Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Oxford Scientist “It’s Illogical & Unethical To Force Jab On NHS Staff”

By Richie Allen | September 9, 2021

Speaking to SKY News this morning, Professor Sunetra Gupta, a theoretical epidemiologist at Oxford University, said that it is illogical and unethical to “foist a vaccine upon people in the hope that you can reduce transmission of a disease.”

Speaking about the functionality of the jabs, Professor Gupta told Kay Burley:

“They were never meant to be used to stop transmission or to allow people in particular settings to make them risk free. So it is really not logical to use vaccines to protect other people. The vaccine protects you, which if you are vulnerable is a very valuable thing.”

Burley interrupted and asked Gupta to clarify that she does not believe that NHS staff should be forced to have the jab. Professor Gupta replied:

“I don’t think they should be forced to on the understanding simply because this vaccine does not prevent transmission. So if you just think of the logic of it, what is the point of requiring a vaccine to protect others if that vaccine does not durably prevent onward transmission of a virus?

Obviously there are all sorts of ethical and political issues surrounding this. It’s illogical to foist a vaccine upon people in the hope that you can reduce transmission of a disease.”

Burley asked her for her thoughts on jabbing 12 year-olds. Sunetra Gupta pulled no punches saying:

“I absolutely do not think that is logical at any level I mean leave alone the ethics of using 12 year-olds as barriers for infection for the community. The bottom line is that these vaccines do not prevent transmission.

In the case of the 12 year-old it benefits neither the individual who is not at risk of severe disease and death, nor does it benefit the community. To ask children to bear that risk is for me, simply unacceptable.”

September 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

No, Minister, Vaccine Passports Are Not Necessary to End the Pandemic

By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • September 9, 2021

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi has insisted to MPs in the Commons that vaccine passports are necessary to end the pandemic. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.

While the U.K. has seen a spike in reported ‘cases’ in recent days, much of it is driven by the increase in testing as schools have returned. The positive rate, by contrast, shows a gentle decline.

There’s no sign here of vaccine passports being needed to prevent unmanageable spread.

What about elsewhere? Israel is a highly vaccinated country which got in there early with vaccines, so that upwards of 55% of the population has been double vaccinated since early April, and it has made extensive use of vaccine passports.

India, by contrast, is a low vaccination country which only recently broke through 10% double vaccinated.

How are they faring? Israel is currently experiencing a big surge in Delta infections, at a time when over 62% of the population is double vaccinated.

India was the first place to have a Delta wave, back in March and April (the variant, of course, was first identified there). New reported infections entered sharp and sustained decline around May 9th. At that point, fewer than 2.5% of the population were double vaccinated.

Clearly, then, vaccines do not prevent Delta outbreaks, and neither are they necessary to end them.

If you’re wondering about the small recent rise in India, it’s entirely concentrated in two states (on opposite sides of the country), Kerala and Mizoram, which stand out as having had very different reported infection patterns than the rest of the country since late July. As can be seen below, Kerala is now declining again while Mizoram (the other anomalous line) is behaving more erratically. This is not (yet) a new nationwide surge in infections then, though is worth keeping an eye on.

Another country worth looking at is Sweden. Its Delta surge duly appeared, but then, unlike in Israel, quickly seems to be fizzling out. Is this a result of having more robust herd immunity from allowing the virus to spread more freely?

Excess mortality in the country continues to be through the floor, meaning that August 2020 to July 2021 may well turn out to be a year of very ordinary levels of mortality, just as August 2019 to July 2020 did.

If this is the outcome in a country that famously imposed no stay-at-home order, closed no businesses or schools for under-16s, imposed no mask mandate, and has no vaccine passport, then what exactly is everyone afraid of? And what is Nadhim Zahawi on about?

September 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Medical chiefs, take a stand! Tell the politicians you won’t give children jabs

By Patrick McGinnity | TCW Defending Freedom | September 8, 2021

As concern grows over the proposal to give children the Covid vaccine, this is an edited version of an open letter I have written to the Chief Medical Officers of the UK – Dr Chris Whitty (England) Dr Michael McBride (Northern Ireland), Dr Gregor Smith (Scotland) and Dr Frank Atherton (Wales).  

I WRITE to you concerning the gravest of matters – the safety of this nation’s children.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has advised against vaccinating 12 to 15 year-olds. You have always advocated ‘following the science’ and, if you follow the science on this occasion, you will agree with this JCVI advice.

