Justice for Orgreave?

Forty years ago, during the UK miner's strike, Margaret Thatcher sent 8000 police to attack striking miners during the so-called Battle of Orgreave. 95 miners were subsequently charged with riot and violent disorder - only for the charges to be thrown out when the police were found to have systematically lied. The police paid nearly half a million pounds (in 1980's money) to settle the resulting lawsuits, but no officer was ever disciplined, and no-one was held accountable for the abuse of power. But now, the UK government is finally launching a formal inquiry into the police's actions:

More than four decades after the violent policing at Orgreave during the miners’ strike and a failed prosecution criticised as a police “frame up”, the government has established a statutory inquiry into the scandal.

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the inquiry having informed campaigners last Thursday at the site in South Yorkshire where the Orgreave coking plant was located.

The inquiry into the policing on 18 June 1984 and the collapsed prosecutions marks the culmination of remarkable persistence by campaigners, who argue that the miners’ strike remains an enduring source of injustice.

If run fairly and allowed to inquire fully (and if the files haven't all been conveniently “lost” or destroyed), the inquiry might actually get to the bottom of the systematic police misconduct during this part of the miner's strike, name names, and allow those responsible to be held to account - just like the similar inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster. OTOH, after 40 years, it is likely that many of those ultimately responsible - including Thatcher - are dead and buried, and the Establishment (which has refused justice and dragged its feet and whitewashed for the last forty years) will no doubt now argue that too much time has passed and nothing can be done - just as it has done over all its other crimes. Which just reinforces the need for that rotten institution to be ejected from power - permanently. The UK deserves democratic, accountable government, not a rotten system of lies and cover-ups which seems to exist primarily to protect itself from accountability.

A further descent into tyranny

A protest group carries out repeated non-violent actions to highlight its cause, highlighting the fact that the regime's foreign policy is in violation of international law and is at odds witht he values and wishes of its people. The regime responds by banning the organisation, and threatening 14 year jail terms for anyone who expresses support from it.

Putin's Russia? No, it's Starmer's UK:

MPs have voted in favour of legislation to proscribe group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, passing by 385 votes to 26.

The order, which amends the Terrorism Act 2000, is now expected to be signed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and come into effect later this week.

Once in effect, supporting Palestine Action will become a criminal offence, with membership or expressing support for the direct action group punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

This is exactly what civil libertarians and human rights groups warned about when western governments passed "anti-terrorism" legislation in the wake of September 11th: that the tools used to target terrorists would ultimately come home and be used against peaceful protest groups. Its taken 25 years, but its happened, and there's no coming back from it. Along with the UK's anti-protest laws and the jailing of peaceful activists, it makes it clear that the UK is now a tyranny in all but name. And there's one thing we all know about tyrannies: they deserve to be overthrown.

PPPs are still a rort

On Thursday, infrastructure minister Chris Bishop was wanking in the House about the benefits of Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs). So how do they work out in practice? We all know Transmission Gully is a complete shitshow which ultimately had to be completely restructured after the contractor simply refused to complete the work. Meanwhile, in the UK, the first 25-year "build-own-operate" contracts for schools under their Private Finance Initiative are about to end. And of course its a disaster:

Stoke council bosses are locked in dispute over almost 3,000 school building issues just months before England’s biggest education private finance initiative (PFI) contract ends.

Local authority chiefs in Sheffield also fear legal action from trusts if they fail to ensure a PFI company meets contractual obligations to return schools back to state ownership in good condition.

Meanwhile, multi-million-pound court rows have also erupted in Lancashire over alleged defects in a number of schools built through similar deals, which are now coming to an end.

The core problem: maintenance spending costs money, which means lower profits, so PFI contractors didn't want to spend it, instead choosing to run the infrastructure into the ground. And while they have a clear legal requirement to make good at the end of the contract, they are basically taking a "fuck you, make me" approach in an effort to preserve their profits. And national wants to do this to our courthouses and defence bases, not to mention schools and hospitals.

