Oh rock ‘n roll New Labour. We are just an ASBO away from more law and order measures. Blair unveiled his latest Orwellian nightmare in his crime plan yesterday. Proposals that could come straight from a Philip K. Dick story. Unfortunately, this isn’t sci-fi….
The plethora of proposals include assessing the risk every kid in Britain runs of turning to crime. This is being dubbed a new style “11-plus”. Kids of prisoners, drug users and others at “high risk” offending will face being actively managed by social work teams. DNA samples taken from any crime suspect who comes into contact with the cops, “summary justice” measures, tougher community punishments, “hybrid prisons” will be set up to treat mentally distressed offenders, more privatisation, “rigorously enforce" the responsibilities of migrants in Britain and review the human rights laws to ensure they don’t restrict implementation of the government’s asylum and immigration policies.
And what a goodie bag of attacks on civil liberties these are. There have been 53 law and order bills passed since 1997 and even then Blair thinks tougher measures are still needed...!
How long before innocent until proven guilty, jury trials and the right of habeas corpus are jettisoned forever to join the right to silence as a distant dream of a justice system with at least a nod towards freedom from arbitrary and tyrannical government.
On top of this will come further demonisation of asylum-seekers. The one group who have the most to fear from a major league war criminal of a prime minister.
Just what kind of society are we sleepwalking towards?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Ah, but at least the Tories aren't in power!!!
As each day wanes on this dying and hilarious drawn-out end to the Passion's premiership we can look forward to more demented policies from the Downing Street Policy Unit.
Father Brown's policies will be slightly less deranged (and backed by the unions), but to keep the myth going that the Tories are so much worse than New Labour (haha) there'll be screams of how progressive and enlightened Father Brown is.
And no Left Party to put up a show. How depressing.
"Father Brown's policies will be slightly less deranged (and backed by the unions)"
Slightly less, you kidding, Brown will be bloody worse.
Orwellian is right.
You know, most anti-fascist rhetorique is targets the BNP. The thing is, the BNP are not, as of yet, a serious political threat. They must be crushed before they become one, aye, but we must not ignore the growing authoritarianism of the British state.
Apart from Blair's "neoliberalism" we on the left should start a fight against Blair's fascism as well.
Oh come on, Korakious. There's no hint of fascism in any of the mainstream political parties. It ruins the Left's otherwise airtight arguments by referring to "fascism". The UK is not fascist, or anything like it, and neither is Blair, Brown, Cameron and others. They're neoliberal and imperial goons.
As for Louise's contention that Father Brown will be worse than the Passion, that may well be true. The neoliberal dopmestic agenda is all down to Father Brown. But Father Brown does not come up with deranged policies. For example, Thatcher's crushing of the unions and Blair's wars are not deranged: they're typical policies of the capitalist state.
Blair, however, surrounds himself with spotty, ghoulish kids straight out of PPE courses or zombies from the IPPR. They whisper all kinds of weird things to their hero, while playing at whose Sam or Josh from the West Wing (“I was Sam last week! It’s my turn to be Josh,” the spotty ghouls and zombies froth). And Blair thinks “Crikey, that’s a great idea, Sam, or are you Josh this week?”. Even for New Labour, it’s utterly bizarre.
Ah, but fascism is merely the strong arm of capitalism.
As imperialism declines further and the security of British capitalism is shaken, those neoliberals you speak of can very well be pushed to further authoritarianism.
Have we forgotten of the talks to remove books that "promote terrorism" from libraries?
Post a Comment