Could Davis claim his fourth home secretary scalp?
November 8th, 2007
Is the detention limit extension a good battle-ground for Labour?
On the second day of the Queen’s speech debate battle was joined on what’s likely to be a difficult issue for the government in the coming session - the move to extend the maximum period that suspects can be held with trial beyond the current 28 days.
This is an issue that the Blair government tried and failed to push before but is one that Brown has decided to raise again leaving it up to his home secretary, Jacqui Smith to carry the flag for the government and Labour.
Her challenge is that she’s up against not only her formidable Tory shadow, David Davis, but also large parts of the serious press as well. This morning’s editions won’t make comfortable reading - particularly the suggestions that the measure is only being proposed as a means of attacking the Tories.
Under the heading “Gordon Brown is playing political games with a debate that is both sinister and silly” this is how Steve Richards describes it in the Independent this morning “..Do not knock Jacqui Smith for declaring yesterday on the BBC’s Today programme that she did not know how long the extension should be. Ms Smith should be praised for lapsing into candour, perhaps unintentionally. No one knows what such a limit should be. This is what is so absurd about the meaningless machismo in relation to setting some maximum limit. And yet it appears that Downing Street itself is knocking Ms Smith. Within hours of her interview yesterday, Downing Street made clear that Mr Brown wants a 56-day limit, making Ms Smith’s apparent flexibility seem an act of weakness. But why does Downing Street want 56 days? Why is it not 59, or 61, or 78, or 29? This debate manages to be both sinister and silly…Whenever Mr Brown tries to be too clever by half he gets himself into trouble. The message yesterday was not one of bold resolution, but of muddle. Over this, the Government has a lot to be muddled about.“
By all reports David Davis was on fire yesterday.
This is how Times sketch writer, Ann Treneman, describes it “DD did not stop with a warning shot. He loaded the cannon and let rip. He was a man possessed. It dawned that he might actually care about this. You’d be surprised how rare that is at Westminster..Ms Smith, he noted, had never explained why she wanted to go beyond the current 28-day period. Indeed, she had told the Home Affairs Committee: “There has not been a circumstance in which it has been necessary up to this point to go beyond 28 days.” Ms Smith, on the front bench, muttered: “Thank goodness.”.This inflamed DD, who turned on her, teeth bared, like a dog with the hair standing up on the back of his neck. “She seems to have managed to pick this number out of the air!” he cried, referring to 28 days. “The highest number in the free world! The highest length of time for people to be held without charge in the free world!”
A key political question is whether the government’s stance will help it win back Lib Dem votes. This is one of those subjects which are pretty sensitive amongst this group of voters.
Mike Smithson
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This issue seems to me to typify the way in which Brown represents continuity with the Blair days. You can add in ID cards and the reflexive institutional support for all things nuclear.
My guess would be that many of the Lab->Lib Dem switchers at the ‘05 GE were the type of voter who would support Labour, in preference to the Tories, unless Labour were so bad that the choice between the two parties appeared to be the choice between losing an arm and a leg, or “just” losing a leg. Last time, given the legacy of Iraq, ID cards, etc, these voters switched to the Lib Dems.
Brown’s strategy in raising this issue, and not killing off ID cards as a disaster waiting to happen, almost appears designed to drive these voters away.
Brown has no understanding of why Blair became unpopular, does he?
He really does not have a clue.
Incidentally, I think that things like this, and ID cards (proposed by one of the later Tory administrations last time) are symptomatic of when a Government has gone “native” and has been captured by the civil service and their lobbyists.
Either the Prime Minister is an idiot, which seems unlikely, or his advisors are: hyping the non-election, flying to Iraq, and disenfranchising half of Scotland.
And now detention without trial. There is no operational need so it is politics but it is bloody stupid politics because all the voters who feel strongly about it line up in the same direction: they are all opposed to extension.
There is no upside. Whether or not the measure is passed, it can only hurt Labour. Sack the advisors and restore Cabinet government.
I think Brown’s retention of increasing the limit and, according to Nick Palmer, of imposing ID cards on us all should persuade everyone of a liberal-left persuasion that Labour simply is not home to them. It is not surprising that many of those Labour members who support these authoritarian measures have a history of being communist in their youth. If you’re willing to ignore the crimes of the Soviet Union as a university-educated undergraduate, you’d be willing to support ID cards for a Labour goverment.
I was watching part of the Queen’s Speech debate yesterday, and I happened upon a good speech by Bob Marshall-Andrews. Apart from other things, he pointed out that the governemtn and/or police have not been able to give any concrete examples of specific cases where they have found that the 28-day limit was not enough; the original demand for a 90-day limit seems to have originated in political expediency (what the government thought it could get away with) rather than any scientific analysis of what was necessary.
Meanwhile, Ian Blair said he will not resign. This is not a true statement, just as it was not true when he said that Jean Charles de Menezes jumped over the ticket barrier, ran away, and failed to obey police orders when challenged.
If Jacqui Smith wants to back Ian Blair to the hilt, then she too will go.
Why are every one of your threads biased against Labour.
EVERY one.
No doubt this post wont make it through the net.
It seems to me that the goings on at the Treasury and the Home Office say all you need to know about Gordon Brown’s Govt.
And it’s not good. One would hope that at some point senior Cabinet ministers would get fed up of trying to come up with arguments to justify policies they clearly don’t believe in. At least when Tony Blair used to take control of departmental policy he generally took a fair share of the burden of making the case upon his own shoulders.
Sadly i think the only person currently at the top of Govt who would make a stand is Jack Straw. So at least we can be assured that Gordon will make no attempt to meddle with the Judicial system. Small mercies.
With whom would you suggest the Prime Minister replace the truly awful Ms Smith? If the best he can do in filling the three great offices of Chancellor, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary is Darling, Smith and Miliband, the conclusion must be that there ain’t no-one better. That’s the biggest problem with this Cabinet - there is no possibility of a reshuffle unless Brown brings back such heavyweights as Glenda Jackson.
5.
i dont know why you feel that, the point of the Mike’s threads is to analyze what the polls/papers are saying, to get a better grasp of how best to bet. Right now the media and the polls are heavy set against Brown, and fairly pro Cameron-which is what Mike’s threads suggest. Back over the summer when Brown was making all the right moves, and Dave forgot how to play the game, many Tories could easily have claimed the opposite of what you are claiming.
7 - Not necessarily. Darling and Smith are there, in particular, because Gordon can walk all over them. Which he is doing. That’s not to say that there is necessarily anyone better, but the fact that they are the current incumbents doesn’t preclude the possibility.
http://adamboulton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/gb-faces-fight-.html#comments
re 5. They aren’t. And on this subject you should ask the normally Labour-leaning Independent writer, Steve Richards. from whom I quote extensively above.
The accusation of using traditional civil liberties for party political advantage is serious and could have a political impact.
My point has already been made by JohnLoony at 4: this won’t hurt Jacqui Smith, at least until the debate itself, but her support for the increasingly isolated Ian Blair might - there’s an IPCC report out today with I think 15 recommendations. Should it be bad enought that Ian Blair has to go, then David Davis will really have something to crow about and Jacqui Smith will look like the one who missed the tide going out.
Harsh perhaps, as Home Secretary is in media terms the hardest job in Government, but Brown picked her because he thought she was up to it.
12 - he picked her because he wanted to give the govt a fresh look and wanted some cheap headlines.
As you have said before there is no one left in a senior position who can attack or make a go at defending a difficult policy. John Reid would have been able to put up a good case and give Davis a run for his money. Again, this comes back tp Brown’s personality and not being comfortable with any potential rivals.
12. Once again, we must ask - why is Labour clinging so desperately to Ian Blair?
I simply cannot understand how a supposedly left-wing party supports this kind of violently repressive agenda.
Detention without charge is simply one of the worst agressions a state can impose on its citizens.
It says something of the post-modern state of the British political debate that your government wants to toughen AGAIN what is already the highest legal period of detention without charge in western democracies (as DD pointed out yesterday).
For the record, 28 days is already 7 times higher than the French limit for suspects of terrorism. Do mass terrorist killings happen as a result in France? No. Moreover, the french police has been able to catch most of the top leaders of the deadly basque terrorist group ETA (and its French counterparts Iparetarrak), Corsican terrorism has been dismantled and barely a month goes without them catching suspects of terror planning.
Protracted detention without charge is not the answer to terrorism. A proper preparatory job by the police before any arrest is much more useful.
Jacqui Smith has one advantage over her predecessors. She is responsible for a smaller dept with fewer things to go wrong. That said why did she allow herself to front a policy when she cannot say what number of days Govt require? If it is fact based then there either is or is not a tact based case for an increase to a specific number.
Brown is clearly doing this for political reasons to bring the Sun, Telegraph and Mail behind him. He will have the Guardian and Independent against him and possibly the Times.
For undermining our liberty for political advantage he deserves it to back fire on himself and lose out. The question is how many of the people in Labour that have a moral compass will put up with this?
I must say I find this subject of little interest and haven’t really followed it. I did hear Jaqui Smith talking on the subject of Sir Ian Blair yesterday and I found her surprisingly impressive.
I dont agree with the very unloony John that Sir Ian Blair is on his way out. I don’t sense any groundswell of anger against him and I think everyone’s tired of self righteous politicians and the Daily Mail calling for what Blackadder would describe as ‘futile gestures’.
18. That’s it - Ian Blair’s a goner for certain now
19 - and Jacqui Smith too!
As a party leader, I think he would have struggled to make an impact, but he is more than a match for the Home Secretaries that Labour keeps lining up for him to just knock down. Like Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis has really found his feet in his current role.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
20. Odds on both being out of a job by Christmas? I think Labour should replace Smith with one of the real stars of the younger generation - the eloquent and intelligent James Purnell.
18- Roger I cannot begin to understand how someone like you who, I understand, is genuinely a liberal by many aspects, can find this subject “of little interest”…
Detention without charge for almost two months? This is the kind of stuff people (rightly) reproach to the Bush administration: heavy-handed symbolic gestures to please the press and curb the liberties without many effects on the (supposed) aim of reducing the menace of terrorism.
22, no Purnell is far too camera shy.
I don’t know if this was posted last night by the London Assembly passed a vote of no-confidence in Sir Ian last night by 15 votes to 8 - a combination of Tories, LibDems, one Green and Hockney. Opposed by Labour and one Green. Apparently Tory Leader Richard Barnes was on good form too. Maybe the Conservatives have found their “issue”?
[16] Spot on, Chris. The French have the necessary security resources to catch terrorists for a very good reason. Terrorists destroyed a French constitutional settlement once, and the French don’t intend to let it happen again.
15 I expect, Aunt Sally, it’s because he’s their man and they trusted him to do a job which would involve a lot of reorganisation within the force, much of it unpopular in parts of that force. They may not be entirely happy with him but to drop him now would look like bowing to political pressure. The Authority vote was gesture politics. The Government won’t want to encourage it to believe it has more influence than it does.
I understand the report out today does not criticise him personally, as was the case with earlier reports. It is unlikely therefore to justify dismissing him.
Labour may not be crazy about their top cop, but they are not about to junk him right now.
22 Ah, now you are talking my language, Aunt Sally.
Odds? What odds you want? I’d be very interested in a private wager.
28. Do you really think I was serious about JP? hahaha - what a gift he would be for the Tories.
But of course you have put your finger on it re. Blair - ‘it’s because he’s their man’ . Exactly - Labour wanted a politicised Met and Ian Blair delivered it. The public may have a different preference though
18. Chris. It is not that I think detention without trial is a good thing or remotely a necessary thing. It’s just that in the order of injustices that we live with and accept this comes very low down on my list of priorities. I don’t compare it with Guantanamo by the way-which you seem to be suggesting- which is one of those injustices that comes much higher up the list.
