A Jury?

 An interesting post from Craig Murray:

 

           I want to make one or two points for you to ponder while I am in jail. This is the last post until about Christmas; we are not legally able to post anything while I am imprisoned. But the Justice for Craig Murray Campaign website is now up and running and will start to have more content shortly. Fora and comments here are planned to stay open.
         I hope that one possible good effect of my imprisonment might be to coalesce opposition to the imminent abolition of jury trials in sexual assault cases by the Scottish Government, a plan for which Lady Dorrian – who wears far too many hats in all this – is front and centre. We will then have a situation where, as established by my imprisonment, no information at all on the defence case may be published in case it contributes to “jigsaw identification”, and where conviction will rest purely on the view of the judge.
        That is plainly not “open justice”, it is not justice at all. And it is even worse than that, because the openly stated aim of abolishing juries is to increase conviction rates. So people will have their lives decided not by a jury of their peers, but by a judge who is acting under specific instruction to increase conviction rates.
          It is often noted that conviction rates in rape trials are too low, and that is true. But have you ever heard this side of the argument? In Uzbekistan under the Karimov dictatorship, when I served there, conviction rates in rape trials were 100%. In fact very high conviction rates are a standard feature of all highly authoritarian regimes worldwide, because if the state prosecutes you then the state gets what it wants. The wishes of the state in such systems vastly outweigh the liberty of the individual.
         My point is simply this. You cannot judge the validity of a system simply by high conviction rates. What we want is a system where the innocent are innocent and the guilty found guilty; not where an arbitrary conviction target is met.
         The answer to the low conviction rates in sexual assault trials is not simple. Really serious increases in resources for timely collection of evidence, for police training and specialist units, for medical services, for victim support, all have a part to play. But that needs a lot of money and thought. Just abolishing juries and telling judges you want them to convict is of course free, or even a saving.
         The right to have the facts judged in serious crime allegations by a jury of our peers is a glory of our civilisation. It is the product of millennia, not lightly to be thrown away and replaced by a huge increase in arbitrary state power. That movement is of course fueled by current fashionable political dogma which is that the victim must always be believed. That claim has morphed from an initial meaning that police and first responders must take accusations seriously, to a dogma that accusation is proof and it is wrong to even question the evidence, which is of course to deny the very possibility of false accusation.

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The State's Prying Eyes.

     So the Scottish government wants to open the NHS central Register (NHSCR) to 100 or so public bodies. What could possibly go wrong with 100 different public bodies being able to dip into your personal data, after all we know that all these 100 or so public bodies are all fully staffed by totally scrupulously honest people, who would in no way abuse that data!! Not even inadvertently.

     The Scottish government, UK government, French government, American government, Chinese, government, and the rest, they are all the same. They want to collect as much data as possible about you and share it with all branches of their apparatus, and it is always for our benefit, to protect us, but the bottom line is that it is control. They want all their branches to know as much about you a possible. Dipping into your personal data will be local councils, the police, tax collectors, benefit offices, education departments, even Scottish Canals and Quality Meat Scotland. Like I said before, what could possibly go wrong? 

      We all know that a lot of that data would be very useful to commercial entities, insurance companies etc., and they will be doing their level best to pick-pocket little gems to enhance their profits, with over 100 new doors opening, that would make their job so much easier.

      Big Brother walks in many guises, but the aim is always the same, who are you, where are you, what are you up to, why are you there, have you been authorised to be there, who are you mixing with, and why. It costs a lot of money to collect, process and store all that data, and you would be a fool if you thought it was all for your benefit. The tentacles of the state do not caress, they strangle.

From the BBC:

   Everyone born in Scotland or registered with a GP north of the border has a Unique Citizen Reference Number (UCRN) held in the NHSCR.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky'#s home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk