There is a huge kerfuffle about the latest lockdown. Sir William Bradbury, chairman of the Conservative 1922 committee, is worried that our civil liberties are being denied. There was I thinking that it was the duty of the state to protect and care for me – isn’t that why we pay money for the armed forces, the police, the NHS and every other government service – when it appears that we, the great majority taking Covid seriously, should really be sacrificed for the sake of business and businessmen.
Civil liberties are to protect a citizen’s freedom from government abuse. Trying to halt a pandemic is not an abuse.
But now the churches are getting involved. It was the monastic orders who first provided care for the sick and the poor, and such benevolence has continued thereafter, well, until 2020 evidently. I can understand a plea for communal services just as I can understand that many people who might attend those services are among the ones at greatest risk and perhaps should not be mixing.
What I struggle to understand are the words of John Steven, director or the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, who said the new restrictions came as a “very significant emotional blow” for couples who had weddings planned this month.
Around 70% of couples getting married these days have been cohabiting for years. So where is the emotional impact of a few months delay? If marriage was that important why did they wait? And surely, there is a far greater emotional impact if someone dies. ‘We had a brilliant wedding, everyone had a great time except Aunt Betty who died two weeks later from Covid.’
Fortunately, I have a solution. Give everyone their civil liberties, let them hold big weddings, parties, football matches, but make it a condition that everyone attending puts their hand in a bucket of red dye that will not wash off for six months. Then those that have exercised their civil liberty to protect themselves will know who to avoid and the hospitals will know who to turn away.
Basically, if you don’t act responsibly in the best interests of the community you forfeit the right to health care. Why should people who don’t care take treatment away from those who do?