PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
♦
Yes, I know I’d promised to write on a couple of other subjects, but this coronavirus pandemic has turned things upside down. It’s certainly impacting on the Jones household.
To begin with, my daily trips to Tywyn for a coffee and a read of the ‘paper are gone. This was often followed by sauntering up and down the High Street, doing a bit of shopping, maybe driving down to Aberdyfi to mooch around some more. But not now.
I’m stuck at home with my long-suffering wife. Fortunately, being a home carer, she’s out quite a lot. Another aid to me keeping cabin fever at bay is to stock up on the Malbec. I’ve found that caressing unopened bottles can have a soothing effect.
Self-isolation has also meant no grandchildren staying, which only adds to the sense of this being a different time. And it’s also quieter outside the house, fewer people about, less traffic. If it wasn’t for the internet it might be like an earlier epoch.
Though perhaps what I miss most is the football. I used to spend at least 25 hours a week watching football. Not just Welsh and English football; I’m just as happy watching La Vecchia Signora or the Jam Tarts. But coronavirus is global, which means there’s no football anywhere. Anywhere! (Yeah, I know, that’s what ‘pandemic’ means.)
So when I’m not online, or out taking my constitutional, listening to music, or up in the attic doing my Fast Eddie impersonations on the kids’ pool table, I’m dipping into my books. Hazlitt has always been a favourite. But when I reached for that little volume of essays the other day I found a page marked with the dust cover, so I opened it . . .
Fortunately I don’t believe in such things. So for all the shysters out there, and the lying politicians – I plan on being around to write about you for some time yet.
♦
THE STORY THUS FAR
The realisation that things were getting serious took a while to sink in, for just about everybody, with the Welsh Rugby Union taking longer than most to get the message.
The Six Nations game against Scotland, scheduled for March 14, was going ahead almost up until the last minute. This despite the other games in Round 5 – Italy v England and France v Ireland – having been called off, and with football and almost every other sport also put on hold around the world.
It wasn’t until the afternoon of Friday the 13th, with Scottish fans safely in Cardiff and spending their money, that the WRU decided to call the game off.
To understand this disregard for the nation’s health you must appreciate what motivates the Welsh Rugby Union, what it regards as important. Vying for top spot are sucking up to English royals, and making money. Everything else is secondary.
In defence of the WRU, no pressure was applied by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’. As late as Thursday the 12th, Vaughan Gething, the woefully inadequate health minister, saw no need to call the game off. Though in fairness to Gething, this non-decision could itself have been due to pressure from the WRU.
(Things can often be ‘reciprocal’ in Cardiff.)
Gething last week warned that Wales can expect a “larger impact” from coronavirus because Wales’ population is “typically older, sicker and poorer”. After two decades of his party running things in Wales he felt no shame in such an admission!
Something that did go ahead in Cardiff that Saturday was a Stereophonics concert.
All grist to the mill of cynics believing that too many ‘national’ bodies based in Cardiff bend over backwards to make sure Cardiff never loses out, even when we are threatened by the worst pandemic since ‘Spanish’ Flu a century ago.
In terms of leadership, things have not got any better.
The ‘Welsh Government’ gives its daily briefing and issues advice, which is usually repeating what has already been said in London. Much like the laws passed in Cardiff docks, which are basically the same laws as England with ‘(Wales)’ added.
Exposing a fundamental problem with devolution when it’s run by a timid and unambitious Unionist party stuffed with mediocrities.
Labour has never resolved the conundrum of wanting to make Welsh people feel devolution is relevant to them but not wanting to depart too far from the London line for fear of being branded ‘nationalist’, even when doing things differently would be best for Wales. And so we have a sham devolution that neither enthuses our people nor serves Welsh interests.
All of which makes a mockery of “Welsh solutions for Welsh problems”, which is how devolution was sold to us many years ago.
Yet there are times when ‘Welsh solutions’ are needed. Let’s cast our minds back to last weekend, just after ‘lockdown’ was announced, when workplaces and schools were closed, and people told to stay home. Yet we saw thousands upon thousands of people treat a national emergency as a national holiday and flock to Wales.
While I didn’t expect the ‘Welsh Government’ to close the border and lay minefields, I did think they could have been a little more decisive than they had been the previous weekend over the rugby international, but no; not even when the scale of the irruption had become obvious.
Below you’ll see a few examples of the ignorance and stupidity we were confronted with, and just a few of many instances of locals acting for themselves. (Some still had to do it yesterday.)
UPDATE: Here’s the response of a second home owner in Y Felinheli today. The slate sign reads ‘Port Dinorwic’, as that road runs down to the old harbour.
These colonialist attitudes are the result of ‘selling’ our homeland for decades as nothing but another nation’s holiday destination. Encouraging the belief that Wales is some kind of Brigadoon that only comes alive when tourists visit.
This belief that Wales exists for no other reason than the enjoyment of tourists results in contempt for us, our history and our very identity.
Out of curiosity, I went to the Visit Wales Twitter account, and what I found was revealing. Up until March 12, two days before the planned Wales v Scotland game and the Stereophonics concert, there is at least one ‘Come to Wales’ tweet per day.
There is then a gap of ten days in which Visit Wales did no more than retweet other organisations’ tweets about coronavirus and, significantly, compensation. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights Visit Wales didn’t seem to know how to react. March 22 was of course the Sunday, and by then it had become obvious even to Visit Wales that locals in tourism hot-spots were organising themselves against irresponsible tourism operators and individuals.
Only then did Visit Wales put out a tweet telling potential visitors to stay away. And this might have been motivated as much by worries about the damage being done to the reputation of the tourism industry as by concern for public health.
If I carry on like this I’ll be accused of ‘politicising’ coronavirus. This was the accusation thrown at Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon when she recognised the threat and acted on coronavirus earlier than Westminster.
I accept that coronavirus knows no national boundaries, while on an island there must be some unity of purpose in the face of such a threat, but Wales still faces problems that will not be appreciated by those giving orders in London.
As we’ve seen, one such problem was holiday homes and tourism, and many thousands of people choosing to self-isolate in Wales. Which exposed another serious failing down in Cardiff.
The ‘Welsh Government’ (and this of course includes Visit Wales) refused to address this problem for far too long because politicians and civil servants in Cardiff have come to believe their own propaganda – Wales cannot survive without tourism, consequently nothing must be allowed to interfere with tourism. Not even a pandemic.
Political leadership has been noticeable by its absence. From London the advice has swung from “Nothing to get alarmed about – let’s all catch it!” (the ‘herd immunity’ approach), to “We’re all gonna die! – everybody stay home!” (lockdown).
While here in Wales, when not acting as an echo chamber, our politicians have been even less inspiring. Just read the article below from yesterday’s Llais y Sais. (Available here in pdf format.)
Did you ever read such waffle from a politician? Was Wales ever cursed with a more evasive and dishonest practitioner of even this disgraced profession? Did you ever see anyone more out of their depth?
Yet here’s the man leading the party and the administration that over the past twenty years has given billions of pounds to the crony-parasites of the third sector, where we find CEOs pulling down £100,000+ salaries – while our nurses don’t have Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).
(My wife, who every day visits sick and elderly people received her face mask on Friday.)
Political confusion reigns.
