Category Archives: Politics

Security mania targets amateur snappers

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Extraordinary story on BBC News Magazine.

Misplaced fears about terror, privacy and child protection are preventing amateur photographers from enjoying their hobby, say campaigners.

Phil Smith thought ex-EastEnder Letitia Dean turning on the Christmas lights in Ipswich would make a good snap for his collection.

The 49-year-old started by firing off a few shots of the warm-up act on stage. But before the main attraction showed up, Mr Smith was challenged by a police officer who asked if he had a licence for the camera.

After explaining he didn’t need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal “stop and search”, then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more. So he slunk home with his camera…

This is ludicrous. It’s also unlawful.

“If you are a normal person going about your business and you see something you want to take a picture of, then you are fine unless you’re taking picture of something inherently private,” says Hanna Basha, partner at solicitors Carter-Ruck. “But if it’s the London Marathon or something, you’re fine.”

There are also restrictions around some public buildings, like those involved in national defence.

But other than that, you’re free to click.

There’s some very helpful advice in the comments on this post:

Take some photos of the police who are trying to stop you taking photos. Then tell them you are within your rights to do so and you will not delete them and if they arrest you then you will pursue a case of wrongful arrest. They really hate that.

Thanks to James Miller for spotting it.

The mystery of Broon — contd.

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Martin Kettle thinks the unthinkable?

This much, though, is certain. Brown is not ready to give up, but nor is he confident he can win the public’s support back. For whatever reason, he lacks the certainty of his predecessor. Even when Blair was wrong, he was clear about where he was heading. But Brown lacks Blair’s confidence – and this is now corrosive. “The challenge is primarily psychological,” says a senior minister, “It’s about being confident.” “He simply doesn’t know what to do,” responds a senior backbencher. “There’s no sense of direction whatever. There’s nothing there.”

What can Brown do about this mood? Helpfully meant suggestions abound – be more radical, be more centrist, be yourself, be someone else, get a speechwriter, get a haircut – yet most of these miss the point. Guys of 57 don’t change much. The way people have behaved in the past, a wise minister observed this week, is still the best guide to the way they will behave in the future. A large amount of the wishful-thinking school of commentary on the Labour government’s predicament persistently overlooks this obvious point. There isn’t an Attlee or Roosevelt lurking inside the prime minister. There’s just the same old Gordon with the same old strengths and weaknesses…

The mystery of Broon

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Perceptive column by Polly Toynbee

Why is Brown on the slide? Why has that 12% lead he earned in the early months evaporated? Those were Labour voters expecting something better, looking for the mission and vision lacking in Blairism, looking for the change, change, change that Brown promised. The mystery of this premiership deepens with every day, perplexing some who thought they knew Brown best. Now he refutes any suggestion he has changed any Blairite “reform” one iota.

Most dismayed are those who toiled for him for 10 long years, drinking midnight toasts to the king over the water, plotting and obstructing, singing the old Gordon-is-my-darling songs, and telling any of us who would listen that when the bonnie prince sails home, the egregious sins of opportunistic unprincipled Blairism would be expunged. But now the prince is here, his leadership is a pale shadow of what they promised. Inept generalship looks in danger of leading the Labour clans towards their Culloden – and they can see it coming.

Here is the puzzle. Those who know him know Gordon Brown to be a man of sincere beliefs with a profound concern for the poor at home and abroad. There is nothing showy or sham about him. But, alas, a good man doesn’t necessarily make a good prime minister. So was it right when the Blair camp malevolently tarred him as “psychologically flawed”? Well, who isn’t? There’s no reason to think him any crazier than others with the vaulting ambition to reach No 10. Blair was considerably madder and badder by the time he left office – what with war, Catholic conversion and shameless plunder from fat directorships.

Gordon Brown is certainly the cleverest prime minister in living memory – but then intellectuals rarely make good leaders. His bookishness may account for his worst failings. He has studied every aspect of every dilemma, met every global expert, perused every research paper, communed with every contrary opinion. He knows there is rarely one simple answer and the world is made of nuanced grey areas. But prime ministers have to make black and white choices every day. When he doesn’t, he increasingly ends up with the worst of all worlds, pleasing no one…

Gesture politics

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The disintegration of the Brown government is almost painful to watch. here’s the latest example of the replacement of policy by well-intentioned but fatuous gestures:

LONDON (AP) — The British government wants to ban convicted pedophiles from using social networking Web sites such as Facebook, the Home Office said Friday.

The plan involves forcing sex offenders to give any e-mail address they use to police, who will then ask the Web sites to block their access, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said.

Smith said the proposal is aimed at sending out the message that the Internet is ”not a no-go area when it comes to law enforcement.”

