The United Kingdom Elections 2010

[Louis VI the Fat]

the authoritarian tendancies of labour, necessary to achieve the 'liberal' paradise they seek:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/p...-a-carton.html

Bollox, the lot of it. Populist nonsense. Written by somebody without the faintest clue about laws, regulations and legal matters. Or, more worryingly, as I shall argue in the post below, written by somebody with an insidious political agenda.


Here we go:

1)

However, it is now illegal for supermarkets to sell you something without giving you something else for free.

I suggest any Briton goes to a supermarket tomorrow, armed with his copy of the Daily Outragograph, and insists he must be given something for free with his purchase.
Watch yourself being laughed out of the shop. Watch yourself being laughed out of your lawyer's office when trying to get your due based on this misreporting.


2)

Also illegal: causing a nuclear explosion.

Legislation was brought in after 9-11, to close loopholes that might prevent terror suspects from being prosecuted. 'Illegal to cause a nuclear explosion' - nothing wrong with that law. In fact, it is so bloody obvious that perhaps previous governmets forgot to mention it, leaving room for crafty lawyers to get terrorists of the hook, even when caught red-handed with a nuclear device on the London Underground.



3)

disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer

Spreading salmonella by interfering with eggs declared as contaminated with it?

4)

Others:

Switching the ear tag of an animal which has been declared disease-free to one which hasn’t?
Fishing out endangered species and hiding what you’ve done in an “unsorted” batch?
Gaining some advantage by claiming qualifications you don’t have?

'Legal diarrhea'?
Not at all. I say the people who are laughing at these silly laws, outraged at the Labour 'police state', are either unaware of, or haven't thought through, the underlying issues behind these laws/local regulations/court decisions.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Do you know that genius postmodern text generator? It is a program that automatically produces an interesting (at first glance) postmodern text. Out of just a few words and concepts, endlessly mixed and re-arranged, the programs manages to produce an infinite number of texts.

I say the Telegraph has managed the same. The paper is filled by spambots, several programs written by the Telegraph, which automatically create daily, endlessly repetitive articles based on just a few concepts and phrases, written into a new daily outrage article simply by tossing about the order of these handful of concepts.

I feel like Groundhog Day when reading the Telegraph.



Here you go, if one wants to have a real laugh, instead of laughing at legislation that actually makes Britian safer for British people, read how the Telegraph simply repeats its own articles with intervals of eighteen months. The trick behind this is, the reader vaguely remembers he has read it all before, so thinks to himself that what is written is probably true - since he has heard it from multiple sources.

This is how you are being taken for a ride.

This is the real problem of British politics: the media moguls, the clique of billionaires in London, their lackeys in Westminster.
In the case of the Torygraph, the two billionaire tax exiles who run their channel island - made into and kept a s a private tax haven by London - as feudal barons. And who hold a disproportionate stake in British media, to spew an endless daily diarrhea of false or misleading information to the British people.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Labour has created 3,600 new offences since 1997.

The Government has created more than 3,600 criminal offences since it came to office in 1997, almost one for every day in power.

By Chris Irvine
Published: 7:40AM BST 04 Sep 2008




Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, will reveal the statistic as he sets out a fresh initiative to cut crime.
Critics of the new laws blame a government addicted to pushing complicated legislation through Parliament, and keen on grabbing a cheap headline.

A total of 3,605 offences have been introduced since May 1997, an average of 320 a year.
They include 1,238 brought in as primary legislation, which means they were debated in Parliament, and 2,367 by secondary legislation, such as orders in council and statutory documents.

The worst offender is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which has created 852 new offences.
This is followed by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and its predecessor the Department for Trade and Industry, which between them have created 678 offences.
Meanwhile the Home Office is responsible for 455 offences.

Among some of the more bizarre criminal offences created in the past five years include disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer, or offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day.
Under Tony Blair, Labour introduced 160 new offences in his first year, but in 2003, 493 offences were created.

