Running A False Flag Up the Mast

Britain is Infected... By a Bad Case of Madness

Peter Hitchens
Mail On Sunday

Yes, you are right. We have gone quite mad. I know that many people are thinking this, but dare not say so.  I will be accused of all kinds of terrible things for taking this view – but that is another aspect of how crazy things are.

Yes, coronavirus poses a risk. No, our response to it is not intelligent or useful. In fact, I think it is increasingly damaging and will soon become more so.  The key word here is proportion. There is nothing wrong with simple, practical precautions.

I have for many years believed that door handles pose one of the greatest threats to health, and try never to touch them with the naked hand. I was taught from my earliest years to wash my hands before eating.

I am a health faddist. I work at a standing desk. For many years I have walked and bicycled wherever I can.  I often take the stairs rather than the lift. I can’t understand how anyone in my generation or younger can smoke, given what we know about it.  I regard sugar as a delicious poison to be avoided as much as possible. I drink little. I get up early and go to bed early.

I believe cars are heart-attack machines, noisy, smelly, ugly devices, which depreciate in the gutter while they are not stopping us from exercising and wrecking our lower backs.  Yet our country is so badly planned that few families can manage without them nowadays.

For these reasons, I reckon that my risk from coronavirus is quite small. If I catch it, and I quite possibly will, I doubt it will trouble me all that much.   The truth is, people with what are called ‘underlying conditions’, many of which follow decades without exercise, are in danger not just from coronavirus but from almost everything.

Warning From Top Judge

Coronavirus Rules are 'Hysterical Slide Into a Police State'

The former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption hit out at the heavy-handed measures taken by Derbyshire Police

Nicola Bartlett
Daily Mirror

A former Supreme Court justice has warned that the public are displaying "collective hysteria" over coronavirus.  Lord Sumption, who retired as a justice at the UK's highest court in 2018, hit out at the way that some police forces are interpreting the new rules.

He said: "The pressure on politicians has come from the public; they want action. They don't pause to ask whether the action will work, they don't ask themselves whether the cost will be worth paying - they want action anyway.

Lord Sumption told Radio 4's The World At One:"Anyone who has studied history will recognise here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria, which is infectious.  We are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure may be worse than the disease."

He added: "Yes, this is serious, and, yes, it's understandable that people cry out to the Government, but the real question is, is this serious enough to warrant putting most of our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hard-working people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt?

"Depressions, stress, heart attacks, suicides and unbelievable stress inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable and will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all like the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister."

The police force caused controversy when they used drones to deter people from breaking the lockdown rules by travelling to remote areas for their daily exercise.

Which Way Will Brexit Go?

Brexit: A Realm, If They Can Keep It

Iain Murray
National Review Online


At 11 p.m. tonight London time, Britain will cease to be a member of the European Union. Three and a half years of indecision, incompetence, and stonewalling will finally end the way it always should have, with the implementation of the mandate of a majority of British voters. It is a cause for some celebration, but also for some reflection, and for a steeling of the nerves as to what is to come.

The main cause for celebration is that British institutions have been saved. This was, to my mind, always the primary reason for Brexit, as I wrote here on the eve of the vote. They have been weakened over the past few decades, as I mentioned, but the impetus to Europeanize British institutions will end. One would hope that this will go hand in hand with a restoration of the traditional approach to the judiciary, and in particular the abolition of the very un-British institution of a Supreme Court.

A second cause for celebration is that Britain has beaten the heretofore unfailing European Union tactic of forcing a dissenting country from voting again on an issue. Ireland, the Netherlands, even France, had been forced to hold second referenda after a democratic rejection of an EU proposal. These “neverenda” served to confirm that the EU project was a ratchet that only ever went in one direction.