British Politicians, the small print and the EU

There is no point in me writing a post on this myself, Mary Riddell has done a fine job of that already.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, rhubarb, rhubarb, order in the House, 'physically ill' and the rest of it. All I can say to the Commons over this votes for prisoners dispute is: just shut up and pull the trigger and get out of the Council of Europe. Or admit you are too timid to pull the trigger, so shut up anyway and submit in the manner that suits men who are cowards.

This noise about how Britain may now stand against to the council's European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is at best naive and in most cases (yes, you, David Cameron) is synthetic. What Cameron has done on this one is pretend this is the crucial line he won't cross. Meanwhile, very much more quietly and apparently without a moment of squeamishness (odd that, how selective the prime minister's stomach is on parliamentary sovereignty), his Government hands over more and more power to the European Union.

What he has done by stirring up this prisoners' votes business is simply give the euro-anxious Tories a different kind of 'European' bone on which to chew. Yet this issue is not the meat. The ECHR and its decisions are not the things most endangering Britain's sovereignty now.

Still, if MPs are really so determined to stop this so-called 'encroachment' by Strasbourg, maybe a technical note first. Britain freely (and foolishly) agreed long ago to give the court at Strasbourg all the powers that the ECHR has since been using. This so-called 'court' at has never invaded Britain -- the supine British opened the gates to all these European 'justices' and their powers to decide Britain's laws.

The angry cries, even among my colleagues, that there has been 'remorseless undermining' of Britain's parliament and courts implies that the ECHR has been tunnelling away under the stone walls of Britain, rather in the manner of medieval seige warfare. It hasn't. The ECHR has done only and exactly what decades of euro-supine British politicians have allowed it to do. The drawbridge has been down all along, with 'We are all Europeans now' written on cloth-of-gold and slung from the battlements.

All parliament has to do if it really does want to stop the powers of this 'court' is just vote to pull out of the Council of Europe, ECHR and all. Then this absurdity of votes for prisoners, and every other ECHR so-called 'human rights' absurdity, goes away; or at least -- and this is what Cameron is hiding in this debate -- until Brussels reminds the United Kingdom that by signing up to Lisbon Treaty and the rest, powers across the Channel can go on imposing these 'human rights' on Britain whether the UK tries to derogate from the ECHR decisions or leaves the Council of Europe altogether.

Cameron, being so very busy having a public relations-designed 'physcal illness' over the issue, won't admit that the problem with exactly this kind of control by foreign powers over Britain's legislation will continue as long as Britain stays in the EU: even if Britain now refuses votes for prisoners -- and it won't; in the end, some man caught with 10,000 child porn images on his laptop will have the liberty to cancel out your vote -- ultimately the EU will have ways of getting the same decision reached in the European Court of Justice (the EU 'court,' this one in Luxembourg with the power to enforce EU law in member states). All that will be necessary is for some other ex-con lowlife to bring another case, this time in Luxembourg not Strasbourg.

The Lisbon Treaty, among many other poisonous things, gave the EU 'legal personality' for the first time. That means it can sign international agreements, not as an agent for a group of 27 sovereign states, but as a state in its own right. And as this new country called Europe, it is going to join the Council of Europe. It will be a member just as the United Kingdom is now.

What that means is that Britain, even if it pulls out of the Council of Europe, will still be bound to the damned thing as a part of the EU: remember, Lisbon made us all 'citizens of the EU' now. If you are a native of England, Scotland Wales or Ireland, your nationality is now 'European' whether you want it or not. The treaty says so, and the treaty, thanks to the refusal by Cameron and William Hague to fight it, is law.

Treaties and other international agreements now signed by the EU will be directly binding on the UK and have primacy over all UK laws and the British constitution. And, no, Britain does not have a veto over most of the things the EU might sign treaties on.

Slightly delicious note: I gather the EU's signing for the membership has been held up because the EU is demanding that decisions of the ECHR cannot over-rule the decisions of the ECJ. In other words, Brussels is demanding that its own court have supremacy over the ECHR, something Britain has surrendered for its own Supreme Court.

