Tag Britain

Entries 71 Total

Blair’s scared he’ll end up in the dock for war crimes

Jun 21, ’09 10:00 AM

Looks like Blair is run­ning scared he’ll end up in the dock for war crimes. Not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing the lengths he went to to help bring about the war of aggres­sion against Iraq.

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Another whitewash hardly surprising

Jun 16, ’09 8:12 AM

If Gor­don Brown were to open the way for a truly inde­pend­ent and open inquiry into the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Iraq he would quite likely find him­self in the dock for war crimes.

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How the UK break EU voting rules

Jun 8, ’09 8:32 AM

No Right Turn on how the UK breaks pro­por­tion­al­ity and EU vot­ing rules:

I’ve been crunch­ing some num­bers on the UK’s European Par­lia­ment elec­tion res­ults. And des­pite the sys­tem they use sup­posedly being “pro­por­tional”, they show sig­ni­fic­ant disproportionalities.

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God these people are loathsome

Jun 3, ’09 1:12 PM

In a dev­ast­at­ing inter­view with George Mon­biot Hazel Blears pulls this lovely com­ment out of the bag, regard­ing the decision to invade Iraq:

Des­pite the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands of people have died — and that is a tragedy — I still believe that it was the right thing to do.

If there was a hell Hazel Blears would surely burn in it.

The whole inter­view is worth watch­ing. She’s a good example of the kind of spine­less per­son who makes their way into the major polit­ical parties simply to be in power.

Her state­ment on Iraq reminds me of Madeleine Albright, who in 1996, then the U.S. Sec­ret­ary of State, was asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a mil­lion Iraqi chil­dren had died as a res­ult of U.S.-led eco­nomic sanc­tions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

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The Telegraph’s interview with MPs’ benefit fraud whistleblower

May 23, ’09 5:44 PM

The Daily Telegraph’s inter­view with John Wick, UK MPs’ expenses bene­fit fraud whistleblower:

There were three ver­sions [of the MPs’ expenses data­base] … there was an unre­dac­ted ver­sion and two redac­ted versions.

We’ve reached a stage in soci­ety where they want to know everything about us. I think we’re entitled to know about them.

I like the way the Tele­graph has gone about pub­lish­ing this mater­ial. If they’d pub­lished it all at once the story may have faded away and there wouldn’t be as big­ger shit storm as there is.

Update: Title updated for accur­acy and context.

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The downward spiral of UK’s major political parties

May 22, ’09 7:38 PM

Quarter of voters set to reject main parties at EU elec­tions, a Guardian/ICM sur­vey finds.

That’s still a lot of suck­ers out there. I still can’t fathom why they didn’t reject them after they took their coun­try to war on a pack of lies.

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The evil legacy of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and New Labour

May 9, ’09 10:51 AM

Two things stand out as New Labour’s leg­acy: war of aggres­sion (the “supreme” war crime) and the worst inequal­ity of incomes since records began (another supreme crime con­sid­er­ing the dam­age it inflicts on every­body).

Tony Blair, Gor­don Brown and their con­spir­at­ors are little more than wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing and they’ve had much of the Labour Party and its sup­port­ers hood­winked for all these years.

Polly Toyn­bee — one of the hood­winked—may stamp her feet now but all she ends up doing is lay­ing bare how dys­func­tional Britain’s quasi-democracy is.

Because the UK is still stuck in the dark ages of plur­al­ity vot­ing (and New Labour broke its mani­festo pledge of elect­oral reform) con­trol of Bri­tain will simply pass from one wolf to another.

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Held hostage by the state, then they charge you for rent

Apr 29, ’09 8:44 AM

On 18 March 2009 Sean Hodg­son walked free after his con­vic­tion was quashed, hav­ing spent 27 years in prison.

… when com­pens­a­tion is finally paid out, the gov­ern­ment, unbe­liev­ably, docks room and board, or “saved liv­ing expenses” cal­cu­lated on the basis of what a frugal per­son might have spent on their own upkeep if they were free. “As if you vol­un­tar­ily popped into the local prison,” says Young, con­temp­tu­ously. “Yes, it would have cost them some­thing to live — but you’ve taken their liberty. If you can afford £50bn to bail out a bank you can afford to com­pensate someone for 27 years in prison.” McManus estim­ates that Hodg­son will pay a min­imum of £100,000 for the priv­ilege. The appeal was paid for by legal aid, but it does not cover the pro­cess of apply­ing for com­pens­a­tion. And so he will have to pay legal fees too.

“It’s like [the state is] pro­ject­ing some of the respons­ib­il­ity back on to the indi­vidual,” says Turn­bull. “As if he should have made a bet­ter job of prov­ing his own inno­cence and not allowed the sys­tem to make the mis­take it did. It’s like accus­ing a rape vic­tim of being pro­voc­at­ive, spread­ing the respons­ib­il­ity bey­ond those who should be tak­ing it. He should have been set free imme­di­ately, com­pensated mag­ni­fi­cently and put through a sys­tem to restore him to as near his nor­mal self as pos­sible, and yet none of things are happening.”

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UK police’s use of “kettling” to be legally challenged

Apr 26, ’09 11:12 AM

Bind­mans, a Lon­don law firm, is pre­par­ing to launch a legal chal­lenge against the UK police’s use of ket­tling:

Bind­mans is … pre­par­ing to launch a legal chal­lenge against the use of “ket­tling”, the police tac­tic used to pen in 5,000 people dur­ing the G20 protests and a strategy which led to pro­test­ers suf­fer­ing asthma and panic attacks. John Halford, a part­ner in Bind­mans, said that the firm had held talks with Cli­mate Camp legal advisers on Fri­day to pre­pare to launch a judi­cial review against the con­tain­ment of protesters.

Halford said that “ket­tling” is leg­ally jus­ti­fi­able only when there is no altern­at­ive to address actual or immin­ent viol­ence. He said: “There is much to sug­gest that ‘ket­tling’ was the first thing resor­ted to as a response to a peace­ful demon­stra­tion that was con­sidered a nuis­ance by the police. Worse, many pro­test­ers have repor­ted unpro­voked baton charges and other forms of intim­id­a­tion while they were penned in. We plan to ensure all of this is examined by the courts.”

I’ve exper­i­enced ket­tling before as part of a peace­ful demon­stra­tion in 2003 against the world’s largest arms trade fair, DSEi, held every other year at East London’s ExCeL Centre. I spent most of my time in the kettle try­ing to explain par­ti­cip­at­ory eco­nom­ics to the police. An enga­ging lot to be sure.

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“What is the difference between Zionism and racism?”

Apr 26, ’09 10:30 AM

Jeremy Pax­man: What is the dif­fer­ence between Zion­ism and racism?

Peter Gooder­ham: Well we see the two as being quite dis­tinct, um, Zion­ism is clearly a …

Jeremy Pax­man: Yeah what’s the difference?

Peter Gooder­ham: Well Zion­ism is a polit­ical move­ment, um, relat­ing to the establishment …

Jeremy Pax­man (queitly): So are some forms of racism.

Peter Gooder­ham: … of a home­land, a Jew­ish home­land, in the er…er, in in what is now Israel, um, and racism is some­thing else. I mean racism is, I think we all know it when we see it and it’s not, it’s not that, and we have fought long and hard at the United Nations to keep that, to main­tain that distinction.

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