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UK Can Now Hold People Without Charge For 42 Days
the_leander writes "Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days. There is talk of compensation packages available for the falsely accused. The chances of you getting that money however are slim to none, lets not forget, this is the same country that charges prisoners who have been falsely accused for bed and boarding costs."
... where it's currently 6+ years and counting.
Oh wait, I forgot - they're not being held by the police, and they're not actually in America. My bad.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
We don't need terrorists anymore, we are doing their job for them. Thanks Gordon.
As mentioned above, the bill has to make it through the house of lords yet, and since the Lords are usually the "conscience" of the legal process in the UK (weird, but true), it's highly unlikely to make it.
And, of course, 42 days in police custody, still with all human-rights privileges and in a standard jail subject to standard civilian law is a significantly better deal than several years in a foreign military jail, with questionable legal status, and subject to military law and "process". I very very much doubt these suspects, held for 42 days maximum, will be tortured and humiliated, either.
In other words, glass-house-dwellers, throw no stones...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
To hell with facts, let's just post grossly misrepresented stories. The police *can't* hold terror suspects for 42 days, until this is passed by the House of Lords, which is unlikely to happen.
/. got similar stories in the US so utterly wrong, for example if some congressman from Bumfuck, Iowa proposed the death penalty for people caught with more than 1g of cannabis, and /. reported it as a huge roundup and mass execution of dope smokers.
I could understand it if
Of course, it's posted by samzenpus, who seems to have a particular dislike of the UK.
As if that'd make any difference. It's the game that's the problem, not the players. Time to leave this country I think. Anyone recommend a decent country that respects human rights, has sensible drug legislation, and fast, cheapish internet connections?
....as the Bill in question has only been passed by the House of Commons. It's got to go before the House of Lords yet. Many commentators think it is not going to do too well there.
However there are still 315 people who really should be held for 28 days without charge. Are there enough truely patriotic police to do this though.
Ah yes, our fine tradition of having decisions by the people we elect overturned by a bunch of unelected lords.
Nope, nothing wrong with our system at all. Those unelected lords are there precisely to stop bad (but popular) laws from being passed.
No fair - the ones sent to Australia were already charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced; and at least they were still in the Commonwealth & subject to British/colonial law & legal process.
Only barbarians would ship their alleged criminals to some overseas outpost then claim they had no recourse to the laws of the country...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
"Guantanamo bay"
or how about: "Abu Ghraib"
The US certainly has no moral high ground. They rape, torture, and sexually humiliate *suspected* terrorists, in a foreign land, out of sight of the people because they're so ashamed of what they do in the people's name.
If (I'm not, but *if*) I was a suspected terrorist, I'd take 42 days maximum in a standard UK jail, held under standard UK law by standard UK law-enforcement over indefinite detainment in a foreign military prison, with no legal status, and denied the right of habeus corpus. I'd prefer to be jailed in the UK rather than tortured and sexually abused by the US military.
Just saying. I continue to hope that the American people abhor and remove this stain on their countries honour, but it seems to be getting worse, not better.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I prefer to think of it as our fine tradition of having legislation sanity checked by a bunch of people who aren't primarily motivated by re-election and "making their place in history".
Except, of course, the bill has to get through the Lords. Which it almost certainly won't. Even Lord Goldsmith (ex attorney general, promoted to Lords) is against it.
Then it has to be voted on again by the Commons - which could be in a few months time. Only then will it become law (ignoring formality royal assent, and possible rare use of Parliament Act).
Who knows what Brown's ability to force sick MPs into the house to vote, and what deals N. Ireland MPs will insist upon then?
I honestly think a few months down the line, when it comes to the crunch, the government could loose this, and force a vote of no confidence vote on Brown.
In any case UK is still a way off from 42 day detention......
echo $SIGNATURE
Wasn't Jose Padilla held without charges for a number of years in South Carolina?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The Tories opposed it because they need contentious issues to argue over, not because they wouldn't do it themselves.
Note that they also argue against the governments attempts to have private health bosses take over failing hospitals, even though it was the Tories who started the privatisation of publicly owned services in the first place.
Personally I don't think there's much difference between the Labour Party and the Conservatives any more. That's no big deal, in spite of what whichever one isn't in power says about the others failings, they end up doing almost exactly the same things.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
You cite three persons all a product of the 20th Century - the House of Lords has been a part of British Parliament since 1295. It seems to have done us well in the past 713 years....
