Isn’t there some sort of automatic absolute qualifier wherein a state that has secret trials with limited defense IS NOT, in fact, a democracy?
A bill to establish secret courts is named a “deregulation bill”? The lighter touch of government is implemented by secret courts?
Not that I want to distract from the fundamental issue of “what?!? I mean what?!??”
War = peace, obviously. I must have missed the memo.
Damn!!!
The current British government really love digging ideas from fiction.
Please someone “misplace” all the books with demented authoritative governments in them, like 1984, V of Vendetta, The Hunger Games, or Homeland from the parliament’s library. They are great books for sane people, but in the hands of madmen they turn into really scary handbooks of tyranny.
I saw David Cameron reading “The Turner Diaries” the other day, should I be worried?
I don’t think we’ve been a democracy in the true sense for a long time, perhaps ever. We sometimes give the impression of being one, when the policies enacted match the current public opinion, but do the policies follow the opinion or is it the other way round?
When all the parties have similar policies and when the government of the day breaks the promises made by both the constituent parts during the election and justifies that by saying the coalition government is not the same as it’s component parts and therefore does not have to keep any promises they made individually for their votes, then any idea of democracy goes out of the window.
Secret trials, ordering destruction of hard drives, lying to your own populous, these are all examples of a non-democratic state - and these are all things the current UK government (and the previous one) have done.
Man, it feels as though the US, England & Canada all seem to be coordinating legislative changes that decrease privacy of individual behaviour, and increase privacy for governmental/judicial behaviour.
Eris, help us out, the tide seems to fnord be getting a bit high…
The United Kingdom is doing a lot of terrible things to infringe on the rights of their citizens. First the porn filter and now this? What are these politicians trying to do? People ought to stand up to them.
If the LD party “sold out,” who bought them, and with what currency?
If there only was some sort of regulation that limited the power and arbitrary injustice that the government can mete out to its citizens… imagine how great that was.
Ohwait, that actually totally exists.
- Magna Carta
- Provisions of Oxford
- Provisions of Westminster
- Statute of Marlborough
- Statute of Rhuddlan
- Laws in Wales Acts
- Petition of Right
- Instrument of Government
- Humble Petition and Advice
- Habeas Corpus Act
- Bill of Rights
- Claim of Right
- Representation of the People Act
- Human Rights Act
- Constitution of the united Kingdom
- Constitution of Scottland
- Constitution of Britain
- European Constitution
- Human Rights
- Fundamental Rights
But if David (laughable onion employee) Cameron decides to supersede constitution and democracy, that’s totally OK.
If any ordinary citizen got it into his thick skull to act attack the constitution, to undermine democracy and to actively harm the country, they’d be branded a terrorist, traitor or both.
Lately it seems that the UK adopts every totalitarian idea of their master and then tries to take it a step further - like an overeager puppy.
… and in the meantime complaining about the undemocratic tendencies of the EU. Oh the irony…
The Tory Party, With a sniff of power.
And meanwhile, here in The Land of the Free, Inc. there’s been a corporate mass media blackout of the latest Snowden interview:
Media blacks out new snowden interview the government doesn’t want you to see
http://benswann.com/media-blacks-out-new-snowden-interview-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-see/#ixzz2s0BPBRUm
UK doesn’t have a written constitution and the Tories want to get rid of any European restrictions, and human rights as well. Why? Because they ARE the Nasty Party. Nothing has changed for a long time.
“Power corrupts”. Nuff said.
Sadly at least three of those don’t exist, and the others can all be got round with a little thing called “Parliamentary sovereignty”.
It is a central principle of British law that no Parliament can bind its successors, so even if a law is passed saying the government can’t do X, all it has to do is pass another law that says it can.
Incidentally, almost all of Magna Carta has been repealed. Much of this is a good thing- for instance, Clause 21 stated that lords could only be tried by other lords, and Clause 54 stated that a man could not be imprisoned on the testimony of a woman.
Was it the Monarch that tipped you off? Or the titled elite?
Was it the Monarch that tipped you off? Or the titled elite?
I think it was the amount of time politicians keep going on about doing things for the sake of democracy (like going to war to aid countries who don’t even pretend to know the meaning of the word). The more they talk about something you know the more they actually do the opposite.
Actually all a democracy needs is mob rule. No, what you’re describing is simply a place where there are no human rights.
