Justice is impossible if we cannot trust police forces to tell the truth
From Blair Peach to Ian Tomlinson, there is only one remedy for police officers found to have made false statements: sack them
By George Monbiot
'From the information I had, that is what I believed happened to me." So Simon Harwood, the police officer who pushed Ian Tomlinson to the ground at the G20 protests two years ago, told the inquest into his death. The information Harwood had led him to believe two weeks after the event that he fell to the floor, lost his baton, received a blow to the head and was involved in violent and dangerous confrontations. Last week he admitted that, though he had made these claims in a signed statement, none of it happened. So what was this information? Who gave it to him? Had he been brainwashed?
We have yet to hear John Yates's explanations for the ever-widening gulf between what he told parliament and what appears to have happened in the News of the World phone-hacking case, but they will doubtless be just as persuasive. Yates is acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police. He told a parliamentary committee that there was no evidence that MPs' phones had been hacked; that the Crown Prosecution Service had given the police "unequivocal" advice that the paper had committed an offence only if it picked up messages before its victims did; that the police had contacted everyone targeted by the paper; and that the police had ensured that the phone companies had warned all the suspected victims. It appears none of this is true.
A Scotland Yard briefing paper shows that "a vast number" of people had their phones hacked, including at least eight MPs. The director of public prosecutions has testified that the claims Yates made about CPS advice are false. There are plenty of victims who have not been contacted by the police, and the phone companies say that the police didn't ask them to contact their customers.
Surprised? You shouldn't be. It is hard to think of a case of alleged police misconduct which has not been surrounded by police misstatements. Harwood's claims are the latest of the untrue stories issued by the Met about the events surrounding Tomlinson's death. They claimed, for example, that officers tried to resuscitate him and called an ambulance while a screaming mob pelted them with bottles. In reality, demonstrators helped him and called an ambulance, and there was no hail of bottles.
After Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by the Met, the then commissioner (the head of the force), Sir Ian Blair, claimed that De Menezes "was challenged and refused to obey police instructions". A statement by the police claimed that his clothing and behaviour gave grounds for suspicion. An account that De Menezes' relatives believe originated with the police, and found its way into most newspapers, suggests that he was wearing a heavy jacket, that he fled from the officers when he was challenged and that he vaulted over the ticket barrier into Stockwell underground station. None of this is true. Similarly misleading stories surrounded the killings of Kevin Gately, Blair Peach, Richard O'Brien, Shiji Lapite, Roger Sylvester, Harry Stanley, Mikey Powell and other people killed by officers. The problem appears systemic and widespread: we can't trust the police to tell the truth.
The issue is not confined to killings. Here's a story that has received less attention, but involves a chain of alleged falsehoods that almost deprived an innocent man of his liberty.
In August 2008 Michael Doherty, who lives in Hillingdon, discovered a long series of messages exchanged by his 13-year-old daughter with someone who appeared as if he might be grooming her. The messages were sexually explicit. At one point the person proposed staging a kidnap and whisking her away. Doherty went to the police. He presented them with an 86-page dossier. When he wasn't satisfied with the action being taken, he phoned Hillingdon police station five times to try to speak to a senior officer to complain, and to find out why, in his view, the investigation seemed to have stalled. Then a series of remarkable things happened.
Two plainclothes officers arrived at Doherty's house at seven in the morning, when he was feeding his baby, to arrest him. Among other charges, the police claimed that he had been harassing the commander's secretary. She had produced a witness statement in which, she said, he had phoned 10 times in two days, that he was "raging", "abusive", "rude and aggressive". Doherty offered to get dressed and then present himself at the station – but the officers, after threatening to smash down the door, handcuffed him and dragged him out of the house in his dressing gown.
At the same time the police dropped the grooming investigation. They hadn't looked at his daughter's computer. A note by a detective inspector at the Hillingdon station later justified this decision by maintaining that "there is no evidence of a crime capable of proof". Doherty believes that this conclusion could not be supported without examining the computer; the police maintain that they have established that the correspondent was only 15, had met Doherty's daughter, and was who he said he was.
Doherty had proof that the calls he had made were not rude, abusive, raging or aggressive: he had recorded them. I have listened to the recordings: he remains patient and polite – remarkably controlled for someone faced with alleged police indifference to what was happening to his daughter. The police failed to pass these recordings to the Crown Prosecution Service, so off to court he went. There, though she had signed a legal witness statement, the secretary admitted that her recollection of the calls was hazy, and he was acquitted; but had he not recorded them, and meticulously documented everything else that happened, he might have been convicted.
Having failed to interest the crown prosecutors, Michael Doherty is about to launch a private prosecution for alleged perjury. It's the last hope he has of holding anyone to account.
Justice is impossible if we cannot trust police forces to tell the truth. The remedy I'm about to propose should not be difficult for any government to adopt. It offers, I think, the only chance we have of addressing what seems to be an endemic problem: anyone who works for the police and is found to have made false statements – to the prosecution, the defence, the courts, parliament, public inquiries or the media – should be sacked. No excuses, no mitigation, no delays. It sounds harsh; it's not nearly as harsh as a system in which the police malign both the living and the dead, and use the law against innocent people in order to protect themselves.
• A fully referenced version of this article can be found at George Monbiot's website
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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Thursday, October 13, 2011
Do the Gay Twins Fox and Werritty ever dress differently?
Do the Gay Twins Fox and Werritty ever dress differently?
I suspect that Mr and Mrs Fox-Werritty got married in church rather than a civil ceremony, and that the Fox Jesme Baird marriage is bogus and a sham and is just a marriage of convenience.
I suspect that Mr and Mrs Fox-Werritty got married in church rather than a civil ceremony, and that the Fox Jesme Baird marriage is bogus and a sham and is just a marriage of convenience.
Sara Payne: Shut the fuck up!
Sara Payne: Shut the fuck up!
Sara Payne in Victims' Commissioner bid
Whilst I feel sympathy for Sara Payne in relation to Sarah Payne being raped and murdered, she is an angry, bitter and twisted woman and not fit for purpose as a Victim's Champion. For example, when in office she ignored the plight of prisoners who are victims of State abuse in being denied their human right to the vote.
Sara Payne in Victims' Commissioner bid
Whilst I feel sympathy for Sara Payne in relation to Sarah Payne being raped and murdered, she is an angry, bitter and twisted woman and not fit for purpose as a Victim's Champion. For example, when in office she ignored the plight of prisoners who are victims of State abuse in being denied their human right to the vote.
Why have a European Court of Human Rights? – Dr Ed Bates
Why have a European Court of Human Rights? – Dr Ed Bates
Comment:
As I did not attend the Inner Temple hall event I have no idea whether Laws LJ, declared his conflict of interest. I suspect he did not. What my case exposes is not only corrupt politicians but also corrupt judges. I refer to the Chester case at the CofA covered in this post and added my criticisms in the comments section http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2010/12/17/court-of-appeal-rejects-prisoner-vote-plea-government-announces-plans/.
Ed Bates asks a silly question which deserves a silly response, but I won’t lower myself to his level. The role and purpose of the ECtHR is clearly explained on the Court’s website and also explained on the Council of Europe’s website. I suggest that Ed Bates asks his easy, wrong question because it is easier than him asking the tough, right question. That is, ‘Why hasn’t the UK fully complied with Hirst No2?’. The fact that the UK is dodging the question and the fact that the media are not asking the question should be ground enough for Ed Bates to ask the question and not let up until he gets an answer. This week I commenced proceedings in Hull County Court in an attempt to force the UK to answer the question.
Ed Bates is wrong to claim that there is disagreement over whether convicted prisoners should be able to vote. The disagreement was settled in my favour in Hirst No2. The disagreement is whether the UK should fully comply with the judgment.
Of course there are limitations upon the Court’s authority and jurisdiction. However, the UK has signed up to accept both the Court’s authority and jurisdiction. The UK signed up to the Court’s Grand Chamber judgment is final. The UK must accept this position or withdraw from the Council of Europe and the EU. Hirst No2 will remain even if the UK withdraws or is expelled. Ed Bates suggestion is wrong, what lies at the heart of this is my desire to reform Parliament. There is raging a battle of wills, my will for Parliamentary reform and Parliament’s lack of will for reform:
“There are supposed to be ‘no votes in prisons’ and no political prizes for doing something about them. Any politician brave enough either to tell the truth about them or grasp the nettle and try to change the way they are run is likely, so it is believed, to run into difficulties with public opinion” (Vivien Stern, Bricks of Shame – Britain’s Prisons, Pelican 1989, p.133).
Ed Bates conveniently ignores that my case is one of the Individual v the State. That is, the Executive, Parliament and Judiciary. Baroness Stern was referring to there being no votes in prisons for MPs. She went on to explain that actually public opinion is not against prison reform. So, the MPs fears are groundless. I turned around Baroness Stern’s quote to fit my Prison Law Inside Out school of thought. That is, ‘Why are there no votes in prison for prisoners?’. I also turned around my life from a law breaker to a law-maker. That is, I reformed. If I can reform then why cannot Parliament and the prison system? MPs and the media keep trying to hide behind public opinion, but the Court excluded public opinion as being a justification to deny convicted prisoners the franchise. Therefore, the 3 arms of the State are the guilty parties in Hirst No2 and they are required to remedy the breach of human rights disclosed in my case. It is not for the losing guilty parties in a case to question the authority and jurisdiction of the Court. If this was the case, the innocent would suffer.
Ed Bates questions whether it was appropriate for the Court to take the stance it did. Of course it was appropriate. Parliament and the domestic courts abdicated responsibility. Parliament did not debate the issue, and the High Court deferred to Parliament. The Court grasped the nettle. Now the UK is complaining about getting stung having been whipped with it!
Ed Bates fails to point out that the motion in the HoC was unlawful.
Ed Bates also fails to point out that the High Court not only abdicated responsibility but that its decision erred in law.
Ed Bates is wrong to suggest that the answer to his question is not within the Convention. Not only is it within the Convention, but it is also within other documents relating to the Council of Europe. Whilst minority opinions maybe interesting reading, what really counts are the majority opinions. In my view, the Court is the Supreme Court of the United States of Europe.
In my view, the UK has failed to take into account the views I hold on the issue. From a Prison Law Inside Out perspective I formed the conclusion that prisoners’ rights would fare better under European law as opposed to English law. Therefore, my case and legal arguments were designed to appeal to those judges more familar with European law. I succeeded. I was conscious of the Treasury Solicitor’s booklet Judge over your shoulder. I employed the same tactic with prison governors during adjudications, my case was not for their benefit but instead for those entrusted with guarding the guards.
When I studied law I rejected the traditional black letter of the law teaching in favour of law in context or ‘living law’, and took in European law. On the other hand, Lord Falconer who read law at Queen’s College Cambridge was not schooled in European law. Therefore, his education was inferior to mine from the “University of Crime”. English law recognises the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, whereas under European law the sovereignty of the people is supreme. Under English law we have a fusion of powers whereas under European law there is the separation of powers. I played on these differences successfully. I embrace Europe whereas the UK tries to be both in and out of Europe at the same time. The UK says one thing in Europe and another thing in the UK. The media and MPs fail to tell the truth to the UK public. There is also a lack of understanding of the European law principles of the margin of appreciation and subsidiarity. Even the Court’s judgments must be read differently because they do not follow the English law judgments with ratios and obiters, rather within them are European law principles.
I look forward to Ed Bates response.
Comment:
As I did not attend the Inner Temple hall event I have no idea whether Laws LJ, declared his conflict of interest. I suspect he did not. What my case exposes is not only corrupt politicians but also corrupt judges. I refer to the Chester case at the CofA covered in this post and added my criticisms in the comments section http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2010/12/17/court-of-appeal-rejects-prisoner-vote-plea-government-announces-plans/.
Ed Bates asks a silly question which deserves a silly response, but I won’t lower myself to his level. The role and purpose of the ECtHR is clearly explained on the Court’s website and also explained on the Council of Europe’s website. I suggest that Ed Bates asks his easy, wrong question because it is easier than him asking the tough, right question. That is, ‘Why hasn’t the UK fully complied with Hirst No2?’. The fact that the UK is dodging the question and the fact that the media are not asking the question should be ground enough for Ed Bates to ask the question and not let up until he gets an answer. This week I commenced proceedings in Hull County Court in an attempt to force the UK to answer the question.
Ed Bates is wrong to claim that there is disagreement over whether convicted prisoners should be able to vote. The disagreement was settled in my favour in Hirst No2. The disagreement is whether the UK should fully comply with the judgment.
Of course there are limitations upon the Court’s authority and jurisdiction. However, the UK has signed up to accept both the Court’s authority and jurisdiction. The UK signed up to the Court’s Grand Chamber judgment is final. The UK must accept this position or withdraw from the Council of Europe and the EU. Hirst No2 will remain even if the UK withdraws or is expelled. Ed Bates suggestion is wrong, what lies at the heart of this is my desire to reform Parliament. There is raging a battle of wills, my will for Parliamentary reform and Parliament’s lack of will for reform:
“There are supposed to be ‘no votes in prisons’ and no political prizes for doing something about them. Any politician brave enough either to tell the truth about them or grasp the nettle and try to change the way they are run is likely, so it is believed, to run into difficulties with public opinion” (Vivien Stern, Bricks of Shame – Britain’s Prisons, Pelican 1989, p.133).
Ed Bates conveniently ignores that my case is one of the Individual v the State. That is, the Executive, Parliament and Judiciary. Baroness Stern was referring to there being no votes in prisons for MPs. She went on to explain that actually public opinion is not against prison reform. So, the MPs fears are groundless. I turned around Baroness Stern’s quote to fit my Prison Law Inside Out school of thought. That is, ‘Why are there no votes in prison for prisoners?’. I also turned around my life from a law breaker to a law-maker. That is, I reformed. If I can reform then why cannot Parliament and the prison system? MPs and the media keep trying to hide behind public opinion, but the Court excluded public opinion as being a justification to deny convicted prisoners the franchise. Therefore, the 3 arms of the State are the guilty parties in Hirst No2 and they are required to remedy the breach of human rights disclosed in my case. It is not for the losing guilty parties in a case to question the authority and jurisdiction of the Court. If this was the case, the innocent would suffer.
