I do not often watch television but when I moved to Princetown, I began watching the BBC evening news at six o’clock and over the past months, one small segment of the bulletin has never failed to raise my blood pressure, sometimes to the point of explosion.

I refer of course to those interminable Covid statistics released daily by the government. Firstly they announce the number of ‘new’ cases. They actually mean, the number of positive tests but even more annoying than that little falsehood is the number of deaths that are announced as being from the Coronabug. I am sorry but these figures are blatant lies, sponsored by Bunter J, Mathew ruddy Hancock and the scientific goons who are ruling us all so badly at the moment.

Anyone who has died and has coincidentally tested positive for the virus is recorded as dying from it. Because people already on their last gasps with cancer, organ failure, advanced dementia – you name it – are recorded as victims of coronavirus if they have tested positive within the preceding twenty eight days. Yet the cause of death in such cases has clearly little, if anything to do with the virus.

To my mind, this is sheer, unadulterated madness and slanted in this manner so as to terrify the British public into obeying the draconian ‘laws’ being promulgated by Bunter and his cronies. You might as well say they died of a cold if they happened to have one on top of whatever was actually killing them. Even road accident casualties who subsequently died of terrible injuries are recorded as coronavirus deaths if coronabug blood tests prove positive.

‘Never mind the catastrophic brain damage caused by being hit by that truck, Old Chap. Got the virus too? Sorry, that is what has put paid to you and that is bloody official!’ This has been annoying me – and raising my blood pressure to dangerous levels – for months and I have often walked out swearing on the news when this particular segment comes on.

How long will it be I wonder before Covid becomes a viable defence against a murder charge, on the grounds that the victim tested positive for the bug three weeks before he or she was chopped. Sound a bit far fetched I know but I would not bet against anything in this time of madness – government inspired madness at that.

And this week the Office for National Statistics came through, completely agreeing with me. They revealed that almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths were of people who actually did not die of the disease. 

Latest analysis shows that twenty three percent of registered ‘coronavirus deaths’ were in fact people who died ‘with’ the infection rather than ‘from’ it. Other re-evaluated statistics show that daily death figures for April are being wildly exaggerated.

Britain has had no more than twenty eight deaths per day since the beginning of this month, even though the Government put the figure as high as sixty a day. That is because their daily update is based on the number of deaths reported in the last twenty four hours – that often includes cases from days or even weeks previously.

Meanwhile, why have we only ever been given daily figures for hospital admissions and deaths? Why not figures for people who have recovered from Covid and been discharged? It is always an absurdly one-sided presentation.

In my humble opinion there is only one reason for this official lying. It is because Bunter J’s – and remember the man has a history of proven lies to his name – Government, with the connivance of the BBC in particular want to scare us into meek compliance with the tyranny of their lockdown measures.

The sad thing is that it has worked. What on earth has happened to the strength and spirit that brough this country and its allies through two world wars. Gone for ever I am afraid.

What for you has been the most noteworthy event of the past week? The Cameron lobbying ruckus over his mate Les – or is it Lex? – Greensill? The eulogies to the Duke of Edinburgh? Russia beating war drums in Ukraine?

For some of us dotty supporters of ‘the summer game’ all these pale into insignificance alongside the pronouncement that when English cricket’s new-fangled and idiotic competition, ‘The Hundred’ starts, the word ‘wicket’ is to be replaced by ‘out’ and batsmen will become batters – the latter term is insidiously prevalent among many commentators already I am afraid and it sounds horrible to those of us who have grown up with the game. Many people from the Great and the Good to poor old Simon Heffer have already commented on the Americanisation of this wonderful game of ours and indeed, not since Dennis Lillee, the Australian fast bowler walked to the wicket (can I still use that word I wonder?) in 1979 carrying an aluminium bat, has cricket known such a furore.

Perhaps all we cricket lovers should rise above it and treat The Hundred with the disdain it deserves.

After all, it is simply not cricket.

So there!

As a boy, I was encouraged to study hard – I did not – and go to university as it would serve me well later in life. I turned down that option and over the years, have occasionally – and only very occasionally – regretted that choice. Universities in those days were for those elite students who earned the right to attend but all that seems to have been forgotten in the rush by modern academics to be politically correct.

A few decades ago I read a book by Sir Michael Dummett who had just retired as the professor of logic at Oxford University. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was designed to assist students in expressing themselves when answering questions.

Sir Michael was worried because a survey had shown that nearly half of university vice-chancellors were so concerned about their students’ literacy, they had decided to introduce special lessons to help them express themselves more clearly. These, remember, were supposed to be the brightest and best young people this country has to offer.

Today’s vice-chancellors and professors are worried about the same thing, but their response has been rather different. Instead of helping the written language these academic turnips have decided that if a student cannot spell or use punctuation accurately or write basic, simple, reasonably grammatical English, they should not worry about it.  They won’t lose any marks in their exams because tutors are being told to adopt a policy called ‘inclusive assessments.’

The reason for this madness is that these -people who are responsible for fitting young people out for life are afraid that insisting on students expressing themselves in clear English could be viewed as ‘homogenous North European, white, male, elite.’

Hull University has said it is dropping the requirement for a high level of technical proficiency in written and spoken English in some subjects, in order to ‘challenge the status quo.’

What politically correct garbage is this? They should be encouraging the status quo, not challenging it.

Other universities adopting similar policies include the University of the Arts in London, which has issued guidelines telling staff they should ‘actively accept spelling, grammar or other language mistakes that do not significantly impede communication unless the brief states that formally accurate language is a requirement.’

And at Worcester University, academics have been told that if spelling, grammar and punctuation are not ‘central to the assessment criteria,’ students should be judged only on their ideas and knowledge of the subject.

In simple English (a bad pun in the circumstances) what it means is the universities who have adopted these policies will no longer be doing what universities have done since the Middle Ages. They will not be levelling up, setting high standards and enabling their students to achieve them. They will be dumbing down.

At first glance, this might seem eminently justifiable. They want to narrow the gap between white students from more privileged backgrounds, and black, Asian and minority ethnic students who may not have had their advantages. Or students from poorly performing schools. Those who are more likely to drop out of university than the ‘homogenous North European, white, male, elite.’

Hull University said that it would ‘encourage students to develop a more authentic academic voice, a voice that can communicate complex ideas with rigour and integrity – that celebrates, rather than obscures, their particular background or characteristics.’

It warns tutors against ‘imposing your own idea of “correct English” on student work.’

But it takes about thirty seconds to realise that whatever language you use to express it, this is Grade A nonsense that will achieve the opposite. And what in heaven’s name is ‘your own idea’ of correct English? We get a clue to that from Nottingham Trent University, which wants their academics to give a ‘clear message about whether spelling and grammar are considered important’ when they are setting an essay.

Perhaps I can save them the trouble. They are not just ‘important.’ They are ruddy vital dammit!

You may have noticed one simple word missing from Nottingham’s little list of desirable qualities and that is clarity. That is why we have language. We need it to communicate and every language has its own spelling, punctuation and grammar. The French who take so much flak from the English are proud of theirs and will brook on interference in how things are written or pronounced.

