Tuesday 6 April 2010

At Bloody Last!

Well it's finally happened.

David Geffen... I mean Peter Mandleson... erm... Gordon Brown, has called a General Election.

Normally a Prime Minister, or in this case a Deranged Scots Git, will call an election when they think it will give them the best chance of winning.

However with Gordon Brown being the only person on the planet who still believes we have a gnat's chance in hell of winning, the timing has another purpose.

To force the Digital Economy Bill through Parliament before it get torn to shreds.

For those of you who have been hiding in the closet - yes it is nice and quiet in there - the Digital Economy Bill is a rather despicable piece of legislation written almost entirely by copyright lobbyists such as the BPI working quietly behind the scenes.

Carefully buried within the bill are clauses which give ministers the power to extend copyright by decree, give copyright holders the ability to 'convict on accusation' without being required to provide evidence of infringing activity and much more.

Government ministers have been fighting tooth and nail to block amendments since it's original reading, particularly those which would introduce judicial oversight of enforcement action, and on one occasion simply removed the amended text, replacing it with the original.

Naturally I did my bit by oh so casually asking a certain Labour peer about the amendment he had sponsored. He wasn't a bit pleased to see that it had vanished without trace and no notation to indicate why.

However with the tories now 'on-board' I fully expect this to make it through the 'wash-up' essentially unchanged.


As for the election itself. Gordon Brown wants you to support him. Not the Labour Party. Him personally.

I would suggest there are much quicker, less drawn out and painful methods of destroying everything you've worked for.

Dousing your home in petrol and setting it alight with you still inside it is one of them.