The 17-year-old granddaughter of Labour veteran Tony Benn is to contest a seat in the next general election.
A-level student Emily Benn, who turns 18 next month, has been chosen as the party's candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham, in West Sussex.
If elected, she would be the fifth generation from her family to enter Parliament, and the youngest MP ever.
The minimum age at which a person can stand for Parliament was lowered from 21 to 18 last year.
Asked if her family's experience of Labour politics had put her off, Ms Benn said: "Not at all actually.
"Ever since I have been campaigning, I have absolutely loved every minute of it and, to be honest, it is all I have ever really wanted to do."
Global warming sceptics are soon to be non-persons. The Wikipedia list of those opposing the hysterical outlook on the planet's climate has been flagged for deletion. Perhaps it was getting too long?
A group of Italian scientists compared 19 climate models used in the IPCC's 4th report. The outputs are apparently entirely inconsistent with each other, thus confirming the view that climate models are currently, and possibly inherently, unreliable.
People are still chucking rocks in the direction of NASA's bungling AGW cheerleader, James Hansen. Lubos Motl says he was involved in the 1970s global cooling scare too. Meanwhile there was a brouhaha about the fact that he appears to have been receiving money from George Soros. This follows his being showered in cash by the aforementioned Mrs John Kerry - Teresa Heinz. Why are these left-wing luminaries so generous to a public servant? The Soros story has been brought up to date by Paul Biggs writing at Jennifer Marohasy's blog.
There was lots of interest in the climate history of Wellington, New Zealand. Hansen has managed to adjust his way from a gently cooling trend to a sharply warming one. Oh, and the city seems to have disappeared altogether after 1988. Only climate scientists can make major conurbations disappear before your very eyes, it seems. Climate Skeptic's take on the affair here. Climate Audit here.
Those who follow the AGW debate know that in the ice core records, increases in temperature lead increases in CO2 by about 800 years, implying what we might call an inconvenient causality. The hysterics try to shrug it off by saying it's all to do with feedbacks. They were very excited by a new paper [PDF] which claimed that the lag was less than the 800 years previously thought. Unfortunately another paper a few days later suggested a lag of 1300 years.
One of the key reconstructions of the historical climate is that of Osborn and Briffa who say that the 20th Century was abnormally warm. Their work has been the subject of much attention from Climate Audit in recent years. Now another researcher, Gerd Berger of Berlin’s Institut für Meteorologie, has reported that Osborn & Briffa have not done their statistical tests correctly. This will not be a surprise to regular readers. Berger has gone on to recreate their work using the correct tests and says that doing this makes the 20th century temperatures look pretty normal.
Some interesting work has been published by a statistician/blogger called Jonathan Lowe. While the AGW community looks at daily max/min temperatures, JL has looked instead at temperatures throughout the day and finds that night time temperatures in Australia show no trend. It's only daytime temperatures that are rising - when the sun is out.
But Lady Warsi - who was nominated for a peerage earlier this year when party leader David Cameron promoted her to a seat in the shadow cabinet - told the BBC she stood by her comments.
"To suggest I am some sort of apologist for the British National Party is ludicrous.
"You only have to go on their websites and look at their leaflets. I am one of their most hated figures," said Lady Warsi.
"I was talking about people who have been duped into voting for the British National Party because they feel that some of the concerns they are wanting to talk about are not being dealt with by the mainstream political parties."
Her comments also drew criticism from anti-racist group Operation Black Vote - for whom Lady Warsi used to work.
Spokesman Simon Woolley told the Independent on Sunday: "Pandering to the racist views peddled by the BNP and bought by the BNP voters is wrong."
Ms Warsi's views on homosexual equality and now on the BNP are not views that should be upheld by any political party.
Best Sustained Campaign of Hatred:
Devil's Kitchen (victim: Everyone)
Runner-up:
Hamer Shawcross (victim: Question Time)
The Alice Tinker Award for Incomprehensibility:
Nadine Dorries
A man says he is "gobsmacked" he faces action under race relations laws for starting a petition opposing a travellers' site in Swansea.
Carl Lewis collected 953 signatures for the petition while standing as a candidate in a council by-election.
