Mad World

Another awful year is about to end. In many ways this one has actually been worse than 2020, as global governments have turned the authoritarian screws tighter than ever before, making misery for millions for marginal gains on the viral front. The world is now run by doctors, cowards and villains. We have seen the fetishisation, politicisation and pathologization of one single virus. How on earth will people 100 years' hence - providing we still have free speech and functioning democracies, which is by no means guaranteed - view all this lunacy? Over the next few years, as more of the terrible effects of lockdowns and other measures become evident, along with scandalous exposes about the implementation of the measures, trust in government, science and the media will plummet even lower than now. This corrosive cynicism will eat away at the heart of society itself.  But then again, perhaps it won't. Because most people don't really seem to care about what's gone on. So ma

I didn’t make up my mind to go on the march until the Saturday morning. All week I’d been undecided. But when the weekend arrived and I saw it stretch out ahead of me, empty and dispiriting, like so many in the previous two years have been, I made my decision. I used Yandex - not Google, of course - to ascertain that it was still on, double-checked on Maajid’s Twitter feed , booked my train tickets from Bath to London, popped a diazepam to soothe anxiety, and I was soon on my way. The Parliament Square meet had been scheduled for noon, but it wasn’t until after 1pm that I got into Paddington. I know central London like the back of my hand, having lived there from 1990 to 2008 and being Capital Radio’s traffic and travel correspondent for a while, so I chose to walk to SW1, down Edgware Road, past the ugly Marble Arch mound for the first time (a fitting symbol for this era if ever there was one), along Oxford Street, down Savile Row to photograph the building where there's now a p

Here's a fun game you can play at home. It's called 'You Are The Prime Minister'. You will be faced with various posers relating to public health - just choose A or B as the option you would take if you were leader of this country. Let’s go! You have known for many months that there will be pressure on the NHS this winter. Do you: A) Up ICU capacity; increase the number of beds generally; enlist retired medical professionals; promote vitamin D and zinc; lead an anti-obesity drive B) Introduce restrictions on people's liberty that will severely damage the economy and people's mental health, keep families apart,  erode trust in the state for decades , sack 30,000 care workers, have even fewer hospital beds than 12 months previously,  make friends fall out over mask wearing etc  Widespread evidence from Europe shows that vaccine passports do not stop the spread of Covid. A 70-page Scottish report commissioned by the Scottish government does not include any

Popping a mask on to go to Sainsbury’s or get on a bus is a small imposition, the pro-maskers cry. As Adam Sandler’s character intones in Uncut Gems: “I disagree.” Mask mandates are just as monstrous as they’ve ever been , more so, considering around 95% of the population is said to now have Covid antibodies, the vast majority of the country has been double (or triple) jabbed and cases are low and falling. This new variant is, by all accounts so far , mild. And there is still no robust evidence for the efficacy of fabric face coverings as worn by most people in most situations. If masks work, then why do we need other restrictions? The pro-maskers would counter that they are one part of our armoury, that they do do something , but other measures are needed alongside them. Let us grant them this for the moment. The trouble is, though, the costs of mass-masking are not low. We won’t know the long-term consequences for many years of course, but I don’t expect them to be anything but

In reaction to Jellyfish Johnson's new chapter of tyranny, here are a section of thoughts I've posted in various places on the internet... Covid doesn’t scare me; the government scares me.  The virus has struck just at the time that western civilisation is at its lowest ebb - navel-gazing, lachrymose, vain, miserable, spoilt, lazy, dishonest, believing in nothing. If this was a sane world, the emergency would have been over by early summer 2020. Whoever said it is always best to live in the moment clearly wasn’t thinking about 2020 and 2021. Mandatory masking represents the most fundamental change seen in centuries in the relationship between the state and the individual. The state is telling you what you must wear on your face, and there are financial penalties for not doing so. Read that back; let it sink in. It is monstrous, yet people support it because a) they’ve been terrified by the government and b) they haven’t been given the full facts about the efficacy of mask