I took time this afternoon to listen to the debate in Parliament on the 42 days detention without charge proposal. Like many, I am opposed to it. In a few hours we shall know the result.
I listened to some thoughtful and informed views. Sir Menzies Campbell gave a very powerful speech; measured, informed and above all – independent. He reminded us that our civil liberties were not handed out by liberal monarchs – they were won and they were seized. He said that it was the duty of parliamentarians to protect civil liberties – and he is right.
I have voted Labour for many years. I hope the government loses the debate but if they do win – they will do so at a cost to those seized freedoms and those who believe in ‘governing’ by terror will be able to chalk up another erosion in our freedom – the very thing our armed forces, security services, police and serious crime prosecutors are fighting in this country, in Iraq and Afghanistan, to preserve. That is the irony.
Where have all the rebels gone? What pieces of silver did they get? Guido Fawkes has a view
I’m off to have a glass of wine. I have listened to enough debate today. Brown appears, on the other hand, not to be listening at all. Maybe he won’t have to ‘not-listen’ for much longer – it could be less than 42 days?
***
6.20 pm: The government wins by 9 votes. They say that backroom deals did the trick – the BBC commentator stated that Brown could not deliver the result from his own party, that he needed 9 DUP members to support it. – what a way to re-establish authority. Will we ever know what those back room deals are? The DUP, it was reported, voted with the government after “shuffling in and out of meetings all afternoon”. Pieces of silver?
But will it get through the Lords? Will it ever see the statute book? Does the government reallly want it to see the statute book? Maybe the ‘Snotgobbler’ – a monicker given to Brown by commenters on Guido Fawkes’ s blog – survive? All this… and more… on the BBC Parliament Channel. Who needs “Britain’s Got Talent”?
The “duty of parliamentarians to protect civil liberties”? I have to say I agree … but I fear that when it comes to it the aforementioned parliamentarians will decide their highest duty is to further their own careers.
As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s not so much that I’m concerned about what this current crowd will do with such an extension of their powers; what I am concerned about is what the next government or the one after that might decide to do “in the national interest”.
Maybe we’ll get lucky – I shall be watching the news with interest and maybe, just maybe will treat myself to a glass of something too if there’s cause to celebrate 🙂
Ro: The ayes have it… the ayes have it…
On to the Lords.
And I’m off for another glass of wine.
Perhaps we could trial the 42 days by keeping the muppet who left top secret documents on the train from Waterloo?
Honestly… they spend all this time arguing the need for 42 days, and they have f*ckwits who are allowed to run around with sensitive data. Crumbs, why not just hand over the bloody information to those who could do most damage with it, instead of cat-and-mouse tactics!!
As far as I am concerned, 9 votes can not be called victory. Let’s hope the Lords have more back-bone!!
Ms Hansen: Yes… I saw that report. Unbelievable!
I note the sophistry in the so-called ‘concession’ offered by the government to those MPs who ‘waive red’ of a compensation system set at a level of £42000 payable to innocent people arrested and detained for 42 days ‘without charge’.
It would have been either a congenital idiot or a calculating MP looking for an easy way out who would have relied on this impovershed reasoning as a justification to do his masters bidding.
Note the weasel-wording: “without charge”. In other words, a man arrested, held for 42 days within which time he will, as an inevitable consequence have lost his job, fallen behind on his mortgage, facing repossession, or in the alternative, thrown out of his rented accommodation, his personal life in ruins, charged on the 42nd day, and then the case dropped for lack of evidence without coming to trial.
No compensation at all since he was actually charged and not subsequently proceeded against!
The other dubious line which convinced the waverers that such a reserve power will only be used in ‘exceptionally grave circumstances’!
What utter bollocks. All Jacquie smith need to is to come to the House and state that there exists exceptionally grave circumstances as to why extended detention is justified but is unable to submit those reasons to forensic analysis.
These and other so-called concessions, as any reasonably intelligent ten-year old would observe are not actually concessions at all, they are merely a collection of ‘pegs’ upon which an MP who has managed to obtain a personal ‘concession’, such as, inter alia, a promise not to close a post office in his constituency is able to hang his lame: ‘I’m convinced by the government’s argument’ hat on and slink off and vote as directed!.
The liberty of the subject has been reduced to mere horse-trading of ‘benefits in kind’ and grasped greedily with both hands by those who will go home tonight and sleep soundly in their beds with consciences salved by sophistry!
The threat to the security and liberty of United Kingdom subjects is not from the Al Qaeda franchise. It is from 650 elected ‘cyphers’ whose sole purpose is to reap the financial benefits to themselves and their families in return for simply ‘rubber-stamping’ the decisions of those who seek to use the democratic process to impose state-sponsored tyranny on the inhabitants of this island.
What happened today is a sickening insult to the memory of those who shot the Luftwaffe out of the skies over this country in the four months between June to September 1940.
The Military and Civil Service official definition of ‘Top Secret”
“Information, the unauthorised disclosure of which, is likely to cause exceptionally grave damage to the interests of the nation.”
Given the subject-matter disclosed by the BBC, it is highly unlikely that the documents have been ‘over-classified’.
The definition, combined with the circumstances in which these documents came into the public domain says a great deal about the casual attituted of those charged with our security and the seriousness with which they discharge it!
I think it unlikely in the extreme that the BBC are the only beneficiaries of the information contained within the two documents and the information contained therein must now be regarded as completely compromised.
The wine was left undrunk, the celebrations uncelebrated and all I had left was the smug satisfaction that I’d been right about something I didn’t want to be right about.
Time we cast Northern Ireland adrift, methinks … and I can’t help wondering if all the rumours are true about the “considerations” promised by El Gordo to the one-time rebels in exchange for their support, just how much this little “victory” has cost us. It supposedly comes in at around £22,000 per DUP MP for starters – not bad for saying “Aye”.