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I am not the only one calling for a sense of proportion. The Security Minister for Northern Ireland, Sean Woodward, told Radio 4’s Broadcasting House this morning that despite these disorders most people in Northern Ireland were able to go about their normal lives without disturbance yesterday, and we should not get these things out of proportion.
While I am inclined to agree this is not Armageddon, I would suggest that the Government’s sense of proportion is a touch selective. Had riots with firearms, incendiaries, and home-made grenades broken out in Blackburn at some march by a Moslem sect, would we expect such a calming response? Not on your nelly.
We might have woken up to martial law imposed on Lancashire and Yorkshire. At the very least Charles Clarke would be appearing on all channels advocating internment, massively increased police powers and speeding-up the Home Office’s beloved ID card scheme. There would certainly be nothing else on the news.
Is it that 40 miles of water makes the difference? Is it colour or nominal religion? Or does the security establishment (despite being in a scrap with them on this occasion), still think of Unionist extremists as being somehow on ‘our’ side.
This fascinating factoid courtesy of The Times’s Gabriel Rozenberg:
Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook is the standard professional reference on UK direct taxation. Its format has changed little for many years.
1996-1997 edition: 4,555 pages.
2005-2006 edition: 9,050 pages.
As Rozenberg points out, for income tax law to get to the size that a summary filled 4,555 pages took nearly 200 years. Boy, has the present government been busy.
Close observers of the Treasury will know that this has happened at the same time as the Inland Revenue has been piloting a glorious project that could only happen in Whitehall, the Comprehensive Tax Law rewrite. This, the first part of which is about to be enacted, is allegedly designed–this is not a joke–to simplify UK tax law without changing it.
It does serve to emphasise something that is often neglected, even by our friends at the ASI, who calculate Tax Freedom Day on the basis of the tax take. Tax burden, the cost of tax to the payer, is always greater than the actual tax he has to pay. The difference, the compliance cost, is hard to measure. But it is utterly invisible to the Civil Service, to most politicians, and most employees. To them it is someone else’s problem, if they notice at all.
But when bureaucratic treacle is poured into society’s gearboxes, everyone suffers indirectly. Compliance costs are still costs. Leaving aside the moral case against tax, they produce all the baneful economic effects of higher taxation (a split economy, advantages for tax-planners and those who can afford them, disincentive to work or invest, regulatory distortions), without putting more money into the public purse.
It is not just complication. Many of the more recent reforms (and this started under the Tories) move administrative and collection responsibilities from the government to the taxpayer or his employer, so Tolley’s doubling may well be an underestimate of the increase in compliance costs. Taxation has risen fast in Britain. But tax burden has risen, and continues to rise much faster.
There is an article in The Spectator which perfectly sums up the expression “The state is not your friend” that described the nightmarish encounter someone had with the officious little shits that are employed to police our borders and protect us from middle class Australian women.
It should be only under the most extraordinary circumstances in which an agent of the state should be able to legally refuse to give you their name and thereby avoid personal responsibility for their actions. Read the article and then ponder the thesis that the reason many people take jobs in places like the Immigration service is to satisfy a psychological need to exert arbitrary power over others. This is your tax money at work.
If the UN says something should or should not be done, it is a safe bet that doing the opposite is most likely the correct course of action. Thus when the UN says Britain must not expel Muslim clerics who incite terrorism, clearly this is indeed the best policy.
It does not matter if a compass always points south, as long as you know that you can use it to find your way just as effectively as with one which always points north.
So the CCTV camera tapes which would have shown the facts pertaining to tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes were blank. Right. But the IPCC says they have the vital CCTV footage. Ooookay, that is sorted then.
What the hell is going on?
A truly vile act by animal ‘rights’ thugs has had the effect they wanted: a farm will stop breeding guinea pigs for research experiments in the hope that the corpse of the owner’s grandmother, dug up and stolen by these ‘heroes’, will now be returned to her grave. In their considerable history of despicable behaviour, this was a new low.
