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peter
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Post by peter »

Suella Braverman stood in the House of Commons and said that "a hundred million" people were headed in our direction or wanted to come here.

Rishi Sunak spoke of our having already thousands of detention places and our being in the process of creating a thousand more at two sites.

Overstated and embroidered language from the first and chillingly reminiscent language from the second.

Braverman builds up her picture of a country under 'invasion' by 'swarms' of illegal migrants, cementing in the public mind this frightening wave of migrant humanity headed our way.

Sunak speaks of no less than the establishment of concentration camps - for that is in essence nothing less than what such holding centers are - in modern day Britain.

These suggestions and proposals are dressed up in all manner of faux concern for the wellbeing of the individuals being trafficked, for the morality of not allowing the current situation to continue. They are delivered with slick managerial skill and made to sound ever so reasonable, even humanitarian, in their intent. But the reality is that the public are being manipulated. They are being diverted from payment of attention to the real areas where their scrutiny should be directed. They are being drawn into acceptance of policies that do not equate with those of the rest of the civilised world, policies which are drawing the questioning attention of such respected and internationally accepted bodies as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (who have given us the same warning that they gave to Serbs during the Balkans war of the 90's). They are being led with smooth talk and slick delivery into taking the first steps on a path that should have anyone with the slightest knowledge of history demanding a hiatus, an appraisal of what is being suggested.

There is a very good film called Children of Men starring Clive Owen that very much paints the picture of where we seem in some way to be headed. Not so much in the main storyline, but in the depiction of the near future society in which huge holding areas for migrants, pretty much un-policed with the exception of brutal containment and strict admission and leaving policy at the perimeters, are the order of the day.

Is this where we are headed? What will go on in these effective concentration camps, in which Sunak assures us that migrants will remain for but "a few weeks" before being shipped off to some third and as yet unspecified country (for it won't be Rwanda, that is for sure)? If you seriously believe that people will remain there for only the short period that Sunak is selling them on, then I'm afraid you have much more faith in the efficiency and efficacy of the proposed legislation than I do, or that past experience would suggest that you should have.

This is not an answer to the problem of the small boats. The beginnings of an answer would lie in the reopening of the legal routes of entry into this country for asylum seekers from all third countries (subject to satisfaction of the application process once housed in safety within our communities). The renegotiation of an equivalent of the Dublin Agreement, so frivolously torn up at brexit, and under which illegal migrants could be returned to the last safe country from which they had embarked upon their journey to the UK. The agreement of our country to begin to accept its fair share of the migrants entering Europe from the war torn regions of the Middle East and sub Saharan Africa, numbers which are currently far less than our European equivalent countries such as France and Germany. And of course the establishment alongside the United Nations, of safe zones close to or within the countries from which these desperate people are fleeing in the first place, countries that were they given half a decent chance, they would not be choosing to debouch from in the first place.

These are the places where our efforts should be concentrated. Not on stirring up public hysteria around waves of World War Z style invasions, on the creation of concentration camps in which to hold desperate men, women and children, who deserve our every sympathy, not to be viewed as a filth, a scum, that we should be washing off our streets and shores and abandoning to we care not where as long as it isn't here.

This is what I think today.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Post by peter »

:lol: Ha ha ha - What did I say a few posts back.....

The 'small boats laws' were just a big showstopper heap of bollox and that the real work would be done by Rishi Sunak going to France with wheelbarrows full of cash to elicit their help with stopping the boats from leaving.

And what did he do yesterday? Went to France with wheelbarrows full of cash to elicit their help with stopping the small boats from leaving.

I must be bloody psychic! I must be bloody psychic!

----------0----------

Not to want to continue dragging sport into politics, but Gary Lineker has really put the wind up the bods in high places by calling out the government for the dangerous and devious regime it is.

This is a football presenter for frick's sake, and yet you would think he was up there with Vlad the Bad for the reaction his tweets have elicited.

This morning's Telegraph is on the case, telling us that "BBC faces revolt over Lineker". I haven't read it yet, but I'll put a pound to a penny that they'll be trumpeting the charge for his dismissal (I'll come back and confirm or fess up to being wrong, I promise).

Why would this be? Why should a few posts by a sports presenter have got their gander up so badly?

Reason - because he's telling the truth and they are afraid of it.

James O'Brien had the getting of it the other day when he said that the Murdoch's and the Rothermere's, the billionaire backers of the Tories that do their bidding are pretty much afraid of nothing in this society. They have it tied up and they know it. It's in the bag; the politicians are bought, the press and media is tame (not least because they own huge slices of it), the order is just as they would have it thank you very much.

But the one thing that remains that actually does frighten them is the truth. And when it starts being spoken about, being spotlighted by a man such as Lineker - a man with a social media platform that runs into millions (seven at the last count on Twitter I believe) and that has nothing to loose (he's a made man - he cannot be bought or hurt, even by the power merchants in and behind the government) - then they begin to feel the fear.

