Following my last post where I detailed the numerous ways in which the English have few if any of the civil rights enjoyed by their American cousins, the following story from the Guardian also brought to my attention today shows the utter contempt the UK’s supreme judicial body has for the due process rights of the British people:
The court held that there was a risk that a random, “suspicionless”, power of stop-and-search could be used in an arbitrary and discriminate manner in individual cases. But the deputy president of the supreme court, Lady Hale, sitting with Lord Clarke, Lord Reed, Lord Toulson and Lord Hodge, ruled that there were adequate safeguards in place and that there were “great benefits to the public in such a power”, particularly to the black community.
In the first case of its kind, Hale said: “Put bluntly, it is mostly young black lives that will be saved if there is less gang violence in London and some other cities. It is the randomness and therefore the unpredictability of the search which has the deterrent effect and also increases the chances that weapons will be detected.”
The five judges unanimously ruled that section 60 of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which allows random searches, was “in accordance with the law” and therefore compatible with the European convention on human rights.
Outrageous. No wonder the Investigatory Powers Bill is having such an easy time.
