I did not want to rant about the Coronabug crisis again, but the situation is going from bad to worse and there does not seem any let up in the confusion. I once worked for the government of Bishop Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe Rhodesia and did not for one moment imagine that there could be a more shambolic method of governing a country, but I was wrong. The British government at the moment are running around like a bunch of headless chickens.

The most ridiculous aspect of the current situation is the refusal of Ministers to learn from experience. If a total lockdown of several months did not work, either here or anywhere else, why does the Government imagine that lesser measures such as the Rule of Six, travel bans, pub curfews or two-week ‘circuit-breakers’ will do any better? 

The reality is we have no idea what our Government thinks it is doing. In the absence of answers to these fairly obvious questions, we have to assume that Ministers have no idea either. We are not told what their exit plan is, presumably because they do not have one, apart from ‘Something will turn up – perhaps.’

There is a variety of different views in the world of epidemiologists and immunologists – thirty five thousand public health scientists and medical practitioners recently signed the ‘Great Barrington Declaration,’ drawn up by three eminent specialists a fortnight ago.

They point out that indiscriminate attempts to stop infections prevent healthy people from acquiring natural immunity and that buying time only prolongs the crisis. Both of these things are likely to increase deaths. Why can’t our lords and masters see that? The signatories argue that we should protect the vulnerable who are at risk of serious illness or death and allow the others who are not at risk to be exposed to the disease and acquire some immunity.

This is surely basic common sense?

Nobody, least of all the declaration’s authors pretends that this is a perfect solution. It will not eliminate all deaths. Natural immunity may not last – although it will last at least as long as a vaccine.

There will be some whose vulnerabilities are not identified. There will be vulnerable people who would rather take the risk and enjoy life. But it is a better bet than the current load of Mickey Mouse measures. The Great Barrington Declaration approach may or may not be right but it is at least a coherent case. It makes sense damnit!

The Government’s case on the other hand makes no sense at all. It is full of holes, left by the silence of Ministers. So far, the only response of the lockdown enthusiasts has been an attempt to smear the Great Barrington authors with allegations they are the tools of Right-wing doctrinaires or anti-semites. If there was a better answer than childish abuse, we would no doubt have heard it.

The programme of the Great Barrington scientists is at least consistent with experience. The success of the Swedish model has been passed over in embarrassment by UK Ministers who have no answer to it. Stockholm, where the epidemic struck hardest earlier in the year has a density of population, an age balance and a public health system comparable to those of major British cities. Yet our government in their wisdom have preferred to follow the example of countries that have failed to contain the virus rather than the one country that appears to have succeeded.

At the moment. there is a nasty divide opening up between those who want to take reasonable steps to protect themselves and live as normally as possible without going over the top and zealots who think that, as a matter of principle the state should take over our lives, occupy our sitting rooms and keep us infantilised at home. What has happened to rational thought in this beleaguered country?

It seems to me that any sort of joined up thinking has been banished by fear. Fear encourages unthinking responses. It leads to intolerant conformism and ill-tempered abuse of anyone who steps out of line with government thinking. 

It provokes panicked demands for official action, without reflecting on just what government action can achieve. This is an atmosphere in which the advocates of authoritarian styles of government have always thrived. I have seen it at first hand in a number of African countries.

It seems to me that the main culprits for this state of affairs are Ministers who find themselves in a trap of their own making. In the beginning, they stoked up people’s fears to justify their decisions and induce compliance. They promised the impossible and when the inevitable failure came, they blamed it on us, the public for not complying with their commands. The real reason Ministers have not dared to answer the questions posed by their policies is that their purpose is not to suppress the virus, which they must know is impossible. It is to shield themselves from responsibility.

They know damned well that they will be criticised for the Coronabug deaths but hope they will get away with the indirect consequences of their brutal measures – the cancer deaths, the loneliness and mental breakdowns, the poverty and job destruction, the public and private bankruptcy. Truth is the first victim of this process but it is not very high on this Government’s agenda. Having got itself into a pattern of coercion, the Government does not dare to change course, for fear of discrediting its own past decisions.

Yet even fear has its limits. As public trust drains away, it is forced to keep up the atmosphere of panic by ever more hyped-up alarms, misleading statistics, draconian fines, bullying threats, appeals to sneaks and complete disregard for the basic values by which people live.

From the reports and photographs coming out of London and other major cities since the new lock downs were imposed, it doesn’t seem that many people intend to comply with the ban on receiving friends and family in their house or any of the other draconian restrictions for that matter. And why on earth should they?

A few months ago our Revered Leader proudly told us that he and his asinine sidekick, Mathew Hancock were investing twelve billion pounds of taxpayers’ money in a ‘world beating’ Test and Trace system. At the moment that system is a laughing stock with anyone capable of rational thought. Even the government’s own scientific advisory panel SAGE tells us that the system is making only a ‘marginal’ difference to infection rates – and SAGE have to protect their own somewhat shaky reputations.

Even if everyone who develops symptoms of the Coronabug faithfully reports them and submits for a test, what happens about the people – four out of every five cases, according to some studies – who do not develop symptoms but who are still infectious? To catch them, you would need to test everyone, every few days.

Test and trace excites the natural authoritarians who inhabit the Government, the civil service and the police. But it is not going to defeat the virus – it will only poison the relations between the public and the state.

And the entire system is proving almost unbelievably inefficient. On Sunday, people with suspected Coronabug systems were sent to a non-existent site in Kent, How can this happen in this computerised age damnit and surely it proves that the system is not fit for purpose?

Council officials in Sevenoaks said the address had been listed on the government website for people to arrange appointments on the national booking portal. However, the mobile testing unit, which was meant to be introduced in response to a local rise in Coronabug rates, was not deployed to start on site that day for ‘an unknown reason.’ However it did not prevent a number of people driving around the facility for up to an hour before realising it was not operational.

Angie Waters, whose seventy four-year-old husband suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was among those who had booked a test at the park-and-ride site in Otford Road.

Waters, who had developed a cough, told the BBC that the situation was an ‘absolute fiasco.’ She said: “I thought to be on the safe side I’d better get tested, I don’t want to put my husband at risk. It was just a joke. I spoke to one woman who said she had been going round for an hour.”

Peter Fleming, the Sevenoaks district council leader, told reporters that they had been asked by government officials to try to identify a suitable site in the area but none had been properly authorised at that stage. When asked how this could have happened, he replied: “Appears that they were aiming for it to be open this weekend; however, it hadn’t had their final signoff. However, it still made it into the test site list.”

For the pedants among you, I know that the repetition of ‘however’ does not sound right, but I am merely quoting!

Another spokesperson for the council apologised to anyone who made a wasted journey, advising those with bookings to arrange a postal test or arrange an appointment at another venue.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are aware of an issue with an incorrect testing location in Sevenoaks. This issue has now been resolved and people are being redirected to the correct site.

‘NHS Test and Trace is providing tests at the unprecedented scale of more than 270,000 tests per day nationally and we are on track to achieve capacity for 500,000tests a day by the end of October.’’

