[awakened53]

Rishi Sunak spends £500,000 of taxpayers’ cash on focus groups ‘to repair his image’

Rishi Sunak is spending a further £500,000 of taxpayers’ cash on focus groups and polling, new Treasury contracts reveal, sparking a claim that he is trying to “repair his image”.
Researchers have been hired to carry out two focus groups and one national online poll each week until February 2023 – taking the total outlay over two years to more than £1.35m, Labour has said.
Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, said the chancellor had shifted from testing public opinion about the Covid pandemic to making such spending “a permanent fixture”.
The new contracts were awarded after Mr Sunak “told the British people he has no money to ease the cost of living crisis and that cutting their energy bills would be ‘silly’,” she alleged.
“The government apparently has half a million to spend on spin doctors while Jacob Rees-Mogg is threatening to axe thousands of civil service jobs in the name of cost saving,” Ms Rayner said.
Read more: Rishi Sunak spends £500,000 of taxpayers’ cash on focus groups ‘to repair his image’

[awakened53]

Boris Johnson is Guilty of Misleading Parliament and, Worse, Imposing Lockdown Restrictions in the First Place, Says Spectator

Boris Johnson is guilty of misleading the House of Commons and, even more seriously, of putting “the lockdown laws on the statute book in the first place, framing them in such a way as to criminalise everyday interactions”. That’s the damning verdict of the Spectator, a publication the Prime Minister himself once edited, in its leading article today.
The Prime Minister remains guilty – most explicitly of misleading the House of Commons when he denied that any parties took place. He has shown a serious failure, too, in not learning from his mistakes. It is no use him or anyone else in Government complaining about the triviality of the charges. His Government put the lockdown laws on the statute book in the first place, framing them in such a way as to criminalise everyday interactions.
Now the Prime Minister’s allies plead for clemency. It is in human nature, they say, to gather to bid farewell to a departing friend or colleague, to offer friendship and succour. Quite so. Johnson’s allies further argue that, as he raised his glass in a toast, he did so in a work capacity – as evidenced by the presence of his red box. This Jesuitical defence would be more plausible if the Government’s laws had not seen ordinary people dragged to court and found guilty of far milder offences. Let us consider his defence for the leaving party: “I briefly attended such gatherings to thank them for their service – which I believe is one of the essential duties of leadership. Particularly important when people need to feel that their contributions had been appreciated and to keep morale as high as possible.It is a damning – and accurate – charge against the Prime Minister that he is no man of principle
Does he realise, even now, that he made it illegal for anyone to do this during lockdown? Where, in his lockdown rules, was the exemption for the ‘essential duties of leadership?’ Where was the clause allowing those outside the ruling elite to have a regular ‘wine-time Friday?’ Does he realise that he personally used the powers of his office to send the police after anyone else who would have attended a gathering to salute a departing colleague? Or, for that matter, to console a friend, visit a dying relative or even attend a funeral in numbers greater than stipulated by the staff of No. 10.
Read More: Boris Johnson is Guilty of Misleading Parliament and, Worse, Imposing Lockdown Restrictions in the First Place, Says Spectator

[Steve]

The British Government, the World Health Organization 
 ... and the Global Coup of 2020

By John Stone

In March 2020 the British Government decided to impose lockdown on the determination of the WHO against the advice of its own medical experts - the experts then followed the policy

I am trying to understand the events of March 2020 in the light of an answer to a recent Freedom of Information Request. Why and how was it that four days before lockdown was imposed on March 23 the four Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom posted a notice on-line announcing that COVID-19 had been downgraded from the status of High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID).

This peculiar event has not gone entirely un-noticed but has never really been explained. Before this point the disease named in the document  as COVID-19 (rather than  identified as virus SARS-CoV-2) - was a “high consequence infectious disease”, while almost at the very instant our lives, and everyone’s,  were to be irrevocably pitched into turmoil with the denial of civil liberties and most basic human rights, untold economic destruction and chaos, it was no longer such.

If the disease was no longer “high consequence” there could be absolutely no reason for this high level and prolonged disruption, and yet it was at this precise moment that the inevitability of lockdown started to be promoted, only to be confirmed four days later. But according to the CMOs’ reckoning at no point in the past two and a quarter years, whatever actions they took to restrict our lives or coerce us to accept injections of novel products, has the disease been “high consequence”. 

