Major setback for transgender madness

The most bizarre component of the politically correct agenda has been the promotion of so called transgender rights. This has been based on the mistaken belief that ‘gender identity’ has an objective reality. It is in fact a complete delusion. The physical reality is that there are two sexes, male and female. This has been accepted as a biological fact throughout history and in every society, and confirmed by biological science as immutable through the sex chromosomes.

In the past couple of decades in liberal circles the crackpot notion has gained ground that some people, believing that as they do not conform to the stereotypical notions of their biological sex, conclude that they are really the opposite sex, trapped in the wrong body. There can be no doubt that there are many people who do not conform to traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, since there are clearly effeminate men and butch women, both in character and appearance. So there must be a broad spectrum between macho men at one extreme and, for example, simpering females at the other. Each individual will slot into a point in this range according to their character, which in many cases might not accord with their biological sex. So gender is a subjective mental construct involving an almost unlimited number of variations.

The promotion of the transgender delusion has encouraged many mentally confused people to undergo physical mutilation and the injection of hormones of the opposite sex. They believe that these extreme measures will enable them to ‘transition’ to the opposite sex. The first example of this syndrome to come to public attention was the travel writer James Morris, who in the 1970s underwent this kind of physical mutilation and henceforward regarded himself as a woman, with the new name Jan Morris. Extraordinarily, Morris featured as one of the cultural icons in Andrew Marr’s recent BBC TV Series New Elizabethans, demonstrating just how embedded transgender politics has become in politically correct circles.

One of the more pernicious aspects of the transgender agenda that has gained ground in recent years is its impact on children and young teens. At the forefront of this malaise is the Tavistock Centre in North London which operates what is termed a Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) that aims to ‘help young people who experience difficulties in their gender identities.’ Unbelievably, GIDS can involve prescribing puberty blockers and opposite sex hormone treatment for young teens.

One such case was that of Keira Bell who from her mid teens was given puberty blockers, male hormone treatment therapy and then surgery to remove her breasts. However, she later concluded that she did not want to continue living as male, instead deciding to revert to being female. She clearly regretted her decision to consent to the Tavistock treatment, claiming that she was insufficiently mature to give informed consent, and had been given an inadequate psychological assessment. She subsequently took the Tavistock to the courts.

Reassuringly, the High Court recently decided in Keira’s favour declaring that is was highly unlikely that anyone ‘thirteen or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers’, or that fourteen and fifteen years olds could ‘understand and weigh the long term risks and consequences of puberty blockers’. For those sixteen and over the long term consequences of the ‘innovative and experimental treatment’ practiced by the Tavistock, is such that it would henceforth require the authorisation of the courts.

As a result of these court decisions it is highly unlikely that the Tavistock Centre will be able to administer such patently dangerous practices in the future. Once confused teenagers start to realise that playing the transgender card will no longer result in any form of physical medical intervention or uncritical support for their delusions, we should soon find that the numbers supposedly suffering from ‘gender dysphoria’ will start to drop off significantly. It is disturbing that children’s charities such as the NSPCC and Barnados have failed at any time to condemn the barbarous examples of child abuse practiced by the Tavistock Centre.

BBC Covid alarmism

Most people of pension age in Britain today will have witnessed the gradual transformation of the BBC from a high minded pillar of the then culturally conservative establishment, into the hard left mouthpiece for political correctness that it has now become. This new woke cultural and political agenda has been incrementally extended from news and current affairs programmes into virtually all of its broadcast output. It is particularly intrusive when it invades historical dramas, and programmes about history, the arts and science, all of which the BBC once enjoyed a very high reputation which it has now largely lost. The BBC has become the British equivalent of the Soviet propaganda organ Pravda, in which everything it covers must be presented through the prism of the dominant ideology.

This would all be fine if it was an independent media outlet such as the Guardian, which is free to pursue any political agenda it chooses, however misguided or out of touch with majority opinion. But this freedom should not apply to the BBC particularly when it claims to be ‘impartial’ and ‘Britain’s most trusted broadcaster’, both claims which are demonstrably dishonest. The BBC obtains its income via a compulsory levy on all British homes which possess a television, but its output largely reflects the minority views of a self regarding metropolitan liberal elite, who believe they have a quasi-divine mission to impose their outlook on the rest of society.

The journalist Peter Hitchens spent a number of years in Russia before the fall of communism, and thus has first hand knowledge of how a one party state brainwashes its population with an unremitting stream of selective and one sided reporting. Hitchens pointed out that it was permissible for citizens to criticise the performance of the authorities, but what they were never allowed to do was to question the underlying ideology which underpinned it, namely communism and Marxism.

The BBC now operates in exactly the same way. This has been highlighted in its response to the coronavirus crisis. It has been hypercritical of the government’s performance on matters such as protective equipment, testing for the virus and its supposedly tardy response to, and extent of, lockdown. But what it only rarely permits is any viewpoint which questions the need for the lockdown, and whether this strategy is the most appropriate response to dealing with the crisis.

An example of this is the recently published report from Denmark into the effectiveness of face masks. This concluded that ‘there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19’. In a Spectator article on the report, Oxford University Prof. Henegan commented ‘now that we have properly rigorous scientific research we can rely on, the evidence shows that wearing masks in the community does not significantly reduce the rates of infection.’ The BBC almost completely ignored these crucial findings, yet in contrast, earlier in the year, it went into an extended meltdown, over a very minor infraction of the coronavirus rules by a single individual, Dominic Cummings.

