The emerging story regarding the arrest of Tory frontbencher Damian Green would be absurd if it did not represent such a continuing degradation of age-old liberties. As Janet Daley commented, ‘anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are creating an overblown fuss over the arrest of Damian Green is making a genuinely grave mistake’. Many people may dismiss the Tory response as political showmanship, and think that as Green was only questioned and not charged, we should forget the whole sorry saga. But this episode cannot simply be swept under the carpet and forgotten.
At the moment the details of the arrest are still slightly hazy but essentially, Damian Green was arrested on Thursday by anti-terrorist police and held for nine hours, because he had made public leaked Home Office information related to his brief as Shadow Immigration Minister. Some Tories have alleged that the authorization for the arrest was made from the upper rungs of the government itself – a claim that the government deny, saying this was an entirely police matter. Either way it seems clear that the information disclosed by Green (that the government was employing illegal immigrants in 'security-cleared' positions) was a legitimate matter of public interest.
But the details in this story are not the most worrying element. What is so hard to comprehend is the idea that an opposition Member of Parliament can be arrested by counter-terrorism policy, held for nine hours, have his home and his parliamentary office searched (seemingly with the consent of the Speaker), simply for daring to hold the government to account. This is a blatant and undeniable encroachment on the civil rights of the British people. The arrest of an MP by special operations units is the type of scene witnessed under tyrannical dictators. (Well, I suppose Gordon Brown is unelected...)
The worrying thing is that there have been no sweeping invasions of our privacy, they have been snuck in through the back door under the veil of anti-terrorist measures, surveillance cameras and ID cards. The Tories are right to make a big deal out of this arrest, it would be difficult to blow this one out of proportion, but they need to make sure they make real changes when they come into power.
It is things like this that really bring home the sickening reality of what the current government has done to this country.
If it turns out they knew about Damian Green MP's arrest in advance, then they really are beneath contempt. Anyone who values freedom should be disgusted by this latest step along the road to serfdom.
It has been revealed that women with ID cards who change their name after marriage could face fines of up to £1000 if they fail to inform the government. Fines will also be forced upon those who fail to report a change of address to the relevant authorities. The world has turned upside down. It will soon be you who has to prove you are the person in the government’s database, not the other way around. Welcome to Britain, the year is 2008.
As the subtly titled "ID cards for foreigners" are instituted, more facts are revealed about this Gestapo inspired project. We are on a very slippery slope. The 21st century offers many new challenges. Not from terrorism, but from those employed to protect us. Terrorism has long existed, but the quest for absolute security is now being used as a pretext for absolute control of the people.
This loss doesn’t come cheap. As public debt reaches astronomical levels, the government is committing us to shelling out in excess of £5 billion over the next ten years. As John Stepek makes clear, ignoring the civil liberties argument, the practical arguments in favour of an ID cards just don’t add up.
As the wheels of bureaucracy grind ever onwards, the freedom that we once knew is turning to dust. It is impossible to say if and when the people of this country will stand up to the political class. The French recently stood up to Sarkozy’s vision of a police state, why cannot the people of this country round on this Blair-Brown dystopia? Legislation needs to be introduced to protect the individual. Certainly this should cover the threat posed by other private individuals and companies; but the real threat to liberty comes from that most traditional enemy: the politicians.
When an ordained priest of the Church of England writes that the government’s policy of criminalizing paying for sex then it is quite likely that those in power might be making a mistake.
As George Pitcher argues: “The first effect of such legislation would be to drive the "good" punters out of the market. Cosy, self-satisfied, middle-class observers may claim that there is no such beast as a good user of prostitutes. The prostitutes themselves would disagree." As such “The market for the oppressive, abusive and violent will expand, offering less protection for prostitutes, rather than the greater protection that is intended."
Pitcher hits the nail on the head: “laws made by legislators with an eye to the electorate, rather than care for the oppressed and vulnerable, can make lives considerably worse for those who most need our protection."
The motivations behind this government’s approach are clearly the perceived popularity of the tough stance, however the intellectual tradition, as Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon states, “include the radical feminist thesis that all heterosexual sex is exploitation, a Marxist view that all work is exploitation, and a religious evangelism which argues that all non-procreational sex is wrong."
