If it was just the dustbins. . .

Helienne Lindvall, writing in guardian.co.uk this morning, identifies the problem we face, when complaining about the steady encroachment of civil liberties: not just that the authorities take a very black and white view, along the lines, “If you are not in favour of it, you must be against it”, or worse, Gordon Brown’s argument “that new state powers were guarantors of liberty, not threats to it”, but that for many of our fellow citizens, why worry,

“Many people are of the opinion that if you’re not doing anything untoward or illegal you have nothing to worry about. This argument has also been used when it comes to the latest news of UK councils snooping on their constituents. But, knowing people who get interrogated every time they pass the US borders (some of them are even US citizens), because they work for perfectly legal organisations like Peta and Amnesty International, I think the expression “in the interest of national security” is open to a wide range of interpretations.”

Her subheading is that regular monitoring is nothing new to Swedish citizens, and

“In fact, I’ve probably been flagged up for writing this.”

You and me both!

The arrogance of power

Catching up with a week of feeds after a hectic few days, my eye was caught by John Naughton’s post in Memex 1.1 Inside the bunker, linking to the FT’s piece about life in Number 10 (and perfectly juxtaposed with Naughton’s subsequent post, Hitler: the remix. When will someone do the same for Gordon: I would, if I had the IT skill: the Lisbon Treaty, Henley, Wendy Alexander etc.).

Now, this morning, Willem Buiter’s post in his FT Maverecon blog, Manners matter – especially for powerful individuals and institutions. This is Buiter’s conclusion on the Treasury, so long the home and fiefdom of Gordon Brown,

Politicians and others in positions of power should be judged not only on the quality of the decisions they take and the choices they make, but also on the manners they display in their public and administrative roles. The arrogance of power manifests itself in unnecessary brutality and cruelty – sometimes born of ignorance or indifference, sometimes deliberate – toward those whom it considers ‘disposable’. As the most powerful government department, the Treasury displays contempt for and nastiness towards those whom it considers to be obstacles to the effective pursuit of its goals, more frequently and with greater intensity than other institutions.

Even when the goals of the Treasury are aligned with the public interest, there is no presumption that these ends will justify the means used to achieve them. This is true even when these means are necessary; it is true a fortiori if the means are unnecessary ‘bad manners’ add-ons.

In practice, even the goals of the Treasury can be in conflict with the committed pursuit of the public interest. They may represent no more than the opportunistic pursuit of party-political or other sectional interests. To use gratuitous nastiness in the pursuit of the wrong objectives would be the nadir of public policy. Regrettably we see this too often.

How much do we mind? Not a lot, it seems,

Not long after posting More on 42 days last week, I read The Economist’s take on the erosion of civil liberties in Britain, Mary Poppins and Magna Carta

Liberals have long lamented that, despite much stirring rhetoric about the mother of parliaments and Magna Carta, modern Britons have little real interest in their hard-won liberties. On June 17th, as Gordon Brown gave a speech on the subject, that pessimism seemed confirmed when one rapt listener fell asleep in the middle of the prime minister’s oration.

Much worse, however, was Gordon Brown’s argument “that new state powers were guarantors of liberty, not threats to it.” This was the position taken by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam and most recently Mugabe. Gordon must be pleased he is such good company.

More on 42 days

Marshall Grossman’s post Electing Obama, the Supreme Court and American Exceptionalism in HuffingtonPost.com is well worth reading for his take on the importance of Obama’s candidacy. I was very struck by his comments on law, and his reference to James Harrington,

“To be sure the signers of the Declaration of Independence represented the enfranchised classes of Englishmen, but they also knew the difference between a republic and a kingdom and they understood the significance of a government based on a written constitution. Writing under a pseudonym in the Boston Gazette in 1774, John Adams both asserted the English origins of the new republic and its aspiration to something different when he famously quoted the English republican theorist James Harrington’s call for an “empire of laws and not of men,” strategically substituting the word “government” for Harrington’s “empire.” We have in the last seven years seen a sustained and often successful effort to replace that government of laws with something closer to the royal prerogative against which Harrington wrote in 1656.”

In Gordon Brown’s Britain, we are inexorably moving back towards that royal prerogative. 42 days is just one more step along that journey.

No crisis to address?

Isn’t it enough that he denies that his country is ravaged by AIDS? Today’s comment by Thabo Mbeke, reported by Reuters, suggests that he is denial on a whole lot more,

“I wouldn’t describe that as a crisis. It’s a normal electoral process in Zimbabwe. We have to wait for ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) to release (the results),” Mbeki told reporters after meeting Mugabe for an hour.”

To the rest of the world, including many of his fellow leaders, what is happening in Zimbabwe is nothing less than a constitutional coup d’etat. That perhaps the most powerful leader in Southern Africa seems to think all is “normal” says more about Mbeki than Mugabe. According to Gordon Brown, “We, and the leaders of the region, strongly share this commitment [to democracy]”. Perhaps, as has long been suspected, Mbeki doesn’t.