Publish and be Damned

First of all, despite the fact that I am not a lawyer, I am a deeply cynical person and arguments such as this do not compel me in the slightest:

In light of these definitions individual bloggers are unlikely to be subject to the new proposed regulatory regime. So for example those individual blogs on WordPress or Blogger would remain unregulated and not subject to the adverse costs awards, or possibility of exemplary damages, that can result from not signing up as members of the proposed regulator. On the other hand websites such run by those such as the Huffington Post or Guido Fawkes could be.

Paul Staines’s ‘Guido Fawkes’ website for instance has a number of contributors, is run as a business and despite being off shore is targeted primarily at an audience in the United Kingdom.

If I enable Google Ads on my blog, I would fall under this regulator, because I've got a couple of guest posts on my blog.

The article goes on to say:

Whilst he is entitled to protest and refuse to join the regulator one has to ask, from a commercial perspective, why such a website would do so?

Well, up to a point, your honour. The events that led up to Leveson were NOT issues of regulation, they were quite clearly acts that were proscribed by law in which the media, police and the political establishment were complicit. The whole Hacked Off bollocks was not a failure in the existing media regulatory system, it was a failure of the criminal justice system to which the media were a party.

That is quite a different matter altogether and one that our glorious politico-legal Establishment has quietly glossed over with some fetching Farrow & Ball Red Herring emulsion.

The whole issue of media regulation (or not) should much more correctly be looking at the consumers of this tripe. The Sun, the Daily Star, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, etc. all feature swathes of salacious, scandalous gossip because that's what people want to read. If people didn't want to read this shit or see tits on Page 3, they shouldn't buy papers that provide that sort of thing.

The fact that this tripe gets bought and read so avidly is because there are cunts who want to read this sort of shit. It's a fucking lie to say that if papers didn't print it people would suddenly start reading Tolstoy, because there is a massive market for vacuous magazines filled to the brim with the banal details of Z-list-sleb lives.

You can regulate yourself to death and not fix the root cause of this shit.

And, of course, the slebs themselves are not at all blameless for this situation. It's insane for Hugh Grant to live the vacuous life of a sleb, trolling from movie star wife to movie star wife, enjoying all the glamour to then get the hump when the same media that fawned over him suddenly get the chance to report that he's been sucked off in a car by a prostitute.

The people who are actually the least to blame in this whole farrago of bullshit are probably the media, who are simply providing consumers with what they want.

The people who buy this shit and the slebs who whore themselves around for media attention both need to take a long, hard look at themselves.

The cunts.

Too much government

I found this article via twitter. An absolutely fascinating read on why government consultations tend to generate so little useful response and why the whole concept of getting people affected by legislation to comment on it is largely pointless and self-defeating.

If I was a cynic, I'd almost say it was designed to be a self-defeating object.

Isn't it ironic that the same people who demand clarity from business in their dealings with the public commit the most egregious crimes against plain speaking themselves?

We don't need more regulation. I don't believe we need ANY regulation, but if we must have regulation it should be reasonable to expect that you do not need to spend 20 years in government to be to decipher the rules that apply to you.

The virtues of representative democracy

I frequently get into debates about democracy with people. In essence, I don't believe in government at all, so I wouldn't believe in democracy anyway.

If you have direct democracy with minimum levels of voting mandated for everything, you still wind up with a potentially significant section of the population having to live by rules by which they don't want to. There is nothing inherently more noble in 50.1% of the population beliefs over the beliefs of the remaining 49.9%. Yet no-one who argues in favour of democracy would disagree that the 50.1% have "won".

But the truth of the matter is that direct democracy is hard work. There are so many bits of law being created, we would never do anything else.

So in order to free us up to get on with our lives, we have "representative democracy", where we appoint people for five years to vote on everything for us. The problem with this is the inevitable issue that our representatives will represent us on some issues but not represent us on others. In addition, the people who voted for other parties are not, in general, being represented at all.

But in the delightful world of modern British politics, it's not even that good. The days of MP's taking their constituency's pulse on keys issues are long gone, if they ever existed.

