Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment

I support the principle that capital punishment, which in plain language is judicial killing by the State, is wrong in all circumstances. The State should not be in the business of executing people. Crimes for which people are convicted according to law do require punishment - that punishment should be strict, but humane. Some will argue that persons convicted of certain particularly heinous crimes (wilful murder, torture, rape to take a few) deserve no compassion and no rights. I don't necessarily disagree with either argument, but it is not the 'immortal soul' (if such exists) of the convicted person which concerns me, rather what it says about the societies and people who sanction judicial killing. Do we really wish to liken ourselves not just to the US's of this world, but to the Irans and Chinas, too?

A number of people convicted of murder in recent years have had their convictions overturned; in some cases they have been exonerated completely and in other cases new evidence has come to light which has cast sufficient doubt upon the original conviction for it to have been suspect. Were investigative processes always completely accurate during the period when capital punishment was still in force? Forgive me, but I simply do not believe it. What is completely certain, however, is that once someone has been executed, the punishment (as distinct from the conviction) can never be retracted.

I do believe, however, that a term of punishment should be observed strictly - a sentence of 'life imprisonment' should mean precisely that. There should be no parole, ever, under any circumstances, unless new evidence comes to light casting doubt upon the original conviction. So someone suffering from a terminal illness and who was serving a term of life imprisonment would die in prison - there should be no nonsense about allowing someone home to die.

It is on this basis that I have signed the e-Petition for the retention of the ban on captial punishment. If you share this basic view and if you wish you can sign the petition here.

Brian Souter Knighthood - sign the petition opposing this

Brian Souter, a co-founder of major transport company 'Stagecoach', has just been granted a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2011. However, as the man who provided a million pounds of his own money for a campaign opposing the repeal of the anti-LGBT 'Section 28' (Clause 2a in Scotland), I feel this is a deeply flawed award and should be withdrawn as it is deeply insulting to the LGBT community, who suffered increased violence in the wake of the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to keep this odious piece of legislation. The legislation was finally repealed in Scotland in June 2000 and in the rest of the UK in November 2003 - the full history of this legislation is here.

In the event that you feel as I do, I wanted to draw your attention to an important petition that I recently signed to "Withdraw Brian Souter's Knighthood" - I really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes just a few seconds of your time. If you wish to visit and sign the petition, please click here to go there now.

I urge you to consider signing this petition.

Sign up to the petition for Alex McIlveen

The Remittance Man has started a Petition to the Prime Minister for the parking ticket 'awarded' to Mr Alex McIlveen to be quashed, after having read a newspaper article here. He was one of the brave people who helped to subdue the attempted terrorists at Glasgow airport on 30th June 2007. Mr McIlveen left his taxi in order to take part in this valuable action and was subsequently asked by Police to make a statement, during which time his abandoned taxi received a parking ticket. Given the circumstances I think there is a strong case to be made for this parking ticket to be quashed. If you agree, please click here to sign up to the petition, which reads as follows:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to quash the parking ticket issued to taxi driver Mr Alex McIlveen at Glasow Airport on 30/06/07." "Without thought for his own safety, Mr McIlveen left his taxi to tackle the occupants of the green Jeep Cherokee that crashed into the terminal building of Glasgow Airport. He was then taking in by the police to give his statement during which time his shoes were confiscated for forensic testing. On return to the airport he found that his cab had been ticketed for parking offenses. "Clearly this is hardly the way to treat a man who assisted in the capture of two would be terrorists and we ask the PM to use his influence to have this unjust penalty quashed."

Freedom of Information Act and MP's self-voted exemption

A petition to the Prime Minister seeking an overturn of the exemption MPs have voted themselves to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act has been launched. The petition is in the following terms:

'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to implement a full Freedom of Information Act. There is no justification in Government business being executed in a shroud of secrecy. The Government works in our name, therefore access to ALL business should be free and immediate.'

If you are a British Citizen or resident in the UK I urge you to consider adding your name to this worthwhile initiative. To view the petition and add your signature please visit the 10 Downing Street website here.

(thru Justin at Chicken Yoghurt)

Police State Britain - ID Card data to be used to resuscitate unsolved criminal cases

(I have added a postscript to this entry a couple of hours after I originally uploaded it - please read it. Thank you.)

When I posted the update here about having received a reply from 'The Dear Leader' Tony [Kim il-Sung] Blair after the closure of the ID Card petition I must admit I was so incensed by the infernal arrogance and cheek of the man that I did not read the whole thing as thoroughly as I should have! Fortunately other blooggers subjected it to rather more careful scrutiny than me. Hidden within the text is this little [further] erosion of our civil liberties:

I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register. Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.

Luckily Longrider links to a Telegraph article which it says contradicts assurances 'given by Tony McNulty, a Home Office Minister, when the legislation was going through the Commons in 2005. Mr McNulty said there were safeguards against state agencies "for want of a better phrase, going fishing in the database".'. Now we learn, in this most underhand manner by slipping it in to the Prime Minister's email, that these assurances were possibly meaningless, in the Prime Minister's view at least! Read also what Mr Eugenides has to say about this.

Blair and his gang of incompetent criminals have completely lost sight of the fact that this is supposed to be a democracy where civil liberties and due process are supposed to be the system - not some crude totalitarian regime where the citizen exists only to serve the needs of the 'State'! It is frankly becoming urgent that we get rid of these quasi-dictators at the earliest possible opportunity. The Conservatives are pledged to abolish ID Cards and all that goes with them (i.e. the ID Card 'database') and they must be held to that promise; likewise the LibDems have always been opposed to ID Cards.
My fellow citizens, you know what to do!

