Fucking Hellski!

March 28, 2020 Longrider Civil Liberties, General News, General Rants, misanthropy, Political 28

I grew up reading Orwell. Even though the Soviet Bloc was still a reality, I found it hard to comprehend just how people could become informers. And, surely not in this country where we value such things as liberty. We, after all, were not Soviet Russia, Communist East Germany or Maoist China after all. Fucking Hell, how could I have been so bloody naive?

Police chiefs are encouraging Britons to snitch on neighbours they suspect of breaching the coronavirus lockdown rules put in place to protect them and the rest of the public.

Humberside, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and Avon and Somerset have created a mixture of ‘hotlines’ and ‘online portals’ where people can submit tip-offs if lockdown infractions occur.

The portals have been made in response to a surge in the number of calls to the non-emergency 101 number since the PM imposed the most drastic curtailment of civil liberties in either peacetime or wartime.

Concerned citizens are being asked to fill out an online form specifying the nature of the alleged infractions.

They can report police for supposed violations committed by individuals, groups, or businesses – putting shops under further pressure. They can also provide the address, and date and time by the minute.

You can take your Stasi hot line and sick it so far up your arse, you can clean your teeth with it, you vile authoritarian cunts. Fuck off already.

No, I won’t be snitching on anyone. If Plod catch them, well so be it, they have taken their chances, but I’ll be damned if I will contribute to this dystopian vision. 1984 was a warning, not a fucking instruction manual.

28 Comments

  1. “1984 was a warning, not a fucking instruction manual.”

    I’ve been saying for years that TPTB have treated this book as a text-book.

  2. Would it work if we swamped them with lots of really silly stuff so that they didn’t have the time to deal with the genuine snitches?

    • There probably aren’t enough of us. We were always a minority. We are the folk who would have been rounded up as counter revolutionaries or anti-social influences. If you dare to question the narrative, expect a hostile response.

      • Without wishing to engage in the slippery slope fallacy, this is the kind of mindset that allowed people to be concentration camp guards. It was the law, after all.

  5. I find it worse that police are actively encouraging “informants” or as I’d describe them ‘traitors’ to their neighbours.If you know a snitcher, put mice and/or cockroaches through their letter-box

    .
    Great: Supermarkets replenishing stock, then the fails:

    1. Limiting number in store (queues outside*)
    2. Rationing – only 2 or 3 of each item

    Result
    3. Peeps/families have to shop daily – longer queues
    4. Fresh produce at sell/use by date at 95% off in abundance: yesterday 1/2 hour before close 1 pallet of 2.5kg potatoes all at 7p – these won’t have been sold due to 1

    Gov’t & stores rules making situation worse

    * Plod ordering peeps queuing to go home or be fined as large gathering and out for over 1 hour illegal – yet supermarkets saying visit, not use deliver

    No logical, rational joined up thinking, only hysteria and “must be seen to do something”

    Wednesday
    Jobsworths’ enjoying their new powers:
    Two store cleaners on door duty:

    Old Woman hobbles to entrance from disabled bay
    JobW: Go to other door
    W: Why, where?
    J: CV. See that fence? Walk to top of car park, round fence, back down, join queue, then come in through other door when we say
    W: I can’t, I’m disabled
    J: That’s rules

    Woman bursts into tears, hobbles back to car and leaves

    • If we truly were a ‘caring society’, a couple of burly blokes would have picked up the cleaners, tipped them headfirst in the nearest bin, and ushered the lady into the shop…

  6. I think that there are a couple of things being missed here:

    First I agree that the law appears illiberal but there is also the libertarian principle of not causing harm to other people and under the current circumstances there is the very real prospect of causing harm to someone else. There are clearly a significant majority of people out there who don’t understand this.

    Second; instead of looking at this through the lens of liberty I think it should instead be looked at through the lens of Health and Safety. In this instance I have to ask if this was work and you observed an event/incident/near-miss/hazard that contravened safe working practices that had the potential to cause injury or death the next time would you call a stop to the work and would you report it? I know that I would.

    • instead of looking at this through the lens of liberty I think it should instead be looked at through the lens of Health and Safety

      You mean the health and safety like the hi-viz clad ‘officer’, that comes into my weld bay when I’m welding, slaps me on the shoulder so he can grass me up if not wearing ear plugs? High deposition welding such as I do has around 3 seconds exposure to the arc before you get very bad sunburn and your skin drops off. Bullshit. If that’s what you call health and safety you can ram it. There’s so much contradictory bollocks going around about the dangers of this virus that its bordering on insanity. and you sound like one of the sheep that’s lapped it all up.

