Archive for Police State

Anti-terrorism police try to intimidate 12 year old youth club protest organiser

A 12 year old boy has been pulled out of class and interviewed by the police for organising a protest about the closure of his youth club outside David Cameron’s constituency office.

David Cameron

These kids is disrespectin’ me init?

The police told the boy that anti-terrorism police were investigating him and that he would be held responsible and arrested if there was any trouble at the protest. They also told him that anti-terrorism police would be watching his posts on Facebook and tried to talk him out of holding the protest.

The protest went ahead on Friday with 13 people and six police officers.

Orwellian plans to allow police to restrict suspected potential sex offenders

The British government is giving the police the power to apply for an order restricting the freedom of anyone they suspect of being a potential sex offender.Ministry of Truth

The new powers will allow magistrates to grant the police a sexual risk order to prevent someone from contacting children or vulnerable people, travelling abroad, using the internet, etc. based on nothing but a suspicion of their potential to be a sex offender.  The subject of a sexual risk order doesn’t need to be convicted to have the order made against them and the criteria for granting the order are lower than existing sexual harm orders.

Sex offenders obviously need to be tracked down and dealt with but if there isn’t enough evidence to convict someone of sex offences then they shouldn’t have one of these orders made against them.  Restricting someone’s freedoms because the police have a suspicion that they have the potential to commit sex offences is something that could have been lifted from Orwell’s 1984.

We all have something to hide and we all have something to fear

Following revelations that GCHQ has been obtaining covert intelligence data from the US National Security Agency (NSA) to circumvent legal restrictions on their activities, William Hague has moved to reassure us that law abiding citizens have “nothing to fear”.

A welcome reassurance from Comrade Hague.  I can’t help but think that he’s not the first politician to use that phrase though.  Which other prolific collectors and keepers of intelligence about their citizens said much the same thing?

The East German secret police, known as the Stasi, used extensive surveillance of citizens to find their victims who had nothing to fear

The Nazis used their comprehensive records and ID cards to target Jews, disabled people and any other group that had nothing to fear

The Khmer Rouge regime’s secret police, Santebal, murdered 20,000 Cambodians who had nothing to fear

The Romanian secret police, the Securitate, was one of the world’s most brutal secret police and was responsible for the persecution and murder of millions of people who had nothing to fear

If you have nothing to hide then you haven’t been living your life properly.  The state needs to know the bare minimum about its citizens to be able to provide essential services and anything else they want to know they can ask for so you can tell them to bugger off.

If you trust the current government not to abuse its ability to spy on its citizens (although god knows why you would) then how do you know you will trust the next government?  Or the one after that?  It wasn’t that long ago that the British government tried to give itself the power to lock up any citizen for three months without charge on suspicion of terrorism, the legal definition of which is so loose as to allow a lawful protest to be classed as an act of terrorism.

Wee Willy Vague can say what he like but we all have something to hide and we all have something to fear.

How you can help to get cabinet devolution minutes released

The SNP have asked the British government for the minutes of the 1997 cabinet meeting on devolution in which it was decided that the Scots and Welsh would be allowed self government whilst England would not.

This important document has been requested a number of times under the Freedom of Information Act and blocked every time.  The Information Commissioner has ruled that release of the minutes is in the public interest and ordered their release but they were blocked by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve.

1997 Cabinet

What are these traitors so desperate to hide?

Vetoing FOI requests requires the unanimous agreement of the cabinet.  When Jack Straw and Dominic Grieve vetoed their release in 2009 and 2012, these people conspired to keep the minutes secret:

