This week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson postponed Freedom Day from June 21 to July 19, 2021.
Although a vote on this passed comfortably on Wednesday, June 16 — 489 to 60 — the number of rebel MPs, mostly Conservative, increased compared with previous votes on coronavirus restrictions. This page shows who voted No.
Boris and Matt Hancock might want to rethink their dependence on the lefty scientists of SAGE, but will they?
SAGE are effectively running this nation … into the ground.
Chesham & Amersham by-election upset
In addition, on Thursday, June 17, the Conservatives lost a by-election in Chesham & Amersham in leafy Buckinghamshire, not far from London. It had been a safe Conservative seat since the 1970s. A journalist from the Financial Times tweeted that he was sure they would win it once again:
In reality, it was a hat made out of fabric. Jim Pickard took three small bites of it, washed down with water. Sensible, as it could have been made in the world’s largest manufacturing country (no prizes for guessing correctly). H/T Guido Fawkes:
Now they have a Liberal Democrat MP, the lady pictured below standing next to party leader Ed Davey MP. The reply to the tweet blames the win on local opposition to a high speed railway (HS2) and to extending lockdown:
However, the Lib Dems never really opposed HS2:
The by-election took place because Dame Cheryl Gillan MP died on April 4. Despite a long term illness, she was an active participant in parliamentary debates until the end.
According to a Guido Fawkes reader, this was the vote tally on Thursday compared with 2019’s general election:
2019 results:
Conservative 30,850
Lib Dems 14,627
Labour 7,166
2021 Votes:
Conservative 13,489
Lib Dems 21,517
Labour 622
The only consolation is that the Labour vote sank like a stone:
Coronavirus cases rise in Cornwall after G7 summit
The virus lives and is on the rise in Cornwall:
In addition to the G7 and half term, another factor could be the warm weather last Sunday, attracting people to beaches.
Guido Fawkes has maps and the figures (emphasis in the original):
Last week, both St. Ives and the Carbis Bay area had two positive cases respectively. Now, St. Ives has 36 cases, and Carbis Bay has 15. That’s a 1,700% increase in the former, and a 650% rise in the latter…
One of Guido’s readers replied that a hotel and university are responsible (emphases mine below):
Tosh. The rise in St Ives/Carbis Bay happened before G7 kicked off and was down to the staff in one hotel and is linked back to the plastic University at the top of Penryn.
Cases, however, are only positive tests. Not all should require hospitalisation.
Wednesday’s vote in Parliament
On Wednesday, June 16, Matt Hancock opened the debate on coronaivirus restrictions in the House of Commons.
He said, in part:
Thanks to the protection of the vaccination programme, huge advances in treatments like dexamethasone, which was discovered a year ago today, and the resolve of the British people in following the rules that this House has laid down, we have been able to take the first three steps on our road map, removing restrictions and restoring colour to the nation, but we have always said that we would take each step at a time and look at the data and our four tests before deciding whether to proceed. The regulations before the House today put into effect our decision to pause step 4 on our roadmap until 19 July. Before outlining the regulations that will put this into effect, I would like to set out why we made this difficult but essential decision.
Unfortunately, there has been a significant change since we started on our journey down the road map in February. A new variant has given the virus extra legs, both because it spreads more easily and because there is some evidence that the risk of hospitalisation is higher than for the alpha variant, which was, of course, previously dominant in this country. The delta variant now accounts for 96% of new cases. The number of cases is rising and hospitalisations are starting to rise, too—they are up 48% over the past week. The number of deaths in England is thankfully not rising and remains very low, but, as I told the House on Monday, we do not yet know the extent to which the link between hospitalisations and deaths has been broken, so we propose to give the NHS a few more crucial weeks to get those remaining jabs into the arms of those who need them.
Mark Harper (Con) intervened:
Can I just ask my right hon. Friend what we expect to achieve in the four weeks? I think I am right in saying that there are 1.3 million people in priority groups one to nine who have yet to have a second dose of the vaccination. The good point is that that means we have vaccinated 96% of people in those groups, but I just wonder—after four weeks, I doubt that we will get to 100%, so there will still be a significant number of people in those groups not vaccinated with two doses, and at that point, there is still going to be some risk. My worry, and the worry of others, is that we are going to get to this point in four weeks’ time and we will just be back here all over again extending the restrictions. That is what we are concerned about.
Hancock said he was sure that four weeks would be sufficient. He’s said that before.
Steve Baker (Con) also intervened:
Is not the problem with the two-week checkpoint that it creates another moment of hope for people who still feel even these restrictions very acutely, and that if we create hope and then shift the goalposts again, people will continue to deepen their despair? What will he say to those people?
Hancock said the public understood the reasons for the delay.
After Hancock finished speaking, it was the turn of the Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth (Lab) to respond.
Ashworth largely agreed with the Government’s extension to Freedom Day, but he rightly posed questions, such as this one:
Will we continue wearing masks?
At which point, Desmond Swayne (Con), who wears a silk scarf instead of a mask, shouted:
No!
Steve Brine (Con), former Public Health minister, intervened, recalling a bad flu year:
The right hon. Gentleman is right: we had a battle royal with influenza in the first year that I was in the job, but the difference was that we did not have any non-pharmaceutical interventions. Our interventions were about the take-up of the vaccine—yes, for children as well as for adults, especially the vulnerable. One of our chief advisers, the deputy chief medical officer then, one Professor Chris Whitty, never suggested masks, let alone closing schools—just a really good roll-out of the flu vaccine. We lost 22,000 people that year. Never were those numbers rolled on BBC News; never did we know the R number, but there was a point where we accepted an element of risk in society. I guess that was the point of my earlier intervention on the hon. Gentleman: what element of risk is he prepared to accept? Because that is what it comes down to—our own mortality is part of the human condition.
Ashworth replied, in part:
I do not want to see it done by some of the wider restrictions and lockdowns that we have heard about. That is why I would be interested to know whether the Department has developed plans for restrictions this winter and whether the Secretary of State has been discussing that with Whitehall colleagues.
Mark Harper intervened again:
On the point about the restrictions, I know that those discussions are going on because I have seen documents from within Government with very detailed suggestions about what measures may continue. I asked the Secretary of State about this when he was in the Commons earlier this week, and he did not rule out bringing in restrictions this winter. That is partly why some Conservative Members are very concerned and why we are not going to vote for these regulations today. However, I want to take the right hon. Gentleman back to his comments on what Chris Hopson said about the fact that the NHS is very busy at the moment. There is a danger here. I am very sympathetic to colleagues who work in the NHS, who have done a fantastic job, but we cannot get to a point where we restrict and manage society in order to manage NHS waiting lists. That is not the right way round. The NHS is there to serve society. If we need to enable it to do that, we have to think of a way of doing it other than putting restrictions on the rest of society. That is not a sustainable or a desirable position, but it is the logical consequence of what Chris Hopson was saying earlier this month.
Here’s the video, which begins with Ashworth sitting down to give way to Harper:
Ashworth replied, beginning with this:
Even though we will find ourselves in different Lobbies this evening, I think there is more in common between us than perhaps one might expect. I do not want restrictions to remain in place for any longer than they need to. I want to move to a system where we are trying to push down covid infection rates by, yes, rolling out vaccination as far and as fast as possible to everybody, but also putting in place the proper framework so that those who are ill or a contact of someone who has been ill with covid is able to isolate themselves.
He took more interventions from Conservative MPs, then concluded:
The House is being asked to extend these restrictions, but there are a number of pressing issues. First, many of us have been contacted by business people in our constituencies who are deeply concerned about the extension of these restrictions. For my constituency in Leicester, which has been living under a form of restrictions more severe than other parts of the country, other than perhaps parts of Greater Manchester, this has been particularly devastating. I hope that the Government will be putting in place full support for businesses such as mine in Leicester and Greater Manchester and elsewhere.
The second issue, which we have touched on a little bit, is whether these restrictions will ever end, or whether the Prime Minister has trapped us in Hotel California, where we can never leave. He has talked about 19 July as the terminus date, but the explanatory notes themselves say that the four tests will apply on 19 July, and that these four weeks will be used to gather more data.
Hancock said later on that July 19 is still the terminus date and that data would be examined in two weeks’ time.
The general debate took off from there, with Sir Desmond Swayne (Con), the original rebel, the first to speak. He criticised SAGE and one of its members, Susan Michie, the Communist:
I never believed that it was proportionate, even from the outset, for Ministers to take such liberties with our liberty. I always thought that it was wrong for them to take our freedoms, even though they believed that they were acting in our best interests in an emergency, but by any measure that emergency has now passed and yet freedoms are still withheld and the Government will not allow us to assess for ourselves the risks that we are prepared to encounter in our ordinary, everyday lives. The Government do not trust the people whom they govern.
Many members of SAGE—a misnomer if ever there was one—have been out busily undermining public morale. One of them even shared her dystopian vision that we must all remain masked and distanced in perpetuity—a shocking, horrible prospect. The fact is that once the consequences of this virus in terms of their financial and health impacts have long been addressed, the moral impact will remain. The Government have set a disastrous precedent in terms of the future of liberty on these islands. I could understand it if we were a communist party, but this is the party that inherited the true wisdom of the Whig tradition. This is the party of Margaret Thatcher, who said that liberty was indivisible. This is the party that only recently elected a leader whom we believed was a libertarian. There is much on which we are going to have to reflect.
Here is the video of his remarks:
Smoking also came up in the debate:
Sir Charles Walker (Con), another early rebel, spoke. He wants a reform of SAGE. Excerpts follow:
I wish to try to be constructive about how we can improve SAGE. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, SAGE has huge power over our lives. It has power over whom we hug and hold. It has power over which businesses open and which businesses close. In essence, it has power over who keeps their job and who loses their job. We, too, in this place have great power, but our power is matched by accountability.
Accountability is very important in the exercising of power, so I want to suggest some reforms to SAGE—some quite technical reforms. First, there is a need for greater financial transparency from members of SAGE in line with that expected of Members of Parliament. For example, I think when we look at SAGE members, we should be able to see what their annual income is—not only from their substantive job, but from their pensions accrued or the pensions they might well be in receipt of. This is something that is freely available for all Members of Parliament. I think we should also know and constituents should know if they have any significant shareholdings in companies, in the same way that our constituents know if we have significant shareholdings in companies. We could also look at whether they get other forms of income—from rent, for example …
… in the case of young people, many SAGE experts say that young people should be working from home. We know that young people are now tied to their small kitchen table or in their bedroom in miserable environments—the new dark satanic mills—and working endless hours in appalling circumstances, because people with nice gardens and comfortable homes think that is what they should be doing.
