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The birth of the biostate Beveridge's vision for public health has been perverted

Slay the giant (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Slay the giant (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)


November 29, 2022   6 mins

While each of Beveridge’s “Five Giants” — want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness — remains unslain, one in particular retains the power to cripple entire nations with the stroke of a pen. The past three years have revealed many things, the most disturbing being the extent to which Beveridge’s notion of public health has been perverted. Not only is the NHS falling short of its original aim of providing free and adequate healthcare for all, but, as something meant to liberate human beings from the threat of disease, public health is slowly being transformed into an instrument of social control.

As new authentication and surveillance technologies, such as vaccine passports and track-and-trace apps, were rolled out during the pandemic, civil rights organisations and activists raised the question of mission creep — that is, the likelihood of governments clinging on to these technologies and using them for unanticipated ends, heralding a new era of normalised state surveillance.

Even the United Nations warned that the potential for abuse was high and that “what is justified during an emergency now may become normalised once the crisis has passed”. Some went even further, claiming that the pandemic was being deliberately exploited by global elites to usher in a “great reset” of human societies — a shift towards an increasingly propertyless, cashless, ultra-digitalised economy. At the time, such concerns were dismissed as groundless conspiracy theories. And yet, like so many other claims that were initially ridiculed and censored only to be proven correct over time, events are corroborating many of these fears.

Following the recent G20 meeting in Bali, the leaders of the world’s largest economies issued a joint declaration that, among other things, called for the establishment of a global vaccine passport and digital health ID scheme. The statement reads: “We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognising digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations.”

The International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 are a legally binding agreement of 196 countries developed under the auspices of the World Health Organization. The IHR, which entered into force in 2007, required countries to strengthen surveillance capacities at border crossings and introduced a series of health documents, including international certificates of vaccination. The G20 leaders further stated: “We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalise and build on the success of the existing standards and digital Covid-19 certificates.”

During the Business 20 (B20) panel held ahead of the G20 summit, Indonesia’s Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin made the same recommendation in even starker terms: “Let’s have a digital health certificate acknowledged by WHO — if you have been vaccinated or tested properly, then you can move around.” In a 132-page document that contains a series of recommendations for the G20, the B20 urged the widespread adoption of digital Covid-19 certificates that would be part of a “technology-enabled ‘always-on’ global health infrastructure”.

Sadikin added that G20 countries have agreed to the proposal and now plan to introduce it as a revision to the IHR framework at the next World Health Assembly, scheduled for May 2023 in Geneva. The idea is that the WHO should be given legally binding powers to implement such measures in the future. This is an attempt to revamp the WHO’s so-called international pandemic treaty — an effort to give it sweeping powers to dictate public health measures to countries with the full backing of international law, potentially overriding their national sovereignty.

This reform would effectively transform the organisation into something akin to a “world health government” with unprecedented powers to overrule the decisions of national governments in all matters of public health. Given the highly questionable role it played throughout the Covid pandemic and its well-known dependence on private “philanthrocapitalist” institutions — first and foremost the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — this is a rather alarming prospect.

Mainstream “fact-checkers” have been quick to point out that, even if the treaty were approved, the WHO would have no capacity to force member states to comply with public health measures. But while it is true that any law that isn’t backed by force is ultimately a paper tiger, such rebuttals ignore the way in which such a treaty could bolster the ability of governments to implement overreaching measures under the guise of public health precisely by engaging in “blameshift” towards the WHO (“It’s out of our hands — we’re just doing what they’re telling us to do!”).

They equally ignore that “peer pressure” exists even among nation states — countries can be cajoled into taking certain measures simply by painting refuseniks as pariah states (as Sweden knows all too well). And the refusal to implement a legally binding international agreement would certainly put any government under enormous pressure. This is especially true in the context of highly uneven relations of power between states. This explains why the main opposition to the treaty has hitherto come from African countries — a likely reaction to global Covid policies that have come to be seen by many on the continent as a novel form of medical colonialism.

Yet this doesn’t appear to concern developed nations. And this is where the normalisation of vaccine passports becomes most alarming. As we saw during the pandemic, Covid passports led to an unprecedented upending of rights and liberties that we took for granted in liberal-democratic societies. Never before had QR codes been used as a regulated requirement for entry into social life. Almost from one day to the next, millions of unvaccinated citizens found themselves stripped of their basic constitutional, civil, and human rights — the right to work, education, public transport, and social life. These policies caused massive psychological stress and economic deprivation, as unvaccinated people found themselves not only excluded from social life but in many cases also restricted from working.

What’s worse, it is now clear that Covid vaccines have a limited impact on transmission, which means that the original rationale for vaccine passports — that of creating “Covid-free spaces” and reducing the spread of the virus — was largely unfounded. It’s hard to see how the G20 leaders could describe this as a “success”, unless vaccine passports were not just a means to an end — mass vaccination — but also, and perhaps even more importantly, an end in and of themselves. It’s no secret that tech companies saw Covid passports as the gateway to all-encompassing digital IDs.

Corporations and international organisations such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum have long been promoting biometrics-based digital identity and health wallets — “digital passports” assigned to each citizen at birth that contain a person’s vaccination status and other health data (such as genetic tests and mental health records), as well as, potentially, their demographic, financial, location and biometric data. As researchers noted in the BMJ, this creates the potential for all sorts of rights infringements and discrimination based on personal status by governments, employers, law enforcement, and financial institutions.

This is exactly the “new normal” that many had warned about: one in which access to social life and the enjoyment of basic human rights, such as the right to freedom of movement, would become linked to the positive scanning of a digital ID containing all manner of personal data. As the WEF predicted in a 2018 report, this digital ID will one day “determine what products, services and information we can access — or, conversely, what is closed off to us”.

Projects of this kind are already underway across the world. India, for instance, has the largest biometric ID system on the planet, with 1.3 billion digital IDs issued, covering 92% of the population. Aadhaar requires Indian citizens to submit their photograph, iris scan and fingerprints to qualify for social services, benefits, compensation, scholarships, legal entitlements and nutrition programs. According to one report in the Financial Times, there have been “several cases of cardless individuals starving to death because they could not access benefits to which they were entitled”. As its author notes, some critics argue the Indian Aadhaar system “now acts as a tool for social exclusion and corporate influence”.

