Denmark is First EU Country to Scrap All COVID Restrictions
21st Century Wire | January 29, 2022
Later this week, England is scheduled to drop its problematic mask mandate for shops and public transport, along with its highly unpopular vaccine passport regime. Up north, Scotland says it will “relax” so-called ‘work from home guidance,’ and reopen nightclubs, as well as ending venue capacity limits.
While the UK and Ireland gingerly roll-back their highly disruptive COVID restriction policies, other European countries are now leading the way by scrapping the entire ‘pandemic’ regime altogether.
Financial Times reports…
Denmark said it would lift almost all Covid-19 restrictions and stop designating it a “societally critical” disease on Wednesday in the latest sign that western European countries are easing or even eradicating strict measures brought in to combat the Omicron coronavirus variant.
Magnus Heunicke, Denmark’s health minister, wrote to parliament on Wednesday saying that he would remove all Covid-19 restrictions on February 1, except for testing on arrival from abroad. Just as the Danish government did in September, when it lifted all restrictions, it will also stop calling Covid-19 a “societally critical disease”, meaning that it will no longer have the legal basis to introduce wide-ranging curbs.
“Tonight we can begin to lower our shoulders and find our smiles again,” said Mette Frederiksen, Danish prime minister, on Wednesday evening. “The pandemic is still here, but with what we know now, we can dare to believe we are through the critical phase.”
Denmark is the latest European country in recent days to announce it is dropping most or nearly all measures as it follows in the footsteps of the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands…
Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets like Politico report this latest development with the accompanied fear-mongering over the latest “subvariant” – allegedly on the loose:
The announcement comes as a new subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, is gaining a foothold in Denmark and driving infections up, with 46,000 new COVID-19 cases recorded on Wednesday.
“Recent weeks have seen very high infection rates, in fact the highest in the entire pandemic,” Frederiksen said. “Therefore, it may seem strange and paradoxical that we are now ready to let go of the restrictions.”
Some 82 percent of Denmark’s population is fully vaccinated with two doses, of whom 50 percent are boosted with a third dose, according to the Danish Health and Medicines Authority.
However, as the FT points out, with this alleged rise in “cases” (aka PCR positive tests) promoted in the media – there is no corresponding rise in serious illness as a result COVID-19:
Denmark still has one of the highest number of Covid-19 cases per capita in the world, currently more than 10 times its previous peak as Omicron causes tens of thousands of daily infections. But the number of patients in intensive care continues to fall and, even with Omicron, never hit the peaks reached from April 2020 and January 2021.
Elsewhere in Scandinavia, Sweden, Norway and Finland have all announced they will also be easing their restrictions in the coming weeks.
Are vaccine deaths outpacing Covid-only deaths in under-65s?
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | January 29, 2022
LAST week several readers alerted me to the government’s reply to a Freedom of Information request as to the number of Covid only deaths. Even to hardened sceptics of the pandemic ‘crisis’ such as myself the answer came as something of a shock. The number of those dying of Covid alone – that is with no coexisting illness or condition – are by any standards low compared with other causes of death. The figures show a total (all age) mortality rate over two years of just 17,500. The figure for the under 65s is very much lower. As one reader put it to me, did we really lock an entire country down in 2020 for just 1,550 under-65s dying?
The real public health threat, as with other diseases, is the country’s dietary and lifestyle choices – obesity and insufficient exercise and vitamin D.
What struck me perhaps even more forcibly was the comparison with the reported number of the MHRA vaccine deaths, 1,954 as of their last publication (see below). It raises the question of whether vaccine deaths have, within one year, outpaced two years of Covid deaths for the under-65s?
That is a genuine question to which I don’t know the answer. It will require a further FOI demanding the publication of an age breakdown of the reported vaccine fatalities. As it stands on the main reporting page with Annex One documents there is no overall total fatality age breakdown provided. This is simply unacceptable. We need to know the ages of the people dying following the vaccines.
The only fatality age breakdown given is for thrombo-embolic (blood clotting) events with concurrent low platelets. Scroll down to about halfway through the long report page link above and see table 6:
Number of UK suspected thrombo-embolic events with concurrent thrombocytopenia ADR cases received for the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca by patient age up to and including 19 January 2022.
By far the largest number of these otherwise preventable deaths are of people under 70, the highest proportion being in the 40-60 category. These may also of course have been people vulnerable to Covid, but given that by far the largest majority of Covid deaths remain in the 70-plus age groups and the absolute majority in the over-80 group, it really makes you wonder at the recklessness of the government’s totally uncompromising and determined vaccine roll out to all age groups, not just the vulnerable ones.
