There are times when Parliament and the State, in general, seems to have about the same kind of understanding and appreciation of popular culture that Ian Hislop routinely demonstrates on ‘Have I got News For You’.

How else does one account for the fact that Britain really does have a satellite-based military communications system called ‘SKYNET’ - yeah, as in ‘The Terminator’ - no really, we do, just read this…

So will anyone be surprised to find that buried in the desperately dull ‘Procurement of Innovative Technologies and Research Bill’, which aims to make good on a comment/commitment in Gordon Brown’s 2005 budget speech about government departments spending 2.5% of their research and development budgets on the work of small and medium-sized businesses, we find that this new project is to be called ‘The Genesis Programme’.

Yep, there’s Klingons on the starboard bow, Cap’n but in case anyone has any bright ideas on spending any of the cash in the search for a resurrected Vulcan, don’t bother, he’s already turned up on one of Cameron’s new policy review groups.

And the sponsor of this bill?

None other than our old friend and MP for Burnley, Kitty Ussher, last seen playing Violet Elizabeth Bott on the government’s abortive - sorry, aborted - plans for banging people up for 90 days without trial.

Still, with government showing a bit of penchant for pinching project names from science fiction, it can’t be too long before we find that the National Indentity Register has been given a name of its very own…

HAL 9000.

It may sounds terribly geeky to admit this, but I’m quite looking forward to the publication (today, hopefully) of the transcript of yesterday’s proceedings of Commons standing committee D, which will cover the last two of eight sessions examining the Police and Justice bill.

If you’ve been following the action at Liberty Central, you’ll already know that I have a particular interest in sections 33-37 of the bill, which deal with amendments to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 – unfortunately I was on my way home from work at the time the committee was scheduled to debate this part of the bill and so missed that part of the debate. But what I was able to listen to was the debate on opposition amendments to schedule 12 of the bill, which make a number of amendments to the Extradition Act 2003, specifically two amendments introduced by Conservative members in relation to the workings of the 2003 US-UK extradition treaty.

The back story here is that on 31st March 2003, Britain was signed up to a new extradition treaty with the US by the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, without any prior consultation with Parliament – signing treaties without the need for Parliament’s consent is yet another power vested in the Prime Minister and his appointed Ministers under the Royal Prerogative.

This treaty was then ratified by the government by means of an ‘Order in Council’, which means simply that the Queen called a meeting of the Privy Council, which usually amounts to no more than a half-dozen Cabinet Ministers, and which a list of pre-agreed Orders were read out and approved – only the title of the order, mind you, not the order itself – following which the order, as it was related, at the time, to the Extradition Act 1989, was ‘laid before’ Parliament, being covered by the provisions of the Statutory Instruments Act 1947. All this means, in practice, is that it was listed in the daily order paper where it could have been voted on, but only if MPs demanded a vote of floor of the House, which is almost unheard of as few MPs are willing to disrupt the day’s business in the Commons by demanding such a vote – and in the absence of such a demand, it automatically becomes law, even though it was not formally implemented until the passing of the Extradition Act 2003.

In this case, matters were complicated by the fact that this entire process was carried out before the treaty has even been published – this didn’t happen for two months after it was signed – so MPs had no idea of its contents at the time it was ratified and waved through into law by entirely undemocratic means.

What this treaty, and the Extradition Act which implemented it, does is place extraditions to the US on the same footing as extraditions to EU countries, which might sound reasonable until one realises that this had the effect of;

Removing the requirement that the US provide prima facie evidence to a UK court when seeking the extradition of individual from the UK; although when the UK seeks to extradite an individual from the US, the UK still has to prove ‘probable cause’ before extradition can be approved – under the previous treaty the US had to provide sufficient evidence to show that committal for trial, under UK law, would be justified, now it merely has to provide a ‘statement of facts of the offence’; by ‘facts’ here we mean allegations, not actual evidence.

Watering down a number of other safeguards that were previously part of the extradition process, giving rise to several areas of concern; including,

* The question of the possible application of the death penalty.

European case law and protocols 6 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Britain is a signatory, expressly forbid extradition where the death penalty may be imposed, yet the treaty say online that the UK may refuse extradition if the US fails to give assurances that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out; and,

* The watering down of the ‘speciality rule’.

