Day 5301: Speaking Out Against Extremism

Tuesday:


As a member of an ethnic community (namely white people*), it has been brought to my attention that we're in danger, as a community, of "tacitly condoning" extremist language from my fellows because they are "people like me".

These people prey on young British men and women, trying to persuade them to travel to foreign countries thousands of miles away, to perform acts of terrible violence with high explosives.

I mean, of course, people like Mr Michael Fallon, Secretary of the so-called Ministry of Defence (by which we mean Attack) who thinks we should be exploding things in Syria.


There seems to be something about Syria that EXEMPTS politicians from remembering what actually happened. If it's not Mr Milipede claiming he "stood up to President Obama" (when in fact he and Mr Balloon basically cancelled each other out with very similar "let's bomb Syria" motions) then it's Mr Fallon saying we should "think again" about attacking people who we were never thinking of attacking and defending the people who we WERE thinking of attacking!

I think there's a name for how this happens: it's called "lazy journalism" – "Oi! Newspapers! Look at the record and CHALLENGE people when they MAKE this STUFF UP!"

Of COURSE things are more COMPLICATED than just "bombing people bad".

Our history – in the last ten years, or a hundred years, or a THOUSAND years(!) – is one of sticking our fluffy noses into the Middle East and making a mess. So we've got RESPONSIBILITIES and AMENDS to make.

And the Not-Islamic Not-a-State terrorists (should we call them NINAS to keep the Prime Monster happy?) are, as far as I am able to judge from their actions, among the most horribly evil people on the face of the planet, and if they come anywhere near us then we would be quite right to fight them off with the full might and power that the West could deploy.

But they AREN'T anywhere near us. And we certainly do not seem willing to deploy enough might and power to defend the people in the region that we say are our friends. And deploying only the tiny fraction of the full might and power that we can be bothered to send – while still fully capable of flattening large areas of any Middle-Eastern country – doesn't half badword off the survivors!

If you want to intervene, then (a) get a UN mandate and (b) send enough troops actually to do the job. Lobbing bombs in the general direction of people you don't like just so you can feel better… that's what TERRORISTS do!

We have in the West an "ultimate weapon" that for all the undoubted impressiveness of all that might and power is INFINITELY more successful than ANY amount of ordinance: it is called PEACE. Sometimes it is called prosperity.

It is why Ukraine is willing to stand up to Vlad the Bad. It is why hundreds of thousands are willing to throw themselves in leaky boats to cross the Mediterranean.

So I KNOW it's COMPLICATED, but can we at least START from a position of HUMBLY accepting that we keep messing up and that SWAGGERING around THREATING to EXPLODE people is, to say the least, not helping.

Today is "7/7". We should remember. And we should do BETTER.

*white ELEPHANT people, thank you.

Day 5283: Elephant v Home Office

Friday:


The story so far…

At the Leadership hustings on Wednesday, Mr Tim the Tim Lord challenged us not to let the Party of Grimond, Penhaligon and Kennedy die on our watch*.

And Mr Norman "Conquest" Lamb impressed me with his radical proposals on prison and drugs policies.

And I described the Home Office as our "natural enemies".

In reply to a comment, I said I would defend this idea. The Home Office want increased security. It's their job. But mostly they do this by reducing liberty. Defending liberty is OUR job. This very naturally puts us on opposite sides.

(Though, as I also said, as with most things I say, it WAS supposed to be amusing/satirical rather than extremely literal, too.)

This is ALREADY a big issue, what with the Conservatory Government dropping their manifesto pledge to abolish the Human Rights Act even before Mrs the Queen had sat down for her first speech.

Lord Chancellor Michael "Gollum" Gove Sheepishly Presents the Speech to Her Majesty, sans British Bill of Rights

But the Speech did contain…

…an "Investigatory Powers Bill" aka Return of the Snooper's Charter, to collect your every random browse on the Internet;

…and a "Psychoactive Substances Bill" that plans to ban anything that might legally give you pleasure;

…and an "Extremism Bill" to ban "extremist groups", "extremist mosques" and "extremist broadcasts"… presumably to be followed by "extremist thought crimes";

…and an Immigration Bill to make "illegal working" a criminal offence and extend the principle of "deport first, worry about whether they've survived to appeal later" to all immigration cases;

…and a "Police and Criminal Justice Bill" because, what the heck, it's an annual tradition nowadays and we can sweep up anything left we've forgotten to criminalise into that.

So it's not like the Home Office ISN'T BUSY driving a tank across everything the Liberal Democrats were protecting during the Coalition.

