Despite all the talk about the importance of maintaining our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is increasingly seeming to be a dead letter in other European countries. Here is a very brief rundown. It is sad that space does not permit coverage of yet more appalling situations in member states of the EU.
Hungary – discrimination against the Roma; detention of migrants in containers; refusal to accept the EU-determined quota of migrants; closing the independent Central European University; a razor wire fence on the border with Serbia and Croatia.
Austria has built a fence on the Slovenian border; Bulgaria has built a fence on the Turkish border to stop migration; Greece has fenced off Macedonia; Slovenia has fenced off Croatia.
Croatia – discrimination against the Roma; journalists under attack.
Slovakia will take only Christian migrants
Poland – the media under control; it is being investigated for breaches of the rule of law by the European Commission; refuses Muslim migrants.
Romania – admitted corruption in the judiciary, business and tax.
Sweden – rising antisemitism.
In many European states, it is reported that intolerance, xenophobia, racism, domestic violence are on the rise. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/european-union. The European Parliament is calling for investigations into states’ complicity with rendition and torture. France has renewed her state of emergency for the fifth time.
And even more concerning is the fact that Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are among the European countries so heavily dependent on Russian oil (Gazprom) that there is no way they would contemplate sanctions against Russia for its actions in Syria or anywhere else. The Eastern European states still live in the shadow of their former Soviet oppression. So much for a united moral European foreign policy.
Why would any democracy with a real respect for human rights want to be in a union with these countries?
So why would the UK state reserve the right to slave labour?
(1) No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.
(2) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
(a) any work required to be done in the ordinary course of detention imposed according to the provisions of Article 5 … or during conditional release from such detention;
(b) any service of a military character or, in case of conscientious objectors in countries where they are recognised, service exacted instead of compulsory military service;
(c) any service exacted in case of an emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community;
(d) any work or service which forms part of normal civil obligations.
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Articles b, c and d need to be removed.
But no doubt you support forced labour when you are the slave master.
Vital to our very lives is the British “rotten-ness” insidiuosly “hidden” –
[see the longer JSDMiles submission at about 9th below] –
[“] Our monies are being “blown” on un-necessary luxury-living
by the few “In Power” –
PM Teresa May’s dress cost us £2000;
read on please
because the cost of a mere sitter for 7 hours is to your Local Government (Plymouth instanced below) was “worth”
£70 an hour [out of which the sitter’s minimum wage would have been £6 per hour] :
so your “democratic-citizen” task
has now become [and really always should have been] to
scrutinise and justify
the few-minutes-computer-tapping “work”
as “needing” to be allocated £64 –
Article 7: No Punishment Without Law
What does Article 7 cover?
Non-retroactivity, the principle of legality or, if you are into Latin, nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege (no crime, no punishment without law).
And precisely what does Article 7(1) say exactly?
No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time that it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offence was committed.
============
Again, retrospective taxation has been made legal
So much when the state is desperate for the cash.
Watch out when the state makes fraud by the state legal. They will exempt themselves from section 2, 2006 fraud act.
The second relate to criminal cases only and six specific additional requirements are imposed:
•To be presumed innocent until found guilty (Article 6(2))
•To be informed promptly in a language understandable to the suspect of the detail of ‘the nature and cause of the accusation against them’ (Article 6(3)(a))
•To have adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence (Article 6(3)(b))
•To defend yourself in person or through legal assistance of your own choosing or, if you cannot afford it, ‘to be given it free where the interests of justice so require’ (Article 6(3)(c))
•To examine, or have examined, witnesses and to obtain their attendance and examination (Article 6(3)(d))
•To have the free assistance of an interpreter if you cannot understand or speak the language used in court (Article 6(3)(e))
==============
Except if its HMRC, or its parking. Then you are found guilty first
No fines forfeitures or penalties without conviction, unless its the tax man, or the parking crooks.
Clear enough, baroness.
Taking your very informative report [‘though of necessity headlines only]
‘tail-end’ first, you “ask”:-
“Why would any democracy with a real respect for human rights want to be in a union with these -” [other sorts of ‘democracy’] “- countries ?”