There should also be far greater personal accountability. There should be no more, “Here is Sir Mark Walport—of SAGE, but here in a personal capacity”. Nonsense! He is there because he is a member of SAGE. We should also have elections to SAGE, so we could see Sir Mark Walport, Professor Susan Michie, John Edmunds and regular talking heads in our TV studios challenged by people with a different perspective—people such as Professor Karol Sikora, Professor Paul Dolan, who is an expert on human behaviour and quality of life, and Professor Ellen Townsend, who has a huge interest in the welfare of children and adolescents who are now being plagued by anxiety and eating disorders …
So here it is: full financial disclosure from members of SAGE and full elections, or they advise the Government, and if they do not want to do that, but want to advise TV studios, they do that, but they do not do both.
Here is the video of his speech in full:
Graham Stringer (Lab), also a rebel, spoke next. He rightly said that MPs do not have enough scientific data to make an informed decision about restrictions. Excerpts follow:
As ever, it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker). On his interesting point about SAGE, we could do with full disclosure from the Government about all the facts that they have available to them on covid. In the Science and Technology Committee this morning, we were told that vaccinations have saved 14,000 lives. I have no doubt that that is an accurate figure, but there are many figures that have not been given. As we said the last time we debated this issue, only one side of the equation is given. Let me ask this question: how many lives have been lost in order to save capacity in the NHS? When it comes to looking at people untested and untreated for cancer, heart disease and other diseases, we will find that the figures are of a similar, if not greater, magnitude than the number of people who have died from covid …
There is a great deal more information that we require in order to make a rational decision about whether the lockdown should continue. I agree with the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) that what we have here is the Government asking for emergency powers when there is no longer an emergency …
The Government have refused on a number of occasions to give out that information. They have run a campaign to scare people into accepting their decisions …
One of the things that has annoyed me most in the last 15 months is when the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care say, “We instruct you”—meaning the population—“to do various things,” when there is nothing in the legislation that would give the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister the ability to instruct individuals. We live in a liberal democracy in which we pass laws that are enforced by the police, and then the courts make a decision if there is a prosecution, not one in which the Secretary of State acts like some kind of uniformed Minister of the Interior.
I will vote against the regulations today. We need a more direct debate on the issue and we need what Members have searched for—a straightforward comparison, with real statistics, of what risks everybody faces.
Steve Baker (Con) agreed with Mark Harper about society and the NHS:
I refer the House to the declarations that I have made relating to the Covid Recovery Group.
No one can deny the brilliance of the Government’s—the NHS’s—vaccination programme. By mid-April, the over-50s and the vulnerable had had their first vaccination, and overwhelmingly they have now had their second. That is reflected in the Office for National Statistics antibody data, which shows extraordinary levels for anyone over 50. Antibodies are there in that population, which is vulnerable to the disease.
That brings me to the best case that the Government could make for the regulations before the House, which is that the ability of the NHS to provide other healthcare could be compromised by admissions from a younger population, because a small percentage of a big number is still a big number. But the huge problem with that is that it concedes the point that our liberties can be used to manage the capacity of the NHS. I cannot concede that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) said, that is not the way in which we should be going as a society. If the restrictions that we are extending had been proposed for that purpose in the past, we would never have accepted them.
In Wycombe, people have of course been dutifully washing their hands, covering their faces and keeping social distancing rules, yet early in this pandemic, I remember one dear, sweet, older lady was beside herself with anxiety at the thought of having to go about her ordinary life with her face covered, and look at us now, taking it for granted. This is not normal. This is the dystopia that I stood here and forecast on the day we went into lockdown …
One of the most important things that we have learned from Mr Cummings’ leaked WhatsApp messages is that it seems that the Government have been significantly influenced by polling. I fear we have had a real doom loop here between polling and policy making, which has driven us into a disastrous position. We now must not tolerate lockdowns being perpetually on the table. We must not tolerate a situation going on where we and the police are unclear about what the law is and how it should be applied. Imagine that you can hug but not dance—what madness is this? We cannot tolerate a situation any more in which a Government social scientist told the author of the book “A State of Fear” that the Government had used unethical techniques of behavioural science to deliver a policy which he said, in his own words, “smacks of totalitarianism”.
We have transformed this society for the worst. We have it put in place a culture and habits that will take years to shake off and that distance people from one another and diminish their quality of life and the quality of relationships that they have with one another. High streets are in danger of becoming haunted alleyways. We are in danger of hollowing out and destroying the entertainment industry—much of what makes life worth living. Today’s vote will go through—it is a foregone conclusion—but as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) implied, if the Conservative party does not stand for freedom under the rule of law, in my view, it stands for nothing. We have got to have a turning point. We have got to recapture a spirit of freedom.
Mark Harper spoke later on, at which point the Labour benches were empty. It is important for Britons reading this post to look at what he has uncovered. The Government continue to be dishonest not only with MPs but also the public:
Well said!
Please also note the following about winter. Meanwhile, Democrat-run New York and California are now open:
May our merciful God help the UK out of this unholy mess.
Last week at this time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was preparing for the G7 summit at Carbis Bay in Cornwall.
Prior to that, meetings between G7 foreign ministers and finance ministers took place earlier in London.
This is the family photo of the foreign ministers from their meeting in May. The eighth man is an EU representative:
One of the outcomes of the finance ministers’ meetings in early June was a tax on profits from the largest multinational tech giants, to be continued when the G20 meet in July:
Joe Biden
It was amazing to see Joe Biden last the full course of the G7, especially without Kamala Harris hovering over him:
I am still puzzling over this photo of Dr Jill prepping for the G7 and the text ‘United States government official’. She is the First Lady, not a government official:
Joe Biden successfully triggered a post-Brexit storm around the EU trading arrangements with Northern Ireland, which are crucial to maintaining the peace agreement between that part of the UK and the Republic of Ireland:
Biden’s opinion is important, because the UK wants to make a trade deal with the US, which would have been much easier were President Trump still in the White House:
Nigel Farage rightly tweeted:
The sad truth is that no one in government cares about Trump. Boris has made it pretty clear in Parliament that he prefers dealing with Biden.
On Thursday, June 10, the US and the UK signed The New Atlantic Charter to promote common interests between the two nations, including technology, health pandemics and climate change.
The original Atlantic Charter was signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt in 1941.
This new charter is hardly as ground breaking as the original.
The Daily Mail reported:
The major focus of Mr Johnson and Mr Biden’s new charter is defeating the coronavirus crisis and preventing further global health crises.
To achieve these goals, the two men agreed to ‘scale up joint work on genomic sequencing and variant assessments’ and to work together on a new global surveillance system.
This will see the UK Health Security Agency’s new Centre for Pandemic Preparedness establishing a working relationship with its US counterpart, the proposed National Center for Epidemic Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.
The new charter states: ‘We recognise the catastrophic impact of health crises, and the global good in strengthening our collective defences against health threats.
‘We commit to continuing to collaborate to strengthen health systems and advance our health protections, and to assist others to do the same.
Mr Johnson said: ‘While Churchill and Roosevelt faced the question of how to help the world recover following a devastating war, today we have to reckon with a very different but no less intimidating challenge – how to build back better from the coronavirus pandemic.’
While the men met, Carrie Johnson, young Wilfred Johnson and Jill Biden took a walk along the beach. That evening, the Bidens enjoyed a drink at the Tregenna Castle Hotel in St. Ives.
On Sunday, June 13, the Bidens left Cornwall and were guests of the Queen at Windsor Castle where they enjoyed tea together. The Express has more.
On Monday and Tuesday, Biden met with NATO leaders and held a private meeting with the president of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan.
The Bidens flew to Geneva on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, Biden met with Vladimir Putin in Geneva.
Sausage war
On the topic of Biden’s beef over Northern Ireland, he wants the UK to move closer to the EU and had the diplomat at the American Embassy in London issue Boris with a démarche, a reprimand normally reserved for enemy nations.
On Wednesday, June 9, the Telegraph reported:
Joe Biden ordered US officials to rebuke Boris Johnson for jeopardising the peace process in Northern Ireland due to its stand-off with the European Union, it emerged on Wednesday night.
In a significant diplomatic intervention which now threatens to overshadow the G7 summit in Cornwall, America’s most senior diplomat in Britain told the Brexit minister Lord Frost that the UK’s stance on the Northern Ireland Protocol was “inflaming” tensions in Ireland and Europe.
Yael Lempert is said to have issued Lord Frost with a demarche – a formal diplomatic reprimand – at a meeting on June 3 in London, during which she relayed to him the US President’s “great concern” over the UK’s approach to the protocol, which was established to prevent a hard Irish border.
The protocol is causing difficulty in shipping sausages, hence ‘sausage war’. You could not make this up.
Lord David Frost is attempting to negotiate with the EU:
During “frank” discussions in London, the Brexit minister Lord Frost said he would not rule out acting unilaterally to prevent a ban on the sale of British sausages in the province from coming into force at the end of the month.
It came despite Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice-president, warning that the EU could ultimately suspend parts of the Brexit trade deal and hit British products with tariffs should the UK choose to extend the grace period on chilled meats.
In a clear show of defiance, one insider involved in the joint committee that oversees the Northern Ireland Protocol told The Telegraph: “David very clearly said he wasn’t taking that off the table.”
Lord Frost also rebuffed EU calls for the UK to solve the row by signing up to a Swiss-style veterinary agreement which would require it to follow the bloc’s food safety rules as they change over time in a process known as “dynamic alignment”.
Over the years, British food and veterinary standards have become more strict than those of the EU, so it is no surprise that Lord Frost is sticking to his guns.
The démarche from the United States upset the DUP leader in Northern Ireland — Edwin Poots — and some Conservative MPs in Westminster.
On Thursday, June 10, the Daily Mail reported:
New DUP leader Edwin Poots laid into Joe Biden today after the US president intervened in Northern Ireland politics with a rebuke for Boris Johnson over the EU ‘sausage war’.
Hardliner Mr Poots accused the Democrat of trying to drive ‘a coach and horses through the Good Friday Agreement’ that guarantees sectarian peace in Northern Ireland.
The US President instead used his diplomats to express ‘great concern’ over the conflict centred on post-Brexit trade rules agreed last year by both sides, which the UK is now seeking to change, the Times reported today.
The UK is now at loggerheads with the EU over rules governing the import of chilled goods like sausages into Ulster under the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed six months ago.
The US is said to have issued a ‘demarche’ to Britain, an official diplomatic censure not normally used against allies, especially those as close as the two nations.
The United States was said to have ‘strongly urged’ Britain to ‘stay cool’ and reach an agreement, even if that meant making ‘unpopular compromises’.
The White House tried to row back from the row today, insisting the bust-up had been overplayed, but not before the president was branded ‘senile’ by a Tory Brexiteer …
… an anonymous Tory MP told Politico: ‘America should remember who their allies are… unfortunately he’s (Biden) so senile that he probably won’t remember what we tell him anyway.
‘Unless an aide is listening I’m not sure he’s going to remember for very long.’
The Express had more from anonymous Conservative MPs:
One told Express.co.uk: “The cognitive decline of the American President appears to mirror the decline of the special relationship.
“I don’t actually believe this is Biden doing this.
“He’s lost the plot again. Somebody is pulling his strings because he’s senile and just hasn’t got it – if he ever had it.”
Another angry Conservative told this website the US was picking fights with the wrong people.
They said the Biden administration had issued a rebuke to the UK, one of America’s oldest allies, quicker than it had taken action against Iran or China.
“He’s talking to the wrong people on this one I’m afraid,” the MP said.
The Gateway Pundit picked up on the story:
Joe Biden’s first trip abroad is turning into an utter disaster as the senile sock puppet offends our closest allies and endangers the peace process in Northern Ireland with his incompetent dementia …
On June 10, the Prime Minister and Biden met privately at St Michael’s Mount, a 17th-century castle on an island just off the coast of Cornwall.
The Daily Mail reported that Boris downplayed the disagreement:
Boris Johnson tonight insisted Joe Biden did not rebuke him over the Northern Ireland situation during their first face-to-face talks – as the White House tried to cool a furious row.
The PM revealed that the US president avoided reading the riot act over the Brexit standoff when they met in Cornwall this afternoon.
But he said there is ‘common ground’ between the UK, America and the EU that solutions must be found to the Northern Ireland protocol issues.
The Express quoted him as saying:
So it’s a relationship, you can call it the ‘deep and meaningful relationship’, whatever you want, the ‘indestructible relationship’.
It’s a relationship that has endured for a very long time, and has been an important part of peace and prosperity in Europe and around the world.
Emmanuel Macron’s gaffe
Emmanuel Macron ruffled British feathers when he said that Northern Ireland was not part of the United Kingdom.
The Express reported on Macron’s reaction to the sausage war:
Britain has been left frustrated by the EU’s implementation of the mechanism, warning excessive customs checks are having a detrimental impact on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland.
During talks with Mr Macron at the G7 summit, Boris Johnson tried to explain the problems with the Protocol, comparing it to the hypothetical introduction of checks on goods between Toulouse and Paris.
Mr Macron responded by saying there was a difference because Northern Ireland is a separate country to the rest of the UK.
The comments enraged Boris Johnson and led to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab blasting the EU for a lack of “respect”.
According to the newspaper, Macron also threatened a reset of British and French relations:
Emmanuel Macron was among the leaders who visited Cornwall this week for the G7 summit. Mr Macron told Prime Minister Boris Johnson the two countries had common interests, but ties could only improve if he kept his word on Brexit. One source told the Guardian: “The president told Boris Johnson there needed to be a reset of the Franco-British relationship. This can happen provided that he keeps his word with the Europeans.”
Meanwhile, Carrie Johnson took Brigitte Macron and Jill Biden to a performance at the Minack Theatre. Mrs Macron wore espadrilles.
The Queen’s reception
On Friday, June 11, the Queen held a reception at the futuristic green Eden Project for G7 leaders and their spouses. Prince Charles (pictured) and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also attended:
A family photo was taken, where the Queen cracked a joke:
She also hosted G7 leaders in 1977. Among them was Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre, on the far left in the photo below. Valery Giscard d’Estaing and the Queen engaged in conversation. It is unclear why the Queen Mother and Jimmy Carter were holding hands:
Other members of the Royal Family also attended this year’s reception.
The Queen has met nearly every US president since Dwight D Eisenhower. The only one she never met was Lyndon B Johnson.
The Duchess of Cambridge took Jill Biden for a visit to Connor Downs Academy, a primary school in Hayle:
Jill Biden revealed that she knows Prince Harry well, thanks to the Invictus Games.
In a separate event, the Duchesses of Cambridge and Cornwall accompanied the Queen to an event in St Austell, where the monarch cut a cake with a ceremonial sword. This video is a must:
Lighter moments
The G7 security costs were eye-watering:
In addition, the Daily Mail reported that the Royal Navy’s giant new aircraft carrier sailed past the summit venue where the G7 leaders are staying to prove Britain’s power.
A beach party was held on Saturday, June 12. The weather was good:
The G7 family photo this year was socially distanced because of coronavirus:
Elbow bumps replaced handshakes:
However, social distancing disappeared for the flypast by the Red Arrows:
Conclusion
The G7 summit ended on Sunday, June 13.
The French tried to clarify Macron’s remark about Northern Ireland:
Boris announced that the UK would build back better in a ‘gender neutral’, possibly even ‘more feminine’, way.
The nations’ leaders also agreed to counter China’s belt and road policy:
Meanwhile, the sausage war rages on.
The next big British event will be COP26, to be held in Glasgow in November 2021.
On Monday, June 14, 2021, I posted about the launch of GB News, a channel that offers balanced content.
On June 15, Guido Fawkes posted the new channel’s preliminary ratings demographics — 70% male viewers and 62% middle and upper middle class viewers:
Guido wrote (emphasis in the original):
According to BARB figures for the first full day on air, GB News averaged over the 18-hour day 74,000 viewers, just behind Sky News’ 78,000. BBC News was well ahead with 138,000. Andrew Neil’s show drew 150,000 for his hour, down from Sunday’s opening 262,000. Let’s see how things settles down in a few weeks. Today the audio technical problems were noticeably fewer…
GB News has been taking some flak over the past few days. It must be over the target.
Someone in the media sniped at Andrew Neil, the channel’s chairman, who has a weekday evening news roundup:
Unfortunately, advertisers are beginning to withdraw their sponsorship, claiming they had no idea their adverts were being shown on GB News. How can that be?
Kopparberg Cider (never heard of it) was the first:
Guido’s post says that Koppaberg pulled their ads because of an appearance by Nigel Farage on Dan Wootton’s first nightly show:
In a bizarre business move, Swedish cider company Kopparberg has suspended all their GB News advertising after a left-wing Twitter user complained they’d hosted Nigel Farage as a guest. Guido has no doubt Kopparberg will also be suspending ads for … ITV and Sky, who have all interviewed Nige’ on numerous occasions…
Nivea is another former sponsor:
Nivea has also apparently announced a boycott, though Guido’s altogether less familiar with brands of moisturiser. Imperial Leather moisturiser seems an appropriate alternative brand…
Guido has contacted Kopparberg for comment.
Then came Ovo Energy:
The thread received this reply:
ITV News must have been rubbing their hands with glee. It’s hard to discount the possibility that the main channels want GB News to fail:
ITV’s article listed more former sponsors (emphases mine):
An Ikea spokesperson told iNews the company “has not knowingly advertised on GB News” and has suspended all paid display advertising while it investigates.“We have safeguards in place to prevent our advertising from appearing on platforms that are not in line with our humanistic values and vision to side with the many people,” they added.
“We are in the process of investigating how this may have occurred to ensure it won’t happen again in future, and have suspended paid display advertising in the meantime.”
Beer producer Grolsch said in response to a message from a campaigner it would “do everything we possibly can” to stop its adverts appearing on the channel.
The controversy comes from the channel’s aims to fight “cancel culture” and present news to audiences that in their view are not reflected in the current British broadcast media landscape.
ITV says that a left-wing campaigning organisation is behind the boycott:
Stop Funding Hate, which has been campaigning to get businesses to pull adverts from GB News said OVO Energy, Ikea, Nivea, the Open University and Grolsh have also all reportedly stopped working with the channel.
Andrew Neil had a go at Ikea, as did one of his followers:
What is wrong with the content and ‘values’ of GB News?
Did advertisers object to the Who’s Roger Daltrey’s take on today’s culture?
Were they upset with Andrew Neil’s ‘Woke Watch’ which explored the new culture at the National Trust?
Neil did take issue with the anti-lockdown protesters who chased the BBC’s Nick Watt in London on Monday afternoon:
The following are Wednesday’s stories on GB News. What is objectionable?
There is a story on council tax hitting those in northern England more than those in London:
A Labour MP criticised the Home Secretary Priti Patel for not helping legal immigrants more:
Liz Truss MP talked about Britain’s new trade deal with Australia:
Sajid Javid MP, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and former Home Secretary, explained why he would like to see the increase of the legal marriage age to 18:
Where is the problem?
Guido Fawkes alleges that an ex-BBC producer could be behind the advertising boycott:
Her company has allegedly created a website, Boycott GB News.
Guido’s post says:
The website BoycottGBNews.org, which has spent the last 24 hours celebrating various corporate boycotts, says it is a “campaigning website from Ripples”. A quick search of Companies House shows Ripples Campaigning was co-founded, and is run, by Louise Wikstrom. Louise, who appears to be their only employee, was a senior content producer at BBC Worldwide for three years.
He included a photo from her Facebook page indicating that she is a supporter of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Guido adds (emphases in the original):
Co-conspirators may have theories as to why someone closely linked to the BBC’s commercial arm might want GB News to fail?
… Whilst Guido hadn’t heard of Ripples, it’s clearly a petition site exclusively for left-wingers and FBPEers. They laughably claim that due to their petitions, they prevented: a cut to universal credit; MPs receiving a £3,000 pay rise; an extension of the furlough scheme; and preventing the government from “breaking international law” on Brexit. These past claims are clearly absurd. Their latest busy-bodying attempt is far more malicious…
In closing, I have bought print advertising in the past. There is no way that anyone buying advertising doesn’t know what is going on. It isn’t done independently. I was told what publication to contact for my employer’s ad and how to negotiate the price.
It is disingenuous for these sponsors to say that advertising was placed without their permission. That cannot happen. Yet, if you read their statements, they all claim they did not know they were advertising on GB News.
No doubt Andrew Neil will know how to deal with this. I wish him all the best.
On Monday, June 14, Prime Minister Boris Johnson postponed Freedom Day from Monday, June 21 to Monday, July 19.
Quelle surprise!