Nowadays, MP's are referred to as "lobby fodder". By and large, policies that are deemed important by the party leadership are "whipped" and the opinion of the constituency are roundly ignored. The party leadership has decided what will happen, which means that as far as many core, central issues are concerned, the people who live in an affluent area in Oxfordshire have the most incredible levels of influence in the country.

But even that isn't true, because the cachet of having the Prime Minister as your MP means that even if you prove to be a complete fucking mentalist, mong, loser and profligate maniac, you will never get thrown out by the "democratic" process. Look at Gordon Brown.

So the Prime Minister is largely untouchable. And he drives vast swathes of policy that everyone has to live by.

But wait! It gets even better. Because MP's are lazy cunts and because there are so many new laws and regulations being introduced, not every bit of law that we are governed by is actually even debated in Parliament. They have introduced something called Statutory Instruments that aren't even submitted to the trivial scrutiny that our laws are.

Here is an example of just how fucking stupid these can be:

Weaknesses in parliament's law-making procedures have been exposed by a curious case encompassing a Tyneside egg-collector, the hatching of a non-existent offence, and the criminalisation of Britain's museums.

Museums. Made into criminals. At the stroke of an entirely unelected and unaccountable bureaucrat's pen.

Seven years after a statutory instrument updating nature regulations glided virtually unobserved through Westminster, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has this week admitted it "unlawfully" put a new crime on the statute books.

The unintended outcome of the rarely deployed Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 Amendment Regulations, Statutory Instrument (SI) 1487/2004, has been shot down by lawyers' persistent questioning.

Quincy Whitaker, a barrister at Doughty Street chambers, London, and Nigel Barnes, a solicitor at the Sunderland and Newcastle firm Ben Hoare Bell, realised that a parliamentary drafting error had accidentally removed a previous defence and laid in its place, cuckoo-like, a constitutionally impossible crime.

The regulations, meant to harmonise UK bird protection rules with EU laws, made illegal the possession of wild eggs collected from 1954-1981. Police and wildlife agencies used the new regulations to prosecute a number of people.

For seven fucking years, people have been prosecuted, fined, punished, chivvied, bothered by an unlawful law. Who has been punished for this? Who will ever be punished for this?

And the chances are that more than 50% of the people who read this blog would say "Fuck you" to EU law anyway.

The change in the law was never the subject of public consultation, neither was it debated in parliament. The retrospective criminalisation of historic collections has caused museums, scientific research organisations and private collectors to the risk of prosecution.

One of the first people to discover the law had changed was John Dodsworth, 52, who has past wildlife convictions. His home was raided by the police wearing riot gear in 2006 and about 1,000 eggs were seized from there. "Officers used a battering ram to force their way in. The children were very upset to see their parents manhandled by the police."

Riot gear? Battering ram? For EGGS?

At South Tyneside magistrates court three years later Dodsworth, an asbestos removal supervisor, pleaded guilty to one offence of possessing wild birds' eggs, but said: "I should never have been prosecuted. But when I was taken to court I was told it was a strict liability offence and I had to plead guilty. I was given a 100 hours community service order."

So not only do we have an unlawful law, but it's a law that you cannot argue with. You WILL be punished, you CANNOT be found innocent.

He later decided to appeal against both conviction and sentence. The sentence –was quashed in January 2010 and Dodsworth was granted an absolute discharge on the grounds that no one was aware such possession had been an offence at the time. "But they were still prosecuting people for this as recently as September," he said.

An overturn of the disputed section of SI 1487/2004 has proved more difficult.

Whitaker told the high court: "The retrospective criminalisation of possession of eggs that were lawfully held prior to the enactment of the regulations (those collected from 1954-1981) has widespread implications for museums and other public collections, natural history and scientific research collections and private egg collectors throughout Britain.

"[The creation of a new crime] would have been expected to have been widely announced and debated within the relevant communities if it was the intention that the regulations should have such an effect." Her judicial review case was also brought against the Crown Prosecution Service to prevent pursuit of fresh cases.

