Blimey, the fuzz that searched the MP's Office at Westminster had no warrant to do so and did not explain to the Commons' authorities that they did not need to give consent to the search - which they then did.
Resign Mr Speaker!!!!
I've been clucking away on various message boards for a few years now about the slow erosion of civil liberties by stealth.
We've simply 'sleep walked' into a lot of this stuff...Blair and this government have left us the MOST spied upon and watched over society on the face of the planet, bar none.
If you're happy with that then fine....but I know I'm not and it worries me a lot to be honest.I just hope and pray the ID card project dies a death at some point soon....I've proudly managed to live here for 60 years without having to give my ID to every Tom Dick and Harry....and long may it last.
I know this next comment is slightly skewed....but it's never-the-less true, in an ironic way.
A generation fought and many died to avoid (amongst other things of course) this very thing....and now we're being led slowly by the nose towards total control by faceless control freak beaurocrats in Whitehall.
I'm no radical ...... far from it...but I'll defend my (and your) privacy and civil rights to the bitter end.You youngsters on this board and further afield need to watch things very very closely and somehow put the brakes on all this stuff...too late for me and my generation maybe...but not yourselves.
Good luck Guys & Gals!
Quote: SoundAS£....... I'm no radical ...... far from it...but I'll defend my (and your) privacy and civil rights to the bitter end.You youngsters on this board and further afield need to watch things very very closely and somehow put the brakes on all this stuff...too late for me and my generation maybe...but not yourselves.
Good luck Guys & Gals!
[cite]Posted By: SoundAsa£[/cite]I've been clucking away on various message boards for a few years now about the slow erosion of civil liberties by stealth.
We've simply 'sleep walked' into a lot of this stuff...Blair and this government have left us the MOST spied upon and watched over society on the face of the planet, bar none.
If you're happy with that then fine....but I know I'm not and it worries me a lot to be honest.I just hope and pray the ID card project dies a death at some point soon....I've proudly managed to live here for 60 years without having to give my ID to every Tom Dick and Harry....and long may it last.
I know this next comment is slightly skewed....but it's never-the-less true, in an ironic way.
A generation fought and many died to avoid (amongst other things of course) this very thing....and now we're being led slowly by the nose towards total control by faceless control freak beaurocrats in Whitehall.
I'm no radical ...... far from it...but I'll defend my (and your) privacy and civil rights to the bitter end.You youngsters on this board and further afield need to watch things very very closely and somehow put the brakes on all this stuff...too late for me and my generation maybe...but not yourselves.
Good luck Guys & Gals!
I agree with pretty much all of this. I am mindful of the time of Winston Churchill during the 1930's when he received "unofficial" briefings from Civil Servants regarding Germany's re-armament and our lack of preparedness and he used this information under priviledge to attack the Government and warn the public of the dangers of the situation. His continuous exposure of our Governments weaknesses led to covert re-armament started under Baldwin which whilst late, meant that we had Spitfires and Hurricanes to defend our country at the start of WW2.
It is the role, not to say the duty of politicians to hold governments of whatever persuasion to account, which, as far as I can see, is what Damian Green has done.
We have seen today, the state opening of Parliament where tradition holds that the Commons slam the door in the face of the Monarchs representative symbolising the independance of the Commons against the will of the Monarch/State. It seems to me that the bungling Police have been allowed to ride roughshod over this fundamental right of priviledge and protection afforded our elected MP's. The Speaker or whoever represented his office should never have allowed this.
The erosion of long held civil rights has gathered pace under this Government largely in the name of populism. The use of draconian laws to arrest individuals like the pensioner who was arrested at the Labour Conference under the Prevention of Terrorism Act is a grotesque but all to frequent an occurence. This always happens when draconian laws are introduced by the way.
Who have we got to thank for it? The knee-jerk reactionary Daily Mail reading pricks who believe that there's nothing wrong with granting a government 45 days to question a terror suspect - without charge or evidence, despite knowing that there isn't a damn thing any government can realistically do about people who are so disillusioned/brainwashed/fanatical that they are willing to blow themselves to smithereens to further an agenda. Why should anyone be surprised when police use legislation at their disposal that was brought in without proper consideration of, and sanctions on, how and where it would be applied?