Although the data for hospitalisations and deaths look better than ever thanks to the vaccine rollout, SAGE modelling shows that if figures of cases — positive tests — continue to increase ‘exponentially’, then we could be in for a big problem:
However, the reality is more like this:
Incredibly, Britons support the delay:
Protest at Downing Street
Earlier in the afternoon, when it became clear that Boris was going to delay England’s reopening, a protest took place outside of Downing Street.
The BBC’s Nick Watt got caught up in it on his way to the mid-afternoon press briefing for journalists. I have no idea why the crowd harassed him, but the Metropolitan Police did not seem bothered:
Coronavirus briefing
Boris held his televised coronavirus briefing at 6 p.m.
Boris should have had Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, go to Parliament first to make this announcement, then give his press conference. Hancock poled up in the House of Commons two hours after Boris’s press conference. More on that below.
At the coronavirus briefing, Boris was accompanied by Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty. Here are the highlights:
Sure, just as he announced June 21 would be a few months ago. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Some restrictions have been lifted for weddings and funerals:
The delay is partly because of the Delta variant from India:
Sure thing, Chris. By July, there could be another variant:
Even though Boris is trying to keep us hopeful, there is no way we would open in two weeks’ time instead of four:
This is because — as has been explained at previous coronavirus briefings — it takes four weeks for a full cycle of effects to complete before a decision can be made: cases, hospitalisations, deaths.
Keep in mind that our vaccination programme has been wildly successful. The elderly and vulnerable have had their second shot and 18-24 year olds are now invited to get their first inoculation.
The vaccines used thus far — AstraZeneca and Pfizer — are said to be highly effective against the virus, especially after two injections:
One of the three men said that we would have to ‘learn to live with this virus’. We know that, fellas, so open up.
We know that people are going to die, just as they do from flu:
That’s exactly what they said in April.
Labour are quite happy with an extension of restrictions. No surprise there:
Matt Hancock’s statement in the House of Commons
Matt Hancock announced the delay in the Commons that evening at 8:30.
Once again, the Government evaded going to Parliament first, followed by the media and public.
The Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was not happy. This is not the first time Hoyle has reprimanded Hancock:
Sir Lindsay said that he is ready to arrange a private meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss these continuing evasions of Parliament:
Hancock said:
That tweet is spot on. In March 2020, it was about ‘squashing the sombrero’ of hospital admissions, as Boris put it.
Then we had the rest of the list in that tweet.
Now it seems to be about zero COVID.
That’s quite a leap.
Hancock’s statement and the subsequent debate are available on Hansard. Excerpts follow. All MPs below are Conservative.
Jeremy Hunt MP, the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and former Health Secretary, said (emphases mine):
May I start by saying that I totally agree with your expression of disappointment, Mr Speaker, that in a parliamentary democracy Parliament heard about this news after the media, and much as I respect my right hon. Friend it should be the Prime Minister who is here this evening?
I happen to support these measures and the caution the Government are showing, but may I suggest to my right hon. Friend that one of the reasons for the disappointment many people feel is the use of words like “irreversible”? Tonight, Sir Patrick Vallance said that we will be living with covid for the rest of our lives. If there is a vaccine-busting variant that threatens another 100,000 lives, these measures will not be irreversible, and we have a duty to be completely honest with people about the bumpiness of the road ahead. So may I urge the Health Secretary to be as cautious with the language we use as he rightly is with NHS bed capacity?
Mark Harper is one of the few MPs who wants England to open up now. He said:
Before I ask the Secretary of State my question, I should just say—as a former Government Chief Whip, it does not give me any great pleasure to do so—that I wholly associate myself with your remarks earlier, Mr Speaker. This statement should have been made to this House by the Prime Minister before it was made to the media. I hope that we do not see a recurrence of it and I wish you well in your meeting with him.
The Secretary of State has set out that it is not the Government’s policy to get to zero covid—indeed, that is not possible. Can he say whether it is the Government’s policy to maintain a low prevalence of this virus? If it is not, can he confirm the Prime Minister’s sentiments today that 19 July is a terminus date, and can he rule out bringing back restrictions in the autumn and winter when we see an inevitable rise in what is a respiratory virus?
Hancock replied:
Well, it is not inevitable—I do not think it is inevitable. It may happen, but it is not inevitable because we also have the planned booster programme to strengthen further the vaccination response. But it is absolutely clear, based on all the clinical advice that I have seen, that a goal of eradication of this virus is impossible. Indeed, there is one part of this country that tried it for a bit in the summer and found it to be impossible. Therefore, we must learn to live with this virus and we must learn how we can live our normal lives with this virus, so I reflect the Prime Minister’s words, which, of course, I concur with entirely, on 19 July. Our goal is to make sure that we get as much vaccination done between now and then—especially those second doses—to make sure that we can open up safely, even if there is a rise in cases, by protecting people from hospitalisation and especially from dying of this awful disease.
Steve Brine was, rightly, unhappy:
Last week, the Secretary of State told me:
“Our goal…is not a covid-free world…the goal is to live with covid”.—[Official Report, 7 June 2021; Vol. 696, c. 678.]
Well, you could have fooled me, and many of our constituents. There is dismay out there tonight. The reopening of the wedding industry is not a meaningful reopening and I think it is cruel the way some are being misled. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend have been very clear today that 19 July is not a new “not before” date but an end to all this, so will the Secretary of State tell the country his assessment of risk and personal responsibility and whether he feels that as a country we remotely have that right at this time?
Hancock replied (in part):
Once we have the offer of a vaccine to everybody, and once we have protected and mitigated the large part of that risk, we do need to move back to a world based on personal responsibility. That is right, and that is where we intend to go. I think that we have made steps already in that direction in steps 1, 2 and 3. This country is freer than almost any other in Europe in terms of our economy and of our society. That is partly because of the very rapid vaccination effort here, but I hope that my hon. Friend can take from that the direction we intend to go.
Peter Bone made excellent points on the Government’s disrespect for the Commons:
I am sure, Mr Speaker, that the Secretary of State for Health heard what you said at the beginning of this statement. May I ask the Secretary of State how we got ourselves into this position? He has been very good at coming to the House and making statements on covid, but on the biggest, most important day, the press were given an embargoed statement at 3 o’clock and the Prime Minister had a big showy press conference at 6, yet he could not be bothered to turn up until 8.30. This is a clear breach of the ministerial code. How did it happen? Who thought it was a good idea, and who actually broke the ministerial code?
Hancock had little to say in response but said he would continue answering questions.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown asked on what basis the decision to delay was made. Hancock said:
… Central to the judgment today is the fact that we are seeing a rise in hospitalisations, especially over the past week, and especially among those who are unvaccinated or have just had a single jab. Those people are not largely those who are unvaccinated out of choice; it is those who are unvaccinated because they have not yet had the opportunity because they are younger.
Until about a week ago, hospitalisations were basically flat. We thought that the link might have been completely broken between cases and hospitalisations or that it might be a lag. Sadly, hospitalisations then started to rise. For deaths, we have not yet seen that rise, which I am very pleased about; hopefully they will never rise, in which case the future will be much easier. It may still be that there is an element of it that is a lag, and we will be looking out for that very carefully over the couple of weeks ahead, but nevertheless our goal is to get those vaccines done in the five weeks between now and 19 July in order to make sure that this country is safe. I will commit to publishing anything further that we can that underpinned the decision, but I can honestly say to my hon. Friend that most of it is already in the public domain.
The morning after with talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer and guests
On Tuesday, June 15, Israel ditched its mask mandate:
They vaccinated quicker than the UK, which they could do as a much smaller country:
TalkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer interviewed three interesting guests, whose videos are all worth watching.
Clearly frustrated by this delay, she asked her audience about their mood:
She opened her show with an editorial on selfishness, because many people say that her civil liberties stance is ‘selfish’. She turned the tables on her accusers:
She interviewed David Paton, the Professor of Industrial Economics Nottingham University Business School. He has been running his own models and studying the national statistics since the early days of the pandemic last year.
This is his take. He observes that we are doing much better than SAGE models suggest:
He also told Julia that we are doing much better than the SAGE models purport:
Next up was Hugh Osmond, the founder of the Punch Taverns chain. He said that the medical experts wanted to remove all joy from our lives. He also pointed out that hundreds of pubs have closed because of the government’s handling of the pandemic and that if the pub summer season is short this year, hundreds more will go to the wall by the end of 2021:
Julia’s next guest was Mark Harper MP, chairman of the parliamentary Covid Recovery Group, quoted in the aforementioned Hansard excerpt. I agree with him in that these restrictions might never end:
He cannot understand why the Government is not more positive about the success of the vaccine rollout. He also discussed the negative fear-mongering from the media. Note the reply tweet which is spot on re the G7 get-togethers:
Julia’s third guest in her coronavirus segment was barrister Francis Hoar, who has been anti-lockdown from the start:
Before his interview, he reiterated his concern about increased government control via a (Chinese style) social credit system:
He also retweeted the following:
This appears to be a quote from Sir Charles Walker MP (Conservative), who is also against lockdowns:
It is hard to disagree with him as the Government keeps moving the goalposts:
Francis Hoar told Julia Hartley-Brewer that Boris looked as if he had been taken hostage at last night’s coronavirus briefing and that he is deeply concerned about the future of young people today because of continuing restrictions. He is very much a supporter of having our personal freedoms restored yesterday:
Conclusion
I really do hope that England reopens on July 19. I wanted the nation to reopen on June 21.
However, if it does not, then it is unlikely to reopen until Spring 2022. That could be June 2022.
My reasoning is as follows. September is the month when schools reopen, so that is a risk factor. Then comes flu season when coronavirus will worsen. The experts and the Government will say that we shouldn’t have big Christmas celebrations at home, in the pub or in a restaurant because it’s just too risky. Winter is always a bad time for illness, and we don’t want to overburden the NHS, so we have to wait until sometime during the springtime.
Therefore, if reopening does not take place on July 21, 2021, then the next possible date is between mid-March (after the Cheltenham Festival, likely to be a ‘pilot’ event) and June 2022.
I hope I am wrong. I truly do.
On Sunday evening, June 13, 2021, Andrew Neil’s GB News channel (Freeview 236) launched in the UK.
Andrew Neil has had a long career in broadcast and print journalism, having helped launch Sky News in the UK. He presented political programmes for the BBC for many years and is also chairman of The Spectator.
The satirical magazine Private Eye refers to him as Brillo because of his hair.
The channel began broadcasting at 8 p.m., with a one-hour introduction from Neil laying out the agenda and introducing the viewing audience to its presenters and regional reporters:
Neil was broadcasting from London, rather than his home in the south of France, as he has done during the pandemic for Spectator TV.
