It should come as no surprise whatsoever to learn that Nanny likes to spy on us.
Knowledge is power, and Nanny gets high on power.
Such is her desire to poke her nose into the minutiae of our daily lives, that Nanny's chums in our "beloved" local councils have been recruiting a "secret army" of agents and informers to trap fly-tippers, tax cheats and other offenders.
Over 850 "covert human intelligence sources" (spies to you and I) have been recruited to spy on us over the past two years.
The informants, who can be paid, pass on information about associates and relatives.
Nice!
Nanny's official papers say that the covert human intelligence sources have a handler to watch over their safety.
That doesn't surprise me, were they to be found out they would receive a well deserved "talking to".
Seemingly their remit is vast and they can be used for; detecting crime, protecting public health and for "any tax, duty or levy".
One council's code of conduct says:
"Examples include the covert use of an officer to establish whether a particular person has been fly-tipping/or committing another relevant offence."
The definition of fly-tipping ranges from dumping large items such as a sofa or fridge on public land, to placing bin bags on the pavement on the wrong day.
Councils also have the power to access telephone or mobile records, although not the content of calls.
Sir Christopher Rose, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, said 429 covert human intelligence sources were "recruited" by local authorities and Government departments in 2007.
In 2006, they recruited 437 agents and informers.
The way to stop this is to "out" the informants. Publicise their names, photos and addresses. That will kill this off stone dead.
They don't learn from history, do they?
ReplyDelete...the Stasi had constructed a police surveillance system second to none, one so thorough that there was an agent or informer for every 180 East Germans. This apparatus generated an unimaginable amount of paper as agents remorselessly chronicled the most humdrum and pointless of activities, intercepted the most innocent of letters, and spent months trailing political suspects while following absurd but detailed instructions on how to play the nonchalant passer-by. - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/07/13/bofun13.xml
Hmmmm! Time for a new page on this interweb thingy methinks. Somewhere where people can publish photographs of the official snoops or jobsworths. Every time an official sticks their nose where it is not wanted, get a photo or two and publish it along with their name. They will soon think twice when they are named and shamed.
ReplyDeleteKapitan von:
ReplyDeleteThat will get you a criminal conviction, for sure.
It's time you Great Brits got yourselves worked up about having the place turned into a fascist police state, a la North Korea.
I was over there recently, and I was appalled at the fascist state Great Britain had become.
This is a sinister turn by Nanny.
ReplyDeleteKen, were these posts advertised? What were the criteria for those that were recruited? Were they already employed by Nanny and just given extra duties and a bonus payment if they could catch one of their fellow human beings?
Was Saddam really executed or is he alive and well and running a local authority?
Tonk,
ReplyDeleteSaddam is alive and well in spirit his malovelent little soul infests the bodies of every council jobsworth in Britain.
Oh, that they could have the power to arrest, torture and execute their fellow citizens for green crimes suchas overfilling their (tax paid for) dustbins, their little sparrow chests would swell with pride as they sip their decaf coffe in the pub and spy on people having too many EU permitted 'units' of booze before running back to nanny to fill out their forms in triplicate.
How do I get in touch with you to send you an exchange of emails I have had with the OFT re the Morrison's judgement that might persuade you to add another blog to your stable entitled "The OFT is shite"
ReplyDeleteBring back the commies. When we had the Soviet Union to contend with, our own government couldn't boss us around and curtail our freedoms because they were always telling us what an restrictive place the Soviet Union was. Now that bogey man has gone, they can recreate the Soviet Union here and call it the EUSSR. Plus ça change…
ReplyDeleteGentlemen, may I crave your indulgence? Here is a piece that I published on my site in March: in view of Ken's latest revelations I thought it might deserve a wider audience.
ReplyDeleteHow to bring a Country to its Knees and Gain Personal Wealth
(A Guide For British Politicians)
-------------------------
Take someone otherwise unemployable; offer him a non-job demanding no intelligence or skill. Promise him a uniform which – of itself – will guarantee him the ‘respect’ of the general public; explain that this means he can fuck with other people’s lives (stopping short of ‘unprovoked physical attack’), without fear of recourse and that he can be as rude and aggressive as he wishes to his elders and betters. Tell him that he can continue in his evening employment as a pub bouncer (that, in fact, he should bring all the qualities he has acquired in that job to his daytime position). In short, explain that becoming an ‘officer’ will grant him a level of authority that his pig-ignorance and general animal-like stupidity would normally have debarred him from.
