The world is becoming a very disturbing place. I never thought to find myself in full agreement with the lefty journalist John Pilger – whose name was turned into a verb by the late Auberon Waugh: to pilger, to utter whining, systematically-slanted, effusions blaming western capitalism for all the trouble in the world. Yet here he is in The New Statesman this week:
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill has already passed its second parliamentary reading without interest to most Labour MPs and court journalists; yet it is utterly totalitarian in scope.
It is presented by the government as a simple measure for streamlining deregulation, or “getting rid of red tape”, yet the only red tape it will actually remove is that of parliamentary scrutiny of government legislation, including this remarkable bill. […]
Those who fail to hear these steps on the road to dictatorship should look at the government’s plans for ID cards, described in its manifesto as “voluntary”. They will be compulsory and worse. An ID card will be different from a driving licence or passport. It will be connected to a database called the NIR (National Identity Register), where your personal details will be stored. […]
The ID card will not be your property and the Home Secretary will have the right to revoke or suspend it at any time without explanation. This would prevent you drawing money from a bank. […]
A small, determined and profoundly undemocratic group is killing freedom in Britain, just as it has killed literally in Iraq. That is the news. “The kaleidoscope has been shaken,” said Blair at the 2001 Labour party conference. “The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us.”
Meanwhile Michael Moorcock writes in The Spectator on becoming American, of his unexpected admiration for the “constitutional fundamentalism” of Ron Paul and how:
I have a feeling that Americans will be putting their house in order rather sooner than the British, because once the People realise there is a problem, We are usually surprisingly quick to fix it.
Given the passivity of our own rather less sovereign people, and the sanguinary noises from all quarters, I do not find myself as hopeful.
A friend brought that article to my attention, too – my thoughts exactly.
He just can’t help himself, can he?!
I read this article this morning which made me realise for the first time in nearly 5 years in Italy that I no longer wished to be part of England. What a crying shame.
I read this article this morning which made me realise for the first time in nearly 5 years in Italy that I no longer wished to be part of England. What a crying shame.
Tuscan Tony: I read the sad article you mention….nothing new there, I fear. You have my sympathy; I left the pig-ignorant, third-world Septic Isle in ’74 and have never, ever, regretted it. If I am ‘attacked’ for being a Brit, however, I always defend my provenance…..I cannot think why. Maybe it’s just that some bad habits aren’t easily divested..;-)
The thread:………..so maybe, perhaps, could it possibly be that there’s some hope? Experience would suggest not, but……………
I feel the same way. I left for good in 1998 having seen the country unravelling before my eyes, and everyone else apparently unaware of it or disempowered from doing anything about it. Political correctness had already got its cold, dead fingers grasped around what people said, although they still had independent thoughts. Now, it seems, people censor their very thoughts, inside their own heads.
It still hurts that my country came undone so easily, without a fight, on so many fronts. The Vandals were simply allowed to walk in and destroy it. If I ever came back to your side of the Atlantic, it wouldn’t be to Britain because I feel Britain has fallen further than any other country.
THIS article: “Anti-Americanism ‘Feels Like Racism'” on the BBC News website raises an interesting point in my mind.
However, first I must say that I do not personally feel the blanket anti-Americanism that is around at the moment.
My point is that the feeling is largely about what the USA (being made up of its citizens) has done; it is not about what they are. Thus I do not see how it can be racism – which is discriminating against people for something intrinsic, that they cannot change.
[Now follows the torrent: that the citizens of the USA cannot change what their government is doing; also that what they (the citizens and their government) are doing is intrinsic to them. I agree with neither.]
Best regards
Damn! That was quick. Discussion about an article on the Brits supinely surrendering to their own useful idiots becomes an attack on the USA — at least in old “Nigel Sedgwick”‘s mind.
One could not ask for a better demonstration of how many among the once proud English have allowed their petty jealousies to distract them from the serious events in their own front yard.
Damn! That was quick. Discussion about an article on the Brits supinely surrendering to their own useful idiots becomes an attack on the USA — at least in old “Nigel Sedgwick”‘s mind.
One could not ask for a better demonstration of how many among the once proud English have allowed their petty jealousies to distract them from the serious events in their own front yard.
Concerning strange bedfellows, I suggest that it is better to stick to the ideas that one agrees with and disagrees with, rather than who is for or against you.
I understand many of us share our liking of dogs with Hitler. So what!
I will also admit to agreeing with just a little bit of what John Pilger says (perhaps less than 5%). However, most of his views that I read (for the short period I can stand it) strike me as alien to the very core of my being. I hope the same is true of Guy; otherwise I’ll have to back off from hoping that one day we will meet (me and Guy that is).
