What Makes Capitalism Work : Make Low Paid Work Seem More Attractive - Privatise NHS, Education - Reduce Real Value of Benefits- 1982 Cabinet Report -

What makes Capitalism work?

Update September 30th 2022.

"Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, has already announced plans to cut benefits to encourage more people into the job market, saying that this was part of the government’s plan to “make work pay” by not allowing people to rely solely on welfare as their main form of income."

This is the strategic stance of the English Ruling Elite, the Aristocracy, the Land owners and the Corporate Bosses and their Shareholders.

Their strategy is to remove state provided social and economic support in order to drive people into low paid work. This planning involves privatisation of NHS, Education and Social Care, keeping wages low and undermining democratic regulation of Industry and shared commons monopolies. 

All excuses will be made, in spite of evidence of harm. Removing these three elements on their own is creating poverty in order to extract more wealth from workers. Socialism is to be destroyed as an 'enemy'.

The most brief analysis of socialism is that it is designed to abolish poverty by regulating the power of the Oligarchy using the means of the Legislature.

In practice it is 'Nudge' (introduced by Cameron, previewed by The Work Capability Assessment).  Or, more harshly, withdrawing social support to herd poor people into a situation designed entirely to maximise Wealth Extraction aka shareholder returns, irrespective of the harms it will cause, (raw sewage from Chicken Factories destroying entire river systems, polluting our shores), all the while well aware of those harms. It is brutal and purely for the purpose of Wealth Extraction. Psychopathy runs through the corridors of power in England. Lies, gaslighting, bullying, hate campaigns and grift.

In this blog I am examining a 1982 Cabinet long-term policy discussion paper, because it indicates a 40 year political operation, in incremental steps, to privatise social programs, from NHS to Education, Water to Energy and much else besides. It also gives an insight into the thinking and the sense of entitlement to Rule within the English Ruling Class and illustrates how they view ordinary people as people who can be manipulated by how the Government sets the circumstances within which we live. Nudge has evolved to pushing people over an economic and social cliff.

Looking at attitudes towards poverty, I found this article from 2016, "Is poverty in the UK in 2016 caused by employment, habit or circumstance?" prepared by the New Policy Institute, which explores those attitudes as they stood in 2016. It draws on some details of a survey of poverty carried outlined in a Survey of Poverty in East London : Labour and Life of the People Charles Booth (1889) Source

"The day after we published Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2016, Indy Bhullar, curator for Economics and Social Policy at LSE library, shared this fascinating excerpt from Charles Booth’s famous survey of the East London poor, first published in 1889. He shared it because the percentage of ‘very poor’ households categorised as being in ‘great poverty’ by Booth due to having insecure, irregular and poorly paid work was the exact same proportion of people in poverty in the UK in a working family in 2016: 55 per cent"

"Booth’s belief that some poverty is attributable to laziness (‘idleness’) or immoral habits (‘drunkenness’ and ‘thriftlessness’) also resonates very clearly today. The circumstance of being in poverty (especially if you receive any working-age social security benefits) is taken as a sign by much of the media, political establishment and the general public to be a sign that you are feckless and lazy. Problems relating to addiction, from substance misuse to smoking are still viewed by many as ‘bad habits’, as a recent proposal from a CCG in Yorkshire to limit surgeries for smokers highlights.

While Booth referred to illness, disability and family composition as ‘circumstances’, many of the policies of the last five years- from the increased scrutiny of people receiving disability benefits to the limit that only two children per family will be eligible for support through Universal Credit and Tax Credits from next year- show that what Booth termed ‘circumstance’ are increasingly seen as bad ‘habits’ which must be quashed.

There are fundamental problems with attempting to draw a line between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. We need to ask ourselves what price, both financially and ethically, we are willing to pay as a society in the service of this paternalistic view of the poor.  In 2015/16, 93 per cent of JSA sanctions that were reviewed were overturned- this is just one of the many indications that mechanisms within our current system for separating the ‘deserving’ from the ‘undeserving’ are applied in contradictory and inconsistent ways. Is it worth significant public money being spent on gatekeeping to ensure no one with ‘bad habits’ is benefitting from our public safety net?  Is the possibility that someone ‘undeserving’ may get support from our social security system really worth other people who are disabled, raising a young child alone, or unable to find work suffering?"

The fundamental question is this - is the suffering of so many people a harm that can be avoided, and if it is not being avoided who deems that harm worth it, and why?

~ Pdf file of the 1982 Cabinet Report : 30 pages, carefully typed out, photographed. Take a look. It's informative. Instructive even. More about that later. Kew Archive Location CAB 184/628 (Available to view at Kew, not available online)
~
A Guardian report on the release of the Cabinet Discussion Paper, in 2012, under the 30 years rule.
~
W.E Du Bois is much respected as an influential writer and thinker, of some wisdom. These are his words.
~ “We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires, but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can [and] do read worthwhile books.”

W. E. B. Du Bois - 1868 - 1963 ~ “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.”
― Aneurin Bevan ~

Topical Images indicating Westminster Ruling Class policy influencers:

Map of raw Sewage Release permits voted for recently by Conservative and Unionist Party MPs; Effluence People reacted with anger when the Tory party voted to allow raw sewage release in to rivers and onto coastline. They may yet turn the tide. #Turdreich

.

The point being made in 1982 at the Cabinet Office level: Influence
Poverty levels of State assistance and the social deprivation that acknowledged as directly linked to petty crime, ill-health, bad nutrition and much else besides as a causation.
~

Cheering the passage of a 2015 Budget that maintained poverty levels of low wages, and sub-poverty levels of State Assistance to unemployed, disabled and other vulnerable citizens. 

Nonsense "Universal Basic Income would disincentives worker to take up jobs, and anyway, Universal Credit, the system I created, would be much better suited".  Iain Duncan Smith

Consequences (DWP staff admit psychological abuse of claimants, able, disabled and vulnerable) UN Report - 120,000 excess deaths 2010 - 2019 largely among vulnerable Universal Credit claimants. Poverty is a chronic stressor, and it has a huge health impacts on it's own, eg recent report on adverse birth outcomes, how poverty affects children's health, is a major factor, for millions of people in the UK. 5th Richest Country in the world, they tell us. We see very little comfort in that thought, the way things are.

Another nonsense that has caused a lot of harm is the Work Capability Assessment, introduced in 2005.

'let's get you into work, then shall we? It's for your own good, you know.' This attitude emerges from both Conservative and Labour Parties (apart from people such as Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbot, Richard Burgon, Zara Sultana et al.) aligned with the establishment Civil Service Aristocrats, people like old Robert Armstrong. The establishment are behind the scenes. Class system prevails.

~

Affluence - what does a multi-millionaire understand about living in poverty? 

2021 - By removing the £20 uplift, poverty will increase among the 6 million claimants of Universal Credit. 40 percent of these claimants – over two million people - are in work

Quite a lot as it happens, and he just doesn't care much. That is the problem. That lack of concern for the welfare of ordinary people, the low aged and the poor.

Sunak reduces real value of benefits, increases support for Wealth Extraction.
~

There's a pandemic underway and Government demands that we keep on shopping and clubbing. Keep on working for the economy. The false dichotomy of a conflict between the people's health and the Economy is driven by the desire to extract wealth and enhance power. The people's health is quite clearly not a priority when we are seeing close to 100,000 cases of infection daily.

There's a lot of PR involved in all of this. Selling the product, (it's like flu, it doesn't affect children, they would have died anyway) making the sale determines elections more than does policy well  explained and thus accurately understood by the electorate.

Marketing
The world of marketing is predicated on the ability to manipulate people's emotion and perception in order to make a sale.

Consumers can be manipulated by availability, price, presentation, bias, vulnerability, 'personal choice' or by restrictions. (price increase, scarcity).
A population of consumers can be manipulated by availability, price, presentation and bias, vulnerability, 'personal choice' or by 'restrictions', (price increase, scarcity).

Workers can be manipulated into accepting just above poverty wages by lowered levels of social support programs, privatised health care and education, and much else besides, availability, price, presentation and bias, vulnerability, 'personal choice' or by 'restrictions', (price increase, scarcity). Nudge has been around for a long time indeed!
Is this a key understanding of why Power invested in the Ruling Class entitlement likes consumerism so much? Because consumer social behaviour can be more readily 'nudged'? And if you can change behaviour there, without the targets noticing it, then you can change behaviour anywhere. Without the targets understanding what is being done to them.

The Story of Stuff : Consumerism's origins
Consumerism is undermining our environment, our social systems : bookmark this 20 minute video, because it speaks eloquently and accurately of when consumer culture was birthed, and why. And who benefits the most.

Keep buying our stuff!

Do the Ruling Class understand the individualism of the consumer, and the isolation, the addiction, the disempowerment that develops with that addiction,  and how that assists in the the political dissolution of organised workers that consumerism amidst real poverty seems to inculcate?
Did they already know this in the 1960s?
Here's a recent find, for me,  saw a reference to it in a tweet. The Paper I mentioned above.

The 1982 Cabinet Report 
Long term plans, a few words to start the ball rolling. This memorandum was released to public viewing under the 30 year rule. The original sits in the Kew Archives.

A document prepared in September 1982 for the Cabinet, discussing long term policy, including topically enough, privatisation of the NHS.   They had just 'won' the Falklands War.

