Jaw Dropping Arrogance and Idiocy

The Independent has a story that beggars belief – it is January the 1st and I haven’t been asleep for four months, have I?

“John Prescott has told tax inspectors to use satellites to snoop on householders’ attempts to improve their homes.

Images of new conservatories and garages taken from space will be used to hike up council taxes and other property levies, official guidance obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveals.”

I’m almost tempted to borrow from the luridly expletive-filled invective usually reserved for the Devil’s Kitchen. Indeed, there are plenty of expletives just ripe to describe this obnoxious bully hovering on the tip of my tongue – well, the tips of my typing fingers, anyway. However, I’ll resist. The good DK will manage just fine on his own.

No. Deep breaths. Calm down, take it easy, think serene thoughts, empty my mind and read it again.

Yup, it still says it. John Prescott – he of two jags infamy (and the odd left hook) wants his minions to use satellite technology to spy on us. And why? So that the mandarins of the increasingly fascist Neu Labour can raise taxes… Again.

Last night the Tories accused the Deputy Prime Minister of laying the ground for a “new stealth tax on home improvements”.

Clearly the Tories have an understanding of “stealth” that eludes me. Indeed, so brazen is the plan that it is about as stealthy as a teenager arriving home in the early hours after a night out on the town, having slammed the front door, fallen against the antique grandfather clock sending it crashing across the hallway and subsequently vomited over the bathroom floor.

And, if you had any doubt about the Neu Labour hate war on country folk, well, here is the evidence once more of their nasty envious attitude:

Houses in the country will be particularly targeted. “Aerial photographs are very effective in rural areas where improvements are hard to see from the road,” a handbook for property inspectors says.

It is arguable that the plan is doomed from the start:

The Government is planning to compile a database of every home in Britain, which will include details of how many bedrooms each house has and what kind of roof it has.

Oh, no, here we go again… Some consultant has sold the buffoon the idea of a database. For crying out loud, these people are incapable of managing electronic data despite seeing it as the panacea to cure all ills.

There is something deeply insecure and paranoid about people who want to spy on others in this way and with the benefit of hindsight, I see it in all its awful glory. Since coming to power in 1997, this administration has proposed a National Identity Register to record our intimate details, a national NHS database to record all our medical details, an all encompassing ANPR system along with the Galileo satellite system to log our journeys, a childrens’ database and of course the criminal records database. If this wasn’t bad enough, these people are utterly incompetent when it comes to computer technology, so buy the line fed to them by technical consultants who can see a nice fat contract on the horizon.

If this wasn’t enough, should they fail to get enough information from satellites, the inspectors have the right of entry to our homes – on pain of a criminal record if we refuse.

Underlying it all, though, it is the attitude that bothers me the most – far more than the stupidity of their naive reliance on unproven technology. The assumption that we are all guilty of something and the state must spy on us to keep us in line; the state assumes that we need to be controlled for our own good, for “public safety”. The state grows more powerful and our freedoms are curbed by these people with every pompous, self-grandiosing pronouncement. And we, the innocent citizenry are criminalised.

Again.