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 4219: The Law is a (Naked) Ass. Again.

Friday:

For a minute, it looked like flash of hope, maybe even SANITY, was creeping into things.

Sure, there's been military coup in the nation's capital that has transformed homes into missile launch pads and sees Apache helicopters buzzing our flat on an hourly basis...

And yes, that pie-faced cretin Mr Balloon is planning on using VOODOO to tell who is and isn't a dangerous child-offender...

But at least the Kafka-esque nightmare of the Naked Rambler was over, and he'd been allowed to walk away from prison. Naked.

Only now they've locked him up again.

In so many ways: BUM!

As a FLUFFY ELEPHANT I am USUALLY naked too. Unless I put on a NICE TIE for special occasions like getting nonimated for Blogger of the Year. (Yes, I am ELIGIBLE again this year. Do not forget!)

Nobody is shocked by MY fluffy bottom. So I really don't see the problem. Honestly, the only people making a fuss are the ones ARRESTING him in case he "offends" someone. And you do not have a "right" to take offence at what other people are not doing. Not believing the same things, not saying the same things, not WEARING the same things, it's all much the same.

And yet one minute there's one bunch of folks demanding people burn their burqas. Next there's another wanting them swaddled up again lest they frighten the horses. Just let people wear – or indeed NOT wear – whatever they want!

(And for people who say you can't let people see WILLIES, WILLIES are FRIGHTENING, I say go and watch ALIEN and you will soon see that the GIANT EVIL WILLY is ONLY frightening when it STAYS HIDDEN!)

I realise, in the grand scheme of things (especially today) that the plight of this slightly odd-seeming beardy bloke does not seem very important at all.

But he's not actually done anything WRONG

Eccentric, I'll grant you. Weird, I wouldn't disagree. You might even go as far as to think he's a bit peculiar. But not CRIMINAL. Because where's the crime in wandering about in his own skin doing no harm to anyone? And yet the full might of the state has been brought to bear/bare (hoho) and seen him locked up, mostly in solitary, for SIX YEARS.

If there's any CRIME here, it's the one that the STATE has committed against HIM.

NOBODY benefits from bullying this man to conform. In fact, a bit less diversity means we're all just that little bit worse off.

This country has already been HUMILIATED by an Olympic Five-Ring Circus that has proved that it puts the CORPORATE GREED of "official sponsors" ahead of the entrepreneur spirit of anyone who might have boosted the economy with some local initiative (and the UNIONS have nothing to be proud of either); that it puts the privileges of the elite in their Zil lanes ahead of the ordinary people of this city whose taxes have paid for those roads; that it puts SECURITY THEATRE ahead of FREEDOM or FUN.

Great Britain is SUPPOSED to be a Nation that celebrates ECCENTRICS and INDIVIDUALS and supports the UNDERDOG.

Day 3305: the Naked Truth – How Scottish Justice wastes HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of POUNDS on LITERALLY NOTHING!

Monday:


So it's 2010 and the VICTORIAN ERA is still well and truly in full complete-lack-of-swing here in ye Olde Grande Britannia, as Mr Stephen Gough, aka the Naked Rambler, is released from Prison only to be re-arrested six paces later. Again. Because he's still NUDE!

Apparently he could spend the rest of his LIFE in and out of jail (well, "out-for-a-matter-of-minutes") as this cycle goes on forever!

And it COSTS a bleedin' FORTUNE to keep him (in the buff) in chokey.

Yet the Sherriff has the NAKED CHUTZPAH to accuse HIM of having no concern for the public purse!

Murderers, terrorists, MPs even… we don't send them to the Big House for the whole of their natural lives. And yet this man seems to be a worse criminal than ANY of them! What COULD he have DONE?

Well, Mr Rambler first became famous for his naked hike from Land's End to John O'Groats in 2003.

He was arrested several times over the course of his odyssey.

Nevertheless he completed his journey in 2004 and hailed it as a success!

In 2005, he announced his intention to repeat the epic voyage.

And got arrested again.

In 2006, he flew back to Scotland to appeal against the charge of indecency. Stripping off while on the plane in order to appear in court naked.

He was sent to prison for four months.

