This is the final part of a three-part series. Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

To many people  It seems that Boris and Hancock, as some of us have been predicting for months, have lost the good will of the people who are certainly turning against the police service, who are not now seen as our police in the main but some sort of authoritarian ‘force’ that actually does little for them or their communities, often overreaching the bounds of common sense and with little knowledge of how to deal with people or the law or covid restrictions.

The Prime Minister arrives on view on some TV news programme or other or even on YouTube broadcasts, often wearing a yellow jacket belonging to some quango or other while waving his arms about and stuttering an ill-thought-out answer to some mild questioning by a reporter.

Talking about the floods last week, he said, and I paraphrase, ‘when people have been advised to leave their homes they have not always done so, which of course is their right’. You mean Boris do you that people have a right to self-determination in the face of danger when it suits you, but not when it doesn’t, when for example they wish to leave their homes, go for a walk, meet loved ones from whom they have been parted for months, or exercise their democratic right to protest? Which is it, please? Some of us would like to know. Or is that too much to ask?

Many of us would also like to know how or when these ‘lockdown’ measures are going to be lifted. We now hear, from your favourite media sources of course, that it now may not be mid-February, mid-March, or even Easter, but could be summer before ‘restrictions’, ‘guidelines’, ‘laws’ maybe, could be, or possibly might be lifted, yet again creating more fear and uncertainty particularly among the old and the vulnerable.

The misleading information emanating from presumably government communication experts is mind boggling. People, they said, could be bribed with a £500 pound payment to stay at home and isolate if they are tested and found positive. By a test that has been found to be inaccurate so many times now it would be laughable if the situation were not so serious, how many civil servants whom we are told came up with hare-brained scheme could give up their livelihood and live on a single payment of £500 for two weeks?

Then we hear that the vaccine, the first of which was to be given in two doses, the second dose to be administered at a later date which has now been changed at least three times. We were told that the new variant virus is more contagious, at first 30 percent more contagious then was it 70 percent or 90 percent? Like ‘track and trace’ I admit that, like them, I’ve just lost track. Our neighbours in Europe and countries across the world were so alarmed by this statement that they closed the borders to all citizens of the U.K.

Then we hear that the vaccine may not be very effective against this new mutated virus and if you do take the vaccine it does not give protection, or stop you passing on the virus to others – that’s if you know you have it in the first place! Now we are told that all bets are off because the vaccine that many people will not willingly take is in short supply and to cap it all apparently polls show that 50 percent of people vaccinated think that they are safe to resume normal life.

Look around Prime Minister, leave your yellow jacket at home, turn your phone off so that you don’t get pinged by that app that most people except the Health Secretary no longer use let alone take any notice of, and  get on you bike or even drive to towns and cities and see that traffic levels are much higher, people are in towns and responsibly walking around taking advantage of the great outdoors, not wearing masks when in the fresh air, (presumably that is another one of their rights, unless you have other ideas?) and what you will find if you listen, is that people have had enough of the obfuscation, the misleading statistics (where are the statistics showing the effect on morale,  emotional and mental health), hectoring presentations and the emotive and scary ads on TV and the media. They are just not taking notice anymore. It started with older people who have seen it all before and could have told you that throwing money at the problem was not enough, frightening people half to death with propaganda was only going to work with some of the people for some of the time, draconian laws were just going to alienate much of the population and cause division, which it has.

Young people have seen their lives and education put on hold; they have had their social lives halted. Not everyone will have had the opportunity to join an exclusive club as you did as a young man. Imagine living in a tower block or a large run-down council estate for a moment. They can’t, for goodness sake, learn to drive or take a driving test.

Give some hope to working people who are worried if they are older that they may never get a job again. All these people have votes, and they outnumber your chosen ‘all in it together’ middle classes.

This government is sitting on a timebomb. It’s lost, as many would say, ‘the plot.’ Many other countries have not subjected their citizens to non-stop 24/7 propaganda and spent billions of pounds, much of it wasted and often to little effect, that taxpayers will be repaying for generations. That is, if of course, if the economy recovers enough to eventually find them work.

I have no idea what Boris actually meant this week in another one of those off the cuff announcements, when he reportedly said, it’s ‘alright to be woke.’ Maybe it is or isn’t depending on your view of the modern world, but either view will pale into insignificance unless somebody in government wakes up and soon. Promising tomorrow is all very well, but ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.’ Immortal lines.

Photo by UK Prime Minister

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