Big Brother is Listening...to your jokes

According to THIS article in the Daily Mail, mother-in-law jokes, once the bedrock of British comedy, have been banned by the London Borough of Barnet because they are ‘offensively sexist’ and disrespectful to ‘family elders’.

Oh Gosh. Now the government wants to legislate politeness, or rather their eschewed notion of it. But this is merely the tip of the iceberg of the totalitarian drift of modern Britain.

Welcoming the Pope

God knows that Pope Benedict XVI has received a lot of flack, but I am one Protestant who is more than glad that the pontiff has decided to once again grace the shores of England with his presence, and not merely because I consider Roman Catholics to be Christians, though that helps.

Having spent a number of years blogging about the loss of freedoms in England, particularly where Christians are concerned, and being employed to regularly update Christian Voice's Big Brother Index, the Pope's defense of religious freedom in England strikes a familiar chord. I agree with the Evangelical Alliance who are

urging all Christians to unite in their support of the Pope's planned address on religious freedom. The Pontiff is set to deliver a thinly veiled attack to Westminster on Thursday on what has been described as a growing 'secular agenda' - marking the first Papal visit to Britain in 28 years.

"There have been a number of high-profile cases involving gagging orders on Christians sharing their faith at work, praying for people and practising their faith in obedience to biblical teachings in the work place," says Steve Clifford, General Director of the Alliance.

"Religion is not something we do in church on Sunday. It's a living reality that affects every area of our lives. As such, we applaud companies and organisations that sensibly allow Christians to reasonably follow their beliefs without hindrance or hostility."

 

See "Pope Warns  of Atheist Extremism."

Click here to read my political column in the Spokane Libertarian Examiner

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Links to articles on Thought Police

 

Thought Police Muscle up in Britain 

 

Thought Control in American Society 

 

Thought Reform 101 

Thought Police article in HTML

Thought Control

 

Banned in Britain

 

 Is that liberalism?

 

Lord Waddington on British Thought Control

 

Free Speech in Europe 

 

Big Brother Britain

 

Musings on England

 

The Orwellian Legacy of Tony Blair

 

The Retreat of Reason

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Review of Banned in Britain by Michael Savage

On 5 May 2009, the American talk show host Michael Savage woke up around 7:00 AM and turned on his computer to check the news.

Imagine Mr. Savage’s surprise when, scanning the headlines, he read: “RADIO HOST MICHAEL SAVAGE BANNED FROM UK FOR ‘EXTREME VIEWS’.

Following a link to the Independent, Mr. Savage saw an article titled, ‘Named and Shamed: The 16 Barred from the UK.” Looking at the profiles on the other 15 individuals who were listed alongside of himself (all notorious murderers, terrorist and rapists) Savage wondered what he had done to induce the Home Office to include his name on their blacklist.

Food police take on Cheddar

I commented earlier in the year on the connection between nationalized health and totalitarianism, pointing out that when there is a direct link between the physical health of a populace and the nation's fiscal integrity (which there obviously is when government promises to pick up the tab on everyone's medical expenses), the state cannot help but develop an inordinate interest in keeping its citizens healthy.

If this be doubted, one need look no further than the UK. Whether it is the UK Government's campaign to get citizens to exercise while waiting for the bus or their more recent scheme to use taxpayers' pounds to subsidize "fat camps" (where infants will be put on 'weight management' courses), it is clear that a government that is responsible for health becomes a government that claims authority over health.

As if to confirm my concerns, I just read today that in a move to make the citizens of England eat more low and reduced-fat, the government's food police have gone on the attack against cheddar cheese - a foretaste of what America could be like after 50 years of nationalized health care.

Doesn't the government have anything better to do with tax payers' money than to worry about what kind of cheese its citizens are eating?

