Useless Professor Neil Ferguson has been massaging stats… and married Antonia Staats
IT’S hard to believe, isn’t it? One of the architects of the Government’s lockdown strategy has been caught repeatedly breaking the lockdown.
All so he could entertain his phew-wot-a-scorcher mistress. While loved ones and families across the country were kept apart on his orders.
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Professor Neil Ferguson was one of the chief advisers to the Government on the Covid pandemic. But while you were eagerly awaiting a delivery from the Co-Op or Morrisons, he was awaiting delivery of Ms Antonia Staats.
She’s a married woman and a leftie agitator. Who lives on the other side of London to the Prof.
Didn’t bother him one bit. So long as he could have a nice evening of trying to flatten her curves and show her the extent of his spread.
The lockdown rules, which he helped dream up, didn’t apply to him, you see. Thought it was fine for him to break them.
The arrogance should astonish — and yet it doesn’t really. It’s always do as I say, not as I do.
In Scotland the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, was forced to resign.
She’d been popping off to her second home an hour’s drive away. Having told the population that going to second homes really wasn’t on.
And then there’s the Housing Minister, Robert Jenrick. He spent the early part of lockdown zipping around all over the country, happy as a sandbox.
Miles and miles from his Newark constituency in Nottinghamshire. Second home in Herefordshire, parents in Shropshire. Off he went.
As I’ve said repeatedly during this crisis — we are NOT all in this together.
There are the frontline services bearing the brunt, and the risk. Then there’s most of the rest of us. Trying our best to do as we’re told. Despite the undoubted hardships for many.
And then there’s the boss class. They do things differently.
Ferguson has now resigned. I’m not sure that’s a very great loss, to be honest. His track record is not one to be terribly proud of.
Back in 2009 he and his team at London’s Imperial College said that swine flu would kill 65,000 British people. It actually killed fewer than 500.
Do you remember the BSE scare, better known as Mad Cow Disease? Ferguson and the Imperial team were involved there, too.
Said it could kill as many as 150,000 people in the UK. How many did it kill? A total of 178.
And there was bird flu, back in 2005. Ferguson was at it again, suggesting that 200million could die from it worldwide.
How far out was he, in the end? Oh, out only by 199,999,700 or so. Bird flu killed just 282 people worldwide.
DOWNSIZING DEATH TOLL
He and Imperial College were similarly apocalyptic about Covid-19. There is some evidence that the university is quietly downsizing its predicted death toll. They originally said that 500,000 British people might die of the disease.
So, while Imperial was massaging the stats, Professor Ferguson was massaging Ms Staats.
In the wider scheme of things, Professor Ferguson behaving like a privileged covidiot doesn’t really matter.
Although the message it sends to the rest of us is quite damaging.
But when all this over we might ask a few questions about Ferguson’s success rate. Not with the chicks, but with his predictions.
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No piece of mind
I LIKE to think that lockdown has drawn our little family closer together.
I like to think that. I offended my 14-year-old daughter the other day.
I accused her of spending all day on TikTok.
“I don’t use TikTok, mate. I’d rather hang out on Tumblr with all the paedos,” is how she replied.
It wasn’t quite the response I’d wanted.
At the start of lockdown we invested in a bunch of 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. And we set about them with great enthusiasm.
Now none of us can stand the sight of them any more.
And there’s a big one – of the arguably controversial Italian dictator Mussolini – lying half-finished in the living room.
Covid flights crazy
WHEN all this is over there will be an inquest into what the Government got right – and what it got badly wrong.
I think the Government is vulnerable on three issues. It was slow to begin testing for the virus. It was desperately slow to provide personal protection equipment to frontline staff, such as nurses.
But worst of all was its refusal to stop flight after flight landing from virus-stricken countries.
Between January 1 and the beginning of lockdown, a staggering 18million people arrived here from abroad.
They are still flooding in now. The Government says that it took “scientific advice” that it wouldn’t make much difference.
Yet the countries which imposed immediate restrictions are the ones with the lowest rates of Covid infection – Austria, Germany, Vietnam and Singapore.
It would seem that if the Government WAS taking scientific advice, then that advice was wrong.
No fans, no effin’ chance
IT looks as though the rest of the season’s football games are going to be played behind closed doors.
This will have an effect upon the results, I suspect.
Playing behind closed doors will have a strong impact on teams like Liverpool[/caption]
Liverpool, with players like Mo Salah, will miss their ferocious home support. Whereas Arsenal players probably won’t be able to tell the difference.
For my lot, Millwall, it’s pretty catastrophic. Opposing wingers will be able to tear up and down the touchline without being subjected to dog’s abuse.
Opposing managers won’t have stuff hurled at the dugout.
Not proper football, then, as I see it.
Plague masks
WE took delivery of some surgical masks the other day, for when we’re allowed out again.
But my special one, which is made of leather and in the shape of a sinister bird’s face, has not yet arrived.
I saw that a bloke was arrested for wearing one of those.
The error of his Megs
IT’S not often this happens.
I feel quite faint with surprise, frankly.
But here is a short item of mine PRAISING the Duchess of Sussex, ol’ Meghan Markle.
It has been reported that she has persuaded Prince Harry to give up hunting.
He used to love going out shooting wild animals. And whenever he did so, it made me want to shoot him.
People who take pleasure in killing innocent creatures have something badly wrong going on inside their heads.
So well done, Meghan, for making the ginger berk see the error of his ways. We’ve also learned that when she was an actress, Meghan would stop the cameras pointing at her feet. She thought they were minging feet, apparently.
Next time she’s on some public visit, we should all shout out, “Doesn’t everyone have minging feet?”, or something similar.
Ikea is back!
SO, Ikea is about to reopen its stores. You can go there with your missus on a Saturday afternoon once again.
You can spend hours wandering around looking at interesting shelving units.
And a multitude of coffee tables. You can sample some of their famous Swedish sodding meatballs in the cafeteria.
Then you can take home a flatpack table and spend the rest of the weekend assembling it, snapping the only Allen key and your index finger in the process.
You see, not everything about lockdown was bad.
Thin-skinned students
STUDENTS at Oxford University have demanded that they must never study works which have “hateful” content.
The student union passed a motion demanding they only learn stuff with which they politically agreed.
It’s very simple, really. If you cannot bear to read stuff which challenges your viewpoint, then you shouldn’t be at university. You should be at home with mummy and daddy.
Inappropriate snub
THE Health Secretary Matt Hancock is beginning to lose it a bit.
He’s got a difficult job, for sure. And he must be under a lot of stress.
But he got snappy and rude with Labour Shadow Minister Rosena Allin-Khan.
She was questioning Hancock about the inadequate testing procedures. She’s an A&E doctor, so she knows of what she talks.
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And she was right to raise these issues – that is what Parliament is for.
I hope she won’t be put off by Hancock’s pompous put-down.
At times like these we need Ms Allin-Khan just as much as we need a health secretary.
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