On ‘Judicial Activism’ and the Common Law
There’s something I’ve been meaning to have a bit of a rant about for a while, and after listening George Galloway’s verbal excrescences on tonight’s Question Time I can hold back no longer.
If you live in England and you genuinely think that there is something deeply and desperately wrong with the idea of judges making law then you are, without question, an ignorant, mouth-breathing moron who knows nothing of this country’s history and even less about its legal and judicial system.
There, I’ve said it. That feels so much better.
I am thoroughly sick and tired of listening to people whining about so-called ‘judicial activism’, especially when their ritual whining incorporates a shit-load of banal maundering about how Parliament hasn’t done this, or said that or passed a law to the effect of the other as if this somehow invalidates anything and everything the judiciary does that they just don’t like.
If that’s you – and I do appreciate that such a view is not one that widely held by our regular visitors – then just this once I want you to listen up, numb-nuts.
‘Judicial activism’, the whole business of judges making law, is not flaw or a fault in our legal system. It is a feature of that system. continue reading… »
Rod Liddle makes legal threats against us
In his columns he styles himself as a defender of free speech, but when it concerns himself Rod Liddle is happy with making legal threats to shut down debate on his past writings.
Today afternoon Liddle turned up on the Facebook group: ‘If Rod Liddle becomes editor of The Independent, I will not buy it again‘.
There, he started off immediately with legal threats, saying:
Can I just point out that your letter to Mr Lebedev is defamatory, in quite a big way? I think I ought to warn you about that.
So much for that dedication to free speech. Rod Liddle then goes on to defame the creator of the FB group Alex Higgins.
Our proposed Indy ad does not even refer to comments made by ‘monkeymfc’ on the Millwall website.
They only re-publish statements he has already made in the mainstream media and I am happy to stand by all of them.
The only opinionated comment we actually make in the ad is:
He has been arrested for beating up his pregnant girlfriend, made jokes about smoking at Auschwitz and is a climate-change denier. Does he represent the values of progressive, independent minded readers of this newspaper?
The first claim comes from The Times, the second from his discussion on the Millwall site (which he admits to) and the third on the basis of statement he’s made on global warming at the Spectator.
On the basis of that Liddle is calling it defamatory and warning us. What a hypocrite.
Even more absurdly, he then goes on to attack the creator of the group by saying:
You’re another liberal middle class whiteboy who turns into a fascist when his comfortable values are challenged.
For the record, Alex Higgins is a teacher at an inner-city school.
And what does it say about people who start throwing around the word ‘fascist’?
Apparently calling Rod Liddle “racist” is also “way beyond fair comment”. This is despite the fact that his own colleague at the Spectator Alex Massie said:
How delightfully refreshing to see someone trot out the kind of tired, stale prejudice you can find in thousands of boozers across the country! Or at any BNP meeting, for that matter.
Can’t wait for Liddle to try and sue his fellow Spectator blogger. Calling someone “racist” for making racist comments is definitely within fair comment and it was made across many blogs after he wrote that Spectator blog post.
Defender of free speech indeed.
Read the whole debate on Facebook. I’ve taken screenshots in case Liddle deletes his own comments. The Millwall site has already decided to hide many of the threads ‘monkeymfc’ wrote on.
Update: I’ve changed the wording of the ad to say “he has been arrested for allegedly hitting his pregnant girlfriend” – which mirrors the wording of the Times article more closely. But Liddle’s complaint that calling him a racist and sexist is beyond fair comment is rubbish, and what I’d call ‘lawfare’.
I’m not making this up, honest
“Steve Hilton, though, remains the third most important man in the party behind Cameron and Osborne…Those who are close to him are phenomenally loyal, praising him as invigorating and inspirational.
“But his ideas are often so concentrated that they need to be diluted.
“For a while, Hilton argued that Cameron’s first Queen’s Speech should contain no bills, to show that the Tories did not think legislation was the answer to the country’s problems.”
