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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Lewis is all over this shit on FB/Twitter. He's fallen down a pretty serious Spiked/Alex Jones hard-right rabbit hole. It's quite disturbing.
 

luka

Well-known member
hes literally their target audience. but that was peter hitchens whos not a conspiracy nut. well, maybe he is a bit.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
hes literally their target audience. but that was peter hitchens whos not a conspiracy nut. well, maybe he is a bit.
Oh, he's gone waaaay beyond Hitchens. His latest wheeze is "Blair lied about Saddam's WMDs, therefore covid-19 is a hoax by Them to enslave us all." As if the better part of half a million deaths, spread across the entire world, could just be cooked up like that. Or "it's no different from a normal cold or flu", never mind that at one point it more then doubled the death rate in this country.

I honestly would not be at all surprised to see him writing for Spiked in a few years.
 

luka

Well-known member
our Nina is writing for the spectator so why not! it's all fun and games at the end of the day.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I am fairly sure these measures, like the house arrest and sunbathing bans which came before, have another purpose. They accustom us to being told what to do. Stand there. Wait there. Don’t use cash. Don’t cross that line. They permanently change the relationship between the individual and the state.

Worse is that the public demanded these measures.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah I have a bit of a problem as seeing it as a power-grab by the government when as far as I could tell they never really want to do it and were kinda bullied into it by public opinion and loads of people dying.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Tying into the cancel culture phenomenon, public opinion is now so powerful and can be directed so pointedly that government, press and scientific advisors alike will avoid as much risk as possible - while also increasing perceived risk to justify their risk aversion - in order not to be dragged over hot coals further down the line: far better to be accused of excessive caution than recklessness.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well, the reason the government are following public opinion is to increase their chances of survival and Cummings' ejection would sink the PM and more besides.
There will come a point where they think his political cost is starting to outweigh his usefulness.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
If public opinion were that powerful, Cummings would have been fired.
I'm not sure if that was a reply to me or MB or what... but my point is, I don't think BJ wanted to lock down the country, shut down schools and businesses and so on... he did it eventually cos people were dying all over the shop and every other country had done it and his scientists were advising it and - I think - so was public opinion. Given that he (and I think the government as a whole - they're so spineless anyway, he is the government) was so reluctant to lock down, it requires a kind of cognitive dissonance to see the lock down as some kind of evil plot to get us in inside, control everything we do - and then who knows what? - by that very same government.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah I saw that tweet earlier Leo. It's frightening isn't it? Not only that he thinks like that but also that he either doesn't care or understand how weird that is to even censor himself when he addresses the public.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I'm not sure if that was a reply to me or MB or what... but my point is, I don't think BJ wanted to lock down the country, shut down schools and businesses and so on... he did it eventually cos people were dying all over the shop and every other country had done it and his scientists were advising it and - I think - so was public opinion. Given that he (and I think the government as a whole - they're so spineless anyway, he is the government) was so reluctant to lock down, it requires a kind of cognitive dissonance to see the lock down as some kind of evil plot to get us in inside, control everything we do - and then who knows what? - by that very same government.

The government were and are spineless and let themselves be swayed by a hysterical and ill-informed public and press rather than building a convincing evidence-based and rational case that takes account of the global effects of the measure; SAGE never recommended anything near as emphatic as lockdown. It's not an evil plot but it will look like one in a few months, once we realise its effects and the carelessness and self-interest that lie behind it.

Re. cases, note that the press shifts their focus at will from deaths to cases to maximise the doom quotient eg. with Sweden, where cases have held steady or risen whilst deaths have continued to fall (themselves describing a curve that is mathematically similar to the UK's). If we experience spikes from the demonstrations, raves or beach parties, they will be of cases - not deaths - with the vast majority of them being asymptomatic or mild (as the people attending are young).
 
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