Paul Barbara – Be bold and give it a try; I manage to use the features available here and I am not at all tech savvy.
On Friday Mat Hancock strutted up to the podium pleased as punch and ready to tout his great success at not just reaching, but surpassing his 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month goal he had audaciously set for himself. There have been so many attempts by the media to lower our expectations that I was already suspicious we were being played. The target was a red herring and we just chocked on a fish bone! The public were being set up for that “you didn’t think we could meet that ambitious goal, but we romped past it” moment. No, the reality was that we should have met this testing demand months ago, and we could have done, without Tory over-centralizing the effort and grossly mishandling the roll out. Now we were expected to congratulate Hancock as he announces 122,347 tests done in 24 hours; as my brother used to say: “What do you want, a medal or a chest to pin it on?”
Steve Powis, Medical Director of NHS England, joined Mat Hancock the other day as did Professor John Newton, who is responsible for coordinating the Government’s testing; both were in attendance to share the praise and adulation, but during questioning we were not so easily duped. During the question session, after Hugh Pym had finally quit fawning over Hancock and the Tory Government strategy, he asked if the phenomenal extra capacity would prioritize health and care workers; a redundant question that was just an excuse for “stroking.” Of course the Government was going to focus on care homes at last!
Sam Coates with Sky News asked a far more telling question, “were a number of these tests, kits that were merely sent out but not yet returned, were those too being counted in that impressive 122,000 total?” He wanted to hear a breakdown of the type of tests that were counted… Oops! Mat Hancock was really on the spot, quickly peeling off the numbers hoping no one would notice that the tests counted as soon as they were shipped out; he said they had always done it that way, “nothing to see here.” This is a new take on “my check is in the mail” “your test is in transit!” Just as he thought he had quashed that embarrassing fact a Channel 4 reporter again asked if the tests are counted once sent out, before asking about the increased infection rate in deprived areas of the UK?
Hancock said they were looking at all the evidence… it was like he wanted us to move on from detail on the test kits. A reporter from the Nursing Times reminded Hancock that all Nurses feel really stressed out right now and asked how to protect Nurses from burn out and what about their BME staff given increased risk among ethnic minorities. Mat Hancock tried to claim credit for all the Nurses who felt compelled to return to work out of duty despite retirement, sure they wanted to do their bit during the crisis, but I doubt they will want to continue working after the NHS is back to normal. These returning Nurses were part of the Government’s pledged 20,000 more Nurses; sadly, the risk of working with the chronic shortage of PPE is no way to stimulate their retention.
Germany seems to be experiencing supply problems too, but their Doctors have found an attention grabbing way to get their point across; Doctor’s pictured in the buff! This protest is so “tailor made” for the British sense of humour that it’s only a matter of time before the great NHS staff “take off” launches in a big way here. Expect to see revealing twitter posts from naked GPs, Naturist Nurses, Surgeons going well beyond Commando and coy Carers; this will be a major eye opener. So Mat Hancock, your NHS staff are looking rather “vulnerable” in their birthday suits, are you finally going to get the hint and provide the protective kit they need? The German protest was featured on the BBC yesterday morning; let’s hear it for the naked truth. This provided a few minutes of mirth in a time of very grim statistics like 739 dead in the last day and more shocking manipulations by this Tory Government.
The most recent Daily GasLamp post exposes a disquieting phenomenon with regards the engagement of our military, not to fight a foreign foe or to intervene militarily where they would be better not to get involved; this mission turns one branch of the British Army inward to target UK citizens! The GasLamp reveals how our Army “has been reorganised over the last 10 years as part of a plan called Army 2020 Refine. While generally shrinking the Army organisation, there is one area which is new and growing and that is 77th Brigade. This is the UK’s military PysOp group.” The post highlights how: “In April 2019, a Scottish Labour candidate faced questions over links to a ‘secretive military propaganda unit’ aka 77th Brigade. The implication being is that 77th Brigade was involved in operations to secure the union in the Scottish Referendum.” They note that this was a point made within Craig’s blog.
The GasLamp Linked to an interesting Newsweek Article from October 2019, where they say a Twitter executive was accused of working for 77th Brigade. Entitled: “Twitter Executive Revealed to Be ‘Psyops’ Soldier Linked to Spreading Disinformation Across Social Media” it is worth checking out. In the article Twitter had defended their stance by stating that: “Twitter is an open, neutral, and independent service.” A spokesperson for Twitter went on to tell Newsweek: “We do not allow our data services to be used for surveillance purposes or in any other manner inconsistent with people’s expectation of privacy. Employees who pursue external volunteer opportunities are encouraged to do so in line with company policy.”
The GasLanp comment that “Twitter is also deceiving us because it is not acting as transparently as it could. If they are working with army personnel in this way, it is extremely damaging to our democracy.” The article points to a quote by David Miller, a professor of political sociology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, whose study of propaganda and public relations efforts concerning the British government led him to believe that links between social media and 77th Brigade posed “a threat to our democracy.” The professor noted that we should be concerned that we know so little about the covert operations of this secretive branch of our UK military; “Are they just tracking accounts or are they trying to influence people’s views?”
While on a superficial level the Government will claim that they are trying to prevent radicalization and acts of terrorism, in reality this does not appear to tell the whole story. In the GasLamp Post there was mention of “documents leaked by Edward Snowden about the NSA and its JTRIG [Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group] program.” Few people in the UK now trust this Tory Government, especially following the strong suspicion of fraud associated with the Covert 2019 Rigged Election result. In the post it talks of deceiving people by creating troll farms and fake accounts that try to influence the way people think. This builds on copious information from previous GasLamp posts on PsyOps.
There is growing public concern over the malign influence of Boris Johnson’s Chief Adviser, Dominic Cummings, both before and during the stolen election as well as over the most recent discovery that Cummings is present, in an undisclosed capacity, at the SAGE meetings between top scientific advisors steering Government policy. Now we are informed through this GasLamp post, “that 77th Brigade has been working to counter disinformation in the CovId-19 lock-down.” But they cynically ask, “Is that the disinformation from the UK Government, Donald Trump or where? That bit is not so clear.” They post a video that they describe as “worth a watch” revealing that, “What we do now know is captured from a whistleblower and reported UK Column, Friday 24th April, 2020.”
Sadly PsyOps has embedded itself into our politics, but the involvement of our military on one side of the political divide indicates that we no longer have a functioning democracy in the UK. We cannot continue to ignore the wilful manipulation of our population by this rogue Government in the hope that there might be an opportunity to vote them out of office in five years time. Look at the catastrophic amount of damage done and the innocent lives lost in less than five months of their tyranny and you can envisage the dystopian nightmare that lies ahead for the UK under their rule as we careen towards the disaster of crash-out Brexit. There is still time to appeal to the EU before the end of the transition phase in December, but we must urgently prioritize a full investigation of the Covert 2019 Rigged Election result if we want to have any hope of rescuing our diminishing democracy; do not give up!