Leftism is Criminal

Despite reading Atlas Shrugged three times, I'd managed to miss the money shot, but luckily DK picks up on it for me:

The only power any government has says Dr Ferris is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.


And you know, the willingness of the left to resort to lawfare, to codes of practice that employees can neither amend nor negotiate, to principles of equality and diversity that magically entail restrictions of freedom of speech and thought, to antidemocratically enforcing their worldview through state-funded charities and NGOs and QUANGOs; their desire to have dissent criminalised, or as we see in California, their willingess physically to intimidate opponents when lawfare fails(and to publish their names in newspapers - the left are _very_ keen that others are held accountable to them for their differing opinions), and as we see in the "respectable" intellectual press, their willingness to deny the crimes of leftism (and you don't have to be an extremist to deny the Holodomor or the import of the gulags, or the forty five year slavery of Eastern Europe, or the thirty million victims of Mao - who, disgustingly, appears in the game Civilisation: Revolution for the XBox - or the Soviet Union's pivotal role in starting WWII, not that you'd think it) justifies this very long sentence.

And rightly so.

For there are worse things in life than a long sentence.

Such an evil, power grabbing weltanshaung that attempts to work from an ideology of victimhood. Which restricts your freedoms because of made up complaints from groups in the pay of the authorities. Which just fucking goes on and on passing laws that are designed, in each and every case, to make an individual's life a little bit harder.

The Baby P Case

Amid all the hysteria and tabloid outrage, let us not forget the real victim of this story. There is absolutely no reason why highly paid executives should take responsibility, nor should they be shy of slating opposition politicians, using the language of the government; nor should they regret anything they have done. They are absolutely right to use the state media to point out - correctly - that they have suffered, perhaps more than anyone else.

Please, let us stop victimising those in charge.

Liberty Still Alive

A good story from Europe at last, for all those who believe that simply being arrested should not make you a suspect in all future crimes.


Needless to say, however, just as the government refused to add the amendment voted through by the Lords last month to the counter-terrorism bill, they are disappointed that individuals should remain free from suspicion and that citizens should not have their personal details routinely sifted through by police whenever a crime happens anywhere. They don't really intend to change the law.

Well...what can you say? Are you surprised?

Liberty Prorogued

Oh well, no revolution. A mildly interesting speech by the speaker, calling to order interventions on his own interventions - for the maths devotees among us, an interesting example of recursion - but other than that, the same old same old: questions, no answers, the governing party and the independent police in curious lockstep.

The idea, among the intellectuals, that the police have the right to uninterrupted action, whereas the democratic representatives of the people don't (if they belong to the opposition, crucially).


And the PM? Presumably, the strongest, most passionate democrat in the land?

He does not give a fuck. Instead he wants more powers for the state to demand things from innocent civilians.

Do not rely on the most intelligent: in times like these, their genius is put to the service of evil, which makes tenth rate minds like mine sit back and say, time after time, when liberty after liberty is killed, and even the right to oppose finally attacked, say "oh, well, I guess...if _they_ say it's reasonable, then it must be: after all, they write independent reports/are the police service of the people/are the local authorities/are the independent authority....". Genius and reason can, and are, used by evil.

That's when the only response is silent rebellion, to live as you wish to live.

And that's when they decide to come for you too: because they realise that when visible rebellion has gone, they need to seek the other sources of rebellion.

I'd give it 25 years.

Then, if I were you, I'd learn Newspeak.

By 2050, at the latest.

Hmmm.

As I see it, the story goes like this. The arrest of Damien Green is fine because he possibly broke the law. You don't want MPs above the law now do you? Whatever Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Tony Blair and others did in the 90s, or indeed, whatever Gordon Brown did last weekend, with the PBR, is completely irrelevant.

In short, leaks to or by Labour are part of the democratic process. Leaks by or to the Tories need the full force of the law brought down upon them.


Some sections of the left are not covering themselves with glory over this - it is interesting that the defenders of Green have been people like Tony Benn: ie the looney left. The modern, reasonable left thinks that arresting Conservatives for something Labour does all the time is perfectly alright.

Easton on Teenagers

Or rather, Easton on all those awful people who don't like teenagers hanging around telling people to fuck off and shouting with barely repressed rage:

Perhaps the Home Office might like to do a youth survey asking how worried people are about the anti-social problem of adults treating teenagers like vermin.


