This is ridiculous, infuriating, and just damned outrageous.  I previously wrote about a civil registrar who refused to do her job, because she was a homophobic bigot, and didn’t want to do her job.  She took Islington Council to an employment tribunal, claiming unfair discrimination.

Infuriatingly, she actually won.

A marriage registrar was harassed for refusing to conduct same-sex ceremonies, a tribunal has ruled.

Okay, she was harassed for attempting to break the law, which seems fine to me.  She’d be harassed if she was a racist or sexist, especially if her ignorance prevented from doing her job.  But in this case:

The tribunal ruled that Miss Ladele was discriminated against on grounds of religious beliefs and was harassed.

Or, in layman’s speak, “but it was okay, because she’s religious”.

This is bullshit.  This is utterly incredulous bullshit.

It is illegal in the UK to refuse to provide services to a person based on their sexual orientation.  Catholic adoption agencies fought hard and dirty to secure a religious opt-out.  Catholic politicians fought hard to secure a religious opt-out.  They failed.  The law of the land is quite clear: it is not acceptable – no: it is illegal – to refuse to provide a public service to a person based upon their sexual orientation.  Yet apparently, this employment tribunal thinks that there can be an exception to this law, because – erm – a person is religious.

Miss Ladele said she was being effectively forced to choose between her religion and her £31,000-a-year job as a result.

Of course she bloody was!  Like it or lump it, she provides a public service. As such, it is freaking illegal for her not to provide that service irrespective of the person’s sexual orientation.  If she didn’t like it she could simply find another f*cking job. This ruling makes a complete mockery of parliament (which doesn’t normally need a hand to be made a mockery of), and a complete mockery of the law.

But this pig-ignorant little bigot knows no bounds:

“It is a victory for religious liberty, not just for myself but for others in a similar position to mine.

Bullshit.  This – like every other debate going on within the churches at the moment – has f*ck-all to do with “religious liberty”, and everything to do with personal bigotry.

The next time some pissant little theist tries to claim religious discrimination, and state intimidation against religion, or some ridiculous form of martyrdom because they’re being oppressed by the state machinary, I’m not going to bother to point to the bishops in the house of Lords. Nor will I bother to point to the huge number of state schools run by religious institutions, or the ridiculous amount of money the Anglican church owns, or the unprecedented restrictions on the right to protest in Australia over the pope’s – hideously mis-named – “World Youth Day”.  I will simply point to this decision, which shows just how much power the religious really do have.

It’s sickening.

The official War on Photographers wages on.

A photographer has been accused of being a peadophile and a terrorist because he likes taking photographs of….trams and buses.

Rob McCaffery, 50, is proud of his 30,000 photos of trams and coaches but after being interrogated twice in 12 months he fears the time may have come to hang up his camera.

The credit controller, from Gloucester, says he now suffers “appalling” abuse from the authorities and public who doubt his motives.

The bus-spotter, officially known as an omnibologist, said: “Since the 9/11 attacks there has been a crackdown.

This kind of behavior is, sadly, becoming increasingly common in the UK, as this poster by the MET demonstrates (and yes, that is a real poster).

What’s interesting, in all cases, is that photography – whether it’s of buses, people, children or buildings – is perfectly legal on the streets of London, but the Police don’t seem to understand this simple fact. Indeed, in the example cited above – and this is just one of many that have been reported recently – the police just don’t seem to get it.  This was the response of the Gloucestershire Police:

“If a member of the public becomes suspicious of an individual taking photos in public and makes a complaint to a police officer, the officer will first discuss the matter with the photographer.”

It may just be me, but surely the officer should first discuss the member of public to see why that member of public is suspicious of an individual taking photographs in public.  The way this is worded suggests that the Gloucestershire Constabulary tend to agree that taking photographs in public is, indeed, a suspicious act.

This “default to suspicious” problem is then compounded by the Gloucestershire spokesperson being apparently ignorant of police powers:

“Normally the individual is more than happy to disperse any suspicion by showing an officer their photos and one of the benefits of digital cameras is that this can be done on the spot.

Bear this in mind: The police position is that where a photograher is happy to disperse suspicion, he shows them the photographs on the camera.  This is important.  The police then go on to say:

“However, if the officer remains suspicious as to the content of the images or the photographers intentions they have the authority, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to seize the camera and arrest the individual.”

Okay.  So we have an activity being undertaken that is not illegal.  The default position of the police when dealing with a photographer is that they are immediately held under suspicion if a member of the public complains about a photographer taking photographs.  If the person doesn’t show them the photographs on the camera, the policeman will remain suspicious and the images will be seized under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.  This – according to the Gloucestershire Constabulary is legal, right, proper and above board.

