Recently in The State of Big Brother Category

Apologies for not posting about Labour / New Labour / NuLabour recently, they are too depressing to waste too much valuable blogging time on.

George Monbiot, has excoriated the totalitarian Hazel Blears in a Comment id Free opinion piece in The Guardian.

Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears - except election? An open letter to Hazel Blears MP, secretary of state for communities and local government.

How can we get rid of Hazel Blears and her colleagues in this repressive Labour government, without getting anyone else who is just as bad or worse in power ?

The Great and the Good (including George Monbiot, Henry Porter, David Davis, various pressure groups like the NO2ID Campaign and Liberty Human Rights etc.) from The Guardian reading intelligentsia (together with some people who might well be "wolves in sheep's clothing") will be pondering this at:

Convention on Modern Liberty to be held on Saturday 28th February 2009

The Convention on Modern Liberty is being held in the Logan Hall and adjoining rooms at the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury, central London.

Address:

The Institute of Education
20 Bedford Way
London
WC1H 0AL

Loacation Map

Nearest Tube Stations: Russell Square or Goodge Street

There are video linked screenings or other parallel meetings being held across the UK in Belfast. Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff and Manchester.

This event is quite expensive (£35 a ticket or £20 for concessions), and it is in central London, so it may be better to spend the money on a party with a few friends and debating the issues around a broadband webcast link to the main speeches.

The Daily Mirror reveals that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has admitted to having an extra-marital affiar with his secretary.

This scoop would normally have been the headline story in the rest of the media, but for Home Secretary Charles Clarkes attacks on the media on Monday, followed by yesterdays admission of utter incompetence by the Home Office in not considering for deportation, at least 1023 foreign criminals who hhd been sent to prison over the last 7 years.

Apparently over 160 cases were ones where there was an reccomendation from the Court which sentenced these offenders that they should be deported when they had serveed their sentence.

How is it that the bureaucracies of th ePrison and Probation and Immihration services, all of which report to the Home Secreatry, cannot coordinate something so simple, where the people to deported are not hiding somewhere "underground" as illegal immigrants, but are actually physically locked up in prison ?

Apparently 288 of the total were not delat with properly since August last year, when Charles Clarke had been warned by the National Audit Office of the problem back in July.

It therefore appears as if the problem has got even worse, directly under the mis-management of Charles Clarke

Charles Clarke is refusing to resign, so far, but how why should he be allowed to continue as Home Secreatry ?

Surely he has no special skills or experience which would make sorting out the problem immediately any swifter ?

Charles Clarke now seems to be claiming that he did offer to resign before last Christmas, according to this Press Association report

Ironically, even doubly disgraced ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett has, apparently, called for "heads to roll" , although, not, of course that of Charles Clarke, at least in public.

It was Blunkett who also presided over the same incompetent and shambolic Immigration and Nationality Directorate scandals, which lead to the resignation of Home Office Immigration Minsiter Beverkly Hughes is, of course partly to blame.

WIll this latest demonstration of sheer bureaucratic incompetence be blamed on the "computer system" and lead to a demand for "more resources" and even more legislation ?

Who is the likely replacement for Charles Clarke as Home Secretary, ?

Will he or she actully concentrate on getting the Home Office to fulfill its plain vanilla basic statutory duties competently, instead of trying to social engnieer society with a flurry of ill thought out and ever more complicated legislation and unworkable high tech "magic" technological fixes, which they are incompetent to implement ?

Will the other NuLabour Cabinet Minsters like Tessa "9 mortgaes" Jowell and Lord "Honours for City Academies" Adonis and Margaret "Let's hype up the BNP" Hodge, be thankful that the limited attention span of the press and broadcast media have now seemingly forgotten about, their recent scandals ?

Where is the Tony Blair / Lord Levy "Loans for Peerages" scandal being reported now ?

More good analysis and comments at Blairwatch

It is hard to comment sensibly on NuLabour. We are frightened and disgusted by this Labour regime.

Apart from the ongoing Loans for Peerages and City Academies scandals, we have been reading:

• The Observer has some emails between Henry Porter and Tony Blair which show just how out of touch Tonty Blair is The Devil's Kitchen has some mild crticisism - " Tony Blair: you fascist fuck!"

• Tony Blair's email to Henry Porter promises banishment from theUK, presumably even for British citizens, deportation without trial, merely on suspicion:

  I would impose restrictions on those suspected of being involved in organised crime. In fact, I would generally harry, hassle and hound them until they give up or leave the country.

