“About £2bn was underpaid via the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) system in the past two years, with about 1.4 million people owing an average of £1,500 each. But £1.8bn has also been overpaid and some 4.3 million people will get a rebate because they have paid too much. Treasury minister David Gauke said that in the current financial climate, the government was ‘not in a position to just wave goodbye to that £2bn’”.

Surely that’s something which would be worth going to court over?

Saying ‘the good news is people won’t have to start repaying it until April 2011′ is hardly the point – £1,500 would account for a repayment of over £100 a month, which is a lot of cash to be removed from anybody’s monthly budget at the best of times, let alone for people who won’t have had any form of pay rise, not even an annual Cost Of Living Allowance, for two years.

If you buy a product off a supplier, and the supplier sends you an invoice and you pay it, the supplier can’t turn round two years later and say ‘sorry, I got my maths wrong – you’ll have to pay me some more’; it would just be tough on the supplier.

So why should the government be exempt from those same consumer protection laws? If the government is not in a position to just wave goodbye to £2bn, how many millionaires are there in the country who would completely fail to even notice the shortfall being divvied up between them?

In fact, the government (in the shape of HM Revenue & Customs) aren’t exempt from the law: if the taxpayer has a reasonable belief that they paid the correct amount in the first place – such as for example having had a bill from HMRC which looked about right in the first place – then the tax collector has to just accept their error and write off the underpayment.

“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.

Much has been written all over the blogosphere today about the outrage of this assault by a brutal policeman in the cause of ‘maintaining order’ causing the death of an innocent member of the public. Even had Ian Tomlinson been a protester throwing bricks at the police line, his death would have outrageous – we don’t have the death penalty in this country, not even for riot. But the fact that he had had nothing to do with the protests on the day and was simply going home after his day’s work compounds that outrage by orders of magnitude. Apart from anything else, would he have been assaulted by the policeman had he been dressed as a banker?

Nobody who believes in Civilised Society denies the need for police, and indeed nobody with any sense denies the police do a difficult job in difficult circumstances, in which mistakes will inevitably be made – and in many of those difficult circumstances, the police are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. And whatever one’s personal opinion might be of the Jean Charles de Menezes case and its outcome, it does remain the fact that it was a tragic accident caused by a failure of intelligence and poor training, rather than a wilful attempt to kill an individual.

As can be seen in this video, however, the assault on Tomlinson was wilful – he was behaving perfectly compliantly, walking along, not resisting, not rioting, not protesting. There was absolutely no need for the police officer in question to whack him with his riot stick or throw him to the ground. Obviously the police officer in question wasn’t to know – or reasonably predict – that his actions would result in Tomlinson’s death, but were anybody else to hit somebody with a stick and push them to the ground causing a fatal heart attack internal bleeding, a charge of manslaughter would almost certainly ensue. A failure to bring such a criminal charge against this police officer would be nothing short of a travesty of justice.

Ironically, this case also highlights another aspect of our increasing V-for-Vendetta society – strictly speaking, the people videoing and photographing this incident were in breach of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which since 16 February has made it a potentially criminal offence – with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison – for taking a picture of a police officer on active duty.

Never has there been such a clear example of how wrong – and damaging to a free democratic state – that law is. It deserves to be repealed immediately.

What’s not mentioned in the BBC News article linked, but was described as what the proposal actually is on the Today programme this morning was that The Government^tm are going to ‘force’ social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to give them access to the friends lists of users. Not actually see what messages pass between them, just the lists of friends.

Needless to say, there has been an immediate outcry about how terrible this is, what a total disregard for our liberties, totalitarian state etc this is. You might expect me to be joining that outcry.

But woooaaaaaahhh there.

Erm, Facebook already allows any logged in user to see the list of friends of any user. As does Twitter. In fact, Twitter even lets anybody see what people are saying to each other – it’s the whole point of it!

So, much as I’d like to join in with the gubnint-kicking on this, I’m afraid there’s no story there.

As I was busy elsewhere whilst things have been unfolding I was too late to add my own comment, but Andrew Lewin has written about as balanced and informative a piece as possible – link above.

In the olden days, it was an online axiom that “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”; when an entire country can now be blocked off from certain pages on certain sites, or certain sites as a whole, simply by diktat by a government department or non-governmental organisation, that axiom is clearly no longer true.

