“We” can no longer afford them – “we” must finance Covid …

It’s happened: ‘teh virus’ is rampaging across the whole of Europe. It’s not playing to the rulz according to which the various ‘lockdown lites’ should have stopped it from ‘overwhelming’ the continent and us. Macron puts France into Lockdown (link, paywalled). Mutti Merkel gives the Germans what amounts to local lockdowns, e.g. a tier 4 or five (link, paywalled). Every country on the continent is ‘overwhelmed’. You’ve seen the headlines, the graphs, the fear dripping from the pages like blood …

Better check out this morning’s Newsletter (here) in Lockdown Sceptics if you want to stay sane! However – there are a few things which are happening behind the Covid Madness and which must concern us more than all those case numbers. I’ll get to those below.

I’ll start with asking why the Covid MSM are not asking pertinent questions, such as ‘how come there are all these horror covid scenarios when the countries now in Lockdown have had severe restrictions in place for weeks already’? Or: why aren’t the Covid MSM asking why Macron and Merkel and the rest of the Covid-swamped EU haven’t locked down their countries since yesterday? Wouldn’t the Covid-Lockdown powers they’ve taken unto themselves permit them to do just that?

In an astonishing example that not all of the critical faculties on the continent are lost there are two – yes, two! – articles on the front page of this morning’s German paper ‘Die Welt’. In one of them, the author points out the political stupidity of letting the peasants go to work but then forbid them to relax in a Bierstube (paywalled link, in German). The author of the other article has the temerity to observe the true scandal:  these measures are based not on science but on political opportunism, hitting hardest those who are too weak to resist or whose ‘lockdown misery’ could be mitigated with Lockdown bennies from the government (paywalled link, in German).

Odd, isn’t it, that our covid-obsessed lot over here seem to prefer not to look at that issue! Instead, we get test and trace (T&T), yet again. No, the covid reporters don’t ask why the ‘infallible’ cure, T&T, hasn’t stopped the virus, as we were told it would. The answer to that might lie in some new findings, reported in the Times. It is ever so slyly insinuating that it’s of course our, the plebs’ fault:

“Missing data makes it impossible to know whether the government’s test and trace programme is reducing the spread of Covid-19, researchers say. […] It is unknown how many people are isolating with Covid-19 symptoms at present in England and no routine data is collected on whether people actually isolate for the full 14 days. The researchers said that this made it impossible to assess how effective NHS Test and Trace is in reducing the spread of the virus. Moreover, the best available data was up to two weeks old, meaning that there is no real-time information available to inform decisions on whether to start or end local lockdowns.” (link, paywalled)

Amazing, isn’t it! Well, we all know that the ‘tracing’ part works too slowly. But no matter – it seems that just taking the test, that the number of tests alone, not their results, not the ‘personal quarantine data’, are what drives the mad modellers. In an editorial  this morning The Times has now turned into SAGE Central. After stating that BJ ought to have followed the Vallance&Whitty demand from September four weeks ago, and locked us all down then, they blame the T&T failure on the lack of tracers.

That means “we” need to have more people (tracers?) to collect more data. Here’s a ‘solution’, for cheap: why not ’employ’ some of us plebs, according to a ‘demand’ by the Police. It made my hackles rise:

“Police chiefs have called on the public to report breaches of lockdown restrictions, saying it was their “civic duty”.Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs Council, said forces would act on intelligence received and asked people to report “egregious breaches putting everyone at risk”. Mr Hewitt said it was not about police running a “snooper’s charter” but saving lives, citing cases in which publicans had stayed open past licensing hours and travellers had spread Covid-19 by going to pubs when they should have been self-isolating.” (link, paywalled)

Yes, let’s elevate snitchdom to heroic life-saving’! It is disturbing, to say the least, that on the one hand ‘officialdom’, from police chairmen to researchers to Covid MSM editors, are blaming us plebs for the ‘failure’ of T&T, while on the other hand they demand we snoop because: “Civil duty!”. It’s not a snitches’ charter when it’s about ‘saving lives’! 

Rounding up this collection of collective Covid insanity, we’re told that covid is now spreading south, into the Midlands and the South of England (link, paywalled). How can that be when the North has been locked down already, for the time our Covid masters deem necessary for a personal quarantine? No – don’t ask such boorish questions! SAGE can tell you, right? Let’s also not ask anything about ‘teh vaccine’. On the one hand, ours is so good they will roll it out to health workers before Christmas, on the other it mightn’t do what it sez on the tin, so government has ordered more vaccine from a German Big Pharma company, just in case (link, paywalled). Money well spent, innit like!

As for money, our money – well, let’s look at the first of those important items I mentioned above. Behind the impenetrable ‘covid fog’, the hysteria and fear and lockdowns and all that, here’s a warning that the banks are softly preparing us for an end to ‘free banking’:

“When it released an otherwise respectable set of results this week, HSBC also dropped a heavy hint that the days of free banking are numbered. It was, it said, losing money on many of its accounts, and that it might soon have to introduce charges. There was probably no great surprise about that. The main High Street banks have been grumbling about free current accounts for years. If HSBC broke ranks, Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest would probably follow suit immediately, and very quickly we might find we didn’t have any choice but to stump up a few pounds a month for an account.” (paywalled link)

With the possibility of negative interest rates on the horizon – is it cynical when I regard this as a scheme to impoverish us ordinary people even further? Taking from us through covid taxes ain’t sufficient, it seems. The author, Matthew Lynn, points out that introducing banking charges would crush our faith in the banking system, and then goes on to paint this, the true horror scenario:

“With the decline of paper money – and even potential bans on cash favoured by some of the more extreme central bankers – people may not even be able to resort to stashing cash under the mattress (although they can always take refuge in gold bars, bitcoins, or some other alternative). The chances are that it won’t be good.” (paywalled link)

I respectfully suggest that herein lies the true instrument of controlling us, not in the covid T&T madness. This is what is coming down the line. For the sake of ‘saving our lives’ the governments across the Western world are bent on impoverishing us, not just by controlling or leisure times but by slyly taking our money. 

And finally, the latest scandal, prepared by our own government – make that: the Chancellor of the Exchequer, domesticated nicely by his Treasury Mandarins. One of the foremost duties of any government is the defence of the Realm. Thanks to covid, lockdown, the covid handouts and all that, “we” can no longer afford this. Government had planned

“An integrated review into security, defence, development and foreign policy: to present a plan for a post-Brexit, global Britain at a time when diplomacy and the global military landscape are being transformed by technology and new threats. The review was due to be published next month. Now it is unclear whether it will ever materialise.” (link, paywalled)

There’s more, and while one commiserates (not!) with the Treasury mandarins who need to find a way to raise all that covid money, the way they’re apparently going to do it is, I respectfully submit, disgusting. That integrated review was meant:

“to be accompanied by a three-year spending settlement on defence, so that the armed forces could be modernised and equipped for the era of cyber warfare. That’s off, according to the Treasury. In the wake of that decision an extraordinary stand-off has developed, with No 10 and the Ministry of Defence pitted against a Treasury that proposes a patched-together single-year settlement for defence that would almost certainly entail massive cuts.” (link, paywalled)

When even The Times, the hot spot for anything anti- Cummings, has to mention him without foaming at their mouths, it’s more serious than just a customary spat between bean-counters in the Treasury and the profligates in the MoD:

“The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief aide, are, to put it politely, not natural allies. But they have found common cause in this. Cummings has written extensively about the changing nature of warfare and the need to innovate; Wallace has delivered a series of speeches on similar themes. Living hand to mouth, year by year, is not the way to do things when it is the success of big projects with multi-year investment that will determine whether or not the country is properly equipped for the dangerous decade ahead.” (link, paywalled)

The years ahead are going to be dangerous indeed. The author of this opinion piece, Iain Martin, makes the point forcefully:

“[…] the international picture and cyber situation is growing so troubling — from China, to Russia, to Turkey and beyond — that it is reasonable to think that defence, security, intelligence and foreign policy are special cases where some forward planning and well-targeted spending will avoid problems later.” (link, paywalled)

Just so! Abandoning this important review for the sake of the shroud-waving ‘covid life savers’ is scandalous, no matter how one looks at it. I’m sure all those covid-controllers  would only be too happy to bend their knees to China. After all, there’s no rampaging, overwhelming 2nd Covid wave in China – is there!

As for us – who needs the Armed Forces when even the SBS can be utilised as the latest water-taxi service for ‘poor refugees’ …

KBO!

Photo by Defence Images