An Open Letter to the Home Secretary

A letter I wrote to the Home Secretary upon reading about plans by the Home Office to curtail protests in London duirng the Olympics next year

Dear Ms May

I saw in the paper today that the Home Office is drawing up plans designed to deter long term protests during the London Olympics next summer.

Why does this Government - working through your Office - seem increasingly determined to limit the rights of the British Population to exercise their democratic right to protest? Several (in fact a large majority) of the countries attending the Olympics have also been experienced demonstrations and protests in this last year, some of which have been quelled in quite a violent manner. Surely the United Kingdom should be taking the Olympics as an opportunity to showcase not only our sporting prowess but also are belief in a person's right to speak their mind and voice their opinion. We should not sweep it under the rug.

As someone who voted for your party at the last election, I am growing increasingly concerned about how this new suggestion coupled with comments you made in a recent edition of Question Time about how your department was looking into ways to "deal with" protesters suggests a draconian and Stalinesque attitude towards people's freedoms at the Home Office under your supervision. Surely the Government is here to protect our freedoms, not curtail them?

Please respond promptly and put my fears to rest.

Yours

William Davie

Pizza as a What?

There comes a time I believe when humans can no longer be shocked by world events. We can predict the outcome of most events based on an almost identical event that has gone before. The US wants to make Rick Perry President? Fine. They elected George Bush (twice). We know how this is going to end.

We become the equivilent of those Accident and Emergency Doctors who have seen every example of human stupidity you care to imgine (and some you wouldn't) and thus are no longer phased if a man walks in with a pool cue stuffed up his left nostril, "That looks painful Mr Jones. Now just wait here while I get the jig saw and the pliars."

But inevitably, just after you reach this "Plateu of Disbelief" something will crop up, an idea so monumentally insane that you have to re-draw the boundries of stupidity.

Something like the US Congress classing Pizza as a vegetable.

Now I've checked. The Congress is not run by nine year old children, no do we exisit within the brain of one - the only two situatiosn where that idea makes even the tinest bit of sense - so either Congress have gone crazy, are in hop to the Lobbiests or both.

I suspect both.

Now according to my sources this may be an attempt by Congress to combat what some consider the Obama Administations rather draconian healthy eating laws - though any group without monetary interest who doesn't think healthy eating is a good thing need their heads checking - essentially allowing Children to eat childhood foods. That's something I could probably support.

But there's a limit to the sensible. There's wanting kids to have pizza, then there's classifying the thing as a vegetable. They just tap dances all over the line. Can you imagine the dinner table conversations?

"Did you have your five-a-day Timmy?"

"Yes."

"What did you have?"

"Umm..Peas, carrots, brocoli, sprouts. And a meat feast."

I tell you. This way madness lies.

Remember, Remember.....

Remember Remember, the Fifth of November
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

A little ditty, burned into the brain of every child in England. But what are we remembering?

It is now 406 years since Guy Fawkes - possible the only man to ever enter Parliament with honest intentions - failed in his attempts to blow up Parliament. He was a man determined to bring about Political change. He was also a terrorist, a fact I have never disputed. He believed that the only way to achieve change was through violent action.

But if this year has taught us anything its that violence isn't neccerssarily the answer. We have seen that change can be achieved through peaceful means. We just have to look at Egypt where the only violence was that inflicted upon the protestors. Yes some of the Occupy protests have ended in violence. But this is as usual caused by those that came out determined to cause trouble and is also by and large a result of the supposedly "democratic" governments attempting to remove people exercising their rights to protest by force. Governments essentially silencing protestors.  On Thursday the Home Secretary Theresa May said the Government was looking into ways to "deal with" the protestors both outside St Pauls and in Parliament Square. A phrase that automatically brings to mind black bags and gulags.

The world is changing. People are starting to realise that if their governments are going to be truely democratic, truely representative  they have to answer to all the people, not to a small minority of them. Change is coming. I can feel it in the air. I just don't know what things will be like when we reach the other side.

But maybe, just maybe in 2417 - 406 years from now - people will look back and remember the fifth of November, not for gunpowder, treason and plot. But as the day the world began to change for the better.