What have we lost?

I see this trollish crap a lot in comment threads. Phrased as a challenge when people complain about losing their civil liberties “What freedoms have you lost mate? Name them.”

OoooKay.  I’m up for a challenge.

1. Freedom of speech  Remember when you could say what you liked and the worst response you might occasion was a sarcastic “F*ck you”, or a pointed reminder that you should watch your mouth or risk a large dental bill?   When ‘hate’ crimes didn’t exist unless you were making real threats?  I do. Wasn’t that long ago either.  Or when you didn’t risk getting your door kicked in by plod for an ‘unsanctioned’ opinion?  Or risk losing your job, career or livelihood to anonymous complainants?  When people didn’t get arrested in their own homes for rather tasteless online humour?  Or over spurious false accusations?  Yet these things happen in the UK and across the Anglosphere, every single day.
2. Freedom of movement.  Ah, those heady, hedonistic days of 2019 when, if you had the funds and a passport, you could buy a plane or ferry ticket and go visit a part of the planet you’d never seen before?  Just because you wanted to.  Now you can’t leave the country.
3. Freedom of thought.  Yes, when you could think what the hell you liked without sanction without losing your job or living because some anonymous source who was ‘offended’ by what they thought you were thinking, even if that was the furthest thing from your mind.  Or have Police contacting you to “Check your thinking” after wasting hours trolling around Twatter for something to do instead of going after real criminals who steal things or hurt people.  Hurt feelings aren’t an injury.  Hurt feelings indicate a lack of mental robustness on the part of the complainant.
4. Freedom to protest.  This too is now on the way out.  One cannot publicly air a legitimate grievance any more without a Twatter hate mob, or worse, scruffy items doing bad impersonations of Police Officers coming at you mob handed with batons raised to strike.  Unless of course you are protesting for one of the fashionable, politically correct causes.  In which case you will have the forces of law and disorder kneeling at your merest whim.  The cops will even let you tear down public works if you have the correct opinion.  Although  to be fair, they’re just doing what they are told.  By politicians.
5. Freedom of Association.  Ave atque frater vale.  Halcyon days when you could talk to whomsoever you wanted without some curtain twitching Stasi snitch dobbing you in to what passes for the law.  When having a gathering at home with more than a number picked out of thin air friends wouldn’t get your door smashed down.  Even if you only had the TV on a bit loud with the windows open.  Or met more than an arbitrary number of people at a restaurant table.
6. The right to a fair trial.  Well yes it’s still with us and no it isn’t any more.  Some say it never was and there’s an element of truth in that.  The truth is that what you get in a court is law, not justice.  Which is why you always need a lawyer in court.  Even so, if your case is only vaguely political, you can expect to get stitched up like a kipper or exonerated depending upon your political stance.
7. The right to own property.  Well sort of still with us, but subject to confiscation without compensation if you are accused of a ‘crime’, or being inconvenient regardless of whether you are found guilty in a court of law or not.  The USA is notorious for this under the RICO legislation, and although the UK has no direct power of expropriation, ‘confiscation orders’ under the 2002 proceeds of crime act can be imposed, or if you are suspected of ‘money laundering’ or a trumped up charge of tax evasion.  Fortunately this doesn’t happen much because the proceedings are complex.  However, moves are afoot to simplify this procedure,  And that’s without going into the murky waters of divorce proceedings, where property can be assigned by a court to an ex-partner.

There are of course many more, as enshrined here in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  See if you can work out which ones you don’t have, or never had in the first place.

There are those who will say that losing your rights is okay, saying “but but but what about COVID?”  and “It’s only temporary you moron…”  To which I would say;  “It was only for three weeks over fourteen frigging months ago”.  And guess what kids, the restrictions are still with us.  And will continue to be so.  Don’t think so?  You poor naïve fool you.

Another note directed at the COVID apologists out there, you know who you are and so do I.  Those who I observed wearing masks in the open air on a bright sunny day.   Or inside vehicles while driving.  Most of the unnecessarily terrified appear to be females between 25 & 40 who are unlikely to suffer significant symptoms, although males do constitute around a half as much again of their number.  But we males do tend to reluctantly follow their lead.  Under protest.

As for ‘vaccine passports’.  We’ve never had them for other conditions, so why do we need them for SARS/COV-2?  

To those complacent souls who protest that the above liberties will be ‘given’ back to us, I say, look again.   I’d also like to point out that it was you lot, clamouring to be made ‘safe’ by big government, who literally threw your own liberties, and those of everyone else, in the bin.

For shame.