The Lords are only allowed to send Bills back to the Commons twice. They have no power other than to force debate and thought. It's not part of the "unwritten constitution", it's the Parliament Acts of 1911(Liberal) and 1949(Labour). The British constitution is mostly written, it's just written all over the place.
I would ask the grandparent how much he would like to be imprisoned for a month and ten days, only to be dumped back on the streets having no idea of why, no legal right to be told why and a scant chance of limited compensation. Can you imagine the effect on your family, your job, your reputation? This allows the state to destroy individuals with only limited checks and balances.
There isn't a day now where I don't thank god for the House of Lords injecting, unbelievably, some sanity into Parliament.
I think 'unwritten' is self deprecation or cynicism. It's true in the sense that there isn't one document with a small set of authors that describes the British system. That doesn't mean that you can piece together a constitution from the sources you descibe though. Mind you that constitution would be very complex and not at all logical.
Though as a Tory and programmer I think it's like a very old piece of code which has been patched for a long time, hard to understand but for good reasons. Certainly the English system has a lot of staying power. It's been tested by much worse things than the current Islamist threat and it has survived. Other simpler systems might not be as lucky.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It's been hardly 60 years since millions died fighting for freedom. Does there have to be a genocide every three generations?
Those two things will take you about 20 minutes, and when you've done em you can come back here and rant along with me, with a new-found sense of entitlement and smug self-satisfaction at your personal involvement in the issue. Hey it works for me.
So, yeah, Labour MPs who voted for this disgraceful attack on fundamental rights we've had since Runnymede ought to be utterly ashamed of themselves; they've revealed that they are unprincipled bunch of spineless tossers, and I think there's a line about weasel's and god's clean air from Blackadder that springs to mind, too. Fuck Brown, and fuck this government, too. I've even crossed a personal rubicon whereby I now think a Tory govt would be preferable, something I never thought I'd say.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If there is enough evidence to convince a judge to "sign off" on keeping the (un)accused locked up, surely there must be enough evidence to charge him with some offence. Four weeks locked up with no charge already seems a brutal denial of justice to me.
Christopher Harrison
Remember the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP Act)?
It was supposed to be used against terrorists and organised crime but is now finding use against minor criminals such as litter droppers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm
In one memorable case, a council invoked it to spy on a family to see if they lived close enough to the school they wanted their child to attend.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7341179.stm
I have no confidence that this new power to hold people without charge will be restricted to circumstances where it is absolutely required. The actual text of the act is remarkably vague on when and how it should be applied.
Problem is that won't stop it.
Remember the Fox Hunting Ban? The House of Lords blocked the ban, and Tony B.Liar pushed it through anyway on the crest of a popular mandate - it was an election promise, it was a class issue, the lords had only blocked it cos' they were all evil nasty fox hunters etc...
But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. We handed him a precedent to sweep aside the objections of the only body that could act as a brake on his ambitions. And paid the price years later when he took us into an illegal war - a price that is still being paid. What makes you think that Tony's understudy is going to hesitate for a moment to use the same power to force his own pet projects through?
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
I dunno, when you look at the bill in detail, it seems rather, well, moderate.
It's the old "boiling a frog" situation. This government continually chips away at civil liberties, a little at a time. It's two steps forward, one step back, but it's still a steady march towards authoritarianism.
We keep being told there is overwhelming public support for this but I'm yet to meet anyone who thinks it's a good idea. I'd like to know *exactly* wat the question was the government asked that go such a high support rate. I'm guessing based on previous ones they'e weasled their way with it was "Would you support 42 days if we could guarantee your safety from all future attacks and promise only to detain proper terrorists not innocent people?'
The question that showed people apparantly supporting the ID card was along the same lines.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The House of Lords aren't "rulers". They don't even have any power to prevent the House of Commons from passing a law - the Parliament Act of 1911 (and it's subsequent replacements) effectively took away the Lords power by asserting the supremacy of the Commons and allowing them to override the Lords at any point. It is considered bad form to do so without trying to address the concerns raised by the Lords and voting on an act again in both chambers, and so it's only been used a handful of times since 1911, but it's up to the Commons.
Even before the Parliament Act the Lords had for a long time had their powers severely restricted, as the governments of the time tended to have ways of forcing the Lords into submission on more than one occasion. The Parliament Act itself was passed, after having previously been rejected by the Lords, by getting George V to agree to create a large number of new liberal peers (that would then get seats in the Lords) to essentially stack the Lords in favor of the Parliament Act.
We can argue about the benefit of having a non-elected chamber, but as non-elected chambers go, comparing the House of Lords to despotic rulers is at best ignorant.
