Westminster

A Lesson From History

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

Scotland has become a strange country where videos from Government feeds regularly trend around social media, has it not? Gloriously so, I think.

Two such videos are, as of writing, doing the rounds.

One being Brendan O’Hara, the new SNP MP for Argyle and Bute, and his maiden speech in the House of Commons.

 

I’m not going to take anything away from this speech. It is a wonderful one. My concern lies instead with the other video going around. Namely, the reply from the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

 

This reply is being held up as some kind of paradigm shift within the House of Commons’ attitude towards Scotland and the SNP. I, however, was reminded of a passage from Aneurin “Nye” Bevan’s memoirs, “In Place of Fear” published in 1952 (page 7-8 of the First Edition).
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Four Conservative Policies Which Attack Your Human Rights

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

Somehow, it doesn't seem so bad when a comicbook supervillain says it.

In my previous post, I outlined the Conservative plan to strip you of your Human Rights and replace the ECHR (Full text of the Convention here: http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf) with a British Bill of Rights. I maintained then that I didn’t believe that the Tories actually want to remove, in general, any of the rights within the bill but do want to give themselves the power to remove your rights selectively whenever it chooses to.

We will still have to wait to see what any proposed British Bill of Rights actually contains to see if this prediction bears fruit but while reading up on this it has become quite clear to me that several imposed or proposed policies skirt a very fine line with regard to the articles within the ECHR. I’d hazard a guess that if any of your Human Rights are to be removed then the following would be the ones to watch.

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