David Davies launches manifesto

Former Home Secretary David Davies has launched his manifesto, and it's pretty nice stuff.

1.Reverse 42 days pre-charge detention – a ‘PR coup for Al-Qaeda’.
2.Scrap ID cards – put the £19 billion savings towards a Border Police Force and other security measures.
3.Immediate reversal of the ban on free speech outside Parliament.
4.Protect the right to trial by jury.
5.Stop neighbourhood spies using powers that should rest with the police and MI5.
6.Use intercept evidence to prosecute terrorists – but restrict bugging by local councils.
7.Replace 1 million innocent citizens on the DNA database with the serious criminals left off.
8.Make CCTV more effective (80% is unusable) – strengthen punishments for privacy abuse.
9.Slash the 266 separate powers the state has to force its way into the home.
10.Launch an independent inquiry into the government’s serial database failures.

I had no idea the state had 266 separate powers to force their way into people's homes- be nice if Davies's site had a page listing them all, like the laws Nick Clegg wanted to repeal at the 2006 Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton. Although I don't agree with some of David Davies' other political actions, I think he would have been a good Conservative leader, and he should have won.

Jill Saward, who was raped she was raped in the Ealing vicarage attack in 1986, is also standing, but I'm not sure why. She claims that Davies opposes the DNA database and CCTV cameras-which he does not-and plays lip service to the 42 days detention debate, failing to comment on the possibility of its abuse.

Although she'd be an effective House of Commons campaigner for the rights of rape victims-who are poorly served by the present legal and policing system-she has no reason for standing against Davies and appears to be wrong about his views, making her a dubious choice.

Saward isn't as tedious as Miss Great Britain Gemma Garret, who wants "Westminster to be home to as many glamorous and confident women as say, Rome or Paris. Or even Brussels or Berlin." Wow. She also wants to end the "tide of sleaze" but does not say how.

If you want to vote for a beauty contestant, vote for beautiful Westminster University student Jade Parsons in the final of Miss England (Westminster News Online article written by me). She'd probably be a better political candidate than Gemma Garret.

Other candidates in the election include singer Ronnie Carroll, who is standing for the Make Politicians History party (seemingly by undergoing the process required to become a politician) and Hamish Howitt of the Freedom 4 Choice party (which I can't find a website for) as well of a cluster of independents, including the wonderfully named Thomas Faithful Darwood and Herbert Winford Crossman.