Do you wanna be in my gang?

If you're on Twitter you can't help but have noticed last week the Twitterati throwing what I like to call a "twitfit", an outpouring of sturm und drang in 140 characters because former glam rock musician and convicted pedophile Gary Glitter had popped up on the popular microblogging site to announce a comeback tour.

As you would expect there were plenty of your standard neanderthal "Kill all peedofils they is scum, innit" tweets the majority were of the "Ew, throw this man off Twitter. Why doesn't somebody do something!" flavour... which as it turns out was exactly the point the troll who created the fake account was aiming for. In a statement this person, whoever he is because with a sense of irony he posted his manifesto anonymously, said he'd created the stunt to highlight that "OK you know Glitter is a pedo but how many more are there on the net that your kids are talking to that you don't know about" and calling for anyone on the sex offenders register to be disallowed use of the internet in perpetuity and an end to anonymity on the net.

And so yet again we see that leader of the four horsemen of the infopocalypse, the eevil nasty peedofil, being trotted out into the arena and performing a few half-passes and 20 metre circles at canter for the benefit of the sheeple who all cheer when some scumbag politico then pipes up "You see there, peedofils! That's why we have to take away internet anonymity!".

Of course on a fully registered internet we know what you read, where you go, what you say. Back in your pens sheep, we wolves in Parliament know what's best for you and if you dare to say different well, off to market with you.

Another thing that got me thinking as a result of this was do we actually believe in a rehabilitative justice system? Now I hold no brief for the kiddy fiddlers (and quite frankly can't bloody stand children) but do we as a society believe that old canard about "having paid your debt to society" and once a criminal has served his sentence he is a free man with a clean slate? It would seem to me that in the case of one faded rock star in particular, we clearly don't.

When I want your advice I'll ask for it

Oh what fun. Just when you thought we actually had got rid of the NuLabour nanny state do as I say bollocks up pop BlueLabour with a tick-the-box-your-government-knows-best bullshit scheme where all NHS staff have to lecture you to promote "Good Health"  every time you have the misfortune to come into contact with you.

Now we all know this is going to be a box ticking exercise like the last lots' "Quality of Outcomes" shit. As an example of what will happen here I give you Mrs Dracunculus. She was at the doctors today, routine visit for a long standing complaint just to review, make sure its not getting worse, check the ongoing medication and tweak as necessary. Now she gets five minutes of the doctors time in which he has to do this and she informs me that five minutes was fully used. But in the future three of those five minutes is taken up with a stern lecture from Dr Mopp about how the glass of Sauvignon she likes of an evening will make her sodding tail fall off so what's he going to miss about the actual problem he was being consulted with in the first place?

What we have here is the underlying problem of the NHS. It was set up with the noblest of motives; free at the point of use so all citizens would be able to have their serious medical needs attended to and we would be free of the spectre of people dying for want of seeing a doctor. But since its founding its grown to way, way more than that simple basic service, and we're all partly guilty of making it suck. Over the generations we've demanded more, more, more from the NHS. We want every sniffle and cold treated, every illness given immediate and the best treatment, the treatment of ridiculous conditions (you can get a sex change on the NHS for fuck's sake) and the system simply can't cope. Accordingly the government step in to lecture, harangue and bully us into whatever bullshit they can come up with to try and keep us "healthy" and out of the doctor's surgery. We allowed the NHS to change from a backstop into a state monolith that seeks to control our "healthy choices" because they feel they have to just to stop the whole edifice collapsing in a mountain of debt and unpaid bills.

I'm quite aware that the Cuban Habaneros and that bottle of Malbec aren't good for me thanks. It's my choice and when I want your health advice I will ask for it. Oh, and I have BUPA so, state, kindly sod off.

Hard Cases Make Bad Laws

Yesterday as you all read Steven Lawrence finally achieved some measure of justice with the conviction for murder of two of his killers. From what I have seen of the evidence and the trial it seems that the beyond reasonable doubt the right people have been jailed for this crime and two violent, racist thugs have been put behind bars where they belong.

But I'm not entirely happy.

In order to put these two on trial an ancient principle of natural justice was torn up by the former Home Secretary David Blunkett, that of double jeopardy, the principle that you cannot be tried twice for the same offense. This is a right that has been part of English common law for centuries and it even enshrined in article 50 of the European Convention on Human Rights (although conveniently a part of the convention our craven politicians didn't sign us up to whilst signing us up to all the other bullshit parts).

Double jeopardy defences are fundamentally important in protecting the individual against the machinery of the state; they stop the state bringing prosecution after prosecution until they get the "right" result - kind of like those EU referendums. Their removal by the previous Labour government weakens the individual and was wrong and its generally accepted that it was done primarily with the Lawrence case in mind.

Yes in the Lawrence case the police and CPS made a series of huge cock ups and maybe even were willfully negligent leading to the acquittal of the defendants. Many things went wrong and under double jeopardy they would have literally got away with murder; but hard cases make bad laws and unpalatable though it may be to have the likes of Norris wandering around as a free man* I would rather that than yet another erosion of the fundamental rights of the citizen by a politician trying to look "tough" and trying to patch up the cock ups of the police and Crown Prosecution Service.


* although I believe he was already in the nick on another offence

The problem with PR is always the other guys

I was in The Netherlands over the new year and one evening went out for dinner with friends. Our walking route to the restaurant took us past a small concentration of what the Americans quaintly term "Adult Bookstores" (although books are about the one item you're guaranteed not to find in them). Now you can't walk past without having a quick look in the window can you and I noticed something seemed to be missing.

"Hey," I asked my Dutch mates, "Where's the horseporn gone?" for indeed there appeared to be a dearth of magazines depicting, as Bill Bryson once put it, "A horse receiving a certain oral service a horse would not normally expect to receive, not even from another horse.

"Oh it's been banned. It's illegal to sell it or even possess it now."

I was rather shocked. Not because I have any fondness for horseporn beyond its comedy and shock value, it's about as erotic as a wet weekend in Whitley Bay, but it, along with similar "on the edge" forms of porn, are to my mind a good bell-weather of how free a society is; a measure of a state saying "You know what, this is not hurting anyone so its absolutely none of our business." and it saddened me to see a country I'd rather admired for its socially liberal values take a lurch towards the kind of blue nosed "we know best" shite we have to put up with here.

Not only that, but my friend told me that they have made any representation of bestiality illegal, so I suppose the Rijksmuseum will have to had taken this down.

Now the reason for this is down to a small political party, the PvdD (Partij voor de Dieren, "Party for Animals") who, thanks to proportional representation, gained a couple of seats and this rather ridiculous law was their price for playing ball in the coalition that was formed (and subsequently collapsed as it happens).

Now you might think that not being able to legally buy the collected DVD box set of Bodil Joensen's barnyard movies is no big deal in the grand scheme of things* but just for a moment swap "Party for Animals" with "Party for Sharia in the UK" who, with PR, win three or four seats in a hung parliament.

What would their blood price be?

Now PR has been kicked into the long grass here thanks to Nick's university fee U-turn and some clever play by the tories but it'll come around again and you'll be asked again to vote on its introduction. Before voting ask yourself whereas you might be happy with your little party getting some power all those other little parties will as well and you might just find the pork gets banned along with the piggy pr0n.





* especially as Teh Interwebs has more or less made all forms of censorship moot.