"Labour depends on the votes of Welfare Britain"

Daily Mail: "Labour has been accused of relying on the 'welfare vote' after the Conservatives published a provocative league table ranking Commons seats according to the number of benefit claimants.

A total of 189 constituencies in the first 200 are represented by Labour MPs, which the Tories claim explains why Ministers are failing to tackle the spiralling welfare bill.

Gordon Brown and 12 Cabinet colleagues represent seats in the top 200, while just four have a Tory MP. "

Labour recieve 'brutal verdict' in elections

Guardian: "Voters delivered a brutal verdict to Labour yesterday, as the party lost control of all its remaining ­English county councils in Thursday's voting.

Staffordshire, Derbyshire and ­Nottinghamshire fell out of Labour's hands for the first time in 28 years, and Lancashire for the first time since 1989 – all to the Tories.

With 32 of the 34 local authority results declared, the Conservatives had control of 28 councils, and had won an additional 230 seats and nine more councils, including Devon and Somerset from the Liberal Democrats, and the previously hung Wiltshire and Warwickshire.

The Tories also gained overall control of a new unitary authority, Central Bedfordshire, where Labour failed to win a single seat, and grabbed the mayoralty in North Tyneside back from Labour.

Labour saw sweeping losses across the 27 shire councils and seven unitary authorities, losing a net of 268 council seats."

It's not just the Labour regime melting down

Gordon Brown's government is just in total tatters.

I remember some time ago under Blair when Labour had a particularly bad day, the BBC's Andrew Marr said you'd have to go back to the days of Michael Foot to find a time when Labour had such bad publicity. I can't even think what would be a comparison now.

Labour are in massive trouble, and Gordon Brown, who I do feel sorry for, appears to be a complete lame duck just waiting to be hung out to dry. Apparently even the Guardian are calling for Brown to resign.

However it's important to realise that the MP's expenses scandal has not only damaged politicians, it has also massively damaged the media itself.

The Guardian have been hit very hard by this and are in a very difficult, very compromised position, and they can't create an adequate explanation to their readers why they didn't break the 'story' themselves.

And the problem is the entire journalistic establishment knew all about this for ever. They just didn't care a hoot. And they didn't care a hoot because, as I've said on here a number of times now: it's not a serious issue to begin with.

It's just not important.

Now's it been made important to get rid of the government and the rest of them don't know what to do, and are starting to look even more under strain than the politicians.

If you want to get a picture of how desperate this is for them, about a week and a half ago the Guardian published an article by Andrew Rawnsley claiming this cynicism about MPs is 'bad for democracy', and what I came away from that article is that they simply don't know what to say at all about this.

In the atmosphere surrounding this they can't explain to their readers adequately why they didn't break it themselves, but at the same time it's not a serious issue to begin with.

Now on top of that because it's gone the way it has, and because it's attached the usual childish fantastic reasons why it wants to believe this is a serious issue, The Guardian is actually in a state of real cognitive dissonance on this, and it's probably why they have gone even more potty, like a cat with worms, than they normally are.

So understand what the Guardian is doing. It's jumping just like the politicians have been jumping and it's trying to rescue its own battered credibility.

European elections: Labour in trouble

Mail on Sunday: "Gordon Brown is heading for humiliation in the European elections as voters desert his party in droves in protest over the expenses scandal, a BPIX poll for The Mail on Sunday has found.

Labour's predicted share of the vote in the June 4 elections has fallen to just 17 per cent - neck and neck with the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which advocates Britain's complete withdrawal from the EU.

Over the past tumultuous week in Westminster, Labour's expected Brussels vote has crashed by six points from 23 per cent, while UKIP's has surged by seven points.

This leaves the Prime Minister facing the politically catastrophic prospect of being pushed into third place: Labour has never polled lower than UKIP"

MP's Expenses scandal

Sorry guys, I just don't buy this stuff about MPs' expenses. One can only guess what it may really be hiding, but this (aka sleaze) appears to be the way of getting rid of a weak government that's no longer able to inflict some of the most extreme policies and as well punishing a few individuals who have stepped out of line along the way.

