06/09/2022. London, United Kingdom. Official Cabinet Portrait; Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade – Kemi Badenoch MP poses for a photograph in 10 Downing Street. Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street
At a time when this United Kingdom is crying out for a leader prepared to confess Christ and lead the nation in repentance back to the King of kings, one contender for the office of Prime Minister has announced she has lost her faith, in somewhat strange circumstances.
The Tory leader says the behaviour of the Austrian, who kept his daughter captive for 24 years, “killed” her belief in God. Mrs Badenoch said that after reading the story of Fritzl’s daughter Elisabeth and how she kept praying to be saved, ‘it was like someone blew out a candle’ on her faith.
Mistake not to ’Do God’
Kemi Badenoch says that that she still has ‘cultural Christianity’ but is now not a believer. The Conservative Party leader grew up in a Christian household, having had a grandfather who was a clergyman. She told the BBC: ‘I believed that there was a God, and I would have defined myself as a Christian apologist, always arguing with people about why there was a God.
‘And in 2008, this story about Josef Fritzl and his daughter, who was locked in a cellar for 24 years … That killed it.’
Tony Blair (R) & Alastair Campbell
Sir Keir Starmer is the first self-declared atheist Prime Minister. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor, was also an atheist. He intervened in an interview to prevent Mr Blair answering a question about his Christianity by saying: ‘We don’t do God.
Years later, Mr Blair, by now a Catholic, said it was a mistake for politicians not to ‘Do God’. In an interview in 2009 he said: ‘As the years of my premiership passed, one fact struck me with increasing force: that failure to understand the power of religion meant failure to understand the modern world. … Leaders, whether of religious faith themselves or not, have to “do God”.’
But that is far from the wholehearted ability to grasp the spiritual dimension of events and call on the ‘power in the blood’ which a prime minister will need in the days ahead. If you agree, sign our Petition:
Mrs Badenoch said that she read the account of Elisabeth Fritzl and said: ‘I thought, I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered.
‘I was praying to have good grades. My hair should grow longer, and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn’t miss something. It’s like, why were those prayers answered and not this woman’s prayers? And it just, it was like someone blew out a candle.’
Mrs Badenoch said that she still had “cultural Christianity”, something that she found has grown as she got older.
‘The just wanting to protect certain things because I think the world that we have in the UK is very much built on many Christian values, but it’s that belief in God itself.’
She added: ‘I rejected God, not Christianity. So I would still define myself as a cultural Christian.’
Richard Dawkins – Cultural Christian
But then again, as reported by CARE, evolutionist Richard Dawkins also claims to be a ‘cultural Christian’. Last year, in an interview with LBC, he declared Christianity to be a ‘fundamentally decent religion’, and lamented the way in which in London the city was more decorated with symbols for Ramadan than with those of Easter.
Kemi too loves Easter, saying that people in Britain should ‘talk more’ about the holiday. She told GB News in April: ‘It comes with spring and the sunshine comes in. So we have freedom of religion in this country. We should make sure that people are free to celebrate their religion, not impose it on other people. Whatever the religion. Let’s not impose it. But yeah, let’s talk more about Easter. Why not?’
Once more she is missing the point that a nation’s laws depend on its culture, which depends on its religion. It is not for the State to impose the First Commandment but rather itself to observe it.
Telegraph readers brought many dimensions to the discussion.
Tao-das said: ‘Kemi I am disappointed, not because you said you no longer believe in God but because of the reasons you gave.’
James Williams agreed: ‘Is she really naive enough to think that there isn’t much worse than that going on in the world right now!?’
As did P.B.: ‘Dear me. Hasn’t she read the bible? Tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Humans are capable of evil and can actively choose to be good. Atheists have achieved Stalin and Hitler and Mao – as predicted by Nietzsche when he proclaimed that god is dead. Peterson is good on this….’
Stephen Ross said: ‘I respect what Kemi has said but strongly and respectfully disagree. I cannot form a view or response of God based on the behaviour of other people whether claiming to follow him or not when their behaviour is the complete anthesis of everything God stands for and has demonstrated through other people and circumstances in my life. Its like branding a school as poor when there is one bad teacher out of a staff of many good teachers.’
the question of suffering
Emelye Simpkin wrote: ‘Questions of suffering are, of course, immensely difficult to answer in relation to belief and trust in God, but if you base your belief decision on whether every prayer is answered, then you have missed the point. Start with a gospel and the identity of Jesus.’
David Sage observed: ‘Look at Christ and the apostles and see how badly they were treated yet they spread belief. There is Evil and it does and is doing, all over the world, even here, most terrible things. The alternative would be for God to refuse Free Will and enforce right behaviour.’
Mark Daugherty brought this: ‘I came from a horrific family situation. Violent beatings that continued for 17 years until my escape from them. I was drugged to facilitate the beatings. Left with permanent injury that has affected my whole life, and will eventually kill me. On two separate occasions I was starved to the point of near death. Many other horrific assaults.
Curiously, going through hell on earth had the opposite effect upon me. In the terrible pit I came to a certainty that God did exist, and to this day am convinced that it was God that kept me functional, and saw me to the other side. I am convinced it is my life long faith that enabled me to slowly rebuild my life, and form a character I believe to be loving despite what I went through.
‘This article really scores on me. I have no condemnation or judgement in my heart for anyone who struggles with the question of how there can be a God in a world of evil. It is perhaps the oldest dilemma of humankind. I can’t imagine living without a conception of God. I sympathize with those who never have that peace in their heart.
Born into the Kingdom
Paul Carpenter said: ‘Yes there is evil in the world but also an almighty good God. There are two kingdoms, the kingdom of Light and the kingdom of Darkness. God gives everyone free will to choose light or darkness. Satan’s kingdom (which he took from Adam) lies, steals, kills and destroys and we are all born into it. His kingdom is defeated and Christ is coming to judge the earth (Israel is the sign that this is imminent). We escape being condemned by being spiritually born into the kingdom of light. This follows repentance, confession and faith in Christ’s covenant finished work to deal with our sinfulness at the Cross.’
Claire Jenkins took aim at ‘cultural Christianity’: ‘I find this incredibly sad, as it suggests that Badenoch had a learned faith not a personal one, and due to reading about one man’s actions has come to the conclusion that God is ultimately untrustworthy.
‘And let’s be very clear here, if she has rejected God, she has rejected Christianity. You cannot do the one without the other, as then Easter and Christmas become “holidays” rather than noted Holy days.’
’Low cost option’
Cato Censor agreed: ‘I do admire Kemi’s pluck,but “cultural Christian” seems a very low cost option. Now if Jesus had only thought of that, well, no cross?’
D Storey was cutting: ‘Let’s make someone else’s misery all about me. How very 21st century.’
Christopher Young went back a bit: ‘What a surprise the last decent Christian leader was Thatcher and the last decent point of our Country was under her.’
Caroline van den Berg urged prayer: ‘We better start praying for a second coming of Jesus Christ so all these politician realise God does exist, he is more than the Easter Bunny .
‘What we need is a single individual committed to principle who can illuminate the path of virtue for generations to follow .
‘There will always be Evil people like Josef Fritzl we only have to look at our screens to see it. But we have faith hope and charity which can change the world . Keep praying.’
PRAY Pray for Kemi Badenoch to rediscover her faith. Pray the Lord will raise up a man of God to lead our nation. And ask your MP to support our Christian constitution and to ask the Government to honour our Christian heritage and the King of kings:
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US Vice-President J D Vance tells Europe's self-satisfied elite some home truths.
Script of video:
On Saturday 15th February, 2025, US Vice-President, J D Vance, gave a twenty-minute speech to assembled European dignitaries at the Munich Security Conference.
Of course the conference was already ablaze with outrage that President Donald Trump had called Russia’s President Putin and started negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.
Euro-leaders shut down dissent
US Vice-President J D Vance tells Europe’s self-satisfied elite some home truths.
But J D Vance did not concentrate on that. He hardly mentioned it. His focus was to denounce his audience for shutting down domestic dissent, and to ask them what values they were defending.
For the BBC’s Security Correspondent Frank Gardner it was ‘a blistering attack decrying misinformation, disinformation, and the rights of free speech.’ He meant ‘upholding the rights of free speech’. I think Frank had lost his composure a bit.
He described the JDV speech as ‘a very weird 20 minutes – one met largely with silence from delegates in the hall.’ Indeed it was. Not just did the ‘speech go down very badly – unequivocally badly’, But ‘It was extraordinarily poorly judged,’ according to the affronted man from the BBC.
However, for Brendan O’Neill for Spiked Online, it ‘was a joy to watch’, ‘a delicious spectacle’, seeing ‘A Yank from dirt-poor origins sticking it to Europe’s turbo-smug ruling class’.
I’ve taken out some things you might find informative, even scriptural, from it. Well, it’s no secret that the new US administration ‘does God’, just as Tony Blair’s, according to his spin doctor Alistair Campbell, did not.
Nor, for that matter, do our present crop of UK politicians, even, I must venture, a great many who profess Christ. By ‘Do God’ I mean acknowledge that Jesus, the King of kings, is sovereign in the national affairs of men. Above all, to see faith in the Lord of life as more than a mere personal matter.
This may be a longer video than we normally post, but we’ll be going behind the scenes and drawing encouragement for those who pray and for those who recognise that there is indeed a spiritual dimension to our life here on earth. Sign our ‘Doing God’ petition:
It did not take long for the Vice-President to remind, in his own words: ‘all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely—to improve their lives.’
That is scriptural. Remember from the book of Romans, where the Apostle Paul is discussing the civil ruler? He writes: Rom 13:4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good.
Rulers, according to the Bible, are not there to impoverish their people, as the climate fanatics seem to think, but to create an environment in which we can prosper.
Threat from within
EU Leaders need to repent.
Bearing in mind this was a security conference, Mr Vance went on:
‘the threat that I worry most about for Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within—the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values that are shared with the United States of America.
‘I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.’
It was the Romanian constitutional court, as it happens, but Mr Vance regards the courts, correctly, you might say, as an arm of government.
Defence of Democracy
Mr Vance went on to point out that today: ‘Everything—from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship—is billed as a defence of democracy.’
Well even in the US, some claimed to be ‘defending democracy’ by trying to use the courts to stop Donald Trump from contesting the presidential elections.
And when the European elites use anti-democratic means to prevent the wrong people from participating in the democratic system, that too is ‘defending democracy’.
Because ‘Defending Democracy’ actually means, ‘Keeping us in power’.
The V-P reminded those present about the Cold War: ‘Consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, closed churches, and canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.’
’Shut down Social Media’
He went on to draw uncomfortable parallels between the old Soviet Union and today’s European leaders: ‘I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content.”
‘Or to this very country (Germany), where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online, as part of “Combating Misogyny on the Internet: A Day of Action.”
‘I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder.’
The penalty imposed on Salwan Najem was a fine. His friend, Salwan Momika, was murdered by Muslim vigilantes just weeks previously. Either way, in Sweden, burning the Koran means consequences. Swedish judges have imposed an Islamic blasphemy law.
’Tolerant Country’
Stephen Green was convicted for standing outside Marie Stopes abortion facility in Ealing on 6th February 2023 .
As they have done in the United Kingdom, where one Martin Frost has now been convicted after a similar activity in Manchester.
‘This is a tolerant country, but we just do not tolerate this behaviour,’ said Judge Margaret McCormack in that case, apparently with a straight face.
And indeed, it was to the UK where J D Vance next turned his attention: ‘And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britain in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.
‘Not obstructing anyone. Not interacting with anyone. Just silently praying on his own. … Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new “buffer zone” law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.’
I too have been convicted of a buffer zone offence, for standing outside an abortion facility displaying a Bible verse. Neither obstructing nor interacting with anyone, just like Adam. And just like him, I have been, as J D Vance put it: ‘… sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.’
Mr Vance went on: ‘To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way—or even worse, win an election.’
He went on to ask what is their vision: ‘I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course, that’s important. ‘But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly, I think, to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?’
Keep themselves in power
It’s a good question. And I think the answer is their vision lies in keeping themselves in office, whilst advancing today’s secularist sacred cows, things which stupidly attack the Christian faith upon which their entire civilisation is built, ideas like sodomy, abortion, depravity, divorce and family breakdown, multiculturalism.
I think the new US administration even sees the European elite’s climate fanaticism as an example of what amounts to a cultural death wish. Sign our Petition:
As for multiculturalism being part of their death wish, how else, except from a spiritual perspective, do you explain their policy of opening the doors to Muslims, whose religion has supplanting the Christian foundation of their target societies with Islamism as an article of faith?
’nothing more urgent than mass migration’
Wreath laid after terror attack in France
The Vice-President certainly sees it like that: ‘I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. … The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it’s gotten much higher since. And we know—the situation didn’t materialize in a vacuum.
‘It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday, in this very city. And, of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims—who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined.’
‘An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.’
As Vice-President Vance was speaking, a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker murdered a 14-year-old boy and wounded five others in an Islamist knife attack in Austria.
What did we vote for?
‘No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.’
‘But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And, agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more, all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. …
‘I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children.’
Going further, he took aim at the elitist World Economic Forum, where King Charles has hob-nobbed with Klaus Schwab, Prince William launched his Earthshot Prize, where Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardern and the current secretary general of NATO, former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, emerged from the Young Global Leaders programme, and where ordinary people are envisaged as owning nothing and being happy:
‘Contrary to what you might hear a couple mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy.’
’Sacred Principle’
Moses. brings the Ten Commandments for the people to ratify
It might have come as a shock to those assembled, and to some of our judges, but the US Vice-President regards the thoughts and concerns of ordinary people as valid and worthy of consideration. ‘Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle, or you don’t. Europeans—the people—have a voice.’
The ‘firewalls’ refers to the German elite ostracising the elected members of the AfD, of course. But does democracy rest on a ‘sacred principle’? I think it does. The people have to give their assent to those who rule.
When Moses brought the words of the Covenant given by the Almighty down from Mount Sinai, we read it was essential that it was ratified by the people. Three times in the book of Exodus, in chapter nineteen and twice in chapter twenty-four, we read of the democratic assent of the people, culminating in this:
Exod 24:7 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.
Fear not
J D Vance finished by quoting the late Pope John Paul II, a prominent supporter of democracy in his native Poland, who once said: ‘“Do not be afraid.”
‘We shouldn’t be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.’
It was the Lord Jesus who said ‘Fear not’ first, many times, but it is a constant theme in scripture and it depends on faith and love of God: 1John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
But actually, the arrogant European elites do have reason to fear their people. They know that the people have had enough of them. They are afraid of losing their positions in elections.
There is one higher than they
They will most likely ignore the witness of Mr Vance, and carry on just the same. Yet scripture says, in Ecclesiastes:
Eccl 5:8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.
Do not be afraid of them, because we have sure promises from the Lord on high. Here is his attitude towards those who deny the rule of King Jesus, from Psalm two and verse four: Psalm 2:4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
How do we know that the arrogant will fall? From, for example, Psalm seventy-six: Psalm 76:12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth.
From Mary’s Magnificat in Luke chapter one: Luke 1:51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
Luke 1:52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
Which itself is based solidly on the whole witness of scripture, for example, here in psalm one hundred and forty-seven: Psalm 147:6 The LORD lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground.
’Turbo-smug ruling class’
And that is why the speech of the humble boy from ‘dirt-poor origins’ went down so ‘unequivocally badly’ with ‘Europe’s turbo-smug ruling class’.
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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak addresses the 2023 Conservative Party Conference
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has proposed drafting 18-year-olds into some form of national service scheme.
Under the mandatory scheme, teenagers will have to enrol in the military for 12 months or spend one weekend each month volunteering in their community.
This initiative aims to instil a sense of duty and contribute to national security, reflecting the value of maintaining a peaceful and secure society.
The PM said: ‘The UK has generations of young people who have not had the opportunity they deserve’, adding that this measure will help unite society in an increasingly uncertain world’.
The Bible says, Micah 4:4 But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.
What is National Service?
National Service was introduced in the UK in 1949, with all physically fit males aged 17 and 21 having to serve in the Armed Forces initially for 18 months. However, in 1950 a further National Service Act lengthened the period of service to two years.
They then remained on the reserve list for another four years and during this time they could be called on to serve with their units but on no more than three occasions for a maximum of 20 days.
National Service ended in 1960, though periods of deferred service still had to be completed. The last national servicemen were discharged in 1963.
Who is exempt?
No one will be exempted from taking part in the National Service programme, not even the royals. Others will fit the scheme around their lives. There will be very limited deferments and none for university students.
Further, there will be no exemption for those who are in work. Also, being on a gap year abroad will not be a reason for exemption and those abroad will be expected to do their National Service alongside any travel. However, the Royal Commission will look at exemptions, including where people are already working in the military. But the starting point remains that all people serve.
The Royal Commission will also strive to ensure full participation. Weekend placements could involve roles within the NHS, fire or police services, or with charities dedicated to supporting older adults and combating loneliness.
National service ‘idiotic’
Jeremy Clarkson asserts that it would be better for young people to work on the land. He is quite right that British people don’t seem too enthusiastic about bending over to pick strawberries or waking up at the crack of dawn to milk cows.
