Ignore, if you will, the unpleasant story which the Guardian reporter is telling; where he, along with the Washington Post, is exposing the huge amount of law-breaking by both the NSA and GCHQ. Ignore, as well, the fact that all this stems from an illegal act by Edward Snowden, when he betrayed the trust given him by ‘whistleblowing’ about the secret courts in the USA which demanded that Internet giants such as Yahoo and Google had no recourse but to supply the spies with their customers information.

Concentrate, instead on the fact of which we know; which is that a Brazilian national, David Miranda, was threatened and bullied, totally illegally, into supplying access passwords for laptop and mobile phones. Threatened with jail if he did not comply! We also know that the top civil servant Sir Jeremy Heywood went to the Guardian to bully them into destroying computer hard drives, under the gaze of shadowy figures from GCHQ.

And we now know that the orders for this totally illegal operation came from David Cameron himself.

We are told that one man’s will, and one viewpoint, are to prevail over all the images available to the whole of the United Kingdom. Forget, if you will, the alleged reasons for this draconian ban; because, weasel words aside that is what it will be! I think that the alleged targets of Cameron’s anger and ‘dismay’; namely online child abuse, child pornography and ‘rape sites’ are, collectively, an abhorrent issue, and one which all normal people would recoil from in disgust.

But take, if you will, one step further down the road where, for the ‘best reasons in the world’, either the present slimeball masquerading as our Prime Minister or another from a Party with a great deal more history in authoritative ideas of control and surveillance, namely the Labour Party, takes these steps against freedom of thought. The first step, namely the acceptance of a Diktat, no matter how well-intentioned, has been accepted almost without a murmur. Also remember that this Prime Minister hasn’t been elected by you, the voter. He has firstly been elected by a majority of his Party M.P.s; he had then, because of the lack of a Parliamentary majority, to stitch up a Coalition with the leader of the Lib-Dems, who got to where he was based mainly on viewer perceptions of three political debates on television. During that stitch-up process, he was forced to ditch many policies which formed part of the Tory Party manifesto.

So perhaps now, for whatever reason or circumstance, he decides that all of the United Kingdom will watch, whenever they switch on their computers, a five minute celebratory broadcast of the triumphs of the Tory Party in Government; before being able to surf the Web, check their e-mails, or whatevr else they wish. And he now has the power to do just that. Forget the illusion that we live in a democracy, we don’t! We have literally no ‘say’ in how our taxes are spent, we have no ‘say’ about how the many institutions of Government are run, and we have no idea about how vast amounts of our money are squandered. We live in an age where we either ‘toe the line’ and pay up without a murmur; or a squad of uniformed heavies from the local TSG  branch of our Gestapo comes calling with a warrant for our arrest.

Once any politician grasps the power of deciding what we don’t watch, and more importantly what we do watch, that is the beginning of the long slope towards authoritarian dictatorship; and ‘don’t you worry your tiny little minds’  it is all being introduced for the best possible reasons!

Some time ago, I posted upon the fatuous and puerile suggestion, made by an alleged ‘Tory’ Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, that the Government was proposing that ‘the elderly’ amongst us, who live and have lived in large houses, should be ‘encouraged’ to give up their homes, which of course come with lots of empty bedroom space; so that the ‘underprivileged’ amongst us might gain access to those same large houses and all those empty bedrooms.

Notice the calls by Community Secretary Eric Pickles that ‘Granny Flats’ should be freed from Council Tax so that self-contained ‘annexes’ could be filled by elderly relatives (who are of course literally begging to move in with their reluctant families), and the then-empty houses could be either re-let to the ‘hordes’, or sold off to the newly-buoyant property market?

To my cynical mind, Labour’s Hilary Benn has got it about half right by stating that it is all Tory ‘spin’, as Granny Flats are exempt from Council Tax anyway, if the occupant is over sixty-five, but I fear that this announcement is yet another step along the winding road towards ‘Compulsory Purchase’ of large homes from single people whose only crime is that they have lived longer than their dead husband or wife!

Call themselves F****ing Tories! They all need a short dose of Mme DeFarge’s medicine, and I would volunteer my services to sharpen the blade!

It’s taken ten years and a few  trillion bucks, but the Department of Homeland Stupidity has finally nabbed a dangerous terrorist out to destroy America. Oh yes.

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. He was nobbled for tweeting that he’s on his way to “destroy” America and to dig up Marilyn Monroe. Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.

Emily Bunting said: ‘The officials told us we were not allowed in to the country because of Leigh’s tweet. They wanted to know what we were going to do. ‘They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party.

The awesome stupidity of those defending America at LAX is truly impressive, but there’s something else here. The tweet was posted well before the pair travelled. (Presumably) DHA computers picked up the phrase “destroy America” and the terror masterminds were already as good as done for. So watch what you type, because there is someone watching.

YESTERDAY I posted the text of a speech by Sean Gabb, the subject of which is the revolutionary and liberty-destroying change that has been imposed on the British people. Part of that speech reads (my emphasis):

They tell us they want to end “child poverty” and “build a more equal society”. In fact, they have employed an army of social workers to terrorise every working class family in the country – an army of social workers backed by closed and secretive courts, and that may even be selecting children for legal kidnap and sale to barren middle class couples.

Today we discover:

An obese couple’s seven children are all to be taken into care after their newborn daughter was removed over fears she would become dangerously overweight.Three children had already been removed by social services before the infant was taken from her mother within hours of her birth. Now her ‘heartbroken’ parents have learned that their three other children will be taken away from them too. They say the children of the so-called ‘fat family’ are being removed over fears they would also become clinically obese.

Those seven children have been abducted by the state, at the order of a secret court which heard the testimony of the state’s ‘social workers’ but which did not allow the parents to speak.

But don’t vote BNP ok, ‘cos they’re vile. 

Ever thought about protesting?

Ever got so hacked off with the inertia of officialdom so that you want to protest, by taking direct action?

Ever believed that you still lived in a country where the right of protest was ingrained into the very fabric of society?

Well, my friends, are you happy with how you live now?

In America, even with it’s Constitution where a proud nation of individualists built their Union and Nation because of their belief of the freedoms which so many had fought and died for, there is significant doubt. Both in the Independence struggle from the Colonial hand of England, and in the Civil War, fought on the right to secede from that Union, the very idea of Protest was foremost in the American psyche.

In this United Kingdom, the so-called cradle of modern Democracy, we used to have free assembly guaranteed, and Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park where anyone could stand on his soap-box and spout about anything. I say ‘used to’ because you just try and speak on, say, an anti-homosexual theme, or for that matter an anti-muslim stance, or associate muslims with anything worse than picking fruit, and you will land in the slammer faster than the speed of light!

In America, for daring to comment on, or protest against, an overwheening and arrogant President and Executive’s plans for socialised healthcare, you will be labelled as ‘a right-wing nut-job’ or bullied and threatened by a ‘Rent-a-Mob’, complete with professional posters and transport, paid for courtesy of the ruling Party.

Do you sympathise with the anger, frustration and annoyance of Daniel Duckfield, who was arrested and cautioned for threatening to take the law into his own hands, because he had been ignored by that same law, or do you consider him just another ‘fruit-and-nut’ case?

Jobseekers allowance questionnaire!

GENERAL STATEMENTS AND QUERIES.

You may get contribution-based Jobseekers Allowance if you have paid or been credited with class 1 National Insurance (NI) contributions in the relevant tax years. Self employed contributions will not generally qualify you for contribution-based Jobseekers Allowance.

If you’re unemployed and 16 or 17 years old you may be able to get income-based JSA for a short amount of time. For example, this could be if you:

·                            are forced to live away from your parents

·                            will find it very hard to live without Jobseeker’s Allowance

·                            are part of a couple responsible for a child

Your payments might be reduced if you receive income from part-time employment. You’ll get less if you have savings over £6,000. If you have savings over £16,000 you probably won’t qualify.

If your partner or civil partner works 24 hours or more a week on average, you can’t usually get income-based JSA (contribution-based JSA isn’t affected). If they work less than 24 hours, it may affect how much you get.

How long is it since you worked regularly?

What was your last Employers’ name?

“How much do you drink?”