The notion of a digital ID that “gives you access to services” is also troubling because it implies that your right to access the services in question could be “switched off” at any moment. This is not some dystopian hypothetical scenario — in countries such as Italy, France, and Israel, double-vaccinated citizens lost their “status” when passports came to require a third booster dose in 2021-22; in Chile, that status was extended to a fourth dose in May 2022. A glimpse into what this may mean for the future was offered in June, when a protest planned by hundreds of bank depositors in central China seeking access to their frozen funds was thwarted when authorities turned their health code apps red, several depositors told Reuters, making it impossible for them to travel.

How is this connected to the “Great Reset” — a term which has come to encompass all the allegedly nefarious plans being hatched by the World Economic Forum and by its cartoonishly villainous chairman, Klaus Schwab? Well, for one, Schwab was invited to speak at the G20, where he claimed that the current “economic, political, social and ecological and institutional crisis” represents an opportunity for “a deep systemic and structural restructuring of our world”. A fundamental aspect of this brave new world envisioned by Schwab is the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, which in his own words consists in “the fusion of our physical, digital and biological identities”. Digital IDs, in this sense, should be understood as just the first step in a “revolution” aimed at completely blurring the lines between our bodies and emerging technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, and so on.

It’s not hard to see how such a system would hand corporate elites and their technocratic henchmen almost complete control over our lives. Yet this future is far from guaranteed. The pandemic has also shown that our increasingly digitised reality hasn’t suppressed humans’ basic need for physical connectedness, intimacy, nature — not in everyone, at least. The battle between the human and post-human therefore seems far from over. If introducing a biostate is the answer to Beveridge’s second Giant, it doesn’t seem like a very convincing one.


Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
1 year ago

The WHO is doing two separate but related things 1. Revising the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), and 2. Devising, via an international Negotiating Body (INB) an entirely new “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”. The INB agreed in July that this should be legally binding. The significance is that the latter could have a broader scope than the former, it’s more about substance than process: they have agreed a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society” approach is needed. They INB is meeting again in Geneva, next week, to progress their draft.

A lot could be said about this but one thing it is important to understand is that the WHO has decided that representatives of hundreds (I count nearly 400) of “stakeholders” – including the philanthrocapitalists and direct representatives of the pharma, tech, and other big industries – should in both cases be invited to attend and to speak at working group meetings tasked with working up the amendments and the draft agreement, and to have the ability to send written comments on draft documentation.

The WHO’s Executive Board also decided in January of this year that there should, before each annual meeting (usually held in May) of its governing body, the World Health Assembly, that an “informal pre-meeting for interested non-State actors in official relations [that is, big pharma and the “philanthrocapitalists”], Member States and the Secretariat will be organized annually during the four to six weeks before the World Health Assembly”.

The WHO is actually quite transparent about its *formal* meetings. You can go on the website and read all of the agendas, papers, and meeting reports, including to observe how drafts discussed in formal working groups evolve into final agreements, though you cannot see who, exactly, attended and said what at each meeting. Informal meetings, like the unprecedented one that (presumably) took place before this year’s WHA, are held entirely in secret. One purpose of this would be to iron out any differences in private so as to be able to present a stitched up false sense of unanimity between governments and stakeholders in public. And that’s what we got in May – lots of hand clapping, backslapping, and near-universal agreement on the need for a “One Health” based treaty (even if a package of amendments to the IHR proposed by the US and others were largely rejected – forging agreements still take time).

It’s now up to individuals across the world to stay calm, do our homework, and help each other as best we can to understand what’s happening and, if we think it is wrong, to push back against it with a deliberate, focused determination, avoiding the rabbit holes that it is so easy to fall down or falling out with others over points of detail or personality. If we make honest factual or analytical mistakes we should be very quick to acknowledge them, and be extremely gracious if we believe others to have erred – there is no room for big egos.

For many, this will involve overcoming a fear-barrier to acknowledge just how corrupted many global and national institutions have become: yes they really are attempting a Great Reset (they’ve written books on it for goodness sake!), and yes they really do want a digital global bio-security system (they’ve said so at G20 meetings!). There’s no need to assume any evil or malicious intent, or “conspiracy”: there is little doubt in my mind that the vast majority of the actors involved have genuinely convinced themselves that they are doing the right and moral thing even if that just happens to coincide with an enormous self-interest, a profoundly human thing to do if ever there was one.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Great points about tackling the issues and not the person, as evidenced already in Comments to this article.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Excellent, informative comment. Thank you.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Great points about tackling the issues and not the person, as evidenced already in Comments to this article.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Excellent, informative comment. Thank you.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
1 year ago

The WHO is doing two separate but related things 1. Revising the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), and 2. Devising, via an international Negotiating Body (INB) an entirely new “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response”. The INB agreed in July that this should be legally binding. The significance is that the latter could have a broader scope than the former, it’s more about substance than process: they have agreed a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society” approach is needed. They INB is meeting again in Geneva, next week, to progress their draft.

A lot could be said about this but one thing it is important to understand is that the WHO has decided that representatives of hundreds (I count nearly 400) of “stakeholders” – including the philanthrocapitalists and direct representatives of the pharma, tech, and other big industries – should in both cases be invited to attend and to speak at working group meetings tasked with working up the amendments and the draft agreement, and to have the ability to send written comments on draft documentation.

The WHO’s Executive Board also decided in January of this year that there should, before each annual meeting (usually held in May) of its governing body, the World Health Assembly, that an “informal pre-meeting for interested non-State actors in official relations [that is, big pharma and the “philanthrocapitalists”], Member States and the Secretariat will be organized annually during the four to six weeks before the World Health Assembly”.

The WHO is actually quite transparent about its *formal* meetings. You can go on the website and read all of the agendas, papers, and meeting reports, including to observe how drafts discussed in formal working groups evolve into final agreements, though you cannot see who, exactly, attended and said what at each meeting. Informal meetings, like the unprecedented one that (presumably) took place before this year’s WHA, are held entirely in secret. One purpose of this would be to iron out any differences in private so as to be able to present a stitched up false sense of unanimity between governments and stakeholders in public. And that’s what we got in May – lots of hand clapping, backslapping, and near-universal agreement on the need for a “One Health” based treaty (even if a package of amendments to the IHR proposed by the US and others were largely rejected – forging agreements still take time).

It’s now up to individuals across the world to stay calm, do our homework, and help each other as best we can to understand what’s happening and, if we think it is wrong, to push back against it with a deliberate, focused determination, avoiding the rabbit holes that it is so easy to fall down or falling out with others over points of detail or personality. If we make honest factual or analytical mistakes we should be very quick to acknowledge them, and be extremely gracious if we believe others to have erred – there is no room for big egos.

