MI5 wants to 'erode' our liberties to protect us ...

... genuinely scary stuff!! So, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller's disappointment at not being able to prevent the July bombings is to be assuaged by an 'erosion' of our liberties. Naturally, she assures us, this is for our own good. Stuff and nonsense!

The way I see it is this. We are seemingly under threat from a group of people, some of them home grown, who want fundamentally to change the way our democratic society works, by in essence 'eroding' our freedoms and enforcing social policies they find more amenable. And to get their way they are prepared to loose off bombs on crowded commuter trains, even if it means their own deaths in the process.

So what does MI5 suggest our reaction should be? They suggest, in a manner that 'Sir Humphrey' might have called innovative, or even audacious, his euphemisms for unwise and completely and utterly crazy, respectively, effectively saying that our only option is for our own authorities do the terrorists' work for them. To be quite honest I would rather continue to accept some degree of risk to my personal safety than sacrifice one iota of the freedoms that many generations have struggled and suffered to achieve, in the probably illusory hope that by introducing some further means of keeping tabs on the British public generally we will somehow be better 'protected'. From whom do we really need protecting? We are after all apparently the most 'CCTVed' nation on the planet already! One imagines this is yet another angle that is being used to persuade us to accept that ID Cards are essential. No! No! No! It doesn't wash, dear Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller!

Here is what Spy Blog has to say on the matter.