Some people really need to get out more:

Government plans to give the home secretary powers to remove juries from some inquests are “astonishing”, an influential group of MPs says.

A little-noticed clause in the Counter Terrorism Bill would also enable the home secretary to change the coroner if deemed to be in the national interest.

‘Astonishing’? Have they not been reading the papers since September 12 2001? I imagine less-sensitive and easily startled souls greeted this news with merely another weary shake of the head.

That these MPs should astonished is the astonishing bit. I mean, is there a legal process that government ministers aren’t able to subvert on a whim? Habeas Corpus, corruption inquiries, the Nuremberg Principles. Rules were made to be broken after all, I suppose.

Why the Home Secretary is taking a political hit over this is anybody’s guess. I suppose somebody somewhere is still impressed by such inane posturing. It’s a show of strength and mock heroic cloak and dagger bullshit for someone or other.

The thing is, there’s an easier way of doing it than explicitly derailing the legal process. Just carry on what they’re doing already – underfunding the inquest system to such an extent that it grinds to a halt. It hardly ever gets reported on and nobody gives a stuff apart from a few greiving relatives and they’re all against The War Against Terror anyway. Sorted.