Go Granny, Go

A gang of thugs descend on this jewelry store and begin trying to smash the windows to steal items on display. Shop staff coming running but retreat when threatened with crowbars and the gang resumes trying to smash the windows. I suggest they aren't too bright as they could have just walked in and taken the stuff, but intelligence and crime rarely go together, at least not this sort of crime.

Watch off to the right of the screen and you will see Super Granny come running across the street. She pounces on the gang and starts swinging her handbag at them. They have helmets on, heavy jackets and are armed with crow bars, yet Super Granny seems to terrify them. As she wades into the gang, swinging her bag left and right, they decide to jump on their motorcycles and flee. But it appears Granny gets the last laugh as one of them is knocked over and other people pounce and hold the thug for the police. Alas, knowing British police they will probably apologize to the thug for the inconvenience.

Super Granny, Ann Timson, says she was standing around talking to someone when she heard a commotion. At first she thought the men were fighting with one another. And she said she was alarmed "that too many people just stood around watching as if they were in shock and nobody was doing anything." Then she realized it was a robbery and got even angrier because "they felt they could get away with what they were doing in broad daylight."

The elderly woman says she smacked one of the men "with my shopping but he got away. I don't know what happened next but I just kept swinging my bag. Then they tried to escape, I landed several blows against one lad on the back of a bike and brought him to the ground. He raised a hammer to me so I just kept hitting out and shouting and shouting for others to help and bring them down."

Because of her intervention others joined in and helped her and four of the thugs were apprehended. She insists she is no hero and just wants "to be left in peace" and doesn't want media attention. I suspect that she won't get her wish there given the uniqueness of what she did. Unfortunately most people allow injustice to continue when they see, afraid to intervene. Super Granny is a marvelous exception and a role model.

One of the men was brought to the ground by Super Granny and apprehended on the spot. A member of the public followed another until the police arrested him. And two others were caught by the police after they received photos of the incident on their BlackBerrys. Two others are still at large. Of course the police, while thanking the public, urged people to not risk "their own safety by getting involved themselves."

A man filming a documentary across the street caught the incident on film.

I should note that the police in Britain are very much opposed to communities policing themselves yet very hesitant to do anything themselves in many cases. I will give a personal example when I was spending a few months in a small town on the English coast, not far from Dover.

I was in line in a local fast food restaurant when one of these lower class thugs that now permeate British society comes in. He pushes his way to the front of the line and starts getting aggressive with this older woman who is standing there. He gets into an altercation with this woman and starts becoming aggressive toward her. I'm standing there astounded by his thuggish behavior. I go to the staff of the restaurant and demand to know whey they are letting this happen. I get the "what-am-I-supposed-to-do excuse" from them and suggest they call the police immediately—I still thought the police would help at that time.

The thug is threatening the woman but the staff stand there watching, as if it were television. The thug pushes his way through the people and goes outside. I see the police there and run out to them. I point the officer to the thug as he is standing around the corner with some of his equally low-class friends having a laugh the way he treated this elderly woman. I tell the officer: "That's him right there. I was inside and saw what he did and can testify about it." The officer just stands there, doing nothing. I ask: "Aren't you going to do something?"

His response astounded me. "Well, I will in a bit, I don't want to embarrass him in front of his friends." At that point I wanted to smack the cop. Given the culture of the friends I suggest that the best thing that could have happened was for them to see that their are consequences to their actions. Alas, in the British welfare state, the consequence of being a criminal is to qualify for welfare programs meant to help you. No wonder the British underclass is growing.

UPDATE: More reports I've seen indicate that Super Granny is in her 70s and that a fifth man has been arrested.

The paradox of wealth and disease.

Many of our friends on the Left have repeatedly told us that health care in England is better than health care in the United States BECAUSE England has state provided care. I have repudiated that claim fairly regularly on this blog, especially during the debate when Obama was pushing his “reforms” onto the country though some rather unenviable methods.

The RAND Corporation compared the two systems in a rather interesting way. The first thing they did was study disease rates between the two countries. The U.S. did not do as well when it came to illness rates. But this doesn’t necessarily say anything about the medical systems. You have to examine which diseases they used to determine that. For instance, if Americans were dying from the flu there might be a problem with the health system. But if they are dying from lung cancer it might be because of different lifestyle choices.

And the illnesses that RAND studied did tend to be closely linked to lifestyle: diabetes, high-blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, chronic lung diseases and cancer. Some simple changes in personal preferences could change disease rates in these areas rather significantly. What measures the quality of health care here is not the disease rate, but the survivability rate. This study particularly looked at two age groups: those from 55 to 64, and those over the age of 65.

What they found was that Americans in both age groups had higher rates of these illnesses, which is to be expected based on lifestyle differences. But the death rate for the younger Americans was no different than for the similar group in England. But older Americans, while still getting ill at a higher rate, “had a lower death rate than similar people in England.”
James Smith, on of the co-authors of the study said: “If you get sick at older ages, you will die sooner in England than in the United States. It appears that at least in terms of survival at older ages with chronic disease, the medical system in the United States may be better than the system in England.”

RAND says there are two possible reasons for this. “One is that the illnesses studied result in higher mortality in England than in the United States. The second is that the English are diagnosed at a later stage in the disease process than Americans.”

Smith, however, says both explanations “imply that there is higher-quality care in the United States than in England, at least in the sense that these chronic illnesses are less likely to cause death among people living in the United States.”

Co-author James Banks points out the obvious, though it useful to point it out since so many people continually miss it. He says that the “health problem” in the United States “is not fundamentally a health care or insurance problem, at least at older ages. It is a problem of excess illness and the solution to that problem may lie outside the health care delivery system. The solution may be to alter lifestyles or other behaviors.” Bingo!

The London Telegraph’s Richard Alleyne, put it this way: “[W]hile English people have healthier lifestyles than Americans, the latter’s health care system is better able to patch them up.”

Co-author Smith told Alleyne: “We are spending twice as much as England on health and we are getting the benefit of the extra years of life. If English people spent the same amount I have no doubt people would live a lot longer. That is a choice they will have to make.”

So, if the healthier English spent as much as Americans spend they would live longer as well. But, if Americans adopted, voluntarily of course, healthier lifestyles the survivability gap between the Brits and us would grow even larger. And, I should point out, would reduce the cost of health care substantially.

I also contend that the cause of America’s health “crisis” is largely a problem of prosperity. I lived in Europe for extended periods of time and can compare life in the US to Europe. And while I love the culture of Europe more than I do that in the US, I know that Americans tend to be much more prosperous.

Here are some basic facts.

First, Americans tend to have higher incomes than Europeans do.

Second, they are taxed less and thus keep more of the higher income as well.

