As a great philosopher once said...

....**** the police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/06/police-surveillance-protesters-
journalists-climate-kingsnorth

As much as you may loathe climate protesters, the treatment of the press
is pretty suspect.

 

I'm not.

I don't and I'm not.

 

Probably. The sort of personal freedoms we've enjoyed from the '60s onward
are a kind of blip - in earlier times, they were enjoyed only by the monied
upper classes. In the future, those with power/influence/wealth will enjoy
the good life, and those without will become property.

 

Honestly, I have no idea.

I think we're well past the point where peaceful protest changes
anything - I was one of the many marching through London in February
2002 and knew in my heart at the time it was unlikely to achieve
anything. Seven years later, nothing's improved. The goverment continue
to descend towards totalitarianism. The police continue to slide into
low-level fascism.

It's easy to throw 'orwellian nightmare' and 'big brother' references
around but I was watching This Week last night and as part of their
'name that book' thing there was an exerpt from 1984. It didn't sound
like fiction, it sounded like a blueprint for the future. Diane Abbot
and Michael Portillo cheerfully noting how public thinking can be
changed any way they like through legislation and government propaganda.
Listen to Straw and Harman and remember the Tories are the fucking
opposition. Look at what the Russians are doing with rewriting history
regarding Stalinism.

The general population scare the shit out of me - I honestly feel the
Sun and the Mail represent the majority view and I don't like it one
little bit.

Britain is where I'm from, where my identity was forged, but I don't
really feel at home here. It's not a pleasant feeling.

Short of armed revolution, yes. But we're British. We don't do that sort
of thing. We tried it 350 years ago and it didn't achieve much then
either.

Ho hum, not a happy post.

 

Putting together a new opposition party *can* be done in one of these
modern democracies that are characterised by politicians with their
snouts in various troughs. I've seen it done, as I saw how the Green
Party in Germany started out from a bunch of middle class scaring
eco-nutters to, oddly enough, a party representing a sizable part of
said middle class and actually formed part of the government. Of course
at that point, they had changed from being part of the solution to being
part of the problem...

This wasn't an overnight process though and it took at good twenty
years. But it changed an entrenched 3 party system (two large parties,
one small party mostly targeting smallish entrepreneurial folks and a
bunch of nutcase parties that were, for all intents and purposes,
pointless) into a system where the two big parties had to wake up from
their comfortable slumber and actually change things.

That it didn't achieve much in the end (IMHO) is a bit sad but didn't
surprise me that much.

I'm not going to trot out the usual and way overused Bonhoeffer quote at
this point, but I see the "safe and secure" bit being so completely
overused to justify ever more restrictive policies. It is of course,
never used in the sense of one being "safe and secure" from the
government and its constantly increasing snoopiness.

You'll have to start one, but that'll probably put you into the category
of "dangerous extremist nutcases"...

Not much else, even if you can see that things are heading full steam
ahead towards a place that you really don't want to be in. Going
somewhere else? Well, there's been a massive jump to the right in most
places so how much better is it going to be?

The worrying thing for me is that I don't have that hard a time anymore
to understand the motivation of those who are occupying hilltops in
Montana with enough weapons and ammunition stockpiled to see out
WW3.

Well, I do like it here, otherwise I probably would've fucked off back
to where I came from. But the increasingly authoritarian streaks that
are becoming more and more obvious do bother me. A lot.

Mind you, the visa application for a country where you're also supposed
to be a quiet happy little shopper who mows his lawn every weekend might
not be the most brilliant move from that point of view, either.

 

Nothing new there, then.
They've been doing it for decades, just faster and more efficiently now.

 

You vote Lib Dem. They are the keenest on improving the general level
of education, which I think is the key to the populace ceasing to vote
like sheep. They are also neither Conservative nor New Labour.

It's not a good solution, but I can't think of a better one.

 

The only thing needed is for UK voters to finally realise that
'keeping the other lot out' is pointless, as there's effectively no
difference between them and neither lot will actually be working for
them. Only once the populace as a whole accepts this will they be
willing to take the risk of not voting for the lesser of two evils and
free themselves up to allow new parties and policies a chance of
getting in.

 

IME you're right. I and another on a trip had a fairly long argument
with third acquaintance because he genuinely believed the propaganda
for starting the Iraq war, the war of terror and all the reductions in
freedoms to that date[1]. Nothing we could say seemed to sway him from
his the government knows best line, it's for our own good etc

[1] A few years ago when Blair was just coming to the end of his rule.

 

Flash back to 1983:

"The Alliance won 25.4% of the national vote in the 1983 general
election, compared to Labour's 27.6%. Only 23 Alliance Members of
Parliament (MPs) were elected, compared to Labour's 209. The SDP came
second in many constituencies..."

It may have been just a 'protest vote'. If it wasn't for the 'Falklands
Effect' it might have been more IMO. It may have indirectly sown the
seeds that eventually lead to New Labour. Then surprise, surprise, Blair
reneged on his pledge to look at electoral reform.

Yes, yes, I know all the tired arguments about the need for 'strong
government'. Look where it has got us.

Which reminds me that Shirley Williams and Germaine Greer were on
Question Time from Dudley[1] of all places on Thursday and I missed it.

<fires up iPlayer>

[1] remember Ken Clarke - anything said on a wet Wednesday night in
Dudley doesn't count.
--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Gilera Nordwest * 2 Yamaha WR250Z |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

I thought that Star Wars was released in 1979.

 

Works for me. *And* they were against the Iraq war from the start.

So they're (effectively) electoral losers. Don't care. They have some
principles, and they're pretty good ones.

 

Been doing that for years. Hasn't achieved much so far.

 

So persuade a few more.

 

Opus Dei for the layman.
I'll bet those building companies (re secret data on the
black listed workers)wish they could operate under Chatham
House rules.


--
Jeweller
R100RT
Formerly: James Captain, A10, C15, B25, Dnepr M16 solo,
R80/7, R100RT (green!)
www.davidhowardjeweller.co.uk

 

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong
lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

 

That's the politicians' job.

 

Didn't protest get the vote for women?

We suffer from raging apathy for the most part.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

You don't think they need help?

 

Um, no, actually. If a politican can't persuade people to elect him or
her, then it strikes me that doing it by proxy, as it were, is likely to
be even less successful.

OTOH, yes, of course, because that's what huge armies of campaigners are
for.

I dunno.