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At least one Collins book can be found in nearly every English-speaking household in the UK.
Speaking personally, we have a Collins Bible, Book of Common Prayer and several dictionaries, including the incomparable Collins Robert French Dictionary. In the past, I also bought annual Collins calendar diaries.
What I did not know until reading the recent obituary of Jan Collins, one of the publishing house’s heirs, was that it was started by a Scottish Evangelical.
The Times published Jan Collins’s obituary on February 14, 2022. Jan, who died at the age of 92 on January 29, will be remembered as much for his tennis prowess as his publishing career.
Of Billy Collins, the publishing house’s founder, the obituary states (emphases mine):
Founded in 1819 by Jan Collins’s great-grandfather William Collins, an evangelical Christian, it was known primarily for its printing of Bibles, dictionaries and diaries. In the early Thirties, more than 600,000 Bibles were published annually. One sales jingle declared: “Satan trembles when he sees/Bibles sold as cheap as these.”
Jan Collins joined his family’s business, then called William Collins, after he graduated from Oxford in 1952. He was assigned to the Bible department, located in Glasgow:
At the time it was still the leading publishing house in Scotland, with some 2,500 people employed in its Glasgow printing presses in Cathedral Street, which could produce up to 15,000 books an hour.
The company’s fiction and non-fiction books were published in London:
The general fiction and non-fiction titles division was based in St James’s Place, London, meanwhile, and was being considerably expanded by Collins’s father, Billy Collins, with the addition of bestselling authors such as Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Alistair MacLean and Patrick O’Brian. In 1956 the firm’s last substantial British acquisition was Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly. In 1960, Collins published 576 new editions, the most in the UK.
Jan Collins was responsible for bringing us The Good News Bible. Love it or loathe it, I know several Americans who told me it was the only version of the Bible they could actually read and understand:
After a decade working in the Bible department he hit upon the money-spinning idea of teaming up with the American Bible Society to publish the New Testament in contemporary English, an edition known as Good News for Modern Man. A decade after that, the Old Testament was included and it was known under the title of the Good News Bible, which is still the most popular Bible currently published. More than a million copies were sold in the first year and subsequently nearly a billion copies have been printed throughout the world.
He then turned his attention to dictionaries and the printing presses in Scotland:
Jan Collins also rebuilt the Collins Dictionary business and spearheaded the modern bilingual dictionaries, forging partnerships with Robert in Paris and Mondadori in Italy. In 1971 he was appointed vice-chairman and by the mid-Seventies was in charge of the manufacturing side of the business. He was responsible for moving the entire printing department from Cathedral Street to a new site on the outskirts in Bishopbriggs, which employed 2,000 people.
When his father Billy Collins died in 1976, the atmosphere in the company became turbulent:
Collins was appointed executive chairman of the entire group but within a few years, boardroom tensions developed between the London and Glasgow-based divisions of the company, particularly because of the persistent losses in the print division and differing opinions about possible solutions. There were also questions raised regarding the management style of Jan Collins and, as a consequence, he stepped down in 1979 but remained as non-executive chairman until 1981. At this point, he and his mother sold their shares to Rupert Murdoch and he stepped down as non-executive chairman as well.
Rupert Murdoch ended up buying the company, which is now known as HarperCollins:
Murdoch held 41.7 per cent of the shares. He made a bid to take a controlling interest in William Collins, but was opposed by the new chairman Ian Chapman (obituary, November 30, 2019) and the rest of the board, which included a number of other Collins family members.
Murdoch finally succeeded in taking over the company in 1989, when he merged it with his other publishing holdings in the US and Australia to become HarperCollins, now one of the three biggest English-language book publishers in the world.
Jan Collins had a rareified upbringing in Scotland and England:
William Janson Collins was born in Great Western Terrace, Glasgow, in 1929, son of Sir William “Billy” Collins, who was head of William Collins and the grandson of the founder of the publishing house, and Priscilla Marian Lloyd. Billy Collins was considered one of the last of the benevolent despots in publishing, who scrutinised every aspect of the business. According to one employee, he combined “the necessary elements of the hustler and the showman with the more discreet and urbane attitudes of the worldly gentleman publisher”.
Shortly after Jan’s birth, the Collins family moved to a William Adam mansion on the outskirts of Troon, the favoured Ayrshire seaside resort of Glaswegian millionaires, thanks to its golf courses. The extended Collins family were all passionate sportsmen, which rubbed off on Jan, who apart from golf, took up shooting and tennis. His parents were both talented players and his uncle Ian Collins played at Wimbledon 12 times, making it to the final of the doubles and mixed doubles in the early Thirties. His father was on the All-England Club committee until late in life, while in the late Forties Jan came only one round short of making the championships at Wimbledon.
He was sent to prep school at Ludgrove, and then Eton, where he was All England Racquets champion at 14, in the first XI cricket team and president of Pop, the elite club of Eton prefects. When Collins was 15, he met his wife, Lady Sally Hely-Hutchinson, at the Eton and Harrow cricket match at Lord’s.
Being president of Pop is a huge deal. Allow me to digress for a while with an article by an Old Etonian, Bill Coles, who wrote about the exclusive club for The Express in 2011, the year of its bicentenary. Coles somewhat regretted that he was never elected to be a member:
The Eton Society – or Pop as it’s known – this year celebrates its 200th anniversary and though Prince William and his uncle Earl Spencer will both have been invited to the £250-a-head party in its honour, I will sadly not be among their number.
… At first glance Pop looks like nothing more than a very posh sixth form club. But Eton (with fees of £30,000 a year) is still regarded by many as the top elite school in the country – one that has provided 19 prime ministers (not least our current one) as well as old boys ranging from George Orwell and James Bond author Ian Fleming to Boris Johnson and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. And if Eton is an educational elite then Pop is an even smaller elite within it – one that elects its own members, who form not just an exclusive network but one that doesn’t always admit the members you might expect.
… well they looked like peacocks strutting among a horde of black crows and to a stripling teenager it all seemed rather exotic. Here, in full, was the uniform of an Eton Popper: a black tailcoat with braid piping; spongebag trousers in a houndstooth check; and a starched wing collar with a white (hand-tied) bow tie.
The uniform would usually be capped off with a thick cow-lick of hair, spit-polished black lace-ups pickers), plus a gardenia or a rose in the button-hole. While the rest of us schoolboys had been shoe-horned into grubby black waistcoats the Poppers were allowed to wear any waistcoat they pleased, at least a dozen and you can only imagine the glorious oneupmanship that was involved.
I remember waistcoats of green leather, waistcoats spangled with Pearly King buttons, and even a hideous fur electric pink number. Prince William, when he was a Popper, tended towards the staid and I believe his most daring outfit was a patriotic Union Jack. To all intents and purposes the Poppers don exactly the same sort of clothes that the gentlemen will be wearing at next month’s royal wedding …
When this article appeared, David Cameron was Prime Minister and Boris Johnson was Mayor of London:
Once you realise the sheer showiness of the Pop uniform it is all too easy to understand how David Cameron came to be quite so enamoured with the Bullingdon Club at Oxford. For, if he had been elected into Pop he might never had quite such an urge to dress like a foppish Bullingdon blue-blood (though London Mayor Boris Johnson was in both Pop and the Bullingdon Club). Within Eton, Pop was a self-electing club for the sports stars, which certainly did not include me, and the hearty good guys. There were about 25 of them and they were charged with keeping the 1,300 other boys for such misdemeanours as not being properly dressed, or even “socking” (eating) in the street.
I still recall how, when I was 13, an enormous Popper accosted me in the street for not wearing any cuff links. “Have a pound in my room by lock‑up,” he told me. Ostensibly all this loot went to charity, though doubtless the Poppers were just using it for extra beer money at the school pub, Tap. Speaking to contemporaries who were members, one is struck by the fact that while Pop is exclusive it does not necessarily bother itself with the most opulent surroundings.
“It was a bit like a St James’s club in that boys were put up for election but if there was a single blackball against them then they weren’t in. Things have changed more recently and now the Eton masters have a right of veto. You probably don’t get quite so many bad eggs …
One can see how Jan Collins’s sporting prowess appealed to Pop members:
Pop was predominantly filled with sports buffs and swells and that’s still pretty accurate to this day. It appeals to people who like to dress up as a peacock.” Pop was founded in 1811 and it was originally a debating society and had the name “Popina”, from the Latin for “Tea-Shop” which is where the boys used to meet. In its heyday Pop was the ultimate networking tool and could open the most incredible doors. One can even see Pop’s shadow hanging over Prime Minister Harold Macmillan when he culled half his cabinet during “The Night of the Long Knives” in the late Fifties.
