Sunday, October 5, 2008

sweet land of liberty

According to today's 'Sunday Times', government ministers have agreed in principle to a plan to spy on us all. Every email we send, every phonecall or text, every website we browse, will be monitored and stored. That's the plan.

Read that paragraph again. No, it's not a mistake. That's what they plan to do. The database will cost 'up to' (i.e. much more than) £12 billion.

You may feel a tad uneasy at the thought of everything you write on email, or say on the phone, being spied on and preserved.

But officials say 'live monitoring is necessary to fight terrorism and crime.'

So that's alright then.

We shall, of course, look to the press to defend our liberties and send such a disgusting, unbelievable plan packing. Such as, notably, the 'Guardian'. I assume the title means that it guards are rights and liberties.

Except that its 'house-style' rules for 'Guardian' writers, exposed today also in the S.T., in an article by Minette Marrin, forbids them to use the following words or phrases: uneducated, acre, Third World, elderly, grandparent, tribe, stone-age tribe, committed suicide, practising homosexual, actress, dumb, disabled, career woman, politically correct (!), blacks, Asians, and in a wheel chair. In addition, the words 'terrorist' should be used with great caution, 'as the concept is subjective'. Similarly the words nation, country and immigrant. 'Mental illness' also should be avoided, in favour of 'mental health'. As in 'mental health diagnosis'.

Oh, it's great to live in a free country.

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