Week 1 of 'non' lockdown

 Week 1 of 'non' lockdown

Officially, this is not a lockdown. It is a 4 week period of 'tough new restrictions' , England wide. Hardly a surprise to discover this bizarre four week period has a indistinct label  😕😠

Week 1 is over. 7 days of getting on and getting through. There are shafts of light, breakthrough news of an embryonic new vaccine and, yay,  the beginning of the end of Trump s era in the USA. 

Whilst for much of the country life carries on as normal, I and many like me grieve for more missed time with our grandchildren. The broken hearted cry silent tears of sorrow and isolation. Unlike the spring there is no sense of unity now. 

The country is split many ways, poor and rich, alone and together, and, vitally, those who stick to the rules and those who break them. I absolutely truly understand why people bend the restrictions, these laws are laughable, but it breaks my heart more to see them being treated with such contempt when  my week is empty due to my compliance.

Fortunately I have my social bubble of husband and daughter to keep me afloat.  Its not been an easy week for them either, this week 1, with Lewes Bonfire, the highlight of their social calendar, cancelled. 

Lewes was a ghost town shrouded in mists of mourning on November 5th. Annie and  Paul and I marked the night with their usual ritual of chilli and sparklers anyway  plus a walk on the hills to admire a multitude of  fireworks from gardens across the town. A 2020 'not the same but better than nothing' moment. 

In fairness , for me, for once, this was better than the usual 😁 I don't like crowds or fire so Lewes Bonfire holds little attraction. I 've managed to see the procession once in the 30 years we have lived here. Beyond amazing and I m glad to have seen it but once was enough.

My eldest son has brought his family up in the firework tradition , although in his case its one of blowing up everything in his garden. He triumphed in the  2020 pattern of inventiveness as his superb technology skills gave us a firework family zoom evening.  A truly good show enjoyed by one and all, including his near miss with the exploding rocket 💥 

Whilst watching clutching my granddaughters warm hands in mine cannot be duplicated,  no smell, no taste of burnt marshmallows, yet this was an extra special evening after all. The effort involved to make this work drew the family together, an unspoken bond to get through this by whatever means necessary. 

It is a surreal non lockdown. The streets are humming with life. Schoolchildren throng the town. The playgrounds are heaving. The question of how little too late plays on everyone's lips. Those of us who have had our life silenced again watch on in envy those whose lives continue as normal.

This much shared post on Facebook demonstrated the frustration shared by so many business owners and reflected the confusion shared by so many shoppers. 

News to be thankful for:

Two shafts of light brighten this bleak, dark, November week.

1. Thank God.  Joe Biden has won the US Presidency. Trump is still refusing to concede so weeks, even months,  of legal wrangling lie ahead but America and the world has recognised Biden as President Elect. 

It took days of nerve wrenching waiting after the election date on Nov 3rd for this momentous decision to be called. Early results terrifyingly showed Trump in the lead but painstakingly, state after state, especially with mail in voting , predominately preferred by democrats, came good and the final tally swung in the democrats favour. 

Whilst Biden endeared  himself to everyone by his calm patience and 'elder statesman' persona during this long wait Trump played golf and fired off increasingly wild twitter posts. 

It is great news that Trump's four years of right wing /climate denying/racist/sexist policies are over yet I find it sad so many Americans voted for him still. It is hard for me to know why. All I can say is we have Boris Johnson/Brexit so I guess is equally hard for the EU to understand this. I can hardly believe it myself. 

2. One of the multitude of vaccines in escalated  development has shown spectacularly good results.  The news from Pfizer/Bionetic in the USA had been held back until after the US election as it offer promise that a safe synthetic vaccine is closer than the world dared hope. 

Needless to say, it is just that, a promise. There is much water to flow under many bridges before our world is righted.

Three more weeks to go:

I cannot think as far ahead or as far back in imagining the world as it was before.

November is about getting through, one day at a time. 