Omniscient.   That’s the one! Most people who read this blog believe implicitly in one form of omnipotent and omniscient higher being or another. Whether the name is God, or Jahweh, or even Allah, the effect is the same, they believe that their destiny is to live their lives according to a set of ethics, or Commandments, or rules; and if they live those lives to the end of their allotted time, they will go to ‘Heaven’. But the main idea is that they all believe in an omnipotent, all-knowing God who already knows all the answers, but is reluctant to share the knowledge with his subordinate creations. 

So what did those people who were unfortunate enough to hear the interview on BBC Today with Professor David Salisbury, Immunisation director (Gauleiter) of the Department of Health think of the Word from on High? A very short while before, a father of two from Essex gave what I thought to be a perfectly logical reasoned argument against the whole MMR vaccine idea, basing his reasoning only partly on the alleged links with autistic behaviour, but also on the extremely valid arguments that it is a big thing for one vaccine alone to be shovelled into the body of an infant, but when three come along together, the bodies concerned sometimes react in a very negative fashion. These arguments were, as I said, reasoned, polite but solid, and based on his being a parent, and because he thought the MMR vaccine had been supported by Government because of cost factors!

The good Professor commenced by parroting statistics about the huge (comparative) rise in cases of measles this last year compared to ten years ago, and blaming it all on hysterical parents such as the gentleman from Essex. He further went on to describe the actions of the Essex-based parents, and all others who had the temerity to even doubt the Word from on high, as both irrational and ‘totally unneccessary’. He stated that parents should not only concern themselves with their children, but also should be aware of the ‘wider community’!

Now my own days of immunisation arranging are long gone, and my children are all adults themselves, with two fine grandsons for GranDad to spoil outrageously whenever possible. When my own were kids, my wife and I availed ourselves of the immunisation services available in South Africa, partly because the shots were both well-proven, well-researched and because they came one at a time! The Health Services were a little like me, both competent but conservative in thinking.  What arrangements for immunisation and vaccination have been made for my two grandsons are the business of my sons, but I hope that they have weighed up the benefits as opposed to the risks, and believe me there are risks, of having no less than three sets of weakened bacteria or viruses slotted into the veins of a tiny baby. Again they are the parents, and it is their choice, but I hope that their actions will be based on research and true statistics, not on the words of one who really does believe that he knows everything, that he cannot be wrong and there is no point arguing!

My own thoughts are echoed by my own favourite person in all of British History, who once wrote in letters to the Church of Scotland :-

“I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power

The above statement is taken from Orwell’s 1984, and I reproduce it here to remind everyone that this wonderful Freedom-loving Government of ours is planning to outsource the infamous Total Internet Database, where everyone’s texts, calls, e-mails and web-page visits will be stored and referenced for use by the Security Services, Council Bin-men and anti-terror sections of the police.

Are your worries relieved by the Home Secretary’s statement that suggests tough legal penalties would be imposed if the data is misused! Are you happy that your calls will be logged by a private company in the knowledge that they ‘know what they are doing? Are you just complacent in the knowledge that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear? If you have answered “Yes” to any one of these queries, you deserve everything you get from this bunch of thugs! If you have replied in the negative, why don’t you log on to this bunch, write your M.P. and lambast this bunch of hypocritical scum with your invective?

Know much about computers? Of course you do, other wise you wouldn’t be able to navigate to these pages. Not too many want to be able to do much more; possibly correspondence, household accounts, the odd genealogical survey, family photographs and the like, because that is what the PC has become. A channel for your social life, a means of instant communication, a diary and (for some) a partner who never speaks back. But for those who have delved further than the edges into the possibilities, we are aware of the terrifying possibilities of the use by the unscrupulous, the criminal, or a combination of both; namely politicians.

So what do you make of the latest Data Disaster to be unveiled by our political masters where hundreds of thousands of NHS records have been lost, mislaid or stolen. Now in order to imagine the physical means by which these records can, and have been transferred willy-nilly, I am able to store every document I have ever written including rough and further drafts of all my novels, hundreds of digital photographs, every spreadsheet I have built or used for my work; on to a mobile hard drive which can be hidden within the palm of my hand.

So why didn’t you take notice when I warned you before?