eurealist.co.uk

He says this is just the start of his fight in a campaign against an assault on civil liberties.

He might be better advised to come clean about his real target which is not as advertised the Labour Government but rather his own party leaders.

Ian Jack looks at the prospects for the Davis campaign in the Guardian he makes a point that has been concerning me since Davis resigned;

“Haltemprice will elect David Davis because of his party, but the popularity of his beliefs will remain unproved. As an independent newcomer campaigning for liberty he might struggle, like Miss Great Britain, to save his £500.”

Although I agree with the perceived stance of Davis - there is so much to complain about over the various invasions this government has made into the neighbourhood of our civil liberties - The struggle for the restoration of those liberties and rebalancing the power of the state verses the people will not be centred on the results of the by-election in Haltemprice.

In that respect the Davis campaign is practically a non event and can only serve to entrench the idea in a political elite that these things do not matter to the man in the street, which of course they do not, until he is individually faced with the power of the state at which point he will soon begin to realise that his so called rights no longer exist.

The whole reason Davis offers for his resignation is flawed in any case, because he could not possibly put pressure on this government by resigning from his office as Shadow Home Sectary, resigning his seat, and forcing an election. The other major parties - LibDems and Labour - are not even standing, so there can be no question that the issues will be discussed nationally when the only opponents to Davis re-election are independents, greens and various assorted others. As Ian Jack point out David Davis’s resignation has triggered not just a by-election but a scramble for publicity. And when he is returned with a lower turnout he will find himself in a weaker position than that which he previously held within the party. It will be entirely up to Mr Cameron if he wishes to offer Davis his old job back, some other job, or simply leave him languishing on the back benches.

Not that it really matters what happens to Davis, but he hung his banner on a very important civil liberties issue, as he becomes weakened so will the cause. Unless he can force Cameron to make this a real Conservative party issue at the next election. Which looks unlikely as Cameron has already declared his interests and they did not include civil liberties.

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This morning David Aaronovitch skewers the new leader of “Our Ancient Liberties Are Being Destroyed” movement, David Davis, arguing that if you examine his record closely and you will find a strong streak of authoritarianism. According to Aaronovitch, Davis has not, by his record, been a standard bearer for civil liberties.

His first line of attack on Davis is to point out that by his opposition to the DNA database Davis is showing he is soft on crime, and by implication his opposition to the 42 days detention is showing he is soft on terrorism.

With a little bit of NewLabour double think, Aaronovitch argues that Davis is soft on crime because he is against the universal DNA data base, and would only maintain the records of those who have been imprisoned, “what Davis means is that the guilty who haven’t been to prison will also get taken off.”

As much as it may annoy Aaronovitch, it also exposes his own strong streak of authoritarianism,

a book called 1984. It was supposed to be a warning. This government has used it as a text book.”

because he is arguing for the power of the government to retain all of our DNA. He is also taking a leap in legal definitions; the guilty who have not been to prison are in fact legally innocent, until they are proven guilty.

The apparent inconsistency of Davis is next to come under the spotlight, Aaronovitch points to the fact that Davis voted for 28 days detention, but fails to note that he was following his party in the face of the threat of 90 days which the government and police chiefs were vying for and in fact Davis assisted in defeating the governments plans. Also the present Conservative position is to look at the 28 days with a view to reducing it and this was down to Davis.

Aaronovitch, is also missing the vital piece in the jigsaw, in reality it does not matter how long a suspect is held, what matters is how long before the police must offer some proof to a magistrate, how long before they need the approval of another branch of our justice system in order to continue to hold a suspect, that is the basis for the protection of habeas corpus, the division of authority and that is where Blair and his backers were making inroads into our civil liberties. By removing the inbuilt protections for the individual against the state and thus increasing the power of the state over the citizen.

The aim of the article is to suggest that Davis has now found a new cause that previously he had ignored; it is not really possible to sustain that argument. In February 15th, 2006 David Davis made these points about the national register;

“There are many good reasons for not wanting to be on the national identity register, which involves a large number of pieces of data about each individual being put on a single Government database, many of them the access keys for other Government databases. That is the important point: it is a central database with access keys effectively to all the other Government databases.

It is disingenuous of the Home Secretary to say, “We’ve already got all those.” One of the transitions that has taken place over the past several years under the Government, and to a small extent under the previous Government too, is the removal of barriers to the transfer of information around Government. Those barriers were a protection of the liberties of the individual, and now they have gone.”

Later Davis warned that the scheme would

chip away at the basic liberties we would have come to hold dear, and which previous generations fought to protect.

