Social Divide and the Super Injunction

The super-injunction, tool of the rich and famous, so special you can't even mention it exists.

I prefer law that is tangiable and definable. Recent debacles over peoples' sex lives don't interest me beyond Fleet Street bar gossip, but I do take the freedom of the press seriously.

As Maxwell Mosely goes to the ECHR, we are presented with a conundrum. If press have to notify before publication, then Freedom of Speech is comprimised. To decide to do so would result in the an automatically created right of passage for the rich to protect themselves, while mere mortals suffer.

Rather like defamatory actions, to allow any part of the law to be accessible only to the rich goes against the rule of law founding principle.

But now the ECHR must further confuse this by answering a priority of human rights. Which is more important? Freedom of Speech or Right to Privacy?

And where does right to privacy end and right to scrutiny or public interest begin?

One could argue the law is based on a system of each case on it's merits; but it's merits should not include whoever can pay to protect themselves.

The government in the UK is unlikely to revoke legal aid reductions, but will be extremely unlikely to challenge the rich-proxy of injunctions and libel. Therefore they are likely to use whatever the ECHR decides as a principle and get out of the responsibility of deciding at all.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Why the Fawsett Society Challenge Actually Discriminates Against Women Further

The Fawcett Society has launched a major, high press challenge against the government's spending cuts to child benefit and benefit cuts in general.

Controversially, as a feminist, I disagree with this action.

Ultimately, I feel this hinders the gender equality debate, is a poor use of legislation and does not represent a true equality impact assessment of the spending cuts in line with other legislation.

Do the Spending Cuts Disproportionally Discriminate against Women?

Flexible Working and the Public Sector

The Fawcett Society states that "65% of public sector employees are women". It then goes on to illustrate why two thirds of civil servant employees are in fact female. Firstly, it is because the public sector has far more stringent flexible working schemes, equal opportunities governance and care related policies than the private sector.

By campaigning against the spending cuts to the public sector, all the Fawcett Society appears to be achieving, to me, is preserving the public sector as the best equal opportunities employer in the country. This immediately implies that these women would be unlikely to seek employment opportunities outside the public sector because practices are not as adequate.

Therefore, the debate is not about the cuts to the public sector, but in fact about how inadequate private corporations in the UK are at providing equal opportunities in employment for women, caregivers and those who seek flexible working schemes.

By enforcing major budget cuts on the public sector, this would significantly increase job seekers into the market who do not just seek flexible working, but insist upon flexible working. This would force companies into applying more suitable flexible working policies, and seek better ways of functioning with a level playing field of diversity strands.

The Fawcett Society may succeed in their legal challenge, but all this would do with secure a narrow field in which women can work and allow private companies to continue to discriminate against women and diversity strands.

Child Rearing

The Fawcett Society is responding to the sociological issue that women are, in the majority of cases, the main child rearers.

This is not a response to the amount of money these women receive, whether from benefits or employment, but in fact a response to the entrenched notion of discrimination within the family unit that the society has failed to address since the onset of second wave feminism in the 1960s.

Gender discrimination and patriarchy remain truly embedded within society through a variety of means. All the time we allow women to be considered as the "caring, mother figure" stereotype, we persist in the notion that women nest and men build.

Sexual liberation in the 1960s allowed women to have sex with a much lower risk of pregnancy thereby allowing them a far greater choice of partner prior to embracing family life.

However, the barriers still exist post commencing that relationship. Once she selected her partner, she is still expected to undertake certain roles within that relationship. This includes being the one to take leave for nine months to two years when a child enters the relationship. While a leave of absence is reasonable for women that have given birth, the assumptions of "biological destiny", "bonding" and the interdependent relationships indicated within society between mother and child ensure that the woman feels guilty for not taking for maternity leave, feels guilty when she is struggling with a variety of related child rearing issues, feels secondary to her child and is obligated by the sociopolitical landscape to fulfil these roles.

The Fawcett Society challenge to spending cuts perpetuates the concept of the woman of the child rearer, thereby inadvertently preventing the positions of women within society from changing to a more equal stance within the workplace.

The limiting of child benefit may in fact assist to reposition the role of the female as a potential to be an equal or main earner within the family; dependent on meritocracy and not upon negative and perceived social roles.

Legislative Tools

There is an entire range of gender equality legislation now available for use within the UK. But all the time that negative sociopolitical concepts of the roles of women within the home, the workplace, or career style, persists, all challengers are effectively moot.