As a nation, we haven't so much sleepwalked into this situation as actively encouraged it with our political apathy and fascination with celebrity culture rather than 'real' issues facing the world today.
Civilisation is fucked - utterly and beyond all repair. This country is at the forefront of it.
A crime is still a crime and claiming that it was in the public interest does not change that. If Green feels that he is fighting an unjust LAW (not an unjust search warrant) then he should welcome a trial in order to expose that.
Not sure why this destroy's civil liberties or is the end of civilisation. A lot of stuff about privacy and being spied on but this has always been a crime.
Leaks have been going on for years. They have always been against the rules and Civil Servants have always been liable to punishment for doing so.
Some, like Clive Ponting, were found out, sacked but argued their case in court.
That the police didn't follow the rules is another issue. Shame that those who bleated that "too much red tape and regulation means our police can't do their job" didn't worry about the other people who's rights were abused. Surely all this shows is that the Police need to be controlled and regulated because they can't be trusted to enforce the law fairly and with common sense.
On the other hand I think the Government are setting a dangerous precedent in attacking an MP for a crime that they have and will commit themselves ie leaking Govt information and which the up in arms press connives in on a daily basis with their off the record briefings.
I still think it is an argument for the Village of Westminster. The rest of the country has more important issues to worry about.
The home office are the ones who contacted Police to investigate the situation. The 'Sargeant at arms' is the one who gave permission for the search to take place without a warrant therefore it's not illegal. The speaker of the house seems to be blaming him but at the same time blaming the police saying they didn't explain they didn't have a warrant.
Seeing as the 'Sargeant at arms' is a very sought after job which is always given to someone with a good legal, either high up in Police or practicing/legistative law, i find it hard to believe the Police duped them into the search.
Does anyone actually believe there isn't politics behind all this and as usual the politicians are claiming ignorance?
[cite]Posted By: Leroy Ambrose[/cite]Who have we got to thank for it? The knee-jerk reactionary Daily Mail reading pricks who believe that there's nothing wrong with granting a government 45 days to question a terror suspect - without charge or evidence, despite knowing that there isn't a damn thing any government can realistically do about people who are so disillusioned/brainwashed/fanatical that they are willing to blow themselves to smithereens to further an agenda. Why should anyone be surprised when police use legislation at their disposal that was brought in without proper consideration of, and sanctions on, how and where it would be applied?
As a nation, we haven't so much sleepwalked into this situation as actively encouraged it with our political apathy and fascination with celebrity culture rather than 'real' issues facing the world today.
Civilisation is fucked - utterly and beyond all repair. This country is at the forefront of it.
"Knee -jerk reactionary Daily Mail reading pricks" are guilty of some things but it is the "New Labour green fascist yoghurt knitting Guardian types" who are the movers and shakers in removing civil liberties.
As to Damian Green there are many strands to this issue and it is not as simple as it at first appears.
The civil servant is a paid up member of the Tories for one thing but that is not a crime in itself. The proper forum for Damian Green to raise these leaked matters was the House of Commons where he would have been protected by Parliamentary Privilege and thus neither New Labour nor the fuzz could touch him.
However Green, as a journalist by trade, felt that his information would have more impact by being judiciously leaked into the media and, given the way New Labour has sidelined and treated Parliament with contempt, one can understand his reasoning. However understanding why someone commits an action does not make that action right and outside Parliament an MP is (and should be) treated no differently to the rest of us if he or she breaks the law.
The question as to whether it was necessary to employ anti terrorism legislation, thereby bypassing all recognised police procedures in this case, is another issue.
However if our self serving, complacent MPs finally realise just how powerless and irrelevant Parliament has become both through surrender of powers to Brussels and cynical sidelining by New Labour then some good for the ordinary people of this country may yet emerge from this fiasco.