Three more weeks. I hope 🤞

 

Lockdown (ish) looms

 Lockdown (ish) looms

England is to go into another lockdown (ish) from tomorrow, Thursday November 5th.  Officially 4 weeks. Possibly. Maybe. Depends on who you believe. Discontent and discord rule. 

Yet again everything that fills me with joy is to be forbidden. No household mixing. No meeting friends. No seeing my grandchildren, no walking groups, no long coffees putting the world to rights. No visits to my Norfolk cottage. Long endless empty days. Again.

Luckily I will not miss the gym or the cinema as I had not yet re-embraced them, nor the pubs or the restaurants. But it is November. Wet, dark, cold, grim. 

This is supposed to be for Xmas but no MP will commit to anything like a normal Xmas. 

It is supposed to be following the science but every scientist from every camp has made the same point. Too little, too late.

Too little as this is a light touch lockdown by anyone's standards. Schools, colleges and universities stay open. Public transport runs. Playgrounds stay open, estate agents continue as normal, and whilst non essential shops are supposed to close the rules are flexible, elastic and frankly bizarre.

Macdonalds making sure your essential nutrients are still available...

I cannot go to Norfolk, visits to second homes are banned. Despite the fact that I can legally travel by train to lecture at the university in Norwich and then I have to stay in a hotel. Ludicrous.

Dissent echoes in the Commons, in private homes, in cities and across the country.  Revolt among back bench Tories, whilst not enough to stop this passing, shows how strong anti-lockdown light sentiment is. 

Everyone I know feels it should have been either a proper lockdown or England should have continued with the tier system, give it time to work. 

When early warning of this impending lockdown was leaked on Friday night to headline Saturday's papers , thus ruining everyone's weekend, there was immediate anger from all quarters that yet again the Prime Minister has sought to circumvent debate in the House of Commons. 

Boris Johnson insists the leak was not from No 10 given the speaker had previously issued strict instruction to Government to talk to Parliament before any announcement.  Well, he would, wouldn't he, is the phrase that comes to mind.

His self appointed presidential style has backfired yet again as whilst the synopsis of this plan was revealed early, substance was so vague Cabinet Ministers have been 'misspeaking' every since.

As the country plunges yet again into darkness the Chancellor reintroduces furlough through gritted teeth. fixed smile failing to raise above a grimace. Nightmare on Downing Street.

The UK media distracts us by the freak show of USA election night. Yesterday. Knife edge decision resting on key states with Trump insisting he will contest any result which causes him to leave the White House. 

Me, I can barely watch the ghastly spectacle of millions of Americans voting for another term for Donald Trump. 

I am lost in a strange alien landscape, disorientated, depressed, beyond making sense of anything. 

Un Happy Halloween

 (un) Happy Halloween 😷

Halloween 2020 is a ghost like spectre of its annual self. Racks of reduced gruesome paraphernalia gather dust on shop shelves.Traditions fall dismally flat when trick or treating is banned or actively discouraged , excitement quelled when any gathering limited to 6, including children, even in tier 1. If there are parties they are wee mini ones to raise the spirits.  

I miss so much my annual multi generational fun; eating doughnuts from a rope, trying not to knock my teeth out grapping the apple from the bowl,  dressing in my witches costume. Simply being silly. 

Luckily Sussex hangs on tier 1, so I have still that basic luxury of seeing folk. as long as it s only 6 of us obviously, indoors. So I have relished fun, precious moments shining like diamonds in a river of mud. 

Memories which sustain me during the endless days of feeling more wading through mud than finding diamonds.  Living with an ever present creeping anxiety that any moment the ground will give way beneath me. The clocks have gone back. Days are dark, weather is continually wet, cold, windy. No one dare mention Xmas . 

And daily the news gets worse. Sod that mythical journey of my early spring optimism, we are not journeying through this pandemic, coronavirus is leading us on every step of the way. My only consolation to total disillusionment is a belief that I am not alone, more likely I represent millions of us. We are totally out of control, we lost our way to this virus months ago.

