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I suppose being black and under retirement age might be seen as unusual in Bournemouth, but just imagine one twitchy finger amongst the firearms unit?

Nonetheless I have never understood why there is no legal redress to being treated like this as an innocent person by the state. Some of these incidents seem horrendous - like that British Asian pilot who was paraded naked around JFK airport or wherever it was shortly after 9/11.

Was there no other way this poor chap could have been ruled out as the suspect without all this potentially lethal kerfuffle? Did he present an obvious and immediate danger by his behaviour, or luggage or something? Could not following him home and checking the electoral roll perhaps suggest that he was not the wanted person?

Whilst I do not agree with Peter Hitchens (sorry - if you are not a subscriber you won't be able to read the whole of this correspondence)about bringing back the death penalty, I do tend to agree with him that the powers and weapons we have given to the police create an atmosphere in which extra-judicial executions are more likely.

Do we all live but a hair-trigger away from being the next Jean Charles de Menezes?

If we had ID cards to "prevent terrorism" would these nice officers of the law have bothered politely to ask to see his ID card before pinning him to the floor? I doubt it - "operational expediency" covers a multitude of abuses.

A quite bonkers situation is highlighted today:

Migrant cap 'will hit fruit crop':

Thousands of pounds worth of strawberries could be lost

Much of this year's strawberry crop will not be harvested because of a cap on seasonal workers entering the UK, the National Farmers' Union has warned.
The NFU says the cap, which limits the number of non-EU citizens entering the country, is causing a shortage of fruit-pickers.

Farmers are calling for the government to raise the cap from its current limit of just over 16,000.

The Home Office says farms should recruit from closer to home.

Farmers say they have found it increasingly difficult to recruit seasonal workers since the expansion of the EU in 2004, which gave membership to countries including Poland.

So, by preventing the free movement of people, we increase the need to move goods around the world that could be just as well produced at home. We'll presumably have to see more Spanish strawberries in the shops because we won't allow people to come and pick English ones. And yet as I write here from my hall of residence flat, I hear our domestic staff bustling about getting ready to welcome hundreds of youngsters from overseas to learn a bit of English for a few weeks, which will no doubt be replicated at universities up and down the country.

Bonkers.

Technorati Tags: freedom of movement, SAWS, fruit pickers, food miles

...it's Parliament that makes the decisions.

I don't know how many times he's used this excuse in his interview with John Sopel so far. Detention without trial, ASBOs, House of Lords reform - "the government puts forward its policies but parliament makes the decision".

On the one hand, at least there is someone in the government that recognizes this basic tenet of the British democratic system, but on the other, we work on a majoritarian system; if government can't persuade its own people who are in that majority, surely it's not parliament to blame, but the government not putting forward policies even their own people can support.

Excuses.

Technorati Tags: house of lords, politics, ASBO, liberty