UK citizens, are you aware that from the 26th January this year, you may have become a de facto criminal?

I’m not referring to that bag of weed hidden in your sock drawer, nor the drunken theft of those road signs a few years back. No, what I am referring to is hidden on your computer, in a folder within a folder; it’s probably got some nondescript name such as ‘Tax Stuff’ or ‘Word Documents’. Ladies and gentlemen, I am referring to your pornography collection.

The last time your solo-surfing material got you into trouble it was probably with your mum or your girlfriend, and you may well have been 15-years-old. But now the government is poking its long nose in where, quite frankly, I’d rather they didn’t.

Sections 63-67 and 71 of the United Kingdom Criminal Justice and Immigration Act on the possession of extreme pornographic images now dictate that it is an offence to possess certain images.

There are several key areas where this legislation poses cause for concern.

For example, ‘life threatening’ and ‘serious injury’ are not defined anywhere in the act; it is left to the judge and jury to decide whether an image counts as such. So would a shallow bleeding cut inflicted with a knife count as ‘serious injury’? Consider that anything that breaks the skin would be enough for an Actual Bodily Harm charge, as opposed to the less serious Battery. What about somebody with their hands around someone’s neck in an asphyxiation scenario? Truth is, you don’t really know until you’re on trial, which is not going to help your defence.

Moreover, the images do not have to be ‘real’ to be eligible under the legislation. Fake wounds count, as well as fake weapons and staged scenarios, as long as they are ‘realistic’ and ‘explicit’. If you own any BDSM pornography in which all the participants have given their consent and in which careful control has been exercised during production to make sure no-one is hurt, well, that’s illegal too.

So, what are the penalties?

That’s pretty serious when you consider that it is likely everybody involved consented of his or her own free will. But wait, there’s more.

Your image that did no lasting damage to anyone has just landed you on a list of pedophiles and rapists, which can seriously damage your future prospects.

The UK legal establishment has long been overly harsh on consenting practitioners of BDSM, as the infamous R v Brown case continues to show. It remains to be seen how much money and time individual police forces are willing to spend perusing prosecutions in these cases, especially when you consider that the majority of ‘offenders’ are unlikely to pose a risk to society.

So why bother? The law was a reaction to the case of Jane Longhurst, a teacher who was murdered by a porn-obsessed psychopath. Jane’s mother, Liz, has publicly lobbied Parliament to ban the images that she believes contributed to her daughter’s death. However, this thinking seems flawed, as put by Clair Lewis of the Consenting Adult Action Network:

Source.

CAAN predicts the laws will lead to “harmless criminals and victimless crimes.” The UK is sleepwalking into a 1984 culture, with our sleazy politicians introducing reactive legislations through the back door for popularist appeasement, and it is people like you and me who will suffer for it.

For information and advice about this issue please visit Backlash-uk.org.uk
Click HERE for a Government circular on the legislation.

Tony Blair is one of the most unpopular prime ministers in recent memory for the U.K. Famous caricatures of him as President Bush's lapdog or servant were relatively common in the years following his support of the Iraq war. I remember several Britons telling me about celebrating when he finally stepped down. Now, he wants to be president of the EU. But only if "you give me the power".

This desire of Blair's occurs in the middle of an important change in the nature of the European Union itself. Some may remember the proposed European Constitution in 2005 that France and the Netherlands rejected. In 2007 a similar yet revised plan was put forward, variously called "The Lisbon Treaty", "The Reform Treaty", and "The Treaty Establishing The European Community". The proposed treaty would amend already existing treaties between EU nations and make the position of EU council president a position with real power behind it. The treaty would give the council president, among other things, power to intervene in trade and defense. Because of this and other powers the position is now being dubbed "President of the EU" by some.

An editorial in the Guardian explains about Blair:

But nonetheless Blair

And has already gotten the backing of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been actively promoting Blair, according to a recent article in the Guardian.

One reason he seems to want the position is his reported unhappiness with his lack of position in the Israeli - Palestinian talks this year, despite being the Middle East envoy.

Oh, and he may be losing his job.

Fortunately, Blair himself doubts that the position's powers will be ratified by the EU and the position has two other possible candidates. Former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, backed by Germany, and the current Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker.

Blair may just be staying true to his nature, which lusts for a key position in whatever he does, but those positions also seem to be the ones where he can do the most damage.

Dear British people, from now on please think of Americans as aliens from outer space. It would be better if you did because we have decided to kidnap you whenever the fuck we want, much like an alien abduction. But it won’t be as bad as being abducted by aliens because there will not be an anal probe. (Although we cannot guarantee that.) Actually, scratch that. It will be worse than an alien abduction because they take you in the night, shove something up your nose, maybe take some sperm and usually close with an anal assault, but America will take you and throw you down a dark hole never to be seen again. That's just how we do things now.

