[Angus]

Originally Posted by BB_Eye

It sounds like you've taken a very naive worldview. The final solution wasn't a closely guarded secret in Germany. It was happening under the Germans' noses and it is often human nature to deceive ourselves and justify the most awful things, so not only did the Germans share the moral responsibility of the actions of their leadership, they were doing what any other country would have done in the same situation. Society is always going to fall prey to evil if there are no laws to teach people otherwise. I urge you to take a long hard look at our history if you think human beings are naturally good. A law can only mean something if we can apply it to everybody including ourselves. It is thus with taking the life of another human being. You have to ask yourself that if a truly dangerous, malicious and evil individual were locked away from society, how does revenge make any sense? I can tell you what doesn't make sense. For a society to tell a criminal 'don't do as I do, do as I say'.

I'm sorry to hear you think human rights laws are unworkable in practice. Could you elaborate further on why you think some people's human rights are invasive of others? I can't say I agree.

In recent years, there have been serious cynical abuses of the Human Rights Act: You wanted examples:

"An abuse of common sense", said the prime minister about the court's decision not to deport the nine Afghan hijackers and the release of the murderer and rapist Anthony Rice.

It is not. It is the direct result of the ill-considered and badly drafted Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights, and was rammed through Westminster in the first months of the Blair government.

The Afghan hijackers have shown that they could play us and our new fangled system for fools. Nobody can blame them, after all they only used common sense.

AND THIS ARTICLE

By Clive Elliott - Victims of Crime Trust
The abuses and uses of the Human Rights Act loopholes has, for a long time, been an inequitable tool placed in the undeserving hands of law breakers at the expense of justice for law abiders.

As director of Victims of Crime Trust and having, I first became aware that prisoners were receiving greater human rights than their victims when one of my clients wrote to me in 1999.

The lady, whose six-year-old daughter was murdered by a perpetrator - who later successfully sued the prison authorities under the Human Rights Act for £20,000 because treatment for his broken ankle was slightly delayed - was left wondering why he was paid such a vast sum. This compared with the £6,000 CICA compensation she received through the British criminal justice system for her murdered daughter.

It is fundamentally flawed and open to abuse in so much that it was never designed to help a law-abiding society

It seems to victims that criminals and illegal immigrants are immediately elevated to some extraordinary higher status of special treatment under the Human Rights Act, which empowers them to sue for any and every perceived injustice.

Victims observing the type of preferential treatment, respect and advice afforded perpetrators during criminal trials and appeals have quickly realised the Human Rights Act cannot help victims, but only serves those held at her Majesty's pleasure.

The Human Rights Act was originally designed to protect the most vulnerable against abuse.

Nowadays, that remit has been manipulated into a reversal whereby the abusers can use it against the vulnerable.

It is fundamentally flawed and open to abuse in so much that it was never designed to help a law-abiding society."

Should the human rights act be changed ... is the way the law is working at the moment "an abuse of common sense"?

The Human Rights Act should be repealed, not amended. No good has come of it at all, only harm.

It was not needed to secure any genuine civil liberties citizens and foreigners domiciled here should enjoy against the state and each other they did not already have under common and statute law prior to its enactment.

Moreover, it has given the authorities power to impose many quite unnecessary and undesirable restrictions on liberty, especially in relation to freedom of expression, without producing any discernible net benefit as a result.

The way the Act is working at the moment is manifestly an abuse of common sense
Simultaneously, the Act has resulted in judicial decisions that have limited the ability and will of the authorities to restrict liberty in ways they would have been able to before it which are warranted by the exceptional present circumstances arising from the threat of terror.

Judicial decisions invoking the human rights of foreign terror suspects and convicted criminals have seriously compromised national security and public safety.


This is not merely because it has been wrongly applied, as, for example, by the police in not publishing photographs of foreign criminals they are currently seeking after being released into the community rather than deported, out of fear their publication would violate a right to privacy of the foreigners.

Common sense would want the authorities to be able to detain foreign terror suspects without trial and deport dangerous foreign criminals upon completing their sentences, just as it would want primary school teachers to be able to administer suntan cream to their pupils prior to playtime to prevent their exposure to harmful sun-rays, something currently precluded by the act.

The Human Rights Act also abuses common sense by encouraging applications, some successful, for compensation for alleged violations of "human rights" that common sense would deny belonged to those seeking compensation.


I have not for one minute suggested there should be no laws, there would be anarchy without law and order. What I am against is Human Rights legislation which is unnecessary and heavily biased in favour of the perpetrators of criminal acts. It has encouraged political correctness gone mad, encouraged the compensation culture and shackled the police from doing their job of detaining suspects and the government from deporting known terrorists. Murders and paedophiles are given new identities and are allowed to live amongst us again, without our being made aware of the danger in our midst. Therefore this government's insistence on observing the human rights of criminals and terrorists has directly compromised MY human right to live in safety and without fear or risk to my life, home, and family.


As regards me, as an individual, condoning the behaviour of the corrupt and immoral government whose jackboot we are currently under, I do not accept any responsibility for their illegal invasion of Iraq, or their occupation of Afghanistan. By the same token I do not believe you can condemn an entire nation for the actions of murderous dictators. To say that the entire German nation was complicit in the Final Solution is ridiculous.