The Danish report confirmed more indirect evidence of the worthlessness of face masks. In the UK deaths from covid in the UK fell from a peak of 9495 a week in mid April to 200 at the end of July before masks became compulsory in shops. Since their introduction deaths have risen to 3038 a week in late November. Moreover, countries such as France and Spain in which the wearing of face masks outdoors is compulsory have shown even greater rises in deaths than the UK in recent months, whereas in Sweden with very little use, deaths are significantly lower. So it is patently obvious that facemasks do little or nothing to prevent the spread of covid. At the start of the pandemic the World Health Organisation (WHO) rightly considered that masks were of little use, but later in mysterious circumstances, and without any new evidence, the WHO reversed this position, concluding instead that they should be worn, and governments throughout Europe started to mandate their use.

The BBC has been stoking up alarm over covid since the start of the pandemic, castigating the government for introducing the lockdown to late, relaxing it too early, exaggerating the danger of the virus, and promoting face masks as a supposedly essential tool in combating the virus, whilst at the same time sidelining the enormous long term social, economic and financial damage that is being caused by the restrictions. No wonder a significant proportion of the population appear to be petrified of catching the virus, given the unremitting alarmist messages peddled by the BBC.

The BBC is not alone in its blind enthusiasm for face masks, as they have now become a virtue signalling fetish for the broader politically correct class. In a recent Newsnight report about protests following the USA presidential election, demonstrators supporting Biden were nearly all wearing masks in contrast to their Trump opponents, almost all of whom were without masks. So masks now appear to have become a symbol of woke political and ideological allegiance regardless of any medical worth, with the BBC in the vanguard of promoting their acceptance in total disregard of all the evidence.

The recent increase in covid cases and deaths (despite face masks) in the UK and in most European countries has punctured three cherished myths about the virus. Pro lockdown enthusiasts had repeatedly claimed that if the UK had locked down earlier then up to 20,000 deaths could have been avoided. They also believed that measures to suppress the virus would lead to its elimination, leading to the early lifting of all restrictions.

So how have these two theories worked in practice? The Czech Republic was lauded in the summer for locking down very early and so keeping infection numbers low. However, come the autumn the virus returned with a vengeance and the Czech Republic suddenly became the world leader on infection rates. With regard to the policy of suppressing, and then eliminating, the virus, Scotland was very successful in suppressing it during the summer months through its ‘zero covid’ strategy, and went several weeks without there being any deaths. However, despite this suppression, during the autumn the virus returned and Scotland has seen roughly the same rise in cases as the rest of the UK.

Regrettably, the third myth was supported by lockdown sceptics, including this blog. They concluded that cases would continue to fall as herd immunity increased, and that there would be no second wave during the autumn and winter months. Clearly this has not happened. Nevertheless, the herd immunity theory is still valid, the more people are infected the greater the immunity becomes. What is still unknown is at what level does herd immunity shut down the epidemic.

During the past three months immunity has been rising but this has been more than offset by more favourable conditions for the spread of the virus, due to lower temperatures and decreased daylight. Before very long increasing herd immunity will once again become the dominant factor in determining the caseload, and with the onset of spring further disadvantaging the spread of the virus, new cases should start to fall considerably. As full herd immunity will almost certainly have arrived by next autumn, there should be no ‘third wave’ at that time, regardless of whether or not a vaccine has been introduced.

Coloured people

BBC radio news recently reported that the chairman of the Football Association had resigned after using a ‘racial slur’. The offending word in question was ‘coloured’ when referring to footballers.

Something similar occurred when the headmistress of Roedean School, explaining to pupils the origins of Black History Month in 1926, mentioned that it was originally called ‘Negro History Week’. This prompted several pupils to complain demanding that she apologise for using the ‘racist’ word ‘negro’. Predictably, she surrendered to their intimidation by issuing a grovelling apology admitting that ‘the original name contains an offensive word and by using this word in this context I was attempting to show how far language around black people has come since then. However, in hindsight I recognise it was not necessary to use the specific word and I accept that by using this word at all I have caused offence to some pupils.’ Fortunately, the headmistress has been allowed to keep her job as many parents supported her.

The irony about this kind of furore is that until the early 1970s both ‘coloured’ and ‘negro’ were considered to be courteous and neutral words to describe dark skinned people. For example, Martin Luther King Jr, in his acclaimed ‘I have a dream’ speech in 1963 repeatedly used the word ‘negro, when he declared ‘the Negro still is not free…the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination… the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity…the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.’

With regard to the use of the word ‘coloured’, in both Britain and the USA, this term was ubiquitous in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio programmes during the 1950s and 1960s, and the word ‘black’ was deliberately avoided. ‘Coloured’ was universally regarded as a courteous and polite description, whereas the use of ‘black’ was deemed offensive. I can still remember when on our first shopping trip to Hull, from our small all white town in our new car, my younger brother excitedly exclaimed ‘look, there is a black man over there’. Somewhat shocked my mother reprimanded him ‘you should never call them black, but instead refer to them as coloured which is polite’. The word ‘coloured’ was used not just to describe Afro-Caribbean people but also Asians. It should be remembered that the full title of the American campaigning organisation NAACP still remains as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

In the early 1970s the more vocal African Americans came to the conclusion that describing themselves as black was nothing to be ashamed of, or something which they needed to be on the defensive about. As a consequence the term ‘black’ very quickly supplanted ‘coloured’ as the approved form of address. This first came to my own consciousness with the hit song Young Gifted & Black from 1970. For many people, being able to say black in this context caused a frisson of pleasure in using a word that until only recently had been considered taboo.