I have some of my own insight to offer, having read the paper twice.

What I see here.

The report was written by a senior civil servant, the late Robert Armstrong, an aristocrat by birth, inheritance and award.

What I see here is that it is that the politicians operate as the public front, they shield the Establishment ruling class within the Civil Service, who direct and influence the the politicians as much as the corporate billionaires do.

The public facing politician's function is, in part, to take the popular ire 'on the chin' in the theatre we call The News, to protect The System, safe in the knowledge that their pension and future wealth is secured and that custodial sentencing is not likely, under any circumstances, no matter how egregious their behaviour.

The adulation of the monarchy preserves the status of the aristocracy, as a political power base rooted in the class system, and it maintains the power of the aristocracy through the undemocratic House of Lords.  Take away the monarchy and the House of Lords crumbles. Lords and robber barons dominate our political situation.
Here is a brief report from the Health Policy forum on the NHS part of  Cabinet Document. 
https://navigator.health.org.uk/theme/thatcher-cabinets-private-consideration-radical-reform-nhs
Documents disclosed in December 2012 revealed that Thatcher's Cabinet had considered radical reform of the NHS. The Central Policy Review Staff prepared a paper for a Cabinet meeting on 6 September 1982, outlining longer-term funding options of public services.
The Cabinet considered introducing private health insurance and increasing or extending user charges. The Cabinet paper suggested that some of the options reviewed in the paper would represent the end of the NHS for the majority of the population:
'Even though a free state service would be retained for the uninsured and possibly for the non-working population, for the majority the change would represent the abolition of the NHS. To save substantial sums involves raising existing charges and breaking unpopular ground in three areas - imposing charges (eg for drugs) on patients who are now exempt (eg children); charging for seeing the general practitioner; and for hospital treatment.'
Pdf file of the document, 30 pages on carefully typed paper, photographed. Take a look. It's informative. 

The Theme~Repeated throughout in this Cabinet Paper of 1982 is the concept of  using gradual withdrawal of State support on all measures that effectively abolish poverty, to 'reduce real value of benefits' and to do so as a behavioural lever, and to mask it in the language of 'saving expenditure' in order to protect Wealth Extraction.
To give people who might be in need, and on benefits, an incentive to "see the attraction of low paid work". 
Who needs low paid workers? 
Who extracts the most real value from low paid workers? Exactly. The Boss earns more by not doing any cleaning work. The cleaner gets just enough to get by, no more. More for the boss. Maybe the cleaners children will get a better job, but not all of them, They need low paid workers, and they  desire to maintain some visible poverty as a behavioural incentive. The system could be set to eliminate poverty, low wages. It's a systemic problem.
Then there's this : the relaxed sense of entitlement to impose privatisation, for profit, to render democracy safe for power by treating citizens as consumers, rather than State provision, free at point of use, accessible to all, citizens as persons, people.
The social programs that abolish real and relative poverty also include support to maintain clean water, cheap energy, mail, communications, rent capped at %  or ratio of income, social housing, education, public transport, roads and rail, health care, old age care, care for disabled and other vulnerable groups. 
The poorer you are the more likely you will face a need you cannot meet on your own, and find yourself stuck in a pretty horrible place, as a human being, a person. Think about what Health Care costs causing bankruptcy and poverty means. Think then of not being able to access further quality health care because of that poverty. Think of the slow suffering of the many, many people faced with real poverty and chronic disease. Horrible, terrifying, precarious.

Using intentional restriction of support as a behavioural modification utility.

here is a comment from page 7, paragraph 16 :

"Some of the options would make some people word off. But it is very difficult - sometimes impossible - to effect changes in the role of Government without making some people worse off, particularly where public expenditure and hence taxation are involved. It is therefore necessary to accept that possibility, whilst always recognising that it is the proper function and duty of the Government to ensure that no-one is made so much worse off that he or she is subjected to undue hardship.

If poverty is thought of as a relative condition, adverse redistributive effects become hard to accept. If, however, it is recognised that there is such a thing as an absolute level of poverty from which people should be protected. and that poor people should share in the increasing wealth of the country, but perhaps mot in full proportion, then some redistributive effects can be accepted - as they must be if the amount of wealth for distribution is to increase."

In other words in order to maintain poverty as a whip, as a nudge, the system will need to offer just enough support to people to avoid destitution, just enough support to make low paid work attractive and they will use media to portray that choice to work as being 'honourable'  and that all of this subterfuge and rigging is essential to the continuation of that which generates their Wealth.

The tone between 'redistribution' and 'distribution' of wealth is worth noting.

Poverty as an incentive to push the population into work. Sado-Monetarism.

