75ZT Community

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/26/theresa-may-measures-combat-terrorism

So it isn't just the extremist right wing lunatics who are using the sad event of last week to further their schemes.

I imagine she and her Machiavellian advisers have been rubbing their hands in glee for another excuse to extend the most widely abused Act of Parliament in recent years.

POTA and its concomitant legislation is, by and large, used as an umbrella excuse for the Police to do as they please. I say this from the point of view of having seen it twisted and warped out of recognition to suit inappropriate agenda. If I've seen sufficient to form that view then what of the possible atrocities as yet undiscovered? Now it is going to be even more insidious and all-pervading.

Luckily, the Separation of Powers and the independence of the Judiciary are still very much in place. Has this woman learned nothing from the last hissy fit she threw when the Judiciary used her own legislation to thwart her thrashing about in the (continuing) debacle surrounding Abu Qatada et. al.?

Knee-jerk law has, and never will be, good law, but it appears that politicians, and ministers most of all, cannot accept that.

God knows what sort of a mess she and her ilk will make with this inevitable new spasm of laws of convenience.

At the risk of incurring wrath and ultimate demise - I protest! No offence intended, but I take
the opposite view! Yes, I know, surprise, surprise!

At a time of unprecedented attack on ordinary common people, none so far by any means ‘insider’ or exalted position (note) and a unified and concerted assault on our civilisation from an apparently implacable source to which there appears no defence, I don’t give a tinker’s cuss if my or anybody else’s electronic communication is hacked. Better that than that horrific word be applied somewhat more literally than in a Leveson context - although recent events do not prompt this reply to the OP.

I understand the alarm and resistance to civil liberties abuse and the remorseless advance of the State into personal lives, but in the absence of sensible and competent remedies the seemingly extreme measures proposed, which would presumably include renewal dates, become increasingly attractive to the millions of potential victims of atrocity. The objections to GCHQ covering traffic are 99% from non-security sources - business, so-called celebrities and people-in-the-public-eye, politicians, crooks and media types who operate on questionable footing anyway, and hang the rest of us.

We got by quite well before the advent of IT, there’s no reason why we can’t restrict commercially sensitive and personal correspondence to the-following-day delivery if we want to avoid prying eyes. If the narrow desires and Diva preferences of the likes of Hugh Grant and Tara Palmer Tomkinson et al triumph over National Security then it is hopeless.

The Communications Data Bill has seemed to me, until recent events gave it fresh impetus, to be largely self-defeating. For the record, I don't and never will accept blanket regulation of the shotgun approach over carefully thought out, surgically precise legislation which, most importantly of all, doesn't bite its own tail as so much of recent legislation does. Of course, it isn't the remit of the politicians to interpret it and make it work and, worst of all, to prevent such short-sighted, knee-jerk legislation placing itself in the untenable position of making a mockery of the previous week's short-sighted knee-jerk legislation. That, unfortunately, is the lot of the Judiciary, including men and women of far greater intellect than I who find themselves tearing their hair out over the incongruous and, frankly, risible conflicts which arise, time and time again.

There is a reason why Common Law, as opposed to statute law is so effective

That said, it would be at best, churlish of me to deny any regulation of proselytizing underpinned by incitement of racial / religious hatred, and I do not seek do so, thereby agreeing with your views, if, perhaps, only to an extent

But, to focus the thrust of my concern in the OP more clearly, and I apologise for not doing so initially, it is my view, based upon observation of successive administrations but of this one in particular, that the POTA (rather the CD Bill specifically mentioned in the link) will be further reinforced on the back, as it were, of recent events and act as an even greater excuse to hide shoddy behaviour behind legislation.

One example of past abuse, locally to me, that will serve to illustrate my point at a basic level, is the case of the woman who was told to remove her collection of porcelain pigs from her window-sill as they were offensive to Muslims. Eventually, she was prosecuted under the auspices of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, having not complied with the edict, following a similar case in Leicester, if I recall correctly, in which the offence was said to be made out under the terms of the racially aggravated Public Order offence of harassment, which, of course, failed owing to the clear and incontrovertible fact that there was no racial aggravation, ergo, no offence of harassment.

The local matter was quietly dropped as well, owing, in large part, to the multilateral condemnation of the case by the local community, Muslim, Christian and atheist alike.

My point is though, that the POTA is so wide ranging, imprecise, tenuous and insidious that such a prosecution would have had the legs to even be considered. Please also be assured that the case I used as an example is very far from being an isolated case and is also one of the least serious of documented abuses of the Act.