Later this year the venerable incandescent lightbulb is going to be banned in many countries in the west. The reasoning behind this ban is that the bulbs are ‘inefficient’, and that removing them from use will save energy and reduce the amount of ‘carbon’ that is released into the atmosphere by the people who use them.

As a replacement for these bulbs, ‘energy efficient’ fluorescent light bulbs are planned to replace the incandescent light bulb, by the force of law.

All of the production lines that used to produce the incandescent light bulb have either been stopped or are in the process of being stopped. Capital has been diverted to the production of fluorescent light bulbs, and manufacturing capacity of the factories that make them has been increased to meet the demand caused by the ban on incandescent bulbs.

The incandescent light bulb is an old technology, developed and patented by Thomas Edison, and refined over many decades. They are cheap to manufacture, made of simple, 100% recyclable non toxic parts (glass, steel and tungsten), and there are literally billions of receptacles that have been designed to accommodate their shape.

The new ‘Environmentally Friendly’, ‘energy saving’ compact fluorescent lightbulbs are expensive to manufacture, have plastic parts, are not simple in design and contain poisons like mercury, making it necessary to dispose of them carefully, lest the mercury escape, polluting the environment and poisoning people.

The new bulbs also produce a hideous, unpleasant light that flickers at the frequency of the electricity mains. These bulbs have been demonstrated to have deleterious effects on people who are sensitive to their light, causing them migraine headaches and eye strain.

Now, as the ban on the incandescent light bulb is about to come into force, we read the following:

Boffins: Ordinary lightbulbs can be made efficient, cheaply

Incandescents nearing extinction: Impeccable timing, everyone
By Lewis Page

Posted in Physics, 1st June 2009 11:03 GMT

Just as authorities in much of the Western world have moved to phase out the incandescent lightbulb, American boffins believe they have developed a process which can make the oldschool lights more efficient than energy-saving lamps.

Optics boffins at the Rochester Uni in New York state say they’ve developed a process in which an ordinary lighbulb is zapped with a femtosecond-long pulse of extremely high-energy laser light. The laser blast travels through the glass to hit the tungsten filament, causing complex nano- and micro-structures to form on its surface.

Once the lasered light bulb is than powered up, according to the Rochester scientists, it emits a lot more light for the same energy compared to an untreated bulb – equivalent to 40 per cent energy savings. The process of lasing incandescent bulbs wouldn’t be expensive, apparently, so they’d remain cheap compared to fluorescent energy-saving jobs.

According to Rochester Uni:

The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb. Despite the incredible intensity involved, the femtosecond laser can be powered by a simple wall outlet, meaning that when the process is refined, implementing it to augment regular light bulbs should be relatively simple.

It seems that Professor Chunlei Guo of Rochester hit upon the idea of brightening-up lightbulb filaments following earlier experiments in which he and his team used laser zapping to turn metals completely black. This worked so well that Guo and his cohorts wondered if they could reverse the process.

“We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament,” says the prof. “When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb’s energy usage.”

It seems that Guo and his team of lightbulb-blasting boffins can also produce other strange effects, getting incandescent bulbs to emit partially polarised or differently-coloured light – without the energy-wasting filters that would normally be necessary.

It’s the efficiency-enhancement aspect of the studies which could make headlines, however. Both the US and European Union governments are now committed to firm timetables which will see incandescent bulbs phased out in favour of more energy-efficient alternatives, such as fluorescents. This is being done in order to save energy and so lower carbon emissions. But if it’s as simple as Guo suggests to enhance an incandescent with his laser process, this may turn out to have been an unnecessary or even retrograde step.

Guo’s research has been accepted for publication by the journal Applied Physics Letters, but isn’t out yet. In the meantime, there’s a pop-sci release from the university here.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/01/light_bulb_laser_blast_enhancement/

This is a perfect example of why the state should have no say in what technology firms must use to produce their goods and which goods people can and cannot have access to.

In their zeal to ‘protect the environment’ the state has diverted capital and resources away from the well established incandescent lightbulb production lines, by force, to the new fluorescent lightbulb lines, that have had their  manufacturing capacity ramped up in order to meet the artificially stimulated demand for the new bad bulbs.

The decision to ban the incandescent lightbulb was made with all of the information the legislatures had to hand; i.e. all the relevant facts about the different types of bulb that were available in 2007/2008. What they did not and could not take into account was the research in the above article, which, had they known about it, may have prevented them from legislating for the ban.

This is the central problem with the state interfering with technology; no one can predict the future. Now that the law is about to come into force, we are in a situation where capital has been wasted and misdirected, resources wasted and misdirected and depending on the state of the decommissioning of the incandescent bulb lines, no costless way back to the manufacturing of incandescent lightbulbs.

The state, by its nature, is incompetent. They cannot predict the future and they are not omniscient. In order to be able to legislate effectively, especially where technology is concerned, they would need to be omniscient, with perfect knowledge of every piece and field of ongoing research and technology, and the potential of each piece and field of research and technology.

The enormity of this amount of knowledge is beyond the capacity of any man or group of men; it would mean being able to apply each existing technology (implemented or not) and each piece of research against each other (in the case above, femtosecond lasers and incandescent light bulbs), considering the effect of multiples of them upon each other in succession, and then considering the knock on effects of each of these, say, ten levels down on the tree. This would produce a multi dimensional matrix / tree with a size bigger than the universe. Only then would they be able to synthesize an optimal plan that would maximize the production and movements of capital to reach any particular goal, and of course, who has the moral authority to choose the appropriate goals is something to consider…. for another post.

Applying a femtosecond laser to incandescent lightbulbs is one solution that has produced significant increases in efficiency. Who knows what other treatments, changes in filament formulation, the glass envelope etc etc will produce? Certainly, the state cannot possibly predict them. What the state can do however, is prevent research and innovation, destroying potential breakthroughs, efficiencies, savings and progress.

The state is a bumbler, a reactive and ignorant dealer; they are like a cave man being tasked to turn off a diesel engine that has been left running. Instead of getting into the car by actuating the door handle and turing the key counter clockwise, the caveman takes his club out and beats against the hood covering engine until it stops running. Of course, he claims success when it stops, when in fact the tank has run out of gas and the engine cuts out of its own accord. But I digress.

This femtosecond laser process, an inexpensive, and easy addition to any incandescent lightbulb production line, would have saved billions in electricity bills, spared the environment – and our bodies – from tonnes of mercury poisoning, eliminated the need to build light bulb recycling plants and spared the health of many millions of people, with all the costs attendant on that. Then there are all the other applications of this femtosecond laser technology that are now going to be delayed or which will not now come into existence.

Think about it; the widespread deployment of femtosecond flashers would mean designing modular systems for resale to manufacturers; out of that design and manufacturing process, other processes will have emerged. Secondary uses of these flashers would have been subsequently discovered, which would have other knock on effects. The innovation cascade resulting from this process is what the state has destroyed.

When you apply this example to any other industry or technology where the state legislates, and take into account the default incompetence that inheres in the people that make these decisions, you can begin to get a glimpse of the suboptimal world that we are now in.

Imagine what sort of world it would be had the state not interfered in any way with any technology. To put it into perspective, think of the ubiquity of cheap mobile phones, and then apply that example to every expensive technology that the state has controlled in any way… like the automobile. Imagine how much more efficient, inexpensive, clean and beneficial cars would be had the state stayed out of the business of the details of car manufacture.

‘Consumer advocates’ would tell you that cars are safer now only because the state intervened in the manufacturing process. This may or may not be the case, but what is certain is that cars would be safer than they are now had the state not interfered with the manufacture of cars.

I do not know of a single person who would not pick a safer car over an unsafe one, and since competition is fierce in car manufacture, this fact would be taken into account at every point the design stage, producing just the sort of cars that people want, and cars that people did not know that they wanted. Think iPhone here; once you see it, you want it; you did not know that you would want it before it existed, but now that you have seen it, you want it more than any other mobile phone… the same could be said for the very idea of the cellular phone itself.

Extrapolating from all of this, it is clear that in many aspects of the way we live, we are existing in a world that is grossly distorted and sub-optimal. This world could be better in every way by orders of magnitude had the destructive and disruptive state not interfered with the innovations and interactions of men.

The single worst interference in technology has been the system of Patents. The system of state granted monopolies on ideas has been a total disaster, causing distortion and disruption for generations, throwing us off the optimal path down the years leading to a future that is literally retarded by a century or more of compounded diversions. See ‘Against Intellectual Monopoly‘ for the full, and truly horrifying story of this.

If you are one of those people who have not drunk the Environmentalism Kool-Aid, then you will realize that state intervention in technology is the worst possible thing to do to protect the environment. Only when technology is unleashed can the imaginations and inventions of men be applied dynamically across the maximum number of fields to produce the sort of efficiencies that are needed to keep the environment clean.

Then again if you have drunk the ‘E Kool-Aid’, by definition you have no imagination, are science illiterate, irrationally anti business and are incapable of understanding any of this.

Nick Clegg chimes in on the Guardian with a well crafted piece demonstrating his complete lack of understanding of what the real problem is. I was going to entitle this post ‘Foxes call for chicken coop redesign’. But thought better of it.

Nick Clegg: Bar the gates. No summer holiday before the overhaul
Warm words and rhetoric are easy. We must seize the mood and enact a radical programme of reform within 100 days

Why the rush nick? The British Form of Government^®, whatever your opinion of it, took ONE THOUSAND YEARS to get to this state. Do you really think that you have not only the right, but the capability to redesign it in ONE HUNDRED DAYS. That is the very definition of conceit. You people are so full of FAIL, so terrible, so spineless, murderous, rudderless and worthless that you could not be trusted to design a new milk bottle, let alone a form of government that is ancient.

Furthermore, if everything is to be torn up, why should YOUR voice be louder than anyone else’s? Just who the hell do you think you are?

Finally the dam has broken, and everyone is talking about changing Britain’s political system. For decades reformers have been thwarted by Westminster inertia. But the MPs’ expenses scandal has overturned old certainties and made change possible.

As bad as it may seem this ‘crisis’ is not enough of a reason to destroy something that is 1000 years old, wether you agree with it or not, and certainly the insane people who sit there should not be the ones who ‘reimagine’ it.

This moment must be seized by all who want a different kind of politics. Warm words, rhetoric and consideration are not enough; indeed, they are a guarantee that little will happen. So let us bar the gates of Westminster and stop MPs leaving for their summer holidays until this crisis has been sorted out, and every nook and cranny of our political system has been reformed.

This is so ridiculous that I laughed out loud.

You want to reform Parliament, while all of the electorate in the country are away on THEIR holidays, sunning themselves in Dubai, while you make everything WORSE without anyone watching…..ROTFL!

Today I’m setting out a plan of action to get all the changes we need delivered in just 100 days

What’s the rush? The evil that has been emanating from that house has been going on for years; why the need to act quickly? If you want to do something quickly, why not remove all laws from the statute books that are the cause of everyones anger? The expenses scandal is merely the pin that has popped the boil. It is the final straw. How is it that you cannot see this?!

– making it possible for MPs to be sacked by constituents,

Irrelevant; if your MP sits and votes your rights away, and then you sack her, what does that do to the legislation she voted for? NOTHING. Nick Clegg and his party of FAIL are sour grape class warriors, interested in punishing everyone and not in the real things that matter

abolishing the House of Lords,

See what I mean? 70’s style class war that is the hallmark of the sour graper. No one cares that there is an unelected upper house; in fact, they have been useful in resisting the excesses of the lower house. This obsession with abolishing the lords is like journalists interviewing journalists about journalism. The only thing that matters in this, the real crisis, is the killing of the British people by the incredible burden of laws and the police state. A house of lords in a country where everyone’s rights are respected is completely tolerable; after all, someone has to organize the street sweepers. As long as that is all they are doing, who cares how they got there?

getting corrupt money out of politics and changing the electoral system to give everyone a voice.

Proportional representation; this will benefit only Nick Clegg’s party. It is a non issue when put against the core problem; power itself. A proportionally represented parliament that votes for illegal wars, ID Cards and ContactPoint is just as bad as one that is elected the old way.

People will say it isn’t possible – parliament can’t act that quickly.

‘Some people say‘? Actually, we say that it doesn’t matter wether or not it is possible. But you read that.

I say the innate conservatism that marks out our political establishment is part of the problem. Let’s stop all this self-congratulatory hype about the mother of parliaments and get on with improving it.

No one cares. Dismantle the police state and the 3000+ police state laws of Tony Bliar and everything else, using the old system, before you start tearing down parliament and replacing it with Parliament 2.0.

Momentum will ebb away unless we act quickly.

Its always best to act after careful thought and never in haste. This demonstrates that you are not fit to lead a donkey.

Delay would be a victory for those who want to confine change to the bare minimum – the two establishment parties who will talk up reform long enough for the storm to pass, then kick it into the long grass for good.

The whole thing is over…. that is what you DO NOT UNDERSTAND Mr FAIL!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/27/nick-clegg-a-new-politics

Who is the ‘We’ in this? In this case, it means the foxes who want to design a streamlined chicken coop with racing lines on the outside.