And pledged that an incoming Conservative administration would abandon the legislation and scrap the ID card scheme.

We will not be the party of such a move. The Home Secretary’s proposals represent a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the state.

A vision rather like this was originally set out by a man called Blair who later changed his name to Orwell and wrote a book called 1984. It was supposed to be a warning. This government has used it as a text book.”

That is not to say Aaronovitch is totally wrong Davis has in the past been supportive of the NewLabour line, on the Civil Contingencies Bill, for instance Davis wrote:

I believe that this Bill is necessary. Some of the existing emergency powers legislation dates back to the 1920s and requires updating to reflect new threats. This does not mean, however, that the government should go unchecked and my colleagues and I have been doing - and will continue to do - our utmost to ensure that the potential for misuse of these powers is eliminated.

Many of us however thought Civil Contingencies Bill was a step to far and a grab for extra powers by the government.

One commenter at the time said;

These are Bolshevik-style powers, so sweeping and totalitarian that they sound as if they have been lifted out of some 1930’s banana-republic manifesto.
The effect (and almost certainly the intention) of these laws will be to give the Executive complete political control over the country.

Davis Davis, must be supported in his proclaimed battle against the continual erosion of our basic rights, unlike Aaronovitch I do not see that someone who has resigned his post and is prepared to stand for election on a platform of basic rights of the citizen against the state can be described a authoritarian.

Moral: If you don’t want authoritarianism, don’t vote for authoritarians. If you want to voice your concerns about the continual erosions of our basic rights by an increasingly authoritarian government and a supine opposition, who are content to turn a blind eye to this authoritarianism. Then vote for David Davis - he has had enough, and so have we, it is time to roll back the powers of the state and undue the damage Blair has done to our civil liberties.

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A strange thought process is alive and well in Nulabour, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is just the latest to conflate basic negative human rights with a governments duty to protect its citizen or subjects in our case, the concept of universal human rights and the later added concept of state donated social rights.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has stated that it is “A Fundamental Right not to be a victim of terrorism”

I wonder is it truly the case that we have fundamental right not to be a victim, we can dismiss the terrorism part because in reality it matters little to nothing to the victim if the attacker is defined as terrorist or bank robber.

But can we really claim that there is a basic human right not to be a victim?

When I hear a politician proclaiming the cause of human rights I feel it is time to check my wallet and hide behind the nearest tree, the claim of basic human rights has become the calling card for all sorts of disparate groups making all sorts of derisive claims ;

Abortion must become a basic part of the human rights, Access to Quality Higher Education in Science and Technology is a. basic human right. Access to safe and secure housing is one of the most basic human rights According to the UN, basic human rights are violated when countries cut off Internet access.

And when you hear the words from the mouth of NuLabour politicians they usually mean we are going to infringe on your basic rights (as is the case with Smith). The reason for this is the modern politician is more inclined to propose the concept of universal human rights, than they are to recognise human rights which are firmly grounded within the nation state.

Not that I would oppose the ideals of universal human rights as proposed by Islamic scholars in the 8th century (all human beings must have the right to life, property, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, family and honor) A basic right applies to all humans whatever their nationality creed or colour, all have the right to life the right to support themselves and the right to defend themselves the right to free speech. I believe we could all or should all sign up fully to that concept. I believe we can recognise universal human rights because they are basically the same as our own human rights which have developed over the years.

However that is not to easily dismiss nationally based human rights, especially our human rights because those are the rights that protect us from our own government.

In this instance our human rights were to protect people as individuals from abuses by the state. They were to limit the risk that legitimately elected, i.e. formally democratic, governments might commit crimes and cruelties in the name of majority rule.

This one of the reasons why our politicians would wish to transplant these limitations on their powers with the more political elite friendly version that developed on the continent.

This version of perceived rights as a sort of grant given by the state as a form of fulfilling its obligations to the society. Among these obligations was also the duty of the rulers to protect the citizens and to take care of them in times of need or deprivation.

Rights understood in that way, were not to protect individuals from the government but to be realized through the government of an active rather than passive state. This vision of rights was embodied in the French revolutionary constitution of 1790 as well as the second Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793 and in the social legislation that spread throughout Europe in the in the late nineteenth century, and in its latest manifestation in the EU Charta of Fundamental Rights.

But when the term universal human rights is extended to include social rights that in reality mean someone has to pay for some others rights, then it cannot so apply to everyone, hence social rights gifted by government must be firmly rooted in the nation state an applicable to only those who pay for them.

In Britain for instance we have the right to free medical care at the point of use, but at the point of use, implies that the medical care offered by our National Health service is not in fact free, in fact it obviously is not a free service, we pay for it from our tax.

