The retreat from freedom

I had meant to put a post about the new measures against "extremism" announced by Conservative leadership candidate home secretary Theresa May a few days ago.

In what sounds like the measures used against the IRA's cheerleaders in the 80s there are to be all sorts of arbitrary bans on extremist preachers ( by which they mean - to start with - Islamic preachers ). That just made the government of the day look stupid as the measures were easily circumvented.

I think its worth just noting what this is a retreat from.

It means that we are abandoning debate and the battle of ideas to reply instead on measures that the Chinese Communists or East Germans would have approved of.

We no longer hold freedom as our ideal, but something sinister called British Values.

Also we have created a system which will allow, just by adding a few words to the home secretary's British Value list, the arbitrary oppression of whole classes of people.

If you see the style of no-platform debate used by the left in Universities these days you'll realise how our future politicians will use these powers.

The Conservatives have created the instruments for our own oppression - and just for short term political gain.

There is a lack of courage and vision in those grabbing at the purple of Conservative party leadership as freedom lies bleeding out into the sand.

Thought crime

Its another busy week for me, with lots of travel.

But let me leave you with a link to Janet Daley on Hate Speech http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10092764/Hate-mustnt-be-made-a-thought-crime-only-acting-on-it-is.html .

This is a recurring theme in our society, especially since Labour passes the SOR regulations and Equality bill - and the Conservative party failed to repeal them and made things ten times worse by the new fiction on marriage they are trying to bulldoze through parliament.

Just who are the politicians thinking of with new censorship ?

Suddenly we have a media campaign (in the UK post the Woolwich murder ) to ban certain individuals and groups appearing on TV, and perhaps appearing in Google searches etc.

Let's face it those interested in radical Islam will find what they are looking for anyway. The government knows this won't work, so who is being censured here the speaker or the listeners? Is it to prevent the wider public learning what these individuals think and believe, so the public is only left with the laughable Clegg/Cameron religion of peace meme.

And let's remember once the law is on the statute books whose tho say how that law will be used. Will those who speak against the EU or ending marriage and replacing it with the abomination Cameron/Clegg have decided it should be find themselves censored for hate speech ? What of those who point out the inconvenient truth about the climate change fraud?

We should think very hard before accepting restrictions on freedom of speech.

Cameron backs RedEd's Soviet press oppression scheme

You have to wonder about Clegg & Miliband. Both come from families who's links to this country are ones of convenience, and perhaps that's why they are so rabidly eager to crush a free press in this country.

But then you have to wonder about Cameron also ( hence the record UKIP poll ratings ) for going along with this rod for our own backs measure.

The English traditions of freedom are so easily bast aside by the new political class, that have no cares beyond their own mayfly like careers at the top and certainly not sense there might be something worth sacrificing your political career for - like the principle of free speech and a a free press.

Only UKIP stands for freedom now.

Shifting sands ?

The video can be seen here - apparently this web domain its too subversive for Meridian or something like that ...  ( they really need to think this idea through - or employee someone who understands social media ).

Over David Cameron's (politically) dead body I suspect, but that's not such an unpopular idea these days in the Conservative party is it ?

Still won't happen, yet ...

Labour's Equality agenda is about anything but ...

I don't know about you but I first started hearing the term the ***** (insert term) agenda from Sinn Fein, probably in the 80's. It was a Marxist way of putting some sort of objective in vague form that justified all sorts of unreasonable ideas to achieve it.

Well now we have Harriet Harman's Equality Agenda.

But she doesn't mean what you think she means. by equality Labour don't mean equality of each of her Majesty's subjects before the law, they mean the excuse to subvert that very thing.

Examples are starting to pile up and they include:

• Making motorists pay fines for crimes they haven't committed ( the new victims leavy on crimes without victims - ie a stealth tax ).
• Providing grants to some students but expecting the parents of other to pay for their own offspring and those of other - even though the whole point of tertiary education is supposed to be about the future benefits to the individual concerned.
• Putting Equality issues on a par with Education in schools ( making it quite clear that Labour doesn't see schools as being there for education but for indoctrination ).
• Turning the police from a force to fight crime, into a service that will knock at your door to accuse you of hate crimes, take your DNA and attack you for not being diverse enough.

