Tesco Potters Bar Unleaded is still 136.9p tonight - it's totally outrageous!
Potters Bar has always been expensive for petrol. When I first started driving in the late 80's, the Mobil as it was then was always at least 2p a litre more than the Mobil in Whetstone
I like farage and ukip,but I think farage is making a political mistake of banging on that ukip are the party of thatcher especially when we have a by election in the north east,praising thatcher up north will not help win seats in the northern cities.
Thatcher would join UKIP, Farage claims as he insists he was dragged to a Strasbourg strip club by a French presidential candidate
I like farage and ukip,but I think farage is making a political mistake of banging on that ukip are the party of thatcher especially when we have a by election in the north east,praising thatcher up north will not help win seats in the northern cities.
Thatcher would join UKIP, Farage claims as he insists he was dragged to a Strasbourg strip club by a French presidential candidate
Anna Soubry.....In another of her trademark interviews, in which she attacked the "twattery" of Tory speculation about the prime minister's future, Soubry said she hoped her successor would be a man to change the perception that women should be public health minister.
Thank you, my friend. I wish I had had more time to browse the bookshop at Ongar - there were plenty of interesting books on offer and I browsed (incorrectly) the information on the Newbury Park - Ilford Sidings line.
The "lost" line of my youth was Elmers End to Sanderstead which succumbed in 1983 and which I travelled on in the 1970s. I also used the Elmers End to Addiscombe service which survives (partly) through the Tramlink (as does the other line through Sandilands).
The station master at North Weald told us on Saturday afternoon with justifiable pride how much they had achieved in a year and how, having travelled on the Bluebell and Watercress lines, the level of service to which they could aspire.
You were unable to buy a book in Ongar?
I an reminded, irresistibly, of a favourite old Fleet Street story - supposedly true.
Some new journalist in the 1990s once asked a Sun editor why the sub-editors were paid so much, compared to the actual writers and hacks, who went out and found stories.
By way of argument, Kelvin MacKenzie (or whoever it was) pointed to the sub-editor who was told to jazz up an apparently tedious story about a library strike in remote north east London.
After much thought, the sub came up with the headline:
Book Lack in Ongar
And thereby earned his £1500 a week.
If it's true, they forgot that Ongar is well outside the Greater London boundary, being in Essex.
Cowardly George Osborne could have faced a rough ride as he was lined up for a TV debate with disabled campaigner Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.
But the anticipated showdown never materialised – after she was suddenly axed from the show.
And last night sources on ITV’s The Agenda claimed the former wheelchair racer, who won 11 Paralympic gold medals over five Games, got the chop because the Chancellor was scared she would attack his savage benefit cuts.
An insider said: “He did not want to be hauled over the coals on the Government’s disability changes. So she was dumped from the line-up.”
Baroness Tanni, 43, who sits as an independent in the Lords, said yesterday: “I am not sure what to say about Mr Osborne – I am always quite reasonable when it comes to the changes in welfare, and any debate.
“It is up to him whether he wants to appear with me or not. But I am not party political and I think it’s a shame if he did not want to have a proper debate. Having open healthy discussion is positive.”
What an odious little "twit" Osbrowne is.
The nasty party are going to have to look to 'shy voters' as an excuse again sooner or later.
The Bundesliga is now, palpably, the best league in Europe, taking over from Spain, which took over from England in about 2011.
The English will be back, though. All that money talks.
The curiosity is the absence of the Italians.
Not if we don't start producing some decent defenders,the premier league this season as been poor,even a 4th division team got to a major cup final ;-)
It's more of a rank or title rather than a description. Similarly, both men are women are (singularly) referred to as transfigura, even though that's feminine.
Magistri magnus sounds like the equivalent of courts martial or Grands Prix. I wasn't sure if it'd be like that, or if both words should be pluralised (or something else peculiarly Latin).
It's more of a rank or title rather than a description. Similarly, both men are women are (singularly) referred to as transfigura, even though that's feminine.
Magistri magnus sounds like the equivalent of courts martial or Grands Prix. I wasn't sure if it'd be like that, or if both words should be pluralised (or something else peculiarly Latin).
That's the joy of Latin.
What exactly is the plural of penis? I would say penises, but it seems too simple and obvious. Is it penis, like deer, or maybe peni, like fungi?
I like farage and ukip,but I think farage is making a political mistake of banging on that ukip are the party of thatcher especially when we have a by election in the north east,praising thatcher up north will not help win seats in the northern cities.
Thatcher would join UKIP, Farage claims as he insists he was dragged to a Strasbourg strip club by a French presidential candidate
Mrs Thatcher has repeatedly polled as the most respected PM since WW2. Even if the voters of South Shields wouldn't have voted for her in the 1980s, they can see she was good for the country. More importantly, they know that Mr Farage believes that. Lying to the voters is not going to do UKIP any good.
