The UK thread

[Giz]

I’m not sure it makes sense.

“For the Irish it’s like having a neighbor who’s really into clowns and your grandfather was murdered by a clown”

Have the royals been sneaking over and murdering people? Is this why the IRA blew up Mountbatten? Because they were in fear of his yacht rampaging up and down the coast?

[Witness]

I’m not sure it makes sense.

“For the Irish it’s like having a neighbor who’s really into clowns and your grandfather was murdered by a clown”

Have the royals been sneaking over and murdering people? Is this why the IRA blew up Mountbatten? Because they were in fear of his yacht rampaging up and down the coast?

Very snarky. Just get a bit more back in time.

[Witness]

The UK is secretly testing a controversial web snooping tool

The Investigatory Powers Act, or Snooper’s Charter, was introduced in 2016. Now one of its most contentious surveillance tools is being secretly trialled by internet firms

For the last two years police and internet companies across the UK have been quietly building and testing surveillance technology that could log and store the web browsing of every single person in the country.

The tests, which are being run by two unnamed internet service providers, the Home Office and the National Crime Agency, are being conducted under controversial surveillance laws introduced at the end of 2016. If successful, data collection systems could be rolled out nationally, creating one of the most powerful and controversial surveillance tools used by any democratic nation.

Despite the National Crime Agency saying “significant work” has been put into the trial it remains clouded in secrecy. Elements of the legislation are also being challenged in court. There has been no public announcement of the trial, with industry insiders saying they are unable to talk about the technology due to security concerns.

The trial is being conducted under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, dubbed the Snooper’s Charter, and involves the creation of Internet Connection Records, or ICRs. These are records of what you do online and have a broad definition. In short, they contain the metadata about your online life: the who, what, where, why and when of your digital life. The surveillance law can require web and phone companies to store browsing histories for 12 months – although for this to happen they must be served with an order, approved by a senior judge, telling them to keep the data.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/interne ... rds-ip-act

[Giz]

I’m not sure it makes sense.

“For the Irish it’s like having a neighbor who’s really into clowns and your grandfather was murdered by a clown”

Have the royals been sneaking over and murdering people? Is this why the IRA blew up Mountbatten? Because they were in fear of his yacht rampaging up and down the coast?

Very snarky. Just get a bit more back in time.

But they were never murdered by clowns.

They were murdered by the clown’s subjects. Or by his clownships government.

It should have been:

“For the Irish it’s like having a neighbor who’s really into clowns and your grandfather was murdered by neighbors who were really into clowns”

In other words, his problems are with brits rather than the institution of clownarchy

[Witness]

Metaphors, like jokes, and especially metaphors which are jokes, don't really benefit from arguing the finer points.

---

Priti Patel is about to rush through ‘draconian crackdowns’ on the right of peaceful protest

The plans have been described as a "staggering assault" on our right to protest.

Home Secretary Priti Patel says she has asked for a “full report” from the Metropolitan Police after officers clashed with some of those in attendance at a London vigil in memory of Sarah Everard.

The Home Secretary described footage of the clashes as “upsetting”, adding that her thoughts remain with Sarah’s family and friends at this terrible time.

But tomorrow, as the dust settles on some deeply disturbing scenes at Clapham Common, a new policing bill will bring in “some of the most draconian crackdowns on the right of peaceful protest we’ve seen in our lifetime,” Politics.co.uk editor Ian Dunt has said.

“It covers a wide range of areas, from sentencing to digital information. But it has a specific section on the policing of protests. And the function of this section is simple: It aims to silence them. It is cancel culture on a statutory footing, directed against the left.”

In what has been described as a “staggering assault” on the right to protest, new laws will give Patel powers to create laws to define “serious disruption” to communities and organisations, which police can then rely on to impose conditions on protests.

The HMICFRS report, ordered by Patel following Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, outlines a “need to develop” covert intelligence gathering methods and an expectation of increased use of facial recognition technology, despite a court of appeal ruling last year that its use in south Wales breached privacy rights and broke equalities law.

The report also supports expanding stop and search “to prevent serious disruption caused by protests”, amid concerns over discriminatory use of the power.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/polit ... st-257419/

More heat for Priti.

[Witness]

Sarah Everard: Green Party's Baroness Jones suggests 6pm curfew for men

The peer tells the House of Lords such a move would "make women a lot safer, and discrimination of all kinds would be lessened".



A Green Party peer has suggested a 6pm curfew should be introduced for men in the wake of Sarah Everard's disappearance.

Baroness Jones of Moulescoomb told the House of Lords that such a move would "make women a lot safer, and discrimination of all kinds would be lessened".

