Having driven most of my friends insane over the last few years with my continuous ranting about what a terrible place the UK was becoming under a government who was seemingly dedicated to overthrowing three hundred years of rights in the course of a single decade, I decided I’d like to try living somewhere else for a while. To paraphrase Martin Fowler slightly, “if you can’t change your country, change your country”.
When I started looking in earnest for a suitable candidate, Estonia kept popping up as a serious contender, which surprised me slightly as all I really knew about it I’d learned from Eurovision! But the more I read the more I decided it was the place to relocate to for a while, and a visit in October sealed it.
So, as of this week, I am now resident in Tallinn. I’ve created a new blog at http://eek.tmtm.com/ for those who want to keep up with the more mundane details.
I’m sure Ed will be able to keep me adequately informed as to the important details of what’s going wrong back home, but at least for now my despair in that regard can become a little more abstract.
All of these, plus the removal of the power of the second house, and an attempt to even bypass the Commons, the loss of the right to silence, the abolition of double jeopardy, and, under POCA, pretty much the presumption of innocence. The list goes on and on.
We can go back much further than the Bill of Rights for most of these, and the abolition of some of them stretches back further than the current government, but since 1688 at least these sorts of things are meant to have been sacrosanct. It might not be described as a Divine Right any longer (in the UK at least), but the destruction of the separation of powers and return to a system of absolute rule hasn’t exactly been very subtle…
Three hundred years – ah, you are referring to the Bill of Rights and the erosion of Habeas corpus to a procedure confirming that the government says internment or detention (90 days or some other figure) is ok.
Or maybe some of the other disturbing changes of our time – limitation of trial by jury, reducing the independance of the judiciary to the future cataloging and stamping of the UK population.
Yep, I can see your point of view. I hope it goes well in Estonia.