End the Lockdown
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
Spiked is not a reliable source to base your belief on.
That said you do have a point, people HAVE been more wary to come into the Emergency department out of fear of Covid and what procedures would be if they show.
But my mom - as a Cancer patient - hasn't had issues with any of her appointments whether it be chemo or otherwise.
So as the others said...
Bullshit.
Whatever , they were roller skating in a public park owned by the citizens of which he is one . Nothing more then police and bureaucratic over reach I hope he takes it to court and the judge throws it out and reprimands the poor judgement of the officers . Stay off the lawn Gerry you wouldn’t want to get fined for walking the dog .
Talking about stupid , you just bend over and take it up the hoop like a good little boy .
I have to think that there is/was more to this story. I think it probably started with cop reminding them that park was closed and likely asking them to leave. No doubt he responded with a speech much like the one you just gave and may have even suggested the location of an open doughnut shop. I suspect that is when he was fined.
Probably so , it is still overkill as far as I am concerned . Police officers should have more pressing matters than bylaw infractions .
The lockdown left is no friend of the working class
Middle-class Corbynistas are using fear and hysteria to keep working people under house arrest.
BRENDAN O'NEILL
EDITOR
13th May 2020
Spiked
If you want to know how messed-up politics has become in the Covid era, consider this: a Tory government is agitating for working people to have the right to return to work, while the TUC and the rest of the left are howling for working people to be kept at home. Evil Tories want to get the working classes working, while hip Corbynistas cry: ‘No! It’s too dangerous. Leave them in their flats.’
It’s an about-face of epic proportions. How far we’ve come since the Battle of Orgreave in 1984. It is now the left that wants working people to be decommissioned, put out to pasture, languishing on state-paid wages or Universal Credit and uncertain of whether their job will even exist once the lockdown is finally lifted. And it’s the Tories saying: ‘Erm, don’t you think it would be better if working people worked?’
Of course, the left’s justification for its new policy of preventing the working classes from working is that they might catch Covid-19 and die. They’re ramping up the culture of fear in a desperate effort to present their bizarre, historically unprecedented anti-work outlook as a good, noble thing. Actual facts – like the fact that under-40s have made up just 0.75 per cent of deaths from Covid – don’t get so much as a look-in. No, keep all workers at home, even the fit, healthy young ones.
Part of the problem here is the colonisation of the left by the middle classes, which means the left has less and less understanding of the importance of work as a means of earning, and feeling autonomous, and having a sense of dignity. This is why someone like Owen Jones, still working from his comfortable apartment, can describe the government’s desire to get people back to work as ‘the working classes [being] ordered to return to their function as generators of revenue’. Only someone completely removed from the reality and aspirations of working-class communities could describe work in such dehumanising terms. Jones thinks he is caricaturing the Evil Tory view of working people, but in truth he is letting slip his own middle-class pity for the poor, exploited souls of the capitalist machine.
This is also why the pseudo-Marxists at Novara Media can do a pisstake of the government’s new Covid slogan that says: ‘Back To Work, Catch The Virus, Save The Billionaires.’ Because for these vulgar leftists, capitalism is little more than a conspiracy in which the filthy rich steer the dim workers into harm’s way in a desperate bid to make loadsamoney. No wonder the Corbynista movement was so easily overrun by the Socialism of Fools.
And of course there’s a huge element of hypocrisy in the middle-class left’s insistence that workers be kept at home until their workplaces have been made 100 per cent Covid-proof (as if such a thing were even possible). These people are still shopping for food, getting Dirty Burgers delivered by Deliveroo guys, giving lectures via internet systems maintained by electricians. If they really thought work was unsafe right now, they’d be agitating for a complete shutdown. They aren’t, of course, because the ‘work as death’ line they are currently pushing is entirely cynical. It is not based on reasoned reflection of the threat posed by Covid-19, far less on the needs and interests of working people, but rather on the question of how best to score political points against the Tory government.
The anti-work left presents its opposition to the lifting of the lockdown as a pro-working-class stance. ‘We want to save the working classes from death’, they say, blissfully unaware of how much they sound like Victorian moralists seeking to lift The Poor out of darkness (or in this case to keep them in darkness, under house arrest, for as long as possible). But there is nothing remotely pro-working-class about keeping working people locked down with no regard whatsoever for the devastation that will result from this unprecedented shutdown of economic life and from the manmade recession we are creating.
Britain is heading for the largest economic contraction on record. It is predicted that millions will lose their jobs. The global lockdown contagion has had even more terrible consequences elsewhere. More than 100million Indians are at risk of losing their livelihoods. The International Labour Organisation believes that 1.6 billion people could lose work as a result of the pandemic and the lockdowns. And that’s not to mention the poverty and hunger that will take hold in various parts of the world as a result of the halting of production and trade.
The naivety of believing that halting economic life is in any way good for working people is staggering. The lockdown most severely affects working-class people who need to leave their homes to earn a living, and its global consequences will be most severely felt by the world’s lowest-paid workers. Using fact-lite fear and panic to sustain the lockdown – by arguing that working people risk death from Covid-19 if they go back to work now – is a transparent effort by the left to escape moral responsibility for what it is really agitating for: economic contraction, unemployment, and the decommissioning of working people.
Pro-working-class? Do me a favour. To the modern left, working people are just weapons to be wielded against the Evil Tories, not individuals for whom work is a source of money and independence and pride. There is far more humanity in Boris Johnson’s invitation of people to return to work than there is in the left’s deranged insistence that working people will die if they leave their houses.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/13/the-lockdown-left-is-no-friend-of-the-working-class/
Middle-class Corbynistas are using fear and hysteria to keep working people under house arrest.
BRENDAN O'NEILL
EDITOR
13th May 2020
Spiked
If you want to know how messed-up politics has become in the Covid era, consider this: a Tory government is agitating for working people to have the right to return to work, while the TUC and the rest of the left are howling for working people to be kept at home. Evil Tories want to get the working classes working, while hip Corbynistas cry: ‘No! It’s too dangerous. Leave them in their flats.’
It’s an about-face of epic proportions. How far we’ve come since the Battle of Orgreave in 1984. It is now the left that wants working people to be decommissioned, put out to pasture, languishing on state-paid wages or Universal Credit and uncertain of whether their job will even exist once the lockdown is finally lifted. And it’s the Tories saying: ‘Erm, don’t you think it would be better if working people worked?’
Of course, the left’s justification for its new policy of preventing the working classes from working is that they might catch Covid-19 and die. They’re ramping up the culture of fear in a desperate effort to present their bizarre, historically unprecedented anti-work outlook as a good, noble thing. Actual facts – like the fact that under-40s have made up just 0.75 per cent of deaths from Covid – don’t get so much as a look-in. No, keep all workers at home, even the fit, healthy young ones.
Part of the problem here is the colonisation of the left by the middle classes, which means the left has less and less understanding of the importance of work as a means of earning, and feeling autonomous, and having a sense of dignity. This is why someone like Owen Jones, still working from his comfortable apartment, can describe the government’s desire to get people back to work as ‘the working classes [being] ordered to return to their function as generators of revenue’. Only someone completely removed from the reality and aspirations of working-class communities could describe work in such dehumanising terms. Jones thinks he is caricaturing the Evil Tory view of working people, but in truth he is letting slip his own middle-class pity for the poor, exploited souls of the capitalist machine.
This is also why the pseudo-Marxists at Novara Media can do a pisstake of the government’s new Covid slogan that says: ‘Back To Work, Catch The Virus, Save The Billionaires.’ Because for these vulgar leftists, capitalism is little more than a conspiracy in which the filthy rich steer the dim workers into harm’s way in a desperate bid to make loadsamoney. No wonder the Corbynista movement was so easily overrun by the Socialism of Fools.
And of course there’s a huge element of hypocrisy in the middle-class left’s insistence that workers be kept at home until their workplaces have been made 100 per cent Covid-proof (as if such a thing were even possible). These people are still shopping for food, getting Dirty Burgers delivered by Deliveroo guys, giving lectures via internet systems maintained by electricians. If they really thought work was unsafe right now, they’d be agitating for a complete shutdown. They aren’t, of course, because the ‘work as death’ line they are currently pushing is entirely cynical. It is not based on reasoned reflection of the threat posed by Covid-19, far less on the needs and interests of working people, but rather on the question of how best to score political points against the Tory government.
The anti-work left presents its opposition to the lifting of the lockdown as a pro-working-class stance. ‘We want to save the working classes from death’, they say, blissfully unaware of how much they sound like Victorian moralists seeking to lift The Poor out of darkness (or in this case to keep them in darkness, under house arrest, for as long as possible). But there is nothing remotely pro-working-class about keeping working people locked down with no regard whatsoever for the devastation that will result from this unprecedented shutdown of economic life and from the manmade recession we are creating.
Britain is heading for the largest economic contraction on record. It is predicted that millions will lose their jobs. The global lockdown contagion has had even more terrible consequences elsewhere. More than 100million Indians are at risk of losing their livelihoods. The International Labour Organisation believes that 1.6 billion people could lose work as a result of the pandemic and the lockdowns. And that’s not to mention the poverty and hunger that will take hold in various parts of the world as a result of the halting of production and trade.
The naivety of believing that halting economic life is in any way good for working people is staggering. The lockdown most severely affects working-class people who need to leave their homes to earn a living, and its global consequences will be most severely felt by the world’s lowest-paid workers. Using fact-lite fear and panic to sustain the lockdown – by arguing that working people risk death from Covid-19 if they go back to work now – is a transparent effort by the left to escape moral responsibility for what it is really agitating for: economic contraction, unemployment, and the decommissioning of working people.
Pro-working-class? Do me a favour. To the modern left, working people are just weapons to be wielded against the Evil Tories, not individuals for whom work is a source of money and independence and pride. There is far more humanity in Boris Johnson’s invitation of people to return to work than there is in the left’s deranged insistence that working people will die if they leave their houses.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/13/the-lockdown-left-is-no-friend-of-the-working-class/
It's the first day of the more relaxed lockdown here in England.
People in England - but not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - can now travel long distances when out exercising rather than having to stay local. As a result, lots of people have been visiting English beaches and national parks today.
People in England - but not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - can now travel long distances when out exercising rather than having to stay local. As a result, lots of people have been visiting English beaches and national parks today.
John Ioannidis Responds to Critics of His Study Finding That the Coronavirus Is Not as Deadly as Thought
https://www.realclearscience.com/ar...us_is_not_as_deadly_as_we_thought_111392.html
A brilliant mind. End the lockdown.
https://www.realclearscience.com/ar...us_is_not_as_deadly_as_we_thought_111392.html
A brilliant mind. End the lockdown.
UK faces 'recession to end all recessions' with GDP set to plunge nearly a THIRD this quarter amid coronavirus lockdown and warnings the misery will go on as long as social distancing stays
The respected IFS think-tank said the scale of the nose-dive due to coronavirus lockdown will be like nothing seen before, while the NIESR forecast that UK plc will shrink by 25-30 per cent in the current three month period. The dire assessments came after official statistics this morning showed GDP was down 2 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 and plunged 5.8 per cent in March - the largest monthly fall on record. But although the three-month fall was the worst since the end of 2008 at the height of the credit crunch, it is just the tip of the iceberg as it includes just one week of the full lockdown. IFS director Paul Johnson said the scale of the downturn was huge. 'It is a mega-recession. It is a recession to end all recessions, in terms of its scale,' he told BBC Radio 4's World at One. The NIESR figures are in line with the scenario from the Bank of England that GDP will slump by 25 per cent this quarter before bouncing back. The 14 per cent over the year would be the worst recession in 300 years, since the Great Frost swept Europe in 1709. Former chancellor Lord Lamont has said much of the economy cannot recover until social distancing ends.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...cession-end-recessions-GDP-set-plunge-30.html
The Wuhan Virus Lockdown is a Colossal Blunder
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/the_wuhan_virus_lockdown_is_a_colossal_blunder.html
Kinda reminds me of The Peter Principle, higher-ups can never lose face by admitting they made a mistake. End the lockdown.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/the_wuhan_virus_lockdown_is_a_colossal_blunder.html
Kinda reminds me of The Peter Principle, higher-ups can never lose face by admitting they made a mistake. End the lockdown.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Coronavirus Shutdown Is Overreach
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the extension of the state’s stay-at-home order, siding with Republican legislators in a high-profile challenge of the emergency authority of a statewide official during the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, had extended the prohibition on most travel and operations of nonessential businesses until May 26. But in a 4-to-3 ruling, the court said that Wisconsin’s top health official had not followed the proper process in setting the strict limits for residents.
Although the opinion centered on the technical method by which the limits had been set, several conservative justices conveyed their dismay at the restrictions themselves.
“This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person’s life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law,” Justice Daniel Kelly wrote in a concurring opinion.
The ruling, Mr. Evers’s office said, appears to immediately end statewide provisions that have required many Wisconsin residents to stay home. Within hours of the ruling, some taverns were making plans for reopening, the governor’s office said.
“This turns the state to chaos,” Mr. Evers said in an interview. “People will get sick. And the Republicans own the chaos.”
More than 10,000 cases of the coronavirus have been identified in the state, a New York Times database shows, and at least 421 people have died.
There have been legal challenges to stay-at-home orders in Michigan, California, Kentucky and Illinois, but none of those were successful in persuading a court to fully strike down the order, as the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case were. Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order took effect on March 25 and was extended by the governor on April 16, leading to a protest at the State Capitol.
During a 90-minute hearing about the order that was conducted over video chat last week, some justices asked tough questions of the lawyer defending the state’s top health official, Andrea Palm. “Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work, among other ordinarily lawful activities?” Justice Rebecca Bradley asked.
In their majority opinion on Wednesday, the justices ruled that Ms. Palm did not follow the proper procedure for setting stay-at-home limits, and should have followed a rule-making process that permits members of the Legislature to provide input.
“We do not conclude that Palm was without any power to act in the face of this pandemic,” the justices wrote. “However, Palm must follow the law that is applicable to state-wide emergencies.”
The ruling appears to leave Mr. Evers and Republican leaders of the State Legislature in a position of negotiating any next steps for limits on businesses amid the pandemic. But their work relations have been extraordinarily tense, and many observers said the possibility of fruitful negotiation seemed remote.
Mr. Evers, who has already announced plans for a gradual reopening of businesses, said that he hoped to work with Republican lawmakers on next steps, but that in the meantime, he hoped that Wisconsin residents would remain safe, and at home.
“We are in a very perilous place,” he said.
Scott Fitzgerald, the leader of the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Senate, said lawmakers had long been seeking a voice in the conversation about how to respond to the pandemic, but that the governor’s office had, until now, kept them out of the process. “We’re more than willing to sit down with the governor,” he said.
For the moment, Mr. Fitzgerald said, residents would use their own judgment. “People understand, if you don’t want to go to church, you don’t go to church,” he said. “If you don’t want to go to work, you don’t go.”
Wisconsin is considered a swing state in November’s presidential election, and for much of the last decade it has been riven by an intense partisan battle.
When Mr. Evers was elected governor in 2018, it set off a sharp battle over the state’s direction on all sorts of policies. Republicans had full control of the state before that, during a period in which they curtailed bargaining rights for many public labor unions and moved the state sharply to the right.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, while officially nonpartisan, has long been sharply divided along conservative-liberal lines that are well understood by the state’s voters. As partisan fights boiled over in the State Legislature, they emerged on the court as well, once leading to claims of a physical altercation between justices on opposing sides. Conservatives hold a majority on the court, and they will even after a new justice — a liberal challenger who upset Justice Kelly this spring — is seated in August.
This week’s court ruling did not provide a mechanism for a stay so that Republicans and Democrats could reach a compromise on reopening Wisconsin, which the dissenting justices wrote could endanger residents.
“The lack of a stay would be particularly breathtaking given the testimony yesterday before Congress by one of our nation’s top infectious disease experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote. “He warned against lifting too quickly stay-at-home orders.”
Around the state, groups were trying to determine how the opinion would now affect life. A poll of Wisconsin residents released this week by Marquette University Law School found that 69 percent of those surveyed supported the state’s move to close schools and businesses and restrict public gatherings.
“Public health experts have been clear that prematurely lifting social distancing measures will have serious and deadly consequences, especially for vulnerable communities,” Chris Ott, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Wisconsin, said in a statement. He added, “Emergency orders can be necessary during crises like a pandemic, as long as they are grounded in science and consistent with the need to protect the health, safety, and civil liberties of us all.”
Rick Esenberg, the president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which had filed an amicus brief siding with the Legislature, commended the court on Wednesday.
“The court’s decision ensures that Wisconsin’s response to Covid-19 must involve both the executive and the legislative branch,” Mr. Esenberg said. “Wisconsin will be better for it. The grave nature of the pandemic cannot be used to subvert our very form of government.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the extension of the state’s stay-at-home order, siding with Republican legislators in a high-profile challenge of the emergency authority of a statewide official during the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, had extended the prohibition on most travel and operations of nonessential businesses until May 26. But in a 4-to-3 ruling, the court said that Wisconsin’s top health official had not followed the proper process in setting the strict limits for residents.
Although the opinion centered on the technical method by which the limits had been set, several conservative justices conveyed their dismay at the restrictions themselves.
“This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person’s life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law,” Justice Daniel Kelly wrote in a concurring opinion.
The ruling, Mr. Evers’s office said, appears to immediately end statewide provisions that have required many Wisconsin residents to stay home. Within hours of the ruling, some taverns were making plans for reopening, the governor’s office said.
“This turns the state to chaos,” Mr. Evers said in an interview. “People will get sick. And the Republicans own the chaos.”
More than 10,000 cases of the coronavirus have been identified in the state, a New York Times database shows, and at least 421 people have died.
There have been legal challenges to stay-at-home orders in Michigan, California, Kentucky and Illinois, but none of those were successful in persuading a court to fully strike down the order, as the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case were. Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order took effect on March 25 and was extended by the governor on April 16, leading to a protest at the State Capitol.
During a 90-minute hearing about the order that was conducted over video chat last week, some justices asked tough questions of the lawyer defending the state’s top health official, Andrea Palm. “Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work, among other ordinarily lawful activities?” Justice Rebecca Bradley asked.
In their majority opinion on Wednesday, the justices ruled that Ms. Palm did not follow the proper procedure for setting stay-at-home limits, and should have followed a rule-making process that permits members of the Legislature to provide input.
“We do not conclude that Palm was without any power to act in the face of this pandemic,” the justices wrote. “However, Palm must follow the law that is applicable to state-wide emergencies.”
The ruling appears to leave Mr. Evers and Republican leaders of the State Legislature in a position of negotiating any next steps for limits on businesses amid the pandemic. But their work relations have been extraordinarily tense, and many observers said the possibility of fruitful negotiation seemed remote.
Mr. Evers, who has already announced plans for a gradual reopening of businesses, said that he hoped to work with Republican lawmakers on next steps, but that in the meantime, he hoped that Wisconsin residents would remain safe, and at home.
“We are in a very perilous place,” he said.
Scott Fitzgerald, the leader of the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Senate, said lawmakers had long been seeking a voice in the conversation about how to respond to the pandemic, but that the governor’s office had, until now, kept them out of the process. “We’re more than willing to sit down with the governor,” he said.
For the moment, Mr. Fitzgerald said, residents would use their own judgment. “People understand, if you don’t want to go to church, you don’t go to church,” he said. “If you don’t want to go to work, you don’t go.”
Wisconsin is considered a swing state in November’s presidential election, and for much of the last decade it has been riven by an intense partisan battle.
When Mr. Evers was elected governor in 2018, it set off a sharp battle over the state’s direction on all sorts of policies. Republicans had full control of the state before that, during a period in which they curtailed bargaining rights for many public labor unions and moved the state sharply to the right.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, while officially nonpartisan, has long been sharply divided along conservative-liberal lines that are well understood by the state’s voters. As partisan fights boiled over in the State Legislature, they emerged on the court as well, once leading to claims of a physical altercation between justices on opposing sides. Conservatives hold a majority on the court, and they will even after a new justice — a liberal challenger who upset Justice Kelly this spring — is seated in August.
This week’s court ruling did not provide a mechanism for a stay so that Republicans and Democrats could reach a compromise on reopening Wisconsin, which the dissenting justices wrote could endanger residents.
“The lack of a stay would be particularly breathtaking given the testimony yesterday before Congress by one of our nation’s top infectious disease experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote. “He warned against lifting too quickly stay-at-home orders.”
Around the state, groups were trying to determine how the opinion would now affect life. A poll of Wisconsin residents released this week by Marquette University Law School found that 69 percent of those surveyed supported the state’s move to close schools and businesses and restrict public gatherings.
“Public health experts have been clear that prematurely lifting social distancing measures will have serious and deadly consequences, especially for vulnerable communities,” Chris Ott, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Wisconsin, said in a statement. He added, “Emergency orders can be necessary during crises like a pandemic, as long as they are grounded in science and consistent with the need to protect the health, safety, and civil liberties of us all.”
Rick Esenberg, the president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which had filed an amicus brief siding with the Legislature, commended the court on Wednesday.
“The court’s decision ensures that Wisconsin’s response to Covid-19 must involve both the executive and the legislative branch,” Mr. Esenberg said. “Wisconsin will be better for it. The grave nature of the pandemic cannot be used to subvert our very form of government.”
