A manifestly unfair and draconian new procedure...

Police to seize mobiles in EVERY car crash http://dailym.ai/1rjoCzY via @MailOnline

Don't get me wrong: I understand why they will now be doing this, but it's also a dangerous move. My phone is literally my lifeline - I'm a former heart patient, and not having my mobile phone to hand could be the difference between receiving life-saving medical help, and dying. Further, it's more often than not the only way my relatives can get hold of me. It's the way I can access the internet. It holds immensely personal data on myself, my partner, and the contact details of all manner of people, businesses, and organisations that I know, work with, or do business with.

In short, it would be not only a personal disaster for my phone to be seized, but a professional one as well - all because some damn fool shunts me up the khyber because he wasn't bloody looking.

I appreciate that it's difficult for the Police and prosecuting authorities to gain successful convictions for certain offences, but this is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I drive practically every day. I use my phone to navigate, warn me of traffic delays and congestion (satnav applications), and yes, to receive calls via my bluetooth headset (thus ensuring that I don't handle the phone when I'm driving), which IS legal.

Moreover, being a bus driver, I'm not permitted, BY LAW, to even use a hands-free headset or headphones, while I'm in control of a bus, let alone driving one (PSV regulations are much more draconian in this regard than for mere car and van drivers).

Yet, the old bill will seize the phone if some other bugger smacks me while I'm driving.

Patently, this is manifestly and grossly unfair.

Equally as obviously, it's treating everyone as being guilty before being proved so in a court.

So much for a cornerstone of English Justice, that of the presumption of innocence.

I wonder what it'll take for Liberty to get involved in this mile-wide paintbrush of draconian practice?

Are Liberty goping after the WRONG targets (again)...?

I saw this on Twitter today, and it rang a bell.

TheCustodySgt ‏@TheCustodySgt 24m

I see @libertyhq protects civil liberties and promotes human rights for everyone... unless you're a #police officer. http://bit.ly/M8Wlx7

Sadly, I can see what he's driving at. Liberty was created to ensure that all people on this small planet of ours receive the same Human Rights and treatment from their respective governments, authorities, organisations, and fellow Human Beings. However, over the meany years since it was created, Liberty has made announcements and policy decisions from the sensible through to the (to me) utterly bazaar.

Now, personally, I find it rather strange that over the last few years, the only times I've ever heard anything either about or from Liberty (mostly via the popular press, admittedly), is when they've been doing something or other in places where the chances were better than even that the local (most likely) despotically lunatic regime isn't about to grab 'em by the scruff of the neck, and sans a fair trial, tie a blindfold over their heads, line 'em up against a convenient wall, and summarily shoot them in the back of the head for "subversive actions against the state". Odd, that. Understandable, in that they, like the rest of us, don't want to see the back of their collective heads part company with the rest of their skulls, but still a bit odd, given Liberty's original intent to spread the word of Human Rights.

After all, you'd be forgiven for thinking that their much-publicised efforts would be needed the most in places like those, not back here in Great Britain, where democracy - despite it's many fully acknowledged faults - already works, where our rights are already enshrined in law and regulations, and where, despite the financial burden on plaintiffs, recourse to inhuman treatment, and (for sake of example) recourse to libel and slander is available to all who can afford it through the courts system.

With the above in mind, don't they think their efforts and monies (gleaned by donations from the public, who DO want to see a better world for everyone) would be better spent on, for wild example, halting the ultra-right-wing efforts of certain persons and organs of the state in Russia, from tramping down the rights of certain sections of their own citizenry, instead? Oh yeah. It's probably because that same former communist state'd probably arrange for them to receive a kick in the groin, then several savage stamps on their heads, with steel-capped combat boots. Naturally, said treatment would not come from official sources. It'd be blamed on over-enthusiastic minorities. Who'd never see the inside of a courtroom for their actions.


Just saying, of course.