Like Nancy Reagan said: Just Say No! Well, thanks to us living in a mature democracy, we now have to rely on a bunch of unelected toffs and cronies to defeat the most ineffectual, illiberal, expensive and pointless danger to our civil liberties since the 1970s, with its mainland bombing campaign from the Provos, with Diplock Courts, with the police falsifying evidence and torturing prisoners, leading to illegal and unjust gaol sentences for innocent people like the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven and all the stupidity of the “temporary provisions” of the PTA. What is it about Labour governments being totally persuaded by every single thing MI5 tells them and forgetting that there’s no point trying to save the British way of life if you’re gonna destroy it in the attempt? On the plus side, the vote went through its Third Reading in the Commons with 224 votes in favor and 64 votes against. Now the arithmetically gifted will already have spotted that 160-vote majority, but that’s not the important point. That’s a total of 288 votes, from a Parliamentary chamber of 659 — not even 45% bothered to show up to support the government’s flagship policy, one that Michael Howard supports wholeheartedly (yet his Shadow Home Secretary says it has failed the famous five tests; guess that’s called saving face). And of those 64 sane MPs, 19 were Labour (presumably including my old teacher, Dr Ian Gibson, and my boyfriend’s MP, Neil Gerrard) and 11 Tories (presumably including Peter Lilley); the balance, of course, will have been all the Lib Dems and nationalists (Plaid and SNP together, dunno what the SDLP think on the subject and Sinn Féin don’t take their seats, as well as having a little more on their minds at the moment). So off to the Lords’ we must go…