Comments

Totalitarianism — 24 Comments

  1. Sixty three!!  Is that all you are GD?  I had imagined you a little older than that.  You're hardly old enough to be a grandad at all.  I must admit you looked a little older in your photo, but I guess that's what growing whiskers does for you.

    • Which photo?  Is there a photo?

      I have a daughter who is 34.  Does that qualify me to be a Grandad?

      • Sure it qualifies you. I'm only a year older than you and I have two sons of 41 and 39 and two daughters of 32 and 26. And five grandchildren, the oldest of whom is entering that  'Here There Be Dragons' territory of teenagerdom.

        It's what comes of being told to 'go forth and multiply' so many times….

        Totally agree with your post. I usually read Booker's piece on a Sunday, and he often highlights some pretty awful stuff from Social Services, but this one left me somewhat slack-jawed in front of the screen. We have truly entered the realms of Orwell's dystopia.

        • It just baffles me how they are allowed get away with it.  This is the State playing God with people's lives.  I have seen horror films with less horrifying themes.

          • Place not your trust in princes, and as for princes of the church… In the Man Above do I trust – all others pay cash. As for Christmas almsgiving, this time round I'll donate to street beggars and buskers, not organisations like Rehab.

    • Maybe I am.  I feel a lot older sometimes.  There again I sometimes feel a hell of lot younger.  You can't win at this game….

    • And in the Independent.

      Christopher Booker has a particular interest in the family courts [and also Warble Gloaming], He makes pretty terrifying reading sometimes.  Social Services over there are really scary!

  2. Words failed me when I read about this poor woman. And it isn't the first time something like this has happened over here but they keep this shit under the radar.

    • Surely the day is fast approaching where the fuckwits who took part in this and their ilk get herded off the cliff.

      • Staggers me that the activity you outline above hasn't already been tried, Bill. There are those people in the world who are singularly unforgiving and prefer not to trouble the custodians of the "law" (who are only in place to protect the interests of the licensed thieves anyway) when they or their loved ones are harmed. Take the case of RBS deliberately putting small firms out of business so they can snap up the assets for a fraction of the price; where are the reports of deceased bank managers being found on landfill sites, with every orifice stuffed with rolled up banknotes? Where are the reports of judges being discovered dressed in nothing but stockings, suspenders and wigs while chained to lampposts outside the Old Bailey?

        Not recommending such shocking and reprehensible behaviour of course – far from it … Just asking, that's all.

        • Caractacus.
          I hear creaking everywhere I go on this land and can see infrastructure of all kinds in varying states of disrepair, collapse and abandonment as I am sure you do. We cannot be alone but it does seem to me collectively and individually people have been drugged into accepting impotence as the price they must pay for allowing the political/legal/commercial 'interests' to provide them with a worthless guarantee in return for compliance.
          On a personal level I an actively withdrawing my scant funds and boundless energy from their system. It is proving to be far easier than I thought (what a surprise, thought is harder/scarier than the action that follows the thought!).  It's a personal journey though even if it is taken with family as mine is. It comes down to what each of us is no longer willing to put up with.
          Once the drugs are withdrawn, Cyprus style raid on bank accounts for example, there will be one hell of a cold turkey session.

  3. When I read things like this I think of Mission of Burma's song, "That's when I reach for my revolver"

  4. Democratic tyranny – we vote for governments to throttle our incomes. Es ist das Ende / der Anfang off Zivilisation as vee know it, ja? Somebody up there likes us, but the gurrier is faceless and has tentacles not fingers.

    • I really cannot see the point in voting any more.  Democracy is dead, and the polling station is just a symbol of bygone times.

  5. We too were astounded to read the report of this in the local papers here. Surely there has to be a back story to this – if this is the whole story then it's time to be very afraid.

    Here in the land of Oz we too have been landed with a government which knows so much more than the population and has decided that every promise made before the election was only hollow talk.

    Their way of dealing with us is to stop releasing any news. Everything still happens but no press releases are  made so eventually the populace forgets the problems.

    Read 1984 again. It sums up exactly the way it's gone over here… and by the sound of it how it's going for ye too.

    (The most frightening thing for  me to comprehend is that the people in power doing all this stuff are my generation  and younger. Where did it all go belly up ?).

  6. I wonder what possessions you think you own Grandad?

    I believe that here in the UK the entire country is 'owned' by the crown. So yes I bought my house, and I'm entitled to live here, but only by the goodwill of the royals and if I fail to pay my taxes or the authorities decide I bought it with illegal income (proceeds of crime) or they need to build a high speed railway through it  they can take it away.

    I have some savings in the bank, but apparently these became the property of the bank as soon as I deposited them, Thus I am simply a creditor of the bank who may, or may not, pay me back my money – although of course it's not actually money even when you get it, just a promise of money printed on a bit of paper.

    I have a car, but that's registered with DVLA and I'm relegated to 'registered keeper'. If I park it badly or fail to pay my taxes on it then the authorities can load it up, take it away and crush it – my rights only extend to a sort of paid for leasehold that allow me to use it in some ways.

    The only things I actually own are the bits and pieces of furniture, utensils and 'stuff', and even some of those have copyright (like my music collection) that prevents me having anything but a very limited control over them.

    I'm writing this on my computer, except the software isn't mine at all. I 'bought' it, but a large conglomerate was given rights of copyright which means I don't own it and cannot do anything with it except run it on this PC, which is also full of built-in copyrighted software that I have no rights of ownership over.

    It's very depressing.

    • Woodsy, I remember reading somewhere that Brenda owns America too … I dunno, unless it's nailed down …

      Anyway, that's all "stuff", your soul is yours and you can think what you like. The universe is far bigger and more splendid than the kleptocracies who happen to be lording it for this brief period of time. Fuck 'em!

      • An interesting little side-thought – When I was employed, I did a little creative stuff as a hobby.  All the work was done at home, in my free time and on my own PC.  It transpired that what I had created had quite a high value, and when I went to sell it, my employer claimed it was theirs as they owned the intellectual copyright on anything I created while I was in their employ.  I told 'e to fuck off and sue me.  It rattled me a bit though, to think that they thought they had the rights to anything I did at home.

  7. This gets back to me last point. All these decidions are made by people. you say your employer claimed it was theirs. That decision was made by a person. Just as the italian lady was cut on the say so of a person. Nor the british social services, by a person.

    Every time I hear this argument, that the department has decided you don't get whatever, etc etc, or social services has decided, etd etc. Remember it was a person making this decision, not a department, not the SS .

    Now try and picture that person.

    Mealy minded cunt with no idea of the chaos they're fostering.

    I have to go now.

Hosted by Curratech Blog Hosting