Financial support for Northern Ireland?

[bimbim]

Does anyone believe that the D.U.P. were not offered any incentives to vote for the repeal of the Magna Carta ...oops sorry..... vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days.?

[jno]

there's a sort of smell of rat in the air, isn't there.

[gonzo00]

does anybody really care...unless you're a terror suspect that is!

[jno]

these days everyone's a terror suspect, gonzo. Remember Derby (was it?) using anti-terrorist laws to spy on schoolchildren's parents to make sure they lived in the right zone?

[sp1214]

They were interviewing the NI finance minister tonight and he was asked the same question. An emphatic NO.

[Gromit]

That's the Pope's holiday plans dashed.

[whiffey]

What puzzles me is why it is needed now but has never been needed before, 28 days always having been sufficient.

I think they want to start arresting and banging up whole swathes of the population, which is fine by me, but why now?

[kempie]

"28 days always having been sufficient"

Always?

The amount of time that a terrorism suspect can be held without charge has changed significantly in the last 8 years. An overhaul of counter-terrorism laws in 2000 increased the basic 24-hour detention to 48-hours, extendable to seven days with the permission of the courts. In 2003 that was doubled to 14 days, and the Terrorism Act 2006 took it to 28 days.

[jake-the-peg]

Personally I think they're proceding in totally the wrong manner.

the law should be changed to allow someone to be charged and held on a holding charge whilst still allowing other charges to be investigated.

[anotheoldgit]

Why worry unless you are a terrorist?

No one seems to bother about other suspected criminals, who can be locked away for almost a year before they go to trial.

Even though they are supposed to be classed as innocent until proven guilty.

[sp1814]

anotheoldgit

Anti-terrorism laws are being flouted by councils to catch people who overfill their bins (seriously).

Who's to say that these new laws, and the erosion of civil liberties won't be flouted by whichever government is in power to justify political rather than judicial ends?

[WoWo]

"Why worry unless you are a terrorist?

No one seems to bother about other suspected criminals, who can be locked away for almost a year before they go to trial. "

This isn't about detention, it's about detention without charge, people awaiting trial have been charged with a crime, enough evidence was found for their to considered a good chance of conviction. This new law basically means they can detain people without any evidence, effectively just on a hunch or hear say.

As for nothing to worry about unless your a terrorist check this out...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/ terrorism_laws.html

[Supernick]

It's not only terrorists that should worry. One of my mates was hanging around outside a tube station a couple of weeks back waiting for a friend to arrive, and he was stop and searched by plain clothes police officers who thought that what he was doing constituted suspicious behaviour. How much more 'evidence' would they have to have found to bang him up for 42 days? What if, as a tourist he had a map with a few high profile locations in London circled? Who knows?

[Kromovaracun]

Why worry unless you are a terrorist?

Because these laws allow action based on suspicion. Now, fair enough, this doesn't let you bang up just anybody, but it's still very lucrative.

Plus the 28-Day limit is already the highest in the Democratic world.

These comparisons from last week's Economist are very interesting:

Australia has 12 days, Turkey and Ireland have 7, France has 6, Spain and Russia have 5, Italy has 4, Germany, New Zealand and the USA have 2, and Canada has one.

Spain for instance has a greater terrorist problem than we do, so why do we need over 7 times more then them?

42 Days won't make the situation much worse, but it's completely unjustified overkill.

[Kromovaracun]

It's also important to consider that the Lord's may use it's 2-year suspension (after its stopped playing ping-pong, of course), which would delay the measure until 2010. By that date, as we all know, Labour will have to call a general election which they are highly likely to lose.

Thus hope is not lost just yet.