Ed Bates questions whether it was appropriate for the Court to take the stance it did. Of course it was appropriate. Parliament and the domestic courts abdicated responsibility. Parliament did not debate the issue, and the High Court deferred to Parliament. The Court grasped the nettle. Now the UK is complaining about getting stung having been whipped with it!
Ed Bates fails to point out that the motion in the HoC was unlawful.
Ed Bates also fails to point out that the High Court not only abdicated responsibility but that its decision erred in law.
Ed Bates is wrong to suggest that the answer to his question is not within the Convention. Not only is it within the Convention, but it is also within other documents relating to the Council of Europe. Whilst minority opinions maybe interesting reading, what really counts are the majority opinions. In my view, the Court is the Supreme Court of the United States of Europe.
In my view, the UK has failed to take into account the views I hold on the issue. From a Prison Law Inside Out perspective I formed the conclusion that prisoners’ rights would fare better under European law as opposed to English law. Therefore, my case and legal arguments were designed to appeal to those judges more familar with European law. I succeeded. I was conscious of the Treasury Solicitor’s booklet Judge over your shoulder. I employed the same tactic with prison governors during adjudications, my case was not for their benefit but instead for those entrusted with guarding the guards.
When I studied law I rejected the traditional black letter of the law teaching in favour of law in context or ‘living law’, and took in European law. On the other hand, Lord Falconer who read law at Queen’s College Cambridge was not schooled in European law. Therefore, his education was inferior to mine from the “University of Crime”. English law recognises the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, whereas under European law the sovereignty of the people is supreme. Under English law we have a fusion of powers whereas under European law there is the separation of powers. I played on these differences successfully. I embrace Europe whereas the UK tries to be both in and out of Europe at the same time. The UK says one thing in Europe and another thing in the UK. The media and MPs fail to tell the truth to the UK public. There is also a lack of understanding of the European law principles of the margin of appreciation and subsidiarity. Even the Court’s judgments must be read differently because they do not follow the English law judgments with ratios and obiters, rather within them are European law principles.
I look forward to Ed Bates response.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Liam Fox and the rent boy and the non violent crime
Liam Fox and the rent boy and the non violent crime
Chris Grayling MP, Dr Fox's former campaign manager in his bid to become Tory leader, confirmed today on Radio 4's Today programme, that Liam Fox is gay. He added, "I thought we had got past the point in politics where we needed to worry about people's private lives".
Meanwhile, Liam Fox has made the false claim “I was a victim of a violent crime". Burglary is not a violent crime unless it is aggrevated burglary. This was not the case here. There was not even a break in because there was no forced entry. It is more likely that it was an inside job. That is, it is more likely that a rent boy or rent boys took advantage of the situation. Either the young boy or young boys called their mates.
It maybe that the "friend" who slept the night in the flat was not connected to the so-called burglary. Mystery surrounds the identity and age of this boy or young man. Liam Fox categorically denies that it was Adam Werritty.
Chris Grayling MP, Dr Fox's former campaign manager in his bid to become Tory leader, confirmed today on Radio 4's Today programme, that Liam Fox is gay. He added, "I thought we had got past the point in politics where we needed to worry about people's private lives".
Meanwhile, Liam Fox has made the false claim “I was a victim of a violent crime". Burglary is not a violent crime unless it is aggrevated burglary. This was not the case here. There was not even a break in because there was no forced entry. It is more likely that it was an inside job. That is, it is more likely that a rent boy or rent boys took advantage of the situation. Either the young boy or young boys called their mates.
It maybe that the "friend" who slept the night in the flat was not connected to the so-called burglary. Mystery surrounds the identity and age of this boy or young man. Liam Fox categorically denies that it was Adam Werritty.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Leave human rights law to the judges
Leave human rights law to the judges
Theresa May's attack on the Human Rights Act is irresponsible, and diminishes our democracy
By Derry Irvine
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 October 2011 22.00 BST
Theresa May criticises the Human Rights Act at the Conservative party conference. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features
Theresa May's unjustified attack on the Human Rights Act at the Conservative conference was deeply irresponsible. The immigration appeal decision in question shows it was her department's failure to follow its own guidance, and not a cat, which ultimately prevented the appellant's deportation. Even more disturbing, but unsurprising, was that when justice minister Ken Clarke robustly defended the judiciary, the prime minister came down on the side of the home secretary. It seems David Cameron is happy to lecture governments abroad on human rights and the rule of law, but disregards them at home.
The deportation of offenders is but the latest focus for the Tory right and the tabloid press in their incoherent attacks on the HRA. It is of a piece with similar attacks when judges have prevented the indiscriminate publication of salacious celebrity gossip, or raised the prospect of prisoners being given the right to vote.
Ironically, the main proponents of the European convention were Conservatives, including Churchill and Macmillan. The convention was substantially the work of British jurists in a tradition going back to the Petition of Right of 1628 and our own Bill of Rights of 1689.
The Human Rights Act 1998 brought the convention rights home; to be enforceable in our own courts, while maintaining the supremacy of parliament.
Conservative MP Jesse Norman and Peter Oborne have written that the HRA is on the political agenda largely due to the tabloids' commercial dependence on stories about celebrities' private lives. They have thus waged a campaign of misinformation against the HRA, especially the right to respect for private and family life under article 8, which May and Cameron have joined with enthusiasm.
The prime minister has accused judges of creating a privacy law, when it should be parliament which decides "how much protection we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press". There are two straightforward answers.
First, the HRA requires judges to balance the right of respect for private and family life against the right to freedom of expression in article 12. However, it is often the rights of innocent third parties, including children, which need to be balanced. There is typically no public interest in disclosure of the peccadilloes of footballers or reality TV contestants. Nonetheless, the weight courts give to freedom of expression is illustrated by the recent refusal of an injunction to Rio Ferdinand.
Second, the government could introduce tomorrow a freedom of expression bill compatible with the convention, if they dared. But it is far easier to berate judges for doing what parliament has instructed, than have the courage to legislate themselves.
The media have gained greatly from the convention and the act: enhanced protection for journalistic sources; a dramatic reduction in libel damages; and the right to report on a wider range of court proceedings. When impartial courts hold the balance between privacy and freedom of expression, the media cannot expect to have it all their own way.
The controversy over votes for prisoners has been another Tory cause celebre. The European court has held that our blanket ban should be reconsidered. As a result of the HRA, this will be done in the proper forum: parliament. The ban has put us out of step with most other states in the Council of Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. It is surprising then that the prime minister should claim he felt physically ill at the prospect of giving a vote to prisoners. All that was held at Strasbourg was that the ban was disproportionate as it applied irrespective of the length of the sentence or the gravity of the offence.
Another ruling which raised his bile was the supreme court's decision on the sex offenders' register. They declared incompatible with the convention statutory provisions that imposed on certain sex offenders lifelong obligations to inform the police of their whereabouts. Such offenders could not even apply to be removed from the register, regardless of rehabilitation. But even if a right to apply were introduced, it would again be for parliament to determine the criteria for success.
The PM told parliament the decision was completely offensive and flew in the face of common sense, while the home secretary questioned its sanity. All the judges were doing was applying the law. Respect for the rule of law underpins our democracy. That respect is not a commodity to be traded for short-term political advantage; when it is, ministers diminish both themselves and our democracy. As Lord Pannick recently commented, there are countries in which the government win all their cases in court, but these are not places in which any of us would wish to live.
Clarke's Ministry of Justice this year announced an independent commission "to investigate the creation of a British bill of rights that incorporates ... all our obligations under the European convention, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties".
These terms of reference indicate that the European convention will continue to be a guaranteed floor, but not a ceiling, for the protection of human rights in Britain. Given that, it is all the more unfortunate that the prime minister and home secretary persist in opportunistic and irresponsible attacks on the HRA and the judges who have been charged by parliament with applying it.
Theresa May's attack on the Human Rights Act is irresponsible, and diminishes our democracy
By Derry Irvine
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 October 2011 22.00 BST
Theresa May's unjustified attack on the Human Rights Act at the Conservative conference was deeply irresponsible. The immigration appeal decision in question shows it was her department's failure to follow its own guidance, and not a cat, which ultimately prevented the appellant's deportation. Even more disturbing, but unsurprising, was that when justice minister Ken Clarke robustly defended the judiciary, the prime minister came down on the side of the home secretary. It seems David Cameron is happy to lecture governments abroad on human rights and the rule of law, but disregards them at home.
The deportation of offenders is but the latest focus for the Tory right and the tabloid press in their incoherent attacks on the HRA. It is of a piece with similar attacks when judges have prevented the indiscriminate publication of salacious celebrity gossip, or raised the prospect of prisoners being given the right to vote.
Ironically, the main proponents of the European convention were Conservatives, including Churchill and Macmillan. The convention was substantially the work of British jurists in a tradition going back to the Petition of Right of 1628 and our own Bill of Rights of 1689.
The Human Rights Act 1998 brought the convention rights home; to be enforceable in our own courts, while maintaining the supremacy of parliament.
Conservative MP Jesse Norman and Peter Oborne have written that the HRA is on the political agenda largely due to the tabloids' commercial dependence on stories about celebrities' private lives. They have thus waged a campaign of misinformation against the HRA, especially the right to respect for private and family life under article 8, which May and Cameron have joined with enthusiasm.
The prime minister has accused judges of creating a privacy law, when it should be parliament which decides "how much protection we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press". There are two straightforward answers.
First, the HRA requires judges to balance the right of respect for private and family life against the right to freedom of expression in article 12. However, it is often the rights of innocent third parties, including children, which need to be balanced. There is typically no public interest in disclosure of the peccadilloes of footballers or reality TV contestants. Nonetheless, the weight courts give to freedom of expression is illustrated by the recent refusal of an injunction to Rio Ferdinand.
Second, the government could introduce tomorrow a freedom of expression bill compatible with the convention, if they dared. But it is far easier to berate judges for doing what parliament has instructed, than have the courage to legislate themselves.
The media have gained greatly from the convention and the act: enhanced protection for journalistic sources; a dramatic reduction in libel damages; and the right to report on a wider range of court proceedings. When impartial courts hold the balance between privacy and freedom of expression, the media cannot expect to have it all their own way.
The controversy over votes for prisoners has been another Tory cause celebre. The European court has held that our blanket ban should be reconsidered. As a result of the HRA, this will be done in the proper forum: parliament. The ban has put us out of step with most other states in the Council of Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. It is surprising then that the prime minister should claim he felt physically ill at the prospect of giving a vote to prisoners. All that was held at Strasbourg was that the ban was disproportionate as it applied irrespective of the length of the sentence or the gravity of the offence.
Another ruling which raised his bile was the supreme court's decision on the sex offenders' register. They declared incompatible with the convention statutory provisions that imposed on certain sex offenders lifelong obligations to inform the police of their whereabouts. Such offenders could not even apply to be removed from the register, regardless of rehabilitation. But even if a right to apply were introduced, it would again be for parliament to determine the criteria for success.
The PM told parliament the decision was completely offensive and flew in the face of common sense, while the home secretary questioned its sanity. All the judges were doing was applying the law. Respect for the rule of law underpins our democracy. That respect is not a commodity to be traded for short-term political advantage; when it is, ministers diminish both themselves and our democracy. As Lord Pannick recently commented, there are countries in which the government win all their cases in court, but these are not places in which any of us would wish to live.
Clarke's Ministry of Justice this year announced an independent commission "to investigate the creation of a British bill of rights that incorporates ... all our obligations under the European convention, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties".
These terms of reference indicate that the European convention will continue to be a guaranteed floor, but not a ceiling, for the protection of human rights in Britain. Given that, it is all the more unfortunate that the prime minister and home secretary persist in opportunistic and irresponsible attacks on the HRA and the judges who have been charged by parliament with applying it.
Ryszard Piotrowicz is a foreign devil
Ryszard Piotrowicz is a foreign devil
I am disgusted by the headline of this article. It calls for Article 8 of the ECHR to be ignored. The subheading is almost as bad, first it states that human rights are crucial but then states that judges who uphold these human rights should be challenged. Then it suggests “A change in legislation may help”. Is it a coincidence that this is precisely what Teresa May suggested at the recent Tory party conference?
Ryszard Piotrowicz is being intellectually dishonest firstly by claiming that British judges are timid and secondly by claiming they show excessive deference to the ECtHR. Whilst the author has expertise in trafficking, here he is writing about a subject he knows nothing about. He is advocating that judges bow down to the knee-jerk policies of the Executive. In Hirst v UK (No2), Kennedy LJ, was criticised for showing excessive deference to Parliament. Because the UK has signed up to the Convention it is only right that judges show deference to the Convention and ECtHR decisions. It is disturbing that the author is advocating challenges to British courts and the ECtHR for their interpretations of the right to family life protected under Article 8 of the Convention. It is the role of the courts to interpret the law, and not for the media and politicians and the odd mad professor of law. Given that under the Convention the ECtHR decisions are final, leaving no scope for challenge, the Tasmanian Devil fails to explain how he thinks the final say can and should be challenged. Perhaps, he is advocating that the UK should simply ignore the rulings like with Hirst No2?
Prisoners still enjoy a right to family life even in prison. So, once again Ryszard Piotrowicz is displaying his ignorance of the subject. To suggest that those being threatened by deportation can take their family with them to enjoy family life, is no different than the Gestapo saying to those entering the gas chambers “Don’t worry you're all going to be together”. It is nonsense to suggest that criminals should not have a family life under the Convention. Even criminals can suffer from State abuse. It is not a legitimate interest to pander to the racist and xenophobic right wing media like the Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun and Telegraph. Ryszard Piotrowicz has plumbed the depths writing this article.
I am disgusted by the headline of this article. It calls for Article 8 of the ECHR to be ignored. The subheading is almost as bad, first it states that human rights are crucial but then states that judges who uphold these human rights should be challenged. Then it suggests “A change in legislation may help”. Is it a coincidence that this is precisely what Teresa May suggested at the recent Tory party conference?
