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You cannot tell a lie, politicians ordered

For the first time MPs, ministers and civil servants will have to agree to a code of conduct which binds them to the truth as part of a package of measures proposed to combat the low level of public trust in Government. Sir Alistair Graham, head of the powerful sleaze watchdog, is driving through the first major changes to the Seven Principles of Public Life since their introduction in 1995.

Source: TimesOnLine, February 27, 2005

Every school pupil to get ID number

Every child at a state school in Scotland is to be issued with a unique identity number to help authorities trace them if they go missing.

Source: The Scotsman, February 24, 2006

How I woke up to a nightmare plot to steal centuries of law and liberty

In my nightmare, Tony Blair finally decides that he is fed-up with putting Bills before Parliament. He has so much to do and so little time. Don’t you realise how busy he is? He’s had enough of close shaves and of having to cut short trips abroad. He decides to put a Bill to End All Bills before the Commons, one that gives him and his ministers power to introduce and amend any legislation in future without going through all those boring stages in Parliament....

Only one thing persuades me that I’m not cracking up. When I have my nightmares about the Bill to End All Bills, I am not dreaming about dastardly legislation that I fear a cartoon Tony Blair, with an evil cackle, will introduce in some terrible future. I am tossing and turning about a government Bill that was given its second reading in the House of Commons last week and is heading into committee.

Source: TimesOnLine, February 15, 2006

Clarke launches amnesty on knives to reduce stabbings

A five-week nationwide knives amnesty is being launched in the summer in an attempt to drive down numbers of stabbings.

More than 230 people were stabbed to death last year and concern over levels of knife crime have been highlighted by the killing of City lawyer Tom ap Rhys Pryce last month.

Source: The Independent (online), February 9, 2006

Police stop and search 100 people a day under new anti-terror laws

Campaigners will mount a legal challenge in the House of Lords today, as they attempt to limit the laws giving police sweeping powers to stop people even if they have no grounds to suspect them of a crime.

Source: The Independent (online), January 25, 2006

Mother loses 'right to know' abortion battle

Girls under 16 can have abortions without their parents' knowledge, a judge ruled yesterday.

Source: news.telegraph, January 24, 2006

Police to file all offences for life

RECORDS of all criminal convictions and cautions will remain on police files for 100 years after chief constables overturned the principle that offences can be “spent”, The Times has learnt.

Source: TimesOnline, January 21, 2006

Prescott satellite to spy on your home

Hi-tech cameras brought in to police home improvements and council tax dodgers.

John Prescott has told tax inspectors to use satellites to snoop on householders' attempts to improve their homes.

Source: The Independent (online), January 1, 2006

Santa too scary for children, says government

The highlight of any Christmas party for generations of children has been the moment when the lights dim, voices hush and the sound of sleigh bells signals the imminent arrival of Santa Claus.

But that magic moment has come under threat from government advisers who have told teachers that children should be protected from the "terrifying" appearance of Santa at school Christmas parties.

Source: The Scotsman, December 12, 2005

Police warn author over gay comments

During the programme, she said she did not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. She added that placing boys with two homosexuals for adoption was as obvious a risk as placing a girl with two heterosexual men who offered themselves as parents. "It is a risk," she said. "You would not give a small girl to two men."

Source: telegraph.co.uk, December 12, 2005

Sex lessons at five urged

Classroom lessons about sex and relationships should be a routine part of the education of children as young as five so they can deal with today’s “increasingly sexualised society”, according to a government-commissioned report.

Source: Times Online, December 4, 2005

Taxman to snoop in your home

Council tax inspectors will be able to enter people's homes and take photographs even of their bedrooms, it emerged yesterday.

Whitehall documents reveal that they will be allowed to "obtain factual information from internal inspections" as part of the enormous exercise to revalue 22 million properties in England.

Source: news.telegraph, November 15, 2005

Nursery children must stay inside to protect neighbour's rights

A nursery has been forced to keep youngsters indoors after a council threatened it with legal action following a complaint about the noise its children made.

telegraph.co.uk, November 11, 2005

Mixed response to toddler plans

A proposed "national curriculum" for babies and toddlers in England has received a mixed response....

"From the minute you are born and your parents go back to work, as the government has encouraged them to do, you are going to be ruled by the Department for Education."

Source: BBC News (online), November 9, 2005

Blair Suffers Major Defeat on Terror Bill

In a political blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair, British lawmakers on Wednesday rejected tough anti-terrorism legislation that would have allowed suspects to be detained for 90 days without charge.

Source: Breitbart (online), November 9, 2005

ID cards will lead to 'massive fraud'

"Unlike other forms of information, such as credit card details, if core biometric details such as your fingerprints are compromised, it is not going to be possible to provide you with new ones," - Mr Fishenden, national technology officer for Microsoft....

In an article for The Scotsman today, Jerry Fishenden, the national technology officer for Microsoft, says the proposal to place "biometrics" - or personal identifiers such as fingerprints - on a central database could perpetuate the "very problem the system was intended to prevent". He says ministers "should not be building systems that allow hackers to mine information so easily".

Source: The Scotsman, October 18, 2005

Embryos created by 'virgin conception'

Scientists have created the first human embryos in Britain by a technique of "virgin conception" that does not involve either fertilisation with sperm or cloning. The six embryos lived for between three and five days and were created as a potential source of human stem cells, which can develop into the body's specialised tissues such as brain nerves or bone.

