February 27th, 2009 § § permalink
The LibDems have launched a bill, The Freedom Bill, to repeal a load of laws that have steadily eroded our freedoms and civil liberties.
At the moment they have twenty thing to look at…
Our first draft of the Freedom Bill contains twenty measures to restore the fundamental rights that have been stripped away in recent years. We would:
- Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals.
- Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
- Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
- Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
- Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
- Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
- Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
- Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the
- Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
- Stop criminalising trespass.
- Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
- Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
- Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
- Prevent bailiffs from using force.
- Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
- Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
- Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
- Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
- Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
- Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
- Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras.
It looks good to me so I’ve added my name to the petition.
Via
February 25th, 2009 § Comments Off § permalink
A big number two at number two, beaten by a man who was a number two and had two (cont. p. 94)…
background 1, 2.
February 23rd, 2009 § § permalink
You remember I decided to join Tim in spreading some lurve on Youtube?
Well, it’s been 6 days (sooner than I expected to be honest) and we have a result with Patrick Holford…
I think I might have to wait a tad bit longer for Iain Dale…
Update:
Lets see how long this one takes then, eh…?
Tanya Byron
February 18th, 2009 § § permalink
It’s been around for ages, putting a price per quantity on the little price tags on the shelf in supermarkets. It helps people compare items and it is A Good Thing.
Now, look at the the two pictures here…
I know it’s not advanced mathematics, you know, multiplying 67 x 10, but what is the thinking behind it? What’s wrong with putting them both in per/kg or per/100g? It’s not like the items are even different brands.
Some git has actually thought about it and decided to make life that little more awkward for some people. I know it sounds like a coincidence but today, I actually had some one ask me how many grams there are in a kilogram. It was an elderly chap, and probably still struggling with decimalisation, but it could’ve just as easily been someone with learning difficulties.
Why? What’s the point? Why make life more difficult than it need be?
February 17th, 2009 § § permalink
Tim has found out that it is possible to Googlebomb Youtube…
I found out about this after I linked to this ‘Ninja Cat Fail’ video in this post, using that nice Mr Draper’s name in the linked description. The next day, I was looking for a clip of the man, recognised the 2nd-to-top result (screengrab), and realised immediately that I alone had artificially/externally provided the only ‘relevance’ to this query.
Tim wants Google to fix it and thinks the best way to do that is to make a big thing of it till Google realise what’s happening.
I’m just think it’s funny and am curious to know how little influence I have in the results.
So I am going to link to …
… and count the years roll by before I’m on the first page of results.
February 17th, 2009 § § permalink
The Daily Dish…
Yesterday, Hugo Chavez abolished term limits in Venezuela paving the way for life-long rule.
What the fuck is it with these fucking people? Why the fuck does everyone keep calling him afucking dictator?
Chavez has been elected and re-elected and had his decisions comfirmed with fuck loads of referenda (or whatever the plural is), so why is changing the law to allow him to stand for re-election a third time a ‘power grab’?
It is no different to our system. Theoretically, if she hadn’t gone batshit mental we could’ve still have had Maggie Thatcher as Prime Minister.
When he loses an election and still becomes President, like Monkey-boy Bush, then you can call him a power-grabbing dictator.
Via
February 10th, 2009 § Comments Off § permalink
Beau Bo D’or spotted the London Evening Standard setting their stall out on the Israeli elections, and then deciding to tone it down a bit.
They may have changed the headline from…
Israelis go to polls to choose between three warmongers.
to…
Israelis go to the polls in tight election race.
but the webmaster at the Standard forgot one little detail (click to enlargen)…
February 7th, 2009 § Comments Off § permalink
February 6th, 2009 § § permalink
See that? That’s the very definition of beauty, that is.
The Mail readers must be creaming their pants at the sight of it.
Not one, not two but three stories about the BBC offending people.
Three! It doesn’t get much better than that, eh?
February 5th, 2009 § Comments Off § permalink
Two articles I’ve come across today, both relating to the use cameras.
I’m not into photography, I like to take a good snap, but it always ends up blurred and what I think would be a great picture never quite turns out like it should.
But whatever you use a camera for, for your living or for holiday memories, the two stories below are an indication of something that will have an affect on you becoming more common:
Via Tygerland, from the British Journal of Photography (quoted in full cos it’s only short)…
A police officer has destroyed a journalist’s images of people sledging arguing that it represented an act of voyeurism.
According to the St-Albans local newspaper, The Review, reporter Alex Lewis took several photos on his mobile phone in Stanborugh Park on 03 February when he was threatened by a man who apparently thought he was photographing his children for sexual purposes.
The reporter called the police, however, an officer told him that his phone would be confiscated as evidence for a charge of ‘voyeurism’ unless he agreed to delete the images. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 introduced the offence of voyeurism.
‘The act defines a “private act”, in the context of this offence, as an act carried out in a place which, in the circumstances, would reasonably be expected to provide privacy, and where the victim’s genitals, buttocks or breasts are exposed or covered only in underwear; or the victim is using a lavatory; or the person is doing a sexual act that is not of a kind ordinarily done in public’.
The Review has asked Hertfordshire Constabulary how photographs of fully clothed people in a public park are covered by the legislation. No response has been given.
It may be an over-zealous copper, but when someone slaps the Sexaul Offences Act in your face, most people are going to relent and destroy the pictures. That is the fear of the label ‘sexual offender’.
And another from the Devil himself…
From the 16th of this month, you will be liable to a maximum of ten years in prison for taking a photo of a fucking policeman.
Set to become law on 16 February, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 amends the Terrorism Act 2000 regarding offences relating to information about members of armed forces, a member of the intelligence services, or a police officer.
The new set of rules, under section 76 of the 2008 Act and section 58A of the 2000 Act, will target anyone who ‘elicits or attempts to elicit information about (members of armed forces) … which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.
A person found guilty of this offence could be liable to imprisonment for up to 10 years, and to a fine.
The law is expected to increase the anti-terrorism powers used today by police officers to stop photographers, including press photographers, from taking pictures in public places.
What the fucking fuckity-fuck is this fucking shit? Ten years and a fucking fine? Fucking hell…
So, I would say that you can expect far fewer pictures showing the police kicking in protestors’ heads, wouldn’t you?
We can be watched what ever we do, where ever we go, but try and return the favour at a demo or protest…
