A word to my blog readers. I have a computer problem which may take a few days to fix, so please do not be concerned that I have Coronavirus or whatever. I may be offline for a few days. We shall see.
Matt Hancock, government “rules” and the law
I blogged a week or two ago to the effect that “little Matt Hancock seems out of his depth” as Health Secretary in the Coronovirus crisis. I think that that statement can now be said to have been justified. Today the little blot was on TV bleating about people “flouting the rules” (about not going out etc).
What struck me about Hancock today was, firstly, the extent to which he uses cliches and hackneyed phrases. “Shoulders to the wheel” etc. His thought-world seems very limited (which does not surprise, though, after his having been seen on TV and in front-line politics for some years; just the level of it).
Secondly, Hancock seems to conflate his or the Government’s “rules” with the law itself. What a minister says or wants is not law in this country. Not yet anyway. We may be travelling down that road, but, as former Law Lord (Supreme Court justice), Jonathan Sumption, said recently, this is or is supposed to be a country under law.
The wishes of government ministers are not law.
I looked at the new Coronavirus Act last week, admittedly not in detail. I saw nothing about sunbathing there. Yet here we are today, and little Matt Hancock, trying to sound all serious and authoritative in the absence of his “Prime Minister”, Boris-idiot, was claiming that sunbathing was “against the rules” and so illegal. That is, as far as I can see, plain wrong.
I see that, in the latest news, the government “rules” have not been changed. They stay the same as they were.
There are several points coming out of this:
- Matt Hancock seems to be using people sunbathing etc as a distraction technique, distracting people from the realization that this government has not handled well the present Coronavirus crisis;
- Leaving aside laws and rules and what they may or may not say, there is no real reason why people should not sunbathe, even in urban parks, even within the “social distancing” rules. They cannot infect anyone by so doing.
- Likewise, driving around in a car does not of itself carry any risk of infection; neither does someone walking in a deserted area; or, indeed, a couple or family group walking or exercizing in an area where there are few or no others.
- “Rules” about people staying home, only going out to exercize once daily, only going shopping “infrequently” etc, are only enforceable if most people comply, i.e. do not need to be forced. I am not sure that little Matt Hancock, suited thug, understands that.
I saw on BBC TV News today a report about a care home in Dorset. The quite nice-seeming ladies in charge were getting really quite excited and even hysterical about having seen people in cars on the road and other people walking down roads.
For one thing, those people (especially those in cars) were not endangering anyone, but apart from that there is the point that the British people have been placed under a kind of house arrest, and need some fresh air in order not to get “cabin fever” or to go “stir-crazy”. It is all very well for people in large residences or on country estates (such as the Queen) to stay “indoors” (a meaningless term when it means Windsor Castle or Sandringham House), but British people are already among the most “cribbed, cabin’d and confined” in Europe.
As I predicted, even the quite compliant British people are beginning to chafe under the restrictions, all the more so when it is clear that some do not make much sense and/or have been badly-drafted, and when Cabinet ministers (albeit of a joke “government”) seem not to know the difference between rules laid down by ministers (which may have little or no legal effect) and the law itself.
These are not just petty squabbles about whether some bimbo can sunbathe in Regent’s Park, or whether a family can drive to a national park and then go for a (harmless) walk without being shouted at by self-important police constables. This goes to the root of what we mean by “a society under law” and also that much-used word “democracy” and its meaning (and its limits).
It disturbs me that so many people want to, not help the nation in this time of crisis, as such, but to conform to authority, however pointless such conformity is.
As usual the “Twitterati” are out in force, imagining that their words carry weight. Here below, a nurse tweets something which carries genuine weight, based on her experience of her own recent days on duty, but a typical “Twitterite” sees fit to put in his meaningless comment, attacking people who want to sunbathe (something completely harmless and which infects no-one with this virus). What makes his “contribution” even more silly is that his Twitter profile says that “The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.”
The lack of self-awareness, though stunning, is in fact typical of the Twitterati. (His profile also says “À bas la charogne stalinienne” meaning “Down with Stalinist carrion“!).
https://twitter.com/andrewspoooner/status/1246863714818625536?s=20
Here’s another “me-too” conformist:
Is there any evidence at all that sunbathing in a park spreads “Coronavirus”? If so, I myself have not heard or seen it. Of course, I am saying that on the basis that people are not too close together when sunbathing, walking, or pretending that they are free citizens etc.
