Britian has always been rather over paternalistic police state in some manner of speaking. Anti-terrorism laws have been the biggest legal grey area in this country since the 60s. In a state whereby you dont have rights.. rather you are allowed to do the things which are not banned (very important distinction), stuff like this will come and go...

Hmm.

I agree that graffiti should be an arrest-able offense. Arresting someone for littering sounds a bit extreme, although it depends on what scale I guess. I can't imagine the police are going to WANT to arrest more people because of the time and paperwork involved, but it would possibly help them in certain situations.

This must be balanced however with civil liberties issues, such as the potential for it's abuse, either at individual level or politically at demonstrations etc. Also, I don't believe in drug testing people as a matter of course, certainly not if they are arrested for something not drug related.

As for DNA, I wouldn't mind non-consensual DNA testing of a sample against a database, as long as that sample did not then become part of that database, and they didn't violate my privacy to get it. If anyone wants to scrape my spittle of the pavement, they're welcome to it! Only DNA samples given under proper, witnessed, clinical conditions should become part of any database.

Overall I can see what they are getting at, but wouldn't support the proposals as they stand.

This is just a consultation document. We all have until the 8th of October to write or email the Home Office and/or our MP with our thoughts. At that point there will probably be a debate in the House of Commons, so it's not quite 1984 yet!

Good heads up though. Gives us plenty of time to debate here before informing H.M.G. of her best course of action!

EDIT : Oh and I'm totally, utterly against ANY kind of curfew, whatever the age, except for convicted criminals. That's bad.



[edit on 12/8/04 by muppet]

[edit on 12/8/04 by muppet]

TPL Opps. Sorry. The way it was on the news seemed like it was the whole city. Anyway Its prob only a matter of time.

Muppet, yeah we have some time. Unless their is a terror attack in which parliment can rush through laws without any public interaction!

Well, there's going to be alot of angre teens..

police in UK need more powers to stop the binge drinkers, thugs, yobs, etc... Britain is not tough enough on the criminal class, we've tried the softly softly approach - that doesn't work, lets now try the zero tolerance approach