“This Is Not the Country That I Grew Up In”: Australian Widow Arrested for Exercising Near Home
Following reports of the Australian army being deployed to ensure citizens are abiding by strict lockdown rules, an elderly Sydney resident has written to the Australian about being arrested for exercising near her home. Police officers interpreted this as an offence because the resident, a widow, was wearing a sign and walking in an area she rarely visited. Her letter, republished below, highlights the lengths to which the Australian authorities are going to snuff out the faintest flickers of protest.
I am a 78 year-old widow who chose to exercise in the Sydney central business district (CBD) on Saturday. I wore a sign saying: “Not happy, Gladys.” I was alone, I am fully vaccinated and I was wearing a mask.
I was stopped by police and asked what I was doing. I said I was exercising within 10km of my home. They told me I was not allowed to wear a sign while exercising. Both they and I were very respectful but I was arrested on the grounds that, as I did not normally exercise in the CBD, and was wearing a sign, I was protesting and not exercising.
This is not the country that I grew up in. And the really sad thing is that there will be so many who have been intimidated into cringing cowardice and who will just say of me: “Stupid old biddy, serves her right for not just being obedient.”
Mary M. Ancich, Birchgrove, Queensland
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God bless and keep you, Mary, and bring you safe out of the hell They have made of your country.
Tyrants
I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: arresting her for exercising or arresting her for wearing a sign.
Just makes one want to weep, really.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
If this were only cleared away,’
They said, it would be grand!’
If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,
That they could get it clear?’
I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
But we never learn and try and sweep away this ubiquitous, endemic virus, wreaking havoc on people’s lives in the process. When will they ever learn? when will they ever learn? The human spirit may be beaten down by all this, but it is not totally destroyed.
Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong
“You’ll never take me alive”, said he
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong
“You’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me”
It’s the same logic as two doses of vaccine don’t work but this third one is the charm!
I have never grasped how we are doing all this for something that is literally less lethal than flu for the vast majority of people?
The risk of hospitalization from covid may be 1:100 (even for the so-called “non-vulnerable” individuals). The risk of complications post hospitalization estimated at 20%. The risk of vaccine-related hospitalization is estimated at “only” 1:10000. So yeah, the vaccination (of adults) makes sense, no matter how many times you wish to pretend it doesn’t.
Pretty much every other intervention (except for isolation, but that can be only applied temporarily), and especially all the “vaccine passports” are utter bollocks.
They seem to be using similar logic to that used by the Chinese when suppressing dissent – take whatever you are doing and make it fit their chosen narrative
No. The lady was protesting under the pretence of doing exercise. And good for her.
The fact that protest is not allowed is to the eternal shame of the monsters ruling the place and the millions who didn’t join her.
Isn’t a protest supposed to be political though? I wouldn’t say “not happy” fits that definition. Unless people are no longer allowed to express their emotions either!
It’s an Australian thing – a faux polite way of saying I am greatly upset because of your actions and I heartily despise you because of it. It is most often directed against Prime Ministers (e.g. ‘Not happy, John’, referring to John Howard). Our latest solo protester speaks for many of us (but, alas, a minority of the population) but she has been portrayed as a bit of nutter, an eccentric old bat, by all the usual Covid Hysterics who are proving to be quite at home with the totalitarian assault on civil and personal liberties. Well, give me an ‘eccentric old bat’ anytime rather than one of these New Normal nutters.
Phil
South Australia
Even though we’ve been seeing this craziness for over a year, this still feels like a horrible nightmare that can’t be true.
Once democratic, western countries have actually descended into totalitarian rule.
And in the most predictable way, forewarned and parodied in dozens of movies, written about by dozens of writers and thinkers: by manufacturing fear.
It’s simply stunning.
One can’t help despising all those mental slaves who think it’s all a good idea.
We really shouldn’t be surprised after Russia’s shock invasion of the Ukraine left desperate people scratching coal from the ground in a desperate attempt to stay warm in Winter (and probably going against the climate scare agenda – as people will when it comes to the crunch).
