Tag Archives: lockdown

Hysteria/Mission Creep/Overreach

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When I was head (principal) of a primary (elementary) school in the 1990s, I had a staff member who regarded every small problem as ‘a Major Disaster’ (her words). Everything from a mislaid document to wet weather on sports day was an earth-shattering calamity. She was not the only one to overstate manageable events. Those who wield authority over us, their media lackeys and those with a cause of their own to promote are expert in whipping the populace up into a frenzy disproportionate to the given situation. After a short period in the spotlight, the hysteria and the movements that cause it usually fade, as the media finds something newer and shinier about which to induce panic. Occasionally, the newly out-of-favour movements fight back with renewed vigour, a mission creep extending their influence into new areas.

Looking back over the last 25 years, I and my fellow citizens here in the UK have been expected to be alarmed to an alarming degree about:

The Millennium Bug, when every computer in the world, so the experts said, would crash the instant the year 2000 started. This would, in turn, crash every automated system everywhere, causing chaos and mass fatalities. You all know what actually happened.

Foot & Mouth Disease, when millions of cattle and sheep were slaughtered and burnt. Millions of healthy animals were destroyed in case they contracted the disease.

Weapons of Mass Destruction supposedly amassed by Iraq who, we were told, could unleash them on the West within 45 minutes. That there was no evidence of any WMDs and the fact Iraq did not deploy them (because you can’t deploy something that doesn’t exist) did not deter George W. Bush and Tony Blair from launching their oxymoronic (with the emphasis on the moronic) ‘war on terror’. In so doing, they destabilised the world, creating many of the problems we face today.

Child Abuse Scandals: After either missing or covering up the serial abuse of children and vulnerable people by a BBC celebrity, British authorities went to town on ‘suspected paedophiles’, many of whom were nothing of the sort. (A friend of mine was caught up in this hysteria and spent time in prison for a youthful indiscretion many years earlier.) Unfortunately, this national crisis and the perceived need not to offend Muslims came into conflict when, over 20 years, rape gangs comprised mainly of Pakistani men were able operate in up to 50 UK cities with impunity. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, white working-class girls were systematically groomed and raped while the police and authorities turned a blind eye, the consequence of a woke priority taking precedence over the rights and safety of others.     

The Covid Pandemic and Lockdown, when governments the world over (apart from Sweden) panicked about a flu-like virus, closed down entire countries, failed to protect the vulnerable and crashed the very economies needed to fund healthcare and treatment for the infected. Britain was closed down for almost 2 years and still hasn’t recovered from the consequences. Citizens are now paying heavily for actions taken by a government that extended its powers to achieve very little.

        Cartoon by Mark Woods, Spectator magazine, 7th June '25

Mental Health issues and the medicalised labelling of ordinary human behaviours. We all have mental health issues; this is what it is to be human. Some, it is true, have more than others. Determining an individual has ‘mental health issues’ forces him or her to become his or her issues. Instead of being prone to depression (as I was) or anxiety, the individual who experiences these is now ‘neuro-diverse’. Instead of suffering from a condition the individual could do something about they become that condition. Some people, usually males, used to be diagnosed as autistic. Now that autism is seen as a spectrum, everyone is deemed to be on it somewhere; everyone as a result is autistic. People become trapped in their condition with no way out, lifelong treatment the only recourse.

Black Lives Matter. As Lionel Shriver asks here, do black lives matter any more now than they did before all that righteous indignation and virtual signalling from white people?

Identity Politics in which individuals were told as a matter of urgency to self-identify solely on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality. Gender dysphoria became a thing from which the trans-movement emerged. While I’ve every sympathy for those who feel they were born in the wrong body, society was unprepared for and incapable of dealing with the consequences. Women became ‘cis-women’, sex became ‘gender’ (a grammatical term), ‘non-binary’ became an option and the abuse of pronouns was politicised. An individual could identify as a plural ‘they’, while others lost their jobs if they declined to play along. Worst of all, children, who were too young to be allowed a tattoo, were given puberty blocking drugs, and in some cases surgery, because they felt they were the wrong sex. Children.

