Voting TaKtiX

Quietly announced today behind stories on the smoking ban and bird flu, was the review of the firearms strategy for dealing with suspect suicide bombers, A Scotland Yard review after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menenzes having concluded it remained the best approach. The review on whether or not to change this policy is ongoing.

Now it strikes me that police need an effective way of dealing with such situations, but we come up against a questioning of the use of lethal force. Now in a clear-cut scenario, I have no problem with the police using any force necessary to stop a suicide bomber intent on killing even more people. But in a situation such as that which happened in London earlier this year, the intelligence possed by the police was obviously not enough to justify the shooting of someone who ‘was thought’ to be a bomber.

The thing is, if the police are going to sanction lethal force in a situation where they are not in full possession of the facts, then they are effectively judging someone guilty before the fact, and, by shooting them in the head, denying them the possibilty to defend themselves or be found innocent at a later date. It is very difficult to offer a reasonable explanation of your actions from beyond the grave, after all.

It is also worrying that in the same BBC website article, the shoot-to-kill policy is already being talked about in non-terrorist terms. Again, I defend the right for the police to use lethal force, but it should not be authorised carte blanche, even in specific situations. We need a greater focus on information and crime-prevention than simply shooting the suspect and having done with it. It is often the case in police shootings that the victim is mentally ill rather than ‘evil’, and as such if at all possible the individual should be given medical help as a patient rather than shot as a criminal.

Now of course, this is a fundamental problem of dealing with terrorists. We need an effective was of stopping suspects which doesn’t involve detaining them without trial or shooting them on weak information. But at the same time there is obviously a need to stop criminal acts and terrorist atrocities which we have intelligence but not proof of. It is admittedly a very difficult situation to be found in. Crucially, however, a quick response should not be confused with a poorly thought out response, especially when such a method as shooting suspects is being used. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty; killing someone, however simple it may be, removes that right permanently.

Muttawa gives us the good news that Dudley Council has realised they got carried away when they banned Piglet et al, a follow up from my opinions here on the ban itself and here on the right to cause offense.

Meanwhile, in a related story to Paul’s observations on torture, Craig Murray points out further evidence that the British Government is quite happy to torture people itself. There’s plenty doing the rounds about why torture just doesn’t work, so no need to repeat myself here.

In not-blog-related but possibly useful info for any readers we’ve thus far picked up, I’m typing this on a brand new PC, the old one was on its last legs and crashed on me once too often last week. There are some articles pending, apologies for the delays, I really want to address the future of the Tory party and a needed realignment, and the English question really does need to be addressed somewhere outside of the comments sections. However, as I’m also no longer single, life is getting in the way on a few fronts. I’ll get them done, I’ve got a folder full of links on the Tory article.

When is torture not torture? When it’s done by someone else, or at least that’s one of the possible outcomes of the House of Lords review on the use of evidence garnered from currently held suspects who gave statements abroad.
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When I was first introduced to the web, and almost immediately afterwards to web design, a friend pointed me in the direction of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. As one of the founders of the web usability movement, it’s a site I return to again and again, as although I’m an amateur at design, it’s great to look a a supposed ‘professional’ site and spot basic, glaring errors.

Today, he gives us in the ‘blogosphere’ a gem, Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes. I’ve scanned it, I agree with what I’ve read. Completely off topic for this blog, but just generally worth linking to so go have a look…

The decision yesterday by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal not to return a Zimbabwean man to Zimbabwe for fear of facing reprisal once he got there was almost certainly the right decision. It seems entirely incompatible to, one the one hand, say that it is safe to deport asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe whilst, on the other hand, decrying the truly awful state that the country is in.

That’s about as much as I’ll talk about that though, because now I think there’s a bigger question facing us. What I want to know is, who, outside of Blair and his supporters, actually supports the moves currently being taken by the Labour government?

What I’m saying is that it seemed clear from the start of the case over deportation to Zimbabwe that the government was in the wrong, yet they’ve stuck with it anyway. After the 7th of July attacks, no-one except the government and the police saw the need to introduce new laws that were previously covered by old laws anyway. Detention without trial for up to 90 days is opposed by both the opposition, the Lib Dems, and members of the Labour Party itself, not to mention all the civil liberties groups. ID cards too are opposed by both other major political parties. Where exactly is Blair going with this agenda, and why is he still so keen to pursue it with so much opposition?

