then Britain may not be the best destination for you. We've got plenty of civil liberties problems:
- Labour is trying to introduce national ID cards with biometrics and a central database recording every time the card is checked
- There is a proposal to put a satellite tracking system in every car, for road toll purposes (or, inevitably, police purposes)
- We have more CCTV cameras than anywhere in the world
- We have more people's DNA on a police database than anywhere in the world - it can be taken from anyone arrested, even if they're never charged, or if they're found innocent
- Any offence, no matter how small, is now arrestable
- Any demonstration outside Parliament, Scotland Yard, Whitehall or Downing Street has to have prior police permission
- Labour has tried to get 90 day internment without trial, to restrict the right to a jury trial, to allow double jeopardy, and to make offensive remarks about religions illegal. All of these were eventually subject to a compromise law.
- Labour tried to pass a law which would have allowed ministers to alter many other laws without involving parliament. At the last moment, this was held up, and some other compromise is now under way.
There are probably more examples, but they all pile up so that you can't list them all in one go. The Labour Home Secretary, responsible for policing, prisons and security, is showing off how he's tougher and more illiberal than the Tories - and he's now being put forward as the possible next leader of the Labour party, and thus Prime Minister:
This must have been one of the most unpleasantly jingoistic, rightwing rabble-rousers a Labour conference has heard in quite a few years. This was Britishness as from the Millwall terraces. "No no-go areas," he boomed: "We will go where we please, we will discuss what we like." No fool, he's hard to fault on particulars: the poison is all in the sentiment and tone. How proudly he gloated that Cameron had found his policies too extreme. Indeed, if he was one of Cameron's team, that speech would have got him fired.
Reformed old communists have this in common: when they swing the other way, they always go that bit too far. They never take off their combat kit: the progressive social democratic gene is alien to their psyche. So there was nothing progressive about his performance yesterday.
Roy Hattersley will not be alone: his threat to shoot himself if Reid becomes leader could turn into a mass die-in of Labour supporters. But there was Tessa Jowell, first up within seconds to tell the BBC what a wonderful speech it was. Indeed, rhetorically it was a barn-stormer. So is this it, the last throw of the shrinking group of Blairites? Is this war, after all? No, take a deep breath. It probably isn't quite.
But it is a sign of something almost as depressing. I lost count of the number of times Reid used the word "leadership" in his tough, tough, tough speech, as he put his marker down to be first among possible challengers. So far it's just a threatening gesture from the bruiser lurking in the alleyway. It smacks of both bullying and cowardice: without the bottle for a fight, he will hang about flashing that stiletto under his coat, hoping Gordon trips up all by himself during the next excruciating months of uncertainty. Only then might Reid, more hyena than rottweiler, scavenge up his 44 nominations from MPs, only making a move if he senses a smell of death around the Brown camp.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1883659,00.html(Milwall is a football team with a reputation for violence among its supporters, who have a chant "Everybody hates us, we don't care")
And the alternative government to Labour is a Tory party led by an apparently 'nice' man - but his career before politics was in PR, and he's just as capable of lying and dissembling as Blair is. Elect him, and God knows whet we'd get.
Still sure you want to move back here?
I am single, though.
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