"shytalkz said:
How very true. Any external threat, whether it's real or not, is almost guaranteed to get everybody in line and ready to accept whatever you throw at them.
Rationing?
It can't be helped; there's a war on. 
Garden railings gone?
Fair enough; it's for the war you know. 
Conscription?
Well we can't let the Hun win! 
(Yes, that was WW1.)Compulsory ID cards?
Well, OK. I suppose you can't be too careful these days. 
jondecs said:
The bogey of climate change is a different kind of threat but a threat none the less. Yes, I think it's coming, though it certainly won't happen overnight. Is it our fault? We haven't helped the situation but I suspect it was coming anyway. Can we do anything about it? Maybe a little. Is our government milking it for everything it's worth? Definitely!
On a completely different tack, here's another example of manipulation that's almost standard practice these days: charities telling us how much we ought to give them. This one really gets on my t*t ends.
However laudable their motives might be, they're cynically exploiting the fact that most people are too lazy to cancel direct debits - or even to keep track of how many they've got. I was pleased to see that the RSPCA didn't go down this road in their recent TV appeal but told us instead how grateful they were for all the support (and not just financial) that we already gave them. Nice one. 