It’s said that Macmillan sacked half his friends from Pop – only to replace them with the other half. Fagging at Eton is now a distant memory but in my time in the Eighties a Popper could fag off any boy on the street, sending him off to do any chore he pleased. I still remember my outrage when a Popper took offence at my smirking face and sent me to Windsor to buy him a postcard for his mother. Another extraordinary aspect of the society was that 50 years ago Poppers were empowered to deliver a “Pop tan” – where reprobate boys would be flogged by every member of Pop …
One Old Etonian told Bill Coles:
One of the strange things about Pop is that it never goes away. You find it cropping up in a lot of Etonians’ obituaries. These are people who may well have won VCs or who are captains of industry – and yet for some reason the fact that they were a member of Pop is seen to be on a par with anything else that they’ve done.
And, lo, we discover that Jan Collins was not only in Pop but also one of its presidents.
Now, back to the rest of the publisher’s life.
He did his National Service as a young officer in the Coldstream Guards. The obituary has a stunning photograph of him in dress uniform.
Jan Collins married Lady Sally Hely-Hutchinson while he was reading English at Magdalen College, Oxford:
while his sporting prowess continued, winning blues in tennis, squash, cricket and fives. Later in life, he said that his family were “all frightful sporting bores”.
In 1952, they moved to Scotland:
The newly married couple moved to Troon in 1952, and he remained in Ayrshire for the rest of his life.
Lady Sally had a career as a novelist:
Under the pen name of Harriet Martyn, Lady Sally wrote three girls’ boarding school works of fiction — the Balcombe Hall stories — which were inspired by the escapades of her daughter Jane at St Mary’s, Wantage; and as Sara Healy, three historical novels including a Second World War evacuee story inspired by her own experiences. She died in 2013. He is survived by their four children, Noel, an entrepreneur, Jane who runs her own publishing company in Ireland, Tiffany, a company director, and Bryony who is in technology.
Meanwhile, apart from owning and operating three restaurants that closed in relatively short order, Jan devoted the rest of his life to tennis:
After retiring, he became a fully qualified tennis coach. He was appointed MBE for services to tennis in 2004, after raising nearly £2 million to create the largest junior tennis programme in Scotland. He was the oldest surviving member of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, having first joined 70 years ago, in 1952. In fact, he had attended every Wimbledon tennis tournament since then, including last year. He was especially proud of winning the over-85 category of the British veterans’ grass court championship at Wimbledon in 2014.
During lockdown in 2021, Jan Collins raised money for charity:
In the summer of 2021, when lockdown regulations meant no golf clubs were open throughout the UK, a private five-hole course was suddenly created in the rear garden of a 90-year-old golfer in Troon. Inspired by the story of Captain Sir Tom Moore, Jan Collins raised £8,000 by playing 1,000 holes of golf in his back garden.
But his was not a totally serious life of work and tennis. Privately, he was known for his wit and harmless pranks.
There was no mention of any religious aspect to his life, but Jan Collins lived quite the life. May he rest in peace.
A well known Catholic priest from Glasgow, the Revd James ‘Big Jim’ Doherty, died earlier this month.
On January 10, 2022, Tim Stanley, a Catholic and a columnist for The Telegraph, related one of his favourite anecdotes about Big Jim:
A tribute to another outspoken Catholic
Speaking of outspoken Catholics, I’d like to pay tribute to Fr James Doherty, AKA “Big Jim”, a Glasgow priest who died last week, of whom the stories are legendary. On one occasion, a man appeared at the presbytery with a notepad that read: “I am homeless, deaf and dumb. Please help.” The cleric had seen this trick before.
“Can you lip read?” asked Big Jim. The man nodded. “Well, I’ve nae money, honey, but if you’ll come into the house, I’ll make you a sandwich.” Thank you, the man nodded.
As they walked past the huge gong the house keeper would use to summon the clergy to lunch, Jim whacked it so hard it rang like Big Ben. “Good God!” cried the homeless man, “What the Hell did you do that for?!”
“Oh, it’s a double miracle!” said Big Jim. “Ye can hear and ye can speak!!”
“Aye well,” replied the man, rubbing his ears, “you’ve got to work bloody hard to get any money out of people nowadays.”
Jim made the man his sandwich.
That’s one of the best anecdotes I’ve read in some time.
Lying does not pay, especially to a priest. Priests have heard or seen everything under the sun. They are not to be underestimated.
For the past several weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Conservatives have been lagging behind Labour in the polls.
Boris and the Conservatives held the top spot for most of 2021, apart from one week in January. Their ratings began to sink in November, if I recall correctly. Initially, this had to do with Net Zero policies (far out of reach from the normal Briton), a tax increase to help pay for the NHS and rumours of parties during lockdown at No. 10 Downing Street.
Later, around Christmas, news emerged of parties dating from late 2020. More recently, news leaked about a No. 10 gathering on May 20, 2020 (during lockdown), for which Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised during Prime Minister’s Questions on January 12, 2022:
Today, it is alleged that parties also took place in Downing Street the evening before Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021.
For Keir Starmer and Labour to be ahead of Boris and Co for this long is a parlous state of affairs:
On January 8, 2022, GB News reported that the Conservatives were beginning to regain lost ground (emphases in purple mine throughout):
The Conservative Party has recovered some of its lost lead against the opposition Labour Party, an opinion poll showed on Saturday, but Boris Johnson’s personal ratings remain deeply negative as he faces ongoing ethics questions.
Polling company Opinium said Labour’s poll rating held at 39% in a January 5-7 survey, unchanged from late December, while support for the Conservatives rose two percentage points to 34%. The Liberal Democrats were on 11% and the Green Party was on 5% …
Johnson’s own net approval rating in the Opinium poll was minus 24%, up from minus 31% before Christmas but well behind Labour Party leader Keir Starmer at plus 3%.
Soaring inflation was also souring the public mood, with 86% of people saying their living costs had risen, the polling company said.
On Monday, January 10, the Conservatives continued to gain ground, although they still trail Labour:
Guido Fawkes noted that not moving to Plan C coronavirus restrictions over the Christmas period probably helped:
Labour’s 8 point poll lead at the end of last year has halved in the latest YouGov poll. The plunged best PM rating for Boris has bounced 6 points and Starmer’s has eroded a point, though Boris still trails. Making the right call on Omicron appears to be paying off for Boris. Who knows, if the Tories get their act together and govern a bit more like Tories, they might even regain their lead…
Moving on to coronavirus measures, a number of news items broke since the New Year, some of which relate to England only; the devolved nations have their own measures, largely socialist in nature.
Self-isolation time
On Monday, Boris said he was considering lowering the number of days that people have to self-isolate:
Guido Fawkes reported that Levelling Up Minister Michael Gove said that the current Plan B measures are likely to expire as planned on January 26.
Boris’s comment followed Gove’s on Plan B:
This follows Michael Gove’s comments earlier today on the potential lifting of Plan B measures in a few weeks, provided the NHS continues to keep Omicron under control. Looking increasingly likely that pandemic measures will – finally – wind down sooner rather than later…
On self-isolation being reduced from seven days to five, as the US is doing, Boris said:
We’re looking at [it]… we will act according to the science as we always have. But what I would say to everybody is that Omicron is still out there, it’s incredibly contagious. Everyone will know somebody who has had it, it can be pretty unpleasant.
Boris was likely reconsidering because British scientific advisers ‘misread’ US self-isolation guidance. Dr Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), is pictured:
Guido Fawkes showed the difference between the UKHSA guidance on January 1 and January 10.
Guido concludes:
The US Centres for Disease Control has now clarified their isolation periods do start after the first appearance of symptoms, giving further credence to Tory backbenchers’ calls for a cut. This country has had enough of experts…
Indeed, we have had enough of experts. Unfortunately, Jenny Harries is receiving a damehood, having been on the New Year’s Honours list.
The move for a shorter isolation period is to enable those with coronavirus to return to work as soon as possible.
It is a curious thing that, since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, I have seen the same shop assistants week after week. By contrast, when I watch the news, there is a plethora of public sector workers — the NHS and teachers, to name but two groups — who are constantly sick.
This tweet expresses the phenomenon well:
On Thursday, January 13, Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced in the House of Commons that self-isolation will be reduced to five days beginning on Monday, January 17, provided that the person involved can provide two negative lateral flow test results on Days 4 and 5:
The end of mass vaccination?
On Sunday, January 9, Dr Clive Dix, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said that it was time to end mass vaccination and begin urgent research into antibodies as well as T-cells.
The Observer reported:
Covid should be treated as an endemic virus similar to flu, and ministers should end mass-vaccination after the booster campaign, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce has said.
With health chiefs and senior Tories also lobbying for a post-pandemic plan for a straining NHS, Dr Clive Dix called for a major rethink of the UK’s Covid strategy, in effect reversing the approach of the past two years and returning to a “new normality”.
