Nice to see that 76 MPs voted on Thursday against the extension of the Government's extraordinary power grab over the people. The honour roll is here:
In fact the 484 Members voting FOR were almost exclusively Conservative and Labour, the exceptions being the DUP's Jim Shannon and the Labour expellee/resignee Claudia Webbe. Alas, neither of the latter two spoke, so their reasons are not clear to me.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-03-25/debates/9701394F-FF53-4364-85E1-F017B13CE921/Coronavirus#contribution-2997F299-7954-45B0-BBD3-2A3000339856
If you should happen to have a pint of milk about your person, a tip of the hat to you.
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2.32pm
Sir Charles Walker
(Broxbourne) (Con)
As sure as eggs are eggs, we will be back here in six months, at the end of September, being asked to renew this legislation again. It is inevitable, and anyone who thinks it is not is deluding themselves. But this afternoon I am not here to talk about eggs; I want to talk about milk.
In the remaining days of this lockdown, I am going to allow myself an act of defiance—my own protest, which others may join me in. I am going to protest about the price of milk. I am not sure whether I think the price is too high or too low—I shall come to that decision later—but for the next few days I am going to walk around London with a pint of milk on my person, because that pint will represent my protest. There may be others who will choose, too, to walk around London with a pint of milk on their person, and perhaps as we walk past each other in the street our eyes might meet. We might even stop for a chat. But I was thinking to myself, and I will continue to think to myself, what will their pint of milk represent—what will their protest be? Perhaps they will be protesting the roaring back of a mental health demon, brought on by lockdown. Perhaps they will be protesting a renewed battle with anorexia, with depression, with anxiety, with addiction. Perhaps, with their pint of milk, they will be protesting the lack of agency in their life—not being able to make a meaningful decision; maybe a loss of career or job or business. Maybe they will be protesting this country’s slide into authoritarianism, or perhaps they will be protesting the fact that we allow unelected officials to have lecterns at No. 10 to lecture us on how to live our lives. But there might even be people, with their pint of milk, quietly protesting that the route out of lockdown is too slow, or perhaps even too fast. You see, the point is, Madam Deputy Speaker, that these people can project what they like—what concern they have—on to their pint of milk.
My protest, as I said, will be about none of those things. It will simply be about the price of milk and, as I said, for the next few days I will have that pint on me, it will be of symbolic importance to me, and at the end of the day it will be warm, it will have suppurated, and I can choose whether to drink it or pour it away, because it will be robbed of its refreshing elegance by the time it has been in my pocket for 12 hours. And if I pour it away, that might cause people some concern, but it does not matter because it is my pint of milk and it is my protest, and I am not seeking people’s acclaim, endorsement or support in my protest.
And you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I heard and I listened to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. This will pass; my protest will pass, the pandemic will pass, and in years to come I will be sitting at my kitchen table—perhaps with my wife, and hopefully my children, who will still want to see me—and I will break away from our excited conversation about the day because I will spot that pint of milk on the table, and that pint shall remind me that the act of protest is a freedom—a freedom, not a right, and unless you cherish freedoms every day, unless you fight for freedoms every day, they end up being taken away from you.
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