Probably the most popular response is the need for Blair to be seen to be doing something about the most pressing problems facing the country; terrorism, asylum, national security. All of the these measures do, to some degree, offer protection in some way. Thing is though, for example after the London bombings, the police did incredibly well in tracking down those responsible in a very short space of time without any of these new measures.. Clearly the police were doing something, and something far more tangible than creating new laws to appease the electorate. Seemingly, each and every one of the schemes that Blair is currently pushing is opposed because it offers an overblown solution to a problem which is actually quite a bit easier to solve. Why does it feel that everyone but Blair can already see this?

It seems pretty clear to me that what people actually want is results, not white elephants or singled-out scapegoats to make everybody feel better. We shouldn’t be faffing about with pointless new laws, we should be giving more funding to the police, we shouldn’t be introducing ID cards, we should be hiring more police officers in the first place. And we definitely shouldn’t be condemning people to torture or death by returning them to their unsafe place of origin just because ‘we need to be doing something’ about asylum.

Then again, perhaps bread and circuses really is the way to deflect real criticism. If so, let’s look forward to another Labour government in 4 years time…

I am reminded by my friend Mark, from Alderney, that today is the anniversary of his bit of the worlds invasion of our bit of the world, the Battle of Hastings. This brings to mind a little phrase that always seems to crop up when matter European are discussed, that wonderful old phrase about a thousand years of history. An example, from UKIP, here:

…the Prime Minister is signing away nothing less than Britain’s right to self-government. A thousand years of history goes down the drain…

The historian in me is always bothered by this terminology. What thousand years are you referring to, exactly? (more…)

NM doesn’t like me, or something. Me, cheeky? Never. Oh, wait…

I’ve also had links from strangelyrouge and the dairy product.

Been a bit of a hectic week, but the weekend is fairly clear, and I’ve promised at least two proper responses to comments, so stay tuned for “Why an English Parliament is a bad idea” and “What to do with the Tories”. Honest, they’ll happen. No idea if Paul’s got anything planned…

Well, on the grounds that there are other people out there with my name and I might, at some point, want a blogspot hosted personal blog (like the next time I decide to run for election somewhere), here’s me.

Until I start using this properly, my personal journal and musings on life can be found here and my more political weblog on the state of the nation is Great Britain, not little England. I share the latter with my good friend and former housemate PaulJ, who managed to actually do well at university and got himself an MA in being clever and talking about politics. As we find it really difficult to find things we disagree about, it seemed to make sense to start writing about stuff, especially as we both have very strong views on civil liberties and liberal internationalism.

You want to know a bit more about me? Ok, if you’re sure. Born in Paignton, Devon in 1974, I currently live in Torquay and work in an office about 5 minutes walk from the hospital I was born in (the maternity wing was shut down in the 1980s). This is random chance, it’s a great, although very challenging, job; find out more here if you want. between now and then, I’ve dropped out of university, worked in retail, managed a small store, become very bored and returned to college and then a decent university to get a degree; not being the academic type really, the mark wasn’t that good, but I’m damn proud to have acheived it anyway, so that’s Matthew Bowles, BA if you want to be formal about things. I’m rarely, if ever, formal.

I love travelling, reading, the internet and playing games with friends. Combining all three together is bliss, so I collect card games, especially Warlord, for which I’m a member of the online Rules support team. If there’s a reasonably sized event for the game in Europe, expect to see me there if finance allows. I also love decent music played by real musicians, and have a marked preference for wearing black and not cutting my hair. I’m not a Goth though, no self respecting individual voluntarily describes themselves as a Goth. Besides, it’s called Deathrock now, apparently…

Just go read Not Little England, it’s muc more interesting.

Blogger has it seems over the weekend given us an easier to use, slightly less effective although much harder to spam competitor to trackbacks. Last week, I spent a bit of tie researching if it was possible to run trackbacks on blogger without using haloscan, which I really dislike. After our favourite dairy product switched to Haloscan in order to run trackbacks over the weekend, I was almost tempted. Then I sw the option to enable them while tweaking something else, and after the WTF reaction, started looking into things.

