As I have said, Britain is going downhill. By which I mean I do not expect them to last as a free country.

It obviously took Balls to institute such a program.

Alas, Poor Britain!

Britain is becoming worse than the Soviet Union ever was.
This is why the public should never give up their guns. Gun control does not reduce crime. It does, however, reduce resistance to Big Brother.

I think its being used as some sort of "test country" to see what the public will swollow.

The test is to watch and learn from their current mistakes. Hopefully we'll do better.

To make it simpler and more cost efective for the ministry should they just not mount cameras in every room? Oops! I hope they don't read this.

RE never giving up your guns, I think the appropriate line should be: "If you don't use them you lose them". Once lost, you just bend over and take what they give you.

Just another nail into the coffin that was once England. See what happens when you invite in socialism?

Anyone here remember the good ole days when the U.K. was touted as an example of 'civil socialism'?

What a balls-up.

Bad: "Shadow (i.e. Tory! Yes, Conservative!) Home Sectretary Chris Greyling said 'this is much too little, much too late'"

Too late, I'll probably grant you. TOO LITTLE!?

Weird: "Mr. Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt classes."

"New rights to complain" - um, gosh... well, there's like five things wrong with the thinking behind that sentence, but whatever.

What is WRONG with these people!?!

What is WRONG with these people!?!

Posted by: Black Mamba at August 3, 2009 12:42 PM

They've lived under a monarchy for their entire history. Their understanding of democracy is about as advanced as that of Iranians.

Britain is dead to me.

There's something very creepy about people whose entire approach to life and government is centered around contempt for personal responsibility using the word "responsible" the way Balls (heh) does when what he means by it, of course, is "obedient" and "passive".

It's a mindset some of us always hated in our least-favorite schoolteachers. But we weren't stuck with them for life.

Tipping point????

The communists in Indonesia back in the '60s acted a bit prematurely and got slaughtered in the backlash.

The question is have all the Brits with "git up and go"....already left????

I fail to see what influence the monarchy has in this syndrome.......public cameras to interdict terrorism is light years short of this Orwellian scheme..

Is this the tipping point which makes the soccer hooligans "mad as hell and won't take it anymore"?

Interesting times....our time will come swiftly if this coup succeeds.

First, if the commenters at the Daily Express are so diametrically opposed to this stuff, how do these politicians keep getting into office? They aren't just folks who walk into the Parliament off the street and start making laws. Enough people vote for these nutters to give them the freedom to do this stupid stuff.

Second, wouldn't it be much easier to address the root causes of "problem families" before they become "problem families"? Because I see the root cause of problem families to be problem individuals, and I see problem individuals as being the by-product of a culture, and a government, that has endorsed Nannyism, statism, socialism, moral relativity, irreligion, and sexual revolution over PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY and SELF CONTROL.

If we stopped poisoning kids with school curriculum built more on self-esteem and political correctness, if we stopped indoctrinating youth in thinly-disguised PC universities and colleges, if we stopped telling people that what they do is a-okay so long as they FEEL GOOD about it, and started demanding higher standards for everyone AND started holding people responsible and accountable for their moral and social failings rather than making them into blameless victims, then maybe these problem people wouldn't form tenuous relationships with other problem people, add children to the mix, and become problem families.

Because parents who are personally responsible and have self-control are the parents who don't need the damn government telling them how to feed their children or when to put them to bed. Nor would these people have children before being ready to make the personal, financial, and social sacrifices parenthood requires.

Just sayin'...

dp: Canada's a Constitutional Monarchy too (actually...)

But you don't really blame the Queen, do you? Britain invented parliamentary democracy and was a great nation within living memory.

Typical socialist bassackwards thinking(?)I would add to AmyP's great summary,shouldn't they be doing this to suspected and known terrorists? Or would that offend some minority raghead's poor wittle fweelings?

Black Mamba- I suppose it's a matter of degrees. Canada is once removed from monarchy, so has an extra degree of freedom. The US is a step above, The UK is a step below.

I realize the monarchy is symbolic, but it still has an effect on the minds of British subjects.

Complete agreement with 'Amy P' post @ August 3, 2009 1:06 PM.

dp what a load of utter drivel. The Queen has no say in this whatsoever, in fact Kings and Queens in Britain have effectively been figureheads since the time of William III and the Glorious Revolution 1688. Maybe you should try reading history instead of spouting nonsense.