In more recent years the term ‘people of colour’ has come to be regarded as the most appropriate term to use. So we have arrived at the absurd situation that to speak of ‘coloured people’ is considered to be grossly offensive whereas ‘people of colour’ is deemed the pinnacle of political correctness, when in grammatical terms their factual meaning is identical. This all bodes very ill for harmonious race relations, since it gives the white majority the impression that dark skinned people are so hypersensitive that they must always be shielded and protected if their wellbeing is to be preserved. They are in effect being infantilised in pursuit of an over protective political agenda, and white people are being demonised whenever they transgress the current ludicrous virtue signalling speech codes. In a sane society the words black, Negro, coloured people and people of colour should all be interchangeable and regarded as neutral forms of expression.

Now what was it that Enoch Powell said about the black man having the whip hand over the white man?

Further thoughts on the covid crisis

Since the last blogpost there have been a number of developments on the covid crisis. The principal change is that after several months of declining deaths and hospital admissions these have started to pick up again with the onset of autumn. Previously this blog had assumed that the pandemic was almost over as herd immunity appeared close to being realised. That conclusion now looks to be somewhat optimistic.

The evidence that the pandemic was winding down appeared to be soundly based since numbers were falling throughout Europe despite the lifting of many restrictions. There was also an assumption that the spread of the virus was unaffected by seasonal factors since places with hot climates such as Brazil and Florida were just as badly affected as cooler countries like Britain.

The evidence now suggests that, like influenza, covid spreads more easily in the autumn than it does in the summer. Since it continues to spread, and the number of cases is still increasing, it is also clear that Britain is still some way from achieving herd immunity. This trend is replicated throughout Europe and appears unaffected by measures such as limited lockdowns, face masks or a robust testing regime, all panaceas optimistically promoted by governments to control or suppress the virus.

What the current rise in cases suggests is that the best that governments can hope for is to temporarily reduce the spread of virus, through the introduction of severe measures such as national lockdowns. But these come with enormous economic and social costs together with a disproportionate interference with individual liberty, freedom and livelihoods. Whenever they are lifted the virus inevitably returns, the agony is prolonged for a longer period possibly indefinitely, and we are all back where we started, but with a wrecked economy and sky high unemployment.

Scotland was very successful in almost eliminating the virus during the summer months through its ‘zero covid’ strategy. But during the past few weeks cases there have risen at the same rate as for the rest of the UK. This suggests that the virus can never be suppressed to the extent that it will vanish completely. It will return when either the restrictions are lifted or when seasonal factors become more favourable to its spread.

The only option therefore is to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible through the kind of strategy advocated by the distinguished medical and scientific experts who have drawn up the Great Barrington Declaration. This would allow life to return to normal for the vast majority of people of working age, whilst at the same time providing protective measures for the most vulnerable.

The sooner that the general population starts to move in the direction of achieving herd immunity, the greater is the protection that can be offered to the vulnerable, since this will allow the reproduction rate of the virus to gradually reduce on a sustainable long term basis. This strategy will also have the immense benefit of returning the economy to normal. Given the clear evidence about the nature of the virus that is now becoming increasingly apparent, there really is no alternative to the adoption of this strategy as an urgent necessity.

Time to end the covid paranoia

The government’s measures to control the covid 19 virus have now been in place for almost six months. During that time the number of daily deaths, hospital admissions and patients in intensive care due to the virus have all fallen by 99% from their peak in mid April. Yet neither the government nor its scientific advisors in SAGE appear to have realised this, and the same can be said about alarmist media outlets such as the BBC and Guardian who are continuing to instil a sense of fear in the population. There is still far too much unfounded paranoia about a second wave in which, according to some official projections, the estimated number of people who will die from the virus in the coming winter could be twice as many as those who have so far succumbed to it.

As outlined in the previous blogpost below, the government have faced a problem more daunting than any since the end of the war. They have been criticised sometimes fairly, and sometimes unfairly, about their response. Positive achievements have been the construction of the Nightingale hospitals in record time, and the large scale manufacture of new ventilators. The original purpose of the initial lockdown was to ‘save the NHS’. This objective was achieved as the NHS was never in danger of being overwhelmed. The ‘eat out to help out’ scheme has been a huge success and the furlough measures have preserved millions of jobs for the duration.

Unfortunately, in all other respects the government’s response has been confused, paralysed by exaggerated fears about the effect of relaxing the restrictions against the virus. There has been a massive mission creep away from protecting the NHS to instead an attempt to suppress the virus, which appears to be impossible. Much emphasis and effort has been placed on the track and trace programme in which people with the virus are placed in quarantine for a couple of weeks. A huge increase in testing has been undertaken which has resulted in several local lockdowns. However, the number of people testing positive has been minute compared to the overall population, and almost all of them appear to be healthy since there has been no increase in hospital admissions in those areas. So this testing regime appears completely pointless as the pandemic is now almost over, and society is now largely protected by herd immunity.

All the evidence suggests that we have almost reached herd immunity throughout Britain. This was achieved initially by allowing the virus to spread unhindered during the January to late March period before lockdown. During lockdown the virus continued to spread albeit more slowly. In the UK the restrictions were more relaxed than some countries, and thus the virus could continue to spread, mostly through shops and supermarkets. As some of the restrictions were gradually lifted the number of deaths and hospital admissions still continued to fall and this has continued until the present time.

