Thursday 19 February 2009

Abu Qatada awarded £2,500 Compensation for Human Rights Infringements

There is little point in dissecting Abu Qatada's character per se: the press has already donned its mantle of smug morality and indulged in the customary attack/counter attack, character assassination and dehumanisation by which it conveniently creates our devils for us. Suffice to say, Qatada is a dangerous man; but so are all those in Parliament dangerous who would seek to detain people indefinitely on the one hand and allow the ECHRA to be enacted on our sovereign soil with the other.
The Human Rights Act is a good idea. So is Utopia. How many, after all, would actively not want others to be happy? Would actively want others to be tortured? Denied safety of home and family and freedom to think? (Well, Labour would rather deny that last 'right', but moving swiftly on...) Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could live in a heaven on earth? Unfortunately, what Marx didn't bargain for when he pushed for the adoption of Communism which, to all intents and purposes, is a secularised form of Christianity as originally conceived in the Gospels, was humanity. Socialism works fine as long as there are no people inconveniently getting in the way of progress and asking questions and trying to get ahead and not wanting to be equal. It tends to break down when people sneer at bad accents and bad table manners and persist, despite socialist governments' desperate efforts, in believing that education should be elitist. The Human Rights Act is perhaps the pinnacle of socialist achievement, and therein lies its fundamental flaw. It only allows people to be grateful for the 'rights' handed out and has no safeguards against abuses.
The UK government in its wisdom adopted this one-size-fits-all-generic-Roman-law-based piece of legislation, overturning a good 1200 years of a fine legal system painstakingly built up on past precedent distinct from that being developed on the Continent. Rather than helping victims of crimes - something the English legal system used to be rather good at - the legislature has been forced to find on behalf of the criminals, rather than the victims. It's rather like rewarding the architects of the financial crisis for their destruction; in Abu Qatada's case, we are paying him because after holding him for too long without trial we now want to extradite him to a country where he might be tortured on the basis that he attempted to incite mass slaughter in Britain. 
And other, similarly shocking abuses have been perpetrated against  the victims of crimes solely because of the HRA. Recall, for example, the case of the woman who was raped by a violent African immigrant who'd spent most of his time in the UK in prison; the judge refused to deport him to his home country because he would be too unaccustomed to the culture (one wonders how much of the UK he can learn from a jail cell). So he's cooling his heels at Her Majesty's leisure; and the rape victim's taxes are going towards his upkeep. She is having to pay for her attacker to have three square meals a day and free dental treatment. And, given the economic climate, it is possible that she has lost her job whilst the thug who brutalised her is enjoying far greater security: he doesn't have to worry about bill-paying. She and the rest of Britain are paying the bills for him, just as they are paying the bills of the repulsive thugs who kicked Gary Newlove to death - and then appealed for reduced prison sentences on the basis of their 'human rights'.
I am often conscious of a slightly giddy, panicked sensation as though I've stepped through the Looking Glass: everything is back-to-front. Bankers take bonuses from the taxpayer. Starbucks says 'sorry' to Mandelson for telling the truth. Clarkson is condemned for making an observation. Heroin dealers are allowed to carry on dealing, whilst those who challenge them are thrown in jail. Benefits cheats go to jail, and Jacqui Smith keeps on raking in the allowances. Speaking about religion in the public sector is a sacking offence, Geert Wilders is banned, but marches supporting Hamas in Gaza are supported and anti-Semitic plays attract large audiences. The intellectuals are in a war with the averages and the averages are winning. And Abu Qatada, now in the UK indefinitely, is paid £2,500 for indignities against his person in a country that proposes to ostracise Muslim clerics who shun the Western way of life. Is there no end to the insanity?

7 comments:

  1. "Is there no end to the insanity?"

    No. Many, me included, will have looked at Call me Dave and hoped he is not as vacuous as he appears, that he does, after all, understand the true scale of the destruction visited upon the essential fabric of our fragile society; that he is merely keeping his powder dry, and will, in due course, reveal to we adoring fans a cornucopia of radical and courageous policies that address precisely our fears and promise at least the faint hope of salvation.

    These hopes are a fools paradise; with Dave, what you see is what you get; more of the same, different label.

    If Dave is the answer, we haven't understood the nature of the problem and we are asking the wrong question.

    The real tragedy is that Dave will have a once-only opportunity to put things right.

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  2. Oy vey! Enough with the Ulysses already!!
    18 February 2009 23:02

    Neither Homer nor Joyce: try, instead, A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter Miller, or stanislav passim at order-order

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  3. Hmm, interesting; saw strong Joycean technical elements within the rant - particularly Cyclops. ('Tis a compliment.)

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  4. Dear Mr Blues,

    As a mere apprentice, sorry, EX-apprentice, who has not become, or perhaps ever will be, privy (intended) to the arcane inner mysteries of the Zen art of the U-bend, and thus raised to the privileged and anointed higher echelons of the plumbing community, I bow, of course, to your greater wisdom.

    In my own puny and insignificant defence, I can only say that my answer to Mara's question "Is there no end to this insanity" was no. And that those who still believe that Cameron will provide one are living in a fools paradise.

    I do not believe for one moment that we live in a world where morality, or even simple common sense, will necessarily prevail over evil or stupidity. Or that life should, or will, be always equitable. Or in the tooth fairy.

    Your scathing assessment that all those who debate and argue in cyberspace are simply showing off, performing for very small crowds, is harsh, but ultimately we are all on some sort of ego trip.

    If the filth in Parliament were so schooled in debate, they were very inattentive pupils; I've yet to see one who would not be torn to pieces by any half decent interrogation by someone prepared to abandon the cosy conventions designed to prevent such rank discourtesy to our lords and masters. I recommend, if you have not yet heard it, the Hillary Benn interview doing the rounds where he is effortlessly destroyed by a schoolboy.

    Mockery, scorn and contempt are, I agree, formidable weapons, particularly in this medium. Not all can wield them, and none as well as you.
    Forgive we lesser mortals if we, from time to time, let off a bit of steam by muttering quietly amongst ourselves.


    PS. Dimbleby was denied to the English natives tonight; it would not surprise me at all to learn the Jocks were more lavishly provided for.

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  5. ex-apprentice

    Please explain your remark that the "Jocks" are more lavishly provided for?

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  6. Dear Mr Browneyes,

    As if it were not enough being mauled by Polish plumbers, now up pops one of the beetle-browed ginger mob, from the biggest council estate in England, with his skirt and his wee sockies and his can of Irn-Bru in one hand and his caber in the other, to say that he and his fellow drunken, crossdressing, wifebeating, larcenous, miscreant fellow tribesmen are not, after all, subsidised off the backs of decent hardworking Englishmen.

    Just because we let you have your own pretend Parliament, in it's own wee wendy house, you Jocks should not go getting ideas above your station.

    Especially not when your contribution to the Economy has been that manifest lunatic from Fife, Gordon the Ruiner; Badger Darling - the Chancellor who couldn't count his own fingers and get the same result twice in a row; HBOS and RBS - about to increase our national debt by 1.5 trillion, and many other obscenities that we really would have preferred you had kept, for your own private misery. These examples are by way of illustration, and should be regarded in any way as a comprehensive catalogue of the incompetence and misery you have so generously inflicted upon us.

    Away now, laddie, yon porridge is getting cold.

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  7. ex-apprentice boy

    If ignorance is bliss you must be delirious! I suppose you can't be educated and a Morris Dancer at the same time.

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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat -Ralph Ellison