So he has to be brought down. His platform has to be taken from him and that is what this morning's Telegraph story will be up to. It will be winkling away at his position, demanding that this outrageous interjection by a man who should not be posting his opinions on anything outside his sports remit, be punished. Their indignation will be palpable. Their outrage justified and unquestionable. Pull him down, turn him out, they will cry..... And behind it all will be fear. Fear that the truth has been spoken by someone who will be heard and whom they cannot discount. This has the smell of trouble to them and they will react against the thorn that pierces them in the side with alarm and alacrity, but covered as outrage and righteous indignation.

Now let's go have a look.

----------0------------

Okay. Fair play to them. The story was a balanced report of the backlash against the BBC, not for allowing Lineker to use his platform to criticize the government - but on the contrary, for punishing him for doing so.

It turns out that unbeknownst to me (a hazard of working from late afternoon into the night) I'd not been aware that the corporation had pulled the sports presenter from his high profile Saturday sports slot, in punishment for his refusal to apologize for his comments vis a vis the small boats policy. The backlash refered to in the headline quoted, was pertaining to the rest of his team of presenters on the show coming out in solidarity and saying that if Lineker wasn't to be allowed to present, then neither would they appear. This has left the show's producers in the sticky situation of perhaps having to air the show, just with highlights of the featured match rather than with presenters in situ. Embarrassing to say the least.

Multiple celebrities and politicians (Labour) have come out in support of Lineker, but numbers of Tory MPs have applauded the BBC's decision. I stick by my assessment of the Telegraph's back of house support of the government - it is they after all that have made such a song and dance about the tweets in first place - but give a shout out at least to the editorial team for delivering a factual and non partisan account of the news (if only for once).

The gist of what I was saying remains however. Lineker is a dangerous man to have speaking out loudly against government policy - he commands too big an audience for a state run organisation to swallow that - and the fear of the current administration and the power backers behind them of having the truth broadcast by an un-put-downable figure of national renown like Lineker is real and not without reason. The powers that be simply cannot have that kind of commentary and scrutiny by the public at large directed towards their actions. Lineker with his comments has hit a nail squarely on the head, and they know it. What they cannot do at all costs, is let the public know it as well.

Too late for that. The cat is out of the bag!
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

We are the Bloodguard
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Post by peter »

Okay. So here we are all shiny and new.

Now back to business.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that the two individuals who had most say in the sanctioning of Gary Lineker for his anti government stance re the new small boats legislation, are now themselves under serious scrutiny with big questions hanging over their continued presence within the Corporation.

Both Director General Tim Davies and chairman Richard Sharp are facing questions as to whether their appointments to the very powerful roles within the BBC should ever have been made. The first, Davies, has a long standing relationship with the Conservative Party, being chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham branch of the party in the 90's and having stood (unsuccessfully) as a Conservative councillor in the same period. Sharp, we know from the more recent scandal in which he accepted the role of chairman without declaring his interest in respect of having secured the then PM Boris Johnson a loan of 800 thousand pounds (for no other purpose than to provide him with a few 'readies') before being put forward with a strong recommendation by - you guessed it - PM Johnson.

The whole point of these appointments is that they are supposed to be independent. They may be positions that are made under recommendation from the administration of the day, but they are not supposed to be made with a view to that administration securing an influence within the (meant to be) strictly politically neutral state broadcaster. Like bishoprics, they are appointments that are above the role of party politics, despite the current governments having a say in their filling, and any tricky manoeuvring of their own preferred candidates into the roles (for political reasons) should be rooted out and the candidate in question rejected out of hand. This clearly has not happened in the case of these two gentlemen.

The BBC news department is itself, at the lower levels of editorial and presenter, awash with political bias. It has traditionally been seen as a 'lefty' organisation - the role of a state run media is in itself something of an anathema to the Conservative Party - but it is a very centrist, soft kind of leftism at best. The legacy media in the UK is ordered such that the printed part is right leaning, and this is balanced to a degree by the visual and auditory media's being more leftward in outlook. But as I say, this leftism has very definite limits. It is the kind of Guardian (newspaper) leftism that will shout to the rafters for the rights of the working man, unless and until he begins to shout for them himself. At this point he becomes a dirty prole once again that must be put back in his box.

Because the BBC is nothing if but for the establishment. It thrives on its hallowed position at the top of our society, and is very quick to marshal itself against any threat to the established order. Witness as a case in point how readily they rallied to the cause in bringing down Jeremy Corbyn, a usurper who had risen up from the ranks, Napoleon like to threaten the existing order and actually represent the interests of the common people. No - any left wing leanings in the BBC (such as they might have been) were very definitely of the soft left kind, and this only because the funding upon which they are dependent is more likely to come from the Labour Party than the Tory. Personally within the corporation, earning as they do at the top end of the income scale, the individuals tend to be of a more Tory bent, for once having secured a fat salary, who doesn't want to hold on to it? This and the influence of the Oxbridge background prevalent amongst its employees (at the upper levels) keeps it absolutely within the establishment fold, and in this respect it knows exactly where its interests lie.

