From the Right Side

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker admitted the scale of council snooping on people was undermining public support for the anti-terror law, and promised action 'in the near future'.

ANTI-terrorism powers were used by a council to spy on newsagents who employed paper boys without the correct permit in place.

Cambridgeshire County Council adopted surveillance techniques to bring Rashmi and Dips Solanki, who run the general store in Melbourn, to court after officials discovered that a number of children were working for the store as paper boys.

The Solankis now have a criminal record, after being found guilty at Cambridge Magistrates' Court of employing delivery boys without a valid permit. They had denied the charges, claiming that there had been a simple mix-up over paperwork.

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the public interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Labels: Terror laws