Budget 2010: HMRC officers to get powers to open people's post without asking permission
Tax inspectors are to get wide-ranging powers to open people’s post without their permission for the first time, it can disclosed.
That is the headline to this article.
An Extract;
Officers will be allowed to intercept any suspicious mail anywhere in the country and open it before it is delivered, under plans being drawn up by the Government to amend the Postal Services Act.
The measure is billed as a bid to crack down on tobacco smuggling. However, a HM Revenue and Customs spokesman said the powers could be applied much more widely
I don't think tobacco smugglers will post their smuggled goods that much because it will cost too much and it will take weeks to get to the address.
The customs have said 'the powers could be applied much more widely.' I ask how wide will the powers go?
An Extract;
Civil liberties campaigners were appalled about the increased powers. Alex Deane, a spokesman for Big Brother Watch, said: “This is a dreadful development. The post has always been regarded as near-sacrosanct in law.
“The last time our mail was opened by the authorities without notice, our country was fighting a World War. I hardly think that the situation produced by the government’s tobacco tax compares.
“Once the principle of opening our mail has been accepted, what else will the Government use as an excuse to pry into our post?”
HM Revenue and Customs are growing increasingly aggressive in their battle with tax evaders. Earlier this year it announced plans for a crack down on middle class professionals who do not pay their fair share of tax.
The old Soviet Union was a government controlled state where mail was opened to check on the population.
Do you see any similarities with what the Soviet Union did and what this government is doing?
We are losing our freedom.
How many of our countrymen died in WW1 and WW2 for our freedom, only for the freedom they fought for to be taken away by this government and the EU.
The government is listening on our phone calls and emails, they are now going to be checking on our mail, the council can enter our homes with out a warrant or police presence.
What other freedoms are we going to lose in the future?
Showing posts with label Lost Freedoms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lost Freedoms. Show all posts
Friday, 26 March 2010
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Taking Liberties
Labour has taken 13 years of diabolical liberties with Britain
Individualism and autonomy used to be prized – now they are held in contempt, argues Simon Heffer
That is the headline to this article.
An extract;
A danger of the Government's having made such a mess of the economy is that one risks forgetting all the other horrors for which it is responsible. Between now and the election I shall make a point of discussing some of these other factors that an intelligent voter should want to consider before casting his or her ballot. Despite stiff competition from matters like Europe, immigration, law and order and the near-destruction of our education system, one is perhaps worse than all the others: the insidious and at times quite terrifying assault on our civil liberties.
Gordon Brown tells us not to look at the past, but to look to the future. I wonder why that is?
Labour have taken this country to the cleaners.
In my opinion Labour are those criminals who knock on an elderly persons door and say they have seen some damage on their house and will repair it for £100.
Then, they say they found some more damage and bill the owner £1500+.
That is just what they have done to the finances of this country.
I'll let Simon Heffer tell you about the liberties we have lost
The Government has created 4,300 new offences since it came to office. Many of these are either absurd (such as making it a crime to use a nuclear weapon) or they duplicate laws on the statute book. Some would say this highlights the ignorance of those who govern us. Maybe it does; but I would argue, too, that it shows their insatiable hunger for control.
In the long years of Tory rule, those who reminded the electorate that with a Labour government you also got socialist control were dismissed as scaremongers. However, it is true, and we now see it is true. We live in a country where harmless people taking pictures of cathedrals are warned off by police invoking anti-terrorism laws; where the same legislation is used to regulate the positioning of wheelie bins; where smoking is banned even in public places whose owners wish to allow it; where the hunting of vermin is banned even on the land of those who wish to have it hunted. All these invasions of individual autonomy have taken place since 1997.
It could have been worse. We could have had identity cards, forcing a citizen to prove his or her right to be here, or to admit who he or she is, despite having committed no offence. We could have had a national DNA database. We could have had a law that prevented comedians telling jokes about religion. We could have had the restriction of jury trials. We could have had people locked up without trial for 90 days because the police are incapable of finding any evidence upon which to convict them of something. We could have criminalised people for being nutters, for that is one of the best words to describe those poisonous idiots who claim Auschwitz was just a film set and the genocide of the Jews didn't happen. All these things have been discussed or proposed by Labour in varying degrees of seriousness, but – so far – have not been inflicted on our people. However, they show a certain, and unpleasant, cast of mind.
As it is, enough has been done by the state to remove our autonomy. We are discouraged from having opinions of our own, especially on moral or ethical matters, and certainly from expressing them. It is frowned on to be opposed to abortion; or to believe homosexual partnerships to be lacking in equivalence to marriage; or to imagine that stable family units with both a mother and a father are superior, generally, to those that lack one or the other; or to imagine that married families might last better than unmarried ones; or to have any sort of perceived privilege, whether it be through wealth, hard work, luck or simply having the right outlook on life or the right sort of parents.
In Miss Harman's insane view the state can, indeed – and should – eliminate all these factors, or work to compensate those who do not have them. This can only be done at the cost of autonomy: at the cost of people being allowed to decide what in their lives is valuable, and living their lives in accordance with those decisions. We are more regulated, more policed, more restricted than in living memory, except in war.
This is the natural consequence of having politicians infected with a doctrine that office is about the power to prevent rather than about the power to enable. They are also politicians who restrict the many, without a thought for their liberty, in order to try to control the behaviour of a few. Individualism and autonomy used to be prized rights of our people. Now they are held in contempt by our governors. If we seek reasons not to give Labour another term in office, this wanton theft of our liberties should be high among them.
Labour has ruined this country, but the country isn't lost.
We need to show Labour that we no longer believe them or believe in them.
Labour need to be sent back to the stone age in the election.
