Has the Government Granted Itself Too Many Draconian New Powers?
Further Reading
‘Is shutting down Britain – with unprecedented curbs on ancient liberties – REALLY the best answer?‘ by Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, March 21st 2020
‘Are the government’s lockdown measures proportionate and lawful?‘ by Francis Hoar, The Telegraph, March 29th 2020
‘Parliament must return to defend our liberties‘ by David Green, The Spectator, April 3rd 2020
‘Outdoor exercise could be banned if Britons continue to flout social distancing rules‘ by Amy Jones and Christopher Hope, The Telegraph, April 6th 2020
‘A disproportionate interference: the Coronavirus Regulations and the ECHR‘ by Francis Hoar, UK Human Rights Blog, April 21st 2020
Further Listening
‘Peter Hitchens: Liberty in the age of COVID-19‘, Podcast with James Delingpole, Ricochet, March 26th 2020
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What is clear is that the notion of unalienable civil liberties has been shown to be a fiction. It is obvious that a threat such as a virus would not have to be real in order for the government to give itself total powers and for the individual to find themselves in a dystopian nightmare. In fact, the distinction between real and not real need never be tested: we are in the nightmare now, and once triggered looks like being permanent. The government uses public opinion – that it manipulates through its position of authority – in order to maintain its total power with a fig leaf of ‘consent’. The ‘culture wars’ of the last few years have also contributed to the media’s collusion in this, and to the government’s confidence that the ruthless suppression of civil liberties is ‘the right thing to do’ – with the PM taking the opposite side to the one everyone assumed he was on. Those people who thought Johnson was a man of straw from the start seem to be being proven right. The rest of us were just fantasising. I am not a student of dystopian fiction particularly, but I am aware that… Read more »
Is this an issue where veteran civil rights MP David Davis should take a prominent stand as he has done in the past on other issues regarding civil liberties? A leading Conservative politician is needed to take the Government to task on its current restrictions and how long they will last. To see yesterday unelected medical bureaucrat, Chris Whitty, making what was a very political statement on the lockdown was a bit of a spine chiller. The Government seems on the point of abrogating responsibility to these experts who are not always in agreement with each other over strategy.
Maybe Whitty and Co know something most of the general public seem not to about rule by a medical/scientific technocracy being integral to “global governance” being planed for us all under the WEF great reset.
Forwarned is forearmed. Read Klaus Schwab’s messianic writings if you want to avoid a truly dystopian transhumanist future.
Boris Johnson in 2004:
“If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”
What a joke! With Boris as PM we’ll not only need to pay for our own tracking device, but if stopped by the police prove why we’re even out of our hovel.
https://unherd.com/2020/04/why-have-the-english-sacrificed-liberty-for-lockdown
Peter Hitchens and Lord Sumption are dead right. Most Western Europeans alive today have not had to fight for their civil liberties, and are very carelessly allowing them to be lost
‘Εωσφορος Φιλαληθης, ‘Ο Κυνικος Cogitated…… there is escape not only hope… http://www.1888CE.net
It isn’t necessary though Mr Baker, that’s the problem.