What's that scraping sound?

[cromwell]

It can only be the sound of the goalposts being moved again.
Every time we get a shaft of light in the Covid induced gloom, along comes a scientist or our Health Secretary or our Prime Minister to jump on it.
Does anyone remember these phrases?
"Three weeks to flatten the curve"
"Lockdown will end on the second of December"
"Lockdown will be reviewed on February 15th"
"Lockdown will start to be lifted in early March".

Well, with the coming of the vacine you might think things were looking up.
I use the word "you" advisedly, because I certainly wasn't. After nine months of lies, evasions and ju ju science I think I know a bs merchant when I see one.

And lo, it has come to pass.
First you get some coughing and shuffling of feet and noises being made about the shortage of vaccines.

But then you get what you were always going to get - the next installment from You Will Not Be Allowed To Be Cheerful mob, Vallance, Whitty, Van Tan, Ferguson, Johnson and Hancock.
First you get Haddockface Hancock saying that the new South African strain could "reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine by 50%" although he wasn't sure of the data.
Then up pops Gullible Boris, and two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalype, Whitty and Vallance saying that the new strain might "possibly" be thirty to forty percent more deadly than the old one.

You know what's coming next, don't you? Think lockdown is going to be lifted in March?
I bl**dy doubt it!

To their credit some Tory MP's have noticed the tendency for the scientific community to put a damper on things
"The Covid Recovery Group of Tory backbenchers and business chiefs are growing increasingly alarmed at suggestions lockdown could stretch well into summer despite Britain's vaccination programme

Tory backbencher Craig Mackinlay told MailOnline some of the scientific warnings were reminiscent of Project Fear and every time there was hope of easing lockdown there was 'a new twist'.

'It seems to me we are now being held hostage to a zero Covid policy which is completely unattainable – or if you do attain it we are going to be in lockdown for an incredibly long period. That just cannot be,' he said.""
Can't it though? If Bottle it Boris carries on when will we be released from lockdown?

ps The new research came from NERVTAG a "sub-committee of SAGE" on which sits our old friend and useless forecaster, Professor Neil Ferguson.

[Workingman]

Things appear to have flip-flopped recently.

We have gone from over promising and under delivering mode to playing everything down in the hope of better news sometime soon.

I have given up on the statements and headlines when they say one thing but the sub-text says something else. Hancock, for example, said the SA variant 'may' make the vaccine 50% less effective, but the rider was that the data was incomplete and not peer reviewed. It was unnecessary and nothing needed to be said until the full facts were known.

Same with the "more deadly" claim and all the 'ifs' and 'buts' that came with it. It turns out that mathematicians were crunching numbers on restricted data sets and came up with it "might possibly" raise the death count in 1,000 men aged 60 from 10 to 13, but there was no difference when they looked at other data sets. Next week will bring new numbers no doubt.

Then comes the bee in my bonnet. Why are reviews only done weeks or months in the future? To get a full picture of what is really going on we need rolling reviews on possibility a weekly basis. It is what the sensible ones among us do with budgeting and finances. If things are going well we can take note, but if they are not going well we can tweak things to bring them back on track.

It is also noticeable that whenever there is any morsel of good news, as with the long-term and ongoing ONS survey, its reception is very muted.

I sense an element of 'control' in play.

[Suff]

For me it is part and parcel of the scare story.

A big chunk of this is to scare people into having a vaccine. Any certified vaccine, just get it.

Another part of this is to scare people to being sensible until the month after the vaccine is up. Do what? you say! Nobody is talking about After at all.

But, yes, even if you have the bloody vaccine, any vaccine and it works, it still takes a minimum of a month before the body manufactures enough antibodies to be of reliable use in fighting the infection. Numerous cases documented in previous covid variant outbreaks.

The biggest problem is there is no trust on either side. The politicians don't trust the people and the BS that engenders is rapidly telling the people they are being lied to.

Yes, they are. But it is not always obvious why.

[cromwell]

No Suff, there is no trust. And when the government says that there are no plans for a vaccine "passport" at the same time that they are paying eight firms to develop one, you begin to see why.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... 0-000.html

Increasingly, like WM, I believe their is a control agenda at work.

I mean, why not? Many modern politicians see the public as nasty, brutish, lower than them. People who need to be controlled "for their own good".
And as vast swathes of the British public have proved during the pandemic that the only thing that matters to them is their own well being, that sort of politician will be very encouraged by how easy it has been to strip us of most basic rights during lockdown.

