It seems Richard Barnbrook is not a happy bunny. On the front page of the BNP’s website is an article called “Richard Barnbrook Condemns “Anti-Democratic” Sabotage of His Website by Leadership Challenge Opponent’s Team“. It’s great to see the BNP are being fair and balanced, with such phrases as

British National Party GLA member and leadership challenger Richard Barnbrook has expressed his disgust at what the anti-democratic sabotage of his official website by the web designer of fellow leadership challenger Eddy Butler.

and

the disgraced traitor former BNP webmaster Simon Bennett

and

Although Bennett had of course been suspended from the party for his treason, it was Mr Butler’s right to employ whoever he wanted to in his campaign team, despite the obvious questions over Bennett’s suitability.

Nice to see the BNP having a falling out with itself.

xD.

The first in my ‘know your ism’ series.

xD.

Not only is Julia Gillard Welsh – she was born in Barry – she’s an atheist. She is, of course, the first woman to be PM of Australia, and drafted the affirmative actions rules “within the Labor Party in Victoria that set the target of preselecting women for 35 per cent of ‘winnable seats’[17] within a decade”. She was also involved in setting up EMILY’s List Australia. You can hear a brief interview with her on the subject of her atheism here.

xD.

The Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill, introduced by Philip Hollobone MP (Conservative – Kettering), has had its first reading.

Given Mr Hollobone’s previous statements that the burka is ‘against the British way of life’ and ‘offensive’, it is fairly clear to me what its intent is.

Three points.

Firstly, this is deeply illiberal. I shouldn’t need to say much more, but I will. I understand that there are times – airport security, for instance – where we do need to make sure that the person matches the passport and we seem to be managing just fine with providing an area where people who wear the burka can be identified and so on. However, if people are just going about their daily business, I think they should be able to wear more or less what they want. Short of that, this must rank as an extraordinary expansion of the writ of the state and I don’t want the introduction of some sort of sumptuary law.

Secondly, this isn’t the way to go about it. If we assume that the burka is indicative of oppression and isolation, I don’t see how a ban will remediate the situation. If the premise is that women are oppressed and forced to wear the burka, they can be compelled to remain at home or only leave it occasionally. If the premise is that they are an isolated community, ditto, with the additional bonus of feeding into the extremists’ (al-Mujahiroun, the Daily Express…) narrative that it is impossible to reconcile being British with being a Muslim. Mr Hollobone and his fellow-travellers in UKIP haven’t talked about education or reaching out, just about bans.

Thidly, unintended consequences. It is far too easy for me to see how a badly-worded bill could lead to situations like welders’ masks having to be removed if you’re not welding for more than half a minute and not being able to dress up as a ghost for Hallowe’en. The alternative is to specify that this law only applies to Muslim women.

Ultimately, I don’t think this is about covering one’s face. I think that is being used as a proxy for Islamophobia.

I find this proposal abhorrent and I’m glad to say that, as Mr Hollobone came seventeenth out of twenty in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills, I don’t think it stands any real chance of making progress. The second reading will be on December 3rd, by which point the text of the bill should be available.

xD.

I’m working on a slightly longer post about the British constitution at the moment; in the meantime, do take a look at some of my videos over at www.youtube.com/DLandonCole.

You have to feel sorry for anyone involved with ‘elf ‘n safety.

Whenever they get it right, they are joyless jobsworths sucking all the pleasure out of life. When they get it wrong, they are criticised for putting children at risk; viz., Godstone Farm.

The short version of the story is that Godstone Farm, a petting farm, did not have adequate measures in place to prevent people, principally children, from picking up diseases from animal dung. Ninety-three people became ill as a result of infection with a nasty strain of E. coli, O157, and it seems that some of the children who were infected will require dialysis for the rest of their lives. Insufficient attention given to handwashing at the farm seems to have been the original cause, coupled with an inadequate response from the Health Protection Agency. The independent Griffin Investigation reported yesterday.

I would make a few points about what might be considered by some to be unwarranted intrusion on our ancient liberties and so on.

Firstly, it’s not obvious. Just because it’s obvious to you (and as a reader of this blog, I can only assume that you are of quite exquisite intellect and positively overflowing with common sense) doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone. While I was aware that rolling in cow dung was probably not a good idea, it’s easy enough to see how the meme about children needing to get exposure to pathogens to strengthen their immune systems coupled with a lack of knowledge about, say, E. coli could lead parents to think the risks are lower than they are; in this case, there was a particular criticism that the risk was considered lower than it should be as, although the probability of it happening was low, the outcomes could be very negative. Moreover,

Secondly, people are used to a certain level of safety. Although we have evolutionary predispositions to react to certain dangers (in my case, to jump out of my skin when I see, hear or suspect a dog), we live in a relatively benign world. People are used to their environments being safe; strangely enough, we don’t like our gas pipes to leak or our computers to electrocute us, so there are systems and processes in place to prevent that and countless other dangers. The result is that we blithely go about our business, perhaps without remembering that there are dangers out there.

Thirdly, it’s about providing information so people can make decisions; in this case, providing better signage and information about handwashing.

Fourthly, if we’re going to draw a line, we have to err on the side of caution.

Fifthly, there have to be systems in place to deal with, for instance, outbreaks like this. The Griffin Investigation talks about greater awareness and co-operation between organisations involved with healthcare near Godstone Farm in particular and open farms in general. It would be very easy for that to be criticised as ‘excessive bureaucracy’ or somesuch. It’s too easy to criticise something where a successful outcome is ‘nothing happening’.

Sixthly, a lot is blamed on health and safety as it is a convenient and believable excuse. I happen to think, for instance, that people should have healthy and safe workplaces and so there are some rules and regulations (turns out asbestos is a bad idea). More frequent than this, I would warrant, are people using ‘elf and safety because they want to avoid litigation or just don’t understand why something has been done.

Yes, there are mistakes; I suspect, though, that the media take those few examples of poor decision-making and represent them as symptomatic of the entire health and safety culture, leading people to think that there are armies of clipboard-equipped bureaucrats just waiting, after a risk assessment, to jump out and ban whatever it is you enjoy doing.

xD.

PS Before anyone says anything, I know this came under the remit of the HPA rather than the HSE, but the points stand.

Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008′s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts.

In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

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