“The home secretary has said he will back any request from police or local government to ban an Islamic group marching through Wootton Bassett. Alan Johnson said he felt ‘revulsion’ at the thought of Islam4UK’s proposed march through the Wiltshire town”.

Now indeed, it is quite offensive that the group is indeed planning on holding its protest march in the town which has become synonymous with returning dead soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, and by choosing to hold their protest march there – regardless of their rationale that by proposing to hold it their they well get maximum publicity which they almost certainly wouldn’t have got anywhere else, by choosing to protest in such an inflammatory manner, they will almost certainly drive more people away from their point of view than bring them to it, especially in the current climate of broad public sympathy for members of the armed forces regardless of broad public opposition for what those forces have been sent to do. If they have any sense, Islam4UK will reconsider.

However, what I do find even more offensive and repugnant is that the home secretary wants to ban the march, simply on the grounds that he doesn’t like it. So much for freedom of speech.

Now, of course, there is information which the police have which us in the general public don’t have, which may be relevant to this story.

But looking at what we have been told, we have a Home Office whistleblower who apparently revealed:

• in November 2007 that the home secretary knew the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it,
• in February 2008 that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons,
• a whips’ list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days, and
• a letter from the Home Secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime.

And Damian Green was the conduit through which this information was brought to the public knowledge.

Although technically the Official Secrets Act applies – as indeed it does to the information about what brand of tea is served in the Cabinet Office – the items which were leaked were far from being issues of National Security, and everything to do with being issues in the National Interest.

In this instance, Damian Green was clearly performing his public duty, a duty he was elected, as an Opposition MP to perform – to act on information received about areas where Government was clearly failing, to publicise it, and to oppose it.

The Government denies involvement in the arrest – during which, apparently, his home was turned over by eight anti-terrorism officers, presumably all donning riot shields, battering rams, and machine guns – although it did take place following a complaint made by the Cabinet Office. On the Today programme it was vehemently denied that ministers were aware of the arrest before it was on the news broadcasts, although it is a fact that the Tories themselves called an evening briefing in the House of Commons well before it hit the news.

The words ‘Orwellian’, ‘Stalinist’, and ‘Fascist State’ are of course well overused; usually when they’re used in the context of Western politics you’ll always find at least one apologist who will jump up and say “look at Zimbabwe! Look at North Korea! Look at Stalin!”.

But when we’re increasingly moving to a state of being where criticising the government becomes an arrestable offence, what other words can be used?

This is basically a ‘battle of the bands’ competition, but it turns out that each band on any given night (of six bands) has to sell at least 25 tickets at £6 in order to go through to the next round of the competition – so effectively the band has to cover £150 for each night they play a 20 minute set in; given many nights of the event there have reportedly barely been 25 people in the venue, let alone 150 people, it’s not hard to work out what might be going on – the bands have been having to stump up that cash themselves.

Now operating a pay-to-play is bad enough, but at least the bands have chosen those terms & conditions of their own free will – stoopid as they might be for doing so. But in what can only be described as a PR own goal, the operators of the Surface Unsigned Festival have sent a legal cease-&-desist take-down notice to the main blog for the creative industries in birmingham, Created in Birmingham, for criticising this practice, claiming copyright violation for reprinting the paragraph from the terms & conditions the bands had to sign containing the evidence of the policy.

Do we want this kind of behaviour from music promoters in Birmingham ?

From the rest of the blogosphere:

• Pete Ashton
• Danny Smith
• D’Log
• Chris Unitt
• Birmingham: It’s Not Shit
• Russ L
• Dave Harte
• Graphiquillan

& much, much more.