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What are the Tories going to suggest here?

The impact would be wide-ranging. The UK armed forces would cease to be subject to human rights legislation overseas, and Labour’s 1998 Human Rights Act would be scrapped to be replaced by a “British bill of rights and responsibilities”, the policy document states.

“Responsibilities”? A slightly dangerous idea don’t you think? A bill of rights is a list of things the bastards may not do to us, the citizenry. Start adding responsibilities and we’ll end up with a list of things that we the citizenry must do for the bastards.

And that ain’t right at all.

27 thoughts on “What are the Tories going to suggest here?”

  1. What, so you the arch UKipper, in favour of the nation state as the basic building block of world society, want us to have a set of human rights legislation derived and controlled from outside the nation state, as we do now? Surely the whole argument about leaving the EU etc is not that its necessarily better, but its more democratic – the UK people get what the UK people decide is best for the UK people. And if that means voting for a party that offers a wholly UK derived and controlled human rights system, surely thats a good thing? It might be more or less ‘free’ than what we have now, but it would be ours, not imposed from outside.

    Or are you in favour of supra-national bodies above the nation state now?

  2. Jim,

    I don’t think you get (deliberately or otherwise) Tim’s point. I think Tim would be entirely happy with a (sensible – but let’s not go there) British (and NI) Bill of Rights as opposed to HRA98.

    What I take him to be opposed to is the inclusion in the proposed British Bill of “Responsibilities”.

  3. Firstly the Tories are bags of wind. Their average conference spews out more tough guy threats than the entire canon of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. All of which are less deadly than a bad-farting dog.

    Second–bills of rights are largely worthless. Here is a link to a Youtube vid about the state of the US const/bill of rights. The scum will always undermine and pervert such bills.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUow1DhAubA
    Third –this is a rehash of one of ZaNuLab Broon’s shite ideas. I think the Bottler wanted us all to sign up to it. And since I and millions of others would have (and still will) told him where to stuff it–it seems a little problem would exist.

  4. Negative responsibilities could be fine, depending on what they are. Thou shalt not …. and all that.

    In fact, prohibiting coveting and theft would close down the Labour Party. Hurray!!! Back to Whigs vs Tories, as God always intended.

  5. So Much for Subtlety

    Mr Ecks – “Third –this is a rehash of one of ZaNuLab Broon’s shite ideas. I think the Bottler wanted us all to sign up to it. And since I and millions of others would have (and still will) told him where to stuff it–it seems a little problem would exist.”

    As I said in another thread, the real rulers of Britain are the bureaucrats. This survived Brown’s disaster and is about to become Tory policy. Why? Because the bureaucrats want it. They will push it on the weak minded under Brown, they will push it on the weak minded under Cameron. They would push it on the weak minded under Abu Qatada. Good luck with that.

  6. bloke (not) in spain

    Sorry but i don’t get Tim’s point, here.
    Rights & responsibilities are inseparable. One person’s right is always someone else’s responsibility. If only in observing it.

    Actually I’d be more in favour of an extremely limited list of responsibilities. Those things I’m obliged to do. (And just those)
    Given that, rights can go hang.

  7. I’d say one of the big problems in today’s society is the widespread belief that rights do not come with responsibilities. If they’re trying to reinforce the idea that they do, fine by me.

    That being said, it does depend on what the responsibilities actually are, and I have no faith in politicians not to fuck that up.

  8. The Swiss corpus of law governing companies and businesses is called the Code of Obligations. Think on that.

  9. Ideal Bill of Responsibilties

    “Don’t be an arse”
    “Don’t take the piss”
    “Pay your own way as best you can”

  10. I follow the Golden Rule and so most of the small number of sane laws have no reference to me any way–I do not kill, rape, steal etc.
    The rest of the “law” is mostly abusive tyranny to the benefit of the thieves and psychopaths who “rule”. Which as SMFS says is in fact the Senior Civil Service–all of whom should be sacked without comp, have their pensions confiscated, have any “honours” stripped from them and be publicly denounced as the scum they are.
    I have no “responsibilities” to thugs, thieves and murderers–none whatsoever–nor will they ever induce to accept any supposed responsibilities.

  11. @SE: well he didn’t say that though did he? Just that what was proposed was a bad idea. The implication being he’d prefer the status quo. Which I wouldn’t. I’d rather have a UK defined and agreed set of rights (and responsibilities) because at least then if we don’t like them at some future point we can change them . That democracy thing again. As it is we’re stuck with the Euro wibble set of ‘rights’, and they’re determined and interpreted by judges from such wonderful bastions of human rights as Russia and Albania. I’d rather have a British set of judges deciding thanks very much. And if it takes having to accept some ‘responsibilities’ (which are hardly going to be very onerous given the behaviour of a good proportion of the citizens at the moment) as a citizen I’m quite happy to accept that.

  12. “There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty: the duty to take the consequences.”

    P. J. O’Rourke

  13. s it is we’re stuck with the Euro wibble set of ‘rights’,

    But we’re not. The state may leave the Convention; Parliament is not bound by the Convention; the judiciary is not obliged to abide by case law from the European Court of Human Rights (some irony here in that the Conservatives tabled an amendment to the-then Human Rights Bill to make that happen and Parliament rejected it); Parliament can make new rights.

  14. ukliberty said: “the judiciary is not obliged to abide by case law from the European Court of Human Rights ”

    I thought it was a condition of membership of the EU that you abide by the findings of the European Court of Human Rights? The EU could change its position on this but I guess is unlikely to.