As someone said to me recently, why didn't all this happen during the lead up to the Iraq War ? Well there's your answer in the question. Because the Iraq War was good, why on Earth would you want to punish a government that's doing what it's supposed to.

And of course, it's not just the Telegraph. Just to illustrate, astonishing as it is, the New York Times was effectively calling for regime change in the UK, no ambiguity about it.

This is the level of it. No disguise anymore.

The media, the concentrations of power that own that media want to just get rid of this government now. And I have to say I do feel somewhat sorry for Gordon Brown, who's just under extreme political pressure and attacks from everyone from the Daily Telegraph to the New York Times, some of which are frankly ludicrous and puerile.

Gordon Brown's mistake was trying to a cut deal with the devil (Blair) early on, you just can't do that. What should have happened, after the second term, Brown should have stepped up, declared the Iraq War and the police state an outrage, profusely apologized for his role in supporting those things, and stepped aside as a leader in waiting. Effectively started Labour again overtly rather than trying to play the political game and not rocking the boat. Big mistake.

I should say I don't believe for a second Gordon Brown was ever close to that, but it should have happened. Now the Labour government is effectively disintegrating before our eyes, for all the wrong reasons.

I said it before, and boring as it is I'll say it again: don't try to think for a second, as the media want you to, that the real crime of Labour or MP's in general is this expense stuff. Yes there are some grotesque examples and some silly stuff but it's just in reality nothing to what they have created, presided over and voted for.

Labour women have 'helmet hair'

Sometimes you need a laugh: Daily Mail: Labour women have 'helmet hair' declares David Cameron's mother-in-law"

"David Cameron's mother-in-law would naturally be suspicious of New Labour. But it seems it is the haircuts, not the politics that bother Lady Astor most.

Samantha Cameron's mother said in an interview that female ministers in New Labour had 'helmety' haircuts, although she acknowledged that women in politics were under a lot of pressure.

Her comments seemed to refer to ministers like Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears and Yvette Cooper, who all have short-bobbed hairstlyes.

'I do think that working in the Commons must be very hard on women,' she said. 'You don't have hours to spend on your appearance, so I think it's unfair to focus on it – although the hairstyles could be a little less helmety.' "

Does anyone remember a few years back BBC News 24: every female correspondent/news anchor had a short pudding basin haircut, it got so conspicuous to the point of ridiculousness... It appeared to be some sort of symbol..

Guardian: Polls: Tories on course for landslide

I'm not going to talk about the Swine Fever thing right now, I see plenty of other sites are.

Some light, but interesting analysis from The Guardian on the political landscape. Surely The Guardian, just as Labour, will seek to motivate their constituency, but it's nonetheless interesting.

I haven't been studying political polls for some time, but the trend is clear overall as I understand it being reported and started to become all too obvious some time ago. It's just such a shame that, by and large, that old adage about the party in power loosing the election rather than the opposition winning seems to be what we are looking at.

However, I reckon we will be able to rely on the media and the Labour Party doing everything they can to evade why they lost the election; to put it down to a bunch of spurious political reasons, and 'lack of leadership' and so on, while the attempt to create a shocking police state of bobbling slaves, the legacy and endowment of Tony Blair and complicity of Gordon Brown and others of the Iraq War, amongst other horrendous crimes will never even come into it.

Guardian: "We've now had three polls, from two different polling organisations, since last week's budget, and they're all saying much the same thing, which suggests that they are worth taking seriously. The news is dire for Labour: on current form, the Tories are heading for a landslide.

