We need to change the way we govern ourselves!
The real question is… Who gets the most benefit from this technology?
Do we really need to communicate with our contacts instantly? The answer of course is that we did not have mobile technology at all (apart from braces wearing city folk) until the mid 1990’s and we survived very well for thousands of years before this. So the benefit is at best, marginal.
However, because the “authorities” are hell-bent on continuous surveillance and ordinary folk are becoming irritated by the emergence of the police state, we need to find a solution, and just switching these devices off is rather Luddite and won't work anyway, because they will think of something else. When the Romanians had finally had enough of Ceauşescu, it was because he had been working against the interests of the people that he had been ruling and no guns, police or armies can stop a determined people from overthrowing or modifying the behaviour of government.
In a so-called “democratic” country, we have the concession of being able to vote for a new form of government (not so easy in a personality led dictatorship), so we need to create a political party that is prepared to change the way we do things and then vote for them, en-masse.
A good model, though not perfect, is the form of government that is operated in Switzerland. This form of government is maintained by a system called “direct-democracy”. Here, the people control the government, and power rises bottom-up from the lowest common denominator, which is the individual. It must work, because they have been using it peacefully for more than 700 years, and everyone (in their mainly Germanic way) seems to be reasonably happy.
The top-tier of government still acts in an arbitrary manner at times, but the people smack them down with a vote (not of no confidence) but NO, you can’t do this creepy thing (whatever it is), and they go away and think of something else. There are so many benefits to this form of government, that it beats me, why we have not got it in more places, after all, there are far more reasonable folk about than there are "Millipede or Blears" types. The central government is a permanent coalition of conservatives, socialists and greens, and they rarely take a step too far. The people have stopped the government from joining the EU or creating a standing army on many occasions, because they know that they like their boring, peaceful lives, and what is more, the Swiss are the most prosperous people on the earth, and yet, apart from snow, they have no natural resources.
One more thing, this form of government is cheap, most taxes in Switzerland are raised for the benefit of people (they have one of the most comprehensive welfare systems on earth), not for the benefit of government, the central government is actually part time, they only meet four times a year, the rest of the time they do “proper jobs”, and this effect can be seen right down to street (commune) level.
What we need, is a political party that has never operated the normal levers of power that is willing to introduce this form of direct democracy. Step forward, the UK Independence Party, it is already in every manifesto that they have produced, and it is why the powers in this country go to great efforts to smear them with labels, like racist, or far right (fascist!) and try to compare them to BNP at every opportunity. They are nothing of the kind, they are ordinary folk, some traditional liberals and conservatives, and some socialists and hang ‘em and flog ‘em types, and they are all focussed on a couple of things, getting out of the EU, the precursor to freedom, and then changing the way we govern our newly re-acquired nation.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
