The Equalities Act doesn’t matter whebn it’s my side breaking it.
Browsing Posts in Politics
As you may or may not be aware, former equalities minister Harriet Harman called Chief Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent” during a speech at the Scottish Labour conference.
Liberal England notes that this raises an interesting question:
Could Harriet Harman be prosecuted under the Equalities Act that she herself did so much to bring on to the statute book?
This article from the BBC suggests that if anyone decides to take offence at her remarks then she can and should be prosecuted.
Over 100,000 stops-and-searches: zero terrorists
When it comes to wasting police time, the biggest offenders appear to be…the police. That, at least, appears to be the conclusion of the Home Office. Its official statistics, published today, show that while police stopped over 100,000 individuals last year to “prevent acts of terrorism”, there was not a single arrest for a terror offence as a result of these stops.
On the other hand, the police had no problems hitting their photographer harrassment targets.
… comes from The One-Thousand
Dear Some People On The Internet,
You get upset at stupid things.
Many people die horrible and unjust deaths in this world. Many starve. Babies are beaten to death.
And you throw shitfits when someone offends you with their words.
Go read the rest.
Concerned about rowdiness and anti-social behaviour, Mayor Luigi Bobbio of the Italian seaside town of Castellammare di Stabia has gotten it into his head that the best course of action is to ban miniskirts.
There will also be a ban on sunbathing, playing football in public places, and blasphemy, if the proposals are approved at a council meeting on Monday.
The mayor is making use of powers handed down by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government and which have led to even more bizarre regulations elsewhere.
In other places they have banned sandcastles, kissing in cars, feeding stray cats, wooden clogs and the use of lawn mowers at weekends.
How long before they start banning music, dancing and other unIslamicChristian values?
According to the BBC, the Electoral Commission thinks that the proposed wording for the question in the referendum on changing the UK voting system needs to change. The proposed wording for the question is:
Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the “alternative vote” system instead of the current ‘first past the post’ system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?
And the Electoral Commission thinks that this is too difficult for some people.
I disagree (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging this). The question doesn’t need to change but the range of answers should be extended as follows:
- Yes
- No
- I’m too thick to vote
“I’m my own man“, says new Labour leader Ed Miliband. “And I have Tony Woodley’s permission to say so.”
On 25th July, Wikileaks relased the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. Three papers were give advance copies of these reports; The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times.
So why didn’t Wikileaks just publish the documents and let journalists around the world have at them? Julien Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has this to say:
“It’s counterintuitive,” he said then. “You’d think the bigger and more important the document is, the more likely it will be reported on but that’s absolutely not true. It’s about supply and demand. Zero supply equals high demand, it has value. As soon as we release the material, the supply goes to infinity, so the perceived value goes to zero.”
So, if a significant story is available to everyone equally, journalists will ignore it. This probably also explains why the press finds papparazzi photos so appealing.
(Via Pharyngula)
Please, Home Office, stop this macho posturing, and stop treating border controls as a means of scoring cheap political points. New Labour is over.
- The Heresiarch on the news that the Home Office is pointlessly trying to keep Anna Chapman out of Britain.
Just a bit of fun:
Take the Who Should You Vote For? UK General Election quiz
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