But that’s not what the police guidelines on the PACE act say.

The Gloucestershire Constabulary website has a link to a website, “askthepolice.co.uk” aka, “Police National Legal Database”.  It’s FAQ on the PACE act can be found here, and states:

The grounds for stop and search that concerns members of the public mostly, is the grounds that the officer must have reasonable grounds for suspicion that the person is in unlawful possession of, or has unlawfully obtained an article, or is a terrorist, or to prevent an act of terrorism.[my emphasis]

In other words, the police can stop and search a person if they have reasonable grounds to believe they are carrying a proscribed weapon, or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that person is a terrorist.  The police PACE guidelines can also be found on the web here (pdf), which states, in part:

1.2 The intrusion on the liberty of the person stopped or searched must be brief and detention for the purposes of a search must take place at or near the location of the stop.

… 

1.5 An officer must not search a person, even with his or her consent, where no power to search is applicable….The only exception, where an officer does not require a specific power, applies to searches of persons entering sports grounds or other premises carried out with their consent given as a condition of entry [my emphasis]

…

2.1 This code applies to powers of stop and search as follows:

 (a) powers which require reasonable grounds for suspicion…that a person is a terrorist.

(b) …based upon a reasonable belief that incidents involving serious violence may take place or that people are carrying dangerous instruments of offensive weapons…

(c)…based upon a consideration that the exercise of one or both powers is expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism.

(d) powers to search a person who has not been arrested in the exercise of a power to search premises.

 …

2.2 … Reasonable suspicion can never be supported on the basis of personal factors alone without reliable supporting intelligence or information or some specific behaivour by the person concerned.

 …

2.10 If, as a result of questioning before a search, or other circumstances which come to the attention of the officer, there cease to be reasonable grounds for suspecting that an article is being carried of a kind for which there is a power to stop and search, no search may take place.

 …

2.11 There is no power to stop or detain a person in order to find grounds for a search.

Do feel free to read the guidelines through in full, it’s enlightening reading.

The only authorisation given in PACE for a stop and search, then, is if the officer has reasonable grounds – based on good intelligence – to believe that the person is a terrorist, is involved in serious violence, or is carrying prohibited weapons.  Furthermore, they are specifically prohibited from allowing a person to show the officer photographic images on a digital camera of their own free-will unless they have the specific authority to stop and search.  Which they don’t.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but this would strongly suggest to me that the Gloucestershire Constabulary’s official policy is not – as they claim – authorised by the Police and Criminal Evidence act. The Gloucestershire Constabulary’s official policy with regards to photographers is actually to break the law.

Incidentally, if you’re reading this and thinking, “Well, photographers could be terrorists.  After all, they may be scoping a building for a terrorist attack”.  They aren’t. Terrorists simply don’t work that way.  Peadophiles don’t work that way. This is simply hysterical ignorance on the part of the police and the public.

I can only assume from this that Home Secretary Jackie Smith has been taking advice from the Hillary Clinton school of politics: 

Cannabis is to be reclassified as a class B drug, Jacqui Smith has said.

Because, presumably, there is a good reason to do so:

The home secretary said she wanted to reverse Tony Blair’s 2004 downgrading of the drug because of “uncertainty” over its impact on mental health.

Okay, so presumably the advice she had been given by her scientific advisors on the matter had been unclear? Nope:

Her statement to MPs came despite the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’ review – commissioned by Gordon Brown – saying it should stay class C.

She’s doing because she can, and because – presumably – the Daily Mail has told her to.

If you have experts in a field telling you – after a period of investigation – that cannabis should remain a class C drug, the obvious conclusion should be to ignore the people who study the field, and conclude that they were probably all high at the time.  Apparently, though, these experts don’t know what they’re talking about, because:

Since cannabis was downgraded there has been widespread concern about the increased prevalence of stronger “skunk” varieties.

Presumably, because the experts the government consulted were entirely unaware of any information regarding the potency of cannabis in current circulation.  I can only assume that the experts the government consulted were morons.  Which – obviously – says more about the government than it does about their experts.

She added that the government’s change of heart – which is subject to parliamentary approval - was part of a “relentless drive”. 

Relentless.

Why would you have a relentless drive against something the experts – the scientists, the medical practitioners, and those people who actually know what they’re talking about – say should remain classified as a Class C drug? Or are politicians really just terminally stupid.

