Dial M for Mandelson

I can’t be the only one think­ing along these lines right now, so… have blog, will rant.

I think Peter Man­del­son has too much power.

First off, he’s unelected, not hav­ing been a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment since 2004. So how come he man­ages to be such a promi­nent fig­ure in the Gov­ern­ment? How is he even still heav­ily favoured by the Labour Party, despite hav­ing resigned (twice) over involve­ment with var­i­ous scan­dals? How come his anti-filesharing agenda, which head­lined the Queen’s Speech, seems to be being calmly accepted as the law-to-be despite the fact that is was trans­par­ently influ­enced by lob­by­ing from the enter­tain­ment indus­try? To say noth­ing of how much of an insane over­re­ac­tion his anti-piracy plans actu­ally are (but that’s for another post, one I’ve prob­a­bly already made some months ago).

And now this? If there’s any truth in that, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a brazen and dan­ger­ous power-grab. We didn’t vote Man­del­son in, we can’t vote Man­del­son out, and now he’s aim­ing for the power to make laws and impose them on ISPs and indi­vid­u­als in the name of pro­tect­ing copyright.

Am I the only one think­ing this isn’t quite the Democ­racy we had in mind?