NEVER AGAIN MASK TRUTH
AFTER they callously “scared the pants off” me with mask and jab mandates, I needed support from the Welsh NHS to help me deal with deep despair which could have led to suicide as fear and suspicion ramped up dangerously and any kind of social engagement disappeared completely.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63119146
What I got was sweet Fanny Adams, by and large, from a hopelessly disconnected analogue based ancient monopoly totally incapable of caring for me properly obsessed suddenly with protecting its own staff from me (the very antithesis of care and treatment) and physically barring me from access with inhumane, callous tactics including offering me consultations in the car park if I dared to refuse to wear a mask.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55333756
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-54540764
Vaccine passports, a ban on attending funerals, even visiting cemeteries or elderly relatives in their homes or in care homes wreaked misery in the lives of families with many still carrying scars and harbouring resentment and bitterness towards the caring sector and politicians like Matt Hancock and Mark Drakeford, who took obscene liberties with one breaking his own rules to enjoy “non-essential” sexual activity denied under health and safety emergency powers to us. Senedd politicians including Labour’s Alun Davies were caught drinking alcohol on the estate when others were barred under zealous rules to ban social drinking by shutting pubs.
The Welsh response differed from the English one most markedly in mask mandates for schoolchildren, much more vicious and totalitarian bans on social drinking and hospitality which unfairly targeted the younger, fitter least at risk (who, by and large, were treated abysmally) and the introduction of COVID-19 passports not needed in England. Consequently a separate inquiry into a separate Welsh approach is essential in a truly democratic country.
BARMY: Face masks were no longer needed in England’s schools from May, 2021 but they were in Wales until September 2021. WHY?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/57787815
BARMY: Nightclubs and pubs opened in England on Freedom Day July 19, 2021 but they were still shut in Wales until January 2022, forcing many people to travel for a night out. WHY?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57867865
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/57787815
BARMY: COVID-19 passports or passes were needed to enter cinemas, nightclubs, theatres and concert halls in Wales but the UK government decided not to go ahead with vaccine passports in England. WHY?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-58600373
BARMY: Non-essential goods were barred from sale in Wales but no such rules were in place in England. WHY?
BARMY: Welsh Labour processed into power in a Senedd election in May 2021 at which candidates were controlled in door-to-door leafleting and canvassing and council offices were closed but in England rules were different. This made a Welsh Labour win easier as it disadvantaged the smaller parties struggling to cope with a perception of Labour protection and prevention. WHY?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56217215
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-55895712
Now, having moved surgeries three times in the hope of getting solutions, I remain totally in the dark about my real risk of illness or death from COVID-19 at any stage, whether or not I have had it or just think I have, how strong my natural immunity is, the efficacy of the vaccines I took in one arm with the other tied behind my back and, crucially, any negative or deleterious side-effects of the emergency medication I was forced to take or face refusal to pass through borders and even enter some public spaces with COVID passports in Wales, health insurance wrangles and outrageous stigma and aggressive victimisation from fearful rule takers who might abuse me on buses.
What I DO know is that health professionals were not and still are not engaging with me (the anti-social effects mentally of a lockdown were more dangerous to me and the wearing of a mask was a massive problem which they never backed me on) but instead with a political process specifically designed for me to comply with arbitrary often baseless draconian top down rules or face fines or jail. A vaccine rollout has now replaced care and treatment and converted leisure centres with jab generals has replaced the surgery.
Crucially, comparisons cannot be made between different approaches to controlling the virus because we chose to follow one path and never tried any others, eagerly dismissing herd and natural immunity and more proportionate and humane responses based on voluntary responsible behaviour such as those in Sweden, where death tolls were lower than in most European countries, so our governments can state that they prevented deaths by rolling out vaccines whatever anyone says and we have no way of knowing if another approach might have saved more lives or caused less needless social misery and damage to business, education and mental health.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_government_response_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Tegnell
Also, British passport holders for the first time in my lifetime were restricted by devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from moving freely within a union they are active citizens with full voting rights and representation at Westminster and can normally expect equal treatment in wherever they happen to be. The consequences of that are still affecting our relationships with our most able and well resourced nearest neighbour and during the crisis it caused massive needless tension and confusion among schoolchildren, business and transport in eastern Wales exactly where it meets western England who ordinarily and naturally process in and out of the two freely and without being monitored or having to have permission.
Boris Johnson told us in March 2020 that this was the worst public health crisis for a generation and many more families would lose loved ones then Councillor Jane Mudd, leader of Newport City Council and Judith Pagett, then chief executive of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, jointly wrote a letter delivered to my door telling me of a “glimmer of hope” (yes, I kid you not) in the shape of vaccines.
“The situation in Wales is very serious at the moment. Cases of the virus are very high and there is a new, very transmissable strain of coronavirus in the UK, circulating in all parts of Wales. We are all staying at home again to stay safe, save lives and protect the NHS,” the duo wrote.
What I want to know is who, exactly, wrote that letter. One thing you can be certain of is that it was not Mudd and Pagett. That letter scandalously containing the term “glimmer of hope” was very carefully constructed to frighten and co-erce.
The total number of mentally unwell and in crisis grew after even children at school were brutally targeted by a combination of health and safety zealotry and alarmist responses from teaching unions, forcing pupils to mask and observe inhumane distancing rules when our schools finally re-opened to them after long periods closed, denying them a basic education and stacking up problems for families forced to hide indoors in cramped conditions naturally suspicious and fearful of others.
Others, like me, watched in horror as residents in their streets in one of the lowest points in modern history in March 2020 only ventured out on doorsteps to clap the NHS, having been whipped up by a colluding mainstream media broadcasting government propaganda to venerate our “key workers” while trotting out daily death tolls as if other illnesses no longer existed and people were dropping down dead all over the place due to the pandemic. I knew nobody who had nor even anyone who actually had it.
The Imperial College modelling carried out by epidemiologist Neil Ferguson said that it could affect up to 60% of the UK’s population, in the worst-case scenario, and “the unfolding epidemic may be comparable to the major influenza pandemics of the twentieth century”. In other words, get set for Armageddon, folks.