The JCVI simply must not be overruled by government on this decision regarding the safety of children. The JCVI Green Book is the bible for all vaccinations in this country and it would be totally inconsistent of government to follow the science only when it suits them.

Interviewed on Channel Four News, Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair of the JCVI, stated: ‘My responsibility is to the children of this country and my responsibility is not to government.’

This is clearly your responsibility too and, although government is pressurising medical advisers to give the go-ahead for vaccination of 12 to 15 year-olds, it is essential that you stay firm and do the right thing by refusing to bow to political interference in what is essentially a matter of medical ethics.

Professor Adam Finn of the JCVI told Sky News: ‘We’ve been able to get really up-to-date information from paediatric cardiologists in the United States who are managing children who’ve experienced this myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) side-effect.

‘Admittedly small numbers, but still some early concerns that this might be a problem in the longer term and that very up-to-date information is why we’ve kept to our line actually over the last two months that we should be cautious about this.’

In a letter to the US Food and Drug Administration on December 8, 2020, Dr Patrick Whelan, from the Department of Paediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote:  ‘I am a paediatric specialist caring for children with the multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C).

‘I am concerned about the possibility that the new vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (including the mRNA vaccines of Moderna and Pfizer) have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver, and kidneys in a way that is not currently being assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs.’

Dr Whelan concluded: ‘In caring for children with MIS-C, I have been impressed with how widespread the organ involvement is, particularly given the absence of actively replicating virus in virtually all patients.

‘Particular caution will be required with regard to the potential widespread vaccination of children before there are any real data on the safety or effectiveness of these vaccines in paediatric trials that are only now beginning.’

It is nonsensical and disingenuous for anyone to claim that we need to vaccinate children in order to keep schools open and ensure no further interruptions to education. The only reason to vaccinate anyone is to protect them from a dangerous pathogen and children are at minimal risk from Covid.

Sweden kept schools open and mask-free all the way through and did not suffer any ill effects at all. Sweden’s Covid death rate has been minimal in the past six weeks and overall they have had a lower death rate per million than the UK.

It has been flawed UK government policy that has disrupted children’s learning. The way to solve this problem is to do exactly as Sweden did and then there will be no more disruption to lessons. Sweden kept schools open all last year when there was no vaccine, so to claim a vaccine is needed to keep schools open now is completely false.

Forcing a risky vaccine on innocent children as an excuse for keeping schools open when they should never have been closed in the first place would be morally and ethically repugnant.

It is the same Covid in Sweden as it is here, so if Swedish schools could stay open with no masks, no vaccine and no resultant problems, our schools should all have stayed open too.

Did the UK government purposely close schools and intentionally cause huge disruption to education in order to use this as an excuse now for vaccinating children when there is no other legitimate reason for doing so?

The argument that vaccinating children will reduce transmission is without foundation. The vaccines do not prevent transmission and it is now clearly in the public domain that vaccinated people can carry as much virus in their nasal tracts as unvaccinated.

So arguing that child vaccinations will reduce overall transmission is not true. This is also the opinion of the JCVI, who stated: ‘The committee is of the view that any impact on transmission may be relatively small, given the lower effectiveness of the vaccine against infection with the Delta variant.’

At least half of 12 to 15 year-olds have already been infected, so they will have natural immunity. As the recent large study in Israel showed, natural immunity is more robust and longer-lasting than the narrower, transient immunity afforded by the vaccine.

When a child develops natural immunity, it is to the entire virus while the immunity produced by the vaccine is only to the spike protein. There has never been a vaccine in the history of medicine that produced better immunity than natural infection. Therefore there is no clinical medical case for vaccinating 12 to 15 year-olds.

The fact that government has asked the chief medical officers to consider the wider societal and educational impacts of vaccinating children shows clearly that no medical case can be made for doing so and they are trying to cobble together some other excuses for going ahead.

It is ethically and morally wrong to suggest that children’s health should be put at risk in order to supposedly protect adults. Adults are supposed to protect children, not the other way round.

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons last November: ‘This vaccine will not be used for children. It hasn’t been tested on children. And the reason is that the likelihood of children having significant detriment if they catch Covid-19 is very, very low. So, this is an adult vaccine, for the adult population.’

No children without underlying conditions have died in the UK due to Covid. Therefore if even one child were to die or suffer serious injury due to being vaccinated, it would be one child too many.

