The Metropolitan Police spent £111k last year trying to remove Brian Haw, the anti-war protester who embarasses the British government outside Parliament.

The British government brought in a new law banning any form of protest – peaceful or otherwise, within 1km of Parliament and sought to use it to remove Brian Haw. Unfortunately for them a judge ruled that as Haw has been there for 6 years and the legislation was brought in after that, Haw was entitled to stay where he was. But not before 78 police officers were involved in dragging this one man – who hasn’t shown any inclination towards violence in 6 years of protesting outside Parliament – from his spot on Parliament Square.

No other government in any civillised nation in the world bans peaceful protest from outside their parliament.

While I’m on the subject of this illiberal law, I don’t think it’s lawful and I’ll tell you why. It’s nothing to do with being illiberal, a breach of human rights, violating our rights under the constitution or anything like that. It’s those two letters – km. Under English law the use of kilometres for road signs, bridleways and other forms of official measurements are illegal and I think that this metric exclusion zone is illegal too.