Ryszard Piotrowicz is being intellectually dishonest firstly by claiming that British judges are timid and secondly by claiming they show excessive deference to the ECtHR. Whilst the author has expertise in trafficking, here he is writing about a subject he knows nothing about. He is advocating that judges bow down to the knee-jerk policies of the Executive. In Hirst v UK (No2), Kennedy LJ, was criticised for showing excessive deference to Parliament. Because the UK has signed up to the Convention it is only right that judges show deference to the Convention and ECtHR decisions. It is disturbing that the author is advocating challenges to British courts and the ECtHR for their interpretations of the right to family life protected under Article 8 of the Convention. It is the role of the courts to interpret the law, and not for the media and politicians and the odd mad professor of law. Given that under the Convention the ECtHR decisions are final, leaving no scope for challenge, the Tasmanian Devil fails to explain how he thinks the final say can and should be challenged. Perhaps, he is advocating that the UK should simply ignore the rulings like with Hirst No2?
Prisoners still enjoy a right to family life even in prison. So, once again Ryszard Piotrowicz is displaying his ignorance of the subject. To suggest that those being threatened by deportation can take their family with them to enjoy family life, is no different than the Gestapo saying to those entering the gas chambers “Don’t worry you're all going to be together”. It is nonsense to suggest that criminals should not have a family life under the Convention. Even criminals can suffer from State abuse. It is not a legitimate interest to pander to the racist and xenophobic right wing media like the Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun and Telegraph. Ryszard Piotrowicz has plumbed the depths writing this article.
Lord Hope in Cadder was wrong
Lord Hope in Cadder was wrong
In the Cadder case the question arose:
Should this court follow Salduz?
“The starting point is section 2(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998, which provides that a court which is determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right must "take into account" any decision of the Strasbourg court. The United Kingdom was not a party to the decision in Salduz nor did it seek to intervene in the proceedings…And in R v Horncastle [2009] UKSC 14, [2010] 2 WLR 47 this court declined to follow a line of cases in the Strasbourg court culminating in a decision of the Fourth Section because, as Lord Phillips explained in para 107, its case law appeared to have been developed largely in cases relating to the civil law without full consideration of the safeguards against an unfair trial that exist under the common law procedure".
“The requirement to "take into account" the Strasbourg jurisprudence will normally result in this Court applying principles that are clearly established by the Strasbourg Court. There will, however, be rare occasions where this court has concerns as to whether a decision of the Strasbourg Court sufficiently appreciates or accommodates particular aspects of our domestic process. In such circumstances it is open to this court to decline to follow the Strasbourg decision, giving reasons for adopting this course. This is likely to give the Strasbourg Court the opportunity to reconsider the particular aspect of the decision that is in issue, so that there takes place what may prove to be a valuable dialogue between this court and the Strasbourg Court. This is such a case”.
Lord Hope was wrong in relation to his starting point.
The starting point is Articles 1, 2 and 3 of the Treaty of London 1949 (Statute of the Council of Europe). The next step is Articles 44(1) and 46(1) of the Convention.
Article 44(1) “The judgment of the Grand Chamber shall be final”.
Where does it state that there is a discretion to only take into account the judgment and discretion to ignore it?
In the Cadder case the question arose:
Should this court follow Salduz?
“The starting point is section 2(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998, which provides that a court which is determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right must "take into account" any decision of the Strasbourg court. The United Kingdom was not a party to the decision in Salduz nor did it seek to intervene in the proceedings…And in R v Horncastle [2009] UKSC 14, [2010] 2 WLR 47 this court declined to follow a line of cases in the Strasbourg court culminating in a decision of the Fourth Section because, as Lord Phillips explained in para 107, its case law appeared to have been developed largely in cases relating to the civil law without full consideration of the safeguards against an unfair trial that exist under the common law procedure".
“The requirement to "take into account" the Strasbourg jurisprudence will normally result in this Court applying principles that are clearly established by the Strasbourg Court. There will, however, be rare occasions where this court has concerns as to whether a decision of the Strasbourg Court sufficiently appreciates or accommodates particular aspects of our domestic process. In such circumstances it is open to this court to decline to follow the Strasbourg decision, giving reasons for adopting this course. This is likely to give the Strasbourg Court the opportunity to reconsider the particular aspect of the decision that is in issue, so that there takes place what may prove to be a valuable dialogue between this court and the Strasbourg Court. This is such a case”.
Lord Hope was wrong in relation to his starting point.
The starting point is Articles 1, 2 and 3 of the Treaty of London 1949 (Statute of the Council of Europe). The next step is Articles 44(1) and 46(1) of the Convention.
Article 44(1) “The judgment of the Grand Chamber shall be final”.
Where does it state that there is a discretion to only take into account the judgment and discretion to ignore it?
The UK is a dysfunctional State
The UK is a dysfunctional State
It’s not nasty to fix our human rights problem
A debate about the flaws in the system must not be derailed by political point-scoring
"The difficulties caused by human rights laws far transcend any silly argument about a pet cat, and it is the duty of government ministers to deal with them, not to exploit them for political advantage".
"We cannot put right the wrongs of dysfunctional countries from the courtrooms of Britain".
Comment: Do we have a human rights problem? If so, what is the nature of the problem? Is it easy to fix?
In 1949 the UK signed up to the Council of Europe. Part of this deal is that the UK abides by the Articles of the Convention and this includes abiding by the Court decisions. The problem is that the UK tries to dilute their clear obligations. Part of the Interlaken Conference was designed to remind Member States of the Council of Europe about their obligations under the Convention.
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights welcomes the declaration and action plan which emerged from February’s high-level conference on the future of the European Court of Human Rights in Interlaken, especially its recognition of the basic principle that human rights must be guaranteed first and foremost at national level. Convention rights need to be better implemented nationally, states with major structural problems which give rise to repeated breaches of the Convention must deal with these more effectively, and Court judgments should be swiftly and fully executed.
For their part, parliaments can play a key role in stemming the flood of applications by, for example, scrutinising draft laws to make sure they are compatible with Convention standards and keeping up the pressure on governments to execute Court judgments.
What Hirst v UK (No2), the Prisoners Votes Case, exposes is that there is a systemic failure. The UK is a dysfunctional State. I see no valid reason why we cannot put right this wrong from the courtrooms of Britain.
It’s not nasty to fix our human rights problem
A debate about the flaws in the system must not be derailed by political point-scoring
"The difficulties caused by human rights laws far transcend any silly argument about a pet cat, and it is the duty of government ministers to deal with them, not to exploit them for political advantage".
"We cannot put right the wrongs of dysfunctional countries from the courtrooms of Britain".
Comment: Do we have a human rights problem? If so, what is the nature of the problem? Is it easy to fix?
In 1949 the UK signed up to the Council of Europe. Part of this deal is that the UK abides by the Articles of the Convention and this includes abiding by the Court decisions. The problem is that the UK tries to dilute their clear obligations. Part of the Interlaken Conference was designed to remind Member States of the Council of Europe about their obligations under the Convention.
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights welcomes the declaration and action plan which emerged from February’s high-level conference on the future of the European Court of Human Rights in Interlaken, especially its recognition of the basic principle that human rights must be guaranteed first and foremost at national level. Convention rights need to be better implemented nationally, states with major structural problems which give rise to repeated breaches of the Convention must deal with these more effectively, and Court judgments should be swiftly and fully executed.
For their part, parliaments can play a key role in stemming the flood of applications by, for example, scrutinising draft laws to make sure they are compatible with Convention standards and keeping up the pressure on governments to execute Court judgments.
What Hirst v UK (No2), the Prisoners Votes Case, exposes is that there is a systemic failure. The UK is a dysfunctional State. I see no valid reason why we cannot put right this wrong from the courtrooms of Britain.
Man fined £75 for brushing pet dog
Man fined £75 for brushing pet dog
A pensioner was fined £75 for brushing his pet dog and leaving fur on the ground in a public park.
Comment: So a Community Protection Officer (CPO) who is actually impersonating a police officer investigates someone who is not guilty of impersonating a police officer and then abuses power to try and save face.
Double whammy!
A pensioner was fined £75 for brushing his pet dog and leaving fur on the ground in a public park.
Comment: So a Community Protection Officer (CPO) who is actually impersonating a police officer investigates someone who is not guilty of impersonating a police officer and then abuses power to try and save face.
Double whammy!
Joshua Rozenberg's opinion counts for naught and he wins another booby prize
Joshua Rozenberg's opinion counts for naught and he wins another booby prize
Joshua Rozenberg deserves credit for correctly predicting that Jonathan Sumption QC would become a Supreme Court judge.
However, Joshua Rozenberg only got the booby prize for this piece of writing, and I am only giving him another booby prize for the following. Once again he is being economical with the truth.
Ministers will also have welcomed his acknowledgment of the truism that any decision they might take not to implement a ruling from by the European Court of Human Rights - on prisoners' voters, for example- cannot be overturned by the domestic courts.
Joshua Rozenberg can be rightly accused of claiming that the truism stated above is a fact when it is not the case. For example, "The word may be used to disguise the fact that a proposition is really just an opinion, especially in rhetoric".
So, Ministers express a rhetorical opinion and Joshua Rozenberg merely expresses his opinion as a legal commentator that the Ministers are correct. Hirst v UK (No2) is the leading case on prisoners' votes, and it is the European Court of Human Rights opinion which counts and not that of Ministers in the UK.
UPDATE:
Dear Joshua
Responding to a question with a question does not answer the original question!
Where does it say in our constitution that the supreme court cannot strike down legislation? Where does it say in Israel's similarly unwritten constitution that its supreme court can?
Report card reads Must try harder!
Kind regards
John
Joshua Rozenberg deserves credit for correctly predicting that Jonathan Sumption QC would become a Supreme Court judge.
However, Joshua Rozenberg only got the booby prize for this piece of writing, and I am only giving him another booby prize for the following. Once again he is being economical with the truth.
Ministers will also have welcomed his acknowledgment of the truism that any decision they might take not to implement a ruling from by the European Court of Human Rights - on prisoners' voters, for example- cannot be overturned by the domestic courts.
Joshua Rozenberg can be rightly accused of claiming that the truism stated above is a fact when it is not the case. For example, "The word may be used to disguise the fact that a proposition is really just an opinion, especially in rhetoric".
So, Ministers express a rhetorical opinion and Joshua Rozenberg merely expresses his opinion as a legal commentator that the Ministers are correct. Hirst v UK (No2) is the leading case on prisoners' votes, and it is the European Court of Human Rights opinion which counts and not that of Ministers in the UK.
UPDATE:
Dear Joshua
Responding to a question with a question does not answer the original question!
Where does it say in our constitution that the supreme court cannot strike down legislation? Where does it say in Israel's similarly unwritten constitution that its supreme court can?
Report card reads Must try harder!
Kind regards
John
Monday, October 10, 2011
Courting trouble
Courting trouble
Update to this post, this morning I submitted the application to the Hull County Court and the clerk behind the counter rubber stamped it to go before a District Judge.
I did speak to a solicitor friend beforehand and he thought no DJ would want to deal with the case and would send it instead to the High Court for a Judicial Review.
Given that the Master of the Rolls has already spoken out against prisoners votes, which High Court judge would dare to go against his or her superior?
Update to this post, this morning I submitted the application to the Hull County Court and the clerk behind the counter rubber stamped it to go before a District Judge.
I did speak to a solicitor friend beforehand and he thought no DJ would want to deal with the case and would send it instead to the High Court for a Judicial Review.
Given that the Master of the Rolls has already spoken out against prisoners votes, which High Court judge would dare to go against his or her superior?
A round up of Monday morning's politics
A round up of Monday morning's politics
Fox hunting debate
In my view, it is David Cameron who is laughable and childlike.
And I would question why the taxpayers are forking out to pay Priti Patel's wage? Along with Baroness Warsi she is obtaining money by deception.
Human Rights and Cat Fights - The Calls for Reform Must not be Silenced
It would be, to coin a phrase, child-like to summate the debate around the Human Rights Act as one between those in favour of protecting human rights in law, and those against doing so.
In my view, it is David Cameron who is laughable and childlike.
And I would question why the taxpayers are forking out to pay Priti Patel's wage? Along with Baroness Warsi she is obtaining money by deception.
Human Rights and Cat Fights - The Calls for Reform Must not be Silenced
It would be, to coin a phrase, child-like to summate the debate around the Human Rights Act as one between those in favour of protecting human rights in law, and those against doing so.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Hull Fair 2011
Hull Fair 2011
I had intended to go to the Hull Fair this year however a cash flow problem almost prevented this from happening until a last minute cash injection saved the day. I met up with my extended Polish family and other animals, Arthur, Violetta, Adrian, Norbert and Marius.
It rained. The wet kind of rain, sleet which somehow managed to get under my umbrella. The fair ground was awash with large puddles. I looked at the prices of £2 and £3 per ride and miss the days when they were only sixpence or a shilling.
We went on the dodgem cars, and Norbert threatened to bump us all over the place but I kept bumping into him instead. He only managed to get us once. Then Arthur and me went on the Giant Wheel. Norbert wanted a rematch, So Adrian drove this time and Norbert had more success.
Norbert is behind the grinning idiot but Marius is obscured by Norbert.
UPDATE: Last night Arthur and Violetta came for a drink and Arthur uploaded the following photos of Hull Fair to my computer.
Arthur and me
Adrian and me
Adrian and me
I had intended to go to the Hull Fair this year however a cash flow problem almost prevented this from happening until a last minute cash injection saved the day. I met up with my extended Polish family and other animals, Arthur, Violetta, Adrian, Norbert and Marius.
It rained. The wet kind of rain, sleet which somehow managed to get under my umbrella. The fair ground was awash with large puddles. I looked at the prices of £2 and £3 per ride and miss the days when they were only sixpence or a shilling.
We went on the dodgem cars, and Norbert threatened to bump us all over the place but I kept bumping into him instead. He only managed to get us once. Then Arthur and me went on the Giant Wheel. Norbert wanted a rematch, So Adrian drove this time and Norbert had more success.