Each embryo came about as a result of parthenogenesis, when an egg divides without being fertilised into a ball of cells that develops in effect into an early embryo called a blastocyst.

Source: The Independent, September 10, 2005

Underwater cameras save pool girl from drowning

A 10-year-old girl has become the first person in Britain to be saved from drowning by a computer system.

The child was plucked from the bottom of a public swimming pool after the computer's sophisticated software realized she had stopped moving.

The system, which uses 12 cameras, four of them underwater, to monitor swimmers, sent an alert to the five lifeguards on duty at the pool in Bangor, North Wales, and one of them dived in to save her. The entire incident took 62 seconds.

Telegraph, September 1, 2005

Perverted internet porn to be banned

Sexually violent images on the internet will banned outright by the Scottish Executive under new proposals being announced today.

A new offence of possession of violent and abusive pornography would mean any images acquired electronically would be illegal.

Source: The Scotsman (online), August 30, 2005

Police ask for tough new powers

Police last night told Tony Blair that they need sweeping new powers to counter the terrorist threat, including the right to detain a suspect for up to three months without charge instead of the current 14 days.

Senior officers also want powers to attack and close down websites, and a new criminal offence of using the internet to prepare acts of terrorism, to "suppress inappropriate internet usage".

Source: Guardian Unlimited (online), July 22, 2005

Speed device will act as cost 'carrot' to young drivers

Young drivers are to be offered cheaper insurance if they agree to have a speed-monitoring device that records every occasion they break the limit installed in their cars.

The device, which uses a satellite tracking system combined with a digital map of speed limits, measures the vehicle’s speed every eight seconds and checks it against the local limit.

Source: Times Online, July 16, 2005

Panic in No 10 as ID card support collapses

Tony Blair's hopes of bringing in a national system of identity cards were looking increasingly imperilled last night amid signs of collapsing public support and panic within the Government.

A YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph shows that backing for ID cards has plummeted from 78 per cent less than two years ago to 45 per cent.

Source: Telegraph, July 4, 2005

Forget cameras - spy device will cut drivers’ speed by satellite

IT IS the ultimate back seat driver. Motorists face having their cars fitted with a “spy” device that stops speeding.

The satellite-based system will monitor the speed limit and apply the brakes or cut out the accelerator if the driver tries to exceed it. A government-funded trial has concluded that the scheme promotes safer driving.

Source: The Sunday Times (online), July 3, 2005

Cigarette snoopers to enforce ban

New powers effectively criminalising smoking in public were announced by the Government yesterday, with the minister in charge promising an "intelligence-led approach to enforcing the law".

Informers will be encouraged to report breaches of sweeping bans on the habit, in which company smoking rooms will be outlawed and places such as bus shelters and the outsides of office blocks made no-smoking areas.

Source: Telegraph (online), June 21, 2005

Human babies 'grown in lab'

Human eggs which could grow into embryos have been created in a laboratory for the first time, scientists announced yesterday.

They were created by scraping stem cells off the surface of ovaries and exposing them to a chemical which stimulated growth.

Source: Evening Standard This is London, May 5, 2005

The parking spy that tells wardens when you are due a ticket

A parking enforcement device that sends messages to alert traffic wardens that a driver should be given a ticket was put on show yesterday as plans were announced for a professional qualification for parking attendants.

The ParkingEye looks little more than an ordinary pay and display machine at first sight. But one day it will instil as much fear into motorists as speed cameras.

Source: Telegraph (online), April 20, 2005

Hospital admits abortion at 34 weeks

Scottish hospitals have carried out abortions on severely abnormal foetuses as late as 34 weeks, an investigation by Scotland on Sunday has revealed.

One hospital conducted an abortion just six weeks short of the baby’s due date after the mother refused an earlier offer to terminate 17 weeks into the pregnancy.

Source: Scotsman (online), April 10, 2005

Speed cameras can 'talk' to track you down

A new "intelligent" speed trap is set to catch thousands of drivers in London.

Groups of cameras will track cars over a wide area - such as a housing estate - instead of "flashing" them at just one spot.

Source: This is London (online), April 7, 2005

School bans 'wrong race' hairstyle

A teenager was sent home from school after the headteacher ruled she was the wrong race to have a braided hairstyle.

Olivia Acton, 13, was told she could not join her classmates at Middleton Technology College because her tightly plaited hair was too "extreme" for the strict uniform policy.

Source: Manchester Evening News (online), March 17, 2005

Australia Tightens Weapons Control

"Police have confiscated more than 2,800 knives, mainly from young men, since July, and from today new laws prohibiting weapons such as missile launchers, extendable batons and stun guns come into effect."

Source: smh.com.au/news/ Sydney Morning Herald

Government reading your email

The British government can read e-mail without having to get a warrant. This fact was disclosed by the Home Office and concerns a legal loophole in the Data Protection Act. The loophole allows police to obtain e-mail information from Internet Access Providers without first getting a warrant. The danger of this is that, if the ISPs cooperate, the police can read e-mails without leaving a paper trail that they have done so. If ISPs refuse to cooperate, the police can get a court order.

Source:Electronic Telegraph, June 9, 1997