I could hardly care less about who slept with who. Frankly I don’t really understand why anybody does care about such things. It may be mildly interesting in the same way you might be interested to know which of your frinds were sleeping together but it is hardly likely to change your life.

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that there is a case for preventing people profiting from selling their bedtime exploits story. You could make a case to say that to do so was prostituting yourself and prostitution is illegal still. It probably shouldn’t be but that is another argument for another day.

I do have real issues with the fact that someone who has been involved in some sort of relationship should be legaly prevented from saying so. I understand the argument that the ‘personality’ may suffer if they are exposed. Their family relationships may be damaged and they may lose income in the future if word gets out that they have been cheating on their partner. Tough.

If it is a problem for you and your career then maybe you should have thought about that before you did whatever you did. You have the right to say nothing about your personal life but why should you have the right to prevent another person speaking about what you have done with them.

There is something very uncomfortable about gagging people and preventing them saying what they have done. I don’t like the idea of kiss and tell stories and maybe there could be a way of preventing the newspapers and magazines from doing anything more than printing the facts of the case. i.e. no sexy pictures and no sexing up of the story but the other party should be able to have free speach about factual matters.

I have no idea who is involved in these gagging orders. I could list 100 names and suggest links between them all and I could be right or I could be wrong but the reality is this. Does it matter? Who cares what they have been up to. Unless it is a politician who tells others they should behave properly, according to their ‘family values’ while being a very different person in private it is none of my business.

I do think everybody should be entitled to a private life and any mistakes need to be dealt with by the people concerned and their families. The problem, in my opinion, is that newspapers are so ready and willing to pay out lots of money for a salacious story. If you have an affair and word gets out then so be it. You should not be able to prevent honest reporting but you should be able to prevent people profiting from your story and any consequent suffering you and you family experience.

Perhaps a requirement to pay the same amount to all parties mentioned in such a story would make newspaper editors less keen to spread the muck far and wide.

I don’t claim to know the solution to this problem but the current situation where one party to an affair can be named while the other cannot because of a super inunction is ridiculous and unfair. Something must be done to change the situation to support freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the freedom and privacy of individuals.

Surely this motorist was helping the police to achieve that aim by flashing his lights at oncoming motorists? He should have been paid by the police for helping them with their dafety campaign rather than fined for helping them.

If it is true that the whole purpose of these cameras is to slow traffic and reduce speeding surely the best thing is to have lots of motorists driving around warning other drivers to slow down.

The only justification for this fine is that speed cameras are set up to catch motorists speeding to raise money from fines becasue this case has proved that they are not put in place to try to improve road sfety by slowing drivers down.

BBC News – CPS defends speed gun warning driver prosecution.

You could easily wonder if the drug dealers are not the people encouraging governments to continue this war on drugs because they are the main beneficiaries. Yes we often hear of drug busts taking x amount of this drug or tht out of circulation but if the availability on the street is anything to go by there seems to be a heck of a lot of drugs getting through.

When there are such vast amounts of money being made the criminals can spend fortunes to achieve their aims and they use ever more sophisticated methods. On the TV news just the other day a tunnel between Mexico and the US was shown. It was over half a mile long and 30 feet below ground. Complete with electric lighting and a small rail track system for transporting the drugs. It is one of no doubt many such tunnels and it shows just how much money the criminals make and how much they can afford to spend. The war on drugs isn’t working and is never likely too.

So, it was refreshing to hear an ex labour minister proposing that there should be some sort of controlled legalisation. Such a move with the drugs being made available under medical supervision and perhaps with taxes applied would possibly solve Britain’s debt crisis in a few shot years thanks to all those extra taxes.

We would suddenly find crime reducing significantly and it would be more than likely we would have to start laying off police officers for lack of work for them to do. The drugs ‘business’ almost certainly accounts for a huge proportion of crime from burglaries to raise money to feed a habit, prostitution to feed a habit and inter gang deaths from fights over drug dealing areas.

If a former DRUGS minister feels the system isn’t working we should surely sit up and pay attention. Nor is he the first to say such things after leaving office. We even had an MP called David Cameron arguing the case for liberalization of drugs policy some years ago.

But of course Ministers are appalled by the idea now. The labour party was quick to establish that they do not share Bob Ainsworth’s opinions. All the parties are scared of what the public would think of such a move but the only reason the public would be upset is because we have been brainwashed for years about how dangerous drugs are to society and that argument has only been used to prop up the drugs war. It smells like vested interests.

