Vaccinated vs unVaccinated is a false dichotomy. Here's why.

First thing to make clear is that there are billions of people who don't have access to vaccines. Vaccine equity is not happening at the scale needed to protect all those people. 

Second, epidemiological and public health strategies to suppress community transmission of the virus to minimal levels are not being followed across the major developed states and that puts everyone else at risk - we have seen repeated cycles of transmission getting out of control because under the guise of 'protecting the economy' community transmission is being allowed to occur at 'low levels' - defined as not overwhelming Health Services, but allowing constant extra stress on existing Health Services - and that guarantees surges will happen and variants will emerge.

So what populations ought to be united in demanding is support to reduce the transmission in the community to the minimum, and certainly quarantine at borders to limit export/import of the virus. The techniques to do this can be supportive rather than 'draconian'. It can be done.

The vax vs unvaxxed adversarial narrative - essentially a concocted angry argument - is obscuring clarity on what needs to be done. So here's an exploration of why this matters. 

Beefs.

There's an industrial scale practice of starting endless arguments, between people imbued with a belief, opinion, bias or bigotry in order to exploit their activity.

 It is known as The Internet of Beefs.

It started out as a tactic to drive up traffic to a page that carried advertising, in order to generate income from the page. Start an argument, get believers on board, troll them, get them angry and sit back as more pile on to argue to win. 

Start an argument, divide the room.

What is a 'beef'?
 

Venkatesh Rao the creator of Ribbon Farm Website wrote really informative piece where he coined the term 'beef-only thinking.'


"You’ve heard me talk about crash-only programming, right? It’s a programming paradigm for critical infrastructure systems, where there is — by design — no graceful way to shut down. A program can only crash and try to recover from a crashed state, which might well be impossible. I came up with a term for the human version: beef-only thinking.

A beef-only thinker is someone you cannot simply talk to. Anything that is not an expression of pure, unqualified support for whatever they are doing or saying is received as a mark of disrespect, and a provocation to conflict. From there, you can only crash into honor-based conflict mode, or back away and disengage.

The connection to crash-only programming is more than cosmetic, but it will take some set-up before I can establish the conceptual bridge.

Online public spaces are now being slowly taken over by beef-only thinkers, as the global culture wars evolve into a stable, endemic, background societal condition of continuous conflict. As the Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird, the public internet is turning into the Internet of Beefs."

source: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/

Continuous conflict. Facebook algorithms that increase 'engagement' are rooted in this dynamic. Fight or flight hormone cascades drive the internal urge to win the unwinnable. Addiction patterns of behaviour becoming habitual. Rational discourse becomes almost impossible, and those who try to maintain a rational stance become exhausted. 

Many of the online arguments that rage are rooted in this practice. Brexit was an example of this practice being deployed online and in News Media in order to seed irrational divisions across the electorate. 

How rapidly the English democratic debate descended into Leave vs Remain as an endless argument largely void of rationality. How quickly previously calm folk became enraged, enervated, to the degree of poisoning familial relationships!

The Vaccinated against The un-Vaccinated against The Vaccinated.

We must protect vaccinated and unvaccinated populations equally, in order to bring this pandemic down to safe and managed levels that prevent avoidable harms. This is critically important given the inequity of global Vaccine distribution, unwillingness to share Intellectual Property rights and technology, which is rendering billions of people vulnerable to SARSCOV2, it's variants and the adverse outcomes associated with it.

Pitting one against the other is toxic and is a large part of the misinformation activity that impedes the preservation of our Right to Health within the specific context of the Pandemic.


image source: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-july-2021/ - a study of attitudes which reveals the potency of misinformation, political grooming and adversarial messaging in influencing sectors of the population, in generating lateral distrust and social incoherence, preventing social solidarity at a time when it is quite clearly needed. Question: who has the most to fear from social solidarity?


what effective suppression of community transmission of the virus using non-pharmaceutical interventions and social solidarity in a population of 1.4 billion people looks like.

Vaccinated vs unVaccinated is a false dichotomy.

First off we are all human beings, deserving of care and the preservation of our Right to Health. Secondly, the vaccinations are superb, and they do offer some reduction in helping to avoid some of the avoidable harms, but not all. Thirdly, there is no real dichotomy in being vaccinated vs not being vaccinated.

That adversarial narrative is a concoction, a logical fallacy, or at least the adversarial aspect of this narrative is a logical fallacy. 

It is part of the weaponization of words and ideas that is part of the wider political grooming operations underway.

Byline Times have published a few insightful and damning articles on misinformation networks linked to the Covid Recovery Group and The Great Barrington Declaration.

Here's why.

Given that the vaccinations were never touted as stopping transmission, only as reducing severity of symptoms, and incidence of fatalities, to function as a cushion for entire populations that reduces systemic stress to lower levels, giving us resource space. and time, to suppress the transmission of the virus in the community, locally, nationally and globally, the issue of vax vs non vax as an adversarial dynamic or narrative is a deflection of focus away from the deliberate failure to suppress transmission, and is therefore yet another way to obscure the public discourse on what is needed to manage this pandemic.

