UK Society – The New Observer

The Panopticon

I thought this was a nice example of the panopticon. “We’re looking out for you… whether you see us or not”. I.e. they can see you but you can’t see them. The machine of the Panopticon. Foucault’s analysis was spot on.

Covid tyranny

The current lockdown laws prohibit political protests. In the first lockdown gatherings were banned but there was a specific exemption for political protests so long as they were conducted with ‘social distancing’ in mind. This exception was explicitly removed in the second lockdown. This means that the government has banned any public political protest against its decisions. This of course is tyranny. It doesn’t matter that many of the people who want to protest are ‘eccentric’ or ‘misguided’ or not well-informed about the science of the epidemic (or the vaccines). When government and the police decide that people are “idiots” and “mindless” (police words) for carrying out a political protest against a government decision we are in effect like China.

This is the result.

Pfizer vaccine and greed

Government Ministers in the UK, fully understanding their supporting role in the interests of global capitalism and finance have long since been seeing any potential vaccine against Covid-19 in terms of profit and stock-market gains. From the outset the Health Secretary was telling the world how a British vaccine would be good for British business. “After all, the upside of being the first country in the world to develop a successful vaccine is so huge that I am throwing everything at it.” [1]

The CEO of Pfizer sold millions of dollars of stock on the day his company prematurely announced a “90% efficacy rate” for his vaccine. [2] The company explained that there was nothing untoward about this. He had set up an automatic selling option back in August and the shares were sold when the price reached a certain level. Obviously the two actions (the announcement and the ‘automatic’ share selling system) have no connection. The corporate media dutifully reported this shifty tale without asking any further questions.

The state of England

At the start of the current epidemic The Department of Health and “Social Care” released untested Covid-19 patients into care homes long after it was well-known that Covid-19 transmits asymptomatically. This resulted in thousands of “totally avoidable” deaths in an event described by Amnesty International as a “scandal of monumental proportions”. The summary of their report makes distressing reading. The facts are basically indisputable.

Old people in care homes were sacrificed to “Protect the NHS”. A political goal.

I have not seen a single MP making a fuss about this. There is a Parliamentary Inquiry into the government’s response to the pandemic which plods along. But I simply haven’t see any MP making a fuss about 18,000 + “totally avoidable” deaths of elderly people in care homes.

Contrast this with this story in today’s Guardian. A peer, in the House of Lords, put out a “tweet” in which he referred to the new Vice-President Elect of America as “The Indian”. Most likely he forgot her name and couldn’t be bothered to look it up. Maybe it is a bit offensive. And if you really want to probe it probably it reflects a slightly racist attitude. But no one has died. It is a Tweet. It will be forgotten in a few days and the mob will get outraged about the next offensive Tweet. But MPs and members of the House of Lords are complaining bitterly and demanding an apology and a retraction. Phrases such as “utterly unacceptable”, “no place in British society” and “I am so angry about this comment” abound.

I wish that at least some MPs and members of the House of Lords found the “totally avoidable” deaths of 18,000 old people in ‘Care Homes’ which resulted from a government decision “utterly unacceptable”. But it seems they don’t. They are too busy scanning Twitter for the next comment to get offended about.

I give you “British society”.