This anomaly cannot I believe be stressed enough: my FOI request produced no new documents but the Department of Health and Social Care drew my attention to a Parliamentary answer by Jo Churchill on November 6,  2020 to Conservative MP John Redwood (submitted fully 5 and a half weeks before on September 28):
The four nations public health high consequence infectious disease (HCID) group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID, based on the information that was available during the very early stages of the outbreak.

Once more was known about COVID-19, United Kingdom public health bodies reviewed the available information against the HCID criteria and noted certain changes. These changes included the increase in information available about mortality rates, which are low overall amongst the general population; greater clinical awareness; and the availability of a specific and sensitive laboratory test for the virus.

COVID-19 has not been considered a HCID in the UK since 19 March 2020, but this reclassification has not affected the Government’s response to COVID-19, which remains a comprehensive national effort.

So, the junior minister, Jo Churchill, confirmed that decision was made with due consideration and not because of some expedience: this remained the case on November 6, 2020, and remains the case today because whatever the CMOs have said subsequently to the public, notably government Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty they have not updated this statement.

With this in mind let us go back and look at what was said in the statement of March 19, 2020 :it may be one of those occasions when British government documents are more revealing than most.

As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK. There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are not classified as HCIDs.

The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
They have recorded their expert view for all time this is an infection without implications for health and government policy (it doesn’t have “high consequence”). So, I think it is the next bit we need to look at to explain what happened:

The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to consider COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), therefore the need to have a national, coordinated response remains and this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.

What they are manifestly saying is that government is not following the advice of  relatively sensible (or once sensible) British health officials but the World Health Organization, and WHO is telling the British health officials what to do as a matter of government policy. In this regard the WHO’s most recent attempt to impose its official authority over governments - and particularly Western governments - in May 2022 already seemed to be the de facto reality in early 2020: everything was coming from the network of global organisations - WHO, UN, WEF all closely linked - and the corporate interests, notably the ventures of Bill Gates, GAVI, CEPI etc. they represented as part of a wider project of domination. It is a very interesting question why a country with huge medical and scientific resources, inordinate if languishing expertise of its own should defer to an organisation with a vastly flawed history: while everybody either kowtowed like Whitty, or was brutally swept aside. It seems as if the decision to scuttle our heritage had already been taken by humanly disengaged politicians.

For lazy, cowardly politicians - of which there are many -  it may seem like a clever option to defer to authority - it protects them from making responsible decisions themselves, but unfortunately it is simply a gimmick, opening the country to brutal corporate exploitation rather than traditional clinical wisdom. The lunacy of the new science could not be better represented the UK’s new and disreputable partnership with the Gates/WEF/Wellcome creation CEPI  to bring emergency mRNA injections to the market without any testing in future in 100 days. We can know nothing useful about the effectiveness and safety of such products in such a time space, and this is simply devoid of the most basic common sense which we should at least be able to expect from the people we elect.
Finally, so sad also to see the British monarchy get sucked into this folly, which people might have thought outside their brief.

John Stone is UK Editor.
Related Stories

• Why were Ingredients Associated with Clots Permitted in Covid Injections - the British Regulator Stonewalls?
  
  
• Action Alert: Tell the FDA to Get Their Hands Off Our Children
  
  
• AoA Submission on the Terms of Reference for the United Kingdom Covid Inquiry led by Baroness Hallett
  

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[awakened53]

Staff at Refugee Facility Warned They Will Have to Handle Violence, Anti-Social Behavior and Death

Potential employees working at a controversial refugee center set to be located in a village of just 700 residents in the UK have been told they should prepare to deal with violent situations, anti-social behavior and “death”.
But wait, I thought diversity was a strength?
As we previously highlighted, despite indicating it may back down on the scheme, the government is already hiring staff to work at the facility in Linton-on-Ouse, a small village in northern England.
Despite the fact that the village has just one shop and only 700 permanent residents, 1500 asylum seekers, the vast majority young men, are set to be housed at the facility, a former RAF base.
Locals thought they had defeated the plan after staging vociferous protests, but last week it was revealed that the government had already begun hiring staff to work at the site.
According to MP Kevin Hollinrake, recruitment has already begun for 300-400 employees to staff the center and “facilities are also being moved onto the site.”
A job advert that was posted by Serco, the outsourcing company used by the government, warned potential recruits of what they would have to deal with.
This included, “Urgent medical needs, suicide risks, domestic violence situations, violence and anti-social behaviour, death, and child safeguarding needs.”
Read More: Staff at Refugee Facility Warned They Will Have to Handle Violence, Anti-Social Behavior and Death

[awakened53]

When Did the Police Become the Thought Police?

