The personal cost of the insane Covid regulations is now finally being reported.
A man who lost his job due to the pandemic has now been forced to sleep at his mum’s on a camping bed after losing his flat too.
Tim Pravda, 44, had been working on some of Britain’s most famous festivals and events before lockdown and was living in his own flat in London.
But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Tim says he lost everything because he didn’t qualify for any government support.
Tim told the Mirror: “In March, I saw everything happening on TV and radio, I saw all the festivals being cancelled and I thought ‘oh my god I’m getting worried here’.
“My savings had dried up because we live from paycheck-to-paycheck. As a freelancer that’s what we do because I’m PAYE. I fall between both schemes.
“I’m only contacted when I’m on assignment, so I can’t get furlough and I can’t get self-employment.”
How many other people out there like this? I know of at least one who was unable to claim the self employment grant because he had only just started up. Like me, he has survived but is down on his income. Being a plumber, he is in demand, so is able to make up for it once the lock-down eases.
I know musicians who have survived because they teach music, but are down on income because they have been unable to gig.
They – we – are the fortunate ones. There will be plenty who have lost everything like Tim Pravda simply because they are unable to claim for help. How many decided that it was all too much and took their lives? I have no idea, but I am contemptuous of the “saving lives” argument for the restrictions being imposed and the fatuous defence of it by the hard of thinking fools who go along with it, lacking critical thinking ability necessary to see through the lies and pernicious manipulation of statistics and hysterical over reaction in the media.
Peter Hitchens being interviewed on Talk Radio the other day likened it to a man burning down his house to get rid of a wasps’ nest. Pretty good analogy.
It is not just the financial and employment cost that has been imposed on innocent Britons by this government’s despicable and useless covid and lockdown policies. We lost a very dear friend of the family back in April due to a heart attack. It is my belief that she could have been saved had she been given timely treatment. Sadly that is not what she got. What she got was an ambulance crew turn up as expected but instead of going to see the patient straight away, the ambulance crew spent what I was told was an inordinate amount of time getting into level three or possibly four hazmat suits. By the time that the crappy ambulance crew had got her to hospital it was too late and she died. Her widower is now drowning himself in drink and her traumatised teenage daughter is self harming and wants to chop her own breasts off.
Shame on this shitty and disgusting government, their useless and cruel lockdowns, their callous disregard for those whom are in their power and an NHS that like all nationalised industries is run for the benefit of the staff and the management and not the customers.
They’ve crossed the line from incompetent and stupid to downright fucking evil now.
Agreed. Yet I’ve still got long term friends who don’t want us to visit them until they’ve had their covid jab, who believe every bit of bs coming out of the BBC and consider us tainted because we refuse to believe what the govt is telling us.
Our children’s education has suffered, the lockdowns have brought about massive physical and mental health problems, too many British subjects have turned into the sort of petty grasses of the sort that used to characterise East Germany and our economy is in ruins and for what? Despite there being an allegedly serious illness going around which has forced pubs and schools to close, our borders are still wide open and the government is still spunking money up the wall on causes that are favoured by the middle class left. Yes, evil is the best description of them and they question in my mind is how can this government be removed and replaced with something better? I believe that the local council elections will give some indication as to whether or not this government’s malevolence will impact on people’s political choices?
If Nigel Farage and Laurence Fox get their act together it might provide a barometer.
Agree there. I believe that this is a good opportunity for the new alt parties. If they can coordinate so that only the alt party that stands the best chance in a particular area stands there then things could go well. My alt party of choice could be between Reform, Reclaim or Heritage depending on which party looks to be the most popular in my area. I’ll also vote for whatever alt party has the best chance of defeating the Lib Dems who got in in my ward no account of the apathy vote, most people couldn’t be bothered to vote but the Lib Dem voters were.
I have great hopes of these two getting together and bringing sanity. Lockdowns are evil !
A few years ago my mother-in-law suffered a stroke. Quite by chance the District Nurse arrived for one of her daily visits and telephoned for an ambulance. Foolishly, we hoped that her status would carry some weight and secure decent service. First to (eventually) arrive was a paramedic on a motorcycle, who then phoned for assistance which resulted in two further paramedics in a car. Thankfully they were able to use their professional training to conduct an assessment and conclude that an ambulance would be needed for a frail bed-bound 80-year-old with dementia. When the ambulance arrived the paramedics spent several minutes dawdling outside before transporting her to hospital where no scan was done, nor treatment given, before discharging her the next day as she managed to survive.
