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"