Compulsory since April 6th this year, the mandating of microchipping for dogs in the UK (and the rest of the EU, come to that) represents, to my mind, a step too far in this cycle of out-of-control Big Government.
There are a lot of pro arguments for dog chipping, parrotted from official propaganda—it’s ‘essential’ to combat the growing stray dogs problem, for instance, even though the numbers for such have dropped massively in the last 30-odd years (when did you last see a stray dog?); to not comply means you’re not a ‘responsible’ dog owner (classically idiotic, black & white, Us vs Them thinking), etc.
It’s all smoke & mirrors. The real purpose of this asinine, fascistic “law” is twofold: firstly, the big corporate interests manufacturing these techno-turds profit handsomely from it (a la many other unnecessary medical applications & drugs); secondly, it forms part of the acclimatising process that readies the public for HUMAN IMPLANTS.
Crazy? Improbable? Tinfoil hat territory? Not really. Since this law came into force, (not so) coincidentally we’ve already seen a literal raft of positive propaganda pieces about the medical benefits of chip implants in human beings. And the stories about this stuff just keep on coming……
Endgadget reports on microchip pacemakers.
Microchipping children is being discussed.
Technology will allows us to become post-humans. And it’s been in the planning stages for quite a long time.
The Neo-Liberal assholes over at Huff-Po are all for it.
All this is well and good as long as it remains ELECTIVE. But it clearly won’t. When implants are tied into electronic forms of identification (something the EU Digital Single Market collective is pushing for), the fact is you won’t be able to go anywhere or purchase anything unless you submit to having one of these wretched implants. Oh, it’ll be your choice. Just not a very fucking desirable choice—unless dropping off the grid entirely is what you wish to do.
So all you people saying it’ll never happen, think again. Since when was the implanting of foreign bodies* into living beings on a non-optional basis something we would deem okay in a so-called democratic, free society? Well, it’s happened with dogs. A decade down the line, it’ll happen with us. By which time the majority will accept it as blindly and uncritically as they’ve accepted it for our poor dogs. Frankly, this reminds me of something.
(*Foreign bodies with a 1 to 10% chance of causing medical problems, by the way—a statistic the Powers That Be describe as ‘negligible’. Not that we can demand any assurance in writing anyway. The government is above the law, after all…)
We are, in the end, lab rats to be experimented upon and socially engineered. Even as our privacy and freedom is stripped away, the distractions and red herrings come thick and fast. All the while, things we once found unacceptable are being normalised for us. Privacy? Reality TV has helped to normalise the invasion of our personal space—right up to the odious, irredeemable Gogglebox normalising the idea of, essentially, watching a television that’s watching us (which, with Smart tech and the “Internet of Things” is more or less becoming a reality).
Our government seriously crossed the line with mandating the chipping of dogs. And few people seem to care.
That’s a pretty scary sign.
If I was paranoid, or at least more than I already am, I’d be deeply suspicious that the implementation of this legislation was followed so swiftly by an incident in which a group of young children were attacked in their community play area by a stray dog. Never mind the irrelevance of microchipping to their injuries, media outlets had free rein to underline the importance of us all being ‘responsible owners’ (ie. meekly bowing to whatever new law our overloads deem worth foisting upon us).
Like yourself, I’m unaware of any major issue with stray dogs in this country (stray cats are quite another matter, but they seem to have been granted a hall pass for the moment). In any case, the simple answer would be to insist all dogs wore a collar with their owners’ contact details. Not only would this remove the need for surgical insertion of a foreign body, updating would be absurdly easy (I wonder how many of this law’s supporters realise they can be fined for failing to notify the national database every time their pet changes residence).
There’s an old saying that bad law is worse than no law at all, and this cackhanded clampdown on a virtually non-existent problem is among the worst I’ve seen in recent years. Since 1991’s criminally ill-considered Dangerous Dogs Act, in fact.