There is a moment at the start of the war film ‘ A Bridge Too Far’ that sticks in my mind: a young boy hearing a sudden increase in traffic moving German occupying troops through his village asked what was going on.’What is that sound’, he asks. ‘Panic’,  came the reply, ‘panic’. 

When the inevitable film of the Covid Pandemic in Britain is made, that single word will surely embody the actions of the Johnson government and much of the public, unable, it seems, to ‘get a hold of themselves’ as uncontrolled fear fills their waking hours. Used to following the hourly updates of news from a supine media, they rush blindly from one fear to the next, often repeating facts half~heard or ~understood on social media.

How delighted must government behavioural scientists and communication professionals be as their latest edicts from the lips of the Prime Minister,no less, are breathlessly reported by the BBC and the mainstream media! Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in government media circles by accident. Emboldened by their unprecedented success last March they keep the emotional response going for each set of draconian and often half-baked responses to the pandemic.

So good are these people they have succeeded, by using what they term ‘British Soft Power’, in terrifying most of our ‘friends and partners’ in the EU block and across the world. How the trade and security ramifications of that will be managed remains to be seen, already it looks like cracks are beginning to show and that not all international ‘friends and partners’, let alone our ‘oldest and dearest’ ones over the channel which ‘we’ now call ‘the short straights’, according to Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport. What they feel about the matter will undoubtedly become clearer. How stock markets and  rates of exchange react also remains to be seen.

Not that ‘we’ can expect any great discussion to take place in the mainstream media or political arenas for at least the next couple of weeks, unless we count closed zoom conferences and leaks to government’s favoured media outlets which these days seems to mean either the Daily Mail or Guardian. Just when government by the unelected technocratic EU blob had, we thought, been filed away in the the ‘Britain has left the EU’ file we now find that Olivia De Freelunch, and Piers O’Surely Knott  have secured their place at the table in the latest  government job creation scheme known as the ‘government source department ‘ where they will be interviewed – sorry, asked pre~planned and vetted questions by somebody called a ‘Democracy Reporter’, embodied in a news outlet and supported by the BBC.

In a lighter vein older readers may well remember when each Christmas a Group called the Barron Knights had huge hits with such songs as ‘The Wally Song’ which was very big in 1996,  so here’s a little offering in an attempt to lighten the mood and lift the gloom for this year’s Christmas, sung to the traditional tune of ‘While Shepherds Watched’:

While Hancock watched with teary gaze

The onslaught of the bug

The Angels of the SAGE came down and wondered why he blubed

Boris looked around in wide eyed awe not knowing what to say

For mighty dread had seized his mind as events left many dead

But never mind the scientists said the vaccine’s ready to go

And we’ve also got  the NHS to work and save the day

The country’s  broke and that’s no joke

But we’re all safe and sound

It’s not our job to save  some jobs or even save the pound. 

It’s just our role to make it clear that you must do as you’re told.

It has been good actually listening to people this week and watching how most people have reacted to the latest, what looks to me like a covid ‘scare too far.’ Traffic on the main roads here looks to be pretty normal for the run up to Christmas, more and more people in this tier 3 area at least are venturing out, walking around town and shopping, although many people seem quite happy to rush to the head of the queue to get their vaccinations which, as one told me through a tightly fitting designer face mask yesterday, will be a ‘game changer’ and we will soon be back to normal again. Another told me – quite seriously – that ‘it’s all over now’.

Mind you that was before the latest hysteria over the new variant vaccine found by our world beating team was created at home and abroad. Kent became a lorry park overnight and panic buying was rampant as rumours of food and fuel  shortages circulated in the mainstream and social media.

It’s odd how history has a habit of repeating itself but not always in the same way. The lorry park created on a disused airfield is actually Manston Airfield which was very active in the defence of the UK during the Battle Of Britain in 1940. Although deactivated many years ago, Manston is apparently no longer used for flying, it’s ironic that seventy five years later the same airfield has once again become of strategic importance, this time as a lorry park.

Somebody in the media must have discovered ‘lorries’ again too. ‘Lorries at Manston’, invoking  images of sheeted Leyland, Austin, Bedford lorries chugging down to the docks at Dover, driven  by their salt-of-the-earth, leather-jerkin clad drivers. So much more homely and somehow more British than ‘trucks’ and their modern driver counterparts, some fighting and arguing with local police while demanding to know why their governments have left them stranded in what, according to mainstream reports, they call a ‘foreign’ country – and there was I thinking that  despite the events of the last few days and as Boris keeps telling us ‘we were all friends and partners’.

Whatever next I wonder, weather forecasts in Fahrenheit and Imperial Measurements? Well, to be fair government Ministers and the Prime Minister himself are all promoting the thoughts,  pretentious projections and forecasts by various  people, apparently working within the campus of Imperial  College. I thought ‘Imperial‘ was one of those words not mentioned in politically correct  Britain these days which explained why I couldn’t buy Imperial Mints at a sweetshop (remember those?) anymore.

Anyway, goodness knows what the next few weeks will bring. On all the fronts that we find ourselves facing – many, it seems, self inflicted – but that apart, may I just say many thanks to all readers who have taken the time to read and comment on the Norman articles,

Have the best Christmas that you can under the circumstances and hopefully a better New Year than this one has been, and please join in with me when I propose a sincere vote of thanks to all who contribute to Independence Daily, particularly for the magnificent editorial and journalistic  efforts of Viv and Debbie. 

 

 

 

 

Photo by pirate johnny

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