Cameron’s Speech in Milton Keynes: FAIL.
May 26th, 2009Cameron has just delivered his speech in Milton Keynes, and the Daily Mail has an article on it.
Let’s see shall we?
An end to ‘top-down authoritarianism’
authoritarianism that is bottom up instead of top down is still authoritarianism. FAIL.
Education:
Take power out of councils’ hands and give it to parents
End state monopoly of state education
Any suitable organisation can set up a new school
Parents can send child to different school if unhappy
new extra payment for children from poorest families
And ‘enshrine the rights of Home Educators’ is missing from that list. As is enshrining the rights of parents. Also, the scrapping of ContactPoint is not anywhere mentioned here is it? How can you return power to parents if you COMPEL them to be listed on an Orwellian Database that is made to work against them, violating the sanctity of the family, privacy and everything else bad that ContactPoint does? FAIL.
Housing:
local community to decide size and shape of their area
new local housing trusts giving neighborhoods power to build houses they want
planning permission granted if agreement on local level
Once again, the local community, a collective, cannot have the power to say what you can and cannot do on your own land. If Britain is to be a free country, then what you do on your property is your business, as long as it does not interfere with anyone else’s life or property. FAIL.
Local government:
cut back on central regulation and targets
end central ring-fencing of local budgets
publication of spending over £25,000 online
local referendum on any excessive tax increases
keep proceeds on any activity that boost local economic growth
new general power of competence to act without government’s permission
directly elected mayors
policing under local democratic control
Local referendum on tax increases? So the collective can decide to steal more as long as the majority vote for it? FAIL.
“Policing under local democratic control”. Does this mean that if the local community wants smoking in pubs, speed limits on roads, an end to ‘drug’ prohibition etc etc, that they can have a police force that will only enforce the laws that the local community agrees on?!! WIN!
Europe and Justice
redistribute power from EU to Britain and judges to the people
referendum on Lisbon Treaty
law to require referendum on any further transfer of power to Brussels
negotiate return of powers and greater scrutiny of European legislation
British bill of rights to strengthen liberties
proper democratic accountability over creation of new rights.
British bill of rights to strengthen liberties WIN. Although how this line is worded should give everyone pause. Rights are absolute, not conditional. A bill of rights that lists conditional rights like the German Constitution is going to be complete FAIL. The right to privacy, the right to property, freedom to travel and all the other rights that are well understood and which have been enshrined in the constitutions of other countries should be in any bill of rights that Britain adopts. I fear that it is not likely that anyone in Britain today who is currently in a position to make it happen, has the spiritual and intellectual purity to write such a document. In any case, I mark it as ‘WIN’ because it is the right noise.
As for the rest of it, Britain should not be in the EU, so everything else on that list is in that block FAIL.
So, it looks like Cameron is full of FAIL. No surprise there.
The Daily Mail article title is:
Cameron promises fixed-term Parliaments under Tories as he unveils ‘manifesto’ to tackle ‘Orwellian state’
There is no mention in this article about anything to do with the Orwellian state; i.e. the NIR, ID Cards, ContactPoint and the insane number of networked CCTV cameras in the UK.
Like I said before:
Shifting the the responsibility for running the nanny state from the centre and distributing this vile power to the regions does not solve the actual problem, which is that people are tired of being interfered with by power itself.
[…]
Can you think of anything worse than being under the thumb of non cosmopolitan people with the power of the Orwellian State to back them up? We know what it looks like, thanks to New Labour; witness the recent outrages of Councils using Anti Terrorism laws to spy on the people they are ‘serving’:
- Poole council spies on family over school claim
- March of the dustbin Stasi: Half of councils use anti-terror laws to watch people putting rubbish out on the wrong day
- Spy law ‘used in dog fouling war’
- Nine in ten of 10,000 spied on by councils using anti-terrorism powers are innocent
- Anti-terrorism laws used to spy on noisy children
- Council uses terror laws to spy on underage smokers
- Council uses terror law to spy on shirker in shower
And there you have it; just a smattering of the insanity we can expect to be amplified by the amount of power devolved to the local level.
Now take a look at this:
State recruits an army of snoopers with police-style powers
A growing army of private security guards and town hall snoopers with sweeping police-style powers is being quietly established, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Under a Home Office-run scheme, people such as park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards receive the powers if they undergo training, and pay a small fee to their local police force.
Their powers include issuing £60 fines for truancy and dropping litter, and being able to demand a person’s name and address on the street.
Under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme, the number of civilians wearing a special badge, and a uniform approved by the local chief constable, has rocketed by almost 30 per cent in a year and there are now 1,406.
Critics claim Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is quietly seeking to create a third-tier within the ‘policing family’, with even less training and accountability than the controversial Police Community Support Officers.
The civilians are known as Accredited Persons, but they have been nicknamed ‘Jacqui Smith’s Irregulars’. The only significant difference between them and PCSOs is that they do not have the power to detain a suspect. Instead, they have to summon police.
Councils and other public sector organisations must pay between £300 and £315 to be accredited to the scheme, and between £35 to £90 per employee.
[…]
Phil Booth, of the NO2ID privacy campaign, said: ‘This sharp increase in Jacqui Smith’s Irregulars makes you wonder what her policing ambitions are.’
[…]
My emphasis.
Think about that; park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards are going to be able to give you an on the spot fine for TRUANCY. How are they going to know wether or not you and your child are truant? Why, they will consult ContactPoint in real-time, phone the school your child is attending and ask if you have the school’s permission (in itself, utterly absurd) to be away from school. That is why they have given access to ContactPoint to so many people; in the context of this, it all makes sense.
This is what Cameron has utterly failed to address.
Unless the apparatus of the Orwellian State is removed in its entirety, the reins of authoritarianism will simply be handed over to other, even more brainless people.
The first group of people in the right place to stand up and say this will collect the light of the incandescent rage that is coming off of the British public, and that light will turn them into a shining beacon around which everyone on this island will rally.