Exilian

So this is now a major thing.

We have attacks on the legality of encryption, the human rights act, the snoopers' charter, new powers to ban "extremist speech" without a court hearing, and a whole bunch of other stuff headed our way very rapidly.


Thoughts, folks?

Once upon a time, I think, the Conservative Party believed in small government and the rights of individuals - I'm fairly sure that's what Margaret Thatcher thought. Somehow it seems to have turned into an authoritarian monster. At least some of this is apparently being done in the name of protecting us, but it seems bizarre that our rights are protected by destroying them.

I am horrified, outraged and very, very angry. Our human rights are precious and have been hundreds of years in the making; I do not intend to let them go without a struggle.

I'd agree on the current point, but challenge you on the history - I think the current Tory party is acting much more in Thatcher's legacy than that. The confusing thing with her is that she seemed to simultaneously believe in individuals having fiscal responsibility, but not social or moral responsibility, and that I think is what is being continued here. Under Thatcher this manifested itself in ways that included, to take the obvious example, Section 28. It's a feature of post-Thatcher Toryism and Farage's side of UKIP that the perceived social norms are defined in an aggressive way against a perceived other. Today, it's terrorists and radical Islam, in the 1980s, it was LGBT people. That is, I think, very much the mould the current government is in - the idea that you have nothing to fear, so long as you conform, is at the heart of it.

You both realise we actually keep our human rights, it's going under a name and signatory change is all?

Read this if you're unsure https://fullfact.org/law/conservative-party-bill-of-rights-39308/

Under the conservative BBoR, we stay attached to Strasbourg but have the power to over rule them. Why are you so afraid of letting our country be run by our own people?

"The Conservatives want to limit the use of a British Bill of Rights to "the most serious cases", so it won't cover "trivial" issues. At present, human rights arguments can be used in any case where they're relevant.

They also want human rights laws to be restricted in terms of who can use them. The Conservatives cite the examples of "a foreign national who takes the life of another person", and "terrorists", who would be prevented from invoking human rights law to resist being deported.

But the Conservatives don't propose radical change in the core content of their Bill of Rights compared to the Human Rights Act. They say the wording of the rights people have would be largely the same as in the ECHR." - Quoted from the link but it's the most relevant bit imho.

Conformity in this day doesn't even exist. People can be whatever/whoever they want to be. Like I've said before, Northants has a gay rubgy team, we have more mosques than churches (probably) and guys wearing skirts is not an uncommon sight. How much more open can we get, what is it that you need from society to make you feel accepted?

As a point of fact, there are over five times as many Anglican churches as there are mosques in the Northampton area, let alone other Christian denominations.  :P

The problems for me are as follows:

• Firstly I'd like to point out that we already can overrule Strasbourg. The government has been de facto overruling Strasbourg for over a decade on some issues. So that's clearly not the point of this. The Human Rights Act is a British law, it was supported by the Conservatives when it was implemented. Why are you so afraid of the fact that it signs us up to a basic international agreement on human rights? What's so wrong with someone being able to point out when the government might be intruding too much on people's lives?
• The whole point of human rights, for me, is that they apply to all humans. I'm well aware that I am unlikely to personally fall foul of these laws, but it's very important to me that we have genuinely universal human rights laws that still do apply to foreign nationals etc. They're still people.
• There's no formal definition of what counts as a "trivial" issue, or who counts as a terrorist. I am extremely worried that this will lead to arbitrary standards in who can access human rights law. I know of no cases where actual human rights cases were actually heard in court that I would regard as trivial.
• I strongly disagree with territorially restricting the HRA as well, which is an aim of the bill.
• I'm worried that this will lead to a row that would see us leaving the ECHR, which I think would be extremely morally irresponsible. Leaving the ECHR is, in the current formulation of the plans, seen as a preferable option to staying in the event that the UK cannot re-negotiate its membership of the Court. That would a) send a really bad signal to countries that regularly abuse human rights that are also signed up to the court, notably Russia, Azerbaijan, etc. It would also lead to our near-automatic expulsion from the EU without anyone in the UK getting a say, which regardless of whether you want to leave the EU or not seems profoundly undemocratic.
• The HRA is wired into devolution settlements, the Good Friday Agreement, etc etc. Ripping it up could destabilise those relationships within the UK significantly.

I think this is a good link that gives further details:
http://www.dominicgrieve.org.uk/news/why-human-rights-should-matter-conservatives

I meant in the UK as a whole (where it still isn't true) but regardless, you get my point surely: we are a free country and have a relative metric ton of civil liberties. Conformity isn't an issue we have, I'm curious as to why you think it is.