Not to mention Mr Balloon's frankly TERRIFYING speech stating that:

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'.".

So, even if you obey the law they're STILL going to come and get you.

What happened to Habeus Corpus? Did Magna Carta die in vain?

And now the Prime Monster is saying British Muslims are (quoting the BBC's headline): "…'quietly condoning' IS ideology"; perhaps it's time someone told him to stop LOUDLY ADVERTISING for the terrorists!

(and things are getting pretty DIRE if I'm agreeing with the Grauniad's numpty Owen Jones .

Next thing, I'll be saying Pollyanna Toytown is right about wind farms!)

In a time of AUSTERITY, people feel afraid, afraid for their jobs and the security of a roof over their families' heads. And it's all too easy for politicians to tell them that (to quote Tim again) the blame lies with the foreigners for taking their houses rather than the politicians for not building the houses in the first place or the voters for not voting for politicians who’ll build and reduce their house prices.

The treatment of migrants and asylum seekers and the people daily being people-trafficked across the Med (or drowning in the attempt) is urgently topical.

Government ministers' talk about "pull factors" and "encouraging more" is, quite simply, OBSCENE when people are dying. These are human people and they have left their homes, fled across continents, because of PUSH factors – War, Famine, religious genocidal maniacs – which massively outweigh any trifling "pull" considerations.

It seems there are really only three possible solutions:

1. Let them drown!
2. Annex dirty great chunks of the Middle East and North Africa to establish new, secure safe zones where they can build cities and jobs for themselves protected by our military, i.e. a new IMPERIUM, exactly what we're accusing Russia of doing (and bearing in mind that we would need to spend an awful lot of money and possibly lives to do this properly)!
3. Actually do our bit and let them come here.

Call me old fashioned, I favour option THREE.

Iraq, and to a lesser extent the bombing in Libya, has demonstrated the limits of our ability to control foreign interventions given the amounts of money and lives that we are willing to expend (i.e. not very much of either).

Instead it seems that we are going to leave them either in the water, in terrible danger in their own countries, or in effectively concentration camps in Italy and Greece (Greece! As if the Greeks weren't in enough trouble!).

Immigration is GOOD for the country – any country! It drives growth in GDP. It could be good for OUR country.

But to feel that benefit we need to ensure that we build the houses, services and infrastructure to support the people here. But building those things CREATES jobs, including the fabled "British jobs for British workers" (and also British jobs for anyone else willing to do them!).

We should be LEADING the call – as Paddy Ashdown did when saying we should give British passports to citizens of Hong Kong in the lead up to the hand back to China – for not a few hundred or a few thousand but for a few HUNDRED THOUSAND rescued migrants to come here to start a new life. Britain will DO OUR DUTY and stop blaming it all on poor, impoverished Greece and the EU.

Meanwhile, a lot of anti-EU rhetoric is being driven by the spurious claim that we are unable to deport foreign criminals.

We should be telling people loudly that this is a sign of PATHETIC WEAKNESS in a Home Secretary!

If people are criminals then we should be prosecuting and punishing people HERE. If you are so WEAK that you need to chuck them out of the country and make it someone else's problem, then probably you are not FIT to be Home Secretary let alone Prime Monster.

And IF we are so PROUD of British Justice, then why would we NOT be willing to hold it up to international scrutiny? Our record is INCREDIBLY GOOD, and we win VERY NEARLY ALMOST ALL of the cases that go before the Court in Europe.

(And let's be clear: it's a Court of UNIVERSAL Human Rights IN Europe, not Rights OF Europeans or OF Europe – we'd have a GLOBAL International Criminal Court one excep, China and America refuse to live up to their protestations of upholding Human Rights! Even Russia is technically a signatory!)

Once again, we should say that if you think we need to withdraw from scrutiny then you clearly don't think British Human rights are UP TO MUCH.

Well, I rather think they ARE, and that the Conservatories are a bit PATHETIC for not trusting that we DO uphold Human Rights.

But nobody is perfect, and having an outside body that can look from time to time and say where we might – might – have to consider that we could be wrong… only a SOCIOPATH thinks they're never wrong.

As I went on to say in that comment: I think saying the Home office wants to increase security is being NICE to them. I'd suggest that very often the Home Office does things that reduce liberty and do NOT increase security:- counter-productive measures like stop-and-search or "go home poster vans" which generate resentment and breed threats to security; and ludicrous security theatre - like ID cards or the snoopers charter - which is in the business of looking like it's doing something but actually wastes resources, money, time, manpower, on activity that achieves NOTHING.

