Wednesday - August 13, 2014

a few words from littlejohn

My final post for this evening a good way to say good night.

My favorite columnist, Richard Littlejohn has written what many have been thinking for a long time.

Yes, it is a bit long, but worth the read I think. 
What say you Lyndon?

Democracy? No, Britain’s now a judicial dictatorship - and it’s time for revolution, writes RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

By Richard Littlejohn

First, the good news. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled unexpectedly that British prisoners denied the vote are not entitled to compensation or legal costs.

That should go some way to deterring the steady flow of vexatious cases brought against the Government.

If opportunist lawyers believe there is every chance they won’t get paid, they are less likely to tout for business in Britain’s jails.

Claimants who realise they will not be receiving a fat cheque from the taxpayer, even if they win, may decide that resorting to law is not worth the bother.

The good news ends there, though. The bad news is that the European Court has again asserted its supremacy over national parliaments.

It ruled that MPs were wrong to vote overwhelmingly to prevent prisoners taking part in elections and insisted they must be given the right in future.

This case has been rumbling on for almost a decade, at goodness knows what cost in time and money. It was originally brought by ten men serving sentences in Scottish jails, among them notorious repeat sex offenders.

Had the court ruled that they were entitled to compensation, taxpayers could have been landed with a bill for millions of pounds as thousands more convicts crawled out of the woodwork to lodge similar claims.

The most disturbing aspect, however, is that such matters have to be decided by foreign judges and not by British MPs.

How absurd that the question of whether or not prisoners should get the vote rests on a decision by a supra-national court comprised of judges for whom no one has ever had the chance to vote.

We may kid ourselves that we live in a parliamentary democracy, but the reality is that we are ultimately governed by a judicial dictatorship, accountable to no one, with its power base in Strasbourg.

It’s bad enough when government policy is re-written by unelected jurists from countries such as the former Soviet satellite states, with no distinguished history of respect for genuine human rights.

But increasingly, British judges are flexing their muscles, too. Lord Neuberger, president of Britain’s Supreme Court — a typical Blairite, European-style institution — has admitted that the Human Rights Act has given the courts a blank cheque to make up laws as they go along.

Judges are using the excuse of ‘human rights’ to establish new rules on everything from privacy and sham marriages to assisted suicide. They are handing down the most perverse interpretations of statute, which often fly in the face of justice and decency.

Yet far from expressing reservations about this unaccountable judiciary and its implications for democracy, Neuberger declares that it’s a good thing — because it keeps governments in check.

That stands the entire principle of British justice on its head. Our system was founded upon MPs making the laws, and judges interpreting and enforcing them.

All of this stems from the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law — which Tony Blair proclaimed as his greatest achievement in politics.

Blair’s wife, Cherie, and her Left-wing activist lawyer friends even set up a new chambers, Matrix, to cash in on the bonanza of cases generated by the new legislation.

This was only to be expected. New Labour was a party of lawyers, for lawyers. If anyone is concerned about the predominance of public school boys at the top of British politics, they should look at the shallow, self-selecting gene pool from which our judges and top barristers are drawn.

Those of us who warned at the time that the Human Rights Act was a charter for criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants, as well as a goldmine for the legal profession, were howled down as enemies of justice.

The judiciary regularly displays undisguised contempt for public opinion, for the people who pay their wages.

Another judge, Peter King, said recently: ‘There seems to be an expectation that the public interest trumps everything else. It seems to me that is not necessarily the case.’

He was justifying his decision to grant a Bangladeshi double murderer the right to move to England, where he has relatives, under the section of the Act that guarantees ‘the right to a family life’.

As if we haven’t got enough criminals of our own. We used to deport convicts. Now we are importing them — with the full blessing of the courts.

The Home Office will have to issue this Bangladeshi citizen with a visa, despite initially refusing permission on the grounds that his presence was ‘not in the public interest’.

If this ruling stands, what’s to stop criminals from all over the world deciding to make their home in this country? And what’s the betting he goes straight on to benefits?

To add insult to injury, we are not allowed to know the circumstances of his crimes or even his identity. He has been given lifelong anonymity, so he could move in next door to any of us and we would be none the wiser.

The ‘right to a family life’ provision is the most flexible and abused section of the Human Rights Act. It has deprived us of the ability to kick out murderers, terrorists, even war criminals wanted for genocide.

The number of foreign criminals who avoided deportation rose 50 per cent last year. They include murderers, rapists, robbers and paedophiles.

The perverse definition of ‘family life’ has been extended to men with a couple of illegitimate children they never see and to another illegal immigrant whose ownership of a pet cat was cited as evidence of his right to remain here.

A Bangladeshi student who was able to demonstrate he played for a village cricket team was ruled to have the right to a ‘private’ life in Britain and so he, too, could stay.

British judges appear to be more creative and indulgent than their Continental counterparts, who seem to have no compunction in deporting undesirable aliens.

Yet the right to ‘family’ life is not unqualified. The Act itself makes exceptions for public safety, crime prevention and national security; yet these are rarely invoked.

Even when they are, the courts still throw obstacles in the way of natural justice. Just look at the struggle to deport Abu Qatada. Our bored prisoners and their greedy lawyers have also been adept at exploiting their ‘human rights’.

A Jamaican convict avoided deportation by claiming after she was jailed that she had become a lesbian and would therefore face persecution if she was sent home.

Others have won the ‘right’ to heroin and gay porn behind bars. It’s amazing the number of jailbirds who claim to be pagans — and even transsexuals — so they are ‘entitled’ to special privileges.

One prisoner in Birmingham announced she had become a Red Indian and should be supplied with the appropriate cultural artefacts, including a drum and peace pipe — and, presumably, a tomahawk to protect herself in the shower block.

All this madness could explain why Home Secretary Theresa May has finally come round to demanding that we withdraw from the European Convention. Not before time.

It also might explain why the European court, while upholding prisoners’ right to vote, seemed to soft-pedal on compensation and legal costs.

Perhaps they think that throwing Britain a couple of bones might persuade us to stay on board the ludicrous European legal gravy train.

Most Tories want to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. Why? We managed perfectly well for centuries. Britain had one of the most humane and effective legal systems on Earth, evolved from Magna Carta. Our common law served us well.

Britain has no need of laws made by unelected activist judges, based upon a foreign and wholly alien concept of justice and ‘human rights’.

That’s why we should scrap the Act and withdraw from the Convention.

Labour and the Lib Dems would never support that because it would mean Britain having to leave the EU. Acceptance of the Human Rights Convention is a rigid condition of EU membership.

But quitting the EU and the European Court would be the ideal outcome for Britain.

David Cameron’s best attempts at securing meaningful ‘reform’ of either are doomed to failure.

The only way is out: a clean break and a fresh start as an independent sovereign nation with its own legal system.

Come the referendum in 2017, we could even be magnanimous and give the prisoners a vote.

source

Posted by peiper     on 08/13/2014 at 02:21 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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