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We need to decide whether the convention itself is still fit for purpose or whether it has become outdated.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 Please explain with specific examples in what ways the principles in the Convention are no longer fit for purpose or outdated.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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
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.
What it shows, as did the Iraq wars, is that there is a gulf in class between NATO and Russian kit, not just the guns but the communications networks and logistical support networks. I think there was always a gap but it got considerably wider at the time of the Reagan boost to US defence spending. And it means that Russia's traditional weight of numbers argument is no longer relevant.
Nukes apart, Russia is no longer a first rank military power. They can kill those who are virtually defenceless in the third world but if they take on a country with a modern army they are in serious trouble.
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.
I’d imagine the publicity of the jets being supplied is what the Ukrainians really want.
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.
My partner and I have been in a very similar situation - every other family in my daughter's class (including my daughter) had it in January, but my partner and I didn't.
I did have a horrible reaction to the Moderna 3rd shot vaccine, though, from which I am still recovering (whole body weeping rash, which lasted 6 weeks, and my left arm muscles are still painful and weak) so it is swings and roundabouts. I'd rather that than my 2 friends who were on mech ventilation.
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.
My partner and I have been in a very similar situation - every other family in my daughter's class (including my daughter) had it in January, but my partner and I didn't.
I did have a horrible reaction to the Moderna 3rd shot vaccine, though, from which I am still recovering (whole body weeping rash, which lasted 6 weeks, and my left arm muscles are still painful and weak) so it is swings and roundabouts. I'd rather that than my 2 friends who were on mech ventilation.
Thanks for that - I have the exact same symptoms (albeit right arm because that was where the injection was) and given the time frame couldn't work out what the cause was.
'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..
For composition, The Beatles? The Who? Queen? Elton John? David Bowie? Whoever wrote the music for Coldplay?
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.
What it shows, as did the Iraq wars, is that there is a gulf in class between NATO and Russian kit, not just the guns but the communications networks and logistical support networks. I think there was always a gap but it got considerably wider at the time of the Reagan boost to US defence spending. And it means that Russia's traditional weight of numbers argument is no longer relevant.
Nukes apart, Russia is no longer a first rank military power. They can kill those who are virtually defenceless in the third world but if they take on a country with a modern army they are in serious trouble.
Don't underestimate doctrine, training, and experience. It seems that NATO is way ahead on the first two, and Ukraine has taken full advantage of the latter.
Ukraine's success so far seems to be based on planning, maneuver, tactical doctrine (including the use of night operations), and individual commanders on the ground.
'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.
‘What are these novels of which you speak? Anyway, have you seen the latest episode of Get Your Love Junk out in Sexy Metropolis? It’s Gucci, bruh.’
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.
My partner and I have been in a very similar situation - every other family in my daughter's class (including my daughter) had it in January, but my partner and I didn't.
I did have a horrible reaction to the Moderna 3rd shot vaccine, though, from which I am still recovering (whole body weeping rash, which lasted 6 weeks, and my left arm muscles are still painful and weak) so it is swings and roundabouts. I'd rather that than my 2 friends who were on mech ventilation.
Thanks for that - I have the exact same symptoms (albeit right arm because that was where the injection was) and given the time frame couldn't work out what the cause was.
Make sure you report it on NHS "yellow alert" and let your GP know.
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.
I’d imagine the publicity of the jets being supplied is what the Ukrainians really want.
Maybe - but surely Mig29s* and S300s would be of more immediate use?
*The Mig29s in Europe might still need some conversion training, since they have (mostly) been considerably upgraded over the years.
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.
Collectivism vs Individualism exists independent of the state. Consider Thatcher's anti-Union laws. These are a use of state power to prevent (or at least weaken) collective action by workers against the (individual) owners of capital.
One of the criticisms of the Left I've repeated on here many times is to be too quick to see collective = state, when the Left should also be seeking to encourage collective action independent of the State (which is why I saw Cameron's Big Society as a huge missed opportunity for the British Left).
Those on the authoritarian right clearly see the use of state power as a way to destroy collective action. This was the very basis of fascism in Italy, but you can also see it in, say, the history of strike-breaking in Victorian England.
The genuine libertarian, who wants to see a very small and weak state, is very rare because in practice they find they need to use state power to prevent collectivists from organising and creating limits on their freedom (to exercise their economic power over others).
One of the damaging influences of the experience of Communist governments on left-wing thought has been to establish this idea that to do things collectively means that you must do it through the state. This does not have to be so.
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.
I have better things to do with my time than read Dominic Raab’s CV, carefully or otherwise!
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
As I said, I agree with you that this is a matter for all of us. Law and what it means is something which ought to be understood and debated by all of us. You may have noticed that I write quite a lot about legal cases and proposed laws precisely in order - in my very small way - to widen the debate to non-lawyers.
But I'd like to understand - genuinely - what precisely you mean when you say that the HRA's scope has been widened "into areas it was never intended for".
What areas was it intended for? What was it not intended for? Where was this latter statement said? And how has it been widened?
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
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.
Another excellent post, mainly because I agree. As someone who is instinctively anti authority and pro leaving people to be as free as is practically possible, it is interesting to compare the left with the right. The left take a principled stand (with which I disagree) to interfere in people's lives for what they believe is the general good. The right claim to be in favour of freedom, yet constantly interfere in peoples lives and seem unaware that they are doing it.
I'm not sure which is worse in my view. I suspect the latter as at least with the former you can have a logical argument as to the pros and cons of state interference, but with the latter they appear unaware they are doing it. On more than one occasion I have referred to a policy of the right as being socialist to bemusement. @HYUFD often puts forward authoritarian views for instance, yet I am sure he would be offended to be called a socialist.
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.
I'm sure that is true, but in wars troops called up are presumably always getting less training that they would under ideal conditions - surely there is a point at which armed forces are rushing deployment but still getting some benefit from doing so? I imagine for piloting that's still quite a bit of training, given the nature of the role.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 2h French presidential election suddenly erupts into a contest as 2 polls this week show Macron’s lead over Le Pen in 2nd round presidential run-off (April 24) narrow to 53/47. Macron still likely to be re-elected. But no longer the walk in the park he assumed.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Lots of Oxbridge 1sts in the City as you know. Some of them are quite remarkably stupid. As you also know.
(Though it is possible that I have met more than my fair share of the stupid academic ones.)
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.
What it shows, as did the Iraq wars, is that there is a gulf in class between NATO and Russian kit, not just the guns but the communications networks and logistical support networks. I think there was always a gap but it got considerably wider at the time of the Reagan boost to US defence spending. And it means that Russia's traditional weight of numbers argument is no longer relevant.
Nukes apart, Russia is no longer a first rank military power. They can kill those who are virtually defenceless in the third world but if they take on a country with a modern army they are in serious trouble.
Don't underestimate doctrine, training, and experience. It seems that NATO is way ahead on the first two, and Ukraine has taken full advantage of the latter.
Ukraine's success so far seems to be based on planning, maneuver, tactical doctrine (including the use of night operations), and individual commanders on the ground.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
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.
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.
I’d imagine the publicity of the jets being supplied is what the Ukrainians really want.
Maybe - but surely Mig29s* and S300s would be of more immediate use?
*The Mig29s in Europe might still need some conversion training, since they have (mostly) been considerably upgraded over the years.
They'd also have to be considerably downgraded before Ukrainians were allowed to get their hands on them to remove the NATO comms fit, IFF and probably lots of other shit.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Some bright conservatives go a long way by pretending to be dim. The BiIl of Rights is a classic case that shows you why this works, ie there's a stupid idea that the conservative base think is clever. If you're going to get into arguments with people who understand why it's stupid, you have to appear either dim or slippery, and it's bad for a politician to appear slippery.