UPDATE: Last night Arthur and Violetta came for a drink and Arthur uploaded the following photos of Hull Fair to my computer.
A Point of View: Prisons don't work
A Point of View: Prisons don't work
Prison does not work for the majority of inmates either as punishment or rehabilitation, writes Will Self.
If you stand on a main road in a British city and wait for long enough several kinds of vehicle will pass you by.
Naturally, there will be the relentless snort and grumble of cars and lorries, the snarl of motorcycles and the hiss of buses. But also with unflagging regularity nowadays there comes the demented wail of police cars, ambulances and fire engines weaving through the stalled traffic.
However, there's another kind of vehicle that may well escape your attention: boxy, four-square vans of the sort used by security companies to transport cash and other valuables, but painted white and with anything from two to eight opaque windows ranged along their hard riveted hides.
Next time you see one of these distinctive vans stopped by a traffic light, why not go up close to the windows, wave, and mouth the words of a silent greeting because inside, unseen yet able to view a tinted world, will be sitting a human being just like you, but in all probability shackled.
In prison slang these vans are known as "sweat-boxes" because the tiny individual cells they house, which are furnished with unpadded plastic seats, can grow intolerably hot.
The occupants of the sweat-boxes may be being transferred from prisons to courts, or taken on some other more or less rational journey mandated by their confinement.
However, often they will simply be being "ghosted", another apt slang term that perfectly captures the condition of inmates shifted from one prison to another, without warning, on a senseless go-round seemingly designed to disorientate and pacify.
It was Dostoevsky who said: "The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." But in contemporary Britain you don't even need to do this, you can simply stand on a street corner and wait for the ghosts to come flitting past in order to appreciate its parlous condition.
We now have the highest prison population in Europe by a considerable measure, and following the recent riots there is no likelihood of it decreasing.
Of course, we aren't quite at the levels enjoyed by our closest allies, those prime exponents of the civilising mission the United States, whose extensive gulag now houses, it is estimated, more African American men than were enslaved immediately prior to their Civil War - but we're getting there.
Powder keg
Then again, should you have cause to actually enter one of Her Majesty's prisons - as I have on many occasions as a prison visitor - you'll be in a position to appreciate the extent to which it is a decoction of modern urban Britain, what with its high numbers of ethnic minorities, alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill.
Like society at large, I've discovered that prisons are beset by endless rules administered by petty-minded, management-speak-spouting bureaucrats - rules, programmes and so-called initiatives that result in the wastage of taxpayers' money.
Also in common with the wider world, prisons are benighted by an almost breathtaking hypocrisy. In their case this is summed up by the stentorian signs by the barred gates warning visitors about to be searched that the penalties for attempting to smuggle in contraband items such as drugs, weapons, mobile phones take the form of yet more custodial sentences.
It's breathtaking hypocrisy because the very prison officers who frisk you just might be trafficking the drugs with which the system is awash. Time and again addict inmates I've spoken to have told me that it's easier to obtain heroin in jail than out.
Contrary to the view of prison as a deterrent and a way of keeping criminals off the streets, almost all enlightened opinion now concurs in the following.
Not only does prison, for the vast majority of those who endure it, not work, either as punishment or as rehabilitation, but there is no escaping the conclusion that it functions as a stimulant to crime, rather than its bromide.
The current chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales recently warned that the latest pupils to enrol in these £30,000 per-annum malefaction academies are being recruited by criminal gangs, and will almost certainly reoffend upon their release - if not before.
And yet what political will there is to deal with the problem when in opposition, and it's often considerable, drains away once the reins of power are taken up. The current government is only the latest whose stated determination to sluice down the Augean stables of Wandsworth, Strangeways and Parkhurst has resulted in an ineffectual piddle. The question is, who's treading on the hose?
Certainly there is the dead weight of the prison bureaucracy, a Kafkaesque interleaving of public service boondoggling and private sector lobbying, whose raison d'etre is not the reduction of the prison population but its increase.
Then there are the ministers who, by definition strangers to the seamier side of life, find themselves on inspection visits, face-to-face with scary inmates either hopped-up on illegal drugs, or zombified by prescribed ones. And who are told by heavy-set, authoritative men and women that this is a powder keg only prevented from going off by the sheer weight of their boots.
Class layer-cake
But a far more important choke on reform is that a significant portion of the great British public, already infuriated by the sums spent on prisoners, bitterly resent the notion of spending still more.
They are right. Much more spending would be required to effectively separate sheep capable of being herded in the right direction from goats that simply have to be confined.
Much more money would also be needed to put in place comprehensive drug and alcohol treatment programmes that actually work. And still more cash would be necessary to treat mentally ill prisoners, teach illiterate prisoners and make unskilled prisoners employable.
Whatever cost-benefit analyses are presented to them, the public, or at least that vocal section of it whose cries for law and order make penal reform electoral suicide, resent this expenditure.
But anyway, it appears they don't really want prisoners rehabilitated, they want them punished. They want them locked down, maltreated and if it were possible beaten on a regular basis.
They require convicted prisoners to be scapegoats for all that is wrong with society, while paradoxically desiring them to pay their debt to it, as if spending 23-hours a day in a cell watching television could possibly equate with turning up for work, paying taxes and otherwise doing your bit. These people erroneously believe that punishment works and point to the happily virtuous past to prove it.
Certainly, if we go back a hundred years we find remarkably law-abiding citizenry and only 15,000 or so in prison as against today's ninety-odd, but perhaps this was because society for the lower orders, as they were then dubbed, was already a form of imprisonment?
There was little opportunity or energy to commit crimes when you were already doing hard labour for six-and-a-half days a week, nor was there any need for additional confinement when so much of the workforce was already banged-up below stairs.
The sort of nostalgia that attaches itself to the serialised class layer-cake that is Downton Abbey is of a piece with the refusal to recognise that grotesque inherited privilege is something people have struggled hard to do away with. Not without accident are our prison cess-pits nominally possessed by the Queen.
I'm not such a bleeding-heart liberal that I don't recognise the need for imprisonment when someone has been convicted of a violent crime, but unless an individual represents a credible physical threat I'd far rather he was set to work in the community to pay back what he has taken.
In those cases where redistributive justice is impossible because the offender is already so socially inutile, their rehabilitation must consist precisely in assisting them to be the responsible citizen they have heretofore failed to become.
The raw meting out of punishment solves nothing. And although there are some psychopaths who may have to be confined indefinitely, the Manichaean belief in the unbridgeable rift between sanctity and evil that shadows so much of our thinking about prison should play no part in its actual administration, any more than should a belief in ghosts.
Prison does not work for the majority of inmates either as punishment or rehabilitation, writes Will Self.
If you stand on a main road in a British city and wait for long enough several kinds of vehicle will pass you by.
Naturally, there will be the relentless snort and grumble of cars and lorries, the snarl of motorcycles and the hiss of buses. But also with unflagging regularity nowadays there comes the demented wail of police cars, ambulances and fire engines weaving through the stalled traffic.
However, there's another kind of vehicle that may well escape your attention: boxy, four-square vans of the sort used by security companies to transport cash and other valuables, but painted white and with anything from two to eight opaque windows ranged along their hard riveted hides.
Next time you see one of these distinctive vans stopped by a traffic light, why not go up close to the windows, wave, and mouth the words of a silent greeting because inside, unseen yet able to view a tinted world, will be sitting a human being just like you, but in all probability shackled.
In prison slang these vans are known as "sweat-boxes" because the tiny individual cells they house, which are furnished with unpadded plastic seats, can grow intolerably hot.
The occupants of the sweat-boxes may be being transferred from prisons to courts, or taken on some other more or less rational journey mandated by their confinement.
However, often they will simply be being "ghosted", another apt slang term that perfectly captures the condition of inmates shifted from one prison to another, without warning, on a senseless go-round seemingly designed to disorientate and pacify.
It was Dostoevsky who said: "The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." But in contemporary Britain you don't even need to do this, you can simply stand on a street corner and wait for the ghosts to come flitting past in order to appreciate its parlous condition.
We now have the highest prison population in Europe by a considerable measure, and following the recent riots there is no likelihood of it decreasing.
Of course, we aren't quite at the levels enjoyed by our closest allies, those prime exponents of the civilising mission the United States, whose extensive gulag now houses, it is estimated, more African American men than were enslaved immediately prior to their Civil War - but we're getting there.
Powder keg
Then again, should you have cause to actually enter one of Her Majesty's prisons - as I have on many occasions as a prison visitor - you'll be in a position to appreciate the extent to which it is a decoction of modern urban Britain, what with its high numbers of ethnic minorities, alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill.
Like society at large, I've discovered that prisons are beset by endless rules administered by petty-minded, management-speak-spouting bureaucrats - rules, programmes and so-called initiatives that result in the wastage of taxpayers' money.
Also in common with the wider world, prisons are benighted by an almost breathtaking hypocrisy. In their case this is summed up by the stentorian signs by the barred gates warning visitors about to be searched that the penalties for attempting to smuggle in contraband items such as drugs, weapons, mobile phones take the form of yet more custodial sentences.
It's breathtaking hypocrisy because the very prison officers who frisk you just might be trafficking the drugs with which the system is awash. Time and again addict inmates I've spoken to have told me that it's easier to obtain heroin in jail than out.
Contrary to the view of prison as a deterrent and a way of keeping criminals off the streets, almost all enlightened opinion now concurs in the following.
Not only does prison, for the vast majority of those who endure it, not work, either as punishment or as rehabilitation, but there is no escaping the conclusion that it functions as a stimulant to crime, rather than its bromide.
The current chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales recently warned that the latest pupils to enrol in these £30,000 per-annum malefaction academies are being recruited by criminal gangs, and will almost certainly reoffend upon their release - if not before.
And yet what political will there is to deal with the problem when in opposition, and it's often considerable, drains away once the reins of power are taken up. The current government is only the latest whose stated determination to sluice down the Augean stables of Wandsworth, Strangeways and Parkhurst has resulted in an ineffectual piddle. The question is, who's treading on the hose?
Certainly there is the dead weight of the prison bureaucracy, a Kafkaesque interleaving of public service boondoggling and private sector lobbying, whose raison d'etre is not the reduction of the prison population but its increase.
Then there are the ministers who, by definition strangers to the seamier side of life, find themselves on inspection visits, face-to-face with scary inmates either hopped-up on illegal drugs, or zombified by prescribed ones. And who are told by heavy-set, authoritative men and women that this is a powder keg only prevented from going off by the sheer weight of their boots.
Class layer-cake
But a far more important choke on reform is that a significant portion of the great British public, already infuriated by the sums spent on prisoners, bitterly resent the notion of spending still more.
They are right. Much more spending would be required to effectively separate sheep capable of being herded in the right direction from goats that simply have to be confined.
Much more money would also be needed to put in place comprehensive drug and alcohol treatment programmes that actually work. And still more cash would be necessary to treat mentally ill prisoners, teach illiterate prisoners and make unskilled prisoners employable.
Whatever cost-benefit analyses are presented to them, the public, or at least that vocal section of it whose cries for law and order make penal reform electoral suicide, resent this expenditure.
But anyway, it appears they don't really want prisoners rehabilitated, they want them punished. They want them locked down, maltreated and if it were possible beaten on a regular basis.
They require convicted prisoners to be scapegoats for all that is wrong with society, while paradoxically desiring them to pay their debt to it, as if spending 23-hours a day in a cell watching television could possibly equate with turning up for work, paying taxes and otherwise doing your bit. These people erroneously believe that punishment works and point to the happily virtuous past to prove it.
Certainly, if we go back a hundred years we find remarkably law-abiding citizenry and only 15,000 or so in prison as against today's ninety-odd, but perhaps this was because society for the lower orders, as they were then dubbed, was already a form of imprisonment?
There was little opportunity or energy to commit crimes when you were already doing hard labour for six-and-a-half days a week, nor was there any need for additional confinement when so much of the workforce was already banged-up below stairs.
The sort of nostalgia that attaches itself to the serialised class layer-cake that is Downton Abbey is of a piece with the refusal to recognise that grotesque inherited privilege is something people have struggled hard to do away with. Not without accident are our prison cess-pits nominally possessed by the Queen.
I'm not such a bleeding-heart liberal that I don't recognise the need for imprisonment when someone has been convicted of a violent crime, but unless an individual represents a credible physical threat I'd far rather he was set to work in the community to pay back what he has taken.
In those cases where redistributive justice is impossible because the offender is already so socially inutile, their rehabilitation must consist precisely in assisting them to be the responsible citizen they have heretofore failed to become.
The raw meting out of punishment solves nothing. And although there are some psychopaths who may have to be confined indefinitely, the Manichaean belief in the unbridgeable rift between sanctity and evil that shadows so much of our thinking about prison should play no part in its actual administration, any more than should a belief in ghosts.
Mystery files cast doubt over verdict on Robert Magill gangland killing
Mystery files cast doubt over verdict on Robert Magill gangland killing
Kevin Lane has been in jail for 16 years after being found guilty of murder. But did police pervert the course of justice?
Kevin Lane has served 16 years for murder but maintains his innocence. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
It was a notorious killing carried out one morning in a Hertfordshire backwater. Two men had approached Robert Magill as he walked his dog close to his home in Chorleywood on 13 October 1994. One of them was seen by several witnesses to pull out a shotgun and shoot Magill five times at point blank range. The final shot was delivered to the head as Magill lay prostrate.
As of today, Kevin Lane will have served 16 years and 255 days of a minimum 18-year sentence for carrying out what was seen as a classic contract killing. Lane was raised in the criminal underworld, but has always claimed he was innocent of this crime.
Many aspects of the case remain troubling and new evidence now threatens to blow apart not just Lane's conviction but the way in which it was achieved.
The Observer understands that a specialist team reporting to the Crown Prosecution Service is examining whether a clutch of confidential internal police files, apparently relating to the case and sent anonymously to Lane's lawyer, Maslen Merchant, are genuine.