Poverty level benefits to force people to accept low paid jobs.
"The reduction in the real value of benefits for those of working age would increase incentives to work and increase the attraction of low paid work."
That would cause few problems: 
"There would be an increase in real poverty and the current problems of social deprivation would be worsened (crime, poor care of children, illness from cold homes and poor nutrition."
Note they make no mention of the emotional and psychological stresses and chronic mental health of the people affected by poverty levels of support...
How it effects the people who must subsist on so little, how it afflicts their minds and hearts and bodies, as persons. That metric informs Corbyn and most decent people's naturally benign disposition. Most people are decent enough to recoil at that image, the suffering person, suffering because of Government policy that is designed to support the extraction of wealth.
That humane empathy is absent in this document.

Shunak is operating the old tradition to the tee!
The writer, Robert Armstrong, a life long civil servant, and very much a member of the ruling class, mentions in the document the problems they'd have to spend more on, the symptoms of increased real terms poverty - the social, community level stressors of poverty and the behavioural change as poverty impacts peoples lives and causes harm.  They acknowledge that poverty causes low level criminality, neglect and disease.
Because it's a money thing. The person at the other end of this power transaction is not in the room. They are not valued.
Take away a little slice of support at a time via reform to nudge to citizen along a behavioural track, based on a deeply biased mis-understanding about people and our needs... as in rating and relating to people as economic units, as workers in the industries the ruling class own, and their children as future workers, whose work is needed in order to increase wealth 'redistribution', which as we see with Shunak's Autumn Budget 2021.
Less support for the poor, more support for the very, very rich.
Cash flow into the coffers of the billionaires. That money tree remains, always.
Government's role in the mind of  The Owner Ruling Class is to funnel State revenue - currency, taxation, subsidies into the Wealth Extraction system, it's job is to legislate to protect that Wealth Extraction, and it is to never cede that legislative power to workers. Make concessions if we must, but never cede power.

Here's an excerpt on the NHS from the planning discussion document.

"As living standards rise, individuals are likely to demand more and better health care. There is some social gain from improved health care, but mostly it is a matter of individual wants and choices (income-elastic demand). Hence it is arguably not appropriate for public finance, and puts a strain on the Exchequer by distorting choices and shifting the burden from the consumer to the taxpayer. Public health services also tend to be led by the producers rather than consumers.
It is therefore worth considering whether over a period the provision health care for the bulk of the population could be shifted from the State to privately owned and run medical facilities. Those who could not afford to pay would then have their charges me by the State, in the form of rebate or reimbursement. As an exception to the general rule, it might be judged more efficient for the stay to provide institutional care for long stay patients (mentally handicapped, elderly) who clearly could not afford to contribute.
This would mean leaving to individuals how far they insured against facing high costs of health care, and it would be important to monitor the growth of private health insurance over the intervening period.
Given that the State would in the last resort meet the costs of necessary health care, they could be a danger of under-insurance by  a large part of the working population, and thought might therefore have to be given to a scheme for compulsory private insurance.
If ministers accept the broad concept as a longer-term objective, they will want to judge more immediate health options as steps along the road. In particular they will want an examination of how far the switch from public to private provision of health care could be promoted, and whether there are an institutional changes, within the NHS, that could make this switch easier.
1. Increased and extended health charges
2. Private Health Insurance."
The document discusses Social Care. 

Then the document looms over privatisation of Education, page 4, paragraph 11, discussing the move towards wholesale privatisation, slowly, slowly, starting promoting more private schools, reducing State spending on State Schools. 1 982.

Fast Forward to 2021

https://www.tes.com/news/heads-condemn-dfe-plan-cut-school-improvement-fund

"Plans to remove a £50 million school improvement fund for councils will be seen as a “thinly veiled attempt to turn up the heat” on maintained schools to convert to academy status, a headteachers' union has said this afternoon.
The Department for Education has launched a consultation today on removing the local authority School Improvement Monitoring and Brokering Grant.
Instead, the plan would be for councils to fund all of their school improvement activity by taking a slice of funding directly from school budgets."
Defence: Annexe K, page 29
A warmer discussion in tone. We have money for the Military. Military is growing. Maybe we can persuade NATO to increase the mandatory spend. Background is that Defence spending was increasing in real value and budget had to find ways maintain 'real value'. 
Previously they were discussing cuts to social programs as incentives in to work. Now they are the discussing the impact of 'an absence of real growth in the defence budget, as against the increase of complexity and cost of major equipment, would entail a reduction in United Kingdom Military Capabilities."
No cuts to their real value budget, to incentivise the military into peace, then?

Cuts to social support designed to nudge behaviour by the stress of real poverty.
Would eschewing maintaining an expeditionary army incentivise a country to behave more like a peacemaker? Perish that thought, now!

