Pretty Vacant

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

So the plan is we all commit a crime that so overwhelms the Police that they cannot lock us all up.

What sort of crap is this, when 1000 Met officers commit fraud against the taxpayer the the 'investigating authorities' are so overwhelmed that they have a secret ammnesty for all the fraudsters in their ranks. I suppose its the same 'secret ammnesty that means that serving Police officers never get speeding tickets or can appeal to 'the boss' to let them off.

Something the rest of us cannot do, we have to go to Court.

The Stasi State using Nu Labour's RIPA legislation is spying on 504 000 of its citizens, discounting children (but who knows) that is roughly 1% of the population are considered 'terrorists' of some kind. The IRA was deemed at the height of the troubles was estimated to have six hundred members, terrorists resort to terror because the chaos caused is disproportionate to their size.

The only conclusion that I draw from this is that if you are politically active,a member of some organisation that Whitehall does not 'control', active in the community, a member of a professional body, you will be watched.

This is unacceptable and if the watchers are not being charged with their 'crimes' the watched should not accept the authority of 'those in authority' , did you elect these bastards ?

(2) The Secretary of State shall not issue an interception warrant unless he believes—

(a) that the warrant is necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3); and

(b) that the conduct authorised by the warrant is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by that conduct.

(3) Subject to the following provisions of this section, a warrant is necessary on grounds falling within this subsection if it is necessary—

(a) in the interests of national security;

(b) for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime;

(c) for the purpose of safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom; or

(d) for the purpose, in circumstances appearing to the Secretary of State to be equivalent to those in which he would issue a warrant by virtue of paragraph (b), of giving effect to the provisions of any international mutual assistance agreement.



RIPA ACT 2000

It would be interesting to see how many of these warrants are made on behalf of 'Foreign Powers' under 'the provisions of a international mutual assistance agreement ?

You do not need to send spies to this country anymore the British State will do it for you, and arrange free flights to a nice cell abroad.

The Power V HM Court Service has established in Law the two tier legal system. The Public cannot hold the State and its servants to account.

Do you seriously believe that the British State does not condone torture ?

The State has been torturing people for decades, Mau Mau suspects,Irish Republican suspects etc, the only result is the further radicalisation of as yet uncommitted sympathisers.

No doubt the torturers also have written ammnesties, everybody else working for the State has.

Are they malicious or just stubborn?

The Guardian, which despite the lefty economics, Polly Toynbee, and a general stench of Champagne Socialism, occasionally gets it right when it comes to civil liberties, gives us this piece of bad news:

Chief constables across England and Wales have been told to ignore a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights and carry on adding the DNA profiles of tens of thousands of innocent people to a national DNA database.

Senior police officers have also been "strongly advised" that it is "vitally important" that they resist individual requests based on the Strasbourg ruling to remove DNA profiles from the national database in cases such as wrongful arrest, mistaken identity, or where no crime has been committed.

This is despite the ECHR ruling last year* that keeping DNA samples indiscriminately from those not convicted of anything breached Human Rights (Specifically, article 8, right to a private and family life).

The advice to senior officers comes in a letter from the Association of Chief Police Officers criminal records office. The letter, seen by the Guardian, tells chief constables that new Home Office guidelines following the ruling in the case of S and Marper are not expected to take effect until 2010.

As usual, not good enough. This database needs to be ended now. No DNA should be taken until being charged with an offense, and even then, it should be destroyed if the accused is cleared or the charges dropped. There's not much chance of that happening though; our government is just too stubborn. It won't back down on its "no referendum" stance for The Lisbon treaty, and it won't back down on the database and identity cards. It'll just repackage them up again and again until we all fall for it.

At least Chris Huhne has found a pair and is attacking ACPO's little scheme:

"It is not up to police forces to ignore court judgments because they or their masters do not like them."

Excellent.


*That'd be S and Another v UK, aka S and Marper. In that case, some kid of ELEVEN had his DNA taken from him. Eleven.