For further reading on the socialization of food, see my article 'Food is not a Private Matter'
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Catching the criminal before the crime

I've just posted the following article on the Signs of the Times blog:

Catching the criminal before the crime
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A Good Month For Big Brother - A Bad Month For Liberty

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Now that October '09 is finished, I find myself reflecting on the remarkable loss of liberty that occurred between the 1 and the 31. I didn't think so many liberties could be lost for the British people in only one month. Consider that the following are just some of the stories that might be brought forth to illustrate this (taken from Big Brother Britain which I maintain and update daily).


Policing of Opinion Has No Place In Our Country

Britain passes Big Brother landmark: More than one in 10 people now on DNA database

Councils get ‘Al Capone’ power to seize assets over minor offences

ID card plan 'needs 28m people to sign up to cover costs'

Brussels 'Home Office' plot to snoop on all of Europe

'Bedroom snooping' by 2011 census

Innocent protesters' details collected for police databases

Police compiling database of 'domestic extremist' protesters

Secret court seizes £3.2bn from elderly

Brussels is 'Plotting a Spy State"

Want to help the neighbours with the rubbish? It's illegal

Teacher 'bullied' by council for leaving bag of waste paper next to full recycling bin

Social workers remove new-born baby from obese mother

Spying on Communities Contravenes Cherished British Freedom

DNA database now holds profiles of 5.6m Britons (but crimes solved using it falls by a fifth)

Armed police to permanently patrol Britain's streets

Liberty warns of new secret inquests threat

Big Brother Britain: £380 a MINUTE spent on tracking your every click online

Hundreds of council workers duped into answering Health and Safety questions on eating biscuits

Trafigura: 'Never again should a newspaper be barred from reporting Parliament'

MEPs call for compulsory 'EU lessons' in schools

Terror Act used on climate activist

A David for this surveillance Goliath?

Equality database sought by government

£1,000 fine for putting any food scraps in the dustbin

Council Snoops Have Power to Issue £300 Fines

Big Brother culture attacked by country's top barrister

Authoritarian? China’s not a patch on Britain

Amateur photographer is quizzed by police (for taking snap of the sunset)

English children abroad to be included on government database

Couple fail to win return of obese children

The United States of Europe Will Come


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Law Professor Warns of "cultural genocide" under new EU Directive

THIS interview with William Wagner shows some of the issues that Christians in Europe are facing under an increasingly totalitarian EU.

Professor Wagner, who serves with Christian Concern for Our Nation, warns that if this proposal is not adequately addressed, it “has the potential to create a cultural genocide.”

The Directive is part of a series of measures aiming to promote equality and combat discrimination among organizations and individuals across EU Member States in the areas of disability, age, religion and belief and sexual orientation. The Directive is worded in such a way that many Christian activities could fall foul of the law if someone believes equal treatment has not been received.

It has the “horrendous potential to completely eliminate the Christian worldview from any professional activity that involves providing a service,” said Professor Wagner.

During the above interview, Dr. Wagner points out that the Directive entails a de facto reversal of an ancient Anglo-Saxon law principle known as the assumption of innocence. According to this principle, a person is innocent until proven guilty. The Directive defines harassment as something which is perceived by a person to have caused offence or to create an offensive environment.

Wagner commented that, "It’s your job in court, if you’re accusing someone of something, to produce evidence and actually prove your case. Discrimination law has taken a different route. Again, almost in a Darwinistic, evolutionary way, they have said we need to evolve the legal principles to do something different in discrimination cases. What they have done is they say once someone accuses you of harassment or of offending them, then the burden of proof no longer is on your accuser, but the burden of proof now shifts to you, the accused, to prove that this person actually wasn’t offended. Now there are some great lawyers out there in the United Kingdom and the European Union, but I don’t know of any that can win a case like this. How do you prove the negative? And after you inevitably lose a case like this, how do you appeal? You can’t. And I think the lawyers who wrote these provisions know this."

Yikes!

THIS story from lifesitenews reports that the British government will force thousands of the "worst" families in the country to live with 24-hour CCTV surveillance in a bid to cut back on child abuse and neglect. In the next two years the government plans to expand an existing family monitoring program from 2000 families to 20,000 at a total estimated cost of £400million. Yikes!

