I am writing to these heroic rebels and abstainers. They are an outpost of hope against this awful administration. Get a move on Nige, we need you!

Mr O’Brien’s reasoning is flawed because it is based on two incorrect assumptions:

1. That natural forces can be defied

2. It the duty of government to save every life.

The fact is that, as the government now realise, lockdowns only slow the progress of a pandemic. Lift the lockdown: the epidemic resumes. A vaccine may help but it is folly to put all our strategic eggs in the basket of a safe and effective one and not to deploy the only process that might, sooner or later, defeat or ameliorate the effects of the virus; as it has historically with measles (partly), malaria and influenza. Despite what Mr Hancock thinks the development of immunity through natural infection is a common feature of many pathogens

The hair-raising statistics that Mr O’Brien cites rely on the worthy and idealistic assumption that government must make available to every citizen the highest humanly possible standards of medical care. In a pandemic that is idealistic nonsense anda recipe for national breakdown and bankruptcy.

A situation as difficult as an epidemic requires difficult decisions: triaging the youngest with the best prognoses and doing the best we can with the resources we have for the rest.

We must also respect the fact that we live in a democracy and the rights of the individual. Mr O’Brien need not include me in his statistics for requiring “shielding” for example, because at 82 (the average age, incidentally of Covid fatalities) I am well beyond the normal life expectancy and would choose to take my chances in my loving, multi-generational household.

I doubt I am the only one

Somehow BJ had to defuse the time bomb that the sabotaging civil servants left ticking for him. With the help of those who have been warning him about the flaws in the WA he exposed them and that's the background to last weeks departures; they either jumped or were going to be pushed.
Now we know that no international law is being breached and the only danger is a political one BJ is to be commended for basically cocking a snoot at the EU and not (as mad bat May would have done) the people

I DID do the same in similar circumstance. I would do it again. Judicial penalty counts for nowt against family

The Dominic Cummings affair demonstrates and disturbing development in this country; the sight of print and broadcast media harassing, vilifying and attacking a government adviser, (including publicising and promoting mobs outside his private home), in an attempt to damage by proxy a democratically elected government the policies of which it does not approve.

What is the solution?

" It will not survive if right-leaning voters and politicians feel un- or under-represented and withdraw their support for it"
And that is what has happened. Biased or not the BBC is perceived by a section of the population as "Not fit for purpose" Hall has failed even to address the problem, let alone tackle it. Change must come

One way or another, sooner or later this epidemic will resolve itself and die away; epidemics always do. The problem is what its legacy will be and in this I fear for the liberal democracy; every institution and organisation from the police to politicians is preparing to fulfil the lifelong dream of those who comprise it: control and power.

Let's not mince words. What Mr Green and his proponents posting here are proposing is legally enforceable house arrest based on age. That probably strikes you, like it does me, as fascist ideology worthy of the Nazis. Thank goodness it is illegal as well as immoral and abhorrent. What next? Put the elderly in "transit camps" for their "own good"? Shame on you

Rubbish WHS. Whether the elderly accept the lockdown or not they must always get the best medical care society can afford, including hospital care, that may mean rationing or prioritising but everyone is entitled to the best we can give.

"this may be a group that are forced into isolation for longer than the rest of the population." No, No, No