2009: A bad year for UK civil liberties
The Guardian – The brass neck quote of 2009 comes from Jack Straw, the justice minister and one of the architects of the new democratic authoritarianism in Britain. On the eve of the Convention on Modern Liberty last February, he wrote, “I hope that in the final reckoning even some of our harshest critics will concede that this Labour government has done more than any before it to extend liberties and to constrain government.” Of course, there is no such thing as a final reckoning because the struggle between government and individual liberty, waged from one generation to the next, is endless; but at year’s end we can produce annual accounts, which in 2009 have two main headlines and, unsurprisingly, contradict Jack’s mischievous little fib. The first is that the government and enemies of liberty in the civil service have not lost their ambition to create a highly controlled and monitored society.
Ed – In bold is surely the best example of Orwellian double-speak that has ever been uttered by a politician.
Tags: big brother, Europe, human rights, The 10 Steps
