Meanwhile in other news, the MoS also reports that Murdoch won;t be backing Mackenzie after he made some poorly judged comments about Hull that were caught microphone. Basically, he implied the place was a bit of a shithole (probably true, I've only been there once when I was 16 and it's the first time I ever saw a hooker on a street corner).
On the issue of 42 Days and David Davis, there is also an aticle in the MoS by Shami Chakrabati. And as she quite rightly says
These debates can’t be sewn up in the courtroom or the Westminster village. They belong in all the living rooms of towns and villages in the oldest unbroken democracy on Earth.The problem with pre-charge detention is that it assumes guilt. Why not have post-charge questioning instead? It's all about triangulation politics on law and order at the end of the day. Make the Right look weak whilst the Left looks tough.
The opinion poll argument, that a majority support the argument, is flawed because when you ask someone if they support it, and then you put forward other options to them they have a tendency to change their mind. We've thrown away so much liberty already, and we did it without questioning, perhaps now we should stop and think.
Edmund Burke once noted that "whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe." His peer and rival Pitt said "necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." When opposing sides in history meet perhaps it is time to learn we paid heed to their wisdom?
4 comments:
don't they presume guilt in that horrid place the other side of the channel?
The Westminster Village is not so much out of sync, as cocooned inside an impermeable bubble of ignorant self regard and rank arrogance.
And breathe...
Oldest unbroken democracy? The property qualification was only abolished (for men) in 1884, and that doesn't seem very long ago...
If we take the view that the country was not democratic while it had the property qualification, which seems reasonable, a few countries would get in ahead of us. According to Wikipedia, the modern Swiss constitution was adopted in 1874, for example.
As I understand it, polls tend to ask a question along the lines of, "Do you agree that terror suspects should be allowed to be locked up for 42 days withouut charge?"
If the question were changed to, "Do you think YOU should be locked up for 42 days without charge if YOU are suspected of terrorism?" I suspect one would get a wildly different answer.
In these days of Islamist terror, people assume that the only ones being locked up are young Asian men with beards. Wait until they come for you.
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