I felt impelled to comment on two items in The Guardian newspaper today.

George Osborne in China – wide-eyed, innocent and deeply ignorant

Will Hutton says he feels ashamed of the deals done with China. My view:

I felt rage rather than shame. The UK was at the forefront of nuclear power originally. As with all innovation, first attempts are not so successful, and R&D should follow leading to better designs. Indeed we gave it away and now have to buy back. What happened to the special relationship, could we not have better sourced the systems from the US? Why go on about being under EU control when the real economy is being sold off as fast as possible at knock-down prices to be controlled by non-British entities that operate in ‘tax efficient’ ways – that is, little to us? You can bet that the Chinese PLA will soon be copying everything that GCHQ collects without us knowing. I am not anti-Chinese, but I would like our part of the democratic world to cooperate better together to preserve our patch. Instead of building British innovation and skills this government seems intent on making Britain the upcoming sweat-shop for China. How can George Osborne say we’re an aspiration nation, when it is selling off any possibility of being so?

The GCHQ scandal is not about the Guardian. It is an insult to parliament

Jonathan Freedland is commenting on MPs ignoring this issue of unaccountable spying. My view:

The MPs realise that GCHQ also has information on them, For example, I guess GCHQ has a lot more on Liam Fox & Adam Werritty than is generally known. I leave to the readers’ imagination what that could imply, and I only mention Liam Fox because he seems to be the one most wanting to distract from the out-of-control data collection. But I repeat my previous comment on past posts: that the GCHQ data & systems are a gift to criminals and other governments with malicious intent. Don’t think we are so much cleverer than anyone else. This total data collection will lead to a disaster not security.