18 June - Khanpox outbreak in London
Whilst never knowingly distorting the truth in a @bexleynews sort of way,
what you read here may not always perfectly reflect my personal view. For
example, the rubbish bins are not contaminated by British people but you are not
allowed to be more specific any more without risking the police at your door. A few may be mischievous to provoke a
response but more often I will sit on the fence because I
do not have the time to argue with correspondents who will take extreme views.
Air pollution is a case in point. I can sometimes see it and can frequently
smell it but I am less certain about regressing civilisation to the stone age in
order to remedy things. What was life expectancy before the internal combustion engine was invented and do I want to buy a bike?
With only two rivals for comparison, it’s fairly easy to conclude that Sadiq
Khan has been London’s worst ever Mayor and that Councillor John Davey was not
far wrong when he compared his effect on London to that of the Luftwaffe. Different methods, similar result.
I don’t believe for one moment that Khan wants to raise motoring taxes for the
good of our health, his priority is raising money to waste on his management
team and statue smashing and with the available statistics swinging either side
of an arbitrary threshold it is easy to confuse the issue with competing claims. That’s the Mayor’s
game but apparently even the best of Bexley’s Councillors feel the need to fight
under the same rules.
What
is the truth of the matter?
Who really knows because the only available statistics come from Khan himself
aided and abetted by those stalwarts of public integrity, the UK Health Security
Agency, the London Association of Directors of Public Health and London Councils.
Not to mention that apologist for China, the World Health Organisation.
Khan’s men and women found that Bexley was some 20% worse than the all England average for
death attributed to particulates and outside Bexley’s twelve care homes
pollution was worse than World Health Organisation guidelines in eleven of them.
76 schools fall outside the limits too but it must be said that they are judged
to be a danger to life by only the smallest of margins. In the very worst
case, Gravel Hill Primary, only 6% over. That couldn’t possibly be caused by
Bexley Council’s carefully engineered traffic congestion could it?
By insisting on a simple Pass/Fail formula a Good/Bad
pollution verdict is too open to manipulation.
Most Bexley schools are either right on the limit or only one or two percentage
points over. They are not especially bad and well hidden in Khan’s report is the
admission that the pollution problem has been reducing in every one of the past seven years.
If ‘right on the limit’ was judged to be OK instead of a Fail. Khan’s case for more ULEZ would pretty much fall apart.
Whether the WHO can be trusted on anything after Covid is debatable now that we
know that they will retrospectively redefine long held medical norms to suit their agenda.
Should one have any confidence in an organisation that wants to rename Monkeypox
on the grounds that it is racist? The only people who could make a connection
between monkeys and any race on earth are by definition themselves the racists.
What about renaming Chickenpox which must be an affront to the French and their
predisposition to run away from any fight - or pander to Putin?
Smallpox. That must be an insult to anyone suffering from Dwarfism. Obvious beyond reasonable doubt.
Download
the Mayor’s report on air pollution in Bexley
(PDF) if you wish to peruse Khan’s numbers for yourself. A master class on the use of statistics to justify an addiction to money grabbing. IMHO of course.
January 2015 but nothing quite that bad since.