It is as we predicted; the promised Great Reform Bill was just another sideshow. Nick Clegg blows it out of the water today, with this laughable drivel.

Tongs at the ready…

This morning Nick Clegg delivered a speech asking the public how they want the Government to redress the balance between the citizen and the state.

This morning I want to talk about freedom.

All ears.

For too long new laws and regulations have taken away people’s freedoms, interfered in everyday life, and made it difficult for businesses to get by.
The state has crept further and further into people’s homes, the places they work, their private lives.
That intrusion is wrong; it’s illiberal; it’s disempowering and it’s going to change.

All true, except for the last part. But we have already said that.

This government is putting freedom under the spotlight in a way the previous government never did.

Actually, by their inexcusable abuses, they forced everyone to think about the true nature of rights, right and wrong, ethics and the role of the state. New Labour are responsible for a huge uptake in Libertarian ideas, and one LibDem Councillor giving up that unethical party.

We want the British people have their say on where the state should step in, and where it should butt out.

This is entirely illegitimate. This is democracy; two wolves and a sheep deciding on what is for dinner. A ruthless bully boy thick necked Fabian Socialist northerner with ice cold ambition for blood, and two fat monsters deciding on who gets to kidnap your children. What the mob wants should not be law. PERIOD. This goes against every idea of the rights of the individual to his own life and property. Mob rule is UNCIVILISED.

I sense GREAT FAIL in you!

We are asking people for ideas on restoring hard won liberties that have been lost…

Ok, but as we said before, what are the conditions? And at the risk of repeating myself, what the MOB wants does not make RIGHT.

On repealing unnecessary laws that have no place on the statute book…

And on stripping away the excessive regulation that stops businesses from innovating.

Define ‘unnecessary’. Define ‘excessive’.

Your views will shape directly the steps we take.

And here is the first caveat; the views of the mob will SHAPE the steps; this is not, “we are your servants, and therefore we obey.”

It is a radically different approach.

Because this Coalition trusts people to get on with their lives…

This is wrong headed; it is not the place of a servant to trust that the master can ‘get on with his life’. Trust is something that the MASTER gives to the SERVANT conditionally; if the trust is broken, the servant is FIRED. What Mr. Clegg has demonstrated obliquely is that he thinks that he is your MASTER.

It’s probably the thing Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have most in common.
We don’t think every problem can be fixed by passing a new law.

Translation, “we do not have the power (yet) to fix everything, and so therefore, we leave to you what we cannot now control.”

We understand that Whitehall doesn’t have all of the answers, and doesn’t have a monopoly on the best ideas.

Translation, “we do not yet have all the answers, and so in the interim, we defer on matters that we do not yet have answers for.”

So gone are the days of know-it-all, do-it-all government.

They never existed!

Because a liberal society, a prosperous society, is one where citizens and businesses have the space and power to thrive.

True, but what is the nature of that space, and what do you, Nick Clegg, have to do with any of it?

Today I am asking the people of Britain to help us to begin building that society.
Protecting civil liberties, repealing unnecessary laws, and cutting restrictive red tape.

Here it comes…

Civil liberties

First, civil liberties.
One of the Coalition’s immediate acts was to halt ID cards.

But not for foreigners, who are second class sub humans, Apartheid style. This is FAIL for the reasons outlined here.

Plans are underway to restrict the storage of innocent people’s DNA; to properly regulate CCTV; to restore the right to non-violent protest; to protect trial by jury… To end the scandal of children being fingerprinted at school without their parent’s consent.

If the ID Card is anything to go by, all of these will be piecemeal measures at best.

The vetting and barring scheme for people wanting to work or volunteer with children is being scaled back to common sense levels.

You see? TOTAL FAIL.

That scheme should be SCRAPPED in its entirety. Its basic premise is fundamentally flawed. It is inherently immoral, dangerous, corrosive and evil. The only result of keeping will be an indefinite continuation of exactly the sort of ‘society’ that Clegg claims to hate. There are only two conclusions we can come to in this; he is either plain stupid, or he is he lying about hating the nanny / police state. One of those has to be true, because keeping the Barring scheme in any form is completely indefensible.

