Warning: Creeping Stateism is bad for your Liberties.

A “>report has been published in the British Journal of Cancer. It concerns the possible causes of various, predictably enough, cancers. Fair enough and all well and good so far.

It is based on medical researchers doing correlations and statistical analysis rather than any clinical tests, that is always prone to possible mis-interpretation, but it is not unreasonable to take the findings at face value.

It finds that lifestyle choices influence your likelihood of getting certain forms of cancer. That smoking is the main cause of lung cancer and second but far behind is a lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet possibly responsible for oesophageal or gullet cancer, half of the risk comes from eating too little fruit and veg. too much salt in the diet a possible cause of Stomach cancer. Way down there under 5% is drinking too much alcohol and being overweight.

Useful information if taken sensibly, along with other studies that show moderate levels of alcohol seem to be actually beneficial.

So what is apparently the knee jerk reaction of the Royal College of Physicians? True to form a demand for authoritarian legislation. Their president, Sir Richard Thompson, claimed the findings were a “wake-up call to the government” to take stronger action on public health.

He stated that rising incidence of preventable cancers showed that the 'carrot' approach of voluntary agreements with industry is not enough to prompt healthy behaviours, and needs to be replaced by the 'stick' approach of legislative solutions,"

Maybe Sir Richard Thompson’s intentions are good, but his instincts seem to be to order, to force and that is not.

Diane Abbott, Longstanding New Labour luminary and current Shadow Public Health Minister, said: "The government is failing on all the main public health issues.”
So let’s leave aside ideas of punitive taxation of burgers and sweets, making it illegal to smoke anywhere else or legislating illegal anti competitive minimum prices for alcohol for a moment. Lets rewind.

That reflexive authoritarian statist demand that the government get involved, do more.

Exactly what business of the state is it if I want a glass of wine after dinner in the fist place?

OK so I am not as fit or as skinny as I used to be but I can see how it is my business, maybe my “significant other”, my tailor even, but the Government?

The only justification I can see is how much I might cost the state. Possibly in increased pension payments from a scheme that I am basically forced by law to pay into by the Government if, I live significantly longer due to good lifestyle choices. Or increased medical costs from a scheme that I am basically forced by law to pay into, use it or not, by the Government.

So the only real justification for the State to be involved, apart possibly from the odd public health warning, is how much I cost systems that they force me to participate in and thus cost er - well me.

Catch 22.

UK State encroachment backs off, but not far enough

The UK's New Labour Government seem to have backed off slightly from their frankly crazily draconian extremes of their criminal records check system after public outcry.

As usual the public are far too reasonable and don't complain nearly enough, about anything like enough.

The legislation was supposedly brought in to prevent another “Soham” child murder and essentially tries to and succeeds in treating practically any adult who may anything to do with children as a paedophile unless proven otherwise.

In practice this amounts to, effectively, a licensing system the individual must pay for themselves to be allowed to interact with the young.

The ludicrous - and typical for the New Labour State - thing is that there were perfectly good existing systems in place that, if they had actually been followed, would almost certainly have prevented the Soham murders.

Rather than address the failure to follow the existing system, New Labour rail-road through new, hastily and ill conceived authoritarian legislation. Legislation, that it is difficult to imagine would ever have been acceptable to previous generations, who had a greater respect for our historic ...and rapidly becoming just historical traditional liberties.

All of this is the New Labour states instinct to legislate and the ostensible reason is to protect children Ahhh. And with New labour there is always a subtext and one suspects layers of agenda.

The sub text will be “So it can not be a good thing to resist it can it?” It is there to keep children safe. In the same way as their National ID scheme is always to “fight organised Crime and Terrorism”. Speak out against it and you are “soft on crime”.

Despite the state's tactical withdrawal on some of the more draconian aspects of the legislation and the insane consequences that come from it the legislation is still Owellian.

It also, most dangerously of all in my opinion, establishes the precedent that the State rules who may interact with the young not the citizen.

Before the clime down it was seriously preventing job sharing friends looking after each other's children by private arrangement. May still impact of what mutual arrangements parents are allowed to make amongst themselves to drive their kids to school.

In the case of the women they were both police officers so were presumably subject to vetting anyway when they joined up. Insane. If this was not deliberately intended to result by the legislators then it was a piss poor piece of legislation. But then that is par for the course with the current government that apparently does not do thinking things through or joined up thinking.