But its not just them. Because it turns out that Labour also loves PPPs - anything to hide debt and make the books look good, while kicking the can down the road. Anything rather than live up to their name and properly tax the rich to pay for the infrastructure and services we need.

We shouldn't let them. PPPs are a rort, which result in the public getting screwed. And any politician who thinks otherwise is either stupid or on the take, and needs to be de-elected.

Climate Change: The end of coal in the UK

It's official: coal has been eliminated from the UK's electricity system:

Britain’s only remaining coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire will generate electricity for the last time on Monday after powering the UK for 57 years.

The power plant will come to the end of its life in line with the government’s world-leading policy to phase out coal power which was first signalled almost a decade ago.

The closure marks the end of Britain’s 142-year history of coal power use which began when the world’s first coal-fired power station, the Holborn Viaduct power station, began generating electricity in 1882.

Good. Coal has been a significant source of greenhouse gases, and its elimination from global energy systems is vital if we are to get climate change under control. So its a huge positive step from a historical polluter.

Sadly, here in Aotearoa, Shane Jones is trying to push us back onto coal, taking us in entirely the wrong direction in service to his fossil fuel masters. So much for trying to do our bit. Tim Winton is right: our leaders are collaborators with the fossil fuel industry. And if they don't like that word, or the public anger that comes with it, then maybe they should stop collaborating in our destruction.

Inquiring too well

Stephen Lawrence was murdered thirty years ago in a racist attack in London. The murder and the resulting police non-investigation has been the focus of multiple inquiries over the intervening three decades, resulting in official findings of institutional racism against the UK police and multiple corruption investigations. The "Spycops" scandal subsequently revealed that undercover police officers had infiltrated the Lawrence family's campaign for justice, in an effort to dig up dirt and smear them. Those actions were the subject yesterday of the Undercover Policing Inquiry - when it all went horribly off-script:

Asked if undercover police were gathering “intelligence with which to smear the Lawrence family”, [former undercover police officer Trevor] Morris told the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Thursday that that was not his job. Instead, he said it was for MI5 – the Security Service – to do.

Morris said: “I heard this subsequently, and I thought that was … nonsense. That's not what we’re about. We're about gathering intelligence, not smearing individuals.

“That's a Security Service job. Let them do that. We're bothered about gathering intelligence. That's what we were doing.”

Morris then said: “Sorry I shouldn’t say that. Let’s scrap that last bit. I’m not saying that.”

The interrogating lawyer asked: “Are you or are you not in a position to say whether or not the Security Service was seeking to smear …”

At this point the live feed of the Undercover Policing Inquiry was suspended.

Which is all just a bit Orwellian. I guess the inquiry was inquiring too well, and uncovering things the British establishment really didn't want the public to know. But no amount of Orwellian censorship can disguise the truth here: that the British state is rotten to the core.

The UK needs proportional representation

Like a lot of people, I spent Friday watching the UK election. There's the obvious joy at seeing the end of 14 years of Tory chaos, but at the same time the new government does not greatly enthuse me. In order to win over the establishment, Starmer has moved UK Labour even further to the right, and while the new government will be less cruel and more competent than the previous one, the ongoing commitment to austerity and terfery and colonialism means there's not really any hope there. Labour will be competent - unlike the Tories - but also they won't change anything - exactly like the Tories.

Meanwhile, it should be obvious to everyone that the UK electoral system is fundamentally broken and unfair. Labour won fewer votes than last time, and increased its vote-share by a trifling 1.5% - and somehow doubled its seats. Meanwhile the LibDems won close to their fair share: 72 seats from 12% of the vote, but the Greens won just 4 seats off 7% of the vote, and Reform 5 seats with 14%. Its the most disproportionate UK election ever, and the unfairness of it is clear to all. The UK desperately needs to move to proportional representation.

