Yesterday, The Mirror broke the story that, according to a leaked government transcript, in April last year Tony Blair had to talk George Bush out of bombing the Al-Jazeera office in Qatar.

In the Mirror article, “[a] Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been “humorous, not serious”. According to the BBC, ‘[a] White House official said: “We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response.”‘ The official response from the UK government was the stock “We don’t comment on leaked documents”.

Jump to this morning, and we find the Government throwing its weight about and threatening newspapers who print any further details of from the transcript with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Two men, a former Foreign Office official and an MP’s researcher, have already been charged in connection with the leak. Whether “humorous” and “outlandish” or not, somebody thought the document worth leaking and the Government doesn’t want the details published.

So how to process this information? White House communications director Nicolle Wallace apparently said, in connection with the leak: “[I]t is fanciful to think that the President of the United States of America, a champion really for free press all over the world, would ever have any serious notions to do anything of the sort.”

Resisting the temptation to cite precedent and make myriad cracks about Bush being “a champion really for free press”, his administration has previous when it comes to Al-Jazeera. The TV station’s offices in Kabul were destroyed by a US missile in November 2001. This was a month after Colin Powell had asked the Qatar government to “rein in” the Qatari-based station.

In April 2003, the Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was hit by a US missile and a correspondent was killed. The office was close to the Iraqi Information Ministry so you’d be pushed to prove intent. It depends how generous you want to be with the burden of proof. “Reasonable suspicion” or “balance of probabilities”?

It occurs to me that this plays rather well for Blair. Even if the complete transcript doesn’t see the light of day, the story shows him in a good light coming so soon after Christopher Meyer’s assertion that Blair failed to exert any influence over Bush in the run up to the Iraq war. This leaked transcript (apparently) shows that Blair exert some influence, if only 12 months after the start of the war and on the issue of whether to bomb a TV station seen as hostile to the coalition’s aims based in a friendly nation. And as Tim Ireland says this morning, “I still can’t spot an outright denial from the White House or Downing St”.

Who knows what else might be in there - the transcript is supposed to be five pages long after all. Maybe Tony begged George to stop using torture as a weapon of war or warned against the use of thermobaric weapons in hearts and minds exercises but is too modest to have his heroism revealed in the press.

The conversation took place over 18 months ago. The war in Iraq has moved on and circumstances have changed. It’d be interesting to know what the vestigial national security implications are in supressing publication of the transcript beyond saving George and Tony’s blushes.

This story might fizzle out or it might drip, drip, drip until the transcript is published, much like the Attorney General’s advice on the legality of the Iraq war. The question is was the “threat” to Al-Jazeera the meat of the document or is their more?

My copy of 2005: Blogged arrived yesterday morning.

It’s a very nice object and not just because I’m in it, slipped in amongst all the quality, like a Sven Hassel in the Dickens section. I’m certainly a lot less sweary than I used to be, it would seem. I’m debating whether my grandmother gets a copy for Christmas (”Look Gran, here’s the bit where I say kids couldn’t give a flying fuck about what they eat”.)

The, erm, idiosyncratic presentation of Tim Worstall’s intros to each piece has already been noted. Having them in an uppercase faux dot-matrix font and between mock HTML tags (<ED></ED>) is probably meaningless to anybody other than geeks and I imagine sounded better in theory than in it looks in execution. And a (small) typo in one of my two pieces manages to reverse a point I was trying to make.

But that’s minor griping. The book has two indexes, one general and one by blog, which allows you to see who exactly’s in it (five mentions for Nosemonkey though? One to keep him quiet would have been enough). It was gratifying to see how many are on my blogroll and quite a few of those included that aren’t on it will be soon.

I was sorry to see that one or two people (among others) hadn’t made the cut but hopefully 2006: Blogged will rectify that.

The variety of bloggers represented is pretty impressive. The temptation for Tim could have been to go with what he knows. As a narrative of the past year it works as well. Structuring the book chronologically means that people will be inclined to read it from beginning to end rather than if the book had been arranged by, say, subject area.

It’s certainly better written and informed than one of those “I Love 19xx” shows (”Wasn’t Rhoobarb and Custard great?”) and a row of such books will look very nice on the bookshelf in a few years’ time, I reckon.

That really was an advertorial, wasn’t it?

Tim Ireland outdoes himself with his latest flash movie, The World According to Leo Blair.

Chicken Yoghurt had a visitor today from someone googling tim ireland bottle uzbekistan. You’ll know why after watching the movie.

