Leicester Town Hall

It’s  ‘Milestone Day’ today. Not only can we ‘celebrate’ Day 100 of Lockdown, there’s also the change in the rotating  EU Council presidency. From today, it’s Madame Merkel who wears the EU crown – until December 31st, the day when we’ll be Out, finally,with or without a treaty. 

This week, Frost and Barnier have been and are meeting face-to-face. The usual leaks from Brussels ‘sources’ and ‘senior diplomats’ haven’t occurred yet, so to celebrate this Brexit day, have a look at the statistics and graphs in the report by our friends at facts4eu, thoroughly debunking Barnier’s beloved ‘level playing field’. For comic relief look at an article in The Express according to which Denmark believes fishing in our water is their right since 1400 or thereabouts. This Danish argument is apparently based on some historical research first mentioned in the Guardian in 2017.  It’s definitely ‘scrape the bottom of the barrel’ time!

And now – the rolling Lockdown News! There’s Leicester which has seen ‘a spike’, there’s Birmingham where so far there’s only fear and conjecture but nevertheless, the BIrmingham PHE director (how many directors does PHE have?) is on the case, just in case there might be a ‘spike’ after BLM demos (link). Yet again, ‘Our MSM’, while mentioning the truly worrying aspects of another turn of the screw interfering with our civil liberties, are more focussed on the how and wherefore of the lockdown of a whole town. 

Yet again, we read about cries for ‘guidance’, especially from the police, yet again it’s the government in the form of Matt Hancock who is in the hot seat. Never mind that the Leicester Mayor – a former MP, Labour of course – is a certified Lockdown breaker himself, mayors, government and police are each trying to pass the blame:

“A government source suggested Sir Peter was “all over the place” when it came to deciding how to tackle a rise in Covid cases.”One of the things he said was that the Government was targeting Leicester and he didn’t believe the data, which was bordering on conspiracy stuff really,” the source said. “Why would a Government want to close down a city? It’s not something we wanted to do, but had to do to stop there being a national lockdown again and to keep people safe.” (link)

Oh – the Mayor doesn’t believe the data? Well I never! Data must be believed! Of course, Lockdown, local or national, is only for our own good. I highly recommend you take a look at the article in yesterday evening’s LockdownSceptics if you want a proper analysis of those numbers, explaining why this local lockdown is balderdash.

I believe we’re seeing another exercise by that deadly combination of ‘experts’, local tinpot dictators and MSM fearmongers who would rather get back to medieval times where towns and cities cowered behind their town walls. While the authorities are disinclined to take responsibility themselves it’s the police in the firing line:

“Police will carry out spot checks on vehicles leaving the Leicester area to ensure that residents are complying with Britain’s first local lockdown, The Times understands. Minibuses and coaches travelling into surrounding areas will also be stopped and turned around […]  Police in Leicestershire were still waiting for clarity last night on the nature of the lockdown, however, despite a claim by Matt Hancock, the health secretary, that they would be responsible for it.” (link, paywalled)

It gets worse. Blame is being passed back and forth and ‘Our MSM’ are showing their anti-government bias yet again when they write unquestioningly that:

“Reportedly, local authorities in the city were unaware of the extent of the rise in cases until last Thursday, despite Mr Hancock mentioning Leicester as a place of concern a week earlier. “For weeks we have been trying to get information,” Sir Peter Soulsby, the city’s mayor, said. Not for the first time the government’s centralised approach to monitoring the spread of the disease — test and trace — appears to have left regional bodies in the dark.” (link, paywalled)

How can local authorities be ‘unaware’? Do they need the government to hold their hands and spoon-feed them information they could easily obtain from the local hospital trust, from the local PHE? Then there’s this:

“Large numbers of schoolchildren appear to have tested positive for Covid-19 in Leicester. This is concerning for school reopenings even if the health risk to children is low. The city is also home to many multi-lingual, intergenerational ethnic minority cohabiting families, which may have made the spread of the disease easier and may also have a grim impact on pending fatalities. The government will also have to study the extent to which the detail of public health guidance has penetrated these communities, and how messaging can be improved.” (link, paywalled)

Dicey, this – very dicey! Isn’t it down to local authorities to check if ‘messages’ have ‘penetrated’ into those communities? Anecdotal evidence shows that these authorities (paid for with our council taxes) are very good at ‘messaging’ those communities when it’s about all the benefits they can claim. 