“We need to analyse whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary,” he said. “Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.”
He said ministers should urgently back research into Covid immunity beyond antibodies to include B-cells and T-cells (white blood cells). This could help create vaccines for vulnerable people specific to Covid variants, he said, adding: “We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.”
On Wednesday, Professor Jeremy Brown of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) echoed Dr Dix’s call for a post-pandemic plan. He rightly pointed out that we do not test for influenza:
Schoolchildren suffering
I do feel for children having to wear masks, undergo regular testing at school and for being persuaded — with parental consent — to get vaccinated. My commiserations also go to their parents.
On Sunday, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that the rate of children’s vaccinations must speed up:
The topic of mask-wearing, although confined to secondary school students, came up on a recent instalment of ITV’s This Morning programme. Author and television presenter Gyles Brandreth explained how difficult this is for children with learning difficulties:
I am glad to see that pupils are refusing to wear masks: sensible kids showing common sense.
Vaccines
Having watched all the coronavirus briefings on television, I remember when either then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock or one of our senior health advisers told us that not everyone would need to get vaccinated in order to put the pandemic at bay.
This historical example from the smallpox era shows that a only relatively small percentage of people need a vaccination in order to eradicate the disease. In the case of smallpox, this was 32%:
Yet, the UK is now jabbing children, mandating vaccine passports as well as threatening loss of employment in April 2022 to unvaccinated NHS and care home workers. WHY?
The biggest news story on this subject appeared on Friday, January 7.
The Telegraph reported that Steve James, a consultant anaesthetist at King’s College Hospital in London told Health Secretary Sajid Javid that he had had coronavirus and has the antibodies. He said he had no intention of getting a vaccine.
He said that the science does not warrant a health worker vaccine mandate:
Here is a clip from The Telegraph‘s article:
NHS is doing well
On Sunday, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that the NHS is coping well. Eight Nightingale facilities will also be opened in the coming weeks:
Socialist policies in Scotland and Wales do not work
On Monday, January 10, talkRADIO’s Kevin O’Sullivan said that vaccine passports are not working in Scotland and Wales. He rightly wonders why Boris Johnson wanted to extend their reach in England.
Wales’s rate of infection is three times higher than England’s. Scotland recorded its highest ever number of coronavirus ‘cases’:
Dan Wootton of GB News also had plenty to say on the Welsh and Scottish approach to coronavirus:
The chilling reality of the United Kingdom under a Labour/SNP coalition was laid bare over the New Year period.
And it’s not something any of us should want to become a reality.
More on that below.
Wales
On Sunday, January 9, Prif Weinidog (First Minister) Mark Drakeford (Labour) said that Welsh coronavirus rates are lower than England’s. Note that, at one point, he did specify Welsh rates were lower than those in England’s hotspots, not the whole country. In that sentence, he told the truth, less so overall:
Drakeford came up with a few more new rules before Christmas. People couldn’t work in an office, but they could go to the pub.
Dan Wootton said:
In socialist Wales, Mark Drakeford – seemingly so intent on smashing the economy to smithereens – has started to fine honest folk £60 for going to work in an office.
Genuinely. I’m not making that up. Doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly healthy, either.
But Drakeford is the man who forced supermarkets to cordon off aisles selling toys and clothes, remember. Now the Chief Medical Officer in Wales Sir Frank Atherton is hysterically proposing that we should all self-isolate for days on end if we have a common cold.
And, with Labour’s love of restrictions, circuit breakers and draconian laws controlling our behaviour, have Welsh Covid rates been any lower than the rest of the UK? Nope!
According to government data across the pandemic, Wales has had the second highest total rate of cases per 100,000 – just under Northern Ireland – at a rate of 20,386.2.
That compares to England’s 20,174.2 and Scotland’s 17,673.4.
In the last seven days, Wales remains the second highest, again just behind Northern Ireland.
The following tweet shows another absurd aspect of the situation, with an English non-league football (soccer) club, Chester, wondering how it can survive under Drakeford’s draconian rules. Chester’s stadium lies just over the border in Wales:
This exchange shows how complicated the situation is:
Scotland
North of the Border, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) has implemented some of the strictest coronavirus restrictions in the UK.
Dan Wootton says that these are a smokescreen for the lack of a second independence referendum. Nonetheless, he details how totalitarian they are:
In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon prizes her role as a Covid dictator using press conferences broadcast to the nation by the BBC to spread fear and introduce harsh controls on poor Scots.
She insists it’s to keep them safe.
But in my opinion, it’s to keep the Covid crisis running for as long as possible, so she doesn’t have to face the fact her dream of a second independence referendum lies in tatters.
So to Sturgeon omicron has been a blessing, allowing her to impose new social controls essentially killing off the Scottish hospitality industry once more for months. Compare and contrast today’s [January 3] Times front pages.
The English edition reports that ministers in Westminster are confident new curbs won’t be needed, given Plan B has already been imposed and Omicron is a far less severe variant.
The Scottish edition, by contrast, reports that large public gatherings could be forbidden in Scotland well into the spring, with National Clinical Director Jason Leitch saying April will still be too early to host a postponed Hogmanay celebration in Edinburgh.
And it’s these draconian policies propagated by Sturgeon that resulted in ridiculous police overreach and brutality in Scotland that you won’t see reported in the mainstream media.
Case in point: police raiding the Avant Garde gastropub in Glasgow on New Year’s Eve, where there were around 50 folk, most of them over 60-years-old, simply trying to enjoy their night.
Then, for some reason, two large police vans carrying more than 20 officers, according to witnesses, turned up because they were suspected of breaking Sturgeon’s outrageously over the top Covid rules.
The pub may have been targeted because it displays this poster on its door saying…
“We have no discrepancy over whether you want to wear a mask or not.” This is what happened when multiple cops stormed the pub…
The footage is included with this interview of the man who filmed it:
What a despicably unnecessary show of force from Scottish police who routinely fail to investigate muggings and burglaries.
But it’s not their fault, it’s Sturgeon’s for introducing such authoritarian laws, banning bar service and enforcing social distancing between groups.
Sturgeon has implemented these measures despite only ONE patient with omicron having been admitted to intensive care in Scotland. Only one!
The police claim they were simply making a ‘routine visit’, but, come on, it should never have come to this.
Sturgeon is criminalising people drinking and having a good time.
This month — and we’re less than two weeks in — she has had to backtrack on her stringent restrictions.
When the editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, Mike Blackley, asked her on December 17 if she could reduce the number of self-isolation days, she turned caustic:
Yeah, because that’d really help ’cause that would spread infections even further and that would not be doing any favours to businesses.
Guido Fawkes has an update from Wednesday, January 5:
On 22nd December, England’s Covid rules changed so infected individuals can stop isolating after seven days rather than ten, so long as they test negative on day six and seven. Six days ago Wales followed suit, and a day later Northern Ireland copied the change. Leaving one obvious outlier…
It now looks like Sturgeon will confirm the cut, with a statement expected later today and her deputy John Swinney saying yesterday that their administration is “actively considering” reducing the self-isolation period. There’s just one problem with the move if it goes ahead – it’ll be a very embarrassing U-turn on Sturgeon’s part…
So, will she now apologise to the Scottish Mail‘s Mike Blackley?
Unlikely.
Late last week, SNP MP Stewart Hosie appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live to say that Scotland had a lower number of coronavirus cases than England.
The SNP then tweeted this news, which was based on out of date statistics:
Guido Fawkes rightly called out the SNP, including a graphic of the updated statistics.
Not only does England have a lower prevalence than Scotland, it has the lowest prevalence of all four UK nations despite having almost no legal restrictions. The lockdown lovers always say they’re following the science… except when they aren’t.
Last weekend, England still had a lower prevalence of coronavirus than Scotland, which demands mask wearing and vaccine passports:
Last week, Sturgeon took exception to Boris Johnson’s idea to scrap free lateral flow tests. He wants to reserve them for ‘high-risk settings’:
On Monday, January 10, Sturgeon apparently decided Scotland will have to live with the virus. We’ll see:
The Scottish Daily Express reported:
Nicola Sturgeon is under mounting pressure to scrap crippling Coronavirus restrictions after she admitted for the first time that Scots will need to “learn to live” with the virus.
The First Minister is due to announce whether an extension to Scotland’s restrictions will occur in Holyrood today, with critics claiming they have made little difference to infection rates.
Currently the rules put in place on Boxing Day to rein in the Omicron Covid-19 variant include curbs on spectator sports, the closure of nightclubs and the resumption of table service in pubs.
But speaking ahead of her statement to MSPs, the First Minister said that Scots would have to ask themselves “what adaptations to pre-pandemic life” would be required in the longer-term to “enable us to live with it [the virus] with far fewer protective measures.”
