Democracy Watch ~ Stories from the Press ~ warmwell.com

See also: http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/links/links.html for articles monitoring the State and Civil Liberties in the UK and in Europe

ARCHIVE

June 27 2003 ~ "With no real Parliament, Britain must have a surrogate one, a media organisation like a sumo wrestler, with rolls of fat..."

"..How else to resist a regular headbutting from Downing Street? How else to stand four square against the most egocentric, least-checked government machine in the Western world?" The ever excellent Simon Jenkins in the Times today. "This week's scrap between the BBC and Tony Blair's aide, Alastair Campbell, offers rich pickings for future scholars of spin. For Mr Campbell to play poor diddums against “media lies” on any subject is laughable. Equally laughable is his charge that his critics have an obsession with Iraq's lack of weapons of mass destruction. What on earth does he expect? He built an edifice of propaganda round this subject for six months....
...The BBC's morning radio show, the Today programme, has become the parliament of the nation. It is both more thorough and more accessible than the Commons. Ministers flatter it with attendance and are put through their paces as never by MPs. Radio and television have thus become the true "official Opposition". This is a role which the British constitution has forced on broadcasters, like it or not. ...
...he is entitled to an assurance that Mr Gilligan's story was properly validated. Downing Street may abuse "single-sourced" material on Saddam's arsenals, but that does not excuse the BBC from higher standards. ...... But I still believe that the BBC should not run scared. As a news organisation it should remain big, rich and arrogant. It is a vital constitutional irritant and should be commended for making such powerful enemies. "

June 26 ~"... it will now be, in part, up to this committee of MPs to decide who is telling the truth.."

"..If they back Mr Campbell then much of the wider criticism over the government's handling of the conflict will evaporate. The government's critics will find it hugely difficult to press ahead with their case. If, however, this committee suggests they do not believe Mr Campbell's account of events the consequences will be incalculable." See the articles from the BBC today

June 22 ~ The madness of King Tony

"After the euro no-show, the botched Cabinet reshuffle and Blair's despotic displays, Westminster Editor (of the Sunday Herald) James Cusick asks if the prime minister's love of power has gone to his head......."Blair, without consultation, chose his summer reshuffle to abolish the office of the Lord Chancellor, axe both the Scottish and Welsh offices, and invent the new Constitutional Affairs Department putting his pal and former flatmate, Lord Charlie Falconer, at its head. ... none of this went to plan, cobbled together with parliamentary Elastoplast as it was -- and will now be the subject of wide ''consultation'' only after the decision has been taken ..."

June 21 ~ Mr Giscard d'Estaing also said he is in favour of a referendum which some countries will have. "It is entirely legitimate," he said.

Guardian (external link) "Valery Giscard d'Estaing... handed over a symbolic copy of his 16 months worth of work - bound in blue leather - to the 25 EU heads of government who expect to be ruled by it soon. "
See also the Guardian's Beginner's Guide to the Constitution

June 21 ~ We're not going to change the mind of those men but it's important they know more and more people are resisting their policies

Encouraging words, more and more repeated - this time from a Norwegian history student surveying the gap between anti-summit protesters and the EU leaders installed along the road. See today's Guardian : "It's just a mile but one that divides our world, our views, from the very people who are changing the EU into a new imperialist superstate," said Erik Dokken.... For several hours Dokken and thousands of other anti-globalisation activists, communists, leftists, trade unionists had marshalled themselves in the resort of Neo Marmara to take the EU leadership to task.
To combat the protesters, Greece has launched the biggest ever security operation.
Heavily armed coastguard boats dotted the bay and on the beach, in front of sets of giant steel containers, stood hundreds of heavily armed police, with more hiding behind trees and bushes up on the road."

June 21 ~ "if the al-Qaeda threat was as serious as is now implied, surely the Bill should have been raced through Parliament a year ago."

Be careful: too safe can too easily end up sorry Simon Jenkins in the Times. " What threatens the British way of life at present is not terrorism but the public response to it. The terrorist-security complex is driving forward a hyperbolic, risk-averse, "health-and-safety" culture that infuses every British home and workplace, every enterprise and relationship. It is dangerous. "

June 21 ~"It seems driven by its authoritarian instincts to press ahead with the ID scheme while lacking the political courage to say so" "

There was a certain amount of scepticism last year when the Government launched one of its beloved consultation periods for "stakeholders" to express their views on "entitlement cards", the Home Office's preferred euphemism for ID cards." (Telegraph - Free Country) "There was no surprise, then, when the consultation turned into a cod referendum, and the Home Office declared that the 2,000 people who had responded were split two to one in favour of the cards. This alleged response led to artfully spun reports of overwhelming public support for the ID scheme, which was variously presented as a fix-all solution to global terrorism and bogus asylum seekers....But the Home Office had not counted on nine enterprising young people who work in the IT sector and who, in their spare time, run an unfunded website that encourages their peers to take part in such national debates. They posted a form on their site - www.stand.org.uk. This was not a petition, just a mechanism for readers to participate in the consultation procedure. They were gratified that more than 5,000 people used their service, of whom 4,856 were against the scheme....the Home Office dithers, refusing to say what it intends to do. It seems driven by its authoritarian instincts to press ahead with the ID scheme while lacking the political courage to say so

June 20 ~ "The new bill, when it is brought forward in the autumn, will confer sweeping authority on ministers to do almost anything that they like in an emergency."

The Guardian examines the Civil Contingencies Bill "... the second part is potentially the greatest threat to civil liberty that any parliament is ever likely to consider. That does not necessarily mean that it should not be passed. But it does mean that there is an absolute obligation on the press and on MPs to scrutinise it with an eagle eye. The consultation period that began yesterday is short. No one who cares about civil liberty should fail to take part in it. This is far more than just a legal tidying-up exercise. "

June 19 2003 ~ Letter in The Times from Mr Tim Hammond

June 19 ~ "1.7 million people cast their vote, 89.8% demand a voice on Europe, and the biggest ever ICM poll produces the SAME result"

Front page of Daily Mail on Tuesday: Not even mentioned on BBC radio or TV as far as we know.

June 18 ~ Janet Daley in the Telegraph "I heard Jack Straw on the Today programme yesterday expressing sarcastic bemusement.."

".. at the fact that many Tory frontbenchers who are now demanding a referendum on the proposed European constitution had opposed a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, "even though that was more radical". Does he not realise that a treaty is a treaty and a constitution is something else altogether?...."
"......Labour spokesmen are getting themselves more and more tangled up in every broadcast interview about the status of the judiciary, the nature of democracy and its relationship to justice. I heard one of them say desperately that "democracy and justice are entirely separate things". Um, no - not entirely separate, surely.
Perhaps he was confusing democracy with "populist sentiment" and justice with the particular judgments of the courts. No one has yet figured out a flawless way to make the judicial system democratically accountable without turning it into a species of tawdry political life in which district attorneys run for office (as they do in many parts of America) on their record of successful convictions...."
Her article is well worth reading in full

June 18 ~ the EU will be top-heavy with presidents, all trying to out-president each other.

David Heathcoat-Amory in today's Telegraph "No one in the convention doubts the scale of the undertaking or the huge implications for the way Europe is governed - except, apparently, the British Government, which is completely isolated in maintaining that the new constitution is just a "tidying-up exercise". In the convention, this caused bafflement and then some hilarity. Peter Hain, the government representative, belatedly declared a number of "red lines" on proposals that he wants removed, such as majority voting on foreign policy, social security harmonisation, and interference in criminal justice procedures. But if these issues are so important to the Government, how can it just be a "tidying-up exercise"?
The truth is that the European Constitution founds a new union, with a single unified structure and legal personality. The existing structure, which secures the rights of member states to make their own decisions and collective arrangements about foreign policy and criminal justice matters, will disappear. The EU will have "exclusive competence" over trade, competition rules, common commercial policy, fisheries conservation and the signing of all international agreements...."

June 18 ~" The Home Secretary is facing a confrontation with chief constables over what they fear is a backdoor attempt to create a national police force."

Telegraph (external link) "....Chiefs are most disturbed by the proposed creation of national, centrally-controlled shortlists of candidates for chief officer jobs, with the Home Secretary and his officials dictating to police authorities which officers they should consider. They are also concerned by plans for more shorter, fixed-term contracts. ACPO sources believe the constant changes in posts would lead to instability in many forces. Officers would not stay long enough to face the consequences of their decisions...."

June 18 ~ "We cannot destroy the existing world order until we have a better one with which to replace it."

Stimulating and inspiriting, George Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian (external link): "...The UN security council should be scrapped, and its powers vested in a reformulated UN general assembly. This would be democratised by means of weighted voting: nations' votes would increase according to both the size of their populations and their positions on a global democracy index. Perhaps most importantly, the people of the world would elect representatives to a global parliament, whose purpose would be to hold the other international bodies to account.
I have also suggested some cruel and unusual means by which these proposals might be implemented. Poor nations, for example, now owe so much that they own, in effect, the world's financial systems. The threat of a sudden collective default on their debts unless they get what they want would concentrate the minds of even the most obdurate global powers. "

June 17 ~ Regional Assemblies: " they are pressing on with costly and likely fruitless referendums. The three regions, and ultimately all of England, will receive a referendum on this issue when there is no desire for one - but not on the EU constitution, where one is desperately wanted."

The Telegraph leader says The Times LeaderBBC TV 'Look North' is doing a telephone poll, 'Do you want Regional Government?' 09001 800 322 calls at 10p maximum. Over 92% against at 10.30 this morning...

June 16 ~ Blair on the rack over reshuffle chaos

Benedict Brogan, Political Correspondent of the Telegraph (external link)

June 15 ~ "The British constitution is part statutory and part conventional; it allows the prime minister very wide powers, but even those powers are not unlimited. He is neither a president nor a dictator. "

William Rees Mogg in the Sunday Times: (More from the Sunday Times on the redhuffle etc)

June 15 ~ The question is not 'whether' but 'which Europe?'

Booker's Notebook "....it was being urged on the Tory leadership behind the scenes last week, ... to seize the initiative. Asked the question "would you leave Europe?" their reply should be "which Europe do you mean?" - since there are at least three contradictory models locked in deadly rivalry.
The response might continue along these lines: Only with such a positive, wholly "pro-European" alternative can the Tories avoid being boxed into a corner. At the moment they look like the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights, as the truck marked "Constitution", with Blair in the back, thunders down to run them over...."

June 15 ~ "Were I a one-legged homosexual Afghan refugee/terrorist living on the welfare state, you and your ilk would not dare write in such a manner....

....for fear of having all the human rights lawyers in creation round your necks, but as you are speaking to an honest, hard-working and overstressed Englishman, you appear to think you can behave like all too many of the vast and ever-increasing army of totally useless, non-productive, arrogant and bloody-minded officialdom, who are now only too successfully doing more damage to this once great and free nation than was ever achieved by Adolf Hitler".
The ever-readable Booker's Notebook recounts how Geoff Bean, "a respected Yorkshire dairy farmer, last February bought a few lorryloads of builder's rubble to make repairs round his farm. He little realised that he was about to be drawn into a stand-off with officials of the Environment Agency which deserves to become a classic in the annals of the struggle between bureaucracy and the citizen."...

June 15 ~ "Derry wanted to be the last Lord Chancellor. He was furious about the whole thing," said a Cabinet colleague.

Sunday Telegraph (external link) "....The row over the independence of the judiciary will erupt again tomorrow when Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, is threatening to lead criticism of the Home Secretary's Criminal Justice Bill on the second reading in the Lords.
Last Wednesday, Mr Blunkett privately met Lord Woolf and threatened to use the Parliament Act to force the measure on to the Statute Book...."

June 15 ~ Police will run internet after terrorist attack

Our hearts sink even further when we read the words "wide-ranging powers" in conjuction with such words as "terrorist" and "protecting".As with the dubious concept of "health and safety", the nebulous threat of "terrorism" can be successfully used to justify the erosion of civil freedoms and silence the murmurs of dissent.

June 15 ~ "Once upon a time we had local government which served the community, paid for by ratepayers who could call their councillors to account at election time.

Now we have galloping inflation of up to 22 per cent in council taxes to pay more and more for less and less, from councils run by officials accountable to no one. In Bradford thousands of council taxpayers are receiving letters threatening that, unless they pay up immediately, council bailiffs are already armed with distraint warrants entitling them to enter taxpayers' homes to seize any goods they wish, to be sold at knockdown prices until any debt is paid. These letters are going out from Bradford's "department of customer services". Apparently it cannot wait to inform its "customers" that it wishes to "serve" them by stealing their furniture." Booker's Notebook today

June 12 -16 ~ If you are in favour of "Europe" therefore, the question is "Which one"?

Dr Richard North's guide to Understanding the Convention

June 12-16 ~ Europhile bias at the BBC

".... The BBC have taken 96 Million Euros from the EU Investment Bank and a condition of the taking of this loan is to "further the objectives of EU Community Policies in the Construction of the European Union...."
From a report on the conference at Canterbury Hall, University of London on May 31st "BBC BIAS: HOW CAN WE STOP IT?" by Christine Constable.
One of our most respected emailers writes today: And we have also recently been directed to the following website: http://www.bbcbias.org/ - where former Soviet dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, has joined forces with Jonathan Miller, the Sunday Times journalist campaigning for an end to the anachronistic television licence.
See also http://www.globalbritain.org/BBC/BBC%20Front%20page.htm for speeches and letters on the subject of BBC "europhile" bias.
The House of Lords debated the question on March 11 2002.

June 12 ~ "The things we share freely and enjoy in common -- our culture and public knowledge, public assets, public services, public spaces, public lands --

.... Slowly, deliberately, they are becoming private assets and services, private spaces, proprietary knowledge, and trademarked culture, to be marketed for corporate profit. The vibrant body politic is becoming a mundane body economic.
This sea change in our public life is primarily the result of the efforts of 12 archconservative philanthropic foundations that set out 40 years ago to advance an ideology known as "neoliberalism," or "free market theology." These foundations -- call them the Diligent Dozen -- chose to fund not humanitarian projects but ideological programs, and they were willing to do so decade after decade, spending hundreds of millions in the effort...."
From a review of : "Silent Theft: the Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth" David Bollier's book is about America - but we have few reasons for complacency.

June 11 ~ I cannot see what is anti-European in an aversion to a supranational regime that fails to regulate its rotten apples and lacks any wider accountability.

Simon Jenkins today in the Times
"...Mr Brown's document is a masterpiece of modern politics. As critics have pointed out, its style is the nadir of the dismal science of economics. The fatuous equations and gobbledegook that could have been cut by two thirds was no more than Mr Brown jeering over the corpses of his victims. But I cannot recall any decision of British government that was the subject of so colossal a work of analysis, least of all a decision to do nothing. If only British entry to the Common Agricultural Policy in the 1970s had been approached with such rigour. If only the inanities that pour daily from the Home Office and the Education and Health Departments were so thoroughly pre-tested." (Her Majesty's Press provides a sterling service )

June 10 ~"... their lack of democratic accountability is glaring."

Extract from an article by Adam Nicolson in the Telegraph Oh, how I long to live in the new superstate (external)Having used the tired and irritating old argument that all who are unhappy about the proposed EU constitution are somehow "phobic" about European people, and held up the United States of America as "a continent in which I am freely and permanently and stimulatingly at home", Mr Nicolson's article, concludes: "...Only a European superstate, with a democratic structure and a deeply federated system of government, will be able to shake off the disenchantment with politics that the present half-redundant system engenders." This requires no comment. Does he really imagine that there can ever be democracy in a "superstate"?

June 9 ~ Blair and Campbell to 'snub Iraq weapons inquiry'

Times
"... Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that Mr Campbell's failure to appear would destroy Mr Blair's credibility. "The only way the Prime Minister can restore trust is by holding an independent inquiry," said Mr Ancram.
"It would be quite incredible if a genuine inquiry into Downing Street's handling of intelligence material did not take evidence from Alastair Campbell, whose name is associated with every allegation, especially the 'dodgy dossier', and whose hand is evident in all suggestions of manipulation.
"If Alastair Campbell doesn't give evidence, how can the Prime Minister's word last week, that the Government would be open with these inquiries, ever be trusted again?"

June 9 ~"when one hears the Prime Minister once again parody the serious concerns of those who opposed the Iraq war, or of the Eurosceptics, in order to show that arguments they have never used are wrong, one's sympathy goes out to them, not to him. .. "

William Rees Mogg in the Times ".. It is not surprising that the public is increasingly suspicious of Tony Blair's style of advocacy. He repeatedly uses a rhetorical device which has become extremely irritating. He distorts and oversimplifies the case that is being made against him, and then knocks down the straw man he has constructed. Iain Duncan Smith and the majority of the public may be right to think this is misleading but not deliberately lying. But when one hears the Prime Minister once again parody the serious concerns of those who opposed the Iraq war, or of the Eurosceptics, in order to show that arguments they have never used are wrong, one's sympathy goes out to them, not to him. There have been periods in history when Prime Ministers were expected to be more scrupulous. This is cheap jury advocacy; it would not pass the scrutiny of a judge." (whole article)

June 8 ~ it needed the prime minister's claims about the dangers posed by Saddam's weapons to persuade wavering voices. But the consequence is a serious blow -- trust, Mr Blair's most precious political commodity, is ebbing away fast.

Sunday Times Leader (external link) "The prime minister has conceded an investigation by the intelligence and security committee but it is unlikely to bite the Downing Street hand that appoints it. The foreign affairs select committee is to launch an investigation but it too falls short of the full independent committee of inquiry needed. Margaret Thatcher had such an inquiry under Lord Franks after the Falklands war two decades ago. Mr Blair should do the same, otherwise the electorate will form the understandable opinion that he has something to hide. Last September he insisted in the House of Commons that the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was "not American or British propaganda". The onus is on him to prove it."

June 8 ~ "Word had gone around in the mid 90s that Hartlepool, the first of a new breed of pig, had had a strange dream the previous night and had wished to communicate it to the other animals..."

The Today Programme paraphrases George Orwell

June 8 ~ On a straight "in" or "out" choice, Iain Duncan Smith, Business for Sterling, even the Daily Mail would have to crawl shamefacedly back into Mr Blair's camp

and accept, as a result, the euro and everything else that they dislike. The only way for the Conservative Party to avoid being outflanked is to seize the initiative and put forward its own "positive" vision of Britain's relations with the EU, along the lines favoured by David Heathcoat-Amory, the Tory delegate to Giscard's convention.
By holding out the alternative of Britain continuing to trade freely with the EU but not travelling further down the road to political integration, the Tories could themselves make the running, in a way that might win overwhelming support. At the moment they seem to be reduced to such a state of jelly on "Europe" that they are just waiting to fall into Mr Blair's trap." Booker's Notebook - as readable and terrifying as ever.

June 7 ~ NHS Gagging clause could limit freedom of speech, preventing doctors from exposing waiting list fiddles..

"Consultants in the South West appear to be widely rejecting a draft contract drawn up by the Government which they say contains a dangerous "gagging clause". Hospital doctors say the clause could prevent them from exposing waiting list fiddles and limit freedom of speech. But the Department of Health has accused the British Medical Association of scaremongering...
....Nizam Mamode, joint deputy chairman of the BMA's central consultants and specialists committee, said the extra conditions amounted to an attack on civil liberties.
"This goes way beyond patient confidentiality," he said. "It would mean, for example, that all the things we've been saying recently about managers fiddling figures and employing extra staff while surveys are taking place to meet targets, would not come out." ."
More from the Western Morning News (external link)

June 6 ~ ".. the final goal of federalism which you and Hain are supposed to be stopping."

NATION ON BRINK OF LOSING IDENTITY This authoritative open letter to Mr Blair from Vice-admiral Louis Le Bailly and published in the Western Morning News must be read in full. He is, says the WMN, "better placed than most to comment on Britain's place in Europe. His wartime service, in which his ship was sunk by German bombs, and a career in international affairs and intelligence have given him an unrivalled view of world issues".

June 6 ~ NHS: James Strachan, the new chairman of the Audit Commission, has accused the Government of using "spin" and"distortion" to cover up NHS failures.

He said that too many piecemeal targets were diverting doctors' priorities away from treating patients most in need. But instead of addressing the real problems, Mr Blair has just tinkered again. The fat, drinkers and smokers may be told to sign a contract promising to behave if they want treatment.....
.... He's thrown money at schools, but he hasn't put any effort into working out why they're still being forced to sack teachers..... Since Christmas, he has made no attempt to introduce any serious domestic policy except to decide he wants the Olympics so he can invite all his high-flying foreign friends to a great party. He's not going to organise the party himself, of course - he's leaving that to his wife. He can't make his mind up about Crossrail, and he has postponed yet again any decision on GM crops. His Cabinet colleagues aren't allowed to concentrate on domestic issues,either. Instead, they've been working their way through 1,700 pages of economic analysis on the euro. Yesterday, they had to sit through a lengthy Cabinet meeting in the knowledge that Gordon Brown and Mr Blair had already decided to postpone the issue. If only Mr Blair would take transport, education and health that seriously, and leave the euro to Mr Brown and the constitution to a referendum....." Alice Thompson in the Telegraph (external link)

June 5 ~ To take part in the Daily Mail National Referendum online

complete the ballot paper on this page and click Vote. "You can vote online up until midnight on June 12 - official polling day around the country. The results will be published in the Daily Mail and on femail.co.uk the following week and delivered to Tony Blair before the next EU summit in Thessaloniki.
For more details on the Referendum, call the Daily Mail hotline on 0870 3333 853 between 10am and 6pm. "
(You need a valid email address for your vote)

June 5 ~ Lord Ashcroft was convinced that civil servants "had been guilty of undermining democracy" by collecting dirt on him and leaking it to the media - "a very grave matter indeed".

Ashcroft seeks access to 'dirt file' that blocked his peerage (external link to the Times) by Dominic Kennedy

June 5 ~ ID cards: ".. One of the key purposes of a card in Britain would be to identify "illegal" asylum-seekers and ethnic minority communities would be particularly vulnerable.."

Part of John Wadham's letter to the Times. He is Director, of Liberty

June 4 ~"Historians should note. At the turn of the 21st century Britain was ruled by two men, a lawyer and a tabloid journalist.

The first profession does not do whole truths, the second does not do long sentences. Both suffer occupational hyperbole. Neither likes being wrong.
Now a third and nobler calling has crossed the path of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, that of spy. The head of Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), John Scarlett, was head of MI6's Moscow station and reputedly the last man in that city to wear spats. A person of some panache, he, or at least his "friends", were clearly driven beyond endurance by the antics of Messrs Blair and Campbell. ..." Simon Jenkins in today's Times.

June 4 ~ Keep ballot boxes clean

Telegraph Opinion " Yesterday's proposals for the modernisation of elections, published by the Electoral Commission, were said to be all about tackling low turnout and widening choice. Like the Electoral Commission, politicians get very upset about low turnout, but it is fair to assume that it is not something that worries the voters - otherwise, presumably, they would turn out to vote. If electors cannot be bothered to cast their ballots, that is much more likely to be a reflection on the candidates than on the democratic process as a whole. What really does matter, in any election, is the integrity of the process......
Another commission suggestion for boosting turnout - the introduction of a national electoral register - has the drawback that it could very easily become a step towards a national identity card. ...... The electoral system has its limitations, but at least it is tried, tested and, most important of all, secure. The Electoral Commission, which is a new and untried quango, should tread with care.

June 2 ~ "Authorisation of the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is decided in Brussels, on an EU-wide basis.."

today's Independent Warmwell's GM page Pro and Anti GM arguments

June 1 ~ Just Tidying Up

The Financial Times, 22 March 2002.

June 1 ~ The Fishery Limits Amendment Bill

empowers her Majesty's government to take back control of Britain's national waters and manage them in the interests of effective conservation, rather than see them looted and pillaged by other EU members. See press release

June 1 ~ what most fishermen want is temporary help that could enable them to stay in business through the crisis.

See Booker's Notebook "....The Scottish Executive has asked Brussels for permission to pay out a modest £10 million in "interim aid", but has had no reply. Similarly, there has been no reply from Mr Blair to the letters from the Cod Crusaders. For English and Welsh fishermen, our stony-faced fisheries minister, Elliott Morley, insists, there can be no money whatever. The reason for this heartless indifference is that the whole purpose of the restrictions, which have plunged Britain's fishermen into their worst-ever crisis, is to remove as many of them as possible. This will make room for the Spanish fishing fleet which, under the terms of Spain's accession treaty in 1985, was to be allowed "equal access" to UK and other northern European waters by January 1, 2003."

May 28 ~ "Downing Street denied that Mr Hain had been rebuked by the Prime Minister..."

Telegraph today See full text of the European Convention document (pdf) (opens in new window)

May 19 ~"Licences for growing genetically-modified crops in Britain may be approved despite public opposition

the Government has indicated. Environment Minister Michael Meacher said that refusing a licence for the GM crops might not be an option under European Union legislation. A public consultation exercise on GM crops is due to begin in a fortnight's time. Although trials have not come up with evidence that the crops are harmful, opinion polls suggest that fewer than 15% support GM. .." See report

May 19 ~ Peter Hain.....said that those campaigning for a vote "might as well put away their placards and stop wasting their money because we are not going to do it".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/19/neu19.xml "....the Conservative MP David Heathcoat-Amory, who serves on the convention, said the new constitution would change the way Britain was governed. He told The Politics Show: "Foreign policy and defence policy will be decided increasingly by Brussels, by majority voting, so we lose our national veto - that is in the draft - and by a European foreign minister who will take over most of the powers on British foreign policy. "The same is true about domestic policy. Criminal justice policy, environment, transport, social policy - all are going to be decided more in Brussels than Westminster." He said Mr Hain's comments were "particularly outrageous" given that most other member states were planning referendums."

May 19 ~ Can such words as these appear seriously in the Telegraph? Who - with even a modicum of knowledge about the war - could take them seriously?

Telegraph - Dick Morris' article Britain's future lies over the Atlantic - not the Channel "Neither America nor Britain is prepared to sit by while villains do their worst. Both nations have historically put promoting human rights ahead of making money as global priorities. The peoples on either side of the Atlantic share an affection, a warmth, and a feeling of responsibility that bind us tighter than any economic union ever can.
Britain should no longer act like a European fish swimming in the Atlantic Ocean out of its native water. The ties that bind George W Bush and Tony Blair are more than just a determination to topple Saddam Hussein. They run to a shared concept of global duty.
Has the mandate of the United Nations run its course? Is the veto of the fearful, appeasing and economically selfish French delegation as hobbling as was that of the Soviet Union in the Cold War?..."
Not laughable. Frightening.

May 18 ~ "she was accused of "ripping into" Tony Blair, when she simply and coldly condemned his presidential style.

Above all Short was derided for not having resigned sooner. The Blairites smirked in triumph, knowing that when they had earlier dissuaded her from resigning, they had promised her everything and delivered nothing...
...Short's successor as Secretary of State, Valerie Ann Amos, a Blairite look-alike for Condoleezza Rice, was raised by Blair to the peerage in 1997, and subsequently appointed Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, on the sole ground that he trusts her - a presidential move if ever there was one. If Blair's trustfulness is the criterion for high office we can confidently expect Carole Caplin in the Cabinet sometime soon. " Germaine Greer in the Sunday Telegraph

May 17 ~ Big Brother 'watches more of us every year'

Robert Uhlig, now "Technology Correspondent " of the Telegraph, writes "Police and government officials are demanding access to personal data on telephone calls and internet use of more than one million people every year, according to figures released yesterday. The information seized by authorities could total more than a billion items of data, Privacy International (website here), a pressure group that monitors internet and telecommunications snooping, said.
Among the information requested by Customs and Excise, the Financial Services Authority, police forces and the Radio Communications Agency were credit card numbers, telephone records and e-mail logs.
Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the estimate was "very much on the low side", adding: "We literally halved the Home Office estimate, just to be on the safe side."
According to records, Customs & Excise made 18,940 requests for access to personal records in the first three months of 2000 and the Metropolitan Police made 127,000 requests in 2001.
Mr Davies said that under powers given in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act ( The Act can be seen here) , Government departments and the police asked to see records detailing more than 100 million phone calls.
The Government wants to extend the number of public bodies authorised to have access to data."

May 17 ~ We are with Ian Hislop on this...

One of the most riveting moments ever in "Have I got News for You" was last night's genuinely passionate - and funny - tirade by Ian Hislop against Mr Blair's refusal to hold a referendum ("because he will lose") over the European Constitution. It drew loud applause from the audience.
The situation makes for some strange bedfellows - but readers may be interested by the poll run by The Sun: http://europa.eu.int/futurum/documents/offtext/const051202_06_en.pdf

May 16 ~ "Frankly, if this Constitution goes through, we might just as well sell off Parliament to the Japanese and they can turn it into a hotel, because it won't have a job to do."

Nigel Farage of United Kindom Independence Party was on the Today Programme this morning. "We've got those 46 Articles. We know what it means. It is now clear that, if we sign up to the Constitution, the British Government will effectively be allowed to run our Secondary schools - and that's just about it!
....Look at the draft. Even areas like Justice and Home Affairs will come under the EU's competency. Public Health will come under the EU's competency. Small business, fishing, farming - every aspect of our national life will be under the direction of Brussels. .....It's absolutely clear in this Constitution that the European Union shall have the primacy of law over those vast areas of our national life. Frankly, if this Constitution goes through, we might just as well sell off Parliament to the Japanese and they can turn it into a hotel, because it won't have a job to do."

May 15 ~ The government is due to announce by 7 June whether or not it will hold a referendum on the single European currency.
"We need a referendum, even if Blair won't give us one."

Boris Johnson in the Telegraph Our freedom costs less than a Mars bar "Giscard himself has called for a referendum on the question; Alain Jupp , the former French prime minister, has said it would be unthinkable not to consult the people on a question of this magnitude. We cannot take no for ananswer.We need to shame the Prime Minister, and show him that even if he doesn't care about our liberties and constitution, we do. That is why agreat magazine (whose name I will spare you) three weeks ago launched acampaign for an independent referendum. It would take organisation. I twould take money. The Electoral Reform Society says that to canvass all 40 million electors would cost about £ 20 million. But that is only 50p per head, as I say. And it would be worth it, just to show Tony that he cannot count on our apathy. And on this issue, he will neither receive nor deserve our trust."

May 14 ~"While Clare Short has had some pertinent things to say about TB let's not forget that she is not snow white herself. Vision 2020 for instance...."

An emailer directs us to the article in today's Guardian by George Monbiot: Don't cry for Clare ".....Clare Short's approach to overseas development was more authoritarian than that of her Tory predecessor, Lynda Chalker. "Who represents the people of the world?"....
There is, in other words, no such thing as society, unrepresented by government. The people's organisations that seek to question governmental decisions - the trade unions, peasant syndicates, associations of shanty dwellers or indigenous people - are an irrelevant nuisance.... If a government, however corrupt and unrepresentative it may be, says it wants a particular kind of development, then the people are deemed to want it too...... Last year, a group of peasant farmers from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh travelled to Britain to ask the department for international development not to fund the state government's Vision 2020 programme. Its purpose was to replace small-scale farming with agro-industry. While a few very wealthy farmers, seed and chemical companies, some of them closely connected to the government, would make a great deal of money from the scheme, some 20 million people would be thrown out of work. A leaked memo from Short's own department revealed that the project suffered from "major failings", threatened the food security of the poor, and offered no plans for "providing alternative income for those displaced". A citizens' jury drawn from the social groups that the scheme is supposed to help rejected it unanimously. Yet Short ignored their concerns and instructed her department to give the state government £65m."

May 13/14 ~"...the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion."

The text of Clare Short's statement "In our first term, the problem was spin: endless announcements, exaggerations and manipulation of the media that undermined people's respect for the Government and trust in what we said. It was accompanied by a control-freak style that has created many of the problems of excessive bureaucracy and centralised targets that are undermining the success of our public sector reforms.
In the second term, the problem is the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion. It is increasingly clear, I am afraid, that the Cabinet has become, in Bagehot's phrase, a dignified part of the constitution-joining the Privy Council. There is no real collective responsibility because there is no collective; just diktats in favour of increasingly badly thought through policy initiatives that come from on high..."

May 13 ~ Clare Short raises very serious question of the legality of the war and the presidential style of Mr Blair

She accused the Prime Minister of "ruling by diktat", sidelining the Cabinet and centralising power in his hands and those of a few advisers who made decisions in private without consultation. Telegraph (external) "She accused Mr Blair and Mr Straw of secretly negotiating a Security Council resolution that breached promises she had given to MPs that the United Nations would have a proper role in creating a legitimate interim Iraqi authority and alleged that Britain and America had ignored advice from Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and were acting illegally in post-war Iraq in seeking to make major economic and constitutional changes. She said the coalition did not have the authority to create an interim government; only the Security Council had that legal authority..." ........ Lord Goldsmith said he was satisfied that the Government had acted in accordance with international law and would continue to do so."

12 May ~ "This is it: the moment that we have repeatedly been told would never come about. The EU is about to transform itself, de jure and de facto, into a single state."

The European Convention, which has been meeting this past year under the chairmanship of the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, will issue its final text in June. That draft will be adopted by the EU's leaders next year, and a new polity will be born. Europe: the wolf is here Daily Telegraph editorial 12/5 2003

May 12 ~ two official speakers, both clearly in favour of "regional governance", had already taken up over half an hour spouting carefully-prepared waffle which did nothing but waste time and crowd out genuine debate

- the region "shaping its future" (how on earth does a region "shape its future"?), "a better quality of life"(for whom?), "addressing the needs of all the community" (what, ALL of them? Are you God?).....any well-known and competent speakers among the opposition (notably Neil Herron) were scrupulously ignored by the "chair", however hard they tried to gain his (its?) attention . And on the very day the Newcastle Journal had reported that the auditor backed Herron's complaint against the NEA for unlawful use of ratepayers' money.." A real person's (Gillian Swanson) account of The North East Regional Assembly: Making a Difference? meeting on May 6th.
"....Jack Cunningham said that it was not true that the European Union was behind moves towards regional government (I had only said that it was behind thousands of unnecessary regulations). He then refused to allow any further discussion of this point from the floor, although a lot of people were anxious to speak. Dissenters in the audience were not happy about this suppression of any real debate, and were gradually gaining confidence. Perhaps this was why, soon afterwards, Cunningham decided to bring the proceedings to a close nearly a quarter of an hour early...."

May 11/12 ~".. though we cannot compel people to go to church or maintain the empty churches of England, we can compel public servants to guard the beauty that they have inherited.

Ordnance Survey proposes to diminish that legacy, a priceless legacy of England: and I pray England shall have none of it." Rise up, England, and save the map churches

May 11/ 12 ~ "This Constitution," reads Article 9, "shall have primacy over the law of the Member States."

Sunday Telegraph Leader ".....the areas in which Brussels is to have competence: foreign affairs, economic policy, trade, agriculture, fisheries, immigration and asylum, employment policy, industrial policy, research and development, defence, environmental protection, justice and home affairs, civil emergencies, even space exploration.
No wonder Tony Blair keeps talking about "schools'n'hospitals": under these plans, they are all he will have left..
....a friendly suggestion. If Labour will not grant a referendum, the Conservatives should organise one themselves, rather as Brian Souter did in Scotland on the question of Section 28. They should time it to coincide with the referendum in France, for nothing will so enrage British voters as the notion that the French are voting on our future. It will be expensive, to be sure. But what better way to focus people's attention on the enormity of what Labour is accepting? The tactic might even sweep them to power in time to stop the wretched thing coming into force." ."

May 11 ~ "There should be an elected House. What we don't want to see is an appointed House with no safeguards against the abuse of prime ministerial patronage."

(Lord Strathclyde talking about the news that Tony Blair is to abolish the rights of 92 remaining hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, prompting allegations that he has reneged on pledges over reform of the Upper House.)
Telegraph(external link) "Half of the Labour Party don't want the hereditary peers replaced by New Labour's crony aristocracy, such as Lord Birt, Lord Bragg, and Lord Sainsbury, who is a donor to the Labour Party." The axeing of hereditaries would clear out 10 of the Tory front bench including Earl Howe, a shadow health spokesman and Viscount Bridgeman, a home affairs spokesman."
Warmwell, which has watched with relief and gratitude the House of Lords' attempts to slow or stop so much bad legislation from this government, feels a great sense of foreboding.

May 11 ~ There are now whole departments in Whitehall - for example, those that run trade, industry, employment law, the environment, agriculture, and fisheries - that do almost nothing but administer policies and laws decided in Brussels by men such as Prodi, Chirac and Berlusconi.

Yet one of the European Union's most brilliant achievements is the extent to which it has taken over the governing of our country without it being noticed. The Daily Mail last week devoted the whole of its front page and two more inside to a huge "shock horror" expose of the "Blueprint for Tyranny" which it claimed is being drawn up in Brussels by the convention drafting an EU constitution, reducing Britain to just a small, comparatively powerless part of a United States of Europe. It was fascinating to work out just how much of the coup d'etat that the Daily Mail was warning of has in fact already come about. Booker's Notebook which also asks why are our regulatory agencies "so fanatical in their wish to outlaw harmless herbal remedies and vitamin supplements safely used by millions of people, when they seem happy to allow the continued sale of licensed drugs made by pharmaceutical companies which kill thousands of people every year?" and tells us that John Prescott's hopes that the North-East would lead the way in fulfilling his flagship policy to set up elected assemblies for the eight English "Euro-regions" have received a highly embarrassing rebuff.

May 11 ~ "Within six months, Mr Blair plans to set his seal on the new European constitution which would strip Britain of independent control

over whole swathes of the economy, foreign policy, defence, social policy, health, energy, transport and virtually every aspect of free nationhood. Make no mistake. It would change our whole way of life. Once the deal is ratified there could be no going back either. Self-determination would be at an end. The real government of Britain would be in Brussels. Our only democratic influence would be in the European parliament, where we would occupy just 13% of the seats. Yet our Prime Minister "does not see the need" for a referendum though other European leaders show more respect for democracy. France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, Italy, Holland and Denmark are all planning to put the new EU constitution to the vote...." Opinion column of the Daily Mail which has mounted a campaign to force Mr Blair to carry out a referendum on the EU constitution. To take part in the campaign:)

May 10 ~ "We've got Left and Right united in this noble cause of creating a democratic Europe answerable to its people,"

The Telegraph article today: Abolish EU says Tory
" The European Union should be abolished and replaced with a "Europe of Democracies" based on free trade rather than shared sovereignty, say opponents of the European constitution being drawn up in Brussels.
A group of members of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the body writing the constitution, plans to publish a minority report opposing most of the main proposals..."
(The Daily Mail, Britain's second leading newspaper in sales, has mounted a campaign to force Mr Blair to carry out a referendum on the EU constitution. To take part in the campaign:)

May 9 ~ "No French or US cartographer would dare eliminate the boundaries of a local commune or township as this Government is doing..."

Simon Jenkins today on the news that Ordnance Survey wishes that no significance any longer attaches to a "place of worship" or to a parish boundary.

May 9 ~ "...yesterday's newspapers brought lurid headlines reflecting the fears of the Home Affairs Select Committee, which gave warning of "social unrest" if the influx of asylum seekers was not stemmed.

So Beverley Hughes, the Home Office minister whose knee jerks reflexively in salute to the latest negative headline, was quick to change the subject. Suddenly the smart passport to guard against terrorism was put on the back burner; what was really needed, she told the committee yesterday, was a national identity card to fend off asylum seekers. "It would make a significant difference in the sense that it is the only thing really that can help us to be rigorous about illegal working," she said.
By casting the problems of asylum in terms of illegal working, Ms Hughes is pandering to the basest popular notion that "they're after our jobs", a sentiment that would not be out of place at a BNP rally in Burnley..." Free Country - Telegraph

May 6 ~ Anti-terror drive poses risk to civil liberties, says EU study

Stephen Castle in the Independent "Civil liberties across Europe are under threat from electronic surveillance, under-cover operations and tough anti-terror laws put in place after the 11 September terror attacks, an EU report by independent experts alleges. The document, which singles out the United Kingdom in several areas, criticises the rush to implement anti-terrorism legislation and argues that it might not be proportionate to the threat. Compiled by experts in all member states, the report says anti-terrorist measures can "result in interference with private life or with the secrecy of communications, due to increased possibilities of using undercover agents", restrict the rights of defendants, and lead to "exceptional forms of detention".
It also says specifically that legislation giving the British Government the right to extend arrest and detention powers over foreign nationals might be inconsistent with the UK's international obligations. ...... The report is also concerned at the imprecise definition of terrorist offences, used to justify "special methods of inquiry" resulting in a "major interference in private life". And the dossier expresses deep concern over increased collaboration with America on security issues. "There are doubts at this time as to whether the protection offered by the US is adequate." ....." the response of EU governments has been to propose measures that place the population, or sections of it, under wholesale surveillance." .......See the Independent article and also the

May 6 ~ articles in today's Telegraph about biometric recognition in travel documentation

The timely EU report by the team of independent experts (above) is rightly "concerned at the imprecise definition of terrorist offences" and right too to express "deep concern over increased collaboration with America on security issues." In through the backdoor comes more and more legislation- all in the name of security - and out of the window fly our hard won liberties. They will not return.

May 4 ~ Prescott puts paid to parish councils

Christopher Booker's Notebook "Dr John Bishop, a 78-year-old former deputy director of the Atomic Energy Authority, who has spent his 20 years of retirement in the tiny village of Brockhampton, near Hereford, is the sort of retired resident any English village might welcome. He has thrown himself into every kind of voluntary activity, from raising money for lifeboats to serving on the village hall committee. ....
Dr Bishop is no longer on the five-member council... Like thousands of other parish councillors across the country, they regarded as unnecessarily intrusive the obligation publicly to register any kind of "interest" that might theoretically influence their council duties, including all shareholdings and any gift, including a meal, worth more than £25. Dr Bishop's plight is even worse. He was recently summoned to Leominster, 20 miles away, where he was questioned for two hours by two "Ethical Standards Officers" from a body known as the Standards Board for England, on two charges of "misconduct"......(read in full) "..Nobody knows how many members of England's 10,000 town and parish councils were similarly disbarred from standing again last Thursday. The Standards Board website lists only one such councillor. But the total certainly runs into thousands. Some councils have been forced to disband altogether. So much paperwork has been generated by this new bureaucratic monster that a number of councils have had to take on paid clerks, at salaries greater than their existing budgets. The Standards Board proclaims as its motto "Confidence in Local Democracy". As they see how Mr Prescott's new body is asserting its presence, the thoughts of villagers may well stray to the writings of the late George Orwell. (Booker's Notebook in full))

April 30 ~ Police investigate door-to-door collection of postal votes

Vikram Dodd in today's Guardian "Police are investigating the collection of postal votes by Labour party activists in Leicester, including the cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt, the Guardian has learned. In signed statements of complaint, voters say the trade and industry secretary joined two councillors from a Leicester ward, who were asking voters to hand over the council election ballots last Wednesday. Politicians should not handle postal votes according to the electoral commission - although there is no law preventing them from doing so. ..." More

April 29 ~ Death of the secret ballot

"Postal voting does not revitalise interest in elections - but it does encourage electoral fraud.." George Monbiot in the Guardian today
" ......The emerging rule of British politics appears to be that the bigger the issues at stake, the smaller the choice. The Liberal Democrats' pathetic capitulation ensures that no major party in England now represents the people who may have wished to use their vote to protest against the war with Iraq. The smaller parties, in most constituencies, are locked, by first-past-the-post elections and the lack of state funding, into electoral insignificance.
The second is a question seldom asked of a British election: will it be free and fair? While British people may regard the process of choosing between almost identical candidates as unspeakably dull, we retain an affecting faith in its deportment. After all, we invented the idea, and we send election monitors all over the world to ensure that lesser beings are implementing it properly. Our complacency is beginning to look ill-founded. ...."

April 28 ~ The NHS has 210,000 managerial and clerical staff....it has only 199,000 beds.

Telegraph today on bureaucrats and the state of Britain".. some bureaucrats are now so unproductive, they can't even waste money properly.."
"...bureaucracy is one of the absurd features of 21st-century Britain. We have so many bureaucrats, nobody can count them. Bureaucracy is not so much a growth industry as a virus, stifling initiative and suffocating creativity. It has become the chosen profession of the nosy-parker and the second-rater, elevating timidity, form-filling and bossiness above enterprise and endeavour....bureaucracy is a hidden cost. The outputs of state organisations such as the NHS and the state schools are free at the point of use. We have to rely on the likes of Mr Seaton, burrowing through the Government's accounts, to find the true cost of the invisible disease....

April 23 ~ 162 Arrests at Faslane Naval Base

162 people were arrested yesterday during a blockade of Faslane naval base on the Clyde, home to Britain's Trident nuclear weapon system.
"Three of Britain's four Trident submarines are currently based at Faslane. Each of them carries 48 nuclear warheads every one of which is 8 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 people and destroyed a city. In the last year UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon has three times threatened to use Trident against Iraq. Among the 500 or so present at today's blockade were Scottish party leaders John Swinney, Robin Harper and Tommy Sheridan. Among those arrested were former CND chair Bruce Kent, two Church of Scotland ministers ..." See "Trident Ploughshares" site

April 20 ~ Supposed benefits of EU

Booker's Notebook (external link)
"....Fresh from its triumphant mis-reporting of the Iraq war, the BBC last week trumpeted the signing of the treaty admitting 10 new members to the European Union as the moment when Europe was "reunited" in the name of "freedom and democracy". (This "reunion" bit is always a puzzle, since the previous times when Europe could be said to be "united" were under those champions of freedom and democracy, Napoleon and Hitler.)
Evidence is mounting, however, that this latest EU "enlargement" may turn out to be another case of "they now ring the bells but they will soon wring their hands". The Maltese, who last week confirmed their wish to join by re-electing their pro-EU Nationalist government, were subject to a massive, largely EU-funded propaganda campaign, centred on the claim that they would be receiving 30 million Maltese lira (£50 million) a year from their Brussels Big Brother. Closer study shows that, when all costs of membership are added in, including the need to employ 3,000 officials, and compensation for farmers and fishermen likely to be put out of business, Malta will end up paying out £82 million a year to get back that £50 million in supposed benefits...."

April 18 ~ new technology that is strengthening the hand of companies that want to spy on their customers.

"...The generic name for the system is RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags are minuscule microchips, smaller than a grain of sand, that can be sewn in to clothing or attached to almost any object. The chips respond to a radio signal by transmitting back their own unique ID code, allowing the controller of the chip to know precisely where the object is. Retailers love the technology, for it greatly assists in inventory control and security. But increasingly companies are looking ahead to more ambitious applications that will provide information about consumers long after they have left the shop." Telegraph's "Free Country" (external link)

April 15 ~ ... the oil, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries and real estate developers now wield tremendous influence with this (US) government.

See Bush Fighting 'Secret War' On Green Laws - Kennedy by Stephen Leahy IPSNews.net
There is an imbalance of power when a large multinational corporation comes into a very poor country and makes behind-the-doors sweetheart deals with government officials that end up enriching a few people while impoverishing an entire nation. This is the worst face of globalisation. ...
....President Bush has a secret war against the environment. It is a stealth attack. He's now eviscerating America's environmental laws. He has 100 proposed rollbacks of environmental regulations that even if just a portion go through, by this time next year we will have no federal environmental laws..
That's not an exaggeration. These laws are being passed below the radar screen. They're being attached to large budget bills that must be passed so there's no public debate in Congress or elsewhere.
If you talk to the American people - and all the polling shows this - around 75 percent, Democrats and Republicans alike, support stronger environmental laws. Only seven percent say we need the laws weakened.
But it's those seven percent that have influence with this administration. Those are the people from the oil, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries and real estate developers who now wield tremendous influence with this government. President Bush is the worst environmental president in the past 100 years."

April 13 ~ 'Democracy' defies the people

Booker's Notebook
Alas, it seems that the only people who will publicly take an interest in the battle over John Prescott's bid to give elected assemblies to England's "Euro-regions" are the House of Lords and myself. This is a shame, since the struggle grows more confused by the day.
Last week Lord Waddington, a former home secretary, raised in the House the odd way that the North-West Assembly had responded to a QC's opinion given to Lancashire county council. The QC had advised that it was unlawful for ratepayers' money to be spent on a political campaign to establish an elected assembly.
The council was told in return that the Assembly had passed a resolution that "we, the North-West Assembly, declare our intention to become an elected Regional government", and that it was actively campaigning for a referendum to bring this about. In other words, we don't give a fig for any QC's opinion, and if you want to take us to law we shall be happy to spend even more ratepayers' money defending our position...."

April 13 ~".. a grave suspicion that public money from council tax payers has been used to support one side of the argument " said Lord Stoddart of Swindon

See extract from Lords Hansard (external link), April 8th

April 13 ~ "...the Government would not under any circumstances use money to favour one side over another .."

In his reply to Lord Waddington (above)

April 12/14 ~ Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, condemns ministerial efforts to have an independent scientific review of GM technology as 'artificial'.

April 12 ~ " those who choose to stay outside the American cage will need to unite, however loosely, for their own protection. They will have to keep their wits about them."

Matthew Parris in today's Times ".....Yesterday the leaders of Russia, Germany and France met in St Petersburg to talk about the future. They carried with them worries about America shared by many other nations, large and small: Canada, China, New Zealand, Sweden, India, South Africa ... I could make a list that included most of the rest of the world. That meeting, and others to come, could mark the beginnings of some sense of commonality between those civilised nations that have not chosen to fly with the great eagle, and some sense of the need for collective action in clipping its wings. To call this "The US versus the Rest of the World" oversimplifies, but conveys the spirit. To put it more modestly, those nations that do not choose to take Washington's whip are going to need to coordinate their positions and keep in touch. The balance of power needs rebalancing. For want of a better term, I shall call the grouping of which Russia, Germany and France now form a putative core, the Rest of the World.
For Iraq may not be the last American adventure...."

April 8 ~"The Ministry of Defence yesterday admitted it had ignored internal rules that could have saved the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.."

"..when it awarded the contract to refit Britain's Trident nuclear submarines to Devonport Management Limited. Giving evidence to MPs, the MoD's top civil servant Sir Kevin Tebbit ....said that the rule "must have slipped through my fingers".
Sir Kevin also admitted that the Government had been forced to abandon the prospect of legal action against DML when costs spiralled out of control because of the danger it would have "broken" the Plymouth company, threatening the vital work to keep Britain's independent nuclear deterrent afloat.
.....DML is owned by the American defence giant Halliburton
Sir Kevin's evidence came as the Commons Public Accounts Committee launched an inquiry into why the cost of building facilities at Devonport to refit the Trident fleet had risen from an original bid of £237 million to almost £1 billion. Alan Williams, the deputy chairman of the committee, said the decision to award a contract to DML that was 28 times over the limit suggested by MoD rules, had left the Government "massively exposed" to extra costs when things went wrong. ...... Anthony Pryor, executive chairman of DML, defended the handling of the project...." Western Morning News

April 8 ~".. a textbook example of bad government"

Sue Cameron in yesterday's Financial Times Advisers have corroded trust in Whitehall
Extract:"... political advisers are there generally because of who they know.
... Over the past six years it has sometimes seemed like amateur night in Whitehall as party political advisers, inexperienced in government, have put aspirations before realistic programmes and slogans before solid planning. The culture of spin has not been limited to presentation; it has infected the policymaking process itself.
The results have been apparent in the handling of the foot-and-mouth epidemic - surely a textbook example of bad government - and in the government's failure to convince the public that it has the vision and the competence to reform any of the public services..... Whitehall can bungle with the best of them and often has. But at least senior officials recognise the need to think things through and to look further ahead than tomorrow morning's headlines.
.... Those who believe Tony Blair will consider sacking some of his political advisers or neutering the powers of people such as Alastair Campbell, his chief spinner, may need a reality check. ..."

April 8 ~ "The small trader in Swindon wants the same freedoms as the shopkeeper of Umm Qasr;

the schoolteacher or doctor in Basildon should be respected as much as the professionals of Basra. As the proverb implies, you can probably kill a cat by choking it with cream. We should be aware that there is more than one kind of tyranny. ..." Libby Purves today in the Times under the headline: Why should the Iraqis trust Blair if we can't?

April 8 ~ Friends of the Earth has condemned Food Standards Agency for "biased propaganda"

April 8 ~ Scottish National Heritage, who began killing the hedgehogs of Uist last night,

has also now started to claim that it has the backing of all the Scottish political parties. However, when UHR contacted their head offices this morning (April 7 ), the key political parties were astonished to learn of this claim. (See press release from Advocates for Animals, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Hessilhead Animal Rescue Centre, International Animal Rescue, the Mammals Society and St Tiggywinkles) "....comments like those made today by SNH spokesperson, George Anderson, that they are "raring to go" with the killing will dismay a very large section of the Scottish public who have no wish to be associated with this mindless slaughter of wildlife."

April 7 ~ "..the Home Secretary accused me of being a man looking for a cause. Sorry, wrong again. As long as David Blunkett is Home Secretary, I'll always have a cause. .."

Bill Morris, Secretary General of the Transport and General Workers Union wrote in yesterday's Observer. (external link)
"...The proposal last week to snatch back British passports and deport those the Home Secretary doesn't like, represents the latest installment of the continuous assaults on those who seek refuge here. ... The Home Secretary will, of course, point to the radical cleric from the Finsbury Park mosque who will have the honour of being the first to be thrown out under David's law, but do we have to get rid of the barrel for the sake of one bad apple? ........ Frankly, we cannot go around the world pushing a policy of displacement and moral subcontracting. So rather than eye up Albania or the Ukraine as anterooms for the dispossessed, we should be bringing to bear the solutions failing nations need to provide their people with a life free from fear. The West has the resources and skills to tackle the reasons people leave the communities they love to seek a better life. What is needed now is the political will. Perhaps I should not hold my breath. Perhaps I should keep my bag packed in case the knock comes at my door to reclaim my British passport if the Home Secretary decides that this article is against the national interest."

April 6 ~ "council officials had no understanding of the area and had not done their homework"

Prescott endorses plan to kill a community (Booker's Notebook)
"Prince Charles is personally following a remarkable battle being waged by a happily-integrated English and Asian community in a Lancashire mill town against its destruction by a huge council "renewal plan". This would result in the demolition of 400 terrace houses and their replacement by "yuppie" homes which none of the residents could afford.
Although last year a ministry inspector came down firmly in support of the residents, backed by an impressive phalanx of conservation bodies, including the Prince's Foundation, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, ordered the inquiry to be re-opened because the inspector had not come up with the findings that he and Pendle council wanted...... the council's claim that there was no demand for houses in the Whitefield area was comprehensively demolished by the residents and their expert witnesses, who showed that council officials had no understanding of the area and had not done their homework...."

April 6 ~ As Iain Duncan Smith tries to wriggle out of his bafflingly maladroit efforts to keep the explosive issue of "Europe" under wraps, the politics of the next 18 months could be very interesting.

Christopher Booker's Notebook today

April 5 ~ "The collusion between the High Court and the government really needs a public airing"

Janet Hughes writes today about further bizarre goings on in connection with DEFRA's demands for £17,000 costs. It was Defra's legal department that insisted, following Lord Justice Latham's ruling, that Miss Hughes must pay the ministry's costs, even though it was not against Defra she had brought her case. (See article by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph on February 2.
"... They are now informing me that it is possible to amend the court order so that it orders me to pay Defra's costs. The court officials are lying about what they have said to me on the telephone. One official, as I believe I mentioned to you, has told me they have no record of the writ having been issued and that a copy was sent to the Court at a later date. Now he is denying saying such a thing "...." I was telephoned the other day by one of the Sheriff's Officers for Powys and Glamorgan, and his rudeness quite took me aback. He informed me of the White Paper (external link to Lord Chancellor's Dept website) , which I already knew about, and said that I would be able to see "where the government is going on this". It felt like a veiled threat that they would be able to return and force entry to our home."
The unfolding events of this strange and, as we are not alone in thinking, deplorable case can be read here.

April 4 ~ "Total neglect greeted this week's gargantuan forecast of the State of the Countryside, 2020..."

The State of the Countryside, 2020, (external link)"..from the government Countryside Agency. The report is a mess, a consultants' mish-mash of Blairite clichés, glib scenarios and top-down projections. It confuses prediction and prescription and is full of politically correct babble about social sustainability and globalisation. It reads like an undergraduate spoof of a "Middle Way" tract of the early 1990s. But at least it addresses a topic of importance. ..
...Terror of being thought pro-rich or anti-growth has neutered the supposed defenders of the countryside. The greens take money for wind turbines. Local lobbies concede planning permissions for "key-worker housing". Nobody dares defend rural beauty for its own sake. All take refuge in such weasel words as sustainable, affordable and holistic, code for "we surrender". At this rate it is goodbye countryside Britain .... ." Simon Jenkins in the Times

April 4 ~ we must all agree to "forgo some of our personal sovereignty and to combine our individualism in order to achieve a particular collective goal"

Telegraph (external link) Stephen Robinson on Blunkett in the US - ".... Sniffing the post-September 11 breeze, Mr Blunkett has presented himself to Americans as the voice of common sense against feeble folk at home who won't accept the state knows best. First he attacked "liberal and progressive" journalists in Baghdad for toeing the Iraqi line, a pointless fight to pick, given that the war seems to be going well for the allies.
Then Mr Blunkett lectured New Yorkers on the necessity of engaging in "collective governance". To achieve this happy state, he said we must all agree to "forgo some of our personal sovereignty and to combine our individualism in order to achieve a particular collective goal". He told Americans he was working to make the British courts more responsive to "consumer demands", though he didn't say if he had criminals or victims in mind as consumers of the justice system. He also articulated a new freedom "to be involved in formal politics", by which he presumably means voting.
It is perfectly harmless for Mr Blunkett to go on his travels to propound his views on individual liberty and the prerogatives of the state, but it is a bit cheeky of him to suggest to Americans that his rhetoric is matched by his action. Our preparations for a biological or chemical terrorist attack are feeble compared with those in America. Americans have a department of Homeland Security; we have security policy divided between numerous departments, including the Home Office, Defence, Transport and Health. As he ridicules our traditional freedoms, Mr Blunkett does not make us feel any more secure, collectively or individually."

April 4 ~ Mr Blunkett: reactionary, illiberal and wrong

Independent (external link)"Tony Blair's authoritarian attack dog has let himself down again. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has criticised "those who are of a progressive and liberal bent" for treating Allied and Iraqi propaganda as if they were "moral equivalents". ........... If the Home Secretary was again trying to ingratiate himself with the Daily Mail, that newspaper's man in Baghdad was not impressed. "I find it rather offensive," Ross Benson said yesterday.
He is not the only one. Most British people are media-literate enough to understand the biases on information coming from this war zone and to make their own judgements. And if an enterprising small business started to produce badges saying "Progressive and liberal", we suspect many Independent readers would wear them with pride."

April 1 ~ Sainsbury gives another £2.5m to Labour bringing his contributions to the party since 1999 to £8.5m. ......

Mark Seddon, a member of the party's national executive, said the donation was a kind of "corruption" of the political process and urged the party to return the billionaire's gift. In a statement, Lord Sainsbury said: "In our democracy political parties have to raise funds to campaign and put their policies to the electorate. "As a proud supporter of the Labour Party I am happy to be in a position where I can make a contribution to its ongoing work." However, Mr Seddon. told Radio 4's Today programme: "In any other country I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for what it is, a form of corruption of the political process. . This was a criticism of the Conservatives when they were in government and increasingly people are looking in at the political parties and saying 'Why don't they have more members?'" Mr Seddon said accepting the money was "quite extraordinary" when the party was finding it difficult to get trade union funding. "It should be sent back straight away," he added.
Conservative chairman Theresa May said Lord Sainsbury's position as a minister appointed by Tony Blair and whose decisions could have commercial consequences raised real questions about the gift. ....... The Labour party has a £6m overdraft and a £4.5m mortgage on its London headquarters. (See BBC report and Independent) From April 14 2002 on warmwell

March 30 ~ Much of Britain's metal finishing business will go abroad; and once again our officials will think they have done their duty by the nation.

Christopher Booker today writes about the fate of the metal-plating industry as a result of the "gold-plating" of a EU pollution directive, when " not even the normally sheep-like MEPs could agree a common line over Iraq. Of six resolutions proposed by each of the groups in the Brussels Parliament, a publication called Press Watch "which is regularly recycled by gullible newspapers such as The Guardian" and "A recruitment advertisement for the Meat Hygiene Service, part of Sir John Krebs's Food Standards Agency, boasts that lucky applicants will become part of the team of "2,250 officials" whose job is to enforce EU hygiene regulations on Britain's "1,300 licensed meat premises"......

March 30 ~ Householders to be fined for not recycling rubbish

Telegraph(external link) "Ministers have approved plans to fine householders more than £500 a year if they do not prove that they are recycling enough of their rubbish. The proposals have been agreed after John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, has dropped his opposition to what some ministers have dubbed the "poll tax on rubbish". ....... some ministers are still wary of opposition to the plan, which comes in a week that will see householders hit by two sets of tax rises: the "double whammy" of national insurance increases and higher council taxes. The one per cent rise in NI and the freezing of allowances will take effect next week and will cost the average wage earner on an annual salary of £22,000 more than £200 extra a year. Householders, meanwhile, face average council tax bill rises of around 13 per cent, with some local authorities hiking rates by as much as 45 per cent. The increase in council taxes has led to a nationwide campaign of defiance by householders who are refusing to pay the increases and vowing to go to jail if necessary. Ministers will seek to limit the political fall-out from the rubbish tax by presenting the new levy as a discount that rewards good behaviour. ........ The proposal was first raised in a Downing Street policy paper last year but was initially shelved amid concerns at the growing burden of taxation on middle England."

March 27 ~ Police to keep DNA files of innocent

Telegraph (external link) "Police powers to retain DNA samples and fingerprints taken from innocent people are to be extended, the Home Office announced yesterday. For the first time, they will be able to test people they arrest but do not charge and keep the DNA and the prints indefinitely. The move - which will add thousands of samples each year to a growing national database - was condemned by civil liberties campaigners last night. But the Government and police said the additional power was needed to verify the identities of suspects and to ensure that wanted criminals arrested for another offence cannot evade capture. Ministers have tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill now before parliament that will mark the second significant extension of police powers in two years."

March 27 ~ Bailiffs allowed to break into homes

Telegraph (external link) Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor "Licensed enforcement agents will be authorised to break into people's homes and seize property from debtors under new Government plans announced yesterday. They will also be given powers of arrest. A White Paper from the Lord Chancellor's Department proposes improved methods of recovering civil debts and stricter controls on enforcement agents.
Under a case decided 400 years ago, an Englishman's home is "his castle and fortress". Bailiffs have been unable to gain access to homes if the householder has refused to let them in, except in very limited circumstances. But the White Paper says that "forcible entry in domestic premises will be permitted" with prior judicial authority. "We seek to establish the principle that refusing to open a door or a gate will not stop legitimate enforcement action, nor should superior technology to protect the entrance to a property prevent enforcement from taking place. "For example, currently there is little scope for entering private homes that are protected by video cameras and electronic gates."
Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, believes that "the seizure and sale of a debtor's goods to settle a judgment debt may always be necessary". But, he adds, this should be done in a reformed and regulated system. Enforcement agents will have to be licensed and those who operate without a licence will face imprisonment. Licences will allow enforcement agents to "arrest an offender or a debtor under an order of the court and to take him or her into custody". Agents will also be licensed to take possession of land and to apply for a partial "data disclosure order" to assist with enforcement. ..... a Bill might go through the Lords' fast-track procedure."

March 25 ~ Peace protesters, some Quakers, many middle-aged or older, were stopped, searched and forced to return to London on Saturday

(One of several reports of this incident can be found on the IndyMedia website) "In a most worrying development, three coaches carrying protesters from London, were turned away from the protest and escorted back to the city, with several police forces carrying out escort duties from region to region. Amongst the passengers was the 64-year old aunt of one of those killed in New York on 11 September 2001. On arrival in London a number of police vehicles were waiting at Euston.
This is yet another restriction on the right to protest at Fairford. Over the past few weeks hundreds of people have been stopped and searched in the vicinity on the base by police using powers under the 2000 Terrorism Act.
Protesters are also extremely concerned at notices fixed to the fence at Fairford stating the "the use of deadly force is authorised", and are calling for questions to be asked in the House of Commons, about who has authorised this and in what circumstances such force might be used and by whom."

March 24 ~ The National Union of Journalists in the UK has issued a news release challenging Tindle to a debate on free speech "and all those other rights which our forefathers fought to establish and which Sir Ray Tindle seeks to demolish at the stroke of a pen"

See NUJ website (external link) and English regional newspapers start war censorship ....The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has "condemned this act of overt censorship at a time when the UK needs open debate about this controversial issue. It is an example of the invidious power that proprietors have over the content of the press. Barry White, National Officer for the CPBF comments: "Sir Ray Tindle has denied to the readers of his 130 titles access to vital information needed to understand the war".

March 23 ~ Elliot Morley, has turned Newlyn into "a police state".

Booker's Notebook "Cornish fishermen are up in arms over what seems to be a flagrant example of double standards, following draconian restrictions on cod-fishing imposed by Brussels to conserve supposedly vanishing cod stocks.
The seas around Cornwall are swarming with more cod than fishermen can remember for 30 years. Whenever a net is put down it comes up brimming with them. But so minuscule are their quotas that Cornish boats must dump hundreds of tonnes of cod dead back into the sea.
They can do nothing else because of the "reign of terror" by which the regulations are being enforced. In the words of the local fishermen's leader, Phil Trebilcock, the district's senior fisheries official, Colin George, backed by the fisheries minister, Elliot Morley, has turned Newlyn into "a police state".
Twelve boats have already had their licences suspended. When another skipper, Jonathan Turtle, suggested that a catch of £3,000-worth of cod that he and his crew could not avoid netting should be sold for Comic Relief, he was told that they must be chucked back.
What enrages the Newlyn fishermen even more, however, is the sight of a dozen French trawlers "filling their boots" with cod in the same Cornish waters and taking them back home without fear of reprisal, where they are openly advertised for sale. But no doubt Mr Morley is proud to think he and his officials are doing their bit for "conservation" by ensuring that hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of fish are being destroyed, along with the livelihoods of the Cornish fishermen."

March 23 ~ Promoting an elected assembly "would be overtly political"

"..the North-East Assembly's director, Stephen Barber, has assured Sunderland council that no ratepayers' money is being used to fund its promotion of an elected assembly. This money comes from central government. But, as Neil Herron of the North-East Against A Regional Assembly has now explained to Sunderland, last July the local government minister, Nick Raynsford, specifically ruled that government funding must not be used for this purpose. Promoting an elected assembly, Mr Raynsford wrote, "would be overtly political and is thus expressly excluded by the funding agreement". It looks like game, set and match to Mr Herron." Booker's Notebook

March 23 ~"I smelt a rat" - Pharmaceutical cover-up

From Booker's notebook this week.(Sunday Telegraph) "For several years Dr Karran sought answers - from Bayer, from the MCA and from the hospital - to what should have been simple questions, but he met only obfuscation. He even visited Germany to raise the issue before 4,000 Bayer shareholders at their annual meeting. Eventually he went to his MP, Sandra Gidley, whose experience as a pharmacist qualified her better than most to understand the problem. But, she told the Commons, her own repeated letters to Bayer and the MCA met such "a complete wall of silence" that, as she put it: "I smelt a rat."
As Mrs Gidley explained, there seems to be clear evidence of a complete failure of the system designed to protect patients. Not only were lives endangered; the false information given patients before their operations was in specific breach of their human rights. And the refusal of David Lammy, a health minister, to answer any of her questions raises another, yet wider question: why has our system now become so unaccountable that a minister cannot tell the truth to the House of Commons, even when the implications for public safety are as grave as those revealed by Dr Karran?..."

March 21 ~ If news is the first casualty of war, the first victor is government.

writes Simon Jenkins in the Times today. "It is ironic that every war fought by Britain in the past century, justly in the cause of freedom, has led directly to a curtailment of freedom in favour of state control. The history of war runs in tandem with that of higher taxes, greater regulation and more government. ..."

March 20 ~ John Prescott to use the war to end fire dispute

This headline in the Guardian was later changed to Prescott threatens to force fire deal (external link) "John Prescott told MPs today that he will introduce an emergency law allowing him to impose a pay settlement on the fire service and direct its operations. The deputy prime minister described it as "unacceptable" that 19,000 members of the armed forces had to be held back from military duties to provide emergency cover because of the continuing fire dispute.....A resolution calling for the latest offer to be rejected in the strongest possible terms was overwhelmingly passed by the delegates.
The proposed deal will now be discussed by firefighters across the country over the next fortnight. The national conference will then be held to decide whether to accept it or continue with a campaign of industrial action.
Mr Prescott's move today is clearly aimed at pre-empting that decision."
From John Prescott's statement in the House of Commons: "I am therefore giving notice today that I will introduce and publish a new two clause Fire Services Bill tomorrow. The Bill will give me the power to impose terms and conditions within the Fire Service and direct the use of Fire Service assets and facilities. I will start immediate discussions through the usual channels about how quickly we can make progress on this Bill...."

March 19 ~ Blunkett defies appeal ruling on asylum benefits

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor Telegraph (external link)
"Asylum seekers who fail to apply when they arrive in the country or soon after will continue to be denied food and shelter despite a defeat for the Government in the Court of Appeal yesterday. Three judges, led by Lord Phillips, the Master of the Rolls, upheld a High Court ruling that new benefit restrictions have "serious defects" and have been applied unfairly. But David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said the procedures had been redrawn to meet the criticism - even though he had previously indicated that to do so would make them "unworkable"...."

March 19 ~ Wiretapping Found at French, German EU Offices

(Reuters) -"Telephone tapping systems have been found at offices used by France and Germany in the building where European Union leaders are due to hold a summit from Thursday, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday. He said other delegations were also affected at the EU Council Justus Lipsius building and it was not known who was behind the espionage. ..... The French newspaper Le Figaro accused the United States of being behind the wiretapping, but Marro said: "We do not know who is behind it. I don't know who was on the other end of the line." ......"

March 19 ~ Tory peers move to block snoopers' bill

The Guardian yesterday by Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
"Conservative peers are considering blocking a plan to give more government agencies access to sensitive communications data. Lord Strathcylde, the Tory leader in the Lords, is prepared to obstruct government secondary legislation to stop what is seen as an infringe ment of civil liberties. The government plans that every local authority and a number of other public bodies and quangos will have access to phone, email and internet data, though not the content of these communications.
At present only the police, MI5, MI6, the government listening post GCHQ, customs and excise, and the Inland Revenue have access.
Under the plan, 24 government agencies and hundreds of local government officials are to be given powers to demand the personal details of citizens. In the main compromise put forward by the government, the organisations' access to the information will be granted only if a judicial third party, such as the interception of communications commissioner, considers that it is needed to investigate crimes.
The revised plans have been condemned by both Liberty and Privacy International. Liberty said authorities accessing this data should need a warrant from a judge, calling this the only truly independent safeguard. "

March 18 ~ Blunkett loses asylum appeal

Ananova "The Court of Appeal has rejected David Blunkett's attempt to overturn a decision threatening his new policy of denying food and shelter to late asylum applicants. David Blunkett had challenged Mr Justice Collins's controversial conclusion in six test cases that the new rules had resulted in breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. In each case, would-be refugees were refused state help while their claims were being processed because they had failed to apply for asylum at the port of entry, or as soon as reasonably practicable." (© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2003, all rights reserved)

March 17 ~ Sign of the Times - America

From yesterday's Observer (external link)"On the check-out desk at Santa Cruz public library, beside the usual signs asking people to keep quiet and to return their books on time, there is what might be called a sign of the times. 'Warning: although Santa Cruz public library makes every effort to protect your privacy, under the federal USA Patriot Act records of books you obtain from this library may be obtained by federal agents,' it reads. 'Questions about this policy should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft.' ...." Book Burning next?

March 17 ~ Snoopers charter - "Have your say.."

suggests Channel 4 : "Scaled-back plans to give state agencies powers to access the public's telephone, Internet and e-mail records have been revealed. The government wants feed-back on the consultation paper, the thrust of which is laid out below. Several agencies will have full access, and another batch will have limited access to information. " From the Home Office site (external link): "On 18 June 2002, in response to widespread public concern, the Home Secretary withdrew a draft Order laid before Parliament adding public authorities to the access to communications data provisions of Chapter II of Part I of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The Home Secretary announced that public discussion would take place before new proposals would brought before Parliament. He also called for a broader public debate about how to strike the balance between the privacy of the citizen and society's legitimate need for measures to support the investigation of crime and to protect the public.." (Text of "RIPA" - external link))

March 16 ~ Prescott's way with figures

(Booker's Notebook) "John Prescott's campaign to set up elected governments in the eight "Euro-regions" of England becomes ever more "Soviet". Mr Prescott tells us that there is "a hunger for regional government" and, as evidence, he recently assured the Commons that: "In the south-west the indications are that well over 60 per cent want to have a referendum on the issue."
Typical of the way Mr Prescott arrived at this evidence was a recent "soundings" meeting advertised in Weymouth by the South West Constitutional Convention, one of eight identical front organisations set up to campaign for elected regional governments - five of which, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, are chaired by Church of England bishops. On the appointed evening, the tiny Labour Club in Weymouth was besieged by campaigners against a regional assembly, who were initially told that only those who had signed a paper in favour of an assembly would be admitted.
When some were eventually allowed in, outnumbering the pro-assembly faction by eight to one, Tim Pearce, the convention's national organiser, ruled that only those who had already pledged support for an assembly could vote. After the motion had, not surprisingly, been won, there was discussion of the response to 550 "soundings" forms, which had been sent by the convention to those who had registered interest in a referendum.
Of these, it emerged, only 71 had been returned. Only eight recorded "strong" or "very strong" support for a referendum. The remaining 63 expressed either "weak interest" or none. Thus, even of those expressing interest, barely one per cent had been strongly in favour.
Elsewhere, the East Midlands Assembly last week voted against an elected regional government and Lancashire County Council, after reading here that district auditors were investigating claims that the North East Assembly had made unlawful use of ratepayers' money by campaigning for an assembly withdrew its funding from the assembly. "

March 14 ~ "a police state without the police"

Telegraph (external link) "the Home Office has produced no fewer than 100 initiatives, proposals and schemes of one sort or another, over the past 18 months. The problem with such hyperactivity, they argue, is that it may look impressive, but it has yet to yield many results on the ground. Yesterday, David Blunkett was again on his feet in the Commons, unveiling a new White Paper which promised to take "a stand against anti-social behaviour". .......The shadow home secretary, Oliver Letwin, remarked yesterday that Mr Blunkett is in danger of creating "a police state without the police", and he had a point. Whether the police and other authorities use their new powers, collect the fines and issue the orders, as Mr Blunkett envisages, will depend crucially on whether they have the manpower.
The danger otherwise is that they will conclude that it is all too much trouble, as they have before, and continue with business as usual. If the police cannot deploy enough beat officers to control the streets, nothing else will make much difference..."

March 12 ~ Still a charter to snoop

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. See Telegraph
"The Act has always been controversial. When the Home Office proposed extending it so that a huge range of government agencies and other public bodies, including local authorities, would be able to monitor our internet, email and telephone records with virtually no judicial control, all hell broke loose.
It was, by any standards, an outrageous plan and there was general relief when the Government conceded that it would have to be reconsidered. Or at least there was until yesterday, when the Home Office produced the results of its rethink and it turned out that version two differs very little from the original.
In essence, the same range of bodies as before will be able to get access to virtually the same range of records as before. The only difference of any significance is that before an agency or authority can find out whom we have been talking to or e-mailing, it will have to be approved by a gentleman with the Orwellian title of the Interception of Communications Commissioner..."

March 12 ~ This is a staggering situation," she said. "The minister is acting with unbelievable smugness and arrogance.

He has also called into question the committee system in the Scottish Parliament, which was always hailed as one of its great strengths.".......The Telegraph report Ministers reject report into GM food trials (external link) Ross Finnie has dismissed an investigation into GM crops by the Scottish Parliament's health committee.

March 10 ~ Harash Narang has been head-hunted by Case University in America

The Journal (external link)
"....a financial backer of Dr Narang's work, claimed he had been forced to go abroad because he cannot get laboratory time in the UK.
He said: "Harash has been blackballed in the UK because he told the public the truth.
"The establishment will try anything to stop him working here. It's a disgrace."
Noel Baldwin, of the CJD Foundation charity, said: "He has been proved right about so many things . . . that CJD can be transmitted through blood, that BSE can cause both variant and sporadic CJD and that you can test for the disease through urine samples."
Dr Narang starts work at Case University later this month. Shu Chen, one of his future colleagues, said: "He will be a great asset to our CJD research."

March 9~ Last week a powerful coalition ranging from The Women's Institute to Greenpeace and Unison wrote to the FSA board claiming its spin on GM foods was virtually indistinguishable from that of the pro-GM lobby.

See Observer article Fury over spin on GM crops
We anote the comment from DEFRA quoted in the article ..."Although an unnamed Minister has warned that a decision on GM has already been taken, this was denied by a spokesman for the Department for Food Environment and Rural Affairs.
'There will not be any growing of [GM] crops in this country until the results of the farm-scale trials have been considered,' he said."
( He might have added "Comrades" and whisked his tail.)

March 9 ~".. He sued, and that jurisprudential wizard, Mr Justice Harrison of Huddersfield County Court - upon whose noble brow may God rest a garland of frangipani, and before his feet, a brace of naked Nubian handmaidens -

- agreed with the plaintiff. He awarded him 39,408 in damages and costs. More than that: he finally put a barrier in the way of the rule of law being replaced by the rule of ease."
At last. Some good news ( Sunday Telegraph - external link) about randomly administrative fines.
"Motorists are not the only people who should rejoice at the ruling by Mr Justice Harrison that the clamping and seizure of a car parked without authorisation was "oppressive and arbitrary". Libertarians should also rejoice. For increasingly, many countries have allowed the due process of law to be replaced by the random application of administratively-convenient non-judicial fines..."

March 9 ~ Christopher Booker's Notebook

Sunday Telegraph: Read in full here. Agency soft soaps its way to a crafty conclusion - good news for small soap makers
That'll be the day - (Brussels's right to dictate how regional funding should be handed out is not just a matter of "regulations", but a central pillar of EU government, enshrined in article 160 of the treaty. It is a key part of the acquis communautaire, that ever-growing body of EU powers which, under treaty law, can never be challenged or reduced...so what was Gordon Brown up to?)
'Soundings' sound suspicious - (Tony Flynn, the leader of Newcastle council, claimed that "soundings" across the region had shown "87 per cent in favour of an elected assembly"....spectacularly not true)
Cash for care homes 'diverted' - ..(maltreatment of the city's fast disappearing independent care homes, by starving them of funds at a time when council spending otherwise appears to be spiralling out of control.)

March 9 ~ North East Assembly in Council Funding Scandal

by Neil Herron "...We trust that the press and media will be aware of the gravity of what has been exposed. We trust that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will begin a full and thorough investigation. The Electoral Commission is being kept fully informed - as misuse of public funds prior to a referendum may affect the validity of any result. "

March 8 ~ Clear as mud?

European water directive (Guardian) "The government denied that a European Union directive on water quality could force up consumers' bills by up to 10%. Junior environment minister Elliot Morley said he did not accept the figure. Challenged by Tories, he added: "At this stage it really is premature in terms of having an accurate projection in relation to costs."

March 7 ~ "Should London be struck by a terrorist attack, we are told, the Prime Minister will be removed to a secure base

outside London where he will continue to be 'visible'. Other senior ministers and their civil servants will be relocated to their own departmental headquarters at undisclosed locations throughout the country.
It would be reassuring to believe that these provisions were all part of normal planning for national emergencies. But coming from a government which responded to the foot-and-mouth outbreak by sealing off every turnip field..."The Spectator

March 7 ~ "Counties matter, because the Government is about to abolish them"

Simon Jenkins (external link) today..."...Upland England will one day be the only place safe from the Government's nightmare vision of shed parks and executive estates. The most tolerable parts will be the inland combes of Dorset and the secret dales round Bradford in Wiltshire. It will be the lost villages of the Berkshire Downs and the hidden glades of Chiltern Buckinghamshire, where the Blairs' Chequers will keep the wind turbines at bay....."

March 6 ~ "Democracy is in danger when we can't recognise ourselves in our rulers"

writes Jackie Ashley in the Guardian
"Why are they so out of touch? On Iraq, there is a gaping gulf between the views of most people and the views of the political elite. We protest, they smile and nod; but they don't really listen. Polling has consistently shown the majority of the country opposed to a war on Iraq: only around 25% would back war without much stronger evidence from Hans Blix and a second UN resolution. Yet, the government insists, if necessary, Britain will join the United States in going it alone.
...... a kind of cocoon. The shouts in the street have bounced off those walls for centuries.
..... British politicians are very susceptible to Washington thinking generally. They follow American politics. They read American speeches. They are flattered and feel at home when visiting Congress. ......
....naked power politics, explained with impressive bluntness by Jack Straw to the Commons foreign affairs committee this week. We live in a "unipolar" world, he told the MPs: you either worked with the giant superpower, and tried to keep it inside international law, or you let it rampage unchecked. Many of us would say that the British position is that we have decided to work with the superpower outside international law, and simply rampage alongside it.......
... The British public is like the French public and the German public. We are a mixed, liberal, sceptical lot, who don't take to Bush and flinch from Christian fundamentalism almost as much as from the Islamic variety. That is why there is such turmoil, such enthusiasm for mass marches and protests. We look at our ruling elite and we do not recognise ourselves in them. In any democracy, that is a dangerous moment.

March 4 ~ GM licensing gets go ahead

Scots and Welsh furious as crop trials are sidelined Paul Brown, environment correspondent The Guardian
Government plans to press ahead with licensing commercial use of genetically modified crops, before the results of trials are known and a public debate on the issue has been held, yesterday angered both the Scottish executive and the Welsh assembly.
Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, has decided that 18 applications to the EU for growing and importing crops such as GM maize, oil seed rape, sugar beet and cotton are unstoppable and the British government has no alternative but to process them. In the past few weeks Bayer has applied directly to Mrs Beckett to plant and market GM oil seed rape, and Monsanto has applied to import GM maize.

March 4 ~ Public meeting on the review of the Over Thirty Months Rule for cattle All welcome

The Food Standards Agency will be holding a public consultation meeting as part of its review of the Over Thirty Months (OTM) Rule. It will be held on Friday 7 March, between 10.00am - 1.00pm at the New Connaught Rooms, 61-65 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5DA. See http://www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/otm_meeting

March 3 ~ The law is an ass

"Entertainment has been provided in my part of the West Country by the instruction from Defra that, under EU Commission Decision 2000/68, Rosa Drohan from the Somerset village of Marksbury must pay £44 for "passports" for her two ageing donkeys, Popsy, 25, and Dillon, 11. Brussels officials have ruled that by the end of the year all horses and donkeys must join cattle in having passports, to aid disease control. Rosa wonders why her donkeys should need "passports" when their only experience of foreign travel is walking a few yards down the road to graze the village churchyard. This was why, when she saw the voluminous form she must fill in to apply for the passport asking to what "use" she puts her donkeys, she was tempted to put 'organic lawn mower'. It is unlikely that Brussels would be amused."Christopher Booker's Notebook Sunday Telegraph

Feb 27 ~ José Bové faces a 10-month prison term for destroying GM crops

The Guardian reports today:"....The appeals court in this southern city ruled Bové must serve four months in prison for destroying maize crops. That sentence will be added to a six-month sentence handed down for ripping up genetically modified rice. "By the decision the president takes, he will say very clearly if the place of union leaders is in prison ... or if, today, the combat against GM crops is a legitimate combat,'' ...."Bové's lawyer, Francois Roux, said he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. He also suggested that Chirac should pardon Bove.
"The justice system decided that a nonviolent action done in the open was worth 10 months imprisonment. The decision from now on belongs to Jacques Chirac," Roux said. The sheep farmer, visiting the annual Agriculture Salon fair in Paris, said the ruling made the issue political, not judicial. ....."

Feb 27 ~ They're bleeding us dry to buy mountains of red tape

Boris Johnson today in the Telegraph: "......Wherever you look, there are vexatious pieces of central government legislation, which cost the council money, and which end up costing you money. Over the past two years, Oxfordshire has been forced to conduct a massive "job evaluation" of every council worker, in order to avoid being taken to industrial tribunals. The cost this year? A cool £1.9 million. Then there is the inflation-busting pay settlement of £1.7 million. The cost of the landfill tax is £300,000 and the cost of disposing of the fridge mountain is £600,000.
Then there is the £500,000 fine the council has been ordered to pay to the NHS, for "blocking beds" in the sense that the council has failed to find enough care-home places for elderly people. This fine is doubly absurd. The shortage of care-home places is caused entirely by the Government's demented Care Standards Act; and, in any case, the council was given a large sum by the Government to buy care-home beds; which it is now returning in the form of fines.
And then there is Gordon's big April fool, the £2.5 million the council will have to pay for the extra cost of NI contributions for its staff. That's right, folks: you are not only going to be stung for your own NI; you will also pay, via your council tax bill, for the NI contributions of the growing army of public sector workers.
What people don't sufficiently understand, and what I never tire of pointing out, is that regulation has a fiscal impact on everyone, as well as being a bother for those who have to comply. If you have a regulation about sheep carcasses, you need a dead sheep collector. If you have a regulation about windows, you need a window inspector; and these characters will all have their salaries and pensions and NI contributions funded out of council tax.