As I mentioned what is being slipped in without anyone seeming to be aware is the precedent that the sate rather than the parent decides who is allowed to interact with and influence the citizen's child.

The State distracts like a grinning performing magician. “Look at my hand nothing up my sleeve Ladies and Gents, Girls and Boys.”

New Labour's Child Catchers

The UK Orwellian NewLabour state is desperately rolling out the quite sinister National Children's Database designed to contain details of and track everyone in the UK under 18.

One wonders how long it will be before they decide to keep the details for life...

The alleged reason for it is to enable "more co-ordinated services for children" and of course to ensure none slips through the net like Victoria Cimbie.

It is questionable if such a database would in fact have prevented her death, or that of baby "P", local co-ordination, lower case loads and effective working practices would almost certainly have far more impact and cost far less.

In the same way they try to uses the fear of terrorism to justfy a national ID database. It is well known thatID cards would never have prevented the London Tube suicide bombers. Or those who attempted to bomb busy London clubs and attacked Glasgow Airport.

This governemt though seems to have only one kneejerk reponse, cataloguing, regimentaion and control of the ordinary citizen - and it seems their children too.

It is terrifying to think of the numbers of people who will have access to what should be private details of our children. Will all council employees be vetted in the same way as youth workers? No. The potential vulnerability that access to this data lays children open to is truly concerning.

Then there is the potential to just loose the details releasing them into the public domain.

The way local councils have misused anti terrorist laws gives an indication they are not to be trusted with our children's details, that are effectively also our details. How long before they routinely check them to establish where you live for instance?

Those who take comfort that these are the twilight days of New Labour and hope the scheme will die a death with their electorial demise are probably fooling themselves. Once rolled out could an new incoming governemnet be trusted to remobve such a big state friendly tool of control?

Maybe the economic facts of life might make a difference. The database is currently slated to cost £224 million, as with all such things this will be underestimated by a whole order of magnitude. Perhaps in the end it will prove to be too expensive.

New Labour State Reclassifies Cannabis

It seems the New-Labour State has, in the face of it’s own advisors best advice, decided to reclassify cannabis as a class b drug.

Given that this decision is not based on the merits of the case, especially as having it de classified saw a 4% drop in its use, the immediate question that arises is, “What is their agenda?”

Interestingly, they effectively plan to record a persons details on the first “offence” and fine them on the second “offence”.

I don’t know what the percentage of the UK population is that at some time has tried cannabis but I suspect it is very significant. I would imagine thousands of essentially law abiding otherwise non criminal users are detected by the police every year.

To give an idea of the numbers, when surveyed 10% of people asked actually admitted they had used an illegal drug in the past year, that is around 3,100,000 people. Given that many of the repondants may not have admitted using drugs and that the majority of drug use involves cannabis that is a huge pool of potential cannabis users.

One effect of these new rules is likely to be a massive increase in the number and rate of additions to the New Labour State’s disguised National DNA Database.

Another effect is likely to be a considerable increase in revenue for the State in the form of fixed penalty or so-called “on the spot” fines.

Could either of these considerations influenced a cash strapped government anxious to push through a massively unpopular national DNA database?

Then there is the matter of pretending to be ”tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”…

Repent at leisure?

Apparently the Government are going to rush through legislation to ensure there will never be another “Baby P” case.

Ed Balls the “Children's Secretary” is planning to put forward legislation make local services more accountable forcing them to chart their progress in intervening at an early stage.

Now any right thinking individual would wish to prevent any such dreadful thing ever happening again. But one fears hurried I’ll considered legislation is not the solution.

It is almost certain there is perfectly effective legislation already in place that would be adequate to the purpose - if only it had been used. Similarly there was an enquiry after the last dreadful failure of Harringay Council with Victoria Climbié. An enquiry made recommendations, were they ever actually implemented properly? Were all existing guide rules adhered to?

One suspects not.

The last thing this country needs is yet another piece of New Labour legislation that only does what other legislation, if actually enforced, already does, or invents new subdivisions of existing offences.

You can be sure it will not be any better and will almost certainly eventually be found to have unexpected and detrimental consequences, in this case probably to ordinary families.

Herodotus (484 BC - 430 BC) observed “Haste in every business brings failures.” This seems to have entirely escaped the attention of the current government, with their hatred of any history not post 1945 and not spun.

Bumper stickers

I was driving through our nearest town today.

