Just when I was sure that Britain was completely a lost cause, this article gives one hope.

HOME OWNERS and others acting in self-defence were yesterday given the legal right for the first time to fight back against burglars and muggers free from fear of prosecution.

They will be able to use force against criminals who break into their homes or attack them in the street without worrying that “heat of the moment” misjudgments could land them in court.

Under the new laws, police and prosecutors will have to assess a person’s actions based on their situation “as they saw it at the time” even if in hindsight it might be seen as unreasonable.

Then there was this small concession earlier in the year for olympic class shooters.

The British government relaxed gun laws Tuesday to allow shooting teams to prepare for the 2012 London Olympics.

Britain banned handguns in 1997 after the massacre of 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland. The law includes a ban on guns for licensed sports, preventing domestic pistol events.

But home secretary Jacqui Smith has invoked special exemptions in England and Wales. A similar exemption allowed pistols to come into Britain for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

“(Smith) has agreed to use her powers under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968 to allow a small squad of elite GB Olympic pistol shooters to train in this country ahead of the Olympics in 2012,” Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe said in a written parliamentary answer. “Scottish ministers have agreed, in principle, to exercise their powers in a similar manner.”

Well I said it was small. Also only for ‘elite’ shooters. But what the heck, it’s something from a country that seems hell-bent on removing as many citizens rights as possible. It’s amazing how bringing the Olympics into the picture changes the mindset.

But then on a more cynical note, the self-defence provisions may be necessary if the Brit government were to follow through on the leaked report that police would be allowed as long as 3 hours to attend emergency situations and 3 days for other police action.

Guidelines ordering police to respond to emergency calls within three hours and to attend less urgent incidents such as burglaries within three days have been drawn up by the Home Office.

The astonishing proposals were designed as ‘national standards for local policing’ in England and Wales.

They laid down a three-hour target for officers to reach an incident which ‘requires policing intervention’.

And they allowed police to wait a leisurely three days where ‘there is less immediate need’ for their presence.

The leaked draft targets were to be included in the Government’s long-awaited Green Paper on police reform.

But after a barrage of criticism from the Opposition yesterday – which accused the Government of being out of touch with the public – Home Office officials insisted the targets will not appear in the final version of the paper when it is published tomorrow.

The “meet your attacker” plan also apparently drifted away into never-never land once it came in contact with the winds of public outrage,

The apparent disarray follows Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s startling U-turn over proposals to force knife-crime offenders to confront victims in hospitals. That plan was floated and ditched within 24 hours.

Someone somewhere must have written a book on just where Britain took a wrong turn. Can we blame their muddled thinking on breathing EU air?

Or - scary thought - is this the wave of the future?

There was a bunch of babble on the Golf Channel about whether the Open, playing this week, has been diminished by the absence of Tiger Woods. I’m amazed that garbage like this get any kind of serious discussion. The question was even being asked of competitors pre-game at Royal Birkdale to the point of asking if this years winner should have an asterisk beside his name because of Tiger’s absence.

If Tiger were playing and missed the cut would the feel the need to stop the tournament then and there?

This is the 137th playing of the Open and someone thinks Woods has redefined its history? Sergio Garcia summed it up nicely when he said that the Open is bigger than any individual player.

I guess if you desperately need to fill in television time you are driven to find controversy somewhere. Even in the strangest of places.

A better story is Rocco Mediate in a tie for the lead after the first day of competition. Now there would be one hell of a story: Rocco, fresh from his epic battle with Woods at the US Open winning the Open at Royal Birkdale. Unfortunately it’s only day one with a lot of golf under tough conditions to go. Still it’s nice to see him there.

A story of a police officer in Tennessee who falsely arrests a citizen for taking his picture, telling him that it is illegal to do so.

A Johnson County sheriff’s deputy arrested Scott Conover for unlawful photography.

“He says you took a picture of me. It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer,” said Conover.

Conover took a picture of a sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road on a traffic stop. Conover was stunned by the charge.

“This is a public highway,” said Conover.

And it was not a place where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy as Tennessee code states. The deputy also asked Conover to delete the picture three times.

“He said if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail,” said Conover.

*****

The American Civil Liberties Union would not comment on Conover’s case without fully reviewing the allegations, but told us there is no law that prohibits anyone from taking photographs in public areas, even of police. Taking photos is protected by the First Amendment. Conover is ordered to appear in a Johnson County court on August 6th.

Ash Blog Durbatuluk has strong opinions:

There is no excuse — none — for officers of the law to behave in this sort of illegal, bullying, rights-trampling fashion. As a free society, we simply cannot tolerate it.

It’s not just about the ability for citizens to take pictures of police officers in public places (though that’s important too; see: King, Rodney). It’s about the officer’s behavior — specifically his attempt to bully this man into compliance with an illegal demand, using his power as an officer of the law in the service of his personal pique, at the expense of the citizenry that he is supposed to “serve and protect.” It is absolutely, totally and completely unacceptable for police officers to use the authority conferred by their badges to violate people’s rights in this manner, and society needs to send that message loud and clear.

Unfortunately, this is something that probably isn’t an unusual occurrence.

There was the case of the RCMP officers in Dawson Creek attempting to confiscate two hunter’s rifles because they had their own version of safe storage laws. Then fairly recently a Kelowna man returning from the local range had his rifle confiscated by an RCMP officer who had a similar (and wrong), interpretation of the law.

In the British Columbia cases I doubt if the actions of the officers were vindictive, but regardless, they didn’t know what the law was, invented their own version of the law and then of course became defensive when told that they were wrong in their knowledge of the law.

Unfortunately if you are ever caught in this type of situation you’re pretty well hooped. The power lies with the one that wears the uniform.

Golf Magazine has a brief piece in their August issue extolling the virtues of a new course – Pound Ridge Golf Club – near New York City. The article says that the opening of this new high-end course “gives New York public golf something to brag about”.

I wonder who is doing the bragging. The green fees are $235 a round. I wouldn’t think that this is a course that is going to see a lot of local usage unless they are giving deep discounts.

What the hell is it with these inflated green fees? Have we been conditioned to believe that a golf course is somehow substandard unless you are paying through your nose?

On top of the high-end fees it seems that it has also become important for the course to beat the hell out of you. Course reviews in the golf magazines love to tell you how this new 7,500-yard gem will leave you whipped and beaten at the end of the 18 holes.

And apparently you can’t build a respectable course that isn’t longer than 7,000 yards from the tips. China has a par 72 course that measures 8,548 yards. What kind of masochist plays an 8,000-yard golf course? What’s the point of building one other than to use up a bunch of land in the process? Stupid question. The point being, I presume, that if you have an 8,000-yard course it obviously must be worth more to play than a lowly 6,500-yard course; Even though the vast majority of golfers are pushing their limits to play off those 6,500-yard tees.

Maybe it’s a form of madness. Pebble Beach is charging $495 (plus cart if you’re not staying at the resort) a round and apparently has no problems filling out their tee times. Spyglass Hill is $330 plus cart and Bandon Dunes, out in the middle of nowhere is $260 a round during the prime time season. And those are just a three examples. Plus there are literally countless courses in the $150 range, which the golf magazines seem to think is a reasonable amount for the traveling golfer to pay. Their opinion, not mine.

The first time that I went to Phoenix, which is many years ago, I made up my mind that I was going to play the Troon North course. As I recall, green fees were $120 then. But then I played Papago, the Phoenix muni for about $20 and loved the course. I figured 6 times at Papago was better than one game at Troon North any day, so I never did play it. I don’t know what Troon North plays for now other than the fact that it’s out of my comfort range. But I’m willing to bet that the 6:1 ratio still holds.

Whatever; different horses for different courses, or something like that. I’ll leave those courses to those who can justify the fees.

]]> http://totalrecoil.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/golf-that-hurts-your-wallet/feed/ totalrecoil http://totalrecoil.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/more-political-stupidityknife-violence-in-britain/ http://totalrecoil.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/more-political-stupidityknife-violence-in-britain/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:55:29 +0000 totalrecoil http://totalrecoil.wordpress.com/?p=329

I have to reiterate my old theory that people should have to pass some kind of intelligence test before they run for political office.

Here we have the classic nanny state reaction to a problem. As part of their anti-knife crime bill the British government has proposed that knife attack offenders should visit their victims in the hospital to see the damage they have done.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, yesterday rushed out plans to bring youngsters caught with knives face to face with the victims of stabbings in an attempt to deter them from carrying weapons.

But a leading accident and emergency doctor today warned that the proposal could lead to a “secondary victimisation” of individuals at the hands of the perpetrators.

Smith said that she believed that confronting offenders with the consequences of their actions was more effective than jailing anyone convicted of possessing a knife.

But the plan drew a scathing response from the opposition parties, who described it as “half-baked” and “ill-thought through”.

Brown said the measure was “one of the ways” that knife crime would be tackled.

“I wouldn’t want people to think there is one measure we are taking alone,” he said. “There will be tougher sentences, tougher enforcement and a toughening up on prevention to tackle knife crime.”

Smith’s measures include visits by offenders to A&E wards where people are being treated for knife wounds, meetings with the families of stabbing victims and prison visits to offenders jailed for knife offences.

An A&E doctors’ leader attacked the idea of bringing offenders into hospital, arguing that patients being treated in emergency departments would be in “extremely vulnerable states”.

Donald MacKechnie, clinical vice-president of the College of Emergency Medicine, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the proposal was impractical for a busy emergency department, whose priority was the patient.

He said: “When someone is brought in having been stabbed or assaulted with a knife, it’s a very emotive situation. Doctors and nurses first of all have got to assess the injuries and then manage those injuries.

“We certainly don’t think it would be a good idea if then potential or actual perpetrators of knife crime were marched through to see these patients, who are in an extremely vulnerable state.

“It’s tantamount to secondary victimisation of someone who has already suffered a horrendous insult to them. From a practical point of view, working in an A&E department, it’s very difficult to see how this would work.”

The home secretary defended her proposals, as she rejected Tory demands that anyone caught carrying a knife should expect to go to prison.

“I am very keen that we make people face up to the consequences. In my book it is tougher than simply saying there is one simple solution and that is: everyone goes to prison,” she said.

That’s what you want to see when you are stretched out in a hospital bed, hopefully recovering from your knife wounds. You want to see the guy who stabbed you coming through your door. Or as was put by one person:

Dee Edwards, who runs the campaign group Mothers against Murder and Aggression, said: “This is a load of old rubbish, a load of old tosh. As if victims who are lying there dying are going to want to see the perpetrator turn up with their mobile phone taking footage to put onto Youtube.

Not that the brain power on the opposition benches is any weightier. The previous week the Conservatives (according to this article) were calling for jail sentences for anyone carrying a “bladed weapeon”.

The Conservatives, who only last week called for mandatory jail terms for anyone caught in possession of a bladed weapon, dismissed the proposals as “piecemeal”, “ill-thought through” and a “knee jerk reaction”.

And a mandatory jail term for anyone carrying a “bladed weapon” isn’t “ill-thought through” and a “knee jerk reaction”?

You could see what would be coming next on that one: some kind of licencing for people who need a “bladed weapon” to carry on their jobs.

Or the usual convoluted legal description as to what constitutes a “bladed weapon” and what defines a “bladed non-weapon”. Oh well, those definitions could always be thrashed out in court. That always saves writing good legislation the first time around.

Makes me wonder if Toronto’s Mayor David Miller has been talking to the Brits on how to solve their problems or vice versa.

Which brings me around to another question. Why do we pass laws to stop “gun violence” or “knife violence”? Why don’t we worry about violence in general?

Politicians (and others with their personal agendas) call for mandatory jail time for gun crime and knife crime but what about if the perpetrator beats the guy half to death with a baseball bat. Or puts the boots to his victim’s head? Are these “nicer” crimes of violence.

From a politician’s point of view it all comes down to what’s on the front pages of the newspaper today or the lead story on the evening television news.

Something is beginning to annoy me mightily. I go into a store and buy an item. Once I pay for it and the transaction is complete, I say to the clerk, “Thank you”. It seems that increasingly the reply from the clerk (invariably a young person) is “No problem”.

My first reaction is, “Of course it isn’t a problem! I just bought something from your business, paid you for it and thanked you for taking my money. Did you think it might be a problem and were surprised when the transaction went well?”

What worries me is that maybe these young clerks think they really are doing you a favour by showing up for work and actually earning their wage by running your purchase through their check-out.

But probably it is more likely just a phrase that they spew out without having to think about a proper response. Like saying “Thank you for coming in” or even something as generic and insincere as, “Have a good day”.

However I guess it’s better than “Bugger off, I’ve been here an hour and I’m sick of talking to customers already”.

