Opposition must end charade of parliament without power

Unhappily this is a headline in an Irish newspaper this morning, the Irish Independent, linked here, for the same surely goes double for Britain's emasculated Westminster Parliament now lying at the heart of a police state as an EU province or district. Of course the Mainstream Media will not admit such a fact, they are too cowed, but they drop hints, the bravest are Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson in The Times, linked here, where this quote appears "In an interview with The Times, Mr Green warned that his arrest and the raids on his Commons office and homes smacked of a “police state”. The Tory immigration spokesman said that Ms Chakrabarti’s name had been one of the keywords used to go through e-mails and computer documents going back several years." So the evident fact of a "police state' is at least mentioned by two journalists.... Well Done. The Leading Article in The Independent also sets it out in strong terms but hesitates to draw the obvious conclusion, read it from here, and note this telling statement on the certain cause: The common imprint on each of these stories is that of the unaccountable and rampant executive arm of the British state. And concludes with these words:

We need a completely new approach. Any powers granted to public authorities to protect public safety must come with strict conditions of accountability. The police, in particular, need to be brought under much tighter control.

Whichever party forms the next government needs to take back those powers that should never have been conferred. But more than this, it must expunge the mentality that says security always trumps freedom. It is time our arrogant executive was put back in its rightful place.

This implies that delay beyond the next election is acceptable, yet the criticism of the executive casts doubt whether such an election might not be deferred indefinitely due to the worsening economic situation, given that in the Leading Article's own words the executive is 'unaccountable' and 'rampant' and has allowed the police to become 'out of control'! The Guardian has its own sorry tale that highlights all this from a protester who planned to picket a Nottingham Power Station last week, this harrowing account, made anonymously for fear from police threats, involves 114 people and may be read here. A quote:

Then at bedtime a woman appeared saying the police had surrounded the building and should she let them in. "But before anyone could answer, there was a commotion and the door came crashing down and a couple of hundred police swarmed in."

The protesters were told to face the wall and were handcuffed, he said.

"They had their hands cuffed behind their backs and were left standing there for an hour and a half while the police searched the building. There were lots of people there who had never had so much as a parking ticket and some of them were really quite shaken."

Protesters were taken one by one into a room where they were formally arrested and filmed, and then led out into the car park.

"The street had been closed off and there were 20 police vans there and that is when it became clear this was an operation that had been planned for a long time.