I think there are some grey areas here but essentially, he was doing what most opposition politicians have done since the year dot.
We know that the Govt is in a great big hole when they wheel out Mandelson to muddy the waters.
I don't think anti terror laws were at issue, they just used the machinery of anti-terror to carry out the raids/searches.
Gordon Brown raised the possibility of "National Security" issues here, which adds to the feeling that Labour are in damage limitation mode.
For me the case is pretty clear cut. If any fundamental law has been breached, it would be the person who had the secrets and passed them on to Green who may be held to account. Even so there is going to be a defence of "public interest" and juries are reluctant to convict in such circumstances. It's even harder to see how an MP, for may be political gain, but essentially acting on behalf of the citizens he represents, can fail to rely on a defence of public interest, for a jury to convict on it. So why the hell didn't the Police seek advice on this point from the DPP/CPS before blundering in?
[cite]Posted By: LenGlover[/cite]The civil servant is a paid up member of the Tories for one thing but that is not a crime in itself. The proper forum for Damian Green to raise these leaked matters was the House of Commons where he would have been protected by Parliamentary Privilege and thus neither New Labour nor the fuzz could touch him.
The point is Len, he may well have used the information outside Parliament but the police gained access to all kinds of stuff that would be the subject of privilege and privacy. If MP's cannot receive information from their constituents and the wider public for fear that that information will be seized by the Crown, the flow of information will inevitably dry up.
Some of us have been bleating for years about this free society.
*biggest DNA data base in the WORLD * in London u are on CCTV 300 times a day * ALL phone calls screened for KEY words * Mobiles screened as a routine * Sectoin 60 "terrorist " laws used against football herberts * councils using "terrorist laws" to see what you recycle * The ID which will cost you £300 is here * Plans to record + store all emails and phone convesations. Thats everyones is proposed.
Dont worry though its all for your own good.
Brown made his name on geting leaks and exposing the Tories when they were in power. Now neither him or his scum bag Home Sec or anyone knew OB or asked OB to in vestigate this leak.
This Labour Gov is the worst thing to have happened to England since the Norman conquest
Of course this could be as simple as the Met wanting revenge on the Tories.
Boris (a prominent Tory) effectively got rid of Chief Pig Blair once elected (I use pig in the police sense not the politician with snouts in the trough sense) so once tipped off the Old Bill may have decided to over react by needlessly using anti- terrorism legislation in an attempt to try and intimidate the Tories into not complaining about motorist persecution and harassment of innocent people which the police appear to prefer to do rather than investigate real crimes like street robberies, burglaries and vandalism which blight the lives of ordinary, decent working people.
If that is the case then the question becomes who tipped off the Old Bill?
[cite]Posted By: LenGlover[/cite]The civil servant is a paid up member of the Tories for one thing but that is not a crime in itself. The proper forum for Damian Green to raise these leaked matters was the House of Commons where he would have been protected by Parliamentary Privilege and thus neither New Labour nor the fuzz could touch him.
The point is Len, he may well have used the information outside Parliament but the police gained access to all kinds of stuff that would be the subject of privilege and privacy. If MP's cannot receive information from their constituents and the wider public for fear that that information will be seized by the Crown, the flow of information will inevitably dry up.
It's even worse than that BA. Apparently, the police accessed Green's e-mail boxes on the shared server for the House of Commons and thereby had access to ALL MPs e-mail boxes at that time!
Heads should roll.
Well I've just watched Andrew Neil's This Week programme and the bit with David Starkey. I don't like him much but I have to say I agree with everything he said about the constitution (including his history lesson, and can see merit in his suggested constitutional changes). It seems to me that this is all part of a dreadful malaise, orchestrated by a Government who behaves pretty much as it chooses because they have a sizable majority. That so called majority is derived, not from a majority of the those entitled to vote, not even from a majority of those who actually voted but from just over a third of those who did. It was started under the Tories but New Labour have carried it forward to a much higher level. This is a function of the way our Parliamentary system works especially when one Party dominates. This is a scandal. There is no democratic mandate for what they are doing. The Prime Minister acts like a President yet no genuine checks or balances are in place to ensure that his power is not abused.
It is clear that the Government feel that they control Parliament rather than authority resting with the Speaker. We don't know what pressure was brought by Government both on the police to investigate and on the Speaker and his staff to allow the arrest of an MP who was acting under priviledge, but it smacks of authoritarianism.
Look at the things that have been done thus far and what is proposed
Done or in process
1. Prevention of Terrorism legislation which arrests pensioners for booing and freezes the assets of countries just because their economy is in trouble
2. The use of money laundering legislation aimed at serious organised crime to apply to the policing of taxation
3. Identity Card legislation which will not stop crime or terrorists but will allow the boneheads aka The Police, to harass more motorists and pedestrians
4. Requiring DNA records of innocent people to be retained on the database of convicts DNA
5. House arrest (borrowed from apartheid South Africa)
6. Detention for 30 days before charges are brought (and higher if they could have got away with it).
Proposed
1. To use lie detectors to catch out benefit cheats, (how long before they legalise torture for traffic offenses?)
2. To check every e mail that is sent in the UK
3. To listen in to every telephone conversation made in the UK
4. To create a huge database pulling together all information on individuals to a central system
I'm sure the list is longer.
Somebody today summed up why up we should be so careful not to give away the freedoms and privacies which have been hard won over the centuries. They said that "without them, the system relies on a totally benign/benevolent executive to maintain decency and balance and ensure power is not abused". In other words Labour may have no desire to persecute and harass the innocent, but what if say a BNP Government were elected? Would they be so benign, so benevolent? That is why it's so important to maintain these freedoms. Without them, there are no checks and balances and the executive can do as it pleases.
I've never voted Labour. I do have great respect for some Labour figures; but they are, by their authoritarian attitudes, and by harnessing them to popularist causes, changing fundamentally the balance of power between the state and the individual in a direction I find worryingly distasteful and wholly damaging to democracy.
So what's to be done?
We need, as Starkey said, a constitutional convention mandated to provide a proposed re-drawing of our constitution along the American lines:
a).We need a written constitution/bill of rights spelling out the extent of executive power and the rights
of individuals to live free from oppressive use of such power
b) We need separation of the executive and the legislature along similar lines to USA
c) We need Parliament to be representative in the proportions of votes cast for each party - i.e PR
d) We need a Supreme Court to oversee the constitution and to uphold it's rights and ensure their enforcement
e) We need a proper freedom of information act and immunity given to citizens who bring into the public domain, private information which exposes waste, incompetence and abuse of power by the executive and civil servants
"what say if a BNP Gov got in place" quote . we dont need to worry that wont happen WE DO NEEDTO WORRY NOW ! A party who claim to stand for all the people are puting and using these laws in now and have been for 8 years. They say they wont be abused and they are for all our good --- BOLLOX. The OB are already abusing them and so are local councils --the tax man etc.
Aprox 70% of the country vote in a General Election. If 40% vote for one party they get in. 60% f the country dont get who they wanted so tough shit ? if we went for everyone has to vote and a certain % gets you an MP etc it is more representative. However you have to then live with the fact that the far right/left will get people in. London Mayoral elections 100,000 voted for the BNP. The Greens might get a few etc. Could we live with that ?
[cite]Posted By: bingaddick[/cite]
4. Requiring DNA records of innocent people to be retained on the database of convicts DNA
Thanks, for once, to the European Court that yesterday ruled this illegal. The Govt will challenge it of course, backed up by Murdoch, with their perennial argument "the ends justify the means".
