Should Shami Chakrabarti resign?

As I pointed out in my posting the other day, Shami Chakrabarti and David Davis have both been consipicuous by their absence from the debate over whether Geert Wilders should have been allowed into the country.

Legally, there now seems to be little doubt that it was unlawful to exclude Wilders, the showing of his film having gone off with barely a murmur of dissent in his absence, and with Wilders having actually visited Britain a matter of weeks ago without any discernable trouble. The Home Secretary is going to be extremely hard pushed to justify his exclusion on any legal basis.

So in legal terms, he should have been here, and those who support the concept of the rule of law should be incandescent over the Home Secretary's behaviour. Likewise, anyone with the remotest interest in civil liberties should be fuming too. So where are our champions of civil liberties? Why have they not been shouting from the pages of every newspaper in the land? Davis, nothing. Chakrabarti, nothing. The Liberal Democrats? Don't make me laugh.

David Davis is a politician and has presumably made a political calculation that he has little to gain from speaking out in favour of Wilders' coming to the UK, and a great deal to lose in terms of his future career (we assume that he will eventually seek high office again). We expect little else from politicians and can write off the LibDems on the same grounds.

Chakrabarti has no such excuse. She is the head of Liberty, a body that exists solely to speak out in favour of civil liberties. She has failed miserably to do so. Her silence over Wilders is not unprecedented either. She has made it abundantly clear that she doesn't feel that freedom of speech extends to nasty people; her words on Question Time last week can have left nobody in any doubt about that. She also has previous form on the "disappearing act" she has performed in the last few days, notably when Liberty maintained a determined radio silence over the Sikh play Bezhti.

Chakrabarti has demonstrated over the years that she will not stand up for those whose views she deems unacceptable. She will not defend unpleasant views. She will not speak out for unpleasant people. She hates racists so much that she will allow fundamental British freedoms to be trampled underfoot in order allow these views she detests so much to be crushed, regardless of the importance of the freedoms that are lost with them, and regardless of the duties entailed in her position.

What is the point of the woman? It is possible to find people with views like that in any pub, Conservative Association or working men's club in the country. People who think civil liberties are a secondary consideration are two-a-penny in the pages of the Guardian or the Telegraph. Why do we need Liberty if not to make the difficult case of basic freedoms for everyone?

Chakrabarti and Liberty are not champions of civil liberties. In many ways they are a direct threat to the English model of individuals untrammelled in what they can say and think. She should stand down and make way for somebody who wants civil liberties for everyone, not just the favoured few.

BBC responds to the Obama splice complaint

The BBC has responded to the complaint made by Tony at Harmless Sky over their splicing of Obama's inauguration speech.

Risibly, they are claiming that the splice was obvious and that it didn't change the meaning, despite it already having been shown that the splices are inaudible and that it clearly did change the meaning.

The conclusions are quite clear. You cannot be sure that anything you read or hear on the BBC is a faithful representation of what happened. They don't care about their reputation, presumably because they don't have to - it's because of the unique way they are funded.

You still have to pay for them though.

The North Briton

John Wilkes was the scandal-mongering eighteenth century writer who finally won a measure of freedom of speech for the people of these islands. Wilkes was a libertine and a libertarian and the scourge of the establishment; the Guido Fawkes of his time (I'm talking literary matters here; I have no idea if Guido shares Wilkes' predeliction for group sex). 

Since Liberty are clearly not bothered about the Wilders affair, and David Davis, our other reputed champion of civil liberties has likewise gone AWOL, I thought I would make my humble contribution to the debate by quoting a section from the famous issue number 45 of Wilkes' scandal sheet, the North Briton. In his text, Wilkes set about giving offence to all and sundry, including the commendable innovation of accusing the king of lying, in the process neatly laying fair claim to the Englishman's right to give offence.  He also made a general defence of fundamental British liberties in the face of the onslaught against them by politicians of the day. These transgressions by the political class are eerily familiar. Wilkes ended by coming close to a call for rebellion. Readers may wish to discuss the relevance of this idea to the modern fight for civil liberties.

Wilkes had got hold of a copy of the speech that the king was to make at the closing of Parliament and his response - issue 45 of the North Briton - was ready to roll as the king delivered it. No 45 featured page after page of sarcasm and invective against ministers, but I am going to quote a couple of paragraphs directly relevant to us today. The king had called on the members of Parliament to "promote in your several counties that spirit of concord and that obedience to the laws, which is essential to good order".

Concord? How can concord be promoted in the cider-producing counties, where private houses are now made liable to be entered and searched at pleasure?... A nation as sensible as the English, will see that a spirit of concord, when they are oppressed, means a tame submission to injury, and that a spirit of liberty ought then to arise, and I am sure ever will, in proportion to the weight of the grievance they feel. Every legal attempt of a contrary tendency to the spirit of concord will be deemed a justififable resistance, warranted by the spirit of the English Constitution....

The prerogative of the crown is to exert the constitutional powers entrusted to it in a way, not of blind favour and partiality, but of wisdom and judgment. This is the spirit of our constitution. The people too have their prerogative, and, I hope the fine words of Dryden will be engraved on our hearts. 'Freedom is the English subject's prerogative'.

 The colourful story of Wilkes and his fight for liberty is told in John Wilkes - The scandalous father of civil liberty by Arthur H Cash, on which this posting is based.

Good point

Head of Legal asks why we've heard nothing from Liberty or David Davis on the Geert Wilders affair. I guess Liberty aren't going to defend him because he's too right wing and Davis won't because people might think he is too.

Vicky Pope on climate change

Dr Vicky Pope is a climate modeller from the Met Office. Here she is speaking about future climate change.