‘Here’s an idea. Instead of national service, which is obviously idiotic, how about kids working on farms,’ Jeremy Clarkson said.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has indicated, between the lines, that this modern form of national service will equip young people with valuable skills and opportunities for life. He claims it will foster a powerful culture of service, enhancing societal cohesion, and in a more uncertain and dangerous world, it will bolster our country’s security and resilience.
There are four key aspects to this proposal. Firstly, although unspoken, Mr. Sunak likely believes this initiative will attract votes, particularly from those whom Nigel Farage is steering towards Richard Tice and his Reform Party.
Secondly, working backwards, Mr. Sunak mentions that the world is more ‘uncertain and dangerous,’ though he doesn’t specify compared to when. He asserts that national service will ‘strengthen our country’s security and resilience,’ which is undoubtedly a positive outcome.
Thirdly, Rishi Sunak portrays this initiative as a means to foster a more cohesive society through a culture of service. Implicit in this statement is the recognition that society currently lacks cohesion. Perhaps he has observed instances such as pro-Hamas demonstrators freely marching through the streets, Jewish individuals living in fear, women hesitating to use changing facilities due to predatory behaviour from some male ‘transwomen’, or young girls being targeted by gangs.
It seems apparent that achieving societal cohesion will require more than just a few Saturday afternoons of 18-year-olds participating in community activities. Restoring unity around the United Kingdom’s Christian constitution, which serves as the only valid point of reference, may prove to be a more substantial undertaking.
The Bible says, John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Potential benefits for social cohesion
While the UK Prime Minister claims that the plan will foster a ‘national spirit,’ Home Secretary James Cleverly suggests it will help young people break out of their ‘bubble.’
The theory is that through military service or working with charitable organisations, young people will have the opportunity to develop civic pride and social responsibility.
They will also interact with individuals from diverse backgrounds, form new social bonds, and cultivate mutual trust. This approach holds potential benefits for social cohesion in the future.
National service akin to slave labour?
There would only be 30,000 military placements available, with tests introduced to determine the selection of applicants.
The vast majority of 18-year-olds would have no involvement with the military. They would essentially be involved in the 12-month-long community-service programme.
The British Army lacks the resources, both in time and funds, to train hundreds of thousands of reluctant teenagers who have no desire to participate and will likely leave once their 12-month service is completed.
Managing unwilling conscripts would pose more challenges than benefits. Some have exaggeratedly claimed that even the voluntary aspect of the national service plan borders on fascism or resembles slave labor. Such assertions are plainly ridiculous.
Developed and democratic countries such as Russia, Sweden, France, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Norway, Nigeria and others have national service or conscription programmes that are similar to what the Tories are proposing.
National service a priority?
While it’s commendable to use a revamped form of national service to instil a sense of national belonging and civic responsibility among young people, any potential gains could be undermined by the current economic, social, and political landscape that disadvantages them.
Young people face significant challenges in securing well-paying jobs and accessing the housing market. If the Tories are truly serious about fostering national belonging among our youth, they should be advocating for a fairer socio-economic framework—one that gives teenagers and young adults a genuine stake in society.
Why not offer more educational and vocational opportunities? Why not provide more affordable housing? These are critical issues that the next government must address before considering the reintroduction of national service.
READ: 1Sam 08:03; 2Sam 3:36;2Sam 11:1; Psa 4:8a; Prov 28:02a; Psa 127:1b; 2Chron 17:18; Matt 05:17-20; Matt 06:24; Rom 3:16; Rev 19:19
PRAY: That British forces will not be going forth to battle
Pray for our law makers
Pray for our leaders to repent and seek the Lord.
Let us know what YOU think in the comments below.
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Rishi Sunak filling up someone else's car in a publicity stunt. (Rishi does not drive a Kia.)
Rishi Sunak filling up someone else’s car in a publicity stunt. (Rishi does not drive a Kia.)
The papers and media (See ITV news HERE) are reporting that the 2030 ban on petrol and diesel cars may be delayed by five years as Rishi Sunak waters down his net zero pledges.
Some Tory MPs have welcomed the proposals, which will also involve pushing back the ban on gas and oil boilers. climate fanatics are furious. The BBC is talking of ‘a blizzard of criticism’. The motivation, says the Telegraph, is to ‘mark a clear line between the party and Labour at a time when it is struggling in the polls’. But the punitive quotas on how many EV’s manufacturers must sell between now and the cut-off date remain.
To be in accordance with scripture, it isn’t enough for bans on petrol and diesel cars and gas and oil boilers to be put back. There should be no bans at all. The law of God bans things which are evil, things which should not happen. That is things like murder, adultery, theft, false witness, even blasphemy and idolatry in a civilised country. Buying the sort of car the establishment think you should not buy can never be illegal in the eyes of God. Installing a boiler which happens to be the wrong sort in the eyes of the elite can never be ‘against the law’.
That’s because all laws are or should be in accordance with the laws of God.
The Prophet called out to God: Isa 26:9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
To go outside the laws of God into some sort of top-down command and control mentality is human arrogance. And that is whether or not there really is a climate emergency, as the media never tire of telling us.
Never forget, scientists are funding-driven and that means they are agenda-driven. They, like media folk, mix with politicians. It took the Covid debacle to reveal how science can follow policy, rather than the other way round. It also showed us how the media can swiftly become propaganda channels for government. Now we have seen all that, we cannot forget it.
Those who lead us are fallible, ambitious, self-serving human beings. They get things wrong. They focus on the short-term, on polls, on headlines.
The Lord Jesus asked: Luke 14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
The answer is, ‘British politicians and their civil servants’. They have not counted the cost of their net zero policies. They commanded that all new vehicles sold after 2030 should be electric. They may now be pushing that back five years. That decision alone makes my point. It is policy made up on the hoof. If 2030 can become 2035 overnight, the policy never had any rational basis. Did they ever think it through as the Lord Jesus assumed normal, rational human beings would do?
Mining for cobalt in the Congo (DRC). Time Africa Magazine.
Did they count the cost of all the charging points they would need for all the EV’s they demanded we buy, how people in flats would access them, how they would generate all the electricity they would need for them in time, and for all the electric heat-pumps they are instructing the public to install, how they would expand the electric grid by their self-imposed deadline to transport all the electricity they would have to generate, or even whether that electricity would remain affordable? The answer to that is ‘No’.
Did they run tests to check the life of the batteries or consider how people would pay for a new one once the old one expired? Did they assess the environmental and social impact of mining the materials for all the batteries the cars would need? Is there any installed capacity or environmental risk assessment for scrapping the old batteries? Did they ask where in the world the batteries would be made and the impact on domestic security if they and the cars and heat-pumps were made overseas? Did they even consider the impact of much heavier vehicles on roads and car parks? The answer to all these questions is ‘No’.
Renewables
This graph from the Climate Change Committee shows unrealistic aims never costed out or thought through. Black is fossil fuels, Light blue is renewables. Blue is Guaranteed power plant output, Pink is Electricity for hydrogen production, Red is Nuclear, hydro and tidal power. The graph starts at 2020 and ends at 2050, The left axis is TerawattHoiurs of electricity rising from 320 in 2020 to 790 in 2050.
They have commanded and skewed the electricity market with subsidies paid for by consumers through green taxes to drive through the installation of wind turbines and solar panels. The Climate Change Committee has a graphic showing renewables generating two-thirds of our electricity by 2050.
Have they put in place equivalent capacity from nuclear power or fossil fuels to cover those days when the sun doesn’t shine, or shines too much, or when the wind doesn’t blow, or when both of those happen together? Is such back-up capacity even being planned? Are the investing in clean coal technology or buying British nuclear plants?
For that matter, have they ruled out installing solar panels on farm-land and insisted they go on roofs? Have they told us the expected life of the turbines and the solar panels and planned for their disposal or recycling? The answer once again to all that is ‘No’.
Arrogance, stupidity and dishonesty
Not only are those who lead us so arrogant that they legalise things God says in his word are evil and promote them, not only are they so lacking in humility they distort the market by banning things God never banned, but they are so stupid they do not even cost it out and so lacking in wisdom they fail to think any of it through.
On top of that, they lack the honesty to admit it. The exact same cocktail of arrogance, stupidity and deceit meant that Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions and the imposition of mRNA vaccines were both carried out in opposition to the laws of God and were neither costed out nor thought through.
Covid corruption
Stephen Lighfoot, the Chairman of the MHRA through 2020-2023, had shares in vaccine producer Glaxo-Smith Kline. Director Amanda Calvert had shares in vaccine producer AstraZeneca.
Did they seek the Lord before ordering lockdown? Did they ask the public whether it was acceptable to classify some economic activity as ‘non-essential’ and ban it? Did they consider the effect on the national collective immune system and mental health of confining people to their homes or forbidding old folks from seeing their children and grand-children?
Did they conduct a dispassionate assessment of the effectiveness of face-masks and anti-bacterial hand-wash against an air-borne virus? Did they conduct the standard regime of even medium-term testing before they rolled out a vaccine employing innovative mRNA technology? Did they insist no-one with shares in pharmaceutical companies could sit on a regulatory board?
The answer, once again, is ‘No’. Instead, those in office and their advisors gave contracts for largely unnecessary protective equipment to their friends. To the previous mix of arrogance, stupidity and dishonesty they added corruption.
Bribery and corruption are specifically condemned in the word of God: Exod 23:8 And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Changing people’s diets?
The Telegraph reported: ‘(Mr Sunak) is expected to say that there will be no policies to change people’s diets or to encourage carpooling, and no new taxes to discourage flying. He is also likely to rule out burdensome recycling schemes, including a proposal for seven bins, with six separate recycling bins plus one for general waste.’
Even to say that carries the implication that civil servants and government advisors might be considering such policies.
It should not even be under discussion whether people should be free or not to eat whatever they want and travel how they wish. The Government should not even be considering skewing the market in these areas with ‘sin taxes’.
As the Prophet Ezekiel told the rulers of his day: Ezek 45:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord GOD.
Finally, if, as we are told, the bans and impositions are mandated by the Climate Change Act 2008 and the 2050 Target Amendment Order 2019, then those acts of folly must be repealed.
Prayer
READ: Exod 18:21; 2Sam 23:2; Psalm 23:12; Jer 29:5-7; Mark 10:44; 1Tim 2:1-4.
PRAY: Thank God for this backtrack from Mr Sunak in answer to our prayer. Tell God it does not go far enough. Pray the Government will remove the ‘net zero’ targets, policies and impositions altogether. Pray for ministers to repent and have the fear of God and seek his face in humility for wisdom, honesty and to love their neighbour. May they understand that to be a ruler is to be the servant of all.
Use this link to the UK Parliament website to email your MP to ask him to ask the Government to remove all bans and artificial ‘net zero’ targets. Kindly Post your MP’s reply in the comments below.
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Rishi Sunak has become the first Hindu Prime Minister of the UK following a series of political twists and turns.
The former chancellor was selected by more than 180 Conservative MPs to succeed Liz Truss as Tory leader. Mr Sunak’s appointment has been described by supporters as nothing short of a miracle.
Nevertheless, there are deep concerns as to what his religion will mean for Britain and the body of Christ. That being said, a widely-circulated photo of the new prime minister making a Hindu prayer in front of a Downing Street door is not all it seems.
’My religion is Hindu’
Rishi Sunak is of Indian descent. He is the first British Prime Minister to be a practising Hindu who bows down before graven images as gods. The Bible says:
Exodus 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. … 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
When Rishi Sunak became a minister in the Theresa May Cabinet, he took his oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita. At the time he said, ‘I am now a citizen of Britain. But my religion is Hindu. My religious and cultural heritage is Indian. I proudly say that I am a Hindu, and my identity is also a Hindu.’
Having a leader who worships a god aside from the Prince of Peace is a challenge and appears to normalise other gods in our constitutionally Christian nation.
Diwali:’Festival of Lights’
Mr Sunak performing rituals
A video shared widely on social media in the last few weeks of the Prime Minister lighting candles outside a door on Downing Street attracted thousands of comments, all assuming it has just happened.
However, our investigations revealed that the video was taken in October 2020 while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. We are of course concerned that such rituals will continue under his leadership. He has already held a Diwali reception in N0 10. What spirits or even spiritual altars will he leave behind?
Diwali, or Dipawali, is India’s biggest and most important holiday of the year. The festival gets its name from the row (avali) of clay lamps (deepa) that Indians light outside their homes to symbolise the inner light they claim protects them from spiritual darkness. Over centuries, Diwali has become a national festival which non-Hindus partake in. For instance, in Jainism, Diwali marks the nirvana, or spiritual awakening, of lord mahavira on October 15, 527 B.C. In Sikhism, it honors the day that Guru Hargobind Ji, the Sixth Sikh Guru, was freed from imprisonment. Buddhists in India celebrate Diwali as well. The Bible says:
Joshua 23:7 That ye come not among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them.
Britain remains a Christian Country
In AD871, King Alfred the Great established legal codes known as the Doom Book to govern England after his victory over Viking invaders. The Vikings submitted and accepted the peace treaty, which stated that their leader and thirty of their most honourable men would become Christians.
King Alfred codified three prior Saxon codes to which he prefixed the ten commandments of Moses. He incorporated rules of life from the Mosaic code and the Christian code of ethics. During his reign, Alfred was advised by a council of nobles and church leaders. This council was called the Witan.
King Edgar’s Coronation
The King Edgar window in Bath Abbey. Edgar is pictured holding the Sceptre and the Orb under the Cross although this was first used by King Henry VIII at his coronation in 1509. The Orb says the whole earth is subject to the power and empire of Christ our Redeemer
The stage was set for the later coronation of King Edgar by Bishop Dunstan in Bath Abbey in 975AD.
King Edgar made the first Coronation Oath:
‘In the name of the Holy Trinity. I promise three things to the Christian people subject to me:
‘Firstly, that God’s church and all the Christian people of my dominions will be held in true peace
‘Secondly, I forbid robbery and all unlawful deeds by all ranks of men.
‘Thirdly, I promise and command justice and mercy in all judgments, in order that the gracious and merciful lord, who liveth and reigneth, may thereby forgive us all through his everlasting mercy.’
Coronation Oath 1953
Thus it was that 978 years later, on 2nd June 1953, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth made her own oath, responding to Archbishop Fisher, in a communion service full of Christian teaching and symbolism:
Archbishop. ‘Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?’ The Queen. ‘I will’.
Archbishop. ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?’ The Queen. ‘All this I promise to do.’
Only then was the Queen anointed and crowned as monarch.
United Kingdom is constitutionally Christian
Britain’s laws are based on Judeo-Christian thinking. The Church of England is the established Church, and our history, heritage, and arts are all profoundly influenced by Christianity.
Christianity and the UK are inseparable. Our Head of State and monarch of the British empire is represented as ‘Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories. King, Head of the Commonwealth, ‘Defender of the Faith.’
By way of convention and practice, the Prime Minister is sworn in to govern based on the laws and Christian doctrines that established the United Kingdom. How will these doctrines be understood, let alone upheld, by Rishi Sunak, who is Hindu?
‘A very bad Christian’
To be fair, Mr Sunak’s immediate predecessor Liz Truss was not a professing, let alone confessing Christian. The best she could do was: “I share the values of the Christian faith and the Church of England.”
As for Boris Johnson, he told The Times journalist, Tom McTague, that he counted himself “a kind of very, very bad Christian”. Christianity “makes a lot of sense” and “is a superb ethical system”, he continued. Furthermore, in his Easter message last year, Boris declared: ‘Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, not just today but every day. His teaching and the message of his death and resurrection permeates through every aspect of daily life.’
That is more than Mr Sunak would say. Nevertheless, although Mr Johnson understood the EU’s paganism, and why the UK should be free of it, his Covid policies of lockdowns and restrictions, let alone his Net Zero fanaticism, strayed far from the ways of the Lord.
Hindu beliefs
Hinduism dates back four thousand years. The name ‘Hindu’ comes from the word Indus. It is made up of different religious practices and originated near the Indus River in India. Most of the world’s Hindu worshipers live today in India where Mr Sunak’s family heritage is from.
Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic, a term invented by one Max Müller. They worship a single deity, known as Brahman, but still recognise other gods and goddesses. Mr Müller stated that henotheism means ‘monotheism in principle and polytheism in fact’.
The Institute for Human Knowledge says a Hindu can pick a personal deity of choice from 330 Hindu gods. Hindus revere all living creatures and worship animals and things like ‘luck’ and ‘wealth’ (that’s ‘Lakshmi’). Hindus make wooden or plaster images of the gods of various sizes and place them up in their temples and houses. Ganesh, the elephant, and Hanuman, the monkey, are favourites. Around Diwali time ignorant teachers trying to be ‘inclusive’ will set these up in state school classrooms. However, the pantheistic element of Hinduism also sees god in everything and everything in god.
Moreover, followers believe there are multiple paths to reaching the divine. It is complicated by the ‘Karma’ concept of constant rebirth based on conduct in this life. Hindus are on a journey towards understanding the ultimate reality of nothingness. The goal of the Hindu is to be absorbed into the godhead through Nirvana, literally, ‘snuffing out’. Evangelists say: ‘Never offer a Hindu eternal life; that is what he is trying to escape from.’