The Commission for Race Equality (CRE) in Wales said it had instructed lawyers to start proceedings against him.
But Mr Lewis, who runs a recruiting business from his home in Llansamlet, denied he was racist or prejudiced against travellers.
"I'm gobsmacked," he said.
"This petition wasn't against travellers, it was against a second official traveller site in the area."
The organisation's director Chris Myant said they were taking action under section 31 of the Race Relations Act which "made it unlawful to bring pressure on someone to act in a discriminatory way".
He said the act existed to "enable solutions to be found through debate" in which public expressions of prejudice play no part.
"Were this to have been a petition calling on the council to reject housing applications for any other ethnic minority groups, there would have been public uproar."
A RETIRED soldier who was questioned by riot police after complaining about a lord provost's lack of etiquette, has received an official apology.
Former guardsman Jake Reid was stunned to be interviewed by police officers after the provost took exception to being called an "embarrassment" in an e-mail.
The Scots Guards veteran who served on five tours of duty in Northern Ireland was visited by police and warned not to send any more e-mails to Dundee's lord provost, John Letford.
However, Mr Reid has now received an apology from chiefs at Tayside Police, who admitted "there was no basis" for their heavy-handed reaction to the e-mails and that their reaction was "inappropriate".
I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here.
"I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs."
"I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking."
"Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"
"SHUT UP! Go back to bed America, your government is in control."
This divorce from the voters has a sinister side to it - the voter is increasingly treated as being unable to think for themselves, so unable to engage in a debate on any subject. In short, they are there to be told what to do, how to vote and even what they may or may not think. Do not think that any of the Parties are free of this, you need only look at David Cameron's front bench to see that they have cloned their Nu Labour counterparts and are as boorish and disconnected with the real world as the present government. Nor does it end there, for the upper echelons of the Civil Service have been salted with their placemen and the institution of the Civil Service has gone from being merely incompetent, to being the single greatest threat to our freedom and democracy. Why is this so? Simply because it has become the natural home of the New Elite, an elite that recognises no ideals but their own, and which will use every means at its disposal to hold onto power.
There are four blogs who, in terms of influence and traffic, are way ahead of the others – Guido Fawkes, ConservativeHome, Iain Dale’s Diary and PoliticalBetting.com. They are, if you like, the Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal of the UK blogging fraternity. You then have a few teams who might challenge in a good year – Dizzy Thinks (Everton), Devil’s Kitchen (Newcastle) and Recess Monkey (Spurs) – a few new comers who fizz into their first year with huge promise...
The TPA has just been told by a high-level source that George Osborne will commit the Conservatives to abolishing inheritance tax in his speech at the Party Conference on Monday. This is great news. The TPA has long argued that inheritance tax is unfair, unpopular and unecessary and so we warmly welcome its abolition.
The plans as put forward by the Economic Competitiveness policy group and the Tax Reform Commission do envisage inheritance tax being replaced by a short-term capital gains tax, which would taper to zero after ten years and from which the main family home would be exempt. This does mean that some assets held for less than ten years will still face a tax on death, but according to the Tax Reform Commission, far less revenue would be raised under this system than from inheritance tax.
A parent is urging a judge to reconsider a ruling that the government did not break the law when it sent schools copies of a film by Al Gore.
Stuart Dimmock, a father from Kent and a member of the New Party, is at London's High Court.
In late July, a judge there ruled that the decision to send the climate change film "An Inconvenient Truth" to England's secondary schools was lawful.
Mr Dimmock had argued that circulating the film amounted to indoctrination.
But the judge, Mr Justice Beatson, ruled: "The fact that the presenter is a public figure and active in US politics does not arguably make the film as a whole one of political indoctrination.
"Nor does the showing [of] it in an educational context as a supplement to other teaching methods, and accompanied by suitable reservations and indications as to what is political and controversial, arguably the 'promotion' of partisan political views."
In the High Court on Thursday, Paul Downes, appearing for Mr Dimmock said: "Given the serious inaccuracies in the film and the misrepresentations it contains, the film is irredeemable".
He said he was seeking to persuade the court the film constituted "just over half scientific material, 30% pure politics and about 20% sentimental mush - mush there to soften up the viewer for persuasion".
