The government have unleashed their latest and greatest ploy to get the unemployed back into work. It’s a simple procedure that involves the precision hacking away at the benefits of jobseekers everywhere, no matter how much you’ve worked in the past or where. This is supposed to incentivise work by showing that benefits will never pay more than employment.
Only there seems to be two problems with this. First off is the use of the word ‘incentive’, which implies an improvement somewhere, rather than just financial suffocation. This is the equivalent of taking away the oxygen tank from a diver and pointing to the surface. Second is, of course, the economic climate.
This new policy has received, seemingly, widespread support, both from the public and politicians, who see those on benefits as nothing more than a permanent drain on society. Despite the release of the ‘common misconceptions’ statistics last week, it seems no one has learnt. Politicians and the media continue to spin the numbers and now seemingly swallow them, happily and now consciously.
I already wrote a blog entry on those figures, but let’s recap – it would seem a recap is needed for those swimming around their bowls:
The perception is that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save more money than increasing the pension age to 66 or stopping child benefit for those earning over £50,000. The reality is capping household benefits will save £290million, compared with £5billion for raising the pension age and £1.7billion for reducing child benefit.
In addition, the perception is £24 in every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently. The reality: £0.70 in every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently.
The most important set of statistics is the second one. For some reason we have and - despite information like this - continue to have an extremely warped view of those on unemployment benefits. The vast, vast majority of claimants are claiming legitimately and fairly.
People say they understand that the economy is in tatters, only sometimes it seems like their ‘understanding’ is merely the squawking of a very well trained parrot. Sort of like, ‘everyone is using that sound bite, so I will too’. But it seems even after finishing their regurgitation, they have absolutely no idea what economic crisis entails.
To most, it seems that a pay freeze or maybe a raise under inflation is what all this is about. Not the millions who are out of work because there just isn’t the work available. It’s not about the hundreds of people flooding each vacancy with hundreds and hundreds of applications. It’s not about the countless people, not just in the public sector but the private sector too, that have lost their jobs - not just the unskilled, but the highly skilled too who have been made redundant due to budget restrictions or decreased profits. It’s not about all those qualified, experienced and skilled people stagnating in part-time work. And it’s not about the Sword of Damocles that could well be swinging above almost every normal working person’s head, ready to drop when they least expect it. All this, it seems to me, is considered a myth by the majority of middle England.
I just heard an acquaintance lost their job. She was three years qualified at a top London law firm, where for all intents and purposes, she was very successful. However, due to budgetary cuts (and no doubt the partners’ reluctance to take pay cuts) she was made redundant. She was hardly one to stand up for universal benefits, but now she finds herself either at the mercy of the state or eating into the money she carefully put away for her future – a future the government seems less and less enthusiastic about supporting. This is the plight of the majority of those on jobseeker’s allowance.
But this is the real issue here. It’s not the cap at all. What the real issue is is that if the government want to incentivise work, then they have to make working conditions better. It no good having workers worrying about whether their position could go at any minute, rather than just concentrating on the job in hand.
All the government have done in this area is make it easier for employers to sack their workers, cut the amount of compensation they have to pay to only 12 month’s salary, and cut consultation to just 45 days in the case of mass redundancies – and all this was put forward by Vince Cable, the ‘friendly face’ of the coalition. There’s no added incentive when the government so whole heartedly supports business, not the people they represent.
But this isn’t the only area where businesses get the blind support of the government. The fact is employment doesn’t always pay. There are millions of people who are so underpaid by their employers that they cannot make ends meet on their wage alone. It’s then up to the tax payer to make up the shortfall. Far more money goes on these kinds of benefits than on those who are out of work.
The argument that these are tough times and that businesses and corporations can’t afford it is, for the most part, utter bollocks. The average salary of a FTSE 100 chief executive was estimated to be 100 times that of a school teacher in 2011 or around the £3 million mark in 2012. They continue to pay themselves huge and rising salaries each year, along with their vulgar obligatory bonuses. Not to mention throwing away money on risky ventures like Tesco did with their Fresh ’n’ Easy gamble - something they dusted themselves off from pretty quickly. Meanwhile, the average working person’s wage (around the £25,000 mark) rises only 1% per year, if at all.