“Thanks for listening”.

“No problem”.

The world has become a much more difficult place when dealing with problem wildlife issues, especially when today’s animal rights philosophies come into play. Even when professionals try to do not only the right thing, but the only thing, they run into opposition from people and organizations with opposing agendas.

This was brought to mind by a recent article regarding the plan by the US Fish & Wildlife Service to eliminate or at least severely reduce feral cats on San Nicholas Island off the coast of California in order to further protect endangered bird populations on the island.

As to be expected, there was an uproar with the plan being called “misguided and inhumane” as well as “irresponsible, cruel and simply unacceptable.”

The absolutely silliest comment was a quote by a spokeswoman from an organization called Alley Cat Allies, which is an advocate group for feral cats, who said:

….there is no proof that the cats are eating the birds. Though bird remains have been found in cat stomachs, she said the birds could have been dead when the cats ate them.

“They honestly have no solid proof that these cats are killing the
birds,” she said. “They are not making an effect on the population.”

This is from someone who is supposed to know something about cats? Cats are natural born killers. They live to hunt and kill. Your well-fed cuddly old house cat will haunt the bird feeders of the neighbourhood, stalking and killing songbirds. The cat doesn’t need the food but the instincts are strong. Those feral cats don’t affect the bird populations on the island? Get serious.

The message apparently being that it is more important to protect feral cats than endangered bird populations.

In Surrey, B.C. the problem lies with beavers. These furry little dam builders regularly move in and construct dams in areas that threaten to flood homes, buildings and farmlands. To control this problem the city traps and kills these specific animals.

City staffers point out that there are hundreds of sites in the Surrey area where beavers are left to their own devices. They also note that relocating the animals out of problem areas is not an option, because they are territorial creatures and will do battle with interlopers which is why the Ministry of Environment bans relocations.

However a former Vancouver parks commissioner and animal advocate Roslyn Cassells says that trapping and killing the problem beavers is “inhumane, cruel, and unethical.”

It seems we have heard that mantra before.

Unfortunately there is no other practical solution. Some property owners say they have abandoned beaver dams on their property and they would adopt a beaver. But that option, even if viable, is extremely limited. But practicalities have no place in this discussion.

Mayor Dianne Watts, back in her office today after a trip to China, has called for relocating beavers. “I do not support the killing of wildlife,” she said in a statement.

Way to support your staff! Maybe the mayor will personally solve the problem by taking the surplus toothy little fellows home with her.

It may be this philosophy that drove the city of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas to solve their failed animal shelter problem by simply turning unwanted dogs loose in the national forest. Sure, it’s illegal and the dogs might starve out there but at least you don’t have people telling you that you’re “inhumane, cruel and unethical,”

The last posting refers to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Kapp decision which validated a race-based commercial fishery quota in British Columbia. A further article goes on to point out that race based quotas just create a new class of victims.

Quotas are one-size-fits-all remedies for problems that deserve more careful and specific treatment. The way to help Canadians in poverty, including aboriginals discriminated against in the past, is to provide targeted money and education based on individual need. The worst thing a government can do is to use the scattered approach of quotas, which only creates new victims.

To illustrate, in the West Coast fishery, the new quota victims include fishermen of Vietnamese, Japanese and even aboriginal ancestry. The combination of the discrimination-is-OK section of the Charter and federal policy means Kim Nguyen, the first woman of Vietnamese ancestry to join the B.C. fishing industry, is now a second-class Canadian citizen.

The Charter-plus-policy discrimination racket also means George Horne, an aboriginal who has been fishing for 50 years and who belongs to the Saanich Indian Band, can’t fish commercially on an equal basis because of such quotas. He belongs to the “wrong” aboriginal collective.

A third unintended victim of intended racial quotas is Leslie Budden.

Budden is of Japanese ancestry and wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006 to note how her family now faced discrimination for the second time in a century because they were not of the proper race. She noted how in the 1920s the federal government created race-based commercial fisheries that handicapped those of Japanese origin — including her grandfather, Rintaro Hayashi. Eventually, the fishermen went to court and won. Equal rights were restored in the fishery by the Privy Council in England in 1929.

As noted in the previous post it will remain to be seen how this decision plays out in other areas.

On June 27, 2008 the Supreme Court of Canada delivered its’ decision in the Kapp case.