Ms Sturgeon also warned the NHS would need to be managed differently to cope with Covid in the long term with more patients treated away from hospitals.
In an interview with STV Scotland Tonight, she added: “Covid will change all of our considerations of how we manage our health service, and that will be part of the way in which we all learn to live with it over the months and years to come.
“We are in a position where we all want to get to as much normality as possible. All of us, me included, really crave that.
“But we need to recognise that this virus, although we hope Omicron is milder than previous variants, this virus still takes lives and it still causes significant health impacts for people.
“So we have got to treat it seriously and not underestimate the damage that it can do.”
It comes after Ms Sturgeon last week said the SNP-led Scottish Government would unveil a blueprint for Scots to live with the virus in the long term that would be “more proportionate and sustainable and less restrictive”.
Opposition parties in Scotland are particularly keen for these restrictions to end.
The Scottish Conservatives are the main opposition party in Holyrood:
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: “The Scottish public need to see some light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s time for the First Minister to produce a timetable on the new strategic framework that she promised.
“People want reassurance that restrictions won’t stay in force for a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
“After almost two years of sacrifice, the public need to see a bold timetable from the Scottish Government that will enable us to live safely with Covid.”
Labour are the next largest party in opposition:
Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour leader added: “Almost two years into the pandemic, I don’t think we have yet built the resilience in the system in order to respond appropriately to Covid.
“I think we accept that Covid is a risk to people’s health and wellbeing and we’ve also got to accept that how we respond to Covid is also a risk to people’s health and wellbeing particularly their mental health.
“I think this day by day decision making and waiting to see what may and may not be said at a press conference is not actually a good way of responding to the pandemic.
“I would like to see a framework in place that builds resilience, that sets quite clearly what the trigger mechanisms for any potential restrictions are and what those restrictions maybe and also then what the trigger mechanisms are for financial support for individual businesses …
“I don’t think the government has done that work here in Scotland and across the UK and I think we urgently need to do that work.”
The Liberal Democrat response was the best:
Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, said: “I’ve been concerned at the absence of data offered to Parliament by the SNP.
“We still don’t have a firm idea of those who are in hospital because of Omicron or who just test positive when they go in for something else.
“Without that information, Parliament can’t take a view on whether restrictions are appropriate.
“There’s no clear evidence that the enhanced restrictions in Scotland have reduced the rates of infection compared to other parts of the UK.”
Too right!
Conclusion
If Boris can return to a rational outlook on coronavirus measures, England can be the first to exit the dystopia we have found ourselves in since March 16, 2020, with lockdown implemented one week later on March 23.
Let those who wish to take precautions do so.
Let those of us who wish to live and work again do so freely, without hindrance.
The UK’s biggest topics that truly matter to everyday people are coronavirus, COP26 and the fishing row with France.
Coronavirus
On Wednesday, November 10, the BBC news site featured an article on mothers and babies over the past year and a half: ‘Coronavirus births: “My baby’s first word was mask”‘.
How sad is that? My first word was ‘Da-da’.
The BBC interviewed Leanne Howlett, who gave birth to a daughter in March 2020, during the first lockdown. Poor woman.
She said (emphases mine):
“Overnight, home appointments [from the perinatal mental-health team] dropped away,” she remembers.
They would be over the phone instead, she was told, causing her panic about how she would cope.
Nurseries were closed, she couldn’t see family and getting through the basics of each day was a huge struggle.
“I dipped to rock-bottom,” says the 34-year-old.
“You cannot bring yourself out of it – you think everyone is better off without you” …
Leanne started to feel better last summer, when childcare bubbles were allowed and her husband took time off work, but she believes the impact on her daughter, Miley, now two years old, has been profound.
“She is not at all sociable – she didn’t see anyone but us until she was nearly one.
“All those missed activities, photos, and all those firsts,” laments Leanne.
When she did go to her first baby group, all the mums wore face coverings, she says.
“My baby’s first word was mask.”
Black taxis
Prior to the pandemic, Uber was more popular than the traditional black taxi, especially in London.
In fact, Uber drivers from as far away as Manchester drove to the capital every weekend to reap the largesse.
On October 30, The Guardian posted an article on the new-found success of black cabs: ‘Black cabs roar back into favour as app firms put up their prices’.
It begins with the story of a young man who had been stood up by Uber and another app-oriented service, Bolt:
The young man was frantic, trying to get to a third date with a woman he already knew he wanted to marry. But four Bolt drivers had let him down, and when he tapped his Uber app, it was asking for triple surge pricing. In desperation, he did something he’d never done before – flagged down a black London taxi.
“He was trying to open the front door to get in. He wanted to give me a postcode – it was the usual thing you get from the ones who’ve never been in a cab before,” said Karen Proctor, a London taxi driver for more than a decade. “I told him ‘the postcode’s not going to help – just tell me where you want to get to’. It was a restaurant. And we got there seven minutes early, at about a third of the cost. He was converted.”
Tales like that are why, after nearly a decade of Uber-induced gloom, things are looking up for cabbies. Trade has roared back into life since the end of Covid measures in July, with many talking with some astonishment about their best-ever takings.
I hope the marriage proposal met with success.
I am a big champion of black taxis. London drivers have to pass a three-year course called The Knowledge, where they regularly go in at least once a week to be quizzed by a veteran taxi driver on how to get various places in and out of the capital. This requires memorising routes, including all the requisite street names. I saw a three-part documentary on it several years ago. It looked and sounded daunting.
During lockdown, some black taxi drivers sold their vehicles and left the road for good. Some firms are buying up those taxis and renting them out to licensed drivers:
While drivers with a cab talk of people running towards cabs when they stop to let out a passenger, arguing about whose taxi it is, or queues of 100 people outside Victoria train station or Liverpool city centre, there are plenty of licensed drivers without a vehicle.
“People are coming to us every single day looking for a cab,” said Lee DaCosta, a founder of Cabvision which runs payment systems for taxis and also rents a fleet for drivers who don’t own a vehicle. “We’re having drivers turning up literally walking the streets from garage to garage going ‘got any cabs?’”
Transport for London (TfL) figures show there were 13,858 licensed taxis in London on 24 October, compared with historic levels of about 21,000.
The rapid decline is partly due to Covid. During the pandemic, when drivers had no prospect of earning money and some were ineligible for government support, some were forced to sell their cabs and take up other jobs. It led to the sight of hundreds of cabs being stored in unused car parks and fields around London.
But some of the decline pre-dated the pandemic, and DaCosta says TfL’s policy of forcing older, diesel taxis off the road has not been accompanied by enough support for electric cabs.
As Uber demand returns to normal, however, drivers are fewer on the road than before. Some were EU nationals who went home and never returned. Others have opted to drive delivery vehicles instead.
No doubt everything will stabilise in time.
COP26
It appears that COP26 did not do much for Glasgow’s hospitality sector.
On Wednesday, November 10, The Times reported that the anticipated uplift didn’t happen. The conference ends this weekend:
While hotels across Glasgow are fully booked to accommodate the thousands of delegates, the hospitality trade is understood not to have seen any uplift in trading since the event began on October 31.
There are even suggestions the event has led to a reduction in trade for some operators. Footfall in the city centre is said to have been affected as people try to avoid the demonstrations.
There is also thought to be a number of delegations which have stayed outside of the city, with Edinburgh hotels among those which are busy.
Oli Norman, whose Ashton Properties owns venues such as Brel and Sloans, said he had heard of some publicans and restaurant owners who have seen their trading fall by up to 50 per cent, and added: “It should have signified a resurgence in the local economy but if anything it has been a damp squib.”
Fishing wars
Any Englishwoman hoping to keep relations smooth with the French during the fishing wars in the Channel would do well to support her adopted country, as Samantha Brick, who lives in France, wrote in The Telegraph:
“Fishing wars” isn’t a phrase I’d ever suppose would have an impact on my marriage – or indeed on my status in France – but in these strange times I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
After I recently strutted through arrivals at Bergerac airport I was pulled up sharp at passport control. While my documents were checked, I was casually asked what I thought about the issue of French fishing trawlers being unable to go about their business in British waters.
Noting my French passport was still in the hands of the uniformed officer, I swallowed my pride and, after a bit of inconclusive waffle, I was told I should be proud of my French passport and those fishing trawlers. I feebly replied: “Vive la France” …
Not since Brexit has my other half been so fired up about Anglo-French relations. The right to fish is something that the French get very, very angry about. Pascal routinely shouts at the breakfast and lunchtime television (frankly OTT) news reports of the French fishing industry being stymied by brazen Brits and a dozen or so of our fishing boats.
Crustacea, I’ve learnt, is a French human right. The right to gorge on seafood is taken so seriously that drones and police on horseback are deployed to patrol and protect Atlantic oyster farms.
Her husband Pascal’s household does not sound either women- or Anglo-friendly:
My brother-in-law is also married to an English woman. She isn’t mad about the dozen or so oysters the family get in per person each Christmas either; note, we Brits have to compare notes outside the home on this as speaking in our native tongue at home is banned.
In fact, food is probably the area of most contention in our marriage …
… the French are pretty rigid when it comes to anything and everything at the kitchen table. There are centuries old traditions and behaviours which have been silently passed down the generations.
In the early days I once stood up, noticed I’d not finished my rosé and then drained the glass. Pascal was in turn speechless and outraged afterwards. This is, apparently, something no French woman would ever do. Women are supposed to nurse just one glass of wine throughout the evening …
… one rule he is immovable on is not clearing your plate. The motto – which is drilled into every house guest – is “you eat what you take”. The French cannot abide waste.
Sounds dire.
I don’t remember my academic year in France being like that and I was a fairly regular guest in French households, either for parties or for sleepovers concluding with Sunday lunch.
Look before you leap, ladies.
Conclusion
We in the UK are at a strange crossroads at the moment.
Everything we were told not to worry about has become of increasing concern: children’s development post-COVID, Glasgow’s resurgence during COP26 and the nothing-to-see-here fishing wars. At least the taxi trade is prospering.
When I left off on Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that day that there was no public appetite for a referendum on whether the UK government should continue with its goal of Net Zero:
I would not be too sure about that. There is a petition on the UK government site requesting such a referendum:
Guido Fawkes’s accompanying post says (emphases in the original):
Despite Boris’s attempts to resist calls for another referendum, a petition calling for the government to hold a vote on whether to keep the 2050 net zero target has today reached 10,000 signatures – meaning that the government must formally respond. If the petition hits 100,000 signatures it will have to be debated in Parliament, so Boris may have to reconsider his stance yet. Re-ordering our society to achieve net zero is a massive change; one that has not yet been democratically endorsed. Let the politicians who want us to eat bugs, have cold showers, lukewarm heat pumped houses, higher energy bills and far more expensive foreign holidays, make their case!
Writing early Friday afternoon, I saw that over 12,000 people have signed it. The map showing signatures by constituency is quite interesting. Nearly every constituency has signed up in lesser or greater numbers. Only Glasgow North East had 0 signatures.
The British are not the only ones who are upset about what they have seen on the news about COP26. On Thursday, I listened to a lively — heated — debate on RMC, France’s talk radio station, about the blatant hypocrisy on the part of the elites with their private jets and limos who want to legislate us into serfdom when we already have high enough taxes and other things on our minds.
Returning to the UK, it seems to me that half the public are pretty incensed by what they have witnessed this week via television in Glasgow.
Boris Johnson
YouGov’s latest poll, taken between November 3 and 4, have shown a drop in popularity for the Conservatives. They are now only one percentage point ahead of Labour. It wasn’t too long ago that Labour overtook them for a week in the polls.
Guido Fawkes attributes this to the resignation of a Conservative MP yesterday for allegedly promoting a firm paying him as a consultant, but, like some of Guido’s readers, I think it has less to do with Owen Paterson and more to do with COP26, which is the straw that could break the camel’s back:
Guido’s post says, in part:
The 2.5% swing sees Labour up two points to 35% and the Tories down three to 36%, the smallest Tory lead for The Times since Rishi’s social care tax rise in September. 22% of 2019 Tory voters are now undecided about who to vote for…
How did Boris become such an unabashed climate change spokesman? Was it only because he was hosting COP26? Or are there influencers, such as his wife Carrie, not to mention his father Stanley?
On October 21, Conservative Home posted a profile of the elder Johnson, 81: ‘A serious environmentalist who, as COP26 looms, has at last made a convert of his son’.
Andrew Gimson, the author, tells us of Stanley’s early life, his interests and the jobs he had during his career.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
There is scarcely an endangered animal for which Johnson has not campaigned, a senior environmentalist with whom he has not made common cause, and his efforts have been recognised by prizes awarded by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the RSPCA and the RSPB among others …
In February 2016, Johnson became Co-Chairman of Environmentalists for Europe, a group set up to campaign for Britain to remain in the EU, and set out his case in a piece for ConHome in which he recalled how poor Britain’s environmental performance was before 1973 …
… the tone is serious. Johnson’s record as a committed environmentalist stretches back half a century. In 2017 he switched sides and accepted Brexit, but the environmentalism remains a constant.
On television, Stanley displays a jokey joviality, a characteristic Boris has adopted.
Andrew Gimson concludes:
Various characteristics have come down from Stanley to his eldest son, including an indefatigable, at times almost unhinged optimism; a compulsion to make every joke suggested by any given situation; and a fondness for the mannerisms of a stage Englishman, occasionally hard to distinguish from those of a cashiered major.
What lies behind such persistent frivolity? What is each of them hiding? The angry but lazy answer is nothing, which is one reason why the Prime Minister’s chances of success have been so persistently underestimated.
In Stanley’s case, there is the serious, long-term commitment to the environment, and as COP26 comes into view, he finds he has made a convert of his son.
On Tuesday, November 2, Boris flew back to London for a dinner with Telegraph journalists at the Garrick in Pall Mall, London:
Guido says (emphasis in the original):
Instead of wasting his time schmoozing celebrity swampies in Glasgow with the Prince of Wales, Leonardo DiCaprio and Stella McCartney, Boris was instead at a far more important and influential event: a reunion dinner party for Telegraph leader writers at the Garrick.
It’s not the dinner or the private club that is irksome, but the fact that Boris flew back from Glasgow whilst telling the rest of us that we will have to lower our own standard of living.
The Mail‘s veteran columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote about the sheer hypocrisy of it all (emphases mine):
For the record, I have no problem with a few like-minded chaps getting together for Chateaubriand washed down with Chateauneuf du Pape.
I don’t even care if Boris takes a private plane back from an international summit.
It’s the stinking hypocrisy that sticks in my craw, the ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ arrogance of all this.
I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the double-standards of Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, or any other of the preening global junketeers who turned up in Glasgow this week.
But I am extremely concerned about the behaviour of our Prime Minister and his Cabinet, who increasingly behave as if the rules they impose upon on the rest of us don’t apply to them.
Boris has spent the week warning about climate change apocalypse. In pursuit of his insane Net Zero vanity project, he proposes to make us colder and poorer, change our diets and cut back on travel, especially foreign holidays.
After banging on about aviation and vehicle emissions destroying the planet, does he really think taking a private plane and a thirsty Range Rover to a jolly-up at an exclusive London club is a proper way to behave?
What kind of example does that set? If catching the train back from Glasgow meant missing a dinner with Lord Snooty and his pals, so what?
Sadly, this pattern of behaviour has become the norm among our ruling elite, ever since Boris’s ex-sidekick Dominic Cummings flouted the Covid lockdown by driving to Durham.
Ministers exempted themselves from the travel ban and the need to self-isolate. On the pretext of combating global warming, the Tories’ Cop26 champion Alok Sharma flew to no fewer than 30 countries, never once quarantining on his return to Britain.
Next month, it’ll be two years since we gave Boris a thumping 80-seat majority. It should have been the start of a national renaissance under a popular, self-proclaimed libertarian PM.
Admittedly, the pandemic changed everything. But that is no excuse for what has happened subsequently. I’ve been asking friends and family who voted Tory in 2019, some for the first time, if they can name a single one of this Government’s policies they actually support.
Other than getting Brexit done and sub-contracting the vaccine programme to Kate Bingham, most came up blank.
Somewhere along the line, a so-called Tory Government has completely lost the plot …
I could not agree more.
The Royal Family
After having read about COP26, a good friend of mine told me the other day that he would not be upset if the Royal Family disappeared into oblivion after the Queen departs this mortal coil:
At least with a president, we can get rid of him in four or five years.
I do not yet share my friend’s sentiment, but this week’s events have pushed me ever closer.
The Queen
Is the Queen coming out as an environmentalist, further honouring her late husband, Prince Philip, founder of the World Wildlife Fund?
Was it appropriate for her to give a statement via video about COP26? I’m of two minds about it. Then again, only those at the VIP reception at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow got to see it. The following article from the Mail has the transcript in a sidebar.
The Daily Mail reported on the reception, held on Monday, November 1:
Her Majesty, 95, told leaders ‘to rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship.’
She went on to say that ‘none of us will live forever’ and ‘we are doing this not for ourselves but for our children and our children’s children, and those who will follow in their footsteps’ as she urged leaders to reach decisive COP climate change deals.
