Sim-O

A couple of links.

Angry Mob – Abuse and Defamation

Angry Mob receives a Nasty-O-Gram from the lawyers of Associated Newspapers.

Ministry of Truth – Daily Mail threatens media blogger with libel action over two year old article

Unity casts an over over the blog post in question and the letter sent to the hosting company.

Needless to say, neither the Daily Mail or Paul Dacre, come out smelling of roses.

I was just browsing the Express (yeah, yeah, I know, but sometimes I like to smear myself in shit) and read this story about new law and order stuff from the Conservatives (istyosty.com link)…

NOW YOU CAN BASH A BURGLAR

DAVID Cameron last night hit back at allegations that his Government is soft on crime by vowing to back home owners who fight off burglars.

Announcing a major legal shake-up, the Prime Minister pledged that property holders who use “reasonable force” against intruders would not be prosecuted.

How is that new?

David Cameron said: “My mission is to make sure that families can feel safe in their homes, and they can walk the streets freely, without fear. The system today is failing and badly needs reform.”

It needs reform so badly, it’s going to stay the same.

…the most eye-catching announcement was legal protection for people who defend their families and properties during break-ins. It would allow home owners to hit burglars or even shoot them as long as the force used can be shown in court to have been reasonable.

At risk of repeating myself, how is that new?

“So we will put beyond doubt that home owners and small shopkeepers who use reasonable force to defend themselves or their properties will not be prosecuted.”

How is, oh you get the idea.

The PM’s measures include increasing the number of life sentences handed out by the courts and ensuring that serious sexual and violent offenders spend at least half of their jail terms in custody.

Under current rules, many can walk free halfway through their sentences.

All together now… How is that new?

A new criminal offence of squatting will also be introduced to protect home owners, and squatters will be stripped of the right to claim legal aid to fight their cases.

This it is a little worrying. I don’t know any figures about squatting or what squatters give for being squatters, whether it’s to use unused property or poverty or being outside the benefits system, but I doubt the majority actually want to be squatters any more than a property owner wants to host them. So it would be nice if alongside this proposal to rid the land of squatters and prevent them from claiming someone elses property, the government put in place some other way of getting these people back into accommodation.

I love this little quote from Ken Clarke…

I’ve made a number of U-turns in my time. They should be done with purpose and panache when you do them.

If you’re gonna do a u-turn, make it a stylish one. Preferably wearing a hat at a jaunty angle.

So this is why there should be an opt-out of the minimum wage, is it?…

[Phillip Davies MP] claimed the most vulnerable, including those with learning disabilities and mental health problems, were disadvantaged in their search for work because they had to compete with candidates without disabilities and could not offer to accept lower pay.

He claims he was told this on a visit to Mind. Another Tory challenged Davies…

Mr Davies was challenged over his remarks by fellow Tory MP Edward Leigh who told him: “Forget the fact there is a minimum wage for a moment. Why actually should a disabled person work for less than £5.93 an hour. It is not a lot of money, is it?”

Mr Davies replied that, irrespective of whether it was “right or wrong”, that was “just the real world that we operate in”.

So fuck right or wrong, eh? So instead of saying just get on with it, how about Davies doing something to right the wrong rather than letting, again vulnerable people get fucking shafted?

Update:

Mind have issued a statement…

Today, Conservative MP Philip Davies suggested that disabled people should offer to work below minimum wage so they get a job when competing with able-bodied people. He quoted a visit to a Mind association in his statement.

Mind’s Director of External Relations Sophie Corlett said:
It is a preposterous suggestion that someone who has a mental health problem should be prepared to accept less than minimum wage to get their foot in the door with an employer. People with mental health problems should not be considered a source of cheap labour and should be paid appropriately for the jobs they do.

It is simply unacceptable that fewer than 4 in 10 employers will currently consider employing someone with a mental health problem. We should be trying be educate employers and challenge negative attitudes towards mental health problems rather than forcing people with mental health problems to undercut their way in to the workforce.

Mind has found that over 50 per cent of people with mental health problems are living on a weekly household income of less than £200 – what the Government defines as ‘living on the poverty line.’ Paying people with mental health problems less money than non-disabled people will not help them into work it will just widen the poverty gap.

(via DailyQuail & Unslugged

Via D-Notice2012 (the blogger formerly known as D-Notice) I hear that the Bahrain government is going to sue the Independent for publishing stories about anti government protesters being shot by police, torture, being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia, etc. Y’know, the usual Middle East dictator/ruling royal family past-times and hobbies.

My first reaction was “good luck with that”, but then I remembered our courts aren’t the most sensible at times, especially when a foreign government (and one that is now in the Saudis’ pocket) is concerned.

D-Notice notes that UK local governments can’t sue in English courts, so foreign one shouldn’t be able to either. It looks like they’re gonna try, though.

If Bahrain does get to court it’ll be for libel, I presume and so the onus will be on the Indie to prove what it says is true rather than Bahrain to prove otherwise. This, I’m guessing shouldn’t be too hard for the Indie to do seeing as a) it isn’t just the Indie saying this stuff and b) the Bahrain government has singled out Rober Fisk as the main reporter responsible and Fisk has a reputation for being bob on with this type of thing.

But does Baharain really want to go to court, or is it, more likely just trying to scare the Indie/press?

Bahrain has much more resources than the Indie and so could drag this out and cost the Indie so much that it hashas no choice but to capitulate, after all, if this did get to court and the judgement went against Bahrain, it could open it up to charges of war crimes or crim against humanity (or whatever) and end up with arrest warrant being issued against it’s leaders for the International Criminal Court (or whatever the place is called).

Would that threat if the ICC scare the Bahraini officials? I doubt it.

My second reaction was ” WTF? hasn’t this guy read the British press?”

The “Publications director-general and acting press and external
media director-general” Nawaf Mohammed Al-Maawda has…

called upon all media to observe accuracy and objectivity and project the true image…

Hahahaha! In the British press?! Like I said, good luck with that one.

Fred Goodwins’ superinjunction has been, at least, partially lifted. We can all now know, legally, that Fred ‘The Shred’ has been bonking a colleague. Don’t we all feel better and more informed now?

The issue of superinjunctions is a hot one at the moment. Freedom of speech (or expression as some are saying) versus someones’ right to privacy. The press are scared that they won’t be able to report on vital establishment-shaking issues and people are worried that anything goes and will have to spend a fortune in the courts when their shit hits the fan, or newstand.

One of the arguements the press use is that with these injuctions they won’t be able to expose all these celebrities and public figures for the hypocrits they are. Fair enough, but who is a celebrity? What makes a public figure?

Sometimes it’s easy to say. An MP is a public figure, the leader of a campaign is open to scrutiny, the sportstar that uses his/her image to advertise stuff. They are all trying to influence the public to behave in a certain way. If they are not true to their word then fair enough, a charge of hypocrasy should be called and they shoudl have to defend themselves. They have, though, put themselves forward. They decided to enter the public concience in a certain way.

But what of the likes of Fred Goodwin. He was just a banker. Fred didn’t put himself in the public domain, he was thrust into it due to circumstance. Fred didn’t shout that we shouldn’t be doing drugs or being faithful to our spouses while snorting a barrel full of cocaine out the anus of a prostitute while his good little wife waited at home, sat at the table looking at an empty chair while dinner their plated up dinner slowly went cold. He ran a bank. No one, outside a very small circle, before the banking crises had heard of him.

So while the hoo-ha about his running of the bank or his massive pension agreement could be a fair target why should his choice of sexual partner be up for all and sundry to know about?

Fred was apparently shagging a colleague. How does that change things? Lots of people fuck someone they work with. It might cause a bit of concern if it’s the government defence secretary having secret liasons, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the liason is a honeytrap, but a banker? Does it really have any bearing on anything?

Fred Goodwin may be a national bogeyman, but the fact that he is not a public figure of his own making means he shouldn’t have needed an injunction to supress this little bit of his life that is of no consequence of anybody except those close to him, such as his wife and family.

It is entirely possible for this affair to have had some bearing of the massive losses RBS suffered, making it in need of govenrment help, in which case the press would be legitimate in it’s publication. There is nothing wrong with the press investigating this stuff, that is what they need to do to expose hypocracy and shadowy dealings that are of genuine public interest, but when there is no connection between his affair and (his part in) the collapse of the UK banking industry then there is no need to run it.

This obsession of the printed Press with who is shagging who is what is causing this, what seems to be, sudden flurry of injunctions. If the press stuck to what was important and relevant, there wouldn’t be any need for these people to try and gag the editors freedom of speech.

Footnote:
I understand that an MP might want to use Parliamentary privilege to smash an injunction, in the case of Trafigura for instance, but why the hell did the LibDem MP John Hemming think it’s anyones business who the fuck is fucking who?

MPs’ need to stop buggering about with this and either leave superinjuctions alone unless there is serious public interest being censured or debate it and sort out a proper privacy law.

Immigration detention centres. Not the nicest of places. The people in there are generally pennyless and have a big need to talk to solicitors and stuff.

So what does the ever so intelligent people who run the private companies think up for their detention centres? A new telephone system…

The trial at Tinsley House detention centre, near Gatwick airport, is run by Global Comms & Consulting Ltd (GCC), which specialises in secure telecommunications services to major government agencies and multinational companies. As a result, detainees will not be able to call free numbers and will pay significantly higher rates to call their family and solicitors. All calls will also be recorded, monitored and disrupted when necessary by the immigration authorities and/or the immigration prison’s management.

When a detainee arrives at the centre, they have their own phone taken from them and issued with one from the centre. These phones are described as ‘crap’ and cut out ‘after a few seconds’.

Along with the phone the detainee is also given a phone card…

Detainees will be given a Call4Five card when they are admitted in to detention. Call4Five, owned and operated by GCC, allows users to dial any UK or international number from any phone for “five precious minutes,” using a special code provided on a scratch voucher.

GCC claims its Call4Five cards are “a good deal.” However, a voucher of five minutes for international calls (10 for UK calls) costs £2.50 plus VAT. This works out at 60p and 30p per minute respectively, which is significantly more expensive than using pre-paid phone cards or even normal mobile phones.

The new system also means that detainees will be charged higher rates for dialling 0845 numbers and will not be able to call free 0800 numbers without buying credit, for example to use pre-paid phone cards provided by visitors groups or to call their solicitors and other support organisations that provide a free phone service for those who do not have credit on their phones.

What a lovely bunch of people run these services, eh?

Septicisle…

There’s always the danger when protesting of coming across as sanctimonious, patronising and just plain wrong, and UK Uncut fit the bill in so many ways that it’s difficult to count. Direct action and civil disobedience will have always have a role to play in protest; getting a criminal record however for aggravated trespass for occupying Fortnum and Mason, as many seem likely to, will rank up there as probably the most stupid misstep of the entire anti-cuts movement. Every single occasion on which a representative, or at least someone who’s taken part in the protests has appeared on television, such as on Newsnight tonight, they’ve come across as the kind of pretentious, self-satisfied, smug and thoroughly gittish middle-class wankers you would normally cross the street to avoid, repeatedly refusing to answer a straight question and taking no responsibility whatsoever for what some might do under their banner. Only with the advent of Twatter could so many utter cunts make common cause.

Peter Bone, the Conservative MP for Wellingborough, is exagerating a little I think…

Mr Speaker, 373,000 Daily Express readers want it, 80% of Conservative Members support it, the Deputy Prime Minister would love it, and my wife demands it. The British people, Conservative supporters, the leader of the Liberal party and especially Mrs Bone cannot all be wrong. Prime Minister: may we have a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union?

60% of Daily Express readers is the British people is it? Hardly? Sales of the Express is about 7% of all national daily newspaper sales.

(My maths is shit so the percentages may be a little out, but you get the idea)

h/t Devils Kitchen

OU1. The new name for Beau Bo D’Or.

http://ou1.com

Here is a video he has made of most if not all his satirical images form the last 6 or so years.

BBC..

Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to “marry” in church, the BBC has learned.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.

There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the change was “long overdue”.

Civil partnership ceremonies are currently entirely secular.

As far as I know, and I’m willing to be corrected on this point, churches religious temples of whatever denomination aren’t obligated to marry anyone, hetero or not, so I don’t see why they should be complelled to marry same-sex couples.

I don’t know why civil partnerships are referred to as such and can’t be refered to a marriages as that is what they are. They are no different to a heterosexual civil marriage. Both are secular and both bring the same entitlements in law with them.

Why should there be a ban on civil partnerships being conducted in the first place? Surely it is up to the church/synogogue/whatever who they allow to marry there and if a couple are legally allowed to marry, or ‘marry’, then what is the problem?