Social Networking: I'm from the government and I'm here to help !

Be afraid, be very afraid. This current government - you know the one that's now one of the largest purchasers of political propaganda advertising is hoping to crush free expression and independent channels of communication on the internet.

The BBC report Tom Watson MP, he of the daft haircut and the bad taste, eyeing up MumsNet. ( Now just typing that fills me with alarm). Here's an extract from the BBC report (underlining is my own):

Mr Watson sees nothing intrusive about the government using open, commercially run sites to dispense advice and information.

"Having 100,000 mums on a social network like NetMums sharing ideas about how you bring up kids or what it's like to give birth can be useful to government because they can talk about the services that they provide.

"Government can be useful to them to give them advice on what's good and what isn't good.

"If 100,000 mums met at Wembley stadium there would be welfare rights advisers, clinicians, midwives, even politicians would get in on the act.

"But when 100,000 mums meet on an information community online like NetMums, you don't get a politician talking to them."

Rough translation => We could boss around far more people by hijacking social networking and gets lots of socialist propaganda out, just as we do with the governments advertising budget. After all how would people know how to run their lives if the government and Labour party didn't tell them ?

Ronald Regan was right.

( How long before someone like Hazel Blears pops up to suggest using National Identity cards to access web sites etc ? It won't be long before the government insists you declare any email addresses or web site aliases you have ).