Is the PM getting used to dictating, just getting the people of our country used to following his increasingly authoritarian dictates or both? MPs, even those on the Tory backbenches, are becoming alarmed by the total lack of debate over any of the restrictions that appear random, illogical and are introduced suddenly without warning or scrutiny. This reckless Government seem determined to consistently ignore WHO with isolation times initially set at only a week, despite evidence that 14 days symptom free was the norm everywhere except the UK. Finally 14 days is accepted here with no explanation as to why the change was made. With no consideration of the transport logistics, the sudden overnight call for people to return to work led to crammed tubes in the Capitol with commuters ignoring social distancing and with no obligation the wear masks. It was less than two weeks after Boris Johnson had announced that people should no longer work from home, that he was insisting everyone who could work from home should.
So many of the decisions made appear deliberately designed to ‘inadvertently’ spread infection rather than suppress it, as if the ‘Herd Immunity’ strategy is still being forced on our population by covert means. Other measures are bought in with unnecessary delays to implementation, but some just don’t make sense at all and there appears to be no scientific evidence to back them up. There are concerns that latest dictate, closing pubs at ten PM, has seen large crowds gathered on the street at closing time and all boarding public transport at the same time. making the spread of infection worse. Of course this closing time rule does not apply to bars in the House of Commons, where the elite who rule us are exempt from rules they make for us. Restrictions target the poor, who cannot work from home and must commute to work; while work is essential, the ‘rule of six’ inhibits purely social interactions. However the ‘rule of six’ doesn’t apply if you want to go grouse shooting with a modest party of thirty of your wealthiest cronies. With steep punitive fines for rule breaking plebs it’s ‘Six of the Best’ for all the rest!
By far the worst obscenity of last week was as Rishi Sunak lowered the boom on the working poor, refusing to extend the furlough scheme, guaranteeing that many of them will be unemployed going into a tough winter, he somehow scraped the funds together to be a lot more gracious with the Queen. The Canary Article entitled, “Rishi Sunak ‘can’t save every job’, but he can save the queen,” said it all! “On Thursday 24 September, Rishi Sunak released his Winter Economy Plan, intended to protect jobs and businesses from the impact of the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Disappointingly for some, the chancellor’s announcement revealed that the government won’t be extending the existing furlough scheme. Instead, the plan is to implement a ‘Job Support Scheme,’ but only those working at least a third of their usual hours will be eligible for support. This will likely leave countless workers, who are currently on furlough, on their own, with no support from the government, and at the brink of destitution.” ‘God save the Queen’ and sod the rest of us!
The Canary report that, “During the announcement, Sunak declared resignedly that he ‘can’t save every job’. But for those whose livelihoods have been hit hard by the pandemic, this statement might have stung a little less if, only a day prior, the Treasury hadn’t disclosed a bailout package for the Queen.” Grotesque inequality as privilege protects the wealthy elite so, immune from hardship, they can decide our fate. Among Twitter comments Lester Holloway wrote, “As Rishi Sunak tells workers they’ll have to forego a third of their income, the government promises the Queen she won’t lose a penny.” They say, “Following Sunak’s economy plan announcement, people quickly made the connection… there was outrage.” Anne Lairs was less polite, “I see Johnson is gonna bail out the Queen due to the loss in estate portfolio ???? When the fuck are we gonna stop being a nation of forelock tuggers and start thinking of the people who’ve kept this country going thro this pandemic the working class who do shit work 4 shit wages”
According to the Canary, “It turns out that as a result of loss in income from her properties during the pandemic, the Treasury will ‘provide the estate with extra money to meet any shortfall in profits and make sure the Queen’s sovereign grant remains at its current level’.” This is what Tories really mean by ‘levelling up;’ it’s exactly what they always do: extract money from the working poor to pass on up to the filthy rich. We must make it abundantly clear that we understand their real agenda of ‘Decimating Down’ or they will keep that Tory boot permanently on our necks! They note that, “…where an act of god (the pandemic) didn’t spare royal investments, Sunak was still on hand to save the queen. Commoners be damned…” has she no awareness or is she just devoid of a conscience? Cultic Witch tweeted, “Lizzie Windsor’s investments have crashed and wm says they’ll bail her out with tax payers money. People are homeless and losing their jobs fgs!!” “Then again, for the Tories, bailing out billionaires is entirely on brand.”
