The government of whichever hue convinced isd still trying to deport him back to Jordan, with those few on the other side quietly pointing out that we could have avoided all this palaver had we attempted to put him on trial here in the first place, rather than sending him back into the welcoming arms of the authoritarian state he fled from.

We did after all grant him asylum back in the care-free 90s, unconcerned as we were then of the phantom of exploding Muslims.

It doesn’t seem to matter that the danger from Qatada, such as it is, isn’t that he will personally launch an attack: it’s rather than he’s provided theological guidance and motivation to jihadists in the past, and given the opportunity possibly will again.

This makes the threat he poses under a 22 hour curfew, accompanied by surveillance, a tag and a ban on anyone visiting him who doesn’t receive Home Office approval almost negligible.

If anything he probably poses more of one where he currently is in HMP Long Lartin, where he can at least mix with the other detainees in the special immigration unit being held in similar circumstances to his.

It’s been a well established point of law for a long time now that you cannot deport someone back to a country where they will face the threat of mistreatment or a trial where the evidence is likely to be based on mistreatment; the House of Lords surprisingly overturned Qatada’s successful court of appeal bid on that score, so it was always likely that his subsequent appeal to the European Court would succeed.

Distasteful as it is that we should have dedicated such efforts and expense in protecting the rights of a man who would presumably like to see the imposition of Sharia law, this is exactly what makes us democracies.

To steal wholesale from a comment posted by GuyStevenson on Eric Metcalfe’s piece at the Graun, quoting Aharon Barak, former head of the Supreme Court of Israel:

This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual’s liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and its strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties.

It might save some time to remember this when we do have to put Qatada under that less strict regime. Except, of course, we won’t.

—
a longer version is here

With the exception of his promotion of a “sunset clause”, which it has been rightly pointed out could result in a denial of justice, the exact thing the ECHR is meant to prevent, it certainly wasn’t the “savaging” the Sun described it as, nor did the elite seethe.

The real problem we have is the insistence of the tabloids that we should have the right to send anyone back to wherever they came from if they’re considered a threat – even if that means depositing them in a country in the middle of a civil war. Or in the case of Abu Qatada, to face a trial where the evidence against him was in the ECHR’s opinion overwhelmingly the product of torture.

The real danger is that we would be doing the biggest disservice to those in the less free nations in eastern Europe. Figures compiled this week show that comparatively, the decisions that go against the UK at the ECHR are relatively few.

Indeed, more were dismissed than allowed. Turkey, by contrast, had 159 out of 174 decisions go against her, while Russia had 121 out of 133. Both France and Germany also had far more cases heard and go against them than the UK did, with the courting finding there had been a violation in 23 and 31 of the applications respectively.

If those on the right got their way and we withdrew from the convention, then it can be guaranteed that Russia would do the same and point towards our decision in justification.

As right as Sir Nicolas Bratza was in criticising politicians for using “emotion and exaggeration” when taking on the ECHR, it also bears pointing out how they ignore cases which don’t fit into the standard tabloid “human rights madness” archetype.

It was only after the family of Christopher Alder went to the court that the government admitted they had been initially denied a proper independent investigation into his death, as well as accepting that the neglect he suffered at the hands of the police was so serious that it amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment, breaching article three of the convention.

By all means reform the court so the backlog it currently has can be swiftly dealt with – what must not be allowed to happen is any dilution of its right to intervene in cases which “have been dealt with properly in the national courts”, something liable to be highly subjective.

When some of them walk out during the first half of a game, not because of the performance of their team but because of the truly poisonous atmosphere their fellow fans have created, it’s time to sit up and take notice.

Regardless of how poor a manager Steve Kean, the former coach of Blackburn Rovers is, absolutely no one deserves the abuse he’s been subjected to now for months.

Yesterday this culminated not only in supporters engaged in running battles with stewards as they attempted to parade “KEAN OUT” banners during the match, he was also nearly confronted by a fan who got into the dug-out.

It highlights what ought to be recognised as football’s new problem after the almost eradication of hooliganism: the truly unacceptable behaviour of some fans, who seem to think that buying a ticket entitles them to subject players and managers to an endless torrent of verbal, the kind of which would result in a criminal charge should do they it on the street.

As the Secret Footballer wrote earlier in the year, it isn’t so much the culture among players which means there isn’t a single openly gay footballer, it’s the fans and the abuse they know they would receive should they decide to come out.

Open racism might have been stamped out, at least among the fans, yet homophobia is still sadly all too common.

If he were to walk away, he wouldn’t get anything in the way of compensation; stay until Venky’s are forced to act and he’ll at least have something for putting up with what would be regarded in any other walk of life as bullying. And who could possibly blame him when he’s become the scapegoat?

Oh, Jack Straw. Yes, of all the people that really ought to keep their mouths shut, up steps Jack Straw.

There is one less qualified than Straw to comment on when a football manager should leave his job. Having been intimately involved not only in the Iraq war, he then subsequently lied about the role of the UK in the United States’ extraordinary rendition programme, back in 2005 notably claiming that anyone suggesting there was such a worldwide torture regime being run by the US was a conspiracy theorist.

Perhaps that’s one thing Kean should take comfort from: that at least he isn’t a politician completely divorced from the concept of morality.

—
A longer version is here.

It’s a sentence that sums up so much about the Sun’s editorial mindset.

That the “Left” would not have had to do any sort of “regrouping” had the government ordered a proper independent inquiry into the worst outbreak of disorder on our streets for a generation goes completely unmentioned.

After all, why would they when both the Sun and the prime minister knew the causes the second the rioting began? It was what they’ve been spent the last umpteen years banging on about, not just the broken society, but a sick one, sick due to the collapse of responsibility, an underclass created through welfare dependency and worklessness, with the streets controlled by gangs.

