Tag Archives: UK police enforce social distancing

Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 333 [10 February 2021]
or Russia’s Near Normal vs the West’s New Normal

Published: 10 February 2021 ~ Russia aims for pre-Covid Near Normality

There are a few weeks to go yet before I can legitimately celebrate my first Covid self-isolation anniversary, but as that peculiar milestone approaches there are other positives that merit raising a glass or two.

Diary of a self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad
Previous articles: Englishman

Article 1: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 1 [20 March 2020]
Article 2: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 6 [25 March 2020]
Article 3: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 7 [26 March 2020]
Article 4: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 9 [28 March 2020]
Article 5: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 10 [29 March 2020]
Article 6: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 16 [4 April 2020]
Article 7: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 19 [7 April 2020]
Article 8: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 35 [23 April 2020]
Article 9: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 52 [10 May 2020]
Article 10: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 54 [12 May 2020]
Article 11: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 65 [23 May 2020]
Article 12: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 74 [1 June 2020]
Article 13: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 84 [11 June 2020]
Article 14: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 98 [25 June 2020]
Article 15: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 106 [3 July 2020]
Article 16: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 115 [12 July 2020]
Article 17: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 138 [30 July 2020]
Article 18: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 141 [2 August 2020]
Article 19: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 169 [30 August 2020]
Article 20: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 189 [19 September 2020]
Article 21: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 209 [9 October 2020]
Article 22: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 272 [11 December 2020]
Article 23: Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 310 [18 January 2021]

Top of the pops must be the worldwide thumbs up for Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Following news of its approval by one of the UK’s most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet, begrudgingly the West’s media has been forced to concede that Sputnik V flew first past the finishing post in their international vaccine race, proving against all odds that the classic adage ‘who dares wins’ is still the winning formula.

The ‘bugger, we got it wrong’ factor is almost palpable in hindsight, as the great bastions (I think that’s the right word?) of the neoliberal press twist and turn within themselves to corkscrew a last derogative spin out of what remains of their discredited cynicism, and inevitably in the process come away from it all looking and sounding rather mardy.

With the EU let down somewhat embarrassingly by a vaccine supply bottleneck and other problems with its two main vaccines, one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and another by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, let’s hope that neoliberal globalist politics will not get in the way should Angela Merkel’s welcome mat need to be rolled out quickly for Sputnik V. After all, the international nature of a pandemic requires international co-operation.

Pre-Covid Near Normality

Another reason for celebration, but one tempered by caution and common sense, is the understanding that daily coronavirus cases in Russia are down 50 per cent from their peak in mid-December 2020*. With infection numbers said to be travelling in the right direction, downwards, it would appear that in some parts of the country steps are being taken to relax coronavirus restrictions*, a move which represents an entirely different approach to the ‘no light at the end of the tunnel’ endless lockdown scenarios with which my family, friends and the rest of the nation are faced in embattled Britain.

In Moscow, limitations on opening times of pubs, restaurants and clubs are due to be removed (I should say so!), and full-time teaching in universities is to be resumed.

Cheering news for those who have been staunch and consistent critics of the efficacy of masking-up is that based on evidence of increasing immunity the days of mandatory face masks might soon be over in Russia. And not before time.

Recently, I was pulled up by a tram conductress ~ one of those large redoubtable babushkas ~ for being maskless on public transport. I had not forgotten to wear my mask, and neither was I making a formal protest; the face towel had simply chosen to leap from my pocket as I was boarding the tram. I did try to improvise by wrapping my scarf around my mush, but this stout defender of rules are rules was not the sort to take prisoners. Fortunately for me, my wife procured a spare mask from her handbag and honour was seen to be done ~ in other words, I narrowly escaped the humiliation of having my maskless arse kicked off the tram.