The High Court in the UK recently ruled that a man cannot become a woman, entrenching the views of campaigners and prompting other supporters to claim they knew this all along.

Wokeism; while it’s right and proper to treat each other with kindness, courtesy and consideration, politicising something we were, by and large, already doing was not. Wokeism pushed the boundaries over what could be done or said, or rather could not. Anything that might cause someone else offence was forbidden; commenting or criticising others’ religious beliefs or defending women’s rights became ‘hateful’; having a view on unsustainable immigration numbers made you a fascist. This was the era of cancelling those who did not conform to woke ideals. Toppling statues was popular too on the basis that a long-forgotten figure from 250 years ago may have had a slight connection with the slave trade. Western guilt for actions over which people living today had no part in and demands for reparations to those equally uninvolved ensued.

The ‘necessary’ control of free speech, a panic we’re still mired in. Stupid and inflammatory comments on social media can now earn you a prison sentence longer than that of a paedophile offender, often preceded by a visit from half a dozen policemen who will root through your house looking for evidence that you might have once had a ‘Brexity’ thought. Subjects off limits are; arguing that Covid19 began in a Wuhan laboratory (it might upset the Chinese); Islam, Islamic extremism and the Pro-Palestinian movement (however it’s still okay to criticise and condemn Jewish people for the actions of their government); expressing views different from the UK government’s and whatever the prevailing narrative happens to be. A government agency, ‘Prevent‘, last year redefined terrorism (see below) as ‘vocal support of ideologies that advocate discrimination’ and any expression of what it calls ‘cultural nationalism’. What this means is that those who call out religiously-motivated discrimination, lawlessness and terrorism are to be considered terrorists themselves. Actual terrorism and violence is therefore protected against those who would speak out about it, those who do so being the real terrorists. To put it another way, which I read recently (though can’t remember where): those who say hurty things are far more culpable than those who commit actual hurty things. This Orwellian doublespeak must now be taught in universities and other higher education institutions.  

The Climate Crisis and Net-Zero. You must be alarmed by the climate crisis (see here for how much of it Al Gore got wrong). You must too pay heavily for net-zero, thanks to additional taxes; energy prices in the UK are the highest in the world. You must buy into the government’s attempts to enforce a net-zero energy policy by 2050, despite net-zero being unachievable.

What if, might, could, maybe: the media’s favourite phrases to ramp up hysteria. ‘There might be terrible consequences’; ‘we could be headed for another Major Disaster’; ‘if X happens (though it hasn’t) then Y could possibly follow.’ When did the media stop reporting what has actually happened and take up fortune telling instead?  

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There is some comfort in the fact that the so-called crises and hysteria of the past eventually receded and faded away. So too will many of these current causes. All things, as George Harrison once wisely reminded us, must pass. They will, however, be replaced by others equally irrational and preposterous. Those who create them, be they governments, special interest groups or overwrought Swedish teenagers will expect us to conform to their Chicken-Little levels of hysteria. When they do, don’t be alarmed and be sure to seek out the evidence for yourself.

I Don’t Count

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I don’t count. You don’t count. Not if, like me you’re an ordinary person quietly getting on with life, perhaps working to support your loved ones or maybe retired now, drawing the pension you’ve paid into all your life and paying your taxes. You don’t count. I don’t count.

Politicians only become interested in you, and then only as a statistic, when election time rolls round. They see us, in the UK at least, as a cash cow, needed only to fund not merely those services that are necessary to a functioning society but also for every other ill-thought-through scheme they devise.

When Labour – the equivalent of the Democrats in the States – came to power last year they suddenly ‘discovered’ that the previous Tory (Republican) government had left them with a £22 billion debt. A number of financial institutions disputed this figure and the government produced no concrete evidence for it. Nonetheless, they took immediate action, shelving most of their pre-election promises until the debt could be repaid. To this end, our politicians, being among the most unproductive members of society, cut out an enormous amount of government waste and immediately cancelled projects of no benefit to the British people. The Spectator magazine estimated that they saved in the region of £200 billion this way. They were quids in!