Guidance notes accompanying the film pack went "nowhere near correcting these flaws - indeed they don't even set out to do that," he said.
The Swindle movie, however, claims that Gore is hiding something from that analysis in the scale of his chart -- that the same ice core analyses show that global temperature changes have led CO2 concentration changes by as much as 800 years. (short 2-minute snippet of this part of the movie here, highly recommended).
Well, this would certainly be something important to sort out. I have not done much real science since my physics days at Princeton, but my sense is that, except maybe at the quantum level, when B follows A it is hard to argue that B caused A.
So I have poked around a bit to see -- is this really what the ice core data shows, or is Swindle just making up facts or taking facts out of context ala the truther hypotheses about 9/11? Well, it turns out that everyone, even the die-hard global warming supporters, accept this 800-year lag as correct (Watch the Al Gore clip above -- it is clear he knows. You can tell by the very careful way he describes the relationship).
The chief debate really boils down to those of us who think that climate sensitivity to CO2 is closer to 1C (ie the degrees the world will warm with a doubling of CO2 concentrations from pre-industrial levels) and those who think that the sensitivity is 3-5C or more. The lower sensitivity implies a warming over the next century of about a half degree C, or about what we saw in the last century. The higher numbers represesent an order of magnitude more warming in the next century. The lower numbers imply a sea level rise measured in inches. The higher numbers imply a rise of 1-2 feet (No one really know where Al Gore gets his 20 foot prediction in his movie).
Schools in England are being sent a copy of the film by the former US vice-president in a package of resources for use in science, geography or citizenship lessons.
Guidance notes accompanying the film pack went "nowhere near correcting these flaws - indeed they don't even set out to do that," [Paul Downes] said.
The government's counsel, Martin Chamberlain, said guidance notes distributed to schools with the DVD, warning against political indoctrination, would ensure that the documentary was presented in a balanced way.
Although teachers could present the film in any way they wished, they were under a duty to provide balance - for instance, by explaining to pupils that some of the views expressed in the documentary were political and asking "What do you think about it?".
The law protecting people who intervene in criminal situations is to be urgently reviewed, Justice Secretary Jack Straw is to announce.
He will say self-defence law works "much better than most people think, but not as well as it could or should".
Mr Straw wants to reassure victims or witnesses in England and Wales that they can use reasonable force to stop and detain offenders.
"The justice system must not only work on the side of people who do the right thing as good citizens but also be seen to work on their side."
Mr Straw has intervened four times to stop criminals, including three times when he managed to detain the offender.
In 1980 he overheard a burglar breaking into a members club in his Blackburn constituency, chased them down the street and detained them until police arrived.
In the mid 1980s at Oval Tube station in south London he came across an 11-year-old boy who had just been robbed by a man and detained the offender.
At the same tube station in the early 1990s he chased a man who had attacked a woman, but did not catch him.
Then in 1996 he chased a man who had robbed a member of the public and detained the suspect until police arrived.
The justice secretary will state: "Enforcing the law, securing justice, is not just a matter for 'them' the courts, the prisons, the probation service, police - but for all of us."
The Association of Chief Police Officers, the Crown Prosecution Service, judges and other government ministers are expected to be consulted during the review.
One of the great pre-requisites for being in favour of the European Union, it seems, is knowing little or nothing about how it works.
Tony Blair may have flirted outrageously and Bill Clinton may have mesmerised with his louche charisma.
But when it comes to turning grown women into stammering jellies, Gordon Brown, it appears, is your man.
Mariella Frostrup, not normally known as a pushover, seemed to come over all unnecessary when she hosted a question-and-answer session with the prime minister at the Labour conference.
You might think she would have become immune to the PM's entirely unintentional charms by now - after all, she is a family friend.
When the EU talks of a 'Common Foreign Policy' on energy, you need to be aware
of exactly who you propose to do business with.
President Putin is on record as saying:"The Commission should be under no illusions, if it wants to buy Russian gas; it has to deal with the Russian state".
Gazprom is not a private company; it is a state controlled tool of Russian foreign policy.
It is, moreover, in the hands of Putin's political henchmen, and allegedly organised crime.