69% of the UK population in favour of 42 days detention without charge - if you believe the results of a YouGov Poll (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2107480/42-day-terror-detention-British-public-overwhelmingly-in-favour-,-poll-shows.html)
Which brings us back to the point that one of the benefits of the House of Lords is that it's populated by people who don't listen to public opinion.
Oh balls. First of all, you should be talking about the legislative system, not the legal system. The people who write the laws, not the people who enforce them.
Secondly, you're wrong. I know of no persuasive evidence that any substantial number of Americans have "no respect" for the legal (or legislative) system. People have bitched about a do-nothing grandstanding Congress and an expensive legal system that is either (1) overly activist or (2) insufficiently moral (take your pick) in every year of my life since I noticed these things, which would be roughly in 1977 or so. And if you read any history, or just Mark Twain ("America has no native criminal class, excepting Congress") you'll realize they've been doing it for centuries.
Nevertheless, we generally obey the law, we generally serve on juries and believe the verdicts we deliver are just and will be implemented fairly, we mostly trust the police, and we generally return incumbents to office. We certainly love grumbling about politicians, like the weather, but our actions say we are not much less trusting than we've ever been.
Finally, a strong and healthy disrespect for legal authority is one of the fine principles on which this country was founded. We have always believed that We the People are the only true ultimate sovereign, and that we dole out bits of our authority to police, congressmen, and other such riff-raff with the same squinty-eyed distrust and caution as we dole out our cash to used-car dealers, ready to snatch it back at the slightest sign of fraud or abuse. That's as it should be. A powerful distrust of authority and power, however sweetly decorated with noble intentions, is one of the foundation stones of liberty.
True, and the uproar about how he managed to get the votes necessary may well scupper the bill at a re-reading. The point I was making is that due to the Parliment Act the House of Lords now has _no_ power to block a bill against a determined government, merely send it back twice for re-debate. That's it.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
69% of the UK population in favour of 42 days detention without charge - if you believe the results of a YouGov Poll
In other news, 69% of the population are so ignorant of history they forgot why the Magna Carta was so damned important, or probably even that the UK has a constitution (although it's not actually written in a single document... we have a rather more complex history than allows for that).
"NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right."
Sometimes you in the US are lucky.. you're still taught about your bill of rights, etc. so when the government seeks to overturn it you at least realize it's wrong.
From what I've seen of their reactions to things in the past, common sense. And it's a damn good thing as well, since the commons seems to have lost most of theirs in the battle to get themselves reelected.
Mmmm, I've been wondering about that myself. The beeb keep telling us "surveys" show how this is a popular measure, but I haven't heard any reference to which surveys, or who it was that commissioned them.
In any event, I'd love to know how the questions were phrased:
Something like that, I'll bet you....
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
This is the same Anne Widdecombe who said that her own boss, Michael Howard, "had something of the night about him" when he was Home Secretary.
Whatever that "something of the night" was, it seems to have been catching.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The people in the lords have many centuries experience between them. Some of them are getting a bit old, granted, but their experience is across just about every field of knowledge.
The advantage of the lords is that they are not looking over their shoulder to see whether their next action is going to see them voted out at the next election. They can be much more confident about debating the issues rather than spouting popular rants.
At the risk of Godwin-ing this post, Hitler was originally elected by popular vote.
America, Home of the Brave.
SAM: It's a refund... I'm afraid there was a mistake.
MRS. BUTTLE: Mistake?
SAM:(encouraged) Yes. Not my department... I'm only records. It seems that Mr. Buttle was overcharged by Information Retrieval. I don't think they usually make mistakes... but, er... I suppose we're all human.
SAM: Oh... what happened to the...? ...Actually, my bringing this here is rather unorthodox... Usually any payments are made through the central computer... but, er... there were certain difficulties, and rather than cause delay, we thought you might appreciate this now... it being Christmas.
MRS. BUTTLE: My husband's dead, isn't he?
SAM: Er... I assure you Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is always very scrupulous about following up and eradicating error. If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms.
MRS. BUTTLE: What have you done with his body?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Nonsense, that's the kind of stupid excuse you'd think people who gave a fuck about their rights wouldn't swallow.
No, you simply have a retarded attachment to your history that apparently outweighs the need for a Constitution (which you don't have, no matter how many times you crow that an loose assemblage of documents is a "constitution"). And the US constitution has proved such effective protection against the US government detaining people without trial, hasn't it? Remind me, how long have the GITMO detainees been there? How does it compare to 42 days?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?