Just to help confuse matters later on, Anonymong has gone all multi author. Whilst you’ll still be mainly subject to my inane window lickings, to try and lend some class and style to the old blog. I managed to persuade The Wounded Cavalier to grace this ramshackle dive with some of his fine word smithing.
Once again a significant “consultation” that no body new about. It would seem that to they’d like to give the police yet more power:
“This three-part consultation seeks your views on the areas of police powers which the government is committed to reviewing:
– the relevance of the word ‘insulting‘ in section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986
– new powers to request removal of face coverings
– new powers to impose curfews”
And as they’ve had a consultation, which ends
I would point out that the police can already ask you to remove face coverings if they genuinely believe you intend to commit an offence, so that those rioting last summer wore face coverings is already covered by existing powers – and lets face it it’s not as if you’re going to comply with a request to uncover your face if you already rioting. The new power would let them remove face coverings at any time if they felt there was “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity” – of course remember that this is the same police force that despite being told numerous times still think it’s illegal to take photographs.
Finally curfews, the police can already force people to disperse, as people who remember the rave scene at all are well aware, and they can since 2003 request a dispersal zone be designated where people won’t be allowed to gather – this apparently takes too long and has too much paper work so they’d like a new law. Of course they’re once more citing the summer looting, ignoring the option of the riot act and that there was clear criminal behaviour taking place so would the looters really have gone home because they were in a dispersal zone? What they’d like instead is:
“The aim of a general police curfew power would be to give the police an operational tool to keep members of the public off the streets in a given location, for a given period, in order to prevent or address serious disorder.”
Now that looks like it’s just begging for feature creep to me, and is if it could be used in very lazy and Stalinist ways. Though I do tend to take the view that if a law can be abused it probably will be. They say that being outside during a curfew wouldn’t be a criminal offence, so just how would they enforce it? A fine, or a going out door tax as it might be known?
So go have your say whilst you can!
Via the ever well informed Katabasis my attention has been drawn to the rather worrying seizure of computers owned by UK climate sceptic bloggers. Apparently at the behest of the U.S. Department of Justice as other climate bloggers have received nasty grams (cache) from our friends across the pond. Last I checked the climategate e-mails where mainly (allegedly) pilfered from UK sources, and even ignoring that the emails are widely available so the US Department of Justice could just download their own copy. All in all a quite worrying development, state funded “scientific” research into climate change wasn’t a matter of national security last I checked. Rather generally the scientific method in the past has been to share research far and wide for verification and the like, so why are the powers that be on both sides of the pond going for climate bloggers?
I can’t help but suspect there may be more to this than meets the eye.
Do spread the word, and don’t forget to keep off site backups.
Updates: JoNova observes:
Now, more than ever, all the people that value their freedom need to stick together. Whistleblowers and radio personalities need blogger back up, big bloggers need small bloggers, every blogger needs commenter and emailer support, with letters to editors and friends. Every link in the chain helps. The establishment need to know that we will not be intimidated, there are many of us, and the more they push, the more we will tell the world.
and in the comments there:
They took away a DSL router? That would only be done by “experts” to frustrate access to the Internet.
And Watts Up With That? have been in contact with Roger (Tallbloke) and he tells me that he is not a suspect, and that they’ll clone his hard drives and return the computers to him.
Which is good news, and hopefully they’ll return everything quickly and undamaged (which doesn’t always happen) – this still seems really rather odd.
For the benefit of what I’m sure are the scant few of you that don’t already read his Grace, may I bring your attention to his latest missive. The text of the speech given by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks at The Pontifical Gregorian University, it’s not the shortest thing you’ll read but it’s well worth the time. The question addressed (paraphrased somewhat in my title) is that of “Has Europe Lost its Soul?”
For those of you still reading this rather than going over to His Grace to read the text already allow me to give you a slight taster:
“As the political leaders of Europe come together to try to save the euro, and with it the very project of European Union, I believe the time has come for religious leaders to do likewise, and I want to explain why.
What I hope to show in this lecture, is first, the religious roots of the market economy and of democratic capitalism. They were produced by a culture saturated in the values of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, and market economics was originally intended to advance those values.
Second, the market never reaches stable equilibrium. Instead the market itself tends to undermine the very values that gave rise to it in the first place through the process of “creative destruction.”
Third, the future health of Europe, politically, economically and culturally, has a spiritual dimension. Lose that and we will lose much else besides. To paraphrase a famous Christian text: what will it profit Europe if it gains the whole world yet loses its soul? Europe is in danger of losing its soul.“
Another November the 5th gone and another “quiet” walk around London with the indomitable Old Holborn, Olly Cromwell, Katabasis and others whose presence has been erased by alcohol (remind me if you want) – which was an utter blast. As has become our want we met in the pleasing environs of Chandos to exchange niceties, don costumes and imbibe a bracing drink before braving the autumnal air. Our dapper and well presented crew headed off down Whitehall, pausing to admire the security in place at that bastion of democracy that is Downing street. Setting the theme for the day they didn’t seem pleased to see us, undeterred we continued unto the very doors of the palace of Westminster where some terribly nice people told us that as the politicans don’t work on a Saturday it’d cost us 15 quid a head to get in:
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At a lose end today? Why not toddle along to a nice little pub (Chandos) just off Trafalgar square to go for a bracing walk around Westminster, with Old Holborn and a bunch of like minded bloggers, libertarians and other ne’er do wells that are concerned with the way civil liberties are being eroded in this country and Governmental power is being given up to the poorly democratic EU.
