Peter Hitchens' Half Hour: “We Made A Very Grave Mistake” With Lockdowns

it is a Monday morning it's not particularly summery but it's all right Peter Hitchens is here very good morning good morning nice to see you it was very summery at the weekend I thought summer had arrived later in the day it seems to come yes it does but it's been chilly this morning yeah well I like that a bit of uh I don't like it too hot no no well that is so we're supposed to have the hottest day of the year apparently on Wednesday I'll believe it when I see it um just before we get going on to the subject of Crime and Punishment and all the rest of it what did you make of that Richie sunac statement what's obviously about the election isn't it they have to demonstrate this government that they are doing something about the the migration crisis they're talking about they will simply that somebody haven't got a chance if if they can do something convincing and effective about it then I think they would regain a lot of vote so you can see how much they're investing in it one has to ask after so many touring leaders have said that they will do these things whether they will succeed or indeed who could succeed under the circumstances within the the political possibilities that we have but I think that's really yeah I don't think they know what to do I think they've been taken aback and and sort of taken by surprise by the speed and the numbers of of this business now because that's what it is yes but they they are they do realize that if they don't if they don't do something then they're done for so I think that might they might actually finally find something that that actually does bring the numbers down but they're not going to make any notice that total absence of predictions of of numbers yes or targets because they're afraid of not meeting them yeah because they can't it would seem um let's talk about what you wrote about this weekend yeah which was fascinating you put a particular phrase into Google and the amount of things that came back was staggering it goes his head and then they kicked his head like a football right and this happened so much I mean it was the the Gary new love case which you probably remember about who went out to Roman straight with youth at the street who were I think attacking his wife's car and that and I I noticed reports of that and I began to look out for it there are two things you can look at in you can Google and if you do it on Google rather than electronic libraries it brings up all the local newspapers one is then they could just head like a football the other is was spared jail these are the two things so they both bring up enormous numbers of results because and it was six figures not going to prison for offenses which they once would have done judges and and that's how that's how the headline goes and then there's this awful business of people being so cruel yeah that when they attack someone they continue to attack and they keep right there which is a really well they're lying on the ground filthy horrible thing to do uh and and yet it's it's become common yeah and the the reason I picked on the particular case in a village uh in other Stoke where you grew I grew up yeah and I remember I was actually living in Moscow when I picked this up I was I was surfing through the English wire services and it came up and I thought good Heavens if this is happening in other states then nowhere is safe and I've been out of the country for a bit by then when I finally got back I realized something very significant had happened and I think for a lot of people there is this danger if you see trouble in your street the only sensible thing to do is to turn your back on it and ignore it because if you if you do what Gary and you loved it and go out there's terrible danger of it turning very nasty indeed and the other case a man was killed and uh and that was back in what 92 right and I don't think it gets any better you can trust that by the way fascinating story in in some of the papers this morning about the the town of maryport in Cumbria where the police have actually had the brilliant idea of putting a police officer on patrol how revolutionary that is extraordinary how do they think of it yeah and as a result anti-social Behavior has dropped by about half right one one copper one copper patrolling when you think about police that's all it needs you see them I mean I came past the stations with an overground station near me um and there were two police officers standing outside it and there was some tape going from one tree to another tree and then some things that was partially blocking answers no idea what it was about no idea what they were doing there I don't know if they were looking for people to talk to about an incident there was no sign I'm not just you know but it's the first time I've seen two police officers together in my neighborhood is not what you want if you've got two police together they'll be chatting to each other about overtime I've I've seen it uh in in in in in the center of a city well known to me yeah uh where where there's a street where you're not supposed to ride your bicycle and the police are standing there of course and the children chatting to each other and whizzing by in all directions around them and people illegally writing about they don't know this because the single police officer is another matter right this is one of the things I go on and why I go on about individual police officers on proper Patrol will transform the country pretty much overnight and and hear this this evidence from maryport seems to me to back up completely what I'm saying is the exact opposite of this thing which has happened in the suburbs we're in so many cases the the worst kind of people behaving very badly you've got used to the fact that everybody's afraid of them and nothing will happen if they miss yeah and if they are misbehaving in this way do you think that's something that is a result of there not being police or has huge Behavior changed I think well of course Behavior changes when the Roman Empire is treated from from its outward areas as soon as the troops went people you know the danger grows but not immediately it doesn't happen overnight by bit people realize uh there's nobody there anymore the presence of a uniform police officer simply walking has a huge effect judge it for yourself if ever you see a police officer or a police car when you're driving or I think your behavior changes and and this this affects everybody and they just won't do it my proposal is that the the police as they're laughingly cool if they were if they were all abducted by aliens tonight how