What’s more, the new jobs that these companies are creating are mainly part time work, which cannot satisfy the absolutely basic living conditions each human deserves. So is the money being widely invested in a few high-powered boardroom individuals?
Perhaps if a few execs could forgo their raises or bonuses, or better yet take a pay cut, perhaps the wages they pay to their lowest drones wouldn’t be so low. But the ‘not enough to go round’ issue is what every corporation argues when the issue of the Living Wage comes up, yet they have enough stashed away to be used as a play-thing. A cynical person would say some at the top of the food chain have found a convenient excuse in the economic climate.
The biggest scandal we face as far as benefits goes is not that there are so many unfortunate people forced to claim them, but that so many people need them whether they are in work or not. It’s the product of irresponsible capitalism and individualistic greed that is so being pushed by the government and right-wing press and swallowed by the public. As an employee, we shouldn’t be expected to work as low-paid slaves, but rather we should expect inclusion and adequate financial remuneration. Most of us are ultimately working for someone else’s dreams of money, influence and power after all.
It’s the gap between the executives and the average people that is really tearing this country apart. However, it’s the weak, not the strong, we turn the cannons on. This is because we’re told to. And we swallow everything the media and our politicians have to offer. A real incentive to get back into work would be the promise and respect of a living wage and the feeling that one isn’t worthless when compared to those watching over us from their ivory towers.
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
The lies we’re told, the lies we believe and the lies we tell ourselves
This one is a lie I let myself believe, but it’s not one I believe anymore. This is a lie in the same vein as ‘I’m not racist, but...’, ‘I don’t dislike homosexuals, but...’ only it it’s on a much wider scale, a lie attributed to an entire society. It’s a lie that’s told by those leading voices and rehashed by those that follow. It’s the lie that goes ‘The British people are a tolerant bunch, but...’
It doesn’t feel good attacking our society like this. It’s something I slurred out to one of my progressive friends on a night out, only to find myself quickly rebutted. On the whole, she said to me, we are much better than most. A fair enough comment if we believe what we’re told, only I’m not sure what the source material for this is. We read all sorts of stuff that holds us up on the pedestal of tolerance in all sorts of publications, especially the Daily Mail. Only it’s usually written in a column that also drops some kind of anti-minority bomb or something against the disenfranchised in the same paragraph. The slur I made is the bomb I’m going to drop now. The British people aren’t all that tolerant at all.
I’ve often felt this after watching some political panel show like Question Time, listening to comments from the public on certain political issues like immigration or benefits, or even simple things like teenage pregnancy or recreational drug use. A placating statement followed by a spill of bile. I hear it so much that I think, maybe they are speaking the truth. I mean, this person is saying it, the slightly out of shape man with the thinning hair and glasses also said it, and the man in the all too padded, ill-fitting suit who’s trying so hard yet failing spectacularly at looking statesmanlike has also said it, so in there must be some truth here. Scroungers are stealing all the money from the public purse and the island is going to sink into the sea under the creaking weight of all those immigrants. If they repeat what they say, over and over, maybe it’ll be true.
Goebbel’s is attributed to saying something like that once, though I think that might not be strictly correct. However, it doesn’t sound too off what the mastermind of Nazi propaganda might have said. Say something enough and it becomes truth. The problem is this kind of truth is it can be smashed by things like facts and figures and statistics. You know, the pesky objective evidence thing that Locke and Hume so graciously gave us with that whole empiricism idea. And this is exactly what has happened to the great slew of Britain’s misconceived preconceptions.
Splashed all over all the newspapers recently are The Top Ten Common Misconceptions Among Britons About Britain. I first came across this in a rather right-leaning publication, so immediately thought ‘ah, it’ll be something about the length of rivers or about the species of birds we have here’, but instead it did actually list out the top ten of the list of countless items of crap we like to spill out on a daily basis. This includes all the fan favourites; immigration, benefits, overseas aid and – although it’s fallen slightly out of fashion recently – teenage pregnancy. I’m not going to reprint it here, but I would like to go into some specifics.