Suppression of transmission must be the global over-riding strategic protocol, because we know it damn well works. I and others have written millions of words on this, drawing from the lived experience and the available evidence. Allowing spread guarantees the emergence of unpredictable variants, some of which may result in greater harm. The only bulwark against that under the current situation is luck. We cannot afford to throw such a dice.

Mis-use of the Vaccine.

In the UK, which is where I live, (I can speak to the experience here) the Johnson regime abused or exploited the vaccine to lower hospitalisations/deaths knowing full well that their policy options enabled and allowed spread of the virus. They talked a lot about slowing the spread, they never talked about suppressing community transmission to lowest possible levels, except to dismiss it. Instead they spoke and wrote about 'acceptable; levels - which means that avoidable harms continue, at a lower yet still socially significant  rate, the '1000 deaths a week' as a 'cost-benefit rationalisation' of allowing spread to continue since July 19th.

Epidemiological recklessness. Emotional blindness.

75 seconds to describe Johnson Regimes opening up in July 2021


The point of the vaccines then, from Johnson's perspective, the perspective of those who wish to hold onto their existing almost completely hegemonic power, is to protect their power: because they sense that hospital, health care and social care systemic collapse would threaten their position. They fear that if and when public ire becomes too intense, support would evaporate and the people would demand their complete removal, to be replaced by a government of national unity tasked with suppression of community transmission (which has never been attempted yet in the UK) and so it was never about protecting the NHS, it was about protecting those in Power.

That stance is by definition an evil stance.

So when they called on us all to 'protect the NHs, save lives', they were gaslighting in full flow. It was all about them, not about us.

Certainly their concern was not about the welfare of all NHS staff, who were denied the pay raises they so clearly deserved. Certainly not about the millions of people receiving paltry state assistance.  Furlough protected the large corporate employers for the most part, 3 million small business people were excluded from financial support. Certainly their concern was not for the health and safety of all our children.

Trust.

Mike Ryan at WHO is someone I trust. He made it plain in March, April, May, June and July 2021, and ever since that the vaccines on their own were not the way out, that they were a cushion, and that the elimination or reduction to lowest possible levels of community transmission had to be the global strategy to protect whole populations, locally, nationally and globally and to start to bring an end to the pandemic. He was and is still correct. Stopping the Spread is Spreading the Love. 


Why not spread the Love?

The reason USUK and EU chose to not do elimination is because to do it you must support the population in ways that amount to Socialist policy. Using central State funding to empower local authorities to do effective elimination strategy, confronting misinformation and political grooming head on with clear, evidence based communications so that the population is clear as to what needs to be done, and why, providing financial support that enables people to isolate, businesses to stay viable via grants, furlough and other protective measures are all socialistic policies. Those who argue they have tried ignore the facts. Test and Trace is a failure, PPE provision was handed to profiteers, the virus is spreading at a significant rate, people are dying, Long Covid is afflicting millions of people. That is not a success story by any measure.

The Wealth Extraction ideologues, the Neoliberal/Free Marketeers and others detest this approach - suppression of community transmission - because it shifts power away from the Executive to the Community, away from individualism, to the collective, and they know that if a population experiences beneficial collectivism, their reign, in philosophical terms, is practically over. The NeoLiberal ideology of the Sovereign Individual competing with others would be over, finished, dealt a death blow by experience. They will never let that happen. 

We must make it happen to bring this pandemic to safe closure.

And it becomes more obvious when we understand that the same applies to climate, poverty, war and other issues- that the lived experience of working together to adapt to a problem and resolve it would inspire a huge perceptual shift, away from core individualism, (there is no such thing as society) towards collectivism. We are all in this together and we are only as safe as the least safe among us.

Democracy at it's very best is consensual collectivism

The Wealth Extractors will never cede this point, because it destroys their foundation and sense of entitlement to power. 

We are all in this together. Vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.

The Vaccinated vs unVaccinated is a deliberate gaslighting, a false dichotomy designed to protect the established power system.

It really frustrates me, that almost no-one sees this for what it is.

Sometimes I feel utterly alone in this perception, and while I have some doubts, I think the evidence supports it, as it explains what is being done better than any other thesis I have come across. By miles. 

I hope more of you will recognise the validity in the essence this perception, and add to it and I hope, fervently, that it will lead towards more effective action, locally, nationally and globally.






Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions' - pushing back at cunning linguists.


 A letter to various Editors of News Papers and others. Concerning the use of bad language within the context of policy decisions in the middle of a global pandemic. A gentle nudge of sorts.


Dear Editor,

After 20 months of Pandemic,  I have had enough of a certain, deliberate linguistic inaccuracy.

Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions'.  They are measures designed to protect Public Health, a fundamental moral and legal duty of care of every decent Government.

'Restrictions' is an emotive word trap. It engenders an emotional reaction to resist being restricted. It is a wholly inappropriate term to use under the current conditions.

There are some cunning linguists in positions of Public and Civil Authority, and in the Press and News Media and elsewhere.

We must outwit them. To protect the Public Health.

