UK Govt Coronavirus Response: Sceptics Thread

[sancho panza]

12 hours ago, macca said:

Problem is those that have closed boarders and done proper lockdowns tell a different story 

Taiwan 9 dead 2.98% economic growth, double UK population density.. 

New zealand 25 dead 

Vietnam is something like 45 dead

Australia 950 dead

Uk over 125'000 dead..

Boris still on his killing spree 

You can't compare our half arsed open boarders lockdown to a proper well run intelligent lockdown.. 

Allowing 21 million people to land at Heathrow without even a temperature check is not a proper lockdown.. 

You need to look at all cause mortality not just covid.The difference between UK/NZ is most likely UK has an older population.

New Zealand.Highest death rate per 1000 since 2003

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/death-rate

 

UK,highest death rate since 2008

 

[sancho panza]

2 hours ago, reformed nice guy said:

Look on the bright side, we did manage to prevent almost all deaths from flu, Alzheimers, most other dementias etc and massively reduced deaths from heart disease, strokes, COPD etc

Whereas New Zealand didn't......at the recent peak,ICU admissions for Strokes,MI's,Pneumonia were all down 50% or more.....govt narratives are govt narratives though.

[sancho panza]

via Clare Craig

https://www.hartgroup.org/covid-19-evidence/

The ‘sunk cost fallacy’ is a well known one. World War 1 is the classic example. By Christmas 1914 it was obvious to all that the war was a catastrophe, but to admit this was to admit that all the lives lost had been lost pointlessly. And no country would confess that.

However, after a year of pain, suffering and enormous loss, the UK must reach for new solutions to the COVID-19 problem and any future respiratory disease outbreaks. We must learn from errors, acknowledge the harms of the measures we have taken and account for them moving forward. We now need a more holistic, measured approach.

Many international studies bear out that lockdowns have proven to be a complete failure as a public health measure to contain a respiratory virus. They did not succeed in their primary objective of containing spread yet have caused great harm.

Lockdowns were explicitly not recommended even for severe respiratory viral outbreaks in all pandemic planning prior to 2020, including those endorsed by the WHO and the Department of Health. The reasons for ignoring existing policies and adopting unprecedented measures appear to have been (i) panic whipped up by the media (especially scenes from China), (ii) a reluctance to do things differently to neighbouring countries and (iii) the unfaltering belief in one single mathematical model, which latterly turned out to be wildly inaccurate (Imperial College, Neil Ferguson).

We must find the courage to do things differently and to admit mistakes. The USA is leading the charge here, with more and more states turning their backs on lockdowns and mask mandates.

Moving forward, we would recommend the following steps:

1. Reinstate the existing pandemic planning policies from 2019, pending a detailed review of the policies adopted in 2020. Look to countries and states which did things differently. There should be a clear commitment from the Government that we will never again lockdown.
2. Stop mass testing healthy people. Return to the principles of respiratory disease diagnosis (the requirement of symptoms) that were well researched and accepted before 2020. Manufacturers’ guidelines state that these tests are designed to assist the diagnosis of symptomatic patients, not to ‘find’ disease in otherwise healthy people.
3. Stop all mask mandates. They are psychologically and potentially physically harmful whilst being clinically unproven to stop disease spread in the community and may themselves be a transmission risk.
4. Vaccination. Abandon the notion that vaccine certification is desirable and that children should be vaccinated. There is no logical or ethical argument for either.
5. Devise a public education programme to help redress the severe distortions in beliefs around disease transmission, likelihood of dying and possible treatment options. A messaging style based on a calm presentation of facts is urgently needed.
6. A full public enquiry into the extent to which severe/fatal COVID-19 is spread in hospitals and care homes. There is stark recent evidence on this from Public Health Scotland 3 and if true for the rest of the UK, there needs to be better segregation of COVID-19 patients and staff within these settings.
7. More funding and investigation of treatments for COVID-19, instead of only focusing on vaccination as a strategy. Given the high rates of hospital transmission, encourage a drive for more early treatment-at-home using some of the protocols discussed herein.
8. Divert funds. The not inconsiderable money saved from ceasing testing programmes can be diverted to much needed areas, such as mental health, treatment research and an increase in hospital capacity and staffing. The vast debts accrued during 2020 will also need to be paid off, a fact that seems to be worryingly absent from economic recovery plans.

 

Read our full review of the evidence here >

Our group of scientists, medics and public health experts have put together this rigorously and widely researched document. Topics included are:

• COVID policies and harm to children – Professor Ellen Townsend; Dr Karen Neil
• COVID-19 vaccination in children – major ethical concerns – Dr Ros Jones
• Vaccine passports – an ethical minefield – Dr Malcolm Kendrick
• Asymptomatic spread – who can really spread COVID-19? Dr John Lee
• Economic impacts – the true cost of lockdowns – Professor David Paton; Professor Marilyn James
• Mutant strains and the futility of border closures – Dr Gerry Quinn
• ‘ Zero Covid’ – an impossible dream- Professor David Livermore
• Masks – do the benefits outweigh the harms? – Dr Gary Sidley
• Psychological impact of the Government’s communication style and
  restrictive measures – Dr Damian Wilde
• Lockdowns – do they work? – Professor Marilyn James
• Mortality data & COVID-19 – Joel Smalley
• The ONS Infection Survey: a reevaluation of the data – Dr Clare Craig; Dr Paul Cuddon
• Promising treatment options – Dr Ros Jones; Dr Edmund Fordham
• Care homes – we must do better for the most vulnerable in society – Dr Ali Haggett
• Ethical considerations of the COVID-19 response – Professor David Seedhouse

[Chewing Grass]

^^^^

They to abandon the magic vaccine bullet they have been sold as a pup, what they have done so far is ok for the elderley and those with chronic disease.

Next step would be bringing back sanitoria to remove patients with lung conditions from general hospitals.

Emphasise that obesity above all is bad.

Promote exercise, reopen gyms, make weight watchers / slimming world classes free!

Focus on conventional treatments.

Provide education and guidance on nutrition, teach cooking in schools, tell people they need Vit-D over winter.

Above all make an effort instead of focussing on tail chasing vaccine magic, its here to stay.

[leonardratso]

11 minutes ago, Chewing Grass said:

^^^^

They to abandon the magic vaccine bullet they have been sold as a pup, what they have done so far is ok for the elderley and those with chronic disease.

Next step would be bringing back sanitoria to remove patients with lung conditions from general hospitals.

Emphasise that obesity above all is bad.

Promote exercise, reopen gyms, make weight watchers / slimming world classes free!

Focus on conventional treatments.

Provide education and guidance on nutrition, teach cooking in schools, tell people they need Vit-D over winter.

Above all make an effort instead of focussing on tail chasing vaccine magic, its here to stay.

just bring back rationing, hardly any lardy pops after the war, even through to the 60s+70s and probably even the 80s you were hard pushed to find a fat bastard anywhere, and they were the exception rather than the norm.

[sancho panza]

Remember this is the daily mail

Penny starting to drop#?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9386889/The-shattering-price-lockdown-health-economy-revealed-year-Covid-restrictions.html

The shattering price of lockdown: Huge impact of curbs on our health and economy is revealed after a year of Covid restrictions... as EU vaccine block threatens to hit Britain's rollout for MONTHS

• Pandemic measures are costing the UK £500million every day in lost output 
• The NHS waiting list has soared to a record high of nearly 4.6million
• Pubs and restaurants are losing an estimated £1.7billion a week 

By Jason Groves Political Editor For The Daily Mail

Published: 22:02, 21 March 2021 | Updated: 23:12, 21 March 2021

 

The appalling cost of a year of draconian Covid restrictions and lockdowns is laid bare today.

On the eve of the anniversary of Boris Johnson's original 'stay at home' order, in-depth analysis by the Mail shows the sheer extent of the economic, social, educational and healthcare damage.

Pandemic measures are costing £500million a day in lost output, while adding £1billion a day to the national debt. And a feared EU blockade on vaccines could derail the phased plan to end the lockdown.

 

+17

•  

 

Pandemic measures are costing £500million a day in lost output, while adding £1billion a day to the national debt

Brussels commissioner Mairead McGuinness yesterday confirmed such a ban would be 'on the table' at an EU summit on Thursday. Experts say a total embargo could set back the UK vaccination programme by two months.

• A record 844,285 Covid jabs were administered on Saturday;
• Defence Secretary Ben Wallace claimed a vaccine export ban would damage the EU's international reputation;
• Amid signs of a third wave of the virus in Europe, he warned it was premature to book foreign holidays;
• The NHS announced trials of tests to detect dangerous mutations of the virus;
• A government scientist said social distancing should stay until everyone had been vaccinated;
• More than half of Germans and almost two thirds of the French say they will not take the AstraZeneca jab amid scare stories about its efficiency;
• The daily coronavirus death toll rose by 33 yesterday, taking the weekly average down by more than a third.

Today's lockdown audit illustrates the crippling impact that 12 months of curbs have had on swathes of the economy, with pubs and restaurants losing an estimated £1.7billion a week, and some 15,000 shops expected to never reopen.

 

+17

•  

Pubs and restaurants are losing an estimated £1.7billion a week, and some 15,000 shops are expected to never reopen

 

The grim Covid death toll, which yesterday hit 126,155, is well known. But today's analysis also reveals the dire impact of the past year on the nation's health. The NHS waiting list has soared to a record high of nearly 4.6million, with 300,000 waiting more than a year for treatment.

On cancer, 44,000 fewer patients started treatment last year and there were 4.4million fewer life-saving diagnostic tests. An extra 6,000 people died of heart disease and stroke. Mental health services saw a 27,000 rise in individuals seeking support, while child eating disorders doubled.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the current, and third, lockdown had to be the last.

