The other thing about a no-fly zone is that, once you've taken the action to impose a no-fly zone, you've destroyed the Russian SAM batteries, you've hit Russian planes on the ground in Russia - why not also take out the Iskander missile launchers, or the MLRS batteries? Why not bomb movements of Russian armour?
The call for NATO to provide full air support for the Ukraine Armed Forces is a much more logical and reasonable position, and it's an end-state that imposing a no-fly zone leads to (particularly as a no-fly zone wouldn't stop the bombardment of cities like Kharkiv).
Of course, a no-fly zone sounds so much less dangerous, much more like a neutral intervention, and so obviously for propaganda and public relations purposes the Ukrainians will call for a no-fly zone, and if we were to provide one they would equally obviously then call for a no Russian artillery zone, and a no ballistic missile zone, etc.
I'm very tempted by the option of NATO riding gloriously to the assistance of the Ukrainians in this war. If you discount the threat of nuclear war, it would do much to bring the war and the suffering of civilians to an earlier end.
But a no-fly zone does not exist as a viable, significantly less dangerous, middle-way alternative between supplying weapons and full involvement. It's muddled thinking.
Yes you might as well just say why doesn't Nato go all in and destroy the Russian forces. The problem is that Putin might see that as justification for a nuclear response.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
That really is class! Good to see that the headline writer’s art is not altogether dead.
Neither is the arrogance of England supporters. Those will be tough games.
A characteristically superior and snotty post about the England team from you. The draw is statistically about as good as it could be. That’s not arrogance, it’s simply a fair appraisal of the situation. What’s your issue here?
Proof that cats will sit in anything - and perhaps a use for British-supplied NLAWs that will be more appreciated by some sections of the British public.
God, reading Pubman’s responses to Correct Horse on the PT was like having one’s brain sucked out by a straw.
It is tragic how people can be so partisan. Get a life FFS.
There are two responses for that
1) Can you expect reason and balance from someone called Pubman after closing on a Friday night?
2). Labour actually have a problem here. Whilst people have always been tribal, there does seem to be a particularly pernicious and persistent bubble of opinion against Labour. No doubt fuelled by social media, there are people that really, really hate Labour.whilst this minority would have never voted Labour, it does poison debate. Labour need to counter this group somehow.
1. Pubman is like that all the time, not just after closing time.
2. Fair point!
One of the problems with politics today is that social media amplifies anger and hatred. Those in the centre or those with lives outside politics get drowned out.
This is the reverse of the 90s when to get a hearing the extremes had to print their own pamphlets and stand on rainy street corners or shout at the telly,
Starmer operates in the middle of a hate sandwich. The left and right hate him and their passion enables them to take every opportunity to remind us of that online. They represent themselves, but disproportionately influence debate.
Boris has an easier time of it, because his right flank back him and the far left attack Starmer.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
An excellent point. But the most relevant thing that human rights create for the lawyers who draft them is lots more fees and publicity for lawyers, who have to enforce them and oppose their enforcement.
When did you ever hear a lawyer proposing fewer laws when they had fees coming?
Lawyers are trained to apply maximum cynicism in analysing others' motives, but strangely they never turn that spotlight on themselves.
Great day for the nation al, blue sky and sunshine in Ayrshire
Cracking down here in Devon, malc - absent the racing. Have to make do with the garden - and trying to keep the pheasants out the borders*. Buggers took the heads off a load of tulips yesterday.
(Not the peasants out the Borders, as you may have read it!!)
A Bill of Rights, as a list enumerating essential freedom - American Style, seems particularly silly in the UK context. For starters, anything not illegal is generally permitted (as I understand it). So we have an array of intermingling freedoms, more generally. We don't need a court to look at a bill, or a list, or Raab's scribbling on toilet roll to know our rights.
Secondly, the mechanism for inhibiting (or defining the borders of) our rights is legislation. A Bill of Rights is not special just because of it's lofty name, and any rights stated within it can be subject to further legislation to curtail them in the same way any future bill can edit any previous other. Indeed, a lot of COVID legislation showed the broad power of Parliament to legally curtail our rights (for a good reason, in this case at least).
One might argue for a more codified constitution that would specifically protect certain freedoms. I certainly would, though the form of the thing would be very important and our current arrangement would be much preferable to a flawed document (No codification is better than bad codification would be my rallying cry). Because Parliament is Sovereign, giving any specific act powers to bind future Parliaments would require a constitutional overhaul that the Tories would not actually be interested in. Personally, I think the Succession to the Crown Act should be amended so that, when the Queen goes to her palace in the sky, she is succeeded by a constitution. We could even keep calling it the Crown, to appease the monarchists. There would be wrinkles to iron out (the text, how it would be changed, how to stop Parliament going Cromwell on our new vellum-based Monarch etc), of course.
That proposal is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the problems of guaranteeing rights in legislation in a meaningful way are not. Our system doesn't really work like that, even if it can sometimes be made to look like it does.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Whilst I certainly agree that this is not just a matter for lawyers it is lawyers that have created the problem. There is little that is controversial about the Convention itself. The problems, such as they are, that have arisen are when lawyers have sought to argue, with considerable success, that the Convention applies in many situations which were not contemplated giving "rights" which were never intended.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
Springtime in Ayrshire, are you not going to the course to watch the Scottish National Malc? 🙂
After a break in horse betting coinciding with nice weather, sunbathing in bikini bottoms last week, hungry for another racing afternoon again 🙂
This is betting slip draft number 2 with non runners piling up, fields definitely being whittled down. Maybe a nice day for them to be back in their favourite field, steaming and prancing around in the sun and responding to you with their best flehmen, but too nice a day for firming ground the stable didn’t fancy their chances?
Newbury 2.10 - Psychedelic Rock My original preference was La Cavsa Nostra, but with the bay gelding withdrawn (no sniggering at the back) opens it up for a horse likely targeted on this race who is well handicapped this year.
Ayr 2.25 - Anna Bunina e/w Less convinced of a win, very convinced of a good run for places.
Newbury 14:45 Holly Hartingo My original selection before non runner was the unbeaten Corey's Courage. But now I’m interested in a point to point horse, little raced under rules, with good record under rules.
Ayr 3.35 - Jersey Bean e/w Despite wild weather this week the going is largely good, 23ish start, it’s 4 miles. I can only recommend this as each way and rather outside bet.
I have not been idle this week. I have a summer day at racing arranged. I’m off to the Knavesmire for the Yorkshire cup in May. It’s going to be special weekend. We are taking friends from London and meeting my friends from Yorkshire, and Snookie and her fiancé coming from Bristol too. And I might go racing on the Thursday as well.
And I’ve got the dress. Jazzybum, who is similar to my shape, looked great in the green dress, so I got one.
The miseries of this war never end. Telegraph reporting that at least one RU soldier has died of radiation sickness thanks to camping and digging trenches at the Chernobyl plant.
Incredibly, Russians mostly don't know about the incident or the plant or what the situation is at the moment. So they probably just had no idea what they were getting into.
That seems unlikely to me. I can imagine that the soldiers have received radiation doses high enough to cause them health problems in the future, but I'd be pretty surprised if they were sufficiently high to cause death from radiation sickness within a couple of weeks.
Might it depend on where they were digging and what they dug up? If for example, they were handling material ejected from the core in the explosion that would presumably be suboptimal.
(Asking because I am not a physicist and genuinely don't know.)
I am (or rather, once was) a physicist and I don't know either, hence the tentative language. The greatest danger would be from inhaling radioactive dust, but the most strongly radioactive nuclides tend to have short half lives and would have mostly decayed by now. It seems unlikely that the residual radiation would be sufficient to cause the massive cell damage that results in acute radiation sickness, but I think could very well cause enough to trigger cancers. I'd have to read up on it to be sure though, and I could be wrong. But I'd take newspaper reports of radiation sickness deaths with a large pinch of salt before knowing more.
I do have issues with some of the experts poo-pooing this idea. They're used to the idea of going through these areas carefully, knowing the risks. What we've seen are ill-prepared troops digging into the ground, vehicles churning up the ground, and lots of eating and other activities around it. Basically: if you go through the few decades of detritus that has accumulated on the surface, you can get down to nasty stuff. And the troops *will* have been going down those few centimetres.
So whilst I think they'd have to be unlucky to get acute radiation sickness, I doubt it's as 'good' as just having an increased risk of cancer.
You seem to have an extremely low opinion of other people's intelligence. I think even the dimmest of experts would be aware that soldiers are likely to disturb the ground a lot more than scientific investigators!
A Bill of Rights, as a list enumerating essential freedom - American Style, seems particularly silly in the UK context. For starters, anything not illegal is generally permitted (as I understand it). So we have an array of intermingling freedoms, more generally. We don't need a court to look at a bill, or a list, or Raab's scribbling on toilet roll to know our rights.
Secondly, the mechanism for inhibiting (or defining the borders of) our rights is legislation. A Bill of Rights is not special just because of it's lofty name, and any rights stated within it can be subject to further legislation to curtail them in the same way any future bill can edit any previous other. Indeed, a lot of COVID legislation showed the broad power of Parliament to legally curtail our rights (for a good reason, in this case at least).
One might argue for a more codified constitution that would specifically protect certain freedoms. I certainly would, though the form of the thing would be very important and our current arrangement would be much preferable to a flawed document (No codification is better than bad codification would be my rallying cry). Because Parliament is Sovereign, giving any specific act powers to bind future Parliaments would require a constitutional overhaul that the Tories would not actually be interested in. Personally, I think the Succession to the Crown Act should be amended so that, when the Queen goes to her palace in the sky, she is succeeded by a constitution. We could even keep calling it the Crown, to appease the monarchists. There would be wrinkles to iron out (the text, how it would be changed, how to stop Parliament going Cromwell on our new vellum-based Monarch etc), of course.
That proposal is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the problems of guaranteeing rights in legislation in a meaningful way are not. Our system doesn't really work like that, even if it can sometimes be made to look like it does.
I wonder how important the American Style bit is? For some of those currently on top in the Conservative Party, American is good and European is bad by definition.
But then again, "If it's not necessary to change, it's necessary to not change" used to be a good c/Conservative principle.
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent · 1h ⚡️General Staff: Russia begins mobilizing troops in Moldova's occupied Transnistria.
Moscow is redeploying its troops in occupied Transnistria to demonstrate its readiness to attack Ukraine from the southwest and for potential provocations on the border, the General Staff said.
The miseries of this war never end. Telegraph reporting that at least one RU soldier has died of radiation sickness thanks to camping and digging trenches at the Chernobyl plant.
Incredibly, Russians mostly don't know about the incident or the plant or what the situation is at the moment. So they probably just had no idea what they were getting into.