Yours sincerely,

Corneilius Crowley

London


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Make Education Safe Again : II - a letter from a 12 year old student, a letter from a concerned, responsible parent and a People's Inquiry

~
September 2021, I published a blog entitled 'Make Education Safe Again'. In this blog I collated some of the evidence a) that schools as they were set in September leading into the autumn term were unsafe for children and teachers alike and b) that we know well how to make them safe for children and teachers and c) what the implications of the persistent demand by this Government that schools, unsafe as they are, remain open were. We could see the harm ahead of time, which by definition tells us that that harm was avoidable. To refuse to avoid avoidable harms, to children, is gross negligence.

Independent SAGE have published a series of papers, outlining rational, proven methods to make schools safer, to suppress transmission among children and teachers.  These recommendations are well reasoned, by experts in epidemiology, virology, immunology and behavioural science and economics. The Government has not been able to counter with a rational evidence based response. Their stance is to ignore and deny, and to persist with placing our children and their teachers in harms way. This is an atrocity.
~
Then The New Statesman published a story on November 15th, which revealed why the government imposed unsafe schools, demanded full attendance, issued dictats to that end. The policy was designed to use children as superspreaders to deliver a booster to vaccinated adults in their community, the assumption being that a) children do not get seriously ill with Covid and b) wild reinfection confers greater immunity to those vaccinated, and to those who are not vaccinated. This assumption was promoted by the JVCI.  
~
The title of the piece was 'How the UK sleepwalked into another Covid disaster' subtitled  'By failing to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus in schools, Boris Johnson has thrown children and adults to the wolves.'

I wrote that that headline was inaccurate, This Government was not asleep, they were fully awake and aware of the situation, and they chose, consciously, to impose the role of superspreaders upon all our school children and their teachers.
~
December 5th 2021 - Rates of Infection recorded, which are likely lower than actual rates, as asymptomatic cases might not be detected, and even these are only estimated, let alone recorded.

Infection rates amongst 5-9 year old children,  December 5 2021

1% of total population of 5.6 million children is ... 50,000 per day..

~

A child wrote a letter to her MP, Michelle McIlveen, DUP. describing her reality. The letter is remarkable in two regards. The 12 year old child has clearly got a better understanding of the situation than most News Media Journalists and MPs, which she articulates precisely. Her concern for the welfare of others is similarly advanced in comparison to both those groups of adults. Intelligence and empathy, qualities lacking in Government and the News Media with regards to this epidemic.
~
A parent writes a letter to her school, who have been threatening her with fines and court action, because she withdrew her child from school, on the basis that the school was an unsafe environment, putting her child and her family at risk, and by extension putting the entire community that used that school at risk, of contracting the virus.
~

The Good Law Project is taking up the case, has written pre-action letters to some councils, and will be presenting to the courts, if they do not heed the warning. Courts whose rulings this Government wishes to create and legislate the right of Ministers to throw out, ignore and otherwise abrogate. Democratic accountability undermined as Government Policy?

~




The People's Inquiry 2021 led by Micheal Mansfield, QC, one of the UK's leading Human Rights Lawyers, produced a report that detailed the many failures of this Government, (Executive Summary) and made the case for a series of criminal charges and civil litigations.  Misconduct in Public Office, failures to uphold Human Rights Law, The Right to Health and other statuary obligations to protect the populations health during a pandemic. The full report is a document that  makes for sombre reading indeed. It is fully evidenced.

https://www.peoplescovidinquiry.com

Every school, care home, work place ought to have at least one hard copy of the executive summary on the premises, made available to it's constituents,  and efforts should be made by management and parents groups at every school, care facility and workplace to share the document electronically amongst students, teachers and workers to assure maximal reach. 

~

The behaviour of the Johnson Government is criminally negligent in intent, horrifically harmful in action and is a clear and present threat to the health and safety of 77 million people over whom they now Rule as an emerging elective dictatorship. The combination of an 80 seat majority and the desire to enact legislation that curtails public protest, allows ministers to reject court rulings they dislike and much else that egregiously undermines democratic oversight and accountability leads towards an elected dictatorship. No question.

 That this case - this Johnson Regime's criminal behaviour is a direct and serious threat to the welfare of the people - is not being made across the National News Media nor in Parliament, be it the House of Commons or The House of Lords, is a national scandal enabling a national atrocity. Following from Iraq and Austerity this is the worst offence and abrogation of Duty of Care and Human Rights Law by any English Government in the last century.

'Let the Herd take it on the chin, protect the Hoard' : The Johnson Government  policy position explained, placed in it's historical context. Only the transparent most honest telling of the truth can set us free.

~

It is neither a neutral nor a morally viable and honest centrist position to stand between Good and Evil, (Protection of The People from Harm and Harm Causation to The People), and to then claim to be asserting a balanced view. We must always err on the side of the good.

~

This Government must face a vote of no confidence, supported by the majority of the population, carried through by Parliament and be dismissed, routed and removed. A government of national unity must be installed to manage this pandemic in the best interests of the people. No question.

Write to your MP and your local councillors :  https://www.theyworkforyou.com


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

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Christmas Climate Carol : Gently, Firmly, Change, every day - Vaccine Equity Now!

"If there exists a medicine that we know is tool to prevent severe disease, chronic disease, economic and social harm, then it exists to be made available to every human, every person alive. That is the profit of a truly good medicine. Indeed, that is the best measure of any concept of Health Care provision,

Likewise if we knew that chronic stress can undermine efficacy of the best medicine and practice available, then we'd want to stop the chronic stressor from causing the distress.