And how come children have tested positive? Were they not still in Lockdown, living with their lockdowned parents behind locked doors? Might, just might, this not raise questions about the validity of those tests? The whole thing becomes even more bizarre when we read next:

“Already, Sir Peter has suggested that local inhabitants could drive out into Leicestershire to visit pubs or “visit a friend in Birmingham to have their haircut”. If such things are possible, then a local lockdown is meaningless.” (link, paywalled)

Oh dear! Will the Birmingham PHE chief, already worried about a Birmingham spike (link), blame the Leicester Mayor? Nah – ’tis ‘central government’ which is to blame, right?  And if a local lockdown is meaningless, then why are ‘Our MSM’ so keen on it? Is it really about ‘saving lives’ – or is it about pushing all responsibility onto central government? If so then perhaps we can ask why we need local tinpot dictators anyway?

Hancock said there’d be ‘legal underpinnings’ for a local lockdown, giving the police ‘guidance’. The reasoning for this in the Times sent shivers down my back:

“If plans for local lockdowns are to work, the government will have to enforce compliance and restrict travel. That raises issues of personal liberty, but there were always going to be hard choices in fighting this deadly disease.” (link, paywalled)

Yes, in order to ‘save lives’ we better give up our freedom! It’s irrelevant that this latest demand is again based on uncertain numbers, on test results from tests which are dubious at best (here). Still, you’ll be glad to hear that ‘Our NHS’ is taking precautions already – you may have to book your A & E appointment:

“A pilot scheme in Portsmouth will begin this week, with call handlers able to book people into a timed slot to attend A&E. A second pilot scheme in London is expected to start later this month. Patients with very urgent or life-threatening symptoms will still be told to go straight to A&E, and departments will not turn away people who do not have an appointment.” (link, paywalled)

What’s the point if you can go to A & E anyway? Have people become so devoid of common sense that they must be told by someone ‘in authority’ to go and see their GP with some minor illness rather than go to A & E? I hope ‘the authorities’ are doing their best to explain this to all those ‘multi-lingual, intergenerational ethnic minority cohabiting families’.

Should you cling to the belief, on Day 100 of Lockdown, that surely there must be an end in sight, that we’ll be let out, ‘spike’ or not, and that surely we can now turn our attention to that previous ‘Fear & Hysteria’ item, Brexit, then I have bad news for you:

“A new strain of swine flu with the potential to trigger a pandemic in humans has been discovered, according to research. Named G4, it is descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009, a study in the American science journal PNAS shows. The strain has “all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans”, according to the authors, who are from Chinese universities and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in China.” (link, paywalled)

Is this yon swine flu pandemic, modelled by Professor Ferguson, which never happened? That swine flu for which the then government stockpiled millions of doses of Tamiflu which were never used and had to be destroyed? That swine flu? Now look at the actual numbers:

“The researchers found that 10 per cent of 338 swine workers had tested positive for the virus, especially in the 18 to 35 age group, an indication that the virus “has acquired increased human infectivity”. The study found that 4.4 per cent of the general population appeared to have been exposed.” (link, paywalled)

Even without a calculator we can see that this study is based on 34 (rounded up) workers. And who is this ‘general population’ of which they speak? ‘Swine workers’? The whole world? How did they test? But anyway – be afraid, very afraid:

“There was no evidence yet that the strain could pass from human to human but the team wrote that “such infectivity greatly enhances the opportunity for virus adaptation in humans and raises concerns for the possible generation of pandemic viruses”.” (link, paywalled)

‘No evidence’, but it ‘could’ happen. So let’s be ‘concerned’. Let’s keep Lockdown going, just as precaution. Let’s forget the collateral damage, from unnecessary cancer deaths to the crash of the global economy. Keep everybody in the Western world behind closed doors – all hail China!.

Remember though that a population under the cosh of fear is easier to govern than one using their common sense. Keep in mind that a population kept uneducated is easier to govern than one where people think for themselves. 

100 days of Lockdown? Let’s speak again when we reach 1000 days of Lockdown! Meanwhile, keeping our eyes on government, local and national, on our MSM and ‘science experts’, we better not forget to

KBO!

Photo by stevecadman