Anti-radicalisation chief says ministers’ plans risk creating ‘thought police’
by Vikram Dodd, Guardian:
The police chief leading the fight to stop people becoming terrorists has said government plans targeting alleged extremists are so flawed they risk creating a “thought police” in Britain.
Simon Cole, the police lead for the government’s own Prevent anti-radicalisation programme, said that the plans may not be enforceable and risk making police officers judges of “what people can and can not say”.
His comments in a Guardian interview expose opposition in part of Britain’s security establishment against the planned Conservative government bill which was unveiled last week in the Queen’s speech.
The bill widens Britain’s counter-terrorism fight to legislate against those defined as extremists but who do not advocate terrorism. Supporters of the measures say such people encourage those who want to commit atrocities and are ideological fellow travellers, who undermine common bedrock British values.
However, Cole said that other senior police officers have concerns about the plans and the Guardian has learned separately that several British police chiefs are opposed or have serious reservations.
“Unless you can define what extremism is very clearly then it’s going to be really challenging to enforce,” Cole said.
“We don’t want to be the thought police, we absolutely don’t want to be the thought police.”
Read also: The best way to tackle terror? Keep calm and carry on quietly by Peter Hitchens (from July 2015)
[clip] …Nicky Morgan. Attempting to explain the latest goofy, futile plan to root out extremism in the classroom, she groped for an example.
How could teachers spot a potential fanatic, who was in danger of rejecting British values and might end up waving an AK-47? You could almost hear the poor woman’s brain flapping wildly from side to side.
Then she reached for the one thing that absolutely everyone is now compelled to agree on, if they don’t want the thought police and everyone on Twitter to think they are an extremist.
‘Sadly, Isis are extremely intolerant of homosexuality,’ she gabbled.
Alas, until quite recently, Ms Morgan took a position which could, in these days of sexual liberation, be viewed as ‘extremely intolerant’ of homosexuality.
‘Marriage, to me, is between a man and a woman,’ she said in February 2013, after voting against same-sex weddings. This view, she argued, tied in with her Christian faith.
She has since had the politically correct technicians in to adjust her brain, and said in October last year that she had changed her mind, though it wasn’t quite clear how she had done this. The fact is that, in her previous state of mind, she could quite easily have been reported to the police by some zealous sneak, under her own guidelines.
Watch: “Intolerance of homosexuality is sign of extremism” – Nicky Morgan
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