Respect yourself

I was amazed to see that someone (not my girlfriend) had commented on my blog. Thanks for that.

Blair is in the papers this morning talking about the new respect zones in town centres. This reminded me of conversation I had with Tom Price, a Labour Counsellor in Hackney. We were talking about the surveillance state and ID cards and he said "You try going onto a Hackney council estate and giving them the civil liberties argument about cameras and ASBOs -they will laugh at you." This stuff does seem to be popular and effective plus the government is (following Cameron's lead) talking about the causes of antisocial behaviour, spending social service time and money on the families who don't do what they're told and threatening to take away their council flats if they do. The carrot and stick principle.

I think the "right to live without fear" is hard to understand if you're not actually living in fear yourself. Like imagining hunger when you're not hungry. The Tories round my way have brought in more cameras and a drinking control zone - not staunch libertarians then. That stuff does become much harder to defend in the face of switchblade wielding chavs who want your laptop. You'd have to be very brave, or very stupid.

If these people were allowed to represent themselves what would they ask for? (Apart from an Argos chain and a Dog called Brutus)