No thanks Nick Clegg… 100% FAIL.

Cameron has just delivered his speech in Milton Keynes, and the Daily Mail has an article on it.

Let’s see shall we?

An end to ‘top-down authoritarianism’

authoritarianism that is bottom up instead of top down is still authoritarianism. FAIL.

Education:
Take power out of councils’ hands and give it to parents
End state monopoly of state education
Any suitable organisation can set up a new school
Parents can send child to different school if unhappy
new extra payment for children from poorest families

And ‘enshrine the rights of Home Educators’ is missing from that list. As is enshrining the rights of parents. Also, the scrapping of ContactPoint is not anywhere mentioned here is it? How can you return power to parents if you COMPEL them to be listed on an Orwellian Database that is made to work against them, violating the sanctity of the family, privacy and everything else bad that ContactPoint does? FAIL.

Housing:
local community to decide size and shape of their area
new local housing trusts giving neighborhoods power to build houses they want
planning permission granted if agreement on local level

Once again, the local community, a collective, cannot have the power to say what you can and cannot do on your own land. If Britain is to be a free country, then what you do on your property is your business, as long as it does not interfere with anyone else’s life or property. FAIL.

Local government:
cut back on central regulation and targets
end central ring-fencing of local budgets
publication of spending over £25,000 online
local referendum on any excessive tax increases
keep proceeds on any activity that boost local economic growth
new general power of competence to act without government’s permission
directly elected mayors
policing under local democratic control

Local referendum on tax increases? So the collective can decide to steal more as long as the majority vote for it? FAIL.

“Policing under local democratic control”. Does this mean that if the local community wants smoking in pubs, speed limits on roads, an end to ‘drug’ prohibition etc etc, that they can have a police force that will only enforce the laws that the local community agrees on?!! WIN!

Europe and Justice
redistribute power from EU to Britain and judges to the people
referendum on Lisbon Treaty
law to require referendum on any further transfer of power to Brussels
negotiate return of powers and greater scrutiny of European legislation
British bill of rights to strengthen liberties
proper democratic accountability over creation of new rights.

British bill of rights to strengthen liberties WIN. Although how this line is worded should give everyone pause. Rights are absolute, not conditional. A bill of rights that lists conditional rights like the German Constitution is going to be complete FAIL. The right to privacy, the right to property, freedom to travel and all the other rights that are well understood and which have been enshrined in the constitutions of other countries should be in any bill of rights that Britain adopts. I fear that it is not likely that anyone in Britain today who is currently in a position to make it happen, has the spiritual and intellectual purity to write such a document. In any case, I mark it as ‘WIN’ because it is the right noise.

As for the rest of it, Britain should not be in the EU, so everything else on that list is in that block FAIL.

So, it looks like Cameron is full of FAIL. No surprise there.

The Daily Mail article title is:

Cameron promises fixed-term Parliaments under Tories as he unveils ‘manifesto’ to tackle ‘Orwellian state’

There is no mention in this article about anything to do with the Orwellian state; i.e. the NIR, ID Cards, ContactPoint and the insane number of networked CCTV cameras in the UK.

Like I said before:

Shifting the the responsibility for running the nanny state from the centre and distributing this vile power to the regions does not solve the actual problem, which is that people are tired of being interfered with by power itself.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1781

Can you think of anything worse than being under the thumb of non cosmopolitan people with the power of the Orwellian State to back them up? We know what it looks like, thanks to New Labour; witness the recent outrages of Councils using Anti Terrorism laws to spy on the people they are ‘serving’:

• Poole council spies on family over school claim
• March of the dustbin Stasi: Half of councils use anti-terror laws to watch people putting rubbish out on the wrong day
• Spy law ‘used in dog fouling war’
• Nine in ten of 10,000 spied on by councils using anti-terrorism powers are innocent
• Anti-terrorism laws used to spy on noisy children
• Council uses terror laws to spy on underage smokers
• Council uses terror law to spy on shirker in shower

And there you have it; just a smattering of the insanity we can expect to be amplified by the amount of power devolved to the local level.

Now take a look at this:

State recruits an army of snoopers with police-style powers

A growing army of private security guards and town hall snoopers with sweeping police-style powers is being quietly established, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Under a Home Office-run scheme, people such as park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards receive the powers if they undergo training, and pay a small fee to their local police force.

Their powers include issuing £60 fines for truancy and dropping litter, and being able to demand a person’s name and address on the street.

Under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme, the number of civilians wearing a special badge, and a uniform approved by the local chief constable, has rocketed by almost 30 per cent in a year and there are now 1,406.

Critics claim Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is quietly seeking to create a third-tier within the ‘policing family’, with even less training and accountability than the controversial Police Community Support Officers.

The civilians are known as Accredited Persons, but they have been nicknamed ‘Jacqui Smith’s Irregulars’. The only significant difference between them and PCSOs is that they do not have the power to detain a suspect. Instead, they have to summon police.

Councils and other public sector organisations must pay between £300 and £315 to be accredited to the scheme, and between £35 to £90 per employee.

[…]

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID privacy campaign, said: ‘This sharp increase in Jacqui Smith’s Irregulars makes you wonder what her policing ambitions are.’

[…]

Daily Mail

My emphasis.

Think about that; park wardens, dog wardens, car park attendants and shopping centre guards are going to be able to give you an on the spot fine for TRUANCY. How are they going to know wether or not you and your child are truant? Why, they will consult ContactPoint in real-time, phone the school your child is attending and ask if you have the school’s permission (in itself, utterly absurd) to be away from school. That is why they have given access to ContactPoint to so many people; in the context of this, it all makes sense.

This is what Cameron has utterly failed to address.

Unless the apparatus of the Orwellian State is removed in its entirety, the reins of authoritarianism will simply be handed over to other, even more brainless people.

The first group of people in the right place to stand up and say this will collect the light of the incandescent rage that is coming off of the British public, and that light will turn them into a shining beacon around which everyone on this island will rally.

We’re living in an age where technology can put information that was previously held by a few into the hands of almost every one. So the argument that has applied for well over a century – that in every area of life we need people at the centre to make sense of the world for us and make decisions on our behalf – simply falls down. In its place rises up a vision of real people power. This is what we mean by the Post-Bureaucratic Age.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/25/david-cameron-a-new-politics3

David Cameron is trying, but he still doesn’t get it.

“The Post Bureaucratic Age” actually and literally means ‘a time after bureaucracy’ in order to achieve this, we need an elimination of Bureaucracy. It means reversing the creation of the ultimate bureaucratic system of total control; the NIR and the ID Card and all the other databases that central government is trying to foist upon the British people.

No matter who is in charge, wether they are at the center or in distributed mini centres; if there is a national high tech control grid made of monolithic databases that watch your every move, catalogue your children and violate your privacy, then THAT system and the people who have access to it are the true centre of power. That is the ultimate force for evil, that can be wielded by any present or future government to commit atrocities on a nation wide scale, wether that government rules from a single place or many places.

No one cares about how Parliament runs. No one cares about the minutiae of how Parliament does what it does. Everyone is fed up with it, and no matter what he says, unless they completely back off of what they are doing, they will be made to back off.

Everyone wants a simple list of things that once they are fulfilled, will satisfy them permanently. The thrust of this list can be summed up with a single sentence:

Leave everyone alone.

Shifting the the responsibility for running the nanny state from the centre and distributing this vile power to the regions does not solve the actual problem, which is that people are tired of being interfered with by power itself.

The monster state needs to be dismantled. Laws need to be removed from the statute books, and this should be the sole purpose of any new parliament; to remove legislation, not create new legislation. And it had better happen very quickly.

Nothing less than this is acceptable. The palpable rage that has swept this country is just the beginning. David Cameron may find himself in a position to be the man who restored Britain to something looking like sanity. If he doesn’t have the guts or the brains to do it, then its going to be done without him or his party. No one really cares who does it as long as it is done. The fact that he is not asking for a list of things that need to be changed and is instead, offering double talk phrases like ‘The Post-Bureaucratic Age’ does not bode well for him.

That David Cameron has no idea of the seismic rage in Britain is astonishing. That he doesn’t have the wherewithal to harness it is astonishing. Other people seem to get it. Some of them get it and can even write about it. Whatever. There are many people in the UK who have the strong hands needed to tear up the statutes, treaties and contracts that have destroyed this beautiful country. Their hands will be raw and bleeding at the end of it, but it will be worth it.

Madeline Bunting writes at the Grauniad.

She has penned a breathtaking piece of trash; terrifying in its ignorance, its basis in illogic and bone shaking fear.

It is terrifying because she is an example of the devotees of the new secular religion of Environmentalism who are polluting our internets and taking up our time with their increasingly shrill and absurd claims.

And these shrill noises are going to get worse as more and more data emerges to destroy their false religion. They will do anything for their religion and because they are irrational and have no holy book to follow, they can change the focus of their religion at will.

First the threat to the environment was the coming of a New Ice Age. Then it was Global Warming. Now it is Climate Change. Each time, as the data shows that what they believe is not true, they change what they believe.

I have no problem with people following the religion of Environmentalism. They can believe in Santa Claus for all I care. the problem I have with the religious devotees of Environmentalism is that these people are ready and willing to make blood sacrifices on the altar of their new religion, and the blood they will be sacrificing will be yours and the families of other people.

Similar to the Malthusian “mass cull” enthusiasts Attenborogh and Porritt, Madeline Bunting wants everyone to be entered into the most fantastic and fine grained totalitarian system of absolute control in order to satisfy her insane Environmentalist agenda of complete degradation and subservience to Gaia.

These people feel a deep seated guilt at having lived in comparative prosperity, and they are desperate to ‘pay back’ for what ‘they’ have ‘taken’. The problem is, they want to superimpose their guilt onto everyone who lives in their part of the world. Like the Eugenics boosters who will not kill themselves and their children, Madeline Bunting is not willing to suffer alone as a dignified religious fanatic; she must CONVERT everyone, and drag them down into her pit of excrement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Police forces are to stop monitoring hunts in a change of policy that sounds the death knell for the hunting ban, The Times has learnt.

New guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) states that gathering evidence of illegal hunting is difficult, that the ban is hard to enforce and that chief constables have more pressing priorities.

So, Acpo is the new Parliament. The lawmakers pass laws, and then Acpo decides which ones will, or will not be enforced according to their own… what exactly?

In future, forces should rely on anti-hunt activists to produce information, it says. But they should also be “very cautious” of such groups and recognise that hunting is an “emotionally charged” subject.

so they are outsourcing the policing of hunting to the most irrational, illogical, hysterical bunch of people in Britain, but, they should be cautious in doing it.

Pinch! Pinch! Pinch! Pinch!

yep, I am actually awake and not dreaming this!!

Hunts will also no longer be required to inform police in advance of the time and place of meets and their planned route.

This is absolutely amazing. By what permission are they able to essentially nullify a law? Why do they not nullify ALL the laws that are insane, like the absurd prohibition laws that no policeman agrees with. Wether you agree with the idea of a group of mass murdering nincompoops saying who can and cannot do what, it makes no sense if you BELIEVE in that system to say that after the process of making laws another, unelected body actually decides which laws are going to be enforced.

By the way, it is completely sensible that they are not policing this insanity. The police should not be telling people to put on their seat belts, should not be telling people what they can or cannot do on their own land (hunting) and should not be doing anything other than protecting physical people and property. They should not be sitting at the side of the road with speed radars, should not be running drink drive checkpoints, should not be in schools running magnetic arches.

You get the picture.

Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales and the Acpo spokesman on rural affairs, said: “Hunting is definitely not a policing priority. It is not illegal to wear a red coat and ride a horse in a public place.”

That isn’t funny!

The new guidance undermines one of the most controversial pieces of legislation introduced by the Labour Government, which took up 700 hours of parliamentary time.

Since the Hunting Act came into force in 2004, there have been eight prosecutions, of which only three have been successful, with one pending. Hunting has thrived.

Yay hunters and YAY property rights.

Mr Brunstrom said that police had to chose which areas of law enforcement to devote scarce resources to. He said: “If you look at hunting, the penalties do not include a prison sentence for offenders. This puts the Hunting Act to the lower rather than the higher end of offences. Parliament had the chance to include imprisonment as a sentence but did not do so.”

Thats odd… why should the level of sentence have anything to do with it? There are already too many people in prison; the idea that the potential sentence determines wether or not a crime is investigation worthy doesn’t make any sense. What is the ‘value’ of putting people in prison? In fact, it costs people money to keep them there, so surely this something to be avoided. It is not logical; if the police are only going after crimes that could result in a prison sentence, that means that all crimes that do not call for such a sentence are basically unenforced.

The new guidance is not binding but was unanimously approved by the country’s most senior officers this week. Officers are urged to avoid “acrimonious, time consuming, frustrating and ultimately fruitless activity”.

Wow, so that REALLY means that they should not be doing any prohibition style enforcement at all! ‘Drug’ busts are most certainly acrimonious, time consuming, frustrating and ultimately fruitless, because nothing they do can stem the tide of ‘drugs’ in the UK. The decades of the failed ‘war on drugs’ has proved that. You can get anything you want cheaper than ever, and growing mariguana (yes ‘mariguana’) is a cottage industry in the UK.

