Britain’s increasingly ugly, bought and paid for tabloid media is ramping up its war against so-called ‘vaccine refuseniks’ and it is starting to get really vicious and unpleasant.
Here is Andrew Neil, former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, former BBC presenter, and current chairman of The Spectator, deploying his prestige and influence to argue in The Daily Mail that the unvaccinated should be treated like second-class citizens.
In a piece charmingly headlined ‘It’s time to punish Britain’s five million vaccine refuseniks’ he enthuses about the idea of excluding the unvaccinated from all but the basic means of survival:
Under Plan B, vaccine passports will be required for entry to nightclubs and at major gatherings at large venues. It would not be difficult to extend them, French-style, to other public places, including restaurants, pubs and bars, and non-essential shops (even the unvaxxed need food and medicines!).
It would give those of us who’ve done the right thing more protection and for those who’ve not, pause for thought.
What he fails to explain is how, given that even the government admits that being vaccinated is not a barrier to transmission, punishing the unvaccinated will make the vaccinated any safer.
Neil says:
You have a right not to be vaccinated. But I have a right not have you near me in a restaurant or on a plane.
But again, how does this vindictiveness make any sense given that the fully vaccinated can still pass on the virus to the fully vaccinated?
Neil is roasted in the comments, as quite rightly he should be.
The most popular response, with over 17,000 likes, is:
No one should be forced or coerced into having a vaccine. It’s a basic human right to be able to decide what we put in our own body. Andrew Neil should be ashamed of himself for writing this.
Neil has also been roasted on Twitter. The problem is that although the kind of biomedical fascism being advanced by Neil is still currently anathema to the majority of the population it could easily embolden a few gullible idiots to treat the unvaccinated as pariahs — or worse.
This campaign to demonise the ‘unvaxxed’ gives the appearance of being co-ordinated. That might explain why, within days of Neil’s piece, a similar article appeared in the Mail‘s tabloid rival, The Sun, also advocating dire measures against the unvaccinated.
The piece is headlined ‘Make the unjabbed face their own lockdown so we can live our lives’.
It was written by one Lady Karren Brady, arguably best known for being one of Lord Sugar’s sidekicks on the British version of The Apprentice, and for being a complete Karen (which mysteriously her parents chose to misspell).
Her proposals are suspiciously similar to Andrew Neil’s: treat the unvaccinated like pariahs, basically, and deny them all but the most basic freedoms:
My view is that we can’t force people to have jabs, but we can force vaccine refuseniks to live a far more difficult, inconvenient and restricted life, one that will also be more expensive because of mandatory testing.
I was in Italy for the Monza Grand Prix in September.
It is impossible to be served in any café, restaurant or bar — or even enter some shops — without first proving you have been double vaccinated.
It’s a fuss-free process that takes only seconds.
We should do the same here.
None of this is remotely surprising. I warned back in May in a piece titled UK Media and Celebs Gang up to Vilify Vaccine ‘Refuseniks’ that this was happening and that it was going to get a lot worse.
It is and it will.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.