Take for example Alisher Usmanov. This gentleman, the son of a Communist apparatchik, is chairman of Gazprom Invest Holdings, the group that handles Gazprom's business activities outside Russia. He is the man you will be dealing with. He is the man who cuts off gas supplies if client states dare to question Gazprom's demands.
Allegedly a gangster and racketeer, he served a 6 year jail sentence in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, his eventual pardon coming at the behest of Uzbek mafia chief and heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov, described as Usmanov's "mentor".
Usmanov bought the newspaper 'Kommersant'. 3 months later, the journalist Ivan Safronov, a critic of the Putin regime who just weeks earlier had been "vigorously interrogated" by the FSB, as the KGB is now called, mysteriously fell to his death from his apartment window still clutching a bag of shopping.
According to Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, it was Usmanov who ordered the cutting off of supplies to Georgia earlier this year. Please take note, Mr President, that the Kremlin has now refused to sanction the construction of a pipeline to the EU over Georgian territory.
These are the people you want to do business with. These are the people you are moulding your 'foreign policy on energy' around.
Mr Commissioner, good luck: You'll need it.
The Zimbabwean parliament has passed a bill to move majority control of foreign-owned companies operating in the country to black Zimbabweans.
The goal is to ensure at least a 51% shareholding by indigenous black people in the majority of businesses.
The bill completes a process that began with the controversial seizure of white-owned farms starting in 1999.
Critics have said the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill could hurt investor confidence in Zimbabwe.
Labour wants to change the law to allow all-black shortlists in constituencies with high ethnic-minority populations.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman said the highly controversial measure was needed to increase the number of minority MPs.
A bit of digging shows that that Camberwell & Peckham, HH's constituency, had the following ethnic breakdown according to the 2001 census:
White: 54%
Black: 35.2%
Asian: 3.3%
Mixed: 4.1%
Other: 3.4%
So come on Hattie - surely a high earning, St Pauls-educated, law degree-holding, paper QC-holding white woman married to a high earning white man cannot hope to represent the good people of Camberwell & Peckham, can she?
Labour had closed the gap between men and women by 5% since 1997. But women were still being paid 12% less than men an hour if they were in full-time work and 40% less if they were in part-time work. "I simply refuse to believe that a part-time working woman is worth less than a full-time man," Ms Harman said.
I do wish people would grasp this most essential of points: the gender pay gap is caused (at least in part) by the very existence of such things as extended maternity leave. At it's most simple, of course someone who takes three or four year long absences from the labour force is going to have less human capital than those who slog though full time. We can also point to the way in which never married childless women do not suffer a gender pay gap, nor lesbians. That the gap is virtually non-existent under the age of 30, widens then shrinks again from the late 40s onwards.
Taking long periods of time out and insisting on being able to work part time (part timers cost more per hour to employ than do full timers) inevitably reduce the wages paid. So, as in so many things, there's actually a choice that has to made here. Which do you want? Child friendly policies, parent friendly ones...or no gender pay gap? The thing is, it looks like you've got to choose one or the other: you can't have both, they're mutually exclusive.
Women are losing out on jobs because some businesses avoid hiring those of child-bearing age because of maternity laws, research claims.
Some 63 per cent of executives say they find regulations pose a “serious threat” to their companies.
Almost one in five directors says they have avoided hiring women of child-bearing age because of the legal risk of being caught out by constant changes in rules on maternity pay and time off.
Such discrimination is illegal. But whether it is or not isn’t quite the point. If 20% of directors avoid hiring women of child bearing age because of the maternity rules then that’s one fifth of the economy off limits to such women of child bearing age. This will obviously have an effect upon the wages on offer. Just more fuel for the fire that is the obvious thought: the gender pay gap is, at least in part, caused by the laws on maternity leave etc.
My my, what a surprise. Perhaps it isn’t possible to have it all, perhaps there really are trade offs that have to be made in real life?
Meanwhile the inquest goes on into the shooting of two robbers in Lusk a couple of years back. What happened there was armed robbers tried to rob a post office and armed police shot them dead. And for some reason there’s an inquiry into this.
My take is this - If you are armed and about to use your arms to commit a robbery you then put yourself in a position where shooting you is perfectly acceptable. If you have a gun we can only assume you’re willing to use that gun and the best way to make sure you use that gun is to shoot you. In the face, probably. Can’t have an open coffin? Boo fucking hoo.
Now, the thing is the Garda that trailed that stolen car had no weapon beyond a truncheon and the criminals have all kinds of weapons. Honestly, to them it’s like a Grand Theft Auto game where they pick up shotguns, Magnums and rocket launchers as they go around the place being criminals. And the Gardai have sticks. It doesn’t seem very fair to me.
...
I just find it funny that we have to go so in-depth into the Lusk shooting. Two idiot cunts with guns got shot. So fucking what? If they hadn’t tried to rob a post office they’d be alive now. They chose to go in armed, they’re dead. I’m not bothered one bit.
I am bothered by the fact that the police force in this country seems to be falling further and further behind in its ability to control and deal with the criminal elements.
I say give the Gardai whatever weapons they want. Bazookas, flame throwers, whatever. Just don’t send the poor cunts out with sticks. It’s like sending someone into a sword fight with a drawing pin.
British history should be rewritten to make it "more inclusive", says Trevor Phillips, the head of the new human rights and equality commission.
He said Muslims were also part of the national story and "sometimes we have to go back into the tapestry and insert some threads that were lost".
"And if there is a practical thing, I would say it is that we need to revisit some parts of that national heritage. to rewrite some parts of that national story to tell the whole story."
He quoted the example of the Spanish Armada, which was held up by the Turks at the request of Queen Elizabeth I.
"It was the Turks who saved us," Mr Phillips told a Labour fringe meeting.
...
"When we talk about the Armada it's only now that we are beginning to realise that part of it is Muslims," Mr Phillips told the meeting.
"It was the Turks who saved us, because they held up Armada at the request of Elizabeth I.
Nice story, but it's unfortunately at best grossly misleading, and at worst flatly untrue. The argument, put forward by Dr Jerry Brotton, is that Elizabeth I sought an understanding with the Ottoman Empire (not Turkey, for God's sake - it was 350 years before Turkey was created) that the latter would continue to threaten Spain in the Mediterranean, thereby reducing the number of ships available to the Spanish."If the Armada had been bigger it would have taken Britain," said Dr Jerry Brotton.
And that's pretty damn tendentious too. The main reason that the Armada was defeated was that, even though it massively outnumbered the English navy, it was qualitatively inferior in seamanship and gunnery - a larger fleet would have meant more logistical problems - which were already considerable - and not much more chance of victory. In any event, the Turkish 'influence' was insignificant.The letter, ordered the ambassador, William Harborne, to incite the Turks to harry the Spanish navy. It was written in the mid-1580s
It was written in 1584 or 1585, 3-4 years before the Armada, and had no impact on Turkish policy, because they were busy at the time in the Balkans. It's nonsense.
Mr Phillips said he had also been persuaded of the need for a written constitution, saying the UK needed to be "more explicit in our understanding about how we treat each other".
A CONSTITUTION DOES NOT ENSHIRNE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES, DICKWAD! A CONSTITUTION PROTECTS THE NEGATIVE LIBERTIES OF THE PEOPLE TO STOP THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT STICKING THEIR BUSYBODY NOSES INTO OUR BUSINESS.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."—Thomas Jefferson
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."—Judge Gideon J. Tucker
"The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare."—Daniel P. Moynihan
"The power to tax is the power to destroy. A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny."—Calvin Coolidge
"We have an army of bureaucrats laboring feverishly to convince us of the importance of government. There are few who work to convince us otherwise. The bureaucrats are paid for their work. No one is paid to point out the waste, graft, and corruption that is government."—Tom Gleinser
"When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence."—Gary Lloyd
"I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its 'successful experiment' that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office."—Andrew Jackson, February 10, 1825
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."—John Adams
"The amount of donations a candidate receives is a direct indication of his level of corruption. The most corruptible candidates receive the most money."—Tom Gleinser
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."—C.S. Lewis
"There’s a huge difference between Vegas and Washington. See, in Las Vegas, people gamble with their own money."—Jay Leno
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."—John Adams
"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."—David Brin
"Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business."—Paul Valery
“I've had a tough time learning how to act like a congressman. Today I accidentally spent some of my own money.”—Joseph P. Kennedy
"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you give it to others."—William Allen White
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program."—Main's Law
"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."—William H. Borah
"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State wants to live at the expense of everyone."—Fredrick Bastiat
"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."—John Stuart Mill
"There is no better way to provide for the 'common good' than through the preservation of individual liberty."—Tom Gleinser
"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."—Sir Winston Churchill
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."—Tacitus
[And how true. NuLabour have introduced some 3,500 laws and they are one of the most—if not the most—corrupt, morally bankrupt governments this country has ever seen—DK]
"The world is a dangerous place to live... not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."—Albert Einstein
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."—Robert Heinlein
"Even a dumb free market is far more intelligent then a smart bureaucracy."—Joe Balyeat, in response to the 'smart growth' psuedonym used by government regulators
“If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, then you should not ask the government to do it for you."
