The last decent Labour man?

John Mortimer's writing room

A guest post from the esteemed Tom Paine on a man who does it his way - John Mortimer:

How the British Establishment hates John Mortimer. Mortimer has consistently critiqued the Blair/Brown Axis’s assaults on our freedoms. He has defended the presumption of innocence, which his most beloved character never failed to proclaim as “the golden thread that runs through British jurisprudence.” Though it is at the very heart of our civilisation - it is now nothing but a profound irritation to the men of power.

Horace Rumpole may, like Sherlock Holmes, have walked the pages of books rather than Literature. Worse, he appeared first as a character in TV comedy. Like Holmes, however, he transcends his origins. He is that rarity, a character with a life of his own. We all know what Rumpole would say and how he would behave in any situation. Rumpole is no suave hero, but he stands alone in modern British culture as a character who believes in freedom under the rule of law, not the terrifying "social justice" so beloved of our sparrow-brained politicians. Mortimer created a character who will live as long as English is read and the principles of the Common Law are understood.

Mortimer will be remembered for breathing life into Horace, but also as a humane, kindly, liberal man. This is more than enough motivation for Christopher Hart to do the most amazing hatchet job in the Times, while purporting to review Valerie Groves’ biography of this flawed, but charming man.

As ever, glimpses are to be seen of the Cromwellism that (much though I personally revere the memory of "our chief of men") I have to acknowledge underlies much that is wrong in British thought. Mortimer’s “affairs of the loins, rather than the heart” might equally have been characterized as free-thinking rejection of bourgeois values, had he not strayed from the paths of Socialist righteousness. How did he stray? He drew the lines of the State’s power rather closer to the individual than you or I might like, but still short of jackboot range.

The quote the sub-editors selected to summarise the attack on this innocent is telling;

The worst aspects of human nature are laughed away and the dark side is consistently whitewashed

Give me friends who laugh away my failings and look to the good in me, rather than the bad. Spare me, I beg, from the puritan who sees only the bad in me, and relishes the excuse it gives to make me a prisoner “for my own good.” In despising Mortimer, the British left/liberal statists let slip how much they despise us all. We are just potential transgressors to them, guilty until proven innocent.

That is the thread that runs through their thought and it is far from golden.

[micro-control 4] some eu plans for england and beyond

The disintegration of privacy within the sphere of the EU comes next post. This post just restates many things already known vis a vis England and might disappoint, in that it presents not a lot new.

So, first up, we're all agreed, aren't we, that the EU has England broken into nine administrative divisions, as seen on the map above? The only question is, post-Lisbon, when precisely this starts.

These nine regions, along with the Scottish and Welsh regions, have already entered the educational field both at senior level and junior as the current situation.

Further information is available here, here, here, and here, just to post a few. [Some government site links might not now work as they have been progressively deleted.]

Each region is a discreet adminstrative area with its own assembly already in situ, ready to activate. This much is easily accessible from government docs on the web. Winston Leonard commented, on October 15th, at my site:

You have to remember that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will disappear under the EU Constitution, with Brussels dealing with Foreign affairs, policy, and overseas embassies. In all probability, the Senior official concerned will be the one relocating to Brussels in 2010.
Same rule would apply to International Development, another area that will lose out to Brussels. So who will relocate? Malloch-Brown, or Milliband, or both?

The move to regionalization needs to be pretty well completed by post 2009 and it can be better observed in local issues, rather than at the national level, for example, on roads:

The new plan will be to let local governments price or otherwise regulate their bits of the road network as they see fit. So far the main example of this is the London congestion charge, which is enforced by using controversial Automatic Numberplate Recognition (ANPR) technology to track vehicle movements.

Predictably, in the wake of recent clownish "carbomb" attempts, the government has granted terror police routine access to the London tracking system. This has confirmed the widely-held view that no matter the initial purpose of any vehicle-tracking technology, it will swiftly become an automated surveillance tool.

Naturally, once the populace is aware of what is happening, there will be a great deal of unrest - the blogosphere transferred to the general community but this has been factored in. An example is Lisbon itself:

Poland also wants to make sure that the charter of fundamental rights, which guarantees the right to strike among other measures, cannot apply in domestic courts. This is an opt-out already secured by the UK. Some in Brussels have questioned its legality but David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, termed it “silicon-sealed”.

The aim is to have the reform treaty ratified by all 27 member states ahead of elections to the European parliament in 2009.

To enforce both it's "entity" as a continental bloc and to snuff out local dissent, the Merkel initiated pan-EU militsia is already in training. And translated from the original here:

It will be the opening day of the command of Central European Gendarmerie (Eurogendfor), intranazionale new force established by the European Union in order to carry out "police missions in operations of crisis."

They'll naturally need some operational theatre of war for training so:

The EU is to examine the possibility of deploying a 3,000-strong force to Chad to contain spill-over from the Darfur conflict in neighbouring Sudan, foreign ministers agreed on Monday.

All of which is fine, of course, if the EU is a philanthropic and trustworthy body which looks after the best interests of its citizens. If that's the case, then the administrative infrastructure being rushed into place, with Common Purpose leadership, is in the best interests of all.

The litmus test, it seems to me, is whether you can believe the word of the EU. Ellee Seymour throws some light on that here, referring to Mandelson’s reneging on ACP trade agreements in favour of regional agreements.

Do read the whole piece to get some sort of idea how you feel about EU transparency and honesty.

Those whio have not already sighed and clicked out might be interested in one take on what the eventual plan entails. I don't mean the EU-ization of what was once Britain but the overall plan.

This is as good an article as any but the heading summary below does not do justice to the full explanation given at the site. Again, do read the whole thing. The process goes something like this:

1st Signpost: The Registration of Populations

2nd Signpost: The Creation of a Global Identification System

3rd Signpost: The Creation of an Infrastructure for the Global Surveillance of Movement

4th Signpost: The Creation of an Infrastructure for the Global Surveillance of Electronic Communications and Financial Transactions

5th Signpost: The Convergence of National and International Databases

6th Signpost: The Spread of the "Risk Assessment" Model

7th Signpost: Security-Force Integration and the Loss of Sovereign Checks and Balances

8th Signpost: The Corporate Security Complex

9th Signpost: The Erosion of Democratic Values

10th Signpost: Rendition, Torture, Death

Do you think this has gone off the deep end? Well, let me go further. The type of incompetence revealed by Dizzie in the losing of 15 000 personal records by courier I simply do not accept as accidental. Please see part 2 of this series.

Notes

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

[racism] we need to be careful about its definition

That promised article is coming but first, more controversy [H/T Witagamenot] on immigration:

Cameron was irritated by the behaviour of Hastilow, who will contest the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis, which the Tories must win if they are to regain power, after he mounted a strong defence of his article. 'It is in line with Conservative policy,' he told The Observer. 'Uncontrolled immigration will do this country great damage. In the last 10 years we have had more or less uncontrolled immigration.'

But Hastilow won strong support from his local Tory association. 'Most certainly, yes,' said Mary Docker, chairman of the Halesowen and Rowley Regis association, when asked by The Observer if she would stand by Hastilow. 'He is a down-to-earth man who talks to people and doesn't talk at them. He is representative of the views of many Black Country people.'

My view is quite simple, you might say oversimplistic but I'd disagree:

If the racial, religious or national grouping has a history of non-assimilation into the local culture, then prospective immigrants need one-by-one scrutiny and interview as to their absorption into alien sub-communities within the larger nation.

This should also apply to those who have already got through the net.

If the grouping has a history of assimilation [e.g. a Canadian settling in Britain], then they get fast tracked but are subject to the usual police checks, vocational suitability etc.

Just seems common sense to me.

[facebook part 2] run for your lives

I recently wrote a piece on Facebook, commenting on their delisting of bloggers who don’t use their real names. It now looks more insidious than first thought.

I said that I was thinking of unsubscribing and Ian Grey said one can’t – only de-activate but can re-activate at any time. Let me put that again:

When you sign up to Facebook, they have you in and you can not unsubscribe! You can unsubscribe from applications, discussion groups etc., you can unsubscribe from e-mail notifications but you can’t unsubscribe from Facebook itself – there is no mechanism.

This immediately gave me the shivers because it looks no different to those webpages where, the moment you enter, they lock you in and give you no navigation out until you’ve been through a series of other intrusive pages.

I want out and I want out now! I looked around to see what the web said:

Facebook, America’s number two social network behind MySpace, launched a redesign and two new features early this morning, allowing a user’s activities on the site to be tracked.

My guess is that if they’d allowed Facebook users to turn this feature off, most of them would have done so.

What’s odd is that most of Facebook’s recent additions have been extremely smart.

And ...

Facebook is commonly referred to as Stalkerbook, due to its many features that allows you to track people in your network, especially when you are friends with those people.

On September 5, 2006 Facebook altered the default logged-in screen to be the "News Feed," a new feature that lists every action that every Facebook friend of yours makes on Facebook.

And finally, Ian Parker:

Just remember who funded the building of Facebook and why it is there.

It was funded by DARPA's Information Awareness Office, and is there to collect information about you and build a profile on you.

Thats why they dont like pseudonyms.

Their site for those with concerns is here and when there, look down near the bottom of the page and see the group mentioned.

I’m outta here … or I would be if there were a mechanism to do so, which there isn’t.

[oh so wild] the importance of being english

These Weblog Awards, [there's a little banner top left for those who'd care to cast their vote], have had one unexpected spin-off.

Whereas some men have had their potency called into question and some their intelligence, hitherto I’ve only had my height called into question … oh, and my receding hair … well, yes … also my sanity at times … but I digress.

It appears that now, as a result of these double-edged awards, my origins have also been called into question. Wounded to the heart.

An esteemed rambler, uber-blogger, mother of note and lady of spotless virtue has asked the simple question: “Are you a UK blog, James?”

How to answer that, avoiding a simple yes or no?

Is Croydonian a UK blogger? He seems to blog on everything from France to Sweden. Is Tuscan Tony a UK blogger? Is Tom Paine, of questionable Facebook status, who blogs on the England he holds dear but doesn’t actually live there?

To rephrase the question – what constitutes a UK blogger? That he is permanently resident in the UK? If so, where does that leave Tim Worstall or Welshcakes Limoncello? Or Praguetory for that matter?

Or is it that he blogs on specifically UK matters, to the exclusion of all others? Where does that leave Bryan Appleyard or Ian Appleby? Where does that leave the girlbloggers like Liz Hinds and Wife in the North, [whom I understand is in the south right now], who blog on home related matters [and a bit of Rugby]?

Perhaps my crime is to pay too much heed to the Americans and to be too au fait with their affairs, barring football and baseball, which immediately label me non-American. Perhaps my premiership winning Aussie football team raises suspicion, as does my clear familiarity with matters Vancouver.

Is Colin Campbell an Aussie? Is JMB a Canadian or an Aussie? And what on earth is Lady MacLeod?

Or my French language posts, concerning Sarko, Segie and undergarments – do they put me out of contention as a sturdy oak and does this also put out L’Ombre?

What is, in fact, a UK blogger?

The Witanagemot seem to have come to terms with my Englishness, the Cross of St George group, of which I am involved, labelling me “an English Expat”, an epithet I am comfortable with.

Is it that I fail to appreciate the minutiae of daily life in the UK and can’t recite the lists of current pollies? After all, these awards aren’t for “political bloggers” – they’re for “bloggers”.

Further - these are supposedly prestigious stateside-based awards, centred in Florida and under scrutiny by the State Dept and other interested groups. Those top ten UK blogs were the top ten in American eyes. In UK eyes, I’m way down at N124.

Is it that I'm not over there currently, as I'd wish to be, clubbing, swapping asides in the idiom? I do touch on matters UK most days but not party politics – more Common Purpose and other nefarious nasties which the average Brit knows little of as yet.

To come clean at the death, my ancestral home is in the West Riding, snuggled up against Ilkley Moor, baht ‘at. You’d never pick it from either my writing, my accent or my dialect; [now I've lost all the Londoners with whom I lived for three years].

Your ladyship, this is all the explanation I fear I can give. I pray that it should suffice and that your smile shall once again alight on my fevered brow.

[2007 weblog awards] voting now open

Click on pic to vote.

The awards are now open and you can vote once in 24 hours. Should you wish to vote for my little blog or indeed, for another, click on the pic above.