Third, the cost of living for many things is much cheaper in the US than in Europe. Housing is much cheaper, petrol is much cheaper, food is much cheaper, and energy is much cheaper.
This means that Americans earn more, keep more of what they earn, and can buy a lot more with their money. The average American home is about three times the size of the average British home, for instance, and almost double what the French or Danes enjoy.

And that means Americans can indulge more.

Americans are more likely to drive everywhere, even short trips while Europeans are more likely to walk or cycle. The significantly higher costs of owning a car in Europe forces Europeans to drive less. That means they get more exercise, which is healthier for them.

Americans can also indulge in greater quantities of food. For instance, I like roast beef sandwiches for lunch. In England I was paying $1per slice of roast beef that I purchased. I get much roast beef for the same $1 in the US. Americans simply can afford to eat more and that impacts health. The greater ability to consume sweets and snacks will mean Americans will be more obese and more likely to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure and the like.

On the other hand, that higher standard of living also means Americans can purchase a lot more health care so that they are living longer than their British counterparts.

There’s the paradox. Our greater wealth means our lifestyle choices are less healthy but means we can afford the care the British can’t, so we live longer anyway. And, for those who say they can’t afford the health care in the US, I might point out that simple lifestyle choices, that are entirely within your power to make, can dramatically improve your health and lower your health care costs. The problem is when people want the unhealthy lifestyles and then bitch about the costs of the choices they make.

Gordon Brown grilled and served.

Here is a nice take on the corrupt, incompetent and authoritarian policies of Labour's Gordon Brown in the UK by Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament.

British government tramples on speech freedom -- again.

Tony Blair set England on a very totalitarian path. He was the George Bush of the UK, except he was more coherent. But the Labour Party government, under Gordon Brown has continued to push what can best be described as policies with a fascistic contempt for human liberty and privacy.

That vile government has once again shown its contempt for freedom. Recently Lord Malcolm Pearson, of the House of Lords, invited Dutch MP Geert Wilders to address a private meeting of members of parliament. He asked him to show his short film Fitna, and to explain why he produced it. (The film is below if you are interested.)



Wilders is an odd bird in politics. He has some libertarian streaks but some authoritarian streaks as well. But such a mixture doesn’t normally bother people -- such contradictions are common among politicians But Wilder has been an outspoken critic of the terrorist tendencies he believes are inherent in Islam.

Here Wilders is both right and wrong at the same time. These tendencies are inherent in a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam -- just as fundamentalist Christianity is inherently anti-liberty. Where Wilders is wrong is the assumption that to be Muslim is to be a fundamentalist Muslim. There are decent Christians and there are fundamentalists. There are decent Muslims and there are fundamentalists. Wilders doesn’t seem to acknowledge that much. However, in his defense again, the percentage of Muslims worldwide, who are fundamentalists, is much higher than the percentage of Christians inflicted with that anachronistic mentality.

The fascistic Left, however, tends to ignore any threat from Islamists while concentrating on the threat from Christianists. This is true even in countries, like the UK, where the Christianists hardly exist and where violently inclined Islamists are being recruited daily in some very radical mosques. Not only do such Islamists exist in the UK, recruited by these mosques, but they have bombed sites in the country and murdered people. This is not a theoretical threat.

But the radical Islamists still live happily in the UK. Many of them are receiving state support from Gordon Brown’s welfare state. Their leaders get public welfare due to their large family sizes. Meanwhile they openly preach to the members that good Muslims should go out and kill gay people. Gordon Brown and his cronies apparently have no problem with that.

But Mr. Wilders, because of the film we have attached, is a different matter.

After Wilders was first invited to meet with members of Parliament a Muslim member of parliament, Lord Nazir Ahmed, Labour, threatened to bring 10,000 Muslims to parliament to protest. This sort of threat is more than a threat to hold protest signs. Inherent in such a threat is the much heighted risk that Islamist extremists, who are a dime a dozen in the UK, will do something more violent and deadly than protest.

After Ahmed issued his threats Pearson backed down. Ahmed immediately started crowing that this was great victory for Islam. Pearson decided to reissue his invitation to Wilders to explain his position.

At this point Gordon Brown’s authoritarian tendencies burst through the debate and settled it. Quite simply the Brown government issued an order saying that Mr. Wilders will be banned from entering the country entirely because his views are insulting to the thugs who call Islam their religion.

If anything Islamists have proven Wilders to be more correct than wrong. His life has been repeatedly threatened by Muslims living in Holland and he is recluse living with around-the-clock protection. Also remember that when Dutch MP Theo van Gogh criticized Islam he was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam by an Islamist who was living off the Dutch welfare state.

Brown’s government is quite willing to suppress those who peacefully challenge the role of Islam in promoting violence and terrorism. But when a television documentary looked at the hate messages preached inside British mosques on a regular basis the police, instead of investigating the pro-terrorist side, investigated the broadcasters who made the film. Apparently speaking out against hate groups is considered “hate speech” while actually calling for killing people, as was done in the mosques, is ignored. Midlands police publicly said the documentary was false -- an accusation that was later ruled false and the police paid out $200,000 compensation for libel.

As a point of comparison it should be noted that Islamist clerics who preach violence and hate regularly live in Britain. Wilders, an elected official who doesn’t advocate terrorism or killing, is banned from entering the country. Brown’s government will shower Islamists with all sorts of benefits and payments while Mr. Wilders is not allowed to enter at his how expense.

You have to look at the Orwellian language used in the letter that Mr. Wilders received to understand precisely how mentally twisted the Labour government of the UK is. Wilders was told that his views “threaten community harmony and therefore public security.” The “harmony” that is threatened is that violently inclined Islamists may carry out the terrorism that they preach. This form of “hate speech” is not of concern to Brown, responding to this hate speech, however is banned. Maybe Wilders goes overboard, maybe not.

Hate speech laws are double-edged swords and cases like this prove it. These laws are enforced in blatantly discriminatory ways. So-called “hate speech” laws are the justification for keeping out a critic of Islamist extremism.

Islamist mosques told people: “We are not going to be like animals... or to be like the homosexuals. God save us from that, you understand? We have to take the judgment, the judgment is to kill them.” The same cleric told followers that Muslims who “gets out of Islam, he doesn’t want any more. What are we going to do? We kill him, kill, kill.”

Hate speech laws will be used selectively, they always are. They are political tools available to governments to harass opponents. Gordon Brown’s Labour government has actively tried to win the Muslim vote in the UK so criticism of Islam is prosecuted. But hate speech by Islamists tends to get ignored.

Englands surveillance state at work.

Dreary old England is suffering mightily under the weight of the authoritarian government of the Labour Party. Labour has been working assiduously to impose a total surveillance state trampling on traditional British freedoms. First, here is a video of the local police randomly stopping people and demanding to search them. As they make clear, if you do not “consent” to being searched you will be arrested. Of course, once they arrest you they can search you. In other words, in England, the police may search anyone they wish, anytime they wish without any probably cause.



One British “subject” has filmed this sort of police state mentality. It is hard to understand some aspects of the video as the sound is not totally up to par. Please note that these these officers are not only searching the man’s belongings but frisking him, going through his pockets, looking in his wallet, and flipping through the books he reads. Notice the lie they tell. They argue that they are looking for anything that can be used by terrorists. But they start going through his credit cards and looking through his wallet. And then, when they find nothing wrong, they send in his details to check up on the man.

Basically the cops end up arguing that anything a “terrorists” could use can be inspected by them at any time they wish. Of course the terrorists can use anything. Also watch as people walk by and look over at this poor man being searched. You know that many of them are wondering what this man did that was illegal to be apprehended by the police.

The last time I was in the UK I saw a thug harassing an older woman inside the local McDonalds. I complained to the staff who did nothing. I went outside and told the police. The thug walked out and I pointed him out. The police REFUSED to do anything saying they didn’t want to “embarrass” him in "front of his mates”. Apparently guilty people shouldn’t be embarrassed but innocent people deserve to be frisked, searched and checked out on some central data base. Zieg heil! The one thing I will say is that, as disgusting as this is, in the U.S. merely asking the police the questions this man asked would have gotten him beaten, perhaps tasered and possibly shot.

Meanwhile the Telegraph reports that the local councils are using the antiterrorism surveillance systems to spy on “couples’ sleeping arrangements.” Taxes are based, not only on the value of property, but also on the number of people living there. So councils “undertake ‘surveillance’ of cars registered to addresses ‘to substantiate the allegation of living together.’” Documents from one council show they are checking to see if couples are living “as husband and wife.”

In Thurrock single residents are required to sign a document giving blanket permission to local bureaucrats “to enter their home as part of an inspection” to determine if they really are single or in a couple. If they have a partner their tax rate increases by one-third. A spokesman for the Conservative Party said:

Day by day under Labour, the country is sleepwalking into a surveillance state, where spying on citizens has become the norm. Laws which were originally intended to tackle the most serious crimes and safeguard the public are now being deployed routinely and without hesitation.

Councils will naturally wish to ensure that council tax discounts and benefits are not wrongly claimed. But I am concerned that innocent citizens will be spied on through heavy-handed and disproportionate use by town hall snoopers. There are far less intrusive and more cost-effective ways of vetting council tax, such as through data matching, rather than paying town hall officials to camp out overnight outside people's homes.

The fact such snooping is already over-used by local authorities bodes ill for the planned powers for town halls to access communications data. There are insufficient checks and balances to prevent people's sex lives being habitually monitored by state bureaucrats, purely because they claim a council tax discount for living alone.

Bureaucrats with the Local Government Association have a unique stand on the matter. They say “Pretending to live alone to defraud the taxpayer is not a victimless crime.” This goes on the assumption that your wealth belongs to the government and they let you keep some of it. If you keep more of your own income then the government has to take more of other people’s income. So it is your fault that they are confiscating more wealth from other people. Thus keeping your own money is a crime against others.

Already it has been shown that government powers initially created to “stop terrorism” have been used by councils to arrest people whose dog took a shit in the wrong place or who dumped trash in the wrong location.

But one government official, with the title of Interception of Communications Commissioner, Paul Kennedy, complained that the local councils were not using their spying powers enough. He suggested that more councils spy on people to fight crimes “such as skipping work and filing fraudulent overtime claims.” The Telegraph reports: “Councils across the country were criticised last month as it emerged that they used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act up to 10,000 times a year to investigate such petty offences as dog fouling and under-age smoking.”

And while the Conservative Party is, this now, whining about the surveillance state, only days ago they were demanding that police powers be expanded to do more surveillance. Then another Tory spokesman said: “It is not right that we charge our police with combating crime and disorder and then tie their hands behind their backs.... the police should be given both the resources and the freedom to use those resources to do their job.” In that incident the Tories said that restraints to protect citizens from spying were “red tape” and promised to make it easier to spy, including putting in wire taps, without any court permission required.

MP resigns for the right reasons.

A Conservative member of the British parliament has stepped down in protest over the rising police state in the United Kingdom. Here is his resignation statement.

Woman put on trial for having kitchen knife.

You can’t have a successful police state without disarming the public. And that includes disarming them in every way possible. Sad, pathetic England is well on the way toward that scenario. The general public, except for the violent criminals, are disarmed. And the police focus much of their activity toward the general public not the real criminals. It is both much safer for the officers and general more lucrative for the fines they collect for a plethora of petty offenses used to regulate the average person into submission.

A recent example of this four month prosecution of 29-year-old Jane Bellas. Bellas had a small sausage stand at a local fair. She would serve hot sausages on rolls to willing customers. One day she is on her way home when the police contend she committed a revenue raising traffic infraction. That really makes the day of the British cops.

She is pulled over when the police notice a dangerous and apparently illegal weapon in her car — a kitchen knife. In England it is illegal to have a knife in a public place without “good” reason. And “good” is entirely subjective and up to the interpretation of the local police. Clearly the young woman was no threat and that tells the police it is safe to arrest her. Bonus time -- they can not only get her for a traffic fine but fine her for carrying a kitchen knife in her car. She also faced the potential of four years in jail -- all for having a kitchen knife in her car.

And since Bellas was employed and not part of the welfare/criminal class they knew she would like pay up if convicted. For this reason alone the police pursue the working class/middle class citizens while ignoring the criminal case who live off the state and what they steal in other ways. The British system seems to be a system by which the criminal/parasitical class votes in politicians (they have so much in common) who then wage war on the working people in order to fund the programs that benefit the parasitical classes and benefit the politicians.

The police are the front arm of that war and the politicians hand them enough rules and regulations that they could get virtually anyone they set their eyes upon if they felt so inclined. And they set their eyes upon Jane Bellas and that kitchen knife gave them the excuse they needed. Ca-ching!

Bellas argued that she ran a sausage stand and had to cut bread rolls with the knife for the customers. The police said they didn’t believe her and continued with the case. They basically assume that most people won’t fight it due to the cost. Bellas fought it.

The only thing that saved here was that other bureaucrats had previously attacked her. At her trial it turned out that the prosecutors found evidence that inspectors had supposedly been tinkering with a generator while holding a sausage -- an offfense that the bureaucrats took “very seriously”. The judge found that this proved that Bellas did actually work the sausage stand and thus she was shown to have a “good” reason for having a kitchen knife in her car.

She was then found not guilty and given $20 to cover her costs. The Daily Mail reports that the cost of the case was around $4,000 but they were unclear as to whether these costs were for Bellas or for the “justice” system itself. Either way England is a pathetic excuse for a nation when this sort of thing can happen to a woman merely for driving with a kitchen knife in her car.

By the way, if you want an idea of how far this victim disarmament campaign can go, when give the political muscle consider an editorial from the British Medical Journal.