Those earlier posts, back in March, fill me with an emotion close to shame. How innocent was I. How gullible too, to fall for a parable of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Lockdown brought us time. Time squandered. It brought us our golden summer. But now that time past has cost us winter and most probably Christmas with our families. 

Today much of the UK, 11 million people, one fifth of the population,  can only meet anyone outside their household in public outdoor spaces. In the wind, in the rain, in the cold. Terrific. No wonder people's mood is a foul as the weather.

Todays depressing headlines: apparently the infection rates are spiralling out of control, faster, deadlier, than the worst case modelling.  Deaths today, 274. No matter how the figures are calculated, and god knows the stats have been changed often enough , coronavirus continues to win. 

So far I have been lucky although it does not feel like that. I have not been ill. None of my family have been ill. We have spent more time than I feared together this year after lockdown. All bar one of us is still in tier 1 areas. 

I try, I really try, to appreciate how lucky I am compared to so many. I cherish every day I can spend with my loved ones. I desperately seek out more time, craving hugs and kisses before we find ourselves once more forced apart. Yet creeping anxiety is ever present and today as the rain lashes down on a black stormy world it is hard to feel anything but dread at what lies ahead.  

Ever decreasing circles.

Ever decreasing circles 

This was originally a journal of a journey. 8 months on, the reality is a grim nightmare of travelling in ever decreasing circles.

I try to live as normally as possible in an abnormal world. Social distancing, rule of 6, are now part of my everyday.   Scheduling family visits as local lockdowns throw assorted areas into assorted tiers with assorted rules has become a weekly ordeal. 

Anger and bitterness replaced national unity many weeks ago.  Lockdown seems simplistic in retrospect, bathed in golden sunshine, the country pulling together, society pulling together to create cultural moments to unite us all. There are few rainbows fluttering now.

Bojo's policy of delegating Covid responsibilities and restrictions onto local authorities has ended in the inevitable. Wrangling over financial settlements have broken open fault lines macro and micro, pitting communities against each other.  

Tues Oct 20th, Government fails to reach agreement with leaders led by Mayor Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester , forcing  PM was bounced into imposing Tier 3 from Westminster.  

As the week goes on, generous packages are being dangled over their heads in what local leaders say is blackmail. More areas become Tier 3 hotspots, like South Yorkshire, and those in Tier 2 eye up the rising infection rate with fear. 

Sussex remains in tier 1, though for how long who knows. As does Norfolk. It is a measure of the speed life changes that only Wed did my beloved granddaughters there know I was coming to visit on Friday, and even that is a leap of faith.

There is a world weary cynicism. Bojo's popularity is now in minus figures. The nation fixates on his thinning hair rather than his speeches. Or, to put it bluntly, his credibility is shot. Rumours from Downing Street that he intends to resign in the spring "as he cannot manage on his salary" are treated with joyous contempt. 

I did not vote for our PM, but such is democracy. However, his public persona centred on his twin creeds of liberalism and localism. Both have come back to haunt him. The media of every persuasion have picked apart the tatters of the laughably inept Track and Test system revealing the flaws in his privatisation strategy. 

Alas this joke of a system is far from funny. It has cost the taxpayer billions whilst lined the pockets of businesses but worse, far worse, its failure has left us vulnerable to the second wave of the virus raging in all its fury.

Today the chancellor announced a more generous version of the job support system for those in tier 2. Accusations that this has finally popped up only after London moved into tier 2 cannot be answered satisfactorily. The poverty stricken North, after many weeks of tier 2 limitations, agree it is better than nothing. 

Since when did health and wealth become so divided. Surely they are two sides of a whole. None of us is one or the other. Only the truly wealthy or the truly sick can own this separation in any meaningful way. 

The battle over local financial settlements has shown this in stark contrast . Without work, without income, people die. Not of COVID . Of illness, malnutrition, mental health... Families fall apart. Lives fall apart. COVID can kill but so can poverty.  