At London level we saw BoJo and the gang spurn the EU’s offer of ventilators; while in Cardiff, the ‘Welsh Government’ turned down an offer of 10,000, EU certified, Lloyds insured, testing kits of the kind used in South Korea.
This despite the World Health Organisation advising ‘testing, testing, and more testing’ as a way to avoid the spread of Covid-19. The only people being tested in Wales are those showing moderate to severe symptoms who might already have infected hundreds of others. Plus of course, politicians and their friends.
Carefully orchestrated communal clapping must not detract from these political failings. And when the coronavirus threat has passed we must remember how our politicians and their system failed us.
In the immediate future we must be on our guard against London using coronavirus to accrete more powers. For while devolution may not be worth defending, moving back to the status quo ante devolution must not be an option either, though it is being aired.
One airing came from a Welsh Labour MP during Scottish Questions last week, when Chris Elmore, the MP for Ogmore suggested that funding for Covid-19 should bypass the Scottish Government and go to local authorities. An interesting suggestion for a number of reasons.
The SNP of course forms the Scottish Government, but at council level we find a number of Unionist-run councils, often controlled by squalid coalitions held together by nothing more than a desire to keep the SNP out of power.
Such an arrangement as we find in the city of Aberdeen where, after the 2017 elections, the SNP was the largest party by some distance but is kept from power by an alliance of Conservatives, Labour and Independents. (Though the Labour councillors have been expelled from the ‘Scottish’ Labour Party for going into coalition with the Tories!)
And while Elwood (or was he one of the Blues Brothers?) may be a nonentity in Wales, representing a rosette-on-a-donkey constituency, he certainly made the news in Scotland. And as the report I’ve linked to from the National puts it, “It was left to Alister Jack, the Tory Secretary of State for Scotland, to remind the Labour frontbencher of how devolution works.”
A Tory MP having to remind an MP of the party that introduced devolution how devolution works. Lord and Lady Kinnock must have been so proud.
Though if wanting to rip up the devolution settlement and insincerely argue that the common weal would be better served by handing money directly to local councils sounds familiar, then that might be because it’s the same thing we hear from the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party. Is Elton a supporter?
If we are to do away with devolution, and that is certainly what I want, then it must be done in order to move forward to independence, not backward to direct rule.
Westminster is letting us down, Cardiff Bay is clueless, the BBC is failing us, Wales is even losing out when it comes to online shopping for God’s sake!
Covid-19 is disrupting all our lives, and will end a few of them; but it has served the purpose of exposing as weak and malleable incompetents those buffoons down Cardiff docks who’ve lied to us for over twenty years about defending Wales.
Stand firm, stay healthy, and when this threat has passed, emerge from self-isolation determined to push on for independence!
♦ end ♦
With Covid-19 dominating the News, and politics in a state of suspended animation, the pandemic even affecting the crooks I so often write about, I may not be posting so frequently over the next few months unless something important happens.
Look after yourselves!
https://www.facebook.com/rhiannon.pws/videos/10157731695729024/
Swansea boy.
And almost as old as you, Jac ! With a bit of luck, and a steady supply of good red stuff, you’ll both last to 100 and beyond. That should see off a few wankers in the Welsh political sphere. Sadly they seem to be able to spawn more every year !
PRICELESS! Our very own version of Billy Connolly – without the beard! I can see how Pws is spending his hours of boring isolation. One good side benefit of the totalitarian madness I suppose.
Calderwood resigns, under pressure no doubt, but no indication that Kinnock jnr. is going to give anything up. Nice to be so entitled.
Something like 240-50 comments on yesterday’s nation.cymru’s article about sneaky 2nd home owners herding into various (nice) parts of Wales – Gwynedd and bits of West Wales – where said homes proliferate.Mostly angry Welsh shouting “cheat” or occupants of moral high ground shouting “ychafi”. Lots of heat very low on light. However I predict that this heat will never turn to anything other than a bit of cold sweat as few if any will have the motivation to call out the Old Bill let alone get the baseball bat, dig out the tar and feather, or go so far as to chuck an incendiary. Now any one of those would really set a meaningful tone.
Significant intelligence is required to make the right call.
There is evident lack of clarity between police guidelines and the new law and it’s also up to individual officers or CAD advise when deciding on particular circumstance. Caravan and vehicle plate is straightforward, as is attitude. An arsehole in a Jag on the A48 with a cottage in Solva who thinks it’s clever to flash £20 notes at DPP officers, is not clever, neither is the placard shuffler on the Menai.
There are, of course, examples of second home owners who I have no problem with. Two examples I know – Welder from Sospan country who’s working away for BNFL in job-paid digs. Radiologist at Singleton hospital who has a flat in London (exams) and house in Mumbles (practice address). This is travel to second homes for essential work, more often than not, it’s usually Welsh people working in England.
Operation Tân identified a hit rate of over 200 without collateral damage, suggesting perpetrators had access to superior intelligence, and a significant knowledge of the all areas of Wales. There has been much speculation, the most significant was why the garden wall ‘plant’ evidence was lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjTEw4Lfizg%5Bremovetoplay%5D
These days there’s a very quick electronic cross-referencing that can be done. Details on driving license, vehicle registration, and insurance kept at address, these then compared to income tax code, council tax registration, GP register and NI record. For police to use this technique would need a change in the Data Protection Act to relay such data papa units. Otherwise you just catch the thick ones who say Abbeysock as a desired destination.
It wasn’t the MET that flagged Steven Kinnock for non-essential travel, it was SWP who spotted the tweet. He would have paid the congestion charge for the trip or he’s lying about his primary residency in his constituency. Does he have a ‘C’ tax code?
Which brings me to my final point. If a Welshman drives down the Cromwell Road in London they will send you an invoice for the congestion charge, unless you’re a Londoner. When an Englishman drives into Wales on the A55 of M4 it’s suddenly big brother technology and an issue of personal liberty, then they pull the race card.
Looking forward to Coronavirus and Wales – 2.
I sauntered up the village this afternoon, mooched around a bit, and saw activity by individuals who shouldn’t even have been in the village. Two cars, at least three people, plus dachshunds! The police were phoned – not by me – and they were sent on their way. So I walked up to the Talyllyn Railway station, sat on the bench for a bit to watch the world go by. I’m pleased to report that very little went by.
But on my way back into the village I was passed by two huge low loaders going at speed. They were of course empty. The firm was from Cheshire, Cranage Haulage, and I couldn’t help wondering what they had delivered, presumably to Tywyn, that was so essential. Will ask around.
Then I was told that the couple from Birmingham that own what was the last shop in village are staying there. You can usually tell when they’re there because the van is parked in the car park, but now, knowing they shouldn’t be there, the van is hidden away in the garage. But what’s really odd is that the police have been to see them but they claim the old shop is their permanent residence. Which is bollocks, they live in Birmingham.
Knowing the male partner as I do – having appeared in Aberystwyth county court with him – he’s a slippery fucker who tells lies quite naturally and without batting an eyelid. (And when cornered he’s the victim of racism or Islamophobia.) But I’m sure the police would have checked on his claim. So how does he get away with it?
Cranage Haulage.
It they were moving a passenger service train, or plant for the maintenance of, the Cambrian Coast Line then I’d say that’s essential. However, if they were doing same for the tourist attraction, the Talyllyn railway, I’d say that such work is non-essential.
