With the threatened delay of the UK’s ‘Freedom Day’ from Lockdown, many citizens have taken to the streets to demand cheap package holidays, karaoke and universal suffrage – only kidding with that last one, they just want half-price cocktails. Said one agitator: ‘Nobody wants basic human rights, but we do want West End theatre tickets?’
Strangely, as a nation, we now equate freedom with the chance to see ‘Cats’ on stage, ideally discounted, with a restricted view. While Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom took 27 years, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s took 30 seconds, from the stroll from his Rolls Royce to the stage door.
As Julian Assange sits in his prison cell, he must consider himself lucky, compared to those oppressed citizens who now have to wear a face mask in Aldi. In the last decade we have happily surrendered civil liberties and freedom of expression, but as the NRA says: ‘I'll only use sanitizer when you put it on my cold, dead hands’.
Said one concerned citizen: ‘It’s delay after delay, we also had a Freedom Day for leaving the EU but that was delayed by several decades. I don’t mind waiting a few years to hug my family, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss out on front row seats to see ‘Dear Evan Hansen’.’