Letter to the new Health Secretary

Dear Saj

Congratulations on your appointment as Health Secretary. I am glad you intend to make your main priority bringing the pandemic and the special measures it has required to an end. The great success of the vaccines and the vaccination programme make that possible soon.

I have been working on a number of suggestions helpful to combatting and treating the virus, and to seeing off future pandemics which I have put to your predecessor, other Ministers and senior officials. I would be grateful for your thoughts on progress with them.

1. Drug trials of drugs that may have therapeutic value in treating CV 19. After a relatively early breakthrough with dexamethasone, there was a long delay before reaching a positive conclusion on Regeneron. We are still awaiting more news on ivermectin, vitamins C and D and other established drugs.
2.The use of intense UV light cleaners with suitable safety precautions as a means of disinfecting health settings against the virus.
3. The modification of air flow systems in health buildings to ensure early extraction of virus bearing air to cut cross infections in a General hospitals or care homes
4. Improved protocols for the discharge of patients from hospitals to control transmission of infections
5. Designation of some hospitals in populous areas as pandemic hospitals and others as non CV 19 hospitals to make greater use of isolation to cut cross infection

I am also keen to see progress with the restoration of non covid work in hospitals, where there seems to be a substantial variation in rates of non covid work now being achieved.

With best wishes to you in this important new task.

John

119 Comments

  1. turboterrier
    June 28, 2021

    The post is to a lot of peoples mind is a poisoned chalice shades of damned if you’re do and damned if you don’t.
    Unless the new Health Secretary has the mandate to pick his own team and have the power and backing to change/retire existing senior executive staff it will remain same old, same old. The NHS needs to embrace new ideas, ways of operating, and embracing changes similar to those you have highlighted.
    Change is constant but to change everybody across the organisation has to embrace it. Those unwilling to accept the new vision of the HS must be clearly made aware it is change or leave. The HS has a wonderful opportunity to reinvent the organisation, address the waste and drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

    1. oldtimer
      June 28, 2021

      The NHS is a monstrous bureaucracy. The chances of any politician reforming it in any meaningful way are close to zero. Perhaps a new CEO might have a chance if (s)he understands what needs to be done, has political backing to do it and is supported by like minded senior people.

      1. Hope
        June 28, 2021

        OT,
        Javid was useless as community secretary, he increased our taxes year on year through community charges plus add ons ie social adult care flood defence to name two, without any change for improvement whatsoever. Useless as Home Secretary, he got rid of detention centres for asylum seekers and helped create the mess Patel is so miserably failing our nation on and was a disaster as chancellor with a terrible economic record in all areas. He has no credible success as a minister to justify being Health Secretary. Still he is a friend of Carrey.

        1. forthurst
          June 28, 2021

          Before he became Chancellor he was responsible for not breaking up RBS and Lloyds. Instead,
          customers were offered taxpayer funded bribes to take their business to ‘challenger’ banks, one of which has been inviting customers to leave with a month’s notice and no explanation. Telling customers to take their business elsewhere must be the crassest way for any government to deal with monopolism resulting from accretion.

    2. Nig l
      June 28, 2021

      +1

    3. SM
      June 28, 2021

      Seconded.

    4. MiC
      June 28, 2021

      What a complete, disgraceful, degenerate, shambles, of an excuse for a government we have.

      1. Edward2
        June 28, 2021

        You are in a minority MiC
        As usual.

    5. MiC
      June 28, 2021

      It is the shabby circumstances of the change of post holder which will be foremost in many people’s minds and rightly so.

      1. Edward2
        June 28, 2021

        Why is that shabby?
        The PM has the ability and right to replace ministers who resign or who are sacked.

  2. Newmania
    June 28, 2021

    I like Mr Javid actually, he seems a pragmatic, competent man, unlikely to do anything silly. A word on his predecessor; I have often failed to live up to standards I recommend for others and done things of which I am now ashamed. Perhaps he had to go but, honestly, I would rather live in a society where you can get stoned then commit adultery, than commit adultery and as a consequence get stoned ….bum tsk !
    The Conservative Party used to understand we are all fallen creatures. The current mood reminds me of of Life of Brian
    “There aren`t any women here are there ? ”
    “No no (low voices) no no ..Stone im Stone im !”

    Let he ( or she ) who is without sin ..and all that .

    1. Cheshire Girl
      June 28, 2021

      Yes, but I think the Media had it in for Matt Hancock from the start. They made sure that every move he made that didn’t please them, was emblazoned all over the papers.

      They are a sanctimonious bunch, and will already be lining up their next victim. They won’t be satisfied until we have a Labour government, which is their intention.

      No one is safe from them, and their hypocritical attempts to report ‘the truth’.

      1. hefner
        June 28, 2021

        Oh yes, PPE procurement shortages, the Covid-sick sent back to care homes without testing, a centralised and outsourced trace and test system costing about ÂŁ20bn, absolutely brilliant successes I imagine.
        As for the vaccination, the vaccines were not developed nor produced by the DHSC, but by university and pharma, the subsequent vaccination program decided, developed and monitored by Kate Bingham DCE.

        So, tell me, what potion are you taking? Ignorance, blindness, stupidity, the fear of reds of bed (as if!)? And who is the sanctimonious ignorant one here?

        1. Hope
          June 29, 2021

          +1

          prophylactics still not rolled out which are very cheap (article about ivermectin in con woman today) and proven to be a valid against Chinese virus.

    2. No Longer Anonymous
      June 28, 2021

      Cack !