  

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The Dying Scorpion of Labour Still Has Venom in Its Tail

The dying scorpion still has venom in its tail: this decomposing Labour government, rotting like a fish from the head down and with a maximum life expectancy of 11 months, is still doggedly pursuing the destruction of British society - the Project on which it embarked 12 years ago. Its latest assault on the family is an offensive against home schooling.

Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary - the very title is a totalitarian evocation of Maoist crèches and collectivist indoctrination - is to compel all parents educating their children at home to register them with local authorities (whose property they evidently are) and "extra support" (ie taxpayers' money) will be made available as part of "significantly strengthened" regulatory guidelines. In other words, the state, furious that 50,000 children have eluded its clutches, is intruding further into family life.

Keep Reading

Now Nanny State Spells End of Pick-You-Own-Fruit

When we lived in England, one of our family's favourite summer activities was to go to a local fruit farm and pick our own fruit. I remember the children and me coming home with huge boxes full of strawberries, raspberries, black and red currents and login berries, which Esther would then cook into delicious concoctions. I have been looking forward to doing that again when we visit merry England. But alas, thanks to the Nanny State, it looks like this will no longer be possible if this article is anything to go by.

British Totalitarianism

Is Britain the world's first politically correct totalitarian state? That is a question that Ed West has taken up in THIS piece which appeared on the Telegraph's website. Having lived in England for ten years before moving to Idaho, and having written on the growing Orwellian tendencies of modern Britain, I can concur that Mr. West's observations are only too accurate.


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Thought Police Muscle up in Britain

"BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

"There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent." Keep Reading

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Big Brother Britain

One of the jobs that I do is to monitor and maintain the Big Brother Britain website, chronicling the colossal abuses of power that are occurring in Britain almost on a daily basis, moving the nation ever closer to the kind of surveillance society envisioned in Orwell's disutopian literature. From thought control legislation to mandatory ID cards, modern Britain is becoming a society that would do George Orwell’s prophecies proud. Check out the Big Brother pages and see for yourself.

Also see The Orwellian Legacy of Tony Blair.

Echoing comments I made about Britain's growing thought police, Henry Porter has just pointed out that "both women [Blears and Smith ] argue that a calmer, more ordered society would be created if only people would stop expressing their opinions. In reality they propose to sedate our society at the same time as eliminating criticism of the government.... Anyone likely to express an inconvenient opinion should know to bend over soon." From Henry Porter's article "Land of the unfree"

Toddlers Branded Racist for Not Liking Spicy Food

In a previous post I complained about government's attempts to play thought police. It didn't occur to me that the successor would be taste police. Read MORE.


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Forced Adoption

Earlier in the year the Daily Mail ran a story about social workers ear-marking babies for adoption and then removing them from their parents in order to meet government adoption targets even when there was no abuse or risk of abuse. Read the chilling article HERE.

This is not just one isolated report from a right-wing newspaper. See also

Seven Babies taken into care in one week

Child protection? No, ruination

Social workers took our children away

Open justice in court reunites mother and baby.

The baby snatchers: Judge demands review of Social Workers trainingCommunity Care

Judge orders social workers to hand back Baby.

Now teenage mother faces another battle.

Mother who won back her baby faces battle

The Killing Fields Community Care

The Young Victims

Labour's adoption targets to be scrapped

Vulnerable children cry for help.

Unfit to be a mother?

