Day 5909: Mr John Humphrys in Muddy Waters

Monday:


Today’s lesson: when @BBCR4Feedback call an hour early and say they can call back in an hour… they aren’t going to call back.

How did we get to there? Well, the usual start to the week – listening to Daddy Richard shout at the radio – was interrupted by a moment of shocked silence when, as he tweeted, THIS happened:

“Jaw dropping moment as John Humphreys asks: doesn't it muddy the waters if we call far right terrorist murder of Jo Cox "terrorism" #r4today”

Life in the Today Programme goldfish bowl...

That generated… a fair number of retweets and replies, one of which said we should make it a proper complaint to the BBC. So that’s what we did, and posted it up on the Facebook too:

“After a jawdropping moment on this morning's Today programme, I have submitted this complaint to the BBC, via http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

During an interview with Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, in charge of Counter Terrorism, Mr Rowley warned the public should not forget the terrorist threat from right-wing extremists, and cited the murder of MP Jo Cox.
John Humphreys responded by asking "didn't that muddy the waters" and suggesting that the murderer Thomas Mair was mentally ill.
The judge, sentencing Thomas Mair, said: "There is no doubt this murder was done for the purpose of advancing a political, racial and ideological cause namely that of violent white supremacism and exclusive nationalism most associated with Nazism and its modern forms."
Dismissing genuine terrorism as actions of "lone mentally ill person" is factually wrong and dangerous to public safety. And the implication that terrorism is something done only be foreigners / non-white people / Muslims is dangerously close to accepting the premise of the racists that Thomas Mair represents.
If the police are describing the Jo Cox murder as terrorism, the BBC should not be questioning that, but asking itself serious questions about the climate of right-wing hate that has been allowed foment in the UK, for which the BBC by airing or repeating (as here) the views of these people bears some responsibility.

And THAT generated another lot of traffic and clearly a LOT of other people were quite cross too, because that was when the Radio FEEDBACK programme got in touch and asked if they could talk about that Tweet and the reaction to what Mr Humphrys said.

So they said that they would call between 10am and 1pm, Wednesday. Actually they called at 9.15, just as we were getting on the Jubilee line.

So, IF this ever happens to you, do not let them say: “it’s fine we will call you back in an hour”. No! You say “I WILL TALK TO YOU NOW”!

Anyway, here is what we WOULD have said:

Why was I so taken about by John Humphrys suggestion that calling the murder of MP Jo Cox terrorism was “muddying the waters”?


1.
The Facts – the police, the crown prosecution service, the sentencing judge all agreed that this was a politically motivated terrorist murder. These are not liberal snowflakes, they are serious people. Jo Cox’s killer, Thomas Mair, was psychiatrically examined and found to be in his own mind and fit to stand trial for his actions.

This is the BBC’s own report of the sentencing judge’s remarks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38076755 - note the emphasis on the high degree of planning and premeditation, as well as the political motivation. This was not the random act of a “madman”.

The right wing press – who have an agenda – might question this. But I expect very senior BBC journalists to know the facts and not repeat propaganda.

2.
The Context – the interview was with Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley asking the public to contact the police with information if they are worried or suspicious about their neighbours. And as a Liberal, I’m not 100% happy with his “be afraid and inform on your neighbours” agenda here. So actually, I was giving him some credit when he was reminding people that there is far right political terrorism to watch out for as well. When Mr Humphrys interrupted. But if anything is going to “muddy the waters” it is the suggestion from the interviewer that some terrorism isn’t as worth while contacting the police about because it is a fascist rather than ISIS who is threatening people’s lives.

And I think you could tell that the Assistant Commissioner was somewhat taken aback by this sudden derailing of the interview, too.

3.
The Narrative – because it’s all very familiar to hear white terrorists described as “a lone wolf” or “mentally ill”. These excuses get repeated whenever a white person commits an atrocity like this. Anders Breivek who killed all those children in Sweden; Timothy McVeigh the Oklahoma bomber; Dylann Roof, the man who shot nine black churchgoers at a service in Charleston Carolina; the list goes on, back to the Unabomber and earlier.

The message is “white people don’t commit terrorism; only brown people do terrorism”.

And it’s wrong.

We don’t hear people challenging the idea that the murder of Lee Rigby was terrorism. We don’t hear people suggesting that the shoe bomber Richard Reid was mentally ill. And it’s not like we have no experience of white sectarian terrorism in this country.

The BBC has a responsibility not to perpetuate this myth, which leads to…

4.
The hate crimes – we’ve seen a surge in attacks against women and minorities, particularly people who are immigrants or even just perceived as immigrants, fuelled by the xenophobic language of the Leave campaign and UKIP and now even the more right-wing elements of the government. The murder of Jo Cox happened at the height of the most horribly divisive and racially charged referendum campaign and on very the day Nigel Farage was unveiling his Nazi-imagery-evoking “Breaking Point” poster.

And people want to deny there is a connection.

The right wing, the nationalists, want people to think that only foreigners can be terrorists. They want people to be afraid. But they don’t want it to come back on them. And they won’t take responsibility. They want to deny that there are extremist views on their side, and that among those extremists are some people who use violence and murder for their political ends.

I do not expect senior BBC journalists to be giving support to these people.

5.
The excuse – the excuse given in reply to my complaint was that John was just putting a challenging question. Well, firstly, it wasn’t a question. It might have had the form of a question, but it was just an assertion. It was not posed as a question, more a muttered aside. And it presupposes that Jo Cox murder could not be terrorism if the “question” put is whether that statement muddies the waters.

But also, if you’re going to ask challenging questions, why start at that point? Why not challenge the Assistant Commissioner over why the terror alert is still at the second highest level after years and years, and doesn’t that make it a bit pointless? Or challenge him on the threats that the police say that they’ve defeated – what sort of threats are we talking about: knife attacks, anthrax letters or something on the scale of 7/7? That would give the public a genuine insight into the threat level, in a way that questioning whether Jo Cox murder was terrorism would not.



The Farage agenda gets far too much of a free ride from the BBC already, with UKIP – or their proxies in the Tory Party – on the air far more often than their support however you count it would justify. But this was a particularly poor interview – unquestioning of the authoritarian agenda at the start and then then tossing in this unjustified assertion that would not have been out of place in the Daily Mail.

John Humphrys has a reputation to live up to. We should expect more of him.

Day 5364: Lines in the Air, Lines in the Sand

Monday:



I was going to review the Doctor Who story "Mummy on the Orient Express" today. I was going to make a joke about "a shambling creature trapped by its history into perpetuating a war that ought to have been long forgotten and now just murdering by-standers…"

Unfortunately, this ISN'T the plot of "Mummy on the Orient Express" but the Prime Minister's announcement to the Commons of a drone strike in Syria.

I'm very concerned that the British Prime Minister appears to have secretly ordered the de facto invasion of Syrian airspace to carry out extrajudicial execution of British citizens.


Back at the start of the long summer break, the Tories were making noises about getting into more macho posturing, with Mr Cameron claiming he would personally "wipe out the caliphate". Total nonsense.

Keen to take part in more American-led adventurism, the now-Lib Dem free Tory government wanted to extend the air force mission against Islamic State from its current remit of assisting the Iraqi government forces (legally justified by the invitation of the recognised government of Iraq) across the border into Syria (not remotely legally justified, and probably not a hope of getting the UN mandate that might make it so). The reasoning of the Defence Secretary being: "well IS don't recognise the border; it's just a line in the air".

That "line in the air" is of course the difference between International Law and a bunch of terrorists. And the British Government is saying that it wants to cross to the other side.

Just where are those lines anyway?

To be pedantic, it is true that the House of Commons has not said that British forces should not be deployed against Islamic State in Syria. But that's because it hasn't been asked.

The question two years ago was whether to attack the Syrian government (against whom IS were fighting even then – so we'd have been inadvertently intervening on IS side. Which is one of the reasons that we didn't.).

For the moment, the Government is maintaining the position that Islamic State is not a "State". (Also that it's not Islamic, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.) As such, they need to remember that that makes Syria the state that they would be invading, and that the House of Commons has very much said they are not to do.

The history of our non-involvement in the Syrian civil war is a murky one, largely because Ed Miliband tried to exaggerate his own influence by claiming to have stopped it. Actually, both Coalition and Labour put motions to the Commons that would have theoretically authorised military intervention (with caveats, including aforementioned UN mandate), but they unwittingly cancelled each other out. This however suited the mood of the country, tired of spending "blood and treasure" on pointlessly sticking our oar into situations that we only seemed to make worse.

Spectacularly, David Cameron appears to have found a way to make it worse anyway, by lobbing high ordinance into a territory from which millions are already fleeing for their lives.



And in related news, 20,000 refugees over five years is PATHETIC. Germany has already taken four times as many just this year. And George Osborne is robbing the international aid budget to pay for it.

Shameful. Utterly shameful.

PS:

Edited to add: it gets worse!

Minister in the Lords just confirmed refugee orphans and children brought in under Cameron's scheme will be deported at age 18.

— Paddy Ashdown (@paddyashdown) September 7, 2015

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 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 3330: MI5 deny cover-up of [removed for security reasons]

Friday:


Writing in this morning's Tell-lie-graph, we hear from Mr Jonathan "good" 'Eavens, the head of MFI, the British Self-Assembly Security Service, who says:

"We did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf."

Perhaps not. But we DID try to COVER IT UP.

It's, surely, UNDENIABLE that the Government DID go to Court to try to prevent the publication of the secret US documents which reveal that the treatment of British resident Mr Binyam Mohamed had been "CRUEL, INHUMAN and DEGRADING".

Nor can you DENY that the Government APPEALED against the High Court's decision to allow publication.

And it certainly looks pretty convincing that – allegedly –the Government had its lawyer try to lean on the Master of the Rolls to be a bit more, er, circumspect in his references to You Know Who.

With their fluffy foot forced, the Foreign Office have released the documents in question on their website and the crucial paragraph reads:

x. The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972. Although it is not necessary for us to categorise the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities.

So, quite clearly, the treatment of Mr Binyam was ILLEGAL in Great Britain. And it was ILLEGAL in Americaland. And we KNEW about it. And we TRIED TO STOP anyone else knowing that we knew about it.

What part of "covering up torture" have I missed here?


And yet Mr "good" 'Eavens says that a cover up is "the exact opposite of the truth". Which is, presumably, something he would know about. He says:

"The material our critics are drawing on to attack us is taken from our own records, not prised from us by some external process but willingly provided by us to the court, in the normal way"

Apart from, obviously, the whole going to court to prise the documents out of you, obviously. And:

Likewise, we co-operate willingly with the Intelligence and Security Committee so that it can fulfil its oversight role.

Ahh yes, the Intelligence and Security Committee… the Chair of the Committee, Hard Labour's Agent Kim "Philby" Howells huffed and puffed and tried to say that the published documents somehow "don't count" because they've not yet been proved in a Court of Law. Well if the CIA's OWN opinion that it was torturing someone doesn't count, I don't quite know what standard of proof will be good enough for you!

And both Mr Philby and Mr 'Eavens fall back on the old " Appeal to Fear" fallacy: Terrorism is very scary. You must let us do whatever we like because terrorism is very scary.

Mr 'Eavens opens his letter with a reminder of "…the backdrop of the current severe terrorist threat to this country" and concluded with the threat that "…our enemies will also seek to use all tools at their disposal to attack us" threatens. And Mr Philby begins his defence with talk of "Islamist suicide bombers and other murderous terrorists".

The terrorist threat is "very real" said Mr Philby at one point. Well no, actually. The WHOLE POINT of "terrorism" is that MOST of the threat is VERY IMAGINARY. The terrorists want to control MILLIONS of people by just harming (very violently) a few people; everyone else imagines that the threat might be to them personally too and react through terror. That's why it's called "terrorism".

It's basically: This thing we do is very scary. You must let us do whatever we like because thing we do is very scary.

Hang on; that sounds FAMILIAR…


The terrorist threat to Great Britain is PATHETIC. Motorists kill more people in Britain in a WEEK than al Qaeda have managed in a DECADE! SNOW, for goodness sake, SNOW has done more to paralyse London transport than the bombers could manage. They couldn't even ram-raid an airport without setting themselves on fire! Is it REALLY that the Spooks are so jolly brilliant that they've thwarted all the really dangerous attacks, or is it just remotely possible that the enemy we are facing is a bunch of poorly organised, badly financed, ill-equipped, not-terribly-bright malcontents without much of a plan or even idea of what they want to do? Basically, aren’t our enemies a bit RUBBISH?

We don't need "Special Powers" and "Section 44 Orders" to defeat this lot. We don't need the police forcing tourists to delete their holiday snaps. We don't need people being arrested for bad taste jokes on Twitter!

What we need is to show them we're BRITISH (dammit!).

The BRAVE response to the so-called "terror crisis" would be to REDUCE the powers of the police, increase freedom and say to them "look, we reject your ways of fear, we have nothing to be afraid of, and besides, your mother smells of ELDERBERRIES!"


It's about time that we stood up to these COWARDS and BULLIES – terrorists or Government, take your pick – and told them to just GET STUFFED.

.

Day 2710: The Terrorising of Mr Frown

Monday:


Politics is all about TIMING isn't it.

So, on one side of the Atlantic, the Monkey-in-Chief is soon to step down and is desperate to secure some kind of legacy (clue: it is BIGGEST LOSER EVER!)… hence the SURPRISE announcement that al Qaeda has lost the War On Terra.