Feb 26 ~ The editor of the Daily Mail on (further) threats to the freedom of the press

Today's Times - "Politically inspired privacy law would destroy freedom of the press and send Britain on the slippery slope to becoming like Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe, the Editor of the Daily Mail told MPs yesterday. Paul Dacre told the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee that a privacy law, replacing self-regulation of the press, would be a "law for the rich" since only the powerful could afford the legal fees required to take a case to court. He said that editors needed to take no lectures on regulating the press from MPs, when they had effectively kicked out Elizabeth Filkin...."

Feb 26 ~ The Church of England is like the Conservative Party and the BBC, overcentralised, overwrought and losing market share.

All three are institutionally "top down". Read Simon Jenkins today

Feb 23 ~ "Short of miraculous intervention by a politician who can see just how insane is the situation that these decent, desperate people are faced with

it seems a world-beating British industry is about to be wiped out, for no reason whatever...."Booker's Notebook today.

Feb 23 ~101,811 regulations imposed on us - without discussion - since we joined the European Community

Booker's Notebook today "Too many laws to tell us about

Last month Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked the Government how many regulations Brussels had issued since Britain joined the European Community in 1973. This means diktats which, unlike directives, are immediately binding. Lady Symons, the deputy leader of the Lords, gave year-by-year figures showing the total as 101,811. In answer to Lord Stoddart's request that details of these laws be made available, she said "given the volumes of regulations involved, it would incur disproportionate cost" to inform members of the British Parliament what laws have been imposed by a higher level of government.
Curiously, President Prodi in Brussels has also just come up with a figure for the amount of space these regulations occupy in the EU's official journal (again this excludes the thousands of directives which must be put into national law by means of statutory instruments). Regulations alone, he says, cover 97,000 pages. At an average of 1,000 words a page, this makes nearly 100 million words of law, all of which have to be translated into 11 languages, totalling some 1.1 billion words or 1,466 times the length of the Bible. It is not surprising the Government claims it would be too expensive even to supply a list of these laws. But we still have to obey them...."

Feb 22 ~ UKIP gains former Conservative minister as three Dukes become patrons

The U.K. Independence Party today announced that the Duke of Devonshire was amongst three Dukes who had agreed to act as patrons for the Party. He was a Conservative minister under Harold Macmillan in the 1960's. The Dukes of Devonshire, Rutland and Somerset have all agreed to act as patrons of the party's fund raising drive ahead of next years elections to the European Parliament. The Party, which already holds 3 European seats, expects to make significant gains. U.K. Independence Party leader Roger Knapman said, "I am delighted to welcome their Graces to the only party which sees a free, independent future for the United Kingdom outside of the European Union. "It is increasingly clear that the U.K. Independence Party is the only party to represent the views of all British citizens, whether dukes or dustmen." ENDS

Feb 21 ~" The scientific review is one of three strands of the GM debate being conducted in parallel." David King

"The other strands are the public debate and the study of economic costs and benefits. All three were requested by Margaret Beckett in May, in response to the recommendations of the AEBC
The scientific topics being looked at will include: These issues will be added to, and refined, as a result of information emerging from all sources, particularly from the public debate to ensure that the interest and concerns raised are addressed. http://www.gmsciencedebate.org.uk/background/pn291102a.htm Guess who's on the Science Panel. Independently chaired by David King, with Chris Leaver of course.... We wonder what percentage of his, and the others', funding is GM.

Feb 21 ~ Chronicle of An Ecological Disaster Foretold

The GM oil seed rape varieties in UK's farm scale evaluations are terminator crops with in-built sterility to protect patented crop genes. Terminator crops like these had been vigorously rejected by farmers all over the world as it goes against their right to save and replant seeds. These crops are now being considered for commercial release in Europe. Dr.Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins tell us why these crops carry unique risks for health and biodiversity, and should on no account be approved. The complete document with diagram and references is posted on ISIS members site. Full details here

Feb 21 ~ More time for public say on GM crops

Yesterday's Guardian Paul Brown, environment correspondent
"The government has extended by three months the period for a public debate on genetically modified crops and whether they should be grown in Britain. The budget for the consultation process is also being doubled, to £500,000, and the Department of Environment will pay for staff time at the central office of information.
Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, at first refused to allow more time or money, despite a letter before Christmas from Malcolm Grant, the chairman of the commission the government set up to organise the debate. Professor Grant said he had not been given enough time or resources to complete the task by the end of June. The agriculture ministers of Scotland and Wales, Ross Finnie and Mike German, joined Prof Grant's protests and, last month, all three lobbied again for an extension. The ministers face elections in May and wanted the debate postponed so that it would not interfere with the polls.
Environment groups have claimed that the government wanted to stifle debate by completing the discussion before three years of results from the farm-scale trials of GM crops were known in July. A study will be released that month showing whether GM crops attract more weeds and wildlife than conventional alternatives. Yesterday, in a letter to Prof Grant, Mrs Beckett accepted that "it would now be impracticable for the steering board to deliver its report by the end of June", and extended the consultation time until the end of September, with funding increased to £500,000. Sue Mayer, of the pressure group Genewatch, said: "Mrs Beckett's u-turn is good news ... We will at last be able to have an informed debate." Feb 20 ~ Tube bans animal welfare poster which might "offend".... BBC report (external link) London Underground has refused to display an advert for an animal welfare charity.
"The poster, for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), featured scantily-clad models huddled together on one side of a poster and chickens packed in a farm on the other. Underneath the shots is the legend: "Thousands of big-breasted birds packed together for your pleasure."
The CIWF said the advert was designed to raise awareness of "appalling conditions in which meat chickens are reared". But London Underground decided it could not be displayed because it was likely to offend." What? Whose logic was this?

Feb 18 ~ Once again, the Lords defend the country...and will this government defeat too be overturned by yet another Parliament Act?

"The Government was beaten in the Lords last night over its plans to tackle hospital bed blocking, after the peers succeeded in forcing a one-year delay to the scheme by voting 152 to 133 against it....The Community Care (Delayed Discharges) Bill, announced by Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn, aims to "fine" local authorities which fail to get elderly patients out of hospital quickly enough, and was due to come into force from April 2003 - but is now postponed until 12 months later. " See report in the Western Morning News

Feb 17 ~ A very unpopular form of democracy

Booker's Notebook Feb 16 "..Following my revelation last week that 25 district auditors across the North-East are to investigate the improper use of ratepayers' funds to finance the North-East Assembly's campaign for an elected regional government, it seems that John Prescott's scheme to set up elected assemblies across England has hit another set of buffers.
His department has just released on its website a summary of responses to last year's White Paper on regional government. Of 459 organisations responding, including local authorities, only 28 per cent supported his plan, 28 per cent are against, and the rest "undecided". Of individual responses, only 7 per cent were in favour and an overwhelming 72 per cent against.
Meanwhile key historical documents only made available to MEPs last week confirm just why the plan to install regional governments throughout the European Union has been central to Brussels's long-term planning since the 1970s. A series of internal reports on the proposals for monetary union made clear that a single currency could not work without setting up regional administrations which would allow Brussels to control the transfer of funds from richer to poorer regions.
These documents, to be raised in the Lords on Thursday by Lord Stoddart of Swindon, explain the dramatic conversion to the cause of regional government of that champion of the single currency, Jacques Delors, as he laid plans for economic and monetary union in the run-up to Maastricht in the late 1980s. It was he who in 1988 put in place the rule which forced Britain to set up regional "government offices" in 1994, the foundation of Mr Prescott's subsequent plan for elected regional governments.
The only snag, as with Mr Blair and the euro, is that Mr Prescott cannot achieve this without referendums, which he seems increasingly likely to lose."

Feb 14 ~ Dolly, created in 1996, was put to sleep this afternoon at the Roslin Institute, suffering from acute respiratory disease.

Results of the post mortem are to be made public. See also Janet Hain writes to say,

Feb 14 ~ "Yield Effects of Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries" (Science, Feb 7, 2003, Vol. 299) a paper jointly written by Matin Qaim of the University of California, Berkeley, USA and David Zilberman of the University of Bonn, Germany

........We will perhaps have many more such papers being doled out by dozen, all thanking the seed company Mahyco (clearly avoiding to mention its partner - Monsanto) for its research support. Nevertheless, what is interesting is that the paper begins with the wrong premise that Bt cotton increases crop yields.
See A Scientific Fairytale Providing a Cover-Up to the Bt Cotton Fiasco in India By Devinder Sharma

Feb 14 ~ "..the human rights watchdog Privacy International this week launched a competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, annoying and self-serving security measures:

the "Stupid Security" award. Nominations to stupidsecurity@privacy.org are welcome. See today's Telegraph

Feb 13 ~ GM COMPENSATION NOT ENOUGH, SAY FARMERS

See Western Morning News (external link)

Feb 8 ~genes introduced into the DNA of a chloroplast can indeed jump into the chromosome of the cell's nucleus

Scientists have found that genes can jump from one region of a plant cell to another, making more likely the prospect of an introduced gene contaminating the plant's pollen and escaping into the wild. Independent (external link) "...Scientists have found that genes can jump from one region of a plant cell to another, making more likely the prospect of an introduced gene contaminating the plant's pollen and escaping into the wild...... Dr Timmis has shown in a study published in the journal Nature that genes introduced into the DNA of a chloroplast can indeed jump into the chromosome of the cell's nucleus. By modifying the genes of chloroplasts, therefore, the theoretical possibility exists to generate GM pollen that could cross-fertilise with related species of plants, producing GM wild flowers or "superweeds" resistant to weedkiller.
Dr Timmis's team used a gene that confers resistance to an antibiotic as a "marker", to see how frequently this alien DNA could move from the chloroplast to the nucleus of a tobacco plant. They found DNA is transferred at a frequency of one in approximately 16,000 tobacco pollen grains.
Peter Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said: "This research suggests that this is a bit of a shock to scientists. They didn't expect the genes to jump from chloroplast to nucleus so readily. It underlines the fact that we must know more about plant genetics before we start manipulating the DNA of crops."

Feb 8 ~ US trade and agriculture officials are close to launching a legal challenge in the World Trade Organisation to the EU's moratorium on genetically modified crops.

FWi (external link)

Feb 8 ~ Scottish organic bill fails - but not by much.

From The Times (external link) The Bill was defeated by 61 votes to 39 with 18 MSPs abstaining.

Feb 8 ~ "We are not the doctors; we are the disease"

From Harold Pinter's speech in Turin last November ".....The planned war against Iraq is in fact a plan for premeditated murder of thousands of civilians in order, apparently, to rescue them from their dictator.
The United States and Britain are pursuing a course which can lead only to an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe.
It is obvious, however, that the United States is bursting at the seams to attack Iraq. I believe that it will do this not just to take control of Iraqi oil but because the US administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.
Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to challenge and resist US power Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's definition (as quoted in the Guardian newspaper in London recently) "We are not the doctors. We are the disease". Read Harold Pinter's speech and weep.

Feb 8 ~ "I was an aid worker in Bosnia; I know some wars are worth fighting. This isn't one of them,"

said Martin Summers, 43. Lois Atherden, 84, who grew up "in the shadow of the first world war", disagreed. "Weaponry has developed to a state where any war for any reason makes no sense at all. We have to find another answer," she said. There were anarchists and pacifists there; Quakers and Catholics; students and pensioners. The latter have formed the backbone of the vigils; this week, ages ranged from 21 to 84, but most were over 40. ..." See today's Guardian (external link)
( Hoping to see many of my fellow over 40s on Feb 15. )

Feb 8 ~ The mother of all inventions

Times today (external link) "The note of panic is palpable. "What do you mean, there's no smoking gun? Haven't MI6 got anything? No photographs? No defectors? TB is expecting a dossier next week. We promised. He said the Americans liked the last one - quoted everywhere, robust stuff, saved the CIA from having to go public with any sources. So they want another one - Colin Powell's thinking of a spot of show and tell at the UN, and wants to point to independent work by the Brits. So, we better get something - and quick
There was a nervous silence. With so many spokesmen off on crash courses in war briefing, the communications unit was understaffed. Apart from a former foot-and-mouth specialist from the old Min of Ag (chosen because he once worked on botulism), two work-experience students from Keele and a filing clerk, doubling as a liaison officer, spin was thin on the ground. "Well, one of you had better put something together. Get on the internet. Just type in ricin and Iraq and see what you find on Google. 20 pages, at least. By tomorrow "....

Feb 8 ~ Mystery over death of cloned sheep

See Independent (external link) story by Steve Connor Science Editor "Australia's first cloned sheep has died unexpectedly, raising concerns that the animal may have suffered a fatal disorder related to the same technique used to create Dolly, the world's first adult clone.
Matilda died last week and a post-mortem examination over the weekend failed to find the cause of death, said Rob Lewis, who heads the South Australian Research Institute near Adelaide."
They cremated the body before tests could be properly done. We remember the very low proportion of cloned animals that survive - and the fate of poor Dolly. The only motive for cloning is huge profit. We have always been astonished that more outrage has not been voiced.

Feb 8 ~ ".. the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the spoons" (Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman )

A piece of plagiarism (BBC external link) The Directorate of Military Intelligence Government dossier
"These shifting appointments are part of Saddam's policy of balancing security positions. "By constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organisation for a substantial period of time. No one becomes powerful enough to challenge the President. " Ibrahim al-Marashi's work
"These shifting appointments are part of Saddam's policy of balancing security positions between Tikritis and non-Tikritis, in the belief that the two factions would not unite to overthrow him. "Not only that, but by constantly shifting the directors of these agencies, no one can establish a base in a security organization for a substantial period of time, that would challenge the President."

Feb 8 ~ "A prime minister who condemned his country to puppet status would be unworthy of his office"

Today's Telegraph
"The superstate is here" (external link)
".....The weasel word in this treaty, however, is not "federalism", but a phrase that sounds more innocuous: "shared competence". This, its guiding constitutional doctrine, states that, while the EU and the nation states may share competence in domestic and foreign policy, the EU's policies and laws must always have primacy. National governments and legislatures may act only where the EU has chosen not to "exercise its competence". Shared competence extends to foreign and defence policy; to the economy, including monetary and fiscal policy; to health, social security, transport, justice, agriculture, energy, the environment and trade. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which Tony Blair said would never be binding, is "an integral part of the Constitution".
This treaty amounts to a coup d'etat by a clique of a coterie of a cabal. The text was drafted by a triumvirate of arch-federalists: two commissioners, Michel Barnier of France and Antonio Vitorino of Portugal, with the former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato. The other members of the praesidium - including its chairman, Valery Giscard D'Estaing, and the British representative, Gisela Stuart MP - agreed to it, ignoring the rest of the convention.
Mr Blair now has a choice. He could veto the treaty, in which case Britain could face exclusion from full EU membership. Or he could put it to a referendum. The third possibility - that he might sign it, even in a diluted form - sounds unthinkable, yet it appears to be being thought. A prime minister who condemned his country to puppet status would be unworthy of his office."

Feb 8 ~ Protection of Freedoms Bill

"Mark Prisk, the Conservative MP for Hertford and Stortford ...alarmed by the torrent of regulation affecting the private sector, ... is bringing a 10-Minute Rule Bill before the Commons on February 25, to be known as the Protection of Freedoms Bill. It would require that every new piece of legislation be subject to a test as to how "it affects the freedom of expression, assembly, conscience and association; and why the benefits of the measure outweigh any loss of freedom". Back-bench Bills rarely make their way on to the statute book, but Mr Prisk deserves support for seeking to hold back the torrent of bad laws that do get passed. He invites readers to send him comments and suggestions about how he should proceed, and to review what he is hoping to achieve at www.markprisk.com..."
A Free Country - today's Telegraph (external link).

Feb 8 ~ World politics according to Bush

This is a map of Bush's World View. It is well worth a wry grimace...but may be a little slow to load. We are sorry if we are breaking copyright - but they arrived on an email without attribution. (Later: we now have the URL http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/lodrion/Pictures/Fun/world_us.jpg )

Feb 8 ~ INES Appeal to the International Academic Community

Paris, 1 February 2003
"We oppose a US-led war against Iraq and support all non-violent opposition to the planned war. We appeal to scientists, engineers and academics throughout the world to work in solidarity to prevent this war in both their personal and professional capacities. We call for teach-ins, hearings and other meetings to take place at all universities. These should consider the consequences of the planned war on the people of Iraq; the stability of the Middle East; the future of the United Nations and international law; international relations and the dialogue among cultures; the global economy and the environment; and the development, proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction.
We call upon universities throughout the world to engage in all forms of peaceful protest. We call upon universities in those countries supporting the war to go on strike should a war begin and to announce their intention to do so in advance."
The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) is an international non-governmental organization affiliated with the UN and the UNESCO. INES works for peace, sustainability and the constructive uses of science and technology. See http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

Feb 8 ~ Downing Street stands by Iraq dossier

LONDON (Reuters) - The government says it stands by an intelligence dossier on Iraq, after academics said whole passages had been lifted from magazine articles, complete with spelling mistakes.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell drew attention to a British dossier on Iraq during his presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. The British dossier says it is compiled from intelligence material "and other sources".
Several academics came forward on Thursday saying they recognised most of the dossier as lifted, verbatim, from articles published in the U.S. journal the Middle East Review of International Affairs and in Jane's Intelligence Review.
In some cases the dossier included punctuation and spelling mistakes copied from the original articles....."

Feb 7 ~ Your second chance for... Between Iraq and a Hard Place

BREMNER BIRD AND FORTUNE - XMAS SPECIAL The comedy trio Bremner Bird and Fortune bring their viewpoint on the Iraqi crisis in their own unique way.
We're about to invade Iraq. Again. We invaded in 1917... and 1941 ... and 1991. This time though, we're dealing with Saddam Hussein.
But then, we've been dealing with Saddam for years. Why now? The Americans see the chance to bring traditional Western values to the Middle East (aka the guys with the diapers on their heads): democracy (from the people who brought you George W Bush); freedom (from the people who brought you Guantanamo Bay) and economic prosperity (from the people who bought you Enron).
Starring George W Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and a cast of… well, Rory Bremner, flanked by John Bird and John Fortune as Foreign Office mandarins, convinced that this time they have got it right, and that above all the one thing this is not about is oil… Read the transcript of the show
(external liks to Channel Four) (Part One)
(Part Two)
(Part Three)
(Part Four)

Feb 7 ~ Downing Street's "Iraq" intelligence dossier released on Monday was copied from three different articles

"It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence-based analysis - and Mr (Colin) Powell was fulsome in his praise. ... Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student. Published on the Number 10 web site, called "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation", it outlines the structure of Saddam's intelligence organisations. But it made familiar reading to Cambridge academic Glen Ranwala. It was copied from an article last September in a small journal: the Middle East Review of International Affairs. ...." See Channel 4 news report

Feb 6/7 ~ We know more about killing than we know about living

emailer:"There was a good letter in the Times yesterday on the futility of war with Iraq and the final quotation from General Omar Bradley in 1948 is relevant.
"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount...Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants...We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living".

Feb 5 ~ Mr Blair has been as shameless as James I.

"He was personally committed to a "fully elected House of Lords" He signed the manifesto pledge of "a democratic and representative" second chamber. Yet no sooner does he sniff the trough of power than he plunges straight in. He packs the Lords with friends, sycophants and bought peerages. By and large this has worked. At present a House stuffed with statesmen and soldiers dare not even discuss the impending war. ..." Simon Jenkins in today's Times on Monkey business in the House of Baboons

Feb 5 ~ Robert Fisk: Don't mention the war in Afghanistan

See Independent today " The near collapse of peace in this savage land is a narrative erased from the mind of Americans....
"There's one sure bet about the statement to be made to the UN Security Council today by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell - or by General Colin Powell as he has now been mysteriously reassigned by the American press: he won't be talking about Afghanistan. For since the Afghan war is the "successful" role model for America's forthcoming imperial adventure across the Middle East, the near-collapse of peace in this savage land and the steady erosion of US forces in Afghanistan - the nightly attacks on American and other international troops, the anarchy in the cities outside Kabul, the warlordism and drug trafficking and steadily increasing toll of murders - are unmentionables, a narrative constantly erased from the consciousness of Americans who are now sending their young men and women by the tens of thousands to stage another "success" story.....An American killed by a newly placed landmine in Khost; 16 civilians blown up by another newly placed mine outside Kandahar; grenades tossed at Americans or international troops in Kabul; further reports of rape and female classroom burnings in the north of Afghanistan - all these events are now acquiring the stale status of yesterday's war....."

Feb 4/5 ~ Radio 4 "A Strain on the System"

Wed Feb 5th at 9.00pm. The second in a three-part series assessing our preparedness in the face of national crises. Sue Broom looks at the lessons learned from the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic.

Feb 4 ~ Britain must not go to war without UN's backing, say senior officers

Times (external link)"... Serving officers are not allowed to give their personal views about an imminent operation. However, senior retired officers who keep in regular touch with the Ministry of Defence about upcoming operations are not barred from making public comments."
"..... General Sir Roger Wheeler, who was Chief of the General Staff from 1997 to 2000, said yesterday that he and many other recently retired officers would find a war without a second resolution from the UN Security Council, unaccceptable. "If we are going to war, we need the backing of the international community and the country and that means a second resolution," he said. ...Sir Roger said that he backed the view expressed by General Sir Jack Deverell, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe, who told BBC radio last week that he would not like to go to war without the country's support. ..."

Feb 4 ~ Yet another confused Minister

Telegraph today (external link) "Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, was in confused retreat yesterday over her attempt to ban an anti-war rally from assembling in Hyde Park because the marchers might damage the grass.
The Stop the War Coalition, organisers of the demonstration, said Miss Jowell's intervention had prompted a flood of pledges of support and predicted that up to 500,000 people would attend the protest on February 15. A spokesman for the Royal Parks said the concern over the use of Hyde Park was for the safety of those attending the march and not necessarily the damage to the grass. In a letter to Miss Jowell, Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, said Hyde Park was the only suitable venue. A culture department spokesman said: "Hyde Park is still, in our view, an unsuitable venue for safety reasons. No final decisions have been made. We are trying to find somewhere suitable where the march can go ahead. There is no hidden agenda."
• America's desire for oil, rather than concern over weapons of mass destruction, was the main reason for a possible war with Iraq, Tony Benn, the veteran Left-winger, said yesterday after returning from talks with Saddam Hussein. "This is about regime change to give the US control of the oil," said Mr Benn, on his arrival at Heathrow Airport."

Feb 4 ~ Blair: I will risk my political future over Iraq

PM admits he has failed to convince Britons of need for military action Today's Independent ".....The Prime Minister faced hostile questions from Labour MPs. Gordon Prentice, MP for Pendle, said: "There are many people who feel, like me, that we are being led by the nose into war." Derek Foster, MP for Bishop Auckland and a former chief whip, said: "There will be profound implications for the long-term security of the world if the United States was to take international law into its own hands." The former Labour MP Tony Benn, back in Britain after meeting President Saddam Hussein on Sunday, said Mr Blair held "an effective veto" on war. "If he says to Bush, 'I'm sorry, I can't go along with you', Bush would find it very difficult to go," he said. ......"

Feb 3 ~ "Vaclav Havel Takes His Leave

New York Times " ..when Vaclav Havel left Prague Castle on Sunday after 13 years as president, he took with him something quite different an exceptional individual moral authority. Mr. Havel leaves no clearly defined political legacy. What he leaves is the sense that in the life of a nation the character of its leaders matters. He showed us that speaking honestly and deeply when you are expected merely to express platitudes brings its own political authority. Czechs and the rest of us are better off because of him..Parliament has failed twice to choose his successor. The parties bicker and the press reports it. For those freedoms and many more besides, Czechs have Vaclav Havel to thank"

Feb 3 ~ Tony Benn has filmed an interview with Saddam Hussein

See Reuters He said he had asked Saddam "very simple and very short questions" during the interview that dealt with weapons of mass destruction, links to al-Qaeda terror network and oil....Benn said he did not want to reveal Saddam's answers in the interview earlier in the day "because I am hoping that within the next day or two, the whole interview will be broadcast in its entirety". He did not say when or where the interview would be broadcast. He was leaving for London via Amman late on Sunday.....He said the reason for his current visit to Baghdad was "to explore possibilities of a peaceful solution to a problem, that otherwise might lead to the most catastrophic war in which innocent people will be killed with long-term consequences".

Feb 2 ~ America - one company can now own all the radio stations, television stations, newspapers and cable systems in any given area.

Extract from article in the Boulder Daily Camera "....The Federal Communications Commission, led by Michael ("my religions is the market") Powell, is fixing to remove the last remaining barriers against concentration of media. This means one company can own all the radio stations, television stations, newspapers and cable systems in any given area. Presently, 10 companies own over 90 percent of the media outlets. Bill Kovach of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism say these are the most sweeping changes in the rules that govern ownership of American media since the 1940s. The ownership rules were put in place after we had seen how totalitarian governments use domination of the media to goad their countries into war."
Reporters without borders can be found at http://www.rsf.org/ A visit strongly recommended..

Feb 2 ~ Some of the Prime Minister's highest-ranking former colleagues add their voices to the chorus calling for restraint over Iraq

Independent on Sunday
"Former Labour ministers who served under Tony Blair have added their voices to the growing calls on the Prime Minister to draw back from military action against Iraq. All are influential figures in the Labour movement, some having served as Cabinet ministers, others in the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence. Most are still sitting MPs. They have spoken out against the threatened war on Saddam Hussein, warning Mr Blair not to proceed without the backing of the international community through a second UN resolution.
Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland secretary, has even cautioned that with public and political opinion stacked against a war, a prolonged and difficult conflict could spell the end of Mr Blair's premiership. "If the war is not quick and successful, he could suffer considerable political damage. He may even have to resign as Prime Minister," she said. Chris Smith, the former Culture secretary, branded military action without a second UN mandate "unacceptable". Frank Dobson, Mr Blair's first Health secretary, said war without UN backing would be "disastrous worldwide" and "politically disastrous here". Mr Blair's support for US President George Bush and his proposed invasion of Iraq has also been condemned by generals and military strategists, including General Sir Michael Rose, Major General Julian Thompson and Major General Patrick Cordingley..." (Read what they said in the full article)

Feb 2 ~ Labour MPs have remarked on the "warped sense of priorities"

that led the Government to back the ban on the grounds that the central London park's grass might be damaged, or that protesters could be injured, when a real threat to human life in the war on Iraq was at issue. Ms Short said: "I welcome the fact that so many people in Britain are troubled by the prospects of war." She was glad she "lived in a country that did not relish war" and that people were "willing to make their views felt". She added: "That is important in a democracy."
Organisers of the rally, who will meet the Royal Parks Agency tomorrow, said Hyde Park was the only realistic venue for a rally likely to attract half a million people. A spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition, which is organising various marches, pointed out the irony of a ban because of safety concerns: "You have to ask about the health and safety of thousands of people in Baghdad when 800 cruise missiles are targeted at them."...." From today's Independent (external link)

Feb 2 ~" I am a democrat" says Robin Cook

Are true Labourites about to stand up and be counted? See Telegraph today on Robin Cook's assertion that the principle of electing a proportion of Lords was "non-negotiable"
".....In what appeared to be an attack on Mr Blair's reputation for cronyism, Mr Cook said: "If we exclude the public from the process of selection, we should not be surprised if the public is then cynical about who is appointed."
The speech, delivered at Imperial College, London, led Cabinet colleagues and other ministers to predict that Mr Cook will shortly either resign or be sacked.
"It is getting very difficult to see how Robin can possibly stay in that job if Tuesday's vote goes against him. He would ultimately be responsible for seeing through legislation he clearly opposes," said one minister.
Challenged yesterday over what he would do if MPs come out in favour of an all-appointed chamber, the Leader of the House would only say: "I am a democrat."...."

Feb 2 ~ Content with ignoring the church, Bush has also decided to play with dynamite by ignoring some of America's top military minds.

An article in the interesting "Counterpunch" site ".....One of them is retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the military commander of Desert Storm. He told The Washington Post that he has yet to be fully convinced that war with Iraq is necessary. Schwarzkopf's comments mirror those of other retired top generals, including Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, John Shalikashvili, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph Hoar, and Merrill McPeak. Pentagon sources report that the obviously mentally ill Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire some members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff for not supporting the war against Iraq. These included former Marine Corps Commandant and now NATO commander General James Jones and Army Chief of Staff General Erik Shinseki. Another recipient of Rumsfeld's wrath is the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command General Charles Holland who Rumsfeld accused of having a "case of the slows" in carrying out Bush's war plans.
Pentagon sources report that morale among senior military commanders is at an all time low. Rumsfeld rubbed salt into open wounds when he ordered his "CINCs" (Commander-in-Chief) to drop that title, declaring that there is only one "commander-in-chief" and that is Bush. ....."

Feb 2 ~ "America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades - not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water..."

Fascinating article by the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, Stephen C. Pelletiere . Friday's New York Times "....In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.
We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.
Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.
Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades - not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water.

Feb 1 ~ "..Typically, Mr Blair uses words that pretend the issue has not already been decided,

and then tries to tilt the debate in favour of the conclusion to which he has, in truth, already committed his premiership and his nation." See today's Independent (external link) " He made it clear some time ago that, if the US went to war in Iraq, Britain would fight alongside.
His gamble is that he will win British public opinion round, but his dishonesty is in pretending that the outcome could be altered by a vote in either the House of Commons or the UN Security Council. Of course, he would prefer to have those votes behind him, but Britain is locked into conflict anyway if George Bush decides upon it..."

Feb 1 ~ We are talking about the death of community performance.

WMN today reminds us of the extraordinarily interfering new bill - the new Licensing Bill - which may become law as early as next year. It will force pubs, community centres, village and school halls to pay for licences to stage any musical event at which there is an entrance fee - even for charity. See article (external link): The (external) link below gives some idea of what could happen (and appears to already be happening in some places). On the day the Bill was published, the Arts Council received a legal opinion from one of the UK's leading licensing lawyers confirming that corporate hospitality events where performers are paid were licensable under the Bill as published. This contradicted the government's own statement published in the Explanatory Notes that accompany the Bill. http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/fizgig-tom/law.htm

Archive from January 2003

Press f5 SEVERAL TIMES on all main pages for latest version of warmwell

Democracy Watch ~ Stories from the Press ~ warmwell.com

See also: http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/links/links.html for articles monitoring the State and Civil Liberties in the UK and in Europe

"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust." --Demosthenes

Don't trust computers with e-votes, warns expert
Guardian

Stuart Millar, technology correspondent Thursday October 17, 2002 The Guardian
A world experts in electronic voting will today warn the government that trusting computers with the democratic process is a recipe for fraud and error. Rebecca Mercuri is assistant professor of computer science at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, who has given evidence to the US Congress. She is meeting the Cabinet Office in London today, and will urge reconsideration of alternatives to crosses on ballot papers, such as internet and text-message voting, because their results cannot be guaranteed to be secure and accurate.
She told the Guardian yesterday: "E-voting systems actually provide less accountability, poorer reliability and greater opportunity for fraud than traditional methods.
"People assume that electronic voting is just the same as other technologies we use in everyday life, like banking or airline ticketing, but there are crucial differences.
"With all these other systems there is a physical data trail, bits of paper that allow us to check that the transactions are accurate. E-voting offers none of these safeguards." ...more
Oct 17 02

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/10/14/npupil14.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/10/14/ixport.html

Pupils urged to inform on problem parents
Telegraph


By Helen Hague
(Filed: 14/10/2002)

Pupils as young as 13 are being encouraged to disclose sensitive information about their parents to the Government to help discover why they might be failing at school.

Details of problems such as drink and drug abuse, depression, eating disorders and frequent domestic rows would be sought by advisers.

The data, gathered without the consent of parents by the Connexions Service, which supplies careers and personal advisers to schools, could be shared with a number of government departments, the police and health authorities.

The methods used to collect this data, its storage and future use, is worrying child mental health experts, lawyers and privacy campaigners.

Information is gathered by Connexion staff under orders from the Department for Education and Skills to compile profiles on 13- to 19-year-olds and identify problems over academic performance.

Documents seen by The Daily Telegraph say issues to explore include "evidence of suicidal thoughts", "issues around food/weight", "evidence of substance use by parent(s)/carers" and "evidence of living in a criminal environment".

Some of the 3,000 advisers in schools, colleges and one-stop advice shops have a background in youth work. Others are trained to NVQ level four, equivalent to the first year at university. To gain a diploma, they attend the equivalent of 17 days' training.

Helen Rimington, a member of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Act Tribunal, said: "There are areas here where trained doctors, psychiatrists, educational psychologists and counsellors would tread very carefully."

Terri Dowty, from Action for the Rights of Children, said: "The equivalent of about three weeks' training can't possibly equip anyone to provide the level of containment necessary in such situations. It has frightening overtones of totalitarian regimes."

A DES spokesman said all 13- to 19-year olds had access to an adviser. Parental profiles could help advisers to identify the need for intervention from other agencies.

 
 
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/opinion.cfm?id=1139852002
 
Tue 15 Oct 2002

Now they want children to spy on their parents
Scotsman

Allan Massie

THERE are various versions of the proverb "the way to Hell is paved with good intentions". Among them I like Ruskin?s "you can?t pave the bottomless pit; but you may the road to it". It?s a harsh saying, but a true one. A good example has been offered this week.

The authorities are rightly concerned that some children do less well than they might at school. It occurs to someone that this might, in part anyway, be due to troubles at home. We can all accept that this may be the case. So what next? What do the bright sparks come up with?

Easy: they encourage children to disclose sensitive information about their parents. It is gathered by something called the Connexions Service, which supplies careers advisers and personal advisers to schools in England and Wales, and the information provided may be shared with a number of government departments, the police and health authorities.

Apparently the new Department for Education and Skills has asked the Connexions Service to compile profiles on 13-19-year-olds and identify problems over academic performance. The agency?s staff are invited to look for such things as "evidence of suicidal thoughts", "issues around food/weight", "evidence of living in a criminal environment".

It?s all, as you can see, terribly well-intentioned; who can be against helping the kids to sort out their problems? A pity that the road taken leads straight to Hell, down into the bottomless pit.

One of the characteristics of dictatorial regimes has long been the use of children to inform on or denounce their parents. It happened in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, especially during the Stalinist years, and we, in the liberal democracies, rightly found the practice deplorable, disgusting, horrible.

But it goes further back, to Revolutionary France at least. A very good new book, The Lost King of France, by Deborah Cadbury, tells how the little Dauphin, otherwise Louis XVII, a child prisoner in the Temple, was brought to sign a declaration presented at the trial of his mother, Marie-Antoinette, in which he affirmed that he had been taught "pernicious habits of self-abuse by his mother and aunt, and that they took pleasure in watching him perform these practices ... and that very often this took place when the women made him sleep between them".

Perhaps this is just the sort of thing the Connexions Service will be looking for - even hoping for. It sounds like it. After all, to justify its employment by the Department of Education and Skills, it must persuade as many children as possible to offer evidence of their parents? incapability or vice. Any child who then subsequently suffered from guilt on account of having denounced his mother and father would, we may presume, be ready for other and still more intensive counselling from experts, some of whom, it is reported, have received as much as 17 days? training.

Only people with the very best intentions and a high sense of their own virtue could authorise this sort of thing, and not see how iniquitous it is. So far as I know, this policy of encouraging children to inform on their parents is restricted to England and Wales. One would like to be assured that a variant of it will not be adopted here in Scotland.

Meanwhile it is further evidence of how the state sees the family as its enemy, and prey.
 

Politicians waffle as EU onslaught continues
Sunday Telegraph

....... Friday morning's Today programme offered yet another example of how, as the EU makes its final moves towards full political integration, Britain's politicians and media seem to inhabit a different planet from everyone else in Europe. Our Minister for Europe, Peter Hain, yet again praised his boss, Jack Straw, for coming up with the brilliantly novel idea that the EU should have its own constitution, without pointing out that this is precisely what the 105 delegates to the EU's "constitutional convention" in Brussels have been discussing since March.
Michael Ancram, the Tory spokesman, then came on to rehearse his weary plea that the EU must become "more flexible", giving more power to its member states, without pointing out that this is so far from anything that anyone other than Britain's Tories have in mind that it is like a man confronted by an elephant plaintively wishing it was a sheep. John Humphrys sat pettishly in the middle, allowing them both to get away with this twaddle.
So far removed from the reality of what is going on in Brussels were these "Little Englanders" that once again one is left utterly baffled. Do they actually hope to fool us with this vacuous wishful thinking? Or can it be possible that they really have so little grasp of what is happening in front of their noses that they genuinely know no better?....more
Oct 13 02

SHAYLERGATE: British Press Gagged on Reporting MI6's £100,000 bin Laden Payoff By Paul Joseph Watson
From: http://www.propagandamatrix.com/shayler_gate.html

Tony Blair has tonight ordered a D-Notice on British media reporting government officials signing court gag orders. This regards the case of former MI5 officer David Shayler, who has evidence to prove MI6 gave £100,000 to bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, arms to Iraq and had prior knowledge of several terrorist attacks on London in the 1990's.
The original articles stated that top Labour MP's had signed gag orders, whereby upon mention of this evidence in court, media have to immediately leave the trial. Newspapers all over the country, including the Guardian, the London Evening Standard and the Scotsman have either completely removed or amended their articles. This evidence is damning. The British government is trying to bury the story before it buries them. ....
Here it is in Shayler's own words plus the actual MI6 Gaddafi plot document - MI6 Plot to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi: Police enquiry confirms Plot is not "fantasy" - http://cryptome.org/shayler-gaddafi.htm ......
The Scotsman also released a report which remains online but both the title and the article have been amended!!! The new article talks about new MI5 head Eliza Manningham-Buller, only mentio'ning the Shayler case in passing. It certainly does not include information concerning the Labour MPs involved and government prior knowledge of terrorist bombings in London.
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=1113312002 is the amended version - I archived the original at http://www.propagandam'atrix.com/renegade'_mi5_agent_to_face_jury.htm. The report was originally entitled Renegade MI5 agent ready to face jury it is now called Has MI5 really emerged from shadows? This is the report with the most damning information (the one they erased).
Here is the full text of the original Scotsman article.
*************

Renegade MI5 agent ready to face jury

KAREN MCVEIGH
DAVID Shayler, the former M15 officer branded a traitor by the government, is due to take on the legal establishment today, as his trial opens at the Old Bailey in London.
The renegade agent, who faces six years imprisonment for breaching the Official Secrets Act after making a number of sensational revelations about M15 to a national newspaper in 1997, will represent himself for part of the landmark case. The trial will centre around a number of allegations made by Shayler about M15 holding files on prominent politicians, including former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary. He also claimed the secret services ignored warnings that might have prevented bombings in the London in 1993 and 1994.
Shayler, 36, faces two charges under section one of the Official Secrets Act for disclosing documents and information about the work of M15 and another under section four, for disclosing information about telephone taps.
He has failed so far to win his argument that his revelations were in the public interest. The High Court, Court of Appeal and the House of Lords, have all ruled that he cannot claim he disclosed information in the public interest or out of necessity. They also ruled out the main plank of Shaylers defence - that the Officials Secrets Act is incompatible with the Human Rights Act.
Shayler, who made other allegations for which he was not charged, including a claim that M16 was involved in a plot to assassinate the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, will argue that he is only guilty of "exposing wrongdoing".
"I aim to persist in my argument that the Official Secrets Act as it currently stands is totally incompatible with the Human Rights Act," he told a newspaper yesterday.
Some of the hearing is expected to be taken up by an application by newspapers objecting to plans to hold parts of the trial in secret.
The prosecution applied for hearings to be held in camera after its concerns that Shayler will make fresh allegations to the jury to back up his public interest defence.
Shaylers decision to defend himself, against the advice of his legal team, for part of the trial was prompted by the belief that he will be freer to argue his case than his barrister, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, whose hands are tied by earlier court rulings.
***************
Even local papers such as the Leicestershire Mail and the Derby Even''ing Telegraph have removed the story from their websites! The original stories were here and here respectively. They were entiled SHAYLER AT OLD BAILEY FOR TRIAL' and 'SHAYLER ARRIVES FOR TRIAL.' As you can see by clicking the links, they are gone. As is a London Independent article that was entitled 'MI5 faces accountability test as new chief takes reins.'
***************
UPDATE: It is now confirmed that all details relating to the Shayler case cannot be reported. The UK government have successfully gagged the cowardly pathetic mainstream media, but I will continue to track this story.
The Guardian reports - 'Shayler hearing'
'An Old Bailey court yesterday heard legal arguments relating to the trial of David Shayler, the former MI5 officer charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. The judge ruled that they cannot be reported. Mr Shayler's trial is now expected to be heard before a jury next week.' - Richard Norton-Taylor
Read this tiny blurb at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,806640,00.html (until they remove that too)

Labour website spin 'like Orwell's 1984'
Guardian

Professors accuse Labour of creating a 'social statistical utopia' David Walker
Tuesday October 8, 2002 The Guardian
The Labour party has "systematically manipulated" data on its website to show improvements in health, schooling and other services, according to an unpublished study. Starting in the run-up to last year's election and continuing since, Labour has guided the public to misleading statistics for crime and unemployment as well as spending on schools and hospitals.
Figures have been "mangled" to give a better impression of Labour's performance at the local level.
In a research paper circulating among academics, after being presented at a recent Political Studies Association conference, four distinguished geographers take apart the website's figures for local areas. Led by professors Danny Dorling of Leeds University and Ron Johnston of Bristol University, the team argue that Labour has consistently adjusted and manipulated data without acknowledging it. ...(See more)