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.
Collectivism vs Individualism exists independent of the state. Consider Thatcher's anti-Union laws. These are a use of state power to prevent (or at least weaken) collective action by workers against the (individual) owners of capital.
One of the criticisms of the Left I've repeated on here many times is to be too quick to see collective = state, when the Left should also be seeking to encourage collective action independent of the State (which is why I saw Cameron's Big Society as a huge missed opportunity for the British Left).
Those on the authoritarian right clearly see the use of state power as a way to destroy collective action. This was the very basis of fascism in Italy, but you can also see it in, say, the history of strike-breaking in Victorian England.
The genuine libertarian, who wants to see a very small and weak state, is very rare because in practice they find they need to use state power to prevent collectivists from organising and creating limits on their freedom (to exercise their economic power over others).
One of the damaging influences of the experience of Communist governments on left-wing thought has been to establish this idea that to do things collectively means that you must do it through the state. This does not have to be so.
The state union-bashing examples are instructive: if you don't control the state then non-state efforts at collectivism will be destroyed by the state.
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.
It's also quite possible there are 50 Ukrainian pilots somewhere in western Europe/USA currently undertaking that F15 training....
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.
I’d imagine the publicity of the jets being supplied is what the Ukrainians really want.
Maybe - but surely Mig29s* and S300s would be of more immediate use?
*The Mig29s in Europe might still need some conversion training, since they have (mostly) been considerably upgraded over the years.
They'd also have to be considerably downgraded before Ukrainians were allowed to get their hands on them to remove the NATO comms fit, IFF and probably lots of other shit.
Which would then raise the issue of finding the equipment to downgrade to. I would be surprised if the Poles (for example) had all the original electronics stored nicely somewhere.
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 we're all more authoritarian than we'd like to admit. Might (in the form of political dominance) makes right is a very common opinion, and as we've seen people in established democracies are happy to admit to pollsters many of them would like a strongman leader. And even leaders who don't trend that way often end up enacting things which are, since they get frustrated at what it takes to get things done otherwise.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
In general I find Oxbridge lawyers of my acquiantance to be good thinkers, rather than fact regurgitators. I wonder what has happened to DR to spoil that.
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.
Something in this, I think. And the best answers are often not exactly what you'd like - I find that quite a bit.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Don't think Raab's memory is that good - he couldn't remember that Dover to Calais was quite an important trading route. But maybe he didn't do geography or economics.
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.
Collectivism vs Individualism exists independent of the state. Consider Thatcher's anti-Union laws. These are a use of state power to prevent (or at least weaken) collective action by workers against the (individual) owners of capital.
One of the criticisms of the Left I've repeated on here many times is to be too quick to see collective = state, when the Left should also be seeking to encourage collective action independent of the State (which is why I saw Cameron's Big Society as a huge missed opportunity for the British Left).
Those on the authoritarian right clearly see the use of state power as a way to destroy collective action. This was the very basis of fascism in Italy, but you can also see it in, say, the history of strike-breaking in Victorian England.
The genuine libertarian, who wants to see a very small and weak state, is very rare because in practice they find they need to use state power to prevent collectivists from organising and creating limits on their freedom (to exercise their economic power over others).
One of the damaging influences of the experience of Communist governments on left-wing thought has been to establish this idea that to do things collectively means that you must do it through the state. This does not have to be so.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 2h French presidential election suddenly erupts into a contest as 2 polls this week show Macron’s lead over Le Pen in 2nd round presidential run-off (April 24) narrow to 53/47. Macron still likely to be re-elected. But no longer the walk in the park he assumed.
Eh, I think this may just be the French themselves getting bored of it being a cakewalk and so collectively trolling pollsters so it looks more of a contest.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
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.
My partner and I have been in a very similar situation - every other family in my daughter's class (including my daughter) had it in January, but my partner and I didn't.
I did have a horrible reaction to the Moderna 3rd shot vaccine, though, from which I am still recovering (whole body weeping rash, which lasted 6 weeks, and my left arm muscles are still painful and weak) so it is swings and roundabouts. I'd rather that than my 2 friends who were on mech ventilation.
Thanks for that - I have the exact same symptoms (albeit right arm because that was where the injection was) and given the time frame couldn't work out what the cause was.
Make sure you report it on NHS "yellow alert" and let your GP know.
My youngest son got some bad bruising after his second vaccination. He mentioned it when he went for his 3rd and they did check with the doctor. He got bruising again but not quite so bad.
He got the Delta Covid very bad and had a bad reaction to all 3 vaccinations. If he's ever asked to take a 4th it will be the devil's own job to get him to take it.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Being a co author of Brittannia Unchained seems to be a good vouchsafe for doing well in the modern ‘Conservative’ party, evidently the intellectual beating heart of its current manifestation. Don’t know if I can bring myself to read it, but it might be a good guide to what it’s all about.
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.
I’d imagine the publicity of the jets being supplied is what the Ukrainians really want.
Maybe - but surely Mig29s* and S300s would be of more immediate use?
*The Mig29s in Europe might still need some conversion training, since they have (mostly) been considerably upgraded over the years.
They'd also have to be considerably downgraded before Ukrainians were allowed to get their hands on them to remove the NATO comms fit, IFF and probably lots of other shit.
Which would then raise the issue of finding the equipment to downgrade to. I would be surprised if the Poles (for example) had all the original electronics stored nicely somewhere.
There's also the espionage issue. I had assumed that the Russians had access to all the modern NATO tech and were cloning it left right and centre (rather as the Chinese do, to greater or lesser fidelity).
This war has demonstrated this is not the case. Is that a failure of intelligence (in which case we don't want this stuff in harm's way), or a failure of investment?
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.
I have better things to do with my time than read Dominic Raab’s CV, carefully or otherwise!
The great thing about somemodern politicians (though I don't know if this applies to Raab) is that it wouldn't take much time to read their CVs
1) University 2) SPAD/Union Official 3) MP
Possibly with some brief mini jobs sprinkled throughout.
'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..
Isn’t there that poet - Chris Martin or something? I’m not really a fan - leave me cold.
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
You need something seperate and independent of parliament to protect certain fundamentals, though, don't you? I'd feel less safe without that.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
'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..
Isn’t there that poet - Chris Martin or something? I’m not really a fan - leave me cold.
One issue with online stuff is it is next to impossible to know who knows what they are talking about, as many things can seem plausible.
Like this thread trying to assess the war situation - it's not blatantly optimistic or pessimistic, so it seems plausible, but it could all be nonsense for all I know.
https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1510116709839089664 Although the past week has seen a series of Ukrainian victories, they war is far from over. Ukraine is still in a perilous position, although it is winning it could still lose. The fight for the Donbas will be vicious. Russia is staking everything on success here... Now comes the truly gut-wrenching part of the war, one in which Putin & the Kremlin will use every tool at their disposal to reverse the defeat in Kyiv & NE Ukraine in a ruthless attempt to salvage some notion of “victory”. Now is the time Ukraine needs the West the most.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
I used to call this the Gamelin Quandary.... The explanation for the performance of French Army in 1940 is either that
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask. - The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Lots of Oxbridge 1sts in the City as you know. Some of them are quite remarkably stupid. As you also know.
(Though it is possible that I have met more than my fair share of the stupid academic ones.)
