Lockdown stasi are coming for YOU
We may not be fully conscious of it yet, but lockdown is, in many respects, one giant, unprecedented social experiment.
no one has any real idea how it will influence the economy, although very few disagree that, short term, it will be almost cataclysmic.
equally seismic are the social repercussions. For young people, who are not only missing out on their education but also on important relationships outside the home, and who are spending more and more time in the toxic environment of cyberspace.
For vulnerable people stuck at home in poor conditions; for the elderly, cut off from their families and struggling with basic things like shopping and medicines and, of course, loneliness; for the mentally ill or disabled, unable to access their usual support networks.
equally, there are others who are thriving, such as friends whose young son is delighted to have the full attention of both his normally frantic professional parents. And my own mother and father who, four weeks into their house arrest in Italy, seem to be happier than I’ve seen them in years.
And, dare I say it, yours truly, who is secretly enjoying the prolonged company of her quaranteens, despite all the extra washing and cooking, and the occasional scrap over the last packet of Quavers.
BUT there is one group that, for me, stands out more than most — and not in a good way. Those people for whom the curtailment of our daily civil liberties seems to represent not a tragic loss, but a long-awaited opportunity to indulge their inner dictator. Forget Covidiots, it’s the Covidstasi who really get my goat.
These are the people who time their neighbours on a morning run, or monitor how many family members leave the house at any one time, and then report their findings to the authorities.
Those who bite your head off if you so much as stray a centimetre in the supermarket social distancing queue, or snap at you in the street if you fail to get out of their way fast enough.
Busybodies complaining about kids playing football or sunbathing in gardens, even when they are members of the same family and observing guidelines. Curtain-twitchers denouncing people on
Twitter for having non-essential items in their shopping basket.
Consider the case of the NHS nurse from Cambridgeshire who returned home from a 12-hour shift to find a note which read: ‘you are a disgrace and you have been reported! Stay at Home!’
or what about the South yorkshire police officer filmed lecturing a couple for using their front garden; or the one in manchester who threatened a man with pepper spray while he was dropping off food for his mother?
or even the officer who, when I sat down to rest my knee for a few moments on a bench the other day (I have a dodgy meniscus), stood about four metres behind me bellowing into a megaphone about how sitting on benches was strictly prohibited, thus ensuring every passer-by eyed me with the sort of hostility normally reserved for suspected child murderers.
When I pointed out to him that he could simply have asked me to move on without the need to shout in my ear, he implied that if I knew what was good for me I would keep my opinions to myself.
I have no problem whatsoever respecting the lockdown measures to slow the rate of contagion. But this must be by consent, not force. otherwise we are straying into very uncomfortable territory.
Because whatever the lasting effects of this pandemic turn out to be, the permanent curtailment of our hard-won civil liberties must not be one of them.
Britain is a free country, and it must remain that way. I don’t care how bad things get — that is non-negotiable. otherwise, this virus poses far more than a risk to individual lives; it threatens the very essence of our society.