Covid News: Who Can We Believe?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to make any sense of conflicting reports about the current health crisis.

Take this exchange, found today on Twitter.

@bbc5live
· Jan 1

“It was minimally affecting children in the first wave… we now have a whole ward of children here.”

Laura Duffel, a matron in a London Hospital, tells Adrian Chiles about the Covid situation in hospitals.

Radio @BBCSounds.

@CheungRonny

I’ve been the on call consultant in a london children’s hospital this week – this is simply not true, and irresponsible in the extreme – frightens parents, fuels covid-deniers. Covid is rife in hospitals, but not among children. We have enough to deal with without this garbage.

Twitter reply, January the third.

Nightingale Hospitals: The Great Lie

Given the recent spike in Covid-19 cases and hospital admissions, the news reports are full of stories about overwhelmed hospitals. Seriously ill patients are being driven from one county to another in the hope of finding a hospital bed for them.

Understandably, the question has been asked. Why not use the purpose built Nightingale Hospitals? They were built in record time earlier this year, with the assistance of the Army. Every bed had access to a ventilator, and they were specifically designed to accommodate Coronavirus patients, thereby allowing other hospitals to continue to see other patients who did not have Covid-19.

The one in London at the Excel Centre cost tens of millions of pounds to convert and equip.

Journalists went there, to see how it was coping with the recent rise in cases.

They found it had been dismantled. It is now mostly an empty building, guarded by security staff who are supposed to stop people finding that out. But they told the reporters anyway. This is what they said.

It has no hospital beds inside.
It has no ventilators or oxygen inside.
It has no operational medical staff inside.

The equipment has apparently been ‘redeployed’ to other areas of the NHS.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-nightingale-hospitals-b538294.html

Yes, it was all a great lie. Built with the help of the Army, and equipped by companies owned by friends of Boris Johnson and his cronies, only to be stripped out at the earliest opportunity. Don’t forget this, when the next election comes around.

Five hundred Intensive care beds just removed without public consultation, at a time when they are needed more than ever before in history.

Boris and his pals should be hanging from lamp-posts.

But nobody seems to care.

I do though.

Arise, Sir Tax Avoider

Lewis Hamilton is an incredibly successful F1 racing car driver. His skill has made him world famous, as well as very, very rich.

Much is made of his humble background, and how he overcame that to be able to set an example to other young black people in Britain and elsewhere.

Today, he has been made a Knight of the Realm, in the New Year Honours List.

Sir Lewis Hamilton.

He has indeed set a great example with his driving, his respectful demeanour, and his entrepreneurial business sense.

But he has also set another example, that of how to become even richer by not paying the correct amount of income tax on his earnings.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lewis-hamilton-tax-dodging-paradise-papers-f1-champion-latest-claims-a8041061.html

And he doesn’t even live in Britain any longer.

He has learned well from so many other rich Tories and tax-avoiding businessmen, pop stars, and other celebrities.

And like so many of those, he has been duly rewarded with his knighthood.

Compare that to Captain Tom.

Chancellor Sunak: Richer Than Queen Elizabeth

The Chancellor of Britain’s Treasury, Rishi Sunak, has a lot to say about how generous the government has been granting furlough payments to workers unable to go into work because of the current pandemic.

He has also praised the temporary increase in Universal Credit, with an aditional £20 a week granted to claimants for the duration of the lockdowns. Is £20 a week more better than nothing? I suppose it is, but believe me, £20 doesn’t buy much in modern Britain, ask anyone.

Mr Sunak receives a ministerial salary of £71,090, and an additional salary of £81,932 as a member of parliament. A total annual salary of £153,022. This is boosted by living in an official residence, having a government car and driver at his disposal, and being able to claim expenses for almost anything that can be attributed to his job.

Let’s face it, £20 is neither here nor there to him. If he dropped a £20 note, I doubt he would bother to bend down to pick it up.

But there is more.

His wife is one of the richest women in the world. In fact, she is worth more than Queen Elizabeth, the current ruler of Great Britain.

And that’s saying something, as the Queen has a massive amount of personal wealth.