The following April, he successfully defended himself against the accusation of breaching the peace on the grounds, get this, that no one had ACTUALLY been alarmed or disturbed.

Yes that's: "naked man in NOT ACTUALLY FRIGHTENING shocker"!

But he remained in jail awaiting further contempt hearing… because he wouldn't get dressed to appear in the dock.

By November 2007, after nineteen months in jail already, he was found guilty of contempt and sentenced to another three months in jail.

January 2008 and – still naked – he is released from prison. He gets SIX PACES before he is re-arrested and banged up again.

December 2008 and it's the same story. He's taken back to court, appears naked – quelle surprise – and is charged with another breach of the peace.


Are our court officials REALLY so easily startled? Goodness knows how they cope with a REAL crime; they must just SWOON a lot.

Six months later and it's not so much déjà vu (with it ALL still on vu of course) as a revolving door policy at the court.

Sherriff Richard McFarlane, presiding, even pathetically claimed he had "no choice" but to send Mr Rambler back into clink. Yeah, because you should ALWAYS go for the Nuremburg Defence when quashing a man's liberties.

And then the good Sherriff starts on about MONEY! As though Mr Rambler had a penny in his pockets. Or even had pockets for that matter.

"Would you like to estimate how much it has cost as a drain on the public purse to keep you in prison?

"You don't care about the public purse or the public generally."

Message for you your worship: YOU are the one pouring the public's money down the toilet by insisting that it be spent on keeping a man in prison when he is NO THREAT to anyone.

Keeping him in prison for wearing nothing, that's literally keeping him there for nothing, has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds already.

But never mind THAT because actually there's something more important than JUST wasting public funds because you're scared of his gentleman's area.

SERIOUSLY, what is more offensive: a glimpse of WINKEY or a MAN'S LIFE in CHAINS?


And in fact, we are ALL in chains. Because this farcical law applies to us ALL.

Equating NAKEDNESS with BADNESS harms every single one of us.

We have SERIOUS intimacy issues in this country because we are always being told to cover up, put up barriers between each other. We have SERIOUS body dismorphia hang ups in this country too, with people OBSESSING over being too fat or too thin or too the wrong colour or too airbrushed (er)…

Some even go so far as to assert that a naked people must be a "threat to the children". ("Oh won't somebody think of the children!") Because OBVIOUSLY naked people MUST be exactly the same as PAEDOPHILES. And as soon as you can make THAT connection then WHOAH! anything goes! So long as it STAYS ON, obviously!

That is why it is USUAL at this point to wave a big surrender-flag of disclaimer and say something like "but being naked isn't about the SEX! (shock! horror! cover the fluffy elephant's eyes!)".

But I'm NOT going to say that because I'm not willing to surrender!

I have had a "TALK" with my Daddies.

Sometime being naked IS about being "sexy". Whatever THAT is. And we can't go around saying "the sexy sort of naked is the bad sort", because that just gets us into even MORE of a fuddle. For hundreds of years society and the church used that sort of brainwashing as their best means of CONTROL – 'cos controlling the most INTIMATE aspect of people's lives makes it SOOOO much easier to control the rest.

Sometime being naked IS about being sexy. And that's got to be all right. And sometimes it's NOT. And that's got to be all right too. And sometimes DRESSING UP is about being sexy. Apparently.

(And I'm only TEN so that's as far as "THE TALK" with Daddy has got, so far!)

What I'm saying is that it all seems MUCH TOO COMPLICATED to just say "you've got nothing on so you're BAD!"

The Law is locked up in a PURITAN CHASTITY BELT because it was written by people so SCARED, so AFRAID, so buttoned-up TERRIFIED of their sexuality that they made their PIANOS wear DRESSES! Is it any wonder, this country is SERIOUSLY warped!


So here is the test. If you are a Liberal Democrat, it says on the front of your membership card:

"we exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society… where no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity."

This man is enslaved by conformity.

We EXIST to save him.

SO WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST STOP THESE MANIACS SENDING HIM TO PRISON!

PS:

In New Zealand, naked bicyclists get off with a safety warning. Isn't that better all round?



.

Day 3176: Are you Now or Have You Ever Been…?

Friday:


This is one of those things that Hard Labour do to make themselves TOTALLY UNELECTABLE.