So there could be turf conflicts between the euro-courts. As Open Europe notes in its briefing this week on the votes for prisoners dispute, the EU has its own catalogue of justiciable rights -- '' 'the so-called Charter of Fundamental Rights, enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty. The Charter allows citizens to contest rights set down in EU law at the European Court of Justice, and, in future, possibly also the ECHR (when the EU accedes to it).'

This will make it 'increasingly difficult for the UK to negotiate a carve-out from European human rights legislation.'

As for the detail of this particular case of prisoners' votes, 'Withdrawal from the ECHR would allow the UK to ignore ECHR rulings on prisoners votes when it come to general elections. However, as voting rights in European Parliament and local elections are covered by EU law as well as national law, their application in the UK could in future be challenged at the ECHR or the ECJ.'

Oh, and as for the Cameron fudge about limiting the vote to prisoners serving four years or less, the ECHR has already struck down that notion in a similar case, Scoppola v Italy. It decided that the prisoner's rights were violated because Italian law barred him from voting on the basis of his sentence. So they will knock down Cameron's four years, too, and I'd suspect he knows it.

Which is why the noise in the Commons over this is just noise. Either parliament is sovereign or it's not, and until the MPs vote to take Britain out of the EU, it's not: the 'legal personality' called the 'European Union' is sovereign.

So the MPs might as well go home; or go around to the 'Scrubs for a bit of canvassing.

...And back to me. Peter Oborne has this funny statement on his blog

But it just isn’t going to happen. Even if he launched on this kamikaze mission, he wouldn’t complete it. Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, has already advised Downing Street that banning votes for prisoners is illegal. I guess he would resign, along with Ken Clarke. I am told that most of the supreme court judges would follow Clarke out of the door, launching Britain into a full-scale constitutional crisis. Not only that, Nick Clegg, who has been strangely silent on all this, would walk out of the Coalition.

Who cares if Dominic Grieve, Ken Clarke and the Supreme Court judges walk out? They are doing so on their principles not ours and they are supposed to represent us and our parliament. It is not a constitutional crisis when the people that walk out have no support form the electorate anyway. If they had the support of voters and truly trumpeted the vox populi, the story would be different. Hence I cannot see where this "constitutional crisis" would be coming from, simply because no one would care and a few would cheer.

EU Arrest Warrant does not work - deluded ministers think they have power to intervene (they don't)

I am no big fan of the EU, everyone knows that who follows this blogs frequently. I despise the organisation lock, stock and barrel. But I particularly loathe the EAW or the European Arrest Warrant as it is also know. The number of people in Britain seized under the controversial "no-evidence-needed" European Arrest Warrant rose by more than 50 per cent last year, figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show. That's right a foreign court does not need to present the evidence to the British authorities they merely need them to surrender the "suspect" to them.

This is not justice, it is not common law and certainly not habeas corpus. You have the right to face your accuser and a right to know the charges, if you live in a civilised country. I spoke about 'rights' in the previous post but it is becoming abundantly clear even to the most hardline ignorant, are having a hard time denying the disappearance of the latter. Don't take my word for it though read the article yourself.

I love the part in the end where it says, and I quote:

"The Government is committed to reviewing the UK’s extradition arrangements."

The complete and utter failure of the EAW should be insult enough but the chagrin continues. Her Majesty's government is not so ignorant that they do not know EU law. Once the UK has opted in to a measure, it cannot then opt out again should it decide that the direction of negotiations is not to its liking – a decision to opt in is irreversible. In the words of the House of Lords Committee, "the UK may end up bound by a measure with which it does not fully agree." (see House of Lords EU Committee, ‘The Treaty of Lisbon: An impact assessment”, 13 March 2008, p168)

The gentleman above, whom this quote belongs to, is complicit in a complete and utter fabrication of the truth. That quote is a lie and the gentleman to which it belongs is a liar .

