{"id":213486,"date":"2020-09-13T08:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T08:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=213486"},"modified":"2020-09-17T05:58:39","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T05:58:39","slug":"how-the-government-is-wading-into-the-swamp-of-despotism-one-muzzle-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=213486","title":{"rendered":"How the Govt is wading into the swamp of despotism \u2013 one muzzle at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Hitchens \u2013 Daily Mail Sept 12, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
The Government has no legal right to impose the severe and miserable restrictions on our lives with which it has wrecked the economy, brought needless grief to the bereaved and the lonely and destroyed our personal liberty.<\/h5>\n
This is the verdict of one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country, the retired Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption.<\/h5>\n
He said last week in a podcast interview: \u2018I don\u2019t myself believe that the Act confers on the Government the powers that it has purported to exercise.\u2019<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Lord Sumption\u2019s intervention is, of course, so huge and important that the media of this country have somehow not noticed it. So, as has been the case from the start, you have to get it from me<\/p><\/div>\n

He was referring to the Public Health Act of 1984, the basis for almost all the sheaves of increasingly hysterical decrees against normal life which the Health Secretary Matt Hancock has issued since March. I promise you that it is not usual for a retired senior judge to use such language in public.<\/h5>\n
This 1984 Act was drawn up mainly to give local magistrates the power to quarantine the sick.<\/h5>\n
Nothing in it remotely justifies these astonishing moves \u2013 house arrest, travel restrictions, harsh limits on visiting family members, interference with funerals and weddings, closure of churches, compulsory muzzles, bans on assembly and protest.<\/h5>\n
English law just does not allow an Act of Parliament to be stretched so far.<\/h5>\n
Magistrates are never given such powers. It is a principle of our law that fundamental freedoms cannot be invaded or overruled unless the law specifically allows it.<\/h5>\n
As he is one of the most distinguished legal minds of our time, Jonathan Sumption\u2019s opinions on this matter are surely important.<\/h5>\n
Let us hope that the Courts of England, which have so far been content to let the Government do what it likes, will listen to what he says when they look at the matter again later this month, in the case brought by Simon Dolan, a businessman who is seeking a judicial review of the Government\u2019s policy on Covid-19.<\/h5>\n
It is extraordinary for such a person as Lord Sumption to go public in this fashion. And he went on to say another astonishing thing.<\/h5>\n
He pointed out that powers do exist \u2013 in the shape of the formidable Civil Contingencies Act \u2013 under which the Prime Minister could do all the things he has done. But the CCA requires regular parliamentary scrutiny and renewal.<\/h5>\n
The Government\u2019s team of lawyers must know this. So why wasn\u2019t the CCA used? We can only guess that the Prime Minister and his Health Secretary feared that if they had to keep coming back to Parliament, even the dim, slumbering and gullible MPs we have nowadays would eventually have spotted, and halted, the immense power grab now under way.<\/h5>\n
Lord Sumption\u2019s intervention is, of course, so huge and important that the media of this country have somehow not noticed it.<\/h5>\n
So, as has been the case from the start, you have to get it from me. But believe me, it is an indication of just how deep into the swamp of despotism this Government has already waded.<\/h5>\n
Let us escape soon, before we are so far in we can never get out again.<\/h5>\n

Bare-faced state bullies<\/h2>\n

The most terrible warning of what lies ahead of us \u2013 if we cannot smash the Government\u2019s lies \u2013 is in Melbourne, Australia, where a vain little despot called Daniel Andrews has locked his subjects in their homes, banned demonstrations against this policy, and unleashed heavy-handed police against protesters and dissenters.<\/h5>\n
At this rate, Melbourne will soon be twinned with Minsk, capital of Belarus. The treatment of protesters on the streets of both cities is remarkably similar. I was most struck by what happened to a young woman demonstrator at the hands of Melbourne police, after they had grabbed and restrained her, so that she was powerless.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>An officer actually put a covering over her mouth. It was not the only such incident that day and it explains, to those who object, why I call these things muzzles.<\/h5>\n
They are there to humiliate, to cancel individuality and to indicate assent \u2013 forced or otherwise \u2013 to the crazy policy of trying to treat a virus with naked state power.<\/h5>\n
If US police forced handcuffed Left-wing protesters to wear Trumpoid \u2018Make America Great Again\u2019 baseball caps it would be about the same.<\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Britain’s most distinguished lawyers, former Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption, says there is no legal basis for the government’s restrictive Covid-19 laws <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213490,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213486\/revisions\/213490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}