Who talks in riddles, who talks in reasons?

The Memory Glow lantern installation for the Planet Angel X-Party continues apace. ( Here's the blurb in case you missed it. And a sneak preview picture! )

Our 'studio' has been relocated from the living room of bard's house (many thanks to him, strongtrousers and cyrus_ii for putting up with us imposing for quite so long) to my parents' new house in Chigwell, because it has All The Rooms and my parents are lovely. We're not used to being close enough to do this kind of favour for each other. It's marvellous and I'm immensely grateful for it.

So today, Niamh and I are moving into one of my parents' spare rooms for a week, so I can devout my every spare waking hour to finishing decorating lanterns without leaving my cat abandoned and starving in Tottenham. It's going to be a bit strange being away from my comptuer and commuting to OG from there, but it's the only option. This would be massively easier if I had a studio, or a bigger house, but while I'm still earning my fortune I'm really lucky to have parents who are willing and able to help out.

As well as the inevitable last-minute finishing-the-lanterns crisis, entirely unhelped by bluedevi's and my chronic perfectionism, at the moment I'm trying to untangle a whole heap of last minute logistical crises. The lantern-making workshop we're running on the night is now sorted in terms of designs and materials. The LEDs for the installation have been ordered and we've got a plan for how and when we're going to rig them. bluedevi and I will head to the venue on the morning of the Party to spend the day rigging and getting everything right (and dealing with the inevitable last minute things going wrong). We're running the craft table until midnight and (I think!) have the rest of the evening off to party and enjoy ourselves :) Then we're staying on Saturday morning to de rig, and we have a tentative plan for where the lanterns go after the Party.

But we're stuck on how to get them there. This isn't really a last-minute panic - we've known all along that we didn't have a transport solution, and were relying on Planet Angel to help out. But various options have fallen through, and we're getting to the stage of Desperately Asking Everyone We Know On The Internet. Hi, internet! We can offer free tickets to the Party, petrol money, pints of your favourite tipple and probably more - if there's something you'd like in return just ask and we'll see what we can do :)

There are twelve lanterns of varying sizes. Half of them are stackable cuboids and cylinders; a few are awkward round shapes. Three of them are BIG round shapes - the biggest is 3ft across. It's a bit tricky because they're bulky and fragile (although very lightweight) so ideally we are looking for someone with an estate car or people carrier.

At the moment they're in Chigwell in Essex, at my parents' house. We need to get them from there to the Colosseum in Vauxhall on the morning of Friday 27th so we can rig the installation. We know they just about fit in a car because strongtrousers drove them to Chigwell, although it'll be a tight squeeze and there won't be space for passengers.

Now there are two ways of doing this...

If someone is able to drive to Chigwell on Friday morning, we'll help you pack the lanterns into the car, then you drive to Vauxhall while bluedevi and I get on the tube (carrying the biggest two/three lanterns by hand if necessary) and meet you at the venue. Easy!

However, we know that most people are working during the day Friday ... so if necessary we can do the journey in two stages.

If anyone is able to drive up to Chigwell on Wednesday or Thursday (in the evening maybe?) and drop the lanterns off somewhere in South/Central London a bit closer to Vauxhall, we can leave them there until Friday morning and then collect them in a cab to take them to the venue.

So... is anyone able to help out with the driving? And if you don't drive, do you have a house within affordable cab distance of Vauxhall where you could store our lantern project for a day or two next week?

Thanks so much in advance to anyone able to volunteer. We are A Bit Stuck so any help you could give would be massively appreciated.

I made some cheeky icons based on this gallery of CCTV-inspired art. Also one based on a graffiti from the G20. Feel free to use them if you like! It would be courteous to credit me/the source gallery/the original artist (if known), but if you only do one the latter two are more important.

The Home Office has just announced its revised plans to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people on the National DNA Database, despite an EU ruling that this constitutes a breach of human rights. The new policy, under which DNA samples can be taken from any individual stopped by police for an arrestable offence, permits retention of these samples for six years regardless of whether the individual was convicted or released without charge.

This directly contravenes the decision made by the European Court of Human Rights in the S and Marper case last December, in which all 17 judges unanimously ruled that the UK policy of indefinitely retaining DNA samples from people who had not committed a crime was illegal under EU law.

The Association of Chief Police Officers claimed that this ruling would seriously limit their use of DNA technology. They therefore advised chief constables to ignore the EU decision, and since the Strasbourg ruling, while the Home Office drafts new legislation in response to the EU's decision, police have added DNA profiles of over 90 000 people who have never been convicted of an offense to the database. Various proposals have been submitted, condemned by human rights organisations, rewritten, resubmitted - and no response to the EU ruling is yet to pass through Parliament. The current set of plans, if passed, are likely to be in contempt of the EU court, and will no doubt provoke another long-winded round of litigation. The Home Office is clearly making every attempt to avoid the strongly-worded recommendations of the ECHR, and while the UK legislators drag their feet, every day more innocent people are added to a criminal database.