So we are all paying for our national health service, if you omit the last part, the paying part, and open our NHS to anyone based on the concept of universal rights it is a nonsense. Just because we do not pay for the service at the point of use, it is not an open door policy that the rest of the world’s population may use the same service. To argue otherwise is to argue that we owe the world free medical care. It might be a basic human right to own property but is it a basic human right to be gifted property in the form of free housing, within the nation state we have decided that no one should be without adequate housing, can that really be extended to anyone in the world who happens to come here legally or illegally.

The concept of social rights, which has served as the basic underpinning of the welfare state cannot be extended to universal human rights because we pay for those social rights. So although we can openly accept the concept of basic universal rights those rights cannot include social rights.

But anyway I have digressed, we do have the right of self defence, or we used to have the right of self defence but as argued by Max Weber that a central feature of the modern experience was the successful expropriation by the state of the “means of violence” from individuals.

In the modern world, in contrast to the medieval period in Europe and much historical experience elsewhere, only states could “legitimately” use violence; all other would-be wielders of violence must be licensed by states to do so. Those not so licensed were thus deprived of the freedom to employ violence against others. This of course is now used to imply that we do nor even have the right to use violence to protect ourselves, we have all heard of instances where the victim of a violent attack has responded by meeting violence with violence and had ended up in court as a consequence.

It is a very large step from the point of self defence to the point of having a basic human right not to be a victim, it rather smacks to me of the state usurping the right to self defence and then failing its duties to protect and using that failure to infringe further on our basic rights i.e. suspected terrorists must have less protection from the state than the rest of us, but the law will apply to all of us, because who know who will turn out to be suspected of terrorism the definitions of which are manifold and seemingly arbitrary, in fact one EU commissioner has stated it is a terrorism to protest if the that protest becomes violent.

The other point about the about the EU Charta of Fundamental Rights is that far from being as advertised a universal set of human rights it is human rights in the national sense because it sets out the rights for EU citizens against the EU intuitions and members states. It retains the power for the EU to overturn any of the Rights included in the interest of the Union. And worse the rights it offers are self contradictory that will only become clear if challenged in the ECJ, for instance:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression

Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

The first two rights above do not slot neatly into the third, if one has the freedom of thought conscience and religion then a Christian Bishop would not be forced to employ a homosexual youth worker, or fined for not doing so one of the rights which are said to be fundamental must give way to another in which case how can the right be fundamental.

As is often the case with these inter-racial encounters, I suspect the flow of stimuli and responses can cascade along pathways of misconception so what we then witness is an aggregate of flawed perceptions.

Dr Teck Khong: Chinese addition for British politics

I would suggest that you read Henry Porters article in the Observer http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/09/constitution

He argues thus:

this campaign against Britain’s historic rights and freedoms began at almost the precise moment the European Human Rights Convention was incorporated into British law as the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 1998. In other words, the HRA, a Bill of Rights by any other name, has allowed the executive and Civil Service to roll back individual liberty and privacy and has done almost nothing to defend the British public from the accumulation of centralised power.”

By chance this morning I also received an email that commented on Mr Porters article from Jo White;

“The granting of “universal rights” has done more to undermine national sovereignty and British Representative Democracy than almost anything else?

Individual rights were originally founded and linked to the political authority within nation states. By “equalising” universal rights across borders, and stressing the “sameness” of all peoples in applying them, we take away from nation states, the national self-determination from whence the concept of “human rights” was originally born! The granting of universal rights such as those bestowed upon us all by the HRA and the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, turns the citizen against the authority of his own nation state, and instead, grants the authority to set and police those rights, to a distant and unelected authority.

It must surely follow then, that a British Bill of Rights would be useless, unless linked to the absolute sovereignty of the British Nation?”

The idea which has always worried me personally is also picked up by Mr Porter in his final chapter, it is that this idea suggests that rights are somehow in the gift of the government, in this case the EU government, but it matters not a jot any new British Bill of Rights introduced by the present administration would use the same criteria.

The present mostly ignored British Bill of Rights is based on the concept of negative rights, and form a basic protection for the citizen against the power of the state. These rights are beyond the remit of the state and certainly not changeable by a short term, elected government, the states only responsibility is to protect those rights.

Both Mr Brown and Mr Cameron are suggesting a new Bill of Rights for Britain, the problem with this is that should Mr Brown undertake to create such a bill of rights what is then to stop any later administration throwing those rights out of the window and installing something more to their liking.