And we are looking again at counter-terrorism and security legislation to make sure it can provide the necessary powers to the police and the security services…
Without inhibiting the freedoms it’s meant to protect.

There is nothing to look at. At a time when the Irish were regularly detonating bombs in London, there was no need for any of this. The simple answer is to brutally cull all ‘Terror legislation’ that was enacted between the early ’70s and now. That would restore some semblance of sanity without any need for thinking. The only reason why these people want to ‘look again’ is because they have won hard fought totalitarian tools that they are loathe to give up. That is the only possible rationale for stalling or equivocating about this.

As someone who has spent years campaigning for these changes, I am enormously proud to see them in motion.

This is the same mentality of Blair; ‘only a small number will be affected by these laws’ was his rationale for his totalitarian edicts. By not fully removing ID Cards, Clegg is using the same logic; only the brown people will be affected, and so that is good enough for me. Completely shameful!

But I want us to go further.

Why not COMPLETE WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY PROMISED FIRST!

Our ambition is to create a society where no law-abiding individual ever feels intimidated by the state, just for going about their day-to-day business.

Someone already had that ambition ‘Nick’ and his plan is better than yours because it doesn’t include you.

Where people aren’t cast under suspicion simply because of who they are, or where they’re from.

Astonishing. ID Cards for foreigners are going to be retained by them, and they can say this with a straight face? ID Cards for foreigners means that people are going to be targeted precisely because of who they are or where they are from. Absolutely disgusting!

But that means redoubling our efforts to restore the great British traditions of freedom and fairness.

The culture of snooping and mistrust has become so ingrained that we must tackle it with renewed vigour.
Don’t accept it.

WHOA there Nick, that sounds like a call to civil disobedience!

And what about that ‘preacher‘, who your government just barred from entering the UK; a frail man with pencil thin arms and spectacles, who everyone can watch on YouTube at will to make up their own minds wether or not his ideas have any value – this man; should he and the free people who want to accept a speech from him for their own money now ‘not accept it’ and smuggle him in? (And by the way, that man has MILLIONS of views on the YouTubes. Banning him is utter insanity and FAIL.)

Just what the HECK are you saying?

If you’re sick of the state prying into your private affairs, tell us.
If you feel harassed when you haven’t done anything wrong, tell us.
If there are ways that we can better protect your dignity, tell us.
And tell us what you want us to do about it too.

OK, we tell you that you may no longer restrict what we can or cannot ingest at any time or in any place. We are going to take you at your word and simply, “Not accept it”.

Now what? Are you just simply going to relent and fade away back into the night? I think not.

Unnecessary laws

This isn’t just about the laws that make you feel under threat.
This is also about the laws that serve no real purpose.
Obsolete rules that are out of date or that are duplicated by other laws.

Prohibition is obsolete, unworkable, a drain on everyone’s resources and time, bad for everyone’s health and completely immoral and unjustifiable.

It ends NOW.

Take seditious libel – a 17th Century offence, under which writing something contemptuous about the government could be punished by life imprisonment.
Not only do such laws make a mockery of our justice system…
Just having them on our statute book gives succour to regimes in other parts of the world that use similar offences to restrict freedom of speech.
That’s why I was delighted to see campaigners successfully work to get those particular laws abolished last year.

That was last year; what have you done for me lately?

And there are other laws that are now completely obsolete.
It’s a little know fact, for example, that under old laws that are still in place, failing to report a grey squirrel in your back garden is technically a criminal offence.
That’s one I think we could probably do without.

Who cares what you think or want? It is what the public want and their liberty that counts, not what you ‘think’ anyone can do with or without. And by listing all these arcane and patently absurd laws you skirt around the real issues of liberty, rights and power.

We need to work through legislation to identify laws we don’t need.
Looking, also, at how they work on the ground.
And, my colleague, Eric Pickles, will shortly be asking Councillors and Council staff to identify outmoded, outdated and obsolete secondary legislation which could be cut down to size.

The same councils, that with total unanimity and with a single voice, claimed that they needed to be able to enter people’s homes to interrogate their children without the parents present? Now you are being SILLY.

