The Ultimate Answer
From this evening’s Channel 4 News Snowmail:
Channel 4 News has learned that rebel backbenchers have been offered a compromise of 42, rather than 90 days on holding suspects without charge. So is it going to be a Dutch auction on this most sensitive issue? I challenged the Home Office minister Hazel Blears to deny it. And she didn’t.
Is it me or are these numbers being pulled out of thin air? If the police want 90 days, why would 42 be any good?
UPDATE: This from the Independent:
Mr Clarke will meet Labour rebels, David Davis, his Tory shadow, and Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, to discuss a compromise, possibly cutting the detention period to 28 days, which he has to table by “close of play” tonight.
At best terribly lazy language, at worst a softening up. We’re talking about increasing the detention period to 28 days not cutting it to 28 days. It’s looking like the magic number. I suppose if you’re lucky to have accumulated enough holiday entitlement you might save your job. This after all, is the equivalent of a two month prison sentence - what beating an Afghan man to death will get you if you’re an American soldier.
UPDATE: ePolitix:
Meanwhile, the government has been boosted by a YouGov poll for Sky News which found that 72 per cent of voters back the extension to 90 days.
I’d be very interested to see how the poll breaks down along racial and religious lines. I imagine white Christians with “nothing to hide” were fairly sanguine about the reintroduction of internment.
UPDATE: Ace stuff from Unity.
Posted on November 6th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
| See also • You’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator • 90 days defeated • What a difference a day makes |
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Well, let’s try an experiment. We lock up Hazel Blears for telling lies .. we wait 90 days before we charge her.
There is plenty of time therefore to look for more evidence,in her sock drawer, handbag, ask her neighbour etc.,
A classic example of the Bliar making a mockery of his own argument. Saves the rest of us the trouble I suppose…
A bit more on the subject over at BlairWatch
Unfortunately the Yougov respondents are not considering that it might be them locked up for 90/42/28* days. It is always someone else - who obviously deserved it or they wouldn’t be locked up in the first place, now, would they? Stands to reason… innit?
* choose your preferred lucky number
And can anyone explain why the number must be divisible by 2? 90, 28, 42 - why not 41 or 39?
It’s not two, it’s seven (in most cases), with ‘90′ as a nice round number (ie approx. 3 months). Then again, given Blair’s readiness to implement legislation on the say-so of the police, the feds could have picked an even higher, but evocative, number - 101, 365, whatver - and got the same response.
I’m not so sure it’s an argument about the reintroduction of internment.
After all if it’s OK to hold people for 7/14 days, as is the case at the moment, then any increase in that period is simply about the time and not about the principle.
There rather more to the YouGov poll than meets the eye, as I hope I’ve shown here.
Suffice to say, polls commissioned by Sky News seem no more impartial than that which which the Labour Party started running last Friday.
Bugger - wrong link!
Try this instead - http://talkpolitics.users20.donhost.co.uk/index.php?title=ten_for_that_you_must_be_mad
Bagged Bear: The thing is, it is internment by any other name. Some poor innocent bastard is going to get swept up and lose his job, house and maybe his wife, kids and sanity. He’ll certainly lose any semblance of innocence because the police like to fanfare the arrest but don’t quite make the same fuss about releasing people without charge.
You don’t have to be Gerry Conlon to know that having nothing to hide doesn’t necessarily mean you have nothing to fear.
Justin - I understand and appreciate your point. But isn’t that the case with holding a suspect for 7 days or 14 days? If you (not you but the populace), accept the status quo then the internment point was surrendered a long time ago and all you’re arguing over is what time is acceptable, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42…etc?
If the only issue is the length of time, then on what basis do you make the decision. 90 is what the professionals asked for, so it is for the (internal and external) opposition to make the case for the lesser period, which is what they are doing.
It’s not an easy argument on either side, but I think the internment argument was lost a long time ago.