But for the moment let us only look at the EU Charta of Fundamental Rights this clearly falls into the category of the state granting rights, and then also demanding a duty from the citizen in return for those rights. And far from the Charta protecting the citizen from any EU powers it actually allows the EU to limit those rights in the interest of the EU. To be clear about this the EU Charta of Fundamental Rights gives the EU the power to limit all of the rights the Charta grants, this includes the right to life, the right to marry, Prohibition of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Prohibition of slavery or forced labour

(including human trafficking) Right to liberty and security of person, Right to respect for family life, home and communications, Right to have, change and manifest freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the right to conscientious

objection, in accordance with national laws, Right to freedom of expression (including freedom of the media) and so on.

Now I do not know about the reader but I really do not wish to be placed in the position where my basic rights are subject to the vagaries of the state to such an extent that the state reserves the power to remove my right to life itself.

Of course the “it will never happen brigade” will argue that “it will never happen” if that is the case then why allow the EU the power in the first place. If the EU requires the power to remove a fundamental right of its citizens then I would argue that it will at some point to some degree happen, and by allowing the EU that power makes a mockery of the concept of fundamental rights in any case, they are fundamental only so long as the EU allows.

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On the day the man who has done most to undermine our rights and protections against the state leaves office, Billy Bragg in the Telegraph writes about the malaise of British politics and calls for the peoples input on the constitution debate. With both Labour and Conservative leaders suggesting a new settlement for our state, Bragg argues it cannot be left to a stitch up amongst the politicians who have a vested interest and suggests this is not a political party issue but concerns all of us equally.

Link

In the last post I suggested the reason that the EU wanted to introduce its own Charta of Fundamental Rights was had more to do with the advancement of the political powers of its own institutions than any real concern that human rights were deficient in most EU States.

In fact the introduction of the rights the EU politicians have chosen to elevate will create a greater sense of injustice in the very areas they claim we need rights in the first place. Although the Charta gives so called human rights it gives conflicting human rights. Because it is based on a particular left wing secular view of the world and grants one set of rights, it therefore demands the subjugation of other rights and these rights are contradictory. How for instance can the right of freedom of religion be equated with the right of freedom of sexual discrimination, if that is to be interpreted to mean that because every woman has the right to an abortion, every Doctor must assist her in obtaining an abortion, where every homosexual has the right to stay in any B&B even if it is owned an run by a confirmed Christian or Muslim fundamentalist.

In Britian we have over the years been gradually moving away from demanding adherence to any particular standpoint on human rights. We did after all have a revolution to settle the argument (put very simply) between the Catholic theory of divine right of kings and the realm of the Catholic church the protestant claim for the equality of all humans. Of course if you speak to a fundamentalist supporter of the Irish Free State you will get a different perspective, and it is not untrue to argue that Britian today is a revolutionary state based on the laws passed by an illegal government.

Even though all that happened a few hundred years ago it has had the sobering effect of teaching us that to challenge the basic beliefs of a group of people has a divisive affect on the community. So we have over the years been moving slowly but gradually in the direction of allowing as much freedom as possible to the individual to live their life by their chosen path as much as possible without the interference of the state or the interference of any others. This has been achieved by removing political influence and religious influence from a large sphere of human activity. Ok so a homosexual couple might not be welcome in a Catholic B&B and woman seeking an abortion might get no help from a Catholic doctor, but the state allowed both the homosexual and the abortion, so there was still choice which did not intrude on another’s conscience.

The concept of international Fundamental Rights has changed all of that, and now we are on an area we have already learned is detrimental to wellbeing of the community, an area that will set one set of claimants for rights against another set. We do not yet know exactly how this will develop, but we can already see evidence that the interpretation of those rights is forcing those with a contradicting religious conscience to make unpalatable choices. Can we therefore claim to have improved matters, I think not why for instance should a homosexual have the overriding right to demand entry into someone home just because that person runs a B&B when they know that person considers homosexuality as a sin, why would they even wish to. Of course one of the arguments put forward against these universal rights oddly emanated from homosexual hotels which now find they have open their doors to heterosexual couples.

I have exchanged views with left leaning apologists of the concept of international human rights, and have found that even those who are supposedly liberal supporters of tolerance and freedom have demonstrated an outstanding level of intolerance to the idea that religious conscience should have any place in a modern state, or in fact to the idea of religion in any form.

Of course any human right gifted by politicians can also be removed by politicians and chapter 52 of the EU`s charta of Fundamental Rights allows for just that; any right granted in the Charta can removed to “meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union.” This is clearly a contradiction of its own terms, if a right is fundamental then it is fundamental at all times and cannot be removed in the interest of the European Union. Contrast that to concept of basic Human Rights as understood in English Common Law these rights predate political institutions and therefore cannot be removed by politicians, in fact it is the politicians duty to uphold those rights.

Thus by codifying these basic Human Rights the politicians are attempting to claim power over them and by adding Social Human Rights to the list they are diluting the power of the original rights. If they at some stage decide to remove for instance say the right to housing what is to prevent them from removing the right to freedom of religion or the right to life if they are all brought put together as if they are all equal.

The Parking and Traffic Appeals Service is facing yet another challenge under the Bill of Rights,

this time it has been submitted by a solicitor.

Solicitor Frank Rayner, Is not disputing the facts of the case, he is instead claiming that the
Transport for London`s attempt to impose a penalty charge(s) is unlawful, on the basis that
it is extorting money and is in breach of the express provisions
of the Declaration / Bill of Rights 1689.

The law relevant to this appeal is the Declaration of Rights and the Bill of Rights upon which it is
based which clearly states:
That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void

As the Bill of Rights was passed in 1689 it might seem to be old law. Although the Bill of rights
is an act of settlement and states that any attempts to change it are unlawful, it has in the main
been ignored by elected parliamentarians who like to argue that our parliament is sovereign it
can make any law it wishes, and that as one government cannot bind a successor, any new
aw made by parliament overturns an older law.

That was the generally understood position until some people were charged with selling in
imperial instead of metric.
At the time the latest law passed by parliament had allowed imperial measurements.
So of course the charges were challenged because they were based on an older law which
had naturally been overturned or changed by the subsequent law.

In steps the aptly named Lord Justice Laws, who it is suggested is a staunch supporter of the state,
after listening to all the evidence, Lord Justice Laws ruled that in fact it is incorrect to claim that any
new law overturns an older law, because some laws are more important (they were constitutional),
and could not just be simply repealed or changed.
He ruled that although parliament could change any law, it would have to state clearly that its intention
was to change a constitutional law, if they did not, then the original law remained and took precedence
of a later law.

To illustrate his ruling he used such laws as the Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights
and 1972 act of accession to the EU.

Lord Justice Laws ruling if taken at face value means that any subsequent law introduced since
the Bill of Rights which did not clearly state that it was repealing or changing the Bill of Rights
was not legally enforceable.

This opens up a whole new can of worms for the government and the legal profession, because there
are already on the statute books several laws which have been introduced since 1689 which contradict
the Bill of rights, and only those laws which stated clearly that they were changing the Bill of Rights
had the force of law.

The provisions enacting the Congestion Charge Scheme do not in fact state that they the bill is
changing the Bill of Rights, but they are imposing a fine or a forfeit before conviction,
which is directly against the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

So far the government has continued to side step this point and have quietly dropped any cases
which have been challenged under the Bill of Rights.

The latest wrinkle in this saga is the recent ruling by Lord Justice Collins, which although not
challenging the Laws ruling said it was permissible to make these fines / forfeits because
they were not in fact fines but civil duties.

Within the next few months Sexual Orientation Regulations, are to be introduced following the EU Equality Act 2006, this will make it an offence for anyone providing goods, services, facilities, education or public functions to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. But the Equality Act also outlaws discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief.

So what happens when one person’s liberty not to be discriminated against conflicts with another’s to express a contrary opinion and practice the rules of their religion?

There are faith groups who consider the regulations to be an infringement of their liberty to observe the convictions of their faith. Who see this not as a creation of equality, but merely the transfer of discrimination from one group to another

Although the Government has indicated that it is prepared to grant an exception from the regulations for “organised religion”, evidence of recent police action shows that their interpretation of the new laws is likely to be very strict, and only apply to actual religious services within the religious buildings.

The Lawyers Christian Fellowship has proposed an amendment to guarantee in law that adherents to Christianity, Judaism and Islam would not be forced to “promote, assist, encourage or facilitate homosexual practices”. That would mean that in day to day life they would be allowed to ignore the law.

But then why should churches have the right to do something for which the rest of us would face prosecution? Is religious opposition to homosexual behaviour any more reasonable than an atheist’s objection?

As the Telegraph says “These are the murky waters that we enter when we seek to enshrine more and more “rights” in legislation. The lawyers are about to have a field day”.

A very good Fisk by Chris Lightfoot of Charles Clarke’s LSE Speech on the media and civil liberties.

Look out! There’s a SAFETY ELEPHANT on the rampage! ”; his (Clarke’s) basic thesis being that New Labour hasn’t eroded our civil liberties and anyway it’s only doing it for our own safety.

