Bloody Lawyers

Lockerbie bomber freed to save government blushes

Bloody Lawyers
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If we take the case of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, out of its context for just one minute, it becomes a simple choice of mercy over justice. He was convicted under Scottish law for his crimes and sentenced to a prison sentence he hasn’t finished yet. You could argue that the fact he has cancer should not matter in the carrying out of his sentence, that he himself didn’t afford his victims any mercy after all. But justice should tempered with mercy or it’s just revenge: keeping a man dying of cancer in prison to let him suffer as much as his victims is the latter. Whether or not the victims or the US government agrees with this, understandable as it is, does not enter into this.

It’s only when we take the context in which this decision is made into consideration that it becomes an interesting question. The decision to consider Megrahi’s request is of course a politicial decision, formally taken in Scotland but driven by London interests. The idea is to make Libya — no longer a pariah state but a valued member of the international community open to British investments and a future supplier of oil — happy by getting Megrahi freed with the least amount of embarassement.

And there was a lot of potential embarassement for London and Washington both waiting in Megrahi’s appeal against his convinction, which is why he had to drop his appeal as the price to pay for his early release. Megrahi has never accepted his conviction, always maintained his innocence and the circumstances in which he was convicted were dodgy enough that he had a good chance of seeing his conviction overturned. The idea that it had been Libya behind the bombing was always a political decision first, rather than the outcome of a careful police investigation. The evidence at the time pointed to Syria and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) as the culprits and it was only when Syria was courted in the runup to the First Gulf War two years later that Libya was getting blamed for it instead.

A retrial then would’ve been awkward, as it might find Megrahi innocent and reveal what a lot of the Lockerbie victims already suspected, that he was stitched up and the true murderers got away scot free. Worse, it might well have found him guilty again and embarrassed Libya once more. So much better than to release him on humanitarian grounds and get him safely back to Libya where he can disappear in silence…

Are you good enough to be an UK citizen?

Bloody Lawyers, UK politics
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Take the test, courtesy of Charlie Stross.

Best comment:

My favorite was:
Question 17 of 24
Which TWO of the following can vote in all UK public elections?
[ ] Citizens of Irish Republic resident in UK
[ ] Citizens of EU states resident in UK
[ ] Citizens of the Commonwealth resident in UK
[ ] Anyone resident in UK

which I read as: “Which two of the following would not overlap on a Venn diagram”?

So did I, but I got the wrong non-overlapping set… I’m actually afraid to look up the equivalent Dutch test, as anytime the UK gets up to crap like this, we get it a few years later in a slightly inferior version, just like the UK itself seems to get its worst ideas from across the Atlantic…

Compare and Contrast (Updated To Include Pants)

Bloody Lawyers
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How judge Eady could rule in favour of Max Mosley’s right to keep his spank fantasies out of the newspapers, but had no problems with the outing of Nightjack, an anonymous police officer/blogger. Apparently the latter had no “no reasonable expectation of privacy”. Jamie thinks it’s all a question of class.

UPDATE:

Speaking of class, I have none, therefore I have no qualms whatsoever about republishing this picture (via)of boy journalist, blogger-outer, fearless investigator wannabe and fully-trained twunt Patrick Foster, exposing his shortcomings in nothing but ill-fitting M&S underpants.

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There you have it; visual evidence that Patrick “pants’ Foster is indeed a twunt, if more were needed. It’s a public service to enable pseudonymous bloggers to recognise outing twats like Foster, so I urge my fellow bloggers to republish this pic.

Why not. Foster doesn’t believe in privacy, does he? He was quite happy to have this picture posted online in the cause of his glorious career. How could he mind?

It’s easy to see Foster’s motivation for outing NightJack. After all, he’s an actual journalist, however junior. Not like some jumped-up pseudonymous blogger. He’s paid his dues, from Oxbridge student rag to internship then straight to this arduous Fleet St traineeship. On the way, no doubt, he’s sucked up to editors, bought many drinks and brownnosed himself silly and he’s shown himself so devoted to investigative journalism he’s even investigated his underpants.

