Life On The Road

Fantastic! You know, when I read this I almost changed my mind about who I will vote for, and surely this is just the kickstart that the country needs to get us out of the economic doldrums and make Britain Great again?

There's only one problem. We're not talking about Britain.

We're talking about Yemen, and you won't be too surprised to hear that its our old friends at the DFID again, happily spending taxpayers money to rebuild a country that even our own FCO acknowledge is so dangerous that "[they] advise against all but essential travel to the rest of Yemen due to the threat of terrorism, kidnapping and tribal violence. Unless you have an essential reason to be in Yemen you should consider whether you need to remain. See the Political Situation, Terrorism, and Kidnaps sections of this Travel Advice".

Now doesn't that make you sick? It makes me sick, and once again, news like doesn't get reported by the mainstream media who are far too worried about Sarah Brown's bunions, SamCam's embarassing old photoshoot and Mrs Clegg's eco-friendly handbag made out of 1000 ringpulls! Again, the government is spending our money on things the majority of us don't want, and to add insult to injury, all this on a regime that hates everything that this country stands for.

This has got to stop!

Hmmm.. now doesn't that sound familiar? A government that wants to record details of every single citizen electronically, ostensibly for a justifiable purpose? Of course, this is Nepal, not Britain - how silly of me - but maybe it's just coincidence that we're giving aid to China and China now own Nepal? And what better way to trial a new citizen monitoring programme than to test it out on a society that really has no say in the matter, and at the UK taxpayers expense.

The irony is that Nepal's previous elections have been publicly acknowledged as "free and fair", but despite this, the government feel that it would be better to record voters' citizens' photographs and fingerprints as well as their name and address, apparently to make sure even that villagers from remote districts can be quickly identified at the ballot box. The ultimate goal is to give Nepal one of most secure electoral lists in the world, but I'd see this as an exercise in ultimate state control; perhaps even a taste of what we can expect in the UK if a certain party gets in on May 6th. Actually, don't assume that will be Labour: I'm sure Dave will see the value in this scheme as well.

The equipment required to enable this to take place is quite staggering too: "the UK will help provide 1,000 laptops, fingerprint scanners and web cameras which will be taken across the country to record people's details by the Nepali Election Commission, supported by the United Nations Development Programme". Heck, that's a lot of laptops, but at least there aren't the number of taxis and trains in Nepal that there are in the UK and I'm sure the Nepalese Government won't be as adept at losing them as their British counterparts. This also raises another issue though: oh, forget privacy - any country that feels it needs that level of info on its citizens will have waived that old-fashioned notion ages ago. So you have 1000 laptops (hopefully encrypted), so where are they going to be stored once the data has been collected, and who will have access to them?

But despite all these misgivings and concerns, you should remember, dear taxpayer, that you and I have helped finance this, whether we wanted to or not. Whether you want to carry on funding similar schemes can be determined by how you vote on May 6th: please make the right choice!

There's also been a great deal of debate about Britain's continuing membership of the EU, and I see that Mr Douglas Carswell has sponsored the European Union Membership (Referendum) Bill who's purpose is "..to require the Government to hold a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. It makes provision for the conduct and financing of the referendum and stipulates the question to be asked". Great! That sounds like just the kind of Bill that the intelligent citizen voter in the UK would support, but sadly all is not well: the latest news on the bill states that "this Bill was presented, through the ballot procedure, to Parliament on 16 December 2009. This is known as First Reading and there was no debate on the Bill at this stage. The Second reading date for this Bill has not been named therefore the Bill has been dropped and will make no further progress". So am I to understand that we've potentially been offered a referendum to leave one of the most restrictive and money-draining regimes known to man and it's been scrapped? Again, if you know the answer then please leave a comment.

The problem as I see it is that a lot of the legislation that goes through Parliament is apparently below the radar of the established media and as was the case with the farcical passing of the Digital Economy Bill it looks like issues that are important, nay, key to the ordinary taxpaying people of Britain are carefully smuggled through the legislative process like a paedophile being smuggled into a court hearing under a blanket. And sadly the people that want us to vote them into power are quite content for that status quo to continue. Plus ca change.. as they say.

So I decided to leave a comment, and guess what dear readers, all comments have to be pre-approved so I reckon my chances of my rant being published is practically nil. Therefore, I've done what I usually do as a Citizen Journalist: keep a copy here and publish it myself. Roll on May 6th.