In which I see the light

Ever wondered how the majesty of England’s legal system became symbolized by sober, thoughtful, wise old men in wigs and robes?

Dumb Jon seems to be ungrateful once again for the enlightened regime of peace, freedom and human dignity which our new masters have wrought.

If an unemployed man who returns from a terrorist training camp with extra mobile phones, wads of cash and information so sensitive he needed to swallow it to prevent the police reading it can’t travel freely anywhere throughout the United Kingdom, then what does the very word ‘freedom’ mean?

Another example or two or three of all this is a small price to pay, surely, for a foreign-born father of five and associate of terrorists not to cool his heels skulking in some flat above a kebab shop in Gloucester or Polperro, surely?

I remember well the righteous anger with which left-wing and liberal human rights activists (and our own pals of the right-wing libertarian persuasion) opposed New Labour’s former plans to introduce 90 day court-granted detention periods for terrorist suspects, and it must delight us all to know that reason prevailed, with ‘control order lite’ such an effective measure and alternative to some harsher regime of, say, locking up or deporting known associates and enablers of terrorist groups?

Or, maybe not.

Or maybe it is, but the official Left wants the new lighter rules to be enforced in a tougher way? Why, some of them do. Nothing typifies the Left’s profound sanity and illuminated intelligence better than its forthright calls to make something work that can’t work by making it work by being really, really tough because it’s better than doing something that can work. Such as prison or deportation.

Proudly, my formerly bellowed Conservative Party opposed the 90-day regime and wanted less stringent measures instead. You can see how well that’s working out.

Less stringent measures, such as an internal equivalent of our nation’s delightful ‘open-door’ policy of immigration seem to be protecting the rest of us satisfactorily, as in “Here’s an open door, Mr. Terrorist Enabler, but please don’t slam it behind you.”

It’s a fine example of our humourous political class that they can argue our security downwards for months, the Labour government starting as more authoritarian (read ‘security-conscious’) than the traditional supporters of national security and law and order.

So, yes, Mr. Magag should be free to carry cash and several mobile phones and to come into what’s left of London where, at worst, he will speak approvingly of terrorists and maybe contact them and advise them and perhaps even to travel abroad again to join them and help them. 

That’s only free speech and freedom of movement; fundamental human rights not to be curtailed lightly. I see the light at last.

On the other hand, the Political Class is not so doctrinaire that it won’t allow the long detention in harsh conditions of a man who had sought to travel abroad in order to be rude (and possibly quite truthful) about Islam and for an assault for which there seems to be no actual - what’s that word? evidence -  and for ancient mortgage fraud charges that seemed not to have been considered by the authorities in the case of Peter Mandelson while allowing his livelihood to be destroyed and his associates intimidated, or the incarceration of someone who stayed right here in England to be (admittedly very) obnoxious to members of ethnic minorities in person.

You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. I feel safer already.

So the judge’s wigs as symbols of a just and sensible legal system? Now pretty much abolished outside some smaller courts and  House of Lords big occasions.

But not all is lost.

Pictures from here and here.