Sim-O

I just heard via @davorg that Baroness Warsi is to become minister for faith and communities.

My two initial thoughts

1. What the fuck? Minister for faith? Huh?

2. I can just about hear the far right screaming about the Islamification of Britain being well under way and we should’ve listened to them all along.

It doesn’t matter what religion the Minister for Faith is, there shouldn’t be one. religionists aren’t being persecuted out of existence, their unearned privilege in society is slowly being eroded. The creation of this office is a step backwards. Once again, believers of fairy stories have the ear of government with no natural justification.

Don’t bother listening to experts, the government it seems, knows best….

Ministers will not be required to seek the advice of scientists when making drug classification policy in future, under new government proposals.

The police reform and social responsibility bill, published last week, contains an amendment to the constitution of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that would remove the requirement on the home secretary to appoint at least six scientists to the committee.

Crime reduction minister James Brokenshire said…

Scientific advice is absolutely critical to the government’s approach to drugs and any suggestion that we are moving away from it is absolutely not true.

Removing the requirement on the home secretary to appoint to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at least one person with experience in six specific areas will allow us greater flexibility in the expertise we are able to draw on.

And by flexibility, the good minister means being able to get in whoever agrees with the government as easily as possible, whilst getting rid of anyone that doesn’t agree.

Just for my records, this post. A new innersting site from the government.

legislation.gov.uk

What it’s about…

Legislation.gov.uk carries most (but not all) types of legislation and their accompanying explanatory documents. For a full list of legislation types held on legisliation.gov.uk see Browse Legislation. For further details of how complete our data set is for each type, click on a legislation type from the Browse Legislation page and see the colour coded bar for each year.

• All legislation from 1988 – present day is available on this site (see ‘What legislation is missing’ for details of any known legislation we do not carry)
• There are no secondary legislation items (e.g Statutory Instruments) available before 1988 as they are not available in a web-publishable format.
• Most pre-1988 primary legislation is available on this site. In some cases we only have the original published (as enacted) version and no revised version. This occurs if the legislation was wholly repealed before 1991 and therefore was not included in the revised data set when it was extracted from Statutes in Force. In other cases we may only have a revised version if the original (as enacted) version is not available in a web-publishable format.

data.gov.uk

Two more people have resigned from the drugs advisory council in solidarity for Professor Nutt…

Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned todayin protest at Alan Johnson’s treatment of Professor David Nutt. Another member told the Guardian that the experts were “planning collective action” against Johnson, adding: “Everybody is devastated. We’re all considering our positions.”

Nutt said today that there was “no future” for the council in its present form and it is thought the group’s members may use a meeting next Monday to announce a mass resignation.

I would suggest that it needs to be swung on it’s head and it is not the councils’ present form that is at fault, but the governments attitude to it’s advice.

When the evidence is there for all to see that Nutt knew what he was talking about and some jumped up twat that wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow says ‘No, you’re wrong’ because the evidence conflicts with policy, then we’re all a little bit fucked, really.

What you make of it if Alan Johnson had made these decisions?

– Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’

– Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

– Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

– Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.

Because that is what he has done. It is all well and good having a policy on something, but when the evidence shows something is not as bad, or as good, as was previously thought, then surely the only thing to do is modify that particular policy.

Lord Winston makes an obvious point…

I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn’t dismiss it so lightly

Exactly. MPs’ deal with a huge range of subjects and can’t, and shouldn’t, be expected to know about everything. Alan Johnson is not an expert on the effects of drugs, just like David Cameron is not an expert on the problems of the working class. That is where the role of expert advisers come in, to tell politicians what is happening, so they can then figure out how to deal with it. It is one thing if the advice is a bit ambiguous, then fair enough, but in a case like this drugs one, where the expert says that alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis, where is the justification for not lowering classification of cannabis? There is none. Johnson was either a) indulging in his own prejudices or b) unable to deviate from policy that it makes a mockery of the whole fucking system.

It could be Alan indulging himself, but then the policy is the American led pointless ‘War on Drugs’, which for twenty years or so has achieved fuck all except divert funds and effort away from areas that would help.

Kevolution says that this episode…

…highlights a bigger issue, that of the state of our democracy. In all the big decisions, the government either tell us we don’t know enough and that if we knew what they did we would understand (but they can’t show us the evidence as it is too sensitive), or they ignore the evidence and just do what they want. They are no longer representing us, they are just setting forth their own agenda’s

And there’s the nub of it. They no longer represent us.

How do we fix this? I dunno except that it won’t be sorted out by a general election*.

*That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother to vote. If I lived in the right place I would vote for D-Notice

BBC…

The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies.

Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C.

He accused ministers of devaluing and distorting evidence and said drugs classification was being politicised.

The home secretary said he had “lost confidence” in his advice and asked him to step down.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is the UK’s official drugs advisory body.

Following his sacking, Prof Nutt told the BBC he stood by his claim that cannabis should not be a Class B drug, based on its effects.

He described his sacking as a “serious challenge to the value of science in relation to the government”.

Problem solved.

The Dunfermline Building Society has been bought by Nationwide, the UKs’ biggest building society.

Well, I say it’s bought Dunfermline…

But Nationwide will not be taking on the bits of Dunfermline that are seriously loss-making.

These are commercial property loans and portfolios of buy-to-let and self-cert mortgages – with a gross value of £1bn.

It’s actually bought only the good bits. And where are the bad bits going? Yup, to the treasury. Who’d have thought that would happen, eh?

Being a building society rather than a bank, there aren’t any short-termist-greedy shareholders to blame, probably just plain boring mismanagement.But once again, a private entity shifting it’s crap on to us, the taxpayer.

I realise there is not a lot that can be done about the shit currently hitting the fan, but for the future, companies/business, especially big business, need to be regulated to within an inch of their lives or kept small enough not to fuck everything else up if an entity goes belly up.

Capitalism and neoliberalism is trumpeted to be the the fairest business systems there is etc, but it doesn’t really seem fair to me that a company can take risks and reap the rewards, but then not have to take the consequences when the risks don’t go the way they expected/hoped.

Obviously, the old addage of the private sector doing a better, more effient job than the public sector is a load of old toss, and I reckon has come about because, right the way through from way before PFI to these latest bailouts, the public sector has taken the hit, and the private sector the profits.

Oh and don’t forget, If you fuck everything up big enough, you’ll be asked to advise the government on how to put it back together.

Even recently, when the government made a u-turn with the decision to put a service out to tender (I can’t remember which one) and then because of the uproar decided just to let the Post Office keep providing the service, the minister in charge on Radio 4s’ PM programme refused to answer the question of how much compensation the government had to pay the companies who have submitted tenders, citing commercial sensitivity.
What the fuck is that all about? Paying people because you don’t want them to do the job? You get a few builders round your house to quote for an extension. You suddenly decide that you’re going to move house rather than extend, you don’t pay the builders for loss of work or the time they took to quote, do you?
And commercial confidentiality? When the government aren’t actually getting anything in return? It could be argued for if the government was actually getting something for it’s (our!) money, but when it’s just a fucking payoff? Someone deserves a kick in the face for that.
Try it next time you go for a job and don’t get it. Send the company an invoice for time and travel and preparation of CV, maybe a new suit, see what the response is, because that is what these ‘Captains of Industry’ do when they applied for government contracts.

Nice work, if you can get it.

Craig Murray: Your Help Needed – Reveal Torture to Stop It

On Tuesday 10 March the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights will discuss whether or not to hear my evidence on the UK government’s policy of using intelligence from torture. They discussed whether to hear my evidence on 3 March but failed to reach a conclusion.

The government is lobbying hard for my exclusion. I need everybody to send an email to jchr@parliament.uk to urge that I should be allowed to give evidence. Just a one-liner would be fine. If you are able to add some comment on the import of my evidence, or indicate that you have heard me speak or read my work, that may help. Please copy your email to craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk.

Please also pass on this plea to anyone you can and urge them to act. Help from other bloggers in posting this appeal would be much appreciated.

The evidence I am trying to give the parliamentary committee is this:

I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government’s policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.

I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council’s enquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council’s Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as “Compelling and valuable”

Read the rest.

I’m not much of a letter writer, as you might have gathered from reading this blog, but my letter goes as follows:

To: jchr@parliament.uk
cc: craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk
Subject: The evidence of Craig Murray

Dear Sir,
I write to urge you to hear Craig Murrays’ evidence on the use of intelligence gained through the use of torture.

As Craig was the Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, he was regularly seeing information from detainees that was gained through torture.

When Craig raised the issue, that it was illegal and immoral, he was dismissed. Now the government would like Craig not to appear at your committee to try and keep the fact that the UK government was/is complicit in torture.

You, the committee, need to hear Craigs’ evidence to bring to light the appalling things that were done to people in the name of ‘security’ and to hold to account those responsible.

Yours

Sim-O
www.sim-o.me.uk

Update: When you send your email, you may get an out of office reply. Apparently the emails are still being received and circulated.

MP Richard Bacon of the public accounts commitee into the privatisation of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA, which became QinetiQ) questions Trevor Woolley of the MOD:

Bacon: “Mr Woolley, are you a chartered accountant?”

Woolley: “I am not.”

Bacon: “Are you a qualified financial person of any kind? Do you have any financial qualifications?”

Woolley: “I do not have financial qualifications.”

Bacon: “What is your job?”

Woolley: “I am the finance director of the Ministry of Defence.”

Via Private Eye

This story in Technology section of the Guardian Unlimited regarding the new biometric passports reveals that secure, hard to defraud biometric ID cards/passports are either a lot harder to make or, and I suspect this may be the case, the government has not thought it through properly.

…the UK had just begun to issue new, ultra-secure passports, incorporating tiny microchips to store the holder’s details and a digital description of their physical features (known in the jargon as biometrics). These, the argument went, would make identity theft much more difficult and pave the way for the government’s proposed ID cards in 2008 or 2009.

Today, some three million such passports have been issued, and they don’t look so secure. I am sitting with my scary computer man and we have just sucked out all the supposedly secure data and biometric information from three new passports and displayed it all on a laptop computer.

The UK Identity and Passport Service website says the new documents are protected by “an advanced digital encryption technique”. So how come we have the information? What could criminals or terrorists do with it? And what could it mean for the passports and the ID cards that are meant to follow?

And we’re expected to trust these jokers with private, confidential medical information on one big database…?