long will it take most of us to notice uh these these police forces as they have failed that we should train new police forces to replace them and disband them yeah because they are useless nationalized industry which doesn't work and uh and long ago she used to serve the public and you and it just this this maryport episode establishes I think Beyond doubt and if we went back to the basic job the the 19th century job never ever disproved or undermined by practical experience but police officers patrolled to deter crime then you would have also to make it safe for ordinary people to be able to walk around their neighborhood and as you said at the weekend there's an awful lot of people I think who don't feel safe they're scared in their own neighborhood so they don't go out so then it's The Unbroken window of philosophies there's this stuff about reaction terms the police what is more useless than the police officer after a crime unless he or she can do first aid they cannot unburgle you they cannot unkick your head uh the the they can't undo the thing whereas if they had been there in the first place their me a presence would have changed the behavior not many of the bad people but the behavior of the good people who are given confidence by the presence of the uniformed police on the streets right this is this is how it works in New York City or worked when they had the the long period the Bratton period when they actually took seriously the business keeping the streets safe yes because people became confident people who hadn't dared go out at night or in various areas started going out again the streets were full of law-abiding people who expected it to be peaceful and the bad element Retreats when that happens it's very very simple and it's astonishing I know the government or police will pay any attention to it at all no that is the problem because we see on a daily basis now because of just the oils continued sort of you know add infinitum demonstration which they say is going to go on indefinitely um as long as they've got the money to do it um despite the fact that people are now getting more and more enraged and are responding I've been calling them the resistance you know the ordinary working people of London are now the resistance um but there are breaches of the Peace on top of this and you know somebody will get badly hurt this has a reason behind it this is this is this is a judgment by the so-called Supreme Court set up by the Blair rights The Plea I have very little sympathy as I have just demonstrated from the police but in this case the law now says thanks to this so-called Supreme Court legislating on its own part the law now says that if you can come up with a political justification the old laws that it was an absolute offense to have struck the highway have been wiped out the the police cannot act as we would wish him to and people have to get on top of this that Supreme Court is a disaster and has to go and it it it's astonishing to me I I looked into it in some depth it's astonishing to me how little discussion there is about this element but yeah sure it's the the there's no doubt that there is a growing discontent about this what's very interesting though is that in a lot of other countries notably Germany and the Netherlands now there is a growing public discontent at the impositions on on everybody of the green movement Farmers farmers in in the Netherlands being put out of business are people in Germany being forced to install heat pumps ultimately people are beginning to realize look far too late what the green zealotry means in terms of lower standards of living are more inefficiency higher energy costs and indeed in the case of the Netherlands the destruction of one of the most efficient agricultures in the world it's astonishing well you see that doing it in Ireland now they're going to kill 200 000 cattle uh in a view with a view to saving the climate well I think again which is extraordinary with a bit of luck this fluid generates a democratic and peaceful political opposition on such a scale that people will begin to question the green Orthodoxy which has remember when this stuff was being put through part I think only about three MPS spoke or voted against it totally unanimous and it's quite dangerous to speak out against it I think it is now I mean we get MPS on here as you can imagine all the time and if try and get one of them to say they're against Net Zero you can't none of them are yeah and of course the king is in favor of of yes of course all these it's a it's a total University which is generally almost in Fairly a bad song yeah and they're like religions there's no questioning it look at you very like them but look what happens what's happening now in the Netherlands and what's happening in Germany and see it is possible democratically peacefully and legitimately to speak out against this and to change the course of events and I really do hurt the people in this country begin to think seriously about doing that yeah let it go and what's left of our economy will be destroyed our lives will become much colder darker and and Less Pleasant and and for what and this is the serious question and you see what good is all this well this is what I'm saying that those who are now fighting back against justice of oil are literally the the the people's revolutionary movement because it's the people who don't want it and it's the kind of Elites and the establishment that do want it so just of all are really part of that and now it would would appear um that KIA stama had a meeting with Dale Vince who's the guy that runs in treasury who funds just stop oil and suddenly Kirsten comes out and says oh we're going to stop all exploration of North Sea oil and gas yeah well again if Richard sunlight really wants to to to to get some votes back then I think if if his party started to question this yeah this this solitary and intolerance and to and to look and to look at what's happened in the Netherlands in Germany it might again do them some considerable electoral good yes I do I believe very strongly that whatever opposition we have has to be peaceful and Democratic sure very careful not to go down the sort of French but it won't stay peaceful uh if these people don't stop doing what they do well then all the more reasons for the for for for major mainstream politicians to begin to seriously challenging this right I think so because the other problem I think for uh for anyone who goes up against it is you now get called as Sadiq Khan has frequently called Tories in the London assembly you know not interested in Saving children's lives I know and that you don't want to have people