Saturday, November 05, 2005

Elsewhere:The Labour Party: securing Britain's compliance

Something of a blogswarm is growng up over this survey on the governments latest attempts to "protect" us from the nasty people. Talk Politics starts us off, with Consider Phlebas, Bloggerheads and SpyBlog joining the fray. Why?

The questions, all need a yes/no answer. They're all what the trade calls 'leading', and, well, as an attempt to garner support for a badly drafted peice of dodgy legislation, it's pretty blatent.
Do you think that our laws should be updated to cope with the current security threat?
How? No information is given, and no reason as to why existing laws (you know, the ones we used to fight the much more dangerous IRA) aren't adequate.
Do you think police should have the time and opportunity to complete their investigations into suspected terrorists?
Well, of course I do. But if I tick yes, you'll take that as meaning I support allowing the police the powers to lock anyone accused of 'terrorism' (which, lest we forget, includes animal rights activists, civil liberties campaigners and elderly members of the Labour party) for three entire months. I don't. I think 14 days, which was an 'improvement' only introduced in the year 2000, should be adequate enough to find enough to at least charge someone. Charge 'em or release them, internment is not an option, especially seeing as TACT defines terrorism under a fairly broad brush.
Do you think the government should make sure there are new safeguards to protect innocent people?
No, I think the Government should first explain why the current "safeguards" are inadequate, and if they're not, improve the systems. Legislating away freedoms in the name of terror doesn't help anything except the headline writers. They're not making us safer, they're chasing headlines to make their jobs more secure.

Fortunately, the Dairy Product points out to us that the online poll is so badly coded you can complete it as many times as you like. So that'll be lots of 'no' boxes ticked then.

It's easy to create a poll that gets the answers you want. It's a lot harder to justify nannying us all into jail.

Update: The Disillusioned Kid has some extra suggestions Mr Clarke may find useful to add to the questionnaire.

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