One rule for the Rulers, a swath of rules and sanctions for us. To get us to behave. Behaving didn't get the Unions far in the 1890s onwards, that's for sure.

Misinformation, preventing manipulative political grooming.
It is maddening how disruptive Oligarchy funded think tanks and their proxy movements, led by guile and grooming, cry 'Freedom' for all the elements that support the long term strategic planning of the Ruling Class thinking they are doing the exact opposite.
The opposite of that strategic operation is grass roots cohesion, which itself is based on accurate understanding of the situation. awareness of how division is encouraged, how emotions are exploited, how lack of information can be a vulnerability and a curiosity to see that we the wage earning ordinary folk build an equitable culture amongst ourselves that translates into votes and healthier legislators. 
How to make government safe for people?

So I have been thinking many years on this - as have many, many others, and far more education and knowledgeable than I could ever be. I set out in 2017 a metric for healthy governance.

"I think of Healthy Governance as being focused on the practical realities of administering a communities shared resources for the equal benefit of all members of that community. 

Healthy governance sets the context of governance as operating within as a shared responsibility of duty of care for one another.  In that regards healthy governance has to be evidence led at all times. Opinion and belief are insufficient to meet the responsibility of duty of care.

Healthy governance sets the global context of governance as nurturing, caring for and stewarding of the habitat within which the community lives and from which that community draws living materials and other resources."

Now consider the policy choices of this Westminster Government during the past 20 months on managing the national epidemic and the global pandemic, in the light of all of the above, and perhaps some of what that have and continue to do makes more sense - "let the Herd take it on the chin, protect the Hoard."

In my view there's a degree of cruelty and callous recklessness in all of this that is deeply, profoundly uncivilised bordering on sado-monetarism. The gaslighting and lying to maintain that trajectory is a huge red flag.

I know that the only way for the people to counter this is to build a united grass roots front, from  a shared sense of human solidarity, as persons, from the poorest to the most comfortable that elects decent men and women into our legislatures.

Stephen Reicher on why elimination of community transmission prevents surges, lockdowns and restrictions - precisely because the protocols when carefully set, give the population more choice, more freedom.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/28/covid-measures-choice-restrictions-science-freedom-infections-safe

"What we need right now, to supplement the vaccine rollout, is a set of protections and support measures to reduce the harm inflicted by Covid and relieve pressure on the NHS. In order to make that clear, politicians and journalists need to reframe the way they talk about the pandemic. Stop asking: will the public stick to the restrictions? Instead ask: will the government protect and support the public to keep one another other safe?

The real irony is that, by conflating protection with lockdown and refusing to implement the protections necessary to bring infections down, keep people safe and relieve the pressure on the NHS, this increases the likelihood, as Sage noted this month, that more draconian measures will be needed in the future.

In the end (and as we saw last year), the true lockdown party would be the 'do nothing' party."

Mr, Reicher is on point, and utterly correct.

What say you?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Vaccines are not the way out - suppressing community transmission of the virus is the way out, it's simple enough. Complex to deliver.

Good advice.

Long read, this is a review of sorts, and here's the basic points : Vaccines are not the way to end the epidemic nationally nor the pandemic globally. Our Government policy is causing harm. Misinformation is now on public domain News Media standing as 'opinion' and being held equal to scientific, epidemiological and public health best practice, and trying to undermine trust in the evidence. Help!

More good advice.

WHO , The World Health Organisation have been advising Governments since last year, 2020, that reliance on the Vaccines is a massive epidemiological error - the need to stop the spread among the community remains the obvious priority for a few good reasons. We need both working at peak efficiency. Everywhere. Now. Global co-operation that must be transparent.

There are multiple announcements, press and media briefings, papers and presentations where Mike Ryan and Jane Ellis and others have said repeatedly. "The Vaccines are not the way out of this Pandemic." Countries and areas must must suppress transmission from person to person in the community to quell exponential growth of the infection, beyond populations capability to treat, which leads to shutdowns.
People like Mike Ryan are serious people. He's not a corporate shill. He's not a conspiracy maker. He's public diplomat, for the worlds health organisations.
November 16 2020https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-11-vaccine-pandemic-chief.html
January 4th 2021https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-01-04/who-says-vaccines-won-t-be-enough-on-their-own-video
February 7th 2021https://www.cbsnews.com/video/top-who-official-says-vaccines-alone-not-enough-to-defeat-covid-19/
March 18th 2021https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210318142500.htm
27th June 2021https://www.livemint.com/news/india/vaccination-plus-masks-who-official-says-vaccines-not-enough-with-delta-covid-variant-11624751611704.html
July 8th 2021https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-40ac92b1-1750-4e86-9936-2cda6b0acb3f
August 21st 2021https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/who-warns-a-coronavirus-vaccine-alone-will-not-end-pandemic.html
A very good blog on the way 'Vaccine/live with the virus' compares to 'eliminate community transmission' as strategies in terms of health, economy, civil liberties and societal cohesion.
August 26 2021https://gowans.blog/2021/08/26/as-an-anti-pandemic-tool-vaccines-have-turned-out-to-be-more-mirage-than-oasis/

"All countries examined here have seen the number of deaths per million increase over the same period last year, despite Fauci’s promised arrival of the vaccine cavalry. (China and New Zealand, are exceptions. Deaths per million in these two countries have remained at zero.)