I'm shocked. The tea party tories buried the headline.
David Cameron gave me 'soft, girly' job, says public health minister
Anna Soubry, the outspoken public health minister, has said David Cameron appointed her to the post because it is wrongly seen as the "soft bloody girly option".
chrisshipitv "No that's ridiculous" <EdMiliband to my suggestion he should fire @edballsmp Our poll: 54% want Dave/George running economy. 40% want Ed/Ed
The English will spend a few billion and buy some defenders, and be back in the game.
Dortmund have 19 German players in their squad, Bayern Munich 14. Man U 12 English players, Man City 8, Chelsea 6.
Spending billions doesn't do anything for the quality of English players, who are almost all shite by international standards.
And this is why
David Conn @david_conn 18 Apr Premier League clubs paid £1.6bn in wages last year - and spent just £12m on improving grass roots facilities http://gu.com/p/3f8tx/tw
Bayern simply buy the best German players available, such as Neuer and now Gotze for 30 million. They have far and away more resources than any other German club.
As for La Liga being better than the Premiership, only two teams can win it and it's becoming as predictable as the SPL before Rangers were forced out. The Bundesliga is by far the best run though.
How many English players do you see being recruited by top European clubs?
Almost none, because the top ones are paid fortunes for being mostly crap in the Premier League and wouldn't make the Dortmund first team, let alone Bayern's anyway.
English players are notoriously bad travellers, and why would they go abroad when they get more here? And Bayern couldn't beat an injury/suspension hit Chelsea on their own ground in the final last year.
English football, is, on the whole, not very good. We buy foreign mercenaries, to the detriment of our home grown talent. I can barely be arsed to watch it.
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
English football, is, on the whole, not very good. We buy foreign mercenaries, to the detriment of our home grown talent. I can barely be arsed to watch it.
This is the kind of fecking self-hating English nonsense I most despise.
An English team won - WON - the Champions' League last year, in the most remarkable circumstances - coming from behind, against the odds, again and again, and then beating Bayern Munich - obviously the better team - in their own stadium. It was incredible.
IN THE SAME SEASON - Man City beat Man United for the Championship in literally the last second of extra time, in a gob-smacking dramatic sporting simul-denouement which had sports-loving people around the world in spasms of appreciation, and which left fans of other codes speechless in admiration for the English version of the beautiful game.
OK, so this season wasn't as exciting, but what the Holy Fuck did you expect? Did you hope to see the new Pope sacrificed on an altar in Anfield, while millions of Arsenal fans successfully blew up a recently-disinterred Nazi goalkeeper stuffed with smuggled uranium?
Really? What was missing? Do Tell.
Perhaps you preferred the days when we had a relatively unwatched league and, er, we still didn't win anything.
Pfft.
It's not self hating, it's realism. English football is unsustainable. Sure, the league can be exciting, but it's built on shaky foundations. We don't invest in good English players enough, that's how we end up with tossers like Suarez- and I say that as a Liverpool supporter!.
Oh, and we used to trounce Europe, back in the day.
@TwistedFireStopper. 6 out of the top ten football clubs by attendance are now in Germany, while in England fans get milked to watch mostly crap. And the home grown talent isn't very well coached, they are obviously going to be displaced by players from abroad .
It's four actually and what do you know about coaching at grassroots level? My grandson trains at Brentford and I've watched the Wycombe kids coaching sessions, believe me grassroots coaching has improved hugely with the advent of the new restrictions at various levels.
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't yet committed any crime, is a serious issue.
@Richard: would you accept a chip in your car that reported back whenever you exceeded the speed limit? So you could automatically get points.
If it were proven this would save 1,000 lives a year, would that be acceptable?
So, tell me, why is a life lost to terrorism worth more than a life lost to a motoring accident? Surely we should accept the same level of infringement of our civil liberties to save a life, whether it is caused by a speeding motorist of a fundementalist Muslim terrorist?
You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't yet committed any crime, is a serious issue.
We've all heard this kind of authoritarian nonsense previously used by Blair and Brown to justify all sorts of idiocy. Not least of which was ID cards. Do you intend resurrect those too?
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
@Richard: would you accept a chip in your car that reported back whenever you exceeded the speed limit? So you could automatically get points.
If it were proven this would save 1,000 lives a year, would that be acceptable?