( So what's the problem? )

I've been thinking about online democracy a lot since my post the other day. Some of it's pretty exciting.

Mostly I'm just overwhelmed at how big the conversation is. I'm seeing new stuff everywhere I look. I think these next few months, the closing months of the failed New Labour project when no-one really wants Cameron to be Prime Minister, are going to be key for the conversation about democratic reform. I don't think there's time for anything to happen now but the energy is now, before the change happens, when everyone's excited by the possibilities. After the Tories get in I expect the fire will go out of the talk for a bit, but then we have the next four years to actually make something happen.

Anyway, so I've talked about Open Up, and linked a couple of the huge number of blog posts in the wake of the success of the Trafigura/Jan Moir temporary collectives. Seriously, these articles are everywhere. Here's another one. This isn't new, of course: people have been talking about reforming democracy online since Usenet, and I still think of MySociety as the pioneers in using online technologies to improve the quality of our democracy.

But recently ... I dunno, maybe I've just been getting more involved, but it feels like in the last twelve months it's really been gaining momentum. Our Kingdom has an ongoing conversation about democratic reform, and Guy Aitchison, the dude who runs it, is also heavily involved with the Power 2010 campaign.

Then there's 38 Degrees, and Louder, The Downing Street Project ... and that's just in the UK: worldwide it seems that new social innovation campaigns like The Girl Effect and the World Appreciative Enquiry Conference are springing up all over the place. Then there's thinktanks like IPPR which seem to overlap a surprising amount with the grassroots movements. It's inspiring and hopeful - so many people agreeing things need to change, and pouring so much ideas and energy and time into working towards that! - but also chaotic and dizzying. There's just so much of it! To what extent are all these different groups even aware of each other? Are they duplicating each other's work, are they all trying to reinvent the wheel? If none of this has any effect on the current system, is it so much shouting to the void? Are the messages reaching the people who need to hear them, or is it just a big echo chamber? With so many diverse groups, all with their own agenda, won't they just drown each other out? Do we need to get together and find points of commonality? Is that even possible?

Probably not, but today I've been thinking not about campaigns but about the tools they use. Yesterday I was utterly thrilled to read The Future of Politics is Mutual, which is by an awesome person I hadn't heard of before, called Hannah Nicklin. It's on the differences between the traditional press and online media, narrative vs information and the information economy, and the concept of wikipolitics.

( What is Wikipolitics? )

You should read the thread, because there's some really good stuff in there. I've been spamming the thread with comments and thinking lots. Like,

( some thoughts )

I don't think we've come close to hitting on the answer on it yet. I don't think a wikipolitics project as described would be likely to have wings: it would probably just turn into a community of hypergeeks bickering over details. I think Wave has the potential to be useful in the longterm but it's not ready yet, and neither is society.

There are a couple of "unconferences" on this stuff happening this week: Open 09 and £1.40. I can't get to either, but I'll be interested in hearing if the discussions went anywhere useful.

I don't know how to harness the energy of this conversation into action. I don't know how to get the disparate online groups to work together. But I think there's something in this, I really do.

I think the only way to fix our current broken democracy is to decentralise it to some extent. I think the internet not only offers strong models for governance in the form of open source ethics and the open source community, but also a unique opportunity for discourse, collaboration and development.

Anyway. This is me brainstorming. Feel free to join in.

Police State UK have just run a special series of articles on public order policing, surrounding the inaugural public meeting of the new MPA Civil Liberties Panel last Thursday.

Holding the Met to account - by me on Wed 4 Nov 2009 at 23:40
The key issue in the wake of the G20 is accountability. Of the 276 complaints made to the IPCC, very few cases have been investigated or upheld. The IPCC has instructed the MPS to discount any complaints where the officer in question cannot be identified. This is enormously problematic: in what appeared to be a deliberate and calculated effort, hundreds of officers removed their identifying numerals during the policing of G20. This alone constitutes grounds for complaint - Paul Stephenson has called it "completely unacceptable" for police on duty not to wear their numerals - but it also allows the IPCC to dismiss any allegations of excessive force made against officers who removed their ID. Any police inclined to use disproportionate force in a public order situation is thereby given a "get out of jail free" card. Read more »

A mandate for change? - by me on Thu 5 Nov 2009 at 18:17
"Today is all about listening to you - we're not here to speak for the Met, nor to defend them," said Victoria Borwick, chair of the MPA's newly convened Civil Liberties Panel, opening this morning's public meeting. The scope of the meeting - an evidence gathering session on public order policing, and more specifically the G20 demonstrations in April - had been unclear to some. Many people had brought questions demanding immediate answers, but instead their concerns have been 'noted', with no clear idea if answers will be forthcoming. Read more »

Whatever happened to peaceful protest? - by Anna Bragga on Fri 6 Nov 2009 at 14:04
After yesterday's inaugural public meeting of the panel, I am left with an all pervading sense of gloom that no matter how well presented our arguments, no matter how much documented evidence we produce (from citizen journalists to accredited professionals), and no matter how many lawyers and experts we bring in, little will change. Read more »

Deterring Peaceful Protest - by denny on Sun 8 Nov 2009 at 20:33
There's been some good news lately as far as the policing of protest is concerned... the well-established public-order policing policy of 'hit them until they stop, then hit them a bit more' seems to be going out of favour. This is certainly a good thing. Nobody likes being hit over the head, and any reduction in such violence is to be celebrated. However, one of the important concerns such violence raised was that people would be (and have been) put off attending protests due to the possibility of police violence - and while this one issue is now being addressed, there are still plenty of other factors being used to deter protestors from showing up to any given protest. Read more »

Damned if they do, damned if they don't - by me on Mon 9 Nov 2009 at 19:16
Anonymity is increasingly difficult to maintain in the UK. We are tracked and recorded everywhere we go, and the police have access to national databases. The basic precautions necessary to try and slip through the net of police information-gathering require a level of personal inconvenience which many would find off-putting. And yet the alternative is being entered into the FIT/NECTU/etc system of harassment; I can see how facing a choice between the two would put people off attending demos at all. Read more »

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We've also updated the site design a bit to add our Twitter feed and hopefully make the articles a bit easier to read. We're still working on the changes - we eventually want fluid width articles, I'm nagging Denny for the option of longer lead text on the homepage, and I want to improve the usability of the sidebar links. But we're at the "it'll do" stage with a lot of this due to having no time at all.

Please do create a free account on the site so you can post comments and submit articles. We welcome all contributions from anyone interested in civil liberties in the UK.

Couple of good articles on the sacking of David Nutt, which I find abhorrent for all the obvious reasons, plus those articulated by JQP in his two "Expertease" articles written at the start of this year.

This isn't the first time this issue has been on our radar. Drugs legislation is one of the easiest targets. Then there was the debate about Green Party science policy earlier this year. Now this, which some commentators have compared to the way policy on ID cards continues to ignore expert advice. Detecting a bit of a theme?

[Democracy] relies on one very important variable, which British society has utterly failed to deliver: accurate information.
In theory, democracy works for the benefit of mankind because the government responds to public demands. This requires two things to be fulfilled. The public have to be rational, which sometimes pertains, and it has to have access to reliable information, or else its demands rest on false assumptions. But the media, its main source of information, does not deliver. It provides truth, yes, but it also spews out myths and nonsense to substantiate its editorial agenda.

(Drugs policy and the death of reason, politics.co.uk, Monday, 02, Nov 2009 12:00)

Ah, everyone's favourite rant about democracy and the media! Excellent: I always enjoy having someone else do this one for me. It even includes references to Plato, if not to the process of Athenian democracy itself.

You all know this already, but just in case: Athenian democracy worked because it was tiny. Something in the region of 60,000 adult male citizens had the right to vote at any one point in the mid-5th century BC - a figure that dropped during wartime. Start with a small city-state and then exclude women, children and adolscents, immigrants, slaves, criminals and anyone who hasn't completed military training. The result is a direct democracy, where those involved are small enough to sit in a single assembly, watch political speakers and satirical theatre as a single audience, and participate in the same big debate. More oligarchy than democracy by modern standards. (Is more complicated than this, but you get the idea. Feel free to comment if you think I'm misrepresenting.)

Modern democracies which aim at representing the demands of the whole population - including, even more recently, women - can't be directly representational (until we develop secure tech for remote voting) and they can't be directly informed. Our representation is a mess, and so is our information. I mean the internet is great and all, but so far it mostly seems to be resulting in more people sharing opinion than data. (Peer-reviewed science has massive class and accessibility issues - is wikipedia the closest thing we have to democratic information?)

Anyway, so I'm sure you all know my feelings on policy and the meeja. What I found kind of interesting reading the post-Nutt-sacking commentary (har) is the fact that no-one's thought to relate this issue to climate science. Which seems a bit odd. Look at this paragraph from that Nutt vs ID cards article:

That's not to say politicians should blindly and slavishly heed scientific advice without any other considerations. Of course not. The whole nature of politics is about balancing various constituencies of interest. But politicians should be able to explain the reason for their decisions when they choose to ignore independent expert advice and press ahead with proposals that potentially put the UK population at greater risk.

O RLY?

Governments have been ignoring expert advice on climate change for, gosh, several decades now. I'm outraged about that, but I'm not surprised. It's not even really news, apart from in the "shit continues to hit fan" sense - but that's not unusual either.

If the outrage over the Home Office not only disregarding the recommendations of its chosen experts, but actually punishing those experts for telling the truth, leads to it happening less, well, great: perhaps they'll start listening to expert advice on environmental policy. Drugs legislation is a relatively quiet issue - you don't get many people willing to protest about it, and most public figures avoid speaking out on it unless they're happy to be branded a filthy munter.

Climate change should be a considerably less risky thing to talk about: surely most people believe that saving the human race from extinction is a generally good thing, even if they're not willing to act personally to help the cause. I mean, to oversimplify dramatically, this is one of the reasons we have laws, right? To encourage people to do the right thing even if they might not always want to?

Not only does policy fly in the face of scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, those who complain loudly about this are treated far worse by the state than those outraged at scandal of David Nutt's illegitimate sacking. Climate change doesn't seem to make it into any of the commentary on governments ignoring their experts. Is the issue becoming so marginalised that no-one's willing to include it in their analysis? Perhaps they're all just trying to avoid being labelled domestic extremists. In which case, the re-branding of climate activists as a marginal, undesirable group by the police is clearly starting to take effect.

The Defend Peaceful Protest meeting last week was exciting. People are still talking about policing and protest: the so-called "media storm" following the G20 looks like it might turn out to be a shift in consciousness after all. And, of course, the police and the state are still struggling with the issue of accountability as it applies to them, so there's work to be done there. dennyd is running a mailing list for discussion, news and updates - let us know if you'd like to be added to it (there's also a facebook group).

I seem to have volunteered to write up the public MPA meeting on November 5th for PSUK/LibCon/OurKingdom etc, so I want to get my head properly around the issues in advance of the MPA meeting, and if I'm linking people to PSUK it would be nice if there was some recent content on it. (On which note, anyone want to talk about civil liberties, dissent, privacy, surveillance, or policing in the UK? We'd really really love to hear from you - it was never intended to just be me and Denny.) So I'll be at the meeting in the morning, writing in the afternoon, and then then there's a civil liberties protest that evening in Parliament Square: what better way of remembering the fifth of November? Anyway, you should come to the protest if you care about such things, it'll be good.

All of which has motivated me to get back into political blogging again. It was one of the things to be sacrificed this summer in the name of Not Being So Exhausted All The Time, which was fair enough, but now I have an enormous backlog of issues I want to talk about. I've literally spent the whole day sorting through my open tabs, filing links and articles into topics, jotting down thoughts, running ideas past dennyd and romauld and getting them to fill in the gaps for me. (JQP calls me his Chief Research Otter, but I reckon they're both mine.)

So now I have a big pile of Things To Write About, which is a bit overwhelming but I feel better for organising it all a bit. Quite a lot of it doesn't really fit on PSUK, so I might end up shoving stuff on here unless I can write something good enough that I wouldn't be ashamed to submit it to the news sites.

I won't always have lots to say about stuff, in which case it'll end up linked here as well (although the best way of following what I'm reading/interested in is my twitter, which sees far more activity these days than this journal). Like the three excellent articles I've read today on the role of the internet in democracy:

How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet by the late Adams, Douglas Adams. Originally published in 1999 and still relevant and true. ( Read more... )

The end of Adams' article dates it somewhat, so here are two articles from this week, continuing the theme in light of the recent events surrounding Trafigura and Jan Moir, to bring you up to speed:

Poles, Politeness and Politics in the age of Twitter by Stephen Fry, October 19th, 2009 ( Read more... )

And, published today, Can't stop the blog: what the internet has done for ideas by Laurie Penny (aka steerpikelet): ( Read more... )

Which leads me neatly to the two new ideas I've seen this week to ise the internet as a tool to "reshape democracy". The first is PartyStarter.org, an as yet embryonic idea rejected by the 4ip call for ideas, but published to see if anyone else wants to pick up the baton. ( Read more... )

dennyd has pointed out that we already have lots of political parties (including enthusiastic and lively new parties like the Pirate Party), but they don't stand a chance of gaining power under the current first past the post system. So perhaps not that useful, although it's good to see ideas being shared, and I think this sort of thing is indicative of the general mood for electoral reform and grassroots political change.