The files, which have been seen by the Observer, appear to be copies of secret memos sent between a number of police officers involved in the case. For legal reasons, the evidence cannot be reproduced at the moment. But, if genuine, Lane's lawyers believe it would have a material effect on their client's appeal.
In their submission filed before the Court of Appeal, the lawyers claim the documents, "if genuine, demonstrate the most blatant, deliberate and… shocking, plot by police to pervert the course of justice and ensure the applicant's conviction for murder".
They would also illuminate the shadowy way in which the judicial system prosecuted contract killings, often having to go to great lengths to protect police sources who helped to secure convictions but were themselves closely connected to the criminal underworld.
Central to the prosecution case against Lane was his palm print, found on a plastic bin liner in which the murder weapon was said to have been carried. The liner was found in the boot of a car Lane admitted driving. Another article in the car's boot was tested and found to have traces of nitroglycerine on it, indicating the presence of a weapon.
Lane, who had travelled from Spain two weeks before the killing under a false name, claims he was at home at the time of the crime, but accepted he had borrowed the car about a week before the murder. His son's fingerprint was also found in the car, reinforcing Lane's claim that he had used it to ferry his family around.
A defence expert suggested the apparent presence of nitroglycerine could have come from an industrial nail gun. Lane said he had entered the country under a false name because the Department for Social Security had been after him in connection with a benefit claim.
But for Lane's supporters, the most troubling aspects of his case centre on the secrecy that has characterised it. Some evidence disclosed at Lane's retrial in 1996 was subjected to a public immunity interest order, meaning it was not shared with his legal team. For years, Lane's lawyers sought to establish the full contents of the suppressed material, who had authorised it, and why.
The new material, if genuine, answers many of their questions. Lane first stood trial in October 1995 with Roger Vincent, who was found not guilty of participating in Magill's murder by direction of the judge. A hung jury was unable to return a verdict on Lane.
Since Lane's conviction at his second trial, evidence has emerged showing Vincent had lengthy discussions with police officers shortly after his arrest. Statements shared with Lane's legal team by a detective sergeant, Christopher Spackman, also confirmed that Spackman had visited Vincent while he was on remand in HMP Woodhill.
Spackman was later jailed for conspiring with others to steal £160,000 from Hertfordshire police, money the married father of three paid into his lover's account.
The prosecutor at Spackman's trial claimed: "The lengths he went to, the lies he told and the documents that were forged would have been worthy of a seasoned fraudster."
Spackman's name also surfaced in a 2005 court of appeal case that quashed the conviction of two men, Nazeem Khan and Cameron Bashir, in a case involving credit card fraud. The court had heard Spackman had displayed "an ability to conduct complicated deceptions within a police environment".
On his website, Lane makes the extraordinary claim that before his first trial had finished, Spackman had visited Vincent's mother and told her that her son was coming home, but "Lane" would be found guilty. Spackman had also visited Vincent's mother's home twice after her son had been released.
Vincent sued Hertfordshire police for false imprisonment after his acquittal for the Magill killing. He alleged Spackman had offered him a deal to drop the case against him and pay him a reward if he turned Queen's Evidence. Spackman later insisted it was Vincent who had approached him to "do a deal".
It was not to be Vincent's last brush with the law. In August 2005 he and his friend David Smith were convicted of the 2003 killing of David King, who was shot 26 times with a Kalashnikov outside his gym in Hoddesdon, Herts.
Logs later released by the police showed that during the original Magill murder inquiry they had received more than 20 tip-offs claiming Vincent and Smith had been responsible. They were well known in the criminal world and were suspected of having carried out several killings.
Lane's lawyers believe that charting the relationship between Vincent and Spackman is crucial to the success of his appeal. The relationship certainly pre-dated the Magill murder. In 1992, it was Spackman who had liaised with Vincent when he gave evidence in the case of a man convicted of attempted murder and false imprisonment. Vincent received a commendation from the judge for his bravery in testifying.
Today Vincent is behind bars and refusing to shed light on the extent of his relationship with Spackman. Lane continues to protest his innocence from a category B prison, potentially putting his release date in jeopardy.
His hopes now rest on whether the internal police files mysteriously posted to his lawyers are real or sophisticated forgeries. Given the bewildering twists and turns in Lane's case, either conclusion is possible.
Kevin Lane has been in jail for 16 years after being found guilty of murder. But did police pervert the course of justice?
It was a notorious killing carried out one morning in a Hertfordshire backwater. Two men had approached Robert Magill as he walked his dog close to his home in Chorleywood on 13 October 1994. One of them was seen by several witnesses to pull out a shotgun and shoot Magill five times at point blank range. The final shot was delivered to the head as Magill lay prostrate.
As of today, Kevin Lane will have served 16 years and 255 days of a minimum 18-year sentence for carrying out what was seen as a classic contract killing. Lane was raised in the criminal underworld, but has always claimed he was innocent of this crime.
Many aspects of the case remain troubling and new evidence now threatens to blow apart not just Lane's conviction but the way in which it was achieved.
The Observer understands that a specialist team reporting to the Crown Prosecution Service is examining whether a clutch of confidential internal police files, apparently relating to the case and sent anonymously to Lane's lawyer, Maslen Merchant, are genuine.
The files, which have been seen by the Observer, appear to be copies of secret memos sent between a number of police officers involved in the case. For legal reasons, the evidence cannot be reproduced at the moment. But, if genuine, Lane's lawyers believe it would have a material effect on their client's appeal.
In their submission filed before the Court of Appeal, the lawyers claim the documents, "if genuine, demonstrate the most blatant, deliberate and… shocking, plot by police to pervert the course of justice and ensure the applicant's conviction for murder".
They would also illuminate the shadowy way in which the judicial system prosecuted contract killings, often having to go to great lengths to protect police sources who helped to secure convictions but were themselves closely connected to the criminal underworld.
Central to the prosecution case against Lane was his palm print, found on a plastic bin liner in which the murder weapon was said to have been carried. The liner was found in the boot of a car Lane admitted driving. Another article in the car's boot was tested and found to have traces of nitroglycerine on it, indicating the presence of a weapon.
Lane, who had travelled from Spain two weeks before the killing under a false name, claims he was at home at the time of the crime, but accepted he had borrowed the car about a week before the murder. His son's fingerprint was also found in the car, reinforcing Lane's claim that he had used it to ferry his family around.
A defence expert suggested the apparent presence of nitroglycerine could have come from an industrial nail gun. Lane said he had entered the country under a false name because the Department for Social Security had been after him in connection with a benefit claim.
But for Lane's supporters, the most troubling aspects of his case centre on the secrecy that has characterised it. Some evidence disclosed at Lane's retrial in 1996 was subjected to a public immunity interest order, meaning it was not shared with his legal team. For years, Lane's lawyers sought to establish the full contents of the suppressed material, who had authorised it, and why.
The new material, if genuine, answers many of their questions. Lane first stood trial in October 1995 with Roger Vincent, who was found not guilty of participating in Magill's murder by direction of the judge. A hung jury was unable to return a verdict on Lane.
Since Lane's conviction at his second trial, evidence has emerged showing Vincent had lengthy discussions with police officers shortly after his arrest. Statements shared with Lane's legal team by a detective sergeant, Christopher Spackman, also confirmed that Spackman had visited Vincent while he was on remand in HMP Woodhill.
Spackman was later jailed for conspiring with others to steal £160,000 from Hertfordshire police, money the married father of three paid into his lover's account.
The prosecutor at Spackman's trial claimed: "The lengths he went to, the lies he told and the documents that were forged would have been worthy of a seasoned fraudster."
Spackman's name also surfaced in a 2005 court of appeal case that quashed the conviction of two men, Nazeem Khan and Cameron Bashir, in a case involving credit card fraud. The court had heard Spackman had displayed "an ability to conduct complicated deceptions within a police environment".
On his website, Lane makes the extraordinary claim that before his first trial had finished, Spackman had visited Vincent's mother and told her that her son was coming home, but "Lane" would be found guilty. Spackman had also visited Vincent's mother's home twice after her son had been released.
Vincent sued Hertfordshire police for false imprisonment after his acquittal for the Magill killing. He alleged Spackman had offered him a deal to drop the case against him and pay him a reward if he turned Queen's Evidence. Spackman later insisted it was Vincent who had approached him to "do a deal".
It was not to be Vincent's last brush with the law. In August 2005 he and his friend David Smith were convicted of the 2003 killing of David King, who was shot 26 times with a Kalashnikov outside his gym in Hoddesdon, Herts.
Logs later released by the police showed that during the original Magill murder inquiry they had received more than 20 tip-offs claiming Vincent and Smith had been responsible. They were well known in the criminal world and were suspected of having carried out several killings.
Lane's lawyers believe that charting the relationship between Vincent and Spackman is crucial to the success of his appeal. The relationship certainly pre-dated the Magill murder. In 1992, it was Spackman who had liaised with Vincent when he gave evidence in the case of a man convicted of attempted murder and false imprisonment. Vincent received a commendation from the judge for his bravery in testifying.
Today Vincent is behind bars and refusing to shed light on the extent of his relationship with Spackman. Lane continues to protest his innocence from a category B prison, potentially putting his release date in jeopardy.
His hopes now rest on whether the internal police files mysteriously posted to his lawyers are real or sophisticated forgeries. Given the bewildering twists and turns in Lane's case, either conclusion is possible.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
ECtHR: A History of Violations in Statistics per State
ECtHR: A History of Violations in Statistics per State
The overview also shows the grand total of the Court's history: 96% of all applications was either inadmissible or struck out. Only 4% ended up in a judgment. Again a clear pointer that any concerns or fears that the Court is encroaching on a large scale on national powers should be put into perspective.
Take note Dominic Raab, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Telegraph and The Sun!
The overview also shows the grand total of the Court's history: 96% of all applications was either inadmissible or struck out. Only 4% ended up in a judgment. Again a clear pointer that any concerns or fears that the Court is encroaching on a large scale on national powers should be put into perspective.
Take note Dominic Raab, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Telegraph and The Sun!
Friday, October 07, 2011
John Hirst v Executive,Parliament and Judiciary
John Hirst v Executive,Parliament and Judiciary
Yeseterday I sent this email:
Non implementation of Hirst v UK (No2)
John Hirst john.hirst@myhaven.karoo.co.uk; To: Harriet.Moynihan@fco.gov.uk;
Dear Madam
Re: Your E-Transmission to the ECtHR on 26 July 2011.
I am concerned that it is being reported in the media that the UK has secured a six month delay in fully complying with the Hirst No2 judgment.
My understanding is that the Section Registrar has granted a six month stay on the Chamber decision in Greens and MT v UK and not Hirst No2.
Today is the 6th anniversary since the UK lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber in Hirst No2.
To date the UK has ignored the judgment.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
As the FCO represented the UK at the ECtHR I am holding the FCO liable for its failure to fully comply with the Hirst No2 judgment.
As you know the Foreign Secretary has publicly announced that he has put human rights at the forefront of foreign policy. Whilst I applaud this decision, I challenge his decision to deny UK citizens their human rights. In particular, convicted prisoners of their human right to vote.
Therefore, I give you notice that I intend to start a private law action and judicial review against the Foreign Secretary.
So far all I have heard from the UK is excuses but not explanations for non compliance.
The question I will be asking the courts is: How does one get a court judgment implemented?
My starting point is the Treaty of London 1949 (the Statute of the Council of Europe). As you are aware the Court of Justice of the European Union “Its mission is to ensure that "the law is observed" "in the interpretation and application" of the Treaties. The Court reviews the legality of the acts of the institutions of the European Union; ensures that the Member States comply with obligations under the Treaties; and interprets European Union law at the request of the national courts and tribunals”. Therefore I will be asking the courts to seek a ruling from the CJEU.
There will, of course, be other Defendants added to the actions.
I will be arguing that the HRA 1998 is incompatible with the Convention. For example, in relation to non incorporation of Articles 1 and 13.
It appears to have escaped peoples attention that my case is against the 3 arms of the State, that is, the Executive, Parliament and Judiciary. It is the responsibility of all 3 to ensure that the UK abides by the Convention and abides by the ECtHR decisions. It is also clear that all 3 have failed in their respective responsibilities. There have also been failings by the Committee of Ministers and Council of Europe.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely
John Hirst
Today I went to Hull County Court to lodge the Application for Injunction (N16A). However, as I did not have proof of my Pension Credit guarantee credit I was unable to lodge the Application for a fee remission (EX160). Therefore, I will submit the claim on Monday 10 October.
Yeseterday I sent this email:
Non implementation of Hirst v UK (No2)
John Hirst john.hirst@myhaven.karoo.co.uk; To: Harriet.Moynihan@fco.gov.uk
Dear Madam
Re: Your E-Transmission to the ECtHR on 26 July 2011.
I am concerned that it is being reported in the media that the UK has secured a six month delay in fully complying with the Hirst No2 judgment.
My understanding is that the Section Registrar has granted a six month stay on the Chamber decision in Greens and MT v UK and not Hirst No2.
Today is the 6th anniversary since the UK lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber in Hirst No2.
To date the UK has ignored the judgment.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
As the FCO represented the UK at the ECtHR I am holding the FCO liable for its failure to fully comply with the Hirst No2 judgment.
As you know the Foreign Secretary has publicly announced that he has put human rights at the forefront of foreign policy. Whilst I applaud this decision, I challenge his decision to deny UK citizens their human rights. In particular, convicted prisoners of their human right to vote.
Therefore, I give you notice that I intend to start a private law action and judicial review against the Foreign Secretary.
So far all I have heard from the UK is excuses but not explanations for non compliance.
The question I will be asking the courts is: How does one get a court judgment implemented?
My starting point is the Treaty of London 1949 (the Statute of the Council of Europe). As you are aware the Court of Justice of the European Union “Its mission is to ensure that "the law is observed" "in the interpretation and application" of the Treaties. The Court reviews the legality of the acts of the institutions of the European Union; ensures that the Member States comply with obligations under the Treaties; and interprets European Union law at the request of the national courts and tribunals”. Therefore I will be asking the courts to seek a ruling from the CJEU.