Cllr Anthony Little (25) asks: “Maybe the Conservatives have found their “issue”?”
Maybe, Anthony, maybe. But since it is a Liberal issue, equally “maybe” some of the more enlightened Tories may now move over to the Liberal Democrats.
That seems to be the trend just at present, doesn’t it?
I watched the DD speech yesterday and it was very clear the government have no evidence or basis for increasing the limit. DD used the Heathrow example when 10 planes were due to blown up and simply made the government look stupid. His arguments are too long to list here but i suggest you check hansard to understand the comprehensive demolition job he did on smith. it was impressive.
I simply do not understand why the government is pushing this, its clearly not needed, so whats their angle. The measure is unpopular on all sides of the house and other legislation exists that allows government “in the event of overwhelming risk to public safety” to increase detention without trial for 30 days “more” than existing law allows. so in the event of something big the government can already hold people for 58 days.
she was totally out of her depth
30- I know that Guantanamo is worse than this and I don’t suggest you support it. Still, it doesn’t make it a good thing for me. And to make a bad thing (28 days) worse (56 days) is not what I call a very good move.
By the way detention without trial is commonplace and normal (you cannot expect a trial to be organized in a few days); but detention without charge, basically to be held in custody for nothing precise, is much more of a concern.
Not so sure about that, Tory (21). I think Davies would have made a much better leader for the Tories than Cameron has done, who continues to be seen as simultaneously smug and empty.
Tressage your desperation is almost comical!
29 Very good, Aunt Sally, and if I ignore the non sequitur we have some agreement.
Now can we agree on a bet? Post 28 refers.
34 - Cameron, I believe, has genuinely been seen as a breath of fresh air for the Tories (at least at first) whereas Davis would have been more of the same
I genuinely don’t think the Tories would have recorded the poll leads CAmeron achieved under Davis - more than likely old Charlie would still be leading the LibDems, the Tories would still be struggling in the polls and Blair would still be PM had Davis achieved the top job
33. Chris de Paris - Roger doesn’t have any principles, he is simply a Labour partisan who will support anything his party suggests.
Go back a year or so and he was on here spitting blood about the ‘NatWest three’, practically calling for them to be declared guilty without a trial on the basis that they fitted his warped stereotype of a greedy (Tory) banker. Don’t bother trying to discuss an issue like this seriously with him.
The most irritating thing about this deabte is that Labour try and portray anyone who objects to an extension beyond 28 days as ’soft on terror’ which is just ridiculous and childish. the logical extension of that is indefinite carceration for anyone, on a whim.
It is very odd to see a left of centre government desperate to bring in such measures, and ID cards as well. Politically it’s odd as well, most people are instinctively against the state having too much authoritarian power like this, it’s quite disturbing. Still can’t quite work Brown out, but he ain’t doing it for me.
30 Chris from Paris is right, Roger. It is at best unnecessary and unhelpful. It will alienate more of its supporters, and for what?
I would also say that being in Central London during the suicide bombings has changed my attitude somewhat. I have never seen anything as sad and pathetic as those bewildered bloodied people wandering in a daze not understanding what had happened to them.
It was hard to see how conventional means of policing could protect us from human bombs. Strangely many lefties who actually saw the bombings-or the aftermath like me- have become much less certain about these things than we were before.
39 - and there’s the rub. Whether it’s now or when Blair tried it before - and possibly the same with the ID cards issue - the sole motivation behind the proposed extension is simply to make the Tories look weak for opposing it. For some reason The Sun loves all this posturing from the Govt and the Govt loves to see The Sun lapping it up and berating Cameron as weak (remember the front page drubbing he got last time) for the Tories’ eminently sensible line on this.
It’s cunning-stuntism at its worst.
From some of the most stunning that have ever been in government…
SP at 32 “I simply do not understand why the government is pushing this”
It doesn’t matter whether you are talking about the unforgivable tanks at Heathrow incident in 2003, or the more recent string of armed Police raids, publishing the current level of state of alert on a website, or regular public briefings by MI5 about the 2,000 people plotting as we sleep to poison us, blow us up or devastate London with nuclear waste bomb.
it’s part of a strategy to keep up the appearance that we are all only safe because of our strong and heroic, decisive and determined Government looking after it’s grateful citizens at a time of civil crisis.
They have been relying on the lie that we are facing imminent Armageddon since 2001.
41 - Rog old bean, how would 56 day, 90 day, 180 day (whatever) detention have helped prevent the 7/7 killings?
Re the report on the Met Police today, surely Jacqui Smith will have seen it in advance, so the chance that she and Ian Blair will be shocked at the outcome seems unlikely.
On the 56 day detention proposal, is this purely to get certain right of centre newspapers on line, or has anyone made out a reasonable case for it?
£1.00 a litre and its all that, Andrea’s fault.
http://tinyurl.com/2qaemf
41. Pathetic. The same ‘lefties’ vehemently opposed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, voting against it year after year - despite the ‘bewildered and bloodied’ people who were wandering around after the bombings in Guildford, Birmingham, Warrington etc. Now all of a sudden they strongly favour even more draconian measures.
They were playing to the gallery over the PoTA, and are playing to the gallery now as well - such people are unfit to hold office.
41- I can understand that. I was in Paris in the 1995 summer during the bloody wawe of attacks from the algerian-based Islamic Armed Group and have never forgotten the feeling of knowing that one bomb killed 8 people in a central Paris station I passed through daily.
Still, the police caught the terrorists and put them to trial and this wake-up call has meant that no other Islamic act of terrorism has been perpetrated since then, without any extension of the duration of detention without charge but only through more imaginative and better techniques of investigation.
Also interesting article in Guardian, on how the right dominates political blogging in the UK. Can’t say I’d noticed.!
http://tinyurl.com/2vmb4j
46 - Gordon’s done his bit though with the extra £££££££ the Govt is raking in. What a real kick in the balls his extra 2p last month was to the ordinary voter, what with all the extra VAT and tax revenues from the oil companies flowing in to Treasury coffers. And they’re still going to hike it up again in April and then again next October.
The intellectuals on the left are in a strange place. They put their hopes in Blair and when he let them down shifted to Brown a few years later. Brown is now letting them down again and yet they are struggling to acknowledge the reality that they have been “seduced and abandoned” once more. BJ4BW, Thatcher pics, 56 days etc all have no place in a “progressive” party.
Huhne and Clegg have an opportunity to attract these lost voices that fill the Independent and the Guardian. Which one can best attract them? Do the Lib Dems actually want to attract this group?
47
Actually! it was a Labour governmentthat introduced POTA after the Guildford bombings.
47
See here for Guildford bombings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_pub_bombing
48 “…Without any extension of the duration of detention without charge but only through more imaginative and better techniques of investigation.”
Exactlt Chris. It’s better policing that makes us safer. The proposals won’t help. They may well make matters worse.
HF Brown hasn’t got the Telegraph behind him on detention without trial. Their comment is headlined “No benefit to increased detention limit”.
43 DD did make the same point in his speech yesterday.
O/T Sorry to post again about the US elections but it’s all hotting up - 8 weeks until Iowa caucuses - and things are getting interesting. Last week I pointed out an oddity about the Democrat procedure in Iowa:
13 re Iowa.
It gets even more interesting than that. Even if votes rather than delegates are reported, the Democrats (not Republicans) where a candidate needs 15% support at a caucus for the votes to count - otherwise the people voting can switch to somebody else. So for example if 4 people out of 40 support Hillary at one caucus, those four people’s votes will actually be recorded for somebody else. Odd but true I think!
Now the latest polls (Zogby) have taken the second place preference too and it’s interesting that Edwards is the second choice of many Biden and Richardson supporters. While he has dropped back a bit on polls from the beginning of the year, he’s back in a statistical tie if the second preferences are taken from the second tier of candidates.
Obviously this isn’t foolproof because Biden and Richardson could easily pick up 15% of support in some of the caucuses, but it’s still good to see polls starting to pick this up.
Elsewhere, Brownback could be a huge endorsement for McCain, an unlikely comeback kid - as big as Weyrich’s endorsement for Romney - and Huckabee has surely been buried by missing out on these endorsements.
Finally, I don’t know if it has been mentioned but Fred Thompson truly shot himself in the foot on the abortion issue at the weekend. I’m not sure where he’s hoping to draw his support from but he’s looking like a bust.
O/T For people interested in continental politics, the crisis in Belgium has violently deepened yesterday.
All flemish MPs (except the Green who abstained, because she represents the only bilingual parliamentary group) while francophone MPs had left the room voted for an apparently technical but extemely symbolical measure : prevent francophone voters living in the suburbs of Brussels located in Flanders to vote for francophone candidates in general and european elections.
This is considered as an awful agression by all francophones, taking into account that those people living there already have no right whatsoever to communicate with the adminsitration, public services and local councils in another language than Flemish.
This question, known as the split of the Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde electoral constituency, is one of the central questions that prevent the formation of a new government.
5 months after the election, this vote by flemish MPs risk to provoke a collapse in the already incredibly long and difficult negotiations between the 4 parties that are supposed to form the government (Flemish and Francophone Liberals and Christian democrats)
38. Harry. I do think that justice should be the same for those with nothing as for those with millions which was my point about the ‘Westminster bank Three’.
40. PtP. I agree. I don’t understand it either. But in a world where our principle ally has kept hundreds of prisoners shackled without trial for years and who can invade any sovereign country on a whim where exactly does this fit in the scheme of terrorist injustice?
34. Tressage. I was amused by your “Tory (21)”! They’re nearly all Tories so maybe all we need is a number!
50 Quite right too. If we’re really serious about tackling climate change we have to jack up the price of petrol so that drivers demand car manufacturers make more serious efforts to increase vehicle economy and find alternative power sources. Fuel economy of the average car has scarcely improved for 30 years - this must mean that fuel is too cheap.
Coldstone @ 49
!! I hope your tongue is firmly in your cheek there!
Of course, HF (51). The examples you quote - “BJ4BW, Thatcher pics, 56 days” - evidently “have no place in a “progressive” party”.
But the Labour Party ceased being that years ago, when it set out to replace the Tory Party. I doing so, it forced the Tories to try to appear liberal (there was no alternative for them), and this has left the Tories very confused, with a series of contradictory policy statements.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are retaking centre stage, with Cable, Clegg, Huhne and Laws being most impressive in recent weeks.
I sometimes wonder whether Brown is actually TRYING to destroy the Labour Party, in favour of the Lib Dems. It is what he seems to be doing in practice….
PS. I am glad to see that Rik is still alive and kicking. We haven’t seen very much of him here recently, nor in the mass media (in Reading). I did wonder at one time whether he might be getting a bit cheesed off with Cameron’s unproductive leadership.
41. Bob. “41 - Rog old bean, how would 56 day, 90 day, 180 day (whatever) detention have helped prevent the 7/7 killings?”
Pass!
50
But as a, ‘Green Tory’ shouldn’t you be backing the government on this? Why isn’t Cameron calling for more increases in fuel duty, to save the planet?
By the way saw Roger Helmer (?) Tory MEP being interviewed on this subject, (leaning on his, top of the range Jaguar) thinks global warming is all bollocks, and a real con trick, obviously not on board, shouldn’t Dave have a word.
On the Guildford bombings, I was living in Guildford, (Merrow) at the time, the good people of Guildford, said, (under the breath) ‘Good ‘ol IRA’ the squaddies were hated in Guildford, after the bombings they were banned from coming in, this was welcomed. Unpleasant but true!