That's a serious question, which deserves a serious answer
The answer is that I probably would think it acceptable (I'd certainly think it was a debate we should have). Here's why:
Firstly, civil liberties questions are ALWAYS about balancing harm vs good. An excellent example is remand in custody. Since time immemorial, we have accepted that innocent men are imprisoned awaiting trial (such as happened to our very own SeanT), sometimes for long periods. Prisoners on remand are of course 100% innocent before the law ("innocent until proven guilty", remember?), and a substantial proportion of them are actually innocent in reality as well. Yet we lock them up.
Why is that acceptable?
The reasons are that (a) it is proportionate to the risk, (b) it is not abused by the authorities. The population has confidence that it is a reasonable thing to do, despite the self-evident trashing of the human rights of those innocents who are locked up.
So, fast forward to the current controversy. The security services want access to records of internet access and email links, in exactly the same way that they already have access to phone records. The content of messages remains confidential (accessible only by a warrant).
So the deal is, some computer will be able to scan the addresses I communicate with, in the hope that the security services will be thus enabled to head off more terrorist attacks then they otherwise would be able to. No-one will be able to read my emails without a warrant (which is already the case).
That strikes me as a good deal. Maybe it doesn't strike you as a good deal.
But the debate has been ridiculous; this is a trade-off, not something new in principle. The downside looks tiny compared with other breaches of our civil liberties such as remand in custody, the upside is saving lives.
On the "Snoopers' Charter", I think there were four groups identified as not requiring a warrant, and there was some suggestion that was limited to them (99% of cases, or something). Did we assess if that were true? Or are the councils etc. not going to need a warrant? If not, what procedure will they need to comply with?
@SeanT It's also worth bearing in mind the European Commission is starting to look into state aid in football, which isn't good news for Real and Barca.
English football, is, on the whole, not very good. We buy foreign mercenaries, to the detriment of our home grown talent. I can barely be arsed to watch it.
This is the kind of fecking self-hating English nonsense I most despise.
An English team won - WON - the Champions' League last year, in the most remarkable circumstances - coming from behind, against the odds, again and again, and then beating Bayern Munich - obviously the better team - in their own stadium. It was incredible.
IN THE SAME SEASON - Man City beat Man United for the Championship in literally the last second of extra time, in a gob-smacking dramatic sporting simul-denouement which had sports-loving people around the world in spasms of appreciation, and which left fans of other codes speechless in admiration for the English version of the beautiful game.
OK, so this season wasn't as exciting, but what the Holy Fuck did you expect? Did you hope to see the new Pope sacrificed on an altar in Anfield, while millions of Arsenal fans successfully blew up a recently-disinterred Nazi goalkeeper stuffed with smuggled uranium?
Really? What was missing? Do Tell.
Perhaps you preferred the days when we had a relatively unwatched league and, er, we still didn't win anything.
Pfft.
It's not self hating, it's realism. English football is unsustainable. Sure, the league can be exciting, but it's built on shaky foundations. We don't invest in good English players enough, that's how we end up with tossers like Suarez- and I say that as a Liverpool supporter!.
Oh, and we used to trounce Europe, back in the day.
Unsustainable? In what way? And in contrast to what? You mean the debt-fuelled caja-funded weirdness that is the MASSIVE spending by Barca and Real? And that is, what, *sustainable*?
I'd rather have the TV-funded English model than the eerie Spanish model, any day.
And as for the days when we used to "trounce" Europe, presumably you mean the conquering Liverpool or Notts Forest teams of the 1980s. Well, we didn't win any European Nations cups or World Cups then, either, and we eventually got banned for homicidal football hooliganism.
We're talking about different things. You like the Premier league, no matter what nationality players are in it, it's exciting, fast. I'm talking about the standard of English players. It's a subtle difference.
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
No ones denying it's a serious issue. It doesn't make it good reason to infringe on our liberties. I'm sure having a CCTV camera in every living room in the country could help identify potentially dangerous people, it would still be appalling policy. The fact the Tories are rolling out this crap shows what bollocks David Cameron's claims to be a liberal conservative are. The coalition should be rolling back New Labour authoritarian policies, but instead they're adding to them. It's this sort of crap that makes people vote UKIP. All your arguments about having to keep out Labour evaporate when on one of the most fundamental issues of all - protecting civil liberties - the Tories are just as bad, and possibly worse.
On the Snoopers Charter, I don't have a problem with it at all. Security of citizens comes first.
But shame on Cameron and the Tories, utter shame on them, for making such a big thing of stuff like this when they were in opposition, with the whole "civil liberties" attack line against the last Government.
And English coaching has lagged behind the best in Europe for decades, why do you think the national team is consistently useless?
Agree totally coaching has been rubbish but it's not now, and there are literally thousands of coaches giving up their time at weekends to coach the kids. We were absolutely shocking at one stage in the 70's and didn't qualify for World Cups, these days we get so far and we all know it when we can't get any further. Spain were the same for years and made the breakthrough, I doubt we can do the same.