You want the EU to encroach on our lives but not the UK govt? With a UK govt, at least we have the power to get rid of them. As this year more than any other (recently) has shown, people want the power back in the hands of a UK government and out of Europe. I ask again (reworded): Why do you have so much faith that a larger, less interested body has a better way to deal with our rights than our own government does? In practice, it makes absolutely no difference. However in theory: why wouldn't you want more controllable power than something we can't control?

Human rights applying to all humans is all well and good in theory but we can't enforce that. We can only do what we can in our own country. You're worried it'll lead to arbitrary use of human rights? As opposed to what we have now which is foolproof? Right ;)... Mate, it's no better or worse.

You think Ireland is going to start a campaign of terror when one of the purposes of the bill is to make targeting and capturing terrorists easier? It's pretty illogical and would cement the idea that we need it.

"The Conservatives would remove any requirement for judges to "take into account" Strasbourg rulings. That doesn't mean the judges couldn't or wouldn't do so. Nor does it mean that British judges would necessarily reach very different decisions about what ECHR rights mean—human rights cases from abroad often influence the Supreme Court."

I see the point that we are part of the European community that teaches the others how to act upon breaches of human rights, how to create a fair justice system for prisoners and such but it's not our problem, we don't need to be telling countries how to do things; they can find a balance on their own that works for them.

Please can someone explain why Europe is better at making rights than us? For one, we created the original.

OK, you seem to be confused about a couple of things. The ECHR is not part of the EU: it's an entirely separate body. It also doesn't enforce EU law, it literally just makes rulings on the convention rights. We have the same amount of power as regards the ECHR as we do to our own courts, and indeed under the current HRA most human rights hearings go through UK courts. The ECHR is not a larger, less interested body - it's a smaller, more specialist one. It doesn't have power either - it's a check on power, not a source of it. It also can't overrule our laws, the HRA only requires the UK to "take account of" ECHR decisions, not follow them to the letter.

As to application to all humans: I don't mean we should go on a Human Rights Crusade across the globe, I just mean that I want to live in a country where there are basic rights that apply to everyone who is in the country. The fact that someone is foreign and living in Britain shouldn't mean they lose their human rights compared to a British citizen, that's kind of the whole point of human rights. One of the things this bill does, explicitly in the name, is replace "human rights" that apply to everyone under UK jurisdiction who is human, with "British rights" that can be more or less ignored in some cases for non-citizens. I personally don't think that's a good thing.

I also totally disagree that other countries' justice systems aren't our problem - even besides the fairly compelling moral case, we don't live in isolation, and abusive regimes in other countries often do make problems for us here.

I don't think Europe is better at creating rights, but I do think that our governments shouldn't be allowed to just change those few, basic human rights whenever they feel like it, and I think the ECHR does a fairly good job of being an impartial arbiter, pointing out cases where we need to either clarify our law, or change it, to ensure we've properly thought out the implications of what we're doing on human rights cases. Most of the reasons for not having it seem to me to be mildly sinister or rather foolish; I don't want to lose the services of a body who can call the government out when they mess up, and I don't want to restrict human rights on British soil to only fully apply to British citizens.

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As to conformity: I guess I come from a school of thought that says that government shouldn't be arbitrarily defining or stopping anything that isn't actively harmful to others, and we're still not there with that yet. A few current legal examples: there are still legal defences that are only open to wives but not husbands, I have friends who still can't accurately put their gender on their passport, the government gives extra random money to people just because they got married. It's scripted into political rhetoric too - this Labour/Tory armadillo about "hard working families". What about hard working single parents? Or kind of average working families? Or a fifty-five year old guy with no family who can't find a job? So it's not just about legal rights for me - I think there are more nebulous issues of social status, of how we talk and think about political issues, and whether we want to live in a society in which we value equally people who are more "normal" and people who aren't. And there's obviously progress we need to make there. Our legal civil liberties are pretty damn good, I agree with you, but I want them to stay that way and improve, rather than taking steps backwards, and there seem to me to be a lot of current threats to that, and political parties willing to hit the minority to avoid upsetting them majority, and that worries me.

Here's something a little easier going for a Sunday afternoon - a couple of links relating to the Human Rights Act.

First, some debunking of various stories (http://rightsinfo.org/infographics/the-14-worst-human-rights-myths/) that have contributed to the current human rights debate. Oddly enough, they all seem to have originated from a small number of newspapers and Conservative politicians. I can't imagine why...

Second, an article in the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/arguments-human-rights-act-michael-gove-repeal-myth-busting), written by Keir Starmer, explaining what the Human Rights Act is, where it came from and why we should keep it. It covers a lot of the same ground as Dominic Grieve's article that I've already linked to, but rather more tersely. Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013, and is now a Labour MP. Evidently we have people who understand and believe in the Human Rights Act on both sides of the Commons.