Whatever your views about the specific image in question, one paragraph of Andrew’s article bears specific attention:

“The Government probably thinks it can get away with it as long as it doesn’t look as though politicians’ fingerprints are anywhere too close, but the IWF will respond to government edicts about what’s right and proper with alacrity. We’ve already heard Hazel Blears attack political blogs as ‘a dangerous corrosion in our political culture’ so how long before the IWF decrees those to be against the law or corrupting our morals and do a blanket ban of any such blogs? Sounds like a perfectly proper, moral argument being presented to do just that, after all. Which could be any blog disagreeing with the party of the day … Now is it starting to sound just a little bit like China?”

And as Andrew concludes:

“So I ask you: think of the number one thing you would hate to lose online. And now realise, there’s a very good chance that it can and will be taken away because of the situation we’re sleepwalking into.

Want to wait till it happens? Or do something about it now?”

But of course, “it can’t happen here”.

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?

Of course, the fashionable knee-jerk response from many hearing this new this morning will almost certainly have been ‘it doesn’t matter, they’re only prisoners – they don’t have any rights anyway’ etc. Which is, of course, ‘a point of view’.

But whatever your views about whatever rights prisoners might not have, don’t you think their families have rights ? Their children ? Might you not think a five year old child – whatever it’s parent might have done – has the right not to be the subject of a hit from, say, a rival criminal gang ?

Even if you don’t think that – might you think subjecting the families of criminals whose personal data has been lost in this way to potential criminal attack themselves is not a total waste of police time ?

In other news, the BBC news website also has a handy aggregation page of other epic cases of government data loss.

“ID cards – do you still think they’re a good idea ?”

It’s almost unsporting of me these days to continually be referring to instances of this or that security breach when it comes to Government’s ability to keep secure our personal data, whilst at the same time the Government continually pedals the line that the proposed national identity card will be safe and secure, prevent fraud, protect us from terrorists, and end the Looming Credit Crunch(tm).

At present there’s been no evidence made public to prove one way or another, but it does seem just too much of a coincidence that the thieves might have been expecting a van full of painting & decorating equipment and got lucky; it does seem much more likely that this was a theft-to-order – that the thieves knew full well what was in the van, where it had come from, where it was going to, and when the best point for the sting was likely to be.

For once, there’s no real accusation of incompetence to be made (though Keith Vaz does ask why such documents weren’t being transported in a more secure manner) – against such a determined professional gang, there’s probably little anybody could have done better which would have made any difference.

Which is my whole point.

If a highly organised professional gang can run a heist on a van load of blank passports and visa documents, they can run a heist on a van load of blank ID cards. If they’ve got somebody on the inside – which in this case surely they must have done – then so much the easier for them.

So again, the reported benefits of the national ID card scheme – to guard against fraud and terrorism – are just pie-in-the-sky flannel, which will do nothing to keep us safe and secure, but will just provide another revenue stream for organised crime, criminalise the innocent, and potentially have a counterproductive effect on security by encouraging complacency.

The passport service said the stolen documents could not be used by thieves because of their hi-tech embedded chip security features.

But fraud experts say they can still be used as a form of identification and even for travel in countries where the chip technology is not used.

Indeed; I wonder if they are the same hi-tech embedded chip security features which are in use in the Oyster card used for paying for public transport in London?

The hi-tech embedded chip security features which themselves have been hacked – the details of how to do so being due to be published this coming October?

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock said:

‘The Chinese authorities have broken the promises they made when they were granted the Olympics seven years ago. They told the world that the Olympics would help bring human rights to China, but the government continues to persecute and punish those who speak out for human rights ahead of the Games.

‘The Olympic values have been betrayed by the Chinese government. They must release all imprisoned peaceful activists, allow foreign and national journalists to report freely and make further progress towards the elimination of the death penalty – or risk permanently sullying the legacy of the Olympics.’

Amnesty International’s report ‘The Olympics Countdown: Broken Promises’ evaluates the performance of the Chinese authorities in four areas related to the core values of the Olympics: persecution of human rights activists, detention without trial, censorship and the death penalty”.

Unlike most of my friends of the left-liberal persuation, I’m not automatically against the principle of ASBOs – there’s no denying that there are some people who make the lives of other people a misery through behaviour which isn’t actually illegal, and there should be a mechanism for dealing with them which has more legal weight than a stern talking to. If the mechanism is being abused in its implementation, that’s another issue.

But what this new ‘initiative’, branded as ‘Foetal ASBOs’ by the media, is planning on doing is looking at parents, and deciding in advance that their children are ‘bound to’ grow up as problem children – before they’ve even been born. Some people have branded the idea as verging on genetic determinism.

Back in the old days of usenet, it was always considered bad form to compare somebody, or an idea, to Hitler – basically it meant the discussion had run out of useful things to be said. In this instance, I think a comparison with the behaviour of the Nazi regime in 20th century Germany is not too wide of the mark.