In the NHS document Covid-19 Vaccination Programme, Vaccinating Children and Young People: Frequently Asked Questions, we are told that, in addition to the £12.58 item-of-service fee, there is a further supplement of £10 per vaccination dose to eligible children.

Seeing that an extra £10 bounty is going into the pocket of anyone willing to vaccinate a 12 to 15 year-old, is the NHS encouraging doctors to follow the science, or follow the money?

I send you this letter in very good faith and recognise the onerous responsibility placed on all your shoulders in decision-making. I pray that your guide will be the wisdom of Primum Non Nocere (first, do no harm).

September 8, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Doctor: Jabbing Children Is “Contravention Of International Law”

By Richie Allen | September 7, 2021

Retired paediatrician Dr. Ros Jones has suggested that the UK government may be contravening international law if they offer covid jabs to healthy 12 to 15 year-olds. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is not recommending jabs for healthy children, but the government has indicated that it will do so anyway.

Dr. Jones, who is a member of the Health Advisory Recovery Team, said that it would be unprecedented for the government to ignore the JCVI and go to the country’s Chief Medical Officer for his backing to begin jabbing healthy children.

Speaking to Talk Radio’s Kevin O’Sullivan last night, Dr. Jones said:

“So we’re talking about giving it to children where definitely there isn’t a balance for benefit. Absolutely not. That is actually in contravention of international law. We are signed up to Nuremberg code, Helsinki agreement, all of these international treaties, UNESCO, which specify that you cannot do research on children unless it’s for their benefit.

And these vaccines, whether we like it or not, are still in phase three trials. And you quoted Matt Hancock (former Health Secretary) saying that “oh you know they haven’t been studied in children because we know they don’t need them.”

And that is true and I don’t think many of your listeners would know that when the JCVI approved 16 and 17 year-olds last month, only 138 children aged 16 to 17 were in the Pfizer vaccination trials.”

She’s right. The JCVI approved the Pfizer jab for 16 to 17 year-olds despite there being next to no data on how the jab would affect them. I wonder how many parents whose children received the Pfizer jab were even aware of that?

 

September 7, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Challenging Vaccination Policies At Work

UK Freedom Project | August 31, 2021

The UK Government has played a duplicitous game over recent months regarding COVID-19 vaccines and proof of vaccination status.

Background

Early in 2021, in response to a petition calling for the government to commit to not implementing COVID-19 vaccine passports that received over 375,000 signatures, the Vaccines Minister repeatedly stated that mandating vaccines and implementing a passport system would be discriminatory and a dangerous first step onto a very slippery slope.

Yet here we are at the end of August with a vaccine mandate in place for care home workers and the government allowing, and indeed enabling, private businesses to set their own policies regarding vaccination and vaccine status for both employees and customers.

While many employers are jumping on the bandwagon and are either making COVID-19 vaccination a condition of continued employment or are implementing various discrimination measures such as segregating non-vaccinated staff from the rest of the workforce, most have failed to appreciate that there is already well established law in effect that protects the rights of employees (and human beings in general) and prevents employers enacting such policies.

Action Needed

If you are faced with loss of employment, change of duties or are being treated differently as a result of your choice not to have a COVID-19 vaccine, then the law is on your side.

We have collaborated with a solicitor to put together a letter that you can send to your immediate line manager (and your HR department and employer) that states your position, your rights and the law.

It is important that all employees take a stand.  Employers will only get away with this if employees cave in and either accept changes to their employment or leave of their own volition to find alternative work.

As well as the letter, we have compiled a set of explanatory notes to give to your employer, so that they (and you) fully understand the various pieces of domestic and international legislation that their actions and attitudes are breaching. […]

To see more, and to access the documents, see here: ukfreedomproject.org

September 7, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Ticket Sales “Flatlining” as Rebellion Against Vaccine Passports Grows

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 6, 2021

Ticket sales for events in the UK that could require vaccine passports are “flatlining” according to industry insiders, as the rebellion against the onerous system grows.

The government has asserted that it will continue to pursue the policy despite multiple warnings that it will create a two tier society and put countless venues out of business.

From the end of the month, people seeking to enter a nightclub in the UK will have to prove that they have been double jabbed.

Proof of a negative test will no longer be accepted despite the fact that vaccinated people can still carry and pass on the virus.

With nightclubs operating at a net profit margin of 15 per cent, and with around 25 per cent of young adults in the UK remaining unvaccinated, the industry faces potential financial ruin.