The government has no more power over this issue than they have over the weather tomorrow. The British government does not control the day to day management of this country. When is the media going to comprehend this simple fact; we are not an independent country anymore and seized to be so a long time ago.

The EU really does push the right buttons for me but this particular issue really gets the old rage going into overdrive. I wrote a long and winding article about the EAW in our student newspaper back in the day, and that little stunt landed me in a cafe with an italian gentleman who had read it. I spent two hours arguing with him over the virtues of freedom and proper democratic process in the face of oppression, kleptocracy and autocracy. Make no mistake the EU is heading in the complete wrong direction on virtually everything in my opinion, but particularly so with justice and the legitimate process thereof. I could scarcely believe what I was hearing on the other side of the table "Independence is bad, strength in numbers etcetera." He will no doubt make a fine commissioner one day.

HRA

Wrote an article for a paper today about the Human Rights Act 1998. It is bloody amazing how people cling to its name and allows for the argument ' well it is called HUMAN rights act so it must be good' - Mandela was responsible for killing several people using high explosive yet he is held up as a beacon for all that is good in this world. The problem with lefties is that they cannot get past their own bull shit but believe to the extent that they become dogmatic in its favour. They refuse to acknowledge that they are wrong, that they were wrong all along and cannot take advice from anyone not even fellow socialists. That is why Brown and his government are in such deep trouble (well, that and that their entire government is a heap of lying bastards).

1951 Britain signed the European Convention on Human Rights
1960 British citizens could for the first time bring their cases to the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights)
1998 The Convention is signed into British law
2000 the Human Rights Act is fully implemented
2010 the Human Rights Act is scrapped for being utterly useless in protecting normal people but being spectacularly good at ring fencing criminals.

25 Acts of Parliament

60 New Powers

To burn or not to burn, that is the question...

Do you remember when the Danish upheld their principle of free speech and the freedom of the press, when they claimed that the right for a publisher to publish whatever he wants within the law, was a sacrosanct exercise in the West and in Denmark. We remember of course what happened to Danish embassies and Danish products abroad as Muslims reacted to this attrocious enactment of civil liberties. For those of you who are not familiar with this story, here is what happened in a short recap.

"The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. The newspaper announced that this publication was an attempt to contribute to the debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship." (I do not do "copy-paste" and then announce it as my own work so here is the link to Wikipedia from whence the above summary was taken).

Neither do I bow to the wishes of those who would rather I did, alas here is one of the cartoons as published by Jyllands Posten just to put the whole issue into perspective. Admittedly it is not a very nice depiction of Mr. Muhammad but it is a depiction and that is what caused the uproar down yonder.

But as the title of this post suggest the content of this exegesis is not that of Islam bashing - plenty of people do that a lot more satisfactory than myself. No, it is about the curious article of flag desecration.



As has been noted, Muslims around the world really got their knickers in a twist because of something as petty as a picture of their prophet - never mind the other thousands of contradictions in the Koran, lets focus on the non-issue of non-publishing of Mr. Muhammad's face and ignore say, the one about not translating the Koran which to me seems like a much more pressing issue not to say insulting to Mr. Allah. But I suppose we will just have to live with hypocrisy. Moving on, consider this image which was captured somewhere in one of the countries where ignorance clearly outweighed modesty.

Consider this; they are burning the Danish flag thus assuming that the "accountability" lay with the Danish sovereign and not the newspaper in question who saw it fit to muddle in religion (something which always ends bad for anyone who tries - see Richard Dawkins' The root of all evil?) . Would it not have been more appropriate to burn a manikin of the Danish PM Mr. Fogh Rasmussen or why not a copy of the Danish constitution where the freedoms to publish these pictures are enshrined? Or why not stoop so low as to burn a manikin of the cartoonist himself or to be a bit more academic about the whole issue; why not burn a marionette of the Editor of Jyllands Posten, thus making a very learned but gentile protest befitting of "moderate" muslims (the spell checker wants me to put 'muslims' with a capital M. I am not going to honour their actions with this execution as I find the non-moderate population a bit rude).

