Having spent the weekend digging out anticant’s burrow, and putting up the first few pieces of wallpaper, anticant immodestly e-mailed some of his friends and even relations inviting them to look in for a housewarming. One of them responded: “I don’t see the point of being anonymous”. He probably wouldn’t. ‘Mr Upfront’, as I’ll call him, is a man of high intelligence and solid achievement. He has had a distinguished career and has published solid legal tomes and much else of which he is rightly proud. His own blogsite is a celebration of himself. He is pugnacious and forthright in argument.
Sadly, anticant has concluded that we are no longer living in the cosier world which he and Mr Upfront used to take for granted, and so anonymity is essential if he is to be half-way honest. His reason is, quite simply, fear. This is a lamentable and ugly fact, but it must be clearly stated. We no longer live in a world where free speech does not carry a heavy price. Terrorism is not merely a matter of occasional atrocities – it is much more about the creation of a pervasive climate where debate is muffled by a stifling blanket of possible nasty consequences if one honestly says what one really thinks. It is not only private enterprise terrorism, such as the murders in Holland – hitherto a very liberal and tolerant country - of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. There is also ever-increasing state intolerance of free speech as evidenced by all the ludicrous laws pushed through by this government gagging expressions of opinion which might “offend” some individuals or groups or hurt their “feelings”.
Well, anticant is absolutely outraged by the no longer creeping but now briskly trotting advance of Big Brotherism. The latest tit-bit – have you seen it ? – is that the police propose to use high-powered microphones to eavesdrop from up to 100 yards away on crowds at the London 2012 Olympics, “taking public surveillance to an entirely new level”. You can say that again! This ghoulish suggestion has even got up the nose of David Blunkett, who understandably wishes to keep his chats with his guide dog private. Wouldn’t you?
Whatever happened to privacy and free speech?
6 comments:
Hi frank, reckon they're identical to him. But they are ALL f***wits, aren't they?
Anticant _ Language please. not like you this.
Are you trying to get your badge for the Awkward squad?
Well Zola, I didn't spell it out in full. It's Frank who is lowering the tone here, as always. [Don't suppose I have a cat in hell's chance of getting a badge now.........]
No problem anticant : just give him a bung and your will even get a peerage in the AS asap.
But seriously are to to join the web ring? Hope so.
I thought we HAD joined, but don't know what the technical procedure is, being rather a computer dumbo. I find that site of Frank's rather confusing to navigate around. I once glimpsed quite a long piece of enlightening information, thought "Oh, I must read that properly", but have never managed to find it again.....
I had the same kinds of problem. I am no computer wizard either. In fact i have no training IT at all.
But Anticant you must have the BADGE.
The badge is found, for example, at the bottom of frank Pike site or my own ( hope you visit some time ) or around many others like Toby Lewis who has this "Google-Beta" system.
Check the bottom of these sites.
Then e-mail to frank Fisher. he will give you a kind of code to use and it worked OK for eveyone apart from Yellow Duck.
It could all be fun and quite worthwhile.
Post a Comment