Articles & Analysis
On 25/1/20 and 26/1/20 commentators Charles Moore and Janet Daley were both opining in The Daily Telegraph that the BBC had been prejudiced and misleading in its coverage of Brexit for more than three years, while their own articles failed to recognise that the BBC could just as credibly level this accusation at them. Again, more recently, a number of commentators, perhaps most notably Douglas Murray, have been singing the praises of Roger Scruton and denigrating his detractors with this as yet unrecognised reciprocity. Indeed, it is this reciprocity which ensures that neither side in any debate can prove itself right and its opponents wrong. All that opinion/counter-opinion debate can do is support one or other extreme with perhaps some alteration in a previous majority/minority ratio. Thus, my future media analyses will show my readers that there is no merit in taking sides in debates of opinion/counter-opinion, these being no more than debates of belief/counter-belief supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence or news/false-news, no set of which is conclusive debate-terminating knowledge; and that the only merit is in recognising the need for debate-terminating knowledge to be applied if already available, or in recognising the need for its acquisition.
Socrates was right when he recognised that the demos could vote one way after hearing two speakers debate an issue on one day and vote the opposite way after hearing two other speakers debate the same issue on the following day. He was also right in recognising that a vote would be worthless if no-one knew how to implement it in reality. For example, he rightly claimed that a vote to build a temple could be implemented only by stonemasons who knew how to build it. Again, he clarified the inadequacy of debate by showing through question and answer sessions that debaters rarely agreed on the meaning of the abstract terms in which debate was and is conducted. Nonetheless, Plato ignored Socrates in erroneously believing that rational thought produced knowledge without reference to reality, an error passed on through The Enlightenment to the present, and which with public help, I now seek to correct.
To this end, I now seek public support for my contention that knowledge will never replace belief in governmental policy-making without electoral pressure for this replacement; and that such pressure will need to be continued to avert a relapse back to belief. However, I do not contend that everyone has to agree to a particular knowledge-only future. Instead, I foresee political parties contending for differing knowledge-only priorities through their party-specific knowledge-only policies with elections being held to select and prioritise such party-specific policies for implementation within known resource limits. Again, I foresee increasing support for such policies as these are found to work in reality, in contrast to the former belief-only policies which have never worked in reality except by accident. In the meantime, my newly informed public will increasingly recognise that politicians have never accepted responsibility for the failures of their belief-only policies voted for by ‘the people’, nor have advocates and judges accepted responsibility for decisions made by juries of ‘the people’. Thus, If ‘we the people’ have these responsibilities, it is high time we empowered ourselves to demand the right to choose from knowledge-only policy options which will work as intended when implemented in reality.
When I first conceived the idea of a public campaign for knowledge to replace belief, I recognised that the transient nature of general media comment did not provide the specific focus needed for such a campaign. However, while the belief-only topic of anthropogenic global warming has already been noted as a contributor to such a focus by this document, it has since been strengthened by more than three-years of belief/counter-belief Brexit debate (discontinued only by the recent belief-only general election) and is now focused further by the current belief-counter-belief debate on the Coronavirus response of 2020. Thus, we now have greater focus than ever before on the need for knowledge to replace belief in general, and more specifically for science to replace pseudoscience, and I intend to intensify this focus still further by my subsequent media commentaries on this website.
- The Rational Trinity: Imagination, Belief and Knowledge now available on amazon as an E book – Free to Kindle unlimited users for a limited time!