How can anybody have any faith in this lot. Even the Chacma baboons in my own country are better able to organise their lives than Bunter J and his pathetically disorganised bunch of turnips.

Speaking of turnips, Sir Oliver Letwin, who retired at the last election after twenty two years as a Tory MP, says he doesn’t miss the ‘unending’ day to day correspondence of twenty thousand emails and letters a year.

Responding to it all involved dictating ‘two to three hours a day to a highly accomplished secretary,’ he told Dorset Magazine. 

“If anyone wrote individually, I tried to reply personally – that is what my constituents deserved.” Lofty rhetoric but hardly believable. This is the very same Oliver Letwin who – as a minister – was photographed dumping over a hundred documents, including constituents’ letters, in bins in St James’s Park.

To the complete and very blatant hypocrisy of politicians must be added the fact of their total incompetence I am afraid.

Please Mr Johnson, let us get on with our lives and I write as a person in the group most vulnerable to the Coronabug.

There was another story that shames modern Britain over the weekend.

Most of us have heard of the fairly eminent historian David Starkey Abrasively outspoken, he is forever expounding what are sometimes vaguely uncomfortable ideas, but like the rest of us he is theoretically entitled to his views. After all, Britain has proudly been proclaiming its freedom and the rights of its citizens to free speech for a very long time.

What a load of nonsense that claim has become.

Back in July of this year, a young broadcaster and journalist from County Durham, Darren Grimes interviewed Starkey on one of those podcast programmes and it was not exactly the historian’s finest hour.

When asked about the Black Lives Matter movement and whether their claims that slavery was another form of genocide are in any way justified, Starkey responded with words to the effect that slavery was not genocide because there were still ‘so many damn blacks’ both in Africa and Britain.

Not unexpectedly, the historian was roundly condemned for what was described as a ‘deeply offensive comment’ to many people. His publishers Hodder and Stoughton withdrew publication of his latest book – part two of his autobiography – various honorary degrees from multiple universities were cancelled and his reputation was thoroughly shredded by public opinion. I do not expect to see or hear him speaking on the BBC or other broadcasters for some time, if ever again.

Perhaps that is as it should be although he is surely entitled to his opinion but in an Orwellian twist of fate it is Darren Grimes who finds himself in the dock. He is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred under the Public Order Act and has been summoned to a police station to make a statement under caution.

How can that be for God’s sake? What are our esteemed Plod playing at? The very idea that any broadcaster or interviewer should be held responsible for the views of their programme’s subjects is, of course, completely nonsensical. By that token you would have to prosecute Louis Theroux for giving airtime to the lunatic views of far-Right extremists or investigate the editors of BBC’s Question Time for giving a platform to former BNP leader Nick Griffin. 

Indeed, you could even argue that Grimes was doing us all a favour by exposing Starkey’s true feelings. Isn’t that, after all, what journalism is all about – uncovering the truth, however unpalatable? And yet this young man is in the dock and Britain is now officially a country where the police investigate journalists for asking questions.

This happens in African states and under other totalitarian regimes, but this is Great Britain damnit! With Bunter Johnson’s misuse of the Covid Act and now this travesty of legal bullying, I fear that the very notion of free speech and independent journalism has been knocked right out of the proverbial window.

Back to that song and ‘Britons never never shall be slaves.’ What a load of tosh that is proving to be! At the moment we are all slaves to a small but vociferus mob, led or at least tacitly encouraged by our revered leader and his little coterie of yes men.

Meanwhile as if emphasising the us and them divide in modern society, the Scottish MP Margaret Ferrier has said that she will not resign despite a growing backlash over her repeatedly breaching Coronabug rules by travelling after developing symptoms.

Earlier this month, Ms Ferrier admitted to travelling from Glasgow to Westminster while awaiting a Covid-19 test result and making the return trip when she knew she had the virus.

Both the Poisoned Dwarf, Nicola Nicola Sturgeon and SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford have called on Ms Ferrier to stand down over the incident, while the Scottish Labour Party has launched an online petition calling for her to resign. Surely, they should just fire the woman or would that go against some arcane parliamentary rule?

Yet in an interview with The Scottish Sun this weekend, the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, who has had the SNP whip withdrawn over the saga, said she had no intention of standing down.

She told the paper: “This has been an awful experience but I’ll keep fighting for my constituents because that’s who I am.”

What a virtuous lady she obviously is and I write that with my tongue in my cheek!

She added that she has received support locally in the wake of the incident and has ‘owned up and apologised profusely.’

Ms Ferrier revealed to the paper her reasoning for travelling to Westminster after taking a Covid-19 test was ‘wanting to represent her constituents’ and take part in a parliamentary debate – something which could not be done virtually. But Madam, what about the many people you came into contact with while travelling. Consideration for your constituents is undoubtedly admirable but other folk deserve to have the same consideration paid to them.

Ferrier also spoke out about the level of criticism she has received over the incident, adding: “You feel you are getting a lot of criticism from people you thought were your colleagues or friends who’d understand it was an error of judgement. I’m not denying that.

‘People may be saying, ‘You should have known better, you’re a public figure’ but at the end of the day it still hurts. You then think about all that hard work and dedication – is that just wiped away?”

What utter hypocritical cant. This woman was very vocal when the Cummings Creature made his own ill advised journey a few months ago and at the time, she demanded that he be fired.

Sauce for both sides of the goose family immediately come to mind but it seems that British politicians are becoming ever more overbearing and selfish. After all, Bunter J tells us that ‘we are all in this together’ but he is talking twaddle I am afraid. If that were so, surely our MPs would forgo their £3,360 pay rise which takes their basic salary to a cool £85,292. That is about four times the pay of a care worker – and they don’t get to work via virtual reality and Zoom.

It was only today that I learned that there is a restaurant in London’s Camden Market called Shaka Zulu. This is supposed to be Black History Month – is there a White, Brown or Yellow History Month I wonder – so how on earth does this supposedly tolerant society allow a major London restaurant – and the prices look horrific – to be named after a man who killed over two million of his fellow black people – many of them in particularly horrific ways.

We hear a great deal from the chattering classes about the evils perpetrated by colonialism, but the colonial powers between them did not murder two million people over the couple of hundred years that they ruled. Shaka (he was actually Tshaka) managed it in less than ten years and was only stopped when his brother Dingaan plunged a knife into him.

If a restaurant or any other public establishment were named after Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan or Attilla the Hun there would be public uproar, yet the Shaka Zulu eatery has been in business for ten years even though they seem to have received very mixed reviews from their patrons.

Truly this world is losing its marbles!

When she took office nearly a year ago, I was very impressed with Priti Patel. She talked tough and promised to sort out the immigration debacle, put more police on the streets and be hard on crime and criminals.

As yet, we seem to have had nothing but this tough talk and I couldn’t help a somewhat wry smile when I read about the latest farcical incident with illegal immigrants to this country.

It seems that four suspected illegal immigrants were detained at Dover, having stowed away in the back of a lorry. The men, two Bangladeshis, an Indian and an Egyptian were taken into custody and the driver has been sent for trial.

