Over in the the Grundian there is a story which claims that the Non-Taxpaying Taxpayers’ Alliance, an influential pressure group with links to the Tory front-bench, had set up a charity under a different name so it can get tax relief on donations. This ‘charity’ was then organising up to 40% tax subsidies on individual donations.

The Chief Executive has denied that there is any alliance or that the organisation is operating as a ‘Tory-front’ - yet several policy recommendations have found themselves being suggested by the Tory front-bench at a later date. For instance, the public sector pay freeze.

Charity Commission regulators have been looking into this and will continue to scrutinise the situation.

Not even in Gov’t and the CONservatives already have their hands in the till… tut tut!

It came out yesterday that MI5 has being accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Allegedly,  the security service had offered Rangzieb Ahmed ‘encouragement’ (i.e. a bribe) to drop the allegation that its officers were aware of his torture in Pakistan, and were even indirectly involved.

It turns out that despite there being evidence that Rangzieb Ahmed had been involved criminal activities, he was allowed to travel to Pakistani where the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) were waiting for him (having been kindly tipped off by MI5). There Rangzieb Ahmed had three of his fingernails ripped out and was interrogated allegedly based on questions supplied to ISI by MI5 and Greater Manchester police (GMP)! It would apear that MI5 and GMP were well aware that torture would be used to get answers to their questions.

Not our finest hour!

If this turns out to be true then heads should role in MI5 and GMP - Torture can never be justified, but trying to cover up these actions is horrific!

The facts are that  information gleaned under torture conditions are highly unreliable - I’m sure anyone would own-up to being a ‘terrorist’ if whilst being asked they were having their nails pulled out. Aside from the obvious violation of human rights torture poses, if we ignore the Geneva Conventions, other nations and groups will equally ignore it. I can’t communicate enough how much these sorts of shenanigans wind me up, especially when they are glorified in TV programs like 24.

It turns out that despite there being evidence that Rangzieb Ahmed had been involved criminal activities, he was allowed to travel to Pakistani where the ISI were waiting (having been kindly tipped off by MI5).

Rant Warning!

When will we learn that torture is a piss poor way of gaining intelligence!

I think a Team America World Police quote sums it up:

We’ve lost I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E, I repeat, we have no I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E!!!

I don’t care if some one is guilty or not, use of torture is a pointless exercise - and people who contemplate using it are basically sub-human scum!

Watch this, are the police being over the top or just doing there job?

Perhaps F.I.T. Watch do use purposefully antagonistic tactics, but I found this footage shocking and unsettling. There’s authoritarianism and then there’s taking the p**s!

I’ll leave it to you to decide :S

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Full Grundian Story here.

In the Sun (yep I feel wrong linking to that rag), have suggest that teenage crime has soared 60% under New Labour based on Ministry of Justice figures. This despite the endless Labour gimmicks initiatives set-up to counter act these issues.

In addition, the BBC reports that Professor Irwin Waller , an expert on crime reduction, has said Labour had failed in its 1997 Election pledge to be ‘tough on the causes of crime’.

Fortunately, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne, has argued for a shift in focus in crime policy - from punishment to crime prevention. Locally, we would like to achieve the same.

A United Nations report to the general assembly, by Martin Scheinen, declared that the UK had breached the human rights directive. The report was particularly critical of ‘extraordinary rendition’ and how the British Labour Gov’t fully co-operated in the program.

In my opinion, trying to gain useful information via torture is totally pointless. Programs like ‘24′ may glorify the practice, but the facts are that after any amount of torture people are likely to say anything to make it stop. This fact alone renders interrogation as ineffective means of extracting accurate and useful intelligence. To use this technique at all smacks of shear desperation.

All this came on the same day that the Home Secretary admitted in a Parliamentary answer that the DNA of a baby under one year old had been stored on the police national database.

Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, accused the Home Office of being

illegal, immoral, and ineffective

for keeping the DNA of a baby on the national database.

The authoriatian style of Labour Gov’t seems to have no boundaries! Luckily, the Liberal Democrats will always fight to protect human rights and our basic liberties - Yet another reason why I joined-up!