For the record, I don’t smoke cannabis.  I have, but I don’t anymore.  I do, however, drink alcohol, and I do smoke tobacco, I love a good burger and I love cycling on the roads. Which of these will kill me quicker, I wonder?

Illegal says the High Court, but “right” says Attorney General Goldsmith:

It was of course uncomfortable… but I believe it was the right decision to take, in the public interest, in order to prevent terrorism.

I’m still trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing selling arms to the Saudi’s in the first place, let alone dealing in bribery and corruption, whilst protecting the interests of a private company.

It would have been a dereliction of duty to have taken that view and it would have been absolutely no comfort to people who, heaven forbid, had been injured or lost loved ones in a terrorist attack to say ‘we’re terribly sorry but we thought we ought to wait 18 months to see if this case could go ahead

This really is taking playing the terrorism card to a whole new low. The argument is essentially saying that the Saudi’s threatened to stop feeding us information on terrorist activity if the fraud investigation into the BAE affair carried on, ergo people will die in terrorist attacks.  What a load of bollocks.

Goldsmith is getting a bit too ready to leap in to defend the government’s highly unethical and frequently illegal foreign policy. It was Goldsmith who re-wrote his legal advice to suite Labour’s unstoppable lust for a war in Iraq; even though it would appear that he originally noted that it would, in fact, be illegal under international law.  He’s never had his legal judgement on that matter tried in court.  He has, however, had his legal judgement on the SFO investigation into BAe tested, and he was wrong.

I strongly suspect he was wrong about Iraq too.  Everyone else in Blair’s government was.

From the BBC

School-leavers should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, says a report commissioned by Gordon Brown on British citizenship.

Do Not Want. Why? Well, three reasons:

1) the Queen. I’m a staunch British republican[note]. I think telling teenagers that they should be encouraged to “swear allegiance” to the Queen is innately abhorrent. It’s high time that the archaic system of heredity monarchy – and that abortion of democracy that is the house of Lords – be abolished as the figure head of state, and it’s position in propping up the church of England as the official religion of the UK.

2) the Country. What does that mean in the UK? Should Scottish teenagers swear allegiance to Scotland, or Britain? What about Welsh? English? Irish? The naivety being demonstrated by suggesting that teenagers should “be encouraged” to pledge allegiance to something that even it’s adult citizen’s can’t agree is a good thing is astonishing.

3) Allegiance to the state. The very principle of pledging allegiance to a state strikes me as an insane idea. That one should consider oneself to be obligated to be loyal to anything other than oneself, and one’s personal moral integrity, is the antithesis of freedom. One should never consider oneself to be obligated to be loyal to the state, for down that road is nothing but trouble.

So it’s a bad idea – a ridiculously ill-thought and ill-conceived idea from a person who one would hope should know better, but consistently shows that he doesn’t. Incidentally, in writing this, in particular in expressing my republican sentiments, it would appear I have committed treason.

(Note to American readers: republican here is used strictly in the British sense of the belief that an elected citizen should be the head of state as opposed to the hereditary monarch, and that the British people should be citizens of the state, as opposed to subjects of the monarch.)[back]

Via Terry Sanderson writing on-line at the Guardian, we learn that the government has apparently, for the last two years, been in consultation with the Church to provide faith-based welfare:

For two years or more, Government Ministers have been in conversation with church leaders about the possibility of the church providing extensive welfare services, rather in the way that the church plays a major part in education.[My emphasis]

Read that highlighted section again: rather in the way that the church plays a major part in education.

So how do the churches play a major part of eduction? It’s quite simple really: the churches take huge swathes of cash from the government to run 1 in 3 state-funded schools. The churches then refuse entrance to the people paying for the state-funded school unless they both attend church, and want their children indoctrinated into the church’s religion. Is this really what the government has in mind for the welfare system? Not CofE? Well, no disability benefit for you. Not Catholic? No dental service. If not, what the hell does the bishop mean?

Both Government and church are well aware that in the Scandinavian countries and Germany the church provides extensive welfare services. These countries have a church tax, which is paid by most citizens. The money received through taxation is returned to the church in support of its ministers, its buildings and in making possible the extensive welfare work done in its name. admit that I have sometimes wished that we had a church tax in the United Kingdom.

So clearly part of my guess is correct: in a nation which is increasingly secular, a nation that increasingly does not go to church, the bishop wants to introduce a church tax. But note that this is actually unconnected to his preceding comments on providing welfare: the church tax would not be to pay for this church welfare program, it’s to pay for buildings and ministers. Welfare would only be an after-thought.

The Church of England has very strong roots in local communities, making it well placed in many contexts to deliver quality services in a way that truly understands the local situation, which government departments may not. We very much want to be part of the discussion about the new opportunities that are opening up.

Oh, I bet he does! Especially since he also says:

The church is treated as a partner, and its work is trusted, rather than controlled.

Presumably, then, part of this “discussion” will involve telling the government how trustworthy it is, and that it’s welfare provisions don’t need state control. You know, trustworthy like catholic adoption agencies refusing to deal with gays…

And there’s more:

The church is signing 25-year contracts for the new academies.

This, apparently, is an example of “delivering social needs”. 25 schools handed over to the church, which church rules for entrance. “Delivering social needs” apparently is only important if your christian. Or, more precisely, a member of the CofE.  Of course the church is delighted, but that does not make it, “delivering social needs”, that makes it, “delivering the church’s needs”.

If the church is to be a partner, it must be trusted by government and not controlled. As I perceive it, recent governments have found that very difficult. Church projects of course would be audited, but not controlled.

Has no-one told the bishop that old phrase, “trust is earned”. The church hasn’t earned trust, so why would if “of course” not be controlled by the state? The state controls welfare. You don’t hand over vast sums of cash to a single organisation to manage welfare programs and not control it. Even if we ignore the churches appalling record on admissions to church schools, you just don’t do that.

The church very much wishes to be part of the discussion, but it also has serious concerns and misgivings, which need to be discussed frankly and addressed. It needs to be treated as a long-term partner which is trusted even when it wants to challenge the current effectiveness of delivery.

I have a better idea. Disestablish the church, and keep the damn thing out of politics. It has no business running schools as it is, it certainly has no business running the welfare system, and it most certainly has no business collecting taxes.

This is pretty scary stuff just on its own. But this is not the bishop of Carlisle just mouthing off, this is the bishop acting in his capacity on the bench in the house of Lords, putting forward the church’s position as part of British governance.

According to the Guardian yesterday, the government is going to tell Universities that they should:

consider rejecting demands for separate prayer and washing facilities to prevent their campuses segregating along religious lines

This is because segregation along religious lines risks creating:

a climate where illegal extremist views can flourish

But isn’t this the same government that recently affirmed that it wants to keep compulsory collective christian worship in UK state-funded schools? Isn’t this the same government that repeatedly affirms it’s commitment to faith schools, despite obvious opposition from the public and teachers (that last article, incidentally, goes back as far as 2002. Their view hasn’t changed).

If the government recognizes that segregation along religious lines in Universities is such a bad idea, why are they so intent on spending tax-payers money to segregate pupils at earlier stages? Secularists have long argued that separating kids into schools based around the religious beliefs of their parents leads to lower community cohesion, and that the government should not be sponsoring such segregation, and the government has effectively admitted that the secularists are right.

 The government is saying it’s not okay to segregate people when they’re in University, but it is okay before that. They’re saying it’s not okay to segregate and indoctrinate people when they’re starting to be capable of fully assessing the world, but it is okay before that. In fact, it’s not only okay: according to the government it is right and proper to segregate and indoctrinate children into their parent’s religious beliefs in order to promote community cohesion. Unless they’re in University; then it suddenly becomes a danger to national security and a breeding ground for terrorists.

How’s about this for an idea: if kids were not, from a young age, told “you’re muslim”, “you’re catholic”, “you’re CofE”, “you’re Hindu” maybe this wouldn’t be such a problem in the first place! If the state didn’t pay for secondary “faith” schools in the first place, then maybe fewer people would want to self-segregate along religious lines later in life. And, hey, without these institutions being funded by the tax-payer, without the ability of these institutions to select their kids to skew their results, maybe parents wouldn’t want to segregate their kids.

Crazy, I know.

Usual tip ‘o the hat to the National Secular Society

LiveScience blogs asked the American presidential candidates for their position on various “hot button” science issues: global warming, stem cell research and evolution. Asked whether creationism should be taught in schools, Mike Gravel said:

As for creationism in the schools, Gravel says: “Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial … My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, they’ve got a mental problem. We can’t afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as I’m concerned.”

Why is this man not leading the race! Americans: that’s the kind of thing you want your president to be prepared to say!

I don’t very much like Jeremy Clarkson, so it was with much fun and finger pointing I read this. In short, Clarkson, believing himself to be a data-security expert, put his bank account details, and clues to his address, into a newspaper column in the Sun to “prove” that the recent loss of data by the HMRC was nothing to worry about. Clarkson, not actually being a data-security expert, was then suprised to find that he had then become an unwitting £500/month donor to Diabetes UK.