At last it seemed that Priti was living up to her rhetoric and getting tough, but – and it really is a very big ‘BUT’ – the four miscreants were not arriving at Dover, they were attempting to leave the country! Having read this, I was not sure whether to laugh or cry.

A spokesman for the National Crime Agency proudly told reporters, ‘Four individuals have been prevented from making what was undoubtedly a hazardous journey.’ 

What was this turnip talking about? They were inside a lorry about to board a ferry for God’s sake. What is hazardous about that? It’s not as if they were casting off from the beach in a children’s paddling pool or even a leaky dinghy damnit.

The authorities should have bid them a fond farewell and forgotten them. You can bet your winter bed socks that if the French discovered a gang of illegals trying to leave their shores, they would give them a police escort, and wave fond farewell, from the quayside. 

Just look at the way the French Navy has been shepherding dinghies full of migrants into British territorial waters in recent weeks. I can only wonder what our tough-talking Home Secretary makes of this boldly humanitarian and downright ridiculous intervention by the National Crime Agency. 

She has just pledged a major shake-up of asylum laws to fix Britain’s ‘fundamentally broken system’ and has promised to take all steps necessary to tackle human trafficking, despite opposition from Labour, do-gooders and Leftie lawyers. 

She could start by turning her attention to the activities of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, run by entrepreneur, Armarpal Singh Gupta who has been called Britain’s legal aid king and has pocketed fifty five million pounds of tax payers’ cash over the past three years. Yes, you read that correctly – fifty five million of our pounds in three years! 

Most of their work concerns immigration cases and staff from Duncan Lewis have even been travelling to Calais to as they put it, ‘gain an understanding of the conditions asylum seekers are residing in.’ You can bet your life they are drumming up more and more business rather than gaining any understanding of anything.

The company said it had been invited to visit the migrant camps by aid charities. Sources say Gupta’s lawyers work with go-betweens who refer migrants to the company once they make it to Britain. Duncan Lewis has also been involved in a number of recent cases brought to frustrate Home Office efforts to deport asylum seekers who have crossed from France in dinghies. 

This might be vaguely legal but it surely has to be completely unethical. In fact there are recognisable similarities between this firm and that of Phil Shiner the celebrity human rights lawyer – now disbarred – who made a fortune from legal aid by pursuing British soldiers over ‘war crimes’ in Iraq. 

I am sure that most of the British public are solidly behind Ms Patel as she attempts to tackle the migration crisis. The government she represents has a clear public mandate to take back control, not just with the Brexit result but also the eighty seat majority handed to the Tories at the last election. 

The problem she faces is that there are too many vested interests ranged against her, both political and financial. Under New Labour, the legal establishment was taken over and abused by the Left. The Blair creature even boasted that the incorporation of European human rights legislation into British law was the proudest achievement of his entire career but what on earth was he on about? He would have been far more justified in admitting that it was a terrible mistake and apologising to the Nation.

Those of us who warned at the time that it would prove a get-out-of-jail free ticket for everyone from illegal immigrants to criminals, and a goldmine for lawyers, have been proved correct time and time again and the worst thing about it is that we are forced to pay for all this politically motivated legal activism, whether we like it or not. 

Let’s go back to Duncan Lewis for a moment. Their more choice clients include an HIV-positive Zimbabwean rapist who was convicted in 2009 of attacking a woman in her own home and has been resisting – so far successfully – all attempts to deport him. 

How much has that cost us over the past eleven years, I wonder. The ‘rights’ of foreign nationals, however debased they are, have been and are being constantly elevated above the interests of the British people. Let’s face it, Immigration cases are among the most profitable sources of income for Left-wing law firms. These shysters can drag out cases for years, secure in the knowledge that their bills will be picked up by the taxpayer and they can usually rely on a judge to grant their injunctions against deportation when all other avenues have been exhausted. 

Last week, for instance, a plane chartered to remove thirty illegal migrants from Britain departed with just one of them on board after a last-minute plea to the courts blocked the expulsion of the other twenty nine. 

I think Priti P means well and she certainly talks a good game, but until Britain withdraws from the awful European human rights racket, this country will remain a soft touch for illegal immigrants and assorted asylum seekers from all over the world. 

Left-wing lawyers aren’t the only ones making a killing, either. Plenty of unscrupulous businesses are happy to exploit cheap foreign labour, no questions asked. Hoteliers have turned their establishments into immigration hostels, knowing that they have a guaranteed source of income – even during the recent lockdown, which has bankrupted many in the hospitality sector. 

Clearsprings Ready Homes, based in Essex is being paid £1.1billion by the Government to house migrants across Wales and the South of England. It has provided accommodation and transport for most of those who have arrived this year by dinghy from Calais. 

A taxi firm called Evo was awarded a contract worth £1.7million over two years to ferry asylum seekers around the country, picking them up from Gatwick Airport and Dover. Some individual journeys have clocked up bills running into hundreds of pounds. Last weekend a newspaper carried a picture of migrants in face masks being chauffeur-driven in an eight seater people carrier. 

We should be trying to deter migrants, particularly at the moment but why wouldn’t they want to come here? They are guaranteed to be lavished with legal aid, free accommodation, free health care and generous benefits. 

Their chances of being deported range from minimal to none at all and in the unlikely event of them ever wanting to leave, the Home Office will send in the National Crime Agency to stop them. 

It seems that you can paddle across the Channel any time you like, but you can never leave these shores

What is it the song says? ‘Britons never never shall be slaves’ or words to that effect. Well I am sorry but unless someone stands up to the cretins in power at the moment, this country is more under the government thumb than even my own country, Zimbabwe.

In a gesture, curiously reminiscent of the late, unlamented Robert Gabriel Mugabe, our ‘Revered Leader’ has created an untrained army of ‘Covid marshals’ and threatened that he will use the police and the army – both created and sworn to protect us – to persecute us. That is blatant dictatorship I’m afraid and yet Bunter J ploughs along and doesn’t listen to anyone but his coterie of obedient ‘yes men.’ Unsurprisingly perhaps, there do not seem to be any ladies among his immediate advisers. We all know what Bunter thinks of the Ladies!

He has become the obedient servant of a painfully incompetent bunch of pseudo-scientists whose only record is of having got everything – and I mean ‘everything – wrong and equally useless bureaucrats who have spent many billions of tax payers’ money in failing to set up even a moderately usable test-and-trace scheme. Thousands of offers of help from some of the most successful private-sector sources in Europe have been contemptuously rebuffed, often with their calls not even given the courtesy of an answer.

Having lived under two authoritarian and shambolic governments, I am horribly sure of one thing and that is that unless Britain’s elected parliamentarians who listen to their constituents, act and act fast the tyranny – and there  is no other word for it – of our new and useless masters will never be broken. But broken it must be if the British people are ever to be a free nation again.

Back in the Commons, the hapless Hancock managed to avoid an urgent question on the 10pm curfew in pubs by translating it into a ministerial statement on further lockdowns in Liverpool. He might not be good or even mildly competent at his job, but he is a typical politician who cannot even answer simple questions. Even so, he did not seem at all happy to be dragged back to the chamber for his third appearance within a week. Like Bunter J, he has reached the point where he can no longer tolerate any criticism.