Events in other parts of the world have so distracted me lately that it was with some embarrassment that I had to admit, when I ran into Harry Miller at a House of Lords free speech event recently, that I had only “vaguely heard” of his Bad Law Project. Well, I’ve definitely heard about it now: the fearless free speech champion was arrested on Thursday for standing between police officers and their intended target, a military veteran of many years honourable service. The background to this event can be found here, with videos of the event (in chronological order) here, here, here and here.
The ex-soldier’s supposed crime? He had posted a rainbow pride flag reimagined as a swastika on social media. This emblem was originally designed and posted by Laurence Fox and re-posted by many others – including the Daily Mail. Its purpose was to highlight the authoritarianism of “trans-activist” groups such as Stonewall, whose influence runs so deeply in the police (and in Whitehall, local government, universities and employers) that one of the attending police officers was even, according to Harry’s report, wearing a rainbow badge saying “Hampshire Police” on it.
Harry is right to say that the rainbow flag is a political symbol, and that the police are legally obligated to be impartial (but they aren’t). Imagine the situation at some Hampshire Constabulary office where these same officers were sitting down assessing the complaint they’d apparently received about the ex-soldier’s post mocking the rainbow flag – which is a lawful statement in common law and also protected by Article 10 of the ECHR. They can hardly have been unbiased – one look down at their rainbow badges would have told them what to do. They simply cannot claim that they acted impartially when they themselves wear as insignia the very symbol being mocked.
Thus, the arrests of Harry and the military veteran look political – that is, the police are acting as the enforcement arm of a contentious political creed. A shocking statement to make, but true. Indeed, the police actions were so sinister that I began to speculate whether, in fact, by wearing these political badges while purporting to act as the police, they are themselves in breach of the Public Order Act 1936 – a statute that was intended to suppress the public marches and quasi-military pretensions of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
I doubt Hampshire Constabulary will be arresting themselves for a public order offence –quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – but comparisons to political police forces in totalitarian societies might not be all that hyperbolic. As Justice Julian Knowles said in Harry Miller v. College of Policing:

Read more: When Did the Police Become the Thought Police?

[awakened53]

‘The Collapse of Government – The Rise of Resistance’

