Published On: Thu, Jul 16th, 2020

The coronavirus police state (5): the wear-a-mask-to-shop deception

There’s a fatal weakness in the UK Government’s requirement for the wearing of face coverings in shops to be mandatory, and this article is for raising awareness of it. Moreover, as this is a continuation of the “surviving and defying the police state” series, there will be discussion about just what an individual defying the requirement might do should they find themselves encountering police or shop staff trying to enforce it. Please note, while it is the view of the author that is in the reader’s best interest to defy the requirement as a matter of self-defence, each individual must make his own decision, and no actual instruction or even advice is here being given.

True to form, the UK Government is employing a confidence trick to invite volunteering into compliance. The first inkling came even ahead of the announcement of the measure when the BBC reported† this:

The rules will be enforced by the police, with anyone disregarding them at risk of a fine of up to £100. This will be reduced to £50 if people pay within 14 days.

While shop workers will be encouraged to prompt customers to comply, they will not be expected to enforce the rules, allaying unions’ concerns about their involvement.

In the days since the announcement, there has been confirmationǂ, coming from some of the big name supermarket and high street chains, of the hugely significant detail that police, and not shop staff, will be expected to enforce what the BBC calls the rules.

This then presents a parting of the ways for how businesses may operate (representing a failure for Government). Shops can allow people to wear masks on a voluntary basis, or they can make wearing a mask a condition of being on their premises and being served at a checkout. However, there is reason to believe that there will be a following of suit in the same direction set by the businesses who have already announced that the requirement will not be imposed by their staff. There is a sense that, because enforcement is entirely a matter for police, retailers know that they can abide strictly to the letter of the requirement and at the same time allow shopping without facemasks to occur. This sense comes from such examples as the one that follows, which is a quote from something that started life as an internal policy statement by Lidl in Scotland:

In line with government guidance wearing a face covering in store is the responsibility of the individual, not the retailer, and should only be enforced by Police Scotland.

The government have stipulated that shop workers should not refuse entry to customers that are not wearing a face covering.

Therefore, a plan starts to appear for anyone who wants to visit a store and not wear a mask (which should be anyone reading this). They must try to enter the store “naked” – or without a mask. If they are challenged by a member of staff at any time they are in the store, they must ask that person to check with their employer’s official policy on the requirement; there is a good chance that it will say that a customer should not be challenged about absence of a facemask, nor indeed hindered because of the same fact. Chase it to management level if necessary.

As for police involvement, it would not be a straightforward matter. Already there has been rumblings from police forces to say that they would not have the manpower to enforce the requirement. Any police force who sends patrols into supermarkets would be dallying further with becoming an object of detestation beyond redemption. Therefore, it is quite possible that police involvement will mostly arise in the shape of call-outs to a scene of a “transgression”. We might imagine this to come about by one of two ways: i) when a shop that insists on face coverings is dealing with a difficult customer, or ii) when someone in a shop that is not insisting on face coverings snitches on another customer*.

Now, we don’t need to concern ourselves with the first scenario, because people who don’t want to wear masks should not remain in a store after staff have been sent to look at their policy and have returned with a no.  So, moving on to scenario ii., if an individual finds himself on supermarket or shop property (including a car park) being hassled by police looking to enforce the Government requirement, and the supermarket or shop is allowing, or has allowed access without a mask, then that individual should appeal to help from the store management, and have it intervene on the basis that it would be protecting its interests: i.e., ensuring that you return to do your shopping with their firm.

The idea that this might be an entirely valid option is based on the facts that a shop is not a public space, and that usually police need a warrant to enter. If a business has not called police to its property, then this could mean that the police cannot issue a fine because they have no business being at the property in the first place. In other words, it might be that police need to be told to cease their activity and to leave by people with the authority to do it.

However, in the event that police can issue a fine, rather than take an option to avoid it (i.e. comply), the individual might rather want to have the fine issued, and then challenge it in court. Be aware, the British courts are corrupt, and winning a case will not necessarily have to be main objective – instead, it is the fact and the instance of defiance that matters. However, having said that, it appears that precedent still needs to be set. Some study of the decision for Simon Dolan’s judicial review‡ is required before the author can commit to that statement – and moreover, it very much appears that Piers Corbyn’s defence against his arrests may be more significant in these regards (thus explaining why it has been postponed to October; i.e., so that there can be no spoiling of the UK Government’s agenda).  In any case, please expect more on this subject at FBEL.

It might well be the case that an individual chooses to refuse to accept a fine, and thus to make himself liable to whatever powers the police believe they can rely on in such a case, whether it be arrest or removal of that person from the store. A discussion of this is planned for the next part of the series, which is intended to follow quickly on the heels of this one.

Despite the great effort by agents of UK Government (including its wolves in sheep’s clothing) to persuade and demoralise the public so that they comply with the requirement to wear a mask in shops, there is only reason to believe that there is a great deal of resistance to mask wearing in the British public (please see the FBEL article, The facemask balancing act: a matter of controlling heat in the economy, which carries the results of a survey that indicates the fact). Indeed, the very high rate of opposition is probably due to how there is a great innate weakness in UK Government propaganda and psychological manipulation, with its fragile foundation being formed on how the claim that masks are needed just cannot stand up against the evidence.

