A big state means a spying state
Fraser Nelson 12:30pm
One of Churchill’s mistakes in the 1945 election campaign was to argue that no socialist system could be established in Britain without a form of political police, a British Gestapo. He should never have used the g-word: it struck the electorate as excessive. But reading the Sunday Times this morning, I could see what the old man was getting at.
The enemy Britain was fighting was not just Germany, but the way of life that National Socialism in Germany represented. Britain had stood apart from the big government sweeping first Russia, then Italy then Germany. The British way of life was different: respect for liberty and freedom. The nightmares about this intrusive state were taken to one extreme by Orwell later, in 1984. Churchill was trying to make this point, but did so too crudely. For all its faults, there is a difference between big government and a Gestapo.
Anyway, further to the Sunday Times story, the Tories have drawn attention to the details Labour-run Rotherham Council released after an FoI request saying just how council tax-related surveillance was used. Its response includes:-
"Surveillance to take place in order to establish if vehicle registered to partner at address on two or more occasions... to substantiate the allegation of living together.
Surveillance to take place to establish if alleged partner leaves the property each morning. To establish if customer’s partner is living at the property.
Drive past surveillance at property each morning and evening to see if vehicle is outside the property. Evidence to substantiate claim that customer may have landlord living with her.
To establish if partner living is property. To establish if customer has undeclared partner living at property.
Surveillance to take place to establish how often the customer’s partner’s vehicle is part at the property over a two week period. To establish if customer’s partner is living at the property.
To establish if partner living at property and working. To establish if partner living at property as husband and wife."
As Eric Pickles says, "Day by day under Labour, the country is sleepwalking into a surveillance state, where spying on citizens has become the norm. Laws which were originally intended to tackle the most serious crimes and safeguard the public are now being deployed routinely and without hesitation."
Churchill was in 1945 trying too early to say that a big state means a spying state.
If they take the Sunday Times in heaven, the Great Man will be able to think to himself "I told you so".
Previous
Fergus Pickering
August 24th, 2008 12:49pm Report this commentI have thought for some time that Socialist Gestapo was a phrase that could do with resurrection. Of course we do not suppose that these people routinely resort to torture, but it is a pardonable exaggeration fir effect like speaking of New Labour as stalinist or, say, Lord Tebbit as to the right of Attila the Hun
JR
August 24th, 2008 1:00pm Report this commentFrazer - agreed this is a depressing situation. However replace the "council tax" with "income support" and address the same issue. If you have a state with taxation and spending the only issue is how much policing of the situation is needed.
Also extend this to public services - contracying out and/or localism is a recipe for waste and fraud of an ever increasing scale if it's not monitored properly (and there should be accountability). The age old rotton boroughs, Liverstone's London as well the latest SATs and data loss screw ups demonstrate that.
However monitoring properly means cost, beaucracy and intrusion. There is no perfect solution sadly.
Trumpeter Lanfried
August 24th, 2008 1:07pm Report this commentSome of the worst excesses of the state, e.g. the cruelties of the old workhouses, the indignities of the pre-war means test, spring from:
(1) the need to help the poor and disadvantaged; and
(2) the need to police such help, given that the poor and disadvantaged will always include a certain number of crooks and spongers.
The remedy is probably to keep means-tested benefits to a minimum.
Liz Brown
August 24th, 2008 1:48pm Report this commentTime to repeal the terror laws which have given rise to this........and time for Councils to do their job, ie clear rubbish and not spy on the people. Yes, couples do "live together/apart" and that is in response to this useless Govt penalising couples who live together and naturally those cuoples will do whatver it takes for them to get maximum benefits
The Huntsman
August 24th, 2008 2:10pm Report this commentGreat minds think alike....I have just posted this " More news from the STASI State" @ http://tinyurl.com/52dyh8.
I have commented before on Churchill's bon mots about Socialism and have come back to them today.
This sort of thing is utterly alien to our way of life and it is fervently to be hoped that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 will be radically restricted by a Conservative Government.
Such things demonstrate, I suggest, the very point that David Davis was trying to make at his bye-election. We must not let the issue get submerged by others for it is one of fundamental importance.
"The Huntsman": voted 8th. best Libertarian blog for Dale's Total Politics!
