Three Days to Save the NHS Economy

My friend the famous financial journalist, who cannot be named because it would jeopardise his career, thinks the only thing we can do to try and avert the looming disaster that is the second lockdown is to write to our MPs. I suggested he create a template that Lockdown Sceptics readers could use and he duly obliged.

Dear Member of Parliament,

This week you will be called upon to authorise a second lockdown across England. As your constituent, I urge you reject this proposal on the grounds that lockdowns are ruinous to lives, livelihoods and liberty.

Lives are lost when other medical services are suspended. Lives are ruined by depression and domestic violence which accompany lockdowns. Livelihoods are destroyed and countless families impoverished with future generations left to bear the costs of this ruinous policy. Liberty is suspended as the government rules by decree. Parliament is sidelined and its constitutional role seriously diminished.

Lockdown is not only a cruel and blunt instrument for dealing with COVID-19, it is singularly ineffective. That’s why we are facing a second lockdown so soon after the first. We’re told that hospitals are about to be overwhelmed. But how much confidence should we have in epidemiological models when their forecasting record to date has been so poor?

Evidence from around the world reveals no correlation between lockdowns and coronavirus fatalities. In fact, Peru, the country with the highest fatality rate also had one of the earliest and strictest lockdowns. By contrast, Sweden, which had no lockdown has suffered no excess deaths this year. A policy of “focused protection” for the vulnerable offers a viable alternative approach to a second lockdown.

We have reached a critical moment in our country’s history. If you truly care for the health and welfare of the nation, or are concerned about the future of Parliament, our constitution and liberties, you must reject this second lockdown.

And if you don’t fancy that one, here’s an actual letter a reader has just sent to his MP, Gareth Davies, the member for Grantham and Stamford (Con).

Sir,

I am writing to you as my representative in Parliament, as a resident of Bourne, to urge you not to vote in favour of the planned second Lockdown from Thursday.

The effects of Lockdowns are well known. They’re so negative that even the WHO now advises against them with Prof David Nabarro, special envoy to the WHO saying precisely this in an interview with Andrew Neil on Spectator TV. Our PM even described Lockdowns recently as the ‘nuclear option’ when responding to the Leader of the Opposition’s call for a ‘circuit-break’ recently.

Being furloughed and having to make ends meet on 80% salary as a single-parent of two children was bad enough in March, April and May but will be impossible over the coming month with Christmas approaching. And of course it won’t just be the coming month, will it?

I appreciate the low case rate in South Kesteven compared with elsewhere in the UK May afford me and others here a perceived misunderstanding of the situation nationally, but it doesn’t take long using the government’s own Covid Dashboard to see that what SAGE members are saying doesn’t square with reality. Tier 3 measures being introduced in Greater Nottingham from last Thursday, for example, despite the persistent and sustained fall in cases there from the start of the month is a good case in point. The same for Liverpool & Merseyside and the majority of boroughs in Manchester.

I have never had time for conspiracy theories but I am now fully on board with the likelihood of sinister work at play. All these discredited models by SAGE scientists still seem to curry favour with the PM, who has undoubtedly been ‘got’ early on, following his fight with COVID-19.

Why is SAGE’s reasoning behind their models kept secret? Why is SAGE conflating cases with infections when the two are far from the same?

To be clear, if you vote for this atrocious, unnecessary and legally dubious further grab of our liberties, I – like many others I know – will never vote Conservative again.

You may consider time is on your Party’s side with just under four years before the next General Election, but the lockdown-caused deaths will be ‘slow burners’ for all to see, taking place over the forthcoming years with highly publicised cancer, heart-related and mental illness deaths played out before your, and all your constituents’, eyes, from which there will be no going back.

If the good people of South Kesteven see thousands of unnecessary excess deaths reported with as much gusto as the press has with reminding us of the daily case/death rates for years and years, there is every chance that this Tory stronghold will turn red in the same way the Beast of Bolsolver would never have thought he’d see his constituency turn blue.

Yours sincerely,

XXXXX XXXXXXX

Stop Press: There’s a rebellion brewing on the Conservative back benches, according to the Telegraph – not helped by Michael Gove’s hint on Marr yesterday morning that the second lockdown could be extended well beyond December 2nd.

Tory former minister Sir Desmond Swayne said it would take a “huge amount of persuasion for me to vote for this disastrous course of action”.

Conservative former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the announcement of another lockdown was a “body blow” to the British people.

A Government source said there was “enormous frustration” from backbenchers and ministers about the Government’s handling of the crisis, with the leak of lockdown restrictions suggesting “incompetence” within Number 10.

The Mail has more.

Boris Johnson was facing a Tory rebellion last night over his new national lockdown.

Many of his own MPs were outraged by the revelation that the restrictions could last much longer than the planned four weeks – and potentially even run into spring.

Some indicated they would oppose the measures that business chiefs fear will devastate an already fragile economy.

“I will be voting against the new national lockdown on Wednesday when it comes before the House of Commons,” said former Cabinet minister Esther McVey. “The ‘lockdown cure’ is causing more harm than Covid.”

Another Conservative MP said the fresh clampdown was “like a nightmare that we’ll never wake up from”.

The Mail also has a hard-hitting comment piece by Sir Iain Duncan Smith, questioning whether the data presented by Witless and Unbalanced on Saturday night was fair and accurate.

Please God let more Tory MPs rebel. If Boris has to rely on Labour votes to get the second lockdown through Parliament that will be a political disaster for him.

By Toby Young

https://lockdownsceptics.org/