Is there a way to stay completely spam free (comment, trackback, referral and email) with a Word Press blog?

I’m working on a revamp of The Sharpener and would like to build as watertight as possible anti-spam functionality into the new design. The current version of the site has been utterly battered by spam since its inception and the admin has been a pain in the backside for all involved.

It’d be also useful to know for if/when Chicken Yoghurt makes the break to a home of its own.

Ta in advance.

I’m not usually a purveyor of webjunk (time and cash permitting this kind thing will eventually go in a tidy little WordPress sidebar) but I was very taken with this - PocketMod - the paper PDA. Certainly kept me away from doing proper work for a bit.

Mine is eight pages of the game, dots. (I don’t have much to fill a calendar with).

(Via Will Howells who I believe had a cheeky letter in the Guardian yesterday.)

Tim Worstall’s self-explanatory tin.

“Will you be working until you are 67, Prime Minister?” He is backing a Pensions Commission recommendation that other work people should slog on an extra two years after the current retirement age. “Oh, for God’s sake Paul,” he snapped.

read the rest…

The dogs are harnessed and I’m off Up North, land of my forefathers, for a few days.

* Back Monday

More dangerous nonsense from Sir Bob:

The Register: Saint Bob Geldof blows gasket at email

Saint Sir Bob Geldof has advised delegates at a London innovation conference to ignore emails after revealing that they “get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do”.

Geldof said that emails “give a feeling of action, which is a mistake” and revealed his masterplan for business productivity: “Don’t do e-mail.”

It must have slipped his mind that the Make Poverty History campaign, the horse that his Live8 concerts rode in on, not to mention a thousand other laudable causes, largely consist of viral marketing spread by email. Needless to say, the Live8 website, asks people to email their leaders.

“E-mails get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do,” said Geldof. Looking at what little the mass emailing of the G8 leaders achieved, that’s not something Tony, Jacques and the rest allowed to happen when they consulted their inboxes during the G8 summit.

What should I do the next time Oxfam send me an email asking me to sign a petition or email my representatives, Bob? Bob? Can you let Oxfam know that we “don’t do e-mail” any more please. By pneumatic network or whatever other liberating method of communication it is you use to improve your business productivity.

Does Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police commissioner, have any time to do any actual, y’know, policing? He seems to spend so much time putting the wind up the public these days that, if he was in any other profession, his boss would be saying, “do that on your own time, Blair, not the company’s.”

He’s been at it again tonight in his Dimbleby Lecture . (How many hearts must have sank at “During the next 40 minutes…”)

Is this his job? What he’s paid to do? I, and others, would argue that it is not.

And how about this?

The sky is dark…

Ring any bells? It’s the same gothic imagery he used in his last piece of scaremongery, published in The Sun, during his failed attempt to interfere in the parliamentary debate of the new terrorism legislation.

He’s obviously very pleased with the metaphor. Maybe it comes from a poem he wrote as a teenager (”Why do all the nice girls hate me?” or somesuch) and somebody said, “Oooh, Ian. I don’t know how you do it but you paint the picture so vividly”. That stayed with him and ever since he’s been dying to use the phrase again. And again.

It makes you wonder what’s next from Britain’s Top Cop. Maybe he could embark on a busking tour (as long as he’s got his busking licence) of the London Underground, regaling commuters with a rendition of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall“. Hours of fun to be had writing his set list. It’s The End Of The World As We Know It.

‘A’ Bomb on Wardour Street?

I was only vaguely aware of the name Ted Wragg when his death was announced a week or so ago. Education is a subject I write about only when something bizarre is going on. As a parent with a child of school age, I’m quite aware that us parents are an element to be patronised, barely tolerated and, wherever possible, ignored by the school establishment and that any contribution I have to make is about as welcome as Jonathan King offering to open the School Fayre, whatever New Labour’s spurious notions of “Parent Power” might say.

I would probably have never discovered Wragg’s writing if I hadn’t been on the train to London yesterday on a jolly and, having exhausted the rest of my Guardian, I turned to the education section and read the “best of” collection of Wragg’s columns on Britain’s education system. What a brilliant writer, with a turn of phrase that makes me green:

Kelly hours. What a cheek! Schools have run extracurricular activities for decades, but some government spinner decides the secretary of state needs a better image. Bingo, journalists are pressed to give this ancient idea her soubriquet. Imagine the scene in the DfES vomitarium.

