by Magnifico
Sat Jan 23rd, 2010 at 04:21:47 AM EST
On Friday, British Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced that the Labour government was going to raise the UK terror threat level evidently just for the hell of it. Johnson said "there was no intelligence to suggest an attack was imminent," The Guardian reported. "The change was not specifically linked to [any] increased threat from international terrorism".
"Johnson said the new level meant people needed to be 'more aware'," BBC News reported. Aware of what?
Perhaps with the general election due to take place on or before 3 June, the government is hoping the British public will be cowering in fear? After all, Johnson said "The number one job of the government is to keep the public safe".
But how, exactly, has the Labour government kept the British people safe?
Well back in 2001 when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, they along with their American friends, started a war in Iraq based on lies and wishful thinking that so far has killed 179 UK troops and at least hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Just the other day, Jack Straw, the Labour government's former foreign secretary and current justice secretary, said he could have stopped Iraq war but didn't out of "loyalty" to Blair.
Then there are the 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain "In London," according to BBC News, "there are more CCTV cameras than any other city in the world with one camera for every eight Londoners." Or, as the Daily Mail characteristically puts it, Big Brother Britain has more CCTV cameras than China. "Britain has one and a half times as many surveillance cameras as communist China... one per every 14 people."
The CCTV cameras did not prevent the bomb attacks of 7 July 2005 in London, despite the movements of the four bombers being "captured on thousands of hours of CCTV film, with seven hours worth proving to be crucial evidence."
Nor did CCTV cameras stop the 2007 car bomb attack on the Glasgow Intentional Airport despite CCTV images showing the bomber buying a large green gas canister and CCTV evidence being used in the trial of the bomber.
As if 4.2 million CCTV cameras were not enough, today The Guardian reports UK police plan to use military-style spy drones. The Home Office has backed a project by the Kent police and five other police forces to develop a national drone project with BAE Systems, the defence and aerospace manufacturer, using 22-metre long airships.
BAE currently makes spy drones that are deployed in Afghanistan. The goal is to have the drones in the by the 2012 London Olympics. But plans also "indicate that police claims that the technology will be used for maritime surveillance fall well short of their intended use - which could span a range of police activity - and that officers have talked about selling the surveillance data to private companies."
The Kent police and BAE said the surveillance drones "would 'greatly extend' the government's surveillance capacity and 'revolutionise policing'... Kent police's assistant chief constable, Allyn Thomas, [noted] that military drones would be useful 'in the policing of major events, whether they be protests or the Olympics'."
So, it's all about controlling the British public. What I cannot understand is with the Labour government doing such a good job keeping Britons safe why would anyone in Britain want to protest anything?