Which is why the Kier Stamer brand of socialism suits it exactly down to the ground. Under Stamer, there will be none of this nasty talk about ending the licence payer funding, no talk of winding the corporation up and selling it piecemeal to private interests. No. Under Stamer the gravy train will continue along its tracks very nicely thank you. There will also be no threat to the established order of things. The proles will stay exactly where they are, grubbing around too busy just surviving to become troublesome. They will be able to be governed with a paternalistic hand; told what is good for them and admonished with gentle words of restraint when they, as naughty children will, behave badly. Those at the business end of our society will hold onto the reins - Stamer being from amongst their ranks by education and profession if not birth - will see to that. No power will shift downwards, no threat to the established order, the Labour wing of the Tory Party will be briefly in power and all will be well.

This is how things are and to believe that it could ever be different is to live in a fools paradise.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

We are the Bloodguard
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Post by peter »

The site just logged me out while I was studying the papers in relation to the content I was posting. Hope this isn't going to be a regular occurrence!

I'd made the observation that there was a deafening silence from the media, the department of health, messers Whitty and Valance, on the 7.8 percent increase in excess deaths we are currently recording in the 20-44 y.o. cohort (around 2000 per week across all age groups) as compared to the prepandemic figures of 2019.

Both Covid and interruption of normal medical services have been ruled out as causes of the increase and given the lack of comment from those who saw fit to fill our screens with running commentary during the pandemic years, one can hardly be blamed for reaching for one's tin hat in the search for explanations.

I mean, surely it couldn't be the mRNA of those vaccines pumped into us, running riot in our cells, delivering consequences far and wide in our societal health and reflected in the as yet unexplained figures? Our government would never have allowed us to be subjected to any interventionist procedure the safety of which was in any way questionable would it?

And all those people you meet - the ones who say that they "just aren't feeling one hundred percent", that have colds they can't shake off, headaches that last for days and sore throats that linger around for weeks - none of this is related to the vaccines is it? It couldn't be?

I'm not being funny but if these increases in the figures are indeed there (and in the assessment of the journals of actuaries, who after all, you would expect to know, they do seem to be) then we have a right to expect our government to be addressing the subject as a matter of urgency. To bury their heads, to pretend that there is 'nothing to see here', will not cut it. Failure to address the situation will only lead to more speculation and provide fertile ground for the wildest of theories to emerge. And ultimately the truth will out. It always does. And with a situation as big as this, it would be impossible to conceal. The evidence would simply pile up from a thousand uncoverupable sources.

So come on Whitty, Valance - step up to the podium and let's hear what you think is going on. You owe it to us.

---------0000----------

It appears that there was some kind of interaction between a Russian fighter plane and an American drone flying over Ukrainian airspace the other day, in what is being reported as the first direct contact between the two countries that has occurred since the beginning of the conflict.

Reports vary, depending on which side you listen to, but certainly the drone 'dumped' into the sea after the occurrence, while the fighter jet was able to fly home. According to the American reports there was a "collision", but the Russians maintain that no contact occurred. From the sound of it, I'm thinking that the Russians are probably telling the truth in that respect (it is unlikely that their jet would have survived a direct or even glancing collision), but covering up their actions in bringing down the drone. They (the Russians) maintain that the drone began flying erratically and then plunged into the sea, but reports that there was some kind of fuel dumping from the jet onto the drone suggest that there was more than an observational role played by them in the drone's demise. This is probably something like what happened, but whatever the case, the Americans are clearly pissed about it. For their part, they will neither confirm nor deny that the drone was armed, but say that such acts by the Russians are hostile and must be considered as escalatory.

This was always going to happen however. The Americans would not be naive enough to believe that the Russians are going to let potentially armed drones fly over their lines and forces, and so must have been prepared for the possibility. This is the problem with war, and history has shown it to be the case over and over again. It is simply not predictable. It will not conform to the plans you have for it, but will spin off in unplanned for and unknown directions. The only certainty about the whole exercise is that it is uncertain. With the stakes so high and the potential for disaster so large, I believe that we should be searching for a negotiated solution a whole lot harder than we appear to be.
Last edited by peter on Wed Mar 15, 2023 7:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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peter wrote: The site just logged me out while I was studying the papers in relation to the content I was posting. Hope this isn't going to be a regular occurrence!
Hmmm, that should have been fixed. (Maybe.) Make sure you've ticked the "remember me" box on the log-in page, that might help.

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Will do Av.

:)
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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peter wrote: Will do Av.

