2024-02-20

It seems reasonable to assume from their name that the Good Law Project is all about good law.

It isn't therefore necessarily about good climate science, but the Government in its all-knowing wisdom has enshrined its binding net zero targets in law, I suppose because that's the only thing they know how to do.

Of course, that doesn't mean to say that the targets will actually be met, but there's a good chance that it won't be this government that's in place when the targets fall due and the lawsuits begin to fly.

Anyway, the Good Law project, mindful no doubt of the sometimes lengthy nature of legal proceedings, has shrewdly got its retribution in first and compelled the government to disclose its assessments of the risks that may bedevil these now legally binding

2024-02-10

"Under this law, authorities in London have granted themselves the power to surveil, harass, and ultimately imprison any British citizens they wish on similarly suspicionless grounds"

The National Security Act 2023 is now law (since July 2023).

One might be forgiven for thinking that we are at war, but with whom?

Perhaps not yet with Russia (although it does get an honourable mention) but that may simply be for want of trying, or perhaps outright incompetence. Don't encourage them.

Perhaps with Tucker Carlson? Certainly there are those who might hope so.

Or perhaps the EU is suspected of infiltrating its agents in a bid to

2023-10-20

Leaving the EU in order to reestablish our national sovereignty was a good idea at the time, also the prerequisite for maintaining our traditional freedoms, but it turns out that it only served to highlight the tremendous gulf between the people's idea of freedom and our government's idea of freedom - the latter amounting to little more than the freedom to do only what we are told.

We have seen a succession of Bills trundling through Parliament in recent times (not counting the Coronavirus Act 2020 - all 348 pages of it - how long would it take to draft such a beast? - which was rushed through Parliament as an 'emergency measure' in 3 days flat):

Online Harms Bill

...

2023-09-22

Now primed and ready for detonation Royal Assent, this Bill (all 108 thousand words of it) has passed through all its parliamentary stages and will be law shortly.

Of course everything Parliament does these days is always for our safety, but what about our education, our ability to research, and our freedom of speech?

I'm not going to offer any assessment here myself, but one tenacious soul has already had it analysed by AI (ChatGpt) - one AI (automated) analysing another (the Statute Book) one might think. What did it make of it? Did it collapse in a heap, defeated by the intersectional cross-referencing, extraordinary tedium, and sheer volume of banality, or did it manage to extract its meaning andfurnish some relevant answers?

Happily, automated AI knows neither banality nor tedium, and can cross-reference til the cows come home - once it has all the

2023-09-08

Another critique of the Bill - this time from the Daily Sceptic. As you might expect, it's sceptical.

The war is not between Left and Right, the war is between centralisation (empowerment of the few) and freedom (empowerment of the many).

The Bill wants to impose the elite's favoured "solutions" upon the many, and it will as always end in disaster, because they never choose their "solutions" either wisely or appropriately. Despite having all the best advisers at their beck and call ready to advise them, their solutions are invariably political and one-size-fits-all because without that - well, I guess we have no need of them!

They are behaving like zombies that cannot see or hear any conflicting evidence. Maybe we really do have no need of them.

If we find our own solutions then we will quickly pick up on those whose solutions work best, and these solutions will be copied because they work

2023-09-06

David Kurten introduces us to the ramifications of the Energy Bill.

The devil of course is in the detail - "energy smart regulations" will allow ministers to set up draconian energy rules and targets that everyone must comply with without ever going back to get authority from Parliament.

This is dictatorship by statutory instrument. Including new fines and imprisonment for non-compliance. Without explicit parliamentary approval.

Worth watching.

(23 minutes)

Like / Dislike this video here.

Nigel Farage isn't impressed either...

(3

2023-09-05

The Energy Bill is due for more Parliamentary debate this month, allegedly.

It's a complex beast, and apparently required in order for us to make up for the loss of EU legislation "following Brexit".

Is it all about investment?

“A delay on the Energy Bill will have a massive ripple effect on the rest of the energy sector... Why would you invest in the U.K. when we don’t have an incentive package that matches the IRA [the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act] or EU’s Net Zero Industry Act, and now we don’t even have the legislation, maybe, to back it up?"

So investment necessary to reach "net zero" might be imperilled?

“The important reforms and measures it includes are needed more than ever after the energy crisis to help accelerate the energy

2023-09-04

Your energy bill?

No, "our" Energy Bill - Bill 340 as currently wending its way through "our" UK Parliament.

The Bill that would regulate seemingly every possible aspect of energy provision throughout the realm for many years to come.

Sponsored by both the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (now split up - see link) and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

(Is there more to this reorganisation than meets the eye? I note that "Responsibility for national security and

2023-04-30

"Precision Breeding" wasn't a term that sprang readily to mind last year. The uninformed may find themselves struggling slightly to disinter the proper meaning, which is probably why the term was chosen, in place of "GM but not really GM" or some other such verbiage.

Yes, what it seems to amount to is GM with a new label. Actually, GM without any label so as not to cause unnecessary alarm to the shopper. Because it's not supposed to be as bad as GM, it's not supposed to need any special consumer labelling. We don't need to worry our poor little heads about it.