- Article 84Overview Of The Need For Knowledge To Replace Belief In Policy-Making. At this point, I refer to an article Sherelle Jacobs, which appeared in The Daily Telegraph of 9/11/21 entitled ‘After 11 Years of Tory rule, Britain is still ruled by a hypocritical Blairite elite’ It opened with the question: ‘who really runs Britain’? ‘The… Read more: Article 84
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- Article 83Promulgation Of My Newly Definitive Knowledge/Belief Differentiation. Long before my above book had shown that our imaginations are stimulated by reality to rational beliefs transformable to knowledge by evaluation of their compliance or non-compliance with this reality, or to beliefs beyond this reality-evaluation in principle or pro tem practice and which can thus only be… Read more: Article 83
- Article 82The Differentiation Of Science From Non-science (Nonsense). With this website having set out the means by which I definitively differentiate knowledge from belief, and having thus set out my conclusions that all attempts to make progress through freedom of speech are futile as yet, and will be, as long as all that is spoken of… Read more: Article 82
- Article 81How Can Cop 26 Be Other Than An Embarrassment For The UK Government? As the Glasgow (Cop26) Conference approaches, the daily newspapers are replete with articles which question the wisdom of its stated objective of achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources, given the non-sustainability of the costs of its achievement. However,… Read more: Article 81
- Article 80Green Warriors Are On A Mission To Stamp Out Prosperity As We Know It. In an article in the Daily Telegraph of 28/9/21 entitled as above and sub-titled “The spike in energy prices proves that “saving the planet” means making the people poorer and less free’, Janet Daley catches the readers attention by claiming ‘maybe… Read more: Article 80
- Article 79The Increased Frequency Of Press Articles Critical Of Current Policies. As an example of this recent phenomenon, I quote from an article by Nick Timothy which appeared inThe Daily Telegraph of 27/9/21, entitled ‘Virtue signalling is now a clue that an institution is failing to deliver’, and sub-titled, ‘From the police to big business, preaching… Read more: Article 79
- Article 78Knowledge Being Absent, Differences Of Belief Are Resolved By Elections Or War. In a Daily Telegraph article of 24/8/21, entitled ‘We must learn from our tragic “performance war” in Afghanistan, and subtitled ‘Instead of a serious effort to secure freedom, the West seemed to engage in a 20-year simulation’, Sherelle Jacobs more than adequately describes… Read more: Article 78
- Article 77More On The Replacement Of Belief With Knowledge With Respect To Net Zero. At this point, I refer to an article by Philip Johnston which appeared in The Daily Telegraph of 25/8/21, entitled, ‘The limits to protest are not for Extinction Rebellion to decide’, and sub-titled, ‘The confusion over how to deal with their disruptive… Read more: Article 77
- Article 76Net Zero And Other Belief-Only Mega-Trends. According to Allister Heath in an article in the Daily Telegraph of 26/8/71, ‘we are hobbling ourselves with net zero and wokery, as others grow rich while rejecting our values’. At this point, I note for my readers that this hobbling has arisen despite our knowledge of the successive glacial and… Read more: Article 76
- Article 75The Need To Eliminate Parlous Consequences Of Acting On Belief -Only. In an article in The Daily Telegraph of 19/8/21, entitled Decadence and overreach have brought down the American Empire, Allister Heath observes that ‘no empire is eternal: all eventually fall amid hubris and humiliation’; that the heart-wrenching humanitarian calamity that is the botched Afghan retreat is… Read more: Article 75
- Article 74The Parlous Consequences Which Arise When Belief Is Mistaken For Knowledge. At this point in the fourth section of this website, I recall for the convenience of my readers, that my definitive differentiation of the knowledge belief dichotomy and with it those of wisdom/folly, truth/falsehood, right/wrong and good/bad, is derived from my observation that reality… Read more: Article 74
- Article 73The Transformation Of Belief In Anthropogenic Global Warming To Knowledge Of Its Existence Or Non-Existence In Reality. Given that our knowledge of the sequence and timescales of the temperate and glacial stages of the Quaternary Period in which we now exist and which started 2.5 Ma) as cited in the closing Article 72 of the… Read more: Article 73