I noticed a bumper sticker on the vehicle in front. It said: “I love my country - I just don’t trust it’s government.”

It made me chuckle.

New-Labour and the Westminster mindset vs Liberty and David Davis

Recently I posted on David Davis’ resignation over the 42 day issue, the erosion of traditional British liberties and civil rights in general.

I asked the question was it him or Westminster that was out of step with the country. The consensus was Westminster was ‘bog chaining’ on parade - well out of step.

Well he has set up a website here. More power to his elbow. Worth a visit.

The Constitution/Treaty that refused to die

The Irish – Alone out of all the countries of the EU, were actually allowed to vote, to have a referendum by Europe’s politicians, on Lisbon treaty.

There is no plan ‘B’ Barroso said if they rejected the treaty. No, because there is no retreat. They will not abandon plan ‘A’.

All the rest of Europe’s politicians including the election promise breaking Gordon Brown were too fly to permit such a vote, knowing as they did it would almost certainly result in a rejection by the population of Europe the political elite are doing their best to shanghai.

Well the Irish voted decisively to reject the treaty, as would the British, had they been allowed their promised referendum - now the European political elite are desperately attempting to rescue the treaty cobbled together by Angela Mercal that was in turn to revive the rejected bankrupt constitution.

One rejection should theoretically have killed the treaty Gordon Brown so traitorously agreed to over New-Labour’s election broken manifesto promise to ratify it by referendum.

Right now the Political classes of Europe are mostly trying to pretend the Irish rejection just didn’t happen.

These people simply will not take no for an answer. What part of ‘no’ don’t they understand you might ask? They understand it all right. They are just not prepared to accept it. They have little care for democracy. They want to become a new ruling class of, well aristocracy.

It will be interesting to see what lies and contortions the go through to keep it alive or re package it. You can bet they will avoid any referendums if it is at all possible next time.

Is the UK state just too big?

Is it too big? If you have visited this blog in the past then my opinion will be quite clear to you - Of course it is..

This article By Iain Martin in the Telegraph examines the matter intelligently and is well worth a read.

Time to roll back the state.

Is it the gullible favour 42 day detention?

Democracy is all very well. But it depends to some extent on the education and intelligence of the voters for it’s success. Their enlightened self interest. How deep and well they see.

We are all capable of deciding, at a basic level, if something is good or bad for us and for society.

The problem comes much more to the fore with the more complicated stuff, the deeper things.

A classic example is New–Labour's current desire to set a precedent of locking people up for 42 days. It seems that YouGov survey found that a massive 69% of the public support Gordon Brown in this, despite doubts expressed by senior police officers and many others who should know.

One can only assume that these people who support him have been gulled by the false claims of New-Labour that they can actually provide security - if only this is agreed, if only they can have more power. Until of course it proves not to provide absolute security after all, then they will want to raise it again… because things are complicated…

Also those deluded soles who support it probably think it will never be used on them, being law abiding citizens. That it is only intended to be used on foreign terrorists anyway isn’t it?

I have news for them. If a law exists, it will, sooner or later, be used. Once the precedent is set for one person to be treated in this way it opens the door for all of us to be treated that way.

Don’t forget the huge volume of ill thought out legislation New-Labour have saddled us all with since they came to power.

If you know it, or not, it is now much harder to technically speaking be a law abiding citizen than it once was, before they came to power - and often you need to prove you are innocent now, rather than they need to prove your guilt.

New-Labour used anti terror legislation to keep out an ejected party member in his 80s heckling senior party members from their own conference. It was never intended to be used in this way – but it was used that way all the same.

An excellent example of the problem of an ill informed electorate is the sort of government that they actually elect in places like Iran.

So people. Wake up and smell that coffee - or by the time they come for you too, who will be left to speak up in your defence? The price of freedom is to brief yourselves and to actually PAY ATTENTION!!

Can a child really be detained for being overweight in London?

I heard something disquieting on the radio. It was Friday just before 2 pm, one of those radio phone ins on LBC.

The caller Identified himself as a Metropolitan Police Officer. The discussion was centred around how much police time is taken up with paperwork – A truly staggering amount these days by the sound of it.

What concerned me was when the officer mentioned some sort of initiative called something like ‘Every Child Counts’, you wonder who thinks these ghastly titles up.

He was holding it up as something that eats up police time unnecessarily, but as he explained it, it sounded more than a little sinister. It bothered me that he was apparently quite willing to implement it with little concern for civil liberties, but only objected to it as a poor use of police resources.

