Lockdowns are setting us back. Here are some of the areas where we need to advance.
1 More people working for themselves and building small businesses
Lockdowns ban many from working at all, and impair the working of many others. Small businesses are being driven into debt, and entrepreneurs being forced to ask if they can continue. Meanwhile the Treasury threatens them with IR 35 clamp downs. Let’s find ways of getting more back to work with a fairer tax regime.
2 Restoring Town Centres.
A second lock down of non food retail stores accelerates the switch to on line and will lead to the loss of many more shops. High Streets will contract or close down under the pressures. Let’s find ways to re open them.
3. Levelling up the country
More people with professional and administrative jobs on good salaries live in London and the South east. Many are able to work from home and continue on the same salaries. More people with jobs that are at risk or have reduced pay for reduced working live in areas that need to level up. It is easy for people like government advisers and Ministers whose income is guaranteed whatever the circumstances to decide on a lockdown which does not cost them work and income.
4. Running sensible public finances to avoid burdening future generations
Today the government rightly offers substantial subsidy to companies and money to individuals who are banned from working. Tax revenues will be badly damaged again by lock down. We cannot go on like this indefinitely. The way to get the deficit down to more sensible levels is to get us all back to work.
5. Promoting prosperity and growth
I campaigned in the General election on my slogan of Prosperity not austerity, with policies of promoting more opportunity, enterprise and ownership for the many. These aims seemed entirely at one with the Conservative party’s national Manifesto.
We now have an economy badly scarred by the first lock down, with incomes and output well below 2019. We need to get on with the job of rebuilding as soon as possible.
November 7, 2020
Indeed. I would add cheap, reliable on demand energy and a move to real freedom and choice. a level playing pitch, no rigged markets and fair competition in healthcare, broadcasting, housing, education, energy and the likes.
A typically one sided question on Newsnight last night (to the hater of âWhite Van Menâ Emily Thornberry) from lefty, unscientific, dope Kirsty Walk:- âJoe Biden and Boris are of one voice when it comes to climate and looking ahead to COP that has to be a good for the UK isnât itâ.
No dear it is not a good thing at all, quite the reverse. It will render the UK even less competitive, destroy and export jobs, freeze some pensioners and do nothing positive for the climate either. Slightly increased CO2 actually has more positives than negatives and anyway renewables make virtually no difference to this anyway.
November 7, 2020
Even if the UK went 100% renewable it would make no real difference to world CO2 levels at all. Just strangle the economy and export jobs and CO2 (plant food) production overseas.
November 7, 2020
Yes..but THAT is the plan!!!
Then comes communism.
Now whether this govt. is too thick to understand this or even to look back at history OR whether they are commies anyway…who knows.
But we are in BIG trouble.
The tories have always protested a bit too much about being called commies.
November 7, 2020
JR, ‘Economy badly scared by first lock down’. No economy wrecked by your govt. Do not falsely lay the blame on an inanimate object. It was govt. policy based on false figures when it could have targeted the elderly and vulnerable like many said here.
Johnson has listened and acted on extreme left wing advice some of which might have ulterior motives. Why would any intelligent person create policy on any Ferguson model without peer review or knowing codes/calculations on which it is based! The same man acting against his own apocalyptic advice with a reported left wing activist.
November 7, 2020
JR, nothing about freedom, liberty and democracy. !92 arrested on 5/11/2020 in a peaceful protest against lock down. Heavy handed tactics by Met Police again.
Yet in stark contrast in June BLM allowed to carry on while Met police watched and bent their knee.
Same for statues being ripped down by mobs while the police watched! When will Patel resign for being utterly useless on law and order securing our borders?
Even Macron publicly stated some areas of France are breeding grounds for Islamic radicalisation/terrorism. This should be a clue to Patel our borders need to be secure because the Manachester bomber was free to come and go as he pleased from France!
Moreover, why is Patel politicising the police to woke causes? She has had enough chances. Time to resign or be sacked.
November 7, 2020
Our Dear Leader is certainly advised by (ex?) communists…
zorro
November 7, 2020
it would be like a feather removed from a pallet of bricks.
November 7, 2020
7 people have Chinese virus in Cornwall hospitals three of whom in ICU. Population of just over 500,000. I thought Govt. local down policy was for this situation to allow areas like this to remain open? Large area with people scattered likely to reduce infection rate.
The whole county shut down, some areas defined as areas of deprivation. Area hit really hard by shut down being particularly hard without tourism. Your govt shut it down based on false figures.
Get Johnson out.
November 7, 2020
yep – – Cornwall, Devon and Dorset should be set free. But warned this is not going to be a free-for-all. Behave or else!
November 7, 2020
When it comes to CO2, it would appear that the media and, indeed, the government, ignores the fact that this island of ours is a tiny speck on a massive planet and open to all the elements of nature, including the 330 Gt of CO2 produced by the oceans every year.
Nothing our government does will affect CO2 levels, but they still cling to the unproven propaganda of the scientific community as if it was a religion. How ironic that good science is considered incompatible with the mysteries of religious faith, yet scientists don’t apply the same sceptism when playing God with our lives! I can only conclude that, as always, it has far more to do with the irresistible lure of power than with the science.
November 7, 2020
Prince Charles, our future King is banging on about climate change and saying even with lockdown there has been no improvement in CO2 levels and the climate is at a critical stage. Doesn’t this tell him something? Nature will do what it wants. I think with Charles as King, Boris at the helm and now Biden adding to the hysteria businesses are doomed. I hope everyone has their veggie cook book out. Meat is the new enemy.
November 7, 2020
Royalist though I am, Prince Charles needs to stay out of politics – and the ‘Climate Change’ debate is political.
November 7, 2020
Indeed he should stay out of politics especially as he is totally wrong and totally hypocritical on this issue with his ÂŁ1 million PA personal travel bill.
He is also in favour of quack medical treatments & homeopathy on the NHS, wants to protect all faiths and likes talking to plants – so science, logic and reason is not really his strong point. Being wrong is perhaps!
Prince Charles: 100 months to save the world form climate change – he said in March 2009 – so too late now anyway mate.
November 7, 2020
Biden and Boris are as one in supporting Corporatism and strangling Capitalism. The Corporates are open in lockdown, itâs just the capitalists closed down.
Ayn Rand was right. We are going to have to decide how to respond.
November 7, 2020
+1 Lynne. Your party is Not conservative or even a good imitation. JR and few others left but sidelined.
It is obvious this was a deliberate policy to help global corporates and shut down small business.
Little-John demonstrates the stupidity of Govt policy. Allowed to live with wife but not play tennis with her. Cannot buy goods from shops by click and collect but can buy on line!
It is like Johnson’s false narrative about Christmas. It is a sham to play on heart strings to force national compliance from decent people. He has three families with children and will not give a stuff he will not be seeing two of those families at Christmas! His false narrative does not match his actions or deeds of his dysfunctional and misfit family situation.
November 9, 2020
+1 I know that Hope. We have been fighting for the soul of the Conservative Party for decades. Rodney and I ran 2 conferences a year in Oxford, with speakers attending from across the globe, under the banner âCampaign for Conservatismâ – whether there was a so-called Conservative Government or not.
Francis Maudâs lovely mother, Lady Maud used to attend, poor woman, horrified by her son. Farage should have attended, he would have learned something about principle.
November 7, 2020
I watched the Shell advert last night were the dozy woman said we are going carbon neutral using renewable energy. She shows off acres of solar panels and windfalls. All operating with massive subsidy and none giving reliable depatchable energy.
It’s a good job the Republicans control the Senate so Biden can’t destroy America with his New Green Deal.
November 7, 2020
I saw that advert too, staggering in its daftness. It is simply incredible that major players on the world stage feel that they can gain anything from courting the approbation of the Greens, a deluded and tiny faction.
Sir John, when there is so little evidence of support from fellow Conservative MPs I have to wonder what is it that bolsters your confidence that the Party and you can continue to be fellow travellers.
Make no mistake, I have been an admirer of your integrity and wisdom since those early days when you were so effective in changing this country from those dire Jack Jones days of stagnation and dross.
November 7, 2020
I agree, John is a real Conservative in at best a Lump Dumb party.
