G20 police assault video
G20 police assault (other angle)

What a state the UK has come to where a Conservative feels the way I do.

(Although maybe that’s because I am an unusual Conservative).

(Click the image to see the text a little larger)

It is now illegal to take a picture of a police officer if he decides it’s illegal. A little while ago they suggested that people should report their neighbours if they appeared to be living beyond their means and now they are asking people to report their peers for taking innocent photos.

How long before a racist utterance is met with “Let an experienced officer decide what action to take”? How long before your freedom on the street is entirely at the whim of another human being?

A friend of mine asked me the other day, apparently not sarcastically, whether it was legal to take a picture of another person. How far down the road are we where this could even be thought of as a possibility? Taking a photo does no-one any harm and what use are laws that don’t protect anyone? Actually, that’s the wrong question; we should not ask what use a law has that does not protect, rather we should be asking whether a law that does not protect anyone is a just law or an unjust intrusion on self.

I am conscious that this post will not excite the masses — there is nothing in these developments that could not be argued as being in the interest of the majority — but that is true of almost all the steps the state must take between now and Nineteen Eighty Four. Really.

Obviously good people must help the State protect other people from bad people, but when good people act for the State in reporting innocent people on a hunch, well then we’re on a slippery slope.

This from the Guardian:

Last night Tory opposition was also growing with Tim Loughton, the Tory frontbench spokesman on children and MP for Worthing East and Shoreham, cancelling a visit to Birmingham so he could oppose the proposal and Lord Baker, the Tory former cabinet minister, deciding to vote against the measure in the Lords.

At least some politicians appear to care about right and wrong — it’s a shame so many of them are in opposition.

Let’s hope David Cameron can be convinced not to abstain, but instead to show that he believes in democracy and whip up a vote against Gordon Brown’s abuse of power.

There was an uproar Monday when trucks towed nine vehicles and issued tickets to others parked in a bus lane on a street motorists said they’ve been parking on since a transit strike shut down bus service a month ago.

Typical!

Source

Whatever you think of David Davis’ decision to resign he has definitely kept the issue alive. The question “Is it okay to imprison innocent civilians?” would have become just another abuse of freedom had Davis not made his unusual decision.

And he’s highlighted another problem — the BBC and ITV who are supposed to be completely unbiased have continually described the situation as ‘bizarre’. As part of BBC dumbing down they have long sought to explain the implications of situations in news articles rather than just presenting the facts. But on this issue it is quite clear that they are going beyond simple explanation and clarification. If the situation is unusual (and it is) then that is fine, but to say that Davis may have “committed political suicide” or that “David Cameron… is furious” is to make leaps beyond the facts.

Let us be clear too: This is about locking away innocent people. There will be no trial, no evidence will be presented to the victim (of the state) and no news will be delivered to him. This man is losing all rights without being able to help show why he is innocent; and he shouldn’t need to do that.

European Constitution

The other key issue is the European Constitution aka the Lisbon Treaty. The Irish Prime Minister said the other day that the Lisbon Treaty is 95% the same as the Constitution. And the public in Ireland look like they have done for us what we were denied by our liar Prime Minister. Thank God.

Last night’s debate, and the brave Labour rebels in particular, showed that democrats from across the spectrum care passionately about rights and freedoms. MPs of all parties hold courage and conviction about these values and few more so than David Davis.

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty

I feel a little sick.

So why does the law now stop Chris Eubank from behaving as he wishes (harming no-one) and resulting in a warrant issue for his arrest?

When will it be time to resist these steady erosions of our… Well, I was going to say liberty, but that is now definitely gone.

But to be fair to the services available, I had not yet tried the journey from my new home to my old work. My new home is only a two minute walk from the railway station and Legal & General in Hove is a pacy fifteen minutes walk. So the combined journey time, with the fifteen minutes on the train itself, is about half an hour. This compares very favourably with the rush hour journey time by car (because, of course, of the lack of public investment in viable roads from Shoreham past Chichester).

So, in future, if it weren’t for the frankly bizarre prohibitive cost, I would be more than keen on using this alternative. Actually, I’ll have to again tomorrow as my car remains at the garage.

On the cost, I still need to have it explained to me. How can it possibly cost more to transport many passengers than to transport one? And if you can share your car not only is the cost halved instantly, but it also becomes even more competitive. The do-gooder socialist environmentalists wish to correct this imbalance by charging car drivers more for the privilege of moving about their own country by private means (where do-gooder socialist environmentalists could, without too much squinting, be replaced with the single word “facists”).

As a short exercise, here is a comparison of the costs:

1. Private car: 13 pence per mile (if through town) or 10 pence per mile (if using the A27 trunk road which I do). This is a total of £1.20 for the 9.2 mile journey.
2. Train: £3.10 in each direction (ignoring spurious discounts if you choose to use the train every day)

Even if we add the 48 pence per day of road tax (which presumably exceeds expenditure on roads these days) the car remains a cheaper option. And if we removed the imbalance caused by fuel duty the car would be nearly a half cheaper again.

But why? How do economies of scale not come into play here? The train was full and the train in front of it was full too (I had to watch it pass as it does not stop here in Lancing) so the passengers on the train were not subsidising empty seats. The train uses electricity which everyone knows is created relatively efficiently (much more efficiently than burning a small amount of petroleum under the bonnet of several hundred vehicles) and, to cap it all, the train companies are largely subsidised by Her Majesty’s wealth-suppressor (sorry, the tax man).

So, someone, tell me why!