Whole Truth Coalition

The Home Office claims the new database, which can track phone calls and emails, is necessary in an advancing digital world to allow it to tackle terrorism and serious crime.

But Sir Ken MacDonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said the multibillion pound behemoth would prove a “hellhouse” of personal private information that would inevitably leak into the public domain regardless of the stringent safeguards promised by Government.

His warning follows a series of major leaks of personal information in the past year, including the loss of 25 million child benefit records by the HM Revenue and Customs.

At present, Internet Service Providers and telephone companies can provide police with the lion’s share of information about the whereabouts and identities of suspects from their communications.

Under the new system, which will be outlined in the new year in a consultation paper on the interception modernisation programme, one or a number of organisations would proactively collect all communications data, including from broadband phone calls and chatrooms, instead of such information being retrieved at the behest of police or intelligence agencies.

The potential cost of such a database has been estimated to reach £12bn, but the consultation paper includes an option to put it out to private tender in a bid to cut costs.

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Automatic speed control devices should be installed in cars to force motorists to stick to speed limits, an influential pressure group recommended today.

The Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT), a government transport advisory group, said that up to 29 per cent of injury accidents on the road could be prevented by the voluntary introduction of intelligent speed adaption (ISA).

The system, which the report recommended drivers installing on a voluntary and not compulsory basis, would automatically slow a car down to within the limit for the individual road on which it is being driven.

However opponents of the report, co-written by the pressure-group Motorists Forum, claimed the idea was dangerous as drivers would enter “zombie” mode, where they fail to pay proper attention to road conditions.

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What is the definition of a Conspiracy Theory? Wikipedia definition here, Another definition of “Conspiracy Theory” from Webster’s Online Dictionary:
” A conspiracy theory is the belief that historical or current events are the result of manipulations by one or more secretive powers or conspiracies.”

Where on Earth might one hear of such a paranoid idea? How about from President John F. Kennedy?

Or how about President Eisenhower? Watch this segment of the entire Eisenhower farewell below:

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Following a day of training on how to gather evidence, they will reportedly have the right to demand the name and address of anyone they see dropping rubbish up to the size of a bin bag .

Offenders who refuse to pay the fine will face prosecution in a magistrates’ court.

Councils already employ professional “bin police” to enforce the 2005 Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act.

Much of the funding is reportedly provided by the “Keep Britain Tidy” charity Environmental Campaigns (Encams), which receives almost all of its £10 million budget from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

However, it is said that in instructions issued by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, councils have now been advised to recruit volunteers to save money.

The Conservatives said they feared the move could encourage vigilantism. They blamed the Government’s reduction in the number of waste collections.

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Police officers who arrested Damian Green were wearing secret recording devices usually reserved for terror suspects, it emerged today as Scotland Yard’s investigation into the Conservative MP was further discredited.

The Metropolitan Police have been accused of employing heavy-handed tactics and breaching protocol by subjecting the shadow Home Office minister to a nine-hour interrogation as his home and offices were searched as part of a leak inquiry.

Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, who headed the inquiry, was already under pressure to withdraw from it after accusing the Tories of seeking to undermine a police investigation. The revelation that the Mr Green was recorded without the MP’s knowledge could increase the calls for his removal from office.

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The government has been accused of trampling on individual liberties by proposing wide-ranging new powers for bailiffs to break into homes and to use “reasonable force” against householders who try to protect their valuables.

Under the regulations, bailiffs for private firms would for the first time be given permission to restrain or pin down householders. They would also be able to force their way into homes to seize property to pay off debts, such as unpaid credit card bills and loans.

The government, which wants to crack down on people who evade debts, says the new powers would be overseen by a robust industry watchdog. However, the laws are being criticised as the latest erosion of the rights of the householder in his own home.

“These laws strip away tried and tested protections that make a person’s home his castle, and which have stood for centuries,” said Paul Nicolson, chairman of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a London-based welfare charity. “They could clearly lead to violent confrontations and undermine fundamental liberties.”

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‘Mobile phone firms have been accused of cashing in on crime and terror after charging the police £8.7million a year to access data tracking information. The companies keep records of the times, dates, duration of mobile phone calls and the numbers contacted but not the actual content of conversations.

