Are We Still a Free People?

Let’s just run through a few things shall we? In recent years we have had the European Arrest Warrant, which allows someone to be picked up and extradited for something that is not a crime in the UK. Xenophobia for example....this is a crime in some EU countries and is specifically one of the offenses to which the EU warrant applies.

In theory, my stating that "I hate Frenchies" (in fact, given the real meaning of xenophobia, I fear Frenchies) is an offense for which the rozzers can come round, pick me up, stick me on a plane and send me to France to face charges.  That is, send me off to a place with no Habeus Corpus, trial by jury or many of the other things that constitute what we regard as a fair trial. That this blog  can be read in France means that the words have been published there. I have no appeal against this, no route or method in the English courts of asking for the evidence, arguing the case or anything else. I am simply delivered up to a foreign jurisdiction for them to do as they want.

We have had the Civil Contingencies Act, whereby any Minister, on the say so of that Minister, can lay aside any law they desire. Confiscation of property (with or without compensation), limitations of free movement, in times of emergency, that emergency needing only a Minister to say it is for it to be so. This is not an EU matter, this is purely home grown. BTW, this is justified by the War on Terror....but the actual Act includes the phrase "environmental emergency" and as we know, Sir David King, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government has stated that climate change is a greater threat than terrorism. Join that up and failure to reach the Kyoto targets becomes justification for confiscation of everything one owns. It is not for nothing that this law has been compared to the Nazi’s Enabling Act.

We have a Bill currently before the House to create a National ID Card system. Not content with that, there will be a network of scanners around the country, all linked into a central database, allowing our daily activities to be monitored. The cards will have biometric identification on them, as will the dbase, things like iris patterns. We also have the world’s most extensive CCTV network.....how long before the two are joined and the State is able to monitor your wander down the street?

We have a Home Secretary who has been told by the courts that locking foreigners up and denying them their right to trial is illegal. The basic presumption is that one must either be tried and convicted, or be being held on remand while that process is put in train, for it to be allowable for the State to lock you up. His reaction on being told that foreigners have the same rights as natives was, quite amazingly, to remove that right for natives. Quite. The most basic foundation of the relationship between citizen and state, that of the right to trial, Habeus Corpus and all the rest, has been altered. It is seriously proposed that the Home Secretary should be allowed to intern anyone at all, on no evidence that he has to reveal (and thus can be argued against), for as long as he wishes. We all know that miscarriages of justice happen, the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four being examples, even when there is an open system with judges, juries and the like. We’ll never know under the new system as no one will ever have to tell us.

While these two, ID cards and the abolition of Habeus Corpus are home grown, it is interesting to note that (almost) all of our EU colleagues have the former and do not have the latter. Only the most cynical of paranoids could possibly believe that this is part of a long term harmonisation project.

Just to add insult to injury the Fascists who currently rule us have decided to adopt the latest wheeze from our EU partners in this increasingly hated filled marriage.

Ministers have been criticised for backing European Union plans to allow police to raid the homes of people not suspected of breaking British law.
The proposal is still being negotiated in the EU and is not expected to become law for some time. But the Home Office has angered the Commons European scrutiny committee by disclosing that it is not opposed to the principle of the police executing a search warrant in connection with conduct that would be legal in Britain.

So now, going back to the above example of me dissing the Frogs, (and there is an interesting wrinkle to this in the new constitution. It is clearly stated that nationality will not be considered in any test as to whether an offense has been committed. It’s a basic principle, that all EU citizens, whatever their nationality, must be treated similarly. Now, if a Frenchman can say "I hate Frogs", something that would not only be a startling outbreak of good sense but also clearly not xenophobia, then an Englishman must be able to say the same.) the French police can now force the British police to knock my door down, confiscate my computer and then hold it for however long they wish. And I cannot even argue about the search warrant for, given that xenophobia is not a crime in England, there are no grounds for me to be able to object.

All of this is happening in a system where, if you remember Bernard Connelly, the highest court in the system has said that criticism of the EU  can be curtailed without it being a breach of free speech, in much the same way that restrictions on blasphemy are not a restriction of free speech.

What a free and happy land we are building. Anyone surprised that I think we should get out now while we still can?