Inspection as invasion
Guardian

The US has been seeking to prevent a resolution of the Iraq crisis for the past eight years
George MonbiotTuesday October 8, 2002The Guardian
There is little that those of us who oppose the coming war with Iraq can now do to prevent it. George Bush has staked his credibility on the project; he has mid-term elections to consider, oil supplies to secure and a flagging war on terror to revive. Our voices are as little heeded in the White House as the singing of the birds.
Our role is now, perhaps, confined to the modest but necessary task of demonstrating the withdrawal of our consent, while seeking to undermine the moral confidence which could turn the attack on Iraq into a war against all those states perceived to offend US strategic interests. No task is more urgent than to expose the two astonishing lies contained in George Bush's radio address on Saturday, namely that "the United States does not desire military conflict, because we know the awful nature of war" and "we hope that Iraq complies with the world's demands". Mr Bush appears to have done everything in his power to prevent Iraq from complying with the world's demands, while ensuring that military conflict becomes inevitable.
On July 4 this year, Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, began negotiating with Iraq over the return of UN weapons inspectors. Iraq had resisted UN inspections for three and a half years, but now it felt the screw turning, and appeared to be on the point of capitulation. On July 5, the Pentagon leaked its war plan to the New York Times. The US, a Pentagon official revealed, was preparing "a major air campaign and land invasion" to "topple President Saddam Hussein". The talks immediately collapsed.
Ten days ago, they were about to resume. Hans Blix, the head of the UN inspections body, was due to meet Iraqi officials in Vienna, to discuss the practicalities of re-entering the country. The US airforce launched bombing raids on Basra, in southern Iraq, destroying a radar system. As the Russian government pointed out, the attack could scarcely have been better designed to scupper the talks. But this time the Iraqis, mindful of the consequences of excluding the inspectors, kept talking. Last Tuesday, they agreed to let the UN back in. The State Department immediately announced, with more candour than elegance, that it would "go into thwart mode".
It wasn't bluffing. The following day, it leaked the draft resolution on inspections it was placing before the UN Security Council. This resembles nothing so much as a plan for unopposed invasion. The decisions about which sites should be "inspected" would no longer be made by the UN alone, but also by "any permanent member of the security council", such as the United States. The people inspecting these sites could also be chosen by the US, and they would enjoy "unrestricted rights of entry into and out of Iraq" and "the right to free, unrestricted and immediate movement" within Iraq, "including unrestricted access to presidential sites". They would be permitted to establish "regional bases and operating bases throughout Iraq", where they would be "accompanied... by sufficient US security forces to protect them". They would have the right to declare exclusion zones, no-fly zones and "ground and air transit corridors". They would be allowed to fly and land as many planes, helicopters and surveillance drones in Iraq as they want, to set up "encrypted communication" networks and to seize "any equipment" they choose to lay hands on. The resolution, in other words, could not have failed to remind Iraq of the alleged infiltration of the UN team in 1996. Both the Iraqi government and the former inspector Scott Ritter maintain that the weapons inspectors were joined that year by CIA covert operations specialists, who used the UN's special access to collect information and encourage the republican guard to launch a coup. On Thursday, Britain and the United States instructed the weapons inspectors not to enter Iraq until the new resolution has been adopted. As Milan Rai's new book War Plan Iraq documents, the US has been undermining disarmament for years. The UN's principal means of persuasion was paragraph 22 of the security council's resolution 687, which promised that economic sanctions would be lifted once Iraq ceased to possess weapons of mass destruction. But in April 1994, Warren Christopher, the US secretary of state, unilaterally withdrew this promise, removing Iraq's main incentive to comply. Three years later his successor, Madeleine Albright, insisted that sanctions would not be lifted while Saddam remained in power. The US government maintains that Saddam Hussein expelled the UN inspectors from Iraq in 1998, but this is not true. On October 30 1998, the US rejected a new UN proposal by again refusing to lift the oil embargo if Iraq disarmed. On the following day, the Iraqi government announced that it would cease to cooperate with the inspectors. In fact it permitted them to continue working, and over the next six weeks they completed around 300 operations. On December 14, Richard Butler, the head of the inspection team, published a curiously contradictory report. The body of the report recorded that over the past month "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation", but his well-publicised conclusion was that "no progress" had been made. Russia and China accused Butler of bias. On December 15, the US ambassador to the UN warned him that his team should leave Iraq for its own safety. Butler pulled out, and on the following day the US started bombing Iraq.
From that point on, Saddam Hussein refused to allow UN inspectors to return. At the end of last year, Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, proposed a means of resolving the crisis. His organisation had not been involved in the messy business of 1998, so he offered to send in his own inspectors, and complete the job the UN had almost finished. The US responded by demanding Bustani's dismissal. The other member states agreed to depose him only after the United States threatened to destroy the organisation if he stayed. Now Hans Blix, the head of the new UN inspectorate, may also be feeling the heat. On Tuesday he insisted that he would take his orders only from the security council. On Thursday, after an hour-long meeting with US officials, he agreed with the Americans that there should be no inspections until a new resolution had been approved.
For the past eight years the US, with Britain's help, appears to have been seeking to prevent a resolution of the crisis in Iraq. It is almost as if Iraq has been kept on ice, as a necessary enemy to be warmed up whenever the occasion demands. Today, as the economy slides and Bin Laden's latest mocking message suggests that the war on terrorism has so far failed, an enemy which can be located and bombed is more necessary than ever. A just war can be pursued only when all peaceful means have been exhausted. In this case, the peaceful means have been averted.
Oct 8 02

Teenagers 'used to introduce ID cards by stealth'
Telegraph

By Helen Hague and Philip Johnston (Filed: 04/10/2002)
Children's campaigners have accused the Government of using teenagers to introduce a national identity card by stealth.
The Connexions Card - a "smart" card that carries personal data - is being offered to more than two million 16- to 19-year-olds. More than 175,000 have already been issued. The project, described as the largest in Europe, is being run on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills by Capita, the company behind the new Criminal Records Bureau, which has recently been criticised over delays in recruiting teachers.
Teenagers are not required to possess the cards, although they may be obliged to if their school or college uses them to record attendance. They are also encouraged to apply by the prospect of rewards. Holders accumulate points for good work or attendance that can be exchanged for trainers, CDs or days out. Since it displays the date of birth and a photograph, it is also being championed by the Government as a proof of age card. The card has been introduced gradually across the country over the past few months and a high profile national advertising campaign is planned for December.
However, while the Government says the scheme is both benign and voluntary, it is causing alarm among some campaigners.
Terri Dowty, from Action for the Rights of Children, said: "We are concerned that the Government is playing a long game and using the Connexions Card as a means of introducing an identity card by stealth. There would have been fierce objections to the introduction of such a card for adults."
She added: "We are extremely worried by the agenda underlying the Connexions service. The extent of the information being sought from young people and then made available to every conceivable government agency is horrifying."
One of the aims of the Connexions project is to "track" every young person, and ensure their visibility to government agencies.
Three thousand retailers - including Playstation, Panasonic and the British School of Motoring - offer rewards through the Connexions Card website. The department has set aside £100 million to put 2.4 million cards into circulation.
To boost the take-up, the card issuers have offered colleges £1 for each student record they supply - including name, address, date of birth, special educational needs, student enrolment number and digital photograph.
Sue Sampson, a smallholder in Herefordshire, was perturbed to discover that her 16-year-old son John had been signed up for a Connexions Card at school. "It smacks of an embryonic national identity card, softening up young people to release personal data by offering trendy consumer goods," she said.
"With such inducements, teenagers are more likely to get a card without thinking through the implications of releasing personal data," Mrs Sampson added.
"I'm very concerned about the Government's obsession with gathering personal information, and that big business will get hold of spending patterns to target young people. It is an opt-out rather than an opt-in system."
John has since cancelled his card.
A Capita spokesman said: "It is an entirely permission-based initiative - no young person has to have a card. Data on cardholders is not passed on to third parties and the data in the system is protected by extremely rigorous processes that ensure it cannot be abused."
Oct 4 02

The Prince is right
Spectator

Simon Heffer
.......The other day I was having lunch with a senior minister, and we got on to the fiasco of last year's foot-and-mouth crisis. Without blinking, he said it was the fault of the Civil Service. The old doctrine that ministers take ultimate responsibility for what goes on in their departments has been blown out of the water. Where he had a point, of course, is that the calibre of those in the Civil Service is not remotely what it was 20 years ago. There is a stark difference in tone now between mandarins in their late fifties, who joined the Civil Service in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and those a generation younger who have entered in the last ten years. The former include a high proportion of classically educated ex-public-school and Oxbridge types, themselves not from the old governing class, but shrewd enough to have imbibed certain aspects of it. The latter have been deliberately recruited from very different backgrounds, to make the Civil Service more "representative". It is not that they are not as clever as their predecessors, but that many of them have a different agenda. They are often highly politicised; they lack, for that reason, all the attention to detail that the truly objective tend to bring to their work. However, to blame them for the failures of the government is absurd. Last week's debacle at the Department for Education and Skills shows that for every spavined senior public servant there is always at least one completely incompetent minister. Executive abilities are almost entirely absent from the Cabinet, which is why it relies so heavily on the Civil Service; and if the Civil Service is declining in ability and morale at the same time, largely as the result of government policy, the outcome is sure to be ghastly. You would think that a generation of politicians so short on talent would welcome help from whichever quarter it comes, even if it is from a rich landowner like the Prince of Wales. However, the almost oriental desire that this new governing class has to save its own face in the aftermath of its own acts of incompetence prevents it ever from acknowledging such assistance. There will be no encouragement to the old governing class to bring their skills of disinterest, and their often extensive experience of what Lord Falconer has called "ordinary people", to bear on the problems of today. Their charitable role of old has been supplanted by the state; their political role by many utterly unsuited to it. And yet, ironically, when "ordinary people" cry out for a failed minister like Estelle Morris to "do the decent thing" after presiding over some catastrophe or other, they are still expecting very unaristocratic politicians to behave in an instinctively aristocratic way when they make a mistake. It shows a touchingly traditional, if now tragically anachronistic, interpretation of human nature
Oct 3 02

http://www.freedominfo.org/case/eustudy.htm
 
THE EUROPEAN UNION
Secrecy and openness in the European Union
the ongoing struggle for freedom of information
by Tony Bunyan,
Statewatch
Posted October 1, 2002
Summary
This project looks at the struggle for openness and freedom of information in the European Union over the past decade. It starts with the Code of access to EU documents introduced in December 1993 [Chapter 1] and the first challenges in the courts [Chapters 2 and 4] and to the European Ombudsman [Chapter 3]. Despite their public commitment to openness, EU institutions - especially the Council of the European Union (the 15 EU governments) and the European Commission wanted to control which documents were released and which were not.

At the heart of the issue was whether citizens could have access to the documents in the policy-making process before the final decision was adopted. Governments and the Commission wanted to keep under wraps all documents until a new policy was in place - except for selective leaks to "friendly" media outlets.

Civil society groups - journalists, researchers, academics and voluntary groups - argued that a democratic EU had to be based on true openness, that is, full freedom of information. Only then could all sections of society take a view on proposals and put forward their views. Around a number of successful court cases and complaints lodged with the European Ombudsman against the Council a civil society network came into being - journalists, academics and researchers.

When the Amsterdam Treaty was agreed in June 1997 the right of access to documents was written in to Article 255 [Chapter 5]. But we knew from experience that the "Dinosaurs" (as Mr Soderman, the European Ombudsman called them) backing secrecy would try and use a new treaty-based measure to set the clock back.

Our fears were compounded when the European Commission who were responsible for drafting the initial proposal failed to publish a "Green Paper" (to launch a public discussion) as is the normal practice - though Statewatch was leaked, and published, two unpublished drafts. When the Commission proposal for a new Regulation appeared in January 2000 it reflected the in-built secrecy of their existing practice.

As if things were not bad enough, just as all the Brussels institutions went on their summer vacation Mr Solana, the Secretary-General of the Council steamrollered through major changes to the existing code to meet NATO demands for secrecy - by written procedure, the least democratic policy-making instrument available to the EU [Chapter 6].

When the European Parliament finally got down to discussing the Commission's proposal in the autumn of 2000 their first reading report was by common consensus a "mess" and the first drafts of the Council's position was no better. At the turn of the year there were three quite different drafts on the table from the three Brussels institutions. None of these positions met the standard that the new Regulation should build on the existing code, including all the improvements brought about by civil society challenges in the courts and to the Ombudsman, and truly "enshrine" the right of access to documents in EU law as the Amsterdam Treaty promised[Chapter 7].

Instead of sorting out these differences in public, the institutions set up a series of secret "trilogue" meetings which made slow progress. So in February 2001 the civil society network called a meeting in Brussels with the three institutions in the European Parliament and told them that none of the drafts were acceptable and that the Commission should be asked to come up with a new draft proposal.

The "trilogue" meetings were a public relations disaster for the institutions as most of the discussions were leaked to Statewatch. The Presidency of the Council lost patience in April and cobbled together a typical Brussels "compromise" in which the politicians and bureaucrats effectively closed ranks and said that "this was the best that could be achieved". With the support of three of the main parties in the European Parliament this "compromise" was then adopted.

In the end, after a four year struggle in which civil society coalition won all the arguments, some of these were reflected in the new Regulation but many were not.

It has now been in force since December 2001 and new battlegrounds have emerged [Chapter 8]. The current state of play is that more information is now available, especially from the Council of the European Union. But even here there are glaring holes - thousands of documents circulated to meetings are not on their public register of documents and many are only released after people appeal the decision not to release the text of a document. Whether the new regulation has clawed back what the EU rigorously defends as the "space to think" - and what we argue is in reality the "space to act" away from public scrutiny - remains to be seen.

Since June 2002 the European Parliament and the European Commission have been obliged to make available public registers too under the new Regulation. Three months on the European Commission register is nowhere near meeting the requirements in the Regulation and only time will tell if it has any intention of opening up the most secretive of the EU institutions.

This project reflects our belief that:

"Democracy and democratic standards are not static, they are ever changing. While governments and ministers may, or may not, be open and transparent democracy cannot rely on them. Rather it is sustained by lively parliaments and an ever vigilant and critical civil society.

The fight for openness, freedom of information, and against secrecy in the EU is a small, but indispensable contribution to the maintenance of democratic standards"

Tony Bunyan
Statewatch
September 2002

Straw: Britain does not need UN approval
The Scotsman

Fraser Nelson Westminster Editor
BRITAIN does not need a fresh United Nations resolution to attack Iraq and is approaching the Security Council for political rather than legal reasons, Jack Straw said yesterday.
The Foreign Secretary said that Saddam Husseins defiance of the 14 UN Security Council resolutions has given Britain "ample power" to take action under international law. He has also said that MPs will be given the chance to vote on Iraq - but not before military action.
In a hawkish performance in front of the foreign affairs committee, Mr Straw lined up with George Bush in making clear that he believes the UN resolution which sanctioned the Gulf War in 1990 remains valid now.
"We do not regard a new resolution as absolutely critical to any circumstances in which military action might take place," he said. "We think it is desirable, not least politically, to have a new resolution. But if you go through the existing resolutions there is ample power there and ample evidence of a material breach." The US has long argued that Saddams failure to surrender its weapons of mass destruction has violated the terms of the ceasefire agreed in 1991. Only the UK agrees with this interpretation.
Britain is this week expected to present a draft resolution for the UN, threatening military action should Saddam impede the task of weapons inspectors. It needs the votes of Russia, China and France, the three other permanent members of the Security Council.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, yesterday met defence ministers of Russia and France in a closed-door NATO forum on Iraq. He said he presented evidence linking Baghdad to al-Qaeda and the 11 September attacks. However, he refused to give any detail of the proof - save that it had been provided by the CIA and is classified.
Tony Blairs Iraq dossier, released on Tuesday, failed to mention al-Qaeda. Igor Ivanov, Russias foreign minister, yesterday said that even the limited information in the dossier represented a "propaganda furore".
Mr Rumsfeld has made clear that he does not see NATO playing any role over Iraq - drawing questions over its future after 11 September.
When asked about NATOs participation against Saddam, Mr Rumsfeld said: "It hasnt crossed my mind - I havent proposed it." The case against war was consolidating in Scotland yesterday as John Swinney, the leader of the SNP, said he was fundamentally opposed to an attack. ....
Sept 26 02

MPS TOLD RULES DON'T ALLOW VOTE ON CONFLICT
WMN

09:00 - 25 September 2002
Father of the Commons, Tam Dalyell, failed yesterday to secure a vote allowing MPs to directly oppose military action against Iraq.
The Labour veteran appealed to Speaker Michael Martin for a vote on a substantive motion declining to back a war unless authorised by the UN Security Council and the Commons. But the move was rejected by Mr Martin, leaving MPs opposed to any possible military action only able to force a vote on a technical motion at the end of yesterday's emergency debate. That motion will be for the adjournment of the House, a device regularly deployed for debate and usually agreed without a vote. Any vote on it will be symbolic of the strength of feelings among the anti-war tendency but would not allow a direct expression of their views.
In a point of order, Mr Dalyell (Linlithgow) said: "There are many Members on all sides of the House who are opposed to military action against Iraq on various grounds. "Many others who represent servicemen and women, who may be called to fight in such a war, have anxieties on behalf of them and their families.
"Will you accept a manuscript motion that this House declines to support a war against Iraq using the Royal Prerogative unless it has been authorised both by the UN Security Council and a motion carried in this House. "Only in this way can Members discharge their responsibilities to their constituents."
Another senior Labour backbencher, Gerald Kaufman (Manchester Gorton), said precedents on Iraq showed that when the House was recalled in September 1990, after Kuwait was annexed, the debate was on an adjournment motion and this had happened on subsequent occasions too.
Turning down Mr Dalyell's call, Mr Martin said: "Our rules do not allow this to happen. "Under standing orders Government business has precedence over other business except in certain defined circumstances. This is not one of those circumstances. "When the House is recalled under standing order No 13 the only business to be debated is that of which the Government has given notice.
"In this case that is the motion for the adjournment of the House."
Labour's Paul Flynn (Newport W) protested: "My constituents will not understand why I cannot vote against following the Bush agenda today."
Sept 25 02

This is not a dossier but an act of desperation
Timessimon jenkins


We still wander in a daze. Democracies rarely stay up all night seeking reasons to go to war. Normally they do the opposite. They talk, negotiate, compromise, take refuge in the United Nations. They do not like fighting, unless driven by an overwhelming logic of events.
Yesterday's government dossier on Iraq reads like a desperate quest for such a logic. Ministers cannot be quaking with fear at the prospect of an imminent assault from President Saddam Hussein. A year ago they claimed that their bombing was "containing" him, stopping him from harming even his own people, let alone his neighbours or British interests. Of course he seeks nasty weapons. Paranoid dictators always do. But nothing in the dossier constitutes evidence of an early threat, let alone a casus belli between Britain and Iraq. What is going on? I am no pacifist sap. I was convinced when past British Governments told me of threats to the British state. One threat was from Soviet Russia, and came complete with target maps, lists of vulnerable cities and an armoury of all-tooeffective weapons of mass destruction. Yet where were Tony Blair and Clare Short and others in the Labour Party? They wanted unilateral nuclear disarmament and claimed that the "threat" was dreamt up by warmongering Americans. They were wrong. Unlike many in the Labour Party, I believed that the Falklands war had to be fought against a palpable assault on British sovereignty. I thought the Gulf War just in that the invasion of Kuwait could only be resisted by main force. I felt the same about domestic terrorism. Mr Blair, supported by Ms Short and others, believed in releasing IRA terrorists from prison on the strength of vague promises of disarmament. This seemed naive and reckless appeasement, and so it has proved. People need no lessons from Mr Blair or Jack Straw in being"tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism". But yesterday's dossier is not serious. Mr Blair told us yet again yesterday what a nasty person Saddam is. We know that. The task of leadership is not to write tabloid front pages but to judge how far a threat to the nation's interest is real and, if so, how the nation should respond proportionately. Neither Mr Blair nor George Bush has yet explained what has suddenly led them to abandon containment of Iraq and to demand Saddam's head on a plate.
I...... For the moment it might seem that America's hands are tied. Yet on the assumption that weapons inspection proves as unsatisfactory as it did before, then war is back in play. On that assumption, America would be vastly reinforced in its view that Saddam is a prima facie threat. Reinforced too would be the demand that he and his arsenals be neutralised and the UN's will enforced.
There is little doubt that a renewed failure of arms inspection would secure a UN Security Council mandate authorising military enforcement of Iraqi disarmament. Whatever strongarm tactics America and Britain might deploy to win that mandate, mandate it would be. America would have done as it was bidden. Opposing American action to enforce the mandate would mean opposing the enforcement of the will of the UN. That in turn would be an intolerable boost not just to Saddam but to global lawlessness. At this point supporters of the UN would have little option. However thin the evidence of an Iraqi nuclear arsenal, however minimal the overt threat to peace, 3appropriate force4 to punish a decade-long and blatant defiance of the UN would be hard to question. The content and security of Third World arsenals is a reasonable concern to Western democracies. The UN might seem humiliated into a forced acquiescence of American aggression against Iraq. That would be better than the UN being humiliated by Saddam. That route, and that route alone, would justify Britain joining a war against Iraq. The route is long and tortuous. It might take months, even years. But the British Government yesterday failed to make a case for any short cut.
Sept 25 02

What the Connexions PAs are asking
arch-ed.org

Connexions Personal Advisers are trained to use something called the 'Personal Assessment Tool' or 'APIR'. This is a kind of questionnaire divided into 18 sections, exploring different areas of a young person's life, with a 'score' allocated for each section. These scores are then filled in on a little circular diagram. The PAs user-instructions for this Tool include 'suggested areas to explore' in each section.
Keep in mind that, unless the young person refuses consent, this information will be stored and shared with social services, health authorities, the police, probation & young offenders' services, LEAs, local authorities, youth services etc. Much of it depends on the subjective judgment of the Personal Adviser, who has to decide what is or isn't 'appropriate' - one of the most useful words in existence for making prejudice sound legitimate.
Generally, the first few sections are relatively predictable and factual: 'participation'; 'achievements'; 'basic skills'; 'key skills', 'aspirations'.
Others such as 'life skills', 'emotional/behavioural development' or 'identity and self-image' begin to feel somewhat intrusive, and allow for more subjective judgments on the part of the PA by suggesting exploration of such things as personal appearance and hygiene; self- confidence; relationships with others; 'intellectual effectiveness';evidence of 'parenting ability' where the young person is a parent - which the PA may well not be.
'Relationships within family and society' then come under scrutiny, with the PA looking out for 'age-appropriate' and 'age-inappropriate' friendships. This is followed by assessment of the likelihood of offending, seeking 'evidence of living in a criminal environment'.
One of the most offensive sections concerns the 'capacity of a young person's parents/carers'. If you are a parent, the PA will be 'exploring' whether you have aspirations for your child; demonstrate approval of education effort/achievement; ensure your child attends school and offer help with any difficulties. Are you ensuring that s/he has a positive self- image, and providing a stable family environment plus the right kind of guidelines and boundaries? Are you a role model? Emotionally supportive? Do you listen, show physical warmth, provide a hygienic, encouraging and stimulating environment, a proper diet...?' If, at this point, an overwhelming sense of failure is about to drive any parent to drink, stop at once! The PA is advised to 'explore' your substance misuse with your child, along with your 'parental strengths and difficulties'. The diploma training material advises PAs that if they 'identify developmental needs in parent/carers that could have an impact on the aspirations and development of the young person. ... then an offer to refer the parents to an appropriate agency or to offer information about the support available might be the way forward.'
As if this isn't bad enough, 'family history and functioning' wants to know all about a young person's parents and siblings. PAs are told to explore 'health experiences of parents'; 'education experiences of parents' and moves on to parents' 'life experiences'. Relationships between siblings - or between ex-spouses - are also fair game, and yet again 'substance misuse' crops up. And whether your household is 'disadvantaged' or poor.
Bearing in mind the right to privacy enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, how is it possibly acceptable that parents can have the intimate details of their personal life discussed between their child and a stranger without their knowledge, consent - or presence? Parents and siblings of a young person are also people who are entitled to their privacy. A young person may have given consent, informed or otherwise, to the storage and sharing of their own personal information, but there is no mention of seeking the consent of anyone else for the sharing of their private life in this fashion.
It is impossible to see how such potentially divisive behaviour provides any 'protection and assistance' to the family as 'the fundamental group of society' identified in the preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, nor how a young person's respect for parents is encouraged by seeing such indifference accorded to their dignity.
After this staggering piece of invasion, a few sections on the local neighbourhood, housing and income follow. The APIR then suggests exploration of a young person's physical health and medical history - including 'sexual history and activity'. Finally, if you thought that serious emotional difficulties such as suicidal thoughts, self-harm and eating disorders were matters for a skilled psychiatrist or therapist, think again. The PA will 'explore' a young person's mental health and experiences in depth. This mental health section is, in our opinion, downright dangerous. Several of the 'suggested issues to explore' are ones that counsellors recognise as up to the client to broach, probably over a considerable period of time, with several of them requiring careful containment coupled with swift psychiatric referral.
Included in this shopping list of human distress is 'experience of abuse', an area where inept or intrusive questioning can be a potentially devastating experience for a young person who has already endured the worst kinds of intrusion. Human beings build their defences against emotional pain for good reason, and to start tinkering with these is to risk triggering the very behaviour that is being investigated. Having been 'explored' during a session with a PA, how is the young person meant to go home afterwards and carry on with life? Does the PA have the skills to put the worms back in the can, having ill-advisedly prised the lid off in the first place?
PAs receive training that amounts to one evening per week for a year; the most basic 'counselling skills' course at a reputable organisation takes twice as long - and does not in any way amount to a working qualification in counselling, far less in psychotherapy or psychiatry.
A PA may be genuinely well-meaning and concerned for the welfare of young people; s/he might come from a background in educational or youth work, and may have read the Connexions prescribed books on cognitive behavioural psychology, but none of those factors provides anything approaching the expertise - or personal insight - necessary to contain the emotional turmoil of a vulnerable young person on the edge. The entire APIR document (a 3Mb pdf file requiring Adobe Acrobat) can be downloaded from the government Connexions website.
Sept 19 02

Why everybody who believes in liberty should march
Telegraph

By Stephen Robinson (Filed: 19/09/2002)
This week I have been ringing some of the foot soldiers who toil within what might loosely be called the "freedom community" to see how many of them will be attending the Liberty and Livelihood March on Sunday.
John Wadham, head of the campaigning group Liberty, has been a good friend to The Telegraph's Free Country campaign since its launch last summer. His instincts are of the Left, though he is a scrupulously open-minded lawyer who has recently taken on the case, pro bono, of the metric martyrs as their judicial marathon heads to Strasbourg. But Mr Wadham and his colleagues will not be marching in defence of liberty or livelihood, and seemed rather surprised by the suggestion that they might.
There is a similar lack of urgency over at the offices of Charter 88, whose founding principles exhort the faithful to take action to protect "such civil liberties as the right to peaceful assembly, to freedom of association". Karen Bartlett, Charter 88's director, said her group saw hunting "as less of a civil liberties issue as a question of cruelty versus utility".
So, no Charter 88 banner will be borne along the streets of London on Sunday, no messages of solidarity will be sent from its east London headquarters to the farmers and stable hands who have travelled to the capital from all over the country. "A lot of our members feel very strongly we should not form an alliance with pro-hunting groups," Ms Bartlett explains.
I have never attended a hunt, partly because as a townie I suspect I would feel out of place there, but also because I believe, if I am to be honest, there to be something distasteful about the ritual killing of an animal. I say distasteful because I do not think hunting is specifically cruel if you consider how quickly the hounds dispatch the fox, and if you bear in mind the alternative methods of eliminating a rural pest. And I certainly do not think it should be banned.
I apply a similar, though not very logical, distinction to shooting. When I lived in America, I would enjoy an occasional trip to the southern states to shoot, rather inexpertly, at duck. There is something invigorating about rising before dawn, setting off across the bayou, and blasting away at the wild duck as they fly across your field of fire. Then there's the fun of the communal cleaning and de-feathering of the birds before breakfast, always accompanied by several comradely nips of Jack Daniel's.
As much as I enjoyed this sort of shooting (or hunting as it is known in America), I detest the idea of the ritualised, driven shoots popular in this country. Standing in a line of men who have paid a fortune to shoot hand-reared birds has no appeal to me, and nor does all the nonsense about how you are supposed to hold your shotgun. But that does not mean I think this sort of shooting should be banned or that I think less of those who enjoy it.
I find it distasteful (as well as embarrassing and faintly menacing) when an eastern European woman thrusts her baby at me on a Tube train and asks for money. But it seems to me she has a right to do so or, at least, even if some public transport bylaw technically prohibits her behaviour, she should not be locked up for trying to feed her child.
All manner of human activity is distasteful to some. A diner in a restaurant might resent someone smoking nearby; a Muslim might abhor the sight of bare female flesh; judging by the postbag, many readers of this newspaper deplore the idea of homosexual sex. The only proper and well-mannered response to each of these aesthetic or moral challenges is tolerance. This does not imply approval of the action. Indeed, the word tolerance actually suggests a certain disapproval - that is, I will have to live with what you are doing, even as I believe what you are doing is wrong.
If a cable television entrepreneur proposed that bull fighting be transplanted from Spain to a purpose-built arena in Milton Keynes, I would oppose it not just on the grounds that it would make a horrible and incongruous spectacle, but also because it is culturally alien to us. How could you explain the occasion to an eight-year-old? Bull fighting has earned none of the historical and cultural protection that should now be afforded foxhunting, which is shielded not just by its own history and rural custom, but by our common law tradition.
The indifference of the guardians of our civil liberties to the plight of those whose families have hunted for generations is disappointing, though perhaps not surprising. Defence of civil liberties and individual freedom are generally regarded in Britain as metropolitan, Left-wing preserves.
In America, the issue of gun control alerts conservative, rural Americans to the importance of the Constitution. Travel across the heartland and nine out of 10 people will be able to recite the Second Amendment enshrining "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". We have no equivalent of that protection or that culture - one reason why, after Dunblane, the Conservative government could abruptly remove the right of law-abiding pistol shooters to own their weapons.
Because his members are so overwhelmingly of the Left, John Wadham at Liberty will not speak up clearly on behalf of foxhunting, but he is certainly troubled by what he calls "the general trend to criminalise activities without good reason". Mr Wadham favours a new Bill of Rights with a clause specifically granting "freedom of action" taking account of tradition, and barring the creation of new criminal offences unless they be demonstrably necessary in defence of a democratic society.
When I pressed Ms Bartlett of Charter 88 about her blindness to the illiberalism of a hunting ban, she told me that readers of this paper did not care very much about the rights of homosexuals or asylum seekers. This annoyed me, first, because it is a cop-out on her part, and, secondly, because on the whole she is right.
I am not suggesting that marchers on Sunday should carry banners demanding a fair deal for gay Kurdish asylum seekers. But it would be excellent if there were a general recognition on the streets of London that freedom cuts both ways, and is too important to be obscured by something as trivial as political prejudice.
Sept 19 02

Big Brother
Guardian

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Private lives
The information revolution has brought us many benefits, which include the means to more efficient prevention and detection of crime. But this comes with dangers and one is the erosion of our privacy
John Wadham Saturday September 14, 2002
The Guardian
Your private life on show to civil servants? More bureaucrats, local and national, having access to your personal information - through data-sharing and data-matching bet- ween government databases, through access to your telephone and email data, through the national database that will lie behind a "smart" identity card. Your health records on tap to researchers by ministerial order - your doctor can't say no. Local authorities, even health trusts, able to put you under covert surveillance.
This, as Guardian readers will recognise, is not a Hollywood vision of 2054 but the UK, as the Government envisages it in the next couple of years. The data-sharing proposals came out in a Cabinet Office report in April; the first order on health records (under the Health & Social Care Act 2001) was scheduled for parliament in May; the proposed extension of communications data access was in the notorious "snooper's charter" RIPA extension order shelved under public pressure in June, but due back in the autumn. All capped in July by David Blunkett's plans for a compulsory identity card.
One of the problems in the privacy debate in recent months has been the linkage of everything to national security and tackling terrorism. No one is disputing the importance of getting the balance right in these areas - but it is only a valid argument in this context where the proposed extensions in authorities' access to personal data actually relate directly to terrorism (or, at the very least, serious crime).
Almost none of the government's proposals in recent months has anything to do with anti-terrorism - and yet it's still the touchstone to which the Home Office instinctively reaches. Even when it's patently irrelevant, it's a position from which the Home Office will only slowly, sheepishly withdraw. In truth, this repeated appeal to such deep and natural fears has restricted and undermined the broader debate that must be had on the right balance between individual privacy and the necessary functions of the state.
So let's be clear first about the issues of terrorism and national security in this context. The police and intelligence services - the only people who do (and should) - lead the intelligence and investigative fight against terrorism, can already access virtually all your information. Since the beginning of 2002, however, the government's proposals have extended the availability of your information to other bodies, and here the terrorism justification fails utterly. And the only wholly new element, the "entitlement card", as even Mr Blunkett has conceded, is not for tackling terrorism.
Still, with nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear - Mr Blunkett tells us so. Only the guilty need worry. But his approach treats all citizens as suspects. If you've done nothing wrong, you won't - can't - mind who in government knows what about you; so you won't mind which researchers get your medical records, which investigators trawl through your financial records or communications data because they've mismatched your identity with someone with a similar name (more of that later). Even without the proven capacity for error, you might feel uncomfortable with the idea that so many people can find out so much about you for so little obvious reason.
As mentioned above, the government concedes that the proposed entitlement/identity card is not for tackling terrorism. Exactly what the card is for is harder to gauge - in recent months, ministers have claimed it will tackle any number of high-profile problems. The reality is that this vastly-expensive scheme will tackle none of them effectively - identity alone is almost never the issue, whether in relation to targeting terrorists, fraudsters, or illegal workers. That's clear from even a cursory look at the facts. But the card will have a serious impact on every innocent hard-working individual in the country.
The ID card, like the extra snooping powers above, won't make us safer. So what lies behind these initiatives? The obvious answer is that this government doesn't trust us - and wants to hoard as much information on us as possible, so it has as many ways as possible of checking up on us, for virtually any reason it chooses.
And peculiarly, a government that distrusts its citizens seems affronted that its citizens show less than absolute trust in return. How dare we question its need for this information, or its ability and commitment to ensure that information is only used where absolutely necessary, for the best possible purposes, with no possibility of misuse. Government hard-sells us advantages, but rarely acknowledges the drawbacks. True, Tony Blair has noted that the "great potential to make better use of personal information to deliver benefits to individuals and to society... will only be realised if people trust the way that public services handle their personal data". And the Cabinet Office report on data-sharing accepted, importantly, that "the level of public concern about privacy is on the rise". Yet ministers' actions continue to ignore the importance of these words.
They shouldn't - because that public trust isn't there. As the Guardian poll which launched the Big Brother series dramatically showed, most people are willing to give up some privacy if it can be proven to help in the fight against terrorism and crime. But only a small minority actually believes the government can be trusted to keep their personal data secure - and few would be happy to hand public bodies, other than law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the power to access their personal information.
Research accompanying the Cabinet Office data-sharing paper backed up these findings. It found that most people questioned about privacy were concerned about the government's use of personal information, and were not convinced of the virtue of data-matching or of the adequacy of safeguards. Their wide-ranging worries included: errors in data handling; infection with inaccurate data; misidentification; malicious provision of data from anonymous sources; "soft" data (eg professionals' opinions or assessments of individuals); being widely identified as a user of stigmatised public services; and unauthorised access to or disclosure of personal information.
So people are worried and they have plenty of reasons to be. The fact that 65% of records on the Police National Computer are inaccurate is just one example - there are enough documented cases of people failing security checks because their names and addresses were similar to those of convicted criminals.
The appetite for ever more information about all of us - both in government and the commercial world - combined with accelerating developments in technology, has created an urgent need for greater protection for privacy. It's not just email data: we have the highest concentration of CCTV cameras anywhere in the world (and rising); growing use of CCTV facial recognition technology; the ability to track the movements of individuals using the cell network of mobile telephones; the potential to put fingerprints, iris scans and other personal details on an entitlement card's chip; and so on. New technology increasingly threatens any individual's ability to keep their personal information to themselves. New technology can also protect personal information, using free and very robust systems of encryption. But now even encryption keys are subject to seizure by the authorities.
Perhaps ironically, given its bad press, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is the nearest thing we have to a privacy law. Liberty lobbied for its introduction because it does, along with the Data Protection Act, provide controls on the collection, retention and sharing of personal information. But both acts failed to deal with privacy and threats to privacy in a logical or structured way. Consequently, they have been heavily criticised both by those subject to them and those, particularly police officers, who have to use them.
And legal respect and protection for privacy is hopelessly inconsistent. It's a criminal offence to listen in to telephone calls without authorisation - but it's not necessarily a crime to place a listening device in a bedroom without authorisation. Independent checks aren't required before even the most intrusive kinds of surveillance. Telephone taps require the consent of a government minister, listening devices the consent of a commissioner and access to telephone records can be authorised by the police themselves.
The development of computer and communications technologies has changed our lives, in many ways for the better. But this doesn't come without dangers; and now is the time to stop the accelerating disappearance of our right to privacy. Otherwise, in the world of the Whitehall bureaucrat, you may soon be well-known beyond your wildest dreams.
John Wadham is the director of Liberty.
osted Sept 15 02

Blunkett attacks civil liberties lobby
Telegraph

(Filed: 14/09/2002) Home Secretary David Blunkett has attacked critics of surveillance measures taken by the Government after September 11 which give law enforcement and other public bodies greater powers to monitor individuals.
Mr Blunkett accused the civil liberties lobby of "pocketing without so much as a thank you" legislation introduced by Labour on data protection and freedom of information as well as introducing a Human Rights Act. Writing in The Guardian, Mr Blunkett said: "Taken together, all this amounts to more protection for the British citizen against the state than virtually anywhere else in the world.
"I don't resent this, I value it as a citizen. What I occasionally find irritating are self-styled privacy campaigners who denigrate or ignore protections not available to most of our European neighbours."
He said he found it "surprising" that some Labour MPs were "instinctively aggressive about the role of the state and insist on their absolute protection against it". Mr Blunkett's attack on the civil liberties lobby came as he urged Britain's European neighbours to co-operate in the fight against terrorism.
Ahead of his meeting later today with US Attorney General John Ashcroft, Mr Blunkett said that the threat of terrorism did not respect borders. He said Britain would support efforts for judicial co-operation between the European Union and the US. Mr Blunkett, in Copenhagen for the EU's informal Justice and Home Affairs Council, said: "We all know that to combat terrorism we have to tackle the global networks which now threaten all of us, and which transcend national boundaries.
"That is why European and global action is so important. Co-operation to tackle the organised criminal and financial networks as well as the terrorist cells, requires coordination and the use of the most advanced techniques, which are now being used by the terrorist themselves."
Mr Blunkett warned against complacency. "Recent weeks have shown that the threat has not receded, and underlined the need for countries to build on our combined efforts to eliminate terrorism at a global level," he said.
"The threat of terrorism does not respect borders, nor is any individual state immune."
posted Sept 15 02

Blunkett secrecy attack
Guardian

Stuart Millar and Nick Hopkins Saturday September 14, 2002 The Guardian David Blunkett, the home secretary, today launches a scathing attack on critics of the government's post-September 11 surveillance measures which hand law enforcement and other public bodies greater powers to monitor individuals and their private communications.
In an exclusive article for the second issue of the Guardian's Big Brother supplement, published today, Mr Blunkett accuses the "civil liberties lobby" of "pocketing without so much as a thank you" legislation introduced by Labour on data protection and freedom of information as well as the enshrining of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law under the Human Rights Act. "Taken together, all this amounts to more protection for the British citizen against the state than virtually anywhere else in the world," he writes. "I don't resent this, I value it as a citizen. What I occasionally find irritating are self-styled privacy campaigners who denigrate or ignore protections not available to most of our European neighbours."
In another intervention, the director of the national criminal intelligence service claims that highly controversial new snooping and data retention powers do not go far enough and reveals that work to tighten and extend them is already well under way. John Abbott, whose agency has played a key role in lobbying for greater surveillance powers, becomes the first high-ranking law enforcement officer to publicly argue for stronger laws to compel communications service providers to stockpile their customer records for long periods in case they are required by the authorities.
The anti-terror legislation introduced last year in the wake of the US terror attacks established a voluntary scheme, which is the subject of sensitive negotiations between communications companies and the government, but Mr Abbott warns that this would be open to abuse and risked creating internet "safe havens" for criminals.
In a rare interview, he says: "There are problems with a voluntary code. It means criminals can shift from one service provider to another. I hope that it is successful but my concern is that it is not going to be. I would like to see consistency to prevent safe havens. Ultimately we want a global system covering all service providers."
He says there is "great merit" in making service providers retain information about clients for five years and phone companies keeping details for two. Drafts of the voluntary code call for the retention of this material for 12 months. Mr Abbott also calls for an EU-wide data retention regime within five years. "We have to be synchronised [over] uniformity of data retention. It has got to be sooner rather than later."
Last week, a Guardian/ICM poll revealed that voters are broadly supportive of data surveillance measures on the strict condition that they can be proved to increase security. The data includes logs of telephone numbers and email addresses both called and received, websites visited and mobile phone location data capable of pinpointing the users' whereabouts to within a few hundred metres whenever their handset is switched on. But the information commis sioner, the official privacy watchdog, has warned the Home Office that the current surveillance regime may be illegal under human rights law.
Some 60% of voters agree that police and intelligence agencies should have these powers, although only 20% believe they should be extended to public bodies such as local authorities and NHS trusts.
In his article, Mr Blunkett again admits that the row which erupted after the Guardian revealed these proposals in July was "politically embarrassing" for the government, but argues that data retention powers are necessary to fight terrorism and serious crime. He is particularly critical of opponents of his measures from within Labour's own ranks. "I still find it surprising that so many people who consider themselves to be on the left of the political spectrum find themselves instinc tively aggressive about the role of the state and insist on their absolute protection against it."
He says that establishing the proper balance between liberty and security is "more pressing now than at any time since world war two". Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "The UK has taken away more previously existing rights in the last year than any other European country.
"That suggests we are overreacting rather than doing the minimum necessary. The home secretary never does his cause any good by being intemperate and aggressive towards their many reasonable critics."
Sept 15 02