And it seems Mr Sunak ‘forgot’ to declare his wife’s vast fortune, as government ministers are compelled to do. So how much are the Sunaks worth?

The following information is from TheLondonEconomic.com

Rishi Sunak is facing renewed questions about his financial affairs after it emerged that his wife and her family hold a multimillion-pound portfolio of shareholdings that are not declared in the register of ministers’ interests.

Akshata Murty – who married the chancellor in 2009 – is the daughter of one of India’s richest men. Her father co-founded tech giant Infosys, and she has shares in the company worth £430 million – making her richer than the Queen.

The ministerial code complex Sunak to declare any financial interests “relevant” to his job that might constitute a conflict of interests. Ministers are also supposed to declare the interests of close family members.

Richer than the Queen
After he became chief secretary to the Treasury in July 2019, Sunak revealed he was the beneficiary of a blind trust – meaning he can’t make decisions about how his money is invested, but can still profit from his investments.

However, according to a Guardian investigation, Sunak’s declarations make no mention of his wife beyond referring to her ownership of a small venture capital company.

But the paper revealed that Murty and her family hold a score of other valuable interests – including a £1.7 billion shareholding in Infosys, which employs thousands of UK staff and has held a number of government contracts.

Other holdings include a reported £900 million-a-year joint venture with Amazon in India, and a direct shareholding in a British firm which runs Jamie Oliver and Wendy’s restaurants in India.

As we say in London, he’s not short of a few quid.

So the next time he traps on about how great it is to get £20 a week more to spend, perhaps take less notice of him.

He is just a criminal in a nice suit.

The Dark Right

Not since the grim 1930s have we seen such a rise of the Far Right in politics around the world. Black shirts have been replaced by national flags in European countries, and by assault rifles and military clothing in America.

All the usual signs are there. Demonizing minorities and immigrants. Blaming foreigners for the pandemic and natural disasters. Denying the past, flocking to fundamentalist Christianity and ultra-orthodox Catholicism. Attacking other religions and customs as ancient and barbaric, and calling on past glories as justification for new horrors.

This is more than the Far Right though, this is the Dark Right. The Right that rules without conscience or caring, the Deep Right that wants a return to old values and restriction of personal freedoms. Workers with no contracts on poor wages, and immigrants driven out, or ‘sent home’. The Right that asserts that everyone should fend for themselves, pay their own way, or just fall by the wayside.

It is building everywhere, and no longer hiding its intentions or policies. It sneers at ‘ordinary’ people, and laughs at the distress of those less able to cope. It seeks strong leaders; father figures, strong men who say what they think without reserve, and the women who are content to play a traditional role in the background.

You only have to read a history book to see what will happen.

Dark times are ahead.

Second Wave: Or Still The First?

Covid-19 is still making the news. A huge percentage of the British population is enduring a second lockdown, and President Trump has gone into hospital for treatment.

They are now talking up the ‘second wave’. Is it any wonder, when the bars and pubs opened here, and we were treated to videos of groups of (mainly young) people enjoying parties and fun-filled gatherings? Or when Mr Trump thought it was okay to have a presentation in the Rose Garden with nobody wearing masks, and all of the cuddling or chatting close together. Or when the schools were forced back, resulting in large numbers of infections almost immediately.

Then we have the various conspiracy theorists who claim it doesn’t exist, or if it does, it is not that serious. Yes, more people still die from cancer, heart attacks, and even road fatalaties all over the world. But is this a reason to blatantly ignore the advice of medical professionals, or to overturn the hard work of so many medical staff since January?

I doubt this is a second wave, as the first wave never went away. We now have the winter flu season to deal with, when so many people will have the symptoms associated with Covid-19. That will mean more demand for testing, and possibly more deaths being counted as Coronavirus related.

So please stay safe. Carry on abiding by the commonsense rules not to spread the virus, or contract it. And above all, don’t believe it isn’t real.

(This post was created using the new block Editor. I was unable to work out how to insert any images, but wil use this blog to try to learn how to use this pesky, hateful thing!)

