Ruffians in Rushcliffe

I know I've been quiet recently. If the truth be told, the anger has subsided somewhat. The current government isn't great, but it's decidedly less obnoxious than the last one.

The Womble thrives on fury; if the author isn't angry then nothing gets written. Maybe the blog should cater for a wider range of moods, but it is what it is. It needs sources of resentment; perhaps some mean-spirited, bullying State-sponsored thugs who throw their weight around at the expense of innocent individuals who find it hard to defend themselves.

Step forward, Rushcliffe Borough Council. These bastards have just levied a £35 fine on a 76-year-old disabled bloke who parked his car in a disabled space.

Bet you're thinking "So he isn't registered disabled, then ?"

Actually he is.

Bet you're thinking "Ah, didn't display his disabled badge then ?"

Actually he did.

Bet you're thinking "Must have overstayed his time, then ?"

Actually he didn't.

Bet you're thinking "So why did they fine him ?"

Because...he displayed his disabled badge upside down. Yep, for the heinous offence of showing a disabled badge upside down Rushcliffe Borough Council fleece a pensioner to the tune of £35. No, really.

I did a Google, as I usually do, to see if I could find this story somewhere else, just for the purposes of verification. And I actually found that these guys have previous. They've done it before. They must be proud of the fact.

What is it about local councils that makes them think they're so bloody important that they can treat ordinary people like filth ?

I hope 76-year-old Peter Knott wins his appeal against those pathetic, pen-pushing, pedantic pettifoggers from Rushcliffe Borough Council. I hope when he gets into the hearing he ridicules them, humiliates them, shames them and generally takes them to the cleaners.

In fact, I hope he turns them upside down.

ConCensus Reached - Let's Bin It

Tremendous news from the Telegraph this morning that the government is planning to axe the Census. This colossal (and colossally expensive) exercise in State-sponsored snooping has long been a bug-bear among libertarians, so to have a government prepared to do away with it is really quite refreshing.

Francis Maude, doubtless with one eye on cost but also with one, I hope, on lowering the level of the State's intrusion into our lives, quite rightly says that any useful information gleaned from the Census is already in the government's possession in a myriad of other forms, and only has to be pulled together: "There is a load of data out there in loads of different places”, he says, and he ain't kidding. It would be better still if Mr Maude had said "and actually we don't care how many gay Afghan-born Buddhist undertakers there are in Littlehampton anyway" but I suppose that's just too much to hope for.

I can't help worrying that there may be some Data Protection-related legal challenges coming down the line if government agencies start passing personal data from one to the other but in many ways I hope there aren't. Abolition of the Census seems to me to be a common-sense solution to a long-standing problem, namely that successive governments have wasted millions of pounds asking thoroughly banal and stupid questions which they already knew the answer to or, more likely, didn't need to know the answer to in the first place.

A government-employed
busybody yesterday

It would also be nice to think that the government might have been driven to this by a growing reluctance among the public to tow the line and fill the forms in; in 2001 around 3 million people refused to play ball and another 400,000 extracted the Michael out of the "religion" question by informing the State that they belonged to the Jedi faith.

I have to say there's one thing that does disappoint, which is that they're still going to go ahead with the 2011 tree-killing extravaganza. This is, apparently, because it's "too late" to stop it. This is simply beyond my comprehension. How can it ever be "too late" to stop God knows how many thousand government-employed micro managing oiks taking their unhealthy interest in our private affairs a mite too far ?

Knocking the Census on the head will come as a blow to a few, not least of all the various genealogists and history anoraks who caused the website publishing the results from the 1911 Census to crash last year, but they're just going to have to live with it I'm afraid. And as for the QC / constitutional barrister who's crying and bleating about it on the basis that a population count had been carried out by the monarch or government for almost 1,000 years, he's peddling a bloody silly argument. Monarchs and governments have also been locking innocent people up for 1,000 years - it doesn't make it right.

So, hats off to the Coalition on this one - good call.

What To Do About The Census ?

I just caught the end of a story on the radio last night about the 2011 Census.

I must have been asleep when the list of questions was first published back in the autumn. Apparently this "questionnaire" runs to 32 pages, asks about your religion (only God knows what that's got to do with the government) your nationality, whether you're in a same-sex relationship, how your house is heated and, get this, the "address, the first name, last name, sex, date of birth, connection to the household or accommodation and usual address or country of usual residence if outside the UK" of every overnight visitor on census night on 27 March 2011.

The Conservatives, having (when in Opposition) talked a good game about the Census being too big and in need of being scaled back are now (in Government) muttering meekly about the expense having already been committed and it being too late to stop the juggernaut.