Dr Brooks-Gordon also has he solution: “ministers should scrap the prostitution laws and start again by following New Zealand's lead in decriminalising the industry, which empowered workers and reduced violence. It also led to better cooperation between the police and sex workers against coercion, something which will do more to help the victims of trafficking than any amount of wrong-headed government meddling."
Is the writing on the wall for that glorious and appropriately named time of the day: happy hour? An hour (or more) in which one can actually afford to drink outside of one’s house in this most costly of countries. The threat comes from MPs calling for cheap alcohol to be banned in an attempt to address the growing evidence of rising drunken violence.
The argument is that we are seeing an increase in alcohol-fuelled violence, so if alcohol is made more expensive we will see less violence. Well possibly, but alcohol does not cause violence, people do. The problem is not that most people are drinking too much, but that some people are willing and able to commit violence that the rest of us could never consider perpetrating (no matter how inebriated we get).
There are of course many reasons for this violence, but ultimately it is about culture, something that politicians are particularly bad at dealing with. It is not a simple alcohol equals violence equation, but one in which situation plays a key role. For most people violence itself is a taboo, but for some Friday night is all right for fighting.
Ironically, politicians have helped create the problems that they are now trying to solve. As the state has increasingly taken responsibility away from those in society who previously held it by virtue of their position and relationship to those around them, we have seen a concomitant rise in social problems. This is not to claim an idyllic past or a current state of terror; but there can be little doubt the state has taken explicit and implicit power away from teachers, publicans, ticket conductors et al. and we are very much the worse off for it.
Your average drinker should not be penalized for the actions of the wolves amongst the sheep. What we need are more shepherds. The government should be looking at ways of empowering those who used to take a more active role in their communities, so that they can be free to live up to their responsibilities. Instead it is incentivizing the shepherds to take the ferry to France, stock up on cheap booze and drink it in the safety of their home with the doors firmly bolted behind them.
According to Jacqui Smith, public demand means people will be able to pre-register for an ID card within the next few months. She said: "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long."
What tosh! The only people who would want to talk to her are slimy obsequious fools, one rung down from most politicians on the evolutionary scale. ID Cards are deeply unpopular. As I have written previously, they are one of the only issues that all newspapers are against.
In the same piece I suggested a bonfire of ID Cards, if and when we are in position where we are forced either explicitly or implicitly to carry one. A comment rightly suggested that the fumes would be too much, and that instead we should shred them. Good idea. Perhaps one of those industrial wood chippers would do the job?
For a number of years politicians have been assiduously stripping away our hard fought freedoms like cork from the Quercus suber. Now they are getting out the axe and preparing to strike. The yell of timber is not far away. The freeborn Englishman is increasingly the stuff of legend.
If you take something from someone without paying them the full market value the Americans call this a "taking". In their Constitution (actually, the Fifth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights) this is expressly forbidden, the taking of private property for public use without just compensation.
While this is, sadly, often honoured only in the breach the reasoning behind it is quite simple. To use the law, or the power of government, to take the property of a person is theft in the wider sense of that word.
The impending closure of the Colony Room, the Soho drinking den patronised by louche figures from the art world including Francis Bacon and Tracey Emin, may be averted after an intervention by English Heritage.
The advisory body is rushing through an inspection to determine whether the club, which has witnessed 60 years of booze-soaked misbehaviour by some of Britain's most creative drunks, merits listed status.
Quite why the room where artistic livers have been destroyed should be listed escapes me, but the real reason why they want to try is this:
Artists who are campaigning to keep the Colony Room open believe that listed status will help them to come to an arrangement with the landlord because it would be harder to redevelop the premises.
Making it harder to redevelop the building means that the landlord will lose some of the value of the property. That value will be transferred, by law, from the landlord to the drinkers, for the landlord will lose any development profits while the artistes will be able to drink in Soho without paying the full cost of the premises in which they do so.
That the law is used of course makes it entirely legal but in my opinion this is still theft.
Don't list it, don't create such a taking, let Tracey and her friends cough up the full cost of their tipples and the room they like to spill them in.
It was reported yesterday that private shops and post offices might be recruited to collect biometric data for the government’s ID card scheme. This is another addition to the elaborate plan for introducing the UK's new form of identification. Starting next year, some 200,000 airport workers will get identity cards as a condition of employment. The following year, students will be encouraged to apply for a card when opening a bank account, and eventually, the Identity and Passport Service hopes to distribute a substantial number in connection with issuing British passports.
