From the Right Side

Why am I not surprised that the most likely outcome of the recent sleaze scandal involving Labour peers appears to involve the expulsion of ex-Tory Lords Archer and Black?

PEERS who avoid tax or have criminal convictions - such as Lord Archer and Lord Black - are to be expelled from the House of Lords in the wake of the lords for hire scandal.

The reforms are being drawn up by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, in an attempt to restore the Lords’ battered reputation after last weekend’s revelations in The Sunday Times. He plans to enact the legislation necessary to expel them before the general election, which has to be held by May next year.

Retrospective legislation is inherently unjust - so no wonder it appeals to our Labour 'Justice' minister, especially if will result in media stories focusing on ex-Tory peers just before the next election.

Labels: House of Lord, Jack Straw, Justice, Sleeze

The European Union now wants to bring recreational fishing within the ambit of the Common Fisheries Policy! Excerpts from the relevant regulation are here. You can sign the online petition protesting against this here.

Labels: European Union

On 20 November:

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker admitted the scale of council snooping on people was undermining public support for the anti-terror law, and promised action 'in the near future'.

In today's Cambridge Evening News:

ANTI-terrorism powers were used by a council to spy on newsagents who employed paper boys without the correct permit in place.

Cambridgeshire County Council adopted surveillance techniques to bring Rashmi and Dips Solanki, who run the general store in Melbourn, to court after officials discovered that a number of children were working for the store as paper boys.

The Solankis now have a criminal record, after being found guilty at Cambridge Magistrates' Court of employing delivery boys without a valid permit. They had denied the charges, claiming that there had been a simple mix-up over paperwork.

It gets worse and worse. The more powers government takes, the more it will abuse them. I'm slowly but surely turning into a follower of Proudhon, who comprehensively sums up the nature of modern government in all its ghastly glory:

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the public interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Labels: Terror laws

the future's blue, with gold stars:

By 2025, the European Union will be a "hobbled giant" crippled by internal bickering and a eurosceptic citizenry. Eastern European organised crime could dominate one or more member state governments, and the bloc will likely be kowtowing to Moscow after having failed at all attempts to wean itself from Russian energy supplies.

This is the rosy view for Europe's future mapped out by the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), Washington's main intelligence body.

This, from a letter of support for Sharon Shoesmith signed by the head teachers of 61 state-funded primary schools and seven secondary schools in Haringey:

Should the Child P case result in her loss from the borough, then our children and young people will lose one of their most effective, determined and committed champions...[Someone who since their appointment had] continued to work relentlessly and with a determination that the service she leads and develops ensures best practice in providing education, care, support and protection for all of our young people.

Circling the wagons to protect an over-paid bureaucrat from being held responsible for the actions of her department.

The most depressing thing is that if, by any chance, this woman is sacked, it is entirely predictable that within a short time she will secure another lucrative post within the bloated public sector.