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On Saturday morning I received a personal message (addressed 'Dear Resident') from Emma Moore, my local Conservative candidate for Ogmore. In this personal message she outlines 'why we need change in Britain today', and I was immediately struck by a a series of tabloid lies being wheeled out by Emma in an attempt to gain my support. I therefore decided to take some action and post on it. So here we go, tabloid lie number one:
The Conservatives would review the effects of Labour's misguided laws - such as those which results in a grandmother being tagged for selling Goldfish to an underage customer
Oh dear. Emma Moore is using a story about a grandmother being tagged for 'admitting causing suffering to a cockatiel' and for selling goldfish to a person under 161. So of course the tabloids like the Daily Express and Daily Mail used this as 'proof' that Britain had gone mad because they buried the animal cruelty bits and tried to pretend the punishment was just for selling a fish to an underage child - which, we should not forget is still a crime and I thought the Conservatives were traditionally tough on criminals?
Unfortunately for Emma Moore an 'and' follows the above quotation and she continues:
terrorists not being deported as it would be against their 'rights'
Ah yes, the tabloid obsession with 'rights', notice the use of inverted commas around 'rights', making it clear that Emma doesn't believe terrorists have any 'rights'. Presumably she is happy to have extraordinary rendition and torture because people we label terrorists shouldn't have 'rights'.
As has been pointed out before, the tabloids have an agenda to discredit the human rights act, the very thing that attempts to guarantee every individual basic human rights irrespective of the colour of their skin, the religion they may or may not follow, whatever crimes they may have been accused of, their sexuality and so forth. It is the basis of trying to create a world in which everyone is guaranteed not to be abused by any state that signs up to the charter. This doesn't sound like a bad thing, but here we are being told that 'rights' for certain groups are bad.
However, as the Guardian reported in 2009 the majority of tabloid scare stories blaming the lack of deportation of a criminal in most cases has nothing to do with human rights and more to do with legal loopholes and other complicated aspects of international law. Rarely does human rights have any impact on deportation, and if it does it is because the country to which they may be deported is likely to kill or cause unnecessary suffering to the deportee. We are supposed to be a civilised country, we have no form of capital punishment, so should we really deport criminals or 'terrorists' to a certain death sentence? To do so undermines the morality of us all, it would appeal only to the basest instincts of a minority of people in Britain - the dark instincts which the Human Rights Act is designed to keep in check2.
So far from Emma Moore we've had two tabloid myths repeated, but she's happy to keep ploughing the 'aren't you outraged' furrow and moves onto bail:
Simple things have been overlooked. Can you believe it is not illegal to breach bail?
Now, I'm moving outside of my comfort zone here, but from what I have read bail - like most aspects of law - is quite a complex subject and Emma is trying to oversimplify it. From what I have read it is true that the 'breach of bail conditions is not an offence as such', but a 'constable may arrest a person who is believed to be likely to breach or has breached any condition of their bail'3. Furthermore, there are two aspects to breaching bail: firstly, the breaching of bail conditions (moving house, breaching a curfew, moving within areas that are off limits, approaching witnesses etc); and secondly the failure to attend court at the set time without a reasonable excuse - this is a separate criminal offence under the Bail Act 19764.
I'm not going to pretend to fully understand the intricacies of bail, but I know that the subject is far more complex than Emma is suggesting and that because breaching bail conditions normally results in arrest and the reconsideration of whether bail will be granted a second time I'm not overly sure what making it a criminal offence will actually achieve. Sadly, Emma doesn't make any attempt to inform me.
Emma Moore isn't finished with bail yet though:
In most cases bail is offered automatically, even for relatively serious crimes, only for some people to commit more crime whilst awaiting trial.
Here is where the tabloid world of crime starts to contradict itself, for only a couple of paragraphs earlier we were being shocked at the harsh sentence handed out when a goldfish is sold to an underage customer, now we're being told that 'relatively serious' crimes allow the accused to get automatic bail. Well, which is it? Do we have a system that penalises even the most petty offence harshly, or a system that is too weak to deal with those accused of 'relatively serious' offences? You cannot have both Emma, unless your paranoia makes you imagine that the criminal justice system is more interested in persecuting goldfish selling grandmothers than hardened criminals. Considering the justice system remains independent from the government I'm not sure you'd be able to argue this point5.
Furthermore, bail is normally granted unless:
Once charged, the police must release you on bail unless the custody officer reasonably believes that:
- There is doubt about your name or address; or
- Detention is necessary to protect you or somebody else; or
- You will fail to attend court or will interfere with witnesses or the administration of justice.
That seems to leave a significant level of discretion for those involved with the case to refuse bail. Whilst it is true that bail is granted in the majority of cases, it must be remembered that the majority of alledged crimes are not actually serious. If the allegded crime was serious and any member of the public was in danger, then bail could easily be refused. I understand that sometimes this system isn't perfect, because a certain element of human judgement is involved and human beings are not perfect, nor can the behaviour of other human beings be predicted accurately. However, as far as I am aware no-one else seems to be putting the bail system at the heart of their election manifesto, presumably because their are real problems to tackle. Emma seems more concerned with scaring me into voting for her, rather than winning my support by tackling the real issues. At least she is clearly on-message with the rest of the Conservative Party and the Tory press.
Next up, a very predictable and depressing attack:
We would scrap the European Human Rights Act... stopping ridiculous compensation claims like prisoners getting money for not having heroin supplied to them in jail and being 'forced' to go cold turkey.
Wow, you're selling me the Conservative dream Emma! A vote for the Conservatives, is a vote to scrap your basic, fundamental human rights. I know, a vote for the Conservatives has always meant this, but at least they used to be subtle about it. Now they actually think it should be a policy they can show off. As for the heroin story, yes, you guessed it, it is taken from the Daily Mail: 'Drug addicted prisoners receive compensation for being forced to go cold turkey' (I suspect that Emma is a Daily Mail reader).
Like most stories in the Daily Mail, it is also palpably untrue, as a serving prisoner points out on his blog in a post about prison myths:
One such lie, a myth in the making, is that hundreds of prisoners were awarded compensation after being refused heroin. It speaks to the sanity of Mail readers that they could ever think this could be true, but there you are. The case in question was actually about de-toxing from heroin. In the community, detox via the NHS is supported with a regimen of drugs which lessen the pains of the process. But in prisons, this support was absent, forcing the detoxers to suffer. The compensation came about because of this inexplicable disparity in treatment, which led to their being caused unnecessary suffering. Feel free to object to that, as you please, but it had bugger all to do with being refused heroin.
It is terribly depressing to think that the Daily Mail is not just directly attempting to force a Conservative government on us for the next four years, but also that their lies are indirectly being fed to people in my constituency. People who will not have immediately spotted the lies because they don't spend their spare time writing or reading this blog and others. That there is little more to her opening statement than the above tabloid lies says a lot about the Conservative tactic of scaring people into voting for them. I can understand this from their point of view because their policies are directed at maintaining and increasing the wealth of the richest 6% of the country, and these policies are hardly likely to convince many in this area of Wales to vote for them.
And one final point, Emma Moore, if I may direct this at you personally. Under the heading 'Safer Communities' you have three bullet points; I have serious issues with two of them.
Firstly, you state that you want to 'Have a dedicated border police to crack down on immigration and visa offences'. How exactly is this point related to 'Safer communities' unless you're trying to link the idea that immigrants make a community inherently unsafe? I find you wedging immigrants between serious crime and drug-related crime, under the heading you have chosen, deeply offensive and it smacks of racism. You actually seem to be stating that our communities would be safer if we cracked down 'on immigration and visa offences'. Do you seriously not understand how racist that sounds? Immigrants are human beings who seek a different way of life in a different country for a huge variety of reasons, they are human beings, the same as us all9. Yet here you are stating that they make our communities unsafe. I wonder how safe immigrants will be if you do scrap the European Bill of Human Rights.
Secondly, you state you want to 'increase drug treatment programmes to tackle addiction-driven crime'. Sounds like a good idea, in fact this is exactly the kind of programme that the prisoners were refused when they sought compensation for being denied this treatment. You know, the story you used as an example of the UK's crazy compensation culture. You manage to completely contradict yourself in the space of a few paragraphs and if you actually spent an hour looking into your 'evidence' you probably would have spotted just how stupid you were being here.
It staggers me that you would not even conduct the most basic research before publishing a leaflet and posting presumably thousands of them through doors all around this constituency. You have so little respect for your prospective voters that you feed us this tabloid drivel as 'evidence' of why we should vote for you, yet even your own pamphlet inadvertently undermines your own arguments.
I have emailed you a link to this article and offer you the right of reply, I will publish it underneath this post. So, if you want to argue any of your points further then I will publish them here. I am still considering printing this on leaflets and doing my own mailshot because I am that disgusted with your leaflet.
UPDATE 1 - 25th April, 2pm
I appreciate the early comments and take on board my perhaps simplistic idealism with regards to the Human Rights Act, however, I stand by my assertion that to alter or scrap the act requires judgements to be made about who deserves and who doesn't deserve human rights. If history has taught us one thing, it is that governments and human beings in general are not the right people to make these judgements. It is only safe and fair to ensure that everyone has basic human rights, irrespective of how testing that can be at times.
Secondly, in response to how long this took me, well, under 2 hours with Google at my side. I would like to spend more time tidying up what I have written, considering my points a little more and attempting to write something better but as a one-man-band with other commitments I have to be satisfied with off-the-cuff posts like this. Still, I think I have demonstrated that it wouldn't have taken Emma Moore long to research her stories and consider her prospective voters.
With regards to Emma Moore, I am still awaiting a response. I have passed this post to the local Liberal Democrats, but am still awaiting a Labour leaflet to get contact details of who their candidate is.
1, See Enemies of Reason: 'The Proof at last' and 'April Fool' for more details on how the tabloids skewed this story and the Express even laughably campaigned to 'free her now'.
2, See Guardian: 'Bad Press: human rights myths exposed'.
3, See wikicrimeline: 'Breach of bail conditions'.
4, See Your Rights: 'The rights of defendants'.
5, See Wikipedia: 'Separation of powers'.
6, See Your Rights: 'The rights of defendants'.
7, See The Daily Mail: 'Drug addicted prisoners receive compensation for being forced to go cold turkey'.
8, See Ben's Prison Blog (written through sending written blog posts via the Royal Mail to a friend on the outside who uploads them to his blog): 'Myths in the making'.
9, See Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!: 'We need to change the rhetoric on immigration'.
And Angry Mob: 'Deport me, I'm not even integrating'.
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Thank you for taking the time to respond, and in such detail.
Having checked the email I sent it was definately went to that address and hasn't bounced back. Perhaps you should check spam folders etc in case you might be missing mail from other people getting in touch as well.
Obviously Le Salaud makes some relevant points to your response, so i'll deal with different points to save repetition.
1) Tagging: Whether you accept the 'guilt of this particular lady' is irrelevent. You used the example to highlight 'Labour's misguided laws' and as an example it says more about the attempts of tabloid newspapers to create faux outrage by hiding the real facts of a judges decision. When you accept that there was a charge on animal cruelty as well as simply selling a goldfish to an underage customer you can start to argue that the judge may well have used tagging accordingly. Whether the person being tagged is a grandmother, great grandmother or even the queen is not relevant, except to stoke up the idea in the minds of simple Daily Mail readers that such people can never really be real criminals.
Like any good tabloid you happily switch between a false story about a dear old grandmother being tagged to 'terrorists not being deported as it would be against their 'rights''. Again, you imply that sweet old ladies are persecuted under Labour whilst terrorists avoid punishment thanks to human rights.
2) You talk about human rights without addressing my main point: your inverted commas implied that Terrorists should not have rights. In your response you state: 'Every person, no matter what their citizenship or status, deserves protection of their fundemental rights under the law' - then why use inverted commas?
Also, why follow this statement with a 'but the current act is falling short and causing unnecessary tension in our communities'. I'd argue as before: terrible tabloid journalism and lies about 'yuman rites' is causing this tension, not the HRA. We need to pander less to gullible tabloid readers and have a bit more guts to stand up for human rights.
3) Will Conservative cuts not effect the bail system?
4) In your leaflet you talk about immigration, not illegal immigration, so I stand by my original assertion. I do not think it helps a sensible discussion on immigration wedging it under the heading 'safer communities' and between crime and drug addiction.
5) You didnt confess that you got that story badly wrong and that it undermines your commendable pledge to increase drug addiction programmes to reduce offending.
Finally, thanks again for taking the time to respond. I may not agree with all of your points, but I do appreciate you taking the time to respond to mine. Politics is not dead yet.
...no, Habeas Corpus is a procedure within the common law.
"The integration and implementation of the ECHR unfortunately did not sufficiently anticipate the effects of differences in legal systems within the EU"
I'm sorry, but this is utter tosh. It's a piece of legislation like any other. Since it appears that I must: source please. Or indeed a slightly more detailed explanation than this - as it stands this little snippet is very wordy yet actually conveys no message at all.
"Our policy is to draw up a new Bill of Rights incorporating both the ECHR and UN Charter on Human Rights but in a way which is appropriate to our own legal system."
Again: how? As ever, nice and wordy, legally unsubstantiated, and devoid of any actual fact. To re-iterate: how is the HRA inappropriate for the common law?
"the current Act is falling short and causing unnecessary tensions in our communities."
Ditto. Less rhetoric more substance please.
Please accept my apologies for the delay in coming back to you – I have just picked up your posting to my Facebook page which you posted late last night. I did not however receive an email from you so I’m not sure what happened there ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it is the correct one).
I am sure you can appreciate that as an election address is only a few hundred words it is not possible to put full detail on the complex issues and policy areas raised as this would result in a very narrow one policy election address.
However, I am glad to have the opportunity to discuss issues in more depth so will address your broad points as follows:
1)Tagging: I do not dispute the guilt of this particular lady but have used this case to highlight the inconsistency of type and term of sentencing we have under the current sentencing guidelines in place which causes concern to many people and reduces faith in the judicial system and process.
In an article in the Guardian this month (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/05/judges-sentencing-andrew-ashworth) the head of the Sentancing Advisory Panel highlights this problem by saying "The whole idea of guidelines has been undermined. The purpose of guidelines is to steer judges along particular channels but the new legislation is destructive because it hardly binds judges at all. It is possible that the new legislation will lead to the sort of idiosyncratic sentencing that used to cause people such worry.”
2)European Charter on Human Rights: the legal system used in the UK (although there are variations in Scotland) is Habeas Corpus also known as Common Law or case law. In the majority of EU Member States Civil Law is used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_systems).
The integration and implementation of the ECHR unfortunately did not sufficiently anticipate the effects of differences in legal systems within the EU and our precedent driven approach which has led in some cases to abuses of the legislation and a departure from the spirit and intention of the Act.
Our policy is to draw up a new Bill of Rights incorporating both the ECHR and UN Charter on Human Rights but in a way which is appropriate to our own legal system. Every person, no matter their citizenship or status, deserves protection of their fundamental rights under the law but the current Act is falling short and causing unnecessary tensions in our communities.
No system is perfect which is why it is important that we try to get this important area right for the future.
3)Bail: great upset is caused when offenders on bail for a serious crime go on to commit another serious crime while awaiting trial and people find it difficult to understand how bail is granted again after a breach in previous conditions.
One example of such a case is http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/22/teenager-sentenced-matalan-manager-stabbing .
