Posts by Libertarian

South Korean uni installs lavatory that pays out when you spend a penny

Re: Septic tank

Same as usual, You get to drink it once they have strained the lumps out.

'Sunspots drive climate change' theory is result of ancient error

Re: Deniers?

Telling it like it is and in plain basic English, too! Refreshing.

UK.gov's minimum booze price dream demolished

Re: VAT

And presumably extra corporation tax as the poor retailler is forced to make extra profits?

Thank all the Gods in every Pantheon for the commonsense European law "restraint of trade" principle which will restrain the expense account fiddlers on this occasion.

Criminal Records Bureau checks to go online

But not rush in where angels fear to tread.....

As long as the illegal organisation Messrs ACPO Ltd is proscribed and it is made an offence carrying a mandatory life without parole sentence for police to belong to any organisation (Messrs ACPO Ltd, Freemasons, etc) not conducting its affairs with independently verified transparency there might be a hope of some shreds of freedom remaining for our grandchildren - but don't hold your breath waiting.

Unfortunately, the likely outcome is that the Neyroud Review will be modified to Messrs ACPO Ltd's requirements and the fox will be left in charge of the henhouse.

Fuel taxes don't hurt the world's poor - they don't have cars

Socialism

How refreshing to see clarity of thought expressed in a sea of ignorance and gross political misrepresentation.

Socialism = the ants' nest or the bee hive. If you are obliged to live with socialism the obvious survival mechanism is, as you observe, to try to be one of the more equal animals.

Socialism

Clearly your concept of socialism does not recognize the inevitably privileged "more equal than others" apparatchik bureaucracy inherent in all socialist states, as in non-socialist models.

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, dictatorship is not inherently monarchical in character, it can be, and frequently is, collegiate in structure.

Supreme Court: DNA database retention regs are unlawful

Financial responsibility for action.

It is interesting is it not that local councillors can be surcharged (jointly & severally?) for the full cost of any malfeasance in office, but the real malfeasors, national politicians, are specifically protected (ie: above the law) by virtue of the immunity which they have unilaterally arrogated to themselves? Civil servants are also protected by Crown Impunity masquerading as immunity necessary to perform their functions. The police cannot even be sued for negligence in the performance of their duties however vile their abuse of the powers entrusted to them.

However, if a public body is successfully sued, who pays (not the milch cow/victim taxpayer by any chance)?

If this so-called democratic system is not arbitrary and oppressive, then, pray, what is?

ACPO Ltd is an endogenous (to use the term favoured by the worst chancellor/PM ever inflicted upon this country) private company without any legal powers and was set up by a bunch of civil servants without any lawful authority so to do. It is not even a quango! Chief constables (all officers of ACPO) are merely giving themselves whatever "advice" they want to receive in blatant defiance of the doctrine of nemo iudex in causa sua. It is clearly a criminal organisation and its officers should be prosecuted, not least for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Any of the MILLION (+) innocent citizens unlawfully stigmatised on its advice up for a class action aimed at bankrupting it? I'm in for one!

All politicians and civil servants including the police should be personally liable on a joint and several basis for the consequences of their actions to the full extent of their lifetime financial resources (including estimated overseas and/or proxy squirrelings-away). Such proceedings should be conducted on a reversed onus of proof: guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent.

As to being far enough away from "a massive general riot" to avoid engagement, I would respectfully suggest that you consider how far freedom from arbitrary oppression would have progressed recently in the Arab world if those citizens had taken a similar view. All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing - as true now as ever.

Cornish pasties awarded protected status

Supermarket pasties

Lidl's are up there with any supermarket (ie: slurry as opposed to lumpy ingredients-filled) pasty.

Unusual ingredients

I seem to recollect that Ginsters was fined £20,000 a few years ago for putting a whole mouse in one of their pasties (accidentally, I am sure!). Grinding the contents to a slurry might have solved such accidents.

Ginsters location

Callington, Cornwall!

Devon pasty

Not only did the pasty originate in Devon (where the crimped edge allowed arsenic miners to grip it by the discardable pastry edge whilst eating to avoid (minimise?) excessive arsenic intake), but also the commonest "meat" ingredient was mackerel, which was cheap and locally abundant.

Still, nothing to stop an enterprising entrepreneur from selling "Devon pasties".

The "traditional" Cornish pasty is simply a myth, and usually underseasoned due to the current hyponatraemia-risking obsession with eliminating the consumption of salt.

WikiLeaks boss labels UK extradition order a 'rubber stamping process'

The real issue

The real issue surely is how the public meekly accept that the EAW (or any other such crap) is a done deal.

What is needed is a media/IT blizzard to have extradition put on a proper footing.

In any civilised country the following minimum standards should apply:

1. No extradition to any country with a bad human rights record ~ check out https://www.privacyinternational.org/ephr/.

2. No extradition to any country which does not have an exact mirror image extradition arrangement.

3. No extradtion except where a prima facie case to the extraditing country's standard of criminal evidence has been made/appealed etc.

4. No extradition to face suspicions/ bare allegations.

No 'tipping point' for Arctic sea ice - latest science

Cugging through our fossil fuels faster than we are finding them??????????

Check this out:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 <http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911%C2%A0> ;

Thoroughly agree though that climate change just happens. We inhabit a dynamic biosphere after all. Stasis is anathema!

Nominet asks what you think of police domain grab

Warrants

Magistrates are largely less competent than plods and warrants are merely rubber-stamped for the most part. In all instances warrants should only be issued by High Court Masters or more senior judges - and then only on the basis of unimpeachable prima facie evidence.

More privacy for the Queen, less for everyone else

ACPO? Simples:

Abolish it.

Those of its functions which are necessary should be exercised by a national association of police authorities ~ once these have been cleaned up by making their membership directly elected rather than appointed.

ACPO: Is it legal?

Can a private limited company set up by public servants to give themselves legal advice and then act on it, and which sells for profit Sensitive Personal Data harvested from arrests made by its vested-interest shareholders, possibly be legal? Whatever happened to the concept of conflict of interests?

Police-baiting website Fitwatch returns

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The fundamental problem is rotten apples combined with excessive autonomy.

The police service in a democratic society should have its mission statement written for it by effective local police authorities elected by the people and be policed itself by a real version of the IPCC which has effective power to arrest police on suspicion and prosecute effectively. (The present IPCC is (a) in bed with the police, and (b) the bastard offspring of a paper tiger and a toothless toy poodle. It is excellent only at producing the whitewashes required by the government of the day.)

Oh, and the recruitment of police officers should be under the control of the directly elected police authority, not the police service.

At present the bad cops get in power and then perpetuate the situation by recruiting more of the same. Then they start up a private limited company (ACPO) which has no statutory function, for the sole purpose of creating a back-door national gendarmerie which is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. They finance this largely by selling the DNA which they harvest from the willy-nilly arrest of innocent people most of whom are released without charge.

Politicians love it as they can pretend that the police are independent local services under the control of local police authorities whilst having at their disposal a national para-military force armed with Heckler & Koch weapons shortly to be enhanced to fully automatic - ie: battlefield condition - and which will be issued openly with the dum dum bullets (illegal in civilised countries since 1898) which they already routinely use (as in the murder of an innocent Brazilian electrician on his way to work - 7 dum dum bullets in the head whilst they held him down, and no doubt high-velocity dum dum rounds were used against the mentally disturbed lawyer armed only with a shotgun - which is not lethal at any realistic range).

All of this without any parliamentary scrutiny, much less control.

Police state? It's already here in all but name.

The only effective control of the police would be to disarm them immediately and make weapons (held in armouries under the control of directly elected police authorities) available to them only under strict supervision of a justice of the peace when a prima facie case can be made for armed response. At least 90% of police resort to guns is merely macho willy-waving.

Proto-Gestapo

Seig heil!

Spanish netizens pursue urinating traffic cop

Armed Policing

Let us all have the link when you find it..................