The most promising result for Labour
The long leadership campaign is over and the most promising candidate from Labour’s point of view has won. The next significant events are next week’s elections by Labour MPs to the shadow cabinet and...
Category: Civil Liberties
Lockerbie resurgens: al-Megrahi, the myths and the unanswered questions
David Cameron’s visit to Washington this month (July 2010) collided with the resurrection by some American Senators of the controversy over the release in August 2009 on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government’s Justice...
Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs) once more (with update 25 June 2010)
In August 2007, nearly three years ago, I wrote (again) in this blog about the scandal of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), under which people sent to prison for, often, quite minor offences,...
BP, the oil spill, and the Congressional committee
I’m generally a fan of the American constitution, its Bill of Rights, and especially of the American commitment to due process. In the words of the Fifth Amendment, No person shall be held to...
Whither Labour now: an open letter to The Leader
Dear Harriet, Decisions about what kind of opposition Labour is going to be obviously can’t wait until the leadership elections in the autumn: it falls to you to set the tone and issue the...
Classifying drugs: the Home Secretary and the David Nutt case (with 5 Nov 09 Update)
It’s worth trying to identify some of the confusions that have arisen in the controversy over the action of the normally mild-mannered Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in dismissing Professor David Nutt from his post...
Please sign a petition for victims of indeterminate sentences
Last August I posted a piece here about the scandalous injustice of “indeterminate sentences for public protection” (IPPs): it’s at https://barder.com/696. It prompted 37 comments, several of which starkly illustrate the human cost of...
More on al-Megrahi and Lockerbie
Today’s [London] Times rather sportingly publishes my letter, sent last week, disputing all three of a Times editorial’s reasons for condemning the decision of the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, to release on compassionate...
Lockerbie: full marks to Scotland’s Mr MacAskill
I have no doubt that the Scottish National Party’s Mr MacAskill, Justice Secretary in the devolved government of Scotland, was right to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of complicity in the Lockerbie...
Indeterminate sentences and Baby P
Fresh and yet more noxious light has been cast on the working of the indefensible régime of IPPs (indeterminate sentences for public protection) by the sentences passed in May on the three people convicted...