Just who are these ‘senior officers’, how often do they meet, how do they decide what they decide etc etc. The article says ‘unanimously’ so they voted on it… that makes it OK then right?!?!

Senior officers expressed concern that their neutrality had been compromised by being forced to release details of meets through freedom of information requests to activists who had gone on to disrupt hunts.

If they were not wasting their time and violating the rights of landowners, they would not be compromised in the first place. I guess that is not a problem anymore; just ignore the law.

More and more the message is clear; if something, some law, is wrong, simply ignore it. The MPs do it, the police do it. EVERYONE does it.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has made it clear that he favours a repeal of the Hunting Act and in the event of a general election victory will offer MPs a free vote in government time, although a backbencher would have to produce a Bill.

Hmmmmmm. That really is not good enough. If a law is wrong it should be REMOVED from the statute books. Imagine if there was a law saying that the penis of all newborns should be cut off. Cameron says, “I am aginst this, but I am going to allow a free vote on the matter”. No, that is NOT good enough at all, and in fact, all the things that need to be removed from the statute books, NIR, ID Cards, Biometric Passports, DNA Database for non criminals, cannot be left to a simple vote. Or at least they should not be.

Mr Brunstrom said: “I am pleased with the new guidance but hunting is definitely not a policing priority and don’t let me give you the impression it is. But that does not mean we are not going to deal with it. We recognise it is the law of the land and the duty of the police to enforce it — but to do so proportionately and according to priorities.”

That doesn’t make any sense; “We are going to enforce the law, but we are not.”

Mr Brunstrom said that forces needed a consistent approach in dealing with reports of unlawful hunting. He also raised concerns about militants becoming involved with anti-hunt organisations and said that police had to be cautious when people made complaints to them. He outlined the difficulties facing police. “If there are offences they are likely to be taking place in a remote rural environment. We are not very well equipped to follow hunts and get evidence and nor do we think we can justify it. Pursuing hunts is an expensive and sophisticated operation.”

The police are in an impossible position. They do not get paid enough money. They are asked to do things that any rational person would refuse to do. Every year there are more and more things they are asked to police, and they become more and more complicated. Take for instance computer ‘crime’. They have to open labs, get training in how to look at hard discs and then when they do it, they have to expose themselves to horrible things that would derange any sane man. For this, they get hated by everyone.

If the police had simpler roles of protecting property and people, then they would not have any of these problems… or at least they would be greatly reduced. They could allocate their resources correctly and efficiently, and the public would look upon them completely differently. But I digress. If the police are able to do this for Hunting, they should immediately do the same for prohibition, and most certainly, they should NEVER involve themselves in the complete nonsense that they have been getting mixed up with.

He accepted the need to train more police in hunt investigations and said he hoped that the pro-hunt Countryside Alliance and the RSPCA, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the League Against Cruel Sports would attend training seminars to give their views. A hunt investigation manual is to be distributed to forces before the autumn season.

A manual that no policeman has time to read, about a law no policeman has any inclination to enforce, and which is now moot.

The Countryside Alliance said: “We have always understood what a difficult job the police have in dealing with such a confusing piece of legislation. But the guidance suggests that the sort of engagement some police forces have had with animal rights groups should, quite rightly, be avoided.”

POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP!

That is the sound of Champagne bottles popping all over the west country!

A spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sport said: “We fought for 80 years for the hunting ban and, while we accept it is not a high priority for police, a ban was the will of Parliament and is the will of the people and we are going to press for more prosecution cases to be brought.”

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6289896.ece

The ban is the will of SOME members of Parliament, is NOT the will of the people, and you wasted 80 years which would have been better spent keeping Britain sane.

I cannot begin to list all the nonsense that has happened in the UK over the last EIGHTY YEARS. Hunting over that time has been the VERY LEAST of Britain’s problems, and in fact, it is perfectly shameful that so much effort should be wasted on banning hunting while there are still people in Britain who CANNOT READ AND WRITE.

Of course the members of the League Against Cruel Sport can campaign for whatever they like, but thinking about it rationally, in the same way that the police are now forced to prioritize, any rational person would work to eliminate illiteracy in the UK before hunting. Perhaps if they worked for that instead of attacking hunting directly, they would have produced an electorate more disposed to banning hunting…or rejecting the idea as absurd on its face…who knows? One thing is for sure, humans come FIRST, ALWAYS, and FIRST where you live. That means eliminate poverty in your own country FIRST, then encourage other people to solve their problems by the example you set, and THEN you can think about ‘banning hunting’. Or not!

The Daily Mail published a blistering attack on HMG, written deliberately to raise questions. Shall we answer them?

Why not?!

This Parliament has now lost all moral and political authority and ought, by rights, to dissolve itself.

Thats like asking a bank robber to turn himself and his bag of money in, or more accurately, a counterfeiter to hand in his printing press and plates, ink and paper stock voluntarily. No corrupt political power ‘dissolves itself’. That would be an act of decent, moral people. These are not decent moral people.

It is now not only the Government that has ceased to deserve our trust. So many members of the House of Commons have disgraced themselves so completely that their right to make laws for the rest of us has evaporated.

These people have been abusing their positions for years. All during that time, they schemed up the ID Cards, ContactPoint and countless other evils. They never had the right to make laws for anyone. So, if this is the case, should not all legislation introduced by New Labour be struck off of the books? If we are going to start with a clean slate, then let’s actually clean it; the 3000 laws of New Labour should be removed, and all of their purely evil and fascist proposals permanently scrapped. That means ID Cards, ContactPoint, the NIR and everything to do with them – SCRAPPED.

Nothing comparable has happened to British politics in modern times. The revelations of surreptitious greed – sometimes pathetic, sometimes outrageous, often both at the same time – are uniquely damaging.

These people are not greedy. They are behaving like human beings. The mistake the Mail makes is to put these people on a pedestal and expect them to not be human. Instead of asking for this, they should ask instead why these people need to ‘cheat’. Once they find the answer to that question, they will come to the conclusion that everyone in the country should be relieved of the insane burdens that they live under.

We have always known that MPs are human and imperfect, like the rest of us. In fact, it is important, for the sake of our democracy, that they are.

Nonsense. Since no one can be trusted, no one should be put in a position of trust with exceptional powers over anyone else. No one should be able to steal money or property from other people. No one should be able to murder. No one should be able to initiate force against another person. This is true of individuals or collections of individuals, no matter how that collection is selected.

But we also assumed that on election to that hallowed chamber, they recognised the seriousness of their tasks, the long, honourable traditions of freedom and courage which they had been elected to defend and the need to be honest above all things.

This is a joke right?

Nobody can assume that now. Grubby, grasping, shameless, these essentially little men and women are now shown to have become worse, not better, to have shrunk rather than grown, once they took their solemn oaths and added the letters ‘MP’ to their names. What did they think those letters stood for? Manipulate and Profit?

Murder and Pillage
Money and Power
Milking and Pilfering
Menace and Poison
Manacle and Prison
Monsters and Parasites
Money-grabbers and Prostitutes
Movies and Popcorn
Morons and Pipsqueaks
Miscreants and Poopheads
Meddling and Profane
Mad and Pathetic
Mountebanks and Pillocks
Malignant and Perfidious
MMORPG and Pwned
Muffdivers and Poodlefakers

Feel free to add to this list.

They seem to have been gripped by a sort of collective madness, combined with an astonishing heedless arrogance.

Almost there… COLLECTIVIST MADNESS!

How did they dare to finance their unearned profiteering and nest-feathering using taxpayers’ money – and then actually exempt themselves from tax?

‘Who dares wins’ thats how. People like the Mail allowed it to happen by consistently failing to rise to the challenge (as if they even had the choice) of confronting evil from the root; that collectivism itself is the evil.

Like the members of some pampered rubber-stamp Soviet in the old days of communism, their relationship with the State has been the exact opposite of that suffered by ordinary citizens.

Firstly, they are not LIKE members of a rubber-stamp Soviet, they ARE the NEW rubber-stamp Soviet Britain. Everyone knows it.

The hand of Government reaches ceaselessly into the pockets of the hard-working and the productive: when they earn, when they spend, when they travel, when they try to provide for old age, when they die.

And the solution to this is?…. Wait for it…..

For MPs it is the other way round. The State kindly subsidises their forays into the housing market, pumps other people’s money into their pensions, furnishes their little bolt-holes, provides them with free car parking and fat car allowances. Tax free.

The Daily Mail doesn’t seem to understand, THEY ARE THE STATE. The State is not separate from them, they are the State INCARNATE.

Tax free – two little words. Most of us would faint with shock if we were allowed even for a single year to see how much wealthier we would be without this burden.

There it is!

When the Daily Mail types wake up and understand that there can be no State without their cooperation, then the image will have cracked, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” will be everyone’s new reality, and all our troubles will soon after be over. Not only would everyone be wealthier, but this country would start to resemble the sort of place that it used to be; not a police state.

Yet MPs, who impose most of our taxes, do not even have to pay them on what is for many the bigger part of their income, an arrangement that places them in the luxury class. No wonder they are so carefree about loading taxes on everyone else.

‘The luxury class’ what does that even mean? Whatever it is you own or make, no one has the right to steal it from you. Whatever happens, nothing must distract from this and the fundamental principles.

Even now, they do not understand how their behaviour appears to others. Monstrously, it is proposed that the police should act against the source of the leaked information. How doubly ridiculous.

“Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done”. Hmph! What their behaviour appears like is IRRELEVANT. It is what they are ACTUALLY DOING that is important. All the time they were ‘cheating’, they were passing draconian measures to enslave the British people, all the while, appearing to be decent and behaving correctly. Correct behaviour, or at least the appearance of it is enough to keep everyone quiet in the UK. This is TOTAL INSANITY; as long as they are not spitting in your face, they can steal your money, your property, your liberty and …. you do not care? How can people BE like this?!

Modern Whitehall, so keen on gathering our secret details on its databases, so blithe in its promises that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, has proved yet again that it is not fit to be trusted with a bus ticket, let alone information of any value.

Actually, they have control of Bus Tickets also and you are right, they cannot be trusted with that either. As for all the other databases, you are paying for them; you are financing your own oppression. When are you going to join the dots and complete the hideous picture? Not only are they taking your money to live lives of ‘luxury’ but they are using your money to put you all in virtual cages from which you will never be able to escape, short of a total revolution. Wake up you dunderheads!

The 2005 Parliament is, in all important respects, not just a lame duck but a dead one. The Cabinet is an assembly of haggard political ghosts awaiting the end, bereft of ideas and even of the gimmicks and stunts that have served it so well till now.

It has been like this since before Bliar took office. This is not a new phenomenon. This is not news. What people like you need to talk about is how nothing like this is ever going to be allowed to happen again. What are you going to do to ensure that this is the case? That is the question.

Prime Minister’s Questions is a futile, modern version of bear-baiting in which nothing is revealed or gained. Nothing will come out of this nothingness.

“Welcome to the real world.”

The ‘modernisers’ and radicals who have sneered for so long at the Monarchy might now reflect on the fact that the one part of Government completely untouched by scandal and wholly above suspicion is the Sovereign herself.

I defy anyone in Britain to name a modern prime minster that would be preferable to absolute monarchy. Its an interesting question!

As she surveys the behaviour of her MPs, the pitiful failure of the Speaker and of the House of Commons authorities to check their behaviour, the involvement of Privy Counsellors and of the Opposition in the scandal, she must be more than tempted to summon her Prime Minister to the Palace and suggest to him that it would be a kindness to dissolve one of the most disgraceful Parliaments of modern times. This could begin a process of cleansing which is sorely needed.

And the Royal Prerogative to declare war should be returned to the monarch also. The power to wage war is too dangerous to be left in the hands of peasants. Yes, PEASANTS.

The Speaker should, of course, go. The officials supposedly supervising MPs’ allowances should likewise go. The MPs themselves should be compelled to face their constituents, who should all be provided with full details of their member’s expenses claims. The ex-MPs can then explain how they plan to reform their own institution and work out a system by which they would be adequately paid and properly recompensed for genuine expenses. Some of them might then be allowed back.

‘Allowed back’. This is why you FAIL. Its like voluntarily letting a thief back into your pockets for a second rifle around. Are you all TOTALLY INSANE?!?!

Voters face an awkward problem here. This is not – as will become increasingly clear in days to come – a party political issue. The Conservatives were trembling last night, wondering when their own misdeeds would begin to be exposed alongside those of Labour.

If you are a voter, then you have more problems than political parties. If you believe that voting can solve your problems, you are insane.

It is worth recalling that when The Mail on Sunday first uncovered the misuse of housing allowances in December 2002, it was the Tory MP Michael Trend who was found out.

So, between 2002 and 2009, nothing has changed and yet you want to go back to the polls, AGAIN, for MORE OF THE SAME. That is insane. There is no other word for it. Total unhinged insanity.