The Reality of Brown And The Lisbon Treaty

is that clapped out politicians are heading for the sinecure of Brussels. Blair wants the top job, and Patten wants to be EU Foreign Minister.

Do you and I have a say in any of this ? No we do not. This is a big boys club, invitations only.

As Sound Today

'Gay' Marriage and the Quakers

As a Quaker, I struggle with sentences that begin ‘it says in the Bible’ – to me the Bible is a historical document, as are Shakespeare’s plays, and I read both with interest, but I cannot take seriously that any man, nor any book, is the ‘word of God’ – the bible is the word of man as those men interpreted God. I interpret God in my own way, and I simply don’t accept that anyone else has a greater right than I to dictate what I believe.

The basis of a Quaker marriage is a declaration of a life-long commitment in the eyes of God of a loving relationship between two people, those people present are merely witnesses to that commitment, not some form of state or religious ’sanction’ for the marriage. So it is little surprise that the Quakers should have been amongst the first to form the view that it is the value of that commitment between two people that counts rather than any stricture as to what, or whom, constitutes a marriage.

Children being the only means of replenishing the basic stock of society, quality control of those children has been the main reason for society to demand the role of quality controller. Religion, in all its forms, has held the post for thousands of years, with strictures on how, with whom, and when, children might safely be created with the best chance of growing up to be useful members of society.

So the argument that marriage is for the continuation of the species is a societal construct – the species would have continued in any case, but the quality control of the outcome would have suffered; nor could the cost of rearing the outcome have been reasonably fairly placed on the correct shoulders without the intervention of the priestly seal of approval. Children should without doubt be reared with both male and female committed role models, sadly, many are not, through death and divorce, but that does not prevent us from recognising a marriage between man and woman, nor is the inability to have children a bar to marriage.

Now that the quality control is achieved by means of abortion, and medical intervention undreamed of in previous centuries, and quantity control by artificial means, you have to wonder what is the actual point of marriage and why should the religious institutions, or the state, have so much say as to whom, when, and how.

What is the ‘point’ of marriage now?

It is surely the moment when a private relationship becomes public, when the support of society is sought to help cement that relationship, a celebration of that commitment.

Quakers were given the right to conduct marriages in England and Wales in 1753, but case law before that recognised the validity of Quaker marriages. Following the Civil Partnership Act of December 2005, same sex couples in England, Wales and Scotland, who share Quaker beliefs may opt for a blessing or commitment ceremony after entering a civil partnership. The Civil Partnership Act allows same sex partnerships to be registered as civil partnerships in law, but such registrations cannot take place in the context of religious worship.

Yesterday, after intense discussions at the AGM for the Quaker organisation, the Religious Society of Friends decided that :

“We are being led to treat same sex committed relationships in the same way as opposite sex marriages, reaffirming our central insight that marriage is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses. The question of legal recognition by the state is secondary.

We therefore [...] take steps to put this leading into practice and to arrange [...] that same sex marriages can be prepared, celebrated, witnessed, recorded and reported to the state, as opposite sex marriages are.

We [will] [...] engage with our governments to seek a change in the relevant laws so that same sex marriages notified in this way can be recognised as legally valid, without further process, in the same way as opposite sex marriages celebrated in our meetings. We will not at this time require our registering officers to act contrary to the law, but understand that the law does not preclude them from playing a central role in the celebration and recording of same sex marriages”

I have little doubt that by the time the main stream media wake up to this declaration, we will have headlines screaming ‘Quakers to marry gays’, and all the familiar knee jerk reactions and quotations from the bible condemning homosexuality. They will be missing the point.

Society has contrived through various means, medical and otherwise, to take away the role of marriage, and ‘parents’, in the production line of children.

What is left of marriage has nothing to confine it to a man and a woman. The Quakers, not being controlled by a ‘book of rules’, nor a man in a floor length party frock, are merely acknowledging that.

It’s a decision I applaud.