The Information Commissioner has warned that the UK is now the world’s most spied on nation in the world and this is before the compulsary ID card and Identity Database come into force.

The national co-ordinator of No2ID, Phil Booth, says:

NO2ID welcomes this long-overdue opening of the public debate, but fears that it is almost too late. People may be waking up to the surveillance state just as the final building blocks are being put in place.

ID cards and state-assigned ID numbers locked to your biometrics will be the capstone and key for the surveillance state.

Ministers talk as if government ‘management’ of personal identity were a good thing. State identity control is more like it. The government’s plans—the details of which it is clearly still desperate to keep secret —indicate a massive increase in data-sharing for official convenience and other hazily-defined purposes; effectively an end to privacy as we know it.

It’s not often I agree with everything a campaign group says but in the case of NØ2ID I can’t find anything to argue with.  This government is not just taking our liberty, they’re takin a liberty.  We don’t want to be monitored and tracked every minute and every hour of our lives yet the British government forges ahead with their database state.

I will not have an ID card or submit to the Identity Register until I am given the ultimatum: sign up or go to prison.  If I didn’t have a wife and 4 kids I would go to prison rather than submit myself to this undemocratic, illiberal scheme but I have a family and responsibilities.  Even if I am forced to have a card I will not use it unless I have no alternative and I reaffirm the following pledge which I took in June last year:

When the occasion suits me, and when the opportunity arises, I will endeavour to carry my ID card in my pants. Whenever I am required to provide my ID card to an agent of the state, or to an agent of a private organisation cooperating with the state, I will without prejudice or delay reach into my pants, withdraw my card, and present it to the agent.

In recognition of the humanity of these anti freedom agents I will not deliberately make my card look skanky, deface my card with pants related artefacts or otherwise treat my card in any manner different from someone who carries their card on any other part of their body. I will simply carry it in my pants as is my right.

The recycling nazi’s in Swansea have prosecuted a man for putting a letter in with his glass recycling.  He denied putting the piece of junk mail in the bag but despite having no evidence that he did, the council managed to obtain a conviction resulting in a £100 fine and £100 costs.

In April he was given a warning for putting his bins out a day early because he was going on holiday and then in June he was summonsed for putting a letter in a bag of glass recycling.

Since getting the summons he has refused to recycle.  Full marks to the Swansea recycling nazi’s for actually damaging their recycling programme.  As the newly-criminalised Mr Reeves said “People are not going to recycle if they end up in court and it costs them £200.”

A school in Kent forced a pupil to eat his lunch outside the dinner hall because his packed lunch breached their guidelines on healthy eating.

The school has a rule that meals are allowed a maximum of 2 snacks but 10 year old Ryan Stupples had a fromage frais yoghurt, a packet of cheese biscuits and a cake.  The child was removed from the dinner hall and made to eat his lunch outside the hall under supervision.

BBC News have a picture of the boy in question who, if anything, looks a bit thin.  A bit of junk food might do him some good, fatten him up a bit.

I remember my kids being told once that they weren’t allowed to bring sweets to school in their packed lunch.  I made a point of sending them with them again because it is entirely up to me what my kids eat.  They very rarely have sweets and chocolate and they are all the right weight for their age and size.  In fact, Satan Joseph is too bloody thin, we can’t seem to fatten him up.

If any of my kids were removed from the dinner hall because of what I’d put in their lunch boxes I’d be straight round to the school.

Hat-tip: View from Middle England

Somebody needs a slap, any volunteers?

A 14 year old girl was accused of being a racist at school, put into isolation and then a week later was arrested by the police and questioned for 4 hours before being released without charge.

Her crime?  She was put in a group for a science lesson with 5 other children, all Asian, who sat there talking to each other in Urdu so she asked the teacher if she could move to another group because she couldn’t understand them.

A perfectly reasonable request you might think – how can she possibly work with a group that can’t/won’t speak English?  But no, this is the most hideous of racist crimes.  The teacher screamed at her that she was a racist and she was put into isolation.  A week later the police arrested her for racism, kept her at a police station for 4 hours and interviewed her before releasing her without charge.

Would the same have happened if a child who only spoke Urdu asked to be moved from a group of English speaking children because they didn’t speak English?  Would it buggery.  This obsession with branding people as racists is really starting to get on my tits.

The British government has announced that the ID card will cost £5.4bn to set up and run over the next 10 years.

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on!

The cost to the Home Office might be £5.4bn for 10 years but the real costs will be well above that.  Every public body that wants – or has – to take part in the ID database scheme will have to pay for it.  They will have to pay for the cost of implementing the scheme, infrastructure, ongoing costs, etc.  Every police car will have to have a card reader as will hospitals, doctors surgery’s, dentists, etc.  Every time we interact with the state we will have to use our ID cards and we will foot the bill for every state agency, government department and private company that uses it.

NØ2ID estimate the cost at £20bn.  I can see it costing that much in the first year, if not more.