My far better half and I watched this and one hour of Dan Wootton’s show, which followed at 9 p.m.:
Dan Wootton’s show had a few glitches, with guests’ online connections dropping and a synch problem between video and audio.
Nonetheless, the channel’s first night ratings were good:
Their audience share was treble that of Sky News:
Guido Fawkes posted a summary of the reviews in the press. Incidentally, Guido’s Tom Harwood resigned a few months ago to become the Westminster correspondent for GB News.
Guido’s post says, in part (emphases in the original):
It’s all systems go for GB News. Opening with a one hour mission statement from Chairman Brillo (from a tiny, under-lit set which someone on Twitter described as looking like “the inside of a PlayStation“), the fledging news channel finally started broadcasting at 8pm last night. Inevitably, there were teething problems: dodgy cuts, out of sync audio, odd camera angles etc etc. Dark clothes against a dark set just doesn’t work visually. Television is hard.
The aesthetic problems will undoubtedly be ironed out over time. For now, the initial reaction from social media and the punditry went about as you’d expect; Owen Jones tried to dunk on it, the Telegraph gave it four stars. Here’s the full round-up:
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- The Guardian wasted no time in writing it off. No doubt reviewer Stuart Jeffries beamed ear-to-ear as he called it “utterly deadly stuff”, and declared he “give[s] it a year” before it’s taken off-air. He gave it one star, obviously.
- The Times were more generous: three stars for a channel which “may yet bite“, though marking it down for the obvious technical shortcomings. A running theme amongst most reviews…
- The Telegraph’s four star review praised its “no sneering” attitude, and that in spite of the glitches, “GB News is already speaking [the] language” of those frustrated by lockdown. They also made the point that opening with Dan Wootton was probably a mistake, given his opening diatribe about lockdown: “What the channel cried out for was the firmest hand on the tiller from the go. If you were unsure about GB News’s claims of impartiality, you needed Brazier or McCoy to take your hand on the first night. Wootton will have scared a few nervous horses” …
GB News were pleased to say launch night saw them average 164,400 viewers with Sky News garnering only 57,000 viewers. Can they surpass Sky News regularly?
I hope so. My better half thought it was too amateurish. As Guido says, ‘Television is hard’, especially on launch night. I will definitely be tuning in when BBC Parliament is showing a rerun.
Speaking of Parliament, Conservative MP David Jones liked it:
The channel also has half-hourly weather forecasts from the Met Office:
A live stream is on their website. Selected videos are posted there and on YouTube.
GB News took well over a year to reach its launch:
Their signature tune came first:
Investors had to be found:
Britons were eager for a news channel that represents their interests:
On January 28, 2021, Dan Wooton left talkRADIO for GB News.
A week later, people were attempting to boycott a channel that hadn’t even launched, including Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project:
This was Andrew Neil’s response:
At that time, Neil wrote an article for The Express explaining why he was launching a new channel (emphases mine):
I’m proud to be the chairman of GB News and, as you may have read, I have left the BBC after 25 years to host a nightly programme on the channel.
I’m doing it because I believe the direction of news debate in Britain is increasingly woke and out of touch with the majority of its people.
I believe our national conversation has become too metropolitan, too southern and too middle-class.
Some journalists and commentators seem too confident that their liberal-left assumptions must surely be shared by every sensible person in the land.
But many of those same sensible people are fed up.
They feel left out and unheard.
There’s a restlessness, a sense that they’re being talked down to; that much of the media no longer reflects their values or shares their concerns.
GB News is aimed squarely at those people.
The Mail‘s Michael Crick empathised and had a go at Jolyon Maugham:
The channel began attracting broadcasting talent: Sky News’s Colin Brazier, Channel 4’s Liam Halligan, the BBC’s Simon McCoy, conservative commentator Mercy Muroki and Times Radio’s Gloria De Piero (also a former Labour MP and presenter on an ITV breakfast show).
By April 27, Rupert Murdoch decided not to launch a similar rival channel, News UK:
At least one journalist is rankled that GB News has overseas funding:
On May 21, Press Gazette revealed more about GB News:
The channel’s director of news, John McAndrew, is a 25-year industry veteran who has worked for the BBC, Sky News, ITN and NBC.
Interviewed by Press Gazette three days ahead of the channel’s launch, he said: “My view of our channel, and certainly how it’s going to be, is that it will be a very warm, inclusive channel where disagreements will be had, tough subjects will absolutely be taken on, but they’ll be taken on in a classy and courteous fashion.
“What this won’t be is a hate-filled divisive shout-fest that some people seem to have characterised it as, which is 180 degrees away from where we want to be.”
Speaking to the FT Future of News conference Neil revealed that GB News plans to launch in other countries after the UK and has been looking at Spain and Eastern Europe. He said: “They will be distinctive news channels for distinctive markets. We still believe news is national.”
On May 25, Ryan Bourne from the Cato Institute wrote a column for Conservative Home about the channel:
… it’s perfectly within the Ofcom rules to build a news channel that will run different stories or perspectives – and Neil wants to run “good news” stories and shift away from assuming every problem has a government solution. You are allowed to hire, as GB News has, card-carrying conservatives, ex-Labour MPs or people from outside of London with very different assumptions in thinking about what news is important. And, yes, you are free to have colourful presenters with attitude to liven up discussions, provided you still showcase various perspectives.
Why, then, are some on the left so afraid of this pluralism? Maybe they don’t accept biases exist on other news channels (Channel 4 News, really?), and so think any stated attempt to counter them is retrogressive. Perhaps they simply fear a politically strengthened conservatism. For others, no doubt, there is a concern that the Government’s mooted appointment of Paul Dacre to Ofcom is a precursor to watering down impartiality rules as well.
But given that no such policy has been signalled, and we have not yet seen GB News in action, we must judge them at their word. Neil himself thinks, rightly, that a “British Fox” riding roughshod over Ofcom rules just wouldn’t be successful. “Overwhelmingly, Brits value impartiality and accuracy and, during recent years, in fact, the proportion of Brits thinking the BBC and ITV provide an impartial service has fallen.” GB News is keen to harness that particular audience, yes. But having spoken to numerous staffers, they are determined to avoid political bias, and to be robust in providing respectful disagreement more broadly too.
The Evening Standard‘s Insider posted an in-depth article on June 10. Susannah Butter’s piece covers a lot of ground, including on the channel’s investors.
This seems to have been the initial title (h/t Guido Fawkes reader who posted it):
Susannah Butter interviewed Andrew Neil, who had returned from France and was quarantining:
Neil is speaking to me from quarantine in West London, having recently returned from his house in the Cote d’Azur where he has been for the past year with his wife, Swedish engineer and communications executive Susan Nilsson, 52. They married in 2015 and Neil has 14 godchildren but no children of his own. He is straight-talking if occasionally gently cantankerous, saying he only agreed to speak because I “caught him at a weak moment” – and he wants to get one thing clear: GB News is not the British Fox News. “That is an easy, inaccurate shorthand for what we are trying to do. In terms of format we are like Fox but we won’t be like Fox in that they come from a hard right disinformation fake news conspiracy agenda. I have worked too long and hard to build up a journalistic reputation to consider going down that route.” There is a “strong editorial charter written into everybody’s contracts saying that if they spread fake news and conspiracy theories they will face disciplinary action”. Neil’s hope is not to destroy the other channels, more to provide variety and raise the bar. “We are in a competitive environment they know that. I suspect [our rival TV channels] will up their game, that’s fine, the only winner is the viewer.”
This is how the channel began:
GB News was not Neil’s idea – the founders are Andrew Cole and Mark Schneider who both come from a business background – but Neil has been wanting to do something like this for a long time …
Cole and Schneider contacted Neil last summer when he was “in the middle of rather, err, meandering negotiations with the BBC”. His interview show had been cancelled and Politics Live was taken off air; he has said that “what [the BBC] did was unnecessary and I left with a heavy heart… but what’s done is done.” By September he was convinced because he “rather liked the idea of being chairman as well as prime time presenter. At The Spectator, my pride and joy, I have a business angle too, as chairman”.
Early hires include former Associate Editor of The Sun Dan Wootton and The Apprentice’s Michelle Dewberry, who was a vocal Brexit supporter.
Piers Morgan will not be joining the GB News lineup, at least for now:
“It would be nice to have him,” says Neil who is in discussions with Morgan about joining and adds diplomatically: “But he’s got his own idea of what he is worth and we have a slightly different idea of what he’s worth. He is in a lucky situation because ITV are continuing to pay him a tonne of money so he doesn’t have to do anything in the short run. I don’t think he’s going to go anywhere else in the UK. If he has a huge American offer that’s a different matter. No one in the UK can compete with that but if he’s going to do more UK news TV I hope it will be with us.”
The channel will have a regular five-minute feature called ‘Woke Watch’:
Neil enjoys its alliterative title and says while he is “poking fun”, he is seriously concerned about its implications. “Cancel culture is insidious, it stands against everything we have stood for since the enlightenment onwards and that is why it is serious,” he says. “The original meaning of woke was somebody who was aware of social justice issues and who can complain about that? But it is not about social justice anymore, it is about conformity of thinking and it exists in many of our elite institutions from NGOs to the National Trust and parts of our media. Of course it is making huge inroads into our places of higher education. It is not the view of the British people but if it is the view of all these elites in favour of it could become very powerful.”
… He takes a breath. “Look this is a five minute segment in an hour long show but it will be an important part of the output. Humour is a good weapon especially when you are up against po-faced people who take themselves too seriously.”
The channel’s output will target those living outside Britain’s metropolitan areas:
GB News aims to attract two kinds of viewers, people who already watch the news and “may be a bit unhappy with the existing channels” and people who have stopped watching or don’t. “GB News will be more non-metropolitan than existing channels, more provincial which is a good thing. The provincial voice has not been powerful enough in Britain. We are for people who think the existing channels don’t quite represent how they see things.”
Neil discussed the channel’s investors:
Neil says they were overwhelmed with offers of funding but were selective about which ones they accepted. He wants to talk about their leading investor, the Discovery Channel, but money has also come from Sir Paul Marshall, a Brexiteer hedge fund manager and founder of the Right-leaning opinion site UnHerd, and Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm. Legatum’s chairman Christopher Chandler, a New Zealand-born billionaire and international financier, is a partner of Legatum Group, a funder of the separate Legatum Institute, a Mayfair-based think tank which is dedicated to finding “pathways to prosperity” and was one of the most prominent advocates for a hard Brexit.