For many, this will involve overcoming a fear-barrier to acknowledge just how corrupted many global and national institutions have become: yes they really are attempting a Great Reset (they’ve written books on it for goodness sake!), and yes they really do want a digital global bio-security system (they’ve said so at G20 meetings!). There’s no need to assume any evil or malicious intent, or “conspiracy”: there is little doubt in my mind that the vast majority of the actors involved have genuinely convinced themselves that they are doing the right and moral thing even if that just happens to coincide with an enormous self-interest, a profoundly human thing to do if ever there was one.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

This story has some connection to the earlier story about Humanism. Do people consider themselves to be free agents. Even though they live with the give and take of their community are they aware of such a concept? Or do they see themselves as something that just drifts back and forward with the tide, not so much victims as passive forms with a limited understanding of what it is to be alive. I think people are dangerously undereducated and hardly aware of the tacit approval they give to those who will use them.

Chris W
Chris W
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Your last sentence is the clincher – people seem to vote for people without knowing anything about the politics and they would not be interested in learning, using some excuse like, “I’m too busy to listen to all that.” People on Unherd don’t seem to realise how privileged they are to be able to write a reasoned argument. Unherders probably represent less than 1% of the population.

The best use for this site is for everyone to stop criticising things they don’t like and to start coming up with alternatives. How many articles do we have which just blame everything on the party in power? It is electorate which is the real problem.

Stuart Sutherland
Stuart Sutherland
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris W

Yup, in a democracy the buck stops with the electorate. They voted for it!

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

Not in the US. Our elections are rigged.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago

Not any more. Unelected bureaucrats, NGO’s and large multinational corporations run things. Do you honestly think that the current POTUS even has a clue about what’s going on? He was supposedly “elected” by the people, but he is merely a puppet sitting on top of a Trojan horse.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

Not in the US. Our elections are rigged.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
1 year ago

Not any more. Unelected bureaucrats, NGO’s and large multinational corporations run things. Do you honestly think that the current POTUS even has a clue about what’s going on? He was supposedly “elected” by the people, but he is merely a puppet sitting on top of a Trojan horse.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris W

Have to disagree a bit there, our elected government was felled by a press frenzy, lizz truss by ‘the markets’ the electorates power has been eroded, almost beyond comprehension, by multi national corporate interests.
Now it is probably up to the electorate to realise this and do something about it, but you must bear in mind the WEF is enormous, well funded, global. This is the biggest problem.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