Blair declares war on democracy
Sunday Herald

We may be on the road to war with Iraq, but have we bypassed democracy on the way? By MP and former SNP leader Alex Salmond
WE may be at the end of the beginning of the build-up to war in Iraq. That is my reading of Tony Blair's speech to the TUC, and of President Bush's address to the United Nations General Assembly. In both cases, heavy stress was laid on the importance of the UN in an effort to turn around the growing opposition -- both domestically and internationally -- to a unilateral US/UK strike. But,
significantly, Blair and Bush failed to commit to the necessity for a fresh UN mandate for military action, in the form of a specific Security Council resolution.
significantly, Blair and Bush failed to commit to the necessity for a fresh UN mandate for military action, in the form of a specific Security Council resolution.
Tony Blair is being credited with the PR tactic of stressing UN resolutions as a justification for war, while carefully omitting the need for clear UN authority for military action.
The Prime Minister is thus deliberately fudging the central issue of the need for the kind of incontrovertible UN mandate that governed the Gulf war in 1991. Then, the aims and parameters of the campaign were defined in a UN resolution, which provided the basis for the 35-member coalition that ejected Saddam from Kuwait. This coalition encompassed Western, Muslim and Arab nations. It was because the Gulf war carried UN authority and a strong international consensus that the SNP supported Operation Desert Storm.
different situation now, with the only country giving explicit backing for the US/UK position being the state of Israel -- a country itself guilty of breaking UN resolutions.
This shows what is wrong with the Bush/Blair approach. Would Arab countries, if they were strong enough, be entitled to seize back Palestinian lands by force because Israel was in violation of UN resolutions? Or would Pakistan be entitled to attack India to enforce UN resolutions on Kashmir? Obviously not. But that is exactly the chaos that will reign if other strong countries take upon themselves the authority to unilaterally enforce UN resolutions, an authority that properly belongs to the UN itself.
The point is simple. Action in the name of the UN must be decided by the UN. The need to test the legitimacy of military action is exactly why we need a substantive debate on the Iraq crisis when Westminster reassembles the week after next.
The SNP were the first to write to Tony Blair demanding a parliamentary recall, but we wanted a proper debate resulting in a proper democratic policy for the UK. Instead of that, the only vote likely to take place is on the burning issue of whether the House of Commons should adjourn at 10pm or carry on into the wee sma' hours.
Of course, the reason for this madness is to ensure that all the power remains in the hands of Tony Blair and the executive. But in the recalled debate next week there should be a substantive government motion which is capable of being amended by MPs. In that democratic situation, the SNP and other MPs would propose the need for a UN Security Council resolution governing military action. Parliament would then decide on this basic point of principle.
In the United States, President Bush has promised Congress the final word and a proper policy debate on US action in Iraq -- just as his father carried a motion authorising the use of military force against Iraq in January 1991. There will also be public questioning of administration officials by up to six House of Representatives committees, starting in the middle of this month, in order to determine whether an invasion is justified and would work.
However, democracy American-style is not to be allowed in the House of Commons.
We are at the end of the beginning of war preparations. Let us hope it is not also the beginning of the end for the rule of international law, and for any semblance of democratic procedures at Westminster.
Sept 15 02

A free country
Telegraph

By Stephen Robinson (Filed: 13/09/2002) It could be argued that every person in Britain should be compelled to lodge a sample of his DNA with the ever-expanding national database. It would not be an argument that would find support in this newspaper, but there is no denying the power of DNA evidence in solving some types of crime. Anyone who publicly advances the case for a compulsory database should be listened to, and vigorously argued against.
So far, Parliament has declined to introduce a compulsory database because of fears about the erosion of privacy. Not that this omission has troubled chief constables who, under an amendment to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, have retained all DNA samples taken from suspects who have been interviewed, but not charged, about a crime.
The Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that this was in order on the ground that - as Lord Woolf argued - it "is obvious that the larger the databank of fingerprints and DNA samples available to the police, the greater the value of the databank will be in preventing crime and detecting those responsible for crime".
Even if it is true that a DNA databank might help detect criminals, it is difficult to see how it would prevent a crime. But this is not the central objection: yesterday's ruling stigmatises those who have been either acquitted or merely interviewed about a crime. It also endorses the creation of a national DNA database by stealth, and without Parliament's authority.
Kuwait is currently enforcing a requirement for all its citizens to supply a DNA sample to a central database. The emirate is not known for its commitment to privacy and liberty, but its government did at least feel it necessary to pass legislation, rather than create a national DNA database by the back door.
posted Sept 15 02

Our real opposition
Guardian

We all depend on the unions to confront privatisation and the advance of corporate power
George Monbiot A year and a day ago, the battle which may have determined the political future of Britain was about to commence. Tony Blair was to have told the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress that he would persist with his part-privatisation of public services, and the unions were due to respond with unprecedented anger. As Blair was waiting to speak, news of the attacks on New York reached the conference. The prime minister spoke briefly about his horror, then left. The TUC curtailed its conference, and the fight was postponed until today. Blair's reappearance at the conference this afternoon will be overshadowed both by the anniversary of the attacks and by rumours of war. The unions' response to his speech is likely to flicker across our television screens then disappear. So it will take us some time to grasp the significance of 9/10. This confrontation could prove to be the most important political event in Britain since the general election of 1997.
The battle the unions will resume this week is being fought, ostensibly, over low pay, the minimum wage, pensions, health and safety and the coming war with Iraq. But, as everyone in Blackpool knows, it is in reality about far more than this. Most of the unions fighting the transfer of staff from public bodies to private companies are concerned not only about poorer conditions for the workforce, but also about the quality and scope of public services. They see part-privatisation as symptomatic of the corporate takeover of Britain, and the government's capitulation to big business, in turn, as symptomatic of its willingness to side with power against the powerless. This is the week in which the trades unions become the United Kingdom's official opposition.
They are assuming this role not as a result of any grand ambitions (if anything they have been overcautious about making use of their resurgent power) but because no one else can do it. For the past five years the radical, progressive opposition without which all political systems succumb to corruption has failed to materialise. It cannot arise in Westminster: the three main parties, constrained by the distribution of marginal constituencies, are fighting over the same floating voters of the middle classes, while the smaller ones are obstructed by first-past-the-post elections and a funding system which relies on the benevolence of the rich. There is no sign of a sustained revolt among the senior civil servants who must implement the gradual demolition of public services. The government seems to have little fear of unaffiliated public protest.
The civil servants who run our public services know that the extra money the chancellor has found for health and education is likely to be swallowed by the massively inflated costs of permitting private companies to build and run our schools and hospitals. Three months ago this column listed nine serious and specific charges of public fraud and false accounting surrounding the "private finance initiative", and suggested that if the Treasury failed to answer them, the public should conclude that it has no defence to offer. The Treasury has not responded.
But they know too that, like nuclear waste, PFI is a problem which will trouble only future generations of administrators. By the time the costs of the initiative become unmanageable, most of today's senior managers will have retired. Their interests are best served by doing what they are told and hoping that they make enough money to buy private health insurance and insulate themselves from the inevitable collapse of the system they now run. They know it's wrong - I've seldom met a senior public servant who is not privately horrified by PFI - but they have no incentive to oppose it.
Nor will spontaneous public protest be sufficient to change the course of government policy. The private finance initiative is too complicated and too boring to generate a sustained mass movement among people whose professional interests are not affected. Part-time protesters struggle to compete with the businessmen who have all day, and plenty of resources, to lobby for privatisation.
The unions, by contrast, do have an immediate professional interest in confronting the seizure of the public budget: many public service workers whose jobs are transferred to private companies must work harder for less pay. It is greatly to their credit that the unions have, on the whole, resisted the government's attempts to divide this immediate interest from their longer-term concerns, by negotiating better terms of employment. They have not forgotten that their members cannot afford to buy their way out of the system when they retire.
The unions are also uniquely equipped to confront the privatisation lobbyists. Only they can afford to employ enough researchers and analysts, only they can sustain a mass mobilisation of the kind required to defeat a policy as complex and pervasive as PFI. The rest of us have, without admitting as much to ourselves, come to rely on the public sector unions to fight this battle on our behalf.
This tacit expectation appears to be reflected in the levels of public support for strikes which might, at other times, have generated only resentment towards organised labour. Six weeks ago, for example, a Guardian/ICM poll found that 59% of voters believed that the recent strikes by rail, tube and council workers were justified, while only 29% opposed them.
We have come to rely on the unions too to confront the corporations' other intrusions upon the public domain. The Enron and Worldcom scandals appear to have done nothing to dissuade Tony Blair of the superiority of big business over any other form of human organisation: perhaps, we hope, the unions can. And who, among the opponents of the impending unprovoked war with Iraq, has not secretly wished that organised labour will somehow prise Mr Blair away from Mr Bush?
Such hopes have been boosted by the recognition that the year's delay has enhanced the unions' position. Since Blair hurried away from the conference, his two most trusted lieutenants in the movement - Ken Jackson and Barry Reamsbottom, men who behaved very much like the business leaders they were supposed to confront - have been deposed. The TGWU has begun to rise from its slumber. Unison and the GMB are more confident than they have been for years.
The trades unions, in other words, should have no fear of inciting public hatred by exceeding their mandate. It may not be fair of us to expect them to fight our battles on our behalf, and it is certainly lazy, but when the public is ready to thrust greatness upon them, they should not be reluctant to accept it. We now expect them to articulate the concerns not only of their own members but also of all those whose needs have been subordinated to corporate greed.
In time, we should hope, a revitalised union movement will encourage the rest of us to organise more effectively, but for the moment the unions offer the most realistic means of confronting the complex of state and corporate power. So today, when Tony Blair flaunts his indifference at their conference, the unions shoud not fear their freedom.
Sept 10 02

Farmer takes case against Monsanto to Supreme Court
Canadian Press Canada.com

A Saskatchewan farmer is heading to the Supreme Court to try to appeal a lower court ruling that he violated a patent on herbicide-resistant canola.
On Thursday, the federal appeal court dismissed Percy Schmeiser's arguments that he did not violate Monsanto's patent on its Roundup Ready canola.
Last year, the Bruno-area farmer was ordered to pay $19,000 in damages for using the seed and another $150,000 to cover Monsanto's court costs. The farmer had argued that either the seed blew into his field from a passing truck or his crop may have been contaminated by pollination.
Schmeiser says the patent rights will be the "number one issue" of his application to ask the High Court to hear the case.
He says the stress from his legal battles with Monsanto has been hard on him and his wife, adding it's taken their life savings to fight the chemical giant to this point.
Sept 7 02

ID cards 'will sneak in fingerprint database'
Independent

By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent
The Government wants to give police the power to access fingerprint records of any British citizen as part of the new national "entitlement card" scheme.
Police and law enforcement agencies would be allowed to check millions of fingerprints to help to track down suspects of serious crimes or terrorist offences. They could centre searches on cities and towns in which crime had been committed.
Fingerprint information is intended to be included in the proposed new identity cards.
But civil liberties groups say the proposal, which will be considered as part of the Government's consultation on whether to introduce the cards on a national basis, is a gross infringement of an individual's privacy and would turn innocent people into potential suspects. Yesterday, they denounced the Government for slipping out the announcement during the summer recess of Parliament.
Roger Bingham, of the civil rights group Liberty, said: "We are talking about a national fingerprint or biometric database by the back door. The Government admitted the overwhelming majority of crimes are committed by people the police know about, but they still want to treat the other 58 million of us as suspects.".
Sept 4 02

Why Brussels wants to clear the herbalists' shelves
Telegraph

By Daniel Hannan
You may be one of the 20 million people in this country who, at one time or another, have taken a natural remedy. There is even a fair chance that you are one of the two million who regularly buy herbal medicines.
If so, your life is about to become a lot more complicated. Two directives are clanking their way through the EU machine which, taken together, will outlaw a good deal of what you are doing.
The Food Supplements Directive has passed through all its Brussels stages - although not without fierce opposition from Conservative MEPs - and is now awaiting implementation into British law.
It will ban hundreds of vitamin and mineral products, and restrict the dosage of others. The Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive is scheduled to become law in 18 months' time. It will affect thousands of natural medicines.
The combined result of these two laws will be to prohibit many substances that have been on the market for years without the slightest evidence that they are deleterious to our health. Natural remedies will be reclassified as medicines, making them subject to a rigorous testing regime.
It is not only each substance that must be tested, but every single product. In other words, if a herbalist wants to sell echinacea, it will not be enough to prove that echinacea is safe. He - or, more often, she - will also be required to submit her particular version of it, at a cost of several thousand pounds.
Thousands of products will be driven off the market. The bigger firms will be all right: some form of St John's wort will still be available at Boots. But many smaller herbalists, unable to meet the compliance costs, will be driven out of business.
Even by the EU's standards, the criminalisation of an activity engaged in by millions of consumers may seem rather heavy-handed. To grasp why it is happening, you need to understand a little about the Brussels system.
MEPs are rarely happier than when telling others what to do. In the three years since I was elected, we have restricted the amount of time you can spend on a tractor, demanded that you wear ear plugs in noisy places, and laid down an approved way of holding ladders against walls. The idea that herbal medicine is "unregulated" is, to most Euro-MPs, simply a loophole that needs closing.
This is not because of any suggestion that the supplements in question pose a health risk. Rather, the EU is following what it calls "the precautionary principle".
At the beginning of the 19th century, it was widely believed that the noise of a passing train would cause pregnant women to miscarry. Had we applied the precautionary principle, we would never have laid a single inch of track. After all, the rail operators of the day couldn't prove that they wouldn't cause miscarriages, any more than today's health stores can prove that their wares are not poisonous.
Most of the products in question have been used in parts of the world for hundreds of years without evidence of harmful side effects. One of the threatened substances, for example, is cat's claw, which is traditionally prescribed in my native Peru as a cure for inflammation and rheumatism. If it were dangerous, Peruvians would surely have noticed by now.
There is more to this, though, than an addiction to regulation. Whenever you see an apparently insane Brussels directive, ask yourself: cui bono? Someone, somewhere, stands to gain. Thus, the attempt to ban the British double-decker was largely driven by a handful of continental bus manufacturers who had their eye on our lucrative export market. The campaign against British lettuce was enthusiastically supported by Spanish lettuce growers.
And so it is with the directives on herbal medicines, which will allow the large pharmaceutical corporations to squeeze out their smaller competitors. These firms, like other multi-nationals, have discovered that Brussels is a lobbyist's paradise. Because the people who pass the laws are almost untouched by public opinion, measures can be pushed through which would never withstand the scrutiny of a democratic national parliament.
The EU is thus, in many ways, the opposite of a common market. The essence of a market is mutual product recognition. In other words, if a widget is sold freely in Britain, it ought to be available in Germany, and vice versa.
Instead, more often than not, the EU's approach is to lay down highly prescriptive rules on the size, shape and contents of widgets, which can have the effect of banning products which were never intended for export in the first place. And you'd be surprised by how often those standards turn out to have been proposed by some European widget manufacturer who happened to meet all the specifications anyway.
For what it's worth, I am rather sceptical about most herbal remedies - although my wife, a regular user, has converted me to echinacea. But that is not the point.
The essence of liberty, and the focus of this newspaper's Free Country campaign, is that we stand up for rights which we do not ourselves want to exercise. Even if you have never been inside a health store before, go into one now and sign the petition on the counter. This is not about science; it's about freedom.
Conversely, if you are a regular buyer of natural remedies, but have never before campaigned against an EU measure, try extrapolating from this experience.
You are now being treated as fishermen, art dealers, abattoir workers, hauliers and countless other victims of EU meddling have been treated before. It is not just this law that is wrong; it is the system that spawned it.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for south-east England
Sept 3 02

Blair in Mozambique
All Africa.com

Blair declined to reply to a question from the British Press Association concerning his government's attitude to a possible US attack against Iraq.
The press conference was extremely short, and only two questions were taken - one from the Press Association, and one from the Portuguese news agency, LUSA. None of the Mozambican media were able to ask questions. Had AIM been called upon to speak, it would have asked Blair what his government intends to do to ensure that African producers have fair access to the markets of the developed world.
Currently, the enormous subsidies that European and American governments offer their farmers sabotage African agriculture.
They lead to absurdities such as paying farmers in northern England to produce sugar from beet which is at least three times as expensive as Mozambique's cane sugar.
AIM would like to hear from Tony Blair whether the British government intends to move from charity to fair trade. Or will Britain's real, rather than rhetorical, relationship with Africa continue to be determined in Paris, by right-wing French farming lobbies
Sept 2 02

Blair losing control of party over Iraq
The Scotsman

Jason Beattie
TONY Blair was struggling last night to contain the growing revolt in the Labour Party over Iraq, with half of backbench Labour MPs in Scotland publicly warning against United States military action.
With Downing Street under pressure to distance itself from the hawkish line coming from Washington, Gavin Strang became the latest senior Labour figure to caution against a pre-emptive strike by the US military, warning of the "widespread unease" within the party about possible conflict.
Dr Strang, a former Cabinet minister, specifically criticised the recent sabre-rattling by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claiming they had not considered the implications for Middle East stability should the US try to topple Saddam Hussein.
Dr Strang, the Edinburgh East and Musselburgh MP, is one of 19 Scottish Labour MPs who have signed a Commons motion noting the "deep unease" about the prospect of Mr Blair supporting a pre-emptive strike by President Bush.
Malcolm Savidge, the Labour MP for Aberdeen North, used an article in Tribune magazine to launch a excoriating attack on Mr Blair's foreign policy.
"Britain must not be drawn into immoral or illegal wars. Labour must not sacrifice its principles, moral values or British interests and lives to the false god of a specious, special relationship with the US hard Right," he wrote.
Aug 31 02

Christopher Booker's Notebook
Telegraph

(Filed: 25/08/2002) Tories challenge 'sneaky' asbestos legislation Customs officials continue to ignore new laws The pointlessness of the plastic cup

Tories challenge 'sneaky' asbestos legislation


In an unusual and dramatic move the leader of the opposition, Iain Duncan Smith, has intervened to stop the Government using the Parliamentary recess to sneak in controversial new regulations on asbestos which, as I revealed last week, threaten to become the most expensive law ever put on the statute book.
Mr Duncan Smith has taken the unorthodox step of writing to Andrew Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, demanding to see the still-unpublished regulations which the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) hopes to make law before MPs return from holiday in October.
In light of the cost of the new law, estimated by the HSE as £5.1 billion, although unofficial estimates put it far higher, the Tory leader has also asked Mr Smith to postpone signing the statutory instrument until Parliament has a chance to discuss it.
The main concern over the regulations, now shared by the Shadow Cabinet, is that they will impose astronomic costs on Britain's businesses by putting them at the mercy of 800 specialist contractors licensed by the HSE.
These contractors are already exploiting confusion over the dangers of asbestos by overcharging for work which often proves unnecessary either for legal or safety reasons.
In particular, contractors are peddling the myth that all types of asbestos are equally dangerous. In fact the most common form of asbestos product, the white asbestos cement widely used for roofing materials, poses no health risk at all in practical terms, unlike the hazardous blue and brown forms, based on a wholly different mineral.
By imposing draconian requirements on businesses, the HSE's regulations will only exacerbate the existing confusion which allows unscrupulous contractors to fool members of the public into paying ludicrous sums for work which can be safely carried out for a fraction of the cost.
Since my article last week, giving the e-mail address of a fully-qualified expert, John Bridle (jbridle@whiteasbestos.fsnet.co.uk), his advice has already saved 80 readers of this column unnecessary expenses ranging from £80 to £9,000.
Mr Duncan Smith has appointed the combative John Bercow as shadow minister to spearhead a campaign to force ministers to redraft the HSE's proposals in a way that could save the country billions of pounds, without endangering public health.
Mr Bercow will also be calling for a full investigation of the racketeers who have been profiting from the confusion about asbestos.

Customs officials continue to ignore new laws

There is no more glaring example of how officials are now a law unto themselves in modern Britain, than the contempt shown by Customs and Excise for the recent High Court ruling that it was breaking the law by persecuting motorists bringing back cigarettes and alcohol from the Continent for private use.
On July 31 two High Court judges found that Dover customs officials were doubly in breach of the law: first, by ignoring the rules of the European Union single market which permit free movement of goods; and, second, by reversing the burden of proof, whereby passengers were assumed to be guilty of smuggling unless they could prove to officials they were not.
More than 10,000 motorists, including the three who won the case, have had vehicles confiscated, the vast majority for legally bringing in goods for their own use. On August 13, two weeks after the ruling, Captain Christopher Ward, a reader who had gone over with a friend for "a good lunch in Le Touquet" and to bring back three months' supply of cigarettes and wine, was subjected by the Dover officials to the usual grilling.
What was his occupation? "Retired naval officer." What had he done in the Navy? He had served for 20 years in submarines. Implying that he must be lying, the official told him he was "too tall" to have served in submarines.
The captain was then given a political lecture. The lower price of cigarettes in Europe merely balanced their higher rates of income tax.
Tobacco taxes in Britain were high as part of the Government's campaign against the evils of smoking (obviously no one had told the officials that the net effect of encouraging cross-channel imports by making tobacco taxes so high has been to increase cigarette consumption while costing the Treasury more than £5 billion a year).
After a warning that they were lucky not to have their car seized, Captain Ward and his friend were allowed to drive home. All this two weeks after the High Court had ruled such behaviour to be illegal.
Steve Lawrence of Hoverspeed, also a party to the court action, confirms that the officials are "still acting unlawfully and in flagrant defiance of the High Court ruling". Their excuse is that they plan to appeal against the judges' findings and until the appeal is heard, they have licence to continue breaking the law as much as they wish.

The pointlessness of the plastic cup


Next weekend huge quantities of cider will be drunk at one of the west country's most popular annual events, the Great Steam Fair at Tarrant Hinton in Dorset.
Those who sell the cider, including the Somerset cider and brandy-maker Julian Temperley, have received a remarkable letter from Mr Hudson of the Dorset police which encloses a document from "my colleagues at Dorset county trading standards office".
This reminds the cider-sellers that under EU rules, they are not permitted to sell cider by the pint. They can serve it in an officially stamped pint or half-pint glass or plastic container, but may only refer to it as a "large" or "small glass", or as "568 millilitres".
To refer to a "pint" is a criminal offence, and trading standards officials will be "inspecting operations" to ensure the law is complied with.
From long experience, Mr Temperley knows it is unwise to serve cider at such events in glasses or plastic beakers, which break and become dangerous. He prefers to sell it in paper cups, as he is freely allowed to do at similar events in Somerset. But under the "unique Dorset rules" this is considered illegal, because the cups cannot be stamped.
Mr Temperley therefore plans to display a notice that customers will be served in "hard, plastic, dangerous and environmentally unfriendly, stamped containers", for which there will be an extra charge of 30p. If customers then wish to pour their cider into "our safe, biodegradable paper cups", they will get their 30p back.
Trading standards officials and their police "colleagues" (who have no legal status in matters concerning weights and measures) will no doubt be kept busy puzzling out how to bring charges against Mr Temperley for an arrangement which is entirely within the law. But, for good use of police time, it certainly beats catching burglars.
Aug 25 02

Blair 'can't be trusted to oversee ethics'
Telegraph

By Andrew Sparrow, Political Correspondent
A new committee should be set up to oversee ethical standards in government because Tony Blair cannot be trusted to do it, say the Conservatives.
David Davis said yesterday that No 10's refusal to comply with a request from the committee on standards in public life showed the need for a new watchdog.
As Prime Minister, Mr Blair is in charge of ensuring that ministers comply with the ministerial code, the rulebook of government behaviour. Mr Davis, a senior shadow cabinet figure, said a tribunal consisting of privy counsellors and probably a law lord should do the job.
"It is the inability of the Prime Minister to distinguish between what is politically expedient for the Labour Party and what is proper for the government of the country that highlights the need for an independent external scrutiny of both ministers and special advisers," he said.
The committee on standards in public life is holding an inquiry into special advisers. Earlier this year it invited Alastair Campbell, the most powerful special adviser in government, to give evidence.
Sir Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, wrote back to say that Mr Campbell and other Downing Street advisers would not appear in public. Instead they offered to meet the committee in private.
Sir Nigel Wicks, committee chairman, rejected the offer. It was "established practice" to get evidence in public, he said. The committee will not hear from Mr Campbell before issuing recommendations.
No 10 said last night that a new watchdog was not needed.
Aug 22 02

What business has Labour got messing with parish councils?
Telegraph

By Greville Howard
The village where I am a parish councillor is fortunate in having a full complement of able and sensible people doing the job. Not everywhere is so lucky: nearly 40 per cent of parish, town and community councils fail to attract enough candidates, according to a recent study by the University of Wales. There is a crisis in local government.
The Model Code for Parish Councillors, recently introduced by the Government, is bound to increase the problem. Worse, it will reduce the quality of candidates, as the better ones are usually the busiest and thus the most difficult to persuade to give up their time. It will be for these that the code is most likely to act as the final straw.
Throughout England, parish councillors, with no reward and only rarely any repayment of expenses, give time and energy to their local community. They have virtually no power to take decisions; those are taken by the next tier up. Their role is to be consulted: they attend a few meetings a year, frequently very dull, but they are the frontline of contact between their community and government.
Some politician or civil servant, in need of an "initiative", saw this group of public-spirited beings quietly giving their voluntary service and thought: "How shocking that they are unregulated. How can this be? They might misbehave."
There was no thought that parish councils have been going for 800 years, with scarcely a blip; no thought that the matters over which parish councillors actually take decisions are minimal, and therefore the cost-effectiveness of controls (in the unlikely event that they have the effect they are intended to have) would be zero; no thought that it is already difficult to find people to serve as parish councillors.
No, if you see something, regulate it, and so the Model Code for Parish Councillors and the concept of "quality councils" were born. The full effect has yet to be seen, but already whole parish councils are resigning over what they see as unwarranted intrusions into their private lives.
As if all this were not enough, the rules themselves are both silly and being deliberately misinterpreted by the Standards Board for England. Clause 15 of the code says parish councillors must report gifts of hospitality of more than £25.
This provoked an immediate hullabaloo, but the Standards Board for England pointed out that a Christmas present from one's spouse would not need to be declared because clause 1(2) says the "code of conduct shall not have effect in relation to the activities of a member other than in an official capacity".
When I got this information, I asked one of the delightful and helpful antipodean women at the Standards Board to confirm that, if the scope of clause 15 (the £25 gift clause) is limited by clause 1(2), then clauses 12 and 13 would similarly be limited. (These clauses state that all interests - your job, your directorships, charities where you are a trustee, trade union membership, professional associations, political affiliations etc - must be registered.) After discussion, I was referred upwards.
Surely, I repeated, if clause 1(2) stretches out to limit the scope of clause 15, then it must also limit the scope of clauses 12 and 13: it cannot just bypass them. I was told that no, this was not correct. The reason appeared to be that this was what the Standards Board for England had decided.
When my local district council issued forms for parish councillors to record their interests, the council advised that all interests must be included. On being asked, a charming woman said that was what they had been told to do by the Standards Board for England.
However, Dr Alan Whitehead (then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions), in answer to a written parliamentary question, said: "The requirements about the discharge of this duty are set out in paragraph 13 of the Parish Councils (Model Code of Conduct) Order 2001. The Code does not have effect in relation to the activities of a member undertaken other than in an official activity."
This quite clearly shows there is no need for parish councillors to include all interests regardless. The Standards Board is exceeding its powers in demanding detail that does not relate to activity as a parish councillor.
If not impossible, it is certainly very difficult to conceive how membership of a trade union, trade association or professional association could have any relevance to the official activity of a parish councillor. Even membership of a political party would usually be irrelevant, as parish councils are not run on party political lines.
Another point that merits attention is "prejudicial interest". This occurs when the "personal interest" of a councillor could be regarded by a member of the public as likely to prejudice the councillor's judgment. So what is "personal interest"?
It is where (assuming my interpretation of the appalling drafting is correct) a parish council decision would affect "to a greater extent than other council-tax payers, ratepayers, or inhabitants of the authority's area, the wellbeing or financial position of himself"
Does this mean that anyone having more property - for example, a bigger garden - is automatically disqualified by the code from being a parish councillor? After all, virtually all decisions taken by a parish council will affect a larger property owner to a "greater extent" than a smaller property owner.
Following the argument through, are larger council-tax payers excluded because they will be affected to a "greater extent"? And how is one to know what "a member of the public" will think? What a treat for the lawyers to have to argue that one.
The code is yet another expensive, rotten piece of legislation, causing unhappiness and harm and administered by bureaucrats who are deliberately misinterpreting rules. It is difficult to believe that politicians and civil servants could think there is any point in introducing a code of conduct where there is no influence to peddle. Is there, as some have suggested, a hidden agenda to get rid of parish councils?
Two other impediments to the continued good working of parish councils have been introduced. "quality councils" and the one they tried to keep secret: "community vibrancy indicators". This last, if you have not heard of it, is an "indicator theme designed to measure the capacity of parish populations to fulfil their potential for improving their local quality of life".
Politicians and civil servants have already proved themselves incapable of running their bloated empires. Fat chance of their being any help in improving local life. The only contribution they can make is to leave well alone.
One of the rules of the code states that all complaints must be investigated. In my more mischievous moments, I contemplate gumming up the system by complaining about every parish councillor in England. What stops me is that the Government could use the cost of this to close all parish councils down on the grounds that they are too expensive to administer.
Aug 19 02

Re: Sidetracked by trivia
Sunday Telegraph

Date: 18 August 2002
To judge the political ability of a parliamentary candidate, male or female, on how he or she converses with a supermarket checkout girl plumbs new depths of Tory despair.
To "instruct" constituency associations to ensure that short-listed candidates are capable of holding a five-minute conversation with this assistant presupposes that the said individual is capable of participating in the exercise or indeed is desirous of so doing!
This is humiliating and irrelevant, absurdity in a political party claiming to be grown-up. It does nothing for morale and reduces the standards which should be demanded and expected of Conservative candidates. It is trivia.

From:
Beryl M Goldsmith, London

War on the peasantry
Guardian

Mugabe's crimes pale next to what black small farmers endure in the name of development
George Monbiot Tuesday August 13, 2002 The Guardian
The most evil man on earth, after Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, is Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. That, at least, is the view of most of the western world's press.
Yesterday Mugabe insisted that 2,900 white farmers will have to leave their land. He claims to be redistributing their property to landless peasants, but many of the farms he has seized have been handed instead to army officers and party loyalists. Twelve white farmers have been killed and many others beaten. He stole the elections in March through ballot-rigging and the intimidation of his political rivals.
His assault on white-owned farms has been cited by the Daily Telegraph as the principal reason for the current famine. Now, the paper maintains, he is using "food aid as a political weapon". As a candidate for the post of World's Third Most Evil Man, he appears to possess all the right credentials.
There is no doubt that Mugabe is a ruthless man, or that his policies are contributing to the further impoverishment of the Zimbabweans. But to suggest that his land seizures are largely responsible for the nation's hunger is fanciful.
Though the 4,500 white farmers there own two-thirds of of the best land, many of them grow not food but tobacco. Seventy per cent of the nation's maize - its primary staple crop - is grown by black peasant farmers hacking a living from the marginal lands they were left by the whites.
The seizure of the white farms is both brutal and illegal. But it is merely one small scene in the tragedy now playing all over the world. Every year, some tens of millions of peasant farmers are forced to leave their land, with devastating consequences for food security.
For them there are no tear-stained descriptions of a last visit to the graves of their children. If they are mentioned at all, they are dismissed by most of the press as the necessary casualties of development.
Ten years ago, I investigated the expropriations being funded and organised in Africa by another member of the Commonwealth. Canada had paid for the ploughing and planting with wheat of the Basotu Plains in Tanzania.
Wheat was eaten in that country only by the rich, but by planting that crop, rather than maize or beans or cassava, Canada could secure contracts for its chemical and machinery companies, which were world leaders in wheat technology.
The scheme required the dispossession of the 40,000 members of the Barabaig tribe. Those who tried to return to their lands were beaten by the project's workers, imprisoned and tortured with electric shocks. The women were gang-raped.
For the first time in a century, the Barabaig were malnourished. When I raised these issues with one of the people running the project, she told me: "I won't shed a tear for anybody if it means development." The rich world's press took much the same attitude: only the Guardian carried the story.
Now yet another member of the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, is funding a much bigger scheme in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Some 20 million people will be dispossessed. Again this atrocity has been ignored by most of the media.
These are dark-skinned people being expelled by whites, rather than whites being expelled by black people. They are, as such, assuming their rightful place, as invisible obstacles to the rich world's projects. Mugabe is a monster because he has usurped the natural order.
Throughout the coverage of Zimbabwe there is an undercurrent of racism and of regret that Britain ever let Rhodesia go. Some of the articles in the Telegraph may as well have been headlined "The plucky men and women holding darkest Africa at bay". Readers are led to conclude that Ian Smith was right all along: the only people who know how to run Africa are the whites.
But, through the IMF, the World Bank and the bilateral aid programmes, with their extraordinary conditions, the whites do run Africa, and a right hash they are making of it.
Over the past 10 years, according to the UN's latest human development report, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than a dollar a day has risen from 242 million to 300 million. The more rigorously Africa's governments apply the policies demanded by the whites, the poorer their people become.
Just like Mugabe, the rich world has also been using "food aid as a political weapon". The United States has just succeeded in forcing Zimbabwe and Zambia, both suffering from the southern African famine, to accept GM maize as food relief.
Both nations had fiercely resisted GM crops, partly because they feared that the technology would grant multinational companies control over the foodchain, leaving their people still more vulnerable to hunger. But the US, seizing the opportunity for its biotech firms, told them that they must either accept this consignment or starve.
Malawi has also been obliged to take GM maize from the US, partly because of the loss of its own strategic grain reserve. In 1999, the IMF and the European Union instructed Malawi to privatise the reserve.
The private body was not capitalised, so it had to borrow from commercial banks to buy grain. Predictably enough, by 2001 it found that it couldn't service its debt. The IMF told it to sell most of the reserve.
The private body sold it all, and Malawi ran out of stored grain just as its crops failed. The IMF, having learnt nothing from this catastrophe, continues to prevent that country from helping its farmers, subsidising food or stabilising prices.
The same agency also forces weak nations to open their borders to subsidised food from abroad, destroying their own farming industries. Perhaps most importantly, it prevents state spending on land reform.
Land distribution is the key determinant of food security. Small farms are up to 10 times as productive as large ones, as they tend to be cultivated more intensively. Small farmers are more likely to supply local people with staple crops than western supermarkets with mangetout.
The governments of the rich world don't like land reform. It requires state intervention, which offends the god of free markets, and it hurts big farmers and the companies that supply them. Indeed, it was Britain's refusal either to permit or to fund an adequate reform programme in Zimbabwe that created the political opportunities Mugabe has so ruthlessly exploited. The Lancaster House agreement gave the state to the black population but the nation to the whites. Mugabe manipulates the genuine frustrations of a dispossessed people.
The president of Zimbabwe is a very minor devil in the hellish politics of land and food. The sainted Nelson Mandela has arguably done just as much harm to the people of Africa, by surrendering his powers to the IMF as soon as he had wrested them from apartheid.
Let us condemn Mugabe's attacks upon Zimbabwe's whites by all means, but only if we are also prepared to condemn the far bloodier war that the rich world wages against the poor.
Aug 13 02

West's greed for oil fuels Saddam fever
Observer


Anthony Sampson analyses the roots of America's fear of the Iraqi dictator,and warns that toppling him might cause less stability and more insecurity
Iraq - Observer special Sunday August 11, 2002 The Observer
Is the projected war against Iraq really turning into an oil war, aimed at safeguarding Western energy supplies as much as toppling a dangerous dictator and source of terrorism? Of course no one can doubt the genuine American hatred of Saddam Hussein, but recent developments in Washington suggest oil may loom larger than democracy or human rights in American calculations. The alarmist briefing to the Pentagon by the Rand Corporation, leaked last week, talked about Saudi Arabia as 'the kernel of evil' and proposed that Washington should have a showdown with its former ally, if necessary seizing its oilfields which have been crucial to America's energy.
And the more anxious oil companies become about the stability of Saudi Arabia, the more they become interested in gaining access to Iraq, site of the world's second biggest oil reserves, which are denied to them. Vice-President Dick Cheney, who has had his own commercial interests in the Middle East, baldly described his objection to Saddam in California last week: 'He sits on top of 10 per cent of the world's oil reserves. He has enormous wealth being generated by that. And left to his own devices, it's the judgment of many of us that in the not too distant future he will acquire nuclear weapons.'
If Saddam were toppled, the Western oil companies led by Exxon expect to have much readier access to those oil reserves, making them less dependent on Saudi oilfields and the future of the Saudi royal family. The US President and Vice-President, both oilmen, cannot be unaware of those interests.
Of course Western policies towards Iraq have always been deeply influenced by the need for its oil, though they tried to be discreet about it. The nation of Iraq was invented in 1920, after the First World War. The allies had 'floated to victory on a sea of oil' (as the British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon put it), but they preferred to conceal their dependence on it: 'When I want oil,' said Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, 'I go to my grocer.'
But both Clemenceau and Curzon, while they talked about Arab interests and self-determination, knew that what really mattered in Iraq was the oil that was emerging in the North; and the British and French succeeded in controlling the precious oilfields at Mosul.
Iraqi oil became still more desirable after the oil crisis of 1973 which enabled the Arab producers to hold the world to ransom; and the discovery of huge new oil reserves in the South made Iraq more important as a rival to Saudi Arabia - and Saddam more exasperating as an enemy.
It is true that since the Seventies, as the shortage turned into glut, producing countries have become much more dependent on the global marketplace. Countries which hoped to develop political clout by allocating oil supplies soon found they had to compete to sell their oil wherever they could. And Western companies developed new oilfields nearer home, or in friendlier countries.
But America and continental Europe still depend on uncertain developing countries, mostly Muslim, for much of their energy, and in times of crisis the concern about oil supplies returns. Western oil interests closely influence military and diplomatic policies, and it is no accident that while American companies are competing for access to oil in Central Asia, the US is building up military bases across the region.
In this security context the prospect of a 'terror network' controlling Saudi Arabian oil, which last week's briefing to the Pentagon conjured up, presents the ultimate night mare: a puritanical Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia, and perhaps in other Gulf states, would be prepared to defy the marketplace, with much less need to sell their oil than corrupt monarchies or sheikhdoms. Bin Laden, himself a Saudi, made no secret of his overriding ambition to rid his country of corrupt rulers and return to its austere Islamist roots.
In this scenario Americans would be more determined to get access to oil in Iraq, and the demands to topple Saddam would be reinforced.
There are undoubtedly many different and sometimes conflicting strands behind Washington's attitudes to Iraq. Certainly the public sense of outrage about 11 September, and the fear of terrorism, remains the most potent political force behind the moves against Saddam - reinforced by Israel's dread of Iraq's weaponry.
But there are also the longer-term geopolitical arguments in the Pentagon and the State Department, with commercial pressures behind them, about the need for energy security. And these have become more urgent with the growing worries about the Saudis.
The crucial question remains: would toppling Saddam safeguard Iraq's oil for the West? After all, both previous American Presidents - Clinton and George Bush Snr - were persuaded not to overthrow Saddam, because the alternative could well be a more dangerous power vacuum. That danger remains. If Iraq were to split into three parts, as many expect, the new oil regions in the South might be become still less reliable, in a region dominated by Shia Muslims who have their own links with the Shia in Iran. And a destabilised Saudi Arabia could make a power vacuum still more dangerous.
The history of oil wars is not encouraging, and oil companies are not necessarily the best judges of national interests. The Anglo-American coup in Iran in 1953, which toppled the radical Mossadeq and brought back the Shah, enabled Western companies to regain control of Iranian oil: but the Iranian people never forgave the intervention, and took their revenge on the Shah in 1979.
The belief that invading Iraq will produce a more stable Middle East, and give the West easy access to its oil wealth, is dangerously simplistic. Westerners live in a world where most of their oil comes from Islam, and their only long-term security in energy depends on accommodating Muslims.
Anthony Sampson is the author of 'The Seven Sisters', about oil companies and the Middle East.

