Monday 13 April 2009

STUPIDITY, ILLEGALITY AND GREED

I bought the Sunday Times just to see what all the fuss was about the Number 10 'black art' emails. The conclusion I came to was that it was all about stupidity, illegality and greed.

That someone advising the PM wouldn't realise that No 10 leaks like a sieve is obviously incompetent and deserves to be sacked. The only good thing seems to be that be will not get a state pension (I think ~ I hope). Only bankers get compensated for incompetence.

Next is illegality. I always thought that if an email is not addressed to you you should destroy it and not use the information contained therein. If you do it's akin to stealing by finding.

And then there is greed. None of the above would have mattered if it wasn't for the greed of the media, especially the print media, to buy and print the most salacious of material of people in public, and their families, on the basis that such material is always in the public interest.

Saturday 24 January 2009

BBC makes a fool of itself

The more I listen to the chief operating officer (coo for short) of the BBC on the question of the Gaza Appeal the more I realise that the BBC has an in-built desire to court ridicule. Where is the Director General? Or is Mark too embarrassed to voiced the pathetic reasons for not airing the appeal? And who is the chief operating officer? Surely a post too many.

Sunday 18 January 2009

Freedoms

Just been to the excellent 'Taking Liberties' exhibition at the British Library. In a time when many feel that our freedoms and liberties are being more and more curtailed by the state, it is useful to be reminded how the struggle to achieve the liberties we take for granted have had to be fought for and the sacrifices that were made to achieve them.

Perhaps we take our freedoms and liberties too much for granted and are too easy to allow the state to take away from us many of these freedoms and liberties under the guise of protecting us from the evils and dangers that society presents us.

The more freedoms and liberties we have the more difficult it is for the state to control us. Even in parliament, the 3 line whip is the means for the government of the day to remove the freedom of MPs to vote as they would wish.

We should not allow any government to constrain our freedoms and liberties without overwhelming justification. Loosing our freedom is much easier than going it back when it is lost. Just visit the exhibition at the British Library to be reminded of this.