Them and Us

I never thought I would hear myself saying this, but I am now bitterly thankful that we did leave the E.U. at - as it turns out - just the right moment. The vaccine wars have begun.

As people have been pointing out for over a year, nobody in power on both sides of the Channel payed any attention to the epidemiologists who have been warning of a pandemic for years, so no country made any preparation for this once in one hundred years event, but Britain cut its ties with the unwieldy and cumbersome Leviathan of Brussels bureaucracy just in time to make some of the most important decisions it will ever have to make, free of the European men in suits. For once in his life, Boris became light on his feet.

Europe left it too late to order, too late to give approval, too late to build the infrastructure needed to physically administer the vaccine and spent too much valuable time spreading scare stories about it in order to punish us further for leaving. Germany excelled itself with their version of track and trace, but they always have been good at that stuff. Everyone carries identity cards.

In the long run, our recent success may be short-lived if Europe does not get itself together in time to prevent potentially resistant variants taking hold and finding their way back over here, so everyone needs to pull together and  stop the veiled threats to block vaccine supplies in both directions. 

Now that our well-oiled vaccination machine seems to be purring along nicely at speed, some ministers think they have enough free time on their hands to dream up ways of preventing the imagined disorder on the streets by creating new laws to specifically deal with any voicing of dissent from the - also imagined - lefties who are just wandering around looking for ways to wind-up the Metropolitan Police. I did not believe Big Brother Watch then, but I am beginning to take them more seriously now.

Freedom from Brussels also means that they can chip away at the civil liberties which we have all taken for granted since the last world war. They are finding ways of criminalising public protest and the only way we can object to this is to publicly protest. It is a stupid, self-fulfilling prophesy which they believe will stand them in good stead at the next election.

It is not all about toppling statues. There are enough laws already in place to deal with that sort of criminality. The police's jobs will become much harder over the next few months as they find themselves trapped between government and the people who they are supposed to protect.

This was written before I knew anything about the stupidity of what happened in Bristol today. As usual, Marxists and anarchists have hi-jacked what should have been a legitimate and peaceful protest as they always do. Now the police and Home Office have the justification they needed to put through all the above. These rioters only care for violence. A good riot is their idea of a good time. It is shameful, but it is also a self-fulfilling prophesy as described.