Recently in Be Seen To Be Doing Something Category

When will Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP, Secretary of State for Transport physically go to Heathrow Airport and sort out the chaos which he has created with the stupid and obviously unplanned and unrehearsed alleged extra "security" precautions involving hand baggage ?

A third of flights from Heathrow have been cancelled on Saturday, and the same is expected on Sunday. There is no excuse for this chaos to be lasting for so many days after the inital alert on Wednesday.

Surely this scenario involving banning hand luggage and liquids had already been planned and wargamed in all the "desktop" paper exercises , like Atlantic Blue, which focussed on international terrorist incident responses ?

If not, then why not ?

Why has the Government not allocated extra staff to help check passengers, in this artifical crisis ? Where is all the supposed the Resilience and Contingency and Civil Defence Planning ?

The claims by Home Sectretary John Reid that the CRITICAL terror alert status i.e. threat of an imminent attack, was somehow justified , even after the arrest of the alleged plotters seems to be more like bureaucratic and political backside covering , than a rational risk assessment.

If the NuLabour government cannot even organise extra security measures with minimum disruption, when there has been no actual terrorist attack, then why should anyone have any confidence in them if an attack actually does happen ?

Incredibly, it now seems that flights have been allowed to take off with passengers' hold baggage on board, but without the corresponding passengers, who have been held up by the "security" bureaucracy.

In other words, there is now no need for terrorists to be suicide bombers at all ! The travelling public have now been made more vulnerable to Lockerbie PAN AM flight 103 disaster type bombs in the hold luggage !

The Independent has an article which quotes David Miliband on his controversial plans for "Individual Carbon Credits".

Presumably, this uncritical article, has been pumped out by the David Miliband's public relations spin doctors at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which ended up in after the latest NuLabour Cabinet re-shuffle.

Mr Miliband will suggest banning products such as inefficient light bulbs and electrical appliances which waste power while on standby.

Will this really save any energy at all, given that many devices which would have been left on standby, will , instead be left on at full power instead ?

He will suggest new environmental taxes to shift the cost of pollution on to consumers and propose that consumers might make automatic payments to offset pollution.

Who could possibly have guessed that NuLabour's policies would involve even more taxes aimed at consumers ?

He will say: "In the short term it is likely that a mixture of the above tools will be needed. But in the long term, we should look more radically at the option of tradable personal carbon allowances. Imagine a world where carbon becomes a new currency. We all carry carbon points on our bank cards in the same way as we carry pounds. We pay for electricity, gas and fuel not just with pounds but carbon points."

Remember that this is a Government which has spectacularly failed to implement something as comparatively simple as to the poorest families. Instead, there has been massive complexity, red tape, bureaucracy, genuine hardship as a direct result of bureaucratic incomptence, and massive, multi million pound frauds.

How would "Individual Carbon Points" be anything diffreent, except on an even larger scale ?

Why should such a complicated "Soviet Communist GOSPLAN centralised planning" style scheme like this one, ever have a chance of working at all ?

Why should anyone have to submit to the snooping of a bureaucratic "Carbon Means Test" , with all the dangers of privacy violations which that will inevitably create ?

Which "private sector" partners has David Milliband got in mind who would profit from such an artifficial market in "Carbon Points" ? Will they be tapped up for loans or donations to Labour Party funds ?

What is this inane and impractical talk of a nightmare "world where carbon becomes a new currency" ?

Surely Miliband knows that even in the UK, there are lots of people who do not have a bank account let alone "bank cards" on which their "carbon points" will somehow, magically, be traded securely.

Where is there any evidence that normal market pricing mechanisms will not achieve the aim of reducing carbon emissions in the UK?

We will be watching David Miliband's taxpayer funded blog, to see if he bothers to try to justify this "Individual Carbon Points" alternative currency malarkey.

The Health Bill-, which is set to ban smoking any "enclosed or subtantially enclosed" public place, workplace,, as well as alcohol licensed pubs, clubs and restaurants etc. in England and Wales (but not Scotland or Northern Ireland) is possibly admirable in its intent.

However, in typical NuLabour "nanny state" fashion, Members of Parliament will have no idea of the detail of what they are voting for or against, as it is another "enabling bill" which gives the Government the power to create Regulations, but does not even specify which public authorities will be responsible for enforcement.

The Explanatory Notes , which are not legally binding, mention Local Authorities, Environmental Health, and Health and Safety bodies, but not the Police.

It could be that none of these end up becoming the "no smoking" enforcers, or they all could, together with designated private security companies.

Where is the Regulatory Impact Assessment, and how much will it cost to enforce, and who will pay for this ?

