Government wins on 42 days detention with just 9 votes

[edam]

Shameful. We are now no better than a rogue state. NO other democracy in the world detains people without trial for such a length of time.

Particular shame on the DUP - their MPs' nine votes got the government through. Wonder what backroom deal they did?

Only hopefully in the sense of democracy not in this partic. case. Used to work at the Commons and thought this was the case - very unlikely for Lords to overule Commons.

I really cannot type or spell tonight!

The Lords often defeats the Commons -- e.g. here Whether or not the Commons is strong enough to force a bill through any way (as legally it can) is all down to political forces.

I am simply furious about this. Makes me feel soiled.

As an aside that is one good thing about DCs - you can give them a totally one-sided view of any given political subject and they beleive you totally. DS#1 will be spouting about this in school tomorrow I suspect.

yes OrmIrian, think our seven year old will be foaming at the mouth in school tomorrow too .

I can occasionally be found harrumphing at the radio news. Ds puts his head on one side and asks: 'Is that the bad government, Mummy?'

Feel crap about this bcs dnt hv time to dbt (ooh look am doing speedwriting/spdrtng)

You all know I am generally leftie

But will someone pls explain why 48 days is worse than 24?

Um, it's twice as bad? Actually I think it's 42 days and 28, which doesn't make quite such a neat sum.

yes, I am derbrain , but ethically/philosophically, how is it worse? 28 days sounds fairly shite to me if innocent. But I don't have a huge door that closes after 28 but before 42.

Perhaps in NewWorld derbrains won't do so well..

Edam I imagined we would see a thread from you on this matter. He will let the bill go through its parliamentary stages and in the end the Parliament Acts will have to be invoked if he insists he wants to push it through. I'm personally against it.

Apparently the Democratic Unionists were persuaded to climb aboard the Brown bandwagon at the last minute. Apparently, in exchange for £20M. The £20M raised by NI water rates normally goes to the Treasury but apparently the revenue will now go to the NI Executive. It's also being claimed that Shaun Woodward has promised that the 1967 Abortion Act would not be extended to Northern Ireland through the Embryology Bill currently passing through Parliament.

I hear what edam says re: "it's twice as bad"

But can something can't be 'twice as bad' if it isn't provably 'bad'?

And I'm not, I don't think, convinced that the 28 days is provably BAD.

If it were, we should all be campaigning to outlaw the 28 days.

sorry for typos - you know what I mean.

off to bed but will check tomorrow. Apols - I am critically ill-informed in this matter and have no likelihood of improvement in the next week or so, but it does interest me.

Onebat - You have hit the nail on the head. Ideally it shouldn't exist at all - zero days is the ideal. Holding people without charge runs contrary to habeas corpus which was first expressed in the Magna Carta. It says that "No free man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or injured in any way, nor will we enter on him or send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land." This principle evolved to mean that no person should be deprived of freedom without due process of law.

Onebatmother - we should be campaigning to outlaw the 28 days. That is much too long for people to be held without charge.

42 days is evidently much worse, but it is also that we have gone from 24 hours in a few short years. The government just keep increasing it - when will they stop?

Onebat - 28 days is itself an affront to democracy but 42 days is worse because a. it's longer and b. it shows the government is unrepentant. Or stark, raving mad. WHY did Brown choose to make this a test of his political virility? Couldn't he have chosen something less dangerous? He's just playing 'who can pee higher up the wall'. Never mind the poor sods who get caught up in this and end up with life long mental illness. Imagine being held for six weeks with no idea what you are suspected of, whether anyone knows where you are, what's going to happen to you, whether your family is OK...

Respect to Swedes, btw, unless you cheated and googled that.

Eight hundred years of English history, a fine tradition of civil rights, and Brown just chucks it away because he wants to look hard. Tosser.

My old boss, who had been a friend of his since their teenage days, used to call him 'wee Gordon' in a big sister faintly patronising manner. I think she was right that he's not very impressive, really.

Edam - Of course I know the complete transcript of the Magna Carta off by heart, along with all Shakespeare's plays and all the poems in Palgrave's Golden Treasury.

Yeah, but can you recite The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck without checking?

i also hate the chip chip chipping away of this democracy as we grew up with
many of are hard fought for rights

there are all those ships holding people without charge or due process and guantanamo bay, belmarsh, it is dark days

we can be arrested for many more things now and our general civil rights are being pissed legislated away, it makes me so mad

if they want to sort out the terrorist problem look at our foreign policy first imo
towards palestine
towards illegal wars and occupations
its a way better starting point than this

Agree. In large measure the increased risk of terrorism is precisely because of our invasion of Iraq -- which Blair justified as a strategy to protect us against terrorism (after he'd given up justifying it in terms of fictional WMD and beneficial regime change).

It's our current forgeign policy that puts us at risk, not our colonial past. And these further attempts to 'protect' us just increase the hostility.

here here thready

its too orwellian for me, war is peace innit?

too much cctv id cards lost documents ..its gonna be the next ddr

So is anyone really in favour of this? If not, how can Gordon claim the public is? I know MN is not representative, but still....

upwind the way it has been presented to the public they say folks support it
but parliamentry opposition from mps has been bought off

imo it makes him look weaker having to do this to push such a contentious peice of legislation through to show strength as it were, and was forced to buy off key votes with promises, cash whatever
... thought he said he was listening now?

mind you the press have it in for him now and rightly so imho

Also, there are many many laws already on the statute books which more than cover most of the recent new or proposed legislation we have including knife carrying and under age drinking/drinking in public. The laws we have already aren't being enforced. We need fewer laws, not more. What on earth was wrong with having to apply to a judge to extend the period a suspect could be held. If there was a good reason, a judge would be likely to agree.