What Sort Of World Do We Live In?

It's a funny question I suppose, but one we'd all do well to keep asking ourselves.  Superficially we seem to live in a generally benign state where the government only wants what's best for us and most people are happy to accept that premise.  The government wants to help us and smooth life's difficulties with job-hunting, preventing homelessness, ensuring we eat our 5-a-day, lose weight, stop smoking and drinking, tide us over if we fall on hard times, cure us if we are ill and generally act as benefactor.  It says.

I've just caught up with this article which was published in Games Monitor while I was offline earlier this month.  It concerns security measures being taken for Olympics 2012 which include the construction of an 11 mile, 5,000 volt electric fence, topped  with 900 daylight & night vision surveillance cameras spaced at 55-yard  intervals.

"A new genre of military futurology has emerged which owes as much to  apocalyptic Hollywood movies as it does to the cold war tradition of  ‘scenario planning. Often outlandish and bizarre in its prophecies, and  always dystopian, this new military futurism sees threats to the western  way of life emanating not only from rogue states, weapons of mass  destruction and terrorism but also from resurgent nationalism, conflicts  over dwindling resources, migration, disease, organised crime, abrupt  climate change and the emergence of failed cities where social disorder is rife.

"Other security measures to be implemented for London 2012 will include facial and iris recognition, finger-print and hand recognition, guards with attack dogs and search dogs. New software is planned to integrate all of London's CCTV cameras, and will have the capability to follow you through the city. A scheme to search people and vehicles will include machines capable of looking through your clothing. The Air Force will deploy its Reaper pilot-less drone aircraft, which will carry laser-guided bombs and missiles including the Hellfire air-to-ground weapon. While on the Thames, the Royal Navy will deploy its new £1 billion Daring class Type 45 destroyer. These are also to be fitted with laser-guided missile systems able to shoot down a target the size of a cricket ball.

"The Olympic Act 2006, which sets out various laws relating to the Olympics, gives the right of forced entry into private property to remove unauthorised advertising or protest banners.  ... the right of forced entry is extended outside the police force to staff contracted to the ODA.

"... security measures for the London Olympics will include the nationwide use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, allowing police stop and search without suspicion. The London Olympics and its security does not exist in isolation but in a continuum of increasing state surveillance and security hysteria."

Take a look at this article too: The Police are considering the forcible chemical sedation of suspects.  "The Federation is currently undertaking work to formulate a strategy which we intend to lead to recognition and acceptance of excited delirious syndrome by the British medical profession."
Are you feeling safer yet or can you feel the noose tightening?  When has any government voluntarily relinquished power and control once gained?  Oh, grandma, what big teeth you have!

Cross-posted from Calling England

What Sort Of World Do We Live In?

Who Needs ID Cards?

At first glance the government's proposal for a 'paperless society'  seems good: quicker, streamlined, tree-saving and cheaper with no more trips to the local job centre, doctor's surgery or finding you've just run out of stamps.  For time-pressed people who have no trouble getting around on the internet it seems too good to be true - imagine being able to book an appointment at your doctor's surgery at two in the morning.

Reality check:

"Tens of thousands of public sector jobs will go".   Go where?  To the dole queue?  Another created public sector job?
"Jobcentres, tax offices, DVLA local centres, passport  offices and housing benefit offices will be phased out."  Will the money raised go back into the public purse and be spent on projects that actually benefit British people and lift living standards?
The government's track record on IT projects is questionable to say the least;  they're way overdue and vastly more expensive than original projections.  Has one of them ever come in on time and on cost?
Restricted access: not everyone has broadband or even a computer.
Privacy issues - not only from data theft but the government itself.

Consider this:

"A unique identifier will  allow citizens to apply for a place for their child at school, book a  doctor’s appointment, claim benefits, get a new passport, pay council  tax or  register a car from their computer at home...the secure site will be expanded to allow people to  interact with their children’s teachers or ask medical advice from their   doctor through a government version of Facebook."

A unique identifier, your ISP logged, every movement between government departments tracked and collated.  In theory some government jobsworth in a windowless office in Whitehall could have a red alert when you sneeze.

Tim Berners-Lee, Martha Lane-Fox and the Conservatives are on board.

Like the:
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
Anti-terrorism  Crime & Security Act 2001
Civil Contingencies Act 2004
Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005
Coroners & Justice Act 2009
in the hands of less than benign government the effects of this proposal could be draconian and have hidden consequences.
Calling England

Who Needs ID Cards?

Whither Cameron?

Who said: "We are now being told the British people are not capable of judging this issue – the government knows best; the top people are the only people who can understand it; it is too difficult for the rest. This is the classic argument of every tyranny in history. It begins as a refined intellectual argument, and it moves into a one-man dictatorship; 'We know best'
becomes 'I know best'."

No, it wasn't Carswell, Hannan, Redwood, Cash or other euro-sceptic;  it was said in 1962 by Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of the Labour Party in a speech to Party Conference though others have echoed his sentiments many times since then.