58 - Chris, this is riveting. Is it legal to prevent voters from voting for a particular candidate or party (sorry if this is a silly question but I must confess relative ignorance of Belgian politics)
61
My tounge is always firmly in my cheek!
sorry Tongue
60. nickc. “Fuel economy of the average car has scarcely improved for 30 years - this must mean that fuel is too cheap.”
Absolute rubbish on the “fuel economy” point! Diesel cars are now the majority of new cars bought, and their fuel economy is vastly better than petrol equivalents. 30 years ago, everyone except commercial interests bought petrol cars.
As to whether fuel is too cheap - that is a different debate.
Interesting that the partisan Mirror is against Iain Blair.
“Voice of the mirror Met boss must quit. The limpet-like determination of Sir Ian Blair to cling to office is deeply depressing”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/voiceofthemirror/
57 Thanks Ant. I had noticed some interesting price movements in the US markets and wondered what was driving them.
Incidentally, can you, or anybody, tell me why Ron Paul should be as short as 12/1 for the GOP nomination? I suspect deliberate price manipulation.
59 Our principal ally, Roger, is a thorough embarrassment. I didn’t think I would live to see a worse US President than Tricky Dicky. I have.
It’s an EU issue. Detention without charge is permissible in the EU for up to 3 months. Britain is out of line. Gordon thinks the new Constitution is in the bag and wants a nice long detention period to keep Brussels sweet.
One hiccup to the Constitution, that might yet impinge on events, could be that Belgium has no government able to ratify the Treaty. How appropriate that Belgium is self-destructing and unable to function - where all this rubbish is coming from.
Whn will Conservatives start to explain to voters that this and so many similar issues are all son-of our EU subjugation, which book-loving Gordon thinks is almost complete? Cameron’s got to open up eventually on the EU. When will he start the real debate, for which all these lesser issues are merely proxy.
70 You’re probably right - Ron Paul has a veritable army of online champions (who are very good at influencing online polls immediately after debates, raising money, etc) and I’m sure that some people will have been impressed by his recent fundraising effort. And a maverick like him will probably over-perform in odder political states like Minnesota - and maybe even Iowa (which would make his campaign interesting).
But I doubt it would cost much to manipulate his price (I can’t look at Betfair to check the figures) and suspect that his online army is at it again. They’re phenomonally - and impressively - well organised.
“And yet it appears that Downing Street itself is knocking Ms Smith. Within hours of her interview yesterday, Downing Street made clear that Mr Brown wants a 56-day limit, making Ms Smith’s apparent flexibility seem an act of weakness.”
I thought that Brown was talking to his cabinet ministers at some god forsaken time of the morning to discuss what the collective cabinet line should be for the day??
This kind of behaviour keeps undermining his own cabinet, which undermines his government even more in the eyes of the voters, it will also lead to more bad feeling and feuds within his own party. Not good in the long run as Mrs Thatcher found to her cost.
73 Thanks Ant
If you could look at Betfair you would see a wall of money at a lay price of 13.5 and precious little behind it. This is a highly abnormal distribution and would normally suggest an imminent price collapse. It’s been like that for a while though, and when people like me take the lay offers (virtually free money, imo) they are replaced.
This suggests to me that the price is being artificially sustained.
72 Tapestry. “It’s an EU issue. Detention without charge is permissible in the EU for up to 3 months. Britain is out of line.”
(Dire Straits, of course)
This contradicts what Chris (from Paris) said about French law. I’m now confused. You can’t both be right.
In the words of the song “Two men say they’re Jesus - one of them must be wrong!”
I hate what our police have become under this Government.
A ‘paramilitary’ force with permanent flak jackets, earpieces, stun guns and wailing sirens - rude and often aggressive officers using force where once they used nous.
Even in docile Devon we regularly get situations where a ’suspected’ drug dealer has his front door broken in by up to twenty boiler suited, helmeted and armed policemen with absolutely no evidence that the alleged dealer is in any way dangerous or armed.
Very recently a 57 year old local retailer, a well known local man beyond reproach, was woken at dawn by a raid on his home by an ARMED squad apparently from the West Midlands investigating money laundering!
They had officers front and rear of his home and arrested him and held him for eleven hours in a fiasco that turned out to be a case of mistaken (digital) identity; sure he got an apology and yes, it was a cock-up but was all the macho really necessary?
And how much did it cost? He says there were at least five officers in three cars in the ‘arrest team’ whereas if they had just rung him up he would have happily gone to the police station of his own accord.
Worryingly they held him in what he thought was a cell (it was actually an interview room) for ten hours before they asked him anything, and because he didn’t know his rights (never even been inside a police station before) he just sat there.
It took less than half an hour to prove that he was nothing to do with their enquiries. Worryingly his name had come up (and matched that of another suspect) because of what was claimed to be ‘unusual’ cash transactions at his bank branch (he had paid in £3,000 in cash on one day and then drawn it out the next) as he said, “We really *are* being spied on, aren’t we?”.
This kind of thing is going on every day.
I am not ’soft on crime’ but I am increasingly concerned at the way our police force are being encouraged to behave.
75 Thanks PtP. It sounds pretty clear-cut to me.
The only point I would make is that it’s a bit boneheaded to artificially sustain Ron Paul’s price given the US attitude to (online) gambling. I don’t remember the papers/websites/etc ever quoting odds. They stick to polls.
So it might be interesting to see how this one develops?
68 It’s true that diesels are a higher percentage of new sales in the UK now than they used to be (but not other markets - there were always a lot of diesels in France and Italy because diesel is so much cheaper) but the point I am making is that the economy of the vehicle - be it petrol or diesel - has not improved much since the 1960s. My mother had a Morris Minor in 1965 - it did nearly 50mpg. There aren’t many cars today that could compare with that.
The difficulty for this or any other British Government over this is that the advice from most people inside the issue, including the security services and the LibDem peer Lord Carlisle who acts as independent monitor of terrorism legislation, is that there are a *small* number of cases where people who are almost certainly hoping to set off bombs either have to be allowed to roam freely while evidence is gathered (which sooner or later will mean someone who the police ‘know’ is dangerous actually kills people while the police are still thinking about it) or have to be released after 28 days as the evidence isn’t yet sufficient. Obviously 28 days and 56 days are both arbitrary, but so is any number, and few would argue for no limit at all.
Now if this was a *large* number of cases then we’d simply have to do it and there would barely be an argument. If it never happened then it wouldn’t arise. But a small number is harder to argue but still hard to ignore. By the way, Chris from Paris, isn’t it the case that in France you can be detained at the whim of a magistrate for up to two YEARS without trial? Or is that a myth? - I’ve heard it but genuinely don’t know.
But as we are mainly here to discuss impacts rather than merits, I’ll leave the argument there and move on to the impact. The issue has difficulties for all three parties. Mike has described the problem for Labour, and as Sky’s survey shows there will be difficulties in getting an increase through. The Tory problem is that this is a key issue for many of their voters and they hate seeing the party on the ‘wrong’ side - indeed, it’s precisely this issue that led the Sun to call both Cameron and Davis “traitors” (which tells you something about the ephemeral nature of Sun outrage). The LibDem problem is that majoring on the issue reinforces one of the accusations against them that resonate most with many people who see them as a good protest vote - that they’re consistently soft on crime. The core vote likes it, but no party can live only on core votes.
Woger lost interest in the Nat West Three when he discovered that one of them was the son of a Labour politician. That made it all OK.
Interestingly today is the first time that Zelig, sorry Woger told us about his personal experience on 7/7.
80 re the “small” number isnt that what control orders are for?
72 Tapestry “It’s an EU issue. Detention without charge is permissible in the EU for up to 3 months. ”
Sorry, that is nonsense. Such legislation is national not EU. Or it is until the Lisbon Consitution goes into force and then its a different game if the European Court ignores the ‘red lines’ as most lawyers suspect it may.
65- Belgian politics is VERY complex.
Basically there are:
- three regions : Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels.
- three language communities : Flemish, French and German
The problem is that all parties are language-based: 2 liberal parties, 2 socialist parties, 2 christian-democrat parties. in parliament, MPs are divided in two linguistic groups.
Currently the Brussels-Hal-Vilvorde allows suburban francophone voters (the Hal Vilvorde part) to vote for the same candidates than Brussels voters (where francophones have a majority of around 80%).
The split would allow them to vote only in a constituency of Hal Vilvorde dominated by Flemish voters and parties.
Even if francophone parties tried to present candidates there they would not have the right to contact the voters in other languages than flemish (6 francohone mayors of this area are currently suspended by the Flemish region’s justice for having used francophone electoral material). So their candidates would probably be useless and even if elected they would have to sit in the Flemish linguistic group in the national assembly.
The truth is, If the Tories were in power, they would be doing exactly the same, and anyone who opposed their measures, (i.e. the Labour Party) would be soft on terrorism. As for the police,( come off it Marcus) the Tories would be backing them to the hilt, to the applause of the Mail and the Sun, and Labour would be bemoaning what they have become, ‘Bring back Dixon of Dock Green’ says the leader of the Labour Party.
77 Thanks Marcus.
I agree.
Keep up the good work.
Nick P. Debating policy on here is usually something I avoid but I will make an exception on this occasion. Your post ignores the option of extending interviewing after charges. Also the advantage that intercept evidence may give to building the case in court. So alternatives to extending 28 days have been provided and Brown/you simply ignore them. Why, if not for political expediency? Why is the UK so different to other comparable countries that have shorter detention periods or that allow intercept evidence? Maybe because they don’t have nuLabour?
Some of your colleague on your benches came into politics to protect our liberties, not to make them worse. This is a conscience matter not a political football. I thought Brown did want to represent a genuine break from Blair’s slimy use of this issue for political advantage. That seems not to be the case. Brown (and it seems you) prove that it was not a Blair problem but one that lies at the heart of nuLabour.
80- Nick P
As I said earlier, detention without charge (in custody for nothing clearly defined) is evry different from detention without trial (charged, in custody while the trial is being prepared, in the case of suspicion of further crimes). The second makes much more sense: you prevent new crimes from the charged person ,while his trial is prepared.
Actually the period of detention without trial is the key moment for the defence of the accused to prepare their case.
France has a bad record concerning the length of its judicial procedures. This is often the case that people charged of crimes are maintained in custody for up to two years before their trial.
However: a special judge (called the “judge of freedoms”) review all these cases regularly and therefore has to justify each decision to maintain someone in detention. Thus, you cannot say that “a whim of a magistrate” put you into detention for two years. These official decisions are taken by different judges at recurring intervals.
85. You are quite right, the Tories would be doing the same.
But a bit of me does wonder whether the job of the opposition isn’t to give a proposal like this a hard ride? I mean, it seems to me that the government is acting on the advice of the police (reasonable) but the police’s objectives are purely safety. It’s not their job to balance that against liberty - which is where the politicians come in. No?
I think too many “blue harpies” are convinced that Brown is doing a bad, bad thing. While his argument seems muddled, I don’t think he is, but I do think it’s the job of the opposition to ask rigorous questions of such a significant move. It’s not really party politics here if you ask me.
Nick Palmer Lord Carlisle seemed to say something slightly different on TV, that there might be some cases related to encryption for example where the suspect needed to be held for more than 28 days but that straight detention without judicial process was not the answer.
He offered no evidence that any such cases had occurred but speculated that it could be necessary from what decoders in the security services had said about the difficulty of decrypting some computer records.
Judicial process: that goes to the centre of the issue.
There are ways of making legitimate charges to hold a suspect without resorting to detention without trial.
Adopting the idea, as your government has now done, of continuing interrogation after being charged makes this route quite effective.
If you wold now just do the sensible thing and accept intercept evidence in court then we might all be a little more comfortable that mechanisms are in place to make terrorism much more difficult.
