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September 2014

Depends what the judges say about comfort letters, doesn’t it?

Hundreds of IRA terrorism suspects will learn they no longer have immunity from prosecution as the Government announces that hundreds of controversial “comfort letters” are to be rescinded.

Theresa Villiers, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, will tell MPs the letters, issued to individuals suspected of terrorist offences committed before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, are worthless.

Suspects are to be told that the letters, which informed them they were unlikely to face prosecution unless new evidence against them came to light, have been annulled and are “not worth the paper they are written on”.

New letters are now likely to be issued telling terrorist suspects that police will be prepared to mount a prosecution should officers believe there is already enough evidence against them to do so.

That’s all terribly well and good. but it’s not actually ministers who decide whether such letters are binding or not, is it? It’s judges:

Their existence became known after the prosecution of a suspected Hyde Park bomber collapsed amid widespread anger in February when it emerged he had been sent one of the letters.

John Downey, 62, from Donegal, was arrested last year as he passed through Gatwick airport and charged with the murder of four British soldiers in the 1982 bombing.

The case against him was thrown out by a senior judge when it became known he had received a comfort letter. The letter had in fact been sent to him by mistake, as the Metropolitan Police still had a warrant for his arrest over the Hyde Park outrage, which killed four soldiers of the Blues and Royals, who were on ceremonial duties at the time.

 

So what’s the likelihood that those minsters have actually bothered to get a legal opinion on this? Me, given the current shambles, I’d put it at about zero percent.

 

Simply because they’re such damn fools that they don’t understand that they are constrained by the law.

 

I have no idea at all whether the government can in fact say “Ha Ha, just fooling about those letters Paddy!” nor what the courts will say about their having done so. But I’m near certain that they won’t have bothered to check.

So, as I was saying about passports

The prime minister unveiled a package of anti-terror measures in the Commons on Monday but was not able to include a widely trailed proposal to prevent British-born citizens returning to the country from Syria or Iraq if they were suspected of being involved in acts of terror.

Acknowledging the legal difficulties in preventing British citizens returning to the UK, admitting that it might render them stateless, the prime minister said new measures were still needed to prevent British jihadis returning.

….

 

The difficulties facing Cameron were underlined by the former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve, who warned that removing passports from UK-born citizens returning home would breach international law and UK common law.

Grieve said “even taking such powers on a temporary basis is likely to be a non starter”.

 

The twat announced as public policy something he knew was illegal.

Great British Food

Or how we adopt other cuisines:

 

01 September 2014 12:07pm

I like cheese on toast with a tin of spaghetti on top.

With brown sauce.

You know it makes sense.

 

Captainstegs BewilderedMark

01 September 2014 12:48pm

Spaghetti hoops with fried onion stirred in, poured over two sausage rolls warm from the oven. Delicious.

It might, perhaps, be the couple of thousand calories’ worth of beer first that makes them so good.

 

Those sex-mad 60s

The most bizarre show was a political opera where we had to wear Marie Antoinette-type costumes with silver wigs, tight bodices, white stockings with suspender belts and little white shoes. The stage was covered in mesh with an orchestra underneath, and you knew if you put one foot wrong you’d end up in the cymbals. On the night, Dee Dee breathed in and her boobs spilled out right in front of the king of Belgium. He never stopped smiling for the rest of the show.

Sort of thing that would be written into the script these days, isn’t it?

Does Con Coughlin know anything about the military?

I know the bloke has a reputation for simply filing whatever he was told at the last Westminster lunch he went to but come on, this is ludicrous:

Yet by the same token, the refusal of many Western leaders to contemplate any armed action to dissuade Mr Putin from further military adventurism is not helping to defuse the crisis. In Britain our over-cautious approach means that, whether we are dealing with Islamic State in Iraq or Russian aggression in the Caucasus, the knee-jerk response of David Cameron and Philip Hammond, our new Foreign Secretary, is immediately to rule out the possibility of “boots on the ground”.

It’s September. What are the three laws of warfare?

Don’t get involved in a land war in Asia.

Don’t invade Russia in winter.

And there’s another one I’ve forgotten but that’s enough there. We’re simply not going to fight in Eastern Ukraine because fighting, with our forces, in Eastern Ukraine would be ludicrous.

Presumably it wasn’t actually anyone from the Army that Coughlin last had lunch with……

When do we start the public hangings?

A researcher who raised the alarm over the sexual abuse of teenage girls in Rotherham more than a decade ago was sent on a ‘ethnicity and diversity course’ by child protection bosses who refused to act on her evidence.

The researcher, who was seconded to Rotherham council by the Home Office, was told she must “never, ever” again refer to the fact that the abusers were predominantly Asian men.

Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama programme under the condition of anonymity, the researcher said that she identified more 270 victims of trafficking and underage prostitution by mainly Muslim gangs in Rotherham.