An inquiry might suggest that this wasn’t a full or even partial picture, or worse still, have provided as the Sun so wonderfully puts it, “perverse excuses for evil”.

This isn’t to suggest that the Guardian and LSE’s work has been a success, nor that its provisional findings can’t be used to provide excuses.

As others have pointed out, it’s not wholly surprising that so many of those who took part hate the police, or are now pointing to their antipathy towards them as to why London and other parts of the country burned for four nights if they’ve been convicted previously.

Far more interesting would have been a comparison between those convicted before they took part and those who hadn’t as to their attitudes towards the police, as well as to how many times they’d been stopped and searched, if any.

Indeed, even better would have been a quantitative rather than a qualitative study, or at least one running alongside the other: finding out why some from the same area and background rioted and others didn’t would have added much to the debate.

Instead, we’re having to sift through those who not only enjoyed themselves but are now essentially boasting about what they did, such as the young man who supposedly came off a foreign holiday to take it part, and those who now deeply regret their getting caught up in the moment. Self-aggrandisment, rationalisation and honesty have all become mixed up.

To paint this though as “concocting perverse excuses for evil” is a wonderful reflection of the complete lack of curiosity on the part not of the Sun’s readers, but on those who write for them, imagining they’re speaking their language.

At its heart it is not only obtuse and ignorant, it’s also deeply anti-intellectual. You don’t have to be even slightly sympathetic towards those who rioted to want to prevent it from happening again, and to even have a chance of that you have to at least attempt to understand why.

—
a longer version of this blogpost is here.

This isn’t because either of the two groups have any great faith in the inquiry getting to the bottom of what actually happened – it’s because neither know what else to do other than ask some independent grandee to investigate. Strangely though, this initial cynicism and scepticism is often forgotten once the report is published and the conclusion fails to satisfy.

History seems unlikely to repeat itself when it comes to the coalition’s purposely crippled inquiry into the security services’ alleged collusion in torture.

After a year of trying to make the government see sense, the 10 involved NGOs, including Liberty, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch amongst others have withdrawn their cooperation from the Peter Gibson helmed inquiry.

From the very beginning it seemed unlikely to meet even the smell test: Gibson was already the intelligence services commissioner, a position you aren’t offered if there’s even the slightest fear you might be anything other than slavishly establishment.

Instead it seems Gibson’s powers will largely resemble those already wielded by the discredited and supine Intelligence and Security Committee, the toothless parliamentary panel which whitewashed rendition and was almost certainly lied to by a former head of MI5.

He cannot order any particular witness to submit to appearing before the inquiry, nor can he demand to see all the evidence the security services hold on rendition. It’s instead up to MI5/6 what they decide to graciously provide.

Those who claim to have been mistreated will also go unrepresented, with their lawyers unable to question any witnesses.

Why they continue to be quite so wedded to such tight secrecy when so much of what they’re likely to go over is public knowledge is made clear by the Guardian obtaining the official security service policy document on dealing with foreign intelligence agencies over detainees of interest.

In itself it makes clear that despite their insistence they knew nothing of how the United States was mistreating detainees until the Abu Ghraib scandal, MI5/6 had already developed a strategy at the beginning of 2002 in an attempt to remain above the depths the US was sinking to.

It even admits that disclosure of such collusion could in itself lead to further radicalisation of those they were meant to be monitoring and preventing from launching attacks, or damage the reputation of the agencies

It doesn’t matter that as they themselves predicted, the reputation of MI5/6 has been damaged by the allegations, and that the only way to repair a sullied reputation is as near to complete disclosure as can be provided by what have to remain semi-secret organisations, the default response remains stonewalling, backed up by those armed with the black pen of the censor.

—
A longer version is at Septicisle’s blog

Unity has written an excellent post on Breivik and fascism – a lesson from George Orwell – and this is partly my reply.

Scratch beneath Breivik’s anti-racist façade and you find the same old tropes.

I.e. as in the way he exclusively blames “Muslims” for the crime in Oslo (page 1392 of his “manifesto”), just as the EDL and those associated with it have banged on about “Muslims” being in control of the drug trade in various cities, as if religion has anything whatsoever to do with it.

This is why I think he personally has more in common with Tim McVeigh than any previous European terror group or individual.

McVeigh was a fan of the Turner Diaries and a known racist, but he was further radicalised by the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges. Coupled with the then highly en vogue “new world order” conspiracy theories, he decided to strike back against the US federal government.

Breivik instead found his inspiration mainly from the hysterical far-right, convinced that pure Muslim demographics mean that Europe is doomed. He combined this with the utterly bizarre conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt school of Marxist social theorists have somehow managed to influence politicians of both mainstream right and left into imposing state multiculturalism and political correctness onto their people without their consent.

Into the mix also came the “anti-jihadist” bloggers and other assorted right-wing figures, both American and European, Pam Geller and Geert Wilders (page 1407) to name but two, all of whom he came to believe were simply not going to achieve anything through democratic politics.

Only he, or rather his almost certainly imaginary group, can start off the war by killing not Muslims, although he includes them in his list of “prioritised targets” (page 921), but instead hitting the multiculturalists themselves.

In this he shares the “awakening” belief of many other terrorists before him, that through one spectacular act he can both raise awareness among those of like minds that they can personally do something, and also hopefully provoke the authorities into so overreacting that they make things worse, the same trap the West walked into after 9/11.

He also proposes the on the surface completely incongruous idea of “liberal zones” (page 1168), where those who wish to live “Sex and the City” lifestyles can do so, as long as they are cut off “ideologically” from the rest of society to avoid “cultural contamination”. Not many fascists would be willing to offer an apparent safe haven from their policies, especially when so many would obviously consider things to be far more pleasant there.

In my view, he’s best compartmentalised as a 21st century European white nationalist, who while others talked decided to act, by murdering the “friends” of his enemies.