Lord Hailsham once offered to draw up a written constitution for us but his generous offer was declined as we preferred a system that could evolve. It's difficult to uphold something that isn't written down but it does seem that the old style MP's who owed allegiance to a parliamentary system are fast disappearing. That goes for all parties. Any govt that has a large majority and stays in power for a long time abuses its power. That went for Thatcher as well as Blair/Brown. Just switching from one party to another won't actually change anything. I'm old Labour through and through but totally disillusioned and worn out by it now. S*d the lot of them is how I'm feeling.
a).We need a written constitution/bill of rights spelling out the extent of executive power and the rights TICK of individuals to live free from oppressive use of such power TICK b) We need separation of the executive and the legislature along similar lines to USA TICK c) We need Parliament to be representative in the proportions of votes cast for each party - i.e PR TICK d) We need a Supreme Court to oversee the constitution and to uphold it's rights and ensure their enforcement PROPOSED e) We need a proper freedom of information act and immunity given to citizens who bring into the public domain, private information which exposes waste, incompetence and abuse of power by the executive and civil servants TICK
Comments
We've simply 'sleep walked' into a lot of this stuff...Blair and this government have left us the MOST spied upon and watched over society on the face of the planet, bar none.
If you're happy with that then fine....but I know I'm not and it worries me a lot to be honest.I just hope and pray the ID card project dies a death at some point soon....I've proudly managed to live here for 60 years without having to give my ID to every Tom Dick and Harry....and long may it last.
I know this next comment is slightly skewed....but it's never-the-less true, in an ironic way.
A generation fought and many died to avoid (amongst other things of course) this very thing....and now we're being led slowly by the nose towards total control by faceless control freak beaurocrats in Whitehall.
I'm no radical ...... far from it...but I'll defend my (and your) privacy and civil rights to the bitter end.You youngsters on this board and further afield need to watch things very very closely and somehow put the brakes on all this stuff...too late for me and my generation maybe...but not yourselves.
Good luck Guys & Gals!
Which also allows you to shoot an unarmed man in the head half a dozen times whilst you are kneeling on his chest!
Good luck Guys & Gals!
Is it ok to watch closely using CCTV....? ;o)
I agree with pretty much all of this. I am mindful of the time of Winston Churchill during the 1930's when he received "unofficial" briefings from Civil Servants regarding Germany's re-armament and our lack of preparedness and he used this information under priviledge to attack the Government and warn the public of the dangers of the situation. His continuous exposure of our Governments weaknesses led to covert re-armament started under Baldwin which whilst late, meant that we had Spitfires and Hurricanes to defend our country at the start of WW2.
It is the role, not to say the duty of politicians to hold governments of whatever persuasion to account, which, as far as I can see, is what Damian Green has done.
We have seen today, the state opening of Parliament where tradition holds that the Commons slam the door in the face of the Monarchs representative symbolising the independance of the Commons against the will of the Monarch/State. It seems to me that the bungling Police have been allowed to ride roughshod over this fundamental right of priviledge and protection afforded our elected MP's. The Speaker or whoever represented his office should never have allowed this.
The erosion of long held civil rights has gathered pace under this Government largely in the name of populism. The use of draconian laws to arrest individuals like the pensioner who was arrested at the Labour Conference under the Prevention of Terrorism Act is a grotesque but all to frequent an occurence. This always happens when draconian laws are introduced by the way.
As a nation, we haven't so much sleepwalked into this situation as actively encouraged it with our political apathy and fascination with celebrity culture rather than 'real' issues facing the world today.
Civilisation is fucked - utterly and beyond all repair. This country is at the forefront of it.
A crime is still a crime and claiming that it was in the public interest does not change that. If Green feels that he is fighting an unjust LAW (not an unjust search warrant) then he should welcome a trial in order to expose that.
Not sure why this destroy's civil liberties or is the end of civilisation. A lot of stuff about privacy and being spied on but this has always been a crime.
Leaks have been going on for years. They have always been against the rules and Civil Servants have always been liable to punishment for doing so.
Some, like Clive Ponting, were found out, sacked but argued their case in court.
That the police didn't follow the rules is another issue. Shame that those who bleated that "too much red tape and regulation means our police can't do their job" didn't worry about the other people who's rights were abused. Surely all this shows is that the Police need to be controlled and regulated because they can't be trusted to enforce the law fairly and with common sense.
On the other hand I think the Government are setting a dangerous precedent in attacking an MP for a crime that they have and will commit themselves ie leaking Govt information and which the up in arms press connives in on a daily basis with their off the record briefings.
I still think it is an argument for the Village of Westminster. The rest of the country has more important issues to worry about.
The 'Sargeant at arms' is the one who gave permission for the search to take place without a warrant therefore it's not illegal.
The speaker of the house seems to be blaming him but at the same time blaming the police saying they didn't explain they didn't have a warrant.
Seeing as the 'Sargeant at arms' is a very sought after job which is always given to someone with a good legal, either high up in Police or practicing/legistative law, i find it hard to believe the Police duped them into the search.
Does anyone actually believe there isn't politics behind all this and as usual the politicians are claiming ignorance?
"Knee -jerk reactionary Daily Mail reading pricks" are guilty of some things but it is the "New Labour green fascist yoghurt knitting Guardian types" who are the movers and shakers in removing civil liberties.
As to Damian Green there are many strands to this issue and it is not as simple as it at first appears.
The civil servant is a paid up member of the Tories for one thing but that is not a crime in itself. The proper forum for Damian Green to raise these leaked matters was the House of Commons where he would have been protected by Parliamentary Privilege and thus neither New Labour nor the fuzz could touch him.
However Green, as a journalist by trade, felt that his information would have more impact by being judiciously leaked into the media and, given the way New Labour has sidelined and treated Parliament with contempt, one can understand his reasoning. However understanding why someone commits an action does not make that action right and outside Parliament an MP is (and should be) treated no differently to the rest of us if he or she breaks the law.
The question as to whether it was necessary to employ anti terrorism legislation, thereby bypassing all recognised police procedures in this case, is another issue.
However if our self serving, complacent MPs finally realise just how powerless and irrelevant Parliament has become both through surrender of powers to Brussels and cynical sidelining by New Labour then some good for the ordinary people of this country may yet emerge from this fiasco.
We know that the Govt is in a great big hole when they wheel out Mandelson to muddy the waters.
I don't think anti terror laws were at issue, they just used the machinery of anti-terror to carry out the raids/searches.
Gordon Brown raised the possibility of "National Security" issues here, which adds to the feeling that Labour are in damage limitation mode.
For me the case is pretty clear cut. If any fundamental law has been breached, it would be the person who had the secrets and passed them on to Green who may be held to account. Even so there is going to be a defence of "public interest" and juries are reluctant to convict in such circumstances. It's even harder to see how an MP, for may be political gain, but essentially acting on behalf of the citizens he represents, can fail to rely on a defence of public interest, for a jury to convict on it. So why the hell didn't the Police seek advice on this point from the DPP/CPS before blundering in?
The point is Len, he may well have used the information outside Parliament but the police gained access to all kinds of stuff that would be the subject of privilege and privacy. If MP's cannot receive information from their constituents and the wider public for fear that that information will be seized by the Crown, the flow of information will inevitably dry up.
you watch... thay will do something so catastrophic (9/11 x10) and the western world will be cueing up to get chipped........
problem - reaction - solution...
*biggest DNA data base in the WORLD
* in London u are on CCTV 300 times a day
* ALL phone calls screened for KEY words
* Mobiles screened as a routine
* Sectoin 60 "terrorist " laws used against football herberts
* councils using "terrorist laws" to see what you recycle
* The ID which will cost you £300 is here
* Plans to record + store all emails and phone convesations. Thats everyones is proposed.
Dont worry though its all for your own good.
Brown made his name on geting leaks and exposing the Tories when they were in power. Now neither him or his scum bag Home Sec or anyone knew OB or asked OB to in vestigate this leak.
This Labour Gov is the worst thing to have happened to England since the Norman conquest
Boris (a prominent Tory) effectively got rid of Chief Pig Blair once elected (I use pig in the police sense not the politician with snouts in the trough sense) so once tipped off the Old Bill may have decided to over react by needlessly using anti- terrorism legislation in an attempt to try and intimidate the Tories into not complaining about motorist persecution and harassment of innocent people which the police appear to prefer to do rather than investigate real crimes like street robberies, burglaries and vandalism which blight the lives of ordinary, decent working people.
