So UK lockdown continues. Does anyone recall any public consultation over it? Any public discussion? Any publication of a measured analysis of the economic, social and health effects? I don’t remember voting to be part of some vast dystopia.
The Bible says: Prov 20:18 Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.
The only advice the UK Government took was from the false prophet of doom, Dr Neil Ferguson of Imperial College.
Government took a rash decision
The Daily Express reports that only now is the Health Secretary getting together with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to calculate the impact of the lockdown that is putting millions of jobs and businesses at risk. In an extraordinary admission, Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP said: “We do not yet have an established estimate of the impact of the huge problems in the economy on to the health of the nation.
“But it is a piece of work that I am working on jointly with the Chancellor to make sure that when we make the big policy decisions, especially around social distancing, we take into account the impact on the health and wellbeing of everyone in the country.
“Not just on the highly visible impact on the deaths from coronavirus but right across the board including indirectly from the economic impact of the crisis.”
They brought in the shutdown on 23rd March. Three full weeks later, they are getting around to assessing the damage it will do. They have been thoroughly irresponsible. We talk of ‘economics’ and so on, but that word is made up of real people trying to provide for their families.
Our Lord himself gave his followers an illustration in which it is clearly expected that leaders will weigh everything up and not make rash decisions:
Luke 14:31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?
Decision week – email your MP!
This is the week in which the UK Government must by law decide whether to continue their shutdown, or allow people back to work. The Daily Express reports on one page that we shall have to wait until 25th May, And on another page that is could be as early as this week. It’s just conjecture. We need to pray:
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.
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, if it is not already too late.
Economic disaster
According to the Express, a leaked Treasury reports the UK already faces economic disaster. The same paper says ‘Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) manufacturers in England are being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic with 87 percent of companies seeing a big drop in output, a new report suggests.’
The Guardian reports on the failure of a flagship Government scheme: ‘The government has admitted that just 1.4% of businesses that enquired about its coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) have so far been successful.’ But yet again, businesses do not need taxpayer money, they need the Government to allow them to work.
Eccl 2:24 There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.
Furthermore, just this morning, reports the BBC, the Office for Budget Responsibility says if the current lockdown lasts for three months, the UK economy ‘should shrink’ by a record 35% by June. It said ‘a three-month lockdown followed by three months of partial restrictions would push up Britain’s borrowing bill to an estimated £273bn this financial year, or 14% of gross domestic product (GDP).
‘This would represent the largest deficit as a share of GDP since World War II.
False sense of insecurity
Yet still the fear of the virus is being talked up, as both Government and Mass Media try to lull the people into a false sense of insecurity. Exactly why is there a Covid-19 Project Fear? Any ideas? Leave your comment below!
For example, here’s the BBC quoting an ‘expert’ saying: ‘Coronavirus: UK could be ‘worst affected’ country in Europe.’ Off-Guardian reports that other ‘experts’ are saying Covid-19 is ‘twenty times more deadly than the flu’. They showed it isn’t.
Then ex-MP and Brexiteer Douglas Carswell said in a tweet that that the purpose has changed. (Remember regime- change wars, where the purpose also changes over time?): ‘Initially we were told that the purpose of lockdown was to slow the rate at which infection spread – not necessarily reducing total infections – so as to allow health care capacity to be put in place. Media pundits now report as though its to reduce total infections.’
NHS beds unoccupied
Statistics coming out only this morning show how the Government has over-reacted in connection with the NHS.
Health Check website HSJ reveals NHS hospitals have four times more empty beds than normal. They say: ‘Figures from the national NHS operational dashboard, seen by HSJ, show that 40.9 per cent of NHS general acute beds were unoccupied as of the weekend — 37,500 of the total 91,600 relevant beds recorded in the data. That is 4,500 more than the 33,000 the NHS said had been freed up on 27 March, and nearly four times the normal amount of free acute beds at this time of year.’
On yet another page, they show the much-vaunted ‘Nightingale Hospital’ in London’s Excel Centre is ‘largely empty as ICUs handle surge’. They go on: ‘just 19 patients (were) being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend, HSJ understands.’ That is 0.5% of capacity: ‘According to draft plans, the temporary hospital in the Docklands was designed to have 2,900 intensive care beds, along with 750 further beds.’
Deaths rise across (some of) Europe
Oh yes, and while the BBC headline is ‘Coronavirus pushes England and Wales death rate to record high’, their article admits ‘coronavirus deaths only contribute under 60% of these (additional) deaths.’ So what has driven the other 40%?
