Am I a Nutter? Rhetorical Question…

I ask the question because Daniel Finkleston asked that very same question earlier this week.

“THE POINT IS, I don’t want to seem like a nutter. It’s a very common human emotion, that — not wanting to stand out for thinking something hardly anyone else thinks. Best keep your head down and say nothing. In 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 people voluntarily drank strawberry-coloured poison and died, each one following his neighbour, eager not to refuse the drink and have his neighbour think that he was a nutter. Perhaps the worst part of the tragedy is that the rest of us look back at them and think — what a bunch of nutters.

So I’m nervous about admitting that I’ve been having a paranoid nightmare, one that very few other people seem to share. But I have been, so you may as well know about it. “

He goes on to point out what the UK blogosphere has been full of this past few months, culminating in the parliamentary activity this week:

“So I’m nervous about admitting that I’ve been having a paranoid nightmare, one that very few other people seem to share. But I have been, so you may as well know about it.

In my nightmare, Tony Blair finally decides that he is fed-up with putting Bills before Parliament. He has so much to do and so little time. Don’t you realise how busy he is? He’s had enough of close shaves and of having to cut short trips abroad. He decides to put a Bill to End All Bills before the Commons, one that gives him and his ministers power to introduce and amend any legislation in future without going through all those boring stages in Parliament.

That’s not the end of my feverish fantasy. The new law is proposed and hardly anyone notices. John Redwood complains, of course, and a couple of Liberal Democrats, but by and large it is ignored. The Labour rebels are nowhere to be seen. The business lobby announces that it is about time all those politicians streamlined things, cutting out time-wasting debates. In a half empty Commons chamber, a junior minister puts down any objections with a few partisan wisecracks. Then the Bill to End All Bills is nodded through the Houses of Parliament, taking with it a few hundred years of Parliamentary democracy.

I wake up, sweating. “

And it isn’t a dream. And, thankfully, I realise that I’m not the only one. There have been moments when I wonder if I’ve become some sort of tinfoil-hat conspiracist nutter, but, no, those bills going before parliament are real; and didn’t Blair look rather wild-eyed at the dispatch box during PM’s questions this week? Is it me, or is it he who is teetering on the brink?

The lunatics are taking over have taken over the asylum. I can hear door clanging shut with a terrifying crash and the key turning in the lock. Welcome to HMP UK – where the people are controlled for their own good. I’m not going mad, I can’t be. Why does the UK population at large not see it? What will it take to jolt them out of their slumber? Has our society become so dumbed down that what happens on “reality” TV or the sports field is of more importance to the drones than what is happening to our lives and the ability to exert autonomy? More rhetorical questions, I guess.