Category Archives: Civil Liberty

The final historical aspect of this election may only be realised during the coalition negotiations. If there is a grand coalition, we will have a parliamentary opposition without any rights. With only 127 out of 630 seats, the current parliamentary laws mean that Die Linke and the Greens wouldn’t be able to challenge the government’s legislation, either with a complaint of unconstitutionally, a commission of inquiry or a parliamentary hearing.

The only comparable instance in the history of Germany’s federal republic was when the Free Liberal party was alone in opposition against a grand coalition in 1966 and 1969.

If such a scenario becomes reality, Europe will be watching with interest how serious Germany is about democratic principles, especially since my country enjoys lecturing other nations when they ignore the needs of minorities. Europe’s largest country can’t afford to have democracy without serious debate.

Democracy is that tyranny of the majority that you’re complaining about.

The protections against it are the rule of law and civil liberties.

Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP for Reigate, has been told to reapply for his parliamentary seat amid claims that local Tories want to oust him because he came out as a homosexual after the last election.

It’s not a bigotry I share, the one against Teh Gayers. I wouldn’t vote for or against someone for which flavour of consenting adult they liked to play hide the salami with (nor vote for a Tory, obviously).

However, the people in that constituency have every right to vote for whoever the damn want and for any reason that crosses their synapses, assuming a local Tory party has a cumulatively positive number of those of course. Because this is what democracy means: the peeps get to have their say.

They can vote for or against someone because they are or are not a shirtlifter, black/white, commie, fascist or even, if they’re truly lunatic, One Nation Labour.

Democracy does not get limited to either people one approves of nor to votes being cast only for reasons one approves of. This is rather the point of it actually, to find out what it is that the people, rather than the rulers, do in fact approve of or not. And if it turns out that the voters are indeed bigots then sorry, but you don’t get to go elect another people.

A letter was reportedly sent to prison staff and reported in The Times. It said: “You will no doubt be aware that the decision has been made that the time is right for the prison service to adopt a tobacco and smoke free policy to provide a smokefree workplace and environment for our staff and prisoners.”

Prisons in the South West will be the first to implement the ban in early March or April next year, with Exeter and Eastwood Park Women’s Prison thought to be the first to trial the new regime.

Sigh.

The majority of prisoners currently smoke. And it ain’t gonna be easy getting them to stop doing so.

But here’s the thing. I vaguely recall that they decided some time ago that they couldn’t stop prisoners smoking. Something to do with a cell being a “home” and thus there was not the power to stop smoking in it?

The Good Pub Guide.

Not one single mention of the smoking ban.

Tossers.

\”David\’s detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the law can be abused for petty vindictive reasons.

How can being detained under a law be unlawful?

I could understand unfair, or that the law itself violates human rights, all that sort of stuff. But if a law expressly says that they can do this something (which it does) how can that be unlawful?

This Marxist stuff has really dug itself into the establishment, hasn\’t it?

Professor Andrew Ashworth QC, who for three years chaired a body which helped formulate sentencing policy in England and Wales, said even persistent offenders should be fined or given a community sentence.

Prisoners suffer uncomfortable conditions, isolation from their family, loss of autonomy and loss of privacy, said the professor, and it is “disproportionate” to impose such a punishment on someone who committed a property crime.

“In principle … no person should ever be subjected to the pains of imprisonment for a ‘pure property offence’, even if they have done it many times before,” he said in a paper for the Howard League for Penal Reform.

“For an offence that amounts to no more than a deprivation of property, it is difficult to justify a deprivation of such a fundamental right as that to personal liberty.”

Y\’know, it\’s only a crime against property so why worry?

The problem with this is of course that it\’s not really just a crime against property. It\’s a crime against the owner of the property, their deprivation of it. It\’s a breach of the rights of someone else therefore: of to jail you go Scot Boy.