This was evidenced – is there such a word I wonder – when the shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth reminded the house that the main problem with the government’s strategy was the failure of its test-and-trace system. He also pointed out that the 10pm curfew had created as many problems as it had solved by kicking everyone out inebriated on to public transport at the same time but his questions drove hapless Hancock into a fit of pique.

The curfew was fine he said, test and trace was fine and he would not hear anything derogatory mentioned about either of them.

But there wasn’t too much sympathy for the Health Secretary from either side of the house I’m afraid. Many Tory MPs are getting it in the neck from hospitality companies in their constituencies. Philip Davies was fed up with the nanny state and thought people should be allowed to choose to get coronavirus or not, and Desmond Swayne reckoned pubs should be allowed to determine their own opening hours. Now there is a good idea! If people are allowed to drink themselves into unconsciousness and are left where they are, then there’s little chance of them transmitting the virus to anyone else.

But the questions rapidly got tougher for the hopelessly inept Health Secretary. Did he perhaps think people had stopped obeying the rules after Dominic Cummings did what he liked? Apparently not.

“I will not have this,” he snapped, when asked a perfectly reasonable question about a wrong answer he had given two weeks back. “I just won’t have it.”

I can just picture him stamping his foot like a toddler told off for sticking his finger in the jam.

But he will have it though because this buffoon does not have the honesty to admit his government’s mistakes. He is Bunter J’s personal doorMatt I’m afraid and until the pair of them are unceremoniously booted out of power, this country will continue to tremble on the brink of breaking apart and life is going to get considerably tougher for all of us.

Back in the so-called Rainbow Nation, violence by black criminals on the white farming community continues to get ever more horrible. I have seen many horrific crime scenes in my life but reading about the latest episode made my senses reel. Let me describe it briefly although I will leave out the grimmer details.

Sixty four year old farmer, Waldi Van Zyl was in the workshop on his farm at around six on a Sunday evening when he was attacked by six black men, one of whom was armed with a pistol.

Waldi’s wife Cynthia heard a commotion from the farmhouse and went to see what was going on. She was immediately grabbed by the gang and the couple were beaten with metal pipes and planks. The attackers demanded cash and when they were told there wasn’t any, they cut deep wounds in Waldi’s legs with an angle grinder. They used a vice grip on Cynthia’s nose and tried to force her face into the angle grinder.

The gang eventually fled in the farm truck, having taken two firearms, cash and jewellery from the safe in the house. Fortunately, the couple’s son arrived soon after the attack and called for help. Waldi was airlifted to a Johannesburg hospital with horrific injuries including extensive fractures to the bones of his face and head. He is in a critical condition. Cynthia is also in hospital with severe but not life-threatening injuries.

No arrests have been made and I can’t help wondering what world reaction would have been had this been a black couple set upon by white men. Think about it – there would be general uproar worldwide with leaders like Bunter J piously deploring the incident in Parliament and asking the House to join him in sending condolences to the victims. The Biscuit and his Yank would piously remind us that black people are being persecuted en masse but they intend to repair the world themselves. The Pope would also be vociferous in his condemnation yet not even in the Rainbow Nation – what a misnomer that is – has there been a word of condemnation by officials or the media.

What makes it even sadder is that Waldi and Cynthia were lucky in a peculiar sort of way. They are both still alive and yet every week, there are similar incidents all over South Africa where other victims of horrific torture are killed before the attackers flee.

There is a war going on in the farmlands of South Africa but because the victims are usually Afrikaners, no mention of this war is made by the politicians and governments in the rest of the world.

When I mention my dislike of the human race, the two ladies in my life, gently remind me that most people are good, decent folk but then I read about this and other similar incidents or I listen to Bunter and his tame DoorMatt trying to take over the world without admitting to their own incompetence and any vestiges of faith I might have in humanity immediately vanish.

Italy has just voted to cut the number of its MPs by a third. Surely it is time that this benighted country did the same? At the moment, the entire country seems to be run by a cabal of four in Johnson, Hancock and the two gloom merchants Whitty and Valance. The back benchers and Parliament itself are being ignored but hopefully this might be overturned on Wednesday when an extension to the Covid 19 bill will actually be debated in Parliament.

As for Bunter J himself, has ever a man looked more haunted than he does at the moment? His burning ambition was to be prime minister of this country, but I fear that the job is proving far beyond his capability and it shows, not only in the extreme illogicality of his decisions but in his general demeanour. This is not the ebullient bouncy Bunter that so many people hoped would pick the country up and lead it into a triumphant independence. This is a haggard-looking, slope-shouldered loser who really does appear but a shadow of his former self.

The irony of it all is that across the Atlantic, Donald Trump who was said not to really want the presidency, is clearly relishing every moment of his time in power – and I would think he has far more on his plate than our ‘Revered Leader’ over here.

But surely it is Bunter’s own fault? Yes, he was very ill and that had had an undoubted effect on him but he chose to come back to work and immediately began to muck things up. Successful prime ministers choose and appoint shrewd and experienced brains to advise them. Then they take the advice of those they appoint. The praise when things work and the blame when they fail always accrues to the person at the top so serious consideration has to be given to the advice offered. Since the first virus flew across the Channel, as even the average household parrot knew it would, Bunter J has chosen the worst possible advisers and relentlessly followed their catastrophic advice.

We now know that up to a third of the approximately forty-five thousand folk, recorded as dying from the Coronabug did not die of it at all. The figures were cooked to exaggerate the dangers of living and justify the systematic destruction of the economy and so many businesses and lives. Every year about twenty five thousand people die of flu and/or pneumonia, but that is accepted as just another minor danger in our lives.

And let’s face it, these flue and coronabug deaths are overwhelmingly coming from the weakest of people – the very old or those suffering from a serious pre-existing condition. Britons have never panicked over this – just grieved and got on with life.

So what is the true Covid death toll? Probably about half the supposed total waved so hysterically before us, when the final analysis is calculated – which it will be. This in a nation of sixty seven million so as a percentage the figures are very small by any standards.

Yet the entire economy is in fragments. Democracy is vanishing as Britons’ age-old rights to be free citizens are trampled by so-called ‘marshals’ recruited from nobody quite knows where. Over the past few days, the papers have been filled with pictures of these ‘City Marshalls’ in their smart jackets and they all look very Eastern European. I am all for handing out jobs when necessary but not giving these screwballs the power to affect all our lives.

Despite the gullibility and agreement to panic of so many citizens – friends and relatives of mine among them – I suspect that a people’s revolt is coming and needs but a trigger incident to set it off. I hope it does not prove too damaging, but the smashing of this proud, fought for and so often defended democracy cannot go on just because a bunch of useless bumblers has taken over.

And let’s face it, Britain is in the grip of truly mad science. On the advice of his ‘advisory panel’ – is that the Fatuous Four again I wonder – it seems that Bunter J and his team are considering following Scotland’s lead and imprisoning university students in their dormsitories. The police have been ordered to enforce a nationwide pubs and restaurants curfew and the courts to administer fines of up to ten thousand smackers on those who refuse to self-isolate. This is barbaric damnit!

