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Tag Archives: music

Foiled! Lords veto Coalition bid to make being ‘annoying’ an arrestable offence

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Crime, Justice, Law, Liberal Democrats, People, Police, Politics, UK

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Act, annoy, annoyance, Anti-Social, antisocial behaviour, arrest, ASBO, awful legislation, Behaviour, bill, cannabis, civil, Coalition, concession, Conservative, crime, criminalise, Democrat, freedom of speech, government, harassment, health, house, imprecise, injunction, IPNA, Lib Dem, Liberal, liberty, lobbying, Lord Blair, Lord Dear, Lord Faulks, Lord Justice Sedley, Lords, loud, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, music, nuisance, order, Parliament, Patrick Cormack, peer, people, police, policing, political, politics, Prevent, protest, setback, social care, Tories, Tory, transparency, upset, vague, Vox Political, window dressing


140108ipna

The Conservative-led Coalition government has suffered a major setback in its plan for an oppressive law to criminalise any behaviour that may be deemed a nuisance or annoyance.

The Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill was intended to allow police the power to arrest any group in a public place who constables believe may upset someone. It was rejected by 306 votes to 178, after peers on all sides of the House condemned the proposal as one that would eliminate carol-singing and street preaching, bell-ringing and – of course – political protests.

It seems the Lords are more interested than our would-be tyrants in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Cabinet in the basic assumption of British law – that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

The politics.co.uk website, reporting the government’s defeat, said the new law would have introduced Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance (IPNAs) to replace Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs).

It explained: “Whereas an Asbo can only be granted if a person or group is causing or threatening to cause ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ to someone else, an Ipna could be approved merely if a judge believes the behaviour in question is ‘capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person’.

“Opinion could have been swayed by a mistake from Lord Faulks, the Tory peer widely expected to shortly become a minister who was asked to give an example of the sort of behaviour which might be captured by the bill.

“He described a group of youths who repeatedly gathered at a specific location, smoking cannabis and playing loud music in a way representing ‘a day-by-day harassment of individuals’.

“That triggered consternation in the chamber as peers challenged him over the word ‘harassment’ – a higher bar than the ‘nuisance or annoyance’ threshold he was arguing in favour of.

“‘I find it difficult to accept a Conservative-led government is prepared to introduce this lower threshold in the bill,’ Tory backbencher Patrick Cormack said.

“‘We are sinking to a lower threshold and in the process many people may have their civil liberties taken away from them.'”

It is the judgement of the general public that this is precisely the intention.

Peers repeatedly quoted Lord Justice Sedley’s ruling in a 1997 high court case, when he declared: “Freedom to only speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

It is interesting to note that the government tried a well-used tactic – making a minor concession over the definition of ‘annoyance’ before the debate took place, in order to win the day. This has served the Coalition well in the past, particularly during the fight over the Health and Social Care Act, in which claims were made about GPs’ role in commissioning services, about the future role of the Health Secretary, and about the promotion of private health organisations over NHS providers.

But today the Lords were not fooled and dismissed the change in agreement with the claim of civil liberties group Liberty, which said – in words that may also be applied to the claims about the Health Act – that they were “a little bit of window dressing” and “nothing substantial has changed“.

A further concession, changing the proposal for an IPNA to be granted only if it is “just and convenient to do so” into one for it to be granted if it targets conduct which could be “reasonably expected to cause nuisance or annoyance” was torpedoed by Lord Dear, who rightly dismissed it as “vague and imprecise“.

That is a criticism that has also been levelled at that other instrument of repression, the Transparency of Lobbying Bill. Lord Blair, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, invited comparison between the two when he described the Antisocial Behaviour Bill in the same terms previously applied to the Lobbying Bill: “This is a piece of absolutely awful legislation.”

The defeat means the Bill will return to the House of Commons, where MPs will have to reconsider their approach to freedom of speech, under the scrutiny of a general public that is now much more aware of the threat to it than when the Bill was first passed by our allegedly democratic representatives.

With a general election only 16 months away, every MP must know that every decision they make could affect their chances in 2015.

We must judge them on their actions.

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Iain Duncan Smith – the Musical!

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Comedy, Conservative Party, Disability, Media, Politics, UK, unemployment, Workfare

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

adequate, belief, believe, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, Coalition, committee, Commons, Conservative, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, government, housing, I Believe, Iain Duncan Smith, IDS (I Believe), investigator, Ipsos Mori, Job Centre Plus, Media, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, music, Not The Nine O'Clock News, Pensions, people, politics, radio, Raquel Rolnik, returned to unit, Rowan Atkinson, RTU, Secretary of State, sick, social security, song, SoS, special rapporteur, television, Tory, TV, unemployment, united nations, video, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment, YouTube


When he realises we’ve started making satirical music videos about him, Iain Duncan Smith will probably think he’s hit the big time.

Sad, deluded little man.

This is a project that has been developing for a while, after RTU himself went around the media, denying all the factual evidence that said his benefit cap had not put 12,000 people into work, as he was then claiming.

(A previous claim that 8,000 had gone into employment to avoid the effect of the benefit cap had been disproved by polling organisation Ipsos Mori, who surveyed 500 of those 8,000 people and found that only 45 had started work because of the cap. That’s nine per cent of the total claimed by the Secretary-in-a-State).

On this particular media junket, he refused to countenance the factual evidence that was put in front of him, saying he “believed” the anecdotal evidence provided to him by a few members of staff at Job Centre Plus.

That is now worthy of comment in itself, as he has been quick to dismiss the findings of the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, as “anecdotal” – and she has spoken to far more people than he did!

Inevitably, Vox Political published an article on the subject and – because the SoS had made it a matter of belief, prefaced the story with a few verses that could be sung to the old Not The Nine o’clock News/Rowan Atkinson song ‘I Believe‘.

That would have been the end of it – but then it became clear that Mr … Smith was delaying a meeting with the Commons Work and Pensions committee, convened to make him account for his manipulation of the statistics.

It seems clear that he has been waiting for the fuss to die down.

Dear reader, you can probably work out the rest for yourself. The lyrics and music were available and, with the addition of a few more words, Vox Political went into the recording studio.

The audio track that resulted is rudimentary but does the job. Yes, that is Vox founder Mike Sivier’s voice, for which he apologises. He played all the instruments as well, so he supposes he should be doubly apologetic.

The video was put together with photographs trawled from the Internet, interspersed with specially-written captions, and is intended only to give YouTube viewers something visual to enjoy while they’re listening to the song. All the images are copyright their respective creators and were freely stolen for humorous use – for which, again, we apologise.

We think the result is a lot of fun – amateurish, haphazard and slapdash though it is.

It gets the point across.

Please feel free to copy the code and embed the YouTube video anywhere you see fit. This was made to be seen, to be enjoyed, and to get across a message about Iain Duncan Smith and his beliefs.

We hope you all enjoy it!

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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A partly political broadcast from my band

01 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on A partly political broadcast from my band

Tags

Dodgie Jammers, dodgiejammers, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, music, politics, ska


One of the ways I relax is by performing in a band, with a few mates, called the Dodgie Jammers. We play ska, and some of our songs (as you can probably guess from the title of this post) are political. Here’s one for your listening pleasure. The quality’s a bit ropey but I hope you can appreciate the intention behind it.

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