Neil will only say that he “didn’t want any sovereign wealth fund money”. “I didn’t want stuff from Abu Dhabi or Qatar. I said I’d take Norwegian wealth fund money because I don’t think we would be worrying about them but they weren’t offering. And I was reluctant to take money from investors who see themselves as the next Rupert Murdoch because I have already had one Rupert Murdoch in my life. That ended 26 years ago and I have never seen him since. At this stage in my life I am not having another one.”
Neil, quite rightly, does not understand why people would object to the name GB News:
“I am not sure why calling it GB News would be awkward,” he says, responding to those who have objected to the name. “We are British, I am British; I don’t think there is any embarrassment in it. Indeed it is the opposite, we are proud to be British. We will be fair and accurate but we won’t start out from that default position among the incumbents that whatever Britain does must be useless. That was heightened by the Brexit debate and we don’t want to reflect that. We will report all the faults and weaknesses of this country but we also take a certain pride in being British and our successes, the vaccine rollout being one example.”
All this patriotism is well and good but doesn’t Neil now live mainly in France? “This is my country, just because I don’t live here full time anymore doesn’t mean I don’t care,” he says.
Neil’s regular one-hour show will also have a segment called ‘Media Watch’:
“All journalists get things wrong and it is important that we move to put them right quickly and put our hands up and apologise. We have a go at politicians for not admitting their mistakes and then we do the same thing.” GB News will not be immune from Media Watch.
The channel will not be featuring a blockbuster interview immediately:
They have actually decided against launching with a big interview, “because then the story becomes the interview and I would much rather the story becomes the channel, we will get to the interview”. “Times Radio launched with a big interview with Boris Johnson. We’ve decided not to go down that route.”
Neil is not yet ready to retire:
It all sounds like a lot of work – does Neil ever want to retire? “You are right. Lockdown has made me appreciate the virtues of retirement or at least semi-retirement more than I thought I might. I thought I had one more big gig in me and this is it. If we can make a success of GB News that’s when I’ll declare victory and go home.” I doubt he would disappear though. He says: “I would continue to do the odd bit of TV and writing and I certainly want to keep going with The Spectator. It’s quite good at some stage to get to a situation where you can do whatever you want to do from wherever you want to be.”
I ask Neil, one of the best interviewers in the business, if I have left anything out? “I think you know more than enough,” he says. “Can I go now?”
Although Neil very much enjoyed his 25 years at the BBC and was particularly grateful to the help and support from the staffers there, he has objected to some of the recent programming output. On May 30, The Express reported:
Mr Neil has never shied away from controversy on or off screen during his time at the broadcaster.
Never was this more clear than when he called the BBC out – while working for the broadcaster – for airing a specially crafted version of Horrible Histories, using archive episodes to create a song to mark the day the UK left the EU …
Mr Neil commented: “This is anti-British drivel of a high order.
“Was any of the licence fee used to produce something purely designed to demean us?”
On June 11, Simon McCoy discussed his departure from the BBC and revealed that he voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The Telegraph reported:
“People had whiplash by 2 o’clock. Because for three hours it was: ‘Oh, he’s leaving, the A4 Royal watcher, how sad.’ And then, ‘The b—–’s going to GB News! What a right-wing gammon.’” He gives a mock sigh. “I was rather enjoying a couple of hours of adulation.”
Some valiantly tried to give McCoy the benefit of the doubt, but hang on: “I think it’s interesting that people think: ‘He’s gone to GB News to balance it out because he’s a leftie BBC journalist.’ I’m certainly not.” He’s even willing to lay his cards on the table: yes, Simon McCoy voted Leave …
When he talks about Brexit, it’s in measured tones. “We’re a Brexit country. I do think we need to embrace it and, for all its faults, we’ve got to make it work.”
He joined GB News partly because he fancied the challenge: “I loved the BBC; the job was great, but I just thought, ‘Here I am, nearly 60 – do I want to stay here, probably not getting any further? Or do I want to try something new?’”
And he also has a conviction, after 15 years at Sky News and 17 years at the BBC, that those news providers are focusing on the wrong things. “If you watch other bulletins you’ll know very much what’s happening in Idlib or Tel Aviv or Washington. This is about the UK,” he says.
“Rather than obsessing with what’s happening abroad, let’s just look at what’s happening within the UK. While I don’t want to sound jingoistic or insular or Little Englander, I think we could all benefit from just knowing about our own country a little more.”
Neil Oliver, a Scot who presents television programmes on archaeology, is fiercely pro-Union and a vocal critic of the SNP’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. He will have his own GB News show. The Express carried the story:
Last month, the BBC’s veteran presenter of a string of history shows, Mr Oliver, was announced as having joined the lineup.
The archaeologist and historian has become a central voice in Scottish politics and, like Andrew Neil who he will work alongside, is a fierce critic of Nicola Sturgeon.
He has previously accused the Scottish First Minister of “making a fool of Scotland” and said she had made him “sick to my stomach”…
He talked of history being viewed as the lifetime of a person, and that people today are the children of this person, in this case, the British Isles.
This was vital to understanding how interwoven the devolved nations are, he argued, and explained: “More and more we dare to patronise the place, treat the person like a doddery old soul who cannot cope alone, who might even need to be taken into care.
“To me, the truth is altogether different. This place, these islands have taken care of us since a time beyond the reach of memory. Treated properly, they will continue to do so …
“The story of the British Isles is one every single one of us should know and give thanks for.”
On June 2, The Express reported:
The freelance archaeologist will host a new weekly current affairs and interview programme. Mr Oliver’s show will focus on “the people from all walks of life who make Britain great”, according to the announcement put out by the broadcaster …
Commenting on joining GB News, Mr Oliver said: “My career has always been driven by my fascination with people, whether it’s trying to understand ancient people through archaeology or living ones through journalism.
“Debate in this country has been stifled for so long that GB News feels like opening a window and letting some fresh air, fresh perspectives and fresh voices.
“I never imagined my career would take this turn but I’m hugely excited that it has” …
Before the 2014 independence referendum, Mr Oliver stated in an interview with The Herald, that he was “proud of Britain”.
He also noted his dislike of the forthcoming referendum, saying he found “this kind of internecine squabbling puts my teeth on edge. I would rather that it would just go away – or that it had never happened”.
He went on to say that he “liked the status quo”.
As a result of his comments, when he was appointed President of the National Trust for Scotland, thousands signed petitions calling on him to resign.
In December 2020, Mr Oliver reasserted his apparent personal opposition to Scottish independence, describing the uncertainty caused by the prospect of a second referendum as a “cancerous presence”.
Neil Oliver appeared on Sunday:
On the launch day of GB News, The Express reported that a spokesman for the channel alleged that the BBC was trying to restrict their access to news footage:
Britain’s public service broadcaster was attempting to “ambush” and “damage” Sunday’s launch of the right-leaning television channel, a spokesperson for GB News has claimed. A GB News spokesman said: “This is an ambush by the BBC designed to damage the launch of GB News. It is an attempt to protect their dominance of UK news broadcasting.
“We will fight it.
“And our launch continues.”
This has happened before when the Press Association said in 2010 it was unable to access footage from “single-camera assignments” that were categorised as coming under the ownership of the UK Broadcast Pool.
The UK Broadcast Pool comprises the BBC, Sky News and ITN.
The launch was successful.
True to their pledge, GB News is focusing on what matters to Britons, such as this lady from Birmingham:
In closing, Tom Harwood says that GB News are aware of enhancements that need to be made, including the addition of a live stream on YouTube:
I’m thrilled to bits for GB News and do intend to become a regular viewer.
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
36 Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? 37 If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. 38 If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. 39 So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40 But all things should be done decently and in order.
————————————————————————————
Last week’s post discussed Paul’s instruction that women be silent in church. My post provided as nuanced an explanation as possible, especially the excerpt from Dr Craig S Keener’s work on hermeneutics in the Bible.
In today’s verses, Paul wraps up the directives he has given the Corinthians about worship. Theirs was disorderly and chaotic.
Paul was sarcastic in his letter to the Corinthians more than once. He uses sarcasm once more in verse 36, which John MacArthur interprets as follows (emphases mine):
This is very sarcastic. Whew. He’s saying, “Did you write the Bible?”
See, you are either – listen to this – you are either the one who wrote it, or you are required to submit to it, that’s all. So if you didn’t write it, obey it. Now if you’re not going to obey it, maybe you wrote it. Maybe it doesn’t apply to you; it’s just for everybody else.
“You think you have a monopoly on Scripture?” That’s what he’s saying. “Did it just come to you or from you? You got some special dispensation? If not, if the same Scripture applies to you that applies to everybody else, the same Scripture authored by God, then you have one response: obey.” And I’m telling you, boy, he really calls a halt to all their activity, doesn’t he. “Let’s make it edify.”
Paul says that anyone who thinks he can prophesy (preach) or has spiritual gifts should acknowledge that Paul’s directives come from the Lord (verse 37).
Furthermore, anyone who does not recognise that principle is not recognised (verse 38). The Corinthian church had false teachers who were part of the problem in worship.
MacArthur interprets Paul’s message to the church in Corinth:
He says this: “Look, if the gift is legitimate, they will acknowledge that I speak the Word of God; and if they acknowledge that I speak the Word of God, they will bring that gift into submission to the principles I’ve just spoken. Now if they don’t, it isn’t the true gift.” You see that?
If you go somewhere and they don’t do it by two or three, and they don’t do it in order, and it isn’t interpreted, and prophets don’t speak in this manner, et cetera, et cetera, believe me, they do not acknowledge this as the Word of God; and if they don’t, then they’re not legitimate. So Paul really lays it down. It’s one of the greatest claims Paul ever made to being inspired by God: “The things that I write are the commandments of the Lord.”
Matthew Henry picks up on a crucial spiritual aspect in verse 37:
If he will not own what I deliver on this head to be the will of Christ, he himself never had the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ can never contradict itself if it speak in me, and in them, it must speak the same things in both. If their revelations contradict mine, they do not come from the same Spirit; either I or they must be false prophets. By this therefore you may know them. If they say that my directions in this matter are no divine commandments, you may depend upon it they are not divinely inspired.
Paul concludes his chapter on worship by saying that the men should desire the gift of preaching and to allow the true gift of tongues (verse 39), which is speaking the word of God in a foreign language that can be interpreted — not the pagan-influenced ecstatic gibberish of the Corinthians.
Paul’s final word on the subject is that worship be conducted in a decent and orderly manner (verse 40).
