Following the science? You must be joking! Follow the money in 2020 "THE YEAR OF TRUTH"?

Lockdowns dictated from London are causing chaos

This illustration by R Fresson appeared in the Guardian Journal pages, in apposition to this headline, for John Harris's Opinion piece (Sun 11 Oct 2020) in the print edition Monday 12 October 2020.

John Harris writes: 

At the heart of England’s passage through the Covid-19 era are two key factors which have combined to create a mess of failure and mishap.

One is the government’s simple incompetence. The other centres on a centralised system of power and administration that no longer works – something now vividly manifest in just about every aspect of the crisis, from the way rules and restrictions are being landed on places without warning, to a national test-and-trace system whose dysfunction has been clear for months. Put the two together, and you end up with the drama that is now being replayed over and over again: hapless, hopeless people at the top, trying to fight the pandemic using machinery that has long since rusted to the point of uselessness, while those on the ground insist they could do a better job if only they were given the chance.

“We have a bizarre system of government in this country, don’t we? A remote, London-centric operation that doesn’t trust local government, doesn’t invest in it, doesn’t believe in it.” The Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, said that to me last week, as he talked about his leading role in an increasingly angry revolt against a government approach that has managed to be both shambolic and dictatorial, and the inadequacy of Rishi Sunak’s plan to pay people affected by business closures only two-thirds of their lost pay.

The evening before we spoke, the media had begun reporting the imminent prospect of the enforced closure of pubs, bars and restaurants in “the north of England” – wherever that is – and, by implication, even more bad economic news for Greater Manchester. But no one in the government had raised this prospect in the online meetings with ministers Burnham had attended earlier that week. Instead, word of these new so-called “hospitality” measures had initially come to light in a blog written by the ITV News political editor, Robert Peston. Then, the Times previewed a front page featuring the headline “Restaurants and pubs in north forced to shut again”. So it was that Burnham and other leaders of the parts of England most severely affected by the pandemic discovered their fate.

This is no way to run a country, least of all in the midst of a pandemic. But it keeps happening. Burnham describes his dealings with ministers as “sporadic”. He says the meetings that decide new restrictions are like “a papal conclave – where no one else knows anything”, and that he is now used to finding out what is about to hit Greater Manchester via the media. “That’s how they’ve governed all the way through this,” he told me. “It’s been all about late-night briefings to papers. It’s like a political campaign, not a government communications operation.”

What all this means in the everyday world is plain. If policymaking is shut away to the point of being clandestine, and mayors, council leaders, local officials and on-the-ground voices are still kept on the margins, restrictions and the economic and social measures that need to accompany them will be serially bungled.

Burnham’s most pressing fear is that if Greater Manchester and other areas are the subject of the severe rules the government is set to put at the top of its new three-tier system, the results could be disastrous. He fears being “trapped in tier 3 for the whole winter”, without meaningful economic support for workers or businesses. And if that happens, “levelling up will be over, certainly as far as this government’s concerned”.

The same day I spoke to Burnham, I put in a call to Alice Wiseman, director of public health for Gateshead. There, infection numbers are reaching very worrying levels, and the challenges faced by someone in such a crucial role extend into the distance. The last time we spoke, she had expressed deep concern about the lack of detailed information about local Covid cases in the government’s centralised testing system – something which had improved, though other problems had now flared up.

As far as she could tell, the national test-and-trace system’s failure to register 16,000 Covid-19 cases and trace their contacts had resulted in a huge fall in the rate of people in her area being successfully contacted from 67% to 52%, with obvious consequences: “Only half of the people in my area who were potentially a close contact have been told. You’ve got another half wandering around Gateshead, not knowing they could be infected with Covid, and be infecting other people.”

Her accounts of waiting for word on new restrictions echoed what Burnham told me. In the final week of September, for example, the government was about to announce new rules meaning households in Gateshead and elsewhere could no longer meet indoors, which would come into force at midnight the same day. “This was on a Tuesday night,” Wiseman said. “And I had to stay at my computer, hitting refresh. I emailed the Department of Health and Social Care at 9 o’clock to say, ‘I’m really concerned we haven’t been given the regulations – we have three hours to go.’ I emailed again at 10 o’clock. I emailed again at 11: I said, ‘Hello, is there anybody there?’” Soon after, she was finally sent a link to the new restrictions that would hit her area 60 minutes later. Thankfully, lawyers employed by the council had stayed up late to work through their implications, but that was hardly the point.

Last week, Labour leaders from a handful of large English cities came up with five headline proposals to push the fight against the coronavirus down to the grassroots, centred on a much greater role for councils in deciding restrictions, and a locally controlled test-and-trace system (whatever the weekend’s rumblings about woefully late action from the government on this, bear in mind that a system that would be “local by default” was promised in early August, and has not materialised). Among the people fronting the plan was Judith Blake, the leader of the city council in Leeds, who talked me through a list of failures that should have been shocking, but instead felt grimly familiar.

Leeds, lest we forget, is the third largest city in the UK. Testing and tracing there, she said, is “not working adequately at all”, not least when it comes to people self-isolating. There was, she told me, an ongoing fog of media briefings about the new three-tier system and what it may or may not entail. She expects new hospitality rules to arrive next week, “but we don’t know how long it’ll be for – two weeks, three weeks, or longer than that? So it’s really difficult for us to come up with a plan.”

What did all of this come down to? “It’s about a lack of respect, a lack of trust and a lack of understanding of our expertise,” Blake said, “which could have brought so much benefit if we’d been involved in planning right from the start.” She sounded sad, and wearied: someone trying to do everything they could, but being held in check by Westminster and Whitehall, and a zombie system of government stubbornly kept in place, even as its failings become so terrifyingly clear.

Tiers of a clown . . .

Peter Walker, Jessica Elgot and Helen Pidd report for the Guardian (Tue 13 Oct 2020), following doubts over the effectiveness of a three-tier system. Scientific advisers have failed to endorse the three-tier system as an adequate response to the rising transmission rates of the Covid-19 virus. Peter Walker, Jessica Elgot and Helen Pidd write under the headline and subheading:

Tempers flare over new Covid rules as Johnson warns: 'We must act now'

Boris Johnson faces doubt and frustration over new three-tier system that splits England into risk zones

Boris Johnson warned northern leaders that a failure to agree tougher coronavirus restrictions within days would be “unforgivable” as he faced doubt and frustration over a new system designed to prevent the “inexorable” spread of Covid-19.

The prime minister unveiled a three-tier system splitting England into medium risk (tier 1), high risk (tier 2) and very high risk (tier 3) areas. Under the new rules, nearly a third of the country – more than 17 million people – face localised curbs.

Liverpool city region was the only area categorised as very high risk on Monday – with pubs forced to close and household mixing banned in almost all circumstances from Wednesday for at least four weeks.

Greater Manchester and the north-east resisted attempts to close their hospitality sectors, insisting that ministers had not provided scientific evidence and saying the measures were proving counterproductive.

But Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, told a Downing Street press conference that even the toughest curbs would probably not contain the spread of the virus in the worst-hit areas and said local authorities would need to add extra restrictions. “The base will not be sufficient. I think that’s very clearly the professional view,” he said.

Documents leaked to the Guardian last week said Sage scientists had advised the closure of all hospitality and leisure venues in tier 3, which suggests that the measures have since been watered down. Whitty said there would need to be significant sacrifices in the coming months. “The idea we can do this without causing harm is an illusion,” he said.

More people are hospitalised with Covid-19 than when the country entered full lockdown on 23 March, Johnson told the briefing, while cases were up to levels last seen in early May. “These figures are flashing at us like dashboard warnings in a passenger jet, and we must act now,” he said.

However, shortly afterwards documents were released showing that Sage had advised the government three weeks ago to bring in five measures including a short “circuit breaker” lockdown, or else face a “very large epidemic”.

The official documents dated 21 September also called for a ban on household mixing in homes; the closure of all bars, restaurants, cafes, indoor gyms and services such as hairdressers; and all university and college teaching to be online “unless absolutely essential”. Only one of the five Sage proposals has been introduced nationally – an exhortation for people to work from home if they can.

The harsh new restrictions come amid anger from northern mayors and some Tory MPs over the level of financial support for areas facing disruption. A number of MPs and local politicians claimed they were left out of meetings about the new system or given just minutes’ notice.

Despite calls for the government to increase the level of furlough support for workers at firms forced to close their doors by new lockdowns, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, told the briefing measures he announced last week were sufficient to protect people from financial hardship.

Moving to quell anger on the backbenches, the prime minister also announced a further £1bn of “new financial support” for local areas struggling to contain the economic fallout.

In a sign that Downing Street hopes to persuade swathes of the north to accept harsher measures, Johnson told MPs he was urging leaders to continue negotiating. “I believe not to act would be unforgivable, so I hope that rapid progress can be made in the coming days,” he said.

Johnson added: “If we can’t get agreement, then clearly it is the duty of national government to take the necessary action to protect the public and public health and we will.”

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who fought hard against his region being put into Tier 3 restrictions, said he was pleased the government had agreed not to close pubs and bars in the region for now. “It’s mixing that spreads the disease and we don’t have evidence that hospitality is the main cause,” he said.

Andy Street, the Conservative mayor for the West Midlands, reacted with fury to blanket tier 2 restrictions in his region – banning households from mixing indoors but subjecting outdoor meetings to the rule of six – and suggested he was blindsided by the decision.

“This is not something regional leaders supported, nor what I believed would be happening following extensive conversations over recent days. The region was united, cross-party, in supporting the existing restrictions,” he said. “This is something the latest local epidemiology does not support, and I am disappointed that the government is pressing ahead with this despite the united view of local leaders.”

Johnson said he wanted to “simplify and standardise” rules while avoiding a new national lockdown. In the Liverpool city region, pubs and bars must close unless they are food-based and serve alcohol only with meals. Restaurants can stay open. Gyms, leisure centres, casinos, betting shops and adult gaming shops will close, although this is not -stipulated for all tier 3 lockdowns.

Johnson described the Liverpool region as the area where the government was “able to reach agreement”. He said negotiations were continuing with local leaders and health officials are preparing to change advice if areas like Greater Manchester continue on the same trajectory.

However, the mayor of Liverpool city region, Steve Rotheram, said it was “disingenuous” to suggest Merseyside’s leaders were behind the decision to introduce tougher restrictions. He told Channel 4 News: “There was no choice with the tier that we were going into and the restrictions that we were therefore placed under.”

Council leaders in north-east England fought off a late attempt by the government to place the region in tier 3. They told the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, on Monday morning that they strongly resisted having to close pubs, bars and other facilities because they had seen little evidence that those venues were driving the infection rate.

