Smearing and sneering

It is unworthy of someone in a senior government position - it is unworthy of anyone, come to that, and it is absolutely pathetic. This is how people in the Government respond to a wide-ranging public debate on the important issue of the erosion of ancient freedoms. With tittle-tattle lies and grubby little smears and sneers, innuendo and baseless gossip: and so it starts. I expect worse to come in the next three weeks. And will anyone from Labour stand and fight the corner they claim they have overwhelming public backing for?

No. And that says it all, doesn't it?

Lots of talk about a changing world and ghastly threats to our way of life in the PM's recent speech about liberty and security. But who is really feeling threatened? It looks to me like the government is running scared. Too scared to run a candidate in the liberty by-election, just as they seem too scared to allow us a referendum on the EU, and were too scared to have a general election last year. Bottling it, then. Again.

When this government talks about 'security', it looks like the security that they are most interested in is their own job security. And by 'liberty', they seem to mean the liberty to snoop and spy and spin and lie and then retreat into a bunker saying that we don't understand and it's for our own good and if we knew what they knew, then we'd all be grateful and shut up. We should always keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse,

What a disgrace. No wonder people across the country are completely fed up with it all, and are saying so. The old right/left divide is falling away; it's now authoritarian and libertarian lines that we divide along. Those who want to keep a-hold of Nurse and those who would rather not, thank you very much. Lions? Hmmm.

UPDATE: Liberal Conspiracy

'The comments sprang from a subconscious, short-sighted, self-aggrandising boorishness - which often involves chauvinism, but is in fact a different beast. It’s the arrogance of the territory-jealous middle-manager run power-mad (not a bad description of the Labour experience as a whole, in fact).

We’ve all been half-bullied by these half-people at some time (or maybe I just think we all have and it’s actually just me…) and the drip-drip narrative goes something like this: You disagree with me, ergo everything you do is worthy of ridicule, all your motives are untrustworthy and you are to be treated with contempt.

It’s a narrative that twists facts to fit its own picture of how the world should be - Davis obviously must be a lying snake in the grass, therefore any impassioned discussions he may have with senior civil liberties figures can only be a “joke” that reflects badly on both of them.'

UPDATE 2: Guardian - see also the comments raging.

P.S: The casual implication that the phones of anyone prominent in the civil liberties lobby are routinely tapped is particularly creepy and might as well be guest conspiracy theory of the month, though the genuine shock when Davis announced his resignation actually proves that this isn't so...

P.P.S: And this issue has been running as news for eight days so far. And shows no sign of dying down. Heh.