There can now be no doubt that strangling our society in 2020 was just as crazy and stupid as I said. It couldn’t stop the spread of Covid. Our economy was broken, the national work ethic was destroyed, our freedoms were shredded and the NHS crippled, probably permanently.
Even now, jobs are disappearing and businesses are closing as a result. The education of the young was destroyed and the lives of the old made so miserable that many gave up and died.
I’ve never seen a policy so blatantly wrong from the start. So you’ll have to wonder why the only thing I have to show to stand all alone in the beginning is a censure by the Independent Press Standards Organization.
I intend to have a bronze medal struck, for me to wear on ceremonial occasions, bearing this disapproval, intended as a rebuke and taken as an insult, but which I shall in future regard as an honor.
In the same way, I cherish the attacks on me by people who should now be utterly ashamed, for ‘misinformation’ and ‘Covid denial’ and more than once for supposedly killing unnecessarily. The authors of this bilge know who they are.
The publication of Matt Hancock’s files has conclusively shown that the government did not know what it was doing and ended up becoming so swollen with undeserved, undue power that it should have been divided.
The publication of Matt Hancock’s files has shown conclusively that the government did not know what it was doing
Shoppers practice social distancing outside a B&Q store in Chiswick seven weeks after the country went into lockdown
As for the ‘opposition’, everyone in it failed to do his or her job, for which they were paid handsomely. None of them, on either side, deserve to stay in parliament, let alone become the government.
Could we maybe start over, with a simple shame test for every parliamentary candidate in the next election? Anyone who supported the hysteria should be disqualified.
One of the most fascinating things about this event is that it was predicted in astonishing detail in an episode of the American cartoon satire The Simpsons, in November 2010. A new development makes the similarity almost complete. It is the acknowledgment of former minister Lord Bethell that the government considered ordering the death of all cats in the country.
As he told Channel 4 News: ‘At one point the idea came up that we should ask the public to eradicate all cats in Britain.’ If you find this absurd, or if you imagine that people would have opposed such a decree, it is worth recalling that hundreds of thousands of pets were voluntarily destroyed by their owners in the early months of World War II thanks to a poorly worded warning from the government.
The Simpsons episode, The Fool Monty, features a TV bulletin warning viewers (in a brilliant satire of the way authorities present light-hearted speculation as hard facts) ‘House Cat Flu is coming people! The Center for Disease Disinformation predicts with a degree of probability that domestic cat flu could spread in the next hypothetical outbreak pattern.
The TV presenter then puts on a special anti-flu suit, while the fear-stricken populace rushes to get rid of their cats. Homer Simpson makes a bonfire out of all his “cat stuff,” while wearing a face mask. It all ends when a vaccine is introduced.
It’s a joke, of course, but when I tweeted the episode in the early weeks of the panic, no one laughed. For a mild fear had been fueled by an incompetent, weak government – unopposed by a worthless opposition and feeble courts – into a medieval frenzy of superstition and terror. And we won’t recover from it for many long, hard years.
A little girl communicates with her grandparents through a window during the Covid pandemic (stock image)
One of the most fascinating things about this event is that it was predicted in astonishing detail in an episode of the American cartoon satire The Simpsons, in November 2010.
New or old, we still bow to the IRA
If there is ‘peace’ in Northern Ireland, why is Det Ch Insp John Caldwell seriously ill in hospital after being shot by unknown persons in Omagh on February 22 in front of his young son?
We are told that a fictional body called The New IRA is responsible for this crime. How simple can you be? Since ‘peace’ was made in 1998, (starting with the worst massacre of all, including in Omagh) there have been incessant outrages, murders, shootings, robberies purportedly committed by IRA ‘dissidents’ under various fanciful titles.
If there is ‘peace’ in Northern Ireland, why is Det Ch Insp John Caldwell seriously ill in hospital after being shot by unknown persons in Omagh on February 22 in front of his young son?
But has the actual ‘old’ IRA, famous in the 20th century for revenge against those who defy it, ever taken serious action against the perpetrators? Does it never occur to anyone that these are simple deniable operations, usually related to a problem of how far and how fast the British state is giving in to the demands of the Provisionals?
Murderers get amnesty. Soldiers and police officers are pursued by prosecutors. Sinn Fein is growing daily in power across Ireland. But we close our eyes and ears.
This is partly because we hope to get rid of the problem on the mainland. But it is also because we are ashamed and embarrassed that a supposedly powerful military force gave in to a ruthless bunch of kidnappers and gangsters.
And there is a certain shrewdness about the fact that we did this under ferocious pressure from our supposed ‘shoulder to shoulder’ ally, the US, who decided 30 years ago that they would rather have a special relationship with Gerry Adams than with London. There were more voices in it, that was all.
And yet we suck at them. The French General de Gaulle would never have stood in front of it.
I could be considered a criminal if I tell the truth
A few years ago I was approached by some of the bravest people I’ve ever dealt with. These were highly experienced chemical warfare inspectors who worked for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a UN agency that tracks the use of poison gas in warfare by going on the ground.
What ministers say in parliament has no bearing on how such laws are used. This is a nasty all-encompassing law, and if Parliament had any guts it would be thrown out
They were quietly furious that their painstaking work was being misrepresented and distorted by their superiors. I wrote this story. It was very inconvenient for the British, French and American governments, all of whom would have liked the inspectors to have produced a different result. I felt their anger, falsely attacked by a chorus of government toads as “war crimes deniers” and other things. But that was it.
Now I strongly suspect that I could have been prosecuted for this under the new National Security Act, as it could have been argued that my reports would (as the law says) “materially assist a foreign intelligence agency.” Yes, it’s that vague. Lord Sharpe of Epsom says it is ‘almost inconceivable that genuine journalism should remain within the threshold of criminal activity’. I don’t believe him. You shouldn’t either.
What ministers say in parliament has no bearing on how such laws are used. This is a nasty all-encompassing law, and if Parliament had any guts it would be thrown out.