'We must plan and make changes now to avoid this ever happening again,' he said. 'The cost has been far too high.

 

+17

•  

A feared EU blockade on vaccines could derail the phased plan to end the lockdown 

'The damage to the economy has been, and continues to be, enormous. But there have also been huge consequences for people's health and mental health. We cannot allow ourselves to get caught out like this again.'

A fellow Conservative, Sir Charles Walker, said ministers should have adopted a different approach to shielding the vulnerable.

Sir Charles, vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee for backbench Tories, said: 'We cannot afford to let it happen again – the first lockdown should have been the last. We have had a situation where people have not wanted to ask the question about the wider impact because they know they would not like the answer. But whether you look at the economy, mental health or education, the damage has been massive and unsustainable.'

Former Cabinet minister Esther McVey also urged the PM to accelerate the exit from lockdown to limit further damage.

Andrew Goodacre, chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, said: 'It is crucial that this lockdown is the last one.

'Businesses cannot afford to keep going through a process of opening and then closing after only a few weeks or months.

 

 

+17

•  

Government sources pointed out that the Prime Minister had designed a 'cautious' route out of lockdown in the hope it would be 'irreversible'

'The full impact of this lockdown will not be known until the summer, but we can be sure that many will have lost their jobs, which is why the Prime Minister must consign lockdowns to history.'

Rachel de Souza, Children's Commissioner for England, said: 'Our children have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic. They have made so many sacrifices – adapting to home-learning, missing friends and relatives, not being able to do so many of the things children love to do. Their lives have been disrupted and many have struggled.'

Government sources pointed out that the Prime Minister had designed a 'cautious' route out of lockdown in the hope it would be 'irreversible'.

Mr Wallace said yesterday: 'None of us want to have lots of draconian measures but this is an unprecedented global pandemic which has cost tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of lives around the world.' 

 

 

The lethal fallout: A year of Covid pandemic curbs will leave 'lasting scars' on the NHS... as these patients reveal the adverse effect lockdowns had on them

By Shaun Wooller, Xantha Leatham and Kamal Sultan for the Daily Mail

 

+17

•  

Charmayne Oakey has suffered excruciating pain for more than a year after knee replacement surgery was delayed

An unprecedented audit of the effect of the pandemic has exposed the devastating impact on non-Covid care.

Almost a year on from the day we first locked down, analysis by a string of charities reveals the toll on patients with cancer, heart disease, arthritis and dementia.

NHS bosses last night admitted the disruption is ‘eye-wateringly clear’ and will leave ‘lasting scars’. 

Thousands of preventable deaths have already occurred, with many more likely to follow, and others will be left disabled or in crippling pain as a result of the past year.

Hospitals cancelled swathes of ‘non-urgent’ operations to focus on coronavirus, while GPs switched to phone and video consultations. Screening programmes for deadly diseases such as breast cancer were put on hold.

In addition, many ill people delayed seeking help after ministers told the public to stay at home to protect the NHS.

The Mail’s audit of the Covid consequences paints a grim picture, with England recording the largest annual fall in life expectancy since the Second World War. 

Waiting lists have already climbed to record highs – and are expected to get worse as more people come forward after the current lockdown ends.

Patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks for treatment after an NHS referral – but more than 300,000 have been waiting for over a year. 

Health chiefs warn the backlog will take years to clear, with think-tanks predicting a decade of disruption after a crisis that has undone years of progress.

Professor Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: ‘The job facing surgeons and the teams they work with is huge. It will take years rather than months to catch up.’

 

+17

•  

 

The widow of a man who died last year after his cancer treatment was delayed due to the pandemic believes his life was unfairly cut short. Malachy Watkins, 73, was first diagnosed with lung cancer in December 2018 and after six weeks of chemotherapy doctors told him the tumour had shrunk. After a check-up last February, he found out the tumour was growing again but his treatment was postponed for three months

The number of face-to-face GP consultations fell by almost 80million. Millions also missed out on cancer checks, while tens of thousands missed out on dementia care. Many others missed heart operations, diabetes checks, rehabilitation for asthma and lung disease and stroke treatment – leaving many with disabilities that could have been avoided.

Measures intended to combat coronavirus have also played havoc with the nation’s mental health, with friends and families forced apart and many workers left in limbo – or worse.

The number of adults suffering depression doubled during lockdown, as did the number of urgent referrals for children with eating disorders. In addition, the number of dental checks was cut in half.

Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the impact of the pandemic on non-Covid patients has been ‘profound’. 

She added: ‘Some have stayed away from the NHS, but it has been more common for people to try to access care but find it is not available.

‘The result for many is long waits in pain and discomfort, prolonged uncertainty and anxiety, worse outcomes from operations when they are eventually performed, and in some cases people dying from what would otherwise have been treatable illness.’

Patients needing ‘non-urgent’ hip and knee replacements have consistently seen some of the longest waits. Tracey Loftis of the charity Versus Arthritis said: ‘Thousands of people are enduring long waits with no end date in sight. We have heard from people who have lost jobs, are unable to care for relatives and are seeking help for depression because of the debilitating pain they are in.’

Danny Mortimer – chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS organisations – said: ‘The disruption of the pandemic is eye-wateringly clear and it will take many years before the system can return to any sense of normality. The pandemic will leave lasting scars on the NHS after the immediate threat subsides.’

An NHS spokesman said: ‘Since the beginning of the pandemic the NHS has urged people to come forward if they’re concerned for their health and has offered care to everyone who needs it.’

I was lucky my cancer was found

 

+17

•  

 

Emma Gibson was diagnosed with stage 1 cervical cancer last October after her initial screening was postponed for five months

Emma Gibson was diagnosed with stage 1 cervical cancer last October after her initial screening was postponed for five months.

The 25-year-old, who works in marketing, believes she could have had a routine procedure to remove pre-cancerous cells if her March appointment had not been moved due to the pandemic.

She was left frustrated by the lack of urgency from doctors when she tried to find out when her screening would be.

She said: ‘I called three times to try to find out when my smear test would happen but each time I was told to call back again in a couple of months.’

Miss Gibson, of Wigan, finally had a smear test at her GP surgery in August and had a procedure called Lletz – large loop excision of the transformation zone – a month later to remove abnormal cells.

She was called to the Thomas Linacre Centre in Wigan for more testing and was told she had stage 1 cervical cancer.

‘It was a big shock. I never thought that at 25 I would hear that I have cancer,’ Miss Gibson said. ‘We then went into the second lockdown and it was very scary because I heard that hospitals were cancelling appointments.’

In November she had another Lletz procedure and later that month heard she was cancer free. She said: ‘I am one of the lucky ones because there are so many people who have missed out on tests and surgery because of the pandemic.’ 

Daily pain is off the scale

Charmayne Oakey has suffered excruciating pain for more than a year after knee replacement surgery was delayed.

The grandmother from Oxfordshire, who had severe osteoarthritis in her knee, was told in February that she could have the procedure at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford within a few months.

But her appointments were changed to telephone consultations at the start of lockdown and she was told it was no longer possible to set a date for her surgery due to the pandemic.

After eight more months of pain and immobility, Mrs Oakey was warned that she might have to wait another year for her knee replacement surgery because of the backlog in the NHS.

She said: ‘It is affecting every aspect of my ability and it is putting my life on hold. The pain is off the scale and there is no date in sight.

‘I have severe osteoarthritis in my knee, it’s bone on bone and there’s no cartilage there.

‘It’s absolutely heart-wrenching and I have no idea where I stand.’

She has been asked to call back when the current lockdown ends to find out when she can have the procedure.

‘I understand Covid is a killer but surely they can keep a hospital in a safe area open so important surgeries can go ahead,’ Mrs Oakey said.

‘I live in pain every day and there are times when it really gets to me.

‘I cannot play with any of my grandchildren and it drains me mentally, not being able to do things that I normally could.’

‘Some days I think I can’t go on. I’ve had to just sit down in the supermarket and cry.’

Mrs Oakey, 47, was made redundant last October and she is worried she may not get another job because of her current condition. 

She said: ‘I’m out of work, quite stressed out about money... How do I tell a prospective employer I am going to need surgery and time off to recover, but I have no idea when?’

Husband’s life was cut short

The widow of a man who died last year after his cancer treatment was delayed due to the pandemic believes his life was unfairly cut short.

Malachy Watkins, 73, was first diagnosed with lung cancer in December 2018 and after six weeks of chemotherapy doctors told him the tumour had shrunk.

After a check-up last February, he found out the tumour was growing again but his treatment was postponed for three months.

The grandfather from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, started chemotherapy and immunotherapy at Lister Hospital in the town in May but died on September 25.

He began to have heart problems as a result of the treatment and fluid had built up in his lungs so doctors said it had to stop. 

Sheila Watkins, 72, his wife of 53 years, said: ‘I feel angry and it’s so wrong that people are being forced to wait for treatment. We could have had longer together if his treatment started earlier and the quality of his life may have been better.

‘His life was cut short, but the hospital is not going to admit that. They left us in limbo.’

Mr and Mrs Watkins met as teenagers and got married in 1967. Their son Craig, 43, said: ‘If the treatment was started then [last February] I think he would still be with us now.’ Both their children were not allowed to see their father until Mr Watkins’s final moments.

Nick Carver, of the NHS trust which runs Lister Hospital, said: ‘We offer sincere condolences to Mr Watkins’s loved ones at this incredibly sad time.’

 

By Hugo Duncan and Mark Shapland for the Daily Mail 

Each day of lockdown is costing the economy more than £500million, according to research for the Daily Mail.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research found that output is £521million a day lower than it was before the pandemic.

