Your Home is no Longer Your Castle

There will come a day when everyone understands that the Justice Minister Jack Straw ranks as one of the bigger menaces to our free society. Whatever issue you care to consider – the macro or the micro – Jack Straw is chipping away at freedom, accountability and openness. He really should be hauled before a commission of good democrats, exposed and made to account for his sins with community service order and a Day-Glo jacket.

Today we will look at a micro issue – the disgraceful behaviour of his department over the Courts and Tribunal Enforcement Act, the law which ends 400 years of the tradition that an Englishman's home is his castle and allows bailiffs to march into that home and seize what goods they like in settlement of a fine (think ID card fines; think of the pressure people are going to experience in this recession).

Read more...