Continuing, Wikipedia reckons (and thus a portion of the internet who saw fit to edit the page about "Flag Desecration") that the reasons for burning the national flag are as follows:

1. As a protest against a country's foreign policy.
2. To distance oneself from the foreign or domestic policies of one's home country.
3. As a protest at the very laws prohibiting the actions in question.
4. As a protest against nationalism.
5. As a protest against the government in power in the country, or against the country's form of government.
6. A symbolic insult to the people of that country.
7. To demonstrate one's rights.

I would also add "shear ignorance" to this list but if I were to do this someone would undoubtedly remove it from Wikipedia for it does not fall within the remits of equitability. Going back, Wikipedia is spot on in two of the cases namely Nr. 3 and Nr. 6.

Burning a flag could be a very personal issue depending on the reciprocation of the audience. The people in the audience are either very patriotic or modestly or just not at all. The first group will take great offense as a result of this act - my prejudices tell me that many Americans fall into this group. The second group will most likely take offense if this sort of behaviour continues for an extended period of time - I can see the British and French being in this cohort. Finally we have the last group that argues that it is the Muslim's right to exercise their freedom to burn a foreign flag. This is the option we will discuss with regards to Nr. 3 and Nr.6.

Option Nr. 3 finds that desecrating a flag is justified because it is seen as a protest at the very laws prohibiting the actions in question. Now consider also this t-shirt which is on sale at Ban T-shirts. Many Brits would not think twice before slinging this beauty on to their beer-bellies and within the confines of Nr. 3 they are fully entitled to since a majority despise this continental calumniator. Under Nr. 3 then yes, they were perfectly within their right to burn the Danish flag because it is seen as a symbol which represents the actions taken by the paper who according to their beliefs desecrated the holy word of Allah. Whereas most people in the west would go "ehrm, dudes it is only a couple of pictures. It is not like they are chaining muslims and feeding them pork" - quite right it is not. If someone in the UK were to burn the EU they would without question have a EAW thrown at them from either Germany or France for reasons unknown.

It comes down to this Nr. 3 is a double-edged sword. Offense would be taken in the west, at least I think, at some level were someone to burn their national flag. No matter how much the lefties (Of socialism must be said this "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery" - Churchill)in your school proclaimed that they were "a citizen of the world" and similar BS their is always a certain sentimentality towards one's country be it a Sunday Roast or Warm Ale or just cheering for the UK or Denmark in the Olympics - that is after all one of the core purposes of the games to promote national rivalry in sports rather than in arms. But we must consider the point of view as well, for it is very important. The antagonists of this story burned the Danish flags from a religious point of view. That is to say they attacked the state of Denmark for having insulted their religion. Burning the EU flag in Britain would be of different nature; it would be a protest against the ever growing powers of the continental leviathan and a message which simply reads "we want our country back". As V from V for Vendetta said

"A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world." I will leave the reader to extrapolate this quote to flags.

Is either stance more justifiable if conversation were to be kept cordial? If we take the American approach they would most likely argue no. "Flag burning" amendments to the Constitution have been proposed several times with the most recent one on June 22, 2005, a flag burning amendment was passed by the House with the needed two-thirds majority. On June 27, 2006, the most recent attempt to pass a ban on flag burning was rejected by the Senate in a close vote of 66 in favor, 34 opposed, one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to send the amendment to be voted on by the states. However with Bush out of the picture this amendment will most likely never bear fruit, but it does go to show just how sensitive the issue is in the USA.

What about Nr. 6 then? Well when the Mr. Muhammad Cartoon roller-coaster got started most people thought the Danes were being too tolerant towards the Muslim world who were having Denmark-bonfires at least twice a day. Quite an insult some would say but the Danes refrained from pinching it in the bud and did not honour their existence with an apology-statement from the PM. This inevitabily precipitated the crumbling mood of the muslims since they do like attention (see Mr. Ahmadinejad, "democratically" elected president of Iran) but were not getting it from the main player, who normally is the USA, but this time little Denmark had to play that role.