Jack Straw Dominic Grieve
The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP The Rt Hon. David Cameron MP
The Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP The Rt Hon. Nick Clegg MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Mandelson PC The Rt Hon. William Hague MP
The Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP The Rt Hon. George Osborne MP
The Rt Hon David Miliband MP The Rt Hon. Kenneth Clarke QC MP
The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP The Rt Hon. Theresa May MP
The Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP The Rt Hon. Dr Liam Fox MP
The Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP The Rt Hon. Philip Hammond MP
The Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP The Rt Hon. Dr Vince Cable MP
The Rt Hon John Denham MP The Rt Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP
The Rt Hon Ed Balls MP The Rt Hon. Chris Huhne MP
The Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP The Rt Hon. Edward Davey MP
The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP The Rt Hon. Andrew Lansley CBE MP
The Rt Hon Shaun Woodward MP The Rt Hon. Michael Gove MP
The Rt Hon The Baroness Royall of Blaisdon PC The Rt Hon. Eric Pickles MP
The Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP The Rt Hon. Philip Hammond MP
The Rt Hon Jim Murphy MP The Rt Hon. Justine Greening MP
The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP The Rt Hon. Caroline Spelman MP
The Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP The Rt Hon. Andrew Mitchell MP
The Rt Hon Peter Hain MP The Rt Hon. Owen Paterson MP
The Rt Hon Bob Ainsworth MP The Rt Hon. Danny Alexander MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Adonis MP The Rt Hon. Michael Moore MP
The Rt Hon Ben Bradshaw MP The Rt Hon. Cheryl Gillan MP
The Rt Hon Nick Brown MP The Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Malloch-Brown KCMG PC The Rt Hon. David Laws MP
The Rt Hon John Healey MP The Rt Hon. Danny Alexander MP
The Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP The Rt Hon. The Lord Strathclyde PC
The Rt Hon The Lord Drayson PC The Rt Hon. The Baroness Warsi PC
The Rt Hon Jim Knight MP The Rt Hon. Francis Maude MP
The Rt Hon The Baroness Scotland of Asthal PC QC The Rt Hon. Oliver Letwin MP
The Rt Hon Dawn Primarolo MP The Rt Hon. David Willetts MP
The Rt Hon Rosie Winterton MP The Rt Hon. Sir George Young Bt MP
The Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP The Rt Hon. Patrick McLoughlin MP
The Rt Hon. Dominic Grieve QC MP

The minutes are really of more interest to the English than the Scots as they got what they wanted and we got shafted so we shouldn’t be leaving it to the Scots to get these minutes into the public domain.  If every English person interested in seeing what decisions were made at the cabinet meeting that have resulted in over 15 years of institutional discrimination against the English made a Freedom of Information request for the minute, it would be extremely damaging to the British government if they tried to block their release to hundreds or thousands of people.

If you want to help force the release of these minutes, you need to send an FOI request for them to foi.team@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk.  My request is as follows:

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, I am requesting a copy of the minutes of the 1997 Cabinet meetings on devolution. I am also requesting a copy of the Terms of Reference for the cabinet committee headed by Lord Irvine that the minutes relate to and any legal or departmental advice provided to the cabinet in relation to these meetings.

Update:
Kev has started an e-Petition on the British government’s website.

See also:

Social Services confiscate EDL supporter’s children for thoughcrime

A court has ruled that social services can remove three children from their mother and her unborn child when it is born because they find her views unacceptable.

1984 thinkpol posterThe woman is a former supporter of the English Defence League and is now believed to be a member of a splinter group called North West Infidels.  She has convictions for violence and is banned from owning dogs after setting a pitbull on a former partner.  Interestingly, though, it isn’t this past history of violence (none of which have involved children) that led social services to take her children off her but her views on Islam and immigration.

According to the Express, social services are concerned that her children will become “radicalised with EDL views” and a judge has agreed, on that basis, to permanently remove her three children from her care and to have her unborn child taken away and put up for adoption as soon as it is born.

The social worker report says:

Toni clearly needs to break away from the inappropriate friendships she has through either the EDL or break-off group in order that she can model and display appropriate positive relationships to the baby as he/she grows and develops.

Toni has been a prominent member of the EDL. They claim they are a peaceful group, however, they have strong associations with violence and racism.

This makes me particularly angry.  While there are undoubtedly racists in the EDL, the organisation itself is not racist.  This woman may be racist but that is not a good enough reason to take her children off her.  The association of violence with the EDL is the product of a compliant media and vested political interests (many senior politicians on the left and the right are members of UAF which is a front for the SWP) that refuse to truthfully report the cause of most violence at EDL marches: the left wing extremists of Unite Against Fascism and the Socialist Workers Party.  It’s bad enough that this dishonesty results in the far left getting away with some quite vicious attacks on EDL protesters but it’s something else when it means a woman loses her children.

Who this woman chooses to associate with (as long as they’re not people who would put children in danger) and whatever her views on immigration and Islam are is not a good enough reason to take her children off her.  Freedom of association and freedom of expression are human rights.  Taking this woman’s children off her for associating with the “wrong” people and having the “wrong” views is a breach of her human rights.

The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed—would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
– 1984, George Orwell

Bin and recycling fines to go … probably

Good news!  The ConDems have done something sensible at last and announced their intention to remove the powers of local councils in England to fine people for not complying with their recycling and bin collection rules.

Naturally Labour and Greenpeace are up in arms and want councils to be allowed to carry on handing out unconstitutional summary justice to people who put cardboard in with their paper or put their bins out the night before their collection day.

The British government have apparently uncovered examples of illegal practices by some local authorities such as forcing residents to buy bin bags off them and charging for second bin collections when they’ve been missed the first time round.

Of course, there’s still time for the ConDems to cave in to the environmentalists but perhaps on something this trivial they might actually stick to their word.

