I tried an escape route last week. For various (and nefarious) reasons, it failed. But - as always - one learns far more from failure than success. A lot of the failure was at an intensely personal level, whereas the learning came from observing the behaviour of a broad spectrum of national cultures through the medium of their citizens. Nothing this year has so effectively demonstrated to me the insidious effect of insistent propaganda and planned demonisation in play throughout the risibly defined First World.

This is how the totality spans out:

There are millions of Little Hitlers out there just gagging to tell you off. The alternative to mRNA messenger poison in your arm is still (just about) being made available...but there are no special offers, incentives or clear explanations to guide you. If you want a Covid test and you're "vaccinated", it costs €5 and you go to the front of the queue: if you're a swine too selfish to think about "other citizens", it costs anything from €15-98 and attracts 3rd class service.

At the Gare Montparnasse TGV departure station in Paris, there is but one pharmacy; it's at the back of the third level, and there are no signs directing you to it. Yet despite that - and I know this by having befriended the senior medic providing the service - this small centre is knocking out 275 rapid flow tests during an average day. Multiply that by the seven days of the week, imagine how many pharmacies there are in France performing tests, and you will arrive at a very large number.

When given a negative result, you have 24 hours (in France) to get to the Moon and back. Nobody will serve you a meal indoors. At rail stations, they give you a cute little blue bracelet that grudgingly let's you on the train...but is effectively a Judische Stern marking you out as Unclean. On the TGV from Paris yesterday, a young woman sat next to me, spotted the blue bracelet, and asked the Guard to reseat her elsewhere.

Earlier in the week, I had suffered two Lufthansa flights during which the knuckle-rapping thing from stewardesses about total nose-mouth coverage became alternately irritating and hilarious. The young Greek engineer sitting next to me noted my "Es tut mir leid" and then later sarcasm, and plucked up the courage to nudge my left arm before remarking, "Germans, eh? They don't change do they?"

I stayed with kind and generous friends in Paris at very short notice. Very bright, well-heeled people who have completely bought into the State narrative. I was lectured throughout the meal on just how bonkers a paranoid conspiracy victim I am. Yet I took two taxis during the brief stay...and both drivers had suspicions about State motives that were equal to mine.

But the main lesson learned during my travels was the truly multivariate nature of key surveillance media tied into the gold mine of personal information. Such is no longer a new point of debate online: on the ground, however, it is approaching closure at an exponential rate of acceleration.

The world has been obsessed with Covid19 for almost two years now, but it is only one element in a concerted campaign designed to know everything about everyone everywhere forever. Covid is a Trojan horse that brought with it the false dawn of "vaccines", which in turn provided the excuse for "health" passes. But the real key to what's going on - and the factor I had underestimated - is how the pass is being digitalised and connected entirely to the smartphone information set.

The smartphone revolution has been pushing hard ever since Covid made its appearance. In the last six months, the pressure has been turned up: every day my laptop (or various ISPs) encourage me to back up this or join that - giving them much clearer data on where I am - and prodding me to coordinate in favour of a smartphone. Travel sites try everything to send you tickets and clearance documents direct to your phone. The phone is where you are pinged to self-isolate, where you get your boarding pass and how you gain entry to a rail platform. GCHQ in Britain now has every mobile phone on its database - as does the NSA in the States, and the Sureté in France.

But this too is only one avenue, for we are all being softened up ready for the Big Money Reset. I have three smartcards nowadays, and all of them use nil-contact EFTPOS. The limit of electronic payment began at €20 in 2018; now it's climbed past €50 on some cards. The system is wide-open to fraud....but if you withdraw cash now at an ATM, you'll be charged €5. Cash is anonymous, and we can't have that now, can we?

It boils down to this: salaries, pensions and consumption are no longer under your control, they're digital; travel is no longer under your control - you need a digital health pass; and the right to privacy is no longer under your control, because the Smart stuff tells Them what you're doing, where you are and when you consumed. Even the new generation of electricity meters spy on us, telling the boys at EdF when you take a shower, when you wash the dishes, when you're watching TV and so on ad nauseam. Of course, no pressure to get the new meters...but sadly, you'll have to forego all the special offers and your KWHrs will be charged at a higher rate.

If you want to have a life, get a jab. If you want to have a job, get a jab. If you want the best deals, get them online and pay by smartcard. If you want a magic e-ticket, get it put on your smartphone. And if you want to hide....forget it. Believe me - been there, researched it, and drawn a blank. One can "make oneself scarce" as the old Lancashire phrase has it...but nothing more than that. This too is rapidly getting beyond the reach of all the most monied folks out there - and travel rams that point home better than any set of stats.

Examining my recent trip, I drew out €1000 in cash as 'walking around money'. I had €20 left, six days later. I digitally spent €500 on hotel bills, €1100 on flights and trains, €150 on ferries, €190 on car hire, €150 on meals, and a staggering €340 on rapid flow Covid tests. Much of the cash went on taxis. Prices in Athens are out of control.

All up, it cost me €3420...for an off-season break Sunday through Friday.

Our money is going to be revalued to "their" advantage: digitalisation will make bail-ins a matter of buttons rather than a run on the banks....but deliberately untreated inflation will make our losses seem less painful once it goes hyper. This inflationary burst is now well under way - I've been posting about it since the Spring - and the opening punch has been delivered by the energy sector: modern paraffin for interior heating use is up 36% in price; citerne gas is up 27%; and electric heating is a rapidly disappearing option.

The ludicrously dilatory approach Fed boss Jerome Powell took to the sudden spurt of inflation last February showed us all the game that was in play: it was a blip, it was a brief aberration, it was but a momentary phenomenon. And then, in October, suddenly it wasn't. I have waited in vain for a credible explanation of why - following an enormous global slump - a market awash with unwanted crude became inflationary. The truth is that producers, small businesses and large retailers lost a fortune in 2020, and so when some degree of normality was restored they not surprisingly went all out to make good the deficits. It's called human nature.

Twitter is still replete with cries of "Aux barricades!" but with every week they become less believable. If there's going to be a 'sea change' in British politics, then we need rather more than a bunch of disgruntled Tory voters switching to the LibDems in Shropshire:

The Reform, Reclaim, Heritage and Freedom Alliance between them garnered under 2,000 votes. I suppose the collective noun for that should be 'a split of unpopularity'. One thing it certainly isn't is a Resistance. For sure, it's more bad news for BoJo, but then he's a dead man walking anyway.

Lord Frost has resigned as Mr Brexit, essentially because he can't believe the fuss and panic being whipped up by Omicron and the now near-certainty of a Christmas lockdown. Freedom demonstrators clashed with police in London yesterday; the event merited just 3 lines in the Telegraph, and The Times blanked it.

And me? I'm going back to the drawing board.