This newspaper has continued with its bipartisan pursuit of this abuse ever since, following a long trail. This has led more recently to the exposure of the increasingly preposterous Jacqui Smith’s slippery arrangements and to the unveiling of Tony McNulty’s similarly suspect claims.

These stories, doggedly and consistently investigated, undoubtedly helped bring about the mass exposure now under way.

It is true that Labour has made matters worse than they were, repeatedly trampling on rules and institutions which once preserved integrity at Westminster.

Without a paradigm shift, nothing will change. You can write all the articles you like; as long as you prop up the system by pretending that it is legitimate in its form and only needs ‘the right people’ to make it work properly, you will consistently FAIL and continue to be stolen from.

It has debauched Civil Service impartiality, imposing political commissars on Whitehall. It told deliberate lies to Parliament and people to gain support for an illegal war, the one single action that has done most to undermine good government, corrupting everyone involved. The lasting shame of the MPs gulled in this episode has no doubt demoralised them.

That war really and truly broke something. What you are doing by talking like this and holding back is trying to glue back together the dust of the porcelain vase that was the illusion you were living. Instead of trying to glue dust together, you should seize this opportunity to build a truly just britain, with a very small government that does not tell anyone what to do, and that does not steal money from its citizens.

Labour has also connived at torture and presided over the worst economic catastrophe for 80 years, bleating that it is not to blame.

A country with a small government cannot act as the poodle to any other country. Britain should get out of the EU, and tear up all the other treaties that cede sovereignty to foreign bodies. As for the financial crisis, if Britain had sound money no one in this country would be suffering the secret taxation of inflation and all the other problems to do with currencies controlled by a central bank.

At the same time it has extended the system of MPs’ allowances, and accelerated the process (already under way for many years) by which MPs have become the compliant, feather-bedded employees of Downing Street rather than the vigilant representatives of the British people.

When were they EVER the ‘vigilant representatives of the British people’? Those people are nothing more than warmongering ignorant control addicts hell bent on gaining absolute control of every British person down to their urine. After years of publishing articles about this, SURELY you all realize that that is the truth.

The Mother of Parliaments has been transformed into a personal wealth-creation scheme on the moral level of Las Vegas.

When has it been otherwise? It has always been an organ of organized theft and murder. It is only now that they not only steal and kill, but seek to totally oppress the population in a system of absolute control facilitated by technology. The vegas analogy is interesting. Let’s flesh it out.

At a Las Vegas casino, the house (parliament) always wins. The casino owners make a fortune. They ‘own the joint’. The difference is, people CHOOSE to gamble there, the rules NEVER CHANGE, and players can win MILLIONS of dollars with a single pull of a lever on a small stake. While you are there, you are treated with great respect and friendliness by the casino employees, there are free shuttle busses to everywhere laid on for you by the casino, you and your family have lots of fun, the food is cheap, plentiful and high quality, the weather is nice, and when you leave, you cannot wait to come back and spend more money.

Does that sound like Britain’s Parliament to you?

But both major parties have played their part in the transformation of politics into a well-paid and comfortable career for people who probably could not succeed in any other field.

True.

Both have done this as the European Union has hoovered power from Westminster to Brussels, leaving British governments with little to decide and not all that much to divide the parties.

Britain out of the EU.

Wise, experienced and forceful men and women have increasingly turned away from parliamentary politics. Inexperienced and unqualified backstairs-crawlers have taken their places.

So, you prefer to be stolen from by ‘wise, experienced and forceful’ men? That does not make sense. Also, even if those men WERE decent, there is always another Bliar or Brown around the corner. Only a system that permanently defangs government can prevent future theft, murder and abuses.

This change, until today too little noticed by the public, is now exposed in all its squalor.

Serious citizens of all parties and none should recognise that they have not been paying enough attention, that they have trusted too much and questioned too little.

Bloggers would disagree with this. Clearly.

We cannot expect Parliament to hold the executive to account, if we do not ourselves hold MPs to account, in every sense of the word.

Now is the time to do so. The people can and must recapture Westminster from the careerists and the cheats.

AND THEN WHAT?!

[…]

Daily Mail

Judging from the comments on this related post many people seem to instinctively understand that something fundamental is wrong, but they are incapable of making the leap to the final conclusion that the whole system is fundamentally evil. There is talk of throwing them all out and starting again… starting again with the same rules? That is going to inevitably end up with more of the same.

Speaking of rules, Labour’s Lynne Jones, MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, had this hilarious line:

She said: ‘It’s a very difficult situation. People retire on certain financial assumptions and we can’t just change the rules.

[…]

Daily Mail

Astonishing? Hardly.

These are the same people who do nothing but change the rules in the middle of the game (people’s lives); the most recent example is the change of the rules for ‘Non Dom’ workers:

Many people came to the UK because the rules were favorable. Now, after settling down, doing good work, bringing prosperity and creativity to the UK, the government wants to change the rules halfway through the game. That is not cricket.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=986

This is a perfect example of the hypocrisy of government aparatchicks; the rules cannot be changed when it comes to THEIR PLANS FOR THEIR OWN FUTURES, but the plans for ANYONE ELSE are infinitely mutable. I do not need to go into how these parasites are not even productive, producing nothing ever, whereas the people in business are actually productive.

Like we have been saying for many posts, there are too many laws and regulations. If you are going to bring back parliament at all, it should sit in an unprecedented form whose sole Raison d’être should be to remove legislation.

Parliament in its current form sits to create legislation. If it continues to exist as it was, it can only make things worse for everyone, since it justifies its existence through the creation of legislation. As time goes on, they will, logically, have to legislate on every aspect of human life. This is unacceptable. Its like a runaway population of consumers producing garbage until there is no more space to live on earth. And no, the laws cannot be recycled.

Such a parliament could sit for many decades carefully undoing the byzantine and irrational laws and regulations that their venal predecessors conjured up. They would be assured of jobs for life, and great, even unprecedented popularity, as their role would change from ‘oppressors’ to ‘liberators’.

As it stands now, they are revealed as almost completely illegitimate and actually dangerous. They have very little room to maneuver; they can either go forward with the police state and risk being obliterated by force, or they can re-define their role and survive till the end of this century as heroes.

Either way, business as usual is off of the table!

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males”. He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive”.

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government’s anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.” Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: “If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings.” It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher’s first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police!” Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya “Paki” and “bin Laden” during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: “Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don’t bother to prosecute. This is nonsense.”

[…]

The Australian

The case of the 14 year old girl is one we can call a ‘Hot Potato’ case.

The teacher knew that if she did not react, the ‘Hot Potato’ in her hands (the ‘racist incident’) would cause her third degree burns. The Urdu speaking students would have reported her and she would have gotten the sack. In order to avoid this, she passed the hot potato to the police, who had no choice but to react to avoid being burned themselves. The headmaster had to react since the police did not prosecute (they sent the Hot Potato back to him).

Certainly, the police would have thought that it is utterly ridiculous that a teacher calls the police to solve a matter of classroom discipline. Perhaps the teacher in her innermost thoughts would have preferred not to be in the position of having to call the police every time a schoolgirl says something that might be construed as ‘racism’. The same goes for the headmaster, who probably has enough on his hands with all the problems of running a failing school.

Whatever way you paint it, all of this is total unbridled insanity.

Think about it; can you reasonably expect someone to do a science project in French if their native language is Mandarin? How is it ‘racist’ by any stretch of the definition (and that would be stretching it to one molecule thick) to want to do your work in your own language?

One thing is for sure; home educated children and their parents do not have to put up with any of this. When they get together for functions or learning, the parents select children with the appropriate skills and manners to facilitate learning. They do not care about anything else. And if they DO care about other stuff, like exposing their children to ‘other cultures’ they can do that. The point is, it’s THEIR BUSINESS, and no one is going to call the police if they do not want their children to sit in a room with people who cannot speak english when their children are trying to learn in groups.

Anyone who calls that ‘racist’ is just retarded.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington.

In email, some people said….

*******wrote:
Beacuse Monkton is missing the point. Nobody is trying to inform him or fool him.

Did you read the article?

The Democrats ‘…rescinded his (Monkton’s) scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing’. If anything, its the Democrats that are trying to fool and misinform the public by not allowing open debate and the submission of evidence.

Monkton is not missing any point at all, he was prevented from making any point in the first place!

We need to prepare the ignorant mass for a massive change in life style and this includes what gore has done and will continue to do

First of all, who is ‘We’ in this instance?

Secondly, lets define terms:

“Ignorance is the state in which a person lacks knowledge and is unaware of something. This should not be confused with being unintelligent, as one’s level of intelligence and level of education or general awareness are not the same. The word “Ignorant” is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware. The term may be used specifically (e.g. “One can be an expert in math, and totally ignorant of history.”) or generally (e.g. “an ignorant person.”) — although the second use is used less as a descriptive and more as an imprecise personal insult.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorance

So, in order to not be ignorant, we must not lack knowledge, or be unaware of something. In order to be aware, we need to learn, and that means listening and reading.

By blocking Monkton, Al Gore and his democrat friends are fostering ignorance. They are doing this deliberately to boost their social engineering agenda, that they know is based on junk science and outright lies. That is how they have got the ignorant to say by rote, “the debate is over and there is scientific consensus about anthropogenic global warming”, which is of course a bald faced lie. There is no scientific consensus on AGW, they know it, you and I, the people who are not, by definition, ignorant, know it, and they want to stop anyone else from finding out what we both know to be true.

whilst scientists debate in private what to do about the various environmental issues such as , oil depletion, ice melt, co2 rise, population increase, water shortage, food shortage, soil erosion, etc

We know better than to conflate different subjects, and I know that you are playing devils advocate, so lets go there:

• ‘oil depletion’ is a technical problem that will be adapted to by the market.
• ‘Ice melt’ is not happening like the environmental Fascists keep saying it is; you and I both know that, because we study the facts.
• ‘C02 rise’ is not the cause of ‘global warming’ and is not a problem; you and I both know this, because we have been exposed to the facts.
• Water shortage is a problem of efficiency not supply, the same with food shortage. If they are a problem of supply, the market will adjust accordingly.
• Soil erosion is a problem of mismanagement (even vandalism) by a very small number of companies, and is not related to the other things in that list.
• Finally, population increase is not a problem related to oil depletion (even if there were only one car on earth, the oil would still run out since it is a finite resource) or ice melt (AGW lie), or food shortage (there is enough food to feed everyone on earth; this is a problem of will not supply) or water shortage (once again, this is a problem of efficiency not abundance) or soil erosion.

Waste disposal, water pollution, pollution by genetically modified organisms, electromagnetic spectrum poisoning and many other unrelated items could have been on that list obviously.

Ignorant environmentalists who do not have a grounding in or basic understanding of science, or the history of science and technology, or any experience in growing crops or taking care of the land, regularly bundle all of these things together under the banner of ‘the environment’ when they are quite separate and only very tangentially related.

If we are going to talk about AGW, we must stick to AGW and the evidence for or against it, without conflating it with anything that is not related directly to the scientific evidence. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a theory (hypothesis). It is an unproven theory. What you do with theories is put them to the test with scientific observations. When people try and stifle observations that destroy the AGW hypothesis, as in any scientific matter, the people trying to suppress evidence are normally lying about their work or trying to preserve their positions and prestige. This is exactly what is happening, and the Monkton affair is just the latest example.

We either win this battle or we’re all to the dogs

This doesn’t make any sense, and it is certainly not ‘a battle’. If the AGW hypothesis is true, then the effects of AGW can be corrected by taking action to cut emissions. If it is not true, then trying to stop it by cutting C0₂ emissions is a waste of time and will represent a huge distortion in the progress of man, changing the future irrevocably and unnecessarily. The hypothesis has not been proven; what we have are a bunch of non scientists shouting very loud that the AGW hypothesis is correct, and who want to silence anyone with data that says it is not correct. That is not how science is done, and it is not how decisions that change ‘society’ should be made. If society is to be run on the basis of science, then the scientific method must be applied without distortion. What we are seeing is a denial and shutting down of the scientific method for political ends. That is a fact.

and monckton should know better.

This doesn’t make any sense either. Either he is lying and someone has proof of this, or he is genuine and wrong, and what he is saying can be disproved. Either way, the correct way to win debate is not to silence someone with evidence that challenges a hypothesis, but instead to provide evidence. The AGW side does not have this evidence, and Al Gore in particular, has been found to be a consummate liar, his film totally discredited as junk science and propaganda. The ignorant, unlike you and I, are emotionally invested in Gore and his unscientific garbage; that is the true reason why they hang on to all of this and him in particular, not because of any facts, but because they refuse to listen to the facts when they run contrary to their secular religion, ‘environmentalism’, the high priest of which is Al Gore.

he knows that life style needs to change.

Everyone knows that waste is bad, wether it be wasting paper or wasting water. What we must never do is throw away science in a blind ignorant panic and start to mix up things that do not belong together. We must also never run into the arms of the state for our solutions; they do not have any (competence or solutions); all they can offer is tyranny, violence and destruction.

What do you see in a decade?