ONS telling Census staff they’re not part of the government

We’ve just had the census police at the door as we hadn’t returned our form.  She had already been forewarned about my opinion of the census by the next door neighbour who happens to be her sister. 🙂

As it happens, the census has been filled out and sealed in the envelope already but it just hadn’t been posted.  She’ll be back soon though I expect.

I carefully followed the instructions on the front of the census form and complied with them to the letter.  The instructions told me that I must participate, that I must not provide false information and that I should write in black or blue ink in capitals with one letter in each box (this is so Lockhead Martin, the contractors who have been paid millions up front to run the census, can read them cheaply by computer).  I participated and I didn’t provide false information as instructed.  As should doesn’t mean must, I chose to scrawl my answers across the boxes provided.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a red pen or crayon to write with.

The census asked for the names of my children but didn’t specify that it had to be the name on their birth certificates so I gave their nicknames and left the surnames blank for security reasons.  I declined the opportunity to tell them who my employer was as I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act and they already know who I work for from HMRC’s records (HMRC is a government department).  I didn’t tell them how many bedrooms I have in my house because the Land Registry (a government department) already know.  Similarly, I didn’t answer the question about whether we have passports because the Identity & Passport Office (another government department) already knows.  I did helpfully point out to them where they could find the information.

I’ve checked the Census Act 1920 and it says that I have to answer the questions, nowhere does it say how I have to answer the questions other than truthfully.  As far as I’m concerned “Ask the Land Registry” is a truthful answer to the question how many bedrooms does my house have.

Anyway, the census person will no doubt be back in a few days to tell me that I haven’t filled it out properly and have to do it again.

Interestingly, when we were talking about what I’d written on the census, she told me that the government don’t get the census, the ONS do.  When I pointed out the ONS is part of the British government, she said she had been told that it wasn’t part of the government.  I pointed out that the website for ONS is ons.gov.uk.  “Oh yeah,” she said.

Naughty ONS, they’re even lying to their own staff!

Looking for concensus

Very shortly the 2011 Census forms will drop through my letterbox and I’m in a bit of a quandry.

I want to take the opportunity to define myself as English now that the census form finally deigns to ask people if they are English after decades of recording other ethnicities and nationalities.  I also fancy putting something daft in religion just to mess up the statistics.  But I don’t like the idea of the state compiling huge databases of personal information about people, especially me.

I fully understand the justifications for recording census information and on the whole they are perfectly reasonable and genuine.  How can local budgets be set and services prioritised if demographics aren’t known?  But it comes down to a question of trust: do you trust this government with the information and do you trust future governments with the information?  I don’t trust the current British government with all my personal details and I certainly can’t trust a future government because I don’t know who’s going to be in it or what they’re going to be like.

Some of the questions in the census go far beyond the statistical information required to provide services.  Why does the state need to know my religious beliefs?  Why does the state need to know what nationality I consider myself to be?  Why does the state need to know how many bathrooms I have in my house?  The state knows I am married because I was required to obtain the state’s permission to do so and the state knows I am still married because I would have required the state’s permission to dissolve it.  The state knows all about my education because the state controls the education system.  The state knows my ethnic background because the state required my parents to register my birth just like it did of their parents and their parents before them.  The state knows what rooms I have in my house because the state required a plan of my home before it granted permission for it to be built.

The British government already has all this information about me, my wife, my kids and my home.  They may not have it all in one place but they have it already.  So why should I fill in a census form just to give it all to them again in a handy single source of information?

So I am undecided what to do with this year’s census.  Shall I ignore it and risk a fine (a £1,000 fine and criminal conviction is the punishment for not informing the state of your personal information)?  Shall I fill in the bits I want to answer and leave out the bits I don’t (again risking a fine and criminal conviction)?  Or should I provide false information (risking a fine once again)?  I object very strongly to the idea that the state has a right to my personal information and to demand it from me at will with menaces.  I object equally as strongly to the idea that the British government intends to hand over the personal information they are demanding from me with menaces to the EU.

Update: I wrote this post this morning but forgot to publish it.  In the meantime I was sent a link to this article – White and English but not white-English: how to deal with the discriminatory Census for England and Wales – which you should read.  The 2011 census allows people to identify themselves as Black-British or Asian-British but not Black-English or Asian-English.  According to the 2011 census you can only be ethnically English if you’re white but you can be Black or Asian and ethnically British.  In other words, the questions on ethnicity and identity are loaded to ensure they get the “right” answer.

Domestic Violence and the presumption of guilt

This week West Mercia Police started a trial of new powers to allow them to temporarily ban domestic violence suspects from their homes.

On the face of it this seems perfectly acceptable – thousands of men and women have their lives destroyed by domestic violence and the consequences of their abuse stay with them for the rest of their lives – but try and detach yourself from the emotion of it and think about it again.