A national edict has even been issued, warning that only those in an ‘established relationship’ are allowed to have sexual intercourse, although if this was one of Bunter’s ideas, it surely takes hypocrisy to a new level of petty forgetfulness! Besides, what is an established relationship for God’s sake?

‘We got one briefing note a few weeks ago about how people could be allowed to mingle,’ a government Minister is reported to have revealed. ‘It said they could meet in the garden if they socially distance but couldn’t enter a Wendy house if there was one. We have become the Government that wants to lock down Wendy houses. Boris has been totally captured by Witless and Unbalanced. It is insane.’

That it undoubtedly is but hopefully this will be brought to a halt on Wednesday. The Brady Amendment, which will require Ministers to secure parliamentary approval for any further extension of lockdown, will be voted on and unless Downing Street gives significant ground beforehand, it will surely see Bunter’s eighty seat majority overturned with room to spare. ‘We’ve got the votes,’ one Tory rebel said. ‘People have had enough. Advisers can advise, but the politicians have to have their say now.’

There are several reasons why the patience of Conservative MPs has finally snapped. One is that advisers Chris Whitty (Witless or Professor Gloom) and Patrick Vallance (Unbalanced or Doctor Doom) are massively over-reaching their brief. At the start of the pandemic, the strategy was clear. Introduce temporary restrictions, ‘squash the sombrero’ that represented the Coronabug advance through the population and protect the NHS.

But Ministers and MPs believe Boris’s advisers have persuaded him to sign up to a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy of complete eradication of the virus – something most scientists say is impossible to achieve in a large, open country such as Britain.

After last week’s Cobra meeting, a joint statement was issued by Downing Street and the devolved nations. It committed the Government to ‘suppressing the virus to the lowest possible level and keeping it there, while we strive to return life to as normal as possible for as many people as possible.’

What sort of idiotic officialese is that? So far, the ‘experts’ just have not been expert enough. From the use of face-masks to restrictions on mass gatherings, there have been too many reversals and mixed messages.

‘We’re being kept in the dark on the figures,’ one Minister told reporters. ‘then all of a sudden, Whitty pops up with this graph which shows it’s all going to be cataclysmic and everyone’s saying, “Hang on, what is this?” It’s not a prediction. It’s not hard data. So what is this guy actually talking about here?’

To be fair, not everyone in government has the same jaundiced view of their counsel. ‘At the start, they were actually quite balanced,’ said another senior Tory. ‘If you look at the idea of closing the airports, Whitty said, “You can do that. But it will obviously create serious disruption.”’

Another Minister tells us that the problem lies not with the two most senior advisers, but with the sprawling Sage panel. ‘Whitty and Vallance understand there’s got to be some balance in this. But Sage are proper Covid Nazis. There aren’t any measures too strong for some of them.’

But there are for Bunter and his Ministers I am afraid. So far, the Prime Minister has been doggedly, if somewhat clumsily, trying to follow the science. But doing that is almost certain to end in a head-on collision with economic and political reality and we are all going to feel it.

The reality is that by supposedly following the science, Bunter J has become blinded by it. The loss of jobs – the loss of personal liberty – the loss of perspective that Covid has wrought on a nation that once prided itself on its moderation and capacity to keep calm and carry on.

We can only pray that common sense will be the criterion on Wednesday.

The Royal Family’s 2019 accounts reveal that the Biscuit and his Yank made the costliest Royal trip of the year by a very long way .Their African tour cost us taxpayers an eye-watering two hundred and forty six thousand pounds – many thousands more than any of the others – and shortly after it was over, they sailed away to a luxurious life in California where they can lecture the world to their hearts’ content – and get paid handsomely for doing so. 

I was horrified when I first read these figures but on reflection, was it not the best quarter of a million quid, we tax payers have ever forked out? If nothing else, it exposed the Sussexes as a grasping, ungrateful pair of vaguely insane narcissists.

Britain is well rid of them I’m afraid but I still feel some sympathy for Queenie.

In less thnt three months time, I will have completed my seventy sixth year on this planet yet I am being lectured like a naughty six year old by our Revered Leader and his little team of muppets.

I did not listen to his ‘speech’ last evening in which he announced more restrictions on our daily lives, but I have read bits of it this morning and abhor the threats it contains. Bunter J obviously thinks of himself as the new Churchill and ended his diatribe with a little bit of Churchillian verbiage, saying that ‘Never in our history has our collective destiny and collective health depended so completely on our individual behaviour,’ but even if this was so, his threat to bring in troops to assist the police is nothing less than a threat, worthy of my former boss, Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

His new restrictions have been badly thought out, if they were thought about at all and will not have the desired result, particularly when the British people collectively realise how they are being bullied. Yes, I will obey most of the new stipulations, as I have obeyed the ones so far, but this bumptious buffoon is now asking the country for another six months of sacrifice – sacrifice that will cost literally millions of jobs in all sectors of Society.

What happens at the end of the six months I wonder? More lectures from Professor Gloom and Dr Doom followed by yet another supposedly stirring speech from the Man Himself? By then I fear that the initial well of good will toward Bunter and his government will have dried up completely.

The extraordinary circumstances of the moment call for decisive leadership, based on a clear strategy, administrative competence and honesty with the public – all qualities which have been sadly lacking in the government’s coronabug response so far. The catalogue of errors they have made includes the initial delay in imposing the national lockdown, the failure to screen international arrivals, inadequate supplies of protective gear, mixed messages on safety and now, the fiasco with the so-called ‘world beating’ testing system that does not seem to work.

A few days ago, the Oxford scientists, Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson launched a scathing attack on ‘a confused and rudderless government’ that moves ‘from one poorly designed rash decision to another.’

How right they were, but even with this learned criticism plus more from a group of thirty two eminent and learned scientists, epidemiologists and health professionals a day or so later, the criticisms have not been taken in and we lumber on from catastrophe to catastrophe.

Even within the Conservative party there is growing concern at Bunter Johnson’s performance. MPs privately mutter that he has still not recovered from his own Covid ordeal, with the result that he has lost some of his instinctive ebullience and natural authority.

“Misery was etched on his face,” one Tory told the media, having been surprised by Bunter’s subdued appearance at a recent meeting. But this is the time for clarity and firmness damnit! If this hapless government is to provide a renewed sense of direction, it has to be straight with the public yet at the moment, they seem intent on provoking mass panic.

For all the current alarm in Whitehall, it should surely be recognised that this months rise in infections across western Europe has not produced any swell in the Covid death toll. In Britain the daily fatality rate, averaging just eleven recently, a tiny fraction of both the spring peak and the sixteen hundred deaths through other causes that occur every day.

Johnson’s tame muppets might be terrified of a ‘second wave,’ but the damage from these new restrictions will be every bit as frightening. Quite apart from the economic damage – and business leaders in the hospitality sector are forecasting the loss of well over a million jobs – there is what will happen to ordinary folk.

