It’s a source of amazement just how many people download and obediently use the NHS Covid-19 app. Whether that’s checking into a shop or staying inside because the app has told you to ‘self-isolate.’ Whilst some will argue this level of compliance demonstrates people pulling together, it’s actually a revealing insight into our relationship with big tech and the way we have been groomed to the point of no longer valuing privacy. So many people allow Google and Amazon to listen in to family life 24/7 without so much as a second thought. It was little wonder that much of the UK happily volunteered to letting the government know where they’ve been and with whom, via the NHS Covid-19 app.
Today, we are hearing about the chaos this app has wrought on the lives of those who insist on still using it. Not only are there reports of the app pinging you to ‘self-isolate’ because it picked up proximity to a neighbour’s app through the adjoining wall of the house, but there is even the worry of looming food shortages. To be generous would be to call this an ‘unusable system’. However, delve a bit deeper and it starts to smell like a variant of the totalitarian Chinese social credit programme. Reports also suggest that many are now deleting the app, perhaps waking up to the tyranny on their phone.
From the outset, the NHS Covid-19 app has been sold as a way ‘to protect your loved ones;’ indeed, many have felt guilt tripped into using it. The reality is thinly disguised coercion and what we have come to expect from the government on all things Covid.
“We are fast approaching the day when we will need to show our papers…”
Douglas Murray puts it well in the Telegraph recently with his article Britain is sleepwalking into a state of perpetual Covid tyranny. We are fast approaching the day when we will need to show our papers (read NHS app) to gain entry to sports events, restaurants, nightclubs, shopping centres and probably best to forget about foreign travel. In France there is talk of preventing entry to hospitals, of all places, without a vaccine passport. I wonder how long it will be until churches fall in line…
All this is fine if you are at ease with state control of this magnitude. However, history tells us that this level of control and coercion is never a good thing. Freedom is a bedrock of our culture and has its roots in our Judeo-Christian heritage from which many of our laws and way of life have grown. To be sure, this freedom is hard won and yet all too easily given up, as easily as installing an app.
Since when have you been bound to an app on your smartphone? You are not subservient to it. It should have no rule over you.
Do the right thing – protect those you love by deleting it.
Leave a Reply