Posted on by qscrisp

Terrorists on the catwalk

I cannot speak my anger. For instance, at those who want to bring in biometric ID cards, at those who would like to see cash replaced altogether by credit cards. I don't know what I'd actually do if I met any of these people. I'd probably turn white hot in sizzling rage and find my tongue had clove to the roof of my mouth. If I had any presence of mind, of course, I would immediately locate the nearest object that resembled a large chisel, and use it to pan in the back of their skulls, getting my fingers sticky in all the excitement of the brain spaghetti.

Until that blessed moment arrives, the best we can do is laugh at the unpleasant people who are still in control. So, for a little cheekiness at the expense of the living abominations behind the CCTV cameras, please go first here, and then here.

I notice in the comments of one of those pages, the following: "if this is how the English wish to live, that is their choice."

No, not my fucking choice, mate. Not my choice.

23 Replies to “Terrorists on the catwalk”

  3. Peter A Leonard writes:

    The erosion of liberties in the UK since the advent of “New Labour” has been remarkable. My own view, for the little it may be worth, is that the desire to “control” is inherently a part of the beast – NL with its socialist background (never mind its near fascist leanings currently) feels the UK electorate to be (in the main) on a level mentally and emotional with a mollusk! It’s the nature of Socialism to “take care” of us. Everyone must be equal – though God knows why? Not one of us is born equal! And no amount of legislation is going to change that situation.Obviously, one mustn’t get too carried away with this – Mrs. Thatcher, I recall, praised “Solidarity” the Polish trades union, and backed its 21 demands for civil and trades union rights (four of which “rights” were illegal within the UK at the time for unions…which was all rather amusing), aimed at pressuring President Gorbachev in Moscow. Lech Walesa became the man of the moment. Mrs. T at home continued her own “hatchet job” on the unions – and certainly they did need curtailing, but within the process a variety of non-union liberties got “Tangoed”. With regard to NL and the government, since 31st December all ISPs in the UK have acceded to Home Office minister Vernon Coaker’s request to take on board the “Cleanfeed” system. So Britain, as with China, has agreed to the filtering and censorship of internet content –where the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) or Home Office decide this should take place.There is no legislation to support the “Cleanfeed” system within the UK nor government introduction of same.BT developed the system for the government. A list of IP addresses created by the IWF is supplied to the Home Office who then adds to it before forwarding it to ISPs with an order to block all traffic to and from those addresses.Originally the motivation behind the development of this software was the prevention, or at least limiting of access, to child pornography. Only now, as the Legalize Cannabis Alliance has found to its cost, no one except the Home Office knows what addresses are on those final lists! Whatever the original intent, the remit has widened. No one outside of government knows what’s on them – not even the ISPs. They block, but they cannot look.A website set up on Tuesday, 22nd January 2008 under the title INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN THE UK, has been “blocked” and suffers Google censorship…ain’t that a surprise?!Then again we all know about this, don’t we:http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23450560-details/Millions%20of%20passengers%20to%20undergo%20fingerprinting%20in%20security%20crackdown%20at%20Heathrow%27s%20Terminal%205/article.do“Millions of domestic air passengers will have to undergo fingerprint and biometric checks before being allowed to board flights”…oh, yes, what a treat, and who’s going to pay for that then?And then we have this:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/we-shall-not-overcome-nuclear-protest-survived-six-tory-governments-but-not-new-labour-793123.htmlThe key point being, I think: “From being a symbol of the right to protest, Aldermaston has become the latest testament to the desire of successive New Labour governments to curtail the right to assemble, demonstrate and object to government policy”.We also have this little chestnut:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/06/neuvote506.xmlThe most disgusting about face in the history of British politics (probably).I could go on and on, but it’s all too depressing.Regards.Peter

