
At last, a law to stop almost anyone from doing almost anything - callum85
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/06/law-to-stop-eveyone-everything
======
jon-wood
I do voluntary work with the sort of kids this law has been designed to target
- the ones who walk around a council estate causing trouble, because there's
nowhere for them to go but home, where they can look forward to crowded houses
and parents who are high.

There are two approaches to dealing with that problem. The first is laws like
this, which allow the police to prosecute them simply for walking the streets
in a group, and set them up for life with a criminal record. That will
inevitably lead to worse crimes in the future as they find themselves unable
to work because of that record.

Alternatively the government could stop cutting funding for organisations that
try to provide a place where they can go and be children without causing
others trouble. Youth centres are shutting down due to a lack of funding - the
one I volunteer at only functions because its funded by a local church, and
even then it only just scrapes by.

Honestly, I don't really know where I'm going with this, other than needing to
rant about the fucked up approach this government is taking with their "Big
Society", carefully focused on making sure the poor are criminalised, and the
rich don't have to worry about supporting them.

~~~
jackgavigan
"..the sort of kids this law has been designed to target - the ones who walk
around a council estate causing trouble, because there's nowhere for them to
go but home, where they can look forward to crowded houses and parents who are
high."

I've long been of the opinion that poor parenting (and/or an abdication of
responsibility on the part of the parents) is a major contributing factor to
teenage delinquency.

What are your thoughts, based on your experience of working with these kids?

~~~
TallGuyShort
I've long been of the opinion that poor patenting (and/or an abdication of
responsibility on the part of the parents) is a major contributing factor to
an awful lot of society's ills...

~~~
tyomero
Anyone who thinks parenting practices -other than the most extreme- shape
behavior should think twice and look at the evidence. The blank slate by
Steven Pinker might be a good starting point.

There's plenty of evidence that the effects of parenting are generally smaller
than we would like them to be, again with a few exceptions.

~~~
bigfudge
Except that what many of us here would consider extreme are actually pretty
common. Estimates for the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual abuse are
difficult to measure accurately, but are conservatively > 10% in the
population at large and much higher in the deprived communities which will be
targeted by these laws.

~~~
mercer
Having spent significant time of my youth in a bad neighbourhood (with
awesome, stable parents though), and having spent much of my later life with
people on the edges of society, I can confirm this. It's reached a point where
I'm shocked to _not_ eventually hear some awful stories about childhood of
these people.

------
Xylakant
We can watch a similar thing unfolding in Hamburg at the moment. Following a
demonstration that ended up in street fights and an alleged attack on a police
station, large parts of the central districts were declared a "Gefahrenzone"
(danger zone) where the police has special rights to check persons and deny
them entry into that area. This is a special provision in Hamburgs police law
that allows the police itself to declare such a zone with very little judical
oversight. AFAIK this is the first time this has happened on a large scale,
it's interesting to watch events unfold.

~~~
arethuza
Sounds just like the UK:

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/23/police-
terrorism-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/23/police-terrorism-
protest-g20-law)

 _" It is being misused because the police have the power to impose a blanket
area, where any police officer can search anyone without reason for suspicion
on the basis that a senior police officer has thought that there might be
terrorist activity or terrorists operating in the area."_

~~~
Silhouette
That article dates from 2009, but section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which
allowed for stop-and-search without suspicion, was suspended following a 2010
ruling by the ECHR that it violated Article 8. In various developments since
that suspension, it doesn't look like anything as sweeping as the previous
powers will be coming back any time soon.

