Recess Monkey Nails It.

On the subject of the 90 day lock up (as Chicky Boy noted, broken bones heal in 42 days, so plenty of time for inventive questioning):

I work on the assumption that you should never give a current government a power if you wouldn't trust a previous government with it. Under Thatcher, my dear Mum was arrested for beating up six police officers, who went to trial and gave radically different accounts of the event (because it wasn't true).

On being accused, while pummelling six defenceless police officers, of screaming "Leave him alone you bastards, he ain't done nuffink!" (they happened to be giving a man a good kicking at the time) my mother told the Judge in her finest Maidstone Girls Grammar School RP, "Well, your honour, I wouldn't call a police officer a bastard to his face and I certainly wouldn't use a double negative under any circumstances". And the case was thrown out of court with an apology and costs paid.

But if Maggie had had the powers that Charles Clarke is now seeking? Would my mother have spent three months in prison before having her case dismissed? Maybe a bit of porridge would have done her good.

Here’s an even better test of whether a government should have a specific power. If, come the revolution, some right wing bastard like myself were to take the reins of power whould you want some right wing bastard like myself to have that power over you?

After all, all we’ve got to do is get Adrian Flook back into Parliament and next Tory Prime Minister but three and I’ll be the Lord Chancellor (under an ancient practice known as Falconeration).