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        June 28, 2021

        Summer is slipping away.

        The man who helped most to perpetuate lockdown turns out to have had a vested interest in doing so.

        It is plausible that he was showing off in front of his new girl friend and lockdown provided exactly the romantic backdrop and opportunity to peacock in order to woo her.

        We did everything that was asked of us including a world beating vaccine roll out.

        Still, it was not good enough for him.

        I can now see why Parliament being restored to normality might have spoilt things for Mr Hancock and taken the ultimate aphrodisiac from him – power.

        Even if I am wrong he’s certainly given us reason to speculate.

        1. No Longer Anonymous
          June 29, 2021

          It is now beyond dispute that the Health Secretary responsible for the most stringent loss of freedoms in peacetime had – early on – made calculated moves to live out his fantasy and deliberately breach those rules while even the Queen had to sit alone at her husband’s funeral.

          The Tory Party is now a disgrace.

          This is way beyond Major’s sleaze and it is crippling our country economically and emotionally.

    3. Nig l
      June 28, 2021

      I think you are missing the point. It was the hypocrisy. Someone else did it, he suggested it was a police matter. His rules but for everyone else. Credibility zero.

    4. Micky Taking
      June 28, 2021

      what about ‘hands, face, space’ ?

      1. X-Tory
        June 28, 2021

        That was just a typo. It was meant to be ‘Snog, grope, poke’ …

        1. Jim Whitehead
          June 28, 2021

          And bumping elbows, on the floor. . . .

      2. Timaction
        June 28, 2021

        Also reported as hands, space, my place!

    5. acorn
      June 28, 2021

      What’s the betting he will stay any longer in this job than he did as Home Secretary or Chancellor?

    6. Dave Andrews
      June 28, 2021

      Stoning would be too severe in Hancock’s case, but he deserves to be flogged for the harm he’s caused his wife and family.
      Better though he says sorry to his wife and she forgives him and takes him back, knowing that in her lifetime she also has done wrong.
      Mercy triumphs over judgement.

      1. Grist
        June 28, 2021

        Well said, sir

    7. beresford
      June 28, 2021

      Hancock didn’t have to go because of adultery, he had to go because of hypocrisy. Telling the rest of us we had to socially distance etc. then groping his assistant.

      1. X-Tory
        June 28, 2021

        You clearly haven’t understood that he didn’t have to go because a minor lockdown breach (hypocritical though that was) but because of the extremely serious breach of rules in using a private (and hence secretive) email address to conduct government business, including the allocation of large contracts. This was what did it for him, not a silly little bit of snogging and groping in the office.

      2. paul cuthbertson
        June 28, 2021

        Hancock was totally incompetent for the position, as is his successor but who else is available? You have to do your research to find out the real truth about Hancock and his connections.

    8. Ian Wragg
      June 28, 2021

      I hope his pragmatism and financial background means he will push for early lifting of restrictions.
      All credibility has gone now with Herr Gruper resigning. All the time lecturing us on what we can and can’t do whilst ignoring his own instructions.
      I hope Javid realises that the country is not here to protect the monstrosity which is the NHS but it is there to serve us.
      It seems Carrie Antoinette is still pulling the strings.

  3. Mark B
    June 28, 2021

    Good morning.

    As with turboterrier the new Health Secretary needs to surround himself with the right people. People who can give the right advice on viruses and pandemics, not behavioural scientists, and dodgy mathematicians.

    We also need to establish an open plan of action when other countries report highly infectious diseases. A plan that the HS can implement along with all other relevant government departments. Such and open plan could be monitored with measurable degrees of success and failure and amended to suit.

    One thing is to be hoped for, that this change will itself bring about change.

  4. Andy
    June 28, 2021

    PS: there’s a secret camera in your office – so best not get up to any ‘funny business’.

    1. Glenn Vaughan
      June 28, 2021

      Is there a secret camera in your parent’s spare bedroom where you appear to spend most of your time?

  5. Peter
    June 28, 2021

    I would be grateful to know why we still cannot walk into a doctors surgery. Dentists have been back in business for ages now.

    With doctors you just get fobbed off with telephone queue to speak to a receptionist. Emails to the surgery go unanswered.

    1. Peter
      June 28, 2021

      +1 – obviously not you!!

    2. agricola
      June 28, 2021

      Peter, the vast majority of dentists are private, outside the orbit of the NHS though having tentative connections. It is much the same for eyes and ears, until something serious is detected. All these services are operating on a face to face basis but with masks. Your pets have no problem. It remains an almost instant service but at a price, due to insurance costs and drug / vetinary costs largely due to the structure of the service. It is a cartel of large companies.

      At this point in the vaccination coverage I too wonder why GPs are only accessable on their decision. I doubt if my GP in Spain has gone to ground in my absense. Maybe much has been learnt during the pandemic and a new user friendly GP service will emerge. The key is to be able to make your case with your GP service by phone or by email without delay and for an intelligent response to be forthcoming within two hours. It is important that patients, out of frustration, do not feel obliged to try the A&E route which is there for serious immediate problems.
      We then come to what the doctor can do before needing to resort to more specialist examination. My UK practice has at least 16 doctors but no xray machine or access to instant blood tests. Delays are in the order of one month, which is akin to taking your car to the garage on 1/5 and them not doing anything until 1/6. The answer is to make your own appointment with Count Dracula at the local hospital and get a 48 hour service by appointment. For xrays and further specialist investigation the route is to go private and get a next week appointment. For financial reasons not open to all.