Legislation from the EU indicates that you cannot discriminate against gender on the basis of goods and services. However, we still see gender stereotyping in marketing, advertising and merchandise as well as in the services surrounding capitalism in the UK.

The legislation should be strategic and proactive, enforcing companies and service providers to take into account equality impact on gender.

However, persistent messages such as "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" in advertising, education, and social media seem to be so entrenched, that no one even considered challenging them.

I recently submitted a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority with regards to an advert for Dove on the television. This is particularly targeted at men with a voice over detailing how fantastic it was to be male, including lifting the entitlements of the man within society and the role and gender rise masculinity that he should fulfil. I was informed by the Advertising Standard Authority that my complaint was not valid as I was the only person to complain.

What is the point of legislation if it does not exist to combat discrimination in these areas?

Instead, the Fawcett Society are using it as a reactive tool to discrimination. To combat discrimination against women based on these entrenched rules without both advising, consulting and instigating steps to erase such embedded notions from society, is what I consider to be a misuse of the legislation.

I'll go further, saying that it helps perpetuate negative connotations of "feminists" as angry, reactive, aggressive groups that do not put steps in place to rectify mistakes but simply battle against them when the impulse takes them.

Tyranny and Terrorism for Iceland

When the television and news revealed that the public of Iceland would be given a referendum to decide whether Britain would be repaid the money, I took the outcome of that decision as a foregone conclusion.

And surprise, surprise the people said no.

But their assets are still frozen by UK Anti terrorism Laws.

It appears that our country has decided that simply invading countries and enforcing "democracy" with all the zeal of the Roman slaughters BC is a waste of money.

Our government would rather draft all encompassing, detrimental legislation and use it to control from a far.

In the flux of a global financial crisis, the economy of Iceland is in serious trouble, with contractions around 7.7 percent last year and is expected to shrink again in 2010.

Due to the "Mareva Injunction" intended to prevent people from losing the cash when they have a claim lodged against them, seems a little ludicrously applied here.

One can only imagine Lord Denning's opinion from beyond the grave, at the abject use of his renegade common law to keep a country in a recession.

Iceland is a country of just 320,000 people hoping to join the European Union, but with a shattered economy, the injunction can only further damage their livelihoods and prolong their financial difficulties. Further details are identified by the Financial Times.

There is something rather amoral about using any legislation to control an entire country's economy when our own government is not going to be taking the debts incurred by our own banks back.

And it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth when it is anti-terror legislation.

As that great resource Wikipedia states "the term "terrorism" is politically and emotionally charged.

Wikipedia goes on to say;

"As Bruce Hoffman has noted: "terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore""

Yet it seems the only thing terrorist about the legislation used to freeze Icelandic accounts is the country implementing that legislation.

A few views on Frig's Day 2010

Hell Boys

I have run one or two diatribes on the "hell boys" so far so I need not impress my opinion on the illogical systems of criminal culpability and social care in this country any more. I will, however, say that no man is without merit, and if I had any faith in our British Psychology, Rehabilitiation or Young Offenders Institutes, I may be more forth coming about their ages.

But, in the true political prevaricating way, can I just say that Ed Balls on Radio 4 made an excellent point about the case being used for political gain by the Conservatives. The sound bite "broken Britain" is more Blairite than Hazel Blears.

The Pirates of Distraction Technique
Somewhere in the reports of bungled rescue attempts and removal of ring fenced budgeting, reporters seem to have forgotton the plight of Mr and Mrs Chandeler. It is almost as an afterthought in this article they add;

[The couple] "had been separated and beaten by the pirates and [Mr Chandler] expected to be killed within "three or four days".

I'm sure the local papers in Tunbridge Wells are clamouring for justice, but has the world got so big that we are blind to people suffering harm unless it is a mass disaster or a political tool? I hazard a cynical guess that were Cameron to take up their cause, it would be the main thrust of the BBC et al. However, "Chandler" does not make for a good soundbite, and he would only target the same story presented, blaming Labour spending cuts for the resulting harm the couple are suffering and may suffer still.

Perceived Terror Threat

This comes a little late in the day, would you say? Nearly four weeks after the event? The event that was farcical at best. The biggest fall out has been that the Dutch will be even more scrutinised in customs, and more personal freedoms will be erased with inept profiling based on stereotypes and masqueraded as UK Border Agency Security.

Brown's Debut at The Iraq Enquiry

Sir John Chilcott may have "said the committee was still concerned about the risk of the hearings being politicised in the run-up to the election. and we all knew it was inevitable.

