Don't Look Up

Oh, Metropolitan scuffers, why do you want us to hate and fear each other so?


So looking at CCTV cameras, perhaps simply in forlorn wonder at the sheer number of the fucking things these days, could now be enough to get you brought to the attention of the bizzies, intimately acquainted with the inside of a Paddington Green cell and charged with committing the allegedly bonafide terrorist act of looking at something that is, in turn, looking at you.
This poster in particular pissed the living daylights out of me. It depicts a busy street with smiling white people in the foreground. A family is prominently positioned in the centre of the image. Nice use of children to prop up your argument there knacker. And looming over this cheery scene is a big black cctv camera. You see it there, near where all the brown people are loitering?
You must realise of course that this sort of seemingly entirely normal activity is indeed how the 9/11 conspirators and the London bombers got started don't you? Yep, those murderous fuckfaces started off as trainspotters and then worked their way methodically through the ranks of 'CCTV Camera Studier' and 'Tourist attraction Photographer' (now an obsolete course I believe, having been replaced with 'Google Street Map Proficiency'), right up to 'Using Facebook to Inform Your Friends in Impenetrable Teenage Vernacular of Your Intention to Kill the Infidel'. It's a story we're all too familiar with.

And what about the words? Something like...

A bomb won't go off here and kill all the widdle kiddiwinks because some twat saw our scaremongering poster campaign and is now sufficiently terrified of all other human beings that he felt compelled to waste Knackers time reporting that bearded man over there who removed his eyes from the pavement for a few moments to contemplate the sky and the metaphorical freedom it offers in the general vicinity of a cctv camera because the fact is that there is a fucking camera every 2 paces along every single street you happen to walk down and, therefore, it is almost impossible not to look at the bastard things. No. The bomb went off somewhere else instead.

Or something along those lines. I may be exaggerating. Being over the age of 27, my mind is pretty unreliable.

I think the police want to be careful here you know. It would seem that they're giving away all their best terrorist tracking secrets to the public with this poster campaign. I've totally got the hang of it.
"I don't like the looks of that fellow over there. He has long hair/black skin/a hilarious beard/a boyfriend/youthful ideals/an air of wistful melancholy/brown skin/a hood and he is doing something that has really no connection to terrorism at all. Best get the armed police onto him right away."
I mean, terrorist spotting is apparently so simple that even a lowly shop assistant can now spot a nasty bad man at 30 paces. More importantly, eventually we'll all be so good at averting terrapocalypse ourselves we won't need the scuffers at all anymore.

Update Hacktacular

An update from the Tory Troll via Justin. Turns out the print version of that delightful Express story was even worse than the online version. Check out the section on the 'good' Dunblane survivors at the bottom of the article.

The Daily Express. A class act.

On a related note, perhaps we can expect to see similar stories having a swipe at those involved in/affected by other tragic events once they reach the age of majority? Can we look forward to the schoolfriends of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells being villified for twittering about their weekend activities next year perhaps? Or maybe the siblings of Madeline McCann being hounded for getting on with their lives and having the occasional alcoholic beverage sometime around 2022? Do the 'bloidz keep a little list of young people involved in terrible events so they can dredge up shit about them as soon as they turn 18? I wouldn't be at all surprised.

UPDATE
Jonathan at No Sleep Til Brooklands makes the same point, but so, so much better than I did.

To those teenagers, I say this; put the Buckfast down and think about taking up crusading investigative journalism as a path to redemption. There are plenty more tragedies out there with potential! Okay, Ann Coulter is already bravely taking down the 9/11 widows, but I bet there are probably some babies damaged by the fallout from Chernobyl who don't comport themselves with sufficient decorum in 2009. What are the people who got rescued from the sinking ship during the Zeebrugge disaster up to these days? I bet some of them are a bit sweary. Be creative! With a few seconds on Wikipedia I just found out that three people survived getting wounded in the 2002 Washington sniper attacks; why not find out who they are and then start talking to their neighbours or digging around in their bins?

Awesome.

Extravaganza of Hackery!

What in bollocking balls is this all about?
There are some young people involved in doing young people stuff whilst using teenage colloquialisms on one of those evil social networking sites that hacks pretend not to understand and this is bad. So on the surface this article is simply yet another trawl through the internet for a story to whip some fauxrage up about Things Middle England Are Against and pretty much business as usual for the 'bloidz.

Ah, but this is much worse than that. These particular youths are survivors of the appalling Dunblane Massacre which took place some 13 years ago. What do you mean, what's that got to do with anything? Obviously these particular young people are somehow even worse than ordinary teenagers (who are all, according to the 'bloidz, drunken, knife-wielding fuck-rabbits) because they...er..I actually have no idea.

But I get the distinctly yucky feeling that there is something else, something exceedingly nasty being implied here. Something along the lines of 'look at these kids, using the precious gift of life for swearing, drinking and casual sex. Maybe it would have been better if.....'
I mean, just look at this shit;

For instance, ****** – who was hit by a single bullet and watched in horror as his classmates died – makes rude gestures in pictures he posted on his Bebo site, and boasts of drunken nights out.

The webpage of ******, who suffered serious injuries in the shooting, states he is the “f***y who canny stop drivin in the silver hing”, is littered with foul language and features images of him with his new tattoo on his back.

How dare these young men be alive to do the kind of things all young people do! Their classmates died and yet there they are on Bebo, engaged in evil networking, posing in pictures and showing off their tattoos! Tattoos! And according to this particular hack, this means that by simply growing up and living their lives these kids are 'shaming' the memory of those children who were killed. I mean it's obvious really. Don't they get it?

No. And neither does anyone else. What a repugnant rag the Express is.

[Hat Tip Enemies Of Reason]

UPDATE
Looks like the Express got the hint about this tripe and have taken the story down. But cached version is here (via Justin) if you still fancy making yourself sick with rage.

Much Later Update - Decided to 'redact' the names of the kids the Shitspress decided worthy of bile.

The Listener

According to The Observer, Jack Straw has had some sort of flash of insight and now reckons he suddenly "understand people's anxiety" over the data-sharing proposals that were to be included in the forthcoming Coroners and Justice Bill under Clause 152. He goes onto claim with no sense of irony whatsoever that "I have never had a piece of legislation that was not improved by public debate during its passage through parliament."

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh wait, he's being serious. Let me laugh harder. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Mercy.

Anyway, he's going to do us all a personal favour and take out all that stuff allowing whoever to compile whatever and use it for everything, not because he's really understood 'people's anxieties' that the law would allow for gross invasion of privacy (privacy clearly being something only a terrorist would want), that it would give rise to fears that the laws would allow for spying and are yet another blow to personal freedom and civil liberties. No. Come on. There were totally going to be safeguards. And it's not as if laws passed for one thing have been used inappropriately in the past or anything. Why would you even think that? Come off it. It's just that the public haven't properly understood the proposals. Hence the need, according to the article, for

a fresh public consultation on how to implement more limited proposals...which would allow government bodies to share information where there is clear benefit...

In other words, give us a minute to talk you all round and it'll be fine.

Clause 152

After coming across this request at Boing Boing and reading a little more about the proposed law and it's potential impact here I felt motivated to contact my own MP to register my concerns.

Dear Mr Boswell,
I'm not somebody who usually bothers to contact my MP over anything as I understand that my voice is simply one of many you have to listen to. I would, however, like to register my very strong objection to the provisions of Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill which I believe is currently being debated in the House Of Commons, and ask that you vote against the bill itself if this clause in particular is not removed.
I understand that under the proposed Information Sharing Order (ISO), any personal data about an individual obtained for one purpose could be passed on and used for another entirely different purpose without seeking the consent of the individual concerned. The idea that control over and access to my personal data including, as I understand it, sensitive information such as my medical records will be taken entirely out of my hands and handed over to the state to give away to whoever wants it is frankly terrifying to me. It must be up to me to decide what organisations or businesses can have access to my personal information, and for what purpose they can use it, and not the government. Clause 152 (along with the wider bill) is not only yet another threat to individual privacy and liberty but it also undermines existing data protection law. There is also the fact that for all it's claimed safeguards, the governement has proved time and again that it cannot be trusted to protect our personal data as made clear with the numerous high profile losses of confidential files.
Most troubling of all is the fact that this proposed law, the impact of which would be enormous, has been slipped in at the end of a controversial bill full of legislation that will draw most attention from the media and the wider public, as well as most, if not all, parliamentary time given to debating it. It is vital that clause 152 is debated openly and thoroughly as the government has absolutely no mandate for the proposals made.
Should this law come into being I would like it on record that I refuse to give my consent to having my details shared in this way.

I got a reply from my MP today which was short, but positive and indicated sympathy for my views. It would also appear that, perhaps fortunately, Tim Boswell (Con) is serving on a commitee that will be considering the Bill in detail. According to They Work For You Boswell has voted against ID card legislation and the like in the past which makes me a little bit hopeful that this part of the Coroners and Justice Bill at least will be abandoned or scaled back. But, judging by Boswell's tendency to vote strongly in-line with his party's position, this small amount of hope is dependant upon the Tory party as a whole being opposed to this law as well.

A Fair Trial And Hang 'Em

So, the other day I heard Harriet Harman say the following;

"Sir Fred should not be counting on being £650,000 a year better off as a result of this because it's not going to happen. The prime minister has said it's not acceptable and, therefore, it will not be accepted. And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the government steps in."

Which caused me to leap to my feet in a mixture of astonishment and vein-throbbing rage. It also led to me knocking a rather delicious piece of Jamaican ginger cake upon which I'd been nibbling onto the floor. Even accounting for the 5-second rule, the stickiness of the cake meant it quickly picked up a coating of carpet and suspicious-looking hairs rendering it inedible.
Now, I'm not sure that Harman has actually broken any actual laws in making me drop my cake, but in the court of public opinion round my house, she's a cake-destroying bastard who ought to pay for her actions. And as public opinion seems to be on it's way to becoming, ironically enough, legally binding, I shall look forward with interest to her show trial.