Magic Kingdom - Non-Suspicious Red Wait Time Card by BoogaFrito
Andrew Parker, the new head of UK's MI5, emerged from the shadows to talk to the BBC this week. He was effectively saying that Edward Snowden has put us all in danger with his revelations. Now, it seems, the enemies of the British people are aware of things that they could never have fathomed, before that particular miscreant did the dirty on us all, by informing us of how much detailed interest our superiors take in our lives.
There we were, silly fools (some of us), unduly concerned that such 'data capturing' might be useful to a megalomaniacal elite to better maintain control and further undermine an irritating little thing like democracy. That sort of thing doesn't happen, does it?
Anyway, who needs freedom and democracy whilst under the benign auspices of the current world order? It's not as if anyone would want to reverse the social progress made in the early part of last century. Why would anyone want that?
Illegal blacklisting of workers in the building trade was in the news this week too - which might exemplify, for some, the benefits such protective measures our largely unelected authorities take on our behalf - without encumbering us with any knowledge of it. In future, we won't need psychometric testing when we go for a job, for example. No longer need we embellish our CVs and go grovelling for good character (whatever that might be) references. No longer need we lie if we have a propensity for getting out onto the streets to do something, for example, about institutions 'too-big-to-fail'.
All our personal info is in the clouds now. But even that'll soon be obsolete. It seems we've all to be chipped eventually - like our cats and dogs. It's for our own good, of course. (Maybe our four-legged friends will enjoy some poetic justice in that.) Serendipitously, our neighbourly High Street banks have such a system already in place - of which we may take advantage. But, looking on the bright side, initially at least, it seems somewhat more humane than a red-hot branding iron. It would be nice to think that elites have no history in that sort thing either; wouldn't it?
Isn't it marvellous though? If you're a prospective employer and you want to know how well someone would fit in with the rest of your human resources, soon, you may Google GCHQ - albeit via the NSA. Obviously, you're not on the lookout for yes-men/women; instead, you'll actively seek out the critical thinkers - won't you? However, presently, it might be illegal on discriminatory grounds, but for those in the habit of vetting and hiring the legislature, paying to have the law changed is merely a matter of course.
Mr Parker warns that, "It remains the case that there are several thousand Islamist extremists here who see the British public as a legitimate target." Presumably, recent austerity cutbacks in police numbers won't affect our well-being in any way. A strong police presence is only deemed necessary when the dispossessed start demonstrating in the streets.
So, there we all were, going about our innocent daily day - politely sharing the benefits of consumerism around the globe. Suddenly, out of the chem-trailed blue, a bunch of dusky characters, with neither rhyme nor reason, decided they don't like us because we have such a penchant for 'freedom'. Freedom sickens them to the stomach - so much so, that we need Mr Parker and his team to gather all the info they can about us - (so to identify body parts when it all kicks off, perhaps). It couldn't be that our illustrious elite are more concerned about a discrepancy we might one day wake-up to, between their definition of freedom and ours; could it?
Energy springs to mind here too, as one of the eternal bones of human contention. So, too, does Norman Tebbit. He was in the Thatcher administration that destroyed the British mining industry in the eighties. Albeit that he was Tory in tooth and claw, with no sense of irony, he presaged that an over-powerful state might be fine as long as it remained 'benign'. Of course, benign depends on which end of the stick one feels.
During WWII, Aneurin Bevan's 'Bevan Boys' were excused army service so to make themselves available for extracting the coal necessary for the war effort. However, once the war was over, the miners (hence their industry) increasingly became the bogeyman of the common weal. Everything would be fine once we rooted out the cancer. So we, the people, all stood by as the establishment smashed the miners, closed the mines and pits and went on to privatise everything profitable. Many bought their homes with borrowed fiat currency and as a maxim of the earlier part of 'the peoples' century' contended, "Debt-incumbent home owners don't go on strike". They didn't.
But, we had no need to worry. Outages would no longer be a problem once they'd put the trouble-making unions firmly in their place. They did. With the logic of one who craps one's own bed, then complains about the smell trying to waft it out, we were then to put our faith in energy piped to us via parts of the world that we were erstwhile encouraged to disdain for their lack of freedom. Now, we're no longer at the mercy of Mrs Thatcher's "enemy within" for our heat and light. Instead, we must rely on the good will of those who might understandably feel even less affinity with us (if it were possible) than our illustrious elite.
It's little wonder that this week we see the first of the privatised energy companies hiking its charges. (The big wonder would be were the rest not to follow.) It seems a bit like cutting off the proverbial plebeian nose to spite its face - whilst others feather their own tax havens. Never mind, with the sell-off of Royal Mail today, we can rely on the Saudis, who apparently have a large chunk of the shares in their clutches already, to make sure the mail reaches all corners of the UK. They're well known for their thoughts on freedom and equity.
