:: 4/02/2004 ::

straight to the vacuous banter that is representative democracy.. (or, as it has been referred to- elected dictatorship):

"goat-boy edited version"

house of commons

"that an humble address be presented to her majesty as follows:
most gracious sovereign,
we, your majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the commons of te uk of gb and northern ireland, in parliament assembled, bef leave to offer our humble thanks to your majety for the gracious speech which your majesty has adressed to both houses of parliament"

underlings loving it.. "debate on the address" submissiveness


“to what, then, would they wish to return- to the soverieignty that the labour party enjoyed in the 1970s when it had to go cap in hand to the imf to bail it our or the sovereignty that the conservartive party currently enjoys when it goes cap in hadn daily to the speculators of the money marlets to ensure that its economic policies will stand?” 31 jan 90 166 – 328 – Ashdown


tony benn- what a fucking don. all three bits below are re: maastricht social chapter, one speech around 92 probably.

“when the speech of the prime minister (john major) and that of the right hon. Membe for honiton (sir p emery) are read and considered for the study of history, they will rank with some of the greatest speeches ever made in the house.” [thank you for that] “for example, when a bill was introduced to abolish the practice of sending boys up chimneys in the 19th century, exactly the same speeches as those from the rigth hon gentleman were made. It was claimed that the bill would destroy employment for young boys, who were doing a very good job climbing up chimneys”

“if I were a frenchman, a belgian or a german, I would be just as passionately opposed to the maastricht treaty because it strips all of us, not just the people of this country, of the right to sack the people who make the laws”

“patronage is a cancer in our democartic society, and everybody knows it”


CBI, Sir Leon Brittan “the tide of social legislation has all but dried up.. the emphasis is now on job creation”

CBI chairman re: ideological shift.. 1995


working hours “48 hours a week, night and weekend work directive” is what the maastricht social chapter could have been to uk labour

social chapter "opted out of".. combined with common law, this could have actually meant someting

so.. party line 1992-1997: social rights of workers UK parliament: “not health and safety related”


“in the 1980s, a unilateralist pressure group alling itself the moment for the preservation of life on earth- something that the rest of us, it implied, were supposed to be against – was in alliance with the now foreign secretary in its pursuit fo unilateral nuclear disarmament. To present this issue as a disagreement about basic human rights is a childish tactic worthy of those 1980s peace activists who were his allies in those days”

howard 1997 re: cook's left wing past


1998. code of conduct working group “harmful tax competition” reports on tax differentials and resulting economic competition on back of labour force (via working conditions, wages, etc). uk is top in beating down populous. super at this are also spain, italy- quotes from the HC argument:

- FT harmonisation of corporation tax “untimely, questionable and above all hardly feasible”

- “wrong in any event” italian minister of finance to FT 2 dec 98

- spanish prime minister “dumbing down of tax harmonisation”, single rate of dirct tax = recipe for inefficiency


house of heirs

the blue-blooded mince is obviously less accountable to the current "progressive" bourgeois right wing, so you get some interesting points being made.

“indeed, I should not like to see a deindustrialised britain which had to depend on tourism and the City of London to pay for its imports when North Sea oil runs out” Baroness Ewart-Biggs


Lord Desai re: european union enlargement into eastern european territory:

“As my noble friend Lady Blackstone emphasised, they are being subjected to very severe conditions which the european Union members are not willing to obey in their own backyatd. A considerably greater liberal economic policy than is being followed within the European Union is being imposed upon them as a condition of entry. Indeed, it is very similar to the conditions that in NAFTA Mexico had to satisfy vis-à-vis Canada and the United States. It is always the weak who suffer these conditions and the strong get away with it.”


Lord Shore of Stepney (1998) with some keynesian contemplations re: monetarism:

“A great deflationary policy has been pursued across the whole continent of Europe. Desperate attempts have been made to reduce government borrowing to 3 % GDP. We have seen as an immediate result unemployment on the continent of Europe- its greatest economic and political problem- rise during the eigt years since the signing of the Maastricht treaty from about 13.5 million to almost 19 million during te past year. The economies of western Europe have virtually ceased to grow.”

:: phil 10:48 [link] ::

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New Statesman Article by Mark Thomas

The "Fairford Coach" judgement, last week, found the police to be in
breach of the Human Rights Act but the judgement is only a victory of
sorts for peace protestors, leaving both sides looking almost certain to
appeal the decision. The case bought by Jane Laporte against the Chief
Constable of the Gloucester police started on March 22nd 2003. Three
coaches of peace protestors going to join a demonstration at RAF
Fairford, home of the B52's, were stopped some 6 miles from the base.
The passengers were searched and cooperated with the police. Safely back
on board the coaches and without any explanation the police barred the
doors and forced the drivers under threat of arrest to drive non-stop
under police escort back to London, with over 120 people forcibly
detained on board.

Police vans and cars drove at the front and rear of the convoy with
police bikes riding alongside. The protestors hung hand made banners
from the windows reading "Help peace protestors illegally detained".
After a few supportive honks from passing motorists the police took the
measured step of closing the motorway behind the convoy, presumably to
prevent these supportive car horns breaching noise pollution levels.
Either that or the Burmese military were on a twinning project and
happened to be in charge that day.

Protestors phoned 999 to report their kidnap. The officers at the other
end of the line went from concern, confusion and neglect in a matter of
minutes. Leading one group of frustrated protestors feeling that the
only right to protest they might exercise that day was to erect a sign
reading "All coppers are bastards!" in the back window, much to the
amusement of the accompanying police van. In the circumstances you have
to admire the protestors restraint.

The 15th of January saw the hearing. The police stated that they had
found offensive items on the coaches that indicated that a breach of the
peace would occur. Originally the items included a hammer, a saw, 2
poles and knives, which were photographed and submitted as evidence. On
closer inspection of the photo the solicitors found each item to have a
label attached showing where it had come from. Strangely none of the
labels had place names that matched the site where the coaches were
detained. A police video revealed that the items were in fact
confiscated from a traveller in an entirely different vehicle, at an
entirely different location. Somewhat embarrassed by their fabricated
evidence the police pushed ahead insisting that they had found other
offensive items, this time actually on the coach. These were 2
motorcycle crash helmets, a bag of plastic toy soldiers, a Frisbee, 2
pairs of kitchen scissors and 5 home made card and board shields. One
can only guess at the amount of magic mushrooms a sane person would have
to consume to logically believe that a Frisbee constituted a genuine
threat to some 3,000 police officers. Even Lord Justice May came to the
conclusion that these couldn't be judged to be offensive, noting that
the shields and crash helmets could only be defensive.

May's verdict has to be seen as a draw. While he found the police
actions of detaining people without arrest to breach Article 5 of the
Human Rights Act, the right to liberty, he found that the police didn't
breach Article 10, the right to freedom of expression nor Article 11 the
right to assembly. So the police were wrong to detain the protestors
but right to deny them the right to protest by turning them back to
London. The fact that the police couldn't have stopped them protesting
without detaining them seems to have eluded the judge, who we can only
assume is playing Luke Skywalker to Lord Hutton's Yoda.

Although reasonably well reported one aspect of the police's defence has
been ignored. Chief Constable Lambert in his witness statement to the
court argued that he took these actions in order to uphold the
protestors human rights under Article 2. Article 2 is the right to life.

So what threat was there to the protestors lives? Lambert mentions the
tragedy "had a member of the public penetrated the defences and been
killed or injured by one of the armed personnel guarding the B52
aircraft ... [the] political consequences would have been extremely
damaging to the coalition partners ... and consequently could have
interfered with the prosecution of the war."

So Lambert seriously believed that protestors could be lawfully killed
for entering the base. Not surprisingly the Government lawyers didn't
use this defence in the trial. Perhaps because under the rules of
disclosure Lambert would have to produce the government's legal advice
and policy where Tony Blair was not only prepared to lie and ignore the
wishes of the population but was prepared to endorse the murder of
British citizens, armed with a Frisbee and a bag of toy plastic
soldiers.

:: alan 10:04 [link] ::

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