breathing clean air do you not want to breathe clean air like you're some kind of maniac do you know I think people are beginning to see through these this this use of of abuse yeah it's an attempt to silence people rather than serious argument I do hope so yeah well because clearly there's no reason why Sadiq Khan can claim that he's trying to make the air better because what he's doing is he's charging you to pollute it that's the only thing he does at the end of it I mean if we went back to the Stone Age there would be a lot cleaner wouldn't it possibly so and nobody would go anywhere undoubtedly the case well that's where we're headed and one of the maybe the bronzes maybe we're headed there because of lockdown because so once again I'm afraid you've been proven correct as a study out uh that you've probably been reading this morning from Johns Hopkins and Lund the university um in which it basically said the cost of lockdown was Far higher than the benefit worth which of course I think was evident to anybody with with um with any grasp very early on in in events yeah we were discussing this yes you were one of the few people who got a bit earlier than anybody else it still astonishes me yeah uh the the the all the worst uh predictions were immediately accepted as right and nobody looked um there were there were people like John yanidis who very serious uh people who were looking at it very early on certainly not totally sure this is right I I would if only we had the resources I don't have them to look into all kinds of things like what was classified as a covered death uh and also the the number of people who who died with orov covet who were I've had co-morbidities like serious other diseases and and were were in the what you might call the higher age groups I'm in one of those myself uh would it suggest that the measures which have meant corralling the entire population and particularly this is extraordinarily crazy closing of schools which did so much damage which apparently according to this study prevented something like three percent of deaths if that I mean does that prevent any who how can one tell it's uh it whatever it is it Remains the case we we burnt down the house to get rid of almost nest and at the end of it once the hazard but and the WASP test was still there yes because what we now have of course is a devastated Health Service and huge numbers of people whose lives to kill you the healthy old whose lives were put on hold for for months and who suffered permanently Health damage and of course the awful thing which makes me grind my teeth the people at University during that period who were cheated completely of what should have been a proper University education and can never get it back and this number of people who suffer for this and ultimately we look at it for what did we did we even gain anything I mean they they could they can they come up with a figure suspicion is that it did no good at all hey what well I mean interesting interesting figures in here particularly about the mental health of one particular group which is interesting to me because my two sons are in this age category 16 to 39. percentage of people with mental health issues before the lockdown 3.5 after 23. this is terrible isn't it huge isn't it yeah it's the nearest you'll get to an index of the misery that the personal misery that it caused to so many people right I we see these things are so hard to put your finger on any any statistic or figure has to be open to to doubt or or re-examination and I'm I I'm always very careful with them but it does seem to me that if you think about this seriously we did make a very great mistake yeah and we know that we have not yet recovered from it the reason people don't go to work anymore some people will stop working altogether some people just don't go to an office anymore um and it's nothing to do with whether the office wants them there people have just decided this is now how I want to live because basically all bets are off because now everybody says well well they could do that the government could do anything oh it's a revolution in the way that we live and not necessarily one for the best I've just some people it may well be for the better I'm not saying that nobody's benefited from the from from working from home even some employers can't cope with it with a lot a lot can't a lot of people of course can't work from home will be able to and a lot of businesses can't no I think we've created a sort of two-tier Society where we've got people who are kind of in what you might call in the old days of white color jobs where you can sit at home with a laptop and use a phone and use internet and use emails and that's all fine but the guy who's bringing you your stuff from Amazon and the bloke is delivering your shopping you know they're not doing it from home no but all of us are paying the highest taxes for 80 years all of us are suffering the worst inflation in in our lifetimes and a rackety uh cost of living constant cost of living rise and that's imposed on everybody of course except as usual the super rich you do and you worry about any of these things but everybody else has got to face that and that will last for some long time to come I it's it it's just a huge argument for for caution before for taking decisions of such moment and for for listening and we we also saw yet again in the in in the papers over the weekend more evidence of the government actually using its power to try and shut down debate yes the opposite of its function a free a free government of a free country has to keep debate open well what's the point of the country being free at all yeah this was a big piece in the telegraph wasn't it about Molly Kingsley and about how there was a sort of unit which I mentioned Neil O'Brien earlier uh who was involved in this kind of unit to monitor journalists journalists on those sort of black no not just journalists but but distinguished uh scientists and daughters like Carl Hennigan a man total Integrity who was apparently the subjects of some sort of I don't know what call it really but I think mccarthy-esque isn't it that's worse than that it's it's not um it's it's I mean the the one justification you came up with for the for the McCarthy areas that were actually some Communists in this case you had people who were who who were actually trying very hard to do good and to speak to speak uh intelligently and rationally about a major national Justice and contributors they've been educated to do to the good of the nation not merely being prevented from doing so but being actually punished yeah and I mean do you blame the politicians or do you blame