Britain's problems started shortly after WW2 with the rise of socialism. It has been going down hill ever since. The Labour party was for many years infiltrated by communists and many of todays "leaders" such as that tosser Ed Balls are ex student union marxists. During the early 1980's these clowns would rail against the "evil Thatch" a lot of them got involved in local politics like another tosser "Red" Ken Livingstone. This is where the phrase "loony left" sprang from. They took over London councils like Brent and Haringey and started instituting their own brand of marxism lite.

In 1997 the Labour party put aside all its internal divisions and made themselves electable with the scheming shyster Blair. The British electoral system is weighted in favour of Labour because of the influence of city constituencies and the fact that most of Scotland and Wales vote Labour as a rule. The majority of people in England actually voted for the Conservative party in the last election. However as invariably happens the socialists run out of other peoples money and its all gone to ratshit. I wouldn't get too excited about any pronouncement from comrade Balls he is not long for high office. The real tragedy though is the continuing takeover of Britain from the socialist superstate in Brussels.

>'The comments underneath this Daily Express Story show once again the enormous schism in Britain between average citizens and those who would rule them.'

It's not only Britain but all the free democracies which are experiencing a surge of social engineering intruding on traditional civil freedom. We may be able to change the faces sitting in government's seats but we have no control over the infusion of statist thugs gravitating to unelected, unassailable administrative and judical power structures.

Whether it's the removal of online privacy or blanket spying on private communications, mandatory on-demand ID requirements, state censorship of opinion, or just plain big government creep into personal privacy, the rights of the individual are under sustained systemic attack in western democratic nations.

The West's gargantuan post industrial governing systems have little respect for populist inclusive democracy, citizen-driven policy agendas or the individual and his freedoms. NGO lobbies, exclusive policy cabals and their patronized political parties rule in a vacuum these days.

We live in an era of a limited managed democracy and devolved civil freedom run by kakistocratic statist cronyism. Governments have become inaccessible elitist political class monoliths with power concentrated in a leader and his advisors from crony NGOs. Members of parliament are a redundance whipped into conformity. This centralized political authority then appoints more elitist social engineers and crony technocrats to administrative functions who then reconstruct our once free societies into micro managed, totally surveilled Orwellian nightmares.

It is an interesting fact that the majority of Obama's appointed administrative 'Czars' are former NGO lobbyists. Other G8 governments so similar interest group cronyism.

When a democratic free liberal society collapses the first to go is the rights of the individual. First his privacy then free expression then his democratic will is usurped by interest group political cronyism.

A large majority of the 'sheep' in G8 nations have come awake to it at the 11th hour. The task now is to put this raging Orwellian leviathan back into the cage traditional liberal democratic models had constructed for it.

We notice the bureaucratic tyranny of Britain because its civil freedom is in advanced state of decay. But we are catching up to them fast. Nevertheless, there IS a modicum of hope for the embattled individual as we see the EU central governance being protested and detained, we see the Obama sovietization of the US republic on stall and we see resistance in Canada to the statist assault on free expression and privacy.

Perhaps fabian statism has hit its high water mark in western democracies and is now washing back from the breakwater of widening public dissent.

As more go from complainers to actively resisting this bureaucratic tyranny and demanding their representatives reject it and remove it, big brother (entrenched systemic statism) will use every strategy imaginable to resist popular will. Regaining lost traditional civil freedoms, and governmental respect, for the individual will be a multi-generational battle.

Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gun powder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot

"If the commenters at the Daily Express are so diametrically opposed to this stuff, how do these politicians keep getting into office?" -- Amy

It's a good question. It would seem reasonable to assume that politicians in a democracy are, if not a perfect analog, at least an approximate analog to their electorate, but it's often not the case, precisely because of what you mentioned later in your comment: political correctness, indoctrination, and the tendency to treat people as blameless victims. It's undeniably the case that there's been a propaganda victory for the left in the last twenty or thirty years or so, in that certain expressions are now considered functionally off limits, with the proscription most noticeably exemplified/enforced by the overly noisy progressive class -- op-ed writers in newspapers, cultural doyens/ authors / performers /BBC producers/editors -- who were never voted in, but who now have the upper hand culturally. Politicians are very much subject to the resulting politically-correct proscriptions, and along with other public figures they are functionally prohibited from speaking in the straightforward, unadorned language of their constituents because to do so would be treated as a self evident, and likely career-ending, scandal.

