Toby Young was given his peerage for the wrong reason. He deserved elevation to the Lords for his creation of Lockdown Sceptics (as the Daily Sceptic was first known) alone. It was a beacon of sanity in a time when the entire world went mad, one of the few forums where dispassionate discussion about the virus could take place. As an early contributor to the site, I was particularly interested to read His Lordship’s speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the imposition of lockdown. He cites three reasons why the government of the day committed the most humiliating “interference in personal liberty in the history of these islands” (as Lord Sumption put the matter): first, the desire to curry favour with the metropolitan elite; second, the desire to be seen to be doing something; third, the sheer joy of exercising power. These are all correct, but they miss three much more fundamental reasons.
The single most important reason for lockdown was fear. Both the vast majority of the public and politicians were deathly afraid. There was a collective micturition of such overwhelming volume that it would have taken genuine, principled and courageous leadership to resist. Alas, no such leadership existed on the front bench of the government of the day. The clergy, who might have stepped up to the plate, were as fear-struck as anyone. As a result, a sort of cowering mob rule took hold.
The second fundamental reason for lockdown was the fact that ‘combatting the virus’ was, for a lot of people, tremendous fun. It gave people a purpose in life that they had never enjoyed before. So many today work in pointless and therefore deeply unsatisfactory jobs. How many people have the satisfaction of seeing their handiwork produce anything worthwhile – anything to uplift the spirit, to ornament or beautify or vivify the world? Pitifully few. Here, suddenly, was a cause around which the entire population could unite, a cause that only the stupidest would resist and only the truly evil would deny. This was the blitz but without the bombs. How marvellous it was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbours one hadn’t spoken to for years to bang saucepans on a Wednesday evening to propitiate the gods of our wonderful self-sacrificing NHS. One thinks of the peoples of the Himalayas who, in times gone by – and perhaps even today in a few of the remotest areas – doing the same thing, beating their pans and wailing at every eclipse of sun or moon.
All this and not to mention a plethora of secondary benefits – the cruel delight so many took in spying on, disapproving of and – best of all – reporting on one’s neighbours; the intense satisfaction so many took in the prevention of joy. No pub rowdiness, no larking in the schoolroom (remember when we were young how we used to have to keep silent in lessons: young people today just have no idea how to behave), none of your lounging around in parks or on the beach, no toddlers splashing around in puddles, no children running around and shouting. And the joy of masking! How safe it made us feel! How pleasing not to have to smile at anyone. The delightful thought that the full force of the law could be deployed against any of those worthless individuals who dared to resist.
The third reason for lockdown that Toby misses is that it was all for free. It provided the Holy Grail of contemporary conceptions of the Good Life. It was free in different but related senses. On the one hand, the government in its munificence tore up the economic rule book to run the largest bar tab in the history of the universe. But perhaps even more importantly, the whole exercise was entirely free of moral cost. This was not mere virtue signalling, this was actual virtue (supposedly) but with no actual effort required. It was ‘virtuous’ (but not hard) to stay at home. It was ‘virtuous’ (but not difficult) to stay two metres apart. It was ‘virtuous’ (but frankly a joy) to be paid for doing nothing much: no pesky children to teach, no discipline to maintain in the classroom, only the conscientious who might turn up online. Bliss!
In all this, what we see in the lockdown mania that swept the world is a contemporary expression of what theologians used to call enthusiasm – a word that literally means the possession of people by a divine spirit. In a religious setting, enthusiasm refers generally to groups of people who claim the special favour of a god who speaks to them directly through ecstasy.
Lockdown, it seems to me, had quite a religious character to it. This was the state attempting to fulfil a spiritual need – that need being reassurance in the face of anxiety. A people without either faith or (in its absence) calm and measured leadership would inevitably look to its secularised tutelary deity – the state – for guidance, protection and salvation. It is no surprise, then, that so many, sensing the state’s ultimate impotence, should have cried out for more and harder humiliation.
Alexander Norman is the author of Captain de Havilland’s Moth, Abacus, £25.