Farage said: \”Spot checks and being demanded to show your papers by officialdom are not the British way of doing things. Yes, of course we want to deal with illegal immigration, but what\’s the point of rounding people up at railway stations if at the same time they\’re still flooding in through Dover and the other nearly hundred ports in this country.

\”I\’m astonished that the Home Office has become so politicised that they\’re actually advertising \’another 10 arrested\’. Before long they\’ll be live video-streaming these arrests. I don\’t like it. It really is not the way we\’ve ever behaved or operated as a country. We don\’t have ID cards; we should not be stopped by officialdom and have to prove who we are.\”

We are, after all, free people in a free country.

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, 44, said he and his partner Tony, 49, believe the “only way forward” for them may be to challenge the Church in court for denying them the right to marry.

The couple, who have been in a civil partnership for seven years and have five children through surrogacy, describe themselves as practising Christians who regularly attend their local parish in Danbury, Essex.

Mr Drewitt-Barlow said that while he welcomed the passing of legislation for same-sex marriage, provisions exempting churches from performing the weddings meant they still felt discriminated against.

He told the Essex Chronicle: “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into a court to get them to recognise us.”

The Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act, which received royal assent last month, contains a so-called “quadruple lock” of legal provisions designed to protect churches which chose not to conduct same–sex weddings from being sued.

I\’ve no idea whether they will succeed in their suit: but they\’re certainly giving it a go, aren\’t they?

If true, this is disturbing. And I have no doubt that it could be true given the syphylitic little cockweasels we have ruling us.

So, the question becomes, is it true?

OK, so this is about banning Pammycakes from the UK. A ban that shouldn\’t happen, however much I dislike Pammycakes. But seriously:

A spokesman for Hope not Hate, which led a campaign to ban the pair, declared himself “delighted”. Matthew Collins said: “There is enough hatred in this country at the moment; it is tense.

“There is a line in the sand between freedom of speech and the right to use hate speech. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you that right. We live in a democracy and we believe in free speech. People will now quote Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”

Free speech led to an attempted genocide? To the murder of 6 million Jews plus innumerable Gypsies, homosexuals and others? That society in which the free speech of writing the odd postcard arguing that maybe the war wasn\’t a good idea led to the guillotine? That free speech? The one in which freedom of speech only applied to certain ideas and words and not to others?

So what is the societal penicillin for a rancid syphylitic cunt like Matthew Collins?

The US has reportedly been bugging EU offices in Washington and New York, in the latest in a series of revelations about alleged US spy programs.

Umm, isn\’t that what the US actually pays its spies to do? Their very function? Keep an eye on the country\’s enemies?

Support for the Courageous State seems to be falling away:

Earlier this year, the polling company Ipsos MORI began to publish the fruits of its work on 17 years\’ worth of polling results, spread across four generations, starting with those born in 1945 or before, and ending with Generation Y. Among the most striking examples of a yawning gap between the generations was their respective responses to the claim that \”the government should spend more money on welfare benefits for the poor, even if it leads to higher taxes\” – a signifier for the principle of redistribution, support for which has fallen among all generations over the past 20 or so years. Here, though, is the remarkable thing: whereas around 40% of those born in 1945 or before still agree, the numbers tumble as you move down the age range, reaching around half that figure among those aged 33 and under. Similarly, among Gen Y, the claim that \”the creation of the welfare state is one of Britain\’s proudest achievements\” is now supported by around 20% of people; when it comes to the prewar cohort, the figure always hovered at around 70%.

And given that democracy is the highest value (or so we\’re told) therefore that Courageous State should be dismantled.

But snark aside:

A large share of Generation Y seems to build its opinions around a liberalism that is both social and, crucially, economic.

Well, yes. If people should indeed have the freedom to fuck whoever they want then they should have the freedom to buy and sell what, with whom, ever they want.