Open Up Now is an exciting new campaign for just that, based on small steps which seem fairly credible. ( Read more... )

You should read Heather Brooke's excellent article on transparency, MP nominations and party whips. I don't know if Open Up will acheive their aims - it seems a stretch, although I've signed the petition and it seems to be gaining a decent amount of momentum for a new campaign. But I seem to be seeing an increasing number of calls for reform, and they seem to be getting increasingly credible. Or am I just looking properly for the first time? Either way, it's exciting. Now we just have to make a few of them start to stick.

Thanks to denny for pointing me at 10:10, a scheme through which individuals and businesses pledge to reduce their emissions by 10% in 2010:

Everyone's looking for something to do about climate change. What’s needed is something straightforward, immediate and meaningful. I think I've found it.

Today I joined thousands of individuals and organisations from across the country to unite behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in carbon emissions during 2010. It’s called 10:10, and everyone can be a part of it.

Cutting 10% in one year is a bold target, but for most of us it’s an achievable one, and is in line with what scientists say we need right now. By signing up to 10:10 we’re not just promising to reduce our own emissions – we’re becoming part of a national drive to hit this ambitious goal country-wide. In our homes, in our workplaces, our schools and our hospitals, our galleries and football clubs and universities, we’ll be backing each other up as we take the first steps on the road to becoming a low-carbon society.

To find out more and sign up go to www.1010uk.org
To read coverage of the campaign from the Guardian go to www.guardian.co.uk/10-10

I just signed up; it's all stuff I'm trying to do anyway, and if enough people join the scheme, it will help put much-needed pressure on politicians to start meeting targets. The UK started the industrial revolution, we should be the first to visibly start reducing the problems its caused. A lot of political will and an enormous shift in the public consciousness is going to be necessary, but I think it's achievable. And the more countries commit to reducing carbon emissions, the greater a chance we have of persuading the big multinationals to follow suit.

Climate Camp:

• "Climate Change Casino" set up in the City - with at least one police officer joining in!
  


• Climate Camp Day 2 live blog


• Climate Camp in pictures


• Labour Mayor of Lewisham condemns the camp as "patronising and selfish" ...


• ... whereas the local Lib Dem and Green councillors are supportive.
  
  (photo by dennyd!)


• Corporate lobbyists sow doubt about science in their clients' minds. Climate Camp is teaching the skills to expose them.


• Contrary to popular belief, Climate Camp is not about fighting the police – it's about fighting climate change - the article I would have written yesterday if I hadn't been distracted by trying to make this point in the comments on LibCon.


• Revolting Peasants - Whitechapel Anarchist Group's version of their clash with police in the camp on Wednesday night.


• As a result of this, the WAG were politely asked to leave the camp, and the camp decided it would be less disruptive to meet with police outside the camp in future, given how many of its members are victims of police brutality. Click here to read their press statement.

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Feminism links, via various people, but most of them from jacinthsong. Sorry if I've posted any of these before; between IRC, facebook, twitter and here it's sometimes hard to keep track what goes where.

• A Few Things To Stop Doing When You Find a Feminist Blog by Fugitivus, whose writing I am devouring at the moment.


• Misogyny: up close and personal on CiF, originally posted as The terrible bargain we have regretfully struck" on Shakesville. Delighted to see it on the Guardian, but I'd recommend not reading the comments.


• No more Mr. Nice Guy - analysis of the Sodini shooting by Kate Harding.


• Standing Out in the Crowd: on women in open source; and in a related note, click here if you feel like explaining to a clueless open source dude what that's like.


• Women in fiction: why more awesome women in fiction makes for better fiction as well as gender equality.

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Random stuff:

• 18th Century humour by the inimitable cavalorn. E.g. "AMERICAN: Yonder House is Tiny & we have Thrice its size at Home ENGLISHMAN: No doubt Sir for 'tis the BEDLAM-HOUSE."


• A giggle-worthy tale of Dragons, Knights, and the cancellation of Big Brother by John Q Publican


• Men at their most masculine: a photo-essay


• Inspirational Blind Photographers and their Portfolios

Last August, thousands of people camped out at Kingsnorth power station to protest against the continued use of coal power in the UK. Despite eye-witness reports and video evidence that police abused stop and search powers, removed their badge numbers, employed sleep deprivation tactics, harassed journalists, arrested any protesters who tried to demand their legal rights, and engaged in unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters and their private property, the police were not meaningfully challenged by anyone with the authority to do so. In fact, it wasn't until after events were repeated at the G20 protests in April 2009 that official questions were asked about the policing of dissent in the UK.

Early this year, cyber-liberties activist Cory Doctorow wrote an article for the Guardian about the Kingsnorth camp.

We've known about all this since last August - seven months and more. It was on national news. It was on the web. Anyone who cared about the issue knew everything they needed to know about it. And everyone had the opportunity to find out about it: remember, it was included in national news broadcasts, covered in the major papers - it was everywhere.

