Our political system is based on the assumption that there are always checks and balances to prevent unbalanced legislation becoming law. […]

“What you don’t seem to understand is that we are good people!” […]

Guardian

Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.

What is clear is that the British need their own written bill of rights and written constitution, so that there are no assumptions, no unwritten rules and no ambiguities about what your rights are and what your elected servants are able to do. The gentleman’s agreement is broken because there are no gentlemen in parliament.
These much needed documents will provide a clear substrate against which all laws can be tested. Should the Constitutional test fail, a new law cannot come into force. Should a new law violate the Bill of Rights, the law is dead in the water.

The author of that piece fails to come to the conclusion that this is needed, and has failed to take the next step after that; the actual drafting of those documents that are so very badly needed.

It is clear that any such document should be crafted in a way that restricts government to street cleaning and maintenance. It should also make impossible any dilution or transfer of powers of the union. Those are just for starters.
Seeing as we are all focussed on the ID card debacle, lets begin with a first draft of the section asserting our rights with regards to our data:

Wheras in the age before flowing information we could live without explicitly naming certain rights that are inherent to life, the free people of this country are now compelled by the inexorable momentum of the digital age to assert with all moral authority, our rights for this new centrury and beyond.

Mankind is born with rights. These rights exist wether they are written down and understood or not. No person would argue that the rights of man before language were different to the rights of man at the time of Magna Carta, and so too, the rights of man in the information era, being incomprehensible to the men of earlier centuries, are no less existant in absentia of someone with the capability to grasp them.

It is with these thoughts in mind that we write down and categorically assert our rights, which are in addition to those rights already described by the great men of centuries past.

Man has the right to:

anonymity
privacy
travel without surveillance
travel without identification
be unidentified
transact without interference
transact by any currency or means
communicate in secret
associate without interference
study without interference

We assert also that:

The details of the life of a man are his real property.

The body of man is sacrosanct. No one shall be compelled to injest anything against his will, and all men have the right to injest what they will.

No man shall be the servant of a state without his explicit consent.

No man shall suffer any law or regulation that infringes these natural rights. Any law or regulation that infringes these rights is void on its face, and we claim and assert forever our moral justification, absolute right and power to reject and disobey any such law or regulation.

That is how you do it. You actually do it instead of talking about it. You gather millions of people who can be convinced that this is correct, and then you assert your rights.

Note also that each of these rights is asserted cleanly; in other words, we do not, as is seen in the German Constitution, assert a right in one sentence and then apply conditions that make the right null and void in the next sentence. Rights are not conditional. It is possible to construct a Bill of Rights and a Constitution that protects everyone’s rights without qualification, but which also prevents one person from causing harm to another. For instance, you have the right to travel. This is an absolute right. If someone blocks a road in a protest, they are able to be removed forcibly from the road because they are blocking people excersising their right to travel. In this way it is possible to maintain order with a set of laws without constructing this root document in a way that renders it stillborn in an attempt to cater for the requirements of law enforcement.

What we need to do now is to complete these documents using the above guidelines. We then need to take the next step, which is to prune the existing legislation of the UK, removing all offensive and illiberal laws. We do this by writing down a list of laws that are to be removed from the statutes at the next election on an emergency basis.

We will charge the conservatives with this task since that is the easiest route; should they balk or refuse, we will create our own party with this sole agenda. If we win the same number of votes that Bliar did to gain power, we will consider ourselvs the winners, and then assert our rights. Parliament would be nullified and our new government put in place by default; a government created by the electorate and obedient only to the electorate.

This means that there will be a time where there are two sets of laws and populations running concurrently in the UK. The one made up of free men obeying the clean set of laws where all bad legislation has been excised, and asserting their rights under the new Bill of Rights and Constitution, and the ‘losers’ who adhere to the Orwellian Police State – the ‘I have nothing to hide’ brigade who have personally pulled the chain that threatened to flush this great country down the toilet.

There may be some conflict.

