The Parliament Square camp

There has been lots of discussion about the eviction of protestors from Parliament Square that has now been put on hold pending an appeal. This issue has had me tied up in philosophical knots as the right to protest is not far down the list from the right to free speech in my personal list of fundamental freedoms. But this doesn’t feel to me quite as if it it is an attack on that. Whether you subscribe to the Mayor’s position that the camp gets in the way of other protests or not I there is just something nagging at the back of my mind that thinks you can start your protest as early in the morning as you want and stay as late as you like but you must go away at the end of it.Of course this could just be the conditioning from growing up at a seaside resort where all the car parking spots had signs prohibiting overnight stays.

The rights and wrongs of this probably won’t matter in the longer run, what will matter is quite how well it is handled. Perhaps Boris and the Met should do their best to learn from Newbury District Council who come out much worse than the USAF does when the legacy of the Greenham Common peace camp is totted up. To the extent that the camp remained after the missiles left to get the land back into the hands of the public.

I don’t know what you’re saying but…

I defend utterly your right to say it.

Now I don’t know what is in Craig Murray’s new book and I do know he is a magnet for legal threats but I am more than happy to point you at this work so you can decide for yourself, if you want. The thing that interests me most is the idea that Shillings on behalf of Tim Spicer, have gone after Craig and successfully scared off his publisher despite reportedly never having seen the manuscript.

Of all the freedoms and rights I feel the need to fight for, free speech is absolutely number one. It will be interesting to see if any of the sessions at the convention on Modern Liberty end up covering the international reputation we have for lopsided libel laws.

Flash bang wallop

Philip Gwynne, of the West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, which is responsible for speed cameras in the county, said: “Mr Fielden was doing what any other loving husband would do pointing out where something was possibly being done wrong and he attempted to do that using the laws of physics. “However, the judge has ruled that as in any other situation English law can over rule the law of physics. “Maybe it is time that we left physics in the classroom and allowed cameras to get on with the job of raising lots and lots of lovely money for us. How dare people challenge the universal truth that these things are far cheaper than real police officers.”

I must declare an interest in that I know the Fieldens, but I don't know any of the specifics of the case. Other coverage suggests that it wasn't just a simple case of attempting to blind the court with science in order to get off a fine, but that the camera was set up contrary to the manufacturers instructions. While I picked Mr Gwynne's comments as the easier target for satire the more worrying quote from the Examiner article is “I hope the large costs in this case will cause other motorists to think carefully before mounting spurious challenges.” from Trevor Hall, managing director of road safety support for the Association of Chief Police Officers, in other words, stop complaining peasants and accept what your lords and masters tell you, questioning us will just lead to punitive costs. Only those with large amounts of money should be given a fair day in court, the rest of you back to your mud.

What-a-Mess

The cuddly puppy of the cabinet Andy Burnham wants to criminalise football fans who sell their spare ticket to a mate according to Dizzy. Actually having read the DCMS's response it is much worse, they want to do this and they don't want to do this, they want to help the consumer and the promoter and ask the secondary market what they think. They want refunds to be more available where the consumer needs them but not burdensome on the promoter if they get lots. It really looks like they took the original Culture, Media and Sport Committee report as loose leaves and a stack of random notes on the subject submitted by everyone in the department and then let the office afghan puppy loose on the two piles. After ten minutes anything even slightly legible was picked up, dusted off and passed to the typing pool with instructions for it to be transcribed verbatim.
I think there is a sensible middle way to all this, require that the promoter has to either accept refunds (and outlaw utterly disproportionate "fees") or allow the tickets to be resold at only at face value.

It isn't often

The original opening of this post was "It isn't often that I find myself agreeing with Iain Dale" but the truth of the matter is that it isn't often I agree with anyone.

In this case Iain is reporting an incident of people wanting to stifle the freedom of someone to hold certain views and speak about them at a consultative meeting. In the end he was  allowed to speak, but had to leave the room while the discussions were going on. I fundamentally believe that freedom of speech is paramount even if you are in the filthy business of being a campaigner for smokers rights and a passive smoking denier. I just feel that this sort of rubbish will get more prevalent.

Apparently Mervyn King is after giving more of our money to bankers. We need to find a way to try and protect the vulnerable sector of their customers without feathering the nests of the directors and shareholders.