That combination of woeful doomsday modelling based on paranoia, political seizure of science and medicine on highly dubious grounds which actively barred open and fearless debate and discussion, warring factions politically in the UK battling each other for expediency and advancement in shabby manoeuvres most visible in the historical tension between devolved and Westminster governments in constant war, a trades union over-reaction, a menacingly aggressive compliance culture whipped up by mainstream media depending on the cruel illusion that staying at home saved lives or protected our NHS (a fundamental lie we bought into which has facilitated today’s position of no longer being able to see a doctor and being actively encouraged to avoid hospitals altogether) all combined to make life nearly unbearable for me.
I wasn’t being cared for and treated but uncared for and mistreated.
It began when a doctor called me on my mobile phone at my home in February, 2021 to ask me if I could come to the surgery early to get my first jab. I wondered why I was suddenly getting calls from a GP when they refused to take my calls and never engage online via e-mail but complied with the request and cycled off to find the surgery empty and my doctor kitted out in scrubs to inject me in a spooky episode which was to foretell a dystopian future.
In letters I wrote to the doctor, I attempted to establish my real risk and the appropriateness of the jabs as well as the rules surrounding freedom and liberty then and in the future for me if I opted out but I concluded that the British Medical Association had, by and large, tied doctors hands by banning them from backing me on masks and batting away any robust inquiry on vaccines to instead facilitate and manage a compliance or die or infect others culture.
A nurse at the surgery gave me the second jab in June that year after another doctor again called me at home on my mobile phone to ask me if I could come in early to have it. Where doctors, who no longer saw patients, giving me preferential treatment as a favour to me or for other reasons, I wondered.
My cynicism at this point was energetically assisted by numerous people including many business operatives (central heating engineers worked for two days in my home without masks with my permission as, indeed, did huge numbers of small business people and builders elsewhere), who told me repeatedly that doctors they visited were not wearing masks in their own homes and shunning distance rules and seemed quite relaxed about the real risk of death. The anecdotal evidence stacked up for me, including from armchair conspiracists who told me that the vaccine was Bill Gates’s revenge on me for accessing anything online about conspiracies and for asking confrontational questions (I really must stop doing that). Others were more certain that the jabs themselves would lead to my premature death and not the virus with one even saying I might have been lucky and just got a placebo.
I then fully grasped that surgeries and care and treatment were completely closed to me, ably reinforced by staff who took a totalitarian approach. Telephones were not being answered, buildings like the civic centre were shut, preventing access to electoral rolls and key information and even door-to-door canvassing for the 2021 May Welsh government elections was banned with candidates risking police action if they knocked my door.
The distressing episodes of conflict with staff like nurses who scolded me for not wearing a mask or for showing any resistance to rules all behind massive posters warning me that aggressive behaviour will NOT be tolerated has left me bruised and battered and now avoidant, fearing being scolded, chided or given detention again. An icily authoritarian and infantilising tone in staff entered early on and lingers.
After first disproportionately magnifying the real risk with woeful modelling and a compromised scientific and medical elite in the pay of government, they then carried out public health research with supposedly “independent” members of the public who invested blindly in the increasingly menacing moves to clamp down on free movement and liberty and played a very active part in their answers to clearly manipulative questionnaires in ramping up consent for increasingly bizarre and baseless moves we now know were motivated more by political expediency and advancement than by science and medicine.
Public Health Wales’s weekly reports stated with apparent certainty that the public were unanimously in favour of harsher and stricter rules on free movement and liberty and they persistently moved further and further in a pro-Welsh Labour authoritarian direction to scandalously impose physical borders with England, close exercise facilities, some stores, pubs and just about anywhere where you might meet other human beings. But just who were these people (all, of course, anonymous) and how were the questions being framed and on what background authority? An independent inquiry has been ruled out in Wales so we will now never know but we will know to be sceptical about public health research if they ever try it again.
At a crucial stage in October 2021, I needed to see a doctor, desperately needing some mental health support and was told, rather brusquely by a “care navigator” at that surgery that a doctor would call me in two weeks’ time as face-to-face appointments were banned.
I waited for the call and it came nearly an hour late after I had rung the surgery to check that a call would come so I demanded to be referred to the local mental health team mainly by adopting a threatening telephone manner. I wrote to the health board to complain and they told me that I could switch surgeries but did not do anything positive to rectify the situation nor to fix me up with a new one which might meet my needs better.
The mental health team first gave me sedatives – a go-to response at times of crisis mainly because people cannot sleep – and tried but failed to meet my needs with poor resources and overstretched staff struggling to cope. What was most obvious to me was the hopeless records system relying on physical rather than digital storage and hampered severely by poor internal networks and people working in silos.
Finding a new surgery is not a positive process like choosing your favourite dish on a mouthwatering menu with multiple choices, rather it is taking a punt blindly with no reliable information to guide you as the NHS is not selling or marketing its services to me with surgeries fighting each other to get my business and a change can often be nothing more than jumping out of a frying pan into a roaring fire.
I blindly jumped into another roaring fire thinking that a change might be as good as a rest but they forced me to wear a mask and adopted a broadly infantilising tone which led to one nurse prompting the practice manager to threaten removal for “confrontational” behaviour and me having to be defensive just to get in the building.
My blood pressure soared and well-being suffered terribly as I struggled to adapt to a new hostile environment of authoritarian bus drivers, store security and checkout operators behind transparent plastic walls to protect them from me, manically managed socially distanced queues snaking endlessly outside stores with bizarre rules inside them and many items taped off by “scene of crime” type tape and all reinforced by a very obvious separation of people into legitimate “key workers” and the feral and potentially dangerous with politicians and media (seeming to be enjoying more free movement than us with accreditation and passes) united in common purpose suspiciously and scandalously. I was also barred from using gyms and swimming pools or even venturing out onto a golf course in the height of summer and at the outset got used to seeing police cars speeding past or parking up to deter walkers often alone in beauty spots doing absolutely no harm but risking heavy fines.
I changed to a third surgery in 2022 after a pharmacist tipped me off that they might meet my needs better. I then discovered that 56-day prescriptions are being offered by the Welsh government but the second surgery could only offer 28-days and the process of sending out drivers to pick up paper scripts then return them to the pharmacy often meant that I couldn’t even get these on time, leaving me too frequently hanging around waiting for one to talk to the other. I got the 56-day scripts at the new surgery but I am starting to notice that staff sickness levels at pharmacies are often at crisis level so demand is not always being met on time.