But, despite being sent to Rotherham Council, the report – based on interviews with underage girls seeking help from the council’s anti-child prositution project, called Risky Business – was never published.

Indeed, the council tried unsuccessfully to sack the researcher after she resisted pressure to change her findings.

Well, when?

Please vote yes, please, please!

Support for Scottish independence has risen eight points in a month, according to a new poll.

The No camp are now six points ahead of the Yes campaign, down from 14 points in mid-August and 22 points early last month, excluding undecided voters.

The latest YouGov poll found that, excluding ”don’t knows”, 53% of those questioned planned to vote No, while 47% would back Yes.

This compares to 57% for Yes and 43% for No in mid August and 61% for Yes and 39% for No at the beginning of last month.

Go on, gooo oooonnnn, puhlease?

Imagine, both Danny Alexander and Gordon Brown banished from Westminster forever. No more Scottish MPs. The near impossibility of a majority Labour government ever again in Jerusalem’s green and pleasant land.

So, how much do we have to bribe you all to vote yes?

David Cameron really is an ignorant bastard, isn’t he?

Among measures announced:

Legislation will be drawn up to give the police new statutory powers to confiscate the passports of suspect terrorists at UK borders
The UK will challenge any attempt by the courts to water down these powers
Plans to block suspected British terrorists from returning to the UK will be drawn up on a “cross-party basis”
Terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims) will be extended, to include the power to relocate suspects
Terrorists will be required to undergo de-radicalisation programmes
Airlines will be forced to hand over more information about passengers travelling to and from conflict zones.

You cannot refuse to let a British citizen into the country. That’s what being a citizen means: they’ve got to let you in. That’s going to be in breach of so much human rights law it’s not even funny.

And I’m just fine with the temporary confiscation of passports. You get charged with a crime, the court asks you to surrender your passport until trial while you’re on bail. Fine with me.

But permanent confiscation of a passport merely on suspicion? Fuck off you fascist bastard.

“Relocate” suspects? We bringing back exile as a punishment now?

I’ve said for a long time now that far worse than anything any bearded jihadis might do to us is what the cunts in power might do to “protect” us from them.

We invented this human rights shit and let’s keep it going. Not dustbin the lot of it so that some Eton Wet can ponce around looking tough. Abu Hookhand, for exactly and precisely the amount of time that he carried a British passport as I do, is and was entitled to exactly the same judicial procedures that I am to be subject to. And as I don’t want some no neck to be able to confiscate my passport as I get off a flight from wherever just on suspicion nor should that happen to anyone else.

The correct process is suspicion, investigation, charge, trial, punishment. And anyone who tries to change that sequence would righteously have people taking up arms against them.

Shit, have we got to have the Civil War over the divine right of the State again?

Ritchie on corporate management

What if it thinks there can be more than one business model (it was, after all, the Co-op trying to adopt the standard business model that caused its problems)?

Eh?

Set this in context. The Co-op succeeded. It cannot do so as any other business. It can only do so as a Co-op.

What?

The Co Op damn near went bust as a result of having an incompetent from among the insiders running the bank.

I was intrigued by Paul Myners’ demand that now that the Co-op has had the temerity to change his plan for its governance that they must ‘now bring in a top-class chairman and chief executive from outside’. Rumour had it that this is not the plan: insiders are tipped for these posts. I am not surprised; the evidence seems very clear that outsiders, Myners included, have great difficulty understanding the Co-op’s mind set. That to me makes an insider as as an obvious a choice for this job as an insider is to head John Lewis, where the current incumbent as CEO proves just how successful such appointments can be.

This, however, hadme thinking very slightly more than usual about the structure of UK board management and the conventions surrounding it, which it can fairly be said Myners represents.

??

Well done Ritchie!

So, he asks rhetorically:

How many things can you get wrong in a sentence?

In the comments he gets his answer:

A lot, it seems.

“From 1919 until 1970 peacetime debt was higher than now (and the above data fails to take QE into account). The claim that there is unprecedented UK peacetime debt is wrong.” (From Ritchie himself)

Apart from simply ignoring World War 2, you do realise wartime debt doesn’t suddenly disappear when the war stops, don’t you? During the two wars defence spending hit over 50% of GDP alone, pushing total government spending over 100% of GDP. In rough terms each war added about 125% to the debt/GDP number.

Under Labour, pre-crisis the UK had about 40% debt/GDP. We are now around the 90% mark. So it’s the biggest peacetime increase in the debt/GDP ratio, and the biggest ever peacetime budget deficit.

Ouch. Guess Ritchie won’t need to walk into a door to find out what it feels like now.

Well, no Polly, this does have something to do with it

The date at which a foetus might be viable has nothing to do with a woman’s right to choose.

The thing being that we’ve a Sorites Paradox here.