      The key to any serious medical condition is early diagnosis and comensurate action. It is normally the most cost effective route. Compare it with a hole in the roof, the longer it is left the more serious it gets.

      We need to look at the extent of what our GP services can do before moving on to greater specialisms. Why not ask them. We need to improve initial access and response. Accept that the real crunch is the hospital/specialist waiting delay through limitations of capacity and professional input. I have already suggested possibilities in this area.

    3. MiC
      June 28, 2021

      I think that it might be crucially because they get paid the same whether you do or not.

      There may be other reasons advanced, but that is the key, I reckon.

    4. Dennis
      June 28, 2021

      One could and still can walk into Specsavers any time and get tests this past year – why not GPs?

  6. agricola
    June 28, 2021

    I am not qualified to comment on most of the points you mention.

    However suggestions on clearing the backlog of normal work . Capacity and demand will vary throughout the country. An audit of both and matching, plus moving patients around might speed things up. Use of the private sector for diagnosis and cure might help. Inviting surgeons from known areas of excellence on annual sabaticals might enable greater use of facilities. Finally why not fly patients for routine operations to known countries of excellence and spare capacity. With so much travel capacity sat on the ground it could be an inexpensive option.

    Long term we need free education and training to encourage many more into the NHS.

    How about a territorial nursing service that could run Nightingale isolation hospitals if needed, and help the NHS as required compatable with their normal life responsibilities. Ask the military how it is done.

    1. a-tracy
      June 28, 2021

      Agricola, why should medical degree students get free tuition but no-one else in England. Wouldn’t it be better that if they take a job in the NHS the NHS is allowed whilst working for them to pay the 9% tuition fee graduation tax over the lel to the authorities, then if they take private work they pay the graduate tax on the element that is not public service?

      1. J Bush
        June 28, 2021

        Why do nurses need a degree? If I recall correctly this was brought in during the Blair era, along with how he was going to run it along ‘production lines’. I said at the time, you can’t treat people like a unit on an assembly line, add a component, wire, nut and bolt it – Next! It’s dehumanising and ‘bed managers’ is just one of the things that confirm it.

        I would much prefer to see the NHS return to the original tried and proven method of SEN and SRN ‘on the job training’, when people were patients. There are a lot of people out there with a natural inborn caring nature, but can’t afford, for numerous reasons, to take a degree; which doesn’t add anything that they couldn’t learn from ‘on the job training’.

        I also disapprove of taking the medically qualified from 2nd and 3rd world countries. It’s selfish, those countries need them.

      2. Narrow Shoulders
        June 28, 2021

        That would increase the cost of doctors to the NHS by 9% grossed up for tax and ni so closer to 15%.

        I would rather see the student loans company bear the cost of doctors’ repayments while they work in the NHS. This cam be taken from the 6% interest rates that are being fleeced from students.

        1. a-tracy
          June 29, 2021

          I take your point NS, It is a degree level paid job after all, Band 5 nursing roles apply to newly qualified Nurses. The current starting salary for a Band 5 Nurse is ÂŁ24,907.5 Jan 2021, I believe there was an increase to that in April 2021. For a full-time 37.5 hours per week, often done in 3 days. Including the [ 20-25% employer contribution to their defined benefit pension], 35 days holiday for 5 years then 37 days for a further five years then 41 days holiday after ten years. Full sick pay for six months and half pay for the next six months, weekend rates, night rates, and other perks and benefits that you can check out on Nursing Today. 1.5 x overtime rate, plus 2 x bank holidays. On-call payments. High-cost area supplements. Increases are often done through pay bands each year.

          These rates are equivalent to other degree starting level positions if not higher with the pension.

    2. SM
      June 28, 2021

      Although moving patients around seems like a good idea at first glance, it is very unlikely to work in practice, even in non-pandemic times.

      For many of the more complex procedures, tests have to be done 24 or 48hrs before an operation, then check-ups need to take place afterwards, so the patient needs to be within relatively close proximity to their hospital in order to travel to and from home. There is also the rarely-mentioned problem of several doctors within the same speciality having different opinions on methods and drug prescriptions – both I and others have experienced consultants yelping “who on earth prescribed that/cut you like that/recommended you did what???”

  7. Dave Andrews
    June 28, 2021

    I’ve come to the conclusion the best way to deal with possible contamination in the workplace is a ventilation system with heat scavenging. I’m sceptical about UV units, as the time taken to deactivate the virus is much longer than the time taken for air to circulate through them.
    Different rules might apply to hospitals, where the air exhaust contains virus for certain and constitutes a public health hazard.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      June 28, 2021

      The death rate is now way below car accidents and murders.

      1. Micky Taking
        June 28, 2021

        tripping up stairs and kerbs must run it close.

      2. glen cullen
        June 28, 2021

        …and they don’t record deaths of road traffic accidents within 28 days

  8. agricola
    June 28, 2021

    The other area is the administration of the NHS, for which they await a new chief. Not another time served civil servant I pray.
    Why not talk to the lady who organised the vaccination programme, she could tell wood from trees. Pay her enough and give her a hand free of politics to cut it down to an efficient working size.

    1. rose
      June 28, 2021

      She was given such a vile time by the media that I don’t think she’ll be back. Cummings said now she’s gone, the Blob have taken back control of the vaccines. It was the blob briefing against her all along.

  9. Nig l
    June 28, 2021

    I guess the words ‘put to ministers and officials etc’ means that you have had zero response. Shameful, another indictment added to Hancock’s charge sheet. Well done you for keeping banging on. I suspect many of us would want other things to be done as well, start truly a reform programme but this is a good start.