Who’d have guessed that the ground round there could be irradiated?
I think this has been debunked. Increased radiation caused by the action around Chernobyl but a long, long way from levels that should cause radiation sickness.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Whilst I certainly agree that this is not just a matter for lawyers it is lawyers that have created the problem. There is little that is controversial about the Convention itself. The problems, such as they are, that have arisen are when lawyers have sought to argue, with considerable success, that the Convention applies in many situations which were not contemplated giving "rights" which were never intended.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
At one point, I was very much in favour of repudiating the ECHR, and repealing the HRA.
But, the prisoners' votes issue actually shows that an elected government will get its way, if it stands firm, and so I think it's now more trouble than it's worth.
Any good April Fool jokes this year. Gloucester university did a funny one on LinkedIn about offering the first ever Duck Management degree. A DSc.The best ones are the ones that are vaguely believable of course. Staffs uni really did do a David Beckham degree!
The miseries of this war never end. Telegraph reporting that at least one RU soldier has died of radiation sickness thanks to camping and digging trenches at the Chernobyl plant.
Incredibly, Russians mostly don't know about the incident or the plant or what the situation is at the moment. So they probably just had no idea what they were getting into.
That seems unlikely to me. I can imagine that the soldiers have received radiation doses high enough to cause them health problems in the future, but I'd be pretty surprised if they were sufficiently high to cause death from radiation sickness within a couple of weeks.
Might it depend on where they were digging and what they dug up? If for example, they were handling material ejected from the core in the explosion that would presumably be suboptimal.
(Asking because I am not a physicist and genuinely don't know.)
I am (or rather, once was) a physicist and I don't know either, hence the tentative language. The greatest danger would be from inhaling radioactive dust, but the most strongly radioactive nuclides tend to have short half lives and would have mostly decayed by now. It seems unlikely that the residual radiation would be sufficient to cause the massive cell damage that results in acute radiation sickness, but I think could very well cause enough to trigger cancers. I'd have to read up on it to be sure though, and I could be wrong. But I'd take newspaper reports of radiation sickness deaths with a large pinch of salt before knowing more.
I do have issues with some of the experts poo-pooing this idea. They're used to the idea of going through these areas carefully, knowing the risks. What we've seen are ill-prepared troops digging into the ground, vehicles churning up the ground, and lots of eating and other activities around it. Basically: if you go through the few decades of detritus that has accumulated on the surface, you can get down to nasty stuff. And the troops *will* have been going down those few centimetres.
So whilst I think they'd have to be unlucky to get acute radiation sickness, I doubt it's as 'good' as just having an increased risk of cancer.
You seem to have an extremely low opinion of other people's intelligence. I think even the dimmest of experts would be aware that soldiers are likely to disturb the ground a lot more than scientific investigators!
They don't buy it, the sourcing for the story seems to be garbage, and it's a fun evil-people-get-their-just-desserts story with high propaganda value. So I think we can safely say the radiation sickness aspect of this story is bullshit, although of course there's increased cancer risk.
The issue of if new laws are really necessary is a real bugbear of mine. I find the tendency to push for new ones without a genuine mischief that is not covered already very irritating. I know the secret barrister has shown loads of examples across multiple governments of pointless or even counter productive examples.
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
Hardly, as plenty use equity release to give funds to their children and grandchildren for example for deposits to buy a property. As the article makes clear.
More a case of inheritances arriving early for some
More to do with helping themselves and their children/grandchildren with the cost of living than buying a house for a privileged few
'Russian schoolchildren report teacher for anti-war comments - local media
A Russian schoolteacher has been arrested after being reported to police by her pupils for making anti-war comments, according to local media.
The teenagers in the southern city of Penza are said to have recorded a conversation with Irina Gen, their English teacher, on 18 March.
They were apparently upset that a planned sports trip to the Czech Republic was not going ahead and asked Ms Gen for her opinion.
According to an alleged transcript of the conversation published by the Meduza website, she said it was right that the trip had been cancelled and that such things would continue until Russia "started behaving in a civilised way".
The 55-year-old compared the country to North Korea and "expressed a view of the war in Ukraine different from the official one", Meduza said.
It is thought Ms Gen could face a fine of up to $60,000 or a jail term of up to 10 years.'
Sounds like the set up to a dark Russian remake of Servant of the People.
Good on them for refusing to sign and going public. But I fear they are now going to see more examples of misogynistic behaviour from some leftist keyboard warriorsNeanderthal trolls.
Dreadful case, but the blight of NDAs goes far wider than just ‘leftists’. They are a function of HR departments thinking that their job is to protect the reputation of their organisation, rather than the wellbeing of the people who work for it.
Do we really need HR departments? Genuine question. Their are many box ticking jobs out there but HR seems particularly egregious, and with an outsized impact on how an organisation can operate.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Whilst I certainly agree that this is not just a matter for lawyers it is lawyers that have created the problem. There is little that is controversial about the Convention itself. The problems, such as they are, that have arisen are when lawyers have sought to argue, with considerable success, that the Convention applies in many situations which were not contemplated giving "rights" which were never intended.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
Really excellent post @DavidL. You often post some really clearly thought out comments.
The other thing about a no-fly zone is that, once you've taken the action to impose a no-fly zone, you've destroyed the Russian SAM batteries, you've hit Russian planes on the ground in Russia - why not also take out the Iskander missile launchers, or the MLRS batteries? Why not bomb movements of Russian armour?
The call for NATO to provide full air support for the Ukraine Armed Forces is a much more logical and reasonable position, and it's an end-state that imposing a no-fly zone leads to (particularly as a no-fly zone wouldn't stop the bombardment of cities like Kharkiv).
Of course, a no-fly zone sounds so much less dangerous, much more like a neutral intervention, and so obviously for propaganda and public relations purposes the Ukrainians will call for a no-fly zone, and if we were to provide one they would equally obviously then call for a no Russian artillery zone, and a no ballistic missile zone, etc.
I'm very tempted by the option of NATO riding gloriously to the assistance of the Ukrainians in this war. If you discount the threat of nuclear war, it would do much to bring the war and the suffering of civilians to an earlier end.
But a no-fly zone does not exist as a viable, significantly less dangerous, middle-way alternative between supplying weapons and full involvement. It's muddled thinking.
Discounting the threat of nuclear war is not something any sane person should do.
A Bill of Rights, as a list enumerating essential freedom - American Style, seems particularly silly in the UK context. For starters, anything not illegal is generally permitted (as I understand it).
Which leads to the fine old Soviet joke:
In West Germany, everything is prohibited, except what is permitted. In Britain, everything is permitted, except what is prohibited. In Italy, everything is permitted, even what is prohibited. In Russia, everything is prohibited, even that which is permitted.
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
I'd like to think we are quietly providing more support than is being acknowledged publicly. Why is the US only providing 100 of these switchblade drones? Surely thousands would be a better idea. Does all military assistance have to be detailed publicly?
Any good April Fool jokes this year. Gloucester university did a funny one on LinkedIn about offering the first ever Duck Management degree. A DSc.The best ones are the ones that are vaguely believable of course. Staffs uni really did do a David Beckham degree!
Gloucestershire University is considered a great joke at all times...
(To be serious, it's an example of an institution that had its priorities wrong for a long time, but finally seems to be getting its act together by offering more LL courses leading to degrees for locals and fewer undergraduate degrees for teenagers.)
The other thing about a no-fly zone is that, once you've taken the action to impose a no-fly zone, you've destroyed the Russian SAM batteries, you've hit Russian planes on the ground in Russia - why not also take out the Iskander missile launchers, or the MLRS batteries? Why not bomb movements of Russian armour?
The call for NATO to provide full air support for the Ukraine Armed Forces is a much more logical and reasonable position, and it's an end-state that imposing a no-fly zone leads to (particularly as a no-fly zone wouldn't stop the bombardment of cities like Kharkiv).
Of course, a no-fly zone sounds so much less dangerous, much more like a neutral intervention, and so obviously for propaganda and public relations purposes the Ukrainians will call for a no-fly zone, and if we were to provide one they would equally obviously then call for a no Russian artillery zone, and a no ballistic missile zone, etc.
I'm very tempted by the option of NATO riding gloriously to the assistance of the Ukrainians in this war. If you discount the threat of nuclear war, it would do much to bring the war and the suffering of civilians to an earlier end.
But a no-fly zone does not exist as a viable, significantly less dangerous, middle-way alternative between supplying weapons and full involvement. It's muddled thinking.
Discounting the threat of nuclear war is not something any sane person should do.
Completely harmless for the purposes of a Gedankenexperiment.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
An excellent point. But the most relevant thing that human rights create for the lawyers who draft them is lots more fees and publicity for lawyers, who have to enforce them and oppose their enforcement.
When did you ever hear a lawyer proposing fewer laws when they had fees coming?
Lawyers are trained to apply maximum cynicism in analysing others' motives, but strangely they never turn that spotlight on themselves.
Yes! But IMHO, overlooking the lawyer fee point for a moment, the most fruitful way of discussing general human rights is to discuss general human duties and see what rights intelligently emerge from the list of general and enforceable duties.
It sticks out a mile that some of the most annoying people on the planet are anxious to assert their rights while overlooking the rights of others and the duties of themselves.
Discussion of general and universal duties is inherently more interesting and difficult than rights, and is unavoidable as all rights impose duties on others automatically.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Whilst I certainly agree that this is not just a matter for lawyers it is lawyers that have created the problem. There is little that is controversial about the Convention itself. The problems, such as they are, that have arisen are when lawyers have sought to argue, with considerable success, that the Convention applies in many situations which were not contemplated giving "rights" which were never intended.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
I think that is a sensible analysis. Basically, even if theres an issue, and would this address it, what's the cost?
Hardly, as plenty use equity release to give funds to their children and grandchildren for example for deposits to buy a property. As the article makes clear.
More a case of inheritances arriving early for some
More to do with helping themselves and their children/grandchildren with the cost of living than buying a house for a privileged few
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
There is a generally accepted standard for human rights in Europe - the ECHR - that the UK is signed up to. Equating UK human rights standards to those applying in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma isn't sensible.
If the UK no longer incorporates ECHR, it is moving away from a generally accepted and as far as the UK is concerned objective standard towards marking its own homework. I don't think anyone objects to strengthening human rights in the UK beyond those mandated by ECHR, but precisely which ECHR principles need to be eliminated, and how exactly does this improve human rights in the UK, bearing in mind those principles aim to protect individuals from arbitrary action from the state.
And note by the way ECHR is entirely about the actions of the state and not the balance of rights of individuals and businesses.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
Another issue - which may sound pedantic but would actually cause quite a problem - is we already have a bill of rights.
