The ThunderDragon

More attempts to make people stop smoking, this time using pictures:

Why are they doing this? Aren’t the current ‘warnings’ such as “smoking kills” etc. good enough? Why do they want to change it all? And what do they expect it to achieve? Either the government think that smokers are too stupid to read, hence the pictures, or they are on a crusade against people making their own choices.

People will not stop smoking because of a few nasty pictures, any more than they will due to a line of text telling them how bad smoking is for them - something smokers already know. Yet they actually made a mistake on at least one of the new warnings - the one I’ve used in the picture [right] says “Smoking causes fatal lung cancer”. The truth is actually that smoking can, potentially, cause lung cancer - which may or may not be fatal. But I suppose that wouldn’t fit on quite so easily.

Smoker choose to do so. The government has already tried almost everything to stop them from doing so - that constant addition of tax, the ban on smoking in public spaces, the first attempt at warning labels, and probably many others I’ve forgotten. These new warning labels will make no difference to those who smoke and those who want to smoke. They already know it’s bad for them, they already know that it is addictive. Yet they smoke anyway.

What business of the government’s is it to stop them from harming themselves? The government’s job stops at the education of the potential risks. After they have done that, it is up to the individual to make their choice. To smoke or not to smoke, to drink or not to drink. That is the question, and the answer can only be made by the individual themselves.

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph

The Courts say that Prison Officers can’t strike:

As much as a sympathise with the prison officers, when you do a job like that then you can’t really go on strike. It just really isn’t right for them to do so. I appreciate the problems they are suffering, but as an essential part of the modern justice system, they can’t just go on strike like that.

Certainly the manner in which it has been done has been most disruptive, and potentially dangerous, since “[m]any officers - including union officials - arrived for work unaware of the [strike] plans.”If notice of the strike had been given, then at the very least some civilian cover could have been brought in to avoid at least situations such as at Wakefield prison, where “the 745 inmates - including Soham killer Ian Huntley - [are] being guarded by no more than 20 senior managers.”

The strike has been declared illegal, with

The prison officers should go back to work. They are opening themselves up to a severe undermining of their position of authority within prisons by defying the courts, exampled by inmates at Cardiff prison taunting a picket line in the car park with shouts of “You’re breaking the law”.

They should get a better settlement from the government than they are offered, especially considering that assaults on prison staff have risen to eight per day. After all, considering that they can afford to basically throw £3bn away, they should be able to factor in a pay rise for prison staff.

Sources: BBC, The Times, The Telegraph

My first guest post is up over at the Wardman Wire, where I am writing about why I blog even though I am still 22 [the first of a yet-to-be-determined length series].

Go and read it to find out…

There are other guest posters there while Matt is away:

• Heather Yaxley, who blogs at Greenbanana .
• Garbo, who publishes political roundups at The Poliblogs .
• Mike Rouse, who is Chief Technology Officer at 18 Doughty Street.
• Colin Campbell, who blogs at Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe.
• A practising Health and Safety officer who chooses to be pseudonymous.

There are some excellent guest posts up already, and I’m sure there are plenty more to come!

Should we condone this sort of thing, asks Steve Green at the Daily Referendum?

After umming and aaahing I had to come to the decision in the end that no, we shouldn’t. This is vigilante justice, and as pleasurable as it may be to do to someone who is known as a criminal, it is, in the end, just wrong.

We have a justice system for a reason. As much as the Ministry of Justice may be bent on destroying it - such as by letting criminals out before they have served their sentences - it still exists, and must continue to do so. To give into this sort of vigilante justice, just asks for terror to return to our streets, just from people claiming to uphold the law and peace rather than those who know that they are breaking the law in what they do.

Even though an ICM poll today says that “a majority of voters think the government should scrap its prison building programme and find other ways to punish criminals… [with] 51% of those questioned want[ing] the government to find other ways to punish criminals and deter crime,” I don’t think that they were quite thinking of reviving the old punishment of tarring and feathering. Even though the Guardian article suggests it in their analysis, I doubt that a majority really want the prison building programme to be scrapped or criminals not to be sent to prison, but that other alternatives should be found to go alongside prison sentences.

