Articles with the Tag New Labour

There Goes Labour’s ‘No Platform’ Policy

bigotry, Bloody Lawyers, New Labour, Wingnuts
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New Labour’s just so bloody, bloody inept. Only Gordon Brown could manage to position himself against a wall of swastikas, complete with gurning grin, much to the glee of lobby correspondents and picture editors. You’d think he’d show a little more sensitivity, having literally just paid a visit to Auschwitz.

As if that dreadful image management weren’t enough, now Jacqui Smith’s giving fascists the oxygen of publicity too, having banned Fox-sanctioned eliminationist rabble rouser and ‘shock-jock’ Michael Savage from Britain:

Ms Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate.

She told BBC Breakfast that Mr Savage was “someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country”.

But Mr Savage, real name Michael Weiner, insisted he has never advocated violence.

No, but he’s certainly adept at deliberately winding up those who do, in between churning out crappy books on nutrition. Sorry Savage, no 1st Amendment here.

He’s suing Jackie Smith for libel, for damaging his reputation. Good luck with that…

A libel in England is defined as “….any published statement(s) which are alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual or individuals in a manner which causes them loss in their trade or profession, or causes a reasonable person to think worse of him, her or them”

I’m a reasonable person and his banning couldn’t possibly make me think worse of Savage.

Savage’s all over the airwaves saying he’s got seven (or was it nine, or twenty-three) lawyers on the case. Seems to me the Home Secretary actually has a legal leg to stand on, for once: given Savage’s inflammatory statements and status as a public figure, a banning appears to be nothing but fair comment and besides, truth is always an absolute defence.

I hope he does sue, I can’t wait for the show. But then again maybe not: he’s desperate for ratings since times have changed, his audince is dwindling and he’s losing advertisers. Smith and New Labour, in their typically inept way have given Savage exactly what he needs. So much for ‘no platform.’

The Sound Of Worms Turning

Blogs, Funny, Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK politics
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How little authority has Gordon Brown left with New Labour’s dwindling rank and file? Poster ACLB at Labour Home certainly feels free enough of the big clunking fist enough to wax lyrical on his potential exit:

“Fifty Ways to leave your leader…”

“The problem is all in No. 10” said Clarke softly,

“The plan can be easy if we make it confidentially,

We need Brown Balls and all that crew gone if we are to be free”,

There must be fifty ways to dump our leader.

_____________

She said “it’s really not my habit to intrigue,

Furthermore, I hope you’ll never put any more stuff on YouTube,

But I’ll repeat myself, at the risk of being smeared,

There must 50 ways do dump our leader”,

Fifty ways to dump our leader.

Read the rest (if you can bear it)

“Attack him with pith, Smith…”? Do not give up the day job, ACLB.

Do Keep Up, Pundits

Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK elections, UK politics
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Me, April 2008:

I predict, right here and now, that Alan Johnson will be the next leader of the Labour party. I’m even willing to put a fiver on it, as I did on John Major, and I was right about him too…

….who would this likely new leader be? Harriet Harman? Dawn Primarolo? Cooper herself ? Those cooing martinets of incompetence offend women and men alike. Straw? Iraq – enough said. Hillary Benn? Not unless technocracy gets sexy all of a sudden. One of the Millibands? Surely they can’t’ve finished their work experience already….

You see what I mean. Who’s left that hasn’t pissed everyone off, but Alan Johnson?

Jackie Ashley, recently-turned former Brownite, in The Guardian this morning:

… If the party gets the kind of historic shredding the polls suggest then all bets are off.

…Stopping that kind of meltdown is focusing many minds and explains why Alan Johnson has become such a fashionable figure. He is genuine, genial, moderate and working class. He has spoken loyally without sounding greasy – and without closing the door on his own emergence as a unity candidate leader. Yesterday, defending Hazel Blears, he emphasised her roots as a working-class woman. “Blokes and blokettes, keeping calm and carrying on” would be the message.

What did I tell you? Sometimes even I’m shocked at my own prescience. Anyone willing to stake a fiver against Johnson now?

A Spot Of Gardening Leave

Gardening, New Labour, UK politics
Published on 1 Comment on A Spot Of Gardening Leave

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It’s another glorious day, as it was yesterday, but yesterday I missed most of being at the hospital tethered to the dialysis machine. So today I’m staying outside to bask in the results of all the work I put into the garden last year and listen to Radio 5’s coverage.

