Big Chill

Taking Liberties will be screened at the Big Chill festival this weekend. And having seen the weather forecast we may also avoid screening the film in a swamp, which will be a real bonus. Apparently it's on at 2pm in the Amnesty Tent on the Sunday afternoon, and I'll be doing a Q&A afterward. The tricky part is going to be to try to hold it together and not come across as a dribbling wreck...

BNP Bombers Jailed

Robert Cottage, former BNP member, who was caught with largest haul of explosive materials ever in British History, has just been jailed for 2.5 years. What is fascinating about this case is that when he was arrested - at the end of the summer of 2006 (you remember, when the new offence of travelling whilst Muslim was invented) it went completely unreported in all the mainstream media. The previous month several dozen unfortunate dark skinned gentlemen had been arrested in a series of "Terror Swoops", had their names and photos splattered all over the Murdoch Press, and were then quietly released without charge. But when a right wing racist nut nut gets arrested with more explosives than wiley kyote on the way home from an ACME January sale, it fails to make a single column inch in any of the national press, and was only reported in the local newspaper. The other revealing aspect of this affair is the attitude of the police. In May 2006, when 2 innocent brothers from Forest Gate get shot by the police and thrown in the slammer, the MET commander gets on his batphone to The Sun Newspaper within seconds. The next day the paper is filled with slurs, smears & lies, proclaiming the men to be filthy terrorists - even though it was clear they were nothing of the kind. When BNP's finest get arrested, and actually do have a seriously dangerous amount of explosives tucked away in their potting shed, the unforgettable quote from the senior arresting officer was "These men are not terrorists!"

Of course not.