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Lib-Con coalition & Civil Liberties
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I never in a million years thought I'd say this, but looking at the Civil Liberties section of the policy announcments, if Lib-Con had run on this ticket I might well have voted for them.
It appears that through a combination of repealing arbitrary state powers, rolling back the database state, and reestablishing the right to peaceful protest, which a State & Police power block has all too readily run rough shod over for the past decade - this government is actually going putting it's money where it's mouth is and taking civil liberties seriously.
Council snooping, Police officers who assault and excessively restrain women taking pictures, unaccountable officers caught on film assaulting non-violent demonstrators and people walking away - it has to stop. If it takes the Tories and Libs to do it then good luck to them.
Sir Hugh Orde recently came out with the utterly absurd statement that the British Police are the most accountable in the world. Recent Home Office research suggests otherwise:
http://news.parliament.uk/business/news/2010/04/independent-police-complaints-commission-fails-to-inspire-trust-say-mps/
If we are going to restore trust in the Police service, reform is needed - not just at the structural level but at the level of Policing culture - too many Officers seem to see themselves as the masters, rather than servants, of the people.
Professional, considerate and dedicated Officers need not worry.
Arsehole plod on power trips really should...
It appears that through a combination of repealing arbitrary state powers, rolling back the database state, and reestablishing the right to peaceful protest, which a State & Police power block has all too readily run rough shod over for the past decade - this government is actually going putting it's money where it's mouth is and taking civil liberties seriously.
Council snooping, Police officers who assault and excessively restrain women taking pictures, unaccountable officers caught on film assaulting non-violent demonstrators and people walking away - it has to stop. If it takes the Tories and Libs to do it then good luck to them.
Sir Hugh Orde recently came out with the utterly absurd statement that the British Police are the most accountable in the world. Recent Home Office research suggests otherwise:
http://news.parliament.uk/business/news/2010/04/independent-police-complaints-commission-fails-to-inspire-trust-say-mps/
If we are going to restore trust in the Police service, reform is needed - not just at the structural level but at the level of Policing culture - too many Officers seem to see themselves as the masters, rather than servants, of the people.
Professional, considerate and dedicated Officers need not worry.
Arsehole plod on power trips really should...
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Comments
i'd concur with this, he is a tory at heart but most of the MPs in his party are of the right, very few are truly centre right these days and thus the lib dems are a good buffer
they're already moaning at the CGT rise
Certainly, although if they try and push it through against second homes I would imagine there is going to be a huge backlash. Personally I'd rather see it targeted at Fund Managers.
Both parties tended to vote against the Govt on the majority of civil liberties issues (and with the help of a few labour rebels even managed to stop some things going through). Both parties were against ID cards and wanted to curtail state surveillance.
and to suggest that the right of the Tory party is against civil liberties is a bit odd when you think the right of the party supported David Davis in the leadership election who actually resigned to contest a by election on civil liberties (and he's not the only right wing libertarian - the party is full of them). And the only thing that unites the Lib Dems (apart from perhaps PR and perhaps not even that) is a belief in civil liberties
I do sometimes wonder if people actually read papers or watch TV, or whether they just follow any old guff from down the pub
I must have missed the section in the Magna Carta about the fundamental civil right to pay lots of tax to the state
Down the pub? Not since the smoking ban.
I knew the Tories had said this, I just didn't trust them, because I hadn't any reason to, given their record during their last administration.
Which is why I said 'if they'd run on this ticket' - i.e. a combined Lib-Con coalition (totally out of the question but it was hypothetical).
I had absolutely no good will to the Tory word because of their demonstrable mismanagement of the NHS and devastation of working communities, which we are still paying for, during the 1980s. Also their record on civil liberties during the Thatcher era wasn't great.
But I think coalition politics could offer an alternative which is based more around consensus than opposition.
I remain open to convincing...
UPDATE: The thing about coalition politics I also love (so far) is the raising of the income tax threshold. There is so much evidence that this will do so much to help working people on lower incomes, particularly in London.
The most savage criticism I think can be leveled at the dying days of New Labour are that they betrayed working people by even considering the 10p tax rate, never mind raising income tax.
Having said that the Tories would NEVER have done this on their own...
Quite possibly, but it's past experience predicting future behaviour.
Labour have blown it with key sectors of the electorate because they've burned any public trust they once had.
The Tories this election still suffered from the effects people with long enough memories felt from the government previous to that.
It might well be that you're right - and that coalition politics is one way to move out of this type of cyclical impasse.
Who'd'a thunk it?