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I doubt they are at all interested in covid per se, just in the opportunities it presents, same as everywhere else but in spades as they have form. Why would we believe official figures from China about covid, more than any official figures? The idea that they could succeed in suppressing covid to the extent they claim, in a populous, connected country, in simply absurd, as is the idea that it spread around the world from Wuhan but not internally in China.
As a plandemic it worked rather well
Exactly. Most struggle to understand the motivation behind it. Why would anyone care what I’m up to? I have nothing to hide.
But the control freakery used to be understood better. Some people are broken. The unrelenting void in their own minds can only be healed by controlling the world. Many of them gravitate to government and it’s associated organizations.
Almost every single Chinese student I have spoken to over the years has wanted to work for their government or an agency thereof.
Only the wildest dream of an alternative, escaping to America to earn their fortune in the private sector.
Most of them, by far, take rubbish degrees like Business Administration which they pass by learning the “correct answer” by rote. This does not bode well for the future of the Chinese economy or built environment.
Won’t rote learning always be a big part of Chinese culture (whatever political regime they have) because there is no other way to learn how to read Chinese script with its thousands of logograms?
‘They contained it because they were so wonderfully authoritarian, brilliantly barbaric, admirably oppressive and decisively decisive!’
A. Guardian reader.
The sealed countries, including China and New Zealand, will be where omicron mutates as it spreads when it achieves its breakthrough there. The rest of the world will have dropped most or all restrictions and moved on. The danger is then of a highly pathogenic mutant variant appearing in one of these sealed countries. And so, the prospect of China being the source yet again….
What is leaving me completely stunned is that “the west” is passing up a golden opportunity to get one over China big time. All we would need to do is collectively rally behind the idea that covid is over, that it’s just a flu, get rid of literally every single restriction and return to full normality.
China (and whoever wanted to copy it) would then be left completely stuck. Our economies would boom, theirs would languish. Better still, their people, who aren’t idiots and do get outside info, would start getting very restless.
And that’s when I know the WEF, Davos, “conspiracy” narrative is spot on. Because that open approach would be great for the ordinary people, regular businesses. But that is not the priority of people in authority. Their priorities are control of the population and nurturing a cosy relationship with the giant corporations. i.e. The Chinese model.
I have no doubt that the oligarchs, politicians and technocrats running western nations fantasise about implementing Chinese style governance, and see themselves as a westernised, marginally more enlightened CCP.
They don’t want to beat China with western liberal values, they want to copy China and partner up with them.
Precisely. Western liberal values are a bothersome beast – people get such funny ideas about freedom.
They openly talk about the post democratic age, have done for years.
Poor hamsters.
First they came for the hamsters, but I did not speak out
Because I was not a hamster, but my Mother was a hamster so I ought to have spoken out.
Then they came for the elderberries…
It’s a Monty Python meets Martin Niemöller world we live in now. Soon they’ll be coming for Pepper Pig…
It’s time to send Michie to China on an extended research trip; possible duration about 30 years, with no home leave. As Head of the mission, she might include Ferguson, Whitty and Vallance in her entourage, along with any other deserving persons.
Back in the day when Philby, Burgess, Maclean and all that lot were actively pursuing the agenda of a foreign communist power, they had to keep it quiet because it was considered treasonous. These days, it’s done in the open, be it the CCP or the ‘you’ll own nothing and be happy’ WEF.
The Chinese don’t need Michie or Ferguson so after maybe receiving a few CCP honours they will end up like Kim Phillby, cooped up in a tiny flat ekeing out two bottles of Chinese vodka over a week.
The very nature of Zero Covid policy means that countries following it don’t admit immigrants, so it’s unlikely that any of its advocates in the West would be able to go into exile in a country more amenable to their values.
Not at all like Philby (who eventually found a home in the Soviet Union) or even the Nazi war criminals who found refuge in South America.
I, rightly or wrongly, have now mentally filed the last two years under ‘Virus Hoax – Morons Inc. 2020-2022’, where it will join many other compressed files, for reference purposes only.
