"""In other words, leaving aside my own feelings on the issue (which are, pretty much, that I'm more bothered about my rights not to be threatened by terrorists than the rights of the few people who might unjustly lose a few weeks of liberty - for which, under this new legislation, they would be compensated, btw) - what is the point, exactly?""

1. That's a pretty cold self centred attitude usually attributed by members of this forum to those heartless, power mad Tories they all detest so much.

2. Those FEW people whom you dismiss so carelessly, are human beings with lives, jobs, and families, and I'm reasonably sure that the majority of them would care more about YOUR rights than you do about THEIRS.

3. How DO you compensate somebody who has been wrongly arrested, held for several weeks, probably incommunicado except (possibly) for a legal representative, and then set loose without apology or explanation?

Money?.......I don't think that'll do it, especially if the mean B*****ds dish out the kind of cash they pay jurors."


The few people I'm talking about are the very few people who are likely to be picked up by the police under suspicion of terrorist activities and detained for more than 28 days. It's unlikely to happen very often (probably less often than the chances you posit for the terrorist attack, although I have friends who have been affected by these at first hand and I've been within hearing range of at least two bombs in the past) and I have no more idea than you do whether these few people are likely to be nice cuddly civil rights activists or concerned for my well-being. That's immaterial. We also have no definite way of knowing just how many possible terrorist incidents have been de-activated by our security forces, but I'm prepared to believe that there may have been a few, and if Gordon Brown is indeed passionate about extending the 28 day limit despite the consequences for his already damaged public image I suspect he has reason to be so. Yes, indeed it would be a tragedy if they were to detain innocent people for no good reason, but according to the legislation proposed the compensation payable would be £3,000 a day. Not good enough of course if you lose your job or your partner but a hell of a lot better than it might be and one hell of an incentive for the security forces to sort out the evidence one way or another.

I may be naive and trusting, but after going through more security checks myself in the past couple of years than most on this forum (because of the frequency of the work I've done in prisons)I have concluded that I personally would far rather have an ID card than have to continually complete forms for CRB and other security clearances. I remain convinced that for those of us with nothing to hide, there is very little to fear. I have never been prevented from doing anything I wanted to do or say and my only public problems have been to do with the tabloid press rather than public officials. The same goes, incidentally, for my far more politically active brother (big brother, as it happens) who has had more problems with the Daily Mail than with the security chaps.

Self-centred? Who isn't? I've worked with children who were traumatised by the bombings on the Isle of Dogs, who had their windows blown out by the blast and who went slightly loopy for quite a while afterwards when any loud noises came into the school playground. I've been a Samaritan volunteer dealing with members of the public and members of the armed forces who have experienced nasty deaths at close quarters. I think I'm unlikely these days to have my daily routine interrupted by terrorism, living on a fairly quiet hill in Wales, but I reserve the right to be concerned for other people. Locking some suspects up for six weeks, while clearly not a good procedure, is still not the same as shooting them, blowing them up or destroying their homes.

But I'm glad we agree that David Davis is an idiot.

Anne