Not long ago England banned guns to put an end to violent crime. Violent crime increased. As the BMJ admitted: “Violent crime in the United Kingdom is increasing.... and one easily accessible weapon used in many incidents is the kitchen knife.” Because people use knives to kill other people the BMJ wrote: “We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure....”

Are they on to something? I’ve notice that politicians around the world are responsible for a lot of deaths themselves. Government certainly was the leading cause of death over the last century. Make the world safe! Ban government.

British electorate votes against Labour.

Britain’s Labour Party suffered a stunning series of humiliations in local elections. Even holding elections on the favorite holiday of socialists, May Day, didn’t seem to help. England turned its back on Labour very decisively.

The net result is that in total votes cast Labour came in third place. The Conservative Party came in first and the perennial third place winners, the Liberal Democrats, passed Labour in popular votes to come in second.

In the local councils Labour saw their number of seats decline by 331 and they lost control of 9 councils. The conservatives now hold 65 councils to Labour’s 18 with the Lib Dems in third at 12, 64 councils have no clear majority.

In London the oafish Conservative, Boris Johnson beat out Labour’s Ken Livingstone by a margin of 140,000 votes.

Labour has been facing disaster for some time. Tony Blair, following the advice of George Bush, led the party into the wilderness and it simply hasn’t recovered. Even Blair’s well-deserved resignation didn’t help the party. Gordon Brown, Blair’s replacement, refused to distance himself from Blair’s disastrous policies and the voters fled Labour as a result.

His main benefit has been that he is neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown.

Brown has refused to abandon the principles of Blair and that drove voter resentment against Labour. Conservative Party leader, the greasy David Cameron, on the other hand, has simply refused to have any principles whatsoever. But he did benefit because he’s not Tony Blair and not Gordon Brown. Exactly who he is remains to be seen. I suspect he will be the next Prime Minister and he will spend a lot of his first term causing voters to questions the wisdom of electing him.

The Lib Dems are continuing their slow move into becoming England’s second party. There have been some steps within the party to embrace it’s older classical liberal principles, not enough yet to call them true liberals, but enough to warrant attention.

Labour has pushed through many of the Big Brother type policies that George Bush has inflicted on the United States so it is nice to see them slaughtered at the polls. Personally I would have preferred seeing them lose a couple hundred more seats than they did. And I would have like to have seen the Lib Dems receiving more than they have -- they always get shafted in the first-past-the-post seats. Even though they won more votes that the Brownies did they come in third when it translates into actual seats.

One of the ugly incidents in the election was that the fascist British National Party won a seat in the London Assembly pushing their typical anti-immigrant positions. During times of financial stress, usually brought on by inept government management, stupid voters look for scapegoats. And because they stupid they never end up actually blaming the people responsible -- the politicians they put into power. Instead they look to take their frustration on others. Since the defeat of Hitler’s National Socialism it has been very out of fashion to blame every problem on “the Jews” so the dumb have turned to new scapegoats: immigrants and gays.

Le plus ça change ... le plus c'est la même chose.

British bureacrats routinely put citizens under surveillance.

England was once a free country. Of course that ended long ago and it is now has one of the most extensive surveillance systems in the world -- and the targets of that surveillance are not criminals or terrorists but average people going about their average lives.

The Regulation of Investigatoryh Powers Act was passed to give government agencies spying powers in order to go after criminals and terrorists. Well, that was the excuse anyway. Originally these spying powers were bestowed on nine government agencies. Of course, since the damn camel got its nose in the tent matters have escalated. Now 792 government agencies have the right to spy on people and they are doing so!

One family in Dorset discovered that local officials used the law to put them under surveillance for weeks. Their alleged crime was to apply to have their youngest child attend a school where the council said they were not allowed to apply. In reality two of their other children had been attending the school for years. Government bureaucrats followed the family aroundl and kept record of where they slept at night. The school itself had told the parents that admission was legitimate. But for weeks detailed notes of the family were kept by the local council. (See the attached sheet of notes as an example.)

Tim Joyce and his partner, Jenny Paton, and their children were the targets of the investigation in Dorsey. Mr. Joyce said: “It used to be that the Home Secretary had to talk to a judge to get surveillance through the police. Now it seems the world and his wife can carry out surveillance whenever they feel like it.”

Last year government departments, unrelated to policing, engaged in 12,484 cases of surveillance on citizens. That is one citizen being targeted for regular surveillance every 42 minutes, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The London Telegraph reports that this is a doubling from the previous year’s level of domestic surveillance.

In Gosport the local council has put dog owners under surveillance to see if they pick up the dog’s crap. Chris Davis, the would be “intelligence officer” for this sad little bureaucracy says: “We have strategically placed members of our enforcement team to blend in with the natural environment and observe people walking dogs. They are using digital cameras to get hard evidence.” In Stoke-on-Trent bureaucrats are using domestic spying to check on “illegal building work” and to see if people are dumping trash in violation to council rules.

The face of paranoia.

One thing you can say about the British is that they are damn tired of playing second fiddle to the Americans. Any hysteria that sweeps America eventually sweeps England but they try to go one step further with the silliness. And the paranoia that children will be abducted, and the measures taken to "prevent" it, reaches new heights, or low, in England.

The reality is that more people win the lottery each year than there are children who are abducted by strangers. Most incidents like this, or molestations, have nothing to do with "stranger danger". The culprits in most cases are parents, relatives or family friends. Amazingly while paranoid about the rare occurrence little is done (or can be done) about those most likely to cause the problem -- people who are already close to the children.

In the campaign to out-dumb each other the Cann Hall Primary School in Clacton, England has decided to replace the children's faces in photographs with somewhat scary "smiley faces" that are superimposed over the child's real face. In other words, each child is stripped of their personality. School headmistress Clare Reece, in classic paranoid style says this was done because: "You can't say what is going to happen with any of those pictures." The school newsletter apparently has the full photos but when the newsletter is put on the school's website the faces are obscured. They call this "child friendly" and a measure to "to protect our children". Fact check: the kids are more likely to be molested by a teacher at the school than by someone who sees the photo on the internet and then makes an effort to track down the child.

One sociologist said that photographs give "children clear images of their experiences" and that the policy "is not only irrational but serves no purpose whatsoever."

When the bizarre photos got some publicity the school removed them and the site merely said it was "undergoing maintenance".

It seems that the entire purpose of public education is to teach children to live in a constant state of terror. But why not, that just makes them compliant voters later on for the real fearmongers in life: politicians.

Top conservative leader in same-sex union.

Somehow you just knew we weren't talking about the United States. America remains the only developed country in the world with a major phobia about same-sex relationships. And certainly outside Islam you won't find more fanatical antigay types than the Theopublicans in the United States -- the Mike Huckabee crowd for instance.