God broke into creation
Christianity teaches that God is separate from creation. He made it, sustains it, relates to it, and broke into it when he became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Hinduism with its pantheism will never have this. The God with whom Britain identifies is not made with wood or plaster. Neither does our God share his name with other gods:
Isaiah 42:8 I am the Lord: that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. Isaiah 44:6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me, there is no God.
There is but one God and only one God and Saviour: Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear oh Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! Hosea 13:4 Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.
Furthermore, the only way to reach the Supreme Being, Almighty God, is through the Lord Jesus Christ. John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
The United Kingdom now has a leader who does not recognise the God of Abraham. What happens to our faith as a nation? As Christians, our work just began. We must continue to defend and uphold the Christian Faith. Our prayer is that Britain remains united by the name of Jesus Christ in the love of God.
Prayer
The United Kingdom now has a leader who does not recognise the God of Abraham. What happens to our faith as a nation? For us Christians, our work just began.
Pray against every attack on Christianity and the people of God. Pray against principalities and powers in higher places. Pray that the coronation on 6th May 2023 upholds the full heritage of the UK’s Christian Faith. Pray for our leaders, especially that the Lord Jesus convicts Rishi Sunak to repent of Hinduism and find the true faith. Pray that the Holy Spirit convicts Rishi Sunak of his need for a Saviour, Jesus Christ, God incarnate. What better time for that conviction to come at that feast of the incarnation we call ‘Christmas’.
Read also: Deut 8:19; 2 Kings 17:35; Psalm 81:9; Isa 45:5,21; Jer 25:6, 29:7; 1Cor 8:6; 1 Tim 2:1-5; Gal 3:20.
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One question in the Tory Party election which you won’t see asked by the mainstream media is which, if any, of the candidates is pro-life and pro-family.
Be sure news people know about it. They will be doing their best to advance pro-abortion candidates and doing down any seen as pro-life. They know it matters.
What does the Bible say?
Indeed defending innocent human life is as important to our United Kingdom as the shedding of it is to the realm of Satan. The Bible says, in Exodus 23 and verse 7:
Exod 23:7b The innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.
We read in Proverbs chapter six and verses sixteen and seventeen that the Lord hates the hands, like those of the abortionists, that shed innocent blood.
The Lord evicted the Canaanites from the Promised Land because they practised ritual sodomy and child sacrifice. He later judged the people of Israel for doing the very same thing. From Psalm 106 we read that just like us, they forgot to serve the Lord:
Psa 106:37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, 38 And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.
MPs’ voting records
Liz Truss
In the Christian Voice office we record how MPs vote on a range of issues.
So I am able to tell you that on 9th July 2019, both Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat voted ‘Aye’ in the House of Commons to a measure to impose both abortion on demand and gay marriage on Northern Ireland. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch all abstained.
On 30th March 2022 the House voted on an amendment to the Health and Care Bill to keep Do-it-Yourself abortion permanent.
Tom Tugendhat
This measure was brought in during the Covid Lockdown to enable women to receive abortion pills by post. It was a temporary measure.
We should always, by the way, be suspicious of government ‘temporary measures’. They have a strange habit of sticking around.
’Pills-by-post’ open to abuse
Under this one, women did not need to see a doctor as the 1967 Abortion Act requires, they just rang up.
Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat all abstained. Penny Mordaunt voted for it. Only Kemi Badenoch voted against, together with Suella Braverman, who was eliminated yesterday.
Candidate analysis
You may care to know that thirty-five Conservative MPs voted ‘No’ to abortion and gay-marriage in Ulster in 2019 AND to pills-by-post back in March. They included Suella and her campaign manager Steve Baker.
In fact members of this group of thirty-five pro-life MPs have been very likely to declare themselves in the leadership race for Suella, then for Kemi, then for Liz, then for Tom, then for Penny – and for Rishi, hardly at all.
Penny Mordaunt
It shows some MPs at least see this as a defining issue.
Sitting on the fence
Out of the five remaining candidates only Kemi Badenoch is remotely pro-life. Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat are pro-abortion and pro-sodomy, Penny Mordaunt is pro-abortion and pro-trans. Ms Mordaunt told the House of Commons on two occasions that ‘trans-women are women’. See Sky news story here.
Meanwhile, the devout Hindu, Rishi Sunak, sits on the fence. And yes, religion is important.
Rishi Sunak
How will a man who cannot understand where the UK has come from know where we should go, which is to our knees in repentance before King Jesus?
Prayer points
So pray in to this, and let us see what the Lord will do in the series of televised debates coming up over this weekend. As the word of God tells us to pray for those in authority, let us pray for those seeking it:
1Ti 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
1Ti 2:2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
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On 16th June 2022, The UK’s top soldier told British troops they are the generation that they must prepare “to fight in Europe once again” as the conflict in Ukraine continues. He wrote how “There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle.”
His message also included a goal to ‘accelerate the mobilisation and modernisation of the Army to reinforce NATO and deny Russia the chance to occupy any more of Europe.’
Raising the rhetoric further, General Sir Patrick Sanders later went on to liken the events in Ukraine to those in Europe in 1937.
’Land war in Europe’
Gen Sanders became Chief of the General Staff last month. He addressed all ranks and Ministry of Defence staff in an internal message on 16th June.
The BBC reported the message as saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows the need ‘to protect the UK and be ready to fight and win wars on land’. The Army and our allies must now be ‘capable of…defeating Russia’, he went on.
The General believes he is the first Chief of the General Staff ‘since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a major continental power’. He added: ‘Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underlines our core purpose – to protect the UK and to be ready to fight and win wars on land – and reinforces the requirement to deter Russian aggression with the threat of force.’
Warming to his theme, he told soldiers and civil servants ‘we are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again’.
Is it a ‘1937 moment’
General Sanders went further in a speech at a conference organised by the Royal United Services Institute think tank on 28th June. In under two weeks, Vladimir Putin had become Adolf Hitler, intent on conquering the world and bringing in a thousand-year Reich.
‘In all my years in uniform, I haven’t known such a clear threat to the principles of sovereignty and democracy, and the freedom to live without fear of violence, as the brutal aggression of president Putin and his expansionist ambitions,’ he told delegates.
‘This is our 1937 moment. We are not at war – but must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion…. I will do everything in my power to ensure that the British Army plays its part in averting war.”
He likened the current situation in Ukraine to the run up to the Second World War. Britain must be prepared to ‘act rapidly’, whatever that means, to ensure we are not drawn into a full-scale conflict ‘by failing to contain Russian expansionism’.
General Milley
General Mark Milley
There appeared to be no analysis of Sir Patrick’s remarks in any of our mainstream media. They reported but did not question. For the Daily Mail it became: ‘Don’t appease Putin like Hitler.’
So it was refreshing to hear what US General Mark Milley told the BBC’s Sophie Raworth in an interview on Sunday morning (3rd July 2022). The interview is HERE on YouTube and starts at 24:52.
General Milley is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army. He was appointed to be the US Army’s overall commander by Donald Trump in December 2018.
Sophie Raworth began by recalling General Sanders saying the the UK and our allies are ‘facing a 1937 moment over the war in Ukraine’. Could General Milley ‘see any parallels in what is going on now and the failure to confront the growing threat from Nazi Germany in the run-up to the Second World War?’
Any parallels between then and now?
The short answer was ‘No’. Not that General Milley said that. Instead, he began by thanking Sir Patrick and UK forces and recalling that he was recently in London for the Queen’s Jubilee. He went on with a modest claim to being ‘a closet student of history’. Between 1914 and 1945 ‘some really horrific things happened,’ he said. 150 million died in the two world wars and the conflicts in between. At the end of that period, referring to the United Nations, ‘We put in the rules-based international order.’ Russia had violated that, he said.
Naturally, General Milley did not mention US violations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya or those of our allies Saudi Arabia in Yemen. He was there to promote the US line.
Nor did the Russians come to the aid of a breakaway region, as the US and UK did in former Yugoslavia when Kosovo left Serbia. Of course not. Instead, Russia ‘grossly violated’ the rules -based order on 24th February 2022.
By the way, General Milley was being too modest about his studies of history. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Princeton University, a Master’s Degrees from Columbia University in International Relations and another from the U.S. Naval War College in National Security and Strategic Studies.
Turning to the actual question, in a put-down to General Sanders, General Milley said ‘only history’ would judge if today was ‘a 1937 moment.’ In the meantime, NATO ‘would stand tall’ and give Ukraine ‘the means to defend itself.’ It will remain a ‘sovereign independent country with its territory intact’, he said.
Another World War?
Sophie-Raworth on BBC’s Sunday Morning
Sophie asked if it ‘could lead to another world war, though.’ ‘No’, said General Milley, ‘We don’t want that, obviously’, and the conflict would remain where it is. ‘There is no reason at all why this war should expand beyond the borders of Ukraine, where it is right now’, he said. ‘We want to contain the war inside Ukraine and we want to make sure Ukraine has the means to defend itself,’ he went on.
Ms Raworth would not let it go at that. ‘If we are in a 1937 moment, shouldn’t we be doing more to stop President Putin rather than standing by and letting Ukraine do all the fighting?’ Mark Milley, still patient and courteous, was having none of this kind of talk.
The Ukrainians were not asking for any other country ‘to fight their fight for them’, he said, conveniently forgetting President Zelensky’s earlier pleas for a NATO-enforced ‘No-fly Zone’. He explained ‘They have the people’, they just need hardware, tanks, artillery, personnel carriers, ammunition and so on, which NATO was providing, of course.
Aren’t the Russians winning?
But aren’t the Russians winning, ventured the Sophie? General Milley told her the Russians ‘have not succeeded in most of their operational objectives’, casting these as conquering Ukraine.
However, he conceded, they were wining tactically in what he described as ‘a’ grinding war of attrition’ in ‘a relatively small portion on the eastern (side) of Ukraine called the Donbass, the Luhansk Oblast and the Donetsk Oblast.’ And the Russians are making progress, he conceded, by yards or a kilometre a day, but ‘at great cost’.
He would not characterise it ’strategically as a success for Russia’, but that view depends on what one sees as Russia’s objectives in the first place. The Russians had suffered ‘significant losses of personnel and equipment.’ Even to mount an offensive in the rest of Ukraine, or at its capital, the Russians would need to ‘reconstitute’ their military capability, he said.
Capacity and Capability
Finally, pressed on defence spending, size and numbers and technology, General Milley drew an important military distinction between ‘capacity’ and ‘capability’. Capacity is size and the numbers of things like planes, tanks and troops, and it matters.
But capability consists of technology, leadership and training, how good the troops are with what they have at their disposal, their doctrine and their ‘way of war’. So military strategists look at capability, he said, as the most important thing.
The sub-text was clearly that the Russians do not have the capability to do more than they are currently doing, trying to take and defend the ‘relatively small portion’ which is the Donbass.
Tone ‘Unsurprising’
Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP, HM Secretary of State for Defence.
The BBC quoted a defence source telling the BBC’s defence correspondent Jonathan Beale the tone of General Sanders’ 16th June message was ‘unsurprising’. That could be for its mere embroidery of the existing line of Her Majesty’s Government. But General Sanders could have another agenda.
Russia’s operation in Eastern Ukraine could have come at a good time for the new Chief. He was able to claim ‘the world has changed since the 24th February and there is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle’.
Speaking at the United Services event, defence secretary Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP backed up his Army Chief. He issued a fresh call ‘for increased defence spending in the years ahead to counter the growing threat’.
Russia’s real objective
The Russian objective is and has been from the start, that of defending a group of people no-one else in Europe was prepared to defend. Those people are the ethnic Russians of the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine.
Since the Maidan Square uprising of 2014, 14,000 souls have died in this region, mainly at the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis. You would not think it from the outpourings of our politicians and media, but even ethnic Russians have a right to live in peace.
France and Germany helped secure the Minsk Agreements in which Ukraine ceded an element of sovereignty to the Luhansk and Donestk ‘Oblasts’, or ‘Provinces’. However, possibly as a result of US pressure, Ukraine failed to observe these agreements.
Russia’s intervention
In February 2022, the region finally called on Russia to intervene, Russia recognised the breakaway, and took military action. As General Milley explained, they are beginning to succeed in their objective, but with slow progress and at tremendous cost. The idea that Russia’s President would consider it a good idea to invade a real NATO member nation is laughable. They do not have what General Milley described as the ‘capability’. Moreover, he does not want that to happen. Therefore it won’t happen.
It is obvious to state that this is not how UK mainstream interests see it. But even given that, the outpourings of our top general goes far beyond. And yet to Ministry of Defence insiders his intemperate rant is ‘unsurprising’. Why is that?
I suggest it is necessary for British defence top brass and ministers to deliberately misunderstand Russian objectives, talk up an imagined threat to British interests and try to have that narrative accepted by the public and MPs. Why would they do that? It would be not just to safeguard their existing position but to secure increased spending on personnel and equipment in the next Government spending round.
Real battle is with the Treasury
Last year, Richard Hughes. chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, told the MPs on the Treasury Select Committee that spending is now decided yearly and forward planning is ‘a fog’. In such a hand-to-mouth atmosphere and at a time of austerity, when cutbacks will increasingly become necessary, it is important to ‘get your retaliation in first.’
It follows that the real battle, in this cynical view, is not with ‘Putin’ but with Treasury mandarins. Sir Patrick and his boss Ben Wallace want more money for the Army.
Nevertheless, Sir Patrick’s words could have an adverse impact far beyond his and Mr Wallace’s intended Whitehall or even their actual United Services audiences. Nor will their warmongering even have its designed effect. Treasury staff watch TV and they will have seen General Milley’s interview and know his rather more realistic view. They probably knew it already.
Meanwhile, people in Asia and Africa are unable to pay rocketing prices for whatever wheat is on the market and UK consumers are stung by inflated costs of fuel. Rather than talk it up, all parties should be working to end it. Almighty God desires peace between nations:
Isaiah 2:4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Micah 4:4 But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.
No prospect of a wider war
What I am taking away from this is firstly that General Milley has more military understanding than General Sanders. He is better educated, more widely read, with more experience. He knows Russian generals personally and is a man of reason and humility not given to intemperate outbursts.
Secondly, there is no prospect of Russia wanting ‘to occupy any more of Europe.’ General Milley made that perfectly clear. What General Milley wants, General Milley gets. There will be no land war in NATO’s Europe.
Thirdly, the idea that this is ‘a 1937 moment’ is a figment of Sir Patrick’s imagination.
Fourthly, that the US is now prepared to tell Ukraine to concede the ‘relatively small’ Donbass region to Russia as the price of peace.
Fifthly, that such a warmongering fantasist as Sir Patrick Sanders has no place as Chief of the General Staff.
PRAY: For a Christian man of peace to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. Pray for him to appoint a Secretary of State for Defence with wisdom. Pray for him to sack General Sanders and replace him with a God-fearing, moderate, temperate man of peace.
Pray for Russia to take the rest of Donbass quickly, for the parties to come together to negotiate and end the war, and for world trade in the produce of Ukraine and Russia to start moving again.
Pray also for sanctions against Russia to be lifted and for all our peoples to live in peace.
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The National Audit Office has compiled a report on the procurement of PPE earlier this year.
The report is called ‘Investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic’ and is linked HERE.
Fiasco or scandal?
The headline in the Daily Mail’s story is The £18bn coronavirus PPE scandal whereas the print edition (and the Mail’s url) was far too kind, describing it as a ‘fiasco’.
The NAO’s report considered 8,600 contracts awarded by the Government between January and July. They were worth £18 billion. £17.3 billion of the money went on brand new contracts. A staggering £12.3 billion of it went on PPE. Most of the remainder was spent on other equipment and virus testing, but some was splashed out on focus groups and a propaganda campaign. Hardly any of the contracts appear to have been placed after competitive tendering.
David Meller’s company was fast-tracked into a contract worth £163m
David Rose, commenting in the Mail, writes: ‘The mismanagement, the incompetence, the reckless waste – all of this is shocking. But worse, perhaps, is the brazen cronyism involved.’
Corruption
In fact, if the same thing happened in Africa, we should call it what it is: corruption.
For example, businessman David Meller co-owns Meller Designs, which supplies high street retailers such as M&S.
Michael Gove – in charge of PPE procurement. David Meller donated £3,250 to Michal Gove’s 2016 leadership campaign
Mr Meller has donated over £60,000 to the Conservatives since 2010.
He gave Michael Gove £3,250 for his leadership campaign in 2016. Mr Gove is minister for the Cabinet Office, in charge of PPE procurement for the NHS.
Meller Designs was awarded a contract for £163 million to supply protective equipment.
Joe Biden: Lobbyists are ‘corrosive’
U.S. Presidential candidate Joe Biden revealed how the system works
Mr Biden said: “Lobbyists aren’t bad people, special-interest groups are not bad people, but guess what? They’re corrosive.
“It’s human nature. If you, Lynn, bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I’m elected and say, ‘Joe, I’d like to talk to you about something’. You didn’t buy me. But it’s human nature, you helped me, I’m going to say, ‘Sure, Lynn, come on in’,” he explained.
“The front of the line is always filled with people whose pockets are filled,” said Mr Biden.
The Bible commands: Deut 16:19 Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.