 Former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: ‘Companies should have a sense of civic responsibility and, in my view, that means this sort of material should be provided free.’

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The inquest jury examining the death of Jean Charles de Menezes has returned an open verdict - refusing to accept the police’s contention that he was lawfully killed in a fast-moving anti-terrorist operation.

The jurors also answered a series of questions about the circumstances of Mr de Menezes’s death on board a Tube train at Stockwell, South London, in a way which rejected much of the account of the shooting given by police firearms officers.

Asked if they believed that the policemen had shouted a warning of armed police, the jury answered no. They also answered no when asked if Mr de Menezes had moved towards the officers before he was shot.

The jury had been banned by Sir Michael Wright, QC, the coroner, from considering a verdict of unlawful killing. His ruling led the de Menezes family to withdraw from the proceedings and brand the inquest “a complete whitewash”.

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Demonstrations against the killing were seen in cities across the continent with left-wing radicals and other sympathisers taking to the streets.

In Spain, 11 protesters were arrested and several police officers injured when clashes took place in Madrid and Barcelona.

In Copenhagen, 32 people were arrested when their protest in support of the Greek protests turned violent.

In neighbouring Turkey, about a dozen left-wing protesters daubed red paint over the front of the Greek consulate in Istanbul.

Around 150 people belonging to a Danish underground movement took to the streets, throwing bottles and paint bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at Greece’s embassies.

Journalists came under attack for the first time in the riots, with a Russian news crew assaulted by a mob of about 50 youths, some of them reportedly drunk.

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And in Britain one man send a strongly worded letter to his MP and then snoozed off again!

Voters in Manchester have overwhelmingly rejected plans for a congestion charge after a city-wide referendum in which more than a million people voted.

The Greater Manchester scheme was rejected by 79% of voters, amid a turnout in the 10 boroughs of 53.2%.

The biggest support for the charge was in the borough of Manchester, but, even there, only 28% were in favour of the scheme, the Manchester Evening News reported. There was least support for the charge in Salford, where 84% voted against it.

The resounding no vote will effectively cause more disarray for attempts to introduce national road pricing, a key recommendation of the 2006 Eddington transport study. The report said road pricing offered potential benefits of £28bn a year by 2025.

The Manchester result could also discourage other local authorities pursuing a congestion charge option.

The high turnout aided opponents of what would have been Britain’s biggest congestion charging zone.

The timing of the proposals, which would have seen drivers paying up to £5 a day – or £1,200 a year – to use the region’s roads, was questioned amid the economic downturn.

One no voter said: “Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas – and motorists won’t vote for more taxes to drive.”

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We live and struggle in an era of blatantly militarized capitalism and the violence of capital. War, occupation, national security ideologies and repression of dissent –at home and abroad - make for booming business opportunities the world over. As pro-free market US journalist Thomas Friedman succinctly put it: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.”

Militarized capitalism: The military-industrial complex in 2008

What is the military-industrial complex in 2008? Where is it? What does it look like? I am not even sure if the phrase, used so famously by former US president Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 is the best descriptor to encompass the many tentacles and facets of the war and security industry and the links and connections between capital and its political allies. Do terms like ‘defence industry’ and ‘arms trade’ adequately encompass the face of today’s war profiteers, whose devastating impacts can equally be found in the high-tech apartheid wall being built by Israel to seal off the West Bank and Gaza, and its Western Hemispheric counterpart on the US-Mexico border, in the computer flight simulation programs provided to US and British military by Canada’s CAE, in private corporate mercenary armies like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, in the outsourced intelligence, IT, interrogation and translation services of L-3/Titan, in the massive military aid budgets which the US gives to the governments of Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and Colombia, among others, and in the ‘hearts and minds’ operations of US Special Operations Forces based in the Philippines doing ‘humanitarian work’ - medical, dental and other social services, including infrastructure projects in many remote communities - services which should be the function of a government, in Mindanao, as much as it is in weapons production and arms exports.

