Friday, April 04, 2008
The human rights industry wish list
Sorry, I mean the Bill of Rights Forum final report. Newton Emerson has his look at the potential move from “we the people” to “we the judiciary” Northern Ireland faces.
Michael Shilliday @ 11:18 AM
Good article.
What happened to the Civic Forum? Was it abolished at St Andrews? Good riddance, anyway.
In respect of the “Bill of Rights” report, consider this:
(1) RIGHT TO AN ADEQUATE STANDARD OF LIVING
1. Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, water, energy, fuel and clothing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions.
2. Public authorities shall take all appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to the maximum of their available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of this right.
A few questions arise:
(a) What is “adequate” and who will decide? (Presumably a court, after several appeals.)
(b) Why should there be a right to “continuous improvement” of living conditions, and how would this right be enforced, for example, in a recession? If somebody lost his job because of, say, gross incompetence, and became unemployed, would he be able to bring an action against the Government because his living conditions were not “continuously improving”?
(c) What would happen in a, not unrealistic, scenario in which there is an energy shortage? Would the Government have to divert energy resources away from, say, businesses in order to provide “adequate” supply to individual citizens?
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 11:53 AMHere we go again…
If Newt actually took the time to read the BOR papers and behave in an adult manner to take time to understand the process, maybe he wouldn’t jump to this nonsensical stance each time he commented on the Bill of Rights.
The process moves on for the benifit of all people, regardless of class creed colour or race, this is obvioulsy above Newts level of intelligence… Maybe we should just allow him to create the law, or maybe we go back to the good old days when huge sectors of our people on both sides on the conflict were denied votes, housing and education…
To suggest that it is all at the behest of some kind of “Rights Industry” is utter nonsense, he needs to open his eyes, all those involved, including the politicians who were in even numbers on the forum if he could actually count, were given the right to make their points and have their voices heard equally with civic society.
The very fact that everything was in the final document was down to the simple fact that there were no votes taken only opinions collected…
That was a specific decision to have everything available for the HRC, let’s not forget that the last time the HRC worked on a Bill of Rights they carried out a huge consultation and then roundly ignored it. The process as it was finalised by the forum was designed to circumvent this kind of thing this time round.
The process now moves to the HRC who will pass the final paper to the Secretary of State on December 10, International Human rights day, and then the Secretary will finalise it and consult widely on it before it moves through Parliament.
Newt has yet to actually get anything right when it comes to the BOR and I am fairly sure he’ll never manage to it given this recent childish and nonsensical outburst…
Why do the Irish News pay this man to constantly throw his middle class rattle form his pram ? ?
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 11:54 AMPoliticians were outnumbered on every forum working group - a rights sector chair had the casting vote in each case. The reason no vote was taken was because no consensus could be reached - hardly a triumph for the forum process. I don’t see any inaccuracies in this article.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:01 PMMr Monochrome, could you answer my questions re the right to an adequate standard of living?
… Maybe we should just allow him to create the law, or maybe we go back to the good old days when huge sectors of our people on both sides on the conflict were denied votes, housing and education…
This is an ironic criticism, given that Newt is saying that our elected representatives should make the law: not judges at the behest of “civic society”.
It is fallacious to conclude that the absence of a bill of rights as put forward by “civic society” means that universal suffrage will be removed, and that housing and education will be denied.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:04 PMMichael,
I would suggest if people aren’t happy with a BoR, they shouldn’t have a)negotiated it b)voted for it:
4. The new Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (see paragraph 5 below) will be invited to consult and to advise on the scope for defining, in Westminster legislation, rights supplementary to those in the European Convention on Human Rights, to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, drawing as appropriate on international instruments and experience. These additional rights to reflect the principles of mutual respect for the identity and ethos of both communities and parity of esteem, and - taken together with the ECHR - to constitute a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. Among the issues for consideration by the Commission will be: • the formulation of a general obligation on government and public bodies fully to respect, on the basis of equality of treatment, the identityand ethos of both communities in Northern Ireland; and • a clear formulation of the rights not to be discriminated against and to equality of opportunity in both the public and private sectors
You do remember? That thing Trimble negotiated?
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:17 PMThat is merely a commitment to “consult and to advise on the scope for defining, in Westminster legislation, rights supplementary to those in the European Convention on Human Rights ...”.
There is no commitment to the massive wish list produced by this self-important group of “civil society” hacks.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:21 PMMark, that’s the very point. This isn’t the BoR we voted for. The BoR process has never been able to restrict itself to “supplementary rights” for the “particular circumstances of Northern Ireland” plus “additional rights to reflect the principles of mutual respect for the identity and ethos of both communities and parity of esteem”.
