Over the line

Is it just me, or has a line been crossed in what is considered acceptable practice in a democratic country?  I just looked up at facebook to see that the UK Government is banning ticket holders to Olympic events from taking photographs. Now, to be honest with you, I really don't care much for the Olympics, in fact, I think I can quite safely say I've been against the idea since before the bid was won.  This has no bearing on the increasing alarm I feel at such restrictions being placed by a supposedly democratic Government.

Now this 'line' I'm talking about hasn't just recently been breached.  To my mind, the first attempt at crossing the line was made with the Criminal Justice bill 1988, but it probably wasn't until after 9/11 that  it was truly breached.  What is the line I'm referring to?  It's the line over which Ministers no longer even consider what the electorate thinks of their rights being curbed.  It's the line when they stop saying to themselves "The voters won't like that," not the line where they stop taking it into account.  If you think I'm being a little dramatic here, or if you think that we are doing much better now than say, 2 centuries ago perhaps, then consider this rather scary notion about whether or not Robert Burns would have been jailed under modern laws for his work.

Look at the increasingly invasive and restricting laws trotting their way through the Parliament in Westminster right now.  Our government thinks nothing of demanding the right to snoop in our emails and social networking, they think nothing of preventing us from having free access to the Internet, they give tax breaks to the rich and are making poor people pay for the mess of management, legislation and piratical capitalism with 'austerity measures' that look increasingly like a massive privatisation drive.  Meanwhile, back at the Olympics, they are stuffing the rooftops with Surface-to-air missiles and the skies with aircraft in the name of security.  Wonder what it  would look like to the rest of the world if a riot broke out and the rioters took hold of one of those SAM sites?

Look at the UK as it stands.  CCTV is more prevalent here than in the rest of the world, we are no longer allowed to gather before Parliament to protest, the police, although not routinely armed, use delightful tactics such as 'kettling' on peaceful protests and have used the powers given them under the Terrorism Act (2000) in such a way that the European Court had to intervene in 2010. What about last summers riots in England?  The young, poorly educated and disaffected may have gone on a criminal rampage and caused large amounts of damage, but they are poorly educated and disaffected, they have been failed by the system that was supposed to help them.  The response in handing out horribly harsh sentences to those who were caught did not even try to address the causes.  Do you think the increasing bite of Austerity is going make things any better for people from these deprived parts of these islands?  I don't think so.  It looks to me like we are heading into a downward spiral of state intervention that will leave our human rights scattered behind it like ash on the breeze.

There is so much blatant disregard for Human Rights in the UK that they have become more associated with things that prisoners shouldn't be allowed than what the rest of us should! Perhaps, with our 'British' sense of 'entitlement' we don't think we need our human rights safeguarded?  That seems somewhat typical of the short-term thinking rife in Westminster politics currently, which is driven by populism and the desire to woo swing voters in the South-East of England.  Nobody ever seems to imagine that this kind of infringement of our human rights might ever be turned on us.

Yet, that's exactly what is happening.  Banning people from taking personal photographs and posting them on social networking sites might not seem like an infringement of human rights, but it's definitely an infringement of privacy, and we do have a basic right to privacy in the UK!.  Passing laws to snoop on email and other internet correspondence of private British Subjects is also a huge infringement of privacy, and therefore an infringement of our human rights!

Public outcry is treated with contempt too, though.  Look at how little has been done in practical terms to deal with the perpetrators of the banking crisis, or at the tokenism of the MP's sacrificed in the expenses scandal. While party leaders are still tripping over themselves to ingratiate their party with The Sun, we are treated to the spectacle of the Leveson Inquiry.  There is so much mock outrage from the Political Parties over phone hacking, while they are concurrently trying to pass laws that let them do exactly the same thing to anyone in the country.  Who believes Leveson will end with anything other than a fudge and a string of legal action from the celebrities that can afford such a thing?

We the electorate are here merely to be consulted once every 5 years on who gets to exercise the Royal Prerogative.  Election promises are made and ditched practically on one breath and there is very little effort to stem the tumbling turnout numbers for elections (with the exception of the 2010 UK GE).  Look what happened to the AV referendum.  Cobbled together as a sop for the Lib-Dems to get them on board for the coalition, it was undermined and undersold deliberately so that there could be no drastic change to the electoral system, even though there was genuine concern about the result of the 2010 UK GE.  We were also promised the right to recall MP's who were not living up to their obligations, but the bill that has been drafted has been branded 'deeply flawed' as the ultimate power in it really lies with the Government, not the electorate.  There is a lot of hot air about the "West Lothian Question" but not a whole load of action being taken - Scottish MP's from Labour and the Lib-Dems (oh, and David Mundell) still vote on English issues and it's now been 13 years since the Scottish Parliament opened and 35 years since Tam Dalyell proposed it.  The political will for reform of the political system that benefits the political parties so much is minimal. And, of course, there is Lords reform, which has been such a long, painful process and is yet to lead to a single vote being cast by the people for a member of the so-called 'Upper House'.

Which takes us in a very round about way back to my original point.  Our government in Westminster actually cares nothing at all for what the electorate think of their actions.  We are not even in their thoughts, except as a statistic to work around.  Time and time again, they attack our rights and freedoms, and we do very little except grow increasingly apathetic.  The line has been crossed, voters are merely operating in a consultative fashion and politicians even treat that level of contemplation with contempt.  Democracy in the UK is entirely dysfunctional, and this is leading to a dangerous erosion of our rights.  What's to be done about it?