We’re publishing a new post by Dr. David McGrogan, an Associate Professor at Northumbria Law School, about how Britain has muddled through the past two years and come out the other side more or less unchanged. Which is more than can be said for China. Here are the opening three paragraphs:
Did you watch the Winter Olympics? If you did, you were probably struck, as I was, by its strange resemblance to the twilight zone of 2020: mostly empty stadia; deserted streets; everybody wearing masks; the theatre of Covid restrictions on vivid display. It was like being forced to look backwards on a past that one has long ago left behind. Apart from our December flirtation with madness, everyday life has been more or less normal apart from the odd mask here or there in the U.K. for well over six months. As of this week, we are, essentially, free – the real free, the old free. Beijing, by contrast, looked as though it was held in aspic.
Folk wisdom has it that China did ‘well’ in the pandemic, while Britain did ‘badly’. The narrative that set in, very quickly, in the first months of 2020 was that the Chinese had identified a dangerous virus and immediately locked down ‘hard and early’ to stop the spread. We, meanwhile, lacking either the will or competence to do likewise, had ‘dithered and delayed’, with the result being many thousands of avoidable deaths. However, even if one ever believed that narrative (the credulity with which Western journalists reported news from China about lockdowns in early 2020 is something I still find difficult to fathom), it is surely long overdue for revision. China in February 2022 appears to resemble a fully-fledged biosecurity state; it is hard to imagine it ever returning to the pre-2020 ‘normal’. We, on the other hand, in our characteristically bumbling sort of a way, have navigated the stormy seas of the past two years to something like calm waters. Lockdown sceptics will argue that a Rubicon was crossed in 2020 when the state criminalised conduct over which it had no rightful purview, and I would agree: the lockdown of March 2020 was probably the stupidest and most damaging thing a British government has ever done during peacetime. But one has to acknowledge that our social fabric has largely remained intact, in a way it has not elsewhere. We no longer wear masks and never required our pre-adolescent children to; we do not have vaccine passports or vaccine mandates despite brief dalliances with both; we need never take a godforsaken lateral flow test ever again. Life is not exactly as it was in 2019. But it almost is.
The asinine comparisons of the numbers of infections and deaths in different countries – all with different climates, cultures, population densities, age distributions, methods of gathering statistics, and so on – during the Covid era, as though we’re all in some Premier League of pandemic performance, has been one of the more idiotic characteristics of the period. But we can at least compare how well our political and social institutions have withstood the shock of the emergence of the virus and the panic that followed. And across that metric, it must be said that Britain has come out better than most of the rest of the developed world. In much of mainland Europe, one must now exhibit a vaccine passport of some kind to do the most basic things – to go shopping, eat at a restaurant, watch a film at the cinema. In the rest of the Anglosphere, the relationship of trust between governor and governed has almost totally broken down over the introduction of mandatory vaccinations. Blue state America is eating itself alive over the issue of relaxing compulsory mask-wearing for children. My Japanese relatives, like all of their compatriots, still wear a mask from the moment they leave the house to the moment they return home – even outside, even when alone. Compared with all of this madness, Britain can be said have arrived at a rather sensible position – and, indeed, to have been surprisingly wisely governed.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
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For all his good work over the past couple of years (and beyond – FSU), Toby can get quite tiresome on his forgiving nature towards the new paradigm we now live in. One would expect it from the legacy media but not from Tobes (sorry if too familiar – comes from listening to London Calling – full disclosure, Team Dellingpole!). Except in reality I would expect it from Toby. This is the man who said he might consider the vaccine if it meant him being able to go to QPR games! Or that there would be a number that he’d accept to bribe him to take it.And I suspect he would’ve reconsidered his current position if his daughter had wanted him to accompany him to the USA, instead of Mexico.
We are not ‘returned to normal’. We have not attained our previous (already restricted) levels of freedom. Masks are still prevalent. Passports (digital ID’s) are still around. The NHS continues it’s propaganda campaign. Vaccines are still being encouraged onto younger and younger age groups. Our movements are still restricted to some countries. We now live under an even greater crippling debt burden. And it is only by luck that we… Read more »
I forgot to mention increased censorship as one of ongoing artifacts that has taken root also.
Just listened to Dellingpole on The Tom Woods show – Good episode. I always think he pales a bit when faced with the solid nature of Toby’s debating skills but when given a platform to flow he can offer some good content. :o)
Yep, what you said.
