So there’s a whole new “elite” unit monitoring spicy tweets, but criminals are just roaming free to do as they please.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage urged last week that owing to rampant crime and the unwillingness to deal with it, the country is on the verge of societal collapse.
Making things safe for government…Bottom line is, after decades, PC and child groomers are still winning in the UK.
The development comes as the so called Online Safety Act law came into force for social media companies on Friday.
The law was passed by the previous Conservative government, just one of the many disastrous policies they embraced that led to the leftist Labour Party coming back into power with a massive majority last year.
British users of X shared screenshots of messages that popped up while they attempted to view footage from the protests, which started in Epping after a migrant sexually assaulted a teenage girl and have since spread around the country.
Professor Eric Robinson of the University of Liverpool, one of the authors, said: “Foods classed as ultra-processed which are high in fat, salt and/or sugar should be avoided, but a number of ultra-processed foods are not.
“We should be thinking very carefully about what advice is being given to the public, as opposed to providing simplified and potentially misleading messages that grab headlines.”
The wide-ranging report into the urban landscape and public health, released on Thursday, urges the government to do more to tackle what Whitty terms “healthy food deserts” in cities, which the report finds is a major cause of unhealthy eating.
Whitty, who became a well-known and controversial figure during the COVID-19 lockdown era, also points to the cost of food as a key factor impacting poorer people the most, finding that per calorie, healthy food “is almost twice as expensive as unhealthy food.”
Children and families in inner city areas are less likely to have access to healthy, affordable food choices in local shops, restaurants, and takeaways, and are “disproportionately exposed to unhealthy food advertising,” the 430-page report finds.
Four out of five outdoor billboards in England and Wales are in poorer areas, with many advertising junk food, while poorer regions are often “saturated with fast-food outlets,” both physically and online, the study found.
Targeted Food Taxes
Whitty said that businesses must be made to play a part in encouraging healthier eating habits, with proposed solutions including healthy food sales targets, specific taxes on unhealthy foods, and making it mandatory rather than voluntary for firms to report on what types and volumes of food they sell.
“Such measures could level the playing field for large industry actors, pave the way for progressive business and improve accountability for those who hold huge influence over children’s health,” the report said, finding that “meaningful change to food environments is possible.”
Research highlighted in the study shows that, for seven of the 10 biggest global food and drink businesses operating in the UK, more than two-thirds of their packaged food and drink sales came from products classed as high in fat, sugar, or salt.
While “past and present governments have recognised the importance of reformulating the recipes of food and drink options to reduce the amount of fat, salt and sugar in products,” the “failure to mandate this approach” and instead leave it up to industry has led to a lack of meaningful progress, Whitty said.
A number of different groups are quoted in the report, with solutions including an “excess profits” tax on retailers or producers of products with high sugar and salt content.
Supermarkets and shops, especially those where families on lower incomes shop, are often “saturated” with unhealthy food choices, which the report found was exacerbating health inequalities.
Health Inequalities
“Food-related ill health is not experienced equally by children, families and communities across the country, with children and families living in more deprived areas more acutely affected by a food system where the unhealthy options are often the most available,” it said.
The report added that the most deprived fifth of the population would need to spend half of their disposable income on food to meet the cost of the government-recommended healthy diet, compared with just 11 percent for the wealthiest fifth.
It said: “The food environment in parts of cities entrenches inequalities in health and promotes obesity.
“Healthy food deserts combine with junk food advertising to set children and adults up to live a shorter and unhealthier life through obesity and the diseases it causes, particularly in the more deprived areas of our cities.”
Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty photographed giving a media briefing during the COVID-19 lockdown era. Jack Hill/The Times/PA
The report also looks at how food is produced in the UK, finding that almost as much land is dedicated to growing sugar (110,000 hectares) as to growing all of the nation’s vegetables combined (116,000 hectares).
Humans are “genetically wired to crave calorie-rich food,“ Whitty said, so it is “unwise to think we can rely on education and willpower alone to curb our appetites and to prevent the many diet-related diseases that constitute some of the biggest threats to public health.”
The default position for British parliamentarians is to use the brash tools of the state to fix any, and every, issue. When you realize that all of this is objectively true, you learn something that will never leave you: our elites are not very impressive people.
Mainstream British political thought processes contain an epidemic of dreadful reasoning. Witness the average political interaction between “popular” British parliamentarians and voters, think through the reasoning of the topics discussed, and you will know exactly what is lacking. Unlike the remnants that remain on the American political scene, talk of philosophy and deeper economic beliefs are extinct. The United Kingdom is gripped by an election which acts as the perfect situation for our leaders to breakdown their deeper beliefs so that voters can truly understand whether they identify with them whilst effectively thinking through the reasoning behind their beliefs. This has not been the case in the UK for a long time; instead, voters are treated to non-tangible, ambiguous, and abstract babble about the imaginary sunlit uplands that will appear from renewed state intervention.
Bear witness to the commentary in this election and you will find no deliberation on why the state should take a larger role; certainly no discussion about if the state should have a role at all. The default position for British parliamentarians is to use the brash tools of the state to fix any, and every, issue. When you realize that all of this is objectively true, you learn something that will never leave you: our elites are not very impressive people. Absent a discussion on the necessity of state intervention, the United Kingdom will continue down the path of slow destruction and ruination.
The British population has spent the best part of a century demanding the state steps in to solve societal issues. Very little actual debate has been had as to whether the state should have such a role. The National Health Service has replaced religion in Britain, with any criticism levied at it seen as coming from a place of pure evil and hatred. This is despite it consistently underperforming relative to healthcare systems from around the world. Supporters may snipe back with rhetoric that the NHS has been grinded down by the Conservative Party, but even during Tony Blair’s premiership, it consistently underperformed relative to other countries despite record investment. The much hated £350 million investment figure on the side of the big red bus designated for the NHS during the Brexit campaign has been matched and exceeded, yet the NHS continues to underperform. At no stage of the discussion around how to make sure people have high quality healthcare has it been mentioned that perhaps continuous state intervention is not the answer.
The British pension system is nearing the end of the road due to our dizzying level of unfunded liabilities, yet the Conservative Party has made pledges to make our pension system more extensive. There is a complete lack of alert to the fact that the pension system is like a metaphorical Titanic; heading for disaster with very little knowledge of the impending ruin.
Pro-slow campaigners who have been defending controversial new 20mph speed limits enforced in London and Wales last week actually want ‘car free cities’ and an end to private vehicle ownership, plans suggest.
Last week, Mark Drakeford’s Welsh Labour government imposed a blanket 20mph across all built up residential areas – sparking outrage from residents who say their journeys now take twice as long and use twice as much fuel.
Meanwhile in London, Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a further 40 miles (65km) worth of roads in the capital are set to become 20mph zones by the end of 2023.
The British press has quoted the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) hundreds of times in the past two years without informing readers it is funded by the UK military, US government and arms corporations, and that it’s a bastion of establishment interests.
Smaller funders include arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Babcock, Leonardo, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, alongside the UK Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy.
RUSI (circled) is next door to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. (Photo: MOD)
RUSI has been cited in 336 UK press articles in the past two years, and is invariably described by journalists simply as a “think tank”.
But the organisation’s funders include the UK and US governments, alongside arms corporations, and its commentaries overwhelmingly reflect the perspectives of the British establishment.
Declassified could find no instances in the hundreds of press articles where RUSI’s funders were mentioned.
In the past two years, the Guardian or Observer mentioned RUSI in 106 articles, the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in 66 and the Times and Sunday Times in 28 articles.
The references in the papers were quotes from RUSI staff, notably on the war in Ukraine and UK military policy, or reports released by the organisation.
RUSI says it is “an independent think tank engaged in cutting-edge defence and security research” and that it “embodies nearly two centuries of forward thinking, free discussion, and careful reflection on defence and security matters”.
Based in Whitehall, close to the Ministry of Defence, RUSI was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington, the Field Marshal and later prime minister.
Its second largest funder – providing between £500,000 and £999,000 – is the US State Department while its other large sponsors include the UK Foreign Office, the British army and arms corporation BAE Systems, which all gave up to £0.5m each in 2020-21.
As previously discussed, after Musk decided to buy Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European countries to force social media companies to censor Americans. The European Union quickly responded by threatening Musk and other executives. Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear.
Donelan is seeking speech arrests under the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a draconian censorship bill that would effectively ban end-to-end encryption for private internet users.
The bill uses Britain’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” based on various progressive characteristics, including transgenderism. So the government can censor anyone who it views as promoting or justifying hatred against virtually any group. Those who do not censor can now be rounded up by Donelan and her minions.
According to a report by The Telegraph, companies will also face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue should they dare to ignore Britain’s demands to preemptively delete or obscure posts violating its coming censorship regime.
“This is the man who bet it all on Red and it came up Black…”
What a mess. Kwasi Kwarteng’s Special Fiscal Operation failed to stabilise UK markets and has zero prospect of driving growth. The new government stumbled at the first jump. How bad will it get? What are the implications? Who is next for the Chancellor’s job?
There are policy mistakes, and there are Policy Mistakes, but few compare to the market Judder on Friday morning…. In terms of screaming, all-in POLICY MISTAKES new UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s not-a-budget, his “Special Fiscal Operation”, went down about as well as a battalion of Russian chocolate tea-pots on the road to Kyiv. It was moment confidence in the UK’s Virtuous Sovereign Trinity snapped. Sterling Crashed. Gilt yields capped wider.
It ain’t over yet, this morning Sterling traded below 1.03 for the first time ever during an Asian flash crash. I will post regular updates on the comments page and Twitter as this crisis unfolds. The working assumption is even if Gilts and Sterling stabilise – the damage is already done. Expect… volatile politics and markets.
This is going to be a critical week for sterling. There are calls for the Bank of England to jump in with a 100 bp rate hike and currency intervention to stem the crippling currency losses. There are even rumours of yet another internal Tory coup being scoped in Westminster. Ministers trying to talk up export prospects on the back of the currency collapse knew they were defending the indefensible – the UK is a re-exporter and is importing further inflation at speed.
I warned three weeks ago that new UK Premier Liz Truss and Kwarteng had “5 days to Avert a Confidence Crisis in the UK”. She got a time extension because of the Royal Funeral. Turns out I was right to worry about markets. On Friday morning it happened – a 0.7% jump in Gilt Yields and the 3% tumble in Sterling. The response to the not-a-budget confirmed just how badly market confidence in the UK’s political competence, sterling stability and gilt market sustainability has been shaken.
Kwarteng’s response to the mayhem? “I don’t comment on market movements.”
Fair enough. When you know nothing and people suspect you are an idiot it’s best to stay quiet so as not to confirm it.
But is he aware of the consequences of what he’s done? The UK’s reputation for fiscal prudence has been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. This is going to hurt. The weekend analysis was harshly critical – it was right to be so. Dr Doom, Nouriel Roubini, tweeted “Truss and her cabinet at clueless.” Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said the UK will be remembered for the “worst macro-economic policies of any major country in a long-time..” He called the policies naïve, and the UK was an emerging market turning into a submerging market. I could fill the rest of this morning’s Porridge with similar negative punditry and doomster soundbites from analysts presenting variations on the same thing.
If there is a single positive economic comment written by someone not called Patrick Minford or Gerald Lyons – please post it in the comments section, because I can’t find it.
They should EITHER admit their data is garbage or that the vaccines should be IMMEDIATELY halted for ages 10 to 14. Ideally, they admit BOTH. Practically speaking, they will do NEITHER.
UH OH!!! The UK government now has a huge problem. A triply vaxxed child is 45 times more likely to die than an unvaccinated child. That makes the vaccine the biggest child killer ever deployed by any government and makes COVID deaths look like rounding error (45X vs. 0.05X).
UH OH!!! The UK government now has a huge problem. A triply vaxxed child is 45 times more likely to die than an unvaccinated child. That makes the vaccine the biggest child killer ever deployed by any government and makes COVID deaths look like rounding error (45X vs. 0.05X).
The “UK numbers are garbage” is confirmed once again by this dataset.
If you believe the UK numbers are right, then you should be jumping up and down and IMMEDIATELY BE DEMANDING a halt to the vaccines for ages 10 to 14.
Details of both claims are explained below.
But here’s the punchline: there is simply no way out of this for the UK government. They must pick either 1 or 2. They must either confirm their numbers are garbage or they must call an immediate halt to the vaccines for 10 to 14.
The UK press should force them to choose which way they want to have their credibility decimated.
My suggestion: They should come clean and admit to both.
Here are the details for each of my assertions.
The UK numbers are garbage
First of all, compliments are due to the UK government for exposing the data. The US government doesn’t expose any data nearly this detailed so it’s impossible to do the proper analyses on the US data because there is no data to use.
The UK government seems to be not including the most interesting metrics to assess safety and efficacy. The Expose points this out; it seems when the numbers work against them, they either stop reporting the data entirely, stop breaking it out, or in this case, not doing the calculation of the deaths per 100K person years so that only more motivated people will take the time and see that there is a huge problem.
For your convenience, you can download my annotated version here. Go to Table 6. My annotations are in Column G. The important numbers that we’ll use below are in red.
We see that the all-cause mortality (ACM) rate for ages 20-24 is reduced by a factor of 2 (compare G21 vs. G28).
That’s impossible! The vaccine isn’t a fountain of youth. It is only claimed to reduce death from COVID, not eliminate deaths from all known diseases.
According to the unvaccinated Row 21, only (43/378) = 8.3% of the deaths are from COVID. So if you have a PERFECT vaccine, ACM can only go down by 8.3%. It cannot go down by 50%.
MCViewPoint 