Real men don't hit womenThe powers are for the police to ban suspects from their homes.  Suspects, not people who have been proven to be guilty of domestic abuse.  The powers are intended to be used where there is (or is thought to be) insufficient evidence to secure a conviction.  So not only are the powers to be used against people who haven’t been found guilty of committing a crime but they are to be used when there is a lack of evidence that any crime has been committed.

The constitution says that you can’t deprive someone of their liberty or property unless they’ve been convicted of a crime.  The constitution is the law.  For the police to require someone to forfeit their home – even temporarily – without the lawful judgement of the courts and before a jury if requested, is unconstitutional and illegal.  To punish someone accused of a crime but not tried or convicted of it is unconstitutional and illegal.

Something clearly needs to be done to help people in abusive relationships escape from their abusers.  It’s a hard thing to do – the victims are invariably broken down mentally and bullied into thinking they can’t or shouldn’t escape the abuse.  You can’t pass a law to make victims of domestic abuse want to or feel able to escape their abuser but a big part of the problem is that there isn’t enough support for the victims if they do pluck up the courage to try and escape and it is this that has to be fixed.

Someone who has been subjected to domestic abuse is already in a fragile state without the soul destroying prospect of ending up in a hostel full of people with god knows what personal problems or a poky little flat with a couple of kids.  The onus is on the victim to go to court and protect themselves, relying on someone who is probably scared to go out in public on their own to face their abuser in court and accuse them in person. ake it easier for people to get away from their abusers and make the temporary accommodation better.  Don’t force victims to face their abusers and make the punishment fit the crime when they’re convicted.  This is what needs changing, not giving the police permission to break the law and doing away with the presumption of innocence that has underpinned English law for centuries.

EDL protest marred by UAF violence

The English Defence League (EDL) held a “static protest” in Bradford yesterday which was typically marred by violence.

The original plan was for the EDL to hold a march through Bradford but the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, Sir Norman Bettison, successfully got the Home Secretary, Theresa May, to ban any protest marches in Bradford this weekend so they held a “static protest” instead.

UAF Leader arrested for conspiracy to organise violent disorder

UAF Leader arrested for conspiracy to organise violent disorder in March 2010

But wherever the EDL go, of course, the extreme left wing fascist group, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) follow to wreak havoc.  The order to ban the EDL from marching no doubt came from her boss, David “Cast Iron” Cameron who is a supporter of the UAF fascists (the list of MPs supporting the UAF was removed after it was splashed all over the papers but nothing ever disappears forever on the internet).

Yesterday’s EDL protest was met with opposition from both the UAF fascists and The Muslim Community.  The two factions – the EDL and the UAF/Muslim Community – were supposed to have been kept at a safe distance from each other but the UAF/Muslim Community protesters mysteriously made it to within a few yards of the EDL protesters.  The UAF/Muslim Community gathering place was half a mile away from where the EDL were allowed to protest.

There is a lot about yesterday’s protest that doesn’t add up.  Why were the UAF thugs and Muslim Community allowed to get so close to the fenced in EDL protesters?  If the EDL were the trouble makers, why did the UAF and the Muslim Community have to be stopped from getting at the EDL protest by a physical blockade of police vans and a line of mounted police?  Why have the police told the media that EDL protesters threw a smoke bomb at the UAF/Muslim Community protesters when this video clearly shows the trail of smoke from the smoke bomb being thrown from the UAF/Muslim Community protesters at the EDL protesters?

The media’s coverage of the protests is equally suspect.  Sky News provided live coverage which apparently showed the smoke bomb being thrown at the EDL protesters but they continued to report it as being thrown by the EDL.  And despite there being two separate protests yards away from each other – the EDL and the UAF/Muslim Community – the rotating banner said “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”, implying that the EDL were the only ones kicking off when clearly they weren’t.  Another strapline was “Smoke bombs, bottles & stones thrown during English Defence League demonstration” – but who threw what?  It was both sides but the strapline revolving underneath says “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”.  Another said “One EDL supporter taken to hospital after injuring his leg” – how did he injure it?  Was it an accident or was he hit by a brick or a bottle?  There’s no interest from Sky, it’s all part of the “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”.  What about the EDL supporter with cuts on the back of his head from what looks like a bottle injury?  How was he injured?  Again, no interest, it’s part of the “English Defence League Demonstration in Bradford”.

One of the arguments used by the UAF thugs and The Muslim Community as an excuse to ban the EDL march and whip up anti-EDL hatred in Bradford was that the EDL protest might see a return to the Bradford of 2001 when The Muslim Community and non-muslims rioted after David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, banned a National Front march but allowed a march by the extremist left wing Anti-Nazi League (now merged in the extremist left wing UAF) to go ahead.  Sound familiar?  The Muslim Community dictates the agenda in Bradford because the authorities can no longer control them.