For the record, here are the figures:

ComRes in the Independent (published today)

Conservatives: 45 (up five from ComRes last month)

Labour: 26 (down two)

Lib Dems: 17 (down one)

Conservative lead: 19 (up seven)

YouGov in the Sunday People (published on Sunday)

Conservatives: 45 (up four from YouGov in the Telegraph last month)

Labour: 27 (down four)

Lib Dems: 17 (no change)

Conservative lead: 18 (up eight)

YouGov in the Daily Telegraph (published on Saturday)

Conservatives: 45 (up four from YouGov in the Telegraph last month)

Labour: 27 (down four)

Lib Dems: 18 (up one)

Conservative lead: 18 (up eight)

I've fed the ComRes figures into two websites that provide election predictions on the basis of share of the vote numbers, Electoral Calculus and UK Polling Report. Electoral Calculus says the Tories would have a majority of 186. UK Polling Report, which uses a slightly different methodology, predicts a majority of 170. Either way, it's still pretty big"

Sex education for five-year-olds to be made compulsory in schools

Guardian: "The government has announced plans to make sex education compulsory for pupils aged five to 11, dividing faith groups and safer sex campaigners. Under the plans all secondary schools will have to teach teenagers about contraception, safer sex and relationships, but faith schools will also be free to preach against sex outside of marriage and condom"

Ok. Sorry for the latest lull. And I don't think we've gone mad here as one commenter asked. Very very very occasionally we may take a light diversion from some of the very serious, very ugly and nasty issues that nobody really wants to talk about.

And there's a book we are going to be talking about on here at some point, an extremely controversial book and it has a wealth of interesting other little pieces of information in it. And one of the things that caught my eye, and I wish I had made some better notes, was that there was some initiative rather similar to what the Labour government are trying to do here under the pre-Stalin Soviet Union as well.

I've just spent a while raking through pages and pages and unfortunately I just can't find the specific quote I'm looking for. There are some strong hints about this here though.

But the quote I was looking for was particularly chilling in what it said about children, and I'm just so annoyed I can't find it right now but will update the article if I find it.

Labour and Alastair Campbell: legacy & lies

BBC:" David Cameron is demanding a personal apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown over e-mails sent by an adviser discussing smearing the Tories. The Tory leader is "absolutely furious" and is calling on Mr Brown to give a guarantee that such messages will not be sent again, a spokeswoman said.

Damian McBride quit after his unfounded claims about Mr Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne became known. Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne says Mr Brown knew nothing of the e-mails. But Labour backbencher John McDonnell has called for an inquiry to find out who was involved. "

If you read this sorry story, it's just sickeningly ironic the way that former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell thinks the whole thing is somehow 'beneath' the standard of spin mechanics or indeed behaviour that Labour should be seen to uphold.

"Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, wrote in his blog that he had been struck not just by the "unpleasantness" of the emails, but also by their "incompetence". "McBride will be thinking that was his big mistake - writing it all down. His really big mistake was thinking it might be effective," Mr Campbell added"

I really makes you wonder what he's thinking. What did Alastair Campbell then think about the great dossier, the 45 minutes and so on, and does he seriously think that compares favourably to now ?

I can't pretend I'm an expert of every single mechanic of the Blair government. I'm not. I don't know every little thing Alastair Campbell did or said, but I strongly think we know more than enough. And to summarise Alastair Campbell's role, I agree with Michael Howard in a Newsnight interview from a while back that Alastair Campbell was one of the main factors responsible for taking politics exactly into the loathsome gutter it is today. Howard reflects:

"I think that's the man who's responsible for what's changed [pointing at Campbell -j]. The way in which Alastair has conducted his operations, he was in Downing Street when he bullied and lied his way across our political life...consistently did more to lower the tone of our political life, our public life than anything else. And that was all of course done with Tony Blair's connivance and authority"

And I've never seen Michael Howard look as sincere and serious about anything actually.

It's the height irony, it's an insult to injury, for a lying murderous charlatan like Alastair Campbell to be slitheringly admonishing about a culture he was heavily involved in creating and normalizing, much to the delight of the Labor plebs.

Which bit doesn't he like, the fact that it may not be 'effective?' or their 'incompetence' ?, or just the fact this guy got found out ? Well I guess Campbell would know.