    Brandon Lewis was on auto cliche yesterday saying Hancock was putting his family first, maybe not doing it and then telling his wife only because he was to be exposed would have been truly family first. The woeful Lewis only criticised him when Trevor Phillips used a sad personal anecdote. A transparent thick skinned Lewis was exposed for what he is with previously Truss. Shapps, Jenrick etc all saying it’s a private matter.

    No it bloody well isn’t. Tim Stanley got it right this morning. If the Secretary of State does not follow his own rules which apparently the rest of the Cabinet thinks is ok, why should we?

    Nick Timothy spot on as well in the DT, honesty and integrity being sacrificed for self service. The public is seething with resentment. This should be the subject of your next letter to every Minister as they are all self servers.

    1. Peter
      June 28, 2021

      NigL

      Yes Tim Stanley was correct. Adultery probably matters more to conservative voters than politicians. Either way, it is completely unacceptable to try to use that adultery as a sympathy ploy and then ask for privacy and it just will not wash with the general public.

      The nature of the marriage break up sounds fairly blunt for the wife who was left with long covid and the children, who were apparently woken up to be told daddy is leaving.

      It is ridiculous to pretend this is just about a breach of social distancing although the imposition of these rules ruined lives across the country.

      Politicians at their most brazen.

    2. rose
      June 28, 2021

      How many people are seething because they have been manipulated into seething by the media; and how many people are seething at our living in a country where spying and denunciation are now common, where humiliation is a national sport, where hatred comes as second nature, and where there is no longer any due process? This is how the Cultural Revolution started. Eventually people were too scared not to join in the denunciations, not to dissociate themselves from the victims. This should all worry us a lot more than those distancing guidelines..

  10. The Prangwizard
    June 28, 2021

    The new Health Secretary for the UK? For England? And who are you speaking for Sir John?

  11. Nig l
    June 28, 2021

    Ps. Having arrogantly thought Hancock could brazen it out and supporting him with the collective line ‘he hasn’t broken any rules, we now see the frantic efforts by the Cabinet (daily Mail) to say that they didn’t support him really and that they were one of the reasons he resigned.

    What utter bollocks. It was because of mass public outrage. Just like the expenses scandal, equally contemptuous. The gap between politicians and the public has never been wider.

    If MPs, with honourable exceptions treated their electorate as people to represent rather than a self serving career trying to climb the political ladder, these messes wouldn’t happen and we might see real change and improvement. I advise people not to hold their breath.

    Reply P:rsesure from MPs to whips and Ministers was an important part of the resignation decision

    1. Micky Taking
      June 28, 2021

      reply to reply….So Johnson and Hancock intended to sit it out? What sort of a Government is pressured over a cheap snog in a private office, compared to a series of cock-ups that go unpunished?

      1. hefner
        June 28, 2021

        Easy peasy, most people have a view on extramarital affairs they can explain pretty clearly. A much more limited fraction of the population can discuss the actual details of contracts given to chums, of the actual responsibility at different levels of the NHS, of the intricacies of developing and distributing vaccines, 
 so a smokescreen is easy to draw on the second set of matters. On a snog in the workplace, there is not so many ways to find a convenient ‘scientific’ or ‘economic’ escape way.

    2. The Prangwizard
      June 28, 2021

      Let’s face it. The state of the administration is down to ‘Boris’ and his cavalier and careless approach to all things. He has obviously given the impression that his ministers and his givernment in general can just do what tbe hell they like in terms of decency and integrity if they think they can get away with it.

      1. Timaction
        June 28, 2021

        Boris has no morals or scruples as he has repeatedly shown throughout his adult life. Therefore no conscience and unfit for high office.

    3. Zorro
      June 28, 2021

      Lesson learned hopefully – oppose these restrictions instead of supinely supporting them and they will be lifted – job done.

      Zorro

  12. Maylor
    June 28, 2021

    Sir John, thank you for your ongoing work on ways to improve the government’s handling of the virus.

    These measures are especially important as information from highly vaccinated countries like Israel and the Seychelles suggest that further outbreaks are spreading throughout the population causing the reintroduction of lockdown measures.

    1. Everhopeful
      June 28, 2021

      “Leaky” old jab!

    2. paul cuthbertson
      June 28, 2021

      Maylor – Wake up, turn off the TV and do your own research. Truth will prevail.

  13. Everhopeful
    June 28, 2021

    I should think that he is very grateful to the sane 80 MPs?
    A brilliant coup!
    He must do one thing to gain the undying love of the nation.
    End lockdown. Now!
    He will surely be PM if he does?

  14. Sea_Warrior
    June 28, 2021

    Dear Mr Javid,

    Please ask for an early briefing on emerging ‘sniffer’ technology and ask to see the Health Department’s plan for rolling it out across the land – particularly at airports, where it could do away with the requirement for pre-departure and post-arrival COVID testing. If there is no plan, start replacing people.

    Yours,

    A frustrated non-traveller in need of a holiday

  15. Old Albion
    June 28, 2021

    Quote.

    Dear Saj
    Congratulations on your appointment as Health Secretary. I am glad you intend to make your main priority bringing the pandemic and the special measures it has required to an end. The great success of the vaccines and the vaccination programme make that possible soon. Endquote.

    Looks like Bojo has already slapped him down on that.

  16. MFD
    June 28, 2021

    Was that the success of the great experiment in killing 1398 healthy people in early life, Sir!