Also, to get some of the things that Raab has profoundly wanted for ages, he has had to develop the intellectual suppleness to overlook inconvenient realities when required- like the Dover-Calais crossing. That does bad things to the sharpest mind.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Some bright conservatives go a long way by pretending to be dim. The BiIl of Rights is a classic case that shows you why this works, ie there's a stupid idea that the conservative base think is clever. If you're going to get into arguments with people who understand why it's stupid, you have to appear either dim or slippery, and it's bad for a politician to appear slippery.
I have known some very bright, academically, people who were not so when taken away from their normal society or wee outwith their normal topics.
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
As I said, I agree with you that this is a matter for all of us. Law and what it means is something which ought to be understood and debated by all of us. You may have noticed that I write quite a lot about legal cases and proposed laws precisely in order - in my very small way - to widen the debate to non-lawyers.
But I'd like to understand - genuinely - what precisely you mean when you say that the HRA's scope has been widened "into areas it was never intended for".
What areas was it intended for? What was it not intended for? Where was this latter statement said? And how has it been widened?
In the case of Nadia Eweida the ECtHR ruled that it was a breach of her right to religious freedom that her employers, BA, said that she was not to wear a cross at work.
In the case of Abu Quatada the UK were initially stopped from extradicting him to Jordon because that country may, in accordance with their law, use evidence that may have been gained under torture elsewhere.
In the Bamber case the ECtHR said that a whole life sentence for a multiple murderer was contrary to article 3 and amounted to torture.
And of course there is the prisoners votes issue.
You can make arguments in each case whether this was right or wrong. In the Abu Quatada case the government got around it by negotiating a treaty with Jordan that gave him a fairer trial. But these types of cases do annoy people. They are not what the principles were for, they are not express in the text and they do not give governments what the ECJ would call a margin of appreciation in how the principle is to be applied.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
Ah, the (relative) joys of poor leadership at play I suppose.
Problem being there are bound to be people in Russia who do know how to focus on the strengths and will be (or are) going to be found eventually.
If anyone wants to comment or analyse the result of the election of the Captains-General in San Marino, be my guest.
In Hungary, the final Publicus poll has the Fidesz Alliance of Viktor Orban and the opposition tied at 47%. Could we argue the defeat of Viktor Orban would have a profound impact on the politics of central and eastern Europe?
The latest French poll shows Macron on 28.5%, Le Pen on 22%, Melenchon on 15% and both Zemmour on 9.5% and Pecresse on 8.5% continuing to slip back.
We've also got Serbia voting tomorrow but the incumbent Government look set to be returned albeit with a reduced majority.
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
As I said, I agree with you that this is a matter for all of us. Law and what it means is something which ought to be understood and debated by all of us. You may have noticed that I write quite a lot about legal cases and proposed laws precisely in order - in my very small way - to widen the debate to non-lawyers.
But I'd like to understand - genuinely - what precisely you mean when you say that the HRA's scope has been widened "into areas it was never intended for".
What areas was it intended for? What was it not intended for? Where was this latter statement said? And how has it been widened?
The judgement on votes for prisoners (which the government duly ignored) was my major fault with the ECHR. Franchise is a political decision, the courts shouldn't be getting involved with widening the franchise and the lawyers and activist judges pushed the ECHR into expanding the franchise to prisoners, which was and still is a settled political argument in the UK.
I'd also contend that article 8, for a while, became very broad because activist judges and lawyers almost conspired to override the government of the day wherever possible (and this isn't a party political point, Labour struggled with this phenomenon as much as the Tories).
The issue I have is that I can't stand moralising from the legal profession when they/you are part of the problem along with the politicians and we, the voters, are just caught in the middle and given no consideration.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
I believe that many lived in fear of a slave revolt. That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 2h French presidential election suddenly erupts into a contest as 2 polls this week show Macron’s lead over Le Pen in 2nd round presidential run-off (April 24) narrow to 53/47. Macron still likely to be re-elected. But no longer the walk in the park he assumed.
Nah, he's just attention-seeking, as pundits do. In the last dozen polls there is exactly one showing Macron at less than 53.3%, and the spread is entirely consistent with 54-46 plus a little random variation. In fact, what's amazing about the polls is how stable they've been over the last 6 months - they show the lead narrowing from 56-44 to 54-46, meh.
Of course, anything is always possible, but it's untrue to say that the polls have shown a sudden narrowing.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
I used to call this the Gamelin Quandary.... The explanation for the performance of French Army in 1940 is either that
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask. - The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
There is a really interesting question as to what they could have done differently with the men and materiel they actually had, in terms of fighting an offensive war in February in Ukraine?
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.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Don't think Raab's memory is that good - he couldn't remember that Dover to Calais was quite an important trading route. But maybe he didn't do geography or economics.
And Afghanistan appeared to slip his mind completely as the Cretan sun beat down on him.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
I believe that many lived in fear of a slave revolt. That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
There isn't a violin small enough to play for slave owners killed in slave revolts.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
I used to call this the Gamelin Quandary.... The explanation for the performance of French Army in 1940 is either that
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask. - The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
There is a really interesting question as to what they could have done differently with the men and materiel they actually had, in terms of fighting an offensive war in February in Ukraine?
To start with, the Russian command seems to have not understood the capabilities of... the Russian military.
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.
Collectivism vs Individualism exists independent of the state. Consider Thatcher's anti-Union laws. These are a use of state power to prevent (or at least weaken) collective action by workers against the (individual) owners of capital.
One of the criticisms of the Left I've repeated on here many times is to be too quick to see collective = state, when the Left should also be seeking to encourage collective action independent of the State (which is why I saw Cameron's Big Society as a huge missed opportunity for the British Left).
Those on the authoritarian right clearly see the use of state power as a way to destroy collective action. This was the very basis of fascism in Italy, but you can also see it in, say, the history of strike-breaking in Victorian England.
The genuine libertarian, who wants to see a very small and weak state, is very rare because in practice they find they need to use state power to prevent collectivists from organising and creating limits on their freedom (to exercise their economic power over others).
One of the damaging influences of the experience of Communist governments on left-wing thought has been to establish this idea that to do things collectively means that you must do it through the state. This does not have to be so.
The state union-bashing examples are instructive: if you don't control the state then non-state efforts at collectivism will be destroyed by the state.
Reference to unions makes me think of this story this morning about Amazon workers in America seeking to unionise. I'm not some trades union super fan or something, but when someone fights so hard to stop it happening and acts like it is an existential crisis, and will seek to destroy them now, it just comes across as inherently suspicious. What the hell are they up to that the idea of a union is so terrifying to them?
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
You need something seperate and independent of parliament to protect certain fundamentals, though, don't you? I'd feel less safe without that.
Not necessarily, that you need one shows your lack of confidence in our democracy.
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.
What it shows, as did the Iraq wars, is that there is a gulf in class between NATO and Russian kit, not just the guns but the communications networks and logistical support networks. I think there was always a gap but it got considerably wider at the time of the Reagan boost to US defence spending. And it means that Russia's traditional weight of numbers argument is no longer relevant.
Nukes apart, Russia is no longer a first rank military power. They can kill those who are virtually defenceless in the third world but if they take on a country with a modern army they are in serious trouble.
I don't think that's right. After all, the Ukrainians have been using a lot of Russian kit. It's clear that the Ukrainians have major advantages in morale, training, and tactical initiative of junior officers (as well as logistics and communications, as you highlight).
And yet, for all that, it's still Ukrainian cities that are being pounded to rubble.
If you imagine a future Russia where a new leadership has stamped out corruption in military expenditure and has improved training and morale, then I don't think the quality of its equipment would hold it back. I don't think the Indian Army needs to scrap all its Russian-purchased equipment, for example.
If we consider the implications for a Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan the two aspects that I think China would need to concentrate on are: the ability to establish air superiority, by being able to conduct large complex air operations, and, whether the Taiwanese would be willing to fight to defend their democracy.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
I believe that many lived in fear of a slave revolt. That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
There isn't a violin small enough to play for slave owners killed in slave revolts.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
Ah, the (relative) joys of poor leadership at play I suppose.
Problem being there are bound to be people in Russia who do know how to focus on the strengths and will be (or are) going to be found eventually.
They'll be the ones capable of independent thinking. Putin has already either dismissed them, or imprisoned them, or poisoned them.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Lots of Oxbridge 1sts in the City as you know. Some of them are quite remarkably stupid. As you also know.
(Though it is possible that I have met more than my fair share of the stupid academic ones.)
Also, to get some of the things that Raab has profoundly wanted for ages, he has had to develop the intellectual suppleness to overlook inconvenient realities when required- like the Dover-Calais crossing. That does bad things to the sharpest mind.
To my mind what was worse in his Dover-Calais comment was the less spotted point that he clearly didn't understand JIT. He clearly thought it was about getting fresh food and flowers to the retailer in time. If that was what most ministers or even civil servants thought that was dire in the Brexit negotiations.
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 have no problem with the ECHR. 'Generally accepted' and 'generally accepted in Europe except where it isn't' are two different ideas.
FWIW I would rather be in the ECHR. But if courts get over enthusiastic about interpretation then pressure grows either to engage in double think or to bring the matter home to the UK parliament.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
I believe that many lived in fear of a slave revolt. That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
There isn't a violin small enough to play for slave owners killed in slave revolts.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Being a co author of Brittannia Unchained seems to be a good vouchsafe for doing well in the modern ‘Conservative’ party, evidently the intellectual beating heart of its current manifestation. Don’t know if I can bring myself to read it, but it might be a good guide to what it’s all about.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 2h French presidential election suddenly erupts into a contest as 2 polls this week show Macron’s lead over Le Pen in 2nd round presidential run-off (April 24) narrow to 53/47. Macron still likely to be re-elected. But no longer the walk in the park he assumed.
Nah, he's just attention-seeking, as pundits do. In the last dozen polls there is exactly one showing Macron at less than 53.3%, and the spread is entirely consistent with 54-46 plus a little random variation. In fact, what's amazing about the polls is how stable they've been over the last 6 months - they show the lead narrowing from 56-44 to 54-46, meh.
Of course, anything is always possible, but it's untrue to say that the polls have shown a sudden narrowing.
Neil is after all the genius that stated Merkel not being able to immediately form a coalition in 2017 was the worst political crisis to hit Germany since the 1940s.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
I believe that many lived in fear of a slave revolt. That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
There isn't a violin small enough to play for slave owners killed in slave revolts.
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Being a co author of Brittannia Unchained seems to be a good vouchsafe for doing well in the modern ‘Conservative’ party, evidently the intellectual beating heart of its current manifestation. Don’t know if I can bring myself to read it, but it might be a good guide to what it’s all about.
Thanks - I'll psyche up and check it out.
The tldr; version is that Britain is the greatest country in the world, except for all the people who live there who are lazy bastards. Everything will be fixed by more Capitalism.
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.
What it shows, as did the Iraq wars, is that there is a gulf in class between NATO and Russian kit, not just the guns but the communications networks and logistical support networks. I think there was always a gap but it got considerably wider at the time of the Reagan boost to US defence spending. And it means that Russia's traditional weight of numbers argument is no longer relevant.
Nukes apart, Russia is no longer a first rank military power. They can kill those who are virtually defenceless in the third world but if they take on a country with a modern army they are in serious trouble.
I don't think that's right. After all, the Ukrainians have been using a lot of Russian kit. It's clear that the Ukrainians have major advantages in morale, training, and tactical initiative of junior officers (as well as logistics and communications, as you highlight).
And yet, for all that, it's still Ukrainian cities that are being pounded to rubble.
If you imagine a future Russia where a new leadership has stamped out corruption in military expenditure and has improved training and morale, then I don't think the quality of its equipment would hold it back. I don't think the Indian Army needs to scrap all its Russian-purchased equipment, for example.
If we consider the implications for a Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan the two aspects that I think China would need to concentrate on are: the ability to establish air superiority, by being able to conduct large complex air operations, and, whether the Taiwanese would be willing to fight to defend their democracy.
Two points.
Firstly, a disproprotionate level of the damage caused to the Russians, especially in respect of armoured vehicles, has been with western made anti tank weapons.
Secondly, in the third paragraph you are imagining a Russia that is not Russia and which hasn't been since at least the Napoleonic wars. You are imagining it to be a technologically sophisticated modern state. It isn't.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
I used to call this the Gamelin Quandary.... The explanation for the performance of French Army in 1940 is either that
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask. - The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
There is a really interesting question as to what they could have done differently with the men and materiel they actually had, in terms of fighting an offensive war in February in Ukraine?
To start with, the Russian command seems to have not understood the capabilities of... the Russian military.
Or did they just underestimate the impact of nlaws, Turkish drones, and the extent to which the population at large would resist.
Had they driven to Kiev in 2 days and installed a new government it would have seemed like a dramatic coup. Everything else unwinds from those basic failures.
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
You need something seperate and independent of parliament to protect certain fundamentals, though, don't you? I'd feel less safe without that.
Not necessarily, that you need one shows your lack of confidence in our democracy.
That sounds like nonsense to me, no different to people dismissing complaints about Brexit/Sindy whatever as just 'doing down' the country, avoiding a need to engage with any point by traducing the person raising it
Express concerns about our democratic institutions or judicial accountability? You're just not confident in our democracy!
Democracy needs careful tending to remain effective and fair to all, it isn't something we just leave to itself and never focus on what is happening or coming out of a parliament.
I'm instinctively against judges and lawyers in essence determining major questions rather than the legislature - though that is not as common as people think it is it does happen - or creeping general principles far beyond what they were intended to cover, but I am also deeply suspicious of governments seeking to restrict or control things more, or trying to gather together and summarise key principles and rights in some new form, because I don't trust their competence to identify or address specific needs, or trust the motivation of some of them, which is less about democracy than getting mad when things don't go their way.
We know that such ill motivation drives some of the people pushing major changes, because they usually come up with something on the fly while spitting with rage about some legal case loss and the like, emotionally wanting to punish those that defied them.
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 we're all more authoritarian than we'd like to admit. Might (in the form of political dominance) makes right is a very common opinion, and as we've seen people in established democracies are happy to admit to pollsters many of them would like a strongman leader. And even leaders who don't trend that way often end up enacting things which are, since they get frustrated at what it takes to get things done otherwise.
The experience of being a parent can encourage the tyrant in all of us. And then it is very hard to let go.
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.
I'm sure that is true, but in wars troops called up are presumably always getting less training that they would under ideal conditions - surely there is a point at which armed forces are rushing deployment but still getting some benefit from doing so? I imagine for piloting that's still quite a bit of training, given the nature of the role.
As a comparison, it's notable that even the Starstreak G2A missiles have taken 4 weeks from first being mooted to actually be in effective use in Ukr.
They were being "considered for Ukr" around March 4-5. and we had a first convincing report of one shooting down a helicopter in the last 48 hours.
Personally, I'd suggest that conversations were likely started before that first date.
Normal training for those involves hundreds of simulation runs, if reports are correct.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
Ah, the (relative) joys of poor leadership at play I suppose.
Problem being there are bound to be people in Russia who do know how to focus on the strengths and will be (or are) going to be found eventually.