JDBlack tweeted: “’I can’t save every job’ says Sunak. Meanwhile, as our children rummage in bins for food, the Tories can use OUR money to bailout the Royal family.” The Canary noted, “Fyi — Forbes estimates the monarchy is worth around £72.5 billion. Queen to receive government ‘bailout’ ‘This royal bailout will be tough to stomach for people who love the Queen but have lost their jobs,’ says Tax Justice UK. What happens now? For weeks, unions and MPs, among others, have been putting pressure on Sunak to extend the furlough scheme. Despite this pressure, ‘Dishy Rishi’ delivered a rescue package that will be limited at best, and catastrophic at worst. It’s difficult to imagine what the winter will be like for the many people facing unemployment, evictions, and food poverty. None of which the queen will ever have to worry about. So it’s telling that the Tory government is still on hand to bail her out. Yet again, the priorities of this government are clear for all to see.” This corruption of privilege is emulated globally.
For months we were hoodwinked into believing that the PM was ‘following the science;’ a look at SAGE minutes is revealing. In the First of a series of Byline Times Exclusives on “SAGEGATE: Part One,” they uncover, “Treasury and Downing Street Advisors Intervened to Delay COVID-19 Lockdown. Nafeez Ahmed reveals how outside pressure weighed on SAGE to prioritise ‘supply chains’, the ‘wider economy’, ‘workforce’ and ‘business.’ Documents published by the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) throw light on how overarching concerns about the economy derailed efforts to suppress the Coronavirus, resulting in a worst-of-all-worlds scenario: maximum fatality rates combined with the worst economic performance. One of the most consistent themes that emerges from the minutes of SAGE meetings is how the Government repeatedly expected its scientists to account for the economic impact of lockdown restrictions, even though SAGE was not doing any economic modelling.”
Ahmed reports that, “The minutes reveal that economic modelling of the potential consequences of social distancing measures was being conducted by other Government departments such as the Treasury and the Actuary’s Department. This evidence emerges in the context of a Government decision, from the outset, to refuse to consider the goal of suppressing the Coronavirus as a viable option.” So did they attempt to avoid the Inevitable? “The SAGE minutes confirm that the Government at no time considered attempting to prevent the Coronavirus from becoming endemic in the UK. They also show how social distancing measures were constantly and repeatedly pitted against economic considerations. In fact, on 3 February, the main concern was protecting UK ‘supply chains’ rather than enforcing early restrictions that could have helped to prevent the virus from entering the country.” The decision to allow football fans from the Covid hotspot of Madrid to flood into Liverpoole for a football match was unforgivable.
According to Ahmed, “The SAGE minutes at the time said that preventing ‘imported infections’ would have required ‘draconian and coordinated measures’ at the border and that ‘stopping travel would also have other impacts, including on supply chains’. Almost all social distancing measures that were later adopted were dismissed out of hand. The minutes show that SAGE had assumed that reducing imported infections by more than 95% would only delay the onset of the epidemic in the UK by about a month, rather than preventing the bulk of it. But this assumption was false and at odds with progress being made elsewhere. While the UK was refusing to close borders over fears about ‘supply chains’, other countries such as New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore were doing the opposite and successfully managed to suppress the virus within a shorter time-frame.” This obsession with supply chains seems incongruous when you consider the critical impact their crash-out Brexit will have on vital food and medical supply chains.
