Respect yourself

I was amazed to see that someone (not my girlfriend) had commented on my blog. Thanks for that.

Blair is in the papers this morning talking about the new respect zones in town centres. This reminded me of conversation I had with Tom Price, a Labour Counsellor in Hackney. We were talking about the surveillance state and ID cards and he said "You try going onto a Hackney council estate and giving them the civil liberties argument about cameras and ASBOs -they will laugh at you." This stuff does seem to be popular and effective plus the government is (following Cameron's lead) talking about the causes of antisocial behaviour, spending social service time and money on the families who don't do what they're told and threatening to take away their council flats if they do. The carrot and stick principle.

I think the "right to live without fear" is hard to understand if you're not actually living in fear yourself. Like imagining hunger when you're not hungry. The Tories round my way have brought in more cameras and a drinking control zone - not staunch libertarians then. That stuff does become much harder to defend in the face of switchblade wielding chavs who want your laptop. You'd have to be very brave, or very stupid.

If these people were allowed to represent themselves what would they ask for? (Apart from an Argos chain and a Dog called Brutus)

Anyone seen "Brazil" lately?

I'm very worried by the news in The Guardian this morning that John Reid wants to split the Home Office into a Ministry for Justice and a Ministry for National Security. Obviously this does makes sense from their point of view, one of pure efficiency, if, as they do, you see terrorism as a major threat. Even though they're selling it with a "we'll ask the new ministry hard questions about civil liberties" spin I can't see a Ministry for National Security doing anything except enlarging itself exponentially to deal with an inexhaustible "threat". This can only mean more intrusion into the lives of normal people, more hysteria and more of our money spent on watching us. Blair wants to do this before he leaves, lets hope he goes soon.

Don't look at my blog

Just had to advise somone at work against looking at my blog. They were putting one together for Nokia and the Creative Director had told them I was a blogger. Thankfully I had time to check it before I gave them the link, established that it cast me in an unflattering light and then sent them off to Samizdata.

Since that last post I have discovered that "A New Direction" was also used by Clinton - obviously it worked for him.

I e-mailed Karmarama with a sample of some of our work today, so who knows, we might end up making ads for the Tories after all.

I find it so satisfying that Brown has become embroiled in the Big Brother shitstorm. Serves him right for saying he deplored "celebrity politics". Cameron has the right idea on this, which is to associate himself with more credible celebs. Cliff Richard and the Bee Gees do nothing for Blair's popularity - there's something creepy about the Bee Gees and by implication anyone who likes to listen to them ("I'm just going to relax and listen to the Bee Gees. In my cellar."). Equally his association with leathery sperm-miser Cliff Richard does nothing to dispel the idea of Blair as a religious wacko completely out of touch with the world, sustained only by the memory of popularity now long dead.