Abolish Poverty.

Save Live.

It's not so much to ask, is it?
~
Christmess Climate Song of Hope
~
Gently, Humanely, Linking Climate Change, Shopping, Wealth Distribution, Vaccine Equity and grass-roots Humane Political Interest for a Cleaner, Nurturant Healthy future for all our Children, everywhere, where justice is the presence of equity in all spheres of life. Imagine. Then build. Love.
~
~

I really do appreciate the sharing, the kindness, the warmth of family and friendly connections, the holiday break and the genuine human sharing that Christmas represents on a person to person level. 

This song is not about attacking any of that, rather it is about, for me at least, deepening the kindness, expanding the care, nurturing each other and our children's futures. It's a hymn. 

I imagine a more nurturant culture. I dream of this, and I undertake small daily actions to make that dream a social and material reality.
~

A Christmess Climate Carol.
~
It's getting close to Christmas

 Christ! what a mess this world is in:

where will it end, where will I begin?

The ads for gifts are everywhere, 

and still the World will not share the Wealth - (or The Vaccines)

oh Christ! what a mess this world is in.

~
Our climate's changing, people die

just so we can drive smoothly by.

The lights go on, hip hip hooray!

Goodwill to all on Christmas day.

Oh Christ what a mess this world is in.
~

Where will it end, where will I begin?

It will only end when I begin.

it will only end when you begin,

it will only end when we begin

the change, the change...
~

......Imagine there's no countries -

it isn't hard to do,

nothing to kill or die for...
~

Imagine there's no poverty,

no pollution too..
~

It's getting close to Christmas,

and the best give we could give

would be the commitment

so that all could live -

living in dignity! living in dignity!
~

It will only end when I begin,

it will only end when you begin,

it will only end when we begin,

the change, the change...
~
we are all in this together
~
~
old MP3 version - listen and/or download from Reverbnation

~
What is the Carbon FootPrint of UK Luxury Shopping?
~
Even as we ordinary folk do small things to help, we need to vote in and support Governments and legislators that eschew corrupt influences from the major extractive industries and their down stream production and sale of luxury consumer goods, as a Wealth Extraction Economy, and turn instead towards design and practices similar to Cradle to Cradle, by mimicking  biological principles of nothing is waste, everything can be returned to the designed, production, consumption and disposal systems,  and learn how to stop generating toxic outputs and externalised costs to be supported by legislation and regulation, for all our sakes.

"It is common sense, you you put it like that, yes."
~



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

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#blogger
#music

Callous Reckless Behaviour - Endangering a Nation for Profit.

Cycles of this English Epidemic, this Global Pandemic
Avoidable harms deliberately not avoided.
~
March 17 2021 - Mike Ryan at WHO
~

~

1. Callous reckless behaviour. From a teacher, who is probably exhausted, at the end of a tether of chronic stress, and who had Covid, tested positive, and was aware he or she was bringing it into the school. A teacher has a duty of care to the health of those in his or her care, above and beyond any other duty. Teaching is the lessor responsibility in this situation. A teacher should be evidence led in this regard.

"So, my 12 year old's maths teacher decided to come into work and teach maths today, despite having tested positive for Covid, "because I'm vaccinated". Fuming."

https://twitter.com/biscuitsgod/status/1460288748948762624?s=20

2. Head teacher  sends letter to a parent.

"My son's Headteacher has just sent a letter saying we must "build up our #Immunity by having the children in school during an outbreak to become infected with #Covid19. 

I thought that the #herdimmunity theory was debunked? 9 of 30 are testing positive."

https://twitter.com/HelenOLeslie/status/1460272268127490054?s=20

And here's why - Government Policy is to infect 8 million children to confer 'enhanced immunity' onto the adult vaccinated populations - using the children as 'immune boosters'. For profit.

3. New Statesman report on this policy with utterly shocking citations from Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

"How The UK Sleepwalked into another Covid Disaster."

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/11/how-the-uk-sleepwalked-into-another-covid-disaster

The headline is inaccurate.

This was not sleep walking. Not by any stretch of the imagination.  Government was fully awake, JCVI was fully awake, but definitely not 'woke'.

They chose deliberately to expose millions of people children, parents, relatives and others to the virus.

4. An article from this time last year examining the English Government approach to Covid, from a perspective of The Right to Health of the population.

https://hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/

"Experience in the UK also shows the need for a clear national strategy from the outset, as soon as a risk is reasonably identified through scientific evidence. Political action must be prompt, based on scientific evidence, transparent, and communicated clearly to the population. A soft approach like the one adopted by the UK in the weeks preceding the lockdown, where private actors with economic power remained in charge of deciding whether people should travel to work and whether events would be maintained, should be avoided."

5. There are no words to adequately describe this callous, reckless, misinformed and frankly lethal policy.

More than 1000 people a week are dying awful, horrific deaths.

11% of school children have been infected.

We're averaging around 80-100k child cases a week.

Around 250 hospital admissions of children every week.

Close to 3000 children with Long Covid every week.

And between 3-7 child covid deaths a week

NHS is close to a critical state, with 1/3rd of ICU capacity occupied with COVID.