The speech is remarkable in that almost every factual assertion Clarke made about the recent legislation of his department was false. Even for a modern Home Secretary this is a remarkable achievement.

Original Speech

A familiar trick of the bully is to accuse an opponent of the very vice the bully himself practises. So when the Home Secretary spoke yesterday of the “distorted” reporting of his security policy by the media, and the “dangerous poison” of depicting Britain as a sort of dictatorship, it would be unwise to take his words too seriously.

Charles Clarke may have acted in some respects in good faith to try to prevent our country coming under murderous attack from terrorists.

He has also, however, sought to introduce illiberal measures that belong to a time of total war, such as identity cards, control orders, detention without trial and restricting the jurisdiction of ordinary courts.

It was the last of these that caused the former law lord Lord Steyn to accuse the Government recently of being “prone to authoritarianism”. For his pains, Lord Steyn has also felt the rough end of Mr Clarke’s tongue, being branded by him yesterday as “offensive and wrong”.

It might be supposed, from the ferocity of Mr Clarke’s attack on the media and on this senior judge, that a raw nerve has been touched. The fact is that this Government’s disregard for our liberties goes far beyond what the Home Secretary has attempted to do.

The Government in which he holds high office has made a veritable career out of undermining our democracy. The Prime Minister himself has a blatant disregard for Parliament, treating the Commons with contempt and the Lords as a neutered repository for his paymasters.

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, now under promise of amendment, would, in its original form, have enabled the executive to change almost any law it wanted, and for any reason, without consulting Parliament.

The Government has always sought an obedient Parliament, a compliant judiciary, a supine press that takes dictation from its spin doctors and a police force designed purely to implement its policies. Mr Clarke fails to see the huge dangers for a country such as ours of institutional arrangements such as these.

But then, of course, we forget that the same Charles Clarke who now acts like an old East European interior minister from the era of Honecker and Ceaucescu was once a fanatical student radical who enjoyed his visits to the Soviet Union and, clearly, learnt a lot from them. Equally clearly, he pines after a polity where the executive does what it likes and the media does what it is told.

He says that those who talk of our being a “police state”, and make other disobliging references to totalitarianism, are “truly offensive”.

What he fails to see, perhaps, is that we are making the most of exercising our right to say these things - with some justification - while he and his sort still permit us to do so.

Telegraph

This website was born out of deep anger and frustration at a political establishment which over the decades has increasingly treated the British public with contempt.

It explains how our democracy is being eroded - and spells out how together we ordinary people can halt the slide into bureaucratic tyranny.

For a brief Summary Click here

Observer

This ID project is even more sinister than we first thought

The insidious erosion of our civil liberties will accelerate dramatically if the government wins the battle over
identity cards

Henry Porter
Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer

You may have noticed the vaguely menacing tone of recent government advertising campaigns. Here is a current example:
‘If you know a business that isn’t registered for tax, call the Revenue or HM Customs - no names needed.’ Another says:
‘Technology has made it easier to identify benefit cheats.’
Whether the campaign is about rape, TV licences or filling in your tax form, there is always a we-know-where-you-live
edge to the message, a sense that this government is dividing the nation into suspects and informers.

Reading the Identity Cards Bill, as it pinged between the House of Commons and the Lords last week, I wondered about the
type of campaign that will be used to persuade us to comply with the new ID card law. Clearly, it would be orchestrated
by some efficient martinet like the Minister of State at the Home Office, Hazel Blears. Her task will be to put the fear
of God into the public at the same time as reassuring us that the £90 cost of each card will protect everyone from
identity theft, terrorism and benefit fraud.

The ads might imagine any number of scenarios. Here is one. ‘Your elderly mother has fallen ill,’ starts the commentary
gravely. ‘You travel from your home to look after her. She has a chronic condition but this time, it’s a bit of a crisis
and you need to pick up a prescription at the only late-night chemist in town. Trouble is, she has mislaid her identity
card and you never thought to get one. Under the new law, the pharmacist will not be able to give you that medicine
without proper ID. So, get your card. It’s for your own good - and Mum’s.’

It became clear last week that the government will do anything to get this bill through parliament, including ignoring
its own manifesto pledge to make the cards voluntary, a fact that we should remember as each of us entrusts the 49
separate pieces of personal information to a national database. By the end of last year, the government had already
spent £32m of taxpayers’ money on the scheme and, at the present, the expenditure is edging towards £100,000 a day. No
surprise that Home Secretary Charles Clarke dissembles about Labour promises.

Labour’s manifesto said: ‘We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a
national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.’

