Gary Andrews

I can’t remember when or why I wrote this, but it worrying seems just as apt today. Names have been changed below to bring us up to date with changes in government personal. Oddly, it makes no difference to the piece. Make of that what you will.

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The Sun: FURY AS POTENTIAL CRIMINALS WALK OUR STREETS

Victims of crime were OUTRAGED yesterday after new research revealed there are people walking the streets who COULD commit crimes.

New police statistics show a quarter of the population are likely to commit a crime at some point in their lives – and the government has done NOTHING to stop this.

A police source told us: “We know that people have the potential to commit crimes and these figures confirm it.

“We’ve been trying to tell the government for ages the should take action and lock up these would-be monsters before it’s too late.

“We’ll have to build new prisons to lock up a quarter of the population before they can commit these crimes – but it’s a small price to pay for our safety.”

Nikki Nikkison, 21 (32DD), from Croydon had her mobile phone stolen last month and is FURIOUS at the news.

“I’m furious,” the buxom blonde told The Sun. “I’d only had twenty double vodkas and left my bag on the bar when I went to the loo – and next thing I know it’d gone.

“It’s really frightening to think that there are people out there who could commit crimes.”

Well today the Sun vows to make the streets safer for people like Nikki as we launch our ‘Lock ‘em all up’ campaign.

We have to act now and lock up 25% of our population to safeguard our childrens’ FUTURE.

It makes no sense to leave these beasts free to roam our streets – and the police should be allowed to LOCK UP whichever 25% they like.

Another police source told us: “If we act now and remove people we may just make our streets safe.

“We’ve already identified groups of people we think pose a risk.

“Primarily we’d aim to lock up all asylum seekers, blacks, poofs, people with funny sounding names, everybody who opposed the Iraq War, pro-Europeans and Liberal Democrats.

“After all, would you want your children to be alive in the knowledge French people and Mark Oaten could speak to them?”

But amazingly the government is still DITHERING when it comes to locking the population up.

When pressed Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “There is some merit in the idea, but we’ve got to look at the facts carefully and see if we could lock up, say, one fifth arbitrarily instead and see if that would suffice.”

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also refused to commit to our campaign, but promised tough new measures.

“There are people who should be locked up,” he told The Sun. “But we’re still working out which ones those are.”

“But if I – or any other minister – sees a criminal, potential or otherwise, new legislation will enable us to punch the f*****s in the face very hard.”

But while the government DILLY-DALLIES, David Cameron signed up for our campaign and promised to END the OUTRAGE.

“When I’m Prime Minister my first act will be to lock up a quarter of the population,” the Tory leader pledged.

“Everyone knows the police and statistics don’t lie and when you put the two together you get a double non-lie.

“Sadly the government shows no sign of taking a hard line on this and somebody, somewhere could be committing a crime right now because of it.

“If you’re not in the twenty-five per cent we’d lock up then you have nothing to fear.

And before leaving to catch his ultra-green bandwagon, Cameron proved he was HARDER than the Prime Minister on crime by personally disemboweling a five-year-old immigrant caught STEALING a lemon.

Had we not stopped this monster today there’s no doubt he would have grown up to be a SMACK-ADDLED PAEDOPHILE.

Take part in our exclusive Sun Poll and tell us what YOU think. Are you happy that people who haven’t yet committed a crime are free to walk the streets?
1. They should be all locked up
2. We should bring them to justice as quickly as possible.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: civil liberties, Coffe and PC, idiocy, old posts, the sun

There’s a lot to like about Australia. John Howard wasn’t one of these things. Now it seems new Premier Kevin Rudd can also be struck off the list, as Australia joins China in becoming one of the few countries where the government broadly censors the internet.

The argument seems to fall back on that classic piece of hysteria: won’t somebody think of the children:

‘Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.’

I’d like to know what consists of inappropriate material here. Techcrunch has a pretty good summary, which includes BitTorrent, online gambling, ‘R’ rated computer games, the vague area of hate speech, as well as criticism of government policy regarding Aboriginals. I’d also imagine particularly sweary sites like Devil’s Kitchen, for example, could fall foul. After all, we wouldn’t want the children to be exposed to bad language would we?

