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"This followed a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which ordered the government to change the law. John Hirst, a prisoner convicted of manslaughter, successfully argued that his human rights had been violated by the removal of his right to vote."

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I am 50 years old and I was too young to vote in the only referendum that the UK has had on Europe. I personally feel that my human rights have been violated by not allowing me vote on whether we remain as a member of this corrupt European Union.

As a failed democratic state I expect my opinion to be ignored.

It is not surprising that the Tories do not want to give prisoners an opportunity to participate in the democratic processes. It is shameful that the defiance of the ECHR ruling should be lead by a senior labour MP. Some on the right probably would not be satisfied until all prisoners were routinely tortured but there is no excuse for Jack Straw pandering to the political red necks. There is nothing to be gained by continuing to prevent prisoners from voting and some value in them participating in democracy and taking an interest in politics as a feature of rehabilitation, even though some politicians are not a model of honesty and moral integrity.

I am beginning to get the feeling that the failed spin doctor is not up to the job, although I have not deviated from my view that he is a superb, rather smooth ruling class conman.His decision to give the vote to hoardes of prisoners may have been because he has found out that those who will qualify to vote contain a large number of fraudsters from the City and other financial institutions, the sort of individuals involved in Ponzi schemes, insider trading, widespread tax evasion and the crooks and thieves in the legal and accountancy professions that facilitate their dirty deeds, and above all bankroll the Tory Party.

3.

Sout, I agree with the first part of what you're saying - I dont think the former Carlton spinner is up to the job - but we have a slight problem with the second bit about the Ponzi merchants and the like...

.... er, we have to nick them first and bang them up. Minor technicality, I know, but nonetheless....

Mods, are you sure you've closed the right blog here? The most recent one is the one that has been shut.

Shurely Shome Mishtake?

#16 from the closed blog.

No problem with people being executed for those types of offence.

Dead people do not vote.

#5 of coarse there is never any incompetance in public service is there

I see that the outgoing head of Barnados has criticised the jailing of student class warrior Edward Woollard of the bizare grounds that as he's middle class, he might get picked on by other inmates. Aw diddums, is the rough tough class warrior really just a softy-wofty?

Perhaps he could hold a talk on "Why working class oiks should pay tax to fund middle class kids at Uni". That should go down well.

personally, I've suspected this of these student demonstrators. It's all a jolly jape when they're smashing up bus shelters and shop windows but when the nasty-wasty policeman hits them over the head, they go running to mummy.

""13. At 11:50am on 20 Jan 2011, IR35_SURVIVOR wrote:
Bring back caputal punishement for murder,rape and peado's

That will sort out one set of voting rights."

So you'd have been in favour of executing Roger Beardmore, convicted in 1998 of repeatedly raping a girl over a 3 year period between her 3rd and 7th birthday?

Don't you think a long jail sentence is better?"

Hopefully you'll by now have found out that 3 years after the conviction, the girl admitted that she'd made the whole thing up to gain her mother's attention and Beardmore was released.

Under my preferred option, Beardmore could be released. Under yours, you'd have to dig him up and say sorry.

3. At 10:32am on 20 Jan 2011, IPGABP1 wrote:
"I am beginning to get the feeling that the failed spin doctor is not up to the job, although I have not deviated from my view that he is a superb, rather smooth ruling class conman.His decision to give the vote to hoardes of prisoners may have been because he has found out that those who will qualify to vote contain a large number of fraudsters from the City and other financial institutions, the sort of individuals involved in Ponzi schemes, insider trading, widespread tax evasion and the crooks and thieves in the legal and accountancy professions that facilitate their dirty deeds, and above all bankroll the Tory Party."

Have been trying to convince several people that this is the case, have been met with widespread scepticism! I pointed out that voting rights,demolition of prisons and non custodial sentences had electoral advantages to the Tories since most professional criminals had values which aligned more easily to them than socialists.

It could also produce a raft of donors since everyone accepts that Robin Hood is a fictional character and wealthy people tend to be anal retentive,especially dishonest ones.I understand from a friend that Wilileaks is about to explode a few more hand grenades among these people.Is tax evastion theft by the way? Rich people are very good at it,they show their gratitude by funding campaigns in marginal constituencies where elections are decided.The Lib-Dem holy man Mr Clegg is now a beneficiary of these artful dodgers.You gotta larf!


These suggestions were treated as immoral

6 - Ah, I posted at 9 before your post 6 appeared. Still got no problem with Beardmore being hung for something he didn't do? When you think that the only evidence was the fabricated evidence of the girl, would you be happy if it was you being escorted to the gallows knowing you were inncoent?

And what would you have said to Beardmore's family and friends? "oops, sorry" doesn't seem quite sufficient.

Crooks vote all the time: It's called Parliament.

It seems to me that when you commit an act that society finds unacceptable enough to remove your freedom, then you also lose the right to participate in the norms of that society, including deciding its political and policy direction. Perhaps we need a new definition of 'citizen'.

10 - "Have been trying to convince several people that this is the case, have been met with widespread scepticism! I pointed out that voting rights,demolition of prisons and non custodial sentences had electoral advantages to the Tories since most professional criminals had values which aligned more easily to them than socialists."

No, not scepticism, incredulous hilarity. It's what you WANT to believe and so you allow yourself to believe it. In your eyes, Tories are bad, criminals are bad so Tories and criminals must be Tories.

Do you a single shred of evidence to back this up fantasy of yours?

And if your basic idea is that the Tories are (on the sly) in favour of tax evasion, can you explain why they introduced the anti-EBT tax legislation last year? A fairly simple way that business owners have been using to extract money from their businesses at very low tax rates. The Labour party did nothing for 13 years on this, the coalition have ended it within their first year of office.

Goes completely against your theory but I guess that as this is a fact that doesn't fit your view, you'll just ignore it.

And while we're at it, how come it was a Conservative proposed amendment in the last parliament that forced peers to have a deemed UK domicile if they wanted to serve in the HofL? Again, goes completely against your unsubstantiated allegations doesn't it?

No13 Scarrface,
I think you make a perfectly valid point.What do you think of the situation where one of Thatcher's favourites and former deputy leader of the Tory party serves his time and then glides back into the House of Lords and plays a part in the UK law making process?

10 - "I understand from a friend that Wilileaks is about to explode a few more hand grenades among these people."

Hmmm...wasn't it you yesterday getting all patronising about a typo of mine?

I'll resist the temptation to make anything of Wilileaks exploding.

stanblogger wrote:

"The lack of understanding of the purpose of the declaration of universal human rights, cultivated deliberately by parts of the media, is appalling."
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On the other hand, perhaps people understand the impact of the effects human rights on our society only too well. It is chiefly of benefit to those people whose lifestyles and activities operate outside of the law or around the fringes of it. To the majority of the decent law abiding people in this country, it is difficult to see how the humans rights laws improves their lives. In fact, where the rights of criminals are championed by the courts, the exact opposite is true. It is basically a criminals charter and should be replaced with something more effective and accoutable to the people.

This was never going to happen under the last government, with Tony Blair declaring its implementation as his finest day in politics or something like. Lord Irvine also declared it a great success as well. He is of ocurse talking purely from an academic viewpoint, and not of the practical negative impact it would have on many peoples lives. But what else would we expect from someone who's so aloof from real life that he had never heard of B&Q. The Human Rights industry is one of the growth areas in the past decade or so, and it is nothing more than a drain on taxpayers money for the legal profession. I'm thus surprised to see Jack Straw involved in this now.

If only they would enforce the Human Responsibilities bit of the legislation as well.

I find myself in favour of granting voting rights to prisoners on the grounds of pragmatism and not principle.

The issue is that we have not resolved the legal basis of human rights legislation in the UK.

Nor, as per the recent European referendum debate, have we resolved the issue of parliamentary sovereignty, and the relationship between the legislature and the judiciary.

Nor, perhaps even more fundamentally, have we resolved the issue of the relationship between law and politics. This issue has been thrown into relief by our unresolved legal relationship with the EU.

The executive, most people who consider these issues would agree, should be subject to the rule of law.

The potential conflict comes between Parliament, in its role as legislature, and the judiciary.

Lord Hoffman has called for us to recover a sense of constitutional history, and to set a clear distinction between the role of human rights and the role of politics. 鈥淭he value of [International Human Rights standards] should be derived less from their status or acts by an assembly or international organisation than from their success or otherwise in expressing truths about the dignity of human beings鈥�.

From this can be a paradox, which I will not explain. 鈥淩ight,the substantive right, is the child of law: from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians and dealers in intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights鈥�. (Jeremy Bentham).

On this issue the 鈥榙ealers of intellectual poisons鈥� are primarily of a Labour/Lib Dem political disposition.

Not necessarily immoral bryhers, just barking mad for one who paints herself to be more intellectual, more deep thinking than the average mouth-breathing right wingers who she looks down on from the top of the moral high ground.

You're just as prejudiced as the rest of us in the gutter. Come on down, the water is perfectly warm.

15#

Id' say it was about par for the course, Sout.


At least they jailed him. More than can be said for Mandy and a few of the other lawbreakers in the last administration, who had they been ordinary citizens, would have been sent down with indecent haste.

"I pointed out that voting rights,demolition of prisons and non custodial sentences had electoral advantages to the Tories since most professional criminals had values which aligned more easily to them than socialists."

I think I've worked it out, what with your interest in the Mafia it should have been obvious.

You watched The Godfather and thought it all jolly exciting and a bit dangerous and what with the mobsters respecting their "Mudda and Fadda" occasionally going to church and wearing expensive suits you thought "Golly! These mobster chappies are a bit like big businessmen. I expect the scoundrals would vote Tory".

I'm curious as to your thoughts on amateur criminals. Do entertain us by saying who you think they vote for.

In some ways we should be grateful to ECHR for requiring us to re-examine a very old legal tradition. Sometimes things are left on the statute book for far too long and should not be allowed in a modern society.

But if, once the torrent of abuse from some newspapers had died down, research is undertaken and parliament decides that barring prisoners from voting is still the correct way forward, then that should be the end of the matter.

If necessary parliament can always frame the law so that it explicitly removes the right of any UK citizen to complain to the ECHR on this point.

Of course this would bring us into conflict with the EU have required that respect of human rights as per the European convention is fundamental part of membership.

What this highlights to me is that UK was wrong to bring European rules on human rights into English law, wrong to pass the Human Rights Act. That does not mean that English law will not respect human rights - after all we managed to abolish the death penalty without a human rights act and establish habeas corpus without a human rights act.

The downside of re-establishing the primacy of parliament is one that we must acknowledge. parliament can, and frequently does make horrible laws. The various attempts, struck down by the courts, of control orders on terrorists being a case in point.

However, when one considers that the human rights industry has so far:

1. Stopped us deporting illegal immigrants who are also convicted criminals.
2. Allowed govt to impose taxes backdated to 10 years before the change of the law
3. (possibly) required us to amend voting laws.
4. In effect imposed a privacy law for rich people without any debate in parliament

I do seriously question whether it is worth the hassle

2. At 10:32am on 20 Jan 2011, watriler wrote:
"It is not surprising that the Tories do not want to give prisoners an opportunity to participate in the democratic processes. It is shameful that the defiance of the ECHR ruling should be lead by a senior labour MP. Some on the right probably would not be satisfied until all prisoners were routinely tortured but there is no excuse for Jack Straw pandering to the political red necks. There is nothing to be gained by continuing to prevent prisoners from voting and some value in them participating in democracy and taking an interest in politics as a feature of rehabilitation, even though some politicians are not a model of honesty and moral integrity."

I don`t doubt your heart`s in the right place, but where`s your head.As much as social liberals like Ken Clarke and David Cameron may want to hug hoodies,the electoral cost of early release,suspended sentences or prisoner voting rights would be enormous.This has a cast of thousands,imagine the litany of condemnation when week after week one or more of these characters pitches up in court charged with serious crime.

Most of it will be delayed,whittled down,"negotiated". It`s politics,it`s what I would do,so would you if you were honest.They can`t risk a surge in the crime figures after they have fallen for nearly two decades.Especially when economic pressures will inevitably increase property crime in the coming years.There will be a lot of sound and fury from all quarters,not much will happen except the occasional pantomime like Jack Straw and David Davis holding hands in the commons.

Valuable,got parliament off the hook, because attitudes are all over the place on this one,a recipe for chaos,for a surge in reactionary legislation as the mob and its tabloid representatives take charge.

"This was never going to happen under the last government, with Tony Blair declaring its implementation as his finest day in politics or something like."

Well, he wouldnt have done, wouldnt he, it gave old slotgob a licence to print money. Would have been difficult getting a mortgage on that place in W2 without a big fat deposit, otherwise....

Speaking of Lawbreakers...