2022 – you must be a glass half full type.
Good line. I’m going to nick it.
It was only the epilogue I’m afraid.
Hubris and hamsters – ummm – USA, UK, most of mainland europe for two years and at least a handful for the other 198 (at least).
The key lesson is to convince those immersed in BBCland that the Covid virus was to usher in the passports and associated social control measures, not the other way around. In this china has succeeded, although they already had their evolving social control methods already in place.
I don’t hold out much hope for this as I recall how many people around me only got injected with experimental drugs so they could book a holiday not because they lived in mortal fear of a deadly pathogen. That is the truly depressing part of this, how cheaply they were bought. How readily they embraced astonishingly poor propaganda. Like most people I literally don’t know anyone who died from this thing, and know only two people who got it and had heavy colds with zero longterm effects. Despite my own energetic maskless attempts to expose myself I never succumbed. My Vitamin D and zinc, magnesium and K2 regimen unfortunately saddled me with a robust immune system
What to do? For me the only meaningful takeaway is to understand some people will always be immune to the propaganda. That’s all. Most will succumb. That is the real virus.
Yes, we desperately need a propaganda vax to prevent contagion, it’s not enough just to turn off the tv.
Exactly greenpass was extended by a year in EU!
Vitamin D.
Note the first ‘linked article’ on the Dail Mail article above this one. GoFundMe
“Vitamin D works after all !”
Wow, thanks DM, who else knew?
(Well it was a couple of hours ago but it’s gone now. Can’t imagine why.)
They were like Esau and, in effect, sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.
There’s an increasing number of articles here in the UK reporting about dogs catching convid.
The regime has followed the communists every step of the way over the last two years, let’s hope they don’t even think about suggesting animals need to be culled.
Ferguson already has a horrifying track record on using his dodgy stats to cull enormous numbers of healthy animals in the past.
Avian flu outbreaks in areas that just coincidentally have 5G masts installed, with warning posters on them saying that radiation exposure causes flu-like symptoms.
Avian Flu spread prevention orders are commonplace in the UK; last year it spread from S/W England to cover the whole country but were never revoked so remain in place.
5G installation also spread over the last 2 years….
Evidence for a connection between coronavirus disease-19 and exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless communications including 5G
That would really throw a spanner into the brains of the modern, metro person. If dogs were suddenly considered a major spreader of covid, would they finally accept to live with the virus rather than culling them?
What am I saying… they’d plug them with 3 doses of Moderna and pretend that there is nothing unusual about young dogs dying of heart attacks.
If they go after people’s dogs, then that really would cause a revolution!
That would be a dream come true for me. I hate dogs, they are noisy, irritating and shit everywhere.
A bit like peolpe.
You’d think that it would have occurred to someone in China to create a Vaccine whilst it was creating a virus wouldn’t you? I love the “It was in a letter” bit, brings a whole new meaning to Viruses being in the Mail! That kind of thing has made me laugh all the way through with ideas like “YOu won’t catch it sitting down, it only gets you as you go the loo” and “You’re safe in the swimming pool but on the side of the pool”.
I’ve a strong suspicion that any lockdowns in China were strictly performative and staged in fairly random locations for the benefit of the idiot Western media. The CCP would have had the data early on and I simply don’t believe that a regime of this nature would wreck its economy over a possible 10% max increase in all cause mortality over a short period of time. Given the brutality of its one child policy (nice name for mass infanticide and millions upon millions of forced abortions), it just doesn’t make sense.
The argument against that I suppose is that the CCP right back to the sparrows campaign and the Great Leap Forward has a long history of insane, hugely damaging policies of self harm. We’ll never really know.
Indeed – why would anyone think the CCP leadership care much about notionally saving a few lives?
It’s never made any sense to me on those terms. Spreading the foul, insane and evil doctrine of lockdown to the West had its uses though. This is worth a read:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda
Looks like the CCP downtick bots are on the case
They’re famous for snooping and spying on everything.