The drug dealers make huge amounts of money because drugs are illegal. Governments and political parties support the drug war. Why would any political party be in favour of a system that leads to very wealthy illegal drug dealers?

It can only be a matter of time until some sort of changes are made to this crazy system. Everybody knows it does not work. Everyone knows the only people who benefit are the major drug dealers and everyone knows that drugs are at the root of a huge proportion of the crimes we see across the country. There has to be a better way and a caring government that really wants to look after the population should be looking at alternative ways that can reduce the problems and treat drug use as a medical problem like alcoholism rather than a criminal matter like bank robbery.

We should all applaud and support Bob Ainsworth because he knows what he is talking about and he is suggesting a better approach that would benefit everyone in the country. Except of course those very wealthy drugs barons who need the drugs war to continue so they keep on making their millions of pounds in profits.

Now it has been confirmed that this is not the case. The Data Watchdogs Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said such photos did not breach the Data Protection Act.

BBC News – Nativity photos not against law, says data watchdog.

Thank goodness for that. Lets hope we begin to see a little more sanity in various other aspects of modern life that have become clouded, confused and restricted in rules, regulations and, apparently, urban myths.

The campaign is running with the hashtag of #IAMSPARTACUS in a reference to the film in which all the defeated slaves said they were Spartacus to prevent the Roman soldiers identifying the true leader.

It is a wonderful demonstration of how ludicrous the decision to prosecute the original poster was. We all say stupid things at times and I expect many of us have had to resist the temptation to report the only thing we have to declare at an airport is the bomb we packed earlier.

Yes it is stupid to think they would think it was funny and people who have said such things have found themselves arrested but saying something at an airport is very different to saying some throwaway comment on Twitter or some other social networking chat site.

The authorities now look extremely foolish. Everyone knows it was even more stupid to prosecute this person than it was for him to post that tweet in the first place. At least when he typed that he was doing it without thinking as an off the cuff remark. Whereas the authorities must, we assume, have thought about what they should do.

Now they are obliged to either check every tweet referring to a bomb and Robin Hood Airport and perhaps prosecute hundreds of people or they will just look really stupid.

If they thought it was a credible threat they obviously had to look into it but having done so it was clear their was no threat and they should have dropped it there and then. If they were worried that it might lead to lots of people tweeting such comments well they got that totally wrong. There are now hundreds of such tweets.

It makes you wonder if there are legions of policemen spending all day tracking tweets to see what people are saying to see who they can jump on. Presumably the authorities are of the opinion that terrorists operate by giving rather silly warning messages on twitter and if that is how they think then god help us.

If I tweet that someone has annoyed me and I am going to wack him around the head with a cast iron saucepan it could be a real threat but most likely it isn’t. If every person who ever issued a threat of some sort was to be arrested then there would be very few people doing anything other than investigating or being investigated and we would have a lot more very full prisons.

The whole case is a joke and those in charge should be feeling very embarrassed and if you want to make a point then Tweet with the hashtag #IAmSpartacus

If you buy a train ticket any reasonable person would assume that you have paid to travel anywhere between the two ends of the journey you have paid for. If you wanted to get on part way along the line or get off at a railway station before your journey ends you would be perfectly justified in believing you could do so. Not so apparently.

Below is a link to the BBC website where you can hear an interview with a traveller who decided to get off his train one stop early and was landed with a penalty charge of £155 for invalidating his ticket by getting off the train early.

The train operators response was that this was in the terms and conditions and the charge was entirely valid and justified. I am gobsmacked that a company can treat it’s paying customers in such a disgraceful fashion. The traveller had paid for a ticket which took him further than he needed to travel. For the train company to hold him hostage and only release him on payment of that additional payment of £155 is beyond belief.

The lessons from this sad tale are

1: Don’t travel by train because the train company really are out to get you and rip you off.

2: If you do travel by train you should first get a lawyer to read through the Terms & Conditions for the purchase of your ticket.

BBC – PM: Great Railway Journeys of the World.

Putting it bluntly this guy is an old man who is not as fast or precise a thinker as he presumably once was. I saw a program about him some time back and remember thinking he was not entirely with it these days.

He may be many things but he is hardly a great threat to society and I am left with the feeling that the police should have wrapped this case up far sooner sent him home with a flea in his ear.

If the police choose to investigate something it is entirely their choice to devote time to it. I imagine that the high profile nature of this case since his ‘admission of assisting in the death of an ex-lover’ was broadcast on TV. I suspect that was the reason for so much police time being spent on the case but it was the decision of the police to do that, not Ray Gosling.