PR will of course mean that Reform - an outright fascist party - is represented in parliament. But it will be represented according to its proportion of the vote. Because the failure mode here isn't proportional representation, but the disproportionate representation given by first-past-the-post. In this election, Labour won two-thirds of the seats on just one-third of the vote. And to point out what should be obvious: Reform (or a similar party) could one day do that too. Proportional representation stops that. Reform (or a similar party) could enter coalition, if other parties are morally bankrupt and willing to work with them (so the UK will need to establish a norm against that, just as Germany has) - but its chances of winning power outright are low. And that's actually some protection. The problem, as always, is convincing the current beneficiaries of that unfair system to change it.

Climate Change: Forcing accountability in the UK

In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction.

The law was passed with near-universal support, and was explicitly supported by the Conservatives when they won power in 2010. But then the Tories returned to type and decided to "get rid of all the green crap". In 2022 their Net Zero Strategy was ruled unlawful as it failed to quantify how it would meet the emissions budget. And now, the same has happened to its replacement:

The UK government’s climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet.

[...]

The judge agreed with ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth that the secretary of state was given “incomplete” information about the likelihood that proposed policies would achieve their intended emissions cuts. This breached section 13 of the Climate Change Act, which requires the secretary of state to adopt plans and proposals that they consider will enable upcoming carbon budgets to be delivered.

Sheldon also agreed with the environment groups that the central assumption that all the department’s policies would achieve 100% of their intended emissions cuts was wrong. The judge said the secretary of state had acted irrationally, and on the basis of an incorrect understanding of the facts.

An emissions reduction plan is not a PR document. Bullshit numbers and heroic assumptions of success may be normal in the world of business, but they're simply unacceptable in government.

(In the meantime the Tories have doubled down on denial, approving new oil and gas permits and rolling back measures to phase out dirty fossil fuel cars and heaters. So they're clearly unwilling to engage with their legal obligations).

The relevance to Aotearoa should be obvious: we borrowed the framework of our Zero Carbon Act direct from the UK. And like the UK, we currently have a government which professes commitment to its long-term net-zero target, while removing practically every concrete measure by which it might be achieved. That government is currently meant to be preparing its second Emissions Reduction Plan, which is legally required to meet the targets set by the second emissions budget, but its hard to see what it will have in it, other than some handwavium about renewable energy, "markets" and the ETS (which doesn't cover our largest polluters, and which National will then proceed to sabotage). Which means we can probably expect a similar court-case here. And if that happens, the UK precedents, while not binding, are likely to be very persuasive.

The cost of climate backsliding

When the UK opened a new coalmine last year, they were warned that it would damage their international reputation and give cover for other countries also wanting to destroy the Earth. And that's exactly what happened:

The UK’s decision to open a new coalmine in Cumbria was a “disaster” that encouraged other countries to press ahead with fossil fuels, and the continued expansion of North Sea oil and gas is likely to continue the harm, a former chief adviser to the government has said.

Other countries are using the UK as an excuse for pressing ahead with fossil fuel projects despite their climate commitments, according to Adair Turner, the first chair of the Committee on Climate Change and a former head of the CBI.

Lord Turner told the Guardian that he had “literally been involved in discussions” in China and India where UK decisions had been given as a reason for not moving faster on the climate.

“I can tell you that [the Cumbrian coalmine] was a disaster globally, and in China and India, where I was engaged in debates [on reducing greenhouse gas emissions], I have had people say ‘yeah, but you’re building a new coalmine in the UK’,” he said.

The application to Aotearoa should be obvious. The incoming National government wants to overturn the offshore gas exploration ban so its rich friends can destroy the world. There's even a live application for an offshore drilling permit, which chickenshit Labour hasn't rejected despite it now being a slam-dunk rejection (Labour having finally passed the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, so the offshore drilling ban applies and the application cannot lawfully be granted). National's siding with the fossil criminals is already having diplomatic consequences; if they persist in this course, then they will not only ruin relations with our Pacific neighbours, but we'll also end up like the UK, with no credibility with the people we need to persuade if climate action is to be successful. And that prospect should worry all of us.