We have had more than three decades of the Home Office making more and more grabs for power – and over the same time saying that they can do less and less to protect us; three decades of Home Secretaries and Shadow Home Secretaries trying to outbid each other on toughness, outflank each other to the crackdowns, racing to the bottom of the Civil Liberties barrel. Michael "of the night" Howard sending pregnant women to give birth in chains; Tony "Lord" Blairimort, brutally profiteering from the horrible death of Jamie Bulger; Jack "the sinister minister" Straw; David "detention without trial" Blunkett, and the declassified reclassified cannabis; Charles Clarke, the safety elephant; "nice" Dr John Reid and the I.D.iot cards; Jacquie Spliff, the Second Home Secretary… the list goes on, each more authoritarian than the last; most recently we've had Teresa "nuts in" May and Yvette "the Snooper" Cooper vying to be worst yet.

And yet for all their "strong on crime" posturing, for all their "not giving in to terror", every last one of them CAPITULATES instantly, the moment someone (from security or the police) comes along and SCARES them with talk of "the bad people".

"Oh, we need more money, or more powers to arrest people, or to intercept their Instagrams, or to look inside their fluffy brains. Only then will you be safe, only then can we protect you from the paedo-terror-drug-militants… at least until the next time we ask."

It is, quite literally, a PROTECTION RACKET.

And if Her Majesty's far too loyal Opposition will not OPPOSE the madness, then by all that's fluffy WE fluffing well should!

Day 5281: Tim Farron or Norman Lamb? We Need BOTH!

Wednesday:



I was lucky enough to attend the Liberal Democrat leadership hustings in London, and to meet both candidates.

Going in I was leaning more for Farron, and the Tim Lord did indeed play a blinder: full of that old-time Liberal religion. And his last word – "it's my job to get Norman back into Government" – was the best line of the night. But Norman was consistently impressive throughout as the one who put thought into his answers. He made it very much harder to choose. And that's got to be some kind of victory for the Norman Conquest.

Illustrative was the question: "What would you vote against the Party Line on?" (one of Alex's favourites). They both didn't answer the question but in different ways.

Tim's answer was to point to his rebellious record in the last Parliament, voting against the whip on Tuition Fees and Secret Courts. Those are his radical credentials, right there, do what's right not what's on the ticket. That's not really voting against the Party line, though. Norman, answering that question second, chose that opportunity to defend his own record as being the "good boy" and voting for those things on the grounds that practical Liberalism means doing more good by staying in and winning the fights you can win, rather than letting "best" be the enemy of "good".

So in some ways – from a certain point of view – Tim was being the more careful candidate here, embracing the Party, touching us in our warm happy place, while Norman was willing to be a bit more dangerous.

If we were still a credible force in the House of Commons, whether in Coalition or at least in contention to be in Coalition, there would be a strong case for a candidate who has shown just the sort of "winning the best deal" by "tough decisions" talent that Norman has. But we've been massacred. To his credit, Norman clearly recognises this, and that continuity – being the "establishment" candidate – are a weakness in this context, and he's been highly active in generating radical policy ideas to demonstrate that there is so much more to him than that.

When questioned on policies, both candidates were – unsurprisingly – saying the same things: we need to make tackling the housing crisis our priority; we should be first in line to defend the Human Rights Act; we should celebrate immigration not condemn immigrants; renewables not fracking. But although Tim was saying we should be the Party saying the difficult, "spiky" things, Norman was the one coming out with the "out there" ideas, in particular taking the fight to the Home Office (our natural enemies!), on drugs and on cutting the numbers in our (vastly overcrowded) prisons.

If I might paraphrase "Yes, Prime Minister" episode "The Ministerial Broadcast", it's pretty clear that Tim would be the one sat in the oak-panelled room with the leather-bound books on the shelves and the calming tones of Brahms playing to reassure you; while Norman would be all modernist furniture and Stravinsky to distract from the Continuity Clegg label.


With only eight MPs… and one of those the ex-leader, the Reverend Nick, who the public no doubt expect to step into quiet semi-retirement (or to put it another way, they would say they've seen the back of him)… and another, Alistair, the Laird Carmichael, shall we say, hors de combat… with only six MPs… I'll come in again…

At least one candidate (it was Tim) has made it clear that we will have to pick our campaigns.

I would suggest we have to cover the following:

1. Personal freedoms and Civil liberties
2. Health, Social Care and the dreaded "Wellbeing" (so including housing)
3. Opportunity and Education
4. The Economy

In the short term, it almost doesn't matter who wins.