I think we should address the terrifying nature of the Bio-State explored by the author in this excellent article. It exists! It is not a theory. Lockdown saw our elected government surrender authoritarian power to an unholy alliance of monolithic failing NHS, a Leftist BBC & OFCOM bent on inducing Orwellian style hysteria to make us bow and protect a State institution, and an army of dodgy self enriching scientific academics also committed to self enrichment and lies. Our human rights to freedom or debate? Gone in a moment. This Medical Industrial Complex is still there eager to assert its control over our lives even as the self destruction of a now broken NHS in ignoring all disease bar Covid is literally killing us. But hey – Beveridge was into eugenics…it sort of makes sense. Because all our hapless political parties, brazen media and silent law (humsn rights anyone? Pah) summoned this monster collectively, no one is being urged to fight the new born Bio State. So it will spread its wings further. We have been warned.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Yes I know the WEF exist, and I know WHO exist, however the rest of your post is based on assumption. And assumption is the mother of all f*** ups.
I think myself that the world is too big and complicated for the WEF to hold COMPLETE power. Now they have a lot of influence, but not all the influence. If you’ve followed the conspiracy rabbit holes for a long time you will be aware that organisations like the trilateral commission, the un, cia, rockerfeller, Clinton foundations were marked out as the spawning home of evil by conspiracy theorists long before the WEF took the crown. Or people even started talking about it. So which is it?
People have picked up just the WEF as the home of all this stuff because schwabb is all over the Internet and written a book talking about it. (deflecting from the un, trilateral etc. that will be the real people holding on to power) Now if you were an evil mastermind would you reveal your plan?
In doing this he has made the WEF the target of everyones mistrust, I can’t help but feel this is too easy. Edit to say in that he has been visably schmoosing all our leaders. Now if the WEF and their multiple associates wants everyone chipped and passported what’s the easiest way to go about it? You get them to overthrow their own governments, you make it look like every politician is bought, every existing institution useless, you subject them to a pandemic and then blackouts to really rile them up then off they go. They destroy their existing governments, institutions, then you, the rich guy, using your money and media influences install your own people. By this point the country would a shit tip, if we were at war with China at the same time our supply chains would have collapsed. So then you need a thing to get your rations, you need a thing to get your UBI etc. etc. Currency would have crashed by this point there’s your CBDC and there you have it. Easy. Everyone ID carded, all the old democratic and educational establishments gone, WEF winner.
So I will not stop defending our parliament or universities as long as people like Charles Walker, Kathleen stock exist. We must not let them trick us into thinking anything else is the problem apart from multi national corporate interests.
Now I hate the WEF, I hate its propaganda, but it is not the ONLY power in this world, that it wants a biostate and has enough money to throw at trying to get there I don’t doubt, but you are being simplistic. And I know for a fact your the guy I saw the other day calling nurses ‘enemies in the fog’ so if its OK, I won’t take you too seriously.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Will add, to all the people I’ve been anti warring out there, this is the main reason I object to it, the carnage it would cause would be perfect to introduce things like UBI and Cbdcs. Benefit enormous multinational companies involved in the arms industry.
Edit to also say all of the above is just how I see it, you’ve no need to take me too seriously either 🙂
And one more edit cos I love this topic 🙂 Parallel theory also could be China own WHO and the WEF, they started the pandemic, hyped it up, have been deliberately bottle necking shipping to cause inflation, they might be backing russia in Ukraine, they could be relying on the energy crisis and stalled shipping to help tank the west, let us tear ourselves apart and save them the trouble and its just a big old war game? Point is, no one knows.
Another one I like is covid was fire drill for the carnage coming our way if we do end up embroiled in ww3.
All theories. We are scant on facts in this age of information, we have to be very careful. I’m done now.
And actually I’m not, this document, produced by the American intelligence services, linked to the people like the trilateral commission that somehow evade all this stuff on account of WEF is worth a read. It’s the real deal, and it’s based on series of different scenarios depending on how Geopolitics plays out. More realistic than old klaus schwabs book. It’s 140 pages, but honestly, if you read nothing else, have a look.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/gt2040-home
Report: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf
Does highlight the importance of an open mind.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Will add, to all the people I’ve been anti warring out there, this is the main reason I object to it, the carnage it would cause would be perfect to introduce things like UBI and Cbdcs. Benefit enormous multinational companies involved in the arms industry.
Edit to also say all of the above is just how I see it, you’ve no need to take me too seriously either 🙂
And one more edit cos I love this topic 🙂 Parallel theory also could be China own WHO and the WEF, they started the pandemic, hyped it up, have been deliberately bottle necking shipping to cause inflation, they might be backing russia in Ukraine, they could be relying on the energy crisis and stalled shipping to help tank the west, let us tear ourselves apart and save them the trouble and its just a big old war game? Point is, no one knows.
Another one I like is covid was fire drill for the carnage coming our way if we do end up embroiled in ww3.
All theories. We are scant on facts in this age of information, we have to be very careful. I’m done now.
And actually I’m not, this document, produced by the American intelligence services, linked to the people like the trilateral commission that somehow evade all this stuff on account of WEF is worth a read. It’s the real deal, and it’s based on series of different scenarios depending on how Geopolitics plays out. More realistic than old klaus schwabs book. It’s 140 pages, but honestly, if you read nothing else, have a look.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/gt2040-home
Report: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf
Does highlight the importance of an open mind.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Also Mr Walter Marvell, it was the NHS workers here that protested, successfully, against mandatory vaccination, so give up your NHS trope, some of our doctors and nurses have been absolute hero’s in speaking up against it. Our freedom of debate hasn’t quite been completely nullified but if we are stupid enough to destroy our existing parliament it will be. It did not serve the Conservative government well at all locking down, if you were following closely it was obvious by the time we did, the government had no choice, they were damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. The media is a massive problem, if anything, direct your vitriol at them.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Yes I know the WEF exist, and I know WHO exist, however the rest of your post is based on assumption. And assumption is the mother of all f*** ups.
I think myself that the world is too big and complicated for the WEF to hold COMPLETE power. Now they have a lot of influence, but not all the influence. If you’ve followed the conspiracy rabbit holes for a long time you will be aware that organisations like the trilateral commission, the un, cia, rockerfeller, Clinton foundations were marked out as the spawning home of evil by conspiracy theorists long before the WEF took the crown. Or people even started talking about it. So which is it?
People have picked up just the WEF as the home of all this stuff because schwabb is all over the Internet and written a book talking about it. (deflecting from the un, trilateral etc. that will be the real people holding on to power) Now if you were an evil mastermind would you reveal your plan?
In doing this he has made the WEF the target of everyones mistrust, I can’t help but feel this is too easy. Edit to say in that he has been visably schmoosing all our leaders. Now if the WEF and their multiple associates wants everyone chipped and passported what’s the easiest way to go about it? You get them to overthrow their own governments, you make it look like every politician is bought, every existing institution useless, you subject them to a pandemic and then blackouts to really rile them up then off they go. They destroy their existing governments, institutions, then you, the rich guy, using your money and media influences install your own people. By this point the country would a shit tip, if we were at war with China at the same time our supply chains would have collapsed. So then you need a thing to get your rations, you need a thing to get your UBI etc. etc. Currency would have crashed by this point there’s your CBDC and there you have it. Easy. Everyone ID carded, all the old democratic and educational establishments gone, WEF winner.
So I will not stop defending our parliament or universities as long as people like Charles Walker, Kathleen stock exist. We must not let them trick us into thinking anything else is the problem apart from multi national corporate interests.
Now I hate the WEF, I hate its propaganda, but it is not the ONLY power in this world, that it wants a biostate and has enough money to throw at trying to get there I don’t doubt, but you are being simplistic. And I know for a fact your the guy I saw the other day calling nurses ‘enemies in the fog’ so if its OK, I won’t take you too seriously.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Also Mr Walter Marvell, it was the NHS workers here that protested, successfully, against mandatory vaccination, so give up your NHS trope, some of our doctors and nurses have been absolute hero’s in speaking up against it. Our freedom of debate hasn’t quite been completely nullified but if we are stupid enough to destroy our existing parliament it will be. It did not serve the Conservative government well at all locking down, if you were following closely it was obvious by the time we did, the government had no choice, they were damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. The media is a massive problem, if anything, direct your vitriol at them.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

I think we should address the terrifying nature of the Bio-State explored by the author in this excellent article. It exists! It is not a theory. Lockdown saw our elected government surrender authoritarian power to an unholy alliance of monolithic failing NHS, a Leftist BBC & OFCOM bent on inducing Orwellian style hysteria to make us bow and protect a State institution, and an army of dodgy self enriching scientific academics also committed to self enrichment and lies. Our human rights to freedom or debate? Gone in a moment. This Medical Industrial Complex is still there eager to assert its control over our lives even as the self destruction of a now broken NHS in ignoring all disease bar Covid is literally killing us. But hey – Beveridge was into eugenics…it sort of makes sense. Because all our hapless political parties, brazen media and silent law (humsn rights anyone? Pah) summoned this monster collectively, no one is being urged to fight the new born Bio State. So it will spread its wings further. We have been warned.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris W

Blaming the electorate seems rather off target here. A bunch of highly privileged elites with little or no democratic legitimacy stitches up a future they feel desirable that most people don’t even know about? The buck stops with them. You can’t expect and I’d say shouldn’t even desire everyone to become political obsessives. Political fanaticism – which obsession often morphs into – does not have a notably good track record. One of the very good things about Britain was the fact that most people weren’t all that interested in politics, though we have a vibrant non political civic society.

Stuart Sutherland
Stuart Sutherland
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris W

Yup, in a democracy the buck stops with the electorate. They voted for it!

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris W

Have to disagree a bit there, our elected government was felled by a press frenzy, lizz truss by ‘the markets’ the electorates power has been eroded, almost beyond comprehension, by multi national corporate interests.
Now it is probably up to the electorate to realise this and do something about it, but you must bear in mind the WEF is enormous, well funded, global. This is the biggest problem.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Chris W

Blaming the electorate seems rather off target here. A bunch of highly privileged elites with little or no democratic legitimacy stitches up a future they feel desirable that most people don’t even know about? The buck stops with them. You can’t expect and I’d say shouldn’t even desire everyone to become political obsessives. Political fanaticism – which obsession often morphs into – does not have a notably good track record. One of the very good things about Britain was the fact that most people weren’t all that interested in politics, though we have a vibrant non political civic society.