the kind of advisors like sage and people like that and like sort of you know Patrick balance and others but clearly who were clearly sort of catastrophizing every situation and saying well because if you're Boris Johnson and you're presented with a paper which says if you don't do this hundreds of thousands of people are going to die he's going to do it I think huge numbers of people need to question whether what they did those who didn't speak out against those who didn't call for more caution those who fell into it so quickly those who decided that the only option to adopt was the Chinese option those who just junked without the thought the the existing precautions which were already in place and had been devised after careful thought and just said let's get get rid of let's let's copy let's copy communist China how can anyone not a thought that might not be about a good idea there were so many people who didn't it seems to me stand up against it those are the ones I I agree if if some somebody like Neil Ferguson genuinely believed the figures that he was coming out then he he was he's never got anything his life was absolutely obliged to say so yeah but there were other people were equally obliged to say well actually Neil we're not sure you're right and that they were the ones who were missing but you remember Neil Ferguson also said in his view once that you know we didn't think we could impose the kinds of restrictions on people that but then later we worked out actually that we could yes which is an extraordinary thing yeah it was what happened was it was the stuff going out of Italy that I think caused the caused the power which I would like to see re-examined as well I would like to see what was actually going on initially as opposed to the what seemed to me to be slightly at that I'm not sure that that's true I mean I know that there was a massive connection between the Garment industry in Northern Italy and China which is one of the reasons why the outbreak happened there so so quickly supposedly anyway um but I remember like you the sort of the pictures of the of the lorries driving the pictures dead bodies around the night you often do have to wonder how such pictures going to be taken um generally with authorities and everybody else take Greg can not display um such things yeah but anyway who knows but the other thing called Sicily was was that it's incredibly successfully had very good health services for old people and had incredibly successfully kept an awful lot of people healthy and Alive well into old old age and also initially there's still an awful lot of of uh of people who live with their grandparents and and this is a suspect a special circumstance different from the middle but you see all of these things once you begin to discuss them in detail it demonstrate a need for detailed cautious careful examination of the facts rather than a rush to judgment but what we have is a rush to judgment yes we did and as far as the um the deaths are concerned I mean if you look at them now they still would appear to be largely as you say people with co-morbidities people who are much older the numbers who died the loads of the age of 60 and very small yeah so each of these deaths is a tragedy yeah but and and for everyone involved and for their families and relatives it's it's but the thing is that people do actually die um in there is a there is a death rate yeah some deaths are not realistically preventable no the question was were were we were we actually seriously preventing deaths well these were all the figures of the speech remember the one there was one year I think I remember it was 2020 or 2021 where there were no deaths of flu at all yeah and looking at this report they were saying that basically over the course of Any Given flu season in Europe 72 000 people die yeah it just happens yeah there are very many peculiar things in the world but as I say the the questions about what actually was being recorded as what I was also fascinating and one would hope that when this inquiry eventually gets into second gear it might begin to look at these things but I rather does and the people who were very sort of vociferously in support shall we say of these restrictions some of whom are still defending them they've gone pretty quiet haven't they there's not many people left out there now who will say well we should we're very happy that we did it we hadn't done it this would have happened there's not that many of them left uh I wonder in private they're probably still they said I don't mind them having having wanted to do it or advocated it that's if that's what they've felt as they say that's what they should do what I minded at the time and still mind was the the close to defamation of anybody who who called for caution yeah and that that's what made me angry I mean did you ever feel Under Pressure not to write things no no I I I I I I I was extremely fortunate in being completely free from any of that but what I did feel it was a distress yeah as anybody does it being abused as a as a wicked and irresponsible person when I thought I was simply doing my job of saying I'm worried about this I think this is a mistake that's what I was saying and instead of people taking on my audience bit by bit and saying you're wrong about this yeah it was it was I was a wicked person well I remember the debate we we had with you and I was in the middle and Dan Hodges on the other side and he was very proud locked down wasn't he he was he had some he had some interesting doubts about it right but he in the end when he had the debate it was quite civilized yes uh because well it was done Twitter many opportunities for civilization so this thing you didn't the the major broadcasters were not they weren't doing we're not doing it you know it was it was it was left to in Independence Heretics yeah well okay well isn't it great that we have Independence isn't it long may continue oh yeah they flourished the more Independence that had a hundred flowers bloom the more Independent Media there is the more likely we are to retain some sort of Freedom yeah this morning's still on so have no fear right Peter good to see you thank you very much the team pin Hitchens there [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: TalkTV

Views: 49,118

Keywords: debate, free speech, freedom of expression, live, live news, news, politics, talk radio, talk radio live, talk radio tv, talk tv, talk tv live, talkTV, talkradio, talkradio tv, talkradiotv, talktv live, uk, peter hitchens, lockdown, covid, covid-19, pandemic, police, mike graham, study

Id: ksy3WNdPY74

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2023