Darren Johnson, Jean Lambert, Ken Livingstone, Johann Hari, Bonnie Greer, Seumas Milne, Jon Cruddas…all meeting this Saturday for the 2010 Progressive London conference. If you’re interested in progressive politics and what they can offer London, you should book here.
The chairman of the British Olympic Association has decided the only way to fight drug taking in the 2012 London Olympics is to enable legal police raids:
this week Colin Moynihan announced plans to expand police powers to allow raids on the athletes’ village, ostensibly to combat doping.
The British Olympic Association chairman has evidently decided Britain’s bursting statute book is not sufficiently equipped to deal with a two-week sporting event. Fortunately for Moynihan, he moonlights as a Tory peer, so he can use the powers vested in him by this other hat to introduce a Lords bill to remedy the oversight.
As I say, this is fortunate for his lordship, but it does feel rather less fortunate for British citizens. It’s not just that the plan will be an ostentatiously ineffective deterrent – expert opinion holds that drug cheats tend to stay in privately rented accommodation – nor the vagueness about how Moynihan intends to criminalise substances which may be banned but in almost all cases are legal. It is simply unacceptable to change the law of the land to enforce the internal rules of a competition.
So Moynihan wants to use the police as a formal political tool then. He wants to use police raids to search for (as the article says) substances which may contravene the rules of the Games, but otherwise be legal. Yet another nail in the coffin of the rule of law in this country, merely brought about by 2012. And that’s in addition to this nonsense:
civil rights campaigners are worried about several clauses in the London Olympic Games and Games Act 2006. Section 19(4) could cover protest placards, they said, as it read: “The regulations may apply in respect of advertising of any kind including in particular – (a) advertising of a non-commercial nature, and (b) announcements or notices of any kind.”
Section 22 allows a “constable or enforcement officer” to “enter land or premises” where they believe such an advert is being shown or produced. It allows for materials to be destroyed, and for the use of “reasonable force”. The power to force entry requires a court warrant. Causing still further concern is a section granting the powers to an enforcement officer appointed by Olympic Delivery Authority.
Anita Coles, policy officer for Liberty, said: “This goes much further than protecting the Olympic logo for commercial use. Regulations could ban signs urging boycotts of sponsors with sweat shops. Then private contractors designated by the Olympic authority could enter homes and other premises in the vicinity, seizing or destroying private property.”
Do we really need to trample on civil liberties merely in order to stage the Olympic Games? As Chris Grayling points out in the second article, powers are there to be used. To say they won’t be is about as ridiculous as saying Peter Mandelson won’t use the Digital Economy Bill, if passed, to censor every website which inconveniences him. Trouble is on the way in 2012 and before, and as with most of the rest of the civil liberties breaches of New Labour, for no logical reason whatsoever other than to benefit corporate interests. I don’t know anyone who supports the Olympics being in London and although I was amazed on the day London won them, it made no sense for Paris not to get them. If only they had.
Last night I attended a vigil in Trafalgar Square for Ian Baynham, the gay man recently murdered there. I’ve written recently about why gay hate might be so much in the ascendant once more, but last night was cause for optimism. Thousands of people – gay, straight, white, every ethnic minority under the sun, older, younger, you name it everyone was there to make a stand against hate. Friends and family of Ian’s were in attendance, some of them spoke and shared their private memories of a man lost because he dared to stand up for who he was.
The video is of TV personality Sue Perkins, reading out a list of people lost to homophobic hate in the last ten years. It was sobering to experience, and remains sobering to watch.
Thought those days were over? That cosmopolitan central London, on the doorsteps of Soho, where the annual Pride celebrations are now held, was now essentially entirely gay friendly and safe? Think again:
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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