This should mean that a person may only be tried for the offence(s) for which they have been extradited, unless first given the opportunity to return to the country from which they were extradited – in effect, should the US wish to introduce new charges once they have someone in custody, that individual should be repatriated to the country from which they were extradited originally for further extradition proceedings in relation to the new offence(s). In the past this rule has been waived, in very narrow circumstances, and also unilaterally breached by the US; however under the 2003 treaty, the Home Secretary is granted authority to waive speciality and consent to “detention, trial or punishment”, rather than simply prosecution for any offence, not just one for which an individual could be extradited.

Accepting these provisions amount to tacit collusion in US extra-territorial/extra-judicial processes as, under these provisions, the Home Secretary could consent to the indefinite detention of an individual in an ‘offshore’ facility – i.e. Guantanamo Bay, for reasons other than those for which that individual was extradited to the US

* The blanket exclusion of certain offences from provisions allowing the UK to derogate from their obligations, under the treaty, if it considers that extradition is being sought for political reasons and amounts to political persecution.

In the 2003 treaty, a number of offences are expressly excluded from being defined as ‘political’ – these include any violent crime against the Head of State or a member their family, murder, manslaughter, malicious wounding, grievous bodily harm, kidnapping, abduction, hostage taking, possession of explosives, placing, using or threatening to use explosives/firearms and, of course any conspiracy, aiding and abetting or procurement offence relating to any of the other offences.

Now this may sound perfectly reasonable – except one has to the remember that under the treaty the US is not required to provide evidence that an individual engaged in any such actions, merely provide a ‘statement of facts’ (i.e. allegations) sufficient to justify an arrest warrant. In effect, in order to extradite an political opponent, the US merely has to put forward a serious enough allegation, irrespective of whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain that allegation or even whether any evidence they might have is admissible in court – this last point is of particular importance given the issue of extraordinary rendition and the US’s extremely narrow view of what constitutes torture, a view so narrow than many of the interrogation techniques that the US will own up to using would be considered to be torture in UK and Europe, never mind what goes on when interrogations are outsourced by the US to certain other countries.

Conversely, blanket exemptions on extradition for military offences and ‘third-state’ extraditions are retained – by third-state extraditions what is meant in a situation where, for example, the UK extradites an individual from the US and then receives an application for extradition of that same individual from another state, under the treaty this second extradition could not take place without the permission of the state from which the individual was originally extradited. Of course, it suits the US to retain these provisions, not least because the UK has “confirmed [its] understanding that this covers surrender to the international criminal court”, which the US refuses to recognise, which means these provisions support both the US’s refusal to recognise the ICC and exempt US citizens from any proceedings for war crimes in a neutral court.

There is also the little matter that the treaty also makes any statue of limitations, in either country, irrelevant in extradition matters, creating a rather curious situation in which someone in the US could escape prosecution for certain offences by hiding out until the relevant statute of limitations expires, but if they’re caught hiding out in the UK and extradited, they can still be prosecuted, even if the statue has expired in the meantime – this, of course, runs both ways.

Now you may already be thinking that all this looks a tad one-sided, and not in our favour, but then there’s one final wrinkle to be ironed out in all this – while our own government fair fell over themselves in the rush to get this treaty ratified and into our own law; three years on the US senate still haven’t managed to ratify the treaty: it was forwarded to the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee in 2004 and finally debated in November 2005, where the committee declined to vote on it – and until the committee votes on it, it cannot be put to the full Senate for ratification.

And the problem?

Well, after representations from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Ancient Order of Hibernians and several other Irish-American organisations, the Senators on the committee appear to feel that the treaty threatens the civil liberties of their own citizens – if only our own government felt the same way – objecting in particular, so its believed, to the removal of the exemption on political offences, the removal of the statute of limitations and the ability the treaty would give the UK to try people for offences for which they were not originally extradited.

Yes, the situation really is that absurd.

Getting back to proceedings in our own legislature, yesterday Conservative members of the standing committee put forward used the opportunity presented by schedule 12 of the Police and Justice Bill, which deals with a range of extradition matters, to put forward two sets of amendments to the Extradition Act 2003 that would have the effect of permitting the Court to refuse extradition in cases where a matter could be dealt with under UK law and which would suspend the extradition arrangements in the 2003 treaty in all but terrorism cases until the US senate get around to ratifying their end of the deal - a move which drew a remarkable performance from Hazel Blears, who was leading for the government in these proceeding.