Mr Huhne said "In what conceivable way can the introduction of a new criminal offence every day help tackle crime when most crimes that people care about have been illegal for years.
"This legislative diarrhoea is not about making us safer, because it does not help enforce the laws that we have one jot. It is about the Government's posturing on punishments."

Here is a list of some of the new criminal offences brought in under Labour:
- Creating a nuclear explosion
- Selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
- To wilfully pretend to be a barrister or a traffic warden
- Disturb a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officers
- Obstruct workers carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway
- Offer for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
- Allow an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre
- A ship's captain may end up in court if he or she carries grain without a copy of the International Grain Code on board

If disturbing eggs is illegal, someone fetch me a carton
With Labour's laws creating a new kind of crime every day, Bryony Gordon is not sure which to break first.

Published: 7:58PM GMT 22 Jan 2010

I don't know what you're planning to do this weekend: a spot of shopping, perhaps. Some household chores. A nice walk in the park with the family. If you're anything like me, you will spend it doing absolutely nothing at all, apart from lying under your duvet with only a good book for company, the good book perhaps later being joined by your close chum, self-loathing.

Anyway, whatever the case, stop! Stop shopping, and cleaning, and walking, and wallowing in self-pity! Drop everything! For I have a suggestion about how to spend your two days off, and it is this: go swimming in the wreck of the Titanic.

Pardon? Eh? What's that you say? You're not sure that exploring a shipwreck is really a safe activity for all the family? You don't much fancy the depths of the north Atlantic in January and, anyway, you wouldn't know where to get a wetsuit at such short notice? Ah. Probably just as well, seeing as it is now a crime to enter the hull of the Titanic – at least without receiving permission from a Cabinet minister first.

This wacky regulation, we learnt this week, is just one of almost 4,300 crimes created by Labour since they took power. I barely need mention the big ones that we all know – smoking in a pub, for example, or hunting a fox – but it's worth taking a look at some of the lesser publicised ones, if only for a laugh.

For example: disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer, selling game birds shot on a Sunday (or Christmas Day), and "reporting to the master or other officer in charge of the bridge a door to be closed and locked when it is not in fact closed and locked" (that one from Merchant Shipping Miscellaneous Amendment Regulations).

Also illegal: causing a nuclear explosion. You'd have thought – nay, hoped – that this would already be classed as a crime. But never mind – I can't imagine there will be all that many police around to ask "What's going on here, then?" in the event of an A-bomb going off.

The law, then, is an ass – but who knew quite how many weird and wonderful ways one could break it? Under Gordon Brown, the Government is dreaming up about 33 a month, beating his good pal Tony, who only managed a measly 27. In total, criminal offences have been created at the rate of about one for every day that Labour have been in office. It's a wonder they've had time to do anything else.

Last night, Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, attacked the Government for an "acute and prolonged bout of legislative diarrhoea". Thanks for that image, Chris. Huhne wrote to the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, asking him to repeal some of the laws. Straw, referring to the crime of disturbing a pack of eggs, responded thusly: "Egg marketing inspectors must be able to ensure that eggs suspected of being marketed in contravention of EU regulations are not tampered with." He added that he was "sorry that you regard these offences as unnecessary. In their different ways, they are important pieces of legislation."

So. It is OK for the Government to invade a country illegally, but if you fiddle with a packet of eggs, it's off with your head? The phrase that springs to mind here is, of course, "law unto themselves" – but since, for the time being, they're still running things, here are some suggestions for a few other criminal offences they could create before being booted out later in the year:

• In future, it will be illegal to keep food beyond its sell-by date. Why? Because it could kill you, you absolute idiot. Although you're not allowed to throw it away. No. That would just be wasteful.

• On that point, we don't do waste. Not any more. Waste is bad, especially when your local council doesn't bother to pick it up for weeks on end. Also, some of you stupidly mix your plastics with your paper, which just won't do. From now on, it's a crime to create waste of any kind, unless of course that waste happens to be in the form of legislation such as this.