—
A longer version is at Obsolete

Unexpected, truly world-shattering events like the sun deciding to beat down in April meant that instead of 0.7% growth between April and June, we instead got 0.2%.

If George Osborne isn’t much cop at spearheading a recovery which doesn’t resemble the water in the Dead Sea, then he does at least have the invaluable skill of coming up with corny soundbites.

As Larry Elliot points out, for all the talk of rebalancing the economy away from the financial sector, a difficult enough task without imposing austerity at the same time, manufacturing remains 8% below the level it was at 5 years ago while the banks have bounced back straight back, buoyed up by billions of pounds of taxpayer’s money.

The bankers meanwhile just paid themselves another £14bn in bonuses.

Having boxed themselves into this approach, regarding even the slightest deviation from their deficit reduction plan as being akin to putting us directly on the path to a Greek-style default, the Tories have left themselves with no wriggle room whatsoever.

They won’t countenance more quantitative easing, probably wisely considering inflation, they’ll never agree to going back on the rise in VAT, and they steadfastly refuse to contemplate anything slightly resembling a stimulus package.

All bets have been placed on the private sector saving the day, and while it’s been creating jobs, the JSA claimant count continues to rise as GDP flat-lines.

It might well be that there simply isn’t any room for manoeuvre now with the combination of interest rates at historic lows and markets jumping at shadows, but this was all the more reason to have a Plan B and Plan C in reserve in case everything took a turn for the worse. Instead we simply have politicians who refuse to admit to being even slightly worried by such low, stagnant growth. Denial it most certainly looks like, even if Ed Balls isn’t the best person to be point the finger.

Still, if there’s one thing Osborne can surely rely on it’ll be the support of the Murdoch press, considering those 16 meetings with various NI representatives. Let’s have a look at the Sun’s leader:

Mr Cameron’s team talk a good game. But that is all it is. Talk.

Time is running out for this Government to get a grip.

Oh.

Despite everything, we still don’t really know why Rupert Murdoch was so intent on keeping dear Rebekah at the top of NI. It’s true he feels a special affinity with those who have dragged themselves up from under-privileged backgrounds and share his love of newspapers, qualities which Kelvin MacKenzie and Andy Coulson both had in common with Brooks.

It still doesn’t explain though just how she came to be seen as being part of the extended family, or how someone on the surface so ill-suited to the job of chief executive came to helm his UK operations.

Inspiring fear in those you come across while chief exec simply doesn’t work, nor does telling lies which can be easily found out, as she did when she claimed the Guardian had “likely deliberately misled the British public”

Last week the obvious thing to have done would have been to accept Brooks’s resignation and keep the News of the World open, even if last Sunday’s edition was to be an extended mea culpa with those involved in the cover up also falling on their swords.

Even if propping up Brooks was a ploy to direct flak away from Murdoch junior, the very person who authorised the payment to Gordon Taylor in a failed attempt to hush up the spiralling scandal, then subsequent events and the failure to get a grip meant that her departure was an inevitability.

Her resignation letter, decoded by the Graun, says it all. She says she feels a “deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt”, yet only last week she was blaming a BBC-Guardian witch-hunt instead of her own failings for the closure of the Screws.

Unlike the hacks left without a job, it’s apparent that she’ll remain on the NI payroll, although in what capacity it remains to be seen. Equally clear is that falling on her own sword now solves absolutely nothing: the attention has immediately shifted to James. The investigations now under way in America suggest it could soon move to KRM himself.

After suggesting only “minor mistakes” had been made by News Corp, to then issue such a craven apology as will be published in newspapers tomorrow indicates that those who have never felt the need to say sorry before still don’t genuinely mean it now. Brooks and Hinton may be gone, but the cancer remains.

No, what William Hague’s admission signifies is our desperation at how the situation has turned against the rebels, and also our inability to do anything about it other than gestures.

Despite the caveats made above, it is also a clear example of mission creep, precisely because we have now made official what was previously only being done in the shadows.

Hague’s statement was a master class in euphemism – apparently the main work of these experienced military officers will be to advise the rebels on how they can better “protect civilians”, with a side-order of telling them how they can better organise themselves. This though will absolutely not amount to training fighters, nor will it breach the UN resolution, because we’ve said it doesn’t.

You can give the Benghazi-based rebels all the advice in the world; but without proper training the best they’ll be able to do against Gaddafi’s forces will be a repeat of what’s happened in Misrata, where those who rose up have been able to slow the advance through urban guerilla warfare. Even with the best will in the world, they can only hold out against such a superior adversary for a few months.

Here, as Simon Jenkins writes, are the limitations of half-cocked liberal interventionism being played out: not all of those who wanted a no-fly zone were naive or paid little attention to what it would actually mean in practice.

Then there’s Ming Campbell, one of the first to call for something to be done, who seems to be incredibly uncomfortable with how it means sending in those blighters in the military. Alan Juppe meanwhile says with considerable understatement that NATO underestimated Gaddafi’s “capacity to adapt”, as though bombs from the air were ever going to be able to topple him alone.

All of this was both predicted and warned of, and yet the same old traps have been eagerly walked into once again. Cameron’s belligerence looks more like a self-inflicted wound by the day.

—
A longer version of this article is here

In September last year the press was understandably interested in the apparent pact formed by Steve Lumb and Joanna Lee, who died together in a car on an industrial estate in Braintree.

The two had, according to police, met online and killed themselves using a relatively recently discovered method involving gas, placing warning messages on the vehicle alerting the emergency services to the potential danger of opening it without proper precautions.

Where the coverage crossed over the line into sensationalism and distortion was in the presentation of the messages posted on the internet by the pair and the replies to them. The Sun claimed (The People later followed) that both Lumb and Lee had been “egged on” and actively encouraged to kill themselves by posters on the Usenet groups, something which I at the time cast significant doubt on. The next day the paper claimed that a “Doctor Death” figure had “goaded and “preyed” upon Lee, which was also more than dubious.

