|
|
Back to Home Page
Disability Discrimination
Act, now in force - every effort is made to ensure that this
website is easily accessible to those with relevant disabilities. If
you find short-comings, then please
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
|
050228 Make sure you
have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 9 Wednesday
Annette Carson 
Annette Carson is a UK pensioner living in South Africa, whose old Age Pension was "frozen" as at the date of her moving to South Africa. She continues to be paid a pittance, out of her OA pension. Her appeal is being heard by the House of Lords this week, and some 400,000 UK pensioners worldwide, who are in the same position, are watching carefully. The case has been going since 2002, and I have reviewed it earlier. As a lawyer, I have always been pessimistic about her prospects of success in the Courts. The injustice will require, it seems to me, intervention by Parliament.
Yes, US judgments are indeed "handed down", because they are issued (as a matter of law) in written form, and literally distributed as documents. But at English law, the "judgment" (also as a matter of law) is still the spoken judgment, and the typescript is merely a record of that speech.
Refugees 
Public concern is mounting at the Government's new Manifesto strategy to force refugees (i.e. successful asylum-seekers) to live for five years in limbo in the UK, pending a final decision on their claim. Fear and uncertainty are even now the distinctive hallmarks of their early lives in the UK. But that uncertainty is usually resolved - one way of the other, within twelve months. To be forced to remain in limbo for five years constitutes harsh and unreasonable treatment. Such Government action would be excessively harsh, as well as socially corrosive and disruptive. Consider the arguments of the Refugee Council.
PS English law has always
been pragmatic, and requiring citizens to "move on" and put
disputes behind them.
Interest reipublicae ut Editor Hit-count for the short-month of February has been a modest 1125, compared with the mammoth hit-count of 1706 for January! Was that just New Year madness, or a technical glitsch? I don't know... PS
I see from the Disability Discrimination Act advertising campaign that I
now have a duty to make my website user-friendly to those with impaired
sight. Does anyone have any ideas how this is to be done? Do
we simply have to use larger type-faces?
I refuse to I
cannot forget
Iraq. Faced with Bush on his European grand tour, I
cannot just put Iraq behind me,
and "move on".
Not because of the horrors of the invasion itself, or Falluja, or the tragic
continuing loss of life - for I recognise that they are to be set
against other horrors, including the atrocities of Saddam Hussein.
I
cannot forget
Iraq
because it marks the destruction, by George Bush, of all
our hopes for a rational and humane world order.
It was a political crime beyond
forgiveness. His rubbishing of the United Nations was and
is a political misjudgment of the highest order. The invasion of Iraq
represented the triumph of
sheer thuggish brute force over persuasion and diplomacy.
His is a violent Government with a short fuse. The reservoirs of
goodwill, within the international community, have been polluted by the
aggressive
invasion of Iraq. And the British are tainted, along with their flawed
leader. It will be a long time, after Bush and Blair are both gone, before we
see restored any real international consensus for peace and the peaceful
resolution of global conflict. No,
Mr.Bush. No, Mr Blair.
Do
not Brian Brivati,
Professor of Contemporary History at Kingston Universityi, writing in The Guardian, put me on the spot, over Iraq. He
challenged those of us who are alienated by US dominance of Iraq, to make our own
contribution to the development of a mature democracy in that country.
He argues that Iraq would be ruined by the imposition of a US-style,
welfare-meagre free-market American form of democracy. Iraq needs a
"European" welfare state, suitably adapted to its particular requirements. Yet it
will not get that unless we bring European influence to bear,
in
moulding the new Iraqi order.
Asylum Seekers
Numbers Fall
Jacques' I enjoy the clear intelligence, as well
as the political perception, of Martin Jacques. Writing in
The Guardian, he casts his mind forward to the period after the
Tories return to power on an ultra-right, racist, nationalist agenda.
New Labour will inevitably run out of steam, he argues, succombing to
sheer philosophical vacuity. And Jacques does not suggest an answer. But I know precisely what Labour should do.
|
Disability Expertise
Human Rights 
The Strasbourg judges of the European Court of Human Rights have bared their teeth this week. In three landmark judgments, they have awarded damages of £90,000 to the families of eleven civilians unlawfully killed by Russian troops in Chechnya. The Russian Government, a signatory to the Human Rights Convention, had breached their "right to life" (Article 2) during its anti-terrorist drive in Chechnya in 1999.
Asylum destitution grave injustice >>> I will vote Labour, but... >>> Migration should be legal >>> Death of political philosophy >>> London dysfunctional city >>> Referendum? Wrong question >>> How politicians abuse "contracts" >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> "Groupism" Adjustment Pay for every worker ;> >>
The Mischief of ASBOs >>>
Blackened
Mr Justice Wilson has ruled that Beverley Hughes acted illegally, in declaring Bangladesh to be a safe haven. He said, courageously - "It is all too clear that persecution and human rights abuse are not isolated problems at the margins of life in Bangladesh, which is officially ranked as "worst for corruption" on the relevant international index". This is yet another setback for the bleak authoritarianism of this illiberal Government. At local level, I have heard the most harrowing reports from Bangladesh of the repeated violence of local politics, in particular violence against Awami League activists, whose Party lost power to the Bangladesh National Party in 2002. And yet the Home Office has blandly continued to despatch hapless victims back to Bangladesh, to confront their tormentors.
NB Apart from the EU States, the list is now as follows - Albania - Bangladesh - Bolivia - Brazil - Bulgaria - Ecuador - Jamaica - Macedonia - Moldova - Romania - Serbia & Montenegro - Slovenia - South Africa - Sri Lanka - Ukraine.
Flawed
Alas poor Goldsmith. Lord Goldsmith, Attorney General. Without any previous experience of "political" office, plucked straight from the Bar as a Blair placeman, he was swept away by his sense of duty to his patron. I suspect there was no need for Downing Street to "lean on" him: he was already in a suitably compliant posture, in anticipation of being called upon. In the fateful month of March 2003, confronted by His Patron's preoccupation with invading Iraq, he duly came up with a "legal" justification for it. He is said to have written an Opinion confirming the legality of the Iraq invasion plans. In doing so, he lost for ever his reputation, among his fellow lawyers, for professional integrity and independence of mind. A new critique by Philippe Sands QC exposes the sheer fragility of his legal reasoning, and the poverty of the Government's legal case for the invasion. I shall be buying a copy, at £12.99: you can buy one here too.
Language is And two languages are better than one. I ask you to encourage your children and grandchildren - without being under any compulsion to do so - to immerse themselves in different cultures, different ways of thinking about life, different insights, different experiences. Therein lies the biodiversity of the human spirit.
For language is
Never miss
Legal errors created sleeping policemen..
Why do we force
050228 Make sure you
have not missed
Week 9 Wednesday
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
PS I
dislike the expression "handed down", which has crept into English, from
American court practice. It's like the Americanism "taking the
witness stand", instead of the English expression "going
into the witness box". 
But numbers
of other immigrants rise. That is, after all, the
"liberal" side of Labour's strategy, masterminded by David Blunkett. The annual Home Office
statistics, published this week, show just how distorted the "immigration
debate" has become. 
Asylum-seeker numbers have fallen, from
an annual peak of 110,000, partly because the number of violent conflict
zones in the world has decreased, and partly because the Eastward
extension of the EU has legitimised the entry of those Eastern Europeans,
formerly asylum-seekers. 
St Davids Day
puzzles me. Since devolution, it seems to have
become less
of an "event" in Wales, not more. Maybe the Welsh
are now a bit more confident of their place in the
world, and have to make less of an effort to assert
themselves. Or maybe the unremitting forces of global
integration are, to the contrary, continuing to erode
distinctive "national" identities. I cast my mind
back to 1963, when I celebrated 
I
asked for help (below) with fine-tuning this website to assist the
visually-impaired, as required by the Disability Discrimination Act. It turns out
that the DDA expertise was "in the family"
all the time! My daughter Katharine clearly knows 
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
These
are early moments. Early, that is, after the momentous
asylum ruling in the High Court on Thursday 24 February, by Mr Justice
Wilson. He overruled Beverley Hughes' action, in July 2003, in placing
Bangladesh on the "White List", whither asylum-seekers can be
summarily returned, without any effective appeal. The applicant
loses any right of appeal while still in the UK: the woefully inadequate
administrative decisions of the Home Office must stand, without challenge,
until the applicant has left the UK. Which is tantamount to blocking
the appeal. It is pure Kafka.
My
heart is breaking, at the steady decline of foreign language
studies in our schools and universities. All languages are
suffering dramatic
The entire phenomenon of the English speed
"hump" was triggered by lawyer's errors. Errors of statutory
interpretation. Now that the errors have been corrected, these awful
highway obstructions should be dispensed with. I joined Ken
Livingstone in his anti-hump drive, during his re-election campaign.
Older readers will recall that I was very
active, two years ago, campaigning for drugs legalisation.
My commitment has not changed.
But I am dulled by the bovine obtuseness and lack of principle displayed
by our MPs, afraid of every electoral shadow. Here, I celebrated the
11 MPs with the courage to identify with the liberal cause of drugs
legalization. They are still, to my knowledge, the only 11 to stand
out from the bovine herd.