And another thing…

I think that a useful regulation would be for an address for services of summons to be prominently displayed on each blog site:

Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes registered somewhere in the WIndies we have been told . . .

“If you want news, buy a newspaper, or visit a news organisation’s website”

Actually, even then you’re on dodgy ground and likely to be given info spoon-fed to lazy hacks by fake charities and the like.

The rest of your post is sound though. You’ll be signing this then, I presume?

12 years of Labour has set the standard on this sort of thing,.Regulating this and interfearing in that. So there is no point complaining Tom you have left it to late.

Dick – I was disappointed by the Liberal Conspiracy petition, to be honest. It’s a bit rambling and unfocussed and uses the prospect of blog regulation, not to defend blogging, but to have a go at specific journalists and newspapers.

Here’s another thing that’s important about the blogosphere: it doesn’t act as one. We’re individuals (“I’m not!” says a voice at the back, etc…) and I don’t feel the need to “sign up” to anything on which I had no input. If there is a consultation, I will represent my own views and no-one else’s. Everyone else should do the same.

Thanks for giving me the oportunity to add that.

Fair comment, Tom. Plus, I presume you’d be in a bit of a cleft stick with the press considering the wording, so understandable.

“If there is a consultation”

Would this be a Labour-style ‘consultation’ where the public are deemed to be inconvenient? This being a fairly benign example.

Sorry, but considering some of the abuses of ‘public consultations’ in the past decade under Labour, it had to be said.

I think we should enact all US First Amendment law, and its consequent jurisprudence, fully into UK law. I admit this would end state churches (which we only have in England and Scotland), but religion does not seem to have suffered in the US.

Meanwhile, we would have a meaningful standard to observe in the UK, and one that derived from English Common Law at least.

We should all try to love each other (that’s the Christian me), and we should all try to not offend (that’s my polite mum’s me), but above all the law should not constrain expression of views (and that’s a categorical imperative).

Couldn’t agree with you more! This is the last bastion of Free Speech! Leave it be, we can regulate ourselves thank you Madam!!
Another excellent blog & your still my favorite Labour MP.

“I’LL GET straight to the point: any attempt at regulating blogs would be doomed to failure from the start.”

Then you go on to labour the point:
“And it’s a bonkers idea anyway.”

The rest of your post confirms my view that the main threat that bloggers, having broken the mould, now pose is that you will bore us to death.

Glad you got your PC working again, Dad.

It’s no business of the PCC to be regulating free speech between individuals.

It’s the modus of the current government and associated hangers on and client quangos to interfere in the minutiae of life and in a way I would like to see them try to regulate blogs, it might finally rouse the ire of people.

Frankly, I am just waiting for the EU to try the same shenanigans.

Personally I’d welcome Baroness Buscombe with welcome arms.

She is welcome to come try and regulate me. I’d enjoy the sport.

In fact – if you see the dear lady please volunteer me as the first guinea pig.

As a postscript to earlier posts, and the tricky subject of postal voting: the UK is now at an 11 year low on the worlds list of most corrupt countries.

We are 17th out of 180 countries, which is not bad, but why are we not in the top ten?

The blogosphere:

We seem to be in an era of intrusion and control. The prevalent culture of censure and censorship is at odds with the Samizdat nature of blogs, which is in effect what blogs are.

Cut to the 1960’s, the cold war John Le Carre grey days of Soviet Russia and its satellites; remember how information (for this is what we are discussing) was passed on pieces of paper that had been run off on secret printing presses. There was no internet, the radio frequences were jammed, and the full force of the KGB came down on dissidents. Dissent played a vital role in the fall of Communism and dissemination of dissent was the key to organised rebellion. Communication was chaotic, sporadic and unreliable, but it served its purpose. Change.

I have a little strapline on my blog, which is relevant here, I think:

The Establishment has lost control of the media. They know it, and frankly they are increasingly looking like an aetheist who wakes up one morning to find God sitting at the end of his bed.

