For some time now, I have observed how most equality and diversity initiatives usually do the exact opposite. Equality tends to mean greater dependence on state handouts and large corporations, while banksters and tech tycoons consolidate their control over every aspect of our surroundings and private lives. Diversity tends to emphasise superficial differences and labels applied to people based on arbitrary personality profiles rather than practical diversity in skills and ways of life. We may see a greater variation in skin tones, hair styles and fashion statements in most major human habitation zones, but much less variety in customs.

Now it appears most new public health initiatives create more ill-health and most humanitarian campaigns bring us more death and destruction. Over the last two years governments, with the full support of international bankers, have imposed lockdowns and mandated medical interventions which have demonstrably done more harm than good. Only by manipulating statistics can the authorities claim that strict regulation of physical proximity has reduced the spread of respiratory infections. Yet in country after country, the imposition of strict covid measures has had the precise opposite effect. South Korea had one of the lowest covid-19-attributed death rates in the world. Indeed, proponents of face mask mandates heralded the country as a success story. Now, just a few months after rolling out vaccine passports and reaching their goal of inoculating over 90% of their adult citizens, South Korea has seen an unexpected rise in people suffering from severe respiratory diseases. While our focus should be on all-cause mortality and our quality of life, covid-19 restrictions have not even succeeded in reducing deaths attributed to covid-19, which in practice mean anyone who dies after testing positive for the virus whether or not it contributed to their demise.

The covidian cult has finally given way to the Ukrainian cult within the wider context of impending environmental doom. Let’s leave aside the details of Eastern European history or microbiology for a moment. Back in 2019 I recall walking through the streets of Edinburgh adorned with LGBTQ++ pride iconography everywhere. Don’t get me wrong. I’m old enough to remember when gay pride events belonged to a counterculture at loggerheads with the authorities. In 2020 after the first lockdown, NHS-themed covid iconography bedecked street furniture. In 2021, the covid-safety theme morphed into the liberation-through-vaccination theme with vaccination buses in place of gay pride buses. Now, yellow and blue flags dominate the cityscape as the authorities beseech us to stand with Ukraine. Just as the LGBTQ++ events did little to help youngsters who fail to conform to traditional male or female stereotypes by imposing new stereotypes and reframing complex psychosocial challenges in terms of sexual identity, blind support for Zelenskyy’s Ukraine will do little to help Ukrainians, including those in the central and western regions who prefer independence from their larger eastern neighbour. How can we believe that the same global players who have over the last 30 years done everything to undermine national sovereignty in Western Europe, the Americas and the Middle East have suddenly embraced it in Ukraine?