There will be loneliness and isolation, hopelessness and worry. There will be families torn apart – grandparents separated from grandchildren, birthday parties cancelled. There will be more people unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and more lovers unable to go ahead with their weddings.

There will be empty cafes, more jobs lost, closed restaurants and a growing number of buildings falling into dereliction on the streets. There will be more cancelled operations, thousands of undiagnosed cancers, missed hospital appointments. We won’t be able to see a dentist or a doctor, Children will have their education derailed again and graduates will face a future without employment.

To my mind, the problem is about people, not ruddy numbers on a graph and this, I fear, is where Bunter J and his government are out of their depth. Let’s face it, the role of politicians in these circumstances is not just to find a way of keeping the virus at bay; it’s about how they do so in a way that also allows us to continue to function as individuals and families and the country to function as a whole.

There is no question that the numbers, as presented to us, are stark – although there is a row going on over what are facts and what are predictions and the ‘facts’ as stated seem somewhat fictional in many instances. No contrary statistics to those presented by the doom and gloom merchants are ever considered, even when they come from eminent and learned men and women.

But it is the job of leaders not simply to be swayed by statistics, but by other, equally important, factors. In any war it is not only about the sheer number of weapons and manpower. It is also about strategy, wit, inventiveness and courage.

Crucially, and perhaps more importantly, it is about morale and that, I fear is where this government are failing. I know from the few people I talk to that I am not the only one despairing of the present farcical set of rules, counter rules and threats of dire punishments for this who transgress them. In situations of national crisis, governments need to win over hearts and minds and to carry people with them in any circumstances.

I am heartily sick of ministers berating us all, encouraging neighbours to snoop on each other and police to crack down on ‘offenders.’ All this for a bug that kills far fewer people than cancer or strokes or diabetes, all this for a disease that, for the vast majority, is no more lethal than seasonal flu.

At my advanced age, I suppose I am in the vulnerable category where the coronabug is concerned but however many years I might or might not have ahead of me, I want to enjoy them in freedom, not find myself locked in by an authoritarian government.

There is only one way to defeat this thing and remain standing and that is get on with our lives and be truly free. We all have to die at some stage and surely it is better to enjoy life while we can rather than cower in a corner, terrified out of our wits by an unseen enemy and a hapless government.

I know I label this my daily rant but must admit that it is developing into more of a weekly exercise for which I apologise. My excuse is that I am currently engaged in writing a vaguely autobiographical tome on life in the bush and I find wallowing in my memories infinitely preferable to trawling the British and South African newspapers of a morning, particularly with the chaos and confusion prevailing in the world at the moment.

But it is Sunday, there are still blue patches of sky over Dartmoor and I have enjoyed – probably not the correct verb – virtually all that the British press has hurled at us this week, so let me talk about one or two aspects of the news.

No belay that. I am going to talk about two of the main characters making the news at present.

‘Where is Boris?’ the Spectator asked this week. If you remember, the worthy Bunter J was once the editor of this magazine and he might have expected a better press from his former colleagues, but then the Coronabug came along and even his old chums are taking him apart.

With a front cover image featuring a distant blonde dot on a tiny boat bobbing rudderless and oarless on a stormy sea, the message of chaos and drift from the title was emphatic – a criticism of the prime minister’s leadership in the battle against the pandemic that is being enthusiastically echoed across an increasingly sceptical right wing media.

‘The question now is whether he can become a proper leader with a sense of direction and purpose,’ said the magazine’s editor, Fraser Nelson, effectively arguing that Johnson’s premiership was at a crossroads, which of course it is.

After a week in which Britain’s test-and-trace system – once claimed by our hapless prime minister to be ‘world-beating’ – was at the point of collapse, Nelson asked ‘whether the pattern we have seen in recent months – of disorder, debacle, rebellion, U-turn and confusion – is what we should henceforth expect.’

I fear that it is. The freedom-loving, twinkly eyed, Rabelaisian character that I and many others voted for has become a bumbling, burbling version of Oliver Cromwell, forcing his views and the views of a small coterie of his ‘friends’ down our collective throat without any thought as to the probable consequences.

We were warned by the very same magazine of a ‘looming test crisis’ five long months ago yet the situation seems to be deteriorating by the day and nobody – certainly not the prime minister – will shoulder any blame for the shambles.

It is only a week or so since Bunter J spoke optimistically about a ‘moonshot’ plan to test ten million people a day by 2021. What a load of guffle that boast proved to be! At the moment, there are nowhere near enough tests for worried parents at a level of around two hundred and thirty thousand a day.

‘Too often the government has over-promised and under-delivered,’ concluded The Times on Friday morning. ‘Policies have had to be swiftly abandoned after the exposure of entirely predictable problems,’ the broadsheet continued, adding the A-level fiasco and the problems with the contact-tracing app for good measure.

The paper – perhaps with one eye on a promotion for the former Times journalist Michael Gove – argued that Johnson needed to appoint ‘competent deputies’ before ‘the public come to a settled and unflattering view about his ability to do the job.’

I take their point but I am afraid that my view of Bunter J’s ability to do the job is already settled and entirely unflattering!

And then there is his Health Secretary, the asinine Mathew Hancock. He does not have quite the bluster of his boss but nor does he appear to have any idea as to what his job entails, yet this man is a Cabinet Minister with real power over all our lives.

He can smash up businesses, confine us to our homes, break apart families and keep people from their nearest and dearest at the end of their lives. He can destroy wedding plans, wreck education, ruin holidays, take away jobs and set the Cops on any of us for refusing to wear a muzzle, even though expert opinion on the efficacy of facemasks is to say the least, very divided.

He also seems to feel that he can lie through his teeth or at least twist the figures to suit his own views and we must all accept it like docile sheep going into a dip.

On Friday, Hancock told us that the number of hospitalisations for Covid is doubling every seven to eight days.

Really? I am not sure I can accept that at all.

Let’s face it, ‘hospitalisations for Covid’ is a somewhat tricky figure that has to be affected by the government’s endless, futile and utterly frantic hunt for signs of a bug which is now twenty fourth in line among diseases causing death in this country.

Deaths, which would be a difficult figure to ‘massage’ are low and remain low after a long fall from their peak on April 8th. Hancock – I have heard him described as Tigger but that is a serious slight on the much-loved A.A. Milne character – obviously feels that people must at all costs be distracted from this fact.

I have to wonder about the hospital admission figures too, given the slipperiness of the Government throughout this long and apparently unending fiasco. Many experts and senior physicians are now telling us that people who have tested positive for Covid in one of Hancock’s testing trawls, but who go into hospital for other reasons, get added to this total. They also tell us that if one ever tests positive for the Coronabug, then dies because of a heart attack, cancer or other causes – including road accidents,believe it or not – is automatically added on to the Coronabug statistics. 

I am being overly cynical perhaps but I can’t help wondering whether hospitals are being encouraged to admit mild cases for observation, which they would previously have sent home? I am sorry but my faith in the government line on this nonsense has entirely evaporated.

And let us look at the hospitalisation figures. Yes, they have edged up a bit since mid-August, but bear in mind that in March they were regularly more than two and a half thousand a day.

