About 50 Labour MPs could rebel on the move to increase pre-charge detention from 28 days to 42 – although Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is ready to offer concessions.
Writing in today\’s Sunday Telegraph, Lord Goldsmith says passing the measure would help destroy "the very basis of the free society that our ancestors fought so hard to create".
Quite….although the door was rather opened with the move to 28 days in the first place.
What annoys so much about the ignorants who are running the country is that they seem to have missed the most basic point about civil liberties. They are the definitions of what The State may not do to us, the citizens. It isn\’t about trade offs of liberty against security at all (even if it were I think this measure is wrong, but that\’s another matter) it\’s about what those we hire to do the difficult stuff for us may not do with the power that they necessarily have.
Yes, we hire servants to run the cellar for us but that doesn\’t mean that they can then lock us in it for a month and a half on a whim.