The Controlled State

Picture taken: Watersmeet, Lynmouth, Devon, 10 June 2005, 6:14 pm

In a quite extraordinary article in the Guardian Henry Porter closed with the following:

"People insist that we are not living in a police state but perhaps that is rather a 20th-century notion. What we are pioneering in Britain is a 21st-century version of the police state - the controlled state.

I implore you to realise that the fight is on to save our society from this nightmare, to put your fears into perspective and to make every politician understand that this is something the people will not tolerate. There has not been a more important struggle in Britain in the past 50 years."

In the UK the NSPCC website is headed up with the slogan, 'Cruelty to children must stop. FULL STOP.' When they first started using this slogan I wrote to them pointing out that it was unrealistic, unrealisable and naive to even consider this as a goal, unless they consider we should become such a watched society that every home and room would be monitored. As daft as this slogan is, it is entirely a sign of our times that people seem not only to not think it unrealistic but are immune to such nonsense and, indeed, buy it. When the unbelievable becomes believed, we have lost our way.

It would be a terrible world indeed if we became so controlled that any misdeed was impossible. Fortunately such a world is unlikely in the extreme to ever come about. It remains that if someone wants to abuse and has the opportunity, they will. That's life.

Tony Blair does not seem to like the idea that everyone has the right to commit a crime. The law cannot and should not be pre-emptive (as was the invasion of Iraq and wrong if for no other reason). Such a state should be fought to the death, for that is a worse crime than all the crimes the government uses oppression to suppress.

It is also worth considering in these days when words are used negligently and thoughtlessly that what stands at the interface of our every interaction with others is our word. If we are not true to our word and consider them for their life giving or taking quality then we are no longer ethical or moral people and no contract, law or bond can make us so. If I lie, it is ultimately myself I have cheated, for it is my own soul that I have sold out. Tony Blair needs to learn that you cannot force people to do right, that is oppression, people must behave ethically or do right out of choice or ethics and right have been lost utterly.