Britain is on the point of changing into a “police state” with conventional liberties beneath menace, the Freedom Association has warned. The marketing campaign group is alarmed by plans to curtail jury trials, part in a ban on shopping for tobacco, and finish path looking. It can also be involved by potential delays to native elections and “confiscatory” taxation.
David Campbell Bannerman, the chairman of the Freedom Association, warned: “Liberty is no more than a flickering light in Britain’s police state.” Claiming that the general public are “appalled” at seeing “people arrested, questioned and imprisoned for innocuous and often completely legitimate comments” made on-line, he warned: “State power is being extended almost by the day.” He described the plans to cut back the usage of juries as “another outrageous attack on liberty”.
Urging the Government to not press forward with a path looking ban, he stated: “The state now wants to end hundreds of years of tradition by forbidding trail hunting.
“Trail hunting was a classic British compromise after a total ban was avoided. It kept the tradition and ceremony without the objective being to kill foxes.
“But this latest bout of Government extremism means no longer will riders in red coats and packs of hounds meet outside country pubs to the delight of crowds of locals, boost the takings of landlords and then go plunging off into the countryside.
“The poor dogs will be put down, horses put out to pasture, and a harmless yet picturesque part of rural life will be rubbed out by the flinty Puritans who now rule the land.”
Attacking the Government’s plan to part out smoking by regularly growing the age at which tobacco could be purchased, he stated: “A decade from now beneath this absurd measure, a 27-year-old will have the ability to purchase a packet of fags, however a 26-year-old is not going to.
“Shopkeepers on pain of huge fines are meant to police this law, somehow divining whether mature adults are old enough to make a purchase.”
Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin said: “Keir Starmer’s Labour is presiding over a terrifying expansion of authoritarian policies more suited to a banana republic than the cradle of democracy.”
A Conservative spokesman said: “This Labour Government is trampling all over the lives of the ordinary public.”
“Labour ministers are undermining democracy and restricting our freedoms, treating the public with contempt. Only the Conservatives will ensure the British people’s rights are properly respected.”
A Labour source said: “Only Labour have a plan for patriotic nationwide renewal centered on safety, respect and alternative. We are taking the truthful decisions wanted to guard financial stability, reform public companies and make investments sooner or later. There’s rather more to do, however we cannot relaxation till each a part of Britain feels higher off.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2152250/britain-on-brink-becoming-police-state