So, according to these stats, it seems capping benefits will not be saving us anywhere near the amount of money we thought it would, while 70p in every £100 is claimed fraudulently, not the quarter we all thought. Also, we’re spending much more on pensions than on job seekers allowance – fifteen times more.
The overwhelming increased demonization of those on benefits has come at a time when the economy has gone to shit. Many people in the public sector have lost their jobs and find themselves blamed for it – blamed (incorrectly) for causing the economic problems here in the first place and then for claiming benefits. In actual fact, it was the banking crisis that caused this, not the public sector and Labour. And people seem to forget those in the private sectors are suffering too, suffering from pay freezes and job losses while their company overlords thrive, both monetarily and in respect. It’s a sad and pathetic time where the weak maul the even weaker.
And what about immigration and religion? Well, today’s current, fashionable bogeyman is Islam. People talk about how it’s replacing Christianity and how 'soon Sharia Law will take over'. Well, 5% are Muslim, hardly the horde everyone talks about, while 59% of the people of this country consider themselves Christian. This is rather disconcerting to me because I don’t know where that puts the atheists and agnostics. However, it also show the ridiculous focus and obsession that people seem to need to need to put on something the consider 'other' in order to go about their daily lives. In the 21t Century, what does the representation of religious groups really matter?
As far as immigration and ethnicity goes, people of ethnicities other than white make up 11% of the population, not 30%. It’s more likely that if this country does sink into the sea, it won’t be under the weight of people mainly from the lands conquered by the British Empire, but rather from the descendants of those that conquered these islands between the end of the Roman Empire and 1066. It’s not race and immigration that we are buckling under the weight of, but just the number of people in general, whatever their colour or race. So now do we want to stop having kids entirely?
Of course, I do understand that people have to get their information from somewhere. Unfortunately, the media and politicians have been feeding us outright lies for years to fit their own agenda. After all, the erroneous figures must have some source. The problem seems to be, however, that no one bothers to think about them. No one trusts what they see and would rather apply themselves to a strictly abstract idea.
We, as a nation, are turning on each other. In our time of need, rather than sympathising with the jobless or those seeking sanctuary, we set them as targets. Rather than being inclusive, we shut ourselves off and try our best create moats and defences between us. We aren’t all in it together, and this is a myth that goes far beyond just the gap between the rich overlords and the rest of us. The citizens of this country are allowing themselves to become completely divided.
The problem is it’s the same new sources and politicians that deem us as a tolerant nation that come up with all the rubbish that we’ve let ourselves believe. It’s them that spout all the intolerant drivel that has been disproved by these latest, national figures and statistics. It’s another case of ignoring the evidence, only the evidence they are ignoring here is their own voice.
And even if we are more tolerant than some incredibly intolerant nations, it’s not a competition. Surely what we want to achieve is a harmonious and prosperous nation, which we cannot do if we aren’t working together.
When a Tory cabinet minister spouts something that creates misconceptions, they usually follow it up with ‘which the British public agree with’. So maybe it’s more their intolerance than all of ours, only we all get painted with the same brush.
Giving prisoners the chance of review, not the promise of freedom by any means, just the promise of review means we should let go of our human rights and allow this government to rewrite them for us – minus the Liberal Democrats. It’s what the British people want. Well, it’s not what I want and I’d thank you for not including me in anything you say. The British people you speak of are intolerant, but not all of us are the British people you speak of.
Read the source article here.
It doesn’t feel good attacking our society like this. It’s something I slurred out to one of my progressive friends on a night out, only to find myself quickly rebutted. On the whole, she said to me, we are much better than most. A fair enough comment if we believe what we’re told, only I’m not sure what the source material for this is. We read all sorts of stuff that holds us up on the pedestal of tolerance in all sorts of publications, especially the Daily Mail. Only it’s usually written in a column that also drops some kind of anti-minority bomb or something against the disenfranchised in the same paragraph. The slur I made is the bomb I’m going to drop now. The British people aren’t all that tolerant at all.
I’ve often felt this after watching some political panel show like Question Time, listening to comments from the public on certain political issues like immigration or benefits, or even simple things like teenage pregnancy or recreational drug use. A placating statement followed by a spill of bile. I hear it so much that I think, maybe they are speaking the truth. I mean, this person is saying it, the slightly out of shape man with the thinning hair and glasses also said it, and the man in the all too padded, ill-fitting suit who’s trying so hard yet failing spectacularly at looking statesmanlike has also said it, so in there must be some truth here. Scroungers are stealing all the money from the public purse and the island is going to sink into the sea under the creaking weight of all those immigrants. If they repeat what they say, over and over, maybe it’ll be true.
Goebbel’s is attributed to saying something like that once, though I think that might not be strictly correct. However, it doesn’t sound too off what the mastermind of Nazi propaganda might have said. Say something enough and it becomes truth. The problem is this kind of truth is it can be smashed by things like facts and figures and statistics. You know, the pesky objective evidence thing that Locke and Hume so graciously gave us with that whole empiricism idea. And this is exactly what has happened to the great slew of Britain’s misconceived preconceptions.
Splashed all over all the newspapers recently are The Top Ten Common Misconceptions Among Britons About Britain. I first came across this in a rather right-leaning publication, so immediately thought ‘ah, it’ll be something about the length of rivers or about the species of birds we have here’, but instead it did actually list out the top ten of the list of countless items of crap we like to spill out on a daily basis. This includes all the fan favourites; immigration, benefits, overseas aid and – although it’s fallen slightly out of fashion recently – teenage pregnancy. I’m not going to reprint it here, but I would like to go into some specifics.
So, according to these stats, it seems capping benefits will not be saving us anywhere near the amount of money we thought it would, while 70p in every £100 is claimed fraudulently, not the quarter we all thought. Also, we’re spending much more on pensions than on job seekers allowance – fifteen times more.
The overwhelming increased demonization of those on benefits has come at a time when the economy has gone to shit. Many people in the public sector have lost their jobs and find themselves blamed for it – blamed (incorrectly) for causing the economic problems here in the first place and then for claiming benefits. In actual fact, it was the banking crisis that caused this, not the public sector and Labour. And people seem to forget those in the private sectors are suffering too, suffering from pay freezes and job losses while their company overlords thrive, both monetarily and in respect. It’s a sad and pathetic time where the weak maul the even weaker.
And what about immigration and religion? Well, today’s current, fashionable bogeyman is Islam. People talk about how it’s replacing Christianity and how 'soon Sharia Law will take over'. Well, 5% are Muslim, hardly the horde everyone talks about, while 59% of the people of this country consider themselves Christian. This is rather disconcerting to me because I don’t know where that puts the atheists and agnostics. However, it also show the ridiculous focus and obsession that people seem to need to need to put on something the consider 'other' in order to go about their daily lives. In the 21t Century, what does the representation of religious groups really matter?
As far as immigration and ethnicity goes, people of ethnicities other than white make up 11% of the population, not 30%. It’s more likely that if this country does sink into the sea, it won’t be under the weight of people mainly from the lands conquered by the British Empire, but rather from the descendants of those that conquered these islands between the end of the Roman Empire and 1066. It’s not race and immigration that we are buckling under the weight of, but just the number of people in general, whatever their colour or race. So now do we want to stop having kids entirely?
Of course, I do understand that people have to get their information from somewhere. Unfortunately, the media and politicians have been feeding us outright lies for years to fit their own agenda. After all, the erroneous figures must have some source. The problem seems to be, however, that no one bothers to think about them. No one trusts what they see and would rather apply themselves to a strictly abstract idea.
