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I can’t imagine that HMG enacts legislation with a view to spawning a whole new line of British pulp fiction novels and crime thrillers but it certainly sounds like it:
“New powers allowing police and customs officers to seize criminals’ assets come into force on Monday.
The Proceeds of Crime Act will mean that money can be confiscated from all types of criminals and not just drug dealers, as previous laws allowed.”
‘All types of criminals’?. Only the financially successful ones surely?
The Proceeds of Crime Act referred to in the article has established the Civil Assets Recovery Agency (CARA) as a branch of the police force empowered to confiscate assets from those ‘suspected’ of criminal activity.
“The new act will enable police and customs officers to search for cash anywhere in the UK and not just at the country’s borders as was previously allowed.
From now on they’ll be able to crash into your home and root around the sofa looking for lost coins. Don’t laugh, you can pick up quite a lot of money like that.
“Even when there is no criminal prosecution a new assets recovery agency can now step in.”
Which is to say, they can target anyone they want whenever they like and for reasons they will never have to prove and whilst that all sounds (and is) scary enough, I have every reason to believe that it is HMG that will regret this in the long run.
Most nominally law-abiding, work-a-day citizens will not be targeted and, consequently, will bask in blissful ignorance. No so the drug-runners and gangsters, who will be only too aware of it (they are always far better versed in the law than most citizens and quite a few lawyers) and the smart ones will regard CARA as a corruption charter. For relatively low-paid public officials, the lure of easy cash, cars or luxury goods is something to which they can all too easily become addicted. Processing law-breakers through the justice system is difficult and time-consuming. Surely much more tempting to let the gangsters get on with doing whatever it is they do and live off the earnings.
This isn’t about the government stopping criminals; this is about the government getting into bed with criminals. It’s a scriptwriters dream.
I am back in the warm embrace of the West – the weather being considerably warmer in London than in Bratislava.  I shall write more about my ‘adventures’ abroad, suffice to say that towards the end of my trip I was genuinely looking forward to coming back home.
The politics and the public life in Eastern European countries usually make me appreciate the subtlety(!) of British politics, but my first encounter with the news in Britain quickly dispelled any reluctant appreciation of developed western democracy. The most upsetting development is the tax rises awaiting the British taxpayers in 2003 or as Francis Elliott of the Sunday Telegraph calls it, a ‘triple whammy’, which could add up to as much as £1,200 per family:
- A one per cent rise in National Insurance
- An average seven per cent rise in council tax
- Congestion charges in major cities
According to the same article, taxes are rising more steeply in Britain than in any other European country, while in America, the tax burden has fallen in recent years by 0.7 percent to 29.8 percent.
As Maurice Fitzpatrick of Tenon, a national accountancy firm puts it:
“This is the year that Labour will break cover as tax-raisers. People will feel a direct impact for the first time. In the past, the Government has been chipping away at the margins. This time, it will be a straightforward assault.”
I suppose Labour has no need to fear the opposition anymore, as the Tories oscillate between moribund and ridiculous. Their feeble and seriously confused proposals to reduce public spending by ‘saving’ money confirm just how clueless the Conservatives in Britain are:
“It’s too early to say how much [public spending can be reduced], but it could be up to 20 per cent. There is waste going on all over the place. It’s completely ridiculous. Everywhere there is a massive spraying of money, without it actually delivering anything.”
Shock, horror, Mr Flight. And you are going to sort it out how exactly? By setting up commitees of advisors to find ways of simplifying the tax system, and by providing government support for company directors who set up employee share schemes as a way of promoting ‘democractic capitalism’!?
Oh, and first let your comrades know, because they were very surprised to hear about this.
“We had a memo about this in November but since then, nothing. When I heard about it on the radio you could say I was more than a little surprised.”
Watching the Labour government unmask itself and the Conservative Party to hasten its demise, I wonder how much longer it will take for a decent opposition to emerge. Not that I put much hope into any opposition arising within the existing political meta-context or know what would make an opposition ‘decent’ under the circumstances. Any ideas?
Prompted, no doubt, by the hugely successful prohibition on the private ownership of handguns, UK police chiefs are planning a gun amnesty:
“A firearms amnesty is being planned for early in the New Year to try to reduce levels of gun crime.”
An inspired idea! I am quite sure that Britain’s urban desperados will be rushing, RUSHING down to their local police station to meekly surrender their Browning Autos and AK-47s.
“A ban on ownership of handguns was introduced in 1997 as a result of the Dunblane massacre, when Thomas Hamilton opened fire at a primary school leaving 16 children and their teacher dead.
But even since the ban, gun-related crimes have soared, with one study suggesting handgun usage had gone up by as much as 40 percent two years after the ban.”
The truly galling thing about this is conspicuous absence from the media of the various anti-gun campaigners who were infesting the airwaves barely five years ago assuring us that a complete ban on private gun ownership would reduce crime, make us all a lot safer and eradicate what they referred to as ‘gun-culture’ from Britain. Not a single one of these people have been brought back on air to be challenged or asked to explain themselves. I doubt that they ever will not least because many of them are still in government.
“The Home Office is considering a minimum five year sentence for anyone caught possessing a gun and setting up a national database and a new agency to trace illegally held weapons.”
In that paragraph, the future lies mapped out. The ‘amnesty’ will prove useless and the criminal use of guns will continue to spiral. Faced with mounting pressure to ‘do something’ the Home Office will impose minimum sentences for handgun possession of five years (or, possibly, ten years as some are arguing for). The result will be that heat-packing gangsters will be far more likely to shoot it out with the cops rather than surrender as well as more likely to ‘silence’ anyone they believe might snitch on them. I see dead people.
Because there is no foreseeable prospect of a policy re-think, I suppose that this whole horrid panoply of unintended consequences will simply have to play out. The British have a penchant for learning things the hard way.
The story so far: The Labour government which promised to nationalize the railways in 1996 has regulated (with massive public support) the private railway companies to the verge of bankrupcy. History repeating itself in other words, as this is exactly what happened between the 1880s and 1945.
What is new is the Conservative Party’s reaction? If I understand this correctly, the Conservatives believe the following:
- The government may have acted illegally in bankrupting Railtrack and in the accounting rules which allow the debt of the new company to remain outside the national debt.
- Costs are spiralling out of control in the absence of any shareholder value or accountability.
- Therefore the Conservative Party promises to leave things as they are for the foreseeable future.
I note that the world’s best railway is privately owned (Japan) and that the French government is likely to move towards privatisation soon. Having pioneered privatisation the Conservative loss of nerve means that we could soon live in the only country in the developed world without a capitalist railway system. Unless of course that the Labour government decides to re-privatise, as it is doing with the Channel Rail link.
Conservative ‘spokesperson’ Tim Collins also has this dire threat for the government:
“When there were future accidents, he would not be calling automatically for a public inquiry or saying it was the fault of the government.”
The government must be quaking in its boots with mirth. The railway fiasco of its own making will not be challenged by the opposition. The Tories are committed to matching Labour’s wasted billions.
And this is the first transport policy of that new leader with the nervous cough the Tories elected a year ago… what compromises would they make if they actually won? (aargh!)
The dependably insightful Melanie McDonagh has a refreshingly clear view of one of the two ‘Home Alone’ items currently clogging up the British media until some domestic or foreign disaster provides some real news.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story, a middle class mother in London somewhat deranged by depression walked out of her house, abandoning Rufus, her 12 year old child, leaving him to fend for himself. He managed to do so for two weeks before someone noticed and reported him to Social Services, in spite of his attempts to hide the fact of his mother’s absence. It was the fact that Rufus tried to conceal his mother’s dereliction which caught Melanie’s eye.
There is one further element of this story that stands out. It’s the villain. It’s the thing that Rufus does everything to avoid, that looms in his imagination like some sort of nightmare.
That is the fear that he will end up in the hands of Wandsworth social services. And I can’t have been alone in feeling my spirits sink at the news that Rufus ends his adventure in the hands of social workers, to whom he’s been turned in by the police, even though they pass him on to family friends rather than to an institution.
It wasn’t irrational fear that made him do anything to keep himself out of their hands. He’d been in care before – another thing that sets him apart from the other pupils at Emanuel School – for some months after his father died and his mother succumbed to depression.
Melanie McDonagh is always good at spotting the ‘off message’ angles to stories such as these. I have followed her career with interest ever since she wrote about the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina that was a head and a half better than most of the dreck which passed for reporting there. It has always puzzled me why she is not a better known journalist than many of the blowhard Idiotarians that infest the British media with one tenth her talent.
I’ve been busy doing normal life for the last couple of days. On Sunday I gave a Christmas party to as many of my friends as I could remember the names of and had the phone numbers of, and could round up. Sorry if you reckon you’re a friend and you weren’t invited. You probably are still, that’s if you still want to be. Anyway, first I had to get it ready, then I had to have it, then I had to recover from it, and while doing that latter thing I had also to sort out a Christmas present for my goddaughter in time for her mother to take it with her tomorrow morning to France, me having forgotten about it until now. Lucky escape there.
So this is a very quicky posting, really just to make sure that, what with Perry still being techno-blighted, David Carr knows he’s not being totally relied upon, like the mug who does all the washing up in a shared student lodging because he has the most team spirit and responsibility.
The posting consists, basically, of the most remarkable single sentence I have read on the web during the last few days of trying to find something quick to comment on here, but mostly failing, until I realised that this thing had really stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away. It first surfaced towards the end of a piece in Scotland on Sunday by Richard Northedge as long ago as Sunday 15th of this month, and it was immediately noticed and reproduced by David Farrer. Here it is:
“The Inland Revenue deals with the widest customer base in the UK. This makes us to all intends and purposes the UK’s number-one service brand.”
Customer base? Service brand? Who and what the hell do these people think they are?
What this most reminds me of is the firing squad sent to execute Captain Blackadder in the First World War manifestation of that great comedy personage enacted on British TV in recent years by Rowan Atkinson. (Blackadder Goes Forth is the generic title, and the episode is called “Private Plane”. Blackadder has been sentenced to death for killing a army message-delivering pigeon.) The firing squad are played nice. They drop by the night before to introduce themselves and to pay their respects. Their leader speaks ingratiatingly of the “terminatory service” which they supply to their “customers”.
But that was a comedy show. This creep really seems to believe that the people of Britain are “customers” for the “service” he and his pals are oh-so-sportingly providing for them. No doubt he imagines that we are all oozing with “brand loyalty” towards him and his partners in state administered robbery.
This quote captures an awful (and I do mean awful) lot about the atmosphere in Britain now, where all manner of institutions boom forth with the language of business, that is to say the language of freedom, while not in fact doing business, that is to say while actually buggering us around in ways we would never consent to if we had any choice about it.
Does this kind of crap get talked in the USA?
Since we at Samizdata are only too aware that most of our readers are not British, we take a particular relish in introducing our readers to the rich and fruity idioms of British slang. We see this as a kind of cultural export.
In this tradition, may I refer you to the expression ‘Taking the Piss’. It means being disrespectful to the point of effrontery or the process whereby, having caused injury or offence to someone, the ‘piss-taker’ then goes on to compound said injury or offence for no obvious reason except contempt.
As always, these terms are best illustrated by a real-life example, so here is quite the most blatant example of ‘taking the piss’ that I can imagine:
“The burglar injured by Tony Martin after he broke into the farmer’s home is suing him for £15,000 compensation for loss of earnings.”
I burgle your home then I sue you for trying to stop me. See, that’s called ‘taking the piss’.
“Brendon Fearon, 32, wants the compensation because he has supposedly been unable to find a job since suffering the gunshot injuries in the raid on Martin’s Norfolk home..”
This thing is expecting the rest of us to believe that, had it not been for Tony Martin’s buckshot lodged in his jacksy, he’d have been abroad actively seeking honest, gainful employment. Get the picture?
“The writ gives a number of reasons for Fearon’s claim, including his leg injuries, which prevent him finding work, concern about his “long-term sexual functioning” and becoming “very tearful” when watching a film in which someone dies.”
Woe, woe and, thrice, woe! Fearon may be unable to breed new Fearons. And I too, get ‘very tearful’ when I watch the world go stark, staring bonkers.
“He is also said to claim that he is afraid of fireworks, no longer enjoys ju-jitsu and kick-boxing and becomes depressed when TV shows contain gunfire.”
I know exactly how he feels because I become depressed by the horrible feeling that his ludicrous claim will, like as not, succeed.
I was reporting the events in and around Parliament Square yesterday afternoon, for a French magazine. Having previously attended the 1998 Countryside March and the 2002 Liberty & Livelihood March, I was able to observe the differences in mood.
In 1998 the typical banner read “Please listen to us!”
In 2002 the banners read “The last peaceful protest…”
Yesterday was not a peaceful protest but an act of civil disobedience.
None of the people I interviewed believed that the government would or could deliver a deal. All criticised the leadership of the Countryside Alliance for as one Devonian middle-aged lady put it: “They are protecting their knighthoods.” Minutes later she was part of the first violent attempt to break into the House of Commons car park.
I took a careful look at the people, mostly men who took on the police. One looked like a soccer hooligan, baseball cap, beer gut and the drooling stupidity of English nationalism at its worst: the police didn’t even bother arresting him when he broke through the police cordon.
The others were in their late thirties or forties. They looked more like farm labourers than landowners. They also looked rather more interested in provoking a battle than dialogue. The campaign badge said “Bollocks to Blair”. No pretence at dialogue there.
