Clearing my mind on COVID

Posted on 16/11/2024 by Jon Garvey

I’ve been ploughing through an astonishing tour-de-force review of the literature, both academic and popular, on COVID-19 by the economist Martin Sewell, available here from Researchgate.

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Seeing through democratic smoke

Posted on 09/11/2024 by Jon Garvey

A former medical colleague was urging me recently to lobby my MP to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill. I’ve done my share of ethical lobbying in the past, even on the same subject, contributing to a series of parliamentary consultations as well as twisting the arm of my representative in the Commons. But I think my friend, like so many well-meaning people, has insufficiently realised how Parliament has, especially since the Blair government, changed from being the place where the common people’s views are represented, to the place where they are kept under control by the illusion of representation.

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Anomalous parallels

Posted on 08/11/2024 by Jon Garvey

From an article in Spiked: The Guardian put out a news notification that said, ‘Trump becomes the first convicted criminal to win the White House’.

A profound observation, for Jesus Christ was the first convicted criminal to rule the universe.

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Comparative religion in 2024

Posted on 05/11/2024 by Jon Garvey

Guy Fawkes night today! But nowadays nobody believes in Guy Fawkes any more. However, yesterday my daughter related an incident in her village that casts great light on the religious beliefs of the modern British public.

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Legacy

Posted on 03/11/2024 by Jon Garvey

Last week I drove 200 miles to the Essex town where I practised as a doctor for thirty years, my first return visit since I retired in 2008. The reason was the funeral of my then junior partner, who sadly died recently.

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Well, whadda you know?

Posted on 29/10/2024 by Jon Garvey

Dr John Campbell, one of the more popular documenters of the COVID nonsense since 2020, has done a video on the Shroud of Turin. I’ve mentioned him in the past mainly as a classic example of the phenomenon of helpful explainers of the official COVID narrative gradually coming round to seeing its unscientific awfulness, to the point of seeing it, as many of us do, as a symptom of a totalitarian power grab in the world.

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Who should run the world?

Posted on 23/10/2024 by Jon Garvey

An article by Obaid Omer, whom I assume to be a “moderate Muslim,” writes rather bravely in Quillette that the problem we face with Islamic extremism is not “Islamism” but Islam itself.

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Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 6 Comments

Moth, rust, and corruption

Posted on 19/10/2024 by Jon Garvey

In my day gap years after school were not the norm they are now, but I did one anyway, and spent several months of it working as a Scientific Assistant at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Pest Control Laboratory at Worplesdon. I earned around a tenner a week, which was enough to buy lunches of toasted ham sandwiches and halves of Double Diamond at the Ship across the road, to pay my Mum 30 bob rent, to buy a second-hand guitar I still use, and finally to spend a princely five pounds on a ticket for the Isle of Wight Festival, which to this day Lefties say was a capitalist rip-off (how much is a Glastonbury pass now?).

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The promise of the land – abrogated?

Posted on 13/10/2024 by Jon Garvey

Given the current polarisation of opinion over the legitimacy of the State of Israel, I want to consider the theological status of the promise of the land to Abraham (eg Genesis 17:8: “The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be their God”). This reflects the threefold blessing of the original promise to Abram of Genesis 12 (“the gospel in advance” – Galatians 3:8) of (a) a great people, (b) a settled nation and (c) blessing both for themselves and for the world’s nations. Maybe my discussion will give readers some food for thought on the present conflict.

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COVID stats revisited

Posted on 10/10/2024 by Jon Garvey

A new paper in the BMJ assesses the worldwide effects of COVID (and simultaneously its management) through excess death statistics.

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