So: let’s oppose this bill, and hope that any strange bedfellows do not spoil our pitch.
Best regards
The world is becoming a very disturbing place. I never thought to find myself in full agreement with the lefty journalist John Pilger…
I presume you are aware of that famous saying about stopped clocks, yes?
I read amoxicillin article this morning which made me realise for the first time in nearly 5 years in Italy that I no longer wished to be part of England. What a crying shame.
My point is that the feeling is largely about what the USA (being made up of its citizens) has done; it is not about what they are. Thus I do not see how it can be racism – which is discriminating against people for something intrinsic, that they cannot change.
Is it about what the USA has done, or what others say we have done? These is often a substantial difference.
@Alice.
You might not have noticed, but it was “Tuscan Tony” who introduced the article on anti-Americanism.
Also, I rather thought I was saying that anti-Americanism was not a good thing. Though complaining about some bad things, done by whoever, might be a good thing.
And what do you define as old? And is age a bad thing in your mind? You’ll get more of it too, as time passes.
See above my comment on Guy’s mainline topic. Also please note that anything concerning John Pilger (since the start of the Iraq war if not earlier) is likely to encompass discussion of anti-American feelings (whether one agrees with them or not).
Best regards
Well obviously you’re going to agree on something with practically anybody.
I think what makes agrreing with Pilger disturbing is that he is so clearly a personally obnoxious toe-rag. Just the sight of him on TV makes me want to vomit with rage.
If we were both stranded on desert island they’d only rescue one of us.
I wouldn’t eat him though, he looks stringy and I bet he tastes bitter.
@rosignol, who wrote: “Is it about what the USA has done, or what others say we have done? These is often a substantial difference.”
That is surely true (as it is of the sum of things bad said about anyone or anything).
But, you are surely not claiming as untrue, all of the bad things (wrt Iraq) of which the USA stands accused.
Best regards
Nick, Pilger would tase like shit, after all he’s full of it.
This is nothing new. Ever since Fanny Trollope published ‘The Domestic Manners of the Americans’ in 1827 – and probably well before that – the Brits have always assumed unto themselves a smug superiority over Americans in all things – as of right.
All my life, insulting and belittling America and its people has been the one constant racism that has always been acceptable among the great majority of the English. As an American who speaks with a strong UK accent, which I can modulate at will, I suspect that I see and hear even more of this than the average American might, since some Brits still retain some vestiges of the good manners they were sometimes brought up with. But, as all the other common racisms, xenophobias and bigotries of the past have been gradually made less-acceptable, and as the good manners that used to be the hallmark of the English have been gradually worn away, the virulent, racist anti-Americanism which was always present has just risen to the top of the heap. When I was a boy in the UK, insults and taunts like ‘Paki’, ‘wog’ ‘gyppo’ or ‘hebe’ were common currency, and unremarked. Now a schoolboy in the UK faces criminal charges for using perhaps the least-offensive of these offensive words. Yet even the most cultured and sophisticated Brits have absolutely no qualms in referring to America and its people in the most obscene, insulting, degrading and racist terms – secure in the knowledge that this is still the one freely-expressible racism on which they will not be challenged.
I had an English co-worker visiting in my office a few weeks ago. He left his briefcase open, and clearly visible within it was a bottle of Scotch.
I asked him, privately, to close his briefcase. Alcohol on the premises, here where I work in suburban Detroit, is a huge no-no. It’s an on-the-spot firing matter. Not his fault, noone told him, it’s just that things are different here. I’m sure he wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing in Saudi Arabia, for example.
Rather to my surprise – and chagrin – he went off like a Roman candle (can I say that?) ‘These f**king Americans, how can you stand them? I can do that back home, why can’t I do it here? How can you stand them? Uncivilized bastards!’ And much more in the same vein.
He would never, I am sure, have reacted that way in the presence of our American co-workers. But, secure in the knowledge (he thought) that he was speaking with a fellow-countryman, he had absolutely no qualms about expressing himself in this way, and in ways which I cannot repeat here.
As I said – it’s the last acceptable racism.
llater,
llamas
For the first time ever, I believe, I’m going to take issue with llamas. If we are insistent that Islam is not a race – which it isn’t – we cannot then claim that Americans are a race. This is infantile and ignorant. It’s a nationality, and a damn’ fine one at that, but it’s made up of dozens of races. So quit that.
Anti-Americanism is closed-minded, provincial, ignorant bigotry.
Oh no! My reply to llamas got caught in a spam trap!
The Moorcock article is particularly good, although goodness knows the Spectator is not much of a publication these days, and I was saying that even before Steyn left. As for Pilger, his track record is so patchy that I tend to tune out what he says, but even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day. So I guess credit is owed where due.
Happy Easter to one and all.
The Spectator is what happens when people who don’t love reading and don’t love journalism buy a publication for status purposes.
True, the Speccie was sinking like a stone under the fine hand of Boris, but, unbelievably, it’s getting even worse. And the online site is a total nightmare. I just don’t go there any more. You click on an article and find it is something that ran two weeks ago and you’ve already read, or you read it somewhere else a couple of days ago. They run their articles with the complete title over the copy, so you never know if you’ve inadvertently gone back to page one. What a mess; and boring, too. If they think anyone is going to subscribe to the online edition to get more of the above, they are bonkers.
llamas: Good posting & you’re absolutely right. The sort of anti-Americanism you refer to is indeed a form of racism, despite the ‘It all depends what you mean by…..? school of double-think. As I mentioned in a previous comment, when I’m berated for being a Brit I defend the country of my birth. (N.B. not my country)
When Britain was top dog it had to put up with all the shit, now equally unfairly, heaped on the USA. As the sherriff says in the films: “It goes with the territory.”
Thereto is the sad truth that part of the Septic Isle’s social makeup….at trans-class levels….is that it is a ‘Neidgesellschaft.’ Add PC & apathy to that sorry state and you have the country which, as Verity has pointed out, has managed to sink lower in manners & morals (& morale) than any other western entity.
The men & women who live in Britain have accomplished this reverse metamorphasis all by themselves. A totally squandered heritage. Weep!
permex writes: A totally squandered heritage. Those are some of the saddest words I have ever read.
If I were stranded on a desert island with John Pilger, I wouldn’t even be able to kill him and make a canoe from his hide. Like his arguments, he’d hardly be watertight.
Its not just the anti American attitudes that abound. I hear much of the same thing about South Africans and Australians pretty much all the time, its perhaps less virulent and nasty but nevertheless is belittling and patronising . Its almost as if it is assumed that all Aussies have a thick skin and can “take it” so its OK.
My apologies to Nigel Sedgewick if I misunderstood what he wrote. Further apologies if my ancient passing acquaintance with “Biggles” books led me into a cultural misunderstanding over the significance of calling him “old Nigel”. Sigh!
The key point in the original post seemed to be that the Mother of Parliaments was in the process of tearing up the Magna Carta — and none of the Brits seem to give a damn! Now that strikes me as a much more interesting topic than run-of-the-mill EUnuch anti-Americanism. Are the UK elites distracting the natives with the Foreign Peril while ensuring their subjugation?
Very good point Alice, it would appear that is exactly what they are doing.
Verity,
Oh no! My reply to llamas got caught in a spam trap!
Restored. Samizdata has some eccentric, but well worthwhile, spamtraps.
An astute observation, Alice.
The Spectator is what happens when people who don’t love reading and don’t love journalism buy a publication for status purposes.
Well that’s me, bang to rights.
Particularly Tuscan tony, Verity, permanent expat et al:
I have mixed feelings about blogging, though the idea was very exciting when I first stumbled across it.
Yes, it’s reassuring to know that there are like-minded people out there, even if they are a miniscule minority. Yes, it’s nice to express what one feels and to know that there is an audience of sorts out there. But it changes nothing, at a time when the need for opposition and action, is becoming a matter of life or death importance, as far as our society is concerned.
Surely there is something we can do. Surely, there are people out there, people with money, influence, connections, resources, who are aware of what’s happening. Surely someone, somewhere is starting to mobilise. Aren’t they?
And it seems to me that ease of movement is a mixed blessing, noting how many expats post, particularly on this site. If you can go and live elsewhere, then the stimulus to do something to help, improve, save your society is diminished or nullified. If there is no way out, then you fight. Same goes to political refugees from other countries. Change will only be affected when individuals are willing to put their heads on the line. I’ve often had this fantasy of going to a particular part of this city I live in, and holding up a placard with something innocuous on it: “Islam is not the best thing since sliced bread”. But when the inevitable happened, and the boys in blue came along and I was hustled into a van, would anyone interpose for me, defend me, speak up for me? Would anyone know or care about it or would I be out on a limb?
What is to be done? Is it simply a case of just cursing the darkness until it is snuffed out?
Trofim – Guy Herbert is doing something. You should support him and his No2ID campaign as he is making inroads and getting publicity and having some triumphs. And he needs help.