After we win, and with the new checks and balances in place, it will be impossible for any subsequent government to create an elected dictatorship, as has been done in the UK. All new law will pass through the cleansing filters of the Constituion and the Bill of Rights, and will come out the other end innofensive and effective.

People are slowly coming to the same conclusion; a Bill of Rights and written Constitution are essential if we are to permanently secure our freedom whilst maintaining the present system of democracy, in a repaired form.

Other groups have banded together to write down a set of principles by which they hope to assert themselvs. These documents fail because they do not address the root causes of the problem, offer no permanent solution to it and are often verbose and off target.

What I have written today is crystal clear. It addresses the root problem, and provides a clear and permanent solution to it. Anything less is a total waste of our time.

And we have little of it.

If we do not address and permanently fix these problems right now, the next generation of Britons will grow up not being able to imagine (for example) a UK without ID cards. They will be like the corn-fed Spanish, who whenever they are confronted about that issue, say to a man, “but I have had one since I was born and I don’t feel that it is a bad thing”. It will then be nigh on impossible to return to a true Britain of free people, because no one will know what the phrase ‘free people’ means. They will all be inured to slavery, to being routinely surveilled and made to present ID for every concievable reason.

It will not be like it was in the days of the Soviet Union, where that long suffering population desired freedom because they saw that there were countries where, for example, there was no internal passport. Where you could write whatever you wanted without fear of arrest. Where you could walk with your own cash money in your own pocket without fear of having it confiscated simply for the ‘crime ‘of posessing it. Everywhere in the world will operate on this Autoritarian / ID / Surveillance basis; there will be no example of a free country where everything works without Orwellian control to point to.

All will have been lost.

And to all those nincompoops who say things like ‘go read Magna Carta’, any document that cannot prevent the emergence of a police state is worthless. It is actually less than worthless and dangerous if by its existance it stops people understanding that they have no protection against madmen in office. Still others say, “look at America – they have a constitution and look what is happening there”. So, just because one country is dismantling their democracy, Britain should not take measures to strengthen its own? These sorts of arguments are not even worthy of debate; trying to counter them is like arguing about what sort of nozzle should be placed on a fire hose as your house burns down. This is a crisis situation, which must be treated with a crisis mentality before there is nothing left but ashes and fond memories.

Reading an article by the Grauniad’s Art Critic, he states that his daughter’s name is Primavera.

In light of the recent trend for naming children such things as Chanel, Chardonnay… even, in the US at least “Chanel (269 girls), Timberland (six boys), Porsche (24 girls) and Armani (273 boys and 298 girls).

Parents named their children after everything from bottled water (Evian) and soft drinks (Fanta) to Western hats and cologne (Stetson), wine (Chardonnay) and beer (Guinness)”
… even with these bizarre choices, Primavera struck me as the most pretentious of the lot. I imagine Mr Jones sneering at the hordes of Chardonnays in Essex from his oh-so-chi-chi Islington terrace, while smug over his choice of pasta dish (or season – take your pick).

Maybe it’s just me.

In the future, perhaps all children will be named after a favourite vegetable. I know in many cultures names have specific meaning – Aslan is Turkish for lion, for example – but Primavera Jones…

I’ll get my coat.

Reading the UK dance music press for research at work I was pleasantly surprised to see one letter complaining about a “dressy ‘up-West'” club that required photo ID on entry, which the door-staff would scan and keep ‘for their records’. The writer of this letter quite rightly refused to give up their ID and didn’t enter the club, they also ask that others do the same as clubs will soon see the light. Sadly they also say “I’m actually all for CCTV and ‘big brother’ devices”.

Another letter is about Lush Life, an artist flying to the UK who was detained at Heathrow for four hours without any contact with the American embassy (he was a US citizen) whilst immigration made a dossier of his career and details including scans of his album cover, record contract and several pages of his rhyme book, which would be kept on file.

I hope these people will connect the dots between NIR, biometric passports and ID cards before it’s too late.

Finally I came across this whilst trawling livejournal recently.

People are starting to stand up and be heard.

From my (other) favourite blog 2lmc spool.

