Melanie Phillips on the police state and its causes.

Quite an interesting article by Melanie Philips in yesterday's Mail and well worth a read.

To cut a long story short and I certainly recommend people read Melanie's article, but according to her- a wider culture of so called human rights legislation, anti-discrimination laws, political correctness etc. have helped play a role in laying the groundwork for a police state in the UK (although she herself doesn't yet like that term). She says:

"It may be thought a curious irony that the Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998 to tackle precisely the concerns expressed last weekend of a slide into tyranny - and yet liberty has been seriously eroded in the past decade.

In fact, this isn't curious at all. Although the campaigners would sooner cut off their hands than admit it, the one has followed directly from the other. The idea that human rights law expands freedom was always a serious mistake. It has the opposite effect."

It's a pretty interesting article, of course a lot of people know Melanie Phillips and either love her or hate her but I don't believe any serious conservative grass roots campaigners against the police state in the UK represents anything like the culture she describes, although others may do.

Sometimes I've referred to something like the European Court of Human Rights, not because I think it's necessarily ideal and that it would in an perfect world supersede national laws but because the system has been so skewed, become so entrenched and the whole thing such a mess now, and the UK such a damaged blot that's what's there currently in this big mess.

And even if the culture Melanie describes is historically on the right lines, things like the European Court of Human Rights also happen to be rebuking the national Labour regime over things like their vile DNA stock-piling.

Certainly though Melanie could well be correct about a lot of it as far as it goes. I think these things probably have helped create the framework for a lot of this, and loosely you might throw these things under the heading of internationalism, post World War II.

Organizations like Liberty advocate a culture of human rights and egalitarianism rather than freedom per se, and the media tend to do a good job of obscuring this and presenting a case about 'civil liberties and human rights'. And this has the implication that the notion of freedom must be bound to other concepts as a kind of intellectual taxation and must now be 'handed down' rather than something you just have with inalienable implications.

And actually in fact I would quite expect the media to advocate, or some organizations to play up to the very notions Melanie is complaining about. I.e to promote people who are anti-police state but somehow enveloped in a culture of political correctness or maybe pro-hate laws or have some flavor of that about them; having the effect to slightly dilute and distract from the the real message and the main issue people are fighting against. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

And certainly Melanie is absolutely correct to suggest that human rights, or in particular the culture that has now become associated with human rights should not be seen as any kind of a replacement for liberty and freedom.

I did see a leaflet for an event I think it was called 'Taking Liberties' off the top of my head (And I believe our friends at Irdial may have attended) and it listed Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell as main speakers on a panel. And I agree that they may not like the police state but they are also not necessarily representative shall we say but represent something else.

This isn't an issue to do with feminism or gay activism.

Of course sometimes we all have to find common ground on those issues that are serious and important with widespread implications and that's a good thing, and I don't believe that is incongruous to anything else, but certainly that must be without loosing sight of what those big issues are.

What Melanie didn't mention of course is this police state/surveillance culture is being cultivated in the United States and Europe too. I don't know if you can pick Britain out in that way other than it's way ahead of the others.

Labour's DNA stockpiling illegal

About Time. "The European Court of Human Rights has spoken with a strong and clear voice - retaining indefinitely the DNA and fingerprint records of unconvicted suspects is unlawful.

The 17 judges of Strasbourg's Grand Chamber were unanimous in their ruling, and they emphasised that the government must follow it - because on this issue it does not have much "margin of appreciation" or leeway.

The court said the UK was the only one of the 47 members of the Council of Europe to permit the "systematic and indefinite" retention of DNA samples and profiles from people who have been acquitted, though within the UK the arrangements apply only to suspects in England, Wales and Northern Ireland."

BBC

"The question is what impact will this have on fighting crime"

No that's not the question, but it's very telling that the BBC would like to propose it is. The question is why this didn't come to pass a long time ago, and quite why the UK government were hoping to get away with this in the long term and why the BBC have, generally speaking, chosen to support any illegitimate dehumanizing measure as long as it is 'for everyone' ?

Another big question is quite why the police have been allowed to stray in a very concerning direction across the board with a view to this and many other things.

Another question is why were at least a couple of judges extremely conspicuously coming out and talking up a mandataory national DNA database ? And why were people like Ian Blair talking up the sharing of this monstrosity with the rest of Europe, especially when it was fairly obvious that at some point it was going to have to, rightly have its wings severely clipped ?