Friday 27 May 2011

LAZY FRIDAY - Star Wars Meets Withnail & I

Back after an eight month absence, today's Friday lunchtime distraction comes courtesy of Raff Jones. When an out-of-work droid finds himself far from his natural habitat of Camden, thrown deep into a galaxy far far away, it does nothing to dampen his quest for cake, tea and the finest wines available to humanity...


Hat-tip: Boing Boing

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Newham Unveils "Building Resilience" - Its New Grand Idea

In our supposedly 'post-ideological' age, with political theory elbowed aside by moral rhetoric turning debate into battles between right and wrong instead of left and right, it seems mainstream politicians of all shades have a fondness for top-down, ill-defined but apparently all-embracing 'grand ideas' designed to change the behaviour of the citizens they govern - and to do so by coercion if necessary.

The Tories have the Big Society, which David Cameron described as "a huge culture change, where people, in their everyday live… don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face, but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities". Now Newham's Labour council is pushing its own visionary Grand Idea and it’s one that sounds remarkably similar to the Big Society: a buzzword providing an ideological basis for the local authority's opposition to what it calls ‘dependency’, in which "too many people… come to rely on the state – letting someone else determine what happens in their lives rather than taking personal control".

It’s called ‘Building Resilience’ and we’ll be hearing a great deal about it in the coming months. In an e-mail circulated last Friday, the borough's Mayor Sir Robin Wales launched a consultation on Newham council’s plans to "radically change the way we work with residents and our partners," set out in a document called 'A Strong Community: Building Resilience in Newham'.

So what does 'resilience' actually mean? It's a term that pops up in psychology, to describe people's capacity to cope with stress and catastrophe, whilst it is also associated with emergency planning and the government's Prevent anti-extremism programme. Generally it denotes the ability of people to 'bounce back' from adversity but Newham's strategy sees 'Building Resilience' as rather more: it is about providing 'positive outlook' skills like confidence-building, social awareness and motivation, about local people solving more of their problems themselves and about residents seeking advice and help from 'community networks' and their neighbours rather than the local authority. Newham council says it also wants to "embed responsibility and reciprocity in the relationship between state and citizen". What it means by this is that more local services will become conditional on people's behaviour, with "rewards and incentives going to those who help themselves and others whilst those who do not should not have an automatic right to the full range of support."

Not unlike the government's Big Society policy, with its warm and fluffy emphasis on 'empowering' local people and supporting charities, elements of 'Building Resilience' seem, at first glance, superficially appealing. Acknowledging that a circle of close friends and wider supportive networks like community groups are positively beneficial seems like common sense, as does the idea that "the broader the range of people we interact with, the more resources and potential support we have at our disposal". It is also true that the majority of local people already depend far more on friends and contacts for mutual aid than they do on direct support from the local state, not only because council assistance is often difficult to find but because most of us do not welcome state 'interference' in our daily lives. Few would disagree too that a well-paid, secure job is far better than unemployment and poverty.

But, just like the Big Society, are there other motivations behind these efforts to promote 'radical' change in our behaviour and expectations in Newham? For all its talk of handing power to local people, we now know the Tories' flagship policy turned out to really mean saving money, justifying cuts in council-run services and handing considerable influence and valuable contracts to private companies and a few large charities. Like the Big Society, 'Building Resilience' seems to advocate the gradual withdrawal of the local state beyond a core of support for the most vulnerable, leaving more of us dependent on making our own arrangements, although unlike the Coalition government's plans, voluntary groups barely receive a mention. It also seems to share an underlying belief that residents can no longer expect "something for nothing" or the certainty that local services will always be there when we need them.