I’m sure that when the session transcripts appear they’ll fail entirely to do the Minister’s performance the justice it deserves; after patiently sitting through the painstaking explanation for these clauses given by Conservative members, her moment came and she grasped with both hands. There were ‘misconceptions’ about the provisions of the treaty that she would ‘correct’ – perhaps she could pay a visit to the US senate which she on, as these ‘misconceptions’ appear to be much the same ones they have as well - but, having brought her incisive legal mind to bear on the matter, much in the fashion of Miss Marple (providing one recalls Margaret Rutherford’s interpretation of the role as a bossy schoolma’am from the 1950’s) it was clear that the members’ real issue was not just the treaty itself, but who the treaty is with; the United States of America.

Oh and how, then, did she lay the faux outrage on with a trowel – well more a cement mixer.

Were the honourable members perhaps casting aspersions on US standards of justice and jurisprudence?

Would they not accept that extraditions to the US should be treated the same as extraditions to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all of whom were being given similar considerations under the Extradition Act they now had the temerity to challenge?

And oh, did the Conservative members not struggle to make their point – that yes, indeed, the US is the problem – without sounding too critical, no doubt fully aware of their own party’s ongoing efforts to rebuild bridges in Washington that had been burned by their previous leaders opportunistic claim that he would not have supported the invasion of Iraq had he know that the government had misrepresented the little matter of the countries WND capabilities. Well might they shy away from pointing the finger too firmly in a Westerly direction in such circumstances…

But, having no such concerns to trouble my own conscience, let me point that America is the problem here.

Lest we forget, it’s the US that has a growing and entirely unenviable record, since launching its self-styled ‘war on terror’, of breaching international law on extradition and ignoring even its own treaties with sovereign nations when it comes to extradition procedures.

The US is also not a signatory to any of the international human rights conventions that apply to judicial cooperation between European states – of course several of these European states are by no means paragons when it comes to their own judicial standards and attitude towards human right, but at least they are all party to the European Convention on Human Right and can be held accountable in the European Courts. The US cannot even manage standards on something as fundamental as the use of torture that would match up with European standards.

Then there is the little matter of US accountability – or rather the lack thereof. The US routinely refuses to recognise international law and judgements laid down by the International Court of Justice – in 1999, a German national was executed by the State of Arizona, disregarding ICJ order a temporary stay of execution pending a judgment in relation to a breach of international obligations. The US Solicitor General took the view that an ICJ ruling was not binding and offered no basis for judicial relief.

On a whole range of issues, the US has an abysmal record on human rights – by the standards of most Western democracies. The US is certainly not the worst human rights offender on the planet, it would be absurd to claim any such thing when one considers conditions within many of the more obvious culprits for human rights abuses (China, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Algeria, North Korea, Burma, etc.) on can quite legitimately argue that it has possibly the most hypocritical record on human rights to found anywhere at the present time.

And then there is Gitmo and the whole business of extra-territorial detentions, extraordinary renditions and the outsourcing of terrorist suspect interrogations to states that are know to have appalling human rights records and where there is documentary evidence of the widespread and routine use of torture – evidence that even the US State Department’s own website records and publishes as guidance for own citizens.

Hazel Blears is right when she says that there is nothing particularly wrong or problematic about US jurisprudence… provided you are allowed access to it and not shuttled off to the Cairo branch of Thumbscrews ‘R’ Us before being dropped off for long holiday from the outside world, and your basic human rights, at the US Military’s favourite Caribbean resort – Guantanamo Bay. It’s not the judicial system in the US that’s so much the problem but some of the corners that elements amongst some US law enforcement agencies that are creating the difficulties.

Still its well worth noting that, on the whole and even allowing for the current parcel of rogues that are running the show in Britain, our overall record on human rights is rather better that that of the US, provided we keep them at a respectable distance; thanks in no small part to our own judiciary and the semi-regular visits of the Home Office to the High Court to be put right when they start pushing the envelope of legality – and still the US Senate won’t ratify this treaty out of concerns for the civil liberties of their own citizens while our own government has not only ratified the treaty on the fast track but started shipping people off to the States under its provisions.