6. This makes the corruption story look like walk in the park.

7. The long term health implications of this virus are unknown, but there are solid indicators of serious sequelae that could last for the life of those infected. An interview with a respected immunologist, Immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi,  outlining some of the risks he sees now and foresees into the future, with so much unknown.

https://wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/11/leon-n11.htm

"BM: You recently wrote a letter to California school boards which was very powerful. You raised some very important issues. What are your concerns about COVID infections in children?

AL: Well, it does really worry me. We are just assuming that infection won’t have long-term consequences in people, and especially in children. And there’s almost a systematic exposure of people and children to the virus before they’re vaccinated. I know from what I’ve read in the studies that have come out that some people are going to definitely be genetically susceptible to very bad outcomes and death. And I think it’s not right for kids to be just exposed to this without a fighting chance, without vaccination.

It’s very disturbing when I think that we’re running the risk for everybody to get something like any Lewy body disease or neurodegeneration and we’re systematically exposing generations to this. I was trying to help. My hope is that we take it seriously and we give people protection. If these children have genetic susceptibility or health concerns, or if their family has health concerns, they’re given remote options. I was thinking if I were in their position, would I want to be consigned to definite exposure to SARS-CoV-2? No, I wouldn’t! And I would want to be protected, with acknowledging that the virus is airborne. So, better ventilation in classrooms, mask wearing and vaccination of children.

There’s a terrible assumption that kids are okay with SARS-CoV-2 infection when there’s data coming out that they have lost out on a greater number of healthy years than adults. Kids have better immunological response to vaccination than adults as well. And kids are more likely to be infected than adults and kids are more likely to be reinfected than adults.

We’re messing up! We’re doing this completely wrong only because probably, my assumption is, kids have less agency. Kids don’t have the agency adults do. That’s fine that they are not like grandma or grandpa when it comes to being infected, it isn’t as dangerous. But it’s unjust to not protect them and vaccinate them. Infection in children should not be written off.

A lot of people are saying it’s endemic and everyone is going to get it. So, they relinquish responsibility of controlling its spread and making these areas safe and just consigning kids to definite inflammation and infection where they’re less likely to make immune-competent memory."

8. In May 2020, after the Cummings Road Show, I wrote a a blog piece suggesting we needed to take drastic action to prevent further harm to the population. I suggested arresting Johnson, Cummings, Whitty, Valance and the entire Cabinet, removing them from office, placing them on remand and instituting a national unity government with a directive to manage the epidemic using elimination/suppression of the virus strategy, which was proven to work much, much better than 'herd immunity' aka 'living with the virus'.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/cummings-need-not-resign-they-should.html

I argued the case for Malfeasance and I, and many others even in those early days predicted a series of waves of infection, fatality, chronic disease and economic hardship, into the future, with no end in sight.  Given the way the virus generates variations through travelling through a population, meeting new evolutionary pressures and beating them, that was an obvious call. 

That was when deaths were at about 25,000 people and long Covid was showing it's first signs of being a real and last impact.

9. My argument stands. Everything we are learning about this Government, the news media and various misinformed lobby groups reveals a callous, reckless and utterly inhumane attitude, an avarice so deep and so corrosive that it places the entire population a risk, a risk that can be avoided, for what?

For Corporate profits, that's what.


10. Earlier in April 2020 I detected a pattern that has historical roots, notably the attitude and actions of the British Government in relation to the Irish and Bengali Famines of the mid 1800s. Late Victorian Holocausts. 

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/uk-take-it-on-chin-historical.html

11. Today we are living a late Elizabethan Holocaust.  I wrote this in March 2021, as the winter 20/21 surge was underway, and showing signs of abating, as the nation was in lockdown.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/03/late-elizabethan-holocausts.html

12. Was it Her Majesty's back or was it her awareness of the holocaust underway and a desire to not stand with Johnson as the nation commemorates the grief, horror and immense human tragedy of WWI? Who knows? I don't.  But, if I was in her position, I would not stand besides Johnson or give him my stature to lean upon.

13. It has to be said that Labour, under Starmer, has not been the advocate for elimination strategy that the English people so badly needed and deserved from an 'Opposition'. The whole of Parliament bears responsibility in all of this. 'No ifs, no buts'.

He fired Rebecca Long-Bailey and abandoned the National Education Union at a critical time, in mid 2020. He excluded Corbyn from the Parliamentary Party. He is not in position for the people of this nation. Marcus Rashford did some of the work he neglected to do.

14. I am at a loss for more words. The trauma visited upon the English people is too great. 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Cash For Questions and other COVID era songs : a different 9/11

Corruption - exploiting ones position of power and others vulnerabilities for ideological and personal gain, causing harm to society and eviscerating healthy governance.
~

Storage of millions of useless face masks, and other PPE: the Uniserve Contract 

The Good Law Project has helped to uncover the current tide of corrupt crony capitalism by taking this Government to court to reveal the details that have been deliberately obscured by this government. 

One example of the many series of dodgy contracts for useless PPE kit was with Uniserve, a British Logistics Company, with no previous experience in health care, based in Kent. Uniserve rushed out in early 2020 to contract for PPE from China, PPE that turned out to be inadequate - it could not be used.