  5. I realise that Tony Blair is no longer important, but I would still like to bash his brains out against the pavement whilst simultaneously throttling him with my bare hands. I would then proceed to squish what remained of his grey matter under the heels of my shoes. It was three years ago that Brian Sedgemoor, who went almost completely unnoticed, made the following speech in the Houses of Parliament:http://my.opera.com/quentinscrisp/blog/show.dml/11464http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/24/uk-labour-mp-flays-g.html“As this will almost certainly be my last speech in Parliament, I shall try hard not to upset anyone. However, our debate here tonight is a grim reminder of how the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are betraying some of Labour’s most cherished beliefs. Not content with tossing aside the ideas and ideals that inspire and inform ideology, they seem to be giving up on values too. Liberty, without which democracy has no meaning, and the rule of law, without which state power cannot be contained, look to Parliament for their protection, but this Parliament, sad to say, is failing the nation badly. It is not just the Government but Back-Bench Members who are to blame. It seems that in situations such as this, politics become incompatible with conscience, principle, decency and self-respect. Regrettably, in such situations, the desire for power and position predominates.”As we move towards a system of justice that found favour with the South African Government at the time of apartheid and which parallels Burmese justice today, if hon. Members will pardon the oxymoron, I am reminded that our fathers fought and died for liberty—my own father literally—believing that these things should not happen here, and we would never allow them to happen here. But now we know better. The unthinkable, the unimaginable, is happening here.”In their defence, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary say that they are behaving tyrannically and trying to make nonsense of the House of Lords’ decision in A and Others as appellants v. the Home Secretary as respondent because they are frightened, and that the rest of us would be frightened too if only we knew what they will not tell us. They preach the politics of fear and ask us to support political incarceration on demand and punishment without trial.”Sad to say, I do not trust the judgment of either our thespian Prime Minister or our Home Secretary, especially given the latter’s performance at the Dispatch Box yesterday. It did not take Home Office civil servants or the secret police long to put poison in his water, did it? Paper No. 1, entitled “International Terrorism: the Threat”, which the Home Secretary produced yesterday and I have read, is a putrid document if it is intended to justify the measure. Indeed, the Home Secretary dripped out bits of it and it sounded no better as he spoke than it read. Why does he insult the House? Why cannot he produce a better argument than that?”How on earth did a Labour Government get to the point of creating what was described in the House of Lords hearing as a “gulag” at Belmarsh? I remind my hon. Friends that a gulag is a black hole into which people are forcibly directed without hope of ever getting out. Despite savage criticisms by nine Law Lords in 250 paragraphs, all of which I have read and understood, about the creation of the gulag, I have heard not one word of apology from the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. Worse, I have heard no word of apology from those Back Benchers who voted to establish the gulag.”Have we all, individually and collectively, no shame? I suppose that once one has shown contempt for liberty by voting against it in the Lobby, it becomes easier to do it a second time and after that, a third time. Thus even Members of Parliament who claim to believe in human rights vote to destroy them.”Many Members have gone nap on the matter. They voted: first, to abolish trial by jury in less serious cases; secondly, to abolish trial by jury in more serious cases; thirdly, to approve an unlawful war; fourthly, to create a gulag at Belmarsh; and fifthly, to lock up innocent people in their homes. It is truly terrifying to imagine what those Members of Parliament will vote for next.I can describe all that only as new Labour’s descent into hell, which is not a place where I want to be.”I hope that—but doubt whether—ethical principles and liberal thought will triumph tonight over the lazy minds and disengaged consciences that make Labour’s Whips Office look so ridiculous and our Parliament so unprincipled.”It is a foul calumny that we do today. Not since the Act of Settlement 1701 has Parliament usurped the powers of the judiciary and allowed the Executive to lock up people without trial in times of peace. May the Government be damned for it.”

  7. Of course, the finger printing will not be cross referenced at this point in time. But when the policy changes in five years time and instead of being destroyed, the data is archived and linked with interpol, it will not be brought to the attention of the greater public. In South Africa, barcoded id books are currently the officiall form of identification. However, the impending introduction of biometric smart card id’s has just being announced. .Unified world government, here we come. :rolleyes:

  8. Good to see so much lucid comment here Quentin since the advent of Neulabour we have bcome to be dominated by H&S,Anti Rasism,Global Warminf etc fascists all of who know better than us what we want and are now clamping down on our civil liberties to make sure that they get their wayWe can but hope that at the next election we get a change of government to start the long road back to being the free and tolerant society that we once were,having said that some of the comments from ” Call Me Dave” make we wonder if the Tories are going to bwe any better than Labour.