The latest EuroMomo map for Week 14 of 2020 shows no excess of deaths in most of Europe, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, all down from ‘above expected’ the week before. Belgium is ‘above expected’ now. England, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland are all at ‘very high’. But geographers are now suggesting that population density affects the spread of Covid-19 more than anything else. It would follow that shutdowns achieve no more than destroying the economy.
Sweden – no lockdown, no panic
Sweden has no lockdown and no panic. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, so there is no organised sport, drama or music. But restaurants and primary schools are still open. The prime minister joked that Swedes are genetically predisposed to social distancing. The prophets of doom would expect Sweden to be adversely affected by Covid-19.
In fact, Worldometer shows their cases of Covid-19 and deaths with Covid-19 are per head of population currently half of the UK’s.
The Independent reports that even inside Sweden, doom-mongers are crying out for lockdown.
‘Dr Cecilia Soderberg Naucler, an expert in microbial pathogenesis at the Karolinska Institute, believes this trust (in Swedish good sense) is unfounded and will soon break.
‘“I’m a scientist, I only trust data and the data says we are heading for catastrophe. We are now part of an experiment without informed consent”.’
With respect, ‘heading for catastrophe’ is not data, it’s prophecy. And if she thinks Sweden is carrying out an experiment ‘without informed consent’ she should come to the UK.
Meanwhile, graphs showing Covid-19 cases and deaths across Europe reveal Sweden is doing no worse than any other nation and better than most. The geographers and the Swedish PM could well be right. Go HERE for the deaths graph and HERE for the cases graph on a larger scale.
Police excesses
Following a South Yorkshire Police woman constable telling a family (wrongly) they were not allowed in their own front garden, on video, Northamptonshire’s Chief Constable threatened to inspect people’s shopping baskets, and others warned Easter eggs were not essential. Whatever we might think of Easter eggs, or even the word ‘Easter’, people give them as gifts as they cheer ordinary folk up. And if chocolate in general is ‘essential’ …
Eager to be in on the act, the Central Community Team of Bedfordshire Police tweeted on Saturday: ‘@CentralBedsCPT · Apr 11: If you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location no one will find you, don’t be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows! We are covering the whole county #urbanandrural #StayHomeSaveLifes #ProtectTheNHS.’
I tweeted back: ‘What a disgrace. People putting themselves and others at no risk at all, yet Bedfordshire Police are lurking in the shadows to nick them, and no doubt getting within 2m to do so. #PoliceStateUK’
If you do Twitter, you can follow @StevieinWales.
Finally, Breitbart reported Northern Ireland Police setting up a website so people can report on their neighbours breakjing the lockdown. I suppose with lockdown, people and the police have little else to do.
The Bible says:
Lev 19:16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.
Prov 11:13 A talebearer revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.
On this day
It is chastening to remember that on 14th April in history:
In 1759, George Frederic Handel died aged 74,
At the theatre in 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot,
In 1912, Titanic sank with the loss of over 1,500 lives.
Read our previous articles:
Lockdown to stay as Boris recovers
Covid-19 deaths overtake GB abortions
Fearfully and wonderfully made: How God has equipped you to fight Covid-19
Lock-down ‘putting lives at risk’
Coronavirus: No fear of ‘the pestilence’
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We appear to be literally on the same page, ref the HSK piece, but did you notice a comment on it:
“Just because you do not use an insurance policy does not mean the insurance policy was not needed in the first instance.
The other sad aspect is that if the death rate had been half what it has turned out to be (something we have only found through bitter experience), London would have needed 1,000 more beds – many of those would have been ITU beds. Covid bed use is lower also because many are no longer in beds, because they sadly died.”
So, the Nightingale was always just an ‘insurance policy’
No, it wasn’t, it was put forward by the government as being vitally necessary.
And we now know that lots of people are dying, so it’s not needed.
Er, no, we knew people were dying when the White Elephant Hospital was set up.
All of this slavish devotion to “our beloved NHS” which we need to destroy our lives to “protect” is yet another absurd secular religion replacement (along with the ‘climate crisis’, obviously). And, boy, doesn’t it have a lot of tinpot little psudo-priests, all those people without doctorates who use the honorific ‘Doctor’, in order to confer some sort of pathetic pretence of expertise and learning on themselves.