Foster’s done all the right things: he is all the right things – Oxford-educated, white, male, young and reasonably photogenic. Surely this selfless devotion to journalism means he deserves to be the new Greg Palast, or at least the new Giles Coren. Journalistic fame is his destiny. It was meant to be.

Or it might have been, if only it hadn’t been for those pesky bloggers. Damn them for undermining the middle-classes’ grip on the British media’s cosy status quo! The career future’s not so quite so bright for wannabe Paxmans when any oik from a comprehensive or lowly copper can use an iPhone and a Twitterfeed to threaten your traditional dominance of the print media.

Hence Foster’s outing of NightJack: petulant envy that he probably justifies as levelling the playing field for other poor, oppressed Oxford graduates. Twunt.

Now then. Anyone got a .jpg of Justice ‘privacy is for the posh’ Eady, preferably in a thong?

P

UPDATE II:

I forgot about plodkarma. A libertarian writes–

Some advice Patrick. If I were you I would set up a savings account and not move from my desk. You grabbed a headline and made some wonga. You also fucked off, beyond all belief, just about all of the British Police Force. I hope you paypacket for this story was worth it. If I was a copper, right now, I would hunt you. And make you pay for what you have done. I would watch your bins, watch you parking, I would fine you to within an inch of your bank balance.

Good point.

A Need To Focus

Bloody Lawyers, Corruption, New Labour, Parenting, UK politics, War on Terror
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What was it Jacqui Smith said about ID cards recently?

“Like every other citizen, they [pilots] ask themselves what will happen to the data they are coerced into providing; whether it will it be safe, whose hands might it fall into, and what might they do with the data?”

Well,quite.

If you, like me, have been indulging in the bitter pleasure of having our belief that most elected politicians are deceitful, greedy, entitled egotists confirmed yet again, have you not idly wondered what fresh hells the government’s been quietly getting away with under cover of media furore? Me too.

MPs may be focused on covering up their corruption and incompetence, scrambling desperately to hold on to their lucrative seats, while bleating about data protection and invasion of privacy, but the implementation of the many repressive and unnecessary laws they’ve steamrollered through rolls inexorably on for the rest of the population.

First off, if you thought ID cards were a goner, think again. Spyblog reports that the planned advent of biometric ID cards is going ahead full steam . While we were boggling over 88p bathplugs, massage chairs and moatcleaning fees, four pieces of secondary legislation were laid before Parliament under the Identity Cards Act 2006:

They are The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order 2009, which allows government to require referees to vouch for your existence, and keep their details on the database too; and

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Fees) Regulations 2009, which lays down a £30 charge just to apply for an ID card; and

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Provision of Information without Consent) Regulations 2009 which allows for the sharing of your information by the government, without your consent, with the tax authorities and with credit reference agencies.
Secondly, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has told Parliament that although he’s backed down on trying to make inquests secret whenever it suited the government, he’s still going do it, but by using other legislation.

“Where it is not possible to proceed with an inquest under the current arrangements, the government will consider establishing an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005”.

And who’d decide it was not possible to proceed? Jack Straw. Of course.

In legal news, the Attorney General and the police are collaborating on new legislation that will give ‘law enforcement’ – now there’s a nicely nebulous name – power to, amongst other things, remotely scan your hard-drive.

Oh yes, and terrorism legislation was used to spy on eight people suspected of committing benefit fraud.

But most worrying for any British parent is the announcement that the illegal government database containing your child’ fingerprints and other physical and personal details is about to go live:

Frontline professionals will start using the controversial children’s database ContactPoint from next week, the government has announced. Up to 800 frontline practitioners, including social workers, health professionals and head teachers, in early adopter areas will be trained to use the £224m system from Monday 18 May.