Needless to say, we didn’t join the clapping seals this year.
My experience of the NHS is not dissimilar to yours.
I’ve long suspected that the people that clap like performing seals are those that have never had to make use of A&E or diagnostic services beyond those provided by a GP.
Agree. Those who went out and clapped either have had no experience of the NHS or they worked for them. Slightly off topic but I wonder if there is a correlation between those who mindless idol worship the disgraceful NHS and those are disgusting covid grasses? I suspect that there is such a correlation.
Trevor, yours is a horrible experience but not dissimilar to what a lot of people have with the NHS. My mother died of sepsis. This was caused by the prescription of an antibiotic that the whole family and her direct familial carers knew would be useless as it had not worked in the past. The doctors were told this fact but ignored it and carried on with the usual NHS tick box medicine and prescribed it anyway. By the time that the doctors realised that this particular antibiotic was useless and the correct drug prescribed, it was too late for my Mum and the sepsis took hold and killed her.
Like you I did not join the clapping seal-like morons who cheered the disgusting NHS this year.
I sympathize with all these people. Both the ones mentioned in the original post and in Fahrenheit211.
I’m in a similar boat. I’m lucky enough to have kept my job (was touch and go when redundancies of 30% of staff were going on). But the factory is on a go slow, so our hours have been cut, nights taken off us. Means my income has dropped by 30-40%.
And the government just keeps hammering aerospace and tourism.
Here’s hoping things improve in 2021. Although the way the government is going, I don’t hold much hope.
Despite my frustrations, I consider myself fortunate. I have a small pension and have enough self employed accounts to have been able to claim the assistance. I’m still well down, but coping.
Fahrenheit 211/ Chernny drakon – profound sympathies on your losses. The evil inherent in this government is truly shocking to behold. One ray of light is the genuinely evil scum that is Owen Jones has appointed himself lockdown’s ‘cheerleader in chief’ – given his record of discrediting every cause he has been associated with and people’s innate distrust of people who are as smug and Eminently hittable as he is it’s possible lockdown might be at an end sooner…
Thank you. I fear that the situation with my friend not getting timely treatment by the NHS because of covid paranoia will not be a singular one.
I’m also mourning the demise of a long term nigh on 15 years friendship with a former lover who gets all her news from the BBC and who is under the mistaken impression that there are bodies piling up in the streets and that covid is something akin to the 1918 flu pandemic or the London Plague outbreak of 1665. All I did to incur a deluge of hatred and her withdrawal of friendship was to point out the true death toll of covid, the cohort of those whom are most susceptible to it and the damage that lockdowns are doing to our children and our economy. To her only the BBC tells her the truth, no other viewpoint is acceptable.
Frightened and increasingly unbalanced people like my former friend are another cost of these dangerous and deluded lockdowns. We as a nation should have shielded the vulnerable rather than shutting down the country and we will be paying back the debts that have been incurred by this evil government for decades, not just the financial cost but also the social, emotional and mental health costs. Despite the costs of securing the vulnerable either by directly funding them or supporting them in various ways with food, fuel and close medical attention, it would have been far cheaper all round to do that rather than what this awful government chose to do.
Fahrenheit 211
It looks as though a curfew is on the way which will of course compound the problems but at least in one sense that will show the true nature of the evil behind the buffoonish facade.
I have two friends driven to the very edge of insanity by the fear-mongering: one took to wearing disposable gloves and was getting through a box of a hundred a day before being admitted to psychiatric care for a month; another, told to ‘shield’ as she had undergone chemotherapy, was sitting in her back (walled) garden when she heard someone cough in the alleyway next to her house, fled inside, stripped naked and threw her clothes in the washing machine. She recognises this was irrational, but still refuses to socialise (ab)normally.
The government (and the ‘medical’ junta they are in thrall to) must pay for what they’ve done – and dearly.
Sorry to hear about your friends and how they’ve fallen for the scaremongering. I doubt that they are singular in buying into Boris’s lockdown bullshit. I certainly agree that the political, academic and administrative classes need to pay for the damage that they’ve done. Personally I’d prefer to see some sort of ‘Nuremberg Mk II’ for those responsible not just to punish but to reveal the path and the mindsets that led us to this point,just as Nuremberg I did.
