Civitas schmivitas

Unless the thinendofthewedge memory stick is playing up again, wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that a Civitas spokesman was sneering at David Davis’ resignation while patronisingly assuring the plebs that there was no civil liberties problem in Britain?

But today the same Civitas has its great big thinktanky knickers in a twist because, as a side effect of child protection legislation, a growing gulf has been created between children and adults.

Although the thinendofthewedge is prepared to nod in favour of any legislation which common sense (yes, totally subjective of course) suggests will protect children despite any side effects on individual freedoms, it’s undoubtedly true that the Civitas report focuses on a number of important and credible issues.

However, none of these issues can be divorced from the civil liberties debate if that debate is stripped of its forthy shorthand of cctv and ripa and conducted solely on the basis of the imbalance of power between state and individual.

So, in the odd world of Civitas on one hand there is no perceived problem with liberty in the uk, but on the other there is a major problem with child protection legislation, though all of it is based on the power of the state over the individual.

It’s impossible to believe that Civitas just wants to promote its brand by churning out reports at every possible opportunity.  It’s much easier to believe that the thinendofthewedge is just too dense to understand why there is no contradiction between them.

Who knows, but as GK Chesterton said: “A large section of the intelligensia seems wholly devoid of intelligence,” so maybe that remedial thinking course can be put on hold just a bit longer.

We know where you live

“We’ve got a letter from Milton.”

“Who?”

“Milton, you know, posh bloke, thinks he’s in charge.”

“Right, him, yeah.  Whats it say?”

“Reckon he’s been on the bottle.  Telling us to stop spying on the inmates.”

“Chief…”

“Ah, fuck it, can’t get used to this bollocks of pretending to have any respect for them, but if it makes you happy, alright, residents.  Anyway, Milty boy reckons we’ve gone a bit too far.  Prat.  Doesn’t know his arse from his elbow that bloke.”

“Wasn’t he in on that complete fuck up in Westminster?  You know, when Porter wanted to out all the chavs to expand her top-end market?”

“Same bloke.  Only went and apologised.  Doesn’t learn, does he?”

“Nah.  Still live there?”

“What sort of a friggin question is that?  You’re supposed to know where everyone lives!”

“Sorry chief.  Got him.”

“Good.  I want that bastard RIPAd till the blood streams from his ears.  Get the local boys on it.  Tell them to use Ipswich’s new talking cameras.  Whisper in Milty boy’s ear as he walks down the road: ‘Milton, we know where you live…Milton, we’re going to reband your council tax and analyse your rubbish and put a tail on your kids.’  Give him a little taste of fear, a touch of local authority.”

“Great chief, great.  Can I monitor his phone calls as well?”

“Give me strength, you prat, we’ve been monitoring them for years.”

“Anything juicy?”

“He’s got a ’special’ relationship with that blonde bimbo Johnson.  On the bloody phone together all the time.”

“Ulrika?”

“Boris, you twat.  Thinks London’s his manor now.  He’ll learn, just like Kenneth had to.  Shame about the newts.  What these ponces just don’t get is we’ve taken the local out of local government.”

“Right chief, they’ll understand, sooner or later.”

“Anyway, fuck ‘em.  Back to the bread and butter.  What happened to that old biddy who dropped dead pushing her wheelie up the hill because the binnies couldn’t pull it with one finger?  Did you get the flytipping fine on her before she croaked?”

Nightjack on civil liberties

If you haven’t already visited NIGHTJACK – An English Detective, you’re missing something more than good.

As with most of the police blogs, NIGHTJACK provides enough information to make you laugh, cry, fear, worry, fret, exasperate, hyperventilate and generally feel glad you aren’t wearing a blue uniform.  But on top of all this, underlying just about every observation is a thick vein of humanity and essential decency that somehow hasn’t been chipped away by years of dealing with the stuff of most people’s nightmares.

Now, thinendofthewedge is obviously a bit of a fan, but even so it was a tad surpising to find that NIGHTJACK is an admirer of David Davis’ principled resignation and also a critic of the continuing erosion of civil liberties in the UK.

A word of warning though, in addition to everything above it is also very, very readable, so expect to lose at least a couple of hours trawling through it.

A little freedom and even less information

If any evidence is needed (and I know it isn’t) that local councils now think of themselves as organisations answerable solely to themselves, thinendofthewedge only needs to look over the municipal boundary at Haringey to pull up a bucketfull.

Even councillors have to use Freedom of Information requests to get answers about stasi snooping in Haringey.  Councillor Jonathon Bloch said that it took three attempts to get Haringey officials to respond, and when they did cough up with the barest of information (29 instances of RIPAing the locals, including three cases of communications monitoring) they failed to provide adequate detail.

When asked by Mr Bloch to cough up more information, senior Haringey pen pushers said they would be delighted to, on receipt of a cheque for £495 to cover their expenses.  I am fairly sure that even Erich himself would smiling from ear to ravaged ear at the sheer cheek.

Biter bit, V

Hand the buggers a shotgun and they might aim at us peasants but they’re bound to hit one of their own from time to time.

And so we can look on and laugh at the Labour councillor who has had his mobile phone calls monitored by officials at Liverpool City Council.

The councillor involved, Joe Anderson, has reported the Council to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is now investigating.

The reason for the monitoring is neither here nor there, but reports suggest that Mr Anderson is at least in part aggrieved because town hall rules ban officials from looking at councillors’ phone records.

Oh dear, poor love, to think that those nasty officials broke the nice, cosy arrangement giving him protection from the very snooping his government has pushed on the rest of us is just too delicious for words.

Welcome to the real world Mr Anderson, though I doubt somehow whether your experience will result in you campaigning on behalf of David Davis in the near future.

