What the well-dressed shopper wears to avoid being fined

 

There are some old sayings which are meant to make us feel better, such as the one about the silver lining we should look for in every dark cloud, or the one about its being darkest before dawn. Well, when I look at the pronouncements of our covid ministers, at the headlines in this morning’s and yesterday’s papers, I’m reminded of the one about that straw breaking the camel’s back and wonder how many more straws the unholy covid alliance is going to pile onto our backs until it, until we collapse.

For example, the police is being urged to be ruthless in fining anything and anyone who seems to ‘transgress’. This reminded me of a saying which, to my utter astonishment, comes from an impeccable Nazi source, a certain Herman Goering:

“Shoot first and ask questions later, and don’t worry, no matter what happens, I will protect you.” (link)

That’s what Hancock and Ms Patel have in effect been telling the police forces. At the same time, like in a well-coordinated ballet, we read that BJ met ‘colleagues’ yesterday, conferring about more and ‘harder’ lockdown measures, about restricting our freedom even further:

“Rules banning people from different households who are not in a support bubble from exercising together are under discussion […] The introduction of rules on face coverings in offices is also being mooted in Government circles, as some businesses are feared to have become lax.” (paywalled link)

They were also considering demands that supermarkets ‘enforce’ the covid rulz. Has it occurred to them that they are requesting private businesses to install what amounts to private police forces? This is of course all aimed at us plebs because for some strange reason “we” aren’t as compliant as we were during lockdown #1:

“Ministers had agreed earlier to toughen enforcement of the rules amid fears that poor compliance will mean the lockdown failing to bring infection rates under control. This will focus on retail and the exemption to the government’s “stay at home” order that allows people to exercise once a day. The rules on shopping stop short of formal legislation, but a government source said that retail bosses were being put on notice that this would change without improved compliance.” (link, paywalled)

The ‘ministerial’ reason for this threat is hair-raising:

“We need to make sure supermarkets in particular are following the rules given this is one of the few places where you still see people from different households in the same indoor space,” the source said.” (link, paywalled)

Clearly, any contact between ‘people from different households’ must be suppressed. Pubs have already been closed – so God forbid people talk to each other in supermarkets! It’s not about suppressing infections, else any work anywhere should be stopped as well because clearly that’s where ‘people from different households’ also meet and talk. It’s about depriving us of our freedom.

These ministers surely cannot have set foot in any supermarket else they’d know that the store managers of those big chain stores are enforcing those rulz already. There was however a ‘study’ by PHE in November last year showing that people caught the virus most commonly in supermarkets’, according to The Times (link, paywalled). Oh really? This couldn’t be an artefact of the Test & Trace data where people are asked to list the contacts and places, could it? Do we really believe that the “Christmas Spike” was due to people celebrating Christmas in shops and supermarkets, not with their families? Gimme a break! But here’s the real reason they’re so very concerned:

“A Downing Street source insisted the focus was on “making sure people aren’t using their own creativeness to interpret the rules how they want to”. They said some people were using their “imaginations” to apply the rules on exercise in a way that allowed them to socialise, adding: “That rule is there for exercise, for people’s mental health, particularly for older people who are not going to be going for a run to see someone.” (paywalled link)

‘Creative interpretation’, ‘imagination’: trust us plebs to come up with ways to circumvent inordinate, harsh measures! One wonders if BJ will come up next with ‘guidance’ to provide every household with a day and hour on which a person is permitted to leave their home!

Restricting our freedom even further is ‘only’ to suppress infections. There were horror numbers in the Sunday papers – and there was Whitty. Please remove carefully any hard object in the vicinity of your PC before you look at this Whitty quote:

“We must stay home except for work, exercise and essential activities. Every unnecessary interaction you have could be the link in a chain of transmission which has a vulnerable person at the end.” (link, paywalled)

Because we’re disobedient, we need more hard measures: ‘work, exercise, shop for food’ and otherwise stay locked in. If this doesn’t sound like prison rules then I don’t know what does! As our covid dictators in government and the NHS demand ever more restrictions to ‘save’ that ‘Sacred Cow’, here’s the latest line of attack: NHS doctors and bosses are demanding private hospitals not to undertake ‘elective surgery’:

“A letter leaked to HSJ, the health service journal, asked trusts in the capital “not to support” private work for at least a month. It said: “[…] In this context, with all but the most urgent elective activity postponed in the NHS in London, it feels profoundly uncomfortable to us that some elective work . . . is continuing in the independent sector.” (link, paywalled)