Ms Everard vanished while walking home to Brixton, south London, from a friend's house in Clapham on 3 March.
...
As peers debated domestic abuse legislation on Wednesday night, Baroness Jones said: "In the week that Sarah Everard was abducted and, we suppose, killed… I argue that, at the next opportunity for any bill that is appropriate, I might put in an amendment to create a curfew for men on the streets after 6pm.

"I feel this would make women a lot safer, and discrimination of all kinds would be lessened."

https://news.sky.com/story/sarah-everar ... n-12243194

[Witness]

Boris Johnson to make protests that cause 'annoyance' illegal, with prison sentences of up to 10 years

• Boris Johnson is set to pass a new law banning protests that are noisy or cause "annoyance."
• The law would limit the right to protest outside Parliament and carry a max sentence of 10 years.
• London's police force is under scrutiny for its heavy-handed response to a vigil for Sarah Everard.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to bring forward a controversial new law this week that could outlaw any protest that is noisy or causes "serious annoyance," with protesters facing up to 10 years in prison.

Members of the UK Parliament will debate the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill at its second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday. It would give police officers significantly greater powers to crack down on protests.

The measures would make it illegal for protests to cause "serious unease" and would introduce criminal penalties for people who cause "serious annoyance."

The law would also create new restrictions limiting the right to protest outside the UK Parliament, while introducing penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment for defacing public monuments.

A Downing Street spokesman on Monday said the bill would not target people's right to protest peacefully and would instead focus on targeting people who used "extremely disruptive" tactics during demonstrations.

"We've said previously that peaceful protest is a fundamental right in a free society," the person said.

"The measures in the bill are not in any way impinging on the right to protest — they're simply focused on the use of some extremely disruptive tactics we've seen used in recent years."

The legislation comes amid public outcry over the London Metropolitan Police's heavy-handed response this past weekend to a vigil in London for Sarah Everard, who was abducted and killed last week while walking home from a friend's house.

Wayne Couzens, a Metropolitan Police officer, has been charged with Everard's kidnap and murder.

https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-j ... ?r=US&IR=T

[Giz]

Every time I think my new country is going mad, my old country says ‘hold my lager’ and gets even worse.

[Witness]

Rising from the rubble: London pub rebuilt brick by brick after illegal bulldozing

Carlton Tavern reopens six years after planning ruling that campaigners hope will prevent developers demolishing other sites



...

The Carlton Tavern’s last orders were in April 2015. After being denied planning permission to convert it into 10 flats, and two days before English Heritage was due to recommend the pub be granted Grade-II listed status, the owners ordered its demolition.

Robertson and 5,300 other locals, including several local councillors, mobilised to persuade Westminster council to act.

It ordered the owners, CTLX, to rebuild the Carlton brick by brick. A planning inquiry the following year confirmed the decision, ruling that the pub should be rebuilt “in facsimile”, from the red bricks to the distinctive tiled pub name.

“They said it would be too difficult to do, but we had an answer for that,” Robertson said. “We had a suspicion before the demolition that they would do something, so we asked English Heritage to think about listing it. They took a plaster cast of every tile, they took pictures and documented everything.”

With nowhere left to turn, the developers started the rebuild. “And to be fair to [CTLX], they have done amazing work,” Robertson said. “It looks fantastic.”

Although praise for the demolishers goes only so far. “I doubt they will be [at the reopening]. The community would eat them alive,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... bulldozing

[Witness]

Tiananmen Square in London? UK council seeks to rename streets near Chinese embassy’s new site

• The council of Tower Hamlets borough has backed a motion to rename streets nearby the area to ‘call out the CCP’s human rights violations’
• The move is the latest controversy to surround the site, where the Royal Mint was formerly located and where thousands of Bubonic Plague victims may be buried

China’s plans for a huge new embassy complex in the British capital faces more controversy, after the local authority in charge of approving the construction on the former Royal Mint site supported a motion to rename streets nearby to Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong Road, Uighur Court and Tibet Hill.
Councillor Rabina Khan, who seconded the motion on Wednesday evening, said she was delighted the Tower Hamlets London Borough Council was “making sure that we call out the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations against the Uygur Muslims, and also the fact we are standing for the people of Tibet and stand in solidarity with Hong Kong”.

The motion was approved on the condition the renaming process would not cost the council any money.

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/ ... reets-near for the rest (some amusing details).


I hope they'll do it.

[Giz]

I seem to remember the British police being respected... decades ago

[Grammatron]

You’re just making me more determined to reclaim our freedom.

That's why I don't want the outcome that AC wants of "Surely something has to give".

[Giz]

A group of religious conservatives has managed to shut down a school for two days running, exact a grovelling apology from its headteacher, and have a teacher suspended. The teacher’s name has been circulated online, both by protesters and a local religious charity, forcing him into police protection.


All this because the teacher showed his pupils images in a lesson that the protesters deem to be offensive.