• However, it is now illegal for supermarkets to sell you something without giving you something else for free.

• After the roaring success of the Asbo, we will introduce the SuBo, under which anti-social beings will be rehabilitated in X Factor-style boot camps under the guidance of Lord Cowell of Wembley.

• Any scrutiny of the spending habits of Members of Parliament is to be made illegal. Offenders will be given community service, which might involve repairing bell towers or sorting out dry rot.

• Thinking freely, for yourself, without instruction from the Government, is also banned. Who on earth do you think you are? A sentient human being? Honestly, the cheek of you people.

[Strike For The South]

Europe is like....different.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Europe is like....different.

That's what you get when you let an entire continent be run by atheist homosexuals.

[Strike For The South]

That's what you get when you let an entire continent be run by atheist homosexuals.

I didn't realize they had put you in charge

[Furunculus]

Bollox, the lot of it. Populist nonsense.

as i said to subotan, concentrate on the bolded text:

[snip]This wacky regulation, we learnt this week, is just one of almost 4,300 crimes created by Labour since they took power. I barely need mention the big ones that we all know – smoking in a pub, for example, or hunting a fox – but it's worth taking a look at some of the lesser publicised ones, if only for a laugh.

For example: disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer, selling game birds shot on a Sunday (or Christmas Day), and "reporting to the master or other officer in charge of the bridge a door to be closed and locked when it is not in fact closed and locked" (that one from Merchant Shipping Miscellaneous Amendment Regulations).

Also illegal: causing a nuclear explosion. You'd have thought – nay, hoped – that this would already be classed as a crime. But never mind – I can't imagine there will be all that many police around to ask "What's going on here, then?" in the event of an A-bomb going off.

The law, then, is an ass – but who knew quite how many weird and wonderful ways one could break it? Under Gordon Brown, the Government is dreaming up about 33 a month, beating his good pal Tony, who only managed a measly 27. In total, criminal offences have been created at the rate of about one for every day that Labour have been in office. [snip]

[Subotan]

what car they should drive, that they should recycle, what fair trade food they should buy, what insurance they must have, etc.

I should be able to have the freedom from the negative externalities that those activities will create.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Did I include "how much pollution they should spew out"? No, I did not.

Well that depends on if your definition of Authoritarian extends to economic matters as well. Clearly yours does, and mine does not.

How could it not? Authoritarianism is the government telling you what to do, or what not to do, in some aspect of your life.

I see no logical reason to exclude any aspect, especially work, from being possible authoritarianism, only the political reason allowing one to claim socialism isn't authoritarian.

Read the definition of Libertarian Socialism,

That's a stupid definition of libertarian.

CR

[CountArach]

I consider my view completely valid because otherwise you are making the term Authoritarian so reductionist as to say that any Government that has ever existed and could conceivably ever exist is, in some way or another, Authoritarian. Just as I don't like people labelling Bush as a Fascist because it reduces the term Fascist to an epithet of everything that you hate whilst ignoring the actual definition of the word. If we label everything as Authoritarian then we forget what Authoritarianism is.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

EDIT: Never mind.

[Beskar]

That's a stupid definition of libertarian.

CR

Looks like that definition and your definition of "free market" have a lot in common then.

Beskar.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Really, Beskar? My definition of the free market is shared by nobel-prize winning economists (Or more accurately, they expounded on it and I agree with it).

That definition of libertarian-socialism means libertarianism without natural human rights, like the right to property. Why not just call it 'decentralized socialism'?

I consider my view completely valid because otherwise you are making the term Authoritarian so reductionist as to say that any Government that has ever existed and could conceivably ever exist is, in some way or another, Authoritarian.

Perhaps that view was overly broad, but even a narrower view would include work place regulations as the possible purview of an authoritarian government. Even if you say a an authoritarian government is one more like the Wikipedia definition, that leaves open the possibility for economic authoritarianism.

