90 days

[Lucifer Box]

The point that is also being missed is that there will be some judicial oversight. It is not carte blanche for the police to look people up willy nilly.

Sorry, Chico, but it will give the police carte blanche to lock people up willy nilly. In fact, it will give police the power to impose the equivalent of a 6 month prison sentence. Not only that but it will also (and you rarely see this mentioned) allow the government to lock people up. You see, not only does this bill extend the time you can be held without charge, it also widens the group of people who may apply for these extended warrants to include the Crown Prosecutor, i.e. a government appointed stooge. In fact, the reviewer of security legislation (Lord Carlisle) said, "if there are to be extensions for up to three months... in my view the protections (for the suspect) built into the bill as drafted are inadequate."

[Phoenix]

Didn't we get a rollocking from Italy recently?
Uk had to release some Terrorist suspects because the fuzz didn't have enough time to gather evidence against them?

[Lucifer Box]

Didn't we get a rollocking from Italy recently?
Uk had to release some Terrorist suspects because the fuzz didn't have enough time to gather evidence against them?

Yes. In that case they had 3 years to sort it out and failed to do so. Clearly the only answer is to allow the state to detain anyone they like for as long as they like. After all, if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.

An alleged al-Qaeda terrorist held in the UK and wanted in Italy will not be extradited because the Home Office did not process the request in time. Home Office officials failed to meet the three-year extradition deadline for asylum-seeker Farj Hassan Faraj, 24, who was arrested in May 2002.

[WageSlave]

The liberties we had in England were due to the fact that most people were encouraged to own and practice regularly with a longbow. Europeans never had anything like the liberties of the English until the cross bow and then gun powder. The reason was that the English nobility were fed up of being invaded so needed to have lots of men ready at a moments notice to use a weapon. Whereas the continental nobility were more bothered about the great unwashed taking them out if they were awful to them.

HTH

EH?
Is that how they teach English history at Winchester?

[Not So Wise]

..However whether you like to admit it or not England does not have much of a history of police abusing their powers on a wide scale ...

Mailman

What's history got to do with it? History has no bearing, what counts is the now and the possible future.

USA had 10 times better rep than UK (at least as far as treating it's own citizens were concerned) now look at, homeland security looking more and more like the gestapo everyday. Does anyone in their right mind (which automaticlly excluded chico) really want even the chance of something like that happening over here?

[mcquiggd]

We are certainly heading in the same direction as the US... both in terms of the way we treat our own people and our reputation in the world... I have the feeling that a lot of legislation that is being proposed now would not have even been considered if the old-style House of Lords had been in place, as it would have been effectively stillborn legislation due to gaurunteed opposition in the Upper House.

It's ironic that people, often hireditory peers, who were smeared as 'dinosaurs' and a bunch of 'senile privilidged old men' actually, whether by design or accident, exhibited considerably more sense and dedication to the principles of democracy than the political wannabees who will do anything to cling to power for just one more term....

Perhaps the only way to curb such damaging occurances as 'New Labour' is to return to the democracy we used to have.... which seems to have been protected by counter-balancing elected office with one that isnt affected by the whims of newspaper proprietors...

[mcquiggd]

P.S Serious question... has anybody any stories of sleaze from the House of Lords, compared to the virtual brothel that is the House of Commons..?

[stackpole]

A lot of legislation that is being proposed now would not have even been considered if the old-style House of Lords had been in place

Too true MQ. This is something Joe Public doesn't seem to care about (stuffy old buffers in the Lords), but it is so important.

This thread about the government's counter-terrorism strategy sums it up. The prime minister's own delivery unit describes the strategy as:

* mired in confusion
* little effective co-ordination
* little confidence
* immature
* disjointed
* weak
* vague
* not connected or coherent

However, you can be arrested and interned on the basis of it.

What has happened since 1997 is that the Lords send it back a few times, then Blair uses the Parliament Act to push it through anyway.

We could all fall foul of legislation like this in many other areas, not least taxation (IR35). I know of no record of consistently bad legislation coming out of any other British government in history.

[Chico]

I feel sick.

[zathras]

It's ironic that people, often hireditory peers, who were smeared as 'dinosaurs' and a bunch of 'senile privilidged old men' actually, whether by design or accident, exhibited considerably more sense and dedication to the principles of democracy than the political wannabees who will do anything to cling to power for just one more term....

And the reason for this is very simple. It is the one attribute that is both it's weakness and strength. Once appointed to the Upper House they cannot be removed. While they may ingratiate themselves to someone to get there, once there they owe their position to nobody. (even more so for hereditary peers) For that reason they can be honest about how they vote. This is not true for those societies governed by an elected or appointed upper house (such as the US). Before we throw out the hereditary peers we would do well to remember that they owe allegience to no political leader except governed by their own conscience. Incidentally Blair has appointed more peers than any of his predecessors, another lot of NL contributors were appointed last week