Just a quick follow-up on my post of a couple of days ago on the Tories proposals to change the UK’s human rights landscape (see Legally Illiterate). As expected this has continued to attract vociferous attacks.
Also as promised the Law and Lawyers blog has posted two further, more in depth, articles:
Human Rights protection in Britain ~ 10 key points
Human Rights ~ the Conservative Party proposals.
Two other pieces worth reading are:
Head of Legal — Full of sound and fury on human rights
UK Human Rights blog — Incoherent, incomplete and disrespectful: The Conservative plans for human rights.
If we care at all about our rights then we all need to be concerned and keep working to halt these appalling proposals.

So, the Conservatives, if they win the next election, propose repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and renegotiating, or failing that withdrawing from, the European Convention on Human Rights — as has been widely reported in the media over the last few days (see, inter alia, here).
Just about everyone except the Tories (and probably UKIP) is saying some variant of how crass a move this is. Many are openly hostile to the very idea. And many are pointing out the numerous flaws, stupidities, misunderstandings and sheer impracticality of such a move.
I’m not going to reprise the arguments here; others have done so far better than I can …
Needless to say Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan has come out against the proposals, as has the Liberal Democrat’s Simon Hughes.
Even Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative Attorney General, isn’t impressed; he describes the ideas as “unworkable” and “almost puerile”.
Jessica Elgot at Huffington Post picks 10 pretty large holes and howlers in the proposals, as well as pointing out that they have self-evidently not been drafted by a lawyer!
The Law and Lawyers blog opinion is “Don’t make me laugh”! He promises a more in depth look at the proposals at a later date.
If you do nothing else read this from barrister Isabella Sankey for Liberty. It is the most considered response I’ve seen so far. Sankey picks apart each strand of the proposals and points out the legal misunderstandings and legal impracticalities. I just love her overall comment on the proposals as “legally illiterate“. That’s really telling it how it is!
This one could run and run. Except that I doubt it will because I’ll be very surprised if the Tories get a large enough majority at the next election. Though that doesn’t mean there is any room for complacency. The time for rebellion approaches …

I’m not a natural Guardian reader. I view it as a bit of a rag, like almost all the media. But I can’t help reading George Monbiot’s column in the Guardian every Tuesday. He invariably lifts the lid on something our political masters would rather remained out of sight and mind. Monbiot’s articles are well argued and he always posts a fully referenced version on his weblog.
This week is no exception. In Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world? Monbiot totally destroys any pretence our masters have for their actions in the Middle East. I give you a few extracts:

Let’s bomb the Muslim world — all of it — to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?
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The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and west Asia … Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative.
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Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.
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More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.
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Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.
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There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role … Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslim nations, they have made life worse for those who live there.
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Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.

He is pointing the finger at David Cameron and Barak Ombama, but previous governments — specifically Tony Blair and George W Bush — are at least as culpable.
The argument may be reductio ad absurdum, but he does have a very good point.