Snapshots of Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia/Italy
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snapshots-of-trieste-friuli-venezia-giulia-italia-italy-xgvmnwxwqelGbJgnhmlu.zip (32090 KB)
Posted by Guy Freeman
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Now I'm a Ghana fan!
After the supposedly Indomitable Lions were the first team to be kicked out of the World Cup, I needed to search for another team to support to enhance my Google Chrome experience. They had to have aesthetically pleasing colours (which ruled out North Korea) and preferably have staying power.
And so I can now happily announce that I am hereby a supporter of the Ghanaian football team! Go Black Stars!
Posted by Guy Freeman
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More non-terrorism terrorism statistics
The Home Office has released the latest set of statistics about policing of terrorism-related offences. It seems that this is now going to be a regular series, starting with the report I analysed in February. This latest one updates the figures to the end of 2009.
With regard to the previously outrageous numbers of Section 44 stopsandsearches, I'm pleased to say that the number in the last quarter of 2009 continues the downward trend since the last quarter of 2008 when over 70,000 stops and searches were made, reaching the still incredible 20,906 instead. Over 17,000 of those are still done by the Metropolitan Police Service, while the whole of Scotland got by on 7 (down from 52 a year earlier). This only makes it clearer how unjustified the earlier zealotry was, and I wait with minty-baited breath for some acknowledgement of that.
Joining the likes of Hampshire and South Wales police forces who in our previous instalment somehow managed to stop their stopandsearches under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, is the Cumbria Constabulary. [Point of order chaps and chapesses: If I'm going to http://cumbria.police.uk with my web browser, show me a website, or at least quietly redirect me to http://www.cumbria.police.uk. Thanks.] Despite carrying out 121 stopsandsearches during the first half of 2009, all the terrorists and innocent photographers must have gone elsewhere, because the good constables winded down their activities to only 7 stopsandsearches in the third quarter of 2009, before admitting defeat and not stoppingandsearching anyone by the last quarter. Well done Cumbria!
Overall the number of stopsandsearches in the UK reduced 40% from 2008 to 2009. This *must* mean that they did their job! Or that they shouldn't have happened to start with. Again, a good analysis of this would be most welcome... Although the admission in the latest report that "Recent data now being collected suggests that very few arrests result for terrorist related offences" doesn't bode well.
Despite the European Court of Human Rights stating that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was illegal under the UK's human rights obligations about 6 months ago, the police was recently still harassing innocent photographers under this law, and it is only within the last few days that a review of the law has been ordered by the Home Office under the new Government. But not because of the ECHR ruling! No, it's because it wasn't even used correctly by the police despite the very basic checks on the use of the law being minimal (viz. a senior officer authorising the stopsandsearches for 28 days at a time [Section 46(3)] and the Secretary of State okaying this within 48 hours [Section 46(4)]).
*sigh*...
Posted by Guy Freeman
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Cameroon for the Cup!
Now that we can customise Google Chrome with a World Cup team's colours, it easily follows that I should therefore switch my allegiance from plucky, crazy North Korea with its drab flag
And now my browser has a pretty much unusable colour scheme! Go Cameroon!!! [Are they any good, by the way?]
Filed under //
world cup
Posted by Guy Freeman
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Lies, damn lies, and terrorism
The Research Development and Statistics section of the Home Office [who changed their URL since I originally posted this from http://homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/index.html to http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/index.html without re-directing visitors to the form, but while keeping the fugly layout] regularly publishes extremely interesting reports, even though its website is a dog (last time I tried the mailing list signup didn't work), and more substantively its independence is hard to gauge (I don't know if, and if so why, they carry out distinct work from the Office for National Statistics, which is supposedly on a more independent footing than it was before).
I found my own way to be told of updates to its "What's New" page. The latest report is the lithely titled "Operation of police powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 and subsequent legislation: Arrests, outcomes and stops & searches. Quarterly update to September 2009. Great Britain", with an accompanying press release which I can't read, although that is almost certainly my fault.
The most eye-catching figure is that a smidgen (444, to be exact) over 200,000 "stops and searches were made in Great Britain under [Section] 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in the year ending 30 September 2009" (page 15 of the report and PDF). That is a lot of terrorists stopped! Although a few of them might have been, say, innocent photographers just trying to, erm, take photographs. Interestingly, the rate at which these stopsandsearches took place decreased markedly in just one year, as can be seen clearly in Figure 2 of the report, reproduced here. The South Wales force, for example, managed to reduce their number of stopsandsearches from 662 to, erm, 0, and the analogous figures from Hampshire went from 633 to, well well, 0! I guess all those terrorists ran away, or maybe the police started to realise they were taking the piss. Now that Section 44 has been declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights, one would hope they will stop altogether elsewhere, but the Home Office has so far refused to countenance this.
Just to show how ridiculous the number of stopsandsearches is (the vast, vast majority of which --- always over 90% --- are carried out by the Metropolitan Police), consider how many arrests and convictions follow from these stopsandsearches. According to the report, "For the year ending 30 September 2009 there were 965 arrests resulted from s44 stops
and searches in Great Britain, an arrest rate of 0.5%". The number of terrorism-related charges, let alone convictions, is not given. I'm going to bet it's quite small.
Consider the only other figure in the report (how convenient!), Figure 1, also reproduced here. It shows the proportion of charges following a terrorism-related arrest that are actually, you know, terrorism-related. It goes from almost 80% in the second quarter of 2008 to under 20% by the third quarter of 2009.
And don't forget that's just the proportion of those charged! Table 1.2, "Outcome of terrorism arrests", shows that for the two years leading to the 30th of September 2009, there were 379 terrorism arrests [although I'm not sure how this squares with the figure for arrests following Section 44 stopsandsearches given above. I think maybe they are only counting Section 41 arrests and suchlike, looking at Table 1.1], of which 66 (about 17%) led to terrorism-related charges (including those determined to be terrorism-related as "assessed by the ACTCC", whatever the hell that is), 64 (ditto%) led to non-terrorism related charges, 193 (over 50%) were released without charge, and finally 56 (about 15%) were, ahem, served with "alternative action", which "includes cautions for non-terrorism offences, transfers to immigration authorities, transfers to the PSNI, summonses and those dealt with under mental health legislation".
In case you didn't see the bold bit above, let me repeat it here: over 50% of terrorism-related arrests led nowhere. And this doesn't include the Section 43 or 44 arrests.
Truly pathetic.
Posted by Guy Freeman
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Libel and medicine: 2010 and 1862
The unjustness of the libel laws and the way they are administered in England and Wales (I admit to not being sure if the issue extends to the rest of Britain or the UK) is such that a very popular petition is being starting to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately that doesn't stop the ongoing nonsense, including this famed ongoing case with a medical researcher which I am not going to go into here.
But it's worth recalling that libel involving doctors isn't something new... and can even include such libellous concepts as "Vesico-vaginal and recto-vaginal fistula". If I had the time and patience I might have read the multi-page description of the case, but I'd rather you did that and then told me about it. Surely the knowledge that a pamphlet called "Vesico-vaginal and recto-vaginal fistula" is mentioned in the first paragraph should be enough to tempt you?
Posted by Guy Freeman
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