‘High-Priority Lane’
What happened in the rush to source PPE was the Government set up a special fast-track channel. Ministers, MPs and civil servants could refer businesses to this ‘high-priority lane.’ It saw a huge amount of lucrative business going to firms with inside political contacts.
Contracts worth billions were awarded, as Mr Rose puts it, ‘not on the basis of quality or price, but in many cases – according to today’s damning report – on which firms had the best personal contacts in Westminster and Whitehall.’
Suppliers with such connections were 10 times more likely to be awarded contracts than those who applied directly to the Department of Health.
Cummings Connections
Dominic Cummings
A company called Faculty went on the high-priority lane because it worked with Dominic Cummings on the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 and worked for Cummings’ company Dynamic Maps under a commercial contract in 2018 and 2019. It was awarded three contracts for data analysis totaling £3,015,000. The firm also had Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew as a shareholder.
The NAO said only the largest of the three contracts (with NHS Information) ‘has any documented consideration of conflicts of interest, and no potential conflicts of interest were identified’. However, the contract paperwork ‘does not have documentation for the basis of choice of supplier’.
Mr Cummings’ father-in-law Sir Humphrey Wakefield is a business associate of Angus Collingwood, a director of Admiral Public Relations. The firm went on the fast track and secured a contract worth £670,000.
Another pal of Dominic Cummings, James Frayne, who has also worked for Michael Gove, runs Public First, which provides focus group research. Mr Frayne’s wife Rachel Wolf co-wrote the Conservative Party 2019 manifesto. Public First gained a contract worth £840,000 after an initial emergency ‘informal arrangement’.
Again, the NAO is scathing: ‘We found a lack of documentation recording the process for choosing the supplier, the justification for using emergency procurement, or any considerations around potential conflicts of interest.’
Pro 15:27 He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.
‘Value for money’
Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez said, ‘We have robust processes to ensure we get critical equipment to where it needs to go as quickly as possible, whilst also ensuring value for money for the taxpayer.’ But the minister is, shall we say, mistaken.
The NAO reports: ‘The Cabinet Office awarded a contract to Topham Guerin with an initial maximum value of £1.5 million for publicity campaign coordination services on 7 May 2020, with the contract effective from 17 March 2020. This contract was a direct award and we did not find evidence of documented requirements prior to the work beginning.’
As it happens, the firm ‘worked for the Conservative Party during the 2019 UK General Election campaign’. Their total Covid contract ended up at £3 million ‘for handling Government Coronavirus digital communications from March until September.’ The ‘ digital communications’ seems to have amounted to social media postings. The Guardian called Messrs Topham and Guerin the ‘Facebook propaganda pair’.
In a speech in May 2019, Ben Guerin told how his Facebook approach works to deliver election results. He recommended ‘highly repetitive messaging – what he calls “water dripping on a stone” with “crude,” poorly-produced memes (which) attract more engagement than slick, formulaic graphics. “You’ve got to surprise people. You’ve got to shock people. Unlock and arouse an emotion in people,” he said. “The particular emotions we’ve got to unlock are arousal emotions,” he continued. “We’re talking: anger, excitement, pride, fear. Your content should be relating to one of these emotions”.’
The ideal firm, then, to run Project Fear with its crude, repetitive messaging.
Facemasks were useless
Another company scrutinised in the report is Ayanda Capital. They were handed a £253 million contract to supply PPE to the NHS.
The deal was brokered by one Andrew Mills, a ‘senior board adviser’ to Ayanda Capital, who just happened to be one of 12 advisers to the Board of Trade which is chaired by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss.
Some 50 million masks, worth £155 million, delivered by the company were of the wrong specification and cannot be used.
Ayanda say: ‘Suggestions that the masks are not fit for purpose or are somehow unsafe to use by frontline NHS workers are simply untrue and we are advised defamatory.’
Millions went to testing firms
Serco gained a contract initially worth £214 million for test and trace. The firm went to the front of the queue because health minister Edward Argar used to be a senior executive and Rupert Soames, brother of former Tory MP Sir Nicholas, is its Chief Executive Officer.
Conservative MP Owen Paterson is paid £100,000 per year as a consultant to Randox, which ‘provides clinical diagnostic solutions to laboratories worldwide’. . The company was given a contract worth £479 million to provide Covid testing.
On Monday night Channel 4 Dispatches revealed lapses at the superlab run by Randox in Northern Ireland. The lab analyses COVID-19 tests from across Britain as part of its contract with HMG. An undercover reporter discovered serious failings, including cross-contamination of test samples.
Billions paid to superlab company
UK Biotec runs three ‘Lighthouse’ superlabs. Companies House lists its directors as highly-placed doctors including Professors Michael Pringle, Patrick Chinnery, Richard Trembath and Peter Weissberg, Dr Tim Peakman, Dr Philip Boyd and Dr Anne Phelan. Any one of them knows enough Conservative politicians to go straight onto the fast track.
The firm was awarded a rushed un-tendered contract in April. The Government says: ‘A direct award has been made due to extreme urgency pursuant to regulation 32(2)(c) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.’
UK Biocentre was soon seeking a partner for ‘genotyping’ an ‘initial 60 000′ samples. Its tender invitation said ‘Budget is anticipated to be from 2 000 000 GBP to 5 000 000 GBP depending on funding applications.’
Lockdown Sceptics reveals the contract the UK government placed with UK Biotech was worth ‘billions’. Yet again, an ‘experienced virologist with a background in biosafety’, one Dr Harris, was ‘horrified by what he witnessed’ at the Lighthouse lab at Milton Keynes
PPE gravy train
My dear late mother used to say: ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’
PPE Medpro won contracts worth £203 million just seven weeks after being set up by Anthony Page, who had worked for Tory peer and lingerie entrepreneur Baroness Mone.
Sreve Declan (left) campaigning for Siobhan Bailllie in 2019 with Sajid Javid (front).
P14 Medical Ltd secured contracts totaling £272 million despite being technically insolvent to the tune of £485,000. It is run by former Stroud Conservative councillor Steve Declan who campaigned for his MP colleague Siobhan Baillie who was elected to represent Stroud last year.
In the local paper Mr Declan denied any ‘favoritism’ after Shadow Health Minister Justin Madders said ‘This company’s connections to the Conservative Party appear to be stronger than their experience in delivering PPE’.
Dragontown Ltd is run by its director Xuelin, Lady Bates, wife of Tory peer and former minister Lord Bates. The company was awarded a £675,000 contract to supply PPE to London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals.
Donations secured contract
Globus Shetland Ltd gained a £93 million contract to supply respirators. Its CEO Haraldur Agustsson has donated £365,668 to the Tories since 2016. He may well view that now as money well spent. But as Joe Biden said, donations are corrosive. The Bible expresses it even better:
Prov 18:16 A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.
Staffing agency SG Recruitment won £50 million worth of PPE contracts despite concerns over its solvency. Tory peer Lord Chadlington sits on the board of its parent company Sumner Group Holdings. That alone would ensure the company’s elevation to the ‘high-priority lane.’ His Lordship is also past president of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association and a friend of David Cameron, who lives in that constituency.
Gavin, now Lord, Barwell
The former Chief of Staff to Mr Cameron’s successor, Theresa May is ex-MP Gavin, now Lord, Barwell.
The Consultancy UK website reveals he became a non-executive advisor to engineering consultancy firm Arcadis in June, one month after helping them to a £1.5 million business consultancy contract with the Ministry of Justice ‘during Covid 19′.
Prayer
Psalm 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. 4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.
Matt 10:26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
We thank God for the National Audit Office and for journalists who first uncovered this story and thank God we have been able to build upon it and verify the facts. It reveals terrible incompetence and lack of any concern or ‘due diligence’ about spending public money wisely, despite what the Government may claim.
Above all it reveals a level of corruption and cronyism which if it were to happen in the developing world would be the subject of condemnation from politicians in the UK. Yet this is the UK, and the monies involved in this scandal are of a proportion a corrupt African politician could only dream of.
Pray these people may be called to account:
Luke 16:1 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. 2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.
And pray for repentance in Her Majesty’s ministers and all our ruling class:
Isaiah 45:6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
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Shortly after Boris Johnson’s speech last night, the polling firm YouGov did a massive phone-round asking people for their opinion on it.
They reported their findings:
‘An overwhelming 78% of Britons support the new lockdown measures announced today, including 44% who “strongly support” them. Just 17% of Britons are opposed…’
There was no loaded question. They made no mention of ‘tackling’ Covid, in fact no mention of Covid at all.
Support or Oppose?
YouGov simply asked: ‘The Government has announced new lockdown measures including pubs and restaurants closing at 10pm, limits on attending weddings, limits on indoor sports, and office workers being advised to work from home if they can. In general, do you support or oppose these new measures?’
In response, 44% ‘srtrongly’ supported the measures. 34% showed ‘somewhat’ support. Those two added together give the 78% support figure.
In opposition were the ‘Somewhat oppose’ who came out at 9% while ‘strongly oppose’ were 8%. Those two added together come to 17%. 6% didn’t know.
Political party affiliation made hardly any difference. EU Leavers were more in opposition than were Remainers, but both were still in the minority.
Figures show only 5% of new infectuions were acquired in the hospitality trade.
Younger people were more opposed than older people, but a majority of those under 25 were still supportive of the Prime Minister’s announcement..
In vox pops, people were blaming pubs and restaurants, even though the figures show only 5% of infections are being acquired in those settings. 45% are being acquired in care homes.
It’s all your own fault
The general public are also blaming each other, following the lead of both the Prime Minister last night and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab this morning. Newspapers are reporting: ‘Dominic Raab today warned the UK ‘could end up in a national lockdown’ if Boris Johnson’s new coronavirus crackdown fails to get the disease under control.
‘The Foreign Secretary said a second shutdown ‘is what we want to avoid’ but the nuclear option remains in the Government’s ‘arsenal’ if all else fails.
‘Mr Raab said he hoped ‘if everyone plays by the rules’ then the nation will be able to go into the Christmas period without a national lockdown being imposed.’
‘It’s all your own fault’, the Mail sarcastically headlined their article.
Cases are not rising ‘exponentially’
On Monday, obviously co-ordinated with the Government, Prof Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance unveiled their sensationalist scaremongering graph. This predicted 50,000 ‘cases’ by mid-October ‘if’ they doubled every seven days.
Cases are not rising exponentially and if they follow France and Spain, nor will they.
The same experts were saying a week ago that they were terrified the UK would follow France and Spain.
Yet if the UK follows France and Spain, as the Mail’s graph shows, infections reach 10,000, not 50,000, while deaths remain in double figures, not in the 200 bracket.
Even in his broadcast, Boris Johnson said: ‘The virus has started to spread again, in an exponential way.’ It hasn’t. Surely a Classics scholar knows what ‘exponential’ means? ‘It’s no less fatal than it was in Spring’, he said. That too, is not true. It is only a third as fatal, say the doctors treating it, because treatments are now smarter..
My people love it so
The false prophets, Ferguson, Whitty, Vallance together with Covid Project Fear have done their job. People are terrified of a disease which is not even in the UK’s August top twenty as a cause of death. More people are dying of influenza at the moment than of Covid-19. Yet the facts make no difference. It is just as the Prophet Jeremiah said in his day:
Jer 5:31 The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests (or ‘officers’) bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?
What indeed will we do? The previous worst recession was at the time of Queen Anne’s War & the freezing of the Thames in 1709. We have only had a prime minister since Robert Walpole took that role in 1721. If we rate our Prime Ministers by economic success, Boris Johnson is not just the worst Prime Minister in 300 years. He is the worst Prime Minister in history.
All this will impact on health, well-being, family incomes, for generations to come. Forget a V-shaped recovery. If the threats of Mr Raab come to pass, the ‘recovery’, so to speak, will be pear-shaped.
Real experts write
Professor Carl Heneghan
On the bright side, a group of real experts have written to the Prime Minister calling for an end to the restrictions. The open letter was written by Oxford’s Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor Karol Sikora, and by Sam Williams, director of the consultancy firm Economic Insight. Signatories include Professor Sucharit Bhakdi (JG University of Main) and Prof David Paton, both known to us already.
In the letter (text here) they say: ‘In summary, our view is that the existing policy path is inconsistent with the known risk-profile of Covid-19 and should be reconsidered.
In the US a ‘spike’ of infections or cases was not followed by a significant rise in deaths.
‘The unstated objective currently appears to be one of suppression of the virus, until such a time that a vaccine can be deployed. This objective is increasingly unfeasible (notwithstanding our more specific concerns regarding existing policies) and is leading to significant harm across all age groups, which likely offsets any benefits.’
They call for ‘targeted measures that protect the most vulnerable from Covid, whilst not adversely impacting those not at risk.’
‘Backlash’ among Tory MPs
And nor was it in Sweden.
The other hopeful sign is a claim in the Mail online, echoed in other outlets, that Conservative MPs are increasingly unhappy with the anti-Covid restrictions. There is a ‘furious backlash’, says the paper.
Telford MP Lucy Allan tweeted: ‘Measures to tackle #covid must be proportionate to the risk. The virus is a serious threat to certain vulnerable groups.
‘We must protect these groups with targeted measures. Shutting down society causes massive damage to health, lives, and livelihoods of the whole population.’
Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee
The Telegraph reports that Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, has accused the Government of ‘ruling by decree’. Sir Graham, has tabled an amendment requiring ministers to put any new measures to a vote. He argues it was ‘entirely possible’ to push through emergency laws quickly through Parliament in the normal way.
‘The British people are not used to being treated like children,’ he added.
Let us hope and pray he is right. The polling seems to indicate they love it.
PRAY
Pray again for a complete return to normailty, for our respective governments to lift all restrictions, masks, social distancing and let us all get on with providing for our families, socialising, singing praise in church and generally rebuilding life, society and the economy.
2Sam 23:3 The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
Pray for humility and the fear of God to descend on Her Majesty’s Government.
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2Sam 1:27 How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!
David says ‘How are the mighty fallen’ three times in his lament for Saul and Jonathan, ‘the beauty of Israel’. But the expression has passed into our culture.
And none has been mightier in recent weeks than the false prophet of doom, Imperial College’s vaccine-modeller, Professor Neil Ferguson. It was his report dated 16th March 2020 which persuaded the Prime Minister to move away from his sensible ‘mitigation’ strategy towards ‘suppression’ or ‘lockdown’.
Sharpest recession on record
Thus it is that today the Bank of England has warned of the sharpest recession on record if lockdown measures last into June. To put that into context, it will be worse than the recessions after World War I and WWII when the economy shrank by 10%, aided and abetted by Spanish Flu, and 4%, respectively. It would be the sharpest downturn since the time of ‘Queen Anne’s War’. That lasted from 1702 – 1713 against the French for control of North America.
Britain was also dragged into the War of Spanish Succession in 1706. Three years later, Western Europe’s great frost set in and the river Thames froze over, bringing what trade still remained to a standstill.
The Bank’s analysis, published today, is based on the assumption that social distancing measures are gradually phased out between June and September.
More money could be printed
The Bank’s latest Monetary Policy Report showed the UK economy plunging into its first recession in more than a decade. The economy shrunk by 3% in the first quarter of 2020, as travelling fell by 80% during March and the lockdown on 23rd March did the rest. If lockdown continues, the Bank sees an unprecedented 25% decline in the three months to June.
This would push the UK into a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. The Bank said the housing market had come to a standstill, while consumer spending had dropped by 30% in recent weeks.
As the Chancellor borrows even more money to pay half the workforce, which again is unprecedented, two of the Bank’s nine members voted to increase the latest round of quantitative easing by £100bn to £300bn. It did not go through, but in the end, that money will have to come from somewhere. ‘Quantitative easing’, simply printing the stuff, will impoverish us all in inflation.
Neil Ferguson immune
So back to the learned Professor Lockdown, whose adulterous flame visited him on two recent occasions. According to The Sun, ‘the UK government scientist met with married Antonia Staats, 38, twice during the lockdown – despite leading the government advice to put the country into quarantine to stop the spread of coronavirus.’
Miss Staats (she is Mrs Chris Lucas) works for Avaaz, the ultra-woke clicktivist website with its petitions, money-raising and headlines like: ‘Just five days to save all the elephants in Africa,’ and ‘If Trump wins, the sky will fall down.’ Well, not quite, but they fanatically support environmentalism, Greta Thunberg and oppose ‘populism’. Here are their suggestions for petitions right now: Example: “Paid leave for parents during coronavirus pandemic”, Example: “Coronavirus: Shut down all schools in Manchester”, Example: “Commit vital funds to a green recovery”. You get the idea.
Avaaz is also pro-vaccine, so long as they are not produced by ‘Big Pharma’. How else are they produced? One Avaaz petition is ‘demanding an affordable Coronavirus vaccine for all’. Meanwhile, Avaaz has taken down another petition, ‘We say “NO” to Coronavirus Vaccine in Africa’, because it ‘was found to contain false or misleading information’. However, this petition is a stunner and needs your support. It refers both to the lockdown and to a tonic from Madagascar. It urges: ‘Africa Purchase COVID ORGANICS And End Restrictions To Save Millions From Starvation’.
The Telegraph turned up tweets from Dr Ferguson himself, opposing Brexit and supporting the LibDems, so we can see Mrs Lucas and Dr Ferguson have a lot of politics in common. How such an avowed statist as Neil Ferguson came to be advising a Tory Government is a very good question. Professor Ferguson immediately resigned from the Government SAGE committee.