Except they did nothing of the sort. What they did was keep up their prolific spending, turning to their cash cow – the British tax-payer – to milk it for even more money by increasing taxes all round. Particularly hard hit were high earners (which I am not), the lower paid, businesses and farmers.

A disputed debt, created solely by politicians (much of it by unnecessarily locking down for two years), now has to be paid for by those who had nothing to do with its creation. As if this weren’t bad enough, the new UK government has extended its control of its people by –

  • Deciding what can and can’t be said online and elsewhere (a new, so-called Islamophobic blasphemy law is currently being considered);
  • Encouraging police to investigate ‘non-crime hate incidents’, while ignoring burglaries and shoplifting ‘incidents’;
  • Restricting how much of our own money we can give away to family and friends before the government helps itself to a massive slice;
  • Freezing tax thresholds, meaning individuals will start to pay tax at lower levels of income;
  • Making taxpayers pay for schemes and projects with no proven track record (carbon capture, net zero);
  • Permitting local councils to increase council taxes, some above the legal limit, for fewer services. (Almost a quarter of council tax collected is spent on ‘unjustifiably generous’ staff pensions.)
  • Allowing government agencies access to private bank accounts in order to determine whether benefit recipients are lying about their income (powers that are set to be extended in 2029);
  • Making tax payers fund mass immigration, which successive governments have failed to control.
  • Requisitioning farm land in order to build more houses. In a second blow to farmers, paying them less than the market value. The government seems hell-bent on destroying food production in the UK.
  • Expecting tax-payers to pay Mauritius between £9 billion and £18 billion to take a tiny island in the Indian Ocean off our hands (though Trump might prevent the handover). 

Also under consideration is a two-tier justice system offering greater lenience to those from minorities. Should penalties for criminal acts be determined by ethnicity?

None of this makes us North Korea, but it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re  living in a Western democracy. What happened to government of the people for the people? Why is there growing resentment in the UK that government is now something that is done to the electorate? Beware legislation that is ‘for your own good’ because it never is.

It’s no wonder so many British citizens feel neglected and side-lined by politicians who view them only as a source of income. Can you blame them, and me, for feeling like we don’t count?

Crime the Newspeak way

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Reports coming in of a burglary in progress, Sarge.

Burglary, you say? Not our responsibility, son. The householder will be insured, don’t worry.

But, Sarge…

Stop stressing, son. We’ve got more important things to deal with.

Like what, Sarge? Stopping those Save The Planet extremists from bringing the motorway to a standstill?

Don’t be daft, lad. That’s not our concern either. They’re entitled to disrupt whatever they like. It’s a human right so long as they’re supporting some cause or other.

But what about when they damage public property, Sarge? Shouldn’t we intervene then?

Not likely! We don’t want to be seen as the unenlightened tools of an authoritarian state.

Like we were in Lockdown, you mean?

That was different.

But what about the vandalism? You know, when they throw soup at old paintings and cut them up with knives?

Self-expression, son. They’re entitled.

So vandalism’s not a crime anymore?

Only when it’s motivated by hate. Then it’s a hate crime – obviously.

What about shop-lifting then? There’s been a lot of that lately.

Dear, dear. That’s totally different, lad. Shops are insured and can always pass the cost of a bit of light pilfering onto paying customers. It’s not a problem that need concern us.

None of this is as simple as I thought it was going to be.

You’ve got to get your priorities straight. That’s the key.

What do you mean, Sarge?

What you need to be concerned about is whether what somebody’s written on social media is a hate crime. And let me tell you, it usually is.

Right.

You’ve been on your 10 day Hate Speech Detection training, haven’t you? You should know all this.

I found it confusing, Sarge. I wasn’t sure that criticising God-botherers or misgendering someone was really, well… hate. And I couldn’t tell either whether somebody just expressing their views was what you’d call hate speech.

Listen, son. As a rule of thumb, it’s all hate speech. Or, as we’re going to be calling it from hereon in, ‘a non-crime hate incident’.