Rather says a lot about the relative priorities given to civil liberties by the US legislature by comparison to our own – which rather raises the point as to whether or not the government understands just exactly who it is supposed to working for, because on the strength of this treaty, it doesn’t appear to be us?

Useful links:

Police & Justice Bill Schedule 12
The 2003 US/UK Extradition Treaty (pdf)
Extradition Act 2003

And an excellent article on the treaty, dating from 2003, courtesy of Statewatch

Well the debate on the Education bill looks set to cause all manner of entertainment if some of the amendments put forward by opposition parties are anything to go by.

I think it fair to say there’s more than a little mischief about a couple of opposition amendments, such as this gem from the Tories:

(1A)The Secretary of State shall only consent to the publication of proposals under subsection (1) for the establishment of a community or community special school if the local authority can demonstrate to the Secretary of State that the establishment of such a school would lead to substantially better academic results than would be the case for a foundation or foundation special school.

So the LEA can still open state schools, but only if they can prove that it will have higher standards than a foundation school, which is likely to be close to impossible given that foundation schools may end up incorporating some degree of back-door selection.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems throw in this little gem…

(7)In the case of the consideration by a local education authority of proposals for the establishment of an Academy made pursuant to a notice under section 7, no inducement, whether in the form of additional grant or otherwise, may be offered to the authority by the Secretary of State so as to influence the decision to be taken by the authority concerned.

I wonder if the ‘or otherwise’ in there includes peerages?

I guess this stands as proof that Justin was right on the money when it comes to Charles Clarke.

Fresh from having to apologise to Rachel North’s father - the full story behind the apology is to be found here - we now find dear old Safety attacking Labour Party Treasurer, Jack Dromey:

Charles Clarke says he has “serious questions about Jack Dromey’s capacity” as Labour treasurer after the row over the £14m of secret loans to the party.

The home secretary told a Westminster lunch the fact Mr Dromey did not know about the loans meant “you have to wonder how well he was doing his work”.

So the fact that the party treasurer was kept in the dark about a series of secret loans from millionaire business that, according to one of the lender, Dr Chai Patel, were specifically solicited as loans and not donations in order to avoid having to declare them to the Electoral Commission is a sign that Dromey may not be up to his job, not that the party leadership have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar?

So, Safety, as John Prescott was equally in the dark about these loans deals, does that call his capacity into question, or does it suggest that these loans were solicited on the strictly need to know basis and those responsible for soliciting them decided that Prescott, Dromey, the rank and file of the Party and the wider electorate didn’t need to know.

The longer this goes on, the more it starts to take on the character of there being what amounts to a party within a party - and we all know what happened last time that idea emerged.

But, of course, Clarke may his own, rather more selfish reasons for trying to smear Dromey - after all the company, Capita, headed up by one of the donors who bunced the party a cool million before the election, Rod Aldridge, is not only making a nice living out of outsourced government contracts but is also one of the 160 companies to have registered an interest in bidding for contracts for the ID cards system, should that ever break free from the current Commons/Lords games of legisilative ping-pong.

But of course, that has nothing at all to do with the donation - does it…

…and whispering, “I will ne’er consent” - consented
Lord Byron

One of the better ways to put any law to to the test is to see just how easily you can conceive of a situation in which, despite the best intention of legislators, the law ends up looking not only unenforceable but just plain stupid.

This week we’ve seen the launch of the Home Office’s ‘No’ means no campaign - £500,000 of public money spent on pushing the new statutory definition of consent in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 with the line that men who fail to ensure they ‘actively’ obtain consent could find themselves on the wrong end of a charge of rape.

You can see the two posters the campaign is using below:

The question that has to be asked, here, is whether this is really all that it’s cracked up to be?

The government claims to have clarified the legal defination of ‘consent’, but if you actually look at the relevant clauses in the Act, 74-76, you find things aren’t quite as straightforward as this campaign is trying to claim:

74 “Consent”

For the purposes of this Part, a person consents if he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice.

75 Evidential presumptions about consent

(1) If in proceedings for an offence to which this section applies it is proved-

(a) that the defendant did the relevant act,

(b) that any of the circumstances specified in subsection (2) existed, and

(c) that the defendant knew that those circumstances existed,

the complainant is to be taken not to have consented to the relevant act unless sufficient evidence is adduced to raise an issue as to whether he consented, and the defendant is to be taken not to have reasonably believed that the complainant consented unless sufficient evidence is adduced to raise an issue as to whether he reasonably believed it.

