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item0070D 1006, 1007 1006 31 May 2004
Civil Rights
British civil rights sensitivities are developed in ways poorly understood on the Continent. We are far more sensitive to the physical practicalities of "civil rights", of personal freedom in a quite literal sense - unlawful detention and imprisonment, unnecessarily violent or intrusive Police behaviour, abusive crowd control, wrongful entry to private property. This is a practical and honourable tradition.
Why do I raise this subject with you, this week? Because of Brussels pressure to introduce random breath-tests, in pursuit of drunken drivers. We resist random testing, because of its blanket extension of Police powers, over every moment of our mobile lives, every traffic movement. Our instinct is to resist an unnecessary extension of intrusive Police powers. For the EU administrators (lacking our traditional sensitivities) random breath-testing seems a no-brainer, an obvious method to be deployed "in the cause" of sobriety. Yet we resist, because of the adverse side-effects of extending Police powers.
Do these issues matter to you? Drop me a line
1007 1 June 2004 Lovelock is right
I have always felt guilty about my support for nuclear power generation. But the famous Gaia scientist James Lovelock CBE FRS (now 84) has now dramatically endorsed the case for a rapid expansion of nuclear power -
I well remember attending, almost surreptitiously, a meeting at Blackpool Labour Conference in the mid-Nineties on The Case for Nuclear Power organised by the Power Workers' Union. It was addressed by that great and courageous advocate of "nuclear" - Tam Dalyell. It was held at 9.30 am on a bleak rainy Sunday morning, and there was an audience of only half-a-dozen in a dismal hotel-room, including me. Tam had driven overnight, from Scotland. All the New Labour luminaries (from Tony Blair to Stephen Timms...) were in Church. I consider that the right course is to confront the undoubted technical problems still besetting spent-fuel disposal. We must phase out the burning of fossil fuels as a top priority. Battery-driven cars can be powered by ample supplies of nuclear-generated electricity.
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NOTICE
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When it comes to civil rights,
British is still best. I
know that sounds complacent, jingoistic, even reckless (in the
light of David Blunkett's awful civil rights record at the Home Office).
But remember that I have lived in
both France and Germany, and had legal training in both countries. I
am keenly aware of the limitations of certain societal faultlines, on this
score, affecting Continental countries.
Let me explain.
