Somewhat lost in recent events over Smoking Bans, ID Cards and Glorifying Terrorism, a couple of wee announcements that didn't hit the front pages:

New Laws without Parliamentary Scrutiny

Yes, our freedom-loving government is plainly tired of all that mucking around attending Parliament, and persuading MPs to support its bright ideas. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill currently before Parliament fully intends to do away with all that.

In future (so goes the vision), our beloved, trusted ministers will be able to amend, replace and repeal legislation by fiat. The only restrictions are that ministers can't impose new taxes, or introduce prison sentences longer than 2 years. They can't impose new taxes, but can introduce new fees. Po-tay-to/Po-tah-to.

So could HMG decide to make ID Cards entirely compulsory? Could they require all public services to be disposed of to PFI? Could they abolish the Scottish Parliament? Yes, Yes and Yes (they couldn't impose laws in devolved matters, but they could abolish the whole thing).

And the checks and balances on ministerial absolutism? Erm... none. The minister merely has to consider a vaguely written checklist and be personally satisfied that's it's a Good Idea overall. Because ministers are of course entirely impartial judges of their own proposals. It's already being called The Abolition of Parliament Act as Parliament simply won't be able to scrutinise legislation in advance. But it's also an Abolition of The Judiciary Act as the courts can't challenge Ministerial Orders after the fact on the basis of being disproportionate or removing freedoms and protections from the citizenry as long as the Minister can show that he/she has thought long and hard about it. Presumably the fact that Ministers are genetically incapable of thinking like this won't help...

Separation of Powers? We've Heard of It

So, here we have an Executive usurping the power of the Legislature, and neutering the capacity of the Judiciary. What I wouldn't give for a real constitution about now. But even more, I'm wanting the nation's news editors to forget the ongoing Gordon and David beauty pageant, and focus on something that really matters. A few columnists have spotted what's going on, from the Guardian to the Times, but it's yet to hit the front pages. Come on guys.

Local Elections Cancelled

HMG is also proposing to cancel the 2007 local elections as they want to reform the local government system - new elections for the new councils are to be held in 2008 and it would apparently be impractical to have councillors sitting for just a year. Did someone not explain this to them? Did they not pay attention in History Class to the tale of monarchs who called and dismissed democracy as convenience struck them?

Don't Blame Me - I Didn't Vote For Them

These are brought to you by the government that loves democracy so much that it invaded and occupied another country to prevent a dictator aquiring viable WMDs foster democracy in the Middle East.

Repeat after me:Democracy isn't a Toy.

What's next? Ban ****ing swearing? The B******s would never get away with it. Probably.