These are some of the questions I want independently assessed as an emergency in a robust inquiry in Wales:
MASKS
1, The scientific mantra on wearing masks was flawed at best. How could key figures like Jenny Harries https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8676535/Jenny-Harries-says-face-coverings-evidence-not-strong.html first cast doubt on them then later observe stricter rules which appeared to mandate them for everyone?
2, Why were people who obviously suffered severe negative consequences of wearing masks, like me, not supported by the BMA and doctors and why did some have to wear sunflower lanyards which stigmatised them and broke their confidentiality, revealing that they had other health issues for no good reason, breaking protections under the 2000 Equality Act?
3, Why were authority figures in customer service and security roles given powers to enforce mask rules and why did some of them embrace these powers so enthusiastically?
4, Why did the government or the NHS not issue accredited and official surgical masks as was the case with gas masks during World War Two if this really was as serious as they said it was and if masks were entirely effective? Instead, shops were cashing in by selling masks and gels with dubious credentials for profit.
5, Why were people who put up “NO MASK NO ENTRY” posters on doors not reminded of the protection given under the Equality Act 2000 to prevent discrimination and advised that such messages were offensive and unpractical?
VACCINES
1, Why did governments appear to abandon the normal periods of time before vaccines could be genuinely properly tested and verified to be safe and effective?
2, Why was natural immunity never properly tested in individuals?
3, Why did doctors simply inject rather than individually assess patients and why was cost benefit analysis not carried out either in relation to the jab or to the draconian lockdown rules to properly establish if either was always entirely appropriate and needed?
4, Why have patients not been assessed properly to see if there are any negative side-effects of the medication for them?
5, Why was responsibility for administering the jabs moved from surgeries to health boards (essentially compromising the doctor patient relationship) and from doctors to converted leisure centre jab generals who may not be specialists?
MEDIA
1, Why was BBC Wales and other mainstream media repeatedly giving daily death tolls from COVID-19 without mentioning deaths from other causes like suicide, cancer, heart disease and strokes and who was establishing the true causes of death on death certificates?
2, Why did mainstream media journalists adopt a broadly supportive tone and suspend rigorous and assertive inquiry and discussion and robust, fearless debate?
3, Why were presenters on radio emphasising the need for jabs without any robust debate or discussion, effectively amplifying official lines?
4, Why did journalists never question either the appropriateness or efficacy of some of the more bizarre lockdown rules nor properly assess if the rule makers were themselves observing them at all times? The media was reduced to “We can bring our own pencils” to polling booths for the 2021 election.
5, Why were politicians allowed to stage manage and curate press conferences so obviously, choosing which media representatives to ask questions and why was a broadly collusive and collaborative tone and mien established so early on in these public access forums?
COVID-19
1, Why have stories about a lab leak from Wuhan as the original source of the virus been discredited and those who spread them vilified, marginalised and accused of spreading disinformation and misinformation?
2, Why was risk from the emergence of “new variants” of it so blatantly disproportionately magnified to “scare the pants” off us and was risk from these new variants always properly assessed?
3, Where death certificates always entirely accurate in relation to COVID-19 and how robustly were they scrutinised?
4, Who decided when booster jabs were needed to maintain our defence against COVID-19 and on what basis were they/are they still making those decisions?
5, Why were respected scientists who cast doubt on COVID-19 orthodoxy and suggested different interpretations and approaches for governments to take undermined, traduced and demonised as if they were dangerous subversives or enemies of the state just for having alternative views?
WELSH GOVERNMENT
1, Did Welsh Labour cabinet members use WhatsApp software to send encrypted messages to each other?
2, Alert levels going up to level four and down to the ludicrous alert level zero (which means not being alert at all. Are we at alert level minus zero now?) were imposed but for what reason and on what basis where they arrived at?
3, Travel to and from England was outlawed under emergency health and safety powers, as was travel within Wales unless people gave documentary evidence that journeys were essential and public transport was severely limited. The UK government called it “disappointing” and the Police Federation called it “unenforceable”. Do you seriously believe that these arbitrary measures were appropriate, proportionate and enforceable and what evidence can you offer to convince us that it was?
4, The 2021 Senedd elections were held at a time when decisions were being taken by a ruling group without reference to the chamber or subject to scrutiny by politicians in a democratic way and when candidates were barred from door-to-door canvassing by law. Was this democracy or something else?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/new-rules-2021-elections-today-20534927 https://www.gov.wales/first-minister-sets-out-plans-hold-covid-secure-2021-senedd-elections https://nation.cymru/news/no-door-to-door-canvassing-allowed-in-senedd-campaign-under-new-covid-rules/
5, How much did groupthink and unchallenged authority among Welsh Labour senior politicians enjoying power in a one-party state since 1999 affect the decision making process and why were senior politicians from other parties not invited into inner circles to debate and discuss the COVID-19 measures?
6, Were the chief medical officer for Wales Dr Frank Atherton and the chief scientific officer for health in Wales Dr Rob Orford completely separate from colleagues in England during COVID-19 and if they were, were they under pressure to give ministers in Wales different advice and guidance about how best to control spread of it? Where they in any way compromised and dependent upon Welsh Labour?
https://www.gov.wales/chief-medical-officer-wales-sets-out-lessons-learnt-covid-19-pandemic
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60120200
7, How certain can we be that Public Health Wales research at the time reflected the true views of the questionnaire participants and why, when I made enquiries to establish who some of these participants were and how questionnaires were designed and on what basis, appearing to change from week to week, did I meet silence? Surely, the public need to know who is asking the questions and on what basis and who is answering them to have confidence in the process if we rely on public health research conducted on our behalf ever again to shape and guide public policy?
WELSH NHS
1, The public health ombudsman, who rules on complaints about service to the public, is an appointment made by Welsh government. How certain can we be that the appointment process is totally independent and is completely without political influence?
2, How certain can we be that rulings made by the public health ombudsman are always without political influence? I think of the treatment of Tory councillor Joan Watkins, suspended from Newport City Council and removed as a public representative on Aneurin Bevan Health Board by a Labour-led ruling cadre.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58960040
3, Were field hospitals costing £166 million to cope with COVID-19 ever used and do you think it was a proportionate and sensible solution to build and fund them? How were they staffed?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55316432
4, How much time, effort and resources were spent on accurately assessing the adverse mental health implications of draconian and inhumane measures to control the spread of COVID-19 on patients and how much on the treatment of sufferers experiencing distress and depression?
