So who will excuse police brutality now?
Shocking as it is, the Guardian video showing Ian Tomlinson’s treatment at the G20 protests shouldn’t come as a surprise. Rowenna Davis and I said on the day that police behaviour and strategy was completely counter-productive. Stuart White illustrated how the peaceful Climate Camp was turned into a warzone thanks to them. They said protestors hurled bricks at them as they tried to help Tomlinson (and the gullible media bought it). Why are we even surprised? The Met police lied during the Charles De Menzes inquiry remember? And this is why the police don’t like videos and pictures taken of them.
Despite all the first-hand accounts and concerns raised about civil liberties, right-wingers have been furiously trying to protect the police from criticism all this week. And now? Complete silence.
As James Graham points out – they can’t even bring themselves to comment. The stench of hypocrisy is over-whelming because the right only get exercised about civil liberties when one of their own gets into trouble. They’ll happily point and laugh when lefties get kettled and beaten at a demo just for protesting, because their concern for civil liberties is soundbite-deep.
As Guy Aitchison says, Britain has a ‘policing problem’ – but neither the media nor the establishment want to have that discussion or admit to it. At least New Labour doesn’t pretend its concerned about civil liberties.
More blog comment:
Laurie Penny – Fuck
Sunder Katwala – The death of Ian Tomlinson
Tom Miller – Assaulted by police shortly before his death
Labour Left Forum – Police Murder
Harry’s Place – Horrendous
Bloggerheads – Ian Tomlinson assaulted
Prog Gold – Police murdered Tomlinson
Bristle’s blog – How many laughing policemen does it take…?
LibdemVoice – Ian Tomlinson – video footage emerges
More links
Two Doctors – The death of Ian Tomlinson
Lee Griffin – The day I lost all faith in my country’s authorities
Mental Nurse – The death of Ian Tomlinson
Mark Reckons – Ian Tomlinson
John Q Publican – Feast of Fools II: Foot in Mouth
The Big Blog – G20 Police Brutality
Paul Sagar – Evan Davis: Apologist for Police Brutality?
Andrew Hickey – The British Police Are The Best…
Neil Harding – Finally Caught On Camera Lying…
Dan O’Huiginn – Turning people against the police
Curly’s Corner Shop – Met. Police must answer…
Mr Eugenides – a libertarian blogger reacts
An Englishman’s Castle – Out of Control Policing
Justin McKeating – Police medic in job creation scheme
Another update
Harpymarx – Cops reaction: making the usual excuses…
Hagley Road to Ladywood – Law and Order
Ecomonkey – The Evidence
Will Rhodes – Conservative: Wearing plain clothes antagonised…
In My Humble Etc – Police violence at Climate Camp
Sim-O – You vicious bastards
5CC – Ian Tomlinson and the tabloids
A new challenger appears – Death in the city
Janus face – We must establish the truth…
There’s a protest at Bethnal Green Police Station on Saturday 11th April 11.30am
Why Britons still haven’t learnt from Obama’s campaign
While Barack Obama has moved on to a serious if difficult effort to cope with the economic crisis and some real movement towards the investment in infrastructure, health care and energy independence he promised during the campaign, it feels like the British debate has scarcely moved past this nonsensical “who is the British Barack Obama” argument.
The launch of the (excellent) Fabian Society book, The Change We Need, recently brought this navel gazing to a new peak.
In recent months I’ve been meeting with a lot of British candidates and political organisers who seem to believe that if only they could copy one easy thing from Obama’s efforts, all would be well. But they also need to be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from this success.
Here are the top five things I think British left of centre politics still gets wrong:
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“Not only have we saved the world”*… it’s green hard-hat time
The circus has left town again. Obama, Hu, Lula and Sarkozy are moving on to their next diary dates, as are the black-clad Guerrigilieri Anomali. So what to make of the G20?
We had thousands of people in green hard hats out on the massive, peaceful march last Saturday — we’ve been teaming up with the unions and NGOs and bombarding officials and leaders with campaigns for weeks, we delivered our G20 campaigns in person to Number 10 and to Dominique Strauss-Kahn (“DSK”, who heads up the now-supersized IMF)… and I still wasn’t sure how much we were getting through the noise.
But when I look at the big picture, you know what?
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The media and killing sprees
There’s now been at least six killings sprees in the space of less than a month .
For the most part I tend to be sceptical about claims of media influence, especially to the extent to which it might by itself trigger copycat behaviour or violence, but there does seem to be some reasonable evidence, at least where it comes to suicide, that sensationalistic coverage and especially emphasis on methods can lead to an increase in the number of attempts by those who already contemplating doing so or are otherwise depressed.
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Media quietly admits smearing G20 protestors
Oh look, the Metro reports today:
Eyewitnesses today described how protesters came to the aid of a man who collapsed and died during G20 demonstrations at the Bank of England. Police were involved in running battles with protesters in central London when the man, believed to be in his 30s, fell to the ground and stopped breathing.
…
“One or maybe two plastic bottles were thrown, but it was by people further back in the crowd who did not know what was going on. There definitely wasn’t a rain of bottles. There were lots of us gathered around him telling people to give him space. The idea that protesters did not care is completely false.”
This contrasts with the Evening Standard’s disgusting piece yesterday stating the police were ‘pelted with bricks’ when trying to help him – a story they quietly changed on their website later. The paper is a stain on London.
RIP Ian Tomlinson, a guy who was just walking by, and got caught in the Met Police’s delightful strategy of ‘kettling’ people in. BenSix has more.
The siege of Climate Camp
There is an old anarchist saying: the state creates the violence which it uses to justify its existence. Like a lot of anarchist sayings, it is an exaggeration of the truth. But it nevertheless contains a partial truth. If you needed evidence of this truth, one only had to be present at the G20 Climate Change Camp in Bishopsgate on April 1, 2009.
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Hobby Horsemen of the Apocalypse!
Good grief, but the G20 protests are kicking up some action. According to Red Pepper’s tweeter-on-the-ground, all you can hear is barking dogs and police helicopters, and it’s getting ugly. Like an idiot, I promised myself that I’d stay home and ohyes, get a lot of work done all day like a good girl. What’s actually happened is that I’ve been sat in front of the laptop getting wriggly, checking the news every thirty seconds, letting a succession of cups of tea go cold and wishing I was down on the streets.
Because I believe in the power of protest, and because this one in particular bloody fascinates me.
continue reading… »
Eric Pickles wasn’t doing April Fools
Created by Beau Bo D’Or
MPs face a form-filling challenge
I feel really sorry for Jacqui Smith and her husband, and indeed for all MPs at this time of year. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the situation with MPs’ expenses seems to work like this: Members of Parliament fill in long and complicated forms, and then a panel of journalists choose a few of them and publicly humiliate them on the grounds that they filled in their forms incorrectly in a sufficiently entertaining way.
For these purposes, the rules about what is judged to be the correct way to fill in the form change randomly all the time.
continue reading… »
Eric Pickles in car-crash TV
His infamous performance on Question Time this week hits YouTube, (via Libdemvoice)
Curiously, Tory blogger Iain Dale avoids any mention at all.
Update: But one Tory says: ‘put him under house arrest’!
Evan Harris should demand a British republic
At the apex of the highly developed and still largely unassailable British class system – the social networks that centre on the landed aristocracy, the county set, the upper layers of the Church of England, the Bar, and the City, and officers serving in ‘good regiments’ – stands the royal family.
That must make Evan Harris’s private members’ bill, seeking to amend the Act of Settlement 1701, ever so slightly subversive. The consistently radical Lib Dem MP is seeking to end restrictions on those in line to the throne marrying Catholics, and to institute equal succession rights for royal daughters.
continue reading… »
Jade Goody, Russell Brand & the media
Some say blog posts complaining about Jade Goody coverage apparently vindicate and perpetuate the rather nauseating circus. I think such logic is bollocks, of course, because the mainstream media – TV, radio, newspapers, blogs belonging to all the aforementioned and others – would have merrily continued to spout crap regardless of what a few poxy political bloggers decided to say.
Why bother writing about it then? These are good questions, and the answer is that not five minutes ago, I spotted a ridiculous article on the BBC website titled, Star dubs Jade ‘Primark Princess’, and then made the mistake of reading it. Thankfully we don’t allow firearms in this country or I reckon I’d feel compelled to hunt down Russell Brand and kill him, earning myself a British Comedy Award for services rendered.
continue reading… »
Spoof FT, and marches this week
According to the Guardian today, “Anti-capitalism campaigners have published a spoof edition of the Financial Times today as the prime minister, Gordon Brown, prepares to host next week’s G20 summit in London.”
See their website too. The Put People First march takes place tomorrow. On Wednesday there will be the anti-G20 marches. I’ll be at both, reporting and slagging off bankers.
These bankers just don’t get it
Wednesday morning I attended the Liberal Democrat treasury team meeting in my capacity as a parliamentary researcher. Paying a visit were some representatives from the banking sector, who were there to give high-profile members of the Liberal Democrats – the party currently at the forefront of attempts to close down tax havens, or secrecy jurisdictions as they are better termed – a bank’s eye view.
In the course of discussions, the issue of Tesco avoiding/evading £billions in stamp duty arose.
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A chance to outlaw homophobic hatred
Some may recall the homophobic campaigns run by the Sun in the not-so-distant past, including that of labelling HIV ‘the Gay Plague’ and the one about the ‘Gay Mafia running the country’ in 1998. You may also recall the Sun’s false allegations about Elton John. They only stopped when they were forced to pay £1m in damages. Overall, they did more to stigmatise gay people and those with HIV than any other publication in Britain.
It’s no surprise then that Fergus Shanahan, their most right wing columnist, is lashing out at the currently debated Coroners And Justice Bill. Some MPs are lobbying to include Clause 58 – which would extent the offence of incitement to hatred to the area of sexual orientation, placing homophobic hatred on a par with the areas of racism or religious hatred.
continue reading… »
Review: The Rotten State of Britain
Eamonn Butler’s The Rotten State of Britain aspires to be The State We’re In for the 00s. It’s not – and not just because it is a much easier read than Hutton’s tome.
Whereas his was a narrative about our economy and society, most of The Rotten State of Britain is a series of attacks upon New Labour’s failures, with chapters such as ’spin’, ’snoopers’ and ‘nannies’. Naturally, some of these hit their targets better than others.
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Jack Straw unveils Bill of Rights
A new British bill of rights and responsibilitilies outlined yesterday could enshrine entitlements to welfare, equal treatment, housing, children’s wellbeing and the NHS, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, said yesterday. He likened the bill’s potential impact to Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights.
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McNulty, hypocrisy and the Westminster bubble
It’s not often that my faith in the British press soars quite as much as it did yesterday, when the story broke over Tony McNulty MP’s claming of £60,000 as ‘expenses’ on a second home in Harrow, where his parents currently live. Yes, that Tony McNulty, Purnell’s lapdog. The same Tony McNulty who believes that crushing poverty is an important incentive to persuade benefits claimants into jobs that aren’t there. The same Tony McNulty who believes that the Welfare Reform Bill – voted in last Wednesday, albeit with some important amendments – is an appropriate strategy to bully the workless back into below-minimum-wage jobs. He claimed as much as £14,000 per year on the home, on top of his considerable MP’s salary and additional expense claims.
It has been pointed out numerous times, not least by McNulty himself, that the money he claimed – equivalent to the entire salary of many of his constituents – wasn’t against the rules. I’m sure it wasn’t. I don’t however, give one solitary iced damn if the Queen gave him the cash in a gold-plated envelope scented with the royal perfume, it’s still a tooth-grinding piece of hypocrisy.
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Abolish Seditious Libel
There’s a chance that the outdated law of seditious libel could be abolished today. Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP, has tabled amendments to clauses 5 and 37 of the Coroners & Justice Bill. The move has support accross party lines, is welcomed by campaigning groups like Liberty, Index on Censorship, and English PEN, and by campaigning comedians Mark Thomas and Rowan Atkinson.
Unfortunately, there’s a chance that MPs may not get to vote on the amendment, since only a short time (45 minutes, I believe) has been allocated to debate such things.
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Report: Govt has lost control of database state
A quarter of all databases are fundamentally flawed and must be scapped, says a landmark study out today.
The first ever comprehensive map of Britain’s database state today reveals how the database obsession of government has left officials struggling to control billions of records of our most personal details and almost every contact we have with the agencies set up to serve and protect us.
continue reading… »
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