So finally they admit it (while no doubt hoping to bury it) – rendition flights did land in the UK. And the careful language that was noted in the non-denial denials (‘”We have found no evidence of detainees being rendered through the UK or overseas territory since 11 September 2001,” said Mr Straw’) proves to be just as expected. Of course you found no evidence you devious cretin – you never looked for any. And as for “we understand our obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture”, I can only say that the egregious Mr Straw (and who says names are not destiny?) and the Foreign Office seem to have a very idiosyncratic conception of what those obligations are.

Meanwhile, surely this means that ‘Buff’ Hoon has been caught lying to Parliament? It’s hard to see how else you could categorise the statement (which as far as I can see was made to MPs) that “the government had since provided the full facts and had nothing to hide”.

So when the leaked memo said there ‘could be more’ than the 2 flights in 1998 they weren’t joking. At least 73 more in fact. I suppose it isn’t suprising that people who can overlook the odd extra £14 million in the accounts (or not notice that a £400,000 mortgage has been paid off) could easily miss 73 flights taking people off to be tortured abroad. Quite understandable.

Given the way this sort of thing tends to dribble out, it does make you wonder how many more than 73 there have really been.

‘Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’
- George Orwell (1903 – 1950)

It seems that not telling colleagues and partners about whacking great sums of money you’ve received (whether by gift, loan or bribe) is quite the pattern in the modern (how they love that word) Labour Party*. But peerages aren’t for sale, oh dear me, no. Of course not. And I am just back from a trip to Alpha Centauri.

Oh and by the way, isn’t there a bit of a contradiction between “Mr Blair also said that he wanted to renounce the right personally to nominate people for honours” and “Mr Blair would also retain the right to nominate a small number of peers“. Errrm, call me an old-fashioned logician, but I don’t see how you square that circle. Has he really reached the stage when he can’t even tell when he’s lying in public?

*It does make one wonder about Jack Dromey’s qualifications as party treasurer if he didn’t notice an extra £14 million in the accounts.

The king has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent Swarms of Officers to harass our People and eat out their substance.
U.S. Declaration of Independence

Apropos of nothing at all, a trip to Penrith looks surprisingly appealing…

The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.
Justice Louis Brandeis

Some people apparently find nothing unusual in a £344,000 gift.

Others meanwhile – well, I don’t need to spell it out.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

The Peter Hitchens programme on Channel 4 last night was interesting – it’s good to see this issues get some mainstream(-ish) airing – but not really anything new. It was instructive, for example, to see the the country’s chief law officer, the Lord Chancellor Charlie “any pal of Tony’s can get to be a minister” Falconer, is as ignorant of what is meant by civil liberties as his boss – or cares as little for them. His suggestion that restrictions on liberty were justified if they were at some point to bring to light evidence of a possible terrorist crime was frankly mind-boggling in its inanity. Is that honestly the best argument he’s got? Here’s a hint Charlie: destroying the centuries of legal tradition that lie at the root of our way of life on the basis of a hypothetical is at the very least pretty stupid. For a trained lawyer to do so amounts to professional incompetence on an epic scale. I thought the law was about evidence – pious hope is supposed to be the province of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps he’s in the wrong job.

The case studies that Hitchens used were disturbing:

• the train spotter harassed and searched in public (on a station platform) by transport police;
• the Christian couple reported by a council minion and then threatened with prosecution for ‘hate crime’ for their – admittedly unfashionable – beliefs;
• the student whose fingerprints were linked to a theft from a post box – because he had written and posted the letters which were part of the evidence – all because his prints were held on file even though he had never been charged with or convicted of any offence;
• the schoolboy arrested, DNA-swabbed, then released – all because he was a witness to a crime – and his DNA, of course, remains on file;
• the Labour peer (and former senior policeman) threatened by the North Wales police;
• and of course the woman convicted for reading a list of names by the Cenotaph.

These are merely the tip of the iceberg, and there is a case to be made that this sort of thing represents a serious and worrying change in the role of the police, from being the servant of the public charged with preventing and detecting crime, to agents of the state with a role in policing what people say and think. There is also a clear indication that there are many, both in public authorities and in the various police forces (the real plods and the pseudo-plods) who just like throwing their weight around. This, in itself is nothing new. What is new is the extent of the opportunities for such abuse, and the support which it receives from government; that we seem to have a government which is more and more concerned with overseeing and controlling citizens’ speech and thought, while leaving the victims of crime increasingly unprotected; and obsessed with monitoring and recording every movement, every transaction, of every one of us. In effect, that the role of the police is gradually becoming less and less one of protecting the citizens against criminals, and more and more about protecting the state. That should worry everybody.