Nadine Dorries – Latest expenses raise more questions
Today’s publication of the Legg report has, naturally, pushed the whole expenses issue back to the top of the news agenda.
We have, of course, had a bit of look for ourselves. And given past history you won’t be surprised that our attention naturally gravitated towards the expenses claims made by our old ‘friend’, sparring partner and Conservative MP for Mid-Narnia, Nadine Dorries…
…and, also unsurprisingly, we’ve got a few questions for Nadine for which we’d really like some answers.
Dorries’ Website/Blog
You may, for example, recall that some time ago – May 2008, in fact – we raised a few issues with the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about her personal website and blog.
At the time, the blog appeared to be funded from her parliamentary expenses and breached several of the rules governing the use of MPs websites when funded from the public purse.
continue reading… »
Stats authority rebukes Grayling as “misleading”
We revealed yesterday how Tory home secretary Chris Grayling was using misleading data to conjure up visions of a “Broken Society” when the data flatly contradicted him.
He was slammed even by colleague Iain Duncan Smith, who said that such comparisons were “profoundly misleading”. Thrown under the bus by his own colleague.
Now, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority has slammed Grayling too.
Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, wrote a letter to him today stating:
I do not wish to become involved in political controversy, but I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics.
The Times called the letter “an astonishing public rebuke”
The UK Statistics Authority is concerned that recent political and media debate about trends in violent crime has misrepresented the data and is, therefore, damaging trust in official statistics. We have looked in particular at comparisons between recorded violent offences in the late 1990s and 2008/09 which have been the subject of recent controversy in the national media. We regard a comparison, without qualification, of police recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public.
Yesterday, Grayling was also criticised by police figures for his error.
Grayling has yet to apologise.
US giant sues Tory blogger over domain
This one comes firmly from the the files marked ‘you couldn’t make this up if you tried’, ‘WTF?’ and ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding!’
British Tory blogger, Tory Politico, has received a cease and decist nastygram from lawyers acting for a major US Political news site, Politico.com, which gives them ten days to shut down their blog and turn over the domain name to Politico on the utterly spurious grounds that it claims that the use of the term ‘politico’ will create ‘consumer confusion’ and ‘injure the image and valuable goodwill’ associated with the Politico name.
Seriously, the company behind the US site, Capitol News, genuinely seems to think that its audience is so thick that it won’t be able to tell the difference between a big fuck-off American political news site ranked 246th in the United States in terms of web traffic and a tiny and relatively inconsequential British political blog (no offence intended, BTW, scale is a relative thing).
And this is all seemingly based on ‘evidence’ taken from Alexa’s somewhat dodgy webstats which shows that our Tory Politco gets about 30% of their webtraffic from outside the UK, which Capitol News presumes to mean America.
In that limited sense, they’re probably right – I don’t know how long Tory Politico has been going but 30% foreign traffic is about right for the amount you’d expect to be driven to your site via random Google search, most of which will bounce straight off because the site doesn’t have what they’re looking for.
However, when you consider that Alexa ranks Tory Politico at 1,755,000 or so compared to Politico.com’s overall ranking of 1,221, then I’m guessing that that net impact of Tory Politico scoring a bit of US traffic off Google search could reasonably be classed as ‘the next best thing to fuck all!’
To compound the epic fail that’s already well in progress, it all appears that the President and CEO of Politico.com is Frederick J. Ryan Jr., former Assistant to Ronald Reagan during his time as US President, who also happens to be current chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation.
Jeez, I thought you guys were supposed to be on the same side?
Needless to say, if its the image and goodwill associated with the Politico brand that Capitol News are so concerned about then we should make sure that as many people as possible get to know just how much they care, shouldn’t we?
—-
Couple of pointers for anyone using Twitter.
The short URL for Tory Politico’s own post is http://bit.ly/9D2916 and the #politico hashtag is being used for this issue, so please use it and let’s see if we can get this story trending.