I hope the state does its job and tracks down those responsible (I have my doubts) but there are some insults so dire that were I in the position of the Hall family, I would feel justified doing quite literally anything to find those responsible. I for one would not be prepared to share a planet with them. These animal rights thugs have shown that the courts are not the only way to compel people to do things against their will and courts are also not the only way to get justice. A truly dreadful affair and a reminder of the contempt with which these ‘activists’ should be treated.
The Muslim Council of Britain has demanded a public apology from the BBC over the broadcasting of a Panorama programme last night which they have castigated as a “travesty“. A quick glance at their statement throws light upon their concerns, namely, that the programme aims to undermine the Islamic faith by presenting imams as extremists and that it is designed to “sabotage” the political participation of Muslims in the British mainstream. The most telling quote is,
It seems that to qualify as so-called ‘moderates’ Muslims are required to remain silent about Israeli crimes in Palestine, otherwise they are automatically labelled as ‘extremists’.
The refutation of the MCB’s position is clear. In a society which values free debate, the Muslim Council of Britain should engage with the issues raised. Instead, they have imported the arguments prevalent in the Middle East, which damns all criticism as a Zionist conspiracy designed to undermine Islam. Muslims do not have to remain quiet about Israeli actions that they perceive as criminal. The problem lies with those who justify terror and the deaths of innocents by referring to Israeli actions and tarring every Jew and Israeli Arab with ‘collective guilt’.
This rhetoric is not new, but the platform that Muslim political institutions are gaining in the mainstream media provides a testament to the paradox that they are increasingly confident and increasingly defensive. The popular demonstrations of the anti-war movement and the dividends reaped from the flanking alliance that Muslim organisations arranged with the hard left has gained the political wing of Islam legislative promises such as the outlawing of statements that are deemed offensive. By rubbishing the Panorama programme, the Muslim Council of Britain wishes to build upon these achievements by narrowing the public discussion of Islam in the mainstream media and excising a ‘critical school’ that does not accept their arguments or values.
The terrorist attacks of July 7th have proved to be an opportunity for Muslim organisations regarded as ‘mainstream’. Their spokesmen have been co-opted into government programmes providing channels of communication and extra sources of patronage. However, the terrorist attacks have also raised the profile of these spokesmen. Buoyed by the popularity of the anti-war movement, they have overestimated the depth of support for their views in Middle Britain, confusing the liberals who marched against the Iraqi war with the hard left. That is why we hear the overconfidence of Muslim anti-Zionists in our midst and a growing realisation in certain parts of the Labour Party that members of the Muslim Council of Britain hold illiberal views.
We were told that the CCTV footage of the fatal incident was not available because the media from the cameras had been removed before the shooting so that detectives could examine them for clues relating to the failed 21/7 bombings.
Not so. The tapes were ‘blank’.
According to the print edition of tonight’s Evening Standard:
Senior Tube sources have told the Evening Standard that three CCTV cameras trained on the platform at Stockwell station were in full working order. The source spoke out after it emerged that police had returned the tapes taken from the cameras saying” “These are no good to us. They are blank.”
A station log book has no reported faults concerning the CCTV cameras which would have been expected to record the crucial moments as Mr. de Menezes approach the train on 22 July.
Ok, so the cameras were working but the tapes are…blank. Of course just because everything else the authorities have said (the victim ran from the police, he was wearing an unseasonable padded jacket, he jumped the ticket barriers, he was not restrained when he was shot dead) has been a lie, we should not jump to the conclusion that the videos from these fully functional cameras were blank because some member of The Plod put them in a machine and pressed ‘ERASE’, right? I mean, without any evidence that would be jumping to conclusions, right?
While I am inclined to think that flat taxes are not as easy in practice as they are cracked up to be, and I would in any case prefer to scrap personal income tax altogether, a radically simplified tax system would benefit everyone but tax-collectors and accountants. (Even the holy skoolznospitles, and the policemen doing £80,000 of overtime a year, would approve of more net revenue from the same tax burden.)
