Even we move with the times... Don't forget pinstripes for dress down Fridays

David Irving compared British justice to that of the Third Reich. The Holocaust revisionist launched his outburst as he attended court to support his friend Gerald Toben who was arrested on a German extradition warrant during a stopover at Heathrow.

Toben is accused of publishing internet material between 2000 and 2004 that denies, approves or plays down the Holocaust, which is illegal in Germany.

Outside Westminster Magistrates' Court, Irving said: This type of procedure demeans our society in that the Germans and Austrians can dictate to us what we feel and can say and what we read and write. They lost that right in 1939.

Irving, who was jailed in Austria in 2006 for denying the Holocaust, plans to invite Toben to stay at his home in Windsor if he is granted bail next week.

He went on: I disapprove of some of his views but he has the right to express them, just as people disapprove of my views but my books and views are suppressed. It’s like living in Nazi Germany. What we have seen here today is like Nazi Germany, but in pinstripe suits.

Ah Dr Toben... We've been revising history too. Remember that old nonsense about Britain being a free country...

In comments which will reignite a row over controversial European Arrest Warrants, Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said that the arrest of Dr Fredrick Toben at Heathrow on Wednesday conflicted with Britain's tradition of free speech.

Huhne said the affair exposed weaknesses in the system and called on the Government to lead a campaign to reform it. He is writing to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, urging them to lobby Brussels for a rewrite of what he described as "rough edges" in the treaty which underpins the warrantss.

He called for Dr Toben's case to be dropped and said the case demonstrated that the legislation wrongly allowed people to be arrested for actions which do not breach British law.

Huhne said: I think the time has come to ensure that the European Arrest Warrant's scope is effective. Some of the sloppy drafting does need to be tightened up. It was rushed through without proper thought as a knee-jerk reaction to terrorist offences.

...Read full article

Nasty Scottish Government plans to raise the age limit for buying alcohol in shops from 18 to 21 have suffered a well deserved setback after being defeated.

MSPs backed a Conservative parliamentary motion, by 72 votes to 47, rejecting the proposals.

Students who claimed the plans would demonise young people earlier staged a rally outside the Scottish Parliament.

As MSPs debated the plans inside, the Injustice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, ludicrously accused his rivals of being irresponsible.

Leading the debate, Scottish Tory deputy leader Murdo Fraser told parliament: The SNP are creating a ludicrous situation whereby students cannot buy a bottle of wine or a few cans of beer to enjoy in the hall of residence or flat.

They are creating an even more ludicrous situation whereby a soldier returning from a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan at the age of 20 cannot buy a bottle of champagne from the off-licence to celebrate with his wife on his return.

Fraser said targeting 18 to 21-year-olds was discriminatory and pointed out that drink problems affected people of all ages.

Labour justice spokesman Richard Baker said it was more important to enforce proof of age cards, test purchasing and tougher sanctions for license breaches should be enforced: It is not just that the proposal is therefore in itself deeply flawed, it's that it's part of an artifice to allow political posturing from this government on tackling under age drinking to hide the fact they are failing to invest in measures which will actually make a difference.

The Liberal Democrat Ross Finnie warned against stigmatising a generation with the plan, adding: We believe it fails fundamentally to contribute to bringing about the essential cultural change in attitudes towards sensible drinking.

But MacAskill spouted that Scotland's drink problem was running up an annual tab of £2.25bn, adding: We do need legislative change, because the status quo is unacceptable. We cannot go on as we are.

Student group NUS Scotland has joined forces with the Coalition Against Raising the Drinking Age in Scotland (Cardas), to rally against raising the age outside parliament.

NUS Scotland president Gurjit Singh, said: We hope this debate will force the government to rethink its unworkable and ill-thought out proposal.

And Green MSP Patrick Harvie hit out at the Puritanism surrounding the discussion of alcohol at Holyrood.

Salmond Staggers on with discriminatory prohibition policy

Based on article from thescotsman.scotsman.com

Alex Salmond is preparing to defy the Scottish Parliament and continue with his plans to raise the age for buying off-sales alcohol to 21 – despite its overwhelming rejection by MSPs.

