david davies ..forces by-election over 42 days detention..

[DeeRiguer]

omg
he came over all habeus corpus and onto id cards and cctv lost records the lot
does he mn??

i was almost proud to be british when i heard bits of his speech
i cant beleive someone is doing something about this...

Edam - Oooh. I approve of your mother's fliration with a Tory. It shows she is not silly enough to believe people are defined by the party they apparently support.

He really was a Tory though, was in the Uni Conservative Students Association or whatever they called it. My father used to go along and disrupt meetings by singing the Welsh national anthem so everyone would have to stand up (obv. not on his own...). Those were the days, eh, wouldn't work now!

On the subject of posh boys, every single Old Etonian I have ever known has been lovely. And there was one I had a major crush on. Sadly a bit older than me and already married.

Have yet to meet anyone in favour of 42 days detention. Seems to me that Gordon Brown is making a big deal of this so we don't notice the economy going down the pan. He is a grade A twunt.

swedes
what it will also look like is that labour will not defend their policy at the ballot box and as public money has been shown to squandered repeatedly by members, then one more byelection want hurt! will it?

dont think there are any major discernable differences between the major parties now and feel that each politician should be taken on their own merits, ...party lines fudged a long time ago imho..

it might be looked upon as a stunt, maybe he should have waited but he has tapped into a depth of public opinion that agrees whole heartedly with him and got the debate on this to top of the agenda no bad thing..

cheers mr d

kelvin mackenzie/murdoch gimme the ubershudders

Don't think that the byelection is just about 42 days. Think byelection is providing a focus to allow civil liberties issues to be debated in a more concerted way. I campaigned for Labour in the run up to 1997 but am going to bung some quid to DD because I think it's good that someone - anyone wants to open a debate on this issue. NEVER thought I would support a Tory let along give money - but really believe this transcends any party identification loyalties. Remeber the question is not whether you think a terrorist should be held for 42 days to gather evidence but whether you think a British citizen should be held for 42 days with no charge being made against them. (ooh had flashbacks to O Level History just then - civus Romanum sum - Captain Jenkins ear - horrible]

The "public support" for 42 days detention seems to be based on a YouGov poll carried out for the telegraph. I sometimes take part in the YouGov internet polls and never give my answers the slightest thought. Either that or it was a telephone survey which was biased towards people inclined to take part in random telephone surveys. Again little thought would have been given to the subject.

I would love to see how the question was phrased. Nobody would mind terrorists being locked up for 42 days without trial. But as stickybun points out we are talking about possibly innocent British citizens, where the police cannot find sufficient evidence to press charges against them.

If this becomes law, history tells us there will be cases where it is wrongly used.