thought control

Big Brother goes undercover……

March 3, 2009

Late last night, after the House of Commons had virtually emptied, a vote was taken on on a new clause of the Political Parties and Elections Bill right at the end of the Report Stage, sneaked in just before the Bill was rubber stamped by the Commons for the Third Reading. Just one MP queried [...]

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Stock phrases for the new reality show……

February 18, 2009

Once we had game shows to evaluate and reward our knowledge of trivia, and competitive sports to reward our physical ability. Then came the reality show. The conventional wisdom is that audiences flock to reality shows because they enjoy the prurient sight of other people being humiliated. Thus conditioned, we have evolved into a mob [...]

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Golly! Gosh! Just look at you now…..

February 14, 2009

Back when Noah was a lad and I was around 4 foot tall, I learned some valuable lessons. I learnt  how to ‘visualise’ large numbers by counting out 169 at a time of my aunt’s long discarded jet beads into neat piles, and that they don’t have tigers in Africa. My Grand-Mother had set me the task [...]

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The flying Dutchman opens Pandora’s Box…….

February 13, 2009

Lord Pearson of Rannoch invited the Dutch Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders to present his controversial film Fitna to the House of Lords. Highly regarded amongst some factions, Fitna is a film attempting to explain the divisions in society caused by the Koran and Islamists. Wilders alleges that the Koran has ‘proven’ links with Holy Wars and terrorism. Many Moslems and non-Moslems have described Fitna as anti-Islamic and warn that it will incite [...]

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The wolf in sheep’s clothing……

February 11, 2009

I am no fan of the Animal Right’s Movement, Peter Singer has a lot to answer for. His theoretical position has been translated into some dark and dangerous realities.  Neither, though, am I a fan of the Serious Crime Act 2007.  It has long been argued that Part 2 – Encouraging or Assisting Crime  Sections 44 to 67 will be used to [...]

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Puffing Polly proscribed………

February 10, 2009

  ’Nothing is so much to be feared as fear’.   Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862  The anti-smoking brigade have long endorsed ’fear’ as the tool of choice to persuade us to join their cult.   We have had the fear of our own imminent death from lung cancer. We had the fear of damaging our unborn children. We had the fear of damaging the lungs of the [...]

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It’s the economy, stupid!

February 9, 2009

The dead tree press has commissioned some of its lawyers and senior editors to take a good hard look at current practice in the media - before the committee set up by the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport starts poking around. Lawyers always like to know what the ‘prosecution’ might discover before the trial. They commissioned [...]

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