According to the London Telegraph, Conservative Party MP and the shadow business secretary for the party, Alan Duncan will into a civil union with his partner James Dunseath. The ceremony is scheduled for the summer and Conservative Party leader David Cameron says he is hoping to attend and is "thrilled" for Duncan and Dunseath. The two meet just over a year ago and Duncan popped the question on Valentines Day.

Both men come from military families and have the blessings of their respective families. The Telegraph quoted Sheila Randall, a Conservative Party activist for 54 years as saying: "Alan and James are lovely men. I was on Alan's selection committee and have know and like him ever since. I am so happy for them both."

The only reason this is news in England is that Mr. Duncan is the first member of cabinet, or shadow cabinet, to enter into a same-sex civil union.

The Christian resistance to marriage equality in the U.S. looks more and more absurd every day. None of the dire consequences that these people predicted have come to pass. Individual equality before the law ought to be respected. I predict it will be and that more and more states will join the civilized world and shun the bigoted legislation the Religious Right has promoted. It will take some time since the Religious Right knew the tide was against them so they pushed through constitutional changes [at the state level] since they knew they'd be in the minority on this matter soon. But the changes will take place. This is one battle the Christianists have lost already. They know they have lost but their hatred for gay people is so intense that they will cling to such laws for as long as possible. And hatred can be a very strong motivator. In fact, it seems very little else is keeping the Republican Party alive these days.

The UK cops aren't a lot better.

I was a bit perturbed to receive some bad news from one of our regular readers, Bexie, in the UK. Miss Rebecca has been having renovation work done. The builder stupidly gave keys to her home to the low lifes he hired from the local unemployment office.

Early last week Bexie returned to her home only to find herself locked out from the inside. She got home early that day. Her return spooked the builder's employees who were inside the house redistributing the wealth. Of course they were the prime beneficiaries. Using another door, that couldn't be double locked from the inside she discovered a car had just fled the back of her home and it contained all her computer equipment. This includes all her data and business records.

Putting together the make of care and that the criminals gained access with a key it was easy to narrow down the culprits. The police were called and yawned totally uninterested. They didn't want to investigate or press the matter. She was told that if she wanted to get her goods returned she should offer a reward. In other words they were suggesting she pay off the thieves to return her stolen property.

Now precisely what purpose do these cops serve? It is a question that comes up more and more as the police refuse to protect people from crime yet use their power against non-criminals on a regular basis. (The latter is not quite as violent in the UK as it is in the US but this is because most British cops are unarmed.)

My theory is that in the modern police states that are arising in the UK and the US the police have stopped being peace officers who see their duty as protecting the people from criminals. They now see their job as one of protecting the State from the people. Their job is to force you to comply with State regulations and rules in regards to your relationship with government more than protect you in regards to your relationship with other people. This is born out by the zeal they exhibit in prosecuting people for going a couple of miles an hour too fast on government roads while being disinterested in burglaries such as this one.

The duty of the police officer has evolved as government has expanded its powers. Today the police officer is the thin blue line protecting statism from liberty. Only secondly, and a distant second I think, does he see his job as protecting people from criminals. Under the first theory of police functions the officer sees the public as the enemy while under the second he sees them as the client. The driving force behind the multiple incidents of "out of control" cops is because cops increasing see you as the enemy and the government as their client.

Bexie (if you can read this): Sorry again to hear about this. You know I'll do what I can to help.

British Police State is alive and well.

The police state that Tony Blair gave England is alive and well. Just ask Darren Nixon of Stoke-on-Trent. Mr. Nixon works as a mechanic. And he appears to be a rather law abiding gentleman who never had a run in with the police until recently. But recently when he got off the bus he took home he found himself surrounded by armed officers barking orders at him.

Mr. Nixon had trouble hearing them because he was listening to his MP3 player at the time so he had to take the earphones out. Nixon was quickly apprehended. He had his mug shot taken and the police added his DNA to the national data base along with taking his fingerprints.

What crime did Mr. Nixon commit? None. Nothing. He did absolutely nothing wrong. Not even the police say he is guilty of a crime. Some half-blind, deluded woman convinced herself that the MP3 might be a handgun and called the police. In England it is entirely illegal to own firearms by the way. In fact, recently a drama group was even told they had to register plastic swords with the police as well as keep them under lock and key when not being used in a stage production. It should be duly noted that the gun ban in England was immediately followed by a massive crime wave as criminals realized they were still armed and that only their victims had been disarmed by the law.

Now consider those DNA samples that were extracted from Mr. Nixon. Under the policies of the English state those samples stay in the files permanently -- even though Mr. Nixon had done nothing wrong and was apprehended by the police on bogus charges. Mr. Nixon shouldn’t feel too bad, some 100,000 children, including a seven-month-old child have been added to the criminal data base because found ways to take their DNA samples as well.

People can have their DNA taken merely because they witnessed a crime and then the government creates a file on them, with that DNA and place it in the criminal data file. The British government says individuals can ask the police to remove the files. And that is true, but the police routinely refuse to do it. But a spokesman for the Home Office claims that there is “clear evidence showing the substantial public benefit in relation to the detection of serious crime” by keeping the DNA of innocent people. From just 2006 to 2007 the number of children, innocent of any crime, who have their DNA kept by the government shot up from 24,000 to 105,000.

It is estimated that over 1 million Britons, never charged with any crime, are on the system and that innocent people comprise one out of four samples. The government pooh-poohs concerns saying: “Those who are innocent have nothing to fear from providing a sample and retaining this evidence is no different to recording other forms of information such as photographs and witness statements.” Do note that while the people are called innocent this Home Office spokesman called the DNA samples “evidence”.

And if you want some idea of how twisted British thinking can be Lord Justice Sedley recently called for mandatory filing of DNA samples of all residents and anyone visiting the country. He said that the police currently take samples from blacks more than from whites. To combat this “discrimination” this “Justice” wants to force everyone to supply their DNA in the name of fairness. Apparently the fact that black women are more likely to be raped is a good reason for the government to rape all women in the name of fairness.

Currently the British police are adding about 1,000 people per day to the DNA data base. Under Blair, and in the U.S. under Bush, western concepts of freedom and human rights were severely damaged. So far in England the opposition Conservative Party is promising to undo many of the worst aspect of the police state. In the United States the Democrats have made no such pledge.

Photo: Mr. Nixon with his deadly MP3 player. No doubt the police feel justified as someone claims he was playing Guns and Roses.

Drama group told to register toy gun with police.

If you want an idea of how England is being regulated to death by morons at all levels of government all you have to do is see what recently happened to the Carnon Downs drama group.

The group puts on pantomimes and sometimes they use a toy gun which shoots out a flag that says “bang”. And other times they use plastic swords.