Normal? If I go to my village shop I’ll more than likely be the only person there without a mask. Even in town, supermarket shoppers are still over 50% covered. I don’t consider that even approaching normality, and it puts me off going into town because I feel so angry seeing so many masks, especially on the young. It seems as if half the population has been hit with the stupid stick
Agreed. I notice it’s more prevalent in the south (in Ledbury are where I spend some time) than back up in north Notts, where I live. The percentage drops to 15~20% covered.
‘Chinese had identified a dangerous virus and immediately locked down ‘hard and early’ to stop the spread. ‘
And so successfully that two years later the same restrictions are in place ‘to stop the spread’. Every long march starts with the first fortnight – to misquote Mao.
Question for all those ‘experts’, the Commentariat, politicians and members of the chattering classes who have insisted all along the success of restrictions and vaccinations, if so successful why did they have to be continued for so long and even increased and why, as some clamour, should we still have them? Just how long to you have to take a medicine with no respite before you realise it isn’t working?
Clear evidence shows that, not only are the pseudo-vaccines not effective at preventing disease or stopping the spread, but those who were boosted were more like to get the Omicron infection than the two or one dosed individuals, and far more vaccinated getting it than unvaccinated.
Yet… more vaccinations are being promoted, now perhaps every Autumn along with the doesn’t work ‘flu jab.
Serious question: are these people mentally ill?
The author clearly hasn’t been to S Devon. Far more people still wearing masks than not wearing them. Two people drove past my rural farm last week, both masked in the car! I don’t see our nearby town of Totnes any different to during lockdown. The people are brainwashed forever.
But Totnes has always been a rule unto itself; certainly as viewed from East Devon!
“more or less unchanged”
I spose the ignoring of masked children and adults who can’t give it up. The fear people feel and the fact we have the basis for a social credit score system emerging.
Scotland pursuing permanent power transfer.
Aye, we are more or less unchanged right enough.
Who believes this. This is how these things remain, take away peoples fight. Until freedom reigns the fight is never over.
“apart from the odd mask here or there in the U.K.”!! Really?? Dr. McGrogan needs to get out more, they’re still everywhere, as a result of the unnecessary extreme fear instilled into the UK population by the UK government, parliament, SAGE, institutions, unions and the medical professionals who really should read up on ‘the science’, and know better.
Giving the Government way to much slack here. Lets be honest, this was a globally organised, planned and orchestrated, fabricated medical crisis using a man made bio weapon, with several objectives.
Control, transfer of wealth, health abuse, among them. The WEF agenda is being followed.
Look at the politicians running the UK – half of them aren’t ‘native British’. Just because you were born in a stable does not make you a horse.
I basically disagree. Until the “mask” is banned the mass psychosis won’t start to go away.
And anyway the last 2 years will be as nothing compared to the problems we have coming now Putin has started his invasion.
Just wait and see what happens when he turns the gas off. Fuel has this morning started to go up in price.
The eco loons will be the only ones celebrating.
We are led to believe that the country is almost back to normal. Another clever piece of gaslighting.
How can we be back to normal when SMEs have been closed. When families have cruelly been kept from loved ones, now dead. When half the population is now injected with goodness what. When freedoms have been taken from us and our Human Rights laws are being reformed to include the banning of peaceful protest and the ‘harms bill’ which means no disagreement with those in charge, and the looming of a social (complete control) credit system.
How can we be back to normal when so many families/communities are now broken and divided and people are in unprecedented states of depression and loneliness.
Once again those wealthy public sector and metropolitan elites with their gated houses and large gardens have not been affected by this steal of our wealth and our freedoms. They quite like not getting on those dirty trains to London when they can work very successfully from home.
In the meantime the majority of the country who actually need to leave home in order to work are devastated. Many small businesses have gone to the wall… Read more »
Hear hear!!!
This guy’s living in la la land – the UK is at the very heart of a global narrative and bio surveillance project which has used the excuse of a ‘pandemic’ to shift to a different economic model – Why? Because without a ‘great reset’ – they would have to face over 8 trillion pounds of debt – mostly in pension funds. Ie if they don’t disrupt the current system and introduce a digitised social credit system (so they have full control over your lives and funds), you will not get your pension and then you will lynch the nearest politician. NOTHING is the same and unless you wake up to it – you are dead slaves walking. Or maybe you are sn elite psycopath who is aok with this ‘new world’ transhumanist technocracy…
“The continuing presence of sceptical voices in our governing party has largely meant we’ve felt no need to take our campaign to the streets.”
