As we celebrate the 800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta, I took the opportunity to read through the whole document for the first time. It’s worth 10min of your time to read through the roughly 4,000 word document, particularly with gems such as “No town or person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to do so.”
We’ve already seen David Cameron come out to use the occasion as crass political ammunition for his attacks on the Human Rights Act – see the Save Our HRA campaign for a different view, complete with some excellent mythbusting! – but amongst all the self-congratulatory chatter and back-patting going on in the UK today, it was the British Library that released my favourite piece.
Over 30,000 voters chose from around 500 different clauses to come up with the top 10 key issues that could be included in a ‘Magna Carta for the digital age’. I wonder how many of these will be included in David Cameron’s vision of a British Bill of Rights?
My money is on No. 6 not getting much of a look in…
(image from The British Library – please click through for more information)
