Not So Jolly Old England

"In the event of an emergency, peel and fry onions. It will not improve the situation, but it will smell good and those present will know that someone is in charge who knows what's important."

I wrote that on the cover page for my examination on Disaster Scenarios at the Senior Leadership Academy. It so enraged the examiners they graded my paper zero. It was a good paper, I thought.

I believe something is wrong in Great Britain. I stumbled over this news article by Philip Johnson of the Telegraph News. It links to the text of the bill. I googled, and found articles in Express and Star, BBC News and Guardian Unlimited, which are all UK-based news organs.

For those who don't want to read these news articles or the text of the Bill, it seems that the Labour government of Tony Blair, which has already gagged and emasculated the House of Lords are now about to pass this bill which is designed to enable members of Cabinet to "amend, repeal and replace" any legislation without a vote by parliament. This gem is called the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill and it is supposedly drafted to enable cabinet ministers to fast track legislation in aid of businesses. It will apparently make Britain more agile in the business world. It allows members of cabinet to create new criminal offences. It allows the government to amend this bill. That's right, it's self-amending, so once passed, it can be amended to become anything the government wants.

This seems to be the Labour government's Enabling Act. It will certainly make the British government agile and effective, but how will this effect Britons? They are already one of the most spied upon nations, with surveillance cameras everywhere. They have extensive anti-terrorism legislation that confers extraordinary powers of search and seizure. They are about to bring in national identity cards. All these bits and pieces are troubling individually. Taken as a group, they turn Great Britain from one of the world's leaders, a bastion of freedom and light, into another totalitarian regime.

This legislation is being poorly covered by the news people. In Canada, it hasn't raised a ripple, and not much in Britain either. It is the job of the news to educate and inform the populace and they aren't doing that. The legislation title "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill" seems purposely boring. The British should be out in the streets. They should be writing their members of parliament with an avalanche of mail, but they aren't. This legislation has been around, moving slowly through parliament for a year. It should be a common subject of discussion, but it isn't. The Nooz isn't doing it's job.

In other nooz, Brittany Spears is still pregnant and Brigitte Bare-dot would like Canadians to be kinder to small fuzzy animals.

Generally, government shouldn't be too effective. They become dangerous if they're capable. Remember, if the government doesn't fear you, then you will fear the government.

Somebody should be peeling onions and warming up the frying pan.