This is insanity.
Every time we have a winter virus the government decides to track, civil society will be at risk.
Everyone who imposed and encouraged lockdowns must now understand that that precedent can never be undone.
That it has left us forever at the mercy of the state.
The idea that the state has a right - let alone a duty - to ‘protect’ the public by restricting the ability of the entire country to go about their lives is a pernicious ideology that would have been - and often was - grasped by every autocratic regime in history.
And this is the result. Child abuse. Enabled by the state. Perpetrated by parents so lacking in humanity that they would do what they thought the state wanted rather than follow their most basic instincts.
This is grotesque.
To make charity to the most vulnerable group in our society dependent on receiving medical treatment is inhuman. I hope - but do not expect - that those who parade their virtue as supporters of the vulnerable condemn it unreservedly.
I hope that this is true. However, will that be possible given this: "Meanwhile, the Guardian reported last week that homeless shelters were shutting their doors due to growing fears around social distancing...
Good analysis of Medley’s admission. The problem since last year has been the blinkered focus on only one problem and the failure to appreciate that every policy decision - but particularly legislation controlling people’s lives - can cause foreseen and unforeseen harm.
This approach was built in to UK policy making with Raab’s ‘Five Tests’ (in April 2020) that fettered the government’s discretion to remove restrictions until tests relating only to this one virus had been met.
Even if such unprecedented state control could ever be justified (it cannot) that irresponsible monomania prevented the multi-faceted policy decisions necessary - those that considered the consequences on society, economy, public health & democratic norms in the widest sense.
The greatest gift anyone could give would be to burn every last testing kit and to destroy every last laboratory apparatus capable of identifying this virus.
We cannot live like this. Exist, maybe. But not live.
The human condition has, since the Neolithic revolution, required an accommodation with viruses. This is not simply a matter of health, it is a matter of our ability to tolerate the risks as well as the benefits of society in its widest sense.
(And, of course, a wider theme is the capture of this debate by scientists & medics who, even if they are speaking rationally & on the basis of good evidence and data and not flawed modelling (which they often are not) can speak only to one limited element of the wider picture.)
Anyone watching it without comment is no friend of human rights. Whatever else they do, however ‘kind’ they like to think themselves, however much they trumpet that they are ‘human rights advocates’, they have been tried. And they have been found wanting.
John Smith may be an extreme example. But my old head of chambers, Sir Ivan Lawrence QC, not only had a regular practice at the Old Bailey, he sat on standing committees (considering legislation), introduced a backbench Bill that became law and held the record for filibustering.
In other words, unlike the (largely) dross that sit in the House of Commons now, he was a legislator, giving his expertise and experience to explain what works, what doesn’t, what would he objectionable and why.
Look at the vacant expression on the clown.
Can we never again give any responsibility to wonks with no judgement dressed like 14 year olds.
Another one; and fixed.
So we delegated one of the most important decisions in peacetime to a bunch of scruffy youths who spend their time gaming in basements?