Let's take a few minutes and savor the many ways in which an intrusive Big Government can screw up our personal life. For the purpose of this discussion, we'll assume that "The Brits" includes England, Canada, Australia and (perhaps to some smaller extent) the Scots and the Irish.
[Did you know that God invented Whiskey so that the Irish would not rule the world? True fact, trust me on this. A further thesis is that God invented the English so that the Scots would not rule the world, and He invented the French just to confound the English. But that's a subject for a future post. Okay, probably not.]
I got an email from Julie Jigsaw, from Australia last week. She has been writing about the recent decision of the Australian Government to bowlderize the Internet.
Well, we seem to have dodged that bullet.
THE Federal Government is planning to make internet censorship compulsory for all Australians.
When the idea was first mooted, there was the concept of an "opt out" option, where users could contact their ISP and say "no, thanks" to this filtering.
This option has now been REMOVED.
When the plan comes into effect sometime next year ALL internet access through Australian ISPs will be censored.
As far as I am concerned, this is a very dangerous path to start walking down.
The Senator in charge of this travesty is Stephen Conroy and, despite trials being planned for later this year, he doesn't know what content the mandatory filters will bar!!!
According to this article there will be two levels of filtering - one level of mandatory filtering for all Australians and an optional level that will provide a "clean feed", censoring adult material. So we're not just talking about porn here.
So much for Australia. Let's move outside the immediate British Sphere of Influence. I invite you to read Erica Jong's prediction that "Obama Loss will 'Spark the Second American Civil War. Blood will Run in the Streets". (!)
Erica Jong:
"Beware of the man who denounces women writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell. "
Well, apparently we dodged that particular bullet, too. Brrrrrrr! It makes my tiny penis shrivel to chance incurring The Wrath of Erica.
Fortunately, there are a few Women Writers whose works I admire: Bujold, Evanovich, Grafton, Rand ... hey, where's Jong?
Not there.
Moving right along, let's zero in on Socialism Central ... England.
London to get Bomb-proof recycling bins.
Okay, so England is going to spend over $60,000 each for garbage cans, to occupy the 'high risk' areas of London, and they're touting this as if it is A Good thing.Central London's financial district will begin installing bomb-proof recycling bins from next year, the company responsible for the product said Monday.
The bins, which cost around 30,000 pounds each to produce and install, will also feature news and weather information on LCD screens that are part of the bins.
"From a blast technology side, it's just something that should be there," said Brian James, the chief operating officer of Media Metrica, the company providing the product.
"You don't expect to get into an accident, but you make sure you have seat belts," he told AFP.
Reason why, is that 20 years ago the IRA dumped some bombs in garbage cans ... er, 'dust bins'.
It's axiomatic that The Military will spend billions of dollars to fight The Last War. That is, for Vietnam we (America) had tanks and stuff that would have been Good To Have in WWII. In Iraq, the American Military had Hummvees which would have been handy in Viet Nam. Maybe. Except that in this century they didn't have what theLiberals were fond of referring to as "Adequate Armor".
In Viet Nam, we didn't have "Adequate Armor"; we had flack jackets which wouldn't stop an AK47 bullet or a ChiCom Directional Mine from messing up your day. [Another blog article which will never be published.]
Today, when airplanes have been pounded into skyscrapers and (locally) Suicide Bombers are packing bomb-vests onto Trams (or whatever Brits call the subway) and onto busses, and thinking about liquid Binary Bombs on airplanes, the Brits are worried about someone blowing up their dustbin.
Okay, that sounds about right.
The Atlanta Bomber had the same idea ... about 10 years ago. Gee, if we had bomb-proof garbage cans on the streets of Atlanta, Georgia, we wouldn't have indicted whats-his-name .... without, as it happens, any shred of proof.
The Brits are looking very much like the Horse who got his head stuck in a tree last week. Think: Ostrich.
Finally, let's stick with The Home Country ... England .. and concentrate on the way it controls its citizens waste:
A company boss faces a £300 (pounds, about $630) fine for failing to declare his sandwich wrapper as "industrial waste"."Used Tea Bags?"
Frank Hughes, 62, was threatened with the penalty by a council official during a spot inspection at his office and told he may be punished over his used tea bags.
The businessman, who runs a small scaffolding firm, works from an industrial unit with his wife Liz, 61, while their team of labourers visit sites across Liverpool.
But the official insisted they had flouted new nationwide laws which force companies to declare industrial waste despite the couple explaining they only have cling film from their home-made sandwiches and soggy tea bags.
Yesterday Mr Hughes branded their action "laughable".
He told the Daily Express: "In the face of recession, Britain should be looking after its small businesses, not hitting them with as many stealth taxes as they can dream up."
"They want to fine me £300 for sandwich wrappers. The world's gone crazy. We got a letter from the council's environmental waste department, like everybody else, about six months ago asking us to declare the waste we produce."
They want to ding him two days wages (in an average Western economy) for throwing his Used Tea Bags in the wastebasket?
Wait! Wait .. wait ...
Wait for the punchline.
Like you, I'm entirely outraged by this last report. But we now (today) have to stop and consider the story in the context of our future.
Within the next four years, My Fellow Americans, we too will be subject to equally draconian regulations.
Not laws ... we have control over them. Well, maybe not.
But Regulations?
That's Administrative, not Legislative.
That's Bureaucrats, not Legislators.
The folks we elect get to hire the Bureaucrats who set the Regulations without any input from us. And we will have no choice but to observe them. No, they won't throw us into jail ... unless we refuse to pay the onerous fines they impose.
We can expect to be the Victims of Bureaucracy for the next umpteen years. And there'e nothing ... absolutely nothing ... you can do about that.
Think about it.
Welcome to 1984, we're all Winston Smith in our fresh-minted Orwellian World.
And it's all our fault.
"All that is necessary for the triump of evil is that good men do nothing."
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