Government Complacency

One major problem with today’s government is complacency. They use fear of crime, fear of terrorism etc, and the false promise of a quiet life to justify their erosion of civil liberties and the democratic process to make their jobs easier. Tony Blair did it when he side stepped international law to go to war with Iraq. Jacqui Smith is doing it with her advancement of Big Brother style surveillance techniques. They have no problem with all this because they feel that it is all for the greater good and they trust themselves. They believe tyranny and oppression to be nightmares from the distant past and not relevant to the present day. It is this complacency which will do the long term damage. They are creating an infrastructure through which the unscrupulous could gain extraordinary power. When inevitably some of their number corrupt, when others succeed and misuse the powers given to their office by their complacent predecessors, then the shit will really hit the fan, and an Orwellian Britain won’t seem all that far fetched any more. In fact it will seem disturbingly familiar.