Evidence was given by Bob McGowan, senior curator of birds at the National Museum of Scotland, who said that the change in the law required him to assess 36,000 clutches of eggs in his collection. "It is difficult to imagine this particular outcome was an intention of the amendment," he said in a statement.

So, a demonstrably bad law was created, it was a strict liability offence, it was blindly and enthusiastically prosecuted right up to the last minute before being repealed. And this was all created in a democracy.

For several years after the law was changed the CPS website continued to advise that possessing historic eggs was legal, Whitaker added. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds believes the change was a legislative error rather than intentional.

Nigel Barnes, who represented Dodsworth in his appeals against sentence and conviction, submitted a series of freedom of information requests. "I questioned whether the statutory instrument was lawful," he said. "What are the CPS going to do now about the people who have been convicted? It may be a handful, it may be more. There are many more who may have committed an offence without realising it."

Whitaker searched through the parliamentary papers and Defra files. "When I got the papers I realised it must have been a drafting error," Whitaker explained. "The department has now conceded it was wrong.

Whitaker said: "It's an example of how much modern-day legislation is passed by civil servants without anybody understanding it.

"Had anyone realised what had happened, it should have been referred to parliament because it creates a criminal offence. As it was, it was unconstitutional.

"The House of Lords had specifically rejected the creation of the offence which the amendment regulations in fact created when the original act (the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981) was debated in parliament.

"To create an offence that was contrary to the express will of parliament by delegated legislation without informing anyone that it has that effect is highly unconstitutional to say the least."

A Defra spokesman confirmed that the department now accepted the change to the law was illegal.

A statement said: "The 2004 consultation documents on the draft statutory instrument did not outline an intention to remove the pre-1981 defence in relation to the possession of wild bird eggs. Defra has accepted that, as the consultation did not mention those particular changes, they were unlawfully made."

The Crown Prosecution Service's website said that something was legal while they were actively prosecuting people for that very act!

How many lives have been affected by this law, how many people needlessly criminalised, just because our duly elected representatives are too fucking lazy to actually debate and discuss every law that we are supposed to live by?

Still think democracy is such a good idea? Did you vote? Because if you did, this kind of shit is your fault.

Stupid Regulation

I knew there was a reason I gave up caring about politics

I did, for a while, genuinely lose interest in politics, because I found something that mattered more than politics. But since I no longer have that happiness, I've started to look back at politics, and once again the sheer hateful stupidity of it all stands before me:

Lord Glasman, the leading policy adviser to the Labour leader, said the country should “draw the line” on immigration and even renegotiate EU rules that allow free movement for migrant workers.

He told The Daily Telegraph that Britain is “not an outpost of the UN” and the needs of the British people must be put first.

The comments are the most drastic yet for any of the major political parties and would effectively end immigration in to the UK.

However, the Labour party was last night quick to distance itself from the suggestions, insisting Lord Glasman’s views were “his own”.

Immigration has been thrust back on to the political agenda by both Labour and the Conservatives.

Now, it's absolutely true that I have, in the past, railed on about immigration, but it's more that it's a symptom of the welfare state that I despise, than that I have an issue with immigration.

And the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of immigrants who come to the UK get jobs (that feckless British cunts don't want to do), pay their taxes and get on with their lives. There are also some genuine refugees and then there are also some weapons-grade motherfuckers who come here to sponge off the state.

The cost of the weapons-grade motherfuckers is easily outweighed by the sheer benefit of people picking up the shitty jobs that are beneath the dignity of the noble Briton, a race clearly designated for only fulfilling, high-paid jobs and nothing menial, OK?

Never mind that they chip in disgracefully high proportions of their income into the saintly NHS or gold-plated pensions for fucking useless civil servants.

Immigrants are a nett benefit to British society, end of. It doesn't matter whether they're Somali cockwashers, Polish builders or Australian IT twats. They come here, they either pick up shit jobs or bring skills we don't have. They endure taxation without representation. They are A Good Thing(TM)

Yet here we have an experienced and educated man, elevated to a peerage, advisor to a man who would rule us, representing the "party of the common man", who wishes to encourage this fucking bollocks because it resonates with people who have been encouraged to believe this fucking bollocks.