Catch the virus, don’t need the vaccine
The best reaction was from Health Secretary, Matt Hancock MP: ‘It’s extraordinary. I don’t understand.’
Well, I do. It’s called human nature, sin, arrogance, passion, even knowledge, all rolled into one.
Furthermore, the professor’s defence of his conduct reveals something else really important. He said:
‘I acted in the belief that I was immune, having tested positive for coronavirus, and completely isolated myself for almost two weeks after developing symptoms.’
You have it from the horse’s mouth. Despite all the gloomsters saying they don’t know if catching the virus makes you immune, it could go on infecting you for ever, you could pass it on, etc, etc, the vaccine-man at the heart of it all knows they are wrong. The truth seems to be, after you have had Covid-19, you are immune, you cannot catch it again, you cannot transmit it and, crucially, you don’t need a vaccine.
Leaks from the Bunker
Yesterday and today, the Daily Telegraph has been saying #StayHomeSaveLives is history. They claim that the Prime Minister will announce on Sunday that we can go out after all. We all knew already the truth of this word:
Psalm 121:8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
And how much wiser would have been the Prime Minister decisions had he the fear of the Lord before his eyes, able to trust God for the truth of that word over the whole United Kingdom. But we are where we are. In need of prayer, hope, repentance and to lift the lockdown.
But today, we are being warned not to expect too much. The madness may continue, we hear. The Scottish and Welsh First Ministers are both opposed to any easing of the ruinous lockdown.
No ‘Second Peak’
The Prime Minister says he dare not risk a ‘Second Peak’. Even the CBI is wittering on about businesses opening ‘safely’.
The Covid-19 epidemic is following the standard curve.
Well, right here we shall pray and declare there will be no ‘Second Wave’ or ‘Second Peak’.
The epidemic is following the standard curve. It started with the first death on 6th March. It hit the peak on 8th April.
Moreover, the rolling seven-day average has slipped below the daily death-toll from abortion, 595, for four days in a row at this time of writing, looking at the figures for 6th May. In short, it’s over.
And even if there were a ‘Second Peak’, when would they like it? In June, July and August, at the height of summer, or in December, January and February, to coincide with the annual Influenza epidemic? Talking of which, I saw lockdown being touted as a counter-measure to that as well. It’s madness.
If you are down to receive the May Christian Voice newsletter, you will read about the worldwide collective insanity and where it has come from tomorrow, by God’s grace. And if you have not seen our May Newsletter, just email us your name and UK land address with postcode to info@christianvoice.org.uk. I’m not putting that email address as a hyperlink. Copy it and paste into your ‘To’ box.
Exodus 18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:
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Damning evidence about the effects of the lockdown, how the lockdown is not itself evidence-based, how the Imperial College Professor Ferguson paper is not even science, not even speculation, but intended to elicit a particular response from governments, is now emerging.
But first, you need to watch a video. Greece was being held up as an early-lockdown success story last night by the BBC. Just more pro-lockdown propaganda, of course.
Here are the facts about Greece as presented on the amazing video below: On Sunday 22nd March 2020, the Greek governemnt under prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the center/right wing party announced some of the most draconian social distancing measures in the world, even though only 15 Covid-19 deaths had occurred thus far. People have to carry a special signed form with them to leave their house. Walking alone at the parks, sitting by the beach, swimming, even scuba diving, were all banned.
John 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
Greek church told to shut
The initial announcement did not include the church because Mr Mitsotakis did not want to carry the political cost of pressing the church to close down. On that day, the Greek Orthodox church held a council and decided to bring services two hours earlier, so they would end before 8am. They hoped that would appease the government. However, 45 minutes later, Mr Mitsotakis issued a decree banning all church congregations.
So the Greek church, in common with churches everywhere, went along with it, issuing an internal order to all ministers to keep churches closed and perform the Sunday and Eastern Easter services without a congregation. The Traditional Good Friday processions were all banned.
Church ministers obeyed the directive. But this one, priest of a church in Athens, delivered this straight from the heart sermon to an online-only congregation slamming the lockdown and the ban on meeting for worship.
2Tim 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
This will bless you (it’s a bit Greek Orthodox at the start!):
Ventilators ‘killing people’
Meanwhile, in the Daily Mirror and at more length in the Daily Mail, a Californian doctor, Cameron Kyle-Sidell, says that ventilators, rather than helping to heal Covid-19 patients, are killing them. Only one third survive being on a ventilator. Just give them oxygen in one of those CPAP masks like the ones being made by Mercedes Formula 1, he says. Don’t expect the medical establishment to change its treatment patterns any time soon …
Prov 18:17 He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.
Meanwhile, another doctor from US, one Dr Erickson, has filmed this damning video showing the lockdown strategy is not ‘led by the science’ as ministers here like to claim.
P.S. This video has been taken down (aka censored) by YouTube for ‘violating’ their ‘terms of service’. You could not make that up. Watch it on Off-Guardian HERE.
Softening us up for more lockdown
Another 684 hospital patients are announced today to have died from or with Covid-19. That takes out UK total to 19,506. It will top 20,000 over the weekend. But these figures, while still above the daily death-toll of unborn children in the UK from abortion, are not rising any more.
I must just add that the UK Covid-19 daily deaths are not the true daily tally, they can include deaths from days, even weeks earlier. Furthermore, that Off-Guardian article above shows the mere mention of Covid-19 anywhere on a death certificate adds the death into the Covid-19 stats. For example: Patient with chronic coronary disease dies from heart failure while being treated for Covid-19 (possibly on one of those deadly ventilators): Covid-19 death.
Project Fear prepares us for more Lockdown against nebulous Second Wave
But just as we thought the end was in sight, we have that Professor Chris Whitty popping up in the last few days warning of a nebulous ‘Second Peak’ and that the lockdown might have to stay for weeks. Even if it doesn’t, it will be ‘social distancing’ and a ‘new normal.’ It is yet more Covid-19 Project Fear. If the people are to continue under house arrest, they must be made to feel afraid. Covid-19 is the enemy. Your neighbour, even your son or daughter, might be harbouring the enemy!
The BBC dutifully ran a piece on the ‘second wave’ on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido where quite liberal measures were relaxed further a few weeks ago and cases are now rising again. Not that the liberalisation helps Hokkaido much. The people rely on tourism for their income.
As does my part of West Wales, as it happens. Incidentally, if Chris Whitty, Prof Neil Ferguson or that nice Health Minister Nadine Dorries MP thinks we are all going to stay indoors for eighteen months until their vaccine has been tested and they can ‘safely’ let us out, they are in dream-world.
The good news is that more people are getting out, aware that sunlight tops up your Vitamin D, which is great for your immune system. For the same reason secure some 200mg Vitamin C tablets and some Zinc tablets from Wilko this weekend. Lastly, get your trainers on and start running. Half-an-hour’s cardio-vascular exercise a day really builds your immune system and your general fitness.
1Cor 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
And I shall leave you with a question. How can NHS workers find the time to make all those videos of whole cohorts of them dancing in corridors. You know, with the crisis of being overwhelmed with patients and all?
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Professor Neil Ferguson models vaccines at Imperial College
Yesterday, the UK Government continued its unjust and irrational shutdown of major sectors of the economy and, incidentally, of large areas of the NHS. They intensified Covid-19 Project Fear. Why does the UK persist with a policy which the rest of Europe is now abandoning?
Social distancing ‘indefinitely’
A comment from the false prophet whose biased modelling spooked the Government into starting the lockdown gives us a clue. According to the BBC, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College said we should expect a “significant level” of social distancing “indefinitely”. It would continue until a vaccine for Covid-19 is rolling off the production line. And that could be later this year, or maybe not until 2021.
Dr Ferguson went on: “And I should say, it’s not going to be going back to normal. We will have to maintain some level of social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine available.”
Health Minister Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) tweeted last night: ‘Journalists should stop asking about an ‘exit strategy.’ There is only one way we can ‘exit’ full lockdown and that is when we have a vaccine. Until then, we need to find ways we can adapt society and strike a balance between the health of the nation and our economy. #COVID19’
Incidentally, Nadine Dorries is supposed to hold the brief for mental health and suicide prevention. Only this morning says the BBC the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were warning how stressful the lockdown is on mental health.
Vaccines save lives
Now, before you dismiss this article as yet another anti-vaccine tirade, let me make my position clear. I have evidence that vaccines save lives. Years ago, we used to lose young lambs every year on the farm. Just as they were starting to put on weight from the spring grass, they would keel over and die. It was always the best ones, the biggest.
What was going on? What was killing them? When I shared the problem with a neighbouring sheep farmer, he told me it was most likely pasteurellosis pneumonia or a clostridial disease such as pulpy kidney picked up with the spring grass. And what was the answer? Heptavac, he said. As the name suggests, the solution contains seven vaccines in one dose.
That very day, I started a vaccination programme for the whole flock. Subsequently, we vaccinate all new lambs and give the ewes a booster just before lambing, which they pass on in colostrum to the lamb before the lambs receive their own dose of Heptavac. The result? No more dead lambs. Vaccination works. World-wide, the return is said to be $44 dollars of productivity for every $1 spent on vaccines as people stay alive for longer.
Ferguson is vaccine modeller
But compulsory vaccination is another matter entirely. We also need to remember vaccination, particularly on a large human scale, makes pharmaceutical companies a lot of money. The vaccine market is worth more than $35 billion today, according to AB Bernstein. Four big players account for about 85% of the market — British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, and U.S.-based Merck and Pfizer.
So is Professor Ferguson a mere dispassionate observer of human vaccines and vaccination programmes just like you and me?
The VIMC looks at ‘the impact of vaccination programmes worldwide’. It’s data helps ‘inform potential future investments and vaccine scale-up opportunities’.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Imperial College London – taken from a page on which they advertise their ‘Master of Public Health (MPH) course.
Now who is the world’s biggest vaccine enthusiast? Step forward Bill Gates, late of Microsoft, now putting all his energy into vaccination programmes.
So it comes as no surprise, as this breakdown shows, to find the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have given Imperial College $184,872,226.99 (yes, nearly $185m) from 2006 to 2018. Only Wellcome Trust has given Imperial College more down the years.
If we narrow the money trail down only to Imperial College’s VIMC, its ‘About us’ page reveals ‘The Consortium is funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the data generated by the Consortium will support the evaluation of the two organisations’ existing vaccination programmes, and inform potential future investments and vaccine scale-up opportunities.’ There are those ‘scale-up opportunities’ again.
Exod 23:8 And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
Now we have an appearance of ‘Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’. GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) apparently started up twenty years ago at the World Economic Forum with a $750m donation from Bill Gates. Bill and Melinda were looking at the time at projects in which to invest. The year 2000 Gavi donation started the Gates’ passion for vaccines. Today, Gavi claims to have vaccinated half the world’s children.
However, although Gavi boasts partners such as Unicef, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, vaccine manufacturers (what a surprise) and donor country governments, its biggest contributor is now the UK Government, providing 23.44% of its income as against a mere 19.66% from Bill & Melinda.
This 2015 webpage from Gavi reveals their CEO, Dr Seth Berkley, seeking to ‘raise billions of dollars to ensure Gavi Is fully funded between 2016 and 2020’.
ID2020
Here is where it all becomes somewhat creepy. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is a founding partner of ID2020. This body ‘supports digital identity programs’. It claims ‘The Need for Good Digital ID is Universal’. The ID2020 ‘digital identity’ webpage even tries to enrol human rights as it tries to expand digital ID. ‘The ability to prove who you are is a fundamental and universal human right’, it says. Meanwhile, its manifesto begins by stating ‘identity is a human right and that individuals must have “ownership” over their own identity.’
Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI, seen here addressing the Davos forum, also sits on the board of ID2020
Other ‘Founding Partners’ of ID2020 include Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation. Gavi’s Dr. Seth Berkley sits on the Executive Board of ID2020.
Why? It is because, as the Biometric Update website reveals, immunization can be ‘leveraged’ as ‘an opportunity to establish digital identity’. A pilot programme in Bangladesh ‘was unveiled by ID2020 in partnership with the Bangladesh Government’s Access to Information (a2i) Program, the Directorate General of Health Services, and Gavi.’
Biometric Update go on, helpfully, to explain: ‘Digital identity is a computerized record of who a person is, stored in a registry. It is used, in this case, to keep track of who has received vaccination.’ Gavi want ‘to use biometrics to improve vaccine coverage in developing nations.’
It is not just in developing nations that ID2020 biometrics will be useful to the authorities. In the city of Austin, Texas, we read how homeless people will be ’empowered’ with ‘their own’ identity data. How good is that?
Rapid Vac
In September 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation together with the Wellcome Trust and the governments of Norway and India launched The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Pronounce it as ‘Seppy’.
The CEPI website, ‘New vaccines for a safer world’, says CEPI is ‘a global alliance financing and coordinating the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.’ It has headquarters in Oslo. Its website lists its ‘investers and partners’ who include the UK and the EU. Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department for International Development sits on the CEPI board as does Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust and Peter Piot of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. LSH&TM also provides CEPI’s Scientific Advisory Committee with Dr John Edmunds and Dr Peter Smith.
Charlotte Watts, Jeremy Farrar and John Edmunds also sit on the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) as does Neil Ferguson. So don’t expect SAGE to come out strongly for ‘herd immunity’ as a preferred policy.
Professor Robin Shattock develops vaccines at Imperial College
CEPI is, as you will already have guessed, awash with money. In December 2018 it gave $8.4m to Imperial College London as this IC webpage shows to develop a rapid vaccine against new unknown pathogens, ‘Disease X’. It says: ‘Through this partnership, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Imperial aims to develop vaccines against new and unknown pathogens within 16 weeks from identification of antigen to product release for clinical trials.’ It is the latter stage which takes the time.
Professor Robin Shattock is the Head of Mucosal Infection and Immunity within the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London. He said ‘Vaccines are needed more than ever—essential to outbreak response, biosecurity, and the ever-present threat of a Disease X scenario.’ Professor Robin Shattock is a colleague of Professor Neil Ferguson. Professor Shattock develops the vaccines. Professor Ferguson models their impact. Both are funded by Gavi and Bill & Melinda Gates.
Bill Gates fears natural immunity
Bill Gates fears natural immunity
So why was Dr Neil Ferguson saying social distancing, for which read a version of lockdown, must stay until there is a vaccine? The answer lies in an interview Bill Gates gave on 24th March reported on the Off-Guardian website. In it:
‘Bill Gates outlined that, despite the comparatively small threat of Coronavirus, he and his colleagues “don’t want a lot of recovered people” who have acquired natural immunity. They instead are hoping we become reliant on vaccines and anti-viral medication.’
On the population developing their own immunity, Mr Gates said: ‘We don’t want to have a lot of recovered people […] To be clear, we’re trying – through the shut-down in the United States – to not get to one percent of the population infected.’
It is exactly the same approach as that of Neil Ferguson. Both want to ensure that as few of us as possible develop immunity, so as to maintain the market for the vaccine, when it eventually arrives.
Now we understand why Professor Ferguson had to produce a mathematical model, with the ludicrous half-a-million deaths, designed to scare the politicians away from Boris Johnson’s entirely sensible initial response, built on keeping calm, carrying on, isolating the vulnerable, taking health precautions and allowing ‘herd immunity’ to build up. It was nothing to do with public health. It was all about money. Nor did Professor Ferguson at any stage declare his conflict of interest. And make no mistake, this profile of a member of his Imperial College team confirms his Gavi funding and shows how deeply Neil Ferguson is embedded in the vaccine industry.
This may also account for the slow roll-out of antibody tests. If those show Covid-19 antibodies in half the population it really is game over for the vaccine.
Digital immunity proof
Off-Guardian says: ‘Shockingly, Gates also suggests people be made to have a digital ID showing their vaccination status, and that people without this “digital immunity proof” would not be allowed to travel. Such an approach would mean very big money for vaccine producers.’
So now the link to ID2020 and biometric data comes closer to home. Mr Gates said: ‘Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who’s a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person […] Because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around. So eventually there will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global reopening up.’
Email your MP right now
Dr Neil Ferguson has been exposed already as a false prophet. Now we know what is driving him. And the Government have bought it hook, line and sinker.
Bear in mind also how the UK Government has shown from its funding programmes how wedded it is in any case to vaccine programmes.
EMAIL your MP from this Parliament link; you have to click on their name twice to reach their email address. Witness to your MP using the material here. Note we say people should take obvious health precautions, and those at risk can remain in isolation. But the general economy must now return to normal, if it is not already too late.
In particular, ask your MP to ask the Government to confirm Professor Neil Ferguson works for the vaccine industry, ask them why he has never disclosed that conflict of interest and demand getting us all back to work must not depend on some vaccine.
I said to my MP: ‘I am shocked by the comments from Nadine Dorries and Professor Neil Ferguson that your constituents have to wait for a vaccine against Covid-19 before we can all return to work.
‘That is an unreasonable and unjust demand. And may I ask you to ask the Government to what extent Professor Ferguson has disclosed his financial links to the vaccine industry?’
Amos 5:12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.