:)
Also, lemme know what avatar you want since I see you still have not managed it... ;)

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Looking for my Frank Frazetta picture Av, but alas it seems to have been lost in the translation. :(

No sweat - I'll find an alternative at some point. (Something inflammatory I'll bet ;)
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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What, that one? :D

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That's the baby Av! Well found - I was starting to feel a bit 'thin' around the edges without it! ;)
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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I just want to talk briefly about 'othering '.

It's a trick that has been pulled down through the ages by regimes desirous of directing attention away from their own failures of administration, and always takes the same form. Pick some vulnerable group of individuals with a shared characteristic, perhaps ethnically distinct or religiously so, then paint them as a threat, something deserving of negative opinion and worthy of rooting out. So it has been practiced going all the way back to the persecution of the early Christians and beyond.

But these days we are more subtle. Since the horror of the holocaust, governments (in the West at least) are fine tuned to the optics of appearing to go down the same track as the early Nazi party, and avoid it like the plague (and react with characteristic anger when they are found out and accused openly). But they do not eschew the tactic - they simply dress it differently. So we hear from its proposers, that the forthcoming legislation that will criminalise any migrant coming to this country by other than the (non-existent) legal routes, is for the "protection" of those who would seek recourse in such desperate measures. Our responsibility, we are told, is to help them by turning them from humans in dire need of assistance into criminals who will never - never - be allowed to apply for asylum status in this country from that day forth.

At the same time the media - especially but not exclusively the printed media - is used to promote the Mr Nasty (in contrast to the government's Mr Nice) angle. Desperate people become swarms and invasions. Provision of food and shelter becomes living in luxury in hotels paid for out of the public taxes. Heinous crimes committed by those we have 'welcomed with open arms' (illegal though they be) are given high profile reportage. And finally it turns out, they're not desperate people flying from murderous regimes where they live under constant threat at all. Instead (it turns out) they're slipping in from Eastern European countries for criminal purposes.

And so it goes. The two pronged strategy works its effect and fifty percent of the population, on being asked, support the said legislation and they don't need to look at the state of the economy, the health service or the rising levels of poverty and inequality in our society; instead they can look over there at the parasites and rapists headed to our shores, preparing to invade our lives, take our homes, our school places, our jobs, and utilise our health and social services to our detriment and expense.

And yesterday in his budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that nice and softly spoken Mr Hunt, began to pull the same trick again - but this time on a different group of people.

Because now he has discovered his own group of people in need of 'help'. Suella Braverman has her group and now he has his. And his are the people in our society who are not working. Not working because they are mothers looking after children, or not working because they are carers for the disabled - hell, not working because they are disabled themselves. And of course people who are suffering long term illness, but are still capable of 'lifting a finger' to push a button (remember that?). These are the people who he has decided are in need of the carrot of his 'help' to return to the workplace. This will be given in the form of increases in childcare allowances, in increased support for carers etc, in provision of 'return to work ' training and services, but what we didn't hear, what won't be shouted about in the right wing press, will be the stick part of the strategy. This will come in the form of benefits cuts for those not deemed to be 'trying hard enough', in fitness to work assessments and in instructions to doctors to refrain from signing to say people are unfit for work. There will be obligatory attendance at seminars on job application, threats of loss of benefits for non attendance of the same and a drip, drip, drip, of continuous pressure to return to the workplace.

And alongside of this will be the demonisation of those in receipt of benefits by the media. As with the case of the 'illegal migrants ' (there is incidentally no such thing - to be a migrant is not, and never has been illegal) they will take the Mr Nasty approach. The subtle undermining of the reasons that people might not feel ready to return to work, the cost to our society of supporting non productive individuals, the concentration on the idea of benefit recipients as 'scoungers' - all these tactics will be used to bring about an atmosphere of negativity around anyone not seen to be working - contributing - to the system. It won't be as overt as the attention drawn to asylum seekers, it won't be as openly critical, but it will be effective nevertheless. Over a period, those not seen to be gainfully employed will be stigmatised and made to feel less, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of others and they will be deemed worthy of blame.

In other words, they will be othered.
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Reading the headline in the Daily Mail today, "Beyond Parody", I dipped into the article to discover that it pertained to a 'language guide' that the charity Oxfam had issued to its staff, containing recommendations as to what words should be used and not used, and suggestions of alternatives for use in replacement of (now considered) 'difficult' terms. It should be noted that it was chiefly against what is described as language with 'colonial' association that the pamphlet was directed, but the examples given in the paper seemed more directed toward the gender controversy (if you can call it that).

A few examples will suffice to give the tone.

Parent is preferable to mother or father it says (though what this has to do with colonialism beats me). Headquarters should be avoided. People who become pregnant should be used instead of the term expectant mothers. The term people could be interpreted as being patriarchal it said (don't really get that) and use of the word local should be avoided (presumably because it has an insular, non-cosmopolitan flavour).

