Policing

I Has A Brainwave

Civil liberties, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Policing, UK politics
Published on

Gordon Brown and his walking incompetence of a Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (I just bet she puts a little heart over the ‘i’) are desperate to roll out biometric ID (already proven insecure) in the teeth of all opposition.

But because of that opposition, they plan to do it by stealth, by imposing it on resident foreigners, airport workers (whatever happened to ‘no-one will lose their job through not having the card’?) and students, whilst all the while spinning this creeping compulsion as a series of pilot schemes.

The project will begin in November with compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals. Within three years all new foreign applicants arriving in the UK will have to have a card. British workers in sensitive jobs, such as airport staff, will have to enrol from 2009.

It’s not going to go well.

But I’ve had a brilliant idea: since New Labour think the whole ID card idea is so fine and dandy then why not – in the light of recent invasions of parliament by protestors – start by issuing cards to their parliamentary colleagues, lobby journalists, political apparatchiks and various spouses and assorted hangers-on and compelling them to be carry the card at all times when in Parliament? What better way to show their faith in ID cards?

I’m sure all these entirely trustworthy people will be perfectly happy and’ll have no problem with providing fingerprints, iris scans, DNA samples and all the other 50-odd separate bits of information required for the card while cheerily forking out the necessary hundred pounds for the privilege of doing so.

I’m sure they’ll be fully in support of the massive national database and petty bureaucracy that’ll be required to support the scheme too.

Won’t they?

Mother of Three, Enemy Of The State

Civil liberties, Corruption, Policing, UK politics, War on Terror
Published on

That’d make a great title for a tv drama, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately it’s not a story, it’s true.You’ll understand why I harki back to the tv drama of yesteryear when you read it.

Britons of a similar vintage to me will remember fondly the crop of tv conspiracy thrillers of the late seventies and eighties. when it was a given that the police and security services had their own hidden aganda.

Edge of Darkness is the classic example, but most dramas had common elements: bent coppers and/or corrupt government, an average joe or jane or journo caught up in bewildering events beyond their control (generally terroristic or nuclear but ocasionally environmental), a massive internal military-industrial conspiracy, a state within the state, is gradually exposed by the hero or heroine who then endis up dead, assassinated by the state within the state within the state.

This was before focus-group mandated happy endings, obviously.

The quality of British thriller series has much reduced since. Now they give us Paul Smith mannequins striding about the Heals catalogue in clever lighting, torturing each other for no apparent reason other than for the fun of it, or 70s retro shows which portray the time’s clothes and casual violence accurately but ignore the justified paranoia of the times. All Sweeney and no Smiley, a circus not The Circus.

Odd that. Paranoia about state shenanigans was as prevalent then as it is now.

When it’s a running joke on a mainstream comedy like The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin that shady rightwing ex-army cabals plot cosily away in the shires (albeit with constant cockups on the catering front). then conspiracy and spying is an accepted part of life. Even such a weaselly milquetoast as Justice Minister Jack Straw was considered a subversive and spied on the ’70s. Spying on ‘subversives’ is all the rage again – but do we see it on tv?

Imagine what a screenplay the ThePress Gazette story.would make…

Milton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally Murrer today described the revelations about the bugging of MP Sadiq Khan as the missing piece in the jigsaw about her case.

Murrer has been at the centre of a huge police inquiry since May last year when she was accused of “aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office”. Her co-defendant – the policeman accused of illegally giving her stories – is Mark Kearney, the Thames Valley Police officer who this week revealed he had twice been ordered to bug the phone of MP Sadiq Khan in Woodhill Prison in 2005 and 2006.

Murrer, a part time journalist and mother of three, has herself been bugged and tracked by police and been locked up twice during questioning – once for 30 hours.

She now feels that fear on the part of the police that her friend Kearney was going to blow the whistle on the bugging of Khan may explain the huge investigation into them both under the “misconduct in a public office” charge.

She said today: “I think this is the missing part of the jigsaw that I’ve been searching for eight months now. During the whole investigation I have wondered what it is I was supposed to have done.”