There will, of course, be other Defendants added to the actions.
I will be arguing that the HRA 1998 is incompatible with the Convention. For example, in relation to non incorporation of Articles 1 and 13.
It appears to have escaped peoples attention that my case is against the 3 arms of the State, that is, the Executive, Parliament and Judiciary. It is the responsibility of all 3 to ensure that the UK abides by the Convention and abides by the ECtHR decisions. It is also clear that all 3 have failed in their respective responsibilities. There have also been failings by the Committee of Ministers and Council of Europe.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely
John Hirst
Today I went to Hull County Court to lodge the Application for Injunction (N16A). However, as I did not have proof of my Pension Credit guarantee credit I was unable to lodge the Application for a fee remission (EX160). Therefore, I will submit the claim on Monday 10 October.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
JHL kicks William Hague up the arse
JHL kicks William Hague up the arse
It is 6 years today that the UK lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst v UK (No2), the Prisoners Votes Case. However it is not a cause for celebration because the UK has so far refused to fully comply with the Court's judgment.
Today I sent an email to the FCO threatening litigation.
It is 6 years today that the UK lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst v UK (No2), the Prisoners Votes Case. However it is not a cause for celebration because the UK has so far refused to fully comply with the Court's judgment.
Today I sent an email to the FCO threatening litigation.
Eye eye
Eye eye
Just been to the opticians for an eye test and some new glasses because my right eye is like looking through a condom. The optician found the problem. I have a cataract.
Just been to the opticians for an eye test and some new glasses because my right eye is like looking through a condom. The optician found the problem. I have a cataract.
‘Tory fetish’
‘Tory fetish’
From John Bowden - HMP Shotts
Someone once said that a Liberal is just a Tory who’s been arrested and this certainly seemed to be the case with former Tory minister and high flyer – Jonathan Aitken when he emerged from his spell inside an apparently changed man. Where he once exuded the sanctimonious arrogance of his class and political type with his metaphorical sword and shield, the ex-jail bird Aitken now cut a very meek and pacific figure, full of compassion for the disadvantaged souls that he shared prison with and imbued with a missionary desire to improve their lives.
Unfortunately it’s also usually the case that there’s nothing quite like the sight of the working class engaged in a riot to send middle class liberals into headlong flight back into the ranks of the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade, and Aitken’s article – “These rioters need the discipline of a tough military jail”, Inside Time September - is illustrative of his own return to the ranks of those who believe that what’s required to keep the rebellious poor firmly in their place is a dose of good old fashioned military-style discipline.
Of course he’s talking nonsense. The riots that swept across English cities last August were symptomatic of everything far more profoundly wrong with our society than just a lack of discipline and respect for authority. And when did sending young offenders to places like military style detention centres ever remedy the deep structured ills of social deprivation and gross economic inequality, obvious underlying factors in the recent social unrest?
Speaking as a graduate of the old detention centre and borstal system with their core ethos of military type discipline and punishment I can assure Mr Aitken that such places achieved nothing in terms of positively improving its recipients. On the contrary, they produced instead young men considerably more hardened in their criminality and attitude towards authority, as well as an instilled belief that violence and intimidation were the means by which power and respect were achieved.
Attempting to regiment young offenders in a glass house type environment achieves nothing in terms of positively rehabilitating them or improving the social conditions that breed unrest and rebellion. Mr Aitken needs to rid himself of this Tory fetish for disciplinary the poor and disobedient or otherwise discord completely his newly acquired image of benevolent penal reformer.
From John Bowden - HMP Shotts
Someone once said that a Liberal is just a Tory who’s been arrested and this certainly seemed to be the case with former Tory minister and high flyer – Jonathan Aitken when he emerged from his spell inside an apparently changed man. Where he once exuded the sanctimonious arrogance of his class and political type with his metaphorical sword and shield, the ex-jail bird Aitken now cut a very meek and pacific figure, full of compassion for the disadvantaged souls that he shared prison with and imbued with a missionary desire to improve their lives.
Unfortunately it’s also usually the case that there’s nothing quite like the sight of the working class engaged in a riot to send middle class liberals into headlong flight back into the ranks of the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade, and Aitken’s article – “These rioters need the discipline of a tough military jail”, Inside Time September - is illustrative of his own return to the ranks of those who believe that what’s required to keep the rebellious poor firmly in their place is a dose of good old fashioned military-style discipline.
Of course he’s talking nonsense. The riots that swept across English cities last August were symptomatic of everything far more profoundly wrong with our society than just a lack of discipline and respect for authority. And when did sending young offenders to places like military style detention centres ever remedy the deep structured ills of social deprivation and gross economic inequality, obvious underlying factors in the recent social unrest?
Speaking as a graduate of the old detention centre and borstal system with their core ethos of military type discipline and punishment I can assure Mr Aitken that such places achieved nothing in terms of positively improving its recipients. On the contrary, they produced instead young men considerably more hardened in their criminality and attitude towards authority, as well as an instilled belief that violence and intimidation were the means by which power and respect were achieved.
Attempting to regiment young offenders in a glass house type environment achieves nothing in terms of positively rehabilitating them or improving the social conditions that breed unrest and rebellion. Mr Aitken needs to rid himself of this Tory fetish for disciplinary the poor and disobedient or otherwise discord completely his newly acquired image of benevolent penal reformer.
Should annual party conferences be scrapped?
Should annual party conferences be scrapped?
Last night on Newsnight it was suggested that we do away with the annual party conferences. There is no need for them and no other country has them. They are paid for by lobbyists. Having read Cameron's speech I can only agree that it is time to scrap them. His peech was empty of substance, and very dull and boring.
"I'm proud of my team, I'm proud of our members, I'm proud to lead this party - but most of all, I'm proud of you". Pride comes before a fall!
"But leadership in the world is about moral strength as much as military might". This said from a man who stands on the low moral ground in relation to human rights.
Full text: David Cameron's Conservative conference speech
Last night on Newsnight it was suggested that we do away with the annual party conferences. There is no need for them and no other country has them. They are paid for by lobbyists. Having read Cameron's speech I can only agree that it is time to scrap them. His peech was empty of substance, and very dull and boring.
"I'm proud of my team, I'm proud of our members, I'm proud to lead this party - but most of all, I'm proud of you". Pride comes before a fall!
"But leadership in the world is about moral strength as much as military might". This said from a man who stands on the low moral ground in relation to human rights.
Full text: David Cameron's Conservative conference speech
Radical reform of human rights court will still not prevent clashes with Europe
Radical reform of human rights court will still not prevent clashes with Europe
Radical reform of the European Court of Human Rights will still fail to prevent a prisoner voting-style row, the Government’s own experts signalled yesterday.
A special commission set up by David Cameron to examine human rights laws and the relationship between the UK and Europe yesterday made a series of recommendations on how to reform the controversial court.
Its influence on domestic laws and judgments has led to growing anger and concern, especially its ruling that a blanket ban on prisoners voting is illegal.
But initial proposals from the commission made clear that the European court must still hear cases that “raise serious questions” over the interpretation or application of human rights laws.
Critics last night said that while that would stop minor cases going to Europe, broader issues such as the principle of voting rights would still fall under the court.
The commission also signalled that Mr Cameron’s suggestion of replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights could be meaningless as it would still have to give priority to the European Convention on Human Rights.
And it has made no recommendations on how to address deep concerns that the European judges do not take sufficient account of the decisions of UK courts and parliament when making its rulings.
Blair Gibbs, head of crime and justice at the think-tank Policy Exchange said: “We have to reform the European Court but we cannot ignore the fundamental democratic issue that an international court can dictate policy to sovereign governments on what only it decides is a human rights issue.
“Limiting the court to serious cases would be a start, but the current recommendations would not have stopped the prisoner votes ruling, which saw foreign judges overruling our own parliament.
“We must build alliances with other nations who also want to address this issue of sovereignty and the proper scope of the court.”
The Commission on a Bill of Rights was set up earlier this year to examine whether the Human Rights Act should be replaced with a British Bill of Rights.
But its first job was to suggest reforms for the European Court of Human Rights for when the UK takes over the presidency of the Council of Europe in November.
Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, wants the UK to uses its position to spearhead a radical shake-up of the court.
MPs are furious over a ruling that could force the UK Government to grant prisoners the vote because a blanket ban breaches their rights, despite it being dismissed by domestic judges and parliament.
In its interim recommendations yesterday, the commission said the Government should “vigorously pursue the need for urgent and fundamental reform”.
It said a backlog of 150,000 cases there meant the court was now in an “impossible situation” and “mere tinkering at the edges” will not work.
It said the number of trivial cases sent to the court should be cut, its ability to award compensation restricted and the way judges are appointed overhauled.
But the commission also said the court should “only address a limited number of cases that raise serious questions affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention and serious issues of general importance”.
It also said that “failure to put in place the necessary machinery for compliance (of the Convention) should itself constitute a violation of the Convention”.
That suggests even a Bill of Rights would have to give sufficient deference to the Convention.
The commission said it did not have time to examine the issue of how the court should take in to account the views and decisions of domestic executives but would look at that in the coming months.
However, one source close to it said it was very unlikely that members would be able to agree on any recommendation on how to address that key problem.
Sir Leigh Lewis, the commission's chairman, said: "In the Commission's view the United Kingdom is uniquely well placed to set the ball rolling on fundamental reforms to the European Court of Human Rights, and should do so with a view to achieving the wellbeing and effective functioning of the court over the long term."
Dominic Raab, the Tory MP, said: “I welcome the overall strategy, and it is critical it delivers.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Our top priority when we take over the Chairmanship of the Council of Europe in November will be to deliver and build upon the ongoing programme of reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Our plans for this will be informed by the Commission’s advice.”
Radical reform of the European Court of Human Rights will still fail to prevent a prisoner voting-style row, the Government’s own experts signalled yesterday.
A special commission set up by David Cameron to examine human rights laws and the relationship between the UK and Europe yesterday made a series of recommendations on how to reform the controversial court.
Its influence on domestic laws and judgments has led to growing anger and concern, especially its ruling that a blanket ban on prisoners voting is illegal.
But initial proposals from the commission made clear that the European court must still hear cases that “raise serious questions” over the interpretation or application of human rights laws.
Critics last night said that while that would stop minor cases going to Europe, broader issues such as the principle of voting rights would still fall under the court.
The commission also signalled that Mr Cameron’s suggestion of replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights could be meaningless as it would still have to give priority to the European Convention on Human Rights.
And it has made no recommendations on how to address deep concerns that the European judges do not take sufficient account of the decisions of UK courts and parliament when making its rulings.
Blair Gibbs, head of crime and justice at the think-tank Policy Exchange said: “We have to reform the European Court but we cannot ignore the fundamental democratic issue that an international court can dictate policy to sovereign governments on what only it decides is a human rights issue.
“Limiting the court to serious cases would be a start, but the current recommendations would not have stopped the prisoner votes ruling, which saw foreign judges overruling our own parliament.
“We must build alliances with other nations who also want to address this issue of sovereignty and the proper scope of the court.”
The Commission on a Bill of Rights was set up earlier this year to examine whether the Human Rights Act should be replaced with a British Bill of Rights.
But its first job was to suggest reforms for the European Court of Human Rights for when the UK takes over the presidency of the Council of Europe in November.
Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, wants the UK to uses its position to spearhead a radical shake-up of the court.
MPs are furious over a ruling that could force the UK Government to grant prisoners the vote because a blanket ban breaches their rights, despite it being dismissed by domestic judges and parliament.
In its interim recommendations yesterday, the commission said the Government should “vigorously pursue the need for urgent and fundamental reform”.
It said a backlog of 150,000 cases there meant the court was now in an “impossible situation” and “mere tinkering at the edges” will not work.
It said the number of trivial cases sent to the court should be cut, its ability to award compensation restricted and the way judges are appointed overhauled.
But the commission also said the court should “only address a limited number of cases that raise serious questions affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention and serious issues of general importance”.
It also said that “failure to put in place the necessary machinery for compliance (of the Convention) should itself constitute a violation of the Convention”.
That suggests even a Bill of Rights would have to give sufficient deference to the Convention.
The commission said it did not have time to examine the issue of how the court should take in to account the views and decisions of domestic executives but would look at that in the coming months.
However, one source close to it said it was very unlikely that members would be able to agree on any recommendation on how to address that key problem.
Sir Leigh Lewis, the commission's chairman, said: "In the Commission's view the United Kingdom is uniquely well placed to set the ball rolling on fundamental reforms to the European Court of Human Rights, and should do so with a view to achieving the wellbeing and effective functioning of the court over the long term."
Dominic Raab, the Tory MP, said: “I welcome the overall strategy, and it is critical it delivers.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Our top priority when we take over the Chairmanship of the Council of Europe in November will be to deliver and build upon the ongoing programme of reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Our plans for this will be informed by the Commission’s advice.”
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
The other side of the story
The other side of the story
I cannot say too much at the present, save to say there was an incident when I took Rocky for a walk in Pearson Park this afternoon.
Two PCSOs arrived at my gate seeking to speak to me about it. I got the impression initially that I was a suspect.
Before I went out I got a strange premonition that an incident, not like actually happened, might happen so I took along my video camera.
I gave my version of the story to the PCSOs, and said I had video evidence. They asked to see it and concluded from it that rather than me being the offender I was actually the victim. They asked me to go to Pearson Park police station to show the videos to their supervisor. I phoned up and now am awaiting a call back for the appointment to be fixed.
UPDATE: 11am Saturday morning at Queens Gardens for witness statement.
I cannot say too much at the present, save to say there was an incident when I took Rocky for a walk in Pearson Park this afternoon.
Two PCSOs arrived at my gate seeking to speak to me about it. I got the impression initially that I was a suspect.
Before I went out I got a strange premonition that an incident, not like actually happened, might happen so I took along my video camera.