All in all it seems to be a load of rather trivial and difficult suggestions designed to interfere with the normal use of an evolved language and concerning words that for the most part, only someone with skin as thin as toilet paper (edit; no, change that to tissue paper - nasty!) would not realise were being used with no associated assumptions of any kind whatsoever. And not only this: the whole thing has the flavour of a kind of Orwellian 'right speak' (or whatever it was called). A rather sinister attempt to design an emasculated language, one stripped of any historical developmental context, in which, if used, ultimately very thought itself would be curtailed, limited, in the scope and richness that it could reach toward.

But then I thought hang on. Is this for real. We are, after all, talking the Daily Mail here. Is this story, placed as it is with the prominence of the headline title, the front page, in actuality simply a trolling exercise? Is it put where it is for the simple purpose of driving old fogeys like me (the chief purchasers of the paper, though I don't fall into that category) into a state of high dudgeon, of righteous indignation at the 'woke'culture/society we now live in? In reality is what has happened that some over zealous Oxfam appointee has come up with some pc drivel, punted a few copies around a few South East based charity shops thinking to score a few brownie points, to enhance their credibility with those who pay such things attention (perhaps the higher ups in Oxfam, I don't know), and the Mail has gotten hold of it and decided to spin it into a tale of a country gone mad? Perhaps they think that in their highly charged response to such nonsense, the old codgers and players with decks short of a few cards that comprise the bulk of their readership, will make the connection, "woke/Oxfam bad - therefore Conservative Party good", and vote accordingly?

I think that there may actually be something in this you know. I've been noticing it across a few of the right wing press and media outlets recently. The Telegraph also prints these kind of anti-woke stories, if more subtly, that have suddenly got me thinking, "Is this really a kosher story or are they just trolling their readership?" There is a very definite and widespread campaign against wokeness which seems to be gaining ground in respect of YouTube postings and within the printed press, and I think that maybe these trolling exercises are all part of this. Several top prominent Tory politicians have been making comments in respect of the perceived march of wokeness through our society of late, and I wonder if the party are going to make a connection with this campaign - even be the behind the scenes orchestrators of it (or more correctly, the behind the scenes paymasters, controllers and establishment forces that hold their strings) - as simply another string to their electoral campaign bow? Let's face it: it needs all the help it can get. Very definitely something of this kind in back of the Mail story on the front of the paper today. But forewarned is forearmed. Keep your eyes open for such manipulation bullshit in the weeks and months ahead because I think you're going to see a lot of it.

---------0----------

In fact, sticking with the same theme, moving on to the Telegraph and glancing across its front page, it seems that almost the entire gamut of stories featured there serves no purpose other than to troll. We have the leader headline that Labour's pension tax raid will hit millions! That will get the old retired Tories foaming at the mouth. Then the BBC license fee will go up by thirteen pounds next year. Given the recent caving in of the executive in the Gary Lineker affair (who has now been reinstated by the way), much speculation as to the future of the licence fee funding of the corporation has been heard, and this is the Telegraph throwing a bit of fuel onto the anger of its readership who will, to a man, have been in favour of the government immigration policy of introducing laws to bar migrants arriving in boats from ever being able to claim asylum, and against the Lineker position that such a law would be an abomination.

Then, connected to this there is a small headline lower down the page saying that BBC presenters will be able to air political views - more fuel onto the same fire - and another reading "First Female Don for Christ Church College, Oxford". This latter will again ruffle the feathers of the largely male Telegraph readership who, being traditionalist in their thinking in the extreme (and often graduates of Oxbridge themselves) will view the Oxford colleges as one of the last bastions of male supremacy (together with the London Clubs of Mayfair and Piccadilly), and the appointment of a woman Dean as being yet a further nail in the coffin of the world that they have enjoyed.

And so there you have it. A page full of little but trolling. And to cap it off, a picture of the bloody French (and left wing MPs at that) singing the Marseilles! What more could you need to have you spitting pieces of boiled egg all over your toast soldiers at the breakfast table? Bastard's the lot of 'em. Bastard's!
The truth is a Lion and does not need protection. Once free it will look after itself.

....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'

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Part and parcel of what you were saying about "othering" really. Demonise the opposition in order to unify your own supporters. Create a threat, promote that threat, then promise to remove the threat.

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It's becoming a bit of a problem for me Av, in that I struggle not to see hidden agendas behind almost everything I read in the papers these days. Sorting out the genuine reportage has become like panning for gold - but the genuine nuggets are out there if you look for them. Not printed of course, but there's a YouTube presenter called Politics Joe who is very good. He had an interview with an economist yesterday that gave a first class breakdown of the UK budget, but more importantly, at the start, an explanation of the current banking story of the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and its potential ramifications, that was out there in front the best account of what is happening and what we might expect to result. Can't recommend this enough (to anyone with an interest).