As the ‘crunch say:

“If there is one certainty in any country that implements broadscale censorship, once they start blocking content it doesn’t stop, and certainly every do-gooder group and special interest lobbyist will be wanting the Government to add to the list.”

In all honesty, there’s no need for the Government to get involved. There’s perfectly good software out there that can block sites, and if parents want better software, then there’s enough companies out there making these products to provide even stronger controls. Absolutely no need for government interference.

What’s also worrying is the opt-out nature of the service. As techcrunch points out, if you opt-out of the censorship, the government will undoubtedly ask questions as to why and start to take an interest. So that could lead to childless twentysomethings who’ve got no need for these controls, finding themselves snooped on by the state because they fancy doing a bit of gambling or BitTorrenting.

Conroy’s defence is as daft as anything I’ve heard in a long time.

“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” he said. 

Right, so you’re happy, proud even, to follow the lead of a repressive illiberal regime? Nice one. What next? Rounding up dissidents?

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.” 

Christ. But this isn’t about child pornography, which in turn has close to fuck all to do with freedom of speech. You’re just using it as an excuse to slip in a host of other controls. And are you really so dumb that you can’t tell the difference between a kiddy-fiddler and a libertarian?

“He says the Government will work with the industry to ensure the filters do not affect the speed of the internet.

“The internet hasn’t ground to a halt in the UK, it hasn’t ground to a halt in Scandinavian countries and it’s not grinding the internet to a halt in Europe.”

And? What the hell does the speed of the internet in the UK, Sweden, or Belgium have to do with Australian censorship? What this clumsy sidestepping statement is probably dealing with is what Techcrunch raises concerns over:

‘There is also a potential cost involved to Australian Internet users. The previous Government regularly cited feedback from ISP’s stating that the cost of implementing a “clean feed” would be passed onto internet users, who already pay some of the highest internet access costs in the Western world for on average slow services.’ 

Wonderful. I have, in the past, entertained ideas of emigrating Down Under. I won’t bother now.

What worries me is firstly the number of people in the comments who think America could be heading the same way, and secondly that somebody from our wonderfully liberal government will think: “Hmm… so we’ve got ID cards coming through, what next? Ah, the Aussie internet initiative sounds like a good idea.”

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Australia, censorship, China, internet regulation, really illiberal ideas

This freedom of speech issue is starting to become somewhat tedious, whirring round with depressing regularity as soon as anybody finds something they disagree with. And let’s face it, Nick Griffin and David Irving are two of the most disagreed with men in this country. But it doesn’t mean they’re not as entitled to their views as anyone else is. Now by all means, object to their views which are rather, well, objectionable. But if somebody asks them what their views are, they’ve got a right to say so, even if what comes out if ill-educated, nasty bilge.

Harry’s Place asks if fascists should be given free speech when, given half the chance, they’d deny others. The Devil neatly replies:

“Because we are not fascists.

Next.”

It doesn’t stop the usual idiocy being trotted out. I’ve no problem with MP Dr. Julian Lewis resigning his membership of Oxford’s debating union over the matter, but this quote verges on the daft.

“I think there are people who are confusing this with an issue of free speech. It’s not an issue of free speech to offer someone a privileged platform from a prestige organisation.”

Er, no. This is precisely an issue of free speech, and they’re being invited to speak at a debate on free speech. This couldn’t be more about freedom of speech if it chartered a hundred helicopters, hovered them above the venue, and waved 60ft high banners with the words: “This is about free speech.”

It honestly feels that, from people of all political persuasions, freedom of speech is actually read as: You’re free to say what you what providing I don’t disagree with it or find it offensive. Then you’re just being irresponsible and it stops being an issue of free speech, and starts being an issue of why you shouldn’t be allowed to say these things.

Honestly. Grow up.

Antonia Bance is another who seems to have gotten the highly confusing idea of free speech and not free speech mixed up.

“But I would just point out that having the right to freedom of speech doesn’t mean having the right to be invited to speak at a private members’ club.”

And Tim, as usual on topic such as this, is spot on:

“Indeed it doesn’t, even I would insist that it doesn’t.