I thoroughly agree that the influx of foreign players is stifling the development of our young players. The best young player I've ever seen is the 17/18 year old Alan Hudson, if he was coming through the ranks at Chelsea now he would farmed out on loan in the lower leagues until he was 22 and totally dispirited.
I would personally be happy to travel by commercial airliner with minimal security. I would regard the time and convenience improvement as being well worth the additional risk of death. Not everyone is like me, of course, but it is very important to remember that we - as humans - dramatically underestimate the chances that we'll die as a result of an accident or a disease, and do the opposite with terrorist attacks. If we allowed one 9/11 a year, but reduced road deaths by 10% (which for the tens of billions spent on Homeland Security, plus the economic loss associated with the disruption to air travel) we could surely do, then wouldn't this be better value for money?
On the Snoopers Charter, I don't have a problem with it at all.
Your choice.
It is however worth pointing out that a great many do have a problem with it and the continuing incompetence that surrounds it. Not least of which was parliament itself.
The decision to redraft the bill came after a joint scrutiny committee of both houses of parliament delivered a withering verdict on the original Home Office legislation, describing it as "overkill" and warning that it "tramples on the privacy of British citizens"
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
No ones denying it's a serious issue. It doesn't make it good reason to infringe on our liberties.
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
No ones denying it's a serious issue. It doesn't make it good reason to infringe on our liberties.
Yes it bloody does!
Ben Franklin said it best: He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
I like farage and ukip,but I think farage is making a political mistake of banging on that ukip are the party of thatcher especially when we have a by election in the north east,praising thatcher up north will not help win seats in the northern cities.
Thatcher would join UKIP, Farage claims as he insists he was dragged to a Strasbourg strip club by a French presidential candidate
Mrs Thatcher has repeatedly polled as the most respected PM since WW2. Even if the voters of South Shields wouldn't have voted for her in the 1980s, they can see she was good for the country. More importantly, they know that Mr Farage believes that. Lying to the voters is not going to do UKIP any good.
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
No ones denying it's a serious issue. It doesn't make it good reason to infringe on our liberties.
Yes it bloody does!
Ben Franklin said it best: He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He was talking crap. Give me security any day.
Interestingly enough though, the Times, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express (and by extension the broadcast media) aren't as OUTRAGED at this NANNYING Government TRAMPLING ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES as they were when Labour were in power.
Home Office fears Liberal leader Nick Clegg will veto 'snooper's charter' http://gu.com/p/3fbnd/tw
More accurate to say it's trouble ahead for the country, surely?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
No ones denying it's a serious issue. It doesn't make it good reason to infringe on our liberties.
Yes it bloody does!
Ben Franklin said it best: He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He was talking crap. Give me security any day.
Interestingly enough though, the Times, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express (and by extension the broadcast media) aren't as OUTRAGED at this NANNYING Government TRAMPLING ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES as they were when Labour were in power.
@carl: if this measure costs GBP1bn a year and saves 100 lives a year (probably an underestimate of the costs, and an overly generous assessment of the benefits), presumably you would prefer to see the government spend GBP1bn on reducing road deaths by 120?
The authoritarians (@RichardNabavi, @tim, etc) will no doubt use tomorrow's events to bolster their arguments. There are two sets of terrorist offenders to be sentenced, one expecting very heavy sentences indeed at the Crown Court at Woolwich before Mr Justice Henriques and the other expecting less severe sentences at the Central Criminal Court before Mr Justice Simon.
@RichardNabavi makes the typical authoritarian's argument that ' civil liberties questions are ALWAYS about balancing harm vs good.' Roll on control orders, roll on indeterminate detention without trial. No doubt @tim will be along to remind us that control orders and internment without trial under Labour were much more efficient than the bizarre control orders-lite regime the Coalition enacted.
The snooper's charter genuinely makes me really angry. To think this is the country that created the Magna Carter and the Bill of Rights, and yet a government party that claims to be conservative, which should mean preserving our ancient traditional liberties, wants to store all of our personal communication on a massive database. It's as bad as when Howard backed ID cards. If this goes through the Tories won't only have lost my vote for good, I'm going to start donating to UKIP. No wonder Cameron wanted to ditch the liberty torch as the party's emblem.
(as an aside, one of the things i love about this site is that - while i disagree with socrates about many things - i get to hear his, and others, insightful views about a great many things, put with intelligence and style)
@carl: if this measure costs GBP1bn a year and saves 100 lives a year (probably an underestimate of the costs, and an overly generous assessment of the benefits), presumably you would prefer to see the government spend GBP1bn on reducing road deaths by 120?
Of course. But there's no reason they can't do both.