Six months later and it seems as though the first directly linkable pact has taken place.

The bodies of Jenny Spain and Mark Searle were discovered in Spain’s car near Chalfont St. Peter in Bucks, with similar warning messages left on the car as in Braintree. It’s also quickly been discovered that Spain had posted on a related Usenet group to the one principally used by Lumb and Lee, asking for help. The difference seems to be that at least for now the Sun’s coverage has been far more staid and accurate:

Referring to a similar suicide pact, Jenny, 23, wrote: “I want to gas myself like those two people did in their car. I need to know what they used to make the lethal gas. Hope you can help.” She had two replies to her message, posted in the early hours of January 23. One suggested she tried to Google the answer. The other was from a woman asking if she spoke Spanish.

The thread is here, and is almost exactly as the Sun describes it. This is interesting because it’s almost identical to what Steve Lumb posted, and he too was told to search, something the Sun portrayed then as being “egged on”.

Whether this will change as Spain’s mother has already called for “suicide websites” to be closed down in the Evening Standard or if further messages are uncovered remains to be seen. For now at least it’s a welcome progression from what went before, especially as the method has not been referred to in the same manner as it was last time.

It’s only through deeper understanding of just what some people do go through that we’ll ever be able to get close to a proper equilibrium of protection coupled with the right to know. And even those of us who have experienced severe depression can never truly know what anyone else has properly felt like or dealt with.

Sensationalism and distortion help no one, and it has to be hoped that today’s coverage is a step in the right direction.

—
A longer version is here.

Hidden away, appropriately enough on page 94, is another of those promises which has since become a miserable little compromise: the proposed abolition of control orders.

Control orders are entirely a construct of the security services being more dedicated to the protection of their own sources and themselves should a suspect go on to commit an atrocity than they are the protection of the public.

Meant to cover the very few that either can’t be prosecuted or deported and on whom there is compelling “intelligence” of their criminal intentions, they’re also an insight into just how we’ve been frightened by the powers that be over the past few years.

It wasn’t so long ago that we were told of how around 2,000 separate individuals were involved in plotting terrorist attacks, although that figure was never properly clarified and broken down. How many people are considered so dangerous that they have to be all but permanently monitored and subject to a form of house arrest? 8, currently.

Those 8 were doubtless eagerly awaiting the long trailed changes to the control order regime, finally announced yesterday after supposedly months of in-fighting and battles between the coalition partners, with David Cameron wailing at one point about how it was turning into a “fucking car crash”.

Instead the government, apparently to save the Liberal Democrats some face as everything else falls down around around them, has embarked on one of their periodic rebranding exercises.

Control orders will become Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures, which if anything sounds even more Orwellian than the current misnomer.

The up to 16 hour curfews currently in place will transform into “overnight residence requirements”.

The other hardly encouraging change is that rather than being a temporary measure, as control orders always had been, the proposed legislation will make the TPIMs permanently available as an option. The orders themselves will be able to be imposed for up to two years, rather than a slightly more amenable 12 months, albeit an improvement on the current indefinite time limit.

It therefore takes quite some chutzpah for Tim Farron to call it a “proud day” as the party completely fails to even begin to implement its promise to prosecute terrorist suspects, but the Liberal Democrats as we have seen are nothing if not shameless.

The security services have once again won against those trying to bring their judgement calls even slightly into the open, and liberty itself is the loser.

—
A longer version is at Obsolete

A couple of weeks later and it’s clear that such thinking was absurd. Ed Miliband is now doing superbly, making himself seen and besting the government over the VAT rise. This is sealed with the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election win last night.

For those ever so slightly cynical, it should be noted that the only real change that’s taken place is that Miliband has brought in a new head of press and “director of strategy and communications”, both of whom just happen to have been journalists.

Labour’s biggest problem isn’t Miliband, even if he’s still showing up in the polls as an ineffective leader, it’s that the Tory-led government’s biggest success has been painting the party as being wholly responsible for the deficit. Even if the polling is coming towards the party on the cuts being bad for the economy and not being done fairly, they’re still not trusted to run it themselves, with the key reason being the stewardship of the past administration.

It doesn’t matter whether or not Labour did what it had to, through the constant repetition, they’ve successfully managed to win the battle of the narratives.

This is why it’s especially daft to posit that this is the perfect time to get rid of Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor. This isn’t to deny that he’s out of his depth, or at the least hasn’t even bothered to read that economics primer for beginners. It’s that the very last thing Labour should be doing is putting either Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper back in charge of policy when both are so associated with the Treasury and Gordon Brown.

While Labour could attempt a real fightback against the coalition’s countervailing narrative, it isn’t likely to succeed as the party has so few allies in the wider media. It’s also to deny the inevitable: the party, despite make clear that it would cut the deficit more slowly than the Tories, hasn’t proposed closing the gap entirely through taxation.

Cuts are going to have to be made somewhere, just not as brutally or as cruelly as the coalition is doing. Alongside this the party should make the case for raising public spending again once the deficit has been closed, something the coalition has if not entirely ruled out then mostly suggested it will not be doing.

This, sensibly, seems to be the position the party is moving towards. It might just help with the yo-yoing press coverage too. That really would be something.

More of note to me though is how the three papers and their rent-a-gobs have seemingly decided that they know better than Mr Justice Cooke himself does as to how he should run his own court.

Mainly due to how the rest of the media either ignored the barracking and the protests outside it, which as usual was the best policy, or only made a token mention of it, we don’t actually know for certain what happened.

Indeed, their reports are confused: the Sun and Express have either two or three men being bundled out of court by security guards to continue their protest outside, while the Mail suggests those photographed outside were a separate second group.