I can see no way in which a simple extension of detention without trial would do that. Good macho posturing for sure. Sensible anti-terrorism mechanism, nope. Infringement of civil liberties, definitely.
re 15 perhaps he knows where the bodies are buried. He looks the sort who when denied his divine right to be Met Commissioner wouldn’t go quietly.
84 Thanks Chris, that’s very clear and interesting. Are there particular tensions bubbling under the surface or am I reading too much into your posts?
While my original question is clearly a little redundant, I shall rephrase slightly. Is it legal under EU law to outlaw election communications in any particular language?
I’m thinking of the (correct) outcry there would be in this country if Welsh (or even Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi etc) election communications were banned. Is that purely a UK law thing??
Spin isn’t dead or is it?
Sir Iain Blair is on the receiving end of a vote of no confidence by the London Assembly, and criticism from Lib Dems and Tories in Parliament. News stories emerge about the Stephen Lawerence case, with a focus on ‘new’ DNA evidence which may led to conviction…
Is this news management, or a coincidence?
76-83- Tapestry is wrong on this : Brussels doesn’t impose on any member states to have detention without charge for 3 months!
As I said, the limit is 4 days in France and nobody from the EU has asked us for a raise.
I think he might have made a confusion with the fact that some european text might mention 3 months as the upper limit of what can be tolerated in the EU. I personnally don’t know anything about this but I’m sure it is not an obligation for all of us, thanks God!
90 DD pointed out yesterday that problems with encryption are a smokescreen in that refusing to give up passwords etc is now a criminal offence. thus any problems with reading a computer because of encryption leads to a charge brought against the individual. that person would then simply be charged obviating the 28 days without charge entirely.
英国前首相布莱尔将于11月6日莅临光大锦绣山河
http://www.soufun.com 房地产门户-搜房网 2007年11月05日10:05 房地产门户搜房网
2007年11月6日，英国前首相布莱尔先生阁下应广东光大企业集团有限公司邀请，在英国驻广州领事馆领事陪同下，将于当天下午抵达松山湖，出席光大•锦绣山河VIP会所酒会，并与东莞市政府相关领导见面会谈，视察松山湖科技产业园及光大•锦绣山河项目；当晚在东莞松山湖凯悦酒店发表“从伟大到卓越”的主题演讲。届时东莞政界名流，商贾巨子将汇聚一堂，分享布莱尔的领袖智慧。
Translated, it seems that at least one former Prime Minister is doing well for himself
(see Guido)
re 46/50 we ought to be grateful at least for $2.10 to the pound - at more normal levels petrol would be practically £1.10 per litre.
92- Tensions about language are consubstantial to Belgium. Nationalists on bith sides, but especially in Flanders, put a lot of energy on imposing their language (and only this one) in all aspects of life.
I vividly recall a recent visit to Brugge where a local baker refused to sell me bread (!) because I asked in French, protesting (in English) that all his products were “reserved”. When he understood that I was French and not a francophone belgian, he happily served me and talked (quite fluently) in French!
I think EU law theorically prevents this kind of limit on electoral material. But the subject is so explosive in Belgium that a call to the european high court could be seen as an agreesion of Flanders. this subject is quite frankly very depressing!
We can produce all the high flown rhetoric on this subject that we like, we can discuss it till we are, blue or red in the face.
Discussing this in the pub, someone broke in with:-
‘The problem is, these dagos look to much like f**king wogs’ this caused in myself a feeling of, ‘Do people really think like that’ everyone else was laughing.
I wonder who is most representative of the public, posters on political betting, or that man at the bar.
re 77 and of course his DNA is stored on file for ever just in case the “usual suspects” have to be rounded up again. Monstrous.
“I hate what our police have become under this Government.
A ‘paramilitary’ force with permanent flak jackets, earpieces, stun guns and wailing sirens - rude and often aggressive officers using force where once they used nous”
Couldn’t agree with you more Marcus! Not a patch on those brave warriors Margaret thatcher sent into battle against the miners. The glorious site of her men in blue beating their riot shields in unison before charging….blood everywhere! That’s what I call policing! None of these mamby-pamby ear pieces and stun guns!
101 - Of course Roger, we must remember that actual troops were used dressed in police uniforms. No faffing abour by dear old Maggie!
101 Well said Roger. Marcus went too far.
hypothetical debates about what the Tories would have done if they were in power are pointless.
The fact is we are dealing with the here and now. Labour know that on this issue the majority of the country are on their side. Sadly i think i am part of a minority that feel that this is wrong, that this goes deeply against what Britain should stand for as a beacon of freedom and democracy and that it is largely about cynical politicking. As nick said its a “soft on crime” issue and will be used as such in campaigns against both lib dems and tories. Lib and tories will talk about “freedoms” and labour will say they are protecting the public’s “freedom to live/be safe”.
I just find it all very depressing and what really gets my goat is the way Brown has said he is trying to get “consensus” on this when he is in fact using the issue of detention as a wedge to drive between his party and the others. its so disingenuous which is why i dislike him and his style of politics.
Marcus is quite right to oppose brutal policing, Roger (101). I was surprised, but pleased, to read what he had to say on the subject.
I am sure that he also agrees with you that the way Thatcher sent the police into battle against the miners was and is to be deplored.
The Times cartoon says it all>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00230/CARTOON-385_230689a.jpg
84. The Francophone Belgians are now paying the price for their suppression of the Flemish speakers (and their language) for most of Belgium’s history, and their general refusal to take bilingualism seriously. It’s remarkable Belgium has survived as long as it has.
You can see why the police are cautious. Look what happens sometimes when you do it the quiet way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7082242.stm
I wonder how we would approach suspected drug dealers if he had to put our own life on the line. I think we have ear pieces, backup and maybe a stun gun if it was available. It’s very easy to complain from afar in our cozy little worlds.
Rarely the police go to far, but we have the mechanisms to deal with that and they clearly work.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7084269.stm
88/90: Thanks to Chris for filling us in on the Frrench system. Both these posts seem to overlook the fact that the proposal is not for detention without judicial process. In the previous proposals, and I assume we’ll see the same here, the detention would be subject to judicial challenge every week that it lasts up to the 56 days (or whatever period was chosen): a judge would have to be persuaded that further detention without charge weas necessary for an additional week. This both adds independent judicial scrutiny and acts as a constraint on the police, who don’t want to have to keep going back to the court if they don’t need to. It was this rider that made the previous proposals acceptable to some of the local LibDems who I discussed it with last time.
Incicentally, I’ve now read the article which Mike quotes from apparently praising David Davis. She describes his macho pretensions as “faintly ludicrous” though she also says it was the best speech she’s heard him give because they’re usually a bit “as careless as a teenager” with their arguments. Sketchwriters rarely give unambiguous praise - they’re the amiable part of the feral beast, but still bent on showing themselves superior to their subjects.
Christ! if Mrs T had still been PM the day after the London bombings, Tehran would have been a hole in the ground. As for the police, they would have been given carte blanche to machine gun anyone whose complexion was even slightly ‘tinted’
Marcus, you’ll be telling me next, ‘Nelson Mandela’ wasn’t a terrorist.
p.s. Still got the T shirt?
Hmm impacts
I think peter and chris are right on this. Measures like this and the continuation of ID cards (not to mention IHT and the back door preparations for horror shows like faith based welfare etc) certainly depress my Labour supporting friends.
Labour’s electoral coalition for winning, surely, is its working class bedrock who identify their social-economic interests with the party, plus middle (or any other class)class liberals, plus enlightened professional classes who see the benefits of a mixed economy.
All this nonsense is killing off support from the liberal professionals, and the apeing of tory measures depresses many working class voters. Much of the “brown bounce” came from previous lab voters who went lib dem and much stronger intentionst to vote from Lab identifiers as a group. Which brain box close to the PM believes the mythical “Brown Conservatives” are going to compensate for this cracking of our electoral coalition?
107- I agree that the (then) Francophone elite has imposed many hardships to Flemish people for years.
However it has been almost 30 years since the last francophone prime minister. I therefore don’t quite understand how Flemish people still think of themselves as an “oppressed majority” in a country where they have had bith political and economic preeminence since at least the 1970ies.
110. Coldstone - fantasising about Mrs T all day again - you are worse than Johnathon Ross..
Tressage. A police force that considers it appropriate to send four officers round at 6 AM to collect the diminutive Ruth Kelly for questioning and to think the use of 12 officers for 15 months investigating ‘cash for honours’ isn’t excessive is hardly likely to baulk at taking an armoured division against a suspected terrorist.
113
I come cheaper!!
114 Roger, do you mean Ruth Turner or did I miss a story?
112. Memories are long, and the daily experiences of Flemish speakers, encountering Francophones who still hold to the view that bilingualism should be a one-way street (i.e. Flemings should all speak French but no French speaker should feel obliged to speak Flemish - even in a Flemish area) don’t help either.
Since the 1970s there has also been an economic dimension - Flanders has prospered while the French speaking areas have declined and Flemings have become resentful of subsidising the latter.
There’s unlikely to be any reason for Jacqui Smith to have to resign over this. Home secretaries have gone in the past either for impropriety or for incompetence - not because anyone disagreed with them over policy. And it’s not the ’serious’ press that counts with voters - it’s the tabloids. As I’ve said before, I think ordinary voters are a lot more authoritarian than either the serious newspapers or the average MP.
Having said that, if she’s not on defensible ground, she’ll struggle, and the serious press and the Tories and Lib Dems will continue to probe. I think she’s more likely to be moved for doing badly in the House and / or the serious press. But the ground has to be really completely untenable for that to happen.
112 It certainly does sound like an outdated and frankly depressing situation. Is there any hope on the horizon?
110 Doubt it - if we’d still had Maggie in charge (26 years and still going on and on) there wouldn’t have been years of multiculturalism, allowing Algerian and other islamists to set up shop in London, the cosying up to the Muslim Parliament etc.
Can see Mike S’s postings now - will Thatcher retire when she’s done 30 years leaving her successor the final year before elections in 2010? Latest betting on her successor. How will the Social Liberal Democratic Alliance do this time round under its latest leader?
What bliss there could have been…..
116. Ant. Thanks for the correction!
60: Utter utter nonsense. The price of petrol has gone up by over 10p per litre without any extra tax, simply due to oil price rises. Has the number of miles people have been driving decreased? No it has not.
Saynig that fuel economy of the average car has scarcely improved in 30 years is simply drivel. Average CO2 per kilometre has come down by 15% in the last 10 years despite an increase of ~12% in vehicle weight due to extra safety demands (airbags, impact bars etc)
So what possible justifciation is there for yet more tax? People have clearly demonstrated that they have no alternative to driving. Another 2p will make no difference to the environment, and every difference to ordinary overtaxed people.
Oh, and can I hazard a wild guess you live in London before you witter on about public transport?
117 I worked in the mid eighties in a Flemish speaking area just north of Brussels - Flemish and French speakers didn’t work together but allocated jobs so they didn’t mix. Not a single Walloon spoke Flemish BUT all the French speakers expected the Flemish speakers to be perfect in Belgian French.
There was no really bad feeling but it was very odd. Belgium makes no sense!!
118: But it’s not just this, the letter she sent to DD about Iain Blair was stupid in the extreme.
120
Really! seem to think there were a few dusky faces knocking around the Edgware Road, when I worked at Marble Arch, in the 80/90’s
The terrorists responsible for the London bombings were homegrown. Mrs T spent a lot of her time cosying up to Saudia Arabia, where many of the terrorists are funded from. Her son, worked for them, as did one of her ministers Mr Aitken, who of course pimped for them.
103 I don’t think he did, Jonathan.
Marcus cares about the quality of policing and we should support him regardless of our tribal loyalties.
Policing always has been and always will be a dangerous job. By alienating their natural supporters, the police make it more so.
