Open thread on Queen's Speech

Please use the thread below to post your reactions to The Queen's Speech.

This just in from The Freedom Association: "New laws proposed today in the Queen's Speech pose a severe threat to freedom. New anti-terror laws will seek to further restrict the innocent in the name of security, and the reintroduction of the Mental Health Bill, which will allow people to be locked up without any crime having been committed, risks the freedom of thousands of innocent people.  Mark Wallace, Campaign Manager of The Freedom Association, said:

"Today's proposals threaten to make the already draconian restrictions on civil liberties in Britain even worse. It seems that the Government may even try to reintroduce the defeated plans for internment for 90 days without trial or charge. The Mental Health Bill would give yet more questionable powers of imprisonment to the State, allowing people innocent of any crime to be locked up. The vandalism of our justice system and historic freedoms seems set to continue apace.""

Comments

[Chris Hughes]

Another parliamentary session, another year of sustained assault on British liberties from this tyrannical government. Oh well...

[NigelC]

Another year talking tough on crime but not addressing its causes

[EML]

And it was said that our 2005 manifesto was reactionary and focused too narrowly?

[TomTom]

Let us now see whether the Commons or the Lords does more to protect us from the Regime

Now it will be easy to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. Josef Goebbels

Formal cabinet meetings were rare during the whole Third Reich and non-existent during World War II

Article 2
Die von der Reichsregierung beschlossenen Reichsgesetze können von der Reichsverfassung abweichen, soweit sie nicht die Einrichtung des Reichstags und des Reichsrats als solche zum Gegenstand haben. Die Rechte des Reichspräsidenten bleiben unberührt.

translation

Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The rights of the President remain undisturbed.Article 2
Die von der Reichsregierung beschlossenen Reichsgesetze können von der Reichsverfassung abweichen, soweit sie nicht die Einrichtung des Reichstags und des Reichsrats als solche zum Gegenstand haben. Die Rechte des Reichspräsidenten bleiben unberührt. Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The rights of the President remain undisturbed.

[Sally Roberts]

I haven't yet looked at the proposed legislation in detail but was struck by the story in this morning's Mail that Reid is proposing to evict "yobs" from their homes - EVEN IF THEY OWN THEM (I capitalise deliberately!) Surely this is nothing more than legalised theft by The State?!

[George Hinton]

It's a load of the usual drivel from that famous rhetorician of our age, St Toni of B-Liar.
Why do we need more laws?, against anything?, when the existing laws are not enforced, or are so badly drafted that they are ineffectual, when our police think that they are the masters and not the servants, when our politicians act like a bunch of Balkan bandits, and we are herded, sheep like to the ballot boxes to vote for an autarchic dictatorship that cares not for us.
NuLab have had 9/10 years to achieve much, they have attempted nothing and ruined everything.
It makes you wish for another Guido to emerge from the miasma and to rescue us from our own stupidity.
The Queen has been treated with a cavalier contempt in this speech, written for her by those arch-propagandists in NuLab.
Shame.

[TimC]

This is about what you would expect from nuLub, a bunch of sound bites that will not improve things.

Their position is totally cynical; they are proposing ineffective legislation that erodes our basic rights, knowing that if we oppose it, they can brand us as weak on crime.

[dizzy]

amazing, they admit that a quango failed so they replace it with another quango in the layer to do the same job?

[Deborah]

"Reid is proposing to evict "yobs" from their homes "
What happens then? Being homeless, presumably they move to the next LA and demand social housing.
Another gimmick from Reid.

[andy kay]

i strongly recommend all of you to buy (or borrow) PC David Copperfield's book "Wasting Police Time" (you can get it on Amazon, or I got mine in Waterstones) because:
a) it's hilarious
b) it's frightening
c) he's a libertarian copper who hates all these new laws. and guess what.... most of us do. Copperfield's going to change things, mark my word. Round our way, he's banned from the police computer (ie you can't access his blog 'coppersblog', senior officers are removing posters put up by bobbies advertising the book and it is frowned on to be caught reading it in the nick.
the reason: they are scared.
thousands of ordinary people are having the wool removed from their eyes by one very brave polcieman who's put his job on the line to tell the truth about modern britain's criminal justice system.
today's queens speech was another disgraceful twist in the ever-turning ratchet of suppression... but not all cops approve of it.

[Martin Wright]

Personally, I have have for years thought that there was a faint whiff of Mussolini about Tony Blair. Still I guess it gives some balance to the Marxists that surround him.

[malcolm]

Nick Robinson over at the BBC damns this Queens Speech with the faintest of praise and lets his cynicism show through very clearly. I think he's right.

[Drew SW London]

Sir Bentley Pauncefoot has some interesting ideas on updating the Queen's Peach (sic), here:

http://sir-bentley-pauncefoot.blogspot.com/2006/11/queens-peach.html

I particularly like "Strictly Primary Legislation".

[Richard]

To give everyone an idea of how serious the crime problem is (and how expensive it may be to effectively deal with it) may I recommend David Fraser's A Land Fit for Criminals.

Suffice to say New Labour's approach is simply scratching the surface at best.

[S.E.L]

"...the reintroduction of the Mental Health Bill, which will allow people to be locked up without any crime having been committed, risks the freedom of thousands of innocent people."

