Well, it’s happening already.
“A police website for reporting suspected lockdown breaches was so overrun with complaints it crashed just hours after being launched,” […] “If you suspect a business or individual is breaching the Covid-19 level four isolation rules you can now head online to fill out a report.”
“A clinical psychologist isn’t surprised that the police have been overwhelmed with reports of suspected lockdown breaches.” […] “It was introduced to ease the pressure on 111 operators after more than 2000 people called to report others not following the lockdown rules.”
Senior lecturer Ian de Terte of leading left-wing madrassa Massey University asserts – or perhaps applauds – that “people are both anxious to follow the rules and to enforce them.”
What he doesn’t say is that people are doing these things not out of concern for others, but out of fear for themselves.
On an online community notice board a woman complains:
“Those people have been standing on the corner for 20 minutes. When do I call the police?”
A man writes:
“That dairy only sells fizzy drinks and smokes. Why isn’t it closed?”
At the beach where the locals run their dogs, a lady has said this activity shouldn’t be allowed to happen. She believes that dogs can pass the virus on via their fur. Whether that’s true or not, the mainly elderly dog walkers, wishing to play their part and be good citizens, meekly comply. One elderly lady is visibly upset. It may be an exaggeration to say that this is all she had in her life, but it was certainly an avenue of harmless pleasure. An avenue of pleasure which is now closed off by the volunteer Stasi. It isn’t difficult to imagine the beach enforcer returning under official sanction, perhaps wearing an armband, and with a notebook to record miscreants’ details.
It now appears both easy and rewarding to be your brother’s keeper. You can dob your neighbours in and join the ranks of Project Fear by calling 0800 NARK.
Over at the supermarket, with so few allowed inside, the queue of waiting shoppers stretches in forlorn silence out to the car park – each person maintaining a two-metre distance from others. Imagine a situation where members of the local People’s Consultative Assembly are issued priority cards so they can obtain their rations faster. Or be entitled to more in times of shortage. Inside the supermarket, the usual anxiety-inducing array of weekly ‘specials’ is gone. Everything is now ‘full price’, invoking a different kind of anxiety.
“’No-one wants to see anyone take unfair financial advantage’, explains the PM helpfully. While she has found no evidence of price gouging during the Covid-19 outbreak, the public will be able to report any they see. ‘To be clear,’ she brightly intones, ‘it is not illegal for businesses to increase their prices.'” Not yet, anyway. Jacinda Ardern clearly does not do her own shopping and, in any case, must have been told to expect teething problems in the brave new world of the State-run economy.
The new Police State. The new rules. With which we voluntarily comply. For all the right reasons – and perhaps for the wrong ones.
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