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Electronic voting? Bring it on, I say:
You cannot possibly undermine something that is already on its death-bed so put it out of its misery already. June 24th, 2007 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Although the Blair government has needed little encouragement from the European Union to destroy our civil liberties and impose ever more layers of political control over our lives, it seems he has decided to try and lock a few more controls at the more remote European level. And will a future Cameron government undo what Blair has wrought? Do not make me laugh. As Dave Cameron even attempted to back out of his pre-leadership promise to take the token action of removing the ‘Conservatives’ from the integrationist EPP grouping in the European ‘parliament’ (and the Conservatives MEPs are still in a de facto coalition with the EPP), clearly he lacks the inclination to do anything of actual substance. Clearly the only way to undo what Blair has wrought in Brussels is to just start ripping up treaties or better yet get out of the EU altogether… and that is not going to happen under any foreseeable UK government. Nothing short of a social earthquake that radically shifts the political landscape is going to make much difference and that ain’t going to happen under any likely government I can foresee. June 23rd, 2007 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Brian Micklethwait of this parish has this zinger of a quote on his own blog. I could not resist posting it here:
Read the whole thing. It is not just about our furry friends. June 22nd, 2007 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
I for one was delighted when I heard Salman Rushdie was going to be knighted… which might sound odd given that I regard the puffed up popinjay as a caricature of the very worst traits of the ‘meejah’ class, truly an example of how the empty vessel makes the most noise (though I cannot fault his taste in crumpet). But the fact UKGov did something that was so obviously going to put one in the eye of the Islamists is a good think in and of itself regardless. Like the Mohammed cartoons incident and its aftermath, the reaction across the Muslim world to this serves as a very useful reminder that the ‘moderate Islam’ is a myth (for a superb account of this ‘from the inside’, I recommend Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and that not only helps in the battle against intolerant Islam directly, it helps in the culture war closer to home against Islam’s host of useful idiots in the western world. June 21st, 2007 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
…Abolish it. That is what the latest Libertarian Alliance press release demands and I find it hard not to agree. In this era of channel fragmentation, cable, satellite and the rise of the internet as a method of distribution, what on earth is the point of the BBC? If I want to see what the other side is thinking I can watch Al Jezeera or read the Independent. June 21st, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
You really couldn’t invent this if you tried. Or at least I couldn’t. It is real ad, from the Guardian Online:
The government scheme to ban smoking in public places in Britain is currently reported as about £100 million over budget, at somewhere in the region of £1.6 billion. But I am not sure that counts local government expenditure, which this is. June 19th, 2007 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
The book is now officially open…
…so time to place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Will the British government buckle? Yes or No? June 19th, 2007 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
I missed this sharp and wise article by US columnist Jonah Goldberg a few days ago – but I had the excellent excuse of being on holiday – but his piece, which nicely sums up what is happening in Britain from a US perspective, demonstrates how some Americans are waking up to what a nannied country Britain now is. Of course, north American readers of this blog have been aware of this progressive infantilisation of the UK adult public for some time. The question that keeps coming up, and which makes an appearance in Jonah’s article, is exactly when will the conveyor belt of nanny-state interference in our liberties stop? When, exactly, does the excrement hit the fan? Just how bullied do we have to be before something snaps? I am still none the wiser as to whether we really know the answer to those questions. June 18th, 2007 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Not only is innocent until proven guilty on the way out. The idea of limited and defined punishment for crime is too. It appears the Sex Offenders Register which is supposed to…. well, I am not really sure what it is supposed to do, other than provide meat for the slavering tabloids, creates an ad hoc police power to get you banned from performing on TV. The BBC reports Police alert over TV contestant, in which a police spokesman says:
One does not suppose the “victim or victim’s family” could remain unaware after an entirely predictable national media alert. And the consequences for the man concerned of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who had no reason to know being told in the broadest terms he is “a sex offender” and the rest left to the mob’s squalid imagination? While ‘sexual offences’ is a broad category, from thought-crime, to bad manners, to genuinely consensual but officially barred conduct, … to the most serious violent crimes, one can be registered for any of them, even if there is no trial and no other punishment. The public obsession runs only one way, however. June 16th, 2007 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Among the rank-upon-rank quangocrats and glorious anomalies of the Queen’s birthday honours, I was struck by an example of the coyness that draws attention to itself: OBE – William Anderson; Grade B2, Ministry of Defence; London. No citation. No location. All other London awards carry the postal out-code (e.g. “SW1A”, “W8”) of the recipient or their office. Grade B2 is a junior executive grade, and one usually only gets an honour for being head of something, even in the civil service. This all stands out as odd. So why do it? If Mr Anderson’s work is too secret to mention, then it seems just a tad silly to go to great lengths not to mention it in this ostentatious way. It would have been easy to invent something boring that insiders would know to be a cover story (most fellow OBEs are getting the award for work in organisations no-one outside them will have heard of before). Or the honour itself could have been made secretly. June 16th, 2007 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Getting on-line in Ethiopia is a nightmare and so it has taken me a while to comment on a strange article in the Financial Times that had me choking on my breakfast of injera and zil zil tibs.
And later in the article, readers are reminded that Royal Dutch Shell was forced last November to sell control of its $20bn Sakhalin-2 oil and gas venture to state-controlled Gazprom and BP’s flagship Russia venture TNK-BP is now being threatened with the loss of its licence to develop the east Siberian Kovykta field. So how exactly are these de facto nationalisation (in reality seizing assets for the benefit of members of Putin’s clique) a sign that “Russia’s transition to a market economy has been successful and cannot be undone”? Seems to me that Putin is doing an excellent job of undoing it. June 14th, 2007 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is a rather gloomy public service announcement. I wrote about the Serious Crime Bill in January. Since, it has proceeded quietly through the House of Lords, almost unchanged. Yesterday, so suddenly that I did not know it had happened, and was talking today about how NO2ID should brief MPs for its appearance, it received its Second Reading in the House of Commons. It is amazing that there has been no large scale protest about this If you live in the UK (or are a voting ex-pat), you have a few weeks to write to your MP before it becomes law. Update: In response to popular demand, some more information. Here are: On Part I of the Bill, a briefing note on Serious Crime Prevention Orders from the Conservative Liberty Forum. On Part II, a somewhat more technical briefing (pdf)on the mindboggling abolition and replacement of incitement at common law from Liberty. On Part III, A briefing I wrote (pdf) on the data-sharing aspects for NO2ID. Which may collectively clarify what I’m going on about. Or not. But take my word for it, this is very bad indeed. Worse than ID cards. If you have an MP, write to them. June 13th, 2007 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
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