Category Archives: law

What fresh blue hell is this?

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I’m just in from the pub.

No, don’t worry, I was the very model of temperance, it was a catch up with a few friends, and to drink I have to be in the mood to drink. Of the three big evil vices which threaten our very civilisation – smoking, meaty fatty foods and booze, I could give up the booze the easiest. I won’t though. My alcoholic libation was limited to a nice glass of merlot this evening.

Well, almost. There’s a brewer down this way called Shepherd-Neame. Britain’s oldest brewery. You’ve probably seen the very imaginative and not a little controversial advertising campaign promoting their Spitfire ale, their bottle conditioned beer is a staple of supermarkets nationwide.

They’ve just got the licence to start brewing Samuel Adams beer in the UK and this has now made its way to the pumps. Now, I’m not a big beer fan, I’m a Kentish lad and as a result my heart belongs to proper cider, Kent makes the best in the country and is second only in the world (in my opinion) to the Bretons, although the Breton stuff can be a little wine-like for some tastes. Don’t believe the Hereford, Somerset and Cornish hype, when it comes to English cider, Kentish is the business.

I digress. Despite not being a big beer fan I did remember quite liking Sam Adams when I visited Boston and took a sneaky little taster, very good it is too. But when tasting the beer I was told something by the barman that left me quite astonished. I had to ask him to repeat it, as I was certain that I’d misheard him.

What did he tell me?

He told me that they were prohibited from serving it in pints. At first (re)hearing my mind went back to a pub of my youth in a beautiful little Kentish village called Biddenden. The village brews a superb cider (and makes a very nice wine as well), imaginatively named ‘Biddenden Cider’. This stuff is nectar, but it is rather potent, and this pub wouldn’t serve it in more than a half pint unless your face was known. But surely this beer, this American beer, couldn’t be as potent as the Kentish cider that gets you drunk from the feet up (don’t have a session on the Biddenden when sitting down, your head will be as clear as a bell, but your feet will not respond to any instruction you give them)?

No it isn’t as potent, and that isn’t the thinking. There has, I’m told, been a bit of legislation passed to prevent us looking like extras from Hogarth’s Gin Lane (and yes, I believe that Beer Street is more apposite). This in effect means that any new beer product launched onto the market will be limited to servings of a maximum of 2/3 of a pint.

I knew nothing of this, and was quite taken aback. Does anyone out there in blogland have any more information? It seems to me to be one of the most stupid items of legislation to have ever sprung forth from the prolapsed rectum that is Westminster. I’m also betting that the next step will be that any existing line that has even the merest alteration to its recipe will qualify as a ‘new product’.

First they came for the smokers. . .

Bloody kids.

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What has happened to the children in our country? Why do they hold the laws of the land in such scant regard?

Take a look at this little blighter:

A criminal. Thankfully, he appears to have been given the sack already.

Sam starts work at 6.45am every day, but because he’s only 15 legally he cannot begin work until 7am – and if he does that, he could miss the start of school.

He’ll have to give up work then, won’t he? If he misses the start of the school day, his parents must be prosecuted. Of course, if he misbehaves at school, disrupts lessons, bullies smaller children and intimidates female members of staff, that’s fine, it’s his human right to express himself.

He won a national award last year for looking after a terminally ill pensioner.

He should be forced to give the award back, and the terminally ill pensioner must be prosecuted for incitement to employ a child before 7 am. Did the terminally ill pensioner undergo a CRB check? I doubt it. This is a scandalous exploitation of child labour.
Thankfully, a public spirited civillian contacted the local council and tipped them off about this. This stout yeoman of our green and pleasant land should be held up as a public hero, stopping the abuse and exploitation of children is a sacred duty for all of us. Perhaps he or she should be given the award handed out to the criminal little mite in recompense?

Now he could be forced to ditch his round after CEO [Child Employment Office] officials threatened the shop owner that employs Sam.

Vicky Onions, from Vicky’s Convenience Store, could be taken to court if she continues to employ the 15-year-old.