In this weeks battle over funds Greater Manchester health authority insist they have the capacity to cope with increasing demand whilst the Government disputes this. Each side can produce the relevant figures.Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Is there any good news. Not really. The last time there was a glimmer of hope it turns out to be based on data missing tens of thousands of positive tests. I have to wonder if our country would ever have known had the scientists not cheered us all by saying the virus was dying out. We do know how to treat it better, which is one silver lining. The rest is confusion, chaos,  ever decreasing circles.

Looking back on this blog my writing in March and April was innocent, naive, simplistic. I believed I only had to get through 12 weeks before the worst was over. I was wrong.  

To laugh or to cry?

 To Laugh or To Cry, That is the Question

 Where to start. In a week which has lurched from crisis to conflict, where any unity within England let alone with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has vanished, any journey anywhere is out of the question, literally as well as figuratively.

The Government introduced formally its new 3 tier local lockdown strategy to much bafflement. Us down South remain in Tier 1, medium risk, i.e. lowest tier.  😆

Liverpool is dragged, kicking and screaming, immediately into Tier 3. Cue headlines of bullying from local authorities. 

London, Essex and assorted others fall rapidly into Tier 2, to take effect at midnight tonight. Neatly scuppering my much anticipated plan to visit my son and partner in London. Thank you Boris Johnson.

Andy Burnham, Manchester Mayor , has simply refused to accept at Tier 3 lockdown, demanding more financial support. Today the PM was forced into a press conference threatening the imposition of law if there is no 'agreement'.

Lancaster did agree earlier today to move into Tier 3, but only after negotiating a substantial package from Government coffers and one which differs substantially from Liverpool, not least in that gyms and leisure centres can remain open there. 

Labour's leader Kier Starmer has finally broken rank with the Government following the publication on Monday showing SAGE had recommended a national lockdown 3 weeks ago which Boris Johnson refused in favour of local restrictions.

Cue Sir Kier demanding this be implemented asap. Nice one. No one wants it but anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that we cannot go on like this.

An ineffectual privatised track and trace system has cost the taxpayer 12 billion pounds and counting , much to management consultancy firms. Corrupt barely does this justice. The testing system is likewise in chaos.  Cases are rising by thousands daily and can no longer be blamed on increased testing. More significantly, the death rate is rising dramatically, today at 136, nearly double from a fortnight ago.

The mothballed Nightingale hospitals are to be put on standby as admissions rise sharply. As predicated the infection rate which originally rose so rapidly amongst the young. especially so  when universities returned has migrated into the vulnerable and elderly.

I simply do not know whether to laugh or cry. I no longer think of this as a journey with a beginning, middle and an end. It is simply a matter of making the best of each day , trying not to look beyond the end of each week, whilst hoping against hope that tentative plans will not be dashed.

On the positive side, I may have lost my trip to London yet with luck and good weather  I can still see my son. Norfolk remains on Tier 1. Will it still be so in 7 days for my planned trip to visit my beloved granddaughters? Only time will tell.  

I would mind less if any of this made sense. In retrospect those barren lockdown months were simple. And , hard though it was, it worked. Economically and emotionally supported, 'we' travelled through that together as one nation.

Now I simply don't know whether to laugh at the futility of this ridiculous charade, or cry. Crying is the most honest answer. 

 

The world has gone mad

The world has gone mad

It is impossible to write anything now without the sensation of being transplanted into a parallel universe. If only.  As it is, trying to describe the main events of the past week in black and white writes like a script for a postmodern play, incoherent and incomprehensible. The world has gone mad.  

Donald Trump has dominated headlines with  action sequence after action sequence in his 'battle' with COVID.  First came the dramatic helicopter ride to hospital for a 77 year old obese man declared by doctors to be doing fine. Que?  Still, that distracted everyone enough from the complete chaos of a White House mass infection and a super spreader event amongst Republican donors the week previously. 

Cut from dramatic intro straight to grandiose finale, the live televised epic of 'the returning hero' only days later. After diverse treatments beyond the imagination let alone the purse of most Americans, Trump helicoptered back to the White House and emerged triumphant to stirring music to wave -minus mask- from the balcony. Ironic that this live stream did also catch his struggles to breath so the stock markets continue their deep diving .

