Tag Archive for 'parliament'

Geeklawyer speaks: The Speaker must go

Published on 18 May 2009 in politics. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

Geeklawyer speaks for the nation: Parliamentary Speaker Mr Micheal Martin must go. Even before the expense debacle his role and competence had become controversial. He had allowed police to search the offices of Damian Greenaway without a warrant earlier this year. Contrary to what Geeklawyer thought at the time he was entitled to do this as, to Geeklawyer’s embarrassment, was pointed out by Carl Gardner. Nonetheless at the time HE didn’t think so and believing himself to be in the wrong he attempted to shift the balance to his assistant Black Rod who was not permitted to defend herself: shabby and disloyal.

Now it gets worse. In what is, to Geeklawyer’s flawed knowledge of the history of Parliament, the worst situation in 350 years MPs are desperately debating how to unseat the unspeakable Speaker.

The Pragmatist Blog has provided a video of the cluster-fuck over today’s debate (18th of May 2009) on a motion on his competence. While the supporters said it was a “Substantive Motion” the speaker shot it it down as as an “Early Day Motion” the distinction is not something Geeklawyer is familiar with but the analysis is clear: on a clear issue of confidence sleazebag Martin is relying on biased and self-serving nit-picking over definitions to avoid any adverse assessment of his position. Thus he fully justifies the proposal to remove him. The Speaker of the House needs to be free of the suspicion of corruption and incompetence, neither of which Mr Martin can claim.

As mentioned before Mr corrupt Martin’s only contribution to the scandal, apart from trying to hide it, has been to try to shoot the messenger of truth. Time to go, scumbag.

I the meantime it looks as though an ex-SAS hero may have been crucial as an intermediary in spilling the beans on the expenses horror. John Wick, a former major with the SAS is a director of a private security company, International Security Solutions Limited which has or had been brokering some, apparently amateurish, attempts to sell a disk full of data on MPs expenses. It isn’t know yet whether police will question him: they bloody well shouldn’t.  The man deserves yet more medals to supplement the recognition of his valuable military service to his country to recognise his invaluable political contribution too.

Sleazy MPs: Freedom of Information & expenses

Published on 20 January 2009 in politics and privacy. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

MPs are by and large a sleazy lot: from brown paper bags under the table ala Hamiltons to ‘innocent’ forgetfulness when employing relatives or double claiming these pricks are milking the system. They claim for the John Lewis list of tellies fridges curtains and the second homes that they claim they simply ‘must have’ to do their work.

The Speaker of the House, the almost incredibly inept and incompetent Michael Martin, recently lost a High Court action to allow his fellow sleazebags to conceal their dishonesty. Were it Geeklawyer or you that would, save an appeal, be the end of the matter.

We two, however, do not have the ability to make up self-serving law. It’s a perk of the job of being an MP perhaps. All the crooked sleazy & dishonest MPs & Ministers have got together to draft an amendment to the Freedom of Information Bill that will allow them to conceal their fiddling. Not because they are crooks, oh no, but because it would be expensive and time consuming. Oh yes and, erm, terrorism. You see FOI requests might help Al Qaeda locate MPs. Yea, honest and you wouldn’t want to help terrorists would you? You being in favour of democracy & all?

Many of us suckers, aka taxpayers, aren’t having it. Mysociety run TheyWorkForYou the famous website designed to keep MPs honest despite themselves. are running a campaign via Facebook group to get people to write into their MPs  and demand that they oppose this legislation.

Geeklawyer has written to his scumbag Neo-Labour yes man and expects an unconstructive response. But ya gotta go through the motions.

It seems amusingly ironic that the same scum who are introducing ID Cards and the database state so that they can monitor everything we do, from taking a shit to drinking too much, want a little more privacy for themselves. Hypocrites.

Different asshole — same shit

Published on 2 October 2007 in politics and the Supreme Leader. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Geeklawyer notes that all of the Supreme Leader’s pro-civil liberties “I’m not as bad as Tony Blair” guff is turning out to be crap. He can’t get enough airtime to bleat about how beastly the Burmese government are to crush peaceful protesters in their capital. Yet oddly he is not following through on his promise to repeal legislation that outlaws democratic protest in our own capital and permits the Met to beat up peaceful protestors outside Parliament.

He is continuing with the requirement to compel people to surrender encryption keys on pain of a jail sentence and despite perhaps incriminating themselves. All the while reversing the effective (if not technical) burden of proof if the keys are lost, as often happens.

