Those few who have seen these blogs may have been put off by their length alone, never mind the content. Yesterday one professional journalist gave voice on radio to her opinion that she was depressed by twitter and the blogosphere with the vast amount of banality it encourages. Sorry, I must have missed something in the popular press and have failed to discover the high minded content hidden behind the yob headlines of the red tops. I try to avoid banality, inevitably fail, but at least I have used more words in achieving it when it occurs. I have purposely built some banality in for the journalist concerned, although I have not dignified her by managing to remember her name. She is probably a very good journalist for all I know, but I also think that journalists do not have a monopoly of valid viewpoints and, even in my case, I am entitled to think that there is just a chance that something worthwhile might trickle down from my viewpoint on these beautiful hills.
This is all prompted by the fact that everything I want to write about seems to demand about 600 words. Sadly the blog posted just before this one could have taken even more words, but I think it was well worth a few more words than usual.
It was inspired by the blog I now provide a link to and I am very grateful to its author for having made me get round to writing something I have been meaning to do ever since I started inflicting my blog on unsuspecting surfers. If you ever thought civil libertarians protest too much then take a look at:-
http://monaxle.com/2009/07/08/section-44-in-chatham-high-street/
If you think this is an isolated incident try to rent out Taking Liberties directed by Chris Atkins. It is also widely available to purchase on DVD. See where all the new authoritarianism has come from and where it is all going. We have been through oppressive times before, but never with so much technology in the hands of those who also have all the power. Not voting, keeping quiet and watching your fellow citizens put into vans will lead in turn to your trip in the van, by which time there won’t be anyone left to write a blog about you. All rather far fetched? Yes it might be, and lets hope so, but do you really want to take the risk? Perhaps the power of the people’s internet technology must now be applied in favour of civil liberties so as to counter the State technology and rules which steal them. It is working with consumer campaigns that have already been successful against M&S, HSBC and now a mobile phone directory inquiry service. Mark Thomas has already started. Why should politicians with so much power need to worry about your liberties when they have been so busy of late taking so many liberties of their own? No more than the general citizenry who never go out late and never experience the use of police powers exercised against them. From my experience, down too many years I care to remember, they will not have found the encounter a model of customer service. As great libertarians of the past have said, the best citizens are those who are critical of their government and the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Being critical should not lead to your loyalty being questioned. The dream is still worth keeping alive. Banal? I do hope so, but I still believe such things nonetheless.
Dacier
Showing posts with label police. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Who are the Subversives Now?
According to the OED a subversive can be someone who seeks to demolish or turn upside down or overturn and so if your views or actions are seen as having this effect expect to be on the awkward squad list kept by your local Special Branch Officer. I would now like to add the names of various politicians and police officers to that list since they are now the new subversives. The power of the people has been turned upside down, if it were ever the other way round, and this stolen power is now increasingly used against them.
According to our own publicity the United Kingdom is described as a ‘liberal democracy’ .This means different things to different people. What it means to me is a system based on that old fashioned phrase, rarely used now by politicians of the Blair years, and even more rarely, understood, ‘The Rule of Law’. I do not know who taught Tony Blair British Constitutional Law or indeed if he ever studied it to become a barrister, before that is, he became a failed Prime Minister, but if he did, he seems to have been unconvinced by its core teachings.
This is surprising because the Rule of Law is fairly simple to grasp, even by those who merely gargle at the fountain of knowledge. Basically, government is to be by law, rather than the whims of rulers or their officials, all are equal before the law and have access to it, and it is the courts, not government officials, who rule on the interpretation of law. There are one or two fuzzy edges about where administrative tribunals and the like fit in, but these are no longer seen as a threat to good government. The threat to the Rule of Law today seems to come from our elected governments which seem ever eager to create more and more discretions for more and more ‘officials’. The keenness for privatisation and the ‘war on terrorism’ has combined to blind our politicians to what they are doing.
