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
Matt Hancock ‘absolutely open’ to delaying ‘Freedom Day’
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Tory MPs have criticised Matt Hancock for saying he is ‘absolutely open’ to delaying ‘Freedom Day’. The Health Secretary refused to rule out keeping face masks and home working beyond June 21, when the Government had hoped to remove all legal limits on social contact.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Quote of the Day #1: Paul Embery
Posted at 5pm.
Posted at 5pm UK time
The first ‘Quote of the Day’ award goes to UnHerd columnist and author of the book Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class Paul Embery.
Responding to Twitter complaining about being blocked in Nigeria, Mr Embery writes:
‘Hunchback of Notre Dame tells someone to sit up straight.’
Ben Pile came a close second with this:
Make your mind up, Boris
Posted at 3.40pm.
Posted at 3.40pm UK time
One minute we are told that ‘Boris’ Johnson is the most ‘freedom-loving Prime Minister of this nation in decades, if not in over a century’ – the next, we are expected to accept that the Government will not merely bow down to a vaccine passport scheme developed by another country, but will ‘lead the way’ on creating its own scheme which others will implement. None of this adds up.
I report on this story for Lockdown Sceptics here.
Stick to crisps, Gary
Posted at 3pm.
Posted at 3pm UK time
Gary Lineker says: ‘If you boo England [football] players for taking the knee, you’re part of the reason why players are taking the knee.’
I see this is the party line on the matter.
But I am yet to see any defence of the kneeling that isn't: 'Muh, racism.'
Football fans aren't stupid – they see right through the charade that this is anything other than homage to a political organisation that loathes this country.
Social distancing, mask-wearing and working from home all likely to remain past June 21
Posted at 2.30pm.
Posted at 2.30pm UK time
Read my Weekend News Review for The Conservative Woman here.
Standardising taxes in an international world
Posted at 5.40pm.
Posted at 5.40pm UK time
Since the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s, which gave birth to a highly globalised and technological world economy, global corporations – whose wealth and profits dwarf those of Medieval Kings and Queens – have been able to filter their money through numerous taxation and legal systems so as to avoid paying higher taxes, whether that be through avoidance or relocation.
This allows large corporations to hold nations to ransom, for if the taxes become too high or the regulations too strict, corporations can move their operations elsewhere, resulting in job losses and a decrease in corporation tax revenue. In the broader sense, this fuels a race to bottom, where governments must weaken the power of their taxman to attract these firms.
Therefore, the G7 agreement to standardise corporation tax of at least 15 per cent to prevent the practice of offshoring (where money made elsewhere is moved to a low-income nation for it to be taxed there) is a step in the right direction. Although this principle is not yet universal, and burgeoning economies such as China and India have not yet been persuaded to sign the dotted line, the upcoming meeting of the G20 nations should reveal what’s looming on the horizon.
The pandemic has seen the largest transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest in history, as lockdowns have left millions jobless while large corporations, having the digital infrastructure already in place and their brick-and-mortar competition wiped out, have ballooned in profits.
In turn, governments across the world have borrowed and spent record breaking sums of money into fighting Covid so are desperately trying to balance the books, and see this as a viable option.
Border Force? More like Parcel Force
Posted at 2.45pm.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Conservative Party’s promises to tackle migration contained more hot air than an asylum seeker’s dinghy.
Far from protecting our borders, The Daily Mail yesterday revealed that a Border Force craft even asked permission to enter French waters so it could shepherd a migrant boat to Britain.
It seems that in addition to making zero progress on closing the Channel Route, Priti Patel and Boris Johnson have now turned Border Force into Parcel Force for migrants – although, to be fair, it seems to deliver its packages far more efficiently than the real Parcel Force.
When will Labour actually do something?
Posted at 5.05pm.
Posted at 5.05pm UK time
The tourism industry is in the brink
The economy is in tatters
The education of millions has been thrown in the bin
Violent crime is out of control.
And yet, all Labour seem to be able to do is to demand inquiries. Message – this isn't cutting through. Do something else.
House prices will continue to go up and up and up
Posted at 5pm.
Posted at 5pm UK time
First-time buyers in England are to be offered new homes at up to 50 per cent off.
The idea of housing being an investment rather than as a practical human necessity has led to homeownership being an impossible aspiration for people of my generation.
This measure won't solve it – it will just further inflate an already inflated market.
Liberty for me but not for thee
Posted at 3.15pm.
Posted at 3.15pm UK time
According to today’s announcement by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the Pfizer vaccine is safe for use in 12-15 year olds, having previously only been approved for those 16 or older. It is now up to Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to advise whether the Government should actively adopt vaccination for this age group.
In my view, it is almost certain that vaccines for 12-15 year olds will become Government policy. It is a natural consequence, a product of unadulterated statism the pandemic has created. People are not seen as individuals to be governed and legislated for, but numbers on spreadsheets and graphs to be managed. (This author yearns for the day he isn’t subjected to spreadsheets, graphs and the 5pm briefings that come with them!) This statism is summed up by the horrible phrase of ‘getting jabs in arms’. Last time I checked I was more than just an arm.
But as we have seen repeatedly, this lack of humanity is not applied equally. If I do not get a vaccine for whatever reason or do not let my child have one (If I were a parent), I could be subjected to a ‘no jab, no job’ approach by a potential employer or refused access to public spaces if vaccine passports materialise. For Michael Gove MP, when he is informed he has come into contact with someone who has had a positive test for coronavirus after attending the Champions League final (which normally requires self-isolation), there is a ‘pilot scheme’ whereby he self-tests daily and avoids what the rest of us are subjected to. How lucky!
Yet again, ‘liberty for me but not for thee’.
Sage member agrees: We must learn to live with Covid
Posted 11.15am.