Average Jane journo, check. Bewildering, unwarranted events, check…

The police allege that Kearney illegally gave Murrer details of various stories. She says the stories they have referred to have all involved relatively ordinary crimes, the details of which she says she knew about from other sources anyway.

Now she believes the current charges she faces – and for which she is due to stand trial next year – may stem from the revelations that Kearney was involved in the bugging of Khan.

She said: “I clearly remember him saying in May 2005 and June 2006 – ‘they’d made me do something illegal’ and I kept asking him what it was.

“He said it was something to do with the bugging of an MP. When it came up again he said he was losing sleep about this, and said something about the Wilson Law.

“He now says that towards the end of 2006 everything was getting too much and the one thing that was stressing him out was this.”

Bent coppers, check. Shady doings, check…

She believes that it would have been obvious to colleagues at Thames Valley Police that Kearney was becoming increasingly agitated about the bugging episode – and that there was a risk he would blow the whistle.

Murrer said it was around this time that the investigation into her and Kearney – code-named Operation Plaid – began.

She said: “It dawned on me yesterday that this may be the missing piece of the jigsaw. They tried to discredit the whistleblower and the journalist they thought he was going to blow the whistle to and destroy the story that way.

“It seems like a huge hammer to smash a very small nut and I think this could be one of the biggest cover-ups this country has ever seen. They were trying to ruin him, destroying me in the process.

“The way I was treated it felt like they wanted to crack me and stop me writing anything ever again – they nearly did, I was a gibbering wreck for a while.”

Murrer is due to appear at court again next week for a plea and directions hearing and believes her full trial may still be a year away.

More…

Diverting as it is to allow myself the conceit of lreading this story as though it were tv drama, these are real lives and real people.

Murrer’s life has been made hell. and she’s a relatively minor character in the overall conspiracy. The ful scale of routine spying, intimidation and harassment by the police and security services, is yet to be revealed. Are there other Murrers languishing in British jails or held under control orders? We just don’t know.

Mind you, in the seventies or eighties we may have never heard Murrer’s story at all, because those concerned would’ve met with an unfortunate accident before they could’ve typed out heir story and got it to a newspaper. Thank goodness for modern communications.

The internet notwithstanding, have we moved on from the seventies at all? Like then, the same fundamentals of liberty and governance are still at stake and the apparatus of state security runs rampant and unchecked. Unlike then, the shady doings of the deep state don’t get much serious coverage on TV, dramatic or otherwise. Technology is such that it is now virtually impossible to check rampant spying. and the laws so written that any attempt to do so is in itself an offence.

On the whole I’d say we trust government about as much now as we did thirty or so years ago.. The difference then is we thought we could do something about it. Now we know we can’t.

The Man Who Copied His War Protest Got 40 Grand – What Did Brian Haw Get?

Activism, Anti-war, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Policing, UK politics, War on Terror
Published on

A beating from the Met, that’s what:

Government and Police under fire for beating up Brian Haw

Tue, 01/15/2008 – 13:00 – Wire Services

The British government and London’s Metropolitan Police came under heavy criticism today for mercilessly beating up Britain’s iconic peace protester Brian Haw over the weekend.In an unprovoked attack by a police officer, Mr. Haw was assaulted in the face with his own camera and arrested while observing a demonstration against the ban on unauthorised protest under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) which was taking place outside Downing Street.

Mr. Haw, who was bleeding from the assault, was then dragged into the police van where he was further assaulted by policeman, according to witnesses.

“I utterly condemn the aggressive mishandling of Brian Haw during Saturday’s demonstration, and his subsequent treatment while in the custody of police,” Green MEP Caroline Lucas said. “He is a passionate and peaceful campaigner, and a popular hero following his outstanding efforts to publicly oppose the Iraq war.”

According to other protesters arrested along with Mr. Haw, the peace protester was once again badly assaulted before being strip searched and charged under the SOCPA.

“This incident provides yet more proof that police actions taken under the terms of SOCPA are putting a stranglehold on civil liberties and threatening the right to gather in peaceful protest,” Lucas added. “It is a sad day for this country when the face of modern democracy is frightened and bloodied and peering out of a police van on a Saturday afternoon.”