On laws that have fallen into disuse, some people may ask ‘what’s the point?’
Why bother getting worked up about a law that just sits there and does no any harm?
But I say: that misses the point.
Squirrels aside, whether seemingly harmless or not, laws that serve no purpose obscure what legislation is for in the first place.
Over the last decade thousands of new laws have been added to the statute book.
Thousands of new ways of turning us into criminals.
Laws for the sake of laws – as if every problem can be solved by an Act of Parliament.

But it doesn’t work; it’s a distraction.

FALSE it is not a distraction in any way; it is YOU that is using it as a distraction.

The purpose of the law is to protect and empower citizens.

FALSE.

The purpose of the law is NOT to empower citizens, the law’s sole purpose is to control and restrain the state.

That is the only time the state ever has the right to restrict your behaviour.

The state has no right WHATSOEVER to restrict your behaviour at ANY TIME. If you are doing something, like committing suicide, that has nothing to do with anyone else but you, the state has no ‘right’ to stop you or to interfere with you in any way. This is absolutely pure LibDem FAIL on STEROIDS… which, by the way, you have every right to shoot into yourself until you look like this.

As soon as we forget that we open the door to state intrusion.

State intrusion begins when Nick Clegg asserts that the state has a ‘right’ to restrict behaviour. He clearly doesn’t know that rights are, where they come from and why his beloved state doesn’t have any.

We lose that kneejerk indignation we should all feel when the state sticks its nose in where it doesn’t belong.
And that complacency is dangerous.

And so to end the habit of compulsive law-making, all new criminal offences and civil wrongs will now be specially screened.
They will only come into effect if we can demonstrate that they are needed, that there is no alternative, and that existing penalties are not sufficient.
And, because no one has been keeping track of new offences, we will start to keep count, making that information public.

No one has been paying attention in any case. They simply get on with whatever they are getting on with, and take no heed of you and your fellow totalitarians. Look at the huge ‘drug’ industry and the associated consumption as an example. Literally millions of people regularly do it, without any consequences of any kind. Anyone who thinks that the population cares a whit for what Nick Clegg thinks on these matters is not on the same planet as everyone in the western hemisphere.

Regulation

Third, regulation.
Regulation is enormously important; not least in protecting employees and ensuring standards.

Utter rubbish. The state is absolutely not needed to ensure standards or protect employees. This is simply not a fact.

But we have to get the balance right.

No, you do NOT. What people do in the privacy of their own homes, the private transactions they make on and with their private property, what they sell in their private businesses, IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. There is no ‘balance to get right’, and these are the same words that the last government used to justify entering people’s homes to interview children away from their parents without any cause whatsoever. More fail from the masters of FAIL.

Too many of the business and voluntary groups I meet tell me that they feel overwhelmed with forms to fill out and boxes to tick…

They should follow your advice: “Don’t accept it.” Don’t fill out the forms. Do not comply. Do not engage. Do not respond. Do not obey.

Whether it’s a fledgling business looking to take on more staff…
Or a charity struggling with the complex record checks their volunteers have to undergo.
And too many ordinary people are burdened with costly bureaucracy…
Which is why, within weeks of coming into office, the Coalition scrapped Home Information Packs – pointless red tape that was hampering the housing market.

And what of the useless eco fascist energy rating? Oh, I know! “Don’t accept it!”

We need regulation that makes sense.

No, ‘we’ need to be left alone to regulate ourselves as we see fit.

Regulation that we can afford and that people can have confidence in.

Wrong. The price is irrelevant, and confidence in regulations do not make them effective.

Ensuring businesses and organisations are run fairly, offering high quality services…

And here we go again, with the infuriating misuse of the word ‘fair’ businesses are PRIVATE entities that should be run as their OWNERS see fit. It is not your place to mandate or legislate ‘fairness’.

But also allowing them the space to be creative and to adapt to changing circumstances.

‘ALLOWING’? Who are yo to allow or disallow anything whatsoever? “Don’t accept it!” hmmmm I’m beginning to like that phrase!