So it is now time to bring to an end all the restrictive measures currently in place so that we can all return to normality. The only thing that is preventing this is the alarmist fears of government advisors who are clearly not properly assessing the evidence, but instead remain in thrall to discredited theories that bear no resemblance to actual reality. The government has certainly not been following the science, since for the most part the scientists the government has come to depend on have been in just as much ignorance about the nature of the virus as the rest of us. It is now time for the government to declare that the pandemic has ended, and so bring the curtain down on the covid paranoia which is bankrupting the country.

Face mask madness

The Health Secretary has announced that for the foreseeable future the British public will be compelled to wear face masks in shops. Many are asking how we have got ourselves into such a crazy situation. To find out it will be necessary to make an assessment of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic from the start of the crisis.

The impact of the virus first came to public attention in February with images of hospitals in Lombardy being suddenly overrun with a huge influx of covid-19 patients with doctors being overwhelmed. The hospitals soon ran out of beds and ventilators, and doctors were placed in the impossible position of having to decide which patients should receive treatment and which of them should be left to die. These images were looked at in horror here, both by the public and government ministers.

The government came under enormous pressure to ensure that such scenes were not repeated in British hospitals. The Italian government had responded by imposing a strict lockdown in Lombardy which was soon extended to the whole of Italy. In quick succession national lockdowns were also imposed in France, Germany and Spain, and before long the whole of Western Europe, with the exception of Sweden had been placed in lockdown. At this stage the first British cases had been registered but numbers were still low compared with the Continent. The government appeared unwilling to countenance a lockdown in Britain, rightly fearing that such a measure would have an enormous adverse impact on the economy. Initially it confined itself to recommending us all to wash our hands thoroughly and to maintain social distancing.

However by March the number of cases started to quickly increase and the first British deaths were announced. Before long the number of new cases was doubling every few days, and ministers feared that British hospitals would soon be overwhelmed unless drastic measures were introduced. Epidemiologists were predicting that over half a million could die if no action was taken.

On March 23 the Prime Minister addressed the nation to announce that a national lockdown would be imposed with immediate effect. The declared objective was to flatten the curve of the virus thus preventing the NHS from becoming overwhelmed. In this situation the Government really had no choice but to impose a lockdown, in the words of their slogan, to ‘Save the NHS’. By this time the pressure from the media, the fears of the public, the precedent of an almost complete lockdown in mainland Europe, and the still unknown threat from the virus meant that no government could have resisted the clamour to lockdown the country.

The government acted with considerable speed at the start of the crisis by expanding the number of bed spaces through the construction of the Nightingale hospitals in a very short period of time. With the help of several companies that switched their production lines, the government was also able to ensure that ventilators were built in the required numbers. More controversially, many elderly patients were transferred from hospitals into care homes. As a result of all these measures the NHS was always able to cope with covid cases even at the time of peak infection which occurred in mid April.

The government should be congratulated for the way it handled the crisis at this most critical moment. There has been some ignorant carping that as the Nightingale hospitals were hardly used, and the number of ventilators far exceeded the actual need, the government should instead have focussed attention on acquiring more PPE equipment which was in short supply. But this criticism comes with the benefit of hindsight and there can be no doubt that government ministers got their priorities right at this critical stage.

With regard to the large number of deaths in care homes it should be remembered that hospitals were also hotspots for coronavirus infections, and there was an urgent necessity to remove from hospital patients who had no clinical need to be there. Other countries showed a similar proportion of care home deaths including Scotland under the sainted Nicola Sturgeon. Indeed in retrospect it is a mystery how more than half British care homes avoided having any infections at a time when the virus was rampant in the community.

Many people were hoping that once the epidemic had peaked and the number of cases was on a clear downward trajectory, the lockdown could be ended since the NHS was no longer in danger of being overwhelmed. It is now almost forgotten that the original period of lockdown was intended to be for only three weeks. But instead of ending the lockdown when the threat to the NHS was over, considerable mission creep occurred, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Boris Johnson contracted the virus and needed to be placed in intensive care. With his removal from the scene the government was left rudderless with no one willing to take important decisions until the Prime Minister had recovered. When he did return to work Boris Johnson, perhaps understandably, appeared rather spooked by his brush with death, and became a lot more cautious about relaxing the lockdown.

At the same time the British public had become far more frightened by the virus, influenced not just by the government’s alarmist messaging but also by fears whipped up by the mainstream media. The BBC was in the vanguard of raising public concern. From the beginning it had been agitating for the strictest of lockdowns, and was continually criticising the government over the lack of PPE and the failure to introduce an effective testing regime. As a result of this campaign the original objective of saving the NHS disappeared, to be replaced by a collective hysteria over the rising number of deaths resulting from the virus.

From the beginning of the crisis the government has repeatedly claimed that it has been following the science. What it has refused to acknowledge is that there has been very little reliable science to follow. This was a new virus with several known unknowns. Nobody knew how infectious it was, or how it was transmitted, or how it would impact on the population, or the level of immunity or how long any immunity would last. So the projections and advice on which the government made its decisions were often little more than guesswork, but dangerously dressed up as immutable scientific fact.

The original strategy of the government appears to have been to achieve what is known as herd immunity. This occurs when sufficient numbers of people have antibodies to the virus so that it is no longer able to spread and it eventually dies out in the community. But as the number of deaths increased the BBC and other media outlets started to denounce this as a callous strategy, calling instead for measures that would help prevent the spread of the disease and save lives. This became the government’s new approach.

Meanwhile the number of deaths per day started to fall and this has continued steadily until the present time. The government and virtually all of the media attributed this decline to the strong lockdown measures that had been taken. In time the government decided that it would be safe to gradually relax elements of the lockdown and the biggest steps were the re-opening of non essential shops followed a few weeks later by the opening of pubs and restaurants. But things have by no means returned to normal as strict social distancing measures are still being insisted upon.

