Darrell Palmer

[Alan @A1an_M]

I grew up in a house where both of my parents smoked, in an era where people smoked, everywhere, and I also had asthma. Unsurprisingly, I've never smoked & don't like being around smokers. Smoking is, overall, bad for your health and the health of those around you. Pubs and restaurants and hotels became much more pleasant places to be after the smoking ban was brought in. For non-smokers at least.

Having said all of that, I'm pretty uncomfortable about seeing government bringing in bans like this. Younger generations have, by and large, made their own decisions about smoking (and drinking) and, vaping aside, smoking was dying out pretty naturally, so a statutory ban seems unnecessary. It might even be counterproductive and make young people want to smoke even more.

And the big concern I have is if we set a precedent with smoking, what will the next thing be that the Big State wants to ban? It might be something that's a lot more valuable to us than smoking.

[Neil Clark @NeilClark66]

More banning, more controlling. What’s wrong with providing people with all the information and then leaving them to decide what to do? Our society has become increasingly authoritarian- much more so than a lot of countries we label ‘authoritarian’. And, with all the cameras everywhere it feels we are under constant surveillance & able to be fined at any point just for going down the wrong road. Orwell was just 40 years too early with ‘1984’.

[Darrell Palmer @DarrellPalmer1]

@FlyingDutchoffi @dre_NOTDR You just send that reply to every 'scam' comment, regardless of the topic? Odd........

[Darrell Palmer @DarrellPalmer1]

@darren_dazmav80 I agree it was a scam, but you need to remember the timeline more accurately. This was more to ensure we were complying with lockdowns, the jab was not around until many months after this.

[Kenny Carmody @KennyCarmody]

Thanks to COVID, I will never trust our government again.

Not this one. Not the next one. Not the one after that. No matter who is in charge, no matter what party, no matter what face they put in front of a camera to reassure me.

Because we watched what they did.

We watched them lock people in their homes, destroy small businesses built over lifetimes, and call it safety. I watched them separate the dying from their families and call it compassion. I watched them inject fear into an entire population on a daily basis and call it public health.

We watched them mandate experimental injections under the threat of losing your job, your career, your ability to participate in society and call it a choice.

We watched them silence doctors who dissented. Destroy researchers who questioned. Humiliate and defame ordinary people who simply asked to see the data.

We watched them change definitions, manipulate statistics, move goalposts, and smile through every single contradiction while the media applauded and the critics were banned.

And when the harm became undeniable when the injured filled forums because the hospitals wouldn’t listen. I watched them look the other way, cover their tracks, and quietly rewrite the narrative before anyone could hold them to account.

Not one resignation. Not one apology. Not one moment of accountability.

Just silence, arrogance, and the quiet assumption that you would eventually forget.

I have not forgotten.

And I will never trust them again.

[Higgy @higgyboson]

My local council have cancelled an event called "Covid Day Of Reflection" later this month.

It's a shame. I was looking forward to "reflecting" on the fact that covid could kill you if you stood up to walk to the toilets in a pub without wearing a mask but not if you were sat down eating a pie. And of course you had to be out of the pub by 10pm because covid knew the time and would kill you if you were still supping up your last drops of beer at 10.01pm.

I was looking forward to "reflecting" on the fact that at one point people who worked in Tesco didn't have to wear a mask at work but if they popped into Aldi on the way home covid would INSTANTLY know they were in a different supermarket and kill them. (And vice versa for all supermarket staff).

I was hoping to reflect that families from different households were allowed to sit in groups of 8 in a pub garden but not in any of their own gardens.

That 30 people who worked closely together in an office all day weren't allowed to invite each other into their own homes for even a minute.

That loved ones were barred from attending funerals.

That anyone who'd had covid and died of ANYTHING (car crash/drowned/fell off a roof/eaten by a lion etc), within 90 days was a recorded as a "covid death".

That children's playparks were apparently covid killing grounds and posed a imminent threat to life if ANYONE dared to sit on a swing.

And of course I'd like to reflect on being told that I wasn't allowed to go outside for more than an hour each day because covid was out there and would kill me but I was supposed to open all my windows to let in fresh air because if I didn't then the covid in my house would also kill me.