Other possibility is that the comparison of moving static caravans or leisure yachts being non-essential in contrast to delivering the RNLI lifeboat or agricultural machinery which would be classed as essential.
Clues would be if you saw the low loader sections having ‘chocolate box’ interconnections for use in the articulated formation (rear wheel set steering), or if you got a photo of the loading weight plates to indicate the type of load, gross, and per axel.
Isn’t there a 90 degree bend for the river bridge southbound, which would mean access only via the northerly route?
I had my back to these low loaders so I didn’t see them coming and wasn’t able to get my phone out. Plus they were shifting.
The road down the Dysynni valley, the B4405, is always used by heavy traffic because it’s a slightly better road than the A493, the coast road between Machynlleth and Dolgellau that runs through Aberdyfi and Tywyn. But being a B road it has its own problems and the council won’t reclassify it because that would mean having to spend money upgrading it.
So we’re stuck with a B road being used as an A road with all the predictable problems.
If Covid 19 doesn’t get you, uncontrolled government handouts could kill an awful lot of us in the medium term. Right now big business and its slightly smaller brother are howling for “more support”. Even highly experienced tax dodgers like Branson are joining the chorus for a handout ( some nerve on that greasy bastard !)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/04/sunaks-virus-bailout-not-enough-as-the-flood-keeps – coming?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVS19XZWVrZW5kLTIwMDQwNQ%3D%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK.
With a moderately high take up this will rapidly empty out the coffers despite printing 100’s of billions of “credit money” for banks to dish out. So a few months down the track with an economy in ruins there will be an equal and opposite contraction of state spending across most of those sectors that people will have come to rely on. Who will bear the cost ? Ordinary Joe and Jane Public in their role as tax payers while the shifty cnuts like Branson will have have dashed back to whatever rathole they hide in at that time of year well protected by sophisticated tax “mitigation” plans/schemes that UK government just won’t get off their silly fat arses to demolish at a stroke.
No doubt that some day Covid 19 will be less of a priority and we may revert to something like a normal life pattern and get stuck, once again, into debating and criticizing the performance of stupid politicians here and in London. In the meantime idling away on a chilly yet sunny afternoon I came across an article in the Guardian about our other major area of concern, the pattern of recurring escalating floods, referring to something as the Age of Extinction !
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/thank-you-greta-natural-solutions-to-uk-flooding-climb-the-agenda.
I was particularly struck by a quote attributed to a John Hughes apparently based on the Mid Wales border with England somewhere close to the confluence of the Vyrnwy and Severn rivers.
“I say thanks very much Extinction Rebellion and Greta [Thunberg] – you’ve done a great job. It’s the job we’ve been trying to do for 50 years. We need to take a holistic view – land can do many, many things.”
I presume this is the same Greta who approves of more investment in large groups of wind turbines, the very same pieces of suspect technology that has caused so much damage to upland Wales’ capacity for absorption of rainfall. Increased levels of rapid run off leads to increased movement of water per hour through lowland flood plain. Or does “cause and effect” analysis stop at some point where it is no longer a convenient fit with current green orthodoxy ?
Dafis. When Greta comes out of self-isolation [or insulation] perhaps she will address the issues you have raised.
That will probably depend on what new stunt Svante (her father and sponsor) has lined up for her. Of course, it’s possible, that after a period of social isolation, Greta might break free of the stifling teenage angst she has amplified and find her own way in life, like her sister Beata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v3wYEnYKrs%5Bremovetoplay%5D
How to deal with Greta in the supermarket.
However, I suspect she will be promoting the new book, and her pushy media parents will continue to exploit the icon. You’re supposed express surprise and be coy when you get picked for a Nobel Peace Prize, not get your mam and dad to write letters to insist on one.
Yes, I agree Brychan. I think it’s time Greta went back to school.
If you think about it, the military has it’s own defences against Covid-19. If you think about it, they have their own training and equipment and has had since WW1 with mustard gas. Protective suits, decontamination arches, pop-up hospital in a lorry, and a well rehearsed evacuation and isolation strategy for dealing with deployment of chemical and biological weapons on the battlefield. There are ‘medics’ in every regiment.
So far, military deployment has been of the ‘public relations sort’.
The army are currently deployed with the South Central Ambulance Service in England, as second-man drivers of ambulances due to sickness and isolation of paramedic staff. This is the ‘public relations’ deployment. It is similar to recent joint deployment of the Royal Military Police alongside the British Transport Police at the main railways stations in London. This was a ‘flash of uniform’ after the London terrorist attacks as ‘public reassurance’ and of no significant physical need.
So what plans are there for military deployment of the ‘direct intervention sort’?
There has been the preparation of ‘field hospitals’ in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol and Cardiff (the national stadium). These are not ‘overflow’ as the BBC is suggesting. They are ‘secondary facilities’. Essentially these are beds with a power supply, a kind of cubical made of studded walls, piped for disinfectant and medical trolleys. The concept is for this accommodation to be used for patients that are bedridden ill with Coronavirus but not at risk of dying, its aim is to keep these patients away from the most at-risk in-patients at main hospitals. Hospitals become the main vector of transmission in a pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJVpihgwE18%5Bremovetoplay%5D
There are two problems with this approach. (a) A patient that goes from very ill to critically ill in a secondary facility needs to be rapidly transferred to the primary facility in the main hospital, and (b) there are hotspots of infection so, for example, if London (Excel centre) becomes full, large numbers of patients need to be transferred to other secondary facilities elsewhere in the UK.
It is my belief that the military will be used for this.
The equipment available in the opening paragraph of this comment is most likely to be used by military personnel for this purpose. They are trained in their use. The other logistical equipment to be used is likely to be airborne vehicles that can transfer bedridden patients, Hercules aircraft and Chinook helicopters. These are most likely to be deployed as ‘scratch landing strips’ or minor airfields rather than main airports that are near major cities which are now clogged with grounded commercial aircraft.
Dead bodies.
While there has been emphasis on expanding HDU units are major hospitals, there has been no mention of mortuary facilities. Mortuaries in hospitals will have capacity issues too, especially as the cremation and burial process is interrupted. The military have been deployed in Milan, Madrid and now New York for this purpose, using refrigerated military logistics originally designed to repatriate battlefield casualties.
Apologies going off stream – I note from Wales On Line (Wasting Mail) that a good citizen who was photographing criminal off road motor bikers was assaulted. The “Lock Down Police” do not seem to be pursuing her assailants . The paper has a COMMENTS section and one commentator has been Aled Gwyn Williams, the Maesteg Sheepdog. He is often on this BLOG nastily attacking good old Jac o’ the North. Anyway under the story mentioned above about scramblers attacking a woman, he has made a strange comment – not attacking the scramblers – but attacking the Wasting Mule for removing his foul pervy comments. Why can’t he take his Lassie look alike out to round up the scramblers to support the lady who was trying to stop them?
If there is one great error in the response to C-19, it is the pushing of panic buttons and descent to a virtual totalitarian police state without the data to back these measures – particularly here in the UK. Where testing has been more extensive, a very different picture is emerging.