The EDL have a right to protest, yes, but we must not allow them to provoke us into violence.
Ratna Lachman, Bradford Women’s Peace Project

I’m surely not the only person who sees something wrong with this comment?  If The Muslim Community turns to violence – which they did yesterday and have done at every EDL protest – then it’s because they’ve been provoked into violence.  How has this been allowed to happen?  Why have the Brits allowed extremism in The Muslim Community in Bradford to reach such epidemic proportions that a protest march by people opposing Islamic extremism could “provoke” them into violence?

We thank people for their patience and support so far and we hope to have protesters removed from the city as soon as possible.
West Yorkshire Police “spokesman”

Again, I’m sure I’m not the only person to see something wrong with this comment either.  It is the job of the police to keep the peace and enforce compliance with the law, not to run people out of town like a wild west sheriff.  The EDL have a right to free assembly and peaceful protest.  They also have a right not to be harassed or attacked and the police have an obligation to protect those rights.  But instead, the objective of West Yorkshire Police was evidently to deny them their rights and to remove them from Bradford as soon as they could in case the EDL’s presence in the city provoked The Muslim Community into violence.

So what now for the EDL?  Almost a year ago I wrote about the EDL following their march in Manchester and again in April this year following a protest in Dudley.  At both protests the EDL were portrayed as the trouble makers with little mention of the UAF thugs despite the ratio of arrests to protesters being 1 in 250 for UAF and only 1 in 1,333 for the EDL – 3 arrests from 4,000 EDL protesters and 6 arrests from 1,500 UAF thugs.

I said that I had no interest in ethnic nationalism and I still don’t but I wonder if perhaps I’ve misunderstood the EDL?  Their website says they’re only interested in opposing Islamic extremism and the creeping influence of Sharia and not race so maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt?  Some of their members are clearly more interested in white supremecism than opposing Islamic extremism but then that’s the same of any organisation that is even vaguely involved in any type of nationalism.  Even the Campaign for an English Parliament – a group that is extremely defensive of its non-partisan civic nationalism – has had problems with members or supporters who have developed an unhealthy obsession with race politics (we’ve rooted them all out to the best of my knowledge) and the English Democrats have some very unsavoury characters in their ranks despite being a primarily civic nationalist party.  The EDL have no control over who chooses to support them and the beliefs those people hold and it’s unreasonable to expect them to filter out the undesirables from the thousands of people that turn up to their protests.

The problem the EDL have is that they are a porous organisation.  They have to be to attract the kind of support they get at their protests.  The downside of this is that they are open to infiltration from all sides.  They have obviously been infiltrated by the likes of the National Front, the BNP and other ethnic nationalists and it is inconceivable that the police and security services haven’t already got people in the EDL chain of command.  The trouble that both lots of infiltrators cause at protests is bringing the day the EDL is proscribed closer.  One of their protests has been banned now, that sets a precedent for suppressing them.  Banning one of their marches establishes them as “wrong”, the next step will be to ban them from having any sort of protest and then to ban the group altogether.  The violence at protests will be cited as justification for banning them and the cost to the taxpayer of policing their protests will be used to convince the general public that banning the EDL is a good thing.  The UAF fascists and The Muslim Community will be exempt from the bans despite them being the cause of most of the trouble at EDL protests because they’re not “wrong”.

The media has already been mobilised against the EDL – a collective blind eye is turned to the UAF fascists and The Muslim Community whilst the violence and thuggery perpetrated by the extreme left is blamed on the EDL.  Despite being apolitical, the EDL are described as “far right” by politicians and the media, following the “right is wrong” mantra that the left have managed to implant into the collective psyche.  The left have managed to convince most of the population that the left wing nationalist socialist BNP are “far right” whilst the forces of anti-fascism are exclusively left wing which of course makes right wing bad and left wing good.  The truth is that the BNP are a left wing party, fascism is a centrist ideology incorporating both left and right wing ideologies and there are as many – if not more – anti-fascists on the right as there are on the left.  Opposing radical Islam and unfettered immigration does not make you a fascist, no matter what the vicious thugs in UAF and failed communists in the Labour Party say.

England is not Britain

England is not Britain

Not only are the EDL not “far right” but they are not English nationalists either.  English nationalists know the difference between England and Britain.  Glaswegian muslims are not English nationalists and they don’t ask “Why are they against the United Kingdom?”  England is not Britain and the English Defence League is not English.