If that is the case then the question becomes who tipped off the Old Bill?
Heads should roll.
Fast getting that way!!
It is clear that the Government feel that they control Parliament rather than authority resting with the Speaker. We don't know what pressure was brought by Government both on the police to investigate and on the Speaker and his staff to allow the arrest of an MP who was acting under priviledge, but it smacks of authoritarianism.
Look at the things that have been done thus far and what is proposed
Done or in process
1. Prevention of Terrorism legislation which arrests pensioners for booing and freezes the assets of countries just because their economy is in trouble
2. The use of money laundering legislation aimed at serious organised crime to apply to the policing of taxation
3. Identity Card legislation which will not stop crime or terrorists but will allow the boneheads aka The Police, to harass more motorists and pedestrians
4. Requiring DNA records of innocent people to be retained on the database of convicts DNA
5. House arrest (borrowed from apartheid South Africa)
6. Detention for 30 days before charges are brought (and higher if they could have got away with it).
Proposed
1. To use lie detectors to catch out benefit cheats, (how long before they legalise torture for traffic offenses?)
2. To check every e mail that is sent in the UK
3. To listen in to every telephone conversation made in the UK
4. To create a huge database pulling together all information on individuals to a central system
I'm sure the list is longer.
Somebody today summed up why up we should be so careful not to give away the freedoms and privacies which have been hard won over the centuries. They said that "without them, the system relies on a totally benign/benevolent executive to maintain decency and balance and ensure power is not abused". In other words Labour may have no desire to persecute and harass the innocent, but what if say a BNP Government were elected? Would they be so benign, so benevolent? That is why it's so important to maintain these freedoms. Without them, there are no checks and balances and the executive can do as it pleases.
I've never voted Labour. I do have great respect for some Labour figures; but they are, by their authoritarian attitudes, and by harnessing them to popularist causes, changing fundamentally the balance of power between the state and the individual in a direction I find worryingly distasteful and wholly damaging to democracy.
So what's to be done?
We need, as Starkey said, a constitutional convention mandated to provide a proposed re-drawing of our constitution along the American lines:
a).We need a written constitution/bill of rights spelling out the extent of executive power and the rights
of individuals to live free from oppressive use of such power
b) We need separation of the executive and the legislature along similar lines to USA
c) We need Parliament to be representative in the proportions of votes cast for each party - i.e PR
d) We need a Supreme Court to oversee the constitution and to uphold it's rights and ensure their enforcement
e) We need a proper freedom of information act and immunity given to citizens who bring into the public domain, private information which exposes waste, incompetence and abuse of power by the executive and civil servants
That'll do for starters.
Aprox 70% of the country vote in a General Election. If 40% vote for one party they get in. 60% f the country dont get who they wanted so tough shit ? if we went for everyone has to vote and a certain % gets you an MP etc it is more representative. However you have to then live with the fact that the far right/left will get people in. London Mayoral elections 100,000 voted for the BNP. The Greens might get a few etc. Could we live with that ?
Thanks, for once, to the European Court that yesterday ruled this illegal. The Govt will challenge it of course, backed up by Murdoch, with their perennial argument "the ends justify the means".
a).We need a written constitution/bill of rights spelling out the extent of executive power and the rights TICK
of individuals to live free from oppressive use of such power TICK
b) We need separation of the executive and the legislature along similar lines to USA TICK
c) We need Parliament to be representative in the proportions of votes cast for each party - i.e PR TICK
d) We need a Supreme Court to oversee the constitution and to uphold it's rights and ensure their enforcement PROPOSED
e) We need a proper freedom of information act and immunity given to citizens who bring into the public domain, private information which exposes waste, incompetence and abuse of power by the executive and civil servants TICK
Remember, what happens first in the US eventually trickles over to the UK - Britain is merely the Delayed State of America.