Of the eight countries, the United States has the highest number of deaths per million, up 19 percent over this time last year, though half the population is fully vaccinated. The calvary has arrived, and more people are dying.

New Zealand, South Korea, and Australia, which have pursued a Covid elimination strategy based on public health and social measures,  have comparatively low numbers of deaths per million, and at the same time, comparatively low levels of vaccination—half that or less of the US rate, and many times less than the rates for Canada, the UK, and Israel. Even so, their deaths per million are much lower than those of the highly vaccinated countries.

China, which is peerless in pandemic control, has pursued a zero-Covid strategy along with a robust vaccination campaign."

The Elimination countries do better, on every measure.

I have been writing about this through out, arguing the case - I understood from the beginning that elimination of community transmission, from person to person, depriving the virus of it's natural habitat is both simple and complex. I understood that 'living with the virus' means a cycle of opening  and shutting down society.

Simple is the basic fact that when the virus cannot find a new host, it dies out.
The complex is that to do this a Government and population have to work together.
That means they must understand the situation, accurately. NO misinformation.
That means they must trust in each other. Can you imagine? A metric for Healthy Government?
Complex means meeting the many different needs presenting, as effectively as possible, in order to support a population taking the steps to stop the spread.
We know a lot now on how to stop the spread in the community, after 19 months of practice and we have seen two strategic variations.

How did we end up here, again?
The two approaches
a) rely on vaccine to limit damage, allow some spread, surfing surges, people take it on the chin, economy is 'protected', wait a while, infections start to surge, ooops!, here we are again, leads to shutdowns.

b) reduce transmission to the minimum, remain vigilant, devote required resources to the mission, stablise the economy, prevent out of control surges leading to Lockdowns.
Now look around the world and see who is doing what, and how is that going?

Even the BBC put out an article reflecting the WHO advice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-40ac92b1-1750-4e86-9936-2cda6b0acb3f - 
BBC July 2021 report lays out the basics. Vaccines are not the way out of this epidemic and this is a 'here is why' kind of article, citing numerous scientists and studies. It's reasonably accurate.
So what!?
Today, 25th October, 2021, that is all forgotten, as the BBC announces continuing policy of no policy change on behalf of the English misGovernment. No-one in BBC News Journalism would be so brave as to point out the obvious. Plan B is waved like a flag of hope, which the government and anti-lockdowners see and present as a surrendering flag. Some are equating another lock down with a tyranny of removed civil liberties, a citation that stirs emotional reactionary sentiment.

The current practice across the G20 is this insane attempt to continue  'living with the virus'.

In effect this amounts to leaving the virus alone, allowing it to spread, which it will do, and it will keep spreading until a lockdown has to be imposed by Law, because the impacts of the uncontrolled spread are noticeable. That line of behaviour is a dead end. It has not worked and it cannot work. 
One cannot hide people queueing outside ICU units to find a place to receive treatment.

The Government metric is so keep the dying at under that threshold, and stay quiet about long term complications for many hundreds of thousands of people, and pretend it's all groovy.
Health, Economy, Civil Liberties of the population all suffer intense distortions, mostly avoidable. Competing powers jockeying for position, profiteering, ideology and psychological recklessness are exacerbating the situation, in spite of the best efforts of a majority of the population and the medical science community.

So how did we end up here? Oh yeah - 

Meanwhile back at the office. Cabinet Office.
"Who could we not save? "
Who makes that choice? How many people drive that choice, to not save - to not avoid the avoidable harms? 
It's not just the matter of doing nothing, it is the choice not do what it would take to prevent harm, when it is largely preventable. Who are these people?

To not do what could be done.
This is a close-up of a picture Dominic Cummings posted on his Twitter feed 2020, annotated as follows: A white board display from within the Cabinet Office deliberations in March 2020. 

“65/ First sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve - shown PM Sat 14/4: NB. Plan A 'our plan' breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min. Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)... details later”

Looking at the board you can tell there are no epidemiologists, public health or social care officials involved in the discussion.

