Labour Totalitarianism moves on apace

Yesterday Polly Toynbee tried to justify Labour plans to revoke passports and driving licences from those who dodge child support. Do read her article and then read the comments; here are some:

"TomRainsborough
27 Jan 09, 12:19am

Classic New Stasi thinking and the main reason I won't ever be voting for them again.

I have no truck with parents who won't pay. Lock them up. The penalty already exists.

If you start stripping people of passports and driving licences what do you think the next set of offences the State will use the option for will be? And the next one and the next one?? Until we arrive at unpaid parking fine collection?



MoveAnyMountain

27 Jan 09, 12:39am

Sorry Mswoman but this is not a Man's Rights issue, it is a human rights one.

Just consider this as a matter of people, and not gender.

What we have is that the Government can decide, arbitrarily and with a long history of f*cking up, to seize as much of your money as they want, they can then prohibit you from driving and then seize your passport and so prevent you working if you happen to live overseas.

They can do all this without once coming near a Court room. It is a simple arbitrary administrative decision. They can utterly ruin some person's life. The idea that there is a chance of appeal through the Courts hardly changes this does it?

The truth is that this is worse than the detention under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Yes, people ought to pay for their children. Just as they should not be terrorists. But the Government should not be granted such draconian powers. Not even if they were competent, and they are not, they should not be given such powers that are open to such abuse.

And I feel sorry for you if your views on men means you can't see that.

Given that this will not work, I wonder what is next. Roaming Death Squads probably.




peitha

27 Jan 09, 9:20am

Polly, 12 months ago you were in favour of Europe and the Lisbon Treaty. Part of that Treaty is ratification that the right to free movement within the EU is a 'fundamental right'. Remember Lisbon, the EU constitution that wasn't, according to NewLabour in order to avoid debate on ratification?

Yet despite having supported that you now approve of taking passports away from certain people whose actions you disapprove of, without due process of law but instead by administrative decision.

So, when you were in favour of the Lisbon Treaty; (a) had you not read what you were in favour of, (b) did you not realise that the point of enshrining such rights as fundamental rights is precisely in order that the state cannot remove them, (c) or have you now changed your mind about Europe and Lisbon?

The whole point of Bills of Rights/Charters of Fundamental Freedoms and Rights and so on is not to limit relations between citizens, they are to limit the power of the state in relation to its citizens - a point you seem never to have grasped.

Do you ever actually bother to think through your position on, and the ramifications of, a political policy before you spout off? Or is it simply that you never think further than knee-jerk, tribal puffing of whatever NewLabour is promoting this week?

Of course, if Brown had not run away from debate on Lisbon, maybe these problems would have been anticipated, or at least argued through in Parliamentary/public debate ... as ever being sleazily authoritarian bites back in the end."