The idea is apparently some draconian Nanny State version of concern for child welfare.

The scenario offered on the radio was: An officer sees a ‘child’ (presumably anyone apparently under the age of 17) they judge to be overweight out in public on their own.

Said officer Stops the child (on what grounds was not made clear). The child would be required to provide full details of name age address, parent’s details, etc. – again why on what grounds?

The officer would then feed the details into the ‘system’ for onward transmission to social services and possibly interview the parents, presumably after having taken the child home.

There may be more criteria involved, time, location, age. But from what the officer said it could as easily happen to a 12 year old child minding their own business on the way to a football match, in the park, on a Sunday afternoon.

If this is actually the case then it is absolutely outrageous. Truly an example of the burgeoning New-Labour fascist state at work.

A young person, detained, though presumably not officially arrested unless the officer is doubtful of the details given to them, prevented from going about their lawful business – apparently for the crime of being a little overweight.

It would be interesting if anyone can verify this or deny it.

Olympics will ‘rebound’ says Rogg

It is difficult to tell about Jacques Rogge, head of the International Olympic Committee. Maybe in an Ideal world the ideal of the founders of the Olympics might actually hold sway and the games wouldn’t be inexorably bound up with the world of politics.

On planet Earth it is - and to pretend otherwise is to be blindly idealistic and naive. Mr Rogge may be many things but it is doubtful he either of those. It is unlikely he would have been able to work his way into the position he holds if he were.

According to the BBC he has told a meeting of national committees in the Chinese capital that they “should assure their countries the Games would succeed.” I hope that is a misprint and he actually said “be assured”. But equally we know they will anyway and it could be his Freudian slip showing.

We all know that the Chinese state will ruthlessly assure the games are not ‘blighted’ by further protest, once they are under their control ‘in house’ so to speak, no matter what the cost, we have heard their representatives say they will ‘show no mercy’ to anyone who attempts to disrupt them anywhere they hold sway.

Chinese security officials have already behaved like “thugs” according to Lord Coe - and that is in the West, what they will feel free to do on their own turf is anyone’s guess.

Rogg is also reported as having said the games will “rebound from crisis" after days of protests along the torch route. The crisis will certainly be less obvious, as mentioned, anyone brave enough to protest, once the route is under Chinese control will most likely never be able to be seen by the media and will be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly if they do.

Any such protesters will require incredible courage and must be aware their efforts will be a forlorn hope and the price for making them will be high indeed.

The athletes will be happy to turn a blind eye. It is their moment in the sun - and many of them are insulated in their world of sport.

So on the surface things will look ok and that is what Mr Rogg and the Chinese Government want. That way they can pretend to the world under the cover of a threadbare fig leaf.One wonders if the then head of the International Olympic Committee Count de Baillet-Latour was equally concerned the 1936 Olympics should go off without any hitches. They went off well by all accounts.

Strangely, threadbare pretence seems to satisfy them - and the many dispicable and unpleasant leaders and governments on the world stage, such as the likes of the ‘democratic’ Robert Mugabe.

Surely they don’t imagine they are really actually fooling anyone?

Vicount claims ‘action’ is needed over ‘unregulated’ sat nav information

It seems that Crossbencher Viscount Tenby is concerned that "unregulated information" on satellite navigation systems was "causing" juggernauts to get stuck in narrow lanes unsuitable for them - and he wants come of that good old Statist Government action to solve the problem - and save the pathetic proles from themselves.

These things do happen from time to time and are reported with relish. Still I was under the impression that users of such systems were not actually compelled to obey them when they can see with their own eyes - and common sense informs them, that a gap is too narrow, or a bridge too low for their vehicle. Such errors of judgement, in extremis, are covered by the offence of driving without due care and attention. Is it possible Viscount Tenby believes otherwise?

Maybe he should address the terrible problem of "unregulated information" on ordinary maps, that, based on his logic, we must suppose ‘caused’ such incidents prior to the advent of Sat Nav systems. I recall reading tales of the odd bus taking their top deck off on a low bridge long before the advent of Sat Nav.

His use of the word ‘unregulated’ is worrying and perhaps telling, it implies he believes the information we are allowed to have access to should be ‘regulated’ - state regulated.

If there is a demand for such a facility it will probably be supplied quickly enough by the manufacturers as a 'bells and whistles' selling point. It does not need State intervention, very little actually does.

