26 July (Part 2) - Teresa goes to Pickles. James gets in a pickle
At
the council meeting on 13th July the petition presented by Mrs. Joan McCarthy on
behalf of FORGE (Friends Of Riverside Gardens Erith) was received with
a mixture of boredom and mirth by Bexley councillors.
Fortunately Mrs. McCarthy is represented by an MP who takes democracy and preservation of the environment
more seriously than Bexley council and she has presented the petition in the
House of Commons. Maybe the Communities and Local Government Secretary, Eric
Pickles will be more sympathetic but the signs are not good.
Mr. Pickles
issues guidance but when Bexley council ignores it he looks the other way, but at least Erith has an MP
that sticks up for her constituents. Teresa’s plea to Eric Pickles is in the panel below.
One of many things I did not like about Teresa’s party in government was the
constant assault on personal freedoms so when James Brokenshire and others came
out against the DNA database in 2009 I looked forward to some back tracking from the police state being progressively created by Labour Home Secretaries. James still has his
statement of 1st November 2009 on his website and an extract from it is provided here.
Today’s newspapers tell a very different story about James Brokenshire. They report he
has said that the DNA of innocent people is to be retained after all. The proposed system
is not entirely without merit but the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights is cast aside in
what The Daily Telegraph said is the 14th U-turn by the coalition government.
James Brokenshire lost the trust of many local people when his
promises for Queen Mary’s Hospital were over-ruled by
the government of which he is a member. History appears to be repeating itself.
Another
anti-DNA retention statement
by James Brokenshire.