So, back to my question a few paragraphs up: should we give the EDL the benefit of the doubt?  I am inclined to believe that the core few people that started the EDL and probably the majority of their supporters are not ethnic nationalists.  I agree that radical Islam has to be dealt with and I agree that Sharia is a cancer that needs to be excised and most people will agree with the EDL’s stated objectives and raison d’être.  What the English people need is a leader – someone in tune with English public feeling and clever enough to take on both the media and the British establishment.  The EDL and its leader, Tommy Robinson, have done a lot in a short amount of time but they aren’t going to lead an English revolution because the EDL is a tainted brand and the danger is that the EDL will end up tainting English nationalism as a whole through guilt by association, just as we are starting to win the war against Englishness.

I certainly won’t be supporting the EDL for the simple fact that they are British nationalists and I am an English nationalist and because I have no desire to get my head caved in by some psycho communist or a member of The Muslim Community for being on the “wrong” side of the police line.  That said, I would still be interested in observing an EDL protest first hand and if anyone from the EDL wants to arrange that, feel free to get in touch.

Recommended reading on the EDL and UAF:
Nourishing Obscurity
The Anger of a Quiet Man

The English Defence League’s … robust … report on yesterday’s protest is here.

ConDem Campaign for Absolute Power

So one of the first acts of our new EU regional administrators is to introduce fixed term parliaments.

I support fixed term parliaments – I even have a button for the campaign for fixed term parliaments in the sidebar of this blog – but I can’t bring myself to support the ConDem coalition’s proposal.

There is nothing at all wrong with a 5 year fixed term parliament and I wholeheartedly agree with it.  Stopping the British Prime Minister of the day from calling an election when it is politically expedient rather than when it is good for the country is a fantastic idea.

What is wrong, though, is the requirement for 55% of British MPs to pass a vote of no confidence to bring about a dissolution of parliament and subsequent election.  To be honest, in a fixed term parliament, the current rule of 50% +1 MP to pass a vote of no confidence would no longer be acceptable.  Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas so the party in power should have no say in a vote of no confidence.  If they have the support of parliament then they should be able to survive a vote of no confidence.

I would prefer to see a 5 year fixed term parliament with a requirement for 75% of opposition MPs required to force a dissolution of parliament.  It needs to be a high figure to prevent spurious attempt to depose the party in power but not so high that the opposition has to be virtually unanimous in their opposition of the ruling party making it almost impossible to depose them.

This 55% rule will keep ConDem coalition in power for as long as they want it and certainly most parties that form a government through an outright majority.  The extra 5% is 4 MPs – hardly an insurmountable target.

Cameron’s campaign for absolute power has to be stopped.

Letter on Jack Straw’s veto of 1997 devolution meeting minutes

On 10th December I sent a letter to my MP, David Wright, about the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, vetoing the release of minutes of a 1997 cabinet meeting on devolution via WriteToThem.com.  He didn’t reply but he’s just agreed on Twitter to reply to questions I’ve asked him on Twitter and to my letter so here it is and I’ll post his reply when he replies.

Dear David,

The British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, has vetoed the release of minutes of the 1997 cabinet meeting on devolution to Scotland, Wales and “the English Regions”.

This is only the second time that a ruling by the Information Commissioner to release information has been vetoed by the Home Secretary.

What was said in a meeting about devolution that was so dangerous that it can’t be made public? What deals were done to break up England and preserve the dominance of Scottish politicians?

I think we all need to know just how much of the current discrimination and Britification of England goes back to shady deals done in that cabinet meeting and what the ultimate objective is. Is the status quo of a neutered England in a Scottish-dominated union all that was intended or was the complete abolition of England ordained in 1997? The cabinet meeting was about long term policy for the union, I think we have a right to know exactly what the British have planned for us. I urge you to speak to your Home Secretary and ask him to rethink his decision to keep this information secret.

Stuart

I have to say that while I don’t rate him as a politician, he does make more of an effort on Twitter than most.

Let Islam4UK march in Wooton Bassett

British Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has said that he will use the Public Order Act to ban the Islam4UK protest in Wooton Bassett planned by Anjem Choudary.  He said “The idea that anyone would stage this kind of demonstration in Wootton Bassett fills me with revulsion”.

Well yes, I’m sure it fills most people with revulsion but there’s this quaint concept in England called freedom of speech and even people like Anjem Choudary are entitled to it.

Let Choudary turn up with his mates and exercise their right to protest at our soldiers, just as long as everyone else who wants to stage a “counter protest” is allowed to exercise their right to protest at Choudary and his Islam4UK mates.  I’m sure the BNP and EDL will be there, not to mention the families of soldiers and ordinary members of the public who will want to turn up and support our troops.  The British government lets the violent fascists from Unite Against Fascism start riots at EDL protests so it’s only fair.

Choudary wants 500 muslim protesters carrying empty coffins in Wooton Bassett so the police won’t even have to bring their own body bags.

