I saw this at a petrol station recently. OK, I can see that it is in the interest of the petrol station owner to log the registration plates of cars in case they drive off without paying. But I can recall no informed debate about whether this data should be automatically made available to the police!
Democracy my arse! Gradually, using fear of crime and terrorism, the state increases the control that it has over the individual. “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” whine the naive and trusting. This is bollocks. History shows that if authorities are given powers they will abuse them.
It’s also a bit rich to advertise it as “neighbourhood policing”. You’d have to have truly Orwellian mind to consider a nationwide network of CCTV cameras to be neighbourly.
In the UK the police continue to stop ordinary citizens taking photographs in public places yet they feel free to take pictures of us any time they like. Police in Brighton have taken to parking a special CCTV van on the pavement. It’s interesting that there has been criticism of Google for their Streetview project yet we are complacent about police collecting similar information.
If I were a IT systems manager in the police force I would consider creating a system collecting all photographs taken by the police into a single database. I’d then reference police computers and online information such as Facebook, Google and Flickr and use automatic face recognition to allow police CCTV equipment to automatically identify people. Add a head up display to police car windscreens and you have little floating tags over members of the public as they go about their business.
Are the police working on such a system? – How would we know?
This is a video by some guys called The Love Police who are highlighting the increasing restrictions on individuals in public/private spaces. e.g. the way the police claim powers which they do not possess to stop filming.
Competition to see who can lie the longest without blinking
So here we go………the Labour leadership race. Channel 4 News ran a mini debate between all candidates this evening and fed in some comments from the recently reanimated Tony Blair.
Diane Abbott
Ed Balls
Andy Burnham
David Miliband
Ed Miliband
All candidates tried to distance themselves from the Brown / Blair debacle. It seems to me that we have David Miliband as the New Labour continuity candidate which I take to mean spending like an irresponsible old Labour government, supporting big business over the individual while increasing the power of the state to control the population using technologies such as centralised databases, CCTV and GPS monitoring of cars.
Then we have Ed Miliband who has mentioned a 50p tax rate and seems to me more an old Labour candidate. Old Labour is not something I relish with it’s economic incompetence but Socialism is an honourable ideal and at least he is relatively straight about his objectives.
Ed Balls is a mystery to me. That this blowhard babbler could even be considered as a candidate for an MP let alone party leadership shows just how much modern politics relies on spin over policies. I don’t trust the way his eyes open wide when he gets fervent and I suspect that he is lying while trying to look the interviewer in the eye and overcompensating.
I respect Dianne Abbot for independence and saying what she thinks and I agree with her on some policies mostly related to foreign policy. However, I expect that she is one of those Labour MPs who are excellent at fighting injustice but inexperienced and naïve when it comes to managing.
I don’t know too much about Andy Burnham but he seems equally distanced from Blair and Brown and relativity untarnished by the New Labour experiment. Perhaps he could be a good leader. Not that I’d vote Labour for a few terms yet. Labour really need to stop adjusting their policies in order to garner votes and figure out what they stand for.
Oh dear. I am finding myself agreeing with the way that the UK is going.
I heard today that the plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport have been scrapped. Good, all cheap air travel does is allow more people to travel to the other side of the world to see that the environment there has been ruined by things such as airports.
I heard that Nick Clegg is saying there will be tighter regulation on CCTV. Good, the UK is the most spied on society in the world. A free society is not one when the government watches everything you do.
I heard that they are designing a new Routemaster bus with an open back so that you can hop on and off. Good, this is a British classic and far more convenient than the curent buses.
A cynic would say that the Con / Libs are just announcing the good news first to make a good first impression. However, at the least they have some good news which is more than can be said for the ghastly burbling drivel spouted by Ed Balls this week when interviewed by Eddie Mayer on Radio 4′s PM. Mr. Balls waffle was staggering. This is a man who is standing for leadership of one of the UK’s great political parties. A potential future Prime Minister. Yet he could not think of a single thing to say.
Oops, there I go again attacking New Labour. I have this fear that the people of the UK will awake together and find we were dreaming. Pinch me someone. Is the New Labour nightmare really over?
This is a link to a track named Evidence by La La and the Boo Ya. It is about the fact that the police have CCTV watching everything we do yet the police are now exceeding their authority by trying to prevent ordinary people taking photos in public spaces and specifically taking pictures of police.
As they say: “My life is captured on CCTV, I can’t hide from society”
So why do the police think that they should be allowed to hide from society.
I was up in London again last night for another Christmas drink. On the way back I saw a group of police in the tube and took a photo of them. It seems that they have not taken on board the recent guidance by the chief constable of the British transport police to the Association of Chief Police Officers. His guidance states that anti terror legislation (known as Section 44) “gives officers no specific powers in relation to photography ….”.