If there really is a crisis in our universities we might, perhaps, trace it back to the early Sixties – the time when I would have been attending university had I been so inclined. Trendy self-styled ‘educationists’ ruled that teaching children the rules of grammar was imprisoning them in linguistic jails run by white males.

The truth, as we now know turned out to be the opposite. We are not imprisoned by grammar. We are liberated by it. Clarity is the enemy of ambiguity and ambiguity is the friend of every politician who has ever tried to pull a fast one on an unsuspecting public.

Clarity of communication – enabled by grammar – empowers us. Which takes us back to the woke fanatics who are seeking to obliterate the modern world with their own approach to empowerment.

Thankfully, some academics are pushing back against this nonsense. Professor Frank Furedi, of the University of Kent, believes that ‘inclusive assessment’ is an instrument of social engineering that violates the norms of academic education.

He says: ‘Lowering standards of assessment lowers expectation of what students should achieve. Worse, normalisation of illiteracy flatters instead of educates students.’

How right he is.

Alan Smithers, the professor of education at Buckingham University, said that universities were under pressure from the government to close attainment gaps, but not requiring a high standard of written English undermined academic integrity.

He too is undeniably and obviously correct. The approach to students who struggle with expressing themselves clearly is not to say it does not matter. It is to help them. Virtue signalling is not only pointless, it is ruddy counter-productive and helps nobody, particularly not the affected student.

You might say we hear non-standard English spoken all the time. Teenagers have their own lexicon of words that are unintelligible to adults of my generation and probably the generation after mine. But that does not really matter. Eventually they grow out of it.

But universities are supposed to impart knowledge dammit! That is the whole point of them. We have a universal language. It is called English and it’s been pretty successful for a very long time. It would be a grave mistake to abandon it to the ‘woke’ and ultimately meaningless notion of ‘inclusive assessment.’

We rely on universities for the new ideas, theories and analyses that will help us create a better world – and they need to be articulated with clarity and precision. We need, in every sense, to be able to speak the same language.

I can’t pretend to be impartial on this topic. I have used words all my life and have twenty reasonably successful books to my name but that is because I was forced to learn basic grammar before I left school on my seventeenth birthday.

Besides, language is fun. We have all heard examples of where sentences have gone horribly wrong. Try these for size and they were culled from the saintly Radio 4 news bulletins: ‘For the second time in six months, a prisoner has died at Durham jail after hanging himself in his cell’. . . ‘A suicide bomber has struck again in Jerusalem.’

I will bet you smiled on reading that.

I wonder if the person who nailed this notice on the wall of a public building paused to reflect. It read: ‘Toilets out of use. Please use floor below.’ Or a hospital parking notice: ‘Thieves operate in this car park.’

Inevitably, those of us who defend grammar are regarded as humourless sticklers with no imagination, who will always mourn the passing of Shakespeare. To me Billy the Bard was a great story teller but I did not enjoy him much.

Nor do I believe that every rule must be obeyed and that splitting an infinitive should be made a capital crime. ‘To boldly go’ is ungrammatical but fine. ‘Boldly to go’ is stupid.

And I have limitless admiration for the young man from rural Mississippi who won a scholarship to Harvard. On his first day, he approached a couple of cashmere-clad young men leaning elegantly against a wall.

‘Hey y’all . . . can you tell me where the library’s at?’

The young men smiled smugly and one said: ‘At Harvard we tend not to end sentences with prepositions.’

He considered for a moment and then: ‘OK . . . can you tell me where the library’s at Fuckface?’

Hard to fault his grammar.

It seems a long time since I last ‘ranted’ but after my second vaccination last Saturday, I descended into a deep fog of weariness wherein all I wanted was sleep and more sleep. Thankfully that seems to have lifted somewhat and I feel almost human today.

But – and it is yet another pun I am afraid – I really have missed the boat. It seems that NHS patients in Nottingham are being prescribed paddleboarding sessions to improve their health.

How daft is that? Britain may be four hundred trillion pounds in debt, but you can always rely on the public sector – particularly the NHS to come up with imaginative new ways of wasting money. An alliance of taxpayer-funded bodies, including the Arts Council and Natural England, are bunging GPs Fifty thousand quid to spend on outdoor activities, such as canoeing and paddleboarding on the Nottingham and Beeston Canal. 

Is it any wonder we are up the creek without a paddle?

Sorry – perhaps more sleep is required after all.

It was once one of the world’s leading centres of learning it seems to have lost its focus and given way to left wing hysteria. Now we learn that the University of Oxford is considering scrapping sheet music for being ‘too colonial’ after staff raised concerns about the ‘complicity in white supremacy’ in music curriculums.

No I am not trying out a belated April Fool joke; this really is happening in modern Britain.

Professors are set to reform their music courses to move away from the classic repertoire, which includes the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, university staff arguing that the current curriculum focuses on ‘white European music from the slave period.’

It claimed that teaching musical notation had ‘not shaken off its connection to its colonial past’ and would be ‘a slap in the face’ to some students. And it added that musical skills should no longer be compulsory because the current repertoire’s focus on ‘white European music’ causes ‘students of colour great distress.’ It is thought that music writing will also be reformed to be more inclusive.

Does that mean Rap, Grunge and Heavy Metal music being part of the future syllabus I wonder?

Thankfully, the proposals have upset some faculty members who argued that it was unfair to accuse those teaching music from before 1900 of being concerned with just ‘white.’

All this nonsense comes after one Oxford college removed the name of an 18th-century slave trader from its main library earlier this year – but has defied calls to take down his statue.

All Souls College reviewed its link to Christopher Codrington, a Barbados-born colonial governor, in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter movement. The former college fellow who died in 1710 bequeathed £10,000 ( a huge amount at the time) to the library which has since been unofficially known as the Codrington Library. 

A marble statue by Edward Cheere of the benefactor has been standing in the library for centuries and the college says it has no plans to take it down despite the clamour from students.

The All Souls governing body said: ‘Rather than seek to remove it the College will investigate further forms of memorialisation and contextualisation within the library, which will draw attention to the presence of enslaved people on the Codrington plantations, and will express the College’s abhorrence of slavery.’

Come on please; Codrington turned his toes up over three hundred years ago!

The All Souls review also found that Codrington’s wealth ‘derived largely from his family’s activities in the West Indies, where they owned plantations worked by enslaved people of African descent.’ They do not bother to mention that these ‘enslaved people’ were for the most part sold to traders by their Chiefs or even their family and friends.

The college claims it has undertaken a number of measures to address the colonial legacy, including erecting a memorial plaque in memory of those who worked on the Caribbean plantations. 

And let’s look briefly at Museums. As a boy I always enjoyed these establishments and I think I learned a great deal from the but now the International Committee Of Museums have come up with a new definition that firstly, males little colloquial sense, but secondly would see to mean that museums are to be rigorously checked to ensure that they comply with the politically correct mores of a deluded modern generation.

Let me quote from the latest announcement from this body of eminent men and women – at least I suppose they must be eminent in their own fields, even if it appears they can only write gibberish.