We remember that during lockdown #1 the NHS commandeered all private hospitals for covid ‘treatment’, only to learn later that they were standing empty and weren’t even used for non-covid, ‘elective’ treatment during lockdown. These NHS contracts were ended in late summer in towns and cities outside London and at the end of December (!) in London (link, paywalled). There are ‘new national contracts’ in place, covering January, February and March this year, but they don’t apply to the London private hospitals (link, paywalled). And so we come to what this is really about:

“The HSJ said that there was a view among senior NHS doctors in the capital that the independent sector and doctors working in it were “once again . . . walking off with the money” and needed to be “shamed” into providing more help.” (link, paywalled)

‘Shaming’ doctors into dropping everything to ‘help’ the covid-infested ‘Sacred Cow’? Not a thought for the patients who ‘elect’ to pay for urgent care which they don’t get in the NHS! Don’t these letter writers see that these doctors, by helping seriously ill patients privately, might also ‘help’ the NHS? It’s a mindset, born from and driven by envy. Apparently, suffering from anything but covid must be negligible. Let’s add to the Whitty catalogue of ‘work – exercise – shop for food’ the point of ‘don’t become ill with anything except covid’. If you’re dying of cancer, if you’re in excruciating pain – tough luck! 

Why is it that SAGE, BJ and the rest of the government are spending so much time on thinking up ever more ‘measures’ to coerce us into giving up even the limited freedom of going out and meeting friends? Why do they neglect addressing the ever more blatant failings of ‘Our Sacred Cow’? Why don’t they investigate the shortcomings of the NHS, still woefully unprepared after having wasted the past nine months? Why must we pay by sacrificing our liberties and our health to prop up a failing, failed system? There’s a good article In Lockdown Sceptics addressing those points (link) even though the author, for my taste, is still too willing to praise frontline staff’. 

Instead ‘ministers’ are thinking about increasing fines from £200 to £500 for ‘rule breakers’, of increasing their propaganda effort about the current pressure on the NHS, telling us that the situation is now worse than during the first peak last spring (paywalled link). Clearly, it doesn’t occur to them that more people will ask why that is, that more people will reject the facile explanation that it’s the fault of us irresponsible plebs. Meanwhile, according to the DT:

“Reports emerged at the weekend that restrictions were due to stay in place until at least March 23, the anniversary of the start of the first lockdown, with further opening of the economy scheduled for the May bank holiday.” (paywalled link)

Expect Easter to be cancelled yet again, and forget about the local elections in May:

“Local and mayoral elections that were scheduled for May 6 are likely to be delayed because of the coronavirus. Mayors and town hall leaders were approached by civil servants last week to discuss whether it would be too dangerous to proceed with the biggest test of political support in this parliament, with almost 40 million people entitled to vote. A unit in the cabinet office is working on contingency plans to hold the vote in June, July or September instead.” (link, paywalled)

They’ve clearly not calculated properly the political fall-out of holding those elections as soon after the May date as feasible. They don’t seem to be scared of the lockdown plebs making their feelings clear on the doorsteps:

“No 10 favours a delay of one month. If polls are delayed until the autumn, Tory candidates want them held in October, not September, because they fear it will be difficult to find doorstep activists willing to go door to door in August.” (link, paywalled)

Perhaps there won’t be activists of any of the legacy parties willing to canvas, having to justify their lockdown support, face-to-face (or should that be ‘muzzle-to-muzzle?) to the silent, non-covid snitches. Or do they believe that we’re all covid lemmings, happily supporting them and their lockdown policies as the various polls keep suggesting?

I leave you with an important analysis in a segment in this morning’s LockdownSceptics Newsletter. It’s about an open letter, pointing out the straight line between China and the CCP’s covid policies and those implemented in the Western world. You can and should read it here.

There’s one item missing though. None of the covid ministers have praised the vaccines which will ‘set us free’ once we’re inoculated. Why is that? Don’t they believe in vaccines? Perhaps they don’t mention the fabulous vaccines as means to ‘end lockdowns’ because it’s not clear if those vaccines provide immunity.

The outlook is grim. I don’t believe this covid government, scared of us plebs meeting ‘persons from other households’, is going to set us free or permitting us to vote later this year – but then I’m a contrarian, cynical old so-and-so …

 

KBO!

 

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