Given the nature of Authoritarian governments, and the huge role the economy plays in a state, it seems natural and expected for an authoritarian government to have authority over the economy.

And it seems prevalent in left wing economic issues because both left wing economics and authoritarianism oppose individualism.

CR

[Brenus]

“Like the right to property”:
Err, the right of property is not a natural human right.
This one is a cultural right (as nature oppose to culture), as nomad will not impose property right in the same meaning than sedentary…
If you want property as natural right you have to give property (of what by the way) to each newborn baby.

[Ironside]

Given the nature of Authoritarian governments, and the huge role the economy plays in a state, it seems natural and expected for an authoritarian government to have authority over the economy.

And it seems prevalent in left wing economic issues because both left wing economics and authoritarianism oppose individualism.
CR

I'm gonna dispute that since the most individualistic nation in the world looks to be Sweden... http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

And here's a note on why Is the Swede Human?
Radical Individualism in the Land of Social Solidarity

[Subotan]

Did I include "how much pollution they should spew out"? No, I did not.

Negative Externalities != Pollution

[CountArach]

2)

Also illegal: causing a nuclear explosion.

Legislation was brought in after 9-11, to close loopholes that might prevent terror suspects from being prosecuted. 'Illegal to cause a nuclear explosion' - nothing wrong with that law. In fact, it is so bloody obvious that perhaps previous governmets forgot to mention it, leaving room for crafty lawyers to get terrorists of the hook, even when caught red-handed with a nuclear device on the London Underground.

Actually that law was brought in in 1998. Other than that I don't disagree with much in the post. On the other hand I get what Furunculus is saying in that it is indicative of an approach to crime that just reeks of Authoritarianism.

Most political parties, especially those on the left, are authoritarian. The whole platform is based on forcing people to behave - they are told how they can go about business, how they should raise their children, what car they should drive, that they should recycle, what fair trade food they should buy, what insurance they must have, etc.

Well that depends on if your definition of Authoritarian extends to economic matters as well. Clearly yours does, and mine does not. Given that difference any arguing by either of us would just be banging our head against a wall.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Well that depends on if your definition of Authoritarian extends to economic matters as well. Clearly yours does, and mine does not. Given that difference any arguing by either of us would just be banging our head against a wall.

Of course it does. Social conservatism is generally authoritarian, just as left-wing economics are authoritarian. You just support fiscal authoritarianism. That's fine, we allow different opinions here, but at least come out and admit it.

[CountArach]

Of course it does. Social conservatism is generally authoritarian, just as left-wing economics are authoritarian. You just support fiscal authoritarianism. That's fine, we allow different opinions here, but at least come out and admit it.

Nope, I simply view Authoritarianism as a solely social descriptor. I would say that I support Collectivism, absolutely, but I don't see that as Authoritarian because it seeks to do away with perceived coercive institutions - as opposed to Authoritarianism, which I see as the active use and reinforcement of coercion.

I don't want to turn this into another my-system-is-better-than-your-system thread so I won't say more.

[Beskar]

Nope, I simply view Authoritarianism as a solely social descriptor. I would say that I support Collectivism, absolutely, but I don't see that as Authoritarian because it seeks to do away with perceived coercive institutions - as opposed to Authoritarianism, which I see as the active use and reinforcement of coercion.

I don't want to turn this into another my-system-is-better-than-your-system thread so I won't say more.

I agree with CountAnarch, and his points.

Read the definition of Libertarian Socialism, it is the most anti-authoritarian realistic system. How in anyway can it be considered Authoritarian.

On the otherhand, having a monarchy, that is an authoritarian aspect to a system.

[Furunculus]

I agree with CountAnarch, and his points.

Read the definition of Libertarian Socialism, it is the most anti-authoritarian realistic system. How in anyway can it be considered Authoritarian.

On the otherhand, having a monarchy, that is an authoritarian aspect to a system.

i'm not aware of ever meeting anyone who'd subscibe to that particular ideology.