Protest demonstrations and the police
[Note: The following comments on police behaviour at protest demonstrations were originally sent in an e-mail by “a young man who blogs under the handle Jamblichus” (his own description) and arose out of some...
Category: Civil Liberties
Damian Green MP, the mole, the police and the law: a discussion
In a recent post on a number of current issues, I mentioned my belief that the police had been justified in arresting Damian Green MP for questioning, and searching his parliamentary and other offices,...
Some flaws in the received wisdom
Several propositions are acquiring the status of well-known truths from frequent repetition, despite all being false. For example, — Proposition 1: The News of the World phone-tapping scandal will run and run, eclipsing even...
The Tories dump their mole
Unlike most media commentators, with their vested interest in encouraging leaks by civil servants who betray their duty of confidentiality and loyalty to the elected ministers for whom they work, I have very little...
Government defeated on Gurkha settlement: now demand justice
Joanna Lumley (pictured below with the much-decorated Gurkha veteran and holder of the Victoria Cross, Tul Bahadur Pun VC) describes on the Gurkha Justice Campaign website the campaign for a decent deal for former...
The Tory MP and his Home Office spy: part 3
As yesterday’s statement by the Director of Public Prosecutions said with some emphasis, the decision not to prosecute Damian Green, the Conservative front-bench MP who for two years has been receiving official documents stolen...
Americans debate torture
Some of us on the eastern side of the great ditch have been bemused by what appears to be a certain ambiguity in American attitudes to torture. Waterboarding and other ‘harsh’ interrogation techniques had...
Musical but not comedy in English jails — Straw
Last autumn our most debased and shameless tabloid newspaper, Murdoch’s Sun, denounced with its usual fake indignation a ‘comedy workshop’ at an English prison, attended by a convicted Muslim terrorist and other assorted evil-doers. ...
An open letter to my MP: Stop Government abuse of personal information (with triumphant update 8 March 09)
An open letter to my MP, Sadiq Khan, MP [but now see update appended below]: Dear Sadiq, Here is an appeal with which you, as a former civil rights lawyer of great distinction, will...
More on the scandal of indeterminate sentences
In an uncharacteristically short letter published in today’s Guardian I have compared the outrage of our system of indeterminate sentences with Cuba’s practice of locking people up on the charge of being a “social...