Monday, March 13, 2006

If It Were You or I

If It Were You or I We’d be Arrested

Sir Ian Blair is fast becoming as big a joke as Dubya. He certainly seems to make about as many gaffes.

Problem is that this guy’s in charge of the Metropolitan Police. From his cack-handed response to the shooting of Mr Menezes, through to the outrageously insensitive comments about the murders of Jessica Simpson and Holly Wells (not to mention the inept and inadequate apology for it) he’s given us all much to ponder. Not least about how someone so apparently self-seeking and incompetent managed to get the job in the first place.

He’s recently been caught out recording conversations with the Lord Advocate and others. Now, apart from the level of mistrust and paranoia that shows which is worrying enough in someone holding his position and would seem to indicate that he holds the Lord Advocate to be on a par with terrorists. After all, it’s to catch terrorists that he wants the right to tap our phones with impunity and without a warrant. If he’s already doing bugging his political masters, then it seems likely that he’ll have no compunction doing so to the rest of us.

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t secretly recording a telephone conversation a criminal offence? My answering machine can do it, but in the manual it quite clearly states that you are required to inform the other person that you are doing so and it beeps every 15 seconds to remind them that it is being done. Now that Sir Ian has been caught doing so and has admitted it publicly, shouldn’t he be getting charged?

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