He may have been trying to boost his profile to generate some TV fees or tabloid newspaper payments but  doubt very much his motivation was to waste police time. I imagine that was the last thing he was thinking about.

Does this mean we are going to have the police trawling over all the outlandish things that are said on TV these days? All those people who have tried to sound more important than they are on Big Brother and other reality shows should perhaps be quaking in their boots.

I don’t know all the circumstances of this case but my feeling is that this guy is a rather sad old fella and deserves sympathy and tea rather than a court appearance. I know rules is rules but this was as much a waste of court time as it was anything else. The police should be questioned about why they invested so much effort into this and a case like this should surely never have come to court.

I have seen plenty of comedians on TV talking about blowing up the Houses Of Parliament, suggesting that maybe Guy Fawkes wasn’t so bad and I am sure, unless my memory fails me, that I have seen news programmes with members of the public when invited to give their views on MP’s expenses saying that MP’s should be hung from the lamposts. I have certainly said that myself about some of the banks management.

So the point is we all say things we don’t mean either in jest or to make a point but it doesn’t mean we will carry out the threat. I’ll bet that in any social gathering someone, at some point will say something along the lines of we should shoot the lot of them, they all need hanging or we should blow the lot of them up.

So, when a 26 year old, on finding out that Robin Hood airport was closed due to snow he posted on Twitter that, “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” it was pretty obvious to anyone but an imbecile that it was said in jest. The week referred to the fact that he was due to fly from that airport a week later.

Yes we live in times of uncertainty and there is an ever present threat, as there always has been right back to Guy Fawkes and before, though the availability of explosives does seem to be commonplace these days.

Anyway, apparently the MI5, MI6, all the government terrorist threat experts and the bomb squad use twitter to find out where all the threats are coming from. So, it comes as no surprise that as soon as they saw a joke posted they leapt into action. The result of which was that this man appeared in court last week charged with menacing or something similarly serious sounding.

Why didn’t they just charge him with speaking in a public forum? That seems to be the real crime he committed and in this day and age it seems we are not allowed to say anything we might think, or maybe we are not allowed to think. The thought police are very active and apparently spend their time on Twitter.

He was found guilty and released on bail awaiting sentencing which, it was pointed out, might well include a custodial sentence. Maybe all the prisons are empty and they are looking for ways to fill them up again but that wasn’t the situation last time I heard any figures. Rumor has it that our jails are filled to bursting.

You would think that when there are real crimes being committed every day and people live in fear of attack, hiding inside their homes every day, that the police really do have better things to do.

It’s yet another sad tale of society, or rather governance and regulation, gone mad and a sad day for justice and democracy.

It seems very odd that when everything appeared to be going pear-shaped in Iran after their election politicians here were applauding the freedom Twitter gave people to voice their opinions yet as soon as a British citizen says something the British authorities don’t like they come down on him like a ton of bricks.

Hypocrisy is best served by British politicians because they truly are the experts.

It is good to know we live in a country that could support users of twitter and other websites who were able to get news out about what was happening in Iran after the disputed election result there. Meanwhile here we are prevented from talking about something as unimportant as details about…. something or other that presumably is about or in reference to Tiger Woods and whatever he has been doing.

I thought freedom of speech was something we were supposed to enjoy in this country. We are quick to criticize other countries that restrict it. Personally I couldn’t care less about what TW has been up to and wouldn’t want to publish it if I knew, but it does bother me that I am prevented from doing so.

If you want to know I expect it is all over the American media on their websites but I can’t be bothered to look myself and no doubt people who do live in freedom loving democracies are able to Tweet about it.

Personally I’d rather go and take some photographs of some unimportant buildings somewhere in the UK. Oh, I forgot. I can’t do that because I’ll get arrested for terrorism.

What is this country coming too?

Some people go to extremes and a woman in Washington on Wearside got an ASBO earlier this year because she made so much noise during lovemaking. She has just lost an appeal that claimed it was a breach of her human rights to deny her the opportunity to express her personality whilst making love.

She now faces a trial for breaching the ASBO and making a breach of the peace for her noisy behavior since the order was put in place.

I have every sympathy for the neighbors but this does seem ridiculous. I would have thought that advice about making the bedroom more soundproof might have been a better use of the authorities time than to spend it putting this lady through the embarrassment of an ASBO and now court cases.

Presumably there is the possibility of a custodial sentence if you breach an asbo and the idea of sending someone to jail for being noisy when they make love is too ludicrous for words. I hope they find a solution that allows her to enjoy her fun and her neighbors to sleep peacefully.