Gaitskell effectively scuppered McMillan's entry negotiations with his speech but Ted Heath lied to the British people in 1970: “If we can negotiate the right terms, we believe that it would be in the long-term interest of the British people for Britain to join the European Economic Community, and that it would make a major contribution to both the prosperity and the security of our country. The opportunities are immense. Economic growth and a higher standard of living would result from having a larger market ... A Conservative Government would not be prepared to recommend to Parliament, nor would Members of Parliament approve, a settlement which was unequal or unfair. In making this judgement, Ministers and Members will listen to the views of their constituents."

When I started this post it was going to be about Article 8A-4 of the Lisbon Treaty and ECJ Ruling 274/99 but then I stumbled across 1971 FCO 30/1048 (I bet you're all breathing a sigh of relief right now) which states: "The transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government. To counter this feeling, strengthened local and regional democratic processes… and effective Community regional economic and social policies will be essential… there would be a major responsibility on HM Government and on all political parties not to exacerbate public concern by attributing unpopular policies to the remote and unmanageable workings of the Community".

We have been systematically lied to, manipulated and betrayed.  Any politician in the current House of Commons must know this so, I ask again, whither Cameron?  He's already said that he wants the UK to be in the EU but not run by it; from what I've read on Euro-lex and other official EU sites, that isn't possible - he must realise that.  The EU is an undemocratic body; the Parliament was added as an afterthought and a sop to democracy.  The unelected Commission makes the laws, the ECJ upholds them and the elected Parliament nods them through, much like our own Parliament in Westminster.  Anyone who still thinks that our Parliament represents us is wrong; they do nothing but channel EU laws and examine their expenses.  They spend less time in session than ever before simply because they have precious little to do.  They are, in effect, overpaid social workers to their constituents in the Regions.

I came across this as well:

FRONTEX has an internal policing mandate and will soon preside over one of the world’s most extensive surveillance systems. This will be achieved through the interlinking of several existing EU databases and police communications systems and the creation of two new overarching surveillance frameworks (EUROSUR and EU entry-exit).

The EU is built on an out-moded concept which is now, to coin a phrase we know well, unfit for purpose.  It cannot last.

Regulation is heaped on Regulation in order to maintain some sort of structural integrity but there are weak points, the most notable one being that it sees people as counters and themselves as Greek Gods, untouchable high above the clouds, pushing little figures to and fro and guiding our lives.

Happy days!

PS: You might like this: NeoConOpticon: The EU Security-Industrial Complex:   "In the final analysis, Full Spectrum Dominance offers a new model of policing based not on ‘consent’, as the liberal democratic model holds, but on continual processes of public submission to authority. Perhaps more importantly, as a project, this model implies the end of resistance to this process (complete domination = complete submission). It follows that if freedom is to survive, then this project cannot be allowed to succeed."

Whither Cameron?

Watford Parents Only Have Themselves To Blame!

'Prove You're Not A Paedo' screams the headline in The Sun today, a brutal yet concise summing up of the absurd situation that has been allowed to develop in Watford as the council seeks to ban parents from their adventure playgrounds on the grounds that they cannot be trusted with their own children.

This state of affairs would be laughable if it wasn't so malignant. The very fabric of our society is being ripped apart under a sustained assault on our right to live our lives as we see fit with as little state intrusion as possible. The plain fact of the matter is the state does not agree with us, it wants our compliance and our control. To be good citizens we must adhere to the rules and laws that the state sets out for us. Common sense is gone, burnt on the same funeral pyre that is consuming our civil liberties and right to privacy.

I can't help wondering though how many of those parents complaining this morning voted Labour or Lib Dem at the last election, national or local? For all their complaining, I am sad to say that those parents in Watford who voted for either of the two leftist parties are just as culpable for this travesty as Dorothy Thornhill (pictured), the Lib Dem Mayor of Watford who has defended the decision, and the council officials who decided to push this through. Those parents only have themselves to blame. Unfortunately, I have a sad feeling that many of them will not learn their lesson. And before they know it, it will be too late.

And it certainly blows a hole in any claims the Lib Dems may make about being the party of 'civil liberties'. If this is what it's like to live under a Lib Dem controlled council as Watford is, imagine the damage they'd do if put in charge of the country. Labour and the Lib Dems, two cheeks of the same arse!

Watford Parents Only Have Themselves To Blame!

Mind The Language

I'm beside myself.  Taxed, fined, penalised, threatened - and all with our own money.  Why do we let them get away with it?  WHY?

Massive expansion of the Big Brother state is planned.  The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen - on top of the email and telephone records already available.

Here's the latest cattle prod up the taxpayers' collective backside:

A Home Office spokesman said the costs involved were entirely separate from those necessary to comply with the European Data Retention Directive, which requires the storage of phone and email records.

Comfuckingpletely ripping us off
Enfuckingtirely wrong
Unconfuckingditionally authoritarian
Comprefuckinghensively undemocratic

European Data Retention Directive 32006L0024 Directive 2006/24/EC
Intercept Modernisation Programme
EU DRD condemned

Mind The Language

A time for choosing - Reagan reminds us of freedoms lost

The man was a first class orator back in the time when Conservatives were conservative and not wishy-washy liberals sporting blue rosettes.



Cross-posted

A time for choosing - Reagan reminds us of freedoms lost