PETER HITCHENS: Forget face masks and fear – let’s relax and accept the risk 

Every day I still see unhappy, frightened people cringing from human contact. They have been terrified almost out of their minds by foolish government propaganda, and the most basic trust, the very heart of civilisation, has been destroyed.

This is another side of savage, unforgivably cruel rules which have prevented grandparents from touching their grandchildren, or forbidden people to visit close relatives, even spouses, in their dying weeks.

Millions of us know this is all the most appalling rubbish, based on wild, wrong guesses and twisted figures, and one day soon I hope an icy public inquiry will condemn those responsible for the grave, incompetents they are.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is pictured above wearing a face mask in a shop in Uxbridge. Since the only other way for this madness to end is for Mr Johnson to admit he made a terrible mistake, which is hardly likely, I offer this as a serious, if slow, route out of our dangerous and damaging national madness

But in the meantime what are those of us who have not been cowed into submission to do?

I suggest that we are allowed to register as ‘relaxed’. We will sign declarations that we will not sue anyone or claim on anyone’s insurance if we catch Covid-19. We regard it as a minor risk of life, to be coped with.

In return, employers, shops, pubs, restaurants, churches, swimming pools and transport operators should (if they wish) ask staff if they too are prepared to declare themselves ‘relaxed’. Or they could recruit new staff who are.

Where this happens, all the footling palaver of visors, muzzles, plastic screens, incessant obsessive use of hand-sanitiser and ‘social distancing’ will be abandoned.

Trains can have special ‘relaxed’ carriages where refreshments are served and baleful, doom-laden announcements are turned off. The upper decks of buses will be ‘relaxed’, or perhaps one entire bus in three (till we see what the take-up is). Airlines can offer entire ‘relaxed’ flights.

Everyone else can carry on, shrouded in gowns like the staff of a mortuary, muzzled in face-nappies, hiding from each other on footpaths and in doorways. 

A couple are seen wearing masks on a ride at Thorpe Park. I suggest that we are allowed to register as ¿relaxed¿. We will sign declarations that we will not sue anyone or claim on anyone¿s insurance if we catch Covid-19

A couple are seen wearing masks on a ride at Thorpe Park. I suggest that we are allowed to register as ‘relaxed’. We will sign declarations that we will not sue anyone or claim on anyone’s insurance if we catch Covid-19

If this appeals to you as a way of life, if you think it is a proportionate reaction to the Covid-19 virus, please carry on behaving in this fashion. I have no desire to stop you or interfere with your strange habits.

And then we will see what happens. My guess is that the people who register as relaxed will be healthier, as well as far happier, than those who don’t. 

Since the only other way for this madness to end is for Mr Johnson to admit he made a terrible mistake, which is hardly likely, I offer this as a serious, if slow, route out of our dangerous and damaging national madness.

In return for it, even I am prepared to submit to tracking and tracing while the experiment lasts. 

An invented tale to twist your mind

Some weeks ago I warned that the BBC would soon unleash a nasty bit of propaganda posing as drama. 

In fact, when the enemies of our once-free and once-happy society want to twist an issue, this is their favourite method. Even the once-bland Call The Midwife has been hijacked for this purpose, oozing pro-abortion bias.

The latest bit of twisting is called Mrs America, and features Rose Byrne, right, as the 1960s American feminist Gloria Steinem, and Cate Blanchett as her opponent, Phyllis Schlafly. 

The latest bit of twisting is called Mrs America, and features Rose Byrne, right, as the 1960s American feminist Gloria Steinem, and Cate Blanchett as her opponent, Phyllis Schlafly

The latest bit of twisting is called Mrs America, and features Rose Byrne, right, as the 1960s American feminist Gloria Steinem, and Cate Blanchett as her opponent, Phyllis Schlafly

The best line in it is an admission by one liberationist that, whatever they claimed back then, they were against ‘housewives’, a word which has now become a term of abuse.

The much-hyped drama is, in fact, pretty lame – expensively made but startlingly dull. But it clearly sees Mrs Schlafly – a courageous lone voice who warned of the ultimate results of the sexual revolution – as its target. 

She was right that the campaign to get women working outside the home would end in those women doing two jobs for less than the price of one.

I do not know how many of the nasty things it suggests about her are true, though I am working on it. But I should point out the programme itself admits much of what it shows is invented. 

That is their word. But invented by whom and for what aim? If you can stomach this stuff at all, bear that in mind.

What news from Leicester, where the dreaded virus surged after a huge number of new testing centres opened? Well, the number of ‘cases’ (not deaths, or even illnesses) seems to be staying high.

And why not when, as the council reports: ‘This week, hundreds of staff and trained volunteers will be calling on people at home to offer them a free test, with mobile testing units popping up in local neighbourhoods. Community testing will initially focus on areas in the north-east of the city, where the number of positive results has been higher… but it will be extended to other parts of the city from this weekend.’

Seek, and ye shall find, as the Bible says.

Blood donors treated like toxic threats 

How I wish that the people who run the English Blood Transfusion Service were even one tenth as helpful as the wonderful people who work in it.

A few weeks ago, at the height of the virus panic, I gave blood (as I often do) without any great fuss and with no need to wear a muzzle. Now the English Service demands I must wear such a muzzle at my next, fast-approaching appointment. It can offer no legal or scientific justification for this (there isn’t one). 

In Wales, donors are asked to remove muzzles, because they hide the signs a donor is about to faint. Since I regard these muzzles as deeply distressing symbols of servile submission to unreasoning power, I face a very unpleasant choice.

Why do these people want to treat voluntary donors as if they are toxic threats?

The biggest crime of all

You’ve said it. I’ve said it. But when Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Tom Winsor, says victims of many crimes are receiving a ‘limited service’ – if they are getting any service at all – then you know things are really bad.

Among his most sinister figures is that a fast-growing number of victims do not support prosecutions of those who have wronged them.

This means people are becoming more afraid of criminals than of the authorities. It must have taken a lot of effort to create a society in which criminals grow more free each day, while the rest of us become less free. But we have done it.

Covid rebel silenced by the courts 

Last year, Gina Miller managed to beat the Government in the courts over its attempt to bypass Parliament over leaving the EU.

I don’t agree with her politics, but I thought she had a case and was not surprised when she won. Her action received huge coverage and was wafted swiftly into the courts.

Compare and contrast the equally brave and justified effort by businessman Simon Dolan, who last week was refused permission to seek a judicial review of the unprecedented powers proclaimed and used by the Government on the pretext of Covid-19.

It was a good case well-presented, and it could not be more important. The Government delayed it by dragging its feet. The judge then absurdly dismissed it – partly because it had not been brought sooner, and some of the provisions (which could be clamped down again at any time) had since been lifted.

The BBC and the courts simply will not give a fair hearing to anything except the causes they like. In many important ways, it becomes more obvious by the day that this country is no longer really free. And when we go bankrupt, which I think will be soon, this will matter even more than it does now.

Compare and contrast the equally brave and justified effort by businessman Simon Dolan, who last week was refused permission to seek a judicial review of the unprecedented powers proclaimed and used by the Government on the pretext of Covid-19

Compare and contrast the equally brave and justified effort by businessman Simon Dolan, who last week was refused permission to seek a judicial review of the unprecedented powers proclaimed and used by the Government on the pretext of Covid-19

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