In Iceland for example extensive testing found that 50% of all test-positive persons showed no symptoms at all, while the other 50% mostly showed very moderate cold-like symptoms in the flu range or below. See: https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-testing-iceland
If you want to keep up to the actual data emerging on a daily basis, the best site I have found is from Switzerland: https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
The mainstream media doom-mongering hype is deafening. Neither they nor the governments will ever take responsibility for this unfolding economic and social disaster they are creating. Here in Wales, it’s no surprise that the Cardiff Bay gang of politicians are all voting for a suspension of civil liberties out of fear and panic. But what about the new challengers – Gwlad and Neil’s WNP? Their silence (unless I’ve missed something) on the rampant destruction of civil liberties and our livelihoods is concerning.
If you have doubts about the seriousness of this situation, I urge you to read an open letter to German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel from Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology in Mainz, Germany. He calls for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid19 by asking the five crucial questions. https://swprs.org/open-letter-from-professor-sucharit-bhakdi-to-german-chancellor-dr-angela-merkel/
Or listen to his direct appeal to the public (with English subtitles) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsExPrHCHbw
Prof Sucharit Bhakdi correctly identifies the lower or equal potency of Covid-19 in comparison to other Corona viruses (flu strains) in causing fatality, what he does not address is that Covid-19 is more easily transmitted within the population.
SARS and MERS the previous covid infections were epidemics rather than pandemics. They were more deadly, but not easily transmitted. Outbreak easily contained. He is correct to identify the lethality of Covid-19 being similar to previous strains of flu, and he is correct about annual mortality from there existing viruses.
What makes Covid-19 particularly dangerous is it spreads rapidly. This does mean health provision being over-run, and also it means those working in the health services at greater risk due to viral load, this before immunity in the form of refinement of anti-body in the ‘fit’.
The real answer to the questions raised is the presence and ability of anti-bodies, the cure, and what makes those recovered, the vast majority who are symptomatic or have only experienced mild symptoms. This anti-body test, which already exists in laboratory conditions, needs to be refined to allow mass-deployment. This will answer the important questions. Potency, herd immunity, and required resource to be deployed in provision for the vulnerable. Only then will we know the proportionality of the ‘lockdowns’.
The BBC is telling us to only refer to trusted sources of information. Quite right. Which is why it’s important to close that BBC window on the web and treat the BBC on terrestrial media with a questioning mind. Instead I refer to Lancet (medical), SVT (Sweden) and RTE (Ireland). It should be noted that this discussion/comment is absent from the BBC. No surprise, as it has a ‘British nationalist’ agenda.
McEvoy hasn’t been silent.He’s been busy pecking away at Drakeford and Gething for an explanation of why the much-needed testing programme has barely got off the ground. He was pushing for testing well before Adam Price got round to it. But Drakeford and Gething are still keeping shtum. Latest theory (as yet, unfounded) is that Westminster deliberately put the mockers on the Welsh testing kit supply arrangement.
If Westminster did scupper a Welsh deal, how did they get to know about it? In any line-up I would definitely put the senior civil servants down Corruption Bay. They all answer to London, many have been sent down from London, and they have no loyalty to Wales.
The coughing caravanner deserves at the very least a flea in his ear, and at most… [redacted]. Haha. But in all seriousness, the ‘One island’ approach cannot work on an island as geographically skewed as this one, both in physical and human terms. England, and Scotland and Wales are very different animals in terms of population density, transport links and topography.
Now the interrelationships between these circumstances as causes and effects are wide open for debate. For example, the interplay between England’s far greater size, wealth, infrastructure and influence and its more forgiving topography and therefore ease of settlement and agriculture.
Welcome – Caravaners Wanted !!
Do you live in Wolverhampton or Birmingham or London? Like the country air? Want a few weeks away? Enjoy country scenery? Then here’s your opportunity, just click on the below link.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeZ8orpcATfbUkeNan1AzFMbv-54LS1zTsbNeuVoHLQI9FoIQ/viewform
You even get PAID and provided with food during your stay. Brexit means those from Eastern Europe will not put food on your the table this year. Extra bonus if you take your caravan with you.
There are opportunities in Warwickshire, Lincolnshire, Kent, Sussex and Norfolk. Tools provided. Social-isolation policy against Covid-19 certified. Harvest celery, lettice, and manner of seasonable vegetables. Immediate start.
https://youtu.be/QGWSazHCrac%5BRemovetoplay%5D
There are also static caravans already on site. Just choose your design. The Kensington, The Windsor, or The Monbiot. Think of old Blighty! Dig for Victory!
Just stay away from Wales. The sheep and cows are fine.
Brychan Not much point suggesting to gentrified Brits and their couch potato underlings that they should get their annual dose of exercise by picking vegetables ! Most of these wankers think veg naturally occurs in plastic bags on supermarket shelves. Not a recent phenomenon either. I recall decades ago walking through woodland with a townie and he took seriously my advice to mind his head as it was the time of year that swedes fell off the trees. Dull bugger, but now there’s whole cities full of them.
I am suggesting that (a) the vast majority of Poles and Romanians come to Britain to work, but (b) the majority of English who come to Wales do so to rest, to sponge, or to flee (a), the former.
The Brits who adopt the royal ‘we’ in such matters are the ones least likely to roll up their sleeves to do that which the eastern Europeans toil in the fields, and it is they who are also the ones who treat Wales as a playground or as a benefit teat. I also remember in the 1980s where the job centre in Rhondda would say “you drive so take that job in Swindon or we stop your benefits” yet when you’d arrive in London you’d see jobs galore and many English people sponging benefits within a tube stop.
I also remember the ‘Paddies’ building the M25 and it was the ‘Taffs’ (and Geordies) who dug the channel tunnel.
Have you read Mike Parker’s “Neighbours from Hell”? He’d probably get another chapter from these incoming pathogens for an updated edition, not to mention the viruses they carry!
To Big Gee
“One coincidence is unlikely, but such an accurate mirror set of coincidences is beyond the realms of probability. The bottom line is that this whole scare was planned and timed beforehand.”
The organisers of the Event 201 conference/simulation, John Hopkins Center for Health Security have organized TWENTY TWO events modeling/simulating epidemics/pandemics/bioterrorism since 1999.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johns_Hopkins_Center_for_Health_Security#Event_201
That an organization that exists to investigate the effects of health security regularly organizes events that investigates the effects of heath security can hardly be a coincidence! And there is no correlation between their events and them being followed by pandemics.
You shouldn’t look for a planned explanation for this pandemic any more than you should follow your own “logic” and believe that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was planned by some powerful and shady secret group..
Sh1t happens!
Try a third alternative – that shit happens, as you say, and that governments, or supranational entities, ever awake to opportunities see this as the big break in terms of cranking up the degree of intrusion, control and regulation on a permanent basis. Draconian laws brought in “temporarily” get retained because something else happens that justifies nudging the temporary into permanent. Then, because the next phenomenon isn’t quite like the last one there is need for further bolt-on’s and we get further into “cradle to grave” control. Of course there may be odd diversions along the way but some nut’s vision of World government/ NWO/ homogenous international standards is creeping up on us.
Allowing a few million to die in a “panicdemic” will mitigate population growth for a few weeks, but who knows, this might be an uncontrolled experiment in culling techniques, or was it intended to be controlled but slipped the leash ? The same cluster of nutcases could well be planning another disaster scenario to follow soon to test resilience and bump off a few more million “disposables”.
Any answers in the comment boxes below !
