We are bloggers. Venetian blinds do not scare us.
– Scott Wickstein earlier this (Australian) evening.
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To hear conservatives indicate that a husband is not the person best qualified to decide what his wife would have wanted indicates a view of what marriage constitutes that seems rather at odds with the usual conservative obsession with the importance and gravity of that institution. Stephen Pollard, a former member of Britain’s Young Conservatives who is now a New Labour guru, has an article in the Times called: My easy ride in the Senate seat. Life after his easy ride is getting a little more tricky, with a savaging from Global Growth, the free-market NGO. Although Samizdata concerns itself with more important things than mere politics (thankfully for our collective sanity), it seems wrong that we should pass let without record the government’s announcement of its intention to introduce indefinite executive detention for UK citizens. For those who missed the vigourous Parliamentary debate (which must have lasted at least 15 minutes), in future anyone may be locked up indefinitely in their own home on the say-so of the Home Secretary, based on evidence known only to him. The Daily Telegraph appears to blame the Human Rights Act, noting that this decision is ostensibly being taken because the Law Lords said that it was illegal to empower the Home Secretary only to detain foreigners arbitrarily. This view is advanced notwithstanding Lord Hoffman’s ditcta that applying such a equally rule to British citizens is no more defensible. But it is an absurd idea that such unlimited arbitrary power of arrest and detention is something the government reluctantly finds has been thrust upon it. On the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I am tempted to wonder about the timing. Is this just a good day to bury bad news? Is it some kind of sick joke? Is the government double-daring libertarians to announce the beginning of the police state on the day we remember the ghastly outcome of arbitrary rule? Whatever the truth, it is a black day. For you to ask advice on the rules of love is no better than to ask advice on the rules of madness I do not know about you but I just hate those ‘year in review’ things that clog up the TV and the internet at this time of year. And now for something completely different. 1 Jan 2004: The year started with a party Oh, and some good and bad things happened in Iraq, some guy got elected in the US and some other stuff happened in some other places. Michael Howard’s Conservative Party is planning a U-turn over identity cards – but not until after the General Election. According to a senior Conservative Party MP, the plan is to support ID cards at present in order to look tough on law and order, but they will drop support on ‘practical grounds’ when public opinion edges away. Cynically, Michael Howard’s office has already drawn up plans to flip-flop in the summer. I believe this is called ‘conviction politics’.
Lord Hoffman’s opinion in A(FC) and others (FC) (Appellants) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent), also reported by the BBC. |
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