Highlights include

• a 1 degree warming will lead to irreversible changes in marine ecosystems
• a 2 degree warming will lead to the irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet and over longer timescales to a 7m rise in sea levels
• a 3 degree warming will lead to the loss of the Amazon rainforest.

Today she has an article in the Guardian in which she says

Apocalyptic climate predictions' mislead the public

Is it the sound of backsides being covered I can hear?

One of the lucky few

Liam Sheahan was one of the lucky few whose home survived the bushfires in Australia. As you can see from the photo, he cut himself a firebreak a hundred yards wide all around his home.

The council, however, would only permit him a firebreak six metres wide and took him to court for disobeying them. This action cost Mr Sheahan nearly $100,000 in costs and fines.

Even with the wide firebreak he had illegally put in place, it was a close-run thing. His house caught light eight times as the bushfire passed. His is now the only house standing in the area.

There is a lesson for all of us here, I think.

 H/T Anthony Watts

Are the police morons?

Brilliant story in El Reg.

A Leicestershire couple who decided it would be a wheeze to celebrate renewing their wedding vows with a Wild West-themed party got a bit of a shock when armed police backed by a helicopter descended on the bash.

Yes, you've guessed it, someone saw a man carrying a water pistol and phoned the police just in case. What is really funny is that the family had even called the police in advance to tell them what was going to be happening.

A slice of frog's liver pate

...is threatening to sue DK at the Devil's Kitchen! Coo!

Professor Allyson MacVean has been quoted by the BBC advocating giving the police powers to search people's computers without a warrant.

"Internet addresses are so easy to make up and it doesn't give any sense of who the person is or where their location is," she told the BBC, "which is why the police do need to have access to their computers without them needing to go and apply for a warrant."

Her particular interest is paedophiles, but as DK makes clear, any law for which she successfully lobbies will inevitably affect everyone else as well. She clearly doesn't care though. She is just another half-witted academic chipping away at what is left of the wall of civil liberties that our ancestors built up in the past.

DK seems to have summarised her, quite correctly, in his usual inimitable fashion. He has however toned it down following her threat of legal action. For those who are interested in the original DK-isms, the original post is still in the Google cache. Unfortunately this is a family blog and most of what he wrote is unrepeatable here, but I was particularly impressed by the description of Professor MacVean as an "illiberal slice of frog's liver pate". I do wonder though if this understates the awfulness of the woman.

Is the Wilders decision unlawful?

The Home Office has banned anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders from coming to the UK. Head of Legal says the decision is likely to be unlawful.

This isn't looking good for the greens

The news that the Australian wildfires were made hugely worse by environmentalists is spreading. This from the Sydney Morning Herald.

So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Governments appeasing the green beast have ignored numerous state and federal bushfire inquiries over the past decade, almost all of which have recommended increasing the practice of "prescribed burning". Also known as "hazard reduction", it is a methodical regime of burning off flammable ground cover in cooler months, in a controlled fashion, so it does not fuel the inevitable summer bushfires.

The article also touches upon evidence that big government was responsible for the fires in a different way too:

The poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria is highlighted by the interactive fire map on the website of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. Yesterday it showed that, of 148 fires started since mid-January, 120 started in state forests, national parks, or other public land, and just 21 on private property.

The implications are clear: big government kills.

Obama administration's view on internment

It's OK, apparently. Look for Guardian liberals to be all over this.

Hello..hello...Guardian writers...are you there...anyone home...?

Jon Snow doesn't get blogs

Jon Snow is a turned over the years from being the enfant terrible of television news into something of a dinosaur, espousing rigidly 1960s left-wing views from his hotseat on the evening news. He's been there for so long it must be second nature to him now. Unfortunately the old dog is having to learn some new tricks, and the powers that be at C4 have set him to blogging.

Oh dear.

A week back our Jon took time out from his globetrotting trip to a literary festival in Columbia (no friend of the planet our Jon - do what you're told, not what I do) and wrote an article about tax havens. As they tend to do, the commenters went off on a path of their own devising and started a heated discussion on how much money you needed to open an offshore account.

Then today, Jon has a post up as follows:

Many of you who complained about my blog did what so many do: suggest I said things that hadn’t. That’s the beauty of blogging: the blog is there for all to see, and I did not say you need £100k to get started in the Isle of Man.

Jon, they were just talking amongst themselves. It's not about you, this blogging thing, it's about us.

Balen decision published

The House of Lords decision on the Balen report is here.

Update on Feb 11, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers: I am satisfied that the Tribunal had jurisdiction to make the decision that it did. I would allow this appeal.

Lord Hoffmann:I would dismiss the appeal.

Lord Hope of Craighead:I would base my agreement with their conclusion primarily on the way I think the Act should be read and, in particular, the effect of listing the BBC by name in the Schedule. In my opinion this is, in itself, a sufficient reason for allowing the appeal.

Baroness Hale of Richmond: I too would dismiss this appeal.

Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury: I, too, would allow Mr Sugar’s appeal.

3:2 to allow the appeal. Ya beauty!

More theories on the credit crunch

Two New York economists argue that the causes of the credit crunch were

• banks developing off-balance sheet ways around their legally mandated capital requirements
• government guarantees of "too big to fail banks" encouraged excessive risk-taking

In a world without regulation, creditors of financial institutions (depositors, uninsured bondholders, etc.) would put a stop to excesses of risk and leverage by charging higher costs of funding, but lack of proper pricing of deposit insurance and too-big-to-fail guarantees has distorted incentives in the financial system.

Nillumbik residents turn on their representatives

From the Age

ANGRY residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said.

"We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road ... and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake."