Apparently, the absurd policing at Kingsnorth might cost up to £3 million. £3 million, that is, to intimidate protestors, assault liberty and break their own rules beyond repair. Who’d like to start the list of where that money could’ve been better spent?

The Police surrounding Kingsnorth Climate Camp were issued a booklet entitled “Policing Protest” by the sinister sounding National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit. Indymedia brings us a dropped booklet - and very englightening it is too. The pamphlet is very vague in places, with key terms defining what precisely constitutes an offence left to individual judgement and whatever’s considered, “ordinary,” by the office (see p7).

So, are there any dangerous extremists at Kingsnorth? I think it’s time to consult the booklet. Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986 states:

An offence is committed:

I if a person uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or

II Distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked.

So, in short - if an individual frightens another individual with the threat of violence. Did that happen at Kingsnorth? Why yes, comrades. You see that snarling man in the centre wearing a fluorescent jacket brandishing what looks to be a blunt object, as though he’d do violence against those unarmed citizens; he looks to be just such a dangerous extremist. And don’t those unarmed civilians look scared?

Note also that provocation to unlawful violence is an offence - one the Police already stand accused of. Baton charges and full riot gear aren’t usually deployed against pacifists and vegans. It’s uneccessary, and smacks of an attempt to intimidate said vegans. So when those baton charges are carried out, they become offences under Section 4A of the same Act:

An offence is committed if with intent to cause a person intentional harassment, alarm or distress, a person:

I uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
II displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

Not looking good, is it? Similar offences took place under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. Unless, of course, smashing the windows of supply vans and the confiscation of materials essential to basic hygiene isn’t an attempt to harrass protestors.

Perhaps the Kent Police will fare better under Section 12 of the Public Order Act, which deals with public processions. It states that conditions may be imposed on activity if it might result in:

I serious public disorder

II serious damage to property

III serious disruption to the life of the community

IV the purpose of procession is the intimidation of others with a view to compelling them not to do an act they have a right to do, or to do an act they have a right not to do.

Let’s treat the columns of police vans that made their way to Kingsnorth as a procession. They’re guilty of all four offences, I’m afraid, thus:

I Baton charges rather count, I think.

II See exhibit A; note also the theft of soap, crayons, board games, essential building materials, etc.

III We can treat the Climate Camp as a community; it has its own food supplies, kitchens, and even neighbourhoods. The Police have surrounded this community, search anyone who wants to enter it, cut off its food supplies and stolen numerous personal possessions (see II). This seems likely to have disrupted the community.

IV Peaceful Protest is a right guaranteed under the Human Rights Act. The protestors haven’t yet perpetrated violence, so can be assumed to be peaceful; they’ve thus a legal right to do as they have. The Police have interrupted their protest, and so compelled them not to do an act they have a right to do.

Section 14 concerns spontaeneous protest, so we’ll let them off here; the Police have clearly planned this for a while.

We move onto the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 now. Section 42 concerns harrassment of the individual within their home. It states directions may be given should:

I that person is present outside or in the vicinity of any premises that are used by any individual ( “the resident”) as his dwelling;
II that individual believes, on reasonable grounds, that that person is present there for the purpose (by his presence or otherwise) of representing to the resident or another individual (whether or not one who uses the premises as his dwelling), or of persuading the resident or such another individual that he should not do something that he is entitled or required to do or
that he should do something that he is not under any obligation to do;
III that individual also believes, on reasonable grounds, that the presence of that person (either alone or together with that of any other persons who are also present) amounts to, or is likely to result in, the harassment of the resident; or is likely to cause alarm or distress to the resident.

We’ve already defined the Climate Camp as a settlement; it follows that tents and shelters contained in that settlement should be defined as (temporary) dwellings. The Police have entered into that settlement, patrolled outside the dwellings within, and taken possessions from those dwellings. That smacks of harrassment - and so, another offence against their own rules.

There follow a long string of inapplicable sections, before we reach Section 68 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. It states an offence is committed if an individual trespasses and, “does anything to intimidate persons on that land,” to deter them from any legal activity. So - how does entry into a private tent and taking soap, with the immediate intent to prevent protestors from engaging in the legal activity of washing, and the wider intent of making legal protest less attractive, sound? Like an offence, that’s what.