And yet ... nothing much has happened in the intervening eight months. Simply knowing that the police misbehaved does nothing to bring them to account.
Transparency means nothing unless it is accompanied by the rule of law. It means nothing unless it is set in a system of good and responsible government, of oversight of authority that expeditiously and effectively handles citizen complaints. Transparency means nothing without justice.

Ironically, the article was delayed due to an administrative error, resulting in its publication shortly after the G20 protests. It was already true, even before the same mistakes were made all over again: and in April, it could just as easily have been talking about the events earlier that month. The Met have lied, again and again, about events on the day and the strategies that led to them. The Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner have placed blame solely on 'rogue' individual officers, denying all knowledge of deliberate and systematic use of violence. Hundreds if not thousands of officers were pictured engaging in unprovoked and disproportionate violence, but almost none have lost their stripes or their jobs. The senior officers in charge of the operation have got away scot-free. No officer who illegally detained or criminally assaulted a member of the public has been arrested or charged.

Next week, the Camp for Climate Action is returning to London for a week-long gathering of sustainable living and activism training. The campers are braced for the worst; Legal Observers, MPs and journalists will be present, and you can bet that if the police engage in unprovoked violence, YouTube and Flickr will instantly be flooded with evidence. But will that transparency lead to justice?

For a host of reasons - the death of Ian Tomlinson certainly, changing media attitudes towards police seen to have 'got away' with shooting Jean Charles de Menezes perhaps, or even that battering articulate middle-class liberals rather than working-class black teenagers is always a more high risk strategy - whatever they may have been, the political landscape had clearly changed.

The events of the G20 were a turning point in public opinion. The press has largely abandoned its original campaign of misinformation, and the Evening Standard, which published some of the worst of the pro-police propaganda, has officially changed its colours, and recently ran a ssympathetic story about a woman whose complaint was upheld by the IPCC.

Although the various committees (such as the new Civil Liberties panel formed by the MPA, which seems to be more interested in future policy than justice for past wrongs), investigative bodies and reports commissioned since April have not resulted in any substantive consequences for the Met or TSG, the former does seem to realise that all eyes are on them this time.

The police's new, all-smiles approach to the August camp, conspicuously lacking any apology or admission of previous guilt, has been called a "charm offensive" by journalists. The Metropolitan Police's PR campaign includes a twitter account (presumably in response to the Campers' successful use of live social media to co-ordinate their event), a change in senior personnel, and meetings with Climate Camp legal advisors. A bitter pill, one suspects, to the police liaisons who tried repeatedly to engage with the Met before the April camp, and were not only rejected, but subsequently blamed for the "lack of dialogue" cited as a factor in the escalation of events.

Common sense suggests that the police are going to behave next week. The camp will probably not obstruct a major road or airport, and nor is it likely to take place in the heart of the City. Of course, similar circumstances didn't help the Kingsnorth protesters, but the Met are doing their best to convince the activists - and the world - that "the policing will be reasonable if the Camp is reasonable". But if it isn't, nothing we've seen so far suggests that those responsible will be brought to account.

If the Met's PR campaign extends to not engaging in mindless violence, as well as just saying they won't, then the August camp could be seen by some as an anticlimax. But the primary narrative for activists is not one of a street war between protesters and police, but one of raising awareness about the issues of climate change and sustainable energy. When the media isn't pretending that nothing happened, coverage of protests gone wrong generates more discussion about policing than it does of these issues. The police have proved themselves keen in the past to silence inconvenient dissent; next week's activists can only hope that the greater public scrutiny focussed on the Met will enable their voices to be heard.

(originally posted on Police State UK)

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I'll be joining the Climate Camp swoop next Wednesday with a few friends. I'm not camping (work, boo), but we'll aim to stay until the camp is established, and defend the location if necessary. I'm going half as an eco-activist, half as an amateur journalist/observer. Click here for details of how to be involved on the day, and sign up for text alerts.

I've had a couple of people round for dinner lately, and have been rocking the rice-based dishes.

( Paella )

( Butternut squash and goats cheese risotto )

Since I moved into the Snug, I've taken great pleasure from making my own stock. Someone on LJ (ailbhe?) shared an as-you-cook way of doing this which is pleasingly non-wasteful. When cooking, you save all your vegetable peelings, onion skins, carrot tops, pepper seeds, unused leaves in a bag in the freezer. This keeps for ages, so you can just keep adding to it. It starts to break down in the freezer, so when you open it it already starts to smell like stock. When you have enough (a bag the size of a bag of frozen peas), tip the lot into a stock pan and cover with boiling water. Add a quartered onion, a couple of sticks of celery, fresh rosemary, parsley and thyme if you have them, black peppercorns and salt. Boil it until the liquid is brown, then leave to simmer for an hour or so. The longer you cook it the stronger the stock will be. If you want stronger stock, leave the lid of the pan off and boil it to reduce. When you're happy, drain the stock into tupperware tubs and put the puply vegetable mash in the compost bin. The stock can then be frozen in tubs or ice-cube trays to make stock cubes.