Of course it's not the same as GM, otherwise it would need labelling, it's just GM that could have been (but wasn't) produced by selective breeding, using natural techniques such as cross-breeding and selection that have been practised for years. So that's all right then?

Well, maybe, maybe not. As so often it comes down to

(a) The characteristics

2023-03-29

The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 is now law in the UK.

Following a public consultation from 7 January to 17 March 2021 (Covid notwithstanding), the government has published its response, plus a summary of the responses received (download).

"Defra’s view is that organisms produced by GE or by other genetic technologies should not be regulated as GMOs if they could have been produced by traditional breeding methods"

But who is to answer this significant "if"

2022-08-26

Lord Sumption hardly needs any introduction, but the curious may satisfy their curiosity here.

His contributions to the Spectator are almost enough to persuade me to subscribe to this weekly (but you can read the occasional article without a subscription).

In this article he explains his views on the Online Safety Bill.

"The real vice of the bill is that its provisions are not limited to material capable of being defined and identified"

"Harm is defined in the bill in circular language of stratospheric

2022-08-20

The Save Our Rights campaign group tells it like it is.

Never mind the gas/electricity bills (distracting as they are) - take note of these Parliamentary Bills, in the pipeline.

These are in addition to other highly dubious Bills already signed into law, such as the UK - Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill 2019-21.

None of them enhance our freedoms, all of them compromise them.

We are under progressive attack by "our own" government.

Where is the popular demand for these

2022-08-04

The UK government has a woeful track record of introducing and passing Bills which disrespect the freedom of the people and the integrity of the sovereignty of the people.

But the train of new Bills has more carriages than we thought.

Next up - an attack on the (already cumbersome) Data Protection rules (GDPR) - now to be replaced by the UK Data Reform Bill.

"Under these proposals Government will grant itself regulatory powers to rewrite the law, and compel private businesses to share personal data they hold about you with the State and law enforcement authorities"

ORG Open Rights Group have had a

2022-03-24

Big Brother Watch has brought out its report for Jan-Mar 2022, and a considerable work it is.

There is more detail here than any normal body would have either time or inclination to read, but in these times of endemic government overreach we must sometimes steel ourselves to inform ourselves of unpleasant truths and take heed lest worse is to come.

"History shows we face challenges of such magnitude best when we hold onto the values that define us, not when we abandon them. This is a pivotal moment and a crucial time for parliamentarians to increase scrutiny and limitations on powers"

Quite so, but past events demonstrate pretty conclusively that our parliamentarians are only nominally "our" parliamentarians - they are (with some honourable exceptions) really the political parties' parliamentarians, and the parties dance to the tune of their largely

2022-03-18

Big Brother Watch reminds us that the same Government that is denying reality by continuing to roll-out an experimental gene-editing therapy to our children (despite strong evidence suggestive of a link between the roll-out and increased deaths in that age group) is still obsessed by the need to make the internet safe from "legal but harmful" content.

It will do this by passing an On-line Safety Bill putting the onus on social media companies to censor the internet.

So the social media corporations who have already been deplatforming anybody who says things they don't like have now persuaded the government to force them to legally do much the same thing to all content they (or the

2021-12-21

The UK Dictatorship has been under construction for many years, and the Covid "pandemic" may be merely the start of the final phase that will establish total control from the centre.

Alongside the much forecast financial collapse, lockdowns have shown us how we can be impoverished by eliminating independent businesses through bankruptcy, leaving the field clear for the big global corporations to supply the market unimpeded by competition.

UK Column in their article The UK New Normal Dictatorship takes us through the restructurings of power that have occurred over the years, unnoticed by those of us with lives to lead.

Largely these changes took place whilst our attention was distracted elsewhere, by the "big issues" such as devolution that didn't really

2022-05-10

This Bill was granted Royal Assent on 28th April 2022.

2021-08-10

Health and Care Bill: water fluoridation

A Policy Paper published on 19th July "explains how the government plans to transfer responsibility for water fluoridation from local authorities to the Secretary of State".

"The World Health Organization recommends a maximum level of 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per litre of water (mg/l)"

"The Water Industry Act will maintain the duty on the Secretary of State to monitor and report

2021-07-08

The People's Brexit (should that be Covidexit now?) publish their update on the case initiated by them eleven months ago, to rule the Coronavirus Act 2020 Null and Void.

As we might expect the Justice system and the government have not exactly put themselves out to expedite the matter, and the People's Brexit are now seeking leave to appeal the latest judgement handed down in April.

This is the long haul, and is being publicly funded by those who care for our future.

Read about the case and the latest update here.

2020-12-12

"A Bill to make provision for, and in connection with, the authorisation of criminal conduct in the course of, or otherwise in connection with, the conduct of covert human intelligence sources"

This is an extraordinary Bill.

Basically it introduces one law for the governed, another for the governors' covert agents.

"Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) are crucial in preventing and safeguarding victims from many serious crimes . . . "

"The Bill provides an express power to authorise CHIS to participate in conduct which would otherwise constitute a criminal offence"

"This is not a new capability; the Bill provides a clear legal basis for a longstanding tactic which is vital for national security and the prevention and detection of crime" 
(in other words they have been doing this for years so don't worry, nothing