It is the world’s largest political party and has held absolute power for 60 years through state control and media censorship. So when the Chinese Communist party decided to overhaul its propaganda machine, there was only one place to look: the spin tactics of New Labour.
The building’s address is, some might say sinisterly, called Status Park 4.
But the intrusiveness of the system at the heart of Government’s so-called ‘e-Borders’ scheme has provoked such fury among civil liberties campaigners that some consider it akin to a modern-day Stasi headquarters.
All the information passengers give to travel agents, including home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, passport details and the names of family members, is shared with an unknown number of Government agencies for ‘analysis’ and stored for up to ten years.
Knock, knock: it’s the council bin snoops! Householders are facing “re-education” home visits for producing too much rubbish after figures released under freedom of information laws revealed that councils have quietly microchipped 2m bins.
The chips can be used to record the amount of rubbish families are throwing away. Those recycling too little will be sent warning leaflets, then visited by council officials…..
Your taxes are paying for this; your taxes are paying Labour to monitor every facet of your life. 1984 anyone?
The move aims to close a loophole in plans being drawn up by GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.
The “Big Brother” database would have limited value to police and MI5 if it did not store details of the ownership of more than half the mobile phones in the country.
Ministers plan to use average speed cameras, which monitor speeds over distances of up to six miles, to help enforce the new limit. The cameras have already been installed at 43 locations. The Home Office is expected to approve their wider use later this year.