One council chief on the call said: “It was almost like we were being bribed to go into tier 3 because that’s where all the money is.”

Three emergency Nightingale hospitals in Manchester, Sunderland and Harrogate have been told to mobilise, ready to take patients. Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy medical director, warned: “This is a nationwide phenomenon. The rate is changing upwards across the UK.”

Most of England will be on the lowest tier, keeping measures introduced last month, including the rule of six for gatherings and 10pm curfew for pubs and other hospitality businesses, Johnson said.

While infection rates are rising in London, a government source said: “It’s not moving at the same speed. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that there will be extra measures in London at some point, but not within days.”

The “high” level (tier 2) mostly applies to areas already under local lockdown: Greater Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester and large parts of the north-east and north-west, as well as Nottinghamshire, east and west Cheshire, and a small area of High Peak in Derbyshire.

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, in one of his most critical interventions yet, said the government had yet to prove that local lockdowns were effective. “The question today is whether the restrictions announced by the prime minister can bring the country back from the brink, whether they can regain control of the virus and provide the support and confidence that local businesses and communities need.”

A number of Conservative MPs asked the prime minister not to allow areas to linger too long under the restrictions. Philip Davies, MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, warned against what he called “a constant blizzard of arbitrary rules which will only serve to collapse the economy and destroy businesses and jobs”.

Jane Stevenson, one of the Tory MPs elected in 2019, suggested that she had privately opposed further restrictions for her Wolverhampton North East constituency, saying tier 2 had been imposed “despite the protestations of all three MPs and the local council”.

The measures will be debated and voted on in the Commons on Tuesday, and come into force on Wednesday. A number of Labour and Conservative MPs have signalled that they may be prepared to vote against the restrictions, particularly the 10pm national curfew.

Additional reporting Josh Halliday and Richard Partington

Does the UK government want lockdowns on the cheap? What about following the science? 

What about protecting the jobs, income and livelihoods of people as well as the "economy"?

Sarah Boseley, Health editor for the Guardian reports (Tue 13 Oct 2020) on how:

Sage documents show how scientists felt sidelined by economic considerations

Sarah Boseley writes under the subheading: 

Timing of the release, just after the PM’s three-tier Covid plan, highlights experts’ disquiet

The government’s Sage committee of scientific experts urged ministers to impose a circuit breaker lockdown on 21 September, documents have shown.

What is unusual about these Sage documents?

The timing of their release, for a start. In the interests of transparency (in response to pressure) the government has been releasing Sage minutes around lunchtime on a Friday for many months. These documents were published at 8.20pm on a Monday, within an hour of the prime minister’s press conference in which he described the new three-tier system of restrictions on areas with high numbers of Covid infections. That makes them look very like a dissenting opinion.

What do they say?

The minutes of the Sage meeting on 21 September show the experts wanted a dramatic increase in restrictions across the country to check the alarming rise in infections, warning at that point that the number of cases was doubling every seven days and hospitalisations had begun to increase. A package of measures was needed, they said, to include:

• a “circuit-breaker” lockdown of a couple of weeks.

• advice to work from home for all who could.

• a ban on household mixing in homes.

• closure of all bars, cafes, restaurants, indoor gyms and personal services such as hairdressers.

• all university and college teaching to be online.

Were they concerned about the impact on people’s lives of more draconian measures?

Yes. They said they would all have costs in terms of health and wellbeing and many would have most impact on the poorest. Measures would be needed to mitigate this, and some could be brought in fairly swiftly (they didn’t specify what). Both local and national measures would be needed, they said. Clear communication of what the measures entailed and the reason for imposing them was vital, and people must be encouraged to continue with social distancing, wearing masks and hand hygiene. But they were aware that there might be resistance – “it should not be assumed that people will respond in the same way that they have done previously”, they said.

What did the UK actually do?

None of the above – except for the advice on working at home. On the day after the Sage meeting, Boris Johnson addressed the nation and said that those who could carry on working from home should do so. This was a U-turn from the government’s previous position, in the summer people had been urged to go back to their workplaces to help the economy.

The circuit-breaker idea was leaked and discussed, but nothing came of it. Sage describes it as “a short period of lockdown to return incidence to low levels”, which would require everyone to stay home for two to three weeks, possibly in the school holidays. It would bring the R number down below 1, but only temporarily. Modelling suggests 14 days of lockdown in October would put the epidemic back by 28 days and significantly reduce infections in December.

Instead, on Monday, the prime minister announced three tiers of restrictions depending on transmission locally. Even in tier 3, the most severely restricted, pubs and restaurants are open for meals, although not solely for drinking. Household mixing is not allowed in tier 3 but allowed outdoors in tier 2, subject to the “rule of six”.

What has happened to transmission since the Sage meeting on 21 September?

Infections have continued to rise, fuelled in part by students returning to universities and colleges, as the Sage scientists predicted in their meeting. The surge in cases from the end of August and beginning of September, means new infections are now around 14,000 a day and there are increasing numbers of hospitalisations and deaths. Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said on Monday that a rise in deaths was inevitable. “Already with the cases that we know about, we have baked in additional hospital admissions, and sadly, we also have baked in additional deaths that are now consequent upon infections that have already happened,” he said.

Does this mean the UK is categorically no longer following the science?

These documents appear to mark the point at which the science of handling an infectious disease epidemic lost out to economic considerations. Sage scientists have always said they were advisers on health and science to the government, and that they recognised politicians had to take other factors into consideration. But the publication of their radically different advice from the course that Johnson set out an hour earlier suggests they strongly believe this is the wrong road. It was clear that the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, who jointly chaired the Sage meeting, was grim faced in the prime minister’s press conference and expressed some doubt. He said that he was not confident the measures imposed in tier 3 areas on their own would be enough to bring the infection rates down.

Amy Walker reports for the Guardian (Tue 3 Oct 2020) on the Liverpool lockdown under the sub heading:

Steve Rotherham says bailout for areas under tier 3 Covid lockdown is 'simply no good'

Amy Walker writes: 

The Liverpool city region mayor, Steve Rotheram, has told residents to blame pub closures on “the mess the government have made in their handling of the crisis”, ahead of tier 3 lockdown restrictions being imposed on the area.

Rotheram stressed that the financial package on offer for areas affected by the strictest measures was “simply no good” and that local leaders had been given little say in the decision by government.

“What has been portrayed as a negotiation between us and them was anything but,” he said during a press conference on Tuesday, adding that ministers had “already made their minds up” about imposing a tier 3 lockdown on Liverpool before discussions began.

Rotheram is among northern leaders, including the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, who are lobbying the government for greater support for affected businesses, including increasing the local furlough scheme from 67% of wages to 80%.

His comments came after the prime minister, Boris Johnson, thanked Rotheram and colleagues for their “cooperation” in agreement for measures in Merseyside during an announcement of the new tier system in the Commons on Monday.

Liverpool and surrounding Merseyside face the toughest local lockdown restrictions under the system and will move into the “very high” alert level from Wednesday.

Under the rules, people cannot socialise with anyone outside their household in any indoor and most outdoor settings, while travel in and out of the affected areas is advised against.

Pubs, bars, gyms, betting shops, casinos and adult gaming centres will be forced to close, although restaurants will be allowed to remain open. Pubs that serve “substantial meals” will also be allowed to remain open, although they may only serve alcohol with food.

While the government has not specified what constitutes a substantial meal, on Tuesday morning, the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, told radio station LBC that a Cornish pasty on its own, for example, did not count.

“If you would expect to go into that restaurant normally, or pub, and order a plated meal at the table of a Cornish pasty with chips or side salad or whatever it comes with, then that’s a normal meal,” he added.

Few so-called “wet” pubs, which only serve alcohol, in the Liverpool city region are likely to be able to switch to being a food-based pub, however, as most do not have kitchens or the food licence required.

On Tuesday, few bars and pubs in Liverpool’s city centre believed residents would flock to the city centre for one last night out before the new measures were imposed.

Although Liverpool’s hospitality association said it expected “a bit of extra drinking” in the evening, managers said the city was “dead” in the afternoon.

“No one seems to be out at the moment – I think a lot of people are staying away anyway,” said Yvonne Taylor at the Liverpool Pub on James Street. “Our takings have gone down since they brought the [10pm curfew] in.”

The Historic England-listed Philharmonic Dining Rooms, once frequented by the Beatles and regarded as a “cathedral among pubs” for its architectural quality, was also quiet with few customers, while a manager at one of the many chain-bars in Concert Square said staff were expecting a “normal” slow day.

Additional reporting by Josh Halliday

Fears for tiers - What local leaders want

Amy Walker supplements her report (Tue 13 Oct 2020) with what local leaders in the north of England and the Midalnds want from government for their communities. She writes:

Leaders in the north of England and the Midlands have expressed intense frustration over the details and financial support offered under the government’s new three-tier coronavirus lockdown system.

On Monday, Boris Johnson warned those in the areas with the highest rates of infection that a failure to agree on tougher restrictions within days would be “unforgivable”. But what exactly do MPs and metro mayors want?

Evidence for pub closures

Greater Manchester and the north-east fought hard against attempts to close their hospitality sectors, saying ministers had provided no scientific evidence that it would stem the spread of the virus. On Monday, Andy Burnham said he was pleased the government had agreed not to close pubs and bars in the region for now. “It’s mixing that spreads the disease and we don’t have evidence that hospitality is the main cause,” he said.

Meanwhile, council leaders in north-east England thwarted a late attempt by the government to place the region in tier 3, telling the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, on Monday they had seen little evidence that pubs, bars and other venues were driving up the infection rate.

Household mixing

While few leaders have resisted tighter restrictions on household mixing at home, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands combined authority, Andy Street, had called for a more “flexible” approach to socialising measures in hospitality venues.

“The most important change between our current restrictions and the new ones announced today is the ban on households mixing in hospitality venues. This is something the latest local epidemiology does not support, and I am disappointed that the government is pressing ahead with this despite the united view of local leaders,” he said on Monday.

More support for tier 2

One of the main issues for leaders is that significant financial support under the new tier system – such as cash grants for businesses, funding for local test and trace and enforcement – is being offered only to tier 3 areas.

The mayor of the Sheffield city region, Dan Jarvis, speaking to Times Radio, said it created a “perverse incentive” for leaders to agree to more stringent measures. “We’ve in a sense [in tier 2], got the worst of all worlds that we’ve got some restrictions in place, which will quite significantly impact on certain sectors of our economy. But the government hasn’t yet brought forward what we think is needed, which is an accompanying economic support package to back up our businesses,” he said.

Money for businesses

Leaders have asked for financial support for businesses that are not required to close but whose trade is likely to collapse, such as companies supplying the hospitality sector.

