WTF Is Up With England
If there was ever a poster child country for the world as foreseen by George Orwell it has to be England. This was the country of my birth and even though I originally left with my mother aboard the QE II at a very (very) young age I have been back twice with the last time when I was 14 years old. Since that time England has changed into a country I don’t even think I would recognize let alone want to call home.
It is a country where privacy is something that has disappeared totally as your every moved can literally be watched from the time you leave your home until you return. CCTV cameras literally have turned the country into one where the people are the most watched in the world. The interesting side note to this is that even with all this surveillance it hasn’t done anything to make anymore than a small dent in the country’s crime figures; unless you count petty crime as something worth spending billions of pounds on.
More and more of the average citizens actions on a daily basis are being scrutinized by council wardens; which is just a fancy way to say police without a badge, who can stop you as they please asking for your identification or even fine you for the smallest of civic infractions. As bad as these invasions of peoples lives and rights might seem as well as a total affront to us as human beings the people in England have proven to be even more lackadaisical about their lost freedoms that Canadians are – and I thought we were bad.
However the English governement has decided to step up this theft of privacy and increase government intrusion with a recent move to force English citizen to produce their passport everytime they purchase a mobile phone. Yes you heard that right – no passport no mobile phone. As the article in the Times Online said
A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.
The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.
I am sorry but to be this has to be one of the most abusive uses of government powers using the fear tactics of fighting terrorism as another way to increase the policing of innocent people. There can be no other way to look at this move by the English government other than as one to further control a populace. This is a disgusting move by the government that will do nothing more than create a whole new class of innocent criminals.
One has to wonder just what else the English goverment can try and to to its people before Guy Fawkes decides to come back from the grave.