    The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is not being told

  17. Alan Jutson
    June 28, 2021

    I wish him well, but do not think much will change in the short term at all, the existing HNS is too large an organisation to turn anything around quickly, but a fresh mind can help if it is applied correctly.

  18. Bryan Harris
    June 28, 2021

    All good points.

    He should also take a fresh look at everything and not assume his predecessor was right about anything.

    The review into the whole pandemic should be brought forward as an emergency requirement.

    1. Martin In Manchester
      June 28, 2021

      I’ll just rewrite that comment. It should read.
      ‘He should take a fresh look, but assume that his predecessor was wrong about everything’

      1. Bryan Harris
        June 29, 2021

        @MinM
        ++

  19. BJC
    June 28, 2021

    Clearly, in order to achieve anything resembling success, Mr Javid will need to understand his true baseline. I’m hoping his 2 week “induction” will see the transformation of data into something robust and relevant and that we no longer hear statements that imply hospital admissions and deaths are due to directly to Covid, rather than data relating to obsessive testing.

    In the longer term, I’m hopeful that as a businessman he’ll have the nous to dismiss all the waffle as to why the NHS can’t (meaning won’t) adapt to modern demands. I’m also expecting some major clashes and threats coming from the unions, whose raison d’etre is to secure very advantageous terms for very little productivity! This particularly applies to its terminally incompetent administration, which operates to protect its fiefdom not in support of the varying needs of clinicians.

  20. Mike Wilson
    June 28, 2021

    Is Javid any good? He doesn’t fill me with confidence. He always has a bit of a ‘rabbit caught in the headlights’ demeanour. What did he achieve as Home Secretary?

  21. glen cullen
    June 28, 2021

    Changing jockeys mid race on the same horse & course achieves little

    Nobody asked for reform of the NHS and its approach to ‘covid’ last week, so why are the media expecting Sajid to change things this week when Matts resignation was due to extra curriculum activity

  22. Mark Thomas
    June 28, 2021

    Sir John,
    Last year the recently departed Health Secretary had been very quick to deride the Great Barrington Declaration, which he arrogantly described as just wrong.
    I hope the new Health Secretary will take a more open-minded, and mature, approach and accept a greater diversity of opinion from acknowledged experts.

    1. hefner
      June 28, 2021

      I just hope the new Health Secretary will also be aware of comments by Dr Anthony Fauci and/or Dr David Nabarro, as I have some doubts about the exact qualifications of, for example, Prof Cominic Dummings and Prof Notaf Uckingclue to serve as distinguished experts.

  23. DOM
    June 28, 2021

    John creates the rather casual and unnerving impression that all is well with the world. The odious hypocrite Johnson replaces the rank hypocrite Hancock and then thanks him for his efforts. Yes, thanks him for politicising a virus to expose us to civil and political harm. And now John pats Hancock’s replacement on the head like he’s a hero come to save us once more. The replacement is just another drone politician without a moral compass. We’ve had enough of these people.

    I have genuine respect for John Redwood and that is a sincerely held opinion but It cannot be denied that at times his backing for certain policy decisions stinks of double standards especially when one considers his political and moral values. Yes, it’s politics some may way but this is no longer about conventional politics but about a form extremist politics that uses the most pernicious and strategies that wouldn’t look out of place in East Germany under Marxist totalitarianism.

    People want to speak out about what they now know to be a class of politicians and their outriders that is targeting ancient freedoms, identity and voice. It is simply UNACCEPTABLE that real world civilians outside of the narrow confines of Westminster should be subject to such neo-Marxist impositions

    1. SM
      June 28, 2021

      Has anyone attempted to smother your regular bouts of hyperbole regarding ‘neo-Marxist impositions’?

      They seem to pop up here with wearying frequency.

    2. Richard
      June 28, 2021

      Well said Dom. The phrase ‘build back better’ was first used at Davos in January 2019.
      And Klaus Schwab’s wishes for humanity are well documented.

  24. beresford
    June 28, 2021

    We could also do with a ‘Coughs and sneezes spread diseases’ public information campaign, including urging employers and hospitality venues to send any offenders home.

  25. oldwulf
    June 28, 2021

    Sir

    It is disappointing that Mr Hancock did not resign as soon as he was publicly caught out and that No 10 procrastinated about his departure. Something might have been salvaged from this mess and they sent the wrong signal to us plebs.

    I believe another wrong signal is the potential relaxing of covid rules for UEFA “dignitaries” and others. I am a football supporter but I recognise that football is not sufficiently important as to warrant the override of the current rules which apply to the rest of us. Whether the rules should be quickly changed for everyone is another matter. I wish the new Health Secretary luck with that.

    Then there was the shenanigans of G7. Don’t get me started.

  26. Sakara Gold
    June 28, 2021

    “bringing the pandemic and the special measures it has required to an end” If only!

    The number of new cases is again rapidly rising; the current seven day average has risen to 14865. Hospitalisations and deaths are lagging, as is usual at the start of another wave – but their trends are up. Particulary concerning are the hospitalisations of those who have had both their jabs, but have been exposed to community spread and have caught the highly contagious new Delta variant.

    Andrew Marr, the BBC presenter, announced on his program yesterday that he had a “nasty bout” of the virus and had been “really ill” but had eventually recovered. He was lucky. Estimates in the press this weekend varied, but 35% – 50% of those hospitalised so far have had their double jab.

