Jacqui Smith: ID Cards Are Safe And Well, Ha! Ha! Ha!
In the wonderful and wacky world of surreal politics which is the happy hunting ground of New Labour, there is never a dead horse which cannot stand yet more flogging.
Jacqui Smith is trotting out the usual stuff and nonsense to what must be a very bored or very credulous audience at the Demos think tank, although there is precious little to indicate actual thought happening, just the normal dirge-like repitition of a tired and discredited mantra as New Labour treads water before its forthcoming electoral defeat.
Read the full text of the snake-oil saleswoman’s patter over here.
Impunity For State Sponsored Death Squads
As Homer Simpson said: “Mmm, doughnuts, is there nothing they cannot do!”
As Jacqui Smith might have said: “Mmm, the War on Terror and anti-terror legislation, is there no end to repressive legislation we cannot squeeze unnoticed onto the statute book under the guise of being tough in the War on Terror?”
Apparently not. Now, even coronors courts are to become the emasculated playthings of the Home Secretary, where proceedings may have to be conducted in secret and without a jury or access by anyone other than Jacqui Smith or her successors, not for reasons connected with national security, but purely on whim and diktat, despite the fact that this little piece of spiteful deviousness to curtail even more freedoms is stuck onto ant-terror legislation.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:
“On first inspection we find this an astonishing provision with the most serious implications for the UK’s ability to comply with the positive obligation in Article 2 (of the) ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] to provide an adequate and effective investigation where an individual has been killed as a result of the use of force, particularly where the death is the result of the use of force by state agents.”
The legislation would mean that if anyone was killed by agents of the New British state or any other country or, in fact, under any circumstances in which the Home Secretary felt that she or he was entitled to interfere for no given reason, then nothing connected with a possibly unlawful killing would ever enter the public domain.
Andrew Dismore MP, the Labour chair of the Committee [Joint Committee on Human Rights], said: “We are seriously alarmed at the prospect that under these provisions, inquests into the deaths occurring in circumstances like that of Jean Charles de Menezes, or British servicemen killed by US forces in Iraq, could be held by a coroner appointed by the Secretary of State sitting without a jury.
“Inquests must be, and be seen to be, totally independent and in public to secure accountability, with involvement of the next of kin to protect their legitimate interests.
“When someone dies in distressing, high-profile circumstances their family need to see and feel that justice is being done, and where state authorities are involved there is a national interest in accountability as well.”
According to The Daily Mail:
Helen Shaw, co-director of Inquest, a pressure group which works with bereaved families, said: “The public will find it difficult to have confidence that these coroner-only inquests, with key evidence being suppressed, can investigate contentious deaths involving state agents independently.”
The group said the proposal could even affect the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian shot dead at a Tube station in 2005.
So, let’s say your son or daughter worked for the state as a civil servant on sensitive issues to do with something like growing vegetables. He or she is then run over and killed by a drunk driver who happens to be a senior policeman.
An inquest is then held in secret with only the coronor and the Home Secretary privy to the details of the case. It is announced later that your child was passing secrets to a foreign power and was killed while attempting to cross a busy road when drunk and high on drugs. The driver of the vehicle involved is receiving grief counselling and will be awarded massive compensation.
So, what are you going to do about it, eh, scum?
Home Secretary Tries To Terrorise Parliament
Remember Jacqui Smith? Yes, she is the one who refused to backdate police pay and in so doing caused about 25 000 of them to march through London yesterday. She is the one who caused the police to start looking at whether they should be entitled to take strike action.
So, is that a record for sticking to your guns and toughing the situation out, or just a reflection of being a bit stupid and not very good at your job?
A clue comes from the fact that she is now going to attempt to push through Parliament a Bill which will bring about an increase in pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects from the current 28 days to more that 42 days.
The fact is that this has been scrutinised by everyone and found to be an unnecessary and bad idea, but Jacqui Smith still wants to go ahead with it.
So: tough, stupid, tough, stupid, tough, stupid. You work it out.
The reason she gives does not exactly reveal copper-bottomed certainty on her part. The argument she adopts is this: we do not need to increase pre-charge detention, but there could one day be a circumstance under which we might, so we are going to do so now, even though we do not need to, just in case.
This is a bit like saying we are going to build a concrete and cast iron dome to cover the whole of Britain in case one day the sky might fall in. There is no reason on earth to think that the sky will ever fall in, but a little bird told me that it could happen.
According to Reuters, this is how the incredibly clever and not at all stupid Jacqui Smith, currently Home Secretary in Her Majesty’s New Labour government explained it to those of us less blessed with such a massive brain:
“It doesn’t come into operation now. It would only ever come into operation if the circumstances required it, if very high legal thresholds were covered, with the approval of parliament,” Smith said.
“We don’t need it now. But there is a consensus we may need it in the future. The responsible thing to do … is to legislate now but for something you would only use if the circumstances arose,” she added.
It is so wonderful and so revealing when our clever masters show us how their minds, er, work.
But wait:
“I think we have won the debate on extending detention, on constantly ratcheting up this figure with no real principle and no new evidence of the need to go beyond 28 days which is already the longest period in the Western democratic world,” said Shami Chakrabarti of human rights group Liberty.
The figures themselves do not stack up anyway, as The Press Association on Google reveals:
Under Ms Smith’s proposals, the Home Secretary will be able to immediately extend the limit to 42 days if a joint report by a chief constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions backs the move.
The Commons and the Lords will also have to approve the extension within 30 days and the new limit will only be available to police for two months unless it is renewed.
Parliament could be recalled from summer recess if a vote was required on an extension and individual detentions over 28 days would need to be approved by a judge at least every seven days.
However, the way the proposed system is set up could mean suspects being held for 42 days even if Parliament eventually refused permission.
Presumably, you could also be held for 28 days and as Parliamentary approval needs to be within 30 days for an extension, you could wait 58 days for the dullards to refuse permission and be returned to the free society of New Britain.
This is all a bit like Gordon Brown quietly bottling out of the ID card fiasco-in-waiting. If this bill goes through, it will ensure New Labour gets kicked out for their own period of indefinite detention at the next election.
Rumours that Jacqui Smith’s imaginary best friend, Chicken Little, has been kidnapped and put on a CIA extraordinary rendition plane to Guantanamo Bay have been denied by the Home Office.
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