POLICING THE STATE?

07-02-2007

The leader of Birmingham's Moslems warned on this site last week that modern Britain was starting to resemble pre-war Nazi Germany; and now the Anglican Bishop of York haswarned that Britain is on the verge of becoming a police state. Derrick Campbell offers his verdict.

At last the church has woken up to something the the rest of us have been worried about for the last ten years…a society that is so policed, that the dividing line between our civil liberties and the need to protect us against the ‘bad guys', who are threatening to over take this country and change our way of life (sound familiar…go back to the Romans, Vikings, Saxons and other barbarians throughout history), is here.

It seems that the prophetic utterances of George Orwell's animal farm have now been realized.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu : "If you detain people, you must have good enough reason for detaining them."

Seems a fair policy you might think, but of course comments follow the Home Secretary's recent move to extend custody limits for suspects. The limit is currently 28 days for those suspected of terrorism, without charge, but John Reid wants 70 days.

Originally the government attempted to introduce a 90 day limit, but failed in 2005, opposed by Tories, Lib Democrats and some Labour MPs.

Thank God for common sense!

But it doesn't end there. If statistics are to be believed, we are captured on average on CCTV 3,000 per day….can anybody tell me why??

Long gone are the days of one being presumed innocent until proven guilty…clearly we are all suspects. There are plenty of people who say, “if you have nothing to hide you should not worry”…well…I have nothing to hide, but feel affronted to know that I cannot even scratch where the sun don't shine anymore, without it being watched by Big Brother.

What has happened to Britain?

Has the threat from a minority so alarmed us that we have lost our trust? Is any of this helping to build community cohesion?