Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But before you leave and just dismiss me as another paranoid idiot who is being overly dramatic, take an objective view at was has happened in the UK over the last 12 months.
- We held a referendum to break away from the European Union and even though it is written in our most sacred of laws that this cannot happen without a vote in Parliament, our un-elected Prime Minister has said she will do it anyway!
- The government have made no secret of their desire to do away with the European charter of human rights that have protected us since the end of World War II and to replace it with their own version!
- The government has finally passed it's Snoopers Charter which will force internet companies to keep ALL YOUR browsing history for 12 months.
- Finally they have begun to censor what you can see on the internet, banning what they deem "non-conventional".
This is not some Illuminati conspiracy, this is actually happening! Do these sound like the actions of a European democratic society?
We would expect this in countries such as China or North Korea but in Britain?? Really?
Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum this should be extremely alarming, the people of the UK are going to be monitored in a way not seen since before the Berlin wall came down. However, what I find most distressing is the sheer apathy that this has been met with in the UK. People simply don't care! They are more outraged that Ed Balls remained on a televised dancing competition for too long than they are that the government is now spying on everything they do online.
"I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to hide" is the standard response I have heard, but THAT IS NOT THE POINT!!! The answer should be "I am doing nothing wrong so why the hell are you spying on me?" The UK is supposed to be a free society where people have a right to privacy and are not constantly monitored on the off chance they break the law!
"It's for your own good" they tell us, in order to protect us from terrorism. Now this is complete nonsense on several levels.
Firstly when you take into account the actual death toll from terrorist attacks in the UK since the turn of the millennium it is 52 people from the July 7th bombings, Lee Rigby and Jo Cox, although the media are hesitating to call the killing of Jo Cox a terrorist act because the killer was not a Muslim but that is another story. So I make that 54 people killed by terrorism in 16 years, lets compare that to deaths of women at the hands of their partners. The average is said to be 2 deaths each week so that makes a total of 1664 women killed in their own home since 2000. What has the government done to protect women from the very real terror of domestic violence? Or let's compare terrorism to road traffic fatalities, 1713 people in 2013 alone, has the government forced car manufacturers to limit the speed of vehicles? The recent proposed sugar tax that aimed at forcing food and drinks manufacturers to reduce the sugar content of their products was booted out because it was deemed too interfering or "nanny state". In other words the government doesn't think it's their place to tell companies what to put in their products even though nearly half the population is overweight! However, they deem it absolutely necessary to monitor every website you visit, every WhatsApp and tweet you send and every Facebook group you join, all in the name of protecting us from something that has killed 54 people in nearly quarter of a century in a country of over 60 million!
What would the reaction have been if in the 70s and 80s the government had said they were bugging everyone's phone or intercepting people's mail in order to protect us from the IRA? I'd imagine there would have been hell up and rightly so, but we have become so politically disengaged that the news was met with a collective shrug of the shoulders.
Secondly, will monitoring everyone's internet really make us safer from terrorism? Who is most likely to plaster their love for the jihad and their plans to cause mayhem all over their Facebook page? The boss of Islamic State or just some idiot looking for attention? The real terrorists will be deep down in the dark net using encrypted messages that this snooper's charter will do nothing to stop. It will be the equivalent of going to a club in Miami during the 80s, arresting the small time coke dealer in there and expecting Pablo Escobar to suddenly fall in your lap! Any arrest made is unlikely to be anyone who is high up in the terrorist networks and personally I feel the loss of my privacy is far too high a price to pay.
The bottom line is that terrorism is not the threat that we are continually told it is and even if it was, this law will do nothing to stop it.
Another alarming fact is the timing of when the government pushed this law through parliament. Whilst the world's media was frothing at the mouth at the news Donald Trump won the election and everybody was competing on Facebook to show who was the most outraged at this news before returning to selfies and cat videos, our wonderful government passed the law that allowed them to look at all your internet history. If this government really had our best interests at heart it was rather a strange moment to push a law through parliament, one might think that they wanted to make sure it would receive as little media attention as possible!
And lastly, who exactly is on the other end of this snooper's charter? Who will be looking at our data? We have to trust that they will be competent and or trustworthy which if you look at the history of totalitarian governments they are usually neither! And make no mistake this law is the action of a totalitarian state, the last European country to have their citizens under this level of surveillance was the DDR (East Germany), who were not exactly known for their love of democracy and free speech!
Who should we really fear? The terrorists? Even though deaths from terrorism are dramatically lower than they were 30 years ago (1) ? Or a government with an un-elected leader who has just passed a law that now turns the UK into a truly Orwellian society?
