Is this Liberty?

Some days you wake up, switch on breakfast TV, scan the online news sites and everything pisses you off.

Take this development as reported by the BBC in the battle to make our streets safe. Liberty have managed to get a court to rule that child (that is under 16 and unaccompanied by an adult) curfew (that is, from 9pm) zones are illegal.

For starters Auntie's report is totally misleading (as usual). In fact, their own News 24 interview with a Liberty spokesman (I presume the Alex Gask referred to in the online report) revealed that Liberty - not the boy - initiated this case. Not only that, they found it difficult to find a suitable teenager to front it, so popular are these curfew orders. They've chosen one from an area where curfew orders are hardly used.

So we now live in a society where parents can be prosecuted up for going on holiday and leaving 15 year olds home alone, yet the same 15 year olds can wander the streets unaccompanied by an adult after 9pm. There is a political consensus that our streets are not as safe as we would like and we want to bring down the levels of petty crime, disorderly behaviour and the more serious incidents that result. This is only going to be done by giving the police some reasonable discretionary powers. Trying to solve the problem by after the fact investigation and prosecution is just not going to work.

Is this really the way Liberty wants to expend the capital that has been built up over the last few years, for example by the media profile of the admirable Shami Chakrabarti?