As far as I’m aware, there is no further breakdown available. As far as age related adverse event data reporting goes it is shockingly limited. The only information given about children injected can be found slightly above the half way scroll mark on the above link, ‘Suspected side effects reported in individuals under 18 years old’. There is very limited information offered. The number of children injected rounded to estimate numbers, and number of Yellow Cards filed are listed per brand but no specific adverse event data. It is unclear if the child adverse events reactions listings are included in the overall total and document brand pdfs.
It feels almost futile to say it is not good enough, but it is not. It is nothing short of negligent. Meanwhile the overall number of fatalities and adverse events continue to rise.
The latest MHRA Yellow Card combination reporting summary up to January 12, 2022 (data published January 20, 2022) follows.
Adult – Primary & Booster/Third Dose, Child Administration
Pfizer – 25.5million people – 47.7m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate – 1 in 160 people impacted
AstraZeneca – 24.9m people – 49.1m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate – 1 in 103 people impacted
Moderna – 1.6m people – 3m doses – Yellow Card reporting rate – 1 in 48 people impacted
Overall 1 in 119 people injected experiences a Yellow Card Adverse Event, which may be less than 10 per cent of actual figures according to MHRA.
Adult Booster or 3rd Doses = 36,079,875 people
Booster Yellow Card Reports – 26,076 (Pfizer) + 399 (AZ) + 14,457 (Moderna) + 128 (Unknown) = 41,060
Reactions – 454,881 (Pfizer) + 857,702 (AZ) + 112,011 (Moderna) + 4,477 (Unknown) = 1,429,071
Reports – 158,933 (Pfizer) + 242,148 (AZ) + 33,630 (Moderna) + 1,462 (Unknown) = 436,173 people impacted
Fatal – 696 (Pfizer) + 1,190 (AZ) + 30 (Moderna) + 38 (Unknown) = 1,954
Blood Disorders – 16,320 (Pfizer) + 7,743 (AZ) + 2,317 (Moderna) + 63 (Unknown) = 26,443
Pulmonary Embolism & Deep Vein Thrombosis – 832 (Pfizer) + 2,997 (AZ) + 83 (Moderna) + 25 (Unknown) = 3,937
Anaphylaxis – 624 (Pfizer) + 868 (AZ) + 76 (Moderna) + 2 (Unknown) = 1,572
Acute Cardiac – 11,141 (Pfizer) + 10,855 (AZ) + 2,642 (Moderna) + 86 (Unknown) = 24,724
Pericarditis/Myocarditis – 1,091 (Pfizer) + 417 (AZ) + 276 (Moderna) + 6 (Unknown) = 1,790
Infections – 10,834 (Pfizer) + 19,774 (AZ) + 1,968 (Moderna) + 139 (Unknown) = 32,715
Blindness – 144 (Pfizer) + 312 (AZ) + 25 (Moderna) + 4 (Unknown) = 485
Eye Disorders – 7,452 (Pfizer) + 14,685 (AZ) + 1,350 (Moderna) + 81 (Unknown) = 23,568
Deafness – 272 (Pfizer) + 418 (AZ) + 43 (Moderna) + 5 (Unknown) = 738
Spontaneous Abortions – 438 including 4 miscarriage related deaths + 1 premature baby death / 15 stillbirth/foetal deaths (11 recorded as fatal) (Pfizer)…. + 227 + 2 miscarriage related deaths + 5 stillbirth (AZ)…. + 53 + 1 stillbirth (not recorded as fatal) (Moderna)…. + 4 (Unknown) = 722 miscarriages
Psychiatric Disorders – 9,493 (Pfizer) + 18,171 (AZ) + 2,181 (Moderna) + 105 (Unknown) = 29,950
Headaches & Migraines – 34,083 (Pfizer) + 93,643 (AZ) + 8,681 (Moderna) + 326 (Unknown) = 136,733
Nervous System Disorders – 76,294 (Pfizer) + 181,290 (AZ) + 18,227 (Moderna) + 819 (Unknown) = 276,630
Dizziness – 11,675 (Pfizer) + 24,942 (AZ) + 3,240 (Moderna) + 109 (Unknown) = 39,966
Strokes and CNS haemorrhages – 713 (Pfizer) + 2,262 (AZ) + 40 (Moderna) + 13 (Unknown) = 3,028
Guillain-Barré Syndrome – 84 (Pfizer) + 483 (AZ) + 10 (Moderna) + 6 (Unknown) = 583
Seizures – 1,030 (Pfizer) + 2,032 (AZ) + 240 (Moderna) + 17 (Unknown) = 3,319
Paralysis – 470 (Pfizer) + 857 (AZ) + 88 (Moderna) + 7 (Unknown) = 1422
Respiratory Disorders – 20,042 (Pfizer) + 29,289 (AZ) + 3,708 (Moderna) + 186 (Unknown) = 53,225
Reproductive/Breast Disorders – 28,503 (Pfizer) + 20,324 (AZ) + 4,479 (Moderna) + 185 (Unknown) = 53,491
Children & young people special report
Suspected side effects reported in individuals under 18yrs old
Pfizer – 3,000,000 children (1st doses) plus 900,000 second doses resulting in 2,591 Yellow Cards (up 120 since last week)
AZ – 12,400 children (1st doses) plus 9,000 second doses resulting in 250 Yellow Cards – Reporting rate 1 in 50
Moderna – 1,900 children (1st doses)* and 1,100 second doses resulting in 16 Yellow cards – Reporting rate 1 in 119
Brand Unspecified – 11 Yellow Cards