I fail to understand why anyone would want to enter a ballot for tickets to see Blair dissemble arguments when we had that for 8 years with him as a Prime Minister.

And on the Iraq Enquiry, do they not have Lawyers and Judges because the cost of creating a logo eradicated their budget perhaps?

Munchausens Mother Jailed

While the facts of this case are terrible, it perhaps raises mroe concerns about our National Health System than I had initially perceived. With the advent of medical technology, one has to wonder how a child went through 8 years of medical examinations, in a high profile case, and was still diagnosed with conditions which require medical evidence. While I appreciate she put sugar in his urine samples to make him diabetic, I am not sure how anyone can fabricate cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis without a level of incompetence in the diagnostacians involved.

It also raises an interesting point about coping with Disability.

"Andrew Macfarlane, prosecuting, told the court that Hayden-Johnson's... medical treatment meant that the child was socially stigmatised."

This in turn makes me think about how society responds to disability. We currently live in a society that pities disability and yet stigmatises those who suffer from it. People with disabilities are constantly pandered to in the worst possible way, with no responsibility, few friends and exclusion from society, yet renounced with charity and gifts. But I will leave this for another post I think.

Seeking Social Policy Solutions

Another rehash of the "Hell Boys" who tortured two younger children in Doncaster last year has appeared through out the news.

The details have not been elaborated on due to an injunction to prevent all of the details being know. When I blogged on this last year, I referred to the case as the next generation's Jamie Bulger, and indeed this case has been compared to the notorious 1993 Jamie Bulger case..

Police were alerted on April 4 after the nine-year-old boy who was attacked was found wandering, covered in blood, in the former pit village. The youngster told the people who found him where to find his 11-year-old companion, who was discovered unconscious in a nearby wooded ravine.

Previous court hearings have been told that the two victims were hit with sticks and bricks, one had a sink dropped on his head, one had a noose put round his neck and the other was burned with a cigarette on his eyelids and ear. Their tormentors also tried to force the boys into performing sex acts on each other.

During the attack the older victim begged his attackers to kill him, such was his torment.

This case raises several strands of concern. The failings of our public services and the systematic rise in child to child violence that the Legal System is not equipped to deal with.

Failing Public Services

The BBC have had access to a document which identifies 31 incidents which Social Services had recorded but not acted on. This must be a relief for Haringey.

Joking aside, this raises serious concerns about thechildren's services department of Doncaster council, where seven children officially marked as being at risk have died since 2004.

Newsnight is revealing the details of the report into Eddington as I type, and reporting of matters in the public interest

"Corporate and Organisational Inadequacies" are cited by the report as the main cause of the failings of the system.

Ultimately, it is not only Eddlington that is failing children, it is systems across the country.

Underfunded, badly staffed, managed by CEOs who transfer through directorates with alarming ease and no experience, all cite reasons for a serious review.

Articles litter the web on proposals and analysis of cases and systems. Political parties have limited proposals and it is as unappealing a job as reviewing the benefit system.

Reviews need to be done with all members of staff, not just quality and target assurance managers who do not practice the trade . Case loads need to be reviewed, more administrative support needs to be provided.

After all, Doctors automatically have secretaries, why not Social Work professionals?

The premise of a right to parenthood has dominated public services for too long. If someone has a child taken away from them, it should follow that all subsequent children are removed until they are deemed to be a stable parent. The case in Eddlington shows more evidence of drink, drugs and violence in a home with seven children.

Early intervention would have decreased the risks of the boys then attempting to murder other children, among other offences.

Nefarious Youth

The convicted killers of Damilola Taylor identified a serious trend of youth violence in Britain in 2006. Yet this, and other high profile cases of attacks and murder of children by children have failed to accelerate a solution within the public services that are failing these "hell boys".

To take a political slant, the "tough on crime, tough on causes of crime" soundbite Blair was so good at has created a decade of clunky bureaucracy and pseudo offences for the young criminal population. Antisocial behaviour orders, a brilliant concept with no back bone or implementation what so ever, have failed the justice system and the perpetrators.

Antisocial behaviour orders remain difficult to achieve, taking an average of 3 years to achieve and only when a system of reprimands such as Acceptable Behaviour Agreements have been tried first. In turn, 45% of ASBOs are breached in the first year.

Many groups question the suitability of ASBOs for young persons and how they are worked separately from the Social Care system.

With The Children’s Society saying "Asbos are never appropriate for children". and fighting for abolition for under-18s, the Youth Justice Board saying ASBOs should only be used “with care, and only when necessary” and the Children's Commissioner stating that an Asbo should only be issued when it is “appropriate, sensible, proportionate and just”, it is understandably a confusing area.

The variety of non custodial sanctions employed in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003 are repeatedly revealed by statistical agencies as futile, there is clearly a need for a social policy review in this area without soundbites, without tabloids screaming capital punishment and a determined focus on the origins and development of violent behaviour that are increasingly leading to high profile cases such as these.

Inadequate Legal Jurisdiction

The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 before a prosecution can be brought.

The Youth Justice Board battled for rights for children in relation to criminal prosecution resulting in the Children's Act 1989.

However, it is clear that the Courts are dealing with these children too late. While Youth Offending Officers and Legislation governs for intervention by Social Services, it is clear that, as children cannot be arrested, cautioned or sanctioned before the age of 10, there is no system in place for referral.

Social services are only aware of a situation if it is brought to their attention.

If lesser sanctions were allowed for children under the age of 10 committing offences then it would flag the child's name to social services and allow intervention before the child ended up in Court at 14 charged with serious offences.

Inter Agency Working

Multiagency working, another Labour Buzzword, is the logical conclusion to proceed in a review of these services.

But partnership working suffers with numerous meetings, little action planning and poor results. Bureaucracy and the infiltration of tick box procedures has created an environment where there is little focus on client care or focus. With Police ensuring they make the target on ASBOs and the Social Workers ensuring they have met their weekly visit quota, the client is left to run rings around the system and results in activities with no fear of consequence, no remorse and little prospects other than further crime.

In the UK we are proud of our public services, but they have become so entrenched in bureaucracy and procedure in the last two decades that they are failing the people who really need them.

Where they are not outsourced to corner cutting, profit making businesses, the staff are disillusioned and unable to make a difference in a culture of targets and imagined successes by managerial incompetency.

The only quality assurance a society should need is to protect it's citizens.

Social policy should follow this by ensuring that children's needs are met to allow them to grow up with access to education, a safe and stable family environment, no poverty and a meritocratic system of reward and achievement.

The social agencies are so focused on meeting stringent targets, they miss the bigger picture. When children die, or commit serious offences, they retreat behind excuses of poor facilities or resources.

What about the poor resources the children are left with that leave them in a state of criminal behaviour with no morality and no future?

Misleading News Articles on Immigration Benefits

For my own opinion on this article on mispayment of benefits, I consider that you read my previous post today.

Just to reiterate, the way that Britain treats asylum seekers in this country is a diabolical abuse of human rights.

the law was changed in the 90s so that legislation and policy on immigration can be made by the Home Secretary without scrutiny of any of the executives of government.

This has allowed our government to respond hastily to accusations and scaremongering by tabloid newspapers about poor management of immigration. As a result, refugee and asylum seekers are electronically tagged while their claims is assessed and kept in converted police cells, they are only given two thirds of income support (which puts them far below the poverty threshold) and if they try to work they are prosecuted and expelled from the country.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and I would advise anyone who does not necessarily follow the common view that refugee and asylum seekers are here to "sponge off our country" to do a bit of research on Refugee and Migrant charities, publications and legislation before making up your mind.

Ultimately, in relation to the article in the Telegraph, consider how many people are not Refugees all Immigrants that received Overpayments not to mention how many people there with non-domicile tax status the utilise all of our services and do not contribute fully.

Ashford, Kent and Asylum Seekers

Your Ashford published a rather inflammatory article on the costs of asylum seekers.

It appears to be geared directly to Daily Mail readers, certainly judging by the number of responses with the words "sponge off our country".

It also seems to have absolutely no information whatsoever and I would question what the journalists that Your Ashford actually do.

The only information that seems to be little relevant in this article is the council tax is set to rise under Kent County Council and part of this is due to asylum seekers.

Reading beyond what appears to be a deliberate incitement of racial hatred, I'm sure you cannot blame me for asking "what costs?"

Any benefits that asylum seekers receive is lower than any other recipient of benefits in the country.

Benefits are paid by central government, therefore Kent County Council do not incur this cost.

The police and the UK Border Agency deal with all immigrants coming across the border. this includes keeping them in converted cells until accommodation can be found, electronically tagging them while their asylum claims are assessed, and then pushing them through to relevant training centres in camps across the country (no longer housed in Kent). Therefore, Kent County Council did not incur the cost.