Boris is falling into the EU trap of never ending neg so on 31st December he will announce another extension as an agreement is just in sight.
This together with his latest lockdown fiascowill crown an utterly disastrous year. The man has to go.
Thank the Lord Farage is back.
November 7, 2020
Negotiations.
November 7, 2020
Hear, hear to that. I just hope I can vote for Reform UK in the local elections. I am not being deterred this time if there is a candidate.
November 7, 2020
âThank the Lord Farage is back.â
Amen to that.
November 7, 2020
is that the Lord as in the Creator, or Lord Farage as in was he given a peerage overnight which I missed?
November 7, 2020
For someone who claims to have a scientific background your rejection of the principles of the Enlightenment – the application of reason to evidence – seems rather quaint.
Rather, you seem to be yet another missionary for the New Obscurantism, where your willingness to believe the preposterous depends only on whom is announcing it.
It parallels the age-old unfounded beliefs in witches, ghosts and goblins rather closely.
November 7, 2020
It parallels the age-old unfounded beliefs in witches, ghosts and goblins … and the idea that Senegal is leading the world in their response to Covid.
November 7, 2020
and China – the land of the free.
November 7, 2020
+1 and to most of the replies too.
November 7, 2020
Immunologist Dr Mike Yeadon claims the PCR test picks up just one molecule in the sample, easily originating up via water supple or elsewhere, giving a probable high proportion of false positives. He believes most of the Covid ‘cases’, hospital admissions and deaths are due to other respiratory viruses and that the coronavirus has been effectively over in the UK since about June. This does explain one mystery, the apparently freakishly low flu incidence this year.
He may be wrong of course but should be taken more seriously than the deplorable contemptuous dismissal of the Great Barrington Declaration by ministers. If he is right, the economy should be re-opened within days but it won’t happen because ministers and their advisers won’t admit they have wrecked the economy and caused thousands of non-Covid deaths needlessly. The only way out looks like a new Cabinet, but short of a coup by MPs I don’t know how this could happen.
His interview by Julia Hart-Brewer is on Youtube, November 5th, well worth 9 minutes.
November 7, 2020
Dr Mike Yeadon may indeed be wrong but he seems exactly on the money to me. It is indeed well worth listening to and hard to fault in my book.
November 7, 2020
+1
November 7, 2020
Meanwhile in threat world China’s economy soars from strength to strength while the West fell for its lock down propaganda aided and abetted by the WHO collaborator.
Johnson so gullible he allowed, on the advice of WHO, travel and trade to continue with China during lockdown as it “was insignificant”. Not satisfied with his contradictory behaviour and self destructing the economy he wanted to seek a clap on the back so he gave the WHO hundreds of millions more of our taxes! That is even after his Haiwei decision being allowed into 5G network threatening our security!! The mind boggling stupidity is beyond comprehension.
The only person in the world to stand up to China and the WHO- yes, you have guessed it Donald Trump. He saw the threat of the CCP and met it head on while the extreme left liberal woke pacifiers thought persuasion would work even though they could see what the CCP was doing in Hong Kong, South Pacific and Africa. How its drive for world dominance, by whatever means, continues. Persuading weak countries by economic dominance to get votes at UN and other world bodies. FFS, wake up! Johnson needs to be ousted.
November 7, 2020
+1
November 7, 2020
Spot on Hope. Well said.
November 7, 2020
+1
The interview is excellent in its clarity on a topic where confusion and deliberate obfuscation are widespread. Required listening I would opine.
It’s over.
November 7, 2020
Why may he be wrong? Is that likely? What a strange thing to say, especially as he has no paid affiliation to any kind of organisation such as Imperial and is better qualified that Boris’s tame ”experts”.
(Imperial that gets much of its funding from…..?)
November 7, 2020
A lockdown justified with fake, alarmist figures (essential blatant lies and project fear) suggesting daily deaths of 4,000 a day when in reality it will be less than one tenth of this figure (and not all of the deaths recorded as Covid will even be so).
It also seems that government, Hancock and Sage have finally admitted they do not know the false positive rate of their testing system. Something that is quite easy to determine by re-testing positives so why are they not doing so? Why are they even using a test without knowing this vital number? To do so is surely gross negligence. It could well be doing far more harm than good if the false positive rate it too high. Locking down thousands of people wrongly, recording deaths as covid that are not, making lockdown decisions on duff numbers etc.
Weekly deaths currently are around normal as are respiratory related death. Covid is essentially over as a serious problem. The âcureâ is now the problem not Covid. As it is with climate alarmism.
November 7, 2020
Lifelogic you were as slow as the Daily Mail to wake up, but atleast you now have.
November 7, 2020
Rus – this is an essential point. Converts always welcome and I too am glad that Lifelogic saw the light. However, the pressure applied by LL and the general public to lock everyone down in March was one of the reasons the government did what it did, believing it to be a popular policy. It still believes it is so will probably do more. And I think LL is in the minority having finally learned the folly of lockdowns
November 7, 2020
I have not convered or changed my position at all. The first lock down was sensible – just to delay and give the NHS more time to prepare. The NHS was so overwhelmed at that time that most Covid deaths (up to 10,000 per week) were given no hospital care at all and died in carehomes or at home.
With 300 a day and no sign of much likely increase from this position (infections declining in fact) it is quite different.
November 7, 2020
Epistemology is not your strong suit, it seems.
November 7, 2020
given your wild, unsubstantiated claims of knowledge of most things – oh! the irony!
November 7, 2020
Epistemology is the study of knowledge, one of your weak points it seems.
zorro
November 7, 2020
Sunakâs Furlough until the end of March seems stupid and misdirected to me. We need incentives to get people back to work not the complete reverse. We need to stop enlarging the PSBR. We need the economy and work force to adjust to the new reality. Furlough largely does the reverse of this.
The Last Orders podcast with Dan Hannah and Chris Snowden was quite sensible on the mad Lockdown 2 on a blatant lie agenda.
November 7, 2020
Yep – the government now lacks the discipline of saying ‘no’ to any demands for additional free money. Sunak’s star is waning fast.
November 7, 2020
LL
I think that furlough till March has been taken to mean, lockdown will continue till March and I believe this is why businesses are trying to remain because they know they canât survive till then, even with the government handouts, which are often insufficient.
I too have heard Dr Yeadon and read the scientists thoughts with the facts to back their thinking… which all makes the government look so ridiculous and dis-honest.
November 7, 2020
It could be that March has been the plan all along, they just let it out in drips, rather than tell the nation we would be locked down for a year:
In the United Kingdom, according to an official briefing that the Guardian has seen, the Covid-19 epidemic there may last until spring 2021.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus-crisis-to-last-until-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised
The document says that: âAs many as 80% of the population are expected to be infected with Covid-19 in the next 12 months, and up to 15% (7.9 million people) may require hospitalisation.â
Sunak’s new furlough to March fits in with the above. If there really are 20-25000 new “infections” every day, why are people not dropping in the streets?
November 7, 2020
No they have PAID people to support government policy.
Tell me the scenario of a âLockdownâ without stupidly named âFurloughâ.
There would be no âLockdownâOR there would be bloodshed!
And by the way, re yesterday…ÂŁ400 pd per patient….ÂŁ1,500 pd for one in ICU.
No patients less cost.
No heating.
No lighting.
No wear and tear.
Same with schools
âMothballâ to save money.
Or maybe I am wrong? Are you a cost and management accountant?
November 7, 2020
reminds me of Blair shutting hospital wards – must be a great money saver? – -surely?
November 7, 2020
Yep..thatâs what Iâd say!
But I just wonder what they have in store for NHS re Great Reset. Will there even be healthcare? Obamacare type thing maybe?
November 7, 2020
Lifelogic: You’ve forgotten to tell us what you had for breakfast and whether the latest TV drama you watched recently was any good.
November 7, 2020
Two eggs with a little black pudding plus a few rasberries, hardly every watch TV drama. A kipper tomorrow.
November 7, 2020
Wife watches Spiral and Montalbano though.
November 7, 2020
The odd are now Biden 1/33 and Trump 1/12 so barring some voting fraud bombshell coming out it is surely all over. A great shame as Trump policies were far, far more sensible for a recovery than Bidenâs lunacy and far better for the UK. But hopefully the Senate will restrict him in this.
Biden is another huge problem for Boris over the Irish border, a trade deal and Brexit. As if he did not have enough with Covid, the dire state of the economy, Scotland, Brexit and his dire lefty, alarmist, green crap pushing, big state MPs and Lords.
November 7, 2020
It seems we have largely to blame College Educated women for the depressing outcome (and younger ones in particular). A huge difference between Tump and Biden support in this demographic.
Even Kate Andrews and Lionel Shriver of the Spectator – surely they at least should have know better!
November 7, 2020
College educated = college indoctrinated.
November 7, 2020
love it!
November 7, 2020
‘Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man’ has now become ‘Give me the uni student for the three years and I will give you the f**ked up’.
November 7, 2020
Fred H – plus a (usually) fairly worthless degree and ÂŁ50K of debt with interest increasing it at ÂŁ3K PA.
November 7, 2020
OTOH Trump would have driven a hard deal. All we have to do is convince Sleepy Joe that Boris is his deceased son and a trade deal should be plain sailing.
November 7, 2020
Think you have a big problem with your figures!!
1/33 Biden, 1/12 Trump – a bookies dream. Maybe 1/33 Biden 12/1 Trump – still massive overround but rather more accurate!
November 7, 2020
Indeed Trump 12/1 was what I meant.
November 7, 2020
JR
“We need to get on with the job of rebuilding as soon as possible.”
Normally I would agree without hesitation. But I would like to see Boris get off the fence and do some serious damage to the ungrateful french – led EU.
Otherwise, to hell with it I’ll retire and won’t be giving anymore graft, and won’t be paying taxes.
November 7, 2020
Good morning.
These points highlight much of what many here have been saying and reflect much of what is being said on the ground as well. People who are both fortunate to work and receive 100% of their income (non-Public Sector) are even beginning to question the various rules etc. For the government to maintain cohesion it must not resort to coercion, something that it seems to want to do. This will quickly lose government support, trust and confidence. Government and Parliament need to be reminded that, when you lose the support of the people, you lose FULL STOP !!!
The Public Sector has grown far too big and too powerful. It can now tell private business how much they can pay, the employees that they should employ and so on. Government has no business being in private business and, much like in everything else it puts its unwanted nose in, will end up destroying it. This it seems to have finally done.
I would like to ask our kind host a question. With much lower tax receipts, how is the government going to pay for things like the NHS and HS2 ? Does it intend to just print and borrow more money, or will it finally realise that it has to tighten its belt and reduce the size of the State Sector and spending ?
November 7, 2020
They allowed supermarkets (some arenât British) to kills off independent butchers, bakers, fishmongers, then they got into flowers and polished off the local florists, then they got into clothes and started to wipe out small town centres, then they bought up pubs cheap and did away with family open all-hours shops and the independent businesses that supplied those shops wholesalers/independent food producers etc. Now we are allowing the German supermarkets to wipe out the lower value town centres in poor areas with profits going back to Germany!
When Amazon have all hoovered up all the small business in each Country the Global order will find a way to take their 50% tax the independent Countries used to take off small business under their control and divi it up if youâre good and follow their rules. How else do you get Andyâs World reset led by the wonderful Biden, Germans and NZs?
November 7, 2020
+1
November 7, 2020
How about the âtime limitedâ money idea? Your bank account is monitored/controlled and your wages/benefits must be spent by a certain time.
Not sure what effect that would have on inflation?
I suppose it would prevent âhoardingâ of money and keep up spending?
THERE ARE NO LENGTHS TO WHICH THEY WILL NOT GO !
November 7, 2020
The Prime Minister is locking the whole of England down so that we can have ‘as normal a Christmas as possible’.
The two family-run card shops that I like to support are now shut. I hope for their sakes they are still there after 2nd December.
A ‘normal’ Christmas involves increased spending in preparation for 25th December. Much of this increased spending happens in November.
The owners of these shops, and many others across the country, had been hoping to make up some of their losses in this period.
In ‘following the science’, Boris Johnson has dashed these hopes.
November 7, 2020
It absolutely disgusts me. Small shops canât organise deliveries so cheaply the powers that be know this, why is it being encouraged for large on-line businesses to put these shops out of business? Who actually does get a direct cut from the online retailers profits if it isnât the Countries they operate in? Does it go straight to global who gets the cut?
November 7, 2020
With the new Danish strain of COVID-19 apparently different enough to be resistant to the vaccines in development, the government’s idea of locking people down until there is an effective vaccine seems to be a non-starter.
Viruses mutate, it is what they do, for example, each year’s annual flu jab only covers a few strains. If we’re going to be locked down until every possible strain has a vaccine, the government needs to replan how to manage the economy long-term as this will be a permanent (or at least multi-decade) state of affairs.
November 7, 2020
All living things mutate; however, only those mutations which confer a specific advantage will replace the original form; others which are neutral will simply add to the variants in circulation. Presumably the variant found in minks is a specific adaption to its new host.
Back in August the WHO was aware of outbreaks in mink farms in the Netherlands and Spain but “believed” that animal-to-human transmission was âvery limitedâ.
Is the WHO a scientific organisation, even?
November 7, 2020
“Today the government rightly offers … money to individuals who are banned from working.”
This was defensible as quickly operable during the first March/April 3 week lockdown. Since then it has become indefensible.
(i) The Govt’s created new normal will be different. To value people inequitably based on old market value is unethical.
(ii) Paying resources to be immobile is senseless. A free market alternative would be for UBI to support the economy to freely adapt to new situation. A command and control (as favoured by the Conservative Govt) view would be to pay resources to do something else e.g. increasing the care home workforce, support in the community etc.
(iii) Usually what are considered socially bads are tackled by education/information, regulation (and compliance costs), taxes etc. I do wonder what precedent has been set by this Govt – who will the Govt pay for not doing what (I can only imagine the direction tha law and order can now proceed)?
(Printed) furlough now looks straight up like a bribe.
November 7, 2020
Furlough excluded a lot of people from help, because it was not convenient for the state. The state is there for us not the other way around.
November 7, 2020
Suppose, for the sake of argument, I accept that the dodgy models, massaged data, no cost-benefit analysis, and no alternative strategy work ups provide world-leading justification to the policy direction of destruction of health, economy, society, liberty and democracy; I still then do not understand the implementation. Gove-Johnson-Hancock-Sunak have again pursued non-constant patterns of behaviour and re-jumbling up the contacts, contact times and contact environments people have with different groups. They keep doing this, this does not support stability and a lower herd immunity threshold.
November 7, 2020
And whilst the casualties have barely got through triage the wokeist/greenists/Marxists are staging a massacre of our liberties.
Is it really true that we are about to have laws where we can be prosecuted for dinner party conversation in our own homes ? Scotland has just outlawed smacking. Will it come here ? Used sparingly it enabled me to teach my boys that No really meant No. And I’ve raised them to MSc level of education and work and still growing (pre-empting Andy who is nearly always wrong.)
The West is fighting for the survival of its own civilisation, John. We are at war. The Left want you to fail. And as far as they’re concerned the more casualties the better. The very last thing the Left wants is a healthy and satisfied population – it destroys their whole reason for being.
November 7, 2020
It is attacks on freedoms and civil liberties that is far more concerning and of far more importance but then politicians prefer to remain silent on the rise of despotism in the UK that appears to have infected the entire British governing class at many levels.
The economy will bounce back when this PM is despatched into obscurity along with your party and that cancer that you sit opposite each day but our freedoms are being deliberately targetted by this concerted and sustained agenda of realignment and that should incite fear into each and everyone of us
Politicians across Parliament know full well that freedom of expression and dissent for the 87% is now being dismantled in the name of tolerance and diversity (or silence and social destruction) and he and his colleagues choose to sit in silence while it happens
We voted for this only 12 months ago. Think about that for a while. We actually VOTED for these two rancid, poisonous, duplicitous, destructive political parties that now cynically exploit our weakness.
We have another 4 years of this despotism as both parties work together and in partnership with Labour’s dependent class in the public sector to crush our world that we once knew
Do not underestimate how far the Tory-Labour duopoly will go to protect the status quo from harm even to the point of dismantling democracy. I believe they are that dangerous
November 7, 2020
The situation is alarming. Why any MP who voted for or softly abstained in the recent vote cannot see how this country is descending into a police state is of great concern.
The extending of the furlough until next March is a perfect example how this
Government will not face the economic facts and are so stupid not to realise, as with cancer, delay makes the situation worse.
When the majority in England have had enough of Westminster and the two party state maybe Reform UK will be as effective as UKIP. The EU sellout is getting closer.
November 7, 2020
Dom, No I did not vote for the Fake Tories. Do not include me in the ‘we’. There is no difference between Fake Tories and labour. Both happy to implement EU law, regs, directive and policy and go along with the “global view” deriding anyone who does not. You know, like Donald Trump.
I would rather poke my eyes out or not vote or allow Labour in than vote for this New Labour alternative. Cameron was appointing former Labour ministers like Adonis, Milburn etc. to lead change in specific policy areas! There were many former conservative ministers he could have chosen. They ridiculed Ed Miliband and implemented his energy policy and still do with May saying she wold build on it! They helped ‘Red Ed’ get elected last year!
I am a conservative. It was clear under Cameron and his insulting of his supporters and not trusting them to select conservative MPs that the Fake tory party was done.
Who could ever elect Teresa May as leader of a conservative party or any party? Certainly no one with an element of conservative views.
November 7, 2020
+1
November 7, 2020
The simplest way for councils to support their high streets is to offer free (but time-limited) car-parking. Too many of them see car-parks as a cash-cow. High charges are a sufficient disincentive for me to travel in to a town center and I’m ‘comfortably off’. As a result, the high street suffers and the out-of-town supermarket gains.
Regarding (1), that will do some good – but more important is to promote the growth of those tech companies that will grow into an Apple or Microsoft. The country is bad at that.
November 7, 2020
When UK does have a company that becomes a world leader – ARM – the shareholders sell/are allowed to sell it to a foreign company. ARM was sold to Softbank of Japan, and has now been sold on to Nviida of USA.
Thatcher’s idea that foreign ownerslong didn’t matter as the jobs were here, was and is utter rubbish.
November 7, 2020
Mrs. T has not been in power for decades and I think you will find that the LibLabCON have allowed the sale of British companies regardless.
November 7, 2020
+1
November 8, 2020
Yes, and I was not absolving other governments. Read it again.
November 8, 2020
Yes, and I was not absolving other governments. Read it again.
November 7, 2020
With most parties now aware that the basis on which this second lockdown was introduced is grossly inflated figures surely there is a case for terminating it early. Especially since in many areas ‘lockdown’ is next to non existant this time round. Nice to know that most life goes on as normal…
If we are to restore the high streets we must cancel the face mask laws. I for one am avoiding visiting town centres and shops because I absolutely hate seeing loads of people in muzzles when the scientific case to support them is as slender as Valance’s ‘scenarios’. Face masks are the most visible evidence that Jo Public has been totally taken in by project fear in an unprecedented way.
November 7, 2020
Ditto
I have things to do and money to spend yet, cannot and will not because of these restrictions. If people want to wear muzzles that is their choice, I do not !
November 7, 2020
Off-topic, but also regarding a serious current event:
I hope and trust that any and all disputes raised by parties to the American election will be adjudicated on by the lawfully appointed judge of the facts, and not by media “fact-checkers”.
November 7, 2020
The first casualty of lockdown is truth. The second is trust.
November 7, 2020
The third is transparency.
November 7, 2020
and fourth will be failure. Fifth probably rebellion.
November 7, 2020
This fits in with my belief that the government needs a good war (sic) to boost its popularity. Hence the Churchillian nonsense.
November 7, 2020
So will it be against China, France or England?
November 7, 2020
New âcasesâ (actually just tested positive figures) for the last seven days UK now about 6% below those of the week earlier just as I predicted a week or so back. So what exactly is the new national lockdown for exactly? Most areas are surely at or nearly at herd immunity levels hence this welcome decline.
November 7, 2020
Politicians have proved in the Brexit fiasco and now the virus scam that they are utterly unsuitable to have even the slightest authority over us. The country should be run on the Swiss model which has worked to prevent powerful interests wrecking their country whilst ours is still being laid waste by the ruling class.
There is only one way the damage will be repaired and that is by the people without interference from the leeches that have caused the trouble.
Best way to help is lockdown government for a very long time.
November 7, 2020
John
Very much agreed and welcome to the small, but growing number, of people like you and I that see Direct Democracy as the way forward for this country. đ
You have to ask, why is it that a landlocked country like Switzerland with no natural resources other than its people, surrounded by hostile neighbours manages to both flourish and remain at peace for hundreds of years ?
For example : If people wanted HS2 they could vote on it.
November 7, 2020
Do you know what I am not seeing from your Government ? Any sign that it has learned from the APAC countries that have made a much better job of constraining and controlling the spread of the virus.
If you want a return to economic growth and prosperity sooner rather than later, getting the virus under control and cases driven down to near zero is key here. Learn from the best.
Otherwise , until there are over the counter treatments or a vaccine, we are going to be stuck in a cycle of lockdown/release.
November 7, 2020
You don’t ‘get a virus under control’. Viruses just do their thing regardless. From Communist China to Dan Andrews’ Victoria prison state, the APAC (Asia-Pacific) countries have shown the way in how to get people under control.
‘Learn from the best’? They’re certainly the best at state control. Our Western leaders have been learning techniques in tyranny.
November 7, 2020
Its priority, I think, is not to deal effectively with the epidemic, but to stay in power and to preserve the resigned acceptance of radical, neoliberal, dogmatic rule among the people.
Accepting the merits of the APAC approach would blow that last aim clean out of the water.
Wouldn’t it?
November 7, 2020
Who can argue with any of that? We are in despair at what this government is doing.
November 7, 2020
I notice that more shop owners are finding reasons for staying open this time, hindered by the governmentâs system of fines.
An example; a husband and wife business of 30 years in a shopping centre, selling identical stock as WH Smithâs, apart from drinks and sandwiches. (Thatâs new, Iâve only ever seen chocolate and drinks!) The couple applied for govt help, but it doesnât cover the rent, so they decide to remain open.
Smiths are open legally, but because they donât sell food, the small business is not. The lady and her husband were reported to the police by the centre management (probably to avoid getting into trouble themselves) and the police turned with the threat of a fine!
The decision to lockdown nationally could be the last nail in the governmentâs coffin. Too many lies and twisted facts – no-one believes a word they say…people are now carrying on as normal as much as they can if the busy roads are any indication. English Heritage are open, Wisley is open….
November 7, 2020
+1. Everyone should ignore the fake graphs from last Saturday. Johnson easily persuaded to implement the left wing civil servants agenda/wishes. He does not even realise it will destroy him and his party!
November 7, 2020
+1
November 7, 2020
Welcome to the Lifelogic blog. I thought JR had asked us to refrain from clogging, to restrict our enthusiasm to over-comment, to make space for others. A virtual social distancing, if you will. Does that apply to all or does it not?
November 7, 2020
Some people get round that by posting under a series of aliases.
JF
November 8, 2020
Who are you accusing of that Julian? Or is it just you that does that?
November 7, 2020
I agree.
8 out of 44 posts is a bit excessive.
November 7, 2020
Totally agree, it’s getting ridiculous.
November 7, 2020
The world will have to work together to get itself out of this economic mess.
I donât doubt that President-elect Biden will lead efforts with other friendly countries – Canada, NZ, the EU – to push for a global effort to fix the damage.
Britain Trump and his incompetent Downing Street cabal of dodgy failures will ensure we are left behind as the unpopular populists here continue causing carnage. But polls already suggest they are removable in 2024 – and the polls will get worse for them as the death toll rises and the jobs go. So they may well be gone by late 2024 – and the public inquiry and prosecutions can start shortly thereafter.
November 7, 2020
‘Unpopular populists’ then you quote polls.
More nonsense. Global community needs to fix the cause of this pandemic – China.
November 7, 2020
Does it need to “fix” Africa too, because of HIV?
November 7, 2020
Martin in China ?
November 7, 2020
Spot on China self-appointed Superpower elect!
Be in no doubt that Trump has warned the world about how dangerous it really is like Churchill warned of Nazis in the 1930s when he was ignored whilst the “good times” heady Charleston jazz and dance bands were the priority in the West.
November 7, 2020
Andy wants older Brexit voters to die and his political opponents to be jailed. He’s nice, isn’t he ?
November 7, 2020
Yes..OK…but PLEASE tell us WHY they are doing this.
Can anyone really live with this degree of cognitive dissonance? Do their job under its cloud?
Especially if that person is logical.
Kill thousands of identifiably frail and ill people to save a unicorn?
Destroy an economy to ….to….WHAT?
November 7, 2020
Next week we move from CV19 terror to climate change terror. Boris is certainly terrified.
November 7, 2020
One reason for your CV terror is that the Climate Change terror had lost steam and more and more questioning of the “science” is occurring. It cannot have missed your attention that their M.O. is identical, involving much the same people with the same desired end result.
November 7, 2020
What silly language.
No one I whom I know is terrorised by the epidemic, though many take sensible precautions such as wearing masks in all public indoor or busy places and the rest.
They look before crossing a road too – that does not make them “terrorised” by the traffic.
November 7, 2020
What? You donât know anybody at all in fear or distress over covid 19 – well that says a lot Martin.
terrorised = create and maintain a state of extreme fear and distress in (someone); fill with terror.
November 7, 2020
he’s been in mental lockdown for months.
November 7, 2020
Traffic will run you over. Fake statistics won’t.
November 7, 2020
Prince Charles says we must take more drastic action to stop climate change as CO2 LEVELS haven’t improved during lockdown. What a surprise. Has he thought that maybe climate change is natural? We are doomed as a nation with all this warped thinking around us and we need to get back to reality.
November 7, 2020
Biden will make things worse that’s if worse is possible
November 7, 2020
We need as a matter of urgency to reform the government’s ineffectual attempts to “control” the spread of this virus. We have become seduced by economic considerations, as opposed to public health and are ignoring the very real possibility that this virus has evolved into something much more dangerous.
There is the possibility that mutated forms of the virus are already circulating in the UK – this may explain the otherwise inexplicable high false negative/positive test results confirmed by Hancock and the SAGE committee last week.
Yesterday the Danish authorities confirmed that a mutated version of the virus has infected mink being farmed there for the fur and fashion industry. Their scientists have expressed genuine alarm over this and the unfortunate mink are going to be culled this weekend – all 17million of them. Apparently 200 Danes have contracted the mutated form and have been hospitalised/quarantined. This morning I have been unable to establish their status however various media sources are reporting that the virus has spread from the farm workers into the general population on the islands affected
In addition to the already announced ban on all flights from Denmark, those being allowed to return from Denmark must be quarantined. If we do not take this seriously we may not be debating whether a lockdown of the economy is necessary, we will be arguing about where to dig the mass graves.
November 7, 2020
Those unfortunate Mink were on death row anyway.
I thought PETA et al. had the disgusting fur trade on the back foot. Not in worldâs leading Mink farmer Denmark, clearly.
November 7, 2020
Wonky, yes it is a disgusting trade and I wrote to my MP asking why we still allow the import of fur from these barbaric places. Didn’t get an answer. We have banned the trade here but not the importing of these poor creatures.
November 7, 2020
Might it be that the mutation has allowed the virus to better infect mink? That is what viruses do (and other life forms) they evolve to improve reproductive and survival options.
We are fortunate that bird flu has not yet mutated to better at infecting humans via droplets.
Covid is more likely to mutate so that it kills and incapacitates fewer people as that will make its ability to spread more efficient.
November 7, 2020
Sakara some reports are saying it is 33 million which is an unbelievable number and cruel beyond belief.
November 7, 2020
What about the suicides?
What about avoidable deaths due to Labour’s NHS incompetence or simply heartlessness? We saw it at Mid. Staffs and we’ve seen it following CV19 when the infirm were sent to care homes to die so that the NHS wouldn’t have to suffer the blame
Mental health impairment of private sector employees and self-employed left to rot like rats on a sinking ship.
Of course all the above aren’t politically organised and can’t fight back so we end up on websites like this moaning to an MP who has zero power to do anything about it anyway
If I was Len McCluskey or the TUC’s O’Grady then non-Tory PM Johnson would be grovelling at my knees
This authoritarian crap wouldn’t be happening if Johnson was in his final year of office as PM. No siree, he’d be on the soap box acting ‘all’ Churchill, draped in the Union Jack.
November 7, 2020
The country did not vote for this epidemic.
However, it did vote marginally for brexit, which, decent analysis shows will be far more damaging than covid19 long term.
Had we voted for the epidemic, then wouldn’t it be sensible to reverse that vote?
A fortiori, the silly version of brexit, on which the teeth-grinders and pitchfork-wavers are so fanatically bent?
November 7, 2020
This comment needs to be fact-checked, this covid19 will cause much more economic damage than Brexit ever will, how on earth have you calculated that?
November 7, 2020
he didnt say economic. He could just as easily be comparing deaths – read it how you wish.
November 7, 2020
“However, it did vote marginally for brexit, which, decent analysis shows will be far more damaging than covid19 long term.”
??? what ‘decent analysis’ have you seen ???
November 7, 2020
America has only marginally voted for Joe Biden and his sidekick.
Do you think that should not be implemented too?
November 7, 2020
Burger King democracy – my results my way eh Marty?
November 7, 2020
Lucky for you Martin that you will be able to blame any problems with the economy onto Brexit rather than these ridiculous lockdowns. Very convenient for your sort.
November 7, 2020
Martin in Cardiff
And now the Americans have voted for Biden whereas the Brexiteers had hoped Trump would help get them out of their predicament.
November 7, 2020
Your dream come true,
My prediction is that Biden will disappoint you.
November 7, 2020
To be fair, it’s not that people are banned from working. It’s sectors which are banned from operating.
Who can blame the gym owners for keeping open? They have willing customers and are willing to sell. People are keeping fir and that helps them avoid flu, viruses and many other conditions which might affect them later. How absurd is it that your party in government pushes police in to close these down?
Madness.
November 7, 2020
JR online retailers are offering 20% of their Christmas goods already. One of my tenants is a card shop. She has invested in masses of Christmas stock because she does very well usually, and this year hoped to make up some of the losses from Lockdown1. Now she is closed.
Boris âallowing Christmasâ at the last minute is of no use at all.
He has launched an unprecedented attack on the capitalists while supporting the almost untaxed Corporatists. This in addition to being oblivious of the NHS being closed to all but Covid cases since March.
Whether he knows what he is doing or not he is literally lethal and the men in grey suits MUST ACT!
Next week he launches the climate change terror campaign.
November 7, 2020
Well..we will soon know the true colour of those men ( and EVERY politician) by their action or …more likely their INACTION!
November 7, 2020
Apologies for posting again.
Reading responses to articles about the lockdown, protests this weekend etc.. one heck of a lot of them are law abiding, long term Conservatives voters. Retired police officers are giving advice on how to respond to police challenges!
Boris really needs to wake up and revoke this lockdown NOW!
November 7, 2020
Sir John you give inspiration and hope where many other politicians at home and abroad just haven’t a clue how to think positively and constructively esp in Europe the America ( forget about Russia and China who are another headache altogether).
We are in unprecedented times and need the wisdom and leadership beacons of knowledgeable proven achievers and definitely not duds. If many of these “cardboard cut-outs” posing as so-called “experts, influencers, consultants and advisors” had been in business they would be found seriously deficient and bankrupt. In totalitarian regimes you know what their fate would be, no second thoughts.
This crisis has proved that the Peter Principle is alive and kicking where folks rise to the level of their incompetence, most emphatically and we have witnessed the wit-less-ness (there’s a long word to chew over) so often folks have been brainwashed into thinking it is normal and acceptable too!
The US election is a warning to Boris Johnson to fulfil Brexit – how he must regret “Get Brexit Dun” and dusted. Also “Build Back Better” ( with no money left) as you only get one shot or blow it like Theresa No Deal Better…..
November 7, 2020
It must be clear now that, after all the inconsistencies, the absurdities of conflicting actions taken over the last 8 months and the deliberate data manipulation to exaggerate the situation, this isn’t about dealing with a virus – it is far more sinister than that. It must be exposed & opposed.
November 7, 2020
It’s not just the government restrictions that have stifled business, it’s the attitude of the general public. No good saying restaurants can open up if people are spooked by the danger of the virus.
What is needed is a change in people’s attitudes so they are prepared to run the gauntlet because life must go on. Until then, no one in their right mind will invest in a new enterprise.
Experience tells me the worst places for picking up an infection are motorway services and airports, so I’m not looking to travel just yet, but I have no problem about going out for a meal.
November 7, 2020
As someone said, if we hadn’t been told about this so called catastrophe we wouldn’t even be aware of its existence.
November 8, 2020
Spot on !
I said here before that people in the NHS were telling me that this virus was in the country since October last year when the Chinese students arrived.
November 7, 2020
All of your 6 points are a good common sense approach. Rather than talking about these issues perhaps Westminster can now take action , now, straight away.
Also, cancel HS2, privatise all news/ current affairs part of the BBC, drastically reduce Civil Service head count, remove all illegal immigrants ignoring the bleating do gooders, overhaul the not fit for purpose tax system…I could go on, but whatâs the point, nothing will be done.
November 7, 2020
Post WW2 Western Germany was ruled by an economically illiterate military and foreign bureaucrats, guaranteeing that recovery was slow. Coffee, Nylons and Cigarettes were the only effective currency. No doubt further slowed by avoiding employing ex Nazis and being over regulated.
Ludwig Erhart, an anti Nazi believer in a free market economy, popular with the military due to his anti Nazi credentials, rose from Bavarian Finance Minister and military adviser to chancellor of West Germany. In the process he engineered the introduction of the Deutschmark and freed the economy of the influence of foreign bureaucrats, introducing a free market economy. This is I admit a very condensed story line. The rest is history.
I would suggest that we need to do much the same. Put an end to all the protectionist EU influence, row back on bureaucratic control that is steeped in EU influence, and go flat out to create a free market economy. Nothing short of a market revolution. One of the first victims should be our overly complex tax system and the level at which it impinges on business and the individual. We need new businesses to be flocking to the UK post Brexit and individuals retaining what they earn to invest in even more enterprise. Post Brexit UK should become a beacon of free market enterprise from which will flow the money to fund those things like the NHS that are dear to us.
November 7, 2020
Great post.
November 7, 2020
Did Sunak want to extend, or was it Boris and/or Cabinet pressure? End of March seems to be a godsend for some people to start another long holiday. But will the jobs still exist come Spring? A political measure to avoid an anormous rise in Unemployed?
November 7, 2020
As every day passes more and more evidence comes that the assumptions upon which lockdown has been based have been exaggerated, several-fold. And other eminent scientists are openly expressing disagreement. Letâs recognise what seems to be the flattening of the hospitalisations and deaths and get out of lockdown.
More generally the govt needs to establish a rigorous red team-blue team process to test expert advice it gets which leads directly to costly policy.
November 7, 2020
Every time Boris listens to the medical experts and eminent scientists they lead him up the garden path … âwe need thousands more ventilatorsâ (oh actually you didnât, what a waste of money and effort you gave to doing what we told you needed doing – your mistake Boris). Letâs get the over 75âs (the most susceptible group) out of hospitals untested and put them in .. I know care homes (where all the other susceptible live) do you think this was Borisâ decision/idea it was expert recommendation.
People were saying canât they go into the hotels with individual bedrooms/en-suite/tv/food provided by the hotel staff and care by carers who didnât need full nursing qualifications all those thousands and thousands of volunteers given just a floor each between two workers to care for to restrict cross contamination those volunteers without families could have even lived on the same hotel floor and had their meals delivered by lift with only them in contact with the patients until every patient tested negative and could then go to the care homes.
Whose idea was Nightingale hospitals? Own up! Was it Matt Hancock all by himself with scientists and medical advisors input at all?
November 8, 2020
Sir John
When staunch Conservatives like Richard1 start questioning the government you know you are in trouble.
November 7, 2020
Most MPs just went along with the government policy.
Yesterday police clamped down heavily on protests in London. As pointed out in newspapers, it seems âwokeâ protests are fine and can go ahead without interference but anything that challenges government policy is targeted.
November 7, 2020
Meanwhile a bad outbreak of Ll virus on this site.
Scientists quote figures of five in six posts. Some say this is the worst it has been since March.
November 7, 2020
Your government is doing the opposite to this blog post. You are being run by the Unions and public servants telling you want they will and wonât do in line with Europe. So if schools shut in Europe, schools shut here, if schools are open in Europe its ok to keep schools open here.
Employerâs national insurance is the key. Andy, frequently says people havenât contributed to their pension s/he possibly is remunerated by dividends and seems not to understand how national insurance (the jewel of the Labour Party) works. PAYE staff contribute 25.8% into National Insurance over ÂŁ9500. They now also contribute 7% nest.
November 7, 2020
I donât say you havenât contributed to your state pension. I say you have not contributed ENOUGH to your state pension.
Most of you take more out than you ever put in. If you cannot understand why that is a long term problem then that is not my fault.
November 7, 2020
The people who haven’t contributed ENOUGH are the public sector employees, let’s start with them, contributions up to 30% of salary for a start for any of them still on final-salary pensions.
November 7, 2020
+1. Ainât gonna happen Roy because the politicians are one of the main beneficiaries of gold plated taxpayer funded pensions.
November 7, 2020
For a start you know Iâm not retired and my retirement age was moved up another 7 years, by that time I will have been paying in national insurance and employerâs national insurance for 51 years donât tell me its not enough Andy. Are you contributing 25.8% national insurance over ÂŁ9500 at the moment? If youâre a public sector worker youâre never going to be anywhere near the contributions required to buy the pot to fund that pension so donât start on the average Joe and Jane here who have been slogging away on PAYE in the private sector you make me sick.
November 7, 2020
shifting goalposts Andy?
November 7, 2020
If HMRC left the pension element of my NI out of my tax figures and I had put that into a pension all my working life Andy I would have a better pension when I retire than the state pension.
That is the whole point of the Workplace Pendion Scheme. Get everyone to contribute to their own pension so the state pension can be wound down over time. There is no reduction in NI payments for it though so we are double dipping on pension tax.
November 7, 2020
evidence, calculations, ‘most’ being how many exactly! Come on Andy support your load of blollocks – you never do – show us how you arrive at these wild vindicative pronouncements.
November 7, 2020
Makes you wonder if we really got BREXIT done and are not just taking orders from Berlin and Paris via Brussels ?
đ
November 7, 2020
Sir John,
You don’t mention the housing crisis. To my mind the lack of affordable housing is one of our biggest challenges going forward as the devastating impact of the lockdown comes clear. Inadequate and expensive housing is the root of many of the problems we have today. Even if we had a well-functioning health service, good education for all and plenty of job opportunities, poor housing will be a major drag on our economy and social well-being.
November 7, 2020
“Reaching Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.” Conservative Manifesto.
This bit of the manifesto can be interpreted, as Mr Johnson has, as giving the green light (sic) to solar farms like the vast monstrosity threatening the villages of West Suffolk and south Cambridgeshire, the return to the economic insanity of on land wind turbines (good for the landowners, not so good for every dwelling within 2 km which will lose 12% of their value, not good for the old, the poor and the sick who spend proportionately most on electricity.)
The obvious answer to reaching a green future is to use our own fracked gas (imported gas from the Middle East comes in liquified form which boils a lot off on its way here, while Russian gas is too political to trust), using this wonderful low carbon fuel to replace oil for heating and even diesel in HGVs, trains etc. Then we should use the breathing space that gives us to develop and deploy small modular reactors which will tide us over until the great cornucopia that is fusion power comes on stream at the latter half of the century.
Accepting the Green Party’s agenda will delay recovery, damage our competitiveness and hand domination of the planet over to regimes less scrupulous than the West.
We can’t rescind the subsidies on renewables, they have contracts. I’d leave the small schemes alone — peoples’ roof solar for example. Then I’d tax away the subsidies being paid to the wealthiest people in the land, spending the tax raised to reduce the bills of those who need that help most.
JF
November 7, 2020
Well said JR
More than anything it is our future on the line.