We, as a nation, are turning on each other. In our time of need, rather than sympathising with the jobless or those seeking sanctuary, we set them as targets. Rather than being inclusive, we shut ourselves off and try our best create moats and defences between us. We aren’t all in it together, and this is a myth that goes far beyond just the gap between the rich overlords and the rest of us. The citizens of this country are allowing themselves to become completely divided.
The problem is it’s the same new sources and politicians that deem us as a tolerant nation that come up with all the rubbish that we’ve let ourselves believe. It’s them that spout all the intolerant drivel that has been disproved by these latest, national figures and statistics. It’s another case of ignoring the evidence, only the evidence they are ignoring here is their own voice.
And even if we are more tolerant than some incredibly intolerant nations, it’s not a competition. Surely what we want to achieve is a harmonious and prosperous nation, which we cannot do if we aren’t working together.
When a Tory cabinet minister spouts something that creates misconceptions, they usually follow it up with ‘which the British public agree with’. So maybe it’s more their intolerance than all of ours, only we all get painted with the same brush.
Giving prisoners the chance of review, not the promise of freedom by any means, just the promise of review means we should let go of our human rights and allow this government to rewrite them for us – minus the Liberal Democrats. It’s what the British people want. Well, it’s not what I want and I’d thank you for not including me in anything you say. The British people you speak of are intolerant, but not all of us are the British people you speak of.
Read the source article here.
Monday, 8 July 2013
Paranoid about being paranoid: putting ourselves at the mercy of the state and Theresa May
Over the past couple of days, our TV screens have been awash with jubilation and victory speeches. The accolades of ‘calmness’, ‘sheer determination’ and ‘thoroughness’ have been bestowed upon a new British hero for what has been deemed a ‘stellar performance’. I wish I was talking about Andy Murray here, whose match on Sunday was a show of strategic and athletic perfection, having swiped the Men’s Singles Wimbledon title away from the world number one, Novak Djokovic in three straight sets. Unfortunately it’s not Andy Murray I’m talking about here, it’s Theresa May. And her accolades, unlike Murray’s, are not well deserved.
I’m not going to comment on the man, Abu Qatada here. I will freely admit that I do not know enough about the man to comment. Despite the pages and pages of media fury whipped up over the years, none of it gave me an insight into the man it demonised. None of it was informative. Instead, all I got was flat rhetoric on a caricature of evil; on a comic book villain.
I have little to no patience with the highly religious, whatever novel they like to adhere to. So where religion could be used as a tool to the damage a democratic and secular way of life, I’m going to take my place on the side opposing it. If he committed crimes against society, then surely he must be held accountable for them; that is common sense. However, it is the wider issues that have been brought up by these events that have stirred feelings not only of anger and disgust but, most of all, of dread.
Politicians often use periods of self-satisfied backslapping as springboards for policy. When the public are good and placated, politicians believe they will swallow anything, whether it be chocolate milk or razorblades. And whether it’s the sweet residue or the smear of blood around their mouths, they will smile after.
In tandem with the announcement of Abu Qatada’s deportation to Jordan came the Home Secretary’s firm resolution to remove Britain from the European Convention of Human Rights. To the public, this seems like the double toot of the victory trumpet. According to the right-wing press and their political allies, these are two ‘one-overs’ on the great controlling block of Europe and a victory in the war to return power to the British people.
Of course, this is rubbish. I have been constantly astounded at the reaction that this campaign has got from the public since the first rumbling started at the beginning of this coalition. I am absolutely stunned that one of the issues at the forefront of so many people’s minds is to relinquish their own rights as a human beings. The notion is absolutely insane.
The European Convention of Human Rights was written up post World War in the wake of the mass persecution, genocide and wide scale torture regimes inflicted on their own people and the people they conquered. The victors were shocked into finally providing the people they ruled over or represented - depending on your view - with co-operatively ratified fundamental freedoms, which all countries would uphold for people everywhere. These fundamental freedoms include such basic rights as freedom of expression, freedom from torture or servitude, the right to privacy, fair trials and to regular and free elections.