We can has website!



I'd planned to chill out a bit after Glastonbury, but then Denny and I decided to take over the world, so this had to happen. I'm pretty damn pleased with it. And who knows, it might even help us find clients! Because more work, yes, that is exactly what I need. ;)

And now, I sleep.

... Actually I help bard move house and go to a celebratory TG with the denny. That's almost the same thing though? Right?

I have one spare ticket for All's Well that Ends Well at the National Theatre tonight at 7.30 (meet 7.15) if anyone wants it! Free to a good home :) It's in the side stalls with a small group of lovely theatre-goers including roz_mcclure, who will deliver your ticket to at the theatre. Have had two interested people so far today, both of whom have fallen through, which is why I'm posting this so late in the day - please only ask if you can actually make it!

I'm not sure, but unless she's advertising my ticket, roz_mcclure has another spare, so there may be opportunity for a couple to take mine plus her extra one.

fire_brand and The Register have already offered much incisive commentary on Be (an ISP owned by O2)'s new rebranded website. HOW WRONG IS IT? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS. Not only does it look like it was designed by a group of bickering 13 year olds who can't decide which of their MySpace page backgrounds to use, but it contains my new favourite image on the internet.

Go to the "Personalise" drop down menu below the main navigation menu on the left. Select the second option. What is it? It's hard to tell, what with the awkward tiling and clashing colours, but do you know, I believe it is a KNIGHT IN ARMOUR RIDING A PSYCHEDELIC MAGIC CARPET WHILE PLAYING THE GUITAR.

WHAT.

As if that horror wasn't enough, check out the pink pixellated balloons that look like breasts a little further down. Because that's appropriate for a national ISP! Ho yus.

In honour of this piece of internet history, I have made an icon of the acidhead rockstar space knight.* Feel free to steal it!

*The filename is "beknighted.png". I crack myself up.

I should know better than to open up this can of worms again on LJ, but there are two really worthwhile discussions going on which you should read:

On rape and men by cereta, challenging the non-sexist or non-sexist-identified men who always protest that "not all men are like that" to stop telling women they're wrong about their own experiences, and start actually challenging sexism where they encounter it.

You're the guy who would never rape a girl passed out on your bed (who, for that matter, knows that such an act would be rape), or the woman in the village your battalion/troop/whatever is overrunning. You're the guy who wouldn't do such a thing even when his buddies were heckling him, telling him he's a fag and a pussy if he doesn't. Even more, you're the guy who would stop his frat brother from raping that girl, and get her home. You're the guy who would stop his comrades, or at least report them.

Now, here's my question: where the fuck are you?

It's a challenging post, and the thread is full of heart-warming stories of men who didn't rape someone, which didn't particularly surprise me. I know an awful lot of men who are prepared to be decent when in a situation with a drunk or vulnerable woman; who will not only fail to rape her, but will look after her and make sure she gets home okay. That's not really the issue, for me. The issue is that I also know an awful lot of men who aren't prepared to be decent in those situations, and most of my friends have been raped or sexually assaulted once or multiple times, because no-one is prepared to challenge the sexist fuckwits. To tell them to shut up when they make rape jokes. To get them to chill out when they're drunk and yelling at strange women. To tell them to their face that they were out of order when they groped a woman in a club, or pestered someone for sex after they'd already said no, or carried on messing around with her after she passed out.

Before you join in the next conversation about rape protesting that "not all men are like that", think about how much you've done lately to challenge the idea that men are entitled to look at/comment on/touch/fuck women's bodies and if the woman objects or resists she's a stuck-up bitch; as cereta put it, "the idea that if a woman is not actively preventing a man from sticking his penis into her (and even then, if she's an enemy), he is doing nothing wrong, and hey, who can blame him?"

The second post I want to point you at is Perusing Penises in the Park (no, seriously) and some street harassment stories, khalinche's response to cereta. This is not so much about sexual violence or living in fear of rape, but the ubiquity of sexual harassment, especially if you live in the city:

I suppose the point of this long, long post is to do what I always try to do - tell a story. Today it's the story of what it's like to live with the constant possibility of having your appearance or person commented on, loudly, by strangers, and of being on your guard many times a day. It is not about my fear of being raped, because that doesn't figure in my life as much as in those of some of the commentators at the linked post. It is about men feeling that they have a right to talk and shout to me about what they want to do and what they think of my body. It is about trying to get through to the men who don't do this quite how common it is and how it affects the lives of most women.

