Wow! That was bad. He said nothing and everything. So nothing. Everyone behaves according to their incentives. Who is paying him and why. I am so tired of these no risk to their income dudes telling you g kids to suck it up when they are living in luxury.

It seems like we are living under Government by Diktat, started by Blair. Pronouncement followed by no interest in implementation. Even worse to public confidence in “government” is where government has no interest whatsoever in abiding by the law. Why follow the law when the government has no respect for it?
One example here is the law on wearing face coverings on public transport. Quite simply the law states that it is compulsory (for those who are not exempted) for people who are on a train, or boarding a train or in a “any transport hub, or any part of a transport hub, which is indoors.” Yet, announcements every 10 minutes on trains, on platforms now state that it is compulsory to wear face coverings on trains and in stations (blanket statement). A ticket office is indoors, a station like Kings Cross is indoors, but an open platform is not. I hear on good authority that the train operating companies have been forced by the Department for Transport to be far stricter than the law permits.
What is worse, these are all statutory instruments, which means they’ve been passed by government without the usual parliamentary control – yet the wheels of government cannot even abide by the letter of these.
After Brexit I assume people will soon realise that it wasn’t really Brussels that restricted freedoms and created all the heavy-handed bureaucracy but London – so long live Lexit.

The overbearing, directionless, silly efforts to control is not confined to the British government. It is evident in many Western countries. I wonder to what extent they are pressurized to ‘take action’ by the hysteria of the mass media.

A silly article. Media has caused endless panic and ignorance. In Canada more of the same. Only 2,000 people have died of covid-19 outside care homes in a population of 37 million. Far more have died of cancer and heart disease yet the so called medical experts ( a clueless lot) and politicians behave like fascists. Also mental illnesses have increased. Serious questions need to be asked about the poor behaviour of the medical profession.

“the preparedness of citizens to help each other” I and others like me call this ‘Socialism’ but, whatever you call it is not relevant. Nonetheless, if you continue to vote for parties who are led by privileged racist buffoons with the emotional intelligence of a 13-year old, what do you expect will happen? Certainly nothing rational or values based. One thing we all can do is exempt ourselves from mask use. Just go to the gov.uk website and do it. Accordng to Carl Heneghan, Oxford Professor of Evidence-based Medicine, the only study relating to respiratory disease says masks harbour moisture, mucus and germs. Exempt yourself now on the grounds that mask-wearing is potentially dangerous and “causes you severe distress”.

Time travel is certainly a valid metaphor. We do it all the time reading history and science fiction, generally with a view to clarifying “who done what”, and “what is waiting for us”. These quests are thence mystery plots. And the hero is everyman.

Commercial writing, mass market stuff, is pitched to adolescent males and females. The former’s libido wallows in power fantasies, the latter, romance. Children, by definition, are unfinished beings, with unformed critical faculties, for whom the preternatural, the inchoate and magical are for them plausible templates for the world they inhabit.

The unintended consequences of the pointless Lockdown (see the Sweden model) and enforcing masks after 3 months of saying they were also pointless are starting to emerge. It has been such a c**k up that a conspiracy would at least give it all some purpose. Here is something that is so 2020 AND looks like a conspiracy AND looks like a Bond villain’s evil plan BUT is actually real – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xO...

I enjoyed reading this so much that I went on to read Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.” Then back to re-read your essay, this time slowly and thinking about my own feelings and memories about the seasons. Maybe I inhabit the seasons without thinking about what I’m experiencing. I resolve to do better.

I’m surprised that anyone still thinks what Govt claims to be trying to do is what it’s knowingly actually doing. I see the former as “we’ll get through this” while the latter appears to be as stupid a series of pointless threats then restrictions as it’s possible to contrive.
In other words, it’s way too prolonged & damaging to have been a series of errors. There is a subtext we’re not being told.