In all the nations that make up the United Kingdom, we are governed by people who may differ on some aspects of politics but who now share disreputable anti-democratic beliefs and whose goal appears to be the end of liberty.
Lies and lockdown are their methods, loss of liberty their aim. Implicit in these three ideas is an ever-increasing State power grab; the smashing of small, medium and large businesses and the denial of family life.
Their physical expression can be seen in the destruction of hard-won civil liberties – the end of travel; control of basic social interaction and the creation of a nation of scared, illness-obsessed people confined to their houses, vaccine-compliant and State dependent. The real roadmap is not, as Boris Johnson asserts, out of lockdown, but one to keep us in it.
Why are they doing this? The discredited Professor Neil Ferguson’s interview with the Times provided one clue. They did it because they could. ‘Sage … had watched as China enacted this innovate (sic) intervention in pandemic control that was also a medieval intervention … Sage debated whether … it could be effective here.
‘It (China) is a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought … and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’
Announcing the first lockdown on March 23 last year, Johnson said: ‘I can assure you that we will keep these restrictions under constant review’. He told us we had to lock down to ‘protect the NHS’s ability to cope’.
But it was apparent by the summer that the NHS was no longer in any real danger of not being able to cope, having discharged patients en masse from hospital beds in March, leading to an increase in deaths at home and in care homes.
But why the Government chose to double down and has maintained the ‘restriction’ momentum since – in the face of all the evidence that shows it is unnecessary and deeply damaging to the health of the nation as well as the economy – is yet to be revealed, perhaps at the G7 meeting in June.
Remember the time we were told that restrictions would end when the ‘R number’ dropped below one? When the ‘R number’ was the ‘key measure’?
‘Keeping the R down will be vital to our recovery and we can only do it by discipline and by working together,’ Johnson blustered, as quoted in the Financial Times.
But when the ‘R number’ did fall below one, new criteria came along. It all became about ‘cases’ – with a ‘case’ defined as anyone testing positive from a PCR test, regardless of whether the person was actually ill.
High-cycle PCR testing, despite all its problems of false positives and the many scandals associated with it, revealed here, was ramped up, in order to deliver the ‘cases’ needed to maintain restrictions. Ex-Pfizer scientist Dr Mike Yeadon later called it a PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic.
This was necessary, as by the end of July 2020 no one was dying from coronavirus. It was also then that the Government mandated face masks.
People were told to mask up when they went into shops in high summer in response to a winter upper respiratory tract virus. Most complied, to the extent of wearing masks outside in the fresh air.
Then in November came the great vaccine ‘breakthrough’ when the UK was the first country to grant emergency approval to the ‘novel’ Pfizer vaccine that would protect the vulnerable and buy the rest of us our liberty. Ministers avowed there would be no shortcut on safety or effectiveness.
The great and the good fell for it. If the vaccine delivered freedom, they would have it. Not so. What became apparent was a coercion strategy – and that all the population would have to be vaccinated whether they needed it or not.
All of sudden, once the rollout was well under way, it became conveniently unclear how protective the vaccine actually was. The ugly head of spurious variants was promulgated by the Government, Health Secretary Matt Hancock making the first of his variant warnings before Christmas.
Soon, the prospect of the necessity of annual boosters was mooted and all the while the population was being softened up for vaccine passports, or Covid certification certificates, by weasel-word ministers .
The current ‘offer’ in prospect is of some limited freedoms over the summer (in return for compliance with the various experimental vaccines now being rolled out), but with most control measures remaining: ‘Social distancing’ (disgusting term), masks (a badge of compliance, not a medical necessity), restrictions on events and on travel.
Given the Government’s behavioural policy form, it is hard not to guess at the intentions behind these conditional promises – one, to lull the people into a false sense of optimism and through the creation of artificial shortages, make them beg for the vaccine.
Two, to head off anti-lockdown parties’ votes at the May elections. Three, allow the G7 meeting to happen in Cornwall. And a possible fourth – allow Johnson’s wedding to go ahead. With all this out of the way, the public will find themselves once more the Government’s prey.
Dr Mary Ramsey, of Public Health England, told Andrew Marr on March 21 that the planned end of restrictions on June 21 would not bring normality. She went unchallenged by him.
In spite of the vaccine rollout, declining rates of infection and deaths, and empty hospitals, Dr Ramsey is, it seems – as billed by Gary Oliver on March 23 in TCW – ‘The expert who’s happy for restrictions to drag on for years.’
Her objective, as described by TCW’s Laura Perrins and others, for example the Liverpool Echo, is to keep lockdowns going indefinitely, confident that few will oppose them. And, as a senior official in PHE, she was clearly given free rein to express it.
Although all the most vulnerable groups have received at least their first vaccine dose, we are told that a ‘return to freedom could be delayed by “significant” vaccine shortages’.
On March 10, Julia Hartley-Brewer of TalkRADIO interviewed Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. He failed to worm his way out of an earlier undertaking that if the Government did not fully unlock the country by early March after the most vulnerable groups were vaccinated, he would stand ‘on the barricades to get our freedoms back.’
Hi @grantshapps do you remember saying this on my @talkRADIO show last month? All the over 70s have had their vaccines. Yet still lockdown continues for months. What time shall I meet you at the barricades? Any other Cabinet ministers care to join us? https://t.co/djZy5zZoD6
— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) February 22, 2021
Can we believe him? What happened to Matt Hancock’s promise in an interview in the Spectator on January 9 that when Covid hospital cases fall and pressure on the NHS is lifted, ‘that is the point at which we can look to lift the restrictions … the goal is not to ensure that we vaccinate the whole population before that point, it is to vaccinate those who are most vulnerable’.
At that point the majority will be unprotected, he said. However, he asserted: ‘We are going to have a great summer’ and he would still ‘cry freedom’.
To date, there has been no such cry from him, in fact the reverse. Just one month after Hancock’s brash words, we were already being told that restrictions would need to remain ‘until the whole population’ is vaccinated.
In fact, as MP Steve Baker said on March 20 in the Sun, restrictions are now tougher than they were last summer before the vaccine rollout began.
Shamefully, there is even a push now to vaccinate children who are at no risk from Covid. Mark Drakeford, First Minister of the Welsh government, admitted to the I newspaper that life will not return to normal in 2021 despite the rollout.
As for having a great summer, Shapps says: ‘I can’t give you a definitive, will there or will there not be, the opportunity to take holidays this next year either at home or abroad.’ This is now confirmed, with foreign travel for any leisure purpose banned until July at the earliest – the date creeps ever backwards.
On many occasions over the past year – 11 times, according to PoliticsHome – the Government has insisted it had ‘no plans’ for vaccine passports.
Yet on December 21 2020, the Daily Mail had already revealed that two companies had started work to develop them. And on March 25, Johnson announced that he will – as he was always going to do – attempt to roll these out, creating a new apartheid on the basis of discrimination on health grounds rather than skin colour. Good luck with the legal minefield that this will sow.
It all reminds me forcibly of conditions under communism in Eastern Europe before 1989. It is hard not to conclude either that the vaccine is ineffective and the continuation of restrictions is to disguise this, along with the enormous sums of money being made from it; or that regardless of its effectiveness, the vaccine is simply another control measure designed to instil fear and compliance.
Of course, both could be true. Public Health England seems to confirm this. On March 18, Yvonne Doyle, its medical director, said: ‘The vaccine does not give you a pass, even if you have had it. You must continue to follow all the guidelines.’
On the one hand, the Government is taking steps to force everyone to have a vaccine. On the other, the NHS, the manufacturers – and even Ferguson – admit that the vaccine is unreliable, will not prevent anyone from catching or passing on Covid, and is likely to have unpredictable long-term side effects because of the type of technology used.