Had this happened it would have been a grave injustice, as I, for one, have found wearing a mask to be particularly useful recently, possibly not as a hedge against catching coronavirus but most definitely as an effective face glove, as temperatures in Kaliningrad plummet to minus 20. If the weather carries on like this debunking global warming, I will have no choice but to snip off the fur-lined flaps from the sides of my spare ushanka (hat) and attach two bits of elastic to them.

However, whilst we wait for this to happen, here is a quick recap of the latest response to coronavirus as reported in Russian media:

🤞There is hope in the air that soon we might all be enjoying more air as part of nationwide demasking.

🤞As there are no strict lockdowns in Russia, they will not be lifted, but spirits may still be lifted by relaxing what restrictions there are.

🤞Normal service is beginning to be resumed in the nation’s universities and, most importantly, in the bars, clubs and restaurants.

😁Sputnik V gets 10 out of 10 in the International Vaccine Race and quick to criticise critics 10 out of 10 for egg on their face. And doesn’t it serve them right!

*Sources
https://www.rt.com/russia/513951-measures-pandemic-slowly-receding/
https://www.rt.com/russia/514381-face-masks-ban-possible-lift/

Copyright [text] © 2018-2022 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas ~ Cheer them up with a card and personal letter!

Published: 17 November 2020

So, what I have been doing for the past week? Did news that they had installed a Democrat in the White House appall me so much that I have not been able to focus and write? No, even stranger than that, I have been busy writing my Christmas cards ~ either a case of there’s forward planning for you, or its time he invested in a new calendar.

Nothing quite as spectacular. I have been writing cards to folks back home, to friends and family in the UK, and cognizant of the fact that the post from Kaliningrad to England is not exactly the 21st centuries’ answer to a hypersonic version of Pony Express, I hope to have mailed them in good time.

Another reason for planning ahead is that every year I include a ‘brief’ note with my card. This has become as traditional as Christmas dinner, party hats, Christmas crackers and auntie Ivy turning Christmas day into a rugby scrum as she insists on clawing open everybody else’s presents.

Important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas

My Christmas letter has become such an important element of the annual Christmas ritual that its up there with seasonal sayings like ‘just what I always wanted’, when it is quite obvious that you didn’t (I mean, who in his right mind would wear a jumper like that, and when did your gran lust after a WWII German tin helmet (or even a WWII German in a tin helmet?)) ~ and ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!”, when you obviously didn’t: that’s the aftershave you were given by someone last year and which you personally would not touch with a barge pole and neither would anyone else. Mind you it makes the perfect Christmas present for social distancing.

The thing about my Christmas letters is that although you have to state out loud at UK post offices these days what you have in your ‘packet’ ~ and my letters are known for being rather bulky, so they always ask ~ they always get through, even though sometimes I cannot resist answering, at first in a whisper, “It’s an inflatable doll,” and then, in response to the lady behind the counter urging me to ‘speak up’, to call out stridently, “It’s an inflatable doll,” so that everyone can hear (you should try this sometime, it really is fun!).

No stopping those Christmas letters

Yes, my letters always get through. Like Reader’s Digest junk mail, electricity and gas bills, even if the Post Office had been sold to China (what’s that, oh, it has been) and my letters rerouted via the M25, carried in the pocket of a young thief travelling on a skateboard during rush-hour, my letters always get through.

They zip past defiled statues, hoody-wearing muggers on handbag-stealing mopeds and bearded men burning poppies. They cruise through ganja-stenched knife-secreted carnivals, through nice areas deprived by people. As slippery as Hope not Hate, they riot their way down Looting Street, defying all manner of social distancing, lockdowns and Tiers for fears and, before you can say Hoorah for Brexit or Joe Biden is as honest as Clinton, they sail up your drive, through your letter box and plummet onto your doormat quicker than the stink from a suspect scientific claim.

