Afterword

The Coronavirus Act 2020 has now lapsed but some parts of it remain.  It could well be superseded by legislation that is even more draconian, such as the replacement of the Human Rights Act with a ‘Bill of Rights’ that emphasises collectivisation over the rights of the individual.

The reason for discontinuing the blog was not merely that most relevant subjects had been dealt with, but that from September 2021, based on the viewing pattern for all three previous versions, it became subject to AI monitoring from a site in the US.  This was and still is a bit unsettling.  All three previous versions of this blog have now been set to private so that only the site administrator, the author, can view them, although the content of each is the same as this version.  Because of that monitoring, the author removed the comments from others on blog posts and closed the facility to comment on any of them, before creating this blog as a duplicate.  Such monitoring is usually intended to gain a profile of the blog author, but given that each of the commentators had used their respective real names, it seemed prudent to remove those comments as well.

Reading back through the blog, there was an unconscious transition from the first to the third person.  To begin with the author had used a pen name based on maternal lineage.  At that time it was intended that the blog would cover a fairly large geographical area and that other authors would be brought on board, each of whom could write in the first person with regard to their respective areas.  As all but one of the blog posts written from December 2020 onwards are written in the third person, as a review it is probably appropriate to slip back into the first …

From April 2020 onwards I began taking photographs to document the collective psychosis that had taken hold and I created a Twitter account (that I deleted a few months later, but with hindsight shouldn’t have) with which to tweet some of these photos and engage with other people.  One such that I tweeted in June 2020 being that above of a ‘socially distanced’ queue at the Market Place in Warwick, as viewed from outside the County Council offices.  Look closely and you’ll see to the left a woman wearing a black mask, correctly it must be said, behind a man wearing a blue bib around his chin.  At this stage muzzle-wearing, correctly or otherwise, was still very much a minority thing.  Few people were genuinely frightened, let alone believed, that we were in a ‘pandemic’, they just obediently queued in what was mostly fine weather, as they were told to.  Add in the long-established habit of obeying anyone wearing a high-viz jacket to look ‘official’ and you can see how it worked, the first stage of compliance.

As per the Introduction, I wasn’t aware of any reasonably local protests until the one that took place in Birmingham in August 2020.  I attended that one along with about two hundred other people, one of whom I got talking to being an artist from Worcester with a large Twitter following (and a more well known journalist brother with whom on many issues I wouldn’t agree, but I digress).  In September I became aware of anti-lockdown campaigners in Oxford who ran a stall at Bonn Square in the city centre on a Saturday afternoon.  So I made the trip down there to visit them.  At that time, there was no similar group in Coventry or Warwickshire that I was aware of, or for that matter anywhere nearer than Oxford.  When this blog was intended to cover a larger area I did include a post about this group, but subsequently deleted it when the blog became Warwickshire only and in reality even more local than that.

Having started this blog in November 2020 I created another Twitter account to tweet the blog posts, also with the intention of engaging with similar activists elsewhere.  No-one whom I came across had started a similar anti-lockdown blog, except the Oxford group as mentioned, two of whom were on Twitter, but their blog is on a different platform from WordPress and has now not been updated since May 2021.  Their blog mentions that London protest of Saturday 24th April 2021 against vaccine passports.  I participated in that protest, taking numerous photographs, but did not include anything about it in this blog, as it falls outside the locality covered.  I covered it in a completely separate WordPress blog.

One person whom I followed on Twitter and who followed back was that artist in Worcester as mentioned.  He was interested in the blog in principle but didn’t have the time to contribute in that way.  He did however kindly tweet a few of the blog posts, so that they got hundreds of views (including from retweets and people linking on Facebook and Reddit).  He also retweeted some of the propaganda photos that I tweeted.  It was very useful for making people aware of the amount of propaganda in this area.  Implicitly on my part, tweeting these photos was a way of saying to other people, why aren’t you documenting said information in your own area?

My Twitter account was however suspended in August 2021.  Thereafter it seemed pointless spending a lot of time on blog posts that hardly anyone else would read.  I’ve recently started another Twitter account to link this blog to, but I don’t intend actively engaging that much on Twitter; besides which it is now in terminal decline due to its high level of censorship.  Its only real use is being able to discover other blogs or vlogs, then saving the relevant links to these to access directly in future.  As for this particular blog, it has served its purpose, so I don’t intend updating it again.  The billboard and bus shelter adverts in this blog post have been removed, as have those on the community noticeboards in local parks.

Summary …

… so far.  The original purpose of this blog was to show the effects of the Lockdown in terms of:

• Shops that had gone out of business
• Mask-wearing mandates
• Pubs and restaurants that had been forced to close
• The absurdity of closing gyms as a ‘public health’ measure
• The culture of working from home
• The cult of worshipping a failing taxpayer-funded ‘health service’

It was also hoped that other bloggers could be brought on board to describe similarly for their respective areas in Leicestershire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, wherever.  Having more than one author is a function that WordPress allows, as long as one of the authors retains overall editorial control.  Think of it like an on-line magazine.  Whilst a couple of people on Twitter expressed an interest, neither had the time or maybe the inclination to do so, hence this blog evolved to cover specifically Warwickshire only, dealing with:

• The torrent of local authority and ‘health service’ propaganda
• Track and Trace, which was renamed Test and Trace
• Informed consent and patient confidentiality (the lack of both)
• Bodily sovereignty in the face of coercion
• ‘Vaccine passports’ as a means of discrimination
• Forcing children, who cannot consent, to risk their future health by being injected with experimental medical treatment they don’t need

With Lockdown just one of many related issues, the title hopefully reflects that.  As such, most of the relevant topics have been covered or touched upon, such as the support off all parliamentarian parties for pushing universal uptake of the experimental medical treatment.  There are other issues that could be touched  upon such as that of personal responsibility for one’s own health and fitness.  Freedom after all means the freedom not to take that responsibility if you don’t want to, but then you should not then expect others to take experimental medical treatment to supposedly ‘protect’ you or that they should pay as much in National Insurance as you do.  It must now be borne in mind that repeated injections with the experimental medical treatment are likely to permanently weaken the natural immunity of the person concerned.