Up yours you lying sneaky bastards!!!! Snoop on that
No, no. The lockdowns were real.
Beijing had pretty substantial restrictions for several months and work from home guidance for many months.
Absolutely. Many think the CCP are geniuses. They are but much in the same way that Mao was. A genius at taking control, keeping it and abusing the population without them saying a peep.
My hunch is that there is also a strong incentive to hide any infections in the municipalities. The CCP has made it clear that any hint of a breakout will be considered a failure and result in a destructive containment strategy. Therefore, any right thinking citizen or member of the CCP is going to do everything they can to hide infections from the central authority.
Started watching the winter olympics but had to switch off as I could stand seeing mass masking.
I saw a snippet of Women’s Ice Hockey and it was dismal – empty arena. Even in Canada I imagine no-one is much interested in it, so perhaps it was empty because it’s not very appealing to locals, but maybe the whole thing will largely be spectator-free. Elite sport in general is unwatchable for me now – virtue signalling, politics, corruption, whingeing, entitled athletes. corporate bollocks, and now covid nonsense.
Just reading about Nadal’s win made me want to throw something.
Just been for a walk in a University city that has a lot of chinky students, well over 90% of them masked up just walking around outside. They must be reveling in bringing their pathetic “culture” here
Read the book ‘Hidden Hand’ about the slow stealthy CCP takeover of the west. It amplifies the brief details here.
It’s sometimes hard to know whether a particular person is reporting to the CCP or the WEF.
I’ve read it and it just confirms what I’ve been saying for 2 decades. I use to travel with my job and I was concerned 20 years ago about the influence of China around the world. In Pakistan I use to go to the Chinese restaurants as the quality of the food was much better than in local restaurants.
I guess Pakistan’s bitter rivalry with India (of course one of the baleful legacies of British colonialism) will have made it easier for China to puppetize Pakistan…
Clean North Sea Gas v Dirty Russian Gas
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/02/05/clean-north-sea-gas-v-dirty-russian-gas/
by Paul Homewood
Saturday 5th February 2pm
Windsor Great Dog Walk for Freedom
behind one simple sign
“Covid Rules Are Barking”
All Canines and Humans welcome
Even if you don’t own a dog please come along
meet Alexander Park (near Bandstand) Barry Rd/Goswell Rd
Windsor SL4 1QY
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Zero covid policy is a hybrid economical warfare against the rest of the world! Just look how many items and raw materials we are dependent on. So in name of covid they limit export and collapse the supply chain.
I think in the long run, they’re doing us a favour, tbh.
As I’ve been saying for nearly two years; in his goterdamerung moment bozo will command the slaughter of all newborn domestic pussycats.
This will be his revenge against those who failed to save him at the ballot box out of some ‘pussyfooting’ concern about him eating cake in No.10s Rose Garden.
Constitutional experts and later historians will be living off that for ages as Mirror Group News buys up the husk of Myspace for archive photos of Cute Cats to.print some every day by way of illustration.
“The U.S. Defense Dept developed SARS-CoV-2 in North Carolina. The 4th Branch (Intelligence Community) wanted to use it. The Pentagon restarts funding for development of SARS-CoV-2 in partnership with Wuhan, China – setting up the cover story. The 4th Branch (Intelligence Community) then uses the virus by releasing it in/around Wuhan. Everything after that is simply part of the 4th Branch covering their tracks. Wuhan, China becomes the patsy.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/02/did-the-fourth-branch-of-government-release-sars-cov-2-then-blame-china/
Ron Unz articles supporting and predating most of the above and the main articles series all listed here.
https://www.unz.com/runz/is-the-tide-finally-turning-on-covid-as-an-american-biowarfare-attack/
I hate the Chinks with a passion, people are waking up far too slowly to what they’re all about and cutting them too much slack.
When I think it’s bad in England at least I be glad I don’t live in China, (or Scotland haha). A good article worth reading in full just for the song lyrics at the end. Made me smile, something I definitely need these days.