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Labour's guide to asking loaded questions : articles

Labour's guide to asking loaded questions

Posted Tuesday 8th November 2005

Emailing politicians is fun - you should try it sometime! Here's one I've just sent the Labour party:

Dear Labour,

I notice you have a completely and utterly flawed survey online at: http://www.labour.org.uk/3447

Update: This was taken offline overnight and replaced with some typical party spiel - however, for some reason it's still available at http://www.labour.org.uk/3448 - guess they didn't figure that people could add one on to a number?

Let's tackle the questions, one by one, and point out how they are completely flawed, and have been asked in such a way as to guarantee "public support" for your nefarious disposal of civil liberties:

1. Do you think that our laws should be updated to cope with the current security threat? [ Yes | No | Not sure ]

Implies that there is a heightened security risk at the moment, when in fact this is still very much a matter of politicians using scare tactics (which are arguably a very real form of "terrorism") to push through all kinds of knee-jerk laws that have not been needed during the last 400 or so years of terrorism in this country. One terrorist attack in the last four years - that's far less than during the 1980s. You are fighting an imaginary demon.

2. Do you think police should have the time and opportunity to complete their investigations into suspected terrorists? [ Yes | No | Not sure ]

This is a meaningless, loaded question. What kind of fool would want to prevent the police doing their jobs by default? The issue (and matter at hand) is not whether the police should be allowed the chance to do their jobs, but whether there should be an INCREASE in the time they may hold someone without charge. Of course, you are too scared to ask the real question, because you need to ask a loaded one in order to get the result you desire.

Why not go the whole hog and just do away with the judicial system? Hey, we can trust the police to only catch bad people - why not ask Jean Charles de Menezes?

14 days is long enough to work out if you can charge someone with a crime, and if it is not, then there is not enough evidence to suspect them, and they should be released instead of all this internment and witch hunting you propose.

3. Do you think the government should make sure there are new safeguards to protect innocent people? [ Yes | No | Not sure ]

Protect us from WHAT? How about from overly intrusive governments doing their best to dispose of our rights and create a police state? People died in the past to protect that, yet for some reason you're rather keen to swap our rights and way of life for some inadequate and flimsy legislation that, by your own admission just after the London bombings, will do nothing to save any lives.

Do you mind if I take a drag of whatever it is you're smoking?

4. Would you like to be kept up-to-date on the progress of this legislation and other issues? [ Yes | No ]

Well, for once it's not a loaded question! However, with examples like the above of how you truly "listen" to the voice of the public (by telling them what to say), I have no doubt you'll be keeping me up-to-date on your new decrees by ramming them down my throat, as and when you see fit to borrow them from a certain book by George Orwell.

You've certainly managed to achieve more in the way of very real terrorism than Osama or any of the others could have done in their wildest dreams! The public are scared witless, and you are using it to control them. Goering would be proud - keep up the good work!

Incidentally, I don't suppose you could do us all a favour and let us know what your real agenda with all this new legislation is? Because if it's going to land me in prison for telling you that you are the worst government this country has ever seen, and that the best thing you could do is stand down immediately, I would at least like the opportunity to seek asylum in a free country well in advance of your establishment of the "Viertes Reich" here in Britain.

Quite frankly, you can tell Charles Clarke to take his blatantly corrupt, manipulative survey, and shove it up his porky arse.

Yours sincerely,

David Silvester

My address, so you'll know where to come and arrest me when it becomes a crime to speak out against the government: (supplied, but removed here)

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