mike[space] dot net

My need to express myself over the recent UK election have led me to bringing this blog out of hiatus ... 140 character chunks just won't cut it. Naturally it won't make much difference to anyone but the few people who I could probably express all this to over a beer ... but that could be said about twitter as well, and that's never stopped me.

I just signed up to the Power 2010 Pledge. As the site says:

They are a people-powered grassroots campaign who are organising for change in the UK. Over 100,000 votes were cast to decide their priorities - and the five most popular are now the basis of the campaign: the POWER Pledge.

The campaign will take these ideas to every candidate from every party at the election - real grassroots change in action.

The European election results provide a useful punctuation point for me to discuss the last few weeks of politics in the UK. With UKIP gaining a sizeable portion of the vote, and the BNP picking up two seats, it's clear that a serious protest vote has been made against the Westminster set.

I've just spent the last couple of hours taking a look around the internet at various commentary and discussion on the topic of Ian Tomlinson's tragic death. The footage released by the Guardian of him being hit and pushed to the ground has (as expected) provoked quite a frenzy of indignation, anger and disgust. Some of it reactionary and over the top, but much of it justified.

Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill has just come to my attention. This clause will allow any Minister by order to take any information gathered for one purpose from anywhere, and use it for any other purpose. Yet another of those pieces of the jigsaw that the Government is engineering to legitimise an overbearing regime with no checks and balances whatsoever and the right to lock us up and prevent us speaking out whenever they want.

Okay, this is going to be quick and off the cuff, as I have to leave to catch a train in 10 minutes. But I just wanted to moan once more about the shower of shit that we currently have to suffer as a political class. Charlie Brooker does a brilliant job of talking about how he's finally reached the point of no return Bring on the summer of Rage:

Today brings us the announcement that the UK Drugs Council is going to advise the downgrading of Ecstasy from a class A to a class B drug.

I just got home to discover that Claire was stopped by the police under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. It seems as though there is a blanket authorisation across the metropolitan police area for these powers to be (ab)used. And the whole thing has made me utterly furious. We'll be filling out the Liberty stop and search report form (which can be found here along with Liberty details on the law itself). And looking to see what grounds for complaint we might have.

Just provided some feedback on the Digital Britain report [edit: that can be found here] ... the email was as follows ...

Hi,

I've been interested in the announcement of the digital britain interim report, and wanted to offer some thoughts on the content of it. I don't know whether you are particularly looking for feedback from individuals as opposed to organisations, but for what it is worth, here are some initial thoughts:

He's eight years late, but the first US President fit for this century has arrived. The significance of the first black US President cannot be overstated, but that's just one part of the package he brings to the table. Intelligent, eloquent, inspiring, young, an idealist, the sort of person you'd like to meet or see on TV and think, "I wish he could get somewhere in politics, but he's bound to be corrupted and compromised by the system before he has a chance at having any sort of power".