42 Days Dropped

I was going to do a follow up posting tonight about the weekend but today's news that the Government is dropping its plans for detaining suspects for 42 days without charge from the Counter-Terrorism Bill is too important not to highlight on a day when there's lots of other news around.

This proposal made me ashamed of our government: it struck at the very heart of the liberties we are meant to be defending against the terrorist threat and its lack of support from the very people it was meant to help in law enforcement left it smelling heavily of a political stunt to leave the Tories looking soft of crime. That's no basis for locking someone up for seven weeks who may turn out to be completely innocent (as previous terror suspects have turned out to be).

Now if only they would do a U turn on ID cards too I might consider voting for them again ...