Hi all

Just a quick ‘un from me.
All posts after this one are from Nightjack’s original blog which I -one way or another- have been able to recover.
The pictures have mostly disappeared, so I’m in the process of cleaning-up.
If anyone notices any dead-links or anything else egregiously faulty, please let me know.

Ta,
SaltedSlug.

The Return Of Lucky C

Well, it’s been a hectic few days. At one point traffic touched 60,000 a day and the blog is getting links from the left and right of the blogosphere.  Wonder of wonders, I even got mentioned on a “Downfall” video made by ScaryMary about Iain Dale.

I can now die a happy man.

Everyone and his dog wants an interview but that isn’t going to happen even if they make my voice sound like Davros.  If I can get the book anywhere towards completion, I think there’s a chance I can get it published.

In other news, I got the magic phone call from H.R. today and by some very unexpected alchemy of guesswork and native wit, I have passed the OSPRE Part I. I honestly thought I had blown it very, very badly. Now I just have to get myself re-chipped for OSPRE Part II (The Assessed Role Plays) before Autumn.

I’m not planning any more updates any time soon. I’m also locking down comments again from Friday. After that I’m on e-mail if there’s anything on your mind that you want to share.

Take care, I’m off out to get another lottery ticket

Jack

Errrm Hello….Is This Thing On

Hello.

As you may konw, this blog was put up on bricks on 1st May 2009 for several reasons, not least of which was that I want to concentrate on writing a book. However, if you have anything on your mind, I am still reading any e-mails that come my way and I answer most of them. I am at thenightjack@hotmail.co.uk I’m also sure that I will be back at some point in the future.

This post was my immediate reaction, live blogged, to winning the Orwell Prize.

I am sitting here at home with a glass of fizz at one hand and sausage, chips and beans at the other. My representative at the Orwell Prize Ceremony has just rung me with the news that I have won. It has also just been twittered on Iain Dale’s Diary so it must be true.

I couldn’t go to the ceremony but I got a friend from way, way back to go in my stead. This is what I asked him to say

When I started the Night Jack blog back in February last year, I was standing on the shoulders of others. I heard about a Police blog called Inspector Gadget at work. I read it and I agreed with it. My comments on there started to get so long that one evening I sat down with my laptop and started a blog of my own.

As I wrote more posts I found that people were coming to my site to read and leave comments. Arguments started, some of them even came close to being reasoned debates. Then people in other blogs started linking to some of my posts and saying they were worth reading. As the readership headed over 1,000 a day, I started getting the occasional e-mail from the news media asking for an interview. I even got the obligatory Police blogging book offer. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a media cop.

If anyone had told me then that I was going to make the short list for the Orwell Prize I would have asked them to stop being silly. It is still a bit of a nosebleed experience finding myself in the company of so many other blogs that I admire and follow.

I believe that as bloggers we are mostly short levers in the political world but I would like to thank the Orwell Prize for noticing us and for choosing to do so in a year that has seen political blogging become a more important part of the wider political process.

Anyway, as you may know, I am an anonymous blogger and as I do not feel able to accept the prize openly and in person, I have decided to donate any winnings to the Police Dependents’ Trust. This is a charity that assists the families of colleagues who have died in the execution of their duties.

Enjoy your night. Thanks again. Jack Night.

If you are here for the first time, there’s quite a lot of stuff to read if you want to. People seem to like the following

A Survival Guide For Decent Folk

Only 24 Hours To Crack The Case Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

Darkness At The Edge Of Town

Living On The Ceiling

The Face Behind The Face

The Evil Poor

Gone In A Blur

The Weight

What Is A Prison For?

Notes From The Glue Factory

From Truncheons To Tasers

Pop Quiz

There’s lots more. Have fun. I’ll be back in a while when the book is finished.

This Is Radio Freedom………..sssssssssssssssssss

Not much changes in 70 years does it?

I was going to save this until the Orwell Prize results were out but I can’t see much point waiting.

The last 13 months or so of blogging have been a lot of fun. It is still fun but  I have now written  down everything that I think is worth me writing. In some areas I am conscious that I am starting to repeat myself.  If I keep on going I believe that I will end up spending the next year or so attack blogging the government rather than blogging about policing.  I don’t want to be all about that. There are plenty of other people doing that better already.

Now as far as I know, I haven’t been outed at work and nobody has asked me to wind my neck in. This is just how I feel about the blog and it is a feeling that has been growing for a while.  It’s time for me to do something else with my writing.

I don’t know if blogging changes anything. I do know that I am just a short lever in this world but it was worth a go on the off chance that there were people reading that could deploy longer levers. I’m probably going to write a book now. It won’t be another searing expose from the trenches, it will be a work of fiction. I don’t have a book deal, never wanted one. If you want to read a book on how it is buy Gadget, Bloggs or Copperfield.

Thanks for reading.

This blog will not self destruct in about a month or so. People have asked so I’ve left it up with comments locked down. Last word went to Big Fat Trucker. Take care all.

The e-mail still works. Keep in touch.

Bye

Jack Night

Manoeuvres In The Dark

I don’t often post a direct reply to a question in the comments. I kind of enjoy reading everybody else kicking it about BUT I read Hopi  Sen and he asked a straight question particularly about David Blunkett’s reforms to Policing.

“So here’s my question to Jack, genuinely meant. Since he knows that some of his colleagues dial it in, while most are dedicated and hardworking, that some constabularies are useless, and some senior officers worse than that, why wouldn’t a Home Sec look at this and come to the conclusion that their only viable option is to grab hold of the system and tell it what to do, even if that means wrenching the agenda away from the freedom of the frontline police to do what they will?” – Hopisen

The key phrase there Hopi is, I think,  your last four words. “do what they will.”  Was that really what was happening? Were an emancipated Police Service swanning around doing not much with all those extra resources? I don’t think we were.

In the wealth of statistics trotted out to show how great the 1997-2001 period had been in terms of Policing, the Home Office were asserting that recorded offences fell by 21% percent between 1997 and 2001.  They also claimed that all types of crime from had fallen significantly. Public satisfaction with the police was around 66% (and how we would wish to achieve that barely 9 years later). The government already had it’s apparent result from the increased spend, a substantial reduction in levels of crime . So if it already had the result it wanted, why then deploy “The Blunkett” to crowbar through reform?

My proposition is that during his time at the Home Office, David Blunkett was not about making policing better. He was about doing things that seemed likely to be popular with

a) A Treasury with concerns that 20% of the bill for policing was for pensions.

b) That part of his political constituency that had been crying out for years that the Police failed the socially disadvantaged, women and various minorities.

c) That part of the floating vote that likes to hear strong rhetoric on anti-social behaviour.

David Blunkett addressed his perceived problems in ways that were not well thought out.  His policy initiatives caused many of the problems in the relationship between Police and society that afflict us today. He is that most dangerous of things, a quick thinker and forceful advocate with no trace of self doubt.

Lets look at what David Blunkett did as Home Secretary between 2001 and 2004. What were the landmark Policing  policies of his tenure? What were his big ideas? (I shall borrow heavily from Wikipedia, The Grauniad and Hansard and I may revisit old ground – sorry readers)

In 2001, right at the start in the Observer, he set out the thinking behind his version of Police reform. He came at it from a standpoint of making sure that the Police started providing a better service in terms of those crimes that impacted on the poorest and most deprived areas of our society. He explicitly saw Police reform as an arm of social policy. His talismanic image throughout was the repeat victim living on the sink housing estate in Sheffield. Policing was somehow failing these victims. His themes were that Policing was not convicting enough people and that Policing was not detecting enough crime. Never mind that Policing was reducing the actual levels of crime. He got us arresting more people alright and detecting more crime but I don’t think that the repeat victim in Sheffield is any better off today as a result and the cost in terms of public confidence and organisational confidence / morale just hasn’t been worth it.  Anyway…..

Someone at the Treasury was not at all happy with the cost of Policing. We know this because early on in his career, David Blunkett mentioned the cost of policing quite a lot. He even fell out with the Police Fedaration about it when he decided to slash overtime, reform pensions, mess with working hours and introduce very large pay differentials all at the same time. It was too much too soon to force onto any working culture let alone the Police. He recanted at a Police Federation Conference when he realised that he had gone too far too fast but the damage was done in terms of trust between the Police rank and file and the Home Office. Too much, too soon. Consequences not properly thought out. Long term damage.

Exhbit NJ/01 Proposed reform to Police pay and conditions

His big idea  White Paper was called Policing a New Century, a Blueprint for Reform. Amidst the rhetoric on increasing detection and convicition rates were a few choice phrases ( I cherry pick freely)

“The challenge of modernisation is to bring about the kind of improvements which are
welcomed by everyone – except those more concerned about protecting their comfortable
ways of working.” – Who could he mean?

“The Government intends to deliver a modern police service in which managers can make
the best, most flexible use of staff, and terms and conditions meet the diverse needs of the
workforce. Police employment regulations are a bar to efficient and effective policing, and
unresponsive to changing needs and pressures. They constrain the ability of police officers
to have modern career patterns and fail to meet the aspirations of those now entering the
employment market. The Government has asked the PNB to explore and agree ways of reforming the pay system and the current system of regulations. It is hoped that agreement in principle will be reached by the end of 2001. The PNB has also been asked to explore and agree
ways of delivering a fair and more consistent approach to early retirement due to ill health.” – We read this as “The shafting stick is coming to get you” and it was.

“Driving up standards is at the heart of police reform. Some forces and BCUs achieve high
standards, and proven good practice should be used for the benefit of all communities.
To help the Police Service deliver a better and more consistent service to the public the
Government is taking specific steps. These include:
• strengthening and developing HMIC to challenge the worst performers and recognise the best
• a National Policing Plan to set out the Government’s priorities for policing, how they wish
to see them delivered and indicators by which performance will be measured; and
• a new three tiered-approach to good practice – regulations binding in law, codes of practice
to which chief officers will have to have regard, and guidance which will be advisory.” – Hello and  welcome to central targets and all the ungoodness that came with them

“There are, of course, particular concerns for women, members of ethnic minority communities,and other groups who are vulnerable to hate crime. Policing must deliver the same service and the same respect to the whole community. “ – Now hear this fringe voters, I’m going to make “The Man” work for you as well

I exhibit as NJ/02 Policing a New Century A Blueprint for Reform

April 2002 brought The National Crime Recording Standard. This was not about common practices of crime recording across forces. It said that on the tin but the label lied. This was about ensuring that every report of a crime was treated as a crime.

The noble aim was to ensure that the police stopped sweeping racist, homophobic, “bad on bad” and domestic violence crimes under the carpet. Did thatsort of thing  ever go on? Of course it did. I remember it well. Shouty, criminal damage and common assault type domestic violence used to be a “look the other way” crime within my service. You might arrest “him” for Breach of The Peace to take the heat out of the situation but you would seldom prosecute for any criminal offence. The ethos was to take the heat out of the situation then and there rather than for the police to try and impose any long term solution on the couple. (That being said one of my first ever arrests was an ABH domestic assault that went to court and got a conviction).

Was N.C.R.S. the answer to those problems? Of course not. It was the bluntest of blunt tools, a quick fix machine bureaucrat’s response. Lets create a one size fits all system and see what happens.  What happened was that the police got an unacceptably large bolus of criminal complaints that all had to be recorded as crimes and all had to be investigated. Goodbye increased Police numbers, hello more arrests and paperwork. The very best way to keep officers on the streets and away from red tape is to encourage us to use the power of arrest sparingly and to seek resolutions that do not involve recourse to the courts wherever possible. That’s where the paperwork is. Always has been. The case preparation that we had already was a massive chunk of that oft quoted 43% of time inside the station. How was adding more cases ever going to change that? There were never enough police to do justice to N.C.R.S., there never could be.

Matters of neighbour dispute, harsh words said, unwanted courtship, name calling, playground fights, petty acts of spitefulness, minor damage, marital arguments and revenge reportings that were never previously anywhere near the criminal justice system were now firmly within our remit as crimes.  A social policy aim was served but at the cost of soaking up an awful lot of resources in pushing the NCRS boulder up the hill. This was entirely forseeable but it did not seem to occur to the Home Office at the time.

Now if you ally NCRS  to inflexibly inspected, crude, centrally driven, quantity based performance targets in terms of arrests, detections and offenders brought to justice you get a Police service that is driven to do two things

1) Create a bureaucracy to ensure that no crime goes unrecorded, un-investigated or undetected. This must be done to pass the inspections. A whole audit trail industry has grown on the back of this central requirement.

2) Create Police Officers who lose sight of the the people involved and who see the world in terms of arrest and detection figures. A crime is just a crime. There is a process to be gone through. There is trouble in not following the process. Not reporting is not an option. Not arresting is not an option.  Criminalisation follows given sufficient evidence.

The public have not enjoyed this new equal opportunity arresting face of policing. Just look at the satisfaction figures.

I exhibit as NJ/03 the National Crime Recording Standard  and the systems that came with it.

I think that’s probably enough to be going on with for tonight. There are P.C.S.O.’s that don’t do much community supporting. There are his  policies on moving law enforcement down a more authoritarian track really quickly in relation to ID cards, freedom of expression, freedom to protest and intrusion into private lives.  There are his reforms to the sentencing system that have created a regularly expressed and growing dissonance between sentence given and sentence deserved to the point where the public look at some sentences and they see real injustice to victims.

I note with interest that the Home Office seems to be coming back to the idea that Police discretion is a good thing and central targets are not. It will be interesting to see how much else of his work survives reappraisal.

Just to re-iterate the point made above less crime is a good thing. More arrests and detections may not be a good thing.  The more arrests we have to make, the more incidents we have to record as crimes, the less we can be outside policing. Processing arrests is the big number in putting police off the streets and swallowing up resources in the back offices. Please Home Office, try and remember that next time.

Counting The Cracks In The Pavement

“Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.“

Tom Lehrer

How the hell did we get here with the likes of Copperfield, Bloggs and Gadget being joined weekly by more officers all telling tales of the ugly truths of current Criminal Justice?  How did we get into a situation where the Circuit Judges are quietly revolting and the Magistrates are as unhappy as unhappy can be with being pushed around by the government? Why has serious and violent crime been on the up every year since 1997? What kind of people have been setting the policies that have kicked such a big hole between the Police and the public?  Bluntly, who has had their hands on the wheel whilst public confidence in all arms of the Criminal Justice System has tanked. I have an over simplistic explanation. It’s time to name and shame.

I’m sitting here thinking that we have a Lord Chancellor who has presided as public confidence in the Criminal Justice System is dropping through the floor. Only 31% of us now feel any level of confidence in how our system deals with criminals. His reaction? Well Jack Straw has been busy doing the Hokey Cokey with Bill of Rights 1.1  and foisting a Sentencing Commission onto judges through the Coroner’s and Justice Bill.  I say foisting because the rather grandly named Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Juudges broke cover last week and said  “We do not consider these sentencing proposals to have any benefit. The proposals are not sought by the judiciary or any other criminal justice group. They are unnecessary, costly and unwelcome.” That strikes me as judge speak for “Stop.“

We started this government with a Lord Chancellor called Lord McKay of Clashfern. Editor of Halsbury’s Laws of England, by most accounts an outstanding lawyer and judge, leader of the Scots Bar, basically a bloody good lawyer and well respected. Fit to be top judge? Oh yes. Man of substance. A man guaranteed to put the interests of a strong independent judiciary above party politics.

A Distinguished and Experienced Lawyer

Cometh the blessed TonyBlair, cometh the old mate in the shape of Tony’s old boss Lord Irvine of Lairgs. He blows £650,000 of our money doing up his grace and favour pad including £59,000 on wallpaper. His career highlights involved marrying his best friends wife, introducing the Blairs and providing legal advice to the Labour Party throughout the 1980’s. A towering legal presence fit for the top judges spot? Possibly not but Tony liked him and he was keen on passing the Human Rights Act.

Tony’s Old Boss

As we slide gently down the ability curve, another mate of Tony’s got to wear the shiney golden robes. Step forward Lord Falconer of Thoroton. Lest you forget, he used to be Tony’s flat mate. Surely, you are thinking, he had more qualification than that? Well, he ran the Millenium Dome for a while, and he was Tony’s mate. At least he was some sort of lawyer and he made QC in 1991.

Tony’s Old Flatmate

That takes us back to the current incumbent Mr. John Whitaker Straw. Well he qualified as a barrister some years ago but since 1979, he has been a full time politician. That’s the man in charge of the Ministry of Justice. It shows.

Some Bloke Who Used To Be A Lawyer A Long Time Ago

That’s how it has been for noble office of Lord Chancellor these last few years.  Does the man at the top of the pile inspire any confidence in and of himself?  The results are in.

That other twin pillar of the Criminal Justice System, the Home Secretary, how has that noble office of state fared?

We start with the incumbent Michael Howard QC. Say what you like about him but he qualified as a QC on merit in 1982. As a Home Secretary, he authored the quote  “Let us be clear. Prison works. It ensures that we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists, and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice.” He was a Home Secretary who at least seemed to understand that the sentencing system needs to carry a little weight and that punishments need to enjoy general acceptance as fair. He appreciated the containment element of prison as well.

Reasonably Good At Law Stuff

Next up, running the Cops, the previously mentioned John Whitaker Straw. Jack brought us R.I.P.A. , sent Pinochet back to Chile and said of pre Operation Desert Storm Iraq “”we have faith in the integrity of the Iraqi judicial process and that you should have no concerns if you haven’t done anything wrong.” Thank’s Jack.

Perhaps Not Quite So Good At Law

All things must pass and in 2001, it was time for David Blunkett. Regular readers will know my opinions on his reign. A career politician with all the knowledge and experience of law enforcement that you would expect from the preparation of Sheffield City Council and teaching. Seldom has so much damage been done to the Police Service by one man. Along with beefing up RIPA and taking a swipe at jury trial, he started us down the road towards National Identity Cards. He was forced kicking and screaming from office when it became clear that he was somewhat involved in speeding through the immigration status of his mistress’s nanny, and giving the same mistress free train tickets on the public purse. I can do no better than quoting the top cop of the time Lord Stevens “If you are ever asked to meet with Blunkett, under no circumstances should you go alone…he is a bully and a liar.” Just what you want to hear about the man running the Police.

Gleeful Wrecker

Now David Blunkett was replaced by Charles Clarke. Another career politician with a side line in running a PR agency. He was another man wedded to identity cards with a regrettable ambition to have all communications data stored for law enforcement purposes. According to his successor, he left a Home Office unfit for purpose.

More Of The Same

Enter Dr. John Reid. The doctorate was in history. The doctoral thesis was a Marxist analysis of the slave trade. From there until parliament he was a full time political organiser, you can guess which party. He was surpisingly sound on building more prisons, closing up our porous borders and sorting out the Probation Service but he did not survive the departure of the blessed Tony and the accession of the Dear Leader.

60 Watts In A 20 Watt World

That brings us to Jacqueline Jill Smith, another academic but sans doctoral thesis this time.  You all know the score with Jacqui. Total expenses hog. Second home that isn’t. Lots of TVs and a lovely fireplace. The current Home Secretary has made a signed claim for her husband’s prOn and trousered the resultant cash. We don’t ask for much before she claims her expenses but at least she could have pretended to check them and weeded out the obviously bogus stuff. Maybe her husband could have done better by her for his our £40,000 a year. Either way she made a blatantly bogus claim and she is set on brazening it out.

Born To Wear Clown Shoes

I detect a downward slope. We start of with one of the greatest lawyers of his age and we end up with errrm Jack Straw. We start off with a man who understands the public expectations that punishments should fit crimes and we end up with a petty expenses fiddler who tries to pretend she hasn’t been caught red handed. Now I’m not claiming that there was ever any golden age of the Criminal Justice System. That would be foolish, but I am just pointing out that there is a case to be made that the people in the key jobs may not have been the best possible choices .

An Unsubtle Visual Reference

Essential Reading

Please, please, please go to this link and read every single post.

I promise it is all a very very good read. Instant classic.

It’s not me.

Electric Landlady

Another one of my Dad’s oft used little sayings is “if you want to beat a dog badly enough you can always find a stick“. So how much fun is it to be Jacqueline Jill Smith (silent M) at the moment? People seem to be casting around for a suitable stick for her and there do seem to be plenty of them coming very readily to hand.

The first rumblings came in December 2008 when it turned out that a series of letters sent to her local press that praised her to the high heavens were written by her husband. We pay him £40,000 a year to help her out with office and administration stuff as her parliamentary assistant. He must be very good to be worth all that money; very diligent, very thorough, reliable and loyal. No really, he must be.

Also in December 2008, Jacqui had to apologise to the House of Commons for publishing some dodgy knife crime statistics. Nobody would have known except for that Sir Michael Scholar standing up and saying that the knife crime statistics were potentially misleading and should not have been released. Lets not forget those traitors at the Public Accounts Committee releasing the damning e-mails proving that the statistics team had slapped health warnings all over the place. She must have been given poor advice. I’m sure a head or two will have rolled somewhere. We nearly got misled there. Would it have been the end of the world if we never found out? Who believes government crime statistics anyway? The e-trail was there though.

Forward to February 2008  when it turned out that she claimed her sisters spare room as her main residence because, she said, that’s where she lived most of the time. Oh dear, the neighbours didn’t agree. They know when she is at “home” because she leaves a vapour trail of cops and cars in her wake. Curtains twitch, people notice. Then there’s the duty records regarding security at her main residence and her second home. Unsurprisingly, it is big news for the local Police Force when the Home Secretary comes to stay. They have records. Some bright spark suggested that cell siting on her mobile phone would also give a very good clue as to where she was laying her hat on any particular night. There’s an explanation apparently. It’s all OK and legitimate, it just looks a bit funny.  Wouldn’t it be funny though if all of these records were matched together and it turned out that although she did nothing illegal, she had been doing something shamefull, something that left her open to ridicule….which brings her to

March 2009 when it turns out that her £40,000 a year assistant / husband watched some pay per view prOn on the cable TV at their second home whilst she was away working. Did I mention that he lives full time at the second home, with the children, all the time? That would have been merely a little uncomfortable in normal circumstances. Wife away a lot and comes home stressed to hell and back. Husband watches prOn when she is out and the kids are in bed. It’s not exactly out there on the extremes of human behaviour, you just wouldn’t want it on the front page of the papers. But there is where it is today. Hardly worth printing really except the rascally assistant / husband (who we pay £40,000 a year etc etc) cocked up rather badly and claimed his prOn back off the rest of us as her wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred expense. He even signed the claim forms to that effect.  Maybe it is necessary for her work that the office staff get to watch some of the products of the sex industry that Jacqui is so publicly against. Maybe it was recorded for research purposes. Probably not though, otherwise the Pete Townshend defence would have been trotted out already. Peskily, there is a bill and an account and a reference number and it turns out that the papers can get their hands on the sordid details and make my breakfast time both funnier and a little bit buttock clenching. I genuinely do feel sorry for her. She has been let down by her staff. He tried to put his pOrn on her tab without telling her. She is mitigating the offence by paying it back and that’s about all she can do.  There’s a trail.

It is no fun at all when you are subject to an investigation. You may even feel that you are subject to a witch hunt. Which of us would be entirely happy at the prospect of having our purchases, e-mails, internet access, home life and telephone records subject to the sort of scrutiny that Jacqui is undergoing at the moment? Jacqui, how many uncomfortable truths do you want to know about your nearest and dearest? Nothing necessarily criminal going on, just embarassing stuff, what will they think at work stuff, what will the neighbours think stuff, are they laughing about me behind my back stuff?  It hurts I bet. How does your husband really feel about the sexual objectification of women? Now you know. Bet you wish that you didn’t.  That’s the problem with keeping all the records of our private lives where they can become public. In the end, they might become public. Most folk don’t like the idea of that risk.

“Nothing to hide, nothing to worry about” really is a very, very stupid take on things, right up there with “No smoke without fire“. Nobody I know has nothing to hide. Nobody I know wants the government arranging for the blanket collection and analysis of the huge amounts of personal lifestyle data currently proposed. That’s nobody. Nobody at all.

I get it that G.C.H.Q. trawls. I get it that if I can make a strong intelligence case for it, I can apply for all sorts of telephony data. I know that I can sometimes get IP address data that is worth spit in the wind. I know that if it is for a proper purpose, I can already get all sorts of personal information for a criminal investigation. I understand that there are people in the Security Services that are itching, just itching to get their hands on a database of everyone’s browser history and e-mail headers. More data = more chance of catching bad people like terrorists they say. Give us all your data and we will sort the wolves from the sheep they say. How seductive it is to see the possibility of sleeper cells and the like emerging from the data but the chances are that they won’t. When you have the data, who will hold the line in deciding what else gets done with this it? How will you be able to resist the temptation of making use of what data you get to further other public policy or public health aims? How long will you retain the information for? Will you yield to the temptations of revenue raising? Will you use data to licence internet connections with a possibility of cutting access if the raw data says, in whatever terms, “irresponsible internet user.”  How many times can I go to the BNP or the NF websites to look at their new idiocies before Professional Standards come a knocking at my door looking to play the R for Racist card on me? Will they believe me? There are balances to be struck between rights to a private life and the needs to preserve law and order. There is a real debate that hasn’t been had in any meanigful way.

No real purpose was served by branding Jacqui’s husband as a bit pervy but he is so branded. Yet there is poor livid Jacqui, presumed innocent, let down by others and somewhat implicated by their collective data trail. I am hoping that being on the business end of how damaging unfettered lifestyle data collection can be in the “wrong” hands will cause the scales to drop from Jacqui’s eyes. I am hoping that she is going to stand up in Parliament and take a lead with redrawing the line where legitmate rights to investigate crime, corruption and disorder end and our private lives begin.  It cannot happen because she is now a victim, she would be seen as biased in a court somewhere under judicial review.  I think that she will continue wilfully trying to prop her proposals in the face of public discomfort and protest  all the way to the end of her 2,000 odd vote majority because that is all that is left for her to do.

Full Steam Ahead

It Was A Good Day

All relatively clear at work today. In fact it was an enjoyable day all round. I got home and after two days fisking Jack Straw’s vanity legislative proposal “The Rights and Responsibilities” green paper, I find that it has been kicked into the long grass from where it should not return. This has happened exactly two days after it was announced. Swift work.

It is also curry night and I have a decent bottle of white cooled in the fridge.

Definitely a really good day.

*Stop press, I have made the Shortlist for the Orwell Prize. I’m now off out to buy a lottery ticket.

But…but….my legacy…oh never mind

Moving The River

I suspect that many of my readers will already have come across this elsewhere. On the off chance that you haven’t or if you just want to see it again, here is a man doing some straight talking in a parliament. I am not politically inclined,  I trust politicians as far as they can throw me but this man’s truths are my truths.  It isn’t going to make the MSM but I suspect that it will go massively viral.  Pass it on, tell a friend.