Primary school students within the Nineties, despite being young and blissfully unaware of politics, did know something of their homeland. “It’s a free country,” we used to say. We didn’t find out about communist China or Saddam Hussein, but in some way, we knew this about our own homeland.
Sadly, I doubt very much if primary school students of today say the identical thing. The latest in a protracted line of concerning cases is that of grandmother, Helen Jones, who was visited by the police after saying on Facebook that her local councillors should resign.
Many commentators have taken issue with the police motion, claiming that it represents a waste of time, when other crimes like theft and burglary go unsolved.
This shouldn’t be true. For our current crop of authorities, intimidating concerned residents and possible dissidents is the perfect possible use of police time!
What other explanation can there be, given the facts? The councillor who Jones called upon to resign was involved in a WhatsApp scandal that involved Labour politicians making derogatory remarks about their constituents. Did the police knock on their doors? Of course not.
It’s an ideal example of what has come to be referred to as ‘anarcho-tyranny’ of the sort that was practised within the Soviet Union. What does this mean? It means ‘tyranny’ for individuals who commit ‘political crimes’ but a lax attitude (anarchy) to what could be called regular crime.
It is why, for instance, throughout the Covid lockdowns otherwise law-abiding folk were too afraid to go for a walk to the shops or to church, and yet Pakistani rape gangs were for years capable of operate with impunity despite the complete the knowledge of the authorities of what was occurring.
This shouldn’t be nearly Keir Starmer’s Britain; this has been occurring for a very long time now and the Tories did nothing to stop the rot. Things might be rather a lot worse, but one thing’s needless to say: we aren’t any longer the “free country” we knew as children.
 Primary school students within the Nineties, despite being young and blissfully unaware of politics, did know something of their homeland. “It’s a free...){kind=link}