What particular circumstances of Northern Ireland require rights to “food, water, energy and clothing” or the right to a “continuously improving standard of living”? Some people in the rights sector say poverty and inequality here are a ‘particular circumstance’ but as I believe the DUP has pointed out, poverty and inequality are worse in London using the same statistical methods used here.
The whole thing is a ridiculous attempt by certain persons to advance their own careers with a document that they hope will put them on the international human rights rubber chicken circuit forever. As a result, we haven’t got what we voted for and they have made such a god-awful mess of it - again - that we probably never will.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:28 PMNewt has made one obvious error, which suggests as indicated by others that there are many. He says the Assembly hasn’t passed any legislation. Perhaps if goes to http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/legislation/primary/assleg07.htm he’ll see that excluding Budget Bills there have been four pieces of legislation which have received Royal Assent since June of last year…
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:34 PMMr Monochrome,
I have read the document. It acknowledged other suggestions but arrived at a chairman’s recommendation. As Emerson said, objections were carried in footnotes.
Btw just repeating that the Bill is for everyone does not make it a good thing ot beyond criticism. The suggestions which were carried in the report were in many cases appalling, in other cases clauses simply replicate existing rights.
I have blogged in some detail on the bill, but two articles carry some detail about my objections to the report.
http://threethousandversts.blogspot.com/2008/04/wiping-slate-clean-for-terror-criminals.html
http://threethousandversts.blogspot.com/2008/03/duplicity-and-platitudes-bill-of-rights.html
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:36 PMNot so, the assembly has failed to pass a single piece of new legislation, as stated in the article and reported in the Irish News last week. The four pieces of legislation passed to date were all drafted under direct rule.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:38 PMWillowfield, you have summed it up perfectly.
I would add to that, what is the point of a NI BoR when they are already enshrined in ECHR? Is this new puesdo quango just a regional Glorified administrator of the ECHR? So whats the point of it?
Newton Emerson is one of the best political commentators in the north and tells it like it is.
I couldnt fault his analyis in anyway. He is a breath of fresh air to Journalism.Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:40 PMOh dear. Inaccurate claims of inaccuracy are a poor response to the points raised here. They also sound a little familiar… I should remind Mr Monochrome, if I need to remind him, that when the BoR was debated in the assembly earlier this year the rights sector quite rightly protested at the “personal” nature of some of the comments by DUP members. It would be most embarrassing if the rights sector was found to have engaged in similar behaviour against its own critics.
I do understand why the rights sector responds to criticism with such spluttering outrage. Its members suffer the common delusion of the liberal left that no decent person could possibly disagree with them. How can you not love rights? It’s like not loving kittens. Anyone who has a problem with a bill of rights must be some sort of heartless monster.
One aspect of the BoR process that strikes me forcibly when reading its reports or attending its events is the extremely poor quality of the debate, which rarely rises above the kitten-soft level. At the meeting referred to in the article, a member of the audience asked the panel an entirely sincere and genuinely perplexed question about the proposed right of children to health.
What if a child’s mother smokes, or drank during pregnancy, he asked. How would the state propose to stop or punish her?The senior member of the Human Rights Consortium fish-mounted a few times before repeating the phrase “there are poor babies in Lisburn” (I kid you not) until her voice trailed off. Then the chairman changed the subject. If serious analysis in the local rights sector has gone any deeper than this, I have yet to see much evidence of it.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:59 PMJimmy - the draft “bill of rights” actually includes a reiteration of most of the rights already in the ECHR!
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 12:59 PMI was pointing out, those moaning about this need to examine legislation. This was an agreed process endorsed by the 6 county electorate.
Secondly, have a good read at the legislation. This is not the Bill of Right or even a draft Bill of Rights.
This is a consultation document that will be submitted to the NIHRC.
The NIHRC then uses it to make recommendations to the SoS.
The SoS uses those recommendations to submit a Bill to Westminister for the usual process of validation.
At that point the Shinners will become hopping mad just like those opposed to the whole process and balance of recommendations thus far are at present. The whole thing will be diluted to irrelevance and they will have absolutely no input on the final outcome.
People are jumping the gun and wetting their knickers over the early stages of a consultation. By the time this thing is finished it’ll be totally irrelevant and no use to man nor beast and at that point Newton and the Unionists will be happy little bunnies.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 01:05 PMJimmy
I was about to write almost exactly the same thing. Spot on.
Newton’s column is the most enjoyable by far on the local circuit. And usually the one that doesn’t fanny around the fact that we have created a society where thousands of people are employed in a huge self serving bureaucracy.