I would insist however that freedom of speech absolutely includes the right of a private members’ club to invite whoever they should wish to come and speak to them. Which would appear to be what Ms. Bance is off to demonstrate against this evening.

Ho hum.”

Swiftly followed by Chris:

“It took a Cambridge Professor of Modern History weeks on the stand to rebut Irving’s assertions to the standard required in a court of law. Hardly the same, is it?

Personally I’d love to see the cream of the UK’s students rubbishing BNP plans to spend a fortune to encourage every last non-white person to leave the country.”

And I’ll leave the final word to Max Hasting’s surprisingly good column in today’s Guardian.

“Student debating societies have always been foolish, self-indulgent and irresponsible. We should cherish their right to remain so. Tonight’s Oxford audience has things to learn from listening to Griffin and Irving. We should possess sufficient faith in its intelligence to believe that they will be the right ones.”

UPDATE: Oh, ok then. Not quite the last word. Matthew, in his own indomitable style, has possibly the best take you could ever have on tonight’s storm in an industrial sized teacup. Somebody make that man Prime Minister.

And who actually who gives a toss really? Who but the protesters going to argue against precisely the thing they’re arguing for? Tonight I’m going to punch myself in the face and film it for youtube, but does that mean the moral decay of Great Britain is stopping you from drinking Calpol and watching Eastenders? No it does not. And if you don’t like it, don’t look at it.

And though as it goes I think they’re both tremendously wrong, they’d possibly afford me the chance to say so. And they’d think I was wrong, and I wouldn’t care because I’ve nearly finished Guitar Hero 3, and we’d all fetch a taxi home. I’d put an Arnie film on, they might do the crosswords, we’d all go to bed and the first thing we’d think on waking wouldn’t be, ‘Oh, my word, I can’t believe that guy, what an unendingly disgusting man he was.’

It’d be, ‘What’s for breakfast?’

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: depressing misunderstandings, free speech, getting outraged

Following the Usmanov case,there seems to have been a raft of ‘cease-and-desist’ actions around the internet, most notably the bunch of Sheffield Wednesday fans wondering where the money’s gone[1], and secondly the Society of Homeopaths who got somewhat miffed at the suggestion that this relatively unproven medicine might not be all that [2].

Firstly, I doubt very much this is a relatively new tactic. It’s just before Usmanov the internet community wasn’t quite as aware, or as bothered by it. Very much like the phone-in and BBC scandals, once people start looking, or bothering, the instances are there. Anyway, that’s somewhat of a side issue.

What this does show is that the internet, while on one hand democratising us all and giving anyone and everyone a voice, is also the most vulnerable to the stifling of free speech.

This largely comes back to a problem I’ve repeated ad infinitum. You could make an argument, certainly in the Quackometer site, that what is being raised is in the public interest. To my mind, Dr. Lewis would have several other defences in a court of law before he’d even have to fall back on Reynolds. That’s assuming he’s actually libelled someone, which I’m not entirely convinced he has. Yet Ben Goldacre can write about the same topic in the Guardian and nobody’s removed the article or forced Goldacre or Guardian Unlimited to be taken down.

If anything, this neatly highlights the problem. On one hand, major media organisation writing about issue worthy of debate. Publish and be damned, and the article remains in situ. Internet blogger catering for a more niche community on exactly the same subject - one lawyer’s letter later and the offending article, if not the whole site, could be forced down.

Yes, given anybody can take finger to keyboard and make any kind of accusation, it’s probably useful to have some form of legal controls and redress in place. But the playing field seems far from level with all other forms of published media, tilting the scales away from freedom of speech.

That, to my mind, shows our libel laws need to be rewritten sharpish to take into consideration the vastly changed nature of communication rather than waiting for piecemeal case law judgements that can often be at odds with each other.

In the case of the Sheffield Wednesday fans, there’s a slightly different, if still very much related to the core area, issue. To be honest, much of what I have to saw on this would be parroting my post on Martin Watson, the Hereford United fan banned from the ground for running an internet forum.

