Monday, May 27, 2013

Must!

Two articles caught my eye today, both in the Daily Mail along with the usual hysterical headlines and justification for yet another government intrusion into our lives.
Both are calling for the banning of something and demand legislation from the government to 'do something' rather than accept that people ought to run their own lives to suit themselves...
Mail 1.
Hate preachers will be banned from British television, Theresa May signalled last night.
The Home Secretary condemned the BBC and other broadcasters for interviewing ‘disgusting’ extremist cleric Anjem Choudary after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby.
A Mail probe revealed that hundreds of videos encouraging extremism can be found on YouTube using Google searches, and Mrs May threatened internet giants with legislation unless they removed them; 
Anyone remember the Gerry Adams fiasco when instead of his words on the screen, an actor read them out instead?
 Mail 2.
Charities have demanded urgent action to prevent access to illegal and ‘disgusting’ child pornography via Google and other web browsers.
A coalition of organisations is arguing for the introduction of blocking software and on-screen warnings to deny internet users access to the material.
The group includes the NSPCC, Barnado’s, Action for Children, BAAF, Beat Bullying, Children England, Children’s Society, ECPAT UK, Kidscape, and Stop It Now.
Ah yes, the infamous 'for the cheeldren' meme in action.
Now despite the claims of these charities, the vast majority of people who look at porn do not turn into child molesting perverts. Nor do I suspect that Google could prevent people from accessing child porn via other means, it's only one search engine amongst countless others (if the most famous) and I'm pretty sure that the real perverts out there have their own network and don't use any sort of mainstream search engines, well the smart ones anyway.
Yet both articles are calling for the same thing, that people should be banned/prevented from making their own minds up and sorting out their own lives, whilst forgetting that there's already legislation in place to deal with such things anyway, it's just that law enforcement for one reason or another fail to use it. In the case of hate preachers it's fear of accusations of racism, with child porn it's because the real problem is the authorities themselves appear to be up to their necks in it. Just check out John Ward in the Slog if you have any doubts on this.
Don't get me wrong, I believe hate preachers and child molesters should be strung up by the gonads until they drop off pour encourager les autres, but I do not like government or anyone else telling me or preventing me from viewing what I want for my own good, mostly because once they start, they never seem to stop.
The legislation is already in place, the government do not need encouraging to take more of our freedoms away.

1 annotations:

Anonymous said...

Classic case of Government trying to correct their own mistake s with legislation. I guess its a case of, if you have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.