God forbid anyone should have an intelligent debate on the real fucking reason immigration is bad: it's bad because it puts more strain on housing and public services.

Why does it put a strain on housing? Because it's in the government's interest to keep house prices disproportionally high which they do my invoking the sacred "green belt" mythology. House prices are kept artificially inflated by regulation and the encouragement of NIMBYism.

Immigration is really not the factor it's made out to be here.

And immigrants do not place any more stress on "public services" than the rest of us, if they are allowed to work. Once they can work, they can pay taxes. Fucking bullshit laws that make it difficult for immigrants to work mean that the fucking government is forcing them to be a drain on public services.

And apart from that, the generosity of the welfare state is hardly the fucking fault of migrants who come here specifically not to suck at the state's teat but come here to work and earn an honest wage, nor is it even the fault of migrants who come here specifically to suck at the state's teat. The state designs, maintains and operates the welfare system. Is it really the fault of some uneducated, filthy foreigner from Outer Krapulastan or The Republic of Bongobongoland if they can look at it and think "I can have these guys for a decent lifestyle"?

Nah, fuck it,immigration is just another fucking bogeyman that the political classes use to frighten us all into voting for whoever is going to "take the strongest line" without being "racist".

So fuck you, Lord Cockmong, and a hearty fuck you to all the imbeciles who have leapt on to his bandwagon. I hope you all fucking die of face cancer.

Update: Snap!

Get fucked!

I have never been a huge fan of the ASBO, although I've not, to be honest, been very aware of how the mechanics of it work. It seemed to be given to juvenile delinquents who seem to wear it as a badge of honour, rather than regarding it as a deterrent. But via Anna Raccoon and Leg-Iron come two contradictory tales of how councils regard the world's oldest profession and the further demerits of ASBOs. Firstly:

OXFORD’S “most prolific” prostitute has been banned from selling sex on the streets and in her home for five years.

It is not illegal to sell sex – why has this woman been ‘banned’ from carrying out a legal activity? It is not illegal to accept money for a sex act carried out in your home – why has this woman been banned from carrying out a legal activity in her own home?

Drug addict Nicola Harris worked seven days a week along Cowley Road, East Oxford, and Oxford Road, Cowley, as well as seeing clients at her home in Costar Close in Littlemore.

‘Seven days a week’ – a hard working girl then, who has avoided the temptations of raising money to feed her drug habit illegally. Like stealing or shop-lifting. Now she has been banned from raising the money legally, guess what will happen next?

The 33-year-old, who had been subject to an interim Anti Social Behaviour Order since July 9, failed to turn up at Oxford Magistrates’ Court yesterday to hear the city council’s successful application for a full order.

She was probably at work.

Anna goes on to point out that she was arrested for soliciting, which is illegal (why?) whereas prostitution itself is not. However, rather than "do" her for soliciting, instead we go down the ASBO route.

The ASBO is, I discovered, a mechanism by which perfectly legal behaviour can be criminalised. If one or more of the curtain-twitchers in your neighbourhood disapprove of one of your perfectly legal activity, they can apply for an ASBO, and if they get it and you continue with your perfectly activity, you can get done for breaking the conditions of your ASBO. You can then go to jail for doing something that is entirely and explicitly legal. Just because your neighbours don't like it.

Or, even worse, the police don't like it.

Or the council don't like it.

I don't want to be accused of giving people ideas, but how long do you think it will be before the police get ASBOs against photographers? How long do you think it will be before certain conditions get pre-approved ASBOs?

Anyway, back to old Leggy and getting fucked. So it turns out that while someone who is working, rather than stealing, to fund her drug habit and being hounded by the council and the police because of it:

Certain councils are paying for prostitutes for the disabled. It's all about 'outcomes' they say, and they kept a straight face while saying it (which is more than I did while reading it. "Oh, what a marvellous outcome," he ejaculated). The 'outcome' is apparently to turn a sad and dejected disabled bloke into a happy disabled bloke, and the method by which this is achieved is of no consequence. The end justifies the means.

