easyweb.co.uk - politics

Global Footwear Armistice

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:55:24 +0000

It would seem that the War On Global Footwear is over. The last two Thursdays have seen me going through LHR Terminal 1 without having to remove my shoes.

Presumably Al-Quaeda sent BAA a note, saying

Righteous Al-Quaeda Brethren in Jihadi Alliance under The Most Holy One to Western Materialistic Fascists, Greeting.

We promise no longer to attack your Western aggressor aviation industry by means of the bombs hidden in Shoes, honest we do. Therefore please call off the security shoe-removing behaviour which is causing us all to spend too long in Airports.

Yours in Faith
Osama

Update 26 Oct

War on Footwear back on, sadly. Presumably Al Queda were just on half term.

Oh, also LHR now have a War on Loading Your Own Tray.

Perhaps I'm just missing it — perhaps it's not a War on Terror, but a War on Catching Your Flight...

Fighting Global Footwear

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:13:37 +0000

No, I'm sorry, I've spent too long fuming about this, so have to rant somewhat. Please excuse me...

Once again last night, coming home through LHR I was confronted by the sheer stupidity and theatrics of the security regime. In the last 6 months, LHR's security policy has moved from Occasionally, you will have your shoes checked to Randomly, you will need to put your shoes through the scanner to everyone will always have to have their shoes scanned.

Being a bolshie person who doesn't give in to implied orders, but waits to be explicitly told to do stuff, and even then challenges them, I enquired why this might be so. And the astounding answer was along the lines of:

Mumble, mumble, terrorism, mumble, mumble, current security climate, mumble, mumble, Shoebomber, mumble mumble.

Or, to put it another way, the best excuse they could come up with was a failed attempt nearly 6 years ago which hasn't been repeated since and has never happened under a British airport security regime, leaving two possible interpretations:

They're extremely slow on the uptake
It's all about being seen to be tough, without having any real impact on risk

The paranoid civil libertarian would naturally pick on the second explanation, as preparing the travelling public for any number of future restrictions (hell, why don't we all fly naked. And ban all fluids from aircraft). However, I prefer the third option of Random order from on high, which seemed like a good idea at the time but is so pointless even the staff can't work out (aka the Cockup theory). Well, it's better than the plain stupid the time taken to take off shoes lets them scan all the other things you now have to split out into separate trays theory.

I wouldn't even mind so much if the 'higher up' source was HMG, as then at least there'll have been some oversight from an intelligence source (what am I thinking?), or perhaps it's a BAA-wide policy. But no, it only applies to LHR.

How do I know? Because at EDI, another BAA establishment, they don't have a War on Footwear. Oh no. At EDI, they have a War on Belts. Yes, you have to take off your belt and put it through the scanner, while you walk through the metal detector (which I might add doesn't detect mobile phones as I discovered by accident on Monday), holding up your trews. Fair enough if it's a whacking great big thing with studs, clan crests and the like on it. But where can I hide a bomb in a modest thing with the smallest of buckles strictly needed to hold the thing together?

Or maybe they're just all scared in case I'm trying to smuggle on Holy Water... And don't get me started on that hoax.

Anne Moffat: Reductio ad Hitlerum

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:07:30 +0000

Our MP, Anne ~~Picking~~Moffat has historically been a thought-free, nodding dog for whatever hare-brained, knee jerk, reactionary guff the current government has dreamt up.

However, lately she's excelled herself in lack of thought, research, tact and insight when she conflated problems with the recent Scottish Ballot Paper with the principle of PR, and in doing so, compared the new First Minister to Hitler:

Did not proportional representation give Germany Adolf Hitler? To a lesser degree, we have been given the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond). Can that be a good example?
Source

To pick off the obvious problems:

There's the obvious kneejerk against Labour's current bête noir — sour grapes for losing power in Scotland, mixed with the fear resulting from her own constituency being part of that shift.
Then there's the simple fact that proportionality delivers an overall result that is closer to the will of the people. That it tends to upset entrenched parties that benefit from the current system obviously leads to even the more reasonable of her Hon Friends decrying it.
Next, we can note that previous AMS elections had very few spoiled papers. And even this time round, the new STV system had a remarkably low spoilage rate. So bitchy comments about this particular election's validity are either supremely premature and ill-informed, or are directed at another target.
Finally, Ms Moffat has shown herself prone to making logical fallacies. In this case, the Reductio ad Hitlerum, generically expressed as Adolf Hitler (or the Nazi party) supported X; therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad, etc. As X can include building motorways, painting watercolors, owning dogs and vegetarianism, this is clearly a fallacy. In the online world, this is known as the Corollary to Godwin's Law: the citing of Hitler in an argument ends the argument, with the citer being deemed to have automatically lost.

Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Fri, 11 May 2007 00:48:48 +0000

It's one of the basic tools of any magician — control of the audience's attention. It's said that a good magician knows at all times where the audience is looking, and controls it. Misdirect the audience into looking at your right hand, while your left hand palms the coin. Or, if that fails, use the Glamourous Assistant as the focal point.

Today's lesson in stage magicianship comes from our old friends, the Labour Party. While you're all looking at the left hand waving goodbye (or the Glamourous Assistant), the right hand is busy palming £400m of my money and yours.

That 8% cost slippage (that's £2.4bn so far, or 76% of the original budget for those keeping count) came out in the Gateway Review, a month past the required deadline, and just happened to be published within a few minutes of the Dear Leader's Resignation Speech. Mind you, the only reason it came out at all was because the courts ordered to be published.

Yes, it seems that even in its death throes, the Blair Project cannot resist spinning for all its worth. It's another Good Day to Bury Bad News — an open goal so wide that we should have seen it coming a mile off.

Oh, we did.

Now That's What I Call Getting Involved

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:16:53 +0000

Now we've all seen popstars using their fame for good causes, more often than is right just to ensure they get a wee bit of extra coverage. However, here's something a bit different. For one thing, it's not gone out in a blaze of publicity (I heard about it via the Bard of Barking group on last.fm). For another, only the people who perform the desired activity are rewarded.

But best of all, it gets people doing something concrete, that draws them into a greater level of involvement than just joining the latest fashion trend. Actually getting people engaged in the political process — marvellous.

Billy Bragg has agreed to do a private concert on Sunday April 1st in West Bromwich. There's one snag though. You have to help out with the anti-BNP day of action first.

So that'll be an hour delivering anti-fascist leaflets, then free food and drink and a private performance from the legend that is. Gotta be worth a look don't you think?

A Funny Kind of Future

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:02:51 +0000

So here's the theory — a couple of senior labour bods, panic about the idea of El-Gordo as Dear Leader. In a desparate attempt to derail the expected coronation (and the gentlemen's likely permanent sinecure on the back benches), they launch a debate on the future of the Labour Party (my emphasis).

Now while this is as obvious a piece of astroturf as the gamut will allow, you'd think that if they had a modicum of sense, Haystack and Hairdo would ensure that the related website would do mad, off-the wall, distracting things like... ooh, debate ideas for the future of the Labour party.

Visiting it for the first (and likely only) time today, I discover this as the front page:

(Again, my highlighting)

Yes, it's Clarke, continuing to punt ID cards. And the forward looking bit (so far forward looking that even Tone hasn't suggested yet) is that the National Register should include a DNA database, presumably to support the Dear Leader's fondness for fishing expeditions.

Leaving aside that even this cowed Parliament balked at the idea of DNA inclusion, I'm just failing to see the 'future of the Labour Party' element here.

Anyone? Buehler? Anyone?

Serious, Repeat and Violent Offenders

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:12:55 +0000

Nice to see that the Government has its priorities right:

If that’s not an Ass, I’m a horse

a gentle and respected friend got 28 days in chink for digging graves as an anti-war protest, and was therefore one of the 271 extra prisoners on Monday who took the prison population through the 80,000 ceiling...

So, a man who was due a six month sentence for downloading child porn (a crime, we are constantly being reminded, involving the actual abuse of actual children) is set free pending good behaviour. Another whose ‘crime’ is to protest against an illegal war - with particular regard to the killing of innocent children (the protest was on the feast of the holy innocents) goes down at huge cost to the taxpayer.