Wherever you look in the world today, governance is failing and governments are falling. And even where governments hold-on, premiers, prime ministers, presidents and parliamentarians tumble around them; disgraced and exposed for one seedy scandal after another.
Be it money, sex, fraud, despotism, embezzlement or quite simply a pandemic of lies. It barely matters, over and over again the inimitable lust for power takes precedence over the responsibility to earn the trust of the nation.
So widespread has this ‘failure to govern’ epidemic become that one is justified in asking whether the electoral system – which supposedly underlies ‘democracy’ – has any merit left in it at all?
Well, you might say “It’s not the system it’s the quality of the candidates that’s the problem.” And clearly that is a big problem, as evidenced by the pandemic of failure to deliver.
But isn’t there something wrong with expecting unaware, uninvolved and unsuspecting members of the general public to choose who should lead their countries? Isn’t this a receipt for chaos and corruption?
Yes, quite obviously it is. Bye and large, whoever is chosen to take on this leadership role turns out to be a mirror of the mentality which put them there.
This seems to come as a shock to most. The electorate appears to want someone on the platform who miraculously rises above their own moral, intellectual and visionary shortcomings. They want a bold, brave and bright Moses figure to lead them out of the desert of their daily afflictions, which, they believe, must have been caused by the previous ‘useless leaders’ they had such unreasonable hopes for.
So the merry-go-round continues. Each time getting more surreal and more systemic in its inability to address the real needs of the country, its people, or any fundamental sense of direction and purpose.
Here we are.
But the laws of the universe strongly suggest that anything which become fundamentally incapable of evolving into something better, but lingers on in a state of abject sterility, lands up in – or as – a black hole. An inwardly collapsing gravitational graveyard.
The only way such an outcome can be circumvented, here on earth, is by many people becoming individually aware enough to take back control of their destinies; while recognising that – together – they can run their lives according to another formula.
We are all faced with this choice, never more starkly than today.  Either get sucked into the black hole which awaits all those who do nothing/take no action – or – form aware, decentralised, autonomous groups with the determination to act as a responsible governing body at the neighbourhood and community level.
The key words are ‘aware’ and ‘responsible’. Without awareness no action can serve the cause of breaking free. Without accepting a level of responsibility, no action can become reality.
What exactly is this ‘awareness’ I refer to?
Quite simply, it is a condition in which recognition of the endemic levels of falsity and deception in society – and particularly in the political sphere – lead to the realisation that one must stop mindlessly obeying authoritarian voices of destruction and take action to establish a better and more just way of life.
You see, this is where so many submit to the coward within. Instead of following their heart led instincts to rebel, they submit to their ‘false intellect’ whose judgement is always “that’s not possible because we can never be more powerful than ‘them’.”
So Mr and Mrs X, who have moaned almost ceaselessly about the corruption and inept performance of those they elected (or didn’t) into office, take the standard position that in spite of witnessing their elected representatives being incapable of dispensing justice and common sense, the only thing to do is wait for the next election and once again try to get their candidate/party into office. This is, let us not mince our words, a direct route to the black hole.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there will not be another ‘election’. This sham is over. The entire tragic-comedy has already imploded. If you think in terms of ‘democracy’ and ‘governance according to the will of the people’, the unaware can’t, or won’t, believe that this ship has sunk to the bottom and cannot be salvaged.
But for the aware, it’s no longer about choices. We must take the tiller and face the music.
It’s not a lullaby or a sonata, but a hand to hand grappling with those who want to destroy us. Which, in some cases, includes those indoctrinated ones who live amongst us and follow orders. Orders that emanate from such devious old hands as Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum and his fellow henchmen. Orders that are passed-on and repeated by the brain frozen bureaucrats and technocrats whose jobs depend upon being proper robots.
There are no more bona fide ‘governments’ in existence in this world. Just a facade of fake interest directed towards those who put the elected members on their pedestals. While these members, enjoying their apotheosis of parliamentary power, have their minds only on the next election, defection or rejection. That’s called ‘government’.
While that stuff will no doubt continue to be played-out on the world stage for a while longer, it is simply a facade for our distraction.
This planet is the territory of ‘The Great Reset’ now. An instrument for enforcing what is euphemistically called ‘net zero’.
What kind of gibberish is ‘net zero’? Does it mean anything?
No, actually it doesn’t. It is simply the reductionist algorithm (Al-Gore-rythm) and digital way of getting around having to say ‘zero carbon’. Because ‘zero carbon’ has been exposed as meaning ‘zero CO2’. And ‘zero CO2’ means zero life on Earth. The black hole.
Yes, under Herr Klaus Schwab’s Fourth Reich, we will be disposable. Since, in some circles, it has been known for years that depopulation and the reprogramming of those that remain, is the true meaning of the two words ‘Great Reset’. And ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is nothing less than the techno-binary control mechanism for the digitalisation and robotisation of human kind.
The ‘Transhuman’.
For the aware, the time for debate about the nature of what lies ahead, is passed. The aware are
 ‘The Resistance’.
‘The Resistance’ is a four dimensional energetic force, operating on physical, mental, psychic and spiritual planes. It encompasses a rising consciousness and capacity for universal vision and action.
The enemy of mankind operates on just two/three dimensional planes. It lacks any warmth or empathy. It is devoid of spirituality. It is coldly wedded to the material world and deeply fears the manifestation of spirit and human courage. It knows not love at all. But does know ‘how to smile’.
‘The Resistance’ is the new government. It will not need to be elected, it will simply come to be.
It is already apparent – and is growing. It is you and I, God and the future of Life on Earth.
Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. Julian’s acclaimed book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is vital reading for this time:  http://julianrose.info/

[awakened53]

The Three I’s of a Police State Education: Indoctrination, Intimidation & Intolerance

Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes
This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.
Instead of making the schools safer, government officials are making them more authoritarian.
Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.
And instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.
From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:
[ul]
[li]draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,[/li]
[li]overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,[/li]
[li]school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,[/li]
[li]standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,[/li]
[li]politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,[/li]
[li]and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.[/li]
[/ul]
Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, the schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.
Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.
Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.
Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.
Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.
Not even good deeds go unpunished.
One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.
Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.
Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.
Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”
Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.
In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”
Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.
On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”
In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids—some as young as 4 and 5 years old—for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.
Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.
Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.
This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.
Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.
For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).
Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.
These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.
The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.
So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?
How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?
Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?
As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.
For starters, parents need to be vocal, visible and organized and demand that school officials 1) adopt a policy of positive reinforcement in dealing with behavior issues; 2) minimize the presence in the schools of police officers and cease involving them in student discipline; and 3) insist that all behavioral issues be addressed first and foremost with a child’s parents, before any other disciplinary tactics are attempted.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.
WC: 1328
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email=staff@rutherford.org]staff@rutherford.org[/email]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