‘Protect the NHS’ popped up out of nowhere on the weekend of 14th/15th March. In the debate on ‘Coronavirus’ in the House of Commons on Wednesday 11th, nobody used the expression. On 16th March, in the debate on ‘Covid-19’ now, Matt Hancock used it for the first time. Aim No 1: ‘protect the NHS by building it up and flattening the curve.’ In the debate on 23rd March no fewer than three more Tory MPs were using the expression. It’s genius, but it’s drivel.
If Labour had brains instead of sawdust, they would have said: ‘Protect the NHS’? ‘Ha, it only needs ‘protecting’ because of all the Tory cuts we warned about.’ But they didn’t, and even that line would have failed to challenge Covid-19 Project Fear.
What would have speared Project Fear would have been to ask the Government for their assessment of the economic downturn, jobs to be lost, businesses ruined, bankruptcies, suicides, long-term poverty-driven health problems from their proposed shutdown/lockdown. (The honest answer would have been ‘we don’t know’, Because they hadn’t even done an analysis.
Yet Labour focussed instead on taxpayer relief for those in the affected sectors. I do not believe they even identified hospitality, sport, education, travel, the High Street and manufacturing as sectors which would be devastated.
I cannot quite believe the irresponsibility not just of the Govt but of HM Opposition.
Indeed so – I completely agree.
Oh, good piece again ,as usual!
Belfast is like a glorious holiday camp. Sunshine. Folk strolling about. I love my official exercise outing on my bike.
People are thoughtful, considerate and careful with one another.
BUT I await the next event which will bring us nearer to a unified organised system
I can irrespectively reconcile this as being ‘the finger of God’ as did J C Ryle on the great cattle plague of 1865-1867. It is well looking up his comments and youtube. O that we had a Bishop like him today.
No one knows when this will finally cease – we are in Isaiah 20 v 25-26 ‘Until the indignation be overpast.’
Another interesting article.
If/when we emerge from this and the Covid-19 death toll (which is technically very difficult to count… died with / died of) is under, say, 50,000 and the economy is a smoking pile of ruins, the government will triumphantly declare: “Phew! We did it!”
But what will they have done?
As Bill Clinton’s advisor, Rahm Immanuel, smartly once said: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste…”)
As an aside: The following two sermons appeared on the front door of a local church last week. They didn’t stay there long…
Sermon #1
This is Easter week
Jesus died on a cross
He came back to life
This is the repeated message of the Bible.
Happily, it is a message of life… because the Bible tells us that “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.
It is also a message of hope… because, Jesus really did, historically, factually, and with credible eye-witness accounts, come back from the dead.
It is also a message of salvation… but not by human effort. The message of the Bible is that “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved”.
It is a wonderful, hopeful message that has echoed down the centuries and still continues to change, inspire and embolden ordinary people.
Sermon #2
Stay at home
Protect the NHS
Save lives
This is the repeated message of the government.
Sadly, it is a message of death… and the fear of death. The government warns that people are dying because of Coronavirus and that more will die.
It is also a message of guilt… because if we don’t stay home, we will be responsible for more deaths.
It is also a message of salvation… but by human effort alone. If we do our bit; the NHS can do its bit; and more people will be saved.
The government’s message emphasises fear and guilt and the costly human efforts needed to bring about a temporary salvation because, despite the best efforts of the marvellous NHS and its wonderful staff, we will all eventually die.
tick…tick…tick…
Brilliant analysis. Thank you.
I guess that Andrew Green has some good common sense points to make. White elephant hospitals, protecting the NHS, and the hideous economic cost of all this, are all issues each one of us have specific views on, and I am not going to make any specific additional comments. We need to recognize that there are no ‘experts’ as such; just merely flawed human beings doing something like a big panic!
However, at the risk of being labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’, I suggest, with David Pawson that this virus issue is a mere foretaste of what is to come. It is globalism at its most oppressive, and a virus is a good way of softening up the global population through fear into absolute submission to heinous ungodly influence and dictats. The economy will be so pulverised as to be even more dependent on organizations as a world central bank that will make national sovereignty a once forgotten dream (including Brexit). It is clear to me that our lives will never be quite the same again, and that ‘normality’ as we know it will cease to exist in its original form. Our freedoms will be sacrificed even more than they already are., and the global agenda will prevail against all other considerations. As Believers, we need to prepare for such opposition that we have for most of us never encountered. Let us prepare!
Thanks Michael! I am actually not a Christian, but am finding that much of the good sense talked about this comes from Christians who, of course, have no reason to put their faith in a secular pseudo-religion, since they already have a religion, with accumulated wisdom from many thousands of years to back up their beliefs.
Yesterday, I watched about 80% of the following documentary.
The first documentary movie on CCP virus, Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bXWGxhd7ic
I also read yesterday (I wish I could remember where) that it has been government policy since 2005, reviewed by the Lib Con coalition in 2011 and adopted, by then with effective all-party support, that the NHS wasn’t prepared for a pandemic like the present one, but that no amount of preparation would be adequate, so the best policy in the event of a viral pandemic would be to keep those likely to be affected badly socially isolated, whilst allowing the virus to affect as much of the rest of the population as quickly as possible, in order to build herd immunity in the fit-and-well population, based upon the assumption that most would survive mild symptoms or asymptomatic infection, developing immunity and non-infectiousness in the process.
This long-established official policy appears to have become the Johnson government’s policy in February. I took social distancing measures approaching social isolation except for buying essentials on my return to the UK from Romania on 4th March, because I’d left my wife there, with plane tickets to join me on 22nd March with her elderly mother, for her first, long-planned visit outside her homeland. She would be in harms way if infected.
Something obviously became known to the government that persuaded a panicky, alarmist change in that mature and carefully considered pre-planned strategy of wait-and-see and trusting in God and the human immune system that he created. The cover story, relieving the strain on the NHS, was plausible enough and probably sincere, but not, I suspected, the whole inside story, which I now suspect was now informed by classified intelligence as much as advice of the minority of scientists with the ear of government, which nobody much is any longer pretending is adequately informed by proven science.
So, what classified intelligence might also have influenced the u-turn?
According to the documentary, SARS-Cov-2 is a genetically modified recombinant of a bat virus isolated in (if I remember correctly) 2003. The extra RNA added artificially codes for a protein that enables the modified bat virus to breach the defences of the human cell (bad enough) and (somewhat sinister) the sequence found in HIV that causes AIDS. The Chinese cover story about a certain fish market, which has never sold bat meat or had a nearby bat population, is a fabrication. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a biological weapon developed in China near the fish market and was released into the local population either accidentally or deliberately. The documentary names whistle-blowers and cites their disclosure of this alleged mischief.
If this conspiracy theory is true, the weapon may turn out to have some nasty surprises in store.
The usual suspects we’d naturally suspect are those with something to gain from the establishment of authoritarian, unelected global governance, the aim of the Secret Power of Lawlessness of 2 Thess 2 and its numerous historical manifestations. However, in what I have seen so far of the documentary makers do not explore those possible connections. However, the coincidence of Event 201 points the finger.
My conclusion is that most of us don’t know yet what is really going on behind the scenes. The virus could be worse than we think it is and could bring the west to its knees.
If you decide not to publish this comment, I shall understand. But please at least make use yourself of the information it links to, in the documentary, if you can. I suspect it might be reliable.
I can’t believe you think the lockdown isn’t working or actually dangerous!
The New hospital in London is a case of insurance, as mentioned in a earlier comment. I’m sure you wouldn’t complain if a close relative
of yours needed one of these beds
I’m unsubscribing from your page!
One man’s ‘case of insurance’ is another man’s ‘complete waste of money and part of Covid-19 Project Fear’!
Seriously, as if that wasn’t serious, the lockdown is destroying people’s jobs, businesses, liberty and health for a generation. It might or not be ‘working’. It is certainly catastrophic.
Christians start from the word of God. And the Bible says denying men their wages is oppression and a sin which cries to heaven. Someone needs to tell our leaders we are fast becoming in the same state as was Egpyt after just seven of the ten plagues:
Exod 10:7 And Pharaoh’s servants said unto him, How long shall this man 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?
I never cease to be amazed at how quick Christians are to fall out with one another …
Oppress not the hireling in his wages – surely relates to an Employer in the abuse and misuse of employees by withholding good when they have current means to give.
This ‘finger of God’ that has now affected the nations of the earth has come as a voice that ‘The Lord Omnipotent Reigneth,’ at least the Evangelical Prime Minister of Australia called for prayer and it has been significant to note that they have a much reduced level of Covid-19 related deaths. Will others nations recognize and follow suit?
Where do we hear a call for confession and national repentance?
Yes of course it means that. But denying people the opportunity to work is just as much an oppression.
The Orthodox President of Belarus has also put his trust in the Almighty.
Kenya had a day of prayer, and the Russian church called for repentance.