“The world has never yet had a “24/7 peoples-participatory-democracy -” [Historians speaking, this is] –
“- the nearest is the “Three-Party State”
based upon a 5-yearly few minutes per elector
to silently and wordlessly mark a small piece of paper with a pencilled X for a “person”
rather than for a “needs-based-policy/manifesto” or “list of Needs and Rights” –
the Constitution and Parliaments should be based upon every-one-of-the-Peoples’ Needs and NB please that “Rights” need to follow Needs, because every-one needs a “right” to “satisfy”or meet each of their needs –
and to do so
***sustain-worthily***
(including sustainably, affordably, and peace-abiding-legally)
{Our de facto Pseudo-Democracy in turn narrows down to
firstly “two-party state (e.g. Tory versus Labour)”
and nextly to “Three-Party-State” {as under the recent British Coalition Tory-&-Liberal ‘versus’ Labour} –
which ultimately results in the dominant-numbers party “winning the day” –
in Britain namely at present the Tory Party and/or_
their Tory-party-internally-appointed “leader” or Prime Minister
(but again NOT a democraticly-elected Office and top-governance job).
——————– need to pause here, I think ——————
– but let it be recommended to take note
that it is also the United Nations itself
that continues failing to establish
(1) an Individual Human Development Programme and Index
(2) a Longest-Term Sustain-worthy Human-Race-on-Earth Purpose
and
(3) a United Aggregate Human Development Programme thereto.
refusal to accept the EU-determined quota of migrants;
==========
Czech refused too.
Why should Czech politicians accept a dictate from elsewhere?
Should the electorate get a say?
Or should you, unelected, immune from the consequences of your action, force what you want on others, force them to pay, whilst pocketing cash yourself?
You don’t get it do you?
The reason why we have brexit and Trump, who no doubt you view as awful decisions is because of what you and others like you have done to the electorate.
But you don’t get it. How could you have shafted others? It must be good because of what you have? Cash to go through the turnstiles [maybe, but that’s a state secret]
The Challenge appears to be to –
“Positively and Positivisingly Peacefully Revolutionise The People, including equally, no comparative-advantages, our topmost-rulkers –
{easily available, almost as easily do-able without either rocket-science or secondary-education – is still –
“Method III ‘No-Lose’ of Cooperative Needs-&-Hows-Recognition and Problem Solving”.
[see a practical guidance sequence in 5-steps via not-for-profit, power nor prestige website http://www.lifefresh.co.uk – Basics pages ].
————–
Also reflecting from “Black Box Thinking” (Matthew Sayed) that
(“) it has become vital that we include in our training, education, and mindfulnessing, clear knowledge and “film-clipping” of every one of our own, and externally of human-civilisations’, failures – otherwise we have stopped being able to learn any thing at all, especially “the new” – (“).
Sayed goes on to spotlight [“] “certainty”, “perfection”, “omniscience/omnipotence”, ” ” and “absolute sufficiency” [“]
to be insidious “prisons”, increasingly inhibiting this vitally-essential “ongoing-learnability” need of our human-race,
and which need, and lack, can be seen by every minimally ‘compos-mentis’ human-being to be encompassing us each, all, and civilisationally –
in again in insidiously varied ‘percentage-degrees’ –
——–
{ Your thoughts, please – }
(Corrected)
The Challenge appears to be to –
“Positively and Positivisingly Peacefully Revolutionise The People, including equally, no comparative-advantages, our topmost-rulers –
{easily available, almost as easily do-able without either rocket-science or secondary-education – is still –
“Method III ‘No-Lose’ of Cooperative Needs-&-Hows-Recognition and Problem Solving”.}
[see a practical guidance sequence in 5-steps via not-for-profit, power nor prestige website http://www.lifefresh.co.uk – Basics pages ].
————–
Also reflecting from “Black Box Thinking” (Matthew Sayed) that
(“) it has become vital that we include in our training, education, and mindfulnessing, clear knowledge and “film-clipping” of every one of our own, and externally of human-civilisations’, failures –
otherwise we have stopped being able to learn anything at all, especially “the new” – (“).
Sayed goes on to spotlight [“] “certainty”, “perfection”, “omniscience/omnipotence”, ” ” and “absolute sufficiency” [“]
as being potentially (“) insidious “prisons” (“),
increasingly inhibiting this vitally-essential “ongoing-learnability” need
of our human-race;
and which need,
and especially here the corruptional-lack-of,
can be seen by every minimally ‘compos-mentis’ human-being
to be encompassing us civilisationally, each and all –
(again) in insidiously varied ‘percentage-degrees’ –
——–
{ Your thoughts, please – }
A primary purpose of the EC is to level would be dictators. Without a federal structure human rights law cannot become Federal Law something that would force compliance upon member states.
The exodus from the Levant should really be seen as a first wave. The next wave will come from Turkey now that Presidential powers have increased. The President pursues a humanitarian gesture by insisting that Turks have free access to the EC allowing his opponents an avenue of escape. The alternative is persecution and civil war.