Total = 3,014,300 children injected
Total Yellow Cards Under 18s = 2,868
*MHRA state: ‘Figures for vaccinations by age group in previous weekly summary reports were based on the person’s age calculated at 31 March 2021. From this week onwards, the age definition will move to a new definition, person’s age calculated at the time of vaccination.’
Full reports including 344 pages of specific reaction listings are here.
Vaccine Site Crime Report – Greenwich Police, Lewisham Station
By The White Rose UK On 26/01/2022
URGENT
Crime References 6029679/21 + Greenwich Police ref 3615315/21
Commander Aitkin or whosoever is now standing responsible for the Peace in Greenwich:
On Saturday 15th about 4PM a group of conscientious people representing the community visited the Clover vaccine centre on General Gordon Sq. We delivered to the chemists who appeared to be in charge of the site a Cease and Desist Notice. They were provided with evidence of grievous harms being caused to patients by both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca supposed “vaccines” being administered at the site.
They also received Government sourced references indicating that there is no evidence of an epidemic in Greenwich or anywhere else in England and Wales; and that the Government itself has designated Covid 19 non-significant. That is to say, there is no justification for the panic induced vaccination of the whole population with an experimental drug causing already horrific injuries. Unfortunately there was no one available to discuss with us in detail our legitimate concerns.
The fact that no qualified and knowledgeable health professional was present to advise and inform patients is in itself a breach of the Nuremberg Code and quashes any claim that informed consent and genuine free choice was available on site. The chemists refused to engage with us. A Sikh gentleman with responsibility for the volunteers serving as patient reception did speak to us in a respectful way. He accepted our grounds for being there and our right to submit evidence. It is your duty to reassure him and the volunteer team who must have been alarmed by what happened that all is well and they are not in ignorance parties to grievous bodily harms or even potential homicides.
The chemists called the Police in their confusion and a Constable Clarke and Constable Lockyer (1636) both from Bexleyheath station arrived eventually and studied the documents served on the vaccination operatives. They were on the phone for a long period and we assume they received instruction from superiors. When they spoke to us, it was immediately obvious they had not understood the seriousness of the situation. They had not understood the justice behind the Notice or the evidence provided in support of it. They were for some reason incapable of comprehending the implications of FOI 52339 issued by Greenwich Council and the one from Hazel Watson on behalf of Bexley Council – that there is no pandemic/epidemic/ medical emergency happening to justify the panic measures afflicting the whole community. We assume as dogsbodies and state apparatchiks and in contravention of their oaths of service that they had been directed to oppose our reasonable, rational and just request for the vaccinations to stop pending proper inquiry.
We understood there is now a live criminal investigation being conducted by the MET at Hammersmith Station – ref 6029679/21. In view of the serious nature of the crimes being alleged – it is reasonable for us to seek immediate suspension of the covid “vaccine” programmes before any more people are killed, incurably heart damaged, deafened, blinded or otherwise horribly afflicted.
We are especially concerned about gratuitous assault and injury being done to children and young people when there is no earthly reason for them to be drug treated. Constables Clarke and Lockyer claimed that taking the treatment was a matter of choice. This is untrue when in effect young people are either being bribed or blackmailed into the injection queue. Blackmail is a very serious offence and is part of the indictment being examined by the MET. Could you confirm the status of the Hammersmith inquiry? Could we remind you also about the local crime reference – 3615315/21 which at this point should also be live and be demanding your urgent and thorough address?
We have to question whether Constables and Clark told the truth when they claimed the Hammersmith investigation was not a live, criminal investigation—and a justification in itself for injections to be halted at the Clover Centre; or at least to allow grounds for Greenwich police discretion to act on the precautionary principle.
We request your immediate attention. If Constables Clark and Lockyer failed in their duty to maintain the Peace and protect the human rights of potentially endangered patients – we request you take immediate action and advise the Clover “vaccine” centre to cease injections until the community can be assured that all is well and the panic within the Authorities is not causing catastrophic health injuries.
Faithfully,
Paul Ursell
Witnessed: M Kitzberger, R Cummin, Sue Johnstone
Supporters: M Ursell
Have Lockdown Sceptics Won the Argument?
By Edward Chancellor | The Daily Sceptic | January 25, 2022
Now that Covid restrictions are being rolled back, various commentators are declaring victory over the miserable virus. Lockdowns, we are told, worked. Only a fool could argue otherwise.
Devi Sridhar, the Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University, who was formerly an exponent of the Zero Covid strategy of completely eradicating the virus, has recently announced in the Guardian that “delaying and preventing infection as much as possible through this pandemic was a worthwhile strategy. In early 2020, there were few treatments, limited testing and no vaccines. The costs of those lockdowns were big, but the effort to buy time paid off”.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Tom Harwood of GB News says much the same. Lockdown sceptics, he writes in CapX, are “bizarrely claiming victory now that restrictions are coming to an end”. The sceptics, Harwood asserts, ignore the success of vaccines. “There is a blindingly obvious distinction between the need for non-pharmaceutical interventions amongst a non-immune population, verses [sic] one with incredibly high levels of immunity.” He points to a lower death toll from the Omicron variant which appeared after the “stupendously successful vaccine rollout”. In conclusion, Harwood writes that to “deny lockdowns worked to reduce spread is to deny logic”.
Let’s examine the logic. If lockdowns bought time for the rollout of vaccines, then we would expect fewer Covid deaths in places that locked down early and fast. That is the case in Australia and New Zealand, which early in the pandemic sealed their borders against the virus. But the trouble with this policy, as our Antipodean friends are discovering, is the difficulty of exiting. Their policy of national self-isolation has lasted nearly two years, and continues in large measure even after most of their population has been vaccinated.
By contrast, in Europe there is no evidence that lockdowns significantly reduced Covid deaths. Sweden, which never locked down, has the same number of deaths per million as Austria, which did (see chart below). It’s true that Swedish deaths ran higher somewhat earlier than Austria, but this ‘bought-time’ doesn’t appear to have changed the final tally.
The evidence from the United States points to a similar conclusion: the Covid death rate (as a share of the population) in Florida, which largely avoided lockdowns, is slightly below the U.S. national average and far below that of New York, which had (and continues to impose) relatively tough restrictions.
It’s true that mass vaccination has reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death from Covid. But lockdown exponents imply that vaccines alone are responsible for the decline in the infection fatality rate. The evidence from South Africa, whose vaccination rate is around a quarter of the European average (49 doses per 100 people versus 180, or 27%), suggests otherwise.
It appears that either Covid has evolved to become less virulent, as the South African doctors suggested back in December, or South Africa’s population has built up strong natural immunity from prior infection – a possibility overlooked by most commentators. It seems likely that both factors have played a role in reducing the virulence of the disease. Even if lockdowns had succeeded in reducing Covid deaths until the vaccine rollout that wouldn’t necessarily justify their imposition. From the start, lockdown sceptics were concerned about the collateral damage caused by closing down the economy, shuttering schools, neglecting conventional health care and forcing people to isolate in their homes for months on end. They railed in vain against the cruelty of lockdowns: mothers giving birth alone, old people dying alone or left for months without visitors in nursing homes, the damage to children’s education, funerals unattended, small businesses crushed and so forth. Finally, the public appears to be waking up to these cruelties. Hence, the fury at the hypocrisy of Downing Street officials who imposed harsh rules for the nation which they didn’t scrupulously follow themselves.