That's the best he can do - no analysis, no evidence, no attempt to empathise with people, no criticism of youth at all - just a sneer at the adults.

Modern liberal insouciance, with no attempt at impartiality at all - what we expect from the publicly funded broadcaster, of course.

But the problem is this. The behaviour he does not even address is not recorded in crime figures. It doesn't get written down. It just gets listened to and put up with every day of the year by thousands of people. It has happened to me, out here in the bloody back of beyond, several times recently: teenagers who refuse to move, who barge you, who shout at you, swear at you, jump into you - they just don't care and you don't really dare respond.

Behaviour that Easton and his tired, clapped out, in denial ideology just will never recognise. It's a rigorous appeal to the ethics of victimhood against the assumed foamings of middle England (or whatever the "bourgeoisie" are labelled from Islington these days). It's based on the two key words of "perception" and "prejudice" (which are essentials of Easton's argument, in meaning if not actually mentioned).

Key NuLab buzzwords both, applied to the streets, to prevent an immature subset of society recognising the rights of everyone else to live in peace. More than that - worshipping the immaturity and elevating it above the real struggles of life that the swearing and aggression is directed against.

Government's Power Grab (part n)

They're at it again: preparing the ground, building a consensus among themselves, establishing their opponents as simply illegitimate and continuing the process of trying to bring the blogosphere under control.

The modern totalitarians are very effective indeed. They know how to work things.

Firstly you need, definably, to be on the side that is understood by those who matter (government, academia, liberal media) to be the compassionate one. It helps if you can point to a list of laws you've introduced on behalf of special interest groups. It also helps if you can have "science" on your side - especially social studies carried out by people with definite ideologies.

Then you pathologise your opponents, slowly but clearly. You begin with accusing them of being "x-phobic", and when this is mainstreamed, you start on the idea of "offensiveness" and "ignorance" (which merely means "dissent" when used in this context). You discuss the need for "dialogue" (which means the government talking and everyone else listening), and you look sternly upon those who are "unhelpful". Laws are brought in citing some of these words. During this process minor court cases, arrests, fines and stories in the tabloids steadily demonstrate that these words actually do have criminal impact and are enough to have the police interested in you. So, gently, you spread a little fear while denouncing all these stories as myths.

Your opponents being successfully pathologised, it follows that they will need to be controlled in order to promote healthy dialogue and positive contributions. There will be an urgent need to prevent the abuse of science and the spread of ignorance.

You will begin very softly, with a quality mark for the good blogs. You will, however, be building a national firewall and a national electronic database during this time. You will send in your trolls to the political blogs. You will maintain the discussions in Europe about the dangers of untrammelled offensiveness online. Eventually you will discover an incidence or two of racism or some other offensiveness on a blog or two, and this will serve as a pretext for closing down websites.

Finally, because of the huge public outcry in the Guardian and on the BBC following these incidents, laws will be introduced and a Council or a Commission will be created, to which all blog-writers will need to apply. This council will consist of government supporters and one or two pro-government bloggers. Applications for rightish blogs will mysteriously fail to be successful.

This will continue regardless of whether this government stays in power or not: for the other Party will be too afraid to close the Commission down, for fear of being painted as pro-racist or pro-whateverotheroffensivenessmattersatthattime.

Not An..Oh Fuck It I Suppose It Is...

It is official.

The Book is indeed an instruction manual.

DK's campaign is well-intentioned but doomed. You see, the people who matter loathe and despise liberty. The people in parliament and in the universities, the people who actually think of, draft, vote on and implement laws, they do not see liberty as anything worth discussing at all. They love control and they mask it in all those fluffy words like "equality", "social justice", "social harmony" and now, "choice-editing". Oh, of course they love some freedoms, the ones that use cocks and cunts particularly, and sometimes arses, but show them a freedom of words, of movement, of belief, of association, of a fair trial, of non-execution; and they become jittery, adducing imaginary terrorist atrocities that will come if we do not all have our wrists stamped. An individual is a danger, because it carries the potential to think other things, things we do not like, things we do not understand. And if we do not understand then it must be made illegal.

Well fuck you lot, yes i am going to have my wrists stamped. With "Ingsoc" and "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever."

So fuck you: every time I wipe my arse, every time I take a wank, every time I stick two fingers up at a fuckwitted agent of the evil state, every time I pick my nose and eat it, every time I drink, there it will be, the reminder of your essential evil, your desire to control every part of me, the fact that you satirise me by your very existence, and by the fact that I hate you with everything I have now and will ever have. All the love I will ever have I hate you with, I hate you with everything good in me, all the respect and tolerance and compassion in me, I hate you with it.