Today as I write Trump is apparently well and announcing his brush with COVID  as a blessing from God. He is cured. An experimental drug works.  Facebook/Twitter  delete his posts that this virus is less deadly than the flu.  This beyond a joke monster is the most powerful man in the world. I despair.

One silver lining. Trump has refused to take part in  next weeks 'virtual' debate with the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. Thank Goodness for small mercies. Trump 's bullying aggressive tactics turned that first 'in person' debate into a grotesque spectacle,  criticised worldwide.  

Here in the UK  we have our own surreal , bizarre situation.  'Fury in the North', the headline in todays Daily Mail, neatly sums up the dramatic and increasingly problematic North /South divide. 

Infections and hospital admissions are surging in the North and the Midlands. Local lockdowns are failing to control the rise. The PM is missing in action, claiming it is 'better' to pass the buck to local authorities.

Rumours abound that bars and restaurants, already on a 10 pm curfew, are to be shut down in these areas completely from Monday. As they already are in Scotland's central belt. MP's and Mayors who represent these hard struck and hard done by areas are livid at the lack of information and lack of funds. Absolutely Fair Enough. Many of these MPs are Tory's furious with their own Government for its incompetence. 

Us down South are still lucky by comparison as our rate is still low. Holding our breath, literally. At the minute, we need only to remember our masks and the rule of 6. Bizarre how many people can't count 😞. And for heaven's sake what is wrong with people who won't wear a mask! Its not a suit of armour, you idiots.

 Last but not least in this latest rant: Boris Johnson.

His avoidance of anything remotely resembling leadership over the greatest crisis of our time, COVID 19, was nowhere more obvious than when he wasted his leaders speech at the 2020 virtual Tory conference this week.  Flagship policy..a green energy pledge made originally in the manifesto before last and universally regarded as one that will never be honored.

His lectern banging reassurance that his 'mojo is back' echoed dismally in an empty room  in front of a row of cameras. He cut a pathetic figure, almost poignant to those who have any sympathy left. My loathing for him long extinguished any respect, let alone empathy. 

What new news tomorrow? Who knows. The world has gone mad. 

As the new series of 'Spitting Image' , revived after decades, found to its cost, you cannot satire the ridiculous. 

taken from Facebook. Unattributed. 

We are Not in this together

 We are Not in this together.

As the number of new COVID 19 cases tops 7,000 for the second day running, Boris Johnson addresses the nation yet again. On a day where the Commons Speaker berated the Government for treating Parliament with contempt for pushing through COVID rules without consultation I am listening with increasing cynicism to yet another lecture from a PM I have no respect for whatsoever. 

It is his 100th briefing in which yet again he reassures us we will all be fine as long as we stick together and do as we are told. Really? We Are Not In This Together. Literally as well as emotionally.  

Today, with hospital admissions increasing by the week, the North East, the North West, half of Wales and Scotland, in all millions of people in the UK are under local lockdowns. Lockdowns, plural, because these vary by region and are so complicated the Prime Minister himself cannot get them right, forced to apologise yesterday for 'misspeaking' after giving erroneous advice.

Down South we are not yet in lockdown. We have only to remember the rule of 6, with all its exemptions and complexities.  And ignore everyone else and everyone else's actions, as it is impossible to see the rule of 6 working anywhere.   

I make no judgement about that, I cannot tell why people do what they do. Ignorance, denial or  carefully judged objective decision? Everyone makes their own choices.  Whilst I absolutely despair and despise those who refuse to wear masks, that surely is a minor inconvenience for an undoubted gain, as for the rest, each to their own,  given the utter and complete chaos caused by continually changing obscure and illogical rules. 

Boris repeats yet again his mantra of 'common sense' , frankly the the only sentence he has uttered today that makes real sense. 