Just opened, with some trepidation, a letter from British Gas - a credit for £900 from a previous supplier. Phew. Letters from British Gas are always faintly menacing because communication with them is almost impossible. If you do manage to get them on the phone it is like speaking to a robot.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Whilst I certainly agree that this is not just a matter for lawyers it is lawyers that have created the problem. There is little that is controversial about the Convention itself. The problems, such as they are, that have arisen are when lawyers have sought to argue, with considerable success, that the Convention applies in many situations which were not contemplated giving "rights" which were never intended.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
At one point, I was very much in favour of repudiating the ECHR, and repealing the HRA.
But, the prisoners' votes issue actually shows that an elected government will get its way, if it stands firm, and so I think it's now more trouble than it's worth.
I have come to exactly the same conclusion for the same reasons.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
Hold on, where did I suggest it was? I simply said that the decision on that shouldn't be left to the lawyers as it isn't a legal issue.
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
The right to do as you please isn't really sustainable without some of the others; For instance, if you don't have the right to not have your property seized by a government agent without accountability and/or due process, you can easily be coerced into doing things you don't want to, and also doing things to other people. At that point the whole rule of law unwinds and you can be forced to do all kinds of things against your will, which is what happened in Russia.
Any good April Fool jokes this year. Gloucester university did a funny one on LinkedIn about offering the first ever Duck Management degree. A DSc.The best ones are the ones that are vaguely believable of course. Staffs uni really did do a David Beckham degree!
I rather liked Rory Stewart's announcement that he was delighted to accept the post of communications director at No 10 and how much he looked forward to working with the PM and other Ministers.
It was kind of poignant though. I miss having a government in which the likes of Rory Stewart would indeed be happy to work.
Hardly, as plenty use equity release to give funds to their children and grandchildren for example for deposits to buy a property. As the article makes clear.
More a case of inheritances arriving early for some
More to do with helping themselves and their children/grandchildren with the cost of living than buying a house for a privileged few
You live in North Wales you have not a clue about how expensive it is in London and the Home counties as property prices near you are so much cheaper
If you live in London and the South East in most areas you have near zero chance of buying a property if on an average wage and not a high salary. That is not a privileged few, that is most younger people. That is unlikely to change much unless London stops being a global city no matter how many homes you build.
Hence so many Home owners in London and the South will use equity release etc to help their children and grandchildren get a deposit to but a property
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
Great stuff, but it's just journalism. Once you incorporate the three crucial words "without harming others".
Take bloke X. He has a wife, two small children, a job which involves in some way the welfare and safety of others and three elderly relatives in failing health. The idea that he has the right to do as he pleases is restricted by duties to such a degree that it barely registers. The idea that the duty to take the consequences is the only duty becomes meaningless as his children starve in the street.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Whilst I certainly agree that this is not just a matter for lawyers it is lawyers that have created the problem. There is little that is controversial about the Convention itself. The problems, such as they are, that have arisen are when lawyers have sought to argue, with considerable success, that the Convention applies in many situations which were not contemplated giving "rights" which were never intended.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
At one point, I was very much in favour of repudiating the ECHR, and repealing the HRA.
But, the prisoners' votes issue actually shows that an elected government will get its way, if it stands firm, and so I think it's now more trouble than it's worth.
Yes, this is basically where I sit too. The ECHR has no power of enforcement on a sovereign nation.
Great day for the nation al, blue sky and sunshine in Ayrshire
Cracking down here in Devon, malc - absent the racing. Have to make do with the garden - and trying to keep the pheasants out the borders*. Buggers took the heads off a load of tulips yesterday.
(Not the peasants out the Borders, as you may have read it!!)
Enjoy Mark, I plan to spend most of my day pottering in the garden.
Yes, Dominic Raab, it's quite odd. His CV indicates a man of high intelligence and deep learning yet he often comes across as rather dense. "Dim" Dom Raab he was known as, apparently, when at the FO, and one can see why.
Also odd (to me) is the instinctive reaction of many Tories, esp on the right of the party, when they hear the words "human rights", either in or out of a legal setting. Rather than cheer it's to boo. The notion of human rights seems to irritate or upset rather than inspire or reassure. It's an interesting bit of brain chemistry.
Anyway, great header. That's a good checklist of questions for proposed new laws. If it were applied to this incoherent "Bill of Rights" I think we'd get a fail.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
There is a generally accepted standard for human rights in Europe - the ECHR - that the UK is signed up to. Equating UK human rights standards to those applying in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma isn't sensible.
If the UK no longer incorporates ECHR, it is moving away from a generally accepted and as far as the UK is concerned objective standard towards marking its own homework. I don't think anyone objects to strengthening human rights in the UK beyond those mandated by ECHR, but precisely which ECHR principles need to be eliminated, and how exactly does this improve human rights in the UK, bearing in mind those principles aim to protect individuals from arbitrary action from the state.
And note by the way ECHR is entirely about the actions of the state and not the balance of rights of individuals and businesses.
I didn't of course equate UK human rights standards with those of oppressive regimes. It is still not true that there are generally accepted human rights. And even in Europe you have to take account of Belarus and Russia.
Hardly, as plenty use equity release to give funds to their children and grandchildren for example for deposits to buy a property. As the article makes clear.
More a case of inheritances arriving early for some
More to do with helping themselves and their children/grandchildren with the cost of living than buying a house for a privileged few
You live in North Wales you have not a clue about how expensive it is in London and the Home counties as property prices near you are so much cheaper
If you live in London and the South East in most areas you have near zero chance of buying a property if on an average wage and not a high salary. That is not a privileged few, that is most younger people. That is unlikely to change much unless London stops being a global city no matter how many homes you build.
Hence so many Home owners in London and the South will use equity release etc to help their children and grandchildren get a deposit to but a property
If you want to live in London then of course you face high property prices but you insult the rest of the country when you think young people can go out and buy property in the north because the prices are cheaper than London, not least because the north does not have anything like the well paid jobs and weighting afforded to London
Any good April Fool jokes this year. Gloucester university did a funny one on LinkedIn about offering the first ever Duck Management degree. A DSc.The best ones are the ones that are vaguely believable of course. Staffs uni really did do a David Beckham degree!
I rather liked Rory Stewart's announcement that he was delighted to accept the post of communications director at No 10 and how much he looked forward to working with the PM and other Ministers.
It was kind of poignant though. I miss having a government in which the likes of Rory Stewart would indeed be happy to work.
It was really good, precisely because of the reason why it was ridiculous and you knew immediately it was an April Fool.
I thought the story about HMS Glasgow being used to provide a stopgap ferry service was pretty good.
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
One thing that we saw with the initial covid response is that governments have a really hard time adjusting to things that don't go according to their pre-crisis plans. Arguably the more thorough the planning was, the harder it is for them to adjust.
I wonder if western governments are still having trouble making the switch to deal with Ukraine successfully fighting a conventional war against Russia, when the pre-war planning must have assumed that they'd get flattened, have their planes and anywhere they could operate planes from destroyed, and fight a long guerilla war with weapons that were small enough to hide.
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
The right to do as you please isn't really sustainable without some of the others; For instance, if you don't have the right to not have your property seized by a government agent without accountability and/or due process, you can easily be coerced into doing things you don't want to, and also doing things to other people. At that point the whole rule of law unwinds and you can be forced to do all kinds of things against your will, which is what happened in Russia.
Don't the others just follow on from that. For example, the government seizure and coercion is "doing harm to others". So perhaps the only other thing is a right *and* a responsibility: to prevent harm from being to yourself or others.
Hardly, as plenty use equity release to give funds to their children and grandchildren for example for deposits to buy a property. As the article makes clear.
More a case of inheritances arriving early for some
More to do with helping themselves and their children/grandchildren with the cost of living than buying a house for a privileged few
In response to @DavidL's excellent post, there have been issues with the interpretation of the ECHR. But the Supreme Court under Lord Reed is now taking a much less expansive view of its role than before and this may well solve some of the perceived problems. This is precisely what Robert Buckland was on about when he said that Raab was addressing an old issue -
"I do not think that we should seek to replace the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights. Doing so runs the risk of introducing an autonomous meaning doctrine and this would upset our constitutional balance. Instead, the starting point of the government should seek to codify the new approach of the Supreme Court." (i.e. taking the approach suggested in my point 2.).
What happened to the German helmets? And, come to that, Ukrainian helmets?
According to this twitter-person on the Mod thread they have now sent 23k:
80,000 Helme in 8 Tagen in UK 👀🤫😬 - da verblassen selbst die mittlerweile scheinbar gelieferten 23,000 aus 🇩🇪 Translated from German by 80,000 helmets in 8 days in the UK 👀🤫😬 - even the apparently delivered 23,000 from 🇩🇪 pale in comparison https://twitter.com/lunchforone/status/1509954659326308358
(Love the lunchforone name. Clearly an Anglophile at New Year)
Incidentally, I don't know the words for Britophile, Scotophile or even Walesophile. Are there such?
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
The right to do as you please isn't really sustainable without some of the others; For instance, if you don't have the right to not have your property seized by a government agent without accountability and/or due process, you can easily be coerced into doing things you don't want to, and also doing things to other people. At that point the whole rule of law unwinds and you can be forced to do all kinds of things against your will, which is what happened in Russia.
Don't the others just follow on from that. For example, the government seizure and coercion is "doing harm to others". So perhaps the only other thing is a right *and* a responsibility: to prevent harm from being to yourself or others.
And that is the basis of human society.
If you read "harm" very broadly then that's true, but read that broadly the principle means nothing. If you want to be able to tell, in any given case, whether the principle is being violated, you need to fill in some more details.
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
One thing that we saw with the initial covid response is that governments have a really hard time adjusting to things that don't go according to their pre-crisis plans. Arguably the more thorough the planning was, the harder it is for them to adjust.
I wonder if western governments are still having trouble making the switch to deal with Ukraine successfully fighting a conventional war against Russia, when the pre-war planning must have assumed that they'd get flattened, have their planes and anywhere they could operate planes from destroyed, and fight a long guerilla war with weapons that were small enough to hide.
Yes, I think that's a factor. Recently there have been announcements of armoured personnel carriers of one sort or another being sent to Ukraine, which is a sign of that thinking shifting, but they'll only provide target practice for the Russian air force if Ukraine isn't given the assistance to maintain at least a reasonable level of air defence.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
Another issue - which may sound pedantic but would actually cause quite a problem - is we already have a bill of rights.
We have lots of Acts which have the same name, but for the date (at least in their short titles). The Acts of Union for a start.
