Friday 6 February 2009

New Labour's Surveillance Society gets a ticking off

eric arthur blair was right about everything except the year.

by johnofgwent

So the dust (well, snow actually) is settling on the battlefield where in recent weeks companies who thought they could chuck british workers onto the dole and ship in italian imports without a second thought.

Now might be a good time to take stock of what we can expect Gordon to do in response to thwart the law abiding folk of this country who are less than impressed with those who currently enjoy the trappings of office without ever asking us for permissionto put them on.

A few years ago now I helped prove to a House of Commons Scrutiny Committee that the job skills shortage figures used to justify the issue of fast tracked visas to indians who were then let in here to take work off me were about as honest as a Welsh Assembly member's expense claim or a Neath MP's accounting practices. Today I can't can't get hold of the facts and figures to do the same.

A few years before that I enjoyed taking part in the biggest "mass green carding" of Members of Parliament ever. For anyone sho does not know, this is the time-honoured practice whereby a constituent registered to vote may turn up at the Palace of Westminster's public entrance and request the Member of Parliament elected to represent their constituency come and meet them to hear their grievance on whatever issue they have. Bring evidence of who you are and where you live, and it was your absolute right to be granted acccess to the building. But no more. These days if more than two or three people try to walk into the public entrance together, the gun-totin trigger happy chappies of the Metropolitan Police Force will drag you off for the crime of not obtaining their prior authorisation to walk throught that door. Mugabe would be proud of New Labour for that one. Even he never thought of pulling that little stunt.

Remember that within months of the 2001 Fuel Protests that brought an ashen faced Blair to realise he couldn't keep trampling roughshod over the british commuter (his only source of revenue through gross domestic product since he'd continued the destruction of industrial manufacturing started by Maggie Thatcher) Blair set up COBRA a special Cabinet Task Force, brought in the sort of measures last seen when we were at war with the germans, used them against septuagenarians opposed to his conference speech and people less than happy with trade fairs advertising arms sales, and tried to have the Sovereign's power to dissolve parliament at the end of its maximum five year term subject to his approval. All on the grounds of fighting terrorism, of course.

So, with lawyers scouting round the net looking for the slightest hint of anyone setting up an internet forum where the Labour Party is not worshipped as a God, what's next ?

Well, I think we can expect to have our cars forced to carry GPS chips "on the grounds of making us pay for road usage" for a start.

And whilst the "chips in your dustbin to charge you to pay as you throw" have quietly been chucked on the scrap-heap, the laws brought in that allow thousands of "public bodies" to mount surveilance on you and your house, laws brought in "on the grounds" they were needed to police schemes such as this one have not been binned.

And what else ?

Well, if the next institution on New Labours extermination list, the House of Lords, is to be believed, Gordon is already trying it on with yet more surveilance.

In the words of LORD GOODLAD, a former MP who left the house in 1999 to become High Commissioner to Australia and who was rewarded in 2005 with a seat and some ermine for his trouble (and therefore in my eyes earned it a thousand times more than a certain Europhilic Trade Minister)

... There can be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about us being recorded and pored over by the state...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

and the many of this country still vote still non object to the labour party EU ??

Anonymous said...

Toal surveillance of the masses, while being able to get away with anything for the elite. Sounds like Communism again doesnt it?, or the new word to describe Labour's totalitarian idology, Communazis.