Chris W
Chris W
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Your last sentence is the clincher – people seem to vote for people without knowing anything about the politics and they would not be interested in learning, using some excuse like, “I’m too busy to listen to all that.” People on Unherd don’t seem to realise how privileged they are to be able to write a reasoned argument. Unherders probably represent less than 1% of the population.

The best use for this site is for everyone to stop criticising things they don’t like and to start coming up with alternatives. How many articles do we have which just blame everything on the party in power? It is electorate which is the real problem.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

This story has some connection to the earlier story about Humanism. Do people consider themselves to be free agents. Even though they live with the give and take of their community are they aware of such a concept? Or do they see themselves as something that just drifts back and forward with the tide, not so much victims as passive forms with a limited understanding of what it is to be alive. I think people are dangerously undereducated and hardly aware of the tacit approval they give to those who will use them.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Personally, I would make resisting cbdcs, mandatory vaccination and global health ID cards my Hill to die on. My daughter will not be a slave to the mega Corp blob if I can help it. If they try it, expect to see me on BBC news, attempting to drive a borrowed tractor through parliament 🙂 hope you politicians are listening, I’d let you out first, but if you are going to enthrall us to the wef, parliament would be superfluous anyway.
The last anti lockdown protesters were treated disgracefully at times, especially compared to the just stop oil, blm American funded lot! This guy, Charles Walker. Hero. I even emailed his office after this went out to thank him and ask him to keep up the good work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-rXtxOvH3pg
I am hopeful that Britain would be able to muster quite a back lash if we needed to, we still have a few politicians with some sense.
Great article again.
Beware they are coming for London:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2012/08/meet-the-london-hub/
Quote : ‘But London as a city is at a crossroads; our banking system is being called into question and, as the riots last year showed, we have challenging social issues. The question is, how can we harness the participation seen at the games and the wealth of innovation, optimism and skills of Generation Y to achieve significant social change?’
Note them calling it ‘ours’ and ‘we’, notice them using the blm ‘riots’ as justification for their social change.
Also note that they are unfortunately working with what was one of the best universities in this country, Imperial are publishing stuff to the wef website, remember where the covid stats came from? https://www.weforum.org/organizations/imperial-college-london
The articles on their website, will make you feel that actual torture would be preferable, they are even telling us what OUR young people want, how OUR businesses should run:
‘Your organization doesn’t have to be non-profit or mission-based to be driven by purpose. For example, our company, Donut, exists to help people create meaningful connections in their workplaces through interpersonal bonds or tackling societal issues.

Values can live in how work gets done, the benefits you offer, or how you speak up about specific causes. From employing actively inclusive hiring practices to hosting company-wide volunteer initiatives, showing that your company cares about making the world a better place creates an inclusive environment for Gen Z and beyond… ‘
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/gen-z-truly-want-from-workplace-work-values/
All of that, sounds designed to murder SMEs, raising problems that aren’t problems and that are already addressed by stringent employment law: ‘actively inclusive hiring practices’, its not enough to make your own living now either your business should also show it cares about ‘making the world a better place’ there’s so much wrong with that article I haven’t time to shred it as I’d like to. Would add I like how they paint the ‘mission based non profits’ (normally an acronym for evil tax dodging bast*rds) as the marvellous saints of business. Ugh. Rage.
They are everywhere, like a bad smell. I feel all angry and militant after half an hour on their website 🙂

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Personally, I would make resisting cbdcs, mandatory vaccination and global health ID cards my Hill to die on. My daughter will not be a slave to the mega Corp blob if I can help it. If they try it, expect to see me on BBC news, attempting to drive a borrowed tractor through parliament 🙂 hope you politicians are listening, I’d let you out first, but if you are going to enthrall us to the wef, parliament would be superfluous anyway.
The last anti lockdown protesters were treated disgracefully at times, especially compared to the just stop oil, blm American funded lot! This guy, Charles Walker. Hero. I even emailed his office after this went out to thank him and ask him to keep up the good work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-rXtxOvH3pg
I am hopeful that Britain would be able to muster quite a back lash if we needed to, we still have a few politicians with some sense.
Great article again.
Beware they are coming for London:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2012/08/meet-the-london-hub/
Quote : ‘But London as a city is at a crossroads; our banking system is being called into question and, as the riots last year showed, we have challenging social issues. The question is, how can we harness the participation seen at the games and the wealth of innovation, optimism and skills of Generation Y to achieve significant social change?’
Note them calling it ‘ours’ and ‘we’, notice them using the blm ‘riots’ as justification for their social change.
Also note that they are unfortunately working with what was one of the best universities in this country, Imperial are publishing stuff to the wef website, remember where the covid stats came from? https://www.weforum.org/organizations/imperial-college-london
The articles on their website, will make you feel that actual torture would be preferable, they are even telling us what OUR young people want, how OUR businesses should run:
‘Your organization doesn’t have to be non-profit or mission-based to be driven by purpose. For example, our company, Donut, exists to help people create meaningful connections in their workplaces through interpersonal bonds or tackling societal issues.

Values can live in how work gets done, the benefits you offer, or how you speak up about specific causes. From employing actively inclusive hiring practices to hosting company-wide volunteer initiatives, showing that your company cares about making the world a better place creates an inclusive environment for Gen Z and beyond… ‘
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/gen-z-truly-want-from-workplace-work-values/
All of that, sounds designed to murder SMEs, raising problems that aren’t problems and that are already addressed by stringent employment law: ‘actively inclusive hiring practices’, its not enough to make your own living now either your business should also show it cares about ‘making the world a better place’ there’s so much wrong with that article I haven’t time to shred it as I’d like to. Would add I like how they paint the ‘mission based non profits’ (normally an acronym for evil tax dodging bast*rds) as the marvellous saints of business. Ugh. Rage.
They are everywhere, like a bad smell. I feel all angry and militant after half an hour on their website 🙂

Andrew Wise
Andrew Wise
1 year ago

Did I miss something – the first paragraph & the sub title (often written by an editor who hasn’t read the article!) – refer to Beveridge and then fail to mention him or his report again.
I’m definitely concerned by any political organisations – either UK or Global – grabbing more power to dictate to us, to control us
The disastrous global response to the pandemic just shows how dangerous these people are… please god don’t give them more power.
But this has nothing to do with Beveridge who was definitely naive to think the NHS would ‘cure all disease and save money’ but had nothing to do with global political control of the world population.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Wise