It turns out that there is nothing voluntary about it. If you renew your passport, you will be compelled to provide all
the information the state requires for its sinister data base. The Home Secretary says that the decision to apply for,
or renew, a passport is entirely a matter of individual choice; thus he maintains that the decision to commit those
personal details to the data base is a matter of individual choice.

George Orwell would have been pleased to have invented that particular gem. Yet this is not fiction, but the reality of
2006, and we should understand that if the Home Secretary is prepared to mislead on the fundamental issue as to whether
something is voluntary or compulsory, we cannot possibly trust his word on the larger issues of personal freedom and the
eventual use of the ID card database.

Clarke has now established himself as a deceiver, even in the eyes of his party. Labour democrats such as Kate Hoey,
Diane Abbott, Bob Marshall-Andrews and Mark Fisher all understood that the Lords’ amendments of last week simply sought
to underline this concept of a voluntary scheme, which complied with the 2005 manifesto. Oddly enough, the compulsory
provision of personal information to the government database is not the greatest threat to our freedom, though it is in
itself a substantial one. The real menace comes when the ID card scheme begins to track everyone’s movements and
transactions, the details of which will kept on the database for as long as the Home Office desires.

Over the past few weeks, an anonymous email has been doing a very good job of enlightening people on how invasive the ID
card will be. ‘Private businesses,’ says the writer, ‘are going to be given access to the national identity register
database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a
London underground Oystercard or supermarket loyalty card or driving licence, you will have to present your card.’

You will need the card when you receive prescription drugs, when you withdraw a relatively small amount of money from a
bank, check into hospital, get your car unclamped, apply for a fishing licence, buy a round of drinks (if you need to
prove you’re over 18), set up an internet account, fix a residents’ parking permit or take out insurance.

Every time that card is swiped, the central database logs the transaction so that an accurate plot of your life is
drawn. The state will know everything that it needs to know; so will big corporations, the police, the Inland Revenue,
HM Customs, MI5 and any damned official or commercial busybody that wants access to your life. The government and Home
Office have presented this as an incidental benefit, but it is at the heart of their purpose.

Last week, Andrew Burnham, a junior minister at the Home Office, confirmed the anonymous email by admitting that the ID
card scheme would now include chip-and-pin technology because it would be a cheaper way of checking each person’s
identity. The sophisticated technology on which this bill was sold will cost too much to operate, with millions of
checks being made every week.

That is a very important admission because the government still maintains the fiction that the ID card is defence
against identity theft and terrorism. The 7 July bombers would not have been deterred by a piece of plastic. And it is
clear that the claim about protecting your identity is also rubbish because chip-and-pin technology has already been
compromised by organised criminals. What remains is the ceaseless monitoring of people’s lives. That is what the
government is forcing on us.

Practically every week in these columns, I urge you to pay attention to the government’s theft of our liberties. I would
feel a bore and an obsessive if I hadn’t pored over the ID card bill last week and read Hansard’s account of the
exchanges in both houses. One of the most chilling passages in the bill is section 13 which deals with the ‘invalidity
and surrender’ of ID cards, which, in effect, describes the withdrawal of a person’s identity by the state. For, without
this card, it will be almost impossible to function, to exist as a citizen in the UK. Despite the cost to you, this card
will not be your property.

People keep asking me what they can do about the lurch into Labour’s velvet tyranny and I keep replying that the only
way for us is to re-engage with the politics of our country. But it is difficult. The new Conservative regime under
David Cameron has not yet found the voice to articulate the objection to the radical changes proposed in our society.
Edward Garnier, the Tory spokesman on ID cards, did his best in the Commons last week, but we need to hear his leader
express the principled outrage that comes from conviction and unyielding values. If we don’t, we may justifiably wonder
if the Conservatives are sitting on their hands in the belief that they will eventually inherit Labour’s apparatus of
control.

Outside parliament, what needs to happen is the formation of the broadest possible front against these changes, a
movement which deploys the most principled democratic minds in the country to argue with the lazy and stupid view that
if you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from Labour’s attack on liberty. I believe that will happen.

henry.porter@observer.co.uk

I did not know that there was such a thing as “consumer rights’ day”

The Brussels Journal

Chresten Anderson

Today the Austrian EU Presidency is organising the 8th European Consumer Day, in cooperation with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The date marks US President John F. Kennedy’s declaration to the US Congress on 15 March 1962, when he spoke in support of consumers and spelled out four fundamental consumer rights (the right to safety; the right to be informed; the right to choose; the right to be heard).

In 1985 the United Nations decided that each year 15 March would be a special consumer rights’ day across the world. In 1999 the European Consumer Day (ECD) was launched at the EESC’s initiative, with the aim of making the public more aware of EU consumer policy and informing people of the ongoing work in this area.