Of all things, the Establishment exists to maintain the status quo. It does not like mavericks, oddballs, nutters or anybody who by design or accident, un-earths inconvenient truths.

And so it was that a seemingly vacuous puffball called Guido Fawkes, (whose early media incarnations were dire) blew the lid on one of the biggest stories of the decade, which has changed forever the way we think about MPs and our governance.

No wonder they are frit.

The press is generally speaking lazy and supine. They do what they are told and feed what they are fed. It’s a cosy little arrangement that suits everybody because its easier that way. That way, journos don’t have to Google or meet people or dig out facts.

Increasingly, people are becoming aware that they are being fed sh*t. They are becoming aware that you can trust no one. You certainly cannot trust a government that seeks to keep secret almost every action it takes, but that also seeks to intercept and expose every little thing we do.

And so you have blogs.

Oh, yes, all of us, sad gits to a man, in our bedrooms trying to find reasons not to look at porn. The tinfoil hat brigade. Well, maybe that’s me, and most of us, but out there there are people who are in the loop, people who cannot be silenced. People who don’t need money or power and who cannot be paid off.

Hope lies with the proles. Hope, if there is any left, lies with the bloggers, and they cannot be numbered, filed, impressed, shut down, fired or subpoenaed. They are beyond the pale and beyond the reach of tyranny.

I was just saying the other day what a danger the internet is to the powers elite and that they will be trying to regulate us as much as they can.

@Paul Halsall,

I’m beginning to think we should be adopting the 2nd Amendment.

I dont think swearing should be allowed or insulting the hard working folk of Norfolk. That is for England only of course, we can still call the Scotch tight fisted ba……….

And another thing… will never come under the regulation of the PCC or anyone else.

How do you know, Tom? All they have to do is write some fascistic little regulation, and it’s done. Easy peasy.

As a smoker, I never thought they’d ban smoking. Silly me. What a fool I was. If you were a smoker, you’d know all about these twisted little regulations which don’t quite make something illegal, but just very, very difficult. If you can make smoking next to impossible, why not blogging?

I’ve been posting stuff up on the Web for about 15 years, one way and another. But I’ve always known all along that it was just a little window of opportunity before that got slammed shut too. Don’t you know that? You, an MP and erstwhile minister in this totalitarian Labour government?

Stewart Cowan: The modern Christian, ladies and gentlemen – claims to oppose abortion, thinks we should make adultery a criminal offence and now wants us to be able to carry guns. Next he’ll be holing himself and his church up in a deserted farmhouse and threatening to commit mass suicide.

Frank – Funny, I never had you down as a smoker. You never mentioned it before… As to this blog being regulated, I can promise it won’t happen because I would press the “Delete this blog” button before any such legislation took effect.

I’m with frank, if they can demonize and regulate 12 million smokers what chance do a few hundred bloggers have?

“I would press the “Delete this blog” button before any such legislation took effect.”

So they win anyway?

They came for the bloggers, there was no one left to speak out.

Strike that last line it falls under Godwins law. Sorry everyone.

Why is it important that bloggers aren’t regulated but spontaneous peaceful protest against the Government is a sin ?

Some would suggest priorities are quite right here and frankly, are just self serving.

Should be:

“Some would suggest priorities aren’t quite right here and frankly, are just self serving.”

Since we are talking about Guido’s blog this morning, does the former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department for Transport, agree with me that Guido’s lead story on how Labour is massaging it’s voters by tarting up Railway Stations in 9 out of 10 Labour Constituencies a paradigm of the blatent bribery this government has sank to?

Tom by “independent regulator”, I presume you mean the Quangos and other NGO’s the Government pay to demand new laws to model our behaviour.

Since when have the Government consulted individuals on regulatory measures?
Again they get their Quangos/Fake charities to do this for them.

So what do you do Tom as an MP, a man of the people?
Do you join together with fellow bloggers and fight for your freedom against state tyranny?

‘I would press the “Delete this blog” button before any such legislation took effect’.

I think Frank is spot on. Its your party that would do it. i know the Baroness is a Tory but she is odd.

Just found out you are wrong on all this. More research before blogging please.

http://order-order.com/2009/11/18/pccs-buscombe-has-no-ambition-to-regulate-blogs/

I take it you didn’t read my update (above) before you wrote that comment, Johnny?

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured.

That is government; that is it’s justice; that is its morality. Probably.

Come to think of it, maybe some regulation is required to help prevent MPs from slandering folk.

Stewart Cowan: The modern Christian, ladies and gentlemen – claims to oppose abortion

Scripture makes it clear that the soul exists before the body, therefore abortion at any age is murder – a death sentence on someone who never even got the chance to do wrong.

…thinks we should make adultery a criminal offence

Your source? You just made it up, didn’t you?

…and now wants us to be able to carry guns.

Banning law-abiding citizens from owning guns is a modern phenomenon. Due to recent rounds of legislation, about the only civilians to carry guns are criminals.

Second Amendment to the Constitution:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Note: being necessary to the security of a free State

Our 1689 Bill of Rights states (acc. to Wikipedia):

Freedom for Protestants to bear arms for their own defence, as suitable to their class and as allowed by law.

It’s been clear for a while now, that the defence of law-abiding people is not a government priority. Then there’s the treason being enacted in dissolving our sovereignty. This is why I suggested we need a ‘Second Amendment’. See the state obey us when there is a well regulated Militia.

Next he’ll be holing himself and his church up in a deserted farmhouse and threatening to commit mass suicide.

We have a strange sense of humour in the west of Scotland, folks.

As to this blog being regulated, I can promise it won’t happen because I would press the “Delete this blog” button before any such legislation took effect.

That’s just like all those smokers who quit smoking so that the ban wouldn’t affect them when it came into force. Or, as Jonathan Campbell put it so succinctly: they win anyway.

Nothing to see here, apparently. No plans to regulate blogs. Well, okay, then….

That’s how this sort of legislation is introduced. First they get a few people to float the idea. Then they announce that this ‘consultation process’ is over, and introduce draconian regulations. They won’t actually ban blogging. Oh no. They’ll just make it so difficult that it’ll be next to impossible.

They might even take the public health route, and pull some experts out of a hat to say that blogging is an addiction, a form of compulsive behaviour. There’ll be blogging cessation programmes. And No Blogging signs. After all, Tom, admit it: you’re hooked on blogging. And then never mind the affects of active blogging on the bloggers themselves, but think about the effects passive blogging – the affect that reading blogs has on other people. Bloggers blow out all this poisonous stuff everywhere, and in next to no time it’s got up any number of people’s noses, causing heart attacks and so forth. I can almost see the statistics being rushed out a month or two or the blogging ban comes into force, showing an immediate 15% drop in CHD hospital admissions. Yes, the public health argument can be applied to just about anything. Way to go.

So I’d like to suggest that you start to gradually cut down on blogging, Tom, so that by the time blogging is banned, you’ll have completely given up blogging anyway. All it needs is a little self-control. You could start by leaving out those Dr Who blogs, and the lists of favourite movies. Once you’re down to one blog a day, then you can aim for one blog a week. Your wife will be glad. And your colleagues. And your constituents. And Gordon too. And when you’ve given up blogging completely, you can become an anti-blogger, and zealously help other bloggers, with less will-power than yourself, to give up too. Just imagine the smug self-satisfaction you’ll enjoy when you get Tom Watson to finally shut up.

I might even try the same myself. Though my habit is nowhere near as bad as yours. And while I’m giving up blogging, I’ll blog about it. But I suspect that think I lack the willpower.

What’s next – monitoring pub conversations on the train and in the pub? It is clear that there are too many politicians with not enough to keep them properly occupied, at least that with which they are competent to deal.

This explains their increasing desire to meddle in and muddle with every minute aspect of peoples’ lives.

Time for a cull.

@Frank Davis – you forgot the new ’scientific’ study that is being planned at the moment which will show that 70% of bloggers really want to give up, so they must be ‘encouraged’. They haven’t started the study yet, but the press releases are already written.

@Stewart Cowan
The right to bear arms for the security of a free state will NEVER be allowed by the government because it is preceisely those people that are the threat to a free state and those people the arms would have to be taken up against.

However, I have two problems with the right to bear arms, 1. Protestants only???, 2. Once you allow the argument for guns there is no limit you can logically stop at so a nuclear weapon, should I be able to build or buy one, would be my right.

Also, the weapons would be taken up against the police and the army and I don’t think the public is up to that challenge.

That’s strange, I don’t think I have ever thought Steart Cowan had the merest sliver of a point in any of his previous comments. But on the one that Tom decides to mock him on I actually have some sympathy with your position.

I would re rate MPs to the level of county councilors. They only work a 3 day week when they are there.

Cant wait for the blogging ban soundbites:
‘Blogging harms you and those around you’.
‘There is no safe level of blogging’
‘The evidence is overwhelming’

Blogs should be banned from all public media regardless of whether anyone wants to read the blog, allow the blog on their own internet connection, or choose to visit a ‘blogfree’ website instead.

‘Its for the chiiiiiiildren’.

If you like, I’ll show solidarity with your efforts to counter this ludicrous, interfering, autocratic, nanny state.

I’ll come and break up piles of asbestos in the garden next to your house. It’s an addiction of mine, and I often take a fluffy piece to break up in the pub. No scientist can absolutely guarantee that it’s unsafe for those exposed to it, so it’s diabolical that they try to prevent our simple pleasures.

@Paul,

I haven’t heard of any Americans citing the Second Amendment because they want to stockpile their own nukes!

Clearly, in our Utopia of diversity, we couldn’t just legalise arms for Protestants, but neither would you want to allow those who hate our country to be able to own guns – I think you know the kind of people I’m talking about: Islamists, Labour MPs, Guardian readers…

“Also, the weapons would be taken up against the police and the army and I don’t think the public is up to that challenge.”

Maybe; maybe not. What do you do when the police is a private army of the government? What happens if/when martial law is declared, for example, to mass inject everyone with untested, mercury-filled vaccines for a ‘flu that was developed in a government lab and released for the very purpose of creating the circumstances where martial law could be sold to the public?

I was always against guns, but now the only ones to have them are:

a) Criminals;
b) Police forces half-full of PC-indoctrinated, government-target-obsessed, jobsworths;
c) Armed Forces at the beck and call of a mad regime that wages wars for corporations to make £billions.

“I actually have some sympathy with your position.”

I’m growing on you, admit it! The reason I called my blog Real Street is because I no longer deny the truth. It’s cosy to believe and trust in the government and state institutions, but it’s very dangerous.

You are likely to agree with me more and more as time goes by and the state assumes more and more control and our way of life is trashed out of existence.

I should point out that the author of the previous comment believes that the Earth was created six thousand years ago, that 9/11 was faked by the US Government, that “black helicopters” are a weapon of the “One World Government”, that manking shared the earth with dinosaurs and that allowing the free ownership of guns in the UK would reduce gun crime.

Thought you should be aware.

It’s an addiction of mine, and I often take a fluffy piece to break up in the pub.

I’m glad you share my point of view. I’d be more than happy to set aside rooms for the many people like you who enjoy tearing up bits of asbestos while they’re chatting to their many friends. It’s not a habit I ever took up myself. Never saw anything in it, somehow. But it takes all sorts, and if that’s what you like doing, then good for you.

Tom Harris – king of the straw man.

Thought you should be aware.

Again, “black helicopters”?

What are you talking about? The only time I remember talking about them was to defend myself against a similar slur you made against me several months ago.

You might remember I posted a link to an article about two separate incidents in the USA where black helicopters were photographed operating.

That was news to me as well, but I’m prepared to look at evidence.

I’m not advocating “free ownership of guns in the UK” I am arguing that there are very good reasons why those of good standing should be allowed to own them.

@Tom

>I don’t feel the need to “sign up” to anything on which I had no input

It’s a draft which invites your input …

Matt, any “input” from me would have started by deleting everything and starting again, and I doubt if that would have been seen as constructive.

@Stewart – As a Christian, abortion is bad, but shooting people is ok ?

TOM:
“the free ownership of guns in the UK would reduce gun crime.”

There is actually evidence that gun ownership would reduce crime overall. But I think serious crime AND gun crime would necessarily rise if we had carte blanche gun ownership.

Stewart:
“I am arguing that there are very good reasons why those of good standing should be allowed to own them.”

A better argument is that there are no very good reasons why those of good standing should be banned from owning guns. When the first gun control laws were passed in the early 1900’s (or late 1800’s) a good enough reason to own a gun for a gentleman or lady was self-defence. For those MPs to have seen what has become of guns in the UK would have shocked them. There are arguments for and against guns, unfortunately I come down on the side of practicality and think there is too much potential harm for the free and widespread ownership of guns.

Oh, for goodness sake, Simon! I never said shooting people is ok. But I bet if someone was in your home strangling your wife, you’d wish you had a gun.

Should owning one, therefore, not be within your rights?

Look at it this way, you trust the government with guns, but they don’t trust you with one.

You trust the government to deal with crime and keep your neighbourhood safe, but they don’t.

You trust the government to protect our sovereignty, but they give it away.

You trust the government to deliver peace, but they go to war.

I don’t trust New Labour with guns, do you?

@Paul,

Your reasoning was probably sound a few years ago. The dangers we face from a treasonous government have changed the situation.

I believe that the Second Amendment was largely written to counter misrule by government, so hardly surprising it is under fierce attack in the US these days.

Guns kill people, no, people with guns kill people, but, if our government hadn’t got off the leash, how many lives could have been spared e.g. wars that shouldn’t have happened and with proper border control and immigration policy?

Here’s a prediction: when the people rise up after a few years of total and oppressive rule from Brussels and only have the proverbial pitchforks, then they’ll wish they had arms.

@Stewart, “Oh, for goodness sake, Simon! I never said shooting people is ok. But I bet if someone was in your home strangling your wife, you’d wish you had a gun.”

If shooting people is wrong, then having a gun in your hand while your wife is being attacked wont help.

So, Simon, you’d just let your wife be attacked? And wait for the police to arrive with the paperwork?

@Stewart, No, I wouldn’t stand by and let my (ex)wife be attacked, but you didn’t answer my original point.

I don’t see how you can reconcile Christian fundamentalism and gun ownership. To me, they are mutually exclusive.

So, Simon and Stewart – do you think blogs should be regulated?

@Simon,

The right to bear arms is for self-defence and defence of the nation. It’s not about holding up banks or gang warfare. Criminals have always thought they had the right to own guns.

@Tom,

Don’t change the subject.

@Tom – lol! not at all. There are few enough opportunities to debate with people of differing opinions to your own.

This is a fantastic forum to do just that.

And your leniency when your contributors occasionly stray off-topic is appreciated

@Stewart Cowan
“The right to bear arms is for self-defence and defence of the nation.”

Unfortunately that leads to an escalation from handguns to assault rifles to RPGs…, which ultimately leads to a nuclear/biological weapon.

While I am responsible enough to own a gun (or nuke) I seriously doubt you are. And even if you are Tom isn’t.

Either all weapons are legal or you draw an artificial line in what’s acceptable for self defence and as soon as you have drawn that line you have lost the argument.

Plus, with Scotland’s (in)famous drinking culture, do you not see a wild west style bunch of duels kicking off in pubs and clubs around the land? I’m coming round to your way of thinking – a culling of the terminally inebriated and violent sounds like it would be a sight to behold and leave a much nicer country behind, once the bodies have been removed.

Paul,

There are slippery slopes, but I don’t think this is one of them. The baddies already have weapons, but it’s never escalated into canons being wheeled around inner cities or tanks rumbling through gardens on their way to Mr Big’s house!

I think Tom would rather have a sonic screwdriver!