This whole matter to me though just seems to be about 'looking' like something really impactful is being done by giving it a dramatic name, when it is just fiddling about for more effort than it is worth.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
Hold on, where did I suggest it was? I simply said that the decision on that shouldn't be left to the lawyers as it isn't a legal issue.
If I have mischaracterised your view, my apologies.
Applying your approach, which is a good one - these are indeed issues for all of us - it is odd that Raab gave so little time for consultation, almost as if he had already made his mind up and ignored what a lot of MPs, who do represent us, said to the Goss Review.
Also, applying to his own proposals, he does none of the things suggested here.
Springtime in Ayrshire, are you not going to the course to watch the Scottish National Malc? 🙂
After a break in horse betting coinciding with nice weather, sunbathing in bikini bottoms last week, hungry for another racing afternoon again 🙂
This is betting slip draft number 2 with non runners piling up, fields definitely being whittled down. Maybe a nice day for them to be back in their favourite field, steaming and prancing around in the sun and responding to you with their best flehmen, but too nice a day for firming ground the stable didn’t fancy their chances?
Newbury 2.10 - Psychedelic Rock My original preference was La Cavsa Nostra, but with the bay gelding withdrawn (no sniggering at the back) opens it up for a horse likely targeted on this race who is well handicapped this year.
Ayr 2.25 - Anna Bunina e/w Less convinced of a win, very convinced of a good run for places.
Newbury 14:45 Holly Hartingo My original selection before non runner was the unbeaten Corey's Courage. But now I’m interested in a point to point horse, little raced under rules, with good record under rules.
Ayr 3.35 - Jersey Bean e/w Despite wild weather this week the going is largely good, 23ish start, it’s 4 miles. I can only recommend this as each way and rather outside bet.
I have not been idle this week. I have a summer day at racing arranged. I’m off to the Knavesmire for the Yorkshire cup in May. It’s going to be special weekend. We are taking friends from London and meeting my friends from Yorkshire, and Snookie and her fiancé coming from Bristol too. And I might go racing on the Thursday as well.
And I’ve got the dress. Jazzybum, who is similar to my shape, looked great in the green dress, so I got one.
Not sure where you got wild weather from, it has been sunshine all the way here for last 2-3 weeks. Think we had about 7 snowflakes once for about 10 seconds. Afraid I am not going this year , my wife is still a bit paranoid about crowds given her experience and fact covid is rife at present so it has to be TV for me unfortunately. It can be pretty raucous at the National meeting , lots of amateurs go , absolutely packed and so can get a bit dodgy. In years past I have had a few remonstrations there with some dodgy persons after a few glasses of the singing ginger. Many cannot hold their bevvy. Good luck with your horses.
PS: No doubt after me saying that , by racing time black clouds will be overheard and storm raging.
Yes, Dominic Raab, it's quite odd. His CV indicates a man of high intelligence and deep learning yet he often comes across as rather dense. "Dim" Dom Raab he was known as, apparently, when at the FO, and one can see why.
Also odd (to me) is the instinctive reaction of many Tories, esp on the right of the party, when they hear the words "human rights", either in or out of a legal setting. Rather than cheer it's to boo. The notion of human rights seems to irritate or upset rather than inspire or reassure. It's an interesting bit of brain chemistry.
Anyway, great header. That's a good checklist of questions for proposed new laws. If it were applied to this incoherent "Bill of Rights" I think we'd get a fail.
If you read his CV carefully, there is a lot of padding in there and some quite obvious clues that he is really quite stupid indeed.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
Hold on, where did I suggest it was? I simply said that the decision on that shouldn't be left to the lawyers as it isn't a legal issue.
If I have mischaracterised your view, my apologies.
Applying your approach, which is a good one - these are indeed issues for all of us - it is odd that Raab gave so little time for consultation, almost as if he had already made his mind up and ignored what a lot of MPs, who do represent us, said to the Goss Review.
Also, applying to his own proposals, he does none of the things suggested here.
I am surprised Raab has made his mind up.
This is largely because I have yet to see evidence he has a mind.
Hardly, as plenty use equity release to give funds to their children and grandchildren for example for deposits to buy a property. As the article makes clear.
More a case of inheritances arriving early for some
More to do with helping themselves and their children/grandchildren with the cost of living than buying a house for a privileged few
You live in North Wales you have not a clue about how expensive it is in London and the Home counties as property prices near you are so much cheaper
If you live in London and the South East in most areas you have near zero chance of buying a property if on an average wage and not a high salary. That is not a privileged few, that is most younger people. That is unlikely to change much unless London stops being a global city no matter how many homes you build.
Hence so many Home owners in London and the South will use equity release etc to help their children and grandchildren get a deposit to but a property
If you want to live in London then of course you face high property prices but you insult the rest of the country when you think young people can go out and buy property in the north because the prices are cheaper than London, not least because the north does not have anything like the well paid jobs and weighting afforded to London
Wrong.
House price to earnings ratio for a single earner is just 6 in the NorthEast, easily affordable for a couple.
. But the Supreme Court under Lord Reed is now taking a much less expansive view of its role than before and this may well solve some of the perceived problems.
I think that is a pretty important consideration. We know for absolute fact that you don't eliminate the possibilty of courts getting expansive by creating new laws anyway. And some may feel Reed is not expansive enough, but even if there is an issue for some, how big a one are we really talking.
I found Rozenberg's book detailing some historic decisions and their reasoning, and his view on the courts' reasoning in those cases, very compelling and interesting, as he didn't come at it from a simple activist vs conservative approaches (not how he termed it I hasten to add) to the law.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
All human rights? What about the US Second Amendment - would you want that in the UK?
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
One thing that we saw with the initial covid response is that governments have a really hard time adjusting to things that don't go according to their pre-crisis plans. Arguably the more thorough the planning was, the harder it is for them to adjust.
I wonder if western governments are still having trouble making the switch to deal with Ukraine successfully fighting a conventional war against Russia, when the pre-war planning must have assumed that they'd get flattened, have their planes and anywhere they could operate planes from destroyed, and fight a long guerilla war with weapons that were small enough to hide.
Yes, I think that's a factor. Recently there have been announcements of armoured personnel carriers of one sort or another being sent to Ukraine, which is a sign of that thinking shifting, but they'll only provide target practice for the Russian air force if Ukraine isn't given the assistance to maintain at least a reasonable level of air defence.
Is it too much to call this a paradigm shift?
Have we ever seen a professional NATO-style army fighting a defensive war like this before?
The closest I can think of is small operations in eg Afghanistan, unless you go back to 50s/60s operations, when Western armies were still partly conscript-based.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
There is a generally accepted standard for human rights in Europe - the ECHR - that the UK is signed up to. Equating UK human rights standards to those applying in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma isn't sensible.
If the UK no longer incorporates ECHR, it is moving away from a generally accepted and as far as the UK is concerned objective standard towards marking its own homework. I don't think anyone objects to strengthening human rights in the UK beyond those mandated by ECHR, but precisely which ECHR principles need to be eliminated, and how exactly does this improve human rights in the UK, bearing in mind those principles aim to protect individuals from arbitrary action from the state.
And note by the way ECHR is entirely about the actions of the state and not the balance of rights of individuals and businesses.
I didn't of course equate UK human rights standards with those of oppressive regimes. It is still not true that there are generally accepted human rights. And even in Europe you have to take account of Belarus and Russia.
Apologies, I didn't intend to imply you do equate human rights standards in North Korea, Burma and Saudi Arabia with those in the UK. I was saying the human rights abuses in those countries make their examples irrelevant to whether the UK continues to adhere to the European Convention on Human Rights. As do Russia and Belarus.
Russia is possibly relevant only in that it decided to ignore European Court of Human Rights rulings back in 2015 as the UK may also decide to do. The court has only just suspended Russia, arguably way too late, but I suppose it could still issue judgments and get them into the public domain while Russia was still nominally a member.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
I think there would need to be some kind of alternative but it may be somewhat more narrowly drawn - the right to family life....
Lord Sumption's Reith lectures were outstanding on this and I'd recommend everyone watch/listen to them. If the law encroaches too much on the democratic parliament you inevitably get populism. Was it a good idea for the US Supreme Court to decide on the abortion issue in the US or should it have been left to congress?
There is a more fundamental political problem with consent to the HRA. For Europe 1945 was their 1776. But for Britain and one or two exceptions it wasn't.
A Bill of Rights, as a list enumerating essential freedom - American Style, seems particularly silly in the UK context. For starters, anything not illegal is generally permitted (as I understand it). So we have an array of intermingling freedoms, more generally. We don't need a court to look at a bill, or a list, or Raab's scribbling on toilet roll to know our rights.
Secondly, the mechanism for inhibiting (or defining the borders of) our rights is legislation. A Bill of Rights is not special just because of it's lofty name, and any rights stated within it can be subject to further legislation to curtail them in the same way any future bill can edit any previous other. Indeed, a lot of COVID legislation showed the broad power of Parliament to legally curtail our rights (for a good reason, in this case at least).
One might argue for a more codified constitution that would specifically protect certain freedoms. I certainly would, though the form of the thing would be very important and our current arrangement would be much preferable to a flawed document (No codification is better than bad codification would be my rallying cry). Because Parliament is Sovereign, giving any specific act powers to bind future Parliaments would require a constitutional overhaul that the Tories would not actually be interested in. Personally, I think the Succession to the Crown Act should be amended so that, when the Queen goes to her palace in the sky, she is succeeded by a constitution. We could even keep calling it the Crown, to appease the monarchists. There would be wrinkles to iron out (the text, how it would be changed, how to stop Parliament going Cromwell on our new vellum-based Monarch etc), of course.
That proposal is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the problems of guaranteeing rights in legislation in a meaningful way are not. Our system doesn't really work like that, even if it can sometimes be made to look like it does.
I wonder how important the American Style bit is? For some of those currently on top in the Conservative Party, American is good and European is bad by definition.
But then again, "If it's not necessary to change, it's necessary to not change" used to be a good c/Conservative principle.
I think if you want to fetishise what you are doing you make it seem more dramatic than it needs to be. A Bill of Rights, even though we already have one which predates theirs, puts people in mind of the USA, because of how much more the americans talk about constitutional issues in their political discourse, and how that bleeds over into popular culture. So I can well believe, as they are searching for issues to fight on, trying to get a division between those who want proper British rights via such a method and those who do not may be in their heads as an idea.
I like Unpopular's 'No codification is better than bad codification' rallying cry.
What happened to the German helmets? And, come to that, Ukrainian helmets?
Missed a bit.
I'm sure that Ukr has helmet-making facilities - they got a huge chunk of the USSR defence industry, but they probably have about a million extra soldiers all of a sudden.