However, Revenue officials in Britain are trying to censor even the discussion of flat tax:
According to yesterday’s account in the Daily Telegraph
The original version of secret work by officials posted on the Treasury website – after freedom of information request – pooh-poohed the claims of flat tax advocates as “misleading”.
But large parts of the work had been removed. The complete version reveals that most, but not all, of the elements which were blacked out present compelling arguments in favour of the flat tax.
Some ‘freedom of information’!
The Telegraph concluded that since such political excisions must have been at the orders of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown MP, but today this is officially denied in a letter from the permanent civil servant who heads HM Treasury:
The Chancellor had never seen any version of the released documents and no minister had any involvement in the decisions regarding their release. To suggest otherwise is completely false.
Should we conclude that the elected Government is being kept in the dark about its policy options too?
Next time someone tells me that Tony Blair does not run the country, Gordon Brown does, I reserve the right to be skeptical. Government by officials, for officials, subject to no law but Parkinson’s, is nearer the mark.
…is Kenneth Clarke to defy the odds and end up the head honcho of the Conservative Party. Why? Because appointing a Europhile statist would be the absolute best way to split the party so irretrievably that it writes the party off once and for all.
Then maybe we can work on getting a proper opposition party that actually has a coherent ideological position, well, at least as coherent as a main stream party can even be. Hell, it can even call itself the ‘Conservative Party’ for all I care.
Please explain to me why there is even any question regarding the facts surrounding the death of Jean Charles de Menezes? I would be amazed if almost every inch of his final journey was not caught on the omnipresent CCTV cameras that disfigure London’s streets. Was anything we were told born out by the evidence? It should be quite easy to check.
Clearly the Metropolitan Police is in the midst of a massive crisis in which the most fundamental question needs to be asked: “Can the police be trusted not to recklessly slaughter people who are just going about their lawful business?”
Only complete transparency over the process and the facts leading up to the shooting can even begin repair the damage to Metropolitan Police credibility. As things stand, a rational observer would have to conclude the Metropolitan Police is run by incompetents and liars. Was being in charge of the ‘Diversity Directorate’ the proper background for Cressida Dick to be put in charge of such work?
And then when John Wadham, the chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission says “The Metropolitan Police Service initially resisted us taking on the investigation, but we overcame that”, but Sir Ian Blair, the head of the Metropolitan Police replies that is untrue, well someone is lying then. Is it the head of the Met or the Head of the IPCC? At this point the credibility of the British Establishment is approaching the credibility levels of a ZANU-PF press release.
Release all CCTV footage showing the fatal journey of Jean Charles de Menezes as clearly the words of the police as to what happened are now worthless. If this is not done, one could be forgiven for thinking the reason the state so loves CCTV is only to detect crimes which are not committed by agents of the state. One law for them and another for us?
Release the footage because the ‘official line’ is now as credible as a Comical Ali war report from Iraq.
Whilst I always took the view (and still do) that summarily shooting dead someone who was reasonably thought to be a suicide bomber is an appropriate policy, even though it turned out to be a tragic mistake.
However the operative phrase is “was reasonably thought to be…”
The more facts that come out about the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the harder it is to see how these policemen came to that dire decision. He ran from the police, we were told. He was wearing an unseasonable padded coat, we were told. He jumped the ticket barrier and ran onto the train, we were told. He was not restrained and so still posed a threat when he was shot dead, we were told. Well, given the context, like so many others I thought that although this was a terrible error, the guy clearly contributed to his own death by his behaviour.
And now it appears that all of it was just a pack of complete lies. He did not run, he did not jump the barrier (he used his tube pass!), he did not have on a padded coat and he was completely restrained when he was shot dead.
There had damn well better be a very heavy accounting for this with a lot of abruptly and dishonourably ended careers and jail sentences. For a start, just a start, the head of the Metropolitan Police should be out of a job by this time tomorrow.
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