Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 August 2005 13:16:45
You may have noticed that when I talk about politicians, I'm not generally too full of bile. My view of politicians is that for the most part, they're a bunch of guys doing a job. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. And because the stakes are high, their mistakes and misdemeanours are very public. If my job were subject to media scrutiny, I'm not sure I'd always stand up very well.
Every now and again though you hear them say something that just chills you a bit. When you feel that the power has gone to their head, and they see themselves as supreme arbiters.
Such a situation happened last week. It was a radio interview, first with Michael Howard and then with Charles Clarke. They both agreed, and when people like that agree, it's time to be scared.
Michael Howard comes out and says ‘Judges have got to make sure that they work with politicians. Politicians want to make sure that the country is protected. Judges are so set on making sure we don't infringe the human rights act though, that the government can't make any decent laws which would stop terrorism.'
Hmmmm.
So does Charles Clarke slate him for the power-crazed nutter that he is? Does he heck. His comment is even more sinister. ‘I think we need to make sure that the human rights act works like it ought to.' With the implication that government is the judge of how it ‘ought' to work.
Now that's interesting. The point of human rights law is that these are rights to protect individuals from governments and bureaucracies. Institutions that have very good track records in inhumane treatment and oppression, and thinking of the rights of the individual as slightly less important than leaving quarter of an hour early on a Friday afternoon. And our Home Secretary wants these parts of society to decide on what's a legitimate human right and what's a flexible right. Reassuring.
In the unlikely event that any barristers or judges happen to be reading this, please do us all a favour and continue to pick holes in any legislation that contravenes human rights. It's quite important really. Otherwise terrorists really have won the day.