Tony Blair on the criminal justice system
The prime minister says the criminal justice system aims primarily to protect the accused from the state or the police, and needs to be reversed. Can he really believe this? [More >>>]
Category: Civil Liberties
The Stockwell shooting and the police: mistrust the rush to judgement
Demands for the resignation of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, are culpably premature. We should all await the report of the independent inquiry.
Blair, Blunkett and Booth
As Tony Blair lends the Home Office back to David Blunkett, a public dialogue between Tony and Cherie Booth QC is developing about the role of the judges in the effort to counter terrorism.
Shoot to Kill, and other remedies?
The government’s proposed new measures in response to 7/7 are surprisingly moderate, subject to scrutiny of the details; and the police, on the available evidence so far, had no real alternative to the action they took in killing the innocent (as it turned out) brazilian at Stockwell tube station.
More on the London bombings
E-mails flying around in the last few days have been polluting the air with glib denunciations of Tony Blair for supposedly having precipitated the London bombings of 7/7 by joining the Americans in invading and occupying Iraq.
That hateful religious hatred Bill
Once again the government is seeking parliamentary approval for the religious hatred Bill which has been repeatedly condemned and rejected on all sides, from far left to far right, as an unconscionable and unenforceable...
Identity cards, the national database and EU fundamental rights
The database will be the biggest ever invasion of British citizens’ privacy and lacks the most elementary safeguards — if it ever works
Jottings
…about the Guantanamo motto and Mme. Roland, an enjoyable film and a sharp TV programme, some horrible grammar, and the database that goes with ID cards
From detention without trial for foreigners to control orders for all
Out of the illiberal frying-pan into the authoritarian fire: farewell to habeas corpus
Control orders are unacceptable, whoever issues them
Whether they are signed by a judge or a politician is beside the critical point