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But now ask your MP to ask the Government to recommend Good Friday to Her Majesty as a day of prayer for release from Covid-19.
DIY abortions
Psalm 106:37 Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
The Government has announced the biggest change to abortion provision since 1967. They have introduced ‘telemedicine abortions’. A woman can just ring or Skype a doctor for for ‘DIY’ abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol.
She will then perform her own abortion at home, by taking both abortion pills, meaning she will be left to deliver her dead unborn child at home without a doctor or any other medical professional present. This is a backstreet abortion, the type abortionists say they are against.
Safety and safeguarding issues
Only last week, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said “there are no proposals to change abortion rules.” The Department of Health stated the proposal carried ‘significant safety and safeguarding issues’ for women and young girls. Indeed, who might be standing over her as she makes the call?
Under the Abortion Act 1967, abortions could only take place in hospitals or abortion clinics approved by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. That brought judgment on us all:
Deut 19:10 That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.
But this change will leave even more mothers bereaved and without the opportunity to consider the gravity of what they are doing. It has been made without any public consultation, parliamentary scrutiny or debate whatsoever.
The approval will expire “on the day on which the temporary provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 expire, or the end of the period of 2 years beginning with the day on which it is made, whichever is earlier.”
MPs must call government to account
We demand the Government rescind this decision and we urge MPs to call them to account.
Psalm 139:13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
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The new UK Government-announced lock-down is putting people’s lives at risk, according to a leading microbiologist. Indeed, Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, an infectious medicine specialist, says the UK response is ‘Grotesque, absurd and very dangerous.’
The softly-spoken Professor Bhakdi is one of the most highly cited medical research scientists in Germany.
P.S. Thursday: Email your MP from this link; you have to click on their name twice to reach their email address. Witness to your MP using the material here. Note we say people should take obvious health precautions, and those at risk can remain in isolation. But the general economy must now return to normal, especially with Imperial College now downgrading their mortality prediction by a factor of 12.5. (See below).
‘Spooked’
Meanwhile, Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens is emerging as one of the few, beside ourselves, trying to hold the Government to account, asking them challenging questions about liberty and the economy, and being vilified for it. OK, ok, some others are Off-Guardian, Swiss Propaganda Research, Rob Slane’s Blogmire and Craig Murray.
The House of Commons, the BBC, ITV, Sky, the mainstream media are all sycophantically following the Government line, or even calling for ‘stronger’ measures. No-one is saying ‘hang on a moment!’ They have all, to quote Dr Bhakdi, been ‘spooked’.
Labour, of course love the idea of a universal wage. It is part of their socialist utopia. They also want the Government to micro-manage our lives. What excuse do the journalists have? We shall try to inject some clarity, remembering the source of all wisdom is fear of God, not fear of a virus:
Prov 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
Informed Prayer
The Bible says:
1Tim 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; 2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
Your prayer for those in power will be better informed by being aware of the respected professor’s analysis.
Peter Hitchens speaking at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Christian Voice continues to say the Government is over-reacting to Covid-19 and should simply advocate isolating anyone frail or with a susceptible medical condition. We remember the ‘figures’ upon which they have made their decisions depend on the information the experts put into the model in the first place.
We also advocate widespread available testing, as per South Korea.
In fact Mr Hitchens quotes a leading vet, Dick Sibley, who remembers the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. His ‘heart sank’ when he learned Imperial College were advising the Government.
Their advice in 2001, he says, led to ‘the unnecessary slaughter of millions of healthy cattle and sheep’. Their bad advice was eventually ‘overruled by the then Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King.’
The Imperial prophecy of doom led to the Government imposing this week’s extraordinary shutdown. They said without such rules the disease could claim up to 250,000 lives. The salient words are ‘could’ and ‘up to’. It all depends on their initial assumptions. As the geeks say: ‘Garbage in, garbage out’.
Covid-19 downgraded
Astonishingly, Covid-19 was downgraded from being classified as a High Consequence Infectious Disease in the UK last Thursday, 19th March. This, according to the Government’s own webpage, was mainly because the public health bodies in the UK concluded: ‘more information is available about mortality rates (low overall).’
I’m struggling to understand this. Our public health bodies decided Covid-19 was no longer a HCID. Four days later the nation was plunged into lock-down over it. That never happened over bird flu or SARS which remain HCID’s. Why the power-grab and why the moves to destroy the self-employed sector?
P.S. (Thursday AM). In addition, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College has now downgraded his advice. It won’t be 250,000 deaths, it will 20,000 in the worst case or ‘substantially lower.’ Hospitals are right now ‘within capacity’ to cope. And this just nine days after the doom scenario which led to the lock-down. He is not back-tracking on the lock-down, however. Instead he is calling for “large scale testing and contact tracing” to ‘bring an end to the lockdown’.
Spanish Flu
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the end of Spanish Flu. The epidemic raged from January 1918 to December 1920. That’s three full years of misery as the First World War was ending and people trying to put their lives back in order. The Great War left 22 million dead. Spanish Flu killed perhaps one quarter to a third of the world’s population, perhaps 50 million.
But the Daily Express reveals Spanish Flu hit the young hardest. Those in their twenties and thirties were most at risk of dying. That is the complete opposite to Covid-19, which attacks those with respiratory issues, compromised immune systems, diabetes, obesity and coronary diseases.
Less advanced medical care and poorer nutrition may have contributed to the death toll from Spanish Flu.
Gassed last night
One haunting parallel with the First World War itself has been going through my mind. It’s the second verse of a song (Bombed last night) displaying typically dour squaddies’ gallows humour:
Gassed last night, and gassed the night before
Going to get gassed tonight;
If we never get gassed anymore
When we’re gassed, we’re sick as we can be
For Phosgene and Mustard Gas is much too much for me.
They’re warning us, they’re warning us,
One respirator for the four of us
Thank your lucky stars that three of us can run,
So one of us can use it all alone.
‘One respirator for the four of us’ just about sums up the current apparent predicament of the NHS.
People need to earn
Construction workers have now been allowed to work, so long as they maintain a two metre social distance from each other, according to reports and despite railing from ITV’s Piers Morgan, who seems oblivious that ordinary people need to earn money to house themselves and put food on their table. Indeed, if only ‘essential work’ should go on, how ‘essential’ is the work of an over-paid TV loud-mouth?
The Government have already announced they will cover 80% of the wages of those who would otherwise be laid off. They are now working on how to extend that to the self-employed. Questions to the Prime Minister in Parliament today were all about how people could be ‘supported’ by the Government. Not one asked whether it might be better to get people back into work, or even ask where the money is coming from.
But this money will have to come from taxation or borrowing. How much better to have urged us all to take simple proper precautions, isolated those at real risk, rolled out testing, and encouraged the rest of us to keep calm and carry on?
Work: the gift of God
Let us just remind ourselves we are not being ‘materialistic’. We are not putting money before lives, as if it were a binary choice. Firstly, being in work is generally an indicator of better health. Secondly, and above all, Almighty God takes pleasure in men enjoying the fruits of their honest labour:
Eccl 3:13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.
So ‘Love thy neighbour’ does not just mean ‘slavishly support the Government and take their word for it’. We are to be prophetic, and depriving a man or woman of their means of livelihood is an oppression of the poor and their rights:
Mal 3:5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.
Keep the Tube running!
Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock has decisions to make. We must pray for wisdom to avert economic disaster.
The one bright spot this morning has been Health Secretary Matt Hancock expressing amazement at the partial closures of the London Underground. We criticised those days ago. He urged Transport for London to run a full service.
But even then, astonishingly, the Independent reports he was castigated as ‘irresponsible’ by the rail worker’s union who echoed Labour’s socialist utopianism in calling for everyone to go home and the Government to pay them:
‘The general secretary of the RMT transport union Mick Cash said: “At a time when we are trying to encourage people to stay away from the Tube so we can concentrate on moving essential workers the government call to reinstate a full service is grossly irresponsible as it suggests it’s business as usual.
‘”The real problem is this government’s refusal to give any wage support to casualised workers who will receive no income if they don’t travel and go to work”.’
Inept text message
The Government sent an inept text message to millions of mobile subscribers from ‘UKAGov’ yesterday. It caused no end of people to wonder ‘How does the Government know my mobile number?’ In fact they persuaded the mobile operators to sent it to all their subscribers. HMG didn’t actually know your number at all, it just looked that way, as this news report explains.
The message told subscribers to ‘stay at home’ and directed them to its website: gov.uk/coronavirus for exceptions. Then it repeated and amplified the direction:
‘Stay at home.
‘Protect the NHS.
‘Save lives.’
Protect the NHS
It is curious that ‘Protect the NHS’ was in there, because actually, fear of the NHS being ‘overwhelmed’ is what is driving the Government panic. But, excuse me, how long have the Conservatives been in office? How long have they had to make sure the NHS is properly resourced, or to explain to us that it never can be? When did coronavirus first start in China? When did it become apparent there would a need for extra ventilators? It is really that difficult to set up field hospitals and pop-up wards in Excel Centre if Imperial College are correct? How many people are they expecting will need beds? For that matter, how many extra beds end up occupied in our annual flu episodes?
Bloomberg reports how well Japan is coping with Covid-19. But it also says:
‘Should Japan see a jump, it may be better suited than many peers to handle the surge. It has about 13 hospital beds per 1,000 people, the highest among Group of Seven nations and more than triple the rate for Italy, the U.S., U.K. and Canada, according to World Bank data.’
Germany has a current low death rate associated with Covid-19. We should note that Germany has 29.2 critical care beds per 100,000 people. Italy has 12.5 while the UK has just 6.6, according to wired.co.uk.
South Korea, on the other hand, is well on the way to beating the virus through widespread testing, as the Guardian reports.
Aghast at Italy
Governments around the world are aghast at what has happened in Italy, where cases continued to rise despite a draconian ‘lock-down’. The curve was easily outstripping China’s experience. Then again, as Dr Bhakdi explains, northern Italy is heavily polluted, with many people facing respiratory challenges already.
Cases and deaths are increasing more slowly now in Italy. But once again, recorded deaths are high compared with recorded cases, indicating that many more people are simply contracting the virus and recovering.
In addition, off-guardian reports, 99.2% of deaths in Italy had pre-existing conditions. Many were already at death’s door. We also hear twice as many elderly men have died in Italy as women. Women fight coronaviruses better than men.
At this time of writing figures stood at 422 deaths in the UK, a daily rise of 87, and 8,077 cases, a rise of 1,427. 135 people have ‘recovered’. Note that the figures for those ‘recovered’ only refer to people who have attended hospital and been discharged. In stark contrast to South Korea, the UK is only testing those who have shown up in hospital with symptoms.
No-one else who has been exposed to the virus is included. That means all who shrugged it off without symptoms, or had symptoms at home and recovered after a few days do not make the UK, or the Italian, figures. An epidemiologist on the BBC on Monday admitted the total number of cases in the UK would be well into the tens, even hundreds, of thousands, because so many cases are not being recorded.
In the UK, it isn’t even possible for a key NHS worker to know if they actually have the virus. They are not allowed to be tested. They have to go home and self-isolate for seven days regardless.
Excess winter deaths
So far to date there have been 422 deaths in the UK. How many people do you think die in the UK every day in ‘normal circumstances’?
Respiratory diseases were the biggest single cause (circa 45%), with pneumonia leading. They were followed by circulatory diseases (20%+) and then by dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (19%+). And yet, somehow, even with 47,410 excess deaths, around 1900 per day, the NHS coped in 2017-18. There was no field ward set up in a leisure centre.
Exact cause of death
In fact, Professor Bhakdi points out that winter excess deaths were either brought on by influenza or by various coronaviruses already circulating. However, the actual written-down ’cause of death’ is what actually killed the poor people. That would be a heart attack, or pneumonia. So to write ‘Covid-19’ as a cause of death of someone who actually died of pneumonia could be somewhat convenient.
Vox.com reports that the heat wave of 2003 killed at least 30,000 people in Europe. A Twitter user suggested 4,000 of those deaths occurred in Italy ‘from a simple heatwave’. He urged a sense of proportion when we look at Covid-19 figures, sad as every death is. And let us remember the reality. We shall all go that way, and that is why faith in Jesus Christ together with his forgiveness, is so important:
Job 30:23 For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.
Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
Coronavirus here ‘since January’
Dr Suntra Gupta, ‘surprised’ by universal acceptance of the Imperial College prophecy of doom.
Meanwhile, an Oxford University study claims coronavirus could already have infected half the British population. It might have been spreading in the UK since January, says Dr Sunetra Gupta. Modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group suggests Covid-19 first reached the UK by mid-January.
Dr Gupta is Professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford. If the learned professor is right, the true size of the outbreak is likely to be closer to the 400,000 mark. It is very possible that half the population has already been exposed to Covid-19.
Widespread testing is needed to assess the theory, said Dr Gupta. ‘We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys – antibody testing – to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,’ she said.
The Daily Mail reports: ‘The Oxford university research offers a contrasting view on the disease to the study that is informing government policy. It was carried out by experts at Imperial College London.
‘”I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,’ Professor Gupta told the Financial Times”.’ That is a devastating put-down.
Negative Health Outcomes
And as Dr Bhakdi says in his video, plunging people into poverty has negative health outcomes down the line. that is what makes the current UK approach ‘dangerous’ in his view. On top of that, seeing family and friends, going out, are the things which make life worth living. This particularly applies to the elderly, but affects us all.
In this view, those who went out in the park or up on Snowdonia last weekend were not irresponsible. They were not not ‘idiots’ or ‘morons’, pace Piers Morgan. They were following government advice to take exercise and they were trying to keep some semblance of normality going.
Prince Charles has symptoms
The BBC reports that the Prince of Wales has now tested positive for coronavirus.
The Prince of Wales has contracted Covid-19 from someone he met out and about, has mild symptoms and is recovering, as we should expect.
‘Prince Charles, 71, is displaying mild symptoms “but otherwise remains in good health”, a (Clarence House) spokesman said, adding that the Duchess of Cornwall, 72, has been tested but does not have the virus.’
A Clarence House statement read: “In accordance with government and medical advice, the prince and the duchess are now self-isolating at home in Scotland.
“The tests were carried out by the NHS in Aberdeenshire, where they met the criteria required for testing.
“It is not possible to ascertain from whom the prince caught the virus owing to the high number of engagements he carried out in his public role during recent weeks.”
Charles and Camilla are now self-isolating at Balmoral. We pray for HRH as we pray for protection for all the Royal Family and Her Majesty’s Government. Once again, his experience demonstrates that for the overwhelming majority, Covid-19 carries mild symptoms. It also shows how widespread the virus is, reveals the limited extent of testing in the UK and shows that carrying on is really not that difficult. And now HRH will be immune.
Pray for Government
So pray for our leaders to find the wisdom and humility to row back on their shutdown and get the population back to work.
They have invested a lot in the original dire Imperial College predictions. It would be tempting for them to hope the predictions come true to justify the measures they have taken. However, I.C. have now downgraded them (Thursday 26th) and we can only pray this sparks the end of the lock-down.
It is beginning to look as if the field hospital in Excel Centre will never be used. That will be a cause for rejoicing, and yet, it cost taxpayers’ money to erect in the first place.
If the scare fizzles out, there could be some very upset people out there, outraged that the UK Government impoverished them for no reason at all.
We had better start praying against disorder, because the stability of society itself could be at risk.
Jer 29:7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
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It is not coronavirus which is destroying the UK like Egypt's Biblical plague of locusts, but the universal social distancing mandated by the Government.
It is not coronavirus which is destroying the UK like Egypt’s Biblical plague of locusts, but the universal social distancing mandated by the Government. The Plague of Locusts, illustration from the 1890 Holman Bible
Christian Voice continues to say the Government is over-reacting to Covid-19 and should simply advocate isolating anyone frail or with a susceptible medical condition. We remember the ‘figures’ depend on the information the experts put into the model in the first place. We advocate more available testing, as per South Korea.
‘Egypt is destroyed’ said Pharaoh’s advisers. The Government simply have not assessed the impact of their measures (not ‘the virus’, but their measures) on the economy. Or if they have they aren’t telling us. But then again, Rishi Sunak’s loan guarantee gives the game away. More on all this below.
We are praying and confessing this verse:
Psalm 91:5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; 6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that waiteth at noonday
Remind the Lord of his word and pray that over yourself and your family. However, how good it would be if our Queen and Prime Minister confessed it over the whole United Kingdom? Keep praying for fear of God, not fear of a virus, to be the position of Her Majesty’s Government.
Nadine’s mum is recovered
Both Health Minister Nadine Dorries MP and her 84-year-old mother recovered quickly from Covid-19
Let us say again, it is only people with underlying health conditions who need to keep indoors and avoid social contact.
‘Surely it is better to lock down everybody of any age with underlying health problems – as well as the very elderly – and expect the rest of us to keep the economy going,’ she said.
Two days ago we reported Health Minister Nadine Dorries MP had passed Covid-19 on to her 84-year-old mother. We are happy to report that just a few days later, her mum has made a full recovery, as did Nadine.
Michel Barnier, the head of the EU task force handling the post-Brexit relationship with the UK, has tested positive for coronavirus. He’s apparently a devotee of exercise, mountain air and healthy eating and, guess what, he’s feeling fine.
