Sir Richard Branson might not immediately spring to mind as someone prepared to stand up and champion a positive attitude towards ex-offenders. But he is actively encouraging his Virgin group of companies to employ people freshly released from prison, and even some who are still inside and working towards release. “Everybody deserves a second chance,” he says, speaking by phone from Necker Island, his private Caribbean hideaway. “A lot of people end up in there [prison] because they’ve had a lot of bad luck in their lives.”

For the last two years, one of the UK’s wealthiest and most high-profile businessmen has been suggesting to the managing directors of hundreds of Virgin companies that they take on ex-offenders. The numbers are sketchy – “It’s early days”, says Branson – but in the UK, the charity Working Chance has placed female ex-prisoners with Virgin Management. Virgin is also taking on male ex-offenders.

On the problem of disclosing a criminal record – very few people get an interview once they have ticked the criminal convictions box on a job application form – he says: “It sounds like something we should look at, perhaps we should have a clause in our applications stating that Virgin does not hold a criminal record against applicants and that, on the contrary, we will try to help where that is the case. I’d be very happy to go that far.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. Whilst there are voices very much in support or opposed to the diversity agenda, there are woefully few which speak up in support of ex-offenders/people with criminal records. As he says later in the article there is untapped potential being wasted in the British economy because so many employers rule people out arbitrarily. It’s also unfair – do we want to be a society which says you make any mistake once, and you’re excluded from employment and other vital areas of civic society for all time? It’s so helpful hearing words like this from Branson, a man who many people idolise. I’d like to hear a lot more, not just from him but from other high profile CEOs. 

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This ill-informed back-patting follows the dropping of a secret UK High Court gag order blocking the Guardian’s reporting of parliamentary questions by Paul Farrelly MP. Farrelly’s questions related to press freedoms and in particular, a leaked WikiLeaks report, the so-called “Minton report” which exposed a toxic dumping disaster inflicted on the Ivory Coast by oil trading giant Trafigura, which is reported to have hospitalized over 100,000 people.

However, a more substantive secret gag order against the report, granted in September, entirely prevents the reporting of its contents and remains in effect. It is not the only one. Last month, the Guardian revealed that it had been served with 10 secret gag orders—so-called “super-injunctions”— since January. In 2008, the paper was served with six. In 2007, five. Haven’t heard of these? Of course not, they are secret gag orders. The UK press has given up counting regular injunctions.

To understand the crucial events in this case, we need to go back to September when commodities giant Trafigura obtained the original “super injunction” preventing discussion of the leaked Minton report into the Ivory Coast disaster.

During September and the preceding months, investigative reporters from the Guardian, Norway’s NRK TV, the Independent, the BBC’s Newsnight, the Dutch press, Greenpeace and lawyers for the victims were collaborating to show Trafigura’s culpability.

It’s a blistering editorial, which everyone who cares about the freedom of the press and free speech in general should read as a priority. In essence the Guardian (amongst others) was hit with a gag order preventing reporting on the Minton Report on September 11th. Paul Farrelly MP was then understood to have intended his parliamentary question to draw attention to the order, given that libel laws are not applicable in the Houses of Parliament, so Carter-Ruck went for a second injunction in effect to shut him up too, and against all expectation succeeded. The Guardian made the second gag the national issue and drew the worldwide blogosphere in on its side, but Wikileaks believes the second injunction fell despite the massive Twitter intervention (the subject of earlier posts); with politicians amongst the targets it was inevitable. The lawsuits and gags in place before the attack on Farrelly remain untouched, and politicians are now largely disinterested in the subject. Free speech in the UK remains laughable, when it can be suppressed with a big enough chequebook, even over matters of vital public interest such as Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast.

The Minton Report can be found here.

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UK border police used anti-terrorist legislation to prevent a British climate change activist from crossing over into mainland Europe where he planned to take part in events surrounding the forthcoming United Nations summit in Denmark.

Chris Kitchen, a 31-year-old office worker, said he feared his treatment by police could mark the start of a clampdown on protesters, hundreds of whom are planning to travel to Copenhagen for the climate change talks in December.

Tonight he will make a second attempt to reach Denmark, where he plans to take part in discussions organised by a network of protest groups coming together under the banner Climate Justice Action.

He said he was prevented from crossing the border yesterday at about 5pm, when the coach he was travelling on stopped at the Folkestone terminal of the Channel tunnel.

Kitchen said police officers boarded the coach and, after checking all passengers’ passports, took him and another climate activist to be interviewed under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a clause which enables border officials to stop and search individuals to determine if they are connected to terrorism.