@carl: if this measure costs GBP1bn a year and saves 100 lives a year (probably an underestimate of the costs, and an overly generous assessment of the benefits), presumably you would prefer to see the government spend GBP1bn on reducing road deaths by 120?
You've conceded there that it is not a matter of deep principle, but of grubby trade-offs.
The snooper's charter genuinely makes me really angry. To think this is the country that created the Magna Carter and the Bill of Rights, and yet a government party that claims to be conservative, which should mean preserving our ancient traditional liberties, wants to store all of our personal communication on a massive database. It's as bad as when Howard backed ID cards. If this goes through the Tories won't only have lost my vote for good, I'm going to start donating to UKIP. No wonder Cameron wanted to ditch the liberty torch as the party's emblem.
Oh give it a rest. What "ancient traditional liberties"?
I've been canvassing a safe Conservative part of Potters Bar tonight. About 1 in 3 Conservative pledges were switching from Con to UKIP. Reasons given were the EU, immigration, dislike of Cameron, and gay marriage.
It's not at all comparable to criminal suspects being kept in custody. The police can't just do that to anyone: they need to have evidence that the person in question may have been attached to the crime. Otherwise it's harassment. This isn't keeping the records of people with probably cause. It's doing it to everyone. Everyone is being treated like a suspect. It's appalling.
@carl: government resources are not unlimited. there are official, if unpublished, numbers about what the Department of Transport and the NHS are allowed to spend to save a life. I think you'll find we spend 10-100x more to save a death from terrorism than we do in other areas.
terrorism is rare. and it's rare because being a terrorist is hard, and you will die. it is no coincidence that the ira never got into the whole 'suicide bomber' malarky. (watch four lions, as an aside.)
you can choose to spend unlimited amounts searching for the illusion of security. but no amount of spending, and no level of infringement of civil liberties, will ever stop an individual with a death wish and a burning hatred for unbelievers.
it's even more ridiculous when you realise how easily all these 'snoopers charter' measures can be evaded (which they will be by terrorists, and won't be by normal people). use tor. use the method used by general petreus to hide his affair. use vpn services. all these things will allow you to evade the snoopers charter. and you can bet that your average al queada member knows things already.
all we are buying with the snoopers charter is the feeling that 'the government is doing something' no matter how illusory the security is, and no matter how high the cost.
@RichardNabavi No. Your description of the nature remand in custody was so badly informed that I didn't feel any point in responding to it. A person is not 'imprisoned awaiting trial'. Imprisonment is a penalty imposed upon conviction. The general principle with remand used to be (although there have been some deplorable innovations in recent years) that it was a method of ensuring people were brought before the courts for trial, preventing interference with witnesses, protecting the accused from danger etc. As such remand aids the administration of justice and the fair trial of the accused. It is categorically not about protecting society as a whole from the accused, although as I say there have been some regrettable amendments since the early 1990s in that direction.
@carl: if this measure costs GBP1bn a year and saves 100 lives a year (probably an underestimate of the costs, and an overly generous assessment of the benefits), presumably you would prefer to see the government spend GBP1bn on reducing road deaths by 120?
You've conceded there that it is not a matter of deep principle, but of grubby trade-offs.
You might be right on the specific point.
I'm sure I'm right on the specific point. But I also know that the greatest danger to individuals over the last 100 years has been their own governments. Unchecked executive power may seem like a swell idea when 'your side' is the one wielding it. It seems less brilliant when someone less scrupulous than yourself is in the saddle.
@tim At least you are (more) consistent about it. But you know as well as I do that the logic of your argument (and that of the coalition) dictates that "terrorist suspects" ought to be detained indefinitely at the discretion of the Secretary of State. In fact, that was precisely what the last Labour government did, via Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, until the House of Lords put a stop to it.
@carl: if this measure costs GBP1bn a year and saves 100 lives a year (probably an underestimate of the costs, and an overly generous assessment of the benefits), presumably you would prefer to see the government spend GBP1bn on reducing road deaths by 120?
You've conceded there that it is not a matter of deep principle, but of grubby trade-offs.
You might be right on the specific point.
Unchecked executive power may seem like a swell idea when 'your side' is the one wielding it.
It's not unchecked. We live in a democracy. No matter which 'side' is in power, it's democratic.
It's not at all comparable to criminal suspects being kept in custody. The police can't just do that to anyone: they need to have evidence that the person in question may have been attached to the crime. Otherwise it's harassment. This isn't keeping the records of people with probably cause. It's doing it to everyone. Everyone is being treated like a suspect. It's appalling.
That's garbage, for three reasons:
(a) The security servives already have the same access to your phone records. Are you indignant about that, and, if not, why not?
