The Times newspaper published an article on Monday called “I have lockdown nostalgia, and I’m not alone”. The piece by fashion editor Harriet Walker is concerning but predictable evidence that lockdowns could return at the drop of a hat at some point in the future.
I’ve had several conversations recently — at parties, ironically enough — that confirmed what the guilty little voice in my head has been whispering for some time: for many people, the enforced planlessness of lockdown was actually quite nice.
Many of the laptop class, those who could work from home, actually enjoyed their freedoms being taken away from them. Sad. Their lives were in such a mess, so exhausting and so stressful that they needed someone to imprison them to feel better about themselves. Instead of taking control of their own existence, by changing things that weren’t working for them, they required society to lock them up. Pathetic
In some sense I feel sorry for these people. Nobody should feel that their lives are so out of control that they need something as extreme as lockdowns to subdue the chaos. It’s ironic that the worldwide chaos caused by lockdowns actually returned order to those whose lives were already in chaos.
But these really were first world problems that the laptop class wanted to hide away from. And most of which could have been sorted out by themselves or if external influence was required, with therapy.
Let me get my tiny violin out to play some incredibly sad music whilst I listen to Harriet’s reasons for longing for lockdowns. “Constantly ferrying the kids between things”, “the roster of weekend clubs and activities” and weeknight work events”. Tough life, maybe she should do a life swap with one of the hundreds of millions of people who were pushed into extreme poverty due to lockdowns.
Even single friends I expected to be livid with me for mentioning the L-word said they were wistful for time that didn’t come with the pressure to be used efficiently or productively. In this age of constant omni-channel communication, maintaining friendships can often feel like a second job.
That’s because you have rich friends, Harriet. They sat in their gardens, made banana bread and watched Netflix whilst the furlough money rolled in. I can guarantee that anyone who uses the phrase the “age of constant omni-channel communication” doesn’t have a clue about how the other half live. And if maintaining friendships feels like a second job, stop pretending you have so many friends. They are mainly fake, ditch them and keep the real ones.
The school-aged kids I know remember lockdown (the sunny one, anyway) with something close to fondness, too. Though it was tough for older teens, younger ones enjoyed walking the dog, reading and making up dance routines without worrying about what their friends were doing without them.
Once again, the kids Harriet knows are rich ones. The ones who aren’t part of the laptop class were often trapped in cramped apartments with no outside space. They struggled to complete homework due to the noise in the house and had to cope with stressed parents who had lost their jobs and couldn’t afford food. Many of these kids disappeared from the school system and still have not returned. Some were abused. Some witnessed domestic violence. Some sadly killed themselves. Many still have social anxiety to this day.
To be fair to Harriet, she tries to acknowledge the harms that happened due to lockdowns.
It’s a privilege to think this way, I know. For those who lost relatives and livelihoods, lockdown was beyond awful. It sharpened lifestyle choices to their most intolerable: loneliness among single people; the claustrophobia of house shares; the frustrated exhaustion of trying to work and parent simultaneously.
But these are just noises. If Harriet truly understood the harms caused by lockdowns, she would be too embarrassed to write her article. ‘Lockdown’ should be a dirty word that, even if people enjoyed it, should never be mentioned in a positive light again. And if you are so desperate for another lockdown, then pay for yourself to be incarcerated. Go to therapy, check in to a clinic but don’t force the rest of the world to suffer just because you can’t get your shit together.
We are all still coming to terms with what we went through in 2020 and there is a certain pressure to perform “normal” again. But I’m determined to keep hold of some of that planlessness. It is empty time, I now realise, that keeps me feeling topped up.
And this is why her article is so dangerous. Because a large percentage of the laptop class still feel like this. They can be given stats and figures showing how damaging lockdowns were until they are blue in the face and they would still crave for another lockdown. You could probably show them a starving baby, its family pushed into extreme poverty due to lockdowns and whilst they would feel sad, they would still manage to justify it somehow.
All it would take is for another crisis, any crisis, it doesn’t have to be a pandemic, and these people would feel the pangs of nostalgia return. Power hungry governments would suggest lockdowns and whilst pretending to be enraged, behind the scenes they will push for them to go ahead. Anything to avoid the commute to work. Anything to avoid another face-to-face meeting. Anything to avoid another networking event. There are too many selfish people in our society. They think the world owes them a break because they work so hard in their bullshit jobs, drinking their soy lattes. And the only way to get that break is to dump on the poor people of this world from a great height.