This is an interesting question, and an interesting time horizon. I know some very ignorant people who thought that the world would be in total chaos, “in twenty years”….in 1980. Doomsayers have been with us for generations, environmental doomsayers are only the latest in the breed. The world is still going to be here. Technology is going to be better than we can imagine. The economy will be very different. AGW will be totally discredited as a hypothesis, and we will probably be back to ‘new ice age’ theories like the crackpot junk scientist James Hansen predicted in 1971 when he helped create the model that told us of the coming ice age. When that didn’t happen, he turned to global warming. Of course, it could be possible that the environmental fascists could stifle science with some absurd, ‘environmental hate speech’ statutes, effectively killing science in this field. Who knows? What I do know for certain, is that if the state and ignorant environmental religious fanatics set the agenda, we will be living in a sub optimal future constrained by the lack of imagination and prejudices of a small coterie of nutcases, cult leaders, power mad control freaks and their brainless followers.

How do you see yourself and your children?

That is a good question. I have five children. I do not want their fertility controlled by the people who I describe in the paragraph above. I do not want them taxed in a bogus ‘carbon trading’ scheme whose only goal is to enrich criminal bankers. I do not want their ability to travel to be restricted on the false pretext of AGW. I do not want them to live in a fascist world where science cannot be practiced because the ignorant masses forbid it out of religious fervor. It is my wish that my children are protected from the people who would make this planet a nightmare place. Anyone who wants their children to be caught in such a system, cannot possibly understand what it is they are asking for, and of course, once it is in place, it might never be removed for generations. We need only look at how long it took for the Soviet system to fall; seventy years. Millions of lives wasted and ruined by people who believed the theories of Marx and Lenin. Now we have Al Gore and his new religion of ‘environmentalism’; just as poisonous as Marxism Leninism, only now, it is not the proletariat against the capitalists, it is man against himself. In the environmentalism religion, man is is own enemy, and so he must destroy himself and his way of life to save himself. It is, like Marxism Leninism, utter, unscientific nonsense from beginning to end. If the environmentalists are not struck down, it will take until the models are disproved by the march of time to finally put to rest their wild imaginings. By that time, like Russia, all that will be left of the great civilizations will be wastelands of destroyed emasculated populations of cowed slaves.

And it will all have been for nothing.

As for me, I hope to be alive to see the utter destruction of all of this nonsense, from the insanity of Keynsian economics to the environmentalism religion and everything that flows from them. I live for the day when collectivism is dead and buried, where socialism and all of its masks are consigned to the garbage bin of history. There is a more than good chance that I am going to get my wish.

Neslon Mandela, president of South Africa. ANC in total control.
Barack Obama, for all his many fatal flaws, faults and failings, President of the United States of America.
The Dollar about to go the way of the hyperinflation Deutchmark.
The Internets…
Neodymium Magnets…
Cloned pets…
Cloned humans…

Oh yes, ANYTHING is possible, more than we expect.

Tough question! we really need to try and think about it because we are not part of the ignorant mass and we can go beyond some small propaganda.

I agree. Thinking about it is crucial. In order to do it, to think, we need to hear all of the evidence, not just the evidence that we like. We need to understand and apply the scientific method, and adhere to it strictly. We need to be mindful of the state, and its lust for power and absolute control over the individual and every aspect of life. Science is not propaganda, and neither is the truth. There are people out there who do not want anyone to have access to the facts. We must be suspicious of these people, and make sure that we really have all the facts to hand in spite of what they want. That is the only way that we can come to any sort of correct judgment, and think correctly.

Being rational thinking people, we are rightfully outraged that Monkton was not allowed to speak at the eleventh hour after having been invited to give evidence; what is Al Gore afraid of? That his hoax film would be exposed for the nonsense that it is? Thankfully, due to the internet that he invented, it is impossible to herd people anymore. Whatever the truth is about AGW, it will out.

What is more galling is that Gore and his religious fanatics are appealing to the legislature to enshrine their religion in the law. If they are making an appeal to the legislature, which ostensibly represents all of us equally, it is absolutely outrageous that a person offering scientific data that counters AGW was prevented from speaking. Quite apart from the debate surrounding AGW, this is an attack on Democracy and openness in government. People who believe in those two things are disgusted by this action.

If this were simply an academic debate, it would not be so important, but this is about the creation of law and the use of force on the population in order to carry out the environmentalist agenda. That evidence exists that Al Gore and his gang are dead wrong, and that this evidence is deliberately suppressed when evidence is about to be presented for the record is inexcusable.

Anyone who is reasonable, as you and I are, cannot be for such a suppression of facts.

It is only by the seeking of truth that we have had the technological means to manage our future placed into our hands. It is only through the seeking of truth that we will overcome all the myriad and very real problems that face us.

Suppressing truth, giving into irrational fear and running to the state is not going to solve anything; instead, it is going to make everything much worse, in every aspect.

We are almost there. 912 petitions is stating some of the facts plainly, but they fail in that they are ASKING for their rights. This is like a slave asking its master not to be beaten. I will strike out what is bad, and then add what needs to be added:

To the United States Congress, United States Supreme Court and President of the United States:

Whereas, the First Amendment guarantees our right to Petition for Redress of Grievances, and

Whereas, the Senators and Representatives, all executives and judicial officers of the United States are bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution, and

Whereas, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people, and

Whereas, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws, and

Whereas, Article 1 of the Constitution prohibits both the federal government and the states from passing either bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, and

Whereas, the Supreme Court has insisted that “a Bill of Attainder may affect the life of an individual, or may confiscate his property, or may do both”, and

Whereas, “All laws which are repugnant to the constitution are null and void” (Marbury v Madison, 5 US (2Cranch) 137, 174, 176 (1803)) and,

Whereas, We the People, have been betrayed through treachery and breach of allegiance, by those entrusted with the responsibility to safe guard our liberty and the United States Constitution,

We the People, in seeking Redress of Grievances, as is our right under Amendment I of the United States Constitution, ask this question of each branch of Federal Government:

“Where in the Constitution do you find authorization for each and all of the following?”

1. The redistribution of property by force and subterfuge; and the unequal application of tax laws amounting to punitive action against certain groups of American People and providing favored status to other groups
2. A paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting
3. Willful and purposeful devaluation and destruction of American currency
4. Deploying military to fight undeclared wars
5. Targeting and labeling law-abiding American citizens as domestic terrorists
6. Declarations that disagreeing with policy is unpatriotic or disloyal to our country
7. Intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens
8. Perpetual massive indebtedness to foreign countries
9. Infringement upon the rights of the People to keep and bear arms through oppressive regulation and taxation designed for the very purpose of infringement
10. Passing laws and taxes without deliberation and without reading the legislation; said action is tantamount to the American People not having any representation
11. Enacting ex post facto laws and Bills of Attainder
12. Granting Constitutional rights and privileges to illegal aliens and prisoners of war
13. Funding mercenary organizations that engage in voter fraud and paid harassment of law abiding American citizens
14. Maintaining and deploying armies in peace time on United States soil
15. Unprecedented and arbitrary federal power, through the United States Treasury, for government intervention into, control of, and confiscation of, private property, private industry including but not limited to banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming and other sectors of the private economy (current and proposed)
16. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law (proposed)
17. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law (proposed)
18. Acts regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press (proposed)

We the People of the United States of America, who cherish liberty, taking into our most serious consideration, the best means of assuring our continued constitutional rights of self governance, as our ancestors in like cases have done, for asserting and vindicating our rights and liberties, declare,

That the citizens of the Unites States of America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the United States Constitution, Supreme Court case law and the Federalist Papers, have the following Rights:

• We are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and we have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever., a right to dispose of these without our consent.
• The three branches of the United States government derive their just powers solely from the consent of the governed.
• We the people have the right and the obligation to alter or abolish any government that becomes destructive of the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator and rights codified in the United States Constitution.
• We have the right peaceably to assemble, consider our grievances, petition the three branches of the Federal Government; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory and proclamations, defamatory declarations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.
• We the People of the United States of America, do claim, demand, and insist on, as our indubitable rights and liberties that the federal government must be answerable and accountable to the people; which cannot be legally taken from us., altered or abridged by any power whatever, without our own consent, and said consent has never been given.

In the course of our inquiry, we find numerous infringements and violations of the foregoing rights; which demonstrate systemic corruption formed to subvert and destroy our constitutional republic and to enslave the American people.

We submit this Petition for Redress of Grievances in an ardent desire that precious liberty be restored to ourselves and preserved for future generations of Americans.

This Petition for Redress of Grievances serves as notice and demand by the American People to on the federal government, as our agent: 1) To cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of the constitutionally delegated powers; 2) To formally and publicly recognize the natural and Constitutional rights of the American People in a manner appropriate to each branch of government (resolution, proclamation, statement); 3) To answer, point by point the question contained herein; 4) To honor your oaths to support the Constitution or resign immediately from your positions.

That we will no longer obey, since such laws are invalid on their face:

• Any law prohibiting or controlling or monitoring of the ingestion of any substance wether naturally occurring or not.
• Any redistribution of property by force and subterfuge; any application of tax laws amounting to punitive action against certain groups of American People
• Any legal tender law or law governing the type of money Americans can or cannot accept in payment for goods and services
• Any law controlling air travel safety or mandating documentation or unconstitutional search as a prerequisite for travel by air or any other means
• Any law mandating routine and unconstitutional intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens
• Any law or action causing perpetual massive indebtedness to foreign countries, such debts to be considered forgiven, written off, and not the responsibility of the American People from this moment, retroactively and going forwards
• Any law which controls or regulates arms
• Any laws and taxes passed without deliberation and without members of Congress reading the legislation
• Any laws enacting ex post facto laws and Bills of Attainder
• Any laws granting Constitutional rights and privileges to illegal aliens and prisoners of war
• Any laws creating arbitrary federal power, through the United States Treasury or otherwise, for government intervention into, control of, and confiscation of, private property, private industry including but not limited to banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming and other sectors of the private economy
• Any laws requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law
• Any laws requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law
• Any laws or acts regarding religion; limitations on freedom of political speech; or limitations on freedom of the printing press or any means of mass communication existing or yet to be invented.

You are hereby put on notice that any violation of the above will be met with deadly force as a response.
You are hereby put on notice that maintaining and deploying armies in peace time on United States soil is illegal and any such deployment will be met with deadly force.

—

There. Much better now.

In the end, this is what it will come to: deadly force as a response to any violation of your rights. In fact, we are already there. The 912 people just do not know it yet. The fact that they are creating a petition to ASK for their rights proves that they do not know it. They still think that honorable people are there to be appealed to. That laundry list of crimes proves that the people who did them are the worst type of criminal. Petitions do not work on criminals.

In the end, when the petitioned do not obey, and the 912 people want to live like human beings and not slaves, they will be forced to TAKE their liberty. The amended document above is what they will need to live by if they want to do that.

And by the way:

We are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and we have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of these without our consent.

I struck out ‘, a right to dispose of these without our consent’ and the other line with similar wording because no single generation has the right to dispose of the rights of subsequent generations, no matter how large the majority that votes for it or ‘consents’ to it, and the rights of individuals cannot be voted away by a majority. If that were not the case, the current generation of Americans could, by referendum, enslave themselves and all future generations to a foreign power without any regard for the rights of future Americans. If all people are born with inalienable rights, then those rights cannot be forfeited by anyone on an unborn person’s behalf for ANY reason. This line implies that the current generation has the right to sell future generations into slavery. They count on the ‘immutable laws of nature, the principles of the United States Constitution, Supreme Court case law and the Federalist Papers,’ as the basis of their rights, but then say that it is their right to forfeit the rights of future generations. That is immoral and illogical.

As I said at the beginning of this article, we are almost there. The most important and encouraging part of all of this is that we will not have to wait 70 years for the evil infrastructure to fall to pieces, like the people who suffered under the Soviets had to. Generations of Russians had their lives stolen from them by the Soviet system. As the 912ers and everyone else starts to wake up, it will not be very long before things are put right.

The effects on the world will be profound. Not only will Americans once again reclaim their birthright, but they will, once again, show the whole world ‘how it is done’. Other people around the world will be encouraged to emulate them. And since the world-wide war machine will be de-funded and returned to barracks, this will mean an end to the pointless and ceaseless wars. Strangely enough the greatest beneficiary of the standing down of the empire, in terms of money, will be the Americans.

Everybody wins!

The Oxford Libertarian Society is hosting a talk:

Thursday, 12th March – 8pm – Christ Church (Lecture Room 1)

DOUGLAS CARSWELL MP – ‘The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain’

Conservative Member of Parliament for Harwich and Clacton since 2005, Douglas Carswell is one of the leading advocates for limited government in Westminister. As a contributor to ‘Direct Democracy: an Agenda for a New Model Party’ and author of ‘The Localist Papers,’ he established himself as amongst the vanguard of the highly effective localist movement within the Conservative Party. He strongly favours the devolution of most functions of government to the local level, and greater participatory democracy through referendums and citizens’ intitiatves. He will speak about a book he has recently coauthored with Daniel Hannan MEP, ‘The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain,’ a set of policy proposals to radically change the role of the central government in a single legislative session. Amongst the key ideas proposed are health savings accounts, school vouchers, and elected sheriffs. He blogs at http://www.talkcarswell.com, and the book can be downloaded from http://www.renew-britain.com.