There are bigger issues that follow on from those in this blog, such as the ‘vaccine passport’ morphing into a Digital Identity Card, that will contain all of a person’s health, employment and financial details, to be shared on a global basis, as an enabler for an authoritarian global government.  This appears to be the purpose of the ‘Covid’ scam and the intensive psychological programming that has gone along with it, ramping up the fear of SARS-COV2, despite the low risk that it poses to most of the population.  This issue and that of responsibility for personal health transcend dealing with a locally-oriented blog.

During the course of the past year, two specific issues arose relevant to the area covered by this blog, the first being the ‘Coronavirus Megalab’, now known as the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory, located on the Precision Park Trading Estate, about a mile south of Leamington Spa rail station, the second being that Nadhim Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, was appointed as the Johnson regime’s chief pusher of the experimental ‘vaccines’ and latterly as Secretary of State for Education to ensure that children are also injected.  His claims that the Johnson regime would not mandate ‘vaccine passports’ have now been shown to be false.  It is highly unlikely that he, any other member of the Johnson regime, any of the psychopaths of the ‘SAGE’ group or any of the drug pushers working for Big Pharma will be prosecuted.

At the time of typing the Coronavirus Act 2020 has not yet been extended for another six months, though it is expected to, so the pressure applied to those who have not yet succumbed to sacrificing their bodily sovereignty to Big Pharma will increase; and it is likely that the powers of state authorities will also increase to enforce that.

As a final note, going back to the blog post that followed the Introduction, the above picture shows Venue Menswear, Regent Street, Leamington Spa, an independent ‘non-essential’ retailer.  It went out of business several months ago, with that photo having been taken last December.  A case of the Karmavirus for a clothing shop showing mannequins, including that of a child, muzzled up as a means of trying to ‘normalise’ the practice.

Child Abuse

It started with the closure of schools on the pretext that children for whom SARS-COV2, for which the associated respiratory illness is better known as COVID19, that poses virtually no risk, were transmission vectors.  The teaching unions and a great many teachers supported this move for the supposed ‘safety’ of the latter; the real agenda being to move teaching on-line to minimise the interaction between teacher and pupil.  The teacher would disseminate the information and that would be all, this being part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to denigrate education in the state sector, with most private schools also following suit.  Exams were cancelled to be replaced with teacher assessment from the same teachers who had had minimal contact with their pupils.

Children’s play areas were also closed, in some cases fenced off, taped off and even monitored for breaches of this security by our brave boys and girls in blue, the PCSO’s, for whom ridicule is the only appropriate way to deal with.  Neighbourhood snitches were replied upon as they will continue to be in the Abnormal.  The closure of these was another way to punish children for the crime of being young humans, needing the social interaction and learning to be gained from playing.  Strongest support for these authoritarian measures unsurprisingly came from the lockdown fanatics of illiberal Guardianista ‘progressives’.  When eventually re-opened play areas had propaganda signs from local authorities.  Some people may regard these as innocuous, but again they peddle the message that children must be kept apart as they are transmission vectors.

Warwick gates patrolled twice today after calls from residents of people using the play equipment. No issues today and signs show the parks are closed. Patrols will continue. For information please look at the government guidelines: https://t.co/DyEhpI26ue ^FW pic.twitter.com/ZX5cde4hR0

— Warwick Police🚔 (@WarwickCops) April 5, 2020

The next phase was mandating all children to wear a face mask at school for almost all of the 2020/21 academic year, inhibiting their breathing.  Perversely, some children were even asked to design their own to ‘normalise’ this.  Every teacher who enforced his or her pupils to wear a face mask is guilty of child abuse and should be dealt with appropriately by being prosecuted, with permanent termination of employment and to be prevented from ever working with children again.  This is unlikely to happen.  It is plausible that some of those children may in years to come take revenge upon the teachers who abused them in this way.  If so, it will be no less than those teachers deserve.  Worse than mask wearing, the agenda now being put forward by those such as Devi Sridhar, is for children to get injected with the experimental medical treatment that none of them need.  Her social media echo chamber is made up of the same fascists who support children being forced to mask up.

Millions of children will be sacrificed to Big Pharma in order to stay within the state education system.  The cheerleaders for this will be those already highlighted above.  They will claim on social media to have had their children ‘jabbed’ and in some cases this may be true, though in many cases it will be nothing more than a perverse ‘virtue signalling’ claim.  Although the JCVI has now admitted that children aged 15 and under do not need to take any of the experimental ‘vaccines’, the Johnson regime, whose strings are pulled by Big Pharma, is pushing on with these injections, starting from today.  This unfortunately is not the first time that children have been experimented on, nor is it likely to be the last.  Further examples can be found in Brett Wilcox’s book Jabbed, mentioned in the blog post about Informed Consent and in Neil Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies, which gives the reference of the relevant published paper in each case.

Update, 16 September 2021

As a result of the Johnson regime’s ‘cabinet reshuffle’, Nadhim Zahawi has been appointed as Secretary of State for Education.  This is very disturbing news, given that he wants all schoolchildren aged 12 – 15 (and younger?) to be injected with experimental medical treatment for a virus that poses negligible risk to them.

