I couldn't agree more with what you say about the increasing encroachments of officialdom on individual freedom and privacy. In a funny kind of way the more trivial the example is the more clearly it reveals megalomania on the part of those who should regard themselves as our servants rather than our masters. I've also noticed the BBC increasingly deploying its in-house comedians to sneer at such concerns. For example BBC comics frequently use the phrase "it's political correctness gone mad" in an ironic mocking way as if anyone who thinks political correctness has indeed gone mad is by definition a bigoted right-wing idiot. This is a classic psychological technique for discrediting an idea without engaging with it intellectually - simply associate it with culturally uncool attitudes and those who fear being caricatured as Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells will run a mile from it, without ever even stopping to ask whether the mockery is justified. A few months ago I heard Radio 4 comic Steve Punt slip in a bit of this type of covert propaganda, on behalf of CCTV, during a quiz show he was presenting. Comedians singing the praises of ubiquitous state surveillance! Whatever next? So much for comedy as a vehicle for political and cultural dissent.

As for the negative reactions of "left-wing luminaries" to humanist concerns about mass murder I am not as dispirited as George Monbiot. I have come to expect that from a certain type of left-wing "thinker". In fact it is something that such "thinkers" share with political hacks of every hue. Like George Monbiot, I consider myself to be on the left, but unlike him I have never had a high regard for the politics of people like Noam Chomsky and John Pilger and I am not at all surprised by their reactions to his efforts. As I see it what marks people like that is a complete inability to see the difference between special pleading and making a genuine case for a point of view. Chomsky and especially Pilger think that merely piling up evidence that is consistent with their point of view amounts to proving its correctness. Many of their readers clearly think so too. What they have not understood is that to make a case for something the most important thing you have to do is to consider the strongest possible evidence and arguments against it. If one does not do that then ones argument is essentially worthless - however much the piling up of evidence that is consistent with one's conclusion may delight those who are keen to see attacks on those they oppose. A scientist or engineer who relied on this technique would not keep his or her job for long.

O hidden face of man, whereover The years have woven a viewless veil, If thou wast verily man's lover, What did thy love or blood avail? Thy blood the priests make poison of, And in gold shekels coin thy love.

And we seek yet if God or man Can loosen thee as Lazarus, Bid thee rise up republican And save thyself and all of us; But no disciple's tongue can say When thou shalt take our sins away

Full employment, workers’ rights, strong trade unions, municipal services (including council housing), public ownership and the Welfare State made possible the civilised and civilising world of the trade unions and the co-operatives, of the Workers’ Educational Association and the Miners’ Lodge Libraries, of the pitmen poets and the pitmen painters, of the brass and silver bands, of the male voice choirs, of the people’s papers rather than the redtop rags, of the grammar schools, and of the Secondary Moderns that were so much better than what has replaced them.

The fact that he doesn’t seem remotely ashamed of it suggests that he is actually beginning to turn into the true Heir to Blair, a man who has so successfully faked sincerity that he no longer knows or cares when he is lying.

Socialism = long history of famine, firing squads, secret police, bankruptcy

All the pillars of the Cameron delusion have now collapsed. The Tory Party cannot win a majority by any method. Nobody trusts it, and it stands for nothing except getting posh boys into office

Now we out in Paris, yeah I’m Perriering White girls politicking that’s that Sarah Palin Gettin’ high, Californicating I give her that D, cause that’s where I was born and raised in