Lords reform by stealth
Telegraph

(Filed: 10/08/2002)
Reform of the House of Lords has slipped into the clutches of spin doctors. In a recent newspaper interview, Lord Williams, the Leader of the House, spoke of weeding out the elderly by setting a retirement age and offering a pension.
Next, it seems, those who sit in the House of Lords are to forfeit their titles. There has been political chatter about dropping the prefix "Lord" and substituting the most modest suffix of ML (Member of the Lords). On the Lords website, this chatter is turned into reality. The prefix has been dropped, the suffix is in use. All this without serious discussion or debate.
It is plain that the Government seeks further changes in the Lords but, recalling how often past proposals for reform have been scuppered by controversy, reckons the best way of getting there is either by slipping changes past or simply imposing them. Lord Williams, again, sees no reason why receipt of an honour should entitle anyone to become a Member of Parliament. Knights, he argues, do not join the Commons, so why should Lords automatically become members of the Upper House?
Those attracted by the logic of this argument should also weigh the corollary. Once a Member of the Upper House becomes Bill Snooks ML, the way has been paved for the Prime Minister to appoint as many Snookses as he likes to the Upper House without the encumbrance of a title, and to call a whole load of other petitioners "Lord X" without giving them space on the red benches. The door to cronyism will be open wide.
All this rolls along, together with lighter hours for the Lords and talk of salaries in place of an expense allowance, but without any undertaking from the Government on meeting the desire of those who wish to see an element of the Lords removed from patronage and open to election. That, as ministers know well, would be controversial and troublesome. Easier by far to carry out cosmetic changes stealthily.
Aug 10 02

Earth summit agenda 'hijacked'
Guardian

Big business is wielding its influence to water down plans for tighter regulation, says aid group

Terry Macalister and Paul Brown
The earth summit has been hijacked by big business and the original goals of enhancing the lives of the world's poor are fast disappearing, according to research by an aid agency seen by the Guardian. Christian Aid has launched a blistering attack on the business community in the lead-up to the world summit on sustainable development, which opens in Johannesburg on August 26.
Binding regulations on companies, covering such issues as human rights and the environment, have been dropped in favour of voluntary codes, its report says. The draft plan now calls only for the "promotion of corporate accountability and responsibility and the exchange of best practices".
It blames this on specially formed lobby groups including Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), supported by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the International Chamber of Commerce.
"Business has greater access and influence than any other group and we are concerned that the agenda is being unduly skewed towards the wishlists of companies and away from those of the poor," the agency says. Its report concludes: "Ten years after the Rio earth summit, the Johannesburg summit offers the chance to place corporate accountability at the centre of sustainable development. Corporate influence means this does not look like happening."
Business leaders last night said the summit was an intergovernmental conference and they had no more influence as observers than any other non-governmental organisation.
As for regulation of corporate accountability, BASD said: "It is up to individual governments to look at what is feasible, possible and desirable. NGOs have the best interests of developing countries and small and medium-sized companies at heart but they have not really thought through the consequences."
Tougher rules could set standards that many smaller firms could not meet, leading to decreased investment in developing countries.
But Christian Aid points to comments made by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, last September, who said: "We cannot leave companies to regulate themselves globally, any more than we do in our national economies."
The agency is not the only NGO to complain that the summit has come under the sway of big business. This week Friends of the Earth said a "creeping corporate takeover of the UN itself" was under way.
Meanwhile, the environment minister, Michael Meacher, said yesterday he was delighted to have been picked as part of the five-strong ministerial team to attend the summit, after Downing Street announced it had reinstated him in the British delegation.
Mr Meacher had been dropped on the instructions of Tony Blair, who was concerned Britain was taking too many ministers in a delegation of 100 to what will be the world's biggest conference.
After the Guardian reported that Mr Meacher had been excluded, enraged environmental groups offered to pay his fare and hotel bill so Britain could be represented by the only minister they think fully understands the issues.
"Of course I am delighted to be going," Mr Meacher said. "Now we have settled the delegation I hope we can concentrate on the issues involved. I believe [these are] pushing forward the agenda on energy, water, health, food security and biodiversity to make the world better for the poor and underdeveloped countries."
Aug 9 02

Lords 'will block compulsory retirement age for peers'
Telegraph

By Benedict Brogan, Nicole Martin and John Jelley
The House of Lords would block any attempt by the Government to impose a compulsory retirement age on its members, peers warned last night, amid renewed speculation about the future of the second chamber.
Lord Williams of Mostyn, the Leader of the Lords, said he was in favour of weeding out elderly peers by imposing a maximum age for membership and offering a pension as an inducement to retirement.
He promised to treat elderly peers - who could include the former prime ministers Lady Thatcher, 76, and Lord Callaghan, 90, - "with decency and dignity", but made clear he wanted to make room for paid, elected members.
An all-party joint committee of the Lords and Commons set up by the Government is due to produce recommendations for further reforms of the second chamber, including electing some of its members.
Of the Upper House's 572 life peers, 78 per cent are over 60, and 43 per cent are over 70 in a chamber that has no provision for retirement. The Government is under pressure from reformers to make the Lords elected or partly-elected.
Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, the Liberal Democrat peer who is on the joint committee that includes Kenneth Clarke and William Hague, said retirement would have to be optional.
"I would be very surprised if any retirement mechanism was other than voluntary. Personally I would be against any form of compulsory retirement, but it would have no chance of getting through the Lords.
"Voluntary retirement would be an option. It's one of the strange things about this place that there is no mechanism for retirement. You either die or take a leave of absence."
In an interview with the Financial Times, Lord Williams called for peers to be given salaries rather than an attendance allowance. In exchange, he was "strongly in favour" of separating the award of a peerage from membership - raising the prospect of members of the Upper House serving without a title.
"I don't think that having an honour has got anything to do with being a member of Parliament. After all, if you're elected an MP, you don't get a knighthood - immediately."
Lord Blake, 85, a constitutional historian, said it was wrong to suggest that elderly peers became redundant senior citizens once they reached a certain age. "I accept that there is the danger of people going gaga, but in the Lords, so far, common sense has prevented anything silly happening," he said.
"There is no retiring age for the Commons, and the two houses should be treated exactly the same."
Lord Deedes, 89, a former editor of The Telegraph who still writes regularly for the paper, said it would be unfair to set an upper age limit because people aged in different ways.
"We all know of people aged 65 who are not very useful, and others in their 80s and 90s who are still well. Take Lord Callaghan, for example, and Lady Castle, who was still very bright when she died," he said.
"I agree that the House of Lords has been seen as a retreat for geriatrics. Throughout its history, its carried a number of pretty senile characters. But at what age can we say that people are no longer any use?"
Tony Benn, 77, the former Labour MP, who is in favour of an elected House of Lords, said: "I dont think there should be any age limit for elected peers. Why should you discriminate? The key in the House of Commons is that you have to be elected. If you want to elect an older person, you should be able to."
' Mr Benn added: "Some old people are gaga, but some young people are a menace. Im 78 next birthday and life gets better every year. I left parliament to devote more time to politics and Im busier than Ive ever been."
Aug 6 02

'

The logic of empire - '' The US is now a threat to the rest of the world'. The sensible response is non-cooperation
Guardian

George Monbiot
There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the United States government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in 20 years. It has scuppered the biological weapons convention while experimenting, illegally, with biological weapons of its own. It has refused to grant chemical weapons inspectors full access to its laboratories, and has destroyed attempts to launch chemical inspections in Iraq. It has ripped up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and appears to be ready to violate the nuclear test ban treaty. It has permitted CIA hit squads to recommence covert operations of the kind that included, in the past, the assassination of foreign heads of state. It has sabotaged the small arms treaty, undermined the international criminal court, refused to sign the climate change protocol and, last month, sought to immobilise the UN convention against torture so that it could keep foreign observers out of its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Even its preparedness to go to war with Iraq without a mandate from the UN security council is a defiance of international law far graver than Saddam Husseins non-compliance with UN weapons inspectors.
But the US governments declaration of impending war has, in truth, nothing to do with weapons inspections. On Saturday John Bolton, the US official charged, hilariously, with "arms control", told the Today programme that "our policy ... insists on regime change in Baghdad and that policy will not be altered, whether inspectors go in or not". The US government's justification for whupping Saddam has now changed twice. At first, Iraq was named as a potential target because it was "assisting al-Qaida". This turned out to be untrue. Then the US government claimed' that Iraq had to be attacked because it could be developing weapons of mass destruction, and was refusing to allow the weapons inspectors to find out if this were so. Now, as the promised evidence has failed to materialise, the weap'ons issue has been dropped. The new reason for war is Saddam Hussein's very existence. This, at least, has the advantage of being verifiable. It should surely be obvious by now that the decision to wage war on Iraq came first, and the justification later.
Other than the age-old issue of oil supply, this is a war without strategic purpose. The US government is not afraid of Saddam Hussein, however hard it tries to scare its own people. There is no evidence that Iraq is sponsoring terrorism against America. Saddam is well aware that if he attacks another nation with weapons of mass destruction, he can expect to be nuked. He presents no more of a threat to the world now than he has done for the past 10 years.
But the US government has several pressing domestic reasons for going to war. The first is that attacking Iraq gives the impression that the flagging "war on terror" is going somewhere. The second is that the people of all super-dominant nations love war. As Bush found in Afghanistan, whacking foreigners wins votes. Allied to this concern is the need to distract attention from the financial scandals in which both the president and vice-president are enmeshed. Already, in this respect, the impending war seems to be working rather well.
The United States also possesses a vast military-industrial complex that is in constant need of conflict in order to justify its staggeringly expensive existence. Perhaps more importantly than any of these factors, the hawks who control the White House perceive that perpetual war results in the perpetual demand for their services. And there is scarcely a better formula for perpetual war, with both terrorists and other Arab nations, than the invasion of Iraq. The hawks know that they will win, whoever loses. In other words, if the US were not preparing to attack Iraq, it would be preparing to attack another nation. The US will go to war with that country because it needs a country with which to go to war.
Tony Blair also has several pressing reasons for supporting an invasion. By appeasing George Bush, he placates Britain's rightwing press. Standing on Bush's shoulders, he can assert a claim to global leadership more credible than that of other European leaders, while defending Britain's anomalous position as a permanent member of the UN security council. Within Europe, his relationship with the president grants him the eminent role of broker and interpreter of power.
By invoking the "special relationship", Blair also avoids the greatest challenge any prime minister has faced since the second world war. This challenge is to recognise and act upon the conclusion of any objective analysis of global power: namely that the greatest threat to world peace is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush. The nation that in the past has been our firmest friend is becoming instead our foremost enemy.
As the US government discovers that it can threaten and attack other nations with impunity, it will surely soon begin to threaten countries that have numbered among its allies. As its insatiable demand for resources prompts ever bolder colonial adventures, it will come to interfere directly with the strategic interests of other quasi-imperial states. As it refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of the use of those resources, it threatens the rest of the world with environmental disaster. It has become openly contemptuous of other governments and prepared to dispose of any treaty or agreement that impedes its strategic objectives. It is starting to construct a new generation of nuclear weapons, and appears to be ready to use them pre-emptively. It could be about to ignite an inferno in the Middle East, into which the rest of the world would be sucked.
The United States, in other words, behaves like any other imperial power. Imperial powers expand their empires until they meet with overwhelming resistance.
For Britain to abandon the special relationship would be to accept that this is happening. To accept that the US presents a danger to the rest of the world would be to acknowledge the need to resist it. Resisting the United States would be the most daring reversal of policy a British government has undertaken for over 60 years.
We can resist the US neither by military nor economic means, but we can resist it diplomatically. The only safe and sensible response to American power is a policy of non-cooperation. Britain and the rest of Europe should impede, at the diplomatic level, all US attempts to act unilaterally. We should launch independent efforts to resolve the Iraq crisis and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. And we should cross our fingers and hope that a combination of economic mismanagement, gangster capitalism and excessive military spending will reduce America's power to the extent that it ceases to use the rest of the world as its doormat. Only when the US can accept its role as a nation whose interests must be balanced with those of all other nations can we resume a friendship that was once, if briefly, founded upon the principles of justice.
Aug 6 02

Glenys, queen of the desert (from Booker's Notebook)
Sunday Telegraph


Just as Neil Kinnock gets into hot water over the sacking of another senior EU official for trying to blow the whistle on EU fraud, his wife, Glenys, seems to have got involved in a curious little episode of her own, in her role as international development spokesman for the Socialist group in the EU Parliament.
For some years, that highly professional campaigning organisation Survival International has been battling on behalf of the few thousand remaining Bushmen of the Kalahari, who are being forced by the Botswanan government out of the Central Kalahari game reserve, set aside by Britain in the 1960s as their last refuge. Last year the EU threatened to withhold a £4 million development grant to Botswana unless forced removals ceased.
Last November, however, Brussels gave the go-ahead for the grant, even though Survival had produced voluminous first-hand evidence that persecution of the Bushmen, including torture, was continuing.
Before recently visiting the Kalahari, Mrs Kinnock was fully briefed by Survival on the gulf between the official line that the Bushmen are being well treated and the horrific reality of the dismal New Xhade camp where they are dumped after eviction, which they call "the place of death".
During her brief visit, it was the government's district commissioner who acted as her interpreter. The Bushmen's chief spokesman, Roy Sesana, had the microphone snatched from him when he tried to speak. She was then locally reported echoing the government's propaganda line, and on the day that she left Botswana, July 1, Brussels handed over the money.
When Stephen Corry, Survival's director, wrote to Mrs Kinnock asking whether she had been fairly reported, she replied that she had seen no evidence of physical force being used and that Survival should accept the Botswanan government's invitation to visit the settlement for themselves.
A disbelieving Mr Corry responded by pointing out that over the past five years he and four other Survival staffers have made innumerable visits to every part of the Kalahari, recording hundreds of hours of interviews with scores of Bushmen.
He then listed some of the forcible measures the Botswanan government has recently used to evict the Bushmen, ranging from emptying their water tanks to threatening that, unless they agree to leave, they would be shut up in their huts and burnt. The persecution of the Bushmen was, he said, the worst case of neo-colonial oppression Survival had investigated.
Last week Survival's Miriam Ross returned from the Kalahari with a further stack of interviews describing how Mrs Kinnock's visit looked to the Bushmen. They were astonished how easily she had been hoodwinked. As Roy Sesana put it: "She wasted money coming from London. I am crying when she says these things. She should pay the money back."
Aug 4 02

Whitehall spin machine expanded
Guardian

Alan Travis and Avi Silverman
The electronic information and rebuttal system used by the government to help Whitehall stay on message is to undergo a dramatic expansion, according to Cabinet Office documents seen by the Guardian.
The system, known as the "knowledge network", has been used for two and half years to give ministers, their special advisers and key policy officials instant access to the "most up to date key messages" from individual departments.
But the document shows that while the government has sworn to abandon spin, behind the scenes it has been developing ever more sophisticated ways of getting its message across.
The system's creators now want to extend it to enable Downing Street to tighten its grip over Whitehall by ensuring that civil servants "get a broader feel of wider departmental and government policies, rather than simply their own area or department".
It says that cross-government initiatives using these new information-sharing techniques have become "immensely stronger".
The primary aim of the knowledge network is to share information between government departments but in practice it has been used by Downing Street to ensure that all ministers and press officers are putting out the "most up to date messages".
The documents show that it has already proved useful to ministers in dealing with hostile criticism from MPs and the media: "Journalists will still call out of the blue on unfamiliar subjects, but we are far better equipped and less vulnerable to bolts out of the blue," the Home Office said.
The Department of Food and Rural Affairs said: "Access to information on the department's key messages and aims has certainly been improved... it proved useful in coordinating departmental responses to media coverage."
But plans to develop "knowledge-enhanced government" also include developing secure computer networks enabling key figures in local authorities, the NHS, and other agencies to join planning during crises. .................... .....In the blueprint seen by the Guardian, the ambition is to use the newly developed secure government intranet to "manage new and existing policies in conjunction with key stakeholders in the wider public, private and voluntary sectors".
The system was used in the foot and mouth crisis to ensure that the views of ministers and their advisers were shared with local officials. The blueprint says this provides a model to improve the ability of public sector officials to contribute to the debate about priorities - but cautions that the right members must be picked to take part in the first place.
Aug 3 02

Blair's worries over Iraq invasion revealed
Scotsman

Fraser Nelson Westminster Editor
TONY Blair is privately opposed to bombing Baghdad and has deep concerns about the consequences of any invasion of Iraq, according to King Abdullah of Jordan.
The king has said the Prime Minister told him he harbours deep reservations about the position adopted by President George Bush and the hawks in his administration.
The disclosure has shattered the image of unity between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, and left the Prime Minister accused of a duplicitous diplomatic policy, telling each world leader what he thinks they want to hear.
King Abdullah met Mr Bush yesterday and preceded the talks by giving an interview to the Washington Post, where he made clear Britain is among the countries worried about the US's rhetoric.
The president, he said, does not realise how much opposition there is to a war with Iraq because world leaders are reluctant to make their true feelings known to him.
"In all the years I have seen in the international community, everybody is saying this is a bad idea," he told the newspaper. "If it seems America says, We want to hit Baghdad', that's not what Jordanians think, or the British, the French, the Russians, the Chinese and everybody else."
He then detailed the extent of opposition to Mr Bush and singled out the Prime Minister: "Mr Blair has tremendous concerns about how this would unravel".
His comments flatly contradict the image of unflinching support for the US which Downing Street has been careful to nurture since 11 September. No 10 believes that this position delivers the most leverage with the White House.
Downing Street yesterday did not dispute the king's version of events and would only say there is no shift in position. A spokeswoman said: "The situation hasn't changed. The Prime Minister met the king on Monday, when they had a constructive dialogue. The Prime Minister believes that weapons of mass destruction is an issue that has to be dealt with." When asked whether she accepted that Mr Blair has never before admitted to any reservations about attacking Iraq, she said: "I would refer you to what he said last week."
Last week, Mr Blair gave an press conference where the topic of Iraq emerged several times. He would then say only that "no decision has been taken", but did make clear he would not require parliament's consent before making such a decision. The Conservatives said that Mr Blair has been caught trying to give two different messages to two different audiences. ......
Aug 2 02

A toast to liberty
Telegraph

Many a bottle of (legally) imported champagne will have been cracked open to celebrate the defeat of HM Customs and Excise in the High Court yesterday.
Customs officers will no longer be entitled to stop and search anybody returning from the Continent without reasonable grounds for suspecting those individuals of smuggling goods for commercial resale in order to avoid duties. Though Customs has been given leave to appeal, there can be no doubt that the court came to the right verdict.
Alan and Pauline Andrews, whose car and its contents were confiscated at Dover last year, should be the toast of all tourists, along with Hoverspeed, which bravely brought the case on their behalf.
It was characteristic of the arrogance that seems to have infected the Board of Customs and Excise that it should issue a statement claiming that the court had "upheld" its rights. John Healy, the Economic Secretary, even claimed that "those who bring back large quantities of tobacco must accept an evidential burden to provide a satisfactory explanation".
This is nonsense. One of the court's findings was that Customs "wrongly reverses the burden of proof". It is for the authorities to prove that an individual is engaged in smuggling, not the other way round.
Customs and Excise should cease forthwith the practice of arbitrarily seizing alcohol and tobacco as contraband, and especially of impounding and selling vehicles, without strong evidence of criminal intent. The court found that the principle of proportionality is abandoned in such penal confiscations.
The most notorious recent case, highlighted in this newspaper, was that of Mrs Kim Cundle, whose Mercedes van was confiscated and auctioned after she was unable to prove that the wine and beer she was bringing home from France were intended for her own and her husband's birthday parties.
One of the most sinister aspects of this affair has been the treatment of travellers as if they were criminals. Interrogations, sometimes lasting many hours; "lock-ins", in which passengers are forced to endure long delays; intimidating tactics, paramilitary uniforms and "intensification exercises" - all the trappings of a police state have been deployed to terrorise law-abiding people.
Ever since Gordon Brown gave the green light to such "deterrence" several years ago, the Government has been impeding the free flow of people and goods. It has abused its powers, merely to preserve the grotesque imbalance in excise duties between Britain and the Continent. As Edmund Burke observed: "The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse." It has been left to the courts, invoking European laws, to put a stop to this very British abuse.
Aug 1 02

Suspects held illegally
Scotsman

Fraser Nelson Westminster Editor
NINE suspected terrorists arrested without trial under David Blunkett's new emergency legislation were told yesterday that the Home Secretary had detained them unlawfully. The foreign nationals who were detained under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act were told that they had been discriminated against because they were not British.
However, they will not be released and will continue to be detained in a high-security prison in London while the Home Secretary appeals against the ruling.
In a damaging blow for Mr Blunkett's post-11 September policy, three judges in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission said that the detention of the nine was "not only discriminatory and so unlawful ... but also it is disproportionate". Using the European Convention on Human Rights, they argued that Mr Blunkett cannot detain a Briton without trial, and therefore should not be allowed to imprison anyone else. The Home Office said this distinction is a cornerstone of the English legal system. "We are disappointed that the court has found that these powers discriminate against foreign nationals," it said. "Our law has always distinguished between UK citizens and foreign nationals. We will be appealing to the Court of Appeal on this issue." The nine could not be deported to their country of origin because of European Convention obligations not to deport to states which practise torture or the death penalty. Mr Blunkett's compromise was to detain them without charge in the UK - while stating that they were free to leave the country at any time if they could find a safe haven. Liberty, the civil rights pressure group which has opposed Mr Blunkett's legislation, said the ruling has inflicted an important blow on what it sees as his increasingly draconian policy. "The government did not have the guts to say they were going to intern British people because they didn't think they would get it through parliament," said John Wadham, the organisation's director.
"They took the easy option and said they were only going to intern foreigners. This violates Article 14 of the Human Rights Convention, and today's ruling is a huge victory."
This is the first time that the specially-appointed panel of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission has examined the legality of the act. Its hearing took place in secret with even the applicants' lawyers banned from hearing some of the evidence against their clients. The government had been correct to state that there was a "public emergency threatening the life of the nation", said the panel. But it added: "We have decided that the 2001 act ... to the extent that it permits only the detention of foreign suspected international terrorists, is not compatible with the convention." Lawyers for the Home Secretary were granted leave to take the case to the Court of Appeal, while the applicants were granted half their costs.
July 31 02

Blair to ignore warning on media ownership law
Telegraph

By Dominic White and Benedict Brogan (Filed: 29/07/2002)
Tony Blair will this week defy calls from an influential committee of MPs and peers to scrap plans that would allow foreign businesses to buy up British media companies, including television channels.
The joint committee set up to study the Government's Draft Communications Bill is expected to recommend on Wednesday that the media market should only be opened up if other countries open their markets in return. It is believed that the committee, chaired by the film producer Lord Puttnam, will criticise the plan to give major figures such as the naturalised American Rupert Murdoch a chance to increase his hold on broadcasting in Britain. The verdict recommending the proposal be scrapped is an embarrassment to ministers.
The committee's main target is the United States, which has strong bars on foreign investment in its media market. With the US unlikely to change its laws, the committee is effectively calling for a bar on companies such as Disney, AOL Time Warner and News Corporation investing in Britain.
Last night the Government made clear it was not prepared to compromise. Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, indicated that she was prepared to ignore Lord Puttnam's report. "The provisions on media ownership were not tentative proposals, they were decisions," she said. "Of course we will look very closely at what the committee says and the evidence they had.
"But the Government believes the broadcast industry and the public will benefit enormously from the foreign investment that would flow from the recommendations." The move will open the Prime Minister's relationship with the media to fresh scrutiny. It will also raise doubts about the purpose of the committee.
July 29 02

Gibraltar is not British enough for Blair
Telegraph

By Jenny McCartney (Filed: 28/07/2002)
The Government's shambolic show-down with Gibraltar first sprang, I suspect, largely from Mr Blair's desire to avoid social embarrassment. Every time he meets his new friend and European ally Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, Gibraltar is there too: a spiky lump of gravel in the seafood terrine.
How nice it would be, Mr Blair must have mused over his Rioja, to give Mr Aznar something to make him smile again, and how pleasant to be rid of the outmoded Gibraltarians and their faraway flag-waving. With ill-concealed enthusiasm, Mr Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Minister, began hastening towards an arrangement to share the sovereignty of Gibraltar with Spain (pending future discussions) and to sedate the Gibraltarians with the painkiller of a large pay-off.
Then - boom! - last week's row erupted, and the British government was left looking like a man who has rubbed violently at a small stain on his tie, and knocked a pot of soup over himself in the process.
How could Mr Blair not have foreseen it? By almost any interpretation, this government has behaved with extraordinary arrogance towards Gibraltar, and - when its people protested - it simply ratcheted up the crassness.
Mr Straw placed joint sovereignty on the negotiating table with Spain, regardless of Gibraltar's wishes. Then last week Peter Hain, the Europe Minister, indicated that London would organise a Gibraltar referendum after a few years, once its people had "time to reflect".
An outraged Peter Caruana, Gibraltar's chief minister, rejoined that Gibraltar would organise its own referendum within three months, and instantly became Public Enemy Number One. Mr Hain bluntly informed him that his referendum wouldn't count, and the British government would ignore the results. So that was that.
Except that it wasn't. Many fellow-Britons suddenly turned upon their government, elbowing their way on to the Today programme to vent their ire at Mr Hain. The anger came from Right and Left alike: Bill Morris, the leader of the TGWU, called the Foreign Office's rejection of the referendum "an insult to democracy" and announced that he personally would travel there "to campaign for a No vote".
A number of Labour back-benchers - including Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar - also fiercely attacked the negotiations with Spain.
Yet Spain, at least, has been eminently frank in the pursuit of its popular interests: our government has not. The fact that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Office so grossly miscalculated the national response is very telling, for there is a blind spot in New Labour: a streak which masquerades as anti-colonialism, but is in fact brutally colonialist in its thinking.
It is best summed up by the phrase "Not British Enough": a category reserved for groups of people who have a historical British identity but create a diplomatic difficulty. New Labour treats such groups as obstreperous children, whose sticky hands must be kept away from the levers of decision-making, especially when those levers are being worked to eject them from the British state.
In Northern Ireland, the Labour party still refuses to allow British citizens the chance to organise or vote for Labour, even as it governs them from London. Indeed, the blueprint which is taking shape for Gibraltar - exclusive British government negotiations with Spain, followed by a fait accompli and a heavily-managed referendum - is startlingly similar to that which was implemented in Northern Ireland. The Foreign Office, however, appears not to have twigged that this deal is much less saleable to the British public.
There is no significant minority in Gibraltar campaigning to be part of Spain: at the last referendum, in 1967, more than 99 per cent of its population voted to stay British. Nor is mainland Britain asked to endure a bombing campaign as the price of keeping the Rock, as it was with Northern Ireland. When Mr Average in England is informed that everyone in Gibraltar wants to stay British, and realises that he is not suffering one jot as a result of them so doing, his gut reaction is: "Why the hell shouldn't they?".
None the less, something evidently niggles Messrs Blair, Straw and Hain about Gibraltarians per se, and I think it is rooted in that notion of "Not British Enough": a faint, visceral contempt for anyone who wants to remain a member of Club Britain without being born on the mainland. Somewhere deep inside their political instincts, they can't help thinking of Ulster Unionists as a bunch of mad Paddies with union flags, and Gibraltarians as wannabe Englishmen taking afternoon tea in a tinpot state.
But I have visited Gibraltar, and its people are a great deal more complicated than that. They speak English, Spanish and llanito: a dialect which combines both languages. Their peculiar history has been shaped by seafaring and sieges, Nelson and Franco. I wonder, however, what it says about New Labour's blinkered definition of Britishness, that there is no room in it for the inhabitants of the Rock
July 28 02

Blair doubles cost of spin
Guardian


The amount of taxpayers' money spent on government advertising has more than doubled since Labour came to power, confirming fears that No 10's current inhabitant is obsessed with spin.
In the past year Tony Blair shelled out a staggering £147m more than John Major did in his last year of office, on advertising ranging from recruitment campaigns for teachers and soldiers to public information ads during the foot and mouth crisis last spring and summer.
July 26 02

A free country
Telegraph

By Stephen Robinson
Last week, Privacy International received a disquieting complaint from the mother of an 11-year-old child attending a London primary school. She claimed all children in the school had been electronically fingerprinted for a new library system without the consent of parents. Some parents were angry, saying the use of such systems softens children up for such initiatives as ID cards and DNA testing.
This fingerprinting system has been sold to 1,000 schools, or as many as 300,000 children from the age of seven. It is being used to replace library cards and to increase efficiency of library management. Each child places a thumb on an electronic scanner, and the identity of the print is then stored in a computer.
That thousands of children are being fingerprinted for school administration is worrying enough. But the most bizarre twist is that the Office of the Information Commissioner, the official responsible for the protection of information privacy in Britain, has come out in support of the practice.
In a letter to the system vendor, Micro Librarian Systems (MLS), a commission compliance officer praised the use of the technology in schools, arguing that fingerprinting "aids compliance with the Data Protection Act".
In the furore that followed, senior staff of the commissioner enthusiastically lined up publicly to "encourage" schools to fingerprint their children, arguing that it would be an example of "best practice" in information handling.
So, it seems fingerprinting of children is good for privacy. Perhaps the newly appointed Information Commissioner, who takes up his post later this year, should examine his office's raison d'etre. On the basis of what we have heard this week, it should be regarded with suspicion by anyone who cares about privacy.
July 26 02

Archbishop will not give blessing for war on Iraq
Times

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
DR ROWAN WILLIAMS hinted at future confrontation with the Government after being named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday when he insisted he would only support military action on Iraq which had been cleared by the United Nations. Dr Williams, who is currently Archbishop of Wales, recently signed an open letter condemning any possible attack on Iraq.
He also said he had no regrets about taking part in direct action against nuclear weapons in a protest organised by CND during the 1980s.
The Archbishop outlined his vision for the future of the Church of England, saying that he was determined that Christianity should once again "capture the imagination of our culture".....
July 24 02

Blunkett may be a listener, but he's certainly no liberal
Guardian

The white paper on criminal justice is a further erosion of our rights
Hugo Young Thursday July 18, 2002 The Guardian
People who take seriously the civil liberties and human rights agenda have often, perhaps usually, voted Labour. They see themselves as progressive, on the left not the right, and have tended to assume that Labour, like them, believed in the importance of defending axioms that range across such issues as free speech, race and sex discrimination, the protection of the individual against abusive state power, and trial by jury. The assumption always was that, given the choice between the two main parties, anyone who cared about these things knew where they had to stand.
This was a triumph of optimism over experience never easy to understand. Beginning with Herbert Morrison, postwar Labour governments have found no shortage of authoritarians to run the Home Office. Few showed natural sympathy for victims of state power, or resisted populist diatribes against fundamental rights and freedoms. Jim Callaghan was in the Morrison line, and so was Merlyn Rees. It turns out that the entire weight of libertarian trust in Labour rests on the performance of one man, Roy Jenkins, whose record was epic in many of these fields, but who is now a Liberal Democrat - as is almost every politician now prepared to take risks for civil liberties.
The Blair government is, in this respect, old, old Labour. With one exception, it has run away from every libertarian challenge. It is profoundly illiberal. As home secretary, Jack Straw always wanted to make clear early in the conversation that he was not a liberal. Nor is Tony Blair. Liberal is a word that crosses Blair's lips as infrequently as socialist. The third way he seeks between these terms is the only one available: reliably and fiercely conservative.
A conservative stance was central to Blair's strategy before 1997. His most tenacious work as shadow home secretary was to prepare the end of Labour's annual opposition to renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He also persuaded John Smith to abstain rather than oppose when Michael Howard's most extreme criminal justice bill came to a final vote. As prime minister, he maintained and extended his unreliable trajectory, insisting, for example, that the Freedom of Information Act, of which he spoke in opposition as a fervent supporter, should be operationally delayed for several years. With his support, Home Secretary Straw abolished the defendant's right to silence in criminal cases, again a reversal of the previous party line.
The exception to this pattern is the Human Rights Act, importing the European convention into domestic law. It was a big reform. But it was driven forward by the inescapable demands of history, together with Lord Chancellor Irvine's conversion to its merits. Straw seized on it, perhaps as cover for the anti-progressive things he wanted to do. Blair has never made more than passing reference to it. It doesn't grow out of the bowels of Labour, old or new, and certainly not out of the mind or sympathy of the present home secretary, David Blunkett, who refers to its libertarian impulse as "airy-fairy", and furiously tried to wriggle round the constraints it placed on his anti-terrorism legislation.
This is the historic context in which to read Blunkett's white paper on the criminal justice system. The progressive agenda places heavy reliance on the importance of law and judges; Blunkett has spent much time scorning what they say and do. Never has a home secretary done more to destroy confidence in the legal profession. Morrison and Callaghan were careful what they said about judges. Time and again Blunkett has whined and sniped at judgments that went against him. It shouldn't be surprising that a defining theme of the white paper is the government's belief that the justice system has become a lawyers' ramp.
That hasn't produced a bad document. Blunkett's rarest virtue is that he's a listener, sometimes prepared to change his mind and challenge other people's conventional wisdom. The paper takes a radical and constructive swipe, long overdue, at some grotesque inefficiencies. At every stage from arraignment to trial, too many thousands of cases are bedevilled by multiple failures on the part of police, prosecutors, witnesses and lawyers. Seeking more reliable satisfaction for victims, and a better clear-up rate for crimes of every kind, is a worthy objective of government. The white paper has many sensible ideas.
It is also good and grown-up about sentencing. Financial as well as social crisis has driven this home secretary to try to do something about the exponential growth that makes Britain the prison capital of Europe. Not a new aspiration - and the message is confused by doubling, as part of the strategy to speed up trials, the length of sentences magistrates can give. But most of the language and would-be policy on prisons is practical, not tabloid.
Blunkett has also listened on juries. Six months ago, in line with Lord Justice Auld's report, he proposed a system that might have halved the number of jury trials, drastically abolishing a fundamental right. Now he's gone back on that. That does not mitigate, however, the crucial shift this state paper expresses. The rule that determined the balance of the judicial system hitherto was this: it was worse for an innocent person to be convicted than for a guilty person to go free. Now that has been reversed. What drives the Blunkett white paper is a demand for more convictions, no matter what collateral damage may be done to people who are not guilty.
That was the purpose of Labour's serial assaults on jury trial, two by Straw and one by Blunkett. Juries were thought to acquit more read ily than magistrates. Though Blunkett was forced to pull back, he continues to eat away at his target. Juries will now be removed, if judges agree, not only from complicated fraud cases but complex cases of any kind that involve money: a burgeoning category. They will also be excused if in danger of "intimidation", something easily manipulable by unscrupulous policemen. The truth is that these ministers dislike juries almost as much as they mistrust, and airily defame, the lawyers whose professional duty is to ensure defendants get a fair trial.
Even more offensive is Blunkett's willingness to open the way to more disclosure of previous convictions. This may already be done in narrowly restricted circumstances. Judges are now invited to extend them, to satisfy an explicit impatience with juries' present performance. The presumption of innocence is not being cleaved away with the axe that tabloid populism might like. But an insinuating needle can destroy the fabric of the system just as well, which Blunkett, detesting lawyers, seems only too happy to countenance.
These are a liberal's objections to his plan. To say the conviction of the innocent is more intolerable than the acquittal of the guilty sounds, these days, outlandish. But any system will be loaded to have one effect or the other, and Blunkett has made his choice. It's regrettable but not entirely surprising: the logical conclusion of Labour's unprincipled and treacherous history.
July 18 02

Blunkett's notion of justice: guilty until proved innocent
Telegraph

By Peter Lilley (Filed: 17/07/2002)
Asked by a judge whether his client was aware of some legal maxim with a Latin tag, the famously insolent barrister F E Smith replied "Your Honour: in the little village from which my client comes, they speak of little else."
The sarcasm was well placed. Most people know little and care less about legal matters. Four legal principles are so fundamental to our liberty that they have impressed themselves on the public consciousness: that we have the right to trial by jury; we are innocent unless proved guilty; we cannot be imprisoned without charge (habeas corpus); and we cannot be tried twice for the same offence (the double jeopardy rule).
What is remarkable is that precisely those four pillars of our liberties are now under threat from this Labour Government. Driven by a combination of saloon bar populism and zeal for modernisation, David Blunkett will today further undermine their foundations.
The Government pursues a populist line by sounding "tough on crime" through deliberately blurring the distinction between those accused, and those guilty, of crime. He claims that juries acquit more people than magistrates do, so he intends to reduce the number of jury trials. In fact, as Jack Straw admitted, the conviction rate for similar offences is much the same whether a trial is before a magistrate or a jury.
When Home Secretary, he none the less brought in two Bills to abolish our right to choose trial by jury. The Government argued that this right to an expensive jury trial was exploited by hardened criminals to get a lesser sentence than if they were tried by a magistrate. So, removing that right would ensure criminals got their just deserts and save money. This argument disintegrated when it emerged that the expected savings would be largely due to the shorter sentences that magistrates can give.
Mr Blunkett appears to have stepped back from a third attempt to abolish the right to jury trial. Instead he plans a squeeze on jury trial from both ends. At one end he will say that most offences carrying sentences of less than a year will be deemed too simple to merit jury trial. At the other end, he will say that, beginning with fraud trials, complex cases should be taken away from juries. The Government seems to have fallen for the myth that juries are so bewildered by complex fraud cases that they let guilty fraudsters go free. In fact, the Serious Fraud Office has had a 92 per cent conviction rate over the past four years, far higher than all other offences.
Despite its protestations of support for juries in principle, it is clear that a government that considers juries unsuitable for either simple or complex cases has little attachment to them at all. Yet juries, precisely because they are ordinary people, are trusted, independent of the state, fairest and the best safeguard against onerous laws, which they may simply refuse to enforce.
Above all, they are the only way, apart from voting, that citizens can participate in the process of government. A million people carry out jury service every five or six years - and in this way power is diffused into the community. We ought to be widening participation, not restricting the jury's role. Anyone summoned for service should be required to nominate a period in the coming year when they can serve.
The Government is also committed to abolishing the guarantee against double jeopardy - at least for murder. This was triggered by the Lawrence case. Stephen Lawrence's parents took out a private prosecution that failed. Hard cases make bad law; yet the Macpherson report proposed that the 800-year-old rule should be set aside to allow retrial if the police found new evidence against the same suspects. The Government decided to sound both tough and politically correct by arguing that, if new evidence is found, a new trial is called for.
The double jeopardy rule persisted for eight centuries for four very good reasons. It protects the individual from harassment by the state; it forces the prosecution to get all its ducks in a row before taking a case to court; and it reassures all innocent people, once acquitted, that they will not face a second trial. Finally, any second trial would inevitably be prejudiced if a judge first ruled that the new facts were "compelling evidence" of guilt.
We may hear rather less about the old habeas corpus rule, which protects us from arbitrary imprisonment. Yet the new European arrest warrant will enable Continental governments to arrest and extradite British citizens. It is extraordinary that we shall have less protection against arrest by a foreign government than we do against our own.
The most fundamental basis of all our freedoms is the presumption of innocence. As the great Lord Chancellor Lord Sankey wrote: "Throughout the web of the English criminal law, one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt." But, of course, it is far more convenient for governments to require us to prove our innocence. So this golden thread has been set aside in the EU directives placing the burden of proof on the accused in sex and race discrimination cases.
Steven Spielberg's current blockbuster, Minority Report, portrays the world in 2054 when everyone's iris can be identified wherever they go, and where police can try people for crimes they are predicted to commit. Now Mr Blunkett wants to store images of our irises on the state's computers. And the Government has rammed through legislation empowering police to arrest people who have committed no offence and require them to prove they are not going to behave like hooligans at some future date. Today he will bring us nearer to 2054.
Peter Lilley is the Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden
July 17 posted here July 18 02

Proposal for European Arrest Warrant

UK ID Card Proposals Consultation Paper Released
Privacy International

The Home Office issued its consultation paper on an "entitlement card" on July 3. Home Secretary David Blunkett said he was "enthusiastic" about adopting it. The card would be mandatory to obtain for all persons over 16 and would be required for employment and health care and cost over 33 billion pounds to install, not including all the devices to use it. The proposal has already been criticized by members of all political parties and major media.
This is a new website
July 16 02

The great charade
Observer

As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John Pilger argues that 'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist ... America itself
It is 10 months since 11 September, and still the great charade plays on. Having appropriated our shocked response to that momentous day, the rulers of the world have since ground our language into a paean of cliches and lies about the 'war on terrorism' - when the most enduring menace, and source of terror, is them.
The fanatics who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. No bombs fell on these American protectorates. Instead, more than 5,000 civilians have been bombed to death in stricken Afghanistan, the latest a wedding party of 40 people, mostly women and children. Not a single al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught. .........
Should anyone need reminding, Iraq is a nation held hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as the dictatorship over which Iraqis have no control. Contrary to propaganda orchestrated from Washington and London, the coming attack has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', if these exist at all. The reason is that America wants a more compliant thug to run the world's second greatest source of oil.
The drum-beaters rarely mention this truth, and the people of Iraq. Everyone is Saddam Hussein, the demon of demons. Four years ago, the Pentagon warned President Clinton that an all-out attack on Iraq might kill 'at least' 10,000 civilians: that, too, is unmentionable. In a sustained propaganda campaign to justify this outrage, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have been used as channels, 'conduits', for a stream of rumours and lies. These have ranged from false claims about an Iraqi connection with the anthrax attacks in America to a discredited link between the leader of the 11 September hijacks and Iraqi intelligence. When the attack comes, these consorting journalists will share responsibility for the crime. It was Tony Blair who served notice that imperialism's return journey to respectability was under way. Hark, the Christian gentleman-bomber's vision of a better world for 'the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan.' Hark, his 'abiding' concern for the 'human rights of the suffering women of Afghanistan' as he colluded with Bush who, as the New York Times reported, 'demanded the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population'. Hark his compassion for the 'dispossessed' in the 'slums of Gaza', where Israeli gunships, manufactured with vital British parts, fire their missiles into crowded civilian areas.
As Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of Imperialism , it is not long ago 'that the moral claims of imperialism were seldom questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global expansion of the western powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a major contributor to human civilisation.' The quest went wrong when it was clear that fascism was imperialism, too, and the word vanished from academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, imperialism no longer existed. Today, the preferred euphemism is 'civilisation'; or if an adjective is required, 'cultural'. From Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of crypto-fascists, to impeccably liberal commentators, the new imperialists share a concept whose true meaning relies on a xenophobic or racist comparison with those who are deemed uncivilised, culturally inferior and might challenge the 'values' of the West. Watch the 'debates' on Newsnight. The question is how best 'we' can deal with the problem of 'them'.
For much of the western media, especially those commentators in thrall to and neutered by the supercult of America, the most salient truths remain taboos. Professor Richard Falk, of Cornell university, put it succinctly some years ago. Western foreign policy, he wrote, is propagated in the media 'through a self righteous, one-way moral/legal screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence'.
Perhaps the most important taboo is the longevity of the United States as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists. That the US is the only state on record to have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe international law, is unmentionable. 'In the war against terrorism,' said Bush from his bunker following 11 September, 'we're going to hunt down these evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes.'
Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth. ...... We, too, watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The government now openly prepares to wage war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with September 11. 'We say this to the world. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of those who fought slavery and all those other great causes of freedom that began with dissent. We call on all like-minded people around the world to join us.' It is time we joined them.
July 14 02

.