Those enterprises that close during lockdown will not reopen, and it is doubtful that our society will grow to its full potential….. Mainly because the government have no plan-B, imagine that lockdown will keep us safe until we can all be forcibly vaccinated with something that will probably kill more people than it helps.
TheNEW NORMAL requires that we will be in some form of lockdown from here on out so that the great RESET can take place… but that will provide no cure.
November 7, 2020
A few days ago I was talking to a taxi driver, who worked out he had spent several days working for the sum of 98pence per hour. No – not a mistake – NINETY EIGHT PENCE PER HOUR, A request for any support from the govt ( our taxes) was met with a reply of “Live off your savings” – which he had done during first lockdown. He had a ÂŁ5oo bill coming and the only thing he could think of was putting it on his credit card – and “hoping”. Exactly his words. No help – nothing.
At the same time, all over the country, thousands of migrants / invading replacements are living in hotels, no bills, no worries, free tv, free bed and roof over their heads, free heating, free cash, free electricity, free hot water, no Council tax, free NHS etc, waiting for their families to arrive and be a bigger financial burden.
Again, WE are told to stay indoors – to stop us spotting the coaches full of yet more immigrants being ferried in from the airports where they have landed?
Glad I am old. It is only going to get worse – deliberately worse.
November 7, 2020
Totally beyond belief Big Neil and an utter disgrace.
November 7, 2020
Anyone with savings applying for Universal credit is told to live of their savings until they have none.
Benefits are not universal and the prudent will always be defecated upon from a great height by government (0.1% interest rates so borrowings can be afforded).
November 7, 2020
Rather than making a list of the casualties of lockdown
I’d like to point out that lockdown is a construct of this government
and that
This government could stop lockdown at any time
November 7, 2020
+1
November 7, 2020
Lockdowns will continue to be popular as long as people are getting taxpayer funded holidays.
November 7, 2020
How many locked down business owners were the âThatcher Free Enterpriseâ entrepreneurs now in or approaching their 60âs. How many of these businesses as % do these people content on furlough think will come back from the dead. This government is stealing their retirement from them. Theyâll be thinking best cash in the chips if they canât operate till March or they get âyes you can, no you canât, yes you canâ. Donât think theyâll all have a business to sell, its like having a nice house and leaving it empty with no care and attention – the damp sets in, windows get smashed, insects invade, wood rots. Donât say you werenât warned these people are screaming youâre just not listening and theyâre not being represented Boris and Sunak are just apologising to the CBI just how many small business subscriptions do they receive a year, how many British owned business subscriptions make up their operating turnover?
November 7, 2020
Quite he support is aimed at larger businesses. Small operators have been hung out to dry
November 7, 2020
Iâm steaming today, my apologies to John about the number of posts but if I donât let off my steam Iâm going to blow.
So garden centres can stay open to take the Christmas market, and good luck to them because they wouldnât survive winter without this pre-Christmas boost BUT what are all the little shops selling Christmas stock supposed to do with it in just two weeks once everyone has stocked up online and at the GC.
Amazon can run amok with no increase in vat or taxes paid to the UK for giving them this massive advantage over every little shop thats been forced to close.
All these little shops, family affairs, all the money, time, trouble invested in them strangled in the best trading month and some in areas with very little covid! I just canât believe it, we can all go work, to school, to college to Uni and mix but not in a shop unless its a supermarket, little mini-market, garden centre theyâre having a laugh.
November 7, 2020
The data and projections on which this lockdown was based have been comprehensively discredited (a good Twitter thread by Ed Conway of Sky today) . Those who understand that will never believe projections presented by SAGE again. Every day that goes by more and more people are joining that group. Eventually it will be a majority. At that point the Government won’t have popular support for another lockdown. Project Fear will lose its effectiveness. They’ll have to try something else, stopping transmission in hospitals and care homes for example.
November 7, 2020
John, this is just wanton vandalism of the lifeblood of this country by a âConservativeâ Government for which they will never be forgiven. Down here in Cornwall we have had millions of extra visitors/staycationers over the last few months up to a few days ago when they were all told to go home and all businesses in Cornwall, my own included were forced to shut down and for what? Despite the influx, there is literally a handful of people in Cornish hospitals who have tested positive for Covid 19 and as the whistleblower Cornish Care Assistant Shelly Tasker who resigned in protest this week told us, our hospitals have been mostly empty all year and those with seasonal flu are being diagnosed with covid. Utter madness by a handful of bumbling clueless out of touch fools – Johnson and Hancock in particular.
November 7, 2020
Please stop thinking they are bumbling.
This was planned.
They take the useful idiots with them!
Not inefficient or bumbling but scheming and plainly evil.
November 7, 2020
+1 for Jools, with sympathy
and
+1 Everhopeful
The anger is out there and growing. Furlough / Operation Kicked Can, cannot go on forever and this is going to blow up in the governments / Tories faces.
You are harming the very people that put you in power you damned fools ! Our host excepted.
November 7, 2020
Town centres have been ruined by:
1) Culturally uneducated town planners, putting up horrible modern / commercial buildings
2) Shops allowed to put up horrible, cheap, tatty shop fronts and signage
3) Noisy, busy town centres
People are now much more culturally educated than they were 30 years ago. They visit beautiful places like Venice and Seville and places like that – they come home back home to a certain degree – to TAT.
People don’t want to hang around in cheap, tatty, noisu locations. Government needs to listen more to people such as Prince Charles – about the need for tasteful architecture – and to get rid of cheap, tatty shop fronts and signage.
Plus shopping now isn’t just about finding stuff, it’s also very much about the EXPERIENCE. Relaxing, enjoying the atmosphere, having a coffee outside – but you can’t do that and people won’t do that if their town centres are ugly, tatty, noisy etc ..
So government needs a creative way to change all this. There are ways. But it’s hard work.
November 7, 2020
Our local town centre was pedestrianised no noisy cars this didnât make it a success far from it. They killed off the old High Street full of successful shops, one a major fashion house that people travelled from all over to visit the owner never forgave them and his rotting forgotten shop was left there for years for all to see until he died.
The planners put up trees so no-one could see the old high street anymore, removed parking took all the little independents out of action. The new pedestrianised ugly precinct with overpriced rents and rates, with an ugly concrete multi-storey had all your nice shiney shop signs but the big supermarket moved in and put all the independents out of business, they were replaced with ugly charity shops, the centre wasnât built to a good quality it was falling down, it was sold to private owners who let it go to rack and ruin without protections put in the sale agreement and it has nearly fallen down completely left in a right mess, the Council paid over the odds to buy a falling down, failing grubby place no-one wants to visit except those without the transport to get to the decent shopping centres 30 minutes away. You canât even get a cup of coffee at a nice cafe theyâre all shut and that was before lockdown. You can get some decent fish and chips though.
November 11, 2020
@a-tracy
‘Our local town centre was pedestrianised no noisy cars this didnât make it a success far from it’ – people prefer PEACE to NOISE / CACOPHONY. So something else must have been responsible for the failure.
‘The planners put up trees so no-one could see the old high street anymore’ – again, people prefer TREES to NO TREES. What’s to blame here isn’t the trees but how they / where they were planted.
I lived in Hampshire until 6 months ago. I used to enjoy shopping in Alresford (traditional Hampshire market town). It’s a great little town. So great, that people come down from London for the day to shop there. Primarily because of the atmosphere – nice, old buildings, relaxing atmosphere, good quality shops (clothes / coffee houses / delicatessen / butchers / gift shops / book shop and art gallery / good restaurants etc ..), not noisy, not that many trees but surrounded by lovely British countryside (but if you’re not in the countryside, then you need more trees and green spaces for sure).
If politicians want to improve town centres then go down to Alresford for the day, have lunch in The Bell, look at the town, ask shop keepers the sort of people who come to visit here and why etc and then try and then try and borrow from this in town centres around the country.
Alresford is the kind of town that
November 7, 2020
Through “following the science” in the bad way chosen can we not expect repeated lock downs? By the fourth (due around mid-2021 I expect), there surely will be no economy left to save so your sensible and required advances will perhaps become irrelevant.
November 7, 2020
”Restoring town centres”
What happened to the initiative to use all the empty space above shops in town centres? In our town I’ve seen very little evidence of this, and yet there is a huge amount of potential accommodation just waiting to be exploited. Instead, we have frantic and damaging building on good, productive farmland and greenbelt, spreading out ever further from those town centres.
