Police kite flying?

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According to an article in the Guardian the police would quite like to less accountability if it’s all the same thanks – or as my friend on face book put it “Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards…” (well you get the idea).

It would seem that The Met commissioner has been privately lobbying the home secretary to make it harder for people to sue the police in civil actions for technical breaches (now where have we heard that before?). They’d also like to be able to charge a fee for freedom of information requests, as they take time and are a nuisance and whilst they at it police officers and other staff should have to face more costs in employment tribunals and if they offer anyone a settlement and the person has the audacity to turn it down then they should “put on risk as to costs from the time that such an offer is made.” (Presumably that would be any offer).

Having recently learnt that ACPO are responsible for producing many of the guidelines on when the police are allowed to shoot us*, that “technical breaches” part is the bit that most worries me. We could easily have a police force that interprets the law according to documents written by a private for profit company (we already have this bit) with a much reduced risk of independent civil action calling them to account. Good job we can always trust them to properly investigate themselves to make sure they followed their guidelines properly.

One has to wonder how this got leaked and how much the commissioner is just chancing his arm, but how much consideration this gets from our ConDemnable leaders will be a potentially rather worrying litmus test of their (already suspect) attitude to restoring any measure of our civil liberties. The comment from the home office on the matter also hints at what could be a concerning smoke screen for the continuing reduction in liberties – pricing accountability and freedom out of peoples reach under the auspices of cuts and deficit reduction. I think I may have to ask my local MP their view on the matter.

* I realise this is probably old news, but the amount of guidance ACPO are responsible for on this surprised me, and makes me suspect that much else of our law is interpreted by the police though the same filter. The officer on the street probably doesn’t have much choice in the matter as if they don’t follow “official” guidelines and anything at all goes wrong they risk being hung out to dry.

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Freespeech in Europe

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I'm Geert Wilders!
Over at Samizdata it’s reported that Gert Wilders is on trial for his film Fitna. A film which saw him banned from the UK despite not having broken any law and being invited here by the Lords. The BBC cover the matter briefly when you consider the precedent this trial will have on freedom of speech across Europe – as so eruditely expounded by Archbishop Cranmer (from where I’ve shamelessly stolen the image used here).

After all as has been said many many times, freedom of speech is an all or nothing affair, and even if you disagree with Mr Wilders he should still have the right to speak to be disagreed with.

I would note that the verdict is expected to come down on the 4th of November, just in time for some sort of response on the 5th maybe?

Update Catching up on reading I came across an article from Counting cats which seemed particularly apt for this post. If we can’t debate both sides of a situation then we can’t understand the situation. So if no one points out “perceived” problems with Islam where do moderate Muslims get the chance to say “actually that’s wrong”? If they do it unilaterally then that will come across as prosletising.

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Don’t eat that or well anything

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Leg Iron has for a long time been talking about how the methods use to attack smokers are applied to drinkers, over weight people and everyone else really, especially high lighting the potential affects of all this reduce salt, reduce fat ban this that and the other plans on the mental well being of anyone actually forced to comply with them. Today the Devils Knife brings news that Japan has moved beyond just encouraging people to be more healthy but are now fining companies if their employee’s don’t match a government defined waist line (seemingly irrespective of any other considerations).

Meanwhile the World Cancer Research Fund has declared that all processed meat is unfit for human consumption. Apparently we should all stop eating bacon, sausages, slamai everything as it’s so carcinogenic that people must be falling down dead in the streets like the plot of some low budget horror movie. The compulsory scare number is a 67% increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer – compared to people that ate little or no meat at all. So whilst apparently the average risk is that 1 in 76 people will get pancreatic cancer I am inclined to add this to the long list of things they want to control and note that the message associated with it is “don’t eat any processed meat”. This will of course increase the cost of eating meat for most people, and so ties into the seemingly global push towards vegetarianism that seems to beloved of the green movement. When they’re not advocating blowing people up for not doing enough to bring about global cooling.

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