Ahmed says, “The next day, the Government’s scientific advisors seemed to agree that the spread of COVID-19 in the UK would be inevitable and that the focus was not to prevent this spread, but to merely ‘delay’ it in order to improve ‘NHS readiness and ability to handle cases’. Meanwhile, almost all social distancing measures that were later adopted were dismissed out of hand. School closures, the banning of public gatherings, shutting down public transport and other measures were described as ‘probably relatively ineffective’. But the SAGE documents suggest that this dismissal was less the result of science and more from being compelled by the Government to consider economic factors.” This total lack of consideration for the inevitable expediential spread of the virus is proof that the pseudoscience of unvaccinated ‘Herd Immunity’ was being heavily relied upon by the Government.
According to Ahmed in the early stages there was, “No Social Distancing Modelling, Earlier released SAGE documents relating to school closures showed that SAGE had put forward ample evidence of their effectiveness based on preliminary literature reviews of existing scientific literature. Early action, it was acknowledged, could potentially reduce an epidemic by as much as 60%. But, somehow, this data ended up being filtered out of SAGE’s final recommendations to the Government. The SAGE minutes suggest that this was because of the constant insistence from the Government that the ‘economic consequences’ of such social distancing measures needed to be accounted for. SAGE had also never been requested by the Government to do specific modelling of social distancing measures until much later.” When the Tory Government was finally forced into lockdown, it was too little too late.
Ahmed remarked, “Given the Government’s reliance on modelling to formulate its strategy, the failure to have detailed modelling in place for social distancing strategies three months into the crisis is damning and suggests that such preventive measures had not been given serious consideration. As the journalist Stefan Simonowitz has observed, ‘the failure to do epidemiological modelling for lockdown until mid-March” meant that the Government had guaranteed it would not receive ‘any alternative ‘design options’. Meanwhile several other SAGE documents prior to March made explicit reference to how social distancing measures would have negative impacts on the economy.” The Tory Governments policy for engagement with SAGE appears to rely on asking the wrong questions to obtain answers that were compatible with the pre selected policy of Herd Immunity.
Ahmed reported that, “By 11 February, SAGE attendees made clear that they expected ‘widespread transmission’ in the UK and that the virus would peak two to three months after this. However, at this time, the Government was already planning to put an end to contact tracing. The minutes show that Public Health England (PHE) would work with a SAGE sub-group, the infection modelling team (SPI-M), to ‘develop criteria for when contact tracing is no longer worthwhile’. The same document shows SAGE advising that the Government ‘should plan for impacts on the NHS and also on the wider UK workforce’. The Government was, in other words, weighing up public health against wider economic concerns.” This revelation demonstrates that a perfectly acceptable functioning Contact Tracing system was already doing the essential work that local Public Health teams do extremely effectively all the time when challenged by tracing STD infection contacts or determining the source of a contamination cluster in the community. The decision to shut this down and later award a private contract to an unqualified provider was unconscionable!
Ahmed says that, “Two days later, the SAGE minutes were even more explicit about the role of economic considerations in Government reluctance to implement early social distancing. Following a discussion of why there was no point in attempting to prevent transmission of the virus across the UK, the document referred to the option of school closures to delay either the first wave of the epidemic or its peak. It then added: ‘Either would have impacts on schools, other services and the wider economy.’ The minutes went on to call for SAGE to revisit the effects of school closures at the next meeting, including on ‘workforce consequences’. Notably, the Prime Minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings’ top advisor in Downing Street, Ben Warner, attended this SAGE meeting.” Since this data was already available regarding school closures it was also well known before they were forced to reopen, but Cummings’s overriding consideration was getting the working poor back to their poverty wage menial jobs.
Ahmed reports that, “Such concerns were reiterated on 23 March, the SAGE minutes for which revealed that analysis of the ‘economic consequences’ of social and behavioural interventions was to become a separate Government research programme in itself. ‘Given the clear links between poverty and long-term ill health, health impacts associated with the economic consequences of interventions also need to be investigated,’ the SAGE minutes recorded. The Government was keen to find evidence that the lockdown itself would be a major cause of death. In a section titled ‘Excess Deaths Planning’, the SAGE minutes state: ‘Actuarial analysis is required to estimate the number of deaths caused indirectly, including those caused by the social interventions… In due course, analysis of the effects of the interventions on other causes of death should be undertaken.’ Towards the end of the month, this goal was reiterated even as SAGE was already under pressure to explore how to lift the restrictions just put in place.”
