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This is an interesting one – the other week the Liberal Democrats launched their Freedom Bill. More details including the full text can be found on their campaign website.
The objective of the Bill is to repeal a large block of legislation that has been put on the Statute Book in recent years, legislation which has taken away or eroded important freedoms that we in the UK had previously enjoyed. As the Bill stands at the moment (the Lib Dems are asking people to contribute), twenty laws are identified for repeal.
Three that particularly stand out for me are getting rid of Identity Cards, removing innocent people from the DNA database and scrapping ContactPoint. In my view these represent a paradigm-shift in the way institutions of the state deal with the individual. In that respect, bringing an end to them means not just changing the way we do things, but tearing down a pillar of New Labour’s ‘war on terror’. As a civil libertarian, that would make me very happy.
Even if it will be a struggle to make the Bill law, I am very pleased that a major Party is making civil liberties an issue again. At the very least, the campaign will make it more awkward for politicians to be ambivalent: they will have to take a stance on these issues, and defend it.
Clint Eastwood (of all people) once said ‘take your profession seriously; don’t take yourself seriously’. It seems a sensible adage to live by, in the spirit of which you will notice a fairly drastic restructuring of this website. In addition to http://nigebox.com, the site has been split in two, with a new sister site: http://nigelaw.com. The former is now to be a tongue-in-cheek place for ranting about the world and a place for me to write about other things as I see fit. It should be read with Clint’s wise words in mind, and not taken too seriously.
This however is the first post of nigelaw (see what I did there?) – the objective of which is quite different. In September I will begin studying for the LPC (Legal Practice Course) in London, and will be writing about my experiences and hopefully collating some useful content on these pages. I enjoy reading a number of serious (and not-so-serious) blawgs written by practitioners, academics and students. The aim is to throw this blog in amongst them.
Exactly what form the ‘useful content’ mentioned above will take remains to be seen. The approach I intend to take is to produce content that I find useful. If over time others find it useful then all the better. Hopefully by obliging myself to produce this content I will understand my course better. If that’s not really happening, I’ll dedicate my time to other things.
The first project that I will be undertaking on here is something that I have decided to call ‘The Law And You’. This will be a series of posts meant to provide an introduction to the law of England & Wales. The aim is for them to be easily understood without any prior knowledge of the legal system. Perhaps for young people thinking of studying law, or for anyone who wants to know a bit more about the way law works.
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