One option under consideration was to amend the 1998 Human Rights Act, which wrote the European Convention into British law, to require a 'balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community to basic security.
I do not see how a community can have rights in this sense. Surely rights attach to the individual?
I also have trouble with the notion of "balancing" rights. If a thing is a right then it does not seem to me it can be traded off. This is a bit difficult to express, but I think that is because the word is used in different ways. For me a "right" exists when all the limitations on it are incorporated and no further restrictions on that right are admissable. It includes a notion like "finality". A right which can be further limited when it suits is no "right" at all, it is something else.
He said the act could be further amended if British courts blocked moves to deport terror suspects on the basis of 'memorandums of understanding' that they would not be tortured.
This is also deeply worrying. If a person does not believe that an assurance they will not be tortured if deported, and the government does believe the assurance, then there is a difference of opinion which must be sorted out. The usual method is to take the argument to the court. If that is to be disallowed then what protection is left?
On a related note (limiting personal freedoms), there was an article in the Economist this week on the ASBO's and such.
FOR many years, Philip Howard evangelised shoppers in London's Oxford Street, urging them to reject the devil and “be a winner, not a sinner”. Wind and rain did not silence him; nor did insults or entreaties to turn down his megaphone. But last week the devil scored a temporary victory over Mr Howard, in the form of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). For the next three years, the preacher will have to rely on his God-given amplification system, or face punishment that could, in theory, run as long as a five-year prison term.
Nowhere is anti-social behaviour such a prominent political issue as in Britain, and nowhere are the laws against it so potent. Since coming to power in 1997, the Labour government has forged more than a dozen legal weapons to combat the petty incivilities that are thought to corrode society. They range from on-the-spot fines to “dispersal orders”, which can be used to expel people from designated areas, to ASBOs. These can be dished out to anyone—including children as young as ten years old—who causes harassment, alarm or distress to anyone else.
Britain's hard line is popular, and puzzling. As a poll commissioned this week by ADT, a security company, reveals, Britons are no more worried about anti-social behaviour than the residents of other west European countries. Italians excepted, everybody frets roughly equally about such things as loutishness and vandalism, and is about as likely to believe things are getting worse (see chart). Why has only one country launched a crusade against it?
One reason is language. No other country has a term quite as all-encompassing as “anti-social behaviour”, which has been used to label everything from drunken violence to flyposting. Germany has “asozial” behaviour, but that is a tricky tag because it is associated with totalitarian attempts to define who is part of society and who is not, according to Johannes Feest, a Bremen criminologist. And as for the Spanish, they “could hardly understand the question”, according to Gloria Laycock, a criminologist who was involved in the research.
The other difference is that the British feel powerless to deal with anti-social behaviour themselves, and so expect the police to do it for them. Just 34% claimed they would intervene to stop a group of children vandalising a bus stop, compared with 43% of the Dutch and 64% of the Germans. They seem to believe that the little hoodlums will turn on them, and they may be right. When the last reliable international survey was conducted, in 2000, Britain had western Europe's
Fear alone did not drive Britain's crusade against anti-social behaviour. Nor did a new expression for it or the belief that petty incivilities are somebody else's problem. Together, though, these three things have proved a powerful force. A government that is keen to respond to popular concerns has been given a free hand in drawing up unusually tough powers, which can be used to tackle problems great and small. Mr Howard is just one victim: neither a sinner nor a winner.
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I'll walk carefully.
- Russian proverb
I have mentioned ASBO's before as part of a very wide attack on civil liberties in this country which frankly scares me.
In the last paragraph you quote it says that the government is "keen to respond to popular concerns" and that is certainly how this process is portrayed and defended. But I notice that earlier in the article it says that UK subjects are not more concerned about these issues than other Europeans, according to the research.Except insofar as the media and government have apparently formed an unholy alliance to make us afraid of each other, that fits with my experience. This is not driven by the people, so far as I can see, though it is true they accept it without much question, or they have so far. There is a small measure of optimism to be derived from signs that some of this rhetoric is now making people angry but those voices have still not got a big platform, though I have the impression it is growing. I hope