The leaders of West Yorkshire councils have asked for an enhanced local restrictions support grant of up to £5,000 every three weeks for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses that have lost at least 25% of their income.

More money for employees

Labour metro mayors – including Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, Liverpool city region’s Steve Rotheram, Sheffield city region’s Jarvis, and Jamie Driscoll of North of Tyne – have asked for support under the government’s local furlough scheme to be increased from two-thirds of each employee’s salary – or 67% – to 80% of wages.

The leaders of West Yorkshire councils have also asked the government to continue its current furlough scheme, which they say could support 113,000 jobs.

North-south divide

Over the weekend, the mayors of Greater Manchester, the North of Tyne, and the Sheffield city and Liverpool city regions said the government’s financial package for areas in local lockdown was insufficient, and warned it would cause long-term economic devastation and exacerbate pre-existing regional inequalities.

Burnham said accepting the package, including a reduced furlough scheme and the monthly cash grants for businesses, would “level down and worsen the north-south divide”.

Now if there's a smile on my face . . . 

. . . it's only there trying to fool the public

Marina Hyde is NOT joking when she uses "irony" and "teasing", she is pointing to the truth! 

In her Opinion piece for the Guardian (Tue 13 Oct 2020), Marina Hyde uses robust humour to stand in for, and echo the exasperation felt by many of her readers, concerning Boris Johnson's continuing shenanigans.

Boris Johnson cannot offer blood, sweat or toil. What he has got is some tiers. Tiers of a clown, but that’s what’s on the table. Lick ’em up and look grateful. On Monday night the prime minister unveiled his latest batch of coronavirus measures next to a chief medical officer who took great pains to stress that they already would not be enough. “We should not have any illusions,” intoned Chris Whitty, standing beside a man who has spent his entire adult life lost in them.

Still, which Covid house are you in? Despite clear advice by Sage not to, Johnson has divided each and every corner of the nation into what he thinks best suits them. Think of him as the Sorting Twat. This may yet be the least successful divvying up of Britain since King Lear had a crack at it.

The hours leading up to his announcement offered a feast of lowlights. Johnson failed to bring Greater Manchester to heel, but reiterated it would need to get with his programme “in return for support for local test and trace”. “It’s absolutely bizarre that you condition test and trace money,” one senior Greater Manchester figure told the Manchester Evening News. Only one of Sunderland’s MPs was invited on to a conference call with ministers – a whole minute before it was due to start – during which she informed the government that there were in fact three elected representatives for Sunderland. Dominic Cummings is, somewhat famously, from the north-east of England. Yet for much of yesterday his information-led government appeared unable to drill down into the data as to where the north-east even was.

Then again, where are any of us? We cannot say much other than it is in the uncharted lands beyond the shitshow, beyond the omnishambles, beyond the blunderdome. Have you thought of retraining as a cartographer?

When I was at school, a man once came to teach us self-defence for a morning, during which he said that you must never take any action halfheartedly, in the hope it might warn your assailant. Do it like you really mean it, because otherwise you just make matters worse for yourself. Back in April, Boris Johnson described coronavirus as “an unexpected mugger” we had to wrestle to the ground. Hand on heart, the mugger is a little more expected the second time around. Yet with this latest set of plans, I can’t help feeling the prime minister is not so much wrestling coronavirus, as warning the virus he will wrestle it if it’s not careful.

His government specialises in measures that become outdated and inadequate about 30 minutes before they’ve even announced them. They are always the Amstrad Emailer of public health responses. Had Johnson been captaining the Titanic, his last words as the icy North Atlantic waters finally closed over his head would have been: “Fine, I give in – close the Irish bar. But leave the Hawaiian lounge open, because that place coins it like a bastard.”

Not that I am suggesting shutting bars is even the right way to go on the UK Titanic – merely that people have a right to know on what basis bars are being shut, given the scientific evidence appears unclear. The time where our leaders were entitled to unquestioning trust from a benighted people has long passed – yet they persist in the delusion it should endure. And they do so successfully. Last night the government overturned an amendment which would force foreign trade deals to meet UK animal welfare and food safety rules. They did so on the argument that they’d made “a commitment”, and therefore enshrining it in law was wholly unnecessary. Can you take a commitment from this government to the bank? Only time will show.

And yet, also last night, Sage’s document dump suggests the science no longer wishes to be used as a deflection by a government which repeatedly falls between every stool there is. When the public inquiry does finally come – too late to save the people who will die in the second wave when more competent systems might have saved them, and too late for the businesses this Conservative government has failed – there should be a long section devoted to how this summer was spent. Huge amounts of time were lavished at the very highest level on vanity obsessions that were entirely ludicrous in the circumstances: blowing up the civil service, or starting facile culture wars, or launching some wheeze to reorganise the armed forces, or refusing to press pause on a Brexit that will now hit in the deep midwinter grips of the second wave. In fact, Johnson and Cummings pressed rewind on Brexit, opting to relitigate bits of it they had told us were nailed down. All of this time would have been better spent focusing all energies on establishing a decent test, trace and isolate system for the £12bn they’ve spent on it.

Meanwhile, as well as earning the condemnation of their natural enemies for the above, the Johnson administration has now also contrived to infuriate even its natural supporters – the likes of desiccated Floridian Richard Littlejohn, and rugby-shirted White Walker Tim Martin. The Wetherspoons boss has delayed publishing the company’s results till Friday, during which the prime minister can expect a glass to be raised. Unfortunately, towards his face.

Back to those Sage documents, though, and it doesn’t feel remotely surprising to learn that three weeks ago, the government’s scientific advisory group recommended a two-week circuit-breaker national lockdown. Nor that Johnson rejected the call in favour of these belated and byzantine measures, which will surely mean a circuit breaker lockdown is in our future – only much harder and lengthier than it needed to have been had they done it sooner. If only some lessons from the first wave had been learned by people in government, and not just the health workers at the frontline of it. Or to put it another way: it won’t end in these tiers.

This has always been the crucial point with this government, wherever you place yourself as far as the so-called “health or economy” debate goes. People still wanging on about this false binary don’t get that the two are far more closely entwined. For instance, “optimising for the economy” by not locking down at all can result in having to lock down for much longer, thus unoptimising for the economy. There are no simple answers: the problem is that Johnson doesn’t even look capable of asking the right questions in time.

Alas, much of Britain has yet to come to terms with the implications of the fact it elected a newspaper journalist to run it. I honestly can’t believe Boris Johnson has turned out to be a clinical procrastinator, a short-termist headline grabber, and a total chancer who only really responds to the need to do his job three minutes after deadline. If only there’d been some clue, you know?

Business as usual . . . 

Farce, and scandal, followed by the incompetence and collusion of government and big business

Bean counters . . .

. . . the financial scandal no one is talking about!

Richard Brooks, Private Eye journalist and author of Bean Counters, shares his take on the folly of outsourcing in a time of crisis in this Opinion piece for the Guardian (Tue 13 Oct 2020).

Outsourcing is costing the UK public purse billions - and ruining the state's ability to function 

Richard Brooks writes: 

The multibillion pound surge in outsourcing of public services during Covid-19 has attracted many headlines, but it is not just a public spending scandal. It is a vivid demonstration of our government’s inability to perform the essential roles society asks of it. Furthermore, this dependency on outsourcing to profit-driven companies undermines any promise to “build back better”.

After drastic public health services cuts over the past decade – coupled with extensive outsourcing of procurement to commercial logistics companies – a stripped-down health service was under-resourced for the challenge of a pandemic. The only feasible response was what is increasingly the default choice across government: outsource the work required. Covid-19 has prompted a gold rush for government contracts not seen since the heady days of New Labour’s private finance initiative.

The richest seam of all for the private companies cashing in has been the test and trace system, handed to Serco on contracts officially priced at up to £410m and to the French company Sitel for up to £310m (with other outsourcing behemoths such as G4S also getting in on the act). Such is the opacity of the arrangements, however, that no details of actual payments to these firms have yet been published. Approximate figures released by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, suggest the final bill will run into several billions of pounds.

But it doesn’t end there. Contracts for managing the procurement of ventilators, PPE and even the job of keeping tabs on all these contracts – what might be thought of as core government responsibilities – have been awarded to battalions of management consultants for hundreds of millions of pounds.

A crisis on the scale of Covid, even when the need to be prepared was clear, was always going to demand additional resources. But bringing in extra personnel is very different to farming out services wholesale, as the UK government has done. So the coordination of testing conducted by private sector staff has been performed not by health officials, but by consultants from Deloitte at an undisclosed but almost certainly much greater cost. Details reported by Private Eye last week show that junior Deloitte staff supplied to another public body, the British Business Bank (which operates Covid financial support packages), are costing the taxpayer salaries comparable to that of the prime minister.

In the teeth of a public health crisis the direct financial cost is of course a secondary matter. Of more immediate concern is the quality of the service – but here again outsourcing proves calamitous. Handing over a central tracing service to 25,000 people with no experience and very little training in a skilled area, for example, demands that processes are standardised and computerised to the point of ineffectiveness, with all discretion removed. The results have been all too painful to see. Success in tracing the contacts of those testing positive is far lower in the central service outsourced to Serco et al (around 64%, at the latest count) than in the smaller number of more complex cases handled by local public health teams (over 97%). Better performance can be found in countries where a substantial public health service has remained at the core of the process. Germany’s well-established public health network was able to manage the efforts of thousands of extra tracers expertly.

Given the recent history of outsourcing, the UK’s failure is not surprising. The same firm now entrusted with tracing Covid contacts, Serco, has in the past few years admitted fraud and false accounting in contracts for offender-tagging. Its auditor and now partner on testing and tracing, Deloitte, was also fined £4.2m for signing off Serco’s fiddled numbers. Meanwhile, the effect of outsourcing probation services to private companies was so damaging that the job had to be brought back “in-house” last year, the chief probation inspector judging it “irredeemably flawed”. A study of outsourcing last year by the Institute for Government found that, while contracting more routine services such as catering and waste collection from private companies appears effective, “government should be cautious about extending outsourcing of frontline services”.

The arithmetic of outsourcing explains much of the problem. To make it worthwhile, public bodies typically look for savings of around 20 to 30% of existing costs. The private company also needs its own double-digit profit margin, so the cost at which it provides the service needs to be far lower than it was in the public sector. Lower wages and skills and thus poorer service follow.

Such narrow calculations in any case miss the longer-term costs foisted on the taxpayer: dealing with the increased reoffending from failed probation and prison rehabilitation, for example; or picking up the pieces from what MPs called the “fiasco” of outsourced disability benefit assessments or an “abysmal” deal for Capita to run military recruitment.

