BRING ON THE REVOLUTION !

Yet again, today's news carries a story that makes me despair of the activities of Government. Today's piece of nonsense involves the labelling of food, which hardly seems to be something for Government to be concerned about.

Apparently, our food is currently labeled in a variety of different ways, specifically in relation to the content - the amounts of salt, fat, sugar, calories and so on, are described or set out in different ways, and Government thinks this should all be standardized. They are, therefore, about to embark on a 12 week long consultation involving food manufacturers, supermarkets and, God help us, 'health experts'. Presumably, once the consultation has been completed, the results will be collated and analysed, legislation will be drafted and a Bill will be pushed through Parliament so that all packaging will carry the same basic style of presentation by some as yet indeterminate date in the future. At a time when the country and, indeed, most of the western world, is facing its greatest crisis since WW2, is there really any sense in this ? Is it actually achievable and will it really have the desired effect ?

Changing the packaging of foodstuffs will cost businesses money and the costs will be passed on to already hard-pressed consumers. Will the the packaging of foodstuffs coming into the country from abroad be subject to the same rules and, if so, how will the rules be enforced on overseas manufacturers ? How many people ever read these nutritional notes on the packaging of their food and how many really care what the details are ? To extend the likely scope of the eventual legislation, will the same information be provided for restaurant and 'take-away' meals and, if so, how ?

Government seems hell-bent on saving us from ourselves and on compelling us to do whatever they feel is 'right' and in our 'best interests'. In doing this, they regularly find themselves having to change their 'guidance' as the professional advice changes or the mania of the 'Health NAZI's' rounds on a particular subject, such as smoking or alcohol. The inevitable result of all this Government interference in our eating habits will be the imposition of punitive taxes on foods that are deemed unhealthy, followed by a requirement for bland packaging, and then hiding the 'undesirable' products in the same manner in which cigarettes are now to be treated. Eventually, certain foods will be banned, in our best interests. Alcohol products will, of course, be the first to suffer this treatment, but foods with too much salt, fat or sugar will soon follow.

This may all seem fanciful rubbish but anyone who's ever read '1984' will already know how close we are getting to a world in which our every movement is monitored and controlled by centralised Government authorities. Successive governments have already totally destroyed our economy and education system, and we are well on the way to seeing our health and transport systems turned in to objects of international ridicule. And still they pretend they know what they're doing and try to impose ever more control over the actions of the people.

There will be revolution, the only question is when.

WHO WILL RID US OF THIS OLYMPIC NIGHTMARE ?

Once upon a time, the 'Olympics' were an occasion for amateur sportsmen to gather and compete for simple athletic glory. No more.

The fast approaching 'London Olympics', or 'London 2012' as the media likes to call it, is set to be a vast extravaganza, costing a fortune to stage and at which an array of professional athletes will dominate. These athletes will all be competing under the banner of their country, in many cases not the country of their birth but an adopted country because either a) their original country has too many better athletes or b) their adopted country offered them money to switch allegiance. That this runs counter to the Olympic ideal should be clear to all but, sadly, it is not.

Another lunacy is the existence of an ever-burgeoning 'Paralympics'. This travesty is designed for all those who are simply unable to compete at THE 'Olympics' due to some disability, which would be fine if they all just competed against each other, but they don't. Instead, competitors are divided into lord knows how many categories depending on the precise nature and severity of their disability and, when the 3 athletes in category XX2U7, or whatever, have finished their downhill rhythmic juggling, all 3 get medals - Hooray ! What utter nonsense, and yet another total denial of the Olympian spirit.

Putting aside all this and being forced to accept the modern Olympics as the travesty that they are, it now seems that staging them is as much a military event as a sporting one. In recent weeks we have learnt that there will be warships in the Thames and surface-to-air missiles on nearby rooftops; today it's become known that something called a 'Long Range Acoustic Device', an American crowd control weapon, will be made available in the event that crowds get out of hand. With such a name, this really only could be an American instrument - call it anything but what it actually is, '1984' style. This 'device' will apparently be deployed by the MoD, adding to the already frightening vision of a nation under military control for the period of what are still, laughably, called 'THE GAMES'.

We've previously heard that there will be thousands of armed police on our streets and what Government people love to call 'enhanced security measures' during July and August, just in case any nasty terrorists should try to blow anything up, shoot anyone, or do anything equally horrible. Am I alone in wondering what kind of world we are living in ? All of this is being put into place at what is meant to be a time of peace, National joy and International celebration, and yet our rulers are so terrified that they feel it necessary to deploy the most extreme security measures.

What is going on and why ? More importantly, where will it all end ? No doubt, with a Gold Medal for the winner of the 800 metres, small bore, terrorist shooting event.