We might expect the great and good of liberal Britain to be incensed by all this. What we have here are religious fundamentalists demanding a state-funded school align itself to their doctrines and sack a teacher for breaching them.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/2 ... tolerance/

[Doctor X]

There were blasphemy laws in the UK as recently as 2008. Scotland finally got rid of them in 2021. Northern Ireland still has them.

I do not think they included "blasphemy" against a pedophile.

– J.D.

[Pyrrho]

[Witness]

Dozens of aristocrats claim under UK furlough scheme

Dukes, earls and marquesses, some of them owners of inherited estates, have drawn on public funds

Dozens of members of Britain’s land-owning aristocracy have claimed under the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme to pay staff at their ancestral estates and personal businesses.

Analysis of publicly available data reveals the names of at least 50 nobles, including dukes, earls, viscounts, barons and marquesses, who have drawn on public funds.

The list includes the owners of vast inherited estates with a combined area nearly the size of Worcestershire, as well as hereditary peers already paid by the taxpayer to sit in the House of Lords, and the owners of multimillion-pound art collections.

Details of the aristocracy’s use of the furlough scheme emerged after the Guardian revealed last month that tax exiles, Saudi royals, oil-rich gulf states and multi-billionaires had also drawn on taxpayer support to pay furloughed staff.

The latest snapshot reveals that claimants including companies owned by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, who are divorced and live in separate parts of the duke’s ancestral home, Belvoir Castle, which sits in 15,000 acres of Leicestershire parkland and has featured in The Crown.

Treasury disclosures suggest that the pair made four claims of up to £10,000 in December, increasing the amount to between £10,000 and £25,000 in January when a national lockdown took hold.

They also own the Engine Yard Cafe & Bistro and a clothes shop, the Duchess Gallery, which claimed up to £55,000 between them over the two months.

The duke, a former Ukip supporter, was listed as having an estimated wealth of £125m in the 2013 Sunday Times rich list, although he sold an item from his art collection, a painting by Van Dyck, to fund the estate’s upkeep. The pair did not respond to requests for comment.

[&c.]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ugh-scheme

[Witness]

BBC’s Prince Philip coverage breaks UK TV complaints record

110,000 people have complained, mostly about excess but also about Andrew, attire – and ease of complaining

The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history, as viewers expressed their annoyance that shows such as EastEnders and MasterChef were replaced with royal tributes.

At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.

BBC One and BBC Two dedicated Friday evening’s programming to Philip, and their ratings fell as viewers switched off altogether, turned to streaming services or watched shows such as Gogglebox on Channel 4.

According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
...
Within hours of Philip’s death the number of complaints about the coverage had become so large that the BBC set up a dedicated form in an attempt to streamline the process. This form was then taken down on Sunday, making it harder for people to register their displeasure.

The previous record for BBC complaints is believed to be the 63,000 objections to the 2005 decision to broadcast Jerry Springer: The Opera, following criticism from Christian groups.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/ ... nts-record

Aow, shocking!

[Giz]

The UK’s moderate Muslim organization closes:

“ It is interesting, this disproportionate vitriol targeted not just at reformers but at real prominent moderates within Islam. The hatred and venom aimed at Nawaz and his colleagues has been exceptional. They have literally had to fear for their lives. And the hatred has far outweighed any aimed at Islamist groups operating in Britain. Certainly the moderates have got far more flak than the Hamas leaders living here. Or the Jamaat types and other backward tribalists who populate the discourse and occasionally the airwaves. And why should that be?

For two decades now, that has been perhaps the most suggestive question. Outside a school in Batley in recent weeks some Muslims have been organising to intimidate a teacher, his family, bosses and colleagues. Will there be campaigns against them? Will the ‘mainstream’ Muslim organisations do anything to de-escalate the problem? As always they will pretend to be brokers between people who can’t be negotiated with and the state.

I don’t say this with any glee, but anybody who put their chips on Islamic reformation or moderate Islam saving everyone should think on the demise of Quilliam. Some of this country’s best citizens, who happened also to be Muslims, gave Islamic reform a good shot here. But it was they — and not their critics — who as a result became the principal target. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.”

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wha ... -and-Islam

[Witness]

Sad news for our little friend:

Gnome limits: UK garden centres run out after Suez blockage

Lack of raw materials and booming sales over lockdown have led to shortage of garden ornaments

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... ness-booms


A shortage of gnomes, the end is nigh!

[Grammatron]

Gnome theft to follow?

[Witness]

Gnome theft to follow?

Quite possible.

Reminded me of the serial "gnome kidnapper" in the Jura mountain, some years ago. He didn't keep them but installed them in circles in removed parts of the woods. Or was it the Garden Gnome Liberation Front?