- British;
- Has the internet (... axiom);
- Likes anything classified 'entertaining';
- Fun-loving.
If you're those things (except the last, you don't have to be fun-loving: you can be morbid-loving, or tedium-loving, or un-loving, or gun-loving - I honestly don't care) then you should be doing one of the following:
- Cowering shakily in the corner;
- Angrily breaking plates;
- Quaking in your proverbial boots;
- Paddling up a stream made of human faeces, in a boat made of your own tongue - which is still attached to your body; being roughly buttfucked by a suit of armour dressed as Henry VIII;
- Gently fisting a baby.
If you're not one of those things, then you're probably just like everyone else in this piddling little rain-soaked streak-of-piss excuse for a country (unless you are doing the last one, in which case you can go and get your hedonism on at one of our local overflowing prisons: booty-lube recommended, but in no way mandated).
Yes, just like the rest of you, I was woefully uninformed about this Digital Economy Bill which is just about to be shunted into our legislative collective you-there-fuck-you-in-the-head - lead by Prison Warden extraordinaire himself: Peter fuck-the-individual Mandelson. It has been put about as Britain's attempt to keep alongside the age of the booming digital world; but the masquerade of illusion has been swept aside by the winds of reality: irony herself has descended into the world and proclaimed that this bill be 'absolutely fucking stupid, 'cause it's all hating on us'. Yes, the Digital Economy Bill [Protecting YOU, the online consumer] has been wholly roundhoused by anyone and everyone who has ever googled something in their life.
What I propose to do, because I haven't yet managed to make any kind of salient point, is to put a few of the things it proposes to do into plain-speak, and then thoroughly debunk them for the wanton privacy invasion that they all are. So, because this has gotten me so unbelievably irate, please get comfortable - and if you're not British then I apologise, but frankly I don't care because you've got it so much better than we have already (unless you're like... third-world shit or something, do those guys have the internet? Whatever) so I shit on your non-British chest. Now you know how it feels to be a Brit under Labour. Not figuratively. Chest-collective-hierarchical-dumping by people with titles more impressive than their political aspirations and achievements.
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Now would be a good place to point out two things that I am doing which you might be unaware of: I am mimicking two elements of the 'bill' itself. My randomly assorted jumble of thoughts - shapeless and confusing - are meant to be a perfect mirror of the 'bill''s assembly, and the ridiculous hyperbole in the title is meant to be a reaction to the ludicrously convoluted title that the 'bill' itself has. In case you're wondering what that title is then I am afraid you'll have to hunt around for it yourself. I read it this morning somewhere but I was laughing so hard at how inanely stupid it was that I can't recall where it was. Rest assured that it was mind-blowingly retarded. As for the formation and construction of the bill: it cannot be read chronologically or logically, because each section is in fact a referral to a previous piece of legislation. Thus, without a handy guide which slices old legislation down to a sentence - and then contrasts it with the new legislation - you are going to be absolutely buggered if you want to understand this 'law' in any way, shape, or form. It would be wrong of me to suggest that such political manoeuvring was clandestine in any sense, but it's a sad fucking indictment of British legislative wrangling if we have to make law so fucking hard to understand that it can't be followed, let alone enforced.
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Before I start there was one other thing: please forgive me if I've gotten any of this wrong. The thing is so fucking hard to understand, and it's so incredibly long and harrowing, that I may have misinferred certain bits of information. As far as I am aware, this is not the case. Though this knowledge will not, of course, prevent me going wildly over the top and employing hyperbole with a shovel, until you can't see for all the mindless, angsty rhetoric I'm spewing all over your face.
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1. 'Peter Mandelson' made Commander-in-Chief of your thoughts.
I feel it necessary to explain why it is that I've hung him in inverted commas. I'm not like that crazy lady from Sturdy Wings in Role Models, who suggests that Paul Rudd and that chiselled guy aren't actually in the room by misplacing inverted commas around the word here. No, what I'm attempting to suggest - rather amusingly I think you'll agree - is that by not placing his name in inverted commas, I would be investing him with a scrap of humanity. It is a common, inherent right of any citizen of this world to be known as human. Unfortunately, rights are not irrevocable. Just because all peoples of the world deserve recognition as sapient beings does not mean I am doing a gross human-rights injustice: no, I believe that Mandelson is in fact a small primordial animal which has coagulated from the ooze of times long past, and is thus free from the confines of UN sanctions on human rights. I can roundly abuse him as hard as I like. It would also thus be incredibly hard to defame him: lowering absolute zero is a task deemed impossible. And logically so.
This legislation basically grants Lordy-Loo the right to amend any previous legislation without due process through the normal ratifying, legislative bodies of our democratic Parliamentary system. It doesn't mean he can bypass everything and just do whatever the hell he likes, but it does set a dangerous precedent for what can and can't be considered law. Naturally, however, you will have seen me argue loudly against the use of the 'snowball fallacy'. Unfortunately, what we are seeing is that it is not in fact a fallacy. It's a reality. A horrible, crusty, leering, peer-in-through-your-windows, watch-you-where-you-walk reality. One which sneaks up behind you in the night and nicks your purse and pisses on your leg. It's a fucking reality people.
We are being downtrodden by a government which allegedly colluded with the perpetration, orchestration, organisation, and facilitation of torture and gross breaches of civil and human rights. We are being molested by a government which stands idly by whilst denizens of Earth are rounded up, shipped off internationally, and then stripped of their rights, before being flogged and tortured over alleged crimes they may or may not have committed. Now we're being sold new legislation which takes any sense of individualism away from you: you yourself are locked in an internal-gaol, beneath and behind - always behind - the government. They will invade your privacy, and lock you up for it.
