Yesterday morning I caught myself committing two crimes simultaneously in a public place.
I emerged from Westminster underground station beside the Houses of Parliament wearing a NO2ID button, which almost certainly constituted an unauthorised demonstration contrary to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2006. And, before proceeding southwards across the bridge to continue the same criminal conduct in Southwark and Lambeth on the way to where I was going, I took a leaflet from a young woman advertising a hairdresser, smiling and thanking her. If that is not ‘counselling and procuring an offence’ against the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005), given that Westminster City Council has taken the powers granted by the new Schedule 3A to prohibit the distribution of free literature, then I do not know what is.
I am minded to get a haircut. Presumably that would make my payment the proceeds of crime, and the hairdressing business subject to sequestration under the 2002 Act.
If things like this can happen on a sunny spring day under the eyes of the armed police and surveillance cameras protecting our diligent legislators, then no wonder the government is ‘cracking down on crime’ for the several-dozenth time in its Serious Crime Bill. If people can communicate and have social intercourse just as they like , without a license or the fear of prosecution, then there could be chaos.
The PM is quite right, plainly. Society is being menaced by the liberal, laissez-faire, values of the ’60s. People showed respect for authority in the 1550s, before we went soft on witchcraft and heresy.
Ah welcome to the ever growing throng of scofflaws(Link)
It’s brave of you to admit this. What a Guy! You’ll probably have to emigrate to Australia, where lowlifes fit in easily enough. When I look around me that is all I see. Just don’t make any anti-muslim thoughts, and you could yet get out alive!
Guy,
I saw a discarded NO2ID flyer outside M&S in central Manchester recently. Given the draconian anti-litter bye-law that MCC passed quite recently you are clearly guilty of an offense. I have informed GMP, so expect the armed response unit breaking down your door sometime between 3am and 5am.
Is there going to be yet another Serious Crime Bill? Is there anything which the gang of NuLabor ragamuffins haven’t criminalised yet?
I imagine in true NuLabor style they will simply be announcing new crackdowns on things they have already banned. Look at it as Potemkin legislation: 99% of it will never be enforced as the police simply cannot be arsed, but it helps fill ministers’ days, and gives them the impression that they matter in some way. They may as well pass a law saying that if ever they were on fire, we’d have the legal obligation to piss on them to put it out. That’s another NuLab law I don’t think I’d be obeying.
A strange type fo totalitarians these NuLabor.
The normal totalitarians – when they want to kill you, they kill you, without bothering too much about the law.
The NuTotalitarians just keep making laws that aren’t enforced. A strange breed.
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
Ayn Rand, ‘Atlas Shrugged’
It’s not that the laws aren’t enforced; it’s that they’re arbitrarily enforced, for when it suits their political ends.
Yea! What Ted said.
Just try a mild heckling at a Nu-Lab party conference. Your feet wouldn’t touch the ground.
Then when you were up befor the beak for it you would have to pay a “Surcharge” on top of any penalty.
Precisely. Once everything is potentially illegal, and the machinery of justice has been adjusted so that there is no possibility of acquittal then there is no law, merely the application of state power.
That is the standard totalitarian approach, Jacob. Not strange at all. Totalitarians want society totally controlled; killing people is an embarrassing side-effect, rather than the object of the exercise. They would much rather you learn to love Big Brother. Rule of law suggests it is possible to argue against power; and it stands in the way of acquiescence. For the totalitarian mindset, freedom is found in obedience.
Totalitarians want society totally controlled;
Correct.
killing people is an embarrassing side-effect,
No, killing people is a very effective (and widely used) tool toward achieving total control – you kill some, the most troublesome, and this terrorizes the rest into submission. Standard practice.
Guy, seems you aren’t very afraid of you government. For all those theories of how the gov. tries to intimidate the people by those numerous laws – I don’t see you, or anyone else very intimidated. Alarmed – maybe, but afraid – not. Mostly the laws are far more stupid than sinister, than a plan for domination.
