There may not be an obvious link between the main stories in the news this week but there is one nonetheless. Perhaps the most significant is the Jury's open verdict in the De Menezes inquest. It is obvious from their findings that the jury were very disquieted by the evidence that they heard and, in particular, the contradictions between the police evidence and the ordinary members of the public who saw an innocent man shot dead in front of them. What is most shocking about the overall Police attitude to this whole matter is their complete failure to recognise how disturbed the public are that a person was gunned down in this way. They can see it from their own perspective but seemingly do not understand that the public do not want to live in a society where the police can do this sort of thing and then expect no one to be critical of them.

No doubt the government saw this verdict coming however and they were no doubt delighted when the Coroner (in fact a former High Court Judge and previously long term prosecutor - see the hopeless 80's Official Secrets Act trial of a lot of young RAF airman who made a series of dubious confessions) prevented them considering a verdict of unlawful killing. This is the same government who have made concerted efforts to remove juries from the Inquest process and stop the public examination of the evidence.

What it demonstrates however is that when the public are exposed to real evidence and allowed to examine it carefully they come to conclusions that the government simpy don't like. So isn't it much easier to stop them knowing the truth at all or manipulating it in a media that happily play along. It is a sad fact that they seem to encourage and rely upon a general public ignorance and unwillingness to examine anything beyond the latest headline. In all the worst possible ways this government seems to have taken "1984" as their bible:

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

How is it, therefore, that the government gets away with it? How is it that they can avoid having to explain the obvious logic of the director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders:

“Current policy objectives are conflicting and incoherent. The government needs to decide on its key priority. The tug of war with lenders being pulled in every direction at once needs to end."?

How is that they can get away with merely stating that everyone is doing the same as us? In the same vein, they even manage to brush off the criticisms from Germany without ever trying to address the criticisms that are made.

This evening the Civil Service have apologised for releasing the statistics on knife crime without the approval of the National Statistician and others. Why is it the civil service who are apolgising? It was not them who trotted out the statistics to make some political point yesterday. It was the politicians and in particular the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, although they have both made themselves scarce again as soon as criticisms are voiced.

All these issues demonstrate how the public are treated with contempt and kept in ignorance as far as is possible. Last week when the Police were trawling through the office of an MP in an attempt to cut off criticism Civil War analogies were all the rage. Here is another one particularly relevant to our current situation:

"the tyranny of princes could never be grievous but by the tameness and stupidity of the people"

With the news that a police woman in Northumberland has been arrested for misconduct in a public office for being involved in prostitution it is a good time to consider where this offence comes from in the first place.

Its origins are in the common law and it was, until recently, rarely used. It was first described by Lord Mansfield in 1783 in relation to the misuse of offices under the crown, particularly where there was an element of profit. It has applied to JP's and very many of the times when prosecutions mainly involved Police Officers neglecting their duties or, more frequently, where they had been corrupt.

It was only in about 1997 that the offence was resurrected with any frequency. This was because it was thought for a while that Police Officers who were misusing the Police National Computer could not be prosecuted for the modern offence of "computer misuse" because they were thought to have been entitled to use the computer for legitimate reasons. The offence of misuse of public office was resurrected to get around this and so came back into the minds of prosecuting lawyers. Surprisingly there are "fashions" in the use of laws and a tendency to stretch a law as far as it can go. That is surely what has now happened with this offence. A police officer working as a prostitute may be undesirable but it is not unlawful and surely has nothing to do with her job. As has now repeatedly been pointed out the leaking and the receiving of leaks of material that did not involve national security was expressly supposed to be excluded from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Frustrated by this it seems that the "authorities" in the shape of the government, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Police have now proceeded to use it to suppress both the press and now Parliament.

There is the clearest link, in the shape of this offence, between the arrest of Damian Green and the unsuccessful prosecution of Sally Murrer. One was an attempt to silence or punish the press arising from a police officer making a fuss over the bugging of inmates in Woodhill prison. It is easy to see what has happened to Damian Green as an attempt, in the run up to the next election, to frighten civil servants as to the consequences of leaking, so reducing the ammunition available to the opposition. If it does no more than silence the apparent mole in the Treasury it will presumably have served its purpose.

Welcome to Number 45

This blog is dedicated to examining the current governments relentless destruction of the liberties that were once espoused by John Wilkes and which were supported by the cry of "Wilkes and Liberty". His great achievements have a real contemporary relevance, the free reporting of parliamentary proceedings so that all could understand what was going on, the unlawfulness of "general warrants" to attack peoples freedom from arbitrary arrest, and the rights of electors to be represented by their choice of candidate and not who was approved by the government of the day. Examples of repressive and arbitrary government actions are welcomed and comment will try and examine whether or not the what is going on is lawful.

We seem to be living in a country where the government, run by the North Briton in Chief, is happy to use the police and the law to suppress opposition and prevent criticism. The complaint against Damian Green is that he might have encouraged leaking. I hope he has and if this blog encourages others to leak material with which to embarass the government it will have made some small contribution to our greater freedom.