Human Rights

You haven't spent Saturday night on the Government Website surely Durhamjen ?

Anya!

Surely you can't be happy with the present situation, durhamjen, where the UK is not allowed to deport convicted rapists and murderers to their country of origin because they have fathered a couple of children here?

There are some parts of the Human Rights Act which are no longer fit for purpose. Change is needed, IMO, irrespective of which government does it.

No, but what do you expect me to do on a Saturday night?
I've been reading the paper. Is that acceptable? Then I did a search for Human Rights and .Gov came up. And I found it rather weird that the government wrote a paper that said they wanted the UK to be a leader in Human Rights four years ago when now they want to get rid of them.
There's an excellent article by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian.

What have you been doing, Anya?

"So much for solving problems that don’t exist. An equal failing of Grayling is that his plan will do nothing for those problems that do exist. Take the Abu Qatada case, where ministers fumed with frustration as bleeding-heart foreign judges stopped them deporting a terror mastermind (I paraphrase). Trouble is, says Gardner, even Grayling’s supposedly muscular bill of rights would have made no difference in kicking out Abu Qatada: “I don’t think anything at all in these proposals would have changed what happened to him.”

The truth is, if the Conservatives were genuinely looking for a solution to the problems they raise, they would have to break with the European convention on human rights altogether. The Grayling document does leave that possibility open, with a warning that the Tories will pull Britain out if their new approach is rejected."

A quotation from Freedland's article. The Tories want to get rid of "Labour's Human Rights Act" and replace it with a "British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities." This is to ensure that Parliament is the ultimate source of legal authority. It already is and has been for three centuries.

I find it difficult to square this ...

I suppose it is all to do with having an understanding that other people have a different perceptions and view to ones own durhamjen but that all this is.

Many will agree with what is on the website, many will raise their hands in horror and some will feel that may be some truth, but on the other hand .... That's why we don't have 100% vote for one political party.

It's not the government having a different view to me. They have a different view to themselves.
They say they believe in fairness and equality, yet their own OBR tells them that we are a most unequal society.
They want the country to be a leader in human rights. What, by getting rid of the Human Rights Act?

But durhamjen there may be many Conservatives (I don't know, but it is possible) who do not believe that tackling the extreme inequality is the first thing that would move us toward a fairer society. I cannot believe many right-wingers (old term I know but useful shorthand) who believe there is any chance of equality.

Indeed, don't even think that many left-wingers believe that we should aim for complete equality as it has been proved over and again that it isn't possible. Wasn't the end of the communist empire a result of the inability for them to support their satellite nations because the idea of equality meant they could not produce enough, of a high enough quality or in sufficient amount so they accrued huge debt from the capitalist nations?

Most of the people I talk to seem to believe in equality of opportunity rather than equality but even then they will interpret this differently.

So you are saying that the third paragraph of my quote is all weasel words that the government can get out of any time they want. They are definitely trying to do that.
They are definitely not reducing disadventage for all. In fact they have increased it for many people.

i am involved in local politics in a big way Durhamjen but I like to switch off when I can and am programmed to think of Saturday night as an 'off' night. So I find other, less taxing things to do. There's plenty of choice.

I have to agree with those who think the Human Rights issue needs amending. It seems to address the human rights of some people to the detriment of others. This is not equality.

Sorry, that does not make sense. All people should have the same Human Rights, and do have when thinking about the European Court of Human Rights.
The declaration of human rights that this government rails against was written by a Conservative in the first place. So they disagree with themselves.

"The Human Rights Act (1998) introduced the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, of which the UK was one of the primary authors."

I can't find any mention of 'a Conservative' being the only one involved in creating the Act, but even if that were so, it would be foolish to assume that all members of all political parties agree with each other all the time.

And no one could have accurately foretold how the Act would used to overturn the decisions of British courts and allow convicted criminals to stay in this country rather than be deported, because it would be a breach of their Human Rights.

In a discussion on these proposed changes on TV, one of the contributors said that if Britain goes down this road it will encourage other countries (we are not perfect but there are many countries who are very much worse) to use our example to withdraw from aspects that they find inconvenient. This seemed quite worrying to me.

I suppose the problem is that we each have a different view as to what should constitute being described as a "right". For instance, should being able to vote in a country where the majority of people has the right to vote, be considered to be a "human right"? Although I personally feel that prisoners should be able to vote, I wonder if these sorts of issues detract from more fundamental breaches of human rights. Presumably others would argue that our ideas of what constitutes a "human right" changes because there is a legal mechanism to explore such issues.

I don't think a lot of conservatives SEE the extreme equality from where they are in the higher reaches of society...

....so why should we need Human Rights?

INequality I mean!

I find it worrying that the government want to take it out completely. Amending it would be better, but that seems to be like moving mountains in Brussels.

Re prisoners being allowed to vote, I don't like that idea. They might not be in the right frame of mind to judge sensibly.

My son teaches Human Rights as part of the Citizenship course that this government put into the national curriculum.
So if the government then changes our human rights, what happens then to the National Curriculum? Sorry, your rights have changed now because the government says so.

Like it, AlieOxon.
An article I read last week said that the super rich can view the lower classes as subhuman.
MRI scans were taken at Princeton University of brain activity when the students were asked to view images of different people. The affluent students apparently reacted to images of homeless and drug addicts as if they were looking at images of trash.
The larger the social gap the less compassion was shown.

Like durhamjen I am appalled at the very suggestion of withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). I agree that there are cases where it appears to be being abused and these cases have been well documented. I am prepared, in the name of democracy to have to grit my teeth and put up with some aspects of the ECHR that I do not like because I understand that this is the price of democracy, I am never going to agree with everything that any government or party or local politician does, whether or not I elected them. This whole announcement smacks of desperate electioneering as the general election gets closer and the Conservatives start panicking about UKIP, they are trying to out do them in the little Englander stakes. Doesn't anyone think it is a disgrace that if this went through ( and legally it is doubtful that it could) that we would be the only country in Europe, apart from Belarus, that wasn't signed up to ECHR? Don't people want protection from abuses of their rights when they are abroad? For heaven's sake, even Russia, that great bastion of human rights is a member.

Anya - I found your post to dj about how she spends her Saturday night quite uncalled for. It had quite a snide tone - quite frankly, the point of the thread is the HR issue so why did you think it necessary to make that comment? Your choice of switching off on a Saturday night is exactly that- your choice. It's neither better nor worse than anyon else's choice. And in fact, I note from the time of your post that it was Saturday night - so GN us ok is it then but not a Govt website?
FWIW - HR is up there with Health and Safety in the amount of ill informed and unconsidered and frankly completely wrong comments made ( I'm speaking generally) And also fwiw, this policy will never be implemented. It's just another knee jerk reaction to the threat of UKIP - populist poppycock.

well said grannytwice you managed to put the point across better than I did. There is a lot of misinformation being pumped around and sadly a lot of people believe it. Do people really think that Health and Safety laws are a bad thing? Honestly?? Also, I too read the article in the paper that Durhamjen was referring too, my way of relaxing on a Saturday night is reading the paper with a glass of wine. Everyone to their own, we don't all want to watch Strictly!

Dominic Grieve, the previous attorney general, called the proposals almost puerile, and said that they would damage the UK's international reputation.
The Human Rights Act is embedded in the Northern Ireland agreement, so if Britain wants out, does that mean the NI agreement is void.
It is also one of the freedoms given to the Scottish Parliament. So will we have different human rights depending on which side of the border we live, which is what the Tories fought so hard against a month ago?

I agree with GrannyTwice, and GillT, it's a reaction to the threat of UKIP. They are just trying to say they can be strong, too.
Hopefully, they will not win on this one.

I agree grannytwice. If only more people bothered to actually explore issues properly rather than rely on bite-sized chunks of information from the media from which to form their opinions.

In a supposedly advanced country such as ours, it's worrying to see how many people have little knowledge of, or interest in, political issues and current affairs.

I think most of us realise there's more to the Act than the right not to be deported because one owns a cat, Eloethan.

I do agree with GrannyTwice, however, that the 'scrapping' will probably never come about.