LionRed
The author is based in the UK at the moment (ex-pat Kiwi) and travels the world as a consultant in developing countries working on business development. As a result, he is totally cynical about NGOs, the UN and WHO etc. He is regularly exposed to contact with governments and diplomatic agencies. He has regularly commuted to Myanmar and South East Asia over the past three years so is able to understand what China is up to in the world.
The good news is that the sun is shining, and the temperature is forecast to be in the high 20s for the VE holiday weekend. This is bad news for the lockdown.
Over the past few weeks, I have tried to give an impression of what is has been like living in the UK under the lockdown without being too political and today I was going to carry on with that policy.
But events mean that I just have to discuss the politics.
We have seen a member of the SAGE committee, Professor Neil Ferguson, who has well-known left-wing views, caught out welcoming a married friend, Antonia Staats, to his home during the lockdown. This happened twice and he thought it was ok as he had already had COVID-19 and therefore the social distancing and travel limitations didn’t apply to him or her, even though she travelled all the way across London to reach him. Unfortunately, he was a senior government advisor and the architect of the measures taken to combat COVID-19. His reputation was already cooling, with growing dissent from his views and calculations. This surfaced with adverse comments from other academics, especially members of Oxford and Edinburgh universities.
Over the years his forecasts have been very good at getting headlines with “worst-case options”, none of which were realised. He has played the old academic trick of going for the worst case, then when it doesn’t happen saying that the WORST case never eventuated. Somehow, his forecasts resulted in him getting continued grant funding for his research. Now, academics are questioning the assumptions on which he based the calculations. These were based on assumptions on infection rates, death rates etc, and of course the input affects the output. Academics are now putting their heads above the parapet and going public. Ignoring the scientific questions which need answers, the lefties are now jumping to his defence.
His married girlfriend is also a well-known left-wing activist working for an organisation called Avaaz which has been described by The Guardian as “the globe’s largest and most powerful online activist network”. As a result of the increasing public pressure (and the political survival instincts of Boris Johnson), Professor Ferguson has resigned.
The Scottish Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Catherine Calderwood had already resigned after being caught out making two journeys from Edinburgh to her holiday home in Fife during the lockdown.
I wonder if these resignations would have taken place if the events in question had happened in New Zealand. Perhaps David Clark can enlighten us on the New Zealand approach to hypocrisy and arrogance.
A former UK government chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, in response to the public outcry over Professor Ferguson, has set up an INDEPENDENT SAGE committee. This committee, set up to represent the people and give independent advice to the public, will comprise 12 people, including two donors to the Labour party, two communists, and many who endorsed Jeremy Corbyn at the last election including a member of Momentum. One member compared cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg with the Ku Klux Klan. The icing on the cake is that Sir David was the lead in advising the Tony Blair Government to reduce fuel duty on diesel cars which has since been shown to be scientifically ill-advised.
The UK is getting closer to being ruled by an informal nomenklatura, without them being subject to the electoral process.
Talking of unelected influence, the Rail and Maritime Union (RMT) are threatening industrial action once the release from lockdown starts unless their demands for safe working conditions and probably more money as well are met. This is a politically inspired move masquerading as a legitimate claim for better working conditions as the far-left union takes every opportunity it can to put pressure on the conservative government and the inept Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Once the RMT starts then the other unions won’t be far behind.
A great worry is the increasing deification of the NHS, which is becoming a breach of the Second Commandment, not that any of the nomenklatura would know. “You shall not make for yourself an idol”. This is not to denigrate the wonderful work that the front line staff in the NHS do, and they deserve the appreciation and gratitude of the nation, but we are now getting close to worshipping the NHS as a body and that forebodes ill for the future.
“Protect our NHS” has become an overworked slogan and the people are tiring of it being thrust at them every day. The management of the NHS is a different matter and it is becoming obvious that much of the management level is self-perpetuating and useless. The red tape and bureaucracy are stultifying and all the form filling and back covering are hampering the work trying to be done by the front line staff.
This can be seen in the treatment of care homes by the NHS management, where they try to get the elderly out of their wards into care homes, freeing up beds and lowering the death figures from the NHS. There is pressure on the politicians to demand a change in the reporting of deaths with COVID-19 to include a new category – death from COVID-19. This will result in a more accurate picture of the impact of COVID-19.
With most of the deaths having been in the elderly, has COVID-19 just accelerated the dying process? If so, expect a lower than average death toll when the disease has run out of steam. Watch out for politicians claiming that the stringent measures have had a beneficial effect on the public at large and that lower deaths are a result of this.
And now to the depression. Not only is the weather going to experience a depression, the whole country will soon feel the start of the great depression. The Bank of England has today forecast a drop in GDP of over 30% and high levels of unemployment. Commentators have forecast that it could take 10 years to recover from this (I hope they had different base data and analytical processes from Professor Ferguson’s). This will undoubtedly result in many business failures (the aid packages and loans are bogged down in red tape and not reaching the target businesses in a timely manner). An unforeseen side effect will be the impact on the insolvency industry, as there is a limit to the capacity of the Insolvency Practitioners’ ability to cope with a huge number of insolvencies.
The government have tried to cope with a difficult situation, but their mistakes are now surfacing. Will they pass the buck, hide the truth, massage the figures or front up and be honest with us? As more information comes to light one can only be staggered at the scale of the initial complacency and sheer incompetence since then. David Davis, the ex-Brexit minister is quoted as saying:
“We need the whole model, its assumptions and working in the public domain. We can no longer run our strategy on secret advice and potentially flawed calculations.”
The cracks are starting to show.
The whole handling of the crisis is now being revealed as a complete and utter shambles, with public figures running for cover. The future is not good, economically and psychologically. It will require a Herculean effort of leadership to keep the ship of state off the rocks.
Thanks to The BFD I have been keeping up to date with events in New Zealand and I fear for the country. The UK is still praising our beloved leader to the rafters. Only this morning was a puff job on BBC News, and nowhere has there been a mention of the issues about the legality of the New Zealand shutdown. Perhaps they don’t want the local hoi polloi getting thoughts that something similar may have been happening in the UK?
What is really depressing is that it has become an economic race to the bottom to see which country reaches the deepest depression first.
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