A spokesman for the First Minister said Salmond still believed that raising the age limit was the right approach and the policy is expected to be included in legislation when it is brought before parliament, either later this year or early next.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Conservatives joined forces yesterday to vote through a motion condemning the Scottish Government's alcohol age-limit plans.

That vote is not binding on the government, but it sent a clear message to ministers that parliament will not support the proposals. Ministers had been expected to take last night's vote on board and drop the age-limit plans from a package of measures on alcohol.

A man has been fined £100 after he took a photo of a drunk woman while she was being sick. Sebastian Prydgodzi said he took the picture because he wanted another view of Edinburgh during the capital's festival.

But he was told by Sheriff Kenneth Hogg that taking a photo of a vulnerable woman was exceptionally unchivalrous.

The woman had her head between her legs when Prydgodzi approached her and took a picture with a flash on his mobile phone. she was embarrassed and shocked by the flash, said fiscal depute Marie Vernon. She added: Her friends took hold of Mr Prydgodzi until the police arrived.

Prydgodzi pleaded guilty in court yesterday to breach of the peace and acting in a disorderly manner.

Andrew Houston, defending, said: The Festival was very much under way and he spent the day wandering around taking photos of the street performers. This girl was clearly worse for wear due to drink and, on reflection, this was an error of judgment. He was taking a photo of another view of Edinburgh and meant no offence.

Sheriff Hogg said: The lady was in that position possibly through her own accord. But you should have walked past and ignored her. It was exceptionally unchivalrous, which might be an old-fashioned phrase, but that I am. It shouldn't matter whether it's a man or a lady, but it's worse that it's a lady.

So Dr Toben... If the Nazis didn't exist, how come we're running Britain?

Dr Fredrick Toben was arrested by Scotland Yard's extradition unit as he passed through London's Heathrow Airport.

He was detained under an EU arrest warrant issued by the District Court in Mannheim, Germany, that accuses him of publishing material on the internet of an anti-Semitic and/ or revisionist nature.

Between 2000 and 2004 Toben posted information online that denied, approved of or played down the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, the charge alleges.

The Australian told City of Westminster Magistrates' Court he did not consent to being extradited to Germany. Claiming he was the victim of legal persecution he said: It's a witch trial mentality in Germany concerning this matter, which is not the case in England yet.

Tina Whybraw, representing the authorities in Mannheim, described how Toben was arrested on an aircraft travelling from the United States to Dubai.

Toben said he was sentenced to a period in prison in Germany in 1999 but returned to Australia after being granted bail. He also told the court he was currently facing jail in Australia in a matter relating to material posted on the website of the Adelaide Institute, of which he is director.

District Judge Nicholas Evans refused Toben bail and he was remanded in custody until another extradition hearing on Friday.

Liberty and Fair Trials International said the new law, passed by the European Parliament and certain to be ratified by member states, threatened the fundamental principle of the right to a fair trial and they were considering a challenge in the European Court of Human Rights.

The proposals would allow British - and other European Union citizens - to be extradited automatically to another EU country to serve their sentence on the basis of a decision by a foreign court.

At present British courts have some discretion to refuse to extradite a British citizen. But the new law will sweep away that discretion and make it almost automatic for a British citizen convicted abroad to be extradited to serve his sentence.

Shami Chakrabarti, Liberty's director, said: This isn't about being pro- or anti-Europe, it's about what kind of Europe we want to live in – surely one where people aren't taken from one country to another without so much as a case to answer in a local court?

Conservative politicians backed the civil rights groups. Dominic Grieve, the Shadow home secretary, said the proposal undermines fundamental principles of British justice. This is the latest government failure to defend the British idea of fairness in Europe.

The Attorney-General said the new law, which will be discussed by EU Justice ministers in Luxembourg next month, would clarify the circumstances in which a person may be sent to another member state after being tried there in their absence.

It would guarantee anybody convicted in absentia the right to a retrial where they were not represented by a lawyer or didn't receive proper notice of what was going on, he said: The measure ensures that no one will serve a sentence without having participated, or had the opportunity to participate, in a trial. No such guarantees exist at present.

