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Continue reading →: Is this how the Crown Prosecution Service would treat you?
One of the best things about Britain used to be that the police had no special powers or privileges. Sir Robert Peel’s original conception was of people employed to do professionally what any public-spirited citizen might do. The genius of this vision was that citizens need not fear their police.…
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Continue reading →: Labour turmoil over new police powers
Link: Labour turmoil over new police powers | Uk News | News | Telegraph. All my life, I have been proud to be a "law-abiding citizen." A lawyer by training and instinct, I am more sceptical than most about the benefits of law in general. In the criminal realm, I…
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Continue reading →: Australian pub bars heterosexuals
Link: ‘Australian pub bars heterosexuals’. Here, in the final sentence of the linked artice, is the perfect example of a non sequitur: Australia’s equal opportunity laws prevent discrimination based on race, religion or sexuality. Leave aside the idiotic choice of the verb "to prevent," which would be used here by…
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Continue reading →: Blair, civil liberties and the rights of suspects « Not Saussure
Link: Blair, civil liberties and the rights of suspects « Not Saussure. I have given blogging a rest for the weekend and have tried to think of better things in life than the totalitarian tendencies of New Labour. Fortunately, Not Saussure has been on guard and has said (in the…
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Continue reading →: Why one and not another?
Link: Missing girl’s body ‘put into kebab’ | Britain Today | Global | Telegraph. The press coverage of the abduction of Madeleine McCann makes me uneasy. Since Blair first trembled his lip at the loss of Diana, Princess of Wales, we seem prone as a nation to impotent outbursts of…
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Continue reading →: Ministers set out plan for waste
Link: BBC NEWS | Politics | Ministers set out plan for waste. Hope springs eternal. When I read this headline I briefly thought the era of spin was over. Sadly not. It’s just tedious stuff about the Landfill Directive. Ho hum.
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Continue reading →: Major energy policy shake-up
Link: Major energy policy shake-up in parliament | Top News | Reuters.co.uk. This is only about 10 years late. Of course the criminalisation of fox-hunting (and about 3,000 other activities) was far more urgent. It is good to see anthropogenic climate change theory serve a useful purpose. It is a…
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Continue reading →: It’s time to find that role
Britain has a habit of command, born of centuries of Empire. It is ironic that the Left accuses the Right of imperial nostalgia, because it is the Left which is most afflicted. Why do we think that the citizens of a small archipelago off the European coast have the right…
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Continue reading →: So much freedom lost…
Link: So much freedom lost…and on my watch | St Opinion | Opinion | Telegraph. Shami Chakrabarti has undoubtedly done her best, but I share her disappointment at the losses "on her watch." I think Liberty (which she leads and of which I am a member) went astray when it…
THE LAST DITCH
Your blogger
Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.
Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.
He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that
“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
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My cars are just tools although I do get attached to them and have fond memories of a couple of…
I did get to ride in her and she did add cachet for me with my neighbours by being in…
It would have been easy to fulfil an open desire so why keep it secret? Surely the whole advantage of…
My secret desire was to be taken for a spin in her. Alas!
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The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
I’m going to go millennial and rent what I need when I need it. If that doesn’t work for me,…