They are so popular, my Yuletide missives, that family and friends leave home for them, and come back after Christmas ~ a long while after Christmas. Some people board up their letter boxes, others disguise them as something intimate in such a way that were you to insert a letter through them, you’d have the neighbours shout ‘pervert!’. Some teach their dogs to savage them, and others, those with ‘Beware of the Cat’ on their doors, train their feline friends to hide them under the Christmas tree ~ and scrape the soil back over.

One year my brother shoved his letter under the mistletoe, prompting his gay friend to say that he would rather kiss his own arse. He is a lonely guy, but no worries, he is double-jointed and quite the contortionist.

Selfish people, those who stockpiled toilet rolls when they heard the word pandemic, convert them into paper hats and hide the Christmas crackers for pulling on their own when they think no one is looking. Ahh, but someone is always looking, especially in these days of essential travel only. Do they really think that they can get away with it?

“Where are you going in that Support Bubble Car?”

“I am a victim of self-isolation and social distancing, officer. I am shunning all that I have ever known and all those that know me, even those who have tried to lose me, give me away or pretend that I don’t exist, such as my mother. I am going somewhere where they can’t track and trace me, and there, in the privacy of somebody else’s Tier 1 home, I will hide from the world and pull my Christmas cracker.”

“Very well,” says the Social Distancing Marshall, “but no laughing at the joke inside the cracker, mind. This is no time to be enjoying life, and don’t forget to wear your mask.”

Sorry, that was uncalled for.

“Hello, I think I may have coronavirus. I have been trying to telephone the hospital for the past three hours and nobody has answered.”

“Sorry, the hospital is as full as boatload of migrants from France. Wait a moment. Oh, it is a boat load of migrants from France. Please hang yourself. I mean hang up and try the Samarlians.”

The Samarlians ~ a not-for-profit organization that will talk you out of the ‘easy way out’:

Answer machine: “Hello, you have reached the end of your tether. I am sorry, due to a high volume of excuses about coronavirus we are unable to take your call at the moment, please leave your name and telephone number and you will never hear from us again. You might like to waste what remains of your life by visiting our website, goingaroundincircles.con, where you can often never find what it is you want to know using our FAQ Offs ~ Frequently Asked Questions Offline ~ alternatively, you will find the end of the line at your nearest Midland Mainline Station.”

Once, all you had to do was press Button A to be connected and Button B to get your money back. Now ‘you have the following options’, more numbers than the National Lottery and about the same chance of winning.

What my coronavirus Christmas letters mean to the recipients

Rumour has it that carol singers have written songs based on the contents of my Christmas letters and sold the rights to Leonard Cohen.

Christmas vicars have read them out in their sermons and have been summarily excommunicated.

Edgar Allan Poe, who essentially travelled by TARDIS, was inspired to write The Masque of the Red Death having read my treatise ‘Lockdown ~ the most effective life saver since leaches’.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas
{See end of article for image credit*}

My letters have tweaked the ears of statesmen, tickled the underbelly of boat-owning philanthropists and have sunk a thousand ships, or would have if I had my way ~ where is my letter to Sir Francis Drake?

Napoleon stuck his arm up his vest after reading one of my letters, and what would Lord Nelson have asked Hardy to do for him had he read my letter before someone shot him first?

Thank heavens Adolf burnt his letter!

As for ordinary mortals, some wrap their present to auntie Joan in them and still others wrap them around uncle Martin’s chestnuts, who would otherwise lose them on Christmas morn as he struggles to adjust his mighty pendulums attached to his very large grandfather’s clock (thank the Lord for Spell Check!).

Looking forward to my letters

People look forward to my letters so much that they ‘wish it could be Christmas every day”. One day they will write a song about it and play it every year with depressing regularity.

This year they are all busy singing to, ‘So this is Christmas and what have you done. Sat in self-isolation it isn’t much fun.” I know, let’s open one of Mick’s Christmas letters and cheer ourselves up (gunshot off stage).