By late summer, the volume of useless PPE that Uniserve was importing started to cause problems. Warehouses were full and shipping containers stacked up at Felixstowe, blocking our largest port. 

James Kemball, a logistics company owned by Uniserve, got the job of relocating the PPE. 15,000 shipping containers were moved. That is 15,000 truck trips. As a topical aside, what's the carbon foot print of that inept exercise?

Paying for the same 'mistake' many times.

The government is now paying James Kemball for those 15,000 containers to be stored on at least two plots, covering 10 acres, at Port of Ipswich. Thousands of containers are also sitting at Port of Tilbury, a field in Mendlesham and on a strip of rented land opposite Melton railway station. 

The proceeds of a corrupt contract scattered across the land, to flow into private profits. Money that could be better deployed funding HEPA filters in schools for example, as part of better management of the epidemic. What a double waste.

How many children will be exposed to SARSCOV2 in unsafe schools? How many will die, how many will go through long covid, how many will be traumatised by the confusion, by the possibility that they spread the virus to a friend, a relative or any other who became seriously ill? There is a link between these harms and those dodgy contracts.

We have an elected dictatorial Government, secure in an 80 seat majority, in the House of Commons, awarding dodgy contracts for useless kit to friendly associates, a government that cruelly withdrew £20 a week Covid uplift' from Universal Credit recipients for no good reason, even as the epidemic continues apace, with circa 1000 deaths from Covid every week, a government that is now paying a subsidiary of the dodgy contracted party Uniserve to store the useless PPE kit, a government that is basically funnelling public cash into private coffers, for doing nothing much beyond being a friend of the relevant Government ministers, or a party donor.

Waste and tragically, in the context of the Covid Epidemic in the UK, part of the  guarantee of more spread of the virus. Layers of harm.

The damage to our democracy, to our people, to our nations health and safety - is the profit gouged by this behaviour really worth it?

Private Eye's special report, in the form of a podcast 'Profits of Doom', and also reported in issue 1560, suggests that for those on the take, and on the make, it certainly is.

"Richard Brooks and Solomon Hughes cover both ends of the Covid wealth gap - from the companies making mega-millions out of lazy procurement processes all the way to the workers having their wages levelled down rather than up. Free major government contract with every download!"

We all know, of course, that for those who have died, who have contracted Long Covid, those whose businesses have collapsed due to mismanagement of the epidemic on these islands, their families and for the low wage working population in general, the costs are not worth it.

The Tip of The Corruption Iceberg.

Another Angry Voice published a short list of crony capitalist 'entrepreneurial' activity: their article lists a long list of this corruption,

"Here's just a fraction of it:

🔵 Tory MP Owen Paterson was caught red-handed breaking the ministerial code of conduct by lobbying for his corporate paymasters like Randox within government. Randox got £480 million in Covid contracts, but they horribly botched a load of test results by sending the all clear to tens of thousands of people who were actually infected.

🔵 Instead of accepting the findings of the Paterson investigation Boris Johnson ordered Tory MPs to vote through extraordinary legislation designed to tear down the parliamentary standards authority, and let Paterson off scot free. 

🔵 Boris Johnson has been caught up in multiple scandals himself, dating back to before he even became Prime Minister. There was the six figure salary paid to his mistress Jennifer Arcuri for "IT lessons" without any declaration of their relationship as one of his registered interests; the dodgy loan he received to decorate his Downing Street flat; his false declaration of a luxury holiday in Mustique that was funded by a Tory Party donor; and his recent holiday in the luxury Spanish villa of Zac Goldsmith, who Johnson gifted a lifetime peerage in the unelected House of Lords after he lost his parliamentary seat in the 2019 General Election.

🔵 On the subject of the House of Lords, all sixteen of the Tory Party's former treasurers have been handed unelected lifetime peerages in the House of Lords, after having donated an average of £3 million each to the Tory operation!

🔵 Tory politicians have been handing out untendered PPE contracts like sweeties, to such an extent that former Health Secretary Matt Hancock's former pub landlord and his sister even got lucrative contracts. Hancock 'accidentally' failed to include his 20% stake in his sister's PPE contract winning company on the register of MPs interests!

🔵 Another of the major winners of this no-tender PPE bonanza was Meller Designs, which was a fashion designer until they bagged £160 million worth of PPE contracts, boosting their annual profits from £144k to £13 million. The owner is a regular Tory Party donor called David Meller, who personally lobbied the unelected Tory minister James Bethell for PPE contracts.

🔵 P14 Medical was turned from a failing company into an absolute cash cow via a whopping £276 million in untendered PPE contracts. The owner Steve Dechan, a Tory party councillor in Stroud, used his profits from the Tory PPE bonanza to buy himself a luxurious £1.5 million country house in the Cotswolds. 

🔵 A company called Clipper Logistics got in on the untendered PPE bonanza with a £1.3 million contract. No surprise that the owner of the company is a major Tory Party donor called Steve Parkin.

🔵 Another major Tory donor called Haraldur Agustsson bagged over £100 million worth of untendered PPE contracts across his companies Globus Shetland and Alpha Solway.