Graham Calvert is a loser

The BBC and other news outlets are carrying the pathetic whining of a man who through his own actions spent lots of money doing something incredibly stupid, gambling. We will come to his specific reasoning as to why he thinks he is justified later, but first the compulsory complaint about the inexorable slide down into the fiery pits of a hell where no-one is personally responsible for their actions and they have to point the finger at the other people that *could* have stopped them, probably with the other hand outstretched for a handout.

Mr Calvert is contending his bookmaker is liable because he asked them to put him on their "self exclusion" list for six months, this means his account would have been in a state where he couldn't use it. As far as I can tell from the media coverage this is what happened. He then opened another account and gambled with it. Now there could be an issue here if he used the same credit card that should have been marked as excluded with his original account. But if he opened the new account with a new card then there is nothing the bookies could have done to stop him.

Take this hypothetical situation: Graham Calvert is not the only person with that name at his address, his father or son is also Graham Calvert, if they try and open an account they should be allowed to, no matter what their relation has done. In fact it is stronger than that, if William Hill refused them because of the suspended account they have just revealed that the other Graham Calvert has a suspended account and thus a gambling problem. They have just committed a very serious data protection offence.

"I think it was irresponsible of William Hill exploit me the way they did. It has ruined my life."

The bleeding heart crowd agree with his statement that he has been exploited by a nasty company when he subverted their systems and opened another account. Why can't he just show some backbone and get on with putting his life back together?

The "save Sir Ian next time" plan

A large number of people are rightly making a lot of fuss about the measures to allow the Home Secretary to replace coroners and mandate inquests be held without juries and the human rights issues therein. I shall allow those others to carry on with those arguments and put forward two of my own.

1. This won't actually be used that often for any sinister human rights infringements, I know that anything that has potential to do so should be protested about, what it will be used for is to cover up embarrassment hence the title of this post. I was instantly reminded of the Spycatcher trial and all the measures that were suggested at the time to make sure that "this kind of thing can never happen again" and have the feeling that this is far more about saving the governments blushes than protecting those that risk their lives in the security services.
2. That this is a measure designed to protect the police and security services is highlighted by it being a power given to the Home Secretary; coroner's courts are no longer her purview

   We are responsible for the law and policy governing coroners — Ministry of Justice

   if there really is a national security angle here then applications should be made to the Lord Chancellor/Secretary of State for Justice and even then it should probably be from the Attorney General not the Home Secretary.

Tickets? I love tickets!

The Culture, Media and Sport select committee has been looking into the issue of ticket touting. The Entertainment industry has asked them to deal with the huge profiteering going on, not of course because it is unfair to the punters, but because they aren't seeing the money.
As you would expect all of the industry suggestions take very little of what is best for the public into account. What would we like? To buy tickets, preferably without huge booking fees, while also having ability to dispose of any tickets that turn out to be spare!
Prominent dairy farmers such as Michael Eavis would of course like the whole practice banned entirely so they can issue their photo ID tickets in comfort.

The right to copy

The consultation has kicked off to discuss the copyright law changes put forward by the Gowers Review. ORG has coverage of the launch. Worryingly there still seems to be a heavy resistance to allowing us the consumers the right to move music from one format to another.
There is currently no right under the intellectual property laws of the uk for someone to move music from the form they have bought it on to another. If you buy a CD you have to listen to it off that CD, rather than rip the tracks to an electronic format for use on your portable music player or vice versa. I think that this is one of the easiest points in the review to argue in favour of change on, if I buy a piece of music, I should be allowed to listen to it wherever I want, I should be allowed to capture my VHS videos to DVD video so I don't have to

Time for action?

The call to arms for a coordinated effort to resist the government's ever expanding encroachment into the liberties of everyone is gathering more and more momentum. Added to the continuous campaigns by the likes of No2ID and the Open Rights Group a slew of commentators are now making pronouncements that there has to be action and soon. Blog posts have appeared this week from Sunny Hundal, Henry Porter and Anthony Barnett promoting combining efforts to our safeguard our rights. But can it be done, can the various interest groups involved actually find enough middle ground to put up a united front against Gordon's land grab on our personal data and freedoms? The other question is even after a coalition of the unwilling is created, can it have any effect? The countryside alliance couldn't put the kibosh on the hunting ban and "Stop the War" hasn't.
What do you lot think?

X-Posted to: ORG-discuss and ljrevolution