Not surprising, then, that they chose a method that turns any straight bloke of any body shape or mental capacity into a happier version of himself. There is no mention of whether gigolos are available for disabled women or whether the disabled gay is similarly catered for, or whether kosher or halal hookers are on their lists. I do hope they are not applying this lunacy in a discriminatory fashion. That would be wrong.

Why do they think this is in any way right?

Liz Sayce, chief executive of disability network Radar, said the desire for sexual relations was a matter of human rights, meaning cases involving payments should be carefully examined on a "case by case" basis.

So if you're disabled you have a human right to an occasional game of hide the sausage. If you're in full health with all body parts present and accounted for, you don't. If you're not disabled and you procure a business arrangement with a lady of the night, you will be frowned on by a wrinkled man in a wig who will bash a hammer on a table and pronounce 'gross diversion' as the label for the dog. Then he'll take your money so you can't do it again.

If you hack off a limb, you can get a quick poke courtesy of the council tax payer and the wrinkled man in the wig will smile fondly and call you 'pet'.

It makes me wonder if this particular wench of the evening might have turned down a council commission.

Aaahhh ... perhaps it's all become clear after all.

It's becoming apparent to me that the ASBO is going to be the new weapon of choice in the hands of the new puritan pecksniffs and prodnoses. Smoking outside your front door? Get an ASBO. Too strict with your kids? Get an ASBO. Not strict enough with your kids? Get an ASBO. Eating too many burgers? Get an ASBO. Prone to getting drunk? Get an ASBO. Taking too many awkward videos of the police beating people? Get an ASBO. Swear in public? Get an ASBO. Blog? Get an ASBO.

Hell on Earth will not be lakes of brimstone fire, it will be a dull, drab beige existence "normalised" to some puritanical definition of morality.

Fuck me sideways with a rusty spoon

In which, really, I praise Barack Obama:

Yesterday, Barack Obama signed into law a provision blocking his country's thinkers and writers from foreign libel laws. The target is "libel tourism," by which complainants skip around the First Amendment by taking their cases to less conscientious countries. And by "less conscientious countries," I mean, erm, here.

Three cheers for Barack Obama! Unqualified praise for protecting your citizens from our awful, pernicious libel laws!

The Cunt Persecution Disservice

We've all heard the stories about these cocksniffers, picking up spurious cases and prosecuting stuff that anybody with half a brain cell could see weren't justified and then equally mysteriously dropping slam-dunk cases ... such as against MPs or pillars of the judicial system. Maybe there's a reason for this curious behaviour:

A corrupt senior Crown prosecutor who pocketed cash to use his position to discontinue a case had spiralling debts of almost £1 million, a jury has heard.

Sarfraz Ibrahim, 51, of Cyncoed, Cardiff, South Wales, admitted corruption and related charges on Monday, on the eve of his trial.

As Gwent Crown Prosecution Service trials unit chief he had the power to stop a case in its tracks by recommending no further action.

He admitted charges of corruption, attempting to pervert the course of justice and misconduct in public office. His pleas mean Ibrahim has admitted pocketing £20,000 to ensure the case of a man he believed to be guilty was discontinued.

Funny that, eh? Might be something to bear in mind next time these fuckers make a curious judgement call.

Barack vs BP (Part 2: Jingoism and Bullshit)

This post from Timmy really focused me on another aspect of how government is the problem, and nothing to do with the solution:

Take, for example, the shortage of oil skimming ships in the Gulf. There’s a whole flotilla of them on offer from a variety of European sources. They cannot, however, be used.

For there is this thing called the Jones Act. It started out, in the 20s (think that’s right) as a way to support the US Merchant Marine. It is now simply a support for the US Seamen’s unions.

What it says is that only US owned and crewed ships may operate in US coastal waters.

Thus those European owned and crewed ones may not: however much they might be needed, however much good they might do.

This is clear evidence of how jingoism is a load of shit. Because of a law passed to to support US business, people's lives are being destroyed. There is no real difference between this fatuity on the one hand and the MOD "buying British" or "British jobs for British workers" or "British energy independence" or anything the BNP proposes on the other.

