It’s a veritable grab-bag of ‘omigawd’ reports in this morning’s MSM. That’s a sign that everything is getting back to ‘normal’, the ‘old normal’, as far as our Westminster bubble dwellers are concerned.

‘Tis odd though: ‘Covid’ is apparently no longer deserving of screaming headlines – perhaps because more and more readers have had enough of the constant fear & hysteria. There’s one report though which ought to have been picked up across the board – more on that below.

Williamson is apparently not going anywhere, thus depriving ‘Our MSM’ of a weekend of reports on ‘strife inside the Tory Party. The Times’ ‘political editors’ seem to have been certain that a reshuffle would have to take place and dedicated a whole article to that theme. It seems to have been hastily rewritten though and is based on gossip, speculation, and a little puff piece about Javid perhaps going to be offered some place at the table again:

“Mr Javid is said to want one of the great offices of state, with the Foreign Office seen as an option. In one scenario, Dominic Raab, the incumbent, could combine the role of first secretary of state with Michael Gove’s job as Cabinet Office minister. Mr Gove would then become health or education secretary. “It could create more problems than it solves,” one minister said. “Boris likes Sajid but it’s difficult to see the impetus for his return.” Mr Javid, meanwhile, has been hired as a senior adviser to JP Morgan.” (link, paywalled)

Who is this minister? Shouldn’t he or she be kicked out for plain idiocy? Never mind – this fantasy is in The Times so it must be true. Post-Covid madness has clearly affected the cabinet as well as ‘Our MSM’, making me wonder if this minister and others simply have too much time on their hands, gossiping instead of working.

The next ‘front’ in the campaign to get rid of Johnson and hopefully of the government has been opened. ‘Our MSM’ are dedicating their lives and reputations to this campaign. Yesterday I surmised that it’ll now be between Sunak and Johnson, and here it is:

“Boris Johnson is resisting tax rises to restore public finances as it is claimed the Treasury is piling pressure on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to claw back some of the billions spent propping up the economy and funding manifesto pledges as he prepares for the Autumn statement.” (paywalled link)

Mandarins seem to have dropped this piece of gossip into the willing ears of political correspondents – mandarins who don’t even want to figure as ‘senior sources’! The Times has another bit of gossip:

“Rishi Sunak’s plans to shelve pension protections to stop big rises are being resisted by Boris Johnson who fears that they would lead to a backlash from older voters. The chancellor has publicly raised concerns about the “anomaly” caused by the “triple lock”, which is used to calculate rises in state pensions, and wants to tackle the issue in his autumn budget. He is considering temporarily suspending the mechanism to help to bolster the public finances, in breach of the Conservative manifesto.” (link, paywalled)

So far – so ‘normal’. But see the next quote, in the same report, demonstrating how ‘Our MSM’ work, or rather how they ‘create’ news:

“A government source said that Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak had differences of opinion over the triple lock but had not had a “blazing row” about it. “That’s not the way they do things,” the source said.” (link, paywalled)

Sunak and Johnson didn’t have a row, but they might’ve had, no? That non-event is newsworthy! Back to the ‘row’ which didn’t happen, carefully leaked by Treasury mandarins. You’ll have noted that neither of these articles envisages a cut in salaries for mandarins, quangocrats or local government CEOs: these are our modern overlords and cannot possibly be asked to shoulder some of the burden of the coming economic crash. 

Meanwhile we’re softened up for another round of ‘protect the NHS’ by giving them more money. It’s about the backlog in cancer care. The Times is pushing this with three articles. One is a piece about cancer specialist Karel Sikora who has highlighted the failure of ‘Our Sacred Cow’ for weeks now, blaming the hysteria about Cv-19 infections (link, paywalled) for this scandal.

However, The Times is not into attacking ‘Our NHS’ on this truly dreadful failure. Instead, they have an article about Tory MPs writing to Johnson about this health scandal, asking him to “deliver an emergency boost to treatment capacity.” (link, paywalled) You don’t need a crystal ball to predict where this is going: Johnson ‘must deliver’, preferably by ‘protecting Our NHS’ with more money. The CV-19 scandal of empty hospital wards, of shoving ill elderly patients into care homes where they died: that’s old news, not interesting! 

To crown it all, The Times presents us with a third report, on NHS chiefs telling us that getting cancer treatment ‘back to normal would ‘stretch them’ thanks to all those CV-19 precautions, that staff is ‘exhausted’ after having dealt with ‘the peak of CV-19 patients’ – never mind that this peak was months ago.