They'll be the ones capable of independent thinking. Putin has already either dismissed them, or imprisoned them, or poisoned them.
Serdyukov was got rid of for upsetting the thieves, by clamping down on corruption - such as missing equipment, fake/poor quality equipment, missing/unusable ammunition stocks....
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.
But an Oxbridge 1st, I think? You surely need a big big brain for that. Maybe he just has a great memory. That gets you a long way with certain subjects in academic life.
Being a co author of Brittannia Unchained seems to be a good vouchsafe for doing well in the modern ‘Conservative’ party, evidently the intellectual beating heart of its current manifestation. Don’t know if I can bring myself to read it, but it might be a good guide to what it’s all about.
Thanks - I'll psyche up and check it out.
The tldr; version is that Britain is the greatest country in the world, except for all the people who live there who are lazy bastards. Everything will be fixed by more Capitalism.
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 we're all more authoritarian than we'd like to admit. Might (in the form of political dominance) makes right is a very common opinion, and as we've seen people in established democracies are happy to admit to pollsters many of them would like a strongman leader. And even leaders who don't trend that way often end up enacting things which are, since they get frustrated at what it takes to get things done otherwise.
The experience of being a parent can encourage the tyrant in all of us. And then it is very hard to let go.
The solution is obvious - we have eunuchs run our governments.
Wait, I'm being silly - with adoption and the like eunuchs can be parents too, so that won't help.
'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.
‘What are these novels of which you speak? Anyway, have you seen the latest episode of Get Your Love Junk out in Sexy Metropolis? It’s Gucci, bruh.’
Never Let Me Go obviously. But it's the ones that were met with initial bewilderment, The Unconsoled, The Buried Giant and to an extent his most recent, Klara and the Sun that will really stand the test of time. These are extraordinarily original novels about what it is to be human, the nature of love, of memory.
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.
The argument alluded to by @FrankBooth, as I understand it - I haven't watched Lord Sumption's talk yet - is that lawyers' judgments should never take precedence over parliaments' decisions. Therefore Parliament's power is unlimited. In practice the Executive would only be constrained to the extent it is unable to control Parliament. In an ideal world it doesn't make a difference whether you have a Human Rights Act or not because Parliament meticulously avoids impacting anyone's human rights. Unfortunately we live in a world that is not ideal, hence the tensions.
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 we're all more authoritarian than we'd like to admit. Might (in the form of political dominance) makes right is a very common opinion, and as we've seen people in established democracies are happy to admit to pollsters many of them would like a strongman leader. And even leaders who don't trend that way often end up enacting things which are, since they get frustrated at what it takes to get things done otherwise.
The experience of being a parent can encourage the tyrant in all of us. And then it is very hard to let go.
The solution is obvious - we have eunuchs run our governments.
Wait, I'm being silly - with adoption and the like eunuchs can be parents too, so that won't help.
I don’t believe the Ottoman Empire was noted for good governance
On the subject of military help to Ukraine, there is an incomplete list on Wikipedia, but extracting from it just the helmets:
Austria: 10,000 Finland: 2,000 Germany: 23,000 Netherlands 3,000 New Zealand 473 Norway: 5,000 Poland 42,000 Romania 2,000 Sweden, 5,000 UK 84,000 US 25,000
Total: 201,473 Helmets
There are also a number of nations who have given, ether 'protective equipment' or 'non-lethal military equipment' both of which I assume include Helmets.
Wikipedia is great for a quick and dirty look at things, but I wonder does anybody know if there is a better site with the lists/breakdown of what has been supplied?
'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..
It's hard to separate this from the mathematical effect of it becoming increasingly hard to set new records without some change in the mean, as the number of events increase.
For example, every year in the first ten years of cinema was one of the top ten years of cinema, at the time, because there were not more than ten years of cinema to compare them to. Now each year of cinema has more than a hundred previous years of cinema to compare to, and so it becomes that much more unlikely that each year will be in the top ten, even if the overall quality of film-making is the same.
Consider how much larger the established corpus is for literature and music?
This suggests that if you want to find contemporary giants of culture you would do best to look at new forms of culture - such as computer games, perhaps. But you would need to accept that they qualified as culture in the same way as literature, music, etc.
The issue of human rights tends to go round and round in circles like the debate between free will and determination. There is no conceivable solution that could actually "solve" the problem, only a succession of local compromises that don't stand up to logical analysis. For example, the convicted criminal who avoids deportation because of their right to family life, as opposed to the right of society at large to expel potential felons wherever possible. Such cases are probably quite rare and don't greatly detract from the common good, but they do expose the problem of having one set of laws in conflict with another because our legislators decided to leave the tough decisions to the judiciary while reserving the 'right' to complain about judicial activism forever after.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
I used to call this the Gamelin Quandary.... The explanation for the performance of French Army in 1940 is either that
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask. - The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
There is a really interesting question as to what they could have done differently with the men and materiel they actually had, in terms of fighting an offensive war in February in Ukraine?
To start with, the Russian command seems to have not understood the capabilities of... the Russian military.
Or did they just underestimate the impact of nlaws, Turkish drones, and the extent to which the population at large would resist.
Had they driven to Kiev in 2 days and installed a new government it would have seemed like a dramatic coup. Everything else unwinds from those basic failures.
(By which I mean a lunatic has told them to do an impossible thing. And the Russian command has come up with the only possible plan that could work and it is an immediate succeed/fail thing. After that it is about drawing out the failure in the hope that some opportunity emerges.)
On the subject of military help to Ukraine, there is an incomplete list on Wikipedia, but extracting from it just the helmets:
Austria: 10,000 Finland: 2,000 Germany: 23,000 Netherlands 3,000 New Zealand 473 Norway: 5,000 Poland 42,000 Romania 2,000 Sweden, 5,000 UK 84,000 US 25,000
Total: 201,473 Helmets
There are also a number of nations who have given, ether 'protective equipment' or 'non-lethal military equipment' both of which I assume include Helmets.
Wikipedia is great for a quick and dirty look at things, but I wonder does anybody know if there is a better site with the lists/breakdown of what has been supplied?
Why 473 from New Zealand? Is that just the ones they had in a cupboard somewhere?
The issue of human rights tends to go round and round in circles like the debate between free will and determination. There is no conceivable solution that could actually "solve" the problem, only a succession of local compromises that don't stand up to logical analysis. For example, the convicted criminal who avoids deportation because of their right to family life, as opposed to the right of society at large to expel potential felons wherever possible. Such cases are probably quite rare and don't greatly detract from the common good, but they do expose the problem of having one set of laws in conflict with another because our legislators decided to leave the tough decisions to the judiciary while reserving the 'right' to complain about judicial activism forever after.
I think the “right to family life” is relatively easy to solve - you freeze it at the time the offence is alleged to have occurred / asylum is claimed, whatever.
Is issue that frustrates is that during the period of judicial assessment the claimant/defendant accrues additional rights that they did not otherwise have
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
As I said, I agree with you that this is a matter for all of us. Law and what it means is something which ought to be understood and debated by all of us. You may have noticed that I write quite a lot about legal cases and proposed laws precisely in order - in my very small way - to widen the debate to non-lawyers.
But I'd like to understand - genuinely - what precisely you mean when you say that the HRA's scope has been widened "into areas it was never intended for".
What areas was it intended for? What was it not intended for? Where was this latter statement said? And how has it been widened?
In the case of Nadia Eweida the ECtHR ruled that it was a breach of her right to religious freedom that her employers, BA, said that she was not to wear a cross at work.
