WHETHER or not anybody else in their ninth decade feels the same as me I don’t know, but increasingly I have the sensation that I am no longer of this world, but have died and gone to heaven or, more likely, given a rackety (but enjoyable) life, to the other place.
As such, looking up or down, I find I am now observing, rather than participating in, what goes on and shaking my head at each new foolishness that presents itself. This could be because of old age, but it’s more likely, I believe, that it’s thanks to the events of the last five years, when practically the entire world went mad, embraced a pandemic that never was, flocked to have ever more dangerous jabs and boosters, obediently masked up, stayed indoors and obeyed each ridiculous government mandate that came along.
At any rate, I feel I am now watching everything at a distance and have gone beyond anger, disillusion and disbelief to a calm plateau where nothing seems real or affects me any more. It is as if I’m watching an endless play where actors come on, strut and fret, and are then replaced by other actors strutting and fretting; there are no good parts as all are baddies.
It’s sad that it has come to this but my main problem is that I fear I will never be able to trust or take notice of anybody in authority ever again.
From local councils to state schools, universities and central government, all institutions seem mired in a sea of corruption from which they can never recover.
Doctors, for instance, are now largely in the pay of Big Pharma. They are given financial inducements to prescribe medications with the result that just about everybody over the age of about 50 is on some kind of pharmaceutical preparation. Much, if not most, scientific and medical research is financed by drug companies selling product and is therefore suspect. If we were to take on board what they say, we would imagine that all ills can be solved by a new miracle drug.
The latest con is that obesity can be cured with the magical weight-loss jabs, rolled out to the masses on Monday, June 23, when 220,000 overweight people were prescribed Mounjaro, the weight-loss drug formulated by Lilly. These drugs have been talked up so much in every branch of the media that I’m sure the public will rush to take advantage of them. Meanwhile, any harmful side effects, of which there are many, have been comprehensively played down.
It’s not just the medical profession that can no longer be trusted. Lawyers are as bad. Mainly, they are only concerned to rack up huge fees and they have ever less connection with truth and justice.
Schools, from what I hear, are putting into their pupils’ heads the idea that they might be trans; something that certainly never occurred to my generation of schoolchildren. Boys were boys and girls were girls, and that was it, for the vast majority.
We can no longer believe what our national broadcaster, the BBC, tells us, even though we pay for this service through the compulsory licence fee. The ‘talent’ is richly rewarded and can buy lavish mansions at our expense. Huw Edwards’s Dulwich pile, bought with licence-payers’ money, has been reduced from £4.75million to £4million as it has failed to sell at the higher price. But who among the licence-payers can afford such a property?
The latest BBC presenter to command a vast salary is Gabby Logan, who will take over from Gary Lineker. Her remuneration is so far undisclosed but we can be sure it will not be far off seven figures.
The mass media, where I worked for many decades, are no longer to be trusted, either, as most sections are nowadays little more than propaganda machines for the establishment. Perhaps they always were but I was so caught up in getting stories in the paper that I simply didn’t notice. And when journalists can become politicians and politicians can become journalists, we have to acknowledge that they are all playing the same game.
Charities, which often start off small and with good intentions, eventually become bloated organisations, paying CEOs vast sums, and the medical ones at least are no more nor less than fundraising arms for Big Pharma. The CEO of the Alzheimer’s Society, for instance, is on a salary of around £170,000.
All sectors of the public and all ages have been ill-served by recent governments, but the worst demographic has been old people. Governments have taken away with one hand what they have given with the other. The first thing to go was the free TV licence, introduced for the over-75s in 2000 and snatched away in July 2020. Then there was the winter heating allowance, introduced by a Labour government in 1997, snatched away by another Labour government in 2024 and partially reintroduced in 2025 for some pensioners on very low incomes, as a tiny sop to all those outraged by this mean act.
Now it seems they want to save even more money by getting rid of us altogether, as with the Assisted Dying Bill, which passed its Third Reading by 314 votes to 291 – a slender majority of 23. This Bill now has now passed to the House of Lords and may never become law. Either way, a seed has been sown.
In fact the intention to end the lives of old people medically did not start with this Bill, but with the treatment of those in care homes and hospitals during covid. Many were summarily bumped off by being put on ventilators and given Midazolam, a palliative care drug used in end-of-life treatment. I also believe that some older people’s lives were ended prematurely by being denied visits from family and friends and that they died from sheer loneliness and despair.
And think of all those, young, middle-aged and old, who ‘died suddenly’ after being given the covid jab. Yet it is still being heavily promoted. In an article in the Times on June 15, Professor Elizabeth Whittaker, a paediatrician, explained how she was trying to persuade all parents to have their children vaccinated against measles and other childhood illnesses, once again debunking any suggestion that the MMR can result in autism. ‘Other myths she tackles,’ the article went on, ‘include the Covid-19 vaccines and the idea they were rushed through without proper research.’ Professor Whittaker was quoted as saying: ‘Normally vaccine development takes 20 years, but all the normal stages of vaccine research were done; they just did them in parallel on an accelerated timeline.’
Try telling that to Professor Angus Dalgleish!
I’m asking again: who in authority and among the professions can you trust? And the answer comes back, loud and clear: hardly anybody! Is it any wonder that I’m starting to feel I don’t belong in this world and have no place here?