The section regarding Offence by Harrassment is obscured. But, given that we’ve already shown harrassment has taken place, we can assume the police are culpable here, too. Likewise Section 4 of the Protection from Harrassment Act 1997, which makes it an offence to, “pursue a course of conduct, ” which, “causes fear,” that violence will be used against them; that Baton Charges were threatened and occured incriminates the Police here. Preventing food supplies reaching the camp almost certainly required a public highway to be obscured; an offence under Section 137 of the Highways Act 1980.

So, that makes the Police at Kingsnorth guilty (at least) of offences under the Public Order Act 1986; the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001; the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994; the Protection from Harrassment Act 1997 and the Highways Act 1980. Quite a charge sheet. But where will we keep them all while they’re on trial?

The Police can only justify their existence when they protect liberty. And yet, at Kingsnorth, they’ve demonstrably abused the law - and broken it on numerous occasions. The Climate Camp protestors have exercised their democratic right to protest, and the police have tried to stop them. In a more firebrand mood (or when drunk), I’d denounce them - and their masters at Westminster - as enemies of popular freedoms who fully deserve to be torn apart in a wild and bloody revolution as the people reclaim their rights. As it is, I’ll merely shake my head and say that I really do worry…

(Hat-tips for evidence: Indymedia, JimJay, Coventry Greens, Stuart Jeffrey)

It isn’t a great week for the Home Office, is it? First, overt abuse of police power at Kingsnorth; and now the Lords splatter 42 Days. It’s just a shame it’s in August, where it’s easier for them to ignore the obvious by sitting on a beach…

That memo I mentioned yesterday turns out to be even worse than suspected. To summarise; it gives the BPI the ability to monitor the internet activity of suspected filesharers. The BPI then passes their details onto ISPs, who first send threatening letters, before slowing and then cutting off internet connections.

That’s a scheme flawed on many levels. The BPI’s powers to monitor internet users and share their details forms an outright assault on their liberties; it’s in effect allowing a private organisation to police behaviour. Their solution, meanwhile, is simply draconian. The move targets suspects rather than the definitely guilty - sound familiar? It then seeks to disconnect them, and anyone else in the same household. That you might have fallen victim to malware or someone else in the house might have done the sharing doesn’t matter. You’re on the same ISP - so they assume you did it.

Nor will any of this actually work. Record companies seem completely blind to the motivation behind filesharing; its ease and speed. It’s the difference between pressing a button and a half-hour bus journey to the nearest music shop and back. That filesharing, much like borrowing a CD, allows consumers to sample entirely new realms of music before splashing out on several albums also gets ignored. Record companies claim filesharing eats into their profits - but it seems unlikely they’d sell as much as they did without this interaction between consumers.

Of course, this blinkered approach to filesharing could well be selective. As Billy Bragg points out, the internet benefits two main ends of the music industry; producers and consumers. Artists can connect directly to listeners through social networking and online stores - and cut out the middle-men of record companies. They’ll retain some power through the offer of improved marketing and better recording facilities, but the internet challenges their grip on the music industry as never before.

Take three examples, from the top and bottom of the scale in terms of size. At its largest extent, bands such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have bypassed those middle-men entirely, putting their music online and allowing downloaders to set the value. At the other end, and smashing the myth that the internet only benefits wealthy groups like Radiohead who’ve already made it, come whole genres which developed on and through the internet. Dubstep began in Croydonian basements and spread across the world through the power of filesharing, to the extent that one of its most inspired disciples hails from Japan. It’s only since that electronic rise that solid CDs have begun to appear on shop-shelves and the music made its way into meatspace.

So, when record companies attack filesharing as it is, it’s with a mind to maintaining their corporate power. That certainly looks to be the motive behind the rather measly carrot offered to consumers under the Memo; legal filesharing through passworded monopolies owned by the companies. They keep their cut, and artists and consumers get the same raw deal as before. And the internet loses its most powerful edge of being open to anyone with a connection. Hardly a move, then, born out of the concern for artists Undertones corporate frontman Feargal Sharkey so frequently whines.