(b) You've ignored my point about the downside. If the postman notes down the 'return to' address on envelopes sent in my mail, that's a breach of my civil liberties (though I think it would have been legal since time immemorial). But the harm to me isn't that great, compared with remand in custody or ID Cards; in the latter case the harm is considerable and direct, since I get fined if I don't notify the authorities when I change address, and some jumped-up bureaucrat might ask that I account for myself. In the current case, it's just a computer scanning for links in zillions of communications records. The harm to my civil liberties is tiny.
(c) This is the most important point: it is NOT about suspects. It's about finding links to interesting nodes in networks, 99.9% of which will be completely innocent. This is about intelligence, not solving crime. By definition, intelligence is at a much earlier stage.
@carl: if this measure costs GBP1bn a year and saves 100 lives a year (probably an underestimate of the costs, and an overly generous assessment of the benefits), presumably you would prefer to see the government spend GBP1bn on reducing road deaths by 120?
You've conceded there that it is not a matter of deep principle, but of grubby trade-offs.
You might be right on the specific point.
Unchecked executive power may seem like a swell idea when 'your side' is the one wielding it.
It's not unchecked. We live in a democracy. No matter which 'side' is in power, it's democratic.
So, it would be OK for 51% of the population to strip 49% of their right to - say - free association?
Barcelona very poor tonight. The end of an era. There were a couple of seasons when they played the best football I have ever seen. And the vast majority of their players are home grown. No need for subsidies from anyone when you do that. All great things must pass, I suppose, but it's a sad old evening.
It's not at all comparable to criminal suspects being kept in custody. The police can't just do that to anyone: they need to have evidence that the person in question may have been attached to the crime. Otherwise it's harassment. This isn't keeping the records of people with probably cause. It's doing it to everyone. Everyone is being treated like a suspect. It's appalling.
That's garbage, for three reasons:
(a) The security servives already have the same access to your phone records. Are you indignant about that, and, if not, why not?
(b) You've ignored my point about the downside. If the postman notes down the 'return to' address on envelopes sent in my mail, that's a breach of my civil liberties (though I think it would have been legal since time immemorial). But the harm to me isn't that great, compared with remand in custody or ID Cards; in the latter case the harm is considerable and direct, since I get fined if I don't notify the authorities when I change address, and some jumped-up bureaucrat might ask that I account for myself. In the current case, it's just a computer scanning for links in zillions of communications records. The harm to my civil liberties is tiny.
(c) This is the most important point: it is NOT about suspects. It's about finding links to interesting nodes in networks, 99.9% of which will be completely innocent. This is about intelligence, not solving crime. By definition, intelligence is at a much earlier stage.
This reminds me of an exchange on Slashdot about 12 years ago.
Person A: Hey, Americal On-Line has announced they're handing over all their emails to the US government so they can be scanned for terrorist activity. Person B: Somehow I doubt Osama bin Laden uses America On-Line Person C: Still, it might explain why he hates America
Comments
When I first started driving in the late 80's, the Mobil as it was then was always at least 2p a litre more than the Mobil in Whetstone
Thatcher would join UKIP, Farage claims as he insists he was dragged to a Strasbourg strip club by a French presidential candidate
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313567/Thatcher-join-UKIP-Farage-claims-insists-dragged-Strasbourg-strip-club-French-presidential-candidate.html
I think the cheapest nearby is Murco at Ravenscroft Park, Barnet - 133.9p. Unless you know better?
https://twitter.com/MathewBlankley
It's labour and chris Bryant peddling 'British jobs for British workers' ,your in the wrong party me old son.
I'm shocked.
Anna Soubry.....In another of her trademark interviews, in which she attacked the "twattery" of Tory speculation about the prime minister's future, Soubry said she hoped her successor would be a man to change the perception that women should be public health minister.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/23/david-cameron-girly-job-health
Maybe they should have gone for:
The Only Way Is Epping
The nasty party are going to have to look to 'shy voters' as an excuse again sooner or later.
http://www.finchannel.com/news_flash/Oil_&_Auto/126570_April_fuel_price_report_-_Drivers_emerge_from_third_pump_price_storm_in_12_months_/
Any Latin speakers? I was just wondering what the plural of magister magnus would be. Magistri magnus? Magistri magni?
Edited extra bit: are you sure that fits? I thought -a was the nominative plural of a second declension neuter noun, whereas magnus is masculine.
