It is too easy to criticise our country these days on the basis that nothing is working properly. Broken Britain is certainly an apt description for the country but, for those who care to look a bit closer at our various organisations and institutions, it is not merely a matter of fact that things are not working; there is a growing list of things that are doing quite the opposite of what they are supposed to be doing. Orwell would have had a field day.
It has been discovered, beyond all reasonable doubt that a branch of our armed forces, the purpose of which is to protect us from foreign aggression (unless, of course, you count Northern Ireland) has been used against British citizens. To be fair, this is not really an ‘armed’ sector of the military. The 77th Brigade, a military haven for full-time geeks to be part-time geeks for the British Army, is composed of people who have probably never stripped down and reassembled anything more dangerous than a biro. Their function is to monitor the internet for signs of hostile foreign powers using social media platforms in a way that could be to the detriment of the United Kingdom.
However, a stunning and detailed report by Big Brother Watch names people who it is confirmed were monitored by the 77th Brigade during the Covid years for their opposition to the government imposed lockdowns and other pandemic panic inspired measures. Thus, sinister characters such as Toby Young, Peter Hitchens and David Davis MP were being monitored and reported to the Cabinet for their articles and speeches about Covid. The irony of all this is exquisite; these people were writing and speaking out precisely to get the Cabinet to listen and, possibly, change their strategy. There was nothing covert about their activities.
We could be grateful that we still live in a country where, on the basis of subject access requests, the individuals prompted by Big Brother Watch to submit them to the relevant government departments were able to obtain them. But it also shows the government was unable or unwilling to suppress these requests. I have a suspicion that there are people in the higher echelons of the British government who maintain that they did the right thing during the Covid panic and that most of the public dislike the likes of Young, Hitchens and Davis so much that they don’t give a hoot. On that last point, if Twitter is anything to go by, those in government may be right.
Border Force, which features regularly in these pages is not working. They can do their job at Heathrow where I regularly see Border Force operatives—frequently not originally British citizens judging from their appearance and accents—shouting loudly at and frisking frail elderly ladies. But their counterparts on our seaboard borders, far from preventing anyone from entering the country illegally, form a welcome party thus ushering in the unwanted and the unidentifiable by the thousand only to release them into the English countryside.
The police seem, strangely, unable to do their jobs and frequently, to do the opposite. I cannot verify the figures, but I heard Silkie Carlo of the above-mentioned Big Brother Watch say on Triggernometry that, for example, the Metropolitan Police are committing more crimes than they solve. The capacity of most police forces for not solving crimes is legendary. What could possibly be going through the mind of a policeman who, when confronted by some eco eejit sitting on the M25 preventing taxpayers from getting to work and ambulances from saving lives, asks If they are OK and offers them a bottle of water? Oddly, they swing into action if it looks like a journalist may report what is happening at the scene or a frustrated motorists decides it is time that someone shifted these loons and tries to do it himself.
We have already seen how the NHS prefers to kill people instead of saving lives, first by preventing sick people using their services during the Covid panic and by being unable to cope with the backlog. Now the nurses, not satisfied with their complicity in the Covid lockdowns, are standing on picket lines and perpetuating the problem. Teachers—another lot of lockdown lovers—don’t teach and since the great Covid panic the mainstream media, instead of ‘talking truth to power’ act as amplifiers of the message from those in power to those who seek truth.
To wind up this miserable piece, I was very disappointed to hear that the prophetic Mark Steyn will not be returning to GB News. I had high hopes for GB News when it started. Even when it received millions of pounds of investment from a hedge fund, I maintained those hopes because it continued to employ Steyn and continues to employ Neil Oliver who seems about as red pilled as Neo in The Matrix. Steyn was not sacked, but GB News made his terms and conditions of returning to work following two heart attacks so restrictive, that he told them where to go. I don’t know if Neil Oliver reads this column but if he does, I advise him not to go off air with a heart attack.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