Then there are lockdown’s immense financial costs. At the time, these could be ignored since governments financed them with interest-free loans from central banks. But all that money-printing is now fuelling inflation that will lead to further immiseration in the coming years. The sceptics argued that lockdowns were never subject to a proper cost-benefit analysis which took social and economic costs into account. That remains the case. Thus, not only has there been no ‘victory’ in the war on Covid – on the contrary, the highly contagious Omicron variant appears to be overcoming all attempts to constrain it – but the argument over lockdowns has yet to be decisively won by either side, so that lockdowns are either accepted as a tool of sound public health policy or roundly condemned as a colossal mistake. The sceptics’ work continues.
Edward Chancellor is a financial journalist and the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (1998).
Guardian: ANTI-VAXXERS ARE JOINING RACIST MILITIAS
OffGuardian | January 23, 2022
This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. “ANTI-VAXXERS ARE JOINING RACIST MILITIAS”
We’ve covered the increasing demonisation of the “anti-vaxxers” regularly for over a year now. Ever since Joe Biden announced his new “domestic terrorism bill”, it was obvious that “Anti-vaxxers” were going to be re-branded as some kind of violent threat to democracy (and they were).
Now it’s happening in the UK too, with a story being published warning that “anti-vaxxers” are becoming more militant and there are fears they will “evolve towards US-style militias”, according to the Guardian.
The article references nameless “counter terrorism” officials and anonymous “Whitehall sources”, who warn that…
Latest intelligence assessments describe the anti-vaxxer movement as ostensibly a conveyor belt, delivering fresh recruits to extremist groups, including racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist organisations.
So there you have it, being anti-Covid “vaccines” is a gateway protest. Before you know it you’ll be shaving your head and sieg hieling all over the place.
Absolutely pathetic propaganda, and hopefully not an early warning sign of legislation to come.
2. “WHAT IF DEMOCRACY AND CLIMATE MITIGATION ARE INCOMPATIBLE?”
OK, this is from two weeks ago, but it’s too important to skip. The title says it all, Foreign Policy is genuinely wondering if climate change is too much of a threat to let democracy stand in the way of fighting it.
It’s a long read, soaked to the bone in double-talk and built on some very shaky assumptions, but there’s some good material on there…
Democracy works by compromise, but climate change is precisely the type of problem that seems not to allow for it. As the clock on those climate timelines continues to tick, this structural mismatch is becoming increasingly exposed. And as a result, those concerned by climate change—some already with political power, others grasping for it—are now searching for, and finding, new ways of closing the gap between politics and science, by any means necessary.
It warns in the opening section, before concluding…
… democracy, in its current form, is not necessarily the path to a solution. It might, instead, be part of the problem.
It’s not hard to see where this is going. We warned, several times, that we would be moving on from Covid to climate, and that “climate lockdowns” were a very real possibility. This kind of talk is setting the groundwork for that movement.
3. ‘MORE PEOPLE IS THE LAST THING THIS PLANET NEEDS’
Another from the Guardian, this time interviewing all the hip and happening young men who are “getting vasectomies to save the world”
It’s about the climate. Again.
Apparently, there are already too many people (that’s not true, but whatever), and so young men are getting the snip. Bravely preventing placing the burden of climate catastrophe onto the next generation… by making sure there isn’t one.
One of the (anonymous, and therefore potentially made-up) interviewees went right out cut his balls off the week Donald Trump was elected. That’ll show ’em.
But wait… It’s not just about climate, it’s also about feminism.
Specifically, it’s about correcting the “gender imbalance” traditionally associated with birth control:
Vasectomies address the gender imbalance that still accompanies the choice and practice of birth control. They come with less risk than more invasive and less reliable methods of female contraception, including sterilisation and the coil.
They are genuinely arguing that making yourself sterile forever is less risky and less invasive than having a completely 100% reversible IUD inserted.
Then they start bemoaning that vasectomies can be “hard to come by, especially for younger, childless men“. NHS GPs are apparently reticent to simply sterilise perfectly healthy young men for no good reason:
While there are no laws on the age at which men in the UK can get a vasectomy, the NHS advises that they may be more likely to be accepted if they are older than 30 and have children. “Your GP can refuse to carry out the procedure … if they don’t believe it’s in your best interests,”
Not only that, but the NHS has cut funding to for vasectomies, and perhaps as a result of this, vasectomy numbers are down nationwide. The Guardian want us to think this is a bad thing, but considering the UK’s birth rate has been falling for decades, it might not be.
Nevertheless, there is hope that “world vasectomy day”, and its links to the fight against climate change, will help “burnish” the vasectomy’s progressive image.