I just see this as just another sinister little drip drip way of trying to normalize, trying to exonerate Blair, Campbell and others for the catastrophe of the Iraq War and the monstrous pile of shocking lies they thought absolutely nothing of concocting and presenting to sell it.

It's as if to say that was normal, but this is abnormal. And that Alastair Campbell is still doing this years latter, tacitly supported by the BBC in this case, I find extraordinary.

And credit were it is due to Labour's John McDonnell for taking a stand on this topic which as he rightly says only reflects on Labour not anyone else:

"They drag the Labour Party into the gutter. They just add further to the undermining of the belief that Labour Party supporters have placed in our party"

The pornography of distraction ?

Isn't it funny that Home Secretary Jaqui Smith's husband apparently a Mr Richard Timney, was paying for porno films and at the expense of the tax payer to boot. A funny and small comeuppance for this ridiculous cloth-headed gorgon at the Home Office, and fittingly ironic for these anti-privacy ghouls in the tinpot regime; just a tiny hint of what the kinds of retained records they want everyone else to be chained to as a 'privilege of living in a modern society' can dig up. Smith is one of several New Labour gorgons, which all blend one into another as far as I'm concerned, I can barely even tell them apart.

Certainly there's a lot of media interest in MP's spending at the moment, and there is something seemingly of insanity about some of the things MPs can claim in their expenses, and for sure there are some grotesque examples of this that the press and other politicians will dig up.

Other than it underlines the particularly dismal and inevitable Animal Farm scenario for Labour, I don't believe it's a particular 'problem' though, and typically all this general talk of sleaze and abusing expenses and so on has a very corrosive and distraction-inducing effect.

Instead of talking about the horrendous, vile and very real policies of this government, including the burgeoning police state apparatus and policies being feverishly assembled, with the Home Office at the forefront of, we end up talking about their expenses and making that the 'bad' thing that they are doing. And this just totally trivializes the real issues of the day.

Unless we are to treat this case as some kind of serious warning shot at those Labour politicians hysterically trying to dismantle privacy and liberty in the UK, which include but are no means limited to mass internet data storage, driving surveillance, the National ID Register, the uploading of medical records and so on.

Great if that's the case, I certainly hope it is, and frankly it should be seen like that anyway despite the general focus on politicians' expenses at the moment.

But it would also be appropriate if this media, rather than solely trying to catch a politician out over some minor rule, or find some embarrassing expense just tell the truth about what's going on and what the government is trying to do to the population.

Information Commissioner warns of surveillance culture

The Times from 27/2/08:

"Laws that allow officials to monitor the behaviour of millions of Britons risk “hardwiring surveillance” into the British way of life, the country's privacy watchdog has warned.

Richard Thomas told The Times that “creeping surveillance” in the public and private sectors had gone “too far, too fast” and risked undermining democracy.

The Information Commissioner warned that proposals to allow widespread data sharing between Whitehall and the private sector were too far-reaching and that plans to create a giant database of every telephone call, e-mail and text message risked turning everyone into a suspect. “In the last 10 or 15 years a great deal of surveillance in public and private places has been extended without sufficient thought to the risks and consequences,” said Mr Thomas, 59. “Our society is based on liberty and democracy. I do not want to see excessive surveillance hardwired into British society.”

He criticised proposals going through Parliament to allow mass data sharing between government departments and the private sector. Campaigners have claimed that Section 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill would enable the transfer of health and tax records to private companies such as insurance firms and medical researchers.

Last year Mr Thomas — who became head of the independent body charged with safeguarding privacy and freedom of information in 2002 — recommended to ministers that data sharing be allowed only in carefully defined circumstances such as law enforcement, improving public services and for research. They ignored his advice. The Bill “needs to be narrowed”, Mr Thomas said. He called on Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to write into it that “anything to justify a data-sharing order has to come explicitly under one of those headings”.