Oh, and I'd like to reflect on being told by a security guard in Tesco that I couldn't possibly be exempt from wearing a face mask because I "walked too fast" to be exempt.

Actually, on reflection, I've done enough reflecting.

[Geoff Buys Cars @GeoffBuysCars]

The first to arrive were the cameras
Installed to protect both you and me
In places where we weren't that threatened
And yet the people didn't see

What followed were traffic restrictions
To keep the roads quiet and clean
The maths didn't add up, or the science
But still the people didn't see

Next came the 15 minute neighbourhoods
Make our lives easier, decreed
To some, it seemed like restrictions
But still the people didn't see

Then came the Digital ID
So convenient, easy and free!
Your life in one chip on a mainframe
And still the people didn't see

The cars they sold were electric
All wired to the government PC
They switched off the driving on Sundays
Yet still the people didn't see

The banks moved their money to digital
The government banned cash the next week
The ability to fly was restricted
Yet still the people didn't see

They linked up your money and profile
To the ID on the government PC
Connected it to social media
Yet still the people didn't see

Then came a new cure, a new virus
Safe and Effective, and free
They linked these j&bs to your profile
And connected the government PC

When the people were locked up in cities
Policed by their digital ID
Unable to visit their loved ones
Now finally the people can see

Restricted and tracked with no money,
To go further a permit you'll need
Contained in your digital city
Oh why did the people not see?!

These steps they sold us a progress
Never looked to be quite what they seemed
If you don't ask the questions and protest
Then your children will never know FREE.

[Alan @A1an_M]

We used to have lots of places in the UK where you could get most of what you needed within 15 minutes walk: school, GP, grocer, butcher, church, pub, children's playground, sports club.

We called them "towns" and "villages".

Then along came central and local government.

They encouraged large chains to build out of town supermarkets, forcing town centre butchers and grocers and fishmongers out of business.

They planted acres of new housing around towns and villages, with no facilities, and too far away from town centres for people to walk there. And they sold off sports grounds and playgrounds for more housing.

They built centralised "superhospitals", moving patient care away from their local neighbourhood, while running down the GP service and replacing it with call centres and "apps".

They raised business rates and car park prices in town centres, and installed lots of bike lanes and "traffic calming", thereby narrowing roads and causing more traffic congestion, reducing footfall, and sending town centre shops out of business.

They closed pubs, playgrounds, sports clubs, churches to save us all from a *checks notes* deadly respiratory virus.

And now what do they want to do?

They want to recreate those 15 minute communities that we used to have in small towns and villages, but in bigger towns and cities instead. Only they're not doing it by encouraging small businesses to open neighbourhood stores, or reducing local business rates, or decentralising the NHS, ensuring we can all live in that same 15 minute paradise.

No, they're doing it by installing traffic filters and CCTV and enforcement infrastructure and fines. All stick and no carrot. Creating new inner city ghettos.

There is seemingly no situation which central and local government cannot make worse.

[Silkie Carlo @silkiecarlo]

Kemi, please name just one way in which the “social media ban” for children will not require the 68 million internet users in the UK, of all ages, to provide our digital ID or biometric data?

Thanks

[Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki @MatthewWielicki]

Look at this map.

–55 °C in Siberia.
+45 °C in Australia.

At the same time. On the same planet.

And I’m supposed to believe that averaging this into a single number called “global temperature” tells me something physically meaningful?

That’s not climate science... that’s statistical abstraction dressed up as reality.

There is no such thing as a global temperature in the way people intuitively understand temperature. Temperature is local. It depends on latitude, season, altitude, oceans, clouds, circulation, land cover, and time of day. Averaging wildly different thermodynamic regimes into one number erases the very physics that control climate in the first place.

You can calculate a global mean.
You can plot it.
You can build policy around it.

But don’t confuse a mathematical construct with a physical state of the planet.

No ecosystem experiences the global average.
No human lives in the global average.
No storm, drought, heatwave, or cold snap is driven by the global average.

The obsession with a single number exists for one reason: it’s easy to message, easy to scare with, and easy to regulate.

[Darrell Palmer @DarrellPalmer1]

@TimothyFBoyle @ClareCraigPath @DrNeilStone Well said this is the most important thing to note and it destroys that graph

[Bob Moran @bobscartoons]

Remember when all these 'terrorists' were so afraid of catching a cold that they didn't attack anyone for two years while the whole world was looking the other way?

Most of you seem to have forgotten that. You think all of this is real. That all of sudden the nasty smelly Muslims have started attacking us on a daily basis, because, you know, there are just SO many of them here now. It's all organic and inevitable. Because they hate us so much. We need to start a war. Elon said so.

Please stop being as thick as your true enemy needs you to be.

[Gareth Icke @garethicke]

It certainly whiffs of this

The attacks ramping up, as we said they would, in the immediate aftermath of the digital id announcement, is a red flag.

Sadly, I expect it to continue.

[Alan @A1an_M]

People today are supposed to have an NI number when they start work in the UK. But many don't, which is why we have a big cash in hand black economy.

What makes you think that the same employers employing illegals today with no NI number will in future decide they're going to ask for digital ID from someone they're going to pay cash in hand to?

[Chris Littlewood @chrislittlewoo8]

Digital ID / Brit Card

Let’s put this in context.

Because successive governments will not enforce the laws we already have and allow people to enter our country illegally, we are now told everyone must accept a Digital ID.

Law abiding citizens are pushed into a “papers please” society just to work, travel, get healthcare, or access their own money.

That is not security.

That is punishment of the public for continuous government failure.

It is a manufactured excuse to bring in Digital ID.

It has nothing to do with illegal migration and everything to do with controlling society.

Not safe. Not secure.

#NoToDigitalID

[Alan @A1an_M]

Having been on Twitter for about 3 and half years now, I've noticed how the level and heat of debate ebbs and flows. You get quiet periods with few people commenting, and relatively mild debate. And then you get periods when commenting - and anger - explodes.

It's always interesting to step back from it and reflect. Why did commenting and anger just explode, and who benefits?

The shooting of Charlie Kirk has resulted in a sudden uptick of traffic on Twitter, and an explosion of anger and division.

Who gains from this?

Not the "two sides" in the arguments, clearly.

Who gains are the people who actually run the world, and shake the jar every now and again to encourage the red ants and black ants to start fighting. They must be laughing like drains right now.

Who shook the jar? Who was behind the Charlie Kirk shooting? I don't mean who fired the gun. Who was behind the shooting? That's where we should be focusing our attention.

[Darrell Palmer @DarrellPalmer1]

@andrewlloyd180 @Turki_alalshikh Not only that, but he has his little runners finding out scorecards during the fight, like after round 6 of Yarde/Arthur where he has a little word to Frank Warren and sends him over in the 7th to tell the Yarde corner the scores.

[Tim CB @balmer_tim]

These are some of the knives I can gather in 10 seconds from my kitchen. 17 year olds being able to buy knives on Amazon isn't the problem and it is shameful deflection to claim it is

[Alan @A1an_M]

It's all so laughable.
Let's do some rudimentary modelling here.

The official population of the UK is 67 million people.
But, according to OurWorldInData, only 53.8 million people ultimately received at least 1 dose of the vaccine.

So that is the population who had the potential to be "saved" by the vaccines. You can't have been saved by it if you didn't have it! (especially since even its proponents admit the vaccine didn't prevent transmission).

The Infection Fatality Rate of SARS-COV-2 in H1 of 2020 averaged 0.26% across the world per John Ioannidis (Stanford). So let's take this as a worst case (in reality the IFR had declined to less than 0.1% by mid 2021)

So 0.26% of the 53.8 million people who were eventually vaccinated were originally at risk of death from the virus. Which is 139,880 people

So if only 139,880 of the people who had the vaccine were ever at risk of death from the virus, how could 475,000 lives possibly have been saved by it?

[Alex Barnicoat @AlexBarnicoat_]

If a two seater plane accidentally flies into British Airspace, the UK will scramble 2 $120 million Typhoon Fighter Jets to potentially shoot it down.

But if a boat filled with 60 military age men arrives, who we don’t know, the UK pays for them to live here.

Why is this?