The more I hear and see, along the political spectrum, on this issue of Europe, for some inexplicable reason, it is obvious Parliament is terrified of leaving that particular dictatorship. Now why is that?
What are they afraid of? What is it they fear British people will lose from being outside the EU? Does our freedom from the European courts make them fear we cannot produce our own laws without domination from Globalists? Because, that’s what Europe is, another arm of the Globalist threat to the people of the world.
We had Human Right laws long before those in Europe even understood what it meant. If you go as far back as the Magna Carta you will see they gave a form of social welfare as a requirement then. We had Alms houses and all manner of help for the poor. Even the workhouse, as dreadful as they were, helped to feed people.
Add that to hearing the billionaire American who is linked to Monsanto, telling our government he won’t stand for us reducing our AID budget and our government assuring him, a few days later, that it will not be touched, no matter how the ‘British public’ object. We, the electorate, in the majority, want AID money spent here on our homeless, our hungry, our poor children, our schools, health service and all thing we pay our taxes to support. Why doesn’t billionaire spend his money and worry about his own countries most dreadful third world conditions and use his generosity there. He is not Obama and has no place influencing our political decisions on any level.
Every move we make is dictated via the EU. It is not, as the Lib Dems want to pretend, enriching us, it is quite the opposite it is impoverishing us. And we do not pay taxes to do that.
The EU club stops us from Nationalising our transport, having Grammar Schools, or, selective education, forces us to adhere to political correctness, which borders on madness. Mass immigration for cheap labour, which is what they have managed to do since we joined, hence the reason we have pay levels, in real terms, far lower than we had in the eighties We have no way of voting them out, other than to vote to leave it altogether. It is utter idiocy to consider looking back, as dimwits with moronic faces and expressions are pushing on us. Time to kick those out of office altogether.
We were told of the manipulation of Globalism as far back as American President ‘We like Ike.’ This was long before we knew or contemplated belonging to the EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4LBioq6KkM
Still we UK people are consuming 500% more of the Earth’s lifesupportive-resources than is our Need and Fair-Share (whilst Americans are “needing” 900% more than their “fair-share” –
and others Russia, China, North Korea, and our late-friends European-Member-Nations – are all consuming more than their “fair-share”.
Further, we are being “led” by “experts” who only want to increase that “share” –
which in the case of the rich calculates out as more than 2,000 times the real and sufficient human-need living, 200 times more than their “fair-share”-
“our” Prime Minister, strongly-voiced almost shouting that (1) Britain’s “economy” is too weak and desperately needs “strengthening”, for which she needs us The People to “give her a stronger hand”- and also that
(2) we the British Taxpayer must pay-in more, to our Common Purse
so that she can draw from us the increasing costs of being our
“chosen single leader” and “newly-people-empowered-prime-minister”,
such “needing” more £2000 dresses –
But this whole gamut of Gordian Knot Human-and-Earth-Lifesuppoprts Predicament
is far greater than mere Politics and Economics can solve –
and certainly not solvable by the forthcoming “warmongering” divide between us USA-UK-Europe westerners and the Eastern “bloc” of Russia, China, and North Korea.
Why are our topmost British and Democratic “brains, bodies, and ‘leaders'” so totally incapable of coming down to Earth, “comfortably-frugally”
especially now that it is already largely “too late” ?
and why are they, to a “private-individual”,
up-front publicly-transparently
both unwilling and unable to set us the Sustainworthily-Affordable-Lifestyle standard that we all Need
and that alone can truly-constitute real and emulable “life leaders”?
Here is a man who was hated by our ruling class. He was a leftie they said. However, he knew what the word Democracy meant. And he had a great deal of intimacy with the Rotten EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQY2CHx4d3U
And from another hated man who also knew our future cannot lie with European rule. Regardless of how Ms Miller wants to fund so many of our political remain parties who, as with the EU, refuse to accept democraces and the will of the people. Her Ugandan roots and contacts, along with Branson, the hated Blair, et al, using her to shove their intentions, as she is less likely than they, to be stopped in their tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl7jtYDye3w
Now we have to worry about Globalist of the brazenly wealthy chocolate makers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaJb74_P-xM
Is this the EU we want to belong to?
