Stellar

When the retired head of the spy service says that Government policy is too secretive and anti-libertarian, it's time to sit up and listen. Oh yes, you'd been thinking I'd not passed any civil liberties comments for a while.

Stella Rimmington, erstwhile spy and now novellist, is reported in the press today as being extremely critical of the Government's policy during the "War on Terror", saying that their policies were in fact at risk of helping the aims of terrorists by reducing us to a police state. Read more here.

There is a certain irony in this coming from such a bastion of the Establishment as the Telegraph; and part of me feels that if powerful public servants felt so strongly when they had power, it's amazing that they felt so powerless to express such sentiments or act upon them. Civil liberties versus pension plan? Hmm.

I'm being picky. The more people like this join with the International Commission of Jurists in questioning policy and practice of our elected representatives, the better. There's an old song, which played us into my aunty's funeral - It's not where you start, it's where you finish; but actually, as a Christian, it's how you get there, and that's why we should care about these things. Freedom, respect, decency. Treating people like people. Loving our neighbours, not (glory, that this comes from MI5) spying on them & locking them up for being different.