Of yet more profound consequence is the erosion of the state’s ability to perform its core jobs. The Covid crisis has exposed the extent to which management consultancy prescriptions now shape services, gearing them up for yet more outsourcing. The “vision, purpose and narrative” of the new National Institute for Health Protection, for example, comes courtesy of McKinsey. Small wonder even a Cabinet Office minister, Lord Agnew, last month warned that Whitehall was “too dependent on management consultants”, which “infantilises the civil service”.

This gets closer to the true cost of outsourcing on a grand scale. Farming out its functions hits the state’s core capability. When new challenges emerge – whether health crises or economic upheavals such as Brexit (another boon for the consultants) – it lacks the expertise to deal with them. What passes for experience and “institutional memory”, never mind anything resembling a workforce, are absent from public bodies. The only answer is to repeat the outsourcing cycle, further eroding public sector competence.

The “new Jerusalem” that Boris Johnson promised in his party conference speech last week requires more than wind farms, expensive rail lines or even dozens of new hospitals. More importantly, it demands rebuilding the capability of the British state to perform the essential functions required of it by its citizens. Procuring the arrows of desire and operating the chariot of fire cannot be outsourced.

Independent SAGE

What is Independent SAGE?

Independent SAGE is a group of scientists who are working together to provide independent scientific advice to the UK government and public on how to minimise deaths and support Britain’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis

Gabriel Scally, a visiting professor of public health at the University of Bristol and a member of the Independent Sage committee, says in this Opinion piece for the Guardian (Mon 12 Oct 2020): 

England's three-tier system is an admission of failure

Gabriel Scally writes: 

For some weeks now there has been a sense of inevitability about today’s announcement of substantial new restrictive measures affecting millions of people in England, as part of a new three-tier system. The plain fact is that the virus is out of control in many areas, and the growing level of infections has started to translate into hospital admissions and deaths, as Jonathan Van-Tam and colleagues set out at a briefing on Monday.

Over the past few months the government has managed to create confusion and discord with a mixed bag of local restrictions. These seem to satisfy no one and, in terms of the overall picture, have proved to make only a limited contribution to reducing numbers of cases. In as much as the new tiered system will be clearer in which restrictions are being employed, and is to be implemented in response to a defined level of infection, it should be welcomed. However, it must be asked why the virus has been allowed to spiral out of control, and why simple measures such as reinstating the two-metre social distancing rule have not been applied.

The government has completely failed to provide any form of strategic framework within which the tiered restrictions might have a role and, in particular, no explicit goal for where they want to get to in controlling the pandemic. It is a strong indication of public health failure when the only practical tool the government seems willing and able to use is crude social and economic restriction. In the absence of a strategy that commands confidence, how are people expected to maintain the hope that many jobs and businesses will have a future in the short or medium term?

All this is before we even get to the very serious question of whether further restrictions of the type being implemented will lead to the virus being controlled. Data that emerged in September from Public Health England showed that even at the end of the previous national lockdown, the virus was still circulating in a significant number of local authorities across the north-west. If the last lockdown didn’t work, why is it expected that, in the absence of any other changes, the latest restrictions will?

The local authorities where the virus was still circulating freely when the last lockdown was lifted share the characteristics of having deprived populations, overcrowded housing and a significant proportion of people from black and minority ethnic communities. If a map of lower life expectancy in local areas across England is placed alongside a map showing the areas that currently have a high incidence of Covid-19 infection, the similarity in distribution is startling. When this pandemic started at the beginning of the year, England was already facing a public health crisis. Since 2012, for the first time in more than 100 years, improvement in the life expectancy of the population of England has stalled. Indeed, for women in the most deprived areas, life expectancy has been falling. Covid-19 is a disease of poverty, even in a country as rich as the UK.

It beggars belief that the government, after all these difficult months, still cannot understand that putting in place an effective system to find, test, trace, isolate and support (a framework known as FTTIS) right across England is absolutely vital. The only conclusion is that this failing is due to one of two things. It is either the absence of basic public health knowledge and experience at the heart of government alongside an inept advisory structure – or a deeply ingrained delusion that any major problem or catastrophe can best be resolved by pumping billions into a select number of private sector corporations. It may, however, be a calamitous mixture of both.

Financial resources should be shifted into the communities that are suffering worst. The local level is the best place to mitigate the economic and social damage that is happening, as well as to put people to work tracking down and suppressing the virus in neighbourhoods and communities.

If the measures that the government is putting in place do buy us some time, then this must on no account be squandered. Keeping the virus suppressed by a proper FTTIS system and by effective public health controls at ports and airports will be crucially important. It is shaping up to be a long and difficult winter. People need hope and support to keep their lives together; the latest announcements offer precious little of either.

Three tiers announcement on Monday, followed by the release of SAGE minutes advising the government to adopt a circuit breaker lockdown three weeks ago. On Tuesday Keir Starmer demands government adopt the circuit breaker, and follow the science. PMQ's today!

Spitting Image puppet of Boris Johnson

Now there's some sad things known to man, but ain't too much sadder than . . .

. . . the tiers of a clown! 

Following the lies . . .

“We don’t know whose money is behind the ads that we analysed here – that’s hidden.” 

When it comes to the climate emergency and following the science, trying to follow the money that the climate change denial machine uses to spread its lies in ads on Facebook, ends in frustration.

Damian Carrington, Environment editor for the Guardian reports on the findings of research into conspiracy theory disinformation that climate change is a hoax (Thu 8 Oct 2020). He writes: 

Adverts on Facebook denying the reality of the climate crisis or the need for action were viewed at least 8 million times in the US in the first half of 2020, a thinktank has found.

The 51 climate disinformation ads identified included ones stating that climate change is a hoax and that fossil fuels are not an existential threat. The ads were paid for by conservative groups whose sources of funding are opaque, according to a report by InfluenceMap.

Last month Facebook said it was “committed to tackling climate misinformation” as it announced a climate science information centre. It said: “Climate change is real. The science is unambiguous and the need to act grows more urgent by the day.”

Facebook uses factcheckers and bans false advertising but also says this process “is not meant to interfere with individual expression, opinions and debate”. Some of the ads were still running on 1 October. The ads cost just $42,000 to run and appear to be highly targeted, with men over the age of 55 in rural US states most likely to see them.

The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said: “InfluenceMap’s devastating report reveals how Facebook lets climate deniers spread dangerous junk to millions of people. We have repeatedly asked Facebook to close the loopholes that allow misinformation to run rampant on its platform, but its leadership would rather make a quick buck while our planet burns and communities – disproportionately black and brown – suffer. Facebook must be held accountable for its role in the climate crisis.”

Warren and other senators wrote to Facebook in July calling on it to close the loopholes.

Facebook’s former director of sustainability Bill Weihl, now at the NGO ClimateVoice, said: “Calling out the climate misinformation issue on Facebook is crucial because the company’s limited attempts to deal with the problem are failing to keep pace with powerful tactics like micro-targeting.”

On Tuesday Facebook announced a crackdown on another thread of misinformation, the antisemitic conspiracy movement QAnon, saying it would remove pages or groups “representing” QAnon. In July Facebook was hit by an advertiser boycott in a row over its policing of hate speech following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Dylan Tanner, of InfluenceMap said: “[Climate disinformation adverts] will be of concern to advertisers like Unilever and others who are clearly concerned about climate, both from the viewpoint of the company’s risk and also being on the same platform as these ads.”

InfluenceMap compared a database of organisations it said had propagated climate disinformation in the past against Facebook’s Ad Library database to see which advertised on the platform in 2020. Analysis of the ads run by these groups found 51 examples of disinformation, including an ad paid for by the conservative group PragerU that ran to 1 October.

Its headline was: “Make no doubt about it: the hysteria over climate change is to sell you Big Government control.” The accompanying video said: “Fossil fuels are not an existential threat … The Green New Deal is an existential threat.”

Craig Strazzeri, of PragerU, said: “We are not running any disinformation ads. Apparently ‘disinformation’ means anything Facebook or the left disagrees with. The ad in question is an educational video on the truth about the Green New Deal.”

Another ad, which ran in April, was paid for by Turning Point USA, whose “mission is to identify, educate, train, and organise students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets and limited government”. It was headlined: “Conservatives Are Pro-Science, While Leftists Are Pro-Panic! Climate Change Is A HOAX! #ThinkForYourself #EarthDay.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that global heating is real, dangerous and caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, a conclusion accepted by governments around the world.

The Guardian asked PragerU and Turning Point USA about who provided the funds to pay for the ads, but neither provided this information. Tanner said: “We don’t know whose money is behind the ads that we analysed here – that’s hidden.”

The report said the ads appeared to be tailored to different audiences. Those seen mostly by the over-55s often contested the credibility of climate science, while ads mostly seen by 18- to 34 year-olds tended to challenge the future impact of climate change.

A Facebook spokesperson said: “We prohibit ads that include claims debunked by third-party factcheckers and we are investigating the findings of this report. We work to reduce the spread of climate misinformation on Facebook and we recently launched a climate ccience information centre to connect people with factual information from the world’s leading climate organisations.”

Greta Thunberg on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" . . . 

. . . in July 2020. This show, hosted by Stephen Colbert, is the premier late night talk show on CBS, airing at 11:35pm EST, streaming online via CBS All Access, and delivered to the International Space Station on a USB drive taped to a weather balloon. 

Every night, viewers can expect: Comedy, humor, funny moments, witty interviews, celebrities, famous people, movie stars, bits, humorous celebrities doing bits, funny celebs . . .

. . . plus jokes.

This video clip edit of Greta Thunberg's interview with Stephen Colbert has them reflecting on the fact that the hateful attacks she has to endure are indicative of the fact that her resilience is seen as a real threat by those whose interests are served by the status quo.

Greta Thunberg talks about the vitriolic personal attacks by so-called national leaders

"In one way it is hilarious because it shows they have nowhere left to go" 

In an interview with Robin McKie, Science editor for the Observer (Sun 11 Oct 2020), Greta Thunberg reiterates this valid point, and discusses her campaign and flags the release of a recent documentary film made about her titled I am Greta. As to the documentary,

Thunberg says she is happy with it, although the title makes her uncomfortable as it suggests she takes herself very seriously. “And I don’t,” she insists.

Robin McKie writes up his interview with Greta Thunberg under the headline and subheading: 

Greta Thunberg: ‘Only people like me dare ask tough questions on climate’

The activist discusses a new film that follows her life and the role autism played in her journey from troubled child to eco champion

For a teenager who first became famous for skipping school, Greta Thunberg has come a long way. The 17-year-old from Stockholm is today a global champion of the environment movement and the uncompromising scourge of climate crisis deniers. In the process, she has earned the disdain of Donald Trump and the plaudits of figures including the pope and David Attenborough. For good measure, Time made her the magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019.

