Quote: Aaron @ January 25 2009, 9:56 PM GMTFancy, a tax on nationality.
I was going to march on behalf of Dyslexia but no one could understand our placards.
Big Brother is watching you Page 7
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 9:58 PM GMTI was going to march on behalf of Dyslexia but no one could understand our placards.
Pilchards.
Not sure how the appointment system works, but hereditary peerage isn't very democratic.
And Labor has no absolute majority in the house, it's lead over the Conservatives is pretty slim.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 10:17 PM GMThereditary peerage isn't very democratic.
But a damn sight better than the new.
Quote: Griff @ January 25 2009, 10:22 PM GMTYou can't have it both ways Sooty. You can't say "our great system has survived unchanged" to back up your argument and then when we point out where it has completely changed say "isn't it great that bit of the system has changed". Well, actually, you can and you do, which is why is kind of pointless arguing with you.
And I am not at all surprised that you are pleased to see one of the last independent checks and balances in our political system removed as an inconvenience.
Didn't say I was pleased or that nothing changed, I said our system was evoloutinary.
Almost all constitutional democracies (and yes I know the UK hasn't got a constitution), exist in a state of continual conflict. Every UK government in the last century at least has either bolstered or attacked the Lords as a way of maintaining influence.
Sooty, I know this for what it is, you tyke. But I still can't resist a bite, even if I am tiddled (always a bad time). For a man whose favourite book is 1984, you must be the only person who read it from the point of view of BB.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMTthis maybe a natural stage of our evoloution and no bad thing.
I see no survival of the fittest here. I can't think of any instance where another species turned themselves into proto-cyborgs and regarded it as natural evolution. You confuse desired social trends or developments with biological evolution. Social engineers are not engineering a species, they engineer a mindset. A different matter altogether.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMT1 Tracking lost childrens that's good.
Conversely, tracking every moment / movement of all children for the rest of their lives, whether lost or not, is not an acceptable price, imo. To find the lost you imply you must know exactly where the unlost are at all times but you don't need to know where everyone else's wallet is, to know you've lost your own wallet.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMT2 CCTV makes me feel safer and if you matched it to an inbuilt chip no more fleeing the scene of crime.
And when you're lying in a pool of blood, slipping out of consciousness, the blinking red light of a CCTV camera will offer you exactly what comfort? Surveillance can't stop crime, it may help catch offenders after a crime is committed but it is no guarantee of compliance to law.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMT3 No passports or credit cards a wave of the hand and your through.
And can you prove that's YOUR hand, sir? Re: credit cards, what if your bank decides you are not going to spend that fiver on a CD, a bottle of wine, or fags? You could be denied the right to spend your money in a way you choose at point-of-sale. Every transaction would be recorded. Every choice you ever made could be construed against you - look at the primitive brutality of the Stalinist regime, where not clapping, clapping, clapping too long, or clapping for too short a time, at rallies, were all equally crimes against the state.
A restuarant menu is not true freedom of choice. It is a selective freedom, chosen not by you but the restuarant. If the restuarant doesn't serve what you want, you go elsewhere. In a world where there is only one menu, you are no longer truly free to choose.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMT4 A complete elimination of benefit fraud saving billions.
This would be one of the greater selling points for the idea. All systems have some good selling points or they wouldn't overcome public resistance. But this doesn't tackle the root of the problem. Why people commit the crime in the first place. For example, a society where crime is impossible, isn't free of criminals. The root cause / flaw is still in that person, biding its time and expressing in other areas.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMT5 If libraries and schools and shops know whos using them at all times no more opening hours.
And libraries and schools would be worth attending in such a world? If your own life is censured then even so, education. All books worth reading will be burned or banned. 24-hour shops already exist. We don't need a bio-chip to enjoy that benefit.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMT6 A warning system that keeps paedophiles away from schools or violent alcoholics from pubs.
Unless they were in government?
Paedophiles should be out of the normal system. That we put them back into society, with easily-bypassed checks, is a failure of our present system that we should be correcting. That we haven't yet corrected the failing shows that it is the human will, and not technology that is the cause. We don't fix it, not because the technology hasn't been discovered but because of cost or we can't be arsed.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMTWe're a herd pack animal at heart and all constant monitoring would do is strengthen that very healthy instinct.
Most examples of inhumanity (to me) suggest the opposite of underlying herd instinct. That we're a selfish species and think of individual before herd, in most instances. Constant monitoring, and the awareness of it; can you imagine the impact on the human mind? The constant invasion, the worry about inference of your actions? From birth to death?
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 5:53 PM GMTno one cares if you opposed the gulf war or think Gordon Brown is a cock. If you break the law, including incorrectly packing your bin or not registering staff. Tough shit the laws the law, don't like it? Move to Somalia.
In that world, you wouldn't be able to oppose the government, you would try and deny Brown is a cock for fear it may show up in words, actions, or inference of words and actions.
Move to Somalia? And when there is no Somalia to move too, where do I move then?
sootyj got pwned.
Sorry for the long previous post was merely wasting a bit of time whilst waiting for my laundry to finish. Picking apart individual posts is terribly anal so again sorry.
Generally democracy is a rough complex inefficent form of government but it's the only worth while one.
Through campaigning and voting a government is formed. We then accept the government and it's role in deciding much of how our day to day life is managed.
Or we don't and we support the opposition, protest, possibly try and violenlty over throw it.
That government should choose and control vast areas of our life, and that includes possibly monitoring our emails and censorship.
It's right they do that to fight fraud, pedophilia, terrorism etc. It's upto us as citizens to give them a hard time over this so they don't extend these powers.
My point is quite a simple one. Muttering about conspiracies and sinister government plots is anti democratic and a get clause for being a participant democratic citizen.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 11:19 PM GMTThat's even more fascist than me, lets prevent crime before it happens?
What a radical idea.
Quote: sootyj @ January 25 2009, 11:19 PM GMTonly the most truly depraved and sociopathic commit crimes
Agreed.
Was merely emphasising that the current system punishes the criminal after crime is commited.
I think most people forget/ignore that private businesses hold more of their personal information, track them more closely and generally intrude on their private lives more than any (western) government could ever hope to. And they pay them for it!
Yes quite absolutely loyalty cards is an example of agreeing to be spied on for pennies. I don't have one, nor will I register my oyster card.
Data from both of these systems have been seized by the police and used in criminal cases.
Quote: sootyj @ January 26 2009, 12:17 AM GMTData from both of these systems have been seized by the police and used in criminal cases.
There was a famous case in Los Angeles where a man slipped on a spill in a grocery store and sued the company for damages. They used his loyalty card info to show that he bought a bottle of liquor every day and inferred that he was an alcoholic and merely fell over his own feet.
Quote: DaButt @ January 26 2009, 12:21 AM GMTThere was a famous case in Los Angeles where a man slipped on a spill in a grocery store and sued the company for damages. They used his loyalty card info to show that he bought a bottle of liquor every day and inferred that he was an alcoholic and merely fell over his own feet.
Hehe!
That's quite funny though.
poor loyal drunken customer. He'll have to take his purchases of Colt 50 elsewhere.