Forget the Autumn Budget – look at this ball!

 

It is quite extraordinary: on Thursday we had the Autumn Budget, filled with all sorts of dreadfulness. Yesterday, we had some of the obligatory writing heads in the MSM explaining what it all means, but today, according to the compilation of the front pages in the usual place (link) this Nation has got one problem only: there will be no beer whatsoever, in the whole country, at yon footie World Cup in Qatar which kicks off tomorrow!

How utterly dreadful, how utterly unpredictable, given that Qatar is a muslim country! Worse – according to a report in a German paper yesterday, the Qataris had bought several tanks from Germany, with the permission of the Chancelloresse Merkel, tanks which the Ukraine so desperately wants. Mind you, that deal was made in 2018 and the Qataris paid for them in full, but what Mr ‘e wants he gets, or has received so far. 

It gets worse. The Times’ printed front page has a scary photo of Starmer, promoting their puff piece with video. It’s of course paywalled but I think you can see the top of that piece, photo included, here, ‘for free’ if you have the stomach. 

There is one opinion piece worth mentioning and quoting at length. It’s by Jonathan Sumption, writing for the DT, headlined 

“We’re all now paying the terrible price for lockdown – An historic failure of government during the pandemic set a ticking time-bomb not just under the economy, but also in health and education” (paywalled link)

As expected, he doesn’t mince his words and tackles the explanation given by Hunt, or rather: the explanation his mandarins in the Treasury and their chums at the OBR and the BoE have provided him with:

“The UK’s public finances are in a worse state than at any time since the Second World War. Not the Government’s fault, says Jeremy Hunt. It’s the pandemic. It’s Ukraine. It’s world-wide interest rates. It’s just about anything other than the main culprit lurking in the background: the lockdowns of the last two years.

Let us look at a few sobering facts. First of all, government expenditure associated with the pandemic has been by far the largest contributor to the current deficit. The National Audit Office (NAO) has estimated the total cost at £376 billion, or £5,492 for every man, woman and child in the land. 

Secondly, most of this expenditure was not in fact caused by the pandemic, but by the government’s decision to respond by locking the population down. Less than a quarter of the NAO’s figure represents the extra cost of health and social care. Most of the rest is the cost of supporting people prevented from working and businesses prevented from operating. At the height of the pandemic, the government was spending about twice as much per month on paying people to do nothing as the entire cost of the NHS.” (paywalled link)

It’s not really a mystery why the MSM’s eminent financial and economic editors and correspondents have overlooked this fact: their Whitehall ‘sources’ and the Whitehall paymasters do not want Lockdown mentioned with one word. This is especially the case because ‘moar lockdowns’ are on the horizon – watch Paul Joseph Watsons’ video published yesterday evening! 

Next, Mr Sumption refers to Sweden and their lockdown policies and then points out that:

“We are paying the price of panic, populism and poorly thought-out knee-jerk decision-making. At least the current Prime Minister can point to his warnings as chancellor that lockdowns were unaffordable if extended over any significant period of time. Boris Johnson’s lordly indifference to mere money ensured that the cost was not even considered. All that can be said in his favour is that, if the Labour Party had had its way, the lockdowns would have been even longer and more costly.” (paywalled link)

Indeed so, and Sir Kneeler in No 10 would happily implement even ‘moar lockdowns’ and those ‘WHO health passports’ described by PJW in his video above. Mr Sumption continues:

“The case against lockdowns was always based on two main points. First, coercion did not appear to work much better in the medium and long term than balanced information and advice addressed mainly to those whose age or state of health put them at significant risk. Secondly, the collateral damage was likely to be exceptionally serious, but was never properly assessed or even considered when it mattered.” (paywalled link)

Pointing out the true, long-term costs of this ‘terrible social experiment’, the impacts on health, education and indeed the economy, Mr Sumption concludes:

“All this is fundamentally a failure of government. It is what happens when radical decisions are made affecting every one of us, without looking at the whole picture. “ (paywalled link)

I’d go further and say it’s a failure of government because those making the decisions, i.e. Whitehall mandarins, scientifically illiterate that they are, had swallowed their own fear propaganda. That propaganda, as we remember only too well, was blared and screamed about in the daily MSM fear porn. The unelected SAGEs, feeling truly powerful for once in their lives, were only too happy to provide the fallacious ‘models’ empowering those on SAGE who wanted to install a Chinese model of social control.

Well, they paved the way for this model which is slowly taking form because an ever increasing number of citizens have accepted that without smartphones and government-produced QR codes they are nobodies who have ceased to exist. Perhaps that’s why Whitehall and their Westminster propaganda outlets, the MSM, like and support our ‘new people’, those dinghy drivers, who all have smartphones rather than passports. Not that they’ll be controlled like we’ll be: after all, they are ‘victims’ and ‘poor’ and need our help, for example to build a whole new village for their family members in Albania (link).

But let’s not talk about that, or about the damage created by lockdowns. Let’s talk about “no beer in Qatar” during the footie World Cup! Isn’t it remarkable how that Autumn Budget was presented just at the time when we peasants could be trusted to take our eyes off that ball and fix it on the real one, the one 22 men fight over … Enjoy the weekend, with beer …