Saturday, December 10, 2005

The right to protest

I want to rant about the Maya Evans case. I'd also rant about the arrest of Brian Haw. But Peter's done it already so I'll just link to him:
Whatever happened to the country whose Prime Minister swore:
Our way of life is a great deal stronger and will last a greal deal longer than the actions of fanatics.
Aren’t our civil liberities an integral part of that way of life?
Arresting someone for reading a list and ringing a bell? For sitting in a public place with banners and making them feel uncomfortable? There's a great comment in his post:
It’s no exaggeration to say that I feel the same way about Blair and his vile, power-crazed government (Prescott!) as I did about Thatcher in her last days. Just thinking about the whole Brian Haw thing makes me boil with anger.
Which pretty well sums up my views. To remove the Tories, we needed an anti-Tory ad-hoc coalition to work around the electoral system. To remove Labour, we'd need the same. The way they're going, we're going to get one.

2 comments:

MatGB said...

Well, to be fair to the Beeb, they are describing her occupation, I've read all over the place that she's a part time vegan cook, and they do normally say what people do for a living when someone's convicted.

But yes, I reckon you're in trouble, you're an even bigger dangerous troublemaker than me, I mean I describe veganism as extremist.

Weirdly, was thinking of Lembit earlier, in a 'if Charles is to stand down who else have they got' kind of way. Rule of thumb; if the Independent and The (formerly fascist supporting) Daily Mail run the same front page story, and take the same editorial line, then there's something utterly wrong with the world.

I think we're talking Blair here.

The only redeaming thing is that if you inform the police in advance you don't get arrested; the bloke she was with didn't, but, well, that's not an excuse. You shouldn't need to inform the police to read a list of names.

Anonymous said...

I will simply point you to what Benjamin Franklin said on the matter!