Average UK hospital waits rise under New Labour

Before New Labour came to power in 1997 waits for hospital treatment of more than 18 months were not rare, now no-one waits longer than six months. Hurrah! Yes? – No. Not necessarily.

Sounds good, at first sight though, dosn’t it? The sort of soundbite Gordon Brown would proudly boast of in PMQ, or at conference.

The thing is the average wait has risen from 41 days to 49 days. Only 8 days up you may think. But it is 8 days longer on average.

This is a symptom of New Labour thinking. Everyone must be brought to a level. It’s like education, rather than raise up those getting a worse service they bring down everybody to the lowest level. The lowest common denominator, as they used to say - when such terms were recognised and understood by more people. So practically speaking overall levels of delivery drop.

Just so with waiting lists. To drop that headline figure to 6 months it is true that the really long waits have been drastically cut – but so have the really short ones.

So why did there used to be really short waits?

The question is who prioritised those waits back then? Well Doctors did, based on medical need, the urgency of the case. Now they are prioritised in order to meet state targets. One size fits all. So if you really need a short wait…

As chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, Jonathan Fielden, pointed out "Doctors have been stopped from using their clinical judgement and pushing people through the system when they need to be.”

So the question you need to ask yourself is: Are you actually getting a better service, or just taken for yet another ride…

‘Most Wanted Fugitive’ actually innocent German holidaymaker

It just goes to show how much you can rely on facial recognition software.

A German couple on holiday in the Sicilian resort of Taormina last year were mis-identified as James J Bulger, alleged American crime boss, one of the FBI’s most wanted - and his girlfriend Catherine Grieg.

Fortunately the FBI appear to have adopted a more sensible approach since they had pensioner Derek Bond arrested at gunpoint and clapped in irons whilst on a wine tasting holiday in South Africa. They misidentified him as one Derek Sykes, on their most wanted list. It was days before they even bothered to go look at him. He had to agree to extradition to try and sort it out.

It could have been far worse, he could have been in real trouble as happened to a German businessman in 2005, whilst off on holiday going to Macedonia.

He was allegedly arrested, held captive, flown to Afghanistan and tortured - by U.S. government agents after being mistakenly identified as an associate of one of the 7/11 Hijackers.

Oops! Sorry…

Presumably this is the same vaunted biometric technology to be included in Passports and New Labour’s beloved ID card system and database. The same facial recognition software that was trialled last year as a part of a airport security and hailed as a success.

Knowing it’s going to be there ready to misidentify you as a dangerous gangster, or a terrorist should make you feel so much more secure – doesn’t it?

Something you should be worried about

Someone with an over active imagination managed to mistake the MP3 player a man on his way home from work was listening to for a gun. They reported it to the police.

We all know that tinny buzzing can be annoying ;-) and it must have been playing at least loudly enough to drown out police shouting at him , as proved to be the case.

It is fortunate whoever it was doesn’t regularly use the tube, or there would be armed police running round in droves all over the place.

The police did what they are supposed to, given the circumstances (Hurrah!), fortunately they were not quite so ‘enthusiastic’ as those who dealt with poor Jean Charles de Menezes and the music lover survived the experience.

The poor guy only realised something was up when passers by and traffic reacted weirdly staring at him. He took out the earpieces and realised he had lots of policemen behind him pointing guns at him and shouting not to move. Fortunately for him he didn’t try to change tracks before he realised…

On discovering he was armed with nothing more deadly than music they still – get this – arrested him and carted him off in hand cuffs anyway.

Now in days of yore, say 30 years ago, even 15 years ago, they would have thought twice about that. But that was before New Labour - and here it all starts to become an example of a dawning fascist state at work.

They could have verified who he was and all this could have been done on the street where they stopped him, or in a police car. At worse he could have ‘assisted them with their enquiries’ at the station and sorted the matter out easily there.

Here is the bit you should really be concerned about though. By now they must have known pretty well the guy was guilty of nothing more than going home from work on the bus, speaking to the witness should have easily confirmed this.

What happened to the discretion that British police officers used to be so famous for using. All gone now under a flurry of ‘Policies’ and ‘Targets’ and ‘Initiatives’. Stuff just serving the public, serve the State. I bet it showed up as at least one extra detection, probably several.

No they had to arrest him, like a clueless call centre operator running through their script - and worst still they took his DNA and fingerprints – and the State will keep them.