It’s not unsurprising football should be seeing more than its fair share of cases in regard to this issue. The 92 league clubs, plus the hundreds more in the lower tiers over have a very passionate, (inter)active fanbase who willingly engage online. Take a look at any unofficial forum for any football team and that’ll immediately become apparent.

In some respects the Guardian somewhat mislead by describing the Wednesday fans as bloggers when the offences took place within a forum. Unityneatly describes the differences between libel issues faced by bloggers and those by forum admins:

“Getting back to Iain [Dale] and his warning to anonymous commenters on his blog, notwithstanding anything else that I’ve said, the position in law that Iain faces is no different to that which has been explored by several bloggers in the wake of the Usmanov issue. UK libel law hold ISPs, webhosts, forum owners and bloggers liable not only for their own content, but for anything they ‘publish’ up to, and including, anonymous comments. It all very well issuing ‘warnings’, as Iain has done, but in doing so he rather misses the point that its only by virtue of the largesse of the litigants in the Owlstalk case that it appears that they’ve chosen to pursue claims against a small number of specific members of the forum, when  they could just as easily – more easily, in fact – have pursued the owner of the forum.”

What I would disagree with Unity is on his explanation of the reasoning and motvations behind the original postings on the Wednesday forums – namely suspicions about the balance sheets.

There are a lot of very suspect characters who’ve been involved in football clubs in the past, and there are probably some still running clubs at the moment. You’ll also get a section of the fanbase who are better informed than others and ay use the forums to raise awkward questions. It certainly gets done a great deal on the Exeter City forums.

There will be some postings that are downright libellious. In my experience, moderators are usually pretty swift to pick these up. Genuine discussion of the off-the-pitch matters often concern matters that are in the public interest, and deserve to be at the very least debated and aired. [3]

However, there is a fine line between libel and genuine discussion, and not all posters will have received the basics in libel. Nonetheless, the free speech issue still remains. It may be uncomfortable for the club or individual and they may not enjoy what is written but if it is done fairly, and is an honestly held opinion or, better still, true, it has the right be be heard – nobody should be allowed to censor something just because they not like the content on an unlibellious piece of writing.

The net, specifically forums and blogs, are a fourth and a half estate of sorts. They should be given the chance to behave like one and develop properly into a fifth estate, or merge with the fourth.

[1] Something they’ve probably been wondering ever since they fell out of the top tier of English football.

[2] At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical ‘I’m not an x, some of my best friends are x’s', I use some homeopathic medicines, mainly to ward off colds. But then I use paracetamol to do the same thing. Both appear to work. One could probably do with a bit more research into it.

[3] And, in the past, I’ve heard some pretty-eyebrow raising football-related stuff covering several different clubs that the media often don’t touch but gets picked up on the forums and then by the media. At least several of these have come from pretty impeccable sources and without the forms a large proportion of the fanbase would have been none the wiser.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: bloggers, football, free speech, libel, Sheffield Wednesday, Usmanov

As many others, a few days late on this but…

Football fans may have noticed in the last few weeks another Russian tycoon has been upping his stake in a British football club. In this case, Alisher Usmanov and Arsenal.

Blogging affectionardos may have noticed notable blogger Tim Ireland’s site along with that of former Uzbek ambassador Craig Murray disappeared.

Political affectionardos may have also noticed Boris Johnson’s site vanished for a bit.

The reason can be found at Tim Ireland’s temporary site. For those who want a brief condensed version…

When Usmanov kept upping his stake in the Gunners, Murray, who knows a bit about the old Soviet Union posted an article about the oligarch alleging the reasons behind Usmanov’s jailing in Russia in the 1980s (Usmanov claims he was a political prisoner. Murray begs to differ).

The oil tycoon’s law firm, Shillings, which had already been warning UK newspapers and Arsenal bloggers about mentioning Murray’s allegations, or generally making allegations about Murray, then made contact with Murray’s web host made a serious of demands, with the net result Fasthosts closed the entire account used to hostMurray and Ireland’s site, which happened to include Boris’s site.

Boris hadn’t mentioned Usmanov and was an innocent victim caught in the crossfire. His response sums things up pretty well:

“This is London, not Uzbekistan. It is unbelievable that a website can be wiped out on the say-so of some tycoon. We live in a world where internet communication is increasingly vital, and this is a serious erosion of free speech.”

