Why I'll be turning my phone off for Sunday's Government emergency alert: GP Taylor

As a retired copper, I am not one for conspiracy theories and need facts and evidence before I come to any conclusions. However, in this age of advanced digital technology, I am worried about why such a test in necessary and what are the real reasons behind it.

Government information states that it is a one-way message and no response is needed other than to click the ‘OK’ button on your phone. I must ask the question, why do we need such an alert?

I have managed to get through 60 years of life quite safely without having my mobile warn me of a sudden calamity around the corner. I certainly don’t live in fear of Covid or climate change and would love the experience of watching an alien invasion.

My research into what has been called the ‘Armageddon alert’ makes me wonder if there are other reasons why it is taking place and I have very genuine concerns regarding personal freedom and surveillance.

It is a fact, that we in Britain are one of the most watched people in the world. Only China has more CCTV cameras per head of the population than the UK. On average, we all appear on a CCTV screen up to 70 times a day if we leave our homes. On a recent trip to Scarborough, I gave up counting the number of cameras I saw. There is even one on the lamppost at the bottom of my garden. Russians are less scrutinised than we are.

Everything we do in life now has a digital fingerprint. When you buy something with a plastic card, go online or get on a bus, all are recorded. The government will say that they don’t have access to this kind of information, but as a former copper, I can tell you that is not true. If the security services want to know about your life, the first place they will look is on your mobile phone. All your habits, peccadillos and desires are there for them to see. You have no secrets.

What I would like to know, is what information the emergency alert will garner for the Tory government? I do not believe the government claims that it will not take any information. What is the point in such a major, expensive psychological operation if the results cannot be assessed, evaluated, or analysed? I believe that the government will be data harvesting from our phones, but they will never admit it.

The past record of the Tory government leads me to further doubts about their honesty in matters of public surveillance.

I was very surprised to find out that during the pandemic, the government actually dared to spy on the British population using the secretive 77th Brigade. That’s right. You and I had our social media posts spied on and analysed. Some commentators say even our movements were tracked.

Big Brother Watch claimed that soldiers from the Army's 77th Brigade collated tweets from British citizens about Covid-19 and passed them to the Cabinet Office as part of wider cross-Government efforts to combat ‘misinformation and disinformation’. In other words, people who went against the government narrative. The information they gathered could also assess compliance with lockdown measures, when according to Matt Hancock, they attempted to “scare the pants off us”.

Ben Wallace said in January that the spying allegations were now under investigation.

A government that spies in this way on its own people is not to be trusted.

The idea of a public alert system is worrying because it could be used to control the population. The pandemic was a great example of this. Compliance to regulations was a top priority. Imagine if they had the Armageddon alert in 2020. The public would have been bombarded with messages from Matt Hancock telling us to stay inside as Project Fear was put into operation.

We are living in times of fear. Fear of terrorism. Fear of climate change. Fear of water shortages. Fear of no food.

Just look back at the newspaper headlines over the last year. Bombs, heat, fires, empty reservoirs and supermarket shelves.

What Yorkshire needs is more freedom and less fear. It is the role of government to protect the people that elected it. The Armageddon alert reinforces the concept that the world is no longer a safe place to live in and used in the wrong hands, is just another way to manipulate the people.

The answer is very simple. All you have to do is turn off your phone on Sunday and send a message to the government that the people of Yorkshire put their freedom over fear.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Yorkshire.