5, What is now being done within the Welsh NHS to restore the doctor patient relationship so badly damaged by many of the measures which denied contact between the two for many months?
SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES
1, Why were school pupils forced to wear masks in Wales for longer than their counterparts in England even after some teachers and parents complained about them?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/masks-schools-wales-rules-guidance-20054958
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/mask-rules-wales-schools-teachers-19334369
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/scrapping-masks-welsh-secondary-schools-20568856
2, Pupils in Monmouth attending schools in the Forest of Dean were not wearing masks while pupils from England attending Monmouth schools were. How was this policed and implemented and what effect did it have on education in Wales?
3, How strongly were decisions made about the closure of schools, mask wearing and jabs in Wales affected and dependent upon agreement between teaching unions and the Welsh government and isn’t that relationship compromised by the fact that the unions are affiliated to Labour?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58861598
4, What does “remote learning” mean and how much was actually offered to pupils and students to learn via laptop? Also, how often did school, college and university staff actually check-in with individual pupils and students to establish how they were doing and what help was needed?
SHOPS AND PUBS
1, Why were products in shops divided into “essential” and “non-essential”, who made the decisions on the ground and why was it considered sensible to restrict some items but make others freely available and on what basis were these decisions made and enforced in stores?
2, How was the “rule of six” arrived at? Was it simply an adoption of earlier rules set out by Boris Johnson or unique to Wales? Did the number six have some meaning? Was there genuine scientific validity in this?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/we-demand-answers-pubs-restaurants-22548966
3, Why were mask rules removed in shops in March 2022 but not in the NHS? These inconsistent and conflicting rules were baffling to even the most placid rule takers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-60863358
4, Laura Anne Jones, Conservative Senedd member for South Wales East, called on Welsh government to publish the scientific evidence “in the interest of transparency” behind the rules which appeared to punish the hospitality sector with some hotels, restaurants and pubs going out of business due to crippling measures with many still struggling. Has this evidence ever been circulated and can we see it now?
5, Why was Mark Drakeford using threats of extending punishing vaccine passport requirements in the hospitality sector as a stick to beat people with and so clearly trying to manipulate and coerce the young and fit, who were, by and large, more enthusiastically targeted when they had the least level of risk?
FUNERALS AND CEMETERIES
1, Some public cemeteries were closed to the public, preventing people from paying their respects to family and friends. Was this always necessary and proportionate particularly bearing in mind that they were open air facilities with plenty of space?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52402292
2, Was counselling and emotional support offered to those barred from visiting cemeteries or funeral parlours?
3, Before May 2020, only five people were allowed to attend funerals in Gwent. Were the rules on numbers entirely scientifically sound or more arbitrary?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/funerals-rules-lockdown-wales-coronavirus-18380584
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/our-mortuary-almost-full-people-19781905
4, A study found that decomposed bodies left to die at home increased by 70% when we went into lockdown. Were statistics gathered in Wales?
5, Temporary mortuaries were built as hospital mortuaries filled up at the height of the pandemic. What special measures did Welsh government take to cope with this?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/170-bodies-being-kept-temporary-19600071
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/temporary-mortuary-opens-business-park-19622303
ARE YOU BEING SWERVED?
DOWN AND OUT: A headless mannequin lies discarded in the store.
WHAT would Captain Peacock and Mrs Slocombe have made of today’s final day closing down sale at House of Fraser in Cardiff?
Mrs Slocombe’s pussy would have been in danger of being sold to a barbarian like me for 50% off the final marked price and Cpt Peacock’s wig might have ended up in the bargain bin with all the other designer goods. As for Mr Humphries’s pink feather duster, God alone knows what would have happened to that (Mike Ashley might re-purpose it as a retro furnishing item for online sale if you hurry, hurry, hurry).
The closing down sale that seemed like it would never end – martialed partly by Sports Direct vultures who used “closing down” merely as a marketing con to get punters in to their stores – was the nearest thing to grave robbing I’ve ever seen.
Burke and Hare at least had the decency to dig graves at dead of night to lift the corpses.
Here, hollow store mannequins which in a byegone age might have been luxuriously attired in designer gear by Miss Brahms in fourth floor ladies lingerie and Mr Rumbold in second floor men’s tailoring were down and out lying permanently robbed of clothes and dignity but available to buy for a small consideration along with all the other fixtures and fittings as what was left of Howells hurriedly disappeared before my very eyes.
The staff, some of whom might have applied to Grace Brothers if it actually existed in rosier times when service was king and not a dirty word and the customer was always right, were not for sale at any price and kept their dignity.
I told one lady that there was no need for her to call me “Sir” but she explained that that was what she had been taught to do or possibly face a bollocking from one of the Grace Brothers if he ever caught her and dropping it would be like losing her identity. To her, of course, I was still an opportunity with potential.
This is the end of that end of the pier nudge-nudge, wink-wink humour we enjoyed in shows like Are You Being Served much, much more than it the end of yet another overstaffed city centre retail outfit no longer able to compete in a digital age.
Even the meanest shoplifter wouldn’t have been low enough to sneak some Hugo Boss, Armani, Ralph Lauren and Paul Smith clobber out of the door manned by scruffy security wardens on this day of all days.
As the clock ticked closer to 4pm when it finally did shut, more and more of the merchandise went either to bargain hunters or was salvaged by store bosses for other purposes.
This was not an everything must go sale so many things stayed unpurchased and at no stage was bartering welcomed though some staff complained about customers removing price tags and replacing them with cheaper ones and they relied on mobile phone data to value things without price tags.
Receipts were given and there was even a returns desk, suggesting that there is more to this than we know or understand.
Howells and David Morgan were Cardiff’s Harrods and Selfridges – impressive department stores you wandered through to look at luxury items you couldn’t afford while dreaming of being rich in a gratification bubble.
Both have now gone and the future for high street retail looks dire everywhere as internet purchasing grows more routine and normal with a younger generation habituated to it and nothing else.
Bouquets of flowers were brought into the store for staff and balloons with the number of years the store kept going flew proudly over a service point.
Throughout this period, staff have been present in the grimmest, sickest working atmosphere imaginable. It was difficult to distinguish them from customers as they had no uniform, making the store feel like a ship sinking slowly with an ununiformed crew staying on to the bitter end as shoppers piled in to plunder the polished brass, silver cutlery and crystal chandeliers then hurl the booty into the lifeboats they manned themselves.
