Poole panned

Great news out of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal which has just found against Poole Council in the Paton case.

This was that business where the local Council used the full extent of anti-terrorist legislation in The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on a woman who wante to get her child into a decent Primary School.

According to Liberty,

Today the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled unlawful Poole Borough
Council’s surveillance of mum-of-three Jenny Paton and her family.
The Council had subjected the whole family, including the children, to surveillance
for three weeks in 2008. It claimed that it was acting under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), in order to discover whether the family lived
within the catchment area where the children went to school. But the IPT ruled
that was not a proper purpose and nor was it necessary to use the surveillance
powers. Today’s landmark ruling is the first time these intrusive powers –
controversially granted to local authorities under RIPA – have been challenged
at an open hearing before the IPT.

All good stuff. Now how many other councils have been misusing these powers?

A trenchant defence of Liberty

Excellent piece by Jan Morris in yesterday's Guardian. Using the David Davis carry on as a springboard she comes to the defence of our Liberties with aplomb,

Anyone can see that in Britain, 2008, individuality is being suppressed, so that year by year, generation by generation, the people are being bullied or brainwashed into docile conformity. What is more ominous is that so many want to be docile. They want to be supervised, cosseted, homogenised, obedient....

The so-called war on terror is of course the supposed excuse for this appalling violation of all our privacies, together with the ominous rise of the secret intelligence agencies. The public has been gulled into acceptance of the supervisory state, with all its paraphernalia of surveillance and identity cards, DNA databases, armed police and arbitrary search, by the mantra: "If you don't do anything wrong, why worry?"

Brainwashed by a tabloid press of brilliantly insidious techniques, then, numbed by the relentless mediocrity of television, half the people have willingly forfeited the right to make up their own minds, and mutely accept indoctrination. "He's not afraid of anything," I overheard one young mother say to another, watching her three-year-old clambering over an obstacle, but the reply came straight from the state: "Oh that's dangerous, you must never allow him to think like that."

Even the middle classes, once the very backbone of robust individualism, are not immune to the contagion. They all think twice about expressing their views in case they say something that is politically incorrect. They preposterously mollycoddle their children, not only because they have been so repeatedly warned of life's unspeakable dangers but also because they wonder what the neighbours will think. They are officially encouraged to snoop and sneak on their fellow citizens, so snoop and sneak they do.

And when you are afraid to say what you think, it is a step nearer to the most dreadful condition of all: being afraid of what to think. A few more generations of nagging and surveillance and we shall have forgotten what true freedom is. Young people will have foregone the excitements of risk, academics will temper all thought with caution, and the great public will accept without demur all restrictions and requirements of the state. Ours will be a people moulded to docility, perfect fodder for ideologues....

Tribalism is what every despotism hopes to impose on its people. It is the will of the party, which Davis has apparently flouted. It is the will of the majority, which is one reason why Gordon Brown feels no need to put up a candidate at Haltemprice and Howden. Today the whistleblowers are our guardians of the spirit, and I like to think that Davis is one of them - a true successor of the grand old knight of Castile, but alas, tilting at windmills that are all too real.

So let us all climb aboard our donkeys. It might be the only thing that saves us.

Go on, read the whole thing.

Egotism and the death of democracy

Sometimes when reading the thoughts of those over here I am well and truly shocked,

Now that the treaty has been agreed upon by the politicians, the question is how to take the process forward and get it actually ratified and put into force. Many argue that the way forward is to have referendums in the Member States to let the people decide on whether they approve the treaty or not.

I think that is a bad idea. The truth is that people have no clue what they are voting on. It is safe to say that close to a 100% of those who would be voting have not, and will not, even read the treaty. The vote would thus not be based on substance but on ideological views far removed from the reality of what is happening. Why would you want people to decide on something they don't know anything about?

There is a good answer to that question. A referendum might be the only way to ensure some sort of a check on the powers of the national and EU governments. Absent a referendum, the politicians can decide on what is good for us and force us to accept it. What we get is a chance to kick them out in a few years at election time if we think they did a bad job which might not be sufficient.

The problem is, as I noted, that we are not competent to vote on it. I for one still haven't studied more than little bits of the darn thing, and don't feel like I could vote yes or no. Given these circumstances, I trust the people I have voted for to make this decision for me. Whether I made the right decision in voting for them, time will tell.

There is of course a simple solution to this bloggers dilemma. Do not vote. However to state that because one does not feel competent to vote thus nobody should do so is egotism on stilts. It is akin to listening to a plutocrat calling for higher taxes for everybody. Nobody stops said plutocrat from putting a greater proportion of their cash into the Treasury, but to call for all to be penalised is arrogance.

My own favourite version of this mindset is the example of Tim Wetherspoon who lobbied for ages to introduce the smoking ban in pubs. I remember hearing him going on about on the Today programme and when it was pointed out that as the owner of well over 100 pubs he could introduce a ban himself he replied along the lines of, "If I do that unilaterally, then I will lose custom to those who do not introduce a similar ban. That is why the ban has to be across the board". Admittedly they did introduce the ban early, but only after the legilstion was already on its way.

It is all part of the same selfish, self important attitude that so disfigures our society. That which I am must necessarily be right and others must be forced to do as I do.

Not in a pluralistic democratic society sunshine, but there again, we are not in a pluralistic democratic society.