🔵 The corporate outsourcing giant Serco was lavished with at least £200 million worth of Test and Trace contracts. Their CEO is former Tory MP and grandson of Winston Churchill Nicholas Soames.

🔵 Former Tory DWP minister Iain Duncan Smith got in on the private medical pilfering, chairing a government taskforce that produced a report advising the government to give the green light to non-alcoholic hand gel, while earning a £25,000 per year salary from Britain's largest producer of non-alcoholic hand gel (a salary he "forgot" to declare as an interest in the report).

🔵 More than a quarter of Tory MPs boost their salary of £82,000 (plus lavish expenses) through the practice of second-jobbing, and perhaps the most egregious is Ben Bradley who claims salaries for 60 hours per week on top of his MPs duties. 

The average MP works 69 hours a week, so if Bradley's not shirking his responsibilities as an MP, we're expected to believe that he's putting in 129 hours a week at work, leaving him less than five and a half hours per day for sleeping, eating, travel, leisure, shopping, personal hygiene, and family life all combined!

🔵 At least 90 Tory MPs also boost their incomes by over £10,000 per year as private landlords, and many of these exploitative landlord MPs have repeatedly voted against proposals to regulate the private rental sector, and to make private rented accommodation "fit for human habitation".

🔵 34 Tory MPs have accepted political donations from firms linked to the Russian oligarch Viktor Fedotov, whose dodgy dealings were revealed in the Pandora Papers. Not a single one of these donations has been returned.

🔵 The Pandora Papers also revealed that the unelected Tory lord Paul Deighton failed to declare a load of secret offshore investments. He was the Tory party's PPE Tsar who oversaw so many of the astounding no-tender PPE contracts detailed above!

🔵 Former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has been raking in literally £millions for legal consultancy work, which included representing the British Virgin Islands tax haven, while arguing in parliament against closing tax loopholes!

🔵 In 2004 Cox bought a £535,000 Battersea flat, relying on public funds to pay his £1,750 a month mortgage repayments. He now rents the property out for about £1,000 a week, living in a different London flat and claiming £1,900 a month in rent!

🔵 Former Prime Minister David Cameron was caught lobbying the Tory government on behalf of a company called Greensill Capital, who were paying him absolutely vast consultancy fees. The government then over-rode their own £50 million limit on emergency Covid loans to award Greensill a whopping £400 million, £350 million of which was provided directly to Greensill subsidiaries and business interests. Then Greensill went bankrupt a matter of months later!

🔵 Multiple MPs from both sides of parliament have been taking £thousands worth of freebies and junkets from gambling companies and the gambling lobby then making pro-gambling statements in parliament. The worst offender is Tory MP Laurence Robertson who earns £24,000 per year (at £200 per hour) who argued against stronger regulation of the gambling industry in parliament, then had the barefaced cheek to claim that there was no conflict of interest.

And this lot is just one part of the visible tip of the Tory corruption iceberg!"

Johnson Lied, people died.

Johnson used the COP26 platform to declare that 'the UK is not remotely a corrupt country'. 
His careful use of the phrase 'the country' was a deliberate evasion. His choice of wording was designed to enrage people who support his Government and annoy everyone who has a deep loyalty and affection for The Country. A lot of people would of course take exception to the accusation that the country is corrupt as a whole. And they'd be correct.

A classic gaslighting ploy. A deliberate deflection.

The issue is not that the country is corrupt. 

The issue is that many members of the Conservative Party in Government (and beyond) are engaged in blatantly corrupt behaviour. Johnson also suggested that there are rules governing MPs lobbying and consultancy work, and that those found to have 'broken the rules' must be held accountable.

Here's an idea.

Make all those MPs and their associates who have extracted such great wealth from the public purse hand back every penny they have 'made' to their local constituencies councils, bar them from political and Government positions and bar them from directorships of companies for life.

Make the companies that 'donated' or 'employed' these MPs match their payments of their 'consultancy fees'  and 'salaries' to each MPs local council social care services, and bar them from political lobbying for ever.

Cameron should never be able to lobby Government ever again. He is reputed to have taken £7.2 million in salary, bonuses and shares from his involvement with Greensill. He must be made to return every penny to the public purse.

Back in February 2010, before the election which made him the Prime Minister Cameron had this to say:

"We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism.

"So we must be the party that sorts all this out. Today it is a £2bn industry that has a huge presence in parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over 100 times a week by lobbyists.

"I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people's worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works."

International Trade Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan on Sky News, 8th November 2021 cited in Private Eye, issue 1560, November 2021.

"I don't think we should have a removal of the ability to maintain or have a second job, because it brings a richness to our role as members of Parliament."

Choice of words, eh?

AI : Another layer of Influence.

Savige Javid : The Bankers Banker.

Prevention, in this case, is the cure.


Parliament should make 'the rule's going forward much more robust, including making this kind of corruption a criminal offence, with custodial sentences mandated for for such behaviour.

There's no need to apply such harsh obligations in retrospect. The return of all these corrupt profits would suffice for now.

My Little Crony

There's a rather superb website, a clever resource that is tracking the links and webs of crony capitalists operating within this English Government 

My Little Crony : take a while to play with it, and study it. The Good Law Project is also unearthing much of this information and Bylinetimes, Double Down News and a few others are reporting it for the public's awareness. Most news media are avoiding the matter.