Did I miss something – the first paragraph & the sub title (often written by an editor who hasn’t read the article!) – refer to Beveridge and then fail to mention him or his report again.
I think one of the challenges for the authors in this series about the Beveridge reforms is that the world has changed in ways Beveridge couldn’t have imagined, and the reforms he initiated have created unintended consequences. Arguably, focusing on Beveridge’s goals and worldview at the time of his reforms would tell us little about the welfare state today.
The NHS, for example, can’t be viewed in a bubble as a national health system. It is, as the author notes, part of of a supranational health care enterprise that is increasingly controlled by unelected bodies such as the WHO. Their policies now effectively govern many decisions regarding the NHS and other nations’ health systems.
What I hope to get from this series of articles is how Beveridge’s original goals should be reimagined and reimplemented in a world vastly different from the one that existed eighty years ago.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Indeed, the best – the only – way to start the dreaded reform process is to return to those first principles outlined by Beveridge, and create a debate around what they actually mean today. It seems there’s an impasse which prevents proper but desperately needed national debate, but identifying a start point is essential to break the Gordian Knot.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Indeed, the best – the only – way to start the dreaded reform process is to return to those first principles outlined by Beveridge, and create a debate around what they actually mean today. It seems there’s an impasse which prevents proper but desperately needed national debate, but identifying a start point is essential to break the Gordian Knot.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Wise

Did I miss something – the first paragraph & the sub title (often written by an editor who hasn’t read the article!) – refer to Beveridge and then fail to mention him or his report again.
I think one of the challenges for the authors in this series about the Beveridge reforms is that the world has changed in ways Beveridge couldn’t have imagined, and the reforms he initiated have created unintended consequences. Arguably, focusing on Beveridge’s goals and worldview at the time of his reforms would tell us little about the welfare state today.
The NHS, for example, can’t be viewed in a bubble as a national health system. It is, as the author notes, part of of a supranational health care enterprise that is increasingly controlled by unelected bodies such as the WHO. Their policies now effectively govern many decisions regarding the NHS and other nations’ health systems.
What I hope to get from this series of articles is how Beveridge’s original goals should be reimagined and reimplemented in a world vastly different from the one that existed eighty years ago.

Andrew Wise
Andrew Wise
1 year ago

Did I miss something – the first paragraph & the sub title (often written by an editor who hasn’t read the article!) – refer to Beveridge and then fail to mention him or his report again.
I’m definitely concerned by any political organisations – either UK or Global – grabbing more power to dictate to us, to control us
The disastrous global response to the pandemic just shows how dangerous these people are… please god don’t give them more power.
But this has nothing to do with Beveridge who was definitely naive to think the NHS would ‘cure all disease and save money’ but had nothing to do with global political control of the world population.

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago

“The pandemic has also shown that our increasingly digitised reality hasn’t suppressed humans’ basic need for physical connectedness, intimacy, nature — not in everyone, at least. The battle between the human and post-human therefore seems far from over. If introducing a biostate is the answer to Beveridge’s second Giant, it doesn’t seem like a very convincing one.”

It’s all a bit bleak of course, but the final paragraph does offer hope. And what’s important about the final paragraph is that it omits the most important factor here: the pandemic was an economic disaster as well as a political fiasco. As an experimental exercise, it proved that personal liberty is not some luxury that can be safely discarded by elites in pursuit of a dirigiste digital utopia: liberty is both the product and the driver of that portion of an advanced economy that raises it above the middle-income trap.

In other words it doesn’t matter now dearly technocrats may wish to regiment us all into obedient drones, any successful eradication of the spontaneity that is essential to personal liberty will also destroy the economic vibrancy upon which the legitimacy of the technocrats rests.

Well, that’s my theory, anyway. It is backed up by the evidence from authoritarian regimes throughout history to a great extent, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a formula for economic success for dirigiste political systems that could be enabled by emergent technological progress. We must hope that in the event we face this danger, that sanity prevails.

Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago

“The pandemic has also shown that our increasingly digitised reality hasn’t suppressed humans’ basic need for physical connectedness, intimacy, nature — not in everyone, at least. The battle between the human and post-human therefore seems far from over. If introducing a biostate is the answer to Beveridge’s second Giant, it doesn’t seem like a very convincing one.”

It’s all a bit bleak of course, but the final paragraph does offer hope. And what’s important about the final paragraph is that it omits the most important factor here: the pandemic was an economic disaster as well as a political fiasco. As an experimental exercise, it proved that personal liberty is not some luxury that can be safely discarded by elites in pursuit of a dirigiste digital utopia: liberty is both the product and the driver of that portion of an advanced economy that raises it above the middle-income trap.

In other words it doesn’t matter now dearly technocrats may wish to regiment us all into obedient drones, any successful eradication of the spontaneity that is essential to personal liberty will also destroy the economic vibrancy upon which the legitimacy of the technocrats rests.

Well, that’s my theory, anyway. It is backed up by the evidence from authoritarian regimes throughout history to a great extent, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a formula for economic success for dirigiste political systems that could be enabled by emergent technological progress. We must hope that in the event we face this danger, that sanity prevails.

Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

I note the wretched censor has been busy again!

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Are you still struggling Mr Stanhope? Rude, rude, rude. This is a weird platform.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Are you still struggling Mr Stanhope? Rude, rude, rude. This is a weird platform.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

I note the wretched censor has been busy again!

Edwina Addington
Edwina Addington
1 year ago

Provocative article. However, it would be good if technology could get us fair results in elections. Interesting article about the “difficulty” that local councils will face at local elections next year.An accident waiting to happen? Voter ID in the 2023 English local elections
report published by supporters of constitutional reform suggests today.https://consoc.org.uk/publications/john-ault-report/
A survey commissioned by the Constitution Society found that a significant number of councils were not confident that they could train staff to deal with the new voter ID requirements before next May.
The average expectation among election staff is that 16% of voters will apply for the new voter authority certificate that will be issued to people who cannot produce a passport, driving licence, freedom pass or other approved photographic identification at the polling station.
Voters who need the new certificate — to be securely printed on a single sheet of A4 — will be able to apply as late as six working days before the election. The Constitution Society report says that will mean potentially millions of applications, all of which will have to be approved by officials and posted by a central authority ahead of polling day — or collected before the polls close.
Seventy councils responded to the Constitution Society survey, conducted by Dr John Ault, an experienced elections observer.
Asked whether they were confident they could train staff to check ID and ensure that those entitled could vote, 45% of the councils said they were either “not at all confident” or “not so confident”. Indeed, 57% said they were “very worried” or “extremely worried”.
Every single election administrator thought the Election Act 2022 would make their job harder. Half said the new requirements would make their task “more difficult” and the other half said it would become “much more difficult”.
Next year’s elections in England see the most significant change to the way we run elections in over a century. Voters will need to show one of the required forms of ID or apply for one of the new voter cards.
Many voters will simply need to produce a bus pass. That should not take much longer than announcing their name and address, as they must do at present. Checking a voter’s face against photograph should not take much time either. But there will be delays when people arrive without suitable identification. A woman who normally covers her face may not want a man to check her identity.
Voters who lose their photo ID documents will be able to apply for the appointment of an emergency proxy until 5pm on polling day. Electoral registration officers will be allowed to issue emergency photo IDs.

