Police: several levels of ‘culpability’
Having gone truncheons to tasers in a generation, I also have to wonder what purpose the current Police Service has been built for?
It looks like we have been built to violently confront and overcome people. I am not saying that is our mindset, but it is without doubt what we are equipped to do. Once people get over the quasi military kit, we are mostly approachable and pleasant people, it’s just that we dress like Imperial Stormtroopers.
– NightJack, Winner of the Orwell Prize for Blogs, 2009
The last week I’ve been pulling apart the Climate Camp Legal Team report and collating the data into a structured analysis over on my blog. As of today, this is what we know: the rioting police forces were systematically hiding their identities to avoid accountability. There was a coherent policy of abusing the statute book as if it were a catalogue of ways to harass specific individuals and groups. The TSG paramilitaries were directed to use the assault on Climate Camp as an opportunity to punish dissenters. And there was a comprehensive and systematic effort to suppress and destroy evidence of criminal activity by officers of the law.
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Top Stories & Blog Review – 27th April
Nationwide
The end of class discrimination in UK?
Can police and media trust each other?
Clegg seeks end to MP home gains
Prepare for public sector pain, says Cameron
International
Call for action as swine flu spreads
Sri Lanka rejects Tamil rebels’ ceasefire
Iceland’s leftist coalition win general election
Chrysler, Union and Fiat reach agreement
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / Sarah Ismail
Craig Murray needs viral press officers.
Aqoul The economic crisis spells the end of the emigration boom.
Blairwatch says that Labour is at war with itself.
Blood And Treasure On the idea of the ‘pre-approved Muslim.’
Chris Dillow on what Susan Boyle’s fame tells us about economics.
The F Word on what geeky women have to put up with.
Nadeem Ul Haque/OpenDemocracy on how to solve Pakistan’s problem.
The New Statesman on the publishing industry’s unhealthy obsession with fame.
And finally, today’s XKCD is a salutary lesson about Swine Flu; or you can, as always, browse through previous Netcasts
Call to scrap ID cards, Trident
In the Observer today:
The climbdown came as Stephen Byers, a former cabinet minister, called on Brown to scrap ID cards and the replacement of the Trident missile programme because of the recession, warning that it would be a “fraud on the electorate” if all the parties were not open about cutbacks needed to balance Britain’s books.
…
Byers has long supported both identity cards and the nuclear deterrent but said he could not justify to vulnerable constituents the respective £5bn and £70bn bills when basic public services were threatened by the economic crisis.
via Tom Miller.
Torture: does it actually work?
In the current debate over the Bush administration’s use of torture, most of the discussion has been around the moral and ethical dilemmas involved, with the strongest argument in favour being the infamous ‘ticking bomb’ scenario.
But in fact these arguments and make-believe situations are irrelevent if torture doesn’t work in the first place. On my own blog I argue for evidence-based policy, and in my first piece for Liberal Conspiracy I want to explore the evidence for torture, because if those who advocate it can’t prove that it works, then they have already lost the debate.
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The ‘Evil Poor’
Dave Osler has addressed the question of the class-war-that-isn’t; what we need to talk about urgently is when, precisely, it became good form to treat people on low incomes as if they were an entirely different, morally deficient species of person. When did it become alright to call the poor ‘evil’?
No, really. Let’s not forget that this week the Orwell prize for blogs was awarded to NightJack, a blogger who claims to be a white, middle-aged police officer posting about his experiences in the force, passing over, amongst others, the esteemed Alix Mortimer. One of his winning entries is entitled ‘The Evil Poor’. Initially I assumed that the title was ironic. It isn’t.
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Top Stories and Blog Review Sunday 26th April
Nationwide
Senior Tory Councillor arrested for Fraud.
Crisis for New Exam System
BNP Candidate arrested for selling illegal firearms
Lib Dem PPC Defects to Tories
Magistrate Quits in Twitter Row
International
British Spy Loses Secrets in South America
Mexican Flu sparks worldwide panic.
Cricket breaks down boundaries in Israel.
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Your Name
Mr Quist thinks we shouldn’t be too worried about Mexican Swine Flu. Susan Watts begs to differ. Lay Scientist also has an excellent post on this.
Nadine Dorries plans to sue Damien McBride. Let’s hope she gets quoted LOTS in the media and then everyone will see how clueless she is… Rhetorically Speaking has a great post on this.
Slacktivist lays into his fellow evangelicals for being bigoted.
The Daily Quail on an unlikely champion of rights for immigrants.
Giandujakiss has made a vid on Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Those of you wondering what the hell this has to do with politics should watch it.
Political Betting on the possibilities of voter registration.
And finally Septicisle has the usual collection of weekend links; or you can browse through previous Netcasts
The return of Class War. Not
I just don’t get it. How is it logically consistent to demand cuts in invalidity benefit and public sector pensions as a response to the financial crisis, yet explode in splenetic rage at the idea that the richest of the rich should pay tax at a rate slightly more in line with the bulk of the population?
Could there be just a hint of special pleading on the part of the rightwing press yesterday morning? I mean, are the cream of the punditocracy really arguing that the trouble with this country is that all those hospital porters, teachers, nurses and disabled slackers are poncing off the backbreaking grind of over-worked tax lawyers, advertising gurus, big name television presenters and financial directors?
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Top Stories – Saturday 25th April 2009
Nationwide
Police caught on tape trying to recruit as spy
Gurkha fury at new rights to live in UK
Child trafficking in Britain up by 50%
Brown pledge on public investment
International
Pakistan anger at UK terror ‘slurs’
Pentagon to release photos of alleged abuse
‘Climate change’ forces out Eskimos
Blast carnage at shrine in Iraq
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by coming later
What can we do about sleaze?
This extract from Jackie Ashley’s column a couple of weeks ago struck me:
You might think that after the Jacqui Smith pay-movie story and multi-homed minister Geoff Hoon we must have plumbed the depths of “politicians on the take” stories. You’d be wrong. Tens or hundreds of thousands of claims by MPs are shortly to be released publicly. Most are unexceptional and within the rules. But according to plugged-in government sources, some are “awful, just worse than you can imagine” and likely to destroy careers.
Voters are going to be furious at some of the wheezes used. I am told that many of the 1997 intake of MPs have been particularly brazen. Incumbents at the next election are going to face opponents waving copies of their expense claims. The cost of DVDs, sofas, garden gnomes and nights out will crowd centre-stage, elbowing aside quantitative easing and the future of higher education. If I’m right, and some MPs are forced out this year, then we may see damaging byelections following what will surely be bad local and European elections for Labour. Even those who stay on will face a higher than usual toll of unseated MPs when the general election comes.
….my first thought was that voters should not only elect an MP at a General Election but also determine their salary and expenses.
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Labour heartlands: fertile ground for the far right?
The increase in support for the far right in cities like Stoke-on-Trent over the past decade well illustrates the need for Labour to strengthen its appeal to the white working classes as well as to middle England. Any increase in support for the BNP raises all sorts of questions about how progressive politics deals with the rise of the far right in Britain. The Labour Party has long argued that, as a nation, we should do whatever we can to tackle xenophobia and racial hatred from wherever it surfaces. This, of course, is right but the key question is how is this best achieved?
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
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» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
» The world is entering the third phase of the crisis, warns ILO
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