Events of the last few days has shown that the Government’s legislative programme is making terrorists of us all.
I will therefore be running this open blog until Christmas to find out who our most unlikely threats are. My starters for 10 are:
Please let me know who you think should be on the list - I am really looking for people who have had anti-terrorism legislation used against them.
I am cautious about saying too much about a story that I have only just heard about on the news, with only a small number of hard facts, but it seems that Conservative Immigration Spokesman Damien Green has been arrested under Anti-Terrorism legislation (although not charged) regarding leaks from the Home Office.
Not only was Damien Green arrested, his constituency office was searched, and it appears that at 9:45pm, over 7 hours after his arrest, he had still not been questioned.
Is this Zimbabwe? Soviet Russia?
His “crime” appears to have been to highlight the misconduct of the Home Office and the recent cover-up of immigration statistics. This happened weeks ago. Why the arrest now, when Parliament are enjoying a 5-day recess and the Opposition cannot raise the matter in the House?
Labour are apparently saying that Ministers knew nothing of the arrest, which is unbelievable, since Commons authorities would have needed to give permission for police to search his Parliamentary office.
This is frightening stuff and David Cameron has called a press conference for early tomorrow morning. We should all be scared about the autocratic tactics this government are willing to use, either directly, or through the legislation they passed, to much hubris.
One last thing: who then leaked this story to the press?
Update (11:08pm): The Times is suggesting that it “was unlikely to be a coincidence” that this has happened on Sir Ian Blair’s last day in charge of the Met. Incredible.
Update (12:05am): I have just read on Iain Dale that Boris has issued a statement saying that he had expressed concerns about Damien Green’s arrest before the event, meaning that senior Labour politicians must surely have known in advance about this. This seems to be getting worse and worse.
Update (12:34am): Hattip to Guido, for expressing the situation in his own unique way.
Update (12:39am): The BBC is reporting that Damien Green has now been released on bail.
Update (12:55pm, Fri 28th): See Iain Dale’s site for 15 excellent questions that need to be answered about this sorry affair.
It is very hard for me to discuss yesterday’s PBR, not least because it is so utterly, incomprehensibly, foolishly profligate and irresponsible, I find it difficult to believe that a UK politician could have even thought about such a plan, let alone implement it.
Just as the European Communities Act of 1972 broke with convention and bound future Parliaments, so Labour have now bound future generations with a scale of debt that only last week would have been unthinkable.
Apologies for the blogging silence of late, but the last few weeks has been taken up with the launch of my non-political Armed Forces campaign and my second week’s holiday this year, both of which went extremely well.
So watching the evening news tonight for the first time in a week, I am extremely interested in the lead story, about the membership of the BNP being published and the furore about the public servants on the list.
I will confess that I am forming my opinion as I write this, but there several thoughts that I would like to make to perhaps encourage debate, on what I believe to be a fundamental test of democracy, particularly within the pubic services.
This year’s US Presidential election has had the singular merit of having engaged vast swathes of a traditionally low-turnout country in political debate, had big personalities involved and captured the imagination and attention of the world, from the Primaries, right through to the actual Presidential elections.
Sadly, we live in a world that is also singularly hypocritical in the way that it views and yes, judges, the US and its politicians, which for me has taken the shine of this “historic” debate.
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