Individualism and autonomy used to be prized – now they are held in contempt, argues Simon Heffer
That is the headline to this article.
An extract;
A danger of the Government's having made such a mess of the economy is that one risks forgetting all the other horrors for which it is responsible. Between now and the election I shall make a point of discussing some of these other factors that an intelligent voter should want to consider before casting his or her ballot. Despite stiff competition from matters like Europe, immigration, law and order and the near-destruction of our education system, one is perhaps worse than all the others: the insidious and at times quite terrifying assault on our civil liberties.
Gordon Brown tells us not to look at the past, but to look to the future. I wonder why that is?
Labour have taken this country to the cleaners.
In my opinion Labour are those criminals who knock on an elderly persons door and say they have seen some damage on their house and will repair it for £100.
Then, they say they found some more damage and bill the owner £1500+.
That is just what they have done to the finances of this country.
I'll let Simon Heffer tell you about the liberties we have lost
The Government has created 4,300 new offences since it came to office. Many of these are either absurd (such as making it a crime to use a nuclear weapon) or they duplicate laws on the statute book. Some would say this highlights the ignorance of those who govern us. Maybe it does; but I would argue, too, that it shows their insatiable hunger for control.
In the long years of Tory rule, those who reminded the electorate that with a Labour government you also got socialist control were dismissed as scaremongers. However, it is true, and we now see it is true. We live in a country where harmless people taking pictures of cathedrals are warned off by police invoking anti-terrorism laws; where the same legislation is used to regulate the positioning of wheelie bins; where smoking is banned even in public places whose owners wish to allow it; where the hunting of vermin is banned even on the land of those who wish to have it hunted. All these invasions of individual autonomy have taken place since 1997.
It could have been worse. We could have had identity cards, forcing a citizen to prove his or her right to be here, or to admit who he or she is, despite having committed no offence. We could have had a national DNA database. We could have had a law that prevented comedians telling jokes about religion. We could have had the restriction of jury trials. We could have had people locked up without trial for 90 days because the police are incapable of finding any evidence upon which to convict them of something. We could have criminalised people for being nutters, for that is one of the best words to describe those poisonous idiots who claim Auschwitz was just a film set and the genocide of the Jews didn't happen. All these things have been discussed or proposed by Labour in varying degrees of seriousness, but – so far – have not been inflicted on our people. However, they show a certain, and unpleasant, cast of mind.
As it is, enough has been done by the state to remove our autonomy. We are discouraged from having opinions of our own, especially on moral or ethical matters, and certainly from expressing them. It is frowned on to be opposed to abortion; or to believe homosexual partnerships to be lacking in equivalence to marriage; or to imagine that stable family units with both a mother and a father are superior, generally, to those that lack one or the other; or to imagine that married families might last better than unmarried ones; or to have any sort of perceived privilege, whether it be through wealth, hard work, luck or simply having the right outlook on life or the right sort of parents.
In Miss Harman's insane view the state can, indeed – and should – eliminate all these factors, or work to compensate those who do not have them. This can only be done at the cost of autonomy: at the cost of people being allowed to decide what in their lives is valuable, and living their lives in accordance with those decisions. We are more regulated, more policed, more restricted than in living memory, except in war.
This is the natural consequence of having politicians infected with a doctrine that office is about the power to prevent rather than about the power to enable. They are also politicians who restrict the many, without a thought for their liberty, in order to try to control the behaviour of a few. Individualism and autonomy used to be prized rights of our people. Now they are held in contempt by our governors. If we seek reasons not to give Labour another term in office, this wanton theft of our liberties should be high among them.
Labour has ruined this country, but the country isn't lost.
We need to show Labour that we no longer believe them or believe in them.
Labour need to be sent back to the stone age in the election.
Friday, 26 February 2010
How much freedom have we lost?
It is a dark day when a father can't take a picture of his own son without being accused of being a paedophile.
An extract from this article from Sky News;
The dad told Sky News: "Ben spotted a children's ride which had a train on it and wanted to have a go because he's obsessed with trains.
"When he got on my wife suggested we take a picture of him.
"I took the picture on my phone and suddenly this security guard came up and told me it wasn't allowed because I could be a paedophile.
"I told him Ben was my own son. But he said I couldn't prove it. He said there is a real problem with paedophiles and that if I didn't like it, he'd call the manager.
So anyone who takes a picture of a child, even though they are their own son or daughter, is guilty of being a paedophile unless proven innocent.
Is this incident a one off, or is this going on throughout the country?
I would like to ask a question.
If parents are not allowed to take pictures of their own children, then all these CCTV cameras must not record children because the operators might be paedophiles.
Our freedoms are being slowly taken away.
I use to laugh when people said we are living in George Orwell's '1984'.
I am not laughing anymore.
An extract from this article from Sky News;
The dad told Sky News: "Ben spotted a children's ride which had a train on it and wanted to have a go because he's obsessed with trains.
"When he got on my wife suggested we take a picture of him.
"I took the picture on my phone and suddenly this security guard came up and told me it wasn't allowed because I could be a paedophile.
"I told him Ben was my own son. But he said I couldn't prove it. He said there is a real problem with paedophiles and that if I didn't like it, he'd call the manager.
So anyone who takes a picture of a child, even though they are their own son or daughter, is guilty of being a paedophile unless proven innocent.
Is this incident a one off, or is this going on throughout the country?
I would like to ask a question.
If parents are not allowed to take pictures of their own children, then all these CCTV cameras must not record children because the operators might be paedophiles.
Our freedoms are being slowly taken away.
I use to laugh when people said we are living in George Orwell's '1984'.
I am not laughing anymore.
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