MacArthur explains what decency means in Greek:
“Let all things be done” – all things, all things – “decently.” That is a word that means beauty. Beauty is a word that means harmony; and harmony has to do with the way everything fits together. “Let it all be done in beauty and in order.” Sequence. God is a God of harmony and beauty. God is a God where everything fits together. And God is a God of order, system, order. He says, “Let your service manifest God.”
Paul would commend the Frozen Chosen, those who like decency and order in their worship.
Next time — 1 Corinthians 15:27-34
The Second Sunday after Trinity is June 13, 2021.
These are the readings for Year B.
The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):
Mark 4:26-34
4:26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,
4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.
4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.
4:29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
4:30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?
4:31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;
4:32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
4:33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it;
4:34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
I am starting with the last verse first today, because John MacArthur explains why Jesus did not explain the parables to others outside of His circle:
So, there was a time when Jesus was proclaiming the truth, and they had heard and believed the truth. But there’s been a very interesting turn in the tide of things … In fact, if you go back to verse 11, Jesus says to the disciples and the apostles, “It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive; while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven.” They’re past grace; they’re past forgiveness; they’re past believing.
What has happened is in all these months of ministry in Galilee day after day after day after day, the final verdict of many of the people and the leaders in Galilee is they reject Jesus Christ. Not only do they reject Him, but according to chapter 3, verse 22, they say, “He’s possessed by Beelzebul and cast out demons by the ruler of the demons.” And that’s when it says He began speaking to them in parables.
They made their final verdict, and they rejected Jesus. And now in an act of divine judgment, he cuts them off from any further truth. And so, in regard to the disciples, he speaks to them explaining the parables.
When the crowd gathers, He speaks to the crowd in parables without explanation. From now on, in His ministry in Galilee, He doesn’t explain anything because they have made their final decision. Our Lord’s judgment then is to withhold the light from that generation of Jews in Galilee who had finally rejected Him and were beyond hope …
So, the point is this, the plan is the light will shine, the seed will be sown. For the moment, a judgment has been rendered on those people in Galilee who made their final decision. But just a few chapters later, there are other folks in other places, even in Galilee, as well as later on in Judea to whom they are to go.
But the assumption, when He sends them out in chapter 6, verses 7 to 13, is that they’re going to be rejected. He tells them if they – “If they reject you, just shake the dust off your feet and get out of there.” But that was a kind of a training mission for what would finally be their full commission.
Now, this is in accord with the divine intention. If you go to verse 22, you see that in the next little parable. Nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor has anything been secret that it – but that it would come to light. This is a simple, simple, little concept. People hide things because there’s a certain time that they need to be revealed.
Mark 4 begins with the Parable of the Sower. The Lamp under a Basket follows. The Parable of the Seed Growing and that of the Mustard Seed, today’s reading, follows that.
Jesus discusses the divine plan for the Church, comparing it to someone planting seed (verse 26).
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
The good seed of the gospel sown in the world, and sown in the heart, doth by degrees produce wonderful effects, but without noise (Mark 4:26; Mark 4:26, c.) So is the kingdom of God; so is the gospel, when it is sown, and received, as seed in good ground.
As the sower’s days and nights pass, and he knows not how, the seed sprouts and grows (verse 27), first into a stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head (verse 28).
Henry makes the following comparisons to the word of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit:
1. It will come up; though it seem lost and buried under the clods, it will find or make its way through them. The seed cast into the ground will spring. Let but the word of Christ have the place it ought to have in a soul, and it will show itself, as the wisdom from above doth in a good conversation …
2. The husbandman cannot describe how it comes up; it is one of the mysteries of nature; It springs and grows up, he knows not how,Mark 4:27; Mark 4:27. He sees it has grown, but he cannot tell in what manner it grew, or what was the cause and method of its growth. Thus we know not how the Spirit by the word makes a change in the heart, any more than we can account for the blowing of the wind, which we hear the sound of, but cannot tell whence it comes, or whither it goes. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; how God manifested in the flesh came to be believed on in the world, 1 Timothy 3:16.
3. The husbandman, when he hath sown the seed, doth nothing toward the springing of it up; He sleeps, and rises, night and day; goes to sleep at night, gets up in the morning, and perhaps never so much as thinks of the corn he hath sown, or ever looks upon it, but follows his pleasures or other business, and yet the earth brings forth fruit of itself, according to the ordinary course of nature, and by the concurring power of the God of nature. Thus the word of grace, when it is received in faith, is in the heart a work of grace, and the preachers contribute nothing to it. The Spirit of God is carrying it on when they sleep, and can do no business (Job 33:15; Job 33:16), or when they rise to go about other business …
MacArthur points out the Greek used in verse 28:
I love this, verse 28, “The soil produces crops by itself.” It’s the Greek word automatē, from which we get the English word “automatically.” It’s divinely automatic. How encouraging is that? Regeneration, transformation, spiritual transition, conversion, new birth can’t be produced by anyone or any human means. The whole process is divinely automatic. You can’t start it, and you can’t stop it. And once it starts, it goes to the full.
When the grain matures, the farmer knows it it time to harvest it (verse 29).
MacArthur says that, for believers, the enjoyment of the harvest will be ours forever, not just as part of a church community:
… one way we enjoy the harvest is fellowship, don’t we? This is fellowship. Another way, in eternity in the future, friends for eternity, that we don’t even know now that we’ll meet then. So, forever and ever, we will enjoy the harvest. We’ll taste the harvest.
Jesus then segues into the Parable of the Mustard Seed by asking what can be compared to the Kingdom of God (verse 30). He answers by saying that the mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds (verse 31), yet grows into the greatest of shrubs, able to accommodate nesting birds (verse 32).
MacArthur says that the mustard seed was the smallest known to them:
Now, a mustard seed was the smallest seed that they used in their farming. It wasn’t the actual smallest seed on the planet, but it was proverbial for something small to them because it was the one they were familiar with. Matthew 17:20, “Jesus said, ‘If you have the faith of a grain of mustard seed’” – and so forth. So, that was their proverbial expression for something very small, and it was the size of a grain of sand.
But proportionately, there was nothing that they planted that started that small and became so large. A mustard bush would be up to 15 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. A massive thing to come out of a seed the size of a grain of sand. And what our Lord is saying to them is obvious. There’s no explanation here. The small beginnings, guys, do not give you any indication of where this is going.
Therefore, from small beginnings a great Church will grow and expand, as we saw in the reading from Acts 2 on Pentecost Sunday.
Mark tells us that Jesus spoke to the disciples in parables to the extent that they could understand them (verse 33).
Henry says:
The glory of the Lord was covered with a cloud, and God speaks to us in the language of the sons of men, that, though not at first, yet by degrees, we may understand his meaning; the disciples themselves understood those sayings of Christ afterward, which at first they did not rightly take the sense of. But these parables he expounded to them, when they were alone. We cannot but wish we had had that exposition, as we had of the parable of the sower; but it was not so needful; because, when the church should be enlarged, that would expound these parables to us, without any more ado.
MacArthur offers us a practical application of these two parables:
The promise is the Lord will bless the seed you sow. The Lord will return to you blessing. It doesn’t mean that all the seed you sow will bring about salvation, but what it does mean is that as you are faithful to sow the seed God will be faithful to give you in return. And not just equally. Because at the end of verse 24, “And more will be given to you besides.” And at the beginning of verse 25, “For whoever has, to him more shall be given.” If you’re one of those who has, that is you have eternal life, you have the truth, you have the seed, you will receive not only in measure what you’ve done but far more.
This is Luke 6:38, Jesus said, “Give, and it shall be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” And it will come from men in this life, and from God and spiritual blessing, and in the future eternal blessing.
So, I say we listen obediently and appreciatively because of the promise of reward the Lord has given to us as faithful listeners who let what we hear be known to others …
So, we throw the seed, and we shine the light obediently because of the innate obligation, and appreciatively because of the individual opportunity. Each one of us will receive personally the blessing of God on our faithfulness and much, much, much more than we deserve.
What an encouraging thought to lead us into the week ahead.
May all reading this enjoy a blessed Sunday.
Weeks ago, the UK government announced that June 21 could well be Freedom Day, with confirmation coming on June 14.
This week, not surprisingly, the government and SAGE began backtracking.
Matt Hancock’s testimony
Yesterday, Matt Hancock gave four and a half hours’ worth of testimony to the Health and Social Care Select Committee.
Today, Friday, June 11, talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer picked up on the same lockdown point as I did in my post. They will not hesitate to use it again:
The vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi defended Matt Hancock’s claim that there was never a PPE shortage. Good grief. I watched the debates in Parliament at the time. There definitely WAS a PPE shortage (and not just in the UK):
Dominic Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former special adviser and Matt Hancock’s nemesis, surfaced as expected:
SAGE
Members of SAGE and Independent SAGE want lockdown to stay.
SPI-M is SAGE’s modelling committee, the one with all the dodgy numbers:
Publican Adam Brooks makes an excellent point, although he meant to write ‘without culpability’. The modellers will continue to rake in their salaries:
Here’s another tweet about the dodgy data modelling — disgraceful:
To top it off, card-carrying Communist Susan Michie, a behavioural psychologist and member of SAGE’s SPI-B committee, says that masks and social distancing should be with us forever:
Michie gave the interview to Channel 5 News (the Daily Mail has more):
Carl Vernon analyses it:
Now, Michie is backtracking:
On April 24, the Daily Mail posted a profile of Susan Michie by Peter Hitchens. Excerpts follow (emphases mine):
The super-rich Communist Susan Michie is so militant that her fellow Marxists once searched her baby’s pram for subversive literature.
They lifted the tiny infant out of the way, to check that the future Professor of Psychology was not smuggling ultra-hardline propaganda into a crucial conference.
No wonder that fellow students at Oxford a few years before had called her ‘Stalin’s nanny’.
The 1984 pram-searching incident, disclosed in 2014 by a far- Left website called The Weekly Worker, is far from being the oddest thing about this interesting person.
The oddest thing about her is that she is a senior adviser to Boris Johnson’s Tory Government, a regular participant in the official Sage committee and the SPI-B committee, which have had such influence over the handling of Covid.
Yet despite, or perhaps, because of being very wealthy indeed, she has been a fervent Communist since 1978, and still clings to the Hammer and Sickle long after the collapse of her creed’s regimes from East Berlin to Moscow.
Her favourite place in the world is Havana, infested with secret police spies and one of the last tottering strongholds of Leninist rule.
