Emboldened by its pyrrhic election victory last month, Tony Blair's Labour Party steps up its barrage of assaults on liberty. Here's a quick but depressing roundup.
• If you're sixteen or seventeen years old, don't try to buy Mom a nice set of steak knives:
The government today unveiled its centrepiece legislation to combat gun, knife and alcohol-fuelled crime in Britain. The measures — trumpeted in Labour's election manifesto and receiving a cautious welcome from the opposition parties — will see a ban on the sale of replica guns, a rise in the age permitted to buy knives, and new 'alcohol disorder zones.'
• If you're under sixteen, you're now also subject to curfews randomly imposed by the police — no more walking home from a movie after 9 p.m. on a balmy summer night.
Under this power, a senior police officer designates an area for a curfew and this is endorsed by the local authority. Once such an order is in place, the police have the power to remove any unaccompanied person reasonably believed to be under 16 if they are in the area after 9pm. There are hundreds of these designations in place all over the country. Crucially, the power to remove doesn't require any bad behaviour on the part of the young person.
• The long-feared Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill has arrived, Labour's special gift to Muslims:
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, will today publish a controversial bill banning incitement to hatred on the basis of religious belief, which opponents believe will outlaw religious jokes and curtail free speech. The racial and religious hatred bill will extend current offences on incitement to racial hatred under the 1986 Public Order Act to cover the stirring up of hatred against people of any religious faith. The offence will carry a maximum seven-year jail sentence.
• And, to enable a new toll-road scheme, all vehicles in the U.K. will soon be monitored by satellite 24/7:
British motorists face paying a new charge for every mile they drive in a revolutionary scheme to be introduced within two years. Drivers will pay according to when and how far they travel throughout the country's road network under proposals being developed by the Government. Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport, revealed that pilot areas will be selected in just 24 months' time as he made clear his determination to press ahead with a national road pricing scheme. Each of Britain's 24 million vehicles would be tracked by satellite if a variable "pay-as-you-drive" charge replaces the current road tax.
There's clearly a pattern here, one that builds on a long string of Blair-era civil-liberties attacks that include the constables coming after you if you're too fat, if you dare carry a penknife in your briefcase, or if you display an innocuous sign that the neighbors don't happen to like.
Scarily enough, George Orwell's enduring bestseller is beginning to look less and less like fiction.
This is sad! But you know Rogier the car tracking systeme is already in force. If you've a later model car ( 2002 or newer) there,s a very good chance that the tracking mechanism is already installed and operating.
Several people in the U.S who rented cars and said they would remain within state lines, but do not do so, were flabergasted when car rental companies charged them an "out-of-state" rate upon returning the vehicle.
The rental company knew every single place the client had visited.
Why don,t they just stick homeing devices in our brains and get it over with?
Posted by: John Palubiski | Thursday, June 09, 2005 at 04:02 PM