Cracking Down

Here comes the political reaction to the death of drummer Lee Rigby. The Government is now on a mission to crack down on extremism and bring back the snoopers charter.

RIP Drummer Lee Rigby, who survived Afghanistan to be brutally killed in a terrorist attack.

First off, let's say something about the Woolwich attack. No matter how sad it was and how awful those people that brutally hacked to death a British soldier, these occurrences are very rare. The last initiated terror attack in Britain before Woolwich was in 2008 in Exeter. The last death as a result of a Terror attack in the UK was July 7th. These events are very unusual.

Most planned terror attacks are foiled before they even get off the ground. In a very similar way to the Woolwich attack, a planned beheading of a very particular Muslim British soldier was stopped in 2007. The police and security services have all the information and available tactics to foil terrorism in this country and after Woolwich they have not been asking for any extra powers. This was just a very sad case where the terrorists were able to carry out their awful deeds.

What I don't get is why the government is looking to introduce the Snoopers Charter again. The charter would force communication and internet companies to store all data from emails, Facebook messages and the like. But they already do that really on their servers. What the government wants is another storage place for the police and security services to have a look at when they ask. This is despite the fact that they already get all this data just off the main servers when asked for. Skype for example handed more data over to British police last year than it did to the Americans. The charter doesn't make it easier for new extremist websites being taken down. How can it as it just records what has happened on the internet twice over.

Also have you noticed that despite calls for it, the government hasn't actually given a reason why the Snoopers Charter may have helped in Woolwich. It just seems that, because they genuinely believe that the charter is a good thing, they are using the public's niggling fears about the death of Lee Rigby to bring it back again. I don't see how it would have helped, it's not like the charter actually allows the police for the first time to use the internet.

Like the charter which is not needed, I have a suspicion we are going to see another Bill on limiting freedom of speech in public. Dave and Mrs May are out and about telling people we need to take a harder stance of extremist preaching and language, from both the EDL and extreme Muslim preachers.

What both the EDL and extremists do is often already breaches liberal limitations on freedom of speech by causing fear of violence or inciting others to become violent. As a nation we haven't been enforcing this properly when it comes to minority beliefs. Anyone who is causing fear of violence or inciting others to violence should be stopped. This may be the case because we are concentrating on irrelevancies like the Snoopers Charter. We have become a little laxed in implementing the basic liberal law on freedom of speech.

EDL helping the White Witch in the mythical world of Narnia in their spare time.

I think you'll find that only women are prescribed to cover their heads under Shariah chaps. The likelihood of a sand storm in Grosvenor Square is very small.

But ignoring the legal aspects of how we defend ourselves from terrorism, what is the best way in my opinion to stop extremism? I say laugh at these ridiculous people and ridicule there silly ideas through a critical debate. We really take the people in the EDL and Muslim hate preachers too seriously as if they have some sort of worthwhile message when they are in the media. Terrorism is not funny, but these people are just utter fools, so treat them as such. It worked against the Fascists and Communist movement in the UK in the 1930s. If you go down to Cable Street you will see a crazily coloured mural of where the Communists and Fascists clashed. That's the essence of how these groups were stopped, by mocking them. I don't think we laugh at the modern day extremists enough.

Mural mocking the silly Communists and Fascists.