Samizdata

Revealed by the blogosphere for all to see!

Several times I have called for the Tory Party, at least in its current form, to be put to the torch so that a viable and genuine opposition party can form in Britain (even if it is called ‘The Tory party’) as an alternative to Blairism in its various forms.

But as I am hardly bashful about my hostility to modern conservatism, dislike for democratic political parties in general, contempt for that invertebrate David Cameron (or Tory Blair as I like to call him) and the whole class of people who appointed him, I do not expect my views to carry much weight with folks who take a less bile spitting view of the political system than me.

However it would seem that Peter Hitchens, who has been by any reasonable definition the very epitome of a core Daily Mail Tory and ‘sensible’ mainstream establishment figure, pretty much takes the same view that the current Tory Party needs to be destroyed. I have been mildly incredulous to read some of his more recent article in which he has started saying things which are more or less identical to a wild-eyed anti-establishment chap like me on this issue, and moreover for pretty much the same basic reasons.

I cannot help but wonder if all those large bodkins I have been sticking in this David Cameron doll I have dangling in front of me via a little noose have not started to pay off.

Police state’s cannot work unless people cooperate with them, and the supermarket Tesco is doing eaxctly that: helping make Britain’s emerging police state a reality.

A man took some photographs to be developed taken whilst deer hunting (showing him posing with a deer he had bagged), to his local supermarket, Tesco. However when the staff saw the developed pictures, they called the police because they felt the images ‘inappropriate’, although he had broken no animal cruelty or firearms laws. So how do the police get involved when something is deemed ‘inappropriate’ rather than ‘criminal’? Nevertheless, the police duly did get involved and moreover according to the article they questioned the man for “several hours”. Unless there is a great deal more to this story that came out in the article, I cannot see what this guy did to justify being questioned at all, let alone for “several hours”.

Now this raises more questions: firstly, what could they possibly question him about for ‘several hours’? If they were trying to ascertain if he had a licence for the weapon in the picture, surely all they needed was his name, a police computer terminal and about five minutes of some police office worker’s time. So what exactly where they asking this man to justify?

Also, Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, does not think that his company was the one who was acting in an ‘inappropriate’ manner, strangely stating:

Tesco does not discriminate against any lawful section of the community.

Sir Terry has not thought that statement through clearly as it is manifestly not the case (and if he dislikes that assertion, his lawyer is free to contact me). To ‘not discriminate’ would mean Tesco treats lawful gun owners the same way way it treats lawful dog owners and lawful car owners (all of which must be licenced).

So, following that statement of non-discrimination, I wonder if every time (or even occasionally) the staff at Tesco photolabs see a person driving an automobile in a picture they develop, something that can only be done lawfully in Britain if you have insurance and a valid driver’s licence, do they call the cops so they can grill the guy in the picture and make him produce proof his vehicle was licenced? If they do indeed do that, well, then I suppose Sir Terry is correct and Tesco do not ” discriminate against any lawful section of the community” as they really do apply the same standards to everyone. If that is not the case, then Sir Terry is not being truthful as clearly they do indeed discriminate against a lawful section of the community, namely those who own licensed firearms.

Needless to say I will never shop in a Tesco again.

I am not the fondest of the Home Secretary. But he does serve his providential purpose, which of late has been to bluster to bully and to sneer at anyone who dare suggest there was anything wrong with the Blair administration’s attitude to liberty. This has been a valuable service to the nation, as it seems to have woken the liberal chattering classes from their torpor to realise that People Like Them (the New Labour elite) will do infinite evil with the best intentions. We need to keep Charles Clarke.

On the other hand, the Home Office itself should go. The spiffy new office in Marsham Street should be levelled, and the the glass pieces, broken small, preserved on the site as a sterile three-acre monument, eternally reminding us that it is more useful than what it replaced. Some parts a reasonable state needs, and they could be transplanted to places they might flourish.

What parts of the Home Office would we be better without?

The entire Communities Directorate for a start. Whether you like the CRE or not, it is hard to see any benefit in a subdirectorate in the Civil Service for “Race, Cohesion, Equality and Faith”. Are those things anything a government can, let alone should, control?

Then there is the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, a nasty project to seize control over the Criminal Justice system and get rid of all that inefficient unpredictable matter of fair trials, messily standing between the police and the prisons that the department owns. It is at best Home Office empire-building, at worst a threat to the rule of law.

Everone here knows my views on the Identity Cards Programme by now. The state has no right to determine who you are, permitting it to keep a life-long permanant record on you is a recipe for totalitarianism.

Without a department one would not need a mountain of shared and administrative services. They probably would not be missed. Entirely incidentally, those most offensive bits of the Home Office, the organs that originate sheaves of new criminal offences every year, and continually tweak the law to make convictions easier, would be gone.

What’s left? Crime. ‘Offender Management’. Immigration. Passports. → Continue reading: Save Charles Clarke!

Charles Clarke appears before an Eminent Jurists Panel, spruced up and professional, to defend the undermining of due process and roll his eyes backward, because they just do not get it. Terrorists, they kill people, we need security.

“I defend it categorically,” Clarke told the Eminent Jurists Panel at a hearing in central London. The orders give some capacity for the state against people we don’t feel able to pursue through the courts in a normal prosecution.”

Clarke today rejected those arguments in his testimony, suggesting the panel may have failed to grasp the gravity of the terror threat.

“I don’t think you understand,” Clarke said. “Do we just somehow pretend it’s not there?”

That was the response of the Home Office to foreign prisoners who were designated for deportation after completing their sentences. They just slipped away… into the community.

Matters were made worse by Clarke’s admission late Tuesday that he did not know where most of the offenders, who include three murderers and nine rapists, were.

Among the offenders, five had been convicted of committing sex offences on children, seven had served time for other sex offences, 57 for violent offences and two for manslaughter.

There were also 41 burglars and 20 drug importers among those released back into the community without considering their removal from Britain.

Our Home Secretary has taken personal responsibility for this slight hiccup.

Clarke, who has accepted personal responsibility for the ‘shocking and systematic failure’ of his ministry and the immigration agencies in dealing with the cases, said Tuesday evening: “I certainly don’t think I have a duty to the public to go – I have a duty to sort this out.”

All the foreign prisoners released will be served with a ‘super-ASBO’ (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) trademarked TB, and supervised by the Probation Service.