[awakened53]

Dr. Doom Steps Down

Sir Patrick Vallance, known as Dr. Doom thanks to his leadership of the always pessimistic SAGE during the pandemic, is stepping down. MailOnline has more.
Sir Patrick will resign from his job, which pays up to £185,000-a-year, in April.
He will then take up the role of chairman of the Natural History Museum’s Board of Trustees.
Boris Johnson said: “Sir Patrick may not have bargained for becoming a household name when he signed up for the job.
“But I am immensely grateful for his advice and expertise throughout the pandemic and beyond.“
The outgoing PM added: “It is impossible to fully convey the impact that Sir Patrick has had as Chief Scientific Adviser.
“He has played an instrumental role in expanding and accelerating the science super prowess of this country.
“Overseeing the development and innovative use of new technologies, responding to the global threat of climate change, boosting the life sciences and health of our nation, and ensuring our policies and decisions are informed by the latest and best scientific thinking.
“It’s our scientists and clinicians, led by Sir Patrick, Sir Chris, and their team, that oversaw the largest vaccine rollout in British history together with my government.
“He will be missed by all when he leaves next year, and I wish him the very best in all future endeavours.”
That’s quite a fulsome tribute and glosses over some of the less impressive aspects of Sir Patrick’s reign.
For instance, no mention of the fact that he initially embraced ‘herd immunity’, before rejecting it as laughably naive. Here’s the Guardian on Sir Patrick’s position before he U-turned:
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance suggested that building herd immunity in the U.K. through widespread transmission could be the UK’s strategy for handling the pandemic.
On March 13th 2020, Sir Patrick Vallance, speaking to the BBC’s Today show, said the key things the UK needed to do was to fight the pandemic was to “build up some degree of herd immunity”, saying that because the vast majority of people with coronavirus get a mild illness, herd immunity would mean that more people are immune to the virus and transmission would be reduced.
As for “the development and innovative use of new technologies”, does Boris mean Britain’s ‘world class’ £37 billion Test and Trace system, which the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee described as muddled, over-stated and eye-wateringly expensive? Presumably not.
Not to mention that “the largest vaccine roll-out in British history” may yet turn out to be the largest medical scandal in British history, given how ineffective and unsafe the Covid vaccines are proving to be. And the expense, almost as eye-watering as the useless Test and Trace system. As we reported in May, the U.K. has used just 142 million of the stockpile of 650 million vaccine doses it purchased, leaving an estimated £4 billion worth of vaccines unused.
And, of course, he was instrumental in the decision to lock us down in March 2020, as well as in November of that year and again in January of 2021. Those decisions, which caused catastrophic harms in education and healthcare and led directly to the current economic crisis, while producing no discernible benefits, will surely come to be regarded as the worst ever made in the country’s history.
If only Anders Tegnell had been the U.K.’s Chief Scientific Officer in 2020 how different things might have been.

Read More: Dr. Doom Steps Down

[awakened53]

UK Government planning energy blackouts this winter with planned power cuts for homes and businesses

The UK is making crisis plans for the winter which include the possibility of organised blackouts. Cold weather could combine with gas shortages to result in blackouts for businesses and households, Bloomberg reports.
Under the UK government’s “reasonable worst-case scenario”, officials reportedly believe there could be blackouts on “several” days in January. It comes as forecasts show annual energy bills are set to top £4,200 from January, sparking fears of severe hardship without government intervention.
The reasonable worst-case scenario — which government sources insist are highly unlikely to materialise — would see the power shortfall total about a sixth of peak demand even if emergency plans to fire up retiring coal power plants came into force, according to Bloomberg. In that scenario, a reduction of electricity imports from Norway and France would see the UK government bring in emergency measures to conserve gas for four days in January.
Under the plan, the network operator would initially override commercial agreements to direct flows of gas on the system, the Guardian reports. Supplies to gas-fired power stations would then be halted, causing power cuts for businesses and homes. Rail services could reportedly be hit if electricity is rationed.
European nations are in “a dash for winter gas” since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as volumes in gas storage reservoirs run well below historical levels, according to the Guardian. Russian energy firm Gazprom has cut gas deliveries to Europe since the war started, while many countries are attempting to wean themselves off Russian energy.
Read more: UK Government planning energy blackouts this winter with planned power cuts for homes and businesses

[Steve]

John Harris - It’s an Illusion 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKvacmyLG2A