Marcus Brigstoke, with the “help” of the Now Show team, explains how tax should work.
UK politics
Commuters surprised at strike
London, England. Commuters today were surprised that a strike in the London Underground actually made their daily trip to and from work more difficult. Worried local reporters, equally puzzled, demanded to know from union bosses why their strike was making their commute more difficult. The unions were put under more pressure when a local politician accused them of having ulterior motives for this strike. He was joined by a national politician also attacking the unions. Commentators from across the political spectrum remained equally puzzled by the idea that workers would actually use the one form of pressure they can bring to bear on their employers and that such action might actually inconvenience middle class people.
Surprisingly, the idea that the Tories are ideologically opposed to unions and have political motivations for their anti-union rhetoric was not brought up.
How to torture children the ministry of justice approved way
More news to make you forget any nostalgia for New Labour you may have had. It turns out the Ministry of Justice has written a torture manual on how to restrain children in private prisons, according to the Observer:
Some of the restraint and self-defence measures approved by the Ministry of Justice include ramming knuckles into ribs and raking shoes down the shins. Other extraordinary passages in the previously secret manual, Physical Control in Care, authorise staff to:
â– “Use an inverted knuckle into the trainee’s sternum and drive inward and upward.”
â– “Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person’s ribs until a release is achieved.”
â– “Drive straight fingers into the young person’s face, and then quickly drive the straightened fingers of the same hand downwards into the young person’s groin area.”
[…]
Published by the HM Prison Service in 2005 and classified as a restricted government document, the manual guides staff on what restraint and self-defence techniques are authorised for use on children as young as 12 in secure training centres. The centres are purpose-built facilities for young offenders up to the age of 17 and run by private firms under government contracts.
Locking up children as young as twelve is not enough for these sadists, they have to be handed over to for profit jails to be tortured there because obviously keeping order normally is too difficult or too expensive for these fuckers. And it wouldn’t have come to light if some of the poor kids tortured like this hadn’t killed themselves in desperation, leaving their parents devastated and looking for answers. One more piece of the sordid lawandorder legacy New Labour has left behind.
Urgent appeal: 24 Hours to Save Refugee and Migrant Justice
Please help save the indispensible Refugee and Migrant Justice:
A consortium of charitable trusts and city law firms, supported by Simon Hughes MP, are putting together a proposal to Government to save Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ). The proposal asks the Government to at least pay the money that it would have to pay anyway on insolvency on the understanding that this will be matched with up to £1,000,000 by way of grants, secured loans and donations to meet cash needs to finance work in progress.
We need concrete commitments for these funds today or as early as possible tomorrow – actual cash can come a bit later. So far today, we have been pledged £193, 625. Significantly more could follow from charitable trusts and others we are already talking with. But at this point it is clear that this is going to be a very considerable challenge without some additional help.
The aim of the plan is to enable, with full transparency and without prejudicing the position of creditors, a 3 month period in which the Government can consider whether it might change the payment system, there might be time to look at some innovative solutions with the Office of Civil Society and banks and RMJ would demonstrate that it had a viable forward business model. If all that fails, at least it would provide time for an orderly transfer of our clients’ cases. We have 10,000 clients, including 900 unaccompanied children who may otherwise be left in limbo.
We are appealing for donations, however small, to help save RMJ and secure its services over the next three months. If funds from both Government and other funders can be agreed, RMJ’s administrators would, in principle, support the proposal to take RMJ out of administration.
To make a pledge, or for further information, please telephone Kathleen Commons on 07872 161 271 or email savermj@gmail.com
Refugee and Migrant Justice is one of the few organisations on the side of socalled illegal migrants or “bogus asylum seekers”, helping to defend some of the most vulnerable people in Great Britain. If it should disappear through lack of funds it would be a disaster.
Innocent!
Simon Winchester, who was there on Bloody Sunday, shows why the Saville report was worth the time and money:
Minutes later, in perhaps the most hauntingly memorable of all of Britain’s post-imperial moments, the prime minister got to his feet in the Commons and publicly apologised for what his country’s soldiers had done, all those years ago. It was impossible to defend the indefensible, he said.
Men of the support company of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, had shot without justification. Victims had been shot in the back, or while they crawling away, Soldiers had lied under oath. The episode would never be forgotten, could never be forgotten.
There was a roar of cheering at the high points of Cameron’s speech – and barely no jeering, even during the obligatory utterances of praise, destined for the shires, for other soldiers in other places. But when it was over, the square was filled with a vast silence. It was as though they could scarcely believe what they had just heard, a British prime minister, a Tory at that, offering a formal and sincerely-meant apology for what his soldiers had done nearly four decades ago to men and women who were guilty only of protesting at the excesses and longevity of British colonial rule of Ireland. It was a speech unprecedented in its tone, its scope and its content.
It doesn’t really matter whether or not any of the soldiers will be prosecuted; what matters was that the victims were exonerated, finally officially declared innocent, no longer smeared as having brought their murders upon themselves. That and that alone more than justifies the Saville report; if not for that it would be pointless. In the end it’s about the best you can expect from a colonial power investigating its own crimes.
What’s interesting is that despite Cameron’s full and unqualified apology and taking of responsibility, there still was a backlash against the findings as soon as they became public, with Stephen Pollard talking big on PM about conclusions drawn not supported by evidence — assholes remain assholes on any topic. Yet it is probably true that the soldiers named and blamed in the report are not completely responsible for the massacre, as it seems pretty clear that Bloody Sunday was the outcome of a deliberate policy to crush the civil rights/freedom struggle in Northern Ireland with violence, similar to how the British army had handled other colonial disturbances. The only difference was that it happened closer to home and in the sight of news cameras.