The point which the Blair generation and many of its apparatchiks either never learnt, or chose to forget, is that in seeking to protect our Liberal Democracy from the enemy within or without, you risk destroying the thing you cherish. It is rather like getting the balance right in the countryside. Once a beauty spot is discovered all sorts will rush to see the beauty and unwittingly destroy it with their traffic jams, car par, gift shops and theme parks. Stop everything happening and you deny others the chance to experiencing what only an elite few could enjoy. In the context of civil liberties if you get the balance wrong and make things too easy for the police we all pay the price through facing more and more difficulties, especially if you want to be a participating and critical citizen in the political process.
The product of the Blair years is a path to the destruction of liberal democracy. I never understood the phrase, ‘Town Air is free air’ but the meaning fell into my lap in a small museum a few years ago. When people were more or less enslaved by feudalism the big change would be that of somehow becoming a ‘freeman’. One route would be to acquire a small strip of land in a town, since that brought the status of freeman. How that was achieved I have no idea, but when I go into our big towns today and see the tooled up police walking the streets, followed by their reserves in the form of Community Support Officers, followed by the private security guards, thug wheel clampers and the like, and see it is all being observed by the CCT cameras on every street corner, in every shop and at every car park, station and shopping mall, ‘town air’ is now suffocating. The dust which spread out from the Twin Towers is no longer grit but has been atomised by our politicians and has blinded them. Those politicians who have wielded power both before and after 9/11 in an attempt to impose Law and Order, have subverted the Rule of Law. They, not their critics, are the subversives now.
Dacier
According to our own publicity the United Kingdom is described as a ‘liberal democracy’ .This means different things to different people. What it means to me is a system based on that old fashioned phrase, rarely used now by politicians of the Blair years, and even more rarely, understood, ‘The Rule of Law’. I do not know who taught Tony Blair British Constitutional Law or indeed if he ever studied it to become a barrister, before that is, he became a failed Prime Minister, but if he did, he seems to have been unconvinced by its core teachings.
This is surprising because the Rule of Law is fairly simple to grasp, even by those who merely gargle at the fountain of knowledge. Basically, government is to be by law, rather than the whims of rulers or their officials, all are equal before the law and have access to it, and it is the courts, not government officials, who rule on the interpretation of law. There are one or two fuzzy edges about where administrative tribunals and the like fit in, but these are no longer seen as a threat to good government. The threat to the Rule of Law today seems to come from our elected governments which seem ever eager to create more and more discretions for more and more ‘officials’. The keenness for privatisation and the ‘war on terrorism’ has combined to blind our politicians to what they are doing.
The point which the Blair generation and many of its apparatchiks either never learnt, or chose to forget, is that in seeking to protect our Liberal Democracy from the enemy within or without, you risk destroying the thing you cherish. It is rather like getting the balance right in the countryside. Once a beauty spot is discovered all sorts will rush to see the beauty and unwittingly destroy it with their traffic jams, car par, gift shops and theme parks. Stop everything happening and you deny others the chance to experiencing what only an elite few could enjoy. In the context of civil liberties if you get the balance wrong and make things too easy for the police we all pay the price through facing more and more difficulties, especially if you want to be a participating and critical citizen in the political process.
The product of the Blair years is a path to the destruction of liberal democracy. I never understood the phrase, ‘Town Air is free air’ but the meaning fell into my lap in a small museum a few years ago. When people were more or less enslaved by feudalism the big change would be that of somehow becoming a ‘freeman’. One route would be to acquire a small strip of land in a town, since that brought the status of freeman. How that was achieved I have no idea, but when I go into our big towns today and see the tooled up police walking the streets, followed by their reserves in the form of Community Support Officers, followed by the private security guards, thug wheel clampers and the like, and see it is all being observed by the CCT cameras on every street corner, in every shop and at every car park, station and shopping mall, ‘town air’ is now suffocating. The dust which spread out from the Twin Towers is no longer grit but has been atomised by our politicians and has blinded them. Those politicians who have wielded power both before and after 9/11 in an attempt to impose Law and Order, have subverted the Rule of Law. They, not their critics, are the subversives now.
Dacier
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