This didn’t stop one officer yelling “YOU’RE FILMING!” at me and raising his hand in a attempt to stop me. This seems incredibly hypocritical given the thousands of CCTV cameras throughout the London Underground. The establishment seems bent on introducing more and more big brother methods for policing and it seems that the only people who, they think, should be exempt are themselves. The picture I took is not very good but I reproduce it here as a minor assertion of a freedom which the police seem intent on erasing.
A demonstration is taking place in London to protest police heavy handedness with photographers. Be there.
Just to emphasise the point the picture below shows what happens when a peaceful demonstration takes place. The police turn up and film everyone. Fucking hypocrites!
I have been mulling over the expenses scandal currently bubbling away in the British press and it seems to me that this is the straw that broke the camels back. The expenses scandle is the last in a long stream of betrayals by our leaders and specifically by New Labour. It is time for a general election. (See petition information below).
New Labour came to power promising an end to the sleaze that defined the fag end of the last Tory government. Tony Blair portrayed himself as embracing an innovative vision of The United Kingdom and promulgated a bold modern vision of the future of the UK.
MPs who tried to stop you seeing their expenses
However, it quickly became apparent that the cardinal attribute of New Labour was not vision but spin. One after another New Labour ministers proved themselves corrupt and were dismissed from office only to be brought back in once the fuss had died down.
New Labour policies turned out to be the wholesale adoption of Thatcherism but, as with all converts, the policies were embraced as a doctrine and without understanding or judgement. Privatisations continued and New Labour became the bitch of big business.
Tony Blair began hobnobbing with the super rich and power went to his head. At the frenzied height of New Labour devotion to hyper-capitalism he tried to introduce super casinos. That a Labour government should consider the massive expansion of gambling in this country when the only people calling for it were greedy American business men beggars belief but by this time he was so far gone he could not see further than the Gordon Brown’s balance sheet.
When George Bush decided to go to war with Iraq Blair’s dragged us in too. The Islamist terrorism unleashed the Big Brother tendency that is never far from the minds of any Labour government. New laws were introduced to detain people without trial, CCTV became almost ubiquitous
The credit crunch brought claims from our leaders that this was a global phenomena that had little to do with their policies ignoring the frequent articles in newspapers such as The Economist describing the dangerous asset price bubble which was being fueled by cheap money and would eventually burst.
When ordinary people protested against the bankers in London the police responded with highly questionable tactics such as kettling and casual violence which may have left one man dead. Yet our leaders supported the outrageous tactics and trotted out the usual platitudes about violent demonstrators.
Luckily the widespread use of video technology by the general public revealed that the violence was mainly perpetrated by the police.
Now we learn that those we trust with the leadership of our country are fiddling their expenses like so many seedy second hand car salesmen.
On The BBC, Radio 4 program Any Questions this week it was suggested that the British people use the upcoming European elections to withhold votes from the major parties. Our leadership on the panel showed the depth of their depravity once again by attempting to scare the public with the spectre of racism and erroneously implying that this meant a vote for the BNP.
Lord Falkner went on to complain that it was a tragedy that New Labour would be judged on the expenses story and that this was a distraction when more important issues were at stake.
Lord Falkner is Talking Bollocks!
There can be no more important issue than whether our leaders are trustworthy. Their policies and promises mean nothing if the are prepared to waive aside their probity and obligations for a few thousand pounds.
While preaching prudence our leaders have led us into the worst economic crisis for decades. They led us into an illegal war that caused the deaths of thousands and severely damaged Britain’s reputation abroad. They continue to introduce ever more draconian laws which erode our civil liberties and they encourage the police to suppress protest using methods not dissimilar to those found in Zimbabwe.
Now we hear that they have been fiddling their expenses.
During the Any Questions program Susan Kramer, MP, suggested that we need a general election. She is right. The British people must be given the chance to decide whether their representatives deserve the confidence and the responsibility with which they are entrusted.
Photography
Police spy on you at petrol stations
Tags: bollocks, cameras, CCTV, democracy, neighbourhood policing, neighbourly, Orwellian, petrol stations, police, spy
Where was the informed debate on this?
I saw this at a petrol station recently. OK, I can see that it is in the interest of the petrol station owner to log the registration plates of cars in case they drive off without paying. But I can recall no informed debate about whether this data should be automatically made available to the police!
Democracy my arse! Gradually, using fear of crime and terrorism, the state increases the control that it has over the individual. “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” whine the naive and trusting. This is bollocks. History shows that if authorities are given powers they will abuse them.
It’s also a bit rich to advertise it as “neighbourhood policing”. You’d have to have truly Orwellian mind to consider a nationwide network of CCTV cameras to be neighbourly.