Fuck you Jack Straw

Female prisoners are very different to male prisoners, and while there is a consensus that we need to be tougher on male offenders there is also a broad consensus that where possible we should punish and reform females in the community and not in prisons.

Jack Straw

What the fucking fuck?  No, seriously, what in the name of all that is fucking holy is that fucking idiot saying?  Women shouldn’t go to prison but men should, just because they’re women?  Unbe-fucking-lievable.

Is it a coincidence that the Equality Bill was passed today making discrimination against white men legal?  Is it bollocks.  Why must we endure this constant fucking battle just to be treated fairly?  Why do these people think it’s ok to treat white men like shit?

Well I’ve got a message for you Jack Straw you fucking fascist.  Fuck you.  Fuck your government and fuck your fucking illiberal, fascist fucking agenda.  I swear to god, if I ever see you in the street I’ll fucking spit on your shoes you fucking twisted, fascist bastard and if that’s all you get you’ll be fucking lucky.  There’s a special lampost reserved just for you outside parliament because come the revolution comrade, you will be the first one swinging.

Is it cos I is white?

The Demon Headmaster Jack Straw has backed down on trying to remove the defence of freedom of speech from a new law making inciting homophobic hatred a criminal offence.

The Lords prevented the Ministry of Injustice from removing the right to freedom of speech four times before Jack Straw finally gave up.

This new law – along with the laws against inciting racial hatred – are wrong and unnecessary.  The divide the population into two – those who are automatically victims and must have special protection and the rest of the population who are automatically pigeon-holed as racists/homophobes/miscellaneous -ists/-phobes and have to prove their innocence if they are accused of offending one of the afore-mentioned “victims” because of their race/colour/sexuality.

Crimes such as murder and assault are instinctively wrong, it’s something built in as a species.  But crimes such as homophobia or racism are crimes of conscience, the imposition of a set of morals on the whole population with serious penalties for those that don’t live their lives according to the morals of others.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with homophobia or racism or other types of discrimination but I don’t think that we as a society have a right to impose that moral view on the whole population and punish people for not having the same morals.  If someone commits a crime, it doesn’t matter whether they were motivated by their victim’s colour or religion or sexuality – they have committed a crime and the crime isn’t worse because the victim was black or a muslim or gay.  If someone abused me in the street, I’m no less of a victim because I’m straight than I would be if I was gay.

This is a bad law, made marginally less bad by the intervention of the House of Lords.  We really have to put a stop to this ridiculous situation where more and more groups of people are identified as automatic victims who require specific legal protection.  It’s just wrong.

Three more drugs advisors resign

Three more drugs advisers from the British government’s Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs have resigned following the sacking of Professor David Nutt.

101 Downing StreetNutt was sacked by the British Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, after publicly saying that LSD was less harmful than alcohol, cannabis was less harmful than nicotine  and that the British government’s decision to upgrade cannabis to a Class B drug was politically motivated, not scientifically.

There are now 6 vacancies on the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs following Professor Nutt’s sacking and the 5 resignations that have occured in protest at the sacking yet Alan Johnson still won’t admit he was wrong and the British government refuses to put scientific fact before personal opinion and populist propaganda.

Just like the British government ignores the science that proves climate change propaganda to be false, so they ignore independent scientific evidence on the level of danger certain drugs (including alcohol and nicotine) present.  The British government isn’t interested in fact, they will continue to spread rumour and false information until the population accepts it as fact.

Manifesto Clubs calls on schools to stop demonising children

Three years ago one of my kids was punished for “racism” at school after he called one of his black friends a monkey when we was pulling monkey faces and making monkey noises.

The Manifesto Club has finally noticed that something is seriously amiss when primary and nursery school kids are being accused of racism and called for changes to the law that requires English schools to fill out racist incident forms every time a child says something that could be construed as racist.

Most of the children accused of racism on these forms are between 9 and 11 years of age.

West Midlands Police “ban” film in Birmingham

West Midlands Police have advised cinemas in Birmingham not to show an independent film about black gang warfare filmed and produced in Birmingham because it is negatively stereotypical.  Cineworld and Odeon have refused to show the film in Birmingham as a result.

This is just wrong.  Very wrong.  It is not the place of the police to make up the law as they go along, although West Midlands Police do have form for it.  If they believe that the black “community” in Birmingham is so touchy that they’ll riot over a work of fiction then that doesn’t say a lot about the black “community” in Birmingham but it says even less about West Midlands Police if they’ve lost control of the city to such an extent that they have to lean on cinema’s not to show films in case it upsets the locals.

Nick Griffin on Question Time and UAF thugs strike again

Nick Griffin will be on Question Time tonight in front of what is probably going to be the bigget TV audience Question Time has ever had.