The Underdoug
August 24th, 2008 2:39pm Report this comment"If they take the Sunday Times in heaven"
Don't worry, they won't.
Augustus
August 24th, 2008 2:57pm Report this commentSurely, the Poll Tax would have been the ideal solution and made all this cheap spying uneccessary? Amenties should be paid for by residents of the community, not by the size of your homestead.
C Powell
August 24th, 2008 3:11pm Report this commentQuite right. But what are the Tories going to do about this? Perhaps you could ask this of Dominic Grieve: what steps is he going to take to roll back the powers of the State which 11 years of Labour have vastly increased? It's not good enough to promise not to implement ID cards; that just stops the State getting any bigger. But those of us who believe in freedom and traditional British liberties - and who, perhaps naively, hope that the Conservatives share those views - would like to know what the Conservatives will do to make the state smaller and stop it spying on its citizens.
Verity
August 24th, 2008 5:58pm Report this commentC Powell - Seconded.
I would also like to put a formal end to the sinister usage by councils and police forces when they refer to taxpayers as "customers".
We are not customers. We are what is technically known as "owners" of these services and I'd like to see a forced end to this illiterate, manipulative and thuggish usage.
John Page
August 24th, 2008 7:07pm Report this commentIsn't this a legitimate way to establish whether single person discount on council tax is being claimed rightly? Such fraud is estimated to be costing at least £200m a year.
Bobski the builder
August 24th, 2008 7:13pm Report this commentI was seriously considering asking the authorities to have a surveillance camera installed in the lower end of my alimentary canal. Then I saw sense and emigrated. No cameras here for at least 100 miles.
I'm not a criminal, I just don't like cameras pointing at me.
Anan
August 24th, 2008 9:40pm Report this commentI do wonder if racists get into heaven?
Nicholas
August 24th, 2008 10:18pm Report this comment"Isn't this a legitimate way to establish whether single person discount on council tax is being claimed rightly? Such fraud is estimated to be costing at least £200m a year."
Well if it is, as a taxpayer I should like to be able to put every quango introduced by New Labour under close surveillance. I suspect my taxes are not being used rightly, that it is fraud and costing far more than £200m a year.
As with most aspects of this mad, bad government, a little perspective was one of the first victims. They are national socialists and are creating a national socialist state.
(Seem to be a few Lefty & Labour trolls lurking in the Coffee House today)
Nicholas
August 24th, 2008 10:20pm Report this commentI do wonder if lefties and socialists get into heaven, bearing in mind their astonishing record of evil in the 20th Century?
Diablo
August 24th, 2008 10:55pm Report this comment"Winston Churchill was a racist." Anan - please discuss.
Frank Pulley
August 25th, 2008 12:21am Report this commentWhat sort of heaven do you envisage Anan? Could you define it? And then could you please define 'racist' for us?
Anan
August 25th, 2008 1:01am Report this commentHe was a racist.
None of your three comments make any sense, so I won't be wasting any energy on them.
Nicholas
August 25th, 2008 8:05am Report this commentAnan. Good socialist reply. You doggedly repeat your mantra but are not prepared to justify it because any dissenters are unworthy of your energy.
You're not a New Labour cabinet minister are you?
Phillip
August 25th, 2008 11:52am Report this commentFraser,
It may be stating the obvious but the root of the problem lies in the complexity of the rules, regulations and benefits created in the last ten years that all generate the 'interest' of the state in our lives. Dismantle and simplify the current benefits system and the 'interest' of the state will disappear, along with the roles of those whose current occupation is to intrude into citizens' lives.
Tim Carpenter LPUK
August 26th, 2008 12:05pm Report this commentAlas the rot set in when those living off taxpayers money could vote. It does not take long to see how net gainers will grow and then dominate policy, forcing a bigger and bigger state with greater and greater powers.
THe lesson of The Chiltern Hundreds has not been learnt (or purposely ignored) when extended to the people at large.
Once you start handing out means tested benefits, you need to means test everyone and make sure everyone keeps records so that at some stage in the future they can be accurately means tested. It does not take a large leap of consciousness to go from benefits to entitlement and then from there to include freedoms as "entitlements". Down that road lies slavery and that is the very road upon which we are now marching.
Back to top