Wait until 2016 and you can say Canary wharf was great. It'll be ok to say the Dublin and Monaghan bombs were wonderful but you go to jail if you say the same about the Sean Graham's bookies massacre.

This just shows what utter junk most of the legislation is. Knee-jerk/Panic measures that won't tackle terror.

A government action that can primarily tackle terrorism is investment in intelligence monitoring and evidence gathering not pointless laws. However, you can't have lots of press coverage about that, a chance to scare the populace or to score political points off your opponents.

Sensible measures like phone-tapping and bugging admissibility are ignored but stupid legal measures that drive terrorists or their supporters underground further making intelligence gathering even more difficult.

alas this will be another law which will not apply to the north, much like the 11 plus et al

Is glorifying terrorism spreading news?

Brian

It will apply to Northern Ireland.

"Section 33(5) Subject to section 13(6) and to subsection (4) of this section, this Act extends to the whole of the United Kingdom."

What does it say about a government composed largely of solicitors and barristers that it can come up with such bad law?

Fanny,

We have the same cute whores on this side of the Atlantic. Must be the common (smarmy) gene pool.

So this would mean that the orange order not only breached the determination of the Parades Commission on several ocasions during last Saturdays parade, but would also have been liable to prosecution under this new legislation.

The fact that an orange lodge taking part in the parade last week, carried a bannerette commemorating uvf killer Brian Robinson, would presumably have led to prosecutions.

The bannerette was carried during the parade in 2003 and was mentioned in the parades commission report after the march.It was carried by former shankill butcher Eddie McIlwaine(complete with orange sash).The lodge in question,the Old Island Boyne Heroes LOL633 was led by the Shankill Star flute band, which also carries the name of uvf man Robinson on its drum and insignia.

You can read about Mr McIlwaine below.

http://www.sundaylife.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=425976

The orange order gave an undertaking that it would no longer be carried during the annual parade.

Until last week, that was.

I googled Brian Robinson and came up with the following pics.

http://www.ipecobservers.org/photos.html

Sorry, but I think it would be difficult to bring a prosecution under the circumstances you mentioned.
Unless the Order specifically mentioned paramiltary membership, or paramilitary deeds, then all they are doing is honouring an individual.

Using your interpretation of the law, one could argue that voting for Sinn Fein ought to be a punishable offence.

*shakes head*

yoda

have you got a medical condition

No. Just a healthy sense of disbelief.

Perhaps an elaboration on your disbelief would assist, Yoda.

Ok, I'll try.

I simply don't know how this was seen as a serious solution by intelligent people. It creates the absurdities your piece points out.

I'm stupefied by this in particular: "Some examples which have been put forward of events that might not qualify for inclusion are the Easter Uprising or the French Revolution."

*Boggle*

The proposal admits to the historical merits of "terrorism" while wanting to disavow them: on the one hand, "terrorism" is a powerful and progressive force, and on the other, "terrorism" is a purely destructive force that *must* be condemned (for twenty years anyway). "Terrorism" is clearly both.

It's like an edict to stop history. Maybe Fukuyama was on to something...

Also, the notion that certain "events" can be deemed to be "absent from the limit" worries me as well: who gets the job of parsing history to make up the list of exclusions? What criteria would they use? Public opinion? Private conscience? Would that then be the "official" history?

The state will always seek to appropriate all violence to itself; it gets annoyed when it is no longer the sole one able to do violence to or kill its own citizens. This just seems like an unusually cackhanded way of revealing that.

Good comment Yoda, history is written by the victors, but maybe if it is legislated properly for history can be written by anyone!

Also it would be important to point out that Provisional Sinn Fein claim a direct line from the Sinn Fein of old and claim to be a revolutionary party which has the names of many PIRA men attached to their cummain. If this legislation is to pass will the British government be rounding up and imprisoning ALL members of PSF?
Also don't forget about the DUP and their links to various terrorist groupings.

So does that mean i have to wait the best part of 2 decades before i can glorify the war against Weapons of Mass Destruction ?

And another whole year before i can celebrate the US bombing of Tripoli and the dozens of civilians killed there, followed by the US Panama invasion a few years later.

Well, at least i can celebrate the bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior" in New Zealand by the French in 1985.

The middle finger to all you wooly liberal whingers ;)
This law means we can rid the country of alot of arse****s,.... and if they get tortured back home; tough shit. They don't seem overly concerned about the human rights of the July 2005 london bomb victims.

The middle finger to all you wooly liberal whingers, where ever you are :)
This law means we can rid the country of alot of arse****s.

spirit-level you seem to infer that ALL terrorists come from out side of the UK and Ireland, have you seen any news over the past 35 years?

What's the legal definition of "terrorism" in terms of this law? Or perhaps there isn't a definition written into law? I remember seeing a definition in Irish law that seemed to me to include organising an everyday strike by a trade union.