Well, that should make the British eager to help us out in the “War on Terror.”

Right, never mind that the British are considered friends of ours. Thanks for helping out in Iraq and everything, but go fuck yourself. And sorry about that extradition treaty you signed with us but we’re going to pass.

Apparently we attempted to kidnap the nephew of a chap named Stanley Tollman, who is a former director of Chelsea Football Club. Both Tollman and his nephew are wanted for bank fraud and tax evasion. Now, I think anyone associated with Chelsea is a total douche bag but that does not mean they should be kidnapped. Or their nephew. We have been attempting to get Tollman through extradition hearings, you know, like a fucking civilized country. But I guess we also don’t have a problem snatching someone off the street, like the mafia.

The US legal representative explained our ridiculous position.

Sweet. Hey, when was slavery wrapped up? Oh, right, the 1860s. I’m going to go ahead and say that some laws from back in those days aren’t the best. What do you say we let this one die, boys?

Well, for all of you who are from the UK, the Scottish National Party has set out to make history and has finally won the most seats in the Scottish Parliament election, marking the Labour Party's first defeat in 50 years.

The SNP won 47 of the 129 seats compared to a extremely close 46 for the Labour Party. The rest went to the Conservatives with 17, the Liberal Democrats with 16, and the last to Independent-small-time Parties.

Tony Blair is planning on announcing his “step down” next week, as the Labour Party was butchered in the rest of the UK as well, after being hounded for its support in the unpopular war in Iraq.

But enough with that... the big question is, what the hell is going to happen next? This change in authority suggests that there’s a strong chance that Scotland could succeed. It does seem like the opportune time, as the SNP is strongly pushing for Scotland’s independence. But we'll have to wait and see. As for me, having ancestry from Scotland, I’m very excited by this news...now where the hell is my Braveheart DVD and fucking kilt?

Not that we couldn’t have told them this 10 years ago, but today the United Nations has declared the United Kingdom the worst place to grow up, out of 21 countries in the developed world. The United States follows closely behind.

A Unicef poll of children aged 11, 13 and 15 assessed the well-being of young people in six categories: material wealth, health and safety, standard of education, relationships with family and peers, the behaviours of the young people, and their own perceptions of their personal happiness and development.

Children’s testimonials rated the Netherlands as the most positive place to grow up, followed by Sweden and Denmark. Children in the UK, the US and Hungary had the least pleasant experiences growing up.

In a country where kids can be handed an ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) for such offences as wearing a hooded top, it's unsurprising that Unicef finds the UK’s children and adolescents suffering from low self-esteem, unhappiness and pessimism about the future. Kids reported having poor relationships with family and peers, with more than a third (approx 36%) saying they had been bullied within the last two months. A similar number of 15-year-olds have no aspirations beyond the lowest-skilled work, and 16% of children are currently living below the poverty line. Adolescents in the UK are likely to put themselves at risk from drugs, excessive alcohol intake and unsafe sex, with 40% of British teenagers having sex below the age of consent.

Children’s Commissioner for England, Al Aynsley-Green, has criticised the government’s ‘blame-the-kids’ response to problems in society, saying:

Not content with making the creation and distribution of "violent porn" illegal, UK legislators will be criminalizing possession of pictures of "material featuring violence that is, or appears to be, life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury."

While what happened to Jane Longhurst is a tragedy, it seems odd that parliament would be so quick to place the blame on the pornography viewed by her killer, rather than the killer himself, for her murder. If a law is required to deal with a problem of this scope then presumably thousands of people view this sort of pornographic material all the time, and cases like these, particularly in the UK, which has a relatively low murder rate, are rare. So if so many people are exposed to this kind of porn so often and incidents like this happen so rarely, how is it possible to place the blame on still images?

There are those in the UK who foresee problems with the ban as well.

It's amazing to me, an American, that people interested in S&M actually have representatives trying to preserve their rights at all, since in the US anything even slightly different from straight, vanilla sex is usually ostracized and demonized, and never taken seriously by legislators.

Even those who don't find the images stimulating should take pause when governments of free countries decide to start making particular types of content (made with consenting adults) illegal. Particularly when they're not depicting any actual illegal activity; the condition for what constitutes a "violent image" clearly states that the image need only "appear to be" threatening in order to qualify. It's a slippery slope, and not too difficult to imagine what will be next on the ban list.

Many people think that terror prevention efforts are over the top, that the threat is minimal compared to the price we're paying, that we're worrying about nothing.

Thankfully some people are still taking it seriously.

from BBC News Online

I await the mawkish tidal wave of introspection, self-blame, conspiracy theories and denial.