The cost of the COVID police state
“The government, gripped by this panic, along with the necessity to be perceived as doing something, has not just sold off the family silver, but thrown the savings onto the bonfire.”
The initial lockdown of March and April, followed by the seemingly never-ending repetitive loosening and then tightening of the screws, as if being teased and mocked in a torture chamber, has cost the people of this country dearly. From the tragedy of missed cancer appointments sending thousands to an early and preventable death as their conditions deteriorate from neglect; a pandemic of poor mental health resulting from solitary confinement (otherwise known as ‘self-isolation’); to an economy which has been tied to a tree and then flogged continuously by hysterical villagers who believe its witchcraft has cursed the town with a plague.
The government, gripped by this panic, along with the necessity to be perceived as doing something, has not just sold off the family silver, but thrown the savings onto the bonfire.
The parasitical furlough scheme has cost the taxpayer thirty nine billion pounds, with some three billion being captured by fraudsters (would electoral support for lockdown have remained as high as it did if this ‘cash for nothing’ racket was still in place?). The August Summer Holiday treat of ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ handed a bill of roughly £520 million to the Treasury for the country’s collective effort in tucking into around £70 million meals – The Furlough Fraudsters no doubt cashed in their checks.
Yet another cost which must be punched into the spending calculator is, of course, the cost of keeping the people – accustomed to the liberties they were born with – in line. When the government unveiled the COVID marshals as a new piece on the chessboard, it announced it would provide thirty million pounds to local councils along with an additional thirty million in funds for police forces. Quickly trained and equipped, these busy bodies were unleashed onto the streets of Britain.
Although, given that COVID marshals can only alert rule-breakers to the police, it would be much easier just to encourage the public to snitch on their neighbours (which the authorities have also toyed with). As I mentioned in my previous article ‘Beware of the Stool Pigeons’, there is already a covert army of binocular-wielding curtain twitchers just waiting to prove themselves as loyal lapdogs to the ruling regime.
Nevertheless, the demand for the stool pigeons needing that heroin hit of reporting their neighbours soon overruns the supply, such as when police forces across the country were smothered with calls from COVID marshals in waiting during March and April. This is exacerbated when the very vindictive nature of mankind to ‘settle scores’ is unleashed when gifted an appropriate battle theatre. Given the ten thousand pound fine businesses face for breaking these restrictions, what is to stop ruthless competitors from breaking the kneecaps of their opposition with just one phone call?
Rather than just a financial charge for the enforcers (small change compared to the big budget blockbusters of the furlough and ‘Eat Out to Help Out’), the cost of scaring people into their homes has the inevitable result of creating a climate of fear. If the public is not terrified of the coronavirus through government and media propaganda – with a sharp turn to an emphasis on the ‘R rate’ when deaths fall, then back to the death rate when it rises – they will be afraid of each other. For many, it is not the coronavirus which is stopping them from seeing their relatives, it is the legitimate concern that a stool pigeon will hear too much noise from next-door and then reach for the phone. The COVID madness has led to the disease being preferred over the cure.