Like all transnational corporations, these companies enjoy both patronage and revolving door relationships with the highest echelons of governments and their armed forces, tax breaks, support for exports, and all kinds of other incentives which help them to focus firmly on their bottom line – profit. US administrations, regardless of their party allegiance, brim with politicians with investments and business interests in the defence industry and war profiteers, perhaps most vividly symbolized by Dick Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and its multi-billion-dollar contracts to provide construction, hospitality, and other services to the US military after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But it is business as usual for US militarized capitalism. An April 2008 Centre for Responsive Politics report states that US Congress members invested US $196 million of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to US armed forces, ranging from aircraft and weapons manufacturers to producers of medical supplies and soft drinks. To cite a couple of typical revolving door examples, General Dynamics board of directors includes an ex-Vice Chief of US Army staff, a former US Air Force General, a former Chief of Naval Operations in the US Navy, and a former Chief of Defence Procurement at the British Ministry of Defence, while Canada’s CAE’s current and former executives include a former Canadian minister for international trade and former PM Mulroney’s head of staff.

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The Financial Times

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

I’ve never actually seen a cabinet minister caught on camera with his (or in this case, her) eyes tightly closed before. When Andrew Marr began addressing the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, yesterday morning, she looked as if she was desperately trying to catch up on the sleep she had lost over the past three days.

Or perhaps she was just attempting to shut out the image of Kenneth Clarke, who had preceded her on the air. Mr Clarke had just proclaimed that, if he had been told as Home Secretary that an MP had been arrested and detained in the way that Damian Green had been, he would have insisted on issuing an immediate apology. His reaction to being informed that a senior opposition spokesman who was not suspected of any crime, had had his home and office raided by the police would have been horrified fury.

So, Miss Smith was asked, did she agree with this former occupier of her office that Mr Green was owed an apology? Answer: no. Sort of. It was, in fact, rather difficult to discern what the answer was amid a lot of blather, the main object of which was to hang the police out to dry - they apparently being solely responsible for this extraordinary incident. (I suspect that the next day or two may produce some interesting responses to this performance from the police - quite possibly in the form of leaks.)

Miss Smith soldiered on, making a great deal of the notion of “police independence” - even trying rather ingeniously to turn the argument round on those who see Mr Green’s arrest as an indication of an emerging police state. What would truly constitute a police state, she maintained, would be for ministers to intervene when the police were engaged in an investigation.

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‘A grandfather was left humiliated after being handed a £60 litter fine when his cigarette was knocked out of his hand as he walked past a scuffle between police and shoplifters. Lazaris Michael, 76,  had taken a single puff before his smoke was sent flying as officers apprehended two girls who were trying to flee a branch of Boots. But the pensioner did not have time to bend down and pick it up before a council warden pounced on him and hit him the fixed penalty for littering in front of a large crowd. When he begged the council to show common sense and drop the case they responded by threatening him with an even bigger fine if he does not pay up.’

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They creep around in the dark spreading misery, rumour and secrets from inside Westminster.

Even so, paperboys and girls are hardly likely to pose a threat to national security.

One local council, however, thought it necessary to use swingeing anti-terror laws against them.

Cambridgeshire County Council used the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on eight paperboys thought to be working without permits.

It sent undercover council officers to lurk outside a Spar in the village of Melbourn and take notes on the movements of the boys.

The evidence was used in a criminal prosecution of the shop’s owners for employing five of the boys without the correct documentation.

Cambridgeshire’s approach is just the latest example of local authorities using the RIPA for minor misdemeanours.

Such activities have been likened to those of the Stasi, the East German secret police.

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When police raided Tory MP Damian Green’s home, they ‘sheepishly’ asked whether children were present before ransacking it. His wife assumed they were being polite. But, under sinister new guidelines, officers must assess all children they encounter – including while ‘searching premises’ – for a police database called MERLIN.

This, in turn, feeds into a giant new Whitehall database on Britain’s children, Contact Point, which goes live nationally in January.

The Tories have vowed to scrap it, arguing that it threatens family privacy and children’s safety. But civil liberties campaigners say we must resist it now, before it is too late.

Since April 1, hundreds of thousands of State employees, from police to teachers, youth and nursery workers, social workers and sports coaches, have been entitled to interrogate children aged up to 19, using the ‘Common Assessment Framework’ (CAF), a creepy, eight-page, 60-section questionnaire.

