And another thing…

Do you think some of these mock tories & ‘libertarians’ have forgotten that Orwell was a socialist?

And that Attlee won in 1945 despite Churchill’s speech likening Labour to the Gestapo?

Most of the “civil liberties” bleats read like amateur Goebells propagated by pro Billionaire Press to me.

Yes Great Britain does rather well against the terrorists, less well as yet against the disemblers I fear, but . .

Hope!

V for Vendetta was a Comic first Tom, c’mon!

Maybe you should actually question the extension of the seizure of private property and the presumption of innocence.

Seems quangos and local councils can seize propoerty just on their assumption of someones guilt.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6892830.ece

Any chance of youe challenging this ministerial extension of the law?
Is parliament sovereign or ministers?

Seems my worries about loss of rights wasn’t totally down to paranoia as you wrote.

Oh, before you ask, no I don’t trust jobsworths and unelected officials to treat people fairly if they’ve no need to and we’ve no come back when they mis-use the powers you’ve given them.

Yes Tom but all I am reading about today is castration. you had better watch out.

This is a very dangerous time in politics. We have a financial crisis that defies exaggeration, a political class who lie and cover up as the default mode, and the weakest opposition party I can remember.

Most of the real power has been signed away, by an un-elected PM to a collection of un-elected oligarchs.

What remains is the mechanism whereby the masses are observed and controlled and prevented from observing and controlling those in power.

Had it not been for the likes of Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) MPs would still be lying about their expenses and thieving from the public purse and making sure we did not find out.

People rail about the BNP. They are not the people who are destroying this country. It is not the BNP who have sent our soldiers to die in order to prop up a corrupt regime. Yes, of course they are racists, but increasingly, the less savoury aspects of the organisation may be seen as a trade off for any specious “benefits” they may bring.

The only way voters can change what is effectively the end of democracy is to vote for parties who have radical solutions. If the cost of this is that multiple rapists are deported to be tortured, or those who have gained nationality by marrying, or those who have toyed with democracy by faking postal votes, and all the rest, – if that is the cost of regaining some kind of national identity and hegemony, there will be many who see that as a price worth paying.

If this happens, the fault and the responsibility will lie solely with the Tories, New Labour and the Lib Dems.

The Bank of England is printing more money today. How long before our international credit rating is downgraded? How long before people are carting their wages home in wheelbarrows?

Old Holborn “dresses up” to make a very sound point. If the symbolism is lost on you, then we are very very fecked.

Old Holborn’s stunt is newsworthy simply because it is seen as a dangerous thing to do in this day and age where photographing public servants (the police) is an offence.

You can’t even accept humour to make a point. You just spun and lied.
You know we can not demonstrate without Police permission. Old Holborn is not demonstrating – he’s going for a walk exactly as the Police did. BECAUSE WE CAN NOT DEMONSTRATE !

SOCPA is an abomination and the government’s own survey accepted it has no support from the Country. NONE. ZERO.

Really, what is wrong with you ?

Am a bit surprised to see that you don’t seem to know there was a (distinctly unDisney-like) 1954 British cartoon version – there are various differences between the book and the film, but it is still pretty grim (and I gather possibly funded by the CIA).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqko1yNUv5I&feature=related

Re Guy Fawkes – you possibly also don’t know that part of Fawkes’ confession was suppressed – asked by Jamie Saxt why he wanted to blow him up, Fawkes replied that he wanted to ‘blow the Scots back to Scotland’, London being then replete with corrupt, hypocritical and puritanical Scots on the make. Thank goodness things have move on!

V for Vendetta has evidently been adopted as some sort of rallying call for right-wing libertarians everywhere. That seems to be a bit of a departure from what its author, Alan Moore, intended. He wrote it in the 80s, under the shadow of the nuclear threat. He portrays a Fascist government is set up after a nuclear attack.

Moore was unimpressed by the film of his book and refused to endorse it, describing it as a “Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… It’s a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives — which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England.”

Moore is famously precious about the various films that have been based on his work. I’ve been a fan of the comic book, V For Vendetta ever since I first started reading it in Warrior comic in the 1980s, and it remains one of my all-time favourite graphic novels. Better than Watchmen IMHO.

But I think Moore was being a tad unfair in his criticism of the movie version of V For Vendetta. Yes, the plot was unnecessarily changed, but it was a cracking film that preserved the central plot, themes and characters of the comic book.

Come on Chris’ Wills, local officials would never use these powers innapprpriately. You might as well say they’d use anti-terrorism laws to check on fly tippers or parents trying to send their kids to good schools.

Guy Fawkes was a freedon fighter trying to destroy a corrupt government. He was also a catholic. He was then tortured and gave up innocent people as confessions under torture are notoriously unreliable. As Edwin says, thank goodness things have moved on.

Stewart Cowan said: “…. where photographing public servants (the police) is an offence.”

No it is not an offence, no matter how many cops would like to think it is. The Met have issued the following statement: “Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel. ”

Lots more at http://www.urban75.org/photos/met-police-photography-advice.html

@Paul

…parents trying to send their kids to good schools.

Next you’ll be telling me that MPs didn’t want their home and second home addreses published for privacy reasons.

Nothing to do with thieving from the public purse, oh no.

P.S. Yes I do realise you wrote what you did in jest.

Rather like Tom did when defending the right of MPs to hide their addresses, nothing to do with flipping 2nd homes.

Chris – since I have never changed the designation of my nominated second home, what motive do you attribute to my view that our home addresses remain private?

Hawkeye, try telling that to these clowns:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQrDK9YHas&feature=player_embedded

The problem with laws, is not the laws themselves, it is how they are interpreted, as Walter Wolfgang might say.

I’m no great fan of V for Vendetta, either the comic or film – not surprised that fascists also like it and take what they want from it. Anyway, surely Chesterton (The Man Who Was Thursday) and Conrad (The Secret Agent) can;t really be improved upon.

I’m with Frank Fisher, who in his excellent blog suggested (satirically perhaps) that we are living in the ‘V’ world – any day now Bono will rip off the mask and show his lizard face and eat all our pet mice.

Tom: Perhaps you don’t want any insistent invitations to social gatherings where they need a Labour MP to complete the fireworks?

I still think that the listing of addresses was just another little piece of fascist bullying, it would have been quite possible to publish the details, referring to addresses a, b, c etc.

But then Hue and Cry works better with the mob’s sans culottes in full foam . . .

Reminds me of the denouement of Mr Attlee’s anti comunist joke:

“When the great day of revolution comes, you will live in them houses, you will rise in them Rolls . . ”

I wonder when the great leaders of anti-politics will be telling their followers:

“When the great day of revolution arrives, you will do as you’re b well told.”?

Wrinkled Weasel – thank you for the link, but it rather proves the point. The police have no right to stop photography in a public place or on private property.

Furthermore, they have no right to wander on to his property without invitation or to require him to identify himself in the course of a casual enquiry.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but in my opinion neither of those officers seemed to know the law they are supposed to be enforcing. Why else would they need a second opinion?

Tom,

I actually think that you are fairly honest.

You wrote in defence of privacy very well and it was a fair point, but your defence was undercut when the unredacted expenses showed that some of your associates aren’t as honest and were flipping.

So I wasn’t getting at you per se, just that if unredacted expenses hadn’t been released the argument for addresses to be hidden would have protected a great many sinners.

I suspect that a number of your fellow MPs (of all parties) used the privacy notion as a cover story.

I had a great day out.

Perhaps this post shows WHY I and many others did it. And we’re going to do it again next year.

LINK

I write because I will not be afraid. And while I don’t have the eloquence of ‘V’, and can’t mobilise millions to stand up against the government, I hope that I can mobilise ONE. Just one.

Most importantly, we can say, “We are not afraid of you – YOU should, instead, be afraid of US”.

And I really did see fear in the eyes of those in “authority” who tried to stop me yesterday. They failed.

Anyway, I left a pint of Spitfire behind the bar of the Westminster Arms for you, as I drank with the brave Servicemen in town for Brendas do at Westminster Abbey.

PS I wouldn’t want to work at Hogwarts

“DESPITE a very polite invitation, I am unable to meet with Old Holborn and Tory Bear today in the Westminster Arms…”

So, where were you, Tom? Admittedly the view was slightly restricted, but I didn’t see you in the House.

Mind you, by my calculations there were about 630 others who also were not in the House; 630 others who couldn’t be bothered discussing climate change (the effects of which Act are going to be incredibly expensive); 630 others who, apparently, couldn’t be bothered to turn up to work.

DK

Maybe Old Holborn should just wear the burka

How would H-o-C security handle that?

‘Which all just goes to show how lucky we are to live in a country where people still have the right to demonstrate against not having the right to demonstrate about not having the right to protest.’

If that is so why the obvious blokes trailing us around in badly fitting M&S suits. The truly funny bit is that you are all hiding behind plate glass and machine guns, your ‘protectors’ talking into their walkie talkies giving the game away, jobsworth policemen being petty and vindictive did not seem very bright. All this protection means you lot cannot understand or hear how bitter,angry and disillusioned we all are. However the Policeman on the front door was first class was great displaying good humour and politeness in equal measure, whilst protecting you all. I suppose he will have to retired now.

Another thing for some of your posters who display such ignorance about Libertarianism. It is not right wing. We are agin all authority over our lives be in Socialist , Liberal Democrat or Tory, Wait until Cameron gets in, we will be going for him just as hard.

Whistling in the wind is one thing.

Blowing in the wind is quite another.

Hi Tom, All of a sudden you are one of the few M.Ps I’d vote for in spite of your party……

Hopefully next year you will make it? (Election + Nov 5)

@Chris Wills: I agree with the general idea that these powers should be exercisable by the police rather than local councils. But isn’t it the case that the powers are only exercisable after a court order? It’s not a full criminal trial, so the burden of proof has been diminished, but it’s not mere suspicion by a local authority either.

Actually Tom, “the house” ( consisting of Jackson Minor, Stinky Tibbs and Cholmendly Smythe plus the school Cormorant) was debating whether or not the plebs should be allowed to hold “protests” outside their Parliament just the day before. Really.

It was defeated of course.

PS: Quote of the day goes to the shaved 6′7″ babboon dressed in a butlers outfit in the “cloakroom” (hand over your phones, cameras etc) of the public Gallery at the HoC

““Who let these clowns in ‘ere…they’ve no right to be here””

“how we’ve become a police state under Labour”

I wonder if the Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall look alike in today’s Times agrees with you.
His council used anti terror laws to snoop on him for 3 weeks.

He was innocent natch

Tom writes

“Which all just goes to show how lucky we are to live in a country where people still have the right to demonstrate against not having the right to demonstrate about not having the right to protest.”

Nothing to do with luck, Tom. That right, which your government have done so much to damage, was bought with the blood of the dead. WTF do you think WWII was about? My father risked his life for you to come up with that twaddle. Lucky? Bollocks.

Edwin Moore:

“Anyway, surely Chesterton (The Man Who Was Thursday) and Conrad (The Secret Agent) can;t really be improved upon.”

Greene’s ‘Our Man in Havana” is up there imho.

Tom,

when you were reading these comics in the 80s, did you ever imagine you would be part of a government that brought about over 3000 new offences? Did you imagine you would be assisting the CIA ship people to be tortured? Did you consider that you might be a part of a government trying to extend detention without trial for up to 90 days? Would you of ever dreamed of giving the councils power to put people under surveillance for the pettiest infringements? What would you have thought if someone had told you an 82 year old delegate and refugee from the Nazis would be arrested under terrorism laws after being literally dragged out of your conference for simply shouting nonsense?

I wonder what would the 1980s Tom Harris of said about the above.

You may wish to sneer at Old Holborn, but don’t tell him he is lucky. The only thing he is lucky for is that your party will not be able to continue its work for very much longer. How you can look at your own record and not register the existence of a disturbing, or at least potentially disturbing, trend I am yet to comprehend.

V for Vendetta was great in my rarely humble opinion.

Tom isn’t sneering. Tom is being very, very smart.

The 646 fuckwitt MP’s who read my blog, tom harris’s blog and Guido Fawkes’s blog (wait for Guy TV on Monday) and their trusted luvvies have absolutely no idea who I am

All they know is I have the courage of my convictions. And I’m happy to come to them if they won’t come to me. On THEIR turf. So be it.

Now put Guidos readership, my readership, Tom’s readership, Devils Kitchens readership, Tory Bears readership and the rest of the blogosphere that covered a “silly little walk” together and the people who need to know now know.

We’re coming for you. We’ve had enough.

[...] explains very well what the point of this little walk is, which is something Tom Harris still doesn’t get (I know no shock there). We go for the walk because we can and to show people that we can. I [...]

Old Holborn: You’re right – I’m not sneering, I’m debating. If I use humour, that doesn’t necessarily mean a sneer. And I will collect that Spitfire.

I bet you didn’t imagine that the menace of Islamo-fascism would look as large as it has – eh, Tom?

Nor that Borish Johnson (Who he?) would politicise the Met to the extent that, having lied in his electoral campaign about the success of Sir Ian Blair and Ken Livingstone in combating the capital’s crime, he would carry out what amounted to a political sacking.

Nor that Gen Guthrie would openly campaign against HMG, thereby still further politicising the Army. Or that the notionally a-political establishment would come so clean about being Tory Party plants.

You may recall the means Michael Howard used to get his way over Prison Governors.

You might have guessed at the Tory endgame we now see played out I suppose, for Thatcher was proto fascist in the way she used illegal convoys to shift coal, aped Hitler in her determination to conquor organised labour, lied publicly about the Belgrano, created two recessions – deflating into the first as a tool to subdue working people.

The British Constitution is more seriously threatened by the failures of Conservative to respect the separation of power far more acutely than by measures to prevent terrorism for example.

Which all just goes to show how lucky we are to live in a country where people still have the right to demonstrate against not having the right to demonstrate about not having the right to protest.

You miss the point, Tom

Firstly – it wasn’t a protest, it was a walk (in masks)

Secondly – we cannot protest without ‘permission’ from the state

Fact is they have to do a walk to avoid any sort of intervention from the authorities, had it been an actual protest the police would’ve been all over it, if you can’t understand that you’re either very naive or just have absolutely no regard for our freedom

How did Bob get into 2009?

Via endless revisits to 1984?

Or does he really think that the “walk” wasn’t a “protest” in the normal meaning of the word?

Some of us, Tom included it seems, are not so hypnotised by the consequences of the battle vs terrorism, that we have allowed the language to be distorted as Bob has:

pro⋅test  [n. proh-test; v. pruh-test, proh-test]
–noun
1. an expression or declaration of objection, disapproval, or dissent, often in opposition to something a person is powerless to prevent or avoid: a protest against increased taxation.

Most of us lightheartedly celebrate the defeat of Guy Fawkes and his terrorists; mock tory trolls object to restrictions on those who might ape him.

“The Two Ronnies” in the 80s had a running sketch called, “The Worm That Turned”, set in a futuristic society in which women ruled, men were known by women’s names and wore frocks. The gags turned on the men’s attempts to undermine the new regime. In one sketch they were discussing ‘Roger’ who’d been prosecuted for ‘watching rugby and smoking his pipe’. Only twenty years later and people are being prosecuted for smoking a pipe in a pub or a bus shelter. Who’d have thunk it?

Apologies for the accusation Tom.

I would still be intrigued to hear my query addressed.

We will shortly have a reminder of what protest and direct action can achieve.

20 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell, brought down by public disobedience and protest. This was not some spontaneous arising, the signs were there earlier, riots and disobedience.

This country is moving in the direction of East Germany in terms of surveillance, the State’s suspicion of the citizen, the draconian laws invoked in the name of “terrorism” and the suppression of dissent and protest.

It is certainly not true to say we are there already, but we are a couple of steps away: the invocation of civil contingencies act is one possible scenario that could result in electoral disenfranchsement. Only mass action could stop this (and the UK state, as in East Germany, could not stop this action).

So, gestures of defiance by Old Holborn’s stroll are a useful reminder of the nature of defiance, and an outlet for those of us sickened by MPs’ behaviour over expenses and lack of scrutiny of the quagmire of Afghanistan.

Bob, perhaps Tom views people going about their lawful business without state interference or permission as a form of protest?

Don’t worry. I’ve researched what it took for the citizens of the most obedient and wealthy Communist Soviet Bloc nation, East Germany to finally turn around and say “enough is enough” and tear down the State.

Not far to go now

@Quietzapple
“The British Constitution is more seriously threatened by the failures of Conservative to respect the separation of power far more acutely than by measures to prevent terrorism for example.”

I agree with you about the effects of the Conservative government, but how can you hark back to that as a problem after 12 years of uninterrupted, unchallenged power?

We had a more pressing, more organised and more severe terrorist threat when the IRA were active on the mainland. We had a firming up of laws, we had police lying under oath due to pressure from above to get results, we had a reduction in our civil liberties. What has happened since Labour came to power has been unprecedented. People can be arrested for creating a piece of art, people are spied upon routinely, people and their homes can be searched at the whim of the police, people can be arrested with NO evidence and the police then given 28 (soon to be 90?) days to root around and find/invent some.

Even worse, for labour supporters, social mobility in the UK is at its lowest since records began and lower than all other countries in the EU. The most accurate indicator of your salary is the salary of your parents. What happened to ‘education, education, education’? Surely that should have improved the situation?

While the 7/7 attacks were horrific, they have to be looked at in perspective. We allow thousands to die on the roads without going overboard on road laws, so surely having the risk of a 7/7 every year is a price worth paying for our historic freedoms. I don’t want to quote Ben Franklin repeatedly, but I feel it is worthwhile: “Anyone who would sacrifice their liberty for some temporary security deserves neither.”

@Old Holborn.

Too late, wrong place, mate.

The capital of meaningful UK government is now in Belgium.

They wouldn’t understand…unless you went there as that little boy in the fountain.

Paul:

Boris Johnson sacked Sir Ian Blair pour encourager les autres and to give a fillip to the Dully Teles. It had nothing to do with anything else. And he has recently admitted that his campaigning on law and order vs Red Ken & Living stone was dishonest.

We have a succession of Tory ex Generals attacking HMG.

The army and police are demonstrably being politicised.

Obscene materials have led to prosecutions for well over a hundred years. The Law decides what is a work of art, and the internet has made the application of all laws re sex more difficult no doubt.

The range of plots which have been uncovered since the atrocities in the USA, here, Spain and which still occur elsewhere may yet prove to be pinpricks.

If Saddam could use WMDs against Iran, the Marsh Arabs etc and if various nuclear materials (let alone any others) are missing from the USSR arsenal . . .

The 42 days & etc is and was the bumfluff of tawdry propagandists. Had it not been for the Billionaires who run our media, and own the Tory party, a Tory Government would rightly have left it to those on the “libertarian” left who moan about those issues of civil liberties which are not exclusively concerned with dangerous abuse of the motor car, to prattle about.

I just love the similar campaigns against cams in shopping malls, which, somehow, rarely run to those operating in public car parks . . .

@Quietzapple
You make fair points (none of which apply to me or my world view) but people are idiots. Democracy is a sham, at best it allows 51% of the people to enforce their will/morality on the other 49%, at worst it allows the political class to do what it likes.

just to disavow you of one opinion, if it is wrong to cctv people in public bathrooms it is wrong to cctv them in car parks.

If I make a painting/computer image that the current law deems illegal but harms no-one, explain why that makes me a bad person, explain why the police should get involved and I should go to prison, explain why when no harm is caused a criminal activity has happened.

Saddam, who we put in place, could well have all sorts of weapons to use against Iran, Kuwait and Israel, but what does that have to do with anything?

Your idea that we have yet to hear of all the successful police/MI?/interpol operations that stopped a terrorist atrocity here, or elsewhere, are naive at best. We have had some dubious claims made that as soon as they have someone they come out shouting about it in order to justify denying you and I the ability to do/say things that we could 40 years ago.

Again, none of this is anti-labour it is more anti-taking away my rights.

I have read many of your comments and do not agree with much of what you say, but will you stick to the party line on this when if it was (and it was under Thatcher) a Tory government that wanted to keep tabs on all union members, politicise the police force, make law abiding citizens show ID to the police when going about their lawful business… I am not a friend of any political party but I do see you making excuses for some labour policies that I think you actually disagree with. Same goes for you Tom!

I don’t excuse Labour policies with which I disagree.

I have twice left the Labour Party – over the Commonwealth Immigration Act of the mid ’60s, and the 1983 change in the anti-nukes policy.

I supported the Tories’ policy re incarceration without trial in N Ireland for a few years before Labour came round to it, for a final example.

Democracy is the best system we shall have to form a basis for important decision making in our society.

“Oh how I hate the human race!
Oh How I loathe its silly face”

as my late Labour Alderwoman Godmother was wont to quote.

But New Labour are a minority government. How is that democracy? The minority make the decisions. The BIG decisions, like murdering hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Be careful what you wish for. The BNP may one day be in the same position. Would you like them to have the same powers your minority has?

Quietzapple

Perhaps it was a protest in academic terms – however for legal reasons it wasn’t, meaning that the police could not marshall them, and that they did not need permission (and remember you cannot protest outside parliament) – that is what would have happened were this really a protest

So you still think it was a real protest?