There we were, silly fools (some of us), unduly concerned that such 'data capturing' might be useful to a megalomaniacal elite to better maintain control and further undermine an irritating little thing like democracy. That sort of thing doesn't happen, does it?
Anyway, who needs freedom and democracy whilst under the benign auspices of the current world order? It's not as if anyone would want to reverse the social progress made in the early part of last century. Why would anyone want that?
Illegal blacklisting of workers in the building trade was in the news this week too - which might exemplify, for some, the benefits such protective measures our largely unelected authorities take on our behalf - without encumbering us with any knowledge of it. In future, we won't need psychometric testing when we go for a job, for example. No longer need we embellish our CVs and go grovelling for good character (whatever that might be) references. No longer need we lie if we have a propensity for getting out onto the streets to do something, for example, about institutions 'too-big-to-fail'.
Isn't it marvellous though? If you're a prospective employer and you want to know how well someone would fit in with the rest of your human resources, soon, you may Google GCHQ - albeit via the NSA. Obviously, you're not on the lookout for yes-men/women; instead, you'll actively seek out the critical thinkers - won't you? However, presently, it might be illegal on discriminatory grounds, but for those in the habit of vetting and hiring the legislature, paying to have the law changed is merely a matter of course.
Mr Parker warns that, "It remains the case that there are several thousand Islamist extremists here who see the British public as a legitimate target." Presumably, recent austerity cutbacks in police numbers won't affect our well-being in any way. A strong police presence is only deemed necessary when the dispossessed start demonstrating in the streets.
So, there we all were, going about our innocent daily day - politely sharing the benefits of consumerism around the globe. Suddenly, out of the chem-trailed blue, a bunch of dusky characters, with neither rhyme nor reason, decided they don't like us because we have such a penchant for 'freedom'. Freedom sickens them to the stomach - so much so, that we need Mr Parker and his team to gather all the info they can about us - (so to identify body parts when it all kicks off, perhaps). It couldn't be that our illustrious elite are more concerned about a discrepancy we might one day wake-up to, between their definition of freedom and ours; could it?
Energy springs to mind here too, as one of the eternal bones of human contention. So, too, does Norman Tebbit. He was in the Thatcher administration that destroyed the British mining industry in the eighties. Albeit that he was Tory in tooth and claw, with no sense of irony, he presaged that an over-powerful state might be fine as long as it remained 'benign'. Of course, benign depends on which end of the stick one feels.
During WWII, Aneurin Bevan's 'Bevan Boys' were excused army service so to make themselves available for extracting the coal necessary for the war effort. However, once the war was over, the miners (hence their industry) increasingly became the bogeyman of the common weal. Everything would be fine once we rooted out the cancer. So we, the people, all stood by as the establishment smashed the miners, closed the mines and pits and went on to privatise everything profitable. Many bought their homes with borrowed fiat currency and as a maxim of the earlier part of 'the peoples' century' contended, "Debt-incumbent home owners don't go on strike". They didn't.
But, we had no need to worry. Outages would no longer be a problem once they'd put the trouble-making unions firmly in their place. They did. With the logic of one who craps one's own bed, then complains about the smell trying to waft it out, we were then to put our faith in energy piped to us via parts of the world that we were erstwhile encouraged to disdain for their lack of freedom. Now, we're no longer at the mercy of Mrs Thatcher's "enemy within" for our heat and light. Instead, we must rely on the good will of those who might understandably feel even less affinity with us (if it were possible) than our illustrious elite.
It's little wonder that this week we see the first of the privatised energy companies hiking its charges. (The big wonder would be were the rest not to follow.) It seems a bit like cutting off the proverbial plebeian nose to spite its face - whilst others feather their own tax havens. Never mind, with the sell-off of Royal Mail today, we can rely on the Saudis, who apparently have a large chunk of the shares in their clutches already, to make sure the mail reaches all corners of the UK. They're well known for their thoughts on freedom and equity.
In the eighties, the media and the politicos constantly advised the hoi polloi that we too could be like our third-world counterparts were we not careful. We tried to be careful. When they told us to take wage cuts, we did - and still they outsourced our jobs to places where, regardless how long and hard we worked, we could never have matched the difference in the cost of living.
Mr Parker concluded his interview saying that the terrorist threat is now, "more diffuse, more complicated, more unpredictable". (That seems a bit like the upshot to expect from poking one's willy in a wasp byke and expecting it to come out honey-coated.)
Now, I ask you; what more do we need, to help us sleep peacefully in our beds at night - so to face our busy schedules in the morning, where we're expected to compete in the world with neither means of production, nor hard assets left in the common domain to sustain us? Yet, there's abundance of foreigners who hate us for the freedoms we, the people and Mr Snowden, enjoy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24454596
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