But if it’s not a crime, Sarge, why are we bothering about it? I mean, aren’t we supposed to be dealing with, you know, real crime?

What, you mean petty things like burglaries and thieving, anti-social behaviour and vandalism? Don’t be daft, son. That’s not what we’re about any more.

But I thought…

You see, that’s your problem right there, son. You’re not being paid to think.

But…

I’m putting you down for 10 days Non-Crime Hate Incident training. We’ll soon have you licked into shape, don’t you worry.

But, Sarge…

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The Scottish Government’s foolhardy Hate Crime Act comes into force today, April 1st.

Canada introduced such a law earlier this year.

Who’s next?

 

Covid+Science

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Science created Covid-19. Or at least scientists did. The evidence is conclusive, being laid out in Failures Of State published in April 2021 by investigative journalists Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott. In short, the virus was first detected about ten years ago in caves in south China after it had killed several miners. Scientists from Wuhan collected samples of the virus from bat guano in the caves. They returned to their lab where, after an initial investigation, they froze the virus until 2019 when they revived it and began experimenting on it, ostensibly to develop a vaccine effective against SARS-CoV2 viruses. They undoubtedly altered the virus at this point, adding the element that has been recognised as being engineered. They also allowed it to escape. This was probably not intentional; pathogens regularly escape from laboratories all around the world. We now know this is the most likely scenario for the origin of Covid-19.

Science propelled us into lockdowns and restrictions. Strictly speaking, the worst case predictions of scientific modellers propelled the world’s politicians into panic mode and, in consequence, populations into lockdowns. Whether data analysis, number crunching and computer projections can be properly defined as science is a moot point, but those involved in this work regard it as such, as do the politicians who act on modellers’ advice. They have been wrong more than they have been right.

Science is helping us out of the pandemic. The vaccine has reduced the number of cases of Covid and its variants. It is not as effective as was originally predicted, three inoculations providing only about five months’ protection. We can only hope that this is sufficient to get us though the next few weeks by which time it may be that the virus will have run its course. We know from previous pandemics that they last about two to three years, after which they become endemic (though naturally scientists are arguing about the meaning of this term). In other words, we will to have to learn to live with a (hopefully) weakened virus.

We must also be more cautious about science and scientists. Science is a tool that humans use to understand the world. It is a good tool, but it is only as reliable as those who use it; scientists who, like all other humans, make mistakes (lab leaks), have biases (towards worst case scenarios) and agendas (predictions of doom, profit, panaceas.) Science sits uneasily on a pedestal.

 

Is It Me?

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Is it me?

Has the world gone completely mad during the pandemic?

It’s one of the two. In the UK, we have panic buying of fuel because of a shortage in some areas of delivery drivers and the consequent closure of a small number of petrol stations. According to a leading motoring organisation, we have over 5 times the usual number of people putting the wrong kind of fuel into their cars (diesel instead of petrol or vice versa.) There have even been some fights. The would-be German chancellor, Olaf Scholz (not yet, Olaf!) blames Brexit, which is a rather curious thing to do when Europe too, as well as the US, is likewise suffering from a shortage of delivery drivers. Perhaps it’s Covid, with some foreign drivers having returned home at the start of the pandemic, never to return. Perhaps it’s the poor working conditions for drivers in the UK or the fact that some companies have driven down their wages, making the job less attractive.

We have civil servants, who, despite their title, are neither civil nor cognisant of their duty to serve the public. Rather, it is, apparently, the public’s duty to comply with all of their demands. I’ve been dealing today, for example, with the DVLA, the agency that handles driving licences in the UK. They want my son, who lives in Australia, to renew his UK licence. He has explained to them by email why he won’t be doing so, only to be instructed to send his explanation in writing. You might think an email is in writing, but you’d be wrong. An email simply won’t do. It must be a letter in the post. Explanations are unacceptable in any other form.

Is it me?

Many civil servants are still working from home following the lockdowns and are reluctant to return to the office. A number of services are unavailable as a result, including queries about tax and pensions, as well as applying for various government permits. Perhaps I’m being unrealistic or unreasonable, but are these people, all of whom have been on full pay throughout the pandemic, working or are they not? Is ‘working from home’ now a euphemism for ‘avoiding dealing with the public we’re meant to serve’?

I don’t know. Maybe it is me.

I’ve been collecting together some of posts from this here blog into book form, as I’ve done several times in the past, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct. (What a splendid Christmas present it will make when it eventually goes on sale – I’ll be sure to let you all know when it does.) Amazon, however, emailed me a couple of hours after I submitted it yesterday, asking me to confirm whether the author of the book (me) is alive or dead. Apart from the pointlessness of this request, I do wonder how, if I were dead, I would confirm the fact.

Doctors (GPs) are now diagnosing people by phone, with many resisting the efforts to get them to resume face-to-face appointments. It took me three weeks to secure an in-person appointment with a doctor recently. I almost put ‘my’ doctor there, but as I’d never seen this particular doc before and am unlikely ever to see him again, I’m not sure ‘my’ really applies. Meanwhile, the Labour Party, the only serious opposition to the UK government, is currently embroiled in an argument about whether only a woman is in possession of a cervix. Many members of the party are reluctant to say and those who have, have been subject to verbal abuse. It is, obviously, the burning issue of the day.

It must be me. Perhaps I’m just getting old and grumpy. Maybe I’ve been locked up (let’s call it what it is) too many times during the last 18 months and, like my fellow Brits, am now facing the possibility of being locked up again this winter because successive UK governments have failed to get to grips with an ailing health service.

If it’s not me, then quite possibly the world really has gone mad.

Jesus v. Covid (and the winner is…)

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Two years ago, a few months before Covid hit, I wrote a post entitled ‘God’s Very Good Creation’ that included the picture above. The post concluded that ‘Jesus can’t save you from the common cold, let alone death’. How the past 23 months have borne that out! We hear almost daily of anti-vax pastors, preachers and assorted evangelicals, who have trusted the Lord to save them from Covid, dying of the virus. The Lord failed to come through for them despite their faith in him and his promises.

I recognise there are Christians who like to tell us God doesn’t work like this. He’s not, they say, a dispenser of health and healing, a fairy godmother who fixes those who love him just because they pray in earnest that he will. They’re right of course; God doesn’t work like this. (God doesn’t work, period.) So why does the Bible tell us he does?

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven (James 5.14-15).

And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will… their hands on the sick, and they will recover (Mark 16.17-18).

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son (John 14.13).

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them (Matthew 18.19-20).

At best this is delusional wishful thinking, at worst, out and out lies. Surely the men who made these fantastic claims knew that God wasn’t like this at all, that magical thinking and ritual didn’t really cure illness? (Perhaps we should expect nothing better from people who believed that God had granted them eternal life.) Despite their dishonesty, some believers today are still prepared stake their lives, quite literally, on the same false promises, discovering when it’s too late, that they are empty and meaningless. The Lord will not and has not saved anyone from Covid nor anything else.

Worse than that, however, is how Christian anti-vaxxers affect others; dissuading the gullible from having the vaccine, spreading infection and providing the means, the culture, for the virus to mutate. They also take up space in ICUs that people with unavoidable medical conditions need but can’t access because of them – like the child in this story. It’s also likely that, should health services become overwhelmed this winter because of the unvaccinated contracting Covid – the overwhelming majority of hospitalisations are of the unvaccinated – the rest of the population will need to go into lockdown again. The UK government, while saying it wants to avoid further lockdowns, has not ruled them out should the NHS need ‘saving’ once more.

Sarah Palin has said she will not get the vaccine because she ‘trusts in the science’. No, it doesn’t makes sense (when has she ever?) Palin believes her own immune system will protect her, failing to understand how vaccines work – by priming the immune system to produce anti-bodies against disease before coming into contact with it.

Palin and those similarly motivated by the fatal combination of ignorance and religion, who refuse to protect themselves and others, are selfish and socially irresponsible . Their actions are as far from loving one’s neighbour as it’s possible to imagine.