Yet the Home Office is already encountering (justified) opposition to this plan. Many are protesting the £30 charge for an ID card, when most of the population do not see it as necessary. Airlines such as British Airways, Easy Jet and Virgin Atlantic have expressed opposition because they claim the scheme is unfounded and will not increase security. Despite the good intentions of the government, it is obvious that this scheme will build up its already mounting costs. In the next ten years, the ID cards are predicted to cost £4,740 million for British and Irish citizens, and an additional £311 million for foreign nationals. In times like these, who really wants to think about further spending on plans most people contest?
As the government tries to move forward with the ID card scheme, the British people may not be the only opposing force that they face. As mentioned earlier, the Home Office is looking to "use market forces and competition" by enlisting the services of private companies, organization and retailers to enrol UK citizens in the program. Those outside of the Home Office, however, speculate whether private companies would be willing to invest millions into a program that very well could be scrapped by a new administration.
So, we must wait and see how the execution of the ID card scheme pans out in the next few years. But getting fingerprinted while shopping for groceries at the supermarket is still a rather worrying thought.
Good news for freedom today as the House of Lords has defeated the government over the issue of keeping peoples' DNA and fingerprints on the police national database. Peers backed a Conservative amendment calling for national guidelines for deleting material by 161 votes to 150.
The amendment by Tory frontbencher Baroness Hanham would require the Government to publish national guidelines to establish procedures for people to find out what information was held on them or their dependants, how to ask for it to be deleted, and the circumstances where police chiefs could refuse. Such regulations would have to be approved by both Houses.
The National Policing Improvement Agency - which released the figures under Freedom of Information rules – estimates that 4,631,838 individuals are now on the database. This includes people who have not been convicted of any crime. And they have big plans for your DNA: A senior scientist from the Forensic Science Service said the Home Office would like the DNA database to be the same size as the national fingerprint database, which has more than 7.3million prints.
Europe may offer some salvation. Next month a case will be heard in the European Court of Human Rights. It will rule on whether it is lawful to keep DNA samples from individuals that have not been convicted for any crime. If successful, over 1 million DNA records will have to be destroyed.
With this government readily tearing through the foundations of freedom in the UK, the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights at times appear to be last lines of defence we have. And yet for very different reasons, both are rather suspect protectors of our liberty.
What this country needs is a new contract between the individual and the state. One in which power hungry politicians can be kept at arms length from our private space. We are all suffering from the intrusive state, the consequent lack of liberty demands redress. In 1100 we got the Charter of Liberties; in 1215 we got the Magna Carta Libertatum. Now about to enter 2009, we need another contract to restrain executive power.
Following Scotland, Redbridge council aims to ban smokers from becoming foster carers, to protect children from the effects of passive smoking. The cabinet of Redbridge council, east London, meets today to rule on the proposed ban that would come into force in January 2010.
Michael Stark, cabinet member for children's services argues that "Unlike adults, children have little choice about whether or not to be in a smoky environment so I hope the cabinet will take the decision to limit the harmful effects this drug can have on them."
True, but no child has a choice to be born into their situation. In a world in which the demand for unwanted children is not met by the number adults prepared to care for them, cutting out a vast section of potential foster carers based upon their enjoyment of tobacco will prove a costly mistake.
Given the understandable scarcity of people willing to make the epic commitment of becoming a foster parent, one has to question placing the importance of whether the adult smokes ahead of other qualities. Lest it not be forgotten: “Smoking only kills you if you stick the cigarette in your own mouth. To pretend otherwise is mumbo-jumbo".
Although inspired by an impulse to protect, if Redbridge council go ahead with the ban it would cause untold harm to many vulnerable future children.
UPDATE: The ban was enforced: nothing less than a disgrace.
The emerging story regarding the arrest of Tory frontbencher Damian Green would be absurd if it did not represent such a continuing degradation of age-old liberties. As Janet Daley 
It has been 
When an ordained priest of the Church of England writes that the government’s policy of criminalizing paying for sex then it is quite likely that those in power might be making a mistake.
Is the writing on the wall for that glorious and appropriately named time of the day: happy hour? An hour (or more) in which one can actually afford to drink outside of one’s house in this most costly of countries. The threat comes from MPs 
According to Jacqui Smith, public demand means people will be able to pre-register for an ID card within the next few months. She 
It was 
Good