PS/ A special note to Labour Party supporters and voters; I am basically a Conservative Party supporter, but I left the Party when it elected Iain Duncan Smith as its Leader and abstained from voting or deliberately 'spoiled' my voting paper whilst he remained Leader; similarly I did not take part in any political activity prior to the 1997 election because I judged that 18 years was quite long enough for a political party, any political party, to be in power contiuously. I would ask you to think very seriously whether you can in good conscience continue to support a government led by Mr Tony Blair, indeed one led by senior people many of whom are tarnished by their arrogance and, worse, their incompetence during the 10 years Labour has been in power. If you can bring yourself to vote for another Party [not the BNP!] at any forthcoming election (local, regional or national) then I would urge you to do so, failing which I would ask you to at least consider abstaining or 'spoiling' your own voting papers whilst the present government maintains its current policies which, in my view, are turning the UK into a Police State. I know the natural instinct is to support the Party one has always supported, but sometimes it is necessary to put such considerations to one side in the interests of the country we all love, whether you think of it as the UK as a whole or England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland as more important focusses for your affections. Please.

Petition to scrap ID Card scheme - deadline 15FEB07!

(Please see the UPDATES at the end)

I just had a look at some of the other petitions on the Downing Street website (after signing the one on vehicle-tracking and road pricing) and found this euqally important - much more important really - petition:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the proposed introduction of ID cards.
The deadline to sign this petition is 15th February 2007. If you agree that introduction of ID Cards is a pernicious scheme to monitor citizens for who knows what [political] ends then you should sign the petition. It is highly unlikely to fulfil the multifarious purposes for which the Labour government says it wishes to introduce them - to combat terrorism, reduce crime, etc. The database which will be required to back-up the scheme the government wants to introduce is a direct threat to our civil liberties by this and future governments (of whatever political party). It will cost huge amounts of money (probably much greater than even the current rising estimates) and will either fail spectacularly at a technical level, or in the unlikely event that it can be made to work turn us into a nation of helots.

I applaud the Conservative Party for last week having placed the contractors for this scheme 'on notice' that a future Conservative government will abolish ID Cards - and we must not let the Conservative Party renegue on that promise.

Please, please sign the petition! (so far there are only 25,242 votes recorded - sigh ...) Click here now to sign up!

UPDATE: (Tuesday 20FEB07 00.15 RST) I have received a 'personal' email from the Prime Minister on the closure of this petition. Basically its message can be summed up as telling those who signed it that the government plans to carry out its policy unamended; the whole petition scheme is a sham, in fact it might more properly be called a 'SCAM' as its real purpose appears to be for the government to gather personal information (names, addresses and email addresses) of those who challenge its policies - it is extremely sinister. I have reported the Prime Minister's email as 'SPAM'. Any further messages I receive from the Prime Minister as a result of completing this petition will also be reported as 'SPAM'. I do not accept the conditions applying to completion of these petitions that one implicitly agrees to receiving upto two emails; I for one do not!

2nd UPDATE: (Wednesday 21FEB07 09.16 RST) See my later posting here, which discusses an important piece of policy information which our crook of a Prime Minister has slipped into his email and which I missed when I scanned through it.

Petition against Labour's UK road-pricing scheme ('tax')

(Please see the UPDATE at the end of this entry)

I have just signed up to the petition to stop the Government from introducing a vehicle-tracking and road-pricing scheme. You can too by filling in the form here (the petition remains open only until 20th February 2007, so get a move on!)

I can see there may be a need to try and reduce traffic congestion and the consequent pollution and squandering of the planet's scarce energy resources. However I think that better mechanisms could be found to achieve this end than by coupling it to vehicle-tracking which I regard as a further sinister move by this government to tabulate citizens and their movements for its own political ends. I regret to write this, but I simply do not trust this government (or possibly a future government, of whatever political party) not to abuse the huge amount of personal data they are trying to accumulate on us, of which vehicle-tracking is just one more piece. That is even supposing that it would be able to get the thing to work even with the huge amounts of 'investment' required for all the software and equipment to run it - which I doubt, given the government's abysmal record with implementing technology.

UPDATE: (Sunday 18FEB07 10.33 RST) In the emollient words, aka 'Blair-speak', of our beloved Prime Minister we see, perhaps, the first signs of a [partial] climbdown in the government's plans to introduce road pricing; and as one of the signatories to the petition I'm promised an e-mail in the next few days from him. Golly, I do feel honoured and am positively tingling in anticipation (Steady now - Ed.). Observing (get the sly pun?) that he 'welcomed' the petition [and I just bet he does!]:

"... not because I share the petitioners' views - I don't - but because I know the country needs to have a full debate on how we tackle road congestion and this petition has helped spark it. "Over the next few days I will be sending out a response to everyone who has signed the petition against road charging explaining the problems the country faces and why I believe road pricing is surely part of the answer here as it is in many other countries. "I'm not kidding myself that this will change people's views overnight. "I am convinced, however, that the focus on this issue that the e-petition has brought about will help improve our understanding of the problems and the realisation that there are no cost-free answers. "And that surely has got to be good news for the health of our democracy and for the chances of our country coming up with the right and sustainable solutions to the long-term challenges we face."

More on this in due course.