The story ends with inspiring words from one of the voluntarily snipped…
“A lot of people are happy to point and say: ‘That’s wrong,’ or film it on their phone… I look at the world and say: ‘That’s not right; I’m going to try to do something about it.’”
A wonderful attitude. I hope he can pass that wisdom on to his children and his children’s children.
… oh, wait.
BONUS: (NEW) HELLHOLE OF THE WEEK
Not Australia this time, well done guys.
This time it’s New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just put in place strict new rules to “combat” the spread of Omicron.
Starting today, the whole of the country will move into the red on New Zealand’s “traffic light” system, meaning mandatory masks, lockdowns for the unvaccinated and an increased self-isolation period of 24 days.
How many cases prompted this decision? Nine.
Nine Covid cases in Motueka are confirmed to have the Omicron variant, prompting the decision, Ardern said.
Australia has been pretty aggressive in the game of “anything you can do, I can do worse” they have going with both New Zealand and Canada, so expect a move from them sometime this week.
IT’S NOT ALL BAD…
Yesterday marked 2022’s first “Worldwide Freedom Rally”, with marches taking place all over the world, from London to Bern, to Vancouver to Warsaw to Liverpool to Genoa.
Bilbao, Graz, Brisbane. The list goes on and on and on.
Huge crowds turned out in Toronto… Stockholm… and Sydney.
In London NHS staff threw down their uniforms in front of Downing Street.
These are the people who they want to classify as domestic terrorists and militias.
Also, someone also sent us this sign, which is our new favourite:
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention that the world’s ten richest men have doubled their fortunes during the pandemic or the Fed’s report on a digital dollar.
News the BBC couldn’t ignore as top doctors demand jab mandates are ditched
By Will Jones | TCW Defending Freedom | January 23, 2022
THE NHS vaccine mandate should be cancelled to prevent staff shortages, the Royal College of GPs has said, as thousands took to the streets across England to protest against the policy. The BBC reported:
‘NHS workers who oppose the Government’s mandatory vaccination policy have staged a protest in central London.
‘Demonstrations were also held in other cities across England including Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.
‘Martin Marshall, Chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said compulsory vaccination for health professionals in England was “not the right way forward”.
He said the vast majority of staff were vaccinated but some 70,000 to 80,000 were not and they accounted for 10 per cent of staff at some hospital or GP surgeries.
If unvaccinated staff were taken out of frontline roles by April 1st there would be “massive consequences” for the NHS, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘He said a delay would allow time for booster jabs and a “sensible conversation” about whether vaccines should be mandatory at all.
‘Danny Mortimer, deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said some frontline staff would have to leave their roles if they choose not to be vaccinated.
‘He said: “This will reduce frontline NHS staff numbers even further and lead to more gaps in capacity at a time of intense pressure and patient demand.”
‘In London, demonstrators marched from Regents Park to the BBC headquarters in Portland Place in a peaceful protest against mandating vaccines for health workers.’
Update:
The Telegraph and Daily Mail report that mandatory vaccines for NHS staff could now be pushed back by six months, following these nationwide protests over the requirement and amid demands by Tory backbenchers to drop the rule entirely.
Net Zero Watch pours scorn on Tony Blair Institute claims about ‘cheap’ onshore wind
Net Zero Watch – January 21, 2022
London — Net Zero Watch has ridiculed claims by the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change” that the recent sharp rise in energy prices could have been avoided if the UK had only erected more onshore wind turbines over the last decade.
Given that Tony Blair introduced lavish subsidies for land owners and wind investors 20 years ago, it is unsurprising that his institute is trying to downplay their contribution to rising energy bills. However, its claim that more onshore wind turbines would have avoided rising energy bills is simply untrue.
The “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change” has claimed that the falling cost of onshore wind means that the UK has lost out by not building more of this technology, first introduced in bulk by the Blair government after 2002. Similar statements have been made by Carbon Brief.
Neither claim stands up to scrutiny.
Onshore wind farms cost consumers in the UK just under £1.5 billion in subsidy in 2020, or about £50 per household in total, one third hitting consumers through electricity bills and the rest finding its way to them through the cost of goods and services as shops and businesses pass on their own share of the subsidy. Because of this subsidy, onshore wind electricity was supplied at an average cost of about £90/MWh, roughly double the cost of conventional energy.
Analysis of the audited accounts of onshore wind farms between 2008 and 2019 conducted by Professor Hughes of the University of Edinburgh, showed no significant reduction in capital or operational costs over this time. Windfarms built in 2008 broke even at about £92/MWh, and those built in 2018/19 at about £91/MWh.