In all the police acted with almost incredible restraint, police horses were shoved backwards by huntsmen who tried to unbuckle saddles and throw riders. Smoke bombs were thrown by Real C.A. activists, sometimes at police. The Real C.A. activists, who have promised a campaign of direct action against the ban on hunting, were handing out Real C.A. stickers but not wearing them themselves to avoid detection. Some of the demonstration leaders were giving instructions in Welsh to confuse the eavesdropping Special Branch.
There were eight arrests, but most of the violent offenders were allowed to rejoin the crowd. I overheard a reporter interviewing a campaigner and asking why they didn’t go through the normal channels: support the Tories, for instance. The reply indicated that for these protesters at least, they have to create their own opposition.
Shortly before I left I heard a police officer saying to a mother with two young children who were screaming “Blair Out!” and cheering a particularly vigourous charge against the mounted police:
“It’s one thing to be up against Swampy or those Greens, but this just doesn’t feel right!”
He looked as if he’d just realised that his parents could be attacking another part of the human shield of police. Unlike his Parisian police counterparts in 1943, he has the option of refusing to collaborate.
Following on from yesterday’s fracas, first-hand reports are now on-line at the website of the Countryside Alliance.
Of particular note is the report from Parliament Square by Simon Hart:
“There isn’t a single person who was in Parliament Square today who has the slightest desire to do anything other than lead a life free from political interference and to respect the rule of law.”
That sentiment has a vaguely familiar ring to it. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before.
Everyone knows the old joke. Q.How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? A. His lips are moving.
It’s not true of course, but it is an accurate reflection of the popular antipathy towards lawyers in general; something which too many lawyers themselves have done much to foster.
Still, I hope enough of my fellow Brits will be able to cast aside their natural cynicism of the legal profession for just long enough to applaud Matthias Kelly, the Chairman of the Bar Council, who has announced that he intends to take on this ‘highly illiberal’ government:
“”There is something about the Home Office that brings out these really penal instincts in people. Mr Blunkett is profoundly illiberal. We have a system that is fair and I want to preserve fairness. I do not want to sacrifice it for short-term political expediency, which is what I think much of the language of the debate being run by the Government is about.”
Admirable sentiments from Mr.Kelly. He has hit upon the truth that the abolition of our liberties is, in some senses, a by-product of incompetence rather than a deliberate political ambition. It has everything to do with a government that is desperate to be seen to be doing something in response to the voters increasing concerns about spiralling crime rates (or, in any event, the general perception of greater crime and violence).
I wish Mr.Kelly every success with his campaign and I hope he will not be deterred by the inevitable response he will elicit from the government and its supporters, that he is motivated by greed and self-interest. It is no secret to anyone that barristers do very nicely from the system as it is and it is, therefore, all too easy to dismiss any genuine concerns they may have as fears for their own pocket.
Such allegations may or may not have any basis in fact but, truth be told, I don’t care. Self-interest is always a reliable motivator and I would be only too pleased to witness it being put to a good use for a change.
It is also pleasing to note that concerns about this illiberal government are now being publicly aired by the ‘great and the good’, a class to which Mr.Kelly assuredly belongs. Thus far, nobody of any public standing has been willing to rock the NuLabour boat. Let us hope that others follow his lead and begin to break their, hitherto, shameful silence.
As for Mr.Kelly, who knows, perhaps he has been reading the Samizdata.
I suppose it’s a bit too tin-foil hattish to suggest that this might have been timed to coincide with the official visit of Syria’s President to Britain by the police to recruit paid informants sounds like exactly the kind of thing said President might recognise from his own Ba’athist tradition.
“A £500 reward is being offered to people who tell the authorities about persistent drink-drivers over Christmas.”
Question: How will either the informant or the police know if the alleged ‘drink-driver’ is ‘persistent’? I suppose the informant could swear blind to the fact, provided they needed the money enough.
Of course, the Syrian regime has nothing to do with it at all, though it does have all the ring of ‘police-state’ snitch culture so sadly prevalent in that part of the world. No, the reality is that this is yet another back-door admission by the state that it has now passed more laws and regulations than it can possibly enforce and so has little choice but to co-opt the polity into acting as its eyes and ears.
What next, I ask myself? ‘Kids, report your parents for not paying their taxes’?
Central London was the venue for another demonstration by the Countryside Alliance today, timed to co-incide with a parliamentary debate on the proposed regulation of fox-hunting.
“”We don’t want an unjust bill, which does not have the support of the community to which it applies and I think we are looking at a serious amount of trouble if that happens…”
Judging from the latest reports from the broadcast news, that ‘serious amount of trouble’ is upon us as some 1500-2000 countryside insurrectionists are locked in battles with police and traffic in and around Westminster has been brought to a standstill.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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