(2) The circumstances are that-

(a) any person was, at the time of the relevant act or immediately before it began, using violence against the complainant or causing the complainant to fear that immediate violence would be used against him;

(b) any person was, at the time of the relevant act or immediately before it began, causing the complainant to fear that violence was being used, or that immediate violence would be used, against another person;

(c) the complainant was, and the defendant was not, unlawfully detained at the time of the relevant act;

(d) the complainant was asleep or otherwise unconscious at the time of the relevant act;

(e) because of the complainant’s physical disability, the complainant would not have been able at the time of the relevant act to communicate to the defendant whether the complainant consented;

(f) any person had administered to or caused to be taken by the complainant, without the complainant’s consent, a substance which, having regard to when it was administered or taken, was capable of causing or enabling the complainant to be stupefied or overpowered at the time of the relevant act.

(3) In subsection (2)(a) and (b), the reference to the time immediately before the relevant act began is, in the case of an act which is one of a continuous series of sexual activities, a reference to the time immediately before the first sexual activity began.

76 Conclusive presumptions about consent

(1) If in proceedings for an offence to which this section applies it is proved that the defendant did the relevant act and that any of the circumstances specified in subsection (2) existed, it is to be conclusively presumed-

(a) that the complainant did not consent to the relevant act, and

(b) that the defendant did not believe that the complainant consented to the relevant act.

(2) The circumstances are that-

(a) the defendant intentionally deceived the complainant as to the nature or purpose of the relevant act;

(b) the defendant intentionally induced the complainant to consent to the relevant act by impersonating a person known personally to the complainant.

So what have we actually established here, in law.

Well, we now a have defined set of situations in which the law considers that consent has conclusively not been given; where violence or the threat of violence is used by the assailant, where the victim is unlawfully detained by their assailant, where the victim is asleep, unconscious or drugged, or if the victim has a physical disability which renders them incapable of indicating their consent, or otherwise.

All of which is fine as far as it goes, even if the act does appear to doing little more than stating the bleeding obvious at this point.

As regards the more general issue of consent, what the law actually says is not that a defendant in a rape case has to prove that consent was given the the alleged victim, but rather that the law presumes that consent was not given unless the defendent can put forward evidence which raises an ‘issue’ of whether consent was given - in effect this reads rather like the idea of reasonable doubt, only in reverse to the manner in which it’s usually applied.

Of course, the real problem arises inasmuch as the critical moment in which consent is either given, or not given, generally takes place in private with only the alleged victim and their assailant present.

So the question still remains - how in such a situation, where the only evidence you have are two differing accounts of the same incident with no physical or other evidence to demonstrate whose account in the truthful one, do you establish whether consent was given or not?

If you take the government’s campaign at face value, then you would think the law would presume automatically that consent was not given, and that its the alleged perpetrator who must, therefore, be helf to be lying - except…

If the only issue at stake in a particular case is consent then it follows that be redefining the law on consent in terms of a presumption that consent was not given unless shown otherwise, one is applying a presumption of guilt to the defendant, who the law now requires much show that consent was obtained. In effect, if someone is charged with rape and their only defence is one of consent, then the law requires them to prove their innocence, not the state to prove their guilt.

All of which brings us to Article 6 of the Human Rights Act, the second paragraph of which states, perfectly clearly that:

Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

And, okay, there may a wrinkle to be played out in terms of being proved guilty ‘according to the law’ but on balance you would have to take the view that somewhere along the line just such a case - in which consent is the sole issue at stake - will give rise to a challenge to this particular law on the grounds that this new definition of consent applies a presumption of guilt, and we could easily be back to square one.

If anything, far from clarifying the position on consent, the government appear to have succeeding in creating more confusion - before this Act was passed, we may not have had a statutory definition of consent, but at least we could be pretty sure that the definition we had was legal. Now we can’t even be sure of that - at least not until a test case does crop up and the matter is fully consided by the judiciary.

This is all very well, but its not the matter of the amended interpretation of consent, on its own, that makes an ass of the law here. For that we have to look closely at something else this particular covers and how that interacts with together with the new definition of consent to create, in the right circumstances, a near perfect defence in rape cases.