My letters have a sentimental and emotional appeal. They are up there, tugging at the heart strings like that old romantic Christmas Carol, who your mother caught your father with (also Christmas Connie, Christmas Christine and Christmas Cordelia, well, Christmas comes but once a year).

Ahh, the old ones are the best (Connie was 73).

Lovely old Christmas carols

What memories these well-known carols:

“Drug King Wenceslas looked out from his boat to Dover

 When the snow is not found out we’ll roll the UK over

Brightly shone the hotel sign, the waiting bus was free

It was worth the trip through several countries and across the sea, He! He!”

And do you remember this one:

“Away in a 4-star I don’t pay for my bed, the tax-payer in England pays for it instead …”

And how could you possibly forget:

“Twinkle, Twinkle celeb star who the F..K do you think you are?

Pontificating up on high?

Spreading all those EU lies.

Twinkle, Twinkle talentless star paid too much, too much by far”

NOW, WHO DOESN’T DESERVE A CHRISTMAS LETTER FROM ME? (Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas)

Dear old Christmas Carol, one of Charles Dickens’ favourites. This will be the one year that Ebenezer Scrooge will be looking forward to a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, anything has to be better than Father Boris’s Christmas Present.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

Although it is very important to keep in touch during a coronavirus Christmas, I don’t as a rule send the prime minister a Christmas letter, besides he will be far too busy this year reading and listening to fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. Chris Witty and Sir Patrick Vallance, sorry I don’t know them ~ and neither do you, but there is a sort of chemistry there. It reminds me of that Chad Valley Junior Scientists set I was given at Christmas a long while ago. As I recall, it was a very disappointing present, all smoke and mirrors, bits missing, as incomplete as a Liberal manifesto and it had a very funny smell about it, something slightly fishy.

Send them a Christmas letter? I would not give them the steam off my turkey. What I do like to do, however, is spice up my Christmas offerings with the odd anecdote from Christmases past.

“Please, pretty please do tell us one.”

Well, all right, if you beg nicely.

Once upon a time, long ago, when England was really England, I worked part time as a waiter. I was young once, and in those days I was a teenager. These were the bad old days, before teenagers became entitled and were able to live at home with mum until their 45th birthday (you can ~ could? ~ always take a loan).

Teenagers in those days were not deprived as they are today. They were lucky, in that they did not have the internet from which to plagiarise articles to pass their exams with and, without keyboards and computers, they had the fun of writing all of their essays out by hand, correcting them by hand and then rewriting them by hand for presentation. This meant that they had less time for anything else, which was good, because there were no smartphones in those days and nothing to twiddle on, no Twatter, Arsebook, Snapcrap and the like. Instead, after school teenagers went out and worked.

I worked at the Talbot Hotel in Oundleshire, a very prestigious establishment, with a long history dating back to Elizabethan times and with a staircase that was said to have come from Fotheringay Castle where Mary Queen of Scots lost her head and on which staircase I almost lost my job for telling two old ladies that Mary was always looking for it in the rooms that they had paid for.

It was a posh place, the Talbot of Oundle, and still is. Standards were high. We had to wear black trousers, white shirt, cummerbund, little white pointed tail jackets and a black dicky bow. We looked like clockwork penguins. We were always well turned out, apart from one person whose flies were never done up, as if, we suspected, by no fault of accident. 

It was three days before Christmas, us well turned out and him with his flies undone, that we were called to wait upon a very important table, several tables in fact containing the governors and alumni from Oundle’s prestigious public schools.

I had two salvers: one with Christmas seasoning and the other containing peas on my arm.

Several of we waiters moved along in single file serving our guests of honour. And then it came to her.

She was gorgeous, stunning, wearing a low-cut dress. She had the most diaphanous orbs you could ever imagine ~ yes, her eyes were beautiful. Mesmerised by love, or something that starts with ‘L’ and has the same number of letters, I leant over her and with the seasoning in my hand, asked:

“Would you like stuffing madam?”

