Who is encouraging the BNP Mrs Flint?
Caroline Flint, the Minister for Europe, has given a warning to trade unions that they are in danger of giving encouragement to the BNP by campaigning against companies that use foreign workers to undercut local pay and conditons.
Ms Flint said: “After the debate in recent weeks about foreign workers and EU law, the danger [...]
Where is the “freedom” in “Freedom of Information”?
So Jack Straw has vetoed the publication of minutes of cabinet meetings leading up to the Iraq war, after the Information Tribuneral ruled that they should be released.
Now I have to say I don’t have any strong opinion about whether it is desirable for these minutes to be released. I don’t think they [...]
Meanwhile on the domestic front…
…Labour shows no sign of losing its enthusiasm for knee-jerk illiberal legislation. Thanks to Section 76 of the Counterterrorism Act 2008 it is now illegal to take a photograph of a police officer ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’, a condition so ill-defined that it is bound [...]
The UK under fire on Human Rights
Following its recent embarrassment over the supression of intelligence relating to the treatment of Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed the government is now coming under fire from all sides over its record on human rights, civil liberties and torture.
Firstly, the UK has received strong criticism from the International Commission of Jurists for undermining international law and [...]
Snouts in the trough
One of Tony Blair’s most famous soundbites from his early days as PM was that it was important for his government to be “purer than pure”. Now this quote is of course much mocked, and rightly so given events such as the Ecclestone affair and loans-for-peerages, but his failure to live up to his own [...]
Is the military playing dirty tricks?
It has been widely reported in the last day or so that Colonel Owen McNally, a British army officer serving Afghanistan has been arrested for leaking military secrets concerning civilian deaths in Afghanistan to Rachel Reid, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, to whom Col. McNally was supposedly “close”.
Ms Reid has stated categorically both in [...]
…and it gets even better
Obama continues to do the right thing…
Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush’s war on terror, shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush’s thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a [...]
Even when they do the right thing they still manage to be unprincipled tossers
It’s good to see that Gordon Brown has done a u-turn (for now) on exempting MPs’ expense claims from the Freedom of Information Act.
It would also be nice if he had accepted that he was wrong in principle and agreed that in a democracy it is essential that our elected representatives are properly accountable [...]
A good start…
From the Guardian
The US president, Barack Obama, has ordered a suspension of the controversial Guantánamo Bay military tribunals in one of his first actions after being sworn in, yesterday.
Within hours of taking office, Obama’s administration filed a motion to halt the war crimes trials for 120 days, until his new administration completes a review of [...]
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu
Well, it’s been eight years since I sat there avidly watching the voting numbers for Florida updating as the recounts came in, and despaired as they fell agonisingly short of wiping out George Bush’s majority in the state. And despaired again as the conservatives in the Supreme Court disgracefully stopped further recounts and handed him [...]
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