- Article 72Knowledge As To What The Future Might Deliver. In Chapter 14 of his timely Book, Peter Toghill has completed his study of over 2000 million years of Earth history in the British area, in the course of which his readers can see two separate portions of Britain, divided by 7000 km of ocean 500 million… Read more: Article 72
- Article 71Knowledge Of Natural Cycles Of Global Warming And Cooling Major climatic cycles in the Quaternary appear to be 40,000 years long, with subsidiary cycles of around 20,000 years. These cycles are caused by predictable changes in the Earth’s orbit round the Sun as discovered by Milankovitch in 1941. However, this is not the whole story:… Read more: Article 71
- Article 70Knowledge Of Ice Ages and Mammoths – The Quaternary. In his Chapter 13, Peter Toghill notes that Northern Britain has a wealth of dramatic mountain scenery produced by ice action, in particular valley glaciers and ice sheets during the last two million years; and that there is also a great variety of lowland features formed… Read more: Article 70
- Article 69Knowledge Of An Emerging Britain – The Tertiary Period. In his Chapter 12, Peter Toghill reports that the Tertiary period over Britain was one of remarkable contrasts. While most of the area experienced uplift and erosion to form a distribution of land forms not too dissimilar to today, the far north-west experienced widespread early Tertian… Read more: Article 69
- Article 68Knowledge Of Chalk Seas And The End Of Dinosaurs – The Cretaceous Period. Peter Toghill’s Chapter 11 reports that increased plate tectonic activity in the Cretaceous led to large amounts of new ocean crust being formed at the World’s ocean ridges. This in turn, led to continuous but erratic increases and decreases in global sea… Read more: Article 68
- Article 67Knowledge Of The Margins Of The Tethys Ocean – The Jurassic Period. Peter Toghill’s Chapter 10 notes that the Jurassic Period, was named after the Jura Mountains on the border of France and Switzerland; and that it lasted around 60 million years from 208 Ma to 146 Ma. It saw the onset of tectonic activity… Read more: Article 67
- Article 66Knowledge Of Deserts and Playa Lakes – The Permian and Triassic Periods. Peter Toghill’s Chapter 9 shows that these Periods lasted from 290 to 245 Ma and from 245 to 208 Ma respectively. In Britain, the rocks of these periods are dominated by red sandstones and the two systems together are often referred to as… Read more: Article 66
- Article 65Knowledge Of One Super Continent, Pangaea-The Variscan Orogeny. Peter Toghill’s Chapter 8 then shows that the closure of the Rheic Ocean at the end of the Carboniferous had profound effects in what is now Britain; but that it had an even wider impact globally in that it formed mountain ranges along the suture-line, including the… Read more: Article 65
- Article 64Knowledge Of A New Continent – Britain Joined Together In The Devonian Period. In his Chapter 6, Peter Toghill recalls that the Devonian Period saw remarkable contrasts in the geological development of Britain. In the south around the margins of the Rheic Ocean (now between Britain and Gondwana yet further to the south) marine Devonian… Read more: Article 64
- Article 63Knowledge Of Coral Reefs, Graptolites And A Closing Ocean – The Silurian Period. In his Chapter 4, Peter Toghill reviews our knowledge of the coral reefs and graptolites associated with the final episodes of marine sedimentation on either side of the Iapetus Ocean before it finally closed at the end of the period. Although subduction… Read more: Article 63
- Article 62Knowledge Of The Cambrian, Ordovician, And Silurian Periods. In his Chapter 2, Animals In Abundance – The Cambrian Period, Peter Toghill summarises our knowledge of what is now the British Isles at a time when it consisted of two areas that were up to 7000 km apart on either side of the widening Iapetus Ocean… Read more: Article 62
- Article 61Further To The Dethronement Of Belief By Knowledge. With my Article 60, having reviewed the geological knowledge contained in the Introduction to Peter Toghill’s Book, I now relate this Section of Articles to his successive Chapter headings. In his Chapter 1: Britain During The Precambrian Period, Peter Toghill observes that Britain’s oldest rocks are difficult… Read more: Article 61
- Article 60Belief De-Throned By Knowledge. Having recognised in Articles 58 and 59 that knowledge is currently subjugated by belief to the extent of being publishable only through the mouths of fictitious characters in the form of novels, I now draw my readers’ attention to a further example of this subjugation provided bythe publisher’s disclaimer which appears… Read more: Article 60
