g-wensley Well this is not about hiding, but about becoming cognescent of the draconian creep taking away personal privacy, and public freedoms and liberties. It is not about terrorism, but about the misuse of the terrorism act to surveille the population. It is about agenda, opaque to public perception and concern.Non-professor Stahlman would have you believe it is all bunkum, even though it is unfolding right before his and your eyes. He would seek to curtail your curiosity in seeing this movie, with petty innuendo and obsfucation. You have your mind to decide what you see and don't see. It is for you to decide the importance of the film...whether the film is crap or not, it carries a very important message, and it is one you should at least be aware of.Some reviewers have called the film entertaining and humorous, it is neither, Its subject matter is neither entertaining or humorous, it is serious and downright scary. Sometime in the future you will face the very thing this film discusses. No matter how hard you try to keep yourself and your family out of it (as if it is someone else's problem, someone else's fear), it will come calling. The question you need to ask is...What will you do when it does? How will you be able to deal with it, and what resources will there be at hand to help you? Well, if you do not prime yourself before hand, you will perceive there to be none.I found myself getting extremely angry whilst watching the film, because it reminded me all too starkly that what was defeated with Hitler, is now winning with Blair and the current imbecilic incumbent of No 10. It is winning through a series of gradual unfoldments, incremental tightenings of the noose around each of our necks. You already feel it in your personal economy, the means by which you are enchained to repeatable patterns of behaviour, day in and day out.Generally the media will not report it. When they do, they will sing the constriction of your liberty as beneficial to you. They will make it sound like a good idea; but like all good ideas, they are open to abuse sometime in the future. Freedom and liberty has to be constantly guarded and fought for. You cannot expect government to be benign, and for your good to safeguard your liberty. It will not do that, it will safeguard its own, and you being freedom and liberty-loving, are a threat to that.If you've nothing to hide, and have nothing to fear, why then the systematic reduction in your freedom, liberty and personal privacy? Simply because, your government considers you to be a potential terrorist, and will misuse the terrorist act to defend, not you, but itself. Individually, you are expendable, collectively, you are a mob. See Naomi Wolf - From Freedom to Fascism ( A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot). This is not just happening in Britain, but around the world. See the movie and discern for yourself, it just might open your eyes.

Cliff Hanley This is a collection of true stories, all products of the UK's New Labour government and the so-called War on Terror. It opens with the bus-full of peaceful demonstrators (friends of mine) on their way to Fairford to complain about it's being used for bombing expeditions to Iraq, stopped, brutally forced to remain on the (no-toilet) bus and escorted back to London by a horde of police vans and bikes. The patch-work continues with Walter Wolfgang, the elderly and eminently respectable party member roughed up by ape-men for shouting 'Rubbish' at Jack Straw, Pinochetist Home Secretary. Rose and Ellen, two young sisters arrested on a peaceful demo at an airport, held in solitary for 36 hours, thrown out in the night, their money and mobiles stolen by the police, and warned that speaking to each other would violate their terms of bail. Mouloud Sihali, found innocent in court, but then imprisoned in his own home for two years. Omar Deghayes, a British resident who has been held in Guantanamo for five years and is being left at the mercy of the government that murdered his father. Also the RAF war veteran arrested for wearing an anti-Bush and Blair T-shirt; an innocent man shot in a police raid based on a faked-up claim about a Ricin poison factory, and a major new change in the law to allow the government to stop one man from keeping his lonely anti-war vigil outside the Houses of Parliament.Britain has a history of control freakery: in Malaysia after 1945 we separated off the ethnic Chinese population, putting them in reservations where they could be controlled while we maintained war with the Chinese insurgents outside. The UK today is looking ever more like a large reservation, with the sea for a wall. The government contends that we are threatened from outside, and just like anyone with a paranoia problem, makes that threat a reality by its pre-emptive wars. This allows it to behave as the 1939 government did, removing all our rights for our own good.Right to Protest, Right to Freedom of Speech. Right to Privacy. Right not to be detained without charge, Innocent Until Proved Guilty. Prohibition from Torture. All listed on the screen, and one-by-one, ripped off. Taking Liberties portrays these real stories of liberty loss using up-dated interviews, citizen/journalist footage, newsreel, stunts, and comment from comedian Mark Thomas, Observer writer Henry Porter, Tony Benn, Amnesty, academics and lawyers. Narration from Ashley Jensen (Extras, Ugly Betty); a powerful soundtrack with tracks by, among others, Oasis, Radiohead, The Stranglers and Franz Ferdinand. It almost loses pace 80 minutes in, but the content carries it. By turns horrifying and good-humoured, it's being touted as the UK's equivalent of Fahrenheit 9/11, but it is without the former's flaws, and it's of much more immediate importance. A pity that the distribution deal limited it to out-of-town multiplexes in the UK, so much of its target audience were unaware of its very existence. CLIFF HANLEY