I hate you. And the more that this convinces the enemies of liberty that I am a lunatic, the better. Here it is again, fuckwads:

I hate you.




Now I come to think of it:

It's odd, actually, how often the word "social" comes into excuses for denying people basic liberties.

This Government Is Evil

A government which acts to stoke fear and division, and which is openly derisive of liberty, can be nothing else. Imagine this: a government minister brazenly announces that if we don't accept draconian surveillance measures, we will die. This is a free society?

So, in case you had missed it, here it is again:

But the Lib Dems' communities spokeswoman Julia Goldsworthy said it sounded like "something I would expect to read in [George Orwell's book] 1984" and questioned whether the government and councils could be trusted not to misuse the powers.

She asked: "How much more control can they have? How far is he prepared to go to undermine civil liberties?"

Mr Hoon interjected: "To stop terrorists killing people in our society, quite a long way actually.

"If they are going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don't have the power to deal with that, then you are giving a licence to terrorists to kill people."


He added: "The biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a terrorist."

This government must be defeated, crushed and destroyed. With such raging contempt for a value that has taken centuries to build, in painful and slow-moving struggles, which needs to be at the heart of any civilisation - the right of an individual to be themselves, and not to be afraid of constant monitoring and punishment, not be assumed to be a criminal - they have set about tearing down the boundaries between state and citizen.

There is a word for this approach of governments to their people, when they promote fear, want to watch every aspect of an individual's life, want to punish, both judicially and extra-judicially, who demand conformity, and who, crucially, leave innocent people guilty (the "recording" of allegations, the DNA theft,) or ensure they are unaware when they have committed a crime.

This word begins with a "t". Ironically, it is a word they often use themselves, to defend these inhuman measures.

It means to be afraid.

I'm not going to say it: even the word itself makes me shudder.

Words Fail Me

Actually they don't. There is more than enough variety, shade and connotation in this language more than adequately to express opinion, belief, logic. Mathematics is more accurately descriptive of the real physical world but language has been able to help build civilisations and destroy them. The demagogue can do almost as much damage as the tank. It helps if you have both, of course. Language can evade meaning and justify anything you like. When words fail us it is because our thinking fails us. We are struck by rage, sometimes, but more likely sheer incompetence is what prevents us. We blame it on words, but the tools are there. So we stay silent, or we just roar - using some words, a few words, as surrogate screams. Their emotional content, their - shall we say - friction, bluntness,sibilance - their history, renders them less a comunication and more a howl. This is why the wild humans at the end of Will Self's Great Apes cry "fuuuuuck offffff" in the distance. It was the call of the human.

When words fail us we let things happen. Shouting sometimes reinforces the evil: it convinces the demagogue that his (or, increasingly often, her) shouting is just, and that of others proof of reactionary or disturbed tendencies. Words become our own jailors.

Words fail us because the thinking has failed, because we no longer recognise the tools we have and we have forgotten how to use them. The concepts we used to use in those words have been overhauled by something else and we have yet to create a new vocabulary to express what is, in fact, a very very old worldview. The language, somehow, needs to change, or the assault on the citizens will simply intensify. And the reactions we give them will convince them more of their need to act.

Some people of course have the talent required: almost no-one in the MSM: in the blogosphere, Tom Paine, Crushed (although he tends to talk far more personally), DK, and this guy among them. Alas, I'm not one of them. I just sit on the wall and shout. Or cry. That's a more accurate rendering of my use of words.

Good Lord

Woman fined for fire engine theft

A 45-year-old woman was fined after she admitted stealing a fire engine while its crew dealt with a flood near her home.

Catherine Durant was "irate" when she entered the cab of the fire engine before reversing it, crashing it into a brick wall and a car, South Wales Fire and Rescue Service said.

Durant, of Pontypool, admitted aggravated vehicle taking when she appeared before Abergavenny magistrates. She was given community service, fined and banned from driving.


Courtesy of msn.

Latest Stasi Nonsense?

Today's Torygraph cover tells a familiarly depressing story, and JuliaM does her usual with it.

The interesting thing is the choice of glamorous names for these networks of little spies, such as "Street Scene Champions". Immediately you de-mystify and make ordinary something which is quite extraordinary: children paid to spy by the state.