In his 1962 speech Kennedy defined the four fundamental rights of consumers.

1. The right to safety: the right to be protected against products, production processes and services that are hazardous to health or life.

2. The right to be informed: the right to be given the facts and information you need to make your own choices.

3. The right to choose: the right to be able to choose from a range of products and services offered at competitive prices. As a consumer, you have the right to expect satisfactory quality.

4. The right to be heard: the right to have your interests as a consumer represented in government policy.

All of those rights are sensible, and luckily a free and functioning market process can ensure them all.

Unfortunately, however, governments have interfered, restricting consumers’ rights:

In order to guarantee European consumers their fundamental rights it is necessary that they once again become free to make their own choices – and not have Brussels bureaucrats make the choices for them.

Full article here

Technorati Tags: EU, Food, European Consumer Day,

The Adams Smith Institute

By Dr Eamonn Butler

There are of course many old laws still in place in the United Kingdom. Some years ago, Lord Harris of High Cross formed what he called the ‘Repeal Group’ in the attempt to get them wiped off the statute book. But most people, especially busy parliamentary business managers, could not see the point of repealing laws that nobody took a blind bit of notice of anyway.

Harris was right. If laws are on the statute book, it is a hostage to fortune that some bloody-minded politician will resurrect and use them, even though they are no longer relevant to today’s circumstances…………. But you only need to look at how modern laws are stretched by the police and others – holding a heckler at the Labour Party conference and a cyclist in Dundee under anti-terrorist laws, or arresting a women harmlessly reading out the names of war dead by the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall.

My concern that bad laws can come back to bite us unless ruthlessly culled is made all the more poignant by the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill now going through the House of Commons. It empowers ministers to amend or repeal any law, supposedly in order to adjust minor administrative inconveniences. The trouble is that a tyrannical government could use the measure to do what it liked, without the minor administrative inconvenience of Parliament. Indeed, when you look at this idea, you might well conclude that such tyranny has already arrived.

Technorati Tags: Law, Regulatory Reform Bill, tyrannical government, Parliament

I did not hear this speech at the Labour party conference, and have only read bits of it, but those are enough to chill the bones of any democratically minded person. Mr Blair told the conference the criminal justice system was two centuries out of date. ”We are trying to fight 21st century crime - anti-social behaviour, binge drinking, organised crime - with 19th century methods, as if we still lived in the time of Dickens,” he said. ”The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted. ”Don’t misunderstand me. That must be the duty of any criminal justice system. But surely our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety. It means a complete change of thinking.”

Promising to take on the wrong-doers, by extending the summary powers of police and local authorities Mr Blair sets in motion his idea of jackboot justice; the police will be given powers to by pass the courts and issue instant fines or remove driving licences just as a starter, thus we have the terrible twins Blair and Blair preparing the ground for the removal of our rights as citizens of this country, to be innocent until we are proven guilty in a court of law, the removal of any need for the police to actually prove a crime has been committed and the removal of one of the basic tenants in British law and the undermining of the British constitution. It was only a few days ago that The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said “modernisation” of the force should be carried forward by introducing “an escalator of powers” for the dispensing of instant justice. That is the point if we are not proven guilty then we are in fact innocent, how many mistakes have the police made in the past, unfortunately in some cases the police cannot rectify their mistakes ask “Jean Charles de Menezes”. It is a little bit late after the punishment has been summarily dispensed to apologise for the lack of evidence to uphold that punishment. It would also put those who have been instantly punished in the position of proving their innocent later in court, which is a compleate reversal of the police having to prove their case in a court of law.

This is just another step down the road of increasing the states powers against its citizens. Along with the right to silence, the removal of trial by juries, and the insistence that juries cannot ignore the law and find against the evidence. Be there no mistake Blair and his merry band of henchmen are all about making the state the first power in the land, by the removing the powers the people have to object to the laws of the state. We are on the road to a totalitarian form of government when the people have no choice and no rights against a state they no longer live in a democratic society.

If we look at some of those 19th century beliefs we can clearly see what Blair is about removing from our system.

Peelian Reform addresses the philosophy that Robert Peel provided to establish an ethical police force. In his principles, Peel states:

* Every police officer should be issued a badge number, to assure accountability for his actions.
* Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.

Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles:

Principle #1: The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Principle #2: The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

Principle #3: Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

Principle #4: The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

Principle #5: Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

Principle #6: Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

Principle #7: Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of cummunity welfare and existence.”

Principle #8: Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

Principle #9: The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.