Here’s the problem - in addition to rejigging the legal definition of consent, the Act also adds several new offences in which consent can be used as a potential line of defence.

One of the problems with the law on sex offences that existed prior to this Act coming into force was that it was rather limited in the scope of offences it defined. Basically, what prosecutors had to work with was either rape, which was pretty narrowly defined in terms of penetrative sexual intercourse, and the lesser offence of sexual assault. The upshot of this was that some of your more imaginative assailants could get pretty medieval on their victims and still not catch for anything more serious than a charge of sexual assault - as to how medieval, the fact that one of the new offences the Act adds to the statute books is ‘assault with penetration’ which covers the use of foreign objects in various orifices, should give you a fair idea of where we’re going with this - this new offence, by the way, carries the same mandatory life sentence as rape, which is essentially why it was introduced.

However, its another new offence, ‘Causing sexual activity without consent’, as defined by clause 4 of the Act where the real interest lies:

4 Causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent

(1) A person (A) commits an offence if-

(a) he intentionally causes another person ( B ) to engage in an activity,

(b) the activity is sexual,

(c) B does not consent to engaging in the activity, and

(d) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

(2) Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents.

(3) Sections 75 and 76 apply to an offence under this section.

(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section, if the activity caused involved-

(a) penetration of B’s anus or vagina,

(b) penetration of B’s mouth with a person’s penis,

(c) penetration of a person’s anus or vagina with a part of B’s body or by B with anything else, or

(d) penetration of a person’s mouth with B’s penis,

is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for life.

(5) Unless subsection (4) applies, a person guilty of an offence under this section is liable-

(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both;

(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.

The real interest here lies in subclause 4(c) - where rape, by definition of the act itself, is an exclusively male preserve, here we have an offence, which carries a mandatory life sentence, in which a woman could be the perpetrator and a man could by the victim. And all things being equal, where illuminating physical absence is lacking, the one defence open to woman facing such a charge is that the man consented.

By now you should be able to see where this is going.

You see, given the way the law is framed, the logical defence for a man facing a rape charge based solely on the issue of consent, is not only to claim that woman consented, but also to claim that they didn’t, filing a complaint of causing sexual activity without consent.

Of course, in some cases such a claim will be far less plausible that other - if the man happens to be 6′4″ and built like a brick outhouse and the women is 5′2″ and seven stones wringing wet then the man’s going to have a hard time making such an allegation stick - but if the size/strength difference is nowhere near so marked then this could be a reasonable enough claim to require investigation, or even a prosecution…

…in which case it becomes the woman’s turn to try and prove that the man consented to having sex.

Oh, and before anyone comes up the obvious physiological line of argument, lets just make it clear the mere fact of stiffy does not conclusively prove consent - remember what the Home Office are saying, only a clear ‘yes’ will do these days.

Where this idea becomes particularly pertinant is in relation to the suggestion, following the recent Swansea case, that the law on consent might be ‘clarified’ to allow for situations in which a judge or jury could decide that a woman was ‘too drunk’ to give consent. Now, logically - and legally, given provisions of Article 14 of the Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination - if a woman can be too drunk to give informed consent to having sex, then so can a man. Physical capacity is not proof of informed consent.

So, in a situation where both parties to the allegedly non-consensual sexual act were pissed out of the faces - not an uncommon occurrance by any means - we now have possibly of both facing a mandatory life sentence for not consenting to have sex with each other, which rather begs the question as to when the Home Office is going to run a similar campaign to its current one, only this time targetted at women.

I know this sounds like a completely absurd situation - it is - but the fact that it sounds absurd does not make any less of a real possibility. Let’s face it, if I can spot this particular angle then you can bet your life that somewhere down the line an imaginative defence barrister is going to see exactly the same thing, the difference being that I’m playing with a thought experiment while they’re likely to be defending a real case.

The upshot of all this is that while its far too early to judge whether the new ‘improved’ interpretation of consent will actually result in more convictions for rape - remember, by far the biggest factor in low conviction rates is cases not getting to court in the first place - the one thing we can be pretty sure of is that by ‘clarifying’ the law in this way, the government has succeeded in substantially increasing the risk that miscarriages of justice will arise out of rape cases where consent is the sole issue on which a case is decided while, at the same time, creating an uncertainty around the legality of the manner in which the law treats consent that, if it were to be ruled incompatible with ECHR/HRA article 6 provisions for the presumption of innocence, could open to the door to men who have been quite rightly convicted of rape, being freed on a legal ‘technicality’.

