The United Kingdom is beginning to resemble a police state!
Ever since this NuLabour government came to power, the United Kingdom has started resembling, more and more, a police state.

Everywhere one goes these days, one is under surveillance, be it in the supermarket, in the Underground, on a railway platform, or on the roads. Nay, especially on the roads! Our motorways are simply plastered with speed cameras. Speed cameras are dotted here, there, and everywhere, just waiting for the motorist to fall foul of the speed restrictions. In fact, speeding fines have become a big revenue-earner for this government.

NuLabour has done its level best to make people ‘wards of the state’. About one in three households are now depend on the welfare state for a large part of their income. This, of course, empowers the politicians, since it takes away people’s independence. The more dependent people are on the state, the more likely they are to elect the current régime back into office. After all, they cannot afford to bite the hand that feeds them!

But this is not all. Tony Blair’s government has systematically taken people’s freedoms away from them. No other government has passed so many new laws in so short a time, and just about all of them banning something or other. Fox-hunting has been banned. Parents’ rights have been taken away. After July 1, nobody will be able to smoke in any public building, be it an office, a restaurant, a public house, a school, a hospital, or wherever. We are told that private homes have been spared. Mercifully! I dare say that they will devise a way of banning smoking in the home, too, given time. And note this: thousands are being trained to police the smoking ban with on-the-spot fines. Even Hitler didn’t try to ban smoking in all public places, even though it is said that he loathed the habit.

We are being treated like recalcitrant schoolchildren! Whilst smoking is not a good habit, indeed, many would argue that it is a dirty habit, it should remain the prerogative of the adult to make up his own mind whether he wishes to smoke or not, despite the health risks involved.

Arguing about second-hand smoke is a red herring. Nothing has been conclusively proven that second-hand smoke, especially to the extent that most people are subjected to it, causes cancer. In any case, even if it does, people should have the freedom to choose whether they smoke or not. This is, after all is said and done, the mark of adulthood. It is what distinguishes adulthood from childhood. In childhood, we have to do what our parents or authority figures tell us; in adulthood, we are supposed to be able to make up our own minds.

But whether one can smoke in a public place or not is hardly the issue. The main issue is this: Too much is being banned. Indeed, NuLabour have raised the practice of passing laws to ban activities into an art form! The EU is doing just about the same. Last week, it was announced that the EU wishes to make it a criminal offence to pick wild flowers! Punishable, of course, by a gaol term!

One can argue about the merits and demerits of fox-hunting, smoking, and picking wild flowers until one is blue in the face. The activities are hardly the point now. It has gone past that. What is the point is this: How many more freedoms are going to be eroded by a government determined to control the people and their every move?

Personally, I preferred the world as it was, for all its shortcomings. There was a place for all people. Smokers and non-smokers alike, fox-hunters and non-foxhunters alike, and all the rest in between.

If all these activities are so abhorrent, then this is hardly a reason for banning them. It might well be a reason for educating people to lead healthier lives, and this is precisely what has been done over the years with regard to smoking. Today, a far smaller percentage of people smoke than before. But this situation has not come about by banning tobacco products; rather, it has come about by a process of information and education.

In today’s Britain, it is difficult to see where it is all going to end. It isn’t much different in the USA, either, especially on the east coast and in California. The health freaks have taken over the place. The interesting thing is this: they target only those who smoke cigarettes and cigars. The druggies are left alone. How logical is that?

We have entered a period of intolerance and disdain for the rights and freedoms of others. The journey to bondage has only just begun. Far worse is surely on its way.

Ronald Reagan and Mrs Thatcher came to power to free up the people. Tony Blair, by contrast, has come to power to put them everywhere in shackles. In Blair’s Britain, the power of the state is everything; the rights of the individual count for nothing. Zilch! Zippo!

Surely it is high time for this nonentity to spend more time with his family, for we, the people, have truly had enough of him. When a country starts meddling in the affairs of the family and prying into the private lives of each and every individual, then that political system is veering away from the democratic and is sailing close to the wind of totalitarianism. Beware of that wolf in sheep’s clothing, that leader, who sweet talks the electorate whilst at the same time enslaves them! Such a man is not to be trusted. You can also bet your bottom dollar that he is passing petty laws because he is inadequate to deal with the main, important issues of the day. Radical Muslims are determined to bring down the system; yet all Blair and his cronies can do is worry about second-hand smoke! Welcome to that new dark age!

Thousands trained to police smoking ban with on-the-spot fines

Where you will be able to smoke?

Put that fag out!

©Mark Alexander