Leveson calls for more pointless legislation

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There’s been an awful lot written about the Leveson report, and I’m sure you’ve already read a fair chunk of it, so I don’t intend to say that much. The pointlessness of the whole investigation was summed up for me by this tweet from “The bard:

The Bard (@TwitTwotBard):
“Can anybody name one press wrongdoing identified by Leveson that wasn’t covered by existing laws? A law to say the press must obey the law?”

As far as I’ve been able to determine, there’s not a thing the press are in trouble for that wasn’t already covered by existing laws. So yet again we’re being told we need more legislation and regulation to deal with a failure of enforcement of existing regulation. This is why our statue books keep getting larger and larger to no effect but to enrich lawyers and make it impossible for anyone to know what the law actually says.

As commented previously Mr Cameron is at least not keen on the idea of state regulation of the press, which is a good thing for as other people have observed like freedom of speech, or being pregnant you either have a free press or you don’t. A state appointed “independent” regulator is just state control at arms length, it is still however state control of the press. Judge Leveson’s call to regulate or as he puts it “civilize” the internet are at best laughable but of course may be used to justify state censorship of the Internet – something past evidence suggests most major parties are very keen on and you’re unlikely to see the mainstream press object (particularly once state regulated). To get an idea of where a state regulated press might quickly end up watch this video from a recent “green” conference (via Bishop Hill).

To save you a bit of effort here’s a still from that presentation, listing some of the measures they’d like put in place to regulate not just articles which disagree with “the scientific consensus” but also opinion pieces. They of course will be the ones to decide what is inaccurate or misleading.

Press regulation for green science

If that doesn’t worry you then consider the same thing being put in place for every pressure group and vested interest. This is why the Leveson report shouldn’t be implemented and instead we should be calling for existing legislation to be applied and enforced (it might not work but hey lets try actyually applying existing law before making news ones).

There is of course an e-petiton to Oppose the implementation of the Leveson report which if you like having a free press I’d heartily recommend signing.*

* I know the government will likely ignore it but it’s always good to not give them excuses.

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The endarkenment

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With the dumbing down of education and politics and the rise of the new priests of the green god, the god of offense and the god of “health” – who have all demanded that the scientific method, facts and truth be perverted and sacrificed upon their altars the endarkenment is surely upon us. What is the endarkenment I imagine I hear you cry, why I shall tell you, it’s the undoing of the progress we’ve made since the enlightenment, the slow dimming and putting out of the lights of scientific rigor, debate and truth. What value truth if it offends, what value science if it goes against the consensus! Burn it all these new priests say, if it doesn’t serve our gods then out with it.

I used to wonder from time to time, if this view wasn’t a little pessimistic, if perhaps things weren’t that bad. Sadly today that spark of hope as been extinguished. As you may have noticed I’ve been invovled with a little protest movement against the new puritans who’d destroy our freedoms and in looking around at what the opposition are doing, I came across proof that the fear of the new endarkenment are far too well founded. The bloated new theocracy are only going and selling bloody indulgences!!

CRUK selling indulgences

Yep, you want a break from your self imposed penance and fancy a drink, that’s just fine as long as you pay.
here is your pass to salvation
“Share your intentions with your mates or team.”
Confess your sins to the congregation

“Decide how much a night off the wagon is worth – we recommend the cost of a few rounds*.”
Consider the gravity of your fault

“Deposit the value of the night onto your JustGiving page using the message “Golden Pass”.”
*suggested donation amount of £15
Buy forgiveness

At least we’ll be able to generate cheap power by hooking Martin Luther’s corpse up to a dynamo, but whose door do we nail our 95 theses to?

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Yoink! an excellent comment

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Firstly, welcome to the new server, hopefully the only difference is it’s a little bit faster, I believe I’m now hosted in Holland somewhere.

Now with that aside I’d just like to share a rather excellent comment that I’ve stolen fair and square from Captain Ranty as it’s really rather good.

“Dan said…

Basically what I reckon we’re seeing right now is the last few gasps of a dying system. Fiat money is the poison; combine this with giving politicians the sole responsibility for administering the financial system and you have a recipe for a disaster.

Politicians, you see, are only any good at being politicians (yeah, stating the stark bleeding obvious here, but bear with me). Politicians exist to do great works, make great decisions and to spend money extravagantly to woo voters. Unfortunately 99% of the time nowadays we don’t actually need politicians; the bulk of the time what we actually need are barely sentient bureaucrats. 99% of the administration of the country is dry as dust, boring as infinity.

Politicians aren’t good at boring; indeed boring is the very antithesis to politics. Thus it is that politicians seem to go out of their way to make interesting that which ought to be flat, boring and uneventful. Running a country and a financial system should be boring and utterly uneventful, and really ought to be mostly machine-run. Non-sentient machines don’t get bored, and don’t ask for wages or pensions.

Instead what we’re seeing is a never-ending series of manufactured events and catastrophes, which require more and more money to fix, which politicians have to get from somewhere. They’ve sold much of our gold, flogged off the nation’s infrastructure and try now to tax everything that moves and are hitting the Laffer Curve bigtime now, so the only way politicians can increase the tax-take is to hit the one class of voters who have no voice at all: future ones.

This is the folly of permitting politicians control of a monetary system: they borrow hugely then create more money to induce inflation and inflate away these debts. This then robs everyone who holds fiat money as the interest rates fail to meet inflation. Right now buying gold and silver is the best policy as fiat currency is dying on its feet.”

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