2. You thought baseball was just a stupid sport that Americans played? Hahaha. You're a moron. Emigrate to Britain. Don't worry about a passport: I don't think we check those.
'Three strikes: you're outta here'. Yes. If you are believed to have violated copyright three times then your ISP might be forced to revoke your internet usage. It will also be mandated to hand over your details to some preening governmental prick who fucks himself silly over the mention of filesharing. I hope to God you don't ever accidentally click on youtube. Or use Google. Or go outside. Or breathe. Or take a quote from this blog and shove it on your wall: I will sue you, and I will have the force of the government behind me. Between us we are a force to be reckoned with: one - a glamorous twenty-something conversationalist - the other - a throbbing cauldron of idiocy. Beware us.
3. Increased fines for copyright infringement.
I have very little to say about this one because it's so laughably stupid. What the fuck kind of deterrent is that; you under-educated collection of buffoons? You genuinely believe that imposing higher fines on copyright-dodgers is going to prevent anything whatsoever? To steal from Aaron Sorkin - fuck I hope he doesn't mind, ah well (he's not British) - that's like bringing back the death penalty for drug kingpins: they live with the constant fear of death anyway. People who steal shit off the internet live with the knowledge that they might face imprisonment and unlimited fines. Jacking up the fine to 50k will not deter anyone, because the kind of person forced to steal shit anyway - because of ridiculous over-market value mark-up - is not the kind of person who can afford any kind of fine. People need this stuff for free because they can't afford it: let's fine them. It's like fining a transient for begging. Patently idiotic. Who the shit is advising them on this stuff?
4. Mandelson allowed to appoint a 'General' to investigate shit.
I didn't even bother attempting to understand what the dick this one was talking about. By this point the only thing keeping me from hanging myself with my dressing-gown was the knowledge that one day I'd be free of this fucking lunacy. I'm sorry if this doesn't clarify anything, the very fact that I've been forced to use the word 'General' should probably indicate that this section doesn't deserve any attention whatsoever. Albeit probably full of references to people stealing your liberties. Then again you could look anywhere in the 'bill' for that kind of inference and allusion. Honest to god: general. I know people are fucking morons anyway, but that kind of language is ridiculous. It's like this awful thing I was transcribing today which said:
"Members of the public are calling for a public enquiry..."
They're unlikely to be calling for a fucking private one, aren't they!?
5. OFCOM (to be explained) given new oversight functions.
Just to contextualise: OFCOM is the scrutiny body in charge of ensuring schools work well, as well as checking up on a whole host of other things - like social services and LSCBs, etc.. In case you're missing the hilarity here: we're giving a new responsibility to an agency which has so far overseen at least seven horrendous, preventable, predictable atrocities perpetrated by British citizens on British children under the purview of social care. Yes. We're giving them new shit to look for. It's no wonder they're getting a bit fucking confused: they've got twenty-five amalgamated responsibilities which seemingly bear no logical relation to each other. They're trying to juggle all this shit whilst being rogered painfully by Mandelson et al. and they have my sympathies. No wonder our schools are failing.
6. Channel 4 must do more for the world.
Yes. Channel 4. You must do more for the world. We let you on the air you know. Don't worry about Channel 5 blithely getting away with its mandated 'news' content by shoving up some human detritus on the screen, and flashing colours at you for an hour. That's not news, but we don't care: it's only mandated by us. Don't worry about the BBC steadily becoming a partisan organisation which propagates only liberal views. Oh and don't worry about the awesomeness that is overspending by the BEEB. With your money. Fuck that. Don't worry about the death of Six Music: the only decent radio station in the shitting country. Never fear. Channel 4 will soon be obliged to produce some benevolent programming. Wait. They're already meant to do that? So this is effectively pointless reinstatement of previous legislation dressed up as governmental intervention in a medium gone wrong? Oh I see. Well, a channel 4 in sheep's clothing... Or however that phrase goes. I think that's a malapropism.
7. Café owners: please form an orderly queue for a round buttfucking.
Yes. Wi-fi is to be limited so people can't let others use their connections. We wouldn't want that. We wouldn't want the possibility of the people below the poverty line - bereft of this medium for communication - ever getting their hands on some tasty bandwidth. That's ours you know. Yes, yes, doesn't this legislation sit wonderfully next to our promise to get high-speed broadband into almost every home? Aren't we wonderful. Oh I farted. Smell it. Aren't I get? No. You're a fucking moron and you're shitting all over us. What if you own a small little independent business? What if you're fucking biggest pull is the fact that you offer free wi-fi to your customers if they buy a drink? What if that closes your establishment? Frankly we don't give a shit. We're too busy wildly fellating the banking industry for garrotting us all on their own petard. Fucking cunts.
8. Digital Radio is the future.
It's not.
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Don't worry. I have little left to say. A closing thing to add, however: it's a misinformed placement of blame. The government is saying that it is your responsibility to not download -- whereas reason would tell us that it is in fact the providers whose responsibility it is to prevent there being a platform under which a user might transgress the legally accepted norms. That's a fucking dick move with no basis in emotion or rationality.
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I said to a friend: "I genuinely believe I would take my own life if someone told me I had to live in this country for the rest of my (inevitably)short life. It's the final nail in the coffin for this godforsaken shithole."
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Goodbye, Britain, it's been a fucking travesty knowing you. And fuck you, Labour, you belligerent high-minded cretinous band of elitist fucking jackasses. Go fuck yourself you cunts.
Oh, and for a fucking uproarious time jot down this sentence which precedes the entirety of the 'bill'.Carry it around with you for as long as you dare, looking at it furtively whenever you get a chance. I guarantee you won't last a day before you kill yourself for the sake of irony, or die laughing.
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