I too have been baffled by how easily most people accept the QR codes as a gateway to public life.
I live on the continent and I see people blithely entering restaurants that are shut to me because of my ethics, and it shocks me that they are not aghast at where they have ended up.
I see people putting cloth masks on their little children and even babies and my heart sinks. These are not thinking adults. These are not critical citizens.
These are sheep.
Me too. When I explain to my pro-mandate friends the madness of having to show my health details to restaurant personnel they look at me like I am the insane one.
The damage covid has done to me is huge. I was not able to return to UK to see my old mother because the rules, and she needs my regular visits and stays – I ended up bringing her to USA in 2021, and she finally sold her house there as it looked like covid restrictions were for ever – so I no longer have a place there and may never return……It is like I lost my identity of being UK/USA. (She kept her money there, to buy later, but I begin to doubt it – the prices are insane, and she is now 96)
My savings (I have to keep loads of $ to build, as it is how I make my living) are being eaten by Covid Inflation, building material prices have doubled/tripled and building now is likely to be building into a property crash. Freedoms lost.
WHY did the people put up with it? It was like the Germans and Italians undergoing Mass Formation Psychosis. It did not have to be like this. NONE of this was any use, but the destruction is HUGE. A hundred Million third world people will starve from Western Lockdowns – Bangladesh lives off the garment industry – so how can thy eat as Westerners are being inflated to reduced spending….Remember, their food, coal, gas, inflation is as bad as ours – but their money will not cover it….. Inflation caused by Westerners sitting at home not producing but being paid. Lockdowns will end up killing hundreds of Millions!
Sharon Overy
2 years ago
We never got smartphones. Not due to any sort of prescience, but we couldn’t see the need for them in our own lives and therefore couldn’t justify the expense. That hasn’t changed, and I’m very glad of it.
Similarly, I remember when Facebook started and people were reportedly constantly updating their pages with the trivial and banal – what they had for breakfast, what music they were listening to, that they felt tired, and so on. I just couldn’t see the point – I had no urge to know such piffle and couldn’t imagine anyone wanting such ‘information’ about me. My husband also pointed out that, if a service is provided for free, then the user is the product. So we never joined any social media platforms either.
We obviously have internet connection (I’m posting this, after all!), but it’s at home and through a VPN.
As far as I can tell, we are more informed than the majority who rely on MSM and so-called ‘authoritative voices’ on social media and spend what seems an inordinate amount of time engrossed in a tiny screen anywhere and everywhere they go.
Get an old-school style of phone – you can call, text, take pictures still, but there’s no need to plug your head into the Matrix. You won’t be missing out on anything, and you’ll probably live a more productive and fulfilling life.
I have a computer generated home phone, it works exactly like a normal one (MagicJack, $30 a year unlimited, and pennies for international) Pick any number, change it when you wish….
ralph bell
2 years ago
Much needed article to highlight the mission creep of technology. So many people are now so wrapped up in themselves and their micro communities that we have lost the art of communication where we listen, observe and think about changes to our reality. Privacy is so precious and yet its largely already disappeared.
And the intellectual skills of the young are suffering. They are distractible, passive learners, with flickering attention spans and wayward recall. Aiming indoctrination at them is like leading a cat in circles with a laser pointer. Their neural pathways are being re-grooved with no rational assent whatsoever. It seems sad and vulgar to me, to start at the sound of a bell, like a Pavlovian dog or those in downstairs service. “Mission creep” is a good description. Perhaps there is something to the notion that excessive reliance on “labor-saving” devices begin to strip us of our dignity.
Geoff Cox
2 years ago
This is a huge problem and one that has been gathering pace for years. But we have to make a distinction (in theory at least) between private surveillance, by which I mean Google, Sainsburys et al, and public ie the Government, local authorities, the police and other agencies.
With the former, we, the public effectively choose to participate and then choose again if we want to buy the products targeted at us. We would probably also have the law on our side in a David v Goliath court case.
But there is no choice about public surveillance and this is by far the bigger threat. You only need to watch any of hundreds of dystopian sci-fi films to see what is coming at us. Total surveillance and the ability for a global government to introduce their fashionable and total solutions is just around the corner. What can possibly go wrong?
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
A sheep pondering on sheephood…..
Well as a non-sheep I can tell you you all are losers, sold out for baubles.
I have never have had a cell phone, I refuse to have that parasite stuck onto me like some psychic lamprey.