In the case of Abu Quatada the UK were initially stopped from extradicting him to Jordon because that country may, in accordance with their law, use evidence that may have been gained under torture elsewhere.
In the Bamber case the ECtHR said that a whole life sentence for a multiple murderer was contrary to article 3 and amounted to torture.
And of course there is the prisoners votes issue.
You can make arguments in each case whether this was right or wrong. In the Abu Quatada case the government got around it by negotiating a treaty with Jordan that gave him a fairer trial. But these types of cases do annoy people. They are not what the principles were for, they are not express in the text and they do not give governments what the ECJ would call a margin of appreciation in how the principle is to be applied.
The right to freedom of religion was very expressly in the ECHR right from the very start. So how can you say that it was never intended.
The issue re Abu Qatada was not that the right not to be tortured was a later invention. It was not. But rather that it extended to countries which had not signed up to the ECHR. That does raise the interesting question about whether we believe that human rights are universal in principle (even if not followed) or only a Western construct suitable for Western countries only. Those who objected to the Qatada decision are, it seems to me, implicitly accepting the latter view. And are therefore saying that while it is not ok for me or you to torture someone, it's all right to send a person to somewhere else where they are not so squeamish - essentially outsourcing our inner devil to someone else.
A sort of globalisation of sin.
It is a bit like us patting ourselves on the back for not having slavery in England (the Somerset case) while ignoring the fact that we were benefiting from slavery outside these shores.
I am not aware of the Bamber case. Isn't he still in prison?
You raise some valid points but the margin of appreciation issue is much more likely to be developed in a way which fits with English legal principles when it is done by English courts, especially as recent Supreme Court cases have shown (see, for instance, the Elan-Cane case - my commentary on it is here: https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/perception-and-reality-7cbe78a2b679) than if it is left to the ECHR.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 2h French presidential election suddenly erupts into a contest as 2 polls this week show Macron’s lead over Le Pen in 2nd round presidential run-off (April 24) narrow to 53/47. Macron still likely to be re-elected. But no longer the walk in the park he assumed.
Nah, he's just attention-seeking, as pundits do. In the last dozen polls there is exactly one showing Macron at less than 53.3%, and the spread is entirely consistent with 54-46 plus a little random variation. In fact, what's amazing about the polls is how stable they've been over the last 6 months - they show the lead narrowing from 56-44 to 54-46, meh.
Of course, anything is always possible, but it's untrue to say that the polls have shown a sudden narrowing.
Neil is after all the genius that stated Merkel not being able to immediately form a coalition in 2017 was the worst political crisis to hit Germany since the 1940s.
A bit like Raab.
Brillio is sharp, especially when he wants to be. But he so much wants to believe that continental Europe is greatly inferior to the Anglosphere that parts of his brain have turned to mush to protect his cherished beliefs.
I’m beginning to think calling the old media “lame stream” rather than “main stream” is a dirty word on here. 🤔
I’m not a trump fan, I think the rest of you ought to rethink this one. CNN banging on about “Moscow video tapes” at Trumps first presidential presser was bang out of order, it was just rumour not news, that’s when trump first used it against them.
Firstly it’s where the ownership and staff has proclivities, using what power they have to crush idea’s they don’t like. Soon as the next GE is called after the locals in May, look how the papers will have Starmer in the proverbial lightbulb. Next consider how people came out of offices for the evening paper for Ashes scorecard from Australia, that’s now beamed live, the world has changed, old mainstream media don’t do news any more, they do “old”. And, more subtly, look how over the last fifty years the UK printed press has dropped in quality, the times telegraph noticeably not as good as when I was young - and I’m still young! Solid Conservative commentary now replaced by right wing populist ideology, not just subtly different, in many ways unConservative.
I get my news and commentary from PB. Anywhere better?
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 we're all more authoritarian than we'd like to admit. Might (in the form of political dominance) makes right is a very common opinion, and as we've seen people in established democracies are happy to admit to pollsters many of them would like a strongman leader. And even leaders who don't trend that way often end up enacting things which are, since they get frustrated at what it takes to get things done otherwise.
The experience of being a parent can encourage the tyrant in all of us. And then it is very hard to let go.
The solution is obvious - we have eunuchs run our governments.
Wait, I'm being silly - with adoption and the like eunuchs can be parents too, so that won't help.
I don’t believe the Ottoman Empire was noted for good governance
Hey, it really lasted though.
You're probably going to dismiss my next suggestion which was to recruit our soldiers and civil service by taking child slaves from our outlying regions.
Though Ottoman practice might also have prevented Prince Andrew.
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.
It's also quite possible there are 50 Ukrainian pilots somewhere in western Europe/USA currently undertaking that F15 training....
Or 50 NATO pilots being given fake id and learning to speak Ukrainian.
There will be books written on what happened in the Ukrainian military between 2014 and 2022. The transformation of the Ukrainian military has been spectacular and seems to be both broad and deep. It can't just be foreign training, though that probably helped. Someone (or rather some group) designed and built a Revolution In Military Affairs for Ukraine.
Entire academic careers are going to be built on what happened to the Russian military in 2022. They appear to have made the confounding choice to fight in a manner that exaggerates their weaknesses and neglects their strengths.
I used to call this the Gamelin Quandary.... The explanation for the performance of French Army in 1940 is either that
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask. - The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
There is a really interesting question as to what they could have done differently with the men and materiel they actually had, in terms of fighting an offensive war in February in Ukraine?
To start with, the Russian command seems to have not understood the capabilities of... the Russian military.
Or did they just underestimate the impact of nlaws, Turkish drones, and the extent to which the population at large would resist.
Had they driven to Kiev in 2 days and installed a new government it would have seemed like a dramatic coup. Everything else unwinds from those basic failures.
The initial attempt at a coup de main broke down when they couldn't reach the paratroops who'd taken various advanced position, by helicopter. It seems to have been a combination of the Russian forces being unable to road march at any speed and the Ukrainian defenders blowing bridges and mounting delaying actions that stopped this.
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
As I said, I agree with you that this is a matter for all of us. Law and what it means is something which ought to be understood and debated by all of us. You may have noticed that I write quite a lot about legal cases and proposed laws precisely in order - in my very small way - to widen the debate to non-lawyers.
But I'd like to understand - genuinely - what precisely you mean when you say that the HRA's scope has been widened "into areas it was never intended for".
What areas was it intended for? What was it not intended for? Where was this latter statement said? And how has it been widened?
The judgement on votes for prisoners (which the government duly ignored) was my major fault with the ECHR. Franchise is a political decision, the courts shouldn't be getting involved with widening the franchise and the lawyers and activist judges pushed the ECHR into expanding the franchise to prisoners, which was and still is a settled political argument in the UK.
I'd also contend that article 8, for a while, became very broad because activist judges and lawyers almost conspired to override the government of the day wherever possible (and this isn't a party political point, Labour struggled with this phenomenon as much as the Tories).
The issue I have is that I can't stand moralising from the legal profession when they/you are part of the problem along with the politicians and we, the voters, are just caught in the middle and given no consideration.
I think the prisoners judgement has been wilfully misconstrued to damage the credibility of the ECHR.
My understanding is that the ruling was that prisoners as a category of people should not be denied the vote on the basis of being imprisoned, but that if the vote was to be taken away from someone as part of their punishment then this should be done in the same way as other rights are removed from people convicted of crimes - by a judge, following sentencing guidelines, and open to appeal.
So my understanding was that you could still remove the right to vote from everyone convicted of imprisonment, for the term of their imprisonment, provided that was the decision of the trial judge following conviction.
