The Laws of Physics Disproven 509

 in Dundee Uni by

The passing of wood through glass is a remarkable feat. There are those who believe that royalty can perform miracles – there is a well developed cult around the vain and vicious Charles I, for example. It now appears that the presence of the future Charles III also has the ability to suspend the laws of physics.

The police have now issued extensive CCTV footage of the attack on the vehicle of Charles and Camilla on the fringes of the anti-tuition fee demonstrations, and the media have been replete with more nonsense about Camilla being poked with a stick. Yet of all the CCTV footage and numerous photographs, there is no evidence at all of this attack and all the images show the car windows to be closed – as they would be. One gets cracked but not holed.

There is in fact no evidence at all of any intent to harm the persons of the expensive royal layabouts, as opposed to discomfiting them and damaging their vehicle. It is fascinating that the media continually repeats the “Camilla attacked with a stick” line when it is so blatantly untrue. There appears to be a closing of ranks by the whole Establishment to perpetuate the myth – both the Home Office and St James Palace have deliberately fostered the myth by refusing to confirm or deny.

Personally I would not touch Camilla with a bargepole. I dislike violence at demonstrations. Demonstrations, good, riots, bad is my basic mantra. Attacks on people in a civil demonstration are always wrong, including attacks on the police unless in self defence. I did not join in the outrage at the prosecutions of violent demonstrators after the big Lebanon demonstration in London, because I personally witnessed the group hurling dangerous missiles at police who were neither attacking, threatening nor kettling them. That is absolutely unacceptable.

But a policy as appalling as the withdrawal of state funding from university teaching, carried out by Nick Clegg by one of the most blatant political breaches of fatih with the public in history, , is bound to provoke huge anger. The government reaps what it sows. Demonstrators should not set out to hurt people. But all the evidence shows they had no intention of hurting Charles and Camilla.

I have personally worked closely with the royal family’s close protection officers in organising two state visits abroad, and plainly they too could see there was no intent to injure – that is why weapons were not drawn. They deserve commendation rather than the crap spouted out by Sky News, who seem to think they should have gunned down the odd student.

All of which serves to take the focus off vicious police attacks on students and the use of kettling to detain people who were seeking peacefully to express their views. Kettling people in extreme cold and with no access to toilet facilities raises questions on illegal detention which genuine liberals in government would wish to address. What is it? Is it a form of arrest? What is the status of the fenced pens into which people are herded? Should they not be formalised as places of police detention, and individuals booked in and given access to lawyers? If that is not possible, this detention – which can be for many hours – is not lawful.

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509 thoughts on “The Laws of Physics Disproven”

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  • somebody

    glenn @ 9.39 pm Steaming – and going mob handed through train carriages too.

    steaming

    Adj. 1. Drunk, intoxicated with alcohol. Abb. of steaming drunk.

    2. Racing, moving quickly. E.g.”We were steaming up the motorway at 140.”

    3. Very angry. E.g.”I’ve never seen her so angry, she was steaming.”

    Adj./Adv. An intensifier, such as ‘blinking’, ‘bleeding’. E.g.”That steaming idiot has spent all our holiday money on a new stereo.”

    Noun. A act of aggressive robbery, often taking place on public transport, whereby groups of youths terrorize their victims.

    http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/s.htm

  • dreoilin

    Comment threads here often take little detours, wander a bit, and come back on topic again. From what I’ve seen of Jon, I doubt if he’d take to deleting all off-topic comments. I think he’s more concerned with deliberate disruptions and provocations — like Larry’s “When did you stop beating your wife?” type of silliness, or Tony when he’s drinking. (Tony sober is another matter).

    I do think Jon has taken on quite an onerous job, if it’s do be done properly.

    Thanks for the ‘steaming’ info, Glenn. I hadn’t heard of that trick before.

    Back in the late sixties and early seventies, I don’t remember infiltration of protests by police, or agents provocateur, or those intent on violence for their own satisfaction. But I was young and naive then. They certainly turned up at our protest against US troops at Shannon Airport, black balaclavas, the lot, throwing stuff at the Gardai (police) from the roof of the airport building, although there hadn’t been as much as 2 seconds’ trouble before they appeared. Who they were I have no idea, but they certainly got coverage on TV that night. “Anarchists” were mentioned. I know a handful of (bioregional) anarchists online, and they are all firmly anti-violence, as well as anti-torture and anti-war.

