Skip to main content

Losing Liberty and Security

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" Ben Franklin.

After traveling to Warsaw and back this week, I can honestly say that the security procedures that have been enacted are pointless and farcial.

In the name of safeguarding our security, travelers are now subject to the kind of intrusion that no free person should have to undergo. We are constantly told that "the terrorists must not change our way of life!". Apparently, they already have.

Since we know that we can never be 100% safe from terrorism, we have to decide what is an acceptable level of risk.

I believe that in their futile search for complete security, our political leaders are corroding our liberties.

I believe that this process must be stopped immediately.

The risk of any single individual being hurt or killed in a terrorist outrage is very small- the risk to our freedom from these pointless restrictions is now certain and is already unacceptable.

We should be watching the results of the Police investigations very carefully- if this turns out to be another Forest Gate, then John Reid, the Home Secretary, should be instantly dismissed.

His political grandstanding, based on fear, which is dubious now, would be totally unacceptable then.

Comments

Gavin Whenman said…
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

You're quite right, the current situation, and the seemingly endless intrusions on our civil liberties, risk corroding the very society we are trying to protect.
5:36 pm
Anonymous said…
I agree.
What can we *DO* about it? Besides complain?
3:23 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and
1 comment
Read more

We need to talk about UK corruption

After a long hiatus, mostly to do with indolence and partly to do with the general election campaign, I feel compelled to take up the metaphorical pen and make a few comments on where I see the situation of the UK in the aftermath of the "Brexit election". OK, so we lost.  We can blame many reasons, though fundamentally the Conservatives refused to make the mistakes of 2017 and Labour and especially the Liberal Democrats made every mistake that could be made.  Indeed the biggest mistake of all was allowing Johnson to hold the election at all, when another six months would probably have eaten the Conservative Party alive.  It was Jo Swinson's first, but perhaps most critical, mistake to make, and from it came all the others.  The flow of defectors and money persuaded the Liberal Democrat bunker that an election could only be better for the Lib Dems, and as far as votes were concerned, the party did indeed increase its vote by 1.3 million.   BUT, and it really is the bi
Post a Comment
Read more

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo
Post a Comment
Read more