Taking liberties

By way of Carl Minns up in Hull and Dick Puddlecote, comes revived comment that the police during the Olympics will have powers to enter homes and business premises near the venues to remove displays and posters they don't like - mostly advertising for products not belonging to the various official sponsors of the games.  This did surface last year some time when some Olympics enabling legislation was being introduced from memory.

Aside from the obvious civil liberties connotations - and, for example, will it be restricted to non-sponsor advertising or would, say, protest posters be the subject of these "raids" - there is the simple question of who are our police supposed to serve?  Are they there to protect the commercial interests of MacDonalds, Coca-Cola, Cadbury (Kraft of course now) Samsung and so on or the security of the venues, participants, spectators and local residents?

On whose planet is it a valid part of a commercial sponsorship agreement that people in their own private property who are not parties to the contract outside the park itself not be permitted to do what the hell they like in their property?  

Presumably no competitors will be allowed to participate or spectators visit the games either who have not arrived by British Airways planes (and then only ones powered by General Electric engines), paid by Visa cards from Lloyds Bank accounts (which can hardly now be counted as part of the private sector sponsorship anyway) and arranged by Thomas Cook, or been driven in BMWs fuelled by BP petrol?  Woe betide if you are spotted with a mobile phone other than a Samsung, a laptop other than an Acer or a watch by anyone other than Omega and no doubt those police who like stopping people taking photographs will now have an added excuse if you are not using a Panasonic camera.  And don't even try getting into a venue if you are not wearing Adidas clothing and have receipts for all of this from John Lewis.  

Given that MacDonalds are providing the food, Cadbury the snacks and Coca-Cola the drinks, perhaps we shouldn't even expect that much of the athletes anyway - and that's assuming that there's nothing in these two companies' products that would cause a doping test to fail - certainly I've heard that horses can fail a doping test after a Mars bar so presumably feeding them Whispa bars is out.  Those bicycles don't look capable of carrying someone who has pigged out on a Macky D and Coke, and I wouldn't go near the diving pool without full waterproof coverings (by Adidas again of course).

Oh, they say, but these companies are "paying" for the Games with their sponsorship and should expect exclusivity.  Bollocks are they.  The private sector contribution to the now £9,000,000,000 plus budget is only just over 20% of that.  Most of the rest is coming from taxpayers directly, with some coming from the people of London in added council tax and a large chunk from Lottery players everywhere.  Add to that the fact that almost any business in the country that has tried to get construction work done over the past few years has had to pay over the odds because the Olympic developments have been sucking up as much construction activity and materials as it could get (at one point the construction inflation caused by the Olympics was running at 30% over "normal" costs) and the contribution of the people of Britain dwarves that of the "official sponsors".

No, this is all an appalling invasion of peoples' privacy and property that can only be applied arbitrarily at best in favour of a group of companies that are barely covering a fifth of the costs of the Games.  I wonder what the charge sheets will say if people refuse to comply - "aggravated poster displaying", or "grievously flaunting an iPhone" perhaps?  Utter hogwash.

Well, what an unpleasant surprise I had last night. I was bloody stopped and me and my car searched by the police about midnight as I was returning from my friend's house in a nearby village. They said they were randomly targeting vehicles on these country lanes late at night, asked where I had been and where I was going and whether I had had a drink - I hadn't.

So he started on about whether I used drugs: I don't really know where that one came from, though he had seen my roll up fag and asked how long I had been smoking rollies. He asked me to get out of the car and to go and show my ID to his colleague and he had a quick nose around in the car. Now, I have got to be one of the untidiest person you could ever meet, but one think I do hate is people dropping litter and especially fag butts. So what I do when I am smoking behind the wheel, since my car came with no ashtray and lighter, is to twist the fag out out the window and then put the butts into my driver's side door pocket.

I don't know if I've done a proper clean out of the car since I bought it four years ago or so! I do usually empty out the big stuff in the car and do a general binning of the rubbish every so often but haven't done for a while. As a guide - he was asking about a spade in the back seat - which I put in there during the snow in December or whenever it was as I was driving up to my mothers and wanted to have one with me in case I broke down. Anyway - all this, notwithstanding my explanation that the fag butts were about my civic responsibility not to drop litter, made him decide to conduct a proper search of me and the car.

What a faff - on a pitch black country road in the middle of the night he went rifling through all the junk in my car, rummaged through my pockets and wallet and so on. Then came back and asked me, off the record so to speak, to be honest about whether I ever used cannabis. Well of course I do, but it's such a rare occurrence - basically maybe every couple of months when I go for dinner at a particular group of friends' houses, so I never have any of my own. He said "you have a habit, I notice, from the car, that suggests to me that you are a user". He wouldn't tell me what this habit was; he did say it wasn't the butts in the door pocket or the general mess, and that I'd have to work it out for myself.

Well, I haven't got the faintest idea. Unless perhaps he was referring to the fact that there was a Tesco back in the bag with half a dozen empty energy drink cans in - again the relics of several longer distance journeys over the past six months when I have stopped in service stations and I usually buy that sort of thing. So, is that it? I'd never really think of that as a trait of drug using, and I dare say that Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber wouldn't think so either!

I did notice that he didn't give me his name or number and whilst the female colleague did fill in a search form I was not given a copy - they said it was primarily for the supervisor at the station to record what they had been up to but that I could get a copy from their station (miles away in Bicester) if I wanted.

So much of a reward for going to do a friend a good turn. Do these people get off on stopping and harassing drivers for no observable reason? Jeez!

The time has come to pass as it was written in the year of our lord Sixteen hundred and ninety, and in the second year of the reign of our glorious sovereign majesty William, Stadtholder of Holland, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau-Dillenburg and his Queen, Mary; King and Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc. by Mr John Locke:

222. The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who. have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly preengages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.

[from John Locke, "The Second Treatise of Civil Government", Ch XIX "Of the Dissolution of Government", Para 222 (1690)"]

At the present government's behest we have:

• over a decade seen ordinary people robbed of their earnings through massively rising house prices and the debt money inflation created on to finance these;

• in the past year seen the result of this: further destruction of capital on a scale almost unprecedented, affecting those impoverished by the first as well as those made more wealthy;  

• seen that our own and future generations will be paying for the bitter pill with which they have tried to clean this ordure of their own making through the further attachment of our earnings, property and wealth;

• overt examples of politicians taking our money for their own frivolities under the eyes of all the others;

• a parliament reduced to a leisure club by the business management of a government desperate to get their authoritarian legislative program through further to curtail our liberties;

• and a government that has used all the patronage at its disposal to buy the votes of those elected to represent us, not them;

• had a government that has taken us into military adventures of the most unwise kind, based on lies and exaggerations and at the behest of a foreign power and which have killed many of our bravest fellow citizens.

I do not believe the good and wise Mr Locke was suggesting that it was up to the various people inside that suppurating House of Common Thieves and Accomplices to invoke the right to dissolve and choose the form and method of replacing it, perhaps especially those whose main interest is in securing power in the next parliament. He said it was up to us, the "other half" of the social contract: We The People.

To stitch up a new set of regulations to permit lesser troughings amongst themselves would be a complete travesty. We need a comprehensive and popular settlement that will not become a part of a package of hundreds of other policies in a party manifesto whose importance may vary from voter to voter and eclipse the program of change in the orders of the House.

I suggest that we have a National Government beginning as soon as possible, with, effectively, only one task: to consult as widely as possible with the people of Britain on a new constitution, new forms of government and representation, to include the powers and competencies of national, local and community level governance, and to produce a short list of different constitutional options to be voted on by the people in a referendum.

If we can be trusted to choose from thousands of hopefuls to dance or sing or otherwise perform before our monarch in a variety show, we can surely manage to sift through the various options and priorities and put together a constitution worthy of Her Majesty's signature.

A Zero Based State! By the people and from the people. Vive la Revolution!

Several centuries ago, momentous change swept Europe. Whether you date it from as far back as 1439 and Gutenberg's printing press, Luther's 95 Theses in 1517 or perhaps Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy in 1534 or Elizabeth I's in 1559, the Reformation changed the world forever. A central theological theme of protestant reformers was that we did not need corrupt, money grabbing, clerics who made up their own hocus pocus rules to control the minds and actions of the rest of the people and to intercede for us with God; that we could all be masters of our own spiritual destiny through our personal relationship with God.

It was called the "Priesthood of all Believers". It was largely made possible by the rising availability of printed books, rather than publishing controlled by those corrupt clerics and their hangers on, and in particular, by the availability of the main faith texts in the local languages everyone could understand instead of the deliberately obfuscating Latin used by the clerics.

Fast forward to the turn of the twenty-first century. Another clever man had invented a new means of personal communication that would reach billions in a few years, enabling more than ever previously people from all corners of the world and all shades of opinion to communicate, collaborate and co-operate on all sorts of projects previously imagined to be bigger than could be managed by individuals and small groups of locally connected people.

A few years later we have been given an insight into the corruption and money grabbing antics of the people who have persuaded us that they are capable of ruling us, making decisions for us, relieving us of so much of our property for the "common(s) good".

It is time for a new Reformation. A secular Reformation. A civil Reformation. Founded on the core principle of the "Sovereignty of all Citizens". Who will be brave enough to cast out the modern day clerics, to instigate the Dissolution of the Bureaucracy?

It must sometimes be a bit annoying for David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary who stood down and fought a byelection over the 42 day detention issue and other civil liberties, to have such a common name. For his fellow conservative homonym David Davies is now calling for a further curtailment of civil liberties:

Call for ban on military protests Angry protests greeted returning soldiers in Luton Conservative MP David Davies has called on abusive protests against serving military personnel to be outlawed. The Monmouth MP has tabled an amendment to a bill governing religious hatred that would extend protection to the Armed Forces. It would make it an offence to incite hatred against serving soldiers. [From BBC NEWS | Politics | Call for ban on military protests]

The trouble is Davies is also wrong. These are big boys and girls. They have stared death in the eyes and faced him down. What they really need to know is not that there is some simmering resentment that goes unvoiced, prohibited, but that the vast majority of us, from the reaction to the Luton protestors this week amongst the good people of Britain, are prepared to stick up for them and heap opprobrium on such protestors.

We go down a dangerous route in banning protest. Far better to get angry and shout them down each and every time and make it clear as a bell that they are in the minority. Our men and women on the front lines, whatever we think of the reasons for them being there, are not there to create or enforce the kind of society that will not brook criticism, we should not shield them from it when they return, but make them proud that the majority of us stick up for them freely and genuinely.

In the depths of last night I happened to stumble upon the BBC reshowing its "HardTalk" interview from last week with David Milliband. Right at the end, Stephen Sackur's last question to Millipede was about whether the Home Department was correct in preventing Geert Wilders from coming to the UK. Millbland's answer was to repeat, time after time the phrase "hate filled film" and that it was "incitement" to show it. Suddenly Sackur asked whether the Milliner had actually watched the film.

Of course he hadn't, and after running that off his tongue easily he went back to his assertion that this was a "hate filled film" that would "incite" and so on and so forth.

Now, someone last week posted a link to the film on YouTube. It's only ten minutes worth (hardly worth traipsing over here to England to show - their lordships would only have actually woken up in time for the closing credits in any case no doubt). It did not incite me to anything. Yes, it is unpleasant in its imagery. It made me want to see a debate about it with Muslims explaining why each piece of the Qur'an it quotes does not mean what he seems to infer it means. But wait, that's a good thing, isn't it? It did not make me believe they do mean what Wilders clearly say they mean personally. It made me want the understand the apologetics to be able to refute such claims where necessary.

It is certainly no worse in its imagery than some of the packages that were being put out on right wing mainstream TV stations in the US in the aftermath of 9/11, for example.

But that's not the point. The decision to bar Wilders from the UK was an extraordinary one - whatever their views it does us no good at all to be barring elected representatives from our close allies, derogating temporarily from core EU principles like freedom of movement if you like. At the very least surely it behoves those who are going to defend such an extraordinary decision actually to have watched the evidence cited for making it, rather than just repeating what you are told and which any concerned individual can decide for themselves by watching it and realize that you have been talking out of the hole between your butt-cheeks.

When you are shown up once as feeding us crap on one subject, how can we take you seriously on anything else you say?