How the media is tricked into ‘balance’ on climate change
contribution by Peter McColl
Sunny pointed out on CiF yesterday that the BBC gave yet more air time to climate change denial on Newsnight the night before. What the mainstream media describe as ‘balance’ has been a matter of concern for some time to me.
The strategy deployed by climate change denialists focuses on two elements. Firstly, problematising the science of climate change, and then appealing to ‘balance’ in the media to ensure coverage of their position.
This is made all the more extraordinary by the lack of coverage for the other conspiracy theories Sunny mentions.
A couple of weeks ago Rod Liddle, the chungwit slated as next editor of ‘The Independent’ was on the radio. He was asked about a range of his more sensationalist opinions. This included his opinions on climate change.
Liddle claims not to be a climate change denier. He is, instead, a climate change ‘moderate’. This, he claims, means he refutes the extremist claims of both climate change deniers, and the extremist climate change believers.
Now this rankles with me.
continue reading… »
Petition on Pope hits 11k names; protests planned
A signature campaign against the Pope’s visit to the UK has gathered over 11,000 signatures according to the National Secular Society’s website.
The organisation has announced a large-scale campaign of protest against the state visit of the Pope to Britain in September.
The trip is estimated to cost around £20 million, payable by the taxpayer.
Terry Sanderson, president of the NSS, said:
We have an online petition where people can make clear their opposition to the state funding of this visit. If the Catholic Church wishes its leader to come here, it should pay for the visit itself.
I am sure many others feel the same resentment as we do at the NSS at funding the presence of someone who wishes to impose a reactionary agenda of social change on us.
He said a coalition of groups that have suffered because of the Pope’s teachings will ensure that wherever he goes he will be aware that he has caused damage and hurt in the lives of real people.
The coalition was seeking to bring together gay groups, feminist groups, family planning organisations, pro-choice groups, victim support groups and anyone who feels under siege from “the Vatican’s current militancy”.
Peter Tatchell, the human rights campaigner told The Times:
His ill-informed claim that our equality laws undermine religious freedom suggests that he supports the right of Churches to discriminate in accordance with their religious ethos.
He seems to be defending discrimination by religious institutions and demanding that they should be above the law.
Coalition calls Harman to push through HoC reform
A coalition of reform organisations have sent an open letter (below) to Harriet Harman urging the government to implement parliamentary reform before the general election.
The Better Government Initiative, Constitution Unit, Democratic Audit, Electoral Reform Society, Hansard Society, Power 2010 and Unlock Democracy all agree with the recommendations of the ‘Wright Committee’, which include:
- a Business Committee for the Commons to give MPs a greater stake in shaping parliamentary agenda
- reforms to the appointment of Select Committee members and chairs;
- new opportunities for public initiation of House of Commons proceedings
The proposals are to be considered by the House of Commons on 23 February through the introduction by the Government of up to 21 separate ‘non-amendable’ resolutions.
Such resolutions can be blocked by the objection of just one MP – raising the prospect that the Wright Committee recommendations will be derailed by a small minority of members who object either to the proposals themselves or to the perceived anti-democratic nature of the procedure being used by the Government to introduce them.
The letter
Dear Harriet,
The Wright Committee
We are writing to you – as Leader of the House with a record spanning two decades as a reforming and modernising MP – to urge that you do all you can within Government to ensure implementation of the Wright Committee’s recommendations for reform of the House of Commons before the general election. The proposed procedural approach to implementation currently puts this at real risk.
When the Prime Minister established the Wright Committee in June 2009 he made clear his personal commitment to reform in principle and as an antidote to the problems faced by Parliament and MPs as a result of the expenses scandal. Those problems have not gone away. The reputation of MPs, of Parliament and that of the Government itself will be further eroded if, having established a clear direction for reform, a procedural roadblock is now erected as the end is in sight.
