Author Topic: UK politics: I Did Not Vote For This  (Read 2672 times)

Glaurung

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UK politics: I Did Not Vote For This
« on: May 17, 2015, 12:41:30 AM »
This is a rant I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago; I'm reposting it here in case anyone else is interested who hasn't already seen it. I've reformatted it slightly to provide better links etc., but the text is unchanged. Here's the Facebook post; there's some discussion in the comments there that might be interesting too.



It's been a week since the general election polls closed, the BBC exit poll was published, and what I now regard as a nightmare began to unfold. At first it was just shock at a wholly unexpected Conservative victory delivered by our medieval electoral system. Since then it has turned into horror and fear that permanent damage is about to be done to our civil liberties and freedoms built up over centuries.

So, what am I so worried about?

1. Repeal of the Human Rights Act
The Human Rights Act incorporates directly into British law the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights - you know, minor things like the right not to be killed, the right not to be tortured, the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of expression, and various others. This is a convention that we, the UK, were instrumental in getting established in the chaos of post-WWII Europe, and have been a signatory to since 1950. Our new rulers want to repeal this - as far as I can tell purely on the grounds that they have had their knuckles rapped by the European Court of Human Rights a few times and are now like a kid with its fingers in its ears saying "La la la, I don't have to listen to you". Withdrawing from the Convention would place us in company with such bastions of human rights as Belarus and Uzbekistan.

In place of the Human Rights Act, our rulers propose a "British Bill of Rights". This would apparently give us the same rights, except for the bits that our rulers don't like, of course, and without any right to appeal beyond the UK legal system. This feels to me dangerously like the thin end of a wedge: once the principle is established that the government can legislate our rights away just because it find them inconvenient, where does it stop?

If you would like to know more, I recommend an article by Dominic Grieve - he was Attorney General in the last government from 2010 to 2014, and there's a suspicion that he lost his job because he was opposed to the repeal of the Act. His article explores the history and workings of the Convention, and shoots down all the government's objections to it. He also sets out several positive reasons for retaining it. One particularly strikes me - that if we withdraw from the Convention ourselves, we lose all credibility in promoting human rights elsewhere in the world.

If you then feel inspired to work for the retention of the Act, you can:
- Sign Amnesty International's petition at http://keeptheact.uk/ (Doesn't this scare you? The world's foremost human rights organisation has decided it needs to run a campaign aimed at our government.) You can donate to Amnesty too.
- Sign any other petitions you find (I think there are several in circulation, and there might even be one on the government's own petitions website once that reopens)
- Write to your MP expressing your concern about the Human Rights Act and urging them to keep it. Our MPs will determine the fate of the Act; the more we tell them we want it, the more likely they are to keep it.

2. Anti-extremism legislation
Or, as I am now thinking of it, the "thoughtcrime" bill, since it will effectively introduce George Orwell's concept from "1984" into British law. As I understand it, our rulers will determine what are acceptable and unacceptable thoughts and opinions, and will gag anyone who expresses unacceptable opinions. This is put forward to us on the grounds of suppressing the spread of violent extremism, but I fear it will once again be the thin end of a wedge - the history of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (usually know as RIPA) shows that a power once granted to the executive for ostensibly good reasons can easily be extended to cases far beyond those it was originally expected to cover. RIPA was introduced on the basis of enabling the security services to fight terrorism and other serious crimes; it has since been used to seize journalists' source information and to investigate whether a family lived in the school district that they claimed to.

There's a BBC News article here with some interesting analysis.
You might take note of this quote from David Cameron: "For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'." So what is he saying? In future, instead of being 'passively tolerant', we will be actively intolerant? Even if we obey the law, the state will not leave us alone?

The purpose of the legislation is apparently to uphold "fundamental British values including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs"; I fear that its effect will be to trample all over them. The banning and disruption orders, for example, seem very reminiscent of those employed by the apartheid regime in South Africa to silence its opponents.

I have not yet seen any online petitions relating to this legislation; they probably will start circulating once the details are known. Again, if you are at all concerned about the possible effects of this, write to your MP.

3. The "snoopers' charter"
This is legislation first proposed by the Conservative part of the Coalition, and promptly shot down by the LibDems. Now that our rulers are no longer restrained by their coalition partners, it's immediately surfaced again. The effect will be to require ISPs to retain complete records of all our internet use and communications, and to provide them to the state on demand. It's a sort of super-RIPA, and no doubt subject to exactly the same sort of misuse.

Also, there's a distinct possibility that encryption of internet communications will be banned, so that all our online banking and purchases will be subject to interception by anyone who feels like it. Hello criminals, here, have my credit card and my bank account!

As above, I haven't yet seen any petitions; write to your MP.

Altogether, this seems like a perfect storm for human rights in the UK: the extremism/thoughtcrime legislation will enable the state to decide to gag us, the "snoopers' charter" will enable them to gather up everything we say online, and the repeal of the Human Rights Act will enable the state to decide what our rights are and prevent any recourse beyond the UK legal system.

Behind all this is lurking outrage at our antiquated and grossly unrepresentative electoral system. It seems to me that in a representative democracy such as the UK claims to be, the electoral system should produce a legislature where the number of seats obtained by parties is broadly proportional to the votes cast for those parties. This is even more important where the executive is derived from the legislature rather than elected separately.
Instead, here, 37% of the votes cast (under a quarter of the total electorate) provided one party with over half the seats in the House of Commons. How can this possibly give the Conservatives a mandate to implement all the stuff I've just gone through, and much more besides? One of their proposals is that in a strike affecting public services, at least 40% of the relevant union members must vote in favour; how much more should this apply to the choice of a government which has complete control of public services?
If you feel that our electoral system ought to be genuinely representative, you can:
- Sign the Make Seats Match Votes petition (This is run jointly by the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy; note that it closes very soon, and will be presented to the Prime Minister on Monday 17th)
- Sign any of the other petitions circulating (e.g. change.org and 38 Degrees)
- Write to your MP expressing your concerns
- Join and be active in any or all of the Liberal Democrats, the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy, and any other organisation campaigning for electoral reform.

Jubal

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Re: UK politics: I Did Not Vote For This
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2015, 12:47:57 AM »
I feel like this is basically commentary on a monologue opinion piece, and as such belongs better in the Pulpit.

It will come as no surprise that I agree with more or less all of the above.  :P
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Glaurung

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Re: UK politics: I Did Not Vote For This
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2015, 01:02:28 AM »
Apologies; I forgot we had a Pulpit - or is is a soapbox? In any case, expect to find me here a lot now, assuming our rulers still allow me to say anything to anybody.