Testing Time

The COVID Test Centre pictured above is located in Kirby Corner Road, Coventry, within the main campus of the University of Warwick and within walking distance of its associated Science Park and Westwood Heath Business Park.  With fewer students around than in normal term time and most of those employed by companies based at the science park and business park, now working from home (see previous post), it is hardly surprising that it is quiet.  I have taken photographs on another day and found it to be similarly so, though it appears to be part of a national trend, that begs the question of where do all the ‘positive’ test results come from?

Having witnessed people entering the COVID Test Centre located in Leamington Spa Old Town (a demographically mixed area in terms of age, status and ethnicity), it is not as if they are all unused all of the time.  So why do people agree to get tested?  Notwithstanding the recently announced government bribe of £500, it is because the person required to take the test has been identified as being in the same place at the same time as someone else who has subsequently tested ‘positive’, as a result of both using the NHS Test & Trace smartphone app.  This could be at a gym, where the equipment is all ‘socially distanced’ and the person later required to take the test may have been nowhere hear the ‘positively’ tested person, so very few such ‘cases’ have arisen at gyms; or at a pub or restaurant, where similarly the person required to take the test may have been nowhere near the ‘positively’ tested person.  Mostly, it is likely to be at a workplace, with the employer mandating that the employee take the test.  So in working-class households there are likely to be a higher proportion of people being tested than in middle-class households where the latter are working from home, having fewer personal interactions in any day, possibly none outside their own household (something that will ironically lower their immunity to ‘outsiders’).

One obvious issue with Test & Trace (originally called Track & Trace) is that of data protection.  In a surveillance society as the UK has been since at least the 1990’s, where every one of us gets viewed numerous times in every day by CCTV cameras, located in either public places or business premises (most obviously in any retail outlet) is this any worse?  Personal privacy outside one’s home is in that respect now already almost non-existent and has been for quite some time.  So in principle you could say no it isn’t any worse (which in itself would not justify it), but the COVID19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a sample of genetic material, not kept even within the NHS, but outsourced to private companies who can then cross-reference with other data held on the person tested.  What if any of those other companies were employers, pension funds, banks or insurers?

Additionally, if this trend of Test & Trace follows the model used in China, where it is ubiquitous and instantaneously loaded onto a centralised database, then every business transaction gets registered automatically; and this would be the case even if cash were permitted for making that transaction.  So retaining the use of cash will be of no benefit if Test & Trace, or an equivalent smartphone app, is always required.  Bear in mind that the withdrawl of cash from any bank or building society, either in person or via a machine is already recorded on a centralised database, which can easily be shared between these financial institutions.  Add in of course that if a temperature check is required (something that pubs in the UK have done when allowed to open), in addition to Test & Trace, then that gets loaded onto the same database as a ‘health’ measure, which could return a message saying that the transaction be cancelled and the individual needs to self-isolate for a set number of days.

The specific issue with these COVID19 PCR tests, as distinct from any other form of test for a viral illness, is the number of cycles through which the results are being run, with the standard being above that (thirty-five) recommended by Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and other similar professionals in the field such as Dr Carl Heneghan, Director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.  The late Kary Mullis, who invented the PCR test, recommended that it is unsuitable for testing for the presence of any particular virus.  This high number of cycles means that a genetic fragment of any coronavirus, including the common cold, may be picked up.  A good summary of the PCR process is given in this video by Dr Samantha Bailey, a former GP, from New Zealand.

Returning to the subject of the UK specifically, it is these supposedly ‘positive’ test results that then feed into the official fatality figures, of people dying ‘within 28 days of a positive test‘. As these are the headline figures presented to and by the mainstream media, then it is clear that deaths even attributed to COVID19 have been inflated; and that is without taking into account the apparently miraculous drop in people dying from influenza; something broadcast even by the strongly pro-lockdown Sky ‘News’ channel, which of course uses it to peddle an agenda in favour of ‘vaccines’ and the anti-social, note mainstream media-dependent, ‘New Normal’ way of living.

Home Work

A prosperous conurbation with a high proportion of middle-class professionals, now mostly working from home in mainly affluent housing estates.  So it is unlikely that many businesses are likely to occupy already vacant office space.  There is a risk that with too much of this office space available, the commercial property market could collapse, affecting the share investments and pension schemes of those middle-class professionals who are currently oblivious to bigger economic picture, though most are well educated enough that they should be.  It is possible that some of that unoccupied office space could be converted into distribution warehouses for the new economy of home deliveries.  But the problem is that there is more than enough of that warehouse space already available (see below).  All photographs herein taken in November & December 2020.

Given that most of this office space is on purpose built business parks, with some on multi-purpose trading estates, where it is attached to a distribution centre (such as in one of the above pictures) it is unlikely to be suitably located for residential use.  In the former case it is plausible that the entire business park could be demolished and replaced with residential dwellings.  Or could those mainly low-rise offices become the new model for twenty-first century dwellings with little personal privacy, smart homespace for the smart city?  The three-decade long era of the business park, which the late author J.G. Ballard regarded as a dystopian environment in itself, not so much coming to an end, as being adapted for the Global Reset Brave New World?

Warwick Technology Park, located to the south of the town, is one such that could become like this.  The University of Warwick, whose main campus is on the south-western edge of Coventry, has an Innovation Centre with free office space on the technology park.  There is also empty office space available at one of the other units.  More to the point is that the other office buildings which were mostly occupied are now mainly deserted, as can be seen during the week by the lack of vehicles in the respective car parks and on the access road.  Whilst the technology park has for the past few decades been in a semi-rural area, it is now being partly surrounded by new housing developments, so the conversion of many of its units to apartments could be absorbed into these.

Some former offices could end up as student accommodation if university courses return to tuition in person, rather than on-line.  At Westwood Heath Business Park, south-west Coventry, there is already some empty office space, as one would expect.  There is also purpose built student accommodation for the nearby University of Warwick (both pictured above).  The business park, the university and its associated science park form what is, in normal times, a busy economic hub, with many middle-class professionals commuting from Balsall Common, Knowle and Dorridge (administratively part of Solihull), Kenilworth, Leamington Spa, Warwick and Stratford, to the point that this hub is essentially part of the same economic area as those (and all were in the same lockdown Tier).  Coventry University Technology Park, located just south of the city centre, on the former Rolls Royce site, is another such hub, which also currently has empty office space available and which could go the same way.

Reading all this, you might think that the transformation isn’t so bad and the notion of integrated work and home has been discussed in academic circles for the past couple of decades.  The real issue to address is the lockdown pretext by which this is being brought about, rather than an honest agenda being put forward.  In the meantime, many people who are working from home will discover the additional costs to their respective fuel accounts come the Spring; they may have already noticed the additional water costs when receiving a statement of account during the Autumn.  Spending a penny costs money assuming that one flushes and refills the cistern, easy to overlook when not in one’s own dwelling.  Added to that, many of the professional middle-class working from home adopted the gated community mentality, enjoying the lack of social interaction with clerical staff and others whom they consider to be ‘beneath’ them.

The lowest rung in the office caste system has always been agency ‘temps’, on short-term contracts, at best usually for six months, at worst on a daily basis.  They get the labour-intensive dogsbody work with no guarantee that it will get any better; and for those employed on a daily or weekly basis, no annual leave entitlement.  But ‘temping’ can at least provide work detail to put on one’s Curriculum Vitae, in the hope that better employment could arise.  Judging by the picture below, taken in Leamington Spa in early November, one of the main recruitment consultants for office-based staff, Adecco, has recently shut up shop (though its website search facility has not been updated accordingly).  This means that either that local demand has dried up for office-based staff, or the equivalent roles to be done from home; or that Adecco itself has decided to move to a mainly on-line based recruitment system, divesting itself of the need for as many of its own recruitment offices (though it still retains some elsewhere).

What is frequently overlooked about home work is that the costs are borne by the home worker, as well as the social isolation, which may suit some; though it is the informal networking and the interaction with people of different grades, different skill levels and different backgrounds – yes the diversity buzzword –  more than the in-built hierarchy that holds the fabric of most companies together.  It helps all employees to build up their social skills and to find out on the grapevine about what is happening elsewhere, via chance meetings by the coffee machines, the queue for the staff restaurant or in the gangways separating rows of hot desks.  Maybe, for those in locations to benefit from it, conversations with others in the changing rooms provided for cyclists, or car sharing with someone in a different part of the company.  Each of these helps to broaden one’s own knowledge of the company, which benefits the latter, if those running it want people to feel engaged and not merely as disposable contractors.  Perhaps that is the agenda, as it gives the employer more flexibility and allows it to worsen employment terms and conditions?

One final point is that in order to pay off the huge amount of debt incurred by the lockdown, with its business support grants, furlough etc, it is plausible that many parts of the public sector – Ofqual for example which is based in Coventry, adjacent to the former Technical College at the Butts just west of the city centre – could be sold off to large private corporations that no longer have defined benefit final salary pension schemes for new employees, if indeed they ever had them.  Working from home will make it more difficult for employees to take collective action to oppose such privatisations, something that their union, most likely UNISON, ought be aware of even if it supports the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  It is even possible that if central government cuts back finance to local authorities, then some of them may go the same way.  At the risk of making this a self-fulfilling prophecy, Coventry City Council for example, its assets, liabilities, income and expenditures, could all be transferred to a large private corporation that would freeze salaries and downgrade terms and conditions, including of course pensions.  For the public sector lockdown-lovers, the Karmavirus would truly have struck.

Exit Strategy

The European Union’s four freedoms, of people, goods, services and capital run entirely contrary to lockdowns, any lockdowns, whether within a particular member state or between them.  In particular, the freedom of movement of people, or more accurately labour, in free market terms means that any employment position can be moved anywhere within the European Union.  Thus a role with a state broadcaster, local authority, health service trust, water company or energy utility, could in principal be relocated from Britain to Bulgaria, the latter of course having much lower labour costs.

This hasn’t happened yet to any appreciable degree, if at all, for those back or middle office roles where it plausibly could be.  With a large number of both public and private sector roles having been fulfilled for more than nine months by working from home, then there would be no need to physically relocate them, but the remuneration could be based on that of a lower cost country such as Bulgaria.  Ah, but we have left the European Union, so that won’t happen …?  Why not?  It is most likely to happen for those roles with the least requirement for specialist skills, i.e. administrative, data inputting and the like.

It is peculiar feature of the tribal nature of British politics that among the most hardcore believers in those four freedoms – or who claim to be – are millions of people who fanatically support lockdowns, the longer and the harder the better.  The reason for this lies within their socio-economic status; the professional middle class being in general the most strongly in favour of British membership of the European Union, because they are more geographically mobile, believing that they can relocate around the continent without loss of status.  They view the lockdowns as something that should not adversely affect themselves in the long-run, which shows in their thinking a level of cognitive dissonance, that somehow the right to be geographically mobile will, for their social class, still exist in the future.

These are also the people who have enjoyed working from home, saving the time and costs of commuting, whilst not looking at the longer term as to whether the geographically specific part of their respective salaries are sustainable.  This is not just with reference to a London weighting, where applicable, but it could apply to being based in a prosperous, hence expensive, area such as Warwick District, which voted 58.8% to 41.2% in favour of Remaining within the European Union during the 2016 referendum; and which is home to a large number of middle-class professionals employed by blue-chip companies or at the University of Warwick, though the main campus of the latter lies just with the boundary of the City of Coventry.