But to return to today's press, we read in the Telegraph that the "Bloated Covid Inquiry may last Seven Years."

Well that's as may be, but I want you to think on something that was drawn to my attention by Dr John Campbell on his excellent YouTube briefings on the data surrounding health and mortality statistics in the UK.

Around 2000 people died in the Twin Towers terrorist attack of 9-11.

The same number of people have been dying every week in the UK over and above the normal expected numbers over the whole of 2022, and right up to the latest available figures into 2023. That's a 9-11 every week in terms of excess deaths, unattributed to any case, and to date barely being given a mention, let alone actually being investigated by our Department of Health or government more generally.

And these are, as I have said before, not Covid deaths. They are running at around three percent above the expected deaths figures across the board, but more worryingly, rise to around seven and a half percent for the 20-40 age group. And these figures are replicated across the rest of Europe to similar levels, some higher, some lower depending on population size (ie smaller populations tend to show higher percentage increases which is probably an effect of the smaller numbers involved if you get me).

Now questions are at last beginning to be asked in the House about this with notable interventions made by the MPs Esther McVey and Andrew Bridgen in the last week. McVey asked for a Commons debate on the issue and asked for the Health Minister's opinion as to what might be behind the elevated figures. His response was the standard lazy referral to the "interruption of services" during the pandemic that was fully expected to be seen in future excess death figures, together with higher levels of flu deaths. Andrew Bridgen responded by saying that given the increased deaths due to Covid over the pandemic period, (effectively weeding out the weaker more vulnerable older individuals earlier than would otherwise have been the case, putting it bluntly) one might have rather expected the future death figures to be lower than the projected rates rather than higher, but this, as the excess death figures were showing, was not the case. Again, he asked, would the government care to give its explanation of the figures?

Now one interesting thing I noticed in the European data was that of all countries in the list, Sweden was sitting at the very bottom with virtually no excess deaths.

Bridgen, McVey and to an extent Dr Campbell, are clearly interested in whether the excess death figures are reflective of an as yet unspecified health risk introduced by the presumptuous licencing and subsequent rollout of the vaccine, and undoubtedly this is something that should be considered (especially in the light of myocardial pathologies that have been noted in the heart tissue of the so-called 'sudden death' victims that seem to be on the increase in adolescents) - but I think that this is to miss the point.

To my mind, if the Swedish figures show anything at all, it is that the vaccination contribution to the excess death figures is probably minimal. One can assume that the majority of the Swedish population will, like the rest of us, have been vaccinated, so were the bulk of the increased deaths due to hitherto unknown problems with the vaccine safety, then their excess death figures would also show the increase. That they do not is I believe down to the fact that they did not introduce the same lockdown policies as the rest of Europe but merely relied upon the good sense of the population to know how to behave, what risks to take and what not, but chiefly not to intefere with the normal running and operation of their health service. So to this extent the Minister is probably right. These excess death figures are if nothing else, a stark revelation of the absolute cost, the absolute madness, of stopping the normal health service function to sixty million people, in the face of a threat that was faced by a minimal number of elderly and vulnerable individuals who would have been better served - far better - had they been ring-fenced and vaccinated, while the rest of society had been left to function as normal.

So here it is in stark black and white. The cost of lockdown. A 9-11 this week, and next, and the next and the next..... stretching off into the distance as far as you can see. Already the numbers of the dead, the lost life hours, far, far surpasses that brought about by the pandemic; and to counter the argument that, "Well - the figures would have been far worse had we not locked down," I once again return to the Swedish figures. No, they wouldn't. If we had followed the Swedish policy of public education and medical support, rather than turning it into a full scale public health situation, the death figures, as with Sweden, would be no worse than they are. But the collateral damage to our economy, the ongoing consequential effects of this, and the weekly 9-11 that stretches away into the future - well, none of that would be happening. And I'm going to say it........

I told you so!
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Personally I tend to be considerably less trusting of the agenda's (hidden or otherwise) of YouTube content creators or podcasters etc. Not that "mainstream" media doesn't necessarily have its own agenda's, but those are usually far more evident and transparent.

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100% there’s no integrity or ethical benchmarks applied to podcaster input. You really can only assume trust lol 😂 and given a lot of conspiracy theorists rely heavily on podcasting it’s dubious at best and disinformative at worst.

The audience has to be much more discriminating of the content provided.
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I had a quick look at “dr campbell” and
YouTuber and retired nurse educator known for his videos about the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the videos received praise, but they later veered into misinformation.