There is currently a two-year waiting list to get a house in Ashford, and I doubt that there is any immediate Housing opportunities in social housing across the county. In the event that councils are housing refugees and asylum seekers (as opposed to letting them live in "camps" which is is a diabolical abuse of human rights), this costs it incurred by the Borough Council, not by the County Council.

In fact, the only costs that I can see that Kent County Council may bear for asylum seekers is to support unaccompanied children while their claims are assessed.

I cannot genuinely believe that this has gone up by 0.71%. Given that an awful lot of charities work in partnership with the Kent County Council, I would also assume that the weight of responsibility is not on Kent County Council and instead rests with the Refugee and Migrant Justice centre in Ashford, not to mention other charities across the county.

So what on earth is Your Ashford playing at, not to mention this extremely dubious press release by Councillor Paul Carter?

And I'm sure that you can ultimately deduce from these facts and your own research that asylum seekers and refugees are not "sponging off our country"

Well done Cameron.

Today you have managed to identify a potential policy that may distract from your Conservative MPs moat and bell tower fiasco.

While I applaud the policy that will state that all MPs should the residents of the United Kingdom and pay the respective taxes, my memory is not so sure as to forget the extremes of the expenses scandal, nor the lack of social responsibility and the rich, and in particular the Conservative party, show.

If you were serious on making a "fairer society" then you would have embraced the Liberal Democrat policies of raising aCapital Gains tax, you would not be insisting that older people required sheltered accommodation they would have to fork out of their own pockets, you would have straightforward proposals on reforming the expenses scandals, you would be supporting the taxation on the bankers and insisting on further changes to our society to prevent the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor.

Stop providing us with bite sized headlines intended to distract from your own party's failings and attempts to distract from the real news.

Before we can condone holding information of innocent people, we must review the systems

While MP expenses are stealing the headlines with "cheque book journalism", I think the leak is potentially a well positioned distraction from the concepts of DNA Databases and ID Cards.

I happen to be a supporter of DNA databases and ID Cards. But I do not advocate them in a country where the Police Service are maintained by target meeting. If we provide the police with a DNA database of every citizen, you can gurrantee that the hierarchy of the Police will feel the pressure to induce more and more use of the system in order to gain funding each year.

But a system that provides a deterrent in both evidence collection and in punishment is of practical use for a democracy.

The other conditions ought to be that DNA evidence is maintained correctly in the chain of command before being submitted, that correct PACE proceedures are met and that DNA evidence is NOT the sole evidence on which to base a prosecution case. Any more than a single witness or character evidence should be.

But the police and the CPS are without morals when faced with the options of hitting targets and getting good press or not hitting targets.

The same applies to the Local Authorities and NHS. Public services should be based on quality and fairness, not revenue and quantative data. This is one Thatcher Legacy I cannot support.

Lateral Applications of the Law (part two)

In one day we have seen a shift in common law that could bear dramatic implications on criminal law in this country.

The conviction of a paedophile without identifying the victim could negate the rights of victims.

If you can prosecute a man for rape when there is no identifiable victim, can you prosecute anyone without a victim? If two blokes have a drunken scuffle and get caught on cctv can they both be prosecuted without the other's consent for abh?

What about the implications of consent? If someone films a "rape fantasy" with his girlfriend and it is seized by police, can they prosecute him for rape?
[I know consent is a tentative issue with the new Criminal Justice Act and redefinitions of pornogrphy but this goes further]

How about if the victim comes forward? There cannot be a retrial. She can never get recompnse.

to make all crimes victimless is a frightening prospect,trial by jury requires both sides of the story, not some clever barristers and a confession.

[This is a bit left wing for me, but i believe in the maintenance of justice, and there is the potential here for justice to lose the basis of it's creation]

Lateral Applications of the Law (part one)

Prosecution and regulation of technological advances are becoming woefullly inconsistant.

[T]he men were found guilty of providing a conduit for others to break the law, rather than breaching copyright themselves

In no other areas do we prosecute someone for providing a conduit. The most obvious correlation is with cars, a metaphor raised by a lawyer in the pirate bay case, with an interesting example of persecution as governments desperately attempt to keep control.

The idea that providing a server, or a hosting service for a website is ilegal even though you have no control over the content of the site is comparable for suing car manufacturers for making cars that can break the law. But noone is suing the car munufacturers, yet the government is insisting on further penalising motorists.

