Have you read Porters latest article on Cif? In it he agues that a police force who are targeting PDTs (potentially dangerous people) are part of the police state Labour have brought in.

As the poster speedkermot points out in the thread this has been the case foe many years. In fact as the police are requirered to proactively prevent crime rather than just reacting to it, it would be a dereliction of duty if they did not concentrate on the people they thought would be most likely to commit serious offences. Mostly these people already have some minor convictions, but a lack of convictions should not overrule good intelligence.

Porter also posts on the thread, saying that it is wrong for the police to take any action (including surveillance) against a person who does not have any criminal conviction. If this was actually taken up the police would not be able to do anything! If a murder was reported to them they would have to say, sorry we can’t do anything, the suspect doesn’t’ have any convictions.

The practice of targeting people the police believe to be dangerous is normal practice for every police force the world over, it has been normal practice for the UK police for many years, it is necessary and useful. And yet Porters rhetoric presents it as yet another new attack on liberty.

@ cjcjc and Praguetory

I was still half asleep when I posted that. I should have written Porter is a natural conservative (small c), not a natural Tory.

I have it on good authority that Grimethorpe Rovers were advocating a brand of ‘total football’ as early as the mid sixties. The fact that they are now forgotten and all the credit is laid at the door of Rinus Michaels and his Ajax and Dutch National squads is not to belittle Grimethorpe’s contribution, rather an acknowledgement of their complete and utter pointlessness. There’s a lesson there for the LibDems

I don’t care if someone is pro-Tory, but if you’re going to be pro-Tory at least do it intelligently. Jenni Russell doesn’t.

Who is Jenni Russell?

So did Tony Benn? It’s like ferrets in a sack here isn’t it?

As an example, does Russell’s article make clear that the CAF details are not on contactpoint? It is recorded that a CAF has been done, but not what is in it. If you didn’t know this the article could easily give the impression that sensitive details are being recorded on a database open to 300 000 professionals.

The Guardians’ coverage of liberty is similar to the rights approach to the US healthcare debate: exclude accurate information and imply, or actually claim, that everything is a step towards fascism.

Our assembled media/business/voluntary sectors are now in a dash to make sure that they are part of the Cameron landslide before they look too opportunistic.

But if you get things right and you can still be the main opposition at the start of the coming decade.