T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
When I went to school all those many years ago and began to learn about World War Two and the holocaust, we were told repeatedly "It couldn't happen here!"
Because my family came from Russia, Germany, Italy and all sorts of other places where the unthinkable had happened and more than once, that statement just didn't sound right to my juvenile ears. I knew that loving, caring and well-educated Germans, Russians and Italians could be stampeded into destroying their own societies and turn on their neighbours and even family members out fear, greed or just ignorant belief in what they were being told by a handful of corrupt, self-serving politicians.
So why not in rural Kent, or Lincolnshire, or Wales, or Scotland? Most of those around me hardly seemed cultured or educated and nearly all my fellow school chums had never been outside of Britain.
The British used to be known for being easy-going, hardly material for mass panic and groundless fear. Thousands were killed in the war and yet between the heaps of rubble, death and destruction, people just got on with their lives and muddled through. As soon as the rubble was cleared from the latest deadly round of attacks by V2 bombs, the trams ran once more and the BBC opened its comedy programmes with the words "Live, from the heart of London . . ."
Lord Haw-Haw told the world that Brits were cowering in their cellars, yet there was the sound of people laughing! Now a new variety of the common cold has taken almost every comedy programme off the air. Well, the funny ones seem to have gone, replaced by a few desperate attempts at woke drivel.
At the helm, the British prime minister has been trying his damndest to look and sound like Winston Churchill. It was like watching the glove puppet 'Sooty' pretending to be a real bear!
At the heart of this government's latest change of policy (U-turn?) is the greatest restriction of freedoms this country has seen since the war. And back then, Britain was fighting a real enemy and not a cold virus whose victims have an average age of 79.5 and are mostly obese.
In today's Daily Telegraph (now apparently the new voice of the opposition!) the main editorial points out three things that this government is studiously trying to not talk about -
1. The totally broken and chaotic state of the NHS and its ability to provide an even adequate health care system. The editorial describes the NHS as 'terminally inadequate' and that seems to be describing the state of health care in the UK rather mildly.
2. The Government is far too frightened to conduct, let alone even discuss, any proper cost-benefit analysis of its measures
3. The dangerous pretence that everybody is at equal risk, which it describes as a shocking unwillingness by both the government and the opposition to engage in an honest conversation about economic trade-offs.
This virus mostly kills the old and sick - i.e. the economically inactive. Any heartlessly economic analysis would find all the arguments in favour of allowing it to rid humanity of those who are a drain on the economy as they are the beneficiaries of a transfer income (pensions and allowances) from the economically active.
These arguments may be tempting for those who are fit, young and healthy, but it would be euthanasia by the back door.
BUT
The lockdown has cost the UK economy 10% of its GDP so far and we are just at the beginning. Poverty kills just as effectively as C19. The difference in life expectancy of what the Office for National Statistics calls the AB class and the DE socioeconomic classes is a whopping ten years. The coming economic crash will primarily impact the poor. In other words, we shall be killing people who are economically active by inflicting poverty upon them.
Add to that, Brexit and government incompetence at more or less every level - remember that this government has thrown fiscal self-discipline out of the window. It is running on an eye-watering and unsustainable 17% deficit by its own figures and probably a great deal more in reality.
And now we discover that the government's chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, is heavily invested in vaccine developer Glaxo-Smith-Klein, for whom he used to work. He holds £600,000 in shares and had received £5m from them in the past. That means that his advice to the government must be regarded as suspect at best.
The UK is stumbling into the Swedish model - but without their health and social care systems and without the freedoms they enjoy. Deaths in care homes are rising and will continue to rise and forced economic inactivity will make the poor even poorer.
It is happening here. We are losing our freedoms, whilst the worst of all choices is being forced upon the British people by government ineptitude and indecision. It's euthanasia by default.
Because my family came from Russia, Germany, Italy and all sorts of other places where the unthinkable had happened and more than once, that statement just didn't sound right to my juvenile ears. I knew that loving, caring and well-educated Germans, Russians and Italians could be stampeded into destroying their own societies and turn on their neighbours and even family members out fear, greed or just ignorant belief in what they were being told by a handful of corrupt, self-serving politicians.
So why not in rural Kent, or Lincolnshire, or Wales, or Scotland? Most of those around me hardly seemed cultured or educated and nearly all my fellow school chums had never been outside of Britain.
The British used to be known for being easy-going, hardly material for mass panic and groundless fear. Thousands were killed in the war and yet between the heaps of rubble, death and destruction, people just got on with their lives and muddled through. As soon as the rubble was cleared from the latest deadly round of attacks by V2 bombs, the trams ran once more and the BBC opened its comedy programmes with the words "Live, from the heart of London . . ."
Lord Haw-Haw told the world that Brits were cowering in their cellars, yet there was the sound of people laughing! Now a new variety of the common cold has taken almost every comedy programme off the air. Well, the funny ones seem to have gone, replaced by a few desperate attempts at woke drivel.
At the helm, the British prime minister has been trying his damndest to look and sound like Winston Churchill. It was like watching the glove puppet 'Sooty' pretending to be a real bear!
At the heart of this government's latest change of policy (U-turn?) is the greatest restriction of freedoms this country has seen since the war. And back then, Britain was fighting a real enemy and not a cold virus whose victims have an average age of 79.5 and are mostly obese.
In today's Daily Telegraph (now apparently the new voice of the opposition!) the main editorial points out three things that this government is studiously trying to not talk about -
1. The totally broken and chaotic state of the NHS and its ability to provide an even adequate health care system. The editorial describes the NHS as 'terminally inadequate' and that seems to be describing the state of health care in the UK rather mildly.
2. The Government is far too frightened to conduct, let alone even discuss, any proper cost-benefit analysis of its measures
3. The dangerous pretence that everybody is at equal risk, which it describes as a shocking unwillingness by both the government and the opposition to engage in an honest conversation about economic trade-offs.
This virus mostly kills the old and sick - i.e. the economically inactive. Any heartlessly economic analysis would find all the arguments in favour of allowing it to rid humanity of those who are a drain on the economy as they are the beneficiaries of a transfer income (pensions and allowances) from the economically active.
These arguments may be tempting for those who are fit, young and healthy, but it would be euthanasia by the back door.
BUT
The lockdown has cost the UK economy 10% of its GDP so far and we are just at the beginning. Poverty kills just as effectively as C19. The difference in life expectancy of what the Office for National Statistics calls the AB class and the DE socioeconomic classes is a whopping ten years. The coming economic crash will primarily impact the poor. In other words, we shall be killing people who are economically active by inflicting poverty upon them.
Add to that, Brexit and government incompetence at more or less every level - remember that this government has thrown fiscal self-discipline out of the window. It is running on an eye-watering and unsustainable 17% deficit by its own figures and probably a great deal more in reality.
And now we discover that the government's chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, is heavily invested in vaccine developer Glaxo-Smith-Klein, for whom he used to work. He holds £600,000 in shares and had received £5m from them in the past. That means that his advice to the government must be regarded as suspect at best.
The UK is stumbling into the Swedish model - but without their health and social care systems and without the freedoms they enjoy. Deaths in care homes are rising and will continue to rise and forced economic inactivity will make the poor even poorer.
It is happening here. We are losing our freedoms, whilst the worst of all choices is being forced upon the British people by government ineptitude and indecision. It's euthanasia by default.
