Liberty convention

29 March 2009 by Jennifer

Not long ago (on 28 Feb 2009), there was the Convention on Modern Liberty, in London and around the country. There are some videos and transcripts up from it now which I think deserve wide circulation. I commend unto you at least the following couple of keynote speeches:

Philip Pullman on the virtues that sustain a living and waking nation
Transcript of Pullman speech

David Davis, inc “Tell me, Jack, when does it become a police state?“
Transcript of Davis speech

Shami Chakrabarti, inc the difference between rights for citizens and human rights
I felt this speech wasn’t quite as “in tune with the audience” as the ones from the two older blokes, so it’s not as compelling as a piece of video, but still full of good points.
Partial transcript of Chakrabarti speech

Of interest especially to bloggers, here’s a panel featuring Ben Goldacre of Bad Science, and others:
Bloggers’ panel

I also liked this panel: How do we secure modern liberty? (longer video than the others) – especially the contributions from Afua Hirsch and Brian Eno, and the point near the end from Evan Harris.
Partial transcript of that panel – at time of writing still pretty full of errors and omissions, and has a warning up to that effect.

Here’s the home page of the whole site.

I haven’t watched everything from there yet, but I must say I found it relieving and moving to see people talking about this very important stuff of which the Government seems so careless. I’m very glad this convention happened.