Alice wrote: “The key point in the original post seemed to be that the Mother of Parliaments was in the process of tearing up the Magna Carta — and none of the Brits seem to give a damn! Now that strikes me as a much more interesting topic than run-of-the-mill EUnuch anti-Americanism. Are the UK elites distracting the natives with the Foreign Peril while ensuring their subjugation?”
These are all good points, with which I am largely in agreement.
Very sadly, the New Labour majority in the House of Commons has not seen fit to demure from its leaders on this rather worrying issue.
Elsewhere, not enough Brits are up in arms over it. But it’s not none!
The House of Lords will undoubtedly savage the bill, though whether they will keep it up is, unfortunately, open to doubt. Perhaps they will (like me) view it as a greater threat than the ID Card bill (though there is much of that bill that I also dislike strongly).
The issue is certainly, in my view, much more important than the eternal squabbles over the EU. It is also it more important than any spat over Iraq with our good cousins across the Pond. On that latter point, I would say it’s better to disagree with your friends to their face; only real enemies ever deserve to be stabbed in the back. [And, of course, the best of the Brits do disagree firmly and politely, and on the issues.]
As to political elites distracting the massed barely interested peoples with scary stories: well maybe, but even the masses are getting fed up with it. There are few left who do not see the Blair government as more competent at looking good in government than being good in government.
Finally, I’m delighted that Alice and I are reconciled – on all but the spelling of my surname. [And don’t rise to that; it’s an old family irritation, with an old knee-jerk reaction.]
Best regards
Verity – now that you are un-spammed, I agree and you are right – describing this as ‘racism’ is incorrect.
Although I will say that I have personally observed some remarkable outbursts of pure, unadulterated racism by Brits when referring to African-Americans – usually as a result of what they have observed on ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ or (lately) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These unfortunates have the double curse (in the eyes of Brits) of being, not only poor and dumb, but American as well, and are therefore fair game for the most unGodly vituperations.
However, you are right, and wherever I wrote ‘racist’, ‘racism’, &c, please feel free to substitute ‘uninformed, prejudiced, xenophobic irrational loathing.’
To the main point – I think there is a tie-in here.
The Brits still suffer under a sort of paternalistic acceptance of what the State chooses to do with and to them. It’s an ‘oh well – mustn’t grumble’ culture, with roots back into things like the common privations of WW2 and a sort of inchoate belief that ‘that can’t happen here! After all, this is England!’
I think that Brits look across the pond at the way that Americans address threats (perceived or real) to their liberties – which is to say, with considerable robustness – and they suffer from a mixture of envy and confusion. The Brits are conditioned to believe that their government will not hurt them (despite all evidence to the contrary) and should be allowed to do what it thinks is best. The Americans, by contrast, are deeply suspicious of their government and do not trust it too much. Brits see this as ‘making a fuss’ and ‘putting on side’.
No US government, for example, would even waste its time trying to introduce a compulsory ID card for its citizens – even with the current illegal-immigration battle raging. They know that such an idea would simply never fly with the populace, and they know that Americans are sufficiently involved in the process that they cannot slide something like that under the public radar.
In the UK, by contrast, the puiblic apathy and misplaced trust in government is so great that you could pass a law requiring twice-daily rolling in dogsh*t without too much trouble. The Bill would be thickly varnished with the sticky, innocuous sounding unction of the Home Office, and cast-iron assurances would be loudly made, and quietly broken, and the law would be passed, like a painless kidney stone, in little, tolerable pieces.
Don’t believe me?
If anyone had suggested, in my yoot, that we would see
– abolition of the presumption of innocence
– banning of firearms and foxhunting
– arrests for heckling politicians
– warrantless searches
– CCTV on every street corner
– automated license-plate tracking
– a national identity database and mandatory ID cards
they would have been laughed down as insane.
Yet, like that kidney stone, all this has passed.
Kipling wrote
‘Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By saying ‘Oh how lovely!’ and sitting in the shade’
llater,
llamas
llamas, I should think the inside of Kipling’s coffin is as shiny as a poltician’s trouser-seat, so much must he have been spinning in his grave these past few years.
Not heard the quote from him before, but boy, was (is) he right!
Kipling was a very clever man, and much maligned by the Left, who loathe patriotism.
llamas – In your list, you forgot the end of the right to a trial by jury.
The British just can’t get rid of their sense of superiority – inexplicable as it is – to America and they see Americans acting with robustness in the face of government encroachments as “over-reacting”. Too excitable. Not mature, like us. We’re so mature we allow incredible truncation of our traditional liberties in the name of not making a fuss. In fact, as Mark Steyn says, the British reaction is not so much “Let’s roll!” as “Let’s roll over”.
