Friday 17 October 2008

Osama Bin Laden traced to Iceland

You may well sympathise with our Government seizing the assets of the failed Icelandic banks. Their use of anti-terrorist laws to do so is a different matter though, since it is entirely at odds with repeated assurances that such legislation will only be used in cases that do indeed involve terrorism.

If there is no other legal means of carrying out such action (and I'd be surprised if there isn't) then maybe the Government should consider bringing some forward. Unless of course the collapse of the Western world's banking system is because Al-Qaeda has seized control of it; in that case giving banks large sums of public money is likely to be somewhat counter-productive.

I've never believed any assurances our Governments have given with regards to legislation that impinges on our civil liberties, but I take little satisfaction from finding my cynicism justified.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You would not belive that friend nation would do such thing to another.

Stephen said...

Sadly I would, although in fairness I think the Government's action was aimed at some failed banks, rather than the (very friendly) Icelandic people.

The most interesting question, particularly I suspect to Icelanders, is what exactly the banks did with the vast sums of money they took in.