Britain's corrupt Parliament

Last month, Transport Minister Michael Wood was forced to resign after deliberately and repeatedly concealing his pecuniary interests. There's no suggestion that they ever influenced his decision-making, but in Aotearoa we're rightly suspicious of politicians being in a position to profit from public office, and have no tolerance for politicians who refuse to comply with the basic safeguards against it. Meanwhile, in Britain, Wood's crime would have been both legal and normal:

More than 50 MPs have owned stakes in publicly listed companies that raise questions about possible conflicts of interest and that until now have been in effect secret, the Guardian can reveal.

Parliamentary rules mean MPs’ shareholdings, including ones that were held by the former prime minister Theresa May and the former education secretary Gavin Williamson, do not need to be publicly disclosed in parliamentary registers. But as a result voters are left in the dark about some of the financial interests of their elected representatives.

[...]

Almost all of the holdings found are not strictly required to be publicly declared under current transparency requirements. Parliamentary rules, unchanged since 2015, require MPs to register holdings they have in a single company when they own more than 15% of its shares or when their shares in it are worth more than £70,000.

That declaration threshold is around 80% of a backbench MP's salary - a ludicrously high amount. Meanwhile, in Aotearoa, there's no threshold - MPs are required to declare every company in which they have a pecuniary interest (though not, weirdly, its value). And that seems much safer. Allowing substantial financial interests - and over twice the UK median income is "substantial" to anyone who isn't a member of Britain's out-of-touch political elite - to remain secret is simply a recipe for corruption. And while UK MP's might argue that it's "within the rules", that's utterly unconvincing, given that they wrote those rules to suit themselves.

Westminster desperately needs reform to force disclosure, and ultimately divestment, of these corrupt financial interests. And until they do, UKanians are entitled to regard it as a corrupt sewer of self-serving pigs, perpetually ripping off the public to feather their own nests.

As for Aotearoa, the Guardian article mentions that the US requires its politicians to disclose share market transactions, to prevent insider-trading. That seems like it would be a useful addition to our system. Better to be safe than sorry, and if politicians don't want their financial affairs scrutinised, they're not really suitable for public life.

Britain's SAS hosted a serial killer

In 2020, the Brereton report found that the Australian SAS had murdered 39 Afghan civilians and committed war crimes. The British government is finally reviewing the actions of its own special forces in Afghanistan, and it looks like the death toll is at least twice as high:

Eighty Afghans may have been victim of summary killings by three separate British SAS units operating in the country between 2010 and 2013, lawyers representing the bereaved families have told a public inquiry.

[...]

Afghans were often killed after allegedly producing weapons when separated from their wider family by SAS soldiers, but there were five incidents where the number shot dead exceeded the number of weapons found.

The fresh claims are cited in a document submitted by the law firm Leigh Day, based on previous Ministry of Defence court disclosures, to a new public inquiry into allegations of war crimes committed by SAS soldiers in Afghanistan.

And these are the murders they have admitted to. There'll be a lot more they've covered up and kept secret.

Appallingly, nearly half the admitted death toll is due to a single soldier, who had a policy of murdering all "fighting-age males", regardless of whether they posed any threat. Which seems both genocidal, and the actions of a straight-up serial killer.

In Australia, the Brereton report got to the truth, and led to consequences. An entire SAS unit was disbanded for its crimes, and criminal trials are imminent. In the UK, with its long history of official coverups, and with politicians trying to "draw a line" under historic crimes to prevent embarrassment to the power structure, I don't think we can have any confidence that anything will be done. Britain will not provide justice for its crimes. Instead, these war criminals and their political accessories and co-conspirators will have to be sent to The Hague.