We therefore urge you and the Government to reconsider the proposed procedure for the 23rd February debate. The introduction of non-amendable resolutions can – and therefore almost certainly will – be blocked by the objection of just a single member. It is surely right in principle that MPs have the opportunity to amend and then vote on changes to the rules affecting the House.
This approach has been used consistently in the recent history of Commons reform. It has proven to be the most effective way of developing consensus around a given set of proposals, whilst respecting the right of all members to set out their views.
For example, when sittings of the House (May 1999), the programming of bills (November 2000), Select Committee changes (May 2002), reform of sitting hours (January 2005) and the establishment of regional Select Committees (November 2008) were considered, members had an opportunity on each occasion to debate and amend the resolutions before them.
The best way of ensuring implementation of the Wright Committee recommendations before the general election is clearly to offer MPs that same democratic opportunity to debate and amend the proposals. If this opportunity is not provided, on or soon after 23rd February, the proposals will simply die.
If the Government continues with the proposed approach on 23rd February, we therefore urge you to make clear now the date on which the House will revisit any resolutions that are objected to. You have previously indicated that time will be made available ‘as soon as possible’ thereafter to take any such decisions.
However, without a clear commitment to a date in the parliamentary timetable the danger is that time will run out: after 23rd February, there may be no more than four parliamentary sitting weeks left before dissolution for the general election.
The Prime Minister, yourself and other members of the Government have previously expressed support for the principles of reform enshrined in the Wright report. Members of the Select Committee worked expeditiously over the summer to deliver the proposals in time for implementation by the general election. Every effort should now be made to facilitate time for proper consideration of the proposals and if you do not change the procedure we therefore urge you to confirm that the House will consider any outstanding issues within a week of the 23 February debate.
Each of our organisations has a significant interest in parliamentary and constitutional reform. We do not always see eye to eye, and have different agendas, interests and perspectives.
But we are united in our belief that the Wright Committee proposals for reform of the House of Commons are essential, sensible, and practical and must be implemented before the general election. That is why we are writing to you collectively on this issue, and copying this letter to the Speaker, other ministers and opposition spokespersons, as well as members of the media.
This Parliament, more than any other in recent memory, needs to reform itself. This reform could be your legacy as Leader of the House. But almost three months have now passed since the Wright Committee proposals were published – further delays preventing their implementation before the general election would be unforgivable.
We look forward to receiving your response.
Yours
Ruth Fox, Hansard Society
Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Democratic Audit
On behalf of:
Constitution Unit
Democratic Audit
Hansard Society
Power2010
Unlock Democracy
Electoral Reform Society
Better Government Initiative
Anti-war zealotry, Israel and Aaronovitch
Do you remember when last year Iraq war zealot and Tony Blair fan David Aaronovitch wrote of the “pointlessness” of accusing Israel of disproportionate force in Gaza?
“Pointless outrage”, he called it, as he wrote in the Times that “Israel takes care with its targeting, [the Palestinians] don’t”.
Like he still does over Iraq, Aaronovitch was oozing confidence that yet another war was “morally just”.
Around that time, Amnesty International and other observers obtained evidence that Israel had used white phosphorous -reports also substantiated by Aaronovitch’s own paper, the Times. All “pointless” stuff, of course.
And yet the UN too, with the Goldstone report, accused the IDFS of using “disproportionate force”, a claim that was immediately rejected by the Israeli government as “flawed from A to Z”, “biased” and “ludicrous”, along with allegations that white phosphorous had been used.
One year later and the tune has changed. The Israeli government published its report to the UN, admitting -crucially- that “[S]everal artillery shells were fired in violation of the rules of engagement prohibiting use of such artillery near populated areas”. In particular, the report refers to a UN compound sheltering 700 civilians that was set ablaze by white phosphorus shells.
Which, I guess, goes to show the “pointlessness” of overpaid commentators a-la Aaronovitch.
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