ShadeGrenade It had to happen. Noting the success of the Michael Moore anti-Bush polemic 'Fahrenheit 9/11', someone in the U.K. has tried to fashion a similar movie attacking Tony Blair's Labour Government. The trouble is there's not enough evidence to support the extraordinary claims it makes. Yes, the arrest of Maya Evans and Milan Rai for reading out the names of Iraq war victims opposite the Cenotaph in Whitehall was regrettable, as was the detaining of Walter Wolfgang under the terrorism laws for heckling Jack Straw's speech at a Labour conference ( you must remember that the security men were keen to avoid a repeat of the previous year's conference when Blair was heckled by Tory infiltrators ), and Gloucestershire police preventing a bus load of anti-war demonstrators from protesting outside RAF Fairford, but do these and other incidents combined paint a picture of a totalitarian government hellbent on destroying cherished freedoms? No!It is easy to make a film of this kind. You scour the news archive, cherry pick the bits that best serve your agenda, interview malcontents, string them together, overlay ominous sounding narration and music, and hey presto - you've got yourself a conspiracy movie. The only M.P.'s to appear are Boris Johnson, Ken Clarke and Clare Short. Is Chris having a laugh or what?Ask yourself this - if ( as Chris claims ) we really do live in a police state, why hasn't the Government suppressed this film and thrown its creator in jail? No mention of Britain under Thatcher, of course, when trade unions were banned from G.C.H.Q., when police stopped and searched cars during the 1984 Miners' Strike to block pickets from travelling around the country, when the G.L.C. was abolished simply because the P.M. did not like it, when Clive Ponting nearly went to jail for speaking the truth about the sinking of the Belgrano, when Trident protesters at Greenham Common were smeared as Communist sympathisers, when miners were beaten senseless for trying to protect their jobs, when London saw the worst riots in its history thanks to the hated poll tax and when Thames Television lost its franchise because it made a programme - 'Death On The Rock' - the Tory Government did not like. More recently, we have had Section 28. That, Mr.Atkins, was a true police state.When the evidence is not deemed strong enough to support his argument, he brazenly distorts the truth. For instance, he claims Blair has taken away an ancient right to protest near Parliament. That right never existed.Its true that, in the wake of the London bombings, security has had to be tightened up and one expects that. Which is the greater evil - having one's right to demonstrate curtailed or being murdered by fanatics? In all the palaver over identity cards, it seems to have been forgotten that the Tories were once keen on the idea. So come off your hobbyhorse, Chris.There's an interesting documentary to be made about civil liberties, but this is not it. I note that ads have been appearing on pro-fox hunting websites. When it comes out on D.V.D. it should be double billed with Channel 4's 'The Great Global Warming Swindle', another steaming turd-pile of lies and half-truths. If you're thinking of seeing this, don't bother.CODA: Its November 2013, and the Tory-led coalition government has ruled out a full enquiry to the Ed Snowden claims that the N.S.A. have been monitoring U.K. emails and phone calls. "The innocent have nothing to fear!", says foreign secretary William Hague. If Tony Blair had said that when he was P.M., the Murdoch press would have had a field day. Any plans to make 'Taking Liberties 2', Chris?

Helen Clifton i have just been to the premiere of 'Taking Liberties' and was both astounded and thoroughly entertained. this film is a documentary about the prolific nature of the statutes that Blair (AKA Bliar)'s government have introduced over the past decade, that not only contradict what Blair promised the British People in his campaign for the Premiership at the 1997 election, but more worryingly, contravene our human rights and our civil liberties. this film is both hilarious and terrifying - the scariest part is that it is all true! the only disappointing thing about this film is that when it is released on June 8th it will only be shown in about 15 cinemas. i know that a lot of cinema goers (me included) will be anxious to see the summer blockbusters that will be released around the same time, but believe me it will be well worth waiting a week, so as to see 'Taking Liberties' instead, not only for your own entertainment and enjoyment but also for the benefit of the rest of the country as the distributors have promised to release this film nationwide if enough people go to see it on the opening weekend.you WILL enjoy this film so please go and see it!