I will never forgive the clowns who cancelled Remembrance Sunday

NORMALLY I would go this morning to a small village war memorial and stand in the cold November air while we prayed a little, sang O God, Our Help In Ages Past, and observed the usual silence between bugle calls.

But a few weeks ago, I was told this was impossible. Apparently we would all be too close together, or something. So the event was to be switched to a nearby cemetery, where we could all stand a long way from each other.

‘There will be white crosses painted on the grass to indicate where people should stand to ensure social distancing… Masks are not compulsory in this scenario, but their use would be appreciated,’ said the parish circular.

And, of course, we were supposed to leave our names and addresses in case, in the wind and the cold, as we avoided each other, we somehow contracted or passed on Covid.

How, I wondered, would those we were commemorating have viewed these pathetic precautions and the spirit of subservience to the State (constantly advised by Church leaders) which they express?

I was getting ready to endure this parody, wondering if it would make me laugh out loud or lose my temper, or both.

But then Johnson and Hancock, our prison governor and chief warder, once again made normal life illegal. The feeble pseudoceremony was cancelled, as are all other religious services.

Quite a few people in the churches and in politics are beginning, too late, to seethe about this repression of an important part of national life. Any actual war veteran, should he take part in a Remembrance Service inside, could be fined on the spot by an official.

But the more we obey Hancock and his dubiously lawful decrees, the more he thinks he can boss us about. It is because the churches took the knee to him in March that he now feels he can kick them in

IN 2003, far too many in the media fell for dodgy dossiers. We were supposedly 45 minutes from an attack by Saddam Hussein’s secret arsenals of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now we have a new dodgy dossier, a dud before it was leaked to the BBC, wrongly predicting 1,500 deaths a day from Covid. And we fall for it again. Doesn’t the old saying go: ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’?

the face. So it is good to mark that last week we began once again to have an opposition in this country. More public voices are being raised against this unjustified folly, out of all proportion to the hugely exaggerated risk. Back in March, as I know very well, anyone who spoke up against this was treated more or less as an outcast apostle of evil, callous and selfish, not to be listened to.

Now, a significant number of MPs are ready to vote against it.

More and more of the media are examining it as severely as they should have done from the start, though the BBC remains mostly a shameful propaganda organ of Downing Street. I think we have reached the end of the beginning.

And one day we may yet liberate ourselves from these sinister clowns. When we do, there will be much to forgive.

But I am not sure I will ever be able to forgive the people who made it a crime to sing O God, Our Help In Ages Past at a British village war memorial.

AT A railway station near me, there is a poster threatening fines of £6,400 for not wearing a face nappy. How many muggings would you have to commit to be fined that much?