Who pays for all this nonsense.Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 01:06 PMSome good points in the article, but I’m afraid that overall it suffers from the author using it as yet another springboard from which to vent his spleen on his favourite hate figures, the dreaded liberal Left.
The whole argument reminds of of what is happening in the policing debate right now. People seemed to think that we were going to get some kind of police force that was representative of the population as a whole, meant to serve the people,rather than simply be there to enforce the rules and maintain the status quo, but where in the world exists a police service such as that?
Instead, people are surprised to see that the new boss is pretty much the same as the old boss, and if I carry on in that theme, they’ve just been fooled again.
So it is with our BoR fiasco, except it seems to me that people are annoyed because they will be able to see the unelected quangos that get to decide on what is good for the rest of us.
But what does Newton thinks happens at the moment, or will happen if this whole thing collapses?
there’ll still be unelected quangos making decisions on what we can and cannot do, but hey, at least hey wont be loony lefties, so that’s all right, eh?Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 01:44 PMI have some sympathy with the idea of a bill of rights, but the effort quoted above hardly inspires confidence. ‘Continuous improvement’ is the sort of thing Michael O’Leary does to cut costs: supplying seatbelts made out of paper, that sort of thing. That said, if everyone had the right to the continuous improvement of living conditions, perhaps the filthy rich could refuse to pay higher rates of tax on account of the fact that this would leave them with less disposable income to spend on helicopter fuel.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:01 PM“doesn’t fanny around the fact....”
Posted by majordolittle on Apr 04, 2008 @ 01:06 PMWill resist the obvious....
Newton “Tory Boy” Emerson doesn’t seem to get any of the “facts” right! His piece was inaccurate, and obviously he has been briefed by his Tory/UUP friends! Apart from some mildly amusing comments, that are no more incisive than the booze fuelled friday afternoon banter in the BBC club, his articles are littered with his conservative agenda.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:07 PMNot necessarily, TAFKABO. The discussion documents published so far on devolving policing and justice powers are very promising and there is cross-community consensus in the assembly for tackling the most obscene quango of them all, the public prosecution service (which would have remained untouchable under the original NIO proposals).
There is nothing inevitable about government by quango - it is a relatively recent phenomenon and also plainly unsustainable, if only because the first duty of the sector is to expand its scale and remit in all directions. Sooner or later it will hit a brick wall and collapse through its inability to expand. The BoR Forum fiasco may well be a harbinger of this.
I do have fun with the lazy left-liberal nature of local “civic society” and it is not a coincidence that statist-minded people are drawn to statist projects. However, everyone seems to have forgotten very quickly that quangos in their present form were a Tory invention and getting rid of the quangos was a key New Labour election pledge…
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:07 PMPS: Can anyone actually point out an inaccuracy in my article or is just shouting “inaccuracy” then resorting to personal abuse the best they can manage?
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:09 PMTAFKABO
The whole point of Norn Iron having scores of unelected quangos pre-GFA was to produce a veneer of reducing the democratic deficit caused by brit ministers lording it over us.
Now that we have our own administration we have every right to expect the number of quangos to reduce.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:16 PM(is) resorting to personal abuse the best they can manage?
First time here Newton? ;o)
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:23 PMNewton,
I believe your piece concerning the age of criminal responsibilty was inaccurate. While a fixed age was proposed in a working group, the actual final document, did not include any fixed age, and in fact, recognised that the age, should be in line with international standards, which currently states, that it should be “not less than 12”, while leaving the specific age to be determined by legislation.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:26 PMNewt,
I’m not too interested and no expert but see some potential inaccuracies in your first para alone:
has recommended” every special interest proposal
I know of several that were relegated to footnotes. You can even read them in the report.
effectively abolishing youth and female custody
Not true. Residential training orders are the accepted norm for replacing imprisonment in serious cases but detention occurs without imprisonment or a criminal record. Women can be detained the standards of that detention would be altered.
– they are all in the final report now forwarded to the Human Rights Commission for enactment at Westminster, conveniently bypassing Stormont and the “minority objections” of everyone we voted to send there.
As pointed out, people voted for this in the Agreement so there is nothing ‘convenient’ about it.
Hope that helps.
Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:32 PMWhen I first wrote about the age of criminal responsibility being raised to 16 then 18, two weeks ago, those were the proposals contained in the published draft.
They were replaced on Monday by a proposal that: “Every person under the age of 18 years has the right to be treated as a child for the purposes of the administration of criminal justice.”
This appears to me to be hair-splitting but it is why I wrote in this article that the forum proposed “treating everyone below 18 as a child”.
This is an accurate description of the final report.Posted by on Apr 04, 2008 @ 02:32 PM