New Labour may have set all this repressive legislation in motion, but now the machine of enforcement grinds on regardless of expenses scandals or public opinion. And like disgraced Labour MP Shahid Malik claims to have done, the government will enforce the rules, however unjust and or illegal they may be, “One million percent by the book”.

MPs may be corrupt, but then we knew that already. This receipts hoohah is mere confirmation. Parliaments may rise or fall, but Government goes on – and I’m more worried about what the State is actually doing right now, and how to oppose it effectively, than I am about the petty bourgeois aspirations of Labour members or the mole problems of Tory grandees.

Though I do wonder just how far that purple-jowled prick of a Speaker Michael Martin can inflate himself in pique before he has an apoplexy.

The Foxes In The Henhouse

Bloody Lawyers, Corruption, Crisis? What Crisis?, UK politics
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Over the past few days multiple pundits have referred casually to the House of Commons Commission and the Members’ Estimate Committee without bothering to explain what it is they do, or more importantly who they are. The first is in charge of the regulation of the House; the second’s in charge of MPs remuneration and expenses and was accused of bias from the start:

A review of MPs’ perks and expenses has been condemned as a stitch-up.

The panel picked by Commons Speaker Michael Martin to carry out the investigation is dominated by politicians tainted by sleaze or who have campaigned to keep allowances secret.

So I thought I should take a look at who’s currently on this committee and who, if any of those tasked with keeping their fellow members honest has got clean (ish) hands themselves.

The score? Not good: only 3 out of 5:

    Rt Hon Michael J Martin MP (Labour ): The Speaker’s been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to stop the details of the expenses claims being published: he spent £1,400 on chauffeurs to drive him to his constituency job centre in Glasgow (60% of children in his area live in “workless households”) and to Celtic football stadium; he employed his wife and daughter both on the payroll for an extra bite at the cherry:

    On top of his £137,000 salary, he has a pension estimated to be worth £1.4m, and the best rent-free apartment in London. His wife was earning £25,000 a year in the first years of his speakership, and his daughter until very recently worked as his constituency secretary. His son, Paul, eased gently into the Scottish parliament, earns £50,000 a year. And, even though he has a primary home fully paid for by the taxpayer, Michael Martin claimed £17,166 last year in housing allowance on his home outside Glasgow, which is mortgage-free.

    Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC (Lab) : Clean so far as is known apart from that one dodgy donation.and a few pesky clerical errors. But that’s largely due to an accident of geography rather than innate rectitude. Harriet’s answer to accusations of corruption? Blame Derek Conway. To be fair, she has voted for pay and expenses reform. But then she can afford to, on over 140 grand a year plus expenses (Which she helps to set the level of. Neat.).
    Sir Stuart Bell (Lab): Sweeper-under-carpet-in-chief and Church Commissioner. Fought disclosure of expenses tooth and nail; currently trying to have the administration of MP’s expenses and pay privatised, so as to exempt it from the Freedom of Information Act so we can’t see how completely lax he’s been and string him up.
    Rt Hon Nick Harvey (Lib Dem): In 2008, Harvey told his fellow MPs: “The public believe—quite erroneously, in my view—that our allowances are excessive, that there are irregularities in the way in which Members claim those allowances and that the systems in this place are lax. I repeat that those are not my views”
    Then why did he say this?

But even the three committee members with (currently) clean hands themselves. McClean, Harman and Harvey, don’t think they or their greedy colleagues have done anything wrong; they’re either tribally loyal to party, like allegedly bipartisan Leader of the House Harman and Tory Chief Whip McClean, or complacent, like lone Lib Dem Harvey. It’s not MPs, it’s the system, they cry.

But they control that system: they could have stopped it. They didn’t. Better to kick it into the long grass and hope it goes away. It hasn’t.

I was always taught as a good churchgoing girl that tempt somebody to sin was a worse sin than the one incited. Harman, Martin, McClean, Harvey and Bell allowed their colleagues steal from the public. They turned a blind eye; they even participated. They’re just as guilty as their greedier colleagues, if not more so.