Probation services are overstretched and in some areas monitoring of everyone on bail or released on licence is an impossible task with current resourcing and structure. A full review and overhaul of both funding and the way money is spent in this area is a cornerstone for any change in approach to bail.
Tightening the legal ramifications of breaching bail conditions will not be a panacea for this problem but is a good place to start. It will send a message both to those who currently view their bail conditions as optional with no consequences, and to reassure the public that bail will be treated more seriously than it currently is and that charges for serious violent/crime will err towards automatic bail refusal rather than an assumption it will be granted.
4)Immigration: Illegal immigration has far reaching consequences from people trafficking to forced labour, and organised crime to terrorism. These are issues of community safety but more importantly than this they are humanitarian and moral issues we have a duty to address.
What they are not is an issue of race.
Our current lax border security enabled 18 Chinese men and women to be smuggled into this Country only to lose their lives doing forced labour in Morecombe Bay to ‘repay’ the people traffickers who brought them here.
There are an unknown number of people currently being forced into prostitution in towns and cities across the UK including children. Organised crime can have an apparently benign face in the illegal DVDs being sold in a local pub or can result in more serious smuggling and other crime. Often the main people to blame for these gangs are British people allowed to exploit illegal immigrants because it is relatively easy for them to get people across our borders.
Improving border security will help prevent more people being trafficked here who are without the protection of the law or able to access healthcare or other support because they are unseen.
I would hope that you would agree that when looked at in more detail this is a policy area rightly included on my election address.
5)Compensation: I do not advocate causing unnecessary suffering to anyone, whether in jail or out, nor do I think it is acceptable when healthcare or policy fails to help the people who need support.
The growing ‘compensation culture’ has resulted in certain types of lawyers moving the focus of some legal or policy challenges away from getting something wrong put right to a purely financially driven aim. It has also resulted in increasing health and safety and other restrictions by Organisations simply trying to avoid being sued rather than trying to improve the service or access they provide. Perhaps worst of all are the reduced freedoms of parents to be able to take part in activities with their children which detracts from society rather than improves it.
6)You were partly right about the Daily Mail (!) but in fact I read 5 newspapers daily (Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, Times) to ensure I get as wide a range of opinion as possible. In addition I read local papers (South Wales Echo and Glamorgan Gazette) weekly.
If you have any other questions please feel free to give me a call on 07775 086288.
Kind regards, Emma
PS I am glad you making use of my Facebook page - I thought this would be the easiest way to keep people up to date during the campaign.
They also want to scrap the European social charter, so wave bye bye to your employment rights.
You're still right to shit all over her poxy leaflet though.
If the Conservatives ever do get in and come around to getting rid of the European Human Rights Act, I will leave this country and never forgive the ignorant people that voted them in. Hasn't history taught us anything?
My previous history teacher is a great lover of the phrase 'Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it' - George Santayana. And never will it be of such relevance if they try and get rid of the fundamental rights we have as humans.
PS: I really hope the people in your constituency don't fall for this crap, perhaps alert your other local parliamentary candidates of this post and let them stage a counter attack against her bullshit. Good article
The danger is, of course, and as you rightly spot, that the Tories would shove through a Bill of Rights (or at least that's what they claim). Two things could happen.
A: The Bill actually ends up pretty much being a rewording of the current Human Rights Act - same rights, similar protections, and cases can still after all go to the European Court of Human Rights.
B: The Bill is radically different and protects rights badly, or indeed does not recognise the existence of certain rights. The Tories face a political and potentially legal shitstorm from the EU for, effectively, abolishing a perfectly good, useful statute conferring positive legal rights on citizens and replacing it with something awful. I cannot begin to imagine the damage done to our international reputation should this occur, and the Tories know it all too well.
As far as I'm concerned, either the Tories will be too scared (or, god forbid, intelligent) to do what they propose, or if they do, they will create legislation almost identical to what was there previously. Sorry for being so wordy.
Shame on the Conservatives for pushing these lies and hypocrisy