Well now, hang on. Why are we just going for the employer here? Certainly she’s had a major part in facilitating the offence here, but then there’s the people who paid her for the service, they should all be fined. There’s the parents who have aided and abetted their progeny being used in the manner of a child being sent up the chimney. There’s the lad’s friends and their parents, are we to believe they weren’t aware of this flagrant breach of the law? They are all accessories in my eyes. Then there’s the boy himself. He has wilfully broken the law here, he has drawn in people to have contact with him, in direct contravention of child safety protocol, he has endangered his chances of getting a drone certificate from his local school, and has knowingly put himself in an environment where he is likely to be snatched from the street by a paedophile, exposed to non-approved literature and to see products containing tobacco, alcohol and high levels of sugar and salt.

Look people, it is perfectly simple, if we have children, their parents and local employers talking and making decisions without the benefit of the State’s Solomon like wisdom, where will it all end? They should all be fined and imprisoned before this sort of thing gets out of hand.

Still it continues.

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Time and time and time and time again the message is sent out.

You cannot do this.

Time and time and time and time again this message is ignored.

Two stories today.

Firstly the NUJ report that a photographer has again, amazingly, been threatened with arrest by the Met Police for taking photos in public, and was made, quite unlawfully, to delete the images she had taken.

How many times do they have to be told? You cannot do this. It is illegal. If a police officer is incapable of acting within the law, then he/she should be sacked. Possibly prosecuted. It is the one message that ACPO send out which is actually correct and desirable.

It may be irksome, it may be inconvenient. But you cannot prevent people from taking photographs in a public area, or arbitrarily destroy the images that have been taken just because you don’t like it.

This is not how the police in a civilised, free society act.

I support the police, but fuck me, they make it difficult to justify that support sometimes.

Stupid, thoughtless and unilateral acts like this do nothing but stir up resentment and mistrust.

And if it isn’t the police, it’s the local council.

If you or I were to break the law, we’d be arrested and probably locked up. Well, that’s not true, if we put a brick through someone’s window, or knocked a granny off her electric buggy we’d suffer no penalty at all. If we didn’t pay our council tax or TV licence, then it would be land of the stripy sunshine.

Is anyone going to lose their job over this? Anyone going to be locked up for a shocking episode of overbearing surveillance?

The bloke on the front line might, but the chap who authorised the operation will probably get out unscathed.

Not good enough.

Actions like these are incitement to civil disobedience.

The One That Thinks It Could Make Quite A Difference. . .

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Ah yes, our old friends the BNP.

Right, I’m not going to give the usual caveat here. The little icons dotted around this page make it perfectly clear who it is I support.

Looks like old Harridan Harperson is going to get what she wanted. It sits nicely with the old warning about being careful what you wish for.


BNP leader Nick Griffin has agreed to ask his party to amend its constitution so it does not discriminate on grounds of race or religion, a court heard.

Now as far as I’m concerned, it is a party with its own values. They are values I do not hold therefore I won’t join them, just as a Labour supporter won’t support Libertarian values and therefore won’t be joining us. Fine.

Ahhh, yes, but black people can’t join the BNP. Their rules don’t allow it.

Well, fine. Their party, their rules.

I have a sneaking suspicion that not many black or Asian people would want to join the BNP, but discrimination is bad and it must be stamped out. The right of a hypothetical black person to join the BNP trumps the right of a very real BNP member to exclude them. I don’t understand how one person’s ‘rights’ can trump those of another, but there you go.

Let’s just suppose for a minute that the BNP relents and alters it’s constitution to allow ‘non-indigenous non-Caucasian’ people to join. What will the outcome be?

Will the BNP be flooded with ultra-nationalist Rastafarians and Taoists?

Doubtful.

Will the BNP find themselves hamstrung by a large faction coming into the party that is determined to work against their policies?

Possible, but then, the current BNP members will just leave and start up another party, so that won’t work.

No, what would happen is that the BNP would hang an ‘all welcome’ sign on their front door, secure in the knowledge that the people they don’t want to join, won’t join. And then, when they start to appear on Question Time (which could be quite entertaining tonight given the reaction to their name last week, either that or someone released a shit load of snakes into the studio), the Big 3 will no longer be able to point their fingers and scream ‘Racists!’ at them, as they will have the constitution to prove they are not.

Much is written in the Libertarian blogosphere about this government’s tactic of denormalising people, drinkers, smokers, the free of thought and will, but now Harman and her chums are doing something even more daft, they are normalising a party.