And now, to combat terrorism of course, he is allowing any government agency to intrude into peoples private lives by getting any phone call data they wish. No safeguards at all, no judicial oversight, nada. Records of everyone you phone or text can be demanded by nearly any government agency. Quite how giving the taxman or the housing authority my phone records helps terrorism is not clear. No, it’s all for the public good, or as the Home Office standard line goes every time the curtail civil liberties:

”We are not intruding into people’s private lives,” said the spokesman, adding that the move was “part of the difficult balance between protecting people from terrorism and serious crime, and respecting people’s human rights”.

Bollocks, you lying scrote.

Contemptible

Published on 29 August 2007 in Civil liberties & human rights. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Geeklawyer is of the view that when people can wind up in jail for protesting outside Parliament we have sunk to the status of China or the USSR.

It is to be hoped that Gordon Brown with his civil liberties populism is doing more than just engaging in “I’m not Blair” posturing. His recent statements that he will rescind the anti democratic parts of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act is to be much welcomed. Time will tell.

Milan Rai and Maya Evans (whom Geeklawyer has met while giving a civil liberties talk to the Hastings Stop the War group) are truly heroic and they deserve support.

Reality Parliament

Published on 29 July 2007 in politics. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

One tends to think of Kiwis as possessing the Aussie’s distaste for pomposity but done with more class (not hard of course — Juxtajazz aside). Maybe not: the NZ Parliament has just passed a law saying that you can’t parody or mock them without risking being a compulsory guest of the state.

Apparently, like our own dear Parliament, if a Taiwanese style punch-up starts on the floor of the house cameras must focus on the Speaker. Which Geeklawyer thinks is a little odd. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to focus on the fight? Or is he, like the Kiwis, not getting the full picture? It would certainly make our own Parliament Channel much more interesting: make a pit in the floor of the House cover it in sand and let Brown and Cameron fight in the style of Roman Retiarii and Paegniarii (erm, right plural?). One presumes they are worried about their dignity and it would clearly never do for the punters to see their elected overlords eating lollipops or giving each other the Agincourt salute.

Ah! The solution for TV companies is obvious.

Get sponsoring companies to pay dim actors a lot of money to speak someone else lines and film it. Oh, wait …

Crushed

Published on 21 July 2007 in crime and politics. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Quickie post.

Geeklawyer is totally fucked off that no-one is going to get nailed and jailed over the cash for honours matter. He does think it comical to see all the politicians and fellow bottom-feeders decrying the length of the investigation and the damage done to the ‘innocent’ and the body politic.

These people were as innocent as Jack the Ripper. It is Geeklawyer’s belief Lord Levy and Ruth Turner were almost certainly a pair of crooks taking direct, oral only — of course, instructions from Tony Bliar to get money:

TB: Mike. how’s the fund raising going?

ML: Ya, not too bad. A lot of these guy are saying ‘what’s in it for me?’, you know, the usual.

TB: Presumably you’re giving them the usual advice? “Give some money to charity, fund an orphanage and we’ll sort you out a peerage”, shit like that?

ML: Yea. ‘natch.

TB: So how much are we getting in?

ML: Not nearly enough. There just aren’t enough rich stupid people in the UK.

TB: No? Can’t we get money off Prince Charles?

ML: Nah, don’t think he need a peerage.

TB: Oh, yea, right. OK heres a list of dodgy businessmen I know. MI5 says most are fraudsters, coke smugglers or crooks but frankly I don’t give a shit, just launder the donation so we can deny knowledge.

ML: I don’t need telling my job Tony.

TB: If you don’t start producing results soon you bastard you won’t have one. Ruth’s available to provide ‘extra services’ if needed.

ML: OK, Tony I’ll crack on. (under breath: ‘Sleazy goy cocksucker.’)

TB: (under breath: ‘Sleazy cocksucker.’)

Geeklawyer reckons that they got off only by the politically corrupt decisions of the CPS. The CPS was always going to decide there was no case to answer. It is an organisation well versed in delivering politically convenient decisions dressed up as laboriously derived independent judgment. It is an amusing paradox that it was initially set up to provide independent judgment from the police on the decision whether to prosecute or not; and rightly so, since the police were a little too keen to use prosecutions tactically. That is, arrest the usual suspects and prosecute innocent family members until the suspects agreed to cop a guilty plea. Ah, how Geeklawyer loved the 1970’s.

The answer, then, is clear. The CPS must retain the prosecution decision except where it relates to public function when the police should make the decision.

Of course outraged parliamentarians want to ensure that no-one washes their dirty laundry in public and are plotting to ‘do a Hutton’ on the police. That is, an elaborate witch hunt enquiry that drags Constable Yates (as he soon will be) through the gorse bushes for having the temerity to do his job.