The timing could not have been more perfect. Hardly had I realised that I should have used the word ‘seasoning’ than my waiter friend at the side of me, my pal, my very good pal, gave a purposeful nudge to my elbow and off went a spoonful of peas straight down the lady’s cleavage.

Talk about Captain Kirk’s ‘Space, the final frontier’!

And really, what did it sound like: “Madam, can I help you?” As she is reaching down inside, red faced and all a fluster, for those penetrative peas.

Sounds like something out of a Carry On film? How about Carry on Down the Cleavage? Rather that than Carry on Down the Pandemic.

Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas

But what has this got to do with it being very important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas? I confess, I have digressed, when my real intention for writing this piece was to say how nice, affectionate and charming Russian Christmas cards are. Different again to the crass and vulgar things that they churn out in the UK.

Every year in the UK,  Christmas cards get bigger, which is a problem for my family and friends, for it means that instead of a ‘short’ letter I can really go to town and insert a tome like War & Peace. But British Christmas cards do not just get bigger they become more vulgar each year. In keeping with declining moral standards, smutty innuendo ~which is as traditional as laxatives on Boxing Day ~ has given way to images of a semi-pornographic nature and to captions laced with obscenity. It is enough to make you lie and say that Rubber Band has comedic talent!

How much nicer these traditional Russian cards are. They remind me of the sentimental cards that were produced in wartime England ~ soft, delicate, romantic and affectionate

Of course, they are not really Christmas cards as such, as this is an Orthodox Christian country, and Christmas is celebrated on 7th January. No, these are, for the sake of accuracy, Happy New Year cards ~Snovam Gordams.

Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year!) I shouted that last year on the stroke of midnight. You did too? Really?

Hmmm, we’d better shout twice as loud this year, as I don’t think He was listening.

By the way, sorry if you did not receive my Christmas card and letter.

No, I shouldn’t think you are!

Leonard Cohen: Waiting for the Miracle ~ A song for 2021

  • Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death
    (Image credit: Harry Clarke – Printed in Edgar Allan Poe'sTales of Mystery and Imagination, 1919., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2348546)

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved. {Dickens & Masque of the Red Death images are In the Public Domain}

Covid 19 Vaccine Race

Covid 19 Vaccine Race

The Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race Not Quite Live from Gaydock Park

Published: 5 August 2020

Hello and welcome to the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race not quite live from Gaydock Park.

Held in somewhere that used to resemble the UK, this is the first equestrian race of its type where most spectators are watching in self-isolation from the comparative bailiff safety of their coronavirus mortgage-reliefed homes. The only people who will get an actual glimpse of the race live are boatloads of migrants, who will have a clear view on their approach to Dover. That’s them cheering in the background, ‘give us a free house in Surrey’, and there’s a man on the cliffside watching through his binoculars who has given us a tip for the 1960s’ Race at Haydock, which is odds-on favourite, They Should Have Listened to Enoch.

Described by some as the first nationalist race symbolising the inevitable, irredeemable, inexorable demise of globalism, and by Others as being sexist, what we do know is that it is the first race ever in which the horses will be wearing face masks, even if nobody else is.

For those of you who have just joined us, from anywhere and everywhere, the police are providing a free taxi service to a hotel of your choice, for the rest of you who understand English, and there aren’t many, but never mind we’ll provide an interpreter, it’s only money, this is a high-stakes race, the first one past the Vaccine Finishing Post not only out-prestiging everyone else in the civilised world, as well as those in Scotland, but also monopolising the coronavirus vaccine for his country and ensuring that their pharmaceutical sponsor makes mega-bucks whilst holding the world to ransom.

Ahh, and now we see the horses approaching the starting gate. In a few moments, a billionaire philanthropist will fire the starting gun and the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race will be underway.

There goes the gun (blast, he missed himself!) and they’re off! (I wondered where my wife was?) and the horses are off too.