On August 1st, the total of Coronabug hospital admissions in England was fifty. On August 8th it was seventy eight. On August 15th it was thirty eight. On August 22nd it was twenty five. On August 29th it was fifty two. On September 5th it was ninety four. On the twelfth it was one hundred and forty three – hardly an established pattern damnit!

In my humble opinion, this is unscrupulous panic-mongering, which would shame a banana republic. Quite what lies behind it, I am not sure but when I watch the Health Secretary being interviewed and trotting out his gloom and doom, I wish I was back in my own country Zimbabwe – which really is a banana republic but seems to be coping far better than Britain in its attempts to fight the Coronabug.

What on earth is the matter with our Revered Leader? Did the Coronabug act as some sort of lobotomy when it struck him down, I wonder? He panicked in March by ‘following the science,’ which was an inane thing to do as the ‘science’ was saying a number of different things at the time. In the process, Bunter J did immense damage and must surely realise that, yet he continues to hammer the economy and the British people. 

Rather than admit that he hugely overestimated the danger of the Coronabug, he continues to insist that it is a deadly plague and that it will be back soon in an even more terrible second wave. 

Yet the official Coronabug death and hospitalisation figures have been declining ever since 8^th April and are now bumping along the bottom of the graph, only just above zero.

Yet the government continues trying to pretend that we are still in serious trouble. How simple-minded does anyone need to be not to see the nonsense in this? Last Monday, the media reported new coronavirus cases in the UK had risen to two thousand nine hundred and eighty eight on Sunday, the highest daily total since May. Was that meant to panic us all into believing the twaddle they are feeding us with? I can’t see any other reason for it and the underlying facts certainly do not support the need for drastic action.

Have a look at official government statistical charts and you will find that out of more than 1.1 million tests each week, there were fewer than ten thousand positive results. Judging by the state of the hospitals and the death rates, I think we may assume most were of those tested were just fine, as most who catch this disease are. 

So, for this, our benighted leaders have decided to to stop people gathering in groups of more than six? I am sure that even those who have up till now, put up with this rubbish are becoming heartily sick of it. Someone in authority somewhere has to make a stand for all our sakes and demand truthful explanations of why children’s education has been ruined, why legions of people will lose their jobs, why daily life is an intensifying misery of rampaging desk jockeys and bureaucracy, and why hundreds of businesses, built up with years of sweat and sacrifice are now dying, If nobody will stand up to these numpties, we are all in considerable trouble. It doesn’t matter too much for me at my advanced age, but I fear for my Grandchildren and their children.

And it seems that Bunter J and the Government (for whom I sadly voted) have no legal right to impose the severe restrictions on our lives with which they have wrecked the economy, brought needless grief to the bereaved and the lonely and destroyed our personal liberty. This is the verdict of one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country, the retired Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption.

He said last week in an interview: ‘I don’t myself believe that the Act confers on the Government the powers that it has purported to exercise.’

Sumption was referring to the Public Health Act of 1984, the basis for almost all the reams of increasingly hysterical decrees against normal life which the asinine Health Secretary, Mathew Hancock has issued since March. The law was my life for thirty years and I know it is not usual for a retired senior judge to use such language in public so there must be a good reason for him to come out now.

The 1984 Act was drawn up to give local magistrates the power to quarantine the sick. Nothing in it comes anywhere near justifying these astonishing moves – confinement to homes, travel restrictions, harsh limits on visiting family, interference with weddings and funerals, closure of churches, compulsory face coverings, bans on assembly and protest.

Huh! Belay that last one. You can bet your lives that extremist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion will be allowed to carry of with their disruptive and destructive antics at the expense of us all.

But that is beside the point. English law just does not allow an Act of Parliament to be stretched as far as this one has been. It is a principle of British law that fundamental freedoms cannot be invaded or overruled unless the law specifically allows it.

As he is one of the most distinguished legal minds of our time, Lord Sumption’s opinions on this matter are surely important so I just hope and pray that the Courts of England, which have so far been content to let the Government do what it likes, will listen to what he says when they look at the matter again later this month when Simon Dolan, a businessman is seeking a judicial review of the Government’s policy on the Coronabug.

It is extraordinary for someone as learned and eminent as Lord Sumption to go public in this fashion. And he went on to point out that powers do exist – in the shape of the Civil Contingencies Act under which the Prime Minister could do all the things he has done. But that Act requires regular parliamentary scrutiny and renewal.

The Government’s team of lawyers must surely know this. So why wasn’t the Civil Contingencies Act used? We can only guess that the Bunter and Mr Hancock were worried that if they had to keep coming back to Parliament, even the dim-witted and gullible MPs we have nowadays would eventually have seen through and put a stop to the immense power grab now under way.

Lord Sumption’s intervention is, of course, so huge and important that the media of this country does not seem to have noticed it, but believe me, it is an indication of just how deep into the swamp of despotism this Government has already waded.

We have to get out of it soon or we will be so badly mired that escape will be impossible. Let us get Parliament back to work and doing their jobs to save us from the same sort of petty tyranny that I have not known since the days of Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Six years ago today, I arrived in Chinde, one of the oldest towns in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of my walk down the Zambezi. It was obviously a special moment but I can remember feeling curiously flat at the time. I had become the first person in recorded history to walk the length of that mighty river – 3200 kilometres – but I just didn’t know how to better that particular feat.

The trouble is that I still don’t and as the years go on, my battered body keeps telling me that it has had enough. Am I to endure a sedentary dotage I wonder?

Ah well…!

The nutcases were out in force again this weekend with Extinction Rebellion causing all sorts of mayhem. Home Secretary Priti Patel is threatening to proscribe the organisation as a criminal group in order that tougher sentences can be handed out, but to my mind, that will make the protesters think of themselves as Martyrs for the cause.

There are plenty of laws already in place and all we need is for the police to actually enforce them and the Courts to back them up. Why are these ill-informed fanatics being allowed to mess up the lives of innocent people in any case? I suppose some of them feel that they are justified in their protests, but as far as I can see, the majority of the ringleaders are comfortably off, middle class people who have nothing better to do and the government are making them feel ever more important and justified in their actions.

It is not so long ago, that their ‘leader’ the precocious Greta Thunberg was haranguing the United Nations and being lauded by Michael Gove and a few other British politicians when in fact, the rubbish she spouts has little bearing on reality. Yes there are a few things that people can do to cut down the damage being done to the world – get rid of plastic for example – but in general, progress is progress and even if we don’t like what is happening – and I certainly do not – we must surely appreciate the fact that life is far more comfortable for us all than it was for our forefathers and their fathers before them.

Another prominent and vocal nutcase would seem to be the lady in charge of the British Library. Chief librarian Liz Jolly leaves Auntie BBC standing when it comes to spouting patronising tommytwaddle.

Jolly, who manages the collection at the UK’s national library (our library damnit, not hers) is supporting changes to displays and collections in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.

Around two hundred library employees have signed a letter declaring a racial ‘state of emergency’ in the library. It seems that the library building to start with was designed to resemble a battleship – ‘an imperialist symbol.’