Whitehall sources told The Times yesterday that Mr Straw would amend the Bill in the next few weeks to meet Mr Thomas's criticisms. Previously Mr Straw's department had maintained that there were sufficient safeguards, including a requirement for parliamentary approval for each data transfer.

The Bill also gives the Information Commissioner the power to investigate public bodies without their consent where there has been a suspected breach of data protection law. Mr Thomas complained that the powers did not extend to private companies.

Other government plans also risked undermining people's right to privacy, Mr Thomas said. Of the Home Secretary's proposal to build a database to store information currently held by internet service providers and telephone companies, Mr Thomas said: “A government-run database of the communications of all citizens, every phone call, every e-mail, every text, every internet use; a database of all those activities held by the Government would be a step too far for the British way of life.”

He dismissed Jacqui Smith's assurances that officials would have access only to data on who had contacted whom, rather than the content of the communication. “That A has telephoned B on a particular date from a particular location is actually quite intrusive,” he said. “If an MP logged on to a site selling Viagra, that tells you quite a lot. If a 16-year-old girl goes on to a website about abortion that tells you an awful lot about her too. I don't think there's a black-and-white distinction between traffic data and content.”

Mr Thomas made clear that he did not object to the monitoring of those suspected of involvement in terrorism and serious crime. “But I think that's a very different situation from monitoring the communications of the entire population,” he said. “We've got to have a much clearer distinction between those who are suspects and everybody else and I think we're at risk of making everybody a suspect if we go too far down this road.”

Security services have insisted that modernising the capacity to store and search telephone and internet information is crucial if Britain's ability to combat terrorists and serious organised crime is to be maintained.

Mr Thomas said that forcing government officials to make specific requests every time they needed information — as they currently have to do - provided a crucial safeguard. “If you have a security service or a policeman making an application [to an internet service provider for records], at least each of those applications has to go through a process and is scrutinised by the ISP. That's very different from it all being done behind the closed doors of a governmental agency.”

His concern about the erosion of the right to privacy extends to social networking sites. People did not realise that information put on sites such as Facebook and MySpace could come “back to haunt them”, he said.

Another area of concern for Mr Thomas is the use of surveillance cameras: he criticised the police for pressing to have closed-circuit television cameras installed in pubs. “We've come out against the requirement for pub licensees to fit CCTV as a condition of their licence,” he said. “This is hardwiring surveillance into British pubs. It is unacceptable.”

He also expressed concern that even some schools were now installing cameras in the classroom. He said that it might be acceptable in the case of a particularly unruly class, “but to roll out cameras in all classrooms is unacceptable”.

The Information Commissioner added his voice to criticism of ContactPoint, a computer database containing details on every child in the country.

“I can see the benefits of a national database of children at risk ... I'm less convinced that you need to have a database of every child in the country. Is it not better to have fuller details of children known to be at risk and make sure that information is used properly?”

Other key government surveillance measures had been “pushed through” without proper scrutiny or parliamentary debate. Of a database of DNA gathered from crime suspects, he said: “Clearly, the DNA database was set up with insufficient public debate. Part of the problem was that such debate took place on the assumption that it would be expensive to run DNA tests. The costs have absolutely fallen and it has become a matter of routine. We have to re-examine the issue in the light of current technology.”

He also lamented the lack of debate over the creation of a North London database that records details of car numberplates for up to five years. Mr Thomas questioned whether the Government had the legal authority for this and asked whether the public recognised that millions of their daily journeys were now being monitored. “We have to scrutinise every proposal very closely indeed to ensure that none involves a step too far.”

Labour planning 'class' laws

Another item from the Daily Mail:

So basically here, you have some internal war of Labour witches fighting for the magic cauldron that can easiest deploy misery on everyone else. It's quite a funny read, but I didn't realise this until I read the article:

"Last month, she [Harman] unveiled plans for a so-called ‘class law’ in which public bodies would have a legal duty to take account of people’s social class in the same way they have to consider race and gender"

I had to go back and read about this. This is just extraordinary. In fact I made a joke about this somehwhere once, and everyone understood it as a joke, and they are actually trying to make it a policy.

