10 Years On, and Burke still holds true

As TMP has previously observed, the changes of the past ten years covering just about every walk of life have been more significant than in the previous 50, yet only coincidentally occupy the same period as the Labour Government.

TV has gone from being a mass medium monopoly to being the medium of the masses, thanks to uTube and cheap video technology. Tesco has gone from being a run of the mill grocery shop to being the very Borg of retail, assimilating every marketplace, customer and location that its hive ships come across in a systematic annihilation of the opposition.

The telephone is inescapable just about anywhere on the planet's surface, yet it is almost impossible to reach a human voice in "real time".

The term "nonentity" has been redefined to mean "celebrity", and the BBC has decided that discretion in favour of saving its own plump budgets from emasculation by politicians is the better part of brave objectivity. Instead, the national mood is now set by the media empire of an Australian- presently resident in the US, but taxable in Bermuda.

Just about every Orwellian big brother prediction to be found in 1984 has come to pass. Video surveillance is everywhere; databases containing everything from the most intimate financial and genetic information of entirely innocent people to their microscopically detailed purchasing habits, are everywhere; and all questioning of the accountability of government and its assorted instruments of the state is conveniently ignored and excused by constant and frequently spurious allusions to WMD, Bin Laden and his bogeymen. (However, do not lose sight of the fact that Osama's oppos took out a couple of office blocks, while Blair and Bush have taken out a couple of countries).

Throughout history, politicians have never been able to resist the temptation to collect and store information on just about anything and anyone "because they can" and "just in case". They have usually been eagerly attended by "security services" that have egged them on "in the national interest". Moreover, politicians can nearly always contrive some sort of "greater good" argument to salve any vestiges of conscience, and justify the next click of the ratchet of progressively eroded personal freedoms. And there is always one them ready to accusingly question detractors with the implication "so then - what have you got to hide?"

The incursions and impositions of the past ten years are all entirely thanks to the availability of cheap computing and storage, but is there a way to stuff the genie back in the bottle? Not as long as the bottle is controlled by politicians who believe the people are unfit to be given the opportunity to get their hands on the stopper and participate in government, other than when they are systematically conned every four of five years by teams of professional liars and their carefully (and expensively) constructed packs of lies.

Edmund Burke said all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing; so it's a pretty bleak outlook as long as the Majority remains precariously silent.