Torn apart for Christmas

Hammersmith and Fulham

Pain of social work sex slur family

Pregnant Fran told she's in the clear

Grandfather One

Grandparent jailed in Secrecy

'I lost faith in justice'

Time to end kids’ suffering

Whom did Dr Southall think he was helping

Family’s fury with Merthyr Social Services

Social Worker guilty of misconduct

Southall accuses media of hate campaign

Mother of Angelina's adopted daughter wants the girl back

Social worker conduct hearing

Solicitor jailed snatching own baby daughter

Help me keep my baby

Essex Social Services forced adoption

Happy, loving parents They must be child abusers

Dr Lazaro Consultant Paediatrician

Heartbreak of families torn apart

Essex Police in child welfare probe

Essex Social Services force Children to be Adopted

Abuse of Child Abuse Laws

Guardian Article - Children in Care being let Down

Scandal of the stolen children

The Heartbreaking Abuse of Power

Chris Owen; 'The Injustice'

True story of my Little Angels

Judge orders social workers to hand back newborn child

Solicitor jailed for snatching own baby daughter from social workers

The woman not allowed to keep her baby

Couple in bid to get their family back

Couple see child taken away

Baby Brandon allowed home

Care home girl abused by 25 men in 2 years

Vegetarian Foster Parents

Social Worker mum with ADHD

Family Courts veil of Secrecy

Family Courts more Secret than Prisons

Pregnant 11-year-old makes social services baby?

Norfolk Social Services took our Children

Too Poor for Children

Too slow to be parents

Stolen by the State

Judge Condemns Council Staff

Silenced for 'Sixteen Years'

No Evidence of Satanic Abuse

The Child Stealers

Meadow - A Disgraced Doctor

Heartbreaking Christmas

MP 'GESTAPO' Social Workers

8 year old taken after social services blunder

Battle to get Laura home

Grandparent receives jail sentence

Parents falsely branded as child abusers?

Foster child removed from Christian couple

Grandparents facing a year in Prison

Over-zealous social services acting on orders

Woman won't be allowed to keep her baby

Lose your children for being 'Too Poor'

Children taken by Social Services returned Read Article...

Couple in bid to get their family back Read Article...

Social Services blasted over Adoption Case Read Article...

Social Services blasted over Adoption Case Read Article...

The Stolen Children Sunday Mail Read Article...

Parents win right to keep fourth child Read Article...

The campaign goes on Read Article...

Opening Up Family Courts End the Secrecy in Family Courts Read Article...

The decisions behind closed doors Read Article...

My baby will be taken the moment its born Read Article...

Couple who fled UK may keep baby Read Article...

The forces of secrecy are prevailing Read Article...

The state stole our children Read Article...

MP claims babies taken for adoption targets Read Article...

Babies being snatched for Adoption Aims Read Article...

Babies taken into care 'to meet targets Read Article...

Babies 'removed to meet targets Read Article...

How the State stole my daughter Read Article...

Social Workers attempt to abduct Baby Read Article...

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The Orwellian Legacy of Tony Blair

As Tony Blair prepares to leave office, I find myself reflecting on the legacy left by this remarkable individual. He is remarkable in so far as he has permanently changed the face of British government.
  

Henry Porter summed it up well in a letter he wrote to Tony Blair on 23rd April 2006, published in The Guardian:

"Successive laws passed by New Labour have pared down our liberty at an astonishing rate. The Right to trial by jury, the right to silence, the right not to be punished until a court has decided that the law has been broken, the right to demonstrate and protest, the presumption of innocense, the right to private communication, the right to travel without surveillance and the details of that journey being retained – all have been curtailed by your legislation. While hearsay has become admissible in court, free speech is being patrolled by officious use of public order laws."

Blair and 'Thought Crimes'

When Tony Blair first came to power, he promised to be tough on crime. Only in retrospect have we come to understand the sinister reality behind these words. Mr. Blair would indeed be tough on crime, but he would do it by eroding thousand year old civil liberties, criminalising a plethora of previously legal activities and altering the very structure of British common law.

Under Mr. Blair, the very idea of Government took a paradigm shift. Categories that at one time would have been unthinkable – such as ‘state-sanctioned morality’, ‘thought crimes’ and ‘politically correct religion’ – have become reality.