So this was the science under which the government took its decisions, and virtually no one in the media questioned whether the scientific advice had been correct. There appears to have been a collective failure to notice, or to ignore, what had been happening in the real world. The first failure was to acknowledge how quickly the virus had spread in the community in the early months of February and March. Given how soon the number of cases increased during this period the only conclusion that can be reached is that the virus is very highly infectious. Moreover it continued to be infectious after lockdown was introduced albeit at a lower level. This suggests that the virus was unaffected by the two metres social distancing rule. Instead it appears that the virus was caught by people breathing it in from the air in enclosed spaces, most probably supermarkets which most people continued to visit, but in reduced frequency and numbers. This theory has now gained some traction with scientists, but with unfortunate consequences for relaxing restrictions.

Another factor to which relatively little attention has been given is the infection pattern in Western European countries. These show remarkable similarities regardless of whether there was a hard lockdown such as in Spain or only relatively relaxed measures as taken by Sweden. The pattern in Britain has been the same with a very quick growth followed by a gradual decline in the number of new cases. In all these countries new infections are now at a very low level, although in Britain the number of deaths recorded in the official statistics is still higher, primarily due to a backlog in registering them. The best conclusion that can reasonably be reached is that the epidemic is now virtually over in these countries, including Britain.

However, the pronouncements of government and the reporting of the media especially the BBC, instead give the impression that the pandemic is still rampant and widespread, resulting in a significant proportion of the population being petrified that they might catch the virus. In reality the virus has had very little impact on people of working age. The average age of those who have died is over 80 and over 90% of those who have died have been over 65. Nearly all those who have died had one or more serious underlying conditions, the virus sadly hastening their inevitable demise. So the deadly nature of the virus for the majority of the population has been grossly exaggerated. Since the height of the pandemic the number of deaths, hospital admissions and new cases have all fallen by over 95%, and they continue to fall.

Another distraction has been the obsession with testing promoted by the BBC but embraced by the government. They have treated testing as if it was a substitute vaccine. In reality a test is out of date as soon as it has taken place. Testing in itself (outside a hospital or care home) has no effect on the spread of the virus. The more tests you carry out the more cases you are likely to find. This is what prompted the unnecessary local Leicester lockdown.

The current fear is that a deadly second wave of the virus will appear in the autumn. A recent report has suggested that up to 120,000 people could die from covid during the winter. It is this alarmism (plus the increasing acceptance that the virus can be spread in the air we breath) which has been the driver for introducing the mandatory wearing of face masks on public transport and now in shops. These fears have also acted as a brake on relaxing the other restrictions which are still in place such as those affecting theatres.

The reality is that by default herd immunity has largely been achieved over most of the United Kingdom, and that there is absolutely no justification for retaining any of the present restrictions including the wearing of face masks. The insistence on wearing face masks at a time when the virus has almost disappeared is sheer madness. In any case these face masks are regarded by many scientists as virtually useless when compared with the surgical masks used in hospitals, which have to be discarded immediately after use. The Guardian comparison between face masks and seat belts is patently fatuous. They are dehumanising, a threat to health and wellbeing through the restriction of oxygen to the lungs. Moreover, there is likely to be a huge spike in shoplifting from convenience stores that rely on CCTV for their security.

The only reason that we cannot return to normalcy is the exaggerated and unfounded fears of a deadly second wave promoted by the BBC and some epidemiologists. However, it can safely be predicted that as herd immunity has now almost arrived this second wave will never happen in Britain. So the government, in failing to return society back to normal, is behaving recklessly by continuing to encourage fears of the virus, which will inevitably result in economic armageddon with sky high levels of unemployment. The ending of the hysteria over the virus should now be the government’s top priority, if an economic catastrophe is to be avoided.

Virtuous evil

During the 20th century there were numerous political revolutions. Three of them stand out for the impact they had on the wider world. These are the Russian Communist revolution of 1917, the Nazi power grab in Germany in 1933 and the Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran. Theoretically each could claim to have been motivated by a virtuous objective. The communists could claim that they wanted a much larger share of the economic cake for ordinary people. The Nazis were motivated by patriotism, namely a love of one’s own country, and a wish for it to prosper. The Islamists would argue that their actions were motivated by devotion to the service of God, the creator of us all.

So all these revolutions, in principle, could claim to be based on a desire to create a better world, as envisaged by their supporters. But as we all know they resulted in totalitarian tyrannies in which many of their citizens were casually murdered or incarcerated, and their freedoms and liberty curtailed. Another factor they all had in common was that they very swiftly seized control from the previous authority, and immediately set about introducing a complete change of policy, that was soon apparent to all citizens.

Over the past half century and more Britain and other Western countries have been undergoing a similar revolution, whereby the old order has been thrown off, and a new one entrenched. This revolution has also been motivated by virtuous intentions, this time the pursuit of equality to empower those who had previously been marginalised, ignored or the victims of injustice and discrimination. But the one big difference with this revolution is that it has happened very gradually, step by step. Thus it has been introduced by stealth, with the result that many people are only dimly aware of what has been happening.

Instead of the hard totalitarianism of the Communists, Nazis and Islamists the Western revolution has so far confined itself to engaging in a soft form of totalitarianism. There have been no state directed murders of citizens, and the numbers incarcerated for political crimes are presently at a fairly low level, although they do exist, and the numbers are slowly increasing. These include the state harassment of Tommy Robinson, the imprisonment of ‘far right’ activists (to appease anti-racists activists) and also men handed down prison sentences for alleged historical sex offences on the accusations of a single complainant during a rigged trial procedure (to appease misandric feminists).

