I don't like the bloke much and I'm certainly no Tory but I admire his decision to step down and fight a by-election on the issue of the 42 days detention.
He is right about the erosion of our civil liberties which have gone on at an alarming pace under the current Government. Lets not forget that 28 days (the old position) was a huge step having gone up from 14 days. Our country is rightly known as the "mother of parliaments". Our countries legal system has in greater part been copied by many, many countries around the world, not least, the greatest super-power USA. Yet what is the maximum time and American citizen can be held before they have to be charged or released? 42 days?, 28 days? 14 days?, 7 days? 5 days? No it's 2 days, which is what our law was only a few years ago. Are they soft on terror? Are they known to put the lives of their citizens in jeopardy?
Its a fundamental principle of our laws that people are innocent until proven guilty, that the state cannot choose to lock people up without a prima facie case of evidence against them. Yet we are now going to lock up the "innocent" without the need for the police to have done their job properly. Giving them up to 42 days (or any period over 2 days) just allows them the luxury of not acting quickly enough. The facts are that they could achieved the same goal of protecting the public without locking people who are "innocent" on whim of the authorities and actually this may well act as a recruiting sergeant for terrorists who want to paint us as an authoritarian regime.
The reason that the government has gone for this is merely to look tough for Daily Mail readers. The worst kind of popularist reason for doing anything.
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and what's with him dropping his jaw after every sentence?
CCTV 300 times day in London, biggest DNA data base in the World and now that.It dosnt matter how much they say its a last resort etc etc, the errosion of the cival liberties in the UK means that terrorists have changed your country for ever and therefore have achieved one aim that of FEAR.
Whats happened to his moral compass I wonder? Got lost somewhere on the road to perdition?
To be brave and principled he should at least let someone else contest his seat and try for a by election where the Tories did not have the sitting MP.
* Best Chancellor ever.
* Government must be above slease,transparent and fully accountable
* Trying to hide disclosure of their expences
* Iraq War and weapons of mass destruction
these days i wouldnt trust any of them to tell me the time of day.
As Salad says, he is one vain individual. It's difficult to believe he's shed this image to suddenly become a man of the people. If he wasn't seeking re-election or at least was standing as an independent then fair play to him. But he's not. He's standing for the party from which he's just resigned and Cameron has already come out and offered his support, all of which tells me that it's all been engineered from within Tory HQ.
If, like the Lib Dems, Labour were not to field a candidate that would f**k him right up.
And the total lie about the smoking ban...
I agree with this he doesnt have a mandate. However the system we have in the UK (parliamentary representative democracy) and without codified bills of rights and the like, Its perfectly fine for him to do this. We elect individuals with party labels at a constituency level who aggregate and the leader of those with the most votes forms the government and becomes PM. People may well vote for a prime minister but that is not an intention of the political system.
Mandate point number two.
Brown in his Scottish constituency has no mandate to vote on English issues along, the scots have their parliament, the welsh their assembly, where is ours?
Actually Blair wanted to give assemblies to all the regions of the UK but the people in the regions of the UK don't want them. The region most likely to vote for an assembly was considered to be the North East but they voted massively against the idea in 2004 so it is a dead duck for several years yet, although there has been talk of city regions having assemblies along the lines of London eg. West Midlands or Leeds-Bradford.
It so easy to knock it but it is one of the few things an individual MP can do which can force a debate in the wider community. I suspect that he has grave doubts that the Tories, if they form the next Government, will repeal the bill because Cameron wants to do the popularist thing all the time.
The Government is threatening to use the Parliament Act to force the bill onto the statute book when this was not a manifesto commitment and thus it is open to question as to whether they have the legal basis so to do.
I also expect that some of the neaderthal Tories like Tebbit who are in the House of Lords, will support the Bill and he wants to ensure that the greatest amount of heat is brought to bear on the issue.
It's one thing to fight an election on a popularist policy, another thing completely to do it on a matter of principle which is popular amongst the chattering classes but which doesn't necessary strike a chord with the wider electorate. I for one applaud him.
My point is that there is no consitutional settlement for England (the west lothian question), so Scots vote on purely English issues in the UK parliament, as do the welsh. Without having the mandate for English decision making. Id love to be able to benefit from the likes of free prescriptions, movements towards free care for the elderly plus no tuition fees for students which have been brought about within the devolved chambers.
The assemblies were prescotts baby, and died a death with him and the fabled north east referendum. Following the sub national review all assemblies will not exist in their current form beyond 2010 when their powers will switch to regional development agencies and scruiting function and planning functions will move back to local government. However Eric Pickles the Tory spokes person for communities and local government says if the Tories get in they will abolish RDAs.
City regions too are failing to move forward, with the sub regions becoming a larger focus within policy work. Most discussion within the regional assemblies at present is with regards to the newly proposed Regional forums for leaders with both political members and the 30% stakeholder members jostling for places.
I agree with you but there isn't the stomach for an English Parliament, at present. Still give Alex Salmond a few more years and we'll all be calling for a referendum to remove Scotland from the Union....:-)
I think the regional assemblies have been useful in some respects, they have brought the social, economic, environmental and business partners into the policy arena. Their principal remit was to scruitinise RDAs which they havent done fantastically at, but in terms of long term planning they have been useful. Unlike councils and MPs and the problems of short termism, the assembly members and secretariats have been involved in essential planning functions. When Gordon Brown says we need however many Billion in housing stock, it has been up the the assemblies to draw up plans about how to situate and accomodate these plans within their regional spacial strategy and regional economic strategies. These operate on 9 year cycles so are a good antidote to the some of the parochial and short term elements of British local government