So, an experiment to see how good they are; link to this post, and if you’re on blogger set up backlinks of your own; it’s already enabled in my template, (I turned it on and it was there, yay!) so it may already appear for you, unless you’re Nosemonkey, who will probably have to recode the site from scratch again…

Tomorrow night, I’ll look at the backlinks, add them to a new post, and we’ll see how they go; deal? Go on. Not just whoring for links to the new blog,honest guv’nor!

[Edit: Nosemonkey just called me a cheeky bastard, but he did link to this post, so we’ll see if it works- Mat-14/10/05]

Great Britain, not little England: Backlinks: link here!

Testing the backlink function.

Devil’s Kitchen informs us he’s off to foreign climes, but has asked Tiny Judas to stand in. Who? I hear you ask. Well, precisely, so I went and had a look. Apart from the occasional frequent missing capitalisation, very impressive. Especially this on Godwin’s law

Here is the crux. By Fetishizing Hitler and Nazism. By setting it to one side, as evil like no other, we devoid ourselves of responsibility for it. It was just a period in which Hell reigned on earth and there’s not a lot anyone could have done about that, apart from be thankful that its over. By imagining that it is something that happened once, we soothe ourselves to the potential for cruelty we carry. We deny the possibility of it happening again.

and this and this on NuLab’s continuing attacks on our liberties.

Blair’s rhetoric is fucking bollocks. justice is not dickensian (its much older than that). and if all the above is Tony’s vision of contemporary justice, then he’s been getting a hard on from one too many judge dredd comics.

Good to know a more favoured blog from the sensible Right is in good hands, enjoy the break DK.

Meanwhile, in response to this discussion on here about the ECHR, Ken at EU Realist gives us this breakdown of the important differences between the Council of Europe (which was set up in 1949 and virtually all countries in the continent of Europe including Turkey are members of) and the European Union (which has grown out of the European Coal and Steel community established by 6 members of the Council who wanted something more). While I disagree with some of his conclusions (we’re sort of in favour of remaining within a reformed EU in these parts) it isa pretty good summary of why the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice should not be confused, being,a s they are, the judiciaries of two, entirely separate, organisations.

The Council of Europe is the continent’s oldest political organisation, founded in London 1949. the first major convention was drawn up: the European Convention on Human Rights, signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 and coming into force on 3 September 1953.
Shortly after the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany, Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister approached all the Council of Europe countries with a proposal for a European Coal and Steel Community, to be provided with very different political and budgetary means.
The six countries most attached to the ideal of integration - Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany - joined, and on 9 May 1951 signed the very first Community treaty. Strengthened by the experience and commitment which had brought the “Greater Europe” into existence, the “Smaller Europe” was now making its own “leap into the unknown” of European construction

(my emphasis; regardless of what you think about the EU, we should be damned proud of our acheivements in WWII and the subsequent creation of the Council). Thanks Ken.

Elsewhere, Dead Men Left and everyone’s favourite dairy product are slamming Blunkett for his latest misstatement of the facts and, well, him in general really. Can’t say I blame them. Or disagree, for that matter.

In the meantime, I’m planning a long response to Gary’s comments here in my post about the necessary break up of the Tory party. But, well, I’m a bit busy, and I want it to be a good one. In the meantime, definately appreciate the comments over the last few days, feedback makes it all seem worthwhile, and we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t like to argue with people.

Just a quick post on the nature of fairness.

This week there’s been a fair bit of talk by George Osborne and others within the Conservative Party about the possible introduction of flat tax as a fairer system of tax than current income tax. Fairer, because it sets a basic rate of tax which everyone is liable to pay with no sector being discriminated against.

What got me thinking about fairness is that this system is clearly both fair and unfair at the same time. Charging everyone the same rate certainly does seem fair, but it means different things to different groups, which means it’s not fair.I think the difference is between fairness and universalism, which seems to be the main distinction between the two extremes. Basically, flat tax is universal because it applies everyone equally even though the effects may not be equal. Another example would be the British legal system, which is also universal in principle but, for example when levelling fines, doesn’t take into account a persons capability to pay that fine with the charge being the same whether the individual is rich or poor.

Now obviously we feel that our legal system is reasonably fair (well maybe not, but it’s not like we’re rioting in the streets just yet). So maybe a flat tax is fair too? Well, no. Not really.