  9. Peter A Leonard writes:

    Tony Blair is a fundamentalist, not, obviously, Muslim but Christian. While Mrs. Thatcher got on well with old Ronnie in the states, she never once heard the voice of GAWD!Unfortunately, Tony Blair did, and does! One has to give him a little nod of appreciation, Muslim, Jew, Christian, or whatever. No British prime minister before Tony Blair has set the scene for a military campaign with a visit to the Vatican for a blessing by the Pope. At the same time, listening to the voice of GAWD!From the Observer Newspaper: “Blair has made only one detailed public attempt at explaining his faith, in a 1996 newspaper article arguing that Christianity led him to left-wing rather than right-wing politics” The voice of GAWD!“Christianity has affected his policymaking, such as the church-led campaign to abolish developing world debt. But the greatest tension between his spiritual and political beliefs came in the run-up to the Iraq war. Jim Wallis, the US evangelical preacher, led a last-minute delegation of anti-war clergy to Downing Street appealing against an invasion. An intense theological discussion ensued. ‘We talked about the “just war” in particular,’ Wallis told The Observer last year. ‘He was very candid about his own struggles.’ Driven by the voice of GAWD!Yet to the White House, he presented a different face. ‘I do think Blair and Bush were very taken by the notion that there was evil stalking the globe,’ says Sir Christopher Meyer, then British ambassador to Washington. But Meyer doubts the two men prayed together. They may have drowned the voice of GAWD!!

  10. Hello.Well, a lot to respond to here.”In South Africa, barcoded id books are currently the officiall form of identification. However, the impending introduction of biometric smart card id’s has just being announced.”This is basically my nightmare. We’re all being turned into blips on a satnav scanner, and everyone’s just shrugging, “Oh well, can’t be helped.” “‘I do think Blair and Bush were very taken by the notion that there was evil stalking the globe,’ says Sir Christopher Meyer”They were/are the evil stalking the globe.”Good to see so much lucid comment here Quentin since the advent of Neulabour we have bcome to be dominated by H&S,Anti Rasism,Global Warminf etc fascists all of who know better than us what we want and are now clamping down on our civil liberties to make sure that they get their way”.I’m not much of a political animal, it has to be said, and certainly not in a party-politics kind of way. I don’t like Blair primarily because, with Bush, he is responsible for mass murder on a huge scale, and secondarily because he is responsible for the erosion of civil liberties.There are all kinds of issues here, but this is how I see it:Blair wanted the political perks of alliance with America and invaded Iraq for no good reason, or no reason beyond the preservation of political and economic power, while hoodwinking the public into thinking he’d done it for other reasons.Previous to this criminal war there had been no Islamic terrorism in Britain. Afterwards there was the threat of some, and even some in reality, as with the events of 7/7. 7/7 is Blair’s fault. The government has used this racial tension to play on issues of immigration while at the same time keeping people sheepish and cowed about speaking their minds about anything, in case they tread on a mine in the carefully laid and very deadly minefield of political correctness.Racism is a reality and a problem, but the biggest racists are evil swines like Blair and Bush to whom the lives of brown people in Iraq mean nothing. Climate change is also a reality and a problem, but I don’t see the government taking any real action over this. Instead, they have used it to gain leverage to bring back nuclear power in what appears to me to be a move entirely governed by commercial considerations. Even if there were no such thing as climate change, we need sustainable fuel sources and sustainable power sources. Nuclear power is not only a bad idea because of the dangerous waste it produces, which will take thousands of years to become harmless, but because it is unsustainable. Stocks of uranium are finite, and will probably not last beyond a few decades:http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/papers/oies_article.htmlI have even read the estimate that if all the world’s energy needs were met by nuclear power then uranium would be used up within four years.One possible solution to the energy problem might be to pour money into research on nuclear fusion, which doesn’t produce the toxic waste associated with nuclear fission, and seems also to be far more sustainable. I’m afraid that’s not an area that I know much about, however.Blair is something of an enigma to me. Thatcher revelled in the nickname ‘the Iron Lady’. At least you knew she was ruthless. Blair represents a far more insidious form of evil. The evil of the ‘nice guy’. I honestly can’t work him out. Does he sleep at night? I couldn’t if I’d done what he has. Is he actually mentally and emotionally deficient in some medically definable way? He actually appears to be, as if he lacks the depths of humanity necessary to make him realise what he’s done.He is a vile, vile man. In one of his last speeches he mentioned when his son had been in the presence of a man sounding off about ‘Tony Blair’, and then the man had realised that this was Blair Junior, and he had apologised and said, “Come in and have a cup of tea.” And Blair had said, almost with crocodile tears in his eyes, how he knew that the British people were good people. Sorry, Blair, but you don’t get me that easily. What do you know about ‘good people’, anyway? The last thing I want is Blair calling me a good person. I do feel sorry for his son, but I’d like to see Blair choke on his own evil, insidious tongue.I remember now someone saying to me, referring to the Iraq invasion, “Well, if they had said at the beginning, ‘right we’re going in here and we’re going to have to kill a lot of innocent people, but we’re doing it so that you can still have electricity in your homes and drive your cars and keep warm in winter’, maybe I would have said, ‘Oh, all right then’.”But would you? Would you say, “Well, all right then” to that?Is Blair, in some twisted way, a hero? Did he deceive the people of Britain in order that we wouldn’t have to say, “Well, all right then” to the murder of thousands upon thousands of innocent people just to guarantee the luxuries of our own putrid little lives? Did he shoulder that guilt instead of us?If so, he hides it exceptionally well.”One has to give him a little nod of appreciation, Muslim, Jew, Christian, or whatever. No British prime minister before Tony Blair has set the scene for a military campaign with a visit to the Vatican for a blessing by the Pope. At the same time, listening to the voice of GAWD!”Walking along by the Thames, away from the Tate Britain, with a friend, looking for a pub, I remarked upon the CCTV cameras marking our route. “Well,” said my friend, “that’ll be the Catholics in Number 10.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s certainly a neat theory – Blair’s dream of a Britain in which God’s electronic eye is always watching you, a real nexus of religion and technology. But whatever the motives, Blair is, to me, a foul pestilence.