Among these hardcore supporters of lockdowns are those that support the organisations still inaccurately known as the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats.  But then of course, political nomenclature is now meaningless when the increasingly Disunited Kingdom is led by a Conservative Party that is anything but, committed as it is to destroying very large swathes of the small-scale private sector – the local mercantile class who have long been its lifeblood – and to increasing the powers of the state.

It is clear that the nominally-only Conservative government has no exit strategy from the perpetual cycle of lockdowns, but then nor has it ever developed an exit strategy from the European Union.  In the former case, it is claiming to ‘follow the science’ whilst doing the complete opposite, in order to implement the Global Reset, which is at a higher level than either the EU or the UK.  In the latter case, its lack of strategy means severing all ties that have developed over the past forty-eight years with our continental neighbours (settling for the present with a fudged ‘deal’ with limited benefits), with many of those who justifiably complain about this lack of an exit strategy happily supporting the lack of an exit strategy from lockdowns.

So does it mean that these ‘Remainers’, or more accurately ‘Rejoiners’ support the Global Reset?  Are these people technocratic communists?  A vociferous minority, employed exclusively within academia, may well be; and it is also noticeable that ‘Remainer’ ultras possess a strong authoritarian streak with their desire for a centralised European Superstate, with no opt-outs.  Or is it more likely that their outlook is just based on self-interest?  Working from home in a middle-class housing development, where they remain nicely segregated from the lower orders, as the ‘New Normal’, suits them and any spurious case to keep that going as long as possible, to establish it as permanent, must be supported.  Whilst the detrimental economic and health effects of the lockdowns to millions of other people are ignored.  These pro-EU lockdown supporters have adopted the same I’m Alright Jack attitude to the world as they accuse Leave voters of possessing.  But the hypocrisy does not just exist on the ‘Remain’/’Rejoin’ side…

‘Leavers’ claim to have been voting in favour of freedom from a domineering state run by unelected officials.  Yet as Francis Hoar, who is himself a ‘Leaver’, has pointed out on Twitter, many of these people have supported the lockdown measures, in the process showing how spurious their ‘libertarian’ credentials are.  Only late in the day did some ‘Leavers’ begin to question the lockdown measures, Patrick O’Flynn being a good example.  Even Julia Hartley-Brewer never questioned the Spring lockdown.  Rather, she enjoyed displaying the indiscreet life of the bourgeoisie, by boasting on Twitter about her middle-class working from home lifestyle.  Most obviously of all, the nominally Conservative government, whose policy was until the start of the lockdowns and subsequently for the first eight months of them, set by unelected ‘advisor’ Dominic Cummings.  It was he reputedly who wanted the lockdown put in place in late March, a lockdown that he of course then famously went on to break.

In any case, prior to Cummings’ ascendancy the UK has long been run by unelected, unaccountable officials in the civil service and the House of Lords.  It is long overdue that millions of those who voted for us to Leave the European Union ditched the tribal identity that they subsequently adopted (along with their fake animosity to a European Union whose freedoms that they have happily taken advantage of) and admitted that it was, based on having waited so long in the face of repeated false promises of a referendum, all just a protest vote, abetted by the mainsteam media who had predicted a comfortable majority for Remaining in the EU.  So voting Leave seemed a safe thing to do in the knowledge of never having the live with the consequences.

One obvious issue that always gets overlooked is British people’s sense of engagement with the European Union dropped as the value of the pound did against the Euro from late 2007 onwards and remained subsequently lower as a consequence.  Prior to that, most British people were happy to be part of a European Union that offered them good value for money; and even amongst those who subsequently went on to become Leave voters, many would have agreed to us joining the Euro at the old fairly stable exchange rate of about €1.45 to the pound, though for tribal reasons, they won’t admit it now.

So here we are, with the worst government in living memory, devoid of an exit strategy from the European Union that would be the least disruptive to maintain the well-being of the economy and maintain good relationships with our continental neighbours; and similarly devoid of an exit strategy from the never-ending cycle of lockdowns, which at best may be relaxed but never scrapped, other than with a so-called ‘vaccine’, for which there is hard push, as a bait.  That experimental ‘vaccine’ has been rushed into production, distribution and injection as part of Boris Johnson’s nationalistic ‘Britain First’ view of the world, something which those ‘Remainers’ who support the policy have not picked up on.  Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole, who is vehemently anti-Brexit has done, though he has not stated any opposition in principle to a rushed ‘vaccine’ being implemented in Ireland or Britain, rather he has called out Boris Johnson for the latter’s nationalistic grandstanding on the matter.

When I’ve discussed the Tier 4 lockdown in the South East, now extended to a greater area of England with the remaining areas likely to follow, as a convenient cover for the trade disruption and possible food shortages in certain areas as a result of a No Deal Brexit or the fudged ‘deal’ that has been adopted, I have been extolled to ‘Buy British’ from people who probably don’t themselves when it suits, but are also happy to go along with everything that this appalling government instructs, including the idiotic guidelines on mask wearing and the adopted culture of lockdown tiers.

It is a thankless task trying to make them realise how Britain, England in particular because of its high population density, is highly dependent on food imports.  They don’t understand when I mention the Wigan Pier reference that we may all end up just living on herrings and potatoes.  Do not underestimate the level of compliance with government among the public on matters of both Brexit and lockdowns.  They genuinely believe that the government will sort everything out.  Challenging these people to possess a modicum sense to think for themselves is like trying to fight a war on two fronts.

As for the tribal identity that developed as a consequence of the stasis following the 2016 referendum, it has made building an opposition movement to the lockdown and all related legislation that much more difficult.  There are some  ‘Remainers’ who are vehemently opposed to lockdown legislation, though on Twitter their views tend to get drowned out; whilst some ‘Remainers’ are opposed to lockdowns but believe that Brexit is worse, hence that is where they expend their energy.  So compare and contrast with Germany where anti-lockdown protests have attracted significantly higher numbers of people than in Britain.  Overall, the referendum served two useful purposes, it left the country almost irreconcilably divided, by age most obviously and it served as a convenient distraction for the four years from when campaigning started in the Spring of 2016 up until the start of the lockdown this year.  The influence of the World Economic Forum, the Chinese Communist Party and Big Pharma all went un-noticed.

However in Hidden Hand, Clive Hamilton & Mareike Ohlberg’s book on the global influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it views Brexit is an opportunity to take control of ‘The City’, which is already the leading overseas trading place for renminbi (RMB).  The CCP, via front companies, will also be able to take advantage of the lockdown-induced collapse in commercial property values in London.  So it looks like Brexit has just resulted in British sovereignty transferring from Brussels to Beijing, with the social model to accompany it.  There was never any chance whatsoever of Britain becoming fully independent upon leaving the EU.  Without having ‘Europe’ to continually blame for our woes though, it is increasingly likely that Britain will split into its three constituent parts, or become even more fragmented, with the ‘British’ part of Ireland being cut adrift regardless.

Fitness First …

… is the name of a chain of gyms operating since the early 1990’s; it used to operate the gym above the Cannon Park Shopping Centre in Coventry that is now run by Simply Gym.  Two of their competitor chains are Pure Gym and Everyone Active.  The latter of these runs the council-owned leisure centres in Warwick District amongst many others.  During 2017/18 two of the principal leisure centres had very welcome multi-million pound extensions and refurbishments done; however in spite of a petition being raised by local residents, the Conservative-run administration decided to outsource all of the jobs.  To be fair to Everyone Active and its staff they have done a good job in running those leisure centres.  Perhaps Labour support for lockdown of this specific area is to hope that private leisure companies such as Everyone Active go bust and the jobs get insourced again.

One part of the draconian lockdown measures introduced by the Conservative government on the basis of being ‘three weeks’ subject to review, was to close all fitness facilities for the sake of ‘public health’ allegedly, although there was no proof that gyms or any other sports / leisure centres were hotbeds of COVID19 infections.  Hospitals and care homes were and have been all along.  A deliberate decision to undermine the health and fitness of millions of people in this way was and remains a highly irresponsible decision.  All to ‘Protect the NHS’ from the fit and healthy people who are least likely to need what services it offers, such as they are anymore.

At the time of the unusually warm dry Spring, many people kept fit by going on long walks, if they lived in a locality conducive to it; Newbold Comyn Leisure Centre in the photograph at the bottom of this post, is one of those, being located adjacent to a former golf course and close to a nature reserve, both accessible to the public.  Not so easy for those who live in inner cities, particularly with travel restrictions in place.  Resistance training would mean buying one’s own fitness equipment if one could afford it and had room to install it.  Again, millions of people don’t, not least those living in apartments.  Swimming?  Take your chance in the nearest river or canal.

All indoor sports facilities were forced to close for eighteen weeks in total, so they remained closed whilst drive-thru junk food joints were allowed to re-open; so much for the government having the health of the public at heart.  Gyms in England were finally allowed to re-open in late July, however the subsequent introduction of the Tier system of lockdowns led to the Liverpool City Region (that includes the Wirral) going into Tier 3 and gyms there being again forced to close, with armed police trying to prevent their being open.  Local gym owner Nick Whitcombe of Body Tech Fitness, with the help of local Labour MP Angela Eagle (to give credit where it is due), led a successful campaign to revoke this decision, helped by a parliamentary petition that gained nearly four hundred thousand signatures.

When re-opened, gyms introduced ‘social distancing’ measures by spacing the equipment further apart, something that could have been done within a few weeks, increased the emphasis on cleaning, although the antiseptic cleaning spray was always available and Everyone Active, amongst others, introduced an on-line booking system (compliant with the government’s Test & Trace, but that would be the case for any sports facility that already had an electronic swipe card system).  The number of ‘cases’ nationally compared to the number of gym visits was very, very low.  At Newbold Comyn, during the weeks that it was allowed to open, it was zero.

However the four-week ‘circuit breaker’ Tier 4 lockdown in late Autumn – with its ever shortening daylight hours and often less than amenable weather not really that conducive for outdoor exercise – meant that gyms were forced to close yet again, with every MP who voted for this, including Angela Eagle herself having voted that way, being complicit in that decision.  The backlash against the Tier 4 lockdown and the forced closure of gyms with it helped to boost the number of petition signatures by more than two hundred thousand, many gym users highlighting on Twitter how important regular attendance is for their mental well-being as well as their physical health, the two being inextricably linked, noting also that gym attendance is an important social activity for them.

In spite of the pro-lockdown anti-gym lobby on social media, gyms are now being allowed to open in Tier 3, though fitness classes are still not allowed to go ahead, affecting the revenue level and hence business viability of many fitness facilities (particularly those which are independent, i.e. not part of any chain).  One could be forgiven for thinking that the twenty-two weeks so far this year – and particularly the recent four weeks – where indoor sports facilities were forced to close, was a deliberate government policy to weaken the respective immune systems of the fittest and healthiest members of society in order that they beg for the toxic COVID19 ‘vaccine’, although the vast majority will never need such a ‘vaccine’ even if it were safe.

Nigel Huddleston, the Sports Minister, cannot provide any proof (because there is none to provide) of indoor sports facilities being hotbeds of COVID19 infections, merely rambling on that any form of social interaction could result in that, in doing so giving the game away as to the real reason for the lockdowns.  In addition, to maintain the fear factor, when one is not taking part in an activity, that is to say when entering, leaving or spectating, one is supposed to constrain one’s breathing by wearing a face mask.  Almost all gym users, even those who may follow that guideline in shops, ignore this idiocy in sports facilities and so they should.   Without explicitly saying so, they know that this guideline is all part of the scam.

