Blogpowerers (& others who know I visit them), if you haven’t see my face pop up on your MyBlogLog Box recently, don’t assume I have deserted you. I’m still visiting my regular daily haunts, although I don’t have quite as much time to comment as I trying to still blog against a lot of demands on my time at the moment. (It is crazy at work, but in a nice way, loads of really interesting stuff going down).

I decided to dump my MyBlogLog Cookie for a short while.  I have been visiting some very unsavoury sites recently to check reactions to stuff like the Lionheart story. On seeing my mush appear on some really rabid hate site from an innocuous Google Click I quickly realised that this was the sort of behaviour that Special Branch get interested in. I also want this blog to remain a neanderthal-free zone in my warm, friendly, cuddly bunny commentariat.

Welshcakes, gave Simi a hug from me.

This is a follow-on post from yesterday’s topic about Blogger arrest. (sweary alert) .

I was just about to say that I wasn’t about to bother looking closely at the Lionheart Detail at this stage are there are plenty of others more perceptive than me to dig. Then, up in my Feedreader RSS alert box popped a excellent blogpoint  from Devil’s Kitchen linking to another post, called, amusingly enough, First they came for the despicable bastards.  (It probably isn’t necessary to click through from DK as the paragraph quoted is sweary enough).

Anyway, the ‘Merkin blogosphere are very bemused  about the whole notion of a British arrest. No screaming tyres, handcuffs and aimed weapons here, instead a very British Dad’s Army Sergeant Wilson asking if Lionheart would mind terribly if he could pop in to Walmington-on-sea constabulary at a convenient time after the officer gets back from holiday. There he would be arrested and questioned to see if there was anything in the allegations. Terrible business old chap, but it is only suspicion…

Lionheart is abroad at the moment so has been advised by email. I wonder if he sends the email back telling the Officer to go forth and multiply, he could then be charged with resisting arrest?

Anyway, there is a presumption that it is an Islamic pressure group doing this, I’ve no idea. But, look at the Home Office definition again, with added emphasis.

Any incident, which constitutes a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.

So, it could be anyone complaining about a perceived slight. The little old lady from the chip shop surfing in the library, the card carrying right on politically correct diversity & sensitivity officer in a Local Council,  a political activist keen to stir up trouble even though he is in the same party in a different faction.

Is being arrested such a big thing? It seems not these days, according to Coppersblog. Much time is taken up on trivial “domestics”, a sort of merry-go-round that passes for entertainment amongst the scratter classes when there is nothing on Sky+ or the Plasma TV is in demand; A accuses B, B counter accuses A, both arrange to visit the station to be arrested, long wait for duty solicitors, statements taken, both released,  PC fills in all the paperwork, Monitoring Officers offer random unhelpful comments, PC fills in more paperwork, Crown Prosecution Service decide not to prosecute, two detections achieved, stats look good, same time next Giro day?

Now it seems that the regular customers (i.e. offenders and victims) of the Police all know their rights but ordinary folk like me who rarely come in contact with the Police find the thought of arrest absolutely terrifying. Apparently we are much easier to prosecute because we don’t insist on solicitors because we assume that if we are in the right the police will see this quickly enough and move on to find the real criminals. This is naivety in the extreme, regrettably, as every now and then a journalist gets wrongly arrested for something and the police only reluctantly let go when some incontrovertible evidence turns up. (I can think of several examples including a girl accused of stealing a purse at a Gym but am too busy to track them down). They are trained to be suspicious but getting an increasingly unlikely suspect to accept a caution in lieu of further investigation is a result.

What are the consequences of being arrested for a normal person in work, even after being absolved of blame? Holidays in America, for a start, no more visa waiver, with unpleasant but otherwise straight-forward travel giving only a fingerprint to get in, now it is a trip to that horrible Embassy in London. The arrest is recorded onto the Police National Computer and could well show up on certain criminal records checks (even though you aren’t a criminal). However, the most criminal part of it is this; All (well, nearly all*) arrestees are now obliged to give a DNA sample  to go on the national register, sitting there waiting for any false positive to give you hassle for the rest of your life. This even happens to Children and it is apparently an absolute bastard of a job to persuade your Chief Constable to get it removed. (Here is an ACPO policy document PDF to give you the feel for how possessive they are.)

Now could Lionheart possibly have a case for political asylum? These are the sorts of things that Liberty campaigns against. OK, it isn’t torture, but is a great way of ruining someone’s career.

This is one reason why don’t Urbex and am very circumspect about what I write - I don’t ever want to be arrested and see a custody suite in anger. Now I provide DNA to the State quite regularly in the form of blood samples to my Doctor but I am (fairly) confident that it is used mostly for the purposes it was provided (although I hear of blind randomised testing for research purposes).

I don’t want to give it to the Police or the National ID register though. Why? because it is personal data. Very personal indeed, it belongs to me, not you or anyone else. Especially not the Government, they can fuck right off.

*except labour politicians it seems 

I’ve had a smattering of people registering on the blog, despite the absence of any obvious benefit in doing so.

Well, I’ve thought of a reason now. Within a month or so of moving from Blogger.com to hosted space, I started to receive rapidly increasing levels of comment spam. I didn’t actally realise at first, because I didn’t see it- Akismet plug-in catches it all very successfully. However it gives me a minor admin nuisance in that the odd false positive gets buried in the spam area and is almost impossible to find in amongst the excrement.

Just watch the blue box in my footer to see how the number is rising. (Click on it to find out how it works, it is quite clever).

To sort this, I’m looking into plugins that do some sort of human validity test such as picking out words/numbers from an image. However, I really hate these things on other blogs (because I seem to be so dyslexic on them) so any regular who registers doesn’t have to pass the turing test on repeat visits.

Anyone else using Wordpress (hosted, not managed .com version) who can recommend a plugin that achieves this well, please let me know as there is a fair bit of choice out there.