While our troops are fighting for our liberties abroad it seems that the politicians at home are dead set on eroding them – if the Queen's Speech is anything to go by.

The government is planning to introduce a Mental Health Bill that will give GPs the power to compulsorily “treat” people whom they deem to be “mentally ill”. The bill will also increase the number of behaviours that are deemed to be “mental illness”. Let us translate this for people who are not used to psychiatric doublespeak: doctors will be given the power to chemically subdue, or torture, people whose behaviour they dislike, even when these people have committed no crime.

The speech also refers to a Consumer Credit Bill and a European Union Bill. The former is intended to prevent lenders from conning people; the latter to enable the government to con people:

The spending of the "yes" and "no" campaigns is limited by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act for up to six months before a referendum, but the government's own spending is not limited until the last 28 days of a referendum campaign, the Vote No campaign said.

The government is also persevering with its ridiculous quest to impose ID cards upon the public. ID cards are an infringement upon our civil liberties: innocent people should not have to present cards at police stations to “prove” they are not criminals. As ID cards will be forged as soon as they hit the streets and quite likely earlier, they will also be utterly useless for security purposes just as they have been in every other country with ID cards. And they will create a completely new type of completely harmless ‘criminal’ (the ID-card non-carrier) on whom the security services' efforts and resources will be wasted at a time when we are in great danger from real enemies. We are also disgusted by the Conservatives' spinelessness over this issue:

The Conservatives say people needs [sic] answers to key questions before knowing whether the planned national ID card scheme will work and protect people's liberties.

Successive governments have eroded Britons' right to defend themselves, by banning guns and prosecuting people who choose to defend themselves. That the state can be everywhere at once is both ridiculous and undesirable: it is long past time that the petty, officious bureaucrats caring, competent representatives in the House of Commons realised that.