One of Britain’s leading symphony orchestras has been forced to scrap an American tour, partly because of the “mind-blowing palaver” and cost of securing visas for 100 players and staff.

the cost of arranging the visas, estimated at £45,000, would render the trip uneconomic

For those in the US whose response is “fine, we don’t want any of those pansy orchestras around”, there’s also this:

Other agents said rock musicians, also fed up with the process and expense, were refusing to visit the US to work. Katie Ray, of Traffic Control Group Ltd, which secures visas and work permits mainly for rock bands, said some artists were now choosing not to tour in the US.

Of course, the usual rubbish emerges at the end of the article.

John Caulfield, the US embassy’s consul general in the UK, [said] “We are all paying a cost because of terrorism.”

Indeed, I remember all the terrorist outrages caused by rock bands and orchestras in the US. Oh, no, wait, no I don’t.

Dutch coffee shops introduce fingerprint ID

Jan Libbenga / The Register | March 21 2006

Some Dutch coffee shops, which sell marijuana in small quantities for personal use, are introducing fingerprinting technology to check the age of customers.

The shops are not allowed to sell to anyone under the age of 18. Coffee shops currently require photographic ID for proof of age.

The first coffee shops to use turnstiles with built-in fingerprint sensors are Inpetto in Rotterdam, Birdy in Haarlem, and ‘t Rotterdammertje in Doetinchem in the east of the country. Customers must first register with the shops, but personal details will not be stored.

The technology has been developed by FingerIdent, a company owned by Gerrie Mansur, one of the members of legendary Dutch hacking group Hit2000. According to Mansur, the system can match 35,000 fingerprints in less than a second. […]

http://infowars.com/articles/bb/biometric_id_dutch_coffee_shops_fingerprint_id.htm

Heh…’I couldn’t resist’: the new catchphrase!

This little piggy deployed marksmen
This little piggy should stay schtumm
This liilte piggy creates a load o’ grief
This little piggy comes undone
‘cos this little piggy taped Lord Goldsmith as they spoke on the phone

An 82-year-old Women’s Institute stalwart has been asked to remove her hat in a pub – because staff claimed it was a security risk. […]  “I mulled it over and then thought ‘How ridiculous!‘ “.

[…]
Pub licensee Tony Love said it was pub policy to always ask people to remove their hats. …”Mrs Wilbraham does not understand that the world is changing.”

…

Wrong. Mrs Wilbraham obviously understands the changes better than Mr Love. She immediately and correctly identified the changes as ‘ridiculous!’. Mr Love thinks being filmed while in a pub is a normal way for society to progress. He is blind and stupid.

…

I also wanted to point out this as a fantastic read. The Chinese have had enough of being hit by rocks tossed by their friends in the glass house. Every single page is fabulous.

There are only two ways of raising Money : Debt and Equity. Right? Wrong.
There are only two forms of tenure: Freehold and Leasehold, Right? Wrong.

Out of the primeval Capital swamp there is emerging a new animal – the “Capital Partnership” – based upon a curious hybrid of a commercial company and a partnership, known as a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP). The LLP is already beginning to make its mark in the commercial world – examples include a recent initiative by the AIM listed company Numerica and a new property portfolio investment scheme by the well known businessman Tom Hunter – but has implications for financing enterprises of all types, in particular those in the field of public investment.

During the early 1990s, professional partnerships such as Arthur Andersen became concerned that their individual partners’ acceptance of liability for their firm’s actions put them individually at risk of bankruptcy. Long before Enron, the City persuaded Jersey’s Parliament to draw up an Act creating the LLP -and the British Government, fearing an exodus of professional partnerships to Jersey, passed the Limited Liability Partnership Act in April 2001. For the first time anywhere in the world, it became possible to form a corporate body -an entity with a legal existence independent of its individual members – which had both collective limited liability and the mutual, co-operative characteristics of partnerships.

There are now over 7,000 LLPs around the country. In part, the growth is because they’re so easy to create: two designated members must complete an application downloaded from the Companies House website, and pay £95. There is no Memorandum of Incorporation, no Articles of Association and no Shareholder Agreement. In fact there isn’t even any requirement for any written agreement at all – although only the most trusting dispense with them – since simple “default” provisions based upon partnership law apply.

The LLP has two key attributes: firstly it is an “Open” Corporate body (NOT legally a partnership as one would expect from the name) in which any stakeholder, whether or not they are Investors may become Members, thereby aligning their interestswith other members. Secondly, the LLP makes it possible for those who invest Money in an enterprise or in Capital assets such as Land to be members of a “Capital Partnership” alongside the users of the Capital or Capital Asset thereby replacing the usual adversarial contracts between those who finance an enterprise or asset and those who utilise it.

In essence, all these stakeholders are brought inside the partnership, so their interests are aligned; it’s quite a change from traditional structures, which pit stakeholders in competition against each other. The LLP delivers an ideal combination of the collective and the individual; it’s flexible and easy to establish while its partnership characteristics are robust enough to make it attractive to the private sector. […]

Open Capital

“Sharia law by the back door”, they will call it, it sounds interesting to me.

Poet and musician Ivor Cutler, who counted John Peel and the Beatles among his fans, has died at the age of 83.

Cutler wrote surreal songs and poetry and continued to perform live until 2004. He also wrote books, did illustrations and made radio series.

He appeared regularly on Peel’s radio shows and The Beatles gave him a role in the film Magical Mystery Tour.

Cutler’s 1967 album Ludo, produced by George Martin, was re-released in 1997 by Creation, then the label of Oasis.

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Glasgow, Cutler attributed his artistic bent to the displacement he felt when his younger brother was born.

“Without that I would not have been so screwed up as I am, and therefore not as creative,” he said.

“Without a kid brother I would have been quite dull.”

After serving with the RAF in World War II, Cutler became a teacher.

He moved to London and continued to teach, while still pursuing his artistic career, until he retired in 1980.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4781980.stm

Sad news.

I meant to post this quote from a football manager, talking about a football pitch.

“Sometimes you see beautiful people with no brains. Sometimes you have ugly people who are intelligent, like scientists,” he said.

I’m glad I’m not stereotyped.

Excuse me while I set up another flask of bubbling green liquid.

The Justice Department submitted a declaration by Philip B. Stark, a researcher who rejected the privacy concerns, noting that the government specifically requested that Google remove any identifying information from the search requests.

“The study does not involve examining the queries in more than a cursory way. It involves running a random sample of the queries through the Google search engine and categorizing the results,” Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has staunchly resisted the Justice Department since receiving a subpoena last summer, setting the stage for the current legal battle.

The case has attracted widespread attention because it has underscored the potential for Internet search engines becoming tools for government surveillance. A hearing is scheduled before U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose March 13. […]

Yahoo News

Wether the data is stripped of personally identifying information or not, its MY DATA and GOOGLE owns it. The DOJ could at any time, go back to Google and ask them to reveal the person who searched for XYZ once they have the anonymized data. Philip Stark must know this. If he does not, he should not have allowed himself to be trotted out as an apologist for this mass violation.

Academics without morals; the most dangerous men on the planet.

I’m a biologist, an Apple/Unix geek, an audiophile, an avid reader and film buff, and an amateur (in both the inept and unpaid senses) photographer. I lived and worked in Oxford (the one in the UK, for any US readers) for 13 years, which was quite an experience. You can see some of the photographs I’ve taken around Oxford on my photoblog, Wings Open Wide. I’ve just moved to the heart of England—Birmingham, Land of the Brummie—and I will no doubt be comparing and contrasting the two cities.

I apparently do not have the gene for interest in make-up, clothes or celebrities. Believe me, I’ve tried to be interested. I’ve even bought so-called “Women’s magazines”, convinced that I can’t be so psychologically different from the rest of female-kind. But eventually I realized that I just do not have any interest in them, and now I just head straight for the computer/hi-fi magazines aisle. This makes time spent in the hairdressers very dull. […]

http://www.rousette.org.uk/