Double post, I know, but I just had to say, I am laughing at the spin the Government is trying to take on this...

'Oh no! We have let down the people by not getting this through, we're doomed! DOOMED!'. As though a large number of backbenchers voting to the will of their constituents was somehow a 'failure' of governement :/

From what I understand the police can hold you for 2 days without charge for any crime. Thatcher's government brought in a special limit for terrorism charges which was later doubled.

Now it's been doubled again which makes Britain the country in europe with the longest period of time someone can be held without charge AFAIK.

Quite frankly I think the rise to 28 days was draconian and if I can believe what I heard on Newsnight last night it's also pointless. Do ytou know how many people have been held for 14 days and then actually charged with a crime?

None.

Not one single case. So why did we need to raise the threshold when there hasn't ever been a single legitimate case that has reached the current limit?

Flipside wrote:Edit : Any Pratchett fan would know what I mean when I say 'Detritus thinking' was starting to prevail. And for those that don't...

Heh. So I'm not the only one who was thinking along those lines.

"It was you what done it, own up!"

I disagreed with the changes Blair was trying to push through. I'm glad they were voted down. That's what parliament is there for and for once they did their job. Everyone should stop trying to bully Blair into resignation though. He was entitled to push for what he wanted and if he always got what he wanted we wouldn't be living in a working democracy would we? The way people are using this to take shots is really cheap. Of course you expect it from the unprincipled Tories and the biased media. The Lib Dems though I am very disappointed with. They should rise above such childish point scoring.

I don't think this is why they're pushing for Blair to resign. They want him to go over the whole Iraq thing. In fact the majority of the country want him to go. This is just a stick to beat him over the head with in a way that the Hutton Report should have been.

So I don't care about him being hounded out of government. As far as I'm concerned he should have been gone long before and would have been had he not fixed the inquiry to whitewash the government.

The funniest thing is that they are actually working against their best interests. If Blair hangs on until 2008 it will improve their chances of winning against Brown. Blair is pretty much singlehandedly responsible for slashing the Labour majority in the last election. There are lots of people who would have voted for Brown who refused to vote Labour in the last election.

The only people who actually stand to gain from Blair resigning sooner rather than later are Labour and they are the ones who are keeping quiet.

The most ironic thing is that people have actually spent less than 90 days in jail for killing a child whilst drunk behind the wheel of a car. Our law system is so fucked-up :/

karajorma wrote:I don't think this is why they're pushing for Blair to resign. They want him to go over the whole Iraq thing. In fact the majority of the country want him to go. This is just a stick to beat him over the head with.

Oh I'm not going to get dragged into the Iraq thing. I saw what that did to Blair . Seriously though this happens every time a prime minister loses an important vote. It's pathetic playground politics, a load of grown men going "You lost! Nah nah, na nah nah!". No wonder the public are apathetic about politics.

I agree with you there IP, it seems the moment an MP does something that is unpopular, the opposition are braying for their head. I don't much like Tony or his 'I know best' attitude he adopts towards the British people and now it's government.

He is now implying that the rebel backbenchers were 'out of touch' with voters, rather than considering the possiblity that it was those voters canvassing their Labour MP's which made them vote against their own party, not something they would happily or voluntarily do.

His Ego is going to be his downfall, if it has not been already.

IPAndrews wrote:Seriously though this happens every time a prime minister loses an important vote. It's pathetic playground politics, a load of grown men going "You lost! Nah nah, na nah nah!". No wonder the public are apathetic about politics.

I agree in principle but I want the b#stard gone so I couldn't care less about it in this case.

Goober5000 wrote:So, would you guys still say "Score one for democracy" if it had gone the other way?

After all, that's democracy in action too.

No, because a) the very principle is undemocratic (I'm pretty sure it's close to violating the UN convention on human rights) and b) it was pretty apparent the MPs were against it, and the tactics being used to convince them were a combination of little threats (to labour rebels) and fearmongering.