It is an astonishing journey that will be brought to our screens this week with the release of I am Greta, a 97-minute documentary that follows the activist, who has autism, on trips round the world as she raises the banners of green concern among young campaigners.

At the United Nations, we see her warning its secretary general, António Guterres, that “political leaders have failed us – but now change is coming”. At the Vatican, we see her greeted by a huge crowd chanting “Go Greta, save the planet!” and, later, flotillas of boats sailing out to meet her when the zero-carbon yacht that had carried her across the Atlantic to attend a UN climate meeting arrives in New York.

As I am Greta makes clear, the world has reacted in a remarkable way to this slight, determined figure. Even more astonishing is the nature of the figure at the centre of these events, for Thunberg is adamant that her condition – she freely acknowledges she is autistic – has played a critical role in helping her get her message across in a clear and simple manner.

“To get out of this climate crisis, we need a different mindset from the one that got us into it,” she said in an interview with the Observer last week. “People like me – who have Asperger’s syndrome and autism, who don’t follow social codes – we are not stuck in this social game of avoiding important issues.

“We dare to ask difficult questions. It helps us see through the static while everyone else seems to be content to role-play.”

Thunberg believes her condition helps her look at the world and see what others cannot, or will not, see. She dislikes small talk and socialising, preferring to stick to routines and stay “laser-focused”.

And her ability to concentrate fiercely is acknowledged by her father, Svante Thunberg. “She can read a book and remember everything in it,” he says ruefully.

But while she argues that her disorder has given her a unique vision of the looming crisis being unleashed by rising carbon dioxide emissions, we see that it has also brought her considerable unhappiness.

Her early childhood was marked by several painful episodes, and at the age of 11 she simply withdrew from life. “She stopped laughing,” says her mother, Malena Ernman. “She stopped talking. And she stopped eating.” As Thunberg puts it: “I almost starved to death.”

The youngster stayed away from school for a year. “She only spoke to me, her mother and her little sister,” says her father in the documentary.

Thunberg is equally forthcoming in the film about the unhappiness she experienced. “For many years, people – especially children – were very mean to me. I was never invited to parties or celebrations. I was always left out. I spent most of my time socialising with my family – and my dogs.” (The latter, black labrador Roxy and golden retriever Moses, play major roles in her life, as the film makes clear.)

Thunberg managed to pull back from the brink, however, and for most of the documentary we see a fairly happy individual: cooking with her mother and laughing with her father. Nevertheless, hers is an unusual background for a person who has become a global star.

The process began with her school strike – against Swedish politicians’ failures to take meaningful action on the climate crisis. “Why have an education when there is no future,” she demanded. The strike was a social media sensation and almost overnight Thunberg became a star of the green movement. She has since spoken to the UN nations in New York, appeared at the COP24 climate conference in Katowice, in Poland and visited the European Parliament.

At the EU she broke down in tears during a speech in which she outlined the extent of the extinctions, triggered by climate change, that were occurring across the planet. And at the 2019 UN climate summit in New York, an infuriated Thunberg told delegates: “People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales about eternal economic growth. How dare you!” Intriguingly, Thunberg insists her performance at the general assembly was an unusual one for her. “I’m never angry. I’m not even angry at home. That was the only time I’ve been angry. Before that speech, I thought, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I need to make sure something comes out of it. So I let my emotions take over.”

Her words are pretty uncompromising in general, however, and her speeches have earned her the approbation of fans who range from Arnie Schwarzenegger to Jon Bercow to Emmanuel Macron and also attracted the scorn of Brazil’s populist president Jair Bolsonaro, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and others.

Thunberg has also received death threats, we learn. So are they still being sent, I ask her? Thunberg looks unfazed. “I don’t know. I don’t spend that much time checking.”

She is equally unperturbed by the political derision she has provoked. “When these people attack individuals – in some cases, children like me – that shows that they really have nowhere left to go,” she tells me.

“They have no arguments left. This is a crisis completely based on scientific consensus, but they try to focus on something else. It’s as if there was a fire and the alarm starts and they try to argue about the fire alarm instead of the actual fire.”

The pattern needs to be disrupted, she insists. “We are stuck in a loop where everyone just blames each other, and as long as we keep on doing that we won’t be able to achieve anything.”

The extent of humanity’s vulnerability is starkly demonstrated by the impact of Covid-19, adds Thunberg. “If one virus can completely destroy economies, then that is a sign that we need to rethink things and start to live sustainably.” If nothing else, Covid emphasises again that we need to listen to the science, she insists. Thunberg is now studying for her school exams and is planning a career in the social sciences. “All this attention isn’t going to last for very long,” she believes. “The interest in me will soon fade away. And, really, it’s not healthy at such a young age. So I need to see past it – although all the travelling was good fun.”

In this video edit of a couple of clips, Greta Thunberg speaks about how the film I am Greta shows her to be how she sees herself, a bit shy and nerdy. This is followed by a trailer for the film.

more a shy and nerdy person . . .

. . . which is the person that I am 

The film I am Greta is to some extent an antidote to the image some of the world's media has constructed. This negative image is a stereotype version of a disability, rather than a powerful ability and competence. This demonising of Greta Thunberg is designed to undermine her message of TRUTH as to what is happening, and what is NOT happening, when it comes to the climate emergency.

And for an autistic person, Spitting Image’s Greta Thunberg looks . . . 

. . . tired and stereotypical  

Great puppet, but is this heavy handed and crass comedy sketch actually funny? Probably funny for some, those who want her brought down and subjected to ridicule, but the comedic quality is as low as you can get away with. And for an autistic person, Spitting Image’s Greta Thunberg feels tired and stereotypical.

As Lydia Williams writing on 6 Oct 2020 for the Metro says, in no uncertain terms.

Watching the puppet of Greta Thunberg on Spitting Image, the revived show on BritBox, left me feeling exhausted.   

Thunberg was portrayed as a scowling weather girl who appears twice in the show – initially to yell ‘hot!’ in lieu of a broadcast.   

When we see her again she has been told by ‘ignorant and lazy adults’ to ‘bring a lighter touch’ to her presenting skills (and ‘to cover afternoon drive time’). After she relays the day’s forecast, she screeches – again – that the weather will be ‘hot!’, her trademark plaits flying. 

As an Autistic person, the depiction of Thunberg wasn’t a ‘different type of humour’ that I have ostensibly failed to understand – I am simply tired of stereotypes about Autism being recycled for the sake of comedy.   

Puppet Thunberg embodies all the age-old tropes: the humourless demeanour all Autistic people apparently display; the obsessional nature and inflexible thinking we are all supposed to have, followed by the screeching meltdown – because, it seems, Autistic people can only exist at extremes. Of course, these are challenges that some Autistic people do indeed struggle with – but I feel like Spitting Image is using Thunberg’s Autism against her to deliberately make her look childish and pedantic.   

For someone like me – who is frequently compared with Thunberg simply because we share the same diagnosis – this one dimensional portrayal is so irritating. While I must continually think about how I can adapt to the world around me, society is so often unyielding when it comes to accommodating me.   

I can’t be the only one who thinks it is inappropriate to satirise a 17-year-old with Autism but whenever I point this out the response is the same: ‘If you can have a go at politicians, she’s fair game.’ Except Autism is a protected characteristic. 

It would have ostensibly been acceptable to use words like ‘r*tard’ and ‘sp*z’ decades ago – it isn’t now. In the very near future, I hope, we will recognise that making fun of someone with Autism is not any different. 

This isn’t the first time Thunberg has been singled out either. Far right pundits have attacked her for things like her ‘flat’ voice and ‘obsessional’ mission to tackle climate change. She has been variously too childish and too ‘superior’.  These are accusations that most Autistic people will know very well – to be too much or too little, to be too intense. We are so often mocked for the way we talk. As a child, I was described as having a ‘robotic’ voice.  

Yet Thunberg speaks more than one language, meets with world leaders, spearheads a global movement, and does so much more beyond. She is also just 17 years old. To define her merely by her Autism does us all a disservice. It doesn’t help that most people’s points of reference for Autism are still so limited. There’s Raymond, Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man; Sam Gardner (played by Keir Gilchrist) from Netflix’s Atypical and The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) – all men, which reinforces the stereotype that Autism is a ‘male’ condition and compounds the fact that women are under-diagnosed or diagnosed later on in life, because the diagnostic criteria is not written with us in mind.   

Autism is more nuanced than a linear spectrum but you frequently wouldn’t think it. Sheldon Cooper is lauded as a genius – yet, as someone who is sometimes suggested as being Autistic, his personality is usually the butt of the joke. I face numerous challenges all the time, yet compared to the bog-standard representation of what Autism looks like, I am frequently told I cannot possibly be (as though that should be a compliment).   This is hurtful; it undermines my experience, and the challenges I face, and is used as justification to deny me help such as Personal Independence Payments (PIP).   

I am all for satire; I love comedy. I particularly like the comedian Jim Jefferies, who leaves me in tears of laughter, because even though the language can be offensive to some, he attacks the actions of people, not their individuality.

The effects of climate change will be absolutely horrific, so Jim’s doing his best to get Trump to give a crap.

How Do You Get People to Act on Climate Change? - The Jim Jefferies Show 12 Jun 2019

Piss on you 'Person of the Year'

Steve Bell 2019 - 4444 13 12 19

Is irony or teasing more effective than ridicule? 

Five years ago the RSA put on a gig with a number of invited comedians and performers to make Seven Serious Jokes About Climate Change. 

Jonathan Rowson covers the event with this article on the RSA website.

Jonathan Rowson says: 

The format of the event was based on the RSA/COIN report The Seven Dimensions of Climate Change, which came out today, and I had a chance to flash it at the audience while speaking briefly before the final act.

This report is introduced thus: 

Einstein said everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. So what's the right kind of simple for the world's most complex challenge? 

We believe climate leadership must go beyond endlessly drawing attention to the problem and issusing generic calls for 'action'. Instead we must ask why the calls to action are not being heeded, and propose and demonstrate solutions to that problem. 

"Our starting point is that climate change is not only (or even mostly) about 'the environment'."  

A better approach is to start thinking and talking about climate change as a shared challenge with multiple identities - we explore the 'Seven Dimensions' which we think illuminate this unique challenge: Science, Behaviour, Technology, Culture, Law, Economy and Democracy.

The edited video clip includes the introduction to the performance where the rationale for the event is explained. This is followed by the comedian Steve Punt teasing the audience with an account of:

Science . . .

