The Big Brother Watch Guerrilla Sticker Action

Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by RK in United Kingdom

This ultra-sound (Dolphin Award worthy) campaign by the new hot property, Big Brother Watch seems like;

1) A hell of a laugh
2) A very worthwhile cause
3) Something the Editors of KeepRightOnline will spend a lot of time doing

Basically, the game is this:

Get some Big Brother Watch stickers, slap them on an overbearing Big Brotheresque logo/image/building/icon/etc – take a picture and send it into our friends at BBW (Ed: That abbreviation still makes me giggle!)

Copied from the BBW Website:

We have thousands of stickers like the one on the right and we want to give them away so that you can name and shame the everyday invaders of your privacy.

Send us your name and address to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk together with the number of stickers you would like us to send and we will post them in an envelope to that address, completely free of charge. Then email us your pictures and the best images will be hosted on the blog and our Facebook group page!

Fuck. Right. Off.

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by RK in United Kingdom

I was just thinking more and more about ID cards this morning, and I couldn’t help but mock up this little graphic and use the above headline to tell the government how I and every freedom loving individual feels about the ID card scheme.

No, it won’t stop terrorism.

No, your details won’t be safe.

Big Brother Watch is getting a lot of coverage this morning with it’s claim that over half the population would need to voluntarily subscribe to the ID card scheme for it to break even on its taxpayer budget.

Conservative Future have a fantastic video regarding their work with NO2ID, the national campaign against ID cards.

Don’t be surprised if you see this editor on the news for climbing atop Parliament and demonstrating against this abhorrent scheme. After all, if it’s okay for environ-fascists to do it without consequence…

The British right; is it trite?

Posted on 26. Oct, 2009 by RK in United Kingdom

We’re on the cusp on what will doubtlessly be the most important General Election since 1997. Change (sigh) is in the air and confidence is high, but this editor, having spent the weekend with various ultra-sound (read: Dolphin Award) YBF and YAFers, wonders if the British right still knows how to get down (a reference to the libertarian half of the political spectrum).

 
What I mean is, amongst all our distaste and disgust for the Labour government and how our sovreignty and civil liberties have been outsourced to government organisations such as the European Parliament or the Equality and Human Rights Commission, we still aren’t revolting. Revolting the way our American chums do, of course, requires a certain sense of national pride. I know we as conservatives feel that, but maybe the problem lies with the fact that as libertarians, many people find it a wonder that you can still support or endorse a monarchy. Or maybe we’re just too damn lazy.

I know we have our campaign days and our rallies from time to time. Kudos to those who stood side by side with our Iranian friends in protest at their recent plight, but what about our own? Have the Labour government been successful in subversively ushering away our individual freedoms, appointing them to executive agencies and quangos? I’d like to think not, but what other reason is there for our shockingly laissez-faire approach to our rights?

Perhaps we exercise our protests on the blogosphere, or more remotely, on a local scale- but when you come across things like this, you can’t help but wonder why as a nation (not from a party political perspective), we haven’t marched en masse to Parliament Square and demanded an end to this constant and increasingly dangerous bureaucratic attack on the individual.

I don’t agree with a lot of what the tea-baggers in the U.S stand for, but I’ll be damned if I’m not impressed by the weight and passion of the movement.

So, is this a rallying cry? One blogger’s call to arms for the entire movement of conservatives and libertarians to fight together against a bully state and against big government? If that’s what you need it to be, then sure. I’m just trying to understand why we aren’t up in arms about this more often like our transatlantic cousins.

Right, I’m off for a cup of tea…

Something Rotten in the State of Britain

Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

Something’s definitely rotten if the (soon-not-to-be) governing party’s candidates think that the government should be tracking all alcohol and tobacco purchases with Drinkers’ Licences.

‘Orwellian’ is an overused term, but this is just that. It is an attempt to track and control everyone’s everyday life, with scant justification except by waving vaguely at the promise of more efficient delivery of government services that ought to be efficiently-delivered as a matter of course. In this case, it’s the NHS. The government already makes £8.5bn a year off alcohol duty (on top of which, VAT, pub licensing fees, fines…). The nanny-statists wail that alcohol costs the NHS £2.7bn, and so MUST be more stringently regulated, including with minimum prices. I’m sure you see the arithmetic fallacy in their argument.

Perhaps it’s all just an indictment of the worship of the NHS, rather than of personal responsibility. Is the world really so cowardly that it submits our entire society to making the irreconcilably inefficient NHS the teeniest bit more efficient? We don’t support military conscription to boost the flagging armed forces (Ed: and rightly so), so why on Earth do we support enslaving our citizenry to save the NHS a fraction of a penny on the pound?

For the second time today, online Labourites are launching an attack on a free society. For the second time, we will say NO! (Ed: hey, that sounds familiar…)

I am concerned. Are you?

Posted on 20. Aug, 2009 by keeprightonline in United Kingdom

Tory Bear seems to be less hung over this morning, and comments on the potentially ideology-shafting considerations David Cameron has made in terms of, “trebling the tax on some drinks in order to curb boozing.”

Shame, shame, shame. TB goes on to highlight Cameron’s more sound comments last year, when he announced that personal responsibility was far better a way to ensure people’s health, to the benefit of us all.

So, in short- if we’re going to be following the NuLabour playbook- I’m very afraid. I have twice found myself disagreeing with David this week. I think he’s playing up the NHS story too heavily, (we have nothing to hide, we already ring-fenced the NHS from cuts) and now this? I’m glad they’re just considerations, mind- and I hope nothing like this comes of it…

Counter-productive. Retrogressive. Abhorrent.

Posted on 10. Aug, 2009 by keeprightonline in United Kingdom

So Oldham Council think it’s a good idea to force publicans to have policed queues during drinks promotions, and to limit each customer’s purchase to 2 drinks at a time. See here, or if you’re not a Daily Mail fan, here.

This grueling imposition on the market will supposedly cut down on rowdy, alcohol fuelled behaviour in the town centre. I feel that Oldham Council have their heads up their arses on this one, and here’s why.

1. Drinks promotions are often loss leaders, or work to very narrow margins for pubs. The fact that they’ll be forced to restrict purchases means that they won’t be selling quantities enough to make up for this. Couple this with the insistence by the council for extra security staff and police, paid for by the pub and you have a recipe for disaster. Do we not have enough pubs closing by the day, that we’re actively now forcing them out of business?

2. This move will simply force people away from the pub, and into the supermarket, where alcohol is available much cheaper and in far larger quantities. Cause a public health crisis? You betcha. Cause a rise in domestic (and more unreported) violence? Indeed. It raises the chances that you simply shift the problem out of the high-street and into the home. I’m sure they’ve thought this one through.

3. The answer to reducing Britain’s ‘binge-drinking’ problem does not lay in policing individuals and restricting their ability to purchase goods on offer. The solution is empowering people to make their own good choices; good choices which have been stifled by this Labour government for over 12 years. For those who see problem with this point, it appears that time has not been a friend to the memory of liberty.

Some people will always drink in excess- you can’t force them to stop excersizing this right. You can encourage, inform and educate, but you must not interfere.

Quote of the Day: Early Edition

Posted on 21. Jul, 2009 by keeprightonline in Quote of the Day

Calling quote of the day at 11.58am? Brave, we know. But this was too good to not post.

Who said the nanny state was out of control?

Posted on 12. Jul, 2009 by keeprightonline in United Kingdom

It’s bureaucracy gone mad, I tells ya:

Said the dog, 'Send back this man. I said I wanted him medium-rare!'

Something about that’s just not right…