Norman has already made himself a champion of personal rights with support for an Assisted Dying Bill, and his excellent policy announcements, in particular on the failed war on drugs and on our prisons. And (for all those "Yes, Prime Minister" reasons) the fact that he looks the more establishment character makes him just the man to be taken seriously when attacking the Home Office from the ANTI-authoritarian flank (something Labour hasn't done for twenty years).

Tim clearly knows his Beverage (and I don't mean TEA), and he's got the background (voting against Tuition fees gives him the opening to be listened to on the subject, possibly the only Lib Dem who can do that), and the talent of a natural preacher to condemn the Tories as "immoral" (which he did several times on the night): clearly he's the man to lead on housing and education.

(Obviously we should be defending our NHS too, but there's no way to make that an issue identified with us and not Hard Labour – however unjustified, they've just spent too much political capital in buying that as "their" turf. What we could and should do, in fact, is address ourselves to the "wall of bureaucracy" that often means the NHS works for itself rather than patients – of which Mid Staffs was only the most extreme example.)

We cannot NOT talk about the economy (stupid), and I'd ask Tom Brake to be our Shadow Chancellor.

Additionally, I'd ask Nick to be spokesperson for foreign policy. It means we can use his considerable talents, but at the same time allow him to step aside from the field of everyday politics, and be a (very young) elder statesman figure.

But the leadership is for more than just the short term. It is about who – as a Party – will be speaking for us for the next five years. Because the media will no doubt shut us out now, and at best we will get our leader to appear on TV's Questionable Time or the occasional talking head comment on the news.

(I did wonder briefly, Tim might be "interesting" enough to get the occasional appearance even if he were not leader, which – in Bizarro world – might be a reason to pick Norman for a "two bites of the cherry" approach. But it won't fly. If we want our best – surviving – communicator to be able to communicate, then we'd better decide which of them it is and make him leader.)

So this is the question: are we content as a Party to drift back into quasi-think tank status? Or do we want to say loud and strong that May 7th will not stand.

This Party, this liberal phoenix needs fire. Tim certainly has fire. And it may be that that's what wins it. But if it does I very much hope that his first act will be to put Norman in charge of choosing our campaigns, picking the fights we're going to pick.

I shook them both by the hand and wished each of them good luck. Whoever wins, they'll need it. But more importantly, whoever wins, they'll need the other one too.

PS: 

courtesy of Count Packula: the opening speeches of both candidates.

First to speak was Norman…



…and then Tim.

Day 4657: If Theresa May Was A Terrorist – a Thought Experiment

Tuesday:


This week Theresa May accused Cap’n Clegg of Hating Britain* for putting the Human Rights of terrorists and criminals above ordinary people.

That’s because Ms May does not understand that Human Rights are not to protect terrorists, they are to protect people who get called “terrorists”.

So, as an experiment, let us imagine that Theresa May is a terrorist.

It’s not that hard to imagine… she’s the head of an organisation that preaches messages of hate to frighten people, snatches people off planes for intimidation, targets certain people in the streets and, of course, occasionally shoots innocent people dead.

Er, okay, this is just a thought experiment, isn’t it?

Anyway, since Ms May doesn’t believe “terrorists” deserve Human Rights, then let’s see how well she does without them, shall we?

Let’s call her a “terrorist”.

Shouldn’t we have to prove that?

Well, a Fair Trial is one of her Human Rights, so I guess not.

So we’ll lock her up.

Oh, no we can’t do that because Liberty is one of her Human Rights… oh hang on.

But shouldn’t she be allowed to hire a lawyer at least?

Well, we’ll just seize all her money. No protection of Property without your Human Rights you see.

But we can’t just do that because of what she thinks… can we?

As it happens Freedom of Thought is another of those pesky Human Rights.

Isn’t she allowed to protest?

Aaaaactually, guess what, Free Speech is one of her Human Rights, so that’s gagged her too.

You can’t actually gag her though, that’s cruel and unusual!

But, since you mention it, Protection from Torture and Degrading Treatment is, guess what, a Human Right.

If you carry on like this you’ll end up killing her!

Funnily enough, I was just coming to that…



So Ms May, if you want to abolish the Human Rights Act, which rights don’t you want? It’s not hard; there’s only ten of them:

1. the Right to Life
2. the Right to Protection from Torture and Degrading Treatment
3. the Right to Protection from Slavery
4. the Right to Liberty and Freedom
5. the Right to a Fair Trial and No punishment without Law
6. the Right to respect for Private Life, including the right to Marry
7. the Right to Freedom of Thought, Religion and Belief
8. the Right to Free Speech and Free Assembly and Protest
9. the Right to Freedom from Discrimination
10. the Right to Protection of your Property


*Or was that was the Daily Heil.