Like Hamlet's soliloquy states (in our context), to burn or not to burn, that is the question. I dare say I have not provided an adequate response to the issue. Is burning a flag really the ultimate political insult as delivered by the proletariat (the vox populi it is not for that would assume that the entireity of the Muslim world are tossers which is not true) or is it merely a futile attempt to get attention to one's lost cause? (It should be noted that the countries in which the Danish flag was burned, the flag desecration was not condemned by the leaders of the nations in question - food for thought perhaps).

A short but insightful one.

Attitude reflects leadership.

Bad attitude and politics in this country spells BNP.

So come on guys give us ONE good reason why we should vote for you. Will you give us our country back? Will you stop destroying every little ounce of history this country has left or will you tackle the triangle issues:

EU
Defence
Immigration

Will you?

(well all know the answer sadly)

Passarelle clauses, Prerogative writs and history - the erosion thereof

Nelson Mandela, that ever glowing beacon of light of human altruism (it is hush-hush to mention that Nelson Mandela was the leader for the ANC's armed faction the MK or the Spear of the Nation), said in his opening speech of his trial in April 1964 that he was a great admirer of the parliamentary system of western governments. He went on to expose his even greater admiration for some of the British milestone documents upon which most western democracies' freedoms are derived from: "The Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights are documents which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world. I have great respect for British political institutions and for the country's system of justice."

Poor old Mandela, I fancy that he does not know that the majority of "British political institutions" ceased to deliver anything even remotely democratic a long time ago. But lets not dwell on the present we must go back to the beginning for a tad of freedom (this is paradox in itself but I am sure you spotted that one).

The first pivotal document that came into being was introduced in 1215 and it is, as you all know, the Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Freedoms). In 1215, king John, faced with the possibility of revolt and civil war, agreed to the demands of his Barons and granted the Magna Carta. It was re-issued in 1216, 1217, and again in 1225 with certain revisions. The Magna Carta was the first document of its kind in that it bound not only the king's subjects, but the king and all of his heirs as well, to the laws of the land. Thus, making no man above the law. Most notably though was that the Magna Carta enshrined the writ of habeas corpus - allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment. You can be quite sure than Brown and his cretins have made it their goal the unlearn any Latin word they ever stumbled upon (which technically involves large chunks of the English language so they should really not have such a hard time to coming to grips with this writ.)

"Aha" you may think, "now all our human rights have been fulfilled" - far from it. It would take another 434 years before another landmark document was broadcasted by the folks on this tiny spec of land.

The Death Warrant of Charles I was published in 1649. We will have to quick forward a bit to get to the juicy parts (well, 'part' is more correct): the beheading.Civil war broke out in 1642. At first, Charles's Royalist forces had the upper hand, with further promise of support from the Irish Catholic Confederation, which was fighting Parliamentarian forces in Ireland. But then the shit hit then fan and at the battles of Naseby and Langport in June and July 1645, the first showing of the Parliamentarian New Model Army under Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, the Royalists suffered major losses. Charles I's surrender in May 1646 concluded the first phase of the civil war, though he rejected all proposals intended to bring a peace. However, he did reach a secret agreement with the Scots regarding Presbyterianism in England, which incensed the English Parliament.

The sequel is a bit of a bitch though for poor old Charles you see the Civil War reached the end of its next phase with Charles's trial. The charges against him were noted in a special Act of Parliament, namely that he "had a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation", and that he had "levied and maintained a civil war in the land." The latter was the equivalent of treason and of it went chop-chop-chop. No head no more. What is interesting though is that New Labour has been waging a civil war as well, not with weapons, but with acts of parliaments and laws - designed to protect us but are now used against us under aegis of "national security". Brown and Blair should start doing their history for if there is one thing about history it is that it infallibly, invariably and consistently repeats itself.

How about it then, did Chuckle Cromwell the Dashing give us all we need to dive headlong into the 21st century as the Computer age dawned before our eyes? No. The wankers had us wait another 40 years before they came up with something that us, the plebeian, could use for our daily undertaking.

