Mark Dolan: This country doesn't belong to the government and SAGE - it belongs to you

As we approach what is hopefully the tail end of this pandemic, we must deal with the painful legacy and lasting scars, not of the virus, but of the damaging and reckless experimental measures with which to stop it.

We have already paid a colossal price for lockdowns and other Covid measures, and the reward for this extraordinary damage? One of the highest Covid death tolls in the world. God, it’s almost like the measures, didn’t help.

Stay home to save lives, in particular, hasn't aged well, given that we have an NHS waiting list of 12 million people and Professor Philip Thomas from Bristol University has calculated, that creating the biggest recession in 300 years, will ultimately claim half a million lives. Well done everyone.

An abandoned George Street in Edinburgh during Covid lockdown.
Jane Barlow

So lockdowns and Covid measures have and will cost lives, many outside the demographic of those targeted by the virus. A young mother with children who missed her breast cancer screening, or a child turned away by the GP due to the missed symptoms of sepsis.

Covid is a wretched virus, highly transmissible but non-fatal to the vast majority of the population, and one which a third of people, have been told to pretend they've got. Remember the slogan "act like you've got it." Wow - we really stopped the world for 16 months for that.

Don't take my word for it - one of the most respected medics on the planet - Professor Jay Bhattacharya of Stamford Medical School in California - has described lockdowns, as the biggest public-health mistake in human history. A policy to save lives, has likely cost many more. And why? It's the economy stupid.

No country that made itself poorer, ever improved public health. Those that will rightly be clamouring for huge investment in the NHS post pandemic, haven't worked out that the extraordinary damage to the economy, makes that impossible.

If you were flying the flag for lockdowns over the last 16 months, perhaps from the comfort of your well appointed home, baking banana bread, watching Netflix and cracking open a San Miguel, as you peruse your last emails of the day, you have to understand, that a price has been paid. And the price is a diminished, divided and poorer country.

Former Health Secretary in front of London's Nightingale Hospital.
Stefan Rousseau

Be clear the human, societal and economic bill for the last 16 months, hasn’t even come in yet. We haven’t even started. We can debate the rights and wrongs of lockdowns, and on GB News we will. But something that is beyond debate, is that lockdowns and other covid measures, wreck lives. And why is it ok, to wreck lives?

Why is it ok to close once viable businesses, and to stop people from going to work? Why is it ok, to close schools, damaging children's educational development, destroying their mental health and curtailing their life chances? Why is it ok, to isolate college students in their halls of residence, or consign them to the anonymous dystopia, of online learning, given that they face precious little threat from the virus. Why is it ok to imprison older people in their homes, and cut them off from social activity, to supposedly protect them?

Given the very sad average age of death from the virus is above 80 - protected, they were not. Measures for this pandemic, have fermented a future pandemic, of poverty, inequality and mental ill health. That’s before you get to the soaring non-covid death toll, due to untreated other illnesses and overstretched public services.

Then there’s the decimated high street, indebted businesses and youth unemployment. Even the DVLA, have bloody given up issuing drivers licenses. The impact of these measures, will be baked into the system for years, if not decades to come.

Masks are still common place in public spaces such as supermarkets.
Victoria Jones

And then there is the national debt, which has topped £2 trillion and will go well beyond that. And we’ll be running a budget deficit – with more going out than coming in – for years to come. That might be the worst legacy, as we saddle future generations, with the eye watering costs of this lockdown experiment.

We've taken away the financial firepower that they will need to deal with future crises - another pandemic, a financial crash, a natural disaster or even, a war. How dare we, spend billions on behalf of British children, that haven't even been born yet.

For a virus that is a bad flu for some, and brings no symptoms for millions. Future generations will look at the numbers, look at the data, look at the threat and will have a simple question - what the hell were they thinking?

Be clear, we’ve let them down, and they will rightly never forgive us. But we are, where we are, and our only option now, is to look ahead.

'No medical intervention should be rolled out by coercive means' - Mark Dolan.
Jacob King

The scars will heal and I am abundantly optimistic about this country's future. With the Brexit wrangles behind us, we can get behind global Britain, a nimble footed, tolerant, diverse, creative - diplomatic and economic superpower.

Global Britain will be an unstoppable force. But no generation of politicians or indeed sage scientists, have any right to change the fundamental structures and values of this country. Which is why Covid passports are totally unacceptable.

I’ve had the vaccine – double-jabbed baby – but that was my choice. No medical intervention, should be rolled out by coercive means, creating a hellish two-tier society, which links your health status, to certain freedoms.

Don’t tell me an unscrupulous future government, wouldn’t have a field day, with biometric ID cards. Blade runner eat your heart out.

And we need to recalibrate our attitude to risk, because if we don’t, we will never recover. An overestimation of the peril from Covid, particularly with millions jabbed, is our greatest threat. We need perspective.

The Mail are reporting today that Covid is the 26th worst killer in the country now, as we sit on a cancer time bomb. And cancer is worse than Covid. Heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, dementia and bipolar disorder, are worse than Covid. Unemployment, a collapsed marriage, losing your home, closing down your business, seeking therapy for your child, because they are so scared and depressed - is worse than Covid.

Deputy chief medical officer for England Professor Jonathan Van Tam.
Alberto Pezzali

Which is why we must learn to live with this virus, in the way that we have lived with every other disease that has faced humanity. I can reluctantly forgive the Covid measures, if they are consigned to the dustbin of history.

Lockdowns, those scientifically debatable masks, perspex screens, elbow pumps, social distancing, bubbles and those bloody arrows in supermarkets – they’ve all got to go. Never to return. Our civil liberties, our Parliamentary democracy and our way of life, have all been unforgivably assaulted over the last 16 months, in the name of an emergency.

Our country has been attacked, and taken from us by a cabal of government scientists and petrified ministers. All of this must be reversed. This country doesn't belong to the government and SAGE. It belongs to you. No government has the right to permanently change the values, liberties and democratic structures of this country, that heroes of the past, have died to protect. What would they be thinking now, if they saw, what we have done to ourselves.

And don’t get me started on the pingdemic, which is crippling the country, and leaving supermarket shelves empty. Scrap the app, it’s crap.

'Scrap the app, it's crap' - Mark Dolan.
Yui Mok

So on my brand-new show I want to have a conversation with you, about the future. Where do we go from here? My show and this bold new TV network belongs to you, and it will be a safe haven for free speech, an oasis of diverse opinion. It’s for everyone.

Labels of left and right, have gone out of the window, especially given that it’s a conservative government who have given us a year and a half of unbridled communism.

Left and right went with Brexit, the pandemic and the red wall constituencies in 2019. The real division now, is not between left and right, but between freedom and control. A far bigger battle, and one that must be won. On this show we are going to hear all opinions – including fervent supporters of lockdown and yes, face masks - no one gets talked down to, judged, lectured or told what to think. It's what you think that matters.

Will this show trigger you? I bloody hope so. And I want you, to trigger me! I will lay out my view, and then it's over to you, and my brilliant lineup of guests. And hey sometimes I'll be right, often I'll be wrong and when I'm wrong I'll put my hands up.

Only Mrs Dolan, is right all the time. Ask her, she’ll tell you. And so, if you are afraid to share your views with friends, colleagues or strangers, not because your thoughts are outrageous or terrible or evil, but because they don't fit the prescribed narrative, then this is the place for you.

If you're fed up with an overzealous state, that has used the pandemic to dictate our lives, then this is the place for you. If you're worried, that the country will be irreversibly changed as a result of this pandemic, this is the place for you. If you're fed up with being treated like a child, and being robbed of your own ability to judge the risks of life, then this, is the place for you. If you’re fed up with being told what to think, do and say by the woke Taliban, then this is the place for you.

And most importantly, if you feel powerless, if you feel you have no voice, if you are one of the millions of people in this country, who feel politically homeless, then welcome home, to GB News.