They are certainly enjoying a great honeymoon period and i expect it will continue for some time but dont be fooled into thinking this goverment will last very long, either the torys will bully the lib dems into being lapdogs or the lib dems will prove to be a little stronger and will be able to turn every policy or budget into a long running arguement, either way the Torys will end up with all the power.
Then you will see that the present lot are just the same as Thatchers, smarmy, patronising,elitest snobs :yes:
Wouldn't be surprised if you were right, but I hope not...and as someone who spends a lot of their professional lives looking at income inequality in this country the £10,000 Income Tax Rise is a big thing. Got family in Sainsburys telling me that everyone in the canteen is talking about it - this is a big thing for families raising children on low incomes.
We'll see if it continues...
After 13 years of endless lies from Labour, I'm very cynical about all this. We shall see in the next few months if they intend to break away from the mould and actually deliver on these promises, or whether they'll keep to tradition and simply ignore it.
As for income tax, the proposal is pretty useless. I think anyone earning less than £20,000 per year should pay no tax at all. That could be one measure which would help kick-start the economy, especially in more deprived areas.
Its a nice idea, but either you would have to radically shrink the State (and therefore much like the US people would just pay out of their own pocket for things the government here provides) or put up other taxes a lot.
That's a massive over simplification, of course no one wants to pay lots of tax but to suggest our tax system is anything but systimatically unfair to those on lower incomes is rubbish.
er to balance the books better they're gonna have to spend less or raise more, or a mix of the 2
CGT being raised to match income is fair (in my opinion), my friend is learning to become a tax accountant, and even he's already been taught "turn income into capital where possible"
????
See point above about how people's views on tax and the relevance to civil liberties
yeh i know that naturally the tories should be more 'liberal' on civil liberties than labour
reason i was having go is that my natural poltics would be a centre or centre left party economically, and socially liberal, closest thing to that for me is lib dems, but stil not great (like id rather royal mail was kept in public hands due to it being a natural monopoly) and taxing 'wake up and earn' income like inheritance, whilst reducing tax on profits and earnings down to what was only necessery
im generally more glad labour didnt get than the tories, so the lib dems tempering the tories so cameron wouldnt be noosed up by the right of his party is the best thing
i think they won't be as good as they promise, but scrapping the ID card and it's database is one of the greatest things ever, it's actually amazing how many people just put up with the status quo, i was generally campaigning against from start, and people i know were ambivelent/positive, now they're being scrapped the same people are like 'oh good', only cause they knew the full extent of the system now ie continually renewing info etc
One of the things this recession has shown is that we can no longer support welfare systems of the size that we have. We pay out more in various social security benefits than we get in income tax in this country. Such a system simply cannot continue in the long run. The worst, of course, is National Insurance - effectively a Ponzi scheme.
Shall elaborate more later today, I need to kip for the night.
I apparently did miss your point, it sounded like you were objecting to a raise in CGT. I agree with you that many in the Tory right wing are stronger on civil liberties, frankly I don't think the Tories would have gone as far as Labour have over the last few years. Although having said that they did go pretty far in Northern Ireland at various points.
Actually I do object to CGT rises (or at least without tapering it), but that's got nothing to do with Civil Liberties.
On Northern Ireland you raise an interesting issue which is the balance between civil liberties and security - or to put it another way there's an awful lot of people buried in my local church whose civil liberties were violated by a bunch of facists a lot more fundamentally than either the Tories or Labour managed
Let's not pretend the Tories (or at least, the right wing of the Tory party) suddenly are champioons of civil liberties, because even against the most reactionary and controlling Labour government in memory, they still come up worse on the whole.
So where do you stand on fox hunting, the right of BNP and EDL parties to march unmolested? Or come to that freedom of conscience (which you seem massively against as soon as it relates to religion). If the right-wing Tories are anti-civil liberities it seems they're not the only ones...
And you'll need to explain what you mean by the right-wing, because the right wing is often regarded as the free marketeers, who are often social liberals (and more so as the europhile part has left the party - its almost certainly a co-incidence but the older europhiles were often the more authoritarian wing Hurd, Howe, Rifkind; the younger more eurosceptic rightwingers tended to be more socially liberal)
Of course, the para-militaries on both sides did absolutely horrific things.
On the government side flooding whole estates with CS gas, internment and torture didn't help in the long run and certainly wasn't very good for civil liberties.
In the case of Tory backbenchers who are generally agreed to be on the right wing of the party however, it is safe to claim that a sizeable majority of them are social conservatives, or at best refrain from defending civil liberties regarding such issues as the ones I mentioned above.