Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Dear Jack Straw,

Come on, Jack.  Labour trying to convince the public that you care about civil liberties?  Obviously we have been living on a different planet for the past 10 years, because here on Planet Earth the government has been eroding civil liberties at every available opportunity and shows no signs of stopping yet.

Speed cameras, proposals for ID cards, getting captured by a couple of hundred CCTV cameras a day, everyone’s phone records being available to every civil servant, holding the DNA of people who haven’t even been charged with a crime - have you forgotten all this?  You and Gordon Brown saying that you want to ‘write a new chapter’ in our country’s civil liberties history at the same time as you are proposing to increase the detention limit for terrorist suspects without trial is staggeringly two-faced.  It is Labour who have cynically used terrorism to start spying on every aspect of our lives and the Conservatives are absolutely right to label this as “desperate” spin.

How about listening to civil liberties groups and seeing what they have to say and what recommendations they have - I thought Uncle Gordon was quite into listening to the public, isn’t that his mantra these days?  Oh right, I forgot.  He only listens when he knows that he’ll get the answer that he wants.

In utter disbelief,

A.Tory