In fact, there is a substantial vein of supreme absurdity in the requirement to wear a face covering in shops: not only would they not achieve the purpose stated for them (preventing the “spread of ‘Covid-19’”), they weren’t thought needed or indeed healthy until all of a sudden (they still aren’t healthy). Finally, and perhaps most farcically, shop workers will be exempt from wearing them. All in all, the requirement to wear masks in shops is a cluster of abject nonsense – and in fact, it offers a golden opportunity for the likes of coronahoax-exposing media (what little there is of it) to assist people shrug off all the psychological power that the UK Government’s “Covid-19” narrative may have over them. The reader should try and imagine their deceased grandparents, great-grandparents, and ancestors beyond that, tolerating what the UK Government is currently doing. The author is quite sure that it would seem like an enormous joke to those people precisely for the reason that they would never, in their wildest dreams, envisage that it could happen to them, or more pertinently that they would let it.

How cowed must a people be to accept being fined in a shop for not wearing a mask? It’s a scenario that goes beyond pathetic into hilarious. And to assist the reader into the same mindset that the author has about this truly unbelievable state of affairs, an article has been produced that expressly to illustrate how the facemask wearing being proposed in this day and age has been so abnormal that it would be easy material for comedy in an age that had no truck with madness. The article is called, The historical British attitude to wearing a covering over the face, as told by the cultural canon, and it imagines scenes in famous British comedies or, in two cases, modifies original work (with one moment coming as is from its original place), and it can be read by following this link.

Ultimately, the reader is asked not to believe any “influencer” or any news organisation pushing or implying the notion that more people are wearing masks than not. Do not believe anyone who says that more people would wear masks than not. It is essential for defeating the UK Government on this issue that as many of the public as possible refuse to comply. Turning up at supermarkets and shops without masks in thousands is the only way to guarantee that those businesses stick with any decision that might have been made to be lax regarding the Government requirement. Are shops really going to turn hundreds of people away during a day’s business an account of missing masks?

Previously: The coronavirus police state (4): pushing back against the business shutdown and loan racket (link).

Linked (not officially in the series): Face coverings in shops: it’s all about store policy and its reward or punishment – so don’t make excuses to be allowed in (link)
 

† The BBC piece that provides the quote has been completely rewritten in the two days it has been published (for the obvious reason that it gave too much exposure to how shops would not police facemask wearing). However, the new version is useful because it confirms what has been supposed in the course of this article:

The latest rules for shops will be enforced by the police, with anyone disregarding them at risk of a fine of up to £100. This will be reduced to £50 if the fine is paid within 14 days.

“A shop can refuse them entry and can call the police if they refuse to comply,” Mr Hancock said.

Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said police should be involved only as a “last resort”.

ǂ Deduced from “leaked” internal policy statements appearing on social media, but here is an example of a published report, from the Mirror:

JD Sports chief executive Peter Cowgill suggested his store will offer face coverings to anyone not wearing them but said it will be for police to enforce. “The guidance so far is that our store colleagues are not really to get involved and it’s a police matter to enforce rather than for them to get involved in any potential public disturbances,” he said…

Sainbury’s… referred to the British Retail Consortium statement, saying while they would help in communication, it should not be up to shops to enforce the rules.

* If other customers approach and complain about your non-compliance, they should be told that it is not their place to enforce the requirement, and that they should refrain from interfering. Get the shop management involved if necessary.

‡ A piece is planned using the decision of Simon Dolan’s judicial review to find out if a fundamental illegality of the Coronavirus Restrictions Regulations has actually been dealt with – the author is not certain that it has. At that stage, we will be able to go back to the previous articles in this series and, as is suspected, reinforce them.

 

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  1. Carrie says:

    Please don’t call it a hoax. A hoax is just simply a lie but usually without any harm being done. This whole thing is more of a scam because they lie to us to get something out of it, control that is.

    • P W Laurie says:

      Thanks for your comment. “Coronahoax” is about the claim for the existence of a deadly disease. The view taken here is that it is a hoax because the deadly disease doesn’t exist. Moreover, “Covid-19” deaths by and large are not deaths that would not have happened. The mechanics of the coronahoax has involved the rebranding of usual deaths to give the illusion of a deadly disease.
      Deaths have been as usual because the NHS manages pathways to death as its bread and butter – all the while being an avenue for the transfer of enormous amounts of wealth from the people into the hands of corporate-government. Please see the FBEL article, The beneficent NHS, where corporate-government makes a buck from population control.
      It may be true that some of the deaths were unnatural because they were hurried up, but the cause would be the withdrawal of the death pathway management. If the truth ever comes out about real Covid-19 deaths, we should expect to find that they are also iatrogenic – caused by prescription drugs; please search this site for articles about ACE2. It’s business as usual for the NHS.
      There may have been unavoidable deaths caused by the lockdown, but then the lockdown wasn’t a hoax, it was a very real thing.