This made interaction with staff problematic, to say the least.
Howells, like the BBC, was an anachronistic uncompetitive institution which feather-bedded too many dependent lifers who grew to expect audience loyalty without having to market themselves and offer something people actually want at a realistic price sharing with the broadcaster a fatal inability to adapt and evolve while putting the users and not the staff first.
Behind the surface gloss and glitz was a sense of entitlement and snobbish class consciousness exemplified by the woman who called me Sir who might very quickly have dropped the patter if I called her Madam in a certain tone of voice.
“I’m free” said Mr Humphries, more in hope than expectation. We’re all free now – free to shop till we drop in splendid isolation with nobody calling you Sir or Madam.
OUT OF ORDER, ORDER
BOTTOM LINE: Period products available in the gents.
SO THAT’S what it’s come to……Hatty Harperson and Sir Bernard Blinkin Jenkin – a malignantly mismatched couple if ever there was one similar only in their unctuously and cloyingly stagey delusions of grandeur – ruling on how literally and religiously other people observed social distance by subjecting Boris Johnson – who dwarfs them and everyone else on the committee combined – to a grilling as if he were a cold-blooded mass murderer on death row.
Hatty, her funereal black hanging judge outfit considerably enhanced by a bold and brassy necklace which for all the world looked like a noose around her own neck and Jenkin, a deceptively docile dummy at her right, (better cop to her blatantly bad one, perhaps) waited patiently for Johnson to swear by a bible produced by an official to consolidate the perception of him as a wrong un because he, like everyone I knew, observed the spirit of rules and not the letter of them as the rules were impractical and offensive, needlessly turning healthy people into prisoners and setting one against another.
Dear Christ, I found out earlier on in the day that I can now stock up on high waist period panties, menstrual cups and cases, and even full cycle (and I don’t mean the two wheeled variety) kits in the male lavatories of the public library by filling in a product list with boxes ranging from S to XL for size and just handing it to a member of staff to be able to take home my requested item (WHOOPEE!).
Men can only experience full stops not periods because they are not capable of menstruating and never will be unless genetic makeup is so radically altered that they in future come out of the womb with front bits at the back and back bits at the front or different bits entirely or, much more rationally, do not come out of the womb at all but a test tube in Wuhan.
Yes folks, the world HAS gone mad and we are now drowning not waving in a sick, sad sea of offensive postmodernist trans radical feminist claptrap designed to demonize the penis and everything that it represents (new life), keeping us captive in an altered adversarial universe specifically designed so that black lesbians and trans people can get revenge on male pale stale gammons like me now having to say nothing about the gratuitously hideous takeover of our personal spaces by political virtue symbols, unexploded bombs and weapons of mass destruction like period panties which offend against our very identity while corroding and corrupting community cohesion and social structure.
And while society declines and descends into decadent and depraved delusions which defy science and faith and we stay silent because we have now lost before we start, our political class sends out all the wrong signals.
Johnson, a stereotypical masculine male, is now public enemy number one not just for being male pale stale gammon but for observing rules in an emotionally literate and human-centred way like we always used to before COVID-19 elf and safety fascism gave puritans like Hatty an opportunity to turn witchfinder general and humiliate offenders with relish as if they were consorters with the devil fomenting wicked and vile brews in giant cauldrons deep in the woods when all they were doing was reaching over that woman at Waitrose to get a can of beans or (horror of horrors) having a drink with others.
“Burn the witch, burn the witch” these puritans used to shout manically when some local wife admitted to a bit on the side with the innkeeper while the villagers eagerly and enthusiastically constructed a bonfire on the village green and sharpened their tongues for more vindictive viciousness when the corpse turned black and crispy.
“Order, Order” cried Goody Harperson at odd moments like an old faded stage veteran as if there was widespread disorder in the room provoked, no doubt, by the big bad beast in front of them. There was no disorder and there was no need to insist on an oath being taken as this was not a criminal hearing.
In the 2010-15 Parliament, the Home Affairs Committee has chosen to take evidence under oath in respect of its inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. Another well-known example in the current Parliament was when the Public Accounts Committee administered the oath to the General Counsel and Solicitor to the Inland Revenue. This approach was criticised by another former Clerk of the House, Sir Malcolm Jack, in a lecture (Parliamentary Privilege: a dignified or efficient part of the Constitution? 29 March 2012) following his retirement. He said:
I do not think that that action was reasonable. Again let me be clear: I understand what the Committee is trying to do – elucidate the sometimes murky details of government spending – but if it really wants to pick a fight, that should ultimately be done with the Minister not his civil servants, the only exception being in the case of Accounting Officers who are directly personally responsible for their actions.
Yet in spite of this, the power remains. Thus, rather than simply a theatrical flourish for the cameras, the issue of evidence under oath before committees might merit some further consideration.
To call the committee of privileges a kangaroo court would be cruel to kangaroos. Indeed, this was a court which had effectively announced its verdict before hearing the evidence and its members duly did not ask open questions to elicit information given in a spirit of candour and openness so we could fully understand and learn but instead asked closed questions and lead like Rumpole on an off day at the Old Bailey, relishing their chance to take the moral high ground again.
Johnson, his thinning hair above his ill-fitting suit, gesticulated with both hands in a typically masculine way using chopping and swaying motions like a sumo wrestler, seemed to disappear in front of our eyes as if in readiness to announce at a later date that he didn’t know it was a committee he had attended in case anyone accused him of some new transgression which might have transpired at that very committee.
Guilty as charged for being male pale and stale and reeling from a choreographed going-over with committee members competing to stick the boot in again and again, this dreadful and debased spectacle did nothing to restore our faith in masculinity nor in politics. In fact, it was yet another nail in the coffin of both.
Mentioning Sue Gray – the chief inquisitor who has now scandalously cosied up to Sir Keir Starmer, casting a shadow over the legitimacy of the inquiry and, of course, the system itself – and emphasising that there was nothing covert or shameful about the gatherings during COVID-19 was his best tactics and, may ultimately save him from further humiliation.
I was left wondering why Hatty did not ask him if period products were available in the gents toilets at 10 Downing Street during COVID-19, if not, why not, how long was the toilet without period products and how much he might regret it if he did not ensure they were provided.
Safe spaces for trans people are now hugely important but where are the safe spaces for male pale stales?