UPDATE: Royal News Blackout

beetleypete

Following my posts on here and on my other blog https://redflagflying.wordpress.com/ yesterday, Fraggle did some digging in the You Tube comments, and discovered that the video was filmed in 2018. Before posting yesterday, I watched numerous clips on Twitter, including one with a date/timer running on the screen. I didn’t use that one, as it was so shaky.

So it would seem likely that the date I saw was ‘inserted’, and the demonstration mentioned happened two years ago when Prince Andrew was initially implicated in the Epstein scandal.

Thanks to Fraggle for discovering this, and I wanted everyone to know.
This will be reblogged on my other blog too.

Of course, that changes nothing about Andrew’s refusal to testify, or to accept extradition to America. Or his well-documented friendship with Epstein and his visits to parties at Epstein’s house where young girls were flown in for the use of guests.

View original post 13 more words

Royal News Blackout

*** UPDATE ***

Please see Fraggle’s comment below. This clip is supposedly from 2018 according to comment by those who posted it, and not yesterday.

Unless you have seen it featured on Twitter, you will be unaware of a loud protest by a fair-sized crowd outside Buckingham Palace in London today.

This is a protest against Prince Andrew’s involvement in the trafficking of underage girls for sex, part of the Epstein scandal in America. The Prince has also declined to appear in court in America, where he might face charges of sex with underage girls at the Epstein mansion.

Not that Andrew is in the palace. The Queen isn’t there either, and has decided ‘not to return for some time’. I doubt anyone is in there, except the poorly-paid staff, and royal lackeys who keep the whole thing going at the taxpayer’s expense.

That in itself is disturbing enough, the fact that Royal privilege means he is exempt from being extradited to America to give evidence. He cannot be arrested by US Federal agents in Britain on an international warrant, for the same reason. This is an even bigger deal than Diplomatic Privilege, which can be revoked.

Of greater concern to me, is today’s event has NOT been mentioned on any news broadcast, by any of the various news channels operating in the UK.

The people working for those companies, and they call themselves ‘journalists and reporters’, should hang their heads in shame.

Much is written about Fake News these days, but this is the reality of Real News going unreported, on the instructions of the rich and privileged who run everything in this country, even the information supply.

Now not only can we no longer believe what we are told is the news, we are deemed unfit to be told what is happening in front of our own eyes.

Has It Come To This?

For all of my life, America has considered itself to be the Cradle of Democracy. The Land of The Free, where free speech is ingrained in the Constitution, and even the right to own and carry lethal weapons is supported by ancient rights.

Over the years, harsh treatment of Civil Rights protestors made the news, as did the violent reaction to Vietnam War protestors at times.

But the recent actions of the authorities in Portland has seen a worrying turn of events. Federal officers wearing Army uniforms and carrying Army equipment have arrived in the city to break up protests there. This is against the wishes of the city’s mayor, who did not ask for assistance.

These ‘Feds’ are using unmarked vehicles, wearing no identity tags or serial numbers. They are dragging protestors off the street and taking them away in those same unmarked vehicles. They are not reading them their rights and arresting them, and in many cases they are beating them hard with clubs, or using pepper spray on them.

I am not an American, and I do not know everything there is to know about the actions of the demonstrators.

But this cannot be right. Not anywhere, and certainly not in ‘The Cradle of Democracy’. Those agents involved are little more than ‘Trump’s Stormtroopers’, and if this was happening in Britain, France, or a hundred other countries, the rest of the world would be calling for sanctions to make it stop.

Only 41

The government here is celebrating. Only 41 deaths from coronavirus notified in a 24-hour period. That confirms their intention to reopen the hospitality sector, and reduce the supposedly ‘safe distance’ from 2 metres to 1 very soon.

Only 41! Hurrah!

Think about that 41. Those people had husbands, wives, children. Relatives including aunts, uncles, and cousins. They had work colleagues, as well as lifelong friends. For every one of those 41, you can add at least 100 people who will be affected by their death, for the rest of their lives.

So to my mind, that should read 4,100, not 41.

And if you see it the same way as I do, you will surely agree.

41 is still too many.