The UK Government has created more than 3,600 new criminal offences since it won power 11 years ago.

Critics blamed the frenzy of law-making on "posturing" by an administration keen to win easy headlines and addicted to pushing complicated legislation through Parliament.

A total of 3,605 offences have reached the statute book since May 1997, an average of about 320 a year. They comprise 1,238 brought in as primary legislation, which means they were debated in Parliament, and 2,367 by secondary legislation, such as orders in council and statutory instruments.

The tally was announced by Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, as he sets out a fresh initiative to cut crime. Huhne said: In what conceivable way can the introduction of a new criminal offence every day help tackle crime when most crimes that people care about have been illegal for years.

This legislative diarrhoea is not about making us safer, because it does not help enforce the laws that we have one jot. It is about the Government's posturing on punishments.

The Home Office, which has presided over a succession of criminal justice Bills, is responsible for 455 offences.

A photographer employed by parents to take pictures of their young daughters to turn into images of fairies has been prosecuted because the photos fell under the definition of child porn.

Under the legislation, the images of the two girls – aged 10 and 12 – were classed as level one child pornography, despite the fact their parents had asked for the pictures to be taken and were even present at photo shoots.

Marcus Phillips, a keen photographer, was hauled before the courts after staff snitches at a branch of Bonusprint reported his pictures to the NSPCC.

At Sheffield Crown Court Judge Lawler QC said it was a wholly exceptional case and sentenced the man to a 150-hour community service order, sparing him jail and stressing there was no need for him to sign the sex offenders' register.

The judge added: What is clear is that you had no base motive, no sexual motive and there was not any question of deriving sexual gratification from what you were doing.

He had heard Phillips ran a photography business in his spare time which specialised in turning photographs of clients into 'ethereal' images of fairies. As well as using professional models he also took commissions from women who wanted to be photographed in the same way.

When the father-of-three, of Crimicar Lane, Sheffield, was asked by the parents of the two girls for pictures to be made of their daughters he agreed to carry out the work. The commission involved taking close-up shorts of various parts of their bodies, which were then superimposed on top of each other, to create the fairy images.

Bonusprint staff were concerned by images which showed the girls topless and on September 12 last year Phillips's computer was seized by police.

Passing sentence, Judge Lawler QC added: You always acted perfectly properly and their parents were perfectly law-abiding, sensible people who cared for their children.

The BBC has admitted that a senior journalist making a programme about al-Qa'ida met members of a government propaganda unit before the programme was broadcast.

Suspicions over the BBC's relationship with the unit were raised after a leaked report said the unit was "pushing" material, designed to undermine al-Qa'ida among its supporters, to a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters.

The BBC admitted yesterday that its security correspondent Frank Gardner and a colleague met members of Whitehall's research, information and communications unit (Ricu). The programme, al-Qa'ida's Enemy Within, was broadcast on Radio 4 on 7 August. It was presented by Gardner and produced by a BBC expert in Islam, Innes Bowen.

It assessed how former Islamic extremists and scholars had turned away from al-Qa'ida's philosophy and were trying to urge supporters to turn against it. The leaked Ricu report had explained that one of the unit's aims was to show that al-Qa'ida was vulnerable to attacks by influential figures.

A Whitehall counter-terrorism unit is using news websites including the BBC's to channel messages and plant volunteers in internet forums as part of an attempt to taint the al-Qaida brand.

The propaganda effort was revealed in a secret Home Office paper seen by The Guardian newspaper. The Guardian said the unit is deliberately targeting the BBC and other media organisations as part of a global propaganda push.

The operation is being conducted by the research, information and communication unit (RICU), which was established last year by the then home secretary John Reid.

The Guardian quoted directly from the secret paper, entitled Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications. It said: We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media.

The paper also reveals that the propaganda is aimed at overseas communicators in embassies and consulates around the world, people that work with influencers and opinion formers.

Labour's changes to the criminal justice system have led to a huge rise in the criminalisation of people for minor offences, according to a key government adviser.