Think about that.
"WHO COULD WE NOT SAVE"
They knew they could save people, and they chose not to.
Obviously not a Public Health and Welfare motivated decision. Britain had the resources. 
For a clue to the origins of the strategic diktat we need to refer back to a victory speech given by Johnson, in Greenwich, on February 3rd, 2020.
An elective dictatorship in action. The Exceptional English Way.



This is the official transcript from Johnson's speech on February 3rd.
"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.
We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century."

Bad Science.
Here, in March 5 weeks later, Professor John Edmunds, on the inevitable policy metric of 'achieving Herd Immunity'. John is a member of SAGE, the State body that advises Government on such matters as handling an epidemic or any other mass disaster, with Science, Advice and Emergencies in mind.

Protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin. Policy is decided. This was the announcement of that strategic stance, and it did not originate in Boris Johnson's mind. This speech was meant to be victorious Brexit speech. Coronavirus was a topical addition. 
Johnson in his February 3rd 2020 Greenwich speech brazenly accused other countries and their governments of panicking, most of whom have had much less serious outcomes precisely because they did not panic.
He deliberately misrepresented the stance of those other countries that were taking elimination strategies and making them work, thus avoiding avoidable harm.

There was no call for market segregation at that time, or any since, related to the pandemic. His Government policy on COVID has been wholly medically irrational. This Governments policy has caused real and un-necessary economic damage, and vast human harm.

We witnessed where that led to. All of us. Many waves.

Johnson has failed his own commitments, disastrously.

Many waves later, Matt Hancock was eased out with a snog, and Sajid Javid left his part time job at JP Morgan Chase, and was appointed Health Secretary for the English Government.

The CDO Salesmen Calls!
Sajid Javid "We will be healthier when we open!" blagging it in the Mail on Sunday back in July. 

A CDO Salesman, repackaged as a Health Secretary, with political responsibility for the entire Health system that serves 75 million people, was himself repackaging an epidemic within a pandemic as a seasonal flu, nothing to be concerned much by. Don't 'cower' from the virus, he said. The emotional gaslighting of fear and courage. '"Buy my goods, Gov. Great investment!"

"Since Sajid Javid’s appointment as health secretary on 26 June, the UK has confirmed a further 188,538 coronavirus cases, with approximately 25,000 extra people testing positive each day. On Sunday, Javid said that the best way to protect the nation’s health was by lifting the main Covid-19 restrictions, even though this would result in a further significant increase in cases. “We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu,” he said."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/04/politics-trumps-covid-science-in-javids-push-to-live-with-the-virus
Sajid Javid claimed at the time that the case fatality rate of Covid is, with the vaccine, equivalent to influenza. It's not. Nowhere near it, and there's a whole bunch of other adverse health outcomes that his glib throwaway thought ignores. That he, in his position, could speak that way, reveals wilful ignorance at best. 

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/no-mr-javid-shouldnt-treat-21006783

A good look at what Javid said, what it means. 

As it happens, Medical best practice says we ought to treat COVID like we treat Noroviurs.

"Of course, SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – does share some characteristics with influenza viruses, which makes comparisons tempting. Around20% of people have no symptoms at all when infected with SARS-CoV-2, and many people infected with a flu virus also don’t get sick. Both viruses are prone to a lot of mutation. And with both diseases, older people and people with weakened immune systems are at a higher risk of severe illness than healthy young adults, with infections spreading rapidly in care homes, hospital wards and schools

But a lot of these traits are also shared by another germ: the norovirus. It too can be asymptomatic in some people, and mutates rapidly – different strains of norovirus have been found circulating around the same hospital during one season. In fact, as it spreads around, norovirus sometimes changes so much that standard testing kits can’t recognise versions of it that have evolved."
"Knowing what we know about these viruses, these plans should consider controlling SARS-CoV-2 more like we would norovirus than flu. With norovirus, we keep people with the infection away from others. We ask parents whose children have symptoms to keep them off school. And in hospitals and care homes, patients with norovirus are nursed separately from others, staff use PPE for protection, and surfaces are deep cleaned. Handling COVID-19 in the future should be more interventionist like this. It should be more akin to living with norovirus than the flu."

In other words, the way to live with the SARSCOV2 virus is to minimise transmission of the virus, take the steps to stop the spread of infection and disease with all available resources, creativity and kindness with adequate logistical support for the population to achieve this logical public health goal.

Remember this: The World Health Authority. WHO, have been advising all national governments that vaccines are not the way out of this pandemic, that we need elimination of community transmission. 

They ignored what was known.
It's not like Matt Hancock or Javid's Office and Department has not seen the WHO advice, at least Whitty, Valence, Harries and Van Tam must have read it through - that is the job of the Health Department, and the Departments of Social Care, Finance and Industry. Every department needs to be on this. But they are not. The British News Media are blanking the WHO, so that the population are none the wiser. Appalling.
COVID is not the flu.