  How about some actual evidence of wrongdoing and a proper trial before punishments are handed out by the state ?

• It is no surprise that the disgraceful David Blunkett is milking his Parliamentary expenses for his country cottage love nest, to the tune of £20,000, according to the Sunday Times

• Tim Worstall has an opinion piece in the The Times , but also writes "Fuck him" on Charles "The Safety Elephant" Clarke and his evil plans to refuse financial compensation to people who have suffered miscarriages of justice.
  
  
• Mayor of London blog asks "So what is the difference between NuLabour and the NuBNP ?" over the NuLabour's Margaret Hodge inspired free publcity and scaremongering for the British National Party just before the Local Council Elections.

• The Terrorism Act 2006 has now been commenced, except for the 28 days detention without charge provisions, for now.

  Watch out for Section 3 "takedown notices" which will curb and chill free speech on the internet . If any "constable" decides, " that your website, or blog or discussion forum should, in his "opinion", be censored - you have 2 working days to comply or else you will be deemed to endorse "encouraging terrorism" or "disseminating a terrorist publication" -and face up to 7 years in prison and / or an unlimited fine. Even a forged Section 3 notice will be enough for your website to be censored by your ISP or webhost.

  You could also face imprisonment for life under the vague, catch-all Section 5 Preparation of terrorist acts even if you have not actually committed an act of terrorism

Do the figures for the number of people who were children when their DNA profiles were taken, and which are still being stored on the National DNA Database include:

• Euan Blair son of Prime Minister Tony Blair, aged 16, drunk and disorderly .

• William Straw - son of the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, aged 17, suspicion of supplying cannabis in a sting by The Mirror newspaper.

Parliamentary Answer 1 December 2005

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office):

At the 31 October 2005 there were 3,466,792 subject sample profiles loaded to the National DNA Database. Of these 741,605 related to people who were under 18 at the time the sample was taken.

Parliamentary Answer 16 January 2006

Andy Burnham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office):

On 1 December the original question asked:

"How many people under 18 years have DNA profiles stored in the police national database without having been charged or cautioned for any offence?"

It was not then possible to provide the answer. A transitional solution provided by the police now enables this information to be compiled, though not as easily as the proposed PNC-national DNA database linkage would permit. On 1 December 2005 there were around 24,000 DNA person profiles on the DNA database which related to persons under 18 who had not been charged or cautioned for any offence.

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 ?"

The NuLabour legislative onslaught outlined in the Queen's speech has started.

The misnamed Equality Bill, introduced in the House of Lords on 18th May, sets out to create a Super Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation or Non-Departmental Public Body called the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, which will replace the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality, and the Disability Rights Commission

If the new body had more power to affect Government policies before they are forced into law, than the quangos it will replace, or if it had a strong enforcement role and budget, then this might be a welcome move.
However, this does not seem to be the case.

Instead, it appears that the NuLabour plan is to further weaken any oversight of the Government or its tentacles of state, whilst paying lip service to allegedly "progressive" politics.

In particular the "Equality Bill" is also sneaking in complicated and controversial "Religous Discrimination / Harassment" powers which were could have a similar "chilling effect" on free speech, as the "Incitement to Religous Hatred" clauses which were removed from the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act during its passage through Parliament.

Presumably this is why the White Paper and Consultation on the creation of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights was originally done by the Department of Trade and Industry, but this so called "Equality Bill" is a product of the Home Office kremlin.

Note the vast number of exemptions for anything to do with National Security or the Criminal Justice system, or indeed any other function or duty of Ministers, which seem to be designed specifically to prevent this new legislation being used to uphold any complaints of Religous Discrimination against the very public bodies which are the most likely to have such complaints made against them.
e.g. people from Catholic or Islamic minorities who complain about the attitude of the authorities towards them, especialy with regards to alleged anti-terrorism stops and searches.

Lumping in "Human Rights" into this new Commission, will probably lead to Tony Blair yet again claiming that there are "no human rights or civil liberties" issues to worry about in the rest of the NuLabour legislative programme, such as the controversial ID Cards Bill.

John Prescott has been representing the UK at the Council of Europe Summit in Warsaw.

As predicted, NuLabour have not signed up for Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings, which attempts to give some minimum rights to the mostly women and children who are victims of the sex slave trade, but NuLabour have signed us up for more repressive "anti-terrorism" laws instead.