      I have to ask if this was work and you observed an event/incident/near-miss/hazard that contravened safe working practices that had the potential to cause injury or death the next time would you call a stop to the work and would you report it?

      No, I’d keep my fucking nose out of other peoples business. Until it affects me personally I couldn’t give a shit. Try as you might, report everyone, but you won’t fix stupid.

    • “…under the current circumstances there is the very real prospect of causing harm to someone else.”

      They aren’t worried about you causing harm to ‘someone else’. They are worried about you causing harm to the NHS. Haven’t you read the podium stickers?

      • They are worried about you causing harm to the NHS

        I’m glad you’ve raised that point, Julia. I am getting a little bit tired of seeing “Protect The NHS” everywhere. While not for one minute disrespecting the doctors & nurses who are working at considerable personal risk, isn’t the NHS supposed to PROTECT US?

    • I’m not convinced that this an accurate parallel. A workplace incident is confined to a relatively small area and is specific. This is not only much more broad, but the police are clamping down on people who are clearly not causing harm to anyone. Driving a short distance and walking the dog in a remote location is highly unlikely to cause anyone harm. Likewise a small family group – who likely as not are isolating together – walking on the beach together are not causing harm, yet the histrionics both have caused is hysterical nonsense.

      Invoking the ghost of the Stasi is a massive overreaction and is bringing out the absolute worst in people. So, no, I won’t play this game.

      • Workplace, Police, Stasi – same mindset LR, abuse of authority. Same with reporting ‘hazards’ vs. curtain twitchers and snitches. There’s two parallels for you.

        I believe its up to the individual to keep him/herself safe so its not my place to go reporting every ‘potential’ hazard I see, or anyone doing anything that I may not personally agree with, unless it is a danger to myself.

        Do you really think that when this is over, that those ‘special powers’ given to the Police will be taken back? And what about Police asking people to snitch on their neighbours? It doesn’t matter how trivial the snitching is, this is Stasi, and just the beginning. It can only get worse from here.

        • Sometimes, reporting a hazard is necessary. Those guys who got killed in South Wales a couple of months back could have been saved by a whistle-blower. That unsafe system clearly had been going on for a while. It’s all about determining when it is necessary and when it’s just pettifogging spitefulness (most of it, frankly).

          As for your final question, I’ll leave that with Betteridge.

  7. I’ve just had a look at flight arrivals into Heathrow for today (Sunday 29 March). There are still plenty of flights coming in, including from New York, Madrid, Rome and Tehran. Surely no non-residents should be allowed into the UK at this time, that would be a more logical restriction on freedom. That is the route Australia has taken and all returning residents are quarantined in hotels near the airport under police supervision.

    • Also it is reported that passenger Eurostar trains are still bringing passengers from central Paris (where it is reported a virus is causing problems) into centralish London

  9. Kindly stop posting with multiple personalities. I’ve deleted and banned your duplicate comment. If you can’t behave, I’ll boot you off. Again.

  10. Think I’ll see if there’s any old ‘Secret Army’ or ‘The Zoo Gang’ episodes on YouTube. Got a feeling they might seem like documentaries in a few weeks time…

  11. There are already snitch lines for things like dangerous driving. I had a look at one once and it makes it clear that you have to be willing to stand up in court and you need, ideally, to provide video evidence (not that difficult these days with dash cams).

    How are these things supposed to work in practice? Who is going to actually stand up in court or sign a written deposition etc against their neighbours or somebody they’ve never seen before in their lives?

    I doubt very much if any actual prosecutions will result, I can’t imagine there will be many knocks on doors either. Just pompous and threatening letters I expect. Jobsworths wet dream, nothing more.

    If I got one of these letters, well, there is a shortage of toilet paper. However, I would find it difficult not to be looking at my neighbours from then on wondering which one of them was the curtain twitching, sheet sniffing block warden. Maybe that’s the intention.

  12. Mail on Sunday Comment
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164031/MAIL-SUNDAY-COMMENT-Willing-sacrifice-British-way-crisis-not-bossy-authority.html

    Very polite, but a message to Boris:
    “Tell the police, councils, jobsworths to back off and as for the Informants: shut up and stop being sh1ts”

    Peter Hitchens spot on
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8163587/PETER-HITCHENS-Great-Panic-foolish-freedom-broken-economy-crippled.html

    Farage on LBC: “I’ve been going out more than once a day”

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