  12. Just been listening to the radio, and Lord Turner being interviewed about climate change targets. It was clear that he really couldn’t give a shit:http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=747&storycode=3104906&c=1http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3512041.eceAt the end, the interviewer said, “To sum up, your attitude is, ‘Lord make me chaste, but not yet!'”‘Lord’ Tuner, was clearly furious at this, though he tried to contain his anger at having been seen through and spoke then in a snippy manner. I’m glad the interviwer (John Humphrys, I believe) didn’t let him off the hook.

  15. This reminds me of a debate I had last year. I was saying that the only way anyone can truly be found guilty in court is if we all have our senses digitally encoded, recorded and cross referenced. That way anyone that commits a crime provides evidence against themselves simply by committing it. But of course that comes at the cost of circumstantial evidence amongst other things like any sense. I was advocating that cause when someone gets arrested for unruly behaviour simply for “twatting a copper” in their own words, then they need to see the other side of the coin. :devil: Apparantly the cop had dared ask if she was alright when she lay down on the cop shop steps to sleep after getting pissed. :rolleyes:

  17. “That way anyone that commits a crime provides evidence against themselves simply by committing it. But of course that comes at the cost of circumstantial evidence amongst other things like any sense.”This reminds me of the Red Dwarf episode where Rimmer tries and convicts himself unconsciously. I can’t remember which episode it was. I don’t know, I kind of think that, after a while, you just have to say no to the paranoia and commit yourself, even if only provisionally, to the idea that people are basically good and trying to do the right thing, and that there must be some way of co-operating to make the best of what we have. Pooling resources and so on. Digitally encoded senses? I can see that being sold to us as some ultra-hip accessory, like an i-Pod or something.

  19. Are you with me in thinking the first series was probably the best? It was almost like Waiting for Godot, the depiction of cosmic tedium and triviality.

  20. Nuclear fusion is a pipe dream. Even if it were possible to develop ‘cold’ fusion, the third law of thermodynamics cannot be circumvented so we still have the problem that energy must come from somewhere. The most sustainable energy sources for the long term are those that exist naturally, solar, wind, ocean waves and the mother of all instant energy sources, lightning. If we develop the technology to harness these free energy sources efficiently, we solve the energy crisis and save the environment in one fell swoop. Any junior school kid can figure this out so why are ‘scientists’ and politicians still confused by the obvious?

  21. Well, in any public debates on the subject I’ve seen, it almost seems like no one wants to lay all the evidence and options on the table and really take a good look and see what’s best. It always seems like people are very selective in what information they offer or refer to. I can only think there are vested interests of some kind here, and I presume these are mainly financial. For instance, solar power would cut out the middle man of the energy supplier, if everyone had solar-panel roofing and so on. I think that there are many people who are still clinging to money. They just don’t seem to get it. I’m hardly a saint myself, and I certainly have materialistic worries, but I would seriously like to sit down with some of these people and make them read Kenko Hoshi, or something:http://www.humanistictexts.org/kenko.htm#Frugality

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