I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!

SOMETIMES I read a news story that is so shocking I immediately think of the line by TV newsman Howard Beale in the 1976 movie Network: “I don’t have to tell you things are bad, everyone knows things are bad... I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”

That’s how I, and no doubt many of you, felt when I read that a woman in her 70s was arrested and HANDCUFFED by the police because she had taken her 97-yearold mother from her care home to a garden centre.

If anything signifies more aptly the appalling slide we’ve suffered into living in a virtual police state, I’ve yet to see it. We’ve already endured police officers banging on front doors demanding to know how many people we might have in our own homes and using drones to spy on people walking to see if they get into groups of more than six, and now we have this utter travesty.

Retired nurse Ylenia Angelis, 73, wheeled her mother Tina Thornborough out of the care home to which she had been transferred following her treatment at hospital. She had neither seen nor hugged her mother for nine months and acted on the spur of the moment. Regrettably, she has been in dispute with the home for months as she is keen to get her mother home so she can care for her there – and as a retired nurse she would seem to have a valid case! While the family has control of her mother’s financial matters, it appears the local authority has effective power of attorney over her care – something the family has been contesting.

As this was the last time the daughter was likely to see her mother before last

HANDCUFFED: Leandra, her grandmother Tina and mother Ylenia who was held

week’s lockdown kicked in, she asked to pass a bunch of roses to her. A care worker denied her that, so admitting she had reached “breaking point” the distraught woman and her daughter, actress Leandra Ashton, 41, took the mother to their car and drove off. Social services were called and they in turn called in the police.

What happened next defies belief. Having spotted their car at a garden centre, police confronted the former nurse and told her she must return her mother. When Ms Angelis refused, police officers arrested her, put her in handcuffs and

SHOWING a clear chip off his paternal grandparents’ respective blocks, Prince William, left, revealed that when he learned he had Covid he decided to keep quiet as he feared spooking a nation that was already “scared enough” following the diagnoses of Boris Johnson and William’s father and heir to the throne Prince Charles, and didn’t want to “alarm” people.

Glorious stuff. But here’s a thought... just imagine if his sister-in-law had contracted it!

Can’t help thinking she’d have called for global prayer vigils and the suspension of normal life.

locked her in the back of the police car. She stayed there as her mother was driven back to the care home and, courtesy of the freshly imposed lockdown, back into isolation from her family. Leandra started to film events with her mobile while adding a first-class but hugely distressing commentary even when one officer ordered her to stop – which he had no right to do.

While I’m not condoning taking people out of care homes, this should have been dealt with in a far more sympathetic manner. Admittedly she refused to comply, but it should be noted Ms Angelis was not behaving in any sense in a threatening manner or even resisting arrest.

But she was still handcuffed!

This is what happens when you seek to terrify and subjugate an entire nation without being prepared to let them see either your workings or the scientific advice on which they are based. Any valid or reasoned opposition can be ignored as some police now feel empowered to the degree they can behave as if they are the Stasi from the former East Germany.

Say it with me: I’m mad as hell...

PROPHET OF DOOM: Peter Finch as TV newsreader Howard Beale in Network