In less than two hours the House of Commons votes on whether to pass legislation allowing terror suspects to be detained for 42 days without charge.

I fear the Government will win the debate but as has been mentioned by many the debate has become a test of strength of Gordon Brown. Labour's worse Prime Minister since Ramsay Macdonald is claiming that it is all about saving the country from terror and that the police and security services want the extra time.

That as with so much of what Gordon Brown says is a lie. The security services have not said that they want extra time and many policemen say that it is unnecessary. Sir Ken McDonald, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, says that it is unnecessary. Former attorney general Lord Goldsmith says that it is unnecessary.

Acpo, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the unelected cabal of top coppers says that it is required but then if you ask them if they wanted 90 days, 180 days, a year, 42 years - they would say yes. Acpo always wants more and more power.

One might ask why 42 days is necessary in Britain when 14 days is sufficient in so many other "civilised" countries.

The Government promises safeguards but it also said that the RIPA powers would only be used to prevent terrorism. More than 150 local councils have so far used the powers for such heinous crimes as dog fouling, putting too much rubbish in a bin and trying to get a child into a particular school. Who authorised that?

If you give politicians and the police powers they will always, always, always abuse them.

As a sop Gordon Brown has said that people held after 28 days and not charged will receive compensation. So that's all right then. The police arrest an innocent man and hold him for more than 28 days and the taxpayer ends up paying... again.

This legislation is unnecessary and the sooner it is put in the bin the better.

In the name of God, go!

Sir Ian Blair's position as head of the Metropolitan Police Force is now completely untenable.

As I have said before, he cannot remain as Britain's most senior policeman. Yesterday his force was found guilty of 19 "catastrophic" failures over the shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. The force was fined £175,000.

PM Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith have both given Blair their backing - for now. The mayor Ken Livingstone has also said, "The idea that people farther up the food chain somehow bear... responsibility is nonsense."

It is not nonsense at all. The ultimate responsibility for any organisation always always rests with the head. If a building falls down, the architect is responsible not the brickie who worked on the site.

Why is it that this government and its acolytes can never take responsibility? Why is it always time to draw a line and move on?

The sooner Ian Blair is removed from his post and replaced with a policeman who sees his job as nicking villains and not being obsessed with diversity the better.

The surveillance society...

An interesting new book has landed on my desk. The Road to Southend Pier details Ross Clark's struggle against the surveillance society.

Britain’s Information Commissioner said that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society so Ross Clark decided to find out if that was true.

These are some of the facts uncovered by Mr Clark:

• There are 4·2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people
• In 2004 Melbourne dismantled its 23 cameras because they did not justify the A$500,000 they cost annually
• Britons are the third most spied on people on earth; only China and Malaysia spy more on their citizenry
• In 1998 Newham introduced a facial recognition software. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on sunny days and had a tendency to confuse young people and women and had a tendency to recognise black people
• Despite the claim that DNA is foolproof – it isn’t. If everyone in Britain (60 million people) was on the database the chances of a mistake being made by misidentifying someone’s DNA at a crime scene is actually one in 16
• In 2007 John Reid admitted that the Prevention of Terrorism Act had been drafted in such a way that people on control orders i.e. terrorists could not have their fingerprints and DNA taken
• In 2007 the Home Office admitted that despite the plethora of CCTV, DNA databases, tagging and police surveillance it had “lost” 322 registered sex offenders
• In 2005 2,000 people randomly volunteered to be surveyed for the biometric ID card. It took an average of seven minutes and 56 seconds to record the information. To cover the entire country would take 905 man years
• Between April and June 2007 the six largest European airlines lost 1·12 million pieces of luggage – this at a time when passengers and their baggage are supposed to be monitored every step of their journey
  
  
  
  

George W Bush is a disgrace to the office of the president

On Monday, 2 July 2007, President George W Bush commuted the 30-month jail sentence of Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, for perjury. Now it seems as if Bush will grant Libby a pardon.

The Republicans have long thought that they can do what they want. Now, it seems as if they know there will be a Democrat in the White House in 2009, or at least not a neo-con so they are just blatantly ignoring the rule of law and setting themselves up for being out of power.

Cheney is probably one of the most evil men to have held the office of vice-president and Bush is to stupid to go against him. Roll on January 2009 when we see the back of these disgraceful men.