Brown gets his way...

[jumpy]

on the 42 day detention vote. For now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7449268.stm

Can't say I agree with this and I don't believe that the 'amendments' being wrangled over recently will be of any real benefit; either way we have a new and dangerous precedent. So far as I know it, no other country in the world has a 'detention without charge' law as long as this.
Ignoring all that stuff about non combatant detainees at guantanamo bay, I'm sure I heard correctly that america can only detain an individual/citizen for 1 day without charge, no matter what the offence. The next closest to the UK now is germany, I think, with 8 days.

XXIX. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.[1]

http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content...tDocId=1517519

So much for that then. Bye bye 700 years of rights to not be imprisoned by the state without charge or trial.
Score!




I know they say 'don't worry, everything will be all right, you can trust us...' well sorry guys, I wouldn't trust any of you as far as I can throw that overweight, aggressive lump of common lard john prescott.

So far we've had local councils using anti terror legislation to spy on citizens to check they are in the right school catchment area. Various other legal rights to demonstrate, generally stamped on with section 44 of the anti terror bill; bandied about by beat officers who are mistakenly suggesting that people must conform to a rule only designed to deal with serious crime and fundamentalist attacks and not for use as a means of coercion for the general populace to jump into line over.


With all of this much needed commons debate, ministers seem to have lost sight of the real troubling issues we have today:
like loosing top secret documents...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449255.stm
or addressing the amount of violence in the country and sentencing appropriate to such action...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7449775.stm

How many years did we have to live with an allied nation funded bombings on the mainland, perpetrated by the IRA? We seemed to cope well enough for more than 30 years without the need to take such large and irreversible steps to change the law.
What has changed since dealing with the IRA then and facing fundamentalist islamic terrorism now? The confidence of the people in the government? Or the governments confidence in itself?

With any luck the house of lords will bin this bad idea along with many others... which reminds me; wasn't it one of tonys ideas to remove the house of lords as a block to parliamentary changes of certain legislature? Or was that got around by a 'majority of sympathetic seats' in the lords - what I really mean is a seat in the house of lords for cash - that was discussed a while back?

This pissant parliament just keeps rolling out the muck for as long as it can doesn't it?