In theory gov. could be oppressive, but I don’t see much oppression in practice (aside from smoke bans, gun bans, etc.).
I was going to make a comment – but Guy Herbert and the commenters have said everything I wanted to say.
Other than to commend you all for making interesting points.
Coincidentally just before I read Guy’s post, I read a post by someone called Steve Olson(Link) in the USA which expresses a darker opinion. Everything he says about the USA seems true or almost true about the UK.
Eg. “When did we decide it was okay for the government to seize property without a trial, without due process, at the whim of a government agency?”
Think it can’t happen here? Read this article about “Operation Ore”(Link) – the anti paedophile internet operation.
David
Great post, Guy, which I accessed through Bag. Tom Paine wrote a guest post on my blog and said that Blair has criminalized over 3000 matters during his tenure. It’s criminal.
Great post and it points to the surreptitious criminalization of us all. Tom Paine pointed to 3000 offences which have been criminalized during Blair’s tenure. Bag lso mentioned this thing.
The number of times I haven’t worn a seatbelt: I’d probably qualify for a £10000 fine.
Two birds one stone-sell the car to pay the fine, never be able to do it again.
Well, you see, Guy needs to make an appointment to be arrested, as 57 of the 58 cops in his local area are either managers, or are on the Bias Crime squad. Since there is probably not a racial component to his future unauthorized coiffure, they have other things to do. The remaining copper is busy collecting CCTV recordings and structured interviews in a five-pound shoplifting case that CPS is going to no-file anyway, and will not be taking anyone into custody until Thursday at the soonest. Not only that, but he’s not recently requalified with his handcuffs, and I’m sure there’s a Helfansafey issue there.
I might just move to the UK, just to vote to the first MP to introduce a “Frivolous Crimes[1]” bill and actually title it as such.
[1] Reselling a ski lift ticket, for instance
Guy needs to make an appointment to be arrested, as 57 of the 58 cops in his local area are either managers, or are on the Bias Crime squad.
Not usually true in sight of Westminster and Whitehall. I was going to do an interview at Millbank before Christmas and rumours of a demonstration you would recognise as such, unauthorised. This one, I think. Had brought about 3,000 police onto the streets around Parliament Square (and parked in reserve in riot vans). You could scarcely move for cops. I believe about 50 anarchists eventually appeared, not many more than the armed police who usually guard the parliamentary fortifications.
Two or three times a week I see someone being questioned in that area.
My post was about the criminalisation of everything, though. Of which Sunfish’s facetious “Bias Crimes” are a blatant example.
On tickets, the Grauniad recently had this, which is almost worth a post in itself:
Jacob,
Guy, seems you aren’t very afraid of you government.
Yes I am. What I’m not afraid of is individual government servants.
The measure of my fear is that I have been forced out of the plain despondency about the state of the world that gripped me for a decade, and given up much of my life for the past couple of years to active opposition to the most dangerous movest, while letting my own business coast dangerously. I’m doing it before it gets to the point where I do have to fear the secret police directly for merely being a political opponent.
I cooperate as little as possible with the culture of compliance, but one cannot push that into open defiance without having a good deal to fear. There are many things one must now do surreptitiously already.
And there are other positive injunctions one does obey through fear. I will, for example, display the compulsory NO SMOKING signs in NO2ID offices after July 1st, because I fear the punishment for not doing do, and because I fear the loss of administrative time in being prosecuted, and because I can’t take the decision not to on behalf of others to whom it is my duty to obey the law when I act for the organization.
That’s how much dread of the state spreads: through the need to protect our relationships with others from the consequences of state intervention. Every act of compliance with unreasonable instructions is a rehearsal of fear.
Guy,
I didn’t say you weren’t annoyed by your government. I didn’t say you weren’t forced to hang a “no smoking” sign.
I said you weren’t afraid.
Not really afraid. Not afraid for your life. Not afraid of what people are afraidof in Russia (see this samizdata post) (Link), in China, in Iran, etc.
I wish you never to feel that kind of fear, and never to know what I’m talking about.