Whoever ends up enforcing this smoking ban will be granted disproportionate "nanny state" powers against anybody who is deemed, in their opinion, to be "obstructing" them.

Presumably these people will be able to demand Identification and any other information which they feel that they can get away with e.g. the proposed Identity Card from people caught smoking in a "smoke free area":

11 Obstruction etc. of officers

(1) Any person who intentionally obstructs an authorised officer of an
enforcement authority, acting in the exercise of his functions under or by virtue of this Part, commits an offence.

(2) Any person who without reasonable cause fails to give to an authorised officer of an enforcement authority, acting in the exercise of his functions under or by virtue of this Part, any facilities, assistance or information which the authorised officer reasonably requires of him for the performance of those functions commits an offence.

(3) A person commits an offence if, in purported compliance with any
requirement of an authorised officer mentioned in subsection (2)

(a) he makes a statement which is false or misleading, and

(b) he either knows that it is false or misleading or is reckless as to whether it is false or misleading.

“False or misleading” means false or misleading in a material particular.

(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.

(5) If a direction of the appropriate national authority has effect under section 10(4), this section has effect, in relation to any case or case of a description specified in the direction, as if references to an authorised officer of an enforcement authority were to a person acting on behalf of the appropriate national authority.

A Level 3 fine on the Standard Scale is currently up to £1000

NuLabour's usual leak, brief, media spin cycle is in operation again regarding the proposed new "Counter Terrorism" legislation.

As the Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke "consults" today behind closed doors with the Opposition spokesmen the Conservative David Davis and Liberal Democrat Mark Oaten on the vague new legislation there are a few obvious questions which must be answered:

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown seems to be keen to give the appearance of being "seen to be doing something" about terrorism.

Invoking the spectre of the Madrid and London bombings, according to this BBC report:

"Chancellor Gordon Brown is to urge EU finance ministers to step up efforts to seize the assets of terrorist groups in the wake of the London bombings.

He will make the plea during talks at the European Parliament in Brussels.

Mr Brown also wants European ministers to target the resources of people who support the targeted organisations."

Except, of course, that his Treasury and Bank of England have a pathetic record of doing this, as shown by this:

House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 22 Mar 2005 (pt 25)

"22 Mar 2005 : Column 713W—continued

Terrorist Assets
Dr. Vis: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much money suspected of being linked to terrorist assets (a) worldwide and (b) in the United Kingdom has been frozen since 11 September 2001. [223023]

Mr. Timms: Since 11 September 2001, 44 accounts totalling some £347,000 have been frozen in the UK. In total, 45 accounts, totalling some £378,000 are currently frozen by UK financial institutions. There is no global figure of the total assets frozen—monitoring frozen funds is a matter for individual jurisdictions.

All organisations and individuals whose assets have been frozen in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolutions, associated EC Regulations and domestic legislation are listed, by HM Treasury instruction, on the Bank of England's Financial Sanctions website. Asset freezing is an essential measure in countering the financing of terrorism by denying terrorists and their financiers access to funds across the world. Taking action not only freezes any funds in the UK but also creates a hostile environment to deter terrorists from using the UK's financial system in future. "

£380,000 would not buy the average NuLabour Cabinet minister a second home, let alone pose a serious threat to international terrorist finances in the three and a bit years since September 2001.

How many individuals do the "45 accounts" represent ? There certainly have not been 45 people arrested, let alone charged or convicted of "terrorist fundraising" or "financing" under the Terrorism Act 2000

The concepts of financial blacklists for suspected but not proven "people who support" terrorist organisations is also rubbish, since it usually means a flawed reliance on the anglicised spellings of foreign names and addresses.

Of course not every "terrorist group" e.g. the Taleban in Afghanistan, or the various Chechen separatist groups, are actually even designated as proscribed terrorist organisations according to the Home Office - simply pretending that every terrorist somehow belongs to the nebulous "Al-Quaeda" is stupid and wrong.

How do NuLabour Ministers get brainwashed into making NuSpeak declarations, which even to supporters of ID cards must sound hollow and false ?

Spy Blog notes that:

"The NuLabour Home Secretary Charles Clarke seems to expect us to believe his statement during the Second Reading debate that

"I argue that the ID card system is in fact a bulwark against the surveillance or Big Brother society, and not a further contribution to it."

Is it terrorists, serious organised criminal, illegal immigrants, benefit fraudsters or "identity thieves" (the presumed statutory targets of the Identity Cards Bill) who are setting up multi-billion pound technological mass surveillance infrastructures to spy on everyone in the UK, or is it the NuLabour Government which is planning to do so ?"