It is no justification to allude to other periods when police adopted disgraceful tactics in furtherance of political ends.
126
So its not just a load of hypocrital shit then?
“I am sure that he also agrees with you that the way Thatcher sent the police into battle against the miners was and is to be deplored” as I have posted here before I opposed Thatcher on most things, I was neither a supporter of Thatcher or of her party at that time.
I never liked suss, or some of the other tactics deployed by the Police in some cities those days (which didn’t work anyway).
The police have often been prone to becoming out of control, but there is a massive difference between riot police quelling (albeit unnecessarily aggressively in my view) what was undeniably a riot (or even ‘a battle’ as some refer to it) and - for instance - 78 police officers being involved in an operation to confiscate placards displayed by lone protester Brian Haw outside Parliament last year.
My point is that right here, right now there is a real problem; a danger that sections of the community are being demonised for political gain, and that our political leaders seem if anything to be encouraging this behaviour.
79: Just saw this one!
Please please chedck your facts. Cars comparable to a Morris minor, (even a petrol one) will do similar or better mpg, be safer, go faster, be more reliable, comfortabel and all round better, not to mention have to comply with emissions standards which will mean the emit 70-80 times fewer harmful pollutants than a Morris Minor. A diesel Nissan Micra will do ~65mpg by way of example.
Seems you have fallen for the ‘cars are evil’ line. Not quite that simple i’m afraid. And will you be the one to go to China and India and tell them, “sorry, because of global warming you are all going to have to give up on aspiration and economic growth and stay in poverty, disease and low life expectancy”. Well, are you?
120. Maggie’s successor - Heseltine/Hague ?
Leader of SDP/Lib alliance - Portillo?
125 - Amongst Mrs. T’s (a trillion blessings be upon her) innumerable qualities was to overlook the talents of Mr. Aitken in any of her Governments, not least because of his caddish behaviour to Carol, and making her cry. :(. That nice Mr. Major on the other hand….
120 - so it must have been another margaret thatcher who oversaw the strategy of working closely with the saudis to promote islamist political movements as bulwarks against secular arab nationalists. And it can’t have been our maggie who helped build up and train the jihadis in Afghanistan who have since diversified and re-branded themselves as the taliban and al-qaida.
When it comes to race I am amazingly tolerant, have no problem whatsoever, when it comes to religion, tolerence desserts me!
As I am an atheist and a secularist, the thought that there are people out there who want me to spend my days, on my knees dressed in my pyjamas, banging my head on the ground eight times a day, fills me with horror. I would die in a gutter full of dog shit, with my testicles cut off and stitched into my mouth, before I’d let that happen.
I’ve been there and seen examples of the ‘Islamic Paradise’ they all believe in, ’shitholes’ the lot of ‘em.
As for alienating communities Marcus, I’m feeling pretty alienated myself.
126. Let’s not have all this revisionism about the miner’s strike. It was of course a political struggle - between a legally elected government and a fanatical union leadership bent on subverting that elected government. That leadership was quite happy to use illegal methods including violence and intimidation to achieve its ends - and did so. The police had no alternative but to use strong arm tactics to uphold the law. The ordinary miners themselves were just pawns in this struggle - used, abused and ultimately abandoned by their ‘leaders’.
134 - Hear, hear! And that ‘leadership’ refused to ballot its own members, and tried every form of intimidation against those who had.
133. Coldstone. You say that “when it comes to religion tolerence desserts me!” I would say there’s no Foole like a Grumpy Old Foole.
135
Yes I would’nt defend Scargill’s handling of that strike at all, the man was a lunatic.
But if you condone, hard police tactics against one threat, why should you oppose hard police tactics against another and potentially more dangerous threat.
This is a very retro thread. Frankie say Relax
132 You make a good point, the problems we face today owe much to the West’s policies in the ’80s. Saddam and the Osama were all allies who we (Maggie and Ronnie) armed to the teeth. We helped open the wound, we certainly let it fester and we helped create the poison we see today.
136
Dawkins fan.
To be fair Hindu’s don’t cause problems do they? Why do their God’s have all those arms?
139: The West sold them to them?
We are a hostage to oil and the unstable regions it comes from.
The government talks about energy security. So it is surprising that there is so little RandD in the UK on alternative energy sources. And there is no real government encouragement of vehicles with alternative fuel supplies.
Cannot security and pollution control not be dealt with together?
Now if ever there was something the EU should be able to work together on and the Commission take a central role in, surely that is it.
All you atheists out there. Putting all that oil into an unstable area like the Middle East is a sign that God exists and has a sense of humour!
(Just like the other argument from Ben Franklin that “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”)
Breaking News from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7084829.stm
Police body urge shooting debate
A police watchdog has called for a public debate over the policy to shoot suspected suicide bombers on sight.
We’ve been at for a few hours already. ,/i>
“BREAKING NEWS”
BBC News carries a story on the IPPC report saying;
“the shooting came after ‘very serious’ but avoidable mistakes”
AND… more importantly;
“The body’s chair said Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair had tried to prevent its investigation.”
Blair’s position is beginning to look untenable.
137. No problem with ‘hard tactics’ against terrorists (I assume that’s who you are referring to) at all. But I do oppose the extension of detention without charge as a grave infringement of basic liberties that will likely be ineffective and possibly counterproductive. The fact that it is being proposed again purely for partisan reasons is sickening.
I am also unhappy with the head of the Met being a greasy pole climbing politician rather than an effective and respected figure who can provide real leadership in the battle against terrorists.
140
Good one!
I was one of those, (probably the only one) who supported the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Why did the SU go into Afghanistan, becuase it didn’t want a country run by Islamic loonies on its borders, wow! wasn’t that dreadful, gosh! think how grateful we would be if Eire was taken over by the Islamic Loonies.
The Russians were winning that war, the Hind helicopter was a weapon for which the Taliban, (whoops sorry Islamic freedom fighters) had no answer for. The British mission in Pakistan, after an approach by the, ‘freedom fighters’ agreed to supply them with Short Blowpipe missiles, Mrs T gave personal support. When the Blowpipe was found to be ineffective, Mrs T approached her friend Ron, who agreed to supply the deadly Stinger, that did the trick! We have lived with the consequences ever since.
Jonathan Every generation’s problems come from the failures and successes of the previous generations.
Problems are never solved, only alternative endings are provided.
An example. You could argue we should have surrendered in 1914 without firing a shot because:
The war to end war lead to an even worse war with genocide.
Defeating the fascists led to the iron curtain and cold war.
The cold war avoided a nuclear war but led to weapons and technological advances
Winning the cold war led to the ‘end of history’ and fracturing the power blocks leaving the field open to other ideologies of destruction
The weapons development and technology without the constraints on the power blocks led to global terrorism
and so to the ‘war on terror’ which will lead……
OT: New article on Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani.
http://thepoliticaltipster.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/is-the-contest-for-the-republican-nomination-over/
Colstone The Soviets went into Afghanistan to support their puppet Marxist regime which offended most of the Afghan population. The people they were fighting were not the Taliban at that time. Many of the other resistance organisations mutated into the Northern Alliance while the extremists coalesced into the Taliban. But it took some time.
You might argue that if the Marxist regime had been allowed to fall without Soviet intervention then the Taliban would never have taken power.
PS the Hind; you have been watching too much Rambo.
The victory in Afghanistan, was the most important victory for the Islamic world since the battle of Hattin in 1187. Since Afghanistan, every Islamic loony dreams of being Saladin, and doing to some American President or British PM, what Saladin did to Reynald of Chatillon.
This is a difficult issue clearly. In principle I understand how extended detentions before charging or release can be used as an adjunct to other activities, not just in investigative terms and building a case but its also a useful way of taking people out of circulation for a period and disruopting activities.
Having said that, no bleeding heart liberal as I am, the problem is perception. The people who support, sympathise and actively get involved with groupings are frankly whingers who will pick up any grieveance at all and there’s no point in trying to please them. Its those who hang beyond the periphery though who have an inclination to take opposition to the state and its measures before opposition to the methods of any groups that are the most important in terms of building perception. These people help create a sense amongst the core that they might, just might have more sympathy than they really do. They also provide an unexpected ‘front’ against the state that such groups and their passive ro active supporters can use to use.
150. ..use to their advantage.
79,129 Economy of a Morris Minor was never above 40mpg for manufacturers figures in a car that could at best make about 75MPH in the later models and barely above 60 for the earlier models. Contrast this with Current Diesel equivalents that will exceed 100 mph return above 70 mpg and spew out little of the chemicals these engines did before we even get to the Oil consumption.
To say no advance has been made is rubbish.
My current 7 seater Espace diesel will return better mpg than a moggie despite having about 5 times the power. The car I drive daily on a 30 mile commute is 6 years old and yet still returns over 70 mpg average. Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.
148 Can you watch too much Rambo?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462499/
Jonathan Certainly. The only one to watch is the first one as at least it was topical to the returning Vietnam vets who had been brutalised by the war, and the underlying double standards of the great American public.
148
How do you know, that it offended most of the Afghan population. Ask the women of Afghanistan whether being the best educated women in the Islamic world was offensive.
The CIA/MI6 saw a chance of weakening the SU, (its fall by then was not in doubt, in my view) and stirred up trouble by supporting the most reactionary elements, turning vicious tribal warlords, into freedom fighters. In the towns of Afghanistan, there were schools for all, good medical services etc. all destroyed by the Taliban.
The Russians may not have been right often, but they were right then! We’ve paid a very heavy price, for believing, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my enemy’
I’ll be honest, I can’t see that the West and the Islamic world can co-exist, one of us is going to have to come out on top, it had better be us.
154 You probably ought to tell David Davis then!
” ‘The problem is, these dagos look to much like f**king wogs’ this caused in myself a feeling of, ‘Do people really think like that’ everyone else was laughing.
I wonder who is most representative of the public, posters on political betting, or that man at the bar. ”
That’s an interesting and important point. I completed a YouGov survey yesterday that was full of questions about ‘underlying racism’ / ethnic diversity questions and such like.
When I thought about the underlying racism question, I had to honestly answer that I felt there was to a degree. There are a surprising amount of people that will think nothing of saying ‘paki’ etc.
There is a huge difference between being Xenophobic and racist. Sometimes is hard to tell the difference, unless they use words like above… however, what has helped form thier decision to use that kind of wording is a another debate.
Take a young school child. They will never say something like that (or even think it) unless they hear others say it or are influenced by peers / parents etc.
157 Of course he’s making the assumption that the man at the bar was not a pb.com poster. They have wifi in pubs these days you know.
I wonder if Jacqui Smith was given the job because she will almost certainly lose her seat at the next election, thereby freeing up the Home Secretary’s job for Alistair Darling and enabling Gordon to move Ed Balls into the Chancellorship. Or am I being too devious?
157
Sadly I agree! But who am I to talk, religion, (as I’ve said despite my own religious upbringing) makes me pretty irrational.
The problem is I no longer feel guilty about it, or the need to be apologetic.
159 dont you mean shadow home secretary?
129 I’m not suggesting people should travel less or that cars are evil. Just that they should be more efficient. I am aware that emission standards have improved in recent years but fuel economy has not. The mpg of the the average family car has not improved significantly in the past 40 years. Compared to the improvements in the efficiency of other consumer items - central heating boilers or fridges for instance - cars have made no progress and I think it’s time they did.
159 - add the word “shadow” and hopefully you’ll be nearer the truth
Marcus (128) - You say: “as I have posted here before I opposed Thatcher on most things, I was neither a supporter of Thatcher or of her party at that time.”
So just for the record, Marcus, when did you start being a proper Conservative? And why?
90 - The claim you mention the government pushing about needing extra time to crack encryption is exceedingly dubious, for several reasons.