I had limited success expressing this a year ago; and the number of men who told me then that I was wrong, that this was nothing to do with gender, that if I'd only been more sensible I could have avoided it, only proves how necessary this conversation continues to be. khalinche's post is excellent, and deserves a wide audience.

Edit: Talking about this in IRC, I ended uo looking up this post by Kate Harding, which has a lot of practical suggestions on how men who aren't like that can act to confront harassment and sexism where they encounter it, and why it's important that they do.

Does anyone have a Victorian/Edwardian outfit I could borrow for Thursday or Friday next week (21/22 May)? We're doing a two-day shoot in Greenwich and I've got custom-made costumes sorted for most of the scenes, but it would be really good to have a different one for me to wear at the beginning of the film when my character arrives at the house. It's about 1900, my character is a governessy type of young aristocrat, a bit like Jane Eyre but obviously later. Costume doesn't have to be perfect for the period, it wouldn't be out of character for her to be wearing something old-fashioned. Unfortunately our budget doesn't stretch to hiring something just for one 2 minute scene, and I should have sorted this out months ago but I've just had too many other things to think about.

Most of my Victoriana is either lower-class (maidservant etc) or a bit goth; plus I wore my black silk taffeta in the previous film and it would be nice if it wasn't totally obvious how limited our wardrobe is ;)

I don't need a whole costume necessarily - bare minimum would be a hat, and a coat or travelling cloak which I could wear over one of my long skirts. But if anyone has a suitable dress or skirt suit in a size 8-12 that would be amazing. I can travel within London to collect on Mon-Wed next week, or cover postage costs. If you can help, I'll happily buy you something off Amazon or Play.com to say thankyou. :)

I have two more DW invite codes - leave a comment if you're interested.

Not first come first served this time, I'm afraid. I'd rather give them to people who actually intend to use the service to blog, not people who just want to squat the username. I reserve the right to give preference to people whose blogs I am particularly interested in reading.

Edit: All taken now - to the writers of two of my favourite LJs, hoorah.

Stephen Fry's letter to himself: Dearest absurd child
"Yes, you will grow to be a very, very, very, very lucky man who is able to express his nature out loud without fear of hatred or reprisal from any except the most deluded, demented and sad. But that is a small battle won. A whole theatre of war remains. This theatre of war is bigger than the simple issue of being gay, just as the question of love swamps the question of mere sexuality. For alongside sexual politics the entire achievement of the enlightenment (which led inter alia to gay liberation) is under threat like never before. The cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand of religion and absolutism has fallen on the world once more."

Filament Magazine
"A new magazine for women. I felt the world was in desperate need of one with:

• Intelligent, inspiring articles, and no fashion, celebrity gossip or diets


• Erotic photography of men based on research about what women think is sexy.

It's hard copy, quarterly and the first issue will be posted out on 1 June.

(Reviewed by Erotica Cover Watch and featuring photography by the talented Ara Maye McBay)

I have four shiny Dreamwidth invite codes. Any takers?

Edit: All gone :)

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/322149.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I've written a couple of articles this week for Police State UK:

Connecting the Dots

While some writers have linked the policing of the G20 to the history of policing and political dissent, even the independent media have mostly failed to situate this connection in a wider context.

How about this for context: The last couple of years has seen a stream of increasingly repressive legislation, denying the conscience of the individual moral agency and responsibility, and curtailing the rights of the many to protect the few. (So the excuse goes; but do we, the public, really need legal protection from people who look at kinky porn or photograph policemen?) Scare-mongering propaganda urging people to report suspicious behaviour among their neighbours. Ubiquitous surveillance enhanced by new technology; endless strategies designed to make it easier to keep tabs on people, such as centralised databases; internet surveillance; making Oyster cards the cheapest way of using the Tube. Exaggerating the threat of an illusory enemy as an excuse to treat the general public as guilty until proven innocent. Terrorism is less dangerous than bird flu or sunbathing; and yet Section 44 uses it as the excuse to grant the Met stop and search powers which intimidate and inconvenience countless members of the general public.

Call me paranoid, but there's a pattern here. And it's getting worse.

MPA defend peaceful protest

Tim Godwin and Chris Allison accepted responsibility in vague terms for events, while denying any specific culpability, and persistently washed their hands of the actions of "individuals". They couldn't give detailed answers on the subjects of any pending investigations. But they were also reasonably conciliatory, and accepted the need for a review of police strategy, to "learn lessons for the future".

However, I'm cautiously optimistic that if the Members of the MPA have anything to do with it, the investigation will be sympathetic and conscientious.