As long time readers of BLOGDIAL will know, we believe that the only purpose of legislative bodies in the 21st century should be to remove legislation from the statute books. Now it seems that some more people are starting to wake up.

Sadly, this particular group is still completely deluded.

From Douglas Carswell’s blog:

Sir Paul Judge is setting up a new “open source” political party – which aims to make great use of the internet and direct democracy.
He seems to have grasped that the internet will remove barriers to entry in politics as surely as it has done already in business and commerce. In order to retain market share, the big, established political parties are going to have to either adapt – or lose out.

[…]

http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=521

‘Direct Democracy’. Can you imagine what that would be like? Imagine the mobile phone generation being able to decide how you can or cannot live? The generation that cannot even speak in complete sentences, thanks to a device that has created a new form of english. Chicken nugget eaters voting by text message on wether or not foi gras should be eaten or not.

This is just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

What makes people free are concrete rights, not access to voting. Democracy IS turkeys voting to outlaw Christmas. Democracy IS three wolves and two sheep voting on what is for dinner. Spreading it into the hands of every uneducated, ignorant moron with a mobile phone is absolute insanity. It is the technical perfection of mob rule; ‘mobocracy’…or ‘mobileocracy’ or ‘txtrcsy’…you get the idea.

Even if increasing democracy were a good idea, we all know that all voting should take place only on paper, and should never be done electronically. There have been recent scandals about this, as you may recall.

In any case, here is the last part of the article in The Times by Sir Paul Judge. The emphasis is mine:

[…]

Everybody knows that the system is broken, everyone agrees that reform is required. However turkeys do not vote for Christmas. It seems that if we want to change the system we have to change the turkeys.

On Monday 16th March, we shall be launching the Jury Team – an organisation that will run a web-based Open Primary to let anyone put themselves forward as a candidate. If they win the popular vote, conducted using mobile phones, they will be selected to head the list of candidates we are putting up for the European Parliamentary elections in June.

Other than prohibiting our platform from being used by extremists, we will demand of our candidates only that they support our principles of good governance. Beyond that, they are free to vote on issues unburdened by any party whip.

With the newspapers filled with stories of sleaze and corruption and with political apathy spiraling, we are in the midst of a perfect storm. The European Parliamentary elections offer the electorate the opportunity to show that there is an appetite for change and a longing for British politics to be cleaned up by people selected from the general population, rather than from the political class. We shall then build on this for the general election. All we need is your support.

You can make a difference by going to www.juryteam.org.

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5864626.ece

Any system that can exclude people because they are ‘extremists’ is broken by definition. There is no such thing as an ‘extremist’, and in a free country, where conduct between people is based on rights, it doesn’t matter what you or your neighbor believes; as long as you do not cause harm to anyone, you can believe and do what you like in a free country.

That means you can publish whatever you like, smoke whatever you like, drink whatever you like and so on and so on. None of these people are awake enough to grasp this. Furthermore, when they talk about ‘our platform’ they give the game away completely. They will be using ‘their’ platform to make sure that only their points of view are expressed; of course, its their right since they own the platform, but the guiding principle is all wrong, and trying to create something to fix a problem should not be made from the same problems that it is trying to fix. You cannot say that ‘anyone can put themselves forward as a candidate’ when in fact, there will be a vetting process to weed out ‘extremists’. This is called ‘FAIL’.

The problem with everything the way it is is that it is owned by one group that exploits other groups by force. They create the contexts, the definitions (like ‘extremist’ or ‘the five outcomes’ or ‘the social contract’) make the rules and everyone is expected to obey. Truly Open Source Politics would accept all ideas and all candidates as equal, and then allow the market (the electorate) to decide which ideas and candidates have merit.

These computer illiterate people have seized on the idea of Open Source software, and are trying to squeeze their increasingly discredited careers into the new paradigm. It is not going to work. They do not even know where to start, as can be seen by how they price their ‘plan’. See below.

Of course, we know that this cannot work because democracy is mob rule and a form of tyranny, so even if this project was open to all ideas, it is fundamentally flawed and a part of the problem.

This is something that cannot be tweaked, adjusted, fixed or set right. The best you can do, if you want to keep the present system in anything like the shape it is currently in, is to pare it down to almost nothing. Other than that, with all the laws, regulations, controls and bureaucratic infrastructure intact, all schemes like an ‘Open Source Political Party’ are failures precisely because they are political parties that dovetail into and amplify the present mess.

And now, from the Renew Britain site:

Britain is heading in the wrong direction. The Plan shows how to put our country on the right track. Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell show how a future government could actually shift powers back, from Brussels to Westminster, from Whitehall to town halls, from the state to the citizens. Their plan aims to restore honour and meaning to the ballot box. It would disperse power among communities, through localism and through referendums. Things do not have to be as they are. The Plan shows how we can change our country for the better.

[…]

http://www.renew-britain.com

Point of order m’lud; the book is for sale at £10. The download is on sale for £5. These people need to read this book. Going ‘Open Source’ means giving away the source of the idea so that other people can copy it without restriction. You utterly FAIL!@!@

Britain has been heading in the wrong direction for generations. This plan cannot put britain on the right track, because they want to shift an immoral power from one group to another group. In order to put Britain on the right track, the train and the rails need to be dismantled completely. Even if the plan could work, these people are doing everything they can to prevent people from reading it, by charging for a download of a digital copy.

But I digress…

Moving power from Brussels to Westminster leaves Westminster with power. FAIL.
Moving power from Whitehall to town halls leaves town halls with power. FAIL.
Moving power from the state to citizens leaves the citizens with power. FAIL.
Restoring meaning to the ballot box means empowering the dictatorial electorate. FAIL.
Dispersing power amongst communities puts power in the hands of back burner vigilantes. FAIL.
Referendums are mob rule, otherwise known as tyranny. FAIL.

Things do not have to be as they are. This is the only thing we agree with. Everything is going to change, like it or not, and the shape it is going to take will be not what the ruling elite want:

A silent $1 trillion “Run on Britain” by foreign investors was revealed yesterday in the latest statistical releases from the Bank of England. The external liabilities of banks operating in the UK – that is monies held in the UK on behalf of foreign investors – fell by $1 trillion (£700bn) between the spring and the end of 2008, representing a huge loss of funds and of confidence in the City of London.

[…]

The Independent

People are quitting the over legislated, super socialist, police state Britain, and they will not be bringing their money or their businesses back. Not only have New Labour / Tory Britain cut out the heart of the city with their sour grapes attack on Non Domiciled people but the pound, being printed into hyperinflation is being run away from like the plague has legs and is chasing investors.

In the end, the only people who will be left in the UK will be those who cannot afford to leave, those too fat to leave and the delusional politicians scrambling around with crazy ideas of how to rule over this impoverished, dumbed down, hopeless and trapped population.

Britain will become the next Portugal.

What a pity.

And it is only balls that will solve this problem.

Editorial
The Observer, Sunday 1 March 2009
Article history
It was never in a Labour manifesto that individual freedom should be surrendered in the interests of collective security. Nor was it written that society should submit itself to a blanket of surveillance by the state.

It was never announced as a political creed of the current government that trial by jury is an expensive inconvenience that modern democracies can, in certain circumstances, do without. Nor was it proclaimed that the principle of habeas corpus, that prohibits the crown from detaining a free individual without his or her knowing the charge, was redundant in the face of terrorist threats in the 21st century. And yet, one way or another, all of those views have been expressed in laws introduced by Labour since it came to power.

Whether by complacency, arrogance or cynical design, the government has erected an edifice of legal constraint to liberty that would suit the methods and aims of a despot.

That is not to say, of course, that we have become a police state, or that a slide to authoritarianism is inevitable. It is simply a matter of fact that basic freedoms, conceptions of the moral autonomy of the individual to act without impediment by the state, have been systematically disrespected. Vigilance and resistance to that process is an obligation that rests with every citizen in a democracy.

Crucial steps towards the fulfilment of that obligation were taken by the Convention on Modern Liberty yesterday. Hundreds of people, representing a spectrum of political affiliations and a wide plurality of opinions, gathered to express a single response to the erosion of civil liberties: enough! It is the message that Henry Porter, one of the convention leaders, has urgently conveyed from the pages of this newspaper many times.

Delegates included representatives from all major political parties, non-governmental organisations, local councils, media organisations, trade unions, and – most important – private citizens concerned about the vandalism to the constitutional order is being done in their name.

Until now the government has by and large scorned the civil liberties lobby, seeing it as a peripheral and largely irrelevant fetish of the chattering classes. That arrogant disregard for democratic principle has been uncovered. The call for liberty is rapidly migrating from the margins to the mainstream of politics, and it is time for the government to listen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/01/civil-liberties-surveillance

FAIL FAIL FAIL.

Like we have been saying, all the conferences, meetings and articles have already been done. There is no need for any more that do not result in a concrete plan of action to finally and totally restore the liberties that have been stolen from the people of this once great Island.

Henry Porter and his cohorts now all feel very satisfied that they ‘pulled it off’. They think this is the start of a movement. If the only thing to come out of this is an unnamed editorial saying, “its time for the government to listen”, then they are doomed to fail.

Government must be TOLD.

This government does NOT LISTEN. You have had many MANY examples of this, from the nauseating government run petitions that are ignored, to the biggest ever demonstration of TWO MILLION PEOPLE against the immoral, illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq, which was also completely ignored.

How many times do you people have to be ignored before you understand what it is that you are dealing with?

Let me help you.

The Guardian, if it is really serious, needs to organize its own civil disobedience campaign, where it makes a list of things that will not ever be obeyed, because they are in violation of their readers civil liberties.

1. Absolute refusal to comply with any aspect of the ID Card scheme. This also means that all Guardian staff must also take the pledge to not comply with any of its measures also.
2. All CCTV cameras that point into the street are to be removed by members of the public on sight. That includes all speed cameras.
3. Any and all actions of the state derived from surveillance systems, that do not involve violent crime, are null and void, are to be disobeyed. That means (for example) you cannot be accused by the evidence of a CCTV camera, even if it is operated manually (automatically generated tickets), and also (for example) that if your council tries to prosecute you and used surveillance to ‘catch’ you, the whole case is null and void.

Do you get the picture?

Not only must all the technical apparatus be physically destroyed, but any action brought about by the police state should be null and void and unenforceable.

That is how you TAKE your liberty back.

I’m sure that you can insert your own measures into that list. No more fishing expeditions. No more mass surveillance. No more huge databases of personal information. This is a zero tolerance strategy. The state will cease to function if it is done, and everything that the population does will remain unaffected.

If you are not willing to do this, to have some balls, then NOTHING will ever change. If you are like Henry Porter and The Guardian, who are servants of the state in thought, word and action, then you may as well stop now and save yourself the bother. You will LOSE.

Finally, as we have said many times before. The root of all these problems is bad money. The Guardian cannot have it both ways. They cannot on the one hand be FOR the fiat currency fueled welfare warfare state and ALSO against the police state. The aspects are inseparable. Even the super socialist George Monbiot has had a Eureka moment where he suddenly seems to understand that the root of the problem is fiat currency, and that commodity money is a way out. When someone like Monbiot starts talking about Austrian Economics as being a good idea without knowing he is talking about Austrian Economics, you know we have reached a tipping point.

It’s up to everyone to push it right over the edge; to tip it over. That means taking some ballsy actions en masse, and not just talking about the problems, which we have all been doing for ages.

Finally Jack ‘Mass Murderer’ Straw says that Britain is not a police state, and if you do not like the government, you can always vote it out. Well, we all know how that works.

When, for example the BNP gets votes, democratically, everyone goes berserk, saying how they should be banned or at the very least controlled etc etc. On the other ‘extreme’ you have the LibDems who can never get into power, and even if they did, they would be an unmitigated disaster. That leaves them with two parties that are essentially interchangeable. Face the facts; democracy is hopelessly broken and can never be fixed. The only answer is a de fanged government that is so powerless that it doesn’t matter who is in charge; your rights trump everything they could possibly come up with.

If you do not face this fact, there will always be another Jack Straw or Tony Bliar on the horizon, waiting to destroy your money, take away your rights and sell the sovereignty of your country to foreigners for nothing.

Finally, it seems that everyone realizes that refusing to obey is the only way out. Congress just passed a 1000 page bill without a single member reading it. Even if they had read it, and initialed every section, if it is a bill that violates your rights, you are under no obligation to obey its provisions. We have been saying this for ages. So have other people:

Children’s Books in Dumpsters: Washington’s Madness Continues

by Gary North

The kiddie police have begun to march across America, threatening thrift stores, as I warned.

On February 10, workers in America’s thrift stores tossed out every children’s book that was printed prior to 1985. That is the law.

A parent is not allowed to go into a thrift store and buy a book printed before 1985. Those books are now gone.

On the dumpsters filled with children’s books, read this.