There’s a big difference between governments and others unscrupulously taking advantage of a pandemic and those governments and others orchestrating a pandemic.
Conspiracy theorists confuse the two.
My I introduce a very different government approach to the Covid-19 outbreak. There are two very important differences in the actions of the Swedish government. Firstly they have appointed a team of medics and epidemiologists who make policy, not politicians, and secondly, there is a high degree of public trust in the state combined with a culture of social responsibility.
The statistics.
https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/
(a) The number of ‘infected carriers’, all of whom originated from Italian ski resorts, was low in the UK but substantial in Sweden. However, Sweden introduced immediate quarantine of these carriers, the UK did not. This led to early containment in Sweden, even though they had more vectors of introduction. Testing was prompt, not in hospitals, but on points of entry.
(b) The rate of detected spreading is lower in Sweden, this is due to a different approach in social-distancing. Schools remain open, only gatherings of over 500 is banned, and there is no need for ‘personal enforcement laws’ as the vast majority of the polulation in Sweden have a culture of ‘personal responsibility’. There was also ‘no panic’, no crowds of panic buying at supermarkets, which has been the main vector of transmission seen elsewhere.
(c) There is less social contact between the elderly (at risk) and the young (super spreaders). This is due to a far superior pre-existing social care system for the elderly, they tend to mix and physically socialise within their own age group, and not reliant on younger generations of family.
(d) The medical policy panel have introduced different policies in different municipalities, depending on urban/rural, epicentre/sterile areas. A ban on fleeing to the countryside was introduced long before school quarantines, for example, and in urban areas social distancing was engineered into metro timetables, tram loadings, avoiding epicentres like in London, which failed.
(e) There has always been ‘national emergency’ protocols in Sweden. This is due to military neutrality, proximity and threat from Russia dating back decades, and national service of citizens. Every urban centre has pre-existing plans for emergencies, like setting up external hospital triages, testing facilities, and a national identity system. South Korea (because of the north) and Japan (because of Tsunami or earthquake) also has this.
(f) There was already a high degree of ‘home working’ in Sweden, so making it compulsory for administrative trades was easy. That technology has existed for some time. The difference relates to ‘corporate style’ in the working environment. Good provision of paternity and maternity provision has driven this in Sweden.
(g) Border clampdown was introduced, initially by on the Oresund bridge with Denmark. This connection between high population density had a lot of commuter activity, now banned. It’s very similar to the Severn tunnel and Pont Hafren between Wales and England. Other border connections are not so significant. There is no Malmo surge, which is experienced in Gwent.
(h) Hospitals have not become centres of infection in Sweden. No PPE shortage for clinical staff, in-house cleaning and sanitation, and as the norm was already single occupancy rooms in state hospitals, upgrading them to isolation intensive care rooms much easier. The ratio of doctors per capital is also higher.
There are many other differences, but the above observations go to explain why death rates in Sweden are lower than in Wales, as is the known tested spread. The actions needed to contain, test, and react is driven by science rather than the ‘interests of the state’, which as we know, is constituently questionable with a colonial dimension in Wales.
There is, of course, a Swedish national, who, unlike the vast majority of Swedes, has been very irresponsible. Her name is Greta Thunberg.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greta-thunberg-coronavirus-news-infection-video-twitter-symptoms-a9422691.html
She had spent three weeks filming in Germany, the UK, Belgium and Switzerland for a BBC documentary with her commercial promoter, her journalist father. This was even though both having shown signs of contracting Covid-19. Of course the BBC, having broken the health guidelines in the countries concerned, have not reported this.
Greta has returned to Sweden and is self-isolating.
self insulating ? A cubic metre of concrete should do the job admirably.
An excellent contribution to the great Covid-19 debate Brychan. Not all countries are the same in this matter. Not all are as complicit in the scaremongering.
Anyone wondering about the Russian silence? They are also more grounded, and Putin has always been on the outside of the ‘club’ that’s up to it’s neck with the 1%.
I’ve seen and heard suggestions that Covid-19 is a man-made virus that has either been released deliberately, or has accidentally escaped from the laboratory in which it was created. I don’t buy it. Viruses have been jumping naturally between species for far longer than humans have existed. For one of the definitive works on what they call a “zoonosis” – when a virus jumps from another species into humans, try a book called Spillover by David Quammen. A long read, ponderous in parts, but an impressive writeup about how many different viral diseases have “spilled over” into our species, together with the consequences. We are familiar with many in our own lifetime – HIV (resulting in AIDS) being one of the most feared in its day and perhaps the best known, and successful one from a virus point of view. Featured in the book are lots of references to “The Next Big One”, namely a virus that would be a pandemic that would sweep through the world in a very short time, due to increasing globalisation. The book rather spookily speculates if this Next Big One will start in a tropical rainforest somewhere, or a market in South China. Ooh! Since the book was published 8 years ago, it didn’t take long for “The Next Big One” to arrive. And short of eradicating every other form of animal and insect life on the planet, it won’t be the last, so even when science and medicine gets us out of this knot, it’ll only be so long before we face a similar challenge. Personally, I’ll be glad to get out of this one. Even though the odds of dying from it are probably only a few orders of magnitude greater than the flu, I’m not sure I’ll get the medical care and attention that Carlo and Boris would have been able to call on should they have needed it.
I am talking about the simulation that took place in October 2019. I don’t think anyone accused anybody of using simulations to herald in EVERY pandemic we’ve ever encountered – a bit obvious that don’t you think? Neither is anyone suggesting that this was the ONLY simulation that has ever been conducted. However, it so closely mirrors what is supposed to be happening, that you would have to be in a comatose state of imposed brainwashing not to be suspicious of the facts.
Regarding the worst pandemic in recent human history (1918 ‘Spanish’ Flu Outbreak), please don’t try to muddy the waters. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with this recent ‘coincidence’. You’ll be trying to link the Black Death plague into the discussion next. Red herrings. Although in fact some medical experts have made suggestions that there was in fact a link between the Flu Pandemic of 1918, with experimental use of vaccines during WW1, in fact they seem to think it may have been the effects of a concoction of many vaccine components to fight against Cholera, Diphtheria etc. at a time when it was thought that it was only a bacterial world we lived in, as viruses had not been discovered. But we won’t go off on the vaccine tangent, even though one of the biggest exponent of the campaign for mass vaccination at present is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who were directly involved in the Event 201 exercise.
Just focus on the overwhelming coincidence of a very detailed simulation taking place just two months before the C-19 outbreak.
As a parting tghought – watch this video (sorry about the quality of the soundtrack, but it’s easy to understand)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afj-v_uaERA
Yes, I could be totally wrong, but from where I am looking there are just TOO many coincidences for comfort.
I know, I know.
Silly me.
“Shut up, do as you’re told and pay your taxes you conspiracy theorist!”
Twenty events (and I’d be surprised if they all didn’t involve simulations) in twenty years held by John Hopkins and one is followed by a pandemic. Coincidence or “coincidence”.
And that’s not counting the scores of similar simulations that have been held in many countries over the past couple of decades. It now appears that the UK did a simulation exercise after the SARS epidemic. Smaller and less extensive simulation exercises form part of workshops and conferences across the world many times a year.