”We are changing the law … so that we have got better control over the way in which child sex offenders are able to use the Internet,” Smith said on GMTV.

The government wants to prevent pedophiles from using social networking Web sites to groom children to be sexual abuse victims, according to the Home Office.

Under the proposed legislation, it would be a crime punishable by up to five years in prison for a convicted child sex offender to use an e-mail address that has not been registered with police, a Home Office spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

However, the report goes on to say that “the government acknowledges it has yet to work out the details of how the plan would work.”

Yep. That’s the Broonies for you.

E-vote early, e-vote often…

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This morning’s Observer column (about voting machines)…

It’s not just the accuracy of the machines that is questionable, it’s also their security. Several projects have demonstrated how voting machines from all the major makers can be hacked into with comparative ease. This is not an argument for not using machines: who would want to replicate the ‘hanging chads’ fiasco of the 2000 election? But before a society entrusts its central democratic process to machines, it ought to take reasonable steps to instil public confidence in the technology.

This requires only two very basic provisions…

Obama

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From Andrew Sullivan

I see no clear reason why the Michigan and Florida primaries should be re-done. Why should a party switch the rules halfway through a game? If Clinton were ahead by the amount Obama is, no one would give the argument for a re-do any credence. Just because the Clintons do not believe the rules ever apply to them, we don’t have to acquiesce to their self-serving arguments.

Obama has essentially won this thing already. He should use the next few weeks to demonstrate what a tough campaigner he can be; to broaden his appeal as he has done in every major primary as the campaign has gone on. The good news about the kitchen sink is that you can only throw it once. He just won Wyoming after being battered by a barrage of negativism and refusing to throw a much larger kitchen sink back. He should now focus on Mississippi. And on reality.

The Clintons just got into our heads. We need to get them out. Keep going; keep focused; remind people why only Obama can provide change in a way the Clintons never have and never will.

The longer this thing goes on, the more I dislike Hillary Clinton.

Barack unveiled

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Excellent New Yorker profile by Larissa MacFarquhar…

There are three things that Democratic political candidates tend to do when talking with constituents: they display an impressive grasp of the minutiae of their constituents’ problems, particularly money problems; they rouse indignation by explaining how those problems are caused by powerful groups getting rich on the backs of ordinary people; and they present well-worked-out policy proposals that, if passed, would solve the problems and put the powerful groups in their place. Obama seldom does any of these things. He tends to underplay his knowledge, acting less informed than he is. He rarely accuses, preferring to talk about problems in the passive voice, as things that are amiss with us rather than as wrongs that have been perpetrated by them. And the solutions he offers generally sound small and local rather than deep-reaching and systemic…

IMHO, the New Yorker is the best print magazine there is. (The only publication that comes close is the Economist, which is the only magazine I make sure I read from cover to cover every week.) The trouble with the New Yorker, though, is that it’s generally a Big Read. I used to subscribe to it, but found the mounting pile of partially-read back numbers too reproachful. So subscribing again to the print edition has joined the list of things I am going to do when I win the Lottery. (Another one is to hire a personal tech support guy as good as DisplayLink‘s Dave Hill.)

Getting things done, Daily Mail style

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Interesting column by Martin Kettle…

If you live cocooned and, dare one say it, comfortable on Planet Guardian, then maybe you have not yet fully reflected on why this week’s Daily Mail’s campaign to Banish the Bags has been both so brilliantly effective, orchestrating the endorsements of Marks & Spencer and the prime minister within its first 48 hours, and also so politically interesting. But you should. It’s important.

The Daily Mail did not invent the issue of plastic bag pollution. Paul Dacre’s newspaper is a Johnny-come-lately to a long-established environmental cause. It is 20 years since Labour’s Chris Smith first raised the issue in the House of Commons and six since Ireland and Bangladesh caught the world’s attention by slapping a tax on them. You can find hundreds of speeches by ministers saying something must be done. But until the Mail’s campaign ministers were still – there is no other word for it – dithering.

Once the Mail went into action the outcome was settled. Ten pages on Wednesday, seven more on Thursday, another four on Friday and the job was done. The Banish the Bags campaign was well planned, well focused, well judged, well timed and was executed on a scale and with a ruthlessness that would have impressed Bismarck. M&S was lined up in advance to create a second-day wave with its 5p-per-bag charge announcement. Even Prince Harry could not shove the campaign off the front page yesterday, as Gordon Brown, who now recycles his garden waste instead of his policy announcements, pledged that the government would “step in and act”…

Hmmm…. He’s right about the amazing inability of the current government to assign meaningful priorities and get on with what’s important. But then one remembers that Mussolini got the trains to run on time…