And up front, but not so up front as we’d like, it’s China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine, followed by Discredited HOO, odds-on favourite Oxford Fix close behind with Gay Parade too close behind for comfort as Labour Party falls back, but not far enough for some. And China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine going like a bat out of hell, neck and neck with Conspiracy Theory as they approach Bills Gate. And in the black & red face mask and German tin helmet its BioTank putting pressure on Rest of the World with Open Borders, Big Mistake and Murkal’s Refugees crowding in the middle and everywhere else, whilst US Operation Warp Speed fails to trump False Liberal Media. Into the first hurdle and down goes Lockdown, Conservative Party unseating its rider, Nobody Cares and Who Gives A Toss on either side of LGBT, Tony Blair a casualty But He Doesn’t Seem to Know It, as She’s Got More Mouth Than a Cow’s Got C… ridden by the Dwarf from the North thunders into fourth place.  False Liberal Media making difficult headway as they enter the Straight & Narrow, with Selfish Brits Crowding Brighton Beach and Social Distancing now one metre, could be two, behind Confused Government Policy. There goes Statistics and its China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine fighting it out with Poisoned Meat Market, Don’t Believe It and Whose Laboratory as Mrs May’s Highly Likely is overtaken by Truth, Porton Down and Unbelievable Story with outsider Russia’s Vaccine closing the distance on  Collusion Complex and Clinton’s Hacking Jacket an also and almost ran. Ahead now and quite round the bend Entire Liberal Media, closely pursued by Populist Vote, which surges into first place as Farage’s Triumph sails merrily into the lead, threatening EU Dominance, pulling the plug on EU Court of Human Blights and Whose Democracy Is It? Common Sense is out of the race replaced by All Kinds of Liberal Agendas, Lost Heritage and Law & Order Matters, and its Muggers Alley, Hand-Over Your Cash, LoL and Innit, and Churchill’s Statue battling it out with Defund the Police as the race enters the final straight.  Black Lives Matters, Reputation in Tatters and Obsequious Corporate Policy making the running, in the opposite direction, alongside Fickle Government Policy and Overpaid Untalented Celebs all surprised by BREXIT.

And its Bullshit, Bullshit and the Liberal Media, Bullshit, Russophobia, Bullshit and BBC Licence Fee hard pushed to pass They Won’t Pay It with Historical Drama Revisionism tangling with Gender-Bending Dr Who and Sink Estate in a TARDIS as they round Diverse Psychosis Corner. And its Bullshit in the lead, Ballshit out in front, Ballshit trampling Anti-Vaxxer, Trump with Second Wind as he trounces Second Wave and yes, its … Wait one moment. News just in! Apparently, we’ve just entered the third wave. Traditionally, it takes 10 to 15 years to develop a vaccine, so the finishing line has been moved to 2035 ~ stay tuned, stay in, stay safe and whatever you do don’t back Nightmares.

😉(Featured image Photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/10000/velka/1-1239868251vifh.jpg)

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

UK Police Lockdown Enforcement

Coronavirus & Rights: an Unholy Alliance

Published: 1 April 2020

I wondered how long it would take for the whinging and whining to start about the police being beastly in enforcing the new lockdown. Not long, is the answer. Two articles appeared in the UK media this week. Yes, you have guessed right: one in the The Guardian the other in The Independent.

Guardian headline is to do with police over-stretching their powers (is that why they call it ‘the long arm of the law’?) and The Independent’s “Coronavirus lockdown likened to ‘police state’ by former Supreme Court judge”. Hmmm, the Supreme Court, is not that the institution where they tried to derail BREXIT?

Let’s look at some quotes from the latter article:

With the police under attack by the ‘usual suspects’, the police response:

“We are not looking to criminalise people but we have to have some way of enforcing it,” said the NPCC’s lead for out of court disposals, Deputy Chief Constable Sara Glen.

Note: Police are not criminalising people. People are criminalising themselves by non-compliance with the lockdown.