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 also didn't suggest that I support the government's approach. Again, my wider point is that something which affects us all shouldn't simply be left to lawyers and activist judges who continue to widen the scope of the HRA into areas it was never intended for.
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
You need something seperate and independent of parliament to protect certain fundamentals, though, don't you? I'd feel less safe without that.
Not necessarily, that you need one shows your lack of confidence in our democracy.
On the subject of military help to Ukraine, there is an incomplete list on Wikipedia, but extracting from it just the helmets:
Austria: 10,000 Finland: 2,000 Germany: 23,000 Netherlands 3,000 New Zealand 473 Norway: 5,000 Poland 42,000 Romania 2,000 Sweden, 5,000 UK 84,000 US 25,000
Total: 201,473 Helmets
There are also a number of nations who have given, ether 'protective equipment' or 'non-lethal military equipment' both of which I assume include Helmets.
Wikipedia is great for a quick and dirty look at things, but I wonder does anybody know if there is a better site with the lists/breakdown of what has been supplied?
Why 473 from New Zealand? Is that just the ones they had in a cupboard somewhere?
I don't know exactly, it might be some they have left over after a round of defence cuts, reduced the number of solders? or the number that can fit on a fit on a plain. Link to the aftical:
It might also be that in most cases the nations that are giving modest amounts have chosen to not disclose the total, so it does not look small, and NZ was an exception to this rule.
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.
It's also quite possible there are 50 Ukrainian pilots somewhere in western Europe/USA currently undertaking that F15 training....
Or 50 NATO pilots being given fake id and learning to speak Ukrainian.
"What great news, a new pilot brigade ready to go. What's you're name, airman?" "Er...Volodymyr?" "I see. And your colleague?" "Me also Volodymyr. Slava Ukraini?"
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.
It's also quite possible there are 50 Ukrainian pilots somewhere in western Europe/USA currently undertaking that F15 training....
Or 50 NATO pilots being given fake id and learning to speak Ukrainian.
The RAF can't do that. They would betray themselves in 2 minutes by demanding 5 star hotels.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
I believe that many lived in fear of a slave revolt. That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
There isn't a violin small enough to play for slave owners killed in slave revolts.
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.
In my experience, people whose starting point is that they want to do what they damn well please rarely add that qualification. Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
Mm. Just been reading an article about slavery and rural Scotland - it demonstrated how one family's wealth was converted, via the compensation to slaveowners (but, as TUD reminded us the other day, not to the poor people enslaved), into fungible capital that was used to help set up a major railway company inter aliis. I hadn't grasped the importance of the compensation scheme in, effectively, generating liquid capital for reinvestment elsewhere.
Comments
My view is that the lawyers and politicians are about as bad as each other. Moralising from the legal profession falls on deaf ears for this particular voter.
Nukes apart, Russia is no longer a first rank military power. They can kill those who are virtually defenceless in the third world but if they take on a country with a modern army they are in serious trouble.
I did have a horrible reaction to the Moderna 3rd shot vaccine, though, from which I am still recovering (whole body weeping rash, which lasted 6 weeks, and my left arm muscles are still painful and weak) so it is swings and roundabouts. I'd rather that than my 2 friends who were on mech ventilation.
Ukraine's success so far seems to be based on planning, maneuver, tactical doctrine (including the use of night operations), and individual commanders on the ground.
*The Mig29s in Europe might still need some conversion training, since they have (mostly) been considerably upgraded over the years.
One of the criticisms of the Left I've repeated on here many times is to be too quick to see collective = state, when the Left should also be seeking to encourage collective action independent of the State (which is why I saw Cameron's Big Society as a huge missed opportunity for the British Left).
Those on the authoritarian right clearly see the use of state power as a way to destroy collective action. This was the very basis of fascism in Italy, but you can also see it in, say, the history of strike-breaking in Victorian England.
The genuine libertarian, who wants to see a very small and weak state, is very rare because in practice they find they need to use state power to prevent collectivists from organising and creating limits on their freedom (to exercise their economic power over others).
One of the damaging influences of the experience of Communist governments on left-wing thought has been to establish this idea that to do things collectively means that you must do it through the state. This does not have to be so.
But I'd like to understand - genuinely - what precisely you mean when you say that the HRA's scope has been widened "into areas it was never intended for".
What areas was it intended for? What was it not intended for? Where was this latter statement said? And how has it been widened?
I'm not sure which is worse in my view. I suspect the latter as at least with the former you can have a logical argument as to the pros and cons of state interference, but with the latter they appear unaware they are doing it. On more than one occasion I have referred to a policy of the right as being socialist to bemusement. @HYUFD often puts forward authoritarian views for instance, yet I am sure he would be offended to be called a socialist.
@afneil
·
2h
French presidential election suddenly erupts into a contest as 2 polls this week show Macron’s lead over Le Pen in 2nd round presidential run-off (April 24) narrow to 53/47. Macron still likely to be re-elected. But no longer the walk in the park he assumed.
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1510163420519313409
(Though it is possible that I have met more than my fair share of the stupid academic ones.)
He got the Delta Covid very bad and had a bad reaction to all 3 vaccinations. If he's ever asked to take a 4th it will be the devil's own job to get him to take it.
This war has demonstrated this is not the case. Is that a failure of intelligence (in which case we don't want this stuff in harm's way), or a failure of investment?
1) University
2) SPAD/Union Official
3) MP
Possibly with some brief mini jobs sprinkled throughout.
Plenty of people throughout history have sought to follow O'Rourke's maxim and do what they damn well please. Take eighteenth century plantation owners, for instance. The only consequence they suffered was to become so wealthy that their descendants are still living off the proceeds three centuries later. So it's a rather empty concept of freedom if you ask me.
Like this thread trying to assess the war situation - it's not blatantly optimistic or pessimistic, so it seems plausible, but it could all be nonsense for all I know.
https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1510116709839089664
Although the past week has seen a series of Ukrainian victories, they war is far from over. Ukraine is still in a perilous position, although it is winning it could still lose. The fight for the Donbas will be vicious. Russia is staking everything on success here...
Now comes the truly gut-wrenching part of the war, one in which Putin & the Kremlin will use every tool at their disposal to reverse the defeat in Kyiv & NE Ukraine in a ruthless attempt to salvage some notion of “victory”. Now is the time Ukraine needs the West the most.
- Maurice Gamelin was actually a German general in a latex mask.
- The entire French Army was institutionally incompetent to an insane and completely obvious degree.
In the case of Abu Quatada the UK were initially stopped from extradicting him to Jordon because that country may, in accordance with their law, use evidence that may have been gained under torture elsewhere.
In the Bamber case the ECtHR said that a whole life sentence for a multiple murderer was contrary to article 3 and amounted to torture.
And of course there is the prisoners votes issue.
You can make arguments in each case whether this was right or wrong. In the Abu Quatada case the government got around it by negotiating a treaty with Jordan that gave him a fairer trial. But these types of cases do annoy people. They are not what the principles were for, they are not express in the text and they do not give governments what the ECJ would call a margin of appreciation in how the principle is to be applied.
Problem being there are bound to be people in Russia who do know how to focus on the strengths and will be (or are) going to be found eventually.
If anyone wants to comment or analyse the result of the election of the Captains-General in San Marino, be my guest.
In Hungary, the final Publicus poll has the Fidesz Alliance of Viktor Orban and the opposition tied at 47%. Could we argue the defeat of Viktor Orban would have a profound impact on the politics of central and eastern Europe?
The latest French poll shows Macron on 28.5%, Le Pen on 22%, Melenchon on 15% and both Zemmour on 9.5% and Pecresse on 8.5% continuing to slip back.