Across the world ICOM provides a common framework for museums, a forum for professional discussions and a platform for questioning and celebrating heritage and collections in museums and cultural institutions. A shared definition of the museum serves as the backbone for ICOM as a global organisation.

The Executive Board selected the below as a new alternative museum definition for a vote to be included in the ICOM Statutes instead of the current museum definition at ICOM’s next Extraordinary General Assembly (EGA), which will take place on 7 September 2019, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Kyoto International Conference Center (ICC Kyoto) in Kyoto, Japan:

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.

Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.

I have spent the last four decades using words as my trade tools but despite reading and re reading that claptrap a number of times, I do not understand what it means except that it convinces me that I will never set foot in a museum again.

Will nobody in authority and academia take a stand against the arrant nonsense with which we are being spoon fed by the left wing zealots before it is too late and the world as we know it disappears up its own backside?

As we go into yet another of these now totally useless seasonal time changes, I find myself increasingly disturbed by the ever increasing and all pervasive power of what is laughingly called ‘social media.’

What on earth is social about it? Yes, I have a Facebook page and an Instagram account but I rarely resort to either and I feel that they pose an incredible threat to the rights and safety of individuals. Social media acts as judge, jury and executioner usually totally without evidence. With a few short clicks, a reputation can be destroyed – sometimes even a life is lost.

It was a social media campaign last year that ultimately led to the beheading of Samuel Paty, a teacher in Paris. His killer, a young Chechen Muslim called Abdullakh Anzorov had been angered by online posts from a parent at the school where Paty taught, denouncing him for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a lesson on free speech.

The parent, the father of a girl in Paty’s class published the teacher’s name and the address of the school on Facebook and YouTube, demanding the teacher’s sacking and urging his followers to act.

Only later did it emerge that the girl had lied to her father about the whole incident. She was not even in class that day, having been suspended for truancy. Thus the lies of a troubled thirteen year old passed on by her father cost a man his life.

That is surely a sad reflection on society and it is hardly surprising that the teacher at Batley Grammar in Yorkshire, who earlier last week was suspended following accusations of Islamophobia, has reportedly gone into hiding with his wife and children.

Not only did the school’s headmaster make things worse by offering an ‘unequivocal apology’ before any sort of sensible investigation had taken place (has the world ever experienced such an outburst of useless and meaningless apologies?) the similarities with the Paty case are also pretty terrifying.

Both centre around the use of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in lessons, although in this case it was part of a Religious Education class and both have led to a climate of intimidation fuelled by dangerous rhetoric in social media circles.

The man leading this particular hate campaign, Mohammad Sajad Hussain (who runs a charity called Purpose of Life, allegedly dedicated to community harmony) called the decision to illustrate the nature of blasphemy in the context of an RE lesson with the cartoon ‘clearly sadistic’ and ‘terrorism to Islam.’

Surely these are seditious words in themselves and should be investigated by the cops? I am not holding my breath!

Hussein published his accusations, together with the teacher’s name and the address of the school on Twitter before doing the rounds of the TV and radio studios repeating his allegations. Such behaviour surely should not be encouraged by any media outlets as it is completely disproportionate to any alleged offence. Yet they seem all too keen to encourage the rantings of anyone wanting to spread hatred.

By acting in this way – and by being allowed to do so – Hussain has potentially exposed this teacher to serious danger without himself being subject to a shred of accountability. There ought to be a law against it and there is, but it is selective and does not apply to everyone.

It’s only if you happen to possess the necessary ‘protected characteristics’ such as disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity that being accused of wrongdoing without any evidence can be called a ‘hate crime.’ For me as a heterosexual white male without disabilities of any sort, there is no recourse to authority should I feel ‘hated.’

The law, in this respect, is discriminatory in favour of certain groups of people. These obviously do not include ‘burly Yorkshire lads’ as this teacher has been described. But the man was doing his job dammit!  He was explaining to a classroom the truth about religion and prejudice? He was challenging young minds to think independently and intelligently about important issues? Yet he is now being pilloried by the current hysterical climate of loathing and victimhood so prevalent on social media and exposed with family to all sorts of risks – just because he does not happen to have the same beliefs as his accuser.

I am no fan of Ricky Gervais but perhaps he put it best when he said that everyone has a right to believe what they want to and everyone else has the right to find it ridiculous.

That is the fundamental principle of free speech and it should apply in all British institutions – especially schools. Otherwise the madness will spread, good teachers will look for other careers and ultimately it is the children who will suffer.

Reading about the Kill the Bill protests in Bristol last Friday, I could not hep thinking that the protesters were pretty stupid. If there is one thing guaranteed to banish any iota of sympathy the British public might have for their alleged cause, it is violence against defenceless animals. Throwing fireworks at horses is pretty horrible and probably a real measure of the kind of idiots they are. For all that, I have not read of any politician – even the Labour firebrands – coming out to condemn them and even the PETA mob and other animal rights groups are ominously silent.

Does everyone in this soggy little island like living in fear of giving offence I wonder?

Although my natural cynicism, engendered by many years of police work has undoubtedly increased over the past year of lockdown, I encountered a glimmer of hope this week.

I was talking (quite legally I assure you) to a young Mother who is married to a very adventurous man who among other things is a mountaineer. They have two children, aged if I remember correctly five and seven. Amy proudly showed me a video clip taken when her husband was sorting out his climbing ropes. He had hung them from a large tree in their garden and the children were taking turns in climbing up, fitting themselves into the safety harness and launching themselves into space.

What a boost to my spirits that was. I smiled at the squeals of joy from the mites and was almost surprised to see young children actually having fun. Potentially dangerous fun I suppose but fun that can only boost their confidence in life and make them into really good people.

When I was a child, my parents encouraged me to walk alone in the African bush despite the profusion of dangerous wild animals that were around. I learned a lot from my early wanderings and those lessons have kept me alive on many occasions since then.

Nowadays my enlightened parents would probably have been prosecuted for child cruelty and I would have been taken into care. Modern parents have a vicious tightrope to walk when raising their children and for me it was heart-warming to see the evidence of a modern couple who are prepared to encourage a little bit of risk in the cause of actual living.

I know it is a nasty, dangerous world but if we take freedom and fun away from the very young, we are going to make it an ever nastier one in the future.

At the moment I am writing a sort of autobiography, provisionally entitled Reflections of an Elephant Man. It started out as a collection of bushveld stories but has meandered a bit to explore various parts of my life.

These include early years as a Cotswold copper in Gloucestershire before returning home to Rhodesia and joining the BSAP. Although I was generally a wee bit bored when serving as a British Bobby, I was proud to have been part of a fine, disciplined and largely honest group of men and women.

Events of the past, Johnson-inspired year have stripped that pride from me I am afraid. Only this week that same Gloucestershire Constabulary send two officers around late at night to issue an official warning to an eighty two year old lady, living in a sheltered housing complex. Her ‘crime’ was to drink tea with three of her neighbours on their communal lawn.

The lady’s daughter, Mrs McGovern – who declined to name her mother in order to protect her from repercussions – said she had enjoyed a socially distanced cup of afternoon tea with three other residents from her complex in Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire on 9^th March. She added: ‘I cannot believe the police travelled from Gloucester to Charlton Kings (fifteen miles or so) so late for something so ridiculous. When they were there, they told my mother if it were to happen again, she would be fined.

