A Message For the Lib Dem Leadership: Stop trying to shut US up and do your jobs

[miss_s_b]

I just got an email purporting to be from Lynne Featherstone, which said (and I paraphrase slightly)

Calm down dear, it's only a tiny extension of the RIPA powers and it;s not going to be on a centralised database, so honestly, there's nothing to worry about

The centralised database is NOT the problem, "Lynne", the problem is that powers that should never have been enacted in the first place are being extended, and it doesn;' matter how small an extension it is, because they are being extended in my name, and I'm NOT GOING TO FUCKING STAND FOR IT.

I know the mandarins have told you that they only want the headers, so to speak, and not the content, but with packet data (i.e. most of what the internet runs on) it's not possible to extract the headers without having access to the content too. The internet was specifically designed to make it hard to intercept stuff. You can't get arround that with platutudes from whitehall mandarins.

And even if that WAS possible, it still doesn't mean that extending the powers that were enacted under RIPA, which were bad and wrong and illiberal, will ever be anything other than bad and wrong and illiberal.

Stop trying to soothe angry bloggers with emails full of bullshit you've been fed by whitehall mandarins and listen to people who know what they are talking about. Stop panicking that the grass roots are making a fuss when you've gone native, and wonder if we might have a sodding point, you useless, spineless, quisling IDIOTS. Your job is to question this shit, not just wave it through and then try and mansplain (and whatever the gender of the person who typed that email, it was a classic example of mansplainin') to people who are justifiably angry about your conduct.

Comments

[gwenhwyfaer]

I wondered, at first, if this was a clay pigeon that the Tories had sent up to give the Lib Dems something to very visibly shoot down. I'm still wondering whether that's the case... but now I'm wondering whether someone should perhaps have told the coalition's Lib Dem contingent that they weren't required to blindly make excuses for Tory excess this time.