Internet Cops

According to an article in the Telegraph a few days ago, "Cartoon police officers are to appear in "pop-up" warnings on the internet every half hour to warn Chinese users that they must steer clear of unapproved websites."

It seems that the pop-ups will also link to a website where Chinese surfers can report "unhealthy" websites - i.e. websites which fall foul of China's draconian censorship laws and have the nerve to challenge or discuss the political climate in China.

Of course, that's in China, where the powers that be, and intend to keep on being, get really ratty if they feel challenged. But I can't help thinking that such a system might have its uses here in the UK, too.

As I've mentioned before, the General Medical Council is of the view that it can pursue Dr Rita Pal for the outrageous crime of linking a page on her blog to publicly available documents, already published on another website.

Perhaps the GMC might consider pop-up ads along the lines of the Chinese model. Cartoon images of Sir Graeme Catto could be made to pop up every half hour, warning medical bloggers that they must not, under any circumstances, link to anything, anywhere on the web. And as for criticising highly dubious "campaigners" who, without a shred of medical or legal training, feel at liberty to make baseless complaints about hard working medical professionals - that would be absolutely forbidden!

The pop-ups could be linked directly to a new website, co-owned by members of the MAMA board and the GMC, under the name shop-a-doc.com, allowing anyone who even suspected a doctor of exercising their freedom of expression to make an instant complaint. Then, while the GMC set about trashing the doctor's career, munchkins from the MAMA board could post obscene comments to the doctor's blog (see the comments on this post to Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry blog for examples of MAMA-member behaviour - lesbian breast feeling, indeed!).

After all, that's pretty much what goes on now, but without the overt cartoons.

Billy Seggars.