‘Then they asked her to provide identification so she was rooting around trying to find some. Finally she ended up showing them an out-of-date driving licence as that is all she had.’

Mrs McGovern added that her mother did not deserve the warning from police and had been unreasonably disturbed late in the evening. ‘I made a complaint to the police station. As soon as my mum opened the door the worst things began racing through her mind.’ Mrs McGovern said. ‘I really do not understand why the police thought a few elderly folk drinking tea, socially distanced in a communal garden, is a priority.’

Nor do I and feel that it was outrageously officious behaviour but my view is obviously not shared by the cops. A Gloucestershire Police spokesman said: ‘An officer has spoken to the complainant and an explanation was provided in response to concerns raised. She was content with this and the matter has been resolved.

‘Police received a report of a potential Covid breach on Tuesday 9 March at 1.30pm suspecting that there was a gathering involving people from multiple households in a residential garden in Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. Covid response officers attended later that day at around 9.45pm where some residents were spoken to and given words of advice around current restrictions.

‘Officers are deployed to incidents based on an assessment of the threat, risk and harm of the incident and in this case officers who are part of the Covid response team and are deployed across the county attended later that evening.’

What sort of mealy-mouthed platitude is that dammit and why would any reasonable police officer harry old folk in a residential home at what for them is very late in the evening?

And then we have the events of last Saturday when officers of the Metropolitan Police broke up a peaceful vigil by crowds of women on Clapham Common. Under Covid regulations the vigil should not have been held but pictures and videos of police officers pinning a young woman to the ground during what was a peaceful protest have been beamed round the world on TV and social media.

No one died, fortunately, but I defy anybody to look at those disgusting images without being overwhelmed by a sense of revulsion. What the hell were those coppers thinking? Who authorised this heavy-handed brutality? Does the Commissioner of the Met really think this is a legitimate way for her subordinates to behave?

How on earth did a demonstration by women abhorring violence against women develop into an horrific excuse for gratuitous police violence against women?

Television footage shows a lass called Patsy Stevenson being slammed against a tree before she is forced to the ground and handcuffed. Miss Stevenson was one of an estimated crowd of fifteen hundred largely female demonstrators who had assembled on Clapham Common for a vigil to commemorate the murder of Sarah Everard.

Others were also dragged away in shackles. One officer is seen throwing a punch. Among those who had gathered earlier to pay their respects to Sarah was the Duchess of Cambridge.

Her presence was testament to the depth of feeling, particularly among young women, incited by this horrific killing. So you might have expected the police to handle the event with extra-soft kid gloves. Especially as the man now charged with Sarah’s murder is a serving officer, part of the parliamentary and diplomatic protection squad.

We can argue until the cows come home about whether the protest should have gone ahead while Covid social-distancing restrictions are still in force. As a cynical old toppie  I really couldn’t see what the demo was supposed to achieve in practice, particularly as horrific murders such as this are rarer than lunar eclipses and the main suspect was already in custody. London remains a great deal safer than most large cities but I am not sure that I would walk alone through its streets and parks at night.

But the murder of Sarah Everard has released a tsunami of demons normally suppressed by modern young women. These horrors have been allowed to fester during lockdown. Which one of us has not worried that we are going slowly bonkers over the past year?

So if young women, almost all of whom are at no risk from coronavirus, wish to gather on Clapham Common for a candle-lit vigil, let them get on with it for God’s sake. Peaceful protest is an essential safety valve in a supposedly civilised democracy. 

So, too, is a democratically accountable police force, made up of citizens in uniform whose first duty should be the preservation of life and the protection of the general public. Every young copper swears to do that in his or her oath of allegiance but sadly, the second part of that bargain seems to have been forgotten. The police now see the public as the enemy, a rabble to be bossed around, beaten up and generally harassed on a daily basis.

I like to believe there are still honest and hard-working young coppers out there, putting their lives on the line to keep us all safe, but they have to answer to an officer class which holds the rest of us in contempt. 

They see themselves as our bosses, not our servants. You can’t get on in the modern Plod unless you have been brainwashed by the left-wing army of politically correct senior officers. This involves signing up to all the fashionable theories of life. The result is a police ‘service’ which combines wokery with authoritarianism.

I well remember how Scotland Yard under Ian Blair – a social worker with scrambled egg on his hat – seemed to act as the paramilitary wing of New Labour. Blair now pontificates from the Lords!

These days, it is ten times worse after the disastrous tenure of another since-enobled plod, Bernard Hogan-Howe, who brought his philosophy of ‘total policing’ – based laughably on Johann Cruyff’s 1970s Holland football team – to London.

In theory, it was supposed to mean that all bets were off when it came to tackling organised crime but in practice, it meant that gestapo tactics were used against blameless men and women falsely accused of phone hacking and ‘historic’ sex crimes, with Hyphen-Howe’s stormtroopers ransacking homes and terrorising families.

As Lady Brittan, widow of the shamefully maligned former Home Secretary, Leon Brittan said recently, the Met police ‘lost their moral compass’. Under that hyphenated buffoon it was ground into the dirt.

Then blessed Cressida Dickwell of Dock Green, was supposed to reassure us that this reign of terror was at an end, and we could look forward to a new era of kind and considerate policing. Huh! 

Under Dick, the reputation of the Yard has disappeared further down the sewer, submerged in a culture of cronyism and cowardice, coupled with random brutality and institutionalised idiocy. The Met in particular have seized on the Coronabug as yet another stick to terrorise the paying public.

After the Robert Mugabe-style tactics on Clapham Common last Saturday, Dick took a leaf out of her sponsor Mother Teresa’s book and did a disappearing act, later claiming that critics calling for her resignation ‘did not understand the situation.’ 

A hapless stooge, one of a seemingly unlimited number of deputy assistant, assistant deputy commissioners was sent out to peddle the usual patronising garbage about ‘lessons being learned.’ 

It turns out that this woman graduated to high office at the Yard via the Parks Police, dealing with litterbugs and flashers. Maybe she would have taken a different approach to the gathering on Clapham Common had she been in charge. Instead, true to form the Met sent in the stormtroopers, trampling over defenceless women. Yet this is the same police ‘service’ which took the knee and ran away from Black Lives Matters thugs.

Oh, and was seen skateboarding and singing alongside a pink yacht in Oxford Circus with Extinction Rebellion anarchists who brought London to a standstill not so long ago.

Scotland Yard is a disgrace as are so many police forces – sorry ‘services’ around the country. But last Saturday surely proved a new low, even for the modern police. Now they have sunk to bashing innocent women protesting violence against women on Clapham Common.

Lucky for them, the Duchess of Cambridge was not handcuffed and dragged off to the Tower, too.

After Saturday night’s casual brutality in Clapham, and while the current rotten regime at the Yard is allowed to continue, Britons certainly have no grounds for sneering at the Minnesota cops for their treatment of the late George Floyd.

Perhaps I will remove details of my early police service from the new book. People might think I am still one of them and I do not want that.

As a white, heterosexual male, I have long been part of an endangered species but suddenly it seems that I am a ravening beast who needs to be kept indoors during the hours of darkness.

A member of the House of Lords no less, Green Party Peer Baroness Jones wants a 6pm curfew to keep all men indoors so as to protect women such as Sarah Everard who would seem to have been murdered this week.

This daft idea would do nothing to protect women, especially those confined by government decree to live at home with violent partners. And, bearing in mind the extremist views of some in the trans-lobby, what would stop me or other men self-identifying as women and going out anyway?

As with the Posturing Prince and his Yank, a set of circumstances is in danger of being hijacked and politicised by people with their own axes to grind.

After Sarah’s disappearance was made public, the cops did not help by suggesting that women who lived locally should not go out after dark. That added fuel to the argument that fear of male violence is causing women increased mental anguish, that somehow women require special treatment and are not equal to men.

Young women have flocked to media outlets to tell us they are routinely forced to plan a safe way to get home at night, using taxis they can’t afford, forced to mimic phone calls when approached by strangers, even walking though streets clutching keys as makeshift weapons. 

They apparently plan ahead carefully and alter their routes if anyone is watching,

I find it all a bit hysterical I am afraid, even though I am sure these fears are very real to many. Thanks to Bunter J and the inept handling of the Coronabug crisis, this nation is living in an atmosphere of fear and the Everard case has intensified this in yet another direction.

In reality, the number of violent attacks on women in public places has not increased much over the last decade. No, violence against women overall is not on the decline – but it is from random strangers in the street.

In fact, since the arrival of Coronabug and successive panicky lockdowns, domestic violence has soared. The charity Refuge says calls increased by 65% during three months in 2020 and the Plod tell us that one third of all the offences they record involve domestic violence.

During a parliamentary debate on International Women’s Day this week, Labour MP Jess Phillips read out the names of over a hundred and twenty women killed in the UK in the last year. The vast majority were victims of domestic murders but now tragically, Sarah Everard’s name has been added to that list.

The violent death of anyone – no matter what their gender or who killed them, is dreadful, but statistics show us that women are less likely than men to be murdered. One third of murder victims are female, and three quarters of them are killed at home, usually by a close relative. Only one-in-ten female murder victims end their lives on the street.

So what about sexual harassment and the fear of unwanted attention? The most likely place this will occur is in a workplace or on a night out in a pub or restaurant, or in a residential setting.

A new study from UNWomen UK, a charity promoting gender equality, says that 97% of women aged eighteen to twenty four have received unwelcome sexual attention – and 80% said they had experienced it in public places.

Their survey was only comprised of one thousand women, so the results might not be accurate – but catcalling, wolf whistling, and leering remain a considerable issue, despite many years of campaigning against them and improved education.

The charity is calling this a ‘human rights crisis’ and while it is probably true that such behaviour can be thoroughly unpleasant, is it on the increase and what can be done about it in any case? It is already deemed illegal and building sites are supposed to have a code of conduct prominently displayed. I cannot see that it constitutes ‘violence against women’ however. Men have always admired the female form and some do it openly but it is Nature in the raw I am afraid and something we must all learn to live with.

And the figures regarding street crime certainly do not indicate that women are more at risk. Knife crime and gang warfare impact on young people, particularly teenage boys, although teenage girls are increasingly involved.

Austerity measures which led to the closure of thousands of council-funded youth clubs removed safe havens and community gathering points for a whole generation and have certainly changed society in the streets. Knives are now routinely carried to inflict violence and as protection. With restrictions being lifted, and teenagers returning to school after months of confinement, scores will be settled, and drugs will continue to be carried and traded. The cops will have to move a vast amount of their resources into dealing with this potentially dangerous mix during the coming months.

Earlier this week, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick held a press conference to reassure the public, stating ‘it is incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets,’ adding ‘I completely understand that despite this, women in London and the wider public – particularly in the area where Sarah went missing – will be worried and may well be feeling scared.’

Sure they will, but only for a short while and all this dramatically publicised fear of consequences will only exacerbate the situation. It is doubtless pretty daft to walk alone through the streets of any city at night and anyone – not only women – should take sensible precautions if they don’t want to be robbed. In a city where people are hungry, homeless and poor, why flaunt your money or your mobile phone?

And why oh why demonise all men as seems to be happening now – that won’t solve the problem. Sarah was allegedly abducted by a police officer, who could have enticed her into his car by showing a warrant card. With the ever increasing Coronabug powers being handed over to the Plod, any young woman would doubtless do as she was told in those circumstances. That is the fault of government, not all men.

John Warboys, the Black Cab Rapist, persuaded hundreds of women to drink with him – a complete stranger late at night – resulting in dozens ending up drugged and being sexually assaulted.

The most horrific sexual offender in recent years – Reynard Sinaga – was convicted of committing one hundred and fifty nine sexual offences and one hundred and thirty six rapes against young men, who were rendered unconscious after he secretly drugged their drink. Note that his victims were all male.

And the reality is that most men are not rapists or murderers or kidnappers and pretending that they are demeans both genders and will only make women even more terrified.

I fear that it is time somebody who can must try to lighten the burden of fear, blame and acrimony that is rapidly dragging this nation down.

I was asked this week how I am feeling about life in general and my answer was unequivocal – I feel angry and frustrated. I do not share the national wrath that seems to be on the point of explosion at the moment about the Posturing Prince and his Yank, although God knows they are becoming ever more irritating. Let them have their coming interview by all means – I will not be watching – but then could they please shut up and get back to the ‘privacy’ they were said to be seeking.

No, what is making me really angry at the moment is Bunter Johnson’s so-called road map out of lockdown. This was going to be based on data rather than dates yet it contained a series of dates that seem totally irrelevant.

If my calculations are correct – and that can never be guaranteed when days merge into days as we cower in our homes – we have another seventy nine days before lockdown is due to be lifted – perhaps.

Seventy nine long days – that is not far short of three months dammit!  That means many more little businesses going to the wall, many more jobs lost, many more families plunged into destitution, many more despairing suicides and a corresponding rise in mental health issues that are growing more frequent by the day. It just does not add up and seems excessively cautious no matter what the circumstances. It is less a roadmap to freedom as Bunter J presented it, than a fretful, slow-motion march towards a hyper-cautious future in which little liberties will be handed back, one by one and with conditions. The wonderful new dawn of returned freedom that we were promised once the vaccines had been successfully rolled out has diminished into a long round of continued restrictions and ongoing economic devastation. What on earth is going on?

It should be clear by now that the discussion about the future is not merely being guided by the ‘data’ as our Revered Leader claims. There is another factor and that is the culture of fear. The culture of excessive and unnecessary precautions. The idea that people must be shielded from risk, even if it is just the risk of mild illness, which is what most people will face from the Coronabug now that the old and the vulnerable – the folk most likely to die from this disease – have been inoculated.

