Here in the UK we are suffering from an excess of interfering busy-bodies who have
pet theories about how the world should be run. All for our own good, of course, we
cannot be trusted to be in charge of our own lives. No, rather we should all behave
as these unelected control-freaks think we should and be damned grateful that they
are saving us from ourselves. Most of these unspeakable swine work for fake charities
that are really funded by the government to lobby the government on the subject of
their weird ideas and distorted world views in the hope that it will result in a change
of policy in line with the meddlers’ latest whim. These people are always publishing
reports or appearing in the mass media in the hope that if they keep banging on and
on they will eventually be taken seriously and so justify all that money that has
been thrown at them by the government.
I’ll give you some recent examples. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)
is the perfect example of a bunch of self-satisfied pen-pushers who will take any
opportunity to get themselves in the press. Some of their lunacy was reported
on the BBC News website today. After the Christmas day bomber, Mr Abdulmutallab,
hid explosive materials on his body and tried to blow up an aircraft heading to the
USA there has been the usual knee-jerk, ‘something must be done’ reaction from the
government who have committed to installing body scanners at UK airports. “That doesn’t
sound so bad?” you might well be thinking.
The
EHRC realised they could get themselves in the press and show that they have some
point to their petty, whining existence by criticising these scanners. Apparently
the devices risk breaching an individual's right to privacy under the Human Rights
Act. Does that sound convincing? It sounds like a load of tosh to me. They go on to
suggest that body scanners could generate illegal images of children and images of
celebrities that could be leaked online. The BBC News website helpfully provides a
picture of the type generated by these scanners. I’ve reproduced it to the right of
this paragraph. These are characterised by the EHRC as ‘naked’ images which are are
likely to have a negative impact on privacy, especially in relation to certain groups
such as disabled people, the elderly, children and the transgendered community.
It is clear from the body scanner picture that they do not generate pictures of people
looking as if they are naked. They are a fuzzy blur, with no real fine details about
the target’s body visible. You’d have to be pretty desperate to find the opaque images
from these scanners in any way a breach of someone’s privacy, they are just not detailed
enough to tell much about a person’s body.
Moreover, even if body scanners produced a more defined image of someone’s body under
their clothes, it still would not mean that the scans would be child porn as the EHRC
suggests. Nakedness does not equate with pornography and body scanners do not automatically
upload the images they scan to Flickr.
Finally, why should body scanners, with their fuzzy, indistinct images, be a particular
worry for disabled people, the elderly or the transgendered community? It is just
totally vacuous to suggest such groups would have any more difficulty with being scanned
than anyone else. These kind of statements, which try to bring victim status to particular
groups by saying they would be unfairly treated, are just a feeble attempt by the
pressure group involved to make the whatever they are raving about seem a more serious,
iniquitous problem and so justify the idea that ‘something must be done’. There are
legitimate reasons why body scanners might not be a great idea, for example security
experts have claimed that body scanners would only have a 50% chance of spotting the
bomb carried by Mr Abdulmutallab, but the extremely vague possibility that a body
scan may reveal that someone in a dress might have the suggestion of a penis being
in their pants is not one of them.
There are more of these fake charities spewing out countless reports about how only
their pet theories can improve the world and everyone else just cannot be trusted
with anything important. A few days ago I discovered an excellent blog
devoted to debunking the ravings on Don Shenker, chief executive of the government-funded
pseudo-charity Alcohol Concern. Quite why the government should be funding this nutcase
organisation is beyond me, but then the Labour government under the odious Gordon
Brown is only too happy to let his ‘big government’ and the unelected special
interest groups nanny us all.
The desire of the government to interfere with our drinking habits has been much on
my mind of late. The recent report from the Health Select Committee (HSC) into alcohol
consumption was woven from half-truths, manipulated data and unfounded assertions.
These people clearly want to dictate how much we can drink, where we can drink it
and how much it will cost. Most people have a perfectly healthy relationship with
alcohol, I know I do, and yet all of us are being demonised by these jumped up farts
who think they know better than us even if they have to publish reports which are
a tissue of mendacity and duplicity to show they know best. I dropped by a good
beer blog earlier and the author of the site has written a number of articles
which debunk most of the claims in the HSC report. He demonstrates that alcohol
adverts do not encourage under-age drinking, that cutting
overall consumption of alcohol does not necessarily result in a drop in alcohol misuse,
that alcohol
is getting more expensive rather than cheaper as the neo-prohibitionists claim
and much
more. All of these blog posts of his are well worth reading; if you know how the
bastards are trying to mislead you it is easier to stand up for them.
The problem with all of these hideous gits clamouring for their own ideas to be adopted
as government policy is that, even if their most extreme ideas are not implemented,
the propagation of the view that there are problems and ‘something must be done’ will
result in legislation creep. Bit by bit our freedom will be eroded until it will be
impossible to do anything without the government’s express permission. The suggestion
floated recently that adults should have ‘entitlement cards’ that have to be produced
when buying alcohol and act as ration books to control the amount we purchase shows
that this is the aim of some of these nutcases. They want to control us, and unless
we stand up for ourselves and our rights the filthy swine will get their way.
The
cat I had whilst in Oxford, named Thin Cat, died a couple of days ago. I was saddened
to hear of it, but not too surprised as she looked pretty tired and old when I took
a picture of her last Christmas. She had a right to look tired as she was over twenty
years old. A good innings for a cat.