The bureaucrats that run the Health and Safety Executive have detailed rules about what one is allowed to do with fake weapons on stage. Linda Barker, of the drama group, said: “The cutlasses count as weapons even though they are replicas and made of plastic and apparently they could be mistaken for real ones.”

And one of the rules is that these faux weapons have to be registered with the police. Barker noted, “It gets a bit farcical when you are dealing with plastic swords. It is not as if anyone is likely to be scared by them.”

The group was told that when the toys are not being used on stage that they are required to keep them under lock and key. The plastic stage props have to be kept in a secured case, in a locked room with only restricted access. Elaine Gummow, co-director of the drama group said this “is perhaps a sign of the times that health and safety is everywhere.”

One of the bureaucrats said: “We do not want to stop people putting on pantos or having fun as long as the risks are sensibly managed.” Of course, when they say “managed” what they mean is managed by them.

After the police were informed they told the drama group that they were also required to inform the fire brigade.

Not long ago actor Ewan McGregor said that the “ludicrous nanny state” in England may drive him out of England. “If anything drives me out of the country it will be that...” McGregor said, “Today, health and safety are out of control.”

The bureaucrat who said they don’t want to stop fun didn’t explain how towns in England had to actually cancel traditional Christmas lighting displays as a result of the micromanagement of the unelected bureaucrats. In Clevedon the local businesses canceled their display after they were told that attaching lights to either buildings or to light poles was too risky. One trader said: “The rules and regulations regarding Christmas lights have changed to such an extent that to put the illuminations we have used is near impossible.” A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses said that “exhaustive safety concerns are ruining the festive spirit.”

England travails! Is an election weeks away?

Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after the failed and disgraced Tony Blair left office. Of course Tony was the lap dog to George Bush and Bush manages to destroy everything he touches.

One result of the close alliance between Bush and Blair was that the Labour Party was in basement poll wise. And in the recent council elections the Conservatives came back strong, capturing more seats than most people thought possible.

Yet, it appears that Mr. Brown may be able to pull off a win in spite of Blair. And it is possible he may pull it off very soon. The rumors that are floating about English political circles is that Brown is about to call a snap election. And Labour is having its annual conference now and the word is that Brown may use this conference for the announcement, and to launch the campaign.

When Brown was asked about the rumors he gave what sounded to these ears like a campaign speech. “"We had terrorism, we had the floods, we had foot and mouth, we had the financial turbulence, and I'll keep getting on with the job.” I must say I'm sorry he had a case of "foot and mouth" but it is common in political circles. Brown then went into other statements about things he will be fixing -- of course the National Health Service is at the top of the list—again. Apparently no matter how much they fix it the damn thing remains broken. It is a top priority for fixing every election year. As the saying goes: “Don’t mend it, end it.”

Brown has until May 2010 to call an election but now may be his best time. What if the US economy tanks due to the collapse of the housing market? Consumers in the US are heavily in debt, partly because of the low-interest rates the Fed has been pushing. But consumers think their home equity is sufficient to cover their debts and feel confident to spend what they don't have. But if the housing bubbles continues deflating the equity will decline in more and more houses and those debts will come back to haunt many a consumer. Add to this the collapsing dollar and that this will push up prices of consumer goods significantly. This will cause lots of problems, especially for banks. A recession, or depression, for the US economy will impact the UK. And already the Brits have had their first panics. Just days ago thousands of people lined up outside one bank to withdraw all their deposits in fear of a collapse. The price of shares in other banks dropped by as much as a third before the government rushed in and promised to pay 100% of all deposits with the money of taxpayers, if necessary.

But the fear is that this could happen again and bigger. And if the UK economy follows the US markets into the toilet no sitting Prime Minister wants to run for office under those conditions.

Brown is currently ahead of the rival Tories by 6 points in the polls. That ought not be surprising. The Tories have a new leader, if you can call him that, David Cameron. Cameron came onto the scene presenting himself as a moderate Conservative who was good on civil liberties and and on free markets. But once in the leadership he presented himself as a Labourite in Conservative drag. Since becoming party leader Cameron has been singing the tune: “Anything Labour can do, I can do better. Anything Labour spends, I can spend more.”

If Labour proposes new regulations then Cameron not only endorses those regulations but ups the ante by insisting he will regulate more than Labour does. If Tony Blair ran to the Right of John Major it appears David Cameron is intent on running to the Left of Gordon Brown.

The problem is that neither Labour voters nor Conservative voters find that particularly appealing. And Cameron comes across too slick, too driven by “focus groups”, to appeal to most voters. His lacklustre personality and lack of any principles ought to have him further behind in the polls than they do. That this hasn’t happened is not due to an innate ability on his part. It is entirely due to the utter disgust of voters over the Blair years. Cameron is a major reason that Brown is doing better than he ought to be doing.

Brown needs to figure out what risks he wants to take. He’s ahead in the polls now but Labour will still lose seats. Should he wait so that more and more voters get sick of Cameron’s Labour-lite antics? But if he waits, and the US economy tanks with England skidding downward as a result, then even a weasel like Cameron could start to look good to the voters. Brown has to bet on who is more inept at his job: George Bush or David Cameron. Neither should be where they are. If I were Brown I would probably assume that Bush is the more inept of the two. I would call a snap election within the next few days and I would hold it as quickly as possible.

Cameron will try to continue his Labour-lite positions to attract “green” voters and play down traditional Tory support for free markets (weak as that has been of late). He will probably find the voters totally underwhelmed by his stands and may try to pull some last minute flip-flops in order to shore up Tory support but by then it will be too late. Alas, it’s too late already. Cameron will have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And hopefully Tory supporters will send him to the backbench, from which he never should have emerged in the first place.

The Conservatives will have to look for a new leader. They need someone with some principles and some resolve. Anyone know how Maggie’s feeling these days?

Not So Great Britain: 1 in 5 households live off the state.

Karl Marx said from “each according to his ability to each according to his need.” Sounds good as long as you ignore the incentives. The first part punishes people for having ability. The second part rewards people for having needs. The end result of such a system is that it reduces the number of people in the first group and increases the numbers in the second group. And that is disastrous.

The Daily Mail, in the U.K., now reports that one in five households there relies solely on state welfare of one form or another. They note:

The figure of three million workless homes is particularly bleak because it includes only those where there is someone of working age - defined as between 18 and 65 whether claiming a disability or not, but excluding students.

In other words it excludes students who are receiving benefits and the elderly who are receiving benefits. Both are large groups. The number of people who live in workless homes are now 4,348,000 which is an increase of 181,000 since last year. But that’s just the adults. Add to that 1,798,000 children and you have 6,146,000 Brits who survive solely on the income the state takes from workers.

In recent years the British government tried to create a program to encourage single mothers to find jobs. Instead, the number of single women with children, who are unemployed, has increased.

It is also estimated that only 20% of those living off the taxes of others are making any effort whatsoever to find employment. About 24% of all homes in London are jobless.

