“Government by WhatsApp” – how suitable for Generation Smartphone!

 

Yesterday the “Lockdown Files” hit the screens of interested online viewers, giving certain parts of the nation conniptions. According to the BBC’s “staff”, it’s what should interest us today:“Newspaper headlines: Confidence in Covid probe hit and Sussexes evicted” (link).

Scrolling down that compilation page, it’s noteworthy hat what we call ‘the Murdoch press’, i.e. The Times and that lot, haven’t deemed yon file as deserving of a lead article. Auntie Beeb’s mention of ‘confidence in covid probe hit’ turns out to be a concern only of the printed grauniad. Online this concern has been superseded. see this:

“Ministers are battling to maintain confidence in the official Covid inquiry after it emerged that Matt Hancock entrusted more than 100,000 official WhatsApp messages to a journalist renowned as an outspoken critic of lockdown. The messages, given by the former health secretary to Isabel Oakeshott, who then passed them to the Daily Telegraph, prompted calls from bereaved families’ groups and Labour for the inquiry to be given more teeth and be completed swiftly.” (link)

That looks like a desperate rearguard action by ‘ministers’, as if any of us peasants had any actual ‘faith’ in yon inquiry, the outcome of which may well  be too late for many who still suffer from the lockdown consequences. Interestingly enough the grauniad has another report relating to that inquiry. Online it supersedes the one above. The headline implies that Ms Oakeshott was correct in publishing yon messages:

“Covid inquiry chair rejects journalist’s fear of ‘colossal whitewash’ – Heather Hallett hits back at scepticism that Isabel Oakeshott says led her to share Matt Hancock messages” (link)

I find it noteworthy that the guardian, so proud of ‘speaking truth to power’, is actually toeing the emerging government line, that the ‘Lockdown Files’ should not have been published because of that inquiry.

The other main argument proffered by the defenders of the covid propaganda machine reads like sour grapes because their editors didn’t have access to those ‘files’. Their main theme, subliminally, is: ‘shoot the messenger’. This is also documented in comment posts under the various reports which make up yon ‘Lockdown Files’: Ms Oakeshott did wrong to publish all those whatsapp texts to which she only had access because the oh-so-trusting Hancock gave them to her to help him write his book on covid. 

Of course, even The Times had to provide something based on those files, e.g. ‘Ten selected points’ (link, paywalled), or about schools staying open or not. However, not one of their oh-so-important editors saw fit to pen one of their weighty opinion pieces. It must be really difficult to have ‘an opinion’ on lockdowns which doesn’t clash with that of their Whitehall masters. Still, their cartoon for today is rather nice …

One has to scroll down quite a bit before one finds something on those files in the DM – Aitch and Em are far more important, see. That ‘report’ is more about the then PM but does manage to get the important information into the headlines:

“Boris Johnson appears tense in first public appearance since the leak of 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent at the height of the coronavirus pandemic by ghostwriter of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries – Isabel Oakeshott shared the huge trove of information after writing the book – They raise questions over handling of the pandemic and care home protection” (link)

In general, the drift of the MSM reports is clear: outrage at the decisions taken, with a sprinkling of selected Whatsapp quotes. I loved this one by Whitty, on the issue of “Shielding”, as selected by the DM:

“And Professor Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, added that he would personally ‘think twice’ about following shielding guidelines himself, unless it was to protect the NHS – which was not the main objective.” (link)

So ‘protecting the NHS wasn’t the ‘main objective’? Recollections, as we all know, may vary – but surely not when Whitty himself stood behind that ominous lectern for his daily TV ‘presentations’ where the Nation read, every day, ‘Protect the NHS’!

I see the fine hand of Westminster swamp dwellers, from the Islington dinner circuit to the empty corridors of Whitehall, in their converted endeavours to deflect our attention from the most important point: how decisions were made, decisions which affected and still affect our Nation, from the economy to our private lives. 

That’s why we get all those selected ‘reports’ in the DT’s “Lockdown Files”, relating to school closures, care homes, tests, shielding and PPE. That’s why the other papers are homing in on Ms Oakeshott having published those Whatsapp messages she got from Hancock. 

For me, so far – I’ve not yet read all the stuff, life’s too short and gets shorter by the day – these messages show the plain ignorance of our elected representatives. They show their carelessness of making such wide-reaching decisions ‘on the hoof’, with no control by Parliament. The ‘excuse’ that “we” were in life-threatening danger doesn’t wash. Other countries didn’t go to these extremes, as we all know. 

It’s absolutely disgusting that government, that No 10 conducted their business via ‘Whatsapp’ which is not precisely a secure app and can be read by anyone who has some IT savvy. I’ll just say ‘China’ … It’s as if none of them have ever heard of ‘hacking’.

Since we lockdown peasants were encouraged, sometimes even forced, to meet and work using Zoom, since the HoC ‘worked’ via Zoom, as did Whitehall, as did the WFH civil service, as did the MSM: why did that ‘covid government’ lot not do so? Why use Whatsapp instead? Was ‘Zoom’ not sufficiently white-hot tech?

What else did they ‘whatsapp’ about, during those years? Questions of national security, by any chance? Let’s not forget that we peasants have been coerced into providing ‘more security’ for any internet transactions, something the Whatapp-Government clearly thought was inapplicable to them because their whatappery was supposedly ‘secure’. 

That’s all I have for today. I am appalled by the cavalier way with which such far-reaching decisions were made. I am appalled by the now evident shallowness and ignorance of our ‘betters’. And “we” are supposed to look up to them? God help us! Have a good day.



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