  15. Gareth,

    Our judiciary must “take into account” the Court’s case law – what that means precisely is up for debate but it certainly doesn’t mean the judiciary is obliged to follow the case law. The state is obliged to abide by that Court’s decisions in cases in which the state participated. If it doesn’t then it becomes a political problem in terms of the bodies where our membership is contingent on abiding by what we agreed to do on signing the respective convention or treaty. Parliament remains sovereign and can make or unmake any law.The controversy about foreign judges overruling Parliament is somewhat manufactured: potential difficulty arises where the government is obliged to table and enact legislation but Parliament refuses, but so far Parliament hasn’t had an opportunity to refuse because the government hasn’t tabled such legislation – people are complaining about a problem we haven’t run into yet.

  16. ” people are complaining about a problem we haven’t run into yet.”

    So all the stuff about people not being able to be deported because of their ‘right to family life’ etc has all been made up then? We are running into the problem constantly because the HRA incorporates the ECHR into UK law and UK judges apply it. And as it doesn’t say ‘If your a useless PoS criminal, then you don’t get to have a right to a family life, especially when you’ve murdered a member of someone else’s family’ they let all manner of scum stay in the country when they should be sent packing.

    Can anyone point to a case involving ‘uman rights that doesn’t involve a criminal getting something they don’t deserve, thanks to scummy HR lawyers, my tax payments, and the HRA? Where are the law abiding tax paying people getting their rights to not be shat upon by the State upheld? Oh, sorry, that doesn’t seem to ever happen. The State can do what it likes to the law abiding, its just the criminals and law breakers that have ‘rights’.

  17. Jim,

    So all the stuff about people not being able to be deported because of their ‘right to family life’ etc has all been made up then?

    Perhaps you read that whole sentence a bit too quickly. Try again. No, that particular controversy has not been entirely manufactured. But I didn’t say anything about that particular controversy.

    Can anyone point to a case involving ‘uman rights that doesn’t involve a criminal getting something they don’t deserve

    Quite a few. A journalist posted some examples today saying press supporters of the Tory proposals are shortsighted. E.g.
    a journalist subject to contempt for not revealing sources
    police unlawfully bugging a journalist
    the BIJ is challenging the police snooping on journo phone records

    Liberty has some other examples:
    a family the right to participate in an independent and effective investigation into a person’s death at the hands of a convicted sex offender
    a woman the right to have the police investigate her abuse and enslavement by her so-called employer, and the right to compensation when they failed to do so
    a mother to prevent a man convicted of sexually abusing one of her daughters to use his property rights to get hold of photographs of her children.

    How many examples do you want?

  18. And presumably all those sort of cases would be covered by our own Bill of Rights AND we could chuck out the criminal scum, and stop pikeys building all over the green belt because of the ‘human rights’. Whats not to like?

  19. b(n)is is right. It is illogical to have rights without balancing responsibilities, whereas if you define responsibilities properly there would be no need for a bill of rights because everyone’s rights would be covered by being someone else’s responsibility. I was flabberghasted the first time a (highly intelligent) arts graduate told me that people could have rights without some other person having a balancing responsibility. The last I heard of him he had been seconded to work for the European com,mission in Brussels and consequently was paid more after tax (but not before) than I was.
    Secondly, I’m with ukliberty on most of this but the ECHR *has* been used to block the deportation of foreign criminals who have no rights.

  20. Jim,

    And presumably all those sort of cases would be covered by our own Bill of Rights

    Have you read the proposals? E.g. “Limit the use of Human Rights laws to the most serious cases. They will no longer apply in trivial cases.” Who do you think is intended to decide what’s “serious” or “trivial”?

  21. If Grayling and co. really want to leave the Convention they should just do it, instead of politicking in this really cynical and shitty way. Grayling’s probably the type of man who, if he wanted to split up with his partner, would make her life miserable until she dumped him instead of him being upfront about it.

    john77,

    Secondly, I’m with ukliberty on most of this but the ECHR *has* been used to block the deportation of foreign criminals who have no rights.

    The Tory proposals wouldn’t prevent a foreign criminal fighting his deportation using the European Court of Human Rights, they would only prevent him bringing a case in domestic courts on Convention grounds. That’s because the UK would still be a contracting party to the Convention.

  22. “Sorry but i don’t get Tim’s point, here.
    Rights & responsibilities are inseparable. One person’s right is always someone else’s responsibility. If only in observing it.”

    Tim’s point is that rights (in the traditional negative sense) only serve to define justly owned property, and so help to protect the little guy from the constant encroachments of our rulers and other criminals.

    Rights as entitlements (i.e. positive rights), like the right to a home, drinking water, a certain standard of living, an education, healthcare and so on, do require someone else to do something and so do entail corresponding “responsibilities”. This kind of right necessarily infringes upon the property of some people in favour of some other people and as such tends to be a mess of contradiction. Socialists love the second kind of rights because they entrench socialism forever.

  23. There is absolutely no benefit to be gained from any bill of rights. History shows that rulers just find ways to circumvent such documents. It is very unlikely that the present day UK could come up with anything as good as the US constitution, and look what that has come to. It is a waste of time to attempt a bill of negative rights and a bill of positive rights and responsibilities is a severe threat to liberty.

  24. > a bill of positive rights and responsibilities is a severe threat to liberty.

    What liberty? The liberty that’s already gone?

    Peopel forget that an awful lot of poltiics is about the public discourse, about shaping the parameters within which these debates take place and thereby influencing the votes of the future. We currently live in a country whose ruling class and whose underclass both believe in positive rights galore with no responsibilities. In that light, building a set of matching rights and responsibilities into law is a good idea, if for no other reason than that it will push the phrase “rights and responsibilities” into general parlance and thus make it part of the background noise of the culture. For an example of that process in action, look at “health and safety”.

    It’s not a perfect ideal, but, in the real world, it is a push in the right direction.

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