Professor Rod Morgan, a former chief inspector of probation, warns in a report that more people are ending up with criminal records owing to the increasing use of cautions and fixed-penalty notices handed out by the police.

His comments are likely to strike a chord with a growing number of parents concerned that their children are receiving criminal records and having their personal details recorded on the DNA database even for minor offences.

Morgan also suggests that, conversely, an increasing number of people convicted of violent offences may be receiving cautions rather than ending up before the courts. He says that the expansion of summary justice - penalties that do not need to be handed down by the courts - needed to be more incisively scrutinised to ensure that justice is being meted out fairly and effectively. We cannot be wholly confident that this is the case.

The increased use of summary justice was hailed by Labour as a way of boosting public confidence in the law. The idea, according to Lord Falconer, the then Lord Chancellor who heavily promoted its use, was to connect the instance of crime much more quickly and directly with the consequences of crime.

But there are concerns that its widespread use is backfiring. The number of cautions has risen from 900,000 in 2002 to 1.4 million in 2006, the most recent figures available. Over the same period, the number of penalty notices for disorder has soared from 1,000 to 513,000.

Such sanctions have in many cases replaced informal legal remedies such as a 'ticking off' from the local policeman. Morgan warns there is a risk that people will be criminalised where both common sense and the public interest suggest that informal control systems and informal sanctions would better apply.

His report Summary justice: Fast but Fair?, published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, also questions whether the trend towards handing out cautions and penalty notices might have resulted in some serious offenders receiving lighter sentences than if they had ended up in court.

MI5 participated in the unlawful interrogation of a British resident now held in Guantánamo Bay, the high court found in a judgment raising serious questions about the conduct of Britain's security and intelligence agencies.

The MI5 officer interrogated the British resident, Binyam Mohamed, while he was being held in Pakistan in 2002. Mohamed an Ethiopian national, was later secretly rendered to Morocco, where he says was tortured by having his penis cut with a razor blade. The US subsequently flew him to Afghanistan and he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay in September 2004 where he remains.

In a passage which appears to contradict previous assurances by MI5, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones concluded: The conduct of the security service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States when [Mohamed] was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer.. Under the law of Pakistan, that detention was unlawful.

The judgment contains two particularly stinging passages. The judges said Witness B worked with the US to the extent of making it clear to [Mohamed] that the United Kingdom government would not help [him] unless he cooperated fully with the United States authorities" They added: The relationship of the United Kingdom government to the United States authorities in connection with [Mohamed] was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.

Richard Stein, of Leigh Day, Mohamed's lawyer, said outside the court that the government was clearly committed to a fair trial and opposed to the practices of torture and extraordinary rendition. He added: However, unfortunately when faced with the choice between the rule of law and upsetting its allies the Americans, it waivers in this commitment.

Have you got a licence for that camera?

When Andrew Carter saw a police van ignore no-entry signs to reverse up a one-way street to reach a chip shop, he was understandably moved to protest to the driver.

But his complaint brought a volley of abuse from PC Aqil Farooq. And when Mr Carter took a picture of the van then tried to photograph the officer, PC Farooq rushed out of the shop and knocked his camera to the ground.

Carter was then arrested and bundled into the van over claims he had 'assaulted' an officer with his camera, resisted arrest and was drunk and disorderly.

He was held in a police cell for five hours before being released on bail at midnight. Carter was never charged with any offence.

Carter lodged a complaint and has since received a personal apology from PC Farooq and Rob Beckley, deputy chief constable of Avon and Somerset Constabulary. The force refused to comment on the case, except to say that the disciplinary process was resolved to Carter's 'satisfaction'.

A recent landmark ruling by the High Court takes the UK one step closer to becoming an “informant society” along the lines of the former East Germany or Soviet Union.

The Register previously reported on the case of deputy head, John Pinnington, who was fired from his job when an enhanced criminal record background (CRB) check turned up allegations of abuse made against him. He took his case to judicial review, arguing that the allegations were seriously flawed, were unsubstantiated, and that the police should only include them in a CRB check where there were some grounds to believe they might be true.