November 7, 2020
So..a school in Liverpool has informed parents by letter that on Monday 9th November the ARMY will be going in to test the children for COVID. Each child will have a barcode!!! and the âresultsâ will be given etc etc. The letter is dated the 6th November so very little notice.
Parents do not need to give permission (!) but can voice any concerns in a letter to the school.
Without a doubt this will lead to school closures.
And think of the other implications. Liverpool = test bed?
How can MPs live with themselves?
November 7, 2020
Assuming the letter to be genuine.
But the school DOES exist and is in Liverpool.
November 7, 2020
Surely we should only be spending our limited time and resources on those with symptoms
November 7, 2020
It seems that âtheyâ have brought about virtual extinction of mink in Europe by vast culls.
Supposedly to do with a mutant COVID virus!
Now if THAT is not the fruition of a long held extreme, far Left ambition I donât know what is!
November 7, 2020
What will they go after next, cheered on by our idiot politicians?
November 7, 2020
Walked into Wokingham today for a takeaway coffee from Gailâs with the idea of sitting in the square in the sunshine to drink it. Was disappointed to find the very few tables and chairs all occupied and then horrified to see them hastily whipped away as soon as they were vacated. Apparently the police had ordered it. No enjoying yourselves in the sunshine folks! Pathetic.
November 7, 2020
You say the Police had been seen in Wokingham? Urban myth – pure hearsay.
November 7, 2020
You don’t seem to have realised the catastrophic effect of the lockdowns on children and adults with learning disabilities, and how lockdown No 1 resulted in ALL services being suspended, with some “replacement” type services only being started up in September which are on a very small scale, piecemeal and in no way equivalent to the care/support packages being provided before lockdown.
It seems that care packages for adults with special needs living at home are having to be started up again completely from scratch, in some cases care packages that have taken years to build up. All destroyed by lockdown, with only skeletal services being started up in September, only to be zapped again now.
Johnson has no awareness of what huge damage, and yes, suffering, he has inflicted on those with special needs. To make matters even worse he now apparently has decreed “shielding” for those with Down’s Syndrome. This touch feely description for what is proposed (and what has been suffered by many elderly infirm already) has little “care” in it. It is more like a prison sentence.
Something has got to be done for those with special needs who suffered complete withdrawal of care and support from March to September, and who are now threatened with reduction of those piecemeal/stopgap services which started up in September. Not good enough. There should be no further imposition of shielding on these individuals.
One further example of the hugely damaging effect of the fearmongering operation by government and the irresponsible advisers: a particular facility (residential and day placements) that I know well, which normally provides excellent care and also facilities for “learning” for those with special needs, shut down access in March for all those who attended daily, and they apparently are so scared witless by all the dire warnings from government they have indicated that this denial of services for day placements will be in place till next spring i.e. a year in total.
So what happens to those abandoned, who have been denied the care and support they need? The answer is a very long struggle to get some sort of provision back in place, which is not adequate, and which is likely to be shut down again.
It is even worse for those elderly parents (who are caring for those with special needs at home) who have their own health challenges plus the extra challenges that lockdown brings for themselves. They have to be fit, strong, determined, resourceful, and much, much more i.e. to do what they have always done, but this time the new challenges faced have been deliberately imposed by a government which is both uncaring and ignorant, using flawed science to justify their action. This is not good enough and MPs should speak out.
November 7, 2020
Public sector employees don’t pay any REAL tax. It ALL comes from the taxpayers in the private sector. Nor do they pay any REAL money into their pensions. Governments are too scared to put public sector pensions on the same basis as most private sector pensions i.e. defined contributions.
November 7, 2020
Just pray that Donald Trump is inaugurated as President on 20 January 2021.
If Biden somwhow manages to cheat his way in, then it is curtains for ALL of US.
Pack your bags, but where are you going to go?
Is Boris waiting for the the true outcome of the US election to decide the Brexit option?
Trump wins then Brexit moves forward? Biden wins, no brexit and total lockdown?
Something very devious is going on but if you say too much here it does not get published.
November 8, 2020
Johnson has already congratulated Biden on is win. What a disgraceful action. He obviously thinks the media has the right to declare who wins elections. What ignorance.
This tweet by Rep Mike Kelly sums it up:
“In our representative republic, it is not the media who declares the winner of elections. Right now, @realDonaldTrump, is engaged in several court cases to determine the integrity of the vote in multiple states. None of those states have officially certified their vote counts and investigations into voting irregularities are ongoing. The winner of the election will be determined by the law, not media projections.”
Or this from Jenna Ellis:
“Media coordinated efforts are attempting to simply declare Joe Biden the president and ignore the rule of law. There is no official winner until every legal vote is counted accurately, the states certify results, and all legal challenges are resolved.”
The start of the fightback against the massive voter fraud has begun, and this new Order from the Supreme Court is highly significant:
Tweet by technofog with link to document:
“New US Supreme Court order: All Pennsylvania ballots received after 8pm on November 3 must be: (1) segregated and kept separate from other ballots; and (2) counted separately from timely ballots”.
This interview by Lou Dobbs of Sydney Powell is straight to the point and summarises the type of voter fraud which is being investigated e.g. the Hammer system and Scorecard software programme.
https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1324852734688923648
November 7, 2020
The North is also where transmission rates and risks are highest and I don`t understand this thing about people, in the South uniquely being able to work from home .
The only people who cannot work are involved in the leisure or retail . Contractors Manufacturers and services can work and do work
There are no more shops gyms and pubs in the North than the South so this is pure nonsense.
I need hardly say that anyone who helped bring about Brexit can no longer speak about public finances , growth and jobs. …well they can speak , but who would care what they said ?
November 7, 2020
Two different topics.
Brexit is one.
Covid is another,
November 7, 2020
One economy
November 7, 2020
I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to this passage in Public Health England’s “Understanding Cycle Threshold (CT) in SARS-Cov-2 RT-PCR A Guide for Health Protection Teams”
Page 6 “RT-PCR detects presence of viral genetic material in a sample but is not able to distinguish whether infectious virus is present. ”
What the hell is going on? The positive results from this test are no way reliable according to this. We are all being strung along with dubious claims.
November 7, 2020
Australia analyses samples using the PCR test only up to 24 cycles, UK analyses keeps going up to 40 cycles and even over. No surprise that their cases are so low in Australia.
November 7, 2020
Indeed and they refuse to say (or perhaps even to find out) what the false positive rate is! It is surely gross negligence to even use this test until this FP rate is clear.
November 7, 2020
Forget all the the technical BS, this is all about C O N T R O L and the majority have fallen for the lie perpetuated by the MSM and left wing EU funded b bc, s k y, c h 4.
Wake up people and NO Biden is NOT president of the USA.
November 7, 2020
It would seem that the table has turned. Today the ordinary folk of the Country are more concerned about the burgeoning debt that the Government is subjecting the Country too, than the Government itself. But still the Government are not concerned, after all the MPs and Civil Servants are still getting their full pay and expences and at the end of the day it will be the ordinary folk who will have to pay the spiraling debt, not them. What was it Boris said?
We are in this together. Yeh right.
November 8, 2020
So much for it supposedly being an independent body ?? đ
November 8, 2020
No one is this incompetent no one, this Government is still run from the EU, they are happy with that because they are all Remainers
The lies that we are told, is beyond belief.
People here writing in daily telling us what is really going on. How many times have we said ,Oh I do not believe that. The Manifesto has long been torn up from the beginning, and still we just look on.
Are we going to get Brexit, are we going to be free of illegal immigrants, are we going to ever get rid of this Government, we could of had our last Election, there majority will be always 100 percent.
Do not believe the above ? Still believe we will be a Free people ? Sorry we are being brought to our knees, Lockdown after lock down.still think it will stop at the beginning of December.how many of us know of good buisiness gone to the wall.
This is the worst Government this Country has ever had, and it is by design betrayal after betrayal
November 10, 2020
I’ve stopped by to say “Thank you for saying No to the national lockdown”. It feels great to live in Wokingham where the MP is you.
Reply. Thank you. I continue to press for a better policy.