With the horrors so fresh in the authors’ minds, the images of death camps and slaughter on an industrial scale, what we got was comprehensive, and rightly so. As living, comprehending and self-aware creatures, these are fundamental rights that we deserve. And we deserve to know that all these rights will be upheld; with others watching over us as well should our own government falter. Our lives are short and stressful, in the most part in service of the dreams of those at the top, rather than our own. So this is the very least we should expect in return.
But it’s not just the recent history of the war that the Human Rights Act serves to protect us from. Look back at the previous centuries. These were times of political and social repression, and people were allowed to live in appalling conditions. Think of the factories of the industrial era, the poor houses, the near slavery of the working people, let alone the actual slavery of Europe’s colonial conquests. That in certain stratas of society, a human was considered more like an animal than a human.
Now the government desires to take them away from us and replace them with a Bill of British Rights or UK Bill of Rights, which incidentally makes no mention of the word human. The reason they give for doing this is purely a financial one. What they want is to make it easier to deport people. Abu Qatada was in custody while he was here. He had no freedom to incite anything. All he was was a cost. He cost the taxpayer £1.7 million, which is a measly sum when compared to the trillions spent on bailing out the failed banks. However, our government is in no hurry to introduce legislation to take control of those. This is how it is in pretty much every, or if not every single, case.
I know it seems like a lot of money, but it’s probably a fair price to pay to know that your absolute and essential rights and freedoms are maintained. This comprehensive list was put together by a co-operative of nations and organisations, with Winston Churchill at the helm. It was the coming together of multiple bodies giving us the rights that we, as humans, are entitled to. This was done to ensure these rights weren’t just those a state or government were willing to give us - so long as it didn't infringe on their desires and ambitions. It’s exactly this danger that the introduction of this new Bill would present.
The problem now is the opinion of people has changed over recent years. Instead of casting doubt over our rulers, we instead cast the doubting eye over our own doubt. To question certain government policies or to suspect the possibility of some kind of malevolence, whether at present or a possible future infraction, is seen as paranoia by many, even with the evidence to suggest otherwise.
It has just been revealed to us that our intelligence services have already been engaged for years in mass data mining, that they have bugged fibre optic cables and it’s been suggested that they have found ways around the legal checks and balances we thought were there to protect us. Our government criticises countries like China and Russia, but they do exactly the same thing. Ultimately, these surveillance methods are the responsibility of the Home Secretary, Theresa May – the very same individual that wants to rescind all our rights, including our rights to privacy, and rewrite them.
Our country also doesn’t have the best track record with torture. We have sent our own citizens to the illegal Guantanamo Bay for brutal interrogations, with no one at all facing the consequences since the revelations. Many politicians even believed we should have sent Abu Qatada back to Jordan illegally, in defiance of the Human Rights Act, without the treaty with Jordan that ensures his protection from torture. A human is a human, regardless, and if we want to stand tall over those that do wrong, we cannot be hypocrites. Those that rule over us, for all their expensive educations, seem to have forgotten that. How can we trust a government that has so little regard for human life to rewrite our rights as human beings?
I’m not going to comment on the man, Abu Qatada here. I will freely admit that I do not know enough about the man to comment. Despite the pages and pages of media fury whipped up over the years, none of it gave me an insight into the man it demonised. None of it was informative. Instead, all I got was flat rhetoric on a caricature of evil; on a comic book villain.
I have little to no patience with the highly religious, whatever novel they like to adhere to. So where religion could be used as a tool to the damage a democratic and secular way of life, I’m going to take my place on the side opposing it. If he committed crimes against society, then surely he must be held accountable for them; that is common sense. However, it is the wider issues that have been brought up by these events that have stirred feelings not only of anger and disgust but, most of all, of dread.
Politicians often use periods of self-satisfied backslapping as springboards for policy. When the public are good and placated, politicians believe they will swallow anything, whether it be chocolate milk or razorblades. And whether it’s the sweet residue or the smear of blood around their mouths, they will smile after.
