The authorities police their lockdown laws as if the virus was reliably woke and as reliably anti-Christian – as if PC protests had a mysterious immunity but a church service was sure to be a superspreader event.
In Canada, a Polish priest showed how to say ‘no’ to PC Karen and her colleagues (video) when they tried to halt an Easter service. When a London PC Karen did the same, the response was less forthright, but maybe the London Polish Christians will learn from their Canadian cousins’ example. Meanwhile, sympathisers advised the Londoners to celebrate Easter outside Batley Grammar School, since the police are loathe to obstruct religious gatherings there.
Interrupting a Polish church’s Easter Friday and Easter Sunday services in London (that appear to have been legitimate under current lockdown rules) while overlooking a “killthebill” protest in Bristol (that appears to have been as clearly in violation of them) allows an unfortunate interpretation: that PC Karens will bite the hand that feeds them and kiss the foot that kicks them; will bully those who defer to them and defer to those who bully them.
(For the benefit of non-UK readers, ‘the bill’ refers to a policing act before parliament. ‘The Bill’ – a.k.a ‘The Old Bill’ – is also a UK idiom for ‘the police’. The chosen hashtag of these protests could thus be seen as regrettable, as regards some of those involved, and unpleasantly appropriate as regards others.)
I think there are those in the police who do not like this message – but someone in authority in London thought it a great idea to invade an Easter service on the same weekend as the latest Bristol protest was being ‘light-touch’ policed.
If I’ve learnt one thing from my years of programming, it is that the computer does what you actually told it to do, not what you thought you were telling it to do. Humans are not computers – we often begin by hearing the propaganda, decoding the intent and doing that instead – but when the actual message is this obvious, it can cut through. If it cuts through to the extent of inspiring more churches to follow the example of the Canadian Polish priest, I’ll be a happy man. It could go beyond that.
Dashing off at a tangent…
From a user’s point of view, it’s a frequent and intensely annoying experience when the computer does not do what you tell it to do but rather what the programmer told it to do to be “helpful.” For example, autocorrect. Or worse, autocorrect-like features that you can’t turn off.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1378797276362051586
Ezra Levant on the barefaced lying by the Calgary police about the church incident.
Plod may have been staging their own ironic Easter re-enactment. You know, when the Priests turned up mob handed to arrest Jesus. Can’t anyone take a joke?
The Nazis are back.
Q. How many cops does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Just leave one policeman alone with the lightbulb for an hour, and it will have changed its’ mind, and sign any confession you put in front of it!
Unfortunately, the CoE is of course, part of the establishment, and thus on board with closing churches to Christian worship.
Maybe the church members just want all religions to be treated equally.
According to the “logic” of the Canadian authorities the Priest was saving their lives – as the highly intelligent virus attacks people in churches, but does not attack them in supermarkets or in Marxist “Black Lives Matter” protest” events.
The Canadian police officers are people – they had entered a church where, unlike a supermarket or a Marxist demonstration, the virus would attack them. So the priest intervened to try and save their lives. This is surely the “logic” of the Canadian authorities own position.
“But Paul the priest called them Nazis” – the “Woke” forces, who dominate the institutions, call everyone “Nazis” or “Fascists”, I am called these things often, so why should they object to be being called these things things themselves?
As for the British legal position.
Amanda Miller (Conservative Central Office) sent out an e.mail only a few days ago celebrating that, unlike last Easter, people are allowed to worship this Easter – many government ministers have said the same.
In my own town some churches are still shut and other, smaller and more crowded ones, are open.
There seems to be some real confusion in the United Kingdom over what is “the law” at present and what is not. I think this is because of the Enabling Act passed in March 2020 – which, essentially, makes anything signed by a minister the law. Ministers sign many things – and are often surprised to be later told of the contents of something they have signed. Remember because someone has signed something – does not mean they wrote it, or have a detailed legal knowledge of the contents of it.
There have several votes to extend the Emergency Powers (the Enabling Act of 2020) – the Member of Parliament for this Constituency has, several times, voted against the extension of the Emergency Powers as have many other Conservative Members of Parliament I respect. Yes each time we LOSE THE VOTE – but dissent is getting stronger. For example, in the last vote the Liberal Democrats joined with the Conservative “rebels” – and honourable mention must be made of the Labour “rebels” as well, and the “rebels” of other political parties.
I will be optimistic (and thus shock Perry) – if the government goes for another extension of Emergency Powers when this six months is up – they will lose (so they will not try it).
Niall – what is disturbing is the effort to get round Parliament by an International Treaty.
