Poll: Who Will You Be Voting For In The Next General Election?

Generali

beingjdc wrote: »

The Anti-Terror, Crime and Security Act was the relevant legislation. Like most Bills in the UK, it was a hybrid act (in the sense that it dealt with a number of issues, not the strict legal definition of affecting an individual but being a public bill) . It also introduced offences including 'incitement to religious hatred', but it would be disingenuous if I went door-to-door with a leaflet saying "all Hindus are paedos" or whatever, to claim then that I'd been arrested under "terrorism legislation".

In this case, the action was presumably taken under Part 2 of the Act, "Freezing Order", rather than Part 1, "Forfeiture of Terrorist Cash". This provides as follows.

Power to make order

(1) The Treasury may make a freezing order if the following two conditions are satisfied.
(2) The first condition is that the Treasury reasonably believe that—
(a) action to the detriment of the United Kingdom’s economy (or part of it) has been or is likely to be taken by a person or persons
(3) If one person is believed to have taken or to be likely to take the action the second condition is that the person is—
(a) the government of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, or

The likelihood was that the Icelandic Government were going to move assets back to Iceland, despite the fact that the money was needed to cover liabilities in the UK - the same trick was used by Lehman when they drained their London office of cash before going into administration, to window-dress the solvency levels of their US operations. It is right and proper to use the legislation above to prevent that being done - the same would certainly be done to us if we tried to repatriate foreign assets when we had clear liabilities we were unlikely to be able to meet.



Cases involving politicians have always been handled by Special Branch (Special Operations 12) for as long as it has existed. In 2005 Special Branch was merged with Anti-Terror Branch (Special Operations 13), and the overall lot called Counter-Terror Command (Special Operations 15).

It still carries out the functions of Special Branch, which extend beyond simply terrorism-related functions. I imagine "Counter-Terror and Political Command" would have sounded silly.



Yes this is rubbish as well. "It has been reported that" should always set alarm bells ringing. In reality, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (which I remember passing, and was never talked about as a Terror law at the time, in the media or in Parliament. If anything it was talked about as a computer hacker law) requires public bodies who use surveillance on people in any way (eg checking what is in their recycling bin* or whether they really live where they claim to) to record the fact they have done so and in some cases notify a higher authority. Taken together with the Freedom of Information Act, this means that the Newspapers can find out how often they're doing it, and get all excited.

The irony is, Councils and so on were doing this before these Acts came in, (generally quite rightly in my view, I went spare when the former Chairman of the Local Government Association said surveillance like CCTV shouldn't be used for minor things like people letting their dogs crap all over the pavement. If I got a Taxi to work I might feel the same way. But I don't) they just didn't have to tell anyone. That's all the Acts say - they don't give permission for it to be done, they require it to be above board.

* Nobody's been done for throwing away things that might have been recycled, they've been done for putting things in the recycling that can't be recycled.

Very interesting, thanks.

I understood that Iceland had cash that wasn't connected to the falied banks seized too. Is that the case?

beingjdc

Generali wrote: »

Very interesting, thanks.

I understood that Iceland had cash that wasn't connected to the falied banks seized too. Is that the case?

I think this is an argument about Kaupthing, which had not at that stage failed, but whose UK assets were seized. It had been taken under the control of the Icelandic Financial Services Authority, but not declared to have failed. So you could argue that post-nationalisation it was all the same money (the Icelandic Government's), though the Icelandic Government believe Kaupthing could have traded through if the UK Government had not impounded those deposits (but then, the UK Government thought that about Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley, and so on!)

What the UK Government actually did in this case was forcibly transfer its UK deposits to ING, using the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008. The important difference between Kaupthing and Icesave is that Kaupthing had a UK banking license, so the UK compensation scheme was liable in the event of failure, not the Icelandic one. For what it's worth, the Finnish Government took the same decision.

All sorts of weird things happened in the Iceland fiasco. I don't know if you followed the saga of the missing shares, but at one point 10% of Sainsbury's went missing. I don't know exactly how this happens, but in essence the owner of a lot of shares, an Icelandic chap, put them up for auction to meet a margin call. There was a winning bidder, but the auction was put in some sort of escrow because the nominee bank was one of the insolvent ones. The original owner didn't have them any more, the bank claimed they'd gone, and the purchaser didn't receive them.

What's scary is how close the UK is to the top of the list of "countries with a financial set-up most like Iceland".

neverdespairgirl

bo_drinker wrote: »

So "they" want to censor the internet, now there's a fkn surprise. They can't even police it to stop paedos wierdos etc. But they can and will censor it.

there is a fair amount of paedophile-catching.

I went through a stage of doing lots of child !!!!!! prosecutions. I think it's the only offence where I have only prosecuted, and never defended.

neverdespairgirl

beingjdc wrote: »

I don't know if you followed the saga of the missing shares, but at one point 10% of Sainsbury's went missing. I don't know exactly how this happens, but in essence the owner of a lot of shares, an Icelandic chap, put them up for auction to meet a margin call. There was a winning bidder, but the auction was put in some sort of escrow because the nominee bank was one of the insolvent ones. The original owner didn't have them any more, the bank claimed they'd gone, and the purchaser didn't receive them.

Cliff hanger!

What happened? Had they fallen down the back of a filing cabinet?

beingjdc

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Cliff hanger!

What happened? Had they fallen down the back of a filing cabinet?

Everyone went very quiet about it and I assumed they had been found hiding out in Qatar waiting for the fuss to die down. However the Chairman of Sainsbury's has been announced as the prospective Chairman of UK Financial Investments Limited, so maybe they're being used to add a bit of retail vim to our holdings in RBS / Northern Rock / HBOS?

xmaswoes

the only way id vote for the tories if is thatcher came back to power. now thats she doo'lally, stuff she says might make sense

but it will never happen......ps maggie....hurry up.....please.....the champagne is getting older an older .... this year maybe?

tories : stop it wit the comin at ya approach to the man on the street......ur not.....never will be nor never can be.......

george osborne......practically no ideas sprouting from his uper class lips as to what he would be doing right now to save the hundreds and thousands affected by the crunch

and to those that say 'but labour us here...but labour put us here...but labour put is here'.......ahem.....dont remember you crying when your property price was booming ???

an fox hunting......a key priority for the tories haha......has to be due to the financiers coming down heavy an no doubt dave likin to ride george on the hunt........well done to the hunt sabetours an keep it up.......hunting is cruel.....i dont care if your upper, middle or lower in the eyes of the silly class system that exists, chasing a fox to its death !!!!!!! above the law an the only justice i hav is that mr ferry is in prison over christmas an the new year an his mother weeps hahahaha......

mewbie_2

xmaswoes wrote: »

stuff

Can you tell me who you will be voting for, so I can cross them off my list?

xmaswoes

ive voted....its a secret

Davesnave

mewbie wrote: »

Can you tell me who you will be voting for, so I can cross them off my list?

Never mind that; find out what he's on, so I can put it on my list...

treliac

beingjdc wrote: »

Everyone went very quiet about it and I assumed they had been found hiding out in Qatar waiting for the fuss to die down. However the Chairman of Sainsbury's has been announced as the prospective Chairman of UK Financial Investments Limited, so maybe they're being used to add a bit of retail vim to our holdings in RBS / Northern Rock / HBOS?

Justin King, Sainsbury's chief executive, has been appointed principal adviser for the 2012 Olympics.

He's put Sainsbury's back in a position of retail strength (for anyone questioning their survival) and must have impressed Boris with his business record.