Brownie has got himself in some 42-day stewed hot water with claims crawling out of the woodwork that he bribed MPs to score his pathetic 9 majority in the Commons. The extension from 28 to 42 days, a plan thought up by his idiotic PAs to boost his image, where Dove and co couldn't, made the prudent prem look more unfit for the job than ever before and it cost a far sight more too to achieve that effect - all £1.2 billion of tax payers' cash wrapped in a nice bundle for nine Unionists. If Brown was in the Apprentice line-up he wouldn't fare well, or maybe he would, TTG bets he has plenty of riddled lies on his CV under achievements, cos this 42 days debacle is certainly not one of them. Here, old bean, are 42 highlights of the 42 days and how funny that all are lowlights for your pristine Iron fist record. NB, my right hand Gorgon, TTG did pick carefully through the cuttings to ensure no bias - a policy she adheres to strongly.
1) By Dave! Davis has quit as Shadow Home Sec.
2) Clegg refuses to stand against Davis - "The Liberal Democrats have consistently opposed this unnecessary and illiberal proposal which poses a threat so serious to British liberties that it transcends party politics."
3) £1.2 billion sweeteners for Ulster Unionists - bribed with water rates. Labour backbenchers bribed with less of a stance against Cuba, miner's compensation.
4)Rebel Bob Marshall-Andrews: "He won this vote on the back of the Irish vote. The numbers could not have been any coincidental. Nine Irish votes - a majority of nine."
5) 36 Labour rebels vote against bill
6) Final votes: 315 for; 309 against
7) Other countries in comparison : one day in Canada, two in the United States, Germany, South Africa and New Zealand, five in Spain and 12 in Australia.
8) Downing Street predicted defeat - "very, very tight"
9) David Cameron calls it "Ineffective authoritarianism"
10) £3,000 compensation per day per person wrongly detained
11) Debates in commons of a detainee "contempt of court and prejudicing jury"
12) BBC, December 6, 2007: "The 28-day limit was itself a compromise, after former prime minister Tony Blair failed to convince Parliament to increase it to 90 days in 2005."
13) From 90 days to 58 to 42
14) December 2007, Nick Clegg, Home Affairs Spokesman: "Frankly, what the government is now proposing is not easy to understand."
15) Nick Robinson, December 2007: "the government's own civil contingency bill allowed detention without trial to be extended beyond 28 days for a further 30 if a state of emergency were declared. This was proof Shami Chakrabarti, and later the Tories and Lib Dems, said that the powers were there if more than 28 days were ever needed.
16) Gordon Brown, The Times: "the judiciary must oversee each individual case. As happens now for detention beyond 14 days, a senior judge will be required to approve the extension of detention in each individual case every seven days up to the new higher limit.
17) Richard Hall, a blogger and Welsh Methodist Minister: "Since 2000, this period has been getting progressively longer. First, the 48 hours for which ‘ordinary’ criminals can be held us upped to 7 days. A couple of years later that went up to 14 days. In 2006 it went up to 28 days. Tony Blair wanted to make it 90 days, but he was defeated in the Commons. Now Gordon Brown wants to look tough on terrorism, so the issue is being raised again."
18) Diana Abbott, MP for Hackney, speech June 12, 2008 "Was it to be 29 days, or 30, or 40? At one point, some of us offered to put our hands in a hat and to draw out a number for the home secretary.
They did not have a number of days because this is not an objective, evidence-driven bill. It is the purest politics. It is about the polls and about positioning. It is about putting the Conservative party in the wrong place on terrorism."
19) Terror suspects cannot be caged without charge for 42 days in either police cells or jails, a secret report claims - Mirror, June 11, 200820)Willem Buiter, FT, June 12, 2008: It is a sad day indeed, when I have to conclude that Ossama bin Laden and his demented followers present less of a threat to my way of life - to an open society, civil liberties and freedom - than my own government’s response to that threat."
21) The House of Lords will vote later this year on the bill
22) Bill will be defeated in the Lords, according to Nick Robinson
23) BBC: "Powers already exist to extend detention for up to 30 days under emergency powers - meaning a grave threat such as wartime."
