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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Daniel Keane

Matt Le Tissier suggests Government controlled the weather during first Covid lockdown

Former Premier League footballer Matt le Tissier has suggested that the Government may have controlled the weather during the first national Covid lockdown in March 2020.

The ex-Southampton and England midfielder wrote in a post on X: “This year’s weather so far has been horrific. Wasn’t it lucky for the Government that four years ago when they locked us down we had wall to wall sunshine for weeks on end.

“It’s almost like they planned it that way.”

Asked to explain what he was “waffling about” by one of his followers, he replied: “The possibility of engineering, haven’t you heard of I (sic)?”.

He later posted: “I’m pretty sure geo engineering and cloud seeding aren’t conspiracy theories but I might be wrong.”

An hour later, he asked his followers: “Were you aware that human weather modification exists and currently 50 countries worldwide have weather modification programmes.”

The UK experienced a hot, dry Spring during the first Covid lockdown from March until June 2020 but there is no evidence to suggest this was influenced by the Government or scientists.

Scientists have proposed geoengineering technology to help fight climate change, such as space mirrors that reflect solar radiation away from Earth to reduce emissions.

Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow. It has been used by the United Arab Emirates to increase rainfall and combat water shortage issues in the country, which has a dry climate.

However, there is no evidence that either of these techniques are part of a Government plot to control the population.

Le Tissier resigned from his role as ambassador for Southampton FC in April 2022 after a furious backlash to his controversial tweets over the war in Ukraine.

It came after he shared a conspiracy theory regarding what appear to be intentional killings of civilians in Bucha and other towns before Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv.

Le Tissier wrote “This” and a pointing-down emoji towards a tweet suggesting the media had “lied”, before deleting the post and seeking to clarify his position by saying “the point was about the media manipulation”.

The ex-footballer has also repeatedly pedalled conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic, claiming that PCR tests “were the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind” and that the Government’s decision to lockdown was an “injustice”.

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