Congress has spoken. Well, not quite. The bureaucrats who use Congress as their hand puppet, agency by agency, have spoken. The bureaucrats spend their careers identifying threats to the people. They get paid to do this, and they are paid well. They invent a presumed threat and then terrorize Congress into passing a 500-page bill that no Congressman has read. Then the bureaucrats add more regulations in the name of this 500-page law.

This has gone on since 1913, and it will continue to go on until the system finally breaks down. This is the logic of the system.

Here is the new reality, one week old. If you can still find any pre-1985 books, it is because the thrift store’s managers don’t know they are breaking the law and could be fined or sent to prison if they persist.

Congress passed the enabling legislation law last year: The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. It has 239 sections. I don’t expect you to read it – after all, no Congressman or Senator did – but click the link and skim it: “Most parents are irresponsible and must not be trusted.”

Every Federal law looks like this one. This was true when I was a Capitol Hill staffer for Ron Paul in 1976, and it will be true for as long as the Federal government is solvent by means of (1) our tax money, (2) Treasury debt investors’ money, and (3) Federal Reserve fiat money.

The bureaucrats are now enforcing the letter of the 2008 law. Congressmen will feign ignorance. “Gee, how were we to know?”

Too late. The books are in landfill.

But why? “Stop dangerous lead paint!” Right. The lead paint in pre-1985 kids’ books in minuscule traces. There is no known example of any child being injured by lead paint from a book. No matter. The law’s the law.

This seems insane, but it is the relentless logic of the State: “Nothing is permitted unless authorized by the State.”

The Federal government has authorized abortion on demand. But, once a parent allows a child to be born, that parent is not be allowed to buy the child a pre-1985 book. Such books are too dangerous for children.

This is the logic of Washington. This logic is relentless. It will be extended by law into every nook and cranny of our lives until it is stopped.

This will stop it: (1) the destruction of the dollar, (2) the bankruptcy of the Federal government, and (3) a decision by millions of Americans to say, “I will not obey this law.” Law by law, people say, one by one, “I will not obey. Arrest me. I will hire a lawyer. Maybe I will simply defend myself in a court of law. I will resist.” Gandhi did it. It worked. People will organize, law by law, to clog the courts, jam the legal system, and vote out of office every politician who does not repeal a specific law. Nothing else can stop this madness.

Americans have surrendered their liberties to Washington, one by one. The process is relentless. No insanity is too great for the bureaucrats. Yet the public is oblivious.

It stems from a simple assumption: “My neighbors are irresponsible. They must not be allowed to make voluntary exchanges, no matter how harmless.” This belief leads to a principle of law: Nothing is allowed unless authorized by the State.

Some of your friends may think you are extreme for not trusting Congress and the bureaucrats. Forward this report to them. They may not yet perceive the nature of Beltway madness.

It is going to get much worse. We can be certain of this. Bureaucrats respect only one thing: budget cuts. That’s a long way away. But the destruction of the dollar may not be.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north688.html

There aren’t enough cops or apparatchiks to control everyone all the time. Once the teeth of the monster’s mouth reaches the meat of the crisis, then all bets will be off.

It will be something like the fall of the Berlin Wall, where everyone suddenly wakes up and the illusion of power fades away, only this time, the wall that will break will be inside people’s minds

It’s already happening. The cracks are widening. All it will take is one strike of a chisel, or a heating and then dousing in cold water for the whole thing to shatter.

At long last…

In 2006, the infamous ‘anonymous email‘ of Frances Stonor Saunders that was widely circulated and published in newspapers, predicted that:

[…]

Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every Bank will have an NIR Card Terminal, (very much like the Chip and Pin Readers that are everywhere now) into which your card can be ‘swiped’ to check your identity. Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the Card was presented. This means for example, that there will be a government record of every time you withdraw more than £99 at your branch of NatWest, who now demand ID for these transactions. Every time you have to prove that you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off licenses will demand that your card is swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.

[…]

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1207

Now we see that once again, its assertions have proven to be completely correct.

This is from a column in today’s Daily Mail

[…]

at the Lichfield branch of Marks & Sparks, 30-year-old Oliver Butler was told that unless he could produce his passport, he couldn’t buy two bottles of mulled wine.

They wouldn’t accept his paper driving licence either.

Rightly, he points out that you don’t see many under-age bingedrinkers swigging M&S mulled wine by the neck down your local shopping precinct.

Alcopops and extra-strength cider are more their preferred beverage.

Oliver tells me that it was the first time in 12 years he’d been asked for ID. You’d better get used to it, old son. It probably won’t be the last.

The crackdown on alcohol sales now extends even to people who can prove they are over 18, if they happen to be accompanied by a minor.

Christine Middleton, from Edinburgh, was out shopping for Hogmanay with her daughter at her local Co-op; usual stuff – chicken, turkey, sprouts, two bottles of wine (one red, one pink champagne).

When the champagne went through the barcode scanner, an alarm went off.

The checkout girl asked Christine’s daughter how old she was. After discovering she was 17, she confiscated the two bottles.

Christine (’48, but I look good for my age’) pointed out that the wine was for her, not her daughter, and sent for the manager. Still no joy.

The manager said that her daughter could, in fact, be a local hoodie who had persuaded Christine to buy booze on her behalf.

Like Oliver Butler and his mulled wine, Christine remarked that ‘pink champagne and a cheeky wee Rioja’ weren’t exactly your average hoodie’s gargle of choice.

But the manager still wouldn’t serve her and, with an impatient queue getting restless behind her, she was forced to withdraw, empty-handed.

At first glance, this all seems laughable, to be filed under You Couldn’t Make It Up – especially after reports that grown men and women are being refused whisky-infused cheddar cheese and knitting needles without proof of identity.

The idea that supermarkets are accusing law-abiding adults of being glue-sniffers and purveyors of illicit hooch to under-age hooligans is not only risible but deeply offensive.

It would be easy to put all this down to the good old British jobsworth mentality and the ridiculous modern ‘if it saves one life’ excuse for lowest-common-denominator law enforcement.

But scratch the surface and there’s something far more sinister going on – on a couple of levels.

First, proof of identity is not just the new elf’n’safety. It has been seized upon gleefully by the ‘consumer protection’ nazis.

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1110069/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-How-Mr-Sheens-enemy-State.html

And there you have it.

The contents of this article prove something else; that it is the store managers and businesses that will be enforcing this scheme, not the government. Every supermarket, every seller of alcohol and cigarettes will be a de-facto arm of government, a fine grained interface between the ID Card the NIR and the public.

It immediately follows therefore that if we want to stop the ID card from being a useful tool, we have to ask that all professionals who will come in contact with it refuse to be that interface and facilitator.

If we can secure a pledge from millions of people who are going to be dealing with this, it would strike a real blow to the proposed ID Card and NIR.

With all the shops, supermarkets, cellphone outlets, banks and every other service you can imagine all refusing to interface with this card, it will become useless and even more pointless to everyone.

The Oxford Libertarian Society mailing list mentions a conference called ‘Modern Liberty’.

Let’s smell it…

Why?

From Anthony Barnett, Phil Booth, Shami Chakrabarti, Henry Porter, Stuart Weir

We are entering a dangerous period in our country.

Economic turmoil threatens profound hardship and disharmony.

Good. Now is the chance to put things on a better footing. Starting by admitting the true cause of this ‘crisis’; fiat currency. This is an unprecedented opportunity to stop the war machine permanently by choking off its fuel; the printing presses that manufacture money by the command of government.

Disenchantment with politics is growing and even legitimate protest is threatened by an unprecedented programme of challenges to our rights, freedoms and democracy.

Good. Politics is corrupt by its nature. Legitimate protest is worthless and has been for decades. We have been over that before.

Sixty years ago Britain was a proud co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Now it is increasingly centralized, abandoning its historic principles some of which date back to the Magna Carta.

And it is getting worse because gatekeepers an safety valvists deliberately prevent the necessary change from taking place by diverting the anger and momentum of the population into useless ‘feel good’ activities that have no real effect in attacking the problems. We have told you about them before.

The Government’s continued stated determination to extend detention without charge in terrorism cases to 42 days is one symbol of the damage done to our hard-won rights and freedoms. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), which gives hundreds of agencies access to people’s records without their knowing, is another. The collection of all available records on a huge central database for the use of the authorities is a third.

None of these things could happen absent the cooperation of all the people who think they are wrong. Listing all the bad stuff over and over and publishing condemnations of them does not destroy them. If you want to destroy something, you have to make a plan and then execute it.

The fundamentals behind all of this evil are not being addressed at all. One of the people out there who does address this is Jan Helfeld. When all these people address this fundamental issue, then the whole true nature of the problem will start to unravel. Then, when they eventually get around to the nature of money, ‘their’ money, the circle will be complete. The answer to all these problems will present itself by virtue of the facts being laid out in front of everyone.

But if you look at who is lined up to speak at this gathering, you will see that for the most part it is precisely the sort of people who have absolutely no interest in changing the way things work. See below.

We believe that such threats can be overcome but only if the public is woken to the dangers. While we may be impatient for action, the issues must be addressed in an open-minded way with as thorough and accessible public debate as possible.

First of all you have to define, precisely, the problem. There are some things which are non-negotiable, like ID-Cards. No amount of open mindedness and public debate has anything to do with the wrongness of this and other subjects when it comes to people’s rights; murdering is wrong, ID-Cards are wrong, stealing is wrong, and employing others to steal or murder or put numbers on people on your behalf is wrong. There are many uninformed, purely ignorant people who think that ID-Cards are OK; you know the type, “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”. Are we to consider the unthinking opinions of these people like they have merit? I think not. And this goes right to the heart of the problem; Democracy is fundamentally flawed, because the illiterate, the unintelligent and the evil can use the vote to force other people to do something through violence financed by the collective.

Therefore we invite you to join a Convention on Modern Liberty. It will ask three broad questions:

Are our freedoms and rights threatened by an over-powerful state and if so how do we defend ourselves from this?

If the majority who show up say ‘no’, then what? It’s all over? This is why you people FAIL.

Are dangers to our security from terrorism and other threats, from climate change to pandemics being used to attack our rights, and how can we best defend ourselves?

This is like asking wether or not the sun is hot. As to how we can best defend ourselvs, history has all the answers to that one. The real question is what can we plan right now to DO IT.

How can we arouse sustained public interest?

The public…what is to be done with them?

It only takes a small minority of people to set things right. We do not need to get everyone on board (that pesky idea of ‘Democracy’ again, EVERYBODY, the MAJORITY must be behind something for it to be ‘right’. It’s a lie.)

We are making Modern Liberty a convention not a conference. We want to bring as many people together to see what common ground can be reached in defence of our freedoms.

No. When there is ‘common ground’ there is the risk of compromise. If the majority of people there agree that its OK for the state to steal from some to give to others or impose ID-Cards then its no better than any other grouping of people who agree to do evil ‘for the greater good’.

The Guardian is the main media partner.

The Guardian is the worst criminal in this affair. It has some good articles once in a while, but these are dead batteries buried deep in a landfill. They routinely call for Britain to interfere in other people’s countries, scream for government to solve ‘problems’ and are generally on the wrong side of history.

Fundamental rights and freedoms are common to us all.

No, they are not. People in other countries are not the business of The Guardian, or of you or I. What I believe applies only to me, and I do not have the right to force my beliefs on anyone else, or to join with others to make them obey my beliefs or service my views.

If you really want to live in a free country, this is the first principle. You cannot initiate force against anyone and you cannot ask someone to do it on your behalf.

Still don’t get it?

The Universal Declaration recognises ‘the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. In Britain such values have an even longer history.

No. The foundation of peace is the acceptance that no one has the right to initiate force. There is no such thing as ‘the human family’ there are only people with their own beliefs, who organize themselves in the way that they like. The shape that those forms take is not our business, and no one has the right to say that anyone or everyone is part of this fictitious collective ‘human family’ that has to live by the rules written down by some wine soaked career diplomats in New York. This declaration is the same paper that is used as a pretext for murdering people and toppling governments.

We are indeed the inheritors of an inspiring tradition of liberty.

This is not true. If Britain had a tradition of liberty we would not be suffering the abuses that we are today. The British have been living under a gentlemen’s agreement that totalitarianism was not good for business. Free range livestock is what Britain has been all about. Steph says it very well, in that link. I will leave it to others to thoroughly debunk that particular passage.

At the same time technical advances from information technology to explosives and the threats of catastrophic climatic change have altered the framework of power and fear.

Wow, its recursive; abusing the generation fear to talk about the problem of the abuse of the generation fear.

This calls for a renewal of our democratic self-confidence.

WRONG. What we need is a change to principles of liberty AWAY from democracy and false, delusional ‘self-confidence’. We need to address the problems directly with a set of simple principles that are applicable to any situation so that even the thickest of people can point to them as a basis for absolute refusal to obey anything that is offensive to the free man.

This is the purpose of the Convention on Modern Liberty. Whether you agree or not we hope you will join us to debate these issues.

Amazing. Wether you agree or not, we hope you will come and spend time talking to us Question Time style.

Good luck with that.