In her most personal speech ever, the monarch also paid tribute to Prince Philip and described how ‘the impact of the environment on human progress’ was a subject close to the heart of her ‘dear late husband’ – who in 1969 told an academic gathering: ‘If we fail to cope with this challenge, all the other problems will pale into insignificance.’
Was it appropriate for her to express her opinion on coronavirus vaccinations last Spring, intimating that those who did not get them were selfish and self-centred? That was bang out of order, in my opinion.
The Queen is now speaking out publicly on subjects that have traditionally been out of bounds for the Royal Family, the monarch in particular. One dreads to think what will be in her televised Christmas message this year.
Prince Charles
On Monday, I watched Prince Charles’s brief speech at COP26.
As expected, he catastrophised, calling on everyone to adopt a ‘war footing’.
The apple does not fall far from the tree. He is like his father in that respect.
As with his mother, is this the sort of thing he should be pontificating on in public? Climate change is highly political.
The Cambridges
The Duke of Cambridge — Prince William — has embraced environmentalism as, so it would appear, his wife, the Duchess, a.k.a. Kate.
The aforementioned Mail article gushed about her outfit, far out of reach for mere mortals:
Kate Middleton looked the picture of poise in a blue coat dress and navy heels as she walked alongside Prince William in a dapper suit at the arrival.
Wearing her hair back in a low bun, the Duchess opted for a glamorous make-up look for the ceremony tonight where she was hosted Prince Charles, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Boris Johnson as well as key members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative and the Winners and Finalists of the first Earthshot Prize Awards.
Her custom dress came from Eponine’s SS20 collection and made from a double wool crepe fabric, the price is available on application but similar dresses cost around $3,278.
Meanwhile, Camilla, 74, opted for a teal Bruce Oldfield featuring buttons recycled from another outfit.
William and Kate’s appearance comes just hours after royal couple, both 39, visited Alexandra Park Sports Hub in Dennistoun to meet with Scouts from and learn more about the group’s’ #PromiseToThePlanet campaign.
Meanwhile, the article says that Prince William had a laugh with Joe Biden, as did the Duchess of Cornwall — Camilla — with Angela Merkel.
The Cambridges will never have to worry about installing heat pumps. They will be able to live in warm rooms and enjoy hot baths or showers thanks to traditional boilers. Meanwhile, any member of the public foolish enough to go along with installing and running a heat pump will never be warm again, either while dressed or abluting. Heat pumps stop working at 4°C. Furthermore, installing one requires tearing up one’s back garden at a cost of £12,000.
Conclusion
The world has changed. We have more inequality now than we did when Prince Charles was born after the Second World War.
UnHerd has a profile of the prince, which has quite a few sad anecdotes in it, and concludes with the world’s changes over the past 70 years:
Charles never changes. But the world always does. When he was born in 1948, wars and revolutions had levelled everything. There was a ‘Great Compression’; inequality was suppressed, by accident, bloodletting, and design. For 30 years there were high taxes, good novels, middle-class successes, and an operational meritocracy.
By the Nineties, Tory politicians in Britain could dream of a “classless” society. Charles was most-lambasted in this midlife period, not merely because of the “War of the Waleses”, but because this socially democratic mood made the monarchy itself look ridiculous. “Who knows what fate will produce?” Diana said, ominously, at the time.
Fate dispatched her, then produced a vastly more unequal world. Meritocracy calcified into an aristocracy. It treats national and international institutions as outdoor relief for its favoured families. After Iraq, the financial crisis, and 2016, this elite, viewed from below, began to look like an Ancien Régime. With their fabulous wealth, estates, yachts, villas, servants, and elaborate sex lives, this class resembles the Windsors, just with stronger chins.
And those are the people who are going to tell us how to live our lives according to the new religion of climate change.
Bring on that Net Zero referendum! We need it!
Happy Bonfire Night to my British readers.
Yesterday’s post was about the opening of COP26 in Glasgow and its attendant hypocrisy.
What our notional betters have done with coronavirus they will most certainly do with climate change.
Examples follow.
Coronavirus
On Monday, November 1, the day COP26 opened, Mark Dolan of GB News had an excellent editorial which bridged the gap between coronavirus and climate change tactics:
At around 5:15 in the full version of Dolan’s editorial (just over ten minutes long), he tells us of the mask theatre used with public appearances of politicians. They wear them for the photo op — outdoors — then take them off when they go indoors. Similarly, social distancing is also ignored:
Yes, the elites are laughing at us: ‘for thee but not for me’.
Climate change
Another commentator, Spiked‘s Brendan O’Neill, also says that the elites are laughing at us.
In writing about COP26 on Monday, he says (emphases mine):
It feels like the elites are just laughing in our faces now. So the other day we had the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, saying everyone will have to eat less meat and fly less if we are going to get a handle on this climate-change thing. A little later it was reported that around 400 private jets will fly into COP26, carrying world leaders and big-business execs to the plush surrounds in which they’ll wring their manicured hands over mankind’s carbon crimes. Ordinary people are guilt-tripped for taking one poxy flight a year to escape the trials and vagaries of life in capitalist society for a couple of weeks, while those who quaff champagne on airplanes that it costs $10,000 an hour to hire out get to pose as hyper-aware defenders of poor Mother Nature.
He continues:
According to one report, the private jets landing in Glasgow will spew out around 13,000 tonnes of carbon. That’s the same amount of CO2 that 1,600 Scots get through in a year … John Kerry, Joe Biden’s climate envoy, will be in Glasgow to pull pained faces for the cameras over the possible heat death of the planet. Three months ago he flew in a private jet to Martha’s Vineyard for Barack Obama’s lavish 60th-birthday celebrations. It was the 16th private-jet jaunt his family had taken this year. Prince Charles, from one of his palaces, says COP26 is the ‘last-chance saloon’ for the planet. The royal family has collectively flown enough air miles over the past five years to get to the Moon and back. And then around the Earth’s equator three times. In short: 545,161 miles. Reader, they’re taking the piss.
O’Neill moves on to cars and Joe Biden:
Driving is viewed by greens, and by eco-virtuous political leaders like Sadiq Khan [London’s mayor], as one of the stupidest, most Gaia-destroying activities indulged in by the plebs. The Home Counties irritants of Insulate Britain have been winning plaudits from the commentariat over the past few weeks for blocking the paths of such terrible eco-criminals as mums driving their kids to school and deliverymen trying to deliver food and other essentials. And yet there’s Joe Biden in Rome for the G20 being whisked around in an 85-car convoy. His own armoured limousine, and its decoy version, generates 8.75 pounds of carbon per mile driven – 10 times more than normal cars. And greens want us to feel angry about the working-class bloke driving an HGV full of groceries and fuel? It’s insane.
When he’s done with Rome, Biden will fly to Glasgow in Air Force One. Four jets will accompany him. Combined, they’ll emit an estimated 2.16million pounds of carbon over five days.
O’Neill gives us other examples:
This is getting ridiculous. People will be perfectly within their rights over the next few days to ask why it is that those who live in the lap of luxury, who jet to every corner of the globe, who experience more luxury in a week than most of us can expect in a decade, should get to hold forth on humanity’s alleged suffocation of the planet with carbon and pollution. Like Joanna Lumley, famed, well-paid traveller of the planet, saying travel should be rationed. Or Dame Emma Thompson literally flying first-class from LA to London to take part in an Extinction Rebellion protest about the evils of CO2. Or Harry and Meghan attending a concert focusing on the ‘urgent need’ for climate action and then leaving on a private jet. What the green oligarchy lacks in moral consistency it more than makes up for with brass neck.
Ultimately, O’Neill concludes that, obvious hypocrisy aside, climate change has become the new orthodoxy of people rolling in money:
It’s the perfect ideology for our at-sea elites. It allows them to magic up a sense of urgent moral purpose – they’re saving the planet, no less! It lends itself beautifully, or, rather, terrifyingly, to the project of social engineering: lower your horizons, learn to live with less, reconceive of yourself as a destructive creature in need of top-down control rather than a creative being who might help to push humanity forward. It naturalises the limitations of capitalism, encouraging people to make their peace with austerity and downturn on the basis that economic growth is a bad, nature-exploiting idea. And it is a very difficult ideology to challenge. The marshalling of The Science to buoy up this ruling-class ideology means that anyone who questions it – anyone who demands more growth, more ambition, a bigger human footprint – can swiftly be written off as an anti-scientific scourge, as a ‘denier’ of the revealed truths of climatology. Its social engineering, its social control and its strict, censorious management of social aspirations are what make the green ideology so attractive to the new elites.
