Furious
Too furious to blog about what I was going to, anyway. Two things have made me annoyed – one that matters, in the grand scheme of things, and one that doesn’t.
The one that matters is that the coalition government has voted that detention without charge for 28 days will be extended for another six months, while the policy is ‘reviewed’. They say they’ll get rid of it, just not yet. What kind of ‘review’ it takes to say “We’ll *NOT* lock people up for a month without charge or trial” I don’t know. And some Lib Dems voted for this! (Others, like Adrian Sanders, thankfully didn’t.)
I haven’t been able to find a list of who did and didn’t vote for this. And the reason for this is simple – nobody seems to care. It doesn’t seem ‘important’. The Lib Dem Blogs aggregator has more posts about Robbie rejoining Take That than about our MPs voting for a fundamentally illiberal law. There’s no mention of it on the BBC, or the Guardian or Independent websites. It’s got past without anyone really bothering, because it’s just an existing law being renewed, not a new infringement of what few liberties we have left.
The argument for renewal for now *almost* makes sense – if we’re having a Repeal/Freedom Bill in six months which will cover all civil liberties issues, and if the law isn’t getting used at the moment (and apparently it isn’t) then easier to let it carry on til then than to come up with something to replace it.
But I *WILL* be keeping an eye on this, and if it’s renewed for even an extra day after that I will no longer consider the junior coalition party to be the party I joined. There is *NOTHING* Liberal about locking people up without charge for a month.
And a warning to Labour trolls – your evil cloacal discharge of a party not only brought in this anal smearage disguised as legislation, this utter barbarism, but they wanted to extend it to ninety days, so you don’t get to have an opinion on this one.
The other thing about which I am annoyed is that Grant Morrison is not writing Batman & Robin after October. There are internet rumours that they’re creating another Batman title for him, but there’s an official announcement of a *fourth* Batman ‘in-continuity’ monthly which Morrison won’t be writing, so I doubt it.
(ETA Please note, I’m not doing a ‘tearing up my membership card’ thing here. But this is a *BIG* red line, and if continued will require *serious* action. Anyone fancy writing an emergency motion for conference or something? I’ve little motion experience so wouldn’t be able to do much, but would gladly help if someone wants to do this…)
“than about our MPs voting for a fundamentally illiberal law. ”
Our MPs vote for this law when it was introduced though. It was part of our “victory” over defeating 90 days.
I know, and I was angry about it then, too. But at least then it was understood as being a compromise position and a way of getting the then Government to back down. There’s no such fig leaf this time.
Very, very disappointed to see that David Ward voted for this measure, and I will tell him as much tomorrow. For what it’s worth, here is the list of MPs that were on the side of the angels, and there aren’t very many LibDems in there;
NOES
Abbott, Ms Diane
Ali, Rushanara
Clark, Katy
Corbyn, Jeremy
Crausby, Mr David
Danczuk, Simon
Davis, rh Mr David
Dobson, rh Frank
Durkan, Mark
Edwards, Jonathan
Engel, Natascha
Flynn, Paul
Gardiner, Barry
Gilmore, Sheila
Glindon, Mrs Mary
Godsiff, Mr Roger
Hilling, Julie
Hoey, Kate
Hood, Mr Jim
Hopkins, Kelvin
Hosie, Stewart
Huppert, Dr Julian
Jackson, Glenda
Keen, Alan
Lavery, Ian
Llwyd, Mr Elfyn
Lucas, Caroline
MacNeil, Mr Angus Brendan
McDonnell, John
Mercer, Patrick
Qureshi, Yasmin
Robertson, Angus
Rotheram, Steve
Sanders, Mr Adrian
Sarwar, Anas
Shepherd, Mr Richard
Shuker, Gavin
Skinner, Mr Dennis
Soulsby, Sir Peter
Umunna, Mr Chuka
Vaz, rh Keith
Weir, Mr Mike
Whiteford, Dr Eilidh
Williams, Hywel
Williams, Mr Mark
Winnick, Mr David
Wood, Mike
Tellers for the Noes:
Pete Wishart and
Mr John Leech
Sadly not very many of *any* party in there. Good to see that John Leech, who I campaigned for, was on the right side.
Hey Andrew, I’ve been reading your blog for a good long while now and really enjoying it. So,I thought I’d try to lessen a small part of your fury. This interview by the new Detective Comics writer Scott Snyder definitely seems to suggest Morrison is sticking around for a while yet.
“We just ran an interview with David Finch where he spoke to his new “Dark Knight” book, and he said that part of what’s allowing him to step on and so much of this to get rolling is that while Grant Morrison won’t be leaving the franchise he’s been guiding for so long now, he’s still leaving all this room for people to play and make their own takes on Batman work on their own terms. How is this shaping up in terms of piggybacking off of “The Return of Bruce Wayne” and being able to play off Grant’s plans?
Yeah! The marching orders or the message from Grant has really been to give your book your feel. It’s been very flexible and elastic in terms of being able to creatively throw things around with Mike Marts, who’ been terrific as an editor, and some of the other people in the Bat Family. I haven’t met Dave Finch yet, but after reading that interview, I imagine it’s the same experience for [the other creators] where they really want you to create your own Batman story and vision. As much of a plan as Grant has – and his plans are pretty incredible – it feels like he’s also very generous about giving you enough room with the character to develop your own little ecosystem.”
Sorry to lower the tone but I want to talk about Batman.
For those of us who have loved (albeit, in my case inconsistently) Morrison on Bats today was a day of mourning. Batman is my favourite man-in-pants and Morrison is, in my view, unarguably the best writer working in the superhero genre today. Grant on Bats was my dream book, and Batman & Robin, sans Tan, turned out to be my dream book plus.
Here’s hoping that Newsrama has it right and that GMoz will be keeping a hand in the batbooks.
Whoever downrated the comments about Batman comics, please don’t. As you will see if you look at my blog, I do actually care about Grant Morrison’s run on Batman, and while I put that bit in at the end mostly as a joke, I’m still glad of the information.
Hey, I’m not offended. In the grand scheme of things Batman isn’t very important, I just wanted to show a little solidarity with you on that score. For us GM fans the prospect of his departure is genuinely painful.