Day 4614: Miranda (Not the Funny One)

Monday:

Mr David Miranda, a passenger en route from Berlin to Brazil and not entering the UK, has been detained at Heathrow Airport under the Terrorism Act 2000, and held for the full nine hours allowed under that Act before being released. His telephone, laptop, games console, DVDs and other electronica have been confiscated.

Mr Miranda is not a terrorist suspect.

This is an abuse of power. This is why Labour were wrong.

We need to be abolishing these laws and Labour’s Yvette Cooper needs to be apologising for her part in enacting them, not demanding answers like a victim.

Hard Labour’s terrorism laws and security theatre are wide open to this kind of abuse and this proves it. Their excuse at the time – “we would never abuse these laws” – we already shown to be hollow, if not downright mendacious, when Walter Wolfgang was arrested at their own Party Conference. But they are shown to be absurd in their cries “oh the Evil Coalition” – and who left the “Evil Coalition” with all these power to abuse, eh? And who warned you not to do anything so bloody stupid?

Nevertheless, as members of the Coalition, this certainly happened on “our watch” and for that we are to blame.

The first question has to be whether we are directly to blame: we urgently need to discover who ordered this and why.

“Who?” is either a minister who needs to be made accountable, or someone in the police or security services possibly acting ultra vires.

The Grauniad is quick to conflate the police/borders authority/security services who detained Mr Miranda with “the UK government”. (Irrelevantly to the illegality of his detention but possibly not unconnectedly Mr Miranda is the partner of one of the Grauniad journalists reporting on the whistle-blower Edward Snowdon and the American NSA, and “intimidation” has quickly – but plausibly – been suggested as a motive.)

I suspect that that is slack reporting rather than bias, but as a first step we need to establish (in decreasing order of culpability) if anyone in government – presumably the Home Office – ordered this, or were aware of this before the fact, or during the fact.

“Why?” then leads to questions of greater UK involvement in the whole Prism/email hacking scandal, or perhaps someone being too eager to do a favour for our American cousins. The possibility of the “phone call from the State Department” being at the root of this reminds us of the dangerously subservient Blair-era relationship between US and UK.

But even if we’re not guilty of direct abuse of power, we have still failed to do our part to prevent it by rolling back the police state that the last government was intent on putting into place.

Our Freedoms Bill was watered down and we have failed to move the Civil Liberties agenda on far enough. Theresa May’s Home Office in particular is rife with “little initiatives” to try and increase rather than decrease the powers that police and security services already have. Every success is treated as proof they need these powers; every failure is cited as evidence that they need more power.

Labour and Conservatives have both demonstrated that they cannot be trusted with our Rights and Liberties, except that you can trust them to take liberties with your rights while handing over more money and power to the security industry.

As Liberal Democrats even we cannot be trusted with this sort of power. That is why we must urgently press to repeal those powers to take the temptation away.

We need to take a stand on this.

Day 4529: No New Powers for the Security Services At Least Until They Explain Why They Failed to Use the Ones They've Got!

Sunday:

World War Z is upon us this summer – not the Brad Pitt monster flick, but the return of ZOMBIE LEGISLATION that we thought Cap'n Clegg had laid to rest with his trusty Silver Veto in the Quad (or Crus-he-fix).

Let's hammer this point hard: reports suggest that the security services KNEW about the murderers in advance and had all the powers they needed to find out what they were up to but just DIDN'T.

And there is a REPORT being prepared to EXPLAIN what went wrong.

Until we've had that report, calling for NEW powers is WILDLY IRRESPONSIBLE!


Normally, we ROUNDLY CONDEMN people who use the MURDER of a soldier to further their political agenda through a CAMPAIGN OF TERROR... so why do we let the Home Secretary and the alliance of Sinister Ex-Ministers from Hard Labour and Mr "something of the night" Howard to get away with it?

Watching the FAWNING Mate-of-Dave Nick Robinson standing in for Andy Marrmite (POOR Ms Facility Kendal must have needed at least two showers afterwards), we were "treated" to the vile former Hopeless Secretary and even more Hopeless Shadow Chancellor Mr Alan "I'm Selling A Book You Know" Johnson & Johnson appearing to agree with Mr Eric Pickled (and how have we come to such a pass when we have to say, "Hurray for Eric Pickled"?!) that it was "difficult in a free country" to surviel every citizen 24/7... only to go on to expound "these things are so much easier in CHINA".