The key question about it, apart from how the operation of justice works when it is solely the word of a minor against that of an adult (I think I can guess), is whether such initiatives will actually get the fly-tippers and yobs who deface our towns and cities.

Somehow I think I know the types of people who will be caught by all this.

Call it intuition.



This, however, is what Harlow Council has to say on its website:

Street Scene Champions project initially aimed at young people age 11 to 13 years who have shown an interest in taking care of the environment and improving the appearance of local areas. Street Scene Champions are encouraged to report static anti-social behaviour to Contact Harlow and take part in community project days which include things such as pond clearing, coppicing, clearing overgrown areas and planting new shrubs and plants etc. In return for their community spirit and positive citizenship they receive credit’s on a high street gift card which can be exchanged for school equipment, books, DVD’s etc. Participants are also given the opportunity to take part in training days that will equip them with valuable skills such as First Aid, fire and water safety and anti-bullying etc.


Clearly they don't teach them the art of apostrophes. Still, not much to object to there, provided that this is in fact what happens. Normally in this NuLab world things turn out to be a little more "complex" than they appear.

But of course the money shot of the Torygraph article is this:

Many of the town halls said they did not encourage their volunteers to confront offenders or collect evidence, for their own safety.

But Bromley Council in Kent offers up to £500 for information that leads to a conviction.

Crawley Borough Council in West Sussex said its 150 Streetcare Champions were asked to "report on individuals if known". Bolton Council said its Green Inspectors must "note any relevant information such as registration numbers" if they see criminal activity.



Aha. It is rather less innocent than it appears. Conviction by word of mouth: the enactment of vendettas and mischief, the promotion of constant surveillance.

And will the violent, or the dangerous get convicted? Nah.
Incidentally,


A commenter on the original Torygraph article writes:

To encourage and assist any child to spy and report on so-called �criminal activity� is in direct contravention of the HASAW Act 1974 as no person under the age of 18 years and 1 day may be placed in a position that may lead to a risk to their heath, safety and welfare, whether for profit or not.

This would apply to the act of spying of course. Not the reporting of "static" problems.

The End of Innocence Again

I've blogged on this before, and here is one of the latest examples at Obnoxio the Clown's place. The key point is that information on false allegations will be held by this database for ten years.

Ten years.

For a false allegation.

Just ponder this: for doing absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever, your job prospects can be screwed over for ten years. This will be rendered obsolete by the national CRB database anyway that will just keep these permanently.

For centuries we worked towards a society founded on justice: now we are building one founded on fear. The fear of these allegations will stalk more and more people. Because that is all it will take. The concept of innocence is irrelevant, totally irrelevant.

You have no possibility of clearing your name.

This, let's be clear, is only the start. Soon it will be extended to all sorts of people, not just those working with children. It will become a plank of the new justice, along with "the need to raise conviction rates" and other non-judicial concepts. The innocent will be caught more and more until no-one will ever know who was guilty and who was not.

This, of course, is the whole idea.

The silence of those who claim to care is deafening. The silence of those interested in rights is shattering.

A society based on fear of the state and fear of others. Informants, non-police enforcers, anyone who might make an allegation, police with weapons: the state constantly arming itself against its people, making it harder and harder for anyone to tell who is good and who is bad.

The state setting us up to destroy the bonds between us.

Day by day we learn more and more of this hate that our rulers, local and regional, have for the citizens of this country. Harsher penalties, more penalties, more rules, more bans. It's what we are used to. We see councils talking of "environmental crimes" - meaning dropping litter or leaving rubbish in the wrong bin, whereas we thought the word "crime" had been replaced by "offence" - no, it was just being saved.

It is silly to say we live in a police state. Of course we don't.

But we are doing our damndest to build one, we really are. And it seems that a lot of us will welcome it. After all, if you've nothing to hide...

which is where this database comes in.

Not Another Bloody Repeat

Yes.


You can lose your job and future because someone makes a totally unsubstantiated, malicious complaint against you. The complaint itself will show up on all enhanced-CRB checks for the rest of your pathetic, miserable life.

You are innocent: you are fucked.


This has been proved in a court of law.


NuLab are wonderful upholders of justice.


All you need to be is innocent, to lose your life.


Courts are politically-neutral, sensitive, defenders of liberty.


This is C21 Britain: civilised, tolerant, evidence-based, insane.