In tandem with the announcement of Abu Qatada’s deportation to Jordan came the Home Secretary’s firm resolution to remove Britain from the European Convention of Human Rights. To the public, this seems like the double toot of the victory trumpet. According to the right-wing press and their political allies, these are two ‘one-overs’ on the great controlling block of Europe and a victory in the war to return power to the British people.
Of course, this is rubbish. I have been constantly astounded at the reaction that this campaign has got from the public since the first rumbling started at the beginning of this coalition. I am absolutely stunned that one of the issues at the forefront of so many people’s minds is to relinquish their own rights as a human beings. The notion is absolutely insane.
The European Convention of Human Rights was written up post World War in the wake of the mass persecution, genocide and wide scale torture regimes inflicted on their own people and the people they conquered. The victors were shocked into finally providing the people they ruled over or represented - depending on your view - with co-operatively ratified fundamental freedoms, which all countries would uphold for people everywhere. These fundamental freedoms include such basic rights as freedom of expression, freedom from torture or servitude, the right to privacy, fair trials and to regular and free elections.
With the horrors so fresh in the authors’ minds, the images of death camps and slaughter on an industrial scale, what we got was comprehensive, and rightly so. As living, comprehending and self-aware creatures, these are fundamental rights that we deserve. And we deserve to know that all these rights will be upheld; with others watching over us as well should our own government falter. Our lives are short and stressful, in the most part in service of the dreams of those at the top, rather than our own. So this is the very least we should expect in return.
But it’s not just the recent history of the war that the Human Rights Act serves to protect us from. Look back at the previous centuries. These were times of political and social repression, and people were allowed to live in appalling conditions. Think of the factories of the industrial era, the poor houses, the near slavery of the working people, let alone the actual slavery of Europe’s colonial conquests. That in certain stratas of society, a human was considered more like an animal than a human.
Now the government desires to take them away from us and replace them with a Bill of British Rights or UK Bill of Rights, which incidentally makes no mention of the word human. The reason they give for doing this is purely a financial one. What they want is to make it easier to deport people. Abu Qatada was in custody while he was here. He had no freedom to incite anything. All he was was a cost. He cost the taxpayer £1.7 million, which is a measly sum when compared to the trillions spent on bailing out the failed banks. However, our government is in no hurry to introduce legislation to take control of those. This is how it is in pretty much every, or if not every single, case.
I know it seems like a lot of money, but it’s probably a fair price to pay to know that your absolute and essential rights and freedoms are maintained. This comprehensive list was put together by a co-operative of nations and organisations, with Winston Churchill at the helm. It was the coming together of multiple bodies giving us the rights that we, as humans, are entitled to. This was done to ensure these rights weren’t just those a state or government were willing to give us - so long as it didn't infringe on their desires and ambitions. It’s exactly this danger that the introduction of this new Bill would present.
The problem now is the opinion of people has changed over recent years. Instead of casting doubt over our rulers, we instead cast the doubting eye over our own doubt. To question certain government policies or to suspect the possibility of some kind of malevolence, whether at present or a possible future infraction, is seen as paranoia by many, even with the evidence to suggest otherwise.
It has just been revealed to us that our intelligence services have already been engaged for years in mass data mining, that they have bugged fibre optic cables and it’s been suggested that they have found ways around the legal checks and balances we thought were there to protect us. Our government criticises countries like China and Russia, but they do exactly the same thing. Ultimately, these surveillance methods are the responsibility of the Home Secretary, Theresa May – the very same individual that wants to rescind all our rights, including our rights to privacy, and rewrite them.
Our country also doesn’t have the best track record with torture. We have sent our own citizens to the illegal Guantanamo Bay for brutal interrogations, with no one at all facing the consequences since the revelations. Many politicians even believed we should have sent Abu Qatada back to Jordan illegally, in defiance of the Human Rights Act, without the treaty with Jordan that ensures his protection from torture. A human is a human, regardless, and if we want to stand tall over those that do wrong, we cannot be hypocrites. Those that rule over us, for all their expensive educations, seem to have forgotten that. How can we trust a government that has so little regard for human life to rewrite our rights as human beings?
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