Abolish this hereditary fascism

Many people think the monarchy isn't a problem, just a distant bit of pomp and pageantry. Outdated and undemocratic, sure, but just a harmless bit of constitutional dress-ups. But events in Britain are showing it to be anything but. First, there's the intimidating letters police sent to republicans before today's giant monarchical wankfest. And then, there's the pre-emptive arrests:

Police arrested the leader of the anti-monarchy group Republic hours before King Charles' Coronation and a number of other protesters who had gathered among the crowds lining the procession route in central London.

Republic had earlier said it would mount the biggest protest against a British monarch in modern history. But London police chief Mark Rowley warned on Friday that police would take action if protesters tried to "obstruct the enjoyment and celebration" of people.

Protesters, dressed in yellow t-shirts to make themselves stand out, were demanding an elected head of state and say that the royal family has no place in a modern constitutional democracy and is staggeringly expensive to maintain.

A spokesperson for the group said police had arrested its leader Graham Smith on Saturday morning. A photo posted on Twitter showed Smith sitting on the ground surrounded by police officers.

If this seems like a headline from Putin's Russia rather than a modern democracy, you'd be right. Because when you scratch the surface, monarchy is just hereditary fascism in fancy dress. Its existence isn't just an affront to modern, democratic values - it is fundamentally toxic to and incompatible with them. And that is why we must abolish it.

Justice for Liam Holden

In 1972, British soldiers tortured a false confession out of Liam Holden, resulting in him being given Britain's last death sentence. While it was commuted to life imprisonment, Holden was wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. Now, the courts have finally recognised that it was torture:

In 1973 Liam Holden was convicted of murdering a British soldier in Northern Ireland and became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang.

On Friday – half a century after the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, 11 years after the sentence was quashed and a year after Holden died – a high court in Belfast awarded £350,000 to his estate.

The court accepted that the army waterboarded and tortured Holden into confessing to shooting Frank Bell, an 18-year-old member of the parachute regiment. The posthumous award included damages for inhumane and degrading treatment, misfeasance in public office and malicious prosecution.

Which is good, if late. But its not enough. Torture is and always has been a crime in the UK. There won't be real justice until Holden's torturers and their co-conspirators are exposed and prosecuted.

Westminster means hate

When England was an empire, it used colonialism to spread bigotry and hate, leaving a legacy of homophobic legislation around the world. And now, they're using colonialism to force bigotry and hate on Scotland, by vetoing Scotland's gender recognition law:

Rishi Sunak’s government has blocked legislation passed by the Scottish parliament that would make Scotland the first part of the UK to introduce a self-identification system for people who want to change gender.

The Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, announced that he would use section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 for the first time to halt the gender recognition bill after a review by UK government lawyers.

This is a Scottish law for Scottish people, and nothing to do with England. It was passed overwhelmingly by the elected Scottish Parliament, which is meant to be able to pass such laws. And its being vetoed by an English government trying to appeal to English voters by running a transphobic hate campaign. Its an affront to both basic decency, and to the promise of Scottish devolution. Its an explicit attack on Scottish democracy, and the right of Scots to govern themselves.

Fortunately there's a solution for the latter. The only way Scotland will be free of English bigotry is independence. Leave Westminster to fester in its own hate. Scotland should make its own future, away from those terf arseholes.

That's no how you do democracy

Last night, the English Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish government cannot hold an independence referendum. Having said that Scotland is not a colony, they then turned around and effectively said that they are, by forbidding them from holding a democratic vote on their own constitutional arrangements unless another country says they can.

Pretty obviously, this is incompatible with any notion that the UK is a democratic country, let alone a voluntary union. In a voluntary union, the parties can choose to leave. Instead, Scotland is locked in, trapped in a cage unless England decides to let it out. They're handcuffed to a partner who economically abuses them. Which makes the need and desire to break those chains even stronger.

But the ruling goes further than that. Because the Supreme Court's logic of looking at the extended (rather than strictly legal) effects of a Scottish law for constitutional impacts can apply to other things. For example, Scotland has a democratic system of government, rather than Westminster's backward first-past-the-post. It has lowered the voting age to 16. While the legal effect is restricted to Scotland, each of these presents an alternative, and implicitly makes a moral case for it, putting pressure on Westminster to change its rotten constitutional system. That is, they affect the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Will Scotland's domestic policies now be micromanaged by England to stop Scotland from making them look bad, on the basis that everything is constitutional?

