Monday, May 29, 2006

Watch out, Will the Terrorist is about

I meant to post this up ages ago but just didn't get round to it.

It happened on the day that the 3 of us (Me, Al and Mike) were heading up to Manchester to hear (and see) a live recording of The Now Show, which was surprisingly funny and well structured but that's another story.

The real excitement occurred in the Train Station, Mike had gone to get some money out of the cash machine and me and Al were just standing around, looking suspicious I guess, not that we can help it, when a policeman came up to me and asked
"Can I have a moment of your time bag please sir"
To which I replied
"I suppose", he interjected that I "supposed right".

He then turned on a blank stare and quoted "I am searching under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act of 2000", which brought up a smirk on my face and also shocked me at the same time, I wondered to myself if I really had the fashion of a terrorist and concluded it must have been the long hair and lumberjack's checkered shirt.

I handed over my bag still in a state of disbelief and he did something that wouldn't have passed off as a search anywhere and handed my bag back to me. He then pulled out a notebook that had printed pieces of paper in it and proceeded to fill one in quoting as he did:

"I searched for..weapons"
"I didn't find any"
"I didn't remove any clothing"
"Tall male, 6 feet 2 inches"

and a string of other speculations about me. He then ripped off the top copy of the document and gave it to me.

He then gave the game away by telling us 3 (as Mike had now returned), that he was searching me to make up the statistics so that it didn't look as if they only searched people of an ethnic minority, which I thought was unjust and felt kinda cheated that I'd been party to this fixing of results, I felt like Mike no doubt felt as a civil servant more than once.

Below is a scan of the said piece of paper:

Front


It clearly states what Act I was stopped under, go here to see why I was stopped, you have top scroll down to the bold 44. bit to see the exact reason for me being stopped, the first line is worrying:

(1) A constable may arrest without a warrant a person whom he reasonably suspects to be a terrorist.

Ahhhh, I really do look like a terrorist it's not just my friends joking.

All the best,
Willx

p.s. Would like to clearly show that the box saying 'Clothes Removed?' is ticked as a no...so don't get any ideas.

irrepressible.info

I recently received this e-mail as one of the many e-mail groups I am signed up to:
"Irrepressible Adj. 1) Impossible to repress or control. Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information. The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments– with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression. Amnesty International, with the support of The Observer, is launching a campaign to show that online or offline the human voice and human rights are impossible to repress. " http://irrepressible.info/ Nuff said. Keith T

I thought I'd help spread the word and undermine unwarranted censorship by publishing censored material from their database directly onto my blog, as shown below.


Just thought you'd like to know and that.

Also kinda linked in BBC picked up on how China is just one big fat censorship, story here.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to incorporate the above bit of script into my template?