Gorski DH (August 8, 2022). "Conspiracy theories about monkeypox: Déjà vu all over again or same as it ever was?". Science-Based Medicine.
Issues with information provided by Campbell and rebuttal re claims made:
He has been criticised for suggesting COVID-19 deaths have been over-counted, repeating false claims about the use of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, and providing misleading commentary about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
Carballo-Carbajal I (March 11, 2022). "Pfizer's confidential document shows adverse events reported following vaccination; it doesn't demonstrate that the vaccine caused the events or is unsafe".
From fact check.org
Jaramillo, Catalina (December 16, 2021). "No Credible Evidence COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines 'Dramatically Increase' Heart Attack Risk, Contrary to Flawed Abstract"

(Fact check). FactCheck.org.
From politifact
Cercone, Jeff (January 22, 2022). "No, death totals from COVID-19 in England have not been overstated". Politifact (Fact check). Poynter Institute
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I saw a very interesting session of one of the select committee sessions within the House of Commons yesterday Av, in which the head of Ofcom (the overseer of standards with the communications sector) was put over the high jump on exactly that subject. In particular the woman was being grilled on how the Murdoch owned Talk Radio had managed to find its way into a select position within the sector normally reserved for public service broadcasters and local radio stations, but not for those with particular political agendas or propoganda functions. It was something about the electronic ratings position of broadcasters which, to be honest, I didn't get fully but basically the feeling was that this Talk Radio should not, if Ofcom were functioning properly, be there. The woman was clearly like a toad under the harrow on the subject, and was floundering to satisfy the questioner that the proper levels of scrutiny had been applied to what was clearly a highly partisan operation. But in fairness, these channels - Talk Radio, GB News, Double Down News etc - do not usually hide their allegiances under a cover of impartiality as do say, the BBC. The printed media again would have us believe that they are impartial deliverers of the news (with added opinion content), but again as I say, there is only rarely ever not a hidden agenda behind any given story.

Take yesterday's announcement that the International Criminal Court based in the Hague had issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin for allegedly spiriting thousands of Ukrainian children away to Russia for adoption by Russian families. This announcement, though recognised as being somewhat symbolic, was hailed as a significant move on the part of the international community in respect of demonstrating its disapproval of Putin's actions in Ukraine and praised in particular by Joe Biden on behalf of America who interestingly are not (alongside Russia) signatories to the agreement that recognises the jurisdiction of the Court.

Now on the face of it, this is a simple account of what is going on - a presentation of the fact of the ICC's issuing of the warrant. But dig a little deeper and the story takes on a different light.

In a few days time President Xi Jinping of China will visit Moscow for a state visit to Russia, and he has recently put forward a roadmap to peace that would involve China brokering a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that would not include any Western involvement. This might seem somewhat outlandish, but it's not so far out on a limb as might be expected. Xi has already spoken to President Zelensky of Ukraine and only the two of them can know what was discussed. Clearly he has a better working relationship with Putin than does Biden. Now what has not been reported to any degree, is that recently the Chinese have been able to broker a resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia - an achievement that surely no-one can have expected to be pulled off, and one that America will be less than happy to not have been credited for. China is very keen to increase its presentation of itself to the world as a broker of, and a force for, peace, and to this end would dearly like to be the one to bring about the end of the war in Ukraine.

This, as can be expected, is far from where the Americans would like to see China positioned in the world pecking order. When it comes to being the one that sorts out the world's problems, it likes to see America first, the rest nowhere. The idea of a world based around a multipolar model of influential nations is not one that it relishes, preferring by far the existing status quo where basically what it says goes. The idea that China and Russia might form a counter center of world influence to rival its hegemony is not - very much not - to its liking. The rise of China as a force of international diplomacy and conflict resolution would go far toward ending American hegemony and it knows it.

So now we come back to the ICC issuing of the warrant.

While largely symbolic as the matter stands, were the war in Ukraine to end, the presence of the warrant becomes suddenly much more significant. Suddenly the movement of Putin around the globe becomes far far more problematic in that there are 120 plus countries that he would be immediately arrested in the moment he stepped out of the plane. Certainly his movement is curtailed as things stand anyway, but he would obviously hope that were the conflict to be over, then he would be able to resume his normal level of movement around the world. For this and other reasons, the presence of the ICC warrant gives him much less incentive to accept a cessation to hostilities without achievement of an outright victory (or so was the assessment of the pundit commentating on Sky News yesterday). Although he did not go so far as to spell it out, clearly the timing of the issuing of the warrant at the very time that Xi is about to visit Moscow with his peace deal intentions in hand is significant. One would surely be naive not to see at least some American influence behind this issuing at this particular time, but no media outlet I have seen has been prepared to call it out for what it is. A deliberate attempt to scupper a peace initiative that it (America) has no involvement in.
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Post by peter »

Hi Sky! :wave:

Just seen your post after posting re Av's reply and I think it deserves a separate post of its own rather than just an edit to the above.

