[Continued from Part I which you can read here]
Back in ‘09 the authorities had a plan to set up helplines for the public, to distribute drugs, close schools and ban public events. Interestingly, given that school examinations take place in summer, plans were announced for pupils to be assessed in other ways to ensure that they were not disadvantaged if examinations were to be cancelled.
None of this caused the hysteria about young people’s futures being ruined, schools closed and all the rest we have endured this year. Older people seemed to have had immunity from that particular virus, as it affected mostly young people and children and although the government had ordered 132 million doses of Tamiflu, there were risks identified and associated with moving resources away from ‘seasonal flu’ to a new ‘vaccine’ and in any case medics said the ‘new virus’ “will mutate and make any vaccine developed before the mutation ineffective”. Wow, who knew? Professionals in 2009, obviously, for a start!
Nothing new in all this then, change the names and the dates and you could be reading about events which took place early this year but with none of the panic and hysteria fuelled by what one can only presume is incompetence or by the deliberate action of the government communication machine.
Looking back at 09, ministerial announcements were measured and concise, ‘health care professionals’, ‘scientific advisers’, ‘statisticians‘, were not afforded official access to the media then, media which nowadays often offer opinions rather than fact and report in such a way that has the effect of worrying or frightening much of the population, particularly the elderly and vulnerable.
One could be forgiven for asking why such ‘gotcha’ media attention was given to Hancock and Boris from February onwards when, given what was known rather than assumed at that time, ministers would have been following the advice and previous contingency plans drawn up and not made worse by media pressure on the government to ‘do something’.
We can all see now how that turned out: draconian laws, civil liberties curtailed, community policing and trust trashed, the economy trashed, unemployment rising and a nation divided not this time by Brexit or the EU but by ‘health and safety’ claims, both subjects close to the hearts apparently of much of the population and more important than anything else.
Now, we are told, we face more draconian laws, more lockdowns, more economic difficulties and so on, but at least much of the population, now used to working from home or furloughed on generous terms, will be securely ensconced and can be safely fed a diet of what can now only be called propaganda, with the message that at all costs we must again save the NHS, with little mention that before Christmas 90,000 staff members were reportedly ‘off sick’ or ‘ self isolating’.
We hear many fine words and proclamations about ‘our world-beating this’ or ‘world-beating that‘ but in the main they are just hollow words, from Railways to Public Services, from Education to Health Services to Border Control to Local Policing and now, when the ‘chips are down’, when we the people that have paid for all this need it most, we struggle even to keep the floods at bay or the roads clear and open when it snows in winter. When billions of pounds are thrown at services that employ tens of thousands of people and should be protecting us, we are unable to cope but have to rely on the Armed Forces to save the day.
Is it not time to stop the pretence? Despite the amount of words being bandied about by the Prime Minister and various other Ministers, operational management in most of our services is failing, some would say it has already failed when draconian laws curtailing freedom of speech, assembly and travel, imposed on the citizens of the United Kingdom, are made by decree and no longer scrutinised by Parliament, enforced by our police services when the second largest police service in the UK is placed in ‘special measures’ by the Inspectorate of Constabulary, when the largest, the Metropolitan Police, is viewed as politicised and authoritarian by many, when the NHS is seen to be failing the needs of the population.
The Home Secretary is more interested in policing the number of people attending Christmas Lunch at Grannies rather than the explosion of knife crime on our streets or the continued arrival of illegal migrants on our shores. Truck drivers ‘invited here’ (don’t forget: at our invitation) are held in conditions on the approaches to one of our busiest ports that include little or no sanitation and have to be fed by concerned locals, during a virus epidemic no less, made worse by inept political machinations and hysteria caused in part by a Prime Ministerial broadcast. Service personnel are rushed around the UK alternating between testing and vaccination duties.
We have, I suggest, a crisis that has nothing to do with ‘The Virus’ or Brexit or any other supposed crisis that the civil service and politicians invent to keep themselves in the glare of media and in nice well paid middle income jobs. We now find ourselves facing a real crisis, one that will not be solved by spending money and having nice policies, green or otherwise.
Are our leaders up to the task, you may well ask! So far there appears little or no evidence that they are. Time will tell.
At last Norman, You have at last resonated with me ( Whether you wanted or not ), and moved on from your more descriptive articles. Your final two paragraphs are what interest me. May I also add that this is a crisis that has been building sinc the Labour party really got stuck into power, while being run by impractical idealists. The early 50’s Labour politicians from the war years that they were involved in, realised the many wrongs and tried in some cases successfully, ( but in more , just ham fistedly,
messed up ) . This was inevitable, Politicians love Political successes which are not really success. Like compromise etc…If they have done one thing, it is show the world ( if not themselves ) and tried ( Usually disastrously ) to right the wrongs etc. Another thing they love is big huge disastrous schenes . Wilson understood these but was miles from being practical except for his own skin.
We are overdue in correcting these well meaning schemes. We are overdue with whatever it is we think we have been doing with so much , it’s embarrassing. Drug missuse, Control, laws, policing of, direction, of the internet. Mis-use of and a total lack of standards or anything not chaos, of the net, These things cannot be done by private sector, self policing does not and never will work. Then there is the ballooning of bureaucracy. I blame the politicians for never even thinking. This is maybe a problem only the makers of pseudo thinking machines and crutches.
You’ve opened the floodgates Norman.
As an example. You could for far less price and zero running cost, have a Stand alone memory containing the necessities for business, say Encyclopaedia, printer, etc without the wasted use by the workshy or destructive. Every machine does NOT have to be linked to the Net. This is an example of big business. They never want change. Change is unprofitable. Change lets in competition,, Business wants to destroy competition or new, If it can change the law to its benefit then it’s cheaper. Business once it becomes market leader changes its spots . So you get cars the same except fot coachwork ( Packaging )for one hundred and thirty years. Same with computers , same since Sinclaire. ( so far 50 years. STAGNENT ). But if business could buy a firms standaloe computer it would cut the staff using them by probably 70% or more.No IT, etc etc.
Despite the huge muzzle compliance in shops, most people aren’t bothering with SD and hopefully a lot of grannies (and granddads) weren’t left alone to pick over their turkeys. We had a great two days in tier4 and I didn’t need the bullbars or bonnet-mounted machine gun to break out into tier3 to relocate for the week with the mater as the police were largely absent or relying on ANPR. I am hoping that with the New Year, folk will lose interest in Covid and the deranged bleatings of the Medical Dictatorship will increasingly fall on deaf ears. When the propaganda stops working they are done.
If total deaths are average why are we so frit we seek to depress our economy and depress our people with authoritarian isolation by Lockdown and Mask which we know don’t work by example of the results being the same whether imposed or not.
It’s the control, Lindsay. The government loves having us under its thumb so encourages the MSM to publicise all these data – and as long as the majority of the general public read and listen only to the scare stories, we’ll all be too terrified to go out without a face muzzle or dare to question the ‘rulz’ the government has announced.
The more people who know about the truth, the better. See also Lockdown Sceptics.
You hit the nail on the head as usual Norman, thank you.
Since there IS a unilateral renunciation clause in the Brexit Treaty it does look to me like we now MUST tackle the COVID DICTATORSHIP.
Yup
Thanks TGS glad you agree.