Portsmouth activist Rosy Bremer objects to the government’s increasing disdain for human rights.
At long last I’ve got it; I have the perfect solution to the anger-causing problem that we all have human rights. So annoying isn’t it that we all have the right to be alive, we can’t be subject to being banged up arbitrarily, we’ve got the right to a private and family life, that we can think and believe what we want and express ourselves as we wish? What a flipping millstone around our poor, old, tiny, shrunken, flippy-floppy, wobbly old necks – and the paperwork, oh it’s endless. So hard for society to function these days now we can’t be owned by someone in Liverpool. What a ridiculous situation for any reasonable Subject of the Crown to put up with.
I’m not in the slightest bit reasonable and I just love human rights. I can’t get enough of them: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The European Convention On Human Rights and little baby sister The Human Rights Act – it’s all pure poetry. I want every one of those rights in all their glorious universal promiscuity applying themselves to everybody. They’re like ice-cream in thirteen of the most delicious flavours; mmm, mmm, mmm. Freedom From Slavery or Right To A Fair Trial flavour – which would you prefer, sir? It doesn’t matter, we can have them all; all at once!
It hasn’t passed me by that there is a swell of opinion that it’s much better to be without them, as sometimes the wrong people get hold of them and they haven’t even eaten their first course and now they’re asking to be allowed to keep all their limbs intact! Sad then for those who want to sign away our rights (whose rights? My rights, your rights, everybody’s rights!), that if we shed one layer of rights, along comes another smothering blanket of bureaucratic, pen-pushing, Euro-madness saying, ‘Sorry Britain, you might want to kiss your rights goodbye in a fit of Anglopique but we’ll still protect your lot with the European version of what you incorporated into domestic law a while ago, so storry-no ingoring people’s rights for you, oh non, nej, nein, nu de no no.’
Bummer, I know. I do understand the deep-rooted desire to be at the mercy of the government of the day, just in case somebody who sounds a bit funny or says things you don’t agree with or who does things you wouldn’t do gets to be not at the mercy of the government of the day. To teach that face a thing or two, the nose must go.
There seems to be a perfectly simple solution, though, for people wishing to de-shackle from the grasp of all those burdensome rights. No change in law is needed, no referendum, no consultation, and it’s a tailored-to-fit-solution. As well as being like ice-cream, human rights are like dogs; you have the option to exercise them or not to exercise them. If you don’t like your rights you needn’t exercise them, you can keep them sat on the sofa all day long, every day. Next time your privacy is invaded, your trial is not conducted fairly and your treatment is inhuman or degrading you can just not mention it and put up with it. You can ask someone else what to think (anyone else that is, apart from Katie Hopkins; anyone else who actually might be worth an add-on British right; Article 15 – “Everyone has the right to Freedom From Katie Hopkins”), you can marry someone not of your choosing and can, if you like, be found guilty of a crime which wasn’t a crime at the time you did it.
Now there’s a good old British compromise for you: rights for those that want them, not for those who don’t. Just don’t take them from me.