Also, I think the British, never having had a tyrant and overlord in the office of prime minister before, have spent 10 years being baffled about how to stop him and the ruthless thugs who surround him. They’ve been baffled for so long, they’ve just accepted it. (In the main; I know there are people like Guy Herbert and organisations similar to his in the causes of other threatened liberties.)
BTW, the British who think the feckless post-Katrina blacks of NO are typical of how America keeps these fine folks down should go into a courtroom and watch a distinguished black judge telling a white attorney to sit down and be quiet in no uncertain terms. Or any number of similar examples.
Well, Moorcock is become an American, and admires constitutionalist libertarians. Shit, I hereby predict that within a decade we’ll get him writing articles praising Heinlein, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, and “Starship Troopers”. Hoo RAH!
“The key point in the original post seemed to be that the Mother of Parliaments was in the process of tearing up the Magna Carta — and none of the Brits seem to give a damn! Now that strikes me as a much more interesting topic than run-of-the-mill EUnuch anti-Americanism. Are the UK elites distracting the natives with the Foreign Peril while ensuring their subjugation?”
The fundamental problem is,like all things Blairian,this has been sneaked in quietly,the media have not pursued it,labour MPs are toeing the line and Call Me Dave is too dim and engrossed in being Tory leader.
What to do,again ,it is no use,taking half measures,fear and loathing must be somehow instilled into the electorate,ZaNuLab must be punished at the ballot boxes if they continue with this.
I don’t care about this Pilger one way or the other. He’s just another leftist cliche’.
I do think it’s interesting, however, that he has identified one of the primary reasons why people who want strict limits on government believe as they do.
Governments have the power to kill people. It is likely that an active state which reacts militarily against its perceived foreign adversaries would, if unleashed from strict constitutional restraints, continue that behavior against its own citizenry.
Thus, the sane and rational person who values his liberty attempts at all times to restrict the power of the state, lest it be turned against him in the form of repressive policies.
It is no accident that the same administrations in US history which have fought major conflicts against military foes have also damaged the totality and sanctity of the rights of US citizens as well.
And, even if in times of emergency some of this can be understood, it can not be meekly accepted or allowed to continue as a permanent fixture of the political landscape.
I doubt Pilger and his like ever make this sort of connection, as it always seems to them that the power of the state should increase in order to accomplish their social goals. When the inevitable negative consequences of such an advocacy finally emerge, as they always do, then the squeeling starts.
Always sounds to me very much like the noises a rat makes when the trap snaps shut on its leg.
veryretired-Isn’t it the same whenever somebody from the right OR left suddenly wake up and realize the state to which they’ve been granting more power(for their own purposes) decides to stomp on them?
TWG
BTW, the British who think the feckless post-Katrina blacks of NO are typical of how America keeps these fine folks down should go into a courtroom and watch a distinguished black judge telling a white attorney to sit down and be quiet in no uncertain terms. Or any number of similar examples.
Yes, always surprises me how engrained this is, especially when you consider who the previous and current US Secs of State are. It may not be related, but a lot of UK papers always refer to “Ms” not “Dr” Rice.
Verity
Guy Herbert is doing something. You should support him and his No2ID campaign as he is making inroads and getting publicity and having some triumphs. And he needs help.
Thank you, but actually, uppermost in my mind was Islam, which takes priority above all else, as the most malignant threat to all free societies.
I found these suggestions on the Democratiya website. This is the kind of thing I have in mind:
Camus’ Catch: How democracies can defeat Totalitarian Political Islam
by Alan Johnson
• support, and so end the isolation of, democratic ideas and organisations in countries threatened by Totalitarian Political Islam
• challenge the arguments of those in the west who seek to apologise for totalitarianism, or who cringe and accommodate, and so sell the liberal democratic inheritance
• educate a new young generation in the difficult glories of democratic and liberal culture. For example, if liberal education is being eased out of the academy by postmodern relativism and contentless ‘critique’ then it will have to be taught outside the academy by online universities, alternative school curricula, reading groups, and through new media, such as blogs, online intellectual journals, and forums for democrats fighting the battle of ideas.
Thank you, but actually, uppermost in my mind was Islam, which takes priority above all else, as the most malignant threat to all free societies.
Malignant it may be. But ignore the murderous paranoia to be found in ample measure on the threads about Iran. It really isn’t a threat. And it hasn’t been since about 1683, which is before there was much in the way of a free society anywhere, except to some degree among the non-slave inhabitants of Dutch and British territories.