There comes a time when the government just stops being a government and starts going very very wrong. It started going serisouly wrong in the UK on May 1st 1997 and has been getting more and more and more extreme as time has gone on.

I hate to play the conspiracy card, from some of the things we saw last year with Blair attacking Brown, with Lord Levy attacking Brown, with Mandelson being parachuted back into the mechanics of government who Brown notoriously hated as Mandelson supported Blair over Brown for leadership early on, I seriously doubt Gordon Brown is operating in any kind of real capacity of leader at all.

And again, over the last year and currently portrayed in this article in the Mail, we've been all too aware of this jostling for power behind Brown; at least according to the press, although I accept they could be misleading us.

Certainly one gets the impression that policy is being formed somewhere else.

In the end you're getting serious dollops of radical Bolshevism masquerading as modern 'caring' 'responsible' government and seeing how far that can be pushed.

Ask yourself what is there to fear so much from a country being itself ? And where does this non-stop impetus for extreme social policy mixed with the machinery of the police state come from ?

And I don't think the answer to that is with a ridiculous crank like Harriet Harman.

Labour government trying to make CCTV mandatory

Apologies for the lapse here. I'm just gonna pick a few things from the Mail yesterday.

And we'll start with this.

"Big Brother CCTV cameras are to be fitted inside shops and supermarkets on the orders of the state to keep track on anybody buying alcohol. A law is being quietly pushed through Parliament giving councils the power to order licensed premises to fit the surveillance cameras. Pubs will also be covered.

The footage of people innocently buying a bottle of wine in a shop or a pint of beer in a bar must be stored for at least 60 days, and be handed over to the police on demand"

I haven't covered the police state machinery stuff for a while, and there will be nuances in it I'm not currently up on, but it's well.. it's really bizarre, it's like it just still can't stop itself.

In spite of whatever critique is offered, no matter from whom, from the public itself or even when the media has started (and it has for some time now) to actually get concerned about this, or the government's own data tzars and even the European Court of Human Rights and so on, it doesn't seem to make to a lot of difference.

No matter who is ostensibly in charge the Labour regime remains like a child in an insane tantrum, it's totally unreasonable, and thinks every conceivable moment of existence is just another opportunity to inflict the machinery of the police state, no matter what else is going on around it.

We talked about this a lot a couple of years ago, in end you're just not in the territory of normal, appropriate, adult rational behavior, but behavior that's transparently about looking for ways to deploy this kind of thing no matter what, because it wants to change society into something very different.

And what's been demonstrated here very clearly is the extremely real danger of compliance. In the end the government will claim a mandatory status for the very culture of snooping, spying and fear they themselves have created and encouraged amongst the public and I think the writing was on the wall for this a long time ago.

Bishops: Labour: morally corrupt

Daily Mail:

"Labour is embroiled in a war of words with senior Church of England bishops after they criticised its ‘scandalous’ record in power.

They warned that the party’s policies had left Britain in the grip of family breakdown, debt addiction and a growing wealth gap.

Downing Street was said to be privately furious at the politically-outspoken comments.

[...] The bishops’ scathing assessments, coming only a week after the Archbishop of Canterbury publicly attacked the Government’s economic policies, took the unusual step of condemning Labour by name.

The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, went as far as to describe the party as ‘morally corrupt’..."

Gordon Brown: 'election is off'

It's good news and it's bad news isn't it ? Bad because it deprives people of the opportunity to get rid of this government asap, good because it shows Brown is not confident.

"A "remarkably calm, but not sunny" Prime Minister [...] admitted he had considered calling a snap election, and denied recent poor polls were behind his decision to stall." (Telegraph)

That Gordon Brown has deep-sixed any November election, when he and advisers around him were clearly strongly toying with/preparing for/talking up amongst themselves and letting the public believe the idea can only suggest the truth:

That some of the recent polls for the Labour party were just simply not stable, and that some of those polls which appear to put Labour ahead were perhaps as much about laying the groundwork for a possible November election rather than an accurate representation of what's what. I was very suprised when I started seeing these polls appear as they didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Other polls of course, have not been so glowing in showing a clear victory for Labour, including the latest News of the World poll.

