42 Days: What can you do in 6 weeks!

In the UK, the government has been trying to bring in a new law that allows the police to hold people up to 42 days without charge. This law is meant to target 'terrorists' but one of the fears is that it could be used in other situations. Furthermore, how easy it would be to say that someone is a terrorist and abuse the legislation. Already Gordon Brown has shown that he is willing to do so, by using a law meant to target terrorists, to seize Icelandic property when one of their banks failed and affected many UK investors.

Philip Pullman, a well-known British writer, wrote a piece in the Guardian yesterday asking why 42 days. Why does it take the police so long to question someone and build a case?

If Mozart can write three symphonies in 42 days, why are the police so slow?

Why 42 days? What they mean is six weeks, of course. Six weeks! Six weeks in prison without being charged! Anything could happen in six weeks. Wars have lasted less than six weeks. In six weeks, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic and discovered the New World. Six weeks was enough time for Mozart to write three of his greatest symphonies. William Faulkner took six whole weeks to write his novel As I Lay Dying; John le Carré wrote The Spy Who Came In From the Cold in five. In six weeks, on average, each of the 2,710 Liberty ships were built in the United States during the second world war to supplement the Allied merchant fleets. Robert Louis Stevenson took three days to write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but six weeks to revise and polish it. In six weeks the Wright brothers' mechanic, Charlie Taylor, built from scratch the light and powerful engine that powered their first flight. In one month in 1819 the poet Keats wrote his Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, and Ode on Indolence.
(by Philip Pullman, Guardian October 14, 2008)

If you would like to read the rest, just follow this link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/14/terrorism-uksecurity

Are you as amazed as I am that so much has been accomplished by some people in just 42 days? It makes me wonder what I could do, if I set my mind to it. How much time we obviously waste! Could I finish my novel in the next 6 weeks? I think that I could. Do I want to do whatever it would take to do so? I'm not sure. How interesting though to set a period of time in which to get something done and strive to reach that goal. I'm sure that none of the above set out to take a particular period of time to do what they did. I'm going to have to consider this. I'll get back to you.