During my viewing of the 42 day debate I was most surprised by Keith Vaz and his sudden change of heart over the poposals. The leader of the Home Affairs Select committee, he and the committee announced in December that there was be "no evidence" for the legislation to take place. This is an important distinction as the evidence for and against the legislation did not change at all between December and the vote in June.

Now the telegraph is claiming evidence of at best ministers being blase about the feelings of the public on "paying off" people for support in votes, and at worst that Keith Vaz, who had prominent time in the debate with a speech of his own, has been promised reward for his allegiance to the party.

Dissent is in the air, and who blames the Labour MPs looking to capitalise on the festering carcass of their own party, when the leader of the sinking ship seems ready to hand out all kinds of shady concessions to get a yes vote? A 9 vote majority on the illiberal 42 day legislation, saved only by the DUP, the hint of rebellion on the most recent planning bill and now concessions are being called for on the long coming plans to tax people more, and retrospectively, for their cars

Now is possibly the best time for fair policy construction and implementation, not ideal by a looong way, but the best we could hope for with a government and parliament structured the way it is

I am unashamedly pro-equality, many others will easily say the same thing. However for some reason many of those people will try to claim that some people need to be more equal than others. On one side of the fence it is the BNP with their "we're not racist but white kids should get first choice on schools" amongst other hypocritical rhetoric. On the other you have Harriet Harman with "I'm for equality, but will legalise employers 'positively' discriminating". I, as others, don't really agree with this term "positive" discrimination as one persons gain is another persons loss...ultimately we feel that everyone should be equal in their entirity, but equal not in statistics and targets, just equal in opportunity, value and thinking.

It's this reason why I have to ultimately ask why it is that Harriet Harman's new legislation would be necessary, and whether or not liberal minded people should really be putting their support so readily behind it.

Just a bit of an update on the story about Heinz pulling a fairly tame ad that included two men kissing briefly. It seems as though a lot of momentum is building here and if you can lend some more weight to that movement then please do so!

With over 10,000 signatures on a petition asking for the ad to be reinstated, and a group on facebook aiming to boycott Heinz over their intolerant stance it is clear many more people are motiviated to complain about the ad being taken off the air than bigots were to get it shelved.

This post is just a bit of filler while I attend the Liberal Conspiracy / Guardian event in London today, but is to highlight two stories that have some serious relevance to homosexual rights in this country. The first is regarding the Heinz advert that has been pulled by the company following 200 homophobic complaints about the innocuous contents. The second is the much more dangerous statement by Jacqui Smith that has the audacity to try and tell homosexuals to tone down their behaviour so as to not get caught by the homophobic Iranian officials.

It looks as though the Telegraph, or someone has finally taken down some of Richard Barnbrook's, only BNP member of the London Assembly, blog postings from their site. Is this a victory for liberty and anti-racism, the BNP back tracking, or just another shallow point made that doesn't solve any of our problems regarding the BNP?

I'm not going to write lots about this (I don't have the time as much as anything else!) but this post from Liberal Conspiracy just showcases how the Labour government have lead our police down a terrible path. The article talks about the sheer pointlessness of things like knife detectors being set up at random around the country, and how the police are seemingly actively discriminating against people by stereotype rather than being thorough. Tough on the appearance of being soft on crime is about all you can muster from this revelation.

'Well...' indulgent little police-officer smile turns into get-rid-of-this-member-of-the-public grin ‘look, we just use our judgement - say, if someone like your good self set off the buzzers, well,’ looks me up and down ‘you’re clearly not the sort of person to be carrying a knife, are you?’

Read the rest over at the Liberal Conspiracy site

News comes out today, as it seems to be most days now as Brown tries his hardest to save his career, that Brown is definitely still sticking to his terror plan, as if we didn't bloody well know.

Over at Harry's Place the response to this news is that they of course think that it's not as bad as people are making out...and by the way it isn't as bad as other awful legislation so what are we complaining about, ungrateful souls that we are?

Why not just oppose the legislation as it is, rather than misrepresenting it? The judicial and parliamentary oversight protect people from just being locked up for 42 days for no reason. Why don't critics acknowledge this?

Remember for those that feel liberal, or even left, and actually understand the sensitivity of this issue the you can join many facets of the campaign against the 42 day detenton laws...most of them detailed on Liberal Conspiracy for you to view under "Not a day longer" on the right!

Here again I find myself in a situation with a few subjects I want to touch on but not really wanting to devote entire posts to each of them at this time. So this time the three subjects are BBC2's White season, your DNA and how little you need to do to give the police reason to put it on a database, and a rather sickening situation of trying to send an Iranian kid back to Iran where he is almost certain to be executed.

It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments. - Aung San Suu Kyi

Or, indeed, that reforms ignoring civil liberties and running contrary to the path we've been taking as a nation are so readily pondered by authoritarian governments. I do wonder how many more times I'll have to keep writing about the illiberal nature of the Home Office led by Jacqui Smith, it almost seems fantastical just how much one person can contemplate and implement in such a short time span. Today we are adding to the ever increasing list of authoritarian practice with the logical extension of where she is going with the current clampdown on under age drinking, as well as subtly not-quite-announcing plans for a what I can only satirically describe as a thought crime unit. (Heads up to Dizzy for that)