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that the SNP will run a de-facto referendum on independence at the next available election, and polling is already saying that they will receive more than 50% support. So there's going to be a democratic mandate for independence whether Westminster wants one or not. The next question is whether they will recognise it, and allow Scotland to leave peacefully and democratically, or whether they ignore the expressed democratic will of the Scottish people, and effectively announce their intention to retain Scotland by oppression and force?

Austerity is murder

Over in the UK, the radical Tory government is planning more benefit cuts to screw the poor. Meanwhile, there's also a timely reminder of exactly what that means: mass-murder:

More than 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain in recent years can be attributed to spending cuts to public services and benefits introduced by a UK government pursuing austerity policies, according to an academic study.

The authors of the study suggest additional deaths between 2012 and 2019 – prior to the Covid pandemic – reflect an increase in people dying prematurely after experiencing reduced income, ill-health, poor nutrition and housing, and social isolation.

Previously improving mortality trends started to change for the worse after austerity policies introduced in 2010 when tens of billions of pounds began to be cut from public spending by the Tory-led coalition government, the study said.

The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found there were 334,327 excess deaths beyond the expected number in England, Wales and Scotland over the eight-year period.

The study talks about "excess deaths", but lets be clear: these people were killed by government negligence. They were murdered by depraved indifference. The only reason we're not talking about genocide - the definition of which includes "[d]eliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" is because the politicians who instigated this slow-motion massacre likely lacked the intent, as they didn't think about their victims at all. Why would they? Its not as if they were important. Its not as if they were people. Its not as if they went to Oxford or Cambridge or Eton or somewhere else that mattered. And yet, given their depraved indifference, its clear that both David Cameron and Theresa May, the Prime Ministers who presided over this, are murderers. And they need to be held to account for every single one of these deaths.

And to bring this home: this is the social policy Christopher Luxon wants to inflict on New Zealand by advocating for tax cuts and austerity. Every time he opens his mouth about that, he needs to be confronted with these numbers, and asked how many people he is willing to kill to benefit the ultra-rich.

No freedom of speech in the UK

In the eighteenth century, the British government waged a campaign of repression against those calling for democracy and an end to the monarchy. Over two hundred years later, nothing has really changed:

A woman was arrested holding an anti-monarchy sign in Edinburgh today, before the Queen’s cortege arrived in the city.

[...]

She held a sign saying ‘f*** imperialism, abolish monarchy’.

Officers appeared behind her and took her away, prompting the crowd to applaud.

The police are saying there was "a breach of the peace". But peacefully holding a sign is not a breach of the peace, and in a free and democratic society citizens are expected to have tolerance for the views of others and their right to protest. But then, the whole problem here is that the UK is not a "free and democratic society" - it is a monarchy, a hereditary dictatorship in fancy dress. If UKanians want to be free, they need to fix that.

A failed state

People being told to drink sewage sounds like a headline from the early nineteenth century, before the public health revolution, or from a failed state, where it has collapsed. But its actually from modern England:

British people need to be “less squeamish” about drinking water derived from sewage, the boss of the Environment Agency has said.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Sir James Bevan outlined measures the government, water companies and ordinary people should be taking to avoid severe droughts.

He said: “Part of the solution will be to reprocess the water that results from sewage treatment and turn it back into drinking water – perfectly safe and healthy, but not something many people fancy.”

Bevan admitted the move would be “unpopular” and reactions on social media have been mixed but he said there was a need to “change how we think about water”.

The reason they're being told to do this is that decades of failed privatisation has seen a quarter of England's drinking water leak away, while privatised water companies dump untreated sewage into lakes, rivers, and the ocean. But rather than order the polluters to fix these entirely avoidable problems, the government is protecting their profits by telling people to just drink shit. Its a perfect example of how privatisation and deregulation erode the state, and ultimately lead to collapse.

