Court rejects UK appeal on stop-and-search
According to the British Journal of Photograph, a European Court has rejected the Home Office’s appeal on Section 44, designed to give police more powers over stop and search.
In a statement, the human rights group Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs, says that “today the European Court of Human Rights confirmed it has rejected the British government’s final appeal over section 44 stop and search powers.”
On 12 January, the European Court stated that the use of Section 44 to stop-and-search people is illegal and that the powers lack proper ‘safeguards against abuse’.
The court was hearing the case of Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton, who were both stopped during a London-based arms trade show on 09 September 2003. The police were ‘acting under sections 44-47 of the 2000 Act, while (the two were) on their way to a demonstration close to an arms fair held in the Docklands area of East London’.
The European Court found that the two protesters’ rights had been violated under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Earlier in June it was revealed that tens of thousands of people had been stopped in the street and searched unlawfully under Section 44 anti-terrorism powers.
[via @glinner]
Prison works? No thanks, Jack
As Justice Secretary, it often felt like Jack Straw was motivated more by a desire to protect the public from liberals than from criminals.
In his inglorious time in government, Straw’s Labour Party oversaw a record rise in the prison population, dangerous levels of overcrowding and a disastrous early release scheme which completely battered public confidence in the courts.
He ignored British and European law on prisoners’ voting rights, fed us policies packed with pure populist junk and blithely suggested that those who complained simply didn’t care enough about the victims of crime.
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WTF? Blair given ‘Liberty Medal 2010′ & 100k cash
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been named the recipient of the 2010 Liberty Medal.
Constitution Center CEO David Eisner said Wednesday that the medal will be presented to Blair in Philadelphia on Sept. 13 by former President Bill Clinton.
The National Constitution Center gives the annual award to individuals or organizations whose actions strive to bring liberty to people around the world.
The medal was first given in 1989 and comes with a $100,000 cash prize. Previous winners have included U2 frontman Bono, former South African President Nelson Mandela and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
..by the Associated Press
Only one thought springs to me: WTF?
Conservative contradictions on crime and punishment
The Tories have long had what one might call a ‘progressive’ (ugh, hate that word) streak on crime and punishment.
In the late 1980s, prison populations under the Tories began to fall as Douglas Hurd and others tried to establish consensus around non-custodial ideas, which would see people avoid prison.
But to leave the matter there is to ignore staggering contradictions on the part of the Tories.
Firstly, there’s no proposal to get rid of what has essentially become a people-herding industry of private companies, to whom a lot of services have been outsourced.
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Mail claims “backlash” saved UK’s dozen eggs
The Daily Mail’s “Foreign Service” triumphantly claimed today: Eggs by the dozen will NOT be banned, say Brussels after backlash by Britain
Shoppers will not be barred from buying eggs by the dozen, politicians at the European Parliament said yesterday after fears Brussels was trying to ban the practice. Reports suggested that the EU was planning to rule that eggs must be sold solely by weight.
That “report” was by a certain newspaper that completely misrepresented what EU legislation actually said.
It failed to understand current legislation and how the standards intended to reduce bureaucracy by setting agreed standards.
The Daily Mail’s u-turn came after the European Parliament issued a press release stating the obvious:
MEPs are neither trying to ban the sale of eggs by the dozen nor the sale or marketing of Nutella. MEP Renate Sommer, who is steering legislation on food labelling through the European Parliament, said, “There will be no changes to selling foods by number. Selling eggs by the dozen, for example, will not be banned.”
…
Reports that claim the new rules will not allow both the weight and the quantity to be displayed are also wrong. The new food labelling regulation does not affect existing EU rules on the size of eggs: There are four official sizes of eggs: very large (73g and over), large (63g to 73g), medium (53g to 63g), and small (under 53g) – this will not change.
If only the Daily Mail and Tory bloggers bothered to do some basic research before frothing at the mouth.
Watch: Activists protest at Tate’s BP party
The video was created by the Liberate Tate collective.
Liberate Tate is a network founded during a workshop in January 2010 on art and activism, commissioned by Tate. When Tate curators tried to censor the workshop from making interventions against Tate sponsors, the incensed participants decided to continue their work together beyond the workshop.
More: Harpymarx and Kevin Blowe
When is it right to take away a child from their parents?
Stories in the media about children in care are seldom talked about unless a tragedy has taken place, notable examples being the case of Baby Peter or the two boys in Darlington.
But on Monday Martin Narey, chief executive of Barnardo’s, saying that he wants the number of UK children in care to increase somewhat from around the 62,000 mark where it is currently.
Narey said: “Contrary to popular belief, and for all its inadequacies, care does make things better and can and does create stable, nurturing environments for children.”
On first glance it would seem unbelievable that someone so well regarded would say something like that.
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Companies: we can’t create so many new jobs
Some of Britain’s fastest growing companies have questioned Government claims that the private sector will hire people made redundant from the public sector or encouraged to work through reform of the benefits system.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, has said that the pain of public spending cuts can be eased by a revitalised private sector but many of those companies contacted by Your Business said this was unlikely in the short term.
…
Mr Walker said George Osborne’s decision to mitigate the impact of the planned increase in national insurance contributions next April was welcome, but he did not see anything more that stimulated private sector recruitment.
Colin Ellis, chief economist at the British Venture Capital Association, said that private equity-backed companies were unlikely to create mass employment in the short term. “There’s a massive amount of uncertainty around the outlook for the economy,” he said.
Update
Those views were also echoed last night John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development:
There is not a hope in hell’s chance of this happening [the creation of 2.5m new jobs]. There would have to be extraordinarily strong private sector employment growth in a … much less conducive economic environment than it was during the boom.
Anthony Painter points out that job creation wasn’t even that high during the boom years:
Let’s take 1999-2007- pre-credit crunch/ recession and boom time. In that time the UK private sector economy only created 1,520,000 private sector jobs. So what hope is there that it will create 2.5million by 2015 in a period of slow growth, fiscal consolidation, potentially rising interest rates, and while the European economy is stagnant? Not very high would be my guess. This is a Budget that will not create jobs at the very best.
Newspapers push back at Tory cuts with the right approach
The rightwing myth of Labour’s ‘clientele’
For the kind of Conservative who remains convinced that the Tories only failed to win a landslide last month because they were insufficiently rightist to satisfy an electorate that positively craved neo-Thatcherism by the bucketload, there is still one obvious outstanding question about the general election.
What needs to be accounted for is the fact that 29% of all voters somehow voted Labour. The possibility that some of us weighed up the options and decided that Brown was the best thing on the menu, or at least the least worst, is ruled out a priori.
There must be another explanation, mustn’t there? The new orthodoxy among the denizens of Hayekville is the Labour voters were bribed. A quick google will turn up a dozen versions of the thesis, often stated absolutely explicitly.
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