Now Dr Campbell is a PhD holder with a longstanding record of working within the academic world as a nurse educator and as a provider of educational videos pertaining to his profession. It might be informative for you to listen to the long interview he gave to Neil Oliver in which he outlined his background and the position he has adopted in respect of the pandemic - a position that you might find much less contrary than the one presented by the 'fact check' quotes you have seen might suggest.

I'm a great believer in listening to all sides of the debate on this issue and generally find it is better to actually listen to what the individuals concerned have to say, rather than simply to rely upon what other people (who might have more vested interest than they would care to let on) claim they have said.

I have watched a number of Dr Campbell's presentations since the start of the pandemic and can say with absolute assurance that what he does is to present the data as it becomes available, and then to draw his conclusions therefrom. One might or might not agree with those interpretations, but that he is basing his observations upon data that he is simultaneously presenting cannot be disputed. He cites the academic papers he is presenting, gives links to those papers and very often shows the actual papers themselves, while reading from the observations and conclusions that the contributors themselves have drawn. And these are from respected academic journals, all recognised within the scientific community as being creditable peer reviewed sources. Now I don't think you can do fairer than that and I have to say that his reasoning and the opinions he has drawn from these presentations have to me, on nearly all occasions, seemed to pass muster.

I can't go to each of your sources to check the credibility of what they are saying - I simply haven't the time - but on one occasion at least, that in which the fact checker says he has presented false claims about the use of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, I can tell you that this is quite simply a distortion of his position.

As he makes absolutely clear in the Oliver interview, he makes no claims about the efficacy of the drug one way or another in respect of its use as a therapeutic in the treatment of Covid - but absolutely advances that, given the support for its use by numbers of highly respected clinicians within the American and other nations health services, it bears investigation as such. What he deplores, and makes plain in no uncertain terms, was the way that any discussion on the matter was shut down by governments and professional drug companies, and the manner in which any individuals who suggested that the potential use of the therapeutic be investigated were pilloried and shamed by their own community for making what they clearly believed, were valid and important contributions to the ongoing search for answers. This, he said, was not how science is supposed to be carried out, and I for one agree with him. Science proceeds by a dialectic - not by the likes of Dr Anthony Fauci saying "I am the science." That those who orchestrated the complete and total refusal to even contemplate the repurposing of ivermectin (a practice well recognised in medicine and done many times in the past - think the repurposing of aspirin from pain killer to blood thinner as just one example) might have been responding to pressure from vested interest within the hugely influential pharmaceutical industry to not see a readily available and virtually free drug adapted for widespread use because it would effectively shred any profit to be made from the disease overnight.....well, you can draw your own conclusions in respect of the possibility of that.

But in conclusion I thoroughly recommend you to at least make the attempt to listen to some of his presentations before you rush to condemn him. You will find that he rarely says anything that he is not presenting the data to back it up with and might be surprised at the level of professionalism and sobriety he displays. I have a background in science myself and can at least give my assurance that his presentations are not those you would normally associate with that of a 'swivel eyed loon'. Disagree with him sure - but at least give him the benefit of a first hand listening before you do.

Since day one of the pandemic we have been told to follow the science and Dr John Campbell has done exactly that. Subjecting the data to forensic examination he for the bulk of the two plus years was in lockstep with the 'official version' of where it was leading us (as your fact checker acknowledged) but it was only latterly that he began to question the narrative we were being told (and only then when the data he was observing didn't seem to tally with what he was hearing. At this point it seems, he moves from being reliable purveyor of information to a disinformation junkie, not to be trusted as a scientific outlier. I've been with him since the get-go and have seen this journey first hand. And were the questions he has raised simply to be coming from him alone, of course he could be ignored. But in reality the whole thing is beginning to unravel and questions that it was once conspiracy theory territory to ask are suddenly becoming pertinent in the wider debate (see the recent House committee session on the origin of the Covid-19 virus as an example). And this is the way with science. Bad science will out. It doesn't hold up to the method, unless it be that the method is distorted and bent ever further from what is scientifically valid in order to preserve it. I'd say that if Dr Campbell says that there are reasons for scepticism about the way that the facts have been presented in this affair, then he probably has at least some measure of validity for saying so.
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Post by Skyweir »

Hi Pete!

:wave:

I’d be happy to look into Campbell more closely ~ though I’m a little dubious given the fact checks identification of misinformation.

We have a couple of PHD drs here too who are rabidly anti-vaxxers and have had their non-peer reviewed reportsutterly debunked for the DISinformation they are.

I think it’s a healthy approach ~ skeptism and I tend to default to skepticism till I’ve confirmed or debunked a source.

But that’s just me.

The other thing with podcasters and youtube vids is that a lot of appeal is in the oration & presentation and less on the substance of the issues under focus.

Even Hitler was a great orator and a master DIS information spreader. So there’s that.

Ironically it’s not unlike identity politics amd perhaps a reflection on the evolution of western culture and where we are in reality today.

But thank you for the information… I’ll look further into Dr Campbell.
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