An article link I spotted at Dick Puddlecote’s place from The Australian has a view of the modern UK as a ‘soft totalitarian state’. For anyone outside our once great but now utterly raped country, reading the article will probably make them wonder what on earth the UK population is allowing to happen without any hint of protest or dissent. I suggest reading the article in full but as a taster :

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely. There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.

Seriously, do go read the full thing and when you have finished on that one, have a look at this next piece I found at Anna Raccoons looking at an article by photographer Mike Wells on the preparations for the 2012 Olympics in London.

The perimeter of the site is shown below :

The article itself makes me wonder what those people who do come here (even after reading the likes of the first article) will really think of us when they see the electric fences and CCTV cameras. If that doesn’t make them think then maybe the police, unmanned drone planes and a Royal Navy destroyer in the Thames will do the trick – and no, I am not being sarcastic :

Nope, this is the 17.5 Kilometre  ring fence, topped with 5,000 volt electrified wire and 900 CCTV cameras that the government feels is necessary to counter the threat of ‘hostile individuals’ attempting to get into one particular district of London.

Other security measures to be implemented […] will include facial and iris recognition, finger-print and hand recognition, guards with attack dogs and search dogs. New software is planned to integrate all of London’s CCTV cameras, and will have the capability to follow you through the city.

A scheme to search people and vehicles will include machines capable of looking through your clothing. The Air Force will deploy its Reaper pilot-less drone aircraft, which will carry laser-guided bombs and missiles including the Hellfire air-to-ground weapon. While on the Thames, the Royal Navy will deploy its new £1 billion Daring class Type 45 destroyer. These are also to be fitted with laser-guided missile systems able to shoot down a target the size of a cricket ball.

Somehow, I think it’s time I started looking at leaving this country while I am still allowed out!

Thanks to Waspsnest’s Dutch correspondent for the Paranoympics in the title.