Justin McKeating’s been keeping tabs of those bloggers who’ve come out in support of Murray and Ireland. It’s a varied list.

Nosemonkey has a good piece on the libel laws surrounding this.

I’ve been saying for ages that, whatever your opinion on Britain’s libel laws (and mine are they are both daft and overly draconian) they’ve needed a drastic overhaul to take into account of the internet for some time.

My knowledge of the exact ins and outs of internet libel could probably do with a refresher course, but broadly it takes into account existing libel principle applied to the media has a couple of test cases which have resulted in a somewhat piecemeal case law. But basically (I think) the courts take a dim view of those who don’t remove the offending material when asked.

(Those whose legal knowledge is slightly sharper than mine in this area please feel free to comment and add/put me right).

This puts the internet somewhat at odds with print and broadcast media. Granted, they have deeper pockets than your average blogger (although that doesn’t necessarily say they’re overly fond of being sued for millions) but their principal is largely one of weighing up the risks and them deciding whether or not to publish and be damned. That allegation is then judged to be laid down in permanent form and should the claimant decide to sue, it’s up to the media organisation to prove the allegations are false.

Interestingly, any defence of public interest is reasonably recent to the world of libel (that is, the allegations may not be true but at the time of publishing, were considered to be important enough to air and, after due diligence, believed to be true) and is known as The Reynolds Defence (I think this is the latest Reynolds development).

Now, even assuming Usamov took out an injunction, I reckon any UK publication that published Murray’s allegations would have been able to have a decent stab at concocting a defence. I’m also not entirely sure whether Usamov would want the matter to get to court, given what might come out. But, as Dan Hardie notes, papers seem reluctant to go after football club owners (note: contains some of Murray’s original text)

And that is where the libel laws with the internet differ. Usamov doesn’t like it, issues a writ, poof, server capitulates and it saves the tedious problem of things like extra lawyers fees, court appearances, bad publicity and freedom of speech.

If the internet is genuinely part of our media, then it should be treated as such and the same laws should apply. If the matter is of genuine public interest and concern, and I’d say Murray’s article most definitely fulfils that, then the bloggers or internet publisher should be allowed to publish. It’s a basic tenet of free speech in this country. If this was an investigative piece written by and investigative journalist and published in a national newspaper then you wouldn’t expect every single issue ever printed of that paper to be pulped. Because that’s essentially the equivalent here.

(I’m deliberately skirting around the bigger issue of libel laws in general. I’d be here all night otherwise).

The one upside of this is so many people have got royally pissed off by Usamov and Shilling’s bully-boy tactics and have either reprinted, linked to or blogged around the issue that more people than were originally aware of Murray’s accusations have a fair idea of what’s going on. And taking down the site of a high-profile figure such as Boris Johnson was just dumb.

On a slight tangent, the Usamov affair is one that adds to my general depression over Premiership football. It provides a great spectacle, but I’d rather people like Usamov and Thaksin Shinawatra weren’t allowed to get involved.

The trouble is money and success talks. There were more than the usual rumblings and questions when Shinawatra took over (more so than Ambranovich) but as soon as the season kicked off and City started winning, it seems the fans forgot and the press moved onto Sven’s men’s success on the pitch.

No matter what the atrocity, no matter how dubious and repulsive the person, if they’ve got money there will be a, usually large, section of the fans who will turn a blind eye because it’s for the good of the club and the media will add to the complicity because, well, football should transcend politics or some other bobbins. Most probably if Peter Sutcliffe suddenly became a multi-billionaire and decided to buy, say, Middlesborough, he’d probably get in without a murmur.

It makes me glad we only had a couple of incompetent fraudsters in charge of Exeter City for a year.

So please, sign the petition and blog about it. In honesty, it probably won’t make a lot of difference but the more people there are, the more pressure there is and… well, hopefully some good will come of it. Most likely, in a couple of year’s time, Alisher will get a football club, they’ll win the league and everybody will forget just what he got up to B.P.P. (Before Premiership Purchase)

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Alisher Usamov, Bloggerheads, libel