In a telling admission of that undeniable and truly depressing fact that we're in this for the  long term is the news that teaching  unions are already urging the cancellation of NEXT YEARS examinations. Fair enough. Well, at least one section with enough sense to plan ahead and allow students to concentrate on learning without the continual distraction of uncertainty. 

Because we are, alas,  in this for the long term. Time and funds have been squandered, testing is in tatters, the economy is shattered as is any cohesion or continuity in society as a whole. 

My journey feels endless today. I feel lost, unsure even where to start. There seems nowhere to go. We have made no progress since I begun this blog. The virus is as contagious, as deadly. There is no vaccine. The economy is dire. Education is a mess at every level. Before there was hope. There was trust. There was a rainbow uniting us . Now we are not in this together any more, what on earth lies ahead.

One post on social  media has so much attention this week it justifies copying here in full. I do not endorse it nor in many ways do I agree with it, yet it does accurately sum up how disenfranchised so many of us feel.   I too am mad, angry, deeply, deeply, depressed at the state of this country and I too now have no trust in our Government to keep me safe. This article summed up the breakdowns and divisions in society today.

Zoe Clews, via Facebook:

I thought long and hard about writing this post and I've been sitting on it for days. I know it may cost me friends. It may cost me business. But I’ve come to realise those things aren’t

worth a damn if we don’t have our freedom.

This is a long post. I make no apology for it. I hope you will take the time to read it, but my bigger hope is that it will prompt you to take pause and to think about what is important in your own life, even if that puts you in a different place to the one I have reached.

At the end of March, when we were told to go into lockdown, almost all of us did so willingly. People were dying from Covid-related illness in terrifying numbers, and there was a clear imperative to do something significant to turn the tide of the virus.

In those months, I nearly lost everything I had spent 18 years building. The losses amounted to tens of thousands of pounds. But I understood it was necessary, and what is money

anyway when it is balanced against a human life? Nothing.

The threat was obvious, and the response – untested as it was – seemed proportionate and appropriate.

It no longer feels that way. Today, British life feels like one of suppression and oppression; one in which our civil liberties are being rapidly and deliberately eroded in the name of

something else.

My contempt for this Government is almost limitless, but this is not a post that rails against party politics. It is one that simply asks you to question whether the attacks on our civil liberty are justified by science. It asks you to make a decision about whether the concession of your civil rights that you are

now required BY LAW to make are worth the social and economic damage we will inflict on the whole of our society – rich or poor, black or white, old or young.

Neither am I a Covid-denier. Whilst I don't know anyone personally who has died or suffered, I do know several who have had it and are now doing well. The virus is real. The

response of our government is not.

Without a single exception, everyone I have spoken to believes the new restrictions are illogical, that they make no rational sense. Not one single person believes the science has

been proven. In fact, there is open conflict publicly among senior scientists and government advisers about how the virus will or won’t spread. Boris Johnson mumbles about the restrictions being a ‘circuit break’. That simply doesn’t

add up. All around the country, thousands of young people are sent back to school to mix in year

groups of 200 or more.

Children are not immune to the virus, they are carriers. Yet Johnson is perfectly happy to send each and everyone of them home every day to older, perhaps more vulnerable people.

How does this break the circuit?

Covid cases in schools have quadrupled in the last week and 1,300 of the 32,770 schools in the UK report they are not fully open due to the disease. Under the ‘rule of 6’ an infected child who may not display any symptoms can happily infect

five other people today. Those six people can each meet and infect 6 different people tomorrow. Now 36 people are infected. The next day it’s 216. The day after it’s 1,296. The

day after that it’s 7,776. On day six, that rises to 46,656. And by the end of the first week that one child has infected 279,936 people.

I ask you again, how does sending that child to school break the circuit? How does the rule of 6 break the circuit?

Hospitality businesses will now close at 10pm, but it’s okay for people to infect each other for the rest of the day. How does this break the circuit?

But we are silenced, as I have been until now, by the fear that to question the political motives behind the new restrictions is in some way selfish, or that healthy suspicion or

cynicism will be repurposed by others as the woo-woo ramblings of an unhinged conspiracy

theorist.

So, we hold our noses and we pretend we don’t smell the bullshit and we hand over our rights and freedoms to a government that has so far failed to offer any shred of evidence

that it has a single clue as to what it is doing or why it is doing it.

And I’ve had enough. To quote Albert Finney in the film Network, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. It’s time to call bullshit on the abuse of power, on the invasion

of our privacy and liberty and on the questionable motives of a government that has seen its net approval rating drop an average of 7 points each of the last 5 weeks.

The government says hospital admissions are rising rapidly. Bullshit. Over the week to the Tuesday just gone, the number of new daily Covid admissions was relatively stable. On

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the trend had slowed.

The government says it’s concerned about a rise in Covid-related deaths. Bullshit.

Statistically speaking, the death rate has been relatively stable since August 8 th . Yesterday there were 40 deaths. On April 20 the there were 1,172.

This government has failed to meet its testing targets. It has failed to implement a coherent track and trace strategy. Dominic Raab admits airport testing for Covid 19 will only identify

7% of those who have the virus. Matt Hancock warns students won’t be allowed home for Christmas.

And all the while respected virologists are also calling bullshit on the measures introduced

this week.

They ask why, if we’re experiencing a second spike, is it predominantly happening in regional areas rather than large metropolitan cities? The government has no answer.

They ask the government to disprove their argument that in fact it is now likely there is widespread herd immunity and that today’s relatively low hospitalisation and mortality rates amid high infection rates suggest that the virus poses a reducing threat. The government is silent.

No one questions the fact that the government’s top scientific adviser has £600,000 in shares in GSK and has made £5m from a Covid vaccine development. But if I so much suggest it’s in his and the government’s financial interest to suppress our

civil liberties until that (knocked up round the back of KFC rush job) vaccine is available, I’ve apparently gone la-la.

So, we allow them to continue to shovel their bullshit. We relinquish our power. The government hobbles the economy and borrows £30bn extra.

And we all shuffle a little closer to financial and emotional ruin.

I don’t care about leaving the pub early, or wearing a mask, or not going on holiday or only being able to see 7 of my mates. In that respect, the Covid measures are mildly inconvenient.

But I do care about the government using this situation to extend its covert surveillance, to extend its right of invasion of privacy, to extend the nature and level of personal data it

holds on every one of us, to extend its powers to silence free speech and the right to protest.

And I care about the further erosion of our civil rights that may be coming in the spurious name of protecting our health and safety.

I care about all THAT very much indeed. And I think you should, too.

You don't have to believe the Queen is a bloody Lizard or that Tom Hanks eats babies to think something is afoot right now. You simply have to have to scrutinise the facts and the

logic. It’s all out there.

Calling someone a conspiracy theorist because they suspect a government of not acting in the public interest or making up their rules on the back of a fag packet? That’s just a form of

gaslighting. It’s the same as telling someone they’re 'mad'; or carting Victorian women off to the asylum with a diagnosis of 'hysteria'; because they dared to disagree with their

husbands.

I’m not selfish. I’m not a 'Covidiot'. Telling people they’re ‘sheeple’ because you disagree them with is not helpful either btw, because all you do is drive everyone further into their trenches

I know this is uncomfortable for many of you to read. It's uncomfortable for me to write. But I simply cannot stand back and watch the unnecessary dismantling of thousands of lives

through a disproportionate and dictatorial government response without saying something.

I didn't come to this world to be scared and I didn't come here to not speak out. Neither did you. I’ve spoken to enough people to know many of you don't want to say anything because you’re afraid of what people will think of you, or the impact it will have on your business.

But free expression is your right and I urge you to be courageous and defend it. Our ancestors gave their lives for it.

And if you’ve got this far (thank you, by the way) and you believe that everything I’ve said makes me a "Conspiracy Theorist" then fashion me a tin-foil fedora quick-sharp, because I'm goddamn in.