As everything gets worse and worse, the heat under the pot increases and they need a bigger release valve to control the overheating pressure cooker containing the incandescent rage of the population. The biggest gatekeepers and cattle herders gather to vent off the steam, and that is what this gathering is. It is not in any way dangerous to the problem. It presents no threat, no threat of a solution, and not even the promise of a solution. It is chaired by people who are the problem, the panel members are almost without exception people who are the problem and so it is a complete waste of time.

All these people, since they cannot come up with a program of strategies that revolve around destroying what is wrong (a strategy to commit suicide) will be aiding the problem by making people feel that they are still ‘free’ since they can organize and gather without permission.

Remember; these are the same people who offer a candle lit vigil should Iran be bombed with weapons they have paid for. These people are part of the problem, and I would not trust any of them with overseeing an empty milk bottle; never mind guarding my liberty, (least of all The Guardian). The only one with any real credentials is Phill Booth who, via No2ID is actually asking people to disobey the law en masse and building an organization to make it happen – the only thing that will stop the problems dead – and they are having a real measurable effect.

Lets see who else is in there:

Anthony Barnett (openDemocracy)

“openDemocracy offers in-depth news analysis and commentary from a pro-Democracy, pro-Human Rights perspective”

I am AGAINST Democracy. Democracy is BAD, people who want to spread it everywhere world-wide are EVIL or in league with it. See what I mean?

Phil Booth (NO2ID)

Really worthwhile. I put my money where my mouth is with them. Real people offering real information and real solutions. No calls for pointless gatherings. Highly efficient. Highly focussed. And its working. They are actually dangerous. Maybe this is why they are part of this…I’m sure that there are plenty of people who would want No2ID de fanged….hmmmmmmmm!

Shami Chakrabarti (Liberty)

No, no, and no.

Henry Porter (the Observer)

Henry Porter has written many excellent articles and is mostly on the right side. There really isn’t anything more to say about him. Everyone does what they are capable of doing, and he does what he does. He calls a spade a spade. Sadly, the evil people don’t care at all what anyone writes in a newspaper, and so if you are not going to use it to organize disobedience, there comes a point where writing articles that describe a problem accurately serve no further purpose. Its like reporting calmly that your neighbors are being taken away in railway cars to be incinerated. They will end up as ashes while the newspaper rolls off the presses.

Then again, lets look at this from his last column of 2008:

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always believed that the democratic state must be given power to act on behalf of us all but that is not the same as the state granting itself powers to know everything about us and to bully those who resist its invasive instincts. In 2004, the Courts and Tribunals Enforcement Act made it legal for the first time in 400 years for bailiffs to force entry into homes on a civil order and remove goods. Now we hear from the Justice Ministry that bailiffs may offer reasonable violence to force inside their own homes. That gives us an idea of how the government plans to enforce the £1,000 fines handed out to ID card refuseniks – ultimately by violence meted out by men who may be no better than nightclub bouncers. It is astonishing that we are going to allow this to happen.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/25/civilliberties

“I’ve always believed that the democratic state must be given power to act on behalf of us all”. Well, this is what we call ‘epic fail’. Once you give power to the state, legitimized by a vote, you inevitably end up with the very situation that we are in now. This belief is fundamentally wrong and immoral, as you can see explained here, and as we see explained here.

The only astonishing thing here is that Mr. Porter asserts that it is astonishing that ‘we are going to allow this to happen’. If ‘we’ give our consent to it via democracy, and he believes that “that the democratic state must be given power to act on behalf of us all” then surely it is completely legitimate for bailiffs to enter houses on civil orders. If they are behaving on ‘behalf of us all’ then it is legitimate. Period. Mr. Porter cannot pick and choose what parts of Democracy he does and does not like; majority rules and once the majority has been given power to do something, it is by definition right.

That is the true face of what Henry Porter believes in.

I suspect that he doesn’t know what he believes in at all, and that he would crumble under the questioning of Jan Helfeld if he were to be forced to strip his beliefs down to their core elements and explain what he actually thinks from first principles.

The fact of the matter is that the state granting powers to itself is exactly how it works and now it always has worked. The public, the electorate, has never been allowed fine grained control over the legislation that goes through Parliament; which has always voted on whatever they like without any reference to or meaningful consultation with the public. That is part of the reason why the statute book is full of garbage.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot on the one hand, believe that it is OK for violence to be done on behalf of the collective but then say its NOT OK in certain circumstances just because you say so. It is either right or wrong. What Mr. Porter is referring to when he says, “but that is not the same as” is the breaking of the gentlemen’s agreement, “its not cricket to give bailiffs the power to break into your home and use violence old chap”. Well, these people are not playing cricket…certainly not with YOU.

I’m afraid that many of the people interested in this gathering are of the same confused type. Look at this comment and the others on this post about The Countryside Alliance joining this farce:

Anna Stanley says:
December 31st, 2008at 9:17 pm(#)

In February 2008, an independent survey of over 2,000 British people was carried out. Of these, 73% said that fox hunting should remain illegal. The House of Commons voted in favour of the Hunting Bill by 339 votes to 155. There is no doubt that the minority are unable to hunt as they please, but it is clear that an overwhelming majority of people are in favour of the ban on hunting with dogs.

Whether the Countryside Alliance like it or not, we live in a democracy. There is no violation of civil liberties here, merely proper application of the democratic process.

Their prescence at this conference is insulting to those attending who are genuinely in need of support.

And there you have it, “we live in a democracy. There is no violation of civil liberties here, merely proper application of the democratic process.” meaning that if the majority rule that all penises must be cut off, thats it, off they go ‘we live in a democracy’. This is the sort of moron that we share air with, and with whom Henry Porter partially shares his philosophy. Bankrupt.

But I must move on.

Stuart Weir (Democratic Audit)

“Democratic Audit is an active research organisation which audits democracy and human rights in the UK and internationally. We are a consortium of scholars, lawyers and others. We often work with partners in mature and developing democracies to assess the quality of their democratic arrangements.”

Democracy. We have said enough about that. As for ‘developing democracies’ you mean like Iraq? I think we have all had enough of THAT also. Spreading democracy is evil. Period.

http://www.modernliberty.net/what/why

and look at the first Plenary

Chair: Georgina Henry (executive comment editor, The Guardian)
Speakers:
Nick Clegg MP (leader, Liberal Democrats)
Dominic Grieve QC MP (Shadow Attorney General)
Helena Kennedy QC (Doughty Street Chambers)
David Lammy MP (Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property)
Ken Macdonald QC (former Director of Public Prosecutions)

Second Plenary16.00 – 17.00

Freedom and Democracy after the Market meltdown

Chair: Anthony Barnett (founder, openDemocracy)

Speakers:
Chris Huhne MP (Liberal Democrat spokesman on Home Affairs)
Will Hutton (Chief Executive, The Work Foundation)
Caroline Lucas MEP (leader, Green Party)
Chuka Umunna (Labour Party candidate, Streatham)

Lammy? Lucas? Umunna? Clegg? These are the very people who are on the way OUT!

This is a plenary of foxes gathered to discuss how many chickens they will consume in their ideal Democracy. David Lammy? You have got to be freaking kidding me. Why not get Clarke, Blunkett or Smith in while we are on the case? It’s a good thing that guilt by association is hogwash, otherwise we wold have to throw out the baby with the bath-water on this one.

Its £35.00 to get in.

Finally, the thing that irks me about many of these people is their misuse of the Possessive Pronoun ‘Our’. They misuse it everywhere – its ‘our’ democracy, ‘our’ money, ‘our’ troops, ‘our’ police, ‘our’ taxes, ‘our’ country, ‘our’ $something_that_is_not_actually_owned_collectively.

Happy New Year BLOGDIAL Man Dem!!!!

The Dutch city of Eindhoven has caused a stir with a plan to set up a cannabis plantation to supply marijuana to its coffee shops. The move was announced at a “weed summit”, when dozens of Dutch mayors urged the government to back the pilot project in an effort to clamp down on the criminals who supply the drug.

The Netherlands, famed for having one of Europe’s most tolerant policies on soft drugs, allows for the possession of less than 5g of marijuana and its sale in coffee shops, but bans the cultivation and supply of the drug to these shops. The majority of Dutch mayors say this legal “back door” has spawned an illicit industry worth €2bn (£1.7bn) a year.

“It’s time that we experimented with a system of regulated plantations so we can have strict guidelines and controls on the quality and price,” Rob de Gijzel, the Mayor of Eindhoven, told the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. “Authorities must get a grip on the supply of drugs to coffee shops.”

There are also concerns about the increasing strength of unregulated cannabis, with the content of tetrahydrocannabinol, the active chemical ingredient, doubling in recent years.

The weed summit was called to thrash out a revamp of drugs policy after the provincial cities Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom announced plans to shut all their coffee shops in the next two years to combat drugs tourism and criminal activity. They complain that the 1.3 million French and Belgians who come every year for a puff of weed or dash of hash are often badly behaved. Worse still, they are targeted by “drugs runners” who lure them away from legal outlets to back-door suppliers that offer harder, illegal drugs.

Han Polman, the Mayor of Bergen op Zoom, said: “We are in favour of the Eindhoven experiment but we don’t see it happening quickly. That’s why we are going ahead with our shutdown.”

The Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, of the conservative Christian Democratic Appeal party, has applauded these “courageous” efforts to wipe out coffee shops.

The capital, Amsterdam, was in shock over the weekend after news that one in five of its coffee shops would be forced to close under a new law. The city council said 43 of 228 sites must close by the end of 2011 because they are within 250m of a school. This includes the famous Bulldog coffee shop, a tourist magnet housed in a former police headquarters on the Leidseplein. Three Canadian visitors were reeling from the news. One said: “We come here twice a year, we fly thousands of miles, spend probably €4,000 while we are here. It’s the place to be!”

The headmistress of a nearby school, Margriet Bosman, was equally unimpressed by the new measure: “This is just for show. Children will get their drugs if they want to anyway, and closing the shops, which are quite regulated, is not a very good solution.”

Amsterdam’s mayor, Job Cohen, is also in favour of permitting the sale of soft drugs. “There should be a system… in which it is clear where soft drugs come from,” he said. Many Dutch also want the tolerant approach to remain in place, with a newspaper poll this week showing 80 per cent of Dutch opposing coffee shop closures.

Experts agree that a ban is not the answer. “A ban is even more dangerous than the grass itself because consumers will turn to illegal circuits and criminality will explode,” said Tim Boekhout, a criminologist.

[…]

The Independent

The only thing wrong with this plan is that the state is going to be the one setting up the plantation. They should completely legalize the growing and selling of marijuana, so that anyone can grow it anywhere and anyone can sell it….just like tomatoes.

It is completely insane and absurd that you are allowed to posses marijuana, but not allowed to grow it or sell it.

When people say, “the law is an ass”, this is what they are talking about.

There are no irrational regulations on the plantation of other crops for eating, and so there should be no irrational regulation on the growing of marijuana. If there are irrational regulations, i.e. what strains you cannot grow, someone, some ‘criminal’ is going to grow those strains simply because she should not. In any case, the crime routing around the law argument is irrelevant; no one has the right to stop you from growing whatever you want. Period. (GM being the exception, since the GM pollen can contaminate other people’s crops….small digression).

Words about the ‘increasing strength of unregulated cannabis’ come directly from the prohibitionist position, and are totally wrong. The strength or weakness of what you smoke should not be regulated by anyone, except you.

As for the Belgians and French who come to get a taste of liberty, that is a problem for the French and the Belgians to sort out. If their countries were operating correctly, there would be no reason to come to the Netherlands to smoke a plant and its extracts.

This nonsense about coffee shops being near schools is, as the teacher says, “just for show”. I’m sure no one is buying it there…what amazes me is that people are so stupid as to think that such a law would be taken seriously in the first place, or that it would in any way ‘work’ whatever they think ‘working’ is in this case.

Job Cohen is wrong to say there should be a system to show where ‘drugs’ come from.

Take a look at bread making:

when people are left to get on with their stuff in what ever way they want, they set their own standards, make what people want and everyone is catered for.

Artisan Bread Original makes a wide variety of high quality breads. No one told them how to do it, what the quality should be or anything else. It sells on its own merits and people buy it and are satisfied.

The same goes for marijuana. Growers will package it and categorize it themselves and the ones who know how best to do this will sell the most, with every other seller finding their own place in the market by virtue of people selecting them or not.

Finally, the argument about what is or is not in marijuana is simply nonsense. Cigarettes are full of toxic chemicals (599 to be exact) to aid the rate of burning and other qualities that the manufacturer is not required to list on the box:

The list of 599 additives approved by the US Government for use in the manufacture of cigarettes is something every smoker should see. Submitted by the five major American cigarette companies to the Dept. of Health and Human Services in April of 1994, this list of ingredients had long been kept a secret.

Tobacco companies reporting this information were:

• American Tobacco Company
• Brown and Williamson
• Liggett Group, Inc.
• Philip Morris Inc.
• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company

While these ingredients are approved as additives for foods, they were not tested by burning them, and it is the burning of many of these substances which changes their properties, often for the worse.

[…]

Marijuana does not currently have any of these artificial additives…but I can assure you that if the state gets involved in the marijuana trade, those deadly chemicals and others will be added.