The COVID Cult Forces the British Queen to Grieve in Brutal Isolation

If anything was going to bring home the revolting, arbitrary and un-British cruelty of the ongoing lockdown rules, it was the sight of our Queen, masked and sitting quite alone, in St George’s Chapel during her darling husband’s funeral. Millions will have been distressed to witness the Royal widow as she bore her sorrow in brutal isolation. It brought me to tears, and I bet I wasn’t the only one

Her Majesty, who turns 95 today, is amazing for her age. Not only does the Queen still have all her marbles, she seems to possess a complete set of Scrabble, a mean hand of Gin rummy and some pretty nifty chess moves. (I’m still smiling at her “recollections may vary” response to the Sussexes’, ahem, imaginative interview with Oprah.) It has been wonderful to watch her chatting and laughing on Zoom calls during the pandemic like a person 50 years her junior. But on Saturday, petty officialdom allied to pathological societal paranoia contrived to leave a great monarch looking small, shrunken and unsupported.

How is such a bleak spectacle scientifically, let alone morally, defensible? Prince Philip’s funeral took place in a naturally ventilated, soaring medieval chapel. The Queen has had both her Covid vaccinations. Prince Charles has been vaccinated (and also had the virus) as has the Duchess of Cornwall and any other member of that small congregation over the age of 50.

Most people at the funeral were protected and were unlikely to spread the virus. If, indeed, there was any virus left to spread, which is doubtful. How many people in Windsor even had Covid on Saturday? I checked. It was four, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Yes, four cases of Covid in all of Windsor and Maidenhead. I’m not joking, although no serious person could dispute that the corona tragedy is fast becoming farce.

Did a practically non-existent “risk” really justify the compulsory wearing of dehumanising masks during a religious ceremony of huge national significance or the social distancing of grieving family members? The rules for church services aren’t even consistent. There were 250 in Westminster Abbey for Easter Day Eucharist. I know that Covid is a fiendishly clever critter, but can it really distinguish between normal congregants and mourners at a funeral? Why the harsher limit on the latter? Do those purse-lipped puritans on SAGE fear that grief might drive people to have a Covid-reckless sherry afterwards and start hugging the people they love? To borrow a favourite Prince Philip word, it’s bunkum.

As The Telegraph reported yesterday, daily deaths from Covid in England have plummeted to four. Below the average number from road accidents. Yet, the day after the funeral, the Queen was spotted at the wheel of a Jaguar. In the kingdom of illogicality where we are all obliged to live, a woman in her mid-90s is allowed to drive a high-powered car (way to go, Ma’am!), but she is forbidden to show her face to her departing husband, for one last time, or to hold hands with their children at a moment of supreme anguish.

Of course, the Queen would not want any privileges that have been denied to so many of her subjects who have suffered similar losses during lockdown. The point is that anyone, be they Royal or commoner, should have the right to take their chances in such heart-rending circumstances, particularly when common flu now poses a bigger danger than Covid. Life is hardly worth living if our deepest and truest instincts are denied.

I’m sure that the late, much-lamented Duke of Edinburgh would have had something splendidly rude to say about the fact that, while only 30 relatives and friends were allowed to attend his funeral, on the same day, at the Sheffield Crucible, 300 spectators were permitted to watch the World Snooker Championship. It’s balls, isn’t it? Complete and utter balls.

Our Prime Minister, who used to have balls, has just cancelled his visit to India, a move he described as “sensible”. Well, that’s a novelty, common sense being in notably short supply among Boris’s Health Secretary and scientific advisers. Apparently, they see no contradiction in “trialling” bigger crowds at major sporting events while a vaccinated resident in a care home is forced into solitary confinement for 14 days if they dare to so much as leave the premises for a walk in the park with their vaccinated spouse.

It pains me to say it but, increasingly, I feel ashamed to have voted for a Government that has institutionalised such inhumanity and continues to disregard evidence that proves it’s unnecessary.

Last spring, certain repressive rules were unavoidable as we struggled to get the measure of this new pathogen. Today, with Covid posing a negligible threat compared with the unfolding horror film of an NHS waiting list approaching 4 million, there is no longer any excuse for these barbarous restrictions.

Witness the speed with which MPs of all parties got up on their hind legs to rail against the European Super League. How can football excite more moral outrage in those timorous breasts than the de facto house arrest of our most vulnerable citizens in care homes?

Lockdown has crushed this nation’s spirit. We have all learnt to keep our heads down and meekly obey many nonsensical rules (or break them on the quiet). What a pleasure and a relief, then, to see Rod Humphris, the landlord of The Raven in Bath, yelling at Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer: “Get out of my pub!” A Labour voter, Humphris railed at the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition for his failure to provide any opposition to the draconian diminishment of British freedoms.

“I don’t need to take any lectures from you,” said Sir Keir with that pious pout of his before trotting out his default, now out-of-date, statement on protecting the NHS.

You know, it’s not such a crazy idea for Sir Keir, Boris and other members of the political class to take lectures from the people who elect them. You know, the people who suffer from their consensus on lockdown. Humphris has been criticised for his angry ranting. What I saw was a man full of pent-up emotion, enraged that the Labour leader had done nothing to stand up for ordinary people – the young, the poor – whose livelihoods have been obliterated.

A few hours after his run-in with Sir Keir, I heard Humphris on Talk Radio. Calm and gently humorous, he said he’d given the Labour leader “a piece of my mind” because the lockdown rules made him angry. “You get Covid in hospitals and in care homes. You get Covid in your own home. You don’t get Covid in pubs.”

Rod’s right, well, pretty much. Hospitality has been linked to a very small number of Covid infections, yet has been penalised out of all proportion to the risk it presents. “The worst thing,” he said, “has been the grinding stupidity of it all. The whole ‘substantial meal’ thing, put your mask on to go to the toilet. It’s clearly not based on good sense.”

This used to be a country of profound good sense. Many of us would quite like it back. The descent into lockdown lunacy continued apace yesterday with the news that the British Town Crier Championships is to be held in complete silence (written entries only).

“Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! Will the real United Kingdom please report to the front desk so we can stop this nonsense and get our lives back?”

It’s too late for our beloved Queen, but a relaxation of the cruel and unnecessary restriction on funerals would make a fitting present. Happy Birthday, Your Majesty, long to reign over us. As long as possible, please. I’m not sure how much more trauma we can take.

Source: The Telegraph