Scrapping the Human Rights Act

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Discussion

cirian75

4,245 posts

232 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
Adrian W said:
cirian75 said:
Yup, he thought he was going to be in a collation, and when the unfettered polls showed the Tory's ahead it was to late to change tact.
He lied, he cant exactly say he hadn't seen the full picture
find me an MP who has been in office over 5 years does not lie regularly.

Derek Smith

45,514 posts

247 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
NicD said:
We see a steady stream of foreign criminals abusing the concept of human rights via Article 8 etc, enriching the legal fraternity at huge cost to the tax payer.

Would the many vocal supporters of the status quo please post examples of where deserving British subjects actually benefit from the HRA?
But we don't see a 'steady stream of foreign criminals abusing the concept'. The statistics show this quite clearly. The Daily Mail abuses its position to tell us so but a little bit of research shows that they are confusing us. That there are the occasional decisions which seem unfair is true but that's hardly a steady stream.

One benefit of the ECHR is that it limits the power of the state over the individual. We all get a little of that.

Cheese Mechanic

3,157 posts

168 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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Derek Smith said:
But we don't see a 'steady stream of foreign criminals abusing the concept'. The statistics show this quite clearly. The Daily Mail abuses its position to tell us so but a little bit of research shows that they are confusing us. That there are the occasional decisions which seem unfair is true but that's hardly a steady stream.
One benefit of the ECHR is that it limits the power of the state over the individual. We all get a little of that.
Thats not my perception of it at all. Parliament must be paramount, not a bunch of foreign judges implementing laws not made by our freely elected parliament.

Those foreign judges did nothing about the hoard of petty rights diminishing laws made during the Blair/.Brown disaster, laws viewed as petty and invasive, the feeling of being unable to move without transgressing somehow and copping a fine.

Fact is, we do not need those foreign "judges" , we are perfectly capable of making our own laws, and if those laws are not liked, we can kick out the writers of them, like we did Brown.

Seems to me, many people seem to think we cannot make our own laws, which is simply wrong.

Derek Smith

45,514 posts

247 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
Cheese Mechanic said:
Thats not my perception of it at all. Parliament must be paramount, not a bunch of foreign judges implementing laws not made by our freely elected parliament.

Those foreign judges did nothing about the hoard of petty rights diminishing laws made during the Blair/.Brown disaster, laws viewed as petty and invasive, the feeling of being unable to move without transgressing somehow and copping a fine.

Fact is, we do not need those foreign "judges" , we are perfectly capable of making our own laws, and if those laws are not liked, we can kick out the writers of them, like we did Brown.

Seems to me, many people seem to think we cannot make our own laws, which is simply wrong.
Well, there you go. It seems I will not convince you and you, by implying that our government passes good laws, stand no chance at changing mine.

Currently, the UK government is paramount.

turbobloke

103,742 posts

259 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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Cheese Mechanic said:
Thats not my perception of it at all. Parliament must be paramount, not a bunch of foreign judges implementing laws not made by our freely elected parliament.
Agreed, but then on top of that there are unelected eurodrones generating regulations year-on year. When the DT covered a B4B analysis that found 'two-thirds' of laws were Made In Brussels, the actual figure they obtained was 64.7% rounded up to 65% and rounded up again to get two-thirds. FullFact then looked at this and counted the EU regulaitons differently and arrived at 62% (an unimpressive difference).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1...

turbobloke

103,742 posts

259 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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Further to that point on counting differently...a study by Open Europe found that the EU was the key driver of UK regulation with 77% of the major regulations passed in the UK since 1998 wholly or partly driven by EU legislation...according the Government’s own Regulatory Impact Assessments, these EU regulations have cost UK businesses £30 billion...Dutch finance minister (as was) Gerrit Zalm has pointed out that “over 50% of the administrative burden on businesses in the Netherlands has a direct European origin”, while a study of laws passed by the Bundestag estimated that of 23167 laws and regulations passed by the parliament in a six year period approximately 19000 i.e. just over 80% came from the EU.

greygoose

8,224 posts

194 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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AJS- said:
He really has no clue what he is doing. He obviously had no intention of winning the election and having to implement the absolute balderdash in the manifesto. Quite why the media are so kind to Cameron is a mystery.
It seems odd to me too that Cameron gets such an easy ride, you'd think that with the opposition being so weak the media would welcome the chance to step up and question the government, instead they do nothing.