I was shocked by the editorial signed by the Prime Minister, and many other world leaders, last week in the Daily Telegraph – indeed I hoped the whole thing was an April Fool’s joke. But it turns out it was published on the 31st of March – it was NOT an April Fool’s joke (or a “fake Moon landing story”).
The editorial (signed by the Prime Minister – of course I do NOT know whether he read it) is about pushing for world governance in matters of “health” (“One Health” “humans, animals and our planet”), by unelected officials (in a body to be based on the World Health Organisation – but with the power to make regulations with the force of law) to get round domestic legislatures and constitutions.
Lawyers I sent the editorial to were horrified by it – as, underneath its absurd language, this would be a serious effort at world “governance” with the justification of “health” allowing just about anything.
It is one thing to see “paranoid right wing conspiracy theories” or “fake Moon landing stories” presented by various supposedly “right wing Americans” such as Steve Hilton (who is neither right wing nor an American) – it is quite another to see them openly presented as plans by various government leaders and signed by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Rather a pity the Balham plods weren’t bundled out by a couple of large Polish gentlemen, especially when they marched into an area of the church where they had no right to be.
There are some useful streetlights in Balham High Road where they could then have sojourned until divine service was over, but no tar or feathers to hand. The congregations at this church for normal services were enormous, even in the 1990s (when we lived close by), so the church authorities had taken what they thought were all the necessary ‘precautions’ to abide by the guidelines (absent that the precautions are largely theatre and that guidelines are, well, just guidance).
Using the virus from the Wuhan research establishment (where “Gain of Function” research was ordered by Peter Daszik and others) as a justification for greater world governance, is what many people have been warning of since the middle of last year. However, it took a long time for mainstream figures, such as Steve Hilton and Tucker Carlson, to be convinced to report on these matters. To then see the plan for greater world governance laid out in an editorial and signed by various leaders of government from around the world (yes again I do NOT know whether they read what they signed) was an incredibly shocking and horrifying event. Hence my desperation to be believe that I had been duped and it was all an April Fool’s joke.
The World Health Organisation, led by a Marxist doctor of philosophy (not medicine) who has a long history of personal corruption and is a puppet of the People’s Republic of China, has lied about the virus from the start – first claiming it was no real problem, so that nations would not close their borders to it, later even altering its own website (shades of Nasa and American government historic temperature data) to change the meaning of such terms as “herd immunity” (which means natural immunity in a population – now the World Health Organisation says it means vaccines).
If there has to be world “governance” (and there must certainly does NOT have to be world governance) – the last structure to be followed is that of the World Health Organisation, which is that of unelected officials who the people did not elect and can not remove.
Niall – as you know even the European Union has a Parliament and a Council of Ministers, the World Health Organisation has neither of these things.
To get us out of a the European Union (if we really are fully out of it – that is a discussion for another day, but I was talking to people from Northern Ireland only a few hours ago, and some people from England, Scotland and Wales also find the E.U. is still in their lives), but put us under a world authority modelled on the World Health Organisation, but with the power to pass regulations with the force of law, would be a terminal development.
Hugh Gaitskell (then leader of the Labour Party) warned in the early 1960s that entering the EEC (as the EU then was) would end British independence – that is exactly what the proposed international “health” governance would do, but not just for the United Kingdom, for ALL nations that put themselves under such world governance.
“But it is just about health” – as we have seen over the last year “health” can be used as a justification for just about anything.
That brave Polish priest is a great man, and I sensed in the body language of the police officers something like the resentment of a fox chased away from a chicken coop and their inner knowledge that they seeking to do evil, and had been stopped, which they deeply resented, and his words rang true to them. They did not try to justify or explain themselves, or shrug and say ‘I’m only doing my job’ or attempt in any way to make light of the situation or apologise. I fear that they are the sorts who would happily load priests onto trains going somewhere cold in the north to protect them from the virus, and whilst they look forward to their next pay cheque, wonder if they could clam stress at work compensation for having done so.
Given that the female seemingly in charge of the Calgary raiding party has “Environmental Health” on the back of her jacket, one assumes she is not even a police person but merely a local council functionary.
asiaseen – well spotted!
Mr Ed – yes.
But I’ll bet that in her mind, she thinks of herself as a police officer, i.e. she self-identifies as police! That settles the issue.
Nor the Canadian police (or Environmental Health enforcement arm – whoever the perpetrators were), it would seem. They got their revenge by having a SWAT team stop the pastor while he drove home from church, making him kneel in the road while they cuffed him. It is reported he was arrested for ‘Inciting’ People to Attend Church.
Fortunately, the penalty for Attempted Worship is more lenient than for outright Worship.