Monday 21 September 2020

A follow-up to the letter to my MP

 I thought now would be a good time to report back on the status of the letter I sent to "my" MP, Jeremy Hunt, on 13th August regarding de-carbonization of transport and, incidentally, the COVID virus.

I did receive, on 26th August, the following reply from his staffer:

Thank you for your email to Jeremy Hunt MP. Jeremy is currently away for a short while and so has asked that I respond so that you don't have to wait too long for a reply.

I will make sure Jeremy is aware of both the paper you wrote for the WUWT website and your response to the consultation on decarbonising UK transport. Although he may not agree with everything you've written he is always interested in seeing well-argued positions to challenge his current thinking.

Best wishes,

Adam

Nothing further yet. But with the COVID situation taking an interesting turn, I sent him this morning another letter, as follows:

Dear Mr Hunt,

When I wrote to you about five weeks ago, the main subject of my letter was de-carbonization of transport. However, I also drew your attention to an article I had had published on the COVID lockdowns, and told you that I had found them to be “way over the top compared to what was actually necessary.”

I have very recently published another article on the subject of COVID – here: https://misesuk.org/2020/09/20/covid-19-is-the-virus-weakening/. The figures show that, over the course of the last three months or so, the lethality of the virus in the UK (as measured by number of deaths divided by number of new cases as at 14 days beforehand) has gone down by a factor of around 60. This means that the virus is now considerably less dangerous than, for example, ’flu. And so, all lockdown measures ought to be released as soon as possible.

And yet, there is now serious talk of a re-lockdown at national level! For “two weeks.” We know from last time round what that means; we were told it would be three weeks, and now it’s been six months. Moreover, it feels like we are locked down harder than at any previous stage. And they want to make it longer, and worse!

The people-haters, that want to lock down as hard as possible for as long as possible and don’t care a damn about how much pain they cause to people, seem to be winning inside your party and others. And the arbitrary and extreme fines they are demanding are a sign of a rapacious monster that has lost all control over itself. I remind you of Edmund Burke’s aphorism that “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” And yet, these aren’t even bad laws – they are simply decrees of a small cadre! That isn’t the rule of law. That isn’t England. Moreover, in a democracy, government is supposed to be on the side of the people. It must never do anything which causes harm to those people without full and rigorous justification, which will stand up to scrutiny by objectively minded people (including me).

A national re-lockdown, in my opinion, would result in a meltdown in the public mood. As to myself, I have already lost all respect for the parliament as a whole, and for the great majority of those in it. Such a move would turn my disrespect into contempt and hatred, or worse.

So, I ask you immediately to add your voice in parliament to those who say “No” to any new lockdowns, and to demand that the public be provided with full, objective justification of every one of the measures that are already in place. Moreover, I would ask you, please, to use your seniority and your relevant expertise to metaphorically box the ears of those that are doing these things to us.

Yours sincerely,

Neil Lock


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