I'm Turning Into Tony Blair...

It was only a matter of time. I've done a quick appraisal of the last weeks posts on this blog, and they seem the writings of a man obsessed with his own media image, desperately clinging on to the crumbling empire he has built up around him and deluded to the point of insanity on how the public will perceive his legacy. This probably wasn't helped by the fact that I've stopped living off adrenaline for the first time in a year and a half, and my immune system seems to have been detained without trail, resulting in a revolting cold that has rendered me completely incapable of enjoying our moderate success. Anyway, in the interests of this Blog not turning into a self serving ego trip for the director (posts saying "too late" will be deleted...) it seems like we are long overdue some...

Liberty News

Where to begin? We have to start with Tony Blair's final sideswipe at the Media. Tony has either now just completely lost it on the happy pills or is practising for a future career in surreal stand up comedy.



After posing with Wallace and Gromitt outside downing street, the mad king hopped in a limo and went down to Docklands, and blasted a group of stunned hacks for not taking him seriously enough. At one point he appeared to sound slightly self critical when he said that "when he began his premiership there was too much of a reliance on spin". but this turned out to be part of a spiteful rant against newspapers that have stopped reporting facts and stated reporting views. Presumably he was referring to:
-The unquestioning reporting of the government line by most newspapers on The Ricin Case.
-The mad rush to print the governments lies and spin on WMD's the 45 minutes claim and the dodgy dossier.
-The slavish misreporting of the use of the French Veto days before the Iraq War.
-The smearing of David Kelly - after he was dead.
-The blatant use of political arm twisting to win the Hutton case and successfully neuter the BBC.
-The smearing of the Forest Gate brothers, while they detained without charge.

But sadly no. The mad king was talking about further regulations and restrictions on the media, and singled out The Independent as an example of a publication that was getting out of control. Even thought The Indie did not make many friends in this blog by giving us one of the few unkind reviews, Blair has simply descended into childish sniping by attacking the one paper that has actually done it's job over the last 10 years and been a healthy check and a balance on an ever more demonic and authoritarian executive.

Police to sell your DNA Abroad

Yes the British Police have decided that it's not fair to amass the DNA of millions innocent people on a big leaky computer in Britain alone, as it means that only people in the UK can abuse the system. So they have now opened the DNA Database up to all EU member states so that any Tobias, Jaques or Henri can steal and replicate your unique biological blueprint. At least when the access was to UK authorities only, we had some clue of who could have access to your DNA. Now that they have let 15 other countries get their mitts on the database, so practically anyone can access your DNA for a high enough fee. Also the Europeans get a far better deal than we do, as the UK DNA Database is bigger than that of all other member states put together.

Latest Terror Proposals

Are still in complete tailspin. Everyone has revolted over "Dr" John Reid's stop and question powers, but Gordon is still pressing ahead with his 90 days proposals. I haven't had time to do a full response to the consultation paper of last week, but Tim has gone through it and has got it spot on, so check out the detailed criticism here.

Yes there are lots more scary things that we've been sent and will be writing about. Please keep tips and suggestions coming.

And yes I did write a piece for the daily mail. Sort of - I ranted and they ghost wrote it for me - I'm not sure if that makes the situation better or worse. Anyway you can read it and mock here.

Hay Festival

Was a great success. The screening sold out completely - I know this as I was accosted by Hugh Hudson moments before it started who told me that he couldn't get tickets for love nor money. Great response from the audience (though admittedly preaching to the choir somewhat), and a lively Q&A afterwards. Then they had to cancel the book signing as they had already sold out of books. We have yet to find out exactly how many they had in stock before we get too carried away...

City Screen Panel Event at Clapham Picturehouse Tuesday!

Also sold out. So they moved it to a bigger screen - and that's sold out as well.

However there are still tickets left at the Ritzy Brixton and the Greenwich Picturehouse.

Nice review at myfilmsblog

Gordon Talks Tougher than Tony

Anyone who thinks that as soon as Mr Brown walks through the door of Downing Street, he will immediately start handing civil liberties back to the masses, should have a look at his latest macho proclamations at the leadership "Hustings". Before we examine his liberty busting proposals in any detail, it's worth looking at the use of the word "hustings" in this context. This word is normally used to describe the process by which all the candidates for forthcoming elections make their case before the electorate ahead of a forthcoming election. It seems a bit of a pointless exercise when New Labour have essentially exorcised democracy from the leadership contest, and made sure that Gordon stands for the top job unopposed. Is it technically a husting if their is only one person to hust? Discuss...

But more to the point, when Gordon was husting with himself, he announced a series of measures that signal that he is deftly taking up Blair's authoritarian baton. The most draconian element is the plan to extend the pre-cahrge detention of terror suspects to 90 days.

This proposal is of course not a new one - Blair tried it on immediately after the July 7th bombings, but for once Parliament actually did it's job and voted the measure down - completely humiliating Blair in the process. The New Labour argument fell apart when it appeared that there was no evidence whatsoever that the extension would in any way help the fight against terrorism, and would only serve to alienate the Muslim Community even further. The only people pushing for these powers were the politically motivated members of the British Police who's careers are steered by the Government. In the Taking Liberties Book, we go through the polices argument in detail, and show it to be a collection of falsehoods, exaggerations and downright lies. The most absurd part of the police's argument for extending pre charge detention, was the use of the Ricin trial as an example of how the existing powers weren't enough.