. . . and "so-called science"  

This event was inspired by an article in the Guardian by Jonathan Rowson: The seven dimensions for action on climate change, where he argues that: To act on climate change, we must shake off the anti-capitalist stigma and focus on seven simple components. This article was shared worldwide 334 times. By contrast another point of reference shared with the audience at the RSA, is when Paper magazine’s winter issue 2014 came out, with the cover shot of Kim Kardashian by Jean-Paul Goude, and the headline to set out to #BreakTheInternet, it generated a predictable level of interest, as clickbait will do, but the internet survived. 

This is "clickbait"!

"Clickbait" is a theme examined in the Re:LODE Cargo of Questions pages . . .

Kim or Greta? Why not both? Follow the money and you will find the answer. 

THE CONVERSATION set the scene for following the money in a pre Covid-19 world back in November 2019 (November 28, 2019). The article by Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCL, is well worth re-visiting.

The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial 

The fossil fuel industry, political lobbyists, media moguls and individuals have spent the past 30 years sowing doubt about the reality of climate change - where none exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.

Their hold on the public seems to be waning. Two recent polls suggested over 75% of Americans think humans are causing climate change. School climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion protests, national governments declaring a climate emergency, improved media coverage of climate change and an increasing number of extreme weather events have all contributed to this shift. There also seems to be a renewed optimism that we can deal with the crisis.

But this means lobbying has changed, now employing more subtle and more vicious approaches – what has been termed as “climate sadism”. It is used to mock young people going on climate protests and to ridicule Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old young woman with Asperger’s, who is simply telling the scientific truth.

At such a crossroads, it is important to be able to identify the different types of denial. The below taxonomy will help you spot the different ways that are being used to convince you to delay action on climate change.

1. Science denial

This is the type of denial we are all familiar with: that the science of climate change is not settled. Deniers suggest climate change is just part of the natural cycle. Or that climate models are unreliable and too sensitive to carbon dioxide.

Some even suggest that CO₂ is such a small part of the atmosphere it cannot have a large heating affect. Or that climate scientists are fixing the data to show the climate is changing (a global conspiracy that would take thousands of scientists in more than a 100 countries to pull off).

All these arguments are false and there is a clear consensus among scientists about the causes of climate change. The climate models that predict global temperature rises have remained very similar over the last 30 years despite the huge increase in complexity, showing it is a robust outcome of the science.

The shift in public opinion means that undermining the science will increasingly have little or no effect. So climate change deniers are switching to new tactics. One of Britain’s leading deniers, Nigel Lawson, the former UK chancellor, now agrees that humans are causing climate change, despite having founded the sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009.

It says it is “open-minded on the contested science of global warming, [but] is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated”. In other words, climate change is now about the cost not the science.

2. Economic denial

The idea that climate change is too expensive to fix is a more subtle form of climate denial. Economists, however, suggest we could fix climate change now by spending 1% of world GDP. Perhaps even less if the cost savings from improved human health and expansion of the global green economy are taken into account. But if we don’t act now, by 2050 it could cost over 20% of world GDP.

We should also remember that in 2018 the world generated US$86,000,000,000,000 and every year this World GDP grows by 3.5%. So setting aside just 1% to deal with climate change would make little overall difference and would save the world a huge amount of money. What the climate change deniers also forget to tell you is that they are protecting a fossil fuel industry that receives US$5.2 trillion in annual subsidies – which includes subsidised supply costs, tax breaks and environmental costs. This amounts to 6% of world GDP.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that efficient fossil fuel pricing would lower global carbon emissions by 28%, fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46%, and increase government revenue by 3.8% of the country’s GDP.

3. Humanitarian denial

Climate change deniers also argue that climate change is good for us. They suggest longer, warmer summers in the temperate zone will make farming more productive. These gains, however, are often offset by the drier summers and increased frequency of heatwaves in those same areas. For example, the 2010 “Moscow” heatwave killed 11,000 people, devastated the Russian wheat harvest and increased global food prices.

More than 40% of the world’s population also lives in the Tropics – where from both a human health prospective and an increase in desertification no one wants summer temperatures to rise.

Deniers also point out that plants need atmospheric carbon dioxide to grow so having more of it acts like a fertiliser. This is indeed true and the land biosphere has been absorbing about a quarter of our carbon dioxide pollution every year. Another quarter of our emissions is absorbed by the oceans. But losing massive areas of natural vegetation through deforestation and changes in land use completely nullifies this minor fertilisation effect.

Climate change deniers will tell you that more people die of the cold than heat, so warmer winters will be a good thing. This is deeply misleading. Vulnerable people die of the cold because of poor housing and not being able to afford to heat their homes. Society, not climate, kills them.

This argument is also factually incorrect. In the US, for example, heat-related deaths are four times higher than cold-related ones. This may even be an underestimate as many heat-related deaths are recorded by cause of death such as heart failure, stroke, or respiratory failure, all of which are exacerbated by excessive heat.

4. Political denial

Climate change deniers argue we cannot take action because other countries are not taking action. But not all countries are equally guilty of causing current climate change. For example, 25% of the human-produced CO₂ in the atmosphere is generated by the US, another 22% is produced by the EU. Africa produces just under 5%.

Given the historic legacy of greenhouse gas pollution, developed countries have an ethical responsibility to lead the way in cutting emissions. But ultimately, all countries need to act because if we want to minimise the effects of climate change then the world must go carbon zero by 2050.

Deniers will also tell you that there are problems to fix closer to home without bothering with global issues. But many of the solutions to climate change are win-win and will improve the lives of normal people. Switching to renewable energy and electric vehicles, for example, reduces air pollution, which improves people’s overall health.

Developing a green economy provides economic benefits and creates jobs. Improving the environment and reforestation provides protection from extreme weather events and can in turn improve food and water security.

5. Crisis denial

The final piece of climate change denial is the argument that we should not rush into changing things, especially given the uncertainty raised by the other four areas of denial above. Deniers argue that climate change is not as bad as scientists make out. We will be much richer in the future and better able to fix climate change. They also play on our emotions as many of us don’t like change and can feel we are living in the best of times – especially if we are richer or in power.

But similarly hollow arguments were used in the past to delay ending slavery, granting the vote to women, ending colonial rule, ending segregation, decriminalising homosexuality, bolstering worker’s rights and environmental regulations, allowing same sex marriages and banning smoking.

The fundamental question is why are we allowing the people with the most privilege and power to convince us to delay saving our planet from climate change?

DESMOG reported in August (Mon 10 Aug 2020) on: 

How the UK's Climate Science Deniers Turned Their Attention to COVID-19

By Zak Derler 

On December 31, 2019 many of us were reflecting on the past year and thinking about what opportunities lay ahead. Few were paying close attention to early reports of unexplained cases of pneumonia thousands of miles away in Wuhan, the large capital city of China’s Hubei Province.

But less than three months later, on March 23, Boris Johnson was ordering a national lockdown to try and stop that virus, by then known worldwide as COVID-19, from raging across the UK. This came 52 days after the chief medical officer of England had confirmed the nation’s first two cases.

The coronavirus crisis once again saw the UK divided — between those putting their trust in public health experts and their recommendations, and those quick to question the science on which the government claimed to base its decisions for controlling the pandemic. For those who have watched the decades-long efforts to slow climate action, this was a familiar phenomenon. And the coronavirus pandemic seemed to give fresh ammunition to some familiar faces.

A close look at commentary on both COVID-19 and climate change reveals significant crossover between unqualified voices casting doubt on experts recommending action.

Why?

“There’s nothing mysterious about this,” says Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor of cognitive science, who studies the persistence of misinformation in society at the University of Bristol.

“I think COVID is just climate change on steroids in a particle accelerator,” he says. “The same forces are happening: you have the inevitability of a virus which is the same as the inevitability of the physics. And opposing that you have politics which motivates some people to deny the inevitables and instead resort to bizarre claims.”

'No need to panic’

Commentators with a history of casting doubt on established climate science first turned their attention to COVID in the days just after Chinese authorities ordered the 11 million residents of Wuhan, a city the size of London, into lockdown.

On January 24, Ross Clark, a columnist for The Spectator who has lamented “hysteria” around COVID-19, said there was “no need to panic about coronavirus” despite warnings from leading epidemiologists about the potential spread of the outbreak.

On January 29, British economist Roger Bate similarly argued on the website of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a climate science denying free-market lobby group, that news reports around COVID-19 were unnecessarily sparking a major political reaction.

“A contagion will happen at some point, and it’s important we recognize it and react. Unless the coronavirus mutates into something far more dangerous, this isn’t it,” he wrote.

The idea that governments and the media were overreacting to the coronavirus threat was echoed by libertarian online magazine Spiked, which has taken funding from notorious backers of climate science denial the Koch family, and has included Bate and other AEI scholars among its contributors. It published an article as early as January 30 saying there was “mass hysteria in the newsrooms” around COVID.

By mid-February, the World Health Organization had declared that the threat of COVID-19 spreading across the world was “high” — yet a relaxed attitude continued to prevail among some commentators.

On February 19, centre-right blog ConservativeHome published an article by Daniel Hannan, a columnist and former Tory MEP, claiming that COVID-19 was unlikely to be as lethal as the common flu.

Hannan, a leading figure in the UK’s campaign to leave the EU, has links to various American lobby groups that have spread misinformation on climate change including the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. He encouraged ConservativeHome readers to “cheer up” and discouraged “panic” over the virus. That message was taken up by Clark in another Spectator article, arguing that “coronavirus hysteria” was “the latest phenomenon to fulfil our weird and growing appetite for doom.”

Clark told DeSmog he stood by his analysis but acknowledged: “Clearly, COVID-19 took off more than I, or virtually anybody imagined it would at that stage.”

“There is a very broad range of opinions among virologists, epidemiologists and others who might be regarded as expert in this field,” he said, “so the idea that I am at odds with some mythical consensus of expert opinion is false.”

“I have been around long enough to know there is no such thing as scientific consensus on either issue [climate change or COVID], nor indeed on any matter where evidence is still emerging and open to wide interpretation,” he added.

Even after the World Health Organization declared the contagion to be a pandemic in early March, commentators who have long cast doubt on warnings issued by climate scientists continued to deny that COVID-19 was a major threat.

Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens claimed that Britain was infected by a “bad case of madness,” arguing that restrictions were being “driven by hysteria” and “unreason.”

The language was familiar: Hitchens has previously rejected science showing human activity is responsible for global warming, and labeled measures to tackle climate change such as environmental taxes as a “sort of madness.”

For Lewandowsky, this “hysteria” narrative is part of a wider phenomenon of undermining expertise across the board, from Brexit, to climate change, and now COVID-19.