“Look, Fortescue, what the hell can we do about Ruth Kelly? She’s a complete disaster.”

“I’ve got it, boss. Why don’t we name something after her, you know, like ‘Baker days’. What about that wheeze to open schools longer each day? We could call it ‘Kelly overtime’. No, better still, ‘Kelly hours’.”

“Brilliant, Fortescue. This could mean promotion for you.”

I offer Ruth Kelly a suggestion. Immerse yourself in what is happening in successful schools and classrooms, so that you can say, quite naturally: “The other day I saw a really interesting idea in a school in Swineshire.” And send the spin doctors off for a long holiday in Albania.

June 21, 2005

If only I’d come across him earlier so many Guardian education sections might not have gone into the recycling unopened and I might be more engaged on an issue which, according to Wragg at least, is in a permanent state of flux, if not chaos, due to constant and unmitigated government interference. Indeed, he seems to have been a a man after my own heart:

The market is a useful servant, but a very cruel master. It doesn’t take care of quality, for a start. The newspapers with the biggest circulation are not necessarily of the highest quality. Nor does it work in the best interests of the least powerful in our society. It often grinds them into a paste.

I’m now working my way through his Guardian back catalogue, something I’d recommend to others for, if nothing else, the love of good writing.

Breaking News: The prominent pseudonymous blogger, Nosemonkey, steps from the shadows.

Busy, busy, busy today so I can’t devote as much to this as I’d like right now so I’ll just give you:

The Independent: US forces used ‘chemical weapon’ in Iraq
The Pentagon has admitted US forces used white phosphorus as “an incendiary weapon” during the assault last year on Fallujah.

Scott Burgess at The Daily Ablution comes at the story from the other end which is well worth a look.

The Home Office was accused of gross hypocrisy last night for instructing senior managers in the probation service not to lobby against the government’s reform plans for the service - in the same week that senior police officers were urged to lobby MPs on anti-terror laws.

read the rest

Kitty Ussher: Blood on their hands
Let’s be clear about this: this country is a less safe place because of the actions of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and, yes, a minority of our own side, last Wednesday. I very much hope that we will never have another terrorist atrocity in Britain. But if we do, and if it happens because the police have not had sufficient time to accumulate enough evidence to charge the perpetrators, then the Tories, the Lib Dems and our own rebels will have blood on their hands.

Ah, the rivers of blood moment. It seems somebody should be having a word with this water-headed harpy about moral agency. Not being the parliamentarian (New Labour to her very core it would seem), she should have plenty of time to read up on such matters.

Or do New Labour get to pick and choose the reasons for terrorist outrages? No, it’s not our fault. Yes, it is your fault. We could never do anything that would bring carnage to the streets of Britain. Whereas you…

(Nosemonkey and Unity say it better than I can.)

Last week I mentioned an Italian television documentary that showed evidence of the use of chemical weapons by US forces during its assault on Fallujah in Iraq.

Since then, despite coverage across the rest of the world, until this morning the issue has had one mention in the British mainstream media, in The Independent.

George Monbiot discusses the documentary today to debunk it in his column for The Guardian:

The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it
The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It’s a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial.

Monbiot goes on to cite other evidence of the use of chemical weapons by US forces in Iraq.

Now, there were some of us who were all over this way back in June (Me, here, here, here, here; and Tim Ireland here) only to see the story fizzle out in the mainstream. We can only hope it catches light again this week although nobody seems overly bothered, not least the BBC who have been happy to let dead Iraqis lie on this issue.

This includes, as Monbiot points out in scathing terms, Ann Clwyd, special envoy to the prime minister on human rights in Iraq:

In May this year, she wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a “modern form of napalm” has been used by US forces “are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm - either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time”. How did she know? The foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Clwyd travelled through Iraq to investigate Saddam’s crimes against his people. She told the Commons that what she found moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister’s word at face value, when a 30-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she really gave a damn about the people for whom she claimed to be campaigning.

A 30-second search on the internet could have told George that Clwyd is little more than a stooge or at best an unwitting mouthpiece for uncorroborated stories that were then shaped into pro-war propaganda, and there are many for who her opinion counts for nothing.

It makes you wonder what else British ministers, and by extension the British public, have been “lied to” about. The UK Government has stated repeatedly that “[t]he US authorities have repeatedly given us assurances that no terrorist suspects are being held on Diego Garcia, or have at any time passed in transit through Diego Garcia or its territorial waters.” But I’d be keeping an eye on that.