To my warped sense of humour, this is very funny. A lot of people (highly scientific source: this discussion at the Register) thought it great that at least Clarkson had admitted he was wrong, and that made it all okay. Well, no it didn’t.

First things first, Clarkson eroneously told a great deal of people that having huge swathes of sensitive data go missing was okay. He attempted to demonstrate his expertise by posting only two peices of information from amongst all the information that was lost: he did not post his national insurance number, his date of birth (although this is easy to find out – 11th April 1960), or any of the other information that was, or might have been, on the missing disks. He erroneously gave the impression that because he posted a limited sub-set of the information available, it was safe for all the information to be freely available. And he was wrong in his reasons why he was wrong.

Look at what happened: shortly after posting his bank details in his newspaper column, someone used that information to set up a Direct Debit between Clarkson’s bank account and the charity Diabetes UK – most likely using the on-line Direct Debit application provided by the charity. When he discovered this happened, he reports that:

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.

The second part of this is true: once your data is out of the bag, it stays out. The first part isn’t — or, more accurately, if the first part is true, whoever he spoke to him is incompetent. It is certainly true that the bank most certainly can’t find out who did it, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Data Protection Act and I have to wonder why this suggestion was made. The bank can’t tell him who did it for the simple reason that they don’t know, and – more precisely – they can’t know. The banks simply don’t hold that information.

In order to see why, it’s worth considering how a direct debit is setup. In the UK, a DD allows an approved (“sponsored”) originator to collect money automatically from an account. Originally, this involved getting a piece of paper from the originator, filling in all your details, signing it and sending it back to the bank. In those ancient times the bank held the mandate and could point to your signature if you ever disputed a collection. Later, you instead sent the mandate to the originator and they could point to your signature if you ever disputed a collection. But paper is a pain in the bum to deal with, and mandates are costly to archive; so recently (well, not that recently, but it’s only recently that it’s become popular) BACS (now BACS/Voca) introduced a system called Paperless Direct Debit. As its name suggests, with a paperless direct-debit there is no paper mandate and there’s no signature. All that happens is the originator sends your bank an computer record effectively saying “this person has set up a direct debit” (the automated management of DD’s is done with a system given the acronym “AUDDIS” – AUtomated Direct Debit Instruction Service). The whilly person who set up the direct debit on Clarkson’s account knew something that Clarkson didn’t: to set up a direct debit on an account on-line, you only need to know that persons: name, sort code and bank account number. The identity of the person making the direct debit request isn’t known, because it both isn’t needed, and because it is assumed that the person making the request is the person who holds the account.

The point here is that the person who set the direct debit up didn’t have to be particularly clever or cunning, he simply had to know something that Clarkson didn’t. Clarkson apparently either didn’t know about paperless direct debit or he couldn’t connect the dots, but felt qualified to comment on whether the data that went missing was worth worrying about or not.

What’s bizarre about this is that Clarkson shouldn’t be reporting that he’s losing any money. The paperless Direct Debit system is highly insecure (read: it’s set up to prefer ease-of-use to security), so it is set up in such a way that it has the ultimate money-back guarantee: if a mandate is set up on your account that was not authorised by you, your money will be immedeatly refunded, and the mandate cancelled, no questions asked. For that matter, if a mandate is set up on your account that was authorised by you, but you’d prefer to pretend that it wasn’t, you will get your money back, no questions asked. (This is what the “Direct Debit Guarantee” stuff at the bottom of paper mandates is all about, and why you are supposed to keep it.)

Clarkson got let off lightly. I don’t know what makes him think that a motoring colomnist is qualified to write about data security, but he was wrong. If he gets punished for it to the tune of £500, then he was both wrong in his first article and either (once again) woefully misinformed, or stupid, in the second. The fact is, however, that a single direct debit being set up in his name as a result of him publishing two pieces of sensitive – but not secret – information, is not the type of fraud people are concerned about; and the concerns raised around the handling of data in at the HMRC is not simply because Jeremy Clarkson may be the target of aprank which should not leave him out of pocket. That he seems to think that it is makes me wonder what kind of reactionary nonsense he’ll write when the next major data breach occurs. Thankfully I don’t read the Sun, so I’ll probably never know.

This is just sick

A woman is punished with 200 lashes and six months in jail for having the audacity to have been raped

If we went to war against Iraq simply because Hussein was a nasty piece of work, then why the f*ck is the Saudi Arabian government considered an “ally”