The Government’s new Terrorism Bill imposes over-the-top requirements on churches, village halls, cricket clubs and other local venues to carry out ‘risk assessments’ and force volunteers to undergo anti-terrorism training. As with many well-intentioned ‘something must be done’ measures, the cure could end up being worse than the disease, says Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator.
All premises with a capacity of 100 or more are covered if regularly used for almost any non-domestic purpose whatsoever. That includes business, religion, amusement, sport and study.
This needs to give you pause. Most churches of any size can seat more than 100 – so too can many libraries, museums, art galleries and university lecture halls. So too, for that matter, can numerous church and village halls, not to mention local football or cricket clubs throughout the kingdom, assuming that they have over 100 seats for fans.
The fact that many such institutions are run on a shoestring by volunteers, entirely uncommercially and as a service to one’s fellow man, does not matter. Nor, it seems, is it relevant that most of the time the actual number attending is closer to 20 than 100, as in the case of many churches. All are included.
The duties on these places, while less onerous, would still be substantial. Every single such place faces compulsory registration; a legal requirement to produce a detailed ‘standard terrorism evaluation’ and a need to give compulsory ‘terrorism protection training’ to every single person, volunteer or otherwise, who works there. Any breach of these duties could see an order land from a civil servant to put matters right or an immediate fixed penalty of up to £10,000.
If none but a tiny handful of these premises will ever experience terrorism, this sounds like a very big sledge-hammer being used to crack a very small nut. …
If you are thinking of stepping up, it’s hard to see a better way to discourage you than demanding that you sit in a draughty hall to be compulsorily ‘trained’ in anti-terrorism techniques you face an infinitesimal chance of ever having to use. And if the volunteers can’t manage, the fee of a few hundred to have the paperwork professionally seen to might, in many cases, be more than the institution can afford.
Worth reading in full.
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Mark Steyn made the best comment on this many years ago.
Decrying the airport security checks, building checks, scanners, barriers, concrete blocks in every town, city, he said to just be honest about the problem. Islamists.
Ban them. Outlaw them. Refuse them entry. Expel those who are here.
It really is that simple unless your afraid or want them to vote for you.
To the government, every non-compliant individual is a threat.
You think this will only be about Islamists?
We’re all terrorists now. Well, not really – but we are being treated as if we are.
I think the real problem is politicians seeking popular approval. This means when something like 9/11 happens, something must be done about it, even when nobody has an idea what could be done about it which would actually work. Let this fester for twenty odd years and you end up with something like today’s totally bizarre dangerous goods regulations.
All of the following are dangerous good which must not be brought into an aircraft.
However, a single disposable lighter filled with flammable gas under pressure (and thus, a potentially explosive device(!)) using a flint for ignition is not a dangerous good and may thus be brought onto a plane.
It’s hard to fathom how something like this could come into being in another way than Joe Public Offical calling Zippo Manufacturing Company and asking “Hey guys! How much are you willing to pay if we don’t ban bringing any of your products into a plane?” and after no satisfactory offer was made, the list about was the outcome.
Which is why people with the same opinion as Steyn need to box more clever so the establishment UN and WEF lackeys cannot get rid of them so easy.
Who invited them here? Our politicians of course. And who elected them?
Anyone who has voted for establishment parties over the last 30 years has voted for the end of our culture, our identity, our replacement, our safety and our security. How could anyone not have seen exactly what our political class were up to? You didn’t need to be a genius, you could see it unfurling with your own eyes, year in, year out.
Expel the I*slami*ts by all means but I am quite comfortable in expelling the establishment party voters too – they are a menace and a threat to what is left of our broken country.
Expel most people? I expect most people vote to keep someone out rather than in.
Ummmm, HMG introduces a Bill to combat terrorism requiring cricket clubs to undergo “training”. Meanwhile, those world class upholders of the Law of this land, led handsomely by the Met and “LawLite Rowley” actively, with exceptions for sure….:
Tempted to say I find this hard to understand but cannot lie – I understand completely why this happens. UK police has been taken over by UFLW Police College graduates – easy to spot them because when giving statements to the Press they use 50 words, many of multiple syllables, most of which are meaningless – when half a dozen would be enough – AND very thick regulars at the local tattoo parlour.
Rowley claims “no evidence” that pro Palestine march will be anything other than peaceful. Bollux – ” watch the footage, and turn up the audio, arrange for translation and subtitles, of the previous marches. Multiple examples of breaches of the peace, overt support for an illegal terrorist organisation; Cenotaph defaced, other War memorials likewise and Poppy sellers assaulted. Hundreds of thousands of people involved, <200 token arrests – any bets for how many the CPS prosecute..? Thought not.
Mark Steyn is 100% right; and it is going to get a lot worse very soon.
If you ever needed proof that the laws of today are created by people who have done nothing, made nothing and understand nothing, apart from that that is within their own safe little gold fish bowl existence, then this is it.
Create an atmosphere of distrust in your club such that no-one wants to attend (at notable expense) or close. One less unmoderated forum in which to criticise the government.
An individual standing alone, could be construed as loitering with intent, 3 people a conspiracy, Darby and Joan coffee mornings a target for a terrorist attack, where the real treat to civil liberties comes from the very people who are responsible for its continuance.
But that’s the root of the problem right there. They actually believe they’re responsible for our liberty now. That it’s theirs to apportion out to us if we’ve been very very good – like a kid getting Haribo after using the toilet for the first time.
Red, yellow, green or blue, we need to smash these feudalist imbeciles to atoms. The current political system is broken beyond repair.
It’s less a belief in responsibility for our liberty, more an insatiable desire to control.
It’s “theirs to apportion” because they took it and we have yet to stop them. These people have no more or less rights than anyone else. What we see is the success of action over inaction.
It will probably be pubs and concert halls next. Obviously any place where plebs gather and DISCUSS is now fair game.
One more stone on the heavy load of rules and regulations that already bears down on us.
The best way for me to describe this sort of petty, needless, meddling regulation is ‘suffocating’.
So when you say churches, are you including mosques? Asking for a friend.
Don’t be silly. Everyone knows islam is the religion of peace.
Well done for remembering to take your “savage irony” medication today.
They already get plenty of terrorism instruction.
If you recall, numerous village halls, community sports clubs & facilities, churches, etc reduced capacity to meet the miraculous 6 ft plandemic limit. It’ll be interesting to see just how many suddenly reduce overall capacity to 99.
Good point.
A better point is how many Cricket clubs which have any, a majority or wholly consisting of members of a certain religious persuasion adhere to the proposed requirement to undergo anti terrorist training.
Safe to say some cricket clubs are going to find that requirement a lot easier than others….
Will the eventual act allow for such training to have “learning material” in any language? I foresee a lot of opportunities for lateral thinking and satire – if Plod willl allow that freedom of expression….
Picture Vito Corleone at the meeting of the 5 families and their associates after a turf war and the assassination Sonny Corleone; “How has it come to this” he asks with a shake of the head. What happened next after the accommodation reached resulted in a truce?
Death and destruction. I hope life does not reflect that high class art.
The devil will be in the detail. Will it be per room or per building.
Some “small” cafes, pubs and restaurants over 2 floors could exceed this number. Will it include those sitting at tables outside in a courtyard?
I am just counting some of my rural favourites in my head and they could exceed.
What about the barn our friendly farmer lends us each October for a harvest festival supper for the parish? We don’t have any village halls and are a 5 parish combination. Many non-church goers attend.
We all have to undergo police checks and safeguarding training if we’re dealing with children (or at-risk adults, come to that), but in practice children are mutilated and put on sex-hormones despite it all and those invoking safeguarding guidelines are sacked or prosecuted..
I wonder how many people, in a village church or scout group targeted by Islamist jihadists will survive such an attack, who wouldn’t have done without the designated person undergoing the anti-terrorism training? Or perhaps they really do mean the terrorism of angry parents attending school-board meetings there.
This is just another part of the attack on our civilisation that has been going on for a long time but became extra-vicious after 97 and even worse since the last GE.
I resigned from the local scout group committee when they introduced CRB checks, which I considered entirely unnecessary since I had zero interaction with the youngsters at all.
This won’t fix terrorism. However, it will generate a cottage industry in anti-terrorism inspectors under OFTER. There will be an army of inspectors armed with tick-boards checking that everybody has undergone the mandatory video training and questionnaire. We had this with Housing Energy Efficiency ratings, COVID compliance snoopers, and coloured bin enforcers. A couple of decades ago under OFSTED the inspectors had to check that school lesson plans supported The Narrative on Global Warming and the NSPCC Narrative on “Indicants of SRA”. More recently we had the precursors of the DIE standards being introduced into the school curriculum.
Much of this has the side effect of creating a Climate of Fear in the general population, that it may be “clamorous to be led to safety” [vide Mencken], usually by paying more taxes and foregoing long fought-for freedoms.
The definition is problematic for many reasons. I wouldn’t worry about it. You are never going to be free of enemies. Even if you destroy all your political enemies still some people would hate you for your looks or personality. Just understand the language of the heart.That is the true test in our time.
Pubs affected too?
Counter Productive
A lot of this stuff ends up being mindless box ticking counter productive buck passing nonsense. I have done ‘on-line’ safeguarding, diversity and equality training, you sit at your computer with headphones on and tick obvious answers to banal questions. At the end you are pronounced trained to some level or other. In practice you have learned nothing and proved nothing but the boxes are ticked.
Everyone then complacency does nothing more because everyone has been supposedly trained. In effect this increases any risk as people assume this totally ineffective training has done the job.
It does achieve one important thing. It means that in the event of an ‘incident’ somewhere down the line, the organisation which mandated the ‘training’ can point to your having taken part, and correct ticking of all the boxes, and therefore pass the buck on to you.
Intended to make people fearful ….. nudge, nudge, nudge ….. shove.
Yes, let’s give an 84 year old Christian sitting in a wheelchair, anti- terrorism training. They closed all the mental asylums but one………..Parliament
May I be rude and correct you – three, HoC, HoL and Whitehall….?
We import all of the worlds sectarian clutter and expect everything to tick along just fine. ————–Eh no it won’t and it isn’t.
It hasn’t worked in France, Belgium, Holland, Sweden and now Germany…?