1) The police already have the power to jail you for not surrenduring your encryption key so that you can decrypt their stuff, so presumably they can either get the key off you or charge you with that for the time being.
See Bruce Schneier’s post on this:
http://tinyurl.com/2mestq
2) Even if you’re not covered by (1) - say if the encrypted evidence implicates you, but you can plausibly claim not to know the key - the chance of being able to brute-force encryption in two months but not in three weeks are fairly miniscule. Basically if the people setting it up know what they’re doing three weeks won’t be nearly enough, and if they don’t, you can crack the thing in hours, minutes or seconds. (Try “password”, their birthday, their pet’s name and “jihad2007″…)
See this article in The Register (which has a lot of other interesting things to say):
http://tinyurl.com/2epct7
3) They’ve been making this claim for over two years, during which popularly used encryption algorithms haven’t got much better, but the ability to crack them, computer power you can buy per dollar, and the ability to rent CPU time for low cost, have all increased a lot. So what used to take them 3 months when they originally asked for this power should take a fraction of the time required now - you should be able to do more in a couple of weeks now than you could in 3 months back then.
What’s more, even if this mythical breakable-in-two-months-but-not-in-one encryption really does exist, you should be able to double the speed at which you can crack it by buying a bunch more CPU cycles. Which would seem like a good idea anyway, what with all those Ticking Time Bombs around the place.
Fair to conclude the government has either been conned or is making stuff up. My guess would be, a bit like the Iraq intelligence fiasco, a mixture of both.
By my reckoning David Davis has only seen off one Home Secrtary, Mike. That was Charles Clarke. There was Beverley hughes aswell I suppose, but she was just a minister.
As for Blunkett - he bought himself down. And reid quit because he didn’t want to work under Gordon Brown.
159, I can see the headline now…
“Balls Up”
165. The state has power in terms of encryption/decrypting that the groups do not. The state can go to the vendors of encryption software and get them to help.
Totally off topic and irrelevant, but it made me LOL.
“Top ten Tory twits”
Tressage at 164. I only really got properly into politics in the lead up to the 1997 election, when it was clear Major would fall.
I am a liberal in every sense, economically and socially and I am fed up with over promoted politicians and over educated civil servants dictating how I should live my life, run my business -and according to Snowflake on here yesterday -even when and how often to procreate.
I got involved because I think most governments don’t do what they say they are going to, and that makes me angry. I was just fed up with sitting on the sidelines whining about it.
It’s our country, our democracy and I suddenly realised in 1997 that I am as entitled to have a say in it as anyone else.
If Cameron does win and I am elected I will do what I can to make sure he gets a damn site closer to keeping his promises than most Prime Ministers seem to, and if he doesn’t he had better not expect Nick Palmer style acquiescence from me.
Oh dear, that was a bit of a rant. Sorry.
I see Blair is making a live non-resignation statement now…
criticism of his personal intervention in blocking the IPPC commission inquiry is damning. he should be sacked for persoanlly trying to stop an independent inquiry into the scandal. im sorry but he MUST go.
The IPCC Report asked the CPS to look at the criminal prosecution of 15 officers of Iain Blair’s police force, including Cressida Dick. The CPS chose not to. 15 officers tends to point to failings in the overall organisation of which Blair if the CofP.
Iain Blair though, says that the IPCC report makes no difference on his decision not to resign as he had seen the report some while ago.
We will next have the MPA meeting. It probably has a Govt/Labour supporting majority and will back Blair. Then an Inquest and then the possibility of the family of the dead man taking out a prosecution.
This is going to run for many months until Blair is gone. Why does he carry on damaging his reputation in this way?
How can Labour defend him after the IPCC slams him?
re 159 Redditch is 41st on the Tories’ target list. If Labour loses that one then Gordon Brown won’t be appointing anyone to Chancellor.
re 170 and I bet he still has that smug you-can’t-touch me smirk on his face still.
The family is taking the failure to prosecute to the EU courts.
#165 Edmund - spot on.
167: “The state has power in terms of encryption/decrypting that the groups do not. The state can go to the vendors of encryption software and get them to help.”
…which is completely useless with any half-decent encryption system. Encryption algorithms are publicly available. What isn’t publicly available are the keys, and the vendors of encryption software don’t know those either, and don’t know any special ways to get them.
This isn’t always intuitive to non-technical people, I know; There’s a good explanation here, in Cory Doctorow’s article about DRM:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/04/lightspeed
The relevant bit starts at “To understand this, you need to understand a little bit about cryptography - the mathematics of scrambling and descrambling information.” and ends at “You know that messages can only be read by the authorised sender and the authorised receiver because you are the only ones who know have the key.”
174. Why will Brown be out if the Tories win Redditch?
Such a gain would give them what, 240 seats?
Borwn could still quite comfortably have a coalition with the Lib Dems.
Thank you for that, Marcus (169). What I find curious is that, if you started being involved in politics only in 1997 for the reasons you mentioned, why did you identify then with the Tory Party. It was (and some would say, still is) a discredited gang of incompetents and sleaze mongers.
If you are, as you say, “economically and socially” liberal, Blair at that stage surely must have seemed like you sort of person - or did you see through him from the beginning?
And the Liberal Democrats certainly were (and continue to be) “economically and socially liberal”.
What you said in your post explains why you are turned off by a certain sort of politician, but does nothing to explain how you came to end up as a Tory. I continue to be curious, I confess.
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) chairman Nick Hardwick said Sir Ian Blair was responsible for “much of the avoidable difficulty” caused after the Stockwell tragedy.
It beggars belief to watch Livingstone and our trainee Home Secy give him their support.
178. Ah hold on, cross purposes maybe. I’m thinking of encryption of data on a machine rather tnan encrypted communication between two people.
I joined the Tories because I am an incompetent sleaze monger - but unfortunately I’m also pretty incompetent at being sleazy. Am I in the wrong party?
168 number ten in the list is surely Theresa Gorman? If not how can she be missing form the list?
172. I wonder why the independent CPS didn’t choose to prosecute? Was some evidence mysteriously labelled as ‘inadmissable’, perhaps?
All this stuff is really revealing the extent to which New Labour has infiltrated and corrupted key institutions in our society, and what a threat New Labour has become to civil society.
181: To quote Livingstone ‘occasionally, the police shoot an innocent man. Never before have the media run this hysterical campaign calling for his resignation’.
Thank God I no longer live in London.
Which nets Blair the bigger pay-off, getting sacked or resigning?
187 PfP a sacking I guess.
Iain Blair says that he would not block an IPCC investigation again.
Well that is alright then, and a criminal just has to say “I wont do it again” to be let off a jail term. On second thoughts that is what would happen with today’s justice system!
Why is the Government so determined to back Balir to the hilt. I know he has a PC reputation, but it can’t be worth that much.
188 Hmm….. thought so.
I think Jaqui Smith performed pretty well. If the government waited until the 28 day deadline was about to be breached it would be criticised for, ‘making up legislation on the hoof’.
The blogs are very slow on the Iain Blair/IPCC story but I see the Times and Telegraph now have it as the lead on their websites.
Governator2. I’m sure I should know-but who were you before you became ‘The Governator’?
Coldstone. “…………the thought that there are people out there who want me to spend my days, on my knees dressed in my pyjamas, banging my head on the ground eight times a day………….”.
Old Compton Street’s full of them!
Even money on Blair being in office in a weeks time?
…as does the Guardian. Where are Iain Guido and ConHome? The story will lead tomorrow’s papers
192 Even money on Blair being in office in a weeks time
Roger, just so that we all know - are you backing or laying?
180. Well the last description of Blair that ever came to my mind even then was ‘liberal’ and so it has turned out to be.
You ask why not the actual Liberals? According to the name over the door my values should be encompassed by the Liberal Democrat party, but they aren’t; don’t ask me why, ask them.
Finally, I didn’t identify with the ‘Tory Party’ - it’s not some kind of football club, I identified and still do identify with a set of values that are generally encompassed by the Conservatives.
My favourite political motto is Ronny Reagan who is said to have told an aide “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
184.Kingbongo, I think that they could have managed a top twenty without any difficulty.
180.I remember listening to a discussion between some political commentators on 5 live just months after Labour came to power. It was all about Labour’s first 6 months or something, one lone voice on the discussion panel predicted that the new government would end up being more sleazy than the one it replaced. His comments were greeted with derision at the time, but he was proved right.
Shockingly I listened to almost all of the speeches yesterday by Jack Straw and David Davies. DD was on tremendous form and laid into a number of Labour MP’s who tried some off the cuff comments with tremendous effect.
What was also very interesting was the performance of Bob Marshall-Andrews who laid into his own party not only on the detention limit but also on the number of law changes Labour has introduced.
On the 28 day detention limit he asked
Will the Home Secretary return to the vexed question of the number of days for which a suspect may be detained? We heard her being tested a great deal about that on the radio this morning. She is not naming a figure, but it is widely known that something like 56 days will be the Government’s preferred option. If that is right, and if the consultations that she has undertaken suggest that would be sufficient, will she say why, two years ago, Labour Members were whipped to approve a limit of 90 days? That appears to be about twice the amount that is required.
While I am on my feet, may I tell the Home Secretary that I said earlier that she was the human and attractive face of the Home Office? She was not here at the time, so I must add that I was making a comparison with her predecessors. [Laughter.]
and then
It is a pleasure and a privilege, as always, to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). The sentiments and views that he expressed I agree with entirely, and, indeed, it has meant that I can expunge totally from my speech the long passage that I had on intercept evidence, so he has done the House a considerable service.
I want to start with, and to spend some time on, the issue of imprisonment without charge or trial, and I shall begin by dealing with zealotry—not “their” zealotry but mine. I am zealous on the subject of civil liberty, which is the reason why I joined the Labour party and one of the reasons why I am still in it. I believe that civil liberty is the most important part of our political agenda, and it is our defining characteristic as a nation. It is worth repeating what the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), said in his speech, in a slightly different way. My parents’ generation did not fight—and in some cases die—in the last war for the national health service, the repeal of section 28 or many of the other entirely laudable and worthy things mentioned during the Lord Chancellor’s speech. Indeed, if we had given in to the blandishments of Herr Hess at the beginning of the war, we would probably now have a perfectly acceptable national health service—providing, of course, that one is not Jewish, black, gay, Serbian or any of the other persecuted minorities who came to this country and received here the security and freedom for which we are famous. I echo what the right hon. Gentleman said: that this House should give up the smallest part of those liberties through our collective gritted teeth.
and then
I say to the Minister, in one simple, compendious sentence, that we do not need any more legislation to reform the criminal justice system. To put a slight gloss on that, I can say that what would be desirable would be a large and compendious Bill that had as its purpose scrapping most of the legislation that has been passed in the last 10 years in the cause of so-called reform of the criminal justice system.
In the last 10 years, the Government have suffered from legislative hyperactivity syndrome in respect of criminal justice matters. I have been to the Home Office only once. I went there briefly to see a Minister who subsequently fell from grace: these things happen. I did not explore the building, but in my mind’s eye I can see a vast, probably subterranean, room—similar to that immortalised by Roald Dahl in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”—out of which are churned ever more impenetrable subsections, deliberately designed to cause dismay and chaos in the criminal justice system.
The figures are interesting. In the whole of the 19th century, 34 Acts were passed that affected criminal justice. In the first half of the 20th century, there were 15. In the second half of the 20th century and up to this date, there have been 48, of which 35 have been passed by this Government. It is something of a feat to pass, in 10 years, more criminal justice Acts than were passed in the whole of the 19th century. Some 400 new offences have been created and 500 new sentences. Some of the figures that are kited are far higher, but I have removed from the count old offences that have been retreaded as new offences.
192. So you can tell I am not new?
I just fancied a change of name. I’ll keep the mystery going for a bit……….
197. Brilliant speech.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7084502.stm
errrr wtf!
198. Governator 2. Oh no! Not another mystery!
197- Excellent speech indeed.
Marcus (195) - I think, after being helpfully thoughtful for most of the morning, you are now getting just a little bit tribal…. Let’s see….
“Well the last description of Blair that ever came to my mind even then was ‘liberal’ and so it has turned out to be.”
Yes, but Blair did fool some of the people some of the time, including, it would seem, Roy Jenkins and Paddy Ashdown: so if you thought right from the start that Blair was in no way liberal, the more credit to you for your perspicacity.
“You ask why not the actual Liberals? According to the name over the door my values should be encompassed by the Liberal Democrat party, but they aren’t; don’t ask me why, ask them.”
Everybody out of step except our Marcus, eh? It makes one start to wonder what precisely you might mean by “liberal values”… They are certainly there within the Liberal Democrats.
“Finally, I didn’t identify with the ‘Tory Party’ - it’s not some kind of football club, I identified and still do identify with a set of values that are generally encompassed by the Conservatives.”
Except that these are not “liberal values”, Marcus, unless you understand “liberal values” as applying only to the extraordinary wealthy. That is the essence of Conservatism, as Charlie Windsor explained very clearly only yesterday, talking about education.
“My favourite political motto is Ronny Reagan who is said to have told an aide “Don’t just do something, stand there.” ”
So you opted to stand in Torbay, instead of in a Labour-held seat, where the MP (or at least the leadership of his party) does NOT believe in real liberal values.
I just do not understand what you Tories are trying to do. Or perhaps I do. And it’s not what you and Cameron are saying.
200. Bad news for cushy pen pushers in LEAs !
It is precisely that sort of speech by Bob Marshall-Andrews (197) that makes one feel that there must be a very large number of Labour MP who would be much happier if they were Liberal Democrats…..
205- It is the kind of speech that makes me think that Labour without its nasty Sun-courting repressive aspect is quite close to centre-right parties in France.
139. The Hindu’s caused a lot of problems in India before independence. Their maltreatment of Muslims to be second class (or should that be fifth-class) citizens in many areas was what caused the ethnic resentment that led to partition.
142. Actually, it maybe that the reason the area is unstable is because the oil is there. A single powerful resource for a country is a curse: it enriches a small subsection, it discourages the need for wealth creation elsewhere (and the need for democratic reform to get that) and it brings hope to rebel groups who can hope to gain power by capturing just a few oil fields/gold mines etc.
More humourous was God’s decision to put the most important holy sites for the three monotheistic (which have the potential to be the most warlike) all in one city - just to see who wants it more!
207. “monotheistic religions”.
125: yes - Abu Hamza for one settled in Britain under Mrs T.
197: fitaloon, welcome to the site. But could you point us to lengthy pieces with a link (to Hansard in this case), rather than cut and paste? - it’s what we mostly do hear to avoid overloading the threads. The link will come up as clickable - you don’t need to do anything special.
203: to be fair, Marcus probably didn’t really have a choice where he stands: if you want to be an MP, you need to be willing to stand where a constituency party/association will take you. It would have been eccentric of him to decline to stand in winnable torbay because he’d perhaps rather oppose a Labour MP.
…er here not hear!
But Torbay is not winnable for the Tories, Nick….
209. I’m rather glad fitaloon posted that speech in full myself.
212. Was obviously the wrong kind of bias for Nick - or maybe too many long words.
But Nick is the head prefect for the site, you know.
205) A point Alan Beith made just after Bob MArshall-Andrews speech see here
Includes link as Mr Palmer has requested, sorry for the long post. I do occasionally post but leave it normally to my wife, who does much of the speaking for me in any case.
211. Let’s see on polling day.
Marcus do you have a Facebook group?
209.Nick, fitaloon is not new to the site. I think that in light of the subject of today’s thread it was perfectly relevant to post that piece.
215.
212. Me too I might not have read it otherwise.
211: Why not?
The Tories did very well in the last local council elections and 2,000 isn’t that large a majority.
The Tories in Torbay are going from disaster to disaster.
214. No need to attack Mr Palmer like that, is there?
214. It would be nice to think Nick only had the interests of the readers of the site in general in mind in his post at 209…..but given his recent relentless efforts to reshape the site in a manner more favourable to the Labour Party, it’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.
221: Which must explain their large gains from the Lib Dems in May.
197 The point about liberty being more important a principle than the NHS was well made by BMA.
Tressage I was hardly expecting an end to this sudden knew-found interest in my political journey with anything other than some kind of put down; but bravely, - even foolishly perhaps, I persevered with answering your questions politely and honestly.
And Nick Palmer is right, Torbay was the first seat I stood for and I was lucky enough to be selected first go.
And as often happens in these situations you interpret our philosophy through the prism of your own political viewpoint, which I think says more about the limitations of your imagination than mine.
Witan. I’ve asked you before but I’ll try again. Are the the poster who used to call yourself Blue2Win?
May is now a long time ago, Ralph. There is a new Leader of the Labour Party (whose supporters are set to go elsewhere in shoals) and very soon a new Leader of the Liberal Democrats (whose supporters are returning in droves, after a brief flirtation with Labour and the Tories).
Added to which, the Tories’ elected mayor of Torbay is now very clearly standing on his own. You Tories can no longer blame Lib Dem councillors for all his mistakes.
And Charlie Windsor seems to be becoming increasingly discredited too.
Is something wrong with my posts, they seem to be held up in moderation today?
Marcus. It’s difficult to imagine anyone who describes themselves as ‘a liberal’ who had no liking for Thatcher standing as a candidate under Michael Howard in 2005.
Did you just cross your fingers?
Woger, are you the poster that is realy Gordon Brown?
229. Its difficult to imagine a Labour Government getting involved in an illegal war in the middle east supporting a neocon republican administration but the worlds a funny old place no?
229 Nothing wrong with that if he did, Roger. I not only voted for Michael Foot, I compaigned for him. At the time, I told myself I wouldn’t have done it if he’d had a snowball in hell’s chance of winning.
72. I know of actual cases where people were detained in Belgium without charges being brought. They can be held for three months before coming in front of a judge. The Police still don’t need to bring charges, even at 3 months, but need only make a statement that they are investigating, and believe the detained might well have committed a crime.
The 3 month process can be repeated indefinitely. In one case (in France) a person was detained for four years without charges being brought. They were finally released without charge.
Corpus Juris countries don’t have Habeas Corpus, and don’t need to make a prima facie case. They can detain for three months without even going in front of a judge.
Britain is obviously coming under pressure to move towards the European standard.
That’s true Jimbo. Though in hindsight I think Blair was always something of a cross-dresser. I think Cameron is too and given time his ‘liberalism’ disappear and he’ll return to his rootes as Michael Howard’s manifesto writer.
227. Roger why do you have to be so boring?
235. No blair was the prime minister this is a cross dresser http://tinyurl.com/2agcop
by the way your logic doesn’t work
215 - thanks fitaloon, and apols if you felt I was trying to suppress the point you were making.
232. PtP. Not enough red in that smiley! I think I did too. I’m not sure if that wasn’t the year I was Nick Palmer’s only vote in Chelsea.
228: If May is a long time in politics the next election will be political decades. There is a clear pattern in Torbay, a swing from the Lib Dems to the Tories.
229 but Roger, surely now that Michael Howard is ranked only second to Gertrude Himmelfarb as one of the political philosophers from whom Gordon Brown draws his vision (his peaen of praise to the Howard School delivered in his unforgettable and historic speech the the Labour Party Conference of 2007) its time you go with the flow like the Great Leader and recognise that the strange blindness to Michael Howard’s Thought was the blame of the class traitor Tony Blair .
There were 3,876 champagne socialists in Chelsea in 1983.
236.”Geralot” A strange post! Do I know you? I asked if Witan was ‘Blue2Win’ and you replied! Does that mean you are also Witan?
233- Tapestry
I’m sorry but you just don’t understand the French sytem.
It is false to say that you can spend 4 years in prison without charges.
Our system is that at the end of custody without charge (maximum FOUR DAYS for terrorism suspects) either you are charged by a prosecutor or you are free.
It is false to say that the police has only to “make a statement” to maintain someone in custody. the police has NOTHING to do with it. The judge in charge of the investigation and a special judge (named the judge of freedoms) has to decide whether detention is necessary for reasons of possible reiteraition of crimes and more genreally the protection of the public.
The fact that a later trial judges that the charges brought against you were false is irrelevant. Those charges did exist.
Please stop your comments about a French judicial system that you clearly don’t understanf. You mumblings about Corpus Juris systems only prove you poor grasp of the (arguably complex) French system of “mise en examen”, “juge d’instruction” and “juge des libertés”…
240 Don’t waste your time Ralph, the Lib Dems in Torbay have retreated to their own parallel ‘virtual’ constituency and there I am sure they are just on the verge of an historic recovery.
In the real world things look a bit different, as they would know if they had anyone left who was prepared to go and knock on doors to find out.
Witan/Geralot/Blue2Win! It’s getting too complicated. Will the real CCO program please turn on!
Ted. I’m desperately looking up Gertrude Himmelfarb. I’m sure I should know her but I just can’t put my finger on it. I may be some time…….
216 Test, No.
Am I getting close Ted? I’m looking for a large Bavarian female with an appeal to our Gordon……
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/images/2007/07/08/andras_kallai_fat_barbie_2006_terra.jpg
If this thread is biased against Labour, I blame lazy Labour supporting posters. Coldstone has posted only 17 times up till now and Roger only 9. Come on boys, is it fair to leave all the work to Gabble and the night shift ?
246 Gordon is given to quote Gertrude (wife of one of the founders of neo-Conservatism) in his ‘intellectual’ speeches. Of her works I’m a bit concerned that the ‘De-moralization of Society’ has been misunderstood by him as the demoralisation of Society (a mistake that Lynne Truss would understand); at which he has had some success.
OT — in Private Eye — leaving aside the witan (any relation?) advert on the back with the photocopier captioned Labour thinktank — why does Gordon Brown smoke a pipe in The Broonites cartoon strip?
246. Roger…ZZZZZZZZZ
249 fr
You have a point. However, if you look at its title, you will see that this is in fact a betting Site. Strictly speaking, it should be primarily about betting rather than who supports which Party, and why.
225 - “BMA” - I take it that’s Bob Marshall-Andrews and not the British Medical Association.
235,
There is doubt about that.
Thats what true conservatives truly belief.
That Cameron will revert to type once elected, and all this so called liberal thought, will melt away,like spurs chances of ever finishing fourth in the premiership.
251. I think just because Paw Broon smoked one in the original comic strip in the Sunday Post. Could be just to show how old fashioned he is.
253
I hope you are not going to push out the experts on Belgian regional politics.
248 Why did a certain Labour MP with interests in transport matters come to mind
257 Not wishing to push anybody out, fr. Just pointing out the principal purpose of the Site, which is sometimes overlooked.
FOI request on Treasury consideration of IHT - doesn’t give details but confirms matter under discussion.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/3/D/foi_inheritancetax081107.pdf
Witan/Geralot/Blue2Win/fox populi! Bravo! The only thing that can hold you back now is running out of usernames.
249. Fr. I wish Gabble would hurry up. It’s getting cold in the bunker
OT. Excellent ad for M+S on at the moment though what Antonio Banderas was thinking about I can’t imagine.
261. Roger - ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
159: ‘I wonder if Jacqui Smith was given the job because she will almost certainly lose her seat at the next election, thereby freeing up the Home Secretary’s job for Alistair Darling and enabling Gordon to move Ed Balls into the Chancellorship.’