The scheme is also expected to cover all venues where crowds of over 500 people gather, which includes some of London’s larger west end theatres.

“There is a significant proportion of people who don’t want to use passports or are not vaccinated. It has settled at 20 per cent in France. We expect something similar here,” said Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of Hospitality UK.

Nicholls noted that with the industry already struggling desperately as a result of lockdowns, the administrative costs combined with the loss of income as a result of people staying away will deliver “a further nail in the coffin of returning for many venues.”

According to Michael Kill, of the Night Time Industries Association, ticket sales for events at the end of September and beyond are already “flatlining.”

“We are seeing a lot of pushback from people who don’t want to come and have to show their health status on entry,” he told the Telegraph.

Plans to introduce the passports are also going ahead despite Israel, which was the first major country to launch a similar scheme, now experiencing its highest COVID wave since the start of the pandemic.

Numerous major European countries have also been rocked by weeks of protests and rioting against the measures, while many businesses in France have simply stopped enforcing them.

As we highlighted earlier, the BBC is already reporting that vaccine passports are going to be rolled out with no mention of the fact that in a democratic society, such a scheme would require a Parliamentary vote.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Oxford Prof: “Jabbing Children Without Parental Consent Is Battery!”

By Richie Allen | September 6, 2021

Clinicians will be reluctant to administer covid-19 jabs to children without parental consent according to Oxford Family Law Professor Lucinda Ferguson. She told The Telegraph this morning that injecting a child without parental permission is “technically battery.”

Yesterday, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi said that if a 12- to 15-year-old said yes to the jab and was deemed to be “competent” then their decision would overrule the parents’ refusal.

However, according to The Telegraph :

Lucinda Ferguson, associate professor of family law at the University of Oxford, said: “In my view the clinician may well be reluctant to accept that because alongside that, you’ve now got the JCVI saying that they don’t consider it to be essentially in the medical best interests of children more generally.

She added: “At least at this early stage would be reluctant to accept that that consent [from a child] is good enough because of course if you treat a child without informed consent, either from them, or from a parent with parental responsibility, it’s technically battery and that would be what would be concerning the clinician.”

That seems perfectly reasonable to me. If I was a parent and my child was underage, I would consider it an assault if anyone laid their hands on the child without my express permission.

Further to that, aren’t those administering the jabs putting themselves at risk of litigation, if they ignore the parents wishes that the child not be jabbed and the child is subsequently injured?

Good luck relying on a defence that the now injured child gave you permission to inject her and that in your mind her wishes superseded those of her parents. No credible judge or jury would buy that.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Jabs for kids and the impossibility of informed consent

By Neil McCarthy | TCW Defending Freedom | September 6, 2021

‘THEY’RE coming after the children next’: these were the words of a Northern Ireland GP, Anne McCloskey, on a video she posted on social media a couple of weeks ago, much shared until predictably deleted from YouTube and Twitter; words which, amongst others, have led to her being ‘suspended’ by the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Board pending a ‘full investigation’, due to there being ‘no evidence to support Dr McCloskey’s comments’.

It hasn’t taken long for the truth of Anne’s words to be revealed.

Although the Government’s own independent vaccination advice body, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, advised as recently as July 15 that  ‘the JCVI’s view is that the minimal (my emphasis) health benefits of offering universal COVID-19 vaccination to children do not outweigh the potential risks’, that selfsame body performed a spectacular volte-face a mere couple of weeks later to advise that all 16- and 17-year-olds should receive a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

In tendering this advice they were unusually frank about the precise risks, as they saw them, for young people, especially young men. They characterised these risks as potential ‘serious side effects’ which include myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart), with data from the US reporting ‘67 cases of myocarditis per million after the second dose.’ Although stating again that ‘Covid-19 is usually mild in younger people’ and that it is therefore ‘important to weigh up the benefits of any vaccine against the possible, although extremely rare, side effects’, the JCVI signally failed to do so in this statement. The simple arithmetic of Covid-19 fatally affecting approximately one in every 1.7million children compared with myocarditis affecting 9.8 in every million males aged 12 to 17 after receiving their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab seems to have eluded them.

