If we can’t stop this, it’s beginning of the end for the net in Britain

That’s what Cory Doctorow suggests when reporting the news that Mandelson is seeking to use a back door to grant himself powers that grant him yet more powers to do just about anything in the interest of protecting Copyright.

It’s terrifying stuff that, if he’s successful, will cripple Britain’s technological progress. I use a programme called, “Drop Box” and it allows me to transfer files from my MacBook to my PC using the Internet. I don’t want such files to be publicly available because they’re my own personal private files. But Mandelson wants these services to disable privacy modes so that Movie Studios can check I’m not stealing from them. Forcing us to make the contents of our online storage public is just one of the powers Mandelson wants to gift himself, unchallenged. In addition to other powers he could have if he gets his way is the ability to demand ISPs turn over their records and of course the infamous threat to ban households from the internet if they’re suspected of copyright infringement.

It’s all in the name of Copyright theft – otherwise known as ‘Mandelson’s extremely rich friends’. It’s crony capitalism, favouritism and economic and social planning all rolled into one horrible, toxic bomb.

Whether or not Mandelson could actually succeed in wiping out Copyright theft on the internet is academic (he can’t, as it happens, no matter what he tries). What he can do is condemn Britain to a sort of internet dark age where technology is held back if it’s a threat to the vested interests Mandelson represents.

He wants access to these powers without debate or scrutiny, and that he wants to be able to wield the powers without debate or scrutiny. He MUST be stopped, This MUST not be allowed. Your Twitter Hashtag to go mental on is #webwar. I will (hopefully) have a piece on CiF tomorrow morning about this too.

The Guardian covers the story from the point of view of what the Tories could do with these same powers. If that’s what it takes to stop it, that’s fine – but in and of itself – what he’s already planning to do with it – are more than bad enough to be utterly terrifying.

Another one of my pet theories about Brown is that whatever he’s most determined to have us believe and think is usually the exact opposite of what he most fears us believing and thinking.

For example, when he first became leader he was obsessed with proving how strong and substantial he was – which, in hindsight, was because he was the exact opposite. He has proven to be weak, lacking real support in his party or friends outside it and shockingly light on any real vision or ideas for his leadership.

He’s like the small child standing in front of the toy he’s broken in an attempt to hide it – and inadvertently drawing attention to it.

Nowadays the message is what a fantastic legacy Labour have left, what a wonderful golden era of achievements and successes it has been.

Draw your own conclusions.

It’s hard to measure how elated I feel.

A rabble rousing propaganda piece – deployed to great effect in mentally numbing the drones at the Labour Conference – has been chosen as Labour’s new Party Political Broadcast. This news has been met with cheers of delight by all sections of the political bubblesphere.

The video is called, “Against the Odds” and recounts the heroic struggle against reality by Labour over the last 100 years – a battle, it seems, they’ve won. Epic won.

See, Labour’s spent the first ten years of their current period in office waiting for Gordon Brown to take over so they could do some ‘real’ Labour stuff. They knew, or at least believed, that by keeping to the moderate, centre ground (or, “keeping the fucking beardy weirdies off the telly”) they could stay in power. While they weren’t getting everything they wanted it was still better than the Tories.

Now, with their doom inevitable, Labour are now beginning to reflect on their time in office with a sort of dewy eyed nostalgia. It’s been a triumph, a golden era – we are, it seems, extremely lucky to have had them.

Do you see the problem, though? During Blair they bemoaned the lack of progress. Now, with Brown, they’re celebrating all the progress they made.

So the decision to use this video is a significant one. It’s not aimed at Liberal Democrat voters, or Conservative voters, or SNP voters, or Plaid voters, or swing voters or undecided voters. They’re trying to prevent Labour voters dragging the Government down in their suicidal malaise. They’re trying to motivate the core, the True Believers.

The language is that of war – the constant repetition of the word, “fight” and “fighters”. They’re fighting us. They’re fighting you. They’re fighting me. This is a war and they’re motivating their troops to do battle against Labour’s enemies. This sort of rhetoric does for Labour what Sarah Palin did for the Republicans -sending everyone else screaming and running in the opposite direction.

It’s nauseating, profoundly partisan stuff. There’s a schmaltzy Sean Bean-a-like narration invoking the old Hovis advert vision of a simple and pleasantly prolitarian Britain filled with ordinary, common working folk that need to… er…  fight against our enemies and the system that denies us what we deserve, Comrades! Swing voters, beware.

What effect will this Party Political Broadcast have? Absolutely none, obviously – no-one watches the bloody things anyway. It apparently reduces certain Labour activists to tears. For hardened, embittered cynics like me, Against All Odds reduces me to tears of laughter – it begs – no, it demands mockery, it demands parody.

What else could I do? Cue several hours of relentless mockery in one of Labour’s little corners of Twitter. Their celebration of Labour’s triumphs became a hotbed of ego deflating irony and sarcasm:

The Labour Party also abolished slavery, put a man on the moon, started the Enlightenment and – AND – killed Hitler.

Mr Kipling’s exceedingly good cake recipes were stolen from Ramsey MacDonald.

Gordon Brown was immaculately concieved by himself. He *is* the Manse!

We had fun with this one. It went on and on, lots of people got involved and came up with their own brilliant little gems.

As long as Labour’s only strategy for winning back the hearts and minds of the British people is boasting and bragging about their achievements, I think it’s safe to say that this sort of irreverent mockery is how the rest of us can stay sane.

UPDATE: Sara Bedford has done a wonderful fisk of this video here. Highly recommended.

The Paul Clarke affair — the guy who handed in a shotgun he’d found to the police and ended up being found guilty of possessing a firearm - continues to provoke strong feelings. People are unclear about whether or not he will have to serve the minimum of 5 years or whether, in fact, it’s possible that this case will count as an ‘exceptional circumstance’ enough for some other outcome.

In other words, until he’s actually been given 5 years, it may be wise to wait and see.

But, really, there’s another aspect of this story that’s been bothering me far more than the case itself. It’s been the reaction to it.

For example, I shared Paul’s tale with my work colleagues and was met with disbelief. These things, I’m told, don’t happen. There must be something dodgy about the guy, and the police must have had a pretty good reason to want to arrest him and charge him.

Oh, to have such faith in our criminal justice system!

I’m coming to the conclusion that when people hear about this sort of injustice – whether it’s terror suspects being locked up without charge or access to legal representation or some fool falls victim to a faceless, arbitrary and inhuman bureaucracy – they react by blaming the victim.

Blaming the victim is psychologically comforting. It means that the horrible thing only happened because of something the victim has done wrong, that such things wouldn’t happen to normal, decent people. The logic becomes circular when, lacking any evidence or information one way or another, people like to believe that when something bad happens to someone, that’s proof that they’re probably not normal or decent.

And this, it seems, is how you boil a frog. Even when the state sticks black bags over people’s heads and carries them away never to be seen again, most people prefer to believe it’ll never happen to them.