- Article 59Hypocrites’ Isle My next example of this clever technique of putting expressions of knowledge into the mouths of fictitious individuals in novels to bring such knowledge to the attention of the reading public was exemplified further for me by Hypocrites’ Isle by Ken McClure (cf Article 58), published by Polygon in 2008. This book opens… Read more: Article 59
- Article 58State Of Fear. Having published my book, The Rational Trinity: Imagination, Belief and Knowledge on the print on demand basis, because I had anticipated problems in otherwise obtaining a commercial publisher for its revolutionary differentiation of the knowledge/belief dichotomy, I have had these anticipated problems confirmed by my recent awareness of commercially published books by… Read more: Article 58
- Article 57The Politics of Catastrophe. In a recent book, Doom, The politics of Catastrophe, Niall Ferguson catalogues possible sources of catastrophe. The flyleaf states in summary, that ‘disasters are difficult to predict; but that when they strike, we ought to better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians were when the Black… Read more: Article 57
- Article 56Future Intentions. In this third section, I intend to exemplify some current party-specific belief-only policies which could be replaced with knowledge-only alternatives, the required knowledge already being available; some for which the appropriate knowledge is yet to be acquired and ought to have been sought instead of implementing mere belief; and some on which available… Read more: Article 56
- Article 55The Replacement Of Belief With knowledge In Future Policy-making. The two previous sections of this website have sequentially reviewed my experience of civil service failure to recognise conclusive knowledge of our experienced reality as being preferable to its own internal debates of belief/counter-belief, and have demonstrated that while political commentators recognise something is amiss, none… Read more: Article 55
- Article 54Where Is The Knowledge In Economics? The first text-book on economics which I read, as a first year university student in chemistry, physics and mathematics, informed me that inflation was caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services; that in such circumstances customers were willing to pay numerically more currency units for… Read more: Article 54
- Article 53Where Is The Knowledge In Anthropogenic Global Warming? In my previous articles touching on anthropogenic global warming, I have called attention to the fact that those who believe in it, never recognise our existing knowledge that global sea levels have been rising for geological millennia; and that no-one has yet quantified the magnitude of our… Read more: Article 53
- Article 52Where Is The Knowledge for Scotland’s Independence? This website shows that politics is never more than the debate of belief/counter-belief via the debate of opinion/counter-opinion to one other transient belief-consensus, pending debate’s resumption and another vote ; and that debate can be terminated only by the positive or negative knowledge which concludes it, once and… Read more: Article 52
- Article 51The Fundamental Error Of The Enlightenment. The eighteenth century Enlightenment was merely a reactivation of the classical thought process attributed to Plato who erroneously claimed rationality per se as the provider of knowledge, despite his tutor Socrates having more than adequately demonstrated in his dialogues that conclusive knowledge could not be reached by debate, however… Read more: Article 51
- Article 50The Ubiquitous Need For Knowledge To Replace Belief In Policy-Making. This article recalls that the first section of this website demonstrated the continuous failure of political parties and civil servants to recognise this need in party-specific policy-making; that the second section demonstrated that while political commentators recognise the ubiquitous need for improvement in all such… Read more: Article 50
- Article 49Scottish Independence Is A Belief-only Policy. Scottish independence has always been a belief-only policy with no knowledge-content at all, while it has recently become a question of which SNP leader/ex-leader is to be credited with its implementation, if ever. However, the policy of maintaining the United Kingdom can be re-cast as knowledge-only to the benefit… Read more: Article 49