Fear of Islam, on the other hand, is a fine pretext for the biggest threat to free societies, the impatience of their bureaucratic ruling classes of with the disorder, intractableness and unpredictability that is the consequence of freedom. If only people would do what they are told at all times, then we could keep them safe and everything would be much tidier, they think.
Which is gloriously paradoxical if you understand that simplification of popular tastes, an ordered society and universal compliance – with a slightly different set of – rules is also the concept of ‘justice’ sought by the Islamists, who also are largely driven by the desire to curb the chaos of cultural freedom, and force people to live ‘better’. Islamism probably can be tackled by the means you advocate – or perhaps just by more of the satellite TV, telephones, and videorecordings that unbalanced the situation in the first place – but encouraging other people to be free is surely a secondary concern to maintaining our own liberty.
Here is the original piece of writing that Pilger quotes at length. It is the anonymous email circulating wildly in the UK:
You may have heard that legislation creating compulsory ID Cards passed a crucial stage in the House of Commons. You may feel that ID cards are not something to worry about, since we already have Photo ID for our Passport and Driving License and an ID Card will be no different to that. What you have not been told is the full scope of this proposed ID Card, and what it will mean to you personally.
The proposed ID Card will be different from any card you now hold. It will be connected to a database called the NIR, (National Identity Register)., where all of your personal details will be stored. This will include the unique number that will be issued to you, your fingerprints, a scan of the back of your eye, and your photograph. Your name, address and date of birth will also obviously be stored there.
There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.
By itself, you might think that this register is harmless, but you would be wrong to come to this conclusion. This new card will be used to check your identity against your entry in the register in real time, whenever you present it to ‘prove who you are’.
Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every Bank will have an NIR Card Terminal, (very much like the Chip and Pin Readers that are everywhere now) into which your card can be ‘swiped’ to check your identity. Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the Card was presented. This means for example, that there will be a government record of every time you withdraw more than £99 at your branch of Nat West, who now demand ID for these transactions. Every time you have to prove that you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off licenses will demand that your card is swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.
Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR Database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Oyster Card,or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license you will have to present your ID Card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account.
Oyster, DVLA, BT and Nectar (for example) all run very detailed databases of their own. They will be allowed access to the NIR,just as every other business will be. This means that each of these entities will be able to store your unique number in their database, and place all your travel, phone records, driving activities and detailed shopping habits under your unique NIR number. These databases, which can easily fit on a storage device the size of your hand, will be sold to third parties either legally or illegally. It will then be possible for a non governmental entity to create a detailed dossier of all your activities. Certainly, the government will have clandestine access to all of them, meaning that they will have a complete record of all your movements, from how much and when you withdraw from your bank account to what medications you are taking, down to the level of what sort of bread you eat – all accessible via a single unique number in a central database.
This is quite a significant leap from a simple ID Card that shows your name and face.
Most people do not know that this is the true character and scope of the proposed ID Card. Whenever the details of how it will work are explained to them, they quickly change from being ambivalent towards it.
The Government is going to COMPEL you to enter your details into the NIR and to carry this card. If you and your children want to obtain or renew your passports, you will be forced to have your fingerprints taken and your eyes scanned for the NIR, and an ID Card will be issued to you whether you want one or not. If you refuse to be fingerprinted and eye scanned, you will not be able to get a passport. Your ID Card will, just like your passport, not be your property. The Home Secretary will have the right to revoke or suspend your ID at any time, meaning that you will not be able to withdraw money from your Bank Account, for example, or do anything that requires you to present your government issued ID Card.
The arguments that have been put forwarded in favour of ID Cards can be easily disproved. ID Cards WILL NOT stop terrorists; every Spaniard has a compulsory ID Card as did the Madrid Bombers. ID Cards will not ‘eliminate benefit fraud’, which in comparison, is small compared to the astronomical cost of this proposal, which will be measured in billions according to the LSE (London School of Economics). This scheme exists solely to exert total surveillance and control over the ordinary free British Citizen,and it will line the pockets of the companies that will create the computer systems at the expense of your freedom, privacy and money.
If you did not know the full scope of the proposed ID Card Scheme before and you are as unsettled as I am at what it really means to you, to this country and its way of life, I urge you to email or photocopy this and give it to your friends and colleagues and everyone else you think should know and who cares. The Bill has proceeded to this stage due to the lack of accurate and complete information on this proposal being made public. Together & Hand to hand, we can inform the entire nation if everyone who receives this passes it on.