Testing
South Korea dealt with the virus better than most by widespread testing. In the UK, testing is belatedly being scaled up. Will we all be offered it on demand as in South Korea? Don’t count on it.
So actually, what we are not hearing from Gov.uk is that thousands more people have been infected than we think and they have all got better.
Life must go on
Anjana Ahuja: Life must go on
Miss Ahuja went on: ‘Even in a pandemic — perhaps especially so then — some semblance of life must continue. Food supply chains must function; hospitals and care facilities need to operate at full steam. In order to keep hospitals staffed, schools need to stay open if feasible. In any case, schools act as informal quarantines — and provide a psychologically comforting routine.’
In addition, depriving people of their income results in impaired health outcomes:
‘The instinct to shut society down, as China did with Wuhan, is not cost-free when it comes to public health. Maxwell Smith, an ethicist at Western University in Ontario, points out that compulsory quarantine, school closures and a disrupted economy inflict social damage that can affect health further down the line. “China will feel the effects [of a shutdown] for years,” he said.’
Economic Assessment
We are still waiting for a UK government assessment of the economic impact of their corona virus measures. No, not an assessment of the impact of the virus. Rather of the impact of their unwarranted shutdown of large sections of British life.
But to get some idea of what they think it is going to cost, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced on Tuesday evening £330bn of loan guarantees. The Government thinks British businesses are going to need £330bn of loans to get them through. Those are loans which must be repaid. And £330bn is 15% of our Gross National Product. The Chancellor thinks the economy is going to take a 15% hit. And who will benefit? That’s right. The bankers.
Worse than Second World War
London-based Capital Economics says the UK economy could shrink as much as 20% in the next three months alone. Metro reported the story as: ‘corona virus triggers a “big recession”‘.’ But once more, the research company said. ‘This is due to the introduction of new government measures against the virus, such as closing pubs, restaurants and theatres, which will ‘significantly reduce economic activity’,’ according to its chief economist, Paul Dales.
‘He continued: “With the peak of the virus yet to come, it is clear we are in the early days of a big recession. As such, our previous forecast that GDP would fall by 2.5% q/q in Q2 is no longer fit for purpose.” With chunks of the economy grinding to a halt, including hiring and investment decisions, the GDP could fall by between 10% and 20%, Mr Dale added.’
Metro went on: ‘Budget forecasters now believe the scale of borrowing needed to pull countries out of a corona virus-caused economic crisis could resemble the large amounts of debt taken on during the Second World War, Reuters reports. By 1945, Britain’s national debt had exceeded 200% of GDP, resulting in the government turning to the US for financial assistance.’ But this time, the disaster is largely self-inflicted.
London Transport all but shuts down
Tooting Bec Tube Station is closed. Why?
People are being urged not to use London Transport unless they really have to, apparently in order to allow essential workers to get to work. So normally, doctors and nurses cannot get to work? It’s nonsense. We heard a story just today from a Kenyan in London who reported there was only her and the driver on a bus which would normally be packed with people going about their business.
Meanwhile, London Transport closes forty stations on the Underground. They have one thing in common, the Evening Standard reports. They are not interchanges. So an essential health worker can change at Vauxhall. But he then cannot get off at Tooting Bec to walk up to St George’s. Why? No-one says. Methinks those in power are punishing those revellers who were celebrating St Patrick’s Day on Tuesday evening all over London. Some were chanting ‘To hell with corona virus’, or words to that effect.
School closures
As for school closures, the BBC is still running interviews with parents who think this is very sensible. It isn’t. Why, in the early stages, did the Government not spell out loud and clear to us all that school children in general are the lowest risk group for even catching Covid-19, let alone becoming a serious case?
For example, a 16-year-old girl interviewed by the BBC about the cancellation of examinations (can you believe that?) let slip she had been self-isolating. ‘Oh really’, said the presenter, ‘Was that for corona virus?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the girl, ‘I had a bit of a cough and a temperature for a couple of days. Not very nice.’ That was it. For the under-tens in particular, there have been minuscule cases in China and not one death in that age-group. There was no need to close schools and every need not to. (On the bright side, closed schools will not be indoctrinating children with homosexuality and transgenderism…)
Instead, the Government have given their best Chicken Licken impersonation.
Cancelled operations
Meanwhile, the Health Secretary’s right-hand man has told NHS hospitals to cancel operations in an effort to free up 30,000 beds to create space for an expected surge in corona virus patients. In a letter to NHS bosses today NHS England’s CEO, Simon Stevens, said hospitals should cancel all non-urgent surgeries for at least three months.
Mr Stevens hopes to stop the health care system becoming overwhelmed during a potential surge of COVID-19 cases. So far, today, Worldometer says there are 2,689 confirmed cases in the UK and there have been 128 tragic deaths. I am praying those 30,000 beds are not needed. But as noted above, thousands more who have had Covid-19 at home and recovered do not register in the statistics and did not need a hospital bed.
Give an account
Luke 16:2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.
It should be that the Government would give an account of themselves. But as with the Skripal affair, no-one on the Opposition benches appears willing to break ranks with the establishment line and demand answers. We may have to wait for a month or two before they realise the sky has not fallen down and that the Government over-reacted and brought the United Kingdom economically and socially to its knees for no reason at all.
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The nations, particularly in Europe and the US, are gripped by fear. Furthermore, the entire world is heading for a recession which will make 2008 look like a tea-party. Our leaders, supposedly men of intelligence, are rushing us into a global recession not because of a deadly virus, but out of unreasoning fear of a fairly average one. We need to pray against the fear. If it does not stop now, we shall all suffer, and for no good reason at all.
Isa 41:13 For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. (KJV)
Jeremiah the prophet wrote this:
Jer 6:25 Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way; for the sword of the enemy and fear is on every side.
But in that case, the Babylonians really were coming. Here, what do we have? A coronavirus, Covid-19, which causes albeit serious flu-like symptoms but is not even as easy to catch as the flu, which Public Health England estimates kills an average of 17,000 people every year. And world leaders are spreading fear about Covid-19 like, well, like a virus. There is even advice from the Prime Minister for pregnant women to hide away. UK medical professional bodies say pregnant women, and young women in general, are not high-risk for Covid-19.
Church: Set an example!
I am going to urge some perspective and an end to the fear over Covid-19. Yes, we do need to wash our hands thoroughly, stay home if we are sick and protect the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. But we also need to stay kind and stay focussed. Political panic will bring dire effects many times worse than the virus itself. But first, I’ll urge the Church to set an example.
Isa 12:2 Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.
But what are we doing instead of trusting the Lord Yehovah? Even now, woke elbow-bumping from welcome teams is creeping in instead of handshakes, the ‘peace’ is being dispensed with and those churches which dispense communion wine in chalices are keeping the fortified spiritual drink in its bottle. Firstly, no virus can live in it. Secondly, the Bible says:
1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
We do not behave like this during the annual flu epidemic. We did not do it during Swine Flu a mere eleven years ago. So what is going on?
I’m going to argue the panic stems from the politics of anxiety coupled with modern risk-aversion. And the Church of Jesus Christ should beware these things of the world:
2Tim 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
French close cafes
Eiffel Tower – hundreds will lose their jobs.
In France, the prime minister announced the closure of cafes, restaurants and all public places “non essential” to public life, including cinemas and discos, from midnight on Saturday . Edouard Philippe said: “We must absolutely limit movement, meetings and contacts.” He allowed food shops, tobacconists, banks and public transport to remain open.
The Guardian also reports: ‘Authorities have banned gatherings of more than 100 people and shut down attractions including the Eiffel Tower, the palace of Versailles, the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay.’ In the Paris region, there will be no Sunday church services.
Meanwhile, ‘the health minister, Olivier Véran, said the evolution and spread of the virus was “rapid and real”, but added that about 98% of those who test positive for the virus do recover.’
Hang on? 98% of those who test positive recover? How long are they ill for? For about a week. FullFact reports: ‘According to the WHO, current evidence on the new coronavirus suggests 15% of all illnesses are severe infections, requiring oxygen, and 5% are critical infections requiring ventilation. These levels are “higher than what is observed for influenza infection”.’
But in the main, patients do not require hospital treatment. Our own health minister, Nadine Dorries, reported feeling ‘pretty rubbish’. That was it. Her mother caught the virus from her and is now fighting it, according to news reports.
‘Non-essential’
So because a few thousand people are going to feel ‘pretty rubbish’ for a week, and a few hundred will need oxygen and a third of those will need ventilation, France has shut down its entire hospitality industry as ‘non essential’. Well, excuse me, but those employed in it and their families might regard their incomes as rather essential to their daily lives. Above all, the owners of the businesses still have to pay their rent and local taxes and food for their own tables even when their establishments are shut. M Phillippe’s diktat will cause real, and above all unnecessary, financial pain.
The prophet Isaiah warned:
Isa 19:16 In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the LORD of hosts, which he shaketh over it.
France is afraid and Italy and Spain are in lockdown and ‘like unto women’ not because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord, but because of a really bad dose of flu. Nike has closed all its US, European and Antipodean stores. Berlin has closed its bars and brothels. (I didn’t know that about Berlin either.) The US has stopped flights from Europe. Coronavirus is not the judgment of God. But the reaction to it could be.
Italy and South Korea
We should just say a word about Italy, where the death rate from Covid-19 appears to be high. At this time of writing they had 2,158 deaths from 27,980 cases.
In contrast, South Korea, with 8,320 cases, had experienced only 81 fatalities. CNN explains that South Korea does far more testing for Covid-19 than Italy. Also, the age profile of those with the disease is much lower. South Korea Italy has an ageing population compared to South Korea. In Italy, 90% of deaths have occurred in those 70 or older.
The BBC reports that South Korea has concentrated on testing and treating in hospital only those seriously ill: Yes, they have closed schools, which is unnecessary, as we explain below. However: ‘The preventative measures being taken in South Korea have so far involved no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement. Trace, test and treat’.
UK hospitality sector ‘teetering’
Last night the Prime Minister advised people to stop non-essential contact with others, work from home where they can and ‘avoid places like pubs, clubs and theatres.’
Mark Cotman of York House Hotel
Significantly, because the Government has merely advised us not to go out, rather than actually closing their premises by law, venues cannot even claim on their insurance. Even if they could, that merely shifts the burden somewhere else in the economy. Better not to have incurred the loss in the first place.
Elsewhere, the BBC reportsthe UK hospitality sector is already ‘teetering on the brink’:
‘Mark Cotman is the group operations director at York House hotel in Eastbourne, and said his bookings are down 60% and he expects them to get worse. “We’ve got the money to carry on for maybe two or three months, and then we’re out of money. Then what do we do about paying staff, paying VAT, paying the veg man, the butcher?…We will run out of money”, Mr Cotman said.
All the treasury has offered is an ‘extension of business rate relief’ and ‘help’ from HMRC.
Mr Cotman went on: ‘The larger businesses like ours have received no assistance in the budget. We’ve been offered a facility of maybe applying for a loan but of course that’s got to be paid back. If we’re not taking any money, how can we pay the loan back?’
Panic attack
In the UK, panic and heartlessness have gripped the whole population. Ex-MP Luciana Berger observed a man with a trolley full of a store’s last remaining pasta refusing to give an old lady just one packet. People are stock-piling toilet rolls and flour. Make sense of that.
Eccl 9:3 This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
According to the Metro, Doctor Abdu Sharkawy, an expert in Infectious Diseases from Toronto University, wrote on Facebook: ‘I am not scared of Covid-19. What I am scared about is the loss of reason and wave of fear that has induced the masses of society into a spellbinding spiral of panic, stockpiling obscene quantities of anything that could fill a bomb shelter adequately in a post apocalyptic world.’
London deserted, sport abandoned
The Daily Express reports: ‘London deserted: UK capital becomes GHOST TOWN as workers flee over coronavirus. LONDON’S usually bustling streets, stations and tourist attractions were almost entirely deserted today as workers and visitors abandoned the capital over coronavirus fears.’
The Football League and Six-Nations rugby have shut down, the London Marathon stands abandoned until the autumn, Formula One will run, if at all, behind closed doors and sporting events all over the world are cancelled for fear of catching the flu.
Imagine the economic impact of all that.
Elderly and infirm
Virtually all those who have died, around 2% of those infected, have been the elderly, or people with pre-existing cardio-vascular problems, high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer. StatNews reports:
‘Overall, China CDC found, 2.3% of confirmed cases died. But the fatality rate was 14.8% in people 80 or older, likely reflecting the presence of other diseases, a weaker immune system, or simply worse overall health. By contrast, the fatality rate was 1.3% in 50 somethings, 0.4% in 40 somethings, and 0.2% in people 10 to 39.’ In under 10’s it was zero.
Men are slightly more likely to catch the virus than women (51% to 49%) but Netnewsledger says men are 50% more likely than women subsequently to die from it. It appears male and female immune systems work differently. Women naturally fight infections like coronavirus better than men.
This might explain why women just get colds while men suffer the flu. That gender imbalance, a source of amusement to some ladies, could be more than a matter of supposed male weakness.
Immune system
In all seriousness, the world is panicking, with stock markets plunging and sporting events being cancelled, over a bad dose of flu.
One could argue Covid 19 is a new disease, and the world population is currently without the antibodies we build up against flu. There will eventually, perhaps within a year, be a vaccine, but until then, we are on our own, so to speak. Even though Covid-19 is less infectious than flu, more people could catch it until the population builds up ‘herd immunity’. (See below!)
Although in one sense we are not alone. Thank God he created us in his wisdom with an immune system to fight disease:
Psalm 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
Elderly to Self-islolate
Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock has decisions to make. We must pray for wisdom to avert economic disaster.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told the BBC that Britons ‘over the age of 70 will be told “within the coming weeks” to stay at home for an extended period to shield them from coronavirus.’ The advice, when it does come into force, could last ‘a very long time’.
‘Wartime like measures will ask car makers to produce medical equipment and turn hotels into hospitals, he said. “Every single person in this country is going to be affected,” he warned.’
‘Over-70s and younger people with certain health conditions will need to remain at home and have groceries and vital medication delivered, the health secretary said.’
Meanwhile, the Scottish government would ask the elderly not to isolate, but instead ‘ask them to reduce social contact’.
‘Jeane Freeman, Mr Hancock’s counterpart in Scotland, said: “We don’t want people who are elderly to be stuck in their homes alone not contacting anyone, with their families not able to be in touch with them and to help them. What we’re saying to them is, reduce your contact”.’
And that is all we need to do. Just that simple measure coupled with basic hygiene.
Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
Don’t close schools!
The evidence from China is that teenagers and children were minutely represented in the figures, among cases and even less in fatalities. The few children who have fallen sick appear to have caught the virus from adults, not from other children. Children are not transmitters. There is absolutely no need to close schools.
In fact, as the children will then go to be looked after by grandparents, so increasing social interaction with the elderly, there is every good reason not to shut schools. And that is on top of the impact on the economy of disrupting the working patterns of parents. Families today need two incomes to make ends meet, in stark contrast from two generations ago. But that is another subject.
Furthermore, if a teacher, or anyone for that matter, feels unwell, just stop at home. ‘Self-isolate’. Yes, quite a few of us will fall ill if the government simply keeps the economic show on the road, but in the vast majority of cases we shall get better soon. Moreover, the economy will not in that event itself catch Covid-19, which frankly means a global slump which will take years to recover from and which will affect us all:
Jer 29:7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
SARS and Swine Flu
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the Covid 19 pandemic is ‘the worst public health crisis for a generation’ and warned Britain that the worst of the crisis is still weeks away. I said in the Christian Voice March newsletter (Email us [our email address is on this page] with your land address for a free copy of the Christian Voice March Newsletter!) that if there are fewer then 10,000 UK cases by Mothering Sunday it will be by the grace of God and in answer to prayer.
But is Covid-19 really ‘the worst public health crisis for a generation’?
According to the Daily Telegraph (£) the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic in 2009 killed 457 people across the UK. The outbreak cost a total of £1.24 billion: ‘£654 million preparing for a possible flu pandemic, and £587 million responding to the H1N1 outbreak’, including ‘£1.01 billion on drugs, among them antivirals, doses of vaccine and antibiotics.’ There were early forecasts that 65,000 people could die, so alarmism is nothing new. It is hard to find an accurate statistic, but over a million people were infected in the UK.
Around 20% of the world’s population eventually went down with H1N1. It could be argued H1N1 was far less lethal than Covid-19, but in the early stages, it was thought millions could die. Yet the global economy did not shut down. Countries were not in ‘lockdown’.
SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003. There were only a few UK cases. Again, some people chose not to travel, as I report below, but they were not forbidden to.
Not a clever disease
To those who are certain Covid-19 has been orchestrated by the Antichrist to decimate the population, I say, ‘Look at the figures’. The disease decimates the elderly and those already placing a burden on the health service. That is not a very clever disease from a ‘health economics’ point of view. If your ambition is to destroy the world, you want a virus which attacks young people.
Or maybe start a war. The First World War was excellent at sending millions of economically-active young men to their deaths. The Second World War did an even better job of destroying whole communities and their industries and property.
