The report said "worst-case-scenario language" sometimes used by politicians, pressure groups, businesses and public bodies around issues such as knife-crime, MRSA, bird-flu and terrorism can have a detrimental effect on people's wellbeing.
No surprise there then. It's been the government's (especially Jacqui's) favourite justification for anything really shit, like ID cards, CCTV, DNA Database, rules against photographing the Police, etc - the list goes on. Orwell knew what he was talking about with the importance of fear - the 646 should have read their copies of 1984 just so they knew that we knew what they're up to. I wondered if the Mental Health Foundation (who commissioned the report) were instructed to do so in order to further increase the fear culture so we might be just a bit more accepting of the loss of civil liberties, but was suprised to note they were only funded to the tune of £80,000 from the Department of Health and £117,000 from Scottish public bodies (Scottish Executive Health Department and NHS), so not as "fake" as some of the other charities.
2 comments:
Yes Dave, fear is the best motivator of all.
So, "fear is on the increase".
So is chlamidia but it's doesn't mean we have to superglue condoms to our tackle, in the same way that because we apparently feel more "fearful" does not mean we need vast arrays of CCTV, ID cards and yet another expansion of the public sector.
This argument is flawed, yet is the backbone of Hegels "problem, reaction, solution" paradigm.
Actually, the Institute for faecal studies in Brussels have identified diarrhea is on the increase, so therefore we require a huge database of faecal information to be run by civil servants.
Actually, most of the increase is concentrated around the red half of Westminster, where it is spouted from every orrafice.....
Oddly or not I am not fearful of terrorists or Avian flu, neither am I taken in by the recent glut of Zombie Flesh Eating Frenzy movies.
What worries me is the Governments power hungry madness and the damage it has done to my civil liberties. What worries me more is that the undiscredited Tories are unlikely to do anything about it.
Public Scrutiny "Institute for faecal studies ", nice.
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