet cleaner and that might be too much responsibility for him.
Jo Dominich
“Toilet cleaner”
As Eric said, BoJo wiped the floor and walls of the toilets with the same mop he used for cleaning the bowl. Scatalogical metaphors for dirtiness of politics is now forbidden. So I can’t infer that he might have used his own mop without getting banned. That is the proper way to clean a toilet isn’t it?
It’s not a complicated message to understand, is it? Privatise everything.
Like putting your garden down to paving slabs. Or always use the motorway middle lane.
A degree in classical languages qualifies one for almost nothing. It’s a left over from the days when the bible was unavailable in English, about 500 years ago. Only in England would this qualification be regarded as a training for high office.
Only in England could a system for cleaning toilets pre-date the discovery of germs.
Sadly instead of criticising the government for its slow, incompetent inept handling of the crisis, many are indulging in denial,. This takes many forms. That our government has used this crises in a way focused on political and financial manner rather than a universal crisis, and that instead those who claim on the left effectively say that there is a conspiracy in which various organisations like WHO, The Lancet, JAMA, the Governments of Italy, China and Hong Kong amongst others are stating the dangers of Covid-19 from actual experience, all the armchair pundits are doing is concentrating on their inability to get loo paper, oh how inconvenient. The fight is here primarily against a vicious disease but also against the government’s handling which is inconsistent.
When China placed a curfew on Wuhan, some of the press critiqued the action as totalitarian, I bet they don’t think that now. The government of China is trusted by its people and they pulled together. But here because we either trust our government too much and for the wrong reason (the sheeple) or rightfully mistrust everything the government does because they repeatedly lie, we are in a mess, In fact some of those who under estimate the epidemic are much more closely allied with the government’s original stance of letting herd immunity develop, a stance they have not changed but only stopped talking about.
Here is the real conspiracy. By letting us discuss what we are discussing, it is diverting from scrutiny of how the government has badly failed us, We are directing our energy in the wrong direction.
SA, I absolutely agree, this is not a question of politics or violated freedoms in the first place, it is a direct biological hazard. It is unfortunate that people cannot trust the government and are wasting valuable time on irrelevant disputes. I just commented on this topic in the forum:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/corona-virus-governemnt-takes-the-st-augustine-approach/#post-51311
That’s easy for a Russian to say. In Russia there are no “freedoms” anyway…
more undisputable opinions, Martinned? 🙂
Tatyana
Are the Russians currently under house arrest like here in the freedom loving UK?
quarantine is not arrest 🙂
yes, many regions quarantined, mine was the first to close on officially declaring “quarantine” instead of vague ‘self-isolation recommendation’
Not very many cases yet, we have online map for the country
https://ria.ru/20200320/1568864012.html?in=t
I describes how it looks like in the comment in the forum section
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/corona-virus-governemnt-takes-the-st-augustine-approach/#post-51311
In the west we have freedom to elect buffoons, to subject ourselves to illness and to endanger other’s lives by doing so. Good.
SA
Freedom to participate in a bingo game where metal inserts in the dice are attracted to magnets, otherwise known as algorithms which in turn choose governments against our will.
Sorry , that’s rather a clunky explanation of an electronically rigged electoral system.
Hopefully when the revolution comes, we’ll be able to round up the Tories with zap guns which leave no trace of human DNA.
Or other appropriate means…
In the UK (and in most democracies) there is no mandatory voting. If you think the whole thing is rigged, please don’t feel obligated to go vote anyway.
O, and for the record, this is what rigging an election looks like: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2018/mar/19/russian-election-footage-appears-to-show-vote-rigging-video
Martinned
A rigged election is a majority of 80 after a minority kept alive by subbing Northern Ireland. We are living breathing and eating a rigged election. Chicken or egg? Which came first, the rigged election or the fascist lockdown?
Given that these lockdowns exist in all affected countries, I’m going to go ahead and speculate that it has nothing to do with the (I agree) undemocratic Westminster parliamentary election system.
