Thursday, February 08, 2007
"... deriving their powers from the consent of the governed ..."
The title quote comes of course from the American Declaration of Independance, and I find it highly appropriate as today The Times reports on the latest in the letter bombs which have been afflicting the afflicters as it were.
Now of course this is criminal behaviour and I cannot condone it, if the culprit is convicted, it will be interesting to see what kind of sentence they get. If it's their first conviction for violence, perhaps a course in addressing offending behaviour will be appropriate? What's the betting that for crimes against the government, the book will be thrown at them? But what's the point? After all we all know that long and tough prison sentences are no deterrent don't we? Still it'll make a nice comparison, crimes against an individual as a private person, slap on the wrist, crimes against the government tough prison sentence even though prison doesn't work at all.
Whilst I cannot condone the behaviour, I find it very difficult to have any sympathy with some of the bodies' targeted. Take Capita for example, they administer the TV tax and send me a monthly harassment as I have no television and refuse to allow: "... an official to visit to confirm the situation...". The people who work for Capita know how the group operates, and how it harasses people that it shouldn't be concerned with, but they choose to get paid for working in that way - they have no excuse of starvation as with our generous benefit system the state won't let them starve. If they happen to get targeted by someone harassed into criminal behaviour well it's just part of the territory, they take the payment so cannot complain of the risk. The fact they happen to be at work cannot morally absolve them of their actions.
To return to the "consent of the governed", we have seen considerable expansion of the government, and a huge increase in administrative crimes. You know the kind of thing, failure to fill out a form £80.00p fine, failure to tell the government something another fine and so on ad infinitum. All this has been done with the active consent of the House of Commons in which are supposed to sit our representatives, but there's no way it's been done with the consent of the people. What party would stand and include in its manifesto a commitment to creating the SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) with a strict liability fine for non-compliance? None of them would. They know when they pass this legislation that they have no mandate or consent of the people for it, but that doesn't stop them.
In the main these oppressive appratchikisms have been tolerated, but and let's be clear, tolerated doesn't mean some kind of implied consent. It's also true that many people have been actively withdrawing from the system as demonstrated by the DVLA computer fiasco. Where these letter bombs are concerned, those involved have undergone a similar process, but perhaps haven't thought about avoiding the forms, and are now demonstrating their intolerance of oppressive government by criminal action.
What's the prognosis? Will the government start to think hang on a minute maybe we're going too far? Or will we see more government interference in turn, feeding intolerance of government? Well this other report from The Times perhaps gives us a clue: "Motorists are to be forced to change the way they drive to help car manufacturers to meet strict new emission targets, the European Union announced yesterday. All new cars will be fitted with devices that tell drivers when to change gear, what speeds to drive at and even when to pump up their tyres."
Oh yes a step in the right direction.
Now of course this is criminal behaviour and I cannot condone it, if the culprit is convicted, it will be interesting to see what kind of sentence they get. If it's their first conviction for violence, perhaps a course in addressing offending behaviour will be appropriate? What's the betting that for crimes against the government, the book will be thrown at them? But what's the point? After all we all know that long and tough prison sentences are no deterrent don't we? Still it'll make a nice comparison, crimes against an individual as a private person, slap on the wrist, crimes against the government tough prison sentence even though prison doesn't work at all.
Whilst I cannot condone the behaviour, I find it very difficult to have any sympathy with some of the bodies' targeted. Take Capita for example, they administer the TV tax and send me a monthly harassment as I have no television and refuse to allow: "... an official to visit to confirm the situation...". The people who work for Capita know how the group operates, and how it harasses people that it shouldn't be concerned with, but they choose to get paid for working in that way - they have no excuse of starvation as with our generous benefit system the state won't let them starve. If they happen to get targeted by someone harassed into criminal behaviour well it's just part of the territory, they take the payment so cannot complain of the risk. The fact they happen to be at work cannot morally absolve them of their actions.
To return to the "consent of the governed", we have seen considerable expansion of the government, and a huge increase in administrative crimes. You know the kind of thing, failure to fill out a form £80.00p fine, failure to tell the government something another fine and so on ad infinitum. All this has been done with the active consent of the House of Commons in which are supposed to sit our representatives, but there's no way it's been done with the consent of the people. What party would stand and include in its manifesto a commitment to creating the SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) with a strict liability fine for non-compliance? None of them would. They know when they pass this legislation that they have no mandate or consent of the people for it, but that doesn't stop them.
In the main these oppressive appratchikisms have been tolerated, but and let's be clear, tolerated doesn't mean some kind of implied consent. It's also true that many people have been actively withdrawing from the system as demonstrated by the DVLA computer fiasco. Where these letter bombs are concerned, those involved have undergone a similar process, but perhaps haven't thought about avoiding the forms, and are now demonstrating their intolerance of oppressive government by criminal action.
What's the prognosis? Will the government start to think hang on a minute maybe we're going too far? Or will we see more government interference in turn, feeding intolerance of government? Well this other report from The Times perhaps gives us a clue: "Motorists are to be forced to change the way they drive to help car manufacturers to meet strict new emission targets, the European Union announced yesterday. All new cars will be fitted with devices that tell drivers when to change gear, what speeds to drive at and even when to pump up their tyres."
Oh yes a step in the right direction.
Tags: freedom, liberty, government, statism
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Labels: freedom, government, liberty, statism