And the reason why Griffin is going to be getting this huge amount of publicity?  Because the anti-democratic, anti-BNP idiots have made such a fuss about him appearing on the BBC that almost every news channel and major newspaper at home and abroad has been talking about nothing but the BNP and Question Time.

The Tories have obvously got jealous of the publicity that Liebour is getting from the fascist left wing thugs at Unite Against Fascism and set up their own anti-BNP protest group called “Nothing British”.  I wonder if Camoron will leave UAF and join “Nothing British” instead.

Protesters have been causing trouble outside the BBC studio all day and 25-30 people managed to break in and had to be removed by the police.  Can you guess who the protesters are?  Yep, Unite Against Fascism.  Again.  The lawless far left extremist thugs supported by the Liebour Party, David Camoron and senior civil servants and police officers all over the country.

The BNP are a nasty, racist party but they are a legal political party (despite what that idiot Peter Hain says) with two MEPs and have a right to impartial representation on the BBC.  The “no platform” policy hasn’t worked, nor have the senseless, anti-democratic attacks on them by fascists like Searchlight and UAF.

The BNP need to be given enough rope to hang themselves, the more they’re attacked, the more support they get.  The BBC were absolutely correct to invite Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time as the leader of a legitimate political party and a democratically elected MEP and I can’t wait to see Nick Griffin make a complete dick of himself in front of millions of people.

As I was typing this, I noticed that Old Holborn has previously found details of the Home Office funding Unite Against Fascism.  State sponsored thugs violently supressing opposition to the government … why does George Orwell come to mind?

Manchester Councillor and UAF activist trying to ban EDL march

“Faith groups and traders” and councillors in Manchester are asking the Home Secretary to ban a protest by the English Defence League that is planned for next month citing the violence at their Birmingham marches as justification for depriving them of their constitutional right to protest.

The Daily Telegraph says:

Gangs of men and youths hurled bottles at each other and pelted riot police with bricks as frightened shoppers looked on

This is absolutely correct but it wasn’t English Defence League protesters that were throwing bricks and bottles at each other or the police, it was the Unite Against Facism thugs and the young muslim troublemakers that turned out to protest against them.  Wherever the UAF goes, voilence follows and there is no excuse for not reporting who the violent troublemakers were because it was correctly reported in the news and the Daily Mail even had pictures.

Councillor Jim Battle of Manchester City Council said:

Wherever the so-called English Defence League have gone, there has been violence and disruption to ordinary people who just want to go about their business.

These people do not have a legitimate cause – they merely wish to vilify, insult, intimidate and provoke one section of our community. That isn’t protest or legitimate democratic debate and it certainly is not welcome in Manchester.

The city council isn’t a lone voice making this request. We are standing together with faith groups and city centre traders. Manchester does not want the EDL, and we stand united against their poisonous, disruptive and un-British outlook and actions.

But we know that the trouble is being caused by the thugs in the UAF – there are pictures showing their violent counter-protests against the English Defence League – so why is he blaming the English Defence League for the violence?  Thank you Google

Unite Against Fascism Re-Launch Meeting
Monday 14th July, 7.30pm, Manchester Town Hall
(Cttee Rm 2)

Proposed Agenda to include:

  • Speaker from Unite Against Fascism National Office
  • Planning a major Gtr Manchester UAF event for the autumn
  • Agreeing a North West statement against the BNP
  • Campaigning against the BNP – particularly if they stand in next June’s European elections
  • Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) events – eg the planned LMHR Northern Carnival for next year

yours in solidarity,

Sharon Green (Manchester UAF Treasurer)
Councillor Jim Battle (Deputy Leader Manchester City Council)
Colin Barker (former chair Manchester UAF)
Karen Evans (UCU Nat Exec pc)
Steve Ratcliffe, (CWU)
Sarah Holden, (Unite the Union Regional Equalities Officer)
Mike Killian, (Manchester UAF)

No wonder he’s hiding the truth about the fascist UAF, he’s a UAF thug himself abusing his position as Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council to promote the UAF and its violent fascist agenda.  And as an aside, the English Defence League’s actions aren’t likely to be “British” on account of them being “English”.

I have no interest in the politics of ethnicity, I’m not a white supremacist and I don’t share the racist views of the English Defence League but I would defend their right to protest and express their views – that is what democracy is all about.  UAF is the cause of all this violence yet they seem to be immune from public criticism thanks to the number of councillors, MPs and senior police officers that are members who all quite happily spread UAF propaganda and abuse their power to try and ban legitimate, legal protests.

The English Defence League are not my type of people and they don’t speak for me but I would rather have them on the streets than the vicious, far left extremists of Unite Against Fascism.

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