My big hope was, out of a combination of folly, misjudgement and hubris, as well various crackpot supporters egging him on, Brown would madly hold a November election and just loose or you would get a hung Parliament.

But Brown has clearly seen this coming, he tested the waters enthusiastically apparently in this party conference season with various announcements but has ultimately seen the writing on the wall. Of course all of this has made Brown look ridiculous:

"But the prime minister insists it was not the melting away of Labour's strong poll lead that led him to decide there would be no ballot. He told the BBC's Andrew Marr that he thought he would win an election but wanted to show how he would change the country, rather than being judged on how he had dealt with a series of events that have taken place since he moved into Number 10."(BBC)

Surely the BBC don't actually believe that ?

Don't forget various supporters urging Brown on in the past to call a snap election included people like Ken Livingstone.

Labour's communist police state again

You've probably seen the front page of yesterday's Mail on Sunday

"Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow. The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos. The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses"

As usual the Daily Mail are permitted to complain about all this stuff, but within the acceptable boundaries of plebdom. So it goes, "what if it falls into the wrong hands ?". But of course, one struggles to think what is the 'right hands' in this circumstance. We've talked about all this stuff before on here.

Council workers asking permission from a nominated person ? Various other agencies, quangos ?

You have to think about it. What possible means do they have to interpret or act on such information ? Presumably it will be possible to phone up any government agency and arbitrarily 'grass' on someone you don't like and get their phone call and internet web surfing use put into the hands directly of council, government workers ?

I remember when all this was being concocted, one of the 'selling points' about the phone snooping side of things was that it will only be a small amount of data, ie it couldn't show the subject of the phone call itself (obviously), but that's not the case with internet data retention (which council leaders and quangos will have access to next) , the subject of intent is very much known from the URL requested, and can be much much more intimate. And I don't think people really understand the implications of this.

And where are the powerful voices against all this ? Where is business ? What are they afraid of ? Are they afraid the Labour spin machine of doting commissars obsessed with hideous ideology will turn against them and start looking at their phone calls and internet records ?

Naturally all this itself is just one small part of the the regime's ongoing plans.

This sounds a like a communist police state to me, hidden behind the crap about 'shared values, security, terrorism, a new 'modern' crime' and so on. As such I think it's only fair to treat the country as that as I've said before. How else exactly are you supposed to treat it ?

And there is another factor to all this too. Those civil servants and council workers compliant in the destruction of basic human dignity with this are also damaging themselves as well as sadly becoming a becoming a real legitimate target in their own right.

Worryingly, as pointed out by Colonel Turner in the interview I posted recently, is that while you have a collection of just career junior ministers and council employees, you have people in government who know exactly what they are doing too, and this has to be a source of enormous concern.

As Colonel Turner also points out, one would imagine there is a gradual 'process of persuasion' but there has been none really, and the Iraq War has wrongly become the focus of sin, isolated out by both Labour, and people in the media supportive of them, as some lone anomaly where it can be cautiously conceded that 'mistakes have been made'.

This is of course obscene, and again, a way of moving the debate away from the war crime of Iraq itself, and the kind of thinking, the kind of judgments and zeal to sell that crime in the first place along with all of Labour's other crimes.

If anything about Iraq, it seems that a number of people in the Labour project were quite happy with it if only to ensure there is then a resulting security concern at home that can then be used to implement their own re-writing of society into an Orwellian socialist nightmare.

But as I've said here before here, I believe responsible council workers or employees of government agencies should be ready to blow the whistle on all this, and resign and disrupt these activities as necessary. I also feel strongly that at least people should not acknowledge the legitimacy of this at all, in any case where it may pertain to them and refuse to co-operate with any results leading from it.