Bournbrook Live
Our commentary on the news as it comes in.
If you would like to contribute to Live, please email us at live@bournbrookmag.com
Posted 5.30pm UK time
Government minister Robert Jenrick confirms what we expected; that the point of the tiered lockdown system is to ‘see us through’ until a vaccine becomes properly available.
‘The point of the tiered approach is, can we get tiers that are sufficiently robust to steer the country through the last few months before we manage to get the vaccine programme rolled out.’
But this thinking will be extremely costly (as if we haven’t lost enough), as William Parker explains in our latest print issue (available here):
‘Simply put, we have to learn to live with this virus. Most jump with outrage at such a statement, believing it means I wish for the virus to tear through the population, as our incompetent Health Secretary Matt Hancock put it. That is simply not the case. We should be cautious in our everyday lives and prioritise the care of those most at risk, but we cannot continue to turn the nation’s economy on and off until, and if, a vaccine arrives.
‘Coronavirus is here to stay for a long time and it is time to wake up to that fact instead of allowing ourselves to be whipped into a Covid hysteria fuelled by mostly unjustified fear.’
Posted 6pm UK time
When we ‘leave’ lockdown in early December, 98.7 per cent of England will enter ‘Tier Two’ or ‘Tier Three’ lockdown. This is no longer just disproportionate, but deeply insulting.
And yet people continue swallowing it. Simon Dolan is perhaps right to say that the ‘altruism and patience of the British public’ has been one of the worst aspects of this madness.
Posted 11.50am UK time
Social media undeniably plays a highly influential role in public life and opinion. As such, we should take its increasing obsession with censoring sensible opinions very seriously — especially on the matter of the Government’s response to the coronavirus.
Another example of Facebook’s meddling has been presented by talkRADIO presenter Mike Graham, whose latest interview with Peter Hitchens was flagged up by the powerful social media platform for ‘missing context’.
‘Independent fact-checkers say that this information could mislead people’.
As Mr. Hitchens has commented in response, ‘Power hates dissent’. This is not an issue we should make light of.
Posted 2.15pm UK time
The Daily Telegraph has published an excellent article today by a pub-owner in Cornwall who has spent the last three years turning a crumbling seventeenth-century building into a beloved social hub. ‘Turning it around involved a lot of hard work,’ owner Amy Newland writes, ‘which was starting to pay off until Covid [or, better put, the Government’s lockdown] struck.’
The pub — like so many others across the country — has been forced to start selling takeaway food and groceries in order to make a slight profit: ‘I can’t say we’re making any money, but even £10 a week is better than nothing.’ Customers could buy milk cheaper at the supermarket, Mrs. Newland writes, but ‘I think they know that if they don’t use us, they’ll lose us’. This, at least, is encouraging. But it clearly isn’t enough.
The most dispiriting line was this one: ‘One of our regulars is 86 — he has been coming to this pub every single day for 63 years. He came in on Sunday to collect his roast dinner and he didn’t want to leave.’ How many times do we need to say that the question of whether or not to ‘lock down’ is not a matter of lives versus money, but lives versus lives (and livelihoods).
The publican ends with a stark warning for the Government: ‘Restrict our business much longer, and there won’t be any pubs left.’ Quite right.
For Mrs. Newland, like many others, all this talk about our Christmas freedoms is just that: talk.
Posted 3:14pm UK Time
Toby Young has provided another reason as to why the warning of ‘false information’ is so ridiculous:
Posted 12:37pm UK time
Recently, a long-awaited Danish study on the use of face masks was published, and it didn’t include much in the way of good news for the politicians who have made the usage of such coverings compulsory. However it seems these scientific results, which came out of a randomised control trial, have not been allowed on Facebook without a warning label attached. Professor Carl Heneghan tweeted this yesterday:
This is what happens when people, especially those working for social media companies, are given the power to curb ‘misinformation’ about a disease and the politics around it. Whilst those who advocate the need to prevent ‘misinformation’ dress this up as an attempt to stop conspiracy theorists, in reality it leads to similar situations as that including Professor Heneghan and the article he wrote on the study. Science does not flourish by attempting to shut out perfectly decent debate.
Posted 12:55pm UK time
The Labour Party have said emergency legislation to ‘stamp out dangerous’ information about vaccines should be introduced.
Whilst many of us will agree that anti-vaccine campaigns over the years have caused harm, the main political issue facing us currently is not a debate between ‘pro-vaccine’ and ‘anti-vaccine’. Instead it is a debate between those who think COVID-19 is an especially bad disease and many government restrictions work and are needed, and those who think the threat of COVID-19 has been exaggerated and government restictions have been wildly disproportionate and may not even work.
To give the government power to stamp out information it sees as unfit is surely unwise in the situation we find out today. One could easily see how such legislation could be used to push away those who are skeptical of government restrictions, by grouping them with the conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. This legislation carries with it a scent of dogmatism and an unwilligness to allow for dissent, however it is dressed up.
If those people who think a vaccine is necessary for the whole population are confident with their arguments, they could make their case and convince a large enough proportion of the population to accept a vaccine. After all, many people have already accepted the plethora of restrictions enacted so far. Why on earth would a government need strict legislation like this?
Posted 1.25pm UK time
The damage of the second lockdown continues to ravage the country, so I wonder how much people really care about current squabbles in No. 10.
‘Joe Public couldn't give a flying fig’, Paul Embery writes, with his usual wit.
Bob Moran’s cartoon for the Daily Telegraph today puts the message better than any words could. Great as always:
Posted 10.45pm UK time
Shortly after it was revealed that the Treasury did not forecast the economic impact of a second lockdown (see below), coffee chain Caffe Nero was forced to enter into a Company Voluntary Arrangement (a type of insolvency).
According to the Daily Mail, ‘founder Gerry Ford, 62, said the second lockdown had pushed the company to act.’ Who would have thought it!
Posted 4.20pm UK time
Regular readers of Bournbrook won’t be surprised by the Chief Economic Advisor at HM Treasury’s admission that the Treasury did not forecast the economic impact of a second lockdown.
Answering questions for the Treasury Select Committee, Clare Lombardelli said that whilst some analysis from external organisations has been considered by the tax-payer funded body, ‘we haven’t done […] very specific predictions or estimates on specific restrictions’, such as the closing of pubs, gyms, and the directive for people to work from home (or, of course, not at all).
No wonder the government’s response to the coronavirus has been so damaging, disproportionate, and wrong.
Kate Andrews has written some interesting analysis on this worrying statement for The Spectator, here.
Posted 1.50pm UK Time
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a now-retired specialist in microbiology from Germany, has been interviewed by Triggernometry on COVID-19. In this, Professor Bhakdi is absolutely scathing on the responses to the virus of governments worldwide.
Topics range from PCR testing, masks, fatality rates, eminent scientists who oppose many restrictions, immune responses and vaccines. The distinguished microbiologist, who has strings of awards and has studied and worked in first-rate institutions, dismisses the exaggeration surrounding COVID-19 and rebukes those advocating disproportionate, damaging measures that have been enacted in response to the coronavirus.
His ending note, wherein he asks us all to question how or why these responses to COVID-19 came about, really is poignant.
The interview is available to watch here:
Professor Bhakdi also has recently co-authored a book called Corona, False Alarm? which can be purchased in many countries.