If you want to help out with kids, you've now got to get a police certificate to prove that you are not a kiddie fiddler.

"We're NOT presuming everybody to be GUILTY," insisted Minister for Child-minding Dilly Moron. "We merely require them to PROVE that they are INNOCENT," she very nearly added.

Yes, for a small fee (and why not a DNA swab; you KNOW they want to) every adult can now receive the comforting proof that they are not a slathering beastie. Probably.

And this will keep our precious younglings safe from the not-in-any-way MASSIVELY OVERBLOWN stranger danger of the BOOGIEMAN…

…while, in a world where we KNOW that most assaults are done by people KNOWN to the victim, there is to be a special exemption for family friends and neighbours.

This law can only be described as HYSTERICAL.

And I don't just mean that someone in the Government has a SICK sense of humour!


OBVIOUSLY it is a reaction to the terrible events in Soham, where two little girls were abducted and murdered by the local school caretaker. And then the police discovered that they had known ALL ALONG that he might be a danger.

If only, went up the cry, someone had checked.

Well, as the old, old saying goes: hard cases make bad laws.

Terrible as those events were, they were an outstandingly RARE event. Indeed, they were so terribly terrible precisely because THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Children die all the time all over the planet and people hardly even seem to notice but good grief this is ENGLAND!

So, requiring every grown up in the country to get a form from the police, just to make sure that the police DO do the checking and DO make use of any information when they have it, making it the LAW, is a MASSIVE over-reaction and, entirely TYPICALLY for Hard Labour, an assault on people's general freedoms to carry on about their LAWFUL business without police or Government busy-bodies interfering.

Worse than that, it is the sort of Daily Hate Mail thinking that just makes the World a worse place by upsetting and frightening people.

In one of the BEST bits of journalistic editorialising I've heard on the The Today Programme, their Home Affairs Editor Mr Mark Eastern spelled out the problem succinctly: the Government is dividing society across an age gap, where oldies see the youngsters as dangerous hoodies and potential muggers and youngsters see oldies as untrustworthy authoritarian and potential paedophiles.

Mr Mark Reckons is on the case too, laying out the likely results of Hard Labour once again breaking the law of unintended consequences.

Because it's NOT like the Government has got a slight case of the MIXED MESSAGES at all, but this week they appear to be saying: adults who want to work with children are OBVIOUSLY monsters… by the way, please help us – we're desperately short of social workers.


Mr Humpy opened his interviews with the assertion "in a decent society, children should be protected from those who would harm them, who could argue with that?" To be FAIR he then framed the question in terms of how FAR that protection should go, and how far is TOO far.

Because the safest POSSIBLE society is one with all of us safely inside our own hermeticly sealed bubbles, fed by machines with our brains plugged into BBC MATRIX. But that is a world that will never change, never evolve, never grow up. It is a society of slaves.

Real life involves some RISK. It's OKAY to be frightened of that; lots of people are. That's why lots of people vote for NANNY STATE Parties like Hard Labour. You don't HAVE to take risks if you don’t want to: you have that choice. What is WRONG is to take away all the risks for everybody else.

Children learn by experiencing. Taking away their opportunities for new experiences is WRONG. Liberal Democrats say so. In fact, it is specifically against the CONSTITUTION of the Liberal Democrats, where we say "no one should be enslaved by ignorance". ("No one should be enslaved by conformity," PROBABLY counts here too!)

Hard Labour want to smother us in cotton wool and take away all those big scary choices that are too much for our "ordinary little brains". Because they think that with their "big" brains they know better than us what is good for us. Good grief, it is time they were GONE!

And ironically, it appears that implementation of this silly law is set for NEXT summer… when Hard Labour WILL be gone (double good grief: people are actually going to elect Mr Balloon, I hold my fluffy head in my fluffy feet).

So not only is this a mean and nasty law, it is also a BOOBY TRAP set up for the Etonian BOOBY. Will he scrap it, or keep it? "Will he," Hard Labour will say, "let the scary paedos get our kiddies or will he be a monstrous police state enforcer, er, just like us!"

Oh, the things Hard Labour do to keep themselves amused. THAT is the REAL abuse.



.