Mr. Blair’s eagerness that Government should function as guardian, not simply of law and order, but also of the ideologies of its citizenry, was made patently obvious last year when his New Labour tried to push through legislation as part of the Religious Hatred Bill, which would have made it an offence to criticise different religious truth-claims. (See Archbishop Nichols' article 'Don't Impose Your Morality')

Even without the impetus of such a law, UK police currently operate under ‘guidance’ that defines a ‘hate incident’ so broadly that it can include debating another person about their lifestyle. Although this guidance has no statutory force, and has been called ‘pseudo-law’ by one constitutional lawyer, it can influence the policy of police constabularies provided it does not lead to an actual charge being issued. The effect is that simply to express certain viewpoints is treated as criminal. (See The Christian Institute’s Update Issue 9, Spring 2007, page 4, for a report on a number of instances where this occurred.)

And just so no one could doubt his totalitarian intentions, this year Mr. Blair championed a law forcing religious adoption agencies to either change their theological commitments or shut down.

It was this tendency to police beliefs that Dr. N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, lambasted in an address to the House of Lords on 9 February, 2006. Dr. Wright referred to a new class of crimes which “have to do, not with actions but with ideas and beliefs.” He said:

"People in my diocese have told me that they are now afraid to speak their minds in the pub on some major contemporary issues for fear of being reported, investigated, and perhaps charged. My Lords, I did not think I would see such a thing in this country in my lifetime…. The word for such a state of affairs is ‘tyranny’: sudden moral climate change, enforced by thought police."

OK, before I go any further I must warn you to be careful about associating Tony Blair with George Orwell in public. Last year, Steven Jago, was charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act for carrying a placard in Whitehall bearing the following quote by George Orwell: ‘In a time of unviersal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ The 36-year old management accountant was also found in possession of several copies of Henry Porter’s article for Vanity Fair titled, ‘Blair’s Big Brother Legacy’, which were quickly confiscated by the police. ‘The implication that I read from this statement at the time was that I was being accused of handing out subversive material,’ said Mr. Jago. Mr. Porter, the London editor of Vanity Fair, wrote to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, seeking ‘assurance that possession of Vainty Fair within a designated area is not regarded as “politically motivated” and evidence of conscious law-breaking.’

'Liberty...Not Keeping Pace With Change' Says Blair

David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, remarked: ‘If I had gone on the radio 15 years ago and said that a Labour government would limit your right to trail by jury, would limit – in some cases eradicate – habeas corpus, constrain your right of freedom of speech, they would have locked me up.’

Blair has never tried to conceal his antipathy for civil liberties. In a speech in May 2006, he said that ‘we require a profound rebalancing of the civil liberties debate.’

During a speech at one of the Labour Party conferences, Tony Blair defended the encroaching totalitarianism of his administration by arguing that desperate times call for desperate measures. He said:

I don’t want to live in a police state, or a Big Brother society or put any of our essential freedoms in jeopardy. But because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.

On this point, at least Tony Blair and his critics agree: our freedoms are in jeopardy. Nor should this come as a surprise given that Mr. Blair’s Government has introduced some 3,000 new offences, including:

• The Protection From Harassment Act 1997: Worded so vaguely that almost any form of repeated conduct can become a crime. It gives the crown authority to prosecute anyone causing a person ‘alarm or distress’ if this involves ‘conduct on at least two occasions.’ Because such conduct ‘includes speech’, and because it is not necessary to demonstrate that the person causing distress has used abusive or insulting words, merely preaching the gospel could become a criminal offence provided that somebody finds it distressing. The penalty is six months imprisonment or an order preventing the person from repeating the offence on pain of 5 years behind bars. It is now used routinely against peaceful protestors.
  
• The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: Removed the freedom to communicate privately without surveillance. Using this act, Government secretly intercepts and spies on 500,000 pieces of mail every year and email every year.
  
  
• The Terrorism Act 2000: Removed the freedom to protest in certain circumstances, and increased the police’s power to question and harass individuals going about their business. Also removed the freedom of association and the presumption of innocence.
  