We've also got Serbia voting tomorrow but the incumbent Government look set to be returned albeit with a reduced majority.
I'd also contend that article 8, for a while, became very broad because activist judges and lawyers almost conspired to override the government of the day wherever possible (and this isn't a party political point, Labour struggled with this phenomenon as much as the Tories).
The issue I have is that I can't stand moralising from the legal profession when they/you are part of the problem along with the politicians and we, the voters, are just caught in the middle and given no consideration.
That shouldn't be read as a justification of their actions; that fear was a justified fear as a result of their actions.
Of course, anything is always possible, but it's untrue to say that the polls have shown a sudden narrowing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60944677
And yet, for all that, it's still Ukrainian cities that are being pounded to rubble.
If you imagine a future Russia where a new leadership has stamped out corruption in military expenditure and has improved training and morale, then I don't think the quality of its equipment would hold it back. I don't think the Indian Army needs to scrap all its Russian-purchased equipment, for example.
If we consider the implications for a Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan the two aspects that I think China would need to concentrate on are: the ability to establish air superiority, by being able to conduct large complex air operations, and, whether the Taiwanese would be willing to fight to defend their democracy.
FWIW I would rather be in the ECHR. But if courts get over enthusiastic about interpretation then pressure grows either to engage in double think or to bring the matter home to the UK parliament.
Firstly, a disproprotionate level of the damage caused to the Russians, especially in respect of armoured vehicles, has been with western made anti tank weapons.
Secondly, in the third paragraph you are imagining a Russia that is not Russia and which hasn't been since at least the Napoleonic wars. You are imagining it to be a technologically sophisticated modern state. It isn't.
Had they driven to Kiev in 2 days and installed a new government it would have seemed like a dramatic coup. Everything else unwinds from those basic failures.
Express concerns about our democratic institutions or judicial accountability? You're just not confident in our democracy!
Democracy needs careful tending to remain effective and fair to all, it isn't something we just leave to itself and never focus on what is happening or coming out of a parliament.
I'm instinctively against judges and lawyers in essence determining major questions rather than the legislature - though that is not as common as people think it is it does happen - or creeping general principles far beyond what they were intended to cover, but I am also deeply suspicious of governments seeking to restrict or control things more, or trying to gather together and summarise key principles and rights in some new form, because I don't trust their competence to identify or address specific needs, or trust the motivation of some of them, which is less about democracy than getting mad when things don't go their way.
We know that such ill motivation drives some of the people pushing major changes, because they usually come up with something on the fly while spitting with rage about some legal case loss and the like, emotionally wanting to punish those that defied them.
They were being "considered for Ukr" around March 4-5. and we had a first convincing report of one shooting down a helicopter in the last 48 hours.
Personally, I'd suggest that conversations were likely started before that first date.
Normal training for those involves hundreds of simulation runs, if reports are correct.
Serdyukov was got rid of for upsetting the thieves, by clamping down on corruption - such as missing equipment, fake/poor quality equipment, missing/unusable ammunition stocks....
Wait, I'm being silly - with adoption and the like eunuchs can be parents too, so that won't help.
Austria: 10,000
Finland: 2,000
Germany: 23,000
Netherlands 3,000
New Zealand 473
Norway: 5,000
Poland 42,000
Romania 2,000
Sweden, 5,000
UK 84,000
US 25,000
Total: 201,473 Helmets
There are also a number of nations who have given, ether 'protective equipment' or 'non-lethal military equipment' both of which I assume include Helmets.
The link to the Wikipedia page is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
Wikipedia is great for a quick and dirty look at things, but I wonder does anybody know if there is a better site with the lists/breakdown of what has been supplied?
For example, every year in the first ten years of cinema was one of the top ten years of cinema, at the time, because there were not more than ten years of cinema to compare them to. Now each year of cinema has more than a hundred previous years of cinema to compare to, and so it becomes that much more unlikely that each year will be in the top ten, even if the overall quality of film-making is the same.
Consider how much larger the established corpus is for literature and music?
This suggests that if you want to find contemporary giants of culture you would do best to look at new forms of culture - such as computer games, perhaps. But you would need to accept that they qualified as culture in the same way as literature, music, etc.
Is issue that frustrates is that during the period of judicial assessment the claimant/defendant accrues additional rights that they did not otherwise have
The issue re Abu Qatada was not that the right not to be tortured was a later invention. It was not. But rather that it extended to countries which had not signed up to the ECHR. That does raise the interesting question about whether we believe that human rights are universal in principle (even if not followed) or only a Western construct suitable for Western countries only. Those who objected to the Qatada decision are, it seems to me, implicitly accepting the latter view. And are therefore saying that while it is not ok for me or you to torture someone, it's all right to send a person to somewhere else where they are not so squeamish - essentially outsourcing our inner devil to someone else.
A sort of globalisation of sin.
It is a bit like us patting ourselves on the back for not having slavery in England (the Somerset case) while ignoring the fact that we were benefiting from slavery outside these shores.
I am not aware of the Bamber case. Isn't he still in prison?
You raise some valid points but the margin of appreciation issue is much more likely to be developed in a way which fits with English legal principles when it is done by English courts, especially as recent Supreme Court cases have shown (see, for instance, the Elan-Cane case - my commentary on it is here: https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/perception-and-reality-7cbe78a2b679) than if it is left to the ECHR.
Brillio is sharp, especially when he wants to be. But he so much wants to believe that continental Europe is greatly inferior to the Anglosphere that parts of his brain have turned to mush to protect his cherished beliefs.
To be fair, we're all prone to it.
I’m not a trump fan, I think the rest of you ought to rethink this one. CNN banging on about “Moscow video tapes” at Trumps first presidential presser was bang out of order, it was just rumour not news, that’s when trump first used it against them.
Firstly it’s where the ownership and staff has proclivities, using what power they have to crush idea’s they don’t like. Soon as the next GE is called after the locals in May, look how the papers will have Starmer in the proverbial lightbulb. Next consider how people came out of offices for the evening paper for Ashes scorecard from Australia, that’s now beamed live, the world has changed, old mainstream media don’t do news any more, they do “old”. And, more subtly, look how over the last fifty years the UK printed press has dropped in quality, the times telegraph noticeably not as good as when I was young - and I’m still young! Solid Conservative commentary now replaced by right wing populist ideology, not just subtly different, in many ways unConservative.
I get my news and commentary from PB. Anywhere better?
You're probably going to dismiss my next suggestion which was to recruit our soldiers and civil service by taking child slaves from our outlying regions.
Though Ottoman practice might also have prevented Prince Andrew.
My understanding is that the ruling was that prisoners as a category of people should not be denied the vote on the basis of being imprisoned, but that if the vote was to be taken away from someone as part of their punishment then this should be done in the same way as other rights are removed from people convicted of crimes - by a judge, following sentencing guidelines, and open to appeal.
So my understanding was that you could still remove the right to vote from everyone convicted of imprisonment, for the term of their imprisonment, provided that was the decision of the trial judge following conviction.
https://thehill.com/news/campaign/3256969-sarah-palin-announces-run-for-congress/
===
Only a few short years ago she would have been seen as the biggest goofball in the whole place. Not these days...
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/463731/watch-new-zealand-pledges-another-5m-to-support-ukraine-including-military-aid
It might also be that in most cases the nations that are giving modest amounts have chosen to not disclose the total, so it does not look small, and NZ was an exception to this rule.
"Er...Volodymyr?"
"I see. And your colleague?"
"Me also Volodymyr. Slava Ukraini?"