A Panopticon of Windows

One of England's greatest monarchs ever, was surely Queen Elizabeth the First. Okay, so she abused herself with the granting of state monopolies and various other sordid Tudor government financial scams. But if we had a modern government which ran itself on anywhere near the same GDP margin she did, I for one would be dancing in the streets with David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

My particular favorite of Elizabeth's many memorable quotes is the one below:

"I have no desire to make windows into mens souls"

Unfortunately, this enlightened philosophical view failed to make it this week to, of all places, Austria, where the local democratic Stormtroopers have just jailed David Irving for daring to possess politically incorrect views.

As a man myself who possesses politically incorrect views, I should imagine it is only a matter of time, and a few more regulations, before Benthamite Blair's own Thought Police come knocking on my door. Just in case they need an excuse, let me put forward the charges:

I don't believe in democracy, taxation, the British legal system, environmentalism, multiculturalism, the BBC, market failure, Kirsty Wark, Graham Norton, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, property taxes, death duties, health and safety legislation, town and country planning, the need for the cash-rich British football industry to be given £500 million pound bungs to build football stadiums, the NHS, comprehensives, Boris Johnson, the London Olympics, nuclear weapons, the invasion of Iraq, the forthcoming invasion of Iran, and I'm even starting to have my doubts about whether Neil Armstrong really landed on the Moon; I can entirely believe that NASA cocked this up, like it cocks up everything else, and had him knock out an ersatz landing somewhere in New Mexico to ensure Kennedy's 1970 target was hit, just like all those spurious Soviet Gosplan tractor targets.

That little lot should be enough to get me put away.

And if that isn't enough, I also refuse to believe that the people of the United States really voted in George W. Bush twice, to be their President. If you ever wanted an alternative definition of political incorrectness, that surely must be it.