Well OF COURSE massive intrusion on ordinary folks and trampling on their civil liberties is "easier" in China – China is a FLUFFING COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP WITH THE WORST HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD ON THE PLANET.

What a NUMPTY!

But, alas, Mr Johnson & Johnson was not alone in the NUMPTY stakes, as Nick Mate-of-Dave soon demonstrated with his penetrating line of questioning:

"So, Home Secretary, are there any other ways in which we can roll over and let you PROBULATE us for our own good?"

Yes, Mrs Theresa Nuts-in-May (coincidentally it IS May and she is...) was on to say how she had ALWAYS been in the "I want to open your every private letter and know every person you ever meet or talk to" camp.

We'd HOPED Mr Mate-of-Dave had set up the opening questions about the inquiry into the FAILINGS of the security services so he could follow through with the OBVIOUS line of "How can you ask for MORE powers when you can't even operate the EXISTING legislation?"

Sadly, he seemed to prefer a line of: "Isn't it true that we'd all be much safer if you knew what colour KNICKERS we were all wearing, oh SAINTLY Theresa?!"

What an EVEN BIGGER NUMPTY!


If someone crashes the car, you DON'T reward them with a faster car. They've shown they cannot control the car they've got.

If someone blows a fortune on the gee-gees, you don't reward them with a BIGGER fortune. NO, Mr Oboe, you don't. They've shown they cannot handle the money they've got.

So why if someone is a failure with the powers they've got should we even THINK about giving them extensive and intrusive new powers? It's MADNESS.

Captain Clegg needs to be answering the question FIRMLY and FAIRLY: the Home Secretary should be EXPLAINING why her department FAILED before making ANY power grab for MORE legislation.

He should ask her WHY, if the security services seem like they're saying that monitoring the THOUSANDS of people they ALREADY have powers to monitor is TOO DIFFICULT, WHY is the solution to monitor MILLIONS of people?! And she'd better have a good answer!

In fact, Liberal Democrats should go further and say there is now a BIG case for Parliament to conduct POST-LEGISLATIVE scrutiny on some of those DRACONIAN laws that the Home Office have had passed in the last few years – remember R.I.P.A? – and ask some SEARCHING QUESTIONS about where those powers have been used, have they made us any safer and have they gone FURTHER than Parliament intended when MPs were told that those laws too were "necessary" to fight the War on Terra too.

World War Z says that if we can trace their zombies back to where it started we can put a STOP to it.

Time Parliament was doing the same!

Day 2660: This Government really likes terrorists

Sunday:


Seriously.

After all, they'd never get away with granting themselves OBSCENE and INTRUSIVE powers of snooping and detaining if they admitted it was NOTHING to do with fighting MAD BOMBERS and EVERYTHING to do with POKING and PRYING into your – yes YOUR – personal and private life.

Everyone remembers Walter Wolfgang and you'll have heard how Poole Borough Council were spying on a family suspected of living outside the catchment area for the school to which they applied.

Now Staffordshire County Council are using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to snoop on kids suspected of buying alcohol.

And that's not to mention the way anti-terrorism laws are used to police protests against the ARMS TRADE.

Or, indeed, the almost unlimited powers to stop-and-search granted under the WIDELY USED Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

In each case, the Government brought in new powers that they PROMISED were only going to be used to tackle fully signed-up MAD BOMBERS, SUICIDE ATTACKERS and the Al Qaeda TYPING POOL, only for we the public to find that the police are using them for "everyday" offences like underage drinking or looking vaguely in the general direction of Fylingdales.

So you have to wonder what the REAL motive is for wanting to extend detention without trial.

The Secretary of State for Afternoon Kebabs and the Home Help Department, Ms Jacquie Spliff, uses the usual terror-tactics – thirty plots are being investigated, be AFRAID, she warns– and then promises an extra three-hundred police to beat up tackle radicalisation (accidentally radicalising the Conservatories with her breach of the election rules).

A more CYNICAL elephant might suspect that the Home Secretary want to be able to keep people in the SLAMMER for so long that they crack and confess to ANYTHING… it could certainly help improve the shoplifting and pick-pocketing clean-up rates.

Ms Spliff says that the problem is that it takes longer and longer for the police to go though a potential terrorist's computers and reach the HIGH SCORE on Grand Theft Auto IV discover any EVIDENCE of EVIL-DOINGS.

