spot on
this commentary expresses pretty much exactly how I feel about the UK governments new plans.But one item may prove impossible to shift: a new crime of “glorifying” terrorism. It won’t have been Mr Clarke’s idea to put people in prison for praising an idea. Home Office lawyers will have told him that it cannot be done and (one hopes) his instincts will anyway have been against the attempt.
No, there is only one possible source of this folly. The notion that you can make the world a better place by making it illegal to say nasty and dangerous things has the intellectual sloppiness, the headline-seeking shallowness, the philosophical carelessness and the creepy mix of the sinister with the sanctimonious, that marks it out as absolutely characteristic of our Prime Minister’s mind.
When I was about 7, urged to say my prayers before bed, I came up with what seemed a succinct and catch-all formula. “Please God,” I would whisper, “make everybody be as they ought to be and do as they ought to do.” By the age of 10 it had occurred to me that my prayer did not do justice to the complexities of life, and I moved on. I rather think that Tony Blair is still stuck at this stage.
posted by Mr K @ 7:44:00 AM
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