Bye, Bye Maria Miller; You Will Not Be Missed

Bye, bye Maria Miller; you will not be missed. 

It was obvious Maria Miller had to go in my mind when she gave the worst apology in the world and then got her PPS to threaten the press with Leveson. Putting aside any wrong doing she had done on her expenses, how can you honestly think that this is something a decent minister could do? It does astound me.

But actually I'm quite pleased Maria Miller has gone because I think she was the most incompetent person in the whole cabinet. She is quite frankly a walking disaster unable to handle any task.

Walking Disaster.

Maria Miller was in charge of the outcome of the Leveson inquiry. As you all know after the report was published Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg called for press censorship to solve crimes which were already illegal. The lobbying from a group of celebrities, who wanted to be on and off public display simultaneously, corrupted the weak minded lefties. So what was Maria Miller's reaction? Well after a short while the government, particularly the department she headed, caved in and agreed to press censorship. What an amazing Culture and Media Secretary she was. She will certainly not be known as the saviour of freedom in the future.

Maria Miller to be locked up for curbing freedom of speech.

Furthermore Maria Miller handled equal marriage. This was always going to be a hot potato in the Conservative Party, it was never going end very well. But Maria as the Equalities Minister handled it so badly for the Government. It got to the point that people who agreed with gay marriage felt they could not support the law because the media mismanagement was so enormous. The actual draft of the law was terrible too having being altered so many times and still not being great in its outcome.

Maria Miller is also not sorry for the mess she made of her time in Government.

Overall Maria Miller was just short of terrible (she is better than Harriet Harperson who is her opposite number, but that's not saying much). Thank God Sajid Javid and Nick Morgan are taking over her two briefs. Sajid Javid is a rising star, he is competent and can manage the monies very well. Nicky Morgan is as equally good. I have seen less of her in government but Nicky Morgan has shown competence throughout and is definitely not just got a Cabinet role because she is a woman. Its a shame that they have been elevated to an office under these circumstances.

The best of the 2010 intake.

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.

On Da TAB

Have you seen the TAB today. Well I wrote a piece about the aftermath of that pointless referendum as a sort of follow up from my recent blog post (see http://thingselliottsays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/hollow-victory.html).

Here is the link to the TAB article itself. Enjoy. http://nottingham.tab.co.uk/2013/05/11/womens-network-refuse-to-accept-abortion-defeat/

Legal Issues

So now the government, which is supposed to be Tory led (but this seems to have escaped the Conservatives around the Cabinet), are now going to end freedom of the press we may have some legal problems.

Downing Street has said:

“No newspaper or blogger would be forced to join the regulator, the Royal Charter system is a system of incentivisation. However, those ‘relevant publishers’ that choose not to join the regulator would be subject to costs and could be subject to exemplary damages if taken to court. ‘Relevant publishers’ are specifically defined and could include blog sites that are written by multiple authors, have editorial control and are published in the course of business.”

Ian Hislop summed up on the BBC quite well what is actually going on (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21848746).  Remember this isn't to prevent crime, we already have laws against phone hacking and the like. This censorship of the press is to stop you finding out about Celebrity Scandals. And who decides what you see? Well seemingly Celebs considering the amount of influence they had in setting it up. 

So like the Spectator we are saying NO! Reminds me of someone. 

Censored

Today the government reached a deal so that enshrined in statute is censorship of the press.#ThingsElliottSays disapproves of this as it extends to blogs so no more news stories on things going around the world as newspapers will be restricted in commenting on them. I hope the Conservatives have plans to over turn this in their manifesto as we are the party of Liberty and this is a clear breach of the beliefs of any Conservative. I hope those cowardly Tory MPs who wished to vote for regulation are chastised from the party. They do not represent any core Conservative beliefs by siding with celebrities who just wish for their public (but yet apparently private) lives not to be seen, despite making a career out of doing so. We just have to hope that Hacked Off doesn't see my blog or all of it will be blacked out.

Freedom of Speech

I'm quite interested in what is going on in the Tory Party at the moment. Everyone, all the way up to Government ministers who would usually take the coalition policy line, is coming out with all sorts of ideas for 2015 and ones for the coalition too. There seems to be a lot of free and open debate on what the party does next. This ranges from the questioning of the Coalition's economic policy (essentially a demand for tax cuts from the Chancellor), Mrs May wanting an official policy to pull out of the ECHR and Philip Hammond saying we cannot cut defence any more. I'd like to ask why this has happened and what will be the consequences of this?

Firstly I think people in the parliamentry party are becoming more sceptical about David Cameron's leadership. Until recently Cameron has had the party right behind him as leader, although not necessarily behind all his policies as this is the most rebellious House of Commons ever. You just have to ask people like Douglas Carswell what they think of the Prime Minister and he will say he honestly believes he is the right man for the job. But now I think many MPs are wavering.

The fact we are in coalition can only go so far as an excuse to why the economy is not moving. Other departments like Education seem to have converted Liberals to Tory education plans, why can't this be done to some extent on economic policy? The reason is is that both George Osborne and the First Lord of the Treasury are not pushing for liberal economics. A good example of this is the refusal to cut taxes some taxes as they say this will slow the rate in which he coalition is cutting the deficit. However, none of them seem to realise that a lower percentage taxation it actually brings in more real money because the economy grows. A large percentage slice of a small pie is less than a small percentage of a large pie.

Also I think one other man has a lot to do with this and it's our good old closet socialist Business Secretary Vince Cable. Mr Cable hasn't done much in his job apart from oppose all changes to employment legislation, occasionally turn up in a car factory and then go on a ramble across India. However he is a massive advocate of Keynesian economics. 'We need more spending' Mr Cable will always say. But now old Vincey has attacked the Tories for being economic 'Jihadists', although they are at the moment advocating a more liberal economic program than the Lib Dems (shock horror, who would have thought it!). So essentially, especially after the Lib Dem win in Eastleigh, Tories are saying what they want because the Dr that advocates an economic death is saying what he wants.

But what does this mean? These are just words after all. As I said last month the moment economic policy disagreement happens in the Coalition, it is as good as over. No one really wants to do it any more except Dave and Cleggers because they like their jobs and working with each other. 

Gone, but not for long

You may have noticed I have been away for a few days. This is because the real world has finally caught up with me so I have been oppressed by the tyranny of John Stuart Mill's Majority in an essay.

Meanwhile The TAB has posted an article I wrote about the Nottingham Abortion Referendum: http://nottingham.tab.co.uk/2013/02/19/pointless-su-abortion-referendum/

The Madness of the SU

Today you may have got this message from the Nottingham University Students Union:

Dear members
A referendum has called regarding whether the Union should adopt a ‘Support the Right to Choose’ policy. A full copy of the policy that is the subject of the referendum can be found here:
http://www.su.nottingham.ac.uk/pageassets/makethechange/elections/The-Right-to-Choose-Policy.pdf
Objections
Objections to this referendum shall be submitted to suelections@nottingham.ac.uk by 6pm on Tuesday 12^th February or be brought to the next meeting of Elections Committee. Elections Committee will next meet at 6pm onTuesday 12^th February in Committee Room 1, Portland Building, University Park.
Location and Timings of Poll
The poll will open at 12noon on Monday 18^th March and close at 3pm on Friday 22^nd March.
Voting shall take place on the University of Nottingham Students’ Union’s Website at the following address: http://www.su.nottingham.ac.uk/

WHAT!!!!!! The Students Union wants us to have a referendum on whether it should support a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. Why?

Why on Earth does it want to do this? Has the SU suddenly decided that instead of pretending to look after the welfare of students it wants to open up an abortion clinic? Is the SU president and his staff wanting to perform abortions in the Portland Building? Unlikely. So why waste our money on such nonsense.

Is the SU deluded? Do they think themselves a mini-legislature ruling over University Campus where they dictate the rules? Or do they think that Nottingham University SU, a few over paid, unrepresentative and politically motivated students, are so influential that Mr Cameron (who by the way isn’t going to change the Abortion laws) is going to say ‘my God we must not change the Abortion laws a few nobodies in Nottingham say it is wrong’.  

Also why do they wish the whole of the University to be ascribed with a massive tag of we are pro abortion and pro women’s choice? Why bother? The campus has many religions the SU isn't asking the student population to vote on whether the SU is Church of England Christianity. Indeed the SU quite frequently says how this is a multi faith campus so why on abortion do they wish to make Nottingham University speak with one voice on an issue people really care about? Surely this is against people’s freedom of expression. Whatever the result of the referendum we will either support women’s right to abort or not which either way is an attack on the other people’s beliefs.

Sadly the SU are fools. They waste a fair portion of the £9,000 I pay to come here on discussing politically motivated motions like whether we should bring back the death penalty (an idea voted upon in the past) instead of making students lives better. This abortion referendum is more of this same lunacy.

Quite frankly there is only one word to say to the SU. Resign! We are hard working students and we will not pay your near £20,000 a year salary in order for you to be feckless towards your real job. We do not want you to debate your own political beliefs and how they can be applied to the university and waste our money on referendums on issues that students do not want you involved with. You live in Cloud Cuckoo land, you’re not the government, I want my money back!

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