Nicholas Watt Should Know Better?

I wasn't going to post any more until I saw this howler of a piece of bad journalism from Nicholas Watt, The Guardian's Chief Political Correspondent.  In his piece, entitled 'Labour support up 14 points after Miliband's energy pledge' Watt states that:

"Voters in the "squeezed middle" are flocking to the Labour party after Ed Miliband pledged to freeze fuel bills for 20 months if he wins the next general election, according to a new poll that shows a dramatic fall in support for the Liberal Democrats."

If you are a Liberal Democrat, that sounds very bad indeed.  And it only gets worse:

Journalism as Terrorism?

David Miranda's detention at Heathrow Airport in August kicked off a storm of commentary as to whether this was an unlawful use of the powers available under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.  We came a step closer today to a High Court decision as to whether it was or not, with a number of applications by Miranda's legal team being heard (and rejected), and a full hearing scheduled to go ahead next week.

At the time I was very strongly of the opinion that the use of Schedule 7 powers, which grant officers the power to question and search anyone at a port of entry to the United Kingdom without reasonable suspicion, to detain and search Miranda was unlawful.  The (limited) disclosure of documents obtained today by Miranda's has done nothing to dissuade me of that opinion.

(As a side note, it may be of interest to my American friends that the case of David House demonstrates that the Department of Homeland Security asserts the same right to search at the US border.  What is interesting is that while in the US the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) simply asserted that they had the inherent right to seize and search electronic devices under the 'Fourth Amendment Border Exception'.  In the UK the British government had to resort to the use of anti-terrorism legislation to achieve the same effect.)