Via Mr Civil Libertarian, my attention is drawn to the latest piece of rampant cockwaffle from Tom Harris.
Just read the Telegraph’s splash. Any minister who puts civil liberties ahead of security should be in student politics, not government.
I have noticed on occasion that fellow libertarian folk tend to look more kindly on this man than others of his persuasion. He is generally regarded as being better than the rest of the Labour rabble. Why, I’m not sure. After all, all that can be said about him is that on occasion he is slightly less awful, which is a relative thing and hardly an endorsement. He was at the centre of the worst government in living memory, one that systematically undermined our civil liberties on the basis of what can only be (kindly) described as student union politics on steroids. For him to therefore suggest that civil liberties trumps security as being student union politics is pretty rich.
Mr Civil Libertarian has remarked at some length as to why Harris’ preposition is wrong, so I won’t go there. Merely, I would make some observations of my own.
One of the things terrorist are attacking is our way of life – our civil liberties. For ministers, therefore, to rescind those liberties is to do the terrorists’ job for them. To collude, to collaborate, to betray. The best weapon against those who would destroy our liberties is to maintain them whatever the threat.
Then, one wonders, what is the security balance involved anyway. What are civil liberties?
Freedom of speech, freedom association, freedom of (and from) religion, freedom of assembly and protest, the right to privacy, the right to a fair trial by one’s peers. How, precisely, does curtailing these increase security? How does preventing a lone woman reading out the names of the dead by the Cenotaph stop bad people bombing us? Actually as an aside, the strict controls around parliament aren’t to protect us, they are to protect the brigands within. There’s an argument to be made, perhaps, that blowing them up would be doing us all a favour. How does spying on all our emails help security? When looking for a needle in a haystack, building a bigger haystack is probably not the best response. Surveillance of targeted individuals on the basis of intelligence is one thing – and is okay – but systematically treating all citizens as potential criminals and terrorists is not and doesn’t help. Creating a “them and us” divide between the police and the policed corrodes the trust between the two.
To suggest, as Harris does, that our civil liberties are in some way a threat to our security tells us much about him. He favours control orders – putting people under house arrest. Look, if there is evidence of criminal behaviour, put them on trial. Ah, but, they don’t because the intercept evidence is not allowed in a court. The obvious answer is to make such evidence allowable and then have a trial, not to lock people up indefinitely without recourse to the evidence against them. That Harris is in favour of such behaviour tells us for one thing that he was never fit to be in government – and if he really is one of the better ones, then what does that say about the rest of them? What he is doing here is indulging in the populist – and easy – approach to liberty. Government may take it away on a whim, using terrorism as an excuse, because the balance must be security then liberty, thrown like crumbs from a leftover meal dispensed at the whim of our overlords in parliament if we are lucky, and in any clash, security takes precedence. This, despite the wise words of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was right and still is. Harris is wrong, hopelessly and dangerously wrong. He is an apologist for totalitarian state control over our lives and uses the veneer of democracy to legitimise his control freakery.
Thank goodness he is no longer in government. Although I cannot improve on Mr Civil Libertarian’s final paragraph as it says it all:
Tommy, your entire role is to protect our freedoms. You, as are all your friends, are utterly failing to do this. Some will insist it’s just a question of getting “the right people” in your seats; myself, I say the only way we’re going to protect our freedoms is by abolishing your job altogether.
Quite.
Ta muchly for the linky love!
They prob make our soldiers go through airport security to and from Afghanistan/lraq
Far-fetched? No, the TSA have done it to the American soldiers.
One of the things terrorist are attacking is our way of life – our civil liberties. For ministers, therefore, to rescind those liberties is to do the terrorists’ job for them. To collude, to collaborate, to betray. The best weapon against those who would destroy our liberties is to maintain them whatever the threat.
Yes but it’s not the game plan, is it?
I guess some may think he’s better because he speaks more openly, thus revealing his authoritarian tendencies. His views are based a belief that he will never be the target of the police state. I’m sure he’d start screeching about civil liberties if he found himself on the receiving end.
Much like those who complained bitterly when they were caught with their hands in the till and didn’t want to have to face a criminal prosecution for stealing. They think they are better than us. In reality, they are scum and as Mr Civil Lib points out, they are the reason we have conflicts that foster terrorism in the first place. Do away with politicians and the world would be a better place.
Agreed. As I said at Mr C V’s, I think what Tom Harris meant is:
“When I was a student, I used to care about civil liberties. Now I don’t.”
“That Harris is in favour of such behaviour tells us for one thing that he was never fit to be in government”
This, to me, nails it…and him.
Well if you read http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2010/10/25/the-case-for-the-defence you’ll see that Harris is little more than an authoritarian Tory, who is ‘intensely relaxed’ about people getting very rich and who thinks that the way to deal with poor people is to hector them and cut their benefits rather than actually provide work for them. I’d say he was in the wrong party, but then nowadays Labour is indistinguishable from the Tories on most policies and what differences there are derive from strategic considerations rather than matters of ideology. The Coalition may appear more positive for civil liberties now, but they are already attacking the civil liberties of benefit claimants by surveillance that assumes that all of them are guilty of fraud. By 2015 it will have developed the infrastructure for full spectrum surveillance of of all our electronic traffic. The new boss is the same as the old boss.
Well, quite. I have mentioned the new boss being much like the old boss myself recently. Last May, given the options, a change meant at least getting rid of the incumbents and a brief period while the new ones got their feet under the table.
Had I been in Bristol, I would have voted Tory as it was the best means of ridding us of Roger Berry – seeing him lose his seat would have been worth it. As it turned out, I couldn’t vote and he lost anyway, so I was able to enjoy the moment nonetheless.
The last part of Stephens first sentence leads me to ask you how the job hunting is going LR.
Yer scroungin’ layabout that yer are! 😉
Stephen makes a very good point here reminding me of a chap I saw on the local news a few months back. Not the sharpest tool in the box, but had always managed to get himself work and had decent references. He had been looking for work for 18 months.
One comment he made was superb. It went along the lines of: “All them that call us idle and scroungers and cheats – I hope they end up out of work for 18 months or more. That’s just what folk like them need. I really hope it happens to them.”
Had an interview yesterday and have got some temporary work with the Post office over the Christmas period.
I seem to get interviews okay, but getting beyond that seems to be the difficulty. Not sure if I’m doing it wrong – being out of practice and all that.
All that said, if I do get the one I went to yesterday, it’s part time working from home (health and safety inspections of work places for work experience placements), so I could look at trying to kick start the self employed stuff with that as a fall-back.
We will see…
The chap on the news is right, though. I have always had a strong work ethic and my situation is outside my control. My not working is not as a consequence of not trying.
The chap on the news is right, though. I have always had a strong work ethic and my situation is outside my control. My not working is not as a consequence of not trying
EXACTLY! The vast majority of unemployed people are in your category. I find the assumption that substantial numbers of benefit claimants are ‘workshy’ to be profoundly offensive. Obviously there will be a small proportion of people who take the piss, but we shouldn’t start out with the assumption that most are like that. And when the methods used to root out the small number of piss-takers affects adversely the vast majority of claimants, that is immoral. Unfortunately that is that situation that has been going on for a long time.