Which appears to leave us with a few decisions of our own to take. I'm really not sure if I can bring myself to claim to be a Jedi but there must be some pretty decent other potential answers out there.

I can't quite work out why there isn't more noise on the blogosphere about this; perhaps the talk of mass civil disobedience is still to come.

Incidentally, in these days when the government is supposed to be scaling back its Internet presence in order to cut costs, it's good to see, that more than half of the top 20 returns to a Google search for "Census 2011" reveals links to various (and different) government propaganda sites or web pages, including this one, excruciatingly named "My Census", which has the brass front to proclaim "This is your chance to make a difference." Give me strength.

UPDATE: Just found out that there are 54 bloody questions in this Census.
Dizzy's on the case.

The Right To Hurl Mindless Abuse

Here is a sign of how far political correctness and the abandonment of free speech has taken us.

As a southerner, it took me while to get the hang of rugby league when I moved to Yorkshire. At first I thought it was some kind of formation mugging. I did get to like it though, and I particularly grew to enjoy the banter of the supporters; coarse and ribald it might have been from time-to-time, but it was generally good-natured and less tribal than what you'd hear on the football terraces. It was, it seemed, a bastion of uninhibited and unpoliced joshing.

Not any more. Castleford have been fined £40,000 because a small group of their supporters threw "homophobic chants" at an openly gay opponent. £40,000's quite a lot of money in rugby; the game is not awash with millions as football is. Thus this will hurt Castleford. But it's not the fine itself that fills me with the most anger or fear. It's the fact that the club is somehow supposed to prevent it. According to Castleford:

"The DVD confirms that this was three faint, short bursts of chanting each of five seconds duration, over a period of four minutes. Two of the chants were drowned out by PA announcements and the third stopped very shortly after commencing as there was no support for it."

OK, so this means that club is supposed to have so many stewards stationed round its ground that it can identify, pretty much immediately, any short chant, song or shout that may offend our lords and masters. Finding where a chant comes from is not easy in a crowd. Preventing a repeat might be even harder, requiring stewarding of sufficent numbers to deal with the supposed perbetrators.

What we've therefore come to is an expectation that private companies such as rugby clubs are expected to do the State's dirty work for it by rooting out behaviour that it (the State) objects to but that few others give a monkey's about. The expense involved, not to mention the restrictions placed on the rights of the fans to vent their frustrations, speaks volumes for the extent to which the State now rules over ever aspect of our lives. You can't go to a rugby game and call someone a poof ?

It really is time the people hit back.

Meanwhile....

...one of the many outrageous legacies of 13 years of socialism is played out by the British legal system.

Garry Mann, arrested, tried and convicted within 48 hours of being found by Portuguese police in the vicinity of a riot by fans during the Euro 2004 football tournament, has had his extradition set.

The courts got this right the first time. Initially deported following a trial in which he was denied proper access to a lawyer and could not understand fully the proceedings, Mann won the first legal round when a British court ruled that he had been denied a fair trial.

Then in 2009 Mann was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant, alleging he was wanted in Portugal to serve a 2 year prison sentence - a sentence he'd been told five years previously by Portuguese authorities he wouldn't have to serve. Earlier this year the High Court decided it had no choice but to grant the extradition request. However, Lord Justice Moses stated in its judgment that he could not “leave this application without remarking upon the inability of this court to rectify what appears to be a serious injustice to Mr Mann”.

At the root of this is another example of legislation supposedly introduced to fight terrorism being used by draconian authorities to mop up relative small fry without the tiresome need to follow what most of us would consider due legal process. Mark my words: Garry Mann will not be the last thoroughly undeserved victim of Europe's fast- track extradition system.

At Last !

I haven't been inspired during the election campaign. I care about the outcome, mainly because the idea of another five years of Gordon Brown fills me with nothing short of despair. But no one has grabbed me and instilled enthusiasm in me.

If there was a Libertarian Party candidate in my area, I'd vote for them. I do think they're a bit wacky, and I haven't quite reconciled myself to the abolition of gun control or even the decriminisalisation of all drugs. But I believe the country needs a wholesale reversal of the assualt on liberty that 13 years of scoailism has inflicted upon us. And until now, I haven't seen anyone else who really "gets it". Until now, perhaps ?

But this story did get hold of me. Any party which launches an attack on the "Big Brother State" will do for me. I simply love the idea of a "Great Repeal Bill", in which the worst excesses of ZaNu Labour's nanny, intrusive, "thou shalt not", DNA-retaining, free-speech hating, ever-spying Stasi are rolled back in one go. No ID cards, no HIPs, more limited power of entry of the State into your house. What a truly fantastic thing. If it happens.

