And about time too.

Its nice of them to notice and say something, but (and its a big "but") I think getting the EC to override national government isn't really the way to improve things.

The nice thing about Westminster government is that we can vote them out and/or apply pressure to get things changed if we (the British) decide we've had enough. The bad thing about EC government is that you would have to convince the French and the Germans and the Poles, the Greeks, the Spanish and the Italians and whoever else to do things the way we want to do them. That is altogether more difficult.

Of course, in this instance the UK gov is worse than all the rest on this issue, but we shouldn't confuse "getting the job done" with "the right way to do it."

If you want things changed, write to your mp and tell them you'll vote against them if they continue with this privacy invasion malarkey. If you can't change you're national government when its obnoxious, you'll never be able to change government by the EC when its being obnoxious.

Every white person between the ages of 40 and 50 needs to beat up an MP - if possible blow one up. If we can skew the stats far enough, the average terrorist will be a white, fundamentalist Muslim female with a beard from Basingstoke.

Let's see them try and use that profile.

(cue angry response from the Basingstoke Islamic Lesbian Association.)

... it'll have damn all effect as our Big Brother State weasels out of it by saying that the information is needed to "prevent crime".

They just don't say *how*...

Whilst you have arrived at the right conclusion, try to find a politcal party that supports less government surveillance. Actually there is one, it is called the UKIP, but the last time I mentioned this, some ignorant anonymous bastard wrote this:

"The reason not so many people vote for UKIP is because they come across as hateful fucking bigots, by and large, one step short of BNP in a sharp suit."

I say ignorant, because this person has done exactly what I said (which is very common), and judged them on what the tory press and the socialist BBC says about them, and lumped them in with the hateful and racist BNP.

Incidentally, the UKIP had a clause in their 2005 manifesto that would enable the UK to have referendums on any subject, at the instigation of the public. The other parties grudgingly agreed to have one on that recipe for war, the EU nottaconstitution, and then reneged!

So who are the "hateful fucking bigots" in "sharp suits" now?

It has been my view for many years that trusting government is a very foolish thing.

Yesterday, I wiled away a couple of hours in a (former) KGB Prison. I read the scripts relating the tale of the Soviet invasion of Lithuania. It details the behaviour of the soviet forces and how they set about destroying an incredibly beautiful city (Vilnius).

Tony Blair and his accolytes followed the same path as Stalin. Gordon Brown is attempting to follow the same path as Tony Blair. Start with the little things, RIPA against animal rights extremists, put tags on the paedophiles, who will argue, no one. Why? Because I am not an animal rights extremist or a paedophile?

The sad thing is, neither of these groups are the target, they are used, cynically, to prise freedom from everybody's grasp.

Stop them now.

If you dont vote them out, or resist their intrusions, the future you will have can be seen in a dark prison cell under a beautiful building in Vilnius.

Heh. Heh heh. Priceless. Our creaking FPTP system permits each of us, every now and then, to have a miniscule influence on which of two gangs with equivalent policies gets to have access to greater embezzlement and corruption opportunities for a while.

Closest thing we have to democracy is the possibility of insurrection.

Anonymous Coward be warned, your cards are marked and your days are numbered! Talk that that is simply not acceptable. Do not pass go, and certainly do not write angsty teen poetry on the back of till receipts whilst working a minimum wage job.