Not literally of course - I am irreversibly against the death penalty - but today the Daily Mail - I was pointed to the story by another blog; I would never voluntarily read it - reopens the story about the UK cover up of official knowledge and condoning of torture in US detention:

British collusion in U.S. torture of suspected terrorists was covered up after extensive top-level talks between the two governments, it can be revealed. Foreign Office officials spent three months working with their American counterparts to hush up the allegations made by Binyam Mohamed, it was claimed. Mohamed, a British resident, has spent six years in U.S. custody - including a spell in the notorious Guantanamo Bay. [From Torture case 'cover up': Foreign Office officials 'spent months colluding with U.S. to hush up claims' | Mail Online]

So, which should be hung out to dry in the international criminal court - Tony Blair for colluding in the first place with what he must have known (after all even I saw the episodes of torture in "24"!) was going on or David Milliband for his desperate attempts to cover up our knowledge and forethought in torture.

Come on chaps. We are signatories to the treaty on torture. If our judges won't indict Bliar and Millibland, perhaps we can persuade Spain's.

...that our representatives are involved in some great conspiracy to create an environment in which we are all monitored from birth to death; in which our identities are only what the state declares them to be; in which we cannot "reinvent" ourselves when necessary as we go through our "seven ages" and perhaps regret or just resile from what we used to be, used to do; in which, if the state somehow thinks there's something suspicious about us, our innocent friends and family will be monitored just because they know us; in which hundreds of thousands of state functionaries will be able to access data about us; in which we may be stopped in the street and forced to prove who we are and justify our presence and be subjected to searches of our belongings.

I just don't. Want. To believe it.

I mean I know policemen; know MPs; I know councillors; I know council staff, and they don't appear, the ones I know anyway, to want all this. And they seem genuine when they tell me not to be paranoid; that none of this is on the agenda.

I just. Want. To believe them.

But the alternative is that they are collectively completely incompetent and blind to the fact that that appears to all the world to be what they are creating. And I'm scared. To believe that.

I don't want to believe that Leviathan is consciously controlled by particular maniacal individuals. I want to believe that most of the ideas start with a spark of ingenuity. A way to get the right benefits to the right recipients here. A convenient way for us to do business there. Maybe even an idea to save money, prevent waste, make sure no doctor ever gives us something we're allergic to.

But if our representatives do not understand Leviathan, and certainly cannot control it, then they must destroy it. Look for different ways. And oh, how many different ways there are! We are at the point where our government, the structures they have to create to maintain all the functions they think we find desirable, are bloated, inhuman in scale. And worse, that there are no alternatives. They must have pretty under-developed imaginations. And over-developed egos.

And I look around at the political alternatives, the parties who vie for our support, and I find not one, at least in the mainstream, who really accept this reality. For they all want to control it. They all want the power. They will tell us they want to downsize some of it with one speech and then propose something else as monstrous with the next.  And even if they don't want to control it, if they don't make it their first priority to destroy it, it will not be destroyed.

What a sad vision of humanity such people must have. What pessimism about our ability to do the right things, for ourselves, without being told, or dragged, or pushed at the point of a gun. There can be no prescription for bringing about the "greatest happiness" because each of us has our own idea of our own "greatest happiness". As humans, rather than Borg, we are individuals and no one size fits all. Ever. That's what makes us humans. There can be no database that takes all these variables into account, so they will end up suppressing those variables.

I don't want to believe (this is the end).

...Back in the USSR!

The government is compiling a database to track and store the international travel records of millions of Britons. Computerised records of all 250 million journeys made by individuals in and out of the UK each year will be kept for up to 10 years. The government says the database is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and terrorism. [From BBC NEWS | UK | Government plans travel database]

Oh dear. Yet another database. This time you won't be able to book a plane, international train or ferry ticket without having your details stored for a decade. At least the Soviets were more honest - not letting you out without a minder and a very rare visa. Now they let you go, but track your every movement all the same.

They tell us it's essential in the fight against terrorism, and then go on to say the benignly named "eBorders" (which actually I think they may have to change as that name is copyrighted to a GIS database at the Edinburgh University I think!) has already:

"...screened over 75 million passengers against immigration, customs and police watch-lists, leading to over 2,700 arrests for crimes such as murder, rape and assault."

That's a hit rate of 0.0036 per hundred, just for your information. Probably statistically irrelevant and quite close to the equivalent of randomly arresting people in the street and checking the PNC to find out if they are wanted! Of course neither do they qualify, question or quantify what is meant by "crimes such as murder, rape and assault. Indeed, these are examples of crimes, as is non-payment of a court fine arising from a speeding ticket. How many murders? How many rapes? And how many unpaid speeding tickets? And how many of those having allegedly committed murder or rape would have been being tracked as non-citizens on visas without having to screen every last one of us leaving or arriving in the country.