Perhaps I should add that not only have I myself not been “sunbathing in a park” today, but have in fact spent the entire day at my now-humble home, mostly sleeping.
The Queen
Saw the first few minutes of the TV broadcast by the Queen. I am sure that she means well, but the fact is that her intervention means little to most people. In a sense, it shows how out of touch Westminster and the msm are, that they think that Her Majesty’s broadcast will bolster the “lockdown”. It may, to a very slight degree, but not much.
Age discrimination
Now that I myself am 63, I do not think that I can be described, plausibly, as discriminating against people of a certain age. The fact is that, while exceptions exist, this virus does kill, mainly, aged people. The older you are, the smaller the chance that you will avoid symptoms, severe symptoms, or death from the virus. The “young”, and particularly the under-30s, in general, face little risk from Coronavirus in terms of serious illness or death.
Poundland KGB and Toytown police
Saw a tweet from the police about how they stopped a lone motorcyclist on the otherwise deserted M27. Why did they? He was neither spreading Coronavirus nor in danger from being infected.
At the same time, I saw a tweet showing Richmond-on-Thames packed with strolling crowds! Perhaps those people were being either selfish or foolish, but the police cannot stop those crowds, unless they were to unleash the riot squad (which I believe is called the Territorial Support Group…very English!) on them.
In the end, policing of a quasi-democratic society can only be done by consent. So far, the people, as a whole, have complied, willingly or reluctantly, with the “house arrest” rules and law (as said earlier, different things…), but that willing compliance will not last forever; it will not last, in my view, beyond the end of May and it may not last beyond the end of April. There may be mass defiance, there may be political pressure too. No doubt suited thug Hancock would like to be able to tell people what to do, but his real power is limited, not by the British Constitution, not by whatever is actually in the Coronavirus Act, but by what the British people, as a group, will tolerate.
Tweet by well-known Jewish “human rights” barrister:
Labour’s new leader
Keir Starmer says that he wants to “tear anti-semitism out by the roots”. He is an enemy of the British people. He has now appointed Lisa Nandy, Rachel Reeves etc to the Shadow Cabinet. All members of Labour Friends of Israel.
“They” want their pound of flesh…
Palm Sunday
This is what some Jewess in Israel thought appropriate to tweet today, Palm Sunday:
[the above was retweeted by the ghastly “Mark Lewis Lawyer”, by the way].
(in case anyone is interested, though, I do not believe that Jews use the blood of Christian babies in their cuisine!).
Some other tweets seen today
Hitchens is making a good point. This government’s action is destroying, to a large extent, our economy (just wait…), an action which may kill far greater numbers than Coronavirus, in the medium term. Come to think of it, the past ten years have seen the Conservative Party as a whole, and some more directly (Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, the jew “lord” Freud etc) kill tens of thousands via the unnecessary and deliberate “austerity” policies, particularly the equally unnecessary and incompetent DWP “reforms”.
Lest my republishing some of his tweets leads some readers to the incorrect view that I am uncritical of Peter Hitchens, I post again my assessment of him from last year:
https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/
Scare stories
You see time and again msm (i.e. Jewish) stories of how terrible were some aspects of the Third Reich (made worse by the exaggerations). More rarely —by far— some of the terrible aspects of the Soviet Union under Stalin are noted. Scarcely at all are the atrocities of the United States shown on TV etc. No, I am not talking only about those committed overseas, such as the perversities of Abu Ghraib and Bagram (etc), but of those committed in the USA itself and against US citizens.
I happened to see a few minutes of one of those paranormal investigation shows, but what struck me was the locus, a place called Moundsville, West Virginia, which was apparently one of the most violent and oppressive prisons in the USA, now shut down. One detail alone: prisoners were frequently lashed with a thick leather strap soaked in vinegar or sometimes salt water. Many died. The “land of freedom”…?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Penitentiary
Some music to make life better…
Ian Robert Millard 