Bunter J rightly scoffed at the daft idea that there could be a situation of ‘Zero Covid’ and yet his determination to keep society closed until Coronabug cases have fallen almost to zero suggests he is not as far removed from those daft people as he might think. Like them, he seems to think it is officialdom’s job to protect the populace from anything that is bad or in any way threatening; any nasty bug; any possibility of hospitalisation. It is not, and we will regret it for ever if this idiotically paternalistic idea, this commitment to extreme risk-minimisation takes hold in our society.

Here is what worries me about Bunter’s ruddy roadmap: it looks to me like a complete shift in the way society is understood, in the relationship between the state and the individual. The problem is far larger than the depressingly far-off dates for the resumption of civil liberty and the reopening of the economy: schools reopening on Monday (with mandatory masks for secondary-school pupils would you believe); retail and gyms reopening on 12th April; the number of people allowed to attend weddings and wakes going up to fifteen on that day too; indoor entertainment and mixing coming back on 17th May, though with the ‘rule of six’ and all legal limits on social interaction lifted on 21sty June – maybe but I would not bet on that.

And then what? I am scared silly by the idea that beyond these distant glimpses of liberty, there is the broader, increasingly influential idea that society can be brought to a standstill in response even to relatively mild risks.

As journalist Fraser Nelson wrote in the Telegraph last week, something odd has happened in the UK. The buzz of the marvellous vaccine rollout organised by the bog snorkelling lady has given way to a horrible excess of caution, the celebration of ‘slowness’ as the best way back to normality. ‘The over-fifties look set to be offered a vaccine by the end of March, a month ahead of schedule’, Nelson wrote and yet a ‘new goal is now being discussed: to suppress virus levels to the lowest rate possible.’ This negates Bunter’s own words and the emergence of ‘new goals’ has been a huge problem in recent weeks. The question of what we must achieve in the battle against the bug before we can open up seems to change by the day and although, I am no scientist and thankfully not a politician I accept that there will need to be monitoring and protection as we emerge from the pandemic. We will need to understand what impact, if any, reopening schools will have on transmission. And of course it is wise to assess the likelihood of an increase in hospitalisations in the under sixties and younger who have not been vaccinated yet but who will be soon. But given that those most at risk from serious illness or death from Covid-19 have been vaccinated to a high level of protection – the over eighties are far more likely than other age groups to be hospitalised with this virus, followed by those aged a few years younger we must surely ask what the government is now protecting us from. A virus whose impact on health is declining rapidly, and which will soon be rendered relatively mundane by human intervention? Should the government be protecting us from that? Of course they should not.

This is where ‘following the data’ becomes especially problematic. Data can tell us what is going on in terms of the spread of disease, and it can provide models of future scenarios (all of which are just possibilities not gospel predictions) but data cannot make moral judgements on humanity’s behalf. Data cannot decide what is the proper role of government during a pandemic. Data cannot determine what level of risk we human beings are willing to live with. Data cannot engage in the profound moral task of weighing up what is more important – restoring social and economic life or preventing people from getting a nasty bug, possibly requiring hospitalisation in some cases. No, these decisions must be guided by moral interrogation, political judgement and a democratic system.

The thing about lockdown that most concerns me is the suspension of democratic life. Yes, there was probably a need for restrictions during the darkest moments of the pandemic but surely ordinary people have a right to be properly involved in the discussion of measures that affect us all, especially in relation to the level of risk that communities and individuals are willing to endure. Right now, we should have the right to weigh up the risk of some people being hospitalised with a nasty viral infection against the risk of keeping the economy closed and society in limbo. But we do not seem to have that right. The ruddy data rules all our lives. We now live in a pseudo democracy where the public’s only role is to await the precise mathematical moment at which our liberty might be safely returned.

Enough is enough dammit! Zero Covid is not going to happen and nor is almost Zero Covid. But zero risk is a crazy idea, too. Life is full of risk. Freedom itself is risky. In taking it upon ourselves to pick our own path through life, to be free citizens, we take a risk. We risk making mistakes; we risk making decisions that an expert or even our parents could have advised us against making; we risk injury of both the physical and emotional variety; we risk being offended; we risk contracting other diseases; we risk making a hash of everything. That is all part of being free. We have decided as a civilisation, that a person’s risk of making a mess of things is far less dangerous to both the individual himself and to society than the risk of living in an authoritarian regime in which our only role is to follow instruction.

I am sorry but I want to live in a society that is free but occasionally risky rather than in a controlled society where we are cushioned from offence, and insult, and injury, and the need to make moral decisions about our lives and our communities.

As the vaccination programme rolls on, and the most vulnerable are protected from serious illness, we all need to demand from our rulers the freedom to risk contracting Coronabug for ourselves. Personally, I am well into my eighth decade and have taken a great number of risks during my long life yet I am still here and kicking so I am NOT going to be locked away like a prisoner while our lords and masters decide what they feel is good for me.

As you can probably tell from this rant, I have had more than enough of this madness and am determined to live as close to a normal life as is possible under this idiotic and vaguely dictatorial government.

A week or so ago I speculated on which Bunter Johnson would unveil his ‘roadmap’ – why they call it that I do not know – out of lockdown. Would it be the swashbuckling Bunter of old or the bumbling turnip who lectures us so frequently and seems bullied to the end of his tether – whether by the solemn scientists who follow him around or his seemingly every more powerful popsy, La Symonds herself.

Anyway, our Revered Leader dully announced an extension of his January 4 lockdown for several more months and did his best to persuade us all that this miserable news is ‘a great release.’ He must have been on the happy pills if he really believes that we will take that seriously.

Did you notice how often he used the phrase ‘not earlier than’ before the various dates he named? The opposite phrase ‘not later than’ is a tough contractual commitment, but if anyone owed me money and promised in writing to pay me off ‘not earlier than’ any date you cared to name, I would surely be a fool to accept such an empty pledge.

So I am afraid, the misery goes on despite the success of the vaccination roll out. It seems to me that those of us who have done everything we were asked to do – albeit with gritted teeth and a clothes peg over our nose – are being sacrificed for the possibility that there might be unvaccinated people out there. So what? If I am protected against the coronabug and do not have it, then surely, I cannot pass it on – or is this particular bug cleverer than its predecessors and capable of following me around at a distance?

Oh hell, the sun is shining so I shall just get on with life and try not to hear the next bit of solemnly depressing news from Number Ten. Whatever gem of wisdom – wrong phraseology there perhaps – Bunter next comes out with, you can bet your life it won’t be at all encouraging.

Meanwhile Howden Junior School in East Yorkshire replaced house names that honoured historical figures such as Lord Nelson with those of modern liberal campaigners idolised by the woke brigade including Greta Thunberg and Marcus Rashford after one student complained. So Walter Raleigh, Horatio Nelson and Francis Drake have been replaced by the Thunberg child, Rashford and an obscure American poet called Amanda Gorman who I confess I have never heard of. Human rights activist (whatever that means) Malala Yousafzai is also a replacement but for whom, I do not know.

All this because one former pupil complained of white bias and condemned the ‘despicable deeds’ of Nelson, Ralieigh and Drake!

Headteacher Lee Hill who has more tattoos than a Maori warrior or even an England cricketer shared the news on Twitter and commended ‘the courage of the child who made a stand.’