- Article 48The Differentiation Of Science From Non Science (Nonsense). Having previously shown that Brexit was treated as a subject for belief/counter-belief debate by all political parties, media commentators and the voting public, instead of being treated as a knowledge-only policy in need of knowledge-only implementation; that this latter approach would have terminated debate long since, as… Read more: Article 48
- Article 47A Beveridge Moment? In an article entitled ‘entitled ‘The country craves a “Beveridge moment” but it is beyond our grasp’, and subtitled ‘As the Budget will show, Britain is still miles away from the kind of radical programme we need’, Nick Timothy records that ‘Keir Starmer has called for it’; that ‘Tory MPs say they… Read more: Article 47
- Article 4646: Yet Further To The Re-Casting Of Brexit As Knowledge-Only Policy. Chapter 4, Euro-Corporatism, of Daniel Hannan’s book, notes that the back-room deals which the EU makes with Big Business are exemplified by its efforts from 2005 to regulate and in some cases to ban, a number of higher-dose vitamin and mineral supplements, herbal remedies… Read more: Article 46
- Article 45Article 45: Further To The Re-Casting Of Brexit As Knowledge-Only Policy. Chapter 1 of Daniel Hannan,s book, “Why Vote Leave”, published in 2016, goes on to observe that ‘although the War had wrecked much of European infrastructure, an educated and industrious workforce remained in place to rebuild it’; that ‘its post-war boom was fuelled by… Read more: Article 45
- Article 44Article 44: The Recasting of Brexit As Knowledge-Only Policy. I have noted previously in this website that throughout the debate for and against Brexit, none of the protagonists ever did more than offer opinions and counter-opinions which, as in all debates whatever the subject, are never more than those of beliefs/counter-beliefs respectively supported by partially… Read more: Article 44
- Article 43The Political Party Most Likely To Adopt Knowledge-Only Policies. This website was initially intended to give the voting public a basis for encouraging its political parties to replace belief with knowledge in the formulation of party-specific policy-options and to recognise the knowledge already available on which to deliver them successfully in reality, or to recognise… Read more: Article 43
- Article 42Further To The Impossibility Of Achieving Unity Of Belief. The Daily Telegraph of 25/01/21 carried an article by Nick Timothy, entitled ‘Joe Biden promised to unite his country, but division is more likely’ and subtitled, ‘By prioritising some identity groups and excluding others he can only sow discord’. I can only express astonishment that Nick… Read more: Article 42
- Article 41The Misunderstood Nature Of Debate. The first element of this website exemplified the need for future policy-making to be knowledge-only rather than belief-only; for policy-makers to recognise this knowledge if already available; and for them to acquire it if not yet available: while the second element analysed the articles of media commentators to demonstrate that… Read more: Article 41
- Article 40My Further Response To Toby Young’s Free Speech Union. Having revealed in Article 39, the circularity of the Free Speech Union’s thus spurious attempt to argue the benefit of beliefs over their counter-beliefs or vice versa, I must now dispel any impression that yet another circularity is hidden in my claim that the imaginative beliefs… Read more: Article 40
- Article 39My Response To Toby Young’s Free Speech Union. I commend this Union’s objective of driving the Woke from the contention-field but I do not share Toby Young’s confidence in attaining this objective by merely advocating free-speech, because the Woke’s beliefs are guaranteed the same freedom of speech as those of the Union which aims to… Read more: Article 39
- Article 38Why Did We Not Leave The EU Long Since? With four and a half years having elapsed since the referendum-vote to leave the EU, our parliamentary representatives continued to discuss the terms on which we would actually leave, (c.f. date below). At this point, I ask why did none of them nor any media commentator… Read more: Article 38
- Article 37What Now With Brexit? In an article in the Daily Telegraph of7/12/20,entitled ‘Leavers have won, but can our politicians lead us to prosperity?’: and sub-titled ‘Britain will soon be free of the EU, but if Brexit is to be a success we must rethink the way we run things’, Nick Timothy observes that ‘as the… Read more: Article 37
- Article 36Yet Further Media Recognition Of The Need For Change. Formerly, I noticed that media commentators write in favour of one side of any debate or argument, and refer to the other side only to oppose it; and that they thus treat all issues as subjects for on-going debate of opinion/counter-opinion which I have shown to… Read more: Article 36
- Article 35Further Media Recognition Of The Need For Change, In a Daily Telegraph article of 27/11/20, entitled ‘If we don’t reform the state now, we never will’ and subtitled ‘Throwing ever greater quantities of money at an unreformed public sector is inefficient and unfair’, Jeremy Warner quotes Winston Churchill as saying ‘never let a good crisis… Read more: Article 35
- Article 34Media Recognition Of The Need for Change. In a Daily Telegraph article of 26/11/20, entitled ‘Britain is facing ruin, but deluded Tories are still refusing to accept it’, and sub-titled ‘Rishi Sunak knows the dangers, but his party has embraced a destructive economic illiteracy’, Allister Heath claims that ‘Britain is permanently poorer and the British… Read more: Article 34
- Article 33Knowledge Versus Belief In Response To Problems Identified By Political Parties. With Article 32 having shown that knowledge ought to replace belief in party-specific policy-making, this Article shows that this replacement ought also to be applied to the delivery of such policies, and having shown in article 28 that knowledge has been ignored in respect… Read more: Article 33
- Article 32Knowledge Versus Belief In The Formulation Of Party-Specific Policies. In an article in The Daily Telegraph of 16/10/20, entitled ‘Boris must not betray the voters who made him Prime Minister’, and sub-titled, ‘Tory infighting is about much more than Dominic Cummings: the party’s very future is at stake’, Nick Timothy states that ‘amid all the… Read more: Article 32
- Article 31Knowledge/Belief Differentiation with Respect To The Covid-19/Brexit Combination. This article was prompted by that of Allister Heath, in The Daily Telegraph of 12/11/20, entitled ‘We have one chance to stop Britain’s slide into another socialist nightmare’, and subtitled ‘Even a vaccine won’t halt the Left-wards drift of a society permanently scarred by Covid-19 lockdown’. It… Read more: Article 31
- Article 30Knowledge Versus Satisfaction By Belief-Only Consumables. If we direct our imaginations to the pre-history of humanity we may safely conclude that our earliest concerns would have been for satisfaction of our knowledge-only needs for food, clothing and shelter; that our earliest acquisition of knowledge would have been directed to the satisfaction of these knowledge-only requirements,… Read more: Article 30
- Article 29Knowledge Versus Governmental and Industrial Belief-Only Response To Global Warming. Following application of my definitive knowledge/belief differentiation to global warming since the last Ice Age (Article 28), I now apply it to governmental and industrial responses to the more recently alleged anthropogenic warming to show that global warming by our fossil fuel combustion is merely… Read more: Article 29
- Article 28Knowledge Versus Belief In Anthropogenic Global Warming. My previous articles have sought to show that political debate is purely a matter of opinion/counter-opinion which is merely the debate of belief/counter-belief respectively supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence and/or news/false-news in the absence of any debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; that press-comment from even the most trenchant critics… Read more: Article 28
- Article 27A Critique Of The Management Of Brexit. Having used my definitive differentiation of the knowledge/belief dichotomy to attribute the mishandling of Covid-19 response to political reliance on belief and rejection of knowledge since March 2020 (c.f. Article 26), I now attribute the mishandling of Brexit to same reliance on belief and rejection of knowledge for… Read more: Article 27
- Article 26Knowledge Versus Covid-19 Beliefs And All Other Belief-Only Topics. Now, that we face localised and tiered restrictions on social contact and a threatened return to national lockdown, despite its previous failure to achieve anything other than economic damage and a reduction in hospital treatment of non-Covid conditions, and having had nothing resolved in four and… Read more: Article 26
- Article 25A Critique of Lockdown. In an article in The Sunday Telegraph of 20/9/20, entitled “Where is the evidence for going back into lockdown?”, Daniel Hannan begins by opining that ‘lockdowns arguably make sense as an emergency measure, a way to buy time and build response-capacity’; but that ‘they are no answer to an endemic virus’;… Read more: Article 25