Ahmed noted, “On 26 March – three days after the lockdown began – SAGE was tasked with shifting attention to ‘future phases of the epidemic’ during which the Government would ‘release current measures safely and advise on long-term issues’. The SAGE document dated 31 March further confirms that economic modelling was feeding into Government decisions and scenario planning – and would continue to do so. Discussing future SAGE research priorities, the minutes recorded that ‘[The Treasury] provided an update on economic work being considered elsewhere’. The minutes also noted that among further questions to be studied by SAGE was the issue of ‘long-term impacts of interventions on health, including socio-economic effects on health’. Attempting to model the deleterious economic impacts of the social distancing measures appears again and again over the ensuing weeks.”
Ahmed reports that, “On 2 April, even as SAGE warned the Government in no uncertain terms of ‘a danger that lifting measures too early could cause a second wave of exponential epidemic growth’, the minutes refer to an ongoing programme of Government economic modelling that was being conducted separately to SAGE. The integration of such modelling appears to have been discussed at this meeting. The minutes record the results of that discussion: ‘SAGE agreed it is not advisable to combine epidemiological and economic or secondary health effect analysis in a single model.’ To their credit, the SAGE scientists had resisted the idea proposed at the meeting that the Government should be making its public health decisions using a single model that would combine public health issues with economic modelling.”
According to Ahmed’s analysis of the minutes, he revealed that despite the damage being done, “Nevertheless, that modelling was still going to continue elsewhere, including with support from the Actuary’s Department: ‘A group led by Ian Diamond and John Aston – and including NHS, HO [Home Office], Government Actuary’s Department – is considering longer-term impacts on overall health from the interventions as part of its work on excess deaths.’ Formerly part of the Vote Leave campaign’s data science team, Ben Warner had attended both this and previous meetings where this economic dimension was mentioned explicitly. In the last meeting, Warner had been joined by another senior Government official Vanessa MacDougall from the Treasury. MacDougall is Director for Economics and Deputy Chief Economic Advisor at the Treasury, advising ministers on ‘the outlook for the UK economy and the evidence base for macroeconomic and microeconomic policy development to support UK growth and productivity’.”
Ahmed reports that, “Less than a week later, SAGE was again asked to ‘consider direct and indirect health impacts of measures, both on COVID-19 cases and more widely (e.g. postponement of other NHS care, and socioeconomic effects).’ Consistent with previous minutes, this work would not be done by SAGE, but by a ‘subset of SAGE participants and other experts’. To date, the Government has not published these economic models. But it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that they played a key role in its COVID-19 strategy. The SAGE minutes confirm that the Government did not ‘follow the science’. Neither social distancing nor test and trace were modelled for their public health ramifications by SAGE until mid-March. Data on NHS capacity, too, only hit the Government’s radar around this time. Why was this scientific research hamstrung for months as the Government watched COVID-19 sweep through the country?” To the public it appeared less like “following the science” and more like ‘following the money!’
Analysing the content of these SAGE minutes paints a devastating picture of failure due to relentlessly pursuing the wrong goals by asking the wrong questions of the scientific experts, ignoring valid priorities and incorporating non-scientific economic modelling, all to deceive the public as they touted their pre-selected agenda. Dominic Cummings and his cohort of eugenicist whackos were so determined to validate their Herd Immunity cull of the ‘economically inactive’ and most vulnerable in a ruthless ‘Slaughter of the Sheeple’ that they exerted pressure to override the ‘science’ of SAGE. Cummings remains in post despite his transgressions and the damage he has done; delivering that ‘landslide victory’ of the Covert 2019 Rigged Election provided sufficient Kompromat to blackmail the PM. We must Investigate the vote to expose the truth, delegitimize this Tory Government and force them out of office as there is no other way to derail the impending Herd Immunity Covicide. Cummings ids the grenade’ oust him and you pull the pin! DO NOT MOVE ON!