Giving exclusive commercial fishing licences to aboriginal groups is consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and does not discriminate against non-aboriginal fishermen, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled yesterday in a unanimous decision.

Ruling on what’s known as the Kapp case, the country’s top court said a federal fisheries program that gives three native bands a 24-hour jump-start on fishing for salmon in British Columbia’s Fraser River is not unconstitutional because it qualifies as an affirmative action program.

The government was taken to court by a group of non-aboriginal fishermen who argued the program violates their Charter equality rights because they were discriminated against on the basis of race.

**********

In its decision, the court acknowledged the program “has a detrimental effect on non-aboriginal commercial fishers” and “that the disadvantage is related to racial differences,” but found the program falls under the section of the charter that protects affirmative action programs from constitutional challenges.

“By their very nature, programs designed to ameliorate the disadvantage of one group will inevitably exclude individuals from other groups,” the court wrote. “This does not necessarily make them either unconstitutional or ‘reverse discrimination.’”

The Charter section in question — Section 15(2) — gives governments the right to implement a program that “has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups” and in this case, the Supreme Court agreed with the Crown that the communal fishing licences granted to the Musqueam, Burrard and Tsawwassen bands meet the relevant criteria.

“The disadvantage of aboriginal people is indisputable,” the court said, and the bands in this case “were in fact, disadvantaged in terms of income, education, and a host of other measures.” The special licences are an attempt to negotiate solutions to aboriginal fishing rights claims and they provide economic opportunities and promote band self-sufficiency, thereby relating to the goals of improving conditions, the court said.

Above and beyond the obvious ones of the non-native commercial fishermen who had brought the suit, there were other concerns about the court’s decision.

Traditionally there are two arguments invoked to justify racial preferences in allocating resources and opportunities: 1) Such preferences are necessary to compensate for past wrongs and to give disadvantaged groups a leg up; and 2) they are necessary to ensure diversity of perspectives and ideas.

The court declared that the racialist system for allocating fishing rights is legal, but what’s disconcerting is that the court relied on argument No. 1. True, the second argument wasn’t available — no one was saying that the commercial fishery is like a law school class where diversity is needed to add cultural richness. But the problem with using reverse discrimination to compensate historically disadvantaged groups is that this approach was discredited long ago.

Yes, aboriginals as a group have suffered persecution and, yes, aboriginals have been disadvantaged as a result. But if the government is going to redress this past wrong, it needs to be certain that a) any individual being compensated has personally been injured and b) any individual at whose expense the compensation is being made is responsible for, or benefited from, the injury.

This stuff is still new to Canadians, but Americans have been dealing with it for decades as their country struggled with the legacy of slavery. Early on, some U.S. civil rights activists also fell into the trap of thinking that because John is black and Peter is white, and because blacks as a group are disadvantaged compared to whites, it’s fair to give preference to John over Peter, without knowing anything about their individual circumstances.

As the philosopher Carl Cohen wrote in a seminal 1979 paper, “rights do not and cannot inhere in skin-color groups. Individuals have rights, not races.” Last week, the Supreme Court justices showed themselves stunningly ignorant of this widely accepted ethical principle, declaring that the “fact that some individual members of the (aboriginal) bands may not experience personal disadvantage does not negate the group disadvantage suffered by band members.”

**********

Now, some Canadians might think, “OK, so my government is engaging in racial preferences. But is it not a pretty trivial entitlement that the non-aboriginal fishers are being denied, this right to fish for 24 hours? Why begrudge aboriginals a small advantage?”

Race-based approaches to social organization are never trivial. As Mr. Cohen noted: “Protests over segregated lunch counters had as their target not the culinary opportunities denied, but the immoral character of the ground of their denial.”

Ethnocultural leaders might be tempted to celebrate last week’s ruling, but they shouldn’t. The flip side of racial preferences is racial profiling. When governments engage in racial preferences they are actually practicing racial profiling, by meting out differential treatment to individuals based on generalizations about the racial groups to which they belong.

Regardless, the Court has spoken. The question is whether they have now set a precedent that will become the norm.

Rush Limbaugh has had his conservative talk show renewed until 2016.

The Drudge Report notes that his “earnings now pace him ahead of the annual salaries for network news anchors: Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer - combined!”

I think this tells us something, although I’m not exactly sure what.