Of course, it is possible for the US Government to provide a waiver. Bush’s lot managed it within two days of Katrina for example. Obama’s lot has not: indeed, for political reasons probably cannot, given the way in which the Democratic Party relies upon union support.

Happily, this just goes to highlight another veracity of the effectiveness of government: perception is everything. Bush was coruscated for his ineffective handling of Katrina, yet he behaved according to the law by holding back until he was asked for assistance by the State Governor. And when he was asked for help, he was (in this one particular case at least) quick to do so.

Yet Barack has merely played to the gallery on this one and is putting party donations ahead of the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans. But because he controls the media narrative, he's seen as "doing something", even though all he's doing is posturing like a motherfucker.

The fucking cunt. And the media happily playing along with this shit are fucking cunts too.

The arrest of Brian Haw

Not the obvious "oh, why was he arrested, it's obviously some attempt to shut him up" point, but this:

In 2007, he won a legal battle to remain in place due to a drafting error in a new law banning unauthorised protests in Westminster.

A drafting error? Fuck Labour and their fucking useless blanket of pointless flawed laws. Dick Cleggeron should just fucking repeal EVERYTHING they introduced.

End of.

The dangers of too many laws

Once again, Labour has been hoist on the petard of its own awful, incompetent, egregious law-making:

He was hailed by Alastair Campbell as the "megastar" who would boost Gordon Brown's flagging election campaign, but an Elvis impersonator has left Labour feeling all shook up.

Corby borough council is investigating whether the performance at the weekend breached the Licensing Act.

Two thoughts immediately spring to mind:

1. How many times does a Labour-initiated law have to bite some Labourite on the arse before someone wakes up and asks: "Are we perhaps doing this wrong?"

2. Absolutely no change any Labour heads will roll over this breaking of the law, same as with Barrenness Scuntland, Barrenness Udders, Kerry McCunty, Harridan Harpie, etc., etc., etc.

I hope they all die protracted, miserable, painful and lonely deaths.

Is Tarantino a paedo pornographer now?

I'm fairly sure Kill Bill has an animated sequence showing a Japanese gang boss indulging in pederasty. And now the Coroners and Justice Act is in force:

Henceforth, you will be committing an offence if you possess non-real, non-photographic images that are pornographic, "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character" and focus on a child’s genitals or anal region, or portray a range of sexual acts "with or in the presence of a child".

I have a copy of Kill Bill in my DVD collection. It's been on Sky Movies. Am I breaking the law? Probably.

As I've said before, none of Labour's new laws have anything to do with protecting people or children or any such thing. It's all about creating swathes of new offences that can be used to cow people into a state of perpetual fearfulness about whether or not they might be breaking the law. It used to be simple not to break the law, and this allowed a precedent to be set: ignorance of the law is no excuse.

But as Barrenness Scuntland showed us, even the people who define the laws can't keep on top of them all, with their highly-trained legal minds and all. What chance do the little people have? Do you really know you've made it through the day without breaking some law or contravening some regulation somewhere?

I never do, and I lead a very unremarkable life.

Luckily, we have high hopes that the Tories will sweep to power and do away with all this nannying and bullying and ...

Oh.

Did I miss a memo or something?

WTF?

New laws which make it easier to prosecute those who exploit some of the most vulnerable people in society are about to come in to effect.

The new offence of holding another person in slavery or servitude, or requiring another person to perform forced or compulsory labour, is set out in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Those found guilty face a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

You mean slavery hasn't been illegal for the last 177 years?! What a fucking missed opportunity that's been then!

Cunts.

Regulation, regulation, regulation ...

People who don't know any better (and my fuck, there are a lot of them!) think that the answer to all the woes of the world is if not more, then "smarter" regulation.

If you think that regulation actually benefits and protects the consumer, watch this video.



Regulation is how big companies prevent small companies from entering the market. They also help to justify more and more government. Any benefit we at the end of the food chain actually get or do not get out of the regulation is entirely accidental and pretty irrelevant to those who create the regulations.