The Bill of Rights. The Act described the abuses of power of King James II that led to his departure, and defined the agreement between Parliament and William of Orange if he was to be king. When William and his wife Mary were crowned in 1689, they took an oath to rule according to the "statutes in Parliament agreed upon, and the laws and customs of the same." Previous coronation oaths had merely said that the new king would adhere to the laws and customs of earlier kings. This is very important, wording.

The EU for example loves wording, they love it so much that they have invented new words to hide the underlying message of their documents. For example they have a clause know as a Passerelle Clause or a Escalator Clause that allows the European Council to decide unanimously to replace unanimous voting in the Council of Ministers with qualified majority voting (QMV) in specified areas. Well that democratic, innit? But back to the past.

From Wikipedia:

The Bill of Rights laid out certain basic tenets for, at the time, all Englishmen. These rights continue to apply today, not only in England, but in each of the jurisdictions of the Commonwealth realms as well. The people, embodied in the parliament, are granted immutable civil and political rights through the act, including:

* Freedom from royal interference with the law. Though the sovereign remains the fount of justice, he or she cannot unilaterally establish new courts or act as a judge.
* Freedom from taxation by Royal Prerogative. The agreement of parliament became necessary for the implementation of any new taxes.
* Freedom to petition the monarch.
* Freedom from the standing army during a time of peace. The agreement of parliament became necessary before the army could be moved against the populace when not at war.
* Freedom for Protestants to bear arms for their own defence, as suitable to their class and as allowed by law.
* Freedom to elect members of parliament without interference from the sovereign.
* Freedom of speech and debates; or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament. This means that freedom of speech for all, and the proceedings of parliament can not be questioned in a court of law or any other body outside of parliament itself; this forms the basis of modern parliamentary privilege [1688 Commonwealth Bill of Rights ].
* Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, as well as excessive bail.
* Freedom from fine and forfeiture without a trial.

Certain acts of James II were also specifically named and declared illegal by the Bill of Rights, while James' flight from England in the wake of the Glorious Revolution was also declared to be an abdication of the throne.

/Wikipedia

But surely now we must be able to go to court and not get screwed over by the judges in their fancy wigs? Well, maybe, possibly, perhaps but no. There is a fairly boring act called the Articles of Union, 1707, it basically said that 1+1 = 1. Where the two '1's are England and Scotland. It is a landmark document in itself but it is really quite boring so if you are really interested google it. I shall focus on the last act which is much more interesting.

The Reform Act of 1832

“We must get the suffrage, we must get votes, that we may send the men to Parliament who will do our work for us; …and we must have the country divided so that the little kings of the counties can't do as they like, but must be shaken up in one bag with us.”
said a working class reformist in George Eliot’s novel Felix Holt: the Radical. That is pretty damn well what happened. The quote stated above is an almost criminal simplification of what happened (but that should suit New Labour taste quite well) as a result of the Great Reform Act, it is quite much more detailed.

The critical point is, this is where the final piece of the democracy puzzle is laid, almost anyway. It is not a nice puzzle, it is full of scratches and minor gaps, but if you stand back, not too far away but not too close either, you can see the whole picture quite vividly - it is beautiful picture quite spectacular indeed.

600 years until suffrage was granted (another 100 years or so before universal suffrage was granted), 600 years for liberty, democracy and human rights to get a proper foot hold - you would have thought that our great leaders of Britain today would have some respect for this astonishing history and engulf the time span.

One would have thought...

Blair and Brown have repaid in kind to English, Scottish, Welsh and British history by introducing 60 new powers contained in more than 25 Acts of Parliament. That have whittled away freedoms and broken pledges set out in the Human Rights Act and Magna Carta, according to a an audit of laws introduced since New Labour came to power in 1997.

Three cheers for the anti-British-grooms, they live; hipp-hipp hurray, hipp-hipp hurray, hipp-hipp hurray! May their acts and legacy never be forgotten.