    We will certainly not bring the Chinese plague virus epidemic to an end here by again prematurely ending the current lockdown restrictions. On the contrary, they should be renewed with vigour – because as long feared, thanks to the failure of Grant Shapps’ border control/quarantine procedures and Test and Trace, the government in it’s incompetence has managed to breed a variant which can evade the vacines.

    1. Zorro
      June 28, 2021

      Had he been tested for it as he described it as summer cold like from memory. I see also that sneezing and a runny nose are listed as symptoms at this time of year. Fancy that!

      Zorro

  27. Sakara Gold
    June 28, 2021

    Andrew Marr also announced that he had received his double jab

    1. Mary M.
      June 28, 2021

      Sakara, Surely you’re not saying that the ‘vaccines’ don’t work?

      1. Sakara Gold
        June 28, 2021

        We appear to have bred a variant that is capable of defeating the vaccines, yes. The India variant has mutated, as has long been feared. With a lockdown skeptical health minister, we are going to have another bad winter

  28. a-tracy
    June 28, 2021

    If Javid wants to be immediately popular he should offer people that aren’t double jabbed because of their age and in the vaccination roll-out but have a single jab a free airport, train station covid test with two free home packs for days 2 and 5. The amounts that are being charged for this service in the UK are obscene when in France you can get the same test in a pharmacy, turned around in 30 minutes with a certificate for 30 euros. That your government condones this health test rip off is a poor show.

    1. hefner
      June 28, 2021

      +1

  29. Bob Duxon
    June 28, 2021

    We have no control over those attending the euro final at Wembley. This assumes that the virus is no longer a danger.
    Can our MP’s attend The HOC in person?

    Reply Our staff are still barred. MPs can go to the building but only around 25 MPs on each side can sit in the chamber.

    1. paul cuthbertson
      June 28, 2021

      Reply to reply – our staff are still barred…. BY whom and on what basis. All total BS.

      1. rose
        June 28, 2021

        Presumably by the Speaker and others, including laymen, on his committee. It seems to be a powerful little committee but I con’t know when it acquired these powers which used to be held by MPs in the Chamber.

  30. Annette
    June 28, 2021

    All of your suggestions should have been put in place back in March last year. The question is why not, and why have the majority of MPs ignored the obvious?
    The simple fact that logical actions have not been taken, whilst there has been a deliberate suppression of cheap & effective alternatives begs the question of Cui Bono, who benefits? Certainly a few people have made plenty of money, & seem to be enjoying control over a compliant & trusting people – well mainly the frightened elderly & mainly law-abiding people wanting a quiet life & who still ‘trust’ those in power to do the right thing.

    The vested interests of those funded by the public purse are perpetuating this as they are having a ‘good’ lockdown. Haven’t lost a penny in pay, in fact MPs were given bonuses of 10k for ‘hardship, no travel to work & easy to skive off. I’ve heard teachers, who live either side of me, giggling as they discussed over the fence that as long as they log in for five mins, the rest of the day was theirs.
    45 mins on the phone to make an appt, which would normally take 3 mins, because the wfh call centre have to message one another and await a response. I’m sure that you’ve heard tons of similar abuses. Meanwhile SME & independents (our largest employers) are being deliberately destroyed & ‘forbidden’ from properly making a living.
    Why has everyone, including MPs, forgotten the most basic facts & not questioning the insanity? Officially, this virus is NOT an HCID. It was downgraded to the level of the flu last March, BEFORE the first lockdown ‘for 3 weeks’. Whilst extremely serious for those, particularly the elderly & those with co-morbidities, the rest of the population has a 99.9% chance of survival.
    Why is no MP questioning the main driver of this ‘pandemic’, the dodgy PCR test ramped up to 45 cycles whenever there’s a need for more ‘cases’? ‘Cases’ which are neither clinically diagnosed nor result in hospitalisation, let alone death.
    Kids will be kids & they’ve already found that almost any fizzy drink will return a positive result & another handy 10 days off school.

    The vulnerable have all been injected, those that want or were coerced into it. The continuation of this madness is that those in power
    a) have created a new money-spinning industry that they don’t want to stop,
    b) they enjoy their tyrannical power over people whilst the rules don’t apply to ‘important’ people, and
    c) they do not work for the people but for vested interests.
    If Javid does not call a halt to this madness, he too will join the primary culprits of this heinous crime.

  31. X-Tory
    June 28, 2021

    Sir John,

    1. I am very disappointed that you did not specifically mention the Synairgen drug in your letter. I have told you about this a number of times. To repeat myself, Synairgen is British biotech spinout from Southampton University which has patented a way to deliver interferon-beta through a nebuliser directly into the lungs (where it is needed). Interferon-beta is a well-established antiviral treatment, and Synairgen’s drug (SNG001) has been proven to be safe (not surprising, given the long-established safety record of interferon-beta) and was 100% effective against Covid in the small-scale, placebo controlled Phase II trials. It is now undergoing Phase III trials, with a specific emphasis on the Indian variant. You can read about it in the Telegraph here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/31/southampton-biotech-starts-trials-indian-covid-variant-treatment/

    Given that this treatment (i) has been proven to be 100% safe, and (ii) has been proven to be 100% effective in a small trial, what we now need is a large trial – and what better than the largest trial possible: distribution to EVERY Covid patient! It cannot do any harm, and can only help, so why not be imaginative and pro-active and adopt it for general use NOW?! That is what I would like to see you propose to the new Health Secretary. Will you do so?