According to the British Chamber of Commerce, the cumulative cost to business added since 1998 has now reached £88 billion.
That is an unacceptable drain on the entrepreneurs and innovators we need to get the economy back on track.

Today, our new Reducing Regulation Committee, chaired by Vince Cable, is meeting for the first time.
Their immediate task will be to look at all of the regulations approved by the previous government which are due to be introduced this year, to establish whether or not they are really necessary.

There is nothing to look at; scrap them all wholesale and save yourself the wasted effort.

They will be central in helping to develop a one-in-one-out rule.

All out and none in should be the rule.

Ministers intending to bring in a new regulation will have to get rid of an existing one.

This is totally ridiculous.

If we accept the initial premise that regulation is sometimes necessary, then if there is a numeric cap, it is clear that at some time, either the cap will need to be raised or ‘people are going to get hurt because we were not there to protect them’. By saying that there should be a numeric cap, Clegg is conceding that no matter what the circumstances are, the state should have no power to increase regulation. The libertarians say that the cap should be a ZERO, and by his own logic, he is confirming that we are correct; why should the state have ANY regulatory power at all, if the limit to its remit is an arbitrary number completely divorced from circumstances or an apparent ‘threat to society’?

Can these people think at all?!

They will also need to convince the Reducing Regulation Committee that their proposed regulation is necessary.
That’s a fundamental shift in Whitehall: regulation will be the last, rather than the first, resort.
And I would also like to highlight the very good work that is going on in Defra, where an industry-led Task Force has been set up to reduce the burden on the farming community specifically.

Farmers know what is best for their property, and this is another simple matter of property rights. The state has no right to interfere with farmers and their private property. PERIOD. Defra should be abolished immediately.

More broadly, we are looking closely at the timing and implementation of new EU rules so that British businesses are not at a disadvantage compared to their competitors abroad.

British business will be the most competitive in the world if Clegg and his merry band of capital destroyers went about the proper business of government, instead of insanely interfering with everyone’s affairs. People would flock to the UK to set up factories, capital would flow in by the trillion if only they would RELENT.

But the key to all of this is you.

True and false. It is up to everyone to “Don’t accept it!”, and not to wait for Clegg to come to his absent senses. If everyone simply said we “Don’t accept it!” Clegg would have no choice but to throw up his hands and join in the pool party.

You – the small business owner, the social entrepreneur, the volunteer.
You know better than government departments, better even than Vince, what rules and regulations are holding you back.
The whole point of this exercise is to get Whitehall out of the driving seat.
We want to know where regulation works, where it doesn’t, and what we can do to help.

I have an even better idea; why should anyone wait for you to be told anything at all? Why doesn’t everyone just do what is right for them (without breaking the two principles of Natural Law, “Do not encroach on other persons or their property.” and “Do all you have agreed to do”) and get on with what they need to get on with? Why should anyone have to wait for YOU to make any sort of decision or appraisal?

What does any of this have to do with YOU?!

A new kind of engagement

And it isn’t just the outcome of this process that is important, it is the process itself.

The outcome is the only thing that matters, and that outcome should be the end of the state.

This is the most ambitious online crowd sourcing exercise ever attempted by any British government.
It is an entirely new way for government to engage with people.

The only act that is required here is disengagement.

One we want to make a habit of…
And we will shortly be asking for your input into how we improve our public services and make savings to help get the public finances in order.

Sadly, your insane Keynsian drivel, soaked as it is in the absurd ideas of ‘fariness’ and dusted by the anthrax of statism represents an infinite and impenetrable barrier to common sense, Austrian Economics, (the TRUE economics), Natural Law, Ethics and Rights. Without an understanding, even a cursory one, of all these things, you are FAIL.

Something we started last week when the Prime Minister and I wrote to 6 million public sector workers…
Doctors, teachers, nurses – people on the front line who know best.

Our aim is for the best suggestions on freedoms and regulations to be included in parliamentary bills, this year and in the future.
As for what they’ll look like, I don’t know.
The government may have got the ball rolling, but now the debate is totally out of our control.

If only!

