Freedom! ...or lack thereof...

Coming to street corner near you

The ‘slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms’ which squeezed Mr Davis into action

It’s a newspaper headline I saw the other day. I’d thought that most people had stopped noticing their rights and freedoms have been taken away. I’d thought that maybe they’d never had them and were used to the oppressive presence of Big Brother, even drew comfort from it. It wasn’t front page news, just a press release from the guy’s office that the newspaper felt obligated to print (must have been a slow news day). And I’m going to re-print it here - type it out manually, verbatim - because unlike the frogs that have been sitting in a pot of warming (now hot) water, I’ve been dropped in and want to jump out.

Former Tory frontbencher David Davis listed a host of controversial developments in the arena of civil liberties as the reasons for his shock resignation.
The Counter Terror Bill and its 42-day detention measure - which he dubbed as a “monstrosity of law” - was just the latest step in the “insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of British freedoms”, he said.
Mr Davis made it clear that he would re-fight his Haltemprice and Howden constituency on the widest issue of the “slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government”.
As examples of the areas that concerned him, the politician listed:

• The national ID cards project, which will see every person aged over 16 be required to register “biometrics” such as fingerprints, plus other personal information, from 2012;
• Massive expansion of CCTV, so that there is now “a camera for every 14 citizens”;
• The National DNA Database, which contains samples from a million innocent people never charged with a crime, including tens of thousands of children;
• “Short cuts” for the justice system which Mr Davis said made it “neither firm nor fair” - thought to be a reference to Labour initiatives such as on-the-spot fines and early release from prison schemes;
• An “assault on jury trial” - namely the Labour government’s measures to allow cases to be heard by a judge without a jury in complex fraud cases and where there is a risk of jury-nobbling;
• The ‘crackdown on peaceful protest” - a reference to the ban on unauthorised protest in and around Parliament Square introduced in 2005, and currently under review by the Home Office;
• So-called “hate laws” which have “stifled legitimate debate”.

When I've met people here they've invariably asked "Why the hell would you come here? It's awful!" Even the people we exchanged with were doing it so they could 'try out' Canada as a possible emigration point. It seems every other person I speak to is planning or fantasizing about doing the same. But why?

I'd never run into this in Canada. I've never met anyone that wanted to emigrate except a few that saw well-paying job opportunities in the States. And even then, only long enough to make some money and come home. When asked, people usually say it's the high taxes here or cite increasing crime or decreasing job opportunities. But tax rates here are the same as in Canada and everyone who's expressed a desire to leave is already employed. As for crime my perception is just that; it's perception. The papers scream it ever day with regular calls for a return of the death penalty and flogging, leading people to believe that crime is higher than it actually is and giving the government further license to further erode individual rights.

The real reason is they're depressed. When people feel hopeless and helpless they enter into a state of chronic depression. They feel control of their lives is out of their hands and powerless to change it. They don't have a voice.

The unions were gutted by the Thatcher government back in the '80s and they've never recovered. Membership now is optional with several unions competing for members on the same job site. In a recent teacher's 'strike', only those teachers in a particular union went out. Members of the other major union stayed on the job. Zero power.

You can now be picked up and held for 42 days on suspicion of being a terrorist. No evidence is needed, no charges need to be laid.

The populace has been cowed into submission and like the dog I trained with a choke chain, it will always remember the feel of the chain around its neck.