Posted at 11.15am UK time
Will advisers to the Government on Covid ever catch on to the damage caused by lockdowns (it’s only been 14 months…)? Thankfully, some already have.
'Lockdowns are awful. They are a mark that you haven’t been able to control the virus in other ways. They have very profound consequences on mental health, on education, on job opportunities particularly affecting people on lower incomes.’
Not my words, but those of Sage member and Director of the Wellcome Trust Sir Jeremy Farrar.
Sir Jeremy has been fairly on the money for some time, warning in June last year that while lockdowns may help in ‘buying time’, they could not remain for 'any length of time’ because the 'damage to younger generations, the damage to education and to society is too profound’.
Too right. Let’s just hope that, given plummeting (yet still exaggerated) Covid death rates and the tremendous success of the vaccine rollout (over 50 per cent of UK adults are now fully vaccinated against Covid), Sir Jeremy’s warnings are listened to by his colleagues.
Government is ‘open minded’ about extending furlough scheme
Posted 9.30am.
Posted at 9.30am UK time
Michael Gove says that high Government spending in response to Covid will continue in order to help the country ‘build back better’, and that an extension to furlough on the table. His comments have worried lockdown sceptics, who note that where furlough is extended, lockdown soon follows.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Extending the furlough scheme: little short-term gain, much long-term pain
Posted 2pm.
Posted at 2pm UK time
For an elite driven by ‘equality’, it is mind-boggling that the inequality caused by the Government’s response goes unreported. A Royal Society of Public Health policy paper, “Disparity Begins at Home: how home working is impacting the public’s health”, starkly laid out the unequal impact of working in a lockdown age. The report showed that the response to the pandemic is literally hurting people. It found that those forced to work at home from their bedroom were more likely to report complaints of musculoskeletal problems than those able to work from a home office. The poor are literally having their health punished by restrictions.
Reports have indicated that part of the influence for open-mindedness on furlough is Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence it be extended, and that she will make this case at a ‘four-nations summit’ later this week. The government’s approach to the pandemic seems to be ‘follow wherever she leads’ when it comes to coordinating with Scotland. But where will this kowtowing to Scotland on policy lead? The Scottish National Party at the recent Holyrood elections pledged that if they were elected they would push for assisted suicide if they were victorious. Now they have won, if Sturgeon makes good on that claim, should Westminster move to legalise it just because the SNP have?
It has been said often but still remains true: the government have an 80-seat majority, it is about time they use it to set us free, or they might just find that we will use our freedom to turf them out instead.
Get woke, go broke? Not this time.
Posted at 6pm.
Posted at 6pm UK time
Patrisse Cullors, who describes herself as a Marxist, has decided to resign from her position within Black Lives Matter, which she founded in the United States in 2013. She had recently been widely criticised for the $3 million property portfolio she had amassed, including a $1.4 million house in Malibu.
This must all be terribly embarrassing to the metropolitan liberals who have been so sympathetic to the group’s aims that they have brushed aside the fact its ethos is a weird and ugly melange of French postmodernism, Marxism, and Nation of Islam. However, at least they now have an exception to the rule ‘Get Woke, Go Broke’.
Vaccinating children makes no sense
Posted at 1.10pm.
Posted at 1.10pm UK time
The Telegraph reports that Boris Johnson will be forced to decide on whether to give vaccines to children. The answer is no. The data we have suggests that children are hardly touched by the virus at all. The vaccine does, however, have rare side effects and, in the case of children, it seems likely that these might be more commonplace than incidences of serious SARS-CoV-2 related illness.
However, let us imagine for a moment the government does not care about this. Let us also assume that it is not concerned about the effect forcing the vaccine on children might have on hitherto enthusiastic vaccine take-up. Let us finally imagine that we do not care about the moral aspects of giving British children finite vaccine resources for an illness that does not affect them, while people in the developing world die by their thousands. In other words, let us assume that the UK’s Covid-19 policy is to be made entirely for the biosecurity of the British baby-boomer generation.
Even in this case, children should not be given the vaccine. Almost all adults over 55 (the main at-risk group) have been vaccinated, and the main threat to them now is a variant that can escape such protection. Therefore, the vaccine doses for British children would be far more effectively directed to the COVAX programme and sent to nations with uncontrolled Covid outbreaks. Already, variants from South Africa, Brazil and India have shown significantly increased transmissibility.
For now, this does not matter to Britain, because initial data suggests the vaccine successfully prevents serious illness from them all. But how long can this hold? How long before one can also defeat the vaccine to some extent? Vaccinating countries that could be a source of such a vaccine-defeating variant is a far more useful way to use finite doses than giving them to British children – even if we take the risks to children and morality out of the argument.
Our new religion
Posted at 2pm.
Posted at 2pm UK time
‘When health matters to you, it matters to us.’ A new billboard located in the Adelaide CBD.
It turns out we live in a much more Christian world than most appear to think…
Am I the only person who’s sickened by these public sanctifications of healthcare? Portraying nurses and doctors as Saints and Angels is embarrassing:
‘When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything’ – G K Chesterton.
That’s not to say that healthcare workers don’t play a very important and noble role in our society – of course they do. But raising them to a plane above others, and therefore above criticism, is silly, infantile, and dangerous.
Edit: A reader and subscriber has kindly got in touch to point out that the above image is false. The reality, he says, is much worse!
‘Medical expertise? No – but I have plenty to say about race’
Posted at 11.30am.
Posted at 11.30am UK time
One of Independent SAGE's "experts", who has criticised the Government for not delaying the latest easing of lockdown restrictions, is a social scientist-cum-race adviser with no medical qualifications.
Read my report on this for Lockdown Sceptics here.
Public told to abandon summer holidays abroad
Posted at 10.40am.
Posted at 10.40am UK time
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.