Yes, thousands of people who are now living on the streets because they can't function in society would be getting the support they need in an institutional setting (the horror!). Often these people have drug and alcohol addictions and may turn to petty crime to fund their habits. We aren't talking about locking up bloggers because they may oppose NuLab thinking and are therefore deemed insane!

[Mark Wadsworth]

Shrami Chakrabarti of Liberty was on BBC Breakfast this morning with Amanda Platell, they came to the conclusion that this wasn't really legislation at all any more, it was PR and spin dressed up as legislation. I doubt whether their opinions will have changed since.

[f.r]

Blair began his speech with the usual attack on the last Tory government. I am, unfortunately, old enough to remember Harold Wilson and his great slogan, "13 wasted years". The slogan worked and worked and worked until, one day, it didn't. You can only blame a previous government for so long. Then people begin to hoot derisively.

[Robert]

It's purely a superficial point, I'm a big fan of DC but the guy's got to sharpen up his PMQs showing; it does not look good if, on the national news, he is clearly shown to be coming off second-best against Blair. There's plenty for Cameron to get his teeth into; even the weakest political knowledge is enough to know Tony and his weak government do not stand up to close scrutiny.
His questions need to be more substantial, and he needs to inject some passion. For tips, he only has to refer to his frontbench; William Hague, who used to bruise Blair every Wednesday.

[Shane Greer]

Ask Labour what their priority is for the coming year and it's Legislation, legislation, legislation!

[Jaz]

Robert, hardly. Brown is no where good enough to match Cameron at any debate. In the end, people hate Blair so much, that anything he says people reactive negatively.

So when the election comes, David Cameron will be the best communicator, Tony Blair will be long gone, but his 9 years of "waste" won't.

[Robert]

Jaz, I understand and agree with what you are saying, but it's key not to underestimate Brown. I have no doubt he would be an exceedingly average PM, but he would go into a debate with Cameron with such low expectations that it would be impossible for him not to confound them.
As for DC, he must be careful that he does not get labelled as a weak debater, or worse - as a poor man's version of Blair - in the media, because it is very difficult to change initial perceptions, or shake labels. Look at Kinnock. People liked the idea of perhaps sharing a pint with him, but not voting him in as Prime minister.

[matt wright]

We are never going to make people responsible by legislating more and more bits of paper in Westminster. Labour are set in a direction going nowhere. When this lot of laws don't work, what next? CCTV in peoples living rooms? The whole thing is just fundamentally flawed and an expensive waste of time. The decline in social responsibility was largely initiated as an unintended consequence of the growing welfare state culture which ironically has ended up undermining the "working class". There has to be a long journey back to creating self-limiting behaviour and decency in more people. The media have to help this process rather than undermine it,

Matt

[Jamie Oliver's Sausage]

>>Nick Robinson over at the BBC damns this Queens Speech with the faintest of praise and lets his cynicism show through very clearly. I think he's right.<<

Hardly surprising is it, since he is a former National Chairman of the Young Conservatives?

The only surprise is that the BBC appointed him in the first plcae.

[Simon Chapman]

Why do the BBC & Gordon Brown believe that Blair's reference to a "big clunking fist" laying out DC was an endorsement of Gordon? I doubt he's ever hit anyone in his life.

The big story of the Queen's Speech, missed by every commentator until now, is that Blair has plainly endorsed John Prescott.

You read it here first.

[Geoff]

JO'sS - NR has moved very much to the left since he was on the dripping Wet wing of the YC's as you well know.

However you are correct - the fact that he is not a card-carrying moonbat does mark him out as odd at the BBC, where subscribing to the Guardian is taken as a sign that you are suspiciously right-wing and need to be kept an eye on.

[Ted]

Simon @22.27 - or John Reid?

[Jamie Oliver's Sausage]

>>As for DC, he must be careful that he does not get labelled as a weak debater, or worse - as a poor man's version of Blair<<

Today's Express says Blair "blew Cameron away" while Cameron's performance was described elsewhere as that of a "vapid amateur".

Yes you're right. He's got to do a hell of a lot better than this.

Cameron is certainly no William Hague.

[Angelo Basu]

The public by and large don't give a stuff about PMQs or the performance of MPs in debates- landing knock out blows on Blair every week didn't win us a single extra seat in 2001. The real value of doing well at PMQs and debates is in persuading the key opinion formers in the mass-market papers and other popular media to support us and that will come more from the substance of what is said and asked rather than whether Blair has managed a witty put-down.

I did think that Blair's retort about DC wanting to "love" people was particularly depressing, especially coming from someone who has joined cause with the religious right- surely there can be no more Christian response than love? As the separate debate on the dreadful impact of government policies (realistically both those of NuLab and previous governments over many years) on the white working classes shows, perhaps we shouldn't deride the value of a bit of love towards a segment of society that has felt decidedly unloved and which has responded by feeling that it has no responsibility to those who have shown so little care for them.

[Martin Wright]

I just seen the excellent, thoughtful contribution from Paul Goodman MP in reply to the Queen's Speech. In it he considers the issue of how to handle the dangers from militant Islamism (as opposed to peaceful Islam).

I confess I found it on Melanie Phillips' site rather than Hansard, but do have a read. It's the first item for 16 November:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1393

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