This politically correct turnip wrote: ‘I’m really excited & proud to share this. Not just because of the individuals our School Council chose as representing our community values but because of the courage of one child who made a stand.

‘During the Black Lives Matter protests, I received a passionate and brave email from a former pupil who not only educated me about the history of the three house names that sat on our website, in our hall and were raised as ambassadors for our school, but also explained the impact of seeing these figures – who have links to slavery, oppression and racism – had on her during her time at our school.

‘Not only a brave email to send to a white male in a position of power but also an email that set off a chain of events.’

What gobbledegook this man speaks! His written English is appalling and why is a man who does not know about these icons of British history appointed to what he grandly claims is a ‘position of power’ in the education system?

Hill went on to explain that the school had no ‘tangible reason’ to keep the historical names and that none of the pupils knew who they were as they were not part of the curriculum. Surely, they should have been or is all British history being swept under the carpet by the educational authorities?

I am hugely grateful that my own children and all but one of my grandchildren have completed their schooling and are not subject to the sort of rampant idiocy that is displayed by Mr Hill and his ilk. They are not doing their job and merely revelling in the current crazy backlash against everything white.

History is there for all to see whatever their own ideologies might have it and history cannot be changed. For myself, I am fiercely proud of being a child of the Raj who was brought up in a colonial setting because I know how much good the colonial authorities did. Yes, there were occasional problems, but problems are part of life and these woke snowflakes would do better to face up to the problems and ensure that they never happen again rather than show their delicate sensibilities and ban everything that does not tally with their own narrow points of view.

They make me cross but the antics of Bunter J’s dog do afford some light amusement in these troubled times. It seems that dog experts have concluded that the reason this mutt, Dilyn is still not housetrained and is allegedly weeing on expensive handbags – when not getting rampantly intimate with the furniture or chewing rare books – is because he hasn’t had ‘the snip’ – in other words, his male organs are still working overtime.

Yet there could be another reason for Dilyn misbehaving so badly. How often are we told that dogs take on the characteristics of their owners?

Once again, I can only quote from my friend Mfanasibili Nkosi – ‘Nuff said.’

I had intended to rant about Britain’s petulant prince and his Yank this morning but decided that neither of them are worth the corresponding rise in my blood pressure. Their California antics of late really do reduce royalty to ridicule. They make us realise he’s just a silly, spoiled Prince who thinks he can have it all.

As he discovered yesterday, he can not. You are not a prince without a country, just a rich playboy with a Netflix contract. If he never comes back home, Britain will be a better place and now can we all just forget the pair of them?

Tomorrow of course is a big day for this country. It is when our Revered Leader will announce just how he intends to get us all out of lockdown and actually save lives for a change. Oh I do not mean the lives of old toppies like myself, but the lives of young people who are dying en masse of other causes, including suicide, cancer and despair.

Which Prime Minister will we see in action tomorrow I wonder? Will it be the one who as recently as last Wednesday was stressing that his approach would be ‘cautious and prudent’ and seemed fixated on listing everything that could possibly go wrong? Or will we see the swashbuckling libertarian, who defied all the political odds and watched as his popularity soared, even after getting stuck on a zip wire and barging a ten year-old Japanese boy to the ground during a scratch game of rugby?

For all our sakes – and sanity – we must fervently hope and pray it is the one-time blond cavalier Bunter who emerges and gives us all a little hope and good cheer to be going on with. I have my doubts though. His insistence on being guided by ‘data not dates’ is enough to give me genuine cause for concern. Mainly because this same data will be supplied to and, most importantly of all, analysed by the same bunch of experts and advisers who have appeared to hold Bunter Johnson in such a tight grip since day one.

Let’s face it, the British public have done their bit to an amazing extent and have met all the criteria we have been set to keep this pandemic under control.

Initially it was to ‘flatten the curve,’ then to ‘save the NHS.’ The majority of people faithfully complied with the restrictions imposed. We did our bit and it seemed to work remarkably well. Then we were told that we must get the ‘R number,’ or the rate of secondary infections, below one, which has also been achieved.

Then, it was the number of deaths which needed to fall, and mercifully that has happened. And then it was the number of cases that also had to decline and again, thankfully, that has also come to pass.

As Bunter J weighs up his options today, it is probably appropriate to take him back to the dark days of November. The full impact of the new wave was starting to be felt and along with the annual pressures that winter brings, it was feared the NHS was once again in jeopardy.

However, during one briefing that month we were suddenly informed of a vaccine that had been created at breakneck speed and urged to listen for ‘the bugle of the scientific cavalry coming over the hill.’

This was Bunter doing what he used to do best, inspiring and even amusing us in one of our undoubted darkest hours.

Now with just hours to go to his announcement, rumours and counter-rumours swirl. First, it is hinted that we will be permitted to eat outdoors in small groups in April, but that then swiftly gets knocked back to May. Or possibly July! Leisure and tourism could be back in part for the Easter holiday, but that is then moved, possibly to August!

The reasoning behind this madcap musical chairs of dates is the fear the virus will continue to mutate into different strains – but that is what all viruses do dammit! Follow that logic and we will stay locked down for another twenty years.

The game changer in all this nonsense has been the fantastic effort by the military, NHS staff and an army of volunteers in getting the vaccines into people’s arms. More than sixteen million – including myself – are already vaccinated and if it continues at the current rate all over fifties – the group most at risk – will have had at least one jab by the end of next month.

More lockdown will mean more economic devastation, more mental health problems and more unemployment. As a former public school boy and fan of the classics, he should understand this better than anyone: Bunter old chap, the time is right.

‘Carpe diem,’ seize the day and set this beleaguered nation free. If you continue to dither, more people will die and they will not only be we old toppies.

I might have mentioned it before, but this country seems in desperate danger of surrendering everything to a handful of entitled and increasingly vocal snowflakes who feel that the rest of us owe them a living.

Take for example the fact that the plain-speaking boss of one of Britain’s biggest accounting firms has had to step down after giving his workforce a bracing pep talk. During a virtual meeting, Bill Michael, of KPMG, told five hundred of his highly paid, working-from-home staff to stop moaning about the cut in their bonuses – they had been paid in full since the pandemic started and had, he said, very little cause for complaint. Michael told them they were in ‘a very lucky sector’ and should not ‘sit there and moan.’

To most of us that would surely sound eminently reasonable.

Many industries have been decimated, the economy is on its knees and millions will lose their jobs before this Coronabug emergency is over. I can only agree with Mr Michael that KPMG accountants are among the fortunate ones and should be counting their blessings instead of whingeing about their lot. Yes, they had a cut in their bonuses but most folk are no longer receiving bonuses so why on earth are they complaining?

But they were dammit. These overpaid turnips were outraged by Michael telling them to buck up and shut up. And then further incensed by his belief that the notion of unconscious bias as ‘complete and utter c**p’ after several in-house training modules seemed to suggest it did not exist.

The howls of snowflake outrage could be heard on Mars and beyond. Now Mr Michael has had to back down, issuing a statement that said: ‘I am sorry for the words I used, which did not reflect what I believe in.’