I refused the vax – I refused the mask no matter how much people glared F**K OFF with your telling me what to do has always been my way. I have taken many a beating and hard time, a great many hard times, but I just do not get you all sheep being driven about. I have almost always been self employed – why would I work for someone? In my forms of self employment I never even would have customers, I do not want some customer telling me what to do – I make things, or catch things, or such – then sell them mostly. Last few decades for a living I build a house from the ground up over a year or so, and sell it – no customers…no boss…
I never am online without a VPN, mostly use a canvas blocker, use aliases, wipe my computer every time I leave a session. It is ascetics really. When you get undressed for bed – don’t you shut the curtains first? Same as not having a phone, or a car with a GPS, or whatever….
In my work – construction in the Deep South USA Not one guy I know in construction has had the vax I think – I don’t ask – but in conversation we all feel the same about it – F You is the usual attitude on being told to vax or mask –
I remember London, where I coma from a long time ago – how it was. How everything was controlled and everyone was a sheep mostly – when I dropped out of school I hit the road, I just was not made for that kind of place, – I just do not get you sheep – baaaa
I used to fish in the ‘Slough Cut’ right by the ICI plant – the smell of chemicals very strong, but the water totally clear. But I lived further in the city – but covered the entire area on my bicycle from young – and was always in the West end running around – the museums were a big hangout, and the penny arcades of Piccadilly Circus – I even used to fish in Hyde Park and the Serpentine – I ran about West London like a feral animal. Mad Bess woods in Northwood and Ruislip (Ruislip Lido) and ‘The Grand Union Canal, were where I spent a great many days – and Uxbridge was a hangout, I even had tea with Screaming Lord Sutch with him and his mother in Pinner, and vaguely knew a couple of the Nomad Hells Angles (Johnny Nomad) ( in the Movie Tommy) and one of ‘The Who’ stole an Afghani Vest I loaned to one of their Groupies. ….. Old days…
I don’t draw my bedroom curtains when I get undressed for anyrthing. My view is looking over the roofs of the houses on the other side of the road. My mobile (cell)phone, indispensable in my last ‘job’ is now mostly switched off. The last 12 years of my working life I drove a truck (one of my own) so I didn’t have a big boss just lots of little ones. They are usually called clients. I have, since the start of the pandemic, worn a mask to go into a shop – its part of my plan to live in the backround. At one stage I would hop onto my eTrike and ride 17 miles, mostly on back roads and bridleways (greenlanes) to visit my boat. Who would suspect that the greybeard on a Trike (battery concealed) would be crossing borough boundaries (big fineable). I may look like one of your sheeples but I am not and just like many others – just keeping my powder dry while maintaining the necessities of life.
Madly expensive too. Why does anyone buy anything from Apple, with their 85 quid cables? And as for the gratingly extraverted hipster children who work there thinking they can call you by your first name. Stupid terds.
Alan Hawkes
2 years ago
“… we lack a shared framework of morality …”
That’s what you get following an Enlightenment that discards notions of divine will as the ultimate arbiter. Morality cannot be rationally proven as 2+2=4 can be: so “progressive “ politics becomes increasingly shouty, as a substitute for debate.
I suspect that the lack of a shared framework of morality has more to do with multiculturalism than the inability of atheists to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Moreover, as myself an atheist and a former philosopher, I can think of at least two systems, viz. deontologism and consequentialism, capable of anchoring a non-deistic ethic.
Incidentally, please don’t take this as my being in any way anti-religion. I most certainly am not. I think religion has by-and-large a beneficial impact on our lives, and respect faith even though I don’t have it myself.
D Hockley
2 years ago
´´How Covid stole our privacy´´.
Title should read: How the gutless plebs of the West surrendered democracy to the Neo-facsism of BIG TECH
Last edited 2 years ago by D Hockley
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
Curse of the unwashed IT beardie, in his Deff Leppard T shirt…
I know – once it was the guy in the Viking robes and sword and shield, now…..
Will Cummings
2 years ago
Thankfully, the Universe is a very, very large place. It is much larger than the internet and you don’t need an iPhone to access it.
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
I have Wuhan Flu at the moment. With its salient features of depersonalisation and irritability, it strongly resembles a cannabis hangover and I want to be shot of it, although it’s a marked improvement on the tooth ache which was plaguing me until a couple of weeks ago – I haven’t needed any paracetamol or ibuprofen. My point in posting is that I very much regret notifying the authorities of my indisposition, and the subsequent mini-deluge of emails and texts from them has prompted my deletion of the NHS Wuhan Flu app. I am unlikely to be travelling abroad until July’s Dutch cricket tour, so although I am isolating I will try to be as uncooperative as possible until then.