    Infiltration is a dirty, dirty, tactic, which makes it virtually impossible for anyone to organise a peaceful protest and expect it to remain that way.

  • tony_opmoc

    Steelback,

    Did you offer to “anonymously” as much as possible – whilst he was in jail – without knowing that he had some rather rich friends – offer to put him up in your home…

    Because I knew next to fuck all about him – but I saw him put Hillary Clinton’s knickers in a serious Twist – and all These Right Wing American Cunts Wanted To Kill Him…

    I Did Say He Can Stay Round My Place – If He Doesn’t Get a Better Offer…

    You See I Don’t Really Care If He is Working For The Israelis or The CIA…

    He Has Got So Many People All Over The World Wanting To Kill Him – I Did Say He Can Stay Round Ours…

    The Police Are Outside Our Home Almost Continuously With There Ray Guns

    But He Ain’t Here At The Moment

    But This Shit Is Not Going To Go Away

    He Will Still Be Welcome in Our Home in The Future

    He Would Get On Brilliantly With My Son Who Also Just Puts It Out

    Censorship Free

    You Can Say What The Fuck You Want In Any Language You Work – In Text if You Like…

    But HD Internet TV Works a Lot Faster and You Can See The Pimples on Your Skin Just Like On Channel 4 HDTV News Bulletins

    But maybe you just want to be a canditate for your local BNP party.

    Tony

  • ingo

    Somebody, all I have got are the figures from Norfolk and Suffolk but they should be available on big brother watch as it mentionsd it in the article, it is a sister campaign of the taxpayers alliance sadly, the chap who runs it is called Alex Deane, the director is Matthew Elliott.

    I’m not surprised that the Eastern Daily Prattle looks to them for ‘advise’ and are prepared to be their mouthpiece, they are printing these figures in a conservative county and its obvious that these operators cannot justify their public spying with any back up results. They feed on public money and when pressed as to cite the arrest figures and convictions to justify their expensive service, CCTV operators poorf nothinmg, nothing at all as yet.

    This is the original article its penned from

    http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/the_4_8m_cost_of_norfolk_s_cctv_1_768466

    and this is the site of the bigbrother watch

    http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/who-we-are.html

    Sorry I can’t send you your specific figures, you are much better at trawling, but all in all I sduspect that there is an echelon working within the Conservatives who want to bust this coalition, as soon as possible, this is a wind up to the locals to react to it, imho.

    I could be wrong, its just a hunch.

    nighty night and hallo Tony. take care all.

  • Jon

    Tony – it is me moderating your posts. How many more complaints do you need to receive about your reams of random meandering before you pack it in?

    Glenn – that was me. Nothing wrong with your post, just that it made no sense once the object of your complaint had been removed. Go easy on me – moderation is fiddly and time-consuming, and the alternative is that we go back to no moderation at all.

  • mark golding - Children of Iraq

    Larry,

    I have no problem with your ‘third party’ ‘mark golding’ and I had even forgotten your attempt to disparage, your belittling of my friend, an elderly lady and libel.

    I am surprised that a lawyer (and a Federalist?)cannot address an issue in the first-party, Oh! but wait a minute, you have been exposed for posting ‘poison’ in, (not anonymous) but using another name to deceive.

    What is the good of a lawyer if that lawyer cannot look you in the eyes?

  • Jon

    Incidentally, if I get things wrong from time to time – as well I might – then apologies in advance. My hope is that the very limited sources of disruption we get here will, in time, get bored, and at that time we can go back to almost no deletions at all.

  • Larry from St. Louis

    Mark Golding,

    What does that even mean?

    And do you have any intention to ever making your “charity” and your solicitations for money a legal enterprise?

  • glenn

    Jon: All is clear – that must have been my rebuke to some rancid post by St. Loony that was also deleted. Fair enough, I’d mistaken it for a (to me) perfectly reasonable post earlier and couldn’t understand how it was offensive. That one was on another thread, my bad. Totally agree – it would look silly leaving rebukes up to offensive posts that are no longer there.

    Moderating is a thankless task in many regards, but you have cleaned up the blog a lot already. It is much more readable, the obvious wind-ups and spoilers are way down – thank you for doing this.

  • evgueni

    All this arguing about exactly who is to blame for our slavery, and all this splitting hairs over how exactly they are to blame, it is of little use. Who cares if it’s a world-wide conspiracy of bankers, masons, Zionists or giant lizards, or not a conspiracy in the conventional sense at all ?” just various elites squabbling amongst themselves but all the while pulling in roughly the same direction like ants as they opine that the status quo is nice and should be preserved. The question of ‘who is to blame’ is a red herring I think because the malaise is systemic and the cure must target the system. Whoever are the group or groups freeloading at our expense, and however they are organised amongst themselves, they are a symptom – not the cause.

    So the question that makes sense is ‘what is to blame?’ It seems clear to me that human nature is the real culprit here. It is opportunistic, self-serving and therefore corruptible. The toffs are corrupted by their privileged surroundings from birth, politicians are corrupted by power, policemen by authority and so on, no one is immune. Much as we like to think of ourselves as morally superior to such weasels drunk on their privilege, power and authority, we cannot know that we ourselves would not act in similar ways under similar circumstances. There is variation of course, but most people will fall somewhere in the middle between saint and sociopath. Our capacity for hypocrisy is a universal characteristic that is just part of our evolutionary inheritance. And that’s just tough. No such person as a good Czar.

    However, this is not to say that we cannot take advantage of the good in our human nature by developing social institutions that minimise moral hazard and capitalise on our co-operative impulses. Conscience is apparently an elastic parameter that depends on the perceived likelihood of our actions being discovered and punished by our peers. And that is extremely important, because it offers a practical cure for hypocrisy. Functional news media, coupled with a credible threat of action ought to ensure that people in positions of authority behave decently and equitably. That is the real meaning of ‘democratic accountability’.

    So what is to be done, how can we have true democratic accountability in practice? Well, this particular bicycle has been re-invented plenty already. As I mentioned elsewhere earlier, the Swiss have been building theirs for over 150 years. They have the closest thing to popular sovereignty on this planet. Popular sovereignty represents the credible threat of action to the politicians, financial and business elites, and this is showing results. But the Swiss bicycle is still missing something to lubricate it and help steer it – truly free news media, the sustainable model for which is yet to be discovered.

    The devil is as ever in the detail. The question of ‘what is to be done’ is inseparable from ‘how’. It is probably too much to dream of Initiative & Referendum in the UK just yet. But it does not stop the English Democrats, UKIP, George Galloway and even some of the more progressive MPs from the ‘centre-right’ parties talking about it. One day we’ll get I&R but before it happens almost certainly there will have to be more incremental democratisation of government, news media and the workplace. If we replace FPTP with AV this may turn out to be just such an incremental improvement and we have LibDems to thank for the chance. It’s a raw deal I know, but realistic alternatives are all even closer to status quo. Ironically, it was under Labour that we in the UK first got a little taste of I&R rights – at the local parish level, lol! (Sustainable Communities Act)

    So why do I keep harping on about the Swiss example. The reason is that it goes to the very heart of the problem and tackles the malaise ?” life’s propensity for parasitising itself (someone mentioned Dawkins and the “selfish” gene not long ago). The existence of parasites is a mere symptom, their identities and methods not material. Whatever their names and geographical locations, we cannot cure the underlying malaise by replacing these guys with ‘someone better’. It is authority itself that needs fundamentally to be re-thought. It is not true that we need to have strong leaders and positions of authority that cannot be Recalled. Rotating presidency is a much more elegant antidote to the corrupting lure of power than an outmoded constitutional monarchy. Issue politics is so much better than the blunt instrument of party politics. It is possible to have universal health care that is world class, free at the point of need and based on healthy competition for customers between the insurers, the hospitals and clinics. And I particularly like the optional ‘religion’ tax!