We don’t know what ideas are going to end up on the site; how they will spread across other sites and forums; which of them will capture imaginations and which won’t.
If a specific reform is popular, Ministers won’t be duty bound to act on it, but we won’t be able to hide it either; it will be right there for everyone to see.

And that, my friends, is the ultimate fail.

Nick Clegg is not a public servant.

Public servants are duty bound to obey their masters. If the masters want a repeal of all prohibition laws, then the dutiful servant is duty bound to act on this order. You, Nick Clegg, have no rights when it comes to controlling other people, you only have power. By disobeying the will of the public, and by demonstrating that you do not care what anyone thinks through this insane pandora’s box exercise, you are going down a road that will expose to all and sundry that you are not a public servant at all, but are in fact, no different to a suave and slick, smooth talking slave master.

And, yes, there will be clashes – arguments over which ideas are good and which are bad; over what we can do and what we can’t.

There is nothing that you cannot do when it comes to removing legislation. It is in fact a matter of what you won’t do, not what you can’t.

But it is precisely because this process is so unpredictable that it is worth doing at all.
Real democracy is unspun; it is the raucous, unscripted debates that always throw up the best ideas.

Democracy is evil, and all of this is proof of that. Democracy is violence, the stupid ruling the smart, the small being crushed by the mob. It is the will of idiots made into power. It is the cause of every problem that people face today.

Conclusion

The Your Freedom project is part of our bigger political reform agenda.
It is one of a series of ways of transferring power away from government and the state and into your hands.

FAIL. The power that government has is illegitimate, and should be nullified, not transferred to anyone.

Part of the most radical shake up of our politics for decades.
The other steps we are taking – include, among other things, fixing parliamentary terms, giving people a choice over the system they use to elect their MPs, reforming the House of Lords, introducing the power of recall, getting big money out of politics…

All fluff and all irrelevant.

And I will be making further announcements on some of that next week.

But today, let me end by saying this:
This government is determined to give people back their freedom.

It is not in the gift of government to give something to you that already belongs to you. The only thing they can do is get out of the way and stop the violence. Nick Clegg is not about to do this, not at any time nor for any reason.

But we cannot do it without you.

WE CAN DO EVERYTHING WITHOUT YOU NICK.

So be demanding about your liberty, be insistent about your rights…
This is about your freedom, and this is your chance to have your say.

Thank you.

Nick Clegg’s Website

I think ‘we’ should all take a que from the best line in this statement, “Don’t accept it!”.

No one should accept anything anymore. No matter what it is that is being done to you…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you you not to smoke in your own pub, or to close at any time not of your choosing…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you not to grow Marijuana in your own garden…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you to pay a ‘TV License’…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you that you MUST attend school…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you have to pay a congestion charge or pay for the ‘National Debt’…

“Don’t accept it!”.

If they tell you to pay 20% VAT…

“Don’t accept it!”.

Need I go on?

The Pandora’s box is now not only open, the lid has been taken off. If you do not take Clegg at his word and “Don’t accept it!” then you have only yourself to blame for your continued status as cattle.

A quick look at the submissions that are pouring in shows that some people want to use the state to do MORE violence or varying degrees lessening of violence:

Democratically electing a head of state, making us all more free.

This guy is smoking the drugs everyone wants legalised. FAIL

Bring back Call Centres to the UK

Forcing business to do what is not economical? FAIL.

Legalise and Tax Cannabis

Legalize it, but then allow the state to steal money off of its production and sale? FAIL

Make access to the Internet a fundamental human right

Complete and utter FAIL. And you know why.

Outlaw corporal punishment in the household.

Force the state into people’s homes? FAIL.

Castrate Paedophiles

Bring back the death penalty? This is fail!

Change CRB Regulations Slightly

Slightly pregnant? FAIL!

You see what I mean? The mob wants VIOLENCE. They want to tell other people what to do, to have money stolen from them. They are irrational, illogical and their demands are illegitimate.

Who is to say which of these should and should not be followed? This is the classic example of two wolves.

All FAIL.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Idiocracy, Post Tipping Point, Someone Stupid Said, TC TI KB.