Now some of these people actually do have under-the-table income they don’t report. This is considered a crime. But crime in the U.K. doesn’t amount to much in reality. They run some hilarious commercials, also paid for by the hapless taxpayer, which warns benefit cheats that if they are caught they could be “questioned under caution” by the police. Not arrested. Just questioned while under caution. I bet that had them trembling in their boots. The first time I saw that commerical I’m sure my response was not much different from the benefit cheaters themselves -- I was doubled over with laughter at the ludicrous nature of the “threat”.

Who needs stinking civil liberties?

It won’t be long now before England’s worst prime minister ever drops into the dustbin of history (unless Bush rescues him and gives him a cushy job -- which has been hinted at).

As he did in his term of office Mr. Blair is doing in the last days of his odious rule -- he is doing his level best to strip Englishmen of more of their civil liberties. Blair has made it clear that civil liberties hinder government, which is precisely what they are meant to do mein Führer said some as they were blackbagged and carted off. (Of course Cheney said much the same thing recently to the cadets at West Point, basically urging them to ignore Constitutional protections when it comes to those deemed “terrorists”.)

Throughout his carrier Blair has introduced measure after measure expanding the police powers of the state. One could argue he has committed treason agains the English tradition of freedom. And as he is being shown the door he’s still working to expand police powers. Peter Hain, Blair’s own Northern Ireland Seccretary attacked the measures as the “domestic equivalent fof Guantanamo Bay.” Perhaps a bit of hyperbole but where his degree of worry is wrong his direction is not.

The idea is to give police the right to stop and question anyone they wish, anytime they wish, for any reason they wish. Failure to answer them could result in a fine of up to $10,000.

The previous Blair measure in this area is the Terrorism Act 2000, an act that truly is terrorism. It gives the government the right stop and search anyone traveling in public whether there is a reason to suspect them of anything or not. Except it is limited to areas designated by a chief constable. Still pretty lose when it comes to reigning in that terrorist organization known as government.

In that law not only did a chief constable have to delineate the area covered he had to set a time limit. Police could arrest people merely on suspicion but if the person didn’t cooperate by answering their questions there was no additional penalty. Blair finds that too restrictive. No doubt Cheney is whispering to Blair and suggesting that perhaps he should consider torture as well.

Under the new legislation individual police officers could interrogate people randomly without any restrictions as to the area or with time limits imposed. It removes the slight restriction of having the area designated by a chief constable. Now any would be “Terrorist Buster” on the force could begin questioning anyone found in public. And if someone found it a violation of their rights and refused to answer they could be fined heavily.

Blair, in perhaps his most disgusting comment in public life, defended these new police powers saying that society is wrong to protect civil liberties. “We have choosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this misguided and wrong.”

Of course the police state/surveillance state that Blair has created doesn’t come cheaply. The most recent analysis of the tax burden on individuals alone, not on business, shows the every single taxpayers pays about $13 in taxes for every hour they work. Just last year alone the tax burden on individuals increased by $50 billion. And these figures don’t include local taxes. Under Blair’s police state taxation has doubled since 1997.

A police state isn’t cheap. The wives of Henry VIII got better treatment than Blair deserves.
Ron Paul

England's streets too dangerous for cops.

The BBC has an interesting report which questions how dangerous the streets of England have become for police officers. The report says:

Research carried out by the Police Federation for England and Wales last year found 40,000 officers had been faced with a knife and 7,000 threatened with a gun during the past two years. Paul Tonks, chairman of the West Midlands Police Federation, said that during his 28 years' service there had always been colleagues injured, but the job had become more dangerous recently. Police constable Norman Brennan says: “Britain is very violent and the increasing violence against police mirrors that faced by other people in society.”

This rise in violent crime in the UK has caused an increase in the debate over arming police with many police saying the streets are too dangerous and they are unarmed while criminals are not. What needs to be remembered is that firearms are nearly completely illegal in the UK. But as we’ve reported here before since hard core gun control went into effect crime has escalated dramatically and the number of weapons in the hands of criminals went up, not down.

Now we have police officers lobbying for the right to be armed because of this sort of criminal violence. But as Pc Brennan stated what is happening to the police “mirrors that faced by other people in society.” So the question the advocates of arming the British police have to ask themselves is whether or not the other innocent people in the UK shouldn’t be able to protect themselves as well.

It could be just days now. Stunning defeat for Blair

Watch British politics carefully over the next few days. One bit of good news is that it appears to be just a matter of days before the vile Tony Blair retires. Here is a man who acted as a toady to the lying George Bush and who has worked hard and long at turning England into a fascist state.

Blair's party wants him to go. The British people want him to go. Blair is doing to the Labour Party what Bush has done to the Republican Party -- destroy support for it. In local council races the Labour Party is bleeding support. With about a third of the council elections called Labour has lost over 100 seats while the Conservative Party has gained almost 200 seats. The Conservatives should gain at least 400 seats. Too bad they don't stand for anything anymore.

UPDATE: Eleciton results are coming in very slowly from the UK but there is little good news for the Blairites. with not quite half the councils reporting the Tories have pick up 378 seats while Labor has lost 181, the Liberal Democrats have lost 134 seats. Tories now contol 73 local councils compared to Labour's 19 and the Lib Dems have 11. In the Scottish Parliament the Labour Party has been the force but that appears to be over. Of the seats so far decided they have 32 seats versus the Scottish National Party with 30 seats, Lib Dems with 12 and Tories with 7. A further 47 seats are up for grab so it is possible for Labour to remain the major party but looking unlikely they will hold a majority. Labour will remain the major party but will lose their majority in the Welsh Assembly. In vote percentage terms Labour is almost tied with the third place Liberal Democrats, 27% to 26%, while the Tories seem to have 41%.

FINAL UPDATE: It couldn't have been much worse for Tony Blair. The more election results that come in the worse the news for the man who played lap dog to George Bush. Let us start with the local council elections which are a strong indicator of what voters are thinking. Labour has lost 485 seats across the country, with 9 localities still outstanding. The Tories were hoping to gain 600 to 700 seats and garned an addition 875 seats. They now control 160 local councils compared to Labour's pathetic 33. And Labour is lucky, they control 33 councils while the Lib Dems control 22 since the Lib Dems have 2114 councillors compared to Labour's pathic third place showing of 1803.

In the Scotish Parliament Labour has lost its dominant position to the Scottish National Party. The SNP has 47 seats to Labours 46 while the Tories have 17 and the Lib Dems hav 16 with 3 others. Since no one is anxious to be saddled with Labour as a partner they will be in the opposition there. In the Assembly in Wales Labour is still the dominant force but lacks a majority. It has 26 seats out of 60. In percentage terms this is the worst Labour result in Wales since the First World War.

How many more days will go by before Blair concedes he is one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in British history and resign his position?