The passports were not initially scanned, Kitchen said, suggesting the officials knew his name and had planned to remove him from the coach before they boarded. During his interview, he was asked questions about his family, work and past political activity. The police also asked him what he intended to do in Copenhagen.

When Kitchen said that anti-terrorist legislation does not apply to environmental activists, he said the officer replied that terrorism “could mean a lot of things”. By the time his 30-minute interview had concluded, Kitchen’s coach had gone.

This should surprise noone. The reason why the police’s behaviour was different to normal throughout the summer was because the interests of the state weren’t seen as being threatened. Granted there is clearly a widely held attitude amongst the police that climate activism is tantamount to terrorism – there’s little other explanation for their unprovoked and unwarranted violence against Climate Camp at Bishopsgate earlier in the year. But a camp in Blackheath, with the occasional forays into Canary Wharf and the City for PR stunts is hardly the same as a mass demonstration to coincide with the G20 leaders’ visit to London, or a ‘swoop’ on a power station like Ratcliffe-on-Soar. So nothing happened in the summer, whilst harsh scenes are likely in three days’ time, and ever more the closer we get to December. The violence in April was unwarranted and unacceptable – it’s equally unacceptable that the police should choose to use anti-terrorism legislation against environmentalists. Just don’t expect any major party to be able or want to unpick this mess any time soon.

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A man who was assaulted in London’s Trafalgar Square as part of a homophobic hate crime has died, Pink Paper can report.

Ian Baynham, was walking through Trafalgar Square with a 30-year-old friend on Friday 25 September when a woman began shouting homophobic abuse at him.

Punched to the floor and kicked repeatedly outside South Africa House by a second female and a man, the 62-year-old victim was taken to a central London hospital with serious head injuries, including brain damage.

Baynham died last night when doctors turned off his life support machine.

This, people, is why hate crimes legislation is important. Whether it be because of the economic climate or other social reasons, gay hate is on the increase. The Independent reports:

Over a quarter of all incidents involved physical violence. Figures from the Met show that in the last year reported homophobic hate crime in London has risen by more than 5 per cent, from 1,008 to 1,062 incidents. London’s gay and lesbian population is thought to stand at around 750,000.

National figures on homophobic incidents are not collected by the Home Office, however. A survey by Stonewall, the gay rights charity, published last year found that one in five gay people had been the victim of a hate crime in the last three years.

Stonewall also published a report earlier this month which revealed a “deeply alarming” amount of homophobia in schools. The report is the largest survey of both primary and secondary schoolteachers on the issue of homophobic bullying.

David Morley, Michael Causer, the Admiral Duncan bombing, these aren’t isolated incidents. The image is of two of the murder suspects. Hopefully Ian’s murderers will be found and sent to jail for lengthy terms. We cannot afford to be complacent – laws may have changed, but homophobia hasn’t gone anywhere.

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Peter Tatchell asks whether Barack Obama really has the will to repeal the US armed forces’ ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (DADT) ban on openly gay people serving:

What’s holding back Obama? His reticence to lift the military ban can’t be due to public opposition. More than two-thirds of the American people want it lifted, according to a Gallup poll in May. Is the president afraid that straight soldiers will resign if the restrictions on gay service are repealed? That’s what some British top brass feared when the UK allowed gay soldiers, but the resignations never happened.

The truth is that the gay ban is underming military efficiency. It often allows homophobic harassment to pass unchecked and this harassment damages unit cohesion and morale. A study this year by Cornell University also found that gay personnel ordered to hide their sexuality perform worse than those who were not ordered to do so.

To optimise military recruitment and effectiveness, General John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton, now believes that gay people should be allowed to serve openly. Even a former hardline opponent, ex-US Secretary of State Colin Powell, has come out in favour of reviewing the gay exclusion policy.

I know Paul was more supportive in his earlier post about Obama’s position on gay equality issues, but I really do wonder. He, like Clinton, knows how to talk to the talk, but is remarkably retiscent about walking the walk. What is holding him back? He could have ended it by Executive Order by now. The armed forced don’t care. The American public doesn’t care. Pretty much all other developed countries’ armed forces have rescinded similar bans, so why even continue to pursue court cases which discriminate against desperately needed LGBT service personnel? Of course the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party will fight this tooth and nail, but they’re fighting against healthcare because they think Obama’s a Nazi for goodness’ sake. A president who truly gives a damn about human rights really needs to move now.

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