Bad weeks for freedom in the UK

It started with the hysteria surrounding the birth of royal baby George of Cambridge. Eight out of ten of the most read articles on The Telegraph were about that b..... baby. I was shocked to learn how deeply ingrained royalism still is in the UK of 2013. People are yearning to be ruled by a family incredibly overprivileged by way of birth and financed by stolen money (taxes). Frightening how people cannot see through the insane absurdity of royalism: The Duke of Cambridge has about as much personal and emotional attachment to Cambridge as the Prince of Wales has to Wales (.i.e. next to none). Prince Harry enjoys machine-gunning desperately poor Afghans from a helicopter in between romps in Las Vegas and other places. Putting 'HM' or 'Royal' in front of any government organisation instantly gives it legitimacy even if its purpose is extortion (HM Revenue & Customs) or providing a rubbish postal service (Royal Mail). And so on ad nauseam.

A few days later, the Prime Minister gave a boost to the surveillance society by announcing plans to block all computers in the UK from accessing LEGAL porn, unless the user actively opts out of the blocking. He added to the insult by trying to smear the "evil" multinational Google in the process by saying that they facilitate access to child porn, even though this claim is patently wrong. Google, like other search engines, already polices its index of websites for illegal content, working with police agencies and the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity it helps pay for. Words fail me when trying to describe how despicable this haughty moralising and down-right fascist prime-ministerial move is.

Not being content with one colossal attack on liberty, the government has announced another plan for trying to micro-manage and meddle in people's lives by announcing what would effectively be a ban on supermarkets displaying chocolate bars and other unhealty sweets close to the check-out counters. Again, the mind boggles. Do they really think that such bans will make Britons slimmer? Or is it just that they want to be seen as a government of action - any action, irrespective of the consequences - in the light of some statistic showing that Britons are getting more obese, and that they see an opportunity to blame yet another "evil" multinational such as Tesco? Whatever the case may be, it is yet another assault on individual liberty by a government which believes it is better at running people's lives than the people themselves. And, even worse, that it is more entitled to do it, too.

All in all, a sad and bad few weeks for liberty in the UK.

Respect for the German president

A relief to finally see a senior Western European politician stand up for Edward Snowden. Unfortunately, the German president has no political power and Germany was one of the countries blocking air space entry of the private jet of the Bolivian president when he returned to Bolivia from a summit in Russia on suspicion that Edward Snowden might have been on board the plane. Also, Germany has refused Snowden's request for asylum.

The Irish boggers defy the EU

Good on the Irish for standing up for private property rights and against the EU. As one independet member of the Irish parliament says: "This is an issue of sovereignty - the right of our people to own and use our own land as we wish,"