Blogging has been light this past few days. Firstly a severe bout of hay fever laid me low. For the first time in my life, I sought medical advice. Normally, I just take the anti-histamine and get on with life. After a week of increasingly severe symptoms, I realised that this method was not working. That was followed by our phone line going dead. It is at times like this when you realise just how much the Internet has become apart of your life. Notes for an article I’m planning? Backed up on-line. Banking? On-line. Shopping? On-line. Then there was that eBay auction I had coming to an end on Sunday…
Still, despite BT telling us that the line wouldn’t be up and running until Wednesday, we have a connection, so I’m making the most of it…
The first thing to hit me between the eyes was the “papers please” story that is, quite rightly being roundly criticised by just about everyone:
Government plans for new police powers to stop and question people were greeted with a barrage of criticism yesterday, after it emerged that senior police officers had neither requested the change nor been consulted. The Home Office confirmed that the power would be included in a counterterrorism bill to be announced in early June.
This is another example of the thoroughly disreputable and evil administration that beleagures this country seeking to treat the population like suspects. Of course the police had not asked for these powers. That is because they have no need of them. The police already have the right to question people when conducting an investigation and they expect people to respond appropriately as is their civic duty. This change – apart from being typical of New Labour’s making policy by headline policy – undermines that goodwill by seeking to criminalise failure to cooperate. It is neither necessary nor desirable.
But the vehemence and breadth of criticism led Home Office ministers to signal a willingness to compromise after the idea was also attacked by MPs, civil liberties and Muslim groups as unnecessary and harmful.
Well, quite. You would have to be more dense than a chunk of lignumvitae not to realise that this is unnecessary, unreasonable and an outrageous assault on civil liberties, indeed, the nasty, brutish, Stalinist home secretary; that evil thug John Reid and his nasty little lap dog, the truly repugnant Tony McNulty seem oblivious to what they are proposing… Or do they?
The new powers, contained in a leaked letter from the counter-terrorism minister, Tony McNulty, to Tony Blair, would make it an offence punishable with a £5,000 fine for a person to withhold their identity or refuse to answer questions. He wrote: “Arguably one of the weaknesses of [stop and search] is that although it enables a search of an individual, it does not enable a police officer to ask that individual who they are or where they are going.”
There you have it; compulsory identity cards. Despite any assurances uttered by this government, their plan all along has been to turn this into a “papers please” state, one where an official may demand to know who we are, and we will be required to produce suitable evidence on pain of prosecution. No, carrying ID cards may not actually be a requirement of the identity cards act; they are too cunning for that, they will simply make it a defacto requirement with moves such as this one. But, then, what do you expect when a bunch of un-reconstituted Stalinists grab the reins of power?