Every simulation exercise tries to match a real situation as closely as possible. that’s the whole point of them. If the one Event 201 undertook included many issues that we’re experiencing now that indicates that the simulation was a good one not that it as part of some grand and evil plan.
It’s common for even small community groups to under take what are effectively simulations to include possible responses and effects to their project from press, government at various levels, public, unions. businesses etc, etc etc etc. It’s not surprising that given the status and resources of John Hopkins Center that their simulations are comprehensive and have such detailed output.
I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next man, and I’m old enough to go back to the ‘grassy knoll’. (I even remember where I was.) While I don’t think that Covid-19 itself is a conspiracy I do think that its effects are greatly exaggerated.
In recent days I’ve read a number of articles by eminent medical people who all say the same thing: very few people are dying from Coronavirus alone. What I’ve read suggests that 99% of those who’ve died might have died anyway from seasonal bronchial illnesses exacerbating underlying problems, and old age, but we wouldn’t be talking about it. It certainly wouldn’t be called a pandemic.
If that is so, then the medical people advising the politicians must also know that, so why do they go along with the extreme measures now being implemented?
I have a feeling that when this hysteria is over and the truth comes out there will be many politicians and others with questions to answer. But whether the questions are ever asked will depend to a great extent on the mainstream media, and they’ve also been caught up in the general hysteria, and may therefore be too embarrassed to revisit their mistake.
Your logic therefore means that the reason many doctors who are treating patients with Covid 19 are dying is because 99% of these doctors have underling health problems!
Who knows?
No, CapM. Those in close proximity to patients with advanced secondary systems are subjected to higher and multiple ingestion of virus, those without robust PPE. The human response to the virus is to generate anti-bodies, however, it takes time for the human body to generate sufficient anti-bodies before secondary symptoms kick in. This is the reason why medical staff at higher risk. It is called viral load.
All I can say is that you’re very trusting CapM. As trusting as a lamb en route to a slaughter house, or perhaps a better example would be the Jews that quietly went in to have a ‘shower’ on the say so of those in authority over them. I suppose it’s human nature – especially when they have been exposed to fear and programmed from birth to trust authority and believe the media. They are the ones who have eyes but cannot see, and ears that cannot hear.
Jac: yes I also vividly remember where I was, and what I was doing when the news of what had happened on the ‘grassy knoll’ broke. Lessons from history that some never learn from.
The Covid-19 strain of a Corona virus is probably a virus that has jumped species in the wild. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s from a lab or from the wild. The concern is that the dark suits in the shadows have used it as the trigger to move forward their agenda, and the sheeple amongst us have reacted in exactly the way they anticipated – the taking away of freedom and citizen’s rights has been like taking sweets from a baby. It’s been horrifyingly effective.
The mainstream (false) media have done their part, as they’ve been ordered to do. Nothing extraordinary there. These are the very things that some of us have been warning about for a very long time – but generally it’s been ridiculed and ignored.
The politicians will not answer any questions post this period, most of them are just ignorant puppets who haven’t got a clue what it’s all about anyway and just go with the flow. What is disturbing is the deafening silence from our politically active people here in Wales. I find that very unsettling. Go beyond the day to day navel region and they seem to be lost.
Simple facts:
It really is as plain as the nose on your face – assuming those eyes that cannot see start to work again!
You’ve changed your position from claiming that Corvid 19 was part of some dastardly plan –
“The bottom line is that this whole scare was planned and timed beforehand.”
To pointing out that individuals and groups will attempt to take advantage of the situation brought about by Corvid 19 –
“opportunity to bring forward the totalitarian goals of the ones with power, wealth and influence to achieve what they are aiming for.”
I’d say that that’s progress of sorts.
We need to be aware of and prepared for threats to democracy, rights, ways of life etc post Corvid. But those threats don’t depend on the existence of a co-ordinated plan to deprive us of them being followed. The threat exists from piecemeal actions and decisions.
It seems you’re having difficulties understanding what you’re reading CapM.
I’ve said what needs to be said, if you can’t follow that, then I can’t help you further with the information provided. There’s no need to boil the cabbage more than once.
Your difficulty appears to be based on your preconceived ideas, and you don’t seem to be able to expand your viewpoint past what you have been convinced of by the authorities. Perhaps time will help you see things in a wider perspective.
The trick is to be more open minded, closed minds are the most easily manipulated.
Only Cardi’s put cabbage in the cawl, BG. There is, of course, a conspiracy theory that has legs and it relates to the may supermarket chains have exploited to the Covid-19 pandemic.
(a) There was the ‘panic buying’ of toilet roll a product which has no rational basis for bulk purchase that only became a tissue issue because of the publicity. Toilet roll has always been known as a ‘hook product’ for supermarkets. It’s something people go out to buy when needed but they locate the product in the centre aisle of the store, meaning that you have to walk past all the other products on offer prior to aquistion, as well as walk past even more products on offer to get to the check out. It is the ideal ‘panic’ product to sell more stuff.
(b) The ‘maximum three’ of any product that is currently in force results in multiple shopping trips creating what is now the largest vector of transmission of coronavrus during lockdown. Weekly shops have now become daily trips for many families. This prompts the alternate product purchase, boosting profits, both by removing 4 for 3 discounts but also the purchase of ‘premium alternatives’ with greater gross margin than would otherwise be sold.
(c) The ‘accompanied children ban’ in supermarkets removes the ‘pester power’ from inside the store, often just re-locates it to the car park. It does not reduce overall opportunities for transmission as for most families this results in small children being ‘in-lawed’ or ‘granny dropped’ in order to facilitate a shopping trip. This also results in bigger spend for ‘anything I can get for you’ trips.
(d) The ‘key worker’ shopping hour for NHS and emergency services is purely a public relations exposition. Anyone who worked shifts prior to the lockdown will know of the ‘uniform hour’ around midnight to 0100hrs in supermarkets, where the aisles of 24 hour stores was full of medics, nurses, police officers, and ambulance drivers. Closing the stores at night just shifts the ‘uniform hour’ to 0700hrs and saves the supermarket having to pay check-out staff a night shift.
(e) I can report that the laying hens of Trimsaran, the milking cows of the Tywi and y mochyn du of Pembrokeshire are all in full fettle. The ‘shotage’ of such products on shelves is purely as a result of the supply and price manipulation by supermarkets to generate extra profit. They have cut out the ‘full shelf’ just in time supply chain (expensive distrobution) in favour of the ‘multiple line trickle feed’ to cut refreigerated haulage costs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPA30JBM3_w%5Bremovetoplay%5D
So, BG, it’s not a matter of cooking the cabbage twice. Cabbages are unaffected by Covid-19, only the retailer of such items.
Further up the page there is a reference to Aled ap Dafydd out canvassing for Plaid’s Rhys O Thomas. Large tracts of Cardiff West will regard smooth talking “professionals” like him with a healthy scepticism and will laugh, even snigger, in much the same way as they did when that other caricature, Daffyd ?, used to mince around the set in Little Britain! He offers the same level of uselessness and irrelevance to the daily grind of making a living and keeping sane in modern Wales.
Good news. There’s no shortage of PPE.
The largest manufacturing plants for PPE are in China who ramped up production and are on the downward curve. They now have surplus to export. Here is an example on what’s needed, and what countries can do, those who have broken free.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0329/1127076-ppe-equipment-china/
The threat to Wales is that we are part of the United Kingdom. A sop-lacky government in Cardiff. We need independence for the health of our people.