What will future historians write of the failures of this Parliament and the British Corporate Media to hold this government to account? What will they say about the population that let that happen?

Corruption, legal or otherwise is an affront to democracy.

For any politician to take money from a business, or any other sponsor, and then attempt to influence legislation or contracts for that business or sponsor is fundamentally anti-democratic.

Crony Capitalism is fundamentally anti-democratic and obviously corrupt, and more importantly, in the middle of a health crisis it undermines public services at every turn because attention to the detail required to maintain best possible delivery of those services is diverted to maintaining illicit cashflow into private hands, to covering it up, to gaslighting the public in order to avoid accountability. This is beyond criminal, it is institutionalised psychopathy.
~
 NEW SONG - Cash For Questions

Chorus :

Cash for questions, cash for influence, 
cash for peerages, personal gain!

Verses: 

The second job is bringing in the loot, 
sneaky, underhand, disguising the truth
use your position to rig the game,
influence and effluent, pour it down the drain!

Elected on a premise, to improve society
duty of care, probity and honesty,
legislators should not skate on thin ice
their responsibility is to never lie.

When crony capitalists rake in the cash
when their 'services' fail and crash
like Dido Harding, Randox and Patterson
PPE in storage, we can see the pattern.

And people get hurt, and people die, 
so much harm, and we all know why
it's a rigged game, voters always lose
it's a rigged game, the honest ones must  now choose

let's break it down, bring them down
corruption, bullying, it's all evil.
let's break it down, send them down
corruption, bullying, it's all evil.
~
~
Here's the  thing I see : it is that Crony Capitalism, Cash for Questions, Cash for Peerages, Corporate Donations to MPs to influence legislation and policy, Corporate and Ideological Think Tanks funded by Oligarchs (Tax Payers Alliance for example) and Corporate Lobbyism undermines democracy, it demeans the vote, it dismisses the electorate and it is reckless abandonment of duty of care by all involved. 

Not every MP, not even a majority of MPs are involved. Yet those who do not stoop so low seem loathe to root this adverse behaviour out. They bleat about the erosion of public trust in parliament, but do nothing meaningful that would prevent this abuse of power, let alone punish it.

This behavioural dynamic - the corruption of a few and the feeble response of the many - denies the democratic mandate of the electorate. It undermines justice. It pollutes everything it touches. It imposes immense costs on the population, the tax paying working class, in terms of resources diverted from serving our genuine needs.

This behaviour causes great harm.

That said, the practice is as old as Magna Carta itself, which was a medieval  attempt to institutionalise the power of the robber barons, who controlled trade and thus generated the wealth of the State the monarchy absorbed. Magna Carta was an early version of Corporate Lobbying assuming dominance of the body politic, rather than an effort to assert Freedom for citizens, as it has so often been misread and misrepresented as. 

So it goes within all violence hierarchies. If my readers do not recognise the violence of this hierarchy, I suggest assessing the non-avoidance of fatalities and chronic disease as an act of institutional violence. A Plague enhancing Government. Medieval in attitude, scope and effect.  

21st Century

This 21st Century is calling for genuine democratic regulation of everything this culture does that causes harm. Externalised Costs is the umbrella term for much of this. 

This call for democratic and legislative regulation of harmful practice is necessary in order to prevent the harms being caused by the way the industrial system is operating. That would be a healthy movement.  The only way through this, safely, must start with ruthless honesty, accountability and for those who are causing deliberate harm, sanctions.

I am merely a grass roots singer, and old man, poor and toothless. Justice can only be done by a united grass roots. The best I can do is sing it like I see it in the hope that having a laugh at it all somehow helps to blow the veil off, clears the air a bit and helps build the bridges of solidarity we so desperately need.

Here are some of my topical Covid Era Songs of Corruption, reckless arrogance, negligent harm causation and avarice.

1. 64 Ways to Mislead a Country (50 ways to leave your lover)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFDvUU-tHd0

Deliberately misleading, lying and manipulating known vulnerabilities - grooming a nation

2. Hit The Road Matt : (Hit the road, Jack)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr3j-_K6ASk

Deliberately down grading existing NHS Test & Trace, rather than expanding it from a good knowledge and experience baseline, to divert vast funding to private coffers, whilst enabling more spread of a dangerous virus. Herd Immunity.

3. Sajiid, Sajiid, Sajiid Javiiid! (Jolene)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0w69rxaNJE

A banker who sold bad debt as secure investments, sells spread of the virus as a health enhancer for the nation. Hoard Immunity.

4. The House They Call No. Ten (House of the Rising Sun)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oe2P2blhEA

Catalogue of harm caused by English Conservative Government 2020/21 in relation to mismanagement of the epidemic on these islands.

5. Cash For Questions



Youtube version.
Abuse relationship.

In my view there is an Abuse Relationship, with the English Ruling class in the dominant abuser position,  unwilling to cease it's abusive behaviour even as it can see the harms it is causing, and the working class population at large exposed to those harms.


corruption: The Great Great Game



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Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

#folkmusic
#singersongwriter
#blogger
#music