The power of the lateral application of the aw is previlant here. Will we see the judgement becoming more widely interpreted to prosecute the manufacturers of knives because someone is stabbed? Or the shops that stock the knives and provide the conduit to the public?

It's a frightening vague interpretation of law and should be reined in immediately.

A Few Thoughts on Legislating on Alcoholism

Labour spin continues in the sidelines to the email scandal.

This current initiative, while not as detrimental to freedom as the enforced community service for adolescents, is illogical and impractical. The assertion that Labour "are going to look at the arrangements for alcoholics on benefits, just as [we] did for problem drug users, so that people get the help they need to get sober" is missing fundamental information about both drug users and alcoholics.

Measuring the "treatment" of heroin addicts is quantifiable. They go to the doctors once a week and get methadone. This replaces the heroin in their system and they are "ticked off". I they fail to collect methadone then it is assumed they are back on heroin (unless they are in work of course) and the benefits are ceased.

What exactly are the government prescribing to subsidise the addiction of alcohol?

They also fail to consider that alcohol is readily and cheaply available. All the time, thanks to the 24 hour drinking scheme initiative.

How can they tell if someone is off alcohol if there are not regular visits to a professional?

Is there even a measurable form of alcoholism? I know plenty of people who may drink every day, and plenty of people who consume so much alcohol in short periods they should be pickled.

This is without touching on the expense, bureaucracy and time investment that it will weight the NHS down with even further. Let alone valid points made by Theresa May and Steve Webb.

Looking at the story in more detail also reveals that it will be the Job centres that will refer the alcoholics for treatment. Ironically at the same time the Scotsman reports that alcoholics have the right to claim disability benefits such as Incapacity. So they wont be going to the job centre anyway will they?

Although alcoholism is cited as the main reason for claiming benefits, alcoholics getting disability benefits are also likely to have other health problems, such as mental health issues, which prevent them working.

So would being an alcoholic with mental health problems negate the removal of benefits if they refuse treatment? And which is the greater problem anyway? Will this extend to removing benefits of people with serious mental heath impairments if they refuse to attend counselling?

As an aside, the constant degradation of smokers aggravates me. I used to manage wine merchants. It always confused me that smokers were penalised more heavily than drinkers, and as staff, I would be penalised to the tune of £5000 if I sold cigs to an underage smoker. But if I sold a bottle of whisky to someone under 18 and they got in a car and killed someone I would only be fined £2000. This seems illogical. The argument, of course, is that smoking causes long term irreversible damage. Although, getting killed in a car accident is not exactly reparable!

Sorry, is Protesting Ilegal Now?

There are a hundred articles on the 114 people arrested today in Nottingham in
"the biggest pre-emptive raid on environmental campaigners in UK history, arresting 114 people believed to be planning direct action at a coal-fired power station."

The Guardian lauches in with emotive statements such as the police "seized "specialist equipment" which turns out to be "bolt cutters". About as specialist as jodphurs are to a horse rider then.

People arranging to protest is not an arrestable offence, but as is becoming all to clear of late, the police use any legislative powers they can, including arresting people"on suspicion of planning to cause criminal damage to a power station.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I am not so subtley indicating my legal training here again, but inchoate offences require the offender to be within the proximity of committing the offence. The people arrested were not at the power station, they were not going to the power station and they are highly unlikely to be charged with anything given our waste of a prosecution service [note, while I do not think they *should* be arrested, the CPS are lacking in sufficient balls to charge anyone unless there is a 99% chance of convition]

So what we are seeing is a large demonstration of the public services to deter protests in the environmental sector. Because the Tomalinson situation wasnt a deterent!

It is NOT ilegal to protest in the UK and long may it remain so, but if the police have such wide ranging powers as provided by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 without regulation, we may see more and more of this sort of nonsense.

The Great Throwing of the Shoe and Political Chimeras

I don't pretend to be an expert on the situation in Iraq, far from it, but I am disconcerted by the politics we have introduced [we being Britain and USA, obviously].

It has always been my opinion that charging into a country in peril and setting up "democracy" smacks of the British invading China and India and enforcing Christianity. The fact that the political parties in Iraq are called the Republicans and the Democrats merely supports my argument.

Today's reasonably low level story raises further concerns. What sort of political chimera have we created that has an offence of "insulting a foreign leader".

Then again it could be the offence of "the involvement in terrorism-related activity of which an individual is suspected may have involved the commission of an offence relating to terrorism" [Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005]