Cheese Mechanic

3,157 posts

168 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
Further to that point on counting differently...a study by Open Europe found that the EU was the key driver of UK regulation with 77% of the major regulations passed in the UK since 1998 wholly or partly driven by EU legislation...according the Government’s own Regulatory Impact Assessments, these EU regulations have cost UK businesses £30 billion...Dutch finance minister (as was) Gerrit Zalm has pointed out that “over 50% of the administrative burden on businesses in the Netherlands has a direct European origin”, while a study of laws passed by the Bundestag estimated that of 23167 laws and regulations passed by the parliament in a six year period approximately 19000 i.e. just over 80% came from the EU.
Well yes, the elephant in the room. We will never regain self determination whilst we remain constricted by the EU straitjacket.

It should be remembered that unions and federations of nation states that do not go forward with the active consent of their peoples are either held together by force, fall apart, or both.

Esseesse

8,969 posts

207 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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greygoose said:
AJS- said:
He really has no clue what he is doing. He obviously had no intention of winning the election and having to implement the absolute balderdash in the manifesto. Quite why the media are so kind to Cameron is a mystery.
It seems odd to me too that Cameron gets such an easy ride, you'd think that with the opposition being so weak the media would welcome the chance to step up and question the government, instead they do nothing.
The media is generally pro-Cameron, Blair, or anyone '3rd way'.

Esseesse

8,969 posts

207 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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RacerMike said:
I suppose the question we should really be asking then is 'why does the government want to scrap it?'. I'm not the foil hat wearing kind of person, so generally believe the reasons for such things are likely to either be a) political maneuvering or b) a genuine belief that it's the best choice or c) a public pleasing policy.

So removing all of the cliche's about the Torries being baby eating millionaires and understanding it clearly can't be 'c', which is it? I'm assuming that at least some in the party believe it to be a genuinely good thing to do to somehow improve things, and I can't really see how it can be a particularly good bit of political maneuvering.
It could be good political manoeuvring if by scrapping ECHR he can claim to have diminished EU influence on the UK and win a referendum on our EU membership.

Esseesse

8,969 posts

207 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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anonymous said:
[redacted]
It's not working well then, we do plenty of trade with China (and I'm sure countless others with poor human rights records).

Esseesse

8,969 posts

207 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
speedy_thrills said:
Esseesse said:
Or why do we have it? Was there a problem before the ECHR came about?
Yes.

After the second world war Winston Churchill (who was in opposition but still widely respected and influential) argued "There is a remedy which ... would in a few years make all Europe ... free and ... happy. It is to re-create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe." (Linky to full speech in 1946) so we created the Treaty of London (1949) establishing the Council of Europe to provide that structure. At this time (in addition to the post-war feeling Europe was doomed to repeat it's history without some wider political unity) Churchill foresaw the Iron curtain and wanted to enshrine social progress in a pan-European common legal understanding. The obvious way to achieve this was to establish a Council of Europe (in fact Churchill had spoken of a Council of Europe much earlier) to realise these ambitions and establish the European Convention on Human Rights and a court (ECtHR) to uphold those freedoms.

However this has been inconvenient for the British government at times.
Yes but did we have a problem? I don't believe Churchill intended what he was talking about to apply to us.

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
Esseesse said:
greygoose said:
AJS- said:
He really has no clue what he is doing. He obviously had no intention of winning the election and having to implement the absolute balderdash in the manifesto. Quite why the media are so kind to Cameron is a mystery.
It seems odd to me too that Cameron gets such an easy ride, you'd think that with the opposition being so weak the media would welcome the chance to step up and question the government, instead they do nothing.
The media is generally pro-Cameron, Blair, or anyone '3rd way'.
Indeed. It is reminiscent of Blair's early years. Cameron has actually had a fairly rough ride as PM with an awkward coalition, a high profile defeat over Syria and the slimmest of victories. The media don't seem to like the Tories in general and have been very critical of the cuts, yet Cameron seems to be treated with kid gloves where they savagely went after Brown and Major.

It could be the politics, but I rather suspect it's a bit more subtle than that, since neither Brown nor Major were significantly different on any major policy issues. There's a few possibilities. One is that Blair and Cameron are just especially good at endearing themselves to certain key media people in the media who then create a herd mentality within their profession which thirsts for the blood of Major and Brown, and indeed Hague, IDS and Miliband while making little of the failures of Blair and Cameron.

Peter Hitchens has said that he believes the major parties and the media basically agree to take it in turns for a period of time, one governing and one being a bit of a laughing stock. Hard to find any evidence to support this, but it's hard to imagine that the last 20 years of government would look much different if this were true.

IainT

10,040 posts

237 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
Further to that point on counting differently...a study by Open Europe found that the EU was the key driver of UK regulation with 77% of the major regulations passed in the UK since 1998 wholly or partly driven by EU legislation...according the Government’s own Regulatory Impact Assessments, these EU regulations have cost UK businesses £30 billion...Dutch finance minister (as was) Gerrit Zalm has pointed out that “over 50% of the administrative burden on businesses in the Netherlands has a direct European origin”, while a study of laws passed by the Bundestag estimated that of 23167 laws and regulations passed by the parliament in a six year period approximately 19000 i.e. just over 80% came from the EU.
Only useful stats if we can accurately show which would not have been implemented fully or in part without the EU as a driver. This also seems to be unrelated to the ECHR but as requirements of trading with(in) the EU. Even if we left the EU and wanted to be a trading partner we'd have to comply or face higher levies with no voice on forming the rules to keep the most excessive meddling in check.

cirian75

4,245 posts

232 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
Yes, if we left the EU we have zero say in say, taxes on UK goods

all they would have to do is wack a supertax on UK goods and wreck us.

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
cirian75 said:
Yes, if we left the EU we have zero say in say, taxes on UK goods

all they would have to do is wack a supertax on UK goods and wreck us.
Like we have zero say in tax on UK goods in Japan, the US or Australia. And yet they don't do any such thing.

Overt and spiteful protectionism like that would be illegal under WTO unless they could make the case that post Brexit UK was some sort of pariah state worthy of economic sanctions. It would also be as damaging to them as it would to us in many ways.

fido

16,752 posts

254 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
cirian75 said:
Yes, if we left the EU we have zero say in say, taxes on UK goods

all they would have to do is wack a supertax on UK goods and wreck us.
No they wouldn't - because we import more than they export to us.

Take for instance cars - Germany/EU whacks supertax on our cars, we whack a supertax on their cars.

The EU (France) tried this on China a few years back wrt to solar panels - they responded by targeting France on its own e.g. champagne, cheeses. We could do exactly the same thing because there isn't much unity between the EU states when it comes to personal finances! I'd pick Germany as the target of retribution in every case - their car manufacturers will not want to put up with a trade war.

Edited by fido on Wednesday 27th May 10:14

Digga

40,206 posts

282 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
Esseesse said:
Yes but did we have a problem? I don't believe Churchill intended what he was talking about to apply to us.
And in any case, we need to stop living in his shadow.

Granted, he was an exceptional and inspirational leader at a time of great national peril, but contrary to popular belief, he was not a diety.

turbobloke

103,742 posts

259 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
Digga said:
Esseesse said:
Yes but did we have a problem? I don't believe Churchill intended what he was talking about to apply to us.
And in any case, we need to stop living in his shadow.

Granted, he was an exceptional and inspirational leader at a time of great national peril, but contrary to popular belief, he was not a diety.
Quite so, even a visionary of his magnitude didn't spot how LVT would be even worse in future than it was when he was pushing it. As covered in previous threads.

NicD

3,281 posts

256 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
quotequote all
cirian75 said:
NicD said:
We see a steady stream of foreign criminals abusing the concept of human rights via Article 8 etc, enriching the legal fraternity at huge cost to the tax payer.

Would the many vocal supporters of the status quo please post examples of where deserving British subjects actually benefit from the HRA?
It legally requires our solders to have the correct equipment and to have deficiency's corrected asap when we send them to war.

The reform of the corrupt RUC into the now much better fit for purpose PSNI
So in the whole day, we have this single answer (perhaps my request got lost amongst the posts).
And the examples of how the HRA has benefitted you or I seem nothing special that couldn't be included in the UK Bill.

Sorry, I am not convinced. The featherbedding a huge swathe of the legal industry and foreign, often despicable clients seems way too high a price to pay.

Btw, its not that I trust the powers that be particularly, but what we have today seems badly broken.