"Once the government becomes the supplier of people's needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right."—Lawrence Auster
"The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect."—Sam Ewing
"Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right."—Ayn Rand
"Politicians and diapers need to be regularly changed for the same reason."—Unknown
"Only Libertarians obey the Constitution rather than changing it to suit the desires of the special interests they owe."
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."—Thomas Jefferson
"If a government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, within five years, they'd have a shortage of sand."—Milton Friedman
"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."—Barry Goldwater
You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection.
Currently US Law protects site owners from liability from the comments made on their site, of course they have to police them to a certain degree, but the law is with them. However there is no such law in the UK.
More interestingly the very fact that I have shown good will to the head of the company by making a vast amount of deletions and edits shows that I have changed from a "common carrier" of information to a "publisher", and this increases my legal liability for the comments.
Actually, going by the letter of the law, my liability is increased by removing comments from my site that are recognised as any type of SPAM. I would have been better to leave all the illegal or offensive SPAM comments all across my site.
Another consideration is the whole subject of online reviews. Does this mean that sites such as Amazon or iTunes are liable for the comments made on their site about products? Could I sue Amazon if someone said something negative about my book? Could I force the film site IMDB to remove all their negative comments about my film and leave a hugely positive and false view for all to see?
While these events were ongoing there was much discussion about a set of blogging guidelines being created, yet I think this isn't addressing the real issue. The problem does not lie with bloggers as such, I feel it lies with the law not being clear about the separation of liability between those making the comments and those hosting the site on which the comments are made.
According to a message on the site, the online music store has already shut its doors to new customers as of last Friday, and as of this coming Friday, it will cease selling individual tracks to current customers. Only subscribing members will have access to the site until their next payment is due or October 19, whichever comes first. After that, the site will cease to operate for both US and UK customers.
...
The site now advises its customers who have purchased tracks to back them up, as they will not be able to download them again once Virgin Digital has closed. It's unclear whether the purchasers of individual tracks will be able to access their songs without burning them to CD and reimporting them as MP3s, but it's better to be safe than sorry if you're one of those customers. And naturally, subscribing members will lose access altogether once their subscriptions lapse.
Universal seems to be taking a particularly hardline — if not outright spiteful — approach in their continuing negotiations with Apple. EMI is already selling DRM-free music through iTunes, as the only label from the big four participating in Apple’s iTunes Plus. Universal, on the other hand, isn’t selling DRM-free music through iTunes. If you want DRM-free music from Universal, you can only get it at Amazon.
In fact, the tragedy is that Amazon could have built this store 10 years ago — the music labels simply wouldn’t allow it. What’s happened now is that the music label executives — at least at Universal and EMI — have finally gotten it through their thick skulls that it’s the iPod that drives iTunes sales, not the other way around. Apple’s FairPlay DRM isn’t (at least primarily) some sort of lock-in scheme to force people to buy iPods; FairPlay was a requirement stipulated by the labels, without which they would not have allowed Apple to sell their music at all.