This view was rejected, as Lord Justice Richards ruled that there was nothing unlawful about the actions of the Police force in passing on allegations. And future employers "should be aware" of the accusations, however weak and unreliable they are.

See article from theregister.co.uk

The most obese youngsters should be seen as examples of 'parental neglect' and handed over to social workers, according to the Local Government Association (LGA).

A report by the LGA, which represents 400 authorities in England and Wales, has warned that Britain is fast becoming the 'obesity capital of the world'. And the LGA confirmed that in worst case scenarios, obese children would be taken into care.

It has been estimated that by 2012 a million English children will be obese and by 2025 around a quarter of all boys will be classified as dangerously overweight.

The LGA also whinge about the cost of Britain's expanding population. Schools are having to buy bigger chairs because so many pupils are getting fatter, the GLA said. Schools are also buying bigger classroom tables, while furniture in gyms and canteens is having to be made wider for larger children for children with larger girths.

David Rogers, LGA spokesman on public health, called for a national debate about the extent to which dangerous childhood obesity could be considered as a factor contributing to parental neglect.

The GLA report also warned that the adult obesity crisis means ambulances will have to be re-equipped with extra-wide stretchers and winches. Buses and trams will soon accommodate fewer, larger passengers, the report said. The LGA said crematoria furnaces were also having to be widened at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds.

The Big Apple is turning into Big Brother, civil liberties groups have warned in response to a new plan from New York city's police chiefs to photograph every vehicle entering Manhattan and hold the details on a massive database.

New York's police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, has proposed a major extension of security measures around the city designed to prevent a third attack on the World Trade Centre as the rebuilding of Ground Zero gathers pace.

As well as placing cameras at all tunnels and bridges into Manhattan, the 36-page plan, called Operation Sentinel, calls for a security ring to be erected at Ground Zero.

The proposals are partly based on the so-called ring of steel erected around the City of London in the wake of IRA bombings in the 1990s. Though the 3,000 cameras that could be mounted as a result of the plans of the New York police pale in comparison with the multitude of cameras in operation on the UK's roads and in public places, the proposals have provoked outrage in the United States, where the concept of video surveillance is relatively unfamiliar .

Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the idea of tracking the movements of millions of people was an assault on the country's historical respect for the right to privacy and the freedom to be left alone. The NYCLU is pressing the New York police to release further details of its intentions under freedom of information laws.

The

The UN's committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain's anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life.

On May 14 I was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act - on suspicion of the instigation, preparation and commission of acts of terrorism: an absurdly nebulous formulation that told me nothing about the sin I had apparently committed. Once in custody, almost 48 hours passed before it was confirmed that the entire operation (involving dozens of officers, police cars, vans, and scientific support agents) was triggered by the presence on my University of Nottingham office computer of an equally absurd document called the al-Qaida Training Manual, a declassified open-source document that I had never read and had completely forgotten about since it had been sent to me months before.

...Read full article from guardian.co.uk

Hicham Yezza, an activist and writer, was released without charge after six days in custody, immediately rearrested on immigration charges and issued with a removal order to Algeria, after which he was held for a further 27 days; he is still awaiting a conclusion to his deportation case

When Gordon Brown called on the British Library to stage an exhibition about Britishness he perhaps envisaged a patriotic celebration of the national identity.

A spokesman for the British Library said: Downing Street initially suggested a display of iconic British ideas. We took our lead from that idea but the team has developed it.

What he would not have expected is the resulting event, Taking Liberties, which encourages visitors to contemplate the perilous state of civil liberties in modern Britain under his Government.

The exhibition, which is the most ambitious in the British Library's history, is in direct response to a call from Brown for the institution to hold a display of patriotism, and critics have described it as a "snub" to the Prime Minister.

Visitors will be asked their views on issues such as ID cards and detention of suspects for up to 42 days, both of which are key Government policies.

Exhibits will be displayed in space in the shape of a clenched fist. As visitors progress through the exhibition, the space gets smaller and smaller to give the impression of confinement. Each visitor to the exhibition will be given a personal ID number.

David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary who recently stepped down from the Parliament to force a by election on the issue of civil liberties, said: It is an astonishingly good idea but is clearly a snub to the Prime Minister and must be accurately embarrassing for him. Gordon Brown likes to talk about Britishness a lot without understanding that liberty is at the core of Britishness. It is our institutional DNA. Our history and tradition of freedom run longer and deeper than any other country.

A spokesman for the British Library said: The Taking Liberties exhibition is very much our own idea. Obviously we listened to the Prime Minister's initial thoughts but we decided in what direction we should go. Of course its a risque subject but the Library wanted to come up with something that was relevant to modern Britain.

The exhibition opens on October 31. The opening night will feature a display by Gerald Scrafe, the cartoonist and a performance by the band the Levellers.

It is rare for a board game to be seized by the police. This week that distinction befell War on Terror: The Boardgame; a set was confiscated from climate protesters in Kent.

Following a series of raids on the climate change camp near Kingsnorth power station, officers displayed an array of supposed weapons snatched from demonstrators: knives, chisels, bolt cutters, a throwing star – and a copy of the satirical game, which lampoons Washington's "war on terror".

For the game's creators, Andrew Sheerin and Andy Tompkins, web designers from Cambridge, the inclusion of their toy was a shock: When I saw the pictures in the papers I was absolutely baffled. I thought: surely no member of the public is going to believe that a board game could be used as a weapon?

You won't find the game in high street stores; retailers have all declined to stock it. The high street chain Zavvi bought 5,000 sets but strangely withdrew them for sale after one day, citing "poor sales". But since its low-key launch two years ago, War on Terror: The Boardgame has sold 12,000 copies online and through independent stockists, prominently featuring in student bedsits.

Much like games such as Risk or Diplomacy, War on Terror revolves around players creating empires that compete and wage war against each other for resources and land. The controversial twist allows them to "train" terrorist cells that either attack your enemies or, if you're unlucky, turn against you – like some anti-Western terror groups have done.

There is an Axis of Evil spinner intended to parody international diplomacy by randomly deciding which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word "Evil" stitched on to it.

Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act.

Have you got a licence for that camera?

A man was labelled a terrorist after he took a picture of a police car parked at a bus stop.

David Gates found himself being questioned under the Terrorism Act after he spotted the BMW in the middle of the box reserved for buses, and decided to capture the image on his phone – apparently falling foul of the anti-terror law in the process.

Gates was then questioned by two officers who asked why he had snapped the picture of their vehicle, and they told him he was being quizzed under the Terrorism Act 2000 because the picture could pose a security risk.

They also said this law gave them the right to use stop-and-search powers.

He said: I explained I'd taken the picture as their car was parked illegally, and taking a photograph in public was not illegal. I told them I thought using the Terrorism Act and suspecting me of being a terrorist was ridiculous.

Gates said he co-operated with the officers and gave his details, which were checked. He was told the record of the incident would be kept on file for a year.

Mike Hancock, the Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South, said: 'The whole thing is quite bizarre. I don't have a problem with them parking at the bus stop, but I do have a problem with them using this legislation for something trivial like this and keeping it for a year.

Superintendent Neil Sherrington, the deputy commander for Portsmouth police, said: Officers are given powers under the Terrorism Act to stop and search. The act states that "this power can only be used for the purposes of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism, and may be exercised whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting the presence of articles of that kind".

The University of Nottingham has decided that its students and staff have no right to possess terrorism-related materials for the purposes of research, such as al-Qaeda training manuals freely available for download from US Government websites.

One Nottingham postgrad student and a clerk were held under the Terrorism Act for doing just this earlier this year, before being released without charge (though the clerk now faces deportation), the university has now made it clear that it fully supports these actions, and says that the student has no reason to possess such material. He's researching Islamic terrorism.

The student, Rizwaan Sabir, who is studying Islamic terrorism, said he had downloaded a copy of an al-Qaeda training manual for use in his MA dissertation and PhD application and had forwarded it to the administrator, Hicham Yezza, for printing. After six days in detention, neither was charged.

A police letter warned Sabir that he risked re-arrest if found with the manual again and added: The university authorities have now made clear that possession of this material is not required for the purpose of your course of study nor do they consider it legitimate for you to possess it for research purposes.