Fuck me, all these frigging repeats. They really get on my tits.

Julia

No it's not another Orwell based screed, but I wanted to see if I could sneak a reference in anyway.

Instead it's this story, via JuliaM: do read it for yourself. It's heartbreaking and sickmaking. Aside from the suicide, which might have any number of long term causes, a man was indeed treated as essentially guilty before any reasonable process of investigation was carried out.

This complaint alone would have been enough for me -or anyone working with or near "vulnerable people" to lose my job and never be able to work in education again, since it would have appeared on the enhanced CRB check all such workers have to go through.

Think about this world we're living in. You can lose jobs, opportunities, have the police record your details, be bailed without any due process, simply for being completely and utterly innocent.

You can lose your job and never get it back purely on the basis of a false, unsubstantiated complaint. And you become, on the way, just another automatic suspect on the DNA database. Your DNA routinely searched whenever a crime happens, just in case you did it. There is also no possibility of a mistake, obviously.

Let us also not think that the police believe in the concept of innocence. A year or so ago a top policemen said on Radio 5 that he had found that people wrongly arrested were often guilty of other things, so they should definitely have their DNA recorded.

Just when - and why - did the concept of innocence disappear?

Let's just repeat that earlier point though, because it's worth it: you do not need to be guilty of anything to lose your job and have your life ruined.


"If that's justice, I'm a banana."

Why Should You Be Free From Intrusion?

OVer at Iain Dale's place a debate is sort of going on about liberties, especially as they are affected by CCTV. Tom Harris MP makes the basic point, asking us exactly how our liberties are affected by the cameras?

Well, in true NuLab or progressive style, I would say that this is a simplistic question and that the answer is fairly complicated.

Firstly, we need to acknowledge that we have consented over the past 15 years or so, to being watched in public. By government and by private companies and even by private individuals. It is perfectly true, i think, to say that there is no real public demand to abolish them. I think some people do feel safer with the cameras around. But then this is no reason not to make the case against them, or to challenge the view that they are a good in our society. It is merely to state the obvious: that we have devolved control over our communities to faces behind screens, that we have given up on a police officer being able or willing to prevent crime, that we want to feel there is an authority looking over us.

I frequently do claim to speak for others on this blog, but today I'll settle for speaking for myself: I have never thought that a CCTV camera protected me: I have often thought that if I were mugged, it might help catch the perpetrator. I don't see it as a crime prevention device at all: how can a camera stop a crime? Especially if all you need to do is wear a hoody to escape its attentions?

Unfortunately I don't look good in hoodies and am probably the only person in the world who looks worse in dark glasses, so those aren't really options for me.

Being watched by the state, or whoever, as you proceed about your lawful business, makes a basic assumption: that crime will occur, and that you might do it. This differs from a copper on the beat in that they look for evidence of possible or potential crime, and look to make citizens feel safer - especially if they are known the community, as used to be common. A camera is just there to see you. The widespread presence of CCTV on our streets is a testament to the automatic mistrust our leaders and authorities have of us. Street to street, corner by corner, you are always on the verge of committing an offence. Step into a shop and you might be a thief. Get on a bus and you might slash the seats. Always the surveillance and always the justification "you have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong".

But does the citizen have the right to proceed privately in a public space, or does going out make you concede that you should be observed by the state (and others)? At the moment i think most of us would probably agree that if you step out in public, you lose that right to privacy you might have at home. I can see the force of that. There is no right to privacy in public.

But that simply means there is no right not to be seen: it does not automatically confer on anyone the right to suspect you of a crime (and when you put CCTV alongside the DNA database this ideology can be seen to be building rapidly).

Therefore I think it is a kind of de-citizenisation. It encourages you to believe that you need to be watched - for your own good; it encourages authorities to believe you need to be watched - for their own good; and it is a testimony to the view that crime can only be dealt with after it has occurred, and certainly not prevented.

This government, and others of its hue, along with its bedfellows in universities and in organisations such as Canada's Human Rights Commissions, is not simply interested in crime as such - though that it is, as it has created many of them and thereby made it much harder to be a law abiding citizen - but in appropriateness, "helpfulness", language and ideology. The movement towards criminalising things the authorities simply disapprove of, such as speech, is strong and will only increase towards the end of this government. That is, it cares about what is in your mind. It wants you to think what it thinks is right. About certain religions, human sexuality; about its specific and ideologically based notions of "hate".

