Tuesday, March 15, 2005

A bit of MP blogging

I know I said I wouldn't be doing so much politicking, but this important. Martin is doing the same on his blog, and the response from Jim Fitzpatrick is very 'attack dog', methinks. By the way, I'm still not confident in the spelling or indeed usage, of habeus corpus, can you tell? :)

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Dear Joan Walley

I know that it has been a busy time but further to my emails of Friday I would be glad if you could send me an explanation, as my representative, why you voted with the government on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. Anything that can help my understanding as to why we have to suspend our basic civil liberties, even temporarily though that was fought, would be useful. I simply do not believe that we are under a sufficient level of threat to justify the measures you are trying to impose.

I appreciate that in the event of a terrorist attack you will need to be able to say you did everything you could but would like to to know what you will say if a terrorist attack occurs despite the suspension of our basic liberties? Will you give them back if it is shown not ‘to work’? You should be willing to acknowledge the relative level of risk to the population from a terrorist outrage in this country, which compared to my everyday risk of death through traffic accidents or crime is, I believe, small. I say this despite regular contact with potential terrorist targets including the tube and mainline trains.

The international work that the government is doing with its other, non-authoritarian, face will do far more to reduce the level of terrorist attacks and I think you could be a lot braver about giving it publicity rather than pandering to reactionary newspapers.

On another matter, I would be grateful if you could send me details of the solid actions the government intends to take in response to the Commission for Africa’s report, which I thought was very good. Will the different departments of the government be taking a coordinated approach to their action?

Best wishes,
Clare-Marie White

1 comment:

Clare said...

Still no response yet...