Meanwhile, on THIS side of the Pond, Mr Frown is desperate NOT to be stepping down soon and so is announcing that terrorism is more terrifying than ever!

He wants to prove he's more of a MAN than Lord Blairimort; but he's really only showing what a COWARDY-CUSTARD he is.


Now I'm NOT talking about PHYSICAL bravery, facing death-defying danger and derring do… although I COULD…

Mr Frown lives in an armoured bunker with iron security gates and only leaves in a bullet-proof car surrounded by armed guards. (The lengths some people will go to to avoid the Parliamentary Labour Party!) It is just possible that this has exaggerated his already feeble connection to the state of the real world.

"I am under no illusion that today's threats are different in their scale and nature from anything we have faced before," writes Mr Frown.

So why is he trying to sell US the illusion that terrorism is worse than ever?

Funnily enough, in the olden days of the IRA, then Mr Frown would GENUINELY have been in occasional danger of being exploded. That is why he is so surrounded by layers of security.

But – as he is so keen to try and make us all believe – today's modern terrorist is looking to do damage to basically anyone at random, ideally in headline-grabbingly large numbers.

(Though their success rate since July 2005 seems to have been a bit RUBBISH, unless you count setting THEMSELVES on fire and/or persuading vulnerable psychiatric patients to have a go at blowing their own faces off – although I would just add that blowing up Giraffes is VERY BAD!)

So if that's the threat then unless he's willing to give everyone in the country their own armoured car and bodyguards (and his track record of paying for armoured cars for our soldiers on the front line kind of suggests that he ISN'T) then he's basically asking all of US to face a danger that he thinks is really, really scary.

Though, you know, I really think that the people of Great Britain – more or less, some more, some less – actually ARE willing to face up to these terrorists, to stick up for living our lives the way we want to and NOT to let ourselves be bullied by some tiny faction of demented psychopaths just because they have a perverted idea of what believing in a religion allows them to get away with.

But actually I'm NOT going to go down that road.

I am talking about POLITICAL bravery.

Yes, I know that we've already pretty much ESTABLISHED that THAT is in short supply in Mr Frown's Labour.

I mean it's obviously too much to hope that the backbenchers might hold their nerve in the face of a DETERMINED TALKING TO by Minister for Reclassifying Class-C Kebabs, Ms Jacqui Spliff.

And who can expect them to remain untroubled by the need to change their underpants after an encounter with the Sinister Minister Mr Jack Man'O Straw, Secretary of State for Justifying the Unjustifiable.

And, by the way, as justifications go "terrorism is getting ever so much more complicated these days… if the police were to find themselves facing three attacks of the scale of September 11th while there was a major European War going on, then they might find themselves overstretched!" isn't even up there with "IT'S TOO HARD!"

It's more: "IT MIGHT ONE DAY BE TOO HARD!"

Here's a suggestion – if you think it's too difficult, go and do something more your level. There are probably a few openings for Lollipop Ladies. You'd probably like the lollipop with optional SPY CAMERA.

(And while I'm on the subject, Ms Spliff keeps citing the evidence of a senior policeperson who said "it is unquestionable that this may happen"… funnily enough, though, she keeps dropping that vital qualification "MAY". In fact in a QUANTUM MECHANICAL universe it is "unquestionable" that almost ANYTHING "MAY" happen – cows MAY fall from the sky; your underpants MAY jump three feet to the left; Ms Spliff MAY say something honest… doesn't mean it will happen. Leaving out the MAY, turning that "unquestionably" into a CERTAINTY rather than just a POSSIBILITY is not just deliberately and repeatedly misrepresenting the police but also deceiving the public.)

The Government's OTHER justification is the even more feeble: "you can trust us; we won't abuse these powers."

Well, (a) obviously no one in their right mind WOULD trust them, what with the whole proven record of deceit thing (do I HAVE to mention that Middle Eastern War again? Or the broken manifesto promises? Or Cash for Coronets?) and (b) you said that LAST TIME about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and then promptly went and proved we couldn't trust you ALL OVER AGAIN by giving every jumped up little Town Hall clerk the power to spy on kids and families and quite probably lollipop ladies too.



But REAL political bravery, the bravery to do something DIFFERENT, is what is called for if Mr Frown is to save either his reputation or at least SOME of the Labour's seats at the next election.

Locking people up without telling them why does not make you BUTCH, it makes you pathetic. It's not like they won't GUESS that it's a terrorism offence after the first fourteen days. (Assuming you're not depriving them of sleep or messing with their heads by keeping the lights on and changing the clock at random.)