WHERE’S OUR JASE?
RADIO Wales’s phone-in show is usually hosted by Jason Mohammad, a Muslim Cardiff boy with mixed race heritage who has learnt the Welsh language and regularly uses it in his broadcasting in Wales, some of which has concentrated on racial tension in his native suburb of Ely, where race riots broke out in 1991 when he was a boy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Mohammad
Our Jase was stood down this morning and the show presented by Oliver Hides who listened to a procession of angry callers lambast Gary Lineker for comparing our illegal immigrant policy to 1930s Germany. BBC Wales chose to replace Jason because he joined a band of well-paid sports staff to support the former England striker’s right to free speech by refusing to host a football show on TV so could no longer claim to be impartial. Does this mean he cannot host phone-in shows ever again?
BBC Wales had Andrew R T Davies, Welsh Conservative leader, giving his reaction on the show but, very, very oddly nobody from Welsh Labour or Plaid. I wonder why? Did they not have an official line or was nobody willing to voice it?
Let’s nail the lie that BBC Wales is in any way impartial.
This is a broadcasting corporation which now regularly gives Welsh government official lines word-for-word as part of their news stories without even asking someone in Cardiff Bay to speak or getting them to give it in person and be open to robust questioning, which its journalists have largely given up on, led for far too long by the Talfan Davies dynasty, which campaigned against Brexit and is historically linked to ancient Welsh Wales.
news/third-member-family-take-top-1823709
The direction of travel at Talfan Davies Tower, the swish new headquarters outside Cardiff Railway Station and in front of a statue of Betty Campbell, a black Tiger Bay teacher, is for even greater adherence to strict Stonewall and BLM diktats and mantras on identity, trans rights and racial discrimination.
The imposing tower standing next to the journalism department at Cardiff University in a hideously overdeveloped part of the city is likely to be a hotbed of postmodernist cultural Marxism in the future with eager beavers fresh out of Aberystwyth University inside working feverishly to amplify Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru consensus after they signed a pact.
Our Jase, a Welsh speaking Muslim from a deprived racially segregated council estate, is now a standard bearer for this wing of the nation and no longer just a broadcaster.
So….. is our Jase going to tell us where he stands on everything or just some things?
GARY’S NOT BEATING ABOUT THE BUSHMEN
GARY Lineker – who once told us that “pipe to pipe bushmen” was code for two paedophiles having sex while watching children from a shrub – is doing a fantastic job of both destroying the BBC and its licence fee AND building up support for the government’s border clampdown on illegal immigrants.
Crisps advertising star Gary is a national treasure who should keep on giving his opinions on anything and everything apart, of course, from paedophilia after he appeared on Channel 4’s Brass Eye looking earnest and parental to warn about prowling paedos in the park.
Yes, keep tweeting Gaz, you’re doing a great job, mate.
In fact, I think he should be knighted, even made director general of the BBC and immediately given a high-profile role somewhere where he can cause even more damage by bashing out his opinions randomly as if we were all waiting with bated breath for the random meanderings of the son of a Leicester market trader.
A former footballer – a sport known for its lack of morality and corporate greed – who wallows luxuriously in his many mansions enjoying a jet-setting gilded lifestyle which insures him against awkward things like having to live next door to a house in multiple occupation or a hotel housing illegal immigrants is just the person to lead on this issue.
Go on Gary, this is an open goal.
ARISE LADY ISABEL
ISABEL Oakeshott’s work to reveal the truth behind the COVID-19 lockdown when we were imprisoned in our homes, policed and denied essential goods in stores in Wales and even short journeys is an immense achievement to rank alongside Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate revelations.
Unlike many of her colleagues, she refused to collude and concur and her stubborn and principled stance to “out” the shocking truth behind some of the bizarre and baseless decisions to lock us down should earn her a title not opprobrium and disgust.
Again and again during that dystopian nightmare, I sensed that politicians were making policy up by the day or the hour based mainly on expediency and advancement after first disproportionately magnifying the real risk of death with some woefully wrong statistical forecasts and now that ultimate symbol of expediency and advancement, the odious Matt Hancock has let the cat out of the bag in messages which strip bare the whole foul and disgusting episode.
I am not and never have been a “lockdown sceptic” nor a “vaccine sceptic” in the way our lame and compromised BBC-led media have tried to mendaciously and maliciously turn the term into either evidence of mental imbalance on my part and a tendency to invest in QAnon cock-eyed conspiracy theories like faked moon landings or of far right extremism and a secret Nazi allegiance.
No, I am a lockdown and vaccine sceptic because I am naturally sceptical and inclined to approach everything politicians tell us with doubt and suspicion.
This motivated me in my own journalistic career, most vividly when I was working into the night and found that members of the political class enjoying far better pay and conditions had gone home at the end of their working day hours earlier and the more I learnt the more obvious it became that Winston Churchill’s words that the truth has to be guarded by lies is usually a de-facto reality it was my job to either reject or reveal.
But during COVID-19 we saw journalists suddenly reporting exactly what they were told without even bothering to ask for the evidence behind the decisions. Press conferences with a politician flanked on either side by a symbol of scientific and medical authority at 10 Downing Street in front of flags safely distanced from each other were entirely stage-managed, curated illusions to keep us uninformed, helpless and controlled.
And journalists herded by government like sheep into a pen to be sheared and branded simply asked what they thought they would be allowed to ask rather than what they should have asked and then demanded to have answered by creeps like Hancock.
Most notable among them was the BBC, which armed itself with “disinformation journalists” and “fact-checkers” to promote and process authoritarian orders from above and to unquestioningly and unconditionally aid and assist what was outrageous government overreach.
It started with Boris Johnson stating that he needed to level with us and that many of our loved ones would die “before their time”. Now, that is a general truth because too many people do die too young so all he was stating was a universal truth which a gullible and weak media simply accepted meant that an apocalyptic scenario of mass death would naturally follow. Nobody even pointed out to him that his words were nonsensical.
A lame, compromised and often colluding media made the mistake of “following the science” as if that were some universal truth on a tablet of stone left with the Ten Commandments by Moses when science is really only a process of proving and/or disproving things by inviting as much information as possible for scrutiny, debate and deliberation under specific rules designed to test scrupulously before arriving at a destination or conclusion. This, of course, is an ongoing, dynamic, ever changing, organic and entirely open and collegiate process because science is NOT something you follow but something you contribute to with evidence and opinion you freely give in a healthy sceptical atmosphere.