All these regular folks you see commenting online under British newspaper stories are perfectly free to do so, but politicians and other public figures are not. The BNP's surge in popularity the last EU election is instructive in that regard: their environmental platform, and their far-left economic policies -- nationalization of key industries, punitive taxation on the rich, etc. -- were at odds in many cases with the views of those who they drew their support from, and they made gains because they were the only party to talk about the elephant in the room: creeping Islamicism. But -- and this is the point -- look at how the BNP is treated by the BBC, by newspapers, writers, artists, etc: they're absolutely vilified, and treated as illegitimate, in a way that those who voted for them are not. The self-appointed cultural commissars, and the noisier denizens of the left, don't run around criticizing/threatening/vilifying regular working class folks for their views; they save that for whoever dares to stick his/her proverbial head up into public life. There's a different standard of behaviour and *thought* for public figures than for regular folks. Put differently, any would-be politician who spoke like an average person, and who voiced the same -- quotidian when privately held -- views, would find the storm surrounding him to be not worth his while.

Regular civilians are free to say of their neighbours "Freddie (X) and Margaret are horrible, lazy, alcoholic welfare-case layabouts who entirely neglect their children's well being." A politician not only can't refer to such specifically to such cases, obviously -- it would be libelous, and just beyond the pale to single someone out like that -- but he/she ALSO has to be very, very careful in even hinting at making such a general case, because it would be considered poor-bashing. Or consider Islam, and the culturally enforced (by the media, largely) proscription against any *public* figure issuing straight-up, balls-out criticism of Islam: any politician who would do so would be labeled as a racist or worse -- you would be allied with Hitler, more or less, and your life ruined. Individual citizens -- as you can see in almost any comment thread on the matter underneath any newspaper story on the subject -- are perfectly free to say things that public figures could never say unless they want to be, say, banned from other countries, like Wilders, or pelted with eggs, etc. etc.

Notice that in the article the Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling complains that it's too little, too late. Just wow.

I am reminded of that fabulous brief series "The Prisoner".

Ed Balls as one of the bouncy balls blocking escape by sea...

Why deal with this problem after the children are born? The easier solution would be state sanctioned births. If you pass the psyche tests given by well meaning social workers, genetic mapping, previous family and ancestor history, parental income etc. - then and only then will you be allowed to have children. OH! YEAH! Bring it on!

I spoke to my retired English friends yesterday. Their daughter and her husband and child are off to Australia for good in January. They spent a year there a couple of years ago and went back to the UK. Now they can't stand the place. BTW he is a very skilled urologist and she's a doctor too. Britain's loss, Australia's gain.

We hear of the hooliganism in Britain, the public fighting and urination in the streets after the pubs close, the general mayhem and destruction, the failure of the national religion, the kowtowing to other cultures and faiths because they can't or won't reproduce in enough numbers to replenish themselves. The same is happening here in Canadian cities. Vancouver, once one of the cleanest cities in the world looks a cesspool Sunday mornings after the havoc of the weekends. Mark Steyn is right, if you keep inviting the 3rd world to Canada, you soon become a 3rd world country. You want to dispense with the moral order, this is what you get.

Only 20 000 families: what happened to the others?

I'm sure many people know about him anyway, but if you only read one brilliant guy who writes articles about how Britain's screwed, make it Theodore Dalrymple .

Amy P: Great Comment. Your argument could also be applied to the American 08 election and Toronto and surrounding area.

Why deal with this problem after the children are born? The easier solution would be state sanctioned births. If you pass the psyche tests given by well meaning social workers, genetic mapping, previous family and ancestor history, parental income etc. - then and only then will you be allowed to have children. OH! YEAH! Bring it on!

Only problem with that is the people who'd pass the test and do so are the ones liberal, PC politicians DON'T want having lots of children.

It's hard to skew the voting blocs if your constituents aren't allowed to pass along their government-dependent dysfunctions to future generations...

The Death of Britain ..... in real time.

And there is still plenty of these socialists around who are proud of what they do!

Dear amyp: Regarding your first comments on this subject - you are right in saying the lack of personal integrity and responsibility is a major cause of social dysfunction. When I attended college almost 40 years ago the prof had an interesting talking point - would there be less poverty if children were removed at birth and fostered by families with incomes above the poverty level. Same concept only wider net. Cheers.

Anyone remember this fine group of British specimens...the family that was "too fat to work"?

http://tinyurl.com/cgryzx

People like that need to be watched because they've surrendered all responsibility for themselves.

...unless of course we could convince the Luftwaffe to ride from the ashes and finish the job.

When I attended college almost 40 years ago the prof had an interesting talking point - would there be less poverty if children were removed at birth and fostered by families with incomes above the poverty level.

To a degree, it might. But poverty in and of itself does not always equal "problem families" or social dysfunction.