Hopefully see you there, Guy Fawkes outfit strongly encouraged :)
Full report later, once I’m back and sober.
Just in case you’ve not already seen the excellent thought about the recent riots by The Snowolf you really should go and read it.
Having dragged myself away from both work and the Tour for a little bit, I discover that there’s been a bit happening this last week.
The big story as far as the papers were concerned seems to have been the NotW getting caught out doing the same sort of stuff the rest of them all do. Though it’d seem that New International really aren’t the worst of them that prize goes to Trinity Mirror, but they of course aren’t run by the “evil” Murdochs. So there are fewer calls for the government to stamp on them, which rather ignores that much like Tesco and other “evil” companies they make money because people buy what they’re selling. Don’t want a Tesco to stay open never shop there stick to your local shops even when it’s less convenient, don’t want Murdoch don’t buy any of his product not just NotW, but anything published by Harper Collins and no films produced by 20th Century Fox either or any of his other brands – oh and write to the firms that advertise with them and then boycott them as well. Can’t do that then I guess they’re probably not that evil really.*
Whilst many are clamouring for the demise of the main stream press (or at least Murdoch’s bits of it) and it has in many cases failed us – I wonder what might replace it as we need something to tell us what’s going on in the world (and provide that vital coverage of the Tour). I’m not sure we’re quite ready for the complete take over by the citizen journalist – at least till we have much better aggregators. Blogs are excellent for opinion (and in the case of this blog recycling other peoples opinions), but so far at least they don’t provide the mix of coverage possible by the mainstream press. None of which is to say they haven’t picked up and broken important stories, and discovered things the mainstream press hasn’t – just that at the moment the value seems to be more in picking up and high lighting stories the established media for one reason or another would rather not touch.
Having said that I’m not sure that the internet is ready to take over from the mainstream press, I think that maybe the powers that be think we’ve made enough of an inroad already. For on the back of this “scandal” which it seems likely that every journalist and politician was well aware of but hoped we’d not notice our glorious leader wants more control of the press. Now come people might say the press needs taming, but do you really want our politicians having any control over one of the more effective mechanisms by which they’re kept to account? Do you think the expenses scandal would have been reported if the MPs had over sight of the press? It’s not working so well in Hungary, at least not as far as the opposition press are concerned. Lets also think how such press responsibility legislation might affect us humble bloggers. Obviously you’d have to have some body with which “the press” was registered, either on a publication level or maybe down to an individual level. Want to be a reporter register with the ministry of truth. This creates a bar for anyone wanting to start a new paper or even become a reporter, and I doubt that a registered press would touch a story from a non-accredited reporter. Beyond that there would then be a legal divide between the citizen journalist (blogger) and the “real” press – would unregistered reporting become an offence or merely a slur to discredit unwelcome stories from the internet? If the mainstream media start supporting more powerful regulation of the press by the state then I’d say watch out for it being used to suppress reporting by anyone not in the club.
* I personally don’t think there are actually that many evil companies and if you actually avoided dealing with all of the ones that are apparently widely considered evil and everything they had shares in or who advertised with them etc. Well you’d pretty soon not be able to use any large company, and probably very few small local ones. Just how far does the saint of “evil” extend?
Just because I think they’re terribly worth reading please let me point you towards the relatively new, under this name:
Traumaville Gazette
Their past blog was excellent, and now they’re dipping their toes into the morass of political blogging, it should be fun.
I feel like I’ve passed some bloggers rite of passage as after leaving what i thought was a light hearted comment over at Captain Ranty’s I was roundly taken to task, and both myself and my humble witterings dismissed as as a young stripling of a Marxist globalist “trying to defend from a moral standpoint themselves living an immoral existence”. This as you can probably tell from my new “More vanity” section rather amused me
Now being an incorrigible sort, but also rather careful of my manners, I just had to reply to determine what insult I’d caused – and to correct what I felt where a few misunderstandings. I’d kind of decided to avoid doing the typical blog post of “ooh look someone said something nasty about me” and leave it there (after all others do it so much better than me), but then well there was the reply. I still don’t know what insult I caused as very little of my comment was addressed instead I seem to have hit a nerve in defending women’s right to dress as they like and the concept of the Slut Walk. So as Harbinger doesn’t want to continue the debate further and pointed out we’d rather wandered from our hosts topic of conversation I can but reply to him here. In a rather less light hearted tone than I’d initially planned.
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