Luke Akehurst – A shining Star

June 14th, 2008 § 0 comments

Luke Akehurst:

Maybe instead of Labour fielding a candidate in Haltemprice & Howden we should find a Martin Bell type candidate – preferably a recently retired senior police officer, or a survivor or relative of a victim of a terrorist attack, to run under the following 5 word candidate description: “Independent – for detaining terrorism suspects”.

mmm. nuff said in the comments really.
Rachel North:

I expect terrorists to attack our freedoms and our democracy by using fear and terror to hurt us. I was right there, seven feet away from a 19 year old suicide bomber in my carriage on 7/7 and lucky to escape with my life when he killed 26 fellow passengers.

I object vehemently to your assumption that victims of terrorism can be waved about to us as a bloodied figleaf to cover up a naked desire to be seen to be tough on terror for entirely politcal purposes, I object to being used as a political football, and if ‘for the victims’ is going to be invoked for this kind of liberty-trashing fearmongering, then this ‘victim’ (hate that word)is going to shout right back that those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

It is what I said in the Sunday Times and the Guardian when it was 50+ days being mooted

and I will go on saying it.

Please don’t assume being blown up makes everyone agree with the Sun.

To which Luke replies:

I think Rachel’s position just goes to show that experiencing something first hand doesn’t necessarily lead you to come to the right conclusions about how to deal with it.

I disagree with her stance but at least it’s more sincerely held than that of most Tory MPs who just saw this issue as a cheap chance to inflict a defeat on Gordon Brown.

I simply do not understand why the “civil liberties” of people suspected of terrorism would be considered of more value than the civil liberty of the rest of us to go about our lives safely.

Luke, the key word here, and is what most people forget, is ‘suspected’. You are probably not going to be affected by this extention to precharge detention, either by being (not) blown up or by being hauled into a cell and kept in the dark for six weeks while your life goes down the shitter, but plenty of innocent people will be.

I guess they’ll just be collatoral damage in another war.

Via Justin, again.

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