Freedom Calls... - the.paranoid.pigeon

Freedom Calls...

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy." At the time of writing a massive 1,683,277 people have signed the petition, over one and a half million members of the electorate petitioning the Prime Minister to stop the road pricing policy, and yet despite heralding the need for debate, Mr Blair is unrelenting in his plan to get this through. His editorial in Sunday's observer demonstrated that he sees debate as him talking and us listening, not so much a debate, it would seem, but a lecture.

The state of democracy in this country is entirely shocking that such a large number of the electorate can be resolutely against something and yet the government refuses to even consider that their view may be correct.

The Sparrow has a major problem with the road pricing policy, not for financial reasons, but for the fundamental belief that citizens of this country are entitled to basic freedoms, freedoms that are eroded by legislation that effectively allows the government to know not only where everyone is all of the time, but where everyone has been. Combine this policy with the proposed legislation on mandatory biometric ID cards, the national super database, the act that allows ministers to create law bypassing parliament, and you have a situation that would send the worlds despots and neo-cons into spasms of ecstasy.

A common argument used to justify the erosion of our freedoms and civil liberties is that if you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. This argument is an entirely erroneous one, because it is only the case if you can have absolute trust in those over you, trust that this government has never earned. The persistent message from this government has been that dissent is not tolerated, protests near parliament are massively restricted, Dr David Kelly was hounded to his death, Gilligan and Dyke forced out of their jobs.

The Blair government has taken a country where people had freedom and rights that had been fought for over centuries, since the 1215 Magna Carta, and systematically stripped people of these rights. It is entirely vital that anyone in this country who values freedom, who values the liberty that millions of our young men and women died for in the last century, refuses and rejects this policy.

The Sparrow encourages signing the petition, writing to your MP and making him aware that he will not be reelected to his seat if this legislation is passed, and should the legislation be passed then the only action for any member of society who values liberty is mass civil disobedience, The Sparrow is willing to be prosecuted for said disobedience if it comes to the crunch, are you? As blogger Guido Fawkes says on his site, in a democracy the people should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people.

Sign The Petition

Find your MP to write too.

20.2.07 12:16

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To date 9 Comment(s) TrackBack-URL

Mas / Website (20.2.07 13:24)
Oh you're just all paranoid; they know all that stuff anyway. They're just trying to make it look like it's something new they've discovered as a side effect of being all green and doing something about the unbalancing greenhouse gasses we're pumping our (bulldoze greenhouses I say!) But look; we already have heading towards a million and a half petitions and ol' Tony is still "well we're going to do trials anyway" (which equates to : We've spent a small fortune on these black boxes that we're going to charge you for so you may as well feel you're getting some benefit from them) and you'll blink and it'll be passed through. Petitions or not. We elect them, we vote for them; they ignore us.
Way of the world; now where did I put my cave?

thisisalloneword / Website (20.2.07 14:49)
The son of a rural florist writes...

OK, ok, for starters I do not drive.

One fact (though one Labour do not want spread widely around) is that the cost of driving has fallen under Labour. It on average cheaper to drive now. Weird, no?

There are two issues with this petition; taxing road users being the first, civil liberties being the second.

Now, I suspect that, as organic celery munching Grauniad reading nouveux-greens we can safely say that its ok to tax people more for using their car more and creating a larger carbon footprint. But, of course, we do not want to allow the Government the right to follow us everywhere we go - so is that what will happen under the new (as yet undebated) legislation?
Well, maybe. But the transport Minister Douglas "Douglas" Alexander has claimed that there are 3 methods of enforcing this tax that do not relie upon the use of fitting black boxed into all your cars, though what these are I do not know - nor do I suspect does Dougie...

One fear I have with this is that we are playing into the hands of the pro-car lobby (which does not need our help people!) who are hiding behind a shield of people shouting "Big brother culture". Please please please distrust the government but do not think that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

pog (20.2.07 14:49)
Well done pigeon - I've signed. If everyone had the same attitude as Mas, nothing would ever change.
I remember reading an interview with the Chief Constable responsible for the Manchester area, when he said 'there's a festival on this weekend and I have no idea who's in my city'.
I see no reason why he should know if I'm in 'his' city, providing I'm abiding by the law of the land. It's none of his damned business.
The other big problem with things like ID card and vehicle tracking is the old one about the database. Governments have crap records on IT projects and, even if this wasn't the case, do we really believe it will be accurate and secure? I certainly don't.

thisisalloneword / Website (20.2.07 16:06)
The only decent IT project connected to the Government is actually the petition one! Needless to say it was cheap, transparent and nothing to do with Capita/BT/Other usual suspects.

Mas / Website (20.2.07 16:17)
Pog: I know that while I applaud everyone taking a stand; we already have almost 2 million people saying "no" to something the government are going to push through anyway; their insistance that regardless of the petition they are still going to run local trials. The trials will be a miraculous success, despite pee'ing off all the commuters who have to put up with them.
What they are doing is applying the same mentality to driving as they do to smoking; people who do it have to do it so they're going to screw them for as much money as they can - all under the pretence of "cutting carbon emissions" and all that rubbish. Like our green and pleasant land has that much of an impact when other, larger countries continue to pump out amounts exponentionally larger than ours. It's like trying to cool down by blowing out a lit match when you're standing to a raging bunfire.

c-side / Website (20.2.07 16:54)
Already signed Pigeon, and passed onwards. You put the issue very eloguently. I am an environmentalist at heart. But I use my car because it is far cheaper and much quicker and convenient that any alternative. Am I hypocryt? Probably but it very difficult to be purist about it. We live in a 24/7 fastlane culture. I just dont have the time or money to catch a bus/train everywhere. Until there is a viable alternative to using your car then taxation just seems to be another money spinner which will impact on those most in need. Instead of spending money on this, why not be really daring and nationalise the railways once more! They wont because they don't want to upset the capitalists. MAS's argument is even more reason why instead of just petitions we need to vote these ignorant, arogant arse holes out of office. Sometimes the people's voice does succeed. Democracy can prevail. Better to shout and try to be heard than do nothing.

disgruntled commuter / Website (20.2.07 21:25)
I signed the ID cards petition, and just got a long email from Mr. Tony himself (or one of his minions anyway) explaining why I'm wrong. Yahoo thought it was spam ... yahoo may well be right. So the whole petition thing is not so that our voices can be heard in Downing street, but more so that they can get hold of our email addresses and bore us in our own living rooms ... Oh, and why am I in the least bit surprised?

thisisalloneword / Website (21.2.07 12:56)
Commuter - OK, the reason that there is a petiton site on the number 10 website is to allow greater participation between petitioner and petitionee (sorry for making words up there).
People have been petitioning parliament for 100s of years and sometimes the government acts on them, sometimes they ignore them and sometimes they use them to influence a modicum of sway upon the direction of general policy.
The number of people who signed up to written petions before meant that it was an impossibility for any governemnt to write to them each explaining what was happening with the petition. Government wished to tackle this by using the web and email. You are signing up to the e-petitions to get a response back from the government via email.

-That is the point of using the medium.-

If you do not want to recieve an email then sign a written petition instead.

Now, the answer form No 10 itself may dissapoint you (and all right minded people) but that is an other matter...

The Sparrow / Website (21.2.07 17:52)
Wow, thanks for all the responses. The e-mail response today from Mr Blair showed how little attention he has paid to it, however, I have to disagree with Mas, we must continue to express our dissent in every legal way possible. I agree with disgruntled that we must vote them out of office also, however with any government you seem to end up with situations of absolute pig headedness and it's surely the duty of a democracies electorate to fight that.