The Home Secretary's Mini-Me is Mr Tony McNutty who still thinks that MPs will "buy 42 days".

(Why am I thinking of Mr P T Barnum, I wonder?)

Anyway, Mr McNutty gave a right TICKING OFF to Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, when he told the Counter-Terrorism Bill committee that he believed 28 days was "sufficient".

I think you'll find that that is up to PARLIAMENT to decide, snapped Mr McNutty.

Odd, then, don't you think, that he didn't similarly castigate Sir Ian "clone of Lord" Blairimort when HE was saying that sooner or later, maybe, you know, if the wind is in the right direction and the moon is full and with the best will in the world there's every chance that eventually we might have a situation where we can push it so it takes more than the twenty-eight days we have at the moment.

Unfortunately for the inept Home Office Minister of State for Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and finding the Home Secretary's Handbag when she's been for a Kebab, the next witness was Lord Goldfinger who IS a member of Parliament and HE said that 28 days was "sufficient" too.


Personally, I liked the line that Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Mr Huhney-Monster, used in the Counter-Terrorism debate:

"In one recent case that she mentioned, there were three terabytes of evidence on computer—the equivalent of a library a third the size of the US Library of Congress or more than 10 million books. This point is a boomerang for the Government, because an extension of a mere two weeks would be entirely useless if each bit of evidence had to waded through and assessed as the Home Secretary implies. Indeed, if it were necessary to read material equivalent to a third of the US Library of Congress within the proposed legal limit of 42 days, I calculate that that would require 238,095 police officers working eight-hour shifts. That is all the police officers in this country, plus 100,000 on loan from a friendly neighbour."

But here is a THOUGHT: why create a SPECIAL WARRANT that would let the police continue to question and investigate someone AFTER they had charged them. So we could go back to the old days where the police had to charge someone within TWO DAYS (not twenty-eight!) but they can still go to a judge and say: "we have charged this person with a Terrorism Offence and here is our evidence so far, but we need to investigate further". That would not be so very different to what they have to do NOW, except that the person who is under arrest but still – I'm sorry to have to mention it – still PRESUMED INNOCENT gets to find out why the police have them in KLINK!

Day 2334: Out of Control; Out of Order

Wednesday:


So, these three blokes have gone missing…

It is not that the Home Office wants to introduce a police state by the back door… no, actually it IS that the Home Office wants to introduce a police state by the back door, but ALSO that they are totally incompetent to administer even this cack-handed, half-witted, numbskull way of getting around the whole inconvenient “innocent until proven guilty” thing.

There ARE only 17 people on Control Orders anyway – does MI5 not have 170-odd people (or 170 odd-people) to keep them under surveillance? If they ARE supposed to be SOOOOOO dangerous, wouldn’t KEEPING AN EYE ON THEM be a fairly OBVIOUS precaution? And if they AREN’T that dangerous, why are we tipping them off that we might be on to them by giving them a Control Order? Or rather a “We think you’re EEEEEEVIL but we can’t prove it, you just looked at us funny” Order.

If you WANT to be a police state and you don’t want them to leave the country, just MAKE UP AN ASBO and take their passports away.

Oh, I forgot, even an ASBO needs you to TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK THEY’VE DONE.

You would think that this relatively basic human right would not be that difficult to live up to, but for some BONKERS IN THE NUT reason it is TOO DANGEROUS to let these people know what they are suspected of. Like they won’t figure out that it’s TERRORISM!

Meanwhile, the independent milk-monitor for the workings of the terrorism act, Lord Alex Carcrash, has said that there is “solid intelligence” that these people are “oooh scary”, sorry, I mean a genuine threat. But that’s just the problem – we haven’t got “solid intelligence” or we would be able to BANG THEM UP.

“Acts Preparatory to Terrorism” is now a crime; “Conspiracy” is a crime. Unfortunately for Lord Carcrash, “Maybe Thinking About Preparing to Conspire to Possibly Commit Acts That Might End Up Being Called Terrorism” is not YET carved into the statue books. We can’t just lock up EVERY aggrieved young idiot who mouths off.

Do not get me wrong: if these are very bad people like the Home Secretary says they are, then I would like them locked up for all of our safety. But in order to do that we need to watch them and see if they actually do any very bad things. Just telling them to please keep us informed of their whereabouts and any DASTARDLY PLOTS that they are planning on getting involved with does not seem to me to be likely to work.

And golly gosh it hasn’t.