Even exempting the poorest from paying any tax at all, the real winners from a flat tax are the really high earners whose tax rate under flat tax would drop from 40% to 22%, saving them huge amounts of money each year and completely belittling the extra £1000 that someone of minimum wage would get. Anybody between the cut-off point for not paying flat tax and the current higher tax rate would suffer massively, and that group would likely consist of the average wage earner at around £22′000. With some losing greatly and others gaining even more, it can hardly be called fair, now can it?

Basically, we what have is a new type of tax to help a small minority disguised in word which make it sound like it’s equal and fair. What we’re actually getting is a tax break for the rich, with a little sweetener for the poor as some thinly veiled attempt to buy them off. It’s not fair in the slightest, and, most laughably, the person that wrote the book on which the idea is based doesn’t think it will work.

Thing is, we seem to be entering a phase where the Conservatives have realised they need to engage more people and gain more than just right wing support. They some very promising young members in David Cameron and George Osborne and for a change it seems like the Tories might be making some progress. (Mat has talked about the possibility of a Lib-Dem/Tory alliance along a new axis of politics elsewhere and he’s not wrong) But this is clearly not a move which is going to bring the Tories back to the centre, it’s just a new policy designed to make the rich richer and screw everybody else. The whole point of trying to help the poorer sections of society is to give them a better chance of doing as well as everybody else, and taking money away from them isn’t the way to go about it. When it comes to money, some people do need more of a leg up than others. It’s hardly ‘positive discrimination’ to support the more needy in society over those comfortably well off - maybe it’s not universal, but it’s certainly more fair.

Go here and read this. A Tory blogger quotes an article in the Telegraph and I agree with every single word? What is wrong with the world when Blunkett and Clarke want to lock the world up and Tories are making perfect sense? I despair of the supposed ‘left’ of this country, half of it still thinks Blair/Brown is a good thing.

Nosemonkey brings us the news that they’ve figured out telling us how to live is difficult. I hate smoking, filthy habit. But many of my friends do, and given my lack of sense of smell, it’s never bothered me. My favourite Paignton cafe is a smoking cafe, they do such a great omelette I don’t care. The only reason I could see for the ban was staff health and safety, but that can be worked around, and it’s already banned at the bar itself. Simple solution to the govt: make pubs, etc. put up a sign and in their ads saying how much smoking is allowed, and let individuals make the choice? Market forces will decide, and then there can and will always be a few pubs for the unhealthy reprobates and their tolerent friends.

[Edit: a friend took a completely opposed view on his livejournal, and we had a debate, made me think through a few of the issues a little more than I had; non-smoking areas are essential for some, and unenforced n-sm policies are downright dangerous. Perhaps this is an area where the market does need a little more assistance?]

Not so much an update as a plug for a very nice website serving to dispel some of the myths about Europe which our media so love to shout about.

The website is called Euromyths, and should provide a good laugh for anybody who remembers the stories a while back about straight bananas, fake chocolate and the general claims of over-harmonization that seem to crop up whenever some Eurosceptic hack cant be arsed to find a real story.

To give a little background, I stumbled across this site because I heard that awful line from UKIP on friday about

70% of british Law being made in the EU

Now I was basically searching around trying to prove or disprove this claim, but suffice to say the only, only reference I can find to it is on UKIP’s own website, and they, obviously don’t offer any evidence for this claim.

Thing is, it’s partly believable in that a lot of British laws are now made after consultation via the EU institutions. That’s not to say, as UKIP would have it, that those laws are imposed on us, but that as a member of the EU, we work within a certain framework. Sometimes that benefits us, sometimes it doesn’t. More often it does both, but our lovely reactionary media *cough* Daily Mail *cough* only pick up on the bad aspects. The laughable thing is that you can usually see straight through their reports, so it’s really the people that read the articles and take them at face value who are the people at fault.

Anyway, I may well email the keepers of the Euromyths website and see if they have the answer.

Oh, and another thing. During his speech to the Tory conference last week, Dr Liam Fox made reference to the need for Britain to avoid Europe’s ‘ever closer union’. I would like to correct Dr Fox here by pointing out that all reference to ‘ever closer union’ was dropped from the draft EU constitution as early as February 2003. I’m sure he’d like me to point that out; God forbid the Tories mislead the public over Europe or anything.