Certainly, if Cooke had been that troubled or startled by their shouts as he passed sentence, he could have either cleared the public gallery or asked for the men to be detained, neither of which he apparently did, with the security guards instead if we are to trust the Sun and the Express removing them of apparently their own volition.

What this all comes back to is not just how far freedom of speech goes, but also how you deal with those who are determined to make a scene and gain the sort of outrage over-the-top coverage which the tabloids are more than happy to give them.

It was much the same back in January when that other extremist and self-publicist Anjem Choudary pretended that he and his organisation were going to march through Wootton Bassett when they almost certainly had no actual intention of doing so. The question of complicity – how by drawing attention which otherwise wouldn’t have been given to a certain group you in fact do their work for them is a fine one, yet deserves to be further looked into.

Surely the proper way to respond to the three’s pathetic little protest, rather than instantly making a decision as to whether or not they were breaking any number of laws, was to regard it as what it was: a deeply unoriginal, yawn inducing spectacle and only move them on if there were any complaints made about them, which was exactly what happened.

For a nation that prides itself on its supposed innate sense of tolerance and fair play, it’s strange that we have such a different notion of freedom of speech to America, a country often criticised for having more than its fair share of reactionaries. When it comes to making mountains out of molehills, our press have shown themselves time and again to be world beaters.

Hirst is not an easy man to like. Convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after killing his landlady in what can only be described as an almost entirely detached manner, he served 25 years when he had been sentenced to only 15.

Less often mentioned is that he was abused as a child after being placed in the care of Barnardo’s, has Asperger’s syndrome and having been given a life sentence, will remain on licence until he dies.

Believing that he’s paid his debt to society, feeling if anything it’s society than now owes him something, he didn’t come across in an interview with the Guardian back in 2006 as someone truly repentant for his terrible crime, at times sounding callous.

While Hirst’s various media appearances may not have helped win over many new supporters, the almost entirely personal tone that Andrew Neil took when Hirst appeared on the Daily Politics reflected poorly on him also.

The arguments against giving those serving prison sentences the right to vote are obvious: having committed a crime felt to be serious enough to deserve a period of time spent outside of normal society, it follows that while someone is inside that they shouldn’t be able to influence what’s happening outside.

Making a convincing case for the other side is much more difficult: Hirst himself maintains that currently the only way to make your voice heard while in prison is to riot, which isn’t quite true; they are other ways of seeking redress, and while MPs might not take you as seriously as those who do have the right to vote, there have been plenty that have taken up the causes of either former constituents or those currently indisposed in their local jails.

Others have posited that prisoners would more likely to engage with politics – and as a result with politicians themselves if they had the right to vote, smoothing a way towards possible personal repentance and reform.

While such claims are dubious, as Neil Robertson has previously stated, on firmer ground is how giving prisoners the right to vote would put votes in prison reform itself, and give the reform groups themselves something resembling a mandate.

The best option would seem to be to disallow those given either a life or indeterminate sentence from being able to vote. In both cases those who receive them have to prove that they are ready to re-enter society after serving a stated minimum, rather than being able to do so once they have completed it regardless of remorse or reform.

While many who have committed terrible crimes would still be able to vote as a result, those considered to have gone so far beyond the realms of civilised society that they have to be permanently monitored would be denied it, hopefully satisfying the dilemma of not giving more rights to those who have denied them to others.

John Hirst might not like that the end result of his case would still have meant he would not have been able to vote while in prison, and few are likely to thank him for his efforts.

Yet if in spite of everything he’s done, his campaign helps in reassuring those currently regarded as beyond the pale that they are not completely excluded from society and can turn their lives around. His efforts if not his motives will in time come to be seen as anything but ignoble.

—
A longer version is here

During his MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh festival, Thompson defended the BBC’s unique funding model, mocked James Murdoch and attacked Sky’s increasing media dominance and failure to fund original British programming outside of sports and news.

Sky, despite being the largest UK broadcaster by revenue, spends the equivalent of ITV’s entire programming budget on marketing while putting only £100m into new home-grown features, or about the same as Channel Five does despite Sky having fifteen times the turnover.

Less than three weeks later, what happens? The BBC Trust meekly submits to a zero-percent rise in the licence fee over the next two years, which even the hawkish culture secretary Jeremy Hunt finds to be thinking too far ahead, agreeing only to the first year, with a decision to be made about 2012/3 at a later date.

Well, why not, some might ask. Every other publicly funded body is being asked to identify savings, ready for the cuts which are just around the corner. What’s more, isn’t it about time that the BBC spent the licence fee more wisely, cutting back on the highly paid executives and star talent, trimming the fat and getting into line with the current economic climate?

Those cuts and changes already proposed a radically different BBC, one where it effectively emasculated itself in some areas, and also went against its very supposed principles of providing different unique content which the private sector either wouldn’t or couldn’t.

The enraging thing about the BBC is that from a position of power, with mass public supportas multiple polls attest, it almost always plays the weakest hand possible.

The management essentially seems to be agreeing to the slow death of a public service broadcaster which is too weak and pathetic to fight its own corner effectively. Perhaps in that respect it almost deserves what’s coming.

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A longer version is over at Obsolete

Firstly, it seems, that the officer has do to something seemingly so out of proportion to the situation he faces, such as dragging along and then hurling a completely defenceless woman to a concrete floor, that it forces a less senior colleague to make clear her concerns.

Second, that for the best possible chance of a conviction, it needs to be the police’s own cameras which record what happened, rather than a member of the public’s, or outside CCTV.

Third, that instead of the video merely showing either the blows or push and impact, there needs to be more still: in this instance, the blood which dots the cell floor.

Fourth, that it helps greatly for the victim to be middle class, female and middle-aged.

We don’t, it should be clear, know for sure how Ms Somerville was behaving both during and after her arrest prior to her being dragged and flung across the station. It should also be noted that the judge has criticised the evidence given by two other officers, who claimed that she was “violent and aggressive”, suggesting that their version of events was unreliable.