Currently the favoured method of thought control is dismissal from employment of anyone deemed guilty of wrong speak, which has proven to be highly effective in muzzling dissent. But given the incremental approach, the present stage is likely to be only the beginning, since the demands of the zealots is always being ratcheted upwards. There is no doubt that the freedoms and liberties of ordinary British citizens are being increasingly threatened by a powerful and unaccountable minority with a determined political agenda.

The agenda behind this new soft totalitarianism is ruthlessly promoted by the vocal hard left and comes under a variety of names, such as political correctness, identity politics, cultural Marxism and woke culture. It has been embraced by academia, the trade unions, mainstream media outlets most notably the Guardian and BBC. In politics it has taken control of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and both the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists. These notionally separate political parties are in practice now a single party, having the same agenda and policies (apart from the nationalist question). The only disagreements between them are confined to arguing about who can impose the same agenda most effectively.

Politically correct values have been embedded in the civil service, local government, the education system, the Church of England, the police, quangos, advertising, charities, the film industry, celebrities, sport , the scientific community, and many business enterprises. It is enforced through social media most notably Twitter. A history and outline of this politically correct agenda is outlined here http://bit.ly/2gpklQz

There is still some opposition but it is relatively weak. The most strident is the Daily Mail group, followed the Telegraph group, and to some extent The Sun which has the disadvantage of not being a serious newspaper. There are in addition dissenting political websites such as Spiked and Conservative Woman together with some others. We live in a democracy so in theory we should be offered a choice by political parties offering some resistance to this soft totalitarianism. However, they have failed in this task.

The largest party of the right, the Conservatives, is divided between those who regularly appease political correctness and those from the right wing of the party who are more sceptical. The latter occasionally provide a challenge, but they are invariably emasculated by the former. The minor parties, demonised as ‘far right’, have all self destructed, most recently UKIP, which before its demise did at least provide a manifesto offering some hope to political dissidents. Something similar to this manifesto, which is outlined here http://bit.ly/2yXEP9t , needs to be adopted by the Conservative Party, since if implemented it would bring a swift end to the politically correct agenda.

Although the growth of political correctness has been slow it can be reversed fairly quickly. The first step has already been taken, leaving the European Union. As we have all seen, this generated a collective howl of rage from the politically correct class, coupled with innumerable attempts to reverse this decision. For decades our new cultural establishment has been pushing the boundaries and receiving very little resistance. They came to believe that they were invincible, developing a sense of entitlement and privilege, that encouraged them in their belief that they had a right to impose their values on the rest of society. They were so absorbed in their own sense of moral superiority, that they haughtily dismissed their critics as unenlightened bigots whose opinions should and must be brushed aside.

Now that we are an independent nation once again we are free to introduce measures to reverse decades of politically correct legislation, and to introduce policies to foster social cohesion and mobility. Briefly, based loosely on the UKIP manifesto, these are; restore grammar schools everywhere, limit university places to 20% of school leavers funded by taxation, severely limit all immigration for the foreseeable future and ramp up the training of our own people, significantly increase housebuilding, repeal all so called hate crime and equalities legislation (other than physical disability), scrap the Climate Change Act, renationalise public utilities including the railways so that they are operated in the public interest, and initiate a debate with minority and religious communities to ensure that they better integrate themselves into traditional British values and way of life, and eschew identity politics together with their embrace of the grievance and victimhood culture. Further administrative measures will also need to be taken to dismantle the politically correct apparatus embedded in public bodies. These measures take together should end the pernicious cultural take over of our country and foster a much needed sense of national identity.

Extinction Rebellion price tag

The anti-capitalist agitprop conspiracy Extinction Rebellion has been in the news quite a lot during the past year. Regrettably it has to be conceded that its street protests have achieved some success in influencing public opinion. Parliament and numerous local authorities have declared that we are now in a climate emergency, and the supposed threat to the climate has moved up the political agenda.

Also the BBC now never misses an opportunity to introduce the threat of climate change into a wide range of topics which on the surface appear to have little connection with the main subject under discussion. Those being interviewed are keen to show their eagerness to parrot the received orthodoxy that climate change is contributing to a host of problems faced by society. So this is a battle which climate realists are losing to a rampant out of control climate alarmist lobby that appears to have become well entrenched in all of our major institutions.

It is seriously disturbing that so many people who should know better have credulously been taken in by the climate alarmist hoax. The reality is that there has been no change to the global climate, and there is no likelihood that there will be in the foreseeable future. The facts and the evidence are compelling. During the past 60 years, since records began, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by about 30%. But during the past 140 years global temperature has fluctuated within a range of one degree Celsius. Thus there is very little correlation between the increase in the harmless trace gas CO2 and the global climate. So projections that global temperature will increase by four to five degrees Celsius by the end of this century are clearly evidence-free nonsensical alarmist pseudo-science.

Regrettably all political parties have been spooked by the climate alarmists and the Government has now set a target of being ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050. Why is it that when British governments take unilateral action in a supposedly virtuous cause such as climate change it is seen as ‘Britain taking a lead’, but when they do the same for a non virtuous cause like reclaiming national sovereignty by leaving the European Union they are denounced by the same people as ‘leaving Britain isolated’?

Britain has to some extent succeeded in reducing its CO2 emissions by introducing vast numbers of inefficient, highly subsidised and unsightly wind turbines. These have in part replaced efficient and less costly coal fired power stations. We have also outsourced a lot of our manufacturing capacity to China. But these are the low hanging fruit and the path to achieving any future emissions reduction will be much more difficult and is likely to arouse considerable public hostility.