A detailed look at what similar, what is different, and what is new in how COVID impacts people and populations, based on current evidence and observed reality.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30577-4/fulltext - 
"In The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Piroth and colleagues  report results of a retrospective study using data from the French national administrative database (PMSI), which includes discharge summaries for all public and private hospital admissions in France. The study compared 89 530 patients with COVID-19 admitted to hospital in March or April, 2020, with 45 819 patients with influenza admitted during the seasonal influenza outbreak between December, 2018, and February, 2019. "
Big study, major differences in the two diseases on almost every measure. 

Jacob Rees-Mogg
The arrogance of the Parliamentary lounge lizard Mr. Right Honourable Rees-Mogg on Masks, and a government minister defending his stance, and flailing - source

Here he waxes lyrical about Socialist Mask Hypocrisy, and the fraternal immunity to transmission of the virus among the sitting MPs of The Conservative and Unionist Party. Arrogance, relaxed arrogance.

Here's a tweet showing a Government Care Minister defending Rees-Mogg's dismissal of masks.

"Adil Ray - Jacob Rees-Mogg said if you know someone you can't catch Covid from them.. is that the new advice?

Gillian Keegan(care minister) - That's not technically right

Adil Ray - So Jacob Rees-Mogg was wrong?

Gillian Keegan - No, he's right " 

#GMB pic.twitter.com/en5IcnWDXr

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) October 22, 2021

Majid Nawaz
On Saturday and Sunday October 23 and 24, Majid Nawaz on LBC was promoting misinformation in a diatribe against lockdowns, masks, vaccine passports. Full on. He was citing papers, studies, claims and presenting long twitter threads with all the misinformation, as the definitive science on each and every matter. CRG Radio.
It was shocking.
I recall one caller, who claimed she believed she would be discriminated against because she could not take a vaccine, for medical reasons, and therefore she felt the passport would discriminate against her. Nawaz didn't stop to think that there would be exceptions built into any legislation to work around those who, for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated.
He just piled in : "Yes, it's being in a oppressed minority, hmmm..." or words to that effect.
I spat my coffee out, for real. Then I laughed a full belly laugh. He can't doing that, can he?
He was. That was just awful, reckless public radio - exacerbating misinformed opinion in order to enrage the audience.

Masks work :
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2021/10/15/do-face-masks-work-look-more-than-two-dozen-scientific-studies/ - Do face masks help reduce spread of the infection?

141 studies, peer reviewed studies. They do. No question.

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius/song/32749437-wear-a-mucking-fask - Ballad for Mask Wearers!

Lockdowns?
Lockdowns do not cause more harms than they prevent  - what causes lockdown is uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community - more precisely is that allowing spread to get out of control is what causes more harm, not least because it generates repetitive, cyclical harm and is avoidable. Lockdowns are a last resort to halt exponential increase in infection.

To allow the virus to spread entirely out of control , until everyone is infected is inhumane.
Elimination of community transmission avoids lockdowns.
https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653
Different Bias News 23 October 2021 : Superbly clear presentation, on the danger of no Plan B, C or anything else as things stand in England. Roasts Johnson and Javid. Chilling. 

The Tactic
Citing the harms caused by previous ill-advised policy to argue for worse policy is the emotional blackmail tactic the Right Wing Media are now fully, openly moving from on line micro targeting into the News Media public domain. This is insane. It is also nasty, Very, vert nasty indeed.

Remember what the WHO advice has been? Vaccines are not the way out of the pandemic stage.

As I have written above, the solution is simple, the delivery will be complex and there's really no need to make it more complicated by twisting the situation for power or economic dominance agendas.
At the very least the powerful, the Ruling Class, they could sort the situation with the Virus, and return to business as normal destroying the Earths living biome. It's too much to ask? I don't think so.

I don't actually accept that - there's no call to return to business as normal, when that normal led directly to the serious problems we are currently not dealing with very well.

In other news:

A few days ago, 291 Conservative and Unionist MPs voted to pollute our rivers, sea & land, 172 voted against it! Almost 1/3 of all MPs - 187 MPs didn't vote at all. 187 people who did not bother allowed the bill to pass. Relaxing the sphincter of  regulation on behalf of the sewage treatment industry. How power flows.

This map shows the areas where untreated sewage is being dumped into rivers and our coastlines because the costs of preventing this would eat shareholders profits, and that is 'impractical' we are told.

It is clear that allowing disease to spread is now Government policy.

~
Compost loos!
~
My song "wear a mucking fask, stop the spread, spread the love!"

#COP26 - Stay Safe, Mask Up, and co-operate with one another

MP3 Download of the song. Enjoy.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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