Clearly, this is a completely different case to the assault on Ian Tomlinson or the dismissed claims of assault against Delroy Smellie, regardless of the possible insight it gives us into how the potential prosecution of police officers for the same or similar overall offences.

It does however all lead into the same debate on how much force it’s appropriate for the police to use, both against those who are complying and those who they deem not to be complying.

Few would probably have many qualms about a clearly disruptive and violent young man say being treated in the same manner as Somerville was; the same people so aggravated on the Mail’s website could well now be complaining vigorously if such was the case and the police officer had been jailed, or even congratulating the police on how they dealt with the situation.

As much as the police are trained to use force effectively and must know better as a result, would a member of the public doing something similar get a six-month sentence if it was their first offence? Maybe in some cases, but in plenty of others probably not. Consistency is crucial, and that’s something which we continue to aspire towards but is still not close to being achieved.

Not so much for what he said, which wasn’t especially controversial or scandalous, more his fairly good summation of what the Sun sets out to do (at 3:25):

“It’s the Sun, it’s a great story, we want to get people angry, it’s what we do, we like to shock and amaze on every page, and that’s what these stories are doing.”

Nothing wrong of course with making people angry; after all, that’s what all newspapers and indeed us bloggers set out to do on occasion. It’s more that the people the Sun wants their readers to get angry about are in the vast, vast majority not those they’ve showcased as being worthy of outrage, and are instead those that are on either hard times or are genuinely sick.

It’s best in fact to quote David Cameron, who goes further than the Sun does if anything:

You know the people I mean.

You walk down the road on your way to work and you see the curtains drawn in their house. You know they could work, but they choose not to.

Yeah, those people. You know they could work, despite almost certainly not knowing anything about them. Their curtains are drawn; it’s obvious, isn’t it? It would be laughable if it wasn’t so potentially serious: this is the basis on which the Sun is urging its readers to report their suspicions, and in Dudman’s parlance the phone has been ringing off the hook, unsurprisingly.

The Sun could, if it wanted to, opt to make its readers angry about something else, like how a businessman and newspaper owner can wield so much political power while having in the past contributed as little as possible in the way of taxation to the country in which he demands to have a say. It could make them angry about how the government thinks another business person with a dubious record on paying his fair share of tax is the perfect man to audit the public finances.

It could make clear how much is lost each year through active tax evasion, amounts which could substantially reduce the deficit without having to inflict savage cuts which will put even more people on benefits, from both the public and private sectors.

It chooses instead the easy, obvious target, a far more apposite description of what the Sun often does than that given by Dudman. It kicks those who are down, and it does it because it can and because it’s politically expedient to do so. It’s the Sun, it’s what it does.

Without wanting to question Laurie’s journalistic integrity, you also can’t help but wonder whether when you go into something with an already pre-determined level of contempt for those you’re about to meet, you’re looking from the outset for confirmation of your view.

That said, having your leg stroked and your bottom pinched by your social betters is hardly likely to make you reassess your initial verdict.

Perhaps though we’re holding the young Tories to too high a standard. After all, such behaviour would hardly be out of place at say, a dismal chain club such as Oceana; far worse would be considered almost de rigeur.

Should they really know better, or do they in the first place? It’s not just young Tories that are slightly weird; youth political organisations across the board are nerdish, the participants not wholly certain of themselves, almost embarrassed at how they’re spending their time.

This, it has to be remembered, is when politics itself is almost inherently leftfield, attracting the Milibands, the Heaths, the Browns, the Majors. Only rarely do the Blairs, the Obamas, the Reagans, the Clintons come along, and they often also bring a neurosis which only shows itself after a period of time.

Hell, I’m happy to admit that having written my blog for the past five years is quite spectacularly weird; I am weird.

Politics and youth only occasionally connect in a good way, and that’s almost always uniquely been at protests and within protest movements, whether against Vietnam, during ’68 or back in 2003. Far too often it instead comes across as trying too hard, of over active earnestness, precociousness. No one in their right mind wants to be William Hague at the Conservative conference all those years ago.

It’s often said that youth is wasted on the young, and it’s certainly being exceptionally wasted by these members of Conservative Future. What’s the point of being young and politically motivated if you’re not radical with it? The Federation of Conservative Students of the 80s wanted to hang Nelson Mandela; the closest the current class has is calling for the left to be vilified in the same way as they vilified Thatcher.

They even bemoaned how “progressive” when used in a political context is meaningless, which it is, while casting aspersions on the “Big Society”, which is meant to be our job. Even this though is a reflection of where politics currently is and has been heading for some time: to a safety zone stretching from the centre to the centre-right, where anything outside of those parameters is derided, ridiculed and belittled.

It therefore seems especially churlish to really lay into the young Cameroons; after all, their time has come, hasn’t it? It’s what we’re going to do about it that really matters, in our undoubtedly insecure and uncertain way.

Here’s the opening paragraphs of the most recent example:

As predicted, the only outcome of the election is that one set of self-serving crooks has replaced another, and our country continues its decline and disintegration. It is time we reflected on the terrible future that awaits our country, our children and grand-children.

If the politicians and the media have their way, our country will be totally overrun by the masses of the Third-World, we will be ruled from Brussels, we will be a despised, second-class minority in our own homeland.

Is that the future you want for your children? Will you regret it when it is too late and you wished you would have joined the British Resistance when you had the chance?

They’ve decided at this inauspicious moment to relaunch the Young BNP, not to be confused obviously with a group with a somewhat similar name which was fairly massive in the 30s and 40s in a certain foreign nation.

Perhaps because of the connotations with that other youth organisation, as well as journalists infiltrating the grouping, the group has been renamed and is now aimed at the slightly older 18 to 30 market.

For those imagining this might be an exercise in encouraging the master race to procreate in a Club 18-30 style, you’ll probably be disappointed.

No, it seems the most exciting antics the BNP Crusaders, as they will be known from now on, involve themselves in is that old hardy perennial, fancy dress, of naturally, the war-time variety.

Aren’t they gorgeous?

The entire ethos of the group seems to be based around having good, wholesome, clean fun. Griffin introduces them as such:

The BNP Crusaders is a group of 18-30 year old BNP activists. We prove that there is more to the British National Party than just politics, with social gatherings arranged all year round. From trips to theme parks to just simple get togethers and nights out, the Crusaders do it all.

From trips to theme parks to simple get togethers and nights out! The whole spectrum of youth interaction covered! There is of course more to the BNP than just politics; it isn’t just a party, it’s a way of life.

It doesn’t help that Griffin comes across as the slightly creepy uncle in his introduction to the Crusaders, nor that his description of the Crusaders’ leader, Joey Smith, is cringe-inducing:

The leader of the BNP Crusaders is BNP activist and super-star Joey Smith (pictured right). “The BNP Crusaders is a great idea and I look forward to working with my new team, and meeting lots of new members and activists. We have already had a few outings and I look forward to seeing you all on future ones.”

Thankfully, super-star Joey is quite the dish, not too dissimilar to heart-throb Robert Pattinson. In fact, they both share another similarity, Pattinson portraying the oppressed minority of vampires in the wider community in the Twilight films, while Smith is from the heavily discriminated against and ignored young white male demographic.

As if you couldn’t have guessed, the choice of Crusaders is meant as a “homage to our ancestors from the middle ages who saved Christian Europe from the onslaught of Islam”, which shows the BNP’s usual level of historical literacy.

Quite what they’re crusading against in our modern times however is unclear.

With almost unabashed racism back in fashion on the front pages of the Daily Star and Daily Express, it could be a good time for those on the far-right to try and create youth groups with some real influence, highly organised and dedicated to the cause.

Thankfully, the BNP Crusaders isn’t it, and frankly the likes of the Bullingdon are almost certainly more dangerous. They’d also be more likely to be the ones goose-stepping down the high street, sieg heiling their hearts out.

Compared to the English Defence League, a genuinely dangerous organisation with the potential to incite riots, with links to hooligan firms and which is far more attractive to those with actual radical views, the choice between the two couldn’t be any plainer. Got to laugh though, haven’t you?

Despite having been prime minister for less than 2 months, David Cameron is potentially the best all-round leader of this country of the modern era.

Not based on any of the actual policies which he and the coalition are pursuing, as that might suggest otherwise, but simply because of his charm, good manners and false ingratiating behaviour at prime minister’s questions.

Also a credit to the man was his glad-handing of other politicians at the G20 and EU summit, and not forgetting his brilliant crafting of a deal with the Liberal Democrats which has successfully placed all the criticism squarely upon them rather than the party whose policies are overwhelmingly being implemented.

More than anything, he isn’t that nasty uncouth Gordon Brown. Did you know the people at Chequers locked away the best crockery in case he smashed it in one of his fits of anger, and that he didn’t even thank them for putting up with his shocking behaviour when David Cameron took over?

Even shorter Martin Kettle: I’ve never met a former private school boy I haven’t liked.

Well, nothing’s changed, or at least has with me personally. I still feel dispossessed from the movement I should be able to belong to; I’m still a stereotypically angry leftie, still naive and still completely uncertain of my own surroundings.

The change, it has to be admitted, is that the government I found myself raging against which I felt I ought to be able to at least sympathise with, is now no more.

Frankly, I should have taken a reality check a long time ago, but a change of government to the traditional opposition is something that always results in a reappraisal. I can’t help but wonder, especially in the aftermath of this week’s budget, whether Polly Toynbee and those like her have had a point all along; that while the economic situation for so long was, if not rosy, at least neutral, that we took it for granted and instead focused to the detriment of inequality on civil liberties and also foreign policy.

Before I start recanting almost everything I’ve written over those 5 long years, all I’m admitting is that she has something approaching a point. Civil liberties should never have become a middle class concern because they affect everyone equally; it’s the Labour party and the authoritarian streak which it has always had which ensured that was the case.

While in government, there was never the slightest possibility that I could have justified to myself being a member of the Labour party. I was never going to be able to have the slightest impact on party policy. In that sense, nothing has changed.

I’m still highly unlikely to have the slightest impact on party policy. I can however, this time, at the very least vote for the next leader of the party. I can at least attempt to make my voice heard.

I’m not completely decided yet. I could make a different case, in fact probably a far better one, for joining the Greens and helping to build them as a real alternative. I’ve voted for them the same number of times as I have for Labour after all (both times in the European elections, and last month, which I don’t in the slightest regret).

I’ve voted for Labour twice locally and, to my still eternal regret, in 2005, in a futile attempt to save a doomed MP who had at least abstained on the war and voted against the worst of the anti-terrorism legislation). They’d probably be far more in tune with my actual views though, and as my blog perhaps has shown, where’s the fun in being in a party where people actually agree with you?

Complaining, moaning and conducting why-oh-why exercises like this one are far more fun and intellectually nourishing, if not actually helpful in the long.

Oh, and I can join for the colossal sum of a whole pound, so it’s not even that I’m vastly contributing to the coffers or a party which will take my money, ignore me, and carry on as before, as it undoubtedly will.

You can of course, if you so wish, persuade me otherwise. And let’s face it, the more votes that go to people with names other than Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and David Miliband the better.

3. A quote is later added to the initial Sun report from Deborah Jack of the National Aids Trust that “there is no risk of HIV transmission from dirty needles”.

4. An actual journalist from Stars and Stripes magazine looks into whether such devices are genuinely being deployed.

He asks Mercer himself whether he actually had confirmation that such fake IEDs were being planted, and the best he came up with was that he “had the impression” they were.