[GH note: This is the famous anonymous email that’s been doing the rounds and been relied on by a number of journalists — so much for research — it is factually incorrect in a number of places, though as a speculation about what the system could become it isn’t so far off the mark. For the record, as soon as NO2ID became aware of it we sent a briefing to all the papers explaining which bits were right, which wrong, and which depend upon regulatory decisions yet to be made.]
Guy Herbert – If you are saying, just bring more modern life to Muslim terrorists and they will settle in to a life of plenty, every shred of evidence proves you wrong.
The suicide mass murderers and maimers of hundreds on London Transport had more than your average young Brit. One had just been given a brand new red sports car by his dad, and he left £120,000 – far more than the average young Brit has accumulated by age 22 or whatever age this little virus had reached. He lived in the West, he had access to everything, including girls in tank tops and mini-skirts. Islam is a completely alien mindset to the rest of humanity. In fact, people who want to have it reclassified as a cult do have a point.
And Guy, you say Iran is not dangerous. Iran has been dangerous and expansionst for hundreds of years and they’ve been acting extaterritorially for the past 30 years. And now they’re getting a nuclear bomb. What do they want it for, do you think?
You give Muslims too much credit. They are not rational. Everything’s for allah. Listen to that recording in the cockpit of Flight 93. They’re hijacking a plane, fighting off the male passengers and shouting “allah is great”. They are nuts.
If you are saying, just bring more modern life to Muslim terrorists and they will settle in to a life of plenty, every shred of evidence proves you wrong.
No that’s not what I’m saying. Thay would be the dim lefty, oh-they-must-be-driven-to-this-by-poverty line. What I’m saying is much the same as Trofim: All the high tech stuff I mentioned is communications equipment. It offers a view of the outside world, and the possibility of understanding it without necessarily it being filtered through the state propaganda machine.
And Guy, you say Iran is not dangerous. Iran has been dangerous and expansionst for hundreds of years and they’ve been acting extaterritorially for the past 30 years. And now they’re getting a nuclear bomb. What do they want it for, do you think?
I said above that Islam wasn’t a significant threat. I don’t happen to think Iran is either, and to assume it is just because its government is a very peculiar form of semi-theocracy, and thereby to equivocate Iran and Islam, is dangerous.
Until this century Iran’s been quiescent and stable for hundreds of years, actually. Penned-in by more powerful neighbours and its own ungovernable vastness. There’s a case for saying it never really recovered from the Arab invasions and certainly put up little fight against Timurids and Ilkhans, Russians and English… It was Saddam Hussein (then friends with the Americans) who attacked Iran to start the Iran-Iraq war, not the other way around.
Acting extraterritorially seems to have been popular with most powers since the 1920s. The US and the former USSR being the worst offenders, though others are catching up. (It is notable that much British law of the nineties and noughties is extraterritorial in ambition.)
What do they want nukes for? The same thing everybody else does. Status. A certain air of invulnerability. In the modern world nuclear weapons are built by paranoid powers that feel they are under direct threat from their neighbours. They are given up, in those rare cases that they are, when that paranoia ebbs, and status no longer demands it.
Britain has no rational reason to keep its nuclear weapons (which are effectively under US control) for military purposes, but the status that it derives from them (keeping it a notch above Germany and Japan) is enough to ensure a ballistic deterrent force, entirely obsolete in concept, is going to be upgraded soon.
Are ‘the Muslims’ much madder than that? I doubt it. In particular, the evidence that some Muslims are mad suicide bombers for whom everything (superficially) is for allah, does not demonstrate either that all or any particular proportion of Muslims are. As I have pointed out before, if a significant proportion of a billion people were that crazy we would notice. The London and Madrid and Bali and New York bombings are moral enormities, but quantatively the trivial acts of a handful of spoilt boys.
That one of those twerps validates his existential actes gratuites by reference to the Islamic god, does not provide any basis for predicting what an old man brought up in an entirely different intellectual and cultural tradition who also regards himself as a Muslim will do.
You might as well deduce the political outlook of Desmond Tutu from the views of fellow Christian David Duke. Though you might, since Christianity has at least some settled doctrine and uniform authority, hope to do better.
Euan Gray has on the other thread, with more patience and more lucidity than I could manage, expressed pretty much my views on Iran.
The Persians conquered all of India. I do not consider that not being a threat to neighbours.
(I have to admit that Moghulie architecture is ravishing.) But they took India by war.
I was under the impression that the Moghuls were Timurids, i.e. Turkic tribes from central Asia, not Persians. And that though they certainly established a powerful empire in India, it was not as if they subjected the entire sub-continent… but even were it true they were Persians and they did subjugate all India in the era of wheellocks, that scarcely proves Iran now is a danger to anyone in particular.