The inevitable outcome of what is deemed necessary to reach the 2050 carbon neutral target will be to destroy the living standards of the British public, to make us all considerably poorer in real terms and return the country to a pre-industrial way of life. Amongst other things it will mean individuals being compelled to fund the replacement of 25 million gas boilers with less efficient and more costly alternatives, the severe curtailment of air travel, the replacement of all petrol and diesel vehicles resulting in a huge increase in home electricity costs to offset the loss of fuel duty, massive changes in farming and the nation’s dietary habits to reduce meat and dairy consumption, and plenty more. All this to address a non-existent problem.

Fortunately if any Government recklessly decided to implement these madcap policies in an attempt to meet the 2050 target, it would very quickly trigger the debate we have never had on the exaggerated and hysterical claims of the climate alarmists. Far from giving a lead to the rest of the world any British government pursuing such a destructive agenda would soon find itself completely isolated as no other country is likely to be quite so foolhardy as to follow suit.

The third race relations act.

This blog has here http://bit.ly/2z6HOgJ and here http://bit.ly/2MCuAOa previously assessed legislation, introduced by the Labour government of the 1960s, which had the objective of outlawing racial discrimination. This aim was promoted as being high minded and progressive, but in reality it marked the start of the slippery slope which has incrementally resulted in today’s pernicious fixation with identity politics, in which all citizens now run the risk of prosecution if the authorities consider they may be engaging in a ‘hate crime’. As part of this ongoing process the Labour government introduced a further Race Relations Act in 1976, which provided the state with additional powers to control still further the social and private behaviour of citizens.

This new race relations bill was introduced into the Commons by the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. He noted that there had been a great deal of change since the first race relations legislation a decade earlier, most notably that a much larger proportion of ‘coloured’ people were now born in Britain, and thus could no longer be described as immigrants. He believed as an essential principle that ‘racial minorities were entitled to full and equal treatment’, and that ‘racial discrimination was morally repugnant to a civilised and democratic society’.

However he also warned that there had to be ‘a clear limit to the amount of immigration which this country can absorb, and that it is in the interests of the racial minorities themselves to maintain a strict control over immigration’. Successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, would shamelessly and consistently continue to ignore this warning, sometimes spectacularly so.

The Home Secretary acknowledged that legislation alone was insufficient to address the problem of racial disadvantage and that ‘a wide range of administrative and voluntary measures were needed in order to give practical effect to the objectives of the law, and to combat discrimination and encourage equal opportunity’. In practice the commitment to equal opportunity was soon overtaken by the drive to achieve equality of outcome, regardless of how this agenda might alienate and discriminate against the majority white population.

Mr Jenkins acknowledged that during the past decade ‘despite all our efforts’ the end result was ‘the inability of the existing legislation to deal with widespread patterns of discrimination, especially in employment and housing’, or to address ‘a lack of confidence among minority groups in the utility of the law’. The new legislation would close some loopholes which still allowed discrimination ‘in an unacceptable way’. Thus private social clubs would no longer be allowed to operate a colour bar or to refuse membership on racial grounds. The law on incitement to racial hatred would also be strengthened.

Also included for the first time was the establishment of a new Race Relations Commission. Its principal functions included working towards the elimination of discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity and good relations between different racial groups and to keep the working of the legislation under review. It was also given a major strategic role ‘in enforcing the law in the public interest, and to identify and deal with discriminatory practices by industries, firms or institutions’. The Commission would have the power to bring legal proceedings against those who persistently violate the law, to conduct investigations and research, to advise the Government and take action to educate and persuade public opinion.

So it is clear that the Commission was provided with wide ranging powers and responsibilities to promote the interests of minority racial groups at the expense of the white majority, and whose cause moreover would be reinforced by making the inevitable accusations of racism and discrimination to give greater weight to their complaints. As Enoch Powell observed in his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech this would provide ‘the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur with the power to pillory citizens for their private actions'.

A Conservative MP made the pertinent point that ‘the Commission will be able to help those who make accusations. What we have not been told, but should like to hear, is what redress there will be for those against whom false accusations are made.’ The Home Secretary agreed that ‘people should not be subject to malicious or frivolous complaints’ explaining that ‘a complainant has either to get the assistance of the new Commission, in which case he has to go through quite an important sieve, or he has to take his own responsibility for bringing an action before an industrial tribunal or a county court. So there is a considerable disincentive to people to indulge in frivolous or pointless complaints’.

The shadow Home Secretary William Whitelaw responded on behalf of the Conservative opposition. He agreed that it was necessary to encourage good race relations and confirmed that his party was ‘completely committed to the principle of non-discrimination’, but added that any race relations policy ‘had to operate against a background of public confidence’. He shared the expressed view of the Home Secretary that if the legislation was to work there would need to be a ‘policy of strict control of immigration’ since continued immigration on a ‘substantial scale’ would destroy any race relations policy.

Mr Whitelaw expressed concern about the inclusion of social clubs in the legislation which ‘represents a completely revolutionary attitude to the private life of the citizen. Clubs have been held in law to be an extension of the home and an area which should be exempt from Government interference’, adding that ‘insisting on legislation in an area where it is quite inappropriate, will stir up resentment and antagonism’. On the subject of incitement to racial hatred he believed that ‘the Government will be seen to be taking dangerously arbitrary powers, which have more than a hint of censorship about them’.