A perceptive observation. Also bear in mind that, where Balls was once caricatured as a minion, a darker, more intriguing picture is emerging: namely Balls as the malefic puppet master controlling the tired and shrunken figure of Brown. Balls is the master now, and I suspect that, upon gaining the Chancellorship, he will order Brown to stand aside before forging ahead with his own ruthless plan to obtain the highest office of state.
re 179 well Labour will probably be reduced to under 300 and I can’t see the LibDems supporting him in these circumstances.
263 - “Balls is the master now, and I suspect that, upon gaining the Chancellorship, he will order Brown to stand aside before forging ahead with his own ruthless plan to obtain the highest office of state.”
It’s the way you tell ‘em.
Remember when the tories used to support the police? It was one of their few redeeming features.
Now, they attack the police for cheap political advantage, undermining the fight against terrorism in the process.
Bin Laden’s cave must be plastered with his poster boys - Cameron & Davis.
263. “Balls is the master now, and I suspect that, upon gaining the Chancellorship, he will order Brown to stand aside before forging ahead with his own ruthless plan to obtain the highest office of state.”
I’m sure this fantasy is very much alive in Balls’ fevered mind - but there does seem to be something of a gap between it and anything that resembles reality…
266- This is awesome even by your standards…
“Bin Laden’s cave must be plastered with his poster boys - Cameron “& Davis. ”
It’s the way you tell them!
249, 266
I’m sorry everybody.
249. fr. I don’t mind CCO putting out it’s reserves but when it’s reduced to putting out it’s juniors then it must be time for afternoon tea.
270. Roger - ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
269 LOL!
No apologies necessary. But please, whatever you do, don’t summon up the Creatures of the Night.
261: ‘though what Antonio Banderas was thinking about I can’t imagine.’
Why so? Bigger Hollywood names have done TV ads. Anthony Hopkins, Samuel L. Jackson and Brad Pitt spring to mind.
268. LOL!!
274 - Well done Roger (for taking it on the chin) and well done, Chris for telling it as it is
273. I know i’ve used plenty myself. I even got a thread on a website asking ‘If this is the worst use of a celebrity on a commercial’ which a competitor kindly drew my attention to!
No it was the way they used Banderas that i was complaining about.
203. “unless you understand “liberal values” as applying only to the extraordinary wealthy. That is the essence of Conservatism, as Charlie Windsor explained very clearly only yesterday, talking about education.”
Actually the essence of conservatism is conserving the society in question’s culture and traditions. In a country like Britain where a central tradition is individual liberty, the terms “Conservative” and “Liberal” are entirely compatible. As for the Liberal Democrats, that they absorbed a social democrat party shows they are at least highly sceptical of economic liberalism.
251 - “why does Gordon Brown smoke a pipe in The Broonites cartoon strip?”
Surely not a cryptic reference by the cartoonist to the French expression….??
BTW and O/T Chris (from Paris), how is Sarkozy’s seeming determination to be closely aligned with the US (and the Bush Administration in particular as their new ‘best friends, unlike Gordon) going down with the French electorate?
279- not too badly, considering the pathological anti-americanism of many french people from both left and right. However those people generally despides Sarkozy already!
Moreover, he was cautious enough to explain that friendship is not equal to submission to a friend’s ideas and projects…
The general public is much more concerned by all strikes currently planned by the unions (because of public sector’s pension reform).
The government (at least its wannabe thatcherite wing) is clearly searching to comfront the unions and prove it can resist their pressure, even a long public transportation strike (the traditional scourge of right-wing governments in France).
OT but important:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4rUOL5kCCeM&refer=home
US faces possible issue of stagflation according US FED Chairman. Could it be possible here as previously discussed on pb.com?
276: ‘No it was the way they used Banderas that i was complaining about.’
Can you elaborate? I thought he looked cool - the smouldering, brylcreemed, matinee idol look. (If cool and smouldering isn’t an oxymoron.)
281. Can you extrapolate for us less well read ?
Details of the Labour IHT reform released today. Nick Robinson’s verdict:
“What it will be impossible to assert, I believe, is that ministers cobbled together an inheritance tax plan when they heard the shadow chancellor’s speech at the Tory conference and then announced their hastily drawn up plans a week later.”
280 - Many thanks. Ah, very interesting indeed. Will Sarkozy triumph and face down these (inevitable) protests?
In a curious way - and I wouldn’t want to stretch the analogy - there must be a some sort of parallel between Thatcher in the 1980s (e.g as evidenced by the miners’ strike) and an apparent (but real???) fundamental change of direction from a reforming, radical newly-elected President in 2007.
Liberals and liberalism, terms bandied about so much as to rapidly become expressions of nothing.
Chris and maybe JohnO. You might enjoy Michael Moore’s new film ‘Sicko’. He eulogizes the French-particularly your medical care-and does it through the unusual vehicle of several Americans working in Paris explaining how they’ve found nirvana! He also does a similar thing with the NHS which is when our willing suspension of disbelief leaves us!.
Ooops,apologies, my O/T comments @ 288 to Chris referred to his at @283.
290 - Thanks. Roger, old comrade in arms, this would all be far too deep for me!
285. He ’smoulders’ but just revealing him on a pull back strikes me as a waste. It’s not a surprise to see a celeb on a commercial anymore. It’s a pity they didn’t get him to act. Male models are so much cheaper!
re 279 they didn’t get him to strip off did they? I can’t see myself complaining about that
269: What pushes the useful idiots towards terrorism is not a people standing up for civil liberties and accountability from the police, its those that would deny people their liberty on a whim, and won’t hold anyone to account for the death of an innocent man.
It says a lot about New Labour that it is attacking the Tories for supporting civil liberties. Where did it go so very wrong?
263. Indeed I hold a similar view. Smith’s promotion was always puzzling and indeed seemed to me an exercise in damage limitation.
After all, what Minister seasoned in the Blair Years would take the poisoned chalice of the Home Office (having worked there some time ago for a decade or more I have an inkling of the disorganised chaos that reigns)? Furthermore, Brown in his ‘wisdom’ would not risk one of his cabal of not so fine young turks in such an environ. To have one of them tainted at such an early stage would be a strategic loss.
Alas for Jacqui Smith but I suspect she is considered as ‘acceptable losses’ by the Big Feartie from Fife.
295. No civil liberties will be supported by removing Blair.
The government have rightly backed Blair so the tories target him as an indirect attack on the government. It’s just cheap part politics.
Cameron should be feeling pretty foolish tonight. This is what he said yesterday:
“I tell you what, look me in the eye and tell me that you were planning to reform inheritance tax before our party conference. Can the prime minister look across the Dispatch Box and just say it?”
When Brown answered “Yes - unequivocally yes”, the entire tory frontbench erupted into a braying mob. It looked nasty and ugly and today we discover it was entirely unwarranted.
O/T and pointless:
“Tony Blair will become a Catholic ‘within weeks’”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=492483&in_page_id=1770
New thread - Who’d be the “something untoward” favourite?
298 the reaction came from the fact he didnt look him in the eye.
295 - “What pushes the useful idiots towards terrorism is not a people standing up for civil liberties and accountability from the police, its those that would deny people their liberty on a whim, and won’t hold anyone to account for the death of an innocent man.”
I can’t understand the argument that restricting Civil Liberties very slightly would encourage people to support terrorist groups like Al Quaeda. You might argue against the extension beyond 28 days as a matter of principals (though I’d disagree with you) but I don’t think you can argue that there are many people in this country who are thinking “this extension beyond 28 days is the last straw, I must therefore oppose it by supporting a bunch of psychopaths who want impose a 7th century theocracy’.
Why doesn’t DD push forward his English Parliament proposals. The English Grand Committee is a second rate cheap option and is not good enough for us English. I’m so surprised at NuLab hostility even to the English Grand Committee, let alone a full blown English Parliament!
297: Every word Livingstone and Smith (and you) have uttered about this is cheap party politics.
286- you don’t want to know…
288- he will face them, as for the triumph, we will see… but the public seems to be much less in favour of public-sector privileges nowadays…
In 1995 many people somehow thought that supporting the right of train workers to retire at 50 was a good idea. They have now understood that all other French people (even civil servants) now have to contribute for at least 41 years to the pay as you go system for a full retirement while members of public companies (train, energy,opera, bankf of france…) still contribute only 37 years.
This is unfair and even left-wing parties are a bit ashamed to defend this.
The parallelism with Thatcher is claimed by many young sarkozysts. (we need a Thatcher is a mantra of the tiny minority of French economic liberals since the 1980ies)
303. How on earth can you say that supporting the Met is cheap party politics?
134. “Let’s not have all this revisionism about the miner’s strike. It was of course a political struggle - between a legally elected government and a fanatical union leadership bent on subverting that elected government. That leadership was quite happy to use illegal methods including violence and intimidation to achieve its ends - and did so. The police had no alternative but to use strong arm tactics to uphold the law. The ordinary miners themselves were just pawns in this struggle - used, abused and ultimately abandoned by their ‘leaders’.”
I found myself instinctively putting on my Marxist-analysis hat when reading that. The definition of what was “legal” and “illegal” were determined by a bourgeois parliament in a bourgeois state, with a reactionary bourgeois government in power which had entrenched the power of the capitalist bourgeoisie within the state by passing anti-TU laws. The use of flying pickets, and actions by which individual miners were sometimes intimidateed into not going back to work, woulkd have been illegal if a different government had been in power or if slightly different TU laws had been enacted. There is a logic in upholding collective workers’ rights at the cost of individuals’ ones; i.e. upholding the class interest in the struggle against the establishment.
It reminds me of a question which was asked at a meeting I went to recently - a spokesperson for the Communist Party of Great Britian (Marxist-Leninist) pointed out that the CPGB(ML) does not have guns and weapons with which to fight the revolution, because it is not big or strong enough. If the working class were to become sufficiently conscious and revolutionary, and were to arm itself in preparation for the revolution, then the question of whether it is “legal” for the workers to be armed would be irrelevant. A law against gun-ownership by the proletariat (to protect and preserve teh bourgeois state) is only meaningful if the state is strong enough to enforce it; if the state has become too weak to sustain itself then the question of “breaking the law” no longer matters.
Everything is political, and the universe is made of a load of stuff moving about.
304 - Thanks. But an excellent analysis without a strong conclusion if I might be as bold (arrogant?) to say so! Surely, the need to triumph over vested and unsustainable union ‘vetoes’ is a necessary but, in itself, insufficient condition to fundamental economic reform. Is that teh Sarkozy game-plan? Or what? Is there a coherent strategy here?
298. Why should Cameron feel foolish? He asked if McBroon was “planning” to include IHT reform in the PBR before the Conservatives came up with the idea. The published material gives no evidence whatsoever that Labour were “planning” to include IHT reform in the PBR before Blackpool. On the best spin for Labour it shows they were “considering” IHT reform. It was dismissed ahead of the March budget (clearly, as it wasnt in there)and it only attracted the Magpie’s attention again 3 days after Osborne raised it in August and then again when it was announced at the Blackpool conference. The fact the politburo did not allow details of the discussions to be published says all we need to know about how supportive to Labour this “evidence” really is.
Barclays below £5, (486p) - Northern Rock 150. Is the Economy going to do for Brown.
BoE kept rates on hold - dont they read the papers?
The IHT issue shows cameron is dictating the agenda, for Brown to release papers now- smacks of weakness!!!
:lol: 
Guido has a clip of Gordon Brown. Watch his hands. It looks like he has the shakes.
http://www.guynews.tv/2007/11/is-gordon-cracking-up.html
I dont know if it is just nerves but it it is very localised. It could be medical. Perhaps mike and guido know something…