- Article 24Pre-Existing Immunity. As an example of where the acquisition of knowledge for the replacement of belief would recently have been beneficial, I recall the earlier recognition of infection rates on cruise-ships having been limited to about 20%, and I now refer to an article by Dr. Uri Gavish, Prof. Udi Qimron, Eyal Shahar, Dr. Ifat… Read more: Article 24
- Article 23Politicians and Public Versus Bureaucrats. Despite politicians having become the “fall guys” for the mistakes of bureaucrats as exemplified by Daniel Hannan and Charles Moore (c.f. Articles 21 and 22), politicians could nonetheless take command of public affairs, were they to become agents for the replacement of belief with knowledge in all future policy-making in… Read more: Article 23
- Article 22The Bureaucracies. In a 29/8/20 article in The Daily Telegraph entitled “Whitehall mandarins have lost sight of what it means to be politically neutral”, Charles Moore recalls that ‘it is a basic doctrine of our system of government that ministers decide, and therefore account to Parliament for their decisions’; that ‘it follows that they –… Read more: Article 22
- Article 21The Failure of Bureaucracies. Perhaps the most significant media comment thus far on the failure of bureaucracies was that of Daniel Hannan, entitled “We say we want politicians to be kept out of the picture, but we blame them when state agencies mess up” which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph of 23/8/20, and which opened… Read more: Article 21
- Article 20What’s To Be Done Now. The Preamble to this website has shown that our political parties now need to replace belief with knowledge in all of their future policy-making; that this is achievable only by treating all socio-economic beliefs as hypotheses for evaluation of their compliance or non-compliance with the reality in which we exist… Read more: Article 20
- Article 19Where Are We Now? Having spent my civil service career from my post-doctorate recruitment grade of senior scientific officer, to chief scientific officer and director of a former national laboratory which included seven years in a headquarters division in London at the senior principle scientific officer grade; and having been motivated throughout by my personal… Read more: Article 19
- Article 18Forget Local Lockdowns . . . In his Daily Telegraph article of 3/7/20 entitled ‘Forget local lockdowns, we should be lifting restrictions in the not spots’, Fraser Nelson expresses his sympathy for Sir Peter Soulsby ‘the energetic Mayor of Leicester who ‘has been told to lockdown again just in case’ and states that ‘this blunt… Read more: Article 18
- Article 17A Question Of Tolerance. In an article under the above title in The Spectator of 13/6/20, Douglas Murray states that ‘our public figures must rediscover the true spirit of liberty’. After citing a few examples of the absence of liberality such as ‘the Black Lives Matter actions of those who attacked the Cenotaph and the… Read more: Article 17
- Article 16Article 16: What We Knew About Pandemics And Could Have Applied To The Covid-19 Virus. This article applies my definitive differentiation of the knowledge/belief dichotomy which arose from my recognition that our imaginations are stimulated by our sense-perceptions of reality to beliefs concerning it; that these beliefs are validated or refuted to positive or negative… Read more: Article 16
- Article 15These People Have No Idea What They Are Doing. This verdict on the corona virus crisis was offered by the ex-Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption in an article under the above title in The Mail on Sunday of 21/6/20. He opened his article by asking, ‘does the Government have a policy for corona virus’ and… Read more: Article 15
- Article 14The Recovery Of Control. The Spectator of 13/6/20 contained a Leader entitled ‘Take Back Control’ which I now analyse for my readers as I previously analysed the accompanying article by Toby Young. I start by quoting the Leader. It begins by stating that ‘there is a grim inevitability to the trickle of round-robin letters from… Read more: Article 14
- Article 13Protesters Have Brought Down The Lockdown. In his Spectator article of 13/6/20 under the above title, the self-styled lockdown-sceptic Toby Young expressed his pleasure in observing the inconsistency of the activities of Black Lives Matter protesters and of those who introduced the Covid -19 lockdown. To focus on this inconsistency he asks, ‘why are police… Read more: Article 13
- Article 12 BScience Is Non-Debateable Knowledge. The need for my Campaign for definitive knowledge to replace definitive belief in policy-making is more than adequately demonstrated by an article jointly authored by Sir Paul Nurse (a Nobel Laureate) and Lord Saatchi (a former Chairman of the Conservative Party) which appeared in the Daily Telegraph of 6/6/20 which fails… Read more: Article 12 B
