Tuesday 16 November 2010

Nothing to fear, nothing to hide

As you know, if you have followed my blog posts, an ex-friend tried to tell me that 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.'

It's what is called a false dichotomy. Either you have something to hide and therefore you fear discovery or it's OK because you aren't doing anything that anyone could possibly disapprove of and you don't care who knows what.

Of course, there's another possibility and that is that you just want your doings, whatever they are, to be private.

I'm quite a private person. I don't like to have people watch me eat, laugh or frown. Sorry, that's just the way I am. Private, shy and quiet. At least, that's the old me. The old me is being constantly upgraded and superceded.

(That is the real me, not the assumed me for public consumption who will leap upon people who threaten my children's freedom and 'engage' them if necessary. The people, not my children. My youngsters are usually engaged, thanks).

So nothing to fear, nothing to hide (deliberate reversal). We have lots to fear. The ceaseless trampling of freedom in the name of other stuff like safeguarding. The unholy rush to protect civil servants' jobs by 'making work' by vilifying parents and telling parents that they suck and they must do better. They can attend courses which makes everything all right then. The make-work principle reaches up into all areas in politics, I believe, because I don't think politicians really know what they are supposed to do.

Just a thought: Do we even need them? Politicians. Would we miss them if they weren't there?

Wouldn't it be nice to try a year without Whitehall? No cuts, no policy writers, no Hansard.

Would we want it all back?

If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear.

Yeah, right.

3 comments:

  1. We agree with you! We also dont like people watching us eat!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Couldn't agree more, Danae. Even taking it beyond the right to privacy, many people who had nothing to hide (eg even the most moderately liberal thinkers in the McCarthy era) had lots of reasons to fear surveillance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's such a silly statement; if you aren't sure of the other person's prejudices then you cannot be sure of what you have to hide.
    I prefer to hide the fact I'm disabled and Catholic from some people because I have seen so much stupid bigotry about both those areas of my life. I am not ashamed of either- but I'm not going to put my children at risk from others because of them.
    Your ex-friend needs to try thinking before speaking trite cliches.

    ReplyDelete