It's like, if MPs voted to suspend trial by jury, or allow CCTV in every home, it wouldn't be considered democratic, would it? Even if the majority seemed to be wanting that, there is still a duty (something which seems to have fallen to the house of Lords lately) for a government to protect the basic rights of the people from themselves. After all, there are countless examples of how easy it is to turn a crowd through the likes of fear, prejudice and paranoia, so that you can justify the worst things from the majority wanting it.

NB: there were quite a few questions I'd liked to have asked the government;
1/ why 90 days? If the police had asked for 180, or 360 days, would that have been ok?
2/ is there a single demonstratable case where 90 day detention without charge would have stopped a terrorist attack?
3/doesn't this legislation contradict the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely Article 9 ("No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.") by removing the need for evidence?

Oh, and it should have been made clear that ACPO (who spoke out for the legislation) is actually a limited company (formerly named the Police Constables Club or somesuch), which receives funding from the Home Office. And which has a mission statement that precludes it from making these sorts of political statements.

I hate to say it, aldo, but what you say is irrevelant to your conclusion. It'd still be democracy in action, regardless of what was actually voted in, as it was still done by those who were democratically elected and engaged in voting on it.

The government of Athens during Hellenic times is considered a democracy too, you know. (Or for a closer examples with representive democracies, Senatorial Rome, or closer yet, the United States before 1865.) And they would certainly flunk most of the criteria you seem to be using. The rights of the individual and democracy do not necessarily go hand in hand. We like to think they should, but that's not really the case. Democracy is only one right, that to vote as you choose. Others might reinforce it, but they are not essential to it.

ngtm1r wrote:I hate to say it, aldo, but what you say is irrevelant to your conclusion. It'd still be democracy in action, regardless of what was actually voted in, as it was still done by those who were democratically elected and engaged in voting on it.

The government of Athens during Hellenic times is considered a democracy too, you know. (Or for a closer examples with representive democracies, Senatorial Rome, or closer yet, the United States before 1865.) And they would certainly flunk most of the criteria you seem to be using. The rights of the individual and democracy do not necessarily go hand in hand. We like to think they should, but that's not really the case. Democracy is only one right, that to vote as you choose. Others might reinforce it, but they are not essential to it.

Actually, the root definition of a democracy is essentially a government ruled by (the elected representatives of) the people; if a a democratically elected government votes to destroy a/the fundamental aspect preserving democratic freedoms (such as basic human rights, which affect both our ability to vote freely and also our ability to vote without being unduly/unfairly coerced).

Democracy, within the modern context, can be defined by the combinations of safeguards upon individual rights; a decision which destroys those individual rights is thus undemocratic (un being the negative; I think a decision which removes the right of the people to rule - from the greek demos kratos - would be considered undemocratic).

Additionally, the MPs elected are acting representatives; whilst their voting decisions can be tempered by current public opinion, their election is - or rather should be - on the basis of a spectrum of policies defined at the time of election (specifically within the manifesto). It's very easy to turn the public one way or the other (for example, the YouGov poll claiming to give 72% public support for 90 day detention was laid in with leading questions which essentially acted to justify 'yes' for the very last question and thus bias the poll; alternatively, just look at the newspaper coverage from the likes of the Sun*), so the only unequivocal answer we can claim to have is based on election results and the general miasma policies of said elected parties. Thus I'd say the general principle of democratic representatives, when voting, has to be of conscience and preserving democracy, unless your actual manifesto is an undemocratic one (i.e. facist).

*the Sun posted a picture of an injured 7/7 victim (a media professor) taken at the time, under the massive headline 'betrayed'. This guy later contacted the media and said that he totally disagreed with the Suns statement, was against 90 day detention, and if they wanted to put words in his mouth they should have been 'not in my name, Blair'. When you have large scale newspapers like the Sun blatantly lying and spinning to make political statements like this, I'd say it makes the issue of conscience over pandering to public opinion even more important.