Yes we were, but it was obvious that Saint Boris was doing it extremely reluctantly. He was not the one who made the final decision. His body language made it clear he didn’t agree with a word of the script he was reciting. If he’d had his way, we would not have locked down at all, and in his own words, “let the bodies pile high”. Somewhere along the line, the message was drilled into him that lockdown was to be the status quo, the “new normal”. Even the mainstream media have admitted that Boris’s own behavioural team was used to persuade him to wear a mask: he was shown pictures of world leaders, all with masks, then a picture of himself, without one. I almost feel sorry for him never getting to have his big moment of “it is with great pleasure that I announce the end of all restrictions”: at that point it was all Ukraine. How convenient that came up just then to keep the public frightened of something; and also ironic that moments after it was a criminal offence to have your own family as guests, the government was pleading with the public to take in complete strangers. Then it was monkeypox, then it was “extreme heat”; the crises kept flowing on tap. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Because the media and the government are constantly telling us that disaster is just around the corner, it’s hard to tell what really is an emergency. To name but a few, Armageddon was predicted from the millennium bug, mobile phones frying brains, weapons of mass destruction, foot and mouth, paedophiles round every corner. The absurd measures of “sitting on benches and buying Easter eggs will kill granny” were not so much a cry of wolf, but an ear-splitting shriek of “the sky is falling down”. As for the WHO declaring an emergency, the word “emergency” is quickly becoming meaningless. It will be a long time before I believe in any “emergency” again, especially one pushed by the government.