And as government plumbs new lows in its determination to conform us to its agenda, we need to remain alert to their latest ever-changing crafty tricks — for e.g. :

• Noisily demonstrating an awareness and 'understanding' of widespread public concern regarding some aspect of policy, and then — equally noisily — declaring the matter 'dealt with' by the introduction of deliberately ineffective measures or through the introduction of genuinely effective measures that only effect change in small ways or effect only a small number of people (for e.g. feeble policy gestures in the direction of solving the massive housing crisis).

• Concealing key, perspective-setting facts in news and current affairs programming — time was, when the media used to mislead by giving some of the facts and then supplying their own distorting 'interpretation' of them. Some of the facts were there, so by a bit of 'mental adjustment' to counteract the biased interpretation, it was usually possible to arrive at a reasonably accurate view of things. Lately however — presumably after discovering that an insufficient number of people were being misinformed — they have taken to omitting the crucial perspective-setting facts entirely (for e.g. omitting to tell us that the EU was making fully 70% of our laws, or that COVID was determined by the government itself to be no more deadly than a bad flu in mid-March 2020).

• The collateral damage OF a policy sometimes IS the policy (for e.g. 'anti-COVID' measures) — when government knows it can't publicly defend what it wants to do, it may use an issue it knows it can defend (such as public health) and use that as 'cover'. Any negative or unpopular consequences (i.e. the real policy) caused by the cover policy are then portrayed as 'unfortunate, necessary' consequences.

• Manipulation of our attitudes through role-play — requiring us to perform actions that contain an implicit 'principle'. For e.g., councils requiring bins to be put out for collection even when they are empty. The implicit principle here being that we must do what the council (and therefore government) says, whether we want to or not, even when what they demand of us goes against common sense. Crafty, eh? So, if what they demand of us — for ANY reason — makes us feel 'funny', 'intruded upon', 'patronised', 'manipulated', 'insulted' or 'reduced' in some way, in ANY way, we need to look a little deeper and see what the action demanded of us is really saying to us, and about us. And then, whenever reasonably possible, REFUSE TO COMPLY.

• Used several times during our membership of the EU, the trick of publicly indicating the intention of taking TWO steps in a policy direction in which they know full well the public does NOT want them to go (for e.g. raising the possibility of surrendering sovereignty in many areas), waiting for the predictable outcry against the policy, then taking ONLY ONE step back (by 'only' surrendering sovereignty in a few areas) — claiming to have 'responded to criticism'. The SINGLE step in the direction in which they knew full well the electorate did not want them to go (more sovereignty surrenders to EU institutions) — of course — remains. And the process is then repeated several times, as anti-democratic government steadily marches against the known will of the people.

• Use the media to misdirect a growing public outcry about a particular policy — so that public disquiet about a policy is portrayed to be about something else much less significant. For e.g., during the EU years, just as public disquiet at MPs' refusal to grant an EU referendum (and all their lies about the EU in general) was about to reach a 'critical mass', the OTT expense claims of a handful of MPs were seized upon and portrayed — for months — as 'THE ISSUE' that the public were so outraged at MPs about. Yeah, right! And more recently, as public realisation grew that many of the measures of the two long and damaging years of the draconian 'anti-Covid response' were both unnecessary and unhelpful, the outrage of voters was portrayed as being concerned merely with a few rule-bending parties at no. 10.

• In seeking to further close down public comprehension of what they are up to, in recent years our wonderful leaders have even descended from constantly spouting 'straightforward' lies, to the evil of mouthing 180 degree lies — i.e. the speaking of lies in deliberate hypocrisy — accusing their political opponents of things of which only they themselves are guilty!

• And perhaps most diabolically of all, after initially inducing us to obey rules and restrictions (for e.g. 'anti-Covid' measures) using a tidal wave of lies, the credibility of the lies is then reduced until the point is reached that continued obedience to the rules (that in our heart we now know to be without sufficient foundation) amounts to the moral cop-out of baseless (and therefore mindless) obedience to government diktat — which is initiation into a form of self-betrayal. And self-betrayal, like other moral failures, psychologically 'binds' us — quite regardless of what induced us to fail. Basic self-respect therefore REQUIRES that we not allow ANYONE, ANY institution, ANY government, for ANY reason, to EVER do this to us.