Come on Fellow, do not allow yourself to be bullied by these politically correct, whingeing idiots. What a lot of companies need right now are strong leaders; a boss who will inspire the workers and lead from the front.

The accountants sitting pretty at KMPG do not want hard truths, just soft soap for their petty vanities.

Quite by chance, I watched our esteemed and petulantly useless Health Secretary doing his Attila the Hun – perhaps Hagar the Horrible is more appropriate – act in Parliament last Monday and like most thinking people, I could not really believe what I was hearing from the man.

Can you imagine anyone in this country being sentenced to jail for ten years because they told officials at Heathrow they had just come from Spain when they had actually been in Portugal? 

Of course you can’t, even if Portugal is on the so-called ‘red list’ of countries where the virus may be a greater risk than it is here.

Ten years for raping a child? Yes of course, but ten years for failing to fill in a form properly? It will never happen and everyone knows it will never happen.

So why did Hancock threaten it this week? Perhaps he really believed it would act as a deterrent to any would-be rule breaker, but deterrents work only if they are credible. This one quite palpably is not.

The truth is that while ministers trumpet toughness on form-filling, they preside over an enfeebled justice system that has become the softest of touches. They proclaim their commitment to protect us from the virus, but miserably fail to protect us from crime. They want to see falsehoods about travel penalised by a decade behind bars but show no resolve to see the same penal vigour consistently imposed for sex assaults or violence or repeat burglaries.

In contradiction of Hancock’s authoritative pose, the enforcement of the law has been drastically weakened in recent years. From the police to the courts, agencies of the state have lost their moral compass, showing far more concern for the rights of offenders than their victims.

The negative impact of progressive ideology, which holds that crime is a symptom of an unequal society, has been reinforced by administrative incompetence, bureaucratic inertia and warped political priorities.

The outcomes of this are plain to see. Incredibly, just seven percent of all crimes in England now lead to a suspect being charged and that surely is an appalling statistic. Only this week, a major study showed that in the third quarter of last year, there was a seventy nine percent rise in legal proceedings that ended in no conviction at all because of delays in the courts – another shameful statistic I am afraid yet nobody in government turns a hair.

Evidence of judicial failure can be found on every front. A 2018 analysis by the Civitas think tank found half of repeat offenders with eleven to fourteen convictions avoided jail terms, while just a third of those found guilty of violence ended up in prison.

Soft drugs have effectively been legalised with seventy percent of cannabis users let off with meaningless ‘community resolutions’ – whatever they may be. Last year the Home Office admitted deportations of illegal migrants were at their ‘lowest since records began.’

Against that backdrop, the Government’s harsh new travel regime is nothing more than a PR stunt. It will never be fully implemented, not least because no court would dish out such a heavy sentence for a bit of documentary mendacity. It is the worst kind of empty gesture, designed to give the illusion of action rather than provide a practical solution.

But that is characteristic of modern politicians’ cynical approach. Far too many of them look on new laws as instruments of propaganda, not to tackle criminality.

In the minds of people like Mathew Hancock the answer to every high-profile incident is more legislation. So when a protester tried to set fire to a flag at the Cenotaph last summer, MPs queued up to demand a new law that would impose a mandatory ten year jail term for vandalising a war memorial.

But such a punishment is already available under Section 1 of the 1971 Criminal Damage Act. This is legislative incontinence I am afraid and should be curtailed. Over the past twenty years, there have been no fewer than two hundred and seventy three pieces of legislation with the term Criminal Justice in their titles, but public faith in the justice system has never been lower.

This inept and pathetic government should concentrate on governing instead of bringing out draconian and ultimately futile new laws in order to look tough.

Common sense was jettisoned again on Thursday. The Government announced it is reforming the NHS – again. These reforms will reverse the last reforms of ten years ago. Maybe they will work and maybe they will not but one certainty is that they will once again, cause massive disruption.

Did anyone in Whitehall point out that we are in the middle of the greatest health crisis in living memory? I bet the over-rewarded management consultants did not. They earn their considerable fees by peddling change. These so-called experts move cheerfully from biscuit factories to hospitals and tell everyone how things should be run That surely cannot work.

It is not that modern governments never get it right – even this somewhat pathetic one. We are reaping the benefits of a brilliant vaccination programme at the moment. But let us just remember that it is the scientists and researchers, chivvied into action by bog snorkelling Kate Bingham who made it possible.

And if you remember, the vaccination programme was brought out in a fanfare of government pronouncements that this was the answer to all our problems and life could soon get back to normal. Really? It seems that the scientists are still preaching caution while our revered leader stammers and stutters about following the science without saying anything to reassure an ever more anxious public.

I think it was Winston Churchill who once said of scientists, ‘They should be on tap but not on top.’ How right he was, but Bunter J has let them to get on top by allowing them to dictate government policy.

I am neither politician or scientist but this is getting right out of hand now and it needs to stop. Scientists are not politicians, they are not leaders and it is ingrained into their personalities to have a super-cautious, negative, downbeat view of the world.

Yes, Bunter has to listen to them occasionally, but he cannot let them believe they are running the country. Nor can he afford to be crippled by the kind of gloominess and defeatism that is typical of their ilk because his job is about more than Covid infections and deaths. He has the fairly terrifying task of getting this country back on the road to economic and social recovery.

And what on earth is the point of this vaccine rollout if we are still going to be living restricted lives for another year – perhaps forever?

The case rate is down by seventy percent, hospital admissions have gone back to early December levels and we are told vaccines will cut deaths by eighty eight percent. Things are changing at lightning speed yet these scientists are talking about restrictions till next Christmas.

Bunter assured us that these vaccines are our ticket for freedom. So why are we not making any progress? Has our Revered Leader – and I use the name sarcastically – suddenly discovered something nobody else is aware of?

We have vaccinated over fifteen million people – that’s a thousand vaccinations a minute dammit – yet restrictions are becoming ever more draconian. This week it was that inane threat of a ten year jail sentence for breaking Covid rules on travel. What will it be tomorrow?

The fact is the scientists currently steering Boris do not understand the economy or how it works. They do not understand that people are hanging onto their jobs, their lives, their houses, their sanity by a thread. And why would they? Their jobs are not on the line and they have been on full pay since the start. More restrictions won’t touch them but it will push millions who are already teetering on the brink right over the edge.

Scientists, who never consider the impact of what they are demanding, do not want normal life to be resumed until the coronabug has been wiped out but that is never going to happen because those same scientists told us the disease is now endemic and will come back every winter.

The fact is that once everyone over fifty and those with underlying conditions has been vaccinated the country should be opened up again and Bunter J should lead the charge back into normality minus masks and bloody social distancing.

Because the majority of us do not want to live in the kind of cowed, sterile, joyless world the scientists want us to inhabit. Nor do we want our liberties dispensed with at will by an increasingly authoritarian Government.

The Brexit vote was supposed to be about taking back control but there has never been a time when people have been less in control of their lives than they are right now.

I wonder if we could persuade Mrs Bingham, the bog snorkelling lady to sort out our inept cabinet office and its ministers as her next project? No, I do not suppose she would thank me for that suggestion, but we all need a ray of hope somewhere.