How a P.C. government in the straitjacket of human rights leaves its people unprotected

The ever perceptive Camilla Cavendish in her Times article analyses the underlying issues in the rendition controversy:

"The government finds itself boxed into a very uncomfortable corner by the Human Rights Act, the human rights lobby and its duty to protect us from terrorism. The Human Rights Act has forced ministers to protect foreigners who hate us, at taxpayers' expense. So we cannot return anyone who might face torture, hostility or even substandard medicine. The human rights lobby has made a mockery of asylum law and the Geneva Convention, leaving us trapped in endless deportation battles. And as a consequence the Government has distorted fundamental principles of justice to protect national security."

Camilla Cavendish goes on to show how a weak government fearful of the left-wing pressure groups at home has had recourse to secret arrangements with other governments to do their work for them.

Labour's positioning has left it left of sensible

Some newspaper articles seem of lasting importance ansd should go instead ito a textbook for understanding our contemporary history.

This is a brilliant article which analyses the failure of the Gordon Brown administration. Philip Collins tells how Gordon Brown turned his back on positive action to improve the country to devote himself to petty party politicking as though he were the leader of the opposition. Faced with a policy decision he does not choose to do it because it is a good idea, or because it is right, but because it is politically useful. Collins says: This tendency to elevate political positioning over action will, in time, be the diagnosis of what went wrong. Labour had previously arrived at a series of defensible policy positions. It had a to-do list and a decent set of arguments about what it was for. On every issue it dropped them like litter to the ground.

• Victimhood’ culture impairs reasonable judgements made in the workplace

This excellent letter in today’s Times (February 10, 2009) illustrates how the infantile political correctness imposed on the whole nation under the rule of the Blairs is still beggaring everybody up. When we were little we were told that sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me. What inadequate people the politically correct would like us to be – at least on issues they prescribe!

Sir, Gary Hancock’s assertion (letter, Feb 9) that “a remark is offensive if it causes offence to those about or to whom it is addressed” illustrates a worrying trend in today’s increasingly sensitive society. We are told by our human resources departments that behaviour is defined as harassment or bullying if it is perceived as such by the complainant: there is no requirement for that perception to be subjected to any examination of its rationality. In a culture where “victimhood” seems to be regarded as a lifestyle option, sensible management in the workplace is fast becoming a defensive exercise in avoiding the industrial tribunal, and expressing a challenging opinion on almost any topic invites accusations of bigotry, or worse. From Bob Bury of Leeds

the urgent need for Britain to re-examine what it can offer incoming workers

At a time when the politically correct establishment is trying to close down the debate with big abstract words of abuse such as protectionism, xenophobia, globalisation, a rational letter to the Times gives a practical, pragmatic reply.


British jobs and European workers. Parliament needs to re-examine what Britain can offer incoming workers in the current economic current circumstances


Sir, Your leading article (“British jobs and British workers”, Jan 31) presented one side of what is at stake in this downturn. EU workers flooded into Britain as the community enlarged because our wages were higher, and our benefits and welfare far surpassed those in their own countries.

In boom times incoming workers pay taxes and help by being consumers. Even then, there is a high economic cost not often offset publicly against the oft-quoted benefit to individual industry and businesses: the cost of interpreters in all our public services; the huge extra cost to our free at point of delivery health services; the cost of immediate and free access to training courses on entry to Britain; the extra cost of policing with increased imported crime; the cost of extra housing and associated allowances; and the evasion of tax — many in the building trade work only for cash.

In addition, not all employers provide proper contracts and holiday and sick provision, but throw these workers on to the welfare system between seasonal work.
Now we are being told every day of huge job losses, many of which will affect the European workers already here, but little mention and no estimate has been given so far of the enormous extra tax burden this will put on those remaining in work — and the nation — that has to pay for all the unemployed. The British, facing now large and growing long-term national debt, are becoming restive about the affordability to the nation of completely open access and funding for Europeans, when their own countries would and could not offer our workers anything like the same largesse. This may be behind the quick surge of what you call “protectionism”.

A re-examination by Parliament of what Britain can offer incoming workers in current circumstances is not incompatible with membership of the EU. Other countries have achieved this successfully, giving limited and phased benefits to migrant workers within EU law. There also needs to be far better correlation of the costs and benefits of migration across fiscal, welfare and public services so that the taxpayer, and indeed the Government, is given a more honest and realistic picture.

Aline Hay
Duns, Berwickshire

My comment:
The government has to end its politically correct disregard for the native British population and give us the protection and fair treatment that other European governments in the EU give to their people.
The Times Tuesday, 03 February 2009