This Sunday, at 3pm, just as most of us are settling down for a post-prandial nap, the Government intends to rattle our collective cages by invading our mobile phones — and our privacy — with its absurd emergency test signal.
Broadly reminiscent of those sirens in 1960s Cold War movies — where the hero finally claws his way out of the gulag with a toothpick, only to be captured and strung up by his toes — the notion is as terrifying as it is tiresome.
Tiresome because you can’t opt out of the damn thing — well, not unless you disable the notification or turn off your phone — and because 3pm on Sunday is about the only time any of us gets to relax these days.
And terrifying because it’s a reminder of the tyranny imposed on all of us by the technology that has invaded our homes like Japanese knotweed, infiltrating every aspect of our daily lives, making itself indispensable while becoming increasingly insidious.
Like the NHS’s hated ‘Test and Trace’ app (confession: I never downloaded it), this ’emergency alert’ system has ostensibly been developed for our own protection.
But in reality, it’s just another example of the micro-chipping away of our privacy and autonomy: another attempt by the Government and its agencies to monitor and manipulate us via the all-seeing eye that now controls our lives — the smartphone.
They already know where we shop, what we eat, how much we spend, where we go — and now they plan to take control of our emotions by randomly scaring the Yorkshire puds out of us for no discernible reason.
Because, after all, what can this thing tell us that we can’t already get on the news? And what can we — or for that matter the Government — realistically do about any of these so-called ’emergencies’ they’ll be warning us about?
Read More: Why are ministers invading our phones with a tiresome emergency alert