This piece was originally published on the Naked Emperor’s Substack. You can subscribe here.
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If anyone really thinks that our elected representatives run the show then I have a bridge to sell them. Ministers can go along for the ride whilst enjoying their perks but woe betide anyone who tries to push anything through the blob that they don’t want to do.
A bit strawmanny.
I doubt many of the tinfoilers like me think that getting rid of Raab was a conspiracy.
Not all court intrigue is conspiracy, sometimes it’s just ideological.
The ouster of Truss was a bit of both.
The installation of Sunak was mostly conspiracy.
“I doubt many of the tinfoilers like me think that getting rid of Raab was a conspiracy.”
I have no idea, tbh. I don’t see how we can know unless we have some way of getting inside the heads of the main protagonists and access records of every conversation they ever had. It’s entirely speculative. What’s not a conspiracy theory is that the establishment is now dominated by the political left.
You are right. It only takes enough cultists agreeing on principle that someone they don’t like needs to be attacked into unemployment for it to happen.
Is that a conspiracy? I suppose it’s an open one.
Good summing up..
“we very frequently overlook the middle ground between the views of the tinfoil hat wearers on the one hand and the anti-disinformation guardians of sensible technocratic soft-Left centrism on the other. ”
Seems to me the “other hand” from us “tinfoil hat wearers” is neither sensible, nor “soft” left nor is it properly technocratic. Covid, “climate change”, wokeism, Ukraine war are all lunatic, fanatical, dangerous, evidence-free cults.
Spot on.
Damn right..
It’s the usual “It’s OK when we do it”. When scientists disagreeing with the mainstream narrative on climate change are harrassed, or there’s a pile-on on Andrew Bridgen, that’s not bullying.
A bit like “breaking the law.”
My piece on the WHO treaty refers.
Unfortunately, we now seem to be back in an age where power and privilege are decided solely by the elites. The challenge from the prosperity generated by free thinking individuals engaged in private enterprise has virtually disappeared as a result of globalist and elitist policy; this was the route that opened up and democratised society in the first place.
British society got democratized because a leader of a faction of the house of commons convinced a king to create enough new, politically suitably aligned peers to turn the house of lords into the function-free relic relic it remains to this day. Sorry, nothing that came from free thinking individuals engaged in private enterprise.
For once I think that the Americans have the best idea. After a presidential election the White House is cleared out and the victors brings in their own team of staff.
A first class article.
One caveat – suggesting civil servants got rid of Raab leaves a big question unanswered – what input did Fishy have?
If Fishy was not involved who then is running the Civil servants?
Move Civil Service departments outside London, perhaps starting with somewhere in Ashfield.
The bastards have now had a victory, this will get a lot worse very quickly
Seems that we need to bring in sortition not just for MPs but also for all judges.
Can’t get any worse or more arbitrary than currently, that’s for sure.
As for conspiracies, I am with Peter Hitchens:
“Of course there are conspiracies in Westminster. They are called lunch and dinner meetings.”
The so-called human rights act is a bit difficult to digest, but I think the meaning regarding the right to family life is as follows
1) Someone the secretary of the interior deems to be a foreign criminal has no right to a family life regardless of his personal situation before the secretary of the interior made this decision.
2) People economically dependent on him also don’t have a right to a family life as they could always live on welfare instead.
ie, such a decision by the secretary of the interior effectively nullifies any family. It would be much more honest to state that foreigners can never become part of a family for the purpose of the European Convention on Human Rights, or, yet shorter, that foreigners are – by legal definition – not human. They exist so that the secretary of the interior may utilize them for demonstrational purpose as he sees fit and in the meantime, they’re supposed to be grateful to be allowed to pay taxes.
Considering that the secretary of the interior will hardly make such decisions himself but rely on the input of the associated civil service departments, that’s a landgrab of the administrative executive which believes the judical executive is just too bothersome, or, to put it into more commonly used terms, it’s really about two different branches of the so-called technocracy fighting a turf war.
How this would relates to Raab’s behaviour in a completely different function in 2019 is still entirely unclear.
Civil Servants act like our masters
************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
And to prove the points made by Dr McGrogan, the spineless amoeba that is the Prime Minister didn’t have the guts to support Raab and tell the blob to wind in their necks and do what they are, very well, paid to do – support the Government
Why would he.. he’s a blobette after all..
A masterly description of the utter mess we are in.