Monday the 19th of July 2021 or ‘Freedom Day’ as the Government’s pet media called it has ended up feeling and being a long way from freedom in any way. Instead of us being able to feel we will have finally taken every step possible back towards ‘normal life’, the Government has once again created fear and frustration in people’s heads, whilst this time offloading the responsibility of how to manage ‘risk’ onto businesses and by default onto people themselves.
The sentiment that people should be allowed to make their own decisions was a laudable one – even if it was 17 months late. But the use of common sense by the public and businesses is a long way from where this has all turned out.
The only successful outcome that the Johnson Government will achieve from this particular ‘opening up’ is sowing what is likely to become a very dangerous level of division between people. One that could easily lead to violence, antisocial behaviour and management problems for businesses that could still be avoided if the Government would grow up and stop thinking about itself just for a change.
It is highly ironic that tackling the societal problems created by ‘visual differences’ between us are so big on the very same news channels that our hapless Prime Minister listens to religiously before deciding upon whatever he does next.
On one hand, Boris has been busy grandstanding over the racial abuse of England Football players because they look different. He then deliberately goes out and creates another set of divisions based on what people will be wearing and how they look. The politically expedient double standards at the heart of this are likely to have profound consequences for us all.
We didn’t create this situation. The Government did.
We are being set up to use the weapons they created and go to war against each other instead of working together to remove and replace them ALL – as we now should.
We must say no.
There is very little that is rational about the continuation of social distancing controls now that the key milestones surrounding vaccination of the most vulnerable has been achieved.
Yet the way that Covid was presented to the public in a deliberately disturbing and fear-encouraging way at the start created a very damaging legacy. A malignant fear that has become embedded within the minds of so many who have been living with the ongoing threat of risks either the same as Covid or in many cases much worse, without giving it a second thought for all of their pre-Covid lives.
This false threat has created a willingness to champion anything the Government says will save them on the part of anyone who has become emotionally enslaved by the rhetoric. Most often, they relate it to personal experience of their own – meaning they are effectively blind to all of the u-turns, backtracking and illogical delays to a return to ‘normal’. Instead, they are embracing every new threat as an endorsement of their own false fears. Otherwise, irrational fears that the government has just officially stamped as being legitimate and therefore something to be forced upon everyone else.
Fear isn’t rational. Some people never manage to overcome it, even with professional or even medical help. Others question fear practically in very different ways and use the evidence they see or experience as a way to judge just how realistic such threats are. As these past 17 months have passed, more snd more people have experienced a lucid moment when they have said to themselves ‘hang on a minute – what the hell is going on?’
Some have taken to social media and public protests to make their feelings known. Others have been so incensed that they their emotions have swung the other way like a pendulum, and they have surrendered their objectivity to the siren call of conspiracies that explain base human behaviour on the part of an inept political class in a way that sounds a lot more plausible than accepting that the people we elected to lead us are basically stupid, outrageously ambitious and completely inept.
It doesn’t matter how strong or logical an argument might be if someone is emotionally tied to or entrenched by an irrational fear. The irresponsibility of the Government in deliberately releasing this genie when mental health issues facing society are already so prevalent amongst us is almost certain to become a question of criminal culpability when the wheels fall off their contrived imaginary cause.
But that doesn’t help any of us now. And we face a situation where on one side we are going to see others approach to the ‘choice’ of how we approach post 19 July social distancing as being completely wrong and unjustified. But we need to be aware that the passion and surety of the argument that we ourselves feel will be exactly the same for those who we perceive to be on another side.
We cannot remove the Government that we have until the next General Election. In the meantime, these power-crazed politicians and the advisors who are relishing the public platforms that they have been elevated to behind them will not give up the control that they believe they have got. They will seek to refuel and maintain the whole covid Narrative they created out of their own myopic fears each and every time it looks like they might have to give it up and step back in some way.
Real leaders would not have acted like this even at the beginning and if restrictions on life for us all had really been necessary, you can be sure that they would have been big enough to give them back to us in full as soon as they had achieved their purpose and without the obvious threat of returning to lockdowns once more.
PLEASE, when it comes to next week and you come across people wearing masks, not wearing masks or you enter a shop or business premises where social distancing is still being enforced – REMEMBER that WE ARE ALL dealing with this horrific chapter in the best ways that we both understand and can.
Just because we may see all of this differently doesn’t make you or I right. It certainly doesn’t make either of us wrong.
The only people who will benefit from the division that fighting with each other will cause is a Government and political class that prizes its own position above all other things. Division between us will secure the future of these politicians and the people who benefit from being around them. Nothing more.
PLEASE, let’s respect each other’s choice and do what we can to accept and tolerate the wishes of each other. Let’s deny the Johnson Government and this whole political class the oxygen of public division that will make their way of doing government the only ongoing choice.
Adam Tugwell 