Both the “Tony Blair Institute” and Carbon Brief rely on an estimated break-even cost for new wind farms over the last decade of about £50/MWh. This is wishful thinking for which there is no empirical evidence in the audited accounts.
Furthermore, as is well-known, but not apparently to the “Tony Blair Institute” or Carbon Brief, onshore wind was restricted in England by the willingness of communities to accept it and not at all in Scotland, which has 60% of all the onshore wind in the UK. Mr Cameron’s “ban” was half-hearted and had no real effect. Insofar as onshore wind development was limited, it was discouraged by reductions in subsidy driven through by the Treasury.
The only realistic option for developing more renewable capacity at the time would have been to increase the amount of offshore wind. This would have involved a commitment to pay between £140 and £180 per MWh – the current prices for offshore projects developed in the 2010s. Those prices are 3.5 to 4.5 times the average market price in real terms for 2015-19 and would have imposed a huge burden on electricity customers, not just temporarily but for another 12-15 years.
It should also be remembered that the wind does not blow on demand. The current gas crisis has been exacerbated by low wind conditions that would have becalmed any additional onshore capacity that Mr Cameron might have built.
Advocates of more reliance on wind generation should tell us how we are to ensure that the electricity system continues to function in such conditions without relying on gas – and what the cost will be. Gas generation is the cheapest form of backup to intermittent wind generation.
By opposing the extraction of Britain’s massive shale gas reserves, Tony Blair’s Institute together with other green NGOs, MPs and ministers have directly contributed to the UK’s gas supply and energy cost crisis.
What is more, they also sabotaged any prospect of building new – and much more efficient – gas plants which would have met the current needs at lower cost and with lower carbon emissions.
The authors of those policies should reflect on their part in making the current situation worse than it might have been.
Professor Hughes said:
The ‘Tony Blair Institute’ and Carbon Brief authors appear to live in an alternative universe of speculative numbers. We have plenty of actual evidence about the cost of onshore wind in exactly the period under discussion. It was (and still is) extremely expensive. To have built more of it would have made the current situation even more painful for consumers.”
Join the global rally for freedom
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | January 20, 2022
THIS Saturday, January 22, will see another worldwide freedom rally. It starts at 1pm in London and other UK cities as well as globally.
To find the details of where, please join the Together Declaration’s Telegram Channel for updates. The Together organisers will be in London and will have placards available on the day. You can find the details on Twitter @togetherdec and on Instagram: @togetherdeclaration […]
Please continue to share Together links to drive their message home. They are doing a vital campaigning and lobbying job. It’s essential that we all keep pushing to end all restrictions on January 26 and to insist on the revocation of an end to all vaccine mandates and coercion.
Together ask us to use the following hashtags in our Twitter communications:
#WorldWideDemo
#StandTogether
and to follow their news and share it on the following platforms:
Twitter: @togetherdec
Instagram: @togetherdeclaration
SPOOKS, RUSSIA, AND DISINFORMATION
By Paul Robinson | IRRUSIANALITY | January 20, 2022
Jeremy Morris has an interesting post on his Postsocialism blog about the malicious role played by Western intelligence services in shaping narratives of Russia. I’m somewhat sceptical about his thesis – or at least the extent of the phenomenon he describes – but as if by chance, today I also came across a story that kind of backs him up.
Morris complains of two “elephants in the room,” who together distort our understanding of Russia. The first is the “clear leveraging of latent public sympathy abroad for the Russian regime by our friends at the English-language offices of RT.” I guess that would be me.
The second is “academic and think-tank contacts with the security services in the West.” Given my former involvement in the intelligence world, and the fact that I’ve taught courses at the University of Ottawa with members of the Canadian security and intelligence services, I guess that would be me too.
Double elephant!
I imagine that Morris thinks that elephant number one distorts things in favour of Russia, and elephant number two distorts them against. That must make me some sort of push-me-pull-you doing both at once. Perhaps that explains why I always end up occupying the middle ground!
Anyway, I digress, because this isn’t meant to be about me. Back to the point.
“If you underestimate the hidden motives of those that comment on Russia – from both elephants, then you are guilty of the ‘fallacy of insufficient cynicism’,” writes Morris. I must confess myself guilty as charged. I can be pretty cynical, but I don’t think that everybody has “hidden motives.” People who write what one might call “pro-Russian” articles for RT aren’t doing it for the money or because the FSB has got some dirt on them any more than people writing Russophobic stuff for think tanks are doing it because they’re taking orders from the FBI, MI5, or CSIS. People tend to believe what they’re doing.