John Reid’s guidelines that were in the news yesterday were not new - they have been in place for quite some time. Reid’s letter was simply a reminder of a policy which was firmly in place on Monday - prison should be reserved for ’serious, repeat and violent offenders’.

[InMyHumbleEtc]

Who knows what kind of threat this serious offence might pose? Next they'll be serving Fairly Traded Tea, and then where would we be?

The Trouble with the Home Office

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:53:43 +0000

Dave Cullen has put his finger on what's up with the Home Office: It's stuffed with mediocre blue-sky thinkers, but they've not got anyone who's got a Scooby about admin.

Hence the never ending series of Whizzo Schemes, and a basic inability to fulfil the tasks they already had. Great news if you're a large system integrator. Not so much if you're a citizen.

Lowering the Bar

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:47:49 +0000

So, The Dear Leader and Shaven-headed Sidekick have given up on the burden of proof of the criminal law...

The Al Capone Bill (yes, it's been at least a week since a Serious Crime Bill was in the works) is positing that the necessity of proof is just a fiddly little thing that plain gets in the way when you're trying to get those Nasty Mr Bigs.

Oh yes, we're reducing the burden of proof in Criminal matters to that of Civil cases because it's easier that way.

Insert your own A-levels joke here...

Why Should I Be So Sad on my Anniversary?

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:28:44 +0000

Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset
And put it in the attic with the emperor's old clothes
When did it fall apart? Sometime in the 80s
When the Great and the Good gave way to the greedy and the mean

Britain isn't cool you know, its really not that great
It's not a proper country, it doesn't even have a patron saint
It's just an economic union that's passed its sell-by date

300 years ago today, the bells of the High Kirk in Edinburgh tolled out the hymn tune Why Should I Be So Sad on my Wedding Day? while the populace rioted in several Scottish cities.

The EBBC's response to this was fairly typical: On BBC Breakfast this morning, they invited Z-list celeb Aggie from How Clean is your House?, who's been out of Scotland so long she referred to the Scots as they, and some Scots-born architect who declared a loathing for all things Scottish to debate whether Scotland should stay in the Union. They also commissioned a survey so biased in methodology that it showed a drop of a third in previously surveyed support for Independence. Balanced Reporting: BBC style.

The West Lothian Question

Pausing only momentarily to note the 290 years when English MPs in the 'United Kingdom' parliament could foist anything they liked apon Scotland through sheer force of numbers, the only danger that the WLQ brings is to ultra-unionists who are worried about the symbolism. Does it practically matter? Probably not. But let's not wear the blinkers that say that the only alternative is a return to full Unionism — that's politically untenable. Anyone positing the WLQ in post-devolutionary times is arguing for something bounded on the one hand by a Federal Kingdom and the other by Scottish Independence, whether they're aware of it or not.

An English Parliament?

Let's make the point of principle first: if the English want a Parliament, it's a decision for the English Body Politic (ie all those who live and vote there) to make, and to decide which powers it will inherit from Westminster. Just as it is for the Scottish Body Politic to decide our constitutional relationship with the overall UK. If they want it, good luck to 'em.

And what of the federal option?

We're partially in this mess because the 'Union' was a de facto takeover. The official theory was that the Scots and English parliaments both adjourned, and their representatives joined a United Kingdom one. But of course, the English parliament remained, and absorbed the Scots MPs in such small numbers that English interests remained dominant. A more equitable settlement would validate all the Brownite rhetoric of I represent a constituency in the United Kingdom parliament; it doesn't matter where it is. And a fully federal state, where limited powers are equally reserved to the Federal Senate from all constituent nations would entirely remove the WLQ.

(Here's a side-thought - wouldn't this body be a logical end-game for the House of Lords debate?)

The powers I would reserve would be a far-narrower set than at present, and I suspect that English political opinion would come to the same conclusion. They wouldn't include the Home Office and Lord Chancellor's Office, for a start; we have our own judicial tradition, thanks. And the skill shortages in Scotland that might be filled by immigration are quite distinct to those of England (particularly those of London, which drive current policy). I'd also devolve DWP, as again, Scottish political sensibilities have a different aspect on much of Disability and Benefits policy.

Although Independence (whatever that means for any nation-state in our globalised world) is my preferred option, I could live with that.