Climate Change: A case to watch

Back in 2019 our parliament passed the Zero Carbon Act. The Act was modelled on the UK's Climate Change Act, and has a similar scheme of five-yearly budgets, with detailed government plans to meet them. But after initial success, its no longer working out so well in the UK - their most recent strategy lacked ambition, while key measures weren't funded. And now, the UK's high court has ordered the government to clarify its measures:

The high court has ordered the government to outline exactly how its net zero policies will achieve emissions targets, after a legal challenge from environmental groups.

Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project had all taken legal action over the government’s flagship climate change strategy, arguing it had illegally failed to include the policies it needed to deliver the promised emissions cuts.

In a judgment handed down late on Monday, Mr Justice Holgate said the strategy lacked any explanation or quantification of how the government’s plans would achieve the emissions target, and as such had failed to meet its obligations under Climate Change Act (CCA) 2008.

The strategy hasn't been overturned, but the government will need to report to parliament on the details of what its measures will achieve. And if it falls below the statutory targets, then it will be overturned. Which I guess is another reason why the Tories want to get rid of judicial review...

The application to Aotearoa ought to be obvious. We have the same framework, and the government's first emissions reduction plan is craven, status quo policy which won't achieve even the weak targets they've set. It seems ripe for a challenge...

More British war crimes

Back in 2017, the ABC revealed that Australia's SAS committed war crimes in Afghanistan, murdering prisoners and civilians, and taking body-parts as trophies. Now, the BBC has exposed the same behaviour in the British SAS:

SAS operatives in Afghanistan repeatedly killed detainees and unarmed men in suspicious circumstances, according to a BBC investigation.

Newly obtained military reports suggest that one unit may have unlawfully killed 54 people in one six-month tour.

The BBC found evidence suggesting the former head of special forces failed to pass on evidence to a murder inquiry.

The ABC story led to a full government inquiry, which found Australian troops had committed at least 39 murders. The most guilty unit was disbanded, and prosecutions are in process. So far, the British government's response has been to accuse the BBC of putting soldiers at risk. But given their past history of obstructing investigations, while pushing for amnesty legislation to outlaw domestic prosecutions of English war criminals, an Australian-style response seems unlikely. But if Westminster won't hold its own to account, then we'll just have to rely on the International Criminal Court to do it for them.

Only fools make deals with liars

Northern Ireland went to the polls last week, resulting in Sinn Féin becoming the largest party, the first time an Irish party has done so. Naturally, the unionists are not taking this well, and are threatening to use their minority-veto to prevent any government being formed. They're also demanding the immediate revocation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the UK's Brexit deal covering the UK's land border with the EU in Ireland. And of course the Tories in Westminster are going to do it:

Liz Truss is reportedly preparing draft legislation that would unilaterally scrap key parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, removing the need for checks on goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

No bill was announced in the Queen’s speech on Tuesday but the foreign secretary is reported to have asked officials to prepare the draft, which would put the UK in breach of its treaty obligations.

As well as scrapping checks, the draft legislation would also take away powers of the European court of justice and remove all requirement for Northern Irish businesses to follow EU regulations.

Effectively, this is the UK tearing up its Brexit deal and saying "fuck you" to the EU - a deal made less only three years ago. This is obviously going to create problems with the EU, but it goes wider than that. To point out the obvious, Aotearoa recently concluded a free trade agreement with the UK - one with some controversial provisions. And the UK has just told us, and the world, that we have no reason to believe that they will keep up their end of it.

This is not acceptable. Only fools make deals with liars, and if we want treaties to be kept, we need to engage in collective action to incentivise keeping them. If the UK cheats on its commitments to the EU, we should suspend implementation of the FTA until they reverse that position and meet all their commitments. Otherwise, we have only ourselves to blame when they break their word to us as well.