Such an egregious reversal of a clearly set out and principled opposition to mass vaccination of young people within such a short time suggests that the heavily covered (in the legacy MSM) tussle between Government and the JCVI over whether to extend the mass vaccination programme to all children over the age of 12 and last Friday’s apparent refusal by the JCVI to recommend mass vaccination of 12- to 15-year-olds are merely stage-managed ploys to make us believe that some deep ethical and societal debate is taking place. Judiciously leaked comments before Friday from Government about its ‘frustration‘ and the description of the JCVI as a ‘black box‘ in which ‘no one knows what’s going on‘ were so many will-o’-the-wisps. It is surely no coincidence that one of the most outspoken opponents of the mass vaccination of young people amongst the membership of the JCVI, Robert Dingwall, was recently ‘axed’ from the body. Indeed, according to a Guardian report dated August 7, ‘the JCVI has moved to ‘refresh’ the membership of its Covid subcommittee in recent weeks‘.

The JCVI is clearly thoroughly compromised. Friday’s statement that the ‘margin of benefit’ of jabbing 12- to 15-year-olds is ‘considered too small’ was in reality a Pontius Pilate-style washing of hands with its express invitation to the Home Secretary to seek further advice. The JCVI is salving what remains of its conscience and is inviting the Government to do its dirty work for it. Therefore Dr Anne McCloskey is right: they are ‘coming after the children next’. Indeed, the Times reported on Saturday, one day after the JCVI’s apparent refusal, that ‘ministers are reported to be confident the medical officers will give swift backing to the mass immunisation programme . . . it could begin as early as next week’.

As if to clarify their malice aforethought, our Government had until Friday gone out of their way to make it known that they had decided in advance that children of 12 and up are ‘Gillick competent’. What this means, quite simply, is that the sole force which stands between our children and a state which is determined to inject them with what Dr McCloskey has rightly called an ‘unlicensed’ vaccine – i.e. parents – was to be pushed out of the way. Briefings to the Times last Friday to the effect that written consent from parents will be sought after all are just words. The Government simply cannot be trusted.

The 1985 case of Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority was without doubt a great victory for the modern liberal state against the traditional notion that children belong to their families rather than the state. Victoria Gillick lost on the substantive issue of whether her teenage daughter could be lawfully prescribed contraception by the family GP without the consent of her parents being sought. A consolation of the ruling, however, was that such bypassing of parental consent to medical procedures for children under 16 could be lawful only in specific circumstances when, as Lord Scarman put it, ‘the child achieves sufficient understanding and intelligence to understand fully what is proposed’. A gratifying and very recent upholding of this ruling occurred in the Bell v Tavistock case, when the High Court decided that it must essentially be true in nearly all cases, a priori, that a child under the age of 16 could not understand fully the implications of receiving puberty blockers.

How children could fully understand the implications of receiving an unlicensed vaccine which, according to the JCVI itself, has the potential for ‘serious side effects’ and the safety trials of which are not due to conclude until 2023, is a question which the courts could surely only but answer in the same way as they did in Bell v Tavistock.

We need to take this government to court. Even if they stick to their new word and children under 16 are no longer classed as ‘Gillick competent’ in relation to receiving the Covid vaccines, the fight needs to move on to the general question of ‘informed consent‘, based upon the Montgomery case, which is detailed here. In the absence of full clinical trials and the suppression and non-investigation of adverse symptoms, ‘informed consent’ is simply an impossibility. This was one of Dr Anne McCloskey’s central points in that suppressed video, and doubtless her real crime.

Update

We read today that Nadhim Zahawi is ALREADY rowing back on last Friday’s briefings to the Times about the need for written consent and that children deemed ‘Gillick competent’ will be able override their parents. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/05/vaccine-passports-to-be-required-for-nightclubs-and-mass-events-in-england

September 6, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

A Twelve Year-Old Cannot Give Informed Consent For Vaccination

By Richie Allen | September 6, 2021

Professor Adam Finn from the Joint Committee on Vaccination (JCVI) has just been speaking to the BBC. He was on Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast Show. Finn reiterated the JCVI stance, that is that healthy children should not be offered a covid jab.

Finn did say that the JCVI stood by its earlier advice, that children with underlying health conditions should be offered the jab. He was speaking to the BBC’s Rachel Burden. Strangely, Burden didn’t ask Finn for his thoughts on comments made by vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi (pictured) yesterday.

Zahawi told The Marr Show yesterday, that if the parents of a given child refused to give their consent but the child wanted the jab, once the child was ruled to be competent, he/she could overrule mum and dad. Zahawi gave no details as to how it would be determined whether or not the child was competent.

Adam Finn made a point of telling Rachel Burden this morning that parental consent is needed for every vaccine that is offered to children. Burden, either through incompetence or because she’d been warned off, didn’t press him. She should of course have said, “Well Professor, it sounds like you disagree with the vaccine minister. Is that right?”