One in four businesses remains closed and six million workers are on furlough. As well as a collapse in output, the Government is borrowing almost £1billion a day to pay for measures including the furlough scheme and tax breaks for struggling businesses.

MPs, business leaders and economists said the success of the vaccine programme meant Covid restrictions should be lifted more quickly.

 

+17

•  

 

Each day of lockdown is costing the economy more than £500million, according to research for the Daily Mail. Restaurants are now closed until after Easter (file photo)

'Of course we should open, we've been locked down for months,' said Lord Rose, chairman of Ocado and former chief executive of Marks & Spencer. 'The economy is going to hell in a handcart. We've spent billions on furlough and on other schemes. How are we going to pay it back?

'Everything has ground to a halt. Companies have spent millions getting ready for this and working out social distancing.

'The Government is terrified of its own shadow. It's time to move on.'

Marketing guru Sir Martin Sorrell, who leads advertising group S4 Capital, said: 'The economy could open up earlier but on a prudent, phased basis, given we've made such good progress through being careful and getting vaccinated. We don't want a lockdown return as we've seen in Italy or Germany.'

 

The Centre for Economics and Business Research found that output is £521million a day lower than it was before the pandemic 

The economy contracted by 9.9 per cent last year – the biggest reverse since the Great Frost of 1709.

With the country back in lockdown, output is expected to contract by another 4 per cent in the first three months of this year.

Unemployment is forecast to hit 6.5 per cent by Christmas – leaving 2.2million out of work, 900,000 more than at the end of 2019.

The total bill for dealing with Covid is expected to hit £407billion as the cost of furlough, higher benefits payments and grants for companies and the self-employed mount.

The collapse in economic activity has also hit tax receipts as incomes, profits, spending and investment dwindle. The Government is on course to borrow a record £355billion in 2020-21 and another £235billion in 2021-22 to cover the cost of higher spending and lower taxes.

This will push UK debt to a peak of 109.7 per cent of national income – the highest level since the aftermath of the Second World War.

But the Bank of England's chief economist, Andy Haldane, predicts Britain will bounce back like a 'coiled spring' once lockdown ends.

Writing in the Mail last month, he said that by the end of June households will have amassed an 'accidental savings' war chest of £250billion. 'Having been bottled in for a year, most people are desperate to get their lives, including their social lives, back,' he said.

 

 

Pubs and restaurants' devastating £86bn hole

By Tom Witherow and Archie Mitchell for The Daily Mail 

The pandemic was like 'an asteroid that hit the earth' for the hospitality industry with pubs and restaurants missing out on £86 billion – or £1.7billion per week – of sales.

Chains were forced to cull thousands of outlets and hundreds of thousands of staff with a total of 11,900 licensed premises shutting their doors since December 2019 and 660,000 jobs disappearing.

Those that have survived can open outdoor areas from April 12 but must wait until May 17 before doing so indoors.

 

+17

•  

 

The pandemic was like 'an asteroid that hit the earth' for the hospitality industry with pubs and restaurants missing out on £86 billion – or £1.7billion per week – of sales. Pictured: The Moon Under Water Pub in London remains closed due to the lockdown

Less than a fifth of restaurant chains have outdoor seating, meaning many will be unable to reopen, while pubs have said that just 17 per cent of pubs' capacity will open outdoors next month.

The industry has been given a glimmer of hope as economists predict customer will unleash £180billion of cash saved in lockdown in a hoped-for repeat of the 'Roaring 20s'.

Bookings have also boomed with some restaurant chains reporting 1,000 bookings ahead of the reopening in April – despite the fact premises will not be restrictions-free until June 21.

We've lost £90,000 

Landlords Phil and Leanne Docherty's pub has lost £90,000 in the pandemic.

The couple, who have owned the Green Man in Ropsley, Lincolnshire, for five years, said losses started to mount in the autumn as they were faced with mammoth National Insurance (NI) and pension bills.

Mr Docherty, 40, said: 'The initial Government support was encouraging. But as we got into autumn there was more onus on the employer. We had a £2,000 grant in March but our NI bill alone cost £3,500 a month.'

 

+17

•  

 

Landlords Phil and Leanne Docherty's pub has lost £90,000 in the pandemic

Mrs Docherty, 39, said next month's partial reopening brings huge uncertainty as they expect many of their elderly customers are unlikely to return until the summer.

She said: 'It's hard to know what the uptake will be with the public when they know they have to be sat outside.'

Bosses are demanding ministers use the vaccine rollout success to allow pubs, bars and restaurants to reopen indoors alongside 'non-essential' shops on April 12.

Tim Martin, chairman of Wetherspoon, which has 875 pubs, said yesterday: 'The future of the industry, and the UK economy, depends on a consistent set of sensible policies, and the ending of lockdowns and tier systems, which have created economic and social mayhem and colossal debts, with no apparent health benefits.'

A string of household names have been forced to close outlets in the pandemic. Frankie & Benny's shut 120 restaurants and Pizza Express 67.

 

 

15,000 shops gone for ever

By Tom Witherow for The Daily Mail 

More than 15,000 shops have shut for good in the last year as rolling lockdowns devastated high streets.

Businesses were left with zero revenue overnight and have now been shut for close to seven months of the last year, irreversibly changing the make-up of town and city centres.

The enforced closures have felled some of the high street's best known names including Topshop, Laura Ashley and Debenhams. 

Shops missed out on £22billion of sales since March 23 last year, forcing them to lay off 185,447 shop floor staff.

 

+17

•  

 

The enforced closures have felled some of the high street's best known names including Topshop, Laura Ashley and Debenhams

Bosses also shut 15,187 stores permanently, equivalent to 42 per day, according to the figures from the Centre for Retail Research. 

The figures include 23,055 staff who have lost their jobs in 2021 in the most recent lockdown, and 1,369 stores which have closed their doors.

Yesterday business leaders demanded the Prime Minister accelerate the reopening plans and 'consign lockdowns to history'. 

It comes after a PwC report found that 'the real impact of the pandemic is yet to be felt' on the high street as thousands of businesses struggle. 

 

The troubles on the high street have forced dozens of brands including Oasis, Cath Kidston and TM Lewin to go online-only, and this week Thorntons became the latest victim of lockdown as bosses announced the closure of all 61 directly managed stores, putting 603 jobs at risk.

The closures have helped to push vacancy rates to record highs of 13.7 per cent, raising fears the pandemic has created yet more 'ghost towns'.

Tom Ironside, of the British Retail Consortium, said: 'Government should remain flexible and allow non-essential retail to reopen as soon as the data suggests it is safe to do so. Any delays to the Prime Minister's roadmap will undoubtedly result in more store closures and job losses.'

Julian Dunkerton, of Superdry, said: 'We can see the end now, people miss shopping and I'm confident that people will be coming back to the high street once they're allowed to.'

 

+17

•  

 

John Lewis has shut eight department stores, and is expected to close eight more before the end of lockdown, Argos shut 420 stand-alone shops and Carphone Warehouse shut 530 stores

Thousands of the shop closures have come from Britain's best known businesses. John Lewis has shut eight department stores, and is expected to close eight more before the end of lockdown, Argos shut 420 stand-alone shops and Carphone Warehouse shut 530 stores.

Marks & Spencer and John Lewis are even in the process of converting part of their stores on London's Oxford Street, the UK's shopping capital, into offices because they can not justify the space.

Smaller towns have also been hit hard by the pandemic, as key tenants in shopping areas were forced to give up their keys. Topshop owner Arcadia and Debenhams went bust within 24 hours of each other leaving 600 large, hard-to-fill stores empty.

It is feared shoppers may no longer want to head into town now that their destination shops sit empty, permanently damaging the whole business ecosystem. Businesses on larger high streets and in shopping centres have suffered most, especially in major cities, where they rely on footfall from tourists and commuters to justify paying higher rents.

Lockdown has also rapidly accelerated shoppers' move online, pushing the proportion of money spent on the web to a record 35 per cent in January, according to the Office for National Statistics.

[jamanda]

That was one of the most informative posts I have read for a while.  Thank you.

[dnb24]

As the covid poster boy/girl- Not only has New Zealand got it’s worse death rate for nearly 20 years (vs Uk 12 years) - the healthcare system is in crisis despite being “covid free”.
 

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/hospitals-across-nz-stretched-to-breaking-point-as-govt-promises-reform/ar-BB1f3XbZ

 

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300262252/new-zealand-hospitals-in-crisis-after-biggest-january-february-on-record

 

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/its-crisis-overwhelmed-ed-staff-in-hospitals-often-tears-experts-say

[Hancock]

2 hours ago, dnb24 said:

As the covid poster boy/girl- Not only has New Zealand got it’s worse death rate for nearly 20 years (vs Uk 12 years) - the healthcare system is in crisis despite being “covid free”.
 

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/hospitals-across-nz-stretched-to-breaking-point-as-govt-promises-reform/ar-BB1f3XbZ

 

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300262252/new-zealand-hospitals-in-crisis-after-biggest-january-february-on-record

 

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/its-crisis-overwhelmed-ed-staff-in-hospitals-often-tears-experts-say

Id imagine its the same breed of politicised doctors in NZ as we have here, that come out with the patients being treat in corridors bullshit to get more money for themselves.

Besides they have Saint Jacinda who has the ability to stand in the sea with the dying to bring 1000s of them back to life in one go.

[sancho panza]

On 29/03/2021 at 13:52, dnb24 said:

As the covid poster boy/girl- Not only has New Zealand got it’s worse death rate for nearly 20 years (vs Uk 12 years) - the healthcare system is in crisis despite being “covid free”.
 