Now if monitoring your internet traffic wasn't bad enough the UK government are going to decide what you can and can't look at on the internet and their first target is pornography. They are going to ban any website that shows "unconventional sex", now what exactly is deemed conventional or otherwise is anyone's guess. The completely natural female ejaculation is almost certainly gone as it was recently banned from porn movies filmed in the UK, so I wouldn't be surprised if anything other than a married couple (man and woman obviously) in missionary with the lights off is banned!
Now put aside your opinion on pornography for one second, this is not drug trafficking or arms dealing, the porn business is a totally legal and regulated industry that involves consenting adults, we are not talking about banning the truly awful stuff that is out there, that is already banned by the way, we are talking about censorship and you not being able to look at anything that the government deems "not normal". And where will they stop? Will any movie/song/videogame be banned because the government doesn't like it and they think you are incapable of being able to separate real life from fantasy? Female ejaculation is banned from films and websites, will it be banned from your home too? Spanking is another past time deemed "unconventional", if somebody enjoys spanking or being spanked with other consenting adults who are the government to tell you its wrong and what does this spell for shops such as Anne Summers who sell whips and bondage devices?
Who should we really fear? The terrorists? Even though deaths from terrorism are dramatically lower than they were 30 years ago (1) ? Or a government with an un-elected leader who has just passed a law that now turns the UK into a truly Orwellian society?
Now if monitoring your internet traffic wasn't bad enough the UK government are going to decide what you can and can't look at on the internet and their first target is pornography. They are going to ban any website that shows "unconventional sex", now what exactly is deemed conventional or otherwise is anyone's guess. The completely natural female ejaculation is almost certainly gone as it was recently banned from porn movies filmed in the UK, so I wouldn't be surprised if anything other than a married couple (man and woman obviously) in missionary with the lights off is banned!
Now put aside your opinion on pornography for one second, this is not drug trafficking or arms dealing, the porn business is a totally legal and regulated industry that involves consenting adults, we are not talking about banning the truly awful stuff that is out there, that is already banned by the way, we are talking about censorship and you not being able to look at anything that the government deems "not normal". And where will they stop? Will any movie/song/videogame be banned because the government doesn't like it and they think you are incapable of being able to separate real life from fantasy? Female ejaculation is banned from films and websites, will it be banned from your home too? Spanking is another past time deemed "unconventional", if somebody enjoys spanking or being spanked with other consenting adults who are the government to tell you its wrong and what does this spell for shops such as Anne Summers who sell whips and bondage devices?
Instead of educating our youngsters about safe sex, respect and consent we are simply going to censor things, and when young people want to watch the censored porn, which they will because banning something always has the effect of making it more desirable, they will simply go onto the dark net and what will be waiting for them there? All the illegal stuff that is not on legitimate porn sites, so the actual violent stuff, child porn, as well as drug dealers, arms dealers and terrorist recruiters.
So aside from being the first step into a North Korean style internet it will have the exact opposite effect as to what the government are telling us will happen.
So aside from being the first step into a North Korean style internet it will have the exact opposite effect as to what the government are telling us will happen.
As I said before this is not some conspiracy theory, I am not talking about secret reptiles that control the world, I am talking about one of the major European democracies ignoring their own laws, censoring the internet, removing the charter for human rights and recording everything you look at on the internet via your phone, tablet or computer. If only people cared as much about their own privacy and freedom as they did about fabric closing, maybe then we would see some real opposition to this government.
Maybe its because we have never had a Franco or a Stalin in charge of us? Maybe we have taken our freedom for granted so we don't recognise when something alarming has happened because it has never happened to us before. We have always been taught in school that we have fought for freedom in the face of tyranny. So we go on assuming that we live in a free society.
Every year remembrance Sunday moves away from a sombre day of quiet reflection of the horrors of war and towards a day of nationalist hysteria, but do we ever really stop to think about what those people who fought and died were fighting against?
Every year remembrance Sunday moves away from a sombre day of quiet reflection of the horrors of war and towards a day of nationalist hysteria, but do we ever really stop to think about what those people who fought and died were fighting against?
For the Second World War at least, those people died fighting against a regime who controlled every aspect of their citizen's lives and now we are letting our own government take that freedom away from us.
Let's wake up and do something before it's too late and the next knock at the door you hear is the police coming to take you away because you are "non-conventional".
Reference
1. https://www.statista.com/chart/4093/people-killed-by-terrorist-attacks-in-western-europe-since-1970/
Let's wake up and do something before it's too late and the next knock at the door you hear is the police coming to take you away because you are "non-conventional".
Reference
1. https://www.statista.com/chart/4093/people-killed-by-terrorist-attacks-in-western-europe-since-1970/