The virus came may have from a lab in Wuhan not a market. It wasn’t genetically engineered by created by extracting the virus from horseshoe bats and creating the condition for transmission to humans.The very strange reaction of the Chinese government, trying to cover the virus up at the start is indicative. These dangers have been flagged by scientists for some time
Tucker on Chinese Scientists Saying the Coronavirus Likely Came From Horseshoe Bat in a lab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK7_8PrGC2Y
Original Chinese paper
https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Abstract/publishahead/Identification_of_a_novel_coronavirus_causing.99423.aspx
In an article published in Nature Medicine1 on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.
https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
Eric
I am not sure on whose behalf you write but I believe you are new here. There are many conspiracy theories promulgated by Trump and Pompeo in trying to implicate China in this. Here is a refutation of this:
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21156607/how-did-the-coronavirus-get-started-china-wuhan-lab
and, here
https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/
Your first link to a video by Tucker is not a reliable source because Fox news is often a spokesman for Trump is partisan, and I am sorry to say the analysis is not therefore a reliable scientific one. Your second reference is to a secondhand reference to a paper originated from China and I will help you here by posting a link to the original paper which was an unpublished manuscript in a form of an opinion rather than peer reviewed research
https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
So, this paper has disappeared and is on the Waybackmachine probably for good reason. As seen in the Snopes article above it only relies on the location of the Labs in relation to markets with many unsubstantiated allegations thrown in.
When you consider all the happenings in context it becomes clear what is happening here: Trump declared economic war on China two years ago as part of his MAGA. The facts are that a lot of industry from US has been relocated to China. It was not China’s fault but that of the money makers they sought cheaper production costs. To cover up for all this and the woefully inadequate response by the US in particular and the West in general despite warnings, to the Covid-19 outbreak, the new diversion now is that it is China that did this deliberately. This is an unfounded conspiracy theory.
You are too befuddled for me to reply. I have no idea how you can link to a totally different paper as proof of anything.
Whoever you are Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson are vastly more intelligent than you. Sanders leftist Jimmy Dore was interviewed by Carlson recently. The world has changed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyub6M8Qfqs&list=PLnt-wxvopm5e3cwWbr91BBhKJifTsy1QW&index=10&t=6s
Are you a Trump shill?
A new paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology casts doubt on the government’s theory that the deadly infection emerged at a seafood market in Wuhan. Scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao said the city’s Centre for Disease Control, just 300 yards away from the market, ‘hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes’, including 605 bats.
Their paper titled ‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus’ claims that bats once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’ It says he quarantined himself for a total of 28 days after bats also urinated on him. The paper, which only gave maps as evidence of their theory, said that genome sequences from patients with coronavirus were between 89% and 96% identical to the coronavirus originally found in the horseshoe bat.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab-bats-attacked-scientists-peed-12252873/?ito=cbshare?ito=cbshare
Metro the source and fount of a scientific discussion. Must try harder.
SA
It woz the goldfish. I’ve spent a long time observing it and this was all pre-planned by someone of golden orange hue…
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.
In an article published in Nature Medicine1 on 9 November, scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China. The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them. It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.
Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so. In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population2.
https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
That doesn’t prove that’s what happened but the Chinese paper says it did happen that way.
https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Abstract/publishahead/Identification_of_a_novel_coronavirus_causing.99423.aspx
Apropos of nothing, my bro is a retired world renowned bacteriologist, doctor and professor of microbiology (Toronto).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC230035/
This is the correct link to the Chinese paper.
‘In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus.
In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus
probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in
high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these
laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.
https://chanworld.org/wp-content/uploads/wpforo/default_attachments/1581810860-447056518-Originsof2019-NCoV-XiaoB-Res.pdf
Eric, the bio lab in Wuhan is owned by the WHO not by China.
Jo Dominich
I don’t care who it’s owned by. I’m not playing dummy level politics. Can you prove your assertion ??
‘The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei,
While Ebright refuted several of conspiracy theories regarding the WIV, he told BBC China that this did not represent the possibility of the virus being “completely ruled out” from entering the population due to a laboratory accident.[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology
Piers Morgan and Peter Hitchens have clashed in a fiery exchange of words during a live debate, after the journalist argued that the UK government’s lockdown restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic was excessive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4xsk-SMA_8