kickingtyres

This week saw, what should be, a triumph of human rights over ill-applied and overzealous policing of stop-and-search under Section 44 of the anti terrorism act. The full ruling can be read at the European Court of Human Rights website.

The gist of it is that Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton were stopped and searched under Section 44 of the Anti Terrorism Act 2000 for doing nothing more than going about their daily business. This law gives police powers to stop any individual within “designated areas” and search them for material related to terrorist actions without having to show “reasonable cause” to justify their actions. They believed the stopping and searching of them for no good reason was a violation of their rights, and took the case to the European Court of Human Rights.  The court ruled that a stop and search without reasonable grounds, suspicion nor  evidence was unlawful and also commented on the fact that the law itself is very wooly in how it is enforced.

The court ruling should have been a triumph of human rights and common sense over an ill thought-out piece of legislation that has been abused time and again since it was brought in, but it wasn’t.  The Government’s response to the ruling is that nothing will change and they will continue to stop and search people in spite of it being illegal.  Their reasoning? even if a particular law is “unlawful” an official acting in compliance with that law would not themselves be acting unlawfully. In other words, they are only following orders, so can’t be held responsible.

“Only following orders”?  I wonder where similar defences were last used?

The proposed Broadband Tax has had the following consultation document released, which offers some interesting clarification of various aspects.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/consult_landlineduty.pdf

I’m most intersted in sections 3.3 through to 3.6

3.3 The duty is payable on local loops. These are lines that connect an end-user’s premises to the wider communications network.

3.4 The duty will be payable on all local loops that are made available for use by an owner whether or not the lines are actually used. It will also be payable on all local loops regardless of whether the loop consists of a copper pair, a co-axial cable or a fibre connection.

3.5 The duty will apply regardless of the service that is being provided over the local loop. Services may include traditional voice services or other data services namely broadband – Government does not intend to capture television services.

3.6 Where more than one local loop is provided in order for an end-user to receive two distinct services, the duty is payable on both lines. When an end-user receives services from two different providers but over the same local loop, the duty is only payable once.

Read 3.4 and 3.6, and consider that we have a BT line “made available” to us, even tho we don’t use it, and that with a Cable connection, we then have two local loop lines would suggest that we are liable to pay twice.

I think I’ll be talking to my MP again.

Account: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Campaign: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This campaign met its daily budget of GBP £250.00 on 15 of the last 15
days. Increasing the budget to GBP £250.00 would allow the ads to show
more often and get approximately 400% more clicks per month.

This is after we’ve had a multitude of problems in getting funds transferred into a Google Adwords account, even when Google created the account themselves, and were unable to transfer funds into it.

Has anyone else found the AdWords platform to be as broken as this?

Hopefully, with everything going according to plan, I’ll be there this year…

March 27th & 28th Croft

May 2nd & 3rd Cadwell Park

May 15th & 16th Snetterton

June 5th & 6th Anglesey

July 3rd 4th Cadwell Park

July 17th Oulton Park

August 21st 22nd Anglesey

September 18th 19th Cadwell Park

Donington TBA

Up at 6am as normal.
ended up, late, running out the door just after 7am rather than 6:55.
Was pissing rain all the way to the station.
Managed to catch the train which then sat in the station for 20 minutes, being rebooted several times before it moved off.
Underground was a sardine-special, and I was standing for the entire journey, which also took 10 minutes longer than normal.
Was still pissing rain as I got off the underground and walked to the office.

My friend, lives around the corner from me.
Walked to the station in the pissing rain.
His train was stopped when someone pulled the emergency cord.
Eventually got into London to find the underground station he normally gets off at was shut due to a combination of flooding and someone taking ill.

My advice for today. Stay in bed!