Another Sunday, another column from Henry Porter in The Observer about how we're about to become a fascist dictatorship (it's not me that reduces the debate to a Young Ones sketch).
Porter writes: "...while there are many other serious calls on our attention these days we should pay attention to Ms Smith [the Home Secretary] who towers over our democracy like some comic-strip super-villain dominatrix. She is wrong, corrosive and arrogant. As Molière said: 'A woman always has her revenge ready.' ..."
It's funny but the only woman he quotes in the piece gets cast as a dominatrix - her gender is highlighted and used against her - while all the men are simply quoted and any criticism is not gender specific.
Meanwhile quotes from government ministers are treated with scepticism (fair enough) Porter quotes Phil Booth from NO2ID saying: "The government is proposing to record - for life - the details of everyone you call or write to and what websites you visit." - that's an opinion not a fact. Why not treat it the same as ministerial statements?
And finally, following on from Booth's quote, Porter writes: "Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs select committee, Lord Carlisle, the government's independent reviewer of terror laws and the left-wing backbencher John McDonnell - none of them in the front rank of civil libertarians - all expressed grave alarm at this idea."
Vaz and Carlisle, fair enough, but I'll take John McDonnell's contribution to civic life in this country over Porter's any day. Anyhow, McDonnell has generally been against ID cards according to his Parliamentary voting record.
But when Porter writes about being in the "front rank" perhaps what he means is having the freedom to churn out the same article week in week out for a national newspaper and be paid thousands of pounds for the privilege.
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