~~~
makomk
Well, not until the current government manages to abolish or abandon the ECHR,
something they've consistently and publicly stated they want to do.

~~~
Silhouette
To be fair, the political leaders are damned whatever they do on this issue
now.

On the one hand, we have the principled argument of H. L. Mencken, "The
trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time
defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are
first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be
stopped at all."

On the other hand, we have had a few very high profile cases recently where
it's hard to see how even a generous interpretation of proper human rights
safeguards should protect someone, yet that person has won legal battles time
after time in court using technicalities and weasel words. In most cases,
those victories are ultimately won in the European Court after failing in all
national courts here in the UK. And these are the ones that make the headlines
and force politicians to react.

What is easy to forget when looking at the latter cases is how often the
European Court has also told a current UK administration it had gone too far,
often in granting sweeping powers to police forces and security services in
recent years. A majority of voters might have agreed with those decisions if
they were pointed out, but the related stories aren't always front page
material.

In short, I suspect a lot of the talk about getting rid of ECHR and the Human
Rights Acts is populist politics. No political party is seriously proposing
getting rid of those without at least introducing some other form of human
rights legislation instead, but then at least they've done something. I'm
guessing that being the politician who didn't do anything after stories about
Abu Hamza not being deported have been on the front page of the Daily Mail for
years is probably not a good way to win your next election.

~~~
makomk
The facts of some of those high profile cases were... not exactly as the press
portrayed them. For example, there was one high profile case where a murderer
couldn't be deported to, I think, Italy because of the Human Rights Act. What
the press didn't mention is that he was pretty solidly English - he'd lived in
the country since the age of 5, and didn't speak Italian or know anyone there
- but even though morally he was firmly our responsibility and not Italy's,
the Government tried to foist him on Italy through a legal technicality. The
human rights laws just provided a way for the courts to ignore their legal
weaseling and come to the only reasonable conclusion.

~~~
Silhouette
_The facts of some of those high profile cases were... not exactly as the
press portrayed them._

Indeed. Unfortunately, politicians are often compelled to respond to the
portrayal of what is happening, as presented in the media, as well as to what
is actually happening. When the press distorts these cases just for the print
equivalent of linkbait titles, it does have undesirable consequences for the
debate as a whole.

------
spindritf
Four paragraphs of lamentations about exclusion, inequality, sanitization,
poor, young, etc. before any hard facts and seven before the actual topic is
brushed. Oh, and no sources or references for the events he describes.

 _Asbos have been granted which forbid the carrying of condoms by a
prostitute, homeless alcoholics from possessing alcohol in a public place, a
soup kitchen from giving food to the poor, a young man from walking down any
road other than his own_

OK, it's not a news article but there are blogs much better than this.

Apart from people who already know what he's writing about and agree with him,
who would want to read this piece of pure mood affiliation? No wonder they're
in the red.

EDIT: This [https://www.liberty-human-
rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy13/libert...](https://www.liberty-human-
rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy13/liberty-s-briefing-on-the-draft-anti-social-
behaviour-bill-feb-2013-.pdf) [pdf] is supposedly the source, according to the
"fully referenced" version on his website. The word 'soup' is not used there
at all.

I will not shed one tear for a profession that cannot master a hyperlink.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Oh, and no sources or references for the events he describes.

Did you see this part?

> A fully referenced version of this article can be found at monbiot.com

~~~
Svip
Strange he doesn't link directly to the article:
[http://www.monbiot.com/2014/01/06/dead-
zone/](http://www.monbiot.com/2014/01/06/dead-zone/)

Imagine reading this article in a few months, then this article would have
been buried further down on monbiot.com

(Perhaps he is not permitted directly to the article from the Guardian's
website.)

~~~
glomph
Generally the guardian doesn't include links to the authors site as these are
published online exactly like they are in the newspaper.

------
resurge
The same exists in Belgium for about a year or so where it's called a "GAS
boete" (Gemeentelijke administratieve sanctie ~= muncipial administrative
sanction).

They have been the subject of a lot of dismay among people because they're
often used for the wrong thing.

Some stupid reasons to get a GAS fine are _:

\- Eating a sandwich on the porch of a church

\- Posting negative comments about the police on a news website

\- Kids can't play football when the pidgeon herders (? - NL: duivenmelker)
are managing their pidgeons.

\- sitting on the back part of a bench

\- Putting garbage from your car in to a public trash can. (yes, IN TO the
trash can, not next to it) It was seen as illegal dumping of trash (NL:
sluikstorten)

_Source: [http://www.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/top-100-van-de-
absurdste-g...](http://www.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/top-100-van-de-absurdste-
gas-boetes-een-klucht-zonder-weerga/article-opinion-120656.html)

~~~
knapp
"duivenmelker" in English (at least British English) would be "pigeon
fancier".

[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pigeon-...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pigeon-
fancier)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_fancier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_fancier)

~~~
bayesianhorse
To a German ear it sounds like pigeon milker...

I actually don't fancy this sport or hobby. You just have to pay attention the
"feral" pigeons running about in the cities. Many of them have exactly one
crippled leg, where their band originally was. After the pigeon doesn't return
home, this thing cuts into the leg over time and in a slow and painful process
the leg falls off...

~~~
mercer
pigeon milker would be the translation in Dutch, but perhaps it has a special
meaning in Flemish...

~~~
knapp
"Pigeon milk" does exist: it is a type of crop milk, the regurgitated lining
that parent birds feed to their young.

But "pigeon milker" as pigeon fancier instead is a copy of the Dutch word for
nightjar ("geitenmelker"), according to NL Wikipedia:

[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duivenmelk](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duivenmelk)

Nightjars were known once as goatsuckers in English because it was believed
they sucked milk from goats.

So it seems it is just a play on words. I am not Dutch, though.

------
tehwalrus
He lays this at Norman Baker's feet, who has only been in the job a few months
(although he has apparently defended the new law).

As a fellow Lib Dem I'm thoroughly ashamed that this is getting anywhere with
us in the government, and I've tweeted him (Baker) to challenge his position -
his account looks like a bog standard politician's announcement feed, no
interactions with other accounts save the odd retweet, so I don't expect he'll
respond (if he does fast enough for an edit, I'll link to it here).

ASBOs have been awful - I remember hearing about a case my dad sat on (he's a
magistrate) where a homeless guy, who had been seriously assaulted, was up on
charges of breaching his no-swearing ASBO for his reaction to the police
ignoring him while he sat their bleeding! Very unpleasant laws used to attack
the vulnerable, and they're making them even more wide-ranging. I am fuming!

~~~
mratzloff
Maybe this law is so far along because the only challenges it receives are
unanswered tweets.

Try calling his office instead. It is a thousand times more effective.

~~~
tehwalrus
If I don't get a response, I will write a letter! I know how this works.

~~~
mratzloff
Yeah, but calling is the most effective means of being heard (short of
appearing in person). Call bandwidth < letter bandwidth < tweet bandwidth.

------
itchitawa
How many people are afraid to walk down a dark alley at night? That's a
freedom we should have but plenty of people are forced to get a taxi or stay
home because of a real fear of being robbed. I live in a city where it is
safe, even for young women alone and I'm amazed when I remember what a
restricted life it was in more dangerous, yet more "free" cities. If someone
demands money from you in a deserted street, do you have the courage to
refuse? If not then you need something, perhaps not these poorly defined laws
begging to be abused, but something to protect you from those subtle threats
that constantly erode your quality of life.

~~~
thisone
When kids were breaking into our power box and shutting off the power, trying
to enter the house after I walked in the door (meaning I learned to be very,
very quick in locking the door), and finally threw a brick through our window,
the cops greeted my complaints with "what did you do to provoke them?"

(truthfully, I think my existing was the provocation. We signed a new lease
somewhere else 2 days after the brick)

None of these laws are going to fix the problem which I think lies more with
policing and with community than with not having enough laws.

~~~
jon-wood
All of those are criminal offences in their own right though - while clearly
inept in your situation, the police don't require new powers to arrest someone
for entering your house without permission, throwing bricks through windows,
or vandalising power supplies.

~~~
thisone
I completely agree.

I know it's easier for the gov to publish new laws than it is to actually
figure out what the underlying problem is and tackle that.

I think it's quite rare that the underlying problem is "not enough laws"

------
mcv
I'm wondering: where is the new George Orwell? Why aren't all writers writing
about this? Clearly we need a new 1984, because we didn't learn anything from
the original.

~~~
simias
I doubt a book would make much difference. Something with more mass appeal,
like a movie or TV show maybe. But it's still a long shot IMHO.