Moreover, 'Building Resilience' does seem to mirror what would usually be seen as Tory morality in suggesting that, rather than the lack of jobs in the current climate or capitalism's endemic economic inequality, it is local people themselves in deprived areas like Newham who must take a large part of the blame (or 'personal responsibility') for their poverty and joblessness and must therefore be coerced into pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

One of the first local battlegrounds of this approach to changing residents' behaviour is over language. Learning English is undoubtedly a vital skill for new migrants, not only for finding work but to ensure that people are not fobbed off, talked down to, exploited and misled. However, as the majority of us who have ever tried to learn a new language will know, it's often extremely difficult to develop proficiency and requires a considerable investment in decent language classes. But it is evident that Newham council believes most local people with poor English are simply not trying hard enough. Sir Robin Wales has made it clear that his recent controversial decision to remove foreign language newspapers from the borough's libraries is an act of compulsion to "encourage people to speak and learn English". This is obviously what 'Building Resilience' means in action.

Unfortunately, Newham's new strategy document is extremely abstruse and, like other 'grand ideas', seems like an attempt to provide intellectual justification for the drastic local cuts in services we will soon be facing. Furthermore, 'Building Resilience' already seems to say far more about the Victorian moral authoritarianism of the Labour politicians who are backing it than it does the ability of people living in Newham to bounce back from economic austerity.

Consultation on 'A Strong Community: Building Resilience in Newham' opened on Friday 20 May and closes on Friday 3rd June. See here for more details

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Long Road To Justice Continues For Tomlinson Family

Today's decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge PC Simon Harwood with the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper seller who died during the G20 protests in 2009, is hugely significant precisely because it is so unusual.

Statistics from the custody-death campaigners INQUEST show that in the last twenty years, there have been nine 'unlawful killing' verdicts reached at coroner's court inquests concerning deaths in police custody and one 'narrative' verdict that placed the spotlight firmly on police conduct. Of these, three decisions were later quashed. Having seen evidence tested in front of a jury, there has nevertheless been only three criminal trials following inquests: two led to acquittals and one collapsed. The two families I got to know well in the 1990s - the relatives of Shiji Lapite and Ibrahima Sey, who both lived and died in east London - were denied even that opportunity.

And no officer has been convicted since the trial in 1971 - forty years ago - of those responsible for the death of David Oluwale (and even then, manslaughter charges were dropped).

The trial that collapsed in 2002 involved officers accused of standing by and watching Christopher Alder die on the floor of a police station in Hull. I attended part of that trial and remember well the prosecution's disastrous and disorganised performance, after the CPS had to be reluctantly dragged into a manslaughter prosecution. The CPS' failings are outlined in this INQUEST briefing [PDF]. I mention this only because the Tomlinson family still has a long way to go before they see justice delivered. The next steps remain out of their control and in the hands of CPS prosecutors - and the probable lead Counsel in the forthcoming trial is the same barrister who advised the DPP, Keir Starmer, in July 2010 that there was insufficient evidence to charge Harwood.

If it wants some of its credibility restored, the CPS really does have a great deal to prove after reaching that ludicrous decision.

Friday 20 May 2011

Now Police Want Armed Officers Underground

The general expectation of most people living and working near to the Olympic Park in east London is that, next year, transport will be appalling and the area around Stratford will quickly start to resemble an military camp.

The 2012 Games undoubtedly represent the world's biggest terrorist target, what the Home Office calls "the biggest peace-time security operation in UK history". This is why, at a time of huge cuts, the government announced in December 2010 that it is committed to providing staggering amounts of money to fund it: £567m in 2011/12 and £564m in 2012/13 for counter-terrorism policing, "much of which is devoted to the Olympics". On top of that, we also know that the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) has signed a £100m contract with the private security firm G4S to provide stewards and guards inside the Olympic venues.

However, next year's Games is also providing the main justification for senior police officers to see how far they can pushing the boundaries. Today, it's the announcement that the British Transport Police wants its own armed response unit "in time for the 2012 Olympics", with officers based at main rail stations "but also deployed for occasional patrols on the Underground".

This is an insane idea. Radio communication underground may well have improved dramatically since the execution of innocent Tube traveller Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station in July 2005, but that doesn't mean that the control of gung-ho firearms officers is any less of a huge risk - especially when they are carrying Heckler and Koch carbines and Glock 9mm pistols in confined spaces underground. All that their deployment on the Tube will do is greatly increase fear and panic amongst members of the public who well remember the circumstances of a fellow commuter's horrific and 'accidental' killing, whilst further normalising the routine arming of a supposedly unarmed constabulary. And unlike, say, accurate intelligence, what police-with-guns most certainly won't do is stop a terrorist attack from taking place - any more than armed officers in Mumbai stopped the awful shooting spree in 2008.