The Barnett Formula and Subsidy Junkies

The echo-chamber of unionist and reactionary English bloggery would have you believe that without English money, Scotland would be in penury. It's easy to believe... if you only go for the advertised per capita spend without further analysis. To understand whether the conclusion is true, you also need consider the following:

Scotland's needs are greater than England's: Wealth creation/poverty reduction in the UK is biased towards England. Set policies that reduce the gap and we'll happily do without the extra cash. To be fair to the Welsh brethren, they do far worse relative to needs — there's probably a case for a needs-based assessment all round.
The Government Spending in question is identifiable expenditure: As HM Treasury admits when pressed, what's included in this is an entirely arbitrary classification. One could equally point towards the massive central government infrastructure in the South East of England that is an enormous subsidy to that region, yet strangely not counted when working these things out. It makes the bleating of the Evening Standard about 'subsidy junkies' particularly odious. The appropriate quote here is:
If the government spends money in the regions of the UK it is called subsidy. But if it pours it down the gullet of the cities and counties in south-east England it is called essential support of the infrastructure.
Political Editor John Forsyth in the Scotsman
It only counts spending: Scotland also has a significantly higher financial per capita contribution to UK taxation revenues. Scotland is in fact a net contributer to the UK economy.

Nationalism is Not A Right Wing Creed

I hear this myth all the time, whether overtly, or implied through barbs of Anti-English Whining when applied to any nationalistic argument. It's not even close to being true — the perpetrators of this myth have clearly not noticed that the SNP is some way to the left of the Labour Party on most issues, showing that Nationalism is ideologically neutral — it can be a Progressive philosophy as much as a Reactionary one. I can think that my country's great, want to better the people who live there, love its (current, ever-changing) culture, while at the same time, be perfectly happy to welcome people to it and celebrate the variation this brings.

But because of this left/right agnosticism, there are fellow-travellers towards Nationhood who dirty the word with their thuggery. Narrow-minded, thoroughly dogmatic, unable to accept difference from self-defined 'norms'; you'll find Fascists in all human societies, political parties not least. It's up to us to fight them wherever we find them.

So where does this leave us, 300 years on? Does the UK continue to make sense? The strongest pro-union arguments I've heard over the last 20 years have all been based on tradition and past glories: The Union has served Scotland well or The Union (particularly the Army) was the best means by which ambitious men could achieve anything.

What it is left with is an economic union that was put together on one party's terms, quite unlike the EU where each member state negotiates its entry. An arranged marriage, with a hefty ~~bribe~~ dowry paid to MPs who had lost out at Darien. Yes, we've had our good times. But we're fed up of being in your shadow, kept subservient incapable of making our own decisions beyond spending the housekeeping.

Which Bride would enter into such a marriage these days? And which Wife of such a marriage would not weep on her anniversary?

State Your Assumptions

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:36:55 +0000

A long time ago, back when I was at school, I was given some rather good advice about putting forward an argument: always state your assumptions. Now, I'm not sure where the current crop of junior Home Office Ministers went to school, and I'm loth to point fingers at his former employer, but it looks as if Liam Byrne didn't learn this lesson, or promptly forgot it when he entered politics.

For Liam has seen the polling on the cost of ID cards and has come up with a whizzo scheme for reducing the cost from the likely £300 a skull: let's just glue together the existing data the Government holds.

Shame it's the very definition of a house built on sand, eh?

Blair Channeling Anakin

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 09:15:54 +0000

Reading Blair's extended answer to ChickYog's question (my emphasis):

I am quite sure, based on the experience I have had in government, you cannot solve some of these law and order problems unless you are prepared, quite profoundly, to change and rebalance the system of criminal justice so that you have more summary justice, more summary powers, more ability for quick and effective action to be taken, even if it will cross the line that most people normally think of as there in terms of civil liberties. And my view is that you can decide that you are not going to do it for civil liberty reasons, decide it, but then don’t say to the politicians and all the rest of it, you have got to deal with this problem, because you cannot deal with it in my view by the normal processes of the law, you just can’t do it. The way the world has changed means that the only, and this is why we only started to get any action on antisocial behaviour when we introduced the power to get Antisocial Behaviour Orders, summary powers for the police, and the ability to take swift action.

rang a few bells with me. It took me a while to work out what they were. I thought about examples of societies changing from ones where decisions were made with thought and care, taking multiple views into account, to ones where frustration with the time this takes leads to demands for summary action without the nicities of getting the edge cases right, and an example popped into mind:

ANAKIN: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.

PADMÉ: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do.

ANAKIN: Then they should be made to.

PADMÉ: By whom? Who's going to make them?

ANAKIN: I don't know. Someone.

PADMÉ: You?

ANAKIN: Of course not me.

PADMÉ: But someone.

ANAKIN: Someone wise.

PADMÉ: That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.

ANAKIN: Well, if it works...

This is exactly what Blair is proposing. The I'm right; I know what needs to be done, and will do it no matter the casualties along the way school of thought. I'm guessing that Il Duce's commitments to targets in train punctuality is all part of this.

I realise incidentally that I'm running the risk of invoking Godwin's Law here, but consider The 14 defining Characteristics of Fascism — I'm counting 10 out of 14 at present.

Spot the (Knee)Jerk

Wed, 03 May 2006 10:49:19 +0000

So, here we have a Home Office who are failing in the management of an existing task:

Trial judge recommends the offender should be deported on sentence completion. Home Office makes a formal decision to follow that recommendation, then fails to carry it out.

(Note that the judge recommends that the offender be deported, not be considered for deportation. HMG's description is spin.)

Rectifying this requires the Home Office to simply be better at keeping records and communicating between its various Directorates (ie Prison Service tells Immigration that someone's coming to the end of their sentence. Immigration turns up on release day with a plane ticket and a taxi to LHR).

Not rocket science, is it?

But in a desperate attempt to get ahead of the headlines, Ol' Jug-ears decides that what is needed is not better implementation of existing legislation (which is more than adequate - Home Secretaries already enjoy the broadest of discretions to deport people who are non-conducive to the public good), but new, more draconian legislation.

Again.

The Home Office's Best Week Ever

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:13:19 +0000

With apologies to la Hewitt for the title.

To start slightly off centre, this week saw two major scope increases for the National ID scheme (conveniently after the legislation has passed):

The NIR is to function as a complete population register with cross-functional data sharing that far exceed the stated strictly limited circumstances mandate. As previously predicted by the Fiend, myself and others, this is child's play once you have foreign keys to all the government's databases stored on the Register
Contrary to previous promises, the Card is to store your medical info. So as well as the inevitable Civil Liberties problem here, every provider of medical services is going to need the Card Reading Kit (previously estimated by the Home Office as £4k - £6k plus connectivity for each reader workstation). Whose budget is paying for this? Can't imagine the Dept for Health is jumping at the idea.

So I'm beginning to think that maybe the best way to keep tabs on the population isn't to give each of us an ID Card, but instead to lock the lot of us up in a secure location, and then HMG will know exactly where we all are. Oh, wait...

Continues below the fold »

Party Funding - Loans, Gifts and the State

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 23:43:47 +0000

Listening to the recent debates about party funding, there seem to be two camps emerging:

Let's leave all the funding limits in place, and just make it more transparent
Let's further limit the amounts individuals and/or corporate bodies can give/lend to political parties, and make up the gap with state funding that won't come with the taint of political favour for sale.

Now let's be clear - I think that people should be allowed to give money to promote their political beliefs. Parties are at their heart voluntary associations, and should be allowed to rely on their membership to fund them.

However, both of the above camps make the same assumption — that parties should be allowed (no, sorry, encouraged) to maintain their current spending levels, particularly in election season. But I have two very good reasons why this is a false assumption:

Campaigns should be fought on the basis of who has the best ideas and policies, not who spent the most on advertising. Does anyone really actually believe that the national poster campaigns make a valid contribution to that debate? The Devil Eyes poster? The Fagin poster? Are you thinking what we're thinking? At least we don't have paid-for political TV ads here...
If a party can't muster a mass membership that can fund its activities, doesn't that suggest that they're not connecting with the electorate? If one or two large donations can outweigh the entire membership fees and donations of the party membership, then of course it's going to bring undue influence with it, whether that's for good old fashioned pork barrel, or fittings for ermine.