CAF includes eyewateringly intimate questions about children’s sexual behaviour, their family’s structure, culture and religion, their views on ‘discrimination’, their friends, secret fears, feelings and family income, plus ‘any serious difficulties in their parents’ relationship’.

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‘A senior police officer has accused former Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair of putting his force ‘in the pocket of New Labour’. Tarique Ghaffur said that Sir Ian had politicised his organisation and said he was glad that his former boss had lost his job. Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur - who has been embroiled in his own controversy over his tribunal claim against the Met for racism - also said that Sir Ian had manipulated the cash-for-honours inquiry into alleged Labour corruption in order to win leverage in the Home Office.’

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Personal information detailing intimate aspects of the lives of every British citizen is to be handed over to government agencies under sweeping new powers. The measure, which will give ministers the right to allow all public bodies to exchange sensitive data with each other, is expected to be rushed through Parliament in a Bill to be published tomorrow. 

The new legislation would deny MPs a full vote on such data-sharing. Instead, ministers could authorise the swapping of information between councils, the police, NHS trusts, the Inland Revenue, education authorities, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, the Department for Work and Pensions and other ministries.

Opponents of the move accused the Government of bringing in by stealth a data-sharing programme that exposed everyone to the dangers of a Big Brother state and one of the most intrusive personal databases in the world. The new law would remove the right to protection against misuse of information by thousands of unaccountable civil servants, they added.

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said he believed Britain had gone too far in helping to bring about a “surveillance society”. In a report drawing on personal data infringements across Europe but “inspired” by Britain’s plan for a new internet, email and telephone database, he added: “General surveillance raises serious democratic problems which are not answered by the repeated assertion that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. This puts the onus in the wrong place: it should be for states to justify the interferences they seek to make on privacy rights.”

He said he was “very worried about the downgrading of the protections of personal information”, adding: “Of course there has to be a balance to be struck. At the moment we have not got it right.”

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‘Benefit claimants will be subjected to lie detector tests to discover if they are cheating the system in a widespread Government crackdown. Unemployed people could also be forced to carry out “community punishments” such as litter-picking or gardening if they miss meetings designed to help them back into the workplace. And single parents and those on sickness benefits will have part of their weekly payments stopped for not keeping to a promise that they will make themselves ready for work.’

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‘Musicians and performers in London will soon be required by law to complete and hand over to police an eight page form detailing all their personal information and the ethnic background of their audience if they want to perform. The information will be collected by venue owners and managers throughout the city, who will have to adhere to the process should they wish to promote live music. Failure to comply with the information demanded on Form 696 could mean the loss of a licence or even a fine and imprisonment.’

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State officials are to be given powers previously reserved for times of war to demand a person’s proof of identity at any time.

Anybody who refuses the Big Brother demand could face arrest and a possible prison sentence.

The new rules come in legislation unveiled in today’s Queen’s Speech.

They are presented as a crackdown on illegal immigration, but lawyers say they could be applied to anybody who has ever been outside the UK, even on holiday.

The civil rights group Liberty, which analysed clauses from the new Immigration and Citizenship Bill, called them an attempt to introduce compulsory ID cards by the back door.

The move would effectively take Britain back to the Second World War, when people were stopped and asked to ’show their papers’.

Liberty said: ‘Powers to examine identity documents, previously thought to apply only at ports of entry, will be extended to criminalise anyone in Britain who has ever left the country and fails to produce identity papers upon demand.

‘We believe that the catch-all remit of this power is disproportionate and that its enactment would not only damage community relations but represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the State and those present in the UK.’

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Bonfire Night on the village green at Elwick went off in the traditional blaze of glory. But Guy Fawkes wasn’t the only sacrifice

Two days later, organiser Brett Duxfield was arrested, held at a police station for ten hours and charged with arson, for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.

He was taken from his home at 8am and had his DNA and fingerprints taken after police received a complaint that a 130-year-old bylaw banning fires on the green had been broken.

Mr Duxfield appeared before Hartlepool magistrates and was granted bail after the case was adjourned.