Well, the fear is not actually “manufactured”. There were hospitals running at or beyond capacity in several places, and corpses literally piling up with crematories unable to process them. Given such events, it’s hard to disagree that at least some of this fear is justified, rather than just “manufactured”. (Of course, it still should not be used to introduce totalitarian measures, but it has.)
Meanwhile, in a still relatively sane country:
Sweden daily Covid deaths hit zero, with human liberty still intact
You would think these authoritarians had no friends or family
Yep – that’s fascism, despite the squeamishness about using the term.
Australia returns to its penal colony status.
… And the Global award for the most outrageously fascistic, state suppressed and despotically unsympathetic hard asses, goes to …. our Antipodean cousins in Australia. Surely. closely followed by, Israel {?] Chile {?] UK [?] Canada ? … It must be a credit based system: brownie points for the cruelest. It also keeps us all tied into the whole globalist polemic/circus. A staged grotesque disrtaction !!
Let’s keep some perspective here.
West Taiwan (those who aren’t keeping up often still rather quaintly refer to it as ‘China’) is indisputably far more evil than any of those countries.
(This is emphatically not an endorsement of the ridiculously OTT actions of the Aussie government).
not since March 2020 it isn’t.
Embarrassing rubbish. (‘PPE’ ‘graduate’ by any chance?)
No-one in these countries has been welded into their homes.
No mass crimes have been committed against the likes of the Uighers.
You have written total crapola – get help, and SOON!
nobody was welded into their homes in China either – we were played big time.
And mass crimes have been committed against most of the world’s population in the past year unless you think telling people they can’t leave home and can’t work to support their families is perfectly ok.
But what’s a few million deaths from starvation due in the grand scheme of things, hey?
She may not think it’s the country she grew up in but the nanny state has been creeping in for at least the past 40 years – ban this, ban that, overzealous police enforcement of it all “if it just saves one life”. This is just the culmination of that stupidity.
Back in 2005 we visited family in Aus, staying for around 2 months and were so impressed by their lifestyle that we considered moving out there. We could probably have done it if we’d sold up and used my wife’s qualifications plus my HGV licence to find work before we moved. In the end we decided against it as we had plans already in place here and elderly relatives who depended on us. I have to say also that one or two things we noticed whilst there also gave us something to think about- there seemed to be a number of ‘worriers’ in the big cities and a lot of ‘groupthink’ for want of a better word, where everyone seems to have the same opinion about a thing and is very dismissive of anyone who dissents. Smoking is an obvious example- my wife smokes and always goes outside, (even before it was law), but the hostility in big cities was a bit of a shock. She was constantly asked to move, told ‘we’ don’t do that, etc. Religion was another example- atheists were scorned, (my son was an atheist and all the time we were there he was told that… Read more »
The religious thing says more about the people you were with than anything else.
You don’t have to vote, you have to attend and get your name ticked off a list. Spoiled ballots are allowed.
Interesting point about religion, especially since Scott Morrison, who makes a big deal of his relationship with Jesus, is apparently all signed up to the Mark of the Beast (no jab, no job).
A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Jesus warned of such people.
Seems like you are in blame-the-victim they-got-it-coming mode now. This sounds very much what a totalitarian regime would love to hear from outsiders.
Its so sad and stupid. Good on you Mary. Please don’t give in, it’s the only way. Good luck.
Sometimes it’s the little things that can galvanise people….think Rosa Parks just sitting down on a bus! I hope Mary’s story gets huge coverage.
There’s a big opportunity here for a savvy business person to print thousands of ‘Not Happy!’ T-shirts!
You just discovered the whole anti-covidians business model.
Australia started as a prison colony and now has returned to that state.A tyranny that is lapping at our feet too.
If this story isn’t enough to rally the public then we are doomed. Don’t think it won’t be coming here!
PJW on usual top form
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8KScb7XjzE
Scum!! and where do they recruit the morons who are stupid enough to enforce this bullshit?!
Well, for what is worth, this is an unverified letter – may have been sent by any lunatic about any event really. And in case the event actually occurred, of course we only have her side of the story.