Category: society

I celebrated Matt Hancock’s resignation as health minister on 26 June 2021.  Not just the fact of his departure but more the disgraceful way in which he went.  Because it felt to me to be so fitting. Because so much damage had already been caused to so many people by politically expedient lockdown policies not backed up by hard scientific data.  The closing down of livelihoods.  Stopping young people from going to school or university.  The finger-wagging.  The heartbreak of not being able to sit with someone who is dying or to attend their funeral.  The pretence that stopping people from working and printing money to pay them to stay at home would not cause permanent damage to an already fragile UK economy.  We are all paying for it now.

So government policy was to “scare the pants off everyone”. I’m sorry but it did not fool me. Maybe I’m in the minority. How could a flu-variant which, half a century ago would not have even been noticed, be in any way compared with the pandemics of old?  What scared me was how quickly people bought into the fear agenda as if it was the great plague.  It frightened me that government propaganda could so easily be used to manage public opinion and mobilise behaviour, such as the weekly public clapping session for the NHS.  As if that compensated for cancelled operations.  Even now, so many people are reluctant to let go of covid restrictions.  It is impossible to walk down the street, or get on a bus or train, without seeing someone still wearing a mask.  What are they frightened of?

The other thing which frightened me was the way in which any contrary opinion was quickly shut down as being ‘dangerous.  In fact, the only real parliamentary opposition was from another political party which wanted even stricter lockdown restrictions.  How sad!

Here is a link to Coronovirus: Keeping Business Open – published late 2020 at the height of the pandemic.