This is a time of innovation.
Let’s turn our backs on low-grade tourism. Rid our landscape, one and for all, of candyfloss brummies, glamping encampments, caravans and holiday cottages. Time to reclaim out country. Shut them down permanently. There is something we have in our landscape, which this pandemic has exposed as crucial. Our agricultural output. Although there have been attempts by supermarkets to maximise their margins like depress the milk price (they are currently raking is super-profits, which I suspect is the payout for many years funding the election coffers of Boris) we need to resist this and also to innovate.
http://www.castellhowellfoods.co.uk/
This comment has links to some Welsh enterprises that is now offering direct food deliveries. There’s no reason, when this pandemic is over, that their innovation should stop.
https://calonwen-cymru.com/
Let our children dine of Pembrokeshire earlys, locally baked organic bread, cutlets of veal and milk direct from our farms. They will no so easy accept that Wales cannot be independent. The hen houses of Trimsaran are still clucking with eggs, the hillside above echoes with the bleat of lambs and the now lush pastures are graced with cattle.
This is the food of our independence.
I hear there’s a zoo near Borth that can now supply African antelope steaks, there’s an NHS consultant in Swansea who I suspect used to eat them as child in their native environment.
Very eloquent, Brychan. I shall have a drink to you in a minute.
The zoo you allude to is a perfect metaphor for what’s wrong with modern Wales and, especially, tourism. Animals caged in appalling conditions so that tourists can gawp at their suffering. This sort of thing has been outlawed in more enlightened countries. Countries with a bit more pride.
History will judge Plaid Cymru harshly if they go ahead with fielding a candidate in Cardiff West in 2021.Unless Welsh Labour do something spectaularly beneficial for Wales between now and then, McEvoy has at least a chance to unseat the First Minister. Splitting the pro-Wales vote in that constituency would be foolish beyond belief. Plaid will be thenceforth seen as the Party that let the leader of an inneffective government in through the back door. They will also be reminded that they were ready and willing to stand down in favour of a unionist party in various Westminsetr Welsh constituencies in 2019.
Plaid will definitely stand a candidate in Cardiff West because there is a powerful element in the party that hates McEvoy with a vengeance. And these people also tend to be rather well disposed towards the Labour Party. In fact, the threat McEvoy poses to Drakewell probably explains why some in Plaid wanted him out.
They already are. Aled ap Dafydd was canvassing on behalf of Rhys Owen Thomas earlier this month.
https://twitter.com/AledapDafydd/status/1236595949352497152
Assuming we’ll have democratic elections come 2021. Because post C-19 the goalposts will have been moved so far you won’t be able to see them on the pitch!
Things won’t be the same as we’ve known them in the past, after this mad period. You only have to analyse the impact so far to see that. Anyone who thinks it’ll be political business as usual afterwards are deluding themselves I fear.
Stop and think what the impact of having half of the world’s population under – what is to all intents and purposes – house arrest at the moment is having, and it’s far from over yet. Do you think that Cardiff West will escape that?
When it comes to this Covid-19 so called ‘pandemic’, although in the past before designating a disease outbreak a pandemic, the number of fatalities, or the percentage of fatalities are taken into consideration (research the Spanish Flu Pandemic). This has not been the case in the strange case of C-19 – odd that! Because MOST people recover from it – as they would with a common cold or flu virus – many are asymptomatic, i.e. they don’t present with ANY symptoms. A big chunk of people who show symptoms of possibly another Corona virus (like a common cold or flu) may be wrongly diagnosed. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is not accurate – that is from the person who headed up the team that developed it. In fact some medical experts go so far as to say that in some instances it throws up both false positive and negative results to the tune of 80%.
The figures appear to indicate that the average death rate across the populations of the earth ,from this outbreak, is around 2 – 3%. Admittedly the percentage is greater for aged people (with naturally weakened immune systems due to age) and other underlying existing poor health factors that are present in that group. This is ALWAYS the case with all disease, including seasonal flu outbreaks. Whilst the last straw on the camel’s back may be quite a benign infection, those in existing poor health (especially the aged), may die as a result. Does this mean the last infection killed them? Or have they been the victim of an accumulation of problems? However the death certificate shows that they died of C-19. There’s fuzzy logic at work there somewhere.
It is my honest opinion that this outbreak is a fantastic scapegoat – it ticks all the boxes. All the boxes for what? The collapse of the present economic system which has been on the verge of collapse since 2008, anyone with half an alert neuron on duty, knows that, because the world’s economic model is critically flawed and is not sustainable – it is GUARANTEED to pop at some point. That time is now. So it’s a brilliant excuse to blame it on something that has nothing to do with the financial crisis. A classic case of: present a PROBLEM (either manufactured or non existent). Wait for the REACTION (oh my God – PANIC – we’re all going to die – you the government have to do something about this). Then offer the SOLUTION (we need to take away your freedoms and rights and get you to volunteer for what is basically house arrest). The deep state global cabal has made it’s move. The next stage is the Hunger Games society. It’s all there for you to see – just read the contents of the Agenda 21/ 2030 documents. The ridiculous man made climate warming scam is also at it’s core, and now this hoax C-19 scare.
The result? The world in one quantum leap has arrived at the doorstep of a centrally controlled, global, totalitarian state. The New World Order is here. Something some of the more awake amongst us have been warning about for years.
Make no mistake, things have changed for good. Talk of getting back to our struggle for independence in this minuscule country, when this is over, is cloud cuckoo land dream stuff. It’s like a little boy playing with his Lego blocks in his bedroom, dreaming of building a new house, whilst the house around him is burning down and the fire engines are parked on the lawn outside. Just look around you and wake up to the reality people.
Try and find the time to view this video clip from Dr. John Bergman, someone I have admired for years. It’s amazing why people can’t see the elephant in the room that is in plain sight for all to see.
Dr. JOHN BERGMAN ” Why I dont FEAR Covid 19″:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9vxOAb8edA
Just to prove that I’m not an all ‘doom and gloom prophet” here is another humorous video depicting ‘panic’. So try and keep your chin up – and stop panicking!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR0lOtdvqyg
Thought-provoking video by Dr John Bergman Big Gee. I’m keeping an open mind at this stage. The jury may still be out !
Those with little knowledge should look around globally and ask why are so many dying? Why are healthy young people increasingly becoming victims? And should you become infected hope that the medical staff do not shrug their shoulders and say ‘It is all a con” before ignoring you and moving on.
The figures for death rates of the actual Covid-19 (C-19) strain of Corona viruses are very vague and misleading. If you choose to trust what you are hearing and seeing via the mainstream media then that’s up to you. If you research a bit deeper you’ll find a different story.
At present there is no test for the specific C-19 strain. There is a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, however that test simply shows up remnants of ANY Corona virus DNA/ RDA in your system, and even that test is actually quite unreliable – as I mentioned above. A vast swathe of humanity have these remnants in their bodies from previous infections. Most cold and flu viruses are in the Corona virus family of viruses.