At one end of the process we’ve entirely separate gametes, each housed in their entirely different host bodies. Usually, but not always, there are two people involved in the process. And at the end of that process we end up with a third, entirely autonomous, different and unique, human being.

The process takes some 22 years in our current culture. From the meeting and fusing of those gametes to the near universally acknowledged full independence of that child when it reaches 21 years of age. Actually, it’s getting a little later as child support notionally stops when the child leaves university these days.

Our problem is that this is a Sorites Paradox. It’s very difficult to insist that the unfertilised egg is a human being deserving of all the protections against, say, being torn limb from limb, that we grant to fully independent human beings. It’s equally very difficult to insist that one 3 days from uni graduation is not eligible for those protections. But where exaclty is that dividing line? That’s what the Paradox itself is: where does a pile of sand become not a pile, where does life become life?

I agree entirely, as I always do on this subject, that I’m an extremist. My position is that life starts where positive action has to be taken to stop it doing so. Thus the egg that needs to be fertilised is not life: contraception is fine. But a fertilised egg left to its own devices in a fallopian tube, which will, if left alone, implant and grow and in that fullness of the 22 years become that independent human being? One that requires positive action to prevent it doing so? That’s life. Meaning that Ru-486 (or whatever) is not OK. That’s an abortifacient.

There are subtleties here: an ectopic pregnancy isn’t ever going to lead to that 21 year old. Thus intervention to stop it killing the mother is just fine (an attitude which even the Catholic Church supports even if you’ve got to ask a few times to get them to agree publicly).

But as I say I’m an extremist on this point, something I know and happily admit. I’m also entirely aware that most of the people I share this society with don’t view it this way. further, that the law ain’t ever gonna be the way I think it ought to be.

However, this still leaves us with the point that this really is a Sorites Paradox type problem. There is no clear and solid dividing line. All we can do, when setting the rules, is go with what most people think is about right. And that’s where viability becomes important. Almost all, almost (sadly only almost) are revolted at the sometimes US (and also Chinese for forced abortions) practice of inducing birth then sucking out the brains of the foetus/child (still Sorities here!) so as to make sure that a live and viable baby is not born. Because almost all agree that that’s sometime past that point at which this new human being gains those protections against being torn limb from limb.

Similarly most are, if not happy, will at least acquiesce, in the idea that a gob of 6 week old meiotic cells is not a human being and can be done away with according to the putative mothers’ wishes.

All of which brings us to what the society around us generally believes is the defining point about which is that tipping point in our paradox. I may not like it that my fellow citizens think this way, you obviously don’t either. But they all do: viability is the defining point. Far from that date of the foetus potentially being viable having nothing to do with a woman’s right to choose our fellows regard that as the defining moment. As and when it can be born and live it’s a human, before that it’s not.

You can’t win with these fuckers, can you?

Poverty inquiry finds growing inequality in schools
Gulf between children from low- and high-income families is starker than ever, leading to social isolation and bullying

The obvious answer to which is that children from poor and children from rich families should be educated separately. Yet the entire thrust of education policy for the past 70 years is that all children, rich and poor, must be educated together in comprehensives.

Meaning that it’s just not possible to win, is it? Either all are educated together in which case there will be such inequalities but if we do something about separating the unequal then we’re divisive fuckers, aren’t we?

Timmy elsewhere

At the ASI:

An open letter to Dr. Sarah Wollaston MP.

She really needs to have a word with the Daily Mail for the paper has made her views sound like those of an idiot.

Quite clearly you’ll want to make sure that the Daily Mail corrects this terrible misrepresentation of what any sane or sensible person could possibly believe on this subject. My suggestion is that you start by calling 020 7938 6000 and ask for a certain Mr. Paul Dacre. He should be able to sort out matters for you.

Interesting news from Saxony

The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which wants Europe’s crisis countries, including Greece and France, to leave the eurozone and aims to retrieve powers from Brussels, stormed home with a record ten per cent of the vote in polling in the eastern state of Saxony.

Not so much will France leave the euro but will the Germans force them to at some future date?

This comes only a year after AfD’s founding……

Erm, no, this isn’t quite correct

Half of young women can’t ‘locate their vaginas’

I think that it would be fair to say that 100% of young women can locate their own whatsits even if their boyfriends have certain problems with the more technical details like G-Spots and the like.

As Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Cancer month kicks off, a study shows half of 26 to 35-year-old women are unable to correctly identify a vagina on a medical diagram of the female reproductive system

Half are unable to locate a diagram of a whatsit on a diagram of lady bits, a diagram stripped of all the flesh that usually covers them, well, that’s not quite so bad, is it?

I’m pretty sure that all young men and women can locate their shoulder but wouldn’t be surprised if a rather lower number could identify it as the ball and socket joint in a diagram.

This leaves with the real problem in our society which is the inability of politicians to locate their arses with their own hands, or to distinguish such from their elbows. That is a serious problem and one which we have struggled with for some centuries now.