Next, the health correspondent offers us some fatuous observations, e.g. that people “will develop cancer symptoms over the next few months at the same rate as usual, requiring diagnosis and treatment.” (link, paywalled). Crikey! Who’da thunk! And then there’s a ‘group of unknown size’, 

“those who would normally have been diagnosed with cancer over the past few months but have not been. The number of urgent GP referrals of patients with suspected cancer is down. This is thought to be partly because people have stayed away from healthcare settings out of fear of catching Covid-19 or of being a burden to the overstretched health services.” (link, paywalled)

Thank you, ‘Our MSM’, for having herded the government into Lockdown, ‘protecting Our NHS’, and for having created such atmosphere of fear that even now people are hiding indoors. 

Before I look at the ‘Covid-News’, here are the latest examples of intrepid reporters spinning ‘news’ in headlines to support agendas without asking critical questions, never mind that their text screams out for it.

For starters, I give you ‘Climate!’: “Climate forces farms to start growing soya – Farmers will have to adapt to extreme weather, experts warn.” (link, paywalled). Nope, it’s because it has become “a popular plant-based meat and dairy alternative but it is mostly used as animal feed” and because of

“the increasing difficulty in growing other break crops such as oilseed rape, which has been affected by the cabbage stem flea beetle since the ban on neonicotinoid seed treatments.” (link, paywalled)

Let’s not worry about the effect a soya monoculture might have on our wildlife or the soil! Then there are the illegal immigrants. That people traffickers use social media to attract ‘business’, e.g in the Sudan, with the ‘message’ “get there or die trying” (link, paywalled), that’s not a problem!

Next, the break-up of the latest Trade Negotiations with the EU has barely raised a wavelet in ‘Our MSM’. That’s not surprising – it’s the same tedious procedure of the EU wanting all our fish and us not going to hand them over. The EU, no slouches them, have found another item to thwart the negotiations:

“Downing Street wants to replace the “inflexible and rigid” Dublin regulation which states that migrants should have their asylum claim examined in the first EU country they enter. Brussels diplomats have suggested the issue could be held back for future leverage in negotiations. “Without a deal on the future relationship between the EU and the UK, the chances for an agreement on migration are rather slim,” said one senior EU diplomat.” (paywalled link)

Translated, this means: give us all your fish or we’ll send you all our “migrants”. Nice. Don’t wait though for ‘Our MSM’ blaming the heartless EU diplomats who are using people’s lives to get their agreement which will be BRINO. Not the EU’s fault, is it!

And so to ‘Covid News’. Yesterday afternoon the DT published a report on the analysis by Oxford and Leeds Universities which show that the ‘fear’ of a 2nd wave is bunkum:

“Analysis by the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford shows that, if there had been a correlation between the recent rise in cases […] and deaths, fatalities should have risen to around 35 per day by now.” (paywalled link)

SAGE however seems to be unaware of this analysis – they want another Lockdown, using another indicator to whip up fear:

“A second national lockdown could be imposed, senior Government advisers have warned, as the upper limit of the R rate pushed over one for the first time since restrictions were lifted.” (paywalled link)

It doesn’t matter that people aren’t dying on ventilators in our hospitals – “we” must keep crashing our economy. “We” need ‘millions of daily tests instead because that’s our best hope to get ‘back to normal’ and ‘restore the British Public’s confidence’ (paywalled link). It’s irrelevant that precisely such mass testing is creating the rise in case numbers which ‘Our MSM’ use to keep their fear and hysteria pots boiling. The question of how much this costs and who is going to pay for this never arises either.

Even more interesting are two other Covid items, one being that Singapore scientists have published a paper in Lancet about a significant mutation in the CV-19 virus causing milder infections (paywalled link). So, according to biological principles, this virus evolves – who’da thunk! All those who’ve pointed out months ago that this was likely to happen were of course ‘covideniers’ and trolls.

Meanwhile, China has developed a vaccine which they’re hoping to market at the end of the year, for a very generous sum of £110 for two jabs. Apparently, they’ll not offer this in China – not just because of the price but because “China has effectively controlled the epidemic, mass inoculation may not be urgent”(link, paywalled). Will we be told to ‘learn from China’ next?

I’ll leave you with a cracker of a link. This was posted in a comment in the DT. It links to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. They have given a grant to the DT to support their reporting on health issues. I’ve not checked if the rest of ‘Our MSM’ have received similar grants – you might like to do that and post what you find. Of course, only trolls and crackpots will find this … astounding! 

Have a lovely weekend, keep digging around the interwebz and 

 

KBO!

 

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