Inquiries to the International Security Forces-Afghanistan were answered “[N]o reports, no intel, nothing – but we’re checking”. The best answer he got was from the Joint IED Defeat Organization, who despite having no confirmed reports of such bombs said the Taliban often “employed anti-tamper devices”.

5. Jeff Schogol’s verdict? “More like an enemy propaganda campaign than a widespread new tactic”.

Nice of the Sun and Patrick Mercer to do the job of the Taliban for them.

After all, Martyn Gilleard, the skinhead who shared a passion for potential race war with a predilection for children, was given an 11-year-stretch for similar offences while only putting together some very rudimentary nail bombs, involving film canisters.

Davison’s son Nicky, on the other hand, has been given what seems a far harsher sentence of two years detention for only having the almost required Anarchist Cookbook and Poor Man’s James Bond manuals, both of which the judge himself noted are available to purchase from Amazon (and still are) despite their possession itself being an illegal offence.

In line with when our jihadist friends have been convicted, the police themselves have come out certain that they’ve prevented an atrocity, whether or not Davison and his pals in the Aryan Strike Force really were about to set out in the footsteps of David Copeland.

There certainly is a parallel with the jihadists cells that have gone on supposed “training” out in the countryside, as the ASF it seems had away days in Cumbria where they seemingly spent most of their time sieg heiling and running around with Nazi banners, but again, whether they were truly prepared to act on their online rhetoric is something different entirely.

That Davison had stored the ricin he’d made in a cupboard for two years gives a clue, as does the fact that he like Kamel Bourgass doesn’t seem to have any real idea as to use it to its full effect; the only discussion about poisoning anything which the police came across involved the “water supplies of Muslims”, which would have diluted the tiny amount of ricin he had even further.

In any event, it does once again show that far from just having a problem with Islamic extremists, there remains a significant if small threat from the very far-right.

And unlike with the takfirist jihadists, and indeed the remaining paramilitaries on both sides in Northern Ireland, there are very few resources being dedicated to watching their antics with the caution with which they deserve.

It was Alan Johnson though that really stole the show:

Linda Bowman is a remarkable and brave woman who has suffered the most unspeakable tragedy yet still manages to be a compassionate campaigner for good.

Quite so.

Mrs Bowman’s compassion is extraordinary, as shown by how she found it within herself to forgive the killer of her daughter:

I’d love to watch Sally Anne’s killer get the death penalty. I want to see him suffer until he is squealing like a pig.

It’s that kind of magnanimous, sensible, compassionate, non-vindictive approach to criminal justice which this country is crying out for.

As is her manifesto for crime prevention, which doesn’t involve such over-the-top measures as zero tolerance to farting in public, an end to lawyers and the death penalty for turning street lights out.

Clearly, Mrs Bowman is the perfect partner for a Labour party determined to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime: namely, allowing people to do anything anywhere without a police officer being present.

Update:
To be entirely clear: it was not my intention to criticise Linda Bowman for not forgiving Mark Dixie, even if that is what the post looks as if it was doing; the entire sentence building up to the quote is simply not good enough, and shouldn’t have been posted here, let alone on Lib Con. I should have written something along the lines of “Really? Her apparent compassion is not exactly shown in statements she has previously made”, or words to the effect.

I was instead attempting to make the point that someone who would like to watch a killer, even of their own daughter, killed in such a manner as to make them “squeal like a pig” is probably not best described as compassionate. Nor is there any other evidence that I’ve seen that Linda Bowman has taken a compassionate attitude towards criminal justice in any shape or form, but I’m willing to be corrected on that front. If however Alan Johnson had described her as “passionate”, rather than “compassionate”, then that would have been perfectly fine.

The coverage is also somewhat unfair because it is clearly only Grayling’s personal view, having voted for the legislation in question when it came before parliament.

That does make him a terrific hypocrite, but at least a honest one when questioned on it and he doesn’t think the media’s around.

Doubly though, Grayling has something approaching a point: while he would doubtless not make the full libertarian argument for why the owners of a bed and breakfast should be allowed to refuse entry to a gay couple, there’s one freedom that has been increasingly encroached upon in recent years, and that’s the freedom to be a horrible bigot.

Iain Dale and Claude both argue as to why you shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate on such grounds, Dale saying that you’re providing a service and that your house ceases to be public once you invite paying guests into it, Claude comparing the ban to health and safety legislation.

Devil’s Kitchen however makes what I think to be the best comparison: the smoking ban. While it’s difficult to argue that the smoking ban hasn’t been a general success and that it’s lovely to come back from either a pub or club and not have your clothes absolutely reek of tobacco fumes, I see absolutely no reason why certain establishments shouldn’t be allowed to deign themselves as places where you are allowed to smoke, and that if you don’t wish to breathe it in, then you can go elsewhere.

The same should be able to apply to small businesses like B&Bs. If you’re such a horrendous bigot that your conscience won’t allow you to permit entry to two gay men, presumably on the grounds that as they’re gay men and all gay men are sex mad and can’t possibly resist the temptation to indulge in anal intercourse in-between your clean white sheets, then you should be perfectly within your rights to do so.

The general public however though will then be perfectly within their rights to be told about your petty little irrational prejudices at every possible opportunity, hopefully resulting in your business either failing or only similarly clean-minded Christians or members of other religions patronising you.

Would this result in, as some have also mentioned, the return of the likes of “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs” signs? Possibly. Can we seriously though not handle that returning, and not actually further put it down to their ignorance and let them get on with it, with perhaps similar consequences to the above?

In any case, we already have establishments where it’s well known that certain people are either not welcome or conversely are welcome, and that few not belonging to those cliques therefore venture to them.

At least with this option we have open discrimination rather than covering it with a veil; let the bigots be bigots and let everyone else mock them. Perhaps we can start with, err, Chris Grayling?