Here be mandarins – the true wielders of power in our country

Has a certain ‘Covid lassitude’ befallen the tribe of ‘science and health’ editors in the Covid MSM? The few Covid articles which were published in this morning’s online papers are disjointed, as if the editors aren’t really certain with which headline to scare us best. Moreover, it looks as if they needed to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with something, anything, to keep us fearful and compliant. We did get a full-frontal attack on the government, using the ongoing ‘feed school children during holidays’ campaign, because it’s nice to report on ‘Red Tories’ taking a stand against the PM.

Let’s take a look at this one first. There’s an extraordinary article in The Times which reports that there was money but that it had already been spent:

“Cabinet ministers have criticised the government’s handling of the free school meals row as it emerged that a £63 million grant for vulnerable families highlighted by the prime minister yesterday had already been spent. Boris Johnson suggested that councils draw on the fund after a campaign by Marcus Rashford, the England and Manchester United footballer, to provide free meals during holidays. However, Tory council leaders told The Times yesterday that they had already spent most of the money on other coronavirus priorities such as buying PPE. The guidance at the launch of the scheme on July 10 said that the money should be spent within 12 weeks and was not ringfenced for feeding vulnerable children.” (link, paywalled)

Eagle-eyed readers will spot immediately that not one Labour Local Council Chief has spoken to The Times. Why not? Analytically-bent readers will also ask if this is because the ‘Red Tories’ who are criticising BJ are from constituencies where local leaders are Labour. 

Apparently, it was the lack of ringfencing wot made them spend the money on such stuff as building a temporary mortuary at Birmingham’s NEC or buying PPE or establishing hubs and food banks for the ‘shielding’ – even on ‘asylum seekers charities’. One of those local leaders said:

“It was never a programme to fund free school meals,” he said. “It was to help local authorities with the deficits they were funding.” (link, paywalled)

Of course, gossip about warfare inside BJ’s cabinet must also be mentioned. Cloaked in a quite a devastating critique  of the Education Minister, Gavin Williamson, it nevertheless comes under “it wasn’t us, guv”:

“Gavin has not made any noises about wanting to extend free school meals for another school holiday, the Department for Education has not put in a proposal,” a Treasury source told The Times.” (link, paywalled)

The Treasury would have given more money if asked? Now that’s a turn-up for the books! Is Whitehall now also jumping on that virtue-signalling bandwagon started by that celeb footballer?

So – on the one hand we have council leaders behaving like irresponsible welfare recipients who spend a windfall sum on whatever takes their fancy to make themselves look good before their local electorate, on the other hand there’s the main player in these power games, well known to us: Whitehall. We also know only too well that Whitehall mandarins are brilliant at playing the system offered by the Westminster MSM.

We’ve become very adept at recognising their games, ever since Leave won in 2016. We’ve learned that the oh-so-powerful government ministers are nought but puppets whose strings are being manipulated and pulled by said mandarins. They and their domesticated editors in the Westminster MSM keep telling us that mandarins only advise but that ministers decide.

I’ll not speculate on the ever so powerful (allegedly) intellects of ministers who (allegedly) are capable of discerning right from wrong in the mountain of papers and reports their mandarins provide them with. When I look at the Labour shadow cabinet though I cannot help but think that the dears were told not worry – they’d be given all the info they need by their lovely mandarins should Labour come to power. This ‘change’ is the aim of the Westminster Cabal. The mental calibre of the Tory Cabinet would indicate that there’s not much to choose between them because ministers come and go – Whitehall Mandarins are forever.

The other players in this power game are the various editors in ‘Our MSM’ who feed us gossip from ‘senior sources’. Reporters and authors don’t do their own research. With the power of Whitehall behind them, using gossip selectively, they are capable, as we’ve all experienced since 2016, to ‘nudge’ public opinion in the direction they want. 

Two segments in this morning’s Lockdown Sceptics, only seemingly unrelated, are perfect illustrations. One is about the extraordinary longevity of those ‘science advisory’ set-ups. They have different labels but their members are strangely familiar. Introducing an article in today’s issue by a retired academic, Dr Janie Axelrad, they write:

“She sees uncanny similarities between that crisis and this. During that panic, the equivalent of SAGE was SEAC – the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee. And, predictably, it massively over-reacted, got drunk on its own power and caused an enormous amount of needless economic damage. “ (link)

‘Plus ça change’, as the French have it … I highly recommend reading that article (here) for the particulars. The other example which nearly made me splutter my coffee over my keyboard is in the introductory segment of this morning’s Lockdown Sceptics Newsletter. It’s about Covid data, cases, hospitalisations:

“Some of these mistakes relate to crass errors of basic management, others more disturbing over-exaggeration or over-extrapolation of the size of the threats to public health. It is known that more granular data exist – for instance around the cause of death statistics and in-hospital Covid infection rates. But these figures are not being released to the public by the NHS despite requests for more transparency – seemingly at odds with Freedom of Information obligations.” (link)

In other words, “we” are being kept in the dark by Whitehall mandarins, on purpose, in order to permit the Covid MSM to keep fear-mongering. Those mandarins have clearly seen this ‘crisis’ as the perfect tool to extend their power over us hapless taxpaying peasants. 

Don’t assume though that the Covid MSM are only relying on Whitehall ‘data’, those that are being released to drive the ongoing ‘Project Covid Fear’. The Times has dug out a statement from a French Covid ‘official’:

“The country is in a “very difficult, even critical situation”, with probably 100,000 new cases a day, double the 50,000 that are being officially reported, Dr Delfraissy [head of a scientific council handling the epidemic] said. “Between those who aren’t tested and asymptomatic patients, we’re close to that number of cases. This means the virus is spreading extremely fast.” (link, paywalled)

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it: the French Covidians don’t know the actual numbers of infected people, but it must be ginormous! The French also need to be scared out of their wits, and of course the only way forward is more curfew and a two-week ‘firebreak’ lockdown. 

Germans are apparently also covid-infected in huge numbers. Thus,  according to a paywalled article in the German ‘Die Welt’ this morning, 63% of them are now expecting Mutti Merkel to institute a Lockdown as well. One wonders how the Germans will pay for all this – after all, they’ll have to shell out more than any other EU country for that EU Lockdown Fund. 

There’s more. As many of us old climate-change warhorses have remarked at the start of this Covid madness: the argument for ‘following the science which has spoken’ was eerily familiar. There are numerous examples of scientists, daring to counter the government-approved science, who are being smeared or silenced altogether. So-called ‘reputable’ science publications reject their articles when they don’t fit the narrative. The ‘case of the mask study’ illustrates that nicely. Lockdown Sceptics reported this first, quoting a Danish Newspaper. You can read the whole article, now translated, here. 

The other tactic employed by the Covidians is to ‘vanish’ any critical papers – like that of Dr Mike Yeadon – by simply not mentioning it anywhere, especially if the scientific arguments are powerful. When that doesn’t help because we plebs are now also wielding internet links, they quote smear ‘articles’ which appear online, promoted by covidiots. Then they claim that the smeared scientists are beyond the pale ‘because the internet sez so’ and their papers can therefore be disregarded.

And finally, here are the first warning signals that all those lockdown measures will be used in future – for greenery. The Times found a scientific paper, reporting under this headline: “Clean air could have saved 6,000 lives from Covid, experts claim” (link, paywalled). This paper comes from German researchers who stated:

“In the UK there have been over 44,000 coronavirus deaths and we estimate that the fraction attributable to air pollution is 14 per cent, meaning that more than 6,100 deaths could be attributed to air pollution.” (link, paywalled)

Note the weasel words which have no place  in a scientific paper: “estimate”, “could” – and see where this is meant to go when you read:

“The authors estimated that air pollution had contributed to 29 per cent of coronavirus deaths in the Czech Republic, 27 per cent in China and 1 per cent in New Zealand.” (link, paywalled)

No air pollution and nobody, well: hardly anybody will die of Covid … yeah right! The Covid MSM would rather spend time and resources to ‘research’ scientific journals which normally would be disregarded in daily news articles than find out about scandals such as ‘Our NHS’ not providing all Covid-related data accurately as that would disturb their fear-mongering Covid narrative.

If anyone still believes that Whitehall Mandarins are only wanting the best for us peasants rather than maintaining their grip on power, no matter who resides in No 10, then I cannot help them. If anyone still believes that ‘Our MSM’ are fearlessly ‘speaking truth to power’ rather than maintaining a cosy relationship with the actual power in our country – Whitehall – to the detriment of the Nation, using fear and hysteria rather than looking behind the Whitehall smokescreens, then I cannot help them.

We however know that the truth is ‘out there’ (no, not aliens, silly!) and we’re finding it. It remains to be seen if, how and when we peasants actually do rise up, to sweep out Westminster. And no – this is not a call for another, real-life Guy Fawkes. It’s a call for us to collect the data we need for a reckoning and share them widely.

We have good memories – we’ve not forgotten Brexit – and therefore we will

KBO!