Save Energy, Or Else

The NRA are a bunch of crackers, but I'm beginning to see sense in the Second Amendment if government officials are going to send energy cops to people's homes.

'Energy wardens' will police homes and offices to ensure that they do not waste gas and electricity under a radical plan being considered by John Prescott. An extraordinary blueprint being studied by the Deputy Prime Minister suggests conserving energy by monitoring the habits of home owners in the same way that air raid wardens made people turn off their lights during the Blitz. Householders will also be forced to conduct an "annual energy audit" of their homes, defending the amount of fuel they have consumed.

Not being of violent disposition, I'd rather train the garden hose than a shotgun on such public servants — but I'm afraid I'll get arrested by the Water Conservation Police.

Kidding aside, England is rapidly becoming a country where a million petty tyrants with badges rule. I know some of the following examples must sound like I have my tin-foil hat on too tight, but I've written about all these things before — with solid sourcing. Here's just a quick, random selection of Orwellian excess in a country that once epitomized fair play:

• Carrying a Swiss Army knife in your car is an arrestable offense.

• National I.D. cards are a done deal.

• Speaking critically of another person's religion can land you in jail.

• A single innocuous word on a public sign is enough to receive an Anti-Social Behavior Order. Don't know what that is? Read on.

• A British legal innovation, the Anti-Social Behavior Order is a new form of capricious punishment, such as a curfew or house arrest, for offenders like the man who howled like a werewolf, and the mother who yelled at her kids and pissed off the neighbors. Break the order and jailtime follows — up to five years.

• Being too fat can get you carted off to a mental institution.

• To enable a new highway toll scheme, all vehicles in the U.K. will soon be tracked by satellite, every hour of the day.

• Another satellite system under development is intended to monitor every car's speed, and will automatically apply the brakes if the driver breaks the posted limit.

Oh, regarding that plan to police people's homes for energy waste: Only the little people are subject to it. The U.K. Telegraph reports that

Last year the then Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt's department was pictured with its lights blazing all night after she announced a drive to encourage householders to save £1 billion a year by switching off theirs.

Comments

[Bart]

Crackers is the term used for native Floridians. Although there are a lot of Floridians in the NRA, I don't think that is what you were trying to say. ;]

[Rogier]

Bart: The first definition of 'cracker,' according to Merriam-Webster Online, is 'a bragging liar.' See http://tinyurl.com/d4cur . But crackbrain, dumbo, or nutbag work fine also, if you prefer.

[Julian Morrison]

ASBOs are worse than a house arrest. They're worse than a criminal conviction (and the sign guy got an ASBO not a conviction).

Worse why?

Because they allow local council bureaucrats to make up law on the spot, at whim, without crime or conviction, banning ANYTHING that was previously perfectly legal, and applying in a discriminatory manner only to one named person. They could be used to implement de-facto house arrest. They could also be used to force you to dye your hair blue and hop on your left foot. The actual order is arbitrary and unlimited.

It gets better: the standard of evidence is civil, and all that needs to be proven is that the person caused "harassment, alarm or distress". An appeal could only attack this (and it's a low enough bar that an appeal is almost bound to fail). And yet, disobeying an ASBO is a full criminal conviction which will result in jail.

ASBOs are an element-pure example of force without limits and without recourse. They're worse than a police state because a police state still has rules. They're closer to "lettres de cachet", updated to place council bureaucrats in the role of royalty.

[Martin Owens]

It is no accident that the British government first took the guns away, before tightening all these screws.

[Eric H]

Last year, while going through the line to that special hell reserved for sucker tourists called the London Eye, I pulled this tiny little pocket knife out and declared it before going through the metal detector and pat-down. When reclaiming it after the ride, they warned me that I could get arrested for it. This thing has something like a 75 mm blade on it and is mostly useful for cutting cheese on picnics. Arrested!? You couldn't threaten grade schoolers with this thing.

Later in the trip, I caught a 40 minute long BBC special about salt in your food, and what the government is going to do about it. So I expect that salt shakers are going to be on the list of banned and arrestable paraphernalia, and that right soon.

[Dan]

Having lived and worked in an area of Britain where low-level terrorists of the community were able to do their mischief unchecked by either civil or governmental forces, I have sympathy for the ASBO, but I also know it doesn't work. Something else needs to be done with career petty criminals (who mostly, by the way, live in public housing) who terrorise neighborhoods and commit low-level property and violent crime. Jail would be a good start.

[chris]

"It is no accident that the British government first took the guns away, before tightening all these screws."

Subsequent but hardly consequent, methinks. You might as well argue that the British stopped wearing powdered wigs, before all these skinheads started terrorising poor neighbourhoods.