UK Government objectivity is ‘questionable’ over water flouridisation

It appears the Government are doing a ‘WMD dossier’ on water flouridisation. Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, has taken an authoritative report that shows tooth decay in children across Europe has fallen - irrespective of whether there is fluoride in the water or not - and is using selected bits of it to push the agenda for the compulsory adulteration of water supplies with fluoride.

Some studies have suggested a link between water flouridisation and increased levels of bladder cancer and hip fracture.

It seems Johnson is also pushing the agenda by bribing strategic health authorities to add fluoride with the prospect of an extra £14 million over a three year period.

He claimed: "Fluoridation is scientifically supported, it is legal, and it is our policy, but only two or three areas currently have it and we need to go much further in areas where dental health needs to be improved.”

Concerning the falling tooth decay the report’s authors state: "This trend has occurred regardless of the concentration of fluoride in water, or the use of fluoridated salt and it probably reflects use of fluoridated toothpastes and other factors, including perhaps nutrition."

You have a choice as to what sort of toothpaste you use, with tap water it is Hobson's choice.

Lets hope the authors can manage to steer clear of Harrowdown Hill.

Schedule introducing UK ID cards delayed

It is interesting to note that New Labour are planning to introduce the National ID card incrementally.

This seems to be one of their favourite ‘stealth’ methods. Apparently they are putting back the date where larger numbers of us will be forced to get them from 2010, until 2012 now.

They know it is un popular, and there is some resistance, so they are buying themselves an extra two years, in the hope attention fatigue will set in.

The technique, one they are fond of, is to introduce unpopular measures in small relatively imperceptible doses. First they Identify a relatively small group to apply whatever they are planning to. A group that does not include the majority of citizens and who preferably will not have the majority of the public’s particular sympathy.

In the case of HIPs it was houses with four bedrooms or over. “The Wealthy”, “Rich Toffs” – a classic hate group and target.

They are careful to avoid stirring people up by ensuring that even of the groups targeted only relatively small percentage are actually directly affected at any time. In this case those actually considering selling their homes.

Then they wait a while and take in another chunk of the population (say owners of three bedroom properties), repeating as necessary until they have everyone.

They are always careful to avoid stirring too much of the population up at once, in case it allows resistance to build to the point where the lethargic UK population will actually protest in significant numbers.

In the case of ID cards it will apparently be “Foreigners”, “Bogus Asylum Seekers”, “Economic Migrants”. They have chosen to target first. Currently they are to be targeted this year.

See if you can spot this technique being used elsewhere....

The Government is not your friend

Re Polly’s: “The state is not public enemy number one”.

Maybe not Polly - But remember, the State is not your friend either!

UK Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill – Yet another threat to free speech

Remember the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill? It has been hanging around since 2006.

It is another of the endless series of legislation the government like to trot out to make it look as if there is any point to them - which it seems there is not, as Belgium, the heart of the EU, are about to celebrate 150 days without a government, hat tip to the ‘Looking for a Voice’ blog.

The bill is actually a multitude of barely related things, many of which it would be difficult to object to that cover for some innocently packaged bits of legislation with some dangerous consequences to liberty, if taken any distance at all.

One of the bits they are trying to slip in (and what it has to do with immigration or indeed criminal justice is difficult to see) is: “Outlawing incitement to homophobic hatred and hatred against transgender people by amending the current offence of incitement to racial hatred in the Public Order Act 1986.”

Not content with this it seems the government are actually touting for other categories of people to include such as the disabled and transsexuals, to push to 'make the case' to extend it to cover them.

On the face of it like much of New Labour’s government by facile sound bite, it sounds ok. The devil, as they say, is in the detail – Much like the ‘Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill’ and the ‘incitement to religious hatred’ tucked away in it, that could have resulted in someone criticising, or satirising religion, or some aspect of it doing 10 years in pokey.

That was rightly watered down when people realised the actual implications and what the government were trying to get away with.

So should this ‘Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill’ be.

This government has a sinister compulsion to legislate to control and criminalise social mores, manners and interactions time and time again.

What will happen to the Little England team if this new bill is enacted? They press so many of the bills buttons they could end up doing life - yet what they do actually seems to increase tolerance.

You may well think that would never be a problem, but there are people out there who seem to make a profession of being offended at the drop of a hat over anything - and there are always ambitious ‘human rights industry’ lawyers willing to try to make a name for themselves.