Or you know, we could vote those people out of office. We keep bashing those
clueless politicians but we did put them here in the first place. We don't
even have the excuse of dictatorship.

This tendency around these parts to look for technical solutions (tor,
bitcoin, etc...) for political problems is very saddening.

Assuming most of the readers of HN come from democratic countries, we
shouldn't have to fear our government. No amount of openSSL will fix that
problem.

~~~
mogrim
> Or you know, we could vote those people out of office. We keep bashing those
> clueless politicians but we did put them here in the first place. We don't
> even have the excuse of dictatorship.

Yeah, but do you really think Labour would be any better? Both parties seem so
scared of the Mail and the Telegraph that they'll do anything to look tough on
crime. Thinking about it, is this the inevitable result of an aging
population?

~~~
mcv
The problem with the UK is that it now has 3 major conservative parties.

But aren't there smaller parties you can vote for? And if there aren't any,
surely you can start a new party? Find enough people who agree with you.

~~~
Ntrails
The US would barely call any of our conservative parties right wing, so it's a
matter of perspective on this stuff.

~~~
mcv
Well, I'm not in the US. I'm Dutch, and from my perspective, you've got 3
conservative parties. Blair killed what used to be Labour.

------
retube
Sadly Britain does have a problem in some communities with ingrained,
persistent and extremely damaging anti-social behaviour.

~~~
route66
Would there be a bigger picture, showing us, how these behaviour comes into
being? How it could be addressed or prevented in other ways? "Ingrained" seems
to indicated, that you feel (yes, it's an emotion , not an established fact)
there is no help anyway, so lets get rid of them. Society, after all, does not
exists. It's you or them?

In the light of the recent complaints on this blog about homeless people in
SF: maybe there is a completely surprising "disruption" lurking, if you do not
address this subject with a "we" mindset.

~~~
DanBC
Put posters into stident halls of residence giving accurate information about
how much people drink.

Early research suggests that some people drink lots because they think that's
the norm and it's what everyone else is drinking.

When someone ends up in a&e for alcohol related stuff a note is taken of who
sold them alcohol. This allows us to aee if any particular clubs need to work
on harm reduction.

Change minimum pricing for alcohol, and prevent special offers for alcohol.
This would have minimal impact on most people, but would help reduce binge
drinking.

Have better training for gps and gp nurses. Most people drinking too much are
not serious enough for specialst drug and alcohol rehab, and primary care is a
more appropriate setting for them.

Urban design and planning can set expectations - early experiments show that
clubbers leaving a premises are quieter with good planning of te environment.

Sensible enforcement of existing laws.

------
venomsnake
It is good that finally there will be sufficient powers and less efforts
required for the police to finally restore the order in the post apocalyptic
crime ridden wasteland that is UK /s

------
001sky
_Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable._ (JFK)

Not sure what they are so affraid of?

~~~
arethuza
This week the British public is being told to be afraid of Romanians and
Bulgarians:

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/03/romanians-
and...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/03/romanians-and-
bulgarians-in-the-uk-react-to-immigration-furore)

~~~
return0
Or otherwise they are being (fakely?) welcomed

[http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21591865-open-
letter-c...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21591865-open-letter-
citizens-bulgaria-and-romania-youre-welcome)

------
tlrobinson
It blows my mind that this is possible in a country like the UK. Surely such a
law would be considered unconstitutional in the US?

Of course I also didn't think we were quite so far along the path to a
complete surveillance state in the US until Snowden's revelations.

~~~
Silhouette
_It blows my mind that this is possible in a country like the UK._

It remains to be seen whether it really is, and if so, for how long.

Remember, this is basically all being done because ASBOs have been a failure
by almost any metric you can imagine. They were always controversial on civil
liberties grounds. They became a badge of honour, or perhaps I should say an
achievement to be unlocked, for many of the very people whose behaviour they
were supposed to moderate. They were widely ignored by those supposedly
constrained by them. And they didn't get a free ride when they were inevitably
challenged in court, either.

~~~
stevejones
They were also challenged by the courts so parliament is basically remaking
them in their original form again.

Given that criminal barristers are protesting poor working conditions right
now I think the government might want to think about making enemies in the
legal profession.

