Westminstenders: Blue Passports

[RedToothBrush]

Yay for the blue passports.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all

May next year bring us £350 million for the NHS, cake, unicorns, financial passporting, access to the single market, Irish love and of course control to the people.

(Apologies been up to my eyeballs. Normal service will resume after Christmas).

Yes I hate it when its said that the majority of the country just want us to get on with brexit now. Its on a par with 'will of the people' and 'we're all brexiteers now'. I wonder if they think we'll give up if we think we're in the minority.

Bought dd the noughts and crosses series by Malorie Blackman for Christmas th

We could combine ideas Pain and Annandale. There could be a sort of volunteer programme as a sop, so 3 years regular volunteering fruit picking (for free) could lead to a promotion to a volunteer role sitting on a camping chair at a remote landing stage in the Norfolk broads lookng for pirates and contraband?

Less dangerous: Eyeballing and contacting the police, no interaction whatsoever with people they are observing

Concerning: Yet another excuse to cut back on paid professionals, like the police, customs service, maybe even coastguard

Harassing: self-selected amateurs asking questions of furrin-looking people to check up on them

Frightening: any private organisation that creates such a group of people to spy on people along the coastline
All too easily can grow into a paramilitary or vigilante group - this is how such groups often start: supposedly helping to reduce crime

It's nuts, though, annanale.

Is it going to be like 'Neighbourhood Watch' on steroids? People involved in organised crime (and smuggling fags, etc., at a significant level is going to be organised crime) tend to be not terribly nice and have a nasty way with snitches.

I also remember 'friends of my youth' who became involved in far right politics. I suspect this is going to attract a lot of people with sympathies in that direction - the fact the call-out uses the dog-whistle of immigration spells that out, really - and, frankly, the overlap between those sympathies and serious crime were present. Membership of Far right organisations, petty and then semi-organised crime, and then (in a couple of cases) actual gun smuggling.

Totally inappropriate. Poorly thought-through. No serious, functioning government would touch this idea with a barge-pole.

Posted too soon. Have been reading them myself. Loved this quote: 'His brand of politics always makes the headlines, the politics of hate. Our policies are failing? Blame the other political parties - remind the people that we may be bad, but they are worse or things would be worse under the other lot. Or if we can't blame the main opposition, find a new scapegoat - a section of society with no power, no voice. Blame the travellers or the noughts or the immigrants. Cheap, gutter politics to appeal to the lowest common denominator.'

Volunteer groups 'paedo hunting' haven't exactly been appreciated by the police.

If you want volunteers to monitor dangers to the public, why not monitor the state, not individuals

The mistakes of the state kill far more people:

e.g. document the cases where people die after being refused benefits / assessed fit to work, or after benefits have been delayed
e.g. cases where people have died due to waiting lists for access to MH services
or to hospital waiting lists for operations

Sounds like it will be self-selecting for the far right, paranoid xenophobes, racists , rent-a-thug etc

Volunteers don't have the selection standards, the training or the monitoring of the professionals

yet another indication of how extraordinarily dysfunctional the UK has become

Rule of law happens by consensus not by enforcement.

As we are seeing.

Has anyone posted the stuff about G4S's expanding role in 'law enforcement'.

Attempts to deploy unpaid thugs, are all the more significant because it indicates the fragility of the the state.

Exactly the same policies as trumpkins. Funny that isn't it Michael and Liam.

Remember the dangers of poor spelling ability, when a paediatrician was targeted by a hard of thinking bunch of thugs?

Law can be perceived to be collapsing; it can also be perceived to define britishness.

That is the whole point of the Article 50 challenge.

Sounds like it will be self-selecting for the far right, paranoid xenophobes, racists , rent-a-thug etc

Yes border patrol by BNP or Britain First.

I hate the culture that has sprung up of not wanting to pay people to do actual jobs. See the rise in interns, charity organisations being used by the public sector, workfare... Some weeks the job ads in my local paper are half voluntary, half paid. I'm not saying that there is no place for volunteering but it should be complementary to, and not instead of, paid positions.

Yes there's no money for the armed forces or local government etc, or many positions held by volunteers, but loads of staff and funding can be prioritised for DexEU

Imagine in this day and age being able to "direct" a vigilante mob with not-so-subtly placed "clues".

You could get the morons to wipe out your opposition.

Here's how to get an innocent man killed by the police 5 states away ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42523045

(This "swatting" technique was used in the UK against at least one person from MNHQ, so isn't my imagination running riot).

Yes I hate it when its said that the majority of the country just want us to get on with brexit now. Its on a par with 'will of the people' and 'we're all brexiteers now'. I wonder if they think we'll give up if we think we're in the minority.

I imagine Henry VIIIs new years message 1535 was "We're all Anglican now, and everyone just wants to get on with it."

Another shift which is happening, or which does happen under wannabe totalitarianism is that the Rule of Law upholders become the Resistance.

It's ironic that it is British Law that which is being sought to be upheld through Article 50 challenge, and it could benefit brexists:
triggering article 50 illegally, and setting short time limit on it has made brexism impossible to achieve.

So we want the British Law to be upheld, even if it allows brexit to happen.

As I understand it.

Law is all we got.

A PP has reminded me of an alleged Churchill quote - "The Americans will always do the right thing...after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives"

So we want the British Law to be upheld, even if it allows brexit to happen.

As long a British law was upheld prior to that. Arbitrary enforcement of the law is simply the tool of the dictator. Hence the separation of powers (that the UK pretends to have).

Many many years ago, when some law changed so that you could people convicted (or possibly accused - I can't quite remember how the name came out) of paedophilia (or other related crimes), it was discovered that John Smith, 42, of Flatty McFlats was listed. This led to John Smith, 33, of Flatty McFlats being beaten severely in a vigilante attack. It wasn't the same John Smith. There happened to be two of them of similarish ages in the same large block of flats.

There's a reason why a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

tool of the dictator
Dictators don't have tools, or power, if separation of powers is operational and there's a functioning judiciary and legislature balancing the power of the executive.
At least this case should cast light on all this.

HashiAsLarry

Probably giving my age away here, but who would want to be a paediatrician, when moronic cretinous idiots can't spell ...

www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society

Self-styled vigilantes attacked the home of a hospital paediatrician after apparently confusing her professional title with the word "paedophile", it emerged yesterday.

(contd)

It's not only new year's Eve, but also my wedding anniversary, so I am afraid I am going to try and take this one moment to say something good about 2017. This is not to say that the shit stuff is not huge, horrifying and important, but for the sake of my mental health it's also important to remember the good even if it seems like a small rock trying to hold back the sea.

2017 has been the year the left and progressive movements stopped sitting back on their laurels and realised that they have not won the fight. For a while there had been the impression that though things weren't perfect they were good enough. Feminism seemed to be dieing out despite the still huge wage gap and even bigger issues for minorities. The left seemed to have decided that maybe drifting slowly to the right wasn't such a problem after all. A lot of people seemed to have come to the view that progress was just this inevitable thing that would happen without their help.

The rise and seeming normalisation of the extreme right in some quarters has also given the left and the progressive movements a big kick up the arse. It's easy to sit and say everyone is now a Nazi, but along with the rise of the right we have seen a corresponding rise in people, particularly young people and minorities fighting against it.

I for one have been thrilled to see the rise of the women's movements and black lives matter. Whether you like Corbyn or not, having a manifesto that offers something different to the center ground we had been stuck in is, in my view, good for politics. Seeing millennials standing up for themselves, becoming politicised and getting out and voting is wonderful.

Over this year we have seen not just opposition to the rising right, but also people grabbing hold of issues that seemed to have been forgotten. The #metoo movement feels to me like a realisation that the job was not done. Women still have much to fight for and if we don't we run the risk of losing everything we have gained so far.

While it is clear that much of the old school media is sticking to the right wing party line and of course we have the fake news continuing, we should not forget that there have been other media outlets that have really come into their own this year. Buzzfeed has done some amazing stories, from following the deaths of prominent Russians, to a very good series on being young and disabled. Of course there are others.

Social media may sometimes feel saturated with fake news, but it has also come into its own for organising opposition, spreading information and just making us feel less alone. The importance of online communities has become even clearer as people have felt abandoned by the traditional media.

I don't know if 2018 is going to be the year we sort out all this mess and can move on, pretending it never happened, but I do feel confident that there is still a lot of people in this country and across the world who believe the same things I do and will fight for those beliefs. It makes me sad and angry that we may end up leaving our children a massive pile of shit to clear up, but I am heartened by the fact that it seems that they are more than capable of doing so.

So, while we all look back at the last year and review all the badness, let's also recognise the good things that have come with it and while we do so give ourselves a little pat on the back for being part of that good stuff even if only in a small way.

Here now ends my 2017 goodness broadcast. Thank you and goodnight.

Well, that was a bit long

Incidentally, the issue highlighted - confusing parts of an address/ID structure - applies equally to DNA evidence matching. It's not possible to store an entire genome, so only key markers are held. Which increases the possibility of a sample being incorrectly matched. (Not the entire genome though).

So the bigger you make your database of samples (that is the DNA you have illegally retrained from all the uncaught criminals you arrest daily) then the more chances there are of more than one match.

In the old days, when the prosecution was obliged to hand over exculpatory evidence, this would have been a problem, as it raised "reasonable doubt". However, given that it appears SOP police procedure to simply hide any contradictory evidence, it seem the UK has that hurdle cleared.

It seems the UK approach to finding a needle in a haystack is too make the haystack bigger.

Happy New year to all of us!

Have I missed a lot of chair-throwing over Christmas? I saw Mumsnet commented on this thread.

@dgrosetti - "that the UK pretends to have" - as a long time consultant I've had considerable contact with the police, courts and the moj over the past decade - both the police and the judiciary guard their independence extremely vigorously, often to the chagrin of the moj, have you any real evidence that the separation of powers has been blurred?

if you have then it needs to be called out - otherwise it's the sort of cynicism that gives a foothold for Change - which won't necessarily be for the better.

elena Just a typical Christmas gathering where you have to put up with your old racist Daily Mail reading uncle for a short time

Happy new year to you all.

Going back to bigly positives post, whilst this year hasn't been great in general I've seen some positives in my own life. This has spurred me to get out there and actually attempt to drive change, I have found a strength to stand up for what I believe in and not just sit and grumble about it. I have also found the strength to stay positive in the light of what would previously make me feel very negative - a newfound resolve to not let bitterness envelop me. I think I'd rather it not taken all of this to happen in order for all that too, but its positive nonetheless.

In general the engagement of Women and Youth within politics has amazed me, and long may this continue.

I hope you all have some positives yourselves too.