Rock's long wait for a say on its future
Scotsman

GILES TREMLETT IN MADRID
JACK Straw's historic Gibraltar speech to the Commons yesterday may have set Tory opponents, and not a few on his own benches, screaming: "Traitor!" But even those who shouted loudest yesterday will not have been surprised.
Foreign Office mandarins - even Mr Straw - have admitted in private for months that co-sovereignty was the stone on which the Rock's new future would, if negotiations with Spain worked out, be founded.
For Gibraltarians wandering down Winston Churchill Avenue or Prince Albert's Road or for the taxi drivers who gather in Casements Square by the latest monument, erected just a few years ago, to the Rock's Second World War heroes, there was nothing new in Mr Straw's words.
They knew Spain would never settle for a deal that did not hand it sovereignty. That is why, when the Foreign Secretary bravely decided to show his face in Gibraltar two months ago, a cordon of helmeted Gibraltarian bobbies had to prevent the crowd from mobbing him. One of the last things Mr Straw will have seen as his limousine pulled out of the back door of the governor's residence and raced to the airport would have been a tough-looking, Gibraltarian granny waving a sharp wooden stake menacingly in his direction.
Gibraltarians want nothing to do with Spain. And that is a problem that neither Mr Straw nor his new Spanish counterpart, Ana Palacio, can fix by just sitting around a table and negotiating.
The depth of Gibraltarian hatred towards Spain can be measured by the results of the last referendum which proposed they might swap nationalities. This, admittedly, was carried out while the right-wing dictator, General Francisco Franco was still in power in 1966. But the result - 12,138 against and only 44 in favour - was as good as unanimous.
The 44 did not escape lightly. Gibraltarians knew who they were and attacked their shops, cars and yachts. Another measure of Gibraltarian dislike of Spain is the wealth gap that separates them from their Spanish neighbours in La Lmnea, a few yards away across the frontier. Gibraltarians earn almost double the Spaniards' income. Why should they want to become Spanish?
It is not the Gibraltarians who want to be Spanish, it is the British government who wants them to be Spanish, or at least partly so. The reasons for this are straightforward. Gibraltar has become a nightmare for Britain in its dealings with Brussels. Often, when the 15 member states finally agree to something after years of negotiating - be it the open-skies policy or financial regulation - a last-minute cry comes up from the Spanish delegation. The deal cannot be signed, they say, until Gibraltar has been excluded.
Thus, a deal that may benefit 60 million Britons is stalled while the government tries to defend the interests of 30,000 of them. Those 30,000, obsessed with conspiracy theories about future "sell-outs", do not seem terribly grateful.
Spain's claims on Gibraltar are not completely unfounded. It ceded part of the Rock in the 1714 Treaty of Utrecht, but the other part was simply grabbed by Britain years later. That treaty also says that if Britain one day decided to give up sovereignty over Gibraltar, it must hand it back to Spain. All this adds up to the "festering dispute" described by Mr Straw yesterday. His solution - which has its precursor in the so-called Brussels process set up by Baroness Thatcher's government - is to negotiate away all, or some, of British sovereignty.
Joint sovereignty, on paper, looks like an inspired solution. Gibraltarians would keep their British passports and get the best that not just Britain but Spain - which is, after all, closer to hand - can give them. Gibraltarians already have a reputation for struggling through the frontier and then collapsing on the other side so that they can get hospital treatment, which is better, on the Spanish side. Throw in increased self-government and, argues Mr Straw, everybody should be happy.
But things are not that easy. Gibraltarians have some very good reasons for disliking Spain. For 13 years, again under Franco but also during the early years of Spanish democracy, the frontier to Spain was closed. Gibraltarians wanting to see relatives in La Lmnea had to travel via Tangiers or shout to them through the fence on Sunday afternoons.
Even now, crossing the frontier can be exhausting. Whenever the political situation gets tough, Spanish border guards are ordered to slow down their checks. Queues can last for hours.
All this could be forgotten, however, if Spain was prepared to accept sharing as a definitive solution to the problem or, even if it publicly acknowledged Gibraltarians' rights to vote in a referendum on the proposed agreement. But Spain will not even go that far. Josi Marma Aznar, the prime minister, has made it clear that sharing is a short-term solution for his government. The end goal remains total possession of Gibraltar. The referendum, he says, is a matter for Britain. Spain will have nothing to do with it.
Mr Straw has promised Britain will not ratify any agreement until the Gibraltarians themselves have backed it in a referendum. Gibraltarians see they are being invited to back a deal that will eventually hand them over to a country that treats them with, at the very best, disdain.
That is not Mr Straw's fault. But he does not want to face humiliation at a referendum and has already signalled that, if Gibraltarians do not like the deal, it may take a very long time for that referendum to be called.
If 60 million Britons have to wait years for a referendum on the euro, then 30,000 Gibraltarians can wait even longer for their referendum.
There are only two ways out of this deadlock. Either Spain drops its long-term demands for full sovereignty and starts showing some consideration to the Gibraltarians, or the talks should be cancelled. Mr Straw, despite the bravura shown yesterday, may not even have to do that himself.
Mr Aznar this week sacked Josep Piqui, the foreign minister who had been an enthusiastic negotiating partner. It was a sign that he did not consider Gibraltar a major priority. He has his own troubles with the Basque country and, now, with Morocco's claims to a series of Spanish enclaves on the north coast of Africa.
The precedent set by co-sovereignty may create problems for him on both those fronts. So Gibraltarians need not hold their breath: Mr Piqui's successor, Ana Palacio, may well pull the plug first.
Strategic position has ensured a turbulent history
THE history of Rock of Gibraltar has been governed by its physical size and its geographical location.
Standing as it does at one of the northern hemisphere's strategic crossroads, it has always attracted the attention of the world.
Gibraltar itself is a tiny outcrop of British history attached to southern mainland Spain. Its 2.3 square mile land mass is dominated by the Rock, a 426 metre-high block of limestone.
It is currently a British dependency, but has changed hands many times over the last 1,000 years. In 911 AD, Moors from North Africa conquered Gibraltar and settled there for almost 600 years.
The 14th century saw the Rock change hands as the Spaniards conquered it in 1309 only to lose it back to the Moors again in 1333.
Spain, fighting on behalf of the King of Castile, re-conquered the peninsula in 1462 and held it until the 18th century, when they were defeated by the British in 1704.
The Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, officially handed Gibraltar over to Britain "forever".
During the course of the 19th century, Gibraltar developed into a fortress of renowned impregnability, the phrase "As safe as the Rock" became commonplace in the English language. At the same time, a civilian community grew up within its walls, earning its living primarily from commercial activities.
In 1830, responsibility for Gibraltar's affairs was transferred from the War Office to the Colonial Office and the status of Gibraltar was changed from "the town and garrison of Gibraltar in the Kingdom of Spain" to "Crown Colony of Gibraltar" with powers vested in a governor.
In 1963, the question of Gibraltar's status came before the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation and Spain seized the opportunity to revive her claim for the reversion of the Rock to Spanish sovereignty. In 1967, Spain, now under General Franco, held a referendum over future sovereignty of the island. Famously, 12,138 votes were cast against joining Spain, while only 44 were cast in favour. Despite the result, the Spanish increased restrictions at the border with Gibraltar, which culminated in the complete closure of the frontier and all other means of direct communication with the mainland.
July 13 02

Gibraltar still besieged
Telegraph

(Filed: 11/07/2002) Tony Blair's strategy was to counter Franco-German dominance of the European Union by forging alliances with other countries, especially Spain. Gibraltar stood in the way of this plan, so would have to be sacrificed by Britain's agreeing to share sovereignty over the colony with Madrid.
Jack Straw was to deliver an agreement on principles to the Prime Minister by the summer; Josep Pique, his Spanish counterpart, would do the same for Jose Maria Aznar. This would then be put to the Gibraltarians in a referendum in which, it was hoped, a mixture of carrot and stick would produce the desired result.
On Tuesday night, Mr Pique was sacked as foreign minister, a move that a former aide to Mr Aznar interpreted as the knell for one of his key policies, a Gibraltar deal. In fact, the betrayal of the Rock by the Government had already run into formidable difficulties: the steadfast opposition of the Gibraltarians, the brilliant advocacy of their chief minister, Peter Caruana, and American misgivings about the defence implications of shared sovereignty. To these must be added Spanish fears about the knock-on effect of a Gibraltar referendum on sovereignty on their own secessionist-minded regions, in particular the Basque country.
Mr Straw will fail to meet his timetable for a deal. But that will not necessarily let the Rock off the hook. To save face, the Foreign Secretary may seek to emphasise the points of agreement with Spain, rather than conceding that the attempted deal is dead. That would leave a sword hanging over the Gibraltarians: they would be under the threat of resumed negotiations while continuing to suffer harassment from the mainland.
The Government's attempt to appease Madrid over Gibraltar is thoroughly reprehensible and has left Mr Straw looking both unprincipled and ineffective. Part of the reason why Mr Pique went was his failure to deliver on his promises regarding the Rock. The Foreign Secretary, by contrast, is likely to remain in office. He should use the time left to him to reverse his earlier follies and reassure the people of Gibraltar.
July 11 02

Blunkett's mission to control
Telegraph

(Filed: 10/07/2002) David Blunkett's latest concession on the Police Reform Bill is another welcome retreat by the Home Secretary in the face of a well argued case by Opposition MPs and peers.
Whether he has stepped back far enough, however, is another matter. Not for the first time, Mr Blunkett wants to have his cake and eat it. He wishes to retain the power to intervene in the workings of a local constabulary deemed by Whitehall to be "failing"; on the other hand, he wants us all to stand back and admire his willingness to show flexibility by partially amending a measure that threatens to undermine 150 years of independent policing in England and Wales.
This country has had cause down the years to be grateful for the autonomy of its chief constables. So why does Mr Blunkett think he is the Home Secretary who should change an arrangement that has served us well? Like many occupants of the Home Office, he is frustrated that he gets the blame for rising crime - as he will when the latest figures are published on Friday - while having no obvious control over the police. (This does not, of course, stop him taking the credit when crime falls.) Why is it, he asks, that, when I pull a lever, there is nothing on the other end apart from an adverse opinion poll? One may sympathise with his predicament, but it comes with the political territory.
If the Home Secretary wishes to have more power over the police, then he is going in the right direction, albeit more slowly than he intended. But if he seriously wants to reduce crime, then he is heading the wrong way, placing too much emphasis on the narrow performance indicators - so loved by Labour ministers - that have had a baleful influence on policing in recent years. They mean more red tape and less long-term planning, and are inimical to the one thing that is likely to cut crime: the presence of more police on the streets, since the one "performance" that cannot be scientifically measured is the deterrent nature of the patrol officer.
No doubt Mr Blunkett will feel his concession is being uncharitably received should the Lords continue to resist his blandishments. But the Upper House should not lose sight of the grand design that is taking shape under Mr Blunkett's stewardship of the Home Office. He wanted to take control of the courts, but was beaten back by the Lord Chancellor; he desired to extend throughout the public sector the power of the state to pry into the lives of ordinary people, but retreated when it blew up in his face; he wants everyone to possess an identity card and register with a central population agency. Notwithstanding the occasional enforced detour, Mr Blunkett's path is clearly marked out and is consistent with the culture of intervention and control that pervades many of the policies of this Government. The line must be drawn before he gets his foot into the door of the chief constable's office.
July 10 02

Scotland 'weak link' if ID card rejected
Scotland on Sunday

MURDO MacLEOD POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT mmacleod@scotlandonsunday.com
DAVID Blunkett last night warned Scotland that it risks becoming "the weakest link" in the fight against crime if it tries to block the introduction of identity cards.
The Home Secretary said the country would become a "haven for fraudsters" if the Labour-Lib Dem coalition failed to implement a national ID card scheme.
Whitehall has insisted that Scotland must not be allowed to go it alone in rejecting the proposed 'entitlement' cards despite the opposition of Scottish justice minister Jim Wallace to the scheme.
The outburst has provoked fury from MSPs and human rights campaigners, who have accused Blunkett of bullying.
A spokesman for Blunkett said: "At a time when organised crime and human trafficking are becoming ever more sophisticated, the UK is alone among European countries in not having a national system of ID cards. Were England, Wales and Northern Ireland to adopt the cards, Scotland could become the weakest link in the fight against fraud. I don't think anyone wants to see that happen.
"There will be a number of issues which we shall have to discuss with the devolved administrations, and that is why we are having a consultation, there's no reason for any conflict in this."
Blunkett also told MPs last week that criminals would flock to Scotland if Holyrood refused to introduce the scheme. He said: "Were we able to introduce a card that dealt with organised fraud, and were Scotland not to have such a card, Scotland would become an absolute haven for fraudsters. Not even the Scottish National Party would want that."
Under the current proposals, UK citizens would have to sign up for compulsory "entitlement cards", which could combine the functions of driving licences and passports. Labour MSPs refused to comment on Blunkett's statement, saying the issue of ID cards was a reserved matter, but their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, were furious. Mike Rumbles, the Lib Dem MSP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, claimed the ID scheme was "unworkable".
"This is not about Scotland not wanting to combat fraud, this is about Scots knowing that ID cards will not work. I think that David Blunkett has forgotten all about devolution," he said.
"If they are supposed to be voluntary, then why is it an issue that Scots might not have them? One minute we are told it is an inoffensive and voluntary scheme, then we are told we must all have them so as to fight terror.
"This shows that Blunkett's policy is all over the place. This system is unworkable." A source close to Jim Wallace said the minister "would wait and see" what Blunkett's final proposals contained.
"Right now Blunkett's plans are so vague and pretty chaotic," the source said.
"Jim and the rest of the group will wait to see exactly what they come up with."
Michael Matheson, the SNP's shadow justice minister, accused Blunkett of attempting to "bully" MSPs.
He said: "I think that the bullying tactics being employed by the Home Office are completely unacceptable. The justice minister has made it clear that the issue of ID cards was a devolved matter. I hope that the Scottish Executive will show some backbone and stand up to the bully-boy methods of the Home Office, and consider the issue from the viewpoint of the good of the people of Scotland."
Bill Aitken, the Scottish Tory justice spokesman, said: "David Blunkett's claims are absurd. To suggest that Scotland would become an open door for crooks, conmen and other criminals is a gross exaggeration. "This is obviously targeted at Jim Wallace. Maybe Mr Blunkett is aware of Jim Wallace's weak approach to crime and justice issues, and feels that Scotland is under threat."
John Scott, the director of the Scottish Human Rights Centre, condemned the intervention by Blunkett.
He said: "The last thing that Scotland needs is to be told by David Blunkett what we have to do. We have a young parliament, and we hardly need to be railroaded into a supposedly 'voluntary' scheme. This is one of the examples of how Scotland could and should go it alone, and avoid this badly thought-out scheme."
However, David Cairns, the Labour MP for Greenock and Inverclyde, claimed that it would be "nonsense" for two separate ID card regimes to operate on each side of the Border.
He said: "It is crucial that the same system should operate in England and in Scotland. We have driving licences, National Insurance cards, and NHS cards issued on a UK-wide basis, this system should operate on the same principle.
"It would be utterly illogical and perverse to deal with this matter on anything other than a UK-wide basis."
A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said: "We are studying the proposals and will make our views known in due course. There may be issues which will have to be legislated for by the Scottish parliament, that is something which will become clear over time."
July 7 02

Corruption at heart of freedom bid
Scotsman on Sunday

EAMONN O'NEIL
A SCOT at the centre of the UK's longest-running miscarriage of justice case is on the verge of having his conviction overturned, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.
Investigators from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) have concluded that there were substantial weaknesses in the 1977 prosecution of Robert Brown, from Glasgow.
Brown, now 45, was jailed for the murder of Annie Walsh, a 56-year-old factory worker from Manchester.
The CCRC report, which will now be sent to the Courts of Appeal in London, concludes that there is a "real possibility" Brown's conviction will be overturned when his case is heard later this year.
The report reveals that a key officer in the original case, Detective Inspector John Butler, was the subject of several internal investigations for alleged dishonesty at the time of Brown's trial in 1977.
The report also contains details of a new analysis of Brown's confession - which was later retracted - by a linguistics expert which concludes that Brown did not voluntarily admit guilt.
The report was greeted by Brown with a mixture of jubilation and frustration. "I've got it!" he said by phone from the prison near Preston where he is being held. Brown, who has now applied to be released on bail, added: "My God, it's been a long time coming... Can someone tell me why it's taken until now to be believed?"
He also revealed that his 1977 defence team had urged him to agree to a deal which would have seen him accept guilt on reduced manslaughter charges in return for a lesser sentence. "I refused that deal because I was innocent. So I was led into the court on a conveyer belt like a lamb to the slaughter."
July 7 02

Re: Existing service already works
Telegraph

Date: 6 July 2002
SIR - The Government is proposing the creation of a Health Protection Agency. Far from establishing a new agency to protect the population from infection, this new creation will mean dissolving the Public Health Laboratory Service.
This service consists of linked laboratories covering England and Wales that carry out microbiological investigations for local health authorities, hospital trusts, environmental health departments and private sector companies.
The network shares the workload and the cost of the service it provides. The laboratories liaise with each other to monitor and control communicable diseases, food poisoning incidents, "super-bug" outbreaks and environmental pollution.
When the HPA is implemented, in less than a year, each laboratory will become part of its local hospital trust, with its links to its sister laboratories severed. They will no longer provide food and environmental services, there will be no division of labour to keep down costs and turnaround time and the supply of growth media and test reagents - currently provided in-house - is in doubt.
As the all-party select committee comments, it would be better - and more cost-effective - to strengthen an existing, already efficient service. Public health is at risk as Government policy forges ahead with little or no consultation with the people who spend every day protecting the population from infection.
From:
Johanna Water, Medical laboratory scientific officer and 26 others, Norwich Public Health Laboratory
July 6 02

Identity card 'would not stop welfare fraudsters'
Independent

By Andrew Grice Political Editor
David Blunkett is facing a cabinet revolt against his plans to introduce a universal identity card, amid warnings that it would do little to combat social security fraud.
Andrew Smith, the Secretary for Work and Pensions, is sceptical that the "entitlement card" announced by the Home Secretary would help to stamp out bogus welfare claims, which cost the Government up to £5bn a year.
A Whitehall source said yesterday: "The Department of Work and Pensions [DWP] will oppose the idea. It believes this is a solution in search of a problem." The source added: "If people are going to work and claim benefits, an entitlement card is not going to deter them. They will just turn up, show the card and carry on working."
DWP officials believe the Home Office plan might encourage fraud by creating a market in stolen or fake cards.
Plans by the Tory government for a "smart card" for all claimants were scrapped in 1999 by Alistair Darling, Secretary for Social Security at the time. Ministers dismissed the £1.5bn Tory scheme as an "expensive and unsuccessful gimmick".
Instead, the DWP is trying to persuade people to have benefits paid into their bank accounts, to try to cut fraud using stolen or fake Girocheques and benefit books.
DWP officials believe an entitlement card would cost the department millions of pounds and could jeopardise plans to upgrade its computers  for example, to handle a new system for child support payments.....
July 6 02

Labour's identity crisis
Telegraph

(Filed: 04/07/2002)
Exactly half a century after Winston Churchill abolished identity cards, David Blunkett yesterday proposed to reintroduce them. Why? Recalling the unpopularity of the wartime national registration cards, and anticipating fierce resistance from public opinion, the Home Secretary insists that his "entitlement cards" will be quite different.
They are not an Orwellian nightmare, but an opportunity for "positive engagement with citizenship". His voluminous consultation paper is supposed to inaugurate a national debate, in which the Government will be "neutral" - though Mr Blunkett admits: "I am not going to disguise my own enthusiasm for an entitlement card system." He claims that his commitment is not "ideological" and that the new cards need not be compulsory. The cost - up to £100 a head - is dismissed as a mere bagatelle. And Mr Blunkett naturally glosses over the fact that the scheme would be administered by such notoriously incompetent branches of bureaucracy as the Home Office and the Passport Office.
The official rationale for the latest attempt to reinvent the ID card is "identity fraud". Mr Blunkett is rightly exercised about the growing incidence of fraud and identity theft. His officials have persuaded him that ID cards would help to combat these problems.
Unfortunately for the Home Secretary, the entitlement card might create as many problems for the criminal justice system as it solves. Holding so much information on one card would make it a highly desirable prize: instead of mobile phone theft, we would have ID card theft. A thriving black market in forged or stolen cards would quickly emerge. Most benefit fraud does not depend on false identity. Mr Blunkett would soon discover that the fraudsters are usually at least one step ahead of the Home Office.
The gentlemen in Whitehall, however, have been dogged in their pursuit of the Holy Grail of ID cards ever since they were abolished. Michael Howard and Peter Lilley both tried versions of the scheme now dusted off by Mr Blunkett. The Home Office is not institutionally racist, but it is institutionally illiberal. The very name "entitlement card" is odious, implying as it does that our liberties are in the gift of the state. Has Mr Blunkett forgotten that in Britain, uniquely, people sing they never, never, never shall be slaves? That in Britain everything that is not prohibited is permitted? That the British are prepared to suspend their freedoms only in the face of a national emergency, and then only temporarily?
Such an emergency might, perhaps, be argued to have arisen on September 11. Though Mr Blunkett insists that the attack on America did not prompt his conversion to ID cards, it clearly was an underlying factor. If ID cards were a foolproof safeguard against international terrorism, that could conceivably justify their introduction. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that they would hinder or deter organisations as sophisticated as al-Qa'eda or the IRA. Moreover, provisional anti-terrorist measures tend to become permanent.
Have the Home Secretary's mandarins convinced him that ID cards would resolve the asylum crisis? He confesses that he is "obsessed with asylum and illegal immigration". Our European partners, and the French in particular, have been demanding that Britain introduce ID cards for some time, though Mr Blunkett indignantly denies that his espousal of the scheme was prompted by pressure from Paris. Whether or not such pressure was a major factor, ID cards are not a substitute for a sensible immigration and asylum policy. None of the options proposed would require people to show their card on demand, so it would pose little or no deterrent to illegal immigrants or asylum seekers. Yet Mr Blunkett may believe that the promise of ID cards would persuade the French to close the Sangatte refugee camp. We doubt it, but to curtail ancient liberties for such a short-term gain would, in any case, be a national disgrace.
If the Conservatives are serious about freedom, they should abandon the Major government's flirtation with ID cards and campaign vigorously against them - just as Churchill did in 1951, under the slogan: "Set the people free!"
July 4 02

Brussels follows Labour's spin model
Telegraph

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels (Filed: 01/07/2002) The European Commission is to counter the growing mood of Euroscepticism across Europe by abandoning neutral presentation of facts and instead creating an aggressive spin machine modelled on the Downing Street methods of Alastair Campbell.
A leaked strategy document obtained by The Telegraph outlines a plan to spend 267 million euros (£173 million) over four years to devise a core catechism of "messages", and harness all elements of the European system to "improve the perception that citizens have of the European Union".
The new unit will begin operations in early 2003, in time for the expected euro referendums in Britain and Sweden.
An "action plan" will start in September involving the use of focus groups in each member state. It will work with the opinion poll departments of each EU government and co-ordinate "informational vigilance". The document, written in French and entitled An Information and Communication Strategy for the European Union, calls for a pre-emptive use of public relations to promote "the legitimacy, image, and role of the union".
"A true EU communication method cannot be limited to mere diffusion of information: it must give a sense to things and put the EU's actions and policies in perspective," it says. "If factual, neutral information is necessary, it is not sufficient. Experience shows that information cannot remain neutral because of the constant distortion by the media, intermediaries and other multipliers of opinion." The EU already has hundreds of information outlets scattered across the 15 states. But the document says that the machinery has not been properly "exploited" to project the EU message. The new propaganda body is to be a revamped version of the Inter-institutional Information Group (GII), a little-known group that already meets twice a year.
A British official, Jan Royall, who is a political appointee at the Commission, working for vice-president Neil Kinnock, played a key role in preparing the strategy report. The text, which is to be debated by the 20 European Commissioners in closed session tomorrow, calls for careful "targeting" of opinion-makers. These would be key figures in civil society, business and women's rights, with a special focus on the education system to counter an alarming increase of anti-EU sentiment among the young.
It said that since "the EU cruelly lacks a 'face' viz-a-viz the ordinary citizens", it must recruit opinion leaders in every state as a sort of visual viceroy - "intermediate personalities" - to help Brussels reach out to the people. The new pro-active strategy follows three disastrous years that have seen the rejection of the Nice Treaty by Irish voters, a victory of the "no" campaign in Denmark, and the eruption of violence at the Nice and Gothenburg summits. The document acknowledges that the EU is "suffering the full blast of public disaffection" and is the lightning rod for the anti-establishment feelings across the Continent.
"Many citizens simply do not understand what the functions of the EU are supposed to be: some think the union ought to do more to address their concerns, others think it meddles too much in details that should be left to member states or regions. "Some see the community as a threat to their national identity." The new plans are certain to outrage eurosceptics. Last week Britain's Bruges Group launched a pamphlet in Brussels - Federalist Thought Control - accusing the commission of spending 250 million euros a year on "blatant propaganda" promoting closer integration.
July 1 02

An ineffective, illiberal and expensive idea that just will not go away
Independent

01 July 2002
Consultation, openness, debate. These are good things, and so should we not be pleased that the Home Secretary is to publish a discussion paper outlining the various options for identity cards and inviting responses?
No, because the basic premise of identity cards is flawed, and has been found to be so by governments of both political colours and all shades of concern for liberty since they were abolished in Britain in 1952. Peter Lilley, the former Secretary of State for Social Security, explained yesterday with his usual clinical logic why the Conservatives rejected the idea. He is personally liberal, but was a member of a government which was potentially quite as authoritarian as the present one. Yet not even Michael Howard could be persuaded that identity cards were a good idea.
The essential point is simple. Making them compulsory would represent an increase in the power of the state over the individual, making it an offence to be forgetful or inefficient. Far from helping to fight crime, a compulsory scheme would create thousands more criminals.
If carrying identity cards is not made compulsory, on the other hand, and David Blunkett insists he has no intention of doing this, what is the point of them? It has come to something when 27 Labour MPs are unwilling to take their own Home Secretary at his word, having signed a House of Commons motion opposing compulsory identity cards, which they must suspect is Mr Blunkett's ultimate objective.
That is the context for the options which have been floated for a middle way between compulsory and voluntary cards. Mr Blunkett says he does not want to make it compulsory for people to carry identity cards, except for asylum-seekers, although his document this week may canvass the idea that, if someone is found not to have a card on their person, they may be escorted home or required to produce it at a police station later.
It is true that the main category whose members cannot readily confirm their identity any other way is that of asylum-seekers. Individuals often arrive here without any papers at all. But they have to record their fingerprints when they apply for refugee status. What is the point, as Mr Lilley asked yesterday, in insisting that they carry cards with their fingerprints encoded on an electronic chip when they are likely, if asked for them, to have their real fingerprints about their persons?
Dressing up identity cards as "entitlement cards" which have to be shown when claiming state benefits makes no difference to the underlying idea - although it gives a clue to the simplistic thinking in Whitehall which is constantly returning to this impractical, expensive and illiberal non-starter.
The simplicity of a universal means of checking identities is deceptive. It seems to offer a simple way to detect crime, stop benefit fraud and control illegal immigration all at once. But the police say that, when they apprehend people, establishing their identities is rarely a problem and not a serious factor in today's low clear-up rates. Identity cards would only cause tensions between them and ethnic minorities. As for benefit fraud, the Government already has a hard enough time keeping track of National Insurance numbers - why should a new layer of records make enforcement easier?
We believe one of the options in this week's consultation paper will be to decline to introduce identity cards at all. That is the option Mr Blunkett should choose - and he should concentrate on policies which are likely to work.
July 1 02

A free country
Telegraph

By Stephen Robinson
The House of Lords yesterday ruled against the Daily Mirror in a case that raises disturbing questions about the freedom of the press. The case arose out of a Mirror article published in December 1999, which included details of the medical records of the Moors murderer Ian Brady while he was on hunger strike in Ashworth secure hospital.
Certainly, as a cause celebre, this episode may be found wanting. Breaching the confidence of an individual's medical records is a serious matter, even if - as in this case - the subject had himself released details of his own medical history. Moreover, the Mirror paid its source for the information, which concerned Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, in giving the lead judgment yesterday. The concern here is not so much with the specific case as with the principle, for, as Lord Woolf conceded: "Any disclosure of a journalist's sources does have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press."
The Brady case goes to the heart of the confusion about the limits to press freedom in this country, where there is no American-style First Amendment protection. In the absence of constitutional guarantees, British journalists can turn only to the Code of Practice of the Press Complaints Commission, the newspaper industry's self-regulatory body, which maintains that reporters "have a moral obligation to protect confidential sources".
Journalists who fail to honour the code are liable to be sacked by their employers. Newspaper executives and reporters who fail to answer court orders to name sources are liable to go to prison, whatever that code may say. And in future, members of the public who might once have turned whistleblower to disclose a serious crime may opt instead to keep quiet. freedom@telegraph.co.uk

While Britain Slept
Demon.co.uk

While the British people's attention was elsewhere their government has agreed the final form of the European arrest warrant, leaving parliament powerless to block or amend the measure.

The warrant was formally adopted at a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council and so becomes part of European law, to be implemented in Britain, and escaping from any scrutiny by the elected representatives of the people.
As detailed previously in these pages the arrest warrant will be used by the EU to suppress all opposition to the diktats of Brussels. Indeed as Lord Scott, a law lord, says "the definition of xenophobia would almost certainly cover the distribution of Biggles and probably the Old Testament".
CIB Vice Chairman, Lord Pearson said "One of the most sinister and little-known aspects of our relationship with the EU is that when the executive agrees something on Britain's behalf, parliament is powerless to change it. If we voted against the warrant it would be enforced by the European Court. This is a very important example of our subservience to Brussels. Parliament is irrelevant in the law-making process.
A Home Office spokesman said parliamentary scrutiny committees had already discussed the subject but Lord Pearson called these debates a "sham" because even though few who spoke in them agreed with the measure, parliament was unable to change it.
Those who have done this are either incompetent fools who "know not what they do" or malign knaves who have deliberately evaded parliament in order to push through a measure which will transfer even more power to the dictators of Brussels. They have betrayed British democracy and are a disgrace to this nation. Those who support the use of the European arrest warrant in this country are at the very least Lenin's "useful idiots" or, more likely, arrogant pseudo fascists who seek supreme power for their elite club at the expense of the democratic rights of the people.
Unless the British wake up soon it really will be too late.
June 25 02

At the seat of empire
Africa is forced to take the blame for the devastation inflicted on it by the rich world
Guardian

George Monbiot Tuesday June 25, 2002 The Guardian
In the Canadian fastness of Kananaskis this week, the messianic cult of empire will solemnly worship itself. The leaders of the G8 nations will declare that they have come to deliver the world from evil. They will announce that they are sacrificing themselves for the good of lesser nations. They will propose solutions from on high, without acknowledging any responsibility for the problems.
It is traditional, when empire celebrates, that its vassal states come to pay tribute and beg for deliverance. This time, the African leaders who will be admitted to the summit on Thursday are prepared to suffer the final humiliation by blaming themselves for the disasters visited upon them by the G8.
"Africa," according to the Canadian government, "will remain a central focus of the Kananaskis summit." The discussions will revolve around a plan called the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or Nepad, drafted by the African leaders and enthusiastically endorsed by the G8. The enthusiasm is not entirely surprising, as Nepad places nearly all the blame for Africa's problems and nearly all the responsibility for sorting them out on Africa itself. In the hope that it might win them a few crumbs of aid and extra debt relief, the continent's leaders appear to have told the rich world everything it wants to hear.
Nepad accepts that colonialism, the cold war, and "the workings of the international economic system" have contributed to Africa's problems, but the primary responsibility rests with "corruption and economic mismanagement" at home. Few would deny that these have played a significant role, but nowhere in the document on which the plan is based is there any mention of the far more consequential corruption and mismanagement by the nations to whom they are appealing.
Africa's underlying problem, as the continent's leaders acknowledge, is debt. Nepad implicitly accepts the rich world's explanation for this debt: that previous African leaders have frittered away their economic independence through poor planning and personal graft. Nowhere is any context given: that Africa's deficit is merely one component of a vast and growing global debt, affecting consumers and nations in the rich world as well as nations in the poor world. The US, for example, owes $2.2 trillion: almost as much as the entire developing world's debt put together. No mention is made of the debt-based banking system which has caused this crisis, and which ensures that the only way debts can be discharged is through the issue of more debt.
This problem, as poor nations know but dare not acknowledge, is compounded by the policing system developed by the rich world at Bretton Woods in 1944. Rather than the self-correcting mechanism proposed by John Maynard Keynes, which forced creditors as well as debtors to discharge the debt, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were introduced as a means of persuading only the debtor nations to act, in the knowledge that this couldn't possibly work.
This system granted the rich world complete economic control over the poor world. The power that nations wield within the IMF is a function of their gross domestic product: the richer they are, the more votes they can cast. The World Bank is run entirely by "donor" states. These two bodies, in other words, respond only to the nations in which they do not operate.
The consequences for national democracy are devastating. African voters can demand a change of government, but they cannot demand a change of policy. All the important decisions affecting the continent are made in Washington, and they always boil down to the neoliberal demolition of the state's capacity to care for its people. So when the African leaders announce that "Africa undertakes to respect the global standards of democracy", they are accepting a burden they cannot lift. Democracy in Africa is meaningless until its leaders are prepared to challenge the external control of their economies.
But far from denouncing the authors of their misfortunes, they appear only to embrace them. "Structural adjustment", the IMF policy which has forced countries to repay their debts instead of investing in healthcare and education, is now almost universally acknowledged as the nemesis of development in Africa. Nepad's fiercest criticism is that it "provided only a partial solution" to poverty. Africa's leaders have pledged to support not only its successor policies (such as the IMF's demand that Malawi privatise its food reserves, with the result that millions of its inhabitants are now at risk of starvation), but also the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act passed by the US Congress. This seeks to complete the job which structural adjustment began: forcing African nations to dismantle state support and privatise their economies in return for minimal concessions on trade and aid.
Without addressing any of these obstacles, Nepad blithely promises to eliminate poverty, enrol all children in primary school, reduce child mortality by two-thirds and supply the continent with clean water and effective infrastructure. It will achieve these worthy aims, it claims, largely by means of "public-private partnership", the mechanism which is now failing so spectacularly in the rich world, while being forced on Africa by the G8.
Agricultural development depends, Nepad tells us, "on the removal of a number of structural constraints affecting the sector". One might have expected this to mean the dumping of subsidised produce on the African market by Europe and North America, which is widely acknowledged as a crippling impediment to effective farming on the continent. But this is never mentioned. Instead, the plan insists, the "key constraint is climatic uncertainty". Quite how the African leaders intend to "remove" this constraint is not explained, but that objective is arguably just as realistic as any of the others they propose.
Apart from a few timid requests for an increase in aid and a little more debt relief, the continent's leaders absolve the G8 nations of all responsibility. Instead, they proudly proclaim that "we will determine our own destiny" and call on the people of Africa "to mobilise themselves in order to put an end to further marginalisation of the continent". Self-determination is an admirable goal, but without control over economic policy it is bombast.
Some might say that this self-flagellation is a realistic means of engaging with the imperial powers in Kananaskis: the G8 nations, after all, do not take kindly to being lectured on their responsibilities. Nepad could be viewed as a white lie: the lies of the whites, repeated, with the best intentions, by the leaders of Africa. But development cannot be built on a lie, for development is a matter of reality. So while their plan has admitted them to the imperial court, it merely reinforces the dispensation that ensures Africa stays poor while the G8 stays rich. The continent's leaders will be forced to kneel on the stony ground of Kananaskis. But at least they've brought a Nepad.
7 George Monbiot will be away until August. His website can be found at www.monbiot.com.
June 26 02

Top mandarin: Blair circle acts like the Third Reich
The Observer

Kamal Ahmed, political editor Sunday June 23, 2002
Tony Blair's government has been compared to the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich by a senior civil servant who worked for the Government until 2000. The remarkable accusation is made by Sir Richard Packer, the former permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture who was made a knight by the Prime Minister when he retired from his job.
His comments, which brought immediate condemnation from Downing Street, will re-ignite the row over 'control-freakery' at the heart of the Government.
Although Packer insists that his allegation is only true 'in one respect', the fact that he makes the link will bring astonished responses from former colleagues who still work in Whitehall. It is highly unusual for such a senior former member of the civil service to speak out publicly so soon after his departure from office, particularly when the comments are so controversial.
'It is true they've shaken up departments and there's a lot more power in the centre,' Packer says in an interview with BBC1's On the Record programme, broadcast today. 'In one respect it did remind of the Third Reich where there were overlapping responsibilities and nobody quite knew where ultimate responsibility lay.
'There are groups at the centre with the Prime Minister's ear and I rather think that from those out on the periphery, it seems as though, if something goes wrong, departmental responsibility is clear, but if something goes right, they read in the newspaper that it was all the Prime Minister's idea.'
Packer hit the headlines earlier in the year when he accused the Prime Minister of giving 'grossly disproportionate' support to the Indian multi-millionaire and Labour Party donor Lakshmi Mittal over his bid to buy a Romanian steel plant.
'One of the problems is that the present administration when it first came in, immediately suggested that it was going to improve the delivery of policies radically,' Packer said. 'That was a very large claim. I don't think it was well thought through and so far it hasn't happened.'
Packer's comments reveal a deep-seated dislike of the Labour government among some parts of the civil service. Many officials feel that they are under-valued by Number 10, which has set up a de facto Prime Minister's department to control the Government from Downing Street.
The Government's special advisers, political appointees whose role became notorious after the Jo Moore episode, also brief against civil servants who they say are not up to the job, are too stuffy and lack a desire to change. Tony Wright, chairman of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, said there was a need for a new Civil Service Act to give Whitehall officials constitutional protection from political pressure.
The Conservative Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, Tim Collins, demanded that political appointees, such as Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of communications, and Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, were stripped of their civil service powers.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman yesterday rejected Packer's claims saying that although they were 'colourfully put' his opinions were now 'wholly out of date'.
June 23 02

Warning from Wales
Western Morning News. Saturday Jun. 15 '02

Sir.
Central Government proposes to set up regional assemblies throughout England. To be able to manage your own affairs sounds like a great idea. We, in Wales, thought exactly that. The reality is not what we expected. Be warned. Shortly before our assembly was set up, all our County Councils were abolished. A whole tier of local government was taken from us.
The assembly took over their role and has no more power than the former councils did. The money that ran the county councils now runs the assembly. There was no new money. With the assembly unable to pass any new laws, or raise any local taxes, we are unlikely to become any better off than we are at present.
Next our historic counties themselves were abolished. Counties like Glamorgan that had existed for more than a thousand years were swept away. They were replaced by a hotchpotch of so called "unitary authorities". The boundaries of the new authorities were drawn up on flat maps. Things like large rivers, or mountain ranges, were not taken into consideration. All that mattered to the planners was to put a certain number of people into each new authority area. We now have people who formerly lived in different counties, on opposite sides of a mountain, lumped together in the same authority area.
Some of the new rural authorities now cover such large areas money has to be spread very thinly. We have seen several cottage hospitals and village schools close. Some authorities, like my own, Merthyr Tydfil, are no longer large enough really to be viable. Several are already in financial difficulty. This year in Merthyr we have seen a 7.9 percent increase in our council tax while services decline. Any E.U. money due to wales cannot go directly to our assembly. It goes to London and they decide if we get it under a system known as "reciprocal funding".
After your assembly is set up, you will still send M.P.'s to London. If you have occasion to write to your M.P., or any Government department, your letter will be automatically returned to your assembly to be dealt with. London washes its hands of you. You are out of their hair.
It was recently reported that London is now the richest city in Europe, generating £159 billion this year alone. Why does the Government not distribute this around the country? That's true democracy.
James F. Addis, Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales.