[Edit:Link fixed to what I think Paul meant, thanks to NM for pointing it out-MatGB]

My avatar pic for various locations; a Belgian mad scientist rides a blimp through the California mines. Yes, it’s as silly as it sounds.

Apparently, the English flag is racist. In fact, if you see one flying somewhere, you should report it as intimidating. So, because small minded racist thugs like a symbol, that means the symbol itself becomes a problem? Should I stop buying red roses because the nanny staters use them as a symbol? I don’t often agree with the England Project (let’s face it, they want to destroy the Union), but on this one I agree completely; the English and British flags are thigs we should be proud of. Reclaim it so we can be.

Mark Steyn wrote an article on the Piglet ban in The Telegraph, and, unsurprisingly, misses the point completely. Firstly, he blames the ‘liberals’ for bending over, when any true liberal knows this sort of ban to be completely illiberal (oh, Tory run council that did it by the way, the sort of people the Telegraph normally likes). Oh well. It’s idiotic nanny staters that want to protect us from being offended Mark, not liberals. Still, he ends well..

But at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they’re still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they’re willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one’s stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult.

Other blogs out there have been covering this, but they’re all blaming the Muslims. I’m not, I’m blaming the idiots who decided to go overboard and ban everything…

Oh, The Independent had some good coverage. on HMG’s non-complaince with our international obligations as members of the Council of Europe, an organisation with a proud history we helped found. shame they still want you to pay for access to their archives.

The European Court of Human Rights today ruled that it was a breach of the Human Rights Act to deny prisoners the right to vote. The immediate response to this by Lord Falconer was that ‘not all convicts will get the vote’. It struck me later whilst reading the debate on the BBC website regarding giving prisoners the right to vote, how similar the argument of many people who would deny prisoners the vote was to one of the main failures of the work of John Locke.
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Well, the Tory leadership contest is once again making the news, and we might get an idea about who is in charge at some point before Christmas. Musings from Middle England has aan amusing round up here. The scary thing for me is that I grew up under Thatcher, and I had no doubt whatsoever by the time I was old enough to vote that the Tories were the enemy and must be defeated. It wasn’t, really, the economic policies that bothered me about them, it was the illiberal lock them up, hand ‘em and flog ‘em approach they took to all crime, criminals, people with long hair, young people who like to party, etc.
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One of the aspects of living in Britain as opposed to many places in the world is its very sensible approach to gun usage. Not only are guns strictly controlled but even their use by the police is closely monitored. In this way we keep a balance which allows our police force guns, whilst not encountering any problems with the idea that the state can use force against its citizens without having to account for itself.

Take for example the case of Philip Prout, shot dead by police in May last year after an armed siege and a stand-off with marksmen involving Mr Prout brandishing a katana. It would appear from looking at the case that the police action was justified - attempts had been made to talk Prout down, non-lethal methods (a baton gun) were attempted and finally, as a last resort, Mr Prout was shot and unfortunately later died in hospital.

What is notable about this case is that there is was a lengthy inquest performed by the IPCC and currently another inquest into the shooting being conducted by members of Prout’s family at Plymouth Crown Court. These investigations are a necessary and crucial part of the legal system and serve to show how gun usage is seen in Britain and how each individual case is considered worthy of a full public enquiry. Hopefully, by IPCC or private hearings, the truth will come out about what happened last year and appropriate measures will be taken.

Which is why, when it came out last Friday that Sir Ian Blair had refused the IPCC access to the scene of Jean Charles de Menezes’ death, I was more than a little outraged. More so, in fact, than when I learnt that de Menezes was not a terrorist (because mistakes can happen), or when I learnt that he had in fact not ran, nor vaulted a barrier, or been wearing a large, bomb-concealing jacket (because we’d all known that was the case from the American Press over a week earlier). Outraged, because whilst our country must protect itself against terrorists, and must act upon best information even where this is unfortunately incorrect, it must also do this is in a way accessible to the British people, so that when mistakes do happen, we can see why, and learn from our mistakes. Terrorist crimes should not warrant private investigations - keeping information from the public helps no-one in the long run, and only serves to undermine the long-standing and impressive relationship with gun use and gun crime that we are so lucky to have. Terrorism and the response to terrorism is no excuse for hiding the truth.

We owe the families of Philip Prout, Jean Charles de Menezes and many others that much at least.