Other countries can manage. Somehow France and Germany and Spain – and it's not like Spain don't have any problems with terrorists – and Italy and Norway can all cope with the simple business of telling people what they're locked up for inside of THREE DAYS. Surely it's just common decency. Surely common decency is what we're supposed to be DEFENDING!

Trying to get detention without charge – or to give it its proper name: LOCKING PEOPLE UP ON NO EVIDENCE – trying to extend it to 42 days because Lord Blairimort LOST the vote to get it extended to 90 does not make you any better than he was. It just makes you THE SAME but MORE SO.

And being THE SAME but MORE SO is what got you into this situation in the first place, Mr Frown.



Today's UNBELIEVABLE coincidences…

#1: oooOOOooo scary terrorist in court!

#2: and in case the Government have upset the Muslim community by telling everyone they're all terrorists, how about twelve-and-a-half-million pounds?

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 2509: Gone West

Wednesday:


Simple Sailor or Silly Sausage?

ALMOST the most worrying thing about the case of Mr Lord Admiral West is that he is credited as a former head of the Intelligence Staff. It makes you worry for the security of our agents if "M" himself cannot stand up to a five-minute grilling from Mr Frown. I mean what are they going to do when Mr Goldfinger has them strapped to the table with the industrial laser pointed at their "handwash only" labels? Assuming Mr Frown DOESN'T have an industrial laser set up in Downing Street for this very purpose…

But what is REALLY the MOST worrying thing is that Mr Frown does not want to listen to the advice about terrorism from the very person he hired to advise him. He would rather be all SECRET STALIN and have the poor man eat his own words on live television than admit that it might be worth THINKING for a bit before doing ANOTHER stupid slash and burn of our once precious liberties.

Mr Frown says that he is looking for a "new consensus" on terror.


He cannot be looking very hard: as Liberal Democrat acting leader Mr Power Cable said:

"Yoo hoo, Mr Frown, the consensus is over here saying 'not one day longer'."

Anyway, it seems to me that the way the law is set up here is that if you think that someone is QUITE LIKELY to try to explode people then you arrest them and charge them and bring them to trial and if you can prove it convict them.

But if you are NOT SO SURE then you lock them up without charge or trial and if they are innocent – which is MORE LIKELY than in case #1 – then you seriously p… annoy them off.

What kind of a law is FAIRER to the BADDIES than the potentially innocent?

Of course the POINT of Habeas Corpus – oh yes, THAT old thing – is that NO ONE should be randomly locked up AT ALL. And we seemed to do perfectly well for many, many years with the police only able to pick someone up and hold them for not a MONTH but a DAY.

Of course, things WERE different back then – in those days we had the I.R.A. armed not with sugar and fertiliser but with semtex and aiming to explode large London landmarks backed by the oil billions of Libya (and a lot of dollars from America too). Oh, and they were QUITE GOOD at their EVIL job, and very rarely set themselves on fire instead of their targets.

Nor do I buy all of this "oh it's SOOOOOO difficult to track them down now that they can use the Internet and laptops and Xbox 360s and stuff". It is hardly like the technological advances are all ONE WAY, is it, what with us being the non-dictatorship (daddy, please check that we ARE still a non-dictatorship) that is MOST SPIED ON in all the WORLD.

(Note how Germany has put the Nazi and Stasi days behind it to become the LEAST spied on nation in the world. How did THAT happen?!)

And our government having the LARGEST DNA database of its citizens on the planet BAR NONE. (Be the envy of Damascus, Phnom Penh and SPECTRE Island; impress your friends, cow your enemies, or vice versa; free PIRANHA POOL with every million DNA subscribers!)

In fact, mobile phones and Internet laptops – which leave mucky I.P. address fingers all over their connections – should make it EASIER to track people, especially if the government isn't too fussy about observing its own data protection laws.

Besides which, the Labour have BROADENED the definition of "terrorist" so much that even having the VAGUEST idea of how to do some harm – do NOT for goodness sake Google how to start a FIRE with two TWIGS!!! – can get you locked up for "acts preparatory to explodingness".

No doubt Mr Frown REMINDED Lord "trained killer" West of this during their (possibly laser-armed) chat!

Day 2371: Security Notice

Friday:


Daddy Richard would like everyone to know that he has NOT been exploded.

The office Summer Party in Leicester Square on Thursday night was AT LEAST a score of metres away from the Haymarket car bomb, he left a good couple of hours before the bomb was supposed to go off and most importantly, it DID NOT GO OFF anyway.

So, no reason to panic!