24) BBC: "So far six people have been held close to the 28-day limit. Five of these people were arrested in 2006 in connection with an alleged plot currently before the courts.
Two of the five were charged and three released before the deadline. The sixth case of 28 days' detention involved another suspect arrested and subsequently charged in Manchester in connection with unrelated allegations."
25) How it works according to the BBC: "The home secretary needs to be satisfied there is a "grave exceptional terrorist threat". Secondly, top prosecutors and police issue a report setting out why they need the power.
Once the home secretary signs the order, she must inform Parliament within two days and both houses must approve the move.
The special powers for 42-day detention are only available to the home secretary for 30 days, after which she must reapply for the powers.
Even while she has these powers, each suspect will be able to challenge any application to hold them beyond 28 days in front of a judge."
26) Human Rights Watch: "The judge is not asked to evaluate whether there exist reasonable grounds to believe the person committed a terrorist offense, the ultimate issue at stake in considering whether detention is lawful or not. "27) Judith Sunderland, Western European Researcher, Human Rights Watch:
“If you were detained, wouldn’t you want the judge to ask whether there are any grounds to believe the accusations against you?” Sunderland said. “It’s not just about whether the police are continuing to investigate, it’s about whether there’s enough evidence to investigate in the first place.”
28) MI5 has not asked for an extension up to 42 days. 29) St. Albans MP Anne Main: "We all accept that terrorism needs to be dealt with, but there has been no evidence of any need, or request from the Security Services, for this extension. 42 days is a figure that has just been plucked out of the air."
30) Tories would "almost certainly" reverse the 42-day terror time if in power
31) David Davis resignation speech:
“It has no democratic mandate to do this since 42 days was not in its manifesto. Its legal basis is uncertain to say the least but, purely for political reasons, this Government is going to do that.
Because the generic security argument relied on will never go away - technology, development complexity, and so on - we’ll next see 56 days, 70 days, then 90 days.
But in truth perhaps 42 days is the one most salient example of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedom."
32) Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, The Guardian: "It is a victory for pork barrel politics, and nothing to do with principle."33) Keith Vaz , Chairman of home affairs select committee offered a knighthood
34) Bill violates European convention on Human Rights according to Trevor Phillips
35) Bill "not supported by prosecution evidence" - Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini -Scotland's chief legal officer
36) Mick Hume, Spiked! : "UK prime minister Gordon Brown has rightly been ridiculed for his puffed-up claim that the security of the UK depends upon extending the period a terrorism suspect can be detained without charge to 42 days. His opponents also deserve a public drubbing for their equally risible claim that civil liberties in our society depend upon maintaining the current limit of a mere 28 days."
Read the article ' The phoney 42 days war' here.
37) Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: "We are left with an unworkable, wicked law and a legislature no longer worth the name. Hundreds of good British soldiers died saving Northern Irish Unionism over the past three decades. Now its MPs return the compliment by killing Magna Carta."
38) Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph: " I think it will do nothing to improve the prevention or detection of terrorist crimes, because it violates the principle of habeas corpus (which has proved adequate for most exigencies since 1679, when the right against unjust detention was codified in law), and because it provides an unreliable, dishonest and authoritarian government with a weapon that I am far from convinced would be used solely against suspected terrorists.
39) Independent, June 11, 2008: "In the unlikely event that 28 days proved insufficient, a one-off application could surely be made before a court."
40) Politics GB: "The bribe offered to those affected by this insane legislation of £3,000 per day which is nice work if you can get it, being on the ballpark of a decent professional footballer, and may in itself encourage ne'er-do-wells to try and get themselves detained deliberately!"
41) Guardian discover police are worried the bill will:
• Damage relations with Muslim communities from whom intelligence to counter terrorism is needed
• Put detectives under pressure to find, even manufacture evidence, against those held for 42 days
• Damage to the police's reputation by becoming involved in such a controversial issue.
42) Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: "As a whimpering mongrel will sometimes drag itself home from a hit-and-run incident, two rear legs reduced to bleeding paddles, so has this Government survived."
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