Er… excuse me but I think you’ll find between half a million and a million people would like to disagree with you on that front. And you’d be surprised to hear I’m one of them.
I don’t know where you’ve been for the past 18 months or so but at least once a month (sometimes more) I’ve been walking the streets of London and my home town, standing outside the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street with thousands of others protesting against not just stupid draconian rules but also tyrannical mandatory experimental “vaccines”.
This has gone very largely unreported by ALL the MSM including your precious Telegraph.
On the contrary I think together with our Police, the Church, Politicians, School Teachers and GPs the MSM has simply been a disgrace and have failed to carry out their job properly. All they have done is spout government propaganda and death porn. Disgusting.
Frankly I’m appalled and so should you be.
No, no no, and again no! We are decidedly not back to ‘normal’, and will never be until the Coronavirus Act is repealed. Masks are always the first and last signs of the current status, and I still see many misguided souls wandering around OUTSIDE with them on. They need to be properly banned. Sainsbury’s in my town is still a cathedral of virtue signalling by mask (but Aldi is not), I still have to wait masked up outside the Dentist’s before being let in, and I’m still waiting to be allowed to watch a concert at the RNCM (Music College) in Manchester without a mask. Testing is rife, and LFT kits are being stockpiled. Still plenty of meat then for the DS to get its eager teeth into!
I agree. Don’t worry about masks in the dentist or anywhere. Just say your medically exempt if asked, which I never have been.
Normal ? They’re still injecting children at school !! And you can not travel to almost any county unless you’ve been injected !
Gracious, I don’t recognise the world being described here, to be honest.
i hope the writer is not as complacent as he sounds.
Where I live, by not wearing a mask I am still a minority in supermarkets and other shops. There are at least two locally that refuse entry if you don’t mask up – no exceptions. Hairdressers and barbers wear masks. Most people on the shopping streets are masked. The hand gel stuff is ubiquitous everywhere, people studiously disinfect and wipe down their trolleys at Tesco. Masked people retreat in alarm when they think I am approaching with my trolley too close to theirs. Young people walk to school in black masks. Joggers and cyclists usually wear masks and goggles.
Everyone I know (admittedly not a huge sample of people) has utterly lost confidence in GPs and the NHS more generally and in different degrees are furious with them. Nobody has a good word to say about the Government. There is widespread fury or despair about the perception of corruption in public life.
Those of us not vaccinated are, in practical terms, not free to leave the country and visit another one. So we are not free.
I… Read more »
Yes, I’m wondering which world that is. Perhaps it’s Canada.
Certainly Mr Putin seems relatively sane compared to other “so called” free world leaders. Notice the word relatively.
Things aren’t ‘nearly back to normal’.
Millions of people have been poisoned, our civil liberties/basic human rights have been shown to be illusory and the nation is financially wrecked.
Here we go again. Yet another academic who clearly lives in a rarified bubble, unable to see the wood for the trees.
Boris is clearly passing round the sweetie jar in a pathetic attempt to save his political skin. But nothing can excuse him, his Cabinet chums and their so-caled expert advisers for the lasting damage their disastrous shamdemic policies have caused our nation.
We’re bankrupt to the tune of trillions, divided as never before and reeling from a raft of tyrannical legislation still being rolled out to permanently curb our already trampled rights and freedoms.Or hasn’t this professor of law heard about the egregious Online Harms Bill and new Bill of Rights?
Assumedly he also somehow managed to miss the nursing homes genocide and is blind to the countless other lives – including those of children – lost or blighted as a result of the government’s love affair with Big Pharma’s latest batch of venomous snake oil.
But even he must know we will never have no chance of ever “getting back to normal” until the Coronavirus Act is repealed, along with the last vestiges of all the rules and regulations inflicted upon us as part of the government’s… Read more »
He should take time to dissect the Human Rights Act Reform bill before the 8th March, and so should anyone who is capable of commenting on it via the consultation. I’m drafting some comments on it, but the overall impression is that they are concerned about where they are in the pecking order, and adopting a self-defensive approach, potentially contrary to the idea of Human Rights for many people.
No. Going back to 2019 is not “back to normal”. That “normal” is what gave rise to the past 2 years of human rights abuses. We cannot and we should not pretend like nothing has happened. The people responsible must be brought to justice.