I note your graphs of deaths per million “across Europe” omit those in France, Italy and Spain, those countries most hard hit. We also need to consider deaths in the USA, still accelerating, despite Trump’s assurance that covid was a ‘hoax’, and then it would be largely over by Easter. We should beware of false prophets. ONS figures for deaths in the week ending 3/4 are c. 6000 up on the average deaths for the week in previous years. This compares to the DHSC total hospital covid deaths of 2846 for that week. The situation is much worse than the headline figures, and I suspect likely to deteriorate futher. Actual deaths to the virus may well have already exceeded 20000. The OBR is projecting a 14% drop in GDP for the financial year. There are no figures for economic hit caused in the scenario of no lock down at all and probably hundreds of thousands of deaths. But what price life? Most would sacrifice far more than 14% this year for their spouse, for example, not to die.
Deaths to the virus, or with the virus? Covid-19 only accounts for 60% of the excess deaths. I suspect the Covid-19 death figures are being over-played to feed in Covid-19 Project Fear.
Covid19 project fear is the Government scaring us into doing what we’re told.
We were told that 250,000 would die. We saved thousands of lives by complying with the lockdown.
Everyone enjoys flattery.
We will continue to do everything the Government asks and vote for Boris at the next election.
The Queen is the head of the Church of England (constitutionally) and its doors are shut and the buildings were empty anyway; but Boris is the head of the NHS and the fickle multitiudes (every Thursday, as on Palm Sunday) will be bashing their saucepans, hooting their hooters and worshipping (“I’m not religious…” Yeah… Right…) the Saviour of us all… the One… the Only… the man-made NHS (Peace be upon it!).
Who was it that coined the phrase about the NHS being the nearest thing to a British state religion?
When Boris fell ill with Covid it was his Good Friday moment.
When Boris rose again from the ICU it was like a month of Easter Sundays all at once for Dominic Cunnings (deliberate mis-spell).
At that point, all Boris had to do was prostrate himself before the nation and thank the NHS “for saving my life” and the next election (or three) was in the bag. Bingo big time!!!
How can the nation that ran a world empire and won the Second World War be so collectively stupid as to swallow a nine-word slogan (Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.) as if it neatly and comprehensively distills and explains all the complexities of the current “crisis”?
We have become a nation of saucepan-bashing, slavery-loving morons.
I have been suspicious from the start because I had all the symptoms before Christmas and A&E . Caused by being mentally and physically exhausted and immune system down. Eventually diagnosed Asthma from which Due to natural medicine for immune system has all cleared up. All three months before Christmas. No mention of any Virus. Hospital appointment at Basildon this morning. Not allowed in the main building. No sign of any activity. Ambulances parked up. All very quiet. Nobody speaks. Very surreal. Appointment at Southend tomorrow. I suspect it will be the same. Problem is neighbours won’t communicate so huge damage socially. They all believe the Media version and get annoyed at any sign of dissent or common sense. Maybe someones answer to Brexit. I am praying for enemies weapon of media turn back on themselves Psalm 37:15. Only God can sort this out so I suggest Humbling ourselves and pray.
God bless
I know of only one person who has had corona and he is a man at work who got sent home a few weeks ago because he is diabetic, he got the virus while in isolation at home So much for self isolation!
According to Worldometer as of April 19th 164,565 worldwide have died since January that is less than what cancer kills in one week worldwide and the same number as what unborn children are slaughtered every 31 hours worldwide.
Proverbs 29v25 The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.
I have switched off the mainstream media because I refuse to be put under a curse of death. I will get the ‘news’ anyway because it is impossible to avoid and whilst waiting for some weather to be reported, I picked up that the government thanked the muslim community for being good and foregoing the end of ramadan celebrations. Did the government thank Christians for not being able to gather for our Easter celebrations? I am not aware that it did.
As some of us said at the start, this is a media driven hysteria; 1400 people die every day of all types of illnesses, add 600 abortions that are carried out per day and the total is 2000; the cause of death can easily be manipulated to be the sars-flu virus, deaths are rarely one single cause, so the death toll, drummed into people by the media is highly questionable; the cure is also clearly worse than the disease.
We are not being told any details of the financial bailout that is being done behind the scenes. It sounds as if it is an enormous nationalisation, in which case, Jeremy Corbyn must be laughing or as sick as a parrot, bearing mind he is not in charge of it. What is being done as a bailout makes Labour’s ideas look tame. It is also ironic that it is a Conservative government that has now effectively undone Thatcherism.
There is clearly a hidden agenda and that is the real sin. Save the children – Stop RSE. Delenda evolution.