None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Yet again I’m forced to side with the grinning David Davis. This doesn’t happen often and is embarrassing to admit!.
ConDem Coalition Pledges Broken!
It’s all about the government plans to allow full-scale unauthorised real-time monitoring of every person in the UK’s internet activity! It’s so 1984.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” – (George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
.
Orwell must be turning in his grave in despair that what he predicted as a warning about what not to do, now looks like coming to fruition.
Remarkably, since wangling themselves into government, the conservative-libdem coalition government is now actually dropping a key part of their manifesto which they laboriously agreed two years ago. This can still be found on the government website, page 11 to be exact (pdf) . Here’s what they said:
- The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian…. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power – FAIL
- …reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion – FAIL
- … introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation – FAIL
- …end the storage of internet and email records without good reason – FAIL
- …a British Bill of Rights that … protects and extends British liberties – FAIL
(Actually, the whole Con-Dem pledge list makes good reading to see just how far removed from it our evil diktat of quangos has become.)
So what to do – use TOR.
ID Cards
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Photo credit: andreasmarx)
Not so long ago I was haranguing the former Labour government about their plans for ID Cards, their laws over CCTV and photographing in public places, the reduction in privacy for individuals and the removal of our civil rights over detention without trial, due cause and 3rd party notification for first 90 days and them 42 days.
I left the Labour Party because of it and have not rejoined.
Huge Vocal Resentment Against UK Government Secret Citizen Monitoring Plans.
The new news (I thought it was an April Fool joke initially!) is that Email and web use is ‘to be monitored’ under new laws proposed by this nasty, nasty government. Happily, there is now a huge and vociferous resentment against this from the general public who can see this evil act for what it is. Top among them is David Davis! See this link and the thousands of comments for instance; Backlash over email and web monitoring plan.
Clueless
Now, the tories and their liberal stooges have been shown to be both serially evil in their pronouncements and plans, and also serially incompetent of managing almost anything.
Their pathetic management of a minor industrial dispute (the fuel shortage) which did nothing except invoke almost universal resentment of the coalition and reawaken a general awareness of their ineffectiveness comes on top of stripping the very foundations away from one of UK society’s greatest inventions of the Industrial Age, our National Health Service (NHS).
Top this behavioural abomination with that of the revolving door policy between banking and politics which they continue to promote with zero penalties for failure while the population-at-large have to prop up the whole system with their taxes means only two things to me.
- The government must do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
- They will do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
Astute folk will see this as my prediction for government actions over the next 3 years.
Tories: Keep Friends Happy
Meanwhile, hundreds of extra Tory donors will soon be available to bankroll the “all is good” story. They will arrive as beneficiaries of the windfall provided as the “former NHS” contracts are handed out to friends, much like Michael Ashcroft benefited from the first round of NHS privatisation during the Thatcher era. This article on Powerbase and this one (sourced from a now defunct article in The Scotsman) show quite clearly that 1/3 of cleaning contracts went to Ashcroft’s businesses during this time, saying;
MICHAEL Ashcroft, (…) bankrolled an “independent” publicity campaign that allowed his multi-million-pound contract cleaning empire to prosper and led to a change in the law. The campaign was run from the London office of the former Conservative Scottish secretary, Michael Forsyth. A spokesman for Mr Ashcroft confirmed last night that he had contributed to the Public and Local Service Efficiency Campaign (PULSE), which was set up in 1985 to persuade the public sector to contract out services such as cleaning and catering. The campaign had been disbanded by the end of the 1980s after the Conservative government passed the 1988 Local Government Act . Mr Ashcroft’s Hawley Services Group, a contract cleaning firm later known as ADT, flourished under the new regime, with ADT, winning a third of NHS contracts between 1983 and 1988.
For further information into the depths that the Tories will go to enable all public money to be fed straight to their business friends, see this article which pulls apart the dealings of Ashcroft, discredited Dame Shirley Porter, NIMBY Nicholas Ridley, Chris Chope (the dog turd of Christchurch) and current (dodgy expenses, remember) minister Eric Pickles.
By Tony Grogan
First published by 1 IN 12 PUBLICATIONS 1989
21 – 23 Albion St. Bradford 1.
Copyright 1 IN 12 Publications 1989
ISBN 0 948994 04 5
Once read, apply the same logic to our dear NHS, and weep again. The same modus operandi is being used;
- discredit the current, imply alternatives are better;
- farm out internal monies to external Tory benefactors.
It’s just more sleaze just like under Thatcher before, backed up with warlike rhetoric. Remember, only 10 days ago we had the news of billionaire Tory donors at Cameron’s dinner table, and Cameron trying to defend the cash-for-access news that made Labour’s cash-for-questions scandal appear like a sweetshop-ish wheeze in comparison. See
Tory Party chairman Lord Feldman was one of the key figures in the ‘cash for access’ scandal which erupted after Tory party treasurer Peter Cruddas was caught offering a private dinner with David Cameron to undercover reporters who posed as wealthy party donors. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2123692/Tory-cash-access-row-David-Cameron-crony-pal-cash-questions.html
as well.
Related articles
- Tory MP David Davis criticises the Government’s surveillance plans (itv.com)
- “Email and web use ‘to be monitored’ under new laws” The BBC /finally/ spot that #CCDP is a story (dropsafe.crypticide.com)
- Email and web use ‘to be monitored’ under new laws. Wait till the Irish government bring’s in some horse shite like this as well, monkey see monkey do. (teddyoshea.wordpress.com)
- Campaigners criticise email and web monitoring plan – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
- Ministers to monitor calls, emails, texts and websites (ffeirio.wordpress.com)
- ‘Class attacks on David Cameron are equivalent to John Major’s sleaze scandal’, says David Davis (telegraph.co.uk)
- Brian Monteith: Scot-free Tories wouldn’t rule England for ever (scotsman.com)
- Clegg must speak up against web snooping (newstatesman.com)
- Anger At Coalition Plans To Snoop On Emails (news.sky.com)
- Dave And George Take Flak (oyiabrown.wordpress.com)
- Tory MPs turn on Cameron and Osborne (newstatesman.com)
- Plans for greater email and web monitoring powers spark privacy fears (victimsofatoscorruption.wordpress.com)
- Why are Libdems so silent about this bill? (liberalconspiracy.org)
- Taxpayers must foot £200 million bill to have their emails snooped on (telegraph.co.uk)
- Cameron pays price for dining toff mates – Morning Star Online (morningstaronline.co.uk)
- Plans for greater email and web monitoring powers spark privacy fears (guardian.co.uk)