It is quite possible to argue that Britain has undergone a revolution in the past year: a cultural revolution in which we have put health and safety above liberty in an astonishing way; a political revolution in which Parliament has become an obedient rubber-stamp and opposition has evaporated, while Ministers rule through decrees; and an economic revolution in which millions of previously independent people have become wholly dependent on the state for their wellbeing.
Perhaps, then, we should look for some revolutionaries. For what an opportunity they have been given by the Covid crisis.
Widespread fear of a mysterious plague led millions to seek safety in the arms of the state. But was this just a natural reaction, or was there any encouragement?
A now-notorious document was issued in March 2020 by Sage, called ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’. It concluded that we were not yet frightened enough.
It said: ‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.’ So we needed to be scared a bit more. It recommended: ‘The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.’
Well, most of us can recall such messaging. Wherever can it have come from?
The Government, supposedly led by a liberty-loving conservative, deployed intense and repeated propaganda, about the overwhelming of the NHS. It united us around a sort of worship of care workers.
It cleverly portrayed quarantine measures, from house arrest to mask-wearing, as selfless and generous, so making nonconformists and dissenters appear stupid, selfish and mean …
Susan Michie has not responded to my requests for an interview, either directly to her email or through the press office of University College London, where she works. So I cannot say whether her lifelong belief in Communism, apparently inherited from her equally militant scientist parents and shared with her ex-husband, the former Jeremy Corbyn aide Andrew Murray, has had any influence on her advice.
Hitchens says that Michie advocates a zero-COVID policy, which means we’ll die in penury from permanent lockdown and be told by the state — Chinese style — when we can leave the house:
Vaccines reduce illness, and hence death rates, for all variants. Most young and healthy people are safe from Covid-19, and always have been. Most of the old are now protected from serious illness via the vaccine.
But can it overwhelm the idealists – Utopians in fact – of Zero Covid, a well-organised and active lobby who believe that the virus needs to be eliminated completely?
Susan Michie seems to be a supporter of this idea. On July 30, 2020, she tweeted: ‘To get people out & about, schools back, workplaces open, economy recovering we need #ZeroCOVID.’
On February 24, perhaps recognising that Zero Covid might put some people off, she tweeted: ‘ ‘Maximum suppression’ seems to be a good way of expressing the goal of ZeroCOVID (without getting side tracked into wilful or other misinterpretation).’
Where does this desire for elimination of the virus actually lead? Many people have praised China’s response to Covid. But in reality China still has Covid outbreaks, and responds to them with measures of extraordinary ruthlessness.
It has also used Covid to speed up and strengthen its worrying ‘social credit’ system, which puts everyone under surveillance, rewards conformity and punishes misbehaviour by denying access to the small joys of life.
Freedom is conditional, and the gift of the state and the Communist Party. In Peking, which is virtually Covid-free, citizens must use a smartphone to scan a QR code for every mode of transport. Contact-tracing is constant.
Anyone who leaves or arrives in the city must be tested. As David Rennie, Peking bureau chief of The Economist, recently observed: ‘It’s very hard to know where Covid containment starts and a Communist police state with an obsession with control kicks in.’
The government
The Indian variant is being used as the excuse for not reopening on Freedom Day, June 21:
Julia Hartley-Brewer has exposed the government’s new zero-COVID strategy:
It is thought that restrictions on weddings could be lifted:
Adam Brooks has this to say about Freedom Day:
Travel is still a no-no:
Conclusion
I could write more, but knowing that a Communist is controlling our behaviour and is advising a Conservative government makes me nauseous.
Therefore, in conclusion, there is no good reason for the government to refuse to reopen the nation on June 21. Deaths, even from 2020, are still average. This year, so far, they are below average:
We will find out the government’s latest excuse on Monday, June 14. More to follow.
Over the past several months, interview sessions that the House of Commons select committees have conducted generally concern an aspect of coronavirus.
Their interviews and subsequent reports will feed into a wider inquiry on the pandemic to be held in 2022.
On Wednesday, May 26, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former special adviser Dominic Cummings appeared before the Science and Technology Select Committee for an inquiry that lasted over seven hours.
Cummings’s testimony included allegations that Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, should be fired and that he was a liar.
He agreed to provide evidence by June 4 to the select committee to substantiate those serious allegations, but he never did. Pictured on the right is Jeremy Hunt MP, co-chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee:
TimesRadio interviewed Jeremy Hunt on June 6:
Guido Fawkes has the key quote. Hunt said of the upcoming session with Matt Hancock:
Dominic Cummings made some very serious allegations against [Matt Hancock] in particular, saying that he lied repeatedly. So we will put those allegations to him [Hancock], but you know we haven’t received the written evidence to back those claims up that we were expecting. But we’ll be putting [..] all those allegations to him to give him his rightful chance to respond.
Guido commented (emphasis in the original):
Guido spent about 7 hours watching Cummings insist that the government is an incompetent cabal led by donkeys, and now the same man appears to have forgotten to hand in his homework. Maybe the Select Committee should check if Cummings has decided to upload the evidence to Twitter instead…
I checked Cummings’s Twitter feed today but couldn’t find anything.
Today, June 10, 2021, Matt Hancock appeared before the Health and Social Care Select Committee, co-chaired by Hunt and Greg Clark MP. Other MPs on the committee also asked questions. The co-chairs and the MPs are the same as those on the Science and Technology Select Committee.
The session lasted four and a half hours and is available for replay. Skip over the first four minutes which are in private, then fast forward 15 minutes when they take a break at around 90 minutes in:
Channel 4 also broadcast it:
Guido Fawkes has video clips of and principal points from Hancock’s testimony.
The session also trended on Twitter.
I haven’t listened to all of it yet, so cannot comment. What follows are tweets and excerpts from Guido’s post:
09.35: Greg Clark points out Cummings has missed all deadlines to submit evidence to substantiate his claims made against Hancock during his committee appearance. Cummings has not explained the absence of his submission.
Greg Clark asked Hancock about Cummings’s animosity towards him:
09.36: Hancock denies ever saying something to the PM that he knew to be untrue
09.37: Hancock denies blaming Treasury for blocking purchasing of PPE. Says it is “Not a fair recollection” of the truth.
09.49: Clark: “Did you know that [Cummings] wanted the PM to fire you?”; Hancock: “Yes because he briefed the newspapers at the time”
Questions turned to testing:
10.10: Hancock defends the 100,000 target says it was needed to galvanise the Whitehall machine.
10.12: Hancock claims countries that experienced SARS & MERS were better prepared, though Covid-19 was very different on account of asymptomatic transmission.
Hancock talked about the (duff) modelling numbers:
Hancock’s department had no list of care homes:
I find this next line surprising:
10.29: Hancock stresses that only 1.6% of cases from care homes came from hospitals.
This, too, was surprising:
Contrary to what Cummings said, Hancock said there was a plan early on:
He discussed China:
10:49: Insists that closing the borders last year would have made little difference: “The only way the world could have stopped this virus getting out of China is if China itself had stopped people leaving China.”
11:28: Hancock claims he first heard about asymptomatic spread in January 2020: “I arranged a call with the World Health Organisation. I was told on that call with respect to China this was ‘likely a mistranslation’ […] I bitterly regret that I didn’t overrule that scientific advice.”
Hancock talked about lockdowns.
We should not have been so compliant, because they’ll lock us down again:
With regard to our present situation:
13:31: The Delta/Indian variant now makes up 90% of cases in the UK.
He agreed with Greg Clark on these preliminary conclusions:
One would think that Dominic Cummings watched Matt Hancock’s testimony.
Hancock has agreed to supply the select committee with copies of documentation and data from the early days of the pandemic.
Cummings is now in a position to critique what Hancock said. Many of us await further developments with interest.
An American graduate student has succeeded in getting the Queen’s portrait removed from Magdalen College’s Middle Common Room at Oxford University.
Guido Fawkes was the first to break the story on Tuesday, June 8, 2021:
The story made the Daily Mail‘s front page the following day:
The only detail Guido missed is the fact that the student is American. The Mail‘s article has photographs of the instigator and states (emphases mine):
The motion was brought forward by MCR President Matthew Katzman, a 25-year-old lecturer in computer science who studied at Stanford University and is from Maryland in the USA.
Mr Katzman, the son of top lawyer Scott Katzman, 60, claimed the move did not ‘equate to a statement on the Queen’ but said the painting was being taken down to create ‘a welcoming, neutral place for all members regardless of background, demographic, or views’.
The decision sparked an immediate backlash, with the president of Magdalen College swiftly moving to distance the institution itself from the students involved. It comes amid growing concern at the rise of intolerance and ‘cancel culture’ at British universities.
The president of Magdalen College explained the relationship of the Middle Common Room to the College:
Barrister Dinah Rose, who was appointed president of Magdalen College last year, emphasised that the students were not representative of the college, but supported their right to ‘free speech and political debate’.
In a series of tweets, she said: ‘Here are some facts about Magdalen College and HM the Queen.
‘The Middle Common Room is an organisation of graduate students. They don’t represent the College.
‘A few years ago, in about 2013, they bought a print of a photo of the Queen to decorate their common room.
‘They recently voted to take it down. Both of these decisions are their own to take, not the College’s.
‘Magdalen strongly supports free speech and political debate, and the MCR’S right to autonomy.
‘Maybe they’ll vote to put it up again, maybe they won’t. Meanwhile, the photo will be safely stored.’
She finished: ‘Being a student is about more than studying. It’s about exploring and debating ideas. It’s sometimes about provoking the older generation. Looks like that isn’t so hard to do these days.’
Matthew Katzman should read British history. The Queen — Britain’s head of state — is far from being a colonialist:
Twitter user Samantha Smith said: ‘The Queen was a pioneer of anti-racism in an era of widespread segregation and apartheid. Imagine trying to cancel the reigning monarch’ …
Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union and himself an Oxford graduate, said: ‘The students are perfectly within their rights to remove this painting from their common room, but it is baffling that they associate the Queen with colonialism.
‘I don’t think these students realise how loved the Queen is by the people of the Commonwealth. It is only woke British students who feel offended by it.’
A commenter on Guido Fawkes’s post pointed out:
This is only the middle common room, though, not the undergraduates, still less “the college”. Middle common rooms consist of students drawn from many countries, the greater part of them just in Oxford for a year to do a Masters. A lot of them will be American. Maybe only 20% will be British.
Someone replied to that comment:
That makes it worse. Showing disdain for your host country.
I couldn’t agree more. This is disgusting and discourteous, especially as the Queen is still grieving the loss of her husband.
