Oh, this has been going on for a little while
here in London. Even taking pictures of public buildings such as the Houses of Parliament can attract the attention of Plod.
There is an increasing stamping on our civil liberties in the UK to the point where people are really beginning to speak up about it now.
The Guardian is the main sponsor of an event called
The Convention on Modern Liberty later this month, and have started up a whole new section on their "Comment is Free" blog pages.
I fear it is too little too late, though, and we are trying to shut the stable door after the horse has been turned into cat meat. The incessant drip-drip-drip eroding our liberties has been happening largely away from the public gaze, with legislation snuck in under the disguise of something else, or published on a
"good day to bury bad news".
Now for the conspiracy theory: none of this has been about terrorism. Since Enron, the major world powers have known that there was a serious, culture-threatening economic crash on the way. They tried to avert it by going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq (nothing like a good war to generate the roll-down effect from the military-industrial complex producing more, selling more, not to mention recruitment into the armed forces, Halliburton, Blackwater
et al.).
But that has failed horribly, and we have seen in the last 6 months billions of our tax dollars taken away from us to shore up the aling banking system - while Joe Public is losing his job, having his house repossessed.
Thanks to the raft of legislation introduced under the guise of the
War on Terror, the government has all the powers it needs to keep our heads firmly under the jackboot now things have gone seriously shit-shaped and people all over Europe are out on the streets in protest.
Are we fascist or not? Well, if not, certainly in the UK we are bloody close.
