I have rejoined the National Trust. I went online the Sunday before last and filled in the relevant details and I was surprised that my membership card and the handbook arrived on Wednesday. I thought it would be at least a month before all this arrived. I had already discovered a local branch of the National Trust Association, having been to the history festival which was held in Campbell Park during the summer of 2019. It was here that I discovered Milton Keynes Heritage Association, which I joined as well as found out about C.L.A.S.P. (Community Landscape Archaeology Project) which I signed up to and was due to go to an afternoon in a village hall somewhere north of Peterborough, learning about the various techniques that are involved in archaeology (for example, ground-penetrating radar, lidar etc. )But this was postponed when the first lockdown was announced in the early months of 2020. So I await the possibility of getting involved in that during the summer of 2022. The area branch of the National Trust Association meets in the Oaktree Centre and I am going to a meeting this Thursday afternoon.
Monday. 4.45p.m. So, the infamous Sue Gray report on the parties and other gatherings, work or otherwise, has finally been released. Has it been tampered with? What has been removed so that some people don't get the blame for all this craziness?
Tuesday. 8.00 a.m. The 'Partygate' business has been blown up out of all proportion. Okay, so our beloved Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, broke lockdown rules. But when you look at these rules they were so complicated, it's no wonder anyone would be totally confused. There should have been a distinction made between what was a gathering for work and when a gathering was for entertainment, such as a party. Tying people in knots isn't such a good idea. Looking at it another way, there are now people coming out of the woodwork who say that, in effect, the medicine is worse than the illness. They say that lockdowns have caused more problems than they solve, that they don't actually reduce infections, wearing face coverings are an infringement of people's liberties and human rights, that lockdowns have damaged relationships, for example, domestic violence has increased under lockdowns, mental health has been damaged, medical procedures such as chemotherapy have been totally disrupted or even abandoned as a result, that children's educations have been totally destroyed. I can go on. Then, on top of all that we have jobs being destroyed, people's livelihoods being damaged and then there's the economic cost which runs into trillions of pounds. Which will take decades to repay. And we're fussing over parties going on in Downing Street? It seems totally ridiculous, and they are supposed to have happened almost two years ago. What a crazy world we live in. If this was fiction, you'd say it wasn't real, when in fact, it is. It seems appalling to me that these regulations have been concocted by those who have no democratic right to make such rules and regulations, although these regulations have been approved by our politicians. Worst of all, the data that has been released about the numbers of infections and deaths of those who have had a positive covid test have been concocted by using highly flawed computer modelling.
I think what really comes out of this scandal, if that's what you want to call it, is whether we as citizens of this country can trust our politicians. Why can't Boris Johnson just tell the truth? It seems he can't be totally honest about whether he was or wasn't at one of these gatherings and stop trying to evade questions. We should be able to trust our politicians, even if we don't agree with their policies.
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