    2. I agree with the comment in your Twitter feed on your website (I no longer visit your actual Twitter page as you have allowed this to become infested with vile trolls who spout nothing but abuse and make your Twitter page a horrible place to go to) that tales of Sajid’s supposed hostilty to lockdown are greatly exaggerated. He has always been a lot better at self-aggrandisement than at actual governance. It was he who created his own nickname (‘the Saj’) to promote his image – how pitiful is that?! I do not trust him at all. Just like Priti Useless and all the rest of them, they are all talk and no action. If he really was opposed to lockdowns he would go public with his support for the lifting of all restrictions on 5 July. But of course he will not do so, as all he cares about is promoting his own career, and absolutely nothing else.

    1. Zorro
      June 28, 2021

      Good points – well made – some inhaler treatments help alleviate the disease as well apparently (budesonide)

      Zorro

    2. rose
      June 28, 2021

      I don’t agree about Priti Patel. She is doing her best but is completely hamstrung by historic legislation and treaties which the Health Secretary is not. On the contrary, the 1984 Health Act has bequeathed him near dictatorial powers. Would that she had half the power he has – to sort out the illegal immigration crisis. (He was supposed to have solved that, remember?)

      1. steve
        June 28, 2021

        Rose

        “I don’t agree about Priti Patel. She is doing her best but is completely hamstrung by historic legislation”

        We shall see when the truth is out….’somebody’ high-up ordered a RN to go into French territorial waters and collect immigrants. Was it Ms Patel or was it Johnson ?

        Woever it was is going to have to resign.

  32. X-Tory
    June 28, 2021

    One more important point, Sir John: your reference to vitamin D is too vague and allows the blinkered Dept of Health civil servants (who will prepare Sajid’s reply to you) to dismiss this all too easily. The point is that while large doses of standard vitamin D3 – as can be bought over the counter and self-administered – has some prophylactic benefit, the treatment that needs to be administered to those who have become infected is the vitamin D variant known as CALCIFEDIOL. This is the bio-active form created from vitamin D3 in the liver. A proper, rigorous, study undertaken in a Spanish hospital found that calcifediol reduced the risk of mortality by a whopping 64%! Here is a reputable link with all the details: https://hospitalhealthcare.com/covid-19/calcifediol-vitamin-d-appears-to-improve-outcomes-in-covid-19/ Calcifediol is cheap and safe and should be administered to all Covid patients. Perhaps you could clarify this to Sajid Javid?

  33. Denis Cooper
    June 28, 2021

    Off-topic, the EU wants to use the minor problem of the Irish border to trap us in its regulatory framework:

    https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2021/0628/1231742-sefcovic-protocol-stormont/

    With the promise that this would not prevent us from making our own trade deals, because in that event:

    “… we would understand and we would say, ok in that case we’ll go back to the checks and controls …”.

    Did I say “promise”? Of course I meant “threat”.

    Once again there is the old “There is no alternative” chestnut, but Graham Gudgin suggests otherwise:

    https://briefingsforbritain.co.uk/the-steps-hmg-needs-to-take-on-the-irish-protocol/

    “Mutual Enforcement entails each side making a reciprocal legal commitment to enforce the rules of the other with respect (only) to trade across the border. Each side maintains autonomy – but commits to the enforcement of whatever rules the other seeks to impose in respect of goods crossing the border.
    It would be unlawful (even a criminal offence) for a trader in Ireland to export a good to Northern Ireland (or vice versa) without complying with the latter’s rules and duties. HMRC would collect all duties for the benefit of Irish customs authorities. And regulatory compliance for exports would be enforced.”

    1. Garret
      June 28, 2021

      Whether we like it or not we are trapped into alignment with them thats if we want to trade with them.. did they not already point out a long time ago.. there will be no cherry picking allowed.. and as far as they are concerned we can neve be as well off in our dealings with them as we were before..

      1. Denis Cooper
        June 29, 2021

        What about all the other countries round the world which do not align with them, are they unable to trade with them?

  34. nota#
    June 28, 2021

    This is me being churlish – the New Health Secretary whom I guess has a place in the UK Government. Weirdly the position has no authority in Wales, Scotland and NI. Isn’t that just an English Health position then?

    1. rose
      June 28, 2021

      No, this has been put about by the media to oblige the separatists. The Health Secretary is the Health Secretary for the United Kingdom, in the United Kingdom Government. There is no administration or assembly for England. If he were not acting for the whole Kingdom, how come the vaccines were procured for the whole Kingdom, with money from HM Treasury, which also acts for the whole Kingdom, hence the furlough money going to the devocracies as well. If you examine the health policies of the devocrats, they are not so different from that of the Government, which is not surprising, as the devocrats come to London to get their intelligence, money, medicines, and vaccines. They go to COBR meetings and talk to the UK scientists. Above all they listen to the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Of course the Welsh and Scottish ones then call press conferences to deceive the public into thinking how independent they are and how much they are deviating. But is all a deception.

      1. rose
        June 29, 2021

        It would have been better if HMG had acted under emergency powers, rather than the 1984 Health Act. Then there would have been no opportunities for the devocrats to pretend they were independent countries. Instead, they would have kicked up merry hell about the Government having those powers. They would have used the situation to advance their separatism in a very different way.

  35. nota#
    June 28, 2021

    “2.The use of intense UV light cleaners”

    More enlightened countries use this lighting actually inside ventilation systems, bus shelters even. The New York subway is cleaned each evening in a similar manor. A simple way of bringing Public Transport back on stream.

    The UK is good at ‘Grand Standing’ but short on action.