As with the napalm stories that the UK Government had denied but were forced to belatedly confirm, there’s been a steady drip of stories about Diego Garcia, an island owned by the UK and rented to the Americans, as yet unconfirmed:

The Guardian, March 19 2005: ‘One huge US jail’

In June 2004, a senior counterterrorism official in Britain confirmed that Hambali (a nom de guerre) - accused of organising the October 2002 Bali bombings and unseen since Thai police seized him in August 2003 - was “singing like a bird”, apparently at the US base on Diego Garcia.

I’d be prepared to put good money on Adam Ingram releasing a statement sometime soon (on a quiet day so it gets maxium coverage, naturally) that Diego Garcia is one of the CIA’s so-called “black sites“.

But these victims will never be seen. They will never feature on our TV screens to inspire millions to take to the streets. But they exist nonetheless.

You know who said that? Tony Blair in his speech to the Labour Party’s spring conference in February 2005.

Torture and chemical weapons. Victor’s justice I think they call it.

UPDATE: The Independent has more on the RAI documentary. The Pentagon’s tactic would seem to be to rubbish the documentary while obfuscating with contradictory statements on the wider issue and other evidence.

UPDATE: I tell a lie. The BBC did cover the story, online at least, last week. You’ll need to use the search to find it. It doesn’t get a mention on BBC News’ dedicated page for Iraq. And the coverage of the story itself doesn’t go beyond reporting what the documentary said and recycling a quote from the US State Department on the matter made last December.

ALMOST one in ten of the life peers created by Tony Blair since he became Prime Minister is a Labour party donor. Between them, the donors have contributed close to £25 million.

read the rest

Thar’s gold in that thar Britblog Roundup.

“I will I will spend an hour researching, drafting and submitting an independent complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about Rebekah Wade’s conduct and/or material published by the Sun before and after the 90-day terror law vote, but only if 50 other people will too.”

(Full story here.)

UPDATE: I, like some others, haven’t waited for the pledge to be successful before sending my complaint. If you fancy sending a complaint anyway, Jim Bliss has a great how-to guide.

Well, now that the measure to introduce 90 day’s detention has been defeated and those of us who were against it only have ourselves to blame if we’re dead before bedtime, it’s time to take stock.

I fervently try not to believe that this Government is truly evil but instead cling to the hope that the Prime Minister and his crew are in fact just emotionally-retarded inadequates desperately trying to compensate for being bullied as children. But it’s so difficult some times.

“They will be held accountable,” hinted Charles (”He orders two main courses for lunch“) Clarke darkly about his opponents on Sky News last night. Tony Blair hopes those who were against him “do not rue the day“.

The headlines, if there is another terrorist bombing, almost write themselves. In fact the Number 10 press office probably wrote those headlines this morning and put them in a safe place ready for passing to the New Labour in-house magazine. The intellectualism shown in The Sunt’s (sic, copyright Larry) headline this morning (”TRAITORS!“) will go right out the window. Oh yeah, it’ll be “well if you’d only listened to me…” from Blair and “You bastard’s might as well have pulled the pin yourselves” from the Sunt.

It looks like the arguments about moral agency that were brought to bear by Blair in the aftermath of the July bombings may have to be dusted off and turned against him and The Sunt. If Iraq wasn’t a factor in the bombings, then neither will the call to safeguard civil liberties be in future ones. As much as Blair and Clarke regard “liberals” as a threat to national security, it’s suicide bombers, not Guardian readers, who cause carnage.

Shrewd politicians know that the value of your public opinion can go up as well as down. The great unwashed were told to stick their objections over the Iraq war in their foxholes. Referendum on the EU constitution? Knack off. What about hanging? Joe Bloggs would have it back tomorrow apparently but politicians are not about to give it to them. (No, I’m not advocating hanging.)

But this week, Blair pulled the public to his sweaty bosom and declared: “It’s you and me against the world, kidder”, like an over-emotional uncle after too many pale ales. Sooner or later, the British public are going to find they’ve been fucked but never loved. Blair cannot be bought, merely rented (apologies to whoever I’ve stolen that from). Next time, “90%” of the public are going to find he couldn’t give a monkey’s for their pet peeve unless it complements whatever’s bugging him that week.