Day 2279: Home Office Split into New Ministries: Fear, Loathing and Las Vegas

Thursday:


This week's list of people who have been RAPPED OVER THE KNUCKLES:

Mr Balloon, for getting Cash for Access to his Commons Office[*],

Mrs Bucket, for getting No Cash for Farmers from their subsidies,

and Mr Balloon again, for not getting Planning Permission for his windmill.

Perhaps we need a new Ministry of Justice to set up a NAUGHTY CORNER for them to stand in!

Oh look, here comes Mr Dr John Reid who is the Home Secretary and Britain's OFFICIALLY nicest man!

He has come up with just the thing: a scheme that will let him keep all of the sexy, macho, hanging-about-with-men-in-flak-jackets parts of his job and get rid of all of that tedious mucking about in hyperspace re-education and reformation.

He has asked the Minister for Magical Accidents to perform his "SAWING A MINISTRY IN HALF" trick.

Nice Mr Dr Reid explained:

"WE will be taking over the security ministry, my precious, gollum, gollum…"

"…while WE will be good Sméagol, nice Sméagol, running the Justice ministry for the nice master, my precious."

A minister of justice, welcoming the news today

Liberal Democrats have been in favour of cutting the Home Office down to size for some time. There are too many people trying to do too many – often contradictory – things. How can you focus on cutting bureaucracy for police people while simultaneously giving them a thousand new things to arrest people for every month? It is all too unwieldy for anyone to manage properly, and morale has been shot to pieces by the excessively KIND words of nice Mr Dr Reid telling them how USELESS and RUBBISH they all are.

The whims, pronouncements and reorganisations of each of Lord Blairimort's Home Secretaries over the years have left the Home Office overstretched, overloaded and undermined. The whole place needs fresh ideas, a fresh start and some good fresh air.

But "the Devil will be in the detail," says leading Liberal Democrat Mr Clogg (who clearly does not realise that the Devil will REALLY be in that Black Hole that Dr Who and Rose dropped him down last year!)

Of course, there are some DANGERS. There is the possibility of getting conflicting goals as the ministry for arresting people tries to arrest more and more people while the ministry for what to do with them after they are arrested tries to stop the prisons exploding. Or the risk of the ministry for making up new laws being just lawyers creating more work for lawyers when they stop having any input from the people who are on the streets trying to keep the peace. And of course there is the threat of EVEN MORE bureaucracy in order to send all of the new INTER-DEPARTMENTAL MEMOS that will now "need" to be written.

So, a cautious welcome then from Mr Clogg, but also a warning that he will be keeping an eye on what Mr Dr Reid decides to do to make sure it is not just another STUNT to try and secure Lord Blairimort's legacy.

On a more REASSURING note, the former berserk safety elephant, Mr Charles Clarke, has previously said that splitting up the Home Office would be a MISTAKE. Since he is always wrong about everything, this means it is almost certainly A GOOD IDEA.


Meanwhile, we have been watching the DELETED SCENES from SUPER CASINO ROYALE: it is the bit where Culture Secretary Ms Jessa Towell goes ALL IN to back the government's plans… only to find her hand beaten by a Full House of Lords.

There is NO TRUTH in reports that Mrs Towell was seen sipping a cocktail from Mr Le Chiffre mere moments before the vote.

"I am very much alive!" said Mrs Towell, hurrying for the emergency revival kit in her Austin Martin…

The Liberal Democrat who trumped Mrs Towell was Lord Clement Weather and today he welcomed the Liberal Democrat victory in the House of Lords Club.

But I am not so sure that this is a triumph. We are always (and QUITE RIGHTLY) critical of Mr Balloon for jumping on any old bandwagon – we need to be careful we are not doing the same.

Of course, the Conservatories were all for Super Casinos until they had a chance to embarrass the government… which is ODD because Mr Balloon normally tries to embarrass Lord Blairimort by voting WITH him. Poor Mr Balloon, he cannot even be CONSISTENTLY opportunist.

But is it really any of our business whether people gamble or not? Are we completely comfortable supporting the "down with this sort of thing" lobby? I am always NERVOUS when we end up on the same side as the BEARDY WEIRDY of Canterbury.

What this DOES mean is that for the moment there will be NO Super Casino at all. Which means that neither Manchester nor Blackpool are satisfied.

Here is MY solution: Manchester can have the new Super-Ministry of Justice, and Blackpool can have the Security Casino!

Will everyone be happy? Do not bet on it!


[*]Fluffy thanks to Mr Peter at the Liberal Review.

PS

Two days to go!