AT 3pm tomorrow afternoon your mobile phone will emit a piercing ten-second siren.
And if you are reading these words after the alert blared out then congratulations — you survived.
This is a nationwide test of the Government’s official emergency alarm for use if they ever need to tell us: “We’re all doomed”.
But what it REALLY represents is that our rulers are pathetically nostalgic for the years when we had to obey every madcap rule they created.
“It could be the sound that saves your life,” sniffs new Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, the minister responsible for overseeing this Orwellian scheme.
Perhaps.
But my guess is that it will cost more lives than it saves — if this Government-sponsored siren results in car crashes by distracted drivers, and heart attacks and strokes from the shock the siren inflicts upon the unaware.
We shall see.
But our political masters have never got over the intoxicating power they possessed during the pandemic.
Some of them — I’m thinking of TV’s Matt Hancock — clearly relished rolling back our freedoms.
And the few who dared to question the draconian rules — like Rishi Sunak, to his eternal credit — were shouted down.
And this is what the state-sponsored siren really represents.
Power-crazed politicians who are addicted to sticking their nose into every private corner of our lives.
Politicians who got to shag advisers and hold drunken “leaving dos” in 10 Downing Street when you were not allowed to hold the hand of your dying parent.
Today’s stunt is ill-conceived and is likely to cause absolute mayhem.
Are the majority of our people even aware their phone is going to start howling at them for ten seconds at 3pm tomorrow afternoon?
I reckon that millions, literally millions of them, are not.
People simply don’t pay that much attention to every little madcap Government scheme.
They are not watching interviews with Oliver Dowden, who they had never heard of until his promotion on Friday.
I hope I am wrong but I think this siren is going to cause carnage.
The whole thing is potentially fatally dangerous.
Monday could bring a terrible hangover.
And if it serves any positive purpose at all, it is to highlight how above themselves our politicians have now become.
Just fix the country — taxes are at an historic high yet public services are at an all-time low.
Our politicians have developed a taste for bossing us about.
Time for them to get over their Long Covid.
And to take their over-bearing, officious snouts out of our lives.
THERE was an exciting development in Anglo-French relations when French citizen Ernest Moret was arrested at London’s St Pancras train station by the Metropolitan Police after arriving by train from Paris.
He was held under terrorist legislation to determine “if he was engaged in terrorist acts or in possession of material for use in terrorism.”
So who is this dangerous honcho? Er, Monsieur Moret is a journalist.
And far — very far — from being a terrorist, the only thing Moret is guilty of is taking part in demonstrations in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reforms.
Why is the Met doing Macron’s dirty work for him?
And what makes this journalist’s detention under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 so obscene is that the French police do nothing to stop people-traffickers on the beaches of northern France from loading up their cargos of human misery.
Indeed, the French police seem quite content to puff away on a Gauloise, give a Gallic shrug and look the other way.
NEWS of a revival in sales of cassettes will have brought back fond memories to generations of music fans.
Old folk are scratching their silver heads as sprogs rush out to buy Florence + The Machine, Harry Styles and the Arctic Monkeys on – gasp! – cassette.
It was the clunkiest technology for listening to music since Fred Flintstone’s prehistoric record player that used a bird’s beak as a stylus.
Yet it was the top-selling format for albums between 1985 and 1992. It had a special place in our hearts because it allowed you to be your own DJ.
The mixtape was what we had instead of dating apps. If you wanted to woo, you did not give your heart’s desire a bouquet of flowers or a box of Quality Street.
You gave them a mixtape with meticulously chosen tunes. You let the music express your feelings.
I love vinyl – so tactile, so beautiful. And I like streaming – so clean, so convenient.
But the cassette, that spectacularly user-unfriendly format, had an aura no other format could match.
It wasn’t just music lovers who adopted the cassette. It was lovers.
ON a night out at the theatre, do you hear people getting slung out because of their deafening singalongs?
Do you hear people treat it like half-cut karaoke?
Audiences are suddenly in conflict with theatre owners.
Because audiences don’t think a beautiful song like I Will Always Love You is best left to the professionals – they like to warble along.
At a Manchester stage performance of The Bodyguard, featuring songs by Whitney Houston, the actors walked off when a struggle broke out between security and punters who refused to stop singing.
My late mother, an avid fan of the unauthorised singalong, was clearly ahead of her time.
As an old Labour supporter, she was vocal when the barricades went up in Les Miserables.
Mind, nobody enjoyed sitting in front of her.
VLADIMIR PUTIN has been pictured with a mystery “prominent scar” on his neck while lighting a candle at a Russian Orthodox service at a cathedral in Moscow, prompting another flurry of rumours about the sick psychopath’s health.
Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.
VANESSA Bauer has already broken up with Joey Essex?
The couple were so adorable together on Dancing On Ice that I fantasised they would live happily ever after in some love-nest in Romford or Wickford or Billericay.
But it was not to be. Vanessa rocked up at the premiere of West End show The Makings Of A Murderer conspicuously alone.
Mr Essex is history.
Apparently the pearly-toothed pair went their separate ways after the ice show ended.
That’s Vanessa for you.
If you’re not skating, she’s not dating.
PADDINGTON Bear’s tea party with the Queen is up for this year’s Bafta Memorable Moment award.
It is unthinkable that any other head of state in the world could have pulled off the skit.
Filmed just three months before Her Majesty died, it captured the Queen’s self-deprecating humour to perfection.
TV moment of the year?
More like the TV moment of any and every year.
DOMINIC RAAB has resigned as Deputy Prime Minister over allegations he bullied civil servants when he thought their work was not quite up to scratch.
Raab clearly feels an injustice has been done.
I can’t recall a resignation letter that was so full of defiance.
Who knows what went on between Raab and his Tory-hating, Brexit-loathing, politically motivated civil servants?
Not me. Frankly, I haven’t got a clue.
Perhaps Raab was truly out of order. Perhaps he really was “curt”.
Or perhaps these civil servants – aka The Blob – are overly sensitive souls who should just serve our country and stop whining.
But Raab is acting like he has been incredibly hard done by.
Meanwhile, Labour are acting like there is a major Tory scalp to brandish, just as Sir Softy Starmer is sliding down in the polls.
Labour are a little too eager to make political capital out of Raab’s reluctant resignation.
Whatever happened, what we can say with certainty is that this is all a storm in the Westminster bubble.
Frankly, nobody who pays a bill for electricity or gas in this country gives a flying toss about a few civil servants and their hurt feelings.
I like Raab. As a politician, as a patriot, as a man.
The Government, and this country, are diminished by his resignation.
JUST Stop Oil have really become such insufferable snobs.
They started out desecrating works of great art but these days they bowl up at the Grand National and the snooker.
What next? Greyhound racing and the bingo?
Just Stop Fun would not dream of disrupting a middle-class event like Glastonbury.
They are not willing to sacrifice their enjoyment for the planet’s sake.
Only yours.