Lewandowsky points out that this also extends to many on the fringes of the political debate, such as controversial commentator Katie Hopkins, who had over a million Twitter followers before the platform banned her, and has said the public were being “played” by the government for being asked to wear face masks. Or Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who described a police visit to his home as “lunacy” after he apparently broke lockdown rules.

Both have also cast doubt on the reality and seriousness of climate change.

“They’re quite explicit about saying that one person’s fact is another person’s lie, because that then enables them to avoid accountability,” Lewandowsky argues.

Miracle cures and conspiracy theories

These commentators’ contributions to the debate haven’t been without consequence. Some have spread conspiracy theories that have had real-world impact, while others have admitted to ignoring official safety guidelines, putting the public at risk of catching the disease.

Columnist James Delingpole wrote in a March 28 article for the Spectator Australia titled ‘Wu Flu Notes’ that he had gone about his daily business despite having symptoms that align with coronavirus and that it was possible he had “infected lots of graduates.”

Some days later, Delingpole posted a tweet claiming a “high-powered zinc formula” had helped him recover from the illness without the need to go into intensive care – despite little being known about whether any such formula can be a cure for the virus.

He went on to write, “what I’d like more than anything is for this stuff to be available on the open market for everyone. But to mass produce it my friend needs ££££. If I crowdfunded it who’d be interested?” He concluded his request by asking for “potential big money backers.”

Delingpole’s zinc promotion was comparable to comments made by US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who, a few weeks prior, had received a cease-and-desist letter from a top New York attorney based on claims he had marketed and sold fraudulent COVID-19 treatments on his conspiracy website. US President Donald Trump was also widely criticised for suggesting that disinfectant taken internally could be a treatment for the virus.

Theories about miracle cures can take hold partly as a result of personal politics, Lewandowsky argues. Under lockdown, “you’re asked to stay at home and to look after other people by not doing what you’d like to do, and that is very challenging if you’re a believer in personal freedom and autonomy,” he says.

The same can be said of the motivations for spreading misinformation on climate change: “A lot of climate denial is very high-pitched, frenetic, emotional, angry, toxic – and that’s all triggered because people’s identity is at stake.”

The desire to reach for conspiracy theories may also stem from a need to feel that individuals still retain some control, says Evita March, a senior lecturer of psychology at Federation University Australia. “Conspiracy theories offer the believer some comfort in that there is still behavioural predictability,” she says.

And there were plenty of conspiracy theories flying around, pushed by long-time climate science deniers.

Piers Corbyn, brother of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, was quick to promote the idea that coronavirus was the fault of politically liberal billionaires, and that it was related to the Chinese-developed 5G mobile network.

The latter conspiracy, also promoted by Infowars’ Jones, had significant real-world consequences. Over the Easter weekend it was reported that 20 phone masts had been subject to arson attacks. According to Mobile UK, the trade association for four mobile network operators, an estimated 50 masts had been targeted by April 15.

David Lawrence, a researcher at campaign group Hope Not Hate, told DeSmog that theories around 5G have existed for a number of years, so “the stage was already set.” ”When the global COVID-19 outbreak occurred, there was both a susceptibility to be exploited and a ready-made explanation to hand,” he said.

“In some ways this is similar to climate change,” said Lawrence, “in that people who work in industries that would be negatively affected by efforts to reduce carbon emissions might be more likely to find reasons to reject the scientific consensus.”

Such conspiracy theories become popular — whether in relation to climate change or COVID-19 —  because they are a means of “simplifying and attributing blame,” particularly during a time when “people feel that they have lost control over their lives,” says Lewandowsky.

“Some will seek comfort in the idea that there are bad people out there causing the pandemic because, for some, knowing there are bad people responsible for terrible things is more comforting than to assume that these things are uncontrollable,” he says. “It allows people to direct anger at someone.”

Distrusting modellers

Many commentators directed their fire at a familiar foe — scientific models.

On April 1, the same day the United Nations announced the postponement of the annual UN climate change conference, two prominent UK climate science deniers argued in The Wall Street Journal that the pandemic had “dramatically demonstrated the limits of scientific modelling to predict the future.”

Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford, the Director and Deputy Director of the UK’s principal climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF),  criticised policymakers for using academic research that was subject to a “lack of quality control.” “In normal times this doesn’t matter much, but it’s different when studies find their way into the policy world,” they wrote.

They did not mention that the GWPF’s own approach to ‘peer-review’, which undercover reporters in 2015 showed operated on the basis of sending reports to its members of its own advisory council. The model has been described by UK charity Sense About Science, whose Advisory Council included GWPF advisor Matt Ridley, as “a way of trying to give scientific credibility to certain claims in the hope that a non-scientific audience will not know the difference.”

Eight days later, Breitbart’s Delingpole similarly criticised scientific modelling, dismissing research from the University of Washington forecasting more than 150,000 deaths from the disease across the US as “operating in the realms of purest fantasy.” Whether on climate change or the pandemic, “we have no idea whether or not we can trust” scientific experts and their modelling, Delingpole argued.

Clark takes a similar view, telling DeSmog: “on both COVID-19 and climate change there are a lot of people who seem to favour the results of modelling over real-world observation.” Those who want action “will latch on to any model” that suits their ends, he claimed, and will “decide that is 'the science', that it is fact, beyond all challenge.”

An article in Spiked likewise argued in April that “worst-case scenario thinking” and “doomsday forecasts” from models had clouded political judgement, referencing the obesity crisis, swine flu, and climate change.

This process of regularly casting doubt on models represents the “weaponisation of the scientific method,” says Imran Ahmed, founder of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. “Those sorts of sly tactics that have been used by these groups have amounted to an entire culture of how they spread information, spread ideas, and build audiences for their groups.”

“It’s expressed through philosophical strands which are anti-expert, faux-populist and conspiracies” and can include the “incel movement, climate denial, vaccine denial, identity-based hate,” he argues.

“As new facts emerge and as the understanding of the scientific movement changes,” says Ahmed, “these actors look back at previous consensuses and say, ‘see, they were lying back then.’”

Attacking environmentalists

As well as attacking coronavirus experts on their response recommendations, many commentators who oppose climate action also attacked those looking further ahead by putting forward proposals to ensure recovery plans were consistent with governments’ environmental pledges.

For months, commentators who regularly question the veracity of mainstream climate science denounced environmental activists for supposedly distracting the world with climate change amid the threat of pandemics.

On March 12, Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs argued that university funding should be redirected away from climate change research and towards “the scientifically uncontested problem of pandemics.” The day after, when the UK was effectively put under a national lockdown, Dutch climate science denial group CLINTEL published an open letter titled “Fight virus not carbon.”

Greenpeace, The Climate Group, and many other environmental organisations believe that the government should include environmental policies in coronavirus economic recovery measures to “build back better,” particularly as the country seeks to position itself as a climate leader ahead of hosting the UN climate talks in November 2021.

Some commentators spun this argument to imply that the environmental movement was happy that the virus has spread.

On March 22, former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson claimed in the Sunday Times that “greens just can’t stop smiling” because COVID-19 was “their idea of a wet dream.” Spiked contributor Ross Clark echoed this position in a response to DeSmog’s questions, saying that “there is a strand of opinion on the left which wants these crises — climate change and COVID — to be as big as possible because they see it as a way of undermining capitalism, and other aspects of our lives, and reforming society in their own dream vision.”

On March 25, a couple of days after Clarkson’s polemic appeared, Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill similarly argued that the pandemic was “a glimpse of the dystopia greens want us to live in.” 

“The truth is that if the COVID-19 crisis has shown us anything, it is how awful it would be to live in the kind of world greens dream about. Right now, courtesy of a horrible new virus, our societies look not dissimilar to the kind of societies Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, green parties and others have long been agitating for,” he wrote.

O’Neill reiterated this position when contacted by DeSmog, saying both the “green movement” and the reaction to COVID represented “privileged Westerners taking political decisions and actions” to the detriment of some of society’s most vulnerable. “Progressives should be questioning the impact of the reaction to COVID-19 on working people and poor people,” he said.

In June, 57 charities wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson asking him to put the creation of jobs in low-carbon sectors at the forefront of his economic recovery plans. They also asked the government to cancel the debts of developing countries struggling with both the impacts of the pandemic and the climate crisis.

Delingpole later wrote in a column for Breitbart saying environmentalists were celebrating the lockdown as a blueprint for a “new world order.” The GWPF took this argument one step further, publishing an image of a crying woman with the text, “net zero, like lockdown but permanent” — a reference to the UK government’s plans to slash the country’s emissions.

As these pieces were appearing, a Twitter account claiming to represent the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion (XR) in the East Midlands posted an image of an XR-branded sticker on a lamppost with the words, “corona is the cure, humans are the disease.”

Official XR accounts were quick to condemn the tweet and said that they were not affiliated with the newly created account, which has since been deleted. But various outlets and commentators used the tweet to condemn the protest group.

Gaia Fawkes, the environmental section of political blog Guido Fawkes, suggested the post showed that XR was “in favour of extinction,” though it acknowledged coordinators of the organisation had “distanced themselves” from the supposed splinter group. A spokesperson for the site told DeSmog it stood by its reporting despite well-publicised doubts over the authenticity of the East Midlands organisation, stating it was “unaware of any publicly available list of ‘official’ [XR] groups at the time.”

The GWPF likewise claimed the Twitter account’s “anti-human sentiment” was “widely shared” among environmentalists, rejecting claims that the East Midlands account was fake.

Author and Guardian columnist George Monbiot suggests that while it is predominantly money that is behind climate science denial or tobacco industry lobbying, “with COVID-19, the motive definitely varies,” but the outcome is essentially the same.

“There are a lot of very well-paid people who are very professional and they’re using the expertise that they’ve gathered in other areas of dispute about scientific facts and the policies arising from them, and applying those directly to the pandemic,” he argues.

“Take their power seriously, but don’t take any of their arguments at face value,” Monbiot concludes. “It’s not worth trying to deconstruct the nonsense they come out with.”

Political impact

Unlike in the EU referendum or Trump’s presidential campaign, pushing anti-expert rhetoric may no longer be a winning strategy in the wake of COVID-19. Polling shows that despite worry about the pandemic and its impacts, the public still wants governments to tackle climate change. And politicians attaching themselves to the anti-science bandwagon are now struggling in the polls.

For the Centre for Countering Digital Hate’s Imran Ahmed, attacking the concept of expertise around COVID-19 is “the first truly great strategic mistake by those who espouse this radical world view.”

The US and UK are two of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and both have leaders “who have been denying evidence and fact,” says Lewandowsky. “Johnson and Trump are creating a situation in which the very thought that we could establish a common truth is under attack,” he says. Both are regularly backed by commentators who also openly question the concept of expertise, whether on climate change or coronavirus.