  • Alaric

    I agree, wholeheartedly, however without meeting the royals, I am ignorant as to their moral status role in the hierarchy of modern UK society, undecided yes, however I am aware that the Prime Minister (whoever that is) meets with the Queen weekly, see here

    “The Queen gives a weekly audience to the Prime Minister at which she has a right and a duty to express her views on Government matters. If either The Queen or the Prime Minister are not available to meet, then they will speak by telephone.

    These meetings, as with all communications between The Queen and her Government, remain strictly confidential. Having expressed her views, The Queen abides by the advice of her ministers.”

    (Source http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/QueenandGovernment/QueenandPrimeMinister.aspx)

    And it is this which brings into question, the influence, and thus, implicit power of the royals, let us not forget this

    “As head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.[55] Longstanding constitutional convention, however, has vested de facto executive authority in the office of Prime Minister and the Cabinet.[10] The Queen remains the “ultimate authority” of the military and retains the power to prevent its unconstitutional use”

    (Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Armed_Forces#Structure)

    Food for thought, as we enter 2011…

  • somebody

    This is off topic but I just wanted to say how appalled and disgusted I was by Jack Straw’s contribution to the demonization of Pakistanis last night on BBC2 Newsnight when he used the term ‘easy meat’ to describe the white girls who were victims of the gang convicted yesterday. The presenter Stephanie Flanders repeated it again during the item which included a contribution from the execrable Douglas Murray.

    The whole segment was racial incitement.

    This is the BBC webpage where the term is included in the headline.

    Sex abuse case prompts Straw plea

    Former home secretary Jack Straw says he believes some Pakistani men in Britain see white girls as “easy meat” after two men were jailed for running a grooming gang.

    Concerns over sex abuse grooming Grooming gang ringleaders jailed

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12141603

  • somebody

    Well, well. Here we go. What’s brought this on I wonder?

    Royal Family granted new right of secrecy

    Special exemptions to be written into Freedom of Information Act

    By Robert Verkaik, Home Affairs Editor

    Saturday, 8 January 2011

    The Royal Family is to be granted absolute protection from public scrutiny in a controversial legal reform designed to draw a veil of secrecy over the affairs of the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William

    The Royal Family is to be granted absolute protection from public scrutiny in a controversial legal reform designed to draw a veil of secrecy over the affairs of the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William.

    Letters, emails and documents relating to the monarch, her heir and the second in line to the throne will no longer be disclosed even if they are in the public interest.

    Sweeping changes to the Freedom of Information Act will reverse advances which had briefly shone a light on the royal finances ?” including an attempt by the Queen to use a state poverty fund to heat Buckingham Palace ?” and which had threatened to force the disclosure of the Prince of Wales’s prolific correspondence with ministers

    /….

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/royal-family-granted-new-right-of-secrecy-2179148.html

    (includes a nice jowly photo of Queenie)

  • Suhayl Saadi

    “It is possible to have universal health care that is world class, free at the point of need and based on healthy competition for customers between the insurers, the hospitals and clinics.”

    Evgueni, 2:26am

    How, precisely? Is this how the Swiss run their health system? There are variations in the mechanics of health provision (public/private, etc.) in different parts of Europe. France, for example, is supposed to be good in this respect. There is of course no perfect system. In the UK we’ve been/ are being fleeced by PFI – hospitals and schools and wealth distribution has become more unequal over the past 30 years; ideas of ‘society’, deliberately eroded. But please could you tell us more. Thanks again.

    Also, what is wealth distribution like in Switzerland, I mean relative affluence/ relative poverty levels?

    Jon, well done. I think that whatever our genuinely-held political views (and that’s the point), all real bloggers here appreciate it.

    Mark, if I may suggest, now that we have decent moderation, my view is that it might be best if all obviously (and boringly) disruptive posts written by the usual cohort were studiously ignored with Zen-like assiduousness, since it seems clear that they will be deleted in due course. It is to be hoped that those posting such material will either stop doing so or else will go away. It is important to change tactics when the structural dynamic has altered.

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