Fair enough about the start, I was just plain wrong. I do my best to try and give a decent counter-argument, once again I failed, not enough research, sorry.

I thought one of the purposes of BBoR is that it details how to treat foreign nationals on British soil as well as British citizens on foreign soil? The reason I'd say it's better to have different rights for foreigners than British is for criminals and the like, easier deportation and make it more difficult to emigrate here (good imo, bad iyo I guess).

I realise this is a kind of bait; it's not meant to be and I can see I'm very, very close to sidetracking this somewhere we both (probably) don't want to go. I just don't know how else to phrase it, if you get the meaning and can phrase it better, please do: It's odd you disagree, given how you're against conflict. What if they say: No, we won't have your justice system? What would you do to back that up? You'd need to back that up with an army or something surely? You say you don't want a human rights crusade but also other countries justice systems are our problem, isn't that a little contradictory?

I respect your stance on the rest and I understand why now after my further reading yesterday/last night. I still disagree though, I believe British rights should be overseen by the British government for the very reason that they can be changed as they are needed and I have faith in us not to mess up and to be able to see where lines are drawn.

On conformity.

I get what you're saying. As far as legal defence, unless I'm missing something I'm with you 100%. Our legal system should discriminate in no way (unless danger to public/persons/witnesses etc). And yeah gender is an issue but you also have to bear (just found out this is the right way to spell it in this context. Irrelevant.) in mind people do this https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/2c4mfv/i_sexually_identify_as_an_attack_helicopter/ which makes over-catering an issue when people take the piss. There are tons of ways people can identify and placing some and not others (by ignorance or malice or whatever) is just as bad surely? If there's a catch-all then again, I agree.

Money to people because they get married? Not 100% familiar but if you mean https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance/overview ? Then it covers living with partner. Unless you mean it discriminates against single people but that's an economic thing rather than because they're together the govt likes them better.

So you see I agree with you in what you're saying but I don't however think these are conformity issues. To me a conformity issue would be, discrimination against a guy with an earring for job they're qualified for or not allowing necklaces or low cut tops or something like that. One of the features of yourself that helps you with your own identity.

I tend to think that just being who you are is neither conforming or non-conforming, it's when you need to change to be in line with what someone else expects without a good reason. Good reason being, you must wear gloves to handle HCl even if you're against wearing gloves. Or something. I don't know.

I think the reason I don't think I'm contradicting myself would be pragmatism; we obviously can't go and change the whole world, but if we can be part of a group and give people nudges in the right direction, then good on us. And there's a concrete example here; the Abu Qatada stuff everyone was getting so upset about. Sure, we took like a year longer to deport him. But what we got for that was a legal treaty with Jordan that makes it easier for us to extradite people there in future and has measures in place to try and ensure they get a fair trial. It's not perfect, sure, but if we can do things like that to make incremental improvements it's surely no bad thing.

I guess I don't feel like UK governments are usually very representative anyway, and I prefer the idea of a human rights block - just for those very basic rights - that is more unchanging. Governments have a tendency to do knee-jerk reactions on these things according to what the current media narrative is, and that's dangerous IMO.

As to conformity: yes, obviously you get a few people who are nuts or take the piss out of the fact society is more free and open. I guess my view is portugal it, let 'em do what they like, if someone claims their gender to be "walrus" then it's really not my problem, nor does it hurt anyone as far as I can tell. Whereas if someone's gender is validly non-binary, and that's not recognised by law, I think that is a problem. Clearly one can only subcategorise so much, but I think my view is that in some ways this should let us subcategorise less; have three (M/F/Oth) gender identity markers on passports and other things where we feel it's a requirement (which is how the international standard is set up), and for as many other things as possible just legislate so gender isn't taken into account in formal law.

Fair enough.

Quote from: Colossus on May 17, 2015, 05:40:33 PM
Fair enough about the start, I was just plain wrong. I do my best to try and give a decent counter-argument, once again I failed, not enough research, sorry.

I wouldn't worry about it. You're allowed to be mistaken - it's the way we all learn. It's one of the strengths of Exilian that we can learn from each other and come to a better understanding of each other.

Very true, thanks.

It sort of highlights what I what I was saying in the other thread, if you want an opposing argument about something serious I'll do my best but I'm not good at it unless it's economics. Or Star Wars.

Colossus: that was the first protest; it won't be the last, I'm sure. I think there will be a lot of people very angry about what this government is doing. I don't know whether it will be on the scale of the poll tax protests around 1990, but it would be good if they were - I think that was the last time a British government changed policy because of public protests. Don't be too surprised to see me appearing on one of these videos some time. I too am one of the angry people now.

Yeah I know, just keeping you guys aware what's happening outside. I'll link one probably whenever something interesting happens, if you show up that counts :P