Consequently the actual deaths from this strain is an unknown. Bear in mind that the symptoms are almost identical to most flu infections. The diagnosis, at present, are based on symptoms alone – not the specific identification of the C-19 strain of Corona viruses. So a wrong diagnosis is often put in the wrong column as cause of eventual death (which is usually pneumonia), 99% of which occur amongst the same elderly/ immune system compromised/ underlying existing health problems group as die from seasonal flu.
You may sniff at what David Icke says on this subject, again thanks to the ridicule poured upon him by the mainstream media, however, no one can claim that he’s a researcher of rare quality, just like Jac. Although his observations and the books he’s written over thirty years of research have been laughed at, his predictions have been unerringly accurate – so who’s laughing now?
If you have an open mind, please view and listen to the video below, it will explain the strange and ever changing ‘figures’ that are coming out of this scare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzhZFD19Udc
Do you believe in coincidences? Check out Event 201, which was a simulated sequence of hypothetical events – in the scenario where we experienced a modern disease pandemic. This was carried out MONTHS before the declared outbreak. It involved a killer CORONA virus outbreak (in the scenario it starts in South America). It got transmitted from bats and got transferred to pigs. It then jumped to humans (sounds familiar?). The simulation then proceeded to show how the media would react (if you watch it, then you’d be hard pushed not to think it was the identical presentation of this C-19 outbreak, figures projected and all).
One coincidence is unlikely, but such an accurate mirror set of coincidences is beyond the realms of probability. The bottom line is that this whole scare was planned and timed beforehand.
Jac you wrote above :-
“The SNP of course forms the Scottish Government, but at council level we find a number of Unionist-run councils, often controlled by squalid coalitions held together by nothing more than a desire to keep the SNP out of power. Such an arrangement as we find in the city of Aberdeen where, after the 2017 elections, the SNP was the largest party by some distance but is kept from power by an alliance of Conservatives, Labour and Independents. (Though the Labour councillors have been expelled from the ‘Scottish’ Labour Party for going into coalition with the Tories!)”
Let me remind your readers that in Swansea City & County Council, when the Independents and Lib Dems kicked out Labour control for eight years 2004 to 2012, the desperate Plaid Cymru joined with Labour and Conservatives to form a “PLC” Alliance to thwart all efforts of the Lib Dems and Independents to change things that had festered for a Century under Labour in Swansea. This PLC then handed Swansea back to Labour in 2012. The Swansea population are not stupid, Plaid Cymru then lost all its seats after 2012 and are now totally absent from Swansea in any form except for hanging on to regional Assembly seats – these mostly elected by Neath people who in all fairness have a decent bunch of traditional Plaid Cymru Councillors. Plaid has also lost everything they were building up in Cardiff by similar “Red Queens” spitefulness aimed at simply trying to destroy one man Neil McEvoy. Surely the future of Wales is more important than current Plaid Cymru’s impotent petty spite!
Plaid are desperate to go into partnership with Labour after the next Assembly Election. Why vote for them if that vote is simply a vote for Labour? There will be alternatives. Scrutinise all the options.
I think we’ve seen some great leadership from frontline medical professionals who are quite active on Twitter. These people have been way ahead of any kind of ‘authority’ or ‘official’ advice. We should single this out and champion it. We have world-leading capabilities here, but unfortunately they don’t manage the budgets or press releases – they just get on with it.
I wouldn’t disagree about the great work being done by health professionals, but there conflicting views among them of how best to tackle Covid-19.
There is also the question of how to deal with the ‘infected worried’.
It is necessary to prevent low risk symptomatic panicers from swamping GP surgeries and hospitals. These will be ill, but not in a life threatening condition. Those who will refuse to suffer at home until recovered, and will still need to be accommodated, preferably away from hospital.
Example – The ‘Headcorn Aerodrome’ has been established as a ‘Covid-19 assessment centre’ by NHS England. A rather strange arrangement as this is a rather large facility if it were just to service Kent.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/maidstone/news/virus-centre-opens-at-airfield-225095/
Although this airfield in the middle of the Kent countryside, it is well connected on rail routes out of London (St Pancras, Victoria and Waterloo) and it’s also has access from the M20.
Unlike other ‘small airfields’, it has a long ‘rough’ runway and a separate flight path for its helicopter centre, as the satellite station to the Kent and Sussex air ambulance. It therefore has a full and robust aviation fuel storage facility.
London, no doubt, will be the priority for the UK government and may wish to assess and evacuate away from London the hoards of their ‘infected worried’.
There is also a requirement for those who have been assessed and confirmed as already having been infected with the virus and are prime candidates for the anti-body test (when it becomes available for mass use) when they are recovered. The ‘infected worried’ is an ideal opportunity for this, especially if they are all recorded and sited at mass-accommodation evacuated from a “Covid-19 assessment centre”.
Will Wales be included in this strategy?
When and where will the ‘hordes of infected worried’ be arriving in Wales?
How will these (bed ridden) ‘hordes of infected worried’ be transported?
That tweet from AUOB about angry Welsh locals prompts me to comment. Anyone who knows my stance on stuff like this will not be surprised that I found it uplifting – at last people here began to wake up to the toxic effects of mass tourism. Perhaps it reflects not too well on many of our fellow natives that it’s taken a Covid 19 “crisis” to generate this level of awareness but we needed some sharp prompting to realise that most of these travellers don’t do much good to Wales at anytime.
The other big problem within the nation was those who just travelled within, say from the valleys to the coast. These represent part of the real challenge for the future. If they can so flippantly disregard current advice regard public health then getting them to see the value in something really challenging like secession will take major efforts over a long time, not just casual soundbites from dodgy politicians at election time. Of course they may be right, that the advice was ill conceived and of little or no value, but the general drift of the justification for the behaviour sounded like …”oh fuck it, it’s a nice day let’s go to ( coastal town) and grab some ice cream and fish & chips”, not some deep analysis that found flaws in Bunter’s missives.
What I noticed about the outraged Bala locals video was that guy in the Land Rover had a camping-type trailer, which suggests he was heading somewhere, or leaving somewhere, that was welcoming campers. I trust GogPlod is looking into this aspect of the matter.
Pleased to note that the pandemic is even affecting the crooks that you write about and those that would otherwise flock to Wales to use the increasing number of zip wires being approved / installed. Keep taking the medicine [Malbec]. Stay safe everyone.
Lockdown has put a stop to lots of things, for good or ill.
I suspect this pandemic may bring out the best and worst in humanity. The best; those in the health and care services working on the front line, and the worst; those that will try to exploit the vulnerable with the usual scams.
Prof Gupta and a team at Oxford University have produced a research paper. Their paper has not yet been peer reviewed yet, and is therefore only theoretical, but the model suggests
1 The virus was first present in the UK at the latest in January
2 30% of the population of the UK was infected 38 days before the first death from CV was recorded In the UK
3 On 19th March 68% of the population were infected and are therefore now immune
4 The vast majority of the infected are asymptomatic
A sample test of the population for antibodies will prove or disprove the theory
My thinking… perhaps this explains the view ‘that children don’t get it. Perhaps the exact opposite is true…. they all have it but are largely asymptomatic.
I’ve been reading more and more about people – especially children – being asymptomatic, and the need for antibody testing to determine how many people may already have been infected but show few signs.
Are you sorely missing your type checker? s/weal/wealth last but fifth paragraph 🙂
What is this ‘checker’ to which you refer? I meant to say ‘common weal’. Use your ‘checker’.