But health itself, we were told, was being threatened like never before (not true) with repeated malicious and mendacious use of the term “unprecedented” when much worse had happened earlier in history so scepticism, too, died and we were left with blind rule takers suddenly turning on anyone they perceived were breaking those rules.
The Stanford Prison experiment and Millgram’s obedience study, which saw people “execute” others with electric shocks, both highlighted just how brutal and aggressive people can be to each other when someone in authority facilitates an environment where they are able to penalise rule breakers.
My most distressing memory was of callers to Radio Wales phone-in shows repeatedly calling for much more draconian rules, regulations and punishments, especially for English people in cars or out walking harmlessly alone on the Brecon Beacons where they could do no damage.
COVID-19 unearthed and let loose some decidedly distressing and blatantly totalitarian instincts in many people and the cruelty and viciousness of that period still persists in our everyday interactions still horrifically invested in the concept of social distance to avoid deathly contagion first and foremost. That distance, in my opinion, will never be abandoned.
The WhatsApp messages reveal a string of decisions made on loose evidence with a medical and scientific hierarchy effectively in the pay of the politicians so unable and unwilling to really stand firm.
They also reveal that party political issues, most notably due to devolution and the opportunity that that gave to opposing political groups in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to alter, amend or radically change various approaches and strategies to control the spread of COVID-19 were far too high on the list of priorities and clearly were dominating the response when it should have been completely co-ordinated and co-operational.
Independent inquiries are not needed in Wales and the Westminster probe is likely to last for years and years with too much of the real truth discarded or covered in secrecy and a ring of protection put around it.
So thank you Isabel Oakeshott for doing the work your colleagues should have been doing and exposing the real truth behind the lockdown – you’re one hell of a Lady.
BORDERING ON THE RIDICULOUS
IMAGINE, if you will, an actual border between England and Wales closed for years with no exit or entry into England for us and air traffic into Wales banned from flying over English airspace.
Deranged political ideologues hellbent on Welsh independence aided by a Welsh Labour government they are cosily in bed with and abetted by a lame and dependent media spearheaded by BBC Wales ramped up the use of the word “border” along Offa’s Dyke during the COVID-19 pandemic and now regularly use the term for absolutely no good reason.
There is no border, never has been and never will be. Free movement to and from England is unfettered and totally invisible as we all carry British passports and therefore do not have to “show papers” at checkpoints or report to guards at physical barriers even and, in many respects, especially in a national emergency.
Gibraltar has a border with Spain which General Franco closed for thirteen years, keeping British citizens virtually imprisoned in their own territory. British citizens there were reliant totally on goods shipped in through sea lanes from the UK or from Morocco during that bitter battle to maintain British identity, rights and justice and the scars of that still linger menacingly on both sides.
The battle still goes on because the Spanish – eager for joint sovereignty – want the Rock just as the Argentinians wanted the Falklands but both are British with our legal and education system, language, sovereign allegiance to the monarchy and all the ancient rights and privileges which go with that.
And people who live in both have proudly and doggedly fought invaders and potential invaders over many years to maintain that, taking up arms to fight if necessary to keep their UK passports and ward off Juntas and dictators like Franco, who tried to starve the Gibraltarians into submission.
BBC Wales now use the term “border” with England routinely in news stories as if we were two entirely different and incompatible nations having to be separated for public health and safety.
This is the grim danger which Welsh people now being deliberately encouraged maliciously to think in terms of borders and lines drawn to separate Wales from England intellectually, philosophically and politically by our political and media elite need to be fully aware of.
Gibraltarians voted overwhelmingly to remain under British sovereignty in 1967. In response, Spain completely closed the border with Gibraltar in 1969 and severed all communication links. The border with Spain was partially reopened in 1982 and fully reopened in 1985 before Spain’s accession to the European community.
In the early 2000s, Britain and Spain were in negotiations over a potential agreement that would see them sharing sovereignty over Gibraltar. The government of Gibraltar organised a referendum on the plan, and 99% of the population voted to reject it. In 2008, the British government committed to respecting the Gibraltarians’ wishes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands
IT’S A PIG IN A POKE
BREXIT was never sold or marketed and the UK political class had never even properly considered, let alone planned and prepared, for building a new prosperous future for Britain as an independent country.
What that political class – which betrayed us abysmally – has left us with now, sadly, is a damage limitation exercise which broadly makes us more aware of our disadvantages and of the EU’s very obvious advantages, managing the single market they vindictively exclude us from with relish and purpose.
The reality is that the 2016 vote to leave – horrifically compromised and marred by a huge majority to remain in Gibraltar and majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland – was more a mirage in the desert.
I would not have voted Brexit if I knew how our political class would betray us, lumbering us with this increasingly compromised and corrupted divorce agreement, which sees one side get the house, the car, custody of the kids and is able to tell the other side where the borders are while that other side only gets to keep the dog and their old home brew kit and has to move back to live with their parents.
“Dear” Rishi Sunak’s sweetheart deal with the unelected Ursula Von der Leyen today sealed with the King at Windsor in a toxic teatime tryst is not a step forward but sideways with the option to go backwards later on and only what we should have had all along. All we are doing is clawing back what we had when we were members of the EU.
Crucial was the economic model for Brexit to succeed which was, broadly, dependent on the kind of low tax, small state, massive investment model proposed by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng to bring a shot in the arm for future expansion in a UK free of regulation and top down rules.
From that, future prosperity would have followed as day follows night but a broadly protectionist statist viewpoint now dominates and is legitimised by a curiously leftist Bank of England after risk of death during the COVID-19 pandemic was disproportionately magnified to make us all recipients of state aid rather than investors and entrepreneurs. Now the EU expands further while the UK contracts and there is little evidence of other European countries following our lead to cut ties.
This economic model needed to be implemented very soon after the referendum to draw a very clear line in the sand and to remodel our country in a radically different way.
The will for Brexit was broadly an English nationalist one but without the intense dislike or historical grievance of Scottish and Welsh nationalism nor the immediate sense of exciting self-determination and freedom from constraint and control a vision of independence might bring.