Ha, who am I kidding. This government thinks they're above everything.

------
girvo
Question: have things always been like this in the past few decades? Have we
always gated off our poor, and passed laws to harass them? How can we change
it, and will we ever? I honestly am asking, not rhetorical.

~~~
stevejones
The Vagrancy Act was passed in 1824.

------
oscargrouch
people would be able to organize protests? it looks more like a "manifestation
censorship"... this is the established power controlling what people can and
cannot in public spaces in a spooky way.. this is ridiculous..

sorry to tell you that but.. you are no longer in a democracy in UK.. because
you dont control anything anymore

Is not politicians that should control people, but people that should control
politicians

------
piqufoh
> Advertisers, who cause plenty of nuisance and annoyance, have nothing to
> fear;

Why not? Can I not pursue an IPNA against these parasites?

------
coldcode
Although the article is pretty lame, it seems to me that the UK is turning out
more and to resemble 1984.

------
timthorn
The Manifesto Club is a strong campaigning organisation against this kind of
regulation - [http://www.manifestoclub.com/](http://www.manifestoclub.com/)

------
gadders
I'm not sure if ASBOs are perfect, but for anyone that has had to share a
street with (for want of a better word) complete arsehole neighbours, I should
imagine they are a god send.

~~~
MichaelGG
Can you elaborate an example where the neighbour is not violating any laws or
bylaws, and needs a tailored law against them?

Best I can come up with off the top of my head is a restraining order, when
there's obvious potential for very damaging acts, but no crime has been
committed yet, or for parole type scenarios.

~~~
gadders
TBH, I don't know enough of the law to provide an example. There may well be
laws that would cover the case, but the ASBOs seem to be the preferred
instrument by councils or whoever. If I was the person suffering the
harrassment/noise pollution/whatever, I wouldn't really care what legal
instrument was used.

------
bayesianhorse
Hm, the United Queendom's people should revoke those laws as incompatible with
their constitution.

Oh wait. They don't have one ...

------
dschiptsov
As history repeatedly told us, such laws will result in strong oppositions and
extremism. Even Russians finally got it.)

------
gaius
_opera lovers hogging the pavements_

Monbiot has really lost the plot this time.

~~~
binarymax
I found that apt. I enjoy opera and ballet. If you stand outside the coliseum
15 minutes before an ENO performance, you will see - most surely - opera
lovers hogging the pavements. I cannot imagine for one moment a PC handing out
a citation to a single one of them. Teens waiting to get into a show in camden
however, I can see these being handed out like take away flyers. (sorry for
the bad analogy)

~~~
gaius
When opera lovers start looting shops, then the police _will_ start handing
out citations. You seem to think it's unfair that a group with no history of
causing trouble should be treated differently from one that has. And yes I
have been both a teenage goth in Camden and in the queue at the ROH to see
Turandot (among others).

~~~
tehwalrus
Treating a group differently because a similar group was trouble in the past
is no way to run a police service!

If it's a bunch of people affiliated with a political ideology (e.g. EDL
marches, occupy) then you might have a point since they're voluntarily
associating - but profiling based on age, race, what type of entertainment
they're queuing for, that is unjustifiable! think of the number of false
positives....

~~~
gaius
The existence of football hooligans would tend to disprove that. Also punks.
You can actually very easily correlate "trouble" with "preferred
entertainment".

~~~
tehwalrus
Punk was political, specifically anarchist - argument void.

I didn't say you can't correlate it, I said you can't treat them all like
criminals by default - only a small fraction of football fans are violent,
similarly teenagers.

A law that effectively bans people queuing up to watch football is the same
level of crazy as banning teenagers from queuing up for goth metal.

~~~
gaius
Political, specifically Fascist I think you mean. There is a big overlap with
punks, football hooligans and BNP/Combat 18. Ever heard of Skrewdriver? Where
does the law ban people from standing in queues?

~~~
tehwalrus
Your initial comment referenced the possibility of people being given an order
for "clogging up the pavement", whether protesting, queuing for the opera, etc
- that is what I've been referencing.