However, that is without recruiting leaders to destroy their own countries from within. We urge prayer for our leaders to adopt ‘business as usual’, allow the people to make their own decisions as to whether to go to the pub or the match, to self-isolate if they feel poorly, and for those at highest risk to stay indoors. The economic damage will be bad enough just from doing little.
Self-inflicted economic damage
Pandemics cause enough economic damage on their own, as individuals change their behaviour, without governments adding fuel to the fire. Sharon Begley of Reuters estimated that the SARS epidemic cost the world GPD $33bn in 2003, as Asian travellers cut their plans. (That equates to 0.063% of world GDP based on 2003 population of 6.36 billion and GDP $8,300 per person.) The effects were proportionally greater in Asia.
World-wide, it is difficult to separate the impact of H1N1 (swine flu) from the effects of the 2008 recession. However, H1N1 cost South Korea an estimated 0.14% of its national GDP in 2009.
Ms Begley suggests in a future pandemic: ‘The majority of the economic losses would come not from sickness or death but from what the World Bank calls “efforts to avoid infection: reducing air travel … avoiding travel to infected destinations, and reducing consumption of services such as restaurant dining, tourism, mass transport, and nonessential retail shopping”.’
That was in a 2013 article and is exactly what we are seeing now, except it’s not consumer-driven but mandated by those in power. When politicians and those at the top of sporting bodies start panicking, the economic problems only escalate. Politics of anxiety coupled with risk-aversion translates into job losses for the man in the street. The possibility of people losing their jobs and their businesses does not, for some advisers, form part of the risk assessment.
Financial failure, even a world-wide slump, will arise not from actual sickness or death in the population but will be self-inflicted, or leader-inflicted, on the population.
Appropriate response
Darren Schulte, M.D., CEO of Apixio, a health analytics company, says this on StatNews:
‘What’s the appropriate response to Covid-19? I believe we should counsel individuals to continue going about their daily lives while taking proper and prudent precautions until we learn more about its long-term public health risks of this disease. We should try to balance the public health and safety concerns with disruptions in daily activities. Quarantining individuals who have been exposed to the virus or who have underlying health risks makes sense, as does adhering to prudent measures like staying at home if you feel sick, washing your hands regularly, covering your mouth when coughing and sneezing, and avoiding large social gatherings. All of these can attenuate the spread of the virus.
‘But we must be measured in our actions so we don’t end up causing more lasting harm than good as we try to protect ourselves and our communities from a new — and scary — infectious disease.’
Advisors at war
In a year’s time, leaders will have to answer to their populations. That is why they need wisdom and the fear of God, not fear of the virus. Godly fear puts everything into perspective.
The Daily Express reports the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, was leading the side who advise interfering as little as possible, keeping things going while protecting the elderly and those at risk.
Sir Patrick hoped the Government’s current approach will create a ‘herd immunity’ to the disease. In practice that means allowing millions of us to become infected. But last night it appeared he had lost.
The other side advocate shutting our entire service economy down. As the Guardian explains here, last night the Prime Minister seemed to be going down that route. It risks putting off another spike of the disease until next autumn and winter. It also means economic catastrophe for the travel, hospitality and sport sectors and all the jobs dependent on those who work in those industries. The High Street, already under pressure, could be finished.
Furthermore, it is becoming clearer by the hour that Government advisers have done lots of medical models to see how the virus would spread in different scenarios. Sir Patrick Vallance told the Health and Social Care Committee as much this afternoon. But has anyone modelled the impact of the various measures on the economy? If they have, they don’t seem to be telling us.
The tourism sector alone is worth £250bn to the economy and gives work to 3.5 million people. The sports sector is ‘only’ worth £24bn, but holds nearly one million jobs. Remember how even Pharaoh could not see the damage his own decisions were doing to his land:
Exod 10:7 And Pharaoh’s servants said unto him, How long shall this man (Moses) be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Who benefits?
Sharon Begley observes that someone always makes money out of a crisis. It may be pharmaceutical companies from a vaccine, or suppliers of medical equipment in a pandemic.
Nevertheless, their profits will pale into insignificance if airlines, hotels and football clubs start turning to the banks.
Bankers are set to make billions from loans just to keep companies afloat. It would be too Machiavellian to suggest the head of Crédit Agricole has been urging Edouard Philippe to shut down the French hospitality industry, would it not?
It’s more subtle than that. He won’t be saying ‘Non’ to the idea, that’s for sure.
Turning to Prayer
The Bible says:
1Tim 2:1 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; 2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
We must pray for them to find that wisdom which has only one source:
Prov 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Pray for an end to anxiety, risk-aversion and sheer panic and for our national economy and world trade in general to return to normal, to everyone’s benefit.
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Not just Boris Johnson but the House of Commons now faces a Brexit Dilemma.
Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, front-runner of the Tory leadership candidates
Ten Conservative MPs are in the race to become their party’s leader and our next prime minister.
Ten Leadership Candidates
The candidates are:
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Health Secretary Matt Hancock
Former Chief Whip Mark Harper
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt
Home Secretary Sajid Javid
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
Previous Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom
Former Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey
Previous Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart
Brexit votes
Only four opposed the ‘May Deal’, Mrs May’s ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ with the EU. They are Mark Harper, Boris Johnson, Esther McVey and Dominic Raab. All four voted ‘No’ in the first two ‘Meaningful Votes’ held on 15th January and 12th March.
Nevertheless, all four caved in and voted for ‘Meaningful Vote 3′ on 29th March. (But then again, so did Jacob Rees-Mogg.)
The other six leadership candidates all voted ‘Aye’ in each MV. Out of the six, Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom are the only two who can also be regarded as Brexiteers. The other four are Remainers.
Brexit Strategy
So far as we can piece together, Jeremy Hunt’s big idea is to carry on with the Theresa May strategy of trying to get the House of Commons to accept some kind of withdrawal agreement. Michael Gove would ‘kick the can down the road’ by seeking yet another Article 50 extension for negotiations.
Esther McVey, Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson have all pledged to take the UK out of the EU on 31st October. All, especially Miss McVey (Mrs Philip Davies), appear keen on No Deal if necessary. She and Mr Raab have said they would call a halt to the current session of Parliament if the Commons starts to get silly.
That is a process known as ‘to prorogue’ Parliament. Some say it is so politically unacceptable it just won’t happen. The retort would be that Parliament trying to thwart the will of the people is undemocratic. Such a process would involve the Queen. Her Majesty is the only person who can actually prorogue Parliament. But HM acts on the advice of her ministers.
The Metro reports Mr Stewart said of Boris: ‘If he tried to force no deal through he wouldn’t be able to.’ But Boris doesn’t need to ‘force’ anything. If the new Prime Minister does nothing, brings forward no motions or ‘MV’s’, No Deal happens by default on All Hallows Eve. That is the law.
Mr Stewart and Matt Hancock have both ruled out leaving on WTO terms.
Launch platforms
At the launch platforms, Mr Hancock said: ‘I offer an emotionally-charged platform to improve lives that is rooted, rooted in objective fact.’ What did he possibly mean?
Esther McVey pledged to ‘sack’ every Remainer in the cabinet prior to the 31st October leaving date if she became Prime Minister.
Sajid Javid pitched himself implausibly as an outsider, Mr Gove showed up as the sensible one, and Dominic Raab tried to come across as the tough guy who will get it done.
Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson both stressed unity and both linked delivering Brexit and defeating Jeremy Corbyn.
Life and abortion
Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP.
Brexit is the big issue, but not the only one. The media have observed that Jeremy Hunt is pro-life. Indeed he voted to reduce the time limit on abortion to 12 weeks in 2008. Apparently he has promised Amber Rudd he would not be a pro-life premier. That was necessary to garner her support, so it seems. Why do women such as this Amber, Anna Soubry, Diana Johnson (author of the ‘decriminalise abortion completely’ bill), Jess Phillips etc so hate other women they want to bereave them of their children?
On this abortion issue Mr Hunt sadly failed to oppose Diana Johnson’s Abortion Bill. The House has voted for it twice, on 13th March 2017 & 23rd October 2018. The Bill went to the back of the private member’s bill queue. It is now in the long grass. The two votes were only symbolic. Nevertheless, one should expect a pro-life MP to oppose such an evil all the way. Of the ten leadership candidates, only Andrea Leadsom and Rory Stewart did that, in the 2018 vote.
At the other end of life, a bill to legalise euthanasia (‘doctor-assisted dying’) came along in September 2015. Those voting ‘No’ to it were Gove, Harper, Hunt, Johnson and Leadsom. The others abstained. Esther McVey was not an MP between 2015 and 2017.
Leadership Candidates on Sodomy
As Mayor of London, Boris Johnson showed himself relentless pro-gay. He supported every pro-sodomy initiative there was, as well as London ‘gay pride’. He opposed pro-marriage initiatives, such as the ex-gay bus adverts proposed by Core Issues Trust in 2012 as the BBC reports here.
Previously, he was saying ‘If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog.’ In the year 2000 he was accusing ‘left-wing local authorities’ of going about ‘to waste taxpayers’ money on idiotic and irrelevant homosexual instruction.’ It is easy to see why some say he blows with the wind.
‘No Outsiders’
Only Esther McVey voted against same-sex ‘marriage’ in 2013 and Andrea Leadsom abstained. All the others voted for it (except Boris, who was Mayor of London). Nevertheless, Michael Gove, Mark Harper and Jeremy Hunt at least voted in December 2009 to exempt churches from the requirement to hire gays and lesbians.
Recently, Esther McVey has spoken up for the parents in the No Outsiders row, setting herself at odds with Government policy and Education Secretary Damian Hinds, who has declared war on parents. To see more, this brilliant article on Spiked Online sets out the issue very clearly indeed.
Just to show what we are up against, the Guardian reports comments by Angela Rayner MP. She is Labour’s shadow education secretary. She said Miss McVey’s arguments in favour of letting parents take young children out of LGBT education were “illegal, immoral and deeply dangerous”. Dangerous to whom or to what? To activists’ plans and the LGBT agenda. But Ms Rayner was not finished:
“Esther McVey is not fit to be a candidate for PM and not fit to be an MP,” she said. Wow.
Crime and morality
In recent days, the media have been awash with stories of the candidates taking narcotics when they were younger.
All this must be a sign of the times. It is also a sign of the times that Mr Johnson’s philandering is greeted by shrugs. His first marriage ended because of an affair with the childhood friend who would become his second wife. Now, after 25 years, and three more (documented) affairs, one of which led to Boris fathering an illegitimate child, his second wife has filed for divorce. It is all very modern and amicable.
Meanwhile, says the Daily Express, Boris is shacked up with his girlfriend, one Carrie Symonds.
Peace in the world
Permanent Under-Secretary Simon McDonald welcomes Boris Johnson to the Foreign Office.
It took just three days for Boris to switch from a friendly pro-Russian stance to the Foreign Office line when he became Foreign Secretary in July 2016.
The current occupant, Jeremy Hunt, has continued the anti-Russian rhetoric. Only last month he described the state-owned Russian television channel RT as a ‘weapon of disinformation’. Well, RT may not have a lot complementary to say about the UK, or the US for that matter. Nevertheless, despite that, on world affairs this author finds RT to be more trustworthy than the BBC.
Jeremy Hunt has spoken up for persecuted Christians overseas. He initiated the report by the Bishop of Truro, which we shall cover in due course. However, when the Christians are in Syria, and being persecuted by the jihadists the UK sponsored who are now holed up in Idlib province, Mr Hunt wants the Syrian Government and their Russian allies to go easy on the terrorists who are oppressing them.
All except Rory Stewart (who abstained) and Boris (who was not in the House) voted for war against Syria in August 2013. By the grace of God, David Cameron lost that vote. On the more limited operation against Islamic State, all the leadership candidates except Esther McVey (not in the House) voted ‘Aye’ on 2nd December 2015. An amendment calling for peace and reconstruction in Syria was defeated by 179 votes on the same night before the main motion went through with a majority of 174. See the Hansard report.
Foreign aid
Two leadership candidates have floated the idea of reallocating the money the UK currently sends as foreign aid. Dominic Raab would redirect £500m to create an international wildlife fund. Esther McVey is more radical. She would halve the current £14bn aid budget, directing £4bn to schools and £3bn to the police.
The UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign aid is now written into our law. That means there is a scramble to dispose of the money as the end of each financial year approaches. Moreover, 38% of the aid budget goes straight to UN agencies.
The 0.7% target means the UK is second only to the United States in the sheer amount of money we spend on foreign aid. But their £25bn is a far smaller proportion of GPD than our £14bn. We are the only member of G7 to meet the 0.7% target, laid down by the UN. Aid is becoming seen as neo-colonial. The UK uses foreign aid too often to promote immorality abroad. It can also depress local commodity prices, causing local hardship. African nations like Ghana are now moving ‘beyond aid’ with a smarter approach to adding value to their raw materials. The days of foreign aid may be drawing to a close.
Latest Brexit News
HRH The Duke of York. Photo by Aaron McCracken/Harrisons
In the latest development in Parliament, Labour last night lost a motion which tried to grab control of proceedings on 25th June in order to bring in a Bill preventing a ‘No Deal’ Brexit on Halloween. The vote was 309 to 298. Seventeen Labour MPs abstained and ten voted against their leadership. Eleven Tory MPs abstained and ten voted with the Opposition. Thank God for his grace and mercy.
Meanwhile, further revelations have emerged from the memoirs of Paul-Henri Spaak about how the architect of the EU ignored public opinion. If you don’t know this name, you simply must click here for our article in which we ask if the EU was a Christian project or a Catholic plot. The answer may surprise you.
Finally, according to the Daily Express, the Duke of York is happy with Brexit. Asked by ITV news if UK entrepreneurs would succeed outside the EU he replied: ‘I see no reason why not. Businesses we see could be successful either inside a large internal market, or operating in an even larger external market.’ He stressed the ‘even larger’.
Prince Andrew made the comments during an event organised by Pitch@Palace, a business-oriented charity the Duke of York founded to support entrepreneurs and help them expand their projects.
Who to pray for?
Who should we pray for to be elected? The one who terrifies the EU is Dominic Raab. When we factor in their stance on other issues, the strongest pro-family Brexiteer is Esther McVey. Frankly, the two most likely to be sent by the MPs for decision among Tory Party members are Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Mr Hunt is the Remainers’ favourite, while Mr Johnson is being cast as the only one who can save the Party.
Of the two, Boris is the most likely to win the Conservative activists’ votes and become Prime Minister. But all is in the hand of the Lord:
1Sam 2:7 The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.
Dan 2:21 And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
Lord, grant repentance
When it becomes clearer who will be elected,‘who to pray for’ will take on a different meaning. It will no longer be ‘which of the leadership candidates’ do we petition the Lord to favour, but ‘Lord, grant repentance.’ We’ll be praying for the most likely candidate and then the successful one to walk in God’s ways and to be as hard as nails on a Halloween Brexit. Another thing a new prime minister can and should do is sack Damian Hinds and appoint Esther McVey as Education Secretary. The Bible says keeping God’s commandments brings a blessing on the nation and on the one who leads:
Deut 11:22 For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him; … 25 There shall no man be able to stand before you:
Above all, pray for all these candidates, indeed for your own MP, to acknowledge God and learn righteousness as the Almighty sees it:
Prov 25:5 Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness.
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Today, MP’s embark on another set of ‘Indicative Votes’. They will start debating at 3.30 pm and vote at around 8.00 pm. The result will be known at 9.30pm. Here is what they will be voting on.
Staying in the EU’s Customs Union is favourite to win. Its proposer is Ken Clarke MP.
Yet Mr Clarke, and all the other Conservative MPs who voted for it last Wednesday, stood for Parliament on the Conservative 2017 Manifesto. which said on page 36: ‘As we leave the European Union, we will no longer be members of the single market or customs union … ‘ Even Labour’s 2017 Manifesto only wanted, ‘the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union’ on page 24, not the actuality of either.
Leavers on last Friday’s walk.
A second referendum is also gaining ground. Its proposers in one form are Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson and in another, Labour’s Graham Jones and Tory Dominic Grieve, who lost a confidence vote in his constituency last Friday.
And yet the 2017 Labour Manifesto said ‘Labour accepts the referendum result.’ (Page 24.) The Conservatives said: ‘Following the historic referendum on 23rd June 2016, the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union.’ (Page 36).
The Bible says:
Psalm 15:1 LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? 2 He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. … 4b He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.
Eccl 5:4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
Matt 5:37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
So pray the MPs will keep their word, reject the Customs Union and the Second Referendum. Pray the Government stay firm and pray the UK will leave the Revived Roman Empire on 12th April 2019.
Meanwhile:
Rt Hon Liz Truss MP
The Daily Express reports Eurocrats salivating over the ‘Customs Union’ prospect and hoping they can corner the UK inot the status of a vassal state post-Brexit.
In the Guardian, Cabinet Minister Liz Truss makes the obvious point that being part of the EU Customs Union would rob the UK of any power over our future trade policy. She will support No Deal, she says.
Martin Howe says ‘It is far better to risk extending Article 50 than to accept May’s bad deal.’
The Guardian reports Brexit supporters blocked roads around Westminster that day.
While Conservative activists – the ones the Party needs to walk the streets and bring their vote out on 2nd May in the local elections, let alone if Euro elections happen on 23rd May, are overwhelmingly pro- ‘No Deal’.