More…

Yet Another Learning Experience

BBC Bias, Cash for honours, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Policing, UK politics
Published on

UPDATE:

Hain has case to answer – watchdog

42 minutes ago

Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain is to face a full parliamentary “sleaze” inquiry over his failure to declare £103,000 in donations to his Labour deputy leadership campaign.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, has ruled that the minister does have a case to answer, the commissioner’s office said.

……….

So – what have we British subjects learned about our political elites this weekend from the Hain saga ?

Well, we’ve learned Gordon Brown is a serial bottler, saying the decision on Peter Hain’s illegal campaign donations is out of his hands. Oh, how very convenient.

We’ve learned that the media is still up the arse of New Labour no matter what they do: although The Independent’s Andreas Whittam Smith calls corrupt Work and Pensions minister, member of Brown’s cabinet and Seceretary of State For Wales Peter Hain what he is, an outright liar: publish and be damned, no ifs, ands or buts – “Frankly, I don’t believe a word Peter Hain says “ – the sentiment of the rest of the Great and the Good is firmly pro-New Labour.

Compare and contrast Smith’s blunt accusation to Jackie Ashley’s apologia in the Guardian – “If Peter Hain resigns, it should be for the crime of political stupidity, not for deceit or fiddling.” and Willam Rees-Mogg’s (no stranger to corruption and nepotism in politics he, given his role in much of Tory party history) in Rupert Murdoch’s Times: “Hain; foolish, but not a scoundrel”

The BBC, meanwhile, is busily talking up a barely-existent Tory funding scandal in order to maintain a spurious balance, while totally missing the point – that this government is corrupt to the core, both morally and in terms of competence, and the smell of it it can’t be overcome.

For all the BBC’s vaunted interactivity, having once caved in to New Labour after the Hutton report the management’s now compelled to ignore the overwhelming public opinion expressed on their own talkboards, in favour of the Panglossian appoach to politics – ever onwards and upwards to the best of all possible New Labour worlds – rather than acknowledge brewing publc discontent with this government.

But something’s got to give at some point – and when it does, whether it’s a government collapse and a shock election, or whether it’s summer rioting on the streets this year or next, the BBC will be the first to express their horror at the sheer unexpectedness of it all.

What else? This weekend we’ve also learned, as if we didn’t already know, that there’s one law for the powerful… and eternal surveillance and an ever increasing thicket of laws and petty tyranny to get fatally entangled in for the rest of us.

Woe betide us if we fall foul, however inadvertently, of the three thousand new laws New Labour has brought in – the government has plans to bag, tag and track all who transgress, whether guilty or not.

While lawbreaking New Labour politicians are busily absolving thermselves of any wrongdoing, the British government, cheered on by power-hungry police chiefs, plans to inject petty offenders and those released on bail and as yet not convicted of a crime with RFID tags. so that their every movement and activity can be tracked by satellite. As the Independent so pithily put it, those who break the law, convicted or not, are to be “Tagged like dogs”.

Dystopia – are we there yet?

No tag for Hain and other dishonest New Labour politicians, though – theirs are just mistakes, guv, nothing like the antisocial behaviour of the permanent criminal underclass their government has created. They are scum – Hain is good. Why, he was in the ANC! He fought apartheid! He’s a friend of Nelson Mandela!

However could an ally of the sainted Nelson Mandela ever commit a crime?

In any case (say, just as an example, that Hain were convicted for bank robbery under the government’s own double jeopardy laws, which reversed English common law to say that you can now be tried again for the same offence despite having been previously acquitted) Hain would need no RFID tag to track him: he can be easily detected by his radioactive glow. That and the stench of corruption.

Now New Labour plan to remove the right of appeal against a conviction based on abuse or invalidity of process. So the cops beat you up? What the hell, you were guilty anyway, it doesn’t matter..

Government disregard for the common law – or even common decency – combined with blatant ministerial corruption and the perpetual creation of new, petty rules for the rest of us is breeding utter contempt for democracy and the law by everybody.Why should the young obey the rules when their elders so obviously have nothing but disdain for the law?

What we’ve learned from this weekend, most of all is that there no illegality or injustice that the new New Labour establishment will not connive at or condone if it keeps them where they want to be.

But then we already knew that..