Proof The Bible Is True

This week seemingly, like Banquo’s Ghost in Macbeth, a new law has appeared to haunt us and disappeared at the final curtain, unnoticed. This week the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (ABCP) came into force. It is to give additional powers to the police, local authorities and some in the private sector to deal with problem people and situations.

The background is that the European Union and UK political parties over the last decade have had terrorism or anti-social behaviour thrust onto their agendas from an often, frightened or intimidated public.

Whilst often an eager general public seem keen to embrace new laws and new personal restrictions, civil liberties groups ask whether it is worth the price on individual freedom and implied undemocratic laws which compromise the spirit if not the letter of Magna Carta.

In the Anglo-sphere, 799 years ago King John was the first monarch to admit that he was not omnipotent and was subject to the same legislation as the people. Indeed, the late Tony Benn on hearing the Counter-Terrorism Acts were to include the right by the police to hold a suspect for ninety days without being informed of the charges opined: “I never thought I would be in the House of Commons on a day when Magna Carta was repealed.” The current limit is twenty-eight days.

Currently Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, is trying to get the maximum sentence for internet “trolls” increased from six months to two years in jail.

Edward Snowden the whistle-blower or traitor, depending on your point of view, said recently that the UK’s GCHQ uses “unlawfully collected information…” and “poses a danger to the UK’s legal and justice systems because evidence is being collected against individuals who don’t have the ability to challenge it in courts.”

Read More  UK Enacts Draconian Anti-Social Behavioural Laws.