London brought to a halt on the busiest Saturday of the year

Yesterday’s barely reported protest in London stopped the city centre for at least three hours. It is hard to judge the numbers with any accuracy, however we filled London’s longest streets from end to end. Around 150,000 people seems a fair estimate.

The protest was monitored by hundreds of masked police, however the crowd was mostly good humoured and determined to use reason to make the case.

Crowds gather in Parliament Square

Birdcage Walk is full from end to end

Freedom fighters

It is ironic in the extreme that Parliament looks down on a statues of freedom fighters. Nelson Mandela – imprisoned for 27 years for fighting apartheid; Winston Churchill – who lead the Allies in a war against fascism; Mahatma Gandhi – whose nonviolent approach to political change helped India gain independence after nearly a century of British colonial rule. Each were freedom fighters, dedicating their lives to human rights and liberty. They should be an inspiration to any politician.

This really matters

Masked police two deep standing outside an Apple store while staff look down

Oxford Street closed for the afternoon

THE PROTESTORS' CASE

Judging from the panoply of banners, the case is straightforward and understood by everyone who marched.

Masks

There is no significant evidence that they protect from viral transmission

Cost benefit

No government has yet provided a balanced assessment of the full range of social costs and benefits of repeated restrictions on normal life

Classification

‘Cases’ are rarely demonstrable illnesses rather they are positive results of unreliable tests

Testing

When a virus is endemic the more tests done the more ‘cases’ there will be

Stop testing healthy people

There is no reason to test healthy people. Testing should be done only on people who are ill and then only for diagnosis and treatment

Deaths ‘from’ Covid

The more positive tests for mild or asymptomatic illness there are, the more ‘deaths within 28 days of a positive test’ there will be simply because people die of all manner of things, so we will all be trapped in an endless loop of illogic

Vaccines

We were told that vaccines would offer up to 95% protection but it quickly became clear that this is not true. It even more rapidly became clear that this is also the case with ‘boosters’

The Pharmaceutical Industry

Despite the lack of efficacy the industry has made over £2billion in the UK alone

Coercion

The mainstream news media portrays those who disagree with what has been done to citizens by governments as ‘anti-this’ and ‘anti-that’, as if we are being perverse. It is true that many banners were against vaccines, but the main ‘anti’ involved was not anti-vaccines per se, but anti-coercion.

Media bias

Leaving the demo for refreshment, a wall of televisions pumped out the BBC’s ‘breaking news’ of alarmed SAGE ‘experts’ demanding immediate lockdown without offering any evidence it is needed, and without considering any other aspects of life than an impoverished view of ‘public health’.

Groupthink

Narrow focused ‘experts’ will generate narrow focused recommendations. If it is to continue at all SAGE must be made up of advisors from heterogenous disciplines plus a representative section of citizens.

Freedom

The clear theme of the protest was simply ‘freedom’. Governments are supposed to protect our freedoms, not reduce them.

THE MESSAGE

What can we do? The protest was certain: ‘it only ends when we say it does’, it ends when we don’t comply.