I gave my version of the story to the PCSOs, and said I had video evidence. They asked to see it and concluded from it that rather than me being the offender I was actually the victim. They asked me to go to Pearson Park police station to show the videos to their supervisor. I phoned up and now am awaiting a call back for the appointment to be fixed.
UPDATE: 11am Saturday morning at Queens Gardens for witness statement.
Judge criticises management systems in Full Sutton and Frankland prisons
Judge criticises management systems in Full Sutton and Frankland prisons
The Judge said: "While everyone is acutely aware of the costs of monitoring vulnerable and high-risk prisoners, from what I have seen in this case it appears that the management systems currently in place require urgent review."
The Judge said: "While everyone is acutely aware of the costs of monitoring vulnerable and high-risk prisoners, from what I have seen in this case it appears that the management systems currently in place require urgent review."
The Sun Says Neuter Clarke
The Sun Says Neuter Clarke
IT was a spat about a cat. But it marked the moment Ken Clarke went from being an embarrassment to his party to a traitor to it.
The Justice Secretary tried to humiliate Home Secretary Theresa May for ordering changes to EU human rights rules that let foreign killers and rapists escape deportation.
Mrs May told the Tory conference how judges had to let an illegal immigrant stay here because under Labour's Human Rights Act, ownership of a cat was proof of a "family life" in the UK.
To the fury of Tories, Mr Clarke sneered that the cat story was wrong and a cover-up for Home Office bungling.
Let's not lose sight of the real issue here, and it's not the cat.
This was an act of gross treachery by an EU-obsessed minister who thinks the unelected Brussels dictatorship matters more than our Parliament.
It was a cynical act of sabotage by an out-of-touch Justice Secretary whose liberal softness infuriates his colleagues and betrays the public.
Mrs May deserves praise for doing what Sun readers want.
This is the first serious step the Government has taken to stop the human rights madness that has let foreign criminals like Mohammed Ibrahim — jailed for leaving a dying child under the wheels of his car — stay here (usually sponging off our benefits, too).
If only the Government would go further, and rip up the whole Human Rights Act as it promised.
Arrogant Ken Clarke has openly contradicted a Cabinet colleague, virtually called her a liar, and repudiates his own party's policy.
What else does he have to do to get sacked?
Jailhouselawyer says to The Sun
Fuck You, Sokol Beqiri, 2001
IT was a spat about a cat. But it marked the moment Ken Clarke went from being an embarrassment to his party to a traitor to it.
The Justice Secretary tried to humiliate Home Secretary Theresa May for ordering changes to EU human rights rules that let foreign killers and rapists escape deportation.
Mrs May told the Tory conference how judges had to let an illegal immigrant stay here because under Labour's Human Rights Act, ownership of a cat was proof of a "family life" in the UK.
To the fury of Tories, Mr Clarke sneered that the cat story was wrong and a cover-up for Home Office bungling.
Let's not lose sight of the real issue here, and it's not the cat.
This was an act of gross treachery by an EU-obsessed minister who thinks the unelected Brussels dictatorship matters more than our Parliament.
It was a cynical act of sabotage by an out-of-touch Justice Secretary whose liberal softness infuriates his colleagues and betrays the public.
Mrs May deserves praise for doing what Sun readers want.
This is the first serious step the Government has taken to stop the human rights madness that has let foreign criminals like Mohammed Ibrahim — jailed for leaving a dying child under the wheels of his car — stay here (usually sponging off our benefits, too).
If only the Government would go further, and rip up the whole Human Rights Act as it promised.
Arrogant Ken Clarke has openly contradicted a Cabinet colleague, virtually called her a liar, and repudiates his own party's policy.
What else does he have to do to get sacked?
Jailhouselawyer says to The Sun
Ken Clarke's prison transformation will take hard graft
Ken Clarke's prison transformation will take hard graft
Getting prisoners working on a large scale is a huge task, but at least Clarke recognises prison must be used more productively
Ken Clarke wants to see prisoners working. The justice secretary has a dream of "hard work flourishing in every single jail in the United Kingdom". The 40-hour working prison week, he says, "will make us safer". Perhaps it will. His argument is that people in prison who are given the opportunity to learn skills and develop a disciplined work ethic while paying their debt to society will be less likely to reoffend after they have been released – and lower reoffending rates mean fewer victims. But it will take more than just talk of hard graft to turn Clarke's vision of a "rehabilitation revolution" into reality.
For a start, the practical challenges of gearing prisons up for large-scale industry are huge. He talks about cost-cutting and is adamant that "criminals" are not going to be "exempt from the cuts". Yet to change the fabric of the prison estate so it can accommodate working conditions that mirror those on the outside would cost an unquantifiable fortune. That's not to say it is not doable, in time.
Given that the prison system of England and Wales is under huge pressure from record numbers, currently 87,000 and rising, we are talking a long time, however.
But at least Clarke is trying. The most important thing he recognises, and what he wants his party and the country to accept, is that prison as we have known it for the past 20 years or so does not work.
Just locking people up for months or years with little constructive activity to keep them occupied serves little purpose beyond giving the outside community a measure of respite. And Clarke knows that unless prisons are used productively all they are doing is storing up trouble.
So I hope he manages to introduce his "dramatic" proposals to the culture of prison life. If he holds steady and can hang on to his job for long enough he might just start the sea change that is necessary to make prison an effective remedy for crime. Reducing reoffending should be the absolute priority of prison time. How much this is achieved should be the true measure of whether or not a prison works.
Good luck Mr Clarke, for all our sakes.
Getting prisoners working on a large scale is a huge task, but at least Clarke recognises prison must be used more productively
Ken Clarke wants to see prisoners working. The justice secretary has a dream of "hard work flourishing in every single jail in the United Kingdom". The 40-hour working prison week, he says, "will make us safer". Perhaps it will. His argument is that people in prison who are given the opportunity to learn skills and develop a disciplined work ethic while paying their debt to society will be less likely to reoffend after they have been released – and lower reoffending rates mean fewer victims. But it will take more than just talk of hard graft to turn Clarke's vision of a "rehabilitation revolution" into reality.
For a start, the practical challenges of gearing prisons up for large-scale industry are huge. He talks about cost-cutting and is adamant that "criminals" are not going to be "exempt from the cuts". Yet to change the fabric of the prison estate so it can accommodate working conditions that mirror those on the outside would cost an unquantifiable fortune. That's not to say it is not doable, in time.
Given that the prison system of England and Wales is under huge pressure from record numbers, currently 87,000 and rising, we are talking a long time, however.
But at least Clarke is trying. The most important thing he recognises, and what he wants his party and the country to accept, is that prison as we have known it for the past 20 years or so does not work.
Just locking people up for months or years with little constructive activity to keep them occupied serves little purpose beyond giving the outside community a measure of respite. And Clarke knows that unless prisons are used productively all they are doing is storing up trouble.
So I hope he manages to introduce his "dramatic" proposals to the culture of prison life. If he holds steady and can hang on to his job for long enough he might just start the sea change that is necessary to make prison an effective remedy for crime. Reducing reoffending should be the absolute priority of prison time. How much this is achieved should be the true measure of whether or not a prison works.
Good luck Mr Clarke, for all our sakes.
More prisoners will be sent out to work
More prisoners will be sent out to work
Inmates should should be put to work in all jails as part of a drive to make prisons "places of retribution, but also places of reform", the Justice Secretary said yesterday.
Ken Clarke told the Conservative Party conference that the move would aim to rehabilitate a growing "feral underclass" in Britain, and that he was "dramatically" expanding the working prisons programme.
"The idea is to provide hard work in prison so that prisoners would be doing something productive, instead of doing nothing, plotting a more honest future instead of planning their next crime, earning money to pay back to [their] victims," Mr Clarke said.
Comment: Prisons are already places of retribution and reform, therefore the drive to put inmates to work actually is part of another agenda. I don't think it is appropriate for the upper class Kenneth Clarke to refer to the inmates in his charge as the "feral underclass".
Inmates should should be put to work in all jails as part of a drive to make prisons "places of retribution, but also places of reform", the Justice Secretary said yesterday.
Ken Clarke told the Conservative Party conference that the move would aim to rehabilitate a growing "feral underclass" in Britain, and that he was "dramatically" expanding the working prisons programme.
"The idea is to provide hard work in prison so that prisoners would be doing something productive, instead of doing nothing, plotting a more honest future instead of planning their next crime, earning money to pay back to [their] victims," Mr Clarke said.
Comment: Prisons are already places of retribution and reform, therefore the drive to put inmates to work actually is part of another agenda. I don't think it is appropriate for the upper class Kenneth Clarke to refer to the inmates in his charge as the "feral underclass".
MPs often 'too drunk to stand' in Commons
MPs often 'too drunk to stand' in Commons
Some MPs drink so heavily before debates that they can barely stand up, a Conservative has claimed.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the MP for Totnes, alleged that a “shocking” number of MPs have “no idea” what they are voting for in the Commons as they just follow the orders of their leaders.
Dr Wollaston, 49, who won her seat at last year’s election, said the party should recruit candidates from a wider range of backgrounds to raise standards in Parliament.
“Who would go to see a surgeon who had just drunk a bottle of wine at lunchtime?” she said at a fringe meeting hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank. “But we fully accept that MPs are perfectly capable of performing as MPs despite some of them drinking really quite heavily.”
Dr Wollaston called for such behaviour to be “challenged”. She said: “It’s really shocking that so many MPs have no idea what they are voting for when they walk through the doors of the lobbies. I think we need to change the culture in Westminster.”
Comment: I have previously blogged about my strong suspicion that Kenneth Clarke appeared before the Joint Committee on Human Rights following a liquid lunch.
Some MPs drink so heavily before debates that they can barely stand up, a Conservative has claimed.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the MP for Totnes, alleged that a “shocking” number of MPs have “no idea” what they are voting for in the Commons as they just follow the orders of their leaders.
Dr Wollaston, 49, who won her seat at last year’s election, said the party should recruit candidates from a wider range of backgrounds to raise standards in Parliament.
“Who would go to see a surgeon who had just drunk a bottle of wine at lunchtime?” she said at a fringe meeting hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank. “But we fully accept that MPs are perfectly capable of performing as MPs despite some of them drinking really quite heavily.”
Dr Wollaston called for such behaviour to be “challenged”. She said: “It’s really shocking that so many MPs have no idea what they are voting for when they walk through the doors of the lobbies. I think we need to change the culture in Westminster.”
Comment: I have previously blogged about my strong suspicion that Kenneth Clarke appeared before the Joint Committee on Human Rights following a liquid lunch.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Tory party conference: May Day, May Day, May day.
Tory party conference: May Day, May Day, May day.
Nicholas Watt, Chief political correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 October 2011 20.14 BST,
Writes:
Theresa May plans clampdown on criminals who resist deportation
Home secretary to announce move to limit power of Human Rights Act at Conservative conference
The Guardian has employed a chief political correspondent to write a story which has both political and legal content in it.
The gist of the story is that Teresa May intends to make secondary legislation which she hopes will persuade judges that the rules should override primary legislation.
"May's proposal is designed to signal to the courts that they can override human rights if foreign criminals are guilty of serious breaches of the new immigration rules".
Imagine that I am a judge, a member of the so-called independent Judiciary, and a barrister representing the Home Office starts signalling to me that I should overturn the hierarchy of powers just to appease Teresa May and the Tory party and their supporters. My response would be to signal back as follows:
Fuck You, Sokol Beqiri, 2001
What we are talking about here is the ultra vires doctrine.
According to Foulkes:
"The administration exercises its statutory functions within a hierarchy of powers. At the top is the Act of Parliament which cannot be ultra vires. Regulations, orders or decisions of whatever name or form must be within the powers given by the Act and not repugnant to it. Any further act authorised or required to be taken by such regulations etc must likewise be within the regulations and within the Act and not repugnant to either. For example, section 47 of the Prison Act 1952 empowers the Secretay of State to make Rules for the discipline and control of prisoners. Under the authority of the Rules the Secretary of State has made standing orders. The Rules must be intra vires the Act; the standing orders must be intra vires the Rules and the Act. The Rules cannot confer any greater power than the Act; nor the standing orders any greater power than the Rules".
Basically, Teresa May is attempting to claim that the rules she is making, secondary legislation, have greater power than the Act, which is primary legislation.
Once again we have a Home Secretary who is claiming to be above the law.
Nicholas Watt, Chief political correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 October 2011 20.14 BST,
Writes:
Theresa May plans clampdown on criminals who resist deportation
Home secretary to announce move to limit power of Human Rights Act at Conservative conference
The Guardian has employed a chief political correspondent to write a story which has both political and legal content in it.
The gist of the story is that Teresa May intends to make secondary legislation which she hopes will persuade judges that the rules should override primary legislation.
"May's proposal is designed to signal to the courts that they can override human rights if foreign criminals are guilty of serious breaches of the new immigration rules".
Imagine that I am a judge, a member of the so-called independent Judiciary, and a barrister representing the Home Office starts signalling to me that I should overturn the hierarchy of powers just to appease Teresa May and the Tory party and their supporters. My response would be to signal back as follows:
What we are talking about here is the ultra vires doctrine.
According to Foulkes:
"The administration exercises its statutory functions within a hierarchy of powers. At the top is the Act of Parliament which cannot be ultra vires. Regulations, orders or decisions of whatever name or form must be within the powers given by the Act and not repugnant to it. Any further act authorised or required to be taken by such regulations etc must likewise be within the regulations and within the Act and not repugnant to either. For example, section 47 of the Prison Act 1952 empowers the Secretay of State to make Rules for the discipline and control of prisoners. Under the authority of the Rules the Secretary of State has made standing orders. The Rules must be intra vires the Act; the standing orders must be intra vires the Rules and the Act. The Rules cannot confer any greater power than the Act; nor the standing orders any greater power than the Rules".
Basically, Teresa May is attempting to claim that the rules she is making, secondary legislation, have greater power than the Act, which is primary legislation.
Once again we have a Home Secretary who is claiming to be above the law.
Monday, October 03, 2011
The justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly, exposed as a common crook!
The justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly, exposed as a common crook!