In support of the legislation a Labour MP declared that’ race discrimination and race prejudice are still widespread. Consequently there is a risk of ethnic communities becoming permanently alienated. What is needed, above everything else, is a clear and demonstrable Government commitment to equal rights’. However, the intention of the legislation was not to provide equal rights which already existed, but to create machinery in which racial minorities could intimidate the majority white population through accusations of discrimination and racism.

Enoch Powell, by then an Ulster Unionist MP, declared that he would vote against the legislation because ‘it would not in its practical application contribute to the achievement of racial harmony’. He warned that the proposals were irrelevant to the real problems and dangers facing the country, and went on to catalogue the huge increase in ethnic births that had taken place in certain town and cities. He pointed out that this increase in the ethnic population was leading to irreversible segregation, which had not arisen because of discrimination, but by human nature and the ‘mass and size of the original movement itself’. He shared the view that ‘bad social practices could not be remedied’ by the legislation adding that ‘in some respects they will flourish in an atmosphere of resentment’ and would be ‘counter-productive because the creation of new rights creates new grievances. The search for new grievance is eternal. There is no limit to the grievances which can be found by those who are determined to find them’.

A Labour MP responded to Mr Powell by claiming that the legislation would only give rights to people who need them, since the mass of the population does not suffer discrimination, unlike a certain section which is at a grave disadvantage and so requires protection because of the actions of a very small and prejudiced minority. Several Conservative MPs thought that a balance had to be struck between ‘avoiding discrimination on the basis of colour’ whilst ensuring that ‘there should be the strictest control over new immigration’. In practice this balance never happened since governments would repeatedly capitulate to ever more strident calls for greater measures against perceived discrimination, but condemn as racist those seeking to curb immigration.

A Conservative MP declared that ‘Parliament should be wary about the racial hatred clause extensions. Free speech must be preserved at all times. Parliament should be paramount in preserving free speech. However unpalatable or distasteful free speech may be at certain times to enlightened opinion, we must always allow it’. This was a timely warning which successive governments would ignore, leading to the current suppression of free speech under the guise of so called ‘hate crimes’.

A prominent Liberal MP considered that the proposals did not go far enough. He suggested that the Government should ‘by the use of their contracting role, ensure that there is no discrimination among the firms with which they deal, and by monitoring more carefully the composition of their own staff, the Civil Service. The Government should set an example in this field, and local authorities should do more in this respect’. In time such measures would not only be introduced but extended to cover many private firms.

The Conservative MP Ronald Bell in a detailed speech made some pertinent points. He believed that the use of the law in this context was wrong, and although he personally always tried to be ‘fair, courteous and kind to all’, he nevertheless discriminates ‘between everyone I meet upon every ground that I can detect. I think that everybody does so, and it is right that they do. Discrimination is not merely the supreme human quality; it is the very principle of life itself’. He continued ‘a heavy responsibility lies upon anyone who proposes to use the law to declare that people must disregard certain things which they believe they perceive’, condemning such laws as being ‘against the very spirit of the human race’. Mr Bell noted that ‘compulsion is so attractive and so quick. It saves all the bother of persuasion. It is the invariable objective of every pressure group. Once we start on the process of using the law to mould minds, we are embarking upon something that is a total abuse of the coercive processes which a society accepts for some of its necessary purposes’.

On practical grounds he opposed the proposed legislation as it widened the range of discrimination that would result in a more oppressive legal system. He condemned the ‘vicious severity of the civil procedure’ that was being proposed, pointing out the reason why this course has been taken ‘since on a civil basis it is not necessary to obtain proof beyond all reasonable doubt, it is necessary only to establish the balance of probability’. He highlighted the financial imbalance between the parties ‘because of the awarding of costs a defendant hardly ever dares to contest the matter in court, whereas the complainants have behind them the inexhaustible resources of the Crown’. With regard to the proposal to strengthen the powers against incitement to racial hatred Mr Bell denounced this as it would eliminate ‘the need for intent altogether. It strikes it right out in this restriction of freedom of speech’.

Another Conservative MP raised the issue of immigration. He believed that ‘ordinary English people wish to keep this country, which they know and love, basically as a place to which they feel they belong. Fundamentally, they do not wish it to change either its character or its cohesion. In other words, they wish to retain their identity’. He considered that this was now threatened since although ‘we have always absorbed small numbers of immigrants, the immensity of coloured immigration that this country has received during the past 25 years is an entirely new phenomenon. He observed that ‘immigration has completely altered the face of certain parts of this country and created foreign enclaves in our midst. It has brought into this country alien people whose religion, customs and habits are quite different from ours. In this way it has fundamentally altered the character of this country’. The MP declared that ‘no government has the right to carry out such a fundamental act without the most specific consent of the people. Successive Governments are gradually depriving English people of their birthright, and in time, if this procedure is not stopped, the local population will be swamped’. It is refreshing to know that Conservative MPs once held robust views such as these, coupled with a willingness to speak the truth about the facts with honesty and clarity.

Alex Lyons, Home Office Minister of State, concluded the debate. He claimed that ‘the 1968 Act succeeded in eliminating overt discrimination. We now have to do something about discrimination which is indirect, latent or concealed. We have decided not just to change the general powers of the Race Relations Board but to create a completely new structure which will have a completely new role’. Unlike the previous two parliamentary debates on this subject in 1965 and 1968, when the Conservatives voted against the proposed legislation, this time they abstained. Despite the near unanimous opposition of Conservative MPs whenever this kind of legislation was introduced, these race laws were never repealed or reversed when Conservative governments were in power.