- Article 12Government Needs To Treat Us As Grown-Ups. The Daily Telegraph of 6/6/20 published an article under the above title by Sir Paul Nurse (Nobel Laureate) and Lord Saatchi (a former chairman of the Conservative Party) which opened by stating that ‘science and politics’ is ‘not a marriage made in heaven’; that ‘both now need a… Read more: Article 12
- Article 11No.10 Is Hiding Behind Sage Pseudo-Science. I was much encouraged by an article in The Daily Telegraph of 21/5/20 under the above title, in which Sherelle Jacobs became the first journalist in my experience to refer to ‘the science’ as pseudoscience. She began her article by stating that ‘Downing Street’s use of Covid pseudo-science to… Read more: Article 11
- Article 10Sage Advice. To illustrate the ubiquitous failure of media and public to understand the nature of science, I hereby quote the leading article which appeared under the above title in The Spectator of 23/5/20. It opened by stating that ‘from the outset of the Covid-19 crisis, the government was determined that scientists would play a… Read more: Article 10
- Article 9The Daily Ministerial Briefings On UK Response To Covid-19. In each and every broadcast of these Daily Briefings, ministers attempted to assure the public that they acted on the advice of their science advisory group (Stag), while until the week beginning Monday 25/5/20, their flanking advisors did nothing to cast doubt on this assurance. However,… Read more: Article 9
- Article 8Is There Any Science In ‘The Science’ Alluded To By Policy-Makers? Ministers and government officials continually refer to the guidance of ‘The Science’ with which they always comply in their Covid-19 policy-making. However while they fail to reveal the details of this ‘science’, their audience is entitled to have doubts as to whether it is… Read more: Article 8
- Article 7The Pseudoscientific Belief Which Is Anthropogenic Global Warming. While science reality-validates beliefs as to cause and effect to positive knowledge of cause and effect or reality-refutes them to negative knowledge thereof by conclusive experimentation, pseudoscience randomly selects a cause for an effect and correlates these two parameters numerically or statistically without conducting any experimentation to… Read more: Article 7
- Article 6The Commonsense Approach. In the Daily Telegraph of 29/4/20 Allison Pearson took the commonsense approach to assessing the significance of the death toll registered for Covid-19 compared with those of more familiar diseases. Thus, she reported that cancer kills 165,000 people in the UK every year while nearly 170,000 people die of heart disease with… Read more: Article 6
- Article 5Freedom Of Speech. In The Spectator of 29/2/20, Toby Young announced the official launch earlier in the week. of his Free Speech Union which he had intimated in and earlier edition of this magazine. On reading this earlier edition, I had asked myself whether his intended Union would defend the freedom to express all opinions… Read more: Article 5
- Article 4Continuing Failure To Differentiate Knowledge From Belief. Having obtained a much delayed Brexit through the belief-consensus of a general election, Dominic Cummings announced his belief-based opinion as to how such delays might be avoided in future implementations by the recruitment of ‘misfits and weirdoes’ to the civil service in such numbers as to overcome all… Read more: Article 4
- Article 3Saying It As It Is. In The Mail on Sunday of 3/5/20, Peter Hitchens, as always, ‘says it as it is’. He opens this particular article by stating that for six weeks he has been saying that the Government’s policy on Covid-19 is a mistake. However, in going on to say that most people do… Read more: Article 3
- Article 2A Further Example Of The Failure To Differentiate Knowledge From Belief. Further to exemplify this ubiquitous failure, I now refer to the attempt by Tim Stanley to answer the question ‘what does follow the science really mean? (Daily Telegraph, 27/4/20). He concludes that it means what questioner want it to mean. In support of this… Read more: Article 2
- Article 1:The Ubiquitous Failure To Accept Science as Knowledge and Pseudoscience As Belief Having gone live with this website on 30/4/20, I now exemplify the above failure by referencing two articles in the Spectator of 4/4/20. In one, Rod Liddle opined in respect of corona virus that ‘epidemiologists are captured by their own paradigms and see… Read more: Article 1: