Simon Dolan seeking judicial Review of government’s lockdown - AIBU to think he is a selfish pr**k?

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A multi-millionaire is taking the government to court to challenge the lockdown restrictions. He is seeking judicial review of the decision to enforce lockdown.

Fair enough if he wanted to use his own multi-millions to find this. But no, he is actually crowdfunding. He is seeking to raise £125,000 from the public. At a time when he himself has already acknowledged the suffering economy.

AIBU to think this is total selfishness and that he is just another white, rich privileged man thinking he can play the hero and save us all when all the while he is only out for himself?

😡

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/law/2020/may/01/uk-government-faces-legal-challenge-coronavirus-lockdown-businessman-simon-dolan

www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/

For all those on this post who agree with this, I assume you are also the ones not following lockdown then I agree with his right to challenge the Gov - I worry about living in a state that does not allow this - we all should whether you agree or not with his view but it have nothing to do with compliance on the lockdown -don't get confused between challenging decisions and following them.

You may think he is doing this to ask questions and support freedom of views.
But it will be all about making him richer and avoiding paying his taxes.
Think about how he made his money and why he lives in Monaco .. yet the press phots show his home in UK

If he wants to 'challenge' the government he should do it where he lives.

I want the answers to the questions he's asking though toffee, but I don't have the cash or time to push for it.

And that is the crux of the question
He wants to live in a tax haven and avoid UK tax
And yet still wants to take the UK government to court
While having a home and a second home in Uk
And many more business interests in UK than Jota Air

The answers are basic common sense. It's a highly contagious virus. Lockdown reduces the spread. Governments around the world, including the country he lives in, have locked down to protect their economies (and to save lives).

It's exactly as @Chh03 says.

I’d have more patience with this distraction were it not obvious that his main concern is restoring his own revenue streams.

I know who he is: he was known in my industry as a back-street accountant flogging ropy tax avoidance schemes, mainly to contractors. Now he lives in Monaco, avoiding tax again. What a charmer.

Bluntness, could you tell us what other country's lockdown measures have successfully been struck down in court as mentioned in your original post. I'd like to read about the basis of that/those cases.

Is evidence rising that Britain's lockdown could be a deadly mistake?

DecadentDeity, I find myself fully agreeing with that article. Even the Torygraph is now starting to critique them more at the moment.

@topseyt I know I don't often agree with the Telegraph. My concern is that this debate is being narrowly controlled by "science" like it's fact. The truth is we don't know what we don't know. If no one is looking for evidence of the negative impact of lockdown we won't find it. You have to ask a broad range of questions to get all the answers.

Decadent thank you for posting that, it's terrifying really!

I'd rather live on a country that allows such a challenge to be tested, than one that doesn't.

I'd say too that I agree with others that the longer this goes on, the more people will start to ignore it and do their own thing because the reality of lockdown will hit them hard.

There are already signs of some businesses tentatively starting to reopen in whatever way they can, and others exploring the idea.

Whatever the government does, and it seems to have become boxed into a corner on this, the economy will start to open itself back up. Very slowly at first while many wrestle with the childcare issues caused by this, but it will happen. The economy simply can't remain tanked as it currently is for very long. People need to make a living, not just an existence.

For all those on this post who agree with this, I assume you are also the ones not following lockdown then

I agree that it is right and democratic that the government should be challenged in the courts where someone feels strongly that they have gone outside the law. I agree with complying with lockdown whilst that is the strategy and have done so to the letter. I don't believe lockdown is the right strategy and I believe the government is following their science of choice rather than the best science.

The countries that have had by far the best results combatting the virus have done so through extensive testing and early medical intervention. That is the science we should have followed. Instead we've gone for a much less effective strategy that has significant risks to mental health, individual prosperity and the national economy.

The problem with that article is that it hasn't counted the people the lock-down has saved.

If total deaths during lockdown are something like double the official figures, and some of the excess deaths are non-covid deaths caused by people not seeking or not getting treatment for other things, how does that compare with the no-lockdown scenario where there were going to be a quarter of a million deaths from COVID alone? How many other deaths would there have been in that scenario? What would the shortfalls in NHS treatment have been if doctors stopped going to work once enough of the colleagues had died, as happened in Africa during the Ebola outbreak? We saw what happened to the NHS with 25K hospital COVID deaths, what would have happened with 10 times that number?

The article tries to claim the Sweden approach could have worked for us, while doing nothing to refute the Imperial College modelling of what would have happened in the UK if there had been no lock-down.

I don't believe the Imperial modelling was wrong for the UK. If Sweden succeeds with a different strategy, it's because it has different conditions.

That's the article allegedly from the Telegraph, although the link is not to the Telegraph.

Why assume that most of the excess deaths are non-COVID deaths? I'd think it more reasonable to assume they are COVID deaths that went unmeasured as such.

I'd rather live on a country that allows such a challenge to be tested, than one that doesn't

I agree with this. It doesn't change the fact that he's a selfish attention seeking arse though. There was a similar case in Berlin about closing the churches too.

Apparently in the Philippines you can be shot if you are out at night (clearly the virus spreads more at night). THOSE are the sorts of rules you should be challenging as they are clearly not founded in any sort of evidence. But of course in those sorts of countries you can't.

Is that going to be the get out clause 'different conditions' ..

God knows what our model is ... semi lockdown with so many holes it's like a sieve, not bothering to order ventilators or ppe, paying people to sit at home quivering in fear for months on end. History is not going to look kindly on our version. Either go Sweden or go Taiwan. Flip flop flammery is nothing to be proud of and nor is being so risk averse the worried well are disinfecting cardboard boxes.

Bluntness100 I agree with you entirely. You explain so eloquently.

I can’t find the post, but upthread it was commented that we shouldn’t have the freedom to affect other people’s right to life. We are used to having exactly that freedom though surely - otherwise vaccination would be compulsory. It is perfectly legal to refuse a vaccination and to spread potentially destructive disease among people who may be highly vulnerable.

RandomLondoner, you mention that the article quoted above doesn’t count lives saved by lockdown. This is true. The article also doesn’t (can’t yet) count all those who will die in the future as a result of lockdown. Don’t some studies count an additional 30,000 deaths annually as a result of austerity measures? We will need austerity measures forever to repair the country after this. I fear that the effect on the youngest and poorest will be lasting and horrendous.

I agree that he should absolutely be able to do this and good on him!

However he's worth £147million

Surely he could foot the letter?

Which is 30k?

I don't get the multi rich asking for money from the public. Richard Branson does it

Pay for it.

It's a common concept. You want it. You buy it.

I think the point of crowd sourcing here is to show that there is a groundswell of support, rather than that he either can't or won't fund it. And key to his argument is proportionality. Was the government's response proportional to the threat, and that would be a factor if it was based on an art 8 ECHR, interference with right to family life, too. That's where it get's tricky.
I'd still like to know which government's lockdown response was successfully challenged. I haven't sent this reported anywhere and I'd like to know the grounds and the judicial reasoning.

Again. Why is he not challenging his 'lack of freedom' in the country where he lives. Monaco has a far stricter lockdown.

Why should someone who evades UK tax cost the UK taxpayer a huge amount of money through a costly court case (easily dragged out by 'technicalities') challenging basic common sense? Do people really not understand the very simple concept of contagion?

We really need our tax revenue right now. We're in a pandemic. As PP have said we have a need for better MH support (needed for years), we have small businesses in need of help, we have NHS and other frontline staff on need of PPE. We have far more important things to spend our money on than a very rich UK tax avoiding expat who wants to ask in court why we want to reduce the spread of a highly contagious deadly disease.

The Barclay brothers (owners of the telegraph) live on a private island off Sark. Tax and Covid haven. They're billionaires. Premature lockdown isn't their risk to take.

Never gamble what you can't afford to lose. Billionaires on private islands can afford the financial hit from the economic devastation a second wave would cause.