  36. forthurst
    June 28, 2021

    Why should we expect someone who has studied politics or PPE ( highfalutin politics) at university to be any good at administration when they have no technical knowledge to support their otherwise layman’s knowledge and competence, yet the government and civil service and its associated quangos are riddled with these people who are constantly moving around and obtaining promotions irrespective of performance?

    In other professions, a long period of specific training is required because people do not expect surgeons to remove the wrong organs or buildings or bridges to collapse or the lights to go out continuously. This is because specific training and professional standards exist for crucial practitioners.

    We are being held back by the rank amateurism of those who control the commanding heights of the economy and our future as a first world country. Instead of one politician giving advice to another on technical matters, we need a conversation about how to remove the lack of professionalism from the governance of our country.

  37. paul
    June 28, 2021

    Are you to get back the powers you give away john, on the 19th july, the so called freedon day or are they never coming back to the people parliament and under the rules of emergency measure no election is needed, are you ok with that.

  38. Barbara
    June 28, 2021

    The so-called ‘pandemic’ (actually a misnomer, as retired professor of clinical pathology Dr John Lee and others have pointed out, since a pandemic is when dead bodies are piling up in the streets) will never end until those in charge stop using the LFT (lateral flow test, which is a 50/50: as covid has never been identified or sequenced, you might as well toss a coin) and the VERY VERY inaccurate PCR test, which 1) cannot distinguish between live and dead matter, so is no use for diagnostic testing or testing current levels of infection and 2) is an amplification tool which is even more inaccurate when used over cycles of c. 28 amplifications (we have been using it at up to 45 cycles). Its inventor said it should never be used for this purpose. Instead, govt and SAGE refer to it as ‘gold standard’. A PCR test does not identify infections – it simply amplifies a given sample until there is a lot more of it.

    The whole ‘pandemic’, hysteria over ‘increasing numbers of infections’, etc, is driven by the VERY INACCURATE PCR test being used for an inappropriate purpose and throwing up huge numbers of false positives, a fact which the government and civil service continuously (deliberately?) fail to understand, even when the WHO pointed this out.

    Remove the inaccurate and inappropriate mass testing and there are no ‘infections’ and no ‘pandemic’.

    A ruling by the Lisbon court publicised yesterday revealed that only 0.9% of supposedly ‘verified cases’ died of COVID, numbering 152, and not 17,000 as was claimed by the government.

  39. paul cuthbertson
    June 28, 2021

    Sajiv Javid is a politician. I do not trust ANY of them especially him.

  40. DaveM
    June 28, 2021

    Mr R,

    I look at this website every day: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ and have noticed that for the last 2 or 3 weeks the Hospital Admissions statistic hasn’t been updated daily (unlike all the other stats). Do you know why? Is there something we’re not allowed to know?!

    1. glen cullen
      June 28, 2021

      Maybe its because the number is so low it doesn’t fit there narrative

  41. Freeborn John
    June 28, 2021

    The EU appears to expect the U.K. to permanently align withEU regulations in order to resolve the problem they have made in Northern Ireland. This is completely unacceptable. With Merkel due in Chequers very soon it is imperative that pressure is put on the PM to make it clear to Merkel and the EU that regulatory alignment is not an option.

    1. glen cullen
      June 28, 2021

      Its the EU level playing field and NIP agreements our government signed

    2. Garret
      June 28, 2021

      Freeborn John.. it’s we who made the problem in NI.. and the solution is the Protocol agreed between EU and UK.. don’t know what the problem is?.. if we really want to avoid alignment with the EU 27 then we don’t have to trade with them. We know the way it works.. we were there for forty five years with them making the rules

  42. paul cuthbertson
    June 28, 2021

    Hydrochloroquine and Ivermectin were mentioned at the very begining of this so called pandemic but ignored by the W.H.O. and others. Ask yourself why.
    The so called pandemic will end when the Establishment decide or fall.
    Nothing can stop what is coming, Nothing.

  43. Dennis
    June 28, 2021

    As the Hancock video was made on May 6th, I think, why was it not revealed just before or during the G7 meeting to really stir things up?

  44. rose
    June 28, 2021

    All very good pertinent points by you to the new Health Secretary in the House today. I can’t remember what his answer was. Was it “Yes”?

  45. Richard
    June 28, 2021

    In the Conservative Woman today there is an article by a MSM health journalist (who can no longer get her articles published in the MSM) who shares her interview of an NHS GP who felt forced to resign because his reading of the research into the various treatments for Covid differed from the views of NHS England.

    Very many studies have indeed been done into the safety & efficacy of the many possible treatments for Covid. For example please see the summaries on tabs here: https://c19early.com/

    The top down rigid control by the medical establishment has not been redeemed by success. The Population Fatality Rate of Japan is only 1/17 that of the UK.

  46. steve
    June 28, 2021

    I can’t help but get the feeling that the last bloke was somehow set-up.

    He had his indescretions for sure, but I bet there’s many in government doing the same or worse.

    What I’d like to know is the identity and affilliations of those who put a camera in his office, and who exactly leaked the imagery.

    I’d like to know who these disgusting bstds are, because whoever it was obviously did’nt care a toss about potential harm to Mr Hancocks three children.

    Because the Hancocks have kids this should never have gone to press. Some things are best left alone and frankly I’m disgusted at the media for running this.

    1. hefner
      June 29, 2021

      The country gets the newspapers it deserves.

  47. Martin C
    June 29, 2021

    I spoke to an Occupational Therapist the other day who works in a hospital on the south coast of England. She told me their intensive care ward is inundated with people with multiple lung infections from constantly wearing face masks.

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