Vaccine passports aren't about public protection but our unhealthy addiction to fear

I know! I know! Another bloody Covid blog! I’m as sick of writing them as I’m sure you are of reading them. But there is no reprieve. With every step in the right direction, it seems we face yet another horror – yet another authoritarian leap that would have seemed unthinkable just a couple of years ago.

The latest of such horrors is vaccine passports, which I have no doubt will be extended and extended until every activity that might involve leaving your house will require you to present your papers, and of course to get the NHS app whether you want the dam thing or not.

The lesson of this Covid Christmas farce is that sometimes rules have to write themselves

Who needs a pantomime this year! The public brouhaha over Covid Christmas rules; the ‘will they, won’t they’ and the constant cries of “they’re cancelling Christmas” have provided  quite enough theatrics for anyone.

Covid hysteria has sentenced us to psychological ruin – we must break free of its chains!

     

“Since we marched obediently into captivity last spring, we have turned servile. Look at us now, arguing about whether we should be in one tier of absurd limits on our lives, or another.”

Experts shouldn't be telling us how to run society – we need to use them more wisely

Let’s get one thing clear, I’m not an expert, thank God! That isn’t to say I’m particularly pleased not to be what traditionally passed for an expert – someone considered to be among the most knowledgeable on a subject.   I’m glad not to be a modern-day expert, namely someone who can apparently pronounce on new, evolving and unpredictable situations with such apparent precision that they can be deferred to as prophets of our times.

That’s exactly what the supposedly expert merchants of Covid doom do.

I'm too distressed to wear a mask because every argument for doing so is absolutely terrible!

There is one particular exemption to mandatory face nappies that is as wide-ranging as you want to make it. That is that the wearing of masks causes one severe distress. As a society, we could effectively end the compulsory muzzling tomorrow, before it is even extended to all indoor spaces.

The case for lockdown falls apart more each day, but our leaders are in too deep to dig us out

Despite tragic mortality figures, Spain and Italy have not resisted the most gradual and tentative of easing in their national lockdowns. Yet the UK government continues to insist that the subject cannot even be discussed yet, apparently awaiting the passing of some kind of Coronavirus peak that will come and go at some point unknown.

Lockdown is poorly justified, unsustainable and an assault too far on civil liberties

A prime minister in intensive care, and 6,159 people dead! Coronavirus looks serious – and it is, no question.

People are afraid and a country is hurting. Every day we await with sad resignation the latest death figures, now read out and poured over like some macabre cricket score card: 786 all out yesterday.

May's first appointments show she's a PM that means business

What a momentous day it must have been for Theresa May. Cool, calm and collected, she is said to have spent this very morning working on urgent papers at her Home Office desk, before the most significant event of her life – her appointment with the Queen, at which she replaced David Cameron as Prime Minister.
A somewhat mysterious figure, May’s comparatively low profile and close guarding of her privacy means that we don’t know much about this woman. What we do know, though, is that as Home Secretary, she has proved time and time again that she’s not to be messed with.