Justice Minister's children owned shares in legal claims firm
The teenage children of the justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly, owned shares in a controversial “ambulance chasing” legal claims firm, it has been disclosed.
Justice Minister's children owned shares in legal claims firm
The teenage children of the justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly, owned shares in a controversial “ambulance chasing” legal claims firm, it has been disclosed.
Replace people's human rights with politicians sound bites
Replace people's human rights with politicians sound bites
Alarm bells ring in my head when I read the following:
Human rights
The Prime Minister backed calls from the Home Secretary to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights.
“That was the Conservative policy at the last election. That is, I think, the right thing to do,” he said. However, the Liberal Democrats say they will thwart any attempt to scrap or water down human rights laws.
Mr Cameron said he wanted to see a more commonsense approach to human rights laws.
The first thing to point out is that we already have the Bill of Rights 1688/9. Prior to the HRA being passed by Parliament, it was the Human Rights Bill. From a legal stand point, it appears to make no sense to replace an Act with a Bill and appears to be a backward step. Whilst I am generally in favour of the HRA, in my view it is too weak and requires amendments to strengthen it. This is a far call from abolishing it altogether just to replace it with a so-called Bill of Rights. The second point is that the Tories did not win a majority at the last general election, therefore the electorate has not given the Tories a mandate to scrap the HRA. In my view, the Tory policy should instead be scrapped. Dictatorships abolish human, civil and political rights. It would appear that David Cameron is seeking to become a dictator by claiming that abolishing human rights is the right thing to do. In my view, it is the wrong thing to do. Therefore I will stongly oppose him and any attempt to scrap or dilute human rights in the UK.
Given David Cameron's elite, privileged, upper class background, the last thing that can be said about him is that he is common. Therefore, it is questionable whether he has any idea what commonsense means.
Common sense, as described by Merriam-Webster, is defined as beliefs or propositions that most people consider prudent and of sound judgment, without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people "in common". Thus "common sense" (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. According to Cambridge Dictionary, the phrase is good sense and sound judgment in practical matters ("the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way").
Whichever definition is used, identifying particular items of knowledge as "common sense" is difficult. Philosophers may choose to avoid using the phrase when using precise language. But common sense remains a perennial topic in epistemology and many philosophers make wide use of the concept or at least refer to it. Some related concepts include intuitions, pre-theoretic belief, ordinary language, the frame problem, foundational beliefs, good sense, endoxa, axioms, wisdom, folk wisdom, folklore and public opinion.
Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events within human experience (such as good will), and thus appear commensurate with human scale. Humans lack any common-sense intuition of, for example, the behavior of the universe at subatomic distances [see Quantum mechanics], or of speeds approaching that of light [see Special relativity]. Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false.
When David Cameron speaks about common sense, it is worth bearing in mind that "Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false".
When commenting in 2006 on his former pupil's ideas about a "Bill of Rights" to replace the Human Rights Act, however, Professor Bogdanor, himself a Liberal Democrat, said, "I think he is very confused. I've read his speech and it's filled with contradictions. There are one or two good things in it but one glimpses them, as it were, through a mist of misunderstanding".
At best David Cameron has only the foggiest idea. At worst he is downright dishonest.
Politicians of the new generation are carefully coached by their spin doctors to produce on-demand sound bites which are clear and to the point.
In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure. While traditional public relations may also rely on creative presentation of the facts, "spin" often, though not always, implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics.
Politicians are often accused by their opponents of claiming to be honest and seek the truth while using spin tactics to manipulate public opinion. Because of the frequent association between "spin" and press conferences (especially government press conferences), the room in which these take place is sometimes described as a spin room. A group of people who develop spin may be referred to as "spin doctors" who engage in "spin doctoring" for the person or group that hired them.
It can reasonably be claimed that what David Cameron is really engaged in is spin. Another word for spin is lie. A lie tends to mask the truth. What is it that David Cameron is trying to hide from the public?
It is disconserting that Teresa May the Home Secretary seeks to abolish the HRA. She seeks to be above the law. This case shows why she should be strongly opposed.
Alarm bells ring in my head when I read the following:
Human rights
The Prime Minister backed calls from the Home Secretary to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights.
“That was the Conservative policy at the last election. That is, I think, the right thing to do,” he said. However, the Liberal Democrats say they will thwart any attempt to scrap or water down human rights laws.
Mr Cameron said he wanted to see a more commonsense approach to human rights laws.
The first thing to point out is that we already have the Bill of Rights 1688/9. Prior to the HRA being passed by Parliament, it was the Human Rights Bill. From a legal stand point, it appears to make no sense to replace an Act with a Bill and appears to be a backward step. Whilst I am generally in favour of the HRA, in my view it is too weak and requires amendments to strengthen it. This is a far call from abolishing it altogether just to replace it with a so-called Bill of Rights. The second point is that the Tories did not win a majority at the last general election, therefore the electorate has not given the Tories a mandate to scrap the HRA. In my view, the Tory policy should instead be scrapped. Dictatorships abolish human, civil and political rights. It would appear that David Cameron is seeking to become a dictator by claiming that abolishing human rights is the right thing to do. In my view, it is the wrong thing to do. Therefore I will stongly oppose him and any attempt to scrap or dilute human rights in the UK.
Given David Cameron's elite, privileged, upper class background, the last thing that can be said about him is that he is common. Therefore, it is questionable whether he has any idea what commonsense means.
Common sense, as described by Merriam-Webster, is defined as beliefs or propositions that most people consider prudent and of sound judgment, without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people "in common". Thus "common sense" (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have. According to Cambridge Dictionary, the phrase is good sense and sound judgment in practical matters ("the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way").
Whichever definition is used, identifying particular items of knowledge as "common sense" is difficult. Philosophers may choose to avoid using the phrase when using precise language. But common sense remains a perennial topic in epistemology and many philosophers make wide use of the concept or at least refer to it. Some related concepts include intuitions, pre-theoretic belief, ordinary language, the frame problem, foundational beliefs, good sense, endoxa, axioms, wisdom, folk wisdom, folklore and public opinion.
Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events within human experience (such as good will), and thus appear commensurate with human scale. Humans lack any common-sense intuition of, for example, the behavior of the universe at subatomic distances [see Quantum mechanics], or of speeds approaching that of light [see Special relativity]. Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false.
When David Cameron speaks about common sense, it is worth bearing in mind that "Often ideas that may be considered to be true by common sense are in fact false".
When commenting in 2006 on his former pupil's ideas about a "Bill of Rights" to replace the Human Rights Act, however, Professor Bogdanor, himself a Liberal Democrat, said, "I think he is very confused. I've read his speech and it's filled with contradictions. There are one or two good things in it but one glimpses them, as it were, through a mist of misunderstanding".
At best David Cameron has only the foggiest idea. At worst he is downright dishonest.
Politicians of the new generation are carefully coached by their spin doctors to produce on-demand sound bites which are clear and to the point.
In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure. While traditional public relations may also rely on creative presentation of the facts, "spin" often, though not always, implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics.
Politicians are often accused by their opponents of claiming to be honest and seek the truth while using spin tactics to manipulate public opinion. Because of the frequent association between "spin" and press conferences (especially government press conferences), the room in which these take place is sometimes described as a spin room. A group of people who develop spin may be referred to as "spin doctors" who engage in "spin doctoring" for the person or group that hired them.
It can reasonably be claimed that what David Cameron is really engaged in is spin. Another word for spin is lie. A lie tends to mask the truth. What is it that David Cameron is trying to hide from the public?
It is disconserting that Teresa May the Home Secretary seeks to abolish the HRA. She seeks to be above the law. This case shows why she should be strongly opposed.
Two charged over Frankland prison murder
Two charged over Frankland prison murder
Two inmates have been charged with the murder of a child rapist at HM Prison Frankland, County Durham.
Mitchell Harrison, 23, was found with multiple injuries in his cell at the high security prison on Saturday morning.
A 32-year-old man and a 23-year-old man will appear before magistrates on Monday, police said.
Harrison, from Wolverhampton, was jailed in 2009 after raping a 13-year-old-girl in Cumbria in 2009.
A Durham Constabulary spokeswoman said: "The man who died can now be named as Mitchell Dean Harrison, whose last address was in Cumbria.
"Two men, aged 32 and 23, have been charged with murder and will appear before Peterlee magistrates on Monday."
Harrison was given an indeterminate sentence at Carlisle Crown Court in January last year after being convicted of raping the teenager.
He was sentenced to at least four-and-a-half years in jail and was put on the sex offenders register for life.
Frankland holds more than 800 of the most serious offenders in the prison system.
Two inmates have been charged with the murder of a child rapist at HM Prison Frankland, County Durham.
Mitchell Harrison, 23, was found with multiple injuries in his cell at the high security prison on Saturday morning.
A 32-year-old man and a 23-year-old man will appear before magistrates on Monday, police said.
Harrison, from Wolverhampton, was jailed in 2009 after raping a 13-year-old-girl in Cumbria in 2009.
A Durham Constabulary spokeswoman said: "The man who died can now be named as Mitchell Dean Harrison, whose last address was in Cumbria.
"Two men, aged 32 and 23, have been charged with murder and will appear before Peterlee magistrates on Monday."
Harrison was given an indeterminate sentence at Carlisle Crown Court in January last year after being convicted of raping the teenager.
He was sentenced to at least four-and-a-half years in jail and was put on the sex offenders register for life.
Frankland holds more than 800 of the most serious offenders in the prison system.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
David Cameron in a car crash waiting to happen: Prisoners votes
David Cameron in a car crash waiting to happen: Prisoners votes
I describe the situation that the Coalition government is in on the issue of prisoners votes as a car crash waiting to happen. David Cameron is in the driving seat and Nick Clegg is in the front passenger seat, and the 1922 Committee with the likes of David Davis and Dominic Raab is in the back seat trying to grab the steering wheel as the car plummets over the White Cliffs of Dover.
I describe the situation that the Coalition government is in on the issue of prisoners votes as a car crash waiting to happen. David Cameron is in the driving seat and Nick Clegg is in the front passenger seat, and the 1922 Committee with the likes of David Davis and Dominic Raab is in the back seat trying to grab the steering wheel as the car plummets over the White Cliffs of Dover.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
My extended Polish family and other animals: The barbecue
My extended Polish family and other animals: The barbecue
Arthur and Violetta came with a bottle of Grants whisky and 4 Polish sausages (about the length of 3 thick sausages), 1 for each of us and 1 for Rocky. Tina Turner Greatest Hits on the juke box.
Arthur and Violetta came with a bottle of Grants whisky and 4 Polish sausages (about the length of 3 thick sausages), 1 for each of us and 1 for Rocky. Tina Turner Greatest Hits on the juke box.
Are our prisons sweatboxes?
Are our prisons sweatboxes?
Traditionally heating in prisons goes off on the 1st of May and goes back on come the 1st of October. Today in some parts of the country its 28(°C) and above!
Sweatbox
In hot countries a sweatbox was a cramped cell where the prisoner would sweat until he felt the affects of dehydration.
Traditionally heating in prisons goes off on the 1st of May and goes back on come the 1st of October. Today in some parts of the country its 28(°C) and above!
Sweatbox
In hot countries a sweatbox was a cramped cell where the prisoner would sweat until he felt the affects of dehydration.
Submerged now surfaced
Submerged now surfaced
Today the submarine surfaced and upped periscope and I had time to visit all the blogs I have been neglecting for a month.
This post particularly impressed me, and I will revisit it to post a response.
Today the submarine surfaced and upped periscope and I had time to visit all the blogs I have been neglecting for a month.
This post particularly impressed me, and I will revisit it to post a response.
Evidence that we're not all in this together!
Evidence that we're not all in this together!
Conservatives to announce unemployed should work harder for benefits
Jobseekers may lose payments if they fail to spend more time looking for work, Tories expected to say at conference
The reason why somebody is called unemployed is because they do not have a job and are therefore unable to work. So, the Guardian headline is nonsense. This is evidenced by the text of the subheading. Why write a misleading headline in the first place?
My own experience is that it was a waste of time looking for a job. Ex-offenders are 17 times less likely to get a job than someone without a criminal record. Employers ignore the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Even before release from prison it was obvious that in some areas accomodation was plentiful but jobs were in short supply, and vice versa. It was very demoralising filling in application forms and attending job interviews and getting no reward of a job.
The Policy Exchange, The New Statesman named it as David Cameron's "favourite think tank", comes out with some crackpot ideas, like on prisoners votes. It beggars belief that our Prime Minister relies upon it for policies. In a democracy surely he should instead be listening to the public?
It was not that long ago that the 1922 Committee summoned David Cameron into a backroom in Parliament and ordered him to curb the power of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to make it easier for MPs to continue to fiddle their expenses. So at a time when there is no legal authority to fiddle their expenses and make it easier to do so, the Tories are seeking to make it harder for those legally entitled to claim their benefits.
Conservatives to announce unemployed should work harder for benefits
Jobseekers may lose payments if they fail to spend more time looking for work, Tories expected to say at conference
The reason why somebody is called unemployed is because they do not have a job and are therefore unable to work. So, the Guardian headline is nonsense. This is evidenced by the text of the subheading. Why write a misleading headline in the first place?
My own experience is that it was a waste of time looking for a job. Ex-offenders are 17 times less likely to get a job than someone without a criminal record. Employers ignore the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Even before release from prison it was obvious that in some areas accomodation was plentiful but jobs were in short supply, and vice versa. It was very demoralising filling in application forms and attending job interviews and getting no reward of a job.
The Policy Exchange, The New Statesman named it as David Cameron's "favourite think tank", comes out with some crackpot ideas, like on prisoners votes. It beggars belief that our Prime Minister relies upon it for policies. In a democracy surely he should instead be listening to the public?
It was not that long ago that the 1922 Committee summoned David Cameron into a backroom in Parliament and ordered him to curb the power of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to make it easier for MPs to continue to fiddle their expenses. So at a time when there is no legal authority to fiddle their expenses and make it easier to do so, the Tories are seeking to make it harder for those legally entitled to claim their benefits.
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