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“Rights” not bourgeois liberties ‘Just let us put in place our hierarchy of rights. The right to live. The right to go to work on the underground. The right to have an ID card. The right not to have data abused.’
– Charles Clarke to MEPs before the second bombing, talking up data retention.
Freedom has no natural place in a “hierarchy of rights”. Freedom used to be what was left over when other people’s rights to their choices were taken into account. But the priesthood seems keen to ensure that there are “rights” everywhere, with no space for anything else, and that “rights” are not options, they are compulsions. Lenin would be proud.
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Yes Charles and I’ve noticed that the more rights you give us the less freedom we have.
The ‘right’ to have an ID card???? In other words, he holds up an ID card as tantamount to a right to exist and as we all want the right to exist, we must have the ‘right’ to an ID card. Is that the thought process at work here, I wonder?
From what I have seen from Charles Clarke; the man would not know what freedom was if it bit him on the arse. His defence of the ID Card is getting more & more shrill by the day. Does honestly think he is convincing any sceptic of their worth?
Well that’s settled then: I will waive my right to an ID card.
The right to have an ID card?
George Orwell would have enjoyed that one.
How about the “right” not to have the English language perverted by a pack of fascistic, barely-reformed Marxist polytchnic lecturers and failed lawyers who are trying to control and order every aspect of our lives, to fit their dark agenda?
Pete_London – Ha ha ha ha! V good!
Pete_London – Ha ha ha ha! V good!
More excellent than I think we realize. This is the line you need to be using everytime they claim this right.
This is how memetic battles are won.
In fact, when you put it on your placards, be sure to put the quote marks around “right”.
A Quote of the Day from Pete_London, methinks.
He forgot the right to have other people tell us how to live our lives so we don’t have to think or take initiative.
I don’t find myself in agreement with Clare Short very often, but her opinion of our Dear Leader fits Clarke rather well…
Here’s a tricky question, to which I don’t have the answer.
Place these names in an order of merit, “Champions of freedom”:
1. Blair
2. Prescott
3. Clarke
4. Livingston
5. Brown
I think they would all tie for last place. All political considerations aside, I honestly cannot remember a governing party with such a high percentage of obnoxious people in power at the same time.
While my contempt for ‘Old’ Labour (as epitomised by dinosaurs like Roy Hattersley, Barbara Castle and Neil Kinnock) knows no limits, they were, if nothing else sincere. They came from the working class (whatever that means) and they stood for the rights of what they claimed were ‘ordinary’ men and women against the interests of plutocrats.
‘New’ Labour, as so many Old Labourites claim, is something quite different – a cuckoo that hijacked the nest. For the most part its key members are of middle class, often quite wealthy, origins and their motivations and affiliations have almost nothing to do with the cloth cap wellspring of the party they have usurped.
‘New’ Labour is the bastard child of 1970’s student political activism. It is driven by inchoate Maoist/Gramscian/Chomskyesque notions of ‘change’ and ‘progress’ rather than anything that would have been recognised by Kier Hardy. It has no true affiliations, nor root morality. It seeks to overthrow the old order and err, we’ll make the rest up when we get there.
It is, above all, authoritarian to an astonishing degree. For all the Left loves to demonise Margaret Thatcher as some sort of deranged nanny figure, there has, as John East points out above, never been a more loathsome assembly of control-freaks in power. Not only would Margaret Thatcher not have dared instigate one hundredth of the bossy, arrogant laws and rules this pack of wolves has instigated, she would not have wanted to.
The present government isn’t ‘bad’ in any ordinary sense of the word. It is dangerous and its arrogance knows no bounds. Its architects believe they know how to manage our lives down to the smallest degree and they intend to seize the powers needed to exercise that control.
It will take some opposing. And, to date, has had none.
Quite. The word is not “bad”, it is “evil”.
Our American readers may not appreciate this, because Blair’s image abroad is of a loyal and articulate ally, but his administration is a greater threat to the open society and liberal Western values than bin Laden could dream of being.
huy herbert writes:
“Our American readers may not appreciate this, because Blair’s image abroad is of a loyal and articulate ally, but his administration is a greater threat to the open society and liberal Western values than bin Laden could dream of being.”
I agree. It is a great pity that Bliar has played so well in the USA (and I use the theatrical term quite deliberately because he is, whatever else, an accomplished actor).
Strip out the studiedly winsome boyishness, carefully chosen accent depending on his audience, the demotic ‘you knows’ and ‘looks’ and what you have left is a hyaena at the head of a pack of jackals.
And yes – I’d go along with “evil”, too.
GCooper, I wish that I could have found the words to pen your contrast between old and new labour. They are spot on.
I was puzzled as to how any critical thinker could have voted for these people in May. When I questioned four of my Labour friends over a few pints after the general election they were happy to say that their motives were personal financial gain. Labour promised them more than the Tories did, and it was simply a no brainer.
As for loss of personal freedom and liberties, they just didn’t care. They all own their own houses, drive new cars, holiday abroad, and generally want for little. Freedom and liberty was not on their agenda.
Things will have to get much more oppressive before these people lose faith in New Labour.
John East writes:
“Things will have to get much more oppressive before these people lose faith in New Labour.”
Thanks for the kind words and you are, of course, quite right.
As another great conman once remarked: ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’
And it really is.
Guy Herbert wrote:
“Our American readers may not appreciate this, because Blair’s image abroad is of a loyal and articulate ally, but his administration is a greater threat to the open society and liberal Western values than bin Laden could dream of being.”
Oh, some of us are quite well aware of that, and in fact consider his role as Bush’s poodle to be part of what makes him a threat. It’s something he shares with his master, although he lacks the power to be as dangerous.
My impression from listening to ordinary Americans in buses, subways, work, etc. here in Los Angeles is that they don’t think of him at all. Even a dedicated Republican partisan at work, who talks about politics and the like all the time, has never mentioned him.
What is his image abroad in places other than America, I wonder?
Ken Hagler, if you think Blair is Bush’s poodle you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Blair is playing the Americans for his own game – what is yet to be revealed. I’m truly sorry Mr Bush has been suckered into helping him buy giving him prestige.
Definitely Bliar and his greedy wife see great financial opportunities in the US for after they leave office. Not just the millions to be made from after-dinner speaking, but I’ve long had a feeling that Bliar, after he’s been enobled and become Lord Blair, will open a consultancy in DC. In what, I don’t know, but probably as some kind of interface for firms wanting to do business in the EU. Or some such. He would be the front man. “Lord Blair will see you now.” And he would shake hands and be full of unaffected charm with a frightfully, frightfully English accent, for 20 minutes. Just a pity he didn’t go to Eton, really, because they do charm so much better than Phoney.
We have moved off topic a little perhaps in this thread, and I am late to the fray.
However, I take exception to this:
Freedom must come first. What is the “right to live” if it is without free will, that is the freedom to choose?
Full comment here.