All of which is really stupid - if not quite so stupid as spending £500,000 on an advertising campaign in the mistaken belief that you’ve actually done a good job.

Just when you get to thinking that maybe your own party had cornered the market on career-ending stupidity, along comes a cheering reminder that when a Tory decides to fuck up their political career then boy do they do it in style…

Tory in woman sex sale attempt

A West Bromwich councillor has admitted trying to sell a woman for sex.

Councillor Alan Burkitt, Tory member for the Charlemont ward, has been suspended by his party following his arrest on Sunday.

He was kept in custody overnight at West Bromwich police station and released on bail Monday afternoon pending further inquiries.

Councillor Burkitt, former deputy leader of the Tory group on Sandwell Council, told the Express & Star that the matter concerned only one woman and claimed that she was consenting.

He said: “I realise what I did was still illegal but it was consented to. She is denying it. She’s saying I made her do it. I do not accept that and shall be vehemently defending myself.”

Councillor Karen Bissell, Tory group leader, said he was suspended with immediate effect.

Councillor Burkitt was elected as a Liberal Democrat in 1996. Within three years he had defected to the Tories.

In 2002 it was revealed he owed more than £1,000 in rent and council tax on his flat in Beaconview Road, where he was arrested.

The 47-year-old former housing adviser has been unemployed for about three years.

What I particularly like about this story is that it contains what has to be one of least effective exculpatory statement in history:

“I realise what I did was still illegal but it was consented to. She is denying it. She’s saying I made her do it. I do not accept that and shall be vehemently defending myself.”

Sorry?

So if she consented to being sold for sex its, what, not quite so bad?

Well that’s alright then isn’t it?

Apropos of recent debates about the Standards Board, am I right in thinking that councillors are under a public duty to report acts of misconduct, such as bringing your office into disrepute? So will that be 71 separate complaints from Sandwell councillors or just the one, with 71 signatures?

BTW - it’s International Women’s Day, today - just thought I’d mention that for Councillor Burkitt’s benefit.

I made a point of avoiding Parky’s interview with Tony Blair where, despite the maxim set down by Alistair Campbell, he finally came clean and confirmed what we’ve known all along; that Tony does ‘do god’.

Quite a few others have looked at different aspects of the story - I’d recommend you read Curious Hamster and Justin at Chicken Yoghurt for starters, especially Justin who hits the nail of the head with this:

As much as he should be pelted and mocked for yet another sweaty, weaselly attempt at wriggling from, shall we say, temporal accountability, I do have a nagging sympathy for Blair. A person so steeped in blood and horror would frantically search for even the slimmest shot at forgiveness and redemption or else surely go mad, wouldn’t they? I wonder if, deep down, if he’s truly frightened of what might happen to him when he’s finally gathered unto justice. I hope so.

I’ve never really had time for those who claim that god/history/whatever will judge their actions, mainly because that whole strand of argument always struck me as a rather peculiar form of moral cowardice.

When you think about it, it really is a hell of cop-out isn’t it? ‘God will judge me’ says the believer, who also believes that god will also forgive them if they repent before the end. Take the whole Catholic business of purgatory out of the equation, which even the Catholic Church has now dropped, and its a the equivalent of a ‘get out of jail free’ card in the great game of celestial monopoly:

Oh Lord, I’ve done some shitty things in the past, but now I’m sorry - so open the gates and let me in like a good chap, will you.

While I’m an atheist, I can’t help but think that the only right way for all this to end would go something like this:

Blair (arriving at the pearly gates): Lord, it is I, your humble servant Tony Blair. Please let me in.

God: Oh, its you is it. Right, lets get a few thing straight here. First, its ‘Allah’ to you, mate… now about Iraq…

As you might expect, I’ve spent much of this week sorting things out at Liberty Central, which just got it’s first pick-up in the mainstream media - ok, New Statesman’s New Media blog, but its a start.

Anyway, most of the technical stuff is now sorted, although naturally I’ll be splitting my time for the foreseeable future between here and Liberty Central as in the case of this article on ID cards, which marks a bit of return, for me, to a familiar subject.

Phew, you know it’s good just to be able to write again…