i can’t wait to be a citizen so i can vote.

gordon brown outlines his proposed bills in a speech to the queen, including more “hate crime” laws. i’ve mentioned how i feel about “hate crime laws” before: a crime is a crime. attacking someone because of their disability (while repugnant) is not any more or less tragic than people attacked for other reasons. motivation for a crime is irrelevant to the outcome. it only serves to make us feel better to punish certain people more because we find them more morally reprehensible, when in fact, we should have done more as a community before the crime – not after. if the laws already in place can’t deter people from attacking people with disabilities, then our society is broken, and no legislation is going to change that – it only assuages our conscience.

brown also proposed the “citizenship and immigration bill”, introducing a points-based visa system and forcing immigrants to do community work. i’ve already made my views abundantly clear on this: this is an ineffectual kneejerk response to the problems of *illegal* immigration and *legal* economic migrants from the e.u. it has absolutely nothing to do with “british jobs for british workers” (a slogan the daily mail helpfully likens to xenophobic bnp propaganda).

and lastly in this dispicable triumvirate, brown puts forth the counter-terrorism bill, which calls for doubling the period they can hold a suspected terrorist without charge to nearly 2 months, a sex-offender type register which will track them indefinitely, and a ban on ever leaving the country. oh, and they’re allowed to draw “adverse inferences” from what a suspect does *not* say, natch. in effect moving the u.k. towards becoming its own private guantanamo.

show me the ballot. in the grand scheme of things my vote may not change anything, but it’ll sure make me feel a helluva lot better.

…and you will know us by the trail of dead – mistakes & regrets

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