Yes, Dominic Raab, it's quite odd. His CV indicates a man of high intelligence and deep learning yet he often comes across as rather dense. "Dim" Dom Raab he was known as, apparently, when at the FO, and one can see why.
Also odd (to me) is the instinctive reaction of many Tories, esp on the right of the party, when they hear the words "human rights", either in or out of a legal setting. Rather than cheer it's to boo. The notion of human rights seems to irritate or upset rather than inspire or reassure. It's an interesting bit of brain chemistry.
Anyway, great header. That's a good checklist of questions for proposed new laws. If it were applied to this incoherent "Bill of Rights" I think we'd get a fail.
I agree with your brain chemistry point. Those on the right claim to fear an overmighty totalitarian state and believe in individual freedom. Those on the left generally have a more collectivist view of society. So why is it that those on the right disapprove of restrictions on that overmighty state whilst those on the left are generally more supportive?
My provisional answer is that those on the right are generally more authoritairan than they like to admit. They have no problem with an overmighty state as long as they are in charge of it. Those on the left, however, still often have a strand of thinking of wanting to stick it to the man, an oppositional view of government, even when it claims to be their government.
This is not an answer I am entirely comfortable with.
I've been keeping an occasional eye on Tucker Carlson. Hopefully one of the minor side effects on the Russia-Ukraine war will see the end of him as he flips completely. It might hopefully have a small impact on bringing the GOP back to sanity as they see some on the extreme tip over the edge.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
There is a generally accepted standard for human rights in Europe - the ECHR - that the UK is signed up to. Equating UK human rights standards to those applying in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma isn't sensible.
If the UK no longer incorporates ECHR, it is moving away from a generally accepted and as far as the UK is concerned objective standard towards marking its own homework. I don't think anyone objects to strengthening human rights in the UK beyond those mandated by ECHR, but precisely which ECHR principles need to be eliminated, and how exactly does this improve human rights in the UK, bearing in mind those principles aim to protect individuals from arbitrary action from the state.
And note by the way ECHR is entirely about the actions of the state and not the balance of rights of individuals and businesses.
I didn't of course equate UK human rights standards with those of oppressive regimes. It is still not true that there are generally accepted human rights. And even in Europe you have to take account of Belarus and Russia.
I'm not especially expert in this area, but I don't understand your reply. The ECHR *is* a "geneally accepted" human rights standard in Europe. The exceptions are, as you say, Russia, Belarus and now the UK. It's possible that we will think up something even better, but if you depart from a standard, the suspicion is that it's because you find it annoyingly stringent, not that you want to do even better (which would be open to you without withdrawing from it).
I've been keeping an occasional eye on Tucker Carlson.
That's really taking one for the team. Thank you for doing it so the rest of us can be spared checking his inane bullshit and still know he's losing what little plot he had.
The miseries of this war never end. Telegraph reporting that at least one RU soldier has died of radiation sickness thanks to camping and digging trenches at the Chernobyl plant.
Incredibly, Russians mostly don't know about the incident or the plant or what the situation is at the moment. So they probably just had no idea what they were getting into.
That seems unlikely to me. I can imagine that the soldiers have received radiation doses high enough to cause them health problems in the future, but I'd be pretty surprised if they were sufficiently high to cause death from radiation sickness within a couple of weeks.
Might it depend on where they were digging and what they dug up? If for example, they were handling material ejected from the core in the explosion that would presumably be suboptimal.
(Asking because I am not a physicist and genuinely don't know.)
I am (or rather, once was) a physicist and I don't know either, hence the tentative language. The greatest danger would be from inhaling radioactive dust, but the most strongly radioactive nuclides tend to have short half lives and would have mostly decayed by now. It seems unlikely that the residual radiation would be sufficient to cause the massive cell damage that results in acute radiation sickness, but I think could very well cause enough to trigger cancers. I'd have to read up on it to be sure though, and I could be wrong. But I'd take newspaper reports of radiation sickness deaths with a large pinch of salt before knowing more.
I do have issues with some of the experts poo-pooing this idea. They're used to the idea of going through these areas carefully, knowing the risks. What we've seen are ill-prepared troops digging into the ground, vehicles churning up the ground, and lots of eating and other activities around it. Basically: if you go through the few decades of detritus that has accumulated on the surface, you can get down to nasty stuff. And the troops *will* have been going down those few centimetres.
So whilst I think they'd have to be unlucky to get acute radiation sickness, I doubt it's as 'good' as just having an increased risk of cancer.
You seem to have an extremely low opinion of other people's intelligence. I think even the dimmest of experts would be aware that soldiers are likely to disturb the ground a lot more than scientific investigators!
Well, one of the experts I heard on the radio (4, I think), was talking of the experiences the scientists usually have in the area, and how they're all okay. AFAICR no question was of him about how the soldiers' experiences might be different.
So you might be correct, but it didn't sound like it.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
There is a generally accepted standard for human rights in Europe - the ECHR - that the UK is signed up to. Equating UK human rights standards to those applying in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma isn't sensible.
If the UK no longer incorporates ECHR, it is moving away from a generally accepted and as far as the UK is concerned objective standard towards marking its own homework. I don't think anyone objects to strengthening human rights in the UK beyond those mandated by ECHR, but precisely which ECHR principles need to be eliminated, and how exactly does this improve human rights in the UK, bearing in mind those principles aim to protect individuals from arbitrary action from the state.
And note by the way ECHR is entirely about the actions of the state and not the balance of rights of individuals and businesses.
Just as a matter of interest what would be the mechanism for amending the current ECHR?
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
I think there would need to be some kind of alternative but it may be somewhat more narrowly drawn - the right to family life....
Lord Sumption's Reith lectures were outstanding on this and I'd recommend everyone watch/listen to them. If the law encroaches too much on the democratic parliament you inevitably get populism. Was it a good idea for the US Supreme Court to decide on the abortion issue in the US or should it have been left to congress?
There is a more fundamental political problem with consent to the HRA. For Europe 1945 was their 1776. But for Britain and one or two exceptions it wasn't.
I am open to this argument, but it is abstract. ECHR lists protections of individuals against arbitrary action by the state. If it's more tightly drawn, we will lose those protections. I'm not hearing from anyone which protections they want to lose.
Human rights are good - why wouldn't you want them? A point that somewhat gets lost in this debate.
The assumption behind the change is that British human rights somehow are better than other generally accepted human rights. But as human rights are necessarily principles-based, and the Act is drafted accordingly, we are in "I don't like these principles but we can have others" territory.
Every single human right creates a human duty since every single person has a duty not to transgress the rights of others as well as a right to assert their rights.
An excellent point. But the most relevant thing that human rights create for the lawyers who draft them is lots more fees and publicity for lawyers, who have to enforce them and oppose their enforcement.
When did you ever hear a lawyer proposing fewer laws when they had fees coming?
Lawyers are trained to apply maximum cynicism in analysing others' motives, but strangely they never turn that spotlight on themselves.
Yes! But IMHO, overlooking the lawyer fee point for a moment, the most fruitful way of discussing general human rights is to discuss general human duties and see what rights intelligently emerge from the list of general and enforceable duties.
It sticks out a mile that some of the most annoying people on the planet are anxious to assert their rights while overlooking the rights of others and the duties of themselves.
Discussion of general and universal duties is inherently more interesting and difficult than rights, and is unavoidable as all rights impose duties on others automatically.
Spot on.
And it is a trend that seems to be increasing as people, particularly but not just on the left, find excuses to take offence at absolutely everything. Everybody has rights, nobody has duties.
It's about the framing of the question. I'm sure the HRA does a perfectly fine job of transposing ECHR rulings into UK law which is why judges and other legal types think is fine. The wider question - should we be doing this - isn't for the legal profession to answer, especially not self appointed experts about everything under the sun.
We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated. The HRA has no bearing on this discussion. It's the same as legal advice saying that the Treaty of Rome was just fine and then using it as an argument against Brexit. The two aren't necessarily related despite being adjacent.
Well, then. Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
I think there would need to be some kind of alternative but it may be somewhat more narrowly drawn - the right to family life....
Lord Sumption's Reith lectures were outstanding on this and I'd recommend everyone watch/listen to them. If the law encroaches too much on the democratic parliament you inevitably get populism. Was it a good idea for the US Supreme Court to decide on the abortion issue in the US or should it have been left to congress?
There is a more fundamental political problem with consent to the HRA. For Europe 1945 was their 1776. But for Britain and one or two exceptions it wasn't.
They were indeed excellent, especially about the tension between the law and democratic will. I think, as @Cyclefree adverted to down thread, that they have influenced the thinking of the Lord Reed led Supreme Court.
'Russian schoolchildren report teacher for anti-war comments - local media
A Russian schoolteacher has been arrested after being reported to police by her pupils for making anti-war comments, according to local media.
The teenagers in the southern city of Penza are said to have recorded a conversation with Irina Gen, their English teacher, on 18 March.
They were apparently upset that a planned sports trip to the Czech Republic was not going ahead and asked Ms Gen for her opinion.
According to an alleged transcript of the conversation published by the Meduza website, she said it was right that the trip had been cancelled and that such things would continue until Russia "started behaving in a civilised way".
The 55-year-old compared the country to North Korea and "expressed a view of the war in Ukraine different from the official one", Meduza said.
It is thought Ms Gen could face a fine of up to $60,000 or a jail term of up to 10 years.'
Unfortunately this is indicative of much of Russian society. Many Russians say that the country needs a "strong leader", but every time they end up with a bunch of snivelling cowards who grovel to any tyrant that shows them the whip. It is this fundamental lack of personal responsibility that lies at the heart of Russia´s broken political culture. So now Russia is under the control of not just the "crooks and theives" but murderers and torturers like Kadyrov not to mention the rapists on the front line.
However few societies cope with defeat unchanged, and if the casualties and equipment losses are anywhere close to the Ukrainian figures then Russia will struggle to renew the offensive in the Donbas. After that perhaps the people of Russia will begin to face up to the moral crisis of the country. However it may take much time and considerable pressure from outside. The world is beginning to understand that Pushkin does not make up for Putin, nor Prokofiev for Stalin. "Nigeria with nukes" is a pretty evil place these days and the West will need to remain alert and determined.
A notable feature of Russia’s decline in the twentieth century is the dearth of great artists, composers and writers that were so abundant in the late 19th and early 20th century. Prokofiev and Shostakovich, like Stravinsky were born into pre-Soviet Russia. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were giants of 19th century literature. They’ve not come close to producing anyone of similar stature since.
Bit unfair on Solzhenitsyn and Tarkovsky, but yes, it’s very much at the descending end of an arc. Otoh, perhaps depressingly, we may be at the end of the age of great artists generally; who are the giants of contemporary British composition, literature and art? We may possess a behemoth of international flint knapping, but..
Interesting stuff from Chris Smith the virologist on BBC TV this morning on people who have been surrounded by covid infected people but haven't caught it. Blood tests have shown them to have anti bodies against other coronaviruses that have protected them. He used the analogy of cowpox to protect against smallpox. So the point being there is hope that a generic vaccine can be found to protect against all mutations of Covid 19 and this is now being researched following the tests.
I have commented before about a friend who has twice been in an environment where he stayed for days with people who all went down with Covid and he stayed clear, similarly a friend of my daughter. And of course there are others of us who haven't had it, although that might be just luck on my part.
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
The right to do as you please isn't really sustainable without some of the others; For instance, if you don't have the right to not have your property seized by a government agent without accountability and/or due process, you can easily be coerced into doing things you don't want to, and also doing things to other people. At that point the whole rule of law unwinds and you can be forced to do all kinds of things against your will, which is what happened in Russia.
Don't the others just follow on from that. For example, the government seizure and coercion is "doing harm to others". So perhaps the only other thing is a right *and* a responsibility: to prevent harm from being to yourself or others.
And that is the basis of human society.
If you read "harm" very broadly then that's true, but read that broadly the principle means nothing. If you want to be able to tell, in any given case, whether the principle is being violated, you need to fill in some more details.
Seem to have lost my reply! But basically yes. O'Rourke's generalisation needs the enforcement right and responsibility to become the underlying principle. You do need a raft of specifics to deal with disputes about what constitutes harm, acceptable response etc. The ECHR is a framework that says "without these things it is almost impossible to deliver on those principles". Subsequent reviews have failed to pick holes in that assertion, so it looks like a good basis to work from.
The problem with the debate over human rights is the right wing press pick on a minority of cases to justify the Tories stance and feed red meat to the uninformed who cheer on the trashing of UK rights .
Human rights are there to protect everyone even those who the public might perceive as not warranting those rights .
The Tories playbook is likely to be Labour is trying to protect terrorists as they embark on yet another pre election deflection , they of course will avoid telling the public of some landmark rulings which helped the UK public .
Not only on gay rights but the right of couples to not be separated if they went into care . Previously the government could separate them and put them into different care homes .
Any good April Fool jokes this year. Gloucester university did a funny one on LinkedIn about offering the first ever Duck Management degree. A DSc.The best ones are the ones that are vaguely believable of course. Staffs uni really did do a David Beckham degree!
I rather liked Rory Stewart's announcement that he was delighted to accept the post of communications director at No 10 and how much he looked forward to working with the PM and other Ministers.
It was kind of poignant though. I miss having a government in which the likes of Rory Stewart would indeed be happy to work.
[Norman Tebbit] thinks public life has changed ‘for the worse’ in his half-century in Parliament. ‘There have always been bounders of one kind or another. But now I think there are far more people who have gone into politics with the aim of getting into a job in government, and they have on the whole been rather poor material. There are one or two who’ve got ability and integrity. I think the leader of those is the Chancellor. But I think you could make a better cabinet, a smaller cabinet, and a cabinet principally of people who had not been career politicians all their lives.’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/02/norman-tebbit-many-people-politics-today-rather-poor-material/ (£££)
(That is pretty much all he says on the subject. The article, a leisurely stroll through Tebbit's life story by Simon Heffer, reads like an obituary for someone who has not yet died.)
On topic, I really find it hard to improve on the late PJ O'Rourke's view of human rights:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
Doesn't seem to be in the original - at least, not in any of the numerous anthologies that feature it, e.g.
PJ will have correctly calculated that the addition of those words completely changes the scenario from the libertarian concept that he seems to have had in mind. If you are not free to harm others, then someone needs to define what harming others means (in your interest as much as theirs). Which means laws restricting what you can do, which is what he doesn't want.
The suggestion that a right to food and housing constitutes slavery (and thus that you'd be better off starving in the street) is an obscenity which takes no account of the randomness of the world. If you suffer from, say, advanced Parkinson's disease, so you are unable to move, and don't have enough to eat, the "freedom" to take action to remedy it is not normally useful to you.
I've been keeping an occasional eye on Tucker Carlson.
That's really taking one for the team. Thank you for doing it so the rest of us can be spared checking his inane bullshit and still know he's losing what little plot he had.
And I am being serious.
It is ok on the laptop screen but if I met him in person I suspect rather than trying to engage in a rational argument I might just punch him.
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
One thing that we saw with the initial covid response is that governments have a really hard time adjusting to things that don't go according to their pre-crisis plans. Arguably the more thorough the planning was, the harder it is for them to adjust.
I wonder if western governments are still having trouble making the switch to deal with Ukraine successfully fighting a conventional war against Russia, when the pre-war planning must have assumed that they'd get flattened, have their planes and anywhere they could operate planes from destroyed, and fight a long guerilla war with weapons that were small enough to hide.
Yes, I think that's a factor. Recently there have been announcements of armoured personnel carriers of one sort or another being sent to Ukraine, which is a sign of that thinking shifting, but they'll only provide target practice for the Russian air force if Ukraine isn't given the assistance to maintain at least a reasonable level of air defence.
Is it too much to call this a paradigm shift?
Have we ever seen a professional NATO-style army fighting a defensive war like this before?
The closest I can think of is small operations in eg Afghanistan, unless you go back to 50s/60s operations, when Western armies were still partly conscript-based.
I think we tend to overgeneralise and simplify from past conflicts (and we will do so from this one too). Ever since the six-day war in 1967 (and then Yom Kippur, 1973, both Iraq Wars) we've seen lots of conflicts between state armies where one side is superior to the other, particularly in the air, and this has led to a rapid resolution of the conflict in favour of one side over the other.
We've also seen conflicts where it's essentially proved impossibly to defeat an insurgency - Vietnam, Afghanistan twice.
We've simply not seen so many conflicts which have been between two forces of broadly comparable and symmetric force. So we've forgotten what they look like. I don't think that constitutes a paradigm shift.
Yes, Dominic Raab, it's quite odd. His CV indicates a man of high intelligence and deep learning yet he often comes across as rather dense. "Dim" Dom Raab he was known as, apparently, when at the FO, and one can see why.
Also odd (to me) is the instinctive reaction of many Tories, esp on the right of the party, when they hear the words "human rights", either in or out of a legal setting. Rather than cheer it's to boo. The notion of human rights seems to irritate or upset rather than inspire or reassure. It's an interesting bit of brain chemistry.
Anyway, great header. That's a good checklist of questions for proposed new laws. If it were applied to this incoherent "Bill of Rights" I think we'd get a fail.
I agree with your brain chemistry point. Those on the right claim to fear an overmighty totalitarian state and believe in individual freedom. Those on the left generally have a more collectivist view of society. So why is it that those on the right disapprove of restrictions on that overmighty state whilst those on the left are generally more supportive?
My provisional answer is that those on the right are generally more authoritairan than they like to admit. They have no problem with an overmighty state as long as they are in charge of it. Those on the left, however, still often have a strand of thinking of wanting to stick it to the man, an oppositional view of government, even when it claims to be their government.
This is not an answer I am entirely comfortable with.
I think people across the political spectrum can be authoritarian. Time to trigger some people with an "irregular verb".... It is always cool to be proscriptive with ones own views - others bad.
The wider problem, to me, is the use of Human Rights as a form of constitutionalism. Where rights are enshrined in law and are irrevocable, and not based on consultation with the people.
From one point of view, this is grand. Society can progress without needing to bother with getting the agreement of the Head Count.
From the other point of view, this is an elite writing the laws without democratic input.
As JA Froude observed, "Constitutions are for men, not men for constitutions". To me, at least, the law and the rights enshrined in it, are the summation of the current political debate. A living constitution means that the laws shifts as society shifts. Not that society shifts as the law shifts.
Considered the real source of the protection of the rights of individuals - it is not in the law. It is in the agreement of the people to respect laws that they themselves have a part in.
The protection of gay people from gay bashing is not the law, so much as the general agreement by the vast majority of people that gay bashing is despicable. The laws relating to attacks on gay people flow from that general agreement.
During the Rotherham "reveal", I was told by someone in the loop, that some of the Great and The Good really thought that literal pogroms might break out. What actually happened? Rather than lynch mobs, the vast majority of the response was to ask for redress *within the law*. There was a small increase in racism - but no mass attacks on a community.
Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel A young cellist playing on the ruins of his house, while an old man is collecting his stuff that didn’t get destroyed. Kyiv.
Yes, Dominic Raab, it's quite odd. His CV indicates a man of high intelligence and deep learning yet he often comes across as rather dense. "Dim" Dom Raab he was known as, apparently, when at the FO, and one can see why.
Also odd (to me) is the instinctive reaction of many Tories, esp on the right of the party, when they hear the words "human rights", either in or out of a legal setting. Rather than cheer it's to boo. The notion of human rights seems to irritate or upset rather than inspire or reassure. It's an interesting bit of brain chemistry.
Anyway, great header. That's a good checklist of questions for proposed new laws. If it were applied to this incoherent "Bill of Rights" I think we'd get a fail.
I agree with your brain chemistry point. Those on the right claim to fear an overmighty totalitarian state and believe in individual freedom. Those on the left generally have a more collectivist view of society. So why is it that those on the right disapprove of restrictions on that overmighty state whilst those on the left are generally more supportive?
My provisional answer is that those on the right are generally more authoritairan than they like to admit. They have no problem with an overmighty state as long as they are in charge of it. Those on the left, however, still often have a strand of thinking of wanting to stick it to the man, an oppositional view of government, even when it claims to be their government.
This is not an answer I am entirely comfortable with.
And the great Goodwinite realignment makes that even more alarming. There have always been social authoritarians on the left of politics, but they have been attracted over to the Conservatives in recent years, at the same time that metropolitan liberals have left. If that becomes the defining cleave, it will not be pretty, as in the USA.
And yes, there is a version of sovereignty popular on the right which boils down to no other meaningful centres of power (whether above us in Brussels or below us in regions / nations) and accountability by a vote whenever we think we can win.
'Russian schoolchildren report teacher for anti-war comments - local media
A Russian schoolteacher has been arrested after being reported to police by her pupils for making anti-war comments, according to local media.
The teenagers in the southern city of Penza are said to have recorded a conversation with Irina Gen, their English teacher, on 18 March.
They were apparently upset that a planned sports trip to the Czech Republic was not going ahead and asked Ms Gen for her opinion.
According to an alleged transcript of the conversation published by the Meduza website, she said it was right that the trip had been cancelled and that such things would continue until Russia "started behaving in a civilised way".
The 55-year-old compared the country to North Korea and "expressed a view of the war in Ukraine different from the official one", Meduza said.
It is thought Ms Gen could face a fine of up to $60,000 or a jail term of up to 10 years.'
Unfortunately this is indicative of much of Russian society. Many Russians say that the country needs a "strong leader", but every time they end up with a bunch of snivelling cowards who grovel to any tyrant that shows them the whip. It is this fundamental lack of personal responsibility that lies at the heart of Russia´s broken political culture. So now Russia is under the control of not just the "crooks and theives" but murderers and torturers like Kadyrov not to mention the rapists on the front line.
However few societies cope with defeat unchanged, and if the casualties and equipment losses are anywhere close to the Ukrainian figures then Russia will struggle to renew the offensive in the Donbas. After that perhaps the people of Russia will begin to face up to the moral crisis of the country. However it may take much time and considerable pressure from outside. The world is beginning to understand that Pushkin does not make up for Putin, nor Prokofiev for Stalin. "Nigeria with nukes" is a pretty evil place these days and the West will need to remain alert and determined.
A notable feature of Russia’s decline in the twentieth century is the dearth of great artists, composers and writers that were so abundant in the late 19th and early 20th century. Prokofiev and Shostakovich, like Stravinsky were born into pre-Soviet Russia. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were giants of 19th century literature. They’ve not come close to producing anyone of similar stature since.
Bit unfair on Solzhenitsyn and Tarkovsky, but yes, it’s very much at the descending end of an arc. Otoh, perhaps depressingly, we may be at the end of the age of great artists generally; who are the giants of contemporary British composition, literature and art? We may possess a behemoth of international flint knapping, but..
Time will tell, though I think if humanity survives another 100 years or so, so will the novels of Ishiguro and the films of Terence Davies. Not that sure about much of the rest though.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks.
This is absolute rubbish. The F-15 'B' conversion course for experienced pilots is 200 hours in the class room then 50 sim sessions and 50 training flights. That qualifies you to be a nugget fit for nothing more than to be the wingman of somebody who knows what they are doing.
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
I'd like to think we are quietly providing more support than is being acknowledged publicly. Why is the US only providing 100 of these switchblade drones? Surely thousands would be a better idea. Does all military assistance have to be detailed publicly?
I am rather surprised by the suggestion that Ukrainian pilots could get up to speed on a new aircraft in 2-3 weeks.
Is there any precedent for such a fast type conversion?
Even during the Battle of Britain, in the worst point of pilots shortages, they still were taking longer than that to convert pilots from other types to the fighters. And aircraft back then, were orders of magnitude less complex.
The biggest problem for Ukraine at this stage is whether their air force can hold on. I simply cannot understand the decision not to provide them with fighter jets.
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
I'd like to think we are quietly providing more support than is being acknowledged publicly. Why is the US only providing 100 of these switchblade drones? Surely thousands would be a better idea. Does all military assistance have to be detailed publicly?
IANAE, but I treat the 2-3 weeks for conversion to the F1 with some suspicion. Firstly, there are different levels of 'conversion': learning to fly the plane is very different from learning to warfight in it.
Then there is learning the envelope and techniques the plane can use. And the various advantages and disadvantages of the western weapons that can be attached (the Ukrainian weapons probably will not be able to be attached, let alone fired).
The RAF have Operational Conversion Units to train people to convert between (say) the Tornado and Eurofighter - two western aircraft.
Comments
There is no 'generally accepted' human rights. The people of North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Burma (to name but three) might be pleased if there were but there aren't.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1509935827153035272
This is the reverse of the 90s when to get a hearing the extremes had to print their own pamphlets and stand on rainy street corners or shout at the telly,
Starmer operates in the middle of a hate sandwich. The left and right hate him and their passion enables them to take every opportunity to remind us of that online. They represent themselves, but disproportionately influence debate.
Boris has an easier time of it, because his right flank back him and the far left attack Starmer.
Aye 15:35. EW. Stormy judge. And Win my Wings @ping @stodge @moonrabbit
One story that I had not spotted. 80,000 helmets for Ukr.
The UK has been sending a range of aid to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Sgt Church talks about how British soldiers from 2nd Battalion
@RAnglians
regiment have completed the challenge to sort and pack over 80,000 helmets bound for the Ukrainian military.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1509938750553571334
When did you ever hear a lawyer proposing fewer laws when they had fees coming?
Lawyers are trained to apply maximum cynicism in analysing others' motives, but strangely they never turn that spotlight on themselves.
I am clearly referring to the cycling helmet…..
The story is that pensioners are accessing their savings to (a) pay their bills and (b) help their kids / grandkids.
The implied sense of entitlement is shocking. It’s their money - they should be able to spend it as they like
(Not the peasants out the Borders, as you may have read it!!)
April Fools was yesterday.
Secondly, the mechanism for inhibiting (or defining the borders of) our rights is legislation. A Bill of Rights is not special just because of it's lofty name, and any rights stated within it can be subject to further legislation to curtail them in the same way any future bill can edit any previous other. Indeed, a lot of COVID legislation showed the broad power of Parliament to legally curtail our rights (for a good reason, in this case at least).
One might argue for a more codified constitution that would specifically protect certain freedoms. I certainly would, though the form of the thing would be very important and our current arrangement would be much preferable to a flawed document (No codification is better than bad codification would be my rallying cry). Because Parliament is Sovereign, giving any specific act powers to bind future Parliaments would require a constitutional overhaul that the Tories would not actually be interested in. Personally, I think the Succession to the Crown Act should be amended so that, when the Queen goes to her palace in the sky, she is succeeded by a constitution. We could even keep calling it the Crown, to appease the monarchists. There would be wrinkles to iron out (the text, how it would be changed, how to stop Parliament going Cromwell on our new vellum-based Monarch etc), of course.
That proposal is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the problems of guaranteeing rights in legislation in a meaningful way are not. Our system doesn't really work like that, even if it can sometimes be made to look like it does.
So the idea of a British Convention is essentially a restatement of the ECHR back to its founding principles removing the additions of the last 70 years.
Which really gets to the central point of @Cyclefree's excellent piece: is it worth it? To take one of the most egregious examples is it really worth withdrawing from the ECHR, decades of jurisprudence and making us something of a pariah state like those hooligans in Russia just to stop prisoners getting the vote? Or to allow courts to take into account that our immigration system is so utterly pathetic and useless that people left in limbo for a decade or more have put down roots here and had children who have known nowhere else?
A cynical lawyer might say yes, excellent idea, and then we can start litigating these same decided points all over again. A less cynical one would argue that even although it is annoying at times it just isn't worth it.
Springtime in Ayrshire, are you not going to the course to watch the Scottish National Malc? 🙂
After a break in horse betting coinciding with nice weather, sunbathing in bikini bottoms last week, hungry for another racing afternoon again 🙂
This is betting slip draft number 2 with non runners piling up, fields definitely being whittled down. Maybe a nice day for them to be back in their favourite field, steaming and prancing around in the sun and responding to you with their best flehmen, but too nice a day for firming ground the stable didn’t fancy their chances?
Newbury 2.10 - Psychedelic Rock
My original preference was La Cavsa Nostra, but with the bay gelding withdrawn (no sniggering at the back) opens it up for a horse likely targeted on this race who is well handicapped this year.
Ayr 2.25 - Anna Bunina e/w
Less convinced of a win, very convinced of a good run for places.
Newbury 14:45 Holly Hartingo
My original selection before non runner was the unbeaten Corey's Courage. But now I’m interested in a point to point horse, little raced under rules, with good record under rules.
Ayr 3.35 - Jersey Bean e/w
Despite wild weather this week the going is largely good, 23ish start, it’s 4 miles. I can only recommend this as each way and rather outside bet.
I have not been idle this week. I have a summer day at racing arranged. I’m off to the Knavesmire for the Yorkshire cup in May. It’s going to be special weekend. We are taking friends from London and meeting my friends from Yorkshire, and Snookie and her fiancé coming from Bristol too. And I might go racing on the Thursday as well.
And I’ve got the dress. Jazzybum, who is similar to my shape, looked great in the green dress, so I got one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5e7IHF7u20
now Off to prepare lemon chicken pizzas.
But then again, "If it's not necessary to change, it's necessary to not change" used to be a good c/Conservative principle.
@KyivIndependent
·
1h
⚡️General Staff: Russia begins mobilizing troops in Moldova's occupied Transnistria.
Moscow is redeploying its troops in occupied Transnistria to demonstrate its readiness to attack Ukraine from the southwest and for potential provocations on the border, the General Staff said.
https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent
E.g:
https://twitter.com/Lee__Drake/status/1497000702199042056?s=20&t=eH9Er_36bu_Jc3hXKdE_Xw
But, the prisoners' votes issue actually shows that an elected government will get its way, if it stands firm, and so I think it's now more trouble than it's worth.
https://twitter.com/safecast/status/1509334350923325440
Radiation-expert Twitter was also considering other possibilities like burning wood and eating contaminated game.
https://twitter.com/jrmygrdn/status/1509379039898841095
They don't buy it, the sourcing for the story seems to be garbage, and it's a fun evil-people-get-their-just-desserts story with high propaganda value. So I think we can safely say the radiation sickness aspect of this story is bullshit, although of course there's increased cancer risk.
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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.”
Edit, one qualification which I am pretty sure was in the original. The right is to do as you please without harming others.
In West Germany, everything is prohibited, except what is permitted.
In Britain, everything is permitted, except what is prohibited.
In Italy, everything is permitted, even what is prohibited.
In Russia, everything is prohibited, even that which is permitted.
https://twitter.com/KpsZSU/status/1509619177656619013
The Ukrainians reckon they could train pilots to use the F15 type jets in 2-3 weeks. Maybe we don't think the Ukrainian air force is on its last legs but it would be a massive failure if we allowed Russia to eventually get air supremacy. Given the disparity that can't be ruled out at some point and we shouldn't be complacent.
I'd like to think we are quietly providing more support than is being acknowledged publicly. Why is the US only providing 100 of these switchblade drones? Surely thousands would be a better idea. Does all military assistance have to be detailed publicly?
(To be serious, it's an example of an institution that had its priorities wrong for a long time, but finally seems to be getting its act together by offering more LL courses leading to degrees for locals and fewer undergraduate degrees for teenagers.)
It sticks out a mile that some of the most annoying people on the planet are anxious to assert their rights while overlooking the rights of others and the duties of themselves.