And the fact that no other copper will ever dare investigate parliamentary corruption again for fear of also falling victim is entirely an incidental benefit unfortunate byproduct of necessary democracy.

London & Glasgow bombs

Published on 2 July 2007 in terrorbollocks. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Geeklawyer was struck by the contrast between Brown & Blair on this. Blair would have put on his best ‘Man in Charge of a Crisis’ face and told us that we shouldn’t panic but that we are all in dire peril. John Reid would have stood behind him nodding and saying “I just wish those in Parliament would stop helping terrorists by preventing us getting the laws we want”.

In fact these ‘bombs’ were merely incendiary devices the clowns setting them off could even get hold of explosives so they tried triggering explosions by heating the cannisters. Woefully ineffective and detonating gas cylinders pose a minor shrapnel risk.

Christ, compare that to the IRA — laughable. And yet Blair is telling us these are a new class of ultra-lethal terrorists we should surrender our liberties for.

I like mashups rather amusing take on it.

For a sane analysis watch this ex-CIA man on MSNBC.

Parliament to screw up music copyright?

Published on 17 May 2007 in copyright. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Thanks to Harry Metcalfe for alerting Geeklawyer to the news, greeted with weary ennui, that Parliament is thinking of yielding to the special interest groups and uber rich lobbying power of the music cartel. Despite Gower saying that extending the mechanical copyright term from 50 to 70 years was unjustified on economic grounds the vacuous MPs thought the real issue was morality.

While there is some limited legal basis for taking morals as a basis for a policy position it is very limited indeed, and mostly imported from the alien civil conceptions of France: things to do with attribution defamatory treatment etc etc.

The parliamentary group, argued primarily for consistency of the term of protection: if a composer was entitled to life + 70 years why shouldn’t a performer? If normalisation of copyright term is the policy objective one presumes that the term of other rights will need to be looked at. For example does the 25 year term for protection of a published edition need extending to life + 70 on the same basis that there is no argument for a distinction? or the 50 years of a cable-cast right?

Indeed if one is talking of morality perhaps the argument should be reversed: is there any reason why an author should get greater term protection than a performer — perhaps life+70 should be dropped to 50 years?

Indeed if ‘morality’ is the issue why not make it a perpetual right?

At its heart is the fundamental question: “why is property in intellectual creations not the same as for any other property — like the property in a physical object like a house?” A good and much broader question which I shall pose and then spinelessly abandon to another day…

Ministry of Justice

Published on 16 May 2007 in legal profession. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Conjuring up mental images somewhere between Orwell and Python the Minstry of Justice went live after very little parliamentary discussion and virtually no press converage on 9th May 2007. The Department of Constitutional Affairs, previously the Lord Chancellor’s department is therefore no more.

Ruthie wonders whether two name changes within the space of 10 years will actually make a difference to the quality of the service provided. The new ministry claims that it “exists for one purpose only — to improve the justice system for the public”, but in the dying days of the Blair government the people grow cynical of “improvement” simply by the repackaging of problems, particularly in the absence of any substantive debate or consultation with the people who are then required to work within the new system.

Statistics thrown out by the Central Committee will no doubt advise us that wheat production has increased 150%, collective happiness in on the increase, and that compared to other countries, where the people are poor, crossed eyed and smelly we are all jolly lucky and should be thankful to our beneficent leaders.

Despite this Ruthie confidently predicts that legal aid will continue to be eroded, prisons will remain overcrowded, young people will still commit suicide in worryingly high numbers in youth detention centres and people suffering from serious mental health problems will still be detained in custody through a lack of funding for appropriate treatment. But hey; we’ve got a great new website.

Cunningly the Minister for Justice is both liable for the funding of legal services, and liable to be defendant in the event of litigation about funding. Huzzah, Judges now get to rule against the Minister of Justice and reduce the provision of their own resources. The sort of constitutional arrangement one might expect of a third world dictatorship; but since we can’t quite bring ourselves to indict errant judges for treason, more subtle methods of control are required.

Dodging the European patent bullet

Published on 20 March 2007 in patents. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

The entire Macrossan software patent ding-dong goes on. Geeklawyer has covered this in the past and his antipathy to Macrossan & software patents (despite drafting them himself — hypocrite) are a matter of record. The recent report, as covered by IPKat, that the EPO has declined to illuminate the matter is, I agree with IPKat, an opportunity missed.

Unlike the generous IPKat, however, I do not ascribe this modesty to any wholesome and objective desire for clarity and relevance.

Continue reading ‘Dodging the European patent bullet’