Eh? How’s this going to work? On the one hand you use legislation to enforce your will and values on a political party. Legislation that, if the BNP have any sense, they won’t break. So you can’t very well screm ‘Racist’ at them anymore, what does that leave you? It is obvious you’ll continue to do your best to ensure that they are shouted down at every opportunity, blocked from attending Parliament or debates and generally excluded, inspite of the fact that they are legitimately elected.

But of course, there’s no room for views you don’t like in your democracy.

The BNP will be able to point and give another example of the Labour mania for controlling anything their gaze happens to fall upon, and cries of ‘but they’re not very nice people’ is hardly going to cut the ice, is it? Did they go to war in Iraq? Did they use expenses to fund their own companies? Did they promote their biggest trougher to the Lords to allow him to bleed us dry until the day he dies? Did they go back on a referendum promise? Did they desert their natural constituency in order to cling on to power? Did they plan a smear campaign against opposition MPs and then whine when they got caught out?

No.

The problem is, all of you Big 3, but specifically Labour, just because most people find the BNP objectionable, it doesn’t follow that they like you any better, and at least the BNP are honest.

By enforcing normality upon them, you surrender your second biggest weapon against them and will do nothing more than generate sympathy for them, you will increase their membership as for many waverers using the law to force a political party to do as you want will be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It isn’t the last straw for me, my camel’s spinal cord was severed about nine years ago, but for a number of people this will be it, for others it will be what you do tomorrow.

What I don’t understand is why you don’t use the most effective weapon you have against the BNP; just let them talk. Or is it that you’ve made such a horlicks of your time in power that you are scared that the people you have a God given right to expect to turn out for you, will look at you, then at them, then back at you, and say to themselves; ‘You know, this BNP lot aren’t as half as bad as Labour’?

If that is the case, then who is to blame?

a) The BNP
b) Those two Irish lads on the X-Factor
c) The Cybermen
d) You

The One That Wonders What The Phrase Means. . .

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I encountered a new phrase yesterday; ‘summary conviction.’

I’ll contextualise it, in the fair city of Canterbury it is now an offence to let your dog walk off the lead. I’m a responsible dog owner, I always pick up after my dog and I do not let her walk off the lead except in places where I know she will be safe doing so. I’m not concerned about her savaging people, because I know it won’t happen. (And yes, I do know, dogs are entirely predictible, read up on amichien bonding, it is surprisingly Libertarian and the results are startling, even in older dogs).

However the attitude is that dogs off the lead could alarm or attack people, therefore, anyone walking their dog off the lead is subject to a £60 fine. The logic is impeccable, and I await the next initiatives; fining people £60 for going into a pub because they may get pissed up and attack a passer-by, or fining people £60 for driving their car because they may run someone down.

I put myself in the hypothetical position of being confronted by one of the City’s wardens, trying to give me a fine.

‘Name?’
‘Not telling.’
‘Address?’
‘Get stuffed.’

I’d refuse to pay it, take me to court, it will be my word against yours. I’ll tell the Magistrate that these people are on performance related pay and have ticketed me to meet targets. My dog was on the lead. Actually, it wouldn’t even get that far in court, I’ll guarantee they don’t meet their statutory disclosure requirements under Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act, it’d be thrown out through abuse of process.

Anyhow, the by-law refers to ‘summary conviction’, it has no definition in the PDF files provided on the council’s website, I can only assume that it means ‘you are guilty because we say you are, no caution, no representation.’ Fuck that, that isn’t what 2000 years of history and common law in this country says, and I’m not about to accept that with these arseclowns.

It all sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? But it cannot and must not stand, because once we accept one little bit of it, we are screwed, the police, bad enough at present, would be turned into Judge Dredd characters.

Let’s look at another example, Obo hits the nail squarely on the head when commenting on this article. Harman has passed summary conviction on Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin;

“The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted.

“It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract, but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in.”

Whoa! The law and process mean nothing. ‘We have dediced this must be so, therefore it shall be.’ Fred is a revolting little fucktard, but a contract is a contract is a contract. It is not up to the law to be popular, or to change with the direction of the wind, it is the law’s job to be fair and to be applied consistently without fear or favour.

The rule of law is the glue that binds our society together, once that is washed away we find ourselves getting closer to Mugabe step-by-step. I’m waiting for the PM to remark on the next General Election by saying ‘it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted.’

Only YOU can stop this from happening.