FOR THE LAST TIME, THEIR WASN'T ANY F*CKING RICIN!!!

And breathe...

Anyway, when Blair tried to turn the country into a Police state in November 2005 - by effectively giving the police the power to hand out 3 month prison sentences without charge - he was roundly defeated. Gordon now sees this as a way of stamping his authority on what remains of the left of the Labour party, and wants to build on his image of being harder than David Cameron.

But as in the previous attempt to remove Habeas Corpus the Government, Police and Security Services have produced no viable evidence that increasing the pre-charge period will in any way help fight terrorism. There is of course substantial evidence that it will have exactly the opposite effect. When similar laws were introduced in Northern Ireland, it backfired completely, as the apparent injustice of people being detained without charge acted as a recruiting Sergent for the very terrorist cause that the government was trying to eradicate.

There is also irrefutable evidence that the longer someone is held without charge, the more likely they are to confess to something they haven't done. Evidence and confessions obtained from people who have been held without charge becomes more unreliable the longer they have been held. Some experts call being held without charge for long periods tantamount to psychological torture.

The British Authorities are also extremely good at smearing suspects in the media while holding them for long periods without charge. During the Forest Gate Farce, the Bottle bombings (that never happened), and the recent terror raids in Birmingham, senior police officers briefed the Murdoch press and planted stories about the men they were holding. In most cases the briefings turned out to be nothing more than a fabrication that was designed to have the suspects declared guilty by media. The most extreme example of this was when senior police officers briefed against a dead man, and Charles de Menezes was declared a terrorist even before his body was cold.

At the current limit of 28 Days, Britain has the longest pre-charge detention period of any western democracy. But even though we are statistically more likely to win the lottery than to be involved in a terrorist attack, Gordon Brown is hell bent on chipping away at our liberties yet further, just to make sure that world believes that he is "tough on terror".

John Reid's last hurrah

No one can ever accuse our chum "Dr" John Reid for going out with a whimper. Although he has spent the last year at the home office making absurd and sinister authoritarian proclamations along the lines of:

-"The Rule of Law should be scrapped."
-"Muslim Parents have to shop their children if they stay out late and grow beards."
-"I will sort out the Home office in 100 days" (where in fact he broke it in two after a year)

He has saved the best til last. He told a European summit that judges should stop following the law "to the letter" as it hampered the fight against terrorism. How exactly judges follow the law if it is not to the letter was not fully expanded on, but one can only assume that he means that they should follow the law to his letter, and stop making rulings that make him look like a tit. Obviously still smarting from his humiliating defeat in trying to send Lybian nationals back home to be tortured, "Dr" Reid decided that the law had to change so that judges would just do as they were told.

Yet again he came out with the potty logic that the European convention on human rights was outdated as we live in far more uncertain and dangerous times than when the ECHR drawn up. Of course we do. Europe in 1950 was a time of peace and harmony... there hadn't just been the most brutal devastating war that the world had ever seen, 60 million dead and the world in tatters... god no. The Europe of today is far more deadly now than it was at the end of WWII. Osama Bin Laden is a much graver threat to our way of life than those wannabe's Hitler & Stalin, so all those pesky civil liberties (that were entrenched to stop the Genocide of WWII ever happening again) have now got to be given up in order to make John Reid look like less of a dipstick.

Yes, "Dr" Reid knows how to end on a bang.

Reasons to be fearful

Things I have learnt today:

US and Canadian customs have started using information from people’s Wikipedia pages to determine if whether or not they are terrorists:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2469270.ece

The British government has once again decided to use it’s favourite method of undermining any investigation they don’t like – play the man and not the ball. In this case they seem to be attempting to oust the head of the OECD when he is investigating the halting of the BAE investigation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,2064191,00.html

The papers have been full, once again, of politicians, civil servants and policemen saying that Al Quaida are planning more attacks. Now that John Reid has built himself a new department whose sole aim it is to look after security and policing I imagine that scaring the bejesus out of us will become a daily occurrence – how else will they be able to justify their budget?

I’m not disputing the security threat from terrorism; it’s just that I don’t feel I have to hear about it all the damn time. It’s like having a child bring home every doodle they’ve ever drawn in nursery school and demanding that it be given pride of place on the sitting room walls.

What, for example, do we do with the information from the Home Office that the threat level is Severe (why the capital S? Maybe it’s not a measure of the threat at all and the Home Office has just decided to name the threat Severe – next week the threat level will be Kevin)? Are we all supposed to hide under the bed until the mythical utopia arrives when people will stop wanting to kill each other and all live together in harmony? History tells us that’s about as likely to happen as my winning gold in the 100m at the next Olympics so I think I will just have to carry on as usual, and wait to see if it will magically move up to critical should the home office budget look to be in jeopardy.


Here are a spattering of the most recent reasons to be fearful:

From The head of Scotland Yard's counterterrorism command
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2064947,00.html

From MI6

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1687360.ece

From John Reid

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6590111.stm

From Tony Blair

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6586883.stm

And, of course, John Reid again

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news/john-reid-gmtv