Vocal Voices

It is indeed ironic that Boris Johnson sits at the head of project fear mk2, the Coronavirus crisis, after having so roundly mocked project fear mk1, the Remainer side in the Brexit imbroglio.

Pariality aside, what the Daily Telegraph has published today is an absolute scandal - but it won't have any repercussions imo.

So let's get started!

On March 22nd 2020 the " Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours"(SPI-B) produced a paper which stated "A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened"
"The percieved level of personal threat needs to be increased", "using hard hitting emotional messaging".
The group also recommended "Use media to increase sense of personal threat".
Some members of SAGE now apparently feel "embarassed" by such advice. One SAGE member now says "The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what is happening. All of this is about trying to steer behaviour in the direction an elite has decided, without deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do".

The Government is weaselling away, saying that all they have done is to repeat facts about the threat that Covid presented. Oh really?

Let's see.
Sept 21 2020 - "UK could have 50,000 Covid cases a day by mid October, say scientific advisers" We didn't.
Sept 22 2020 - "I stand by it, says Professor Neil Ferguson on his claim that 500,000 people could die". They haven't.
February 4 2021 - "Kent variety 30% more deadly than normal strain of Covid". It wasn't.
February 22 2021 - "Tens of thousands more will die as lockdown eases, advisers warn". Yesterday 10 people in the UK died of Covid.
March 10 2021 - "Kent variety twice as deadly, study suggests". No, it isn't.

Predictions presented as though they are certainties have come from Professors Whitty and Vallance. In October last year Vallance warned that the second wave of Covid could kill 4,000 a day. It didn't.Whitty and Vallance predicted another 30,000 people dying after the schools reopened. Didn't happen.

The government have absolutely and unarguably used fear and lies to control their own people. They are denying it, of course.

Trouble is they've done all this at a massive economic cost and a social cost. How many people are going to die because the government closed the NHS down? How many people now have mental health problems (fear induced) because of the governments tactics? How many people do you know, usually cheerful, who have remarked on how low and dismal they feel? How many people have been driven to suicide by the governments deliberate campaign of fear? How many businesses have gone bust? How many people have been scared off of going to hospital and will die because of it?

It's awful; horrible.
We will never ever get an honest inquiry into the government's handling of the covid outbreak.
There's a lot more in the Telegraph article but it's late.

Any link to the article?

I saw the headline but the article is paywalled.

The Telegraph article is paywalled but the Mail basically copied it.

Link
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -677988861

Psyops eh? The modern term for propaganda.

For it to work the government has to be able to control the narrative and there has to be a kernel of truth in what is being presented. Neither holds true in this case.

There are now so many outlets for people to visit to get at the truth - worldometers, Full Fact, Johns Hopkins etc. - and open platforms for discussion such as social media. From the very beginning few of us believed what we were being told. Prof. "Foghorn" Ferguson's numbers were roundly ridiculed, as were the claims from Whitty, Vallance, Hancock and Mophead.

Yes the figures were put out and, yes, the media reported them and even bigged them up, but most of us ordinary folk just laughed at them. As an exercise in control it was a colossal failure.

The laws passed and the restrictions imposed on the back of them are a different matter. We have got huge economic costs and divided communities that will take years to heal. Unfortunately come the next election we will put the same people back into power unless there is some kind of peaceful voting revolution or civil unrest. The signs of the latter are already starting to show.

Workingman wrote:There are now so many outlets for people to visit to get at the truth - worldometers, Full Fact, Johns Hopkins etc. - and open platforms for discussion such as social media. From the very beginning few of us believed what we were being told. Prof. "Foghorn" Ferguson's numbers were roundly ridiculed, as were the claims from Whitty, Vallance, Hancock and Mophead.

Yes the figures were put out and, yes, the media reported them and even bigged them up, but most of us ordinary folk just laughed at them. As an exercise in control it was a colossal failure.

I'm not so sure, Frank. Most people are inherently lazy, don't have enquiring minds, and are more than ready to believe what they're fed by the media, especially those outlets playing up the shock/horror.
I'd have said the propaganda as a form of mass behavioural manipulation has worked quite effectively over the last 12 months. I believe opinion polls may still show a majority in favour of national lockdown, at least until recently they did.

Perhaps but I think the MP rebellion will drive the agenda from 2022 onwards. There is only so much they can do with vaccination in progress and the remaining threat of the third wave in Europe.

Once that is gone, any government which does not start stripping back powers to the level they were at before this mess will find it can't pass any legislation until they do.

Parliament has already had one example of what happens when MP's decide that the executive have lost the plot and that they need to redress the balance. The election of 2019 will not stop them doing it again if it is needed. Because so many Tory MP's are willing to rebel on this, it would not aid Labour at the next election. I'm having a hard time finding a way that Labour could win the next election. The UK will emerge as one of the fastest countries out of this pandemic, people will understand it was action taken by this government which enabled that with a glaring example of how NOT to do it, directly over the water.

This government is going to surf the positive wave of the post pandemic and will also drive their efforts into extra EU trade as we come out of it.

No matter how badly whitty and the rest want to screw things up for them, I can't see them winning this one. Project Fear 2.0 didn't work any better than Project Fear 1.0 worked, although the Scottish Project Fear worked and everyone began to recognise it for exactly what it is.

You know the saying. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Under 3k new cases and 10 recorded deaths. I know it is Sunday, but with these rapidly diminishing figures, it is going to be exceptionally hard for any kind of fear project to get a grip.

If they failed at the height of the virus, they will have zero hope now.

They are still going to try.
Ideas being floated according to the Telegraph include everyone getting two covid test per week to prove that we are clear. Good luck with that one.
The govt are also clinging to vaccine passports. They are absolutely determined to force them through.
There is a tremendous opportunity for Labour here, should they have the wit to see it. Trouble is I think they are authoritarians too.

If the major two parties in the country both want vaccine passports but the people don't???

It may fail because of ethnic minorities who don't even want to get vaccinated, let alone have a vaccine passport. No political party dare force them, and to let them off whilst putting everyone else's arm up their back seems impossible.

cromwell wrote:If the major two parties in the country both want vaccine passports but the people don't???

Well there is always Farage!

cromwell wrote:It may fail because of ethnic minorities who don't even want to get vaccinated, let alone have a vaccine passport. No political party dare force them, and to let them off whilst putting everyone else's arm up their back seems impossible.

They seem to want to try the impossible all the time. The whole "diversity" agenda seems to be driven from London, where near 45% of the population is non ethnic British. Then they want to try and push this agenda on the rest of the country where ethnic population can be as high as 100%.

The whole thing is already out of control. Why not add "impossible" to stupid, lazy and outright corrupt?