England Prevails.

I’ve spent the last few months in a small town on the English coast. Part of my day includes grocery shopping at the local store. And shopping here regularly shocks me. I will never adjust to the absolutely unrealistic prices for food nor will I ever grow fond of “traditional English” cooking, something HL Mencken once described as one step removed from cannibalism.

But the real horror here has been how far the UK has gone toward being a police state under the watch of the loathsome Tony Blair.

Irving Berlin, in 1946, wrote some lyrics for the musical Annie Get Your Gun which included the line: “Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you.” That encapsulates the relationship between Blair and King George of the Imperial Republic of the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq and soon to be announced. Unfortunately what they try to outdo each other with is authoritarian violations of civil liberties and expansions of state power.

But back to the grocery store for a minute. I’m leaving the UK in a few days and I wanted to pick up some items to take with, mainly since where I’m going the groceries are not in English and often that makes it hard for me to find specific items. And one item I needed was vanilla extract.

I’ve bought vanilla extract in three different countries before. No hassle. Today was slightly different. As the $8 bottle of vanilla extract was being scanned the clerk mumbled something. I had to have her repeat it. I still didn’t get what she was saying. It was one of those English accents that requires subtitles. The third time, and with a little help from the amused gentleman in line behind me, I finally got what she was saying.

She was under 18 years of age. So she is forbidden by law from pressing the buttons on the cash register to ring up the sale of the vanilla extract. I can still buy it, for now at least, but she can’t push the buttons without becoming a criminal of some kind. So we have to wait for a supervisor to come over and inspect the suspicious customer wishing to buy a small bottle of vanilla extract. Apparently the Nannys in Whitehall are worried that underaged individuals will buy expensive bottles of vanilla extract to consume in sufficient quantities to get plastered. From what I’ve seen the local yobs have no difficulty finding other forms of intoxication that are far cheaper and much more efficient.

And today’s post brought more interesting news. Local council elections are coming up. Already the Labour yahoos have been by and so have the UK Independence Party, but then their local offices are next door. But today the Conservative Party put in their appearance with a nice color brochure showing three of their local candidates, two of whom I’ve met since being here.

And what do they promise? Well, they promise lots more government! The social welfare state is alive and well in the Conservative Party. The difference is that they promise to give more of it than the Labour Party does. And they promise voters that if put back into office they will increase government surveillance of the population! More state cameras filming more people going about their daily life.

Of course they take their cues from David Cameron who is doing his best to be a Blair-lite candidate if not a Blairite candidate. What principles of small government the Conservative Party briefly and weakly held seems abandoned. Blair has had some opposition from his own backbenchers but on a whole he pushed the fascist state ahead by leaps and bounds.

And what I suspect will shock my American readers is that Blair is far more of a fascist, in the literal sense, than Bush. Fascism and socialism are, in practice, quite similar. Both promote state domination. The fascist just allows the pretence of private ownership. But the state regulates and controls what private owners may do. That is economic fascism and that has always been popular within Labour circles. In fact much of what is called “progressive” and “socialist” around the world is nothing more than economic fascism.

But Blair is adding the police state element of fascism to the mix in ways that America has yet to do so explicitly. As odious as the Patriot Act may be the UK has gone further. Admittedly they don’t run concentration camps and engage in torture but they don’t have to. Blair’s Big Brother George does that for them. But England supports the camps, the torture, the suspension of habeas corpus and the rest of the Bushian imitation of National Socialism. Still Blair is marching much quicker toward the final solution.

Consider that he wishes to have a DNA database of every citizen. Already the British fascist state has such information on one out every 20 citizens. Totalitarian Tony wishes to impose, and will shortly, a national passport which citizens will need to carry around with them in case one of the state police stop them and demand it. There appear to be plans to use RFID chips in the ID so that scanners placed around the country can trace the whereabouts of anyone at any time. I presume this can easily be used to also find anyone who is not carrying a card thus making arrest easier.

Any and all moves to a new address are to be reported to the local gestapo office immediately. And if you die without permission then your grieving relatives better hop down and report it right away lest they be fined. Surely you don’t think they should put grieving and a funeral ahead of our collective obligations to the State!

A new program would place monitors in every vehicle in the country in order to allow the government to trace your every move on the road. This will be incorporated into the tens of thousands of closed circuit television cameras Blair has installed. Currently England is alleged to have one out every five close circuit cameras in the world installed to monitor the population. As dictitorial as Bush has been Blair has gone much further.

In a joint effort the Tony and George Comedy Hour have pushed through requirements that put all people traveling in Europe and the US under surveillance before they even leave home. Vast amounts of private details, including your credit card details, are supposed to be sent to British and US gestapo agents prior to your boarding a plane. All this information, making you a ripe target for identity theft, is then scrutinized by a secret computer program that will determine whether or not you are a security threat. Suspicious details include seat preferences, meal preferences, how you pay for your ticket, etc. And if it targets you wrongly -- and most, if not all, people targeted will be wrong ---well that’s just too bad. Stop whining. You act like you have rights.

In another move the British government has told tax agents to use satellites to monitor the homes of people in the UK. It is used to watch for “improvements” since if you make any effort to improve your life you are required to pay the state for permission to do so. Already they demand that all your computer visits and phone calls for the last two years be saved and open to government inspection.

And if it gets really bad? Will the British people rise up and defend their liberty? Not likely, the government confiscated all legally held, registered guns several years ago. There are still several million firearms in the country, more so now then when the ban went into effect, but the government says those are all in the hands of criminals, hence the reason for the increase in crimes committed with guns after all guns were banned.

And since a huge percentage of the population now pays their living expenses with state largess the tendency will be to avoid biting the hand that feeds them. As awful as things have become under King George I can assure you that England is in far worse shape. When they are finished buying vanilla extract will be the least of your worries.

In the film V for Vendetta the “Leader” of the British state, Adam Sutler, is seen speaking to a police officer whose job is to find the terrorist V. Sutler swivels in his chair and gestures toward a computer. He says to the officer:

“Mr. Almond, do you know what this is behind me?

“Uh... the Fate computer system, sir?”

“No. No sir. It’s more than that. This, this computer is a symbol, Mr. Almond. A symbol of the highest attainable goal of mankind. Do you know what that goal is, Mr. Almond?”

Sutler continues:

“Control, Mr. Almond! Control! The world around us is a changing, directionless, amoral morass and it is up to man and man alone to set things right! Without control, man is nothing, more than any other stinking, sweating, brute animal. Control, Mr. Almond. The control that we have painstakingly built up over the last ten years.”

The motto of Sutler and his crew of fascists is “England Prevails.” Indeed, it appears that England prevails. The good news is that when freedom dies you don’t have to file a report with the local government agents -- they knew before you did.

Photo: John Hurt doing his Tony Blair impersonation as Adam Sutler.