It was spearheaded mostly by political contrarians, market speculators, the politically excluded and disliked who perceived that they no longer had a stake in a future they disapproved of and, most effectively of all, by dynamic and decisive actors with inside knowledge of the harsh realities of business and economics motivated by growing outrage at the wanton waste and disturbing expansionist tactics of the EU and their persistent meddling in free enterprise and growth with its concomitant adverse impact on us on the High Street.
Long before that, however, politicians on the centre obsessed with compromise and continuity (partly to preserve their tickets on the gravy train) had secretly agreed to agree, but not in public. The Brexit negotiations, therefore, were never really negotiations but instead a political con trick all along.
A soft or hard Brexit was never on the Referendum ballot paper, just LEAVE and REMAIN with no clear or easily understood explanations of how either would be achieved so I took that to mean a hard Brexit but others had other ideas. If there was a second choice between hard and soft then that should have been properly offered on the ballot paper.
First, Theresa May took a broadly apologetic tone in negotiations with our European autodidacts, who knew that she was more on their side than ours so could only achieve a very soft Brexit and this, crucially, removed the momentum and political impetus immediately, leaving us defensive and weak.
Mrs May was one of the least likely leaders of a movement to strike out boldly and the apologetic tone she took at the outset has dominated throughout, effectively making us Brits party spoilers and NIMBY’s while elevating them morally and ethically always on the high ground.
Boris Johnson then had a go and being a chameleon with self interest at his very core was able to present as the wolf in sheep’s clothing with some threat and purpose to create the illusion of militancy and power. His new impetus and drive may have achieved a deal but increasingly the realities of it have been cruelly exposed.
This was a movement with momentum but lacking in proper purpose and a methodical, co-ordinated and connected vision for future prosperity we could all buy into and have a stake in and all led by enthusiastic and energetic teams of visionaries and schemers.
We voted for future prosperity but the politicians have given us a pig in a poke.
HELL HATH NO FURY NOW
THE SNP’S battle to elect a successor after Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation highlights religious faith and political conviction are now at war with each other as the two favourites will have to jettison or deny strictly-held beliefs in order to get on.
Finance chief Kate Elizabeth Forbes is Wee Free with strict sacred Presbyterian God-fearing Sabbath beliefs, like only one man and one woman can be joined in holy matrimony and sex outside marriage is forbidden and NHS minister Humza Haroon Yousuf is the SNP’s first south Asian Muslim currently fasting and with equally if not more strict views against gay marriage, sex and trans ideology.
But Kate, born in Ross and Cromarty in 1990 to a couple who ran a small business, and Humza, born in 1985 in Glasgow to south Asian immigrants, find themselves battling to lead Britain’s most progressive, postmodernist, social justice theory BLM political party with increasingly more radically anti-religious, or at the very least, unsympathetic and morally incompatible basic policies on sex and morality.
So is strongly-held personal faith and belief, now, a positive impediment or barrier to progress in all areas of life and are you likely to face discrimination, censorship and policing in the workplace?
Our politicians appear to be setting a lead by praying on some days of the week in churches and mosques alongside partisan patriarchal puritans held together by strong moral and ethical guidelines forbidding liberal and permissive behaviour while on other days pontificating in political chambers alongside postmodernist radical feminist progressives hellbent on smashing up all Biblical and Islamist fundamentals on personal behaviour to establish a moral free-for-all.
And, of course, many thousands of fundamentalist faith-based believers in Christianity and Islam as well as other different faiths are now fighting to maintain their dignity while battling to somehow operate successfully and healthily in work environments where there are glaring irreconcilable differences between their traditionalist paternalistic approaches and radical feminist postmodernist ones currently dominant and in charge of HR.
The Free Speech Union spent most of its time in 2022 defending some of these people branded “hateful and harmful” for their gender critical views or refusal to accept Stonewall diktats on LGBTQ+ inclusivity and diversity.
FSU communications officer Freddie Attenborough mentions one in this:
Karen Sunderland is suing her former employer after falling victim to ‘offence archaeology’. In 2018, when Karen was a Conservative candidate in the local elections, iNews dug up some tweets she’d posted in 2017 and managed to get her suspended by the party. The tweets reflected her sincere belief that aspects of Islamic doctrine are illiberal and unfair to women.
Four years later, when Karen was embarking on a new career, someone tipped off her employer about this episode and she was fired. Karen believes her comments were protected political speech and her dismissal was unfair and discriminatory. Her claim makes two important legal arguments.
First, her dismissal was either directly or indirectly because of her belief in conservatism, a belief that should be protected by the Equality Act 2010. Establishing that conservatism is a protected belief would bring balance to the law: there is case law protecting democratic socialism, but no equivalent protections for its right-wing counterpart. If she succeeds in winning this argument, the judgement would protect employees with conservative views which, while wholly lawful, are often thought to be offensive to HR officers.
Second, Karen argues that she was dismissed because of her belief in freedom of speech. In short, free-thinkers attract controversy and always have – and employers who put rigid speech codes in place are disproportionately affecting those who believe in free speech. A finding that freedom of speech is a protected belief would give legal protection to other employees who manifest that belief by speaking their minds and testing received wisdom.
Karen’s trial begins on 28th March. She is being represented by barrister Francis Hoar, acting on a direct access basis. Francis is one of England’s best barristers when it comes to freedom of speech cases and party-political matters: in 2021 he published In Protection of Freedom of Speech, with a Foreword by Lord Sumption.
TRANS BATTLE OF BRITAIN
THE Free Speech Union – a safe haven for those who always say what they think rather than always think what they say – spent 33 per cent of its legal time defending members in trans rows last year.
Thomas Harris, FSU director of data and impact, said at a meeting in Birmingham that a team of five were dealing with 50 new cases a month from people censored, cancelled, facing disciplinary action or who have been sacked for expressing their views.
A third of their legal case work in 2022 was to defend people accused of anti-trans views or who were expressing gender critical ideas and beliefs.
They have dealt with 2,000 cases so far and grown in membership to nearly 11,000 members.
Educational and creative sectors with “sensitivity readers” squashing and censoring content are the main area of business currently, said Mr Harris.
He advised people to “draw the emotion out of the narrative and just jot down the facts” if they felt wronged and needed legal assistance.
The mental impact on people of being cancelled is also being tackled by the FSU with access to counselling and a legal advisory team.
Free speech champions at universities are being considered, work with the NUS as well as expansion in regional networks throughout the UK.
GARRY W GIBBS 