Too true. Authoritarianism has been growing for decades: just look at all the cameras, regulations and “nudges”. We have got used to safetyism, nannying and extended police powers. That is the “normal” that softened us up for the onslaught of the last two years.
Yup.
Pfizer Withdraws EUA Application for COVID Shot in India After Regulator Asks for Independent Safety Study – https://thevaccinereaction.org/2022/02/pfizer-withdraws-eua-application-for-covid-shot-in-india-after-regulator-asks-for-independent-safety-study/
‘Normal China’. Hilarious. –> Rolls on the floor convulsing with laughter
Nowhere is going “back” to anything. Banks and “government” (civilian wing of the Banderist army) have been cyberattacked in Ukraine; mobile phone networks are said to have been hit by electronic weapons (not the same thing as cyber weapons) in Novorossiya. Meanwhile in Britain, the weather has been a bit blowy and the government has issued solemn warnings against travel, and woe betide any journalist who notices any problem with that.
David McGrogan believes “Fleet Street has shown itself to be very much alive during the past two years”.
I think I finally understand the term gaslighting you young people use all the time.
Cyber Polygon is go 🚨
The next pretext for government overreach?
Salisbury, that was all very odd, very odd indeed.
The official narrative was complete garbage.
Sure was.
Somebody knows but is not telling. Anyway, who wants to buy some more ‘vaccines’ from Honest Sajid?
What democracy is she referring to exactly?
Yeah…..our democracy….what’s that then?
Considering what politicians of all types have done over the past 2 years ( and counting), they have an absolute blo*dy nerve referring to “our democracy” and “the free world”.
We aren’t back to normal until they stop poking around nostrils at airports, the news bulletins showing people getting disgusting things jabbed up their noses is horrendous.
Things won’t return to return to normal until the blatant discrimination between ‘unvaccinated’ and ‘vaccinated’ ends. There is no scientific justification for this, it’s coercion pure and simple.
China has done very well. It exported its virus to us, exported its lockdown and mask policies, exported its bloody masks, and has exported its love of censorship and propaganda.
Chinese hegemony is increasing.
No doubt about it. Compared to most nations, England is a Mecca of freedom. Still, many basic freedoms have been “suspended” and, like America, for four or five months many people basically lived under house arrest … but England has one of the cleanest dirty shirts. That’s something, I guess. England hasn’t gone as mad as most governments and societies.
I’m not going to boycott trips to England, like I am Australia, Austria, Italy, Canada and damn sure China.
Well, we came late to the party
Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota “If you’re still worried about covid, get vaccinated, stay at home, wear a mask: We’re not going to mandate anything”. She has balls and understands the limits that should exist on the powers of governments.
I’ve said that to lots of folk- if you’re so bloody scared then you can stay at home and wear a mask in your own little lockdown for as long as you want- just leave me out of it!
But they think that they are only “safe” if everyone is “safe”……people wandering about outside, maskless and vaxless, are “dangerous”.
Yup.
Witnessing the Chinese COVID restrictions (I didn’t watch the Olympics) was like “being forced to look back on the past one has long ago left behind.” Really? It’s just been a matter of weeks since most mandates were relaxed. Many are still with us, and dividing us. The government has seized the power to reimpose them at any time for any made-up reason. I think China presents an eerie, terrifying glimpse into our future. Canada and Australia present an in-between phase.
It’s not just the physical hardware under my fingers at the moment that was made in China.
The article fails to acknowledge the following bigger picture of which the plandemic is just a part. Anyone who thinks the pandemic, and how governments’ have dealt with it, is deluded. The bigger picture, as confirmed by many sources, includeing Covid-19 – The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab, is along the following lines:
Check out Catherine Austin Fitts, Ernst Wolff and others for a comprehensive explanation of how this is/is meant to play out.
What planet is he living on? We have discovered that we have sleepwalked into being ruled by the most authoritarian regime in modern history. The government waged and continues to wage psychological warfare against the population, paid for by the population, and the emergency powers have not been repealed. As a result, unproven novel therapies and other measures like lockdowns, quarantines, testing, masking, severe limitations on face to face education, injection mandates, injecting children not at risk and most egregious of all the shut down of the NHS for anything other than covid, has been accepted by most of the population as being normal and even desirable, and this idiot who lives in what can only be an academic bubble tells us we’ve muddled through?