Oddly, the Left find this attractive. Then again, they have always been about control:
COP26 will help to consolidate this neo-aristocracy. And, bizarrely, the left will cheer it on. The left once said: ‘We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance… We do not call for a limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume.’ (Sylvia Pankhurst.) Now it pleads with the super-rich to come up with more and more creative ideas for how to rein in the filthy habits and material dreams of the masses. What a disaster. It isn’t climate change that poses the largest threat to humanity in the early 21st century. It’s the bourgeoisie’s loss of faith in its historic project, and its arrogant generalisation of that loss of faith into a new ‘green’ ideology we must all bow down before. A revolt against environmentalism is arguably the most necessary cause of our age. Who’s in?
Well, we in the UK have just been silenced on any revolt.
Recently, The Telegraph ran two editorials proposing a referendum on climate change legislation from COP26. Today, November 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Commons at PMQs that there will be no referendum because the public haven’t the appetite for it.
Disgusting
At the VIP reception in the centre of Glasgow on Monday evening — which prevented people living nearby from entering their own homes — we saw that there were no masks and no social distancing. But these people are super clean and elite, so it’s okay for them.
Here’s the Duchess of Cambridge — Kate — laughing as she holds a jar of larvae for livestock feed:
Hilarious. This is the sort of thing that they want us to eat for dinner, along with insects:
Last week, Boris went one step further. He told a classroom of nine-year-olds that humans could be used as animal food:
Guido Fawkes has the video and two quotes, the relevant one of which follows:
recycling “doesn’t work“, he “wouldn’t put beetroot in lasagne“, and even that “feeding human beings to animals” might be a decent idea.
One thing is certain: neither Kate nor Boris will ever be deprived of meat on their dinner plates.
As for the rest of us, the jury’s out.
The elites despise us. They really do.
COP26? Oh, the hypocrisy of it all!
I watched the first hour of it on Monday, November 1 and nearly gagged but had to hear the actual speeches so that I would know exactly what the more prominent speakers actually said rather than read fake news regurgitations in the comment sections of the sites I read most frequently.
Air and limo travel: ‘for me but not for thee’
The G20 summit in Rome closed on Monday, then it was time for the leaders to jet off to Glasgow for COP20.
While COP26 was scheduled to take place last year and couldn’t go ahead because of the pandemic, it does seem as if these events, e.g. G20, could be better co-ordinated so that they took place in cities which are closer to each other.
But, you know, when it comes to our notional betters, no expense is spared. It’s okay for them to fly then ride in limos all over the place, but it’s not okay for us to go on a budget airline holiday with our family once a year:
In addition, Glaswegian women were made to walk down dark, unfamiliar thoroughfares while a COP26 VIP reception took place:
Let’s take a closer look at the double standard that we, the great unwashed, are experiencing.
Ed Miliband MP
Ed Miliband used to lead the Labour Party. He is now in the Shadow (Opposition) cabinet.
On Sunday, October 31, he went on Andrew Marr’s show on the BBC to object to Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s lowering of passenger air duty on internal flights in the UK.
In fact, Miliband told Marr that domestic flights should be stopped ‘as much as we possibly can’. However, in January 2020, Guido Fawkes revealed the MP’s own air travel habits:
Guido’s 2020 post said, in part (emphases mine below):
Last April, Guido reported on Ed Miliband’s hypocrisy of constantly windbagging about the ‘climate emergency’ despite wracking up 19,000 air miles from his flights abroad, pumping out tonnes of carbon dioxide …
Green Ed’s wracked up 12,000 air miles in 10 months – half the circumference of the globe.
Miliband is one of the North London elite who represents a working class city in the North of England, Doncaster. As one would expect, Miliband is more interested in promoting himself than Doncaster. This is what one of his constituents had to say:
Ed wants Britons to take the train, but that is not always possible within the United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland — and various islands:
One wonders if Miliband finally bought an electric car, the type of vehicle he insists the rest of us should have:
Miliband has complained about our rising energy prices which will be increasing by 20% per annum in 2022. However, he was the one who started the ‘green tax’ on energy when he was the energy secretary during Labour’s last few years in power 10+ years ago:
Lorna Slater MSP
Another hypocrite is the Scottish Green MSP, deputy party leader Lorna Slater, originally from Canada.
She slammed G20 leaders for not going by train from Rome to Glasgow, which would have taken 28 hours:
However, Guido pointed out that, in 2019, Lorna Slater enjoyed a flight from Brussels to Sweden:
Couldn’t she have gone by train?
As Guido points out:
According to Lorna’s logic, Guido is outraged she didn’t set an example by taking the 36-hour train from Glasgow Central via Euston, London St Pancras, Amsterdam and Berlin to Stockholm Central.
Joe Biden
As is customary for the leader of the free world, an American president has to have a ginormous motorcade for security purposes.
Apparently, in Rome, Joe Biden had to have more vehicles than usual because the city has social distancing laws during the coronavirus crisis. As such, he had an 85-car motorcade. The Daily Mail has the story along with numerous photos:
Biden at the upcoming environmental summit plans to tout $550 billion in new environmental programs in his Build Back Better framework, which he unveiled before jetting to Rome on Air Force One (another gas guzzler).
Here’s the US motorcade leaving Edinburgh International Airport for Glasgow:
Here is his motorcade upon arrival in Glasgow:
Less hypocritical transport
Late last week and into the weekend, North West England and the South West of Scotland, including Glasgow, had a lot of heavy rain.
As a result, media reporters and other lesser beings found their trains from Euston to Glasgow Central cancelled:
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reports from … Edinburgh
Incredibly, CNN’s veteran reporter, Wolf Blitzer, must have thought COP26 was taking place in Scotland’s capital:
How does that happen?
Boris’s opening speech
On Monday, as COP26 host, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was one of the first speakers welcoming everyone to the conference.
He laid out the purpose of this year’s conference, which is to determine exactly how the Paris Agreement will work in practice:
The Daily Mail has a good summary of what he said:
The Prime Minister compared the situation facing the globe to the climax of a James Bond film where the hero has to thwart plans to blow up the planet.
But Mr Johnson said ‘this is not a movie’ and the ‘doomsday device is real’ as he urged his counterparts to do more to reduce harmful emissions.
The premier said the longer countries wait to take action then ‘the higher the price when we are eventually forced by catastrophe to act’.
He said the world has ‘long since run the clock down on climate change’ and there is now just ‘one minute to midnight’, with action required immediately to prevent a global disaster.
The PM used his speech at the opening of the summit as a rallying cry to try to build momentum as he welcomed foreign leaders to Glasgow after securing only lukewarm climate commitments at the G20 summit in Rome over the weekend …
Mr Johnson pledged in his lunchtime speech to put another billion pounds into green finance – as long as the UK economy performs as expected in the coming years.
The PM repeated he wants global leaders to unveil steps on ‘coal, cars, cash and trees’ – the things he believes will make the most different in limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees.
Mr Johnson had set the tone as the G20 wrapped up last night by reading the riot act to his fellow world leaders, saying their promises on tackling climate change are starting to ‘sound hollow’.
The PM said there are ‘no compelling excuses for our procrastination’ on reducing harmful emissions and action already taken amounts to ‘drops in a rapidly warming ocean’.
Boris said that Glasgow was the site of the first steam engine, which James Watt invented. If I remember rightly from history class back in the mists of time, Britons called it the ‘doomsday machine’, because it was such a departure from anything anyone had known before.
In the event, it kicked off the Industrial Revolution which, despite its ‘dark satanic mills’ (William Blake), actually improved millions of people’s lives not only in Britain but, with time, around the world:
As such, it seemed strange for Boris to refer to it at COP26. Was he inferring that Watt’s steam engine was responsible for climate change?
Hmm. Look how GDP per capita has increased in England ever since the Industrial Revolution:
Tom Harwood of GB News nailed it, by pointing out how much Boris’s views have changed:
This is what Boris wrote for The Telegraph in 2015, when we had a warm December. His editorial ends with this:
Scientists look at the data. But everyone else just looks at the weather – and it is the weather, therefore, that makes the psychological difference to the debate. Look at the recent summit in Paris, which ended in a good agreement to cut CO2, in contrast to the debacle at Copenhagen six years ago. What was the real difference? It was the weather. Paris was ridiculously warm for December. Six years ago, Copenhagen saw the biggest snowfalls anyone could remember. “Global warming?” everyone asked.
It is fantastic news that the world has agreed to cut pollution and help people save money, but I am sure that those global leaders were driven by a primitive fear that the present ambient warm weather is somehow caused by humanity; and that fear – as far as I understand the science – is equally without foundation.
There may be all kinds of reasons why I was sweating at ping-pong – but they don’t include global warming.
Joe Biden and Boris — sleepy or just heads down?
The media are saying that Joe Biden fell asleep. It looks as if Boris did too.
Here are the photos and a video of Sleepy Joe:
The Queen’s video message
In a recorded video message sent to the conference, the Queen expressed her wishes for COP26.