Last night the 39-year- old lorry driver said: ‘This is a nightmare. I never thought this would happen.

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Those that listened to my radio show last night, will know the second hour was one of the hardest interviews I have ever had to do. It choked me so much I could hardly speak as we went into the end of hour two.

My guest was Brian Howes. He and his wife Kerry have four young children and are facing extradition to the USA under this unfair and unjust extradition treaty I keep going on about. They face up to 95 years in a max-security prison and will never see their children again.

Brian at one point made this emotional statement “Kerry has vowed she will not go to America, and never see her children again, she has said she will commit suicide instead, and if she goes, I go”.

The pair have already spent 214 days in prison, and during this time Brian spent 30 days on hunger strike. Their bail  conditions mean they have to sign in at their local police station THREE TIMES EVERY DAY.

Their crime? They had a LEGAL chemical sales company, but one US citizen found that one of the chemicals legal in the UK, could be used to make “crystal meth”. On that alone, they are being sought for extradition to stand trial in the USA.

Our government offer NO PROTECTION of UK citizens any more, and just like Gary McKinnon, these people are being thrown to the lions. A British passport used to mean something, we knew as citizens we could travel the world and be protected by our government and our embassies, but no longer it would seem!

The ironic thing is, we cannot get an American citizen extradited without him/her first being proven guilty through trial in their own country!

We MUST act to get our government to review this unjust and unfair treaty which is a breach of our human rights. PLEASE sign the petition NOW and ask everyone you know to do the same…. http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/US-extradition

Ross

Ross Hemsworth
Glastonbury Radio - www.glastonburyradio.net
Presenter of the worldwide syndicated hit radio show Now THAT’S Weird -  www.nowthatsweird.co.uk
Now THAT’S Weird the TV show Saturdays at 8 p.m. on Edge Media TV (Sky Channel 200)
MY DAILY BLOG -  http://blog.myspace.com/rosshemsworth

‘Details of one of Britain’s most sensitive spy centres have been revealed in official documents posted on the internet by a local council. Whitehall security officials have raised serious concerns after the authority published a planning file revealing the ‘national security’ role of the development. The major blunder means that the full details of what is believed to be a covert MI5 operations centre - used to share intelligence with MI6 and GCHQ - are now in the public domain. The documents include plans of the building and details of its sophisticated ‘anti-intruder measures’.

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Police attempts to outlaw the monthly Critical Mass cycle ride through the streets of London unless its route was notified in advance were blocked by the Law Lords today.

The House of Lords allowed a challenge by cyclist Des Kay to a Court of Appeal ruling that the Metropolitan Police had the right to demand prior notice of the ride’s date, time and route and the names and addresses of the organisers.

Cyclists who gather on the South Bank and ride through the city to celebrate safe cycling have in the past been handed written notices by the police stating that the event was unlawful because no advance notice was given.

But the Law Lords held that the event, which had no organisers or set route and proceeded on a “follow my leader” basis, was not governed by section 11 of the Public Order Act 1986.

Friends of the Earth Rights and Justice Centre, which acted for Mr Kay, hailed the ruling as “an important victory for the right to peaceful protest and for cyclists to take part in this monthly celebration of cycling”.

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‘The CCTV system has gone up in sites across Portsmouth and it will reportedly help predict crimes before they actually happen. The city’s council has set up the network of “intelligent” cameras that can alert an operator to suspicious behaviour. The system is able to spot “unusual” incidents like somebody loitering or a vehicle travelling too fast.’

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‘Ministers have been accused of trying to introduce compulsory identity cards through the back door, despite promises that people will not have to carry them. Lawyers at Liberty, the civil liberties group, say that little noticed clauses in the draft immigration and citizenship bill introduce new powers to make people produce identity documents or face arrest. The bill is expected to be in the Queen’s speech next month.’

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‘The Government’s latest proposal to combat Britain’s binge-drinking epidemic is to turn down the volume of music in pubs and bars. Landlords could be forced to outlaw all entertainment louder than 70 decibels – roughly the same as a hairdryer – to curb alcohol-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour. A Labour taskforce has been persuaded by research which showed that loud music in pubs made customers buy more alcohol and drink it faster.’

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