An interesting article by George Monbiot that gives an inkling of another angle on the government's unravelling authority (Saturn-Neptune, as discussed on this blog over the past few months):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1924177,00.html
And an interesting comment added by a read of George's article:
"Lord Devlin ... wrote these words (in 1956):
"Each jury is a little parliament. The jury sense is the parliamentary sense. I cannot see the one dying and the other surviving. The first object of any tyrant in Whitehall would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will; and the next to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for no tyrant could afford to leave a subject's freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen. So that trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.""
Blair's government has been busy undermining trial by jury for some time now.....