The Brussels Business. This is a must see if you are truly interested in the workings of the EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUE5BMdp30
Dear Lady Deech
I wish to draw your attention to the fact that the EU has just granted GSP+ to Sri Lanka in spite of the fact that Sri Lanka has not fulfilled the conditions for qualifying for the trade benefit(i). There has been a lot of opposition from the legal luminaries in Sri Lanka on the basis that Sri Lanka is trying to replace a draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act(PTA) with a worse version, Counter-Terrorism Act(CAT) .Furhermore the North of the country is allowed to be in the grip of the armed forces, even eight years after the armed rebels were wiped out. In fact the last 8yrs have been much worse than the previous 61yrs: many Sinhalese civil servants, academics, lawyers, etc told Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission in 2010 that successive governments from the time of independence till now have been oppressing the Tamils politically and economically(ii) .Successive governments have been expertly controlling damage at the UN for decades – the new government that came to power in January 2015 beating all its predecessors by ”co-sponsoring” a resolution on investigation of war crimes at UNHRC in October 2015 and March 2017 and doing nothing about it but telling the Sinhala masses inside Sri Lanka that they would not let anybody punish their ”war heroes” .
Contd:
i. The European Union will remove a significant part of the remaining import duties on Sri Lankan products entering the EU market in exchange for the country’s commitment to ratify and effectively implement 27 international conventions on human rights, labour conditions, protection of the environment, and good governance – https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/sri-lanka/26153/eu-grants-enhanced-market-access-sri-lanka-reform-incentive_en
ii. https://www.scribd.com/doc/104705097/Conscientious-Sinhalese-Tell-LLRC
A few of the arguments against GSP+:
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/170514/columns/the-menacing-promise-of-the-cta-gift-wrapped-for-the-future-240251.html
https://www.fhr.org.za/files/6214/9254/5277/SRI_LANKAS_DRAFT_COUNTER_TERRORISM_ACT_-_PUBLICATION_DRAFT_-_18_APRIL_2017.pdf
http://srilankabrief.org/2017/05/tna-shocked-draft-cta-curtails-civil-liberties-erodes-judicial-control-over-the-security-apparatus/
It is reported that the British High Commissioner has stated that Brexit wouldn’t result in the UK depriving Sri Lanka of GSP plus concessions: http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=165310
Sri Lanka has been one of the countries where conflict-insensitive aid has been exacerbating the conflict:
The Culture, Politics and Economics of Peace in Sri Lanka(2004), Jonathan Spencer (University of Edinburgh, UK): ”On the whole aid was given in a politically or ethnically blind way .… Not much was built in the North or the East…. In the 1980s the major donors grew itchy about the country’s appalling reputation for human rights’ violations, but never so itchy as to cut off the funding that kept the regimes going A thoroughgoing and critical analysis of the political consequences of donor interventions in Sri Lanka since the 1970s would make interesting reading, and it is a genuinely open question whether in the long run more has been gained politically from donor pressure on human rights, than was lost in bankrolling an increasingly bloody regime.”
Disaster Response, Peace and Conflict in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka, Simon Harris, February 2006(University of Bradford, UK):” Had international humanitarian interventions understood the dynamics of conflict and the role of assistance in informing such relationships, they might actually have helped contribute to peace building by tackling the underlying structures and root causes, or more minimally, by at least not making situations worse.”
Saddening & maddening Bomb Blast in Manchester
Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka ‘s Civil Wars(2005), John Richardson, Professor of International development in American University’s School of International Service and Director of the University’s Centre for Teaching Experience:
”Paradise Poisoned is the principal product of a seventeen year project, devoted to understanding linkages between deadly conflict, terrorism and development, by viewing them through the lens of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, from 1948 through 1988………………………………..
How could we have come to this?
What could we have done to prevent the conflict that has killed our family members and friends, devastated our lives, destroyed what was being so painstakingly developed?
What can we learn and share from our experiences that may help others to avoid following a similar path?
How can we share what we have learned most powerfully and effectively?
The ‘we’ of these questions are, principally, political leaders and citizens of the nations, from Angola to Zaire , that have been victimised by civil war.
There is another group of individuals, too, who must continue to pose questions about the causes and prevention of civil wars. Foreign political leaders, multilateral and non-governmental organisation leaders, leaders in the private sector and development practitioners share in the responsibility for causing civil wars, though they bear few of the costs. My vision is of a day when no citizens in today’s developing nations will have to ask ‘how did we come to this?’ Paradise Poisoned will have achieved its purpose when that day comes.”
Hoe the House of Lords will prevent the UK from granting Sri Lanka GSP+ unless it respects the the HumanRights of its minorities thus enabling the present regime to think and act so that next February all ethnicities in Sri Lanka can collectively celebrate 70yrs of INDEPENDENCE