Britain’s no role model, says Bishop
The recent spike in deaths hadn’t come as a surprise, she added.
“Towards the end of the year, I heard there had been a few deaths of elderly people in the area. We were okay here in the first wave but the second wave hit us. I have nurses who are friends who told me about an increase in admissions to Pinderfields Hospital (Wakefield) over the winter.”
Peter Duffy, 69, who was walking his dog on the High Street, said it was clear to him that many locals “don’t give a stuff” about wearing masks or keeping their distance from others.
“People are saying they don’t want the vaccine – well don’t have it then.”
Mr Duffy has seen plenty of people without face masks in supermarkets and says: “I tell them to put their mask on. I get a shrug of disgust and people saying ‘I don’t need to.’”
He says some people seem to think the pandemic is now over.
“I think people think it’s done. They are fed up with it. We are all fed up. I have no sympathy for ignorant people.”
He believes selfish and arrogant attitudes are the root cause of a rise in coronavirus deaths.
“People think ‘I am going to do what I am going to do’ and they have the same outlook with vaccines; they have an ‘I won’t be told what to do’ attitude.”
Mr Duffy added: “I have seen people walking around the supermarket with no mask and sneezing their head off. The things human beings do never surprises me.”
Sarah, 57, who lives alone in a flat in Heckmondwike, says she puts on a mask to visit the shops and always steps aside for people on the pavement.
“I live on my own and only come out for shopping and to take the dog for a walk. I know why it (Covid-19) is spiking - it is because of the ignorant ones partying and flouting the rules. And now they are talking about opening the pubs so it’s going to go back to square one.”
Sarah, who hasn’t seen her mum for many months due to the pandemic, has seen groups of people gathering in Heckmondwike and elsewhere and “carrying on regardless”.
And she claimed that there have been house parties taking place, although she says none happened recently.
Tony, 47, who was returning home to Heckmondwike after a shopping trip, said he was sceptical about information released by the authorities as he believes there is a plan to reshape society, sometimes referred to as ‘Agenda 21.’
He said: “Personally I don’t know anybody who has died of Covid.”
And he claimed people are beginning to question the motives of the ‘powers that be.’ He is dismissive of the Covid-19 mortality statistics, claiming they have been misleading.
“After a year of everybody calling conspiracy theorists ‘idiots’ and all the nastiness, people are maybe thinking they are right.”
He fears that the lockdown will be around for a while yet.
“I am not so sure we are going to be let out of this lockdown – not properly.”
BRITAIN is not yet a model for other white-majority countries in terms of racial equality, the Church of England’s first black female bishop has said.
The Rt Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin said she was concerned that a Government-backed review of racial disparities in Britain had made the claim in a report published last week.
The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities said in its landmark review that the “success of much of the ethnic minority population” in education and the economy “should be regarded as a model for other white-majority countries”.
Ms Hudson-Wilkin, the Bishop of Dover, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Monday: “I think what concerned me most about that report was about this blanket thing that Britain can now be an example to other majority-white people.
“No, it is not an example. Is it getting some things right? Absolutely yes.
“But we will become an example when I walk into large establishments, or any establishments, for that matter, and I don’t see black people only sweeping the floors, doing the cleaning and the catering.”