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LadyEllen -> RE: DNA database setback for Labour (12/7/2008 7:01:30 AM)
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From his website; (and well done for providing some evidence for a change, even if it is just one member of quite a sizeable party)
The latest subject which members of the Dinner Party set are working themselves up into a tsunami lather of righteous indignation is the horrendous, sinister, Orwellian “Police State” of data control.
They tell us that the existence of a national DNA database is a “profound threat to our liberty and privacy”. It will apparently have “dominion over our biological essence”!
I have to admit that I would have more sympathy if the Dinner Party set acknowledged that a more “profound threat to our liberty and privacy” (than the existence of a DNA database) is to be raped and killed by someone who could have been apprehended before with a proper and responsibly organised DNA database.
Contrary to the impression of some, it is not “Liberal” to put concerns about the liberty of perpetrators above those of victims.
It is not beyond the wit of legislators to, for example, create a non-compulsory DNA database operated and overseen by our universities and the judiciary and commissioned, under reasonable restrictions, for the Police to use.
I guess the point is that he's a nobody; it puts a whole different slant on things when the government are enacting crazy ideas like this. I might thing that genocide is a great idea, but it wouldnt mean a damned thing unless I had the power to enact it.
Here's the view from our candidate, also the view of the Party.
Interesting that he thinks the judiciary and universities are the proper custodians of this archive. Surely the point of the DNA database is that the police can routinely dip into it whenever they find a bit of unexplained DNA at a crime scene? And if the govt can't keep data safe, why so a bunch of students? His argument is the usual twaddle one churns out every time something terrible happens - 9/11 - lock up anyone with a sun tan. Soham - bar all men from schools. Fred West - nuke Cheltenham. Okay, I might be being a little churlish here, but it's the extreme version of what the govt is doing across the board at the moment and it's not far removed from things I hear from his so-called dinner party set, either. People have blithely allowed freedoms to be eroded and then wonder why their kids can't go to camp or why they've banned fireworks night or conkers or pancake races. They pine for the good old days of district nurses on bicycles and then when a district nurse is caught bumping off old ladies, they say hang all district nurses and demand a police state. It's government by panic. You cannot live in any sense of happiness and calm if there is not a sense of trust and an acceptance that life isn't always safe. There is little more contagious than fear it is fear which has been stirred up by the Labour government and around which they are constructing a surveillance society. Of course, we want the police to catch criminals but the ultimate extension of what he's saying is that if we're all locked up, at least they know they've caught the right man somewhere amongst all the wrong ones. This is what he's saying in the sentence "It is not “Liberal” to put concerns about the liberty of perpetrators above those of victims." Whereas what we're really saying is, "It IS "Liberal" to recognise that for us to be free and safe from THE STATE, we have to accept that a few criminals will slip through the net." I'm fed up with this "if you haven't done anything you've got nothing to worry about" attitude. Just wait till Gordon Brown sells his DNA to an insurance company, who recognise a slightly higher risk of heart failure and refuse to let him fly. Bloody idiot! Now, I hereby declare Andrew George MP to be wrong - and not a little crazy. You see I have no problem with that; no need to defend the indefensible for the sake of wider allegiance.
The question is, can you declare the Labour government to be wrong and not a little crazy on this subject too, or do you fully support their aims and intentions, whatever those latter might be?
E
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