I'm still waiting for a reply from Matt (sent on 12/9/20):

Dear Mr Vickers,

I have observed the spirit of the restictions brought into being on 23 March and will continue to comply with them, save for any occasion where I am bound by humanity and faith to intervene. The actions taken by the Conservative government I voted for are without precedent, raising questions of a deeply philosophical and existential nature, and, regardless of any other consideration, wholely unwarranted. State intrusion of this magnitude only occurs when a government tenuously democratic in nature, or dictatorship, believes the populace at large are incapable, or would have them believe they are incapable, of adjusting their own behaviour in the face of a threat, perceived or otherwise, which may affect the balance and order of the constructs and institutions which constitute the mechanisms of State. Evidence of this can be found in the inflamatory wide-ranging language used by the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, who doesn’t specify which person, or groups of people, flouted which rule and when, or how often, but rather uses these fever dream phantoms to threaten and to intimidate.

Once the reality of the effects of the solutions are divorced from the question, one can begin to see quite clearly the point we have reached: totalitarianism and rule by decree, areas into which Her Majesty’s Government have never before strayed. Her Majesty’s Opposition, meanwhile, belies its nomenclature, but to continue to discuss The Labour Party further would be to digress; however, one further mention is required: I voted for you and your party to stave off what promised to be a massacre of our economy and freedoms. The Labour Party promised state spending and state intervention on a never seen before scale, and, by operating the levers of power, would have provided a conduit to the dark forces hiding behind the various orgainsations currently engaged in attempts to police our language and audit our innermost thoughts. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, I wanted to demonstrate that, above all else, democracy is sacrosanct and should be respected to the detriment of my personal beliefs: I voted to remain in the European Union. Yet, here we are, almost a year later, commiting economic suicide, setting fire to centuries of evolved due process and enlightenment values and with our most basic indivdual liberties compromised. It was for liberty and respect for the rule of law that my parents settled in this country and it is what used to make us distinct from anywhere else in the world. Now that we seem to have embraced the Napoleonic Code, for BRINO read British in Name Only.

Though I initially comprehended that the governmant was between a rock and a hard place, in terms of what the rest of the world was doing and what people expected, it still occurred to me that it was also politically expedient to comply with the wishes of the majority. But the fact is that the people were already, mostly, acting in accordance with each other to mitigate the effects of, what was then, a disease which was an unknown quantity. The ‘lockdown’ was also supposed to be temporary and only effected to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed - criteria which were quickly satisfied - yet here we are almost six months later with no end to the Kafkaeasque nightmare unleashed by a government which uses non-contextual data to curtail our liberty. A statistical forecast predicting future fatality is not hard, raw data, yet the government continues to rely on discredited and flawed software and statistical scientists who don’t abide by the restrictions they propose. There are other, more eminent, scientists out there who propose a lighter, more coherent and commensurate approach. What happened to listening to a diverse range of opinions? All things weighed, only two explanations remain for the government’s actions: incompetence or insidiousness. And if, because of a lack of hard evidence, for that should always be the maxim, we rule out the latter explanation, then we have a prime minister more inept than the previous incumbent – who, I thought on her exit, reached depths which would surely never be plumbed again. And what of the people who are dying because of ‘lockdown’? Is their plight somehow less important? Are they just collateral damage in this great Bonfire of the Liberties? This disease is only harmful to a very small minority of the people, so why has its status been elevated to something nearing plague-like levels?

I recently joked to a friend that at this rate Christmas would be cancelled, as it was, hubristically, by Cromwell. But this government continues to confound satire, as it was recently mooted that, effectively, because of restrictions, Christmas would not be able to be celebrated as normal. I invite you, my MP, to reflect on the importance of freedom and the rights of an indivdual to be responsible for the risks he or she takes. Though I’m loth to gainsay your thoughts in advance, I predict that we are not in this together. I am part of what is slowly becoming the silent majority. When votes are cast, we will not forget.

Thank You

Paul Chahal