  
• Criminal Justice Act 2003: Removed trial by jury in serious fraud cases. Also removed some of the remaining pillars of the Magna Carta, such as the right of silence and the rule of double jeopardy.
  
  
• Courts Act 2003 and Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004: reversing the 400-year old principle that entry into your home could not be forced in civil cases.
  
  
• Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003: makes hearsay and anonymous testimony admissible as evidence.
  
  
• Civil Contingencies Act 2004: Gives Government police state powers. Allows Ministers to make special legislation in a seven-day period, including seizing property without compensation, banning Parliament, conferring jurisdiction on any new court or tribunal, provided the Minster believes there is or might be an ‘emergency.’ Ministers can orally declare the existence or potentiality of an emergency without consulting Parliament.
  
  
• The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005: Although this Act is most known for removing freedom to demonstrate outside Parliament unless first approved by police, it also includes a section on ‘harassment intended to deter lawful activities’. Under this act, it is an offence to cause alarm or distress to ‘two or more persons’ by ‘harassing’ them. ‘Harassment’ is defined as seeking ‘to persuade any person ... to do something that he is not under any obligation to do’. For example, if I try to persuade two or more people to accept Christ then because they are under no legal obligation to do so, I could be taken to court for harassment if the other person finds it distressing. The Act also requires police to take fingerprints and DNA of everyone who is arrested and to keep them on file even if the person is released without charge.
  
  
• Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005: Further eroded the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Allows Home Secretary to issue control orders restricting the liberty of a suspected terrorist – without trial.
  
  
• The ID Card Act 2006: Gave Government permission to set up a giant database, known as the National identity Register, to record the transactions of every British citizen, while allowing scores of government agencies to secretly monitor our lives. Overrules the principle of innocent until proven guilty since it allows the Secretary of State to confiscate someone’s card (thereby withdrawing that person’s ability to function in the state) without due process. (Read more about it HERE).
  
  
• The Childcare Act 2006: Gives officials power to enter your property if they suspect that childcare is taking place without a proper licence.

Threat to Common Law

These and many other draconian laws engineered by Tony Blair, has led many of his critics to accuse him of abandoning the ancient pillars of British common law. For example, Labour peer Baroness Kennedy pointed out that

‘The common law is built on moral wisdom, grounded in the experiences of ages, acknowledging that governments can abuse power and when a person is on trial the burden of proof must be on the state and no one’s liberty should be removed without evidence of the highest standard. By removing trial by jury and seeking to detain people on civil ASBO orders as a preemptive strike, by introducing ID cards, the Government is creating new paradigms of state power. Being required to produce your papers to show who you are is a public manifestation of who is in control. What we seem to have forgotten is that the state is there courtesy of us and we are not here courtesy the state.’

It is a curious fact that in all the hype surrounding Blair's departure from office - or rather, his refusal to depart - and all the fuss about his mistakes and accomplishments, little mention is being made in the media of the way he fundamentally altered the face of British society, changed our common law and ripped away our time-honoured liberties.

For British freedom, this may be the start of the end, but for Tony Blair, it is just the beginning. Leaving behind him a bankrupt party, Blair stands to become a multi-millionaire overnight through the sale of his memoirs, lucrative directorships or vast sums available on the US lecture circuit. Oh, and he will also receive £90,000 a year from the taxpayer for life.
 

Further Resources:

Blair's Big Brother Legacy

Using 18 pieces of legislation, this Government has taken a sledgehammer to our rights

Blair laid bare: the article that may get you arrested

'Simon Carr: If you still think you live in a liberal and democratic society, then please read on'

Tony the Nanny: Tony Blair's shameful record on civil liberties

How we move ever closer to becoming a totalitarian state

The Legacy: Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997-2007

Blair's new laws leave us at the mercy of future tyrants

The Limits of liberty: We're all suspects now

Seven new laws for every day of Blair as PM

Britain's Liberties: The Great Debate