Police having to defend their actions again:

In the same briefing, NPCC chair Martin Hewitt denied the police service was “an arm of the state”, saying forces were independent and adding: “There is no intention to be heavy-handed.”

Note: Brits have been told to stay put, so it is not being heavy handed, it is enforcing the lockdown. It is not unusual in the UK to accuse the police of all sorts of things when caught doing something that you know you should not be doing:

Numerous arrests have been announced by regional police forces since the law came into force, sparking accusations of overreach.

NB: No, numerous arrests are being made because people are not complying with the lockdown. You haven’t been arrested in your armchair in your sitting room, you have been arrested on the streets because you have broken the rules of lockdown.

And, yes, bring on the performing seals …

The Liberty campaign group said the powers had undergone insufficient parliamentary scrutiny and were “very broad, handing extraordinary new powers to the police”.

NB: Yes, well, these are extraordinary times, are they not? As John Steed of The Avengers once said as he fired a champagne cork at the villains, “Drastic measures for drastic situations …”

Policy and campaigns manager Gracie Bradley added: “Despite the broad scope of these powers, we’ve seen various incidents of police going even further – and beyond their lawful remit. This makes it impossible for people to know how to comply with these new rules, and challenge police when they overreach.

NB: We don’t want the police to be ‘challenged’ we need people to comply. Police have an extremely difficult job to do, and they need the full support of the government and the public. We only have to look at the state of British society today to know what happens when police confidence is undermined by over-zealous rights-related ‘scrutiny’: ie ‘discharging a weapon in the line of duty’ (crucify the cop); the end of ‘stop and search powers’ = 21st century knife fest.

But the last two paragraphs bring fresh hope:

At a briefing with journalists on Friday, Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said: “The police will exercise their own discretion in the use of the powers we have given to them and will take whatever steps they consider appropriate to disperse groups of people who are flouting the rules.

“The regulations signed by the health secretary last week set out what the government’s clear instruction to the public is. Having asked the police to enforce that, we would expect them to exercise their own discretion in using the powers.”

I’ve said it once and I will say it again: Hoorah for Boris!!

I think the majority will agree ~ especially those who have lost loved ones through this pandemic ~ that if any time was a good time to put police powers and commonsense above rights ~ especially the right to be selfish and stupid ~ then this is that time.

UK police lockdown enforcement

Let’s face it folks, it really is quite straightforward:

The populace of the country has been told to stay indoors for a very good and sensible reason; the police are there to enforce the lockdown to ensure that it is complied with. If you choose to ignore the lockdown, then you can expect to be arrested. Not knowing exactly where you stand is a bit of a feeble excuse, when the presumption should be, if in doubt do not do it, and as it is a minority of people who are unsure about the advice and guidance, such as a child in a park who turns out to be a criminal anyway, adults who interpret lockdown to mean organise a mass Karaoke party or congregate in a suspiciously clandestine way on a hillock up in the Peak District, I think we can safely say, and with some authority, that such people are guilty as charged.

UK Police Lockdown Enforcement
(Photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/)

When you are caught doing what you know you should not be doing you are likely to be quite arsey, especially if you receive an on-the-spot fine or are otherwise prosecuted. First response: accuse Plod. I mean, who do they think they are? Well, they are the police force, you see (note the word ‘force’); contrary to umpteen years of disinformation they are not social workers or public relations officers, they are there to police and enforce.

Let us take it step by step; it is all very elementary:

A. You have been told to stay in your home

B. You stay in

C. By doing so you will be helping yourself, and others by not becoming infected, passing the infection on and endangering other people’s lives

Now, if you learn your ABC (which does not stand for being Arsey, Bolshie and a Complete T..t) you will mitigate the risk of being spoken harshly to by naughty Mr Policeman, you could avoid a fine and by not catching coronavirus you could save your life and somebody else’s.

“Evenin’ All”