No sense in extraditing Gary McKinnon
Today Gary McKinnon failed in his attempt to avoid extradition to the US where he could face a sentence of up to 60 years.
Last week Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay resigned after his party voted for McKinnon to be extradited. One of just 10 Labour MPs to vote against the Government, MacKinlay said: “I was really frustrated by the vote last week. Many of my colleagues had expressed their sympathy for Gary McKinnon. But when the crunch came, they just went tribal and followed the diktats of the party.”
A Glasgow-born systems administration, in 2001 and 2002 McKinnon hacked into 97 US military and NASA computers, which the American authorities claim resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage, and left 300 computers unusable.
But McKinnon hacked the US computers because he was looking for evidence of UFOs. As well as being a self-confessed “nerd”, McKinnon has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychology at Cambridge University has described McKinnon’s condition as making him incapable of understanding normal social behaviour, helping to explain why he committed his crime.
That the Government voted to extradite McKinnon is not only depressing in itself: it illustrates fundamental problems with the present administration. After all, why on earth are our esteemed leaders in favour of extradition?
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Allowing the right to die
There’s more than a certain irony in the law lords finally doing the decent thing and ruling in favour of Debbie Purdy’s right to know under what circumstances her husband might be prosecuted were he to accompany her to Dignitas in Switzerland to die.
Less than a month ago the House of Lords rejected the latest attempt to change the law, to allow relatives to accompany a person with terminal illness to places like Dignitas without the threat of prosecution, by a majority of 53.
All this though is still skirting around the issue.
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How important is ‘civility’ in society?
Last week I looked at the Conservative crusade against the ‘broken society’, and pondered why that campaign had found resonance where John Major’s ‘back to basics’ had failed. Responding to that post, Joe Hallgarten linked to this report from the Young Foundation which explores whether a renaissance of civility could help us shrug off this societal gloom.
Earlier, I discussed the Rowntree Foundation’s publication on ‘social evils‘, which reported that the public believed the modern age had made us more selfish & individualistic, less honest & compassionate.
As with the report on social evils, defining what does and does not constitute ‘civility’ is difficult because we don’t all interpret each other’s behaviours in the same way. Likewise, there’s no research method available which could tell us whether we’re being more or less civil to each other; the only thing we can measure is whether people feel they experience civility, and even then you’re relying on the subjectivity of human experience. It’s simply impossible to measure this kind of thing objectively.
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You are being watched
Surveillance, it seems to me, comes in two categories differentiated by purpose; that is, all surveillance efforts will fulfill one, or both in some mixture, of two purposes. The first is the easiest, and the most etymologically obvious: surveillance is investigative.
A typical example of such surveillance work would be a phone tap. You initiate a phone tap to find out things you didn’t know before; it is an investigative tool. But it is worth noting that this investigative function for surveillance is effective precisely in so far as it is covert; a subject aware of observation behaves differently.
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What the coverage on crime statistics doesn’t say
contribution by Gabe Trodd
I’d like to offer a different take on today’s crime statistics, which: have been boiled down and put on the front page of the Guardian and has been securing significant coverage on BBC News all days. They will inevitably be subject to the patronising and cynical ‘Broken Britain’ drones and hand-wringing of David Cameron, George Osbourn and Chris Grayling.
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Gang culture, territory & fear
Nothing brings Britain’s social problems into focus like seeing them on your doorstep. What might seem abstract when described in Home Office documents or reported from unfamiliar places becomes a lot more intimate when it’s set somewhere you know: full of landmarks you’ve visited, people you might’ve met, folks who speak with the same accent or walk the same streets as you.
So when I read Mark Townsend’s report on the rise of gun & gang culture around the Burngreave & Pitsmoor areas of Sheffield, I was always going to react to it differently than if it’d been set in somewhere like Manchester, Liverpool or the North East. I can’t claim to know these neighbourhoods intimately, but my emotional attachment to the city means I probably can’t react as impartially or dispassionately as I would if it were set somewhere else.
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The neo-nazi “threat”
What are we to make then of Neil Lewington, the latest in a string of neo-Nazis to be convicted of terrorism offences?
There is one constant between Robert Cottage, Martyn Gilleard and Lewington, which is either reassuring or worrying, depending on your view: despite their world view, whether it be imminent race war, or the intention to try to start one, all were only interested in “small” explosive devices.
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Meet the prisoners
There are 83,000 people currently incarcerated in England & Wales. Of that number, I’d wager all the money in my pockets that not one of them grew up wanting to do this.
Like us, they will have grown up dreaming impossible things; fantasising about future fame or heroics; quietly relishing the adventures of adulthood.
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Our criminal justice system is in crisis
The Commission on English Prisons Today- presided over by Cherie Booth QC- launched its final report yesterday – with a demand to cut prison numbers and reinvest money in communities.
It is unequivocal. Our criminal justice system is in crisis. A decade and a half of penal excess means that we lock up too many people with too little impact and consequently we are failing make communities safer.
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Silence is the enemy
A friend told me recently about an evening she’d just spent visiting an elderly uncle who was staying with her parents. Now this uncle, let’s call him Bob, is in his seventies, and is fond of telling stories about his past. This particular evening was no exception, and as my friend, her partner, and various other relatives (including his wife) settled down to chill out after a big family meal, Bob started off on one of his tales.
But this story turned out to be a bit different from the normal, everyday reminiscences the family was used to hearing: this one was about the time Bob was out in Libya doing his National Service, more specifically about the time he witnessed 6 or more of his colleagues line up and rape a young woman.
Apparently the soldiers had been given a night off and so had gone out to a small town close to where they were billeted. There, they’d come upon a local couple, and after a brief discussion among themselves about how they hadn’t seen a woman in ages, one of the group went over to the man and asked him how much he’d be prepared to take to let them have sex with his wife The two men negotiated, and eventually the husband settled on a price.
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Dr George Tiller murdered by ‘pro life’ terrorists
In case you hadn’t heard, Dr George Tiller, one of the USA’s few late-term abortion providers, was shot dead by ‘pro-life’ terrorists in Wichita today as he was going to his Sunday morning church service.
Via Feministe:
Dr. Tiller was one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country. He had previously been shot, his clinic burnt down, harassed by ideological anti-abortion attorney generals, and threatened with death countless times. Still, Dr. Tiller continued to provide abortions to women who desperately needed them, to save their own lives or health, or due to tragic fetal deformities. He put the health of women above his own life. And now he is dead.
This is the first time an abortion provider has been killed in over a decade, although in that time countless numbers of brave men and women have faced death threats, attacks and intimidation and continued to do their jobs. My thoughts are with the family, friends and co-workers of Dr Tiller, and with all of those held morally and physically hostage by the crass hypocrisy of the mindless terrorists responsible for his murder.
Cath Elliott has more.
Second meeting: police still not listening
by Andy May and Guy Aitchison
Two months have passed since the G20 and the brutal police operation against protesters in the City of London. On Thursday Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) met for the second time since the operation to question Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson.
At the first meeting the Met showed no signs of having taken on board the serious and widespread criticism of their actions. At times they actively mis-represented what had taken place to spin themselves out of trouble. So it was with a fair deal of scepticism that myself and Anna Bragga of Defend Peaceful Protest went down to City Hall to put our case to the Met once again.
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Will Tory drug policy be worse?
If you want to see what a future Tory government’s approach to drug policy might be, you could do worse than having a peek at a new report that’s just been published by The Centre for Policy Studies. Entitled ‘The Phoney War on Drugs’, author Kathy Gyngell essentially argues that the reason Labour’s attempts to curb drug use have failed is because they’re just not trying hard enough.
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Shahid Malik is being used as a scapegoat
Shahid Malik became the first government minister to step down as an investigation was launched into allegations of financial impropriety.
By claiming that his main home was in his constituency he was able to nominate his London home as his second home, allowing him to use expenses – the maximum of £66,827 over the three years he has been an MP – to furnish and keep it. Among the items that he had claimed for was a £2,600 home cinema system, including a 40-inch flat screen television. The Commons fees office agreed to pay half. He also claimed for a £730 massage chair.
None of this is defensible in my view. But if a minister is being asked to stand down while an investigation is taking place, why doesn’t the same apply to Hazel Blears and James Purnell – who are accused of gaining financially by flipping their homes. As Peter Oborne pointed out yesterday:
He has been accused of pocketing thousands of pounds in expenses and avoiding taxes by designating one of his properties as both a main residence and second home. And yet Purnell is responsible for catching benefit cheats!
Indeed! But will Brown suspend him? Nope. Darling? No. Malik is paying for Brown’s lack of courage. In fact both Cameron and Brown have offered easy sacrifical lambs. And yet if they were serious about punishing people who personally benefited by abusing the expenses system, then they would remove people from the front-bench. Peter Oborne again:
No one with an ounce of decency could ever vote for a party represented by either Francis Maude (who claimed almost £35,000 in two years for mortgage interest payments on a London flat when he owned a house just a few hundred yards away) or multi-millionaire Alan Duncan (who claimed more than £4,000 of taxpayers’ money ‘to cover the basic essentials of grass cutting’).
Incidentally, I am reliably informed that Duncan shows little of the contrition away from the cameras that he expressed in front of them. In private conversation he declared that MPs should receive salaries of more than £100,000 and that their expenses should be kept secret. These remarks are significant because, as Shadow Leader of the Commons, Duncan has a big influence in these matters.
In other news, there is apparently a demonstration on Wednesday in Westminster
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Legalising drugs: lessons from Portugal
Back in 2001, the Portuguese government defied stiff opposition from right-wing groups to decriminalise drug use, making drug laws far more liberal than even the Netherlands.
The right predicted Bad Things: Drug use would explode, tourists would travel from far and wide to get high on the streets of Lisbon, law and order would collapse, and people would start riding around in modified cars and fighting in Thunderdomes. The reality was quite different as two reports published in the last 18 months have demonstrated, the Libertarian Cato Institute have declared the policy an undisputed success on the basis of a report by Glenn Greenwald, and this has been a popular assessment among liberal people.
How correct is it though? Let’s look at the evidence.
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MPs are paid enough already!
Guest post by Tom W
You know what really makes me mad about the MP expenses scandal? It’s not so much the ludicrous claims – for bathplugs, ugly ceilings, scratched sinks etc – as the attitude from many MPs that this was all OK because they weren’t being paid enough in the first place.
I am enraged by this excuse. The basic salary for a backbench MP is £63,291 – and ministers and junior ministers get more. Yes, that’s less than GPs, management consultants, PR reps, bankers and so on can expect to earn. But it is still around three times the UK median income, which varies from between £21-24,000 depending on measurements. It’s considerably more than the 50% of UK citizens below the national median survive on.
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How can we trust police intent now?
“Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards. Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon,” reports the Guardian today.
I really hoped that the assault on Ian Tomlinson had been an accident. It wasn’t. I really hoped that the police medics had not been engaged in violent assaults: they had. I really hoped that the police medical teams had been provided to care for the injured; in fact protesters were explicitly refused help, by medics, while bleeding. I really hoped that the police had not been targeting legal observers and arresting them, harassing them, stealing their recording equipment, defacing their notebooks. All of these things were happening.
But now there is much more.
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Patriotism, the BNP and being a publican
To “serve and protect” is a phrase famously associated with police officers in certain high-profile cities in America but it’s also a phrase I associate with the job of landlord. It’s a pun first made to me by the landlord at my local down in Southampton mumble years ago. The pub was a tiny Victorian establishment with a 2-barrel brewery that was visible through a glass panel behind the bar, so you could drink your Sweet Sensation [1] and watch the next batch brewing. I was told “Our job is to serve drinks and protect peace of mind. The brewer sells beer: the landlord sells happiness.”
I am tired of being told I’m a leftie, which I’m really not; but I’m equally tired of the assumption that if I were, I must ‘hate Britain’. That’s very Yankee thinking; that any progressive view or compassionate view or inclusive view is anti-patriotic.
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The Met must stop spinning its actions
by Guy Aitchison and Andy May
The Metropolitan Police Authority met yesterday for the first time since the policing of the G20 protests. Defend Peaceful Protest put its questions directly to Boris Johnson. The Met were represented by acting deputy commissioner Tim Godwin (standing in for Sir Paul Stephenson) and temporary assistant commissioner Chris Allison.
The good news is that the MPA, which is made up of 11 independent members and 12 London Assembly members, were largely supportive of the protestors’ rights and had critical things to say about the G20 policing – see Anna Bragga on OK for a full report. The bad news is that we were not satisfied with the Met’s response which, when not actively misleading, amounted to “we’re conducting an enquiry, so we’re not going to answer any of your questions yet.”
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Our campaign to Defend Peaceful Protest launches
Guest post by Guy Aitchison and Andy May
Tomorrow morning the Metropolitan Police Authority meets for the first time since the policing of the G20 protests. We will be there along with other members of a new campaign group, Defend Peaceful Protest, to question the Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson on how he plans to ensure the kind of brutal and intimidatory police tactics used in the City on April 1st, which resulted in the death of one man, hundreds of assaults and the systematic violation of the rights of thousands to peaceful protest and assembly, aren’t repeated.
We now have had confirmation that the Chief Executive of the MPA will receive the following questions submitted by us:
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