What a load of pathetic nonsense! Most countries with a coastline have navies, and battleships. The Royal Navy had a big hand to play fairly recently in freeing the Falkland Islands from a fascist invader.

A few decades before that, they were decidedly useful in defeating Nazi Germany during the Battle of the Atlantic. Oh, and didn’t Britain use her battleships to close down the international slave trade after the UK led the world in abolishing that evil?

Other items causing concern to the worthy and very woke Ms Jolly are busts of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Why? Because ‘they are part and parcel of Western civilizational supremacy.’

What on earth does that mean damnit?! I would have thought librarians needed a decent grasp of the English language but that really is woffle of the lowest order.

Even a portrait of Mr Punch is marked down for the skip; some staff believe he is ‘a figure from the heyday of Victorian imperialism who entertained through abuse that mirrored colonial violence.’

I could be wrong but I was always led to believe that Punch originated in 16^th century Italy as the Neapolitan ‘Pulcinella’ and has absolutely nothing to do with anything colonial.

Please will someone free me from these pathetic zealots in high places.

I have spent a fairly substantial chunk of my life in or near Stroud in Gloucestershire. It is where one of the two founders of Extinction Rebellion come from and has always been known for its vegans, poets, scribblers and general cranks, most of whom are quite harmless.

I could not help smiling last week though when I read about a salon owner in that fair town who tried to advertise for an assistant through the local job centre. Her advertisement was rejected because she specifically asked for a ‘happy’ person to apply.

That it seems would only offend unhappy people.

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

He is not everyone’s cup of tea but I do enjoy reading Peter Hitchen’s columns in the Mail on Sunday. As he so rightly asked yesterday, is anyone still fooled by the figures for cases of the Coronabug? I quote,

‘The more you look, the more you will find, but deaths and hospitalisations keep going down. It is increasingly clear that the virus rarely affects healthy people. In fact, I’d guess that the chance of a healthy young person dying from Covid is about as great as the chance of an eagle dropping a tortoise on your head and killing you.

This actually happened to Greek playwright Aeschlyus about 2,500 years ago, so it must be about due to happen again, especially with the growing eagle population in the country, and the huge number of pet tortoises on which they might swoop if hungry. Be afraid.

Using the panic-stricken logic applied to Covid by Health Commissar Matt Hancock, we should surely be taking serious precautions against this menace. Perhaps the enforced wearing of tortoise-proof helmets might be necessary, or anti-eagle netting installed over the back gardens of tortoise-owners, who should from now on be strictly licensed.

But my favourite Hancock-style solution is the compulsory greasing of all tortoises, so that eagles cannot pick them up in the first place.

I think this meets the precautionary principle quite well, and I’m sure our domestic grease industry can cope with the demand. Save Lives. Control the Tortoise.’

I have to agree although it is unusual for Mr Hitchens to resort to levity. The current sense of fear that is promoted by government in all spheres of our daily lives surely cannot go on much longer. Risk is part of life I’m afraid and as far as I can see, the risk from this bug is minimal.

Talking about risk, last week I found myself on the cover of a brand new magazine and was duly flattered by the piece about me inside. SoulKind is a bi annual magazine – more like a coffee table book really – that explores why some people ignore risk and devote themselves to ventures that others regard as completely bonkers. For me, adventure of any sort has always been a way of challenging myself and perhaps getting my own back for my early years of being bullied at boarding school.

It is probably a great deal more complicated than that but I honestly believe that the current mass hysteria – again promoted by the government – is taking the soul out of Britain and will lead to the development of a pathetic nation of scared people.

And it all comes from the top. The character of any government is shaped by the personality of the person in charge – in this case Bunter Johnson. When he was the US president, Harry Truman apparently had a sign on his desk that read, ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ If Bunter J had such a sign, it would have to read, ‘Who Me?

Anyone familiar with his life knows that he does not feel constrained by conventional norms of behaviour and nor will he willingly shoulder responsibility for his bad choices. His career is potholed with scandals, outright lies and betrayals of trust. Having got to the pinnacle of the greasy pole despite all that, he would seem to have concluded that, providing your skin is thick enough and your reserves of shamelessness are deep enough, there is no scandal so enormous or blunder so obviously inept that it cannot be brazened out. And the same law of impunity that he wrote for himself is being applied to his cabinet of loyal mediocrities. Not only does former fire place salesman, Gavin Williamson continue to draw his cabinet salary, Robert Jenrick is still installed in a ministerial limousine, despite having unlawfully approved a £1bn property development.

Mr Johnson is encouraged in this by the pathetic team of ‘Yes men’ whom he imported into Number 10. Taking their lead from Svengali Cummings, they would appear to have an aggressive ‘never apologise, never concede’ attitude in which they can never be wrong. The defining non-resignation was that of Cummings himself after the exposure of his lockdown-busting excursions to and around Durham. His contrition-free account of his activities included that ludicrous ‘eye-test’ defence of his trip to Barnard Castle, the sheer inanity of this excuse demonstrating complete contempt for criticism. Mr Cummings refused to resign – and Mr Johnson to sack him – despite days of terrible headlines, serious damage to the government’s public health messaging, public anger and furious demands from many Tory MPs that he had to go. By successfully defying that level of pressure, the pair proved to themselves that no one can stop them tearing up the conventional rules about accountability.

Yet there will be consequences for the government’s doctrine of total power with absolutely no responsibility. When ministers start thinking that they will never be held accountable for their actions, they are that much more likely to make choices that are reckless, sleazy or stupid. We have a senior ministerial team that many senior Tory MPs regard as totally incompetent and at the same time this hapless cabinet is being encouraged to believe that no ministerial cock-up, however bad it may be, will be punished. That is a very dangerous way of running a country I am afraid. I witnessed the same thing in Zimbabwe and we know how that country has turned out.

After the purging of five of their most senior officials since April, civil servants must have realised that Number 10’s immediate response to anything that goes wrong is to blame officials. I am afraid they will respond accordingly. Instead of encouraging innovation, initiative and accountability within Whitehall, this will engender a culture of risk-avoidance and blame shifting in which officials make it their first priority to safeguard themselves against being cast as villains of the piece.  If ministers are no longer willing to defend their civil servants, officials will be less happy to defer to the tradition that they leave quietly when pushed out.

Parliament returns this week with a growing number of Conservative MPs anxious that a summer strewn with screeching U-turns and howling errors is giving their government a reputation for blithering ineptitude that is draining away public support.

The resignation of Ms Collier and the sacking of Mr Slater from the education establishment will not assuage voters, already angry about what has happened in schools for the simple reason that few parents will have heard of these officials. The latest opinion polls seem to indicate that voters hold Goofy Gavin primarily responsible for his department’s failings. It is his head that is demanded by the angry people who have been bombarding the inboxes of Tory MPs over the past month.

The shrewder people on the Conservative benches know that power without responsibility is a poisoned method of governing that will rebound on their party. A cabinet of blunderers is bad enough. A cabinet that refuses to take any responsibility for its mistakes invites an especially severe verdict from the public.

I really don’t know – nor I think does Bunter J – where we go from here.