When he demurs, saying “yer but like wot about my dole an’ that?”, strike the ‘killer blow’ by pointing out that his daytime activities would remain broadly the same; wandering the streets, looking for trouble AND, not only will his duties be negligible, but he will be paid a salary that he could never, ever have dreamed of – that it will be like winning on his scratch-card every day (Trying to explain what 50 grand per annum actually means might present some difficulty since amounts in excess of ‘ten’ are likely to be an alien concept) and not only that, but he will receive a pension of similar – or greater - amount for the whole of his life after retirement and, even after his demise, his current ‘fuck-buddy’ (or whatever they are now called) will continue to receive the same. Give him time for this information to sink into his brain; reiterate the main points (power/uniform/’rispeck’). Now, stand back and wait until the full impact of what you are offering hits him.
Soon, you will have recruited yet another Public Servant, ready, eager and waiting to get out there and make the world a better place by mindlessly enforcing each and every one of your shiny new restrictions on personal freedoms and by ensuring that everybody who so much as steps off the pavement in the wrong place gets reported (or ‘citizens arrested’).
If you have closely followed these instructions you will have increased the numbers of State-Reliant employees and you, yourself, will now qualify for promotion to a Ministerial Post (and your place at the Euro-trough).
Why not spend all your time making unsubstantiated and anonymous claims about other people?
ReplyDeleteThey will have to investigate,especially if they are concerted with other people's anonymous claims about the same innocents.
They will end up chasing themselves in ever-decreasing circles.
The truth is, we English aren't very good at civil disobedience. Let's face it, we never really needed to be disobedient until this bunch of power-crazed sixth formers managed to get their grubby hands on the levers of power. How on earth did we get to this?
ReplyDeletegrumpy said...
ReplyDelete"this means he can fuck with other people’s lives (stopping short of ‘unprovoked physical attack’)"
I'm sorry to say Grumpy, you're seeing life in this country through rose-tinted spectacles!
Click here for a glimpse of the real world.
Anon:
ReplyDeleteI watched the TVL licensing thug, isn't it funny how these "officials" always try to hide behind another one of Nanny's laws, in this case data protection, still it makes a change from 'Elf'n'safety which is their normally prefered method to enforce the behaviours they want.
Thanks anon: its nice to see someone refusing to be intimidated by the bastards. Whatever happened to that idea about Englishmen's homes being their castles?
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember that - in the bad old days (before PC) - a stroppy git like the one illustrated would have found himself being invited to go somewhere quiet and then been subjected to a friendly discussion about the unacceptability of his behaviour. The 'telling-off' would, of course, have been punctuated by a little light slapping and perhaps some gentle application of boot to testicles: but this was in the days before we all had 'uman rights'. Nowadays we are all well aware that violence is not the solution to anything - and we live in a society where this truth is demonstrated every day: Don't we?
I emailed Hull council about this and got their standard holding reply:
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback to Hull City Council. You will receive an acknowledgment shortly and if you have submitted a
complaint will receive a response within 10 working days from the relevantservice area.
If you need to follow up your original feedback or are unsatisfied with the response you receive it would be helpful if you could include the following service request number 4360517
I'll let you know if I get anything else.
Regards
Hull City Council
Opps, sorry. That should have been in the sausage roll thread, where I'll post updates.
ReplyDeleteHow do we find out who these people are, does any one know? And have they an official title? Is this a national scheme or introduces by local authorities at their discretion?
ReplyDeleteGod, why aren't people like the ubiquitous Shami Chakrabarti up in arms about the likes of this? Or does "Liberty" concern itself only with the civil liberties of ethnic minority groups?
ReplyDeleteJoyce
anon (12:25)
ReplyDeleteHas it occurred to you that at least some of the "...fucking scum fly tippers..." may be quite ordinary people who have simply been unable to get their local council to do anything about their 'problem rubbish'?
Several years ago - when I still lived in the UK - I informed my local council that I had an old mattress that needed moving. I was told to put it outside my back gate, from whence it would be removed, Two months later (after literally dozens of 'phone calls and at least three personal visits to the Council offices), it was still there and - as one would expect - inhabited by all sorts of vermin.
Having rung the council again and threatened to burn it, I was visited by three (3) 'officials' who came to warn me that I would be arrested if I carried out my threat. Asked if they would then arrange for its disposal they replied - in classic style "Not our job mate" and disappeared. Three weeks later, at night, I took the thing to the local council tip and left it at the front gate ('fly-tipping' of a sort, I suppose). When I finally left the UK a couple of years later, nobody had yet been to collect it.
I can only guess that with myriad new regulations regarding rubbish, things must have got a great deal worse. Perhaps there is at least a partial explanation in there.
And, so far as, "...its not like your talking about people bugging our homes its people informing on fucking scum fly tippers..." given the case of 'The Criminal Sausage Roll Eaters", do you REALLY think that the council's spies were justified in pursuing some poor bloody woman who's 'litter' was instantly removed by pigeons? If it were only fly tippers these bastards were chasing that might (just) be acceptable but, surely, we all know that it is the easiest of easy targets that these scum target - not somebody who might physically fight back.