Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

I HAVE NO RIGHTS

I have no rights. No divine rights; I read the bible most days and have never found reference to any right that I have been granted. Opportunites and choices, plenty - but no rights. No natural rights; I look at nature and do not see any rights prescribed by the laws of the universe: does a tree have rights, the tide, a cow? I don’t think so.

So where do all these rights come from that we hear so much about? Only 2 places: either from a specific contract that you enter into as an individual containing rights enforceable in the courts.

Or from the law of the land. And that’s the trouble. We have now grafted into UK law a load of nonsense that has blown in from the planet political correctness. The Convention on human rights, an international treaty entered into by many countries just after WW2 was designed to stop the holocaust and other atrocities from ever happening again. We all support that. These principles stand alongside traditional English freedoms built up over many years: a right to a fair trial, free speech, no imprisonment without trial etc

But the Convention has grown and contorted itself over 50 years into a do-gooder’s charter that meddles where it has no business to and is now part of UK law.
Everyone seems to have a right to everything: a house, a job, the right of foreigners not to be deported back to your own country or to health treatment here. All of this mush gives real human rights – which do matter – a bad name.

So what is the solution? It is no good just talking about it, action is required. We should pull out of the Convention on Human Rights and go back in again only signing up to the core provisions, such as torture etc. We should scrap the Human Rights Act. We should stick up signs at every port of entry saying: “wherever you come from if you commit an imprisonable offence in this country, when you have done your time you will be deported back to your own country, irrespective of conditions there: you have been warned.”

Can all of these things be done? Yes, there is not a single convention or law that our sovereign Parliament cannot undo or scrap. Is it cruel to do it? No, it is plain common sense and I shall be advocating it at Westminster.

posted by Nigel on Wednesday, May 24, 2006