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/hospitals-across-nz-stretched-to-breaking-point-as-govt-promises-reform/ar-BB1f3XbZ

 

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300262252/new-zealand-hospitals-in-crisis-after-biggest-january-february-on-record

 

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/its-crisis-overwhelmed-ed-staff-in-hospitals-often-tears-experts-say

It's amazing isn't it,people are stunned when I tell them about NZ having highest death rate since the 00's.

I nearly laughed at this statement in the last article.

'“We’re not sure why there’s been this incredible surge, Dunedin hospital has gone into code black, hospitals across the country are overflowing, I believe this is a crisis,” Hamilton-based Bonning said.'

 

So basically,they urged people to stay away from ED's for twelve months and they think what exactly will happen to the heart disease, the TIA's and the sepsis?

 

 

[sancho panza]

On 29/03/2021 at 16:22, Hancock said:

Id imagine its the same breed of politicised doctors in NZ as we have here, that come out with the patients being treat in corridors bullshit to get more money for themselves.

Besides they have Saint Jacinda who has the ability to stand in the sea with the dying to bring 1000s of them back to life in one go.

I was jsut at my dentist and he made me feel like an amateur sceptic.He has contacts across the medical professions and one-who's Head of 'something very covid realted' somewhere bigly-and his overall impression was that they think it's bollocks.

As ever though,politics trumps common sense.We're goign to be paying the price for this disaster for 20 years in terms of human life and even longer in terms ofthe economic dislocation caused by the lockdown.Is it really that hard to connect the dots?

Karol Sikora has been a leading light in this regard.

 

[sancho panza]

hattip Clare Craig.Get past the intro and it's very good.

Edited March 31, 2021 by sancho panza

[Hancock]

6 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

I was jsut at my dentist and he made me feel like an amateur sceptic.He has contacts across the medical professions and one-who's Head of 'something very covid realted' somewhere bigly-and his overall impression was that they think it's bollocks.

As ever though,politics trumps common sense.We're goign to be paying the price for this disaster for 20 years in terms of human life and even longer in terms ofthe economic dislocation caused by the lockdown.Is it really that hard to connect the dots?

Karol Sikora has been a leading light in this regard.

 

Yes there must be endless people in the medical profession who know its bollocks, and can prove it. I do wonder if it'll ever come out as all the MSM and political partys have been singing from the same hymn sheet.

For me the repercussions will go on much longer than 20 years ... you're going to get the 16/18/21 year old just out of school college or university who just didnt get that start job they needed to get a good start in life with the country closed for so long.

Then many of these hundreds of thousands of people will struggle throughout their life because of it.

.

[sancho panza]

On 31/03/2021 at 14:21, Hancock said:

Yes there must be endless people in the medical profession who know its bollocks, and can prove it. I do wonder if it'll ever come out as all the MSM and political partys have been singing from the same hymn sheet.

For me the repercussions will go on much longer than 20 years ... you're going to get the 16/18/21 year old just out of school college or university who just didnt get that start job they needed to get a good start in life with the country closed for so long.

Then many of these hundreds of thousands of people will struggle throughout their life because of it.

.

Interesting to see the below from CP regarding Whitty saying we've got to lvie with it like the flu.AS he says ,the political winds are shifting.I think the truth wil come out,too many people are increasingly openly questioning what's happened.Also the truth that the IFR is akin to the flu IFR and that has been known for some time will eventually become disseminated more widely.

I verymuch think the last lockdown was about politcal face saving.

On 01/04/2021 at 18:41, Cattle Prod said:

Political winds have shifted. Yesterday Keir Starmer hinted he would vote against covid passports, and today, the Tories put forward one of their most prominent politicans to say the following:

Yes, there is a caveat in there, but he well knows that viruses vary toward more prevalence and less lethality. They've lied and lied to us, but the whole thing has sat on Whitty supporting policy, IIRC he threatened to quit early doors. I think this is a real signal. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/state-fear-ministers-used-covert-tactics-keep-scared-public/

Failures in the UK’s pandemic response are not hard to identify, but on one front the Government’s success is undeniable: persuading a fearful nation to stay locked indoors for much of the past year.

The daily diet of statistics on deaths, hospitalisations and Covid cases has been so effective that compliance with lockdown has gone far beyond what ministers expected.

But the problem with fear, as one behavioural scientist said on Friday, is that “you can’t turn it on and off like a tap”.

As the country prepares for the complete end of lockdown in June, there are far-reaching questions about how many people will return to the workplace, or to normality, and the consequences of that for the economy and for physical and mental health.

Boris Johnson pounds home the stay at home message at a Downing Street press conference

Whether frightening the public was a deliberate – or honest – tactic has become the subject of intense debate, and dozens of psychologists have now accused ministers of using “covert psychological strategies” to manipulate the public’s behaviour.

They believe the Government, acting on the advice of behavioural experts, has emphasised the threat from Covid without putting the risks in sufficient context, leaving the country in “a state of heightened anxiety”.

They also claim that “inflated fear levels will be responsible for the ‘collateral’ deaths of many thousands of people with non-Covid illnesses” who are “too frightened to attend hospital”.

They are so concerned that the British public has been the subject of a mass experiment in the use of strategies that operate “below their level of awareness” that they have made a formal complaint to their professional body, which will now rule on whether government advisers have been guilty of a breach of ethics.

The Government, and its advisers, deny any such transgression, arguing that they have simply presented the public with the facts about the threat Covid poses, and what they need to do to stay safe.

One of the key pieces of evidence cited by those who have complained about “covert” tactics comes from a document prepared for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) at the beginning of the pandemic a year ago.

Dated March 22, the paper written by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) stated: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising … the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

The same document presented a grid of 14 options for increasing compliance which included “use media to increase sense of personal threat”, a tactic which was seen as having a “high” effectiveness though spill-over effects “could be negative”.

Some Sage participants now admit to feeling “embarrassed” by such advice.

One regular Sage attendee said: “The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what’s happening.

“All of this is about trying to steer behaviour in the direction an elite has decided, rather than deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do.”

The Sage member said SPI-B reports tended not to be “challenged” by Sage because “the core membership of Sage is not very well equipped to evaluate it – there are not other social scientists at the heart of Sage”.

They added: “When someone from SPI-B is saying we need to ramp up the fear and keep it ramped up – there wasn’t much questioning of that at the beginning and most of the questioning came from external sources, not from within.”

Gary Sidley, a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist, said: “It’s as if there is a little industry around pandemic management and it excludes alternative voices.

“There is growing concern within my field about using fear and shame as a driver of behaviour change.”

Mr Sidley was so concerned that he and 46 colleagues wrote to the British Psychological Society (BPS) raising “concerns about the activities of government-employed psychologists … in their mission to gain the public’s mass compliance with the ongoing coronavirus restrictions”.

The letter added: “Our view is that the use of covert psychological strategies – that operate below the level of people’s awareness – to ‘nudge’ citizens to conform to a contentious and unprecedented public health policy raises profound ethical questions.”

The Telegraph has learnt that the BPS’s ethics committee will discuss the matter at its next meeting on June 21 – coincidentally the same day all lockdown restrictions are due to end.

The BPS is a membership organisation and can recommend that members are reprimanded, suspended or expelled. In extreme cases it can raise concerns with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, as a fitness to practise issue.

A spokesman for the BPS said it was “not possible to conclude” from publicly available information “that an intense psychological attack by the Government and orchestrated by Sage has been used to encourage people to comply with government policies regarding Covid-19” but added that the matter would be discussed by the ethics committee and: “It is not appropriate for us to comment on whether the Government’s coronavirus response has used contentious public health policies.”

SPI-B participant Professor Susan Michie, director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, told The Telegraph that “persuasion” was one of 10 options put forward for increasing adherence to social distancing in the document, and that it involved giving people “an accurate perception of risk and therefore, for some, increasing the personal threat they perceive, along with being empowered to take actions to reduce the threat”.

Not that the SPI-B paper is by any means the only evidence of what critics describe as “covert” methods.

Others cite, for example, the fact that the Government tells the public how many people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but does not include the context of whether deaths are above or below the seasonal norm, and also gives daily figures for hospital admissions, but not how many people have recovered.

Terrifying predictions, which are often presented in such a way that they seem like certainties, have also come from the likes of Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.

In October, ahead of a parliamentary vote on a national lockdown, Sir Patrick warned in a press conference of up to 4,000 deaths per day in the second wave, only for Prof Whitty to admit days later that 1,000 deaths per day was a more likely peak (the second wave peaked at an average of 1,248 daily deaths).

Giving evidence to MPs last month, Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick warned of a fresh spike in cases when schools reopened – which has so far failed to materialise – and suggested another 30,000 people could die (deaths are currently averaging fewer than 50 per day and continue to fall).

A planned relaxation of social restrictions over Christmas was scaled back because of concerns about the emergence of the Kent variant of the virus, which Mr Johnson later said “may be associated with a higher degree of mortality”. He was accused of “science by press release” by Dr Susan Hopkins, of Public Health England, who complained that it was too early to know if it was more deadly, and earlier this week a survey involving Dr Hopkins reported that there was no evidence of higher mortality from the Kent strain.

Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, said: “The idea that you need to increase people’s personal threat disproportionately to the threat they face is a problem. It sets a very dangerous precedent – weaponising fear is the phrase that people use.

“Once the fear has been stoked you can’t diminish it. It’s not like turning a tap on and off –  you can’t turn the fear off.

“We have focused narrowly on mortality rates and case rates, but I’m pretty certain that the public would understand placing the deaths in the context of five-year averages.

“There has been such a missed opportunity for communicating risk. Rather than just saying a hundred people have died today from Covid, the Government could say what proportion of deaths that accounts for, and whether or not that translates to excess deaths.

“That may be a more sustainable conversation to have with the public, rather than ‘be scared and stay scared’.”

Senior government sources have admitted that levels of compliance went far beyond what they expected in the first lockdown, forcing Boris Johnson to publicly implore workers to get back to the office last summer.

One source said: “There were genuine fears a year ago that we were going to see supermarkets running out of food and a run on the banks. We never considered that people would go even further than the stay at home advice.”

The same source admitted that the curfew brought in last year was designed to “send a clear signal to young people” that the virus was still dangerous, rather than because of any evidence a curfew would cut infections – which, it could be argued, was another example of behavioural science being used in a “covert” way.

It clearly worked. Last July, a survey carried out by the consultancy firm Kekst CNC found that almost half of respondents, discounting “don’t knows”, thought Covid had killed 1 per cent of the UK population, equating to more than 600,000 people, when the actual figure at the time was 44,000. Almost a third of respondents thought 6 to 10 per cent, or more, of the population had been killed by Covid, which would mean up to 6.6 million deaths.

While Rishi Sunak has openly discussed his concerns about the effects of lockdown on the economy – effects which will continue beyond June if people remain too afraid to go back to their normal lives – there are other consequences of instilling fear in the public.

Laura Dodsworth, who has spent the past year researching this subject for a forthcoming book called A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, said: “I have interviewed people who have been undone by fear, people who have had to be talked down from suicide and people who have developed agoraphobia.

“The problem with fear is that it clouds rational thinking. You become more reliant on government messaging, which makes you more frightened, which makes you even more reliant on their messaging, creating a doom loop. We have forgotten how to analyse risk.”

Another “doom loop” may also be at play: the Government puts huge effort into tracking public sentiment to help inform policy, but critics say that creates an inevitable circle in which the public, put in fear by government messaging, favours a cautious approach to lifting lockdown, which the Government then uses to justify keeping the country in lockdown for longer, and so on.

A report by Nottingham University last year suggested that fear could even translate into additional Covid deaths because poor mental health weakens the immune system.

The report said: “It is well known that when negative mood states persist over time they result in the dysregulation of physiological systems involved in the regulation of the immune system. Thus, there exists significant potential for the psychological harm inflicted by the pandemic to translate into physical harm. This could include an increased susceptibility to the virus, worse outcomes if infected, or indeed poorer responses to vaccinations in the future.”

Behavioural science is so embedded in government that for the past decade it has taken advice from the Behavioural Insights Team, better known as the “Nudge Unit”, which began as part of the Cabinet Office but is now a limited company. A spokesman for the BIT said that “techniques such as ‘fear inflation’ are not, and have never been, recommended by BIT”.

[Hancock]

3 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Interesting to see the below from CP regarding Whitty saying we've got to lvie with it like the flu.AS he says ,the political winds are shifting.I think the truth wil come out,too many people are increasingly openly questioning what's happened.Also the truth that the IFR is akin to the flu IFR and that has been known for some time will eventually become disseminated more widely.

I verymuch think the last lockdown was about politcal face saving.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/state-fear-ministers-used-covert-tactics-keep-scared-public/

Failures in the UK’s pandemic response are not hard to identify, but on one front the Government’s success is undeniable: persuading a fearful nation to stay locked indoors for much of the past year.

The daily diet of statistics on deaths, hospitalisations and Covid cases has been so effective that compliance with lockdown has gone far beyond what ministers expected.

But the problem with fear, as one behavioural scientist said on Friday, is that “you can’t turn it on and off like a tap”.

As the country prepares for the complete end of lockdown in June, there are far-reaching questions about how many people will return to the workplace, or to normality, and the consequences of that for the economy and for physical and mental health.

Boris Johnson pounds home the stay at home message at a Downing Street press conference

Whether frightening the public was a deliberate – or honest – tactic has become the subject of intense debate, and dozens of psychologists have now accused ministers of using “covert psychological strategies” to manipulate the public’s behaviour.

They believe the Government, acting on the advice of behavioural experts, has emphasised the threat from Covid without putting the risks in sufficient context, leaving the country in “a state of heightened anxiety”.

They also claim that “inflated fear levels will be responsible for the ‘collateral’ deaths of many thousands of people with non-Covid illnesses” who are “too frightened to attend hospital”.

They are so concerned that the British public has been the subject of a mass experiment in the use of strategies that operate “below their level of awareness” that they have made a formal complaint to their professional body, which will now rule on whether government advisers have been guilty of a breach of ethics.

The Government, and its advisers, deny any such transgression, arguing that they have simply presented the public with the facts about the threat Covid poses, and what they need to do to stay safe.

One of the key pieces of evidence cited by those who have complained about “covert” tactics comes from a document prepared for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) at the beginning of the pandemic a year ago.

Dated March 22, the paper written by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) stated: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising … the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

The same document presented a grid of 14 options for increasing compliance which included “use media to increase sense of personal threat”, a tactic which was seen as having a “high” effectiveness though spill-over effects “could be negative”.

Some Sage participants now admit to feeling “embarrassed” by such advice.

One regular Sage attendee said: “The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what’s happening.

“All of this is about trying to steer behaviour in the direction an elite has decided, rather than deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do.”

The Sage member said SPI-B reports tended not to be “challenged” by Sage because “the core membership of Sage is not very well equipped to evaluate it – there are not other social scientists at the heart of Sage”.

They added: “When someone from SPI-B is saying we need to ramp up the fear and keep it ramped up – there wasn’t much questioning of that at the beginning and most of the questioning came from external sources, not from within.”

Gary Sidley, a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist, said: “It’s as if there is a little industry around pandemic management and it excludes alternative voices.

“There is growing concern within my field about using fear and shame as a driver of behaviour change.”

Mr Sidley was so concerned that he and 46 colleagues wrote to the British Psychological Society (BPS) raising “concerns about the activities of government-employed psychologists … in their mission to gain the public’s mass compliance with the ongoing coronavirus restrictions”.

The letter added: “Our view is that the use of covert psychological strategies – that operate below the level of people’s awareness – to ‘nudge’ citizens to conform to a contentious and unprecedented public health policy raises profound ethical questions.”

The Telegraph has learnt that the BPS’s ethics committee will discuss the matter at its next meeting on June 21 – coincidentally the same day all lockdown restrictions are due to end.

The BPS is a membership organisation and can recommend that members are reprimanded, suspended or expelled. In extreme cases it can raise concerns with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, as a fitness to practise issue.

A spokesman for the BPS said it was “not possible to conclude” from publicly available information “that an intense psychological attack by the Government and orchestrated by Sage has been used to encourage people to comply with government policies regarding Covid-19” but added that the matter would be discussed by the ethics committee and: “It is not appropriate for us to comment on whether the Government’s coronavirus response has used contentious public health policies.”

SPI-B participant Professor Susan Michie, director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, told The Telegraph that “persuasion” was one of 10 options put forward for increasing adherence to social distancing in the document, and that it involved giving people “an accurate perception of risk and therefore, for some, increasing the personal threat they perceive, along with being empowered to take actions to reduce the threat”.

Not that the SPI-B paper is by any means the only evidence of what critics describe as “covert” methods.

Others cite, for example, the fact that the Government tells the public how many people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but does not include the context of whether deaths are above or below the seasonal norm, and also gives daily figures for hospital admissions, but not how many people have recovered.

Terrifying predictions, which are often presented in such a way that they seem like certainties, have also come from the likes of Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.

In October, ahead of a parliamentary vote on a national lockdown, Sir Patrick warned in a press conference of up to 4,000 deaths per day in the second wave, only for Prof Whitty to admit days later that 1,000 deaths per day was a more likely peak (the second wave peaked at an average of 1,248 daily deaths).

Giving evidence to MPs last month, Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick warned of a fresh spike in cases when schools reopened – which has so far failed to materialise – and suggested another 30,000 people could die (deaths are currently averaging fewer than 50 per day and continue to fall).

A planned relaxation of social restrictions over Christmas was scaled back because of concerns about the emergence of the Kent variant of the virus, which Mr Johnson later said “may be associated with a higher degree of mortality”. He was accused of “science by press release” by Dr Susan Hopkins, of Public Health England, who complained that it was too early to know if it was more deadly, and earlier this week a survey involving Dr Hopkins reported that there was no evidence of higher mortality from the Kent strain.

Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, said: “The idea that you need to increase people’s personal threat disproportionately to the threat they face is a problem. It sets a very dangerous precedent – weaponising fear is the phrase that people use.

“Once the fear has been stoked you can’t diminish it. It’s not like turning a tap on and off –  you can’t turn the fear off.

“We have focused narrowly on mortality rates and case rates, but I’m pretty certain that the public would understand placing the deaths in the context of five-year averages.

“There has been such a missed opportunity for communicating risk. Rather than just saying a hundred people have died today from Covid, the Government could say what proportion of deaths that accounts for, and whether or not that translates to excess deaths.

“That may be a more sustainable conversation to have with the public, rather than ‘be scared and stay scared’.”

Senior government sources have admitted that levels of compliance went far beyond what they expected in the first lockdown, forcing Boris Johnson to publicly implore workers to get back to the office last summer.

One source said: “There were genuine fears a year ago that we were going to see supermarkets running out of food and a run on the banks. We never considered that people would go even further than the stay at home advice.”

The same source admitted that the curfew brought in last year was designed to “send a clear signal to young people” that the virus was still dangerous, rather than because of any evidence a curfew would cut infections – which, it could be argued, was another example of behavioural science being used in a “covert” way.

It clearly worked. Last July, a survey carried out by the consultancy firm Kekst CNC found that almost half of respondents, discounting “don’t knows”, thought Covid had killed 1 per cent of the UK population, equating to more than 600,000 people, when the actual figure at the time was 44,000. Almost a third of respondents thought 6 to 10 per cent, or more, of the population had been killed by Covid, which would mean up to 6.6 million deaths.

While Rishi Sunak has openly discussed his concerns about the effects of lockdown on the economy – effects which will continue beyond June if people remain too afraid to go back to their normal lives – there are other consequences of instilling fear in the public.

Laura Dodsworth, who has spent the past year researching this subject for a forthcoming book called A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, said: “I have interviewed people who have been undone by fear, people who have had to be talked down from suicide and people who have developed agoraphobia.

“The problem with fear is that it clouds rational thinking. You become more reliant on government messaging, which makes you more frightened, which makes you even more reliant on their messaging, creating a doom loop. We have forgotten how to analyse risk.”

Another “doom loop” may also be at play: the Government puts huge effort into tracking public sentiment to help inform policy, but critics say that creates an inevitable circle in which the public, put in fear by government messaging, favours a cautious approach to lifting lockdown, which the Government then uses to justify keeping the country in lockdown for longer, and so on.

A report by Nottingham University last year suggested that fear could even translate into additional Covid deaths because poor mental health weakens the immune system.

The report said: “It is well known that when negative mood states persist over time they result in the dysregulation of physiological systems involved in the regulation of the immune system. Thus, there exists significant potential for the psychological harm inflicted by the pandemic to translate into physical harm. This could include an increased susceptibility to the virus, worse outcomes if infected, or indeed poorer responses to vaccinations in the future.”

Behavioural science is so embedded in government that for the past decade it has taken advice from the Behavioural Insights Team, better known as the “Nudge Unit”, which began as part of the Cabinet Office but is now a limited company. A spokesman for the BIT said that “techniques such as ‘fear inflation’ are not, and have never been, recommended by BIT”.

Governed by Gobels.

I put the term "US death rates in 2020" into Google the other day.

Close to very top they tell us the stats showing they're similar to other years is a lie.

Then has multiple links claiming death rates are far higher, though obviously with no published stats to back this up.

[Noallegiance]

5 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Interesting to see the below from CP regarding Whitty saying we've got to lvie with it like the flu.AS he says ,the political winds are shifting.I think the truth wil come out,too many people are increasingly openly questioning what's happened.Also the truth that the IFR is akin to the flu IFR and that has been known for some time will eventually become disseminated more widely.

I verymuch think the last lockdown was about politcal face saving.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/state-fear-ministers-used-covert-tactics-keep-scared-public/

Failures in the UK’s pandemic response are not hard to identify, but on one front the Government’s success is undeniable: persuading a fearful nation to stay locked indoors for much of the past year.

The daily diet of statistics on deaths, hospitalisations and Covid cases has been so effective that compliance with lockdown has gone far beyond what ministers expected.

But the problem with fear, as one behavioural scientist said on Friday, is that “you can’t turn it on and off like a tap”.

As the country prepares for the complete end of lockdown in June, there are far-reaching questions about how many people will return to the workplace, or to normality, and the consequences of that for the economy and for physical and mental health.

Boris Johnson pounds home the stay at home message at a Downing Street press conference

Whether frightening the public was a deliberate – or honest – tactic has become the subject of intense debate, and dozens of psychologists have now accused ministers of using “covert psychological strategies” to manipulate the public’s behaviour.

They believe the Government, acting on the advice of behavioural experts, has emphasised the threat from Covid without putting the risks in sufficient context, leaving the country in “a state of heightened anxiety”.

They also claim that “inflated fear levels will be responsible for the ‘collateral’ deaths of many thousands of people with non-Covid illnesses” who are “too frightened to attend hospital”.

They are so concerned that the British public has been the subject of a mass experiment in the use of strategies that operate “below their level of awareness” that they have made a formal complaint to their professional body, which will now rule on whether government advisers have been guilty of a breach of ethics.

The Government, and its advisers, deny any such transgression, arguing that they have simply presented the public with the facts about the threat Covid poses, and what they need to do to stay safe.

One of the key pieces of evidence cited by those who have complained about “covert” tactics comes from a document prepared for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) at the beginning of the pandemic a year ago.

Dated March 22, the paper written by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) stated: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising … the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

The same document presented a grid of 14 options for increasing compliance which included “use media to increase sense of personal threat”, a tactic which was seen as having a “high” effectiveness though spill-over effects “could be negative”.

Some Sage participants now admit to feeling “embarrassed” by such advice.

One regular Sage attendee said: “The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what’s happening.

“All of this is about trying to steer behaviour in the direction an elite has decided, rather than deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do.”

The Sage member said SPI-B reports tended not to be “challenged” by Sage because “the core membership of Sage is not very well equipped to evaluate it – there are not other social scientists at the heart of Sage”.

They added: “When someone from SPI-B is saying we need to ramp up the fear and keep it ramped up – there wasn’t much questioning of that at the beginning and most of the questioning came from external sources, not from within.”

Gary Sidley, a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist, said: “It’s as if there is a little industry around pandemic management and it excludes alternative voices.

“There is growing concern within my field about using fear and shame as a driver of behaviour change.”

Mr Sidley was so concerned that he and 46 colleagues wrote to the British Psychological Society (BPS) raising “concerns about the activities of government-employed psychologists … in their mission to gain the public’s mass compliance with the ongoing coronavirus restrictions”.

The letter added: “Our view is that the use of covert psychological strategies – that operate below the level of people’s awareness – to ‘nudge’ citizens to conform to a contentious and unprecedented public health policy raises profound ethical questions.”

The Telegraph has learnt that the BPS’s ethics committee will discuss the matter at its next meeting on June 21 – coincidentally the same day all lockdown restrictions are due to end.

The BPS is a membership organisation and can recommend that members are reprimanded, suspended or expelled. In extreme cases it can raise concerns with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, as a fitness to practise issue.

A spokesman for the BPS said it was “not possible to conclude” from publicly available information “that an intense psychological attack by the Government and orchestrated by Sage has been used to encourage people to comply with government policies regarding Covid-19” but added that the matter would be discussed by the ethics committee and: “It is not appropriate for us to comment on whether the Government’s coronavirus response has used contentious public health policies.”

SPI-B participant Professor Susan Michie, director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London, told The Telegraph that “persuasion” was one of 10 options put forward for increasing adherence to social distancing in the document, and that it involved giving people “an accurate perception of risk and therefore, for some, increasing the personal threat they perceive, along with being empowered to take actions to reduce the threat”.

Not that the SPI-B paper is by any means the only evidence of what critics describe as “covert” methods.

Others cite, for example, the fact that the Government tells the public how many people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but does not include the context of whether deaths are above or below the seasonal norm, and also gives daily figures for hospital admissions, but not how many people have recovered.

Terrifying predictions, which are often presented in such a way that they seem like certainties, have also come from the likes of Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.

In October, ahead of a parliamentary vote on a national lockdown, Sir Patrick warned in a press conference of up to 4,000 deaths per day in the second wave, only for Prof Whitty to admit days later that 1,000 deaths per day was a more likely peak (the second wave peaked at an average of 1,248 daily deaths).

Giving evidence to MPs last month, Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick warned of a fresh spike in cases when schools reopened – which has so far failed to materialise – and suggested another 30,000 people could die (deaths are currently averaging fewer than 50 per day and continue to fall).

A planned relaxation of social restrictions over Christmas was scaled back because of concerns about the emergence of the Kent variant of the virus, which Mr Johnson later said “may be associated with a higher degree of mortality”. He was accused of “science by press release” by Dr Susan Hopkins, of Public Health England, who complained that it was too early to know if it was more deadly, and earlier this week a survey involving Dr Hopkins reported that there was no evidence of higher mortality from the Kent strain.

Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, said: “The idea that you need to increase people’s personal threat disproportionately to the threat they face is a problem. It sets a very dangerous precedent – weaponising fear is the phrase that people use.

“Once the fear has been stoked you can’t diminish it. It’s not like turning a tap on and off –  you can’t turn the fear off.

“We have focused narrowly on mortality rates and case rates, but I’m pretty certain that the public would understand placing the deaths in the context of five-year averages.

“There has been such a missed opportunity for communicating risk. Rather than just saying a hundred people have died today from Covid, the Government could say what proportion of deaths that accounts for, and whether or not that translates to excess deaths.

“That may be a more sustainable conversation to have with the public, rather than ‘be scared and stay scared’.”

Senior government sources have admitted that levels of compliance went far beyond what they expected in the first lockdown, forcing Boris Johnson to publicly implore workers to get back to the office last summer.

One source said: “There were genuine fears a year ago that we were going to see supermarkets running out of food and a run on the banks. We never considered that people would go even further than the stay at home advice.”

The same source admitted that the curfew brought in last year was designed to “send a clear signal to young people” that the virus was still dangerous, rather than because of any evidence a curfew would cut infections – which, it could be argued, was another example of behavioural science being used in a “covert” way.

It clearly worked. Last July, a survey carried out by the consultancy firm Kekst CNC found that almost half of respondents, discounting “don’t knows”, thought Covid had killed 1 per cent of the UK population, equating to more than 600,000 people, when the actual figure at the time was 44,000. Almost a third of respondents thought 6 to 10 per cent, or more, of the population had been killed by Covid, which would mean up to 6.6 million deaths.