This memo serves one purpose; to retain the iron grip of recording companies on the music industry. It fails to exploit the internet at its best, and so fails artists and fans. Do we really want that?

I’ve had to wait a few years for it but finally there’s another proper exchange between two of my favourite writers. Further to what I had to say on the matter they’ve both said their piece here and here. Riddled with reformism though it unforgivably is Seymour is easily the victor here. This is because Hari suffers from his usual, crippling flaw: rather than argue critically each point as it comes he constantly references his thoughts to the looming and increasingly inevitable prospect of what the Conservatives would do. So his view of Labour policy is only condemnatory to an extent sharply restrained by his disdain towards the Tories. This is a highly limiting constraint for any writer. Consider this:

In the Labour model, you will never be cut off, provided you are willing to work. In Wisconsin, you can only receive benefits for two years in your entire life, and every week you claim, the clock is ticking. Once you hit your two years, that’s it: your benefits are severed forever…In the Labour proposals, you don’t have to go to work until your youngest child is seven. In the Wisconsin model, you are forced to leave your baby at three months old.

This does indeed demonstrate that the Wisconsin system is horrific in terms of impact and folly to consider worthy of an introduction. But it is in no way a defence of the Labour system to say that it doesn’t go horribly awry in the way that the American model Cameron wishes to adopt would. A piece of public policy should not be doing such perverse things anyway and the fact that it doesn’t is what we should expect.

As I have said before what this policy amounts to is a low-cost version of social democracy, that has the unfortunate end result of a model more akin to prison earning than state employment. If this is the sort of relationship which wariness towards statism left unchecked leads to then we are left with scanty improvement on outright opposition to the welfare state. So long as you are willing to work as the near slaves of the government, runs the line, you shall continue to be granted state cash.

A perverse outcome, and what a pity that Hari’s binary vision has him so distracted with the outright hostility towards the poor on offer from the Tories that he can not witness the idiocy being planned and plotted by the present party of power.

This bears a startling resemblence to a piece of recent euro-legislation. Compare:

The first stage of the campaign will involve hundreds of thousands of letters being sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music.

The BBC has been told that the firms have agreed to ensure their customers know it is illegal to share copyrighted music.

It is believed that the memorandum also requires net firms to go further in their attempts to tackle illegal file-sharing.

At the same time the government is also expected to start a consultation exercise that could result in laws that force net firms to tackle music piracy.

With:

The legislation would oblige ISPs to disconnect (suspected) filesharers from the internet after two warnings. It wouldn’t matter who’d done the sharing; it wouldn’t matter if it was someone else in the house; it wouldn’t matter if your machine had been assaulted by malware and used without your knowledge. It wouldn’t even matter if filesharing hadn’t taken place - note suspected filesharers.

This clearly isn’t as drastic - largely because it’s thus far just a memo. But the details are similar; an emphasis on attacking suspects, forcing ISPs to do the dirty work, a very clumsy means. That the BBC relate the BPI’s three-strikes policy in the same article worries me even more; implying, surely, it’s what, “go further,” might mean.

So - a similar move, which will receive a similar response. It’s a vague document likely to precipitate an attack on all filesharers regardless of their status, and in a fairly arbitrary fashion. Hardly what the public desires, you’d imagine, given their continued file-sharing. Perhaps the only hope to be salvaged from the article (beyond its embryonic nature) is the line suggesting net-firms will commit to developing legal file-sharing systems - the only way they’ll ever contain the activity.

Until then, though, this doesn’t look to be a very pleasant memo.

On Boris’ plans to criminalise young adults:

“Dear [Assembly Member]

I’m writing to you because I’m very concerned about the Mayor’s scheme to encourage shops not to sell alcohol to those between 18 and 21. You’re my Constituency Assembly Member, so I hope you’ll raise the issue with the Mayor.

The scheme might be voluntary, but the precedent it sets is disturbing. The drinking age is 18, not 21. The young people whom they move discriminates against are adults. If they want to buy alcohol, it’s their right. The GLA shouldn’t make decisions for them - unless they want them to behave like children.

It’s also the right of businesses to sell to whom they want. Many shop-owners are feeling the pinch, at present; some may need these sales to stay in business. And yet, they’ll feel obliged to comply, or be attacked for it. Who wants the editor of a local newspaper, hungry for lurid headlines, denouncing them as soft on yobs? Small businesses face a stark choice; lose money they can ill-afford, or get a bad name.

Nor will the scheme have many tangible benefits. The Mayor believes the drinking culture amongst young people to be deeply ingrained; so how does he think this will help? The move does nothing to address the desire for alcohol which makes binge-drinking happen. It makes it harder for people to get their alcohol - so they try a little harder to get it, and probably look beyond sources where real regulation is possible.

What the move will do is further alienate young adults. The media already demonises youth at every opportunity. This just adds to their social stereotype of young people as incurable monsters. A move against 18-21 year olds to tackle binge drinking, rather than a move against binge drinkers, suggests one thing; that all adults between 18 and 21 years of age are virtually alcoholic. That’s patently untrue, and rejects the vast majority of young adults who comply with the law. Why should they listen to their elders, when those elders just criminalise them? If the Mayor wants to address

I hope you’ll speak to the Mayor about this counter-productive and unjust scheme.

Best Regards,

[Concerned of London]“

Thoughts? I’ve an increasingly large facebook group protesting, and nothing to do with them. There’s little use in gathering an angry e-mob unless you mobilise them…

The government’s new policies for unemployment were, according to the Tories, lifted from the Conservatives. This wouldn’t surprise me, seeing as they pause only from outright theft to try a spot of outflanking {the Tories have lately, finally, wisely, taken to simply claiming the centre instead of plunging further outwards towards fascism}.

Irrespective of their origins I am left wondering what exactly distinguishes this proposal, that able bodied people shall be put to work in exchange for their benefits, from the standard social democrat solution to unemployment of job generation. It’s an old trick practiced by reformists and revolutionaries, right and left, alike: the revisionist Marxists who reached power throughout Europe had the people participate in the construction of public parks, dams other massive projects, the National Socialists built the autobahn, Roosevelt had people hired to scare pigeons away from public monuments with lengthy sticks, the Paris Communes kept people occupied through having some of them dig large holes and others fill them in again.

So why would New Labour follow such a radical tradition? Why would it engage in something so closely resembling the socialism it had previously denounced? And, more curious still, why would the Conservatives lay claim to such policy? Why would they desire to be seen as the architects of this piece of outright statism? Does their view of the relationship between the British people and British State really involve a significant increase in people who deem it their employer?

Well, a singular thing separates this proposal from the rest of those examples: in all of them the workers were given a proper wage; whereas here the de facto state employees will be getting the usual pittance they were anyway in exchange for full time labour.

I was awaiting the inevitable legislative response to what has surely reached the stage where it can be described as a cultural phenomenon. As that preamble suggests I was also expecting it to be counter-active and dire, but was this was beyond even my low anticipation. It seems that the government’s approach to dealing with the “Causes of crime” is to turf the poor out of their houses. How exactly they intend to authorise the eviction of those families suspected of potential criminality and where they expect these homeless masses to move to is not made clear, but this is New Labour legislation, no requirement to focus upon the details so long as the headlines look “tough”.

Of course the Tories are no better, law and order being their traditional stomping grounds and all notions of them being civil libertarians being dispelled by this news, which demonstrates how even David Davis, the supposed champion of the freedom-loving right, is happy to see pub land-lords carrying blades for professional purposes locked away.

Not that I am a libertarian, but their position on weaponry is a rare place where almost all are united. The consensus runs roughly as follows: carrying any item is not something worthy of being a crime, it is commiting an act that breaches another’s personal autonomy which is a crime. So someone could own an automated shotgun and still be within the law, within the liberatarian’s ideal world, and the only breach would occur when they fired it at another living being (for some libertarians another living being which had not given consent).

Therefore the only appropriate stance for anyone truly of such an ideology would be to declare that Britain’s laws are not to leniant on weaponry carrying but already far too harsh. Why, we have even outlawed handguns!

The genuine libertarian position is one which we can extract some value from: it is correct that not all carrying weaponry have intent to stab others (although cutting themselves is bad enough) and that we should be wary of any law which demands they serve time and gives the judge no leeway. The victims of any “Crack Down” would be likely to include the innocent along with the would-be guilty.

But seemingly both parties have, as they tend to, embraced the worst of statism and the worst of authoritarianism. Of the two at least Labour seem to have decided upon a course which makes some measure to cutting off the problems at their source. The failure of parents is not always the cause of such crimes, as is so often imagined, but in most cases is doubtless a contributory factor. But although their intention is sound and their approach not without merit the details are, as ever, hazy. Who schedules these lessons? Who performs them? Who identifies the traits of a “Problem Family”? How can we be assured that being amongst the “Disruptive young people” will not be a badge of honour?

A more fundamental problem is the dependence upon a peculiarly fierce form of social liberalism. Even Thatcher begrudgingly added “…And their families” onto the end “There are individuals…” during her “No such thing as society” speech and Brown appears to be sticking to roughly these limits. Social liberalism can accept interaction within the confines of domestic life, as can the vague communitarianism espoused uncertainly by various Conservatives, but beyond this it struggles. So Brown blithely disregarding the rest of society rather conflicts with the copious research which suggests that it is formative peer groups, rather than parents, which shape the individual most substantially.

But disregard he must: bad parenting causes problems, educate parents on how to teach their children not to knife people and they will become good parents. Free lessons in something valuable for those in need. It is, at least, a start.

Cameron meanwhile appears to have adopted the standard Tory response of attempting not to get outflanked by an eager Labour Party and took to the pages of the Metro lately to declare that the problem was owing to society. By this, he went on to explain, he meant that those who stabbed or dealt drugs were simply unaware that they were doing wrong. This could be resolved by voting Conservatives at the next election.

And, of course, slashing benefits. Fucking over the poor unable to find work in a crashing economy is unquestionably the way in which to deal with knife crime largely committed by members of the underclass, you see!

He speaks also, entirely off topic, of obesity. He begins well, stating “There are many reasons – by no means all of their own making – why people have bad diets.” but then follows poorly with: “Their neighbourhood, their school, and the choices their parents make all have a huge impact.” Leaving out entirely the corporate muscle which can make far more profit from flogging sugar filled crud than anything worthwhile.

Best of all though is his sketching of all the undesirables that fill the fears of Daily Mail readers minds: the drug addict, the thuggish young ruffian, the irresponsible parent. Are they alienated? Impoverished? In the case of the former simply craving endorphins that the brain is no longer able to produce?

No, according to Dave:

There’s a simple reason for this. It’s because society has become far too sensitive to their feelings.

Yes, if there’s one thing I’ve noted from anyone encountered by a starving plunger-pusher desperate for junk its empathy.

I preffered the Tories as atomists. At that, at least, they were skilled.

Excuse me while I gibber in bafflement for a moment. A homophobe doesn’t want to perform civil partnerships for gay couples on religious grounds - and an employment tribunal says that’s okay. Why? The whole point of civil partnerships is that they’re secular; religion doesn’t come into it.

But, apparently, it does now. The tribunal sets a dangerous precedent with their decision. It’s okay for the religious to discriminate against gays on the grounds of their sexuality, it says - even in secular situations. And it’s not okay to ensure secular functions are carried out if the religious functionary due to carry them out isn’t comfortable. Note that sexuality isn’t often considered a conscious choice. Religion very definitely is.

And, guess what? That’s how the fundies read it too. Quoth Lillian Ladele, the bigot concerned:

“I am delighted at this decision.

“It is a victory for religious liberty, not just for myself but for others in a similar position to mine.

“Gay rights should not be used as an excuse to bully and harass people over their religious beliefs.”

And, of course, selective, homophobic readings of an ancient text should be used as an excuse to bully and harrass people over their sexuality. Ladele claims to have won a victory for liberty; she hasn’t. She’s set a precedent where public servants - who exist to serve the whole public equally, on the basis of need - may discriminate against that public on the grounds of their own irrational prejudices. A victory, in short, for discrimination.

Hadn’t we got past all this?