But these positions have begun to hurt both leaders. Johnson has plummeted from a position of public popularity prior to the UK’s lockdown to a negative approval rating almost four months later. And the gap between the majority of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s leadership and those keeping faith with the president now sits at around 15 percent, numbers that could see him lose November’s election.

That may reflect a wider shift in the public mindset, Lewandowsky argues: “My hope is that the COVID crisis has kind of given us a reset here, and there’s some evidence that people are beginning to say that we do need experts and data.”

Take a look at DeSmog's section of examples from UKCOVIDeniers, the bubble where true believers and ideologues operate. 

It is full of distorted facts, lies and denial, about the failure of market capitalism as much as climate change. 

Politicians of the populist right, of Leave, of free trade and Brexit, are dangerous to our health, especially those who believe their own ignorant nonsense.

Across the world, along the LODE Zone Line, news stories tend to register on the international news media cycle, when economic and socio-political issues reach a critical point, critical enough for protests to spill out on to the streets. But then the degree of media focus and attention decreases as other stories enter the news cycle. Re:LODE Radio chooses to end this post with news from Belarus and Indonesia.

Ongoing increases in levels of violence directed towards protesters and the opposition by the government authorities in Belarus, has resulted in the threat level being further heightened this week. This was following a demonstration on Monday, when men in balaclavas carrying batons confronted a crowd of mainly middle-aged and older women carrying placards with slogans such as;  

“the grandmothers are with the people”  

Video footage by Tut.by independent news site confirmed this report. This was reported in the Guardian in a story covered by Agence France-Presse (Tue 13 Oct 2020):

Minsk police spokesman Roman Lashkevich told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency: “We deployed stun grenades from an Osa flare gun and fired teargas when the citizens started to show aggression”. 

Belarus threatens to use firearms against protesters

DW News Date 12.10.2020

Belarus authorities warned they might use firearms against protesters as the country was entering its third month of unrest over the disputed presidential election.

The police are facing "not only aggression, but groups of militants, anarchists, football fans," said deputy Interior Minister Gennady Kazakevich in a video message posted on Monday.

Commenting on the rallies against strongman Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakevich said that crowds attending the protests were getting smaller, but the rallies were also getting more organized and "extremely radicalized", especially in Minsk. He said the protesters on Sunday were using "rocks, bottles, knives and shivs" during the Sunday marches and then proceeded to set up barricades and burn tires during the night.

"This has nothing to do with civil protest," Kazakevich said, adding that the country's security forces would not leave the streets.

"Members of the Interior Ministry and the internal troops will be using special means and firearms, if necessary," said the official.

Killed by the police or by his own bomb?

While the police have denied using live ammunition against the protesters, many believe at least one rally participant, Alexander Taraikovsky, was shot in the chest by the police in August. The authorities claimed Taraikovsky died because an explosive device he wanted to throw at the police exploded in his hand during clashes in Minsk. Separately, an Interior Ministry official posted online that police fired live rounds at protesters during an August rally in the city of Brest, but later edited the message.

The Belarus police have launched several brutal crackdowns since the protests started, but also varied their response to include periods of relative calm. The clashes this Sunday, however, saw the police use more force than any time since August. Over 700 protesters were detained and 570 were still in custody awaiting a court hearing, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

Belarus: Violent crackdown on anti-Lukashenko protesters in Minsk  

DW News •12 Oct 2020

The Guardian covers this too, in a story covered by Agence France-Presse (Tue 13 Oct 2020), but includes more details about the treatment of older protesters by security officials who were, as usual, hiding their identity.

Agence France-Presse for the Guardian (Tue 13 Oct 2020):

Gennady Kazakevich, the first deputy interior minister, said in a video statement: “We will not leave the streets, and law enforcement officers and internal troops if necessary will use riot control equipment and lethal weapons.”

The statement was the first time the authorities have explicitly threatened to use firearms against opposition demonstrators and would mark a major escalation in the two-month standoff between Lukashenko and protesters, who have staged peaceful rallies against his disputed re-election in August and against the abuse and torture of detainees.

The warning came after security forces cracked down harshly on anti-Lukashenko protests on Sunday, prompting EU foreign ministers to agree it was time to sanction Lukashenko himself.

Late on Monday, officers used tear gas and stun grenades against a group of older people holding a regular protest march, prompting outrage from the opposition.

The protests broke out when Lukashenko claimed victory in elections held on 9 August that are widely regarded as rigged. Popular opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claims to be the true winner, has been based in Lithuania since she was forced to flee after being threatened in a conversation with officials the night after the election.

In Belarus, police have so far acknowledged using water cannon, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse the protesters.

Kazakevich claimed that protests had become “extremely radical”, saying stones and bottles were thrown at police on Sunday by protesters armed with knives, who built barricades and set fire to tyres. “This has nothing in common with civil protest,” the deputy minister said, claiming that “groups of fighters, radicals, anarchists and football fans” were taking part.

Belarus was facing attempts to revive the “chaos of the 1990s” and foment the “colour revolutions” that have toppled pro-Kremlin leaders in other ex-Soviet states, he said.

His statement came as police have used some of the harshest tactics yet against protesters.

On Monday, men in balaclavas carrying batons confronted a crowd of mainly middle-aged and older women carrying placards with slogans such as “the grandmothers are with the people”, video footage by Tut.by independent news site showed.

Minsk police spokesman Roman Lashkevich told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency: “We deployed stun grenades from an Osa flare gun and fired teargas when the citizens started to show aggression”.

“Today the regime crossed yet another line,” Tikhanovskaya said in a statement, pointing out that older Belarusians had once been seen as Lukashenko’s most loyal demographic.

The men in balaclavas were shown spraying teargas from inside their vehicles as protesters angry at the detention of demonstrators threw flowers at them and shouted “Fascists!” and “Cowards!”

Later, protesters in Minsk blocked roads and set tyres on fire, as military vehicles drove through the city centre, Tut.by reported.

During Sunday’s mass protests, police deployed water cannon and stun grenades in Minsk, detaining more than 700 people across the country, the interior ministry said.

The crackdown ended any expectations that a prison visit by Lukashenko to hold over four hours of talks with critics held in jail at the weekend marked any change in approach.

European foreign ministers on Monday agreed Lukashenko’s name should join a list of 40 of his officials already sanctioned by the EU with travel bans and asset freezes, diplomatic sources said.

The EU had held back from penalising Lukashenko himself, hoping to persuade him to engage in dialogue with opposition forces to resolve the crisis.

Belarus: personal stories from a country in turmoil 

Mass protests across Belarus erupted following the widely disputed election that put President Lukashenko in office for a sixth term. 

Three Belarusian filmmakers document personal stories of people caught up in the political turmoil. Filmmaker Maksim Shved was arrested, imprisoned and then released while the protests around him swelled. Meanwhile, Ekaterina Markavets observes the psychological burden of her fellow citizens and worked with professional psychologists to set up a volunteer support service for people affected by current events. Andrei Kutsila followed a celebrated Belarusian broadcast journalist who worked for State TV for nearly 40 years, now in hospital recovering from injuries she sustained while at a protest. All three filmmakers wonder what the future holds for their country and fellow citizens.

The Jakarta Post reported on Thursday October 8, 2020, on social unrest flaring up across cities in Indonesia; 

as jobs law protesters clash with police

Students and workers take part in a protest on Jl. MH Thamrin, Central Jakarta, on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. Thousands of workers and students hold a rally to reject the new Omnibus Law on Job Creation 

Jon Afrizal, Apriadi Gunawan and Ivany Atina Arbi The Jakarta Post  (Thu, October 8, 2020): 

Rallies in protest against the contentious Job Creation Law have continued across the country three days after it was passed on Monday, with some turning violent as protesters clashed with police. 

As of Thursday evening, reports of clashes, arson and arrests had come from at least a dozen cities: Greater Jakarta; Yogyakarta; Pontianak, West Kalimantan; Malang, East Java; Jambi; Medan, North Sumatra; Surakarta, Central Java; Bandung, West Java; Makassar, South Sulawesi; Palu, Central Sulawesi; Palembang, South Sumatra; and Denpasar, Bali. 

During a rally in Jakarta, a Transjakarta bus stop near Hotel Indonesia and a traffic police post near Tugu Tani, both in Central Jakarta, were set on fire, it is not clear by whom. Thousands of activists, students and workers clashed with the police in front of the Yogyakarta Legislative Council (DPRD) building. The protesters tried to enter the gate but to no avail. They then began throwing bottles and other missiles at the building. At some point during the rally, a restaurant next to the council building was set on fire but again it is not clear who was responsible. 

Similar clashes happened in Surakarta, during which protesters reacted angrily to police attempts to confiscate a banner. Hundreds of protesters in Malang pelted the Malang DPRD office with firecrackers and flares, setting fire to the front gate of the office. 

Some protesters were seen, in a video tweeted on the Persatuan Buruh (Labor Unions) Twitter account, climbing over the fence to further attack the property on Thursday. “Malang DPRD building was on fire on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. Immediately annul the legal act that impoverishes the people!” the tweet read, referring to the Job Creation Law. 

According to a kompas.com report, the police managed to disperse the crowd by firing tear gas. The protesters, however, continued their assembly in front of the nearby Tugu Hotel. Similar scenes occurred in some other regions across the country with rally participants throwing stones and bottles at local DPRD buildings, as well as police officers securing the demonstrations. 

Thursday’s protests were part of a three-day national strike against the Job Creation Law, which started on Tuesday. Clashes between police and protesters had occurred over the previous two days, with dozens of rally-goers reportedly detained by police across the country. At least nine people were arrested in Bandung and 14 others in Banten on Tuesday. 

Some 185 people, four of whom were students, were arrested in Palembang on Wednesday. Police also briefly detained 17 Manado State University Students on the same day before releasing them. Some protesters were also detained in Medan, Palembang, Yogyakarta and Makassar on Thursday. 

Three police officers were reportedly injured in the Medan demonstration, while dozens of protesters were rushed to hospital in Yogyakarta, where thousands of people took to the streets despite the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The protesters have demanded that the law be revoked immediately. Academics, activists and labor unions have said the manner in which the law was deliberated and then passed violated the Constitution because it ignored public consultation. 

They further claim that the law will pave the way for a more flexible labor market and make it easier to obtain business permits at the expense of workers’ rights and environmental protection. 

The government, meanwhile, has insisted that the law is necessary to improve bureaucratic efficiency and cut red tape, particularly in regard to business licensing and investment.

Cutting red tape for business, at the expense of workers rights and environmental protection. 

Follow the money!