Prisoners Votes Case: It's just not cricket...

Prisoners Votes Case: It's just not cricket...


Long Grass with Butterflies 1890, Vincent van Gogh

A picture paints a thousand words...

Idiom: Kick something into the long grass

Idiom Definitions for 'Kick something into the long grass'

If an issue or problem is kicked into the long grass, it is pushed aside and hidden in the hope that it will be forgotten or ignored.

Keeping to the same theme...

"The Long Grass is the area of the cricket field where things get lost. It doesn't mean they disappear, its just sometimes people give up looking. And if experience shows anything, if you don't try for fear that someone will tell you you're wrong, then you will never have the satisfaction of being getting something right. Sometimes people seem to be looking in the wrong place".



But ministers will discover the issue cannot be left in the long grass.

And another example...

"The government is desperately trying to kick this issue into the long grass because it's more worried about the politics of giving prisoners the vote before the next general election."

Is the day of reckoning 1 June 2010 at the Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers human rights meeting?

Unlock and Democracy...

In 2004 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK’s blanket ban on prisoners’ voting is unlawful. Since then the government has failed to implement the ruling by dragging its heels through a protracted two-stage consultation process making it clear that it does not support the notion of prisoners being enfranchised. It is apparent that, as with any issue whereby prisoners are perceived to benefit from government intervention, the government wishes to avoid enacting the necessary legislation which would be attributable to its tenure. Rather it would prefer to kick the matter into the long grass and escape the negative media attention it fears would reduce its chances of re-election.

Cricket at Lords...

Have the Government taken into account that their timid prevarication will lead to costs to the taxpayer if prisoners take cases to Strasbourg for this gross violation of a binding judgment and then we have to pay the costs of all these legal proceedings? Was that taken into account when the Government decided to kick this into the long grass?