Comment: Plods on doctoral research

From Alan

The letter from Mr Plod to Rizwaan Sabir is amazing: "The university authorities have now made clear that possession of this material is not required for the purpose of your course of study nor do they consider it legitimate for you to possess it for research purposes."

The thing which immediately leaps off the screen is that the peak-capped jobsworth who produced this nonsense doesn't have the first idea of what Ph.D. research is. The reference to a "course of study" might be appropriate to a an undergraduate. A person researching for a doctorate is engaged in original research which will add to knowledge. When I defended my thesis, and when Mr Sabir eventually defends his, we have to convince senior academics, often internationally acclaimed experts in their field, that they have learned something new.

There can be no concept of "required" reading in doctoral research. The researcher doesn't know what he will find, or where he will find it. In Mr Sabir's case, he might find relevant material in a body of Arabic literature in the field of Muslim theology which has extended over a millennium and a half.

Nor do the "university authorities" emerge with any credit, since Mr Sabir was recommended to read the controversial document by his supervisor. Perhaps the best way for him to stuff it to Plod and the university's pusillanimous bosses would be to cite the document extensively in his thesis.

Guidance issued by the Government has told councils to impose fixed penalties of "no less than £75" and up to £110, potentially a more severe penalty than the £80 fine that police often hand out to those guilty of drunk and disorderly conduct and shoplifters.

The Conservative Party condemned the move as a "new stealth tax" after uncovering the guidance contained in the Flycapture Enforcement manual produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Offences for which the spotfines can be imposed include leaving a wheelie bin lid ajar, putting the bin out on the wrong night or leaving it in the wrong place.

The Flycapture Enforcement guidance says penalties for "waste receptacle" offences must range between £75 and £110 and suggests a standard fixed penalty of £100.

Earlier this year Gareth Corkhill, a bus driver from Whitehaven, was given a criminal conviction after being taken to court when he refused to hand over a £110-on-the-spot fine by council inspectors, who found the lid of his wheelie bin open by four inches.

He was originally asked for the fine when he was confronted by inspectors, from Copeland Borough Council in Cumbria, wearing stab-proof vests and armed with photographic evidence of his crime.

Eric Pickles, the shadow local government secretary, said Labour was creating an army of municipal bin bullies hitting law abiding families with massive fines while professional criminals get the soft touch. It is clear Whitehall bureaucrats are instructing town halls to target householders with fines for minor breaches.

In the 12 months up to April last year, nearly 44,000 were fined because they failed to close bin lids, put their rubbish out on the wrong day, or left extra black bags alongside their bins.

Have you got a licence for that camera?

Photographic Privacy International's fated struggle to stop the Google spy car stalking this country's streets has reminded me of my own brush with London's photography police recently.

I was being photographed in Covent Garden. As I followed the photographer's instructions and tried to come up with a smile that would get people running to the nearest shop to buy my book, a security guard on patrol around the piazza walked up and stood between the photographer and me. The guard was quite a determined professional; he put one hand in front of the camera lens and muttered darkly into his walkie-talkie.

Why would a potential terrorist (or people exhibiting suspect behaviour, as the Met likes to describe them in its anti-terror publicity) pose in front of an organic cosmetics stall and religiously follow the instructions of a white, female professional photographer who looked nothing if not an infidel? The photographer tried to test the resolve of the security guard by stepping out of the covered area and making me pose in front of a column. But the guard followed and covered the lens again; he looked like a man with a mission to save London from desperate debut writers and their collaborators in the photographic professions.

In the ensuing hour we were chased away from Nehru's bust outside the Indian High Commission, and Citibank. Even the folks at Australia House descended on us after we had set up the tripod, I had perfected my writerly pose and we were only waiting for the clouds to part.

Update: Unlicensed Hoax

Thanks to Andrea, 18th August 2008, see article from The Register

The following apology was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday August 2 2008

Contrary to a statement we made in the column below, the Metropolitan Police do not require professional photographers operating in central London to hold a police permit and wear a radio-linked ID tag. The material on which this part of the column was based was a hoax. This has been corrected. We apologise for its use.