It makes no difference how often the police and Olympic organisers say next year "is a sporting event, not a security event" if London becomes more and more militarised. But that's the direction we seem to be going.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

No Need To Worry About Census Threats

If only I'd known back in March how little information the organisers of this year's census were prepared to accept, this post about my intention to complete the form but to make it as expensive as possible for US arms company Lockheed Martin (who hold the contract to process census data) would have been very different.

I filled in the census form and sent it back with an unofficial 'Supplementary Questions' sheet [PDF] in early April. However, I still had a visit last week from a census collector, who explained that there was no record of the receipt of the form, that Lockheed Martin had evidently lost it and that I'd have to complete another - but not every question.

Remarkably, I was told that at this late stage, forms were accepted as 'complete' as long as H3 (who lives in the household) and individual questions 1 to 4 (name, gender, date of birth and marital status) were filled in. That's it - meaning all the other information, including country of birth, general level of health, ethnicity, qualifications, religion and indepth employment details, were no longer as important as the threat of a £1000 fine seemed to imply.

Now I realise that the Office for National Statistics is keen to improve on lower levels of returned forms in London, but when senior officials say they are "cautiously optimistic" that targets of an average 94% return rate would be met, with no single local authority area returning less than 80% of forms, we should adopt the usual wariness about anyone bandying with statistical assertions, never mind a statistician. These targets may no doubt be achieved, but if my experience is anything to go by, there will be huge holes in the census data that render much of it meaningless.

In the event that there is another census in 2021 (which is in some doubt), the advice to anyone concerned about the privacy implications of handing personal information to the state is also pretty clear: forget about the complicated avoidance tactics and just wait six weeks, pretend you've already sent the form back and then just answer the basic questions. Job done.

Tuesday 17 May 2011

James Connolly And The Queen's Visit To Ireland

As the Guardian provides 'live updates' on today's visit by the Queen to the Republic of Ireland, I've been rereading this by Irish socialist and republican James Connolly, on the last visit of a British monarch, Lizzie's grandfather, Emperor George V, in 1910:


FELLOW WORKERS - As you are aware from reading the daily and weekly newspapers, we are about to be blessed with a visit from King George V.

Knowing from previous experience of Royal Visits, as well as from the Coronation orgies of the past few weeks, that the occasion will be utilised to make propaganda on behalf of royalty and aristocracy against the oncoming forces of democracy and National freedom, we desire to place before you some few reasons why you should unanimously refuse to countenance this visit, or to recognise it by your presence at its attendant processions or demonstrations. We appeal to you as workers, speaking to workers, whether your work be that of the brain or of the hand – manual or mental toil – it is of you and your children we are thinking; it is your cause we wish to safeguard and foster.

The future of the working class requires that all political and social positions should be open to all men and women; that all privileges of birth or wealth be abolished, and that every man or woman born into this land should have an equal opportunity to attain to the proudest position in the land. The Socialist demands that the only birthright necessary to qualify for public office should be the birthright of our common humanity.

Believing as we do that there is nothing on earth more sacred than humanity, we deny all allegiance to this institution of royalty, and hence we can only regard the visit of the King as adding fresh fuel to the fire of hatred with which we regard the plundering institutions of which he is the representative. Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality, knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom. The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kings – capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks. Thus coronation and king's visits are by our astute neversleeping masters made into huge Imperialist propagandist campaigns in favour of political and social schemes against democracy. But if our masters and rulers are sleepless in their schemes against us, so we, rebels against their rule, must never sleep in our appeal to our fellows to maintain as publicly our belief in the dignity of our class – in the ultimate sovereignty of those who labour.

What is monarchy? From whence does it derive its sanction? What has been its gift to humanity? Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities.

Every class in society save royalty, and especially British royalty, has through some of its members contributed something to the elevation of the race. But neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement of mankind. But that royal family has opposed every forward move, fought every reform, persecuted every patriot, and intrigued against every good cause. Slandering every friend of the people, it has befriended every oppressor. Eulogised today by misguided clerics, it has been notorious in history for the revolting nature of its crimes. Murder, treachery, adultery, incest, theft, perjury – every crime known to man has been committed by some one or other of the race of monarchs from whom King George is proud to trace his descent.

"His blood
Has crept through scoundrels since the flood."

We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.

Fellow-workers, stand by the dignity of your class. All these parading royalties, all this insolent aristocracy, all these grovelling, dirt-eating capitalist traitors, all these are but signs of disease in any social state – diseases which a royal visit brings to a head and spews in all its nastiness before our horrified eyes. But as the recognition of the disease is the first stage towards its cure, so that we may rid our social state of its political and social diseases, we must recognise the elements of corruption. Hence, in bringing them all together and exposing their unity, even a royal visit may help us to understand and understanding, help us to know how to destroy the royal, aristocratic and capitalistic classes who live upon our labour. Their workshops, their lands, their mills, their factories, their ships, their railways must be voted into our hands who alone use them, public ownership must take the place of capitalist ownership, social democracy replace political and social inequality, the sovereignty of labour must supersede and destroy the sovereignty of birth and the monarchy of capitalism.

Ours be the task to enlighten the ignorant among our class, to dissipate and destroy the political and social superstitions of the enslaved masses and to hasten the coming day when, in the words of Joseph Brenan, the fearless patriot of ’48, all the world will maintain

“The Right Divine of Labour
To be first of earthly things;
That the Thinker and the Worker
Are Manhood’s only Kings.”

Friday 13 May 2011

Fire In Babylon

This is the trailer for the brilliant Fire in Babylon, which I saw last night at Stratford Picturehouse. It is the story of the West Indies cricket team's rise from nowhere in the 1970s, which was as much a blow against racism, colonialism and inequality as it was about sport. Check it out when it goes on general release:

Thursday 12 May 2011

The Fantasy World Of Newham’s Counter-Terror Experts

After two decades of activism in Newham, I’ve almost become immune to the council making claims it can rarely substantiate, especially about how wonderful its work is. It is exactly this tendency towards concentric circles of fantasy and bullshit that made a meeting on Tuesday, about the controversial ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (PVE) programme, all the more fascinating.

PVE (also known as ‘Prevent’) is one part of the government’s counter terrorism strategy and targets mainly young people who are at risk of radicalisation by extremist groups. Around £53m has been spent on PVE since it started in 2007 and in 2010-11, 94 local authorities were given £24m. Those involved in delivering Prevent activities like to describe them as a nothing more than a crime prevention programme aimed at making it less likely that young people will be drawn in terrorism, but its critics say it is "the biggest spying programme in Britain in modern times", one that has helped fuel the perception of local Muslim populations as a 'suspect community'.

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in its report “Spooked: how not to prevent violent extremism”, alleges that youth workers have become “increasingly wary of the expectations on them to provide the police with information on young Muslims and their religious and political opinions”, whilst the emphasis on “depoliticising young people and restricting radical dissent is actually counter-productive because it strengthens the hands of those who say democracy is pointless”.

The government has repeatedly denied that Prevent involves spying but acknowledges that one part of it, known as the Channel programme, does identify people thought to be at risk of radicalisation, who may then receive some form of intervention. However, it is almost impossible to identify people who are not terrorists but might become so at some point in the future. Instead, young Muslims with 'extreme' opinions as marked out as what the IRR calls a 'pre-terrorist', their details held on counter-terrorism databases as a potential violent extremist in the eyes of the police and the intelligence services, with no way of having this data removed.

Many of the criticisms come not only from civil liberties campaigners but from within parliament. In March 2010, the Communities and Local Government Select Committee attacked Prevent, saying it was “stigmatising, potentially alienating, and fails to address the fact that that no section of a population exists in isolation from others”. Its chair, Dr Phyllis Starkey said:


"The misuse of terms such as 'intelligence gathering' amongst Prevent partners has clearly discredited the programme and fed distrust.

"Information required to manage Prevent has been confused with intelligence gathering undertaken by the police to combat crime and surveillance used by the security services to actively pursue terrorism suspects.

"These allegations of spying under Prevent will retain widespread credibility within some communities until the government commissions an independent investigation into the allegations."

In November 2010, Home Secretary Teresa May acknowledged that Prevent was not working well and announced a review, which is due to report next month. She refused, however, to allow an examination into allegations that Prevent is a fundamentally a spying operation.

On top of the controversy over motives and delivery, there is also concern about the lack of transparency and accountability in local decision-making on Prevent activities. In May 2010, I recounted my efforts to find out how Newham council has spend more than £1.3million in funding for its local Prevent programme. Eventually I received some scant details (PDF) but these say very little about what this money has actually been used for. I know that others have had similar difficulties with Freedom of Information requests on local PVE spending.

Clearly Prevent has has deeply alienated Muslim communities and raised such serious concerns about the way it operates that it faces an complete overhaul. All of which brings me to the meeting in Newham on Tuesday, where I had been asked at the last minute to present a personal overview of the Prevent strategy and its consequences for community cohesion.

This is where I heard the fantastic claims of the officers responsible for delivering Prevent in a borough with one of the largest Channel caseloads in the country. And what a story they had to tell – one where there is nothing whatsoever to concern anyone about the way the programme is delivered locally. In fact, everything is uniquely excellent in Newham, apparently, with none of the unfortunate problems that have all occurred in other parts of the country. However, in reality it is impossible to know what impact the programme makes - an October 2010 report by the Office for Public Management on Prevent in Newham has never been released publicly. And having briefly worked for Newham council, I can tell you: nothing is ever perfect.

Council officers claimed that the local decision not to fund single faith groups and instead keep the funding in-house is a positive advantage, but were just as opaque in providing more information on how their funding is spent as they have been in the past. Questions were hastily skipped over. They also insisted that there is absolutely no discrimination against Muslims and that Prevent is concerned about all forms of terrorism, including dissident Irish Republicanism, Sikh fundamentalism and support for the Tamil Tigers – but refused to confirm the proportion of Muslims within Newham’s Channel programme. That in itself speaks volumes.

When asked how decisions about individuals are made and the factors used to determine risk of radicalisation, they skipped over this too, saying that they often spend time rejecting vindictive allegations of extremism. How nice and fluffy is that? But what this reveals is the extraordinary level of power that a small group of obscure officers have to investigate and potentially brand someone as calls a 'pre-terrorist' with almost no scrutiny or oversight, but with potentially huge consequences. Indeed, I had the feeling that the meeting on Tuesday was the first time that their upbeat and rosy view of Prevent had been challenged at a local level.

No wonder so many officers turned up en masse to a small community event. But attending to say little or nothing isn't likely to reassure anyone, whilst pretending everything is perfect is itself deeply suspicious. What, one wonders, would real transparency and accountability uncover?

Wednesday 4 May 2011

AV - Like, Whatever

Wouldn't it be convenient if the most serious problem with our political system wasn't the interests that control it, or the careerists who are eager to make names for themselves within it, or even the politicians who'll make any number of sordid compromises just to reach its dizzy heights and ride in a bullet-proof limo? What if, instead, the main problem was the way our votes are counted and distributed?

Most of us know that's not the case and that the imbalance of power between government and governed has roots that are far deeper than the method of holding elections every four to five years. The controversy over MPs expenses helped to expose an entire political class that is removed from and largely unaccountable to voters, whilst the enormous influence that corporate lobbyists wield is surely the next long-overdue scandal to erupt in Westminster. A small change in the voting system, one that isn't proportional to the number of votes cast or even popular with supporters of electoral reform, won't suddenly throw open the doors of parliament. That's not what the decision to hold a referendum was for. It was instead the deal that Nick Clegg was able to squeeze out of the reluctant Tories in exchange for the Liberal Democrats selling out every principle they claimed to believe in.

That's why it's all the more surprising that otherwise sane and reasonable people are kidding themselves that AV is the 'defining' issue of this parliament - and in the process are getting so spectacularly angry about the prospect of losing tomorrow's referendum. Some of the intemperate, frustrated comments I've read today are signs that many already know the Yes campaign has no chance of winning.

I can understand why partisans of different political parties, from the Tories to the Greens, are so animated about AV, because they are weighing the electoral opportunities or threats that a different way of counting votes will have on them. I also see why much of the liberal commentariat are so fixated on the referendum - for them, politics begins and ends within the Westminster bubble. But why would anyone else, especially on the left, give a toss one way or another? It's not as though there aren't more pressing and important subjects to get fired up about, or that we have unlimited reserves of hope and energy to waste. It's certainly not that the issue has motivated and galvanised the wider public. The campaigns for and against AV have both been monumentally uninspiring.

As I've explained before, I didn't vote in last year's general election and don't consider it anywhere near the highpoint of my political activity, so the technicalities of how votes are counted is obviously even less of a priority. In February, I nevertheless argued that a vote against AV could be seen as "a deliberate act of mischief". But I'm not even sure about that now.

I'm really won't know whether I'll be dropping in to the polling station at the nearest school, for the first time in many years, until I wake up tomorrow.

Monday 2 May 2011

Royalty's Last Hurrah

Now that a new global media event, the execution of Osama bin Laden, has completely pushed aside the endless coverage of the royal wedding, there's at last a chance to reflect on what, if anything, last Friday's anachronistic nonsense says about Britain.

Like many a secular anti-monarchist, I had vague plans to get out of the country for the duration of William Windsor's wedding. But instead I was with close friends in the West Midlands and found myself, amusingly, at a royal wedding street party in a suburb of Coventry. Even more of a surprise is that I quite enjoyed myself, although it was decidedly strange. I've no idea, of course, whether this street party was representative of others around the country, but it certainly lacked the patriotic fervour I remember from previous royal weddings. Nor did it share the flag-waving sycophancy on display in the Mall earlier in the day. There were Union flags, naturally, plus plenty of red, white and blue bunting; but it seemed rather appropriate that the faces of the privileged bride and the cosseted groom had been cut out of the large portrait photo so the kids could pose for pictures. The royals were essentially missing from the street party and it was all just an excuse for sharing a few beers in the street without the prospect of complaints from the neighbours about anti-social behaviour.

Oh, and then there was the Morris dancers. I suppose they were supposed to represent a quaint vision of what it means to be English, not unlike the wedding itself, but most people looked on in bemusement during their first jig and then ignored them altogether.

This kind of general indifference, combined with disappearing levels of deference towards symbols of authority, meant that for all the appearance of popular enthusiasm and involvement, the royal wedding was really just a pageant, a fashion show and a celebrity photo opportunity, one that needed the bribe of a public holiday and plenty of official encouragement for people to join in. For all the ludicrous Ruritanian uniforms and gilded fairytale coaches, what the public seemed most concerned about was true of any wedding - how did the bride's expensive dress look and would the best man pull the chief bridesmaid? And that's why I can't see the monarchy ever managing to carry anything like it in the future. This was its last hurrah.

But in the mean time, God help anyone who showed the slightest dissent. The response of the police to the limited number of tiny and mostly irrelevant protests was completely disproportionate (see below). So too was their reaction to an 'unofficial' gathering in Glasgow - perhaps the youths who arranged it on FaceBook should have considered booking some Morris dancers.



This level of heavy-handedness is either rooted in a belief that no-one will care enough to complain, or a nervousness in the days and weeks before Friday that perhaps more people would refuse to fall into line behind the official narrative. On the day, the state got away with it comfortably, showing just how far our basic civil liberties have been undermined - but perhaps the growing number of protests since the coalition government took office has had a greater impact in unnerving those in power than we had all previously realised.

'YOU WILL OBEY' UPDATE: 3rd MAY

And then there's this: news that the police shot someone with a Taser at an unofficial royal wedding street party in Cornwall.

Random Blowe | Original articles licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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