I too have been baffled by how easily most people accept the QR codes as a gateway to public life.
I live on the continent and I see people blithely entering restaurants that are shut to me because of my ethics, and it shocks me that they are not aghast at where they have ended up.
I see people putting cloth masks on their little children and even babies and my heart sinks. These are not thinking adults. These are not critical citizens.
These are sheep.
They are the sheeple, indeed
Me too. When I explain to my pro-mandate friends the madness of having to show my health details to restaurant personnel they look at me like I am the insane one.
The damage covid has done to me is huge. I was not able to return to UK to see my old mother because the rules, and she needs my regular visits and stays – I ended up bringing her to USA in 2021, and she finally sold her house there as it looked like covid restrictions were for ever – so I no longer have a place there and may never return……It is like I lost my identity of being UK/USA. (She kept her money there, to buy later, but I begin to doubt it – the prices are insane, and she is now 96)
My savings (I have to keep loads of $ to build, as it is how I make my living) are being eaten by Covid Inflation, building material prices have doubled/tripled and building now is likely to be building into a property crash. Freedoms lost.
WHY did the people put up with it? It was like the Germans and Italians undergoing Mass Formation Psychosis. It did not have to be like this. NONE of this was any use, but the destruction is HUGE. A hundred Million third world people will starve from Western Lockdowns – Bangladesh lives off the garment industry – so how can thy eat as Westerners are being inflated to reduced spending….Remember, their food, coal, gas, inflation is as bad as ours – but their money will not cover it….. Inflation caused by Westerners sitting at home not producing but being paid. Lockdowns will end up killing hundreds of Millions!
We never got smartphones. Not due to any sort of prescience, but we couldn’t see the need for them in our own lives and therefore couldn’t justify the expense. That hasn’t changed, and I’m very glad of it.
Similarly, I remember when Facebook started and people were reportedly constantly updating their pages with the trivial and banal – what they had for breakfast, what music they were listening to, that they felt tired, and so on. I just couldn’t see the point – I had no urge to know such piffle and couldn’t imagine anyone wanting such ‘information’ about me. My husband also pointed out that, if a service is provided for free, then the user is the product. So we never joined any social media platforms either.
We obviously have internet connection (I’m posting this, after all!), but it’s at home and through a VPN.
As far as I can tell, we are more informed than the majority who rely on MSM and so-called ‘authoritative voices’ on social media and spend what seems an inordinate amount of time engrossed in a tiny screen anywhere and everywhere they go.
Get an old-school style of phone – you can call, text, take pictures still, but there’s no need to plug your head into the Matrix. You won’t be missing out on anything, and you’ll probably live a more productive and fulfilling life.
I have a computer generated home phone, it works exactly like a normal one (MagicJack, $30 a year unlimited, and pennies for international) Pick any number, change it when you wish….
Much needed article to highlight the mission creep of technology. So many people are now so wrapped up in themselves and their micro communities that we have lost the art of communication where we listen, observe and think about changes to our reality. Privacy is so precious and yet its largely already disappeared.
And the intellectual skills of the young are suffering. They are distractible, passive learners, with flickering attention spans and wayward recall. Aiming indoctrination at them is like leading a cat in circles with a laser pointer. Their neural pathways are being re-grooved with no rational assent whatsoever. It seems sad and vulgar to me, to start at the sound of a bell, like a Pavlovian dog or those in downstairs service. “Mission creep” is a good description. Perhaps there is something to the notion that excessive reliance on “labor-saving” devices begin to strip us of our dignity.
This is a huge problem and one that has been gathering pace for years. But we have to make a distinction (in theory at least) between private surveillance, by which I mean Google, Sainsburys et al, and public ie the Government, local authorities, the police and other agencies.
With the former, we, the public effectively choose to participate and then choose again if we want to buy the products targeted at us. We would probably also have the law on our side in a David v Goliath court case.
But there is no choice about public surveillance and this is by far the bigger threat. You only need to watch any of hundreds of dystopian sci-fi films to see what is coming at us. Total surveillance and the ability for a global government to introduce their fashionable and total solutions is just around the corner. What can possibly go wrong?
A sheep pondering on sheephood…..
Well as a non-sheep I can tell you you all are losers, sold out for baubles.
I have never have had a cell phone, I refuse to have that parasite stuck onto me like some psychic lamprey.
I refused the vax – I refused the mask no matter how much people glared F**K OFF with your telling me what to do has always been my way. I have taken many a beating and hard time, a great many hard times, but I just do not get you all sheep being driven about. I have almost always been self employed – why would I work for someone? In my forms of self employment I never even would have customers, I do not want some customer telling me what to do – I make things, or catch things, or such – then sell them mostly. Last few decades for a living I build a house from the ground up over a year or so, and sell it – no customers…no boss…
I never am online without a VPN, mostly use a canvas blocker, use aliases, wipe my computer every time I leave a session. It is ascetics really. When you get undressed for bed – don’t you shut the curtains first? Same as not having a phone, or a car with a GPS, or whatever….
In my work – construction in the Deep South USA Not one guy I know in construction has had the vax I think – I don’t ask – but in conversation we all feel the same about it – F You is the usual attitude on being told to vax or mask –
I remember London, where I coma from a long time ago – how it was. How everything was controlled and everyone was a sheep mostly – when I dropped out of school I hit the road, I just was not made for that kind of place, – I just do not get you sheep – baaaa
I seem to recall you spent sometime in Slough?
That must account for his present behaviour!
I used to fish in the ‘Slough Cut’ right by the ICI plant – the smell of chemicals very strong, but the water totally clear. But I lived further in the city – but covered the entire area on my bicycle from young – and was always in the West end running around – the museums were a big hangout, and the penny arcades of Piccadilly Circus – I even used to fish in Hyde Park and the Serpentine – I ran about West London like a feral animal. Mad Bess woods in Northwood and Ruislip (Ruislip Lido) and ‘The Grand Union Canal, were where I spent a great many days – and Uxbridge was a hangout, I even had tea with Screaming Lord Sutch with him and his mother in Pinner, and vaguely knew a couple of the Nomad Hells Angles (Johnny Nomad) ( in the Movie Tommy) and one of ‘The Who’ stole an Afghani Vest I loaned to one of their Groupies. ….. Old days…
I don’t draw my bedroom curtains when I get undressed for anyrthing. My view is looking over the roofs of the houses on the other side of the road. My mobile (cell)phone, indispensable in my last ‘job’ is now mostly switched off. The last 12 years of my working life I drove a truck (one of my own) so I didn’t have a big boss just lots of little ones. They are usually called clients. I have, since the start of the pandemic, worn a mask to go into a shop – its part of my plan to live in the backround. At one stage I would hop onto my eTrike and ride 17 miles, mostly on back roads and bridleways (greenlanes) to visit my boat. Who would suspect that the greybeard on a Trike (battery concealed) would be crossing borough boundaries (big fineable). I may look like one of your sheeples but I am not and just like many others – just keeping my powder dry while maintaining the necessities of life.
Yes, we do get that you are very superior to us normal people – but you really don’t need to tell us at such length, so often.
…
Why on earth do you own an Apple phone? Do you hate Congolese children?
Madly expensive too. Why does anyone buy anything from Apple, with their 85 quid cables? And as for the gratingly extraverted hipster children who work there thinking they can call you by your first name. Stupid terds.
“… we lack a shared framework of morality …”
That’s what you get following an Enlightenment that discards notions of divine will as the ultimate arbiter. Morality cannot be rationally proven as 2+2=4 can be: so “progressive “ politics becomes increasingly shouty, as a substitute for debate.
I suspect that the lack of a shared framework of morality has more to do with multiculturalism than the inability of atheists to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Moreover, as myself an atheist and a former philosopher, I can think of at least two systems, viz. deontologism and consequentialism, capable of anchoring a non-deistic ethic.
Incidentally, please don’t take this as my being in any way anti-religion. I most certainly am not. I think religion has by-and-large a beneficial impact on our lives, and respect faith even though I don’t have it myself.
´´How Covid stole our privacy´´.
Title should read: How the gutless plebs of the West surrendered democracy to the Neo-facsism of BIG TECH
Curse of the unwashed IT beardie, in his Deff Leppard T shirt…
I know – once it was the guy in the Viking robes and sword and shield, now…..
Thankfully, the Universe is a very, very large place. It is much larger than the internet and you don’t need an iPhone to access it.
I have Wuhan Flu at the moment. With its salient features of depersonalisation and irritability, it strongly resembles a cannabis hangover and I want to be shot of it, although it’s a marked improvement on the tooth ache which was plaguing me until a couple of weeks ago – I haven’t needed any paracetamol or ibuprofen. My point in posting is that I very much regret notifying the authorities of my indisposition, and the subsequent mini-deluge of emails and texts from them has prompted my deletion of the NHS Wuhan Flu app. I am unlikely to be travelling abroad until July’s Dutch cricket tour, so although I am isolating I will try to be as uncooperative as possible until then.