Vlad the quiet

Vladimir Putin is being pretty quiet about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. Here's the link to her final dispatch for Novaya Gazeta (Mikhail Gorbachev recently purchased a stake in this popular political opposition newspaper), reprinted in The Independent.

Xenophobia, illegal state takeovers, state-sponsored breakdown of law and order & the war in Chechnya do help to create the impression that Russia is sliding towards fascism, as summarised in the latest issue of the Economist.

But maybe you don't care, as you don't live in Russia - or Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova...

...Russia's miles away! Too far away to have any effect. I mean, it's not like they are an emerging energy superpower, is it?

With a widening gap between house prices and incomes, the spiralling cost of healthcare, a predominantly service-based economy (little of which can be exported), employment costs consistently undercut by several competing economies, pension funds running on empty, an ageing workforce (so we need immigrants to sustain growth), a continuing erosion of civil liberties, and an increasing number of surveilance cameras as well as the proposed ID cards - where do you think the UK is heading?

I need to brush up on my Roman history. If I remember correctly, democracy was an experiment that lasted a few decades, but then went out of fashion for an awfully long time. Might the same happen to democracy now? If you don't fight for it, you forfeit it.

I remember when I joined the Polytechnic of Central London (now Westminster Uni). A student guide said 'We are not a police state, but a policed one'.

Times are changing.

Are you pliable?