So yes, vaccine passports? Probably. Black boxes in cars for pay per mile use of the roads? Very likely. Restrictions on your rights to move around the country - absolutely, the people have already accepted that.

Oh well, at least I have lived in the country when it was free. When you could get in your car and drive where you wanted, untracked by gps or ANPR cameras. When you could, within the bounds of politeness, say what you wanted because you had free speech, and when loonies who say that a man is a woman if he says he is would have been laughed at instead of listened to.

Such fun times ahead, eh?

[Workingman]

Increasingly, like WM, I believe their is a control agenda at work.

And we have all played our part......

"Don't get mugged and have your purse stolen, here's the ultra secure chip and PIN." So we all rushed in and now they know what we spend, where we spend it and what on.

Then we got CCTV and that would cut down crime. It hasn't. Crime still happens but it is easier to check who did it later on. In exchange we are watched over like no nation on Earth (more spycams per person) and with a bit of facial recognition and microphones thrown in.

And then came ANPR which was supposed to do something.... stolen vehicles, car tax dodgers, no insurance, no MOT? However, it can be used (and is) to track a vehicle from A to B and is mightily used to catch such misdemeanours as doing a few mph over the limit on an average speed limit motorway section of roadworks in the middle of the night when nobody is about.

Now, mobile phones. Loads and loads of us turn off location services because, well, they (the nefarious ones) can track us and we wouldn't want that, would we? No, no! So off they go..... and we phone home to tell mum. At that point they know which mast we used. A bit later we text some SM site to tell everyone our favourite is a skinny latte - no sugar and they have us again. In fact just having the phone switched on locates us.

The sad thing is that over the years governments, industry, commerce, advertisers and the media have all connived to convinced us that all this "stuff" and all these "apps" are necessary for us to function.....

Fake news doesn't always come from conspiracy theorists.

[cromwell]

I'm bumping this because backsliding Boris has done it again - moved the goalposts.
Forget saving the NHS, flattening the curve, vaccinations being the answer etc etc.

What is now crucial?
Not the number of deaths.
Not hospitalisations.
Not infections.

Cases.
We can't lift lockdown until cases are "very low" says terrified Tim.
Well there is a problem with that. Not all cases are infections; not all cases transmit; and the test is supposedly inaccurate anyway.

I'm afraid that Boris has fallen into the hands of the "Zero Covid" fanatics. Lockdown in some form is going to be with us it seems forever if the people who are pulling Boris's strings have anything to do with it.
So until something happens like Sunak resigning, or a leadership challenge or Labour attempting to ride the growing wave of anti-lockdown sentiment, that we are stuck with SAGE running the country.
And I don't remember voting for them.

[Workingman]

Yet again we get mixed messages.

Yesterday there was the announcement that we could need an annual booster dose, as is the case with flu. That is tantamount to an admission that there is no such thing as 'zero Covid'. But then we get the scheme where clubbers, theatre and pub goers could get "rapid" lateral flow tests to enable nightclubs and theatres to reopen.

I find the last idea quite sinister as the tests could be used to allow or deny 'permission' to do all sorts of things such as attendance at football matches, political meetings, campaigns for / against xyz, in fact all gatherings over a certain threshold - decided by TPTB. The logs of such tests will enable those in power to know who is doing what, when and where, and how regularly.

At first glance the rapid lateral flow test idea looks such an easy 'sell' - have a test, have a pint, a pie, a bit of culture, a rave.....and the media has bought in, but then look behind the veils.

[Suff]

It seems sinister, but, again, is this not all under the monthly rolling legislation that requires approval from parliament every month?

People are agitating to get back to what they know as a normal life. The answer is simple, test negative, you can socialise. Test positive you can't.

Once the vaccination completes, all justification for lateral flow testing goes away and parliament should remove the controls. If they don't then it is time to say it is sinister. I see track and trace on my mobile to be far more sinister than a flow test to socialise with other people. The phone tracks you everywhere and you have no choice once it is there and running unless you chose to remove it. The flow tests is a choice. Want to go to the pub or a match? Get a test. Don't want a test? Don't socialise and watch the match on TV.

It is a choice thing. If they mandated the track and trace app; then you would know it was sinister.

[cromwell]

Yet again we get mixed messages.

Yes.

[Workingman]

It is a choice thing.

Is it? I do not and will not have T&T on my phone.... I might not even have a phone - my choice! To get into a political meeting etc. I do have to have a test - one they can log - no choice. BIG difference.

You might trust them, I certainly don't.