At the moment Tony McNulty is on trying to spin the 177,000 increase in unemployed workers since February (if that’s the actual figure) as less bad than expected. It was ever thus).

McNulty’s the Employment Minister and the man who claimed a second home allowance to the tune of 60 grand to pay for his parents’ house, 8 miles from his main home in London: now he’s touting Gordon Browns panic measures on MP’s expenses as an example of labour’s commitment to transparency.

He wasn’t exactly sympathetic to the new wasted generation, he was only interested in justifying his theft from the taxpayers and in claiming the protection of the very laws he ignored himself to prevent his wrongdoing coming to light.

He also signally failed to mention that the door of his constituency office was grafittied with the words “that’s £60,000 you owe me Tony” last week.

Pathetic. Unlike my clematis.

Injustice Is Built In

Bloody Lawyers, Civil liberties, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, Policing, UK politics, War on Terror
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You wouldn’t have seen it in New Labour’s 1997 manifesto, though.

Labour’s deliberate policy of shutting down legal channels to justice for the average Joe and Josephine in order to crush dissent, this from an adminstration of lawyers, is something I’ve been blogging about for a long time.

I was idly rereading the ‘police’ post archive this morning in light of the G20 police brutality reports when I was reminded of this 2000 Schnews article, which made me wonder: how many of those peaceful protestors arrested at Kingsnorth or Nottingham or the G20 or Plymouth or on misapplied terrorist legislation have had, or can get access to legal advice?

Not too many, I’d wager:

Sweeping changes to the legal aid system are going to mean that thousands who find themselves dragged into the legal system are going to find themselves without proper legal advice. Despite the fact that this government has created 6,000 new criminal offences in the last ten years, and is hauling record numbers before the courts and off to chokey, they’re now keen to restrict access to legal advice. All in the name of cost-cutting and reducing inefficiency of course. What is actually happening is a massive erosion of hard won rights and the end of the legal aid system, which helped achieve some degree of parity in court cases. (OK, so SchNEWS is obviously against the system, man, but meantime still not keen to see what few civil liberties we have taken away!)

The changes came in on January 14th. Prior to this, on arrival at the police station you would be offered contact with a solicitor of your choice. From now on you will be directed to the Criminal Defence Call Centre (CDCC). This is staffed, not by solicitors but by accredited representatives who’ve done a training course, many of them actually ex-coppers. You will only be allowed to contact your own solicitor if you pay privately. Needless to say the call centre advice is probably going to be different to that of a specialist defence solicitor.

While I have met at least one accredited representative who was an ex-copper and did a fantastic job, to put so many of them (they’re cheaper than actual lawyers) in charge of dispensing legal advice to the arrested might lead one to think the government’s given the police control of the independent legal process – though no doubt Jack Straw would deny that to his dying breath.

One Brighton-based solicitor told SchNEWS, “Previously we could intervene in the process earlier – warn people to make no comment, not to sign police notebooks and not to answer any questions off the PNC1 form*. We could act as an outside guarantee of people’s rights while they were inside. Now, the system is in meltdown. If the call centre is too incompetent to get hold of your brief then you may end up using a duty solicitor or remaining unrepresented. If you’re not going to be interviewed then you can be fingerprinted, DNAed and booted out of the door without once receiving any independent advice.”

While there was never a Legal Aid golden age Labour’s deliberate blocking of justice and dismantling of low cost legal advice networks and legal aid over the past 12 years has created a legal advice desert. So far it’s only been affecting those nasty, nasty druggies, petty crims, burglars and crusty anarchists, so there’s been little outcry about it from the bourgeoisie. They’re criminals, who cares?

But if there’s no justice for criminals, there’s no justice for anyone. As I wrote at the time:

Should citizens, empowered by knowing what their rights are and how to enforce them, start to challenge the boss, who knows where it might lead?

The overthrow of New Labour – and that would never do.

Why, such an informed populace might start enforcing their rights on other things too. They might even start to challenge the everyday petty tyrannies of Labour’s incompetent and authoritarian government, like, say, the deaths of children in custody or the illegal invasions of other sovereign nations or the selective imposition of swingeing terrorist legislation on people of a certain ethnicity and/or religion.

Maybe now a few of the comfortable middles at legitimate protests like the G20 have had theirs or their kids’ heads batoned, been kettled by aggressive paramilitaries or arrested on trumped up ‘terrorism’ charges for merely expressing their right to free speech, we’ll see a bit more outrage and a lot more challenge.