While Rishi Sunak has openly discussed his concerns about the effects of lockdown on the economy – effects which will continue beyond June if people remain too afraid to go back to their normal lives – there are other consequences of instilling fear in the public.

Laura Dodsworth, who has spent the past year researching this subject for a forthcoming book called A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, said: “I have interviewed people who have been undone by fear, people who have had to be talked down from suicide and people who have developed agoraphobia.

“The problem with fear is that it clouds rational thinking. You become more reliant on government messaging, which makes you more frightened, which makes you even more reliant on their messaging, creating a doom loop. We have forgotten how to analyse risk.”

Another “doom loop” may also be at play: the Government puts huge effort into tracking public sentiment to help inform policy, but critics say that creates an inevitable circle in which the public, put in fear by government messaging, favours a cautious approach to lifting lockdown, which the Government then uses to justify keeping the country in lockdown for longer, and so on.

A report by Nottingham University last year suggested that fear could even translate into additional Covid deaths because poor mental health weakens the immune system.

The report said: “It is well known that when negative mood states persist over time they result in the dysregulation of physiological systems involved in the regulation of the immune system. Thus, there exists significant potential for the psychological harm inflicted by the pandemic to translate into physical harm. This could include an increased susceptibility to the virus, worse outcomes if infected, or indeed poorer responses to vaccinations in the future.”

Behavioural science is so embedded in government that for the past decade it has taken advice from the Behavioural Insights Team, better known as the “Nudge Unit”, which began as part of the Cabinet Office but is now a limited company. A spokesman for the BIT said that “techniques such as ‘fear inflation’ are not, and have never been, recommended by BIT”.

Awaiting the hourly BBC presser every night for 6 months to convince people to eat zero sugar, plenty of plants and encourage local businesses to form with zero parking facilities within walking distance housing estates.

If saving he NHS is the priority, people need to be made to be terrified of almost every item in the modern-day supermarket, because that's what causes health services the real long-term problems.

Not much money in it, but it would save far more than 0.18% of the population.

[sancho panza]

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/lockdown-and-cancer-are-we-getting-the-full-story-

The 10 Downing Street press conferences on Covid-19 tend not to show graphs about cancer care. We see various charts by statisticians and epidemiologists, but the impact of lockdown on patients with time critical conditions such as cancer has been largely ignored. The disruption of cancer services is a global phenomenon, but the suspension of screening services and failure to protect cancer services in the UK has resulted in 40,000 less cancers being diagnosed last year, compared to 2019

 

The true scale of the cancer backlog has yet to be acknowledged by the UK government, far less prioritised with specific additional funding. Denial could cost lives. Any future cancer strategy simply has to start with an acknowledgement of what has just happened, which came on top of pretty poor pre-pandemic cancer services.

 

 

There are already reports of an increase in patients with later-stage cancers due to delays in diagnosis and, not only will this be devastating for these patients and their families, it will further reduce our mediocre survival rates. It is unthinkable that the small incremental gains that have been made by optimisation to screening, diagnosis and treatment of common cancers during my career have been negated by lockdown. Ministers must accept the scale of the problem – and find viable solutions to develop a comprehensive cancer strategy that goes much further than simply focusing on reducing cancer waiting times, recruiting additional cancer specialists, and improving access to imaging and radiotherapy.

Covid kills. But so does cancer – and we need to keep the realistic threats of all disease in mind when we consider how to best save life. There is so much that ministers can do to to provide information, allow people to understand their personal risk and provide access to updated screening and diagnostic pathways that harness recent developments in science and technology.

 

 

 

Written byProfessor Gordon Wishart

Edited April 4, 2021 by sancho panza

[sancho panza]

Not seen this sort of stuff in the UK press much.From Dec 17 2020

Dont think we've had this before.

Goldman Sachs gets a mention of sorts

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/europe/britain-covid-contracts.html

Waste, Negligence and Cronyism: Inside Britain’s Pandemic Spending

In the desperate scramble for protective gear and other equipment, politically connected companies reaped billions.

By Jane Bradley, Selam Gebrekidan and Allison McCannDec. 17, 2020

LONDON — When the pandemic exploded in March, British officials embarked on a desperate scramble to procure the personal protective equipment, ventilators, coronavirus tests and other supplies critical to containing the surge. In the months following those fevered days, the government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive “V.I.P. lane” to a select few companies with connections to the governing Conservative Party.

To shine a light on one of the greatest spending sprees in Britain’s postwar era, The New York Times analyzed a large segment of it, the roughly 1,200 central government contracts that have been made public, together worth nearly $22 billion. Of that, about $11 billion went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy. Meanwhile, smaller firms without political clout got nowhere.

“The government had license to act fast because it was a pandemic, but we didn’t give them permission to act fast and loose with public money,” said Meg Hillier, a lawmaker with the opposition Labour Party and chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee. “We’re talking billions of pounds, and it’s quite right that we ask questions about how that money was spent.”

The procurement system was cobbled together during a meeting of anxious bureaucrats in late March, and a wealthy former investment banker and Conservative Party grandee, Paul Deighton, who sits in the House of Lords, was later tapped to act as the government’s czar for personal protective equipment.

Eight months on, Lord Deighton has helped the government award billions of dollars in contracts –– including hundreds of millions to several companies where he has financial interests or personal connections.

The contracts that have been made public are only a part of the total. Citing the urgency of the pandemic, the government cast aside the usual transparency rules and awarded contracts worth billions of dollars without competitive bidding. To date, just over half of all of the contracts awarded in the first seven months remain concealed from the public, according to the National Audit Office, a watchdog agency.

The Times investigation was based on contracts compiled by Tussell, a research firm that tracks public spending. It also relies on other public records, and interviews with dozens of government officials, lawmakers, business owners, doctors and nurses.

All of the companies named in this article have denied wrongdoing, and there is no evidence to suggest that government officials were engaged in illegal conduct. But there is ample evidence of cronyism, waste and poor due diligence. Some of it has been documented by the British media, but the scale of the problem is wider than previously known.

In the government's rush to hand out contracts, officials ignored or missed many red flags. Dozens of companies that won a total of $3.6 billion in contracts had poor credit, and several had declared assets of just $2 or $3 each. Others had histories of fraud, human rights abuses, tax evasion or other serious controversies. A few were set up on the spur of the moment or had no relevant experience — and still won contracts.

The Department of Health and Social Care, which led the government’s pandemic procurement, said in a statement that “proper due diligence” was carried out for all contracts.

“We take these checks extremely seriously,” a spokesman for the department said in an emailed statement.

The government was undoubtedly in crisis in March, with Mr. Johnson putting the country on a “war footing.” Many companies, such as the fashion brand Burberry, did create new production lines and successfully produce critical supplies.

Nevertheless, the crisis gave way to a system that was neither fair nor equitable, critics say. Suppliers who answered the government's call say the publicly advertised procurement system run by Lord Deighton was at best slow and at worst unresponsive.

Junior staffers reviewed thousands of proposals and passed on a chosen few to their bosses, who often had only a day to sign off on contracts, according to a government official involved in the process. Some businesses said they were left waiting months as their proposals went unanswered. Others said it was difficult to keep up with what the government wanted, with safety specifications sometimes changing after deliveries had already been made.

Normally, companies would bid on individual contracts with requirements published in advance. But given the government’s frenzied need for supplies, most companies simply submitted broad proposals through a government website. Government officials then decided yes or no, or in some cases approached companies themselves.

A government spokesman said that the huge global demand for P.P.E. had created “a highly competitive market” and that it used “the quickest and most accessible routes” to buy protective gear.

In choosing speed over due diligence, however, ministers squandered millions on "unsuitable" items, including some that did not meet safety standards, according to the National Audit Office. The government said that only a tiny portion of the supplies, 0.5 percent, had been found unfit for their intended uses.

Ministers could have avoided the panicked spending spree, critics said, had they not ignored their own pandemic preparedness plan and sold off stocks of P.P.E. from rainy-day reserves in the first three months of the year.

“If they had stocked according to that plan, then they would have bought themselves more time,” said Dolin Bhagawati, a neurosurgeon and a leader of the Doctors' Association UK, which is suing the government for failing to investigate the effects of the P.P.E. shortages.

The V.I.P. Lane

March was a month of madness for Matt Hancock, Britain’s health secretary. Doctors and nurses were in open revolt, telling the government they felt like “cannon fodder” for being forced to work without proper protective gear. Officials were struggling to process thousands of offers that responded to the government’s call to arms to British suppliers.

In the pressurized atmosphere of early April, with lawmakers loudly demanding P.P.E for their constituents, Mr. Hancock secretly authorized the V.I.P. lane for favored companies, which proved to be 10 times more likely to win contracts than those outside that group, according to the National Audit Office.

The government did not carry out systematic company checks, including for potential conflicts of interest, until it had already spent nearly $2 billion, auditors found. Officials did not always document who recommended a company or why it was awarded a contract.

One company in the V.I.P. lane was an investment firm, Ayanda Capital, where a man named Andrew Mills served as a senior board adviser while also working for a government body, the Board of Trade. While it is not clear what role Mr. Mills played, Ayanda Capital was awarded nearly $340 million to supply personal protective equipment. It eventually delivered 50 million masks worth more than $200 million that could not be used for their original purpose, because the ear loop fastenings did not match the government’s new requirements.

A spokesman for Ayanda denied that the masks were unusable and said they met all government requirements when the order was placed.

Many companies and business people, often better qualified to produce P.P.E. but lacking political connections, had no access to the V.I.P. lane. Multibrands International, a British manufacturer that had been producing P.P.E. for China since December, was among them. Its owner, Rizwana Hussain, spent months trying to reach government officials through public channels.

