Fishing injustice

This from the letter section of the Western Morning News
THERE has been a profound miscarriage of justice with regard to Charlie McBride and Charles Jnr, fishermen from Northern Ireland who have been sentenced to two and three months in jail, respectively, for “contempt of court”.
The McBrides, owners of the fishing vessel Arcane N907, were [...]

Security Basic Rights and Porn

The fluff of parliamentary reporting, are we really interested in the fact that the Home Sectaries husband watched two porn films last April and is it really that important within the context of the amount these politicians are costing us as part of a failing institution,  that they then claimed the ten pounds cost of [...]

Sharia law

Thought For The World
Moreover, rather than promote ‘minority’ rights and social cohesion, Sharia law promotes fragmentation and social conflict. It imposes different standards and norms for ‘different’ people. It denies universal and equal rights fought for and established by progressive social and working class movements over centuries. It gives precedence to the most regressive cultural [...]

Bill of Rights and new written Constitution.

An open letter from Anne Palmer
Dear Lord Onslow,
Re Proposed new Bill of Rights and possibly a new written Constitution.
I have already expressed my concerns about the proposals for a new written Constitution and a Bill of Rights yet I feel it important to write once more.
We already have a Constitution of our own plus a [...]

Preparing for a Police State

When the ex head of MI5 tells us that the government is exploiting the threat of terrorism to erode civil liberties, I believe it is time to listen to the growing throng of voices concerned for our historic rights.
But Dame Stella Rimington goes even further she openly says,
“It would be better that the Government recognised [...]

War on Terror or War on Public Freedoms

The Police who have already been harassing not only private photographers but media professionals will no doubt be delighted today to be handed a new tool by a government that does not recognise the concept of individual freedoms.
A new law goes into effect today in the United Kingdom which would make it illegal to [...]

Peelers Transformed

It seems to be a morning when the state of our civil liberties keep jumping out at me, this time it Peter Hitchings who is questioning:
“This horrible development, the transformation of our police into a state gendarmerie, and the way in which our politicians – and much of the public – [...]

Jury Government

However our leaders are chosen, we need rules to keep them in their place. In Britain, we developed these rules over many centuries, largely through struggles between kings and commoners (or kings and aristocrats). Trial by jury, habeas corpus, double jeopardy – all the rules that ensure our leaders can’t just grab us, torture us, [...]

Civil Liberties according to Brown

Browns Speech on civil liberties
In a speech on liberty at the University of Westminster, Gordon Brown said:
I believe that by applying our enduring ideals to new challenges we can start immediately to make changes in our constitution and laws to safeguard and extend the liberties of our citizens:
” respecting and extending freedom of assembly, [...]

Thoughts on Human Rights

The concept of human rights are based on national sovereignty in that they were a control on the states power against its citizens. We the people give our state certain powers so that it can do the job we ask of it, basically to protect both the state and its citizens, but in order that [...]

Big Brother ECHR Ruling

The data sharing bill, which is going through Parliament in the next few weeks, will see government agencies passing intimate details of individuals and families between departments: Libertarians worry that these details will also end up in the hands of government contractors in private companies.
In any case, “The new law would remove the right to [...]

They use the Bill of Rights when it suits them

On Mr Wheeler High Court action against the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, on their refusal to hold a referendum on whether the Lisbon Treaty should be ratified.
Information on Mr Wheeler site says that the Speaker of the House of Commons intended to apply to intervene in the case, in order to make submissions [...]

A Fundimental Right

A strange thought process is alive and well in Nulabour, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is just the latest to conflate basic negative human rights with a governments duty to protect its citizen or subjects in our case, the concept of universal human rights and the later added concept of state donated social rights.
Home [...]

Britain’s unobtrusive ethnic group

As is often the case with these inter-racial encounters, I suspect the flow of stimuli and responses can cascade along pathways of misconception so what we then witness is an aggregate of flawed perceptions.
Dr Teck Khong: Chinese addition for British politics

The Charta of Fundamental Rights

I would suggest that you read Henry Porters article in the Observer http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/09/constitution

He argues thus:

this campaign against Britain’s historic rights and freedoms began at almost the precise moment the European Human Rights Convention was incorporated into British law as the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 1998. In other words, the HRA, a Bill [...]

Blair goes can we now get our rights back

On the day the man who has done most to undermine our rights and protections against the state leaves office, Billy Bragg in the Telegraph writes about the malaise of British politics and calls for the peoples input on the constitution debate. With both Labour and Conservative leaders suggesting a new settlement for our state, [...]

Codifying to Control

In the last post I suggested the reason that the EU wanted to introduce its own Charta of Fundamental Rights was had more to do with the advancement of the political powers of its own institutions than any real concern that human rights were deficient in most EU States.
In fact the introduction of [...]

A Whole New Can of Worms

The Parking and Traffic Appeals Service is facing yet another challenge under the Bill of Rights,
this time it has been submitted by a solicitor.
Solicitor Frank Rayner, Is not disputing the facts of the case, he is instead claiming that the
Transport for London`s attempt to impose a penalty charge(s) is unlawful, on the basis that
it [...]

A Conflict of Rights

Within the next few months Sexual Orientation Regulations, are to be introduced following the EU Equality Act 2006, this will make it an offence for anyone providing goods, services, facilities, education or public functions to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. But the Equality Act also outlaws discrimination on the grounds of religion or [...]

A Remarkable Achivement

A very good Fisk by Chris Lightfoot of Charles Clarke’s LSE Speech on the media and civil liberties.
Look out! There’s a SAFETY ELEPHANT on the rampage! ”; his (Clarke’s) basic thesis being that New Labour hasn’t eroded our civil liberties and anyway it’s only doing it for our own safety.
The speech is remarkable in [...]

Charles Clarke protests too much

A familiar trick of the bully is to accuse an opponent of the very vice the bully himself practises. So when the Home Secretary spoke yesterday of the “distorted” reporting of his security policy by the media, and the “dangerous poison” of depicting Britain as a sort of dictatorship, it would be unwise to take [...]

Voters Revolt

This website was born out of deep anger and frustration at a political establishment which over the decades has increasingly treated the British public with contempt.
It explains how our democracy is being eroded – and spells out how together we ordinary people can halt the slide into bureaucratic tyranny.
For a brief [...]

WE ARE THE ENEMY.

Observer
This ID project is even more sinister than we first thought
The insidious erosion of our civil liberties will accelerate dramatically if the government wins the battle over
identity cards
Henry Porter
Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer
You may have noticed the vaguely menacing tone of recent government advertising campaigns. Here is a current example:
‘If you know a [...]

Consumer rights day

I did not know that there was such a thing as “consumer rights’ day”
The Brussels Journal

Chresten Anderson
Today the Austrian EU Presidency is organising the 8th European Consumer Day, in cooperation with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The date marks US President John F. Kennedy’s declaration to the US Congress on [...]

Hostage to Fortune

The Adams Smith Institute
By Dr Eamonn Butler

There are of course many old laws still in place in the United Kingdom. Some years ago, Lord Harris of High Cross formed what he called the ‘Repeal Group’ in the attempt to get them wiped off the statute book. But most people, especially busy parliamentary business [...]