There will be more, much more. Labour believe the state should be a thug bullying its cowered citizens into saying the right things and being afraid of denying its mantras.

Labour are the sworn enemy of aspiration, freedom and justice.

And they intend to pursue their plans to destroy these things under the banner of Equality.

Brown and Obama favour the big banks heavily regulated - I wonder why ?

Nationalisation has until very recently been out, and yet one of the main aims of the socialist has been to control the banks.

Thanks to the mismanagement of Bush and Brown ( with supporting roles from the Middle East and China fuelling the asset bubble all this was built upon ) our banks where challenged in such a way that we could not let them fail.

The socialists ( Obama and Brown via the G20 ) think these means state control of a few large banks that will eventually be instructed what to do ( which is where more regulation will go eventually ).

The free marketer want smaller banks that can go bust without tax payer intervention. ( As argued for by Mervyn King this week )

So its corporatism and socialism vs freedom and the free market. An interesting, if familiar, dividing line ...

New crimes, future crime, future freedom ?

I took the following picture on his mobile phone last week, as I had a few minutes to kill before a meeting. It shows the defunct Woolworths and soon to be defunct Marks and Spencers above in Woking.

But what I wasn't expecting was to be challenged by a security guard and told that you couldn't take pictures inside the shopping centre ( though pictures of shop windows were OK ), but I was.

He was very polite, friendly and even apologetic so I thought there was no point in giving the messenger a hard time.

But this is where things are going. Because you could carry out a crime you are now being prevented from certain actions. The business of photographing police officers is another example. (This will provide an almost universal clause for harassment to be justified of photographers when ever law enforcement want to).

However, it would be churlish not to admit their are future problems. What if people uploaded pictures of police officers on the Web - future face recognition software could provide instant identification and cross referenced the home addresses of such people, leading them wide open to intimidation.

The only problem with this line is that it applies to all of us, and the most likely organisation to do it is the state. Access to state information is being ever increased and we have to assume that criminal or other illegal organisations would find it little trouble to access this information.

The surveillance society isn't going to go away. What we need is a new way of living with it and keeping our freedom. The luddite refusal to accept change isn't working, so what we need is a better legal and dare I say it consitutional frame work.

Quietly, though a standing order sneaked past Parliament our freedom is removed

Whilst everyone was looking the other way the government has vastly expanded its powers to monitor its citizens electronic communications.

The usual Labour half truths about the powers only being used for serious crime and when its proportionate to do so are used. We all know these reassurances don't add up to a hill of beans.

The capability to do this would be very useful for cracking down on descent in a state of emergency situation. Given that Labour has just over a year left are they planning one ?

Will those who surf, say the B_NP or a anti Western Islamic web site find there fired from their jobs ? This information could provide a very powerful profiling tool.

The problem is that we are building the walls and bars of our own incarceration, if a future government ( or the present one ) decides to act as gaoler.

Proposing the arbitrary misuse of power - Labour yet again

So Labour have decided to go for "Dead beat Dads", by yet again re-announcing they are considering taking away driving licenses and passports from Dads who don't pay their child support. ( Shouldn't this be parents ? And if Dad's are so genetically responsible - how come they can't successfully sue for being fooled into bringing up someone else's child ? But I digress as there's a bigger issue at stake here. )

This is how freedom is taken away - with a good excuse. Its to stop Terrorists/Paedophiles/Rapists or as Harriet Harman seems to think of them Men.

You will then see a minister on TV ( and occasionally - shock horror 0- in Parliament ) stating that the powers will only be used for the purpose intended. [ I am amazed how often I hear that argument from Labour politicians - its of course totally false, but until recently the MSM were so tied into "The Project" that they never questioned it.] I leave it as an exercise to the reader to think of at least three examples of this not being the case with anti-terrorism legislation.