To allow any backtrack down the route of tarring and feathering criminals - especially those who haven’t been convicted of a crime - would be a huge mistake on all sides. It would lead to nothing but trouble for law-abiding citizens. We can’t condone this sort of unilateral action any more so than we can the acts of the [suspected] criminal. After tarring and feathering, what next? The stocks? Pillorying? Trial by ordeal? That’s not justice.

Sources: Daily Mail, The Guardian

A statue of nelson Mandela is to be unveiled in Parliament Square

Why should a statue of Nelson Mandela be put up in Britain at all? He is not a British statesman or even an international one with any real effects on British life. Yes, he was an international and important leader in his time as South African President, but that doesn’t warrant a statue paid for by the taxpayer and erected in Parliament Square.

Mandela seems to be used as a political talisman - MPs named him as their Top Political Idol back in January, and Gordon Brown welcomed him to 10 Downing Street as the “greatest and most courageous leader of our generation”. To invoke the name of Nelson Mandela is almost to make opposition impossible. He is used as the figurehead of the Elders - who have yet to actually do anything since their formation - and seems to be little more than a political shield against any challenge.

How can he really be considered the equal of the other great statesmen whose statue stand in Parliament Square? He achieved some great things, but he was only in office for five years, 1994-1999. I think that the veneration of Mandela has gone too far, and the erection of this statue is an example of it.

UPDATE: Asp also has a good analysis of the same story, and points out that:

Sources: The Times, BBC

Is TV dying?

I watch very little TV, mostly because it’s utter rubbish. Far more than ever before, people my age are turning off the television - and booting up the computer instead. I already stream most of programmes I watch from TV Links or watch them on DVDs - that way, I get what I want, when I want it. I am not dictated to by TV schedules or anything else. It also has a great selection of old programmes which are no longer shown on TV, so I have a far greater choice over what I watch as well as well as when I watch it.

I don’t even watch the TV news very often any more. I get my news from the internet sites of the BBC and newspapers and from blogs rather than the half-hour condensed version that you get on the television. It is again about choice - I read the news I am interested in, and not the stuff I’m not, and I can get far more information on it as well.

On this same issue, Mike Rouse has written an excellent guest post over at the Wardman Wire*:

So even as the traditional TV is dying, a new more on-demand style is rising from the ashes. Internet TV stations, like 18 Doughty Street, are providing a 21st century solution to the end-of-TV dilemma. TV is dead, long live TV!

* I am also a guest poster there while Matt is away, but I’m current suffering blogger’s block on the posts I want to write! I’ll get there eventually…

Yet more support for a referendum on the new EU Constitution Treaty:

Now there is support for a referendum on this “not-Constitution” Treaty from the Conservatives, some Trade Unions, a third of the PLP, and even several senior ministers. We want a referendum on this. Whilst I have every intention of voting against it myself, whatever the result of a referendum on it would have to be accepted.

It is clear that, like Brown, the EU doesn’t want the people - and certainly not the British - to have a choice over this. The people of France and the Netherlands rejected the EU Constitution, so they are just changing a few words - and in the process making it “unreadable” - to get it past the people and legislatures of Europe. There will be transfers of sovereignty, and they don’t want us to know that or to have the chance to vote on it. The Constitution has not been “abandoned” like David Miliband says, but just slightly re-written. No matter if “[t]wenty-seven European heads of government all signed a document in June, after nearly two years of negotiation, saying the constitutional concept has been abandoned,” the reality is that it hasn’t.

I thought the European union was supposed to be democratic? That’s what the entry requirements include anyway. It’s just a pity that they themselves fail their own democratic requirements - if the EU applied to join the EU, it would be rejected on those grounds. But since Britain is still a democracy, we the people demand our right to decide on our own future - directly, in this case.

If Gordon Brown does not give in to their 12 points, the third of Labour MPs who support a referendum on this issue have no choice but to vote against the “not-Constitution” Treaty if it goes to Parliament rather than coming to the people. Even if they agree with the “Treaty” itself, they must vote against it because the people have been denied the right to vote.

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Mail

It has finally been a nice summer’s day - just as summer is coming to an end. But at least it fell on a Bank Holiday so that as many people as possible can enjoy one of the few days of summer we in Britain get! I envy you in Sicily, Welshcakes!

But it’s summertime and the weather is fine…