Discussion of general and universal duties is inherently more interesting and difficult than rights, and is unavoidable as all rights impose duties on others automatically.
If the UK no longer incorporates ECHR, it is moving away from a generally accepted and as far as the UK is concerned objective standard towards marking its own homework. I don't think anyone objects to strengthening human rights in the UK beyond those mandated by ECHR, but precisely which ECHR principles need to be eliminated, and how exactly does this improve human rights in the UK, bearing in mind those principles aim to protect individuals from arbitrary action from the state.
And note by the way ECHR is entirely about the actions of the state and not the balance of rights of individuals and businesses.
For instance, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one's property and possessions. Or the prohibition against being imprisoned for a breach of a contractual obligation. Or the right to an effective remedy against violations of law committed by public officials.
And once you've done that, precisely how a Bill of Rights would remedy the problems you've identified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
Letters from British Gas are always faintly menacing because communication with them is almost impossible. If you do manage to get them on the phone it is like speaking to a robot.
It was kind of poignant though. I miss having a government in which the likes of Rory Stewart would indeed be happy to work.
If you live in London and the South East in most areas you have near zero chance of buying a property if on an average wage and not a high salary. That is not a privileged few, that is most younger people. That is unlikely to change much unless London stops being a global city no matter how many homes you build.
Hence so many Home owners in London and the South will use equity release etc to help their children and grandchildren get a deposit to but a property
Take bloke X. He has a wife, two small children, a job which involves in some way the welfare and safety of others and three elderly relatives in failing health. The idea that he has the right to do as he pleases is restricted by duties to such a degree that it barely registers. The idea that the duty to take the consequences is the only duty becomes meaningless as his children starve in the street.
Also odd (to me) is the instinctive reaction of many Tories, esp on the right of the party, when they hear the words "human rights", either in or out of a legal setting. Rather than cheer it's to boo. The notion of human rights seems to irritate or upset rather than inspire or reassure. It's an interesting bit of brain chemistry.
Anyway, great header. That's a good checklist of questions for proposed new laws. If it were applied to this incoherent "Bill of Rights" I think we'd get a fail.
I thought the story about HMS Glasgow being used to provide a stopgap ferry service was pretty good.
I wonder if western governments are still having trouble making the switch to deal with Ukraine successfully fighting a conventional war against Russia, when the pre-war planning must have assumed that they'd get flattened, have their planes and anywhere they could operate planes from destroyed, and fight a long guerilla war with weapons that were small enough to hide.
And that is the basis of human society.
They got rather lost in the panic about Covid at the time.
1. https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/11/political-rights-and-wrongs/
2. https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/12/amber-warnings-what-might-be-the-signals-that-all-is-not-well-in-a-democracy/
3. https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/14/a-british-gift-the-echr/
In response to @DavidL's excellent post, there have been issues with the interpretation of the ECHR. But the Supreme Court under Lord Reed is now taking a much less expansive view of its role than before and this may well solve some of the perceived problems. This is precisely what Robert Buckland was on about when he said that Raab was addressing an old issue -
"I do not think that we should seek to replace the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights. Doing so runs the risk of introducing an autonomous meaning doctrine and this would upset our constitutional balance. Instead, the starting point of the government should seek to codify the new approach of the Supreme Court." (i.e. taking the approach suggested in my point 2.).
80,000 Helme in 8 Tagen in UK 👀🤫😬 - da verblassen selbst die mittlerweile scheinbar gelieferten 23,000 aus 🇩🇪
Translated from German by
80,000 helmets in 8 days in the UK 👀🤫😬 - even the apparently delivered 23,000 from 🇩🇪 pale in comparison
https://twitter.com/lunchforone/status/1509954659326308358
(Love the lunchforone name. Clearly an Anglophile at New Year)
Incidentally, I don't know the words for Britophile, Scotophile or even Walesophile. Are there such?
This whole matter to me though just seems to be about 'looking' like something really impactful is being done by giving it a dramatic name, when it is just fiddling about for more effort than it is worth.
Applying your approach, which is a good one - these are indeed issues for all of us - it is odd that Raab gave so little time for consultation, almost as if he had already made his mind up and ignored what a lot of MPs, who do represent us, said to the Goss Review.
Also, applying to his own proposals, he does none of the things suggested here.
Afraid I am not going this year , my wife is still a bit paranoid about crowds given her experience and fact covid is rife at present so it has to be TV for me unfortunately. It can be pretty raucous at the National meeting , lots of amateurs go , absolutely packed and so can get a bit dodgy. In years past I have had a few remonstrations there with some dodgy persons after a few glasses of the singing ginger. Many cannot hold their bevvy.
Good luck with your horses.
PS: No doubt after me saying that , by racing time black clouds will be overheard and storm raging.
This is largely because I have yet to see evidence he has a mind.
House price to earnings ratio for a single earner is just 6 in the NorthEast, easily affordable for a couple.
The ratio is a huge 15 in London though
https://www.comparethemarket.com/home-insurance/content/house-prices-vs-income-in-the-uk/
This is obvious to anyone who hasn't fucked off to Sweden.
I found Rozenberg's book detailing some historic decisions and their reasoning, and his view on the courts' reasoning in those cases, very compelling and interesting, as he didn't come at it from a simple activist vs conservative approaches (not how he termed it I hasten to add) to the law.
And as for the Third, well…
Have we ever seen a professional NATO-style army fighting a defensive war like this before?
The closest I can think of is small operations in eg Afghanistan, unless you go back to 50s/60s operations, when Western armies were still partly conscript-based.
Russia is possibly relevant only in that it decided to ignore European Court of Human Rights rulings back in 2015 as the UK may also decide to do. The court has only just suspended Russia, arguably way too late, but I suppose it could still issue judgments and get them into the public domain while Russia was still nominally a member.
My other points stand, I think.
Lord Sumption's Reith lectures were outstanding on this and I'd recommend everyone watch/listen to them. If the law encroaches too much on the democratic parliament you inevitably get populism. Was it a good idea for the US Supreme Court to decide on the abortion issue in the US or should it have been left to congress?
There is a more fundamental political problem with consent to the HRA. For Europe 1945 was their 1776. But for Britain and one or two exceptions it wasn't.
I like Unpopular's 'No codification is better than bad codification' rallying cry.
I'm sure that Ukr has helmet-making facilities - they got a huge chunk of the USSR defence industry, but they probably have about a million extra soldiers all of a sudden.
My provisional answer is that those on the right are generally more authoritairan than they like to admit. They have no problem with an overmighty state as long as they are in charge of it. Those on the left, however, still often have a strand of thinking of wanting to stick it to the man, an oppositional view of government, even when it claims to be their government.
This is not an answer I am entirely comfortable with.
And I am being serious.
So you might be correct, but it didn't sound like it.
And it is a trend that seems to be increasing as people, particularly but not just on the left, find excuses to take offence at absolutely everything. Everybody has rights, nobody has duties.
I have commented before about a friend who has twice been in an environment where he stayed for days with people who all went down with Covid and he stayed clear, similarly a friend of my daughter. And of course there are others of us who haven't had it, although that might be just luck on my part.
Human rights are there to protect everyone even those who the public might perceive as not warranting those rights .
The Tories playbook is likely to be Labour is trying to protect terrorists as they embark on yet another pre election deflection , they of course will avoid telling the public of some landmark rulings which helped the UK public .
Not only on gay rights but the right of couples to not be separated if they went into care . Previously the government could separate them and put them into different care homes .
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/02/norman-tebbit-many-people-politics-today-rather-poor-material/ (£££)
(That is pretty much all he says on the subject. The article, a leisurely stroll through Tebbit's life story by Simon Heffer, reads like an obituary for someone who has not yet died.)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/37028-freedom-is-not-empowerment-empowerment-is-what-the-serbs-have?msclkid=097513d0b26b11eca77e375b604648bb
PJ will have correctly calculated that the addition of those words completely changes the scenario from the libertarian concept that he seems to have had in mind. If you are not free to harm others, then someone needs to define what harming others means (in your interest as much as theirs). Which means laws restricting what you can do, which is what he doesn't want.
The suggestion that a right to food and housing constitutes slavery (and thus that you'd be better off starving in the street) is an obscenity which takes no account of the randomness of the world. If you suffer from, say, advanced Parkinson's disease, so you are unable to move, and don't have enough to eat, the "freedom" to take action to remedy it is not normally useful to you.
We've also seen conflicts where it's essentially proved impossibly to defeat an insurgency - Vietnam, Afghanistan twice.
We've simply not seen so many conflicts which have been between two forces of broadly comparable and symmetric force. So we've forgotten what they look like. I don't think that constitutes a paradigm shift.
An excellent piece @Cyclefree, as always.
The wider problem, to me, is the use of Human Rights as a form of constitutionalism. Where rights are enshrined in law and are irrevocable, and not based on consultation with the people.
From one point of view, this is grand. Society can progress without needing to bother with getting the agreement of the Head Count.
From the other point of view, this is an elite writing the laws without democratic input.
As JA Froude observed, "Constitutions are for men, not men for constitutions". To me, at least, the law and the rights enshrined in it, are the summation of the current political debate. A living constitution means that the laws shifts as society shifts. Not that society shifts as the law shifts.
Considered the real source of the protection of the rights of individuals - it is not in the law. It is in the agreement of the people to respect laws that they themselves have a part in.
The protection of gay people from gay bashing is not the law, so much as the general agreement by the vast majority of people that gay bashing is despicable. The laws relating to attacks on gay people flow from that general agreement.
During the Rotherham "reveal", I was told by someone in the loop, that some of the Great and The Good really thought that literal pogroms might break out. What actually happened? Rather than lynch mobs, the vast majority of the response was to ask for redress *within the law*. There was a small increase in racism - but no mass attacks on a community.
Iuliia Mendel
@IuliiaMendel
A young cellist playing on the ruins of his house, while an old man is collecting his stuff that didn’t get destroyed. Kyiv.
https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1510175140138598403
And yes, there is a version of sovereignty popular on the right which boils down to no other meaningful centres of power (whether above us in Brussels or below us in regions / nations) and accountability by a vote whenever we think we can win.
Is there any precedent for such a fast type conversion?
Even during the Battle of Britain, in the worst point of pilots shortages, they still were taking longer than that to convert pilots from other types to the fighters. And aircraft back then, were orders of magnitude less complex.
Then there is learning the envelope and techniques the plane can use. And the various advantages and disadvantages of the western weapons that can be attached (the Ukrainian weapons probably will not be able to be attached, let alone fired).
The RAF have Operational Conversion Units to train people to convert between (say) the Tornado and Eurofighter - two western aircraft.
@Dura_Ace must know a lot more...