I assume that this is some blindness on my part, some inability to empathise perhaps, but I really cannot ever understand those who argue in favour of social freedoms but not economic, nor economic freedoms but not social. I do understand those who insist that people are not worthy of either set: there are anal retentive authoritarians with us always. I disagree with them but I understand them. But I really do not get some of the more red blooded conservatives who argue for, say, free markets and capitalism but shudder at the thought of Teh Gays being allowed to not frighten the horses behind closed doors. Nor those who insist that the horses be damned and public parks should have free extra strong condoms everywhere but that allowing people to exchange goods, services and money without regulation is the beginning of the very fall into damnation.

Like everyone else I assume that it is they, not me, that is blind: why cannot they see that the two sets of freedoms are in fact the same set? What consenting adults get up to is up to consenting adults as long as they\’re not, in doing so, restricting the freedoms of other consenting adults to do the same?

This included:

•?Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates\’ use of computers;

•?Penetrating the security on delegates\’ BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;

•?Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;

•?Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;

•?Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.

Everyone involved knew that people were trying to spy on them. Indeed, everyone involved was trying to spy on each other. This is just what spies do.

Anyone seriously think that the Russians don\’t try to spy on us in Moscow? Seriously?

The difference that needs to be observe is between these spies spying on Johnny Foreigner and their spying on us, the citizens of the nation that hires them. The first is normal, the second an anathema.

Norway\’s parliament voted overwhelmingly on Friday to conscript women into its armed forces, becoming the first European and first NATO country to make military service compulsory for both genders.

Tsk. A properly free and liberal society would have abolished the slavery of men, not expanded the State\’s helotry in the name of gender equality.

Jamie K.

That\’s a shame in a way, because you just don\’t get the sheer titanium-testicled enormity of what he did until you see the uncropped version.

Oyo.

Pretty dim of him, it has to be said. And corrupt etc. However, this line rankles:

The scandal also highlights David Cameron’s failure to bring in promised laws to allow disgraced MPs to be expelled from Parliament

Err, no.

The powers that be don\’t get to decide who sits in Parliament. The electors decide that. This is actually an important point too. My knowledge of the John Wilkes story is pretty sketchy but wasn\’t it rather about this point?

It isn\’t the party leaders who decide who sits in the Commmons. Not the government, a committee of moral arbitrators, it\’s the electors.

I\’m entirely fine with the whip being withdrawn of course. And with criminal prosecution for criminal acts, even with the few basic rules we have about eligibility (ie, no bankrupts may sit or be elected) and anyone being sentenced to over a year inside having to resign.

I\’m even just ecstatic about the idea of recall elections: but that\’s very much the point. As it is the electors who hire then it must be the electors who fire: and most certainly not some organ of the very State that the MPs are supposed to be (I knowq, fat chance but….) overseeing and monitoring.

Just not on at all.

I’ve made it crystal clear to my son that if any government ever attempts to conscript him – no matter the purpose, no matter the circumstances, no matter the conditions, and no matter the promised duration – I will literally fight to the death, if necessary, to prevent his enslavement. He is not – just as no one else is – born to serve any government.

But as Haldane pointed out, I might for two brothers or eight cousins.

David Cameron is planning new powers to muzzle Islamic hate preachers accused of provoking terrorist outrages such as the killing of soldier Lee Rigby.

The Prime Minister wants to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’ and is to head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) made up of senior Ministers, MI5, police and moderate religious leaders.

The high-powered group will study a number of measures, including banning extremist clerics from being given public platforms to incite students, prisoners and other followers – and forcing mosque leaders to answer for ‘hate preachers’.

This is simply the banning of free speech.

We currently accept two limits on this right: incitement to immediate violence and libel. And no others. Nor should we accept any others.

The danger to us from Islamic nutters isn\’t what the nutters themselves might do. Yes, they do indeed occasionally kill one or more of us. But the real danger is what the fuckwit politicians will do in reaction to said killings.

60 million people must be denied free speech because two nutters murdered a man? Fuck off Dave, seriously.