UKC

Harder to dismiss than some perhaps, he tears into Govt overreach...

Delivering the Cambridge Freshfields annual law lecture, Lord Sumption said: “The ease with which people could be terrorised into surrendering basic freedoms which are fundamental to our existence … came as a shock to me in March 2020.”

I don't know this chap, nor can I vouch for him.  He may not actually be a real person, but a chatbot so caveat emptor..

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/oct/27/covid-measures-will-be-seen-as-...

The freedom to go to the pub or ikea when I like is nice but not really that fundamental. My kids having a few more years with their grandparents is a damn sight more important.

Another one to go on the idiot bus... 

A lot of what Sumption says is subtle and nuanced and therefore open to media misrepresentation. I'll listen to the actual speech before judging. 

That said, his previous comments on this issue suggest he's lost the plot on it a bit!

He's an intelligent man, written/writing the definitive history of the 100 years war, but when I heard on the radio talking about the potential loss of freedoms, I thought he was expousing a philosophical belief that had little to do with the current situation.  He came across as little out of touch with reality.

Also, freedom to have a functional health service for things other than Covid!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-54712153

He was early off the bat with the false dichotomy of "lockdown and wreck the economy" vs "don't lockdown and don't reck the economy".  His early comments on wrecking the economy don't stand up to much scrutiny in terms of their presence - or lack thereof.

I've got more time for some of his secondary points.

I for one wasn't terrorised into giving up my basic freedoms - I made my own judgement on what was going on well before lockdown and I used my freedom to choose, and I chose to withdraw from contact with others as much as possible because I thought it was the right thing to do for wider society.  So he does not speak for me, nor for many people I know who made the same decisions in advance of lockdown.  There was no terror, there was a rational, evidence based judgement that erred on the side of caution in the face of unbounded risk with irreversible consequences.

Not dying is also fundamental to our existence, and not dying for many people (quite apart from Covid) requires access to a functional healthcare system.  

He looks an awful lot longer Rowley Birkin QC... Maybe he was very, very drunk when he came to this conclusion?

That’s the thing about healthcare. It’s not about who’s at the front of the queue for treatment, it’s about who’s likely to die first without treatment.

If you have a better system I’m all ears?

He has a point.  This is real but people did very readily lockdown. I am sure the next Cummings has noticed this and is dreaming up a fake crisis with the intention of making everyone do their bidding.  C.f Brexit as a small example  

I rather took girlymonkey's point to be that if Covid gets out of control it leaves us without all our regular access to healthcare, and that one result of not giving up liberty to reduce infections is a loss of another liberty - access to healthcare. 

Throw money at the diagnostic testing of patients to hammer down the false negative rate to allow better segregation of covid and non-covid patients.  I've seen basically no discussion of this which is frustrating as it feels like one of the areas that could be critical over the coming few months.  

Beyond improving diagnostics you'd have to split sites with a dividing line between ± covid wards and arrange staffing so that people never cross the line without a quarantine period and a -ve test; this doesn't seem like it's going to be very efficient so capacity will reduce a lot. The problem is with the best will in the world, the infection will cross the barrier, patients will die and the legal liability people will get very twitchy as death through what can be framed by ambulance chasers as a failure of infection control is probably seen as a softer legal target than death that could have been averted by operations had they not been cancelled due to the pandemic.  

Hopefully some sharp minds have been working this problem over the last 6 months.

That was exactly my point! The restrictions are there to keep the virus under control so we have the freedom to have a functional health service

Apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick. Not for the first time and probably won’t be the last.

Old man shouts at clouds. 

Yawn.

No worries, it's easy done on forums!

For someone who society has certified as "intelligent", he has a lot of trouble grasping the fairly simple fact the number of ambulances is finite.

When he learns to make an argument that takes into account the relevant facts about the world, I might start listening to him. Until then, I'll consider his view worthless and instead listen more closely to those who have thought more deeply about the issues. Like say, Peter Andre. 

That's because everyone was shouting 'there's a deadly virus and it's going to kill your favourite people' and the footage from Italy looked well bad.

Ofcourse, people reacted appropriately and pulled together for the good of everyone. Well done humans ☺️.

And, as it happens there was a deadly virus and it was going to kill your favourite people and the footage from Italy did look well bad.

Yes, I said that.

The question is what happens when "it" isn't real, or is exaggerated for malicious  reasons.

Ah! Ofcourse. I wasn't arguing with your point, simply adding to it.

I wonder if it would be possible to use this for nefarious means as I think the media would need to be almost entirely complicit which I would hope is unlikely. I could be wrong!

I’m not really familiar with the Sun so forgive me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be an article written by Sumption.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/12886627/lord-sumption...

Some bloody obvious and deliberate fallacies in there.  The same basic premise that we should isolate and protect the vulnerable so everyone else can carry on.  WTF does he think hospitals, care homes and families are trying to do right now?  No recognition from him over the high false negative rate in testing that makes this fundamentally unachievable at the level needed to prevent healthcare overload if the virus is prevalent in even 5% of the wider population.  Heaping praise on the trio of compromised “scientists” being apparently bankrolled by a libertarian lobby organisation and incapable of fact checking their work with the most basic maths like dividing two numbers together.

One new addition to the same old crap though - a claim we still have significant risk control measures because the government can’t admit that the first lockdown was a mistake.

I think I’m going to define a Sumption as a standardised unit of libertarian misinformation.

Whatever you may say about the context in which the Supreme court is created, you don't get to be a judge on it without being fairly bright. Having said that, I think Lord Sumption has rather enjoyed the greater freedom he's had to speak since he retired a couple of years ago. He's certainly made himself available to the broadcast media on numerous occasions, thus to speak his mind on Brexit and now Covid. 

I'm sure he understands the basic calculus as well as any of us, but he clearly likes the role of a contrarian. He does have a point - a government imposing itself of the individual will of the people is at the core of the social contract. It shouldn't be a surprise that, whatever we all understand about the need to protect the NHS, old people, everyone, a few philosophers are keen to point out the scale of the far-reaching legislations which have been imposed. The measures taken would not have easily been predicted, outside of a war scenario in which the nation itself was under direct threat. 

Boris may not have any ideals or ideologies but he does understand that heavy government intervention is not something that should be taken lightly, hence his reticence at several times. We live in a country where many / most people don't really trust the government (for all manner of reasons, some of which probably go back a long way), so the mandating of restrictive measures appears to have become necessary (in a way in which they tried to avoid in Sweden for a long time). It's the mandating that messes with the social contract. 

And I'm sure this is a reasonable conclusion. But his judginess makes it a useful unit for the other libertarians. 

He would do better to just make his original point and not get drawn into the fiddly details that you mention and which undermine any broader economy vs health argument a libertarian freedom fighter would like to make. 

Yes, I was thinking that after reading your previous post.  He’s just become another voice in the discordant choir rather than using his position of privilege to tackle what he claims is his core issue.

The point over government intervention can stand on its own, and there are pertinent questions around what the effective contract for such intervention should look like; I firmly believe that when we locked down it was the right decision - born from past wrong ones perhaps - but the way it was done with ever changing messaging and piss poor consequences for senior people breaking rules was not I feel commensurate with the level of restriction - it cheapened the unilaterally revised social contract; this sets off stronger warning signs about democracy for me than the lockdown itself, and it directly undermines the public buy in to the infection control measures.  Some people have found out they can do what ever they want basically consequence free whilst restricting most other people.  What a shame he didn’t dive in to this one issue and instead has nailed his colours to the wider lunacy.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if he can tie his own shoelaces; far too real world...

Or, to paraphrase Douglas Adams:

"Oh, that was easy, said Sumption, and went on to prove that black is white, only to get run over on the next zebra crossing..."

Yes, I agree. There is a really big point here about where the social contract lies. Being in great part unwritten and, lately, untested, leaves us with some difficult questions long after the immediate crisis of the virus has passed. Should the people trust the government to do its best for the people? 

The current government doesn't appear to be particularly in favour of democratic versions of the contract but it has rapidly eroded the trust some people may have had in it (the government, not the contract). It is also on record as being ambivalent about the law. Not a good look for a government seeking consent.

Arguing about points of fairly well established fact or at least agreed within broad scientific parameters just throws us off the scent and won't help in the future. 

Sumption lost it a few years ago. Unfortunately not before they kicked him off the Supreme Court, where he left some really dreadful judgments behind him.

jcm