As I watched the Prime Minister order mass house arrest on Monday night, I felt revulsion, anger and grief – as anyone brought up when this was a free and well-governed country would. I also felt terribly alone.
You could not have known, from anything broadcast that night or printed the following day, that anyone was unhappy with these events. But they were.
So, above all things this week, I would like to thank all the kind, perplexed people who have got in touch with me by so many means, to say they share my doubts about the Government’s handling of Covid-19.
After last week, can we rule anything out? This new Stasi society has a horrifying level of support. Humberside police are already advertising a ‘portal’ for citizens to inform on their neighbours for breaking the ‘social distancing’ rules.
If you think they won’t get any takers, think again. Northamptonshire police have revealed that their control room has had ‘dozens and dozens’ of calls about people ignoring the order.
I must refer you folks once more to a great quote I read someplace in the aftermath of the 9/11 “Somebody Did Something” man-caused-disaster event. A Brit pundit was asked whether he thought Great Britain could hope to successfully stand against Moslem terrorism. The pundit briskly responded, “That isn’t the question. The question is whether the English people remain English.” Alas, that question was answered long ago, it seems.
Most people will, by now, have viewed the online film of Metropolitan police officers bellowing officiously at sunbathers on Shepherd’s Bush Green in London, energetically stamping out the foul crime of lying on the grass (would they have paid so much attention, two weeks ago, to a gaggle of louts making an unpleasant noise, or to marijuana smokers?).
Others will have seen the films, taken by Derbyshire police drones, of lonely walkers on the remote, empty hills, publicly pillorying them for not obeying the regulations. It is genuinely hard to see what damage these walkers have done.
But as a former resident of the USSR, I can tell you that this sort of endless meddling by petty authority in the details of life, reinforced by narks, is normal in unfree societies – such as we have now become for an indefinite period. It is, by the way, also a seedbed for corruption.
Meanwhile, our economy is still crippled, and the overpraised Chancellor Rishi Sunak, like some beaming Dr Feelgood with a case full of dodgy stimulants, seeks to soothe the pain by huge injections of funny money.
He will get this back from us as soon as we are allowed out again. Just you wait till you get the bill, in increased taxes, inflation and devastated savings.
Gee, thank goodness such things could never happen here, right?
It ought not to be so. In fact, several powerful pieces of evidence have come to light, suggesting that the Great Panic is foolish and wrong.
I shall come to these, to underline the fact that it is not I, alone, who have these doubts. I do not claim to be an expert. But I refer to those who definitely are experts, who doubt the wisdom of what we are doing.
He goes on to cite that evidence chapter and verse. Over there or over here, it’s as I’ve been saying: whatever this whole contretemps was orginally all about, it ain’t about that now. Our would-be masters saw their chance, and they jumped on it with both feet. Long, long after the Chinese Fug itself has faded into dim and distant memory, we’ll be dealing with the disastrous consequences of the panicked overreaction to it.
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