See here
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magna#Latin
Magistri magnus sounds like the equivalent of courts martial or Grands Prix. I wasn't sure if it'd be like that, or if both words should be pluralised (or something else peculiarly Latin).
http://www.pressassociation.com/SpecialEvents/Calendar/LocalElections/
What exactly is the plural of penis? I would say penises, but it seems too simple and obvious. Is it penis, like deer, or maybe peni, like fungi?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2139/what-is-the-plural-of-penis
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-04-23/poll-cameron-and-osborne-have-edge-over-opposition/
I like this bit = lol
Ed Miliband stands by Ed Balls despite poll blow
http://www.itv.com/news/2013-04-23/ed-miliband-stands-by-ed-balls-despite-poll-blow/
"Ed Miliband tells Ed Balls, I'm never gonna give you up"
Personally, I think the best place for Ed Balls is the heart of the sun, but there we are.
*chortle*
chrisshipitv "No that's ridiculous" <EdMiliband to my suggestion he should fire @edballsmp Our poll: 54% want Dave/George running economy. 40% want Ed/Ed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2PfgeczkFg
Maybe Cammie will have Maria Hutchings on a PPB?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVnWLRVJkwM
Or maybe not.
LOL
As for La Liga being better than the Premiership, only two teams can win it and it's becoming as predictable as the SPL before Rangers were forced out. The Bundesliga is by far the best run though.
"Ed Miliband tells Ed Balls, I'm never gonna give you up"
Or. Together forever and never to part?
The news agency's account was suspended and it has advised all tweets should be ignored until further notice.
The false message said: "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured."
US markets were spooked by the tweet; the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 150 points as it was retweeted."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21508660
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10013188/Ed-Miliband-the-illusionist-will-have-to-conjure-up-more-with-less.html
Oh, and we used to trounce Europe, back in the day.
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't yet committed any crime, is a serious issue.
@Richard: would you accept a chip in your car that reported back whenever you exceeded the speed limit? So you could automatically get points.
If it were proven this would save 1,000 lives a year, would that be acceptable?
So, tell me, why is a life lost to terrorism worth more than a life lost to a motoring accident? Surely we should accept the same level of infringement of our civil liberties to save a life, whether it is caused by a speeding motorist of a fundementalist Muslim terrorist?
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
Sure, just what we need is SWAT Lockdown.
The answer is that I probably would think it acceptable (I'd certainly think it was a debate we should have). Here's why:
Firstly, civil liberties questions are ALWAYS about balancing harm vs good. An excellent example is remand in custody. Since time immemorial, we have accepted that innocent men are imprisoned awaiting trial (such as happened to our very own SeanT), sometimes for long periods. Prisoners on remand are of course 100% innocent before the law ("innocent until proven guilty", remember?), and a substantial proportion of them are actually innocent in reality as well. Yet we lock them up.
Why is that acceptable?
The reasons are that (a) it is proportionate to the risk, (b) it is not abused by the authorities. The population has confidence that it is a reasonable thing to do, despite the self-evident trashing of the human rights of those innocents who are locked up.
So, fast forward to the current controversy. The security services want access to records of internet access and email links, in exactly the same way that they already have access to phone records. The content of messages remains confidential (accessible only by a warrant).
So the deal is, some computer will be able to scan the addresses I communicate with, in the hope that the security services will be thus enabled to head off more terrorist attacks then they otherwise would be able to. No-one will be able to read my emails without a warrant (which is already the case).
That strikes me as a good deal. Maybe it doesn't strike you as a good deal.
But the debate has been ridiculous; this is a trade-off, not something new in principle. The downside looks tiny compared with other breaches of our civil liberties such as remand in custody, the upside is saving lives.
Still, it's odd timing. You'd have thought the TV pictures from Boston over the past week would have reminded politicians and voters that identifying potentially dangerous people, who haven't committed any crime, is a serious issue.
No ones denying it's a serious issue. It doesn't make it good reason to infringe on our liberties. I'm sure having a CCTV camera in every living room in the country could help identify potentially dangerous people, it would still be appalling policy. The fact the Tories are rolling out this crap shows what bollocks David Cameron's claims to be a liberal conservative are. The coalition should be rolling back New Labour authoritarian policies, but instead they're adding to them. It's this sort of crap that makes people vote UKIP. All your arguments about having to keep out Labour evaporate when on one of the most fundamental issues of all - protecting civil liberties - the Tories are just as bad, and possibly worse.
But shame on Cameron and the Tories, utter shame on them, for making such a big thing of stuff like this when they were in opposition, with the whole "civil liberties" attack line against the last Government.
I thoroughly agree that the influx of foreign players is stifling the development of our young players. The best young player I've ever seen is the 17/18 year old Alan Hudson, if he was coming through the ranks at Chelsea now he would farmed out on loan in the lower leagues until he was 22 and totally dispirited.
