There were many that dismissed David Davis in his recent by-election campaign. There were many who said, 'If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.' I wonder what those people would make of this story.
There were 10,000 snooping operations sanctioned by councils last year. Remember, these operations are justified by anti-terror legislation. What terrible offences have ordinary citizens been guilty of? What serious threats to national security have been uncovered? You will be surprised - or perhaps you won't.
Following parents to school to make sure they are not breaking catchment area rules, dog fouling and under age smoking are apparently the biggest threats to our security. Forget Islamic terrorists, this is much more vital.
Gordon Brown has ordered a review; so we know nothing will change. Sir Christopher Rose, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, says that councils may be stripped of their powers unless they use them properly; so again we know nothing will change.
The British people are sleep-walking their way into an Orwellian state - and this is not an exaggeration. The more power you hand to local councils and QUANGO's, the more they will snoop into your life. If surveillance is needed, it should be ordered by a judge; not by a tin-pot official in your local town hall or a faceless bureaucrat in the Health and Safety Executive . One would assume that spying on a 16 year-old having a crafty fag would then be dismissed. A major task of the next Conservative government will be to review this legislation and restore our freedoms.
7 comments:
As someone with a kid going to a school that was not our top choice, but is our catchment school, I'm all for any method that catches cheating parents and lets my kid get a justified place that has been stolen from him. As far as crime goes, stealing ia good school place from a person who deserves it is a pretty major kind of theft.
CCTV the b@$tard$ and then lop their 80ll0ck$ off.
I think your story has more to do with the failings of the education system.
No. It has to do with people cheating to get their kid a better life at the expense of someone else and getting away with it. Good schools are a scarce resource and some people think it is OK to fraudulently obtain something that isn't rightly theirs. This is a major act of theft and I'm fed up of commentators talking like it is some trivial matter when it isn't.
People are doing things that impact on others all the time and they either think it is OK to take from someone else or it doesn't even occur to them that they can only have something by someone else losing out. This is what the law and the police are for, and stealing a school place is one of the most serious forms of theft I can think of.
If surveillance is needed, it should be ordered by a judge
Total agreement here!
A Surveillance Commisioner... ?! Really? By heck you are in trouble.
I have to say that I think you are being a little unrealistic if you think changing parties will change anything. It never did in the past.
Mark: For obvious reasons this is a sore subject for you. I still maintain though that if the standards of our schools were higher, these sort of shenanigans would not be going on. It maybe wrong - one of the most serious forms of theft - no. It is simply human nature. They are doing it because they want the best education for their children and are going to do everything they can - legal or otherwise - to get their children into the best school. If we had better schools, this would not happen as much. I am sorry for your predicament though.
Dragonstar: I'm pleased you agree.
Aileni: The past 11 years of Labour has seen a gradual erosion of freedoms in the UK, vastly more than has been seen before. There are many of us in the Conservative Party who will fight for change in this area, although it will be such a popular move electorally, that there probably won't be much of a fight.
RIPA - like many laws now - is badly written to allow usage outside its apparent main target area. Of course, we're sleepwalking into a surveillance society but it's unrealistic that there will be any significant improvement under Cameron.
There will always be inequality in and between schools and so parents will try to "engineer" a move to their school of choice by fair means or foul. Using anti-terror laws is not the way to solve the problem.
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