Cameron has, at times, touched on civil liberties and just suggested, from time-to-time, that he hates what Labour have done in government and is genuinley concerned by the extenstions in State power at the expense of the individual. But never, as far as I'm aware, has he articulated something as concrete as a single Act of Parliament as a means of starting the fightback.

The best thing about this is that it really should survive a hung parliament. The Liberals, if they are as good as their word (yeah, OK, point taken) really should back it to the hilt. It ought to be the easiest single bill for Cameron to push through. And that being the case, Dave shouldn't stop at HIPs and ID cards. He should carry on, and deal too with imprisonment without trial, restrictions on free speech, the outrageous smoking bans, the rise of the Food Police, the need to carry out CRB checks on all and sundry, child curfews, the increased likelihood of arrest if you take a photograph in the street, the right to run round town in one's underpants, the exponential rise in the number of CCTV cameras, attacks on peple trying to practice Christianity, right through to the practice of teachers to impound our children's Mars Bars.

That should be enough for him to be going on with.

This Is Pants

Have you ever felt the urge to run round Swanage in your underpants ? Well, if you ever do, don't tell the Police. Because if you do, you're likely to get a phone call.

Footballer loses a bet. Forfeit - parade in the local town looking stupid. Good for team spirit, drums up a bit of publicity for the club, gives a few people a harmless laugh; everyone's a winner. Unless or until, that is, your local Police Community Support Officer (them again) steps in.

PC Pretend Plod advised the club not to go ahead "...in case we have any complaints. Good natured events of this type have the potential of getting out of hand".

"Getting out of hand" ? A bloke running around in his underpants ? Are they having a laugh ? God Almighty.

I could go on about how utterly useless Police Community Support Officers are at preventing crime (which is why, presumably, their efforts are now seemingly turned to preventing non-crime). I could go on about how nice it would be if police resources were devoted to catching burglars, car thieves or corrupt MPs. But I won't. Instead I'll just lamant this one thing: an entirely lawful pursuit has effectively been declared illegal because it might "get out of hand".

I'd have loved it if Swanage Town and Herston's super-striker had taken these micro-managing morons on, and done the deed anyway. What would happen to anyone who dared to run round Swanage in their underpants ? Would they get arrested, and if so, what for ?

Anyone fancy putting it to the test ?

Hat-tip: Mr Eugenides

What A Good Idea !

I just wanted to wish this rather attractive young lady the very best of luck.

When the State starts pushing us around, we need innovative, imaginative people with a bit of mettle to take them on and test the true boundaries.

The concept of the local pub as a "Research Centre", together with its consequential circumnavigation of the scandalous smoking ban, is a simply wonderful thought. Many of us long for an excuse to pop down to our local. The idea that by having a drink and - for those who want one, a smoke - we might be contributing to the world's medical knowledge is simply delicious.

Sadly it looks as if Brown's henchmen are going to kick their jackboots into action and put a stop to it. The local council appear to be having a distinct sense-of-humour failure as do, doubtless for reasons of political expedience, the pub owners.

I cling on to the hope that Miss Fenton might actually have a case, but it looks unlikely. Almost inevitably, the Righteous will drop on her like a ton of Fascists, fine her to Kingdom Come and threaten her with closure, imprisonment and God knows what.

But it was a nice thought while it lasted, wasn't it ?

So THIS Is Why They Want To Criminalise Filming The Police

Komsomol Comes To Britain

I nearly missed this story from the weekend. It's another sign of New Labour's ardent belief in the standing and power of the State vis-a-vis the individual; that the State is everything, and the individual simply exists to serve it.

They want to introduce compulsory community service for anyone aged 19 or under. Compulsory community service. That is, enforced unpaid labour as directed by the State. Where I come from, that's called slavery.

Gordon Brown is quoted as saying: "It is my ambition to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community, and where community service will become a normal part of growing up in Britain."

"...a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community".

This from the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

If only Joseph Stalin were still alive today...he'd have been so proud.

Another Act of Suppression

Two stories came together today which demonstrate dramatically why one of them should make us profoundly concerned about the other.

In Sunderland, a coroner blamed "systematic failures" within the Royal Navy for the death of two young English sailors, killed when an oxygen generator exploded aboard HMS Tireless in March 2007.

A chemical oxygen 'candle' which they had just ignited had been so carelessly stored and mishandled during the previous months that it was contaminated with oil, effectively turning it into a powerful bomb which exploded on being lit. The inquest heard how a batch of almost 1,000 Self Contained Oxygen Generators (SCOGs) were taken out of a hazardous waste depot in Plymouth and returned to Royal Navy stocks a year before the accident. Paperwork was altered to classify them as safe to use.

The coroner condemned what he called a 'culture of complacency' within the Navy over the handling of SCOGs, which are used to generate oxygen on board submarines. In particular he criticised the MoD civil servant who made the decision to move hundreds of SCOGs out of the hazardous waste depot in order cut costs. Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth today offered his 'unreserved apologies' to the bereaved families for the 'avoidable failings, for which this department is responsible, which brought about this tragic incident.'

Meanwhile, the House of Commons was muling over its decision last night to allow inquests to be held in private and without a jury in "sensitive" circumstances, such as those where "national security" is at stake. A number of Labour MPs voted against the measure, and the government's majority was cut to 34.

Inquests into armed forces deaths are clearly a pain in the neck to the government, as are inquests into deaths which occur in prison or at the hands of the police. It simply defies belief that the government will not attempt to use this legislation at some point in order to sweep potentially damaging or embarrassing deaths under the carpet. This gives the State the ability to kill you and not even have a proper inquest. They can, essentially, mark their own homework. Or handywork.

Think just how much the government would have loved to have held the inquest of Jean Charles de Menezes in private, or the inquests into the deaths of Corporal Mark William Wright (where the coroner said that those responsible should "hang their heads in shame") or Fusilier Gordon Gentle, who died because he didn't have the right equipment. To name but three.

If we're responsible for someone's death we can expect to be held accountable. Does the same apply to the State ? Don't count on it; we may never know.

Jason McCartney Responds

Last week I penned (keyboarded ?) an open letter to my local prospective Conservative Party candidate about the destruction of our liberties by ZaNu Labour.

I look to the Conservatives for a coherent, planned and co-ordinated set of measures to restore habeas corpus and the right to trial by jury, protect free speech, prevent us being watched at every turn and basically ensure we are treated as if we lived in something other than a Communist dictatorship. I find it deeply depressing that no such vision appears to exist within Camp Dave, but I thought I'd write to the bloke who could be my next MP to see what he thinks.

Earlier this week I had a reply. What follows is a slightly abridged version of what he wrote. Initially I was going to leave the first paragraph out but then decided to include it because it was a nice touch and showed that he'd taken the trouble to visit the blog.

Gosh, where do I start. Firstly thanks for getting in touch but I do have to ask, politely of course, where have you been the past few years? Maybe following AFC Wimbledon's glorious charge up the non league pyramid - the Blue Square Premier beckons. Your boys have been getting some great crowds. I remember the old Dons winning 4-0 in an FA Cup tie at Huddersfield in the late 1990s, I think Efan Ekoku scored a couple. I guess we may well be united in hoping Huddersfield Town take all 3 points at the MK Dons tomorrow night?

Back to the last couple of years. I'll make an early party political point but one which I'm very proud of. It's been the Conservatives under successive Shadow Home Secretaries (Davis, Grieve and now Grayling) who have stood up for liberty and freedom for law abiding citizens.

We fought tooth and nail against Gordon Brown's draconian extension of 42 days detention which was more about trying to make the opposition appear to be soft on terrorism rather than tackling it effectively.

We've been opposing the most intrusive and potentially costly ID card system in the world. You and I will end up being fined for losing our cards or leaving them at home whilst the organised criminals and terrorists forge and steal false identities. Would you trust this government with your AFC Wimbledon membership number let alone your DNA or biometric data?

We welcome CCTV in strategically placed crime hot spots but not to the extent that there's now a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens in the UK. I studied Orwell's 1984 for O level back in 1984 and Big Brother is well and truly watching now and not the Channel 4 variety.

We have been opposing proposals for council paid snoopers to spy on our lifestyles, the rubbish in our wheelie bins and which school catchment area we're in. We have been gobsmacked by a governing party that lays out the red carpet for the premier of China allowing foreign security thugs to stifle lawful protest on our streets.

We have spoken up for freedom of speech whilst Labour strongmen throw out pensioners who dare to voice concerns at their party conference whilst the likes of Abu Hamza are left to incite violence and hatred.

Much of this occupies precious police time at a time when some crime, not all before Jacqui gets on the phone from her main home wherever that may be, is going up. Year on year in January, robberies involving knives or sharp instruments increased by 18%, domestic burglaries rose 4% and police-recorded drug offences increased by 9%. That's before we even talk about the 70 young people murdered violently on our streets last year.

Many surveys recently show that the number one issue for law abiding folk is the recession and it's consequences but our ability to prosper and enjoy what I hope will be a Conservative led recovery will only be viable if we have our individual freedoms.

I hope that answers some of your questions,

King regards,
Jason

So, what did I think ? Well firstly and most crucially we've since agreed that the 4-0 Wimbledon win simply didn't happen - he must be confusing us with somebody else.

I'm not sure it would be fair to describe it entirely as a typical politician's response; I think it's a little too human for that. But, and it's a big "but", there is a great deal of what I believe really hacks off the public about politicians in here; namely an attempt to rip the opposition apart and very little about what his own party would do. This is in part symptomatic of the politicians' tendency to think that the quickest route to a vote is a negative one but also, it seems to me, a sign of a wider malaise in the Conservative Party when it comes to fighting for our freedom.

It's easy to fight when you're in Opposition; you just stand up and say "We don't agree". It's when you're in government, when you've got to put what you believe in to practice, when BBC News interviews every State-employed, Nanny-loving do-gooder it can lay its hands on, and when you've actually got something to lose, that the real passion and drive is needed. That's when you're tested to the limit. Many fail at that point, and I worry that Dave will fail there too.

I challenged Jason McCartney to say what the Conservatives would do - how they would find and stay on the long and demanding road back to freedom ? But his reply lacks that vision. Reasonable, you might say, for someone who has never even been an MP ? Perhaps, but if the Conservatives cared anything like as much as we need them to care about restoring our liberties, I'd have expected them to furnish their candidates with some sort of plan, a roadmap, which they could use to reassure us. Something, anything, that says how they're planning to reverse these years of socialism.

He seems like a nice guy. I'm sure he'd try and help me out with a constituency problem. He may make a very good MP. But is he, and is his party, capable of delivering on what we need most; the greatest sustained period of personal liberation this country has ever seen ?

Sadly, I doubt it.

An Open Letter To A Conservative Candidate

The following is the text of a letter I have sent to Jason McCartney, propsective Conservative candidate for the Colne Valley, where the Womble currently resides. I strongly suspect it's a waste of time because I think the Conservative Party is finished as a fighting-for-freedom force, but I enjoyed writing it and you never know.

I fully confess to having nicked the idea following correspondence with the excellent Dick Puddlecote.

Dear Jason

I wonder if you can help me. I am trying to work out where (if anywhere) to place my support at the next General Election. As a resident of Netherton, I am a Colne Valley constituent.

Let me set out my stall. One matter, and one only, transcends all others in my opinion. It is not the economy. It is not the National Health Service, education or, for that matter, this government’s ludicrous obsession with poking its nose into the affairs of other countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. It is the issue that describes our very existence; that of individual freedom.

The past eleven years have seen the most systematic and extensive advance of the power of the State this country has ever seen. We have witnessed the extension of imprisonment without trial - the government would love to have extended the allowable period to 42 days, and was only thwarted by the House of Lords; the fundamental right of trial by jury has been taken away in some cases, and such right will doubtless be further corroded should this government remain in office; we are faced with a government seemingly hell bent on implementing identity cards for every citizen and desperately fighting to retain the DNA details of entirely innocent people; restrictions on freedom of expression (witness the nurse suspended from her job for offering to pray for a patient and people being denied entry to the UK on the grounds of their beliefs) are being imposed at every opportunity; an Opposition spokesman arrested for speaking the truth; a stated desire to be able to track every mobile phone call, every email, every internet enquiry; dark threats to curb the increasingly troublesome blogosphere; growing restrictions on the right of individuals to take photographs in public places.

Since 1997 the balance between State and individual has changed fundamentally. We are being watched as never before: there are four million CCTV cameras in this country - one couple even suffered the indignity of having one installed in their own bedroom; ten people who walked up Whitehall in face masks were stopped by the Police; innocent children in rough areas are rounded up by the Police and sent home, or into the possession of Social Services. Meanwhile we are also being micro-managed as never before: quite apart from the seemingly relentless march of Health and Safety nonsense which threatens to denude us all of almost any personal responsibility whatsoever, State interference extends its tentacles almost daily, from Food Police in Herefordshire to councils who ban couples fostering children because the husband smacked a child once, the State is consistently imposing its nit-picking, draconian, authoritarian values on a nation that was once, but is no longer free.

At the local level the power of the Police is affecting innocent people in frightening ways. Only this week we read a story of a Huddersfield man whose garage was broken into – and inadequately repaired – by the Police, who, entirely in error, suspected him of growing cannabis, a conclusion they had reached because they had been monitoring the distribution of heat within his property from a Police helicopter. No apology was forthcoming, and he was forced to journey to the Police Station himself in order to do so much as to enforce a process of compensation to pay for the repair.

I consider myself, by nature, to be sympathetic to the Conservative cause. I am a staunch free-marketeer. I am a patriot (all be it one who believes that England should assert her sovereignty and free herself from the manacles of both the United Kingdom and the EU), I despise socialism and all it stands for. But now, of all times, I look to the Conservatives and I search for an appetite to dismantle the Statist structures that Blair and Brown have installed since 1997; and I do not see it.

To even begin reversing the juggernaut of the expansion of State power will take a super-human effort. Vested interests are everywhere. All manner of government departments benefit from the increasing power and influence of the State. The Police, local councils and Social Services groups can all boast increased staffing and budgets as a result of New Labour’s assault on freedom. The Health and Safety Executive, most solicitors and education services have recession-beating reasons to take on more staff. Anyone who tries to roll back the frontiers of the State has a colossal battle on their hands. It cannot be done in a day, a year or even a decade. But it can be started, by any government which has the will to do it and the belief that it must be done.

When, in the mid-seventies, Margaret Thatcher took control of the Conservative Party, she saw an economy in ruins through decades of increasing State intervention. For years before gaining office, she surrounded herself with those whom she trusted, plotting and planning what had to be done. Together they researched, debated and prepared Britain’s march from economic tyranny; perhaps the greatest Escape Committee in peacetime history. Now we look once more to the Conservatives to fight for our freedom. The question I find myself asking is: have they got what it takes ?

David Davies raised the standard in the wake of the government’s attempts to impose 42 days interment without trial upon the British people; few Conservatives rallied to his cause. I remain highly sceptical that the libertarian elements within his party have sufficient numbers, influence or stomach to win the gargantuan battle that lies ahead; but I would vote for someone who was, at least willing to try, not least of all because there is so little on offer by way of alternative.

So, on which side of the debate do you fall ? Do you share my concern that our basic freedoms are threatened as never before ? And, if you do, do you have the passion to fight for them with every ounce of energy ? Or, do you believe that there is, in fact little or nothing to worry about, or that the State is right in its endless advance ?

Yours sincerely,


xxxxx xxxxx

I'll post the reply on here (assuming I get one and he gives me permission to do so),

Another Lion-Feeding Frenzy

Another day, another story about State-sponsored Christian-bashing.

I saw this one in the Daily Mail when I was at the gym and I didn't believe it. Partly because it was in the Daily Mail, and partly because I just didn't want to believe that my country has come to this. When I got home I did a Google and I saw that it's quite widely covered, so now I'm thinking it must be true. After all, the BBC has it, and if even they've got an anti-Christian story then there must be something in it.

So, the facts as they appear to be:
....a five-year old girl tells her classmate that if you don't believe in God then you're going to Hell;
....the girl is admonished by a teacher and is told that it's "not OK to say that, but it is OK to discuss what you believe with others" (what on earth is a five-year-old supposed to make of that ?);
....having first comforted her highly upset daughter, the mother, who works at the school, sends a private email to a group of friends describing what had happened and asking for her friends' prayers;
....she is then hauled before the headteacher, to be told that she was to be placed under investigation in suspicion of professional misconduct because she had been "making allegations about the school and staff".

........................""You can't write an email like that, love"

Hells' bells, where to start ?

Well, let's try the child. She's five. She's reciting the stuff her mum and dad have told her. Things are black-and-white at that age anyway; kids call it as they see it, and good on 'em. Apparently the child she was talking to was didn't like it, and it was her mother who complained.

It's probably a good job I'm not a headteacher. Because if any parent came into my office complaining that their offspring had been upset by another child telling them they might go to Hell, they'd get pretty short shrift from me. Something along the lines of:

"Your child will hear far worse than that before they've finished school. I will not wrap kids up in cotton wool and isolate them from hearing completely legitimate theological views. I will not deny them access to free debate, and I will not admonish a five-year-old pupil for expressing a religious opinion. If you don't like it, you can bloody well take your spoilt little brat somewhere else. Now stop wasting my time, I've got hundreds of kids to teach how to read, write and add up in the face of relentless opposition from the government and the education establishment".

I can well remember giving my best friend at primary school the hump by telling him that God didn't exist. The resulting bottom-lip display and cold shoulder treatment lasted around two hours. After that we were mates again. Kids are far more resillient than many give them credit for. They give and receive different points of view all the time. Or at least, they should do. By putting them in the naughty corner for expressing opinion we deny them the ability to learn how to debate and we extend the ever-expanding notion that they have an inalienable right not to be offended.

Secondly, the mother. So, one of her so-called friends leaked her private email and grassed her up to the headteacher. Some bloody friend. But for the headteacher to call her into the office and put her on some sort of charge is nothing short of outrageous. Where's this going to end ? If I have a bad day at work and a row with the boss I might go home and tell Mrs Womble On Tour all about it. Am I to assume that if details of that private conversation get back to my workplace then my boss can discipline me ? Or can that only happen if I'm a Christian and I ask for someone's prayers ? Either way, I should be allowed to express a point of view in a private email without my boss poking his nose in.

Just for completeness, we'll briefly apply the Test of Islam. If a Muslim child says, for instance, that he would sooner befriend a fellow-Muslim than a non-beleiver, as encouraged by the Koran, would that child be similarly admonished ? No need to answer that.

What happens to Jennie Cain remains to be seen. But let me tell you this. This comes hot on the heels of Geert Wilders being kicked out of our country, the Caroline Pertrie case and a host of others in which free expression, religious or otherwise, is being treated as a crime by the State. One day something's going to snap. We are a quiet, tolerant nation. We have let our government walk all over us for a long time, first diminshing and more latterly destroying our freedoms. But it will not go on forever. At some point, there will be a backlash. Something, or some cause, will trigger a point of no return. I don't know when it will happen, but it will. One day that State will take on one free-speaker too many. And then there will be hell to pay.

I just hope I'm still around to see it.

Inncocent, And Sentened For Life

It would be easy for me to go into full-scale rant mode here, but as it's a story about children I'll try to temper my anger.

In 2004 Nicky and Mark Webster were forced to hand their three children over for adoption because a court had concluded that they had intentionally hurt one of them. Doctors diagnosed leg fractures as being the result of child abuse.

In 2006, with Nicky pregnant again, they fled to Ireland to protect their unborn child from the UK authorities, but vowed to continue the fight to clear their names. Their fourth child, Brandon, was allowed to stay with his parents but yesterday lost their legal battle to get their other three children back. All well and good, you might say, if they'd been found guilty of child abuse. Except they haven't.

In 2007 a court decided that the injuries previously attributed to child abuse may have been caused by scurvy. This was believed to have been brought about by the family GP's advice that the child should be fed on soya milk, which is lacking in vitamin C. Thus we have a couple who are, in the eyes of the law and the new medical evidence, entirely innocent of any crime, but who cannot win their children back.

The reason is that adoption is seen as final. Once an order is granted, it cannot be revoked. You can see the reasoning behind this, I guess. Children need stability and certainty, and do not deserve to have the threat of claim and counter-claim hanging over them once the adoption orders have been granted.

But there is another principle at stake here, and it concerns one of punishment by the State. To me any sentence or penalty imposed by the State should be reversible. If I am fined for an offence which I am later found not to have committed I should be reimbursed. If I am incarcerated unjustly I cannot have my time given back to me but I should at least be released once my innocence is proven. But for the Websters, who will never see their kids again, there is no release; their sentence is life-long, and more painful that most of us can imagine. As it is for their children, forever denied access to their biological parents, and for little Brandon, who will never see his siblings.

This is fundamentally wrong. The State has no right to treat parents in this way. Adoption may be a complex, heart-rendering business, and it may be a legal minefield already. But something, somewhere has to change to give wrongly-accused parents the right to get their children back.

Full story here.

Surveying The Damage

The House of Lords is a strange organisation. By every judgement it ought not to work, but it seems to.

As a revising chamber it has, from time-to-time in recent years, come to our rescue by refusing to accept the very worst of the government’s dreadful measures, not least of all on 42 days. And on Friday the Lords Constitution Committee published a damning report on the extent to which the government is spying on us.

The facts, and the scale of the problem, are quite staggering. In addition to the government’s insane obsession with a national identity card scheme, we are faced with:
...refusal of the Home Secretary to comply with the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that innocent people should have their details removed from the massive DNA database, which already holds information on 7% of us;
...the government’s desire to track everyone’s emails, phone calls, text messages and internet usage;
...the ridiculous use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which has seen councils employ kids to try and catch people dropping litter and tailing parents in cars because they think they might be sending kids to schools in the wrong catchment area;
...the fact that the number of CCTV cameras in use is now thought to be, wait for it, 4 million.

Lord Goodlad, chairman of the Committee concludes in ringing tones: “There can be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about us being recorded and pored over by the state.”

The report is unequivocal in its call for the government to comply with the European Court’s ruling, says RIPA should not be employed for the trivial purposes used by councils at present and makes over 50 recommendations in all, mostly aimed at curbing the burgeoning powers of a micro-managing, power-crazed government. It is one of the best documents to have come out of Parliament for some time. Even so, it does little more than try to prevent the rampaging fire spreading any further.

The government’s surveillance bandwagon is completely out of control. The fact that they can even consider tracking every email I write is in itself a shocking indictment of how far things have come, and a sure sign of the contempt with which Jacqui Smith and her henchmen in the Home Office have for our freedom and our privacy. Regrettably, no House of Lords report is going to change that.

What is needed is nothing short of a revolution. To stop, never mind to reverse the shattering juggernaut will take a monumental effort and a revolution in thinking. It has long been clear that this government is capable of neither even if it cared about the issue. I regret to say that right now the Conservatives scarcely look much better. It is one thing to be opportunistic, and hence make the right noises, in opposition; it is quite another to effect fundamental change once in government. The vested interests in surveillance are huge – almost every government department benefits in some way at the expense of the individual. We are desperate for someone to champion our cause; who will it be ?

House of Lords report is here.

Oh. My. God.

'Ello, 'ello, 'ello, what's going into the bin 'ere, then ?

Today is 12th January. I've just checked. Because I've seen yet another of those stories which, if you saw it on 1st April, you'd be convinced it was a joke.

If you live in Herefordshire or Worcestershire, don't open your doors; the Food Police are in town.

Seriously, the government is employing people to knock on doors and issue "advice" on food wastage and hand out recipes. Apparently people are "confused", and don't know how to interpret "best before", "use by" and "sell by" dates (at Womble On Tour Towers we ignore them) and we all need advice on composting and using leftovers.

This is a pilot operation, starting with eight officers aiming at 24,500 households over seven weeks of door-to-door nannying at a cost of £30,000. Every house they visit will, at the very least, be left with a leaflet. Whoever thought of the campaign name "Love Food Hate Waste" does at least have a sense of humour. If it's deemed to be a success (how the hell do you measure ?) it could be rolled out nationwide.

So, not content with putting microchips on our bins, the government wants to start examining our waste before we even throw it out. God Almighty.

And how long before these officers are added to the already frighteningly long list of people who have power of entry into your home, the right to inspect it and the power to issue on-the-spot fines ? £60 fine for throwing out a jar of marmite ? Don't laugh, it'll be happening before you know it.

In my most naive, straw-clutching moments, I cling to the idea that this shows that the government is starting to run out of ideas about how to spend our money; that this, surely, demonstrates the kind of desperation which will shortly end with them saying "No, that's it, we just can't think of anything else". Then realism kicks back in, and I know in my heart-of-hearts that there another few thousand hare-brained schemes where this one came from.

Is there anyone left (apart from me) who isn't now employed by the State with the express intention of checking up on everyone else ?

How Is This Legal ?

Via Old Holburn and Leg Iron comes news of how the government is allowing the police to log onto people’s computers and search them.

This means that the police have licence to read YOUR emails, your instant messages, your private documents (possibly containing passwords, account details etc). Without a warrant. Alternatively, they could install a “key-logging” device, so that they know what you’re typing. At any time. What’s more, this power is not just limited to the police in this country. It also applies to the authorities in any other EU country.

The safeguards, such that they are, appear to include an assertion that these measures can only be instigated in order to detect a “serious” crime, defined as one that carries a jail sentence of three years or more. And we all know what happens to "safeguards". They get changed, ignored, or conveniently forgotten. And that's only if they're any good in the first place, which these are not.

You know what stinks most of all about this particularly smelly destruction of our liberties ? It’s not that it represents a further dismantling of our freedoms and our rights to privacy in our own affairs, important though those are. It’s the way it’s being done.

You would think, would you not, that for the police to have this sort of power, they must have had it granted after full Parliamentary scrutiny and debate. And you would think that if Parliament had not given the police such authority, then acts such as hacking into our personal computers would be illegal. But no, not a bit of it. This has come about as a result of an EU directive agreed by the council of Ministers, which is as close to unaccountable as makes no difference. Under the Parliamentary system built up in the UK over hundreds of years, if politicians passed laws the public didn’t like, the public could get rid of them. What can we do if we don’t like this.? Correct; absolutely sweet nothing.

Deflation Must Have Started Already...

Most will doubtless recall that about a month ago the government announced that it would ban Happy Hours and cheap drinks promotions.

I bet they don't ban this one.

Hat-tip: Old Holburn

State Commnunication Update

Just a brief update on the two attempts the Womble has made recently to "engage" with our friends who are supposedly there to help us in some way:

...from my MP, to whom I wrote a month ago asking whether she was going to respect the privacy of alleged members of the BNP whose names had been leaked onto the Internet, I have received.......not a bloody word;
...from the Headteacher of my children's school, to whom I wrote nearly two weeks ago complaining about his decision to close the school just because it had been snowing 10 miles away, I have received.......not a bloody word.

Isn't it great to know that they care so much ?

And having thought about it I've decided that I will write again to my MP, this time about my experience with the NHS yesterday. I might as well help her to justify the £153,034 she's claiming in expenses. After all, ignoring constituents' letters is hard work.