Tony to push through new stop and search laws

It seems that shiny Tony is going to leave us all with a bad taste in our mouths
Not content with leaving Brown with a poisoned chalice he's going to add alkali and a few other chasers to the cup.


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Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to push through a new anti-terrorism law before he steps down next month giving "war-time" powers to police to stop and question people, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Blair, who is due to resign on June 27 after a decade in office, wrote in an article in The Sunday Times that his government planned to publish new anti-terrorism proposals "within the next few weeks". An interior ministry spokeswoman confirmed the government was looking at including a "stop and question" power in the new legislation. "We are considering a range of powers for the bill and 'stop and question' is one of them," she said. The "stop and question" power would enable police to interrogate people about who they are, where they have been and where they were going, The Sunday Times said. Police would not need to suspect a crime had taken place. If suspects failed to stop or refused to answer questions, they could be charged with a crime and fined, The Sunday Times said. Police already have the power to stop and search people but have no right to ask them their identity and movements. The Sunday Times said the powers already existed in Northern Ireland. Civil rights groups viewed the plan to extend them to the rest of Britain as an attack on civil liberties, it said. Such powers had only existed before in other parts of Britain in war time, it said. Interior minister John Reid is proposing other measures to combat Islamist militants, the report said. These would give police the power to take documents away for examination even if their value as evidence was not immediately obvious and the power to remove vehicles to examine them. Blair's government passed tough anti-terrorism measures after the September 2001 attacks on U.S. cities and again after four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport network in July 2005. However, some of Blair's proposed measures -- such as a plan to hold terrorism suspects for up to 90 days without charge -- have been blocked by parliament or the courts. Britain's anti-terrorism strategy has faced criticism in the last few days after the disclosure that three men suspected of planning attacks on British or U.S. troops abroad had absconded. Authorities had attempted to keep tabs on the three men through "control orders". In his article, Blair said it was not the government's fault the three had absconded. Instead, he blamed parliament and the courts for quashing the tougher measures he had wanted. "We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong," he wrote. Britons had decided that, except in very limited ways, the threat to public safety from extremism did not justify radical changes to the law, he said. "Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment," he added."


The above post is from Reuters via Msn

Is nothing safe from Tony?

Stalker Alert

She has now been caught and the matter is over.

Nightmare

Have been sectioned, injected, and bullied in a psychiatric hospital for the last three weeks

Thank god for parents and real friends

Pasty Halfwit

Still wont step down even after this fiasco

Patsy Hewitt

She is visiting the Walsgrave Hospital tomorrow. This hospital has a special place in my history as I was born there though the hospital buildings that I was born in are no longer there, having been replaced by a brand new shiny Private finance initiative hospital.

She is going to be shown a ward that bears no relation to the real world and will then continue her labour newspeak/spin and declare that the NHS is going from strength to strength

What a load of rubbish.

Already I hear that in Chelmsford they are paying four people from outside the hospital £900 pounds a day each to sort out the financial mess that the hospital is in. They have already sacked half the secretaries such that 1200 dictated letters and notes have built up and there is a risk of an avalanche in some offices with notes piled high to the ceiling. They have increased car parking charges by 500% and got rid of support staff such that my friend an anaesthetist has to do all the drawing up of medications, mopping the floor, and cleaning the machines and is regularly at work until 7 or 8pm at night.

MTAS is a smokescreen to reduce medical staffing in the NHS. Already Patsy has wasted over 2 billion pounds worth of public money by not making sure that there are enough jobs for the doctors who are coming out of medical school, and these doctors are not in the position I was in when I left medical school with £30 in my bank account and no debt; oh no some of them have debts in excess of £20000 pounds.

I wrote of a medical school classmate who died yesterday, do we need more deaths to show the public or the government that what they are doing to us is vile?

I was chatting to an ex boss of mine on Tuesday before I heard the news and she said to me Its always good to have an exit strategy, its a lifesaver.

Poor David couldn't see an exit strategy apart from taking his own life, and I weep with many others that a talented bright and friendly soul has been lost prematurely from this world.

I call for the resignation of Patsy Hewitt with immediate effect.

It is time to write to your MP and ask them to table a motion calling for a vote of no confidence in the health minister.

Death of a Colleague

As I surfed last night I came across the doctor missing from Edinburgh and at first didnt register the name, thought yeah another one bites the dust and then I see the same thing on our doctors' website and then review the webpage . I make the connection from seeing the photo again and reading more deeply. He's been missing for a week in the lovely balmy temperatures and they found a body an hour and half walk from his car and have called the search off. He leaves three children and a distraught wife and grieving brothers.
It shouldn't have to happen, I'm saddened that someone I went to medical school with and who is the same age as I am is dead. Yet his NHS trust is refuting the idea that he worked 84 hours a week and not taking any responsibility at all.

All doctors who work 7 nights on shift work 84 hours for that week. Yet the public as seen from the Have your say page on the BBC news website feel we get paid wonderfully and cant understand the current jobs crisis.

Many of us have exit strategies in place, for some it is retirement others it is fleeing this awful place that Britain has become in the last ten years.

My thoughts today rest with his family, friends many of whom I know and his grateful patients and many many work colleagues.

My Union

My union rep is convinced that my trust is going to sack me. Talk about pessimism the voice of doom and gloom lives. She thinks that there is nothing in my soon to be rather large and rather hole blowing harassment complaint that will make any difference.

She however is not yet party to the details. Talk about trying to depress you in advance