Now I haven't been out of the country for 18 years I think it is, and even that was only to Dublin, so until I actually go into exile (when I can work out where to go and how) it's unlikely to affect me much, but on the basis that "then they came for the air travelers, but I wasn't an air-traveler" I'm going to stick up for the rest of you.

Couple this with the rumours that there may be restrictions on the number of flights people can take anyway, how long before this surveillance starts to generate letters or visits from the carbon cops telling you you've exceeded your quota for the year and your new ID card will only allow you to travel to the Co-op and back.

WAKE UP PEOPLE! This won't stop until you're obediently taking your Prozium.

Horizon last night did a reasonably balanced program looking at the various claims for and against cannabis, the world's most popular illicit drug. You can watch it again on iPlayer if you missed it.

They looked into its history - that it is likely that it has been used by humans for around 3,000 years at least. Into claims that it is a "gateway drug" that encouraged users to move onto harder drugs which showed in trials with rats that this was unlikely. And into claims that it damaged young brains which in trials with mice seemed to suggest that it did indeed create long term memory degradation when given to/used by young adolescents (defined as below around 15 years of age).

They also seemed to be confirming that, assuming one's brain was properly developed before using cannabis regularly, the potential longer term side effects are nonetheless relatively rare.

They looked into some of the claims made for its medicinal properties, talking to a doctor in California who, under their medical marijuana rules seems to prescribe it for all sorts of things from chronic pain to slight anxiety or even, as the presenter suggested, "writers block". And in the one UK licensed pharmaceutical grade production facility was astonished to find that many strains also contain an anti-psychotic substance (which to me reinforced the idea that somehow people in danger of developing mental illnesses may actively seek it out as self-medication).

So, what does it all suggest about the predominant public policy of prohibition? The presenter, "addiction specialist Dr John Marsden" (he looks after patients with addictions to "harder" drugs like cocaine and heroin), concluded the program by saying that the real "problem" with cannabis was the waste of potential it causes - presumably he felt, as an addiction specialist, that all the other [possible problems are relatively low risk enough to make a blanket policy unwarranted.

But even here I think he's quite wrong to infer that such a "waste" of potential is good enough reason for legal prohibition - after all, one user's "waste" of life "sitting around smoking dope all day and doing nothing useful" as Marsden put it I think, is another user's occasional recreation. Set aside any debate as to whether George Washington managed to found the greatest nation on earth whilst toking on the stuff! Exactly the same claims could be made of alcohol, and the evidence is available in far greater numbers - that it can cause psychoses, all sorts of physical and mental illnesses, sitting around drinking all day is a waste of potential, it can also have medicinal benefits. Yet Churchill won the war on the stuff!

Yet we license one for sale and prohibit the other with criminal sanctions that themselves do as much to destroy lives as the substance itself (witness in the USA the scheme where anyone convicted of a possession charge would be denied university funding for example). We know that prohibition drives the supply into the hands of criminal gangs who have no compunction about selling it to those even proponents of legalization would want to protect - the youngsters whose developmental processes can be damaged by access to it too young - and further whose business model tends to encourage them to try to sell other, potentially more dangerous drugs, to their existing customers to maximize profits. We have seen how, after downgrading, the consumption in this country actually dropped. It will be interesting to see whether the uprating to category B will increase consumption again and thus prove utterly counter productive.

As with alcohol, a legalized weed, as shown in the images of medical marijuana dispensaries in California, and also the cafe culture in the Netherlands and the more free attitude in Switzerland, would give people more choice about methods of taking the drug - reducing, probably, the predominance of smoking it (it is at its most potentially harmful when smoked with tobacco). And it would increase awareness of the different strengths and their effects as decent shops would sell a range, rather than, at present, having to take what you can get wherever you can get it.

The law, as usual with drugs laws, is counter-productive. The resultant criminal culture surrounding it makes society less safe not more. It is not based on the evidence. It is not consistent with attitudes to other drugs such as alcohol where even the drunk is more capable it seems of exercising their own judgement most of the time and is also freer to get help because it is legal and not so much of a taboo subject. The recent reclassification defies belief frankly and is simply another reason to oppose all government interference in our lives as ill informed and nannying.

Our legislators should be ashamed of themselves.