Sweden: look on in shame

Following Sweden’s shameful overreaction to a threat described as minor, judges in neighbouring Denmark have refused to sell out free speech in the face of a real and bigger threat.

Seven Danish Muslim organisations had their case against the newspaper editors who published cartoons of Mohammed rejected by a Danish court of appeal earlier this week.

Throwing out the appeal, the judges ruled that the cartoons did not insult followers of Islam.

Three years after the publication, one of the cartoonists is still in hiding and under police protection following death threats.

Denmark 1:0 Sweden.

Canada is really, well, quite exciting

How could we ever have possibly thought that Canada ranked a few places lower than Bridlington for excitement?  As each week goes by, it becomes harder and harder to even contemplate playing the traditional game of ‘name one Canadian contribution to civilisation’.

Not only does Canada boast the meanest social engineering tools in the free world, it has now officially decided that the state has a free hand to push parents out of the way and make decisions about what their children should and should not be allowed to do in their spare time.

Briefly, the facts: a 12-year old girl uses social networking sites and posts inappropriate pictures of herself on them; her father tries to stop her by not allowing her to go on a school trip; the girl gets herself a court-appointed lawyer to argue for the ban to be overturned; the judge (Justice Suzanne Tessier) decides in the girl’s favour and by doing so pulls the rug out from under the feet of all responsible parents in Canada.

On what grounds does Ms Tessier think the Canadian state is better equipped to make such basic decisions on child rearing than parents?  Where, we might ask, does Ms Tessier see this decision leading in the future?  A whole nation of children, responsibility for whom rests with the state rather than parents?  Ah, yes, of course, that is exactly what she sees.  For in Canada, the state is fast becoming everything and individuals nothing.

Biter bit, IV

Ipswich Council is proud of the workers in its “control room” who have the ability to decide what is and what isn’t legal before issuing their commands via the town’s new speaking cctv cameras.  Ordinary people, though, might question what training they receive before being allowed to get their fingers round the mic of power, especially given the insight into the quality of some local authority employees unearthed during Leicester’s recent crackdown on council employee fraud.

Using RIPA in an extravagent banquet of eating their own, Leicester City Council investigated over 122 cases of alleged fraud by council workers last year.  The array of municipal naughtiness included council workers stealing plumbing equipment, siphoning off petrol from council vehicles, working in pubs whilst signed off as sick and, tra la, selling council laptops on eBay.

Council leader Ross Willmott said: “The vast majority of council employees are honest, trustworthy, and do their best for the organisation.”  I am sure they are Mr Willmott, but what assurances can your local residents be given that the minority will not be allowed to play with all the new social control tools your authority will soon have at its disposal?  Selling your laptops on eBay might appear somewhat antedeluvian once they are able to sell our images or personal identities don’t you think?

Brainstorm in a tea cup

Given the huge publicity already gathered by Poole Council, bookmakers have refused to take any more bets on the outcome of the 2008 Erich Honecker Memorial Award, but that doesn’t stop us from briefly acknowedging the hard work still being put in by local authorities bent on making themselves look even more riduculous than they actually are (a not inconsiderable task).

Tunbridge Wells council has banned the use of the word ‘brainstorming’ for fear of upsetting epileptics.

Thinendofthewedge believes ‘brainstorming’ should indeed be banned, but on the grounds that it normally provides a fig leaf for those with no application to pass on an intractable problem to a group of people totally unequipped to deal with it, not because it might cause offence to epileptics.

Before exhibiting their stupidity the senior pen pushers at Tunbridge obviously didn’t bother to consult The National Society for Epilepsy, a spokesman for whom said:  “Brainstorming is a clear and descriptive phrase.  Alternatives such as thought shower or blue-sky thinking are ambiguous to say the least. Any implication that the word brainstorming is offensive to epileptics takes political correctness too far.”

Such is the precarious relationship with reality at local authorities that the woman in charge of the ban, Val Green, was forced to say in defence of her decision: “It is important to us not to offend people and we are sorry if through trying to avoid this, we have indeed caused offence to the very people we were trying not to offend.”

So let’s get that straight Val shall we?  There was no problem until you decided to ban something that wasn’t offending anyone and in the process of your little daytrip out of planet earth you managed to offend the people you were trying to protect?

 

Suffolk stasi’s spew of short-sighted self satisfaction

Speaking cctv units outside a church hall warned local residents that if they attended a meeting in the building to discuss the erosion of privacy in the area their images would be identified and, under RIPA legislation, their names logged on a database of potential trouble makers.  Fiction of course, but Ipswich Council’s smug comments to local paper Evening Star 24 about its trial of talking cameras contained enough seed for this particular tree to grow should future politicians feel it might be useful.

According to the sinisterly titled Head of Community Safety, the speaking cameras have been a great success.  Council workers sitting in a control centre have been able to issue commands and instructions via the cameras to members of the public who they think are, or are about to, break the law.

We’ll not ponder on the question of what training, skills or experience the council workers in the control room have to issue commands based on their reading of potential illegality, as it is a generally accepted fact in Brown’s Britain that anyone who works for a local stasi is a state superman able to implement social engineering policy to the letter.

Instead, let’s dwell on the question of whether the senior pen pushers who run local authorities have the ability to see further than the ends of their noses.  It may be amusing of them to back up their claims of success with stories of people not dropping their trousers in public after a few words from the control room.  It may be admirable that the speaking cameras have stopped potentially violent late-night incidents getting out of control (and on this example, thinendofthewedge thinks the cameras should not only be able to speak, but also to zap the little buggers with a hefty dose of anthrax, but we’ll ignore personal prejudice at this point). 

What is not acceptable is the further strengthening of local control systems which one day might not be put to such benign use.  Unfortunately for us however, unintended consequence is not a concept which politicians of any variety currently value.