Just spotted this at the end of the same Guardian article on the Terrorism Bill in which I noted errors including provision of a link to the wrong Bill entirely.
The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman said existing legislation already outlaws the activities which ministers say the glorification offence will deal with.
He added: “The government wants to have a law that can be used prosecuting anyone one who says anything favourable about terrorism.
“But that becomes a very dangerous inroad on freedom of speech, because people may wish to express views about a repressive regime which may involve suggesting that ultimately it may be necessary to use violence to bring an end to that regime. That seems to me a perfectly respectable thing to do.”
All of which is, in my estimation, a reasonable position to take.
What caught my eye, however, was the sentence following that comment from Geoffrey Bindman.
Mr Clarke said his critics in the human rights community were “lawyers with a vested interest in a particular area“.
Sorry? Lawyers with a fucking vested interest in a particular area???
Is that the only fucking answer you’ve got, Safety? Anyone who disagrees with us has a ‘vested interest’ which makes their opinions entirely invalid?
Just fuck right off now!!
You want to talk about vested interests, then fine – let’s have a full public inquiry into the circumstances leading to the Iraq War and the false information that was fed to Parliament in order to secure a vote authorising British involvement in the invasion and then we’ll see just what kind of vested interests were kicking around that issue.
Oh sorry, I forgot. That isn’t going to happen is it thanks to the ‘nod and a wink’ deal with the opposition which pushed through the Inquiries Act before the last general election and which puts ministers like yourself in full and complete control of every aspect of any public inquiries including inquiries in the conduct of the government – not that we’re likely to see one of those any time soon.
And of course, Ministers like yourself had no vested interest at all in putting forward that piece of legislation, did you?
Vested interests?
No, just another government minister who’s a shameless, low-rent, conniving piece of shit!
I can’t read the post as it’s shunted way to the left, half-off screen beneath your blogroll. That said, Clarke was being particularly stupid on the bits I could tolerate listening to. I gave up when he claimed to be ‘listening to the people’.
Which browser you using?
I’m not seeing that, but in Moz/Firefox on XP, your footer bar has been shunted to the top of the page. Most of it’s obscured behind the photo but I can see “I am not a” poking out the left-hand side. Perhaps a sign that something’s got messed-up.
The footer problem – I think you’ve got an extra closing [div] tag in your blog code section, immediately after the StoryCode link.
Thanks Pete.
Should be fixed.