Fight For Freedom

Britain, my Great Britain, wake up, you the father of modern democracy, are sleepwalking to a totalitarian state. Inch by stinking inch we are allowing our freedoms to be eroded, all, of course, in the name of freedom. We seem unaware of what the result will be of reducing our freedom by the millions of cameras watching our every move. Now they link these systems. They are putting microphones and speakers in combination with many of these cameras.

Our leaders are allowing, or sanctioning or ordering that our tax and other, related financial information, be combined. What’s the reason behind this? When you undertake almost every meaningful financial transaction in the UK today you now have to show either a passport, or your driving license. Why should this be necessary? Ask yourself how many terrorists have been caught in the security net because there are these compliance measures? The official answer is, none!

Add to this the new, combined government information database in which our health information is to be held. We can all understand the theoretical and practical reasons that this might benefit us, but the truth is that this is another system that is completely open to abuse. Imagine if your prospective employer knew you had a medical problem that you wanted to keep private. Does this mean you don’t get the job, but will never learn why you were turned down?

We just don’t know whether the people being entrusted with the confidential information about us are well intended, but we do know they are hopelessly inefficient. This country’s government has, as I have written before, admitted that it is early stage development of a system that enables it to listen to and record every phone call, every visit to every website and study every text message at its leisure. This is a gross breach of our human rights and should be fought by every person who values their future freedom.

Various council authorities in this country are, apparently, sending out information forms for every household in their area to complete. This is compulsory and there are severe penalties for value to complete the forms. The kinds of questions being asked are an attempt by the authorities to spy on every aspect of that household’s lifestyle, expenditure and income levels.

These council authorities are using the anti terrorism legislation, never intended for this purpose, to spy on the householders in their districts. Under law they are doing so quite legitimately but clearly for illegitimate reasons.

Let’s examine another frightening outcome that will surely follow the misuse of medical knowledge in this country, and probably elsewhere. If all the data-bases become linked, and DNA sampling is progressively standardized we will have a situation in which we will be able to forecast which children are going to be born with or will develop various degenerative diseases in later life. Will society allow such children to be born into the poorer world that decreasing resources is likely to engender? If insurance companies are warned in advance that someone is going to develop a long-term illness, or one that might lead to premature death, how likely is it that they will provide any form of insurance cover?

What is the moral and ethical position of our society in dealing with these issues? We must have this debate and arrive at our conclusions BEFORE we enable this truly frightening technology not AFTER.

Remember that our governmental sanctioned data-bases failure rate is 70%. Remember the bigger the data collection the more likely we are to suffer what the American military used to call a SNAFU, Situation Normal All F…d Up!

We also have our government demanding new legislation in which terrorist suspects can be arrested and held without trial, for 42 days. I am, as those of you who have previously read my articles know, extremely hard line with terrorists. Note the difference, I am tough on terrorists, not suspected terrorists. Unless you’ve forgotten, like our government apparently has, you are innocent until you’re proven guilty in this country. There must be a presumption of innocence or we have truly become a totalitarian regime. It was bad enough that our legislators meekly allowed the previously demanded 28 days of arrest without charge, why do we need 42 days? What does 42 days precisely give us, that 28 days did not, or is this simply a number without any meaning?

The real terrorist organizations want our society to over react and turn on itself. Our government is falling into this trap. Obviously this is a difficult balance to achieve, and whatever route our leaders take will be open to error, but there are fundamental truths at stake. These must include the presumption of innocence and that includes the right to trial by a jury of your peers. Our governments must not behave beyond the law to protect us from illegal actions. There is one exception to this, and that's the extraordinary powers a democracy allows its government at time of war.

The question is, are we at war? If we are at war with a global terrorist threat, then you have to make that clear and then these, extraordinary powers could be allowed, but only for the duration of the conflict. When we are already asking questions as to whether it is allowable for the authorities to torture a terrorist suspect for the greater good we are clearly entering a new type of war situation. I find the idea of torture repugnant until this scenario is put into context. For example the terrorist knows where in London or New York, that his friends have planted a dirty nuclear device, ready to explode in one hour. Do you ask him politely to let you know where the bomb, that might kill 500,000 people is, or do you do whatever is necessary to find out where it is, immediately?

For me the answer is obvious, you do whatever you can, and you don't wait one second. The counter argument relates to the size of the threat, and the possibility that you might have the wrong suspect under arrest. I respond that if one person is under threat of being murdered it is worth the risk, and yes, there would be mistakes, and that's too terrible to contemplate, but is a legitimate price in times of war.

Back to the UK, pure and simple; here I have already written to my medical center telling them I want to opt out of the National Health database currently being collected.

I have also checked to see whether my council is one of those placing concealed mini cameras in our wheelie bins to check for “proper” segmentation of paper, glass and other rubbish. Would you believe they are now confirming whether the weight of the bin is too much for our over protected refuse collectors. They’re calling this the “two finger rule”. If it takes more than two of the bin collectors fingers to roll the wheeled bin to his truck they will not remove it. This is, of course, political correctness gone mad, but it is real nevertheless. In England we have a two fingered salute, which means the same as the single finger salute in the States. I want to share this salute with the town hall little Hitlers who are coming up with these ridiculous rules.

Watch out America, because for your Barak Obama read our Tony Blair a decade ago. What we’re experiencing now you can anticipate for your future. Like Blair there is something of the nanny state provider about Obama. All the things we now have in the UK that I‘m outlining were well intentioned laws, regulations and ideas that were founded in the absolute certain belief that these were all being done for our own good. Every day our lives are peppered with news of a never-ending barrage of such ideas. All conceived by our leaders to tell us how to live. This week there were announcements about our health, the packaging and pricing of alcohol, advertising on TV, further congestion charging in another of our major cities, Manchester, and I could go on without end.

My advice to the reader is to fight this type of legislation wherever you find it, and never give in. If there’s an alternative take it. If you’re compelled, try to resist. Tell them no, don’t fill in their forms, don’t volunteer any information, and if you get an opportunity to be in contact with your elected representative tell them, loud and clear what you think about this continual erosion of your freedom. Then, when there are elections, vote the idiots out, or it might be too late.