In any case, I worry less about spooks and more about the military industrial complex and its funding of think tanks and the like, all of which work together to inflate threats, keep us in a state of fear, and justify increased defence spending and aggressive foreign policies. But even there, the think tankers etc believe in what they’re doing. The problem is that believers get funded whereas non-believers don’t. I don’t think “hidden motives” are the issue.
That said, Morris has a point, in that security and intelligence services do maintain contacts with chosen favourites and feed them information that they hope will further their chosen narrative. The story I came across today illustrates how this works quite well.
A while back, I mentioned a law case in the UK involving Guardian journalist Carol Cadwalladr and British businessman Arron Banks. Banks is suing Cadwalladr for libel for having claimed that the Russian government offered him money for use in the Brexit referendum campaign, and that he lied about his relationship with the Russians. The case is now before the court, and Cadwalladr’s defence is becoming clear.
The Guardian journalist isn’t claiming that what she said about Banks was true, merely that given the evidence she had at the time she had good reason to believe that it was in the public interest for her to report it. So what was this evidence, and where did she get it from? This is where it becomes interesting. For as the Guardian reports,
In her written evidence statement, she [Cadwalladr] said she had obtained two intelligence files from an organisation contracted to undertake work countering Russian disinformation in Europe on behalf of a government agency, one file of which raised concerns about Banks’s Russian wife.
In other words, British intelligence fed the information to her via another source.
The accusation that Banks took Russian money to fund Brexit received widespread coverage. It was even repeated in a parliamentary report. Yet no evidence to support the claim has ever been produced, and as we have seen, Cadwalladr isn’t trying to say that it was true. In short, it was disinformation. And yet, what prompted it was in part documents leaked by British intelligence to a third party “contracted to undertake work countering Russian disinformation” and then in turn given by that organization to Ms Cadwalladr.
Doesn’t that strike you as a bit iffy?
In the first place, the story reinforces what I have said several times before, namely that the “disinformation industry” set up to “counter Russian disinformation” is itself a major source of disinformation. And second, it reveals an excessively cosy relationship between the media – supposedly an independent guardian of the truth that holds the state to account – and state organizations, including secret intelligence.
Personally, I find it more than a little disturbing.
Maybe Mr Morris is right after all!
Unboostered Brits Infected and Dying at Higher Rates than Unvaccinated
UKHSA Vaccine Efficacy Statistics: Week 3
eugyppius | January 20, 2022
The UK Health Security Agency has been condemned for literally months now to report incredibly inconvenient vaccine efficacy statistics. How they have struggled. They have composed disclaimer after disclaimer. They filled a whole blog post with special pleading. They have greyed out the inconvenient numbers.
In their latest report, published just this evening, they’ve tried something new and bold. They now only calculate case, hospitalisation and death rates for the unvaccinated and the triple vaccinated. The double vaccinated have been banished entirely from Table 12. This will make the evil negative efficacy go away, right?
Ha, no:
The numbers are unadjusted, it is true; much certainty surrounds the size of the unvaccinated population and therefore case rates within that group. What is more, these are cases, not true infection statistics. Nevertheless, res ipsa loquitur. It does not look great.
In fact, the UKHSA have given us a great gift, in that they finally provide separate case and severe outcome statistics for the triple-vaccinated and the double vaccinated, allowing us to compare rates across all three groups. They don’t do that themselves, of course, but no matter. We can use the raw numbers and rates from last week’s report to derive the total number of double and triple vaccinated, and the rates in this week’s report to derive the triple vaccinated population. A little subtraction then gives us a decent estimate of how many double but not triple vaccinated people there are in each age bracket.
Here is the graph the UKHSA don’t want you to see:
This is plainly a pandemic of the vaccinated.
The double vaccinated death rate is also a problem. You can tell this just from looking at the numbers in each category:
The crucial 70+ demographic is over 90% boostered, and yet the very few double vaccinated in this cohort manage to match or exceed theeir death numbers.
The death rates have the double vaccinated worse than the unvaccinated in the 70+ cohort, and roughly matching the unvaccinated in the 60–69 group:
This isn’t all that surprising, given that Public Health Scotland data has shown across-the-board negative efficacy for the unboostered for some weeks now:
This is also true of deaths, but beware of the extremely low numbers, particularly in the singly vaccinated:
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