It’s a dilemma for us who want more direct democracy. It’d be great to have more say in the way the country’s run but, to be patronising and misanthropic for a second, letting your average Sunt reader have the keys to the kingdom would be like giving Osama bin Laden a fast-breeder reactor for Xmas. Particularly if Joe Public’s opinion is to be canvassed by some of the intellectually, if not actually mathematically, dishonest opinions polls we’ve seen in the last few weeks.

The stitch up of and - in this rare case - embracing of public opinion began last week and continues unabated. John Reid on The World at One on Radio 4 this lunchtime, accused the presenter Nick Clarke of using “precisely the kind of language that was used by the Tories”. Drowning all their kittens in one bucket it would seem, Charles (”He orders two main courses for lunch”) Clarke used exactly the same tactic with John Humphreys on the Today programme last week. And what does the BBC do in the face of this cunning gambit? It grabs its ankles. I suppose if the BBC cops it from both sides it must be doing something right but this conflating the Corporation with the Tories and painting it as being somehow anti-New Labour is laughable. But with the BBC wanting more money, public sympathy towards it is malleable.

As if this and the unseemly romancing of public opinion wasn’t enough (the public not realising that all the Government wanted was a quick, grunting bunk-up before straightening it’s tie and saying “I’ve never told her that I love her - except at those times when you’ve *got* to say something for appearance’s sake” before getting out of the car and going back into the club) the crawling over the victims of the July 7 bombings was pretty stomach churning. Like a reverse Pontius Pilate, Charles (”He orders two main courses for lunch”) Clarke, washed his hands in the blood:

Tony told me that families and victims were saying to him, ‘Don’t let the terrorists do this again, do whatever you can to stop them.’ After that, when you listen to liberal London, you think they are pathetic. These kind of debates are too dominated by lawyers, both in the Commons and the Lords

Brave words from a man with a bullet-proof car and enjoying two lunches. Sympathetic as he is towards the victims of the bombings when he’s pushing his own agenda, those reserves are as dry as the bottle of Burgundy after one of his gargantuan repasts (”He orders two main courses for lunch”), when it comes to making their lives more comfortable.

Now, the victims of the bombings deserve every sympathy but, with the greatest respect, their experience does not grant them special insight or confer on them a greater say in this argument than anyone else. If it was my kids, I’d be screaming for bloody retribution which probably isn’t the best position for advocating new laws.

I was reminded of this sketch from the ace That Mitchell and Webb Sound:

Radio Presenter: Those are are the headlines at 5.09. And for an immediate reaction to today’s events I think we can speak to Tom Hilton. Hello, Tom.

Tom: Er, hello?

Radio Presenter: Chris Powell here from Radio 4, thanks for speaking to us. Can I ask what your response is to today’s announcement that Rail North East will not be funding the laser-assisted train early warning system?

Tom: Erm, well yeah. I personally think it’s a shame.

Radio Presenter: So, it’s shame on the management? Shame on the Government?

Tom: Well, I suppose, but look, can I just say I’m really not the best person to talk to about this, I mean it’s weird you even had to call me. You see, by a spooky coincidence, I actually lost my wife in a train crash.

Radio Presenter: yes, we know.

Tom: One exactly this kind of system could have prevented.

Radio Presenter: That’s why we’re in touch with you, Tom.

Tom: Oh. Oh, right. Blimey. That does seem a bit, almost, ghoulish.

Radio Presenter: Well, no. It’s because you’ve got personal experience of a rail tragedy that your views are so important.

Tom: Really? I would have thought that it was because I’ve got personal experience of a rail tragedy that my views should be dismissed out of hand.

Radio Presenter: No. No, look. Would you say, that to you, safety is by far the most important issue facing the rail network?

Tom: Well, of course I would. My wife just died in a train crash.

Radio Presenter: Thank you.

Tom: But you really should talk to someone else. It’s impossible for me to have any objectivity at all.

Radio Presenter: Right, but if spending the three billion on system could bring back your wife that would be worth it?

Tom: Well, obviously. Although I must stress I lack any objectivity.

Radio Presenter: Nevertheless, what would you say to the minister? What would your message be to him?

Tom: My message would be, “Minister, good luck in judging how to allocate your finite resources given the many competing demands you face.”

For many people who’ve lost relatives or been injured in such circumstances, campaigns and media appearances can be part of the grieving process or, in some cases I’m sorry to say, a way of avoiding the grieving process. But being caught up in such terrible circumstances doesn’t make them any more qualified to form public policy.

Not all the people injured in the July bombings allowed themselves to be used for party political ends. Did Clarke and Blair canvas all of them? Rachel from North London put it eloquently on her blog (”I cannot, and do not speak for all the victims, and nor can, and nor should Tony Blair and Charles Clarke.“) as did John Tulloch in today’s Guardian about the exploitation of his experience by The Sunt:

This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. Its incredibly ironic that the Sun’s rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don’t actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, ‘Not in my name, Tony’. I haven’t read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary.

I’ll leave Larry to comment further (I’m trying to moderate my potty mouth) other than to say if you take lessons in anything from a woman who frightened her partner to the point that he felt compelled to dial 999 and then used her position to bury the story, you’re pitiable. To read Tulloch’s story and then for Rebekah Wade to use it to score the cheapest of political points makes her little more than scum. Tulloch shows more compassion and humanity in this one paragraph…

Two photographs, he says, struck him particularly forcefully: “One of the suicide bombers, Germaine [Lindsay], with his wife and babies. Here was this loving woman with her children, their faces pixillated out to protect them. It brought tears to my eyes. I just felt sad for her and what’s going to happen to her.”

…than Wade has shown in her entire miserable existence.

That’s the level to which the so-called debate from these people has sunk. Putting words in people’s mouths. The (libellous) cries of “TRAITORS!”. Sympathy when expedient, hard words when not. Listening hard when what’s said is affirming, deaf when it’s not useful. The intimations of dissenters’ culpability in any future atrocity. All in all, a graceless spectacle (and that’s said without any schadenfraude).

It seems to have been forgotten that the current detention period is about to be doubled to a lengthy 28 days and getting legislation renewed after the lapsing of a sunset clause never troubled any government. It’s the old boiling frog again. This is the second doubling of the detention period in three years. If New Labour are prepared to wait it out, they’ll get their 90 days within six years if they play it clever (just ask for wildly inordinate periods every couple of years and then meet the opposition halfway). But no. They want it now. NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW!

It’s like watching the spoilt kid who throws a strop when he doesn’t win pass-the-parcel at his own birthday party: nobody knows quite where to look and pointing at the huge pile of presents stacked up in the corner (this is, after all, Blair’s only defeat in eight long years of getting his own way) counts for nowt.

The Guardian: The editor, the actor, the (ex) cabinet minister and a night behind bars
The editor of Britain’s best-selling daily newspaper became embroiled in controversy yesterday after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting her soap star husband. Rebekah Wade, 37, who recently launched a campaign in her newspaper, the Sun, to stamp out domestic violence, found herself in a police cell in Battersea, in south-west London, after being subjected to fingerprinting and DNA testing.

But what about your civil rights, Rebekah?

The police do not make the laws. They enforce those laws that we, the people, believe are required. They work for us and they do what we tell them to do. They do not tell us what powers they should have. We grant them such powers as we choose to grant. If they cannot fulfill their duty using their existing powers, then I suggest we fire them and hire some who can.

read the rest

Aye: 323
No: 290

Passed by 33 votes.

That’s still a long time but I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. As I’ve said before - your yearly holiday entitlement might just cover it. Dark-skinned men with beards should cancel that fortnight in Lanzarotte now.

Aye: 291
No: 322

The detention for 90 days is defeated by 31 votes. The first defeat in the Commons for New Labour.

MPs now move on to vote for 28 days detention…

UPDATE: 41 Labour MPs rebelled according to PM on Radio 4.

UPDATE: Make that 49

UPDATE: The chaps at The Public Whip have stayed late to bring us the break down of the vote.

As everyone reading this knows by now, I was on the bombed train at Kings Cross, in the first carriage. So yes, I am not surprised that terrorists seek to do what they can to attack my democratic society, to destabilise and threaten my liberties, to spread fear, to seek to divide us.

I do not expect my democratically-elected government to do the same. I cannot, and do not speak for all the victims, and nor can, and nor should Tony Blair and Charles Clarke.

But I know one thing: to defeat terrorism and hate-filled individuals we need to draw strength from each other, to co-operate and talk with each other, whether white or black, Muslim or Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Jew or atheist. Just like we did went the lights went out and the tunnel filled with smoke and we heard the screams of the dying; we drew together, we held hands, we prayed and we did not panic.

I do not see why this ill-thought out macho posturing, which can only destabilise and divide us, by robbing men and women of the ancient and fundemental right of habeas corpus, and making sections of the community afraid, is going to defeat terror…

read the rest…

(via Nosemonkey.)