While I personally hope we don’t go into lockdown there is a decreasing chance that the UK government will stand alone on rejecting this, as the Netherlands and other European countries shut up shop.
In the UK we’re told that without further control measures, covid hospitalisations could reach 3000 a day. But this is much less than we experienced last winter pre-omicron. So this should be an argument for not locking down.
The one glimmer of light around a lockdown is that once it is legally declared, it should immediately release government funds to support the businesses closed down. right now businesses are being strangled by scarey briefings from Johnson running scared.
This is true - remember that the PM declared f… business - he’s not a business thinking person - when mayor he bought water cannons from Germany despite the fact that he was advised they could never be road legal in the UK - the water cannons never got to drench the rioters and were sold for scrap.
@Falstaff laments the state of democracy here in the west, he is right in that the pandemic has lessened it - recently was reading a ‘democracy index’ and it is a low.
Then again i think of the ‘election’ taking place in HK today - the authorities have labelled it the “patriots election”.
Ted Hui, former legislator and now has fled to Aus commented “Anyone who’s not against the government is a ‘patriot’. Anyone who doesn’t speak up against democracy and freedom is a ‘patriot’.”
Thus only ‘patriots’ can stand for election - all the true patriots are either in jail, hiding or overseas.
Let’s cherish the freedoms we have - even to discuss such here - without fear.
Lord Frost has been replaced by… the Minister for Women and Equalities.
So I’m thinking that maybe there is a job vacancy in London right now - and the first person I thought of - falstaff - care to shake things up a little?
In HK, the government declare that only a Communist Party of China-affiliated candidate can stand for election. Non-affiliated candidates will be imprisoned.
In the UK, Piers Corbyn will organise the arson of your office if you’re a candidate not affiliated to his ideology.
Where is the practical difference between the CCP and this bitter old Marxist nutter?
He would be a harmless attention-seeker if he only intended to gain attention.
But he intends to destroy democratic governance, and the acquisition of attention is simply a means to that end. As the last paragraph of The Communist Manifesto reads - “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
Piers Corbyn is a declared Marxist. He needs to be recognised as such.
Its hard to conclude that the Parliament Square demonstration was censored when it has been reported by the Guardian, Telegraph, Sky News, Evening Standard, Daily Express, the Metro etc.
The BBC are conspicuously not on the list but surely nobody thinks they are an unbiased news medium?
Media censorship? No
Biased news editing by the BBC? Clearly.
Hard to be precise but definitely an end to racism. This has to mean an end to individuals’ racist thought patterns and personal behaviours. But the emphasis is clearly on an end to white racist thought patterns and white personal behaviours towards black people in the UK.
How can this be achieved? There is seemingly an admission that political change is not a part of achieving this, as BLMUK is not a political party and is not affiliated with any party. This must mean they think the laws in the UK are adequate. It has been illegal for decades here to discriminate against anyone in matters of employment, social housing access, wages, educational opportunities, benefits availability, medical assistance etc. etc. based on race or ethnicity. BLMUK does not seek to itself be involved in changing the legal structure.
One thing they don’t call for is reparation payments to the descendants of slaves.
Of course, its a fine mission objective for an organisation funded by public support to have as its goal something which is undefinable and potentially unachievable. Since racist thought patterns and behaviours are undefinable and universally found across the globe they can never be certainly 100% eliminated. So the organisation must keep on campaigning towards this end. And it must keep collecting donations for that purpose.
Because the organisation has an unclear end point and no viable plan as to how to get there they will achieve nothing but noise.
A very intelligent Nigerian man referred to the latter, no surprise that i read today Nigeria have dumped over 1m vac doses past their use-by date.
Omicron is the natural path of a successful virus - become less lethal but more transmissible - that way it achieves it’s life goal - to multiply.
Things are going wrong for the Mayor. The Mayor has asked for a meeting with the Transport Secretary, who has declined to respond. Its your problem Sadiq.
Londoners - You voted this prat into office. Deal with it.
Some people say that a previous incumbent was or is a buffoon, but he was voted in by Londoners. “The only reason we have got financial problems is because Londoners did the right thing didn’t use public transport, and our fares plummeted.”
So says the “prat” referring to the “buffoon’s” edict during the current pandemic…
Sadiq Khan’s financial mismanagement of TfL was well under way well before the pandemic, certainly by mid-2018. We hadn’t even heard the term covid-19 at that time and nobody imagined a pandemic and lock-down could happen.
Over the last week, an American rapper, Drakeo The Ruler, died form a stab-wound to the neck sustained in Los Angeles. He was the 4th significant rapper or hip-hop artist murdered this year. According to a study by Dianna Theadora Kenny, Professor of Psychology and Music, University of Sydney, homicide is by far the major cause of death amongst rappers etc., accounting for more than half their total deaths.
In fact rapper murders account for the greatest cause of death of all types amongst musical genres of all types. The lowest percentage cause of death by type and musical genre is suicide amongst gospel singers, accounting for only 0.9% of their total deaths, much lower than the suicide rate amongst other popular musical genres.
Yet these two groups both comprise men, ostensibly from the same age demographic and social background, and of course race. Yet their life outcomes are poles apart. The dominance allocated to race by predominantly non-black politicians, journalists, sociologists, cultural commentators and chattering university students is not going to get us anywhere near identifying solutions.
Government says no additional covid restrictions in England before the New Year.
Yet we still don’t know with any certainty what would trigger additional restrictions and what they would be.
The media put little effort into context and politicians are carried along by current popularity. So it takes a bit of effort to understand where we are compared to where we have come from.
Hospitalisations from covid are rising in the UK. Omicron is the main suspect. Covid patient hospitalisations are at 1,171 per day.
But we have seen two peaks of hospitalisation numbers in the past. In April 2020 the same figure was 3,567. In January 2021 it was 4,583. When these figures were attained, the NHS was not overwhelmed. Its hard to believe its going to be overwhelmed now, despite the gloomy projections.
Actually the gloomy predictions were not all that gloomy. It was estimated in the last 2 weeks that if no additional measures were introduced, hospitalisations could peak at 3,000 per day. So even if we did nothing, things would not be as bad as the earlier crises. And it is known as a fact the omicron patients are resident in hospital for shorter periods and fewer of them require ICU beds.
Let’s hope the government are forced to abandon legal coercion as a handy health system management tool, and reserve it for war-time emergencies only. No more lockdowns, no more curfews.