My grandparents were born in 1928 and grew up with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, my mother and her siblings (as well as my father) were raised in households that would probably come out to just around modern-day poverty levels.

Families with money can be just as dysfunctional. Look at Hollywood to see how screwed up some wealthy people - and their children - are.

The problem with both the wealthy and the impoverished in contributing to further social decay and irresponsibility is that they were mired in it growing up.

It's why wealthy celebrities who make more on one movie than all commenters here make combined in 10 years fob off their kids to nannies, and why poverty-stricken families are photographed with cell phones but can't buy groceries for your kids.

"If the commenters at the Daily Express are so diametrically opposed to this stuff, how do these politicians keep getting into office?" -- Amy

Has there ever been an election in a socialist/communist country that wasn't rigged? If these people would stoop to putting cameras in peoples homes to "watch over" them, then election fraud would be a pretty minor thing for them to do (for the greater good of the country, of course)

Has there ever been an election in a socialist/communist country that wasn't rigged?

True. Good point, TJS.

dear amy p: Enjoying the dialogue. I agree that the children who grewup during the Depression should have been the most dysfunctional, law breakers in the history of Canada. Poverty is always cited as a major factor in despair, substance abuse and violence. Instead, they were God centred (knew right from wrong), thrifty, hard working and a charitable generation. Everything in moderation. The same cannot be said for the overprivileged generations that came after them. Regarding my prof - when he threw out that line about removing children, the whole class reacted in horror. But in retrospect it has been a thought provoker many times in my struggles to understand some of the finer points of humanity. I can't believe I took Sociology 101. Should have turned out caring and sharing as a result. Cheers.

First, let me be perfectly clear - I am not a conspiracy theorist. Do not need to be - the techniques used in social engineering are blatant. The best place to hide something is out in the open - don't know who said that but it is true.

People, especially, youth are and have been for many years now, "programmed" not only through the media (movies, cartoons, video games) but through reading, learning and study materials used in the Education system - to be violent, to be promiscuous, and to be rebellious toward parents.

Canada is using NLP to promote multicultuaralism and tolerance: (exert from CANLP site)

"What is the significance of the 2009 Conference? There are two items of major significance with the 2009 Conference. First it is our 20th Annual Conference and is now the longest continuously running NLP organization in the world. This is a solid testament to effectiveness of our commitment to collaboration and tolerance for diversity." http://www.canlp.ca/index.php?option=com_ccboard&view=postlist&forum=1&topic=1

Several techniques are used to accomplish this on a mass scale Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)is one of the main techniques/tools (there are several others - homonyms and double, triple meaning sentances is one). Mentalists, such as Chris Angel and Derren Brown, are masters in using this technique. It can be used very effectively both verbally and/or in print. Suggestions and commands, using NLP techniques, are embedded in nearly all school curriculum materials. If you know what to look for, it is easy to spot. Most often though, these techniques are overt as opposed to covert, and are equally effective in either form.

No need to wander where all the sheeple come from anymore.

What is NLP? From the founders themselves John Grinder http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJzO5x6ko6w&feature=related

And Richard Bandler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vlcsFJyEXQ&feature=related

NLP is dangerous. I suggest everyone familiarize themselves with these techniques.

The following links from You Tube are examples of both NLP and subliminal advertising that is bombarding each of us all day every day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ6vW2Y5A1M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkUOYOc8ygA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGHg09d8y0c

Thanks you LT for clarifying the cause and reminding us of how this came about. It has nothing to do with the monarchy. I note that the Americans are quickly closing on Britain under Obama and they have no connection with a monarchy.

holey jamoley martha.

appropo no, 'tis unfolding in George Orwell's britain. he got that part of the prediction right too.

I can't believe I took Sociology 101.

Thank you for the dialogue, too. I'm glad you get my point.

I took Sociology, too. It was a requirement in my undergrad. I actually wrote a paper about how "Beauty and the Beast" (and all Disney films) were stereotypical and dangerous for women. I also learned about the glories of Margaret Sanger's work and how promiscuity is liberating for women, etc. I got an A+ on the paper, showed it to my mom, and she said it was a load of crap. Thank goodness my parents, and my husband, showed me the path to sanity...

Amy P.

You would propably enjoy these You Tube video's on Disney movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XvvkJcZM-w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkUOYOc8ygA&feature=related

I am not in the least surprised at this development in Britain - we are not far behind.

take responsibility for your OWN behaviour, the effect tends to rub off on the children

Oh, and you will probably not vote liberal, as a side effect!!!

ok. who do you kill first?