John Waters, Gemma O'Doherty, and the Bermuda Triangle of the High Court

 Cases brought to the High Court in Ireland run the risk of costs for the appellants which can be substantial. In cases where the matter to be decided on is deemed to be of public interest those costs are remitted.  John Waters (cf. Give Us Back the Bad Roads

bad roads) and Gemma O’Doherty brought a case questioning the legality of emergency provisions in relation to Covid.  The Wikipedia article on John Waters high court and his career sum up the result of this action:

"On 2 March 2021, the Irish Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by Waters and Gemma O'Doherty of the High Court’s refusal to permit them to bring their challenge, and its award of costs of that hearing against them. Counsel for the state in the appeal argued that some of the applicants' submissions were Bermuda Triangle stuff."

All accounts of this result mention the Bermuda Triangle, and there is a generic quality to the reports as though all journalists, in the safety of their homes, were working from the report of a single intrepid member of the Fourth Estate.  Costs were awarded against Waters and O’Doherty.  Estimates put it at a five figure sum which is a severe range of financial pain.

What made John  and Gemma lose their bearings and challenge the world wide consensus that this virus was so supremely dangerous extraordinary measures needed to be taken?  Only one result was possible: disappearing off the radar.

In time this covidology will come to be seen as an amplified version of the Y2K problem that was going to cause massive disruption but didn’t.  The technocratic mind cannot abide uncertainty and wants no truck with negative capability.

"I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. (John Keats)

To live with risk is to live a human life.  It was a series of mutations that brought us from the big bang to now. Let’s get on with it. In fact we are getting on with it and doing up a 70‘s bungalow that our son has bought.  New plumbing, wiring, stoves, tiling and no shortage of tradesmen to do the work since the construction sites are closed down.  Don’t tell the government.