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Taking The Law Into Your Own Hands
The humiliation of the Rt Hon Gordon Brown, PC, Her Majesty's Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has gathered pace.
Recently his big plan was to allow to extend the period of detention by police for 'terrorists', 'criminals' and 'citizens' from 28 days to 48 days.
Naturally, his raison d'etre was to keep the evil-doers under lock-and-key for as long as possible. Today, most sane people would agree that we don't want miscreants roaming the streets.
But you do not have to go back as far as the Magna Carta, of 1215, to know that it has been a cornerstone of English jurisprudence to recognise that that a person is innocent until proven guilty. And to extend his or her time in a basement cell for an undue duration, before being defended in a magistrate's court, or any court, goes against English legal tradition.
The humiliation for Gordon Brown was that many in his Labour party, all the Conservatives, and the Liberals, voted against his proposed bill. The statute was passed only - with a fair amount of pressure - by Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party. They got it through the House of Commons by nine votes.
Hardly a convincing signal for the the police, the security services and the public.
