Boris accused of breaking the law again

[carmanmemoranda]

Boris has apparently said he followed the rules at all times, so that's that then.

Blup

Not another lie surely

 

[IT Minion]

A much tinier number than the proportion of people who drink excessively, smoke, eat ridiculous amounts of food and generally beat their bodies into submission. Those who did die generally had "pre-existing conditions", in other words they almost killed themselves then covid happened to be the trigger that finished them off.

Just the lack of activity caused by the lockdown would have caused a reduction in our nation's already disgusting state of health. This alone will have a resulting death toll, but it will be spread over time and undectable so there won't be any screaming headlines about it.

Just look at the people waddling around any high street, they're all in various stages of mass suicide. Chuck in a respiratory disease, those who've already pushed themselves to the brink won't have the reserves to fight it.

Of course there were outlying freak cases of apparently fit, young and healthy people who died with (or even from) it, and the likes of the British Bullshit Corporation ran endless stories on them as part of the propaganda campaign to tell people that everyone was going to die. This was intentionally misleading utter nonsense, and they knew it when it was happening.

You could have said 'no I won't'.

Much shorter.

 

[JonathanM]

It appears that the corrupt former pm has said he "will no longer work with government-appointed lawyers for the Covid inquiry, after he was referred to the police over further potential rule breaches during the pandemic"

I wonder whether he will have to pay for alternative lawyers himself, this time. Maybe it's not a good idea to use lawyers working for the government, if you've committed crimes.

EDIT: @IT Minion, I'm relying on years of watching the West Wing There the government lawyers had a duty to declare any information given to them by the president or White House staff about any crimes they had committed.

 

[IT Minion]

There is a general requirement to keep everything confidential. It is easier to state when confidence can be broken than when it can't.

A lawyer will not have a duty of confidence if they are being used by a client to perpetrate a fraud, and, by analogy, any other crime. The common law has long recognised that information of this nature cannot be confidential.

We also do not have much in the way of duty to report offences. Though they are creeping in.

Then there is the data protection element. Information collected for one purpose being used for another without consent.

Its quite unusual and probably not how the press reported it.

The latest I've seen is that the lawyers shared info from Boris with their client. Their client then shared it with the Police. That sounds like the lawyers haven't done anything wrong.

Also there's a rumour the diaries cover additional parties at Number 10.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

If he has done nothing wrong, and followed all the rules, there is no issue.

 

[blup]

He's sacked his lawyers that the taxpayer was paying for because they upset him while discharging their duty to disclose, a Trumpian nightmare is developing. The bloke's mad.

Blup

 

[Brigadier]

These were the people the vaccines and lockdowns should have been targeted at.

BAME were also indicated at being at greater risk from the 'rona, as were diabetics iirc.
Add fatties, and who's left who wouldn't be locked down and jabbed?

Even with the benefit of hindsight, Windy, your plan is carp.

 

[fillyboy]

I wonder whether he will have to pay for alternative lawyers himself

Nah. I'm sure a generous benefactor will step forward, anyway, cut and dried case, shouldn't cost any more than the equivalent of a few rolls of wallpaper.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

BAME were also indicated at being at greater risk from the 'rona, as were diabetics iirc.
Add fatties, and who's left who wouldn't be locked down and jabbed?

Even with the benefit of hindsight, Windy, your plan is carp.

The BAME thing was fairly marginal, and was probably more to do with poverty (close living) and a tendency towards obesity than anything else.

Diabetics are 90% type 2 fatties these days, i.e. self-induced through their own choices...

https://www.diabetes.org.uk/professionals/position-statements-reports/statisticshttps://www.diabetes.org.uk/professionals/position-statements-reports/statistics

How many people have type 2 diabetes?
Around 90% of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes.

Obviously some had illnesses that were beyond their control, but it was almost all about oldies and fatties (old fatties were the main problem). They could have been sternly warned about their risk and made their own decisions. Everyone else could have quietly got on with living, had a cough, and the country's economy wouldn't have been permanently wrecked. The healthy people would have quickly gained herd immunity, after which those who needed isolation could have re-emerged from their homes, or could have waited for vaccines.

This is pretty much what was suggested by the Great Barrington proposal, based on intelligent people examining the evidence that was available at that time, not hindsight today. This suggestion wasn't even considered, constructively criticised or the pros and cons weighed up against the stupid plans we ended up with. They'd made their mind up, the evidence ceased to be relevant and was deliberately ignored.

The real issue was probably that the govt would have upset people by telling them what the truth that they didn't want to hear, that they were old and/or unhealthy. This may have affected the next election outcome, they'd all have a stroppy tantrum and vote for the other lot.

 

[Brigadier]

Even with the benefit of hindsight, Windy, your plan is carp.

To which, Windy replied with....

The BAME thing was fairly marginal, and was probably more to do with poverty (close living) and a tendency towards obesity than anything else.

"......was fairly marginal...............and was probably..............."


You're poo-pooing decisions (which were made in the light of "evidence" and hypotheses available at the time), based on what are best guesses now.

IIRC, mortality rates at the start of the pandemic were c. 1%.
Doing nothing, in the expectation that approaching a million would die, was not deemed to be a defensible position.

One million people.

What number of deaths is acceptable I wonder, to adopt a "Devil take the hindmost" approach?

 

[IT Minion]

IIRC, mortality rates at the start of the pandemic were c. 1%.

More like 2% I think, until the prone position and Dexamethasone were identified as valuable treatments the mortality figure was higher than even a few months later.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

More like 2% I think, until the prone position and Dexamethasone were identified as valuable treatments the mortality figure was higher than even a few months later.

Early mortality figures were a percentage of those hospitalised, as the testing simply didn't exist elsewhere. So 2% of a tiny percentage who were hospitalised died, i.e. 2% of a tiny minority, i.e. a very small number. Definitely not 2% of the entire number infected, which was an unknown number.

 

[IT Minion]

Early mortality figures were a percentage of those hospitalised, as the testing simply didn't exist elsewhere. So 2% of a tiny percentage who were hospitalised died, i.e. 2% of a tiny minority, i.e. a very small number. Definitely not 2% of the entire number infected, which was an unknown number.

No, that's not correct. It's flat out wrong.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

One million people.

What number of deaths is acceptable I wonder, to adopt a "Devil take the hindmost" approach?

Nobody was seriously suggesting this beyond the very beginning.

The Great Barrington thing was suggesting that there WERE lockdowns, but that these should be selective based on age and health.

 

[IT Minion]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00139-5/fulltext

Between 1st March and 31st July 2020, there were 86,356 patients discharged from hospitals in England with a test-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. Across the same period, there were 22,975 patients with a diagnosis of COVID-19 on clinical grounds (without test confirmation). There was a trend towards a greater proportion of all cases being clinically diagnosed across the study period (21.6% in March, 16.0% in April, 25.8% in May, 27.5% in June, 33.2% in July).
Of the 86,356 with test-confirmed COVID-19, 26,929 (31.2%) died in hospital of all causes and 22,944 (26.6%) died in hospital with test-confirmed COVID-19 identified as the primary cause of death.

25% - 30% mortality for anyone admitted to hospital who had Covid.

If you don't know this already then you shouldn't be discussing COVID statistics.