Give me liberty to know, to think, to believe, and utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties.
John Milton

On further reflection, I am moved to wonder whether certain Labour bloggers (many of the denizens of Harry’s Place spring immediately to mind, amongst others) would have been as outspoken in their support of the mayor of London, if said mayor had happened to be a Tory?

Whatever, I still think it’s outrageous that a board explicitly set up to investigate corruption actually ends up doing stuff like this. Ourageous, but somehow unsurprising.

But the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
Edmund Burke, Letter to Sheriffs (II 249)

…is now up and running. Visit. Register. Contribute. This country needs a new constitutional settlement to protect liberty, rescue democracy and preserve freedom – to make politics relevant by making participation have a point. And of course to breathe life back into the great British tradition of ‘just leave us the fuck alone, OK?’

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson

The PM’s mendacious maunderings on the subject of liberty have been adequately picked apart elsewhere (amongst others), so I’m not going to comment on that except to say that it is surprising to find a qualified lawyer so profoundly ignorant of the basics of their profession*. Instead I want to ask what it is that keeps people who oppose a party’s central policies campaigning and voting for them.

To talk of issues being treated as political footballs is a tired and worn out cliché. But what worries me more is the tendency of political party members (and even just supporters) to treat their parties as if they were football teams. That is to say, their party will receive their support no matter how crap it is, no matter what rubbish it is putting out. This sort of tribal loyalty is all very well when it comes to supporting one sporting team rather than another – supporting ‘my team’ because ‘I’ve always supported my team’ – but applying the same sort of unthinking loyalty in politics is frankly lazy, stupid and dangerous.

Yet that is exactly how many, perhaps most, party members and supporters (of all parties) behave towards their objects of their loyalty – unthinking devotion. And I don’t mean that there is a consciously thought-out decision that “I like policies A and B, but dislike C and D, yet on the whole A and B are more important, so they get my vote.” That at least would be some kind of rational process. I mean the thinking that goes, “C and D are really important, but more important still is that no other party should win – even though the other parties oppose C and D as well.” The essentially bizarre idea that you can campaign against bad policies, but should still support the party proposing them, because your party winning outweighs all other considerations.

Well the political process is just a little more important than football (though obviously not as measured by time on TV), and it’s not who wins power that matters, it’s what they do with it. It should be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

*And even more surprising that the country’s top law officer seems equally ill-informed.

Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.
Aristotle

Despite the fact that she was ousted by an internal Tory coup more than fifteen years ago, the spectre of Thatcher still haunts many on the left. This ill-remembered bogey providing a justification for many for their continuing to support the illiberal Labour leadership. It seems that as far as they are concerned the mere mention of “Thatcher” trumps all arguments about liberty and public policy. I’m sure there must be a variant on Godwin’s Law here (as in, “in any argument in a UK forum about civil liberties, the probability of “Thatcher” being presented in the belief it is an unassailable argument-clincher rapidly approaches 1″).

It is all rather pathetic. After all, even if Thatcher had been as evil as Hitler, and her Tory government as wicked as the Nazis – that still wouldn’t make the current government any better. It’s rather like Dunbar being allegedly the driest place in Scotland (rainfall-wise – it has a lot of pubs) – one’s immediate reaction is, “So what? That only puts it on a par with being the wettest place in the Sahara.”

But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt,
And by thir vices brought to servitude,
Then to love Bondage more then Liberty,
Bondage with ease then strenuous liberty;
Samson Agonistes, John Milton

Now I know that Ken Livingstone is a bit of a prat. Well, maybe quite a lot of a prat. But suspended for four weeks for being rude to a tabloid journalist? Ridiculous.

It’s another example of mission creep in the application of laws. When the Standards Panel system was set up under the Local Government Act 2000 I suspect that most thought it would be dealing with serious accusations of financial misdeeds and such like. After all, that’s what the government said at the time. Instead it has been used as a means of harassing political opponents. Or bizarrely persuading people to harass themselves (I do find this very odd).

Meanwhile, some at least in the Labour Party have realised this is all frankly crazy. In response the standards board went into Scottish child mode (as in “It wasnae me – he made me dae it”).

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.
Woodrow Wilson