Freedom Days 1

Oh, hello January, is that you again? I just had the weirdest dream. That it was July, six months in the future and in the middle of a heatwave. Our government had decided, against all reason and science, to abandon every restriction and plunge us all into herd immunity. Yes, s nightmares go it was pretty terrifying. What had happened was that a few months from now there was a massive outbreak in crowd urban India which bred aa variant that become known as Delta. This replaced the existing variant which become known as Alpha. 

Hang on, what day is it? 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes.

The fools went and did the thing. It is now July the 19th, otherwise known as Freedom Day, because everyone likes to be freed from critical thinking and evidence. The date historians will come to remember as Fuck Up Day. It began well enough: midnight Monday morning and everyone piled into the nightclubs freshly able to open at the earliest possible opportunity.

Reason lost, folks. This isn't a triumph for anyone except the crank contingent of the Tory party. The ERG Brexit headbangers who drove Johnson, willingly of course, to kick the moderate voices out, whom we might well have needed (assuming they have any spine). This awful trajectory, beginning in 2016, has driven out common sense, maginalised the countryin the name oof xenophobia, and led to the repealing of essential restrictions at a time when ar re needed most. Now we have to hope people engage in what is risibly an patronisingly called personal responsibility.

The problem is that those making this argument are using personal responsibility as a stalking horse. There is no choice to be made in the wake of a pandemic any more than there is at a crossroads with traffic lights. Sure you could choose to ignore the lights and risk a major collision, but that's a fool's choice. If you need to choose to do the right thing then you are making the case for the oversight needed to keep society going. 

Really that is a childish argument. It is made by emotionally incompetent people who cry because their privilege is being threatened by circumstances. Welcome to the world, you aren't as special as you believed. You're just like the rest of us: vulnerable to the plague. Now these clowns are arguing to switch off their test and trace apps because the pinging is disruptive. Can't think why, as cases rage, it might be triggering so much. 

This is where we are. Six months from a somewhat recalcitrant PM contritely telling us that this time things will be different. That he'll listen tot he data and not be driven by dates. That there willbe only one direction of travel out of the pandemic. That lasted long. Now, as them, people's efforts and sacrifices are squandered, all to appease the most virulent element of the Tory party. The adult children who demand staff wear masks but scoff at the need (they voted for) to do likewise themselves. They are driving us all off a cliff because they are immature spoilt children.

Welcome to Freedom Day.