(and by thirty-one votes! Who knew that the Labour backbenches still contained a few good men (and women)? Admittedly, they're not completely off the hook, as they went for a 28-day detention, but the bloody nose given to Blair is possibly more important than the victory here. Maybe, just maybe, it'll give him a little pause, and give the backbenchers more courage to stand up against ID Cards and Incapacity Benefit)
saw this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4392964.stm
thought of you... don`t know why.
:)
on the political issue... they do have some reasoning, yes it`s true that they shouldn`t arrest someone unless they have the evidence, so they shouldn`t really need the time to get the eviendece after an arrest, how ever there is certian evidence they can not present in cort (phone taps being one i belive) which may have a convincing case in it`s own right. in which case the arrest to protect the public would be a good idea, and the ablity to hold the indivdule for some extra time to prove the case would be a lot better than having to release them, and letting them disaper. yes i agree that the whole terror attacks thing is maybe over rated to induce public fear and cooperation with certian policy`s, and that there some very worring similarities between current policys and policys of another european contry of several years ago.
but on the whole i have to agree with a 28 day peroid at least. but better still would be a look at how inteligence is presented in court, and how the corts work, and the submision of eviedence.
well thats my 10 pence worth.
To which, I mostly say: hogwash. The police should have evidence before depriving a person of their liberty, and if they don't, then they should jolly well get some. Internment did diddly squat in Northern Ireland apart from making the IRA more popular; reducing our civil liberties again isn't going to help matters this time either.
(Although I do agree that wiretaps should be court admissible)
The IRA is a good point to bring up, However the nature of the threat has changed, The IRA were more intrested in self presavation for a start.... it is a lot harder to stop a single person as a walking bomb, people adaopt to the situation, they can pick the places to do more devesation, they can hide inside mass crowds easier, yes a bomb in a bin is bad, but it is contained in a way that a suicide attack is not. don`t get me wrong i would like to retain my civil liberties as much as the next person... if i was to be arrested as an inocent person and jailled for 28 days with out even a reason to be arrested. yes i`d be upset, but i`d be more upset if there was a case that one of my friends was blown up beceause the police had to release a suspect beceause they ran out of time to hold them, and didn`t have the eveidence to act on... i mean put yourself in the place of the police chief, you have a suspect you are 100 % sure of is about to commit a crime of mass murder, but you simple can`t hold them under detention, beceause you havn`t the man power to search a site, follow the leads. find *Submitalbe* evidence.
i agree with you, inpart at least. it is a very difilcult
balance between indivdule rights, and the protection of people. for me i would look at the numbers... how many wrong arrest would the plolice make (don`t laugh!) against how many live`s injuries would they potential save. i don`t think they would make that many wrong arrest`s between 10-20 maybe... one correct arrest could save that many people alone.
okay i think were on 20p now ;)
Then you can just shoot them through the head. Oops!
I'd imagine it's rather difficult to compare those numbers, because you're projecting into a possible future, which may or may not have happened (because if you were certain that it was going to happen, you'd have some evidence, and then you could probably arrest them ;)).
Incidentally, the reason why the IRA bombs caused fewer deaths wasn't down to bin versus suicide bomber; it was because of the phone calls they inevitably made before the bombs went off.
(and taken to the logical extreme, we should just junk innocent until proven guilty, because if we kept everybody under total suspicion and surveillance, we'd cut crime easily)
"Incidentally, the reason why the IRA bombs caused fewer deaths wasn't down to bin versus suicide bomber; it was because of the phone calls they inevitably made before the bombs went off"
exactle... the nature of the threat has changed, the IRA were a whole lot nicer for a terroist bunch... yes they phoned, they picked nicer targets, they were more aiming against the goverment.
"I'd imagine it's rather difficult to compare those numbers, because you're projecting into a possible future, which may or may not have happened (because if you were certain that it was going to happen, you'd have some evidence, and then you could probably arrest them ;))."
yes your very right there, so again it`s numbers.... 90% proable... 80% proable... where do you take action? do you take action... but whats the alternative if we don`t take action?
"and taken to the logical extreme, we should just junk innocent until proven guilty, because if we kept everybody under total suspicion and surveillance, we'd cut crime easily)"
why not the insurance companies have *joke*
why take it to the extreme... now you are projecting into a possible future, which may or may not have happened . :)
Well, no, Luke, it's an extreme, but reasonably logical extension of your/the Government's views on the matter, the old 'if you've got nothing to fear, you've got nothing to hide' canard. And everybody has something to hide - you yourself have an electronic device that legally, should put you inside prison (your iPod).
And I don't think that the nature of the threat has changed all that much. They're still terrorists, they still use bombs, if in a different way, they can still be monitored by MI5/6 and the police. Existing laws can be used against them; we can do the best we can to try to investigate the reason why these people become terrorists, and if possible, eliminate them as best we can. We do not need to trample several hundred years of British justice simply because the Police want it so. They have been given powers and misused them in the past and present; we need to think very carefully before handing them more.
Tony Parsons made a thoroughly pompous ass of himself on This Week last night defending the Govt and railing against MPs sitting "in judgement" on their "fat fannies [yes, really]" and "presuming" they knew better than the police, magnificently ignoring the fact that they are elected to represent and take decisions on behalf of their constituents, and it's just a shame that instead of Diane and Michael, who probably would have been terribly polite while destroying what small resemblance to an argument his remarks bore, we had Clare Short and Ken Clarke, of whom the former, a decidedly second-rate mind IMO, chose to concentrate, at some detriment to the programme for some minutes, on how rude she thought he was being (there was some entertaining tautology she used that escapes me - something like "gratuitous unnecessary rude impoliteness"; I'm pretty certain she was drunk), while Ken and Andrew valiantly tried to return the topic to anything remotely substantive and an opportunity to set the record (ie Parsons) straight on the rôle of MPs, not as PM's rubber stamp but as autonomous entities he must convince, was lost to Clare's vanity. Did Tom enjoy it, if he's reading?
I have heard about this - apparently the description being of Mr. Parsons' film was 'sixth form'. Although, I think the funniest thing of the week was when Blair said that he would have never voted against terrorist measures when in Opposition, only to have the Tories produce a list of all the times when he had (quite rightly) voted against the Anti-Terror Act during the 1979-97 Tory reign. It's like he's completely lost his marbles...