Edwina Addington
Edwina Addington
1 year ago

Provocative article. However, it would be good if technology could get us fair results in elections. Interesting article about the “difficulty” that local councils will face at local elections next year.An accident waiting to happen? Voter ID in the 2023 English local elections
report published by supporters of constitutional reform suggests today.https://consoc.org.uk/publications/john-ault-report/
A survey commissioned by the Constitution Society found that a significant number of councils were not confident that they could train staff to deal with the new voter ID requirements before next May.
The average expectation among election staff is that 16% of voters will apply for the new voter authority certificate that will be issued to people who cannot produce a passport, driving licence, freedom pass or other approved photographic identification at the polling station.
Voters who need the new certificate — to be securely printed on a single sheet of A4 — will be able to apply as late as six working days before the election. The Constitution Society report says that will mean potentially millions of applications, all of which will have to be approved by officials and posted by a central authority ahead of polling day — or collected before the polls close.
Seventy councils responded to the Constitution Society survey, conducted by Dr John Ault, an experienced elections observer.
Asked whether they were confident they could train staff to check ID and ensure that those entitled could vote, 45% of the councils said they were either “not at all confident” or “not so confident”. Indeed, 57% said they were “very worried” or “extremely worried”.
Every single election administrator thought the Election Act 2022 would make their job harder. Half said the new requirements would make their task “more difficult” and the other half said it would become “much more difficult”.
Next year’s elections in England see the most significant change to the way we run elections in over a century. Voters will need to show one of the required forms of ID or apply for one of the new voter cards.
Many voters will simply need to produce a bus pass. That should not take much longer than announcing their name and address, as they must do at present. Checking a voter’s face against photograph should not take much time either. But there will be delays when people arrive without suitable identification. A woman who normally covers her face may not want a man to check her identity.
Voters who lose their photo ID documents will be able to apply for the appointment of an emergency proxy until 5pm on polling day. Electoral registration officers will be allowed to issue emergency photo IDs.

Edward De Beukelaer
Edward De Beukelaer
1 year ago

As Dr Aseem Malhotra so well explained in his speech during the personalised medicine conference in June 22 in London: we and most of the medical profession do not know that we do not know that the current medical system, and all that comes with, it is the result of investment decisions for returns (there a are a few BMJ articles that support this view and a report by Goldman Sachs on the motives of Pharma of 2019). This ‘movement’ started mid last century and is now so much part of our reality that most cannot see this. Any discussions within this thinking will lead to nothing but discussions within this thinking. The only way to get out of this mess is to stop thinking in illness and prevention of illness, and start asking: how can we create wellness and health, how can treat patients to improve their health rather than reduces symptoms or illness. This will need for the research community to start asking questions they are not used to asking, also for fear to fall out of favour… The NHS, other national health systems and universities are incapable of doing this for now and are therefore part of the problem rather than the solution.

Edward De Beukelaer
Edward De Beukelaer
1 year ago

As Dr Aseem Malhotra so well explained in his speech during the personalised medicine conference in June 22 in London: we and most of the medical profession do not know that we do not know that the current medical system, and all that comes with, it is the result of investment decisions for returns (there a are a few BMJ articles that support this view and a report by Goldman Sachs on the motives of Pharma of 2019). This ‘movement’ started mid last century and is now so much part of our reality that most cannot see this. Any discussions within this thinking will lead to nothing but discussions within this thinking. The only way to get out of this mess is to stop thinking in illness and prevention of illness, and start asking: how can we create wellness and health, how can treat patients to improve their health rather than reduces symptoms or illness. This will need for the research community to start asking questions they are not used to asking, also for fear to fall out of favour… The NHS, other national health systems and universities are incapable of doing this for now and are therefore part of the problem rather than the solution.

Robert Eagle
Robert Eagle
1 year ago

What a paranoid rant. Please don’t cough in my face

Vyomesh Thanki
Vyomesh Thanki
1 year ago

Worth re-reading this article carefully as it’s quite relevant to our current pandemic situation: ‘How smallpox inoculation united America’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04334-8

Pamela Booker
Pamela Booker
1 year ago

The answer really is to test the system on one K.Schwab. Let everyone in the world have access to his biometrics and other personal data

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
1 year ago

“Beveridge’s vision for public health has been perverted”

No, Beveridge’s vision for public health has been taken to it’s utterly predictable conclusion. The NHS is and always was a terrible idea.

Bill Ellson
Bill Ellson
1 year ago

“Beveridge’s notion of public health” 
Beveridge’s notion was that if the, by then decades old, idea of a national health service was implemented workers would be restored to health and claim fewer benefits. ~~~ Beveridge: Assumption B.  Comprehensive Health And Rehabilitation Services

The NHS was never intended to be “something meant to liberate human beings from the threat of disease”. Like many others before, Fazi has confused the establishment of the NHS with the general availability of antibiotics.
 
Smallpox vaccination was made compulsory in England in 1852. The phrase ‘national health service’ was coined by biochemistry professor Benjamin Moore in 1911, but he wanted to segregate TB sufferers rather than establish any sort of universal care. 

Public Health has always involved a trade off between the rights of individuals and the welfare of the general population. Tin foil hatted twaddle about the ‘The Great Reset’ adds nothing to any debate. 

Last edited 1 year ago by Bill Ellson
Hendrik Mentz
Hendrik Mentz
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Ellson

Hi Bill, a personal question: have you had your fourth Covid shot? If yes, do you believe we all must receive the fourth Covid shot? If so, what must happen to those who believe they shouldn’t receive the fourth Covid shot, or their children?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Hendrik Mentz

May I ask, have you? And how many times (to the nearest hundred) were you texted before you complied?

Hendrik Mentz
Hendrik Mentz
1 year ago

Hi Charles, after homework decided to pass and explained why to friends and family who believed I was tin hat or down a rabbit hole. To my mind, telling was that not one of them took the trouble to understand my reasons which, I believe, speaks to Brett H’s point above about how the world ends (‘with a whimper’, quoting Eliot’s ‘The hollow men’). Reference: hendrikmentz.com

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Hendrik Mentz

Likewise, thank you.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Hendrik Mentz

Likewise, thank you.

Hendrik Mentz
Hendrik Mentz
1 year ago

Hi Charles, after homework decided to pass and explained why to friends and family who believed I was tin hat or down a rabbit hole. To my mind, telling was that not one of them took the trouble to understand my reasons which, I believe, speaks to Brett H’s point above about how the world ends (‘with a whimper’, quoting Eliot’s ‘The hollow men’). Reference: hendrikmentz.com

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Hendrik Mentz

May I ask, have you? And how many times (to the nearest hundred) were you texted before you complied?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Ellson

You make some valid points about the origins of the NHS and Public Health. What makes your conclusion invalid is the far greater reach of technology as a means of controlling populations, something almost unimaginable prior to the advent of the microchip.

George Orwell, writing his dystopian novel as the NHS was born, wouldn’t have believed the potential scope of techno-reach into the lives of individuals, even as he alerted us to the perils of an ever-present authoritarianism.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

However on a brighter note, the cretins of HMG did NOT manage to introduce ID cards during the great Scamdemic. It certainly looked like an ideal opportunity to introduce this pernicious device.

Perhaps the spirited performance by Lord Jonathan Sumption KS & others dissuaded ‘them’ on this particular occasion?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

It was indeed a spirited performance, although viewed as ghastly at the time.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Not by you surely?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

I was ambivalent about it. Having great respect for Lord Sumption’s intellect, i read his thoughts which were pretty much against the flow of the tide at the time and it gave me pause for thoughts of my own. I thought of being in the position of responsibility should the worst happen and hospitals did end up turning dying patients away (as we witnessed in India and to some extent in Italy), and whether – with that ultimate responsibility – the choices made by politicians might’ve been different. Sumption’s breaking of the dam of media manipulation was essential in retrospect, along with others.
So no, i didn’t view his articles as ghastly, but there was much less certainty around the virulence of the disease at that time.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

I was ambivalent about it. Having great respect for Lord Sumption’s intellect, i read his thoughts which were pretty much against the flow of the tide at the time and it gave me pause for thoughts of my own. I thought of being in the position of responsibility should the worst happen and hospitals did end up turning dying patients away (as we witnessed in India and to some extent in Italy), and whether – with that ultimate responsibility – the choices made by politicians might’ve been different. Sumption’s breaking of the dam of media manipulation was essential in retrospect, along with others.
So no, i didn’t view his articles as ghastly, but there was much less certainty around the virulence of the disease at that time.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Not by you surely?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

It was indeed a spirited performance, although viewed as ghastly at the time.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

However on a brighter note, the cretins of HMG did NOT manage to introduce ID cards during the great Scamdemic. It certainly looked like an ideal opportunity to introduce this pernicious device.

Perhaps the spirited performance by Lord Jonathan Sumption KS & others dissuaded ‘them’ on this particular occasion?

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Ellson

There are still people here in the US who say the government should have shut down interstate travel at the beginning of the Covid panic and even that it should still be forbidden today. THESE are the kind of people who will eagerly give up their (and our) ordinary but crucial freedoms to get an illusory sense of safety that in real life doesn’t and could never exist. It’s anything but “tin-foil hatted twaddle about The Great Reset” when already powerful people are using exactly that term to describe and justify giving unelected bureaucrats even more power over us. Smallpox, TB and polio and such legitimately horrible diseases may justify some carefully monitored and managed government coercive power, but Covid showed us that the bureaucrats are now happy to exaggerate the threat of a disease in order to expand their authority over us. Bureaucrats have ever been thus. Wannabe despots have learned that the new route to power is to tell us it’s for our own safety. (See China right now.)

Hendrik Mentz
Hendrik Mentz
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Ellson

Hi Bill, a personal question: have you had your fourth Covid shot? If yes, do you believe we all must receive the fourth Covid shot? If so, what must happen to those who believe they shouldn’t receive the fourth Covid shot, or their children?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Ellson

You make some valid points about the origins of the NHS and Public Health. What makes your conclusion invalid is the far greater reach of technology as a means of controlling populations, something almost unimaginable prior to the advent of the microchip.

George Orwell, writing his dystopian novel as the NHS was born, wouldn’t have believed the potential scope of techno-reach into the lives of individuals, even as he alerted us to the perils of an ever-present authoritarianism.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
Reply to  Bill Ellson

There are still people here in the US who say the government should have shut down interstate travel at the beginning of the Covid panic and even that it should still be forbidden today. THESE are the kind of people who will eagerly give up their (and our) ordinary but crucial freedoms to get an illusory sense of safety that in real life doesn’t and could never exist. It’s anything but “tin-foil hatted twaddle about The Great Reset” when already powerful people are using exactly that term to describe and justify giving unelected bureaucrats even more power over us. Smallpox, TB and polio and such legitimately horrible diseases may justify some carefully monitored and managed government coercive power, but Covid showed us that the bureaucrats are now happy to exaggerate the threat of a disease in order to expand their authority over us. Bureaucrats have ever been thus. Wannabe despots have learned that the new route to power is to tell us it’s for our own safety. (See China right now.)

Bill Ellson
Bill Ellson
1 year ago

“Beveridge’s notion of public health” 
Beveridge’s notion was that if the, by then decades old, idea of a national health service was implemented workers would be restored to health and claim fewer benefits. ~~~ Beveridge: Assumption B.  Comprehensive Health And Rehabilitation Services

The NHS was never intended to be “something meant to liberate human beings from the threat of disease”. Like many others before, Fazi has confused the establishment of the NHS with the general availability of antibiotics.
 
Smallpox vaccination was made compulsory in England in 1852. The phrase ‘national health service’ was coined by biochemistry professor Benjamin Moore in 1911, but he wanted to segregate TB sufferers rather than establish any sort of universal care. 

Public Health has always involved a trade off between the rights of individuals and the welfare of the general population. Tin foil hatted twaddle about the ‘The Great Reset’ adds nothing to any debate. 

Last edited 1 year ago by Bill Ellson
Chris W
Chris W
1 year ago

This topic is getting boring. Can we have a new one please?

Chris W
Chris W
1 year ago

This topic is getting boring. Can we have a new one please?