So what Labour are spinning they are proposing ( and we have to remember they do just mislead people for headlines quite often - see marching yobs to cash points for details ) is to bypass the courts and the law and have a government agency handing out arbitrary punishment for a reason it thinks is good.

It also assume that these things are "gifts" from the government to be handed out to well behaved citizens.

As we know once the precedent is established it will be embraced and extended by Labour.

Where else could government use these arbitrary powers to withdraw its new grace and favour privileges ? You can be sure they Will think of something soon. At that point a system of justice that has lasted about 800 years will have been castrated ( again you have to suspect its a Harman fantasy).

I'd like to see parents pay for their children, rather than the tax payer. But I want to live in a country where freedom is guaranteed by due process of the law and courts, not subverted by the government.

Government is using gimmicks to overcome its own inability to administer debt collection. It is also either just not able to think issues through in any depth or perhaps deliberately trying to subvert the rule of law.

Also see UK Bubble on this here, she says "This is classic New Labour; it is both authoritarian and congenitially incapable of understanding the deeper problem." That's about right.

James Burdett agrees and also make a point about using the tax system for this sort of debt collection.

How the instruments of the state are turned to oppression

Its often the unintended consequences of legislation and the state that do the real damage. Below is an example of how the systems being set up by the state, incomplete as they are at the moment, are being used to oppress our fellow citizens by the entirely foreseeable misuse by certain groups of people.

( This has its equivalent in IT security where the greatest risk is not intrusion from the outside, but unauthorised activity by people 'trusted by the system').

4 David Davis 4 Freedom: How the instruments of the state are turned to oppression

4 David Davis 4 Freedom: Terrorism -vs- Freedom

This post is worth a minute to read, Tom Paine - of 'The Last Ditch' explains what motivated him to start blogging:

4 David Davis 4 Freedom: Terrorism -vs- Freedom

4 David Davis 4 Freedom: Launch

Anyone interested in an ongoing blogging commentary on/ support for David Davis' campaign to hold Gordon Brown's feet to the fire of liberty ?

If so follow the link below. It would be good to get a group of contributors (including those who support the issue over freedom but not necessarily the Conservatives) and get things flying.

4 David Davis 4 Freedom: Launch

PS Also playing with the blog rolling thing.

Diane Abbott's speech yesterday tells you what you need to know

To get the true picture of the governments methods and motives for the removal of historic freedoms ( civil liberties to any lefties reading ) listen to Diane Abbott's speech in the chamber yesterday - source at They work for you.



Update: Sorry the video seems to have been taken away. However the etxt of the speech is still available at at They work for you.

Also see The Guardian here

If you know of another video link to it please let me know in comments.

Ah - Parliament TV has the speech here - it requires Microsoft media player ( not very democratic eh ? )

Freedom of religion in the UK ?

Would the MCB like to explain why a woman needs police protection, in the UK, just because she has converted from Islam to Christianity ?

Its not just Sudan that has a problem with Islam.

The Times Online has the original article by Ruth Gledhill. It contains the following chilling extract:

The latest threat was a text message from one of her brothers, warning he could not be responsible for his actions if she did not return to Islam.

Hannah said she was looking forward to getting married so she could change her name and escape detection by her family. Not all Muslims in Britain are this extreme, she believes.

"It is representative of some Muslims. I know the Koran says that anyone who goes away from Islam should be killed as an apostate so in some ways my family are following the Koran. They are following Islam to the word. But I do not think every Muslim would actually act on that."

Earlier this year, a Policy Exchange study found that 36 per cent of British Muslims aged between 16 and 24 believed those who converted to another religion should be punished by death.

Update: A further article on these lines is shown here in the Telegraph. It contains the following denunciations by MCB officials - can they be believed I wonder ?

Most leading Muslims in Britain are unequivocal in their denunciation of British Muslim parents who threaten to kill their children for leaving Islam.

Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says that it is "absolutely disgraceful behaviour… In Britain, no Muslim has the right to harm one hair of someone who decides to leave Islam."

Inayat Bunglawala, also a spokesman for the MCB, insists that such behaviour in Britain is "awful and quite wrong. The police should crack down on it."

And yet a significant portion of British Muslims think that such behaviour is not merely right, but a religious obligation: a survey by the think-tank Policy Exchange, for instance, revealed that 36 per cent of young Muslims believe that those who leave Islam should be killed.

There is considerable support, from the Koran and other sacred Islamic texts, for that position - which may explain why, out of the 57 Islamic states in the world today, seven have a legal code that punishes Muslims who leave the religion with death.

Freedom of religion is dying in Britain

After a period of religious conflict in this country Queen Elizabeth I is famously quoted as saying she had "no desire to make windows into men's souls". She understood how to let people with different, but strongly held faiths, coexist and live in peace.

Now we find the freedom to organise your religion in accordance with you conscience is no longer the right of an Englishman. Examples today are:

1. An adjudicator appointed by Exeter University has ruled that is would be okay for a Muslim to become leader of a Christian society ( in this case the CU), as any restriction on membership based on professed faith cannot be allowed. What this in effect means is that any minority religion can be crushed on campus by the majority. It presumably also means all the Christian Union members could join another religious society and use it against the faith is claims to profess. This is just madness - and of course political correctness fuelled by the intolerance and anti-Christian hatred of the National Union of Socialists Students. In other Universities aggressive anti-Christian campaigns have been mounted - of a type no one would dare to carry out against other religions.
2. The Bishop of Hereford has lost an employment tribunal for refusing to employ a man whose views disagree with the teaching and traditions of the church over 2000 years.

Now the courts and Universities decide which parts of the Christian faith are acceptable and legal - when at the same time the law is broken to allow a cow with TB to avoid slaughter and no one dares say anything about Islam.

These measures are all clearly related to left wing politics in the UK and NuLabour in particular. I don't see how any Christian, who professes the faith either of the Church of England or the Catholic church can be a member of or vote for these oppressors of traditional English religious freedom.

Lest we forget 25 years ago

Its worth watching this old ITN film on the Daily Telegraph's web site. Think about how it makes you feel to see British people enslaved in their own country.

Then never forget that feeling, because its the memory of it that will keep us safe. Note the Nazi style suppression of the population and the instant attack on the culture of the islanders. If you want to prevent that happening you need a capable and professional military.

Let us also be thankful that Mrs Thatcher and not Mr Blair was the prime minister at the time.

I have tried to explain the Falkland islands war to friends in Europe and I often mention the picture of Argentine personnel carriers driving up the wrong side of the street past a woman pushing a pram. I explain that that picture created hot and then cold fury in the UK. The Argentines were in a lot of trouble ever afterwards.

The difference between us and the Argentinians was - and continues to be - our attachment to the people of the Falklands.

Incidentally the BBC keeps ending almost every item on the Falklands with a statement that military conflict could not happen again. However there are signs that Argentine special forces may have been on the Islands recently. The islands have been over flown by their air force which also tests out the RAF.( Why does the BBC trot this stuff out - state it as fact - but never justify itself ? )

As I've said before I'm not against an eventual transfer of sovereignty - if the people of the Falklands will accept it and sufficient guarantees that the sort of thing you can see in the film above never occurs again. The current head banging government in Argentina is very unlikely to pull off that particular diplomatic success.

Update: See this essay from an Argentine perspective explaining why Argentina will never gain the Falklands by Professor Carlos Escude. I don;t agree I think the peaceful friendly approach - with a bit of imagination ( think Svalbard / co dominion / Andorra ) could work. My Mother is just back from holiday in Argentina as she has nothing but good things to say about the people she met there. If the Argentine people can reassure that they don't want to colonise the Islands then perhaps there's scope for progress - albeit very slow progress.