CCTV makes the job of enforcing such desires much, much easier. Cameras exist that shout at people. Cameras that can hear cannot be far away. There is really is nothing stopping the extensive network of cameras being used to police conversations between individuals. It will take only the political will. And with the political will there to create various databases, tracking your movements for your entire life, with your DNA taken for being wrongfully arrested, with cautions for fighting at the age of 13 turning up on CRB checks thirty years later (as does happen incidentally) - why would you doubt that the political will is there?

The will is already there to use cameras to enforce parking regulations at 3am, to detect apple cores and cigarette butts being thrown onto the ground, to prosecute for leaving bin lids a little bit open: these are not authorities whose first motivation is to serve the public.

I would accept a charge of "alarmist" at this point. It seems fair enough. But then I am alarmed about it. And this is why I am saying so.

The Information

Look, my last act tonight before going to bed is this. For those of you getting here by googling about harsh fucking and cunts and stuff.

The post you are looking for is a satirical one about SENTENCING for EVIL CRIMES. It has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. My point was that SEVENTEEN YEARS for a BRUTAL, UNPROVOKED MURDER is not really THAT HARSH. The post is IRONIC and REALLY RATHER CONSERVATIVE. It was not intended as AN AID TO MASTURBATION.

So fuck off, will you? It's nothing to do with sex at all, but is instead, a comment on the crapness of a civilised society that cannot be arsed to punish murder unless there's a "hate" motive behind it.

(post is dated 29/3/08 if you're interested).

More Right Wing Anti-State Paranoia

There's been a lot of it about lately: but clearly the state and its agencies are there to protect us, especially the most vulnerable members of society. They are looked after, cared for, nurtured. Attempts to hurt or damage them are resisted by such organs of the state as the National Children's Bureau, who would clearly be against labelling personal likes and dislikes as racist, permanently recording suspicious remarks and punishing tiny children in attempts to root out something from society.

Clearly.


I did wonder how long it would take before individuals needed to ideologically check their personal tastes before adopting them. I didn't think it would start with toddlers though.

Fucking Bloody Mess

Or is it Bloody Fucking Mess? I can't remember: either way it's supposed to be a quote from some Sex Pistols song or other.

Anyhoo.

You know you are in real, serious, cultural trouble, when your most creative and subversive tv programme in a tv-saturated society (ie Doctor Who, in the UK), deliberately, and carefully, advocates rule by elite and slags off democracy as rule by ignorant bleached-blond, jewellery-wearing, heterosexual mob. Cleverly, one character even referred to the alien as an "immigrant". Oh how I bet they laughed in Hampstead, thinking of us racist cunts out here in the styx. Oh how we would of applauded her simplistic specisicissticisismthingy, how we would of loved to see all things we don't understand destroyed. After all, we routinely hound out anyone of different colour.*

Because that's how we are, see. Out here. In the country. We hate. That's all we do. You people in the city, oh how clever you are, how learned, how non-ignorant.

You can almost sense the fear in their breath: if those scumbags, the people, fuck me even Daily Mail readers...if they ever got to choose, if they were ever allowed a say....Jeeezus....



*It's true. We do.

A criminal record?

For a bin lid that doesn't quite shut? How, exactly, is that proportionate? How, exactly, does having a permanent CRB problem reflect the scale of his offence? Why are we letting the people who claim to be our servants revel in ever increased punishments: while we teachers are told by experts that children do not learn through punishment, the theory is being pursued with genuine enthusiasm when it comes to adults by those who claim to be working for us. The extremity of this treatment, and the blank faced assumption of moral superiority by the enforcers of draconian punishments fills me with horror. And I really would be proud of being called a purple faced Daily Mail reader by those who should know better - the Guardian readers don't seem to give a monkey's about the harsher treatment of citizens by its so-called "public services". Yes, the scare quotes are completely necessary.

Assuming that the BBC website and Radio 5 reports are correct, I don't think I am alone in finding this kind of case frightening: minor infractions being treated in a way that means you can never escape them; spying; the deliberate conflation of a minor misdemeanour with putative global tragedies; the cynical application of power in the name of service. It is, surely, taking us places we don't want to go.

But obviously enough people do want to go there, because they're taking us. And I'm not sure we're going to have any choice in whether to join the ride or not.

_Please_ someone find me a link or some evidence to show that I am overreacting and this man does not have a criminal record for leaving his bin open.