Halloween in central London was a more than usually subdued affair this year. No bands of over-excited children roaming the damp streets in pursuit of a sugar rush. A handful of indifferently carved pumpkins squatting sourly on doorsteps. Boris Johnson fatuously conducting another lockdown dance of the seven veils. How could it have been otherwise, when the irrational, arbitrary and totalitarian behaviour of our current government is infinitely more terrifying than any confected festival of the dead ? When the murderous groupthink of our traditional media is more ghoulish than anything that a Hollywood film director could possibly conjure up ?