eclectica: Sleaze sells, kidnap doesn't

Sleaze sells, kidnap doesn't

Posted 30 March 09 by Scott Andrews

In February the Home Secretary ignored a Special Immigration Appeals Court ruling to release two men from custody. The car that collected them from the court, which they, and the court itself, thought would take them home, instead drove them straight to Belmarsh.

Nobody was informed of this until the mens’ wives called their lawyers to ask why they were not home yet.

This was done on an order from the Home Secretary. The lawyers recommended that she be charged with contempt of court and kidnap. As far as my limited understanding goes, they were well within the law to do so.

The court instead told her to let them go and stop ignoring the rule of law, please. Presumably they were wary of the fight that would ensue if they actually tried to enforce the law in this instance.

The Home Secretary cannot be seen to ignore the courts and kidnap people. It is, in the clearest sense, a resignation issue. A clearer, and more dangerous, example of abuse of power I can hardly imagine.

This story was, to my admittedly often hazy recollection, hardly reported at all, and certainly not with the prominence I would have expected given the principles at stake.

Full details courtesy of indymedia.

But now we’re now expected to demand her resignation because she got confused between an internet connection and a TV package, because they were bundled precisely to make them confusing, and accidentally claimed £10 for a couple of pornos her hubby watched while she was away from home.

This story is being reported everywhere, and the headline writers are having a field day using the word ‘sleaze’ ostensibly to refer to unjustified expense claims but really, nudge nudge wink wink, to refer to porn, which is dirty and wrong and by the way turn to page three.

Which is the worse abuse of power – kidnapping people in defiance of the courts, or getting confused by Sky package options and accidentally claiming £10?

And people wonder why newspaper circulation is falling.

The one sane mainstream media voice I’ve come across so far is Nick Robinson, who can always be relied upon for a nuanced reading of events: Smith thought she’d be cleared.