People buy iPods because they love them. If your music doesn’t play on iPods, it isn’t going to sell. And so if (a) you refuse to sell music downloads without DRM; and (b) no other DRM system other than Apple’s is compatible with iPods; then we’re left with a situation where the only successful store is going to be iTunes. What Universal and EMI now seem to have learned, at long last, is that (b) is completely under Apple’s control; only (a) — the labels’ own willingness to allow their music to be sold without DRM — is under their control.
"Under Utah law a 14-year-old can consent to sex, but not if they are enticed by someone at least three years older."Of course, sex with a minor is fine, as long as that person isn't at least 3 years older. Makes all the f*cking difference. It is bad enough that the USA is one of those countries that executes minors, but now we learn that you can fuck ‘em as well. As long as you are not too much older than them.
"Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven. Women are taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.""Nice". A man has to have not just three wives, but actually at least three wives. Which is fine with the women, because they are taught that they have to be subservient to their husband. Remember, this isn't the Old Testament I’m describing: I’m talking about people in America today.
"Polygamy is illegal in the US, but the authorities have reportedly been reluctant to confront the FLDS for fear of sparking a tragedy similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, which led to the deaths of about 80 members."Riiiiggghht, so it is OK to break the law in the US as long as the authorities feel that there is a risk of mass murder and/or mass suicide. This is the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", apparently.
The proposed treaty will give the EU power for the first time over the whole field of energy and Britain’s oil and gas reserves.
The UK’s oil industry produces £5 billion in taxes and has about 265,000 employees. But this could all be threatened by the revived and renamed EU Constitution.
Under the new Article 176a in the Reform Treaty the European Union will take control over energy policy and usage. This will be introduced under Qualified Majority Voting, meaning that Britain will not be able to veto damaging EU laws, nor protect the North Sea reserves.
The implications of this will be enormous. Article 176a reads;
- In the context of the establishment and functioning of the internal market and with regard for the need to preserve and improve the environment, Union policy on energy shall aim, in a spirit of solidarity between Member States, to:
- ensure the functioning of the energy market;
(This will hand Brussels the power to decide, where and how the oil and gas are sold)- ensure security of energy supply in the Union, and
(This could mean that the UK must supply energy to another member-state if they are having problems with their network)- promote energy efficiency and energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy;
(This will make the debate in Britain about how energy is produced irrelevant because Brussels will be making those decisions)- promote the interconnection of energy networks.
(This will give the EU a key role as the system guarantor and thus threatening British control over the North Sea reserves)
Brussels will also be able to decide issues relating to the taxation of the reserves without Britain’s Parliament having a say.
EU involvement in this area is especially worrying because the looming and renamed EU Constitution also adds another clause on energy, Article 100(1), which will force Britain to share its reserves in a time of crisis.
After concerns were raised by the oil and gas industry about the implications of Article 100(1) the proposal mentioning energy was removed from the final text of the then EU Constitution. Now, however, by slight-of-hand it has found its way back into the text of the Reform Treaty. In this respect the so-called Reform Treaty will pose more of a threat to Britain’s energy reserves than the original text of the EU Constitution.
Dr Lee Rotherham says;“Tony Blair told laughed off warnings of the threat in the EU Constitution to North Sea oil and our independent energy supply. But now we see that was just more of the old bluster.
“Huge questions remain in the Constitution as to what we are signing up to. With a shaky Middle East and a pipeline from an unfriendly Russia, we can’t afford any doubt that our energy policy is secure.
“The last thing Britain wants is to share with the EU our oil and their power cuts.”
I find this somewhat concerning. Sovereign nations do not hand over control over anything, but particularly not key strategic sectors like energy. Sovereign nations, in fact anybody with half a brain cell, do not give away their Oil!!! When will our rats in posh suits in Westminster drop the pretence that we remain a sovereign nation and admit that we are running head first into a federal United States of Europe????? I'm waiting, fuckmonkeys.
Yesterday, your humble Devil could be spotted in Bournemouth waving a placard—alongside a number of other activists (and "Gordon the Referendum Rat")—demanding that Brown give us the referendum on the EU Constitution that he promised in the Labour 2005 Manifesto.
The highlight of the day, for me, was when we were moved from our initial position by a couple of policemen. One of them said to me, "I'm afraid that we have to move you to the designated protest area but, believe me, I'm right behind you."
