In May I will have been at the TPA for a year. In that year, I have not seen anything as disgraceful as in today’s Daily Mail. Poole Council used legislation, written and sold to us on the idea it would help track terrorists, to spy on a family they suspected of living outside a school catchment area.
The Regulation of Investigative Powers Act 2000 was introduced on the grounds that it would boost national security. Poole Council, being a creative sort, went well over their remit by using the powers to snoop on families. They monitored this unnamed family for three weeks, with intentions to stop them sending their children to a good school if they lived outside the catchment area.
In an almost comical scene, the Mail describes how council officers wrote reports as if they were in a cheap Spooks rip-off. On your buck, council hatchetmen kept detailed notes, going as far as to record when the lights were on in the family home. To add insult to injury, we don’t even know how long Poole Council will keep the family’s information and what they will use it for.
This time it was Poole Council spying on people to see they send their children to the ‘right’ school. What will they use it on next? But clearly this is a worrying trend. East Hampshire Council announced this week they will be phoning people who leave ‘too much’ rubbish outside to ask them why, what are they throwing away, etc. Basildon Council sent bureaucrats up and down streets to go through people’s rubbish to see if any recyclable goods were being thrown away. Inch by inch these Town Hall bureaucrats are invading our private lives - and we're paying for it year after year in ever-increasing Council Tax.
Someone has to carry the can for this gross invasion of privacy. Please contact Poole’s Councillors to ask them to investigate this obscene breach of privacy. Here are the contact details:
Cllr Peter Adams - [email protected]
Cllr Jeff Allen - [email protected]
Cllr Elaine Atkinson - [email protected]
Cllr Michael Brooke - [email protected]
Cllr David Brown - [email protected]
Cllr Chris Bulteel - [email protected]
Cllr Les Buden - [email protected]
Cllr Judy Butt - [email protected]
Cllr Graham Chandler - [email protected]
Cllr Brian Clements - [email protected]
Cllr Donald Collier - [email protected]
Cllr Graham Curtis - [email protected]
Cllr Carole Deas - [email protected]
Cllr Xena Dion - [email protected]
Cllr Philip Eades - [email protected]
Cllr Carol Evans - [email protected]
Cllr David Gillard - [email protected]
Cllr Roger Gregory - [email protected]
Cllr May Haines - [email protected]
Cllr Joyce Lavender - [email protected]
Cllr Brian Leverett - [email protected]
Cllr Daphne Long - [email protected]
Cllr Peter Maiden - [email protected]
Cllr Daniel Martin - [email protected]
Cllr Graham Mason - [email protected]
Cllr Christopher Matthews - [email protected]
Cllr Charles Meachin - [email protected]
Cllr Guy Montrose - [email protected]
Cllr Sandra Moore - [email protected]
Cllr Ron Parker - [email protected]
Cllr Michael Plummer - [email protected]
Cllr John Rampton - [email protected]
Cllr Neil Sorton - [email protected]
Cllr Ann Stribley - [email protected]
Cllr Tony Trent - [email protected]
Cllr Janet Walton - [email protected]
Cllr Mike White - [email protected]
Cllr Michael Wilkins - [email protected]
Cllr Graham Wilson - [email protected]
Cllr Lindsay Wilson - [email protected]
Cllr Tony Woodcock - [email protected]
Do please contact these councillors and ask them who is responsible for issuing the orders that sent council bureaucrats to spy on people. Ask them how many times since 2000 the RIPA has been used to spy on people. It’s also worthwhile that you ask your council whether they have been spying on you like Poole Council has.
Finally, as a philosophical note, this debacle reminded me of this famous quote from Proudhon:
“"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
- P. J. Proudhon, General Idea of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century
I'm starting to think he had a point...