However, the primary danger that faces us all is the regime enforcing injection with the toxic ‘vaccine’ to access all walks of life, fitness facilities included.  Given that the companies running these lost eighteen weeks of revenue during the Spring, leading many people who had the space at home and the money to do so, to buy their own fitness equipment and create their own home gym, then these companies lost some memberships accordingly.  Do these companies running the fitness facilities want to take the risk of losing even more members?  People who don’t have enough space at home or the money to buy their own fitness equipment could pool resources with neighbours or friends to do so, for example.

Heritage Trust

Since the lockdown started eight months ago the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon has been closed and its staff placed on furlough, as they will be for another at least another four months.  So whilst they may each have enough money to live on, it is no substitute for a professional career that each of them has chosen; and live theatre can never be replaced by the virtual world, though no doubt the likes of Microsoft would like it to be.  More than that, the closure represents a loss of revenue for the town as it is one of the principal reasons for visiting the place, the local economy depending not just on overseas or domestic tourism, but on theatre and corporate hospitality, ‘away-days’ and the like, which help to keep the local hotels in business, I myself having attended such events.

These hotels have now been forced to close; when allowed to open they are required to impose the intrusive Track & Trace, now renamed Test & Trace, system on guests, for the sake of a mild respiratory virus that is harmless to the vast majority of the population.  Of course, there are some ‘virtual tourists’ who think that viewing somewhere on a smartphone or other device is a substitute for visiting it.  It isn’t and it never will be, though many in the ‘green’ lobby would like that as they don’t want us travelling anywhere more than a few miles from home for any reason, let alone for enjoyment, entertainment, or otherwise socialising with people outside our home ‘bubble’.  So unless we happen to live within a few miles, none of us should ever visit in person any of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust sites, which have now been forced to close, having previously had to restrict visitor numbers in any case for ‘social distancing’.

For me, Stratford is a little bit more than a few miles from home, though not that far away.  During the summer there is always a good buzz about the place, or there was up until this year; and whilst during the late Autumn one would expect it to be quiet during the middle of the day in the middle of the week, it is even quieter now that all the pubs have been forced to close.  As elsewhere in the country, shops that are deemed to be ‘non-essential’ have had restrictions on being allowed to open at all, notwithstanding that they will already have lost some trade due to the lack of visitors from outside the locality.

The result is a high proportion of empty retail units so that the town centre now has a depressing recessionary feel about it, although both the town and its surrounding dormitory commuter villages have a high proportion of well-salaried middle-class professional people now working from home, part of the introverted outlook that has resulted from the lockdown.  It is never good to experience a town dying, particularly one that is normally thriving and knowing that its economy is being deliberately killed off to force entertainment, retail, ‘hospitality’ and ‘tourism’ to go on-line.

It didn’t have to be this way and those in the mainstream media who have cheerled for the lockdown should face the consequences, but they won’t because their jobs are secure.  These people pretend that the well-being of the economy is totally unconnected to the well-being of the people who work within it or used to if they are now on furlough, possibly to become officially unemployed.  Contrary to what these media pundits may think or say, the economy cannot be turned on or off like a light switch.  Stratford, like numerous other places whose economy and reputation depend on continuing to attract a high number of visitors, will need to win them back.

Local MP and multi-millionaire businessman Nadhim Zahawi, like most of the Conservative Party and all of the Labour ‘opposition’, voted for the four-week ‘circuit breaker’ Tier 4 lockdown, which is due to end on Tuesday.  He is one of the founders and owners of the YouGov site which continues to peddle pro-lockdown propaganda on the basis of unverified ‘survey results’.  The result of that ‘circuit breaker’ four-week Tier 4 lockdown is that Stratford, like the rest of Warwickshire, like the rest of England, faces tougher restrictions than beforehand.  Whereas it was in Tier 1 four weeks ago, from Wednesday it will be in Tier 3, so the economic decline will continue.  Having toed the government line all along, local ‘green’ campaigner and former Conservative councillor Molly Giles has finally recognised the damage done to her home town, but it now feels too late.

All photographs taken by the author on 25th November.  There are more empty retail units that I photographed in the town centre on that day, but I think that eight is enough for one blog post.  Even a children’s hospice charity shop has been a victim of the lockdown measures.

Grooming Time

It started during an unseasonably warm dry Spring.  The ‘socially distanced’ supermarket queues, in a country and culture where orderly queuing was already ingrained into the national character.  Added to this there being a characteristic probably more English than British, of standoffishness, being guarded about one’s personal space, perhaps a symptom of living in a crowded country.

The Morrison’s superstore in Leamington Spa had a queue snaking for a length of up to thirty to forty people at peak times.  It is situated on a self-contained site with a large car-park (and adjacent petrol station) on former industrial land.  Many people were buying as much as they could cram heaped into a trolley and still returned within a week, bulk buying as if in preparation for the apocalypse.  The Tesco superstore in Warwick was similar.  In either case, the orderliness mostly broke down once in the store where the hunter-gatherer instinct took over and the one-way systems were widely ignored.

Near the top of The Parade, Leamington Spa’s main shopping thoroughfare, is a Tesco Metro, where the queue was never quite as long, maybe at most fifteen to twenty people and it moved more quickly.  As this Tesco does not have a car park, though there are pay-and-displays within walking distance, most shoppers opt for a basket rather than a trolley and limit how many items that they purchase accordingly.  Whilst queuing one warm April day, the bloke next to me, or rather two metres or so away, asked me whether I thought that people would continue like this when it was all over.  I said that I didn’t know, but he reckoned that they would and asked my opinion perhaps to seek reassurance.  He had obviously sussed out what many people including myself had then yet to do, that the whole exercise was and remains nothing to do with preventing the spread of a virus, but is rather about behavioural psychology.  Subsequently, the best observation I had of this was in the store, when ignoring the one-way system I decided to walk along and back the same aisle, as you do in normal times, looking for something that I can’t remember now.  A woman with a trolley was getting very irritable moving it forward and back, taking care to maintain a distance of two metres from me lest I or my subordinate behaviour be infectious.

It was at that surreal time of quiet roads and buses all empty, save for the driver, that from the tailed-back queue for the Tesco Metro it was possible to hear conversations taking place directly across the road at the local branch of the Coventry Building Society, one of the largest in its network.  There were two staff outside and two staff just inside, guarding the entrance double doors to prevent the majority of the great unwashed, the potential virus carriers who used to be known as customers, members, many of whom are savers, hence creditors of the business, from gaining access.  Some staff could be heard advising those in the queue to go home and log on if they could.  Were those staff oblivious to the message that this sent out with regard to the future of their own jobs?  Some staff were even discussing personal customer financial information in front of others outside, as if it didn’t matter.  This is a building society that used to have one of the best reputations for customer service.  To confirm however that its directors weren’t all in on the scam, during the previous two years all its branches had been refurbished away from the traditional bank set up of a row of tellers behind a perspex screen to something open plan, hence customer-friendly.  But now open plan meant outside.

Shop Closures

The continued enforcement of draconian and unjustifiable legislation on so-called ‘social distancing’, limiting the number of customers to any establishment and mandatory mask wearing, which in itself acts as a deterrent to some customers, has resulted in a significant loss of income for the retail and hospitality sectors; with the exception of the large supermarket chains who can enforce this legislation in the knowledge that their customers rely upon them too much.

From the perspective of the owners of those supermarket chains, independent rivals going out of business can only be a good thing.  Many retailers in specific niche areas were already struggling from competition on-line and from the larger stores owned by the supermarket chains, so being forced to close during the Spring due to being ‘non-essential’ meant that in many cases when they could re-open, they had lost customers for good.  Now that the lockdown has been re-tightened, many shop proprietors are either going on-line only or giving up entirely.  With the former at least the business may have a chance of staying afloat in a competitive market, but in either case it will result in another empty retail unit, when many town and city centres were already in decline, having more empty retail space than they would ever need.

The above photo of Karabo Womenswear, Regent Street, Leamington Spa, was taken of 5th November, the day that the lockdown -with unanimous Labour parliamentary ‘opposition’ support – was tightened to Tier 4, the local MP Matt Western being one of those who voted shamefully and accordingly.  This is not the only retailer or other business establishment within the generally quite affluent constituency of Warwick & Leamington which has ceased trading entirely in the past eight months, due to the lockdown.  The menswear shop, in nearby Warwick Street, also ceased trading permanently from 5th November.  Immediately below the CLOSING DOWN notice in the window is one advertising shop fittings for sale (but who would now want to buy them?).  Too small to notice on this photo is another notice on the door stating that the store is now permanently closed, but that purchases can be made on-line.  The notice that was there the day before, stating maximum of four customers allowed in the shop with mandatory mask wearing required, has been sensibly removed.

Leamington Spa’s main shopping thoroughfare, The Parade which bisects both Regent and Warwick Streets, has no shortage of empty shops either, the opticians below (photo also taken on 5th November) being another independent struggling to compete with the majors in its respective field.  The Parade was closed by Warwickshire County Council in mid-June with the stated reason of ‘maintaining social distancing’.  During the following week, I had a chat with a couple of staff at the Holland & Barrett shop just a short way up the road when I popped in to do some shopping.  On discussing the road closure, they confirmed that the council only consulted local businesses after the road closure had been implented and that their shop and others, whose staff they know, had seen a downturn in trade.  Given that there are double yellow lines up the length of the road, the staff believed that the downturn was due to bus routes having been moved, hence the loss of passing trade from passengers waiting or embarking.  So much for any ‘green’ agenda behind all this.  With the lockdown re-tightened, ‘non-essential’ retailers are closed once again, as they were back in April and May, but the road remains closed.

The real agenda however could be that Warwickshire is one of the trial areas for redirecting the use of traffic cameras to monitor appropriate ‘social distancing’ by pedestrians.  With the road closed to all traffic and the resultant downturn in trade such monitoring would hardly be difficult.  Add in the further loss of trade due to mandatory mask wearing (the reason I no longer shop at Holland & Barrett) and The Parade is nowadays never as busy as it used to be up until eight months ago, though the lower overall numbers of people contain a high proportion of those who wear a mask whilst between shops, creating a dystopian environment which is off-putting to other people.  I wonder if mask wearing along The Parade may become subject to pedestrian monitoring as well.  And yet there are still some people who think that these authoritarian measures are about a respiratory virus.  Whilst Regent and Warwick Streets may not (yet) be subject to this except at the intersections with The Parade, the closure of the latter means that they are no longer through routes for traffic, hence they also suffer from the loss of passing trade.

Matt Western MP has a parliamentary majority of just 789 votes, down from 1,206 in 2017, so he ought to be responsive to concerns about local business closures resultant from lockdown, but he toes the party line on almost every matter; and the Labour Party has long been hostile to the aspiring entrepreneurs who want to run their own business.  For their part, the Conservative Party is deliberately destroying the livelihoods of the merchant class who formed their local party and voting base, in thrall to corporatism as it now is and as Labour now is.  So the alternative to a pro-lockdown Labour MP, supporting the destruction of independent retailers, cafes etc would be a pro-lockdown Conservative MP doing exactly the same; and in a marginal swing constituency like this, also toeing the party line.