The message was aired on Monday evening at the aforementioned VIP reception in the centre of Glasgow.
She asked the world’s leaders to rise above politics.
As ever, she had a photo on her desk that tied into the theme: a photo of Prince Philip surrounded by monarch butterflies.
The Mail‘s Robert Hardman reported:
Summoning the wisdom which comes with being the longest-serving head of state on the planet, the Queen distilled the monumental task facing this summit into just a few words.
‘For more than 70 years, I have been lucky to meet and to know many of the world’s great leaders,’ she said.
‘And I have perhaps come to understand a little about what made them special. It has sometimes been observed that what leaders do for their people today is government and politics. But what they do for the people of tomorrow – that is statesmanship.’
This was, she told them, their chance to be ‘written in history books yet to be printed’. Big words from one who has already been written in to a few herself. But then the Monarch knows of what she speaks.
Though this was a speech she had wanted to make in person until her doctors decreed that it had to be delivered via video, it lost none of its punch. The poignancy of the setting only added to the power of her words.
There she was in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle, the same room in which delivered her historic address to a Covid-ravaged nation last year. At her side, was a favourite photo of the Duke of Edinburgh surrounded by butterflies during a 1988 visit to Mexico.
For years, she reminded us, she had watched him nurture a bright idea that turned in to a charity – the World Wildlife Fund – that, in turn, paved the way for so many of today’s environmental organisations.
Between them, the couple had watched their eldest son and his eldest son embrace the same cause.
‘I could not be more proud of them,’ she said. And what was that on her lapel? Her much-loved butterfly brooch …
Another Mail article has more:
In her most personal speech to date, the monarch also paid tribute to Prince Philip and described how ‘the impact of the environment on human progress’ was a subject close to the heart of her ‘dear late husband’ – who in 1969 told a gathering: ‘If we fail to cope with this challenge, all the other problems will pale into insignificance.’
The Queen’s stern intervention, which was displayed on screens during a VVIP reception at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum, came hours after the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged that India will target net-zero carbon emissions by 2070 – two decades later than the targets for the conference – disappointing many delegates.
It also comes after Boris Johnson kicked off the climate change summit by exhorting world leaders to back up their talk on climate change with action – warning it was ‘one minute to midnight’.
A GB News panel thought that she had content and tone just right:
Archbishop of Canterbury apologises
The Anglican Communion is really into the impending doom and disaster of climate change.
To see that they are so wrapped up with the United Nations makes my skin crawl.
They sent a delegation to Glasgow:
Earlier on Monday, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to Radio 4’s Today show. Later on, he had to apologise for his remarks in which he compared coming deaths from climate change to the Third Reich:
Coronavirus hypocrisy
As ever, delegates were expected to wear masks, but as the Daily Mail‘s photos show, world leaders took theirs off and defied social distancing.
How nice for the great and the good!
As for everyone else, it was masks or no admittance:
Public not interested
Thankfully, the general public are not interested in COP26. They have actual pressing issues with which to deal:
Guido’s post says that a poll shows the British public are unwilling to shoulder the cost for any nonsense arising from COP26:
The lack of correlation between the BBC’s output and what people want to read, and what it suggests about the British public’s true feelings towards tackling climate change, seems to be backed up by a poll by Portland this morning. It found that while the public supports hypothetically punishing climate-damaging behaviour, or the government incentivising green behaviour, just 7% say “my family and me, and other families like me” should pay most of the cost. Just 36% are willing to pay more than £50 a month on top of existing bills to limit CO2 emissions.
I plan to feature more on climate change tomorrow.
On Saturday, May 16, 2020, a fractious protest against Britain’s coronavirus lockdown in Hyde Park ended with arrests.
Piers Corbyn, brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, was one of the speakers:
Corbyn is well known in the UK for his subscription-only weather forecasts. He also believes that changes in the sun are responsible for climate change, not mankind.
He makes a convincing argument for it, too.
It seems he also makes a convincing argument for the rather odd 5G-coronavirus theory, because after he appeared in protest in Glastonbury recently, that town’s council voted down 5G. David Kurten is a Brexit Party councillor serving on the Greater London Assembly:
However, although Piers Corbyn supports Brexit — as does his brother, allegedly — he is not a conservative.
This is what he thinks about coronavirus:
A Press Association reporter filmed what happened on Saturday, May 16, near Speaker’s Corner:
The police were out in force (pun intended). Isn’t there any crime fighting to do?
This was the scene from the centre of operations:
They social distanced by holding on to each other’s vests.
Shoulder to shoulder distance was less clear:
The Guardian reported (emphases mine):
The brother of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was one of 19 protesters arrested on Saturday, as small demonstrations against the coronavirus lockdown took place across the country.
Protesters gathered on green spaces across the UK holding placards describing the lockdown rules as unlawful and claiming that the government measures were suppressing civil rights.
In Hyde Park, London, about 50 people defied social distancing guidelines to gather close together at Speakers’ Corner holding placards with slogans including “anti-vax deserves a voice” and “freedom over fear”.
Dozens of police officers, including some on horseback, patrolled the protest, issuing 10 on-the-spot fines and making 19 arrests.
Corbyn’s brother, Piers, was taken away after using a megaphone to declare that 5G and the coronavirus pandemic were linked and branding the pandemic as a “pack of lies to brainwash you and keep you in order”.
He also said “vaccination is not necessary” and that “5G towers will be installed everywhere”, adding: “5G enhances anyone who’s got illness from Covid, so they work together.”
The article gave the reason for Piers Corbyn’s and others’ arrests:
Corbyn was taken away after declining to leave when asked by a police officer and refusing to give his details when asked.
A flyer advertising the protest called for “no to mandatory vaccines, no to the new normal, and no to the unlawful lockdown” …
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said: “With the easing of restrictions we fully expected open spaces to be busy this weekend.
“It was disappointing that a relatively small group in Hyde Park came together to protest the regulations in clear breach of the guidance, putting themselves and others at risk of infection.
“Officers once again took a measured approach and tried to engage the group to disperse.
“They clearly had no intention of doing so, and so it did result in 19 people being arrested, and a further 10 being issued with a fixed-penalty notice.”
The protest attracted a mixed social group:
David Samson, 50, a finance worker, who attended the protests told the Press Association news agency: “I never thought I’d see in my generation the suppressing of civil rights [over a] fake virus. This is nothing compared to what’s coming.”
There was a large round of boos whenever protesters were arrested, and repeated shouts of “jail Bill Gates”.
Another demonstrator, 62-year-old Catharine Harvey, said she was defying the rules to highlight the “devastation this lockdown has caused”.
The shop owner said: “Developing countries will have no trade, no tourism. I have had to close my shop on Columbia Road flower market. The effects of the lockdown are far, far worse than the virus – mental health, domestic violence, shops are closed, theatres, cinemas, restaurants. It’s unnecessary.”
Protests also took place on the southern coast of England in Southampton:
A separate protest in Southampton saw about a dozen protesters gather on Southampton Common, holding placards saying “Stop the Lies”, “Say no to tyranny” and “Fight 4 Freedom”.
One protester, Dee, who did not wish to give her surname, said her job in the hair and beauty industry had been hit by the crisis. She said: “I am here because I am worried about civil liberties being taken away.
“Reading the Coronavirus Act that has gone through parliament, it seems there are changes being made which infringe our freedom. And I am worried the media has run away with the Covid-19 thing and blown it all out of proportion.”
And in Belfast, where police monitored:
a crowd of about 20 people who had gathered in Ormeau Park to denounce the lockdown measures. Officers warned participants to socially distance and they complied. The gathering dispersed without incident after an hour.
Another took place in Glasgow:
… on Glasgow Green in Scotland, with estimates of about 40 to 50 people taking part. People at the event reportedly chanted “experts lie – people die”, “don’t listen to the media, listen to the people”, “Nicola Sturgeon is a traitor” and “we are not livestock”.
However, Britain was not the only European nation to see protests. They took place in other countries, too:
Demonstrations also took place across Europe. In Germany the death toll from the virus has been lower than most of its European neighbours with some lockdown measures already relaxed.
However, protests against the measures that Chancellor Angela Merkel insists are needed to slow down the outbreak have grown with demonstrations held for a second weekend.
I certainly hope that this is not the ‘new normal’.
Personally, I think it is a bit late to protest lockdown. We’re coming out of it now.
However, as it has often been said, attributed to Voltaire but probably more accurately to in Evelyn Beatrice Hall (pseud. S. G. Tallentyre) in the biography The Friends of Voltaire (1906):
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
By now, surely, with all the freedom of ‘lifestyle’ we currently have, we can still assemble to speak our minds when necessary?
Perhaps not, in the ‘new normal’. Heaven forfend.
Churchmouse Campanologist 