This referred to a section of the Guardian article:

The photographer, very bitter by now, told me that the police treat anyone with professional photography equipment as a suspect. According to the professional group Editorial Photographer UK, if you want to take pictures in central London you have to apply for a permit at Charing Cross police station. The approval can take up to 28 days. Then, as a part of Photo Safety Identity Checking Observation you are required to wear "a thin fluorescent waistcoat" kitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. The Met has assured the photographers that RFID is a cheap and "passive device that needs no batteries".

A spokesperson for the Met told the photographers' group earlier this year that cameras are potentially more dangerous than guns.

Beat: Life on the Street is a documentary funded by the Government following the lives of PCSO's. The Government-funded propaganda portrayed PCSOs as dedicated, helpful and an effective adjunct to the police

The Government has spent almost £2 million to fund programmes that are all but indistinguishable from regular shows, The Sunday Telegraph has established.

But unlike normal documentaries, the programmes are commissioned by ministers with the purpose of showing their policies or activities in a sympathetic light.

The media watchdog Ofcom has disclosed that it had opened an investigation into one of the programmes, Beat: Life on the Street to see whether it breached its broadcasting code.

Media freedom campaigners, broadcasters and opposition politicians expressed alarm over the Government-funded documentaries.

The Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow said: I find it extraordinary. So the Government is funding commercial television productions highlighting government policy? Presumably they don’t criticise government policy.

The Government has funded at least eight television series or individual programmes in the past five years. Subjects range from an Army expedition to climb Everest to advice for small businessmen on how to improve their company’s fortunes.

However, the show about PCSOs and a newly commissioned programme about Customs and Immigration officers are particularly controversial because they deal with sensitive political issues and policies.

Beat: Life on the Street, which was supported with £800,000 of funding from the Ministry of Propaganda. One Whitehall source admitted of the documentary: It allows the Government to have more air time and get its message across to people. Ministers are so pleased with the way the series, which drew in audiences of three million people on ITV and changed the public’s perception of the officers, that they commissioned a third series, to be broadcast next year.

But The Sunday Telegraph established that the programmes appeared to break Ofcom’s broadcasting code by not making it clear that they were funded by the Ministry of Propaganda.

In a further apparent breach of Ofcom rules, this time on independence, Ministry of Propaganda officials were directly involved in the making of the series. They were allowed to view a second edit of individual programmes and were able to suggest changes to some of the “terminology” and “language” used in the narration.

David Ruffley, the shadow police minister, said: People want the Government to put police on our streets, not propaganda on our television sets.

Southampton City Council has apologised to two women pensioners after a worker reprimanded them for photographing a deserted paddling pool over fears about paedophiles.

The council said staff would now be advised to use their discretion when seeing people taking photographs at the pool on Southampton Common, the council said today.

Betty Robinson and Brenda Bennett had taken snaps of the pool area when the female council worker ordered them to stop.

Mrs Robinson told the Southern Daily Echo: It's absolutely ridiculous. After asking why we couldn't take photos she told us those were the rules. It's pathetic - bureaucracy gone mad.

Mike Harris, head of leisure and inanity at Southampton City Council, said in a statement: 'I'm sorry if we have caused any offence on this occasion: A lot of people are more concerned about the safety of their children these days so it is appropriate that our staff are aware of who is taking photos.

If we had suggested, ten years ago, that one day soon, the government would draw up a list of prescribed occupations: that they would build a database of millions of people who would need to register for those occupations; and that a committee of Public Safety would be set up with power of absolute veto over every individual on the database; it is just possible that you would have decided that even El Reg had taken leave of its oh-so-cynical senses.

But lo! All of the above is soon to come to pass - and there is a good chance that it will affect a far larger proportion of the population than you might imagine, far more people than the 11.3 million the Government claim it will affect. (14.3 million and rising is our prediction).

The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (SVGA), introduced in the Lords in February 2006 and passed into law in November of that year. Although it is now 'the law', many of its provisions are only slowly being put in place...

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