A primary school in Telford has put a 10 year old boy on a “racism register” for a comment made in the playground.  The entry on the register can only be removed with the permission of a British government minister and will remain on the childs school record.

The reason?  The white boy was talking to another white boy in the playground about Doctor Who.  The boy was trying to explain which episode of Doctor Who he was talking about and said “you know, the one with the packie woman in it”.  A white girl in the playground overheard it and told a teacher.

Ok, I understand that the word “packie” is a derogatory name for an Asian but to a 10 year old boy it’s just another word that lots of people use to refer to an Asian person.  In a previous job, the Asians I worked with used to call each other “packie” all the time.  It’s all about context.

“Eskimo” is a derogatory term for an Inuit so would he be put on the register for that?  How about for referring to a French person as a “frog” or a German person as a “kraut”?  No Asian person complained about what the boy said yet he’s been branded a racist at the age of 10 years old.

A bit of background on this because it’s a bit of a saga.

Firstly, Telford & Wrekin Council have been running a “shadow company” for about two years now, secretly building up brand awareness within their sphere of influence and spending in excess of £1.3m of taxpayers money.  The company was supposed to be called “Telford First” but they were pipped to the post by a couple of enterprising gentlemen who have come to be known as “the two John’s” who registered the name Telford First Ltd the weekend before the hastily arranged official launch of the company.

One of the John’s is the owner of the Telford Council Watch forum and the other John is a moderator there and a local charity worker who has been on the receiving end of the council’s unscrupulous tactics when he was running a charity.  Because of the Telford First fiasco, staff have allegedly been sent an email from someone very high up in the council warning them not to visit or participate in the forum either at work or at home and that the forum will be monitored and anyone that can be identified will be “dealt with”.

To fund Telford First’s unexplained multi-million pound drain on Telford council tax payers, the council have been cutting budgets and staff.  Employees being transferred to Telford First or whatever it ends up being called are being forced to transfer out of the public sector.

There are some serious questions that need to be asked of the people at Telford & Wrekin Council who are either elected or employed to serve the public.  It simply isn’t acceptable to spend vast sums of taxpayers money on pet projects that deliver little or no benefit to the public and bullying their own employees into silence is not only wrong but illegal.

Telford & Wrekin Council have a duty to spend taxpayers money wisely and for the benefit of the public.  Telford First has already cost taxpayers over £1.3m and hasn’t actually achieved anything yet.  The City Region has cost tens of thousands of pounds at the very least and doesn’t exist yet.  The public have not only been kept out of the decision making process but they have been deliberately kept in the dark until the very last moment.

It’s time for a regime change at Telford & Wrekin Council.

It was announced yesterday that the Home Office was going to introduce illegal on-the-spot fines for a range of crimes including assaulting a police officer (which is different to assaulting a normal person because …).

Magistrates and Police were, understandably, a bit upset that violent criminals were going to get nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a fine and the Home Office has backtracked saying that it was never the intention and the Home Secretary would never agree to such a proposal.

However, the backtrack is only for the violent crimes.  The other crimes mentioned – possession of cannabis, petty theft, etc. – will still be punishable by illegal on-the-spot fines.  The unelected North British Lord Chancellor of England said earlier in the year that he intended to flood the legal system with illegal on-the-spot fines.  I’m wondering what is going to be left for the new British government-appointed Supreme Court when it is eventually formed.

The Home Office has announced an extension to its policy of introducing even more illegal summary justice.

From early next year, various offences such as assault, theft and assaulting or obstructing a police officer will be punishable by a £100 on-the-spot fine.

I’m all for speeding up the legal process but summary justice is illegal.  The Bill of Rights says that any promise of fine or forfeiture before conviction is illegal and void.  Unless every police officer is going to be accompanied by a judge and jury (everyone has the right to a trial by jury remember) then the fine is illegal.

NØ2ID lists 29 councils who have passed motions against the British government’s ID card scam and the Identity Database.

In addition to these 29 councils, the North British Parliament and West British Assembly have passed motions against it with the former refusing to require ID cards for any state services and two trades unions – Labour’s traditional allies – have passed motions against them.

A BNP member in Swansea has been convicted of racially aggravated disorderly conduct despite there being no victim and only one witness.  The man was accused of racially abusing an Asian woman by shouting “sieg heil” from his car as he drove past her.  The woman didn’t complain and to this day the authorities don’t know who she was.  A woman who witnessed the incident told the police, testified and the man was convicted and fined £200 plus £200 costs.  He denies the offence and the witness said:

“He was shouting. To me it appeared that he was being venomous. His face appeared quite contorted.”

“But I could not swear to the words I did hear.”

Meanwhile, a wannabe muslim terrorist in London, known to the police for his membership of several banned Islamic terrorist organisations, calls for the pope to be executed for insulting Islam.  Nobody complained so the police didn’t feel it necessary to arrest him for the crime of incitement to murder which is serious enough to carry a life sentence.

Spot the difference.