Ghastly little Hitlers are petty bullies and an affront to British justice

I think most of us can agree that we got a lot wrong during the . As in, y'know, kind of all of it. In fact, the more time passes the more it looks like lockdown was one of the biggest blunders since the captain of the Titanic ordered full speed ahead through an icefield. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course. But five years on it's fair to ask if it would have been wiser to let the virus take its course - which it pretty much did anyway - and allow immunity to develop quickly and naturally.

But we didn't and we're still living with the consequences. Kids who fell behind in their and social skills; an addiction amongst many to "working" from home; an assumption amongst others who don't even want to work that after the generosity of the the state would always be there to pick up the tab... the list goes on and on. A list that includes, of course, the rise of all those ghastly little Hitlers. Small-minded authoritarians who delighted in applying the nit-picking new restrictions to the very letter.

Shakespeare knew all about those types, didn't he? "A little brief authority"; his succinct reference to petty tyrants in Measure For Measure. Isabella uses it to describe Angelo, a nasty character who gleefully abuses his temporary power. Incredibly, it emerged this week that people are STILL being prosecuted for tiny, mostly inadvertent breaches of so-called Covid Laws... five YEARS after their alleged slip-ups.

Take the case of Dodi Wexler. Ms Wexler flew back to in 2021 with her three teenage sons after a Christmas break in Massachusetts. In good faith she had pre-booked a day five Covid test for the whole family, when she should in fact have arranged a day-two and a day-eight test. A genuine mistake, and Border Force merely advised her to buy the correct test kits - for a stonking £840.

Despite promptly doing so, more than a year-and-a-half later Ms Wexler received fixed penalty notices fining her a total of £4,000. (On appeal, this was cut to £400). Similarly piffling cases are pending. This isn't justice. This is petty, vindictive state bullying. The little Hitlers had their day. Let the sun set on them now.

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I am 100% behind those ratepayers threatening to cancel their direct debits to the city's useless . Why should citizens of Britain's second largest conurbation pay a penny for services so conspicuously, even dangerously, unrendered? The Birmingham dustbin strike has dragged on for four weeks now. But residents bitterly complain that there have been serious failings in reliable refuse collection stretching back months.

Foreign TV news crews have been flocking in droves to goggle and giggle at the mountain range of rubbish poking its way skywards, like a filthy Alpine chain, along streets and thoroughfares. Our own TV news coverage has been patchier. If this were , the disgusting scenes would by now be topping every national bulletin.

So I endorse a second strike in Britain's second city - a ratepayer's strike. As Trump is currently demonstrating, financial penalties can concentrate minds wonderfully.