Hoisted by their Own Petard

Oh what a most terribly exciting day. It would appear that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the UK government and declared that retaining fingerprints and DNA records of people not convicted of any crime is a breach of human rights. Oh happy, happy day.

Currently 20% of the UK DNA database consists of records from people arrested, but never convicted of anything. Two such people took their cases to the European High Court, after they were thrown out by the House of Lords in London, and they won. And you know what that means; it means anyone else in the same position could essentially do the same. There is no appeal. There is no higher court. The government has lost.

Now it's not often you'll find me cheering for Europe, but in this case I'll make an exception. I just love the irony here. The Pro-Europe UK government, hoisted by their own petard. The Euroskeptic opposition laughing their collective arse off. I feel like running round the carpark singing, "Oh what a beautiful Morning", in my best Howard Keel voice, but I won't.

The Home Office response to the European ruling on the DNA database was, "The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement." So they will continue to retain DNA taken from people arrested and subsequently released without conviction while they think about it! What is there to think about? You said this very week that parliament was not above the law, and the law says you're acting illegally.

The cow in the HOme Office is actually having a bad morning. She's also had to defend herself in the Commons over the Damian Green fiasco. The police, the Speaker, and the Home Secretary are looking more chaotic every moment.

What's with all the blue Christmas lights this year? It's not right you know. Red, silver, gold, they're Christmas colours. This is all down to blue leds. Blue leds suddenly become available and they're all over the place. The same thing happened in the 70s when we suddenly found that you could make furniture out of plastic. It wasn't until the 80s that we realised that it was only good for garden furniture, and even then it had a tendency to collapse under fat people holding beer, thus providing hilarious material for countless home video clip shows. Anyway, blue Christmas lights, they're all wrong, someone should do something about it.