The government will ignore the JCVI advice. It will roll out the jabs in schools to perfectly healthy children. England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van Tam will give the go ahead.

Parents, you need to seek legal advice at the speed of light. It is preposterous to claim that a child under 16 years-old can give informed consent to be jabbed. You need to move quickly.

The government’s plan is to administer the jabs in schools. Children will come under tremendous pressure to take the needle. It’s fiendishly clever. The government knows that by doing it in schools and not at vaccine centres where parents would need to be present, they’ll be in a better position to overcome the problem of parental consent.

They’re coming for your children. Seek legal advice now.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Support our campaign to repeal the unjustifiable and dangerous Coronavirus Act

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW  Defending Freedom | September 6, 2021

THE Coronavirus Act 2020 received Royal Assent on March 25 last year after passing through the House of Commons without a vote, such was the panic engendered by media images of overwhelmed medical services in Italy and Imperial College’s massively exaggerated Covid death predictions. The Act granted the government emergency powers to handle the Covid-19 pandemic. These allow the government to limit or suspend public gatherings, to detain individuals suspected to be infected by Covid-19, and to intervene or relax regulations in a range of sectors to limit transmission of the disease, ease the burden on public health services, and assist healthcare workers and the economically affected. Areas covered by the act include the National Health Service, social care, schools, police, Border Force, local councils, funerals and courts.

The Act was originally designed to expire at the end of March 2022 without interruption, but thanks to former Brexit Secretary David Davis it became subject to a six-monthly renewal vote in Parliament. Davis’s amendment tabled on March 21 last year to restrict the Act to a ‘brick-wall stop’ of one year failed, but this and the threat of a backbench rebellion led to the government’s own amendment to the Bill requiring parliamentary renewal of its powers every six months. The first of these came at the end of September 2020, the second in March 2021. Each time, shamefully, its extension has been voted through by a large majority of MPs. Only 24 MPs voted against the first time, and a very disappointing 76 the second time.

The one party to date to make a formal stand against its extension are the Liberal Democrats. Their leader, Ed Davey, has accused the Government of making ‘false claims’ over the need for an ongoing Coronavirus Act to enforce emergency lockdown restrictions. Notable critics to take a stand against it in the Conservative Party include Sir Charles Walker, Sir Graham Brady and Sir Desmond Swayne.

The argument that the Coronavirus Act is not important because most of the restrictions that have been irrationally imposed on society have been under section of the 1984 Public Health Act is mistaken. Nothing has been more symbolic of the slide into tyranny than this rubber-stamped Act. Numerous prosecutions have been attempted and indeed made under its provisions. If MPs fail to repeal it for the third time they will be allowing the government – and indeed the media which they appear to lead by the nose – to continue with the charade that there is a Covid crisis national emergency. There is not.

Powers in the Act remain dangerous. Schedule 22 gives the government extraordinary powers to prohibit gatherings, meaning that protests, vigils and political assemblies could be banned. It has never been activated in England and so is plainly unnecessary, but neither is it proportionate in a democracy. All the time it sits on the statute books it poses a threat to the right to free expression, freedom of assembly and democracy.

The fact is that none of the measures were ever necessary. They were granted in the middle of a panic to prevent a worst-case scenario that never came to pass. Since then the government has used these powers irresponsibly, if not abused them. The Coronavirus Act has made the problem worse, not better. There was and is no justification for extending these powers. All the data accumulated in the last eighteen months says this Act is not needed, as has been documented endlessly on these pages, on Lockdown Sceptics (now the Daily Sceptic), by HART and by numerous other independent scientists and doctors. As James Delingpole put it brutally and accurately at the beginning of the year, most of the government Covid statistical analysis is bollocks and designed to engender false fear.

Now, in less than three weeks, the vote for renewing this unjustifiable Act is coming up for a third time.

In March we advised readers to write to their MPs and set out a specimen letter. We fear repeating this letter is a waste of time. We suggest instead that readers concentrate their MPs’ minds by telling them that if he or she fails to vote against this next Coronavirus Act extension you will be giving your vote to the LibDems next time round, as the only party taking a decisive stand on the Act’s immediate repeal, or any other emergent party taking an equally decisive stand.

We’d also encourage you to sign this Repeal the Coronavirus Act petition here and forward it to like-minded friends.

Finally we invite readers to suggest or design their own TCW Defending Freedom car and window stickers to promote our ‘Repeal the Coronavirus Act’ campaign. And we invite your suggestions, below the line and via email to info@conservativewoman.co.uk on how to further our campaign and which other groups we could or should join forces with.

It’s time to end the charade. It’s time to end this legislative symbol of fear and to take away these tyrannical powers from an immoral government that looks quite capable of using them. Please make your voice heard.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

David Davis: “Vaccine Passports Are Dangerously Misleading!”

By Richie Allen | September 6, 2021

The former Brexit Secretary David Davis has described vaccine passports as dangerously misleading. The Conservative Party MP also said this morning, that he will be opposing the extension of “unnecessary emergency powers” in a vote in Parliament this month.

Speaking to Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer, Davis said:

“On the so-called coronavirus passport, it is an idea looking for a problem. It’s not actually gonna do any good. If you have been vaccinated, it protects you! It doesn’t particularly well protect other people.

It stops you getting a very serious illness. but it doesn’t stop you becoming infected and it doesn’t stop you infecting other people. So we’re now going to have a certificate saying we’ve got a vaccine protecting ourselves, and we’re pretending that it’s protecting everybody else.

It’s misleading. Apart from all the civil liberty issues, it’s also dangerously misleading. And again, I hope the opposition parties grow some courage over this, because I think there’s a growing opposition to it on the Tory benches including me.”

Davis was responding to Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi’s confirmation yesterday, that vaccine passports will be required to enter a nightclub and other indoor venues from the end of the month.

On the government’s wish to extend the covid emergency powers for another six months, something which will require parliamentary approval later this month, Davis said:

“We ought to have a freedom bill to revoke every law passed under the emergency powers act.”

September 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

They can’t hide the costs of Net Zero forever

By Patrick Benham-Crosswell | TCW Defending Freedom | September 6, 2021

THE run-up to the COP26 climate change jamboree in Glasgow later this year is probably not going as well as the government would like.  Despite being committed to Net Zero by Mrs May’s undebated and uncosted statutory instrument, the size of the likely costs can’t be hidden for ever and the guardian of the magic money tree, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, is fretting.

I have just produced a short book on Net Zero (brazen plug, you can buy it here) and, having spent several months trawling through the government’s own numbers, have reached the conclusions that the costs are huge (and possibly more than that). Replacing fossil fuels means we have to produce our energy from nuclear and renewables. At the moment they provide just about 10 per cent of our energy requirements. Making up the shortfall needs 30 to 50 Sizewell Cs, or 300 to 500 Small Modular Reactors, or 17,000 to 28,000 new offshore wind turbines. It will also need the electricity distribution grid to more or less quadruple in size. (The uncertainty primarily comes from whether Mr Gove can convert 25million homes to heat pumps, or whether we adopt hydrogen).

The cost of the generation alone comes out at something like £1trillion. Add to that car chargers, heat pumps, hydrogen electrolysers and suchlike and the costs could double. Or more.

The cost of energy will also rise. A report from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in 2016 (when Mrs May imposed Net Zero) forecast that the price of electricity would increase by at least 50 per cent. Which means that the UK is likely to be operating on a higher cost base than those economies which have not yet followed our lead and declared a net zero target. That’s most of the world – only Bhutan, Suriname, Uruguay, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Austria and Germany have followed Mrs May’s quixotic charge. I’m not sure Germany is serious – 25 per cent of its power comes from coal and it is phasing out nuclear power.

Hilariously (or tragically) the government is threatening to crack down on ‘greenwashing’, by which they mean the habit of suppliers claiming that buying their product saves the planet. Yet our political leaders maintain that it will all be fine, that Net Zero is achievable and all we need to do is plant some trees. If they looked at their own data they would know that this is not the case.

To cite one example, every now and then one of them will trumpet about carbon capture, use and storage. Capturing CO2 is tricky and expensive. The world CO2 demand is some 230million tons per year (mostly for the oil and food industries). That’s less than half of the UK’s current CO2 emissions. There is no chance of widescale use of CO2 captured in the UK.

Of course there is already ample legislation on what may or may not be said in advertisements. New legislation is unnecessary.

As we have seen during the pandemic, this government has a habit of deploying misleading graphs and generally being economical with the truth. If they really wanted to improve the flow of information to the public they would apply the current law to their own presentations.

Hell will freeze over before that happens.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Nuclear Power | | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »