Another Non-Policy?

Sacrificial Victim?

Much of the comment on the last weekend's BBC politics output has rightly focused on the 'Calamitygate' story surrounding the Chris Huhne's bid for the leadership leadership for that eternal political calamity, the Liberal Democrat party.

I would have to admit to enjoying the acrimonious exchanges; real Punch and Judy stuff from the party that thinks we are all stupid enough to believe their baseless assertions that they are above that kind of thing. If anything, it actually fell short of the level of intellectual warfare to count as Punch and Judy politics, being more like a scrap between two five year olds watching the show at a seaside stall, which, after all, could be said to be a metaphor fore the role of the Lib Dems in UK National politics more generally. No more Mr Nice Party then. Good, they never really were; no worse than the other two main parties certainly, but not the morally superior force they manage to hoodwink the gullible into believing them to be.

My eye, or rather ear lest I thought to be a very sick puppy, was more taken by the appearance of the ever strange Ruth Kelly with Andrew Marr earlier in the day and what she had to say, or rather not say about plans for airport style security at major railway stations. It was only a few days since I posted my thoughts, for what they are worth, on this ridiculous plan and from the obvious downgrading by of the scheme by Kelly from a headline initiative to an 'option not to be ruled out' it would appear that the government may finally have thought through the implications of the scheme too.

This type of oft repeated story, especially under the current government, leaves the likes of myself, who has never worked inside the political bubble, scratching my head about how such daft ideas ever come to see the light of the day in the first place.

Ignorant of any real insight of the process I am forced to speculate that it must run something like this, with the only known facts highlighted in bold:

• Policy announcement - 3 days: Weekend of media criticism of visionless government


• P - 2 days: PM summons meeting of top secret eye watering initiative team at Number 10, memo sent to all cabinet ministers demanding ideas. Lists of remaining civil liberties that can be dispensed with and things that could be banned circulated.


• P - 1 day: CabinetPM selects least stupid idea from unknown minister, who is informed that it was the PM's idea.


• P day: PM delivers weak speech to House of Commons to announce his idea and is derided by opposition MPs who suspect the policy is unmitigated crap.


• P + 5 minutes: All intelligent life outside the Labour party realise that the policy is indeed crap.


• P + 1 day: Print media splash lurid headlines about PM's bold initiative, some though already comment on inside pages on the fact that the policy is crap.


• P + 2 days: Even slower elements of the media realise that the policy is crap, as do more sophisticated Labour MPs without ministerial sinecure.


• P + 3 days: PM informed that the policy is in fact crap and angrily summons the overworked Labour crap policy disposal team.


• P + 4 days: Expendable minister dispatched to non-announce the strategic non-advancement of a policy, in place of the Home Secretary whose political health was too weak to allow her to deal with what was fundamentally a Home Office issue.


• P + 5 days: PM slinks off back into hiding ahead of what he, unlike Parliament, already knows will be a week of disastrous news for his disintegrating government. Next eye catching initiative placed in production, illiberal line failed, so try banning something next time....plastic bags?

...and so the weekly cycle begins again. Well, this kind of knee jerk rubbish has to come from somewhere.

Ceding the High Ground

Celebrating Gordon's Gift

The arguments over government proposals for further supposedly anti-terror legislation, especially on pre-trial detention, have continued to rumble on today, and so they should.

I'm sure there is nobody rationale who would want anything other than to see the would be perpetrators of the types of outrageous crimes that have occured from time to time in recent years thwarted, caught and punished. This does not however mean that every 'get tough' policy from the government, should, as Gordon seems to believe, be nodded through simply because the police would like the additional powers.

You don't even have the type of passionate belief in individual liberties and basic values, such as a person's fundamental innocence until properly convicted to understand why the type of measures the government appears to be considering should be treated with the greatest of scepticism. All you really need to do is a very simple, though unpleasant, thought experiment and just for a moment put yourself in the shoes of a terrorist leader, and try and imagine how he will have reacted to recent announcements.

Will he have slammed down his fist in frustration on his desk or whatever he may have his dank cave and torn up his plans for attacking the UK overland train network? I suspect not, I think he will probably joined his brethren for a little jig firing volley after volley of AK-47 ammunition into the air. Why wouldn't he? After all he has forced, in his mind at least, a western state to consider placing a highly visible daily reminder of the threat his and similar organisations pose in 285 of the busiest railway stations. This is a measure he will know will have to all intents and purposes zero impact on his ability to operate but will create a very real sense of threat in the minds of the loathed infidels and that after all is his primary objective. As for pre-trial detention, he needs to nothing but wait for the first case of mistaken identity or bad intelligence leading to prolonged imprisonment for an innocent member of a very sensitive community.

As is so often the case with the current government it is the most headline grabbing initiatives that stand up to the least scrutiny. After all to grab headlines is their raison d'être, not actually to be effective. Try another thought experiment. You've got a backpack full of explosives and you want to blow up a packed commuter express just as it comes into London Waterloo during the morning rush hour, but the 285 busiest stations have airport style security scans; do you abort your mission? I've not read the Al Queda training manual, but off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or more ways I could render the inconvenience to those standing in the queues for the scanners completely worthless.

This particular suggestion is at best a symbolic gesture to show the government is doing something, albeit at enormous cost in cash and inconvenience terms. At worst things could take a rather more sinister turn. After all, once the National Identity Register is up and running, what better way could you find to 'encourage' us to file into the registration centre for processing like the mindless sheep the government wishes us to be, than introduce a 'common sense' ID check at these security bottlenecks.

I guess you could clamp down on all train and tube stations, with full airport style checks at all stages even for, say, a ten minute trip from Battersea to Waterloo. I guess there would even be those whose knee jerk reaction would be to say yes to this, just as they squeal 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' on ID cards. Fine, but all you would have achieved by this draconian action is a displacement to fear of buses, and so it goes on.

Airport type checks are appropriate for airports. They are relatively few in number, making the checks practical, the vast majority of journeys are of sufficient length to make the time spent going through security checks seem acceptable, the limited amount of weaponry or explosives needed to cause an outrage make them essential.

This particular gesture, for that is all it is, is about making Gordon Brown appear to be the tough man we all now know he isn't.

The suggestions on pre-trial detention are worse. They should outrage any fair minded person, as should the denunciations of those who speak against them. That said, I'll wait until we know what the government position is once all troublemakers have reported to Number 10 for their reeducation session, before venting my spleen on this subject.

Personally, the greatest tragedy of Labour's response to the terrorist threat, is a growing difficulty to feel proud of my country, in the sense of the values it demonstrates through actions not words to the outside world.

In Memoriam

May there be an afterlife

Every news feed I have is alive with the news that would-be terrorist Kafeel Ahmed has passed away from the burns he sustained in his failed attack on Glasgow Airport. To his family, who must love him, whatever he became, my sympathies.

I do though feel a different kind of bereavement; a chance to show the superiority of our values over those of the perverted form of a great religion that Mr Ahmed appears to have espoused, has been taken from us. As I posted earlier, all I wished for Mr Ahmed was a fair trial, and if the facts of the case were proved a long, possibly (literally) life-long, prison sentence.

Sky News quotes a spokesman for the Scottish Executive as saying:

"There has been some comment about the treatment provided for him by the NHS.

"It was perfectly right that he should have received the appropriate treatment our health service could offer as this reflects the value our society places on human life."

Source : Sky News

Quite right too; this is the kind of society that any decent person should want to live in, even in dealing with those that would wish to replace it with something less humane and forgiving of human frailty.

I hope that Mr Ahmed did not suffer in his final days. I do hope though that I am wrong, and there is some sort of God, and that if so, when Mr Ahmed awakes on the other side he finally understands just how wrong and misguided he was. In there, for anyone who, if Mr Ahmed qualifies, remains part of the human race, is a more profound punishment than any of the more lurid suggestions that will doubtlessly light up the Internet over the next few days.

It is so I can (albeit with diminishing confidence) write things like this that I feel such rage against politicans who want limits on detention without trial to be weakened to an unacceptable level, and a police service who want them removed entirely in any meaningful sense. It is easy to live in a safe country, totalitarian regimes down through history have proved this, albeit with some terrible side effects; it's much harder to live in a country that puts liberty combined with rule of just law first, but I know what which I prefer and which I will fight for.

As much as I might fume about Mr Ahmed, his strange beliefs and the awful things that stemmed from them, I find more comfort in the quote above than the 'strong', 'decisive' and 'hard hitting' statements and proposals from those with the real power on these matters.

From the Bomb Shelter

And the point is?

Currently I'm sitting under the dining table, wishing it didn't have a glass top, having put parcel tape all over the windows.

This is all because, of course, the security services via the Home Office, have elevated the terrorism threat level from 'severe' to 'critical'.

I shall do my public duty by publicising the Home Office definitions of the various levels:

• critical - an attack is expected imminently


• severe - an attack is highly likely


• substantial - an attack is a strong possibility


• moderate - an attack is possible but not likely


• low - an attack is unlikely

Ok, I'm actually out on the balcony enjoying some rather thin sunshine, getting on with life as always, and wondering what the real difference is between the top three levels in terms of what we should do in our day to day lives, or what we should be expecting our security services to be doing for us. I'm not trying to minimise the events of the last few days, but what the hell changed between the failed attacks in London, and the somewhat of a failure on yesterday?

Call me a cynic, but isn't it just something that Broon and new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith can pull out to make it sound as if they are doing something personally about the situation? I've got every faith that the security forces were doing all they could to avert events like those of the last few days, long before these latest attempted atrocities. I would not doubt for a minute that the inquiries that will follow them will be as exhaustive as humanly possible. I can't help thinking that behind the threat level indication and emergency meetings of COBRA is simply the need of the government to be seen to be 'doing something'. Quite what the value is of dragging in security resources to brief an ex-schoolteacher and an economics geek and receive their advice, just a few hours after an event like this is beyond me.

Of course there should be political oversight of what happens in events like these, but in the absence of an all-out attack it should be considered, strategic thinking that is the order of the day; the shorter term tactical response should be left to the experts. The politicians should offer support to the professionals and reassurance to the public. The only outcome from too much of a hands on involvement can be kneejerk legislation.

Already, sadly, it appears the Conservatives appear to be willing to talk again about extending the scope of antiterrorism legislation, including longer detention without trial. The unfortunate thing is that in circumstances like those we find ourselves in, that principle can go out of the window when the urge to be part of the 'doing something' brigade gets too strong. To my knowledge the case for increasing detention without trial has still yet to me made, at least in the concrete form of individuals coming to the end of their permitted detention without it being possible to either formulate charges or decide there are none to answer. Yes, there have been plenty stories of unsavoury characters who have been let out on to the streets, and whom the security services have lost track of, above and beyond those thousands released as a matter of government policy to avoid building new jails. These cases though were ones where some dinosaur of a judge probably had a gin and tonic too many at lunch time and came up with an excessively restricted view of how existing powers should be exercised and have no relevance to the concept of being able to lock up someone, without charge, for a longer period you would be sentenced to after being properly charged and convicted of some pretty serious crimes.

For this reason the threat levels listed above are still only really meaningful under a caption reading 'Threat to Civil Liberties'.

By the way, the graphic above is taken from a blog plug-in that I'm desperately hoping that none of the writers of the blogs that I like reading choose to install. If they do I'm going to hack my own version, I envisage the levels being:

• critical - good day to bury bad news


• severe - chance to look good on TV


• substantial - chance to sound good on radio


• moderate - stealth liberty erosion mode engaged


• low - fingers crossed for another excuse

I will display my Home Office terrorism opportunity level indicator with pride.

An Undeserved Notoriety?

Glasgow Airport - Another terrorist incident?

We're now into our fourth hour of coverage of the incident today at Glasgow Airport.

It has been almost continuous coverage, no breaks for a brief round up of other news let alone sport or weather. Without a doubt it deserves to be the lead story and a certain prominence on any self-respecting 24 hour news outlet, but this much?

Frankly, the whole story can be told in every bit of detail that is known, every pertinent eyewitness statement listened to, and every bit of expert and not-so-expert analysis analysed in less than ten minutes, so all we are getting is the usual almost unchanging loop. I don't seek to minimise what could have been a much more serious incident, but I still think it is overkill.

I should say that it is not yet known whether this incident represents a rather unsuccessful terrorist attack, or something else, but for the sake of argument let us assume it is. I suspect that it is a sad reality that we will have to face incidents like this on a fairly regular basis for many years to come. There's actually very little we can do about it. As a country, we could exit Iraq tomorrow and adopt a rabidly anti-Israeli stance on the world stage and, let's be honest, it would make very little difference. At heart, for the fundamentalists, it is not what we do, but what we are, and the liberal values we espouse. They fear the attraction of the these values over their primitive values of centuries ago; they are right to fear our values, because basically they are right and respect the best of humanity's natural instincts, rather than the baser superstitions and hatreds that they appeal to.

It's natural that at the moment we tend to over play incident's such as today's with the genuine horrors of the London tube bombings still a relatively recent memory, but I really don't think we can afford to give them such prominence in the future. I'm no expert on terrorism, but I suspect that there are just as few evil geniuses in these organisations, capable of creating slaughter on a mass scale, as there are geniuses in any other organisation capable of coming up with a great eureka moment to the benefit of society. While I reluctantly expect we will see more such incidents, I suspect the vast majority will be similar to today's shambolic affair thankfully. Yes, the incident today could have been a lot worse, but given the mechanisms they opted for, the chances of it having being so were probably pretty limited. I remember listening to some stunt director once explaining just how hard it is to make a car explode in that spectacular Hollywood way.

News reporting needs to be full, frank and detailed, but also needs to avoid giving undue prominence to these groups. Frankly, all I want to hear about it now, much of the basic detail being known, is in the days to come whether the alleged perpetrators had links to any known groups or whether this was an ad hoc set of loners, and in the distant future, whether a jury finds them guilty and of what charges. Should they disappear behind bars to spend the rest of their miserable lives in highly sub-standard state accommodation then that is the last I will think of them.

It's especially the "panic and fear" phrase being used by the current BBC anchor that is starting to grate. It seems to fly in the face of all but one of their own eyewitness accounts and plays into the hands of those who try to sell us on deeply objectionable concepts such as ID cards and lengthy detention without charge.

Just before posting my favourite blog read at the moment, Devil's Kitchen has commented on some web coverage of the incident. At first reading I thought it represented a view very different from my own, but actually on second reading I think I agree with him, as well. We should take all incidents seriously and responsibly, because as the Devil himself says:

"Now, it is all very well for The Register to talk about Beavis and Butthead bombings, but just because these arseholes haven't been able to make a competent bomb does not mean that they neither desired to nor could not actually do so with a bit more thought."

Devil's Kitchen

He's right, but I guess all I'm suggesting is that there is a balance to be struck between over trivialising incidents like this one, and aiding terrorists in their aims by creating an excessive climate of fear through media coverage. As for his own criticisms on the way these incidents are reported as well his more practical suggestions on dealing with the menace, and all I can say is hear hear.

I should say that in all of this I'm not suggesting there is any real intent on the part of the BBC or Sky, who've been going down pretty much the same line. Stories like this will always have their macabre fascination for a large portion of their audiences, and I suppose for the journalists involved, it's the type of story they always imagined themselves covering one day as they set out on their careers. There is however need for some care in what they do because by it's nature terrorism is a publicity hungry beast. If we are not careful we will see a journalistic analogye of science's observer effect (sometimes wrongly assumed to be the same as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) emerge, where the act of observation effects the outcome of the experiment, and to an extent we always have, where the newsworthy becomes the preferred target, rather than necessarily the symbolic or even the greatest carnage.

Oh, and a final pre-beer comment. Jacqui Smith, the new Home Secretary, seemed terribly uncomfortable and lightweight compared to her predecessors. Jack Straw aside, I've hated all NuLab's occupants of this role more then those in any other front line job, Broon notwithstanding. That said, if you are going to have an authoritarian control freak with no regard to our traditional liberties to do the job, you may as well have one that sounds the part.

Update 8:35PM: I've just realised it was rather remiss of me to mention the Devil without thanking him for organising the enjoyable Libertarian UK drinks on Thursday evening. As the Devil himself pointed out, trying to get people of a Libertarian outlook together is a bit like herding cats, but he did manage to get a lot of people in the same room, and was a pretty effective catherd, even of some of the more feral beasts.