Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

I'm sorry about this

My apologies for writing another column about the situation in the UK but I find things absolutely fascinating and frightening at the same time.

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll almost certainly be aware that in the UK there was recently a series of demonstrations, some of which turned into riots and that the UK government has been been enacting some rather worrying measures in their attempts to quell the uprising.

At the core of the trouble appears to be the fact that a good percentage of "regular folk" in the UK, are not happy with the levels of illegal migration taking place. Nor are they happy with the fact that they, through their taxes, are now paying as much as 8 million quid a day to house these illegal migrants in conditions that some of the UK's working class can only aspire to equal.

This growing frustration eventually boiled over into protests in the streets and, unfortunately, some of those protests were hijacked by a tiny group of people who saw the opportunity to create mayhem and use violence.

The UK government's response, as I've outlined earlier, is to slap some pretty massive bandaids on the problem and try to simply suppress the symptoms rather than address the cause.

In their efforts to create a "chilling effect" on those who would march in the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the illegal migration situation, UK police have been instructed to arrest anyone who dares to do so -- as was seen in when hundreds of *peaceful* protesters, including pensioners and middle-aged housewives, were put in cuffs near Downing Street a few weeks back.

In the sequel to these arrests, the court system is dishing out hugely disproportionate penalties for people daring to march and shout in the streets.

One 61-year-old man has received a two year prison sentence for -- wait for it -- pointing his finger at police and shouting "who the f**k is allah?".

Now granted, those who engage in civil disturbances should be censured if that disturbance is acute and it's not nice to make fun of another culture's deity -- but two years prison for an offence that was verbal and involved absolutely no physical violence what so ever?

Seriously, how can anyone claim that this two-year sentence for shouting is "justice" when a rapist being convicted of rape for the third time gets only 6 years jail time?

What's more, the UK government is now fastracking a move to commute the sentences of many violent and sexual offenders in its prison system so as to make room for the far more deserving "shouty" offenders who've been given custodial sentences for their involvement in the recent demonstrations.

All this, while the number violent kife attacks, resulting in deaths, continues to rise at an alarming rate. Are police so busy breaking down the doors of those who would dare to exercise their right to free speech that they're not able to deal with the real risks to public safety?

What's more, as I pointed out in a previous column, even the keyboard warriors who've never left their mum's basement are being arrested and imprisoned for daring to type stuff that the UK government says is "not allowed". This includes the 53-year-old carer who got a 15-month sentence for her Facebook post.

The UK government is not backing down either. They've just announced plans to boost the team that spends all day searching out dissenting social media posts for prosecution by 20 percent, bringing their ranks to over 500 in number.

Just imagine, for a moment, that the government had announced that there would be an extra 100 people employed to stem the flow of illegal migrants...

Do you not think that this would be a far more effective way to quell the public outrage that is driving all this highly illegal typing, shouting and finger-pointing?

Would such a move not clearly signal that the government has heard the concerns of the people and is taking moves to address their concerns?

Of course it would -- so why instead, spend that money simply to punish those who are clearly unhappy with the status quo?

So why spend even more, having these shouty, typey people locked up for a year or more at his majesty's pleasure and the taxpayer's cost?

When you step back and look at exactly what the UK government is doing, it's no wonder that so many people are gravely (and perhaps rightly) concerned that this is a government that has siezed the opportunity to use this unrest as an excuse to extend its powers over those people and to annex their previously unchallenged rights to speak freely.

Surely no good can come from this.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

PERMALINK to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font