Soviet Russia was a dangerous global empire for much of the 20th century, running proxy wars almost everywhere; imperial Japan was openly aggressive and acquisitive. But while Putin may be a nasty piece of work, he’s just a regional bully; and Japan has one of the world’s largest navies again without being considered a maritime threat to anyone but the edible whales.
You’re probably right, Guy. I see that Iran’s president has just said “The state of Israel will soon be history”. So nothing to worry about there, then.
Forgot the link! Please forgive! (Link)
Guy Herbert:
My angle on the dangers of Islam is not related to the likelihood of terrorist acts. It is to do with the essential nature of the muslim mindset and it’s reflection in reality. Arguments about what is the real islam, about moderate muslims and so on, are an irrelevance. Actions speak much more accurately than words, and the muslim assumptions about the world, are clearly demonstrated by the very existence of “muslim countries, muslim lands” which are an embodiment of the muslim’s conviction that he is a superior kind of being, that lesser types of human should live by different, more restrictive laws, if they are allowed to live at all, and that they can legitimately, in his eyes, be institutionally discriminated against at will in varying degrees. When “muslim country” issues from the mouth of a muslim, this is what he means. For the man on the Clapham Omnibus a “muslim country” is simply a place where there are quite a lot of muslims, and muslims are not going to inform him otherwise. From this sense of superiority flow other characteristic features of the muslim mindset, absence of reciprocity, hypocrisy, lying.
That, and the fact that islam does not value, indeed, professes hatred for most of the things that I value and which make life worth living, in particular visual art. How long will our art heritage survive in an increasingly Islamised society?
Trofim – How long will our art last? What they usually do is, they go through museums breaking off the noses of statues. Why? Who the hell knows, but this seems to be some religious thing. Then they leave the statues alone. This included statues of animals. These people are raving mad.
I take issue with you on ‘Muslim countries’ though, because they do not recognise “countries” the way we do (and the rest of the sane world does). There are only two regions of the world: Dar-al-Harb (us, our countries, where I am extremely happy to live) and Dar-es-Salaam (them; the world of Allah, Mo and 1.1bn whack jobs).
Strange bed-fellows? Certainly this is war. Right and Left don’t matter at the moment. Let’s have a free country back first. I’ll share my bed with anyone except racists; racists don’t understand freedom, no matter how much they whine about it. The Race Police are after me/I’ve soiled racial purity! Fundamental are the rights to be oneself, choose one’s partner, have children if one chooses, without the mad squawkings of some SS-wannabe manifesting itself like a Nazgul in my bedroom.
Until this century Iran’s been quiescent and stable for hundreds of years, actually. Penned-in by more powerful neighbours and its own ungovernable vastness. There’s a case for saying it never really recovered from the Arab invasions and certainly put up little fight against Timurids and Ilkhans, Russians and English… It was Saddam Hussein (then friends with the Americans) who attacked Iran to start the Iran-Iraq war, not the other way around.
Quiescent and stable up until about a quarter-century ago, when the current lot came to run the place. Since then, it’s been a bit different.
And I would like to point out that the reason the US was favorably disposed to Mr. Hussein back in those days had more than a little to do with some embassy staff that were being held hostage- simply put, anyone who pulls that kind of stunt should bloody well expect the Americans to become favorably disposed to whoever is causing you the most trouble.
Verity,
I see that Iran’s president has just said “The state of Israel will soon be history”. So nothing to worry about there, then.
Not particularly, when the same sentiment has been expressed by almost every political leader in the Islamic world since the founding of the state of Israel. It’s their equivalent of skoolznospittles, the unquestionable populist political ambition. And that in a political tradition that values vaunting rhetoric far above performance.
Now is it possible to revert to the topic of my original post, or just stop? It is exceedingly tiresome that every discussion where Islam is mentioned in passing is immediately a hornet’s nest of the sort of collective judgement and spleen that if it were addressed at a racial group would immediately be seen as vile and empty and get the perpetrators banned.
Trofim,
My angle on the dangers of Islam is not related to the likelihood of terrorist acts.
Nor mine; but I see it as an even lesser cultural danger to civilization than it is a physical danger. And much more important, I do not accept the Islamist line that it is monolithic.
The Islamic world is a trope, like Christendom in mediaeval times, that has ideological meaning for some of its inhabitants, and some descriptive value for outsiders, but tells you very little or nothing about actual political and cultural relations.
Typical Libbo,
Quite.
On second thoughts, this has gone too far to go back to Pilger. Let’s just stop.