I would personally be happy to travel by commercial airliner with minimal security. I would regard the time and convenience improvement as being well worth the additional risk of death. Not everyone is like me, of course, but it is very important to remember that we - as humans - dramatically underestimate the chances that we'll die as a result of an accident or a disease, and do the opposite with terrorist attacks. If we allowed one 9/11 a year, but reduced road deaths by 10% (which for the tens of billions spent on Homeland Security, plus the economic loss associated with the disruption to air travel) we could surely do, then wouldn't this be better value for money?
Your hero Rupert Murdoch has f*ed English football, for a very long time. Deal with it.
It is however worth pointing out that a great many do have a problem with it and the continuing incompetence that surrounds it. Not least of which was parliament itself.
The decision to redraft the bill came after a joint scrutiny committee of both houses of parliament delivered a withering verdict on the original Home Office legislation, describing it as "overkill" and warning that it "tramples on the privacy of British citizens"
Yes it bloody does!
Ben Franklin said it best: He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He was talking crap. Give me security any day.
Interestingly enough though, the Times, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express (and by extension the broadcast media) aren't as OUTRAGED at this NANNYING Government TRAMPLING ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES as they were when Labour were in power.
Interestingly enough though, the Times, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express (and by extension the broadcast media) aren't as OUTRAGED at this NANNYING Government TRAMPLING ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES as they were when Labour were in power.
Well, they should be.
@RichardNabavi makes the typical authoritarian's argument that ' civil liberties questions are ALWAYS about balancing harm vs good.' Roll on control orders, roll on indeterminate detention without trial. No doubt @tim will be along to remind us that control orders and internment without trial under Labour were much more efficient than the bizarre control orders-lite regime the Coalition enacted.
You might be right on the specific point.
That's a view I could respect.
It's not at all comparable to criminal suspects being kept in custody. The police can't just do that to anyone: they need to have evidence that the person in question may have been attached to the crime. Otherwise it's harassment. This isn't keeping the records of people with probably cause. It's doing it to everyone. Everyone is being treated like a suspect. It's appalling.
terrorism is rare. and it's rare because being a terrorist is hard, and you will die. it is no coincidence that the ira never got into the whole 'suicide bomber' malarky. (watch four lions, as an aside.)
you can choose to spend unlimited amounts searching for the illusion of security. but no amount of spending, and no level of infringement of civil liberties, will ever stop an individual with a death wish and a burning hatred for unbelievers.
it's even more ridiculous when you realise how easily all these 'snoopers charter' measures can be evaded (which they will be by terrorists, and won't be by normal people). use tor. use the method used by general petreus to hide his affair. use vpn services. all these things will allow you to evade the snoopers charter. and you can bet that your average al queada member knows things already.
all we are buying with the snoopers charter is the feeling that 'the government is doing something' no matter how illusory the security is, and no matter how high the cost.
No. Your description of the nature remand in custody was so badly informed that I didn't feel any point in responding to it. A person is not 'imprisoned awaiting trial'. Imprisonment is a penalty imposed upon conviction. The general principle with remand used to be (although there have been some deplorable innovations in recent years) that it was a method of ensuring people were brought before the courts for trial, preventing interference with witnesses, protecting the accused from danger etc. As such remand aids the administration of justice and the fair trial of the accused. It is categorically not about protecting society as a whole from the accused, although as I say there have been some regrettable amendments since the early 1990s in that direction.
So you don't object on principle, you just think it's slightly too expensive?
It won't work.
And it is in an attack on my civil liberties.
Feel free to pick one.
At least you are (more) consistent about it. But you know as well as I do that the logic of your argument (and that of the coalition) dictates that "terrorist suspects" ought to be detained indefinitely at the discretion of the Secretary of State. In fact, that was precisely what the last Labour government did, via Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, until the House of Lords put a stop to it.
(a) The security servives already have the same access to your phone records. Are you indignant about that, and, if not, why not?
(b) You've ignored my point about the downside. If the postman notes down the 'return to' address on envelopes sent in my mail, that's a breach of my civil liberties (though I think it would have been legal since time immemorial). But the harm to me isn't that great, compared with remand in custody or ID Cards; in the latter case the harm is considerable and direct, since I get fined if I don't notify the authorities when I change address, and some jumped-up bureaucrat might ask that I account for myself. In the current case, it's just a computer scanning for links in zillions of communications records. The harm to my civil liberties is tiny.
(c) This is the most important point: it is NOT about suspects. It's about finding links to interesting nodes in networks, 99.9% of which will be completely innocent. This is about intelligence, not solving crime. By definition, intelligence is at a much earlier stage.
I really don't think your sophistry and bluster alters that fact, does it?
Person A: Hey, Americal On-Line has announced they're handing over all their emails to the US government so they can be scanned for terrorist activity.
Person B: Somehow I doubt Osama bin Laden uses America On-Line
Person C: Still, it might explain why he hates America