Bournbrook Live
Our commentary on the news as it comes in.
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Posted 12:15pm UK Time
Facebook seems to be up to its old tricks again, though these tricks seem to get increasingly more absurd. The interview with Professor Sucharit Bhakdi by Triggernometry has a warning attached to it saying it may contain ‘partial nudity’:
How on earth can we trust companies such as Facebook to filter news and ‘misinformation’?
On top of this, in the battle to push Professor Bhakdi out of view, a new front seems to have opened. The Wikipedia article on him has been constantly edited in past weeks, though it seems those who seek to discredit him as a crank have won. Of course, his arguments on COVID-19 are not given in the article, and the authors think it sufficient to just label him as ‘a prominent exponent of misinformation about COVID-19’.
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 3.20pm UK time
Priti Patel must go. Not because she has shouted at somebody (or whatever she’s been accused of), but because she is useless.
The Times today leads with a story on the Prime Minister’s decision to ‘dig in over Patel bullying’. Apparently, Mrs. Patel has ‘sworn, shouted at and bullied senior officials’. I stopped reading at this point; there are many far more important matters at hand. Frankly, I am more riled by the destruction of our liberty and economy, and the preventable deaths of thousands of cancer patients due to the Government’s disproportionate response to Covid, than by ministerial misdemeanour.
Surely, The Times should have instead featured its page-four story on the cover: ‘Criminals are allowed to serve sentences ‘working from home’.’ ‘Burglars, thieves and other offenders who started unpaid work were unable to continue because of the lockdown in March. The remaining hours on their sentences have been written off’. Others have been permitted to ‘work from home’. This would be pathetic under any government, never mind one which was elected on the basis of its toughness against crime.
Priti Patel in particular is often fawned over by gullible conservatives because of her firmness against illegal actions, and her rigid stance on borders. Total nonsense, the lot of it. Why don’t the ‘Tory’ papers give prominent coverage to this, rather than to (essentially) meaningless personality politics?
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 10am UK time
Sack Priti Patel for all I care. She's no tougher on crime, criminals or immigration than if Coco the Clown was in charge.
Her problem is that she's particularly good at talking the talk, but pretty rubbish at walking the walk.
Posted 9pm UK time
The much-repeated promise to give Brits ‘control’ of their futures earned ‘Boris’ his spot in Number Ten. In return, he has locked us in our homes, and prevented us — with the threat of fines — even from cuddling our loved ones. Now he’s started spewing a load of guff about the environment… Right now, who cares?
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 5:49pm UK time
The divisions in Number 10 between the professional Vote Leave faction, the more populist wing committed to tearing out Blairism, and the usual Conservative Party establishment have been brewing again, so much so that Dominic Cummings seems to have been forced out by Carrie Symonds and those around her. The liberal wishy-washy class of the Tory Party will see this as an immediate victory- with Dominic goes the strategy that won the party a 2019 landslide win (that was not, contrary to popular belief, guaranteed). It is back to the tried and tested for the Conservative Party, a party that may fail to recognise just what a threat Starmer’s Labour is to them.
It’s clear that if they don’t deliver and change their messaging, the Prime Minister is in for some major political blows and this time he doesn’t have his right-hand man to guard him.
Cummings gone — who will lead ‘Boris’ now?
Posted 5.30pm UK time
Simon Dolan as witty as ever, as Dominic Cummings leaves No. Ten for the last time:
Posted 5.25pm UK time
Is there anything the ‘Conservatives’ won’t leave alone or destroy? Apparently not.
And don’t think natural beauty is free from Tory destruction, either. A powerful message here:
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 7.40pm UK time
An excerpt from Oliver Stanley’s article on UK-US relations under a President Biden in our upcoming print issue:
‘Much has been speculated about what a President Biden will mean for the U.K. but how much of it really matters?
‘On a post-Brexit trade deal, it seems unlikely that negotiating outcomes will differ greatly. Biden has similar international trade priorities to his predecessor, whose willingness to personally intervene to get the U.K. a deal was in my view grossly overestimated by some elements of the Conservative party and many in the media.
‘On policy, the U.K. Conservatives are not far from the U.S. Democrats on a larger range of issues than many would think. Climate change and infrastructure are two key areas. Beyond Europe, foreign policy should also not be too difficult an area to find common ground. If the Prime Minister plays his cards right, the Biden administration can be an opportunity for Britain, not an obstacle.’
Subscribe here to receive your copy.
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 2.20pm UK time
‘The surge in Channel migrants could have been prevented if the Home Office had taken tougher action earlier, claimed the chief inspector of borders.’ So reports The Daily Telegraph today.
It’s almost as if the ‘Conservative’ Party doesn’t really care about defending our borders, and just says it does to win elections…
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.