Ms. Hussain had offered to supply the government starting in March, her emails show. She was still at it in early May when news broke that 400,000 protective gowns that the government ordered from Turkey had proved to be unusable. “I was so upset thinking, ‘Why are we listening to these disastrous happenings when we’re here and are offering our help?’” Ms. Hussain said.

She said that although her company could produce large quantities of P.P.E. at its factories in China and India, she never heard back from the government.

Government officials said that the high-priority lane was set up to efficiently prioritize credible offers of P.P.E. for the National Health Service, and that all proposals, whatever channel they went through, were assessed by the same standards.

But they have not released the names of the nearly 500 companies that made the V.I.P. list., fuelling questions of cronyism.

“Some people seem to be doing very well out of this crisis and that goes against a very basic principle of fairness,” said Rachel Reeves, a Labour party lawmaker and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office.

Lords and Conflicts

Lord Deighton was a central figure in the procurement program, if one with potential conflicts of interest.

He is remembered by his former colleagues at the London Olympics committee as an analytical thinker and a “counselor” of sorts, who was always calm and thoughtful. He is popular inside Westminster, too, where he once served as a junior Treasury minister in a Conservative government, is close to the prime minister’s office and recommended the successor to the controversial Dominic Cummings, who recently resigned as chief of staff.

Lord Deighton, who was once a Goldman Sachs executive, remains involved in business and has financial or personal connections to at least seven companies that were awarded lucrative government contracts totalling nearly $300 million, the Times has learned.

There is no evidence to suggest that the companies won contracts because of their connection to Lord Deighton, and he was not directly involved in awarding vaccine, contact tracing or consulting contracts. He properly declared his business interests in a public register for the House of Lords but did not respond to questions about them.

Still, conflict of interest questions remain, given his access to government ministers overseeing the spending spree and his involvement in high-level meetings and strategy discussions.

Two of the contracts linked to Lord Deighton were P.P.E.-related. One, for $78 million, was awarded to Honeywell Safety Products, a subsidiary of Honeywell International, a company he holds shares in.

Lord Deighton is also a shareholder of AstraZeneca, the British pharmaceutical company that is developing a vaccine with Oxford University, and was awarded $205 million for test services.

He also holds shares in the consulting firm Accenture, which was awarded a $5.6 million contract to help develop England’s ill-fated contact tracing app and detect fraud in procurement. Another company he has a stake in, UBS, won $770,000.

Neither Lord Deighton nor the companies would divulge the size of his share holdings.

A $406,000 contract was awarded to a consulting firm, Chanzo, to help set up and run the P.P.E. procurement system, including providing a chief of staff for Lord Deighton.

Chanzo's founder and chief executive, Jean Tomlin, is a long-time business associate of Lord Deighton, and worked with him on the Olympic committee. Ms. Tomlin is also a fellow director at Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm founded by former British intelligence officers, which Lord Deighton chairs.

Lady Alison Deighton, his wife, is a former director of N.M. Rothschild, which won a $770,000 contract for consulting services. Another consulting contract of the same value went to Moelis & Company, an investment bank where one senior adviser and Labour peer, Lord Charles Allen, was also on the Olympic committee board with Lord Deighton.

A colleague in a situation similar to Lord Deighton’s has been forced to relinquish his shareholdings. Lord Agnew, a Cabinet Office minister responsible for supporting Covid-19 procurement, put shares worth about $120,000 in an artificial intelligence company, Faculty Science, into a blind trust following criticism. The company, which has close ties to the Conservative Party and Mr. Cummings’s campaign to leave the European Union, was awarded $5.5 million for Covid-related data analysis services.

Faculty Science said it was “pleased” the National Audit Office had found no conflicts of interest in the awarding of its contracts, nor any evidence of Lord Agnew’s involvement.

The government said that it has rules and processes to guard against conflicts of interest.

Officials insisted that Lord Deighton had no role in approving contracts, despite his appointment as the P.P.E. czar overseeing both the purchase and manufacture of P.P.E.

In the end, his team awarded contracts to fewer than 1 percent of suppliers who went through ordinary government channels, an auditor’s report found. Ms. Hussain’s company, Multibrands International, was not among the recipients.

“Before this case we were extremely naive,” she said. “We thought if we rang the government, said we're a local British business with the facilities to help, that would be enough.”

“Now we know not being part of the government inner circle held us back,” Ms. Hussain said.

Edited April 4, 2021 by sancho panza

[sancho panza]

Could have brought back some memories for older members of the congregation from the 1940's/50's/60's.

Our police force really need some new leadership if they think breaking up mass on Good Friday is a priority.

 

 

[Hancock]

17 hours ago, sancho panza said:

. He is popular inside Westminster, too, where he once served as a junior Treasury minister in a Conservative government, is close to the prime minister’s office.

I cant for one moment think why that would be.

Like i say i hope a Corbyn esq Labour leader wins an election and takes these crooked cunts to the cleaners.

In the year prior to the next election all of this is going to be in the MSM to bring down Boris.

Im pissed off with myself that i filled in my bounce back loan honestly.

[Andersen]

Banks are gearing up as first repayments become due for bounceback loans. Reality is about to hit some folk - the free holiday is coming to an end (unless one of the debt writeoff schemes can be used to wipe the slate clean ready to start again).

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/smallbusiness/article-9457301/Banks-poised-call-billions-Covid-loans.html

[Hancock]

3 hours ago, Andersen said:

Banks are gearing up as first repayments become due for bounceback loans. Reality is about to hit some folk - the free holiday is coming to an end (unless one of the debt writeoff schemes can be used to wipe the slate clean ready to start again).

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/smallbusiness/article-9457301/Banks-poised-call-billions-Covid-loans.html

The eviction ban comes to an end in May.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/bailiff-eviction-ban-extended-to-may-69943

So more people are about to say, why the fuck do you destroy the economy for another flu variant!

[Agent ZigZag]

On 04/04/2021 at 23:26, sancho panza said:

Could have brought back some memories for older members of the congregation from the 1940's/50's/60's.

Our police force really need some new leadership if they think breaking up mass on Good Friday is a priority.

All is now forgiven the police have now said that they were wrong in what they did and are now very very sorry.

[sancho panza]

8 hours ago, Agent ZigZag said:

All is now forgiven the police have now said that they were wrong in what they did and are now very very sorry.

They were jsut following orders so it's alright ........

 

on another matter...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/11/shutting-up-shop-high-street-names-well-see-no-more

Shutting up shop: high street names we’ll see no more

Arcadia

Sir Philip Green was once dubbed king of the high street. But no more. His Arcadia group collapsed into administration last November, putting more than 13,000 jobs in peril and spelling the end of a retailing empire that included Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Evans and Burton.

Administrators successfully sold various brands to different buyers, but none of them was interested in retaining the Arcadia stores.

The online fashion retailer Asos bought Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and the activewear brand HIIT for £330m, but did not require any of the brands’ 70 branches.

Meanwhile, another online fashion retailer, Boohoo, paid £25m for the Dorothy Perkins, Wallis and Burton brands, which previously had more than 200 branches.

Evans, Arcadia’s plus-size clothing brand, was sold to the Australian retailer City Chic Collective, and is now only available online.

Debenhams

The collapsed department store chain will briefly reopen, but only for a closing-down sale. Just under 100 Debenhams branches will be selling off remaining stock, with reductions of up to 70%, before they close their doors for good by 15 May. Several sites will never reopen, including the brand’s flagship Oxford Street store in central London, after the building’s lease ended in February.

The retailer, which started trading as a drapery and haberdasher from a shop near Oxford Street in the late 18th century, fell into administration for the second time in 2020. It still employed 12,000 people at the start of this year. Debenhams had a presence on British high streets for more than 200 years, and its closure will leave a hole at the heart of many town centres and shopping malls.

The Debenhams brand name will survive, but only on the internet. It was bought by online retailer Boohoo for £55m in January. Boohoo plans to relaunch Debenhams online by the end of May.

Oasis and Warehouse

 

Administrators’ failure to secure a rescue deal for fashion chains Oasis and Warehouse led to the loss of 1,800 jobs and the permanent closure of the two chains’ 92 standalone stores and 400 department stores concessions.

The brands were sold to the restructuring firm Hilco, owner of the Homebase DIY chain, in a deal that included their stock.

The two chains collapsed into administration in April 2020, during the first lockdown, when the enforced closure of non-essential shops proved too much for retailers already struggling with rising costs and the switch to online shopping.

Cath Kidston

 

The vintage-inspired brand announced just after the first lockdown started that it was permanently closing all of its 60 UK stores as part of a rescue deal with its Hong Kong-based owner, Baring Private Equity Asia. A total of 900 staff were made redundant as a result of the decision to quit the British high street, though the firm is continuing to trade online and through its 180 overseas stores, operated through a franchise business.

The retro fashion and homewares company had opened its first store in west London in 1993.

Thorntons

 

Chocolate retailer Thorntons became another established name to vanish from the high street, when it announced last month that it was closing all of its 61 stores, with the probable loss of 600 jobs.

The brand was founded in Sheffield by Joseph Thornton, who marked the year he began trading with the slogan “chocolate heaven since 1911”. The company’s confectionery products will continue to be sold in supermarkets and other retailers, and it will go on making chocolate for international markets from its factory in Alfreton, Derbyshire.

Thorntons said it had been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, because two lockdowns had occurred at its peak sales times, including two consecutive Easters and Christmas 2020. It had also lost customers to its more fashionable rival Hotel Chocolat.

[Harley]

On 23/03/2021 at 07:26, sancho panza said:

Whatever, I'm not going anywhere near places where people are humiliated and degraded like that.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Harley