In the short term however there is an opportunity coming up with the English local and Mayoral elections to send a message to this disgusting government. It’s vital that people get out and vote for alternatives to the Big Three parties, opting for apathy will ensure that nothing changes and we continue to be administered by those who have already failed so badly.
I’ve been wondering for some time if the local elections might be suspended again, just like last year, especially in view of the New Variant (known in this country since September rather than the day before the tiers were to be reviewed, as Hancock implied). I’m half hoping they will be: my greatest fear would be a strong Tory vote thanks to Sunak’s ‘largesse’, and the current level of authoritarianism doesn’t seem to be waking (m)any sheep from their slumber.
I suspect that you may be right. The alternative is a strong Labour surge.
Horror stories in this comment thread. Madness. The police round here have gone all gangsta and started parking on half the pavement whilst popping into the shop. Truly we have now entered the twilight zone. Stock up and never give up. ?
Never give in
There is plenty of blame to go around. People are not taught to think any more and they just parrot what they hear on the TV as fact even when it is contradictory with itself and/or reality.
So you have to take into consideration that politicians get their information from the same place. They also have no thinking capability, they just don’t have the equipment, so they feel compelled to push the policies of those they think are experts and who will create the less risk out of who talking the loudest regardless of what it is.
That is why they are all doing the same. Nobody wants to be accused of causing unnecessary deaths and anyone who does anything differently is putting their career at risk.
Everybody is wrong, but particularly BoZo & his crowd of liars.
Unfortunately & cruelly, lockdown – UNTIL enough people are vaccinated – is the correct answer. Much as everybody dislikes it.
I loathe Nicola Sturgeon, but she has just done the right thing.
I’m 75 next week, & healthy – I wish to stay that way, without some fuckwit infecting me in the name of his or her supposed “Personal Liberty” – it’s the “fist-swinging, until you hit my nose” argument, in fact.
NOTE: I’ve lost 3 friends this year, the youngest of whom was the one with C-19 – your proposed methods will KILL MORE PEOPLE.
Not acceptable, I’m afraid
Wrong, I’m afraid. People are dying because of the lock-down – and that’s quite apart from the livelihoods lost, businesses bankrupt and decades worth of debt for the next generation and the one after that to pick up.
The vaccine will be about as effective as the flu vaccine and for the same reason – they have already admitted that it won’t stop spread or infection, merely reduce symptoms, so a big fat waste of time and effort.
All that lock-downs will ever do is slow the rate of spread, which is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen. That vile authoritarian Sturgeon and Johnson are out of step with the WHO on this one and for once, I agree with the WHO, because they have it right.
Bollocks. This is the most twisted, perverted inversion of the personal liberty argument to justify tyranny that I’ve seen in a long time. Utter cack. My mother in law has twenty years on you and she is living life normally – as much as the restrictions allow – and she isn’t remotely worried about people infecting her. She rightly takes the view that life is to be lived and mortality is a fact of life, so she lives for the moment. She is the type to die on her feet rather than live on her knees.
If you are that worried about infection, then it is your responsibility to look after yourself, no one else’s. If you want to hide under the duvet, be my guest, but don’t presume to tell the rest of the world to stop just so that you can enjoy the illusion of safety (there is no such thing, merely degrees of risk). Did you apply this argument to seasonal flu all these years? If not, why not?
Appeal to emotion fallacy. Please provide evidence that locking down saves more than it kills.
@Van Patten
Thanks for the sympathies.
We’re doing ok, though finances are tight right now. But I’m definitely aware that there are a lot of people out there worse off. And I have a lot of sympathy for them.
@Greg
Unfortunately & cruelly, lockdown – UNTIL enough people are vaccinated – is the correct answer. Much as everybody dislikes it.
No. Get bent.
It’s not about disliking it. Even though I do dislike it. There’s plenty of information regarding increased death rates from other causes as a result of Covid scaremongering and the NHS not treating other conditions quick enough.
Then there’s the economic devastation. Thousands losing their jobs. Millions more at risk. Untold stress (and health problems resulting) involved in that, especially when you have a family to feed.
You’re 75. You can stay home all day without issue, if you want to. I have to keep a roof over my family’s head, food on their table and heat in the radiators*. That means working. But work depends on there being a functional economy to support said work. If people aren’t working and spending, due to lockdowns, demand falls, and a lot of industries are going to struggle or already are.
Who’s going to pay your pension when we’re all on the dole and companies are going bust so can’t pay dividends?
*To engineers – yes, yes, i know. move along.