Breathtaking examples of stupidity and brutality
The Scotsman

IN HAMLET, Shakespeare wrote that there was Providence in the fall of a sparrow. I'm not much of an expert in falling sparrows, but I do know a bit about the way in which American politics works. And when it comes to major bone-chilling announcements about the prospect of a "dirty bomb" attack on the American capital, then it is worth taking a step or two back and asking what exactly we are being told - and why are we being told it? We'll get to the hype in a minute, but first, the facts.
An American citizen and small-time gangster with a violent past, Jose Padilla, converted to Islam, changed his name, and - according to the FBI - became involved in a plot with al-Qaeda terrorists to explode a bomb filled with radioactive material in an American city. Padilla has been held for a month without charge and has been declared an "enemy combatant" by the US authorities. This means they can interrogate him without offering him legal representation, and - pending challenges from civil liberties groups - they can do so more or less indefinitely.
President Bush has already acted as judge and jury. "This guy Padilla's a bad guy," was how Mr Bush put it.
Now, Padilla may be the devil incarnate for all I know. But usually in democracies even Satan would get the right to legal representation, a hearing in court, and a fair trial. In the current mood in America, such sentiments are not very popular. Most Americans want to congratulate their intelligence services for averting a terrorist attack of indescribable horror.
But what has Padilla actually done that is illegal? If he has done something illegal - conspiracy to cause explosions, perhaps - why not bring him to trial? And if he merely thought about doing something illegal, is the US government going to make a habit of arresting its own citizens for Thought Crimes?
Then there is the hype over the "dirty bomb" itself. Some media accounts this week referred to the "dirty bomb" as a favoured weapon of terrorists. In their dreams, possibly. No-one has yet shown any evidence of any such weapon ever having been used by any terrorist group anywhere.
Before scaring ourselves witless, perhaps we should ask: how many people have "dirty bombs" killed this week? Fewer people than badly-wired toasters and accidents with lawnmowers.
Then there is the question of the credibility of the FBI. In the same week that J Edgar Hoover's FBI took a big bow for preventing some kind of terrorist holocaust in Washington, on the other side of the United States there was a different kind of FBI on display. A court in California awarded two radical environmentalists £3 million in damages after the jury decided that six FBI agents and three police officers tried to frame the environmentalists for planting a bomb in 1990.
It took 12 years for the environmentalists to achieve justice in the courts. Perhaps it is just as well that the environmentalists were not alleged to have been operating with al-Qaeda. Under such circumstances they might merely have been interned without trial and the key thrown away.
Besides, the legacy of US federal law enforcement incompetence, stupidity and brutality in the past decade or so is quite breathtaking. There were the intelligence failures leading up to 11 September itself. The FBI has been restructured - again - to make sure it doesn't happen in the future.
Then there was the mess at Waco, Texas, in February 1993, when dozens of federal agents stormed the compound of the Branch Davidian sect led by David Koresh. The FBI finally moved against the Branch Davidians, claiming, among other things, child abuse. This started a fire which killed 76 people, including many children.
Then there was the less well-known siege of Ruby Ridge in 1992, in which federal agents, including more than 100 from the FBI, were involved in a messy shoot-out with white supremacists in Idaho. Now, of course, in a civilised society we all need to be protected from the illegal activities of religious fanatics, white supremacists and, most especially, al-Qaeda.
But we also need to be on our guard against government agencies in the United States and elsewhere who seek to protect our freedom by destroying it. The supposed big success of the FBI over Padilla blew the scandal of the FBI agents in California right off the front pages of newspapers. How convenient.
Gavin Esler is a presenter on BBC News 24.
posted June 18 02

Monstrously illiberal
Telegraph

It has been nearly a year since this newspaper launched its Free Country campaign. But never before have we been faced with a proposal as illiberal, disproportionate and dangerous as the extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. The Government intends to allow our internet use, emails and telephone calls to be monitored by a whole range of officials, with virtually no judicial control. Not only the security services, but also such bodies as the Food Standards Agency and even local councils will be allowed to access our personal communications.
The burden of proof ought always to rest with those who wish to take away a given freedom. It is up to the Government to explain how we will be made any safer by giving, say, the Post Office the right to monitor our private communications. So far, it has barely attempted to make this case.
"If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear," comes the old refrain. If only this were true. In fact, almost every day we read of innocent people who have suffered from the bungling of some state agency.
"Personal information - seeking advice about a medical condition, making disobliging comments about someone else, visiting a pornographic website - will now be rather less personal. The opportunities for blackmail or abuse of power are immense.
In a letter elsewhere on this page, the Tory leader in the House of Lords writes of his readiness to oppose this monstrous measure. We hope that peers of all parties and none will back him.
The first duty of an upper chamber, however constituted, is to protect the citizen from badly drafted and invasive legislation. It is difficult to think of any clearer example than the proposal that will come before the Lords tomorrow.
June 17 02

On the road to a totalitarian state
Observer

While we quibble over the PM's role at the Queen Mother's funeral, our freedom is being eroded

Liberty Watch - Observer special
Anthony Scrivener Sunday June 16, 2002
The big news of the week has been the Prime Minister's denial that he was becoming more royal and trying to muscle in on the funeral of the Queen Mother. It was not as if he was demanding his own cassock or the right to nominate relatives for decent accommodation at the Royal Palace at a bargain rent. It was all about where he should greet the coffin. I am sure that this earth-shattering issue justifies the time and expense in producing a 29-page dossier which should make an excellent Christmas present. This concentration on a matter of such utter triviality demonstrates how out of touch with reality the administration and some parts of the media have become. There are in fact some earth-shattering constitutional issues around, about which the Government has issued no dossier at all.
While the debate goes on as to where the Prime Minister should stand at royal funerals, Big Brother is being quietly ushered in, not by the dreaded Conservative Party responsible for a whole raft of other illiberal measures including the Investigation of Communications Act 1985, but by New Labour, the self-styled party of human rights. Snooping is to become official. Soon we shall all be able to sleep easier in our beds in the knowledge that seven Government departments, including Transport, Work and Pensions and Health, all local authorities, the Postal Services Commissions, the Office of Fair Trading, the Environmental Agency, the Financial Services Authority, the Health and Safety Executive, to name just a few, as well as the police, will be able to demand communication data on any one of us from telephone companies, internet service providers and postal officers.
All of these public bodies and many more will be able to obtain, simply on demand and without a court order, details of any phone call we have made or received, the source and destination of any of our emails, the identity of all websites visited and - best of all - all mobile phone location data which will reveal our whereabouts at any given time within a few hundred metres.
We shall have attained a unique position in the free world - not a police state but a state whose citizens are constantly monitored by public officials without any control by the courts. Before leaders of councils begin to laugh with glee at the possibility of digging up the dirt on the journalist who gives them such a hard time, or perhaps their political opponents, they should bear in mind that the Town Hall Big Brother will know where they were on that Saturday night, too. If you want just to have the privacy you enjoy now, then it is back to the carrier pigeon although, no doubt, New Labour will allow public officials to shoot them down humanely. No wonder John Wadham at Liberty has said 'it is practically every public servant who will be able to play the game'.
The Government was forced into enacting legislation covering such covert investigations as phone tapping under pressure from the European Court of Human Rights. There was no right to privacy under the common law, but in 1984 that court declared that phone tapping was a breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention because the law was not sufficiently clear 'to provide an adequate indication as to the circumstances in which and the conditions on which public authorities are empowered' to obtain evidence by covert means. At the time there was only a Home Office circular governing such matters and the Convention was not part of our law.
By 1996 some fragmentary statutory provisions had been stitched together but in that year in a case involving phone tapping, Lord Nolan said 'the lack of a statutory system regulating the use of surveillance devices by the police seems astonishing'.
The crisis came when in 1998 we adopted the European Convention and Article 8 became part of our law. A clear statutory scheme was necessary for covert surveillance and along came the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. We were told this Act would be a bastion for freedom and that access to communications data would be confined to anti-terrorist investigations. All of this was pie in the sky. Next Tuesday, Parliament will debate a draft order to be made under this Act which will establish public officials as national monitors. The argument is that democracy is under attack so we should suspend democracy to protect it. After all the Americans, by their canny use of a declaration of war, not against a country but against a group, have managed to dodge the rule of law.
If China announced the introduction of such measures in Hong Kong we would be marching on their embassy with banners. Here, we have forgotten the principles on which freedom has been built and we shall do nothing. We shall concentrate instead on where the Prime Minister should stand in relation to a royal coffin. Those concerned with individual freedom will have to rely in Parliament on the Lib Dems and a handful of old Labour.
This proposal - together with a sustained attack on juries, a blunted Freedom of Information Bill, the proposed abolition of appeals for some asylum seekers and even the removal of their right to judicial review - is a dangerous milestone on the road to a totalitarian state. New Labour, which promoted human rights so vigorously in Opposition, has shown itself willing to cast aside those proud principles now it is in power. It is a particularly remarkable change for two members of the Government - Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman, both former senior officials of Liberty

June 16 ~ It's here, it's now: Big Brother's reign has begun
Telegraph

By Boris Johnson ....Anyone who loves liberty, and who wants to be protected from a nosy and unscrupulous government, should be aware of the coming Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Seldom has a Bill been so grotesquely misnamed. This will not regulate or control investigatory powers. It will oversee and encourage an explosion in snooping, by official bodies, into our lives, our associations, our interests, our every move. Investigatory powers are to be given to virtually every public body and quango, from the police to the local dog-catcher.
The Government originally said the Bill would be aimed at increasing the powers of only the police, Customs, the intelligence services and the Inland Revenue. That in itself is excessive. But under measures that have still to be debated by MPs, seven Whitehall departments, every local authority, health bodies, and 11 other bodies are included. It is a quite stupefying extension of state power over the individual. Let us imagine that Labour really wanted to do in poor Pam Warren, or you and me. Let us suppose that we were saying or doing things that they didn't much like, causing them embarrassment, making life difficult for Byers - that kind of thing.
All they would need to find would be a convenient Labour-sympathising person on one of these bodies, and he or she could snap his fingers and conjure up a fantastic quantity of personal information about us. In order to have access to details of all our personal phone calls and e-mails, it would be enough to show that it was necessary for protecting public health, or public safety, or mitigating any damage to anyone's health.
In fact, the Bill is drafted with such unbelievable woolliness that, for the snoopers to avail themselves of this stuff, they could argue, among several other possible grounds, that it was to "safeguard the country's economic well-being". What if it was arbitrarily decided, by some Labour-supporting council official, that what you or I were up to was against the "economic well-being" of the country?
In that case, without consulting any judges, or securing any warrants, or even obtaining the approval of the police, that official could demand - and furtively pass on - the following information. They could establish what websites you have visited, whom you have called on your mobile phone, who has called you, and even the location of those calls.
What if you were a journalist, looking up Islamic websites on the net? Does anyone have any right to draw conclusions from that? Suppose you find yourself somehow trapped, as I once was, in a website called "Boobtropolis", which blurts an embarrassing welcoming song. Does anyone, apart from the indulgent readers of this newspaper, have a right to know that?
Suppose you are scanning the net for information about a disease from which you suffer, or about the possibility of terminating a pregnancy? Why the hell should that be a matter for anyone else? It is not just that the wrong officials could get their hands on this stuff. It could fall into the hands of the media. The possibilities for blackmail or abuse are limitless.
The measures are justified, as ever, in the name of the fight against crime. Serious criminals will soon learn to avoid detection, perhaps by leaving their mobiles running in other places, or by rediscovering the art of letter-writing. This is an attempt to scarify the public, by letting them know that they are being watched not only by Big Brother, but also by all his nosy little relatives.
There is nothing between you and this Bill but one 90-minute debate next week. Then it will be law. You have been warned.
Boris Johnson is MP for Henley and editor of The Spectator
June 13 02

British liberty, RIP Government snoopers must be stopped
Guardian

Leader Tuesday June 11, 2002 The Guardian
Just how quickly civil liberties can be eroded is graphically illustrated by our front-page story today. The story lists the host of public authorities which will be able to demand the communication records of every telephone and internet user in the country. Compare this frightening prospect with the picture painted by David Blunkett just a few days before he published his anti-terrorist bill last November. In an article for Tribune, the Labour weekly, setting out the criterion by which he was judging what should be included, the home secretary asserted: "Every measure in our bill has to meet one simple requirement: will it be a practical contribution to combating terrorism." And he gave this pledge: he would not give the police or anyone else the power to routinely monitor phone calls or emails between individuals.
Yet, as we report today, it is not just the police, security services and inland revenue which are to be given an almost complete map of people's private "electronic" lives; data on whom people talk to by email and phone, what websites they consult, and where everyone goes at any particular time while their mobiles are switched on. A long list of other public authorities are being given access too - seven government departments, hundreds of local authorities, all fire authorities and 12 other national bodies, ranging from the atomic energy authority's constabulary to universal service providers as defined under the Postal Services Act of 2000.
Just two years ago ministers tried to turn internet service providers into a supporting arm of the police by a regulation that would have required them to retain internet and email traffic details for 12 months. They were stopped by parliament, which believed this was a step too far. Now, just two years on, this data will be made available not just for anti-terrorist purposes but for criminal investigations and wider purposes too. True, the public authorities will not be able to look at the content of the emails, but the map which they will obtain, particularly with the new generation of mobile phones that pinpoint location to a few metres, makes a mockery of the right to privacy that the Human Rights Act is supposed to protect.
Blanket data retention is the penultimate step towards a national traffic data warehouse, which the security services and police chiefs have been seeking. There are profound civil liberty implications. The web browsing behaviour of a million customers for a year could be held on about 100 matchbox-sized tapes. Ironically, such Orwellian surveillance will be of little help in tracking terrorists or organised crime cells. They can avoid identification by using prepaid mobile phones or web-based email from public terminals. If David Blunkett was being sincere in his Tribune piece, he would drop this catch-all provision. It will not help him catch terrorists, but it will increase public suspicion and mistrust of the security services and the police.
It is time for parliament to step in again. The new powers are being bestowed by a statutory order that is due to be debated in the Commons next Tuesday. It should be resisted by both houses of parliament. It follows a move by the European parliament, revealed 10 days ago in this newspaper, which overturned a decade of data protection by giving member states the power to force internet companies to retain detailed logs of their customers' traffic. Some ministers might want to intervene. Surely Patricia Hewitt, a former general secretary of Liberty, is one who would want to assert the importance of a robust right to privacy?
June 11 02

Time to come clean on the dirty secret of starvation

This week's World Food Summit will once again avoid the real issues
Guardian

John Vidal Monday June 10, 2002 The Guardian
If you want to see a hideous sight in the next few days, head for Rome where the second World Food Summit will be taking place. Held over from last year following September 11, it will feature 60 heads of state and thousands of bureaucrats and politicians. Even as they pledge yet again to feed the 800 million people who go hungry every year, they will be tucking into the world's finest produce.
Parma hams, wild salmon and canapes are a world away from the roots and berries that S, a Malawian woman I met last month, will be eating this week. She, like tens of thousands of people in southern Africa, has completely run out of food through no fault of her own; her life, from now until next April at the earliest, depends on northern governments and charities sending their surplus food across the world. The UN believes that 11 million people now face severe malnutrition if not starvation in the region. They say four million tonnes of grain will be needed but so far governments have pledged less than 100,000 tonnes. Thousands have already died, tens of thousands more inevitably will.
The global food situation has barely improved since 1996 when the first food summit was held and politicians hollowly pledged to halve the proportion of hungry people by 2015. If present trends continue, 122 million people will have died of hunger-related diseases by then, and the UN admits it will take 60 years to reach even that modest target. Governments, in short, have utterly failed to address one of the world's greatest scandals.
The first paradox is that the world has never grown so much food; there is no overall scarcity and food has seldom been so cheap. The simple equation in the politics of food today is that hunger equals poverty. What we see now is the relatively new phenomenon of increasing hunger amid ever-greater plenty. Just because a country produces more food does not mean it has no malnourished people. The US grows 40% more food than it needs, yet 26 million Americans need handouts. India's grain silos have been bursting for the past five years and a record surplus of 59 million tonnes has been built up, yet almost half of all Indian children are undernourished, tens of millions of people go hungry and many hundreds of poor farmers have committed suicide. .....
June 10 02

Regionalisation
Cumberland & Westmorland Herald, Sat 8th Jun.

Richard Mawdsley, The Dash, Bassenthwaite, Keswick. Cumbria. CA12 4QX
Sir.
Regarding the letter [C&W Herald 25 May] from George Nicholson. I agree with everything he writes. The regionalisation project is claimed to play a part in "bringing democracy closer to the people".
The lie is easily demonstrated by the fact that it is the culmination of a series of initiatives developed in a European context, completely by-passing the normal British democratic institutions. And only now, when the agenda has already been decided - with many of the structures already in place - was a white paper published. And through this, the public is not to be asked whether it approves of regionalisation, per se, but merely "about the shape Regional Government takes". Such is the nature of modern democracy.
What the public is not being told is that the true purpose of regionalisation is political integration. The regions themselves are encouraged by way of "bribes" of regional funding to deal directly with Brussels, thus by-passing the central governments and thus undermining nation states.
As a result, the British public deliberately have not been "engaged" in what amounts to a substantive - and alien - revolution in the nature of local government. Structure and traditions going back centuries have been wilfully abandoned, all to conform with this European agenda. This has no relevance at all to British local government. What is not so obvious is the fact that local government structures are being designed and exploited to fulfil the political dream of a united Europe. That is not the purpose of local government. Regionalisation is not in the interests of the British peoples, nor of good governance.
We have six MP's in Cumbria. Not one of them has had the honesty or decency to stand up and tell us that we have been betrayed. That everything has been agreed behind our backs. That we are like a lot of chickens, plucked, gutted, trussed and offered oven ready to Europe and at a discount price too.
The debate should not be whether Cumbria is lumped with the N. West Region [together with Manchester], or aligns itself with Newcastle and the N. East , but whether we want or need to be regionalised at all. Write to your MP and County and District Councillors and dig the truth out of them..
June 5 02

To: T.Blair@No10.co.uk. Subject: taking criticism
Independent

09 June 2002
This week the next Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, is to spend a few days shadowing his predecessor before taking over the job full-time in September. He arrives in the post at a time when the Civil Service is in turmoil. One of the great departments of state, Transport, appears wholly dysfunctional. The role of special advisers has also muddied the waters of Whitehall. What would Sir Humphrey have made of it all?
Traditionally, Britain has had a professional civil service of great integrity which administers on behalf of the Government, regardless of whichever party is in office. But this government has, through its use of political advisers, jeopardised the values of Whitehall.
Last week the Government was forced to admit that its senior officials were attempting to smear victims of the Paddington rail crash. One of its special advisers issued an e-mail seeking information that could tarnish Pam Warren, a member of the Paddington Survivors' Group, who had dared to cross the then Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers.
This was not the first time that the Government has tried to undermine its critics. It attacked a 94-year-old woman, Rose Addis, for being racist after she and her family complained of her treatment in hospital. There have been plenty of other instances of people in positions of influence being similarly attacked: Mo Mowlam, Elizabeth Filkin, and now, as we report today, Gwyneth Dunwoody.
Labour came into power after years of Conservative sleaze. The Tory government looked bedraggled and corrupt. Tony Blair offered higher standards of probity. His comment at the time was: "We are not here to enjoy the trappings of power, we are here to uphold the highest standards of public life."
Yet the Government attacks those who criticise or question its policies, its methods, and its provision of services, even when those challenging it are members of the public, who have first-hand experience of New Labour not fulfilling its promises on health and transport. In opposition Labour formed an effective fighting machine. Criticism was dealt with promptly by the Rapid Rebuttal Unit. That same mentality exists today. No criticism can be brooked. No attack can be allowed to stand. Now Labour is in power this only serves to underline its lack of belief in itself as a government. A government must tackle criticism with the grace that should come with office. A democratically elected government must be open to criticism, and if Blair's administration is to deserve our respect then it must face criticism head-on. Too many people in this country already mistrust politicians and the political process. This disaffection causes the number of people turning out to vote to fall. It also means less candidates come forward for election. Attempting to smear women such as Pam Warren and Rose Addis brings the Government into disrepute and it disillusions people even further about the dark arts of politics.
It is the Prime Minister who must tackle the culture of mendacity that threatens to undermine public life. As Sir Andrew begins his new job as head of the Whitehall machine, this is the moment to counter the rot in the Civil Service. A Civil Service Act would make the boundaries between ministers, civil servants and special advisers much plainer. It would offer protection to those who feel under pressure to abandon the principles of the non-partisan civil service, and enable Parliament to scrutinise more thoroughly. The core value of impartiality must be maintained. We are fortunate in having a civil service that is non-political. Special advisers may have their place, providing ministers with antennae, but they must not politicise the Civil Service.
June 9 02

British company equipped Indian sea base
Independent on Sunday

By Jo Dillon and Severin Carrell
Rolls-Royce struck a £22m deal to supply the Indian Navy with military equipment as fears grew over a nuclear war over Kashmir. Through a US subsidiary, the famous British firm sold an advanced shiplift 12 days ago. It was bound for India's new naval base being built at near Goa at Karwar on the Arabian Sea south of Pakistan. The base will be headquarters for India's Western fleet. News of the deal will heighten growing anxiety over Britain's decision to continue talks over a major £1bn arms deal to sell 60 Hawk jets to the Indian Government.
It emerged yesterday that Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, reassured the Indian defence minister, George Fernandez last week that the deal could still go ahead.
Today's revelations will reopen the Cabinet dispute prompted by last week's Independent on Sunday report, which quoted authoritative sources at the Department of Trade and Industry who said that the Government had agreed to suspend arms sales to both countries. Downing Street insisted that the current tension over Kashmir was no reason for a change in policy. But other senior ministers, including Robin Cook and Clare Short, have indicated support for a suspension. Labour MPs have already voiced serious concerns about the lack of scrutiny surrounding arms deals to unstable countries.
Richard Bingley, of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade lobby group, said: "It is farcical for the Foreign Secretary to go out to South Asia to promote peace, yet at the same time British companies are still arranging arms deals with Government backing. Quite how promoting the Hawk deal with help promote peace is beyond me." A spokesman for Rolls Royce said the company had followed all British and US Government guidelines for applying for export licences when it agreed the contract. "We clearly went through all the current procedures, as we always do," he said. ......
June 2 02

Labour accepts £12m in donations and perks from defence contractors IoS investigation: Government's 'ethical' policy in disarray as MPs enjoy hospitality from ordnance firms
Independent on Sunday

By Jo Dillon Political Correspondent
Labour has accepted more than £12m in sponsorship for Government projects and political events from arms and defence companies since 1997, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Labour MPs, including the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr John Reid, have also accepted hospitality from such firms.
And links are strengthened by the appointment to Government quangos of senior executives from some of the companies involved.
The multi-million pound link has prompted concerns that a cosiness exists between Labour and the arms industry that threatens an ethical foreign policy, even where there is no impropriety. Richard Bingley, of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said: "No wonder the Government finds it so difficult to put an arms embargo on India and Pakistan when they receive donations and hold shares in arms companies. There seems to be an institutionalised connection between the Labour Government and senior figures in the arms production business.
"It means that other groups that might be putting across a different message to the Government are not getting a fair hearing." Concerns over arms trading have been heightened in recent weeks because of the threat of conflict between India and Pakistan in their dispute over Kashmir. Plans by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt for a UK arms embargo to the two countries were quashed last week after Tony Blair used his personal authority to save a £1bn deal to sell Hawk fighter-bombers to the Indian Government.
The company involved in the deal is British Aerospace Systems (BAe), which is listed among companies who gave more than £5,000 in sponsorship to the Labour party in both 1998 and 2000, sponsored a ministerial question and answer session at the 1999 Labour party conference and paid £12m to sponsor the Mind Zone in the Millennium Dome. The Labour party pension fund has 27,490 shares worth around £95,000 in BAe. Sir Richard Evans, the chairman of BAe Systems, sits on the Government's Competitiveness Council. The former vice-chairman of BAe, Richard Lapthorne, was appointed by the Government in April 2000 to set up its Working Age Agency and Lord Hollick, a Labour peer and party donor, was a director of BAe from 1992-1997. BAe's chief operating officer Peter Gershon is paid £180,000 a year as the head of the Office of Government Commerce, set up in 2000. In April, the Prime Minister, intervened personally in a BAe deal to promote the sale of 24 JAS-39 Gripen fighters to the Czech Republic, later defending his role as straightforward backing of British industry.
Other arms and defence companies linked to Labour include Raytheon Systems, who, according to Friends of the Earth, gave £30,000 to the Labour party in 1997, £15,000 for a pre-dinner drinks party at the Labour conference in 1998 and £12,500 for drinks at the London Hilton in 1997. The US arms manufacturer was awarded a £800m contract by the Ministry of Defence for their Astor battlefield radar spyplane system in 1999. David JB Brown, the managing director of Multidrive, a manufacturer of commercial and military vehicles based in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, donated more than £5,000 to the Labour party in 1999-2000. Thomson-CSF Racal, an integrated defence company, gave more than £5,000 in sponsorship in 2000, as did the UK Defence Forum.
A number of Labour MPs have also listed perks from defence companies in the Register of Members' Interests. In January 2001 Cabinet Minister Dr John Reid took a courtesy helicopter, paid for by BAe Systems, from Stirling to their shipyard in Scotstoun, Glasgow. He then accepted a lift back from Glasgow to RAF Northolt in the chairman's private jet. BAe Systems also paid for Labour backbencher David Borrow's return flights from Chester to Toulouse to visit Airbus Industrie, and his trip in June 1999 to the Paris Air Show. Fellow backbencher Roger Casale, a former policy advisor to John Prescott and Tony Blair, accepted travel and expenses for trips to Italy from defence company GKN, who also part-sponsored a trip to Rome for Labour backbencher Rachel Squire. In June 1997, Raytheon Systems Ltd flew Labour MP Frank Cook to the Paris Air Show where Labour peer Lord (Barry) Jones was a guest of BAe Systems. MP Gordon Marsden's attendance at a conference on EU enlargement in 1998 was paid for by BAe.Labour peer Lord Gregson is the president of the Defence Manufacturers Association and Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, a special advisor to Jack Straw on policing, is its honorary vice-president.
A Labour party spokesman said: "A lot of these companies are diverse companies who are employing a lot of people in this country. It is totally proper that they should be able to make donations to politcal organisations."
But the links have further angered campaigners against the arms trade, who maintain that UK arms exports are still being used by oppressive regimes such as those in Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Angola and Zimbabwe.
June 2 02

Chantilly Virginia Confirmed as 2002 Bilderberg Venue
http://www.bilderberg.org/2002.htm for the latest

31May02 - Tony Gosling - www.bilderberg.org
No it wasn't 'a couple of weddings' as we were told yesterday by the staff. The Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly Virginia was today confirmed as the venue for this year's secret Bilderberg meeting.
Security is very tight with FBI Secret Service and White House Security Staff, all paid from taxpayers money, on duty around the perimiter of this so-called 'private' meeting. This year, for the first time, all security have coded symbols on their lapels to distinguish who they work for.
Hotel staff are always sworn to secrecy at these events but some still feel the world has a right to know what is going on behind the cordon. They risk their jobs, and possibly more, by telling those outside who is inside the hotel and what they're talking about.
Staff have told reporters at the gate that the much talked about attack on Iraq must go ahead but will probably be delayed until Autumn 2003. To try to persuade other western leaders to join in an attack on Iraq Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of State for defence will be attending the Bilderberg conference ... (Saturday). He will almost certainly be giving a presentation to the 120 or so power-brokers in attendance. Rumsfeld's deputy Secretary of Defence Kenneth Dam has already been spotted in the hotel, he's attending all four days of the conference.
It seems to have escaped both these so-called public servants that if the U.S. government agreed to lift Iraqi sanctions which are killing roughly six thousand children a month in the country, Iraq could return to relative normality and war would be unnecessary. But Rumsfeld and Dam are in fact lobbyists for the defence industry and lobbyists for U.S. expansionism. They consider the growth of the U.S. defense industry, or 'military indusrtrial complex' as president Eisenhower described it, to be more important than tens of thousands or even millions of human lives.
Global banker and head of the Rockefeller dynasty David Rockefeller has been spotted by Westfields Marriott staff as have Henry Kissinger and several others. Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson, is aslo known to be in attendance this year. When I contacted the hotel earlier today (Friday) the Bilderberg organisers refused to confirm or deny anyone's presence - they said they would be producing a press release but declined to say when. Hotel telephone +1 703 818 0300 just ask to be put through to 'the conference'
June 1 02

Europe votes to end data privacy
Guardian

Law will allow police to spy on phone and net traffic

Stuart Millar Friday May 31, 2002 The Guardian
European law enforcement agencies were given sweeping powers yesterday to monitor telephone, internet and email traffic in a move denounced by critics as the biggest threat to data privacy in a generation. Despite opposition from civil liberties groups worldwide, the European parliament bowed to pressure from individual governments, led by Britain, and approved legislation to give police the power to access the communications records of every phone and internet user.
The measure, which will be approved by the 15 EU member states, will allow governments to force phone and internet companies to retain detailed logs of their customers' communications for an unspecified period. Currently, records are kept only for a couple of months for billing purposes before being destroyed.
Although police will still require a warrant to intercept the content of electronic communications, the new legislation means they will be able to build up a complete picture of an individual's personal communications, including who they have emailed or phoned and when, and which internet sites they have visited.
From mobile phone records, police will also be able to map people's movements because the phones communicate with the nearest base station every few seconds. In urban areas, the information is accurate to within a few hundred metres, but when the next generation of mobiles comes on stream it will pinpoint users' locations to within a few metres.
Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, said: "This is the latest casualty in the war against terrorism as far as civil liberties are concerned. The problem with wanting to monitor a few people is that you end up having to keep data on everybody."
The British government, which played a key role in driving through the new measures, has already introduced such powers as part of the anti-terror bill rushed through in the immediate aftermath of September 11, although the data retention measures have yet to be implemented.
UK civil liberties groups had hoped that if MEPs rejected data retention, it would open up the possibility of a legal challenge to the British legislation on the grounds that it was incompatible with European data protection law. After yesterday's vote they now expect the government to press ahead with implementing the act.
May31 02

A free country
Telegraph

By Simon Davies (Filed: 31/05/2002)
This month, President Bush signed into law an Act that will ultimately force UK passport holders to be fingerprinted. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act will ensure that everyone travelling to America must be "biometrically" scanned. A biometric is an electronic scan of a body part. Governments believe it is far more accurate than conventional identification methods, such as a photo or identity papers.
Immigration departments in Europe and America are salivating at the prospect of biometric technology, despite evidence that the technique is unreliable. The Act does not specify whether the biometric should be a fingerprint, a retina scan or a handprint, but it makes clear that by 2003 all entry points to the US should be equipped with the technology to read such data.
The American legislation specifies a harmonious global approach to identification, but does not stop there. It requires the transmission of passenger information prior to arrival in America, mandates increased questioning and scrutiny of travellers, and authorises a global information sharing system on all travellers.
The motivation behind the legislation may be commendable, but it carries enormous dangers for individual freedoms. A global identification and data system on all travellers will ultimately be linked to national security and police databases. Such systems are notoriously flawed. Both UK police and the FBI have been repeatedly criticised over the high level of inaccuracies in their intelligence systems.
At the moment, every traveller is considered a potential threat to security. If the intent of the US legislation becomes reality, authorities will have the power to carry out unaccountable and unfair practices on innocent travellers.
May31 02

Blair's Downing St team completes its takeover of power
Independent

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor 31 May 2002
Tony Blair used this week's reshuffle to strengthen his already tight grip on the Whitehall machine by creating what amounts to a "Prime Minister's Department".
Downing Street smuggled out a significant change beneath the headlines about Alistair Darling, the new Trans- port Secretary, and Paul Boateng, Britain's first black cabinet minister.
Whitehall watchers will look back on Wednesday's reshuffle because, for the first time in memory, the Cabinet Office is headed by a minister who does not have a seat at the cabinet table. Instead Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, the Communist shipyard apprentice turned television boss, and his deputy, Douglas Alexander, a Gordon Brown protégé highly rated by Mr Blair, will report directly to the Prime Minister.
In opposition, Mr Blair decided to have a "strong centre" – the opposite of the wobbling and weakness displayed by the Major government – if he won power. But it has taken him five years to mould the Whitehall machine into shape.
Even now, Mr Blair is coy about admitting he has created a Prime Minister's Department, knowing this will provoke more criticism of his presidential style. Officially, the Cabinet Office remains a separate department. But it has been so slimmed down that it is now virtually an extension of No 10. John Prescott's rather grand-sounding Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was split from the Cabinet Office, taking with him responsibility for social exclusion. The women and equality unit has been switched to the Department of Trade and Industry.
Other units based in the Cabinet Office already work for Downing Street, including the performance and innovation unit, Mr Blair's personal think- tank, which is headed by Geoff Mulgan, who also runs No 10's forward strategy unit, responsible for "blue skies thinking" such as Lord Birt's ideas on long-term transport policy. The Prime Minister has two other advisers who report to Sir Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, but in reality work for Downing Street: Michael Barber, who heads the delivery unit, and Wendy Thomson, who runs the office of public services reform.
The rather bewildering structure has provoked complaints, not least from Mr Prescott, who has now abandoned his co-ordinating role to focus on his pet policies.
Lord Macdonald, who was Mr Prescott's number two until this week's reshuffle, was also frustrated. One Whitehall source said: "He's good but he didn't have the muscle to call in cabinet ministers and ask them why they were not delivering. Ministers take notice of No 10 but not someone below them in the pecking order." Mr Blair tried to address this problem this week by announcing that Lord Macdonald now reports directly to him. But some officials believe he should have promoted Lord Macdonald to the Cabinet to give him the necessary clout.
Does the shake-up matter outside academia and the Westminster village? At one level, Mr Blair is merely fine-tuning the machine to make it more focused on public service "delivery", the buzzword at Downing Street.
One Whitehall source said: "There are now three groups working to different timescales: long-term 'blue skies' thinking; reform in the medium term; and delivery in the short term. It is a logical set-up."
However, some ministers resent the interference of the Downing Street policy unit in their business and are worried about the further concentration of power in Mr Blair's hands. One said: "It's fine for No 10 to move in when there is a crisis, but increasingly it is involved in day-to-day policy decisions." The Prime Minister is likely to be questioned about the changes when he appears before the chairmen of Commons select committees in July. The Public Administration Committee is expected to launch a formal inquiry into the "new centre" in the autumn, inviting Mr Prescott and Lord Macdonald to give evidence. Tony Wright, the committee's Labour chairman, said: "There is much to be said for this approach to government, but its implications, especially for the accountability of No 10, need to be explored." Blair aides say Downing Street is small compared with the White House and the offices of the German Chancellor and French President.
Some ministers believe the attention given to the Blair operation misses the point because the real power lies at the Treasury. Mr Brown is now chairing a cabinet committee thrashing out a three-year spending programme to be issued in July. Crucially, he has seen off the Cabinet Office's attempt to share the job of monitoring the targets set for Whitehall departments. One insider said: "The Treasury is by far the most powerful centre because it has the resources and weight of a huge department plus the clout of an enormously powerful Chancellor."
May31 02

Revealed - Leo's medical records
Sunday Telegraph

(Filed: 26/05/2002)

Last Tuesday, the Government dismantled our system of medical confidentiality. Using procedural devices to prevent debate in the House of Commons, New Labour quietly despatched one of our few remaining civil liberties. Under new regulations, the Secretary of State will be able to demand that doctors hand over your medical records - and fine them if, in order to protect your confidentiality, they refuse to do so.

The lack of any real protest shows how we have come to accept the erosion of our liberties by Tony Blair's Government. Faced with the centralising and coercive culture of New Labour, even the once fiercely independent General Medical Council (GMC) has remained subdued - but then the Government is about to announce its proposals for a reform of the GMC, and the GMC is running scared.

The Government slipped its proposals out under the cover of a plan to ensure that the cancer registries could function properly. That change was supported by all parties. The Government, however, went much further: it gave the Secretary of State the right to demand, and receive, confidential medical information whenever that is in "the public interest". The "public interest" is defined as essentially whatever the Secretary of State says it is. It explicitly includes immunisation programmes, adverse reactions to medicines or vaccines, as well as various undefined "other risks".

So a GP could be forced, for example, to disclose to the Government the names of patients who had been tested for HIV in his practice, and could be fined up to #5,000 if he refused to do so. It undermines a long legal tradition which recognises that in areas such as sexually transmitted diseases, the privacy of patients must be protected in order to encourage them to seek treatment and to reveal information about potentially infectious contacts.

Having worked as a doctor myself, it horrifies me that doctors will now have to choose between breaching their ethics and breaking the law. To make matters worse, the new law is not restricted to doctors: the behaviour of every health care professional to his or her patients will now be subject to the direct control of politicians. The new law places the administrative convenience of the NHS not only above the bond of trust between doctor and patient, but above the dignity and privacy of patients.

When Tony Blair decided not to disclose whether his son Leo had been given the MMR jab, he cited patient confidentiality. It was, he said, more important than any public health message. Whatever the merits or otherwise of that judgement, I publicly backed his right as a parent to keep his child's medical records private. The changes Labour have just introduced will effectively destroy that right for the rest of us: any Secretary of State will be able to demand your child's immunisation records from your GP - and you will have no right of veto on behalf of your child.

There are legitimate concerns about whether it is possible to keep information secure when it is so widely shared. More importantly, however, the change marks the death of the principle of the patient's right to give consent before identifiable personal data about them is shared. Labour's decision to dispense with patient confidentiality represents the latest and most worrying example of this Government's accumulation of power by controlling information. It is yet another restriction of our liberty - and one we have surrendered to with barely a whimper of protest.
May 26 2002

How Blair tamed his poodle
Telegraph Opinion

The Government (of which Stephen Byers is a member) is pressing full steam ahead, or so it says, with the next stage of reforming the House of Lords. A joint committee of peers and MPs is to draw up a list of options, and then a free vote will be taken to decide the role, composition and powers of the new chamber. We are going about our constitutional reform back to front.
That the United Kingdom is in the grip of a constitutional crisis nobody should doubt. As speaker after speaker, Left, Right and centre, pointed out at The Daily Telegraph's recent Free Country conference, the crisis is that Parliament has far too little control over the actions of the executive.
But that crisis has its roots in the Commons, the House that decides how the country is governed and who should govern it. The Lords is the second chamber, both in name and importance, whose job is to balance and check the power of the first. How very odd, therefore, to propose reconstituting the Lords before settling the future of the Commons, from which any reform of the second chamber should logically flow.
The very fact that many MPs favour a wholly elected second chamber shows how frustrated they are with the elected Commons as it is now run. They feel powerless to restrain an over-mighty executive - and, as things stand, they are right.
Take one example: today, the Commons will have its one and only chance to debate a measure that has already given the Government extraordinary new powers to seize and slaughter healthy farm animals and pets without their owners' consent. The TSE (England) Regulations 2002 came into force without debate on April 19, even though similar measures had been rejected by the Lords only three weeks earlier. So how did the Government manage to extend its powers so enormously without the consent of Parliament - indeed, against the expressed wishes of the Lords?
The answer is that the regulations were sneaked through as secondary legislation under a statutory instrument - a device that allows the executive to do what it wishes with only the most cursory parliamentary scrutiny. Every year under Labour, many more than 3,000 statutory instruments have been laid before Parliament for rubber-stamping, and the number is growing. There is hardly time for most backbenchers to read them, let alone debate them.
But there are many other means by which the balance of power in Britain has shifted away from Parliament. Since Labour was elected, the Government has abused its enormous Commons majority to mount a sustained assault on Parliament's authority in a way that has grave implications for British liberty. The attack has been on three fronts: managerial, procedural and constitutional.
On the managerial front, Labour has deliberately recruited bland parliamentary candidates, likely to do as they are told. It has then whipped its MPs mercilessly to keep them "on message". It has packed the watchdog committees of the House with its own appointees, keeping likely trouble-makers out.
Procedurally, one of Mr Blair's first acts was to declare that he would answer Prime Minister's Questions only once a week, instead of twice. "Family-friendly" parliamentary hours are being introduced, to send MPs safely home to bed, where they can cause no trouble to the Government. The parliamentary guillotine has been used constantly to silence debate - even on constitutional Bills, which by convention had always been debated in full. Meanwhile, important policies have frequently been announced outside the House. All this, while a weak Speaker watches on.
Constitutionally, Parliament's powers have been sapped by devolution, Europe and a judiciary newly politicised by the Human Rights Act.
The Commons - between elections, the only guardian of the people against the executive - is being emasculated. The Opposition parties must commit themselves to beefing up the watchdog committees of the House and codifying the old conventions that once held the executive in check. They must make firm pledges now - before they, too, are corrupted by power.
May 15 2002

Labour's euro quandary
Telegraph

(Filed: 14/05/2002)
THE acquisition by this newspaper of Labour's plans for a euro referendum is a blow for the "yes" campaign. It is hard to think of intelligence which ministers would less like to have fallen, as it were, into enemy hands.
The memo from GGC, Labour's chief strategist, sets out how voters might be gulled into voting for the euro. First, Labour will make a great song and dance out of assessing the five economic tests ("seeming to wait and watch increases support by nine points" [our italics]).
Then, with exquisite choreography, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will drop his opposition ("two thirds say that if Gordon Brown and the Treasury say the euro meets the tests, then joining probably makes sense"). Publication of this plan now means that, when this charade takes place, we shall know exactly what is going on. Labour's strategy depended on secrecy; that element has been lost.
In a curious way, the memo is also a vindication of the tactics being pursued by the "no" campaign. Probably subconsciously, its authors have assumed that supporters of the pound will fight a very different campaign from the one they are actually planning. When presenting their sample with the arguments of the two sides, they tended to put words into their opponents' mouths ("Britain is an island country; we would lose our historic identity").
In fact, "no" campaigners have eschewed appeals to history or patriotism, marketing themselves instead as young, progressive and internationalist. Only last week, it was revealed that the "no" campaign has commissioned a series of cinema advertisements involving such figures as Rik Mayall, Harry Enfield and Jools Holland - hardly Tory usual suspects. And, as opinion polls in this newspaper have repeatedly shown, 18- 24-year-olds are more strongly opposed to the single currency than any other group except the over-75s.
Which leads on to the delicate question of how the Conservative Party should slot into the anti-euro coalition. On the one hand, only Iain Duncan Smith can bring to the table a campaigning machine with a presence in all 658 constituencies. On the other, there is nothing Tony Blair would like more than to present the referendum as "another chance to kick the Tories".
In the Scottish and Welsh devolution referendums, the Conservatives contrived to get the worst of both worlds: they were just high-profile enough to attract plenty of flak, but did very little to mobilise their supporters on the ground. It does not need to be that way.
In Kent, the Conservatives have mounted a brilliant campaign in defence of selective education, but have done so by taking their place quietly within a non-partisan organisation, "Support Kent Schools". A similar way must be worked out to recruit the Tories to the "no" campaign as individuals or in groups.
By ensuring that his party does not dominate the pro-sterling campaign, Mr Duncan Smith is doing a difficult but patriotic thing. To mount a full-scale anti-euro campaign at this moment would certainly enthuse his own supporters; but it would also undermine the "no" movement more widely. Mr Duncan Smith is right to concentrate first on restoring his party's credibility before turning up the volume on the euro.
After all, the strongest pro-pound argument is the sense that Britain is doing perfectly well as it is, and does not need to take risks. Deliciously, ministers cannot counter that argument without trashing their own record in government. The Tories are right to let them face that dilemma on their own.
May 14 2002

Tim Luckhurst: England needs devolution like a hole in the head
Independent

10 May 2002 I have long wondered what John Prescott dreams about. My list usually includes an American- style constitution that would give the Deputy Prime Minister automatic assent to ascend to the premiership in the event of something nasty happening to Tony. That and an accident involving Peter Mandelson and some well-rotted compost. Wrong. Mr. Prescott dreams of devolving political power to the English regions. His precious hours of REM sleep, he says, are filled with visions of dynamic local assemblies merrily filling England's "democratic deficit" with accountable prosperity and progress. No matter that the "democratic deficit" phrase was Donald Dewar's and that he did not believe England had one. Mr Prescott's dreams are his own, even if the language employed in them is borrowed (and thus unusually eloquent). If he had any decency he would keep them private. Sadly for that large majority of the British population that has been spared the mediocrity of devolution, the Deputy Prime Minister has gone public. In partnership with Stephen Byers, the most transparently incredible minister in the Cabinet, he has advanced his plan for English Regional Assemblies.
England should resist. The Prime Minister was right when he authorised an official at No 10 to explain that the experience with devolution in Scotland and Wales has convinced him that England needed it "like a hole in the head". Scotland reveals the principal flaws in devolved government. Here it has not delivered power to the electorate. It has consolidated the stranglehold of a parochial ilite composed of Labour apparatchiks too incompetent even to win election to Westminster. Three years into the experiment, Scotland does not feel confident and dynamic. Instead, as The Herald ironically revealed just as Mr Prescott revealed his plans to Parliament, "we just feel an awful sense of anti-climax". No wonder. The flowering of debate long predicted by campaigners for a Scottish Parliament was murdered at birth by a system of election that ensures that every candidate must be vetted by party managers. Patronage, not independence of mind, is the route to advancement. Generously, Mr Prescott is proposing the same thing for England.
Devolution has made it harder to win office without sponsorship from the Labour Party. Its nominees stuff every quango in the land. A party incapable of winning 50 per cent of the vote exercises 90 per cent of the power. Devolution means machine politics, not diversity. One First Minister has been driven from office amid allegations of financial irregularity. His successor is deemed a failure by 72 per cent of Scottish voters six months into his term of office. Business laments the absence of a vision for the Scottish economy.
The few capable politicians who followed Donald Dewar into Scotland's legislature have either resigned, as Wendy Alexander, the then Minister for Enterprise, did last week, or been sacked. They loiter on the back benches, angry but impotent or, like Alex Salmond, the the former SNP leader, return to the comparative sanity of the House of Commons. English devo-enthusiasts may be surprised to learn that even supporters have described the Scottish Executive as "a place where failed councillors go to die". Will things be different in England? It seems unlikely. The region most anxious for devolution, the North-east, is, like Scotland, dominated by a Labour establishment preserved from the era of the brontosaurus. These are the people who will grab ministerial jobs, cars and expense accounts if a referendum consents to the change.
Principled enthusiasts for the idea of devolution owe it to the rest of the population to ask themselves: who really benefits? The answer in Scotland has been a narrow sectional interest culled from the corrupt culture of single-party local councils. Devolution has been brought into disrepute as these low-grade career politicians knife each other for position and wrangle over the stupendous cost of an unnecessary new parliament building. Mr Prescott is promoting a myth. He may get away with it. The failure of the UK media to pay attention to events in Scotland since 1999 has left the impression that Scotland has prospered massively under devolution. Yet Scottish economic growth lags persistently behind that achieved in England. Business-failure figures are alarming. The one upside of a devolved administration that more than 60 per cent of Scots believe to be a failure is that it has received generous financing from the Treasury. That, not radicalism, has permitted such policies as the partial abolition of student fees.
But if everyone chooses devolution, who will finance the differential largesse? Even with the additional factor of national pride, which keeps Scots hoping that the parliament they chose will one day make them proud, devolution to Edinburgh has made voters more sceptical about government. So much so that yesterday The Scotsman was reporting that Scottish Labour is so short of support that it plans to draft in members from England to fight next year's Scottish election campaign. Oh England! Devolve if you want to, but don't delude yourselves that you are following best practice. And don't say you weren't warned.
May 10 2002

Surveillance of telecommunications EU governments are secretly drafting a binding Framework Decision to introduce the universal surveillance of telecommunications
Statewatch.org


- European Parliament faces crucial vote on 29 May to reject the governments' demands on the retention of data and access by the law enforcement agencies
Statewatch has learnt that in advance of the completion of the EU legislative process on proposals for the revision of the 1997 EU Directive on privacy in the telecommunications sector a number of EU governments are drafting a binding Framework Decision to ensure that all EU member states introduce a law requiring the retention of telecommunications traffic data and the granting of access to it by law enforcement agencies (police, customs, immigration and internal security agencies).
On 29 May the European Parliament plenary session is due to vote on a report adopted by the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights on 18 April. This report re-affirmed the position taken by the parliament in its 1st reading on 13 November 2001 which opposed the fundamental change being put forward by the Council. Under the 1997 Directive data can only be retained for a short period for "billing" purposes (ie: to help the customer confirm usage details) and then it must be erased. The Council want this data to be retained for law enforcemen