Regulation is NOT your friend.

Tip of the clown wig to LPUK.

Burqa off

I must admit, I'm still reeling from the shock of finding out that underneath his agreeable and articulate demeanour, Farage was just a politician after all. This burqa-banning nonsense was a real body-blow to the vision that you didn't have to be a swivel-eyed loony to want out of the EU.

Anyway, it's left to a libertarian to come up with the only sensible answer to all this stupidity:

Seriously, so what if certain groups of the population don’t live as the majority do, or live by different social norms? Farage [for it is he] is right when he says that the minority should not enforce their ways upon the majority, but it works the other way round too. The majority have no place enforcing their social norms on the minorities.

OK, so I’ve made it clear that I don’t think banning the Burqa will do any good whatsoever, and that UKIP are themselves the biggest Burqs of all. Now, here’s how, when people are given genuine freedom of conscience as well as of association, we can expect things to play out:

By allowing people to choose for themselves at the individual level if wearing a Burqa, or indeed anything of the sort, is the right choice for them, we maximize their freedom of choice of lifestyle. As there is nothing about wearing a Burqa per se that is violating the rights of others, it’s a peaceful act and therefore shouldn’t be banned. In public spaces such as tax payer funded streets, etc, wearing the burqa should be permitted, after all, the people inside them have already been forced to pay up their share! On top of that, people should be allowed to wear burqas in their own private homes. I’m pretty sure no one has suggested otherwise. At least, no one worth speaking of.

The flipside is that there should be no legal/coercive means to force people to accept burqas in their business, homes, etc. For example, UKIP go on about how, for example, you can’t wear motorcycle helmets in banks for security reasons. Those buildings are the business premises of a private organization, and they should be entirely free to set their own rules and security measures. Natwest want no face covering clothes of any kind in their branches? That’s fine. There should be no coercive method of forcing them to accept them against their will. They may, of course, go the other way and allow them. Also fine. Voluntaryism is the ideal.

The same goes for (privately owned) shopping centres, the kind that don’t allow hoods up (they exist?), for the same reasons.

In short, at all levels, relationships should be voluntary, NOT coercive.

It goes without saying ...

... that he's still going to vote Labour.

Oh, go on then ... #trafigura

Some people just don't know when to quit, do they?

Update: Censored report here.

Costs up, detections down ...

... so why are the police so keen to keep our DNA?

Over the last two years, the number of individual profiles held on the NDNAD has risen from around 4.4 million to 5.6 million in March 2009.

Is it working?

However, during the period in question, the total number of crime scene matches dropped from 41,717 to 36,727. Given the increased number of profiles held, this is not inconsistent with some criminals changing their behaviour to avoid leaving samples.

I'll take that as a "no", then.

And how come there's been a 25% increase in samples held when the government keeps telling us that crime is down. But I guess the there's an even bigger issue here:

The raw figure for offences where crime detection resulted directly from a DNA match show a fall from 19,949 to 17,463 in the same period.

Riiiight ... so we have more samples, fewer crime scene matches, fewer detections ... something is still missing, though. Hmmm.

Oh yes, that's what's missing!

Over the last year, costs have doubled

Don't you just love everything the government does to keep us all safe?

Obnostrodamus strikes again ... again

I really can see this shit coming from a mile off, can't I?

Game changed, or just a hiccup?

While worshipping at the altar of St Arbucks today, I read the front page of the Graun. It was given over to a discussion of yesterday's twitter slaughtering of the nonsense of the Graun not being able to report matters of Parliament.

I will admit that I felt a deranged sense of pride for a minute, I thought: "I helped do that."

And then I wondered whether winning this battle meant that we had won the war? I'm not sure, really,I can't see the self-righteous, overweening, make-the-law-up on the spot cunts who run this country taking this lying down.

And I expect there's going to be a good few more skirmishes before it all settles down into state-sanctioned and monitored oppression again.

I fully expect some incredibly draconian legal framework to get enacted off the back of this. It's not going to be pretty.

There are more worrying thoughts here.