A quick post...

I'm just leaving to go and hear Sir John Houghton, but I've just come across something odd. The Indy is reporting that two American Baptists have been banned from entering the UK because they incite hatred gays.

"Both these individuals have engaged in unacceptable behaviour by inciting hatred against a number of communities.

"The Government has made it clear it opposes extremism in all its forms.

"We will continue to stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.

"That was the driving force behind the tighter rules on exclusion for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced on October 28 last year.

"The exclusions policy is targeted at all those who seek to stir up tension and provoke others to violence regardless of their origins and beliefs."

Phelps, 79, and his daughter Shirley, 51, belong to the US Westboro Baptist Church based in Kansas which calls for homosexuals to be killed.

I checked out that last bit though, which says their Church calls for gays to be killed. Also the bit about "violent" messages. There's no mention of it on Phelps' Wiki page. Does he incite violence, or merely hatred? That's a crucial difference in my book. Is there perhaps some spinning from the Indy here?

No time to check now, but I'll look into it when I get a chance.

Eurosceptics read this

Home Ed blogger Gill Kilner has taken a look at the government's sinister Every Child Matters agenda and finds its roots in the work of the colleagues in Brussels.

It's getting hard to reconcile support for the EU with support for civil liberties, wouldn't you say?

What would you keep?

A propos of my earlier post on what recent legislation we should try to repeal in order to reclaim our lost civil liberties, I was struck by the thought that it might be easier to simply repeal every piece of legislation introduced since 1997.

Off the top of my head I can think of nothing Messrs Blair and Brown have done that is worthy of retention. Have I missed something or shall we ditch the lot?

Sir John Houghton on global warming

I'm going to try to get myself along to this.

"Global Warming - is it real and what should we do?"

Prof. Sir John Houghton

5.15 pm Thursday, 19 February 2009
followed by a Reception until 7.00pm

Younger Hall, North Street, St Andrews

I don't know if there is going to be an opportunity to ask questions at the end, but if there is, what do you think I should ask him? I've got a few ideas of my own, but any suggestions would be welcome.

Prototype page for the New York Times website

A whole new approach to newspaper website design at the NYT. (via here).

Hope, or expectation?

I've been away for a long weekend, and have come back to find that the colleagues in the blogosphere have been keeping up the pressure on the civil liberties front. Chris Dillow's piece on the coming police state is well worth a look.

With Labour now trailing badly in the polls, a Tory landslide seems all but certain, so there is at least hope that things might change. My thesis for tonight is that, while hope there may be,  expectation of any great change on civil liberties is a position that is not warranted by the facts, and is not therefore an adequate response to big government encroachment on the realm of the individual.

While I was rude about David Davis's absence from the media during the Wilders affair, a commenter on that thread pointed out that subsequent to my posting he had staked out the civil liberties argument on Question Time and that is certainly welcome. The rest of his party (with certain honourable exceptions) have been pretty craven in their silence. During my recent absence they have restricted themselves to issuing statements about food labelling and bonuses in state-owned banks.Before that it was a task force on maths teaching headed by B-list television celeb - a policy (if we can dignify it with that title) that would not have been out of place in any of the last ten years of Labour government.

Is this reticence part of a wider campaign among the Tories to simply let Labour lose the next election by giving them no firm Tory policy positions to attack? Or perhaps Conservatives agree with the arguments that the war on terror necessitates an expansion of the state security apparatus to levels unknown outside the communist bloc? We simply can't know what the Tories' true position is. The problem is that David Cameron has shown himself quite ready to go back on campaign promises after he is elected, so even if a statement were to be made, it is hard to know if we should believe him anyway.

Can we really face the prospect of going into the next election merely hoping for the best from the Conservative party? For me, civil liberties campaigners need to publish a list of legislation that should be repealed as the first action of an incoming government. No votes for anyone who doesn't sign up to it. The LibDems have of course already mooted a Great Repeal Act, but that was frankly not great enough. The encroachments of Brown and Blair go much further and much deeper than can be countered by the repeal of a dozen acts of Parliament. It's also worth noting that the website they set up at the time (2006) is now defunct.

Here's a partial list of suggestions (pinched from here).

1. Restrictions on protests in Parliament Square.Sections 132 to 138; Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005
2. Identity Cards:Identity Cards Act 2006
3. Extradition to the US: Part 2, Extradition Act 2003
4. Conditions on public assemblies: Section 57, Clause 123, Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003.
5. Criminalising trespass. Sections 128 to 131, Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005
6. Control orders: Section 1, Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.
7. DNA retention. Sections 78-84, Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, Sections 9-10, Criminal Justice Act 2003
8. Public interest defence for whistleblowing. Official Secrets Act 1989.
9. Right to silence: Sections 34-39, Public Order Act 1994 - England and Wales
10. Hearsay evidence: Sections 114-136, Criminal Justice Act 2003

Plus more here

1. Serious Organised Crime & Police Act 2005, Part 4
2. Anti-Social Behaviour Acts 1998 - 2003 in full
3. Crown copyright
4. Drugs Act 2005
5. Misuse of Drugs Acts (all)
6. Prevention of Terrorism Acts 1973 to present
7. Anti-Terror, Crime & Security Act 2001
8. Racial & Religious Hatred Act 2006
9. Freedom of Information Act 2000, s. 36
10. Protection from Harassment Act 1998
11. Sexual Offences Act 2003

To which I would add

1. RIPA Act
2. Civil Contingencies Act

I haven't examined most of these in any detail, but it's fair to say there are many familiar names there. I'm sure this is just scratching the surface.

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.