Cameron Is Piling Up The U-Turns

Blimey even Benedict Brogan, supporter of the coalition and part of the Westminster narrative, has noticed that Cameron may...cough...not be all he seems:

Those who have long believed that David Cameron is a PR man whose politics are driven by managerialist opportunism, not principle, will be unsurprised by the latest u-turn announced yesterday.

What’s more interesting though is the pattern of these tactical compromises that is becoming the leitmotif of Mr Cameron’s administration. The issues on which he has trimmed are piling up: school sports, free milk, the Lisbon treaty, repatriation of EU powers, mandatory sentences for knife crime, reversing the hunt ban, packing the ‘22 Committee are the ones that come to mind. Some of it might be put down to the exigencies of Coalition. But others suggest a hair-trigger response to bad headlines: anything that might disrupte the Coalition or undermine puiblic support is to be avoided: go around obstacles, don’t crash against them. Where Tony Blair had no reverse gear, and Lady T was not for turning, Mr Cameron has a full gearbox and power steering that allow him to execute swerves and three point turns.

Cameron is a spineless fraud. What took you so long to work it out Benedict?

Merry Christmas

Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on my blog in the past year. I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and wonderful New Year.

Why Aren't The Warmists Celebrating?

I'm puzzled. Surely Monbiot et al should be happy that winters are getting colder because it helps mitigate dangerous runaway global warming that they warned of, or are they just disappointed that a catastrophe hasn't happened because they can't say; "I told you so"?

Off With Her Head

Usually I try not to trust Daily Mail stories on face value. They often get it wrong. But I'm currently not in the mood to care so if this is true and we don't do anything then...well...we deserve what we get:

The Queen’s head could disappear from British stamps as part of controversial plans to sell off the Royal Mail, it was revealed last night.

Ministers are locked in frantic talks with Buckingham Palace to discuss how the monarch will be represented – if at all – on future stamps after the Government confessed it had failed to guarantee that the Queen’s image would survive.

Apparently the Queen is most seriously displeased:

But Royal insiders said that ‘anger’ at the Palace at the proposed sale had been heightened by the fear that it could be rushed through in advance of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, when a range of special stamps is expected to be produced.

One said: ‘The Palace don’t like this privatisation at all but they are particularly keen to delay it until after the Jubilee if they possibly can. That could explain the delay.’

But not so displeased as to object forcefully, just delay it so that it doesn't cause too much fuss. Our Queen is a traitor and signs away her power willingly against her coronation oath.

Ireland Should Quit The Euro

So says Jim Corr, of the Irish band The Corrs (at least he speaks with much more sense than another certain hypocritical Irish band member)



hattip: The Tap

Fed Up

Regular readers may have noticed a downturn in the number of posts recently (and perhaps quality I don't know). I had put it down to work commitments. In truth that's only part of the story. Sure work commitments have increased somewhat recently, as have my personal UKIP responsibilities, but I think I'm also suffering from 'blogging about the EU' fatigue.

I never expected this blog to change the world, thinking that of course would be plain daft, nor did I particularly wish it to be as successful as the shamelessly self-prompting Iain Dale (now deceased - the blog that is - and of no great loss).

Blogging for me was a way of helping to instill self-discipline in my research thus improving my knowledge of the EU, by virtue of submitting it to public scrutiny. Yet therein lies a contradiction. In order to fight a battle, you need to know your enemy. But I don't want to know my enemy. Learning more about the EU is not only deadly deadly dull but I hate it with every sinew of my being. I just want the whole thing to magically uplift and plonk itself into the Bermuda Triangle.

And it's not just the EU. That the Tories, and especially Cameron, are europhiles is of no surprise. But only 6 and half months have gone since the election and the integration pace is unprecedented - there's another 4 years or so at least of this. I feel I'm doomed to repeat myself ad infinitum. Despite the wonderfully versatile nature of the English language there are really only so many ways that you can call Cameron a fucking liar.

Then I see this and this:

The Government has published a new set of principles which it wants to govern the relationship between new EU laws and UK law. It wants to reduce the degree to which EU Directives are changed and tailored for the UK.

"The key to the new measures will be the principle of copying out the text of European directives directly into UK law," said a statement from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). "The direct ‘copy out’ principle will mean that British interpretations of European law are not unfairly restricting British companies."

"This move will bring an end to the charge of 'gold-plating'," said Business Secretary Vince Cable. "The way we implement our EU obligations must foster, not hinder, UK growth by helping British businesses compete with their European neighbours."

Basically in order to become an MP you only have to answer two questions:

1. Do you know what an EU Directive is?
   
   
2. Do you know what Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V means?

If yes to both you've got the job. This is not just taking the piss. It's Cameron taking the piss wearing a clown suit, complete with big red feet, one of them twirly bow-tie thingies, and a water-squirting buttonhole flower whilst interfering with your wife then charging you for the privilege.

I shouldn't even be writing this blog post tonight; I should be at a Christmas meal. That's now been canceled because of the snow, I'm snowed in completely and the roads near me haven't been gritted in two days so subsequently they are dangerously icy, and to top it off I couldn't even watch live football. Not that inconvenient facts about the weather stops the Telegraph. The travel chaos made pages 1, 4 & 5 yet on page 24 we get a full page spread on how to reduce carbon emissions in transport to save the planet from global warming (can't find online):

Transport...it's the heart of economic activity yet the more we use it the more carbon emissions are pumped into the atmosphere. With technology and more thoughtful planning we could make fewer journeys in a greener Britain...etc etc.

Kenneth Williams, in his final words summed it up; "Oh what's the bloody point". However then I read this post by The Filthy Engineer which articulates wonderfully what I'm thinking and that in itself cheers me up albeit in a depressing way.

Memorable Passwords

This letter in today's Telegraph amused me:

SIR – Learning that most passwords are easy to crack (report, December 15) made me realise that the two years of Army National Service I spent in Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s were not wasted.

My eight-digit Army number was burned on my brain and makes an ideal password which is impossible to break.

John Henesy
Maidenhead, Berkshire

Thanks John, we all now know that your password is 8 digits long and contains no letters (upper case or otherwise), that makes the task much easier (10 seconds apparently is all it takes). We also know your name, where you live, that you were in the Army, where you were and when. That can help us find out your password via other methods.

Impossible to break? I beg to differ.

Thatcher Sympathises With UKIP

It's not unexpected news that Thatcher has sympathy with UKIP, however Alex Singleton at the Telegraph has an interesting post:

Baroness Thatcher may be the ultimate symbol of the Conservative Party, but it seems that she has sympathies with UKIP. Before the general election, she had lunch with Lord Pearson and they discussed the problems that Pearson, then UKIP’s leader, was having in keeping the support of activists.

She advised him to hire Viscount Monckton, a former Telegraph journalist, who she said had done a brilliant job for her in the Number 10 Policy Unit.

If this is the case then Alex's final paragraph is spot-on:

...there’s a question [the Tories] should be asking themselves. If even Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Conservative PM of the 20th century, now thinks that UKIP is worth helping, aren’t the Tories getting something seriously wrong?

Quite.

Ireland (Sort Of) Loses Abortion Case

The European Court of Human Rights returned its verdict today on the Irish abortion case:

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Irish abortion laws violated the rights of one of three women who sought terminations in Britain.

The woman, who was in remission for a rare form of cancer, feared it might return as a result of her pregnancy.

Despite the press speculation, the judgment isn't a significant departure from current Irish law. It has ruled that abortion access must be made easier in life-threatening situations, an extension to existing law in Ireland - which was the result of the 'X' case, however the ECHR has not ruled that abortion must be widely available in other circumstances. So technically Ireland is not required to legalise abortion but will probably be under pressure to adopt a more flexible position in subsequent attitudes.

This still leaves a couple of issues. Can Ireland implement the ECHR's judgment without breaching the anti abortion condition of the constitution; the eighth amendment? If it does breach this, it would trigger a referendum. Even the Court acknowledges the implementation will be difficult to implement:

As to the burden which implementation of Article 40.3.3 would impose on the State, the Court accepts that this would be a sensitive and complex task. However, while it is not for this Court to indicate the most appropriate means for the State to comply with its positive obligations (Marckx v. Belgium judgment, § 58; Airey v. Ireland judgment, § 26; and B. v. France, § 63, all cited above), the Court notes that legislation in many Contracting States has specified the conditions governing access to a lawful abortion and put in place various implementing procedural and institutional procedures (Tysiąc v. Poland judgment, § 123). Equally, implementation could not be considered to involve significant detriment to the Irish public since it would amount to rendering effective a right already accorded, after referendum, by Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution.

Given the current circumstances, should a referendum be triggered it's hard to imagine that the Irish will do anything other than reject further perceived erosion of their sovereignty, thus putting the nation on a collision course with the ECHR. Certainly at the very least Brian Cowen's 'clarification' on abortion, in order to secure a 'yes' in the second vote on Lisbon, looks a very empty one indeed. Can his already record low support in the polls get any lower?

But there was a more potential and fundamental far-reaching outcome of this judgment. Has the ECHR just effectively by-passed the domestic courts, thus breaching its mandate? Article 35/1 of the Convention of the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms requires that all possible domestic remedies be exhausted before the ECHR has jurisdiction:

Article 35 – Admissibility criteria

1. The Court may only deal with the matter after all domestic remedies have been exhausted, according to the generally recognised rules of international law, and within a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken.

The women in question; A,B & C, did not exhaust 'domestic remedies' and this formed part of the Irish Government's defence.

In the Court's response to this defence, it's important to note that there is a difference between C’s claim and that made by A&B. C’s complaint was that her situation was allowed under the Irish constitution but no suitable domestic remedy was available to her - there was a lack of legislation that allowed her to have her abortion case to be assessed properly despite being entitled to. Her ability to exhaust domestic remedies was limited, therefore the court ruled accordingly:

154. The third applicant feared her pregnancy constituted a risk to her life and complained under Article 8 about the lack of legislation implementing the constitutional right to an abortion in the case of such a risk. She argued that she therefore had no effective procedure by which to establish her qualification for a lawful abortion in Ireland and that she should not be required to litigate to do so.

155. In those circumstances, the Court considers that the question of the need for the third applicant to exhaust judicial remedies is inextricably linked, and therefore should be joined, to the merits of her complaint under Article 8 of the Convention (Tysiąc v. Poland, no. 5410/03 (dec.) 7 February 2006).

4. The Court’s conclusion

156. Accordingly, the Court dismisses the Government’s objection on grounds of a failure to exhaust domestic remedies as regards the first and second applicants and joins this objection to the merits of the third applicant’s complaint under Article 8 of the Convention.

Conversely A&B were bringing a case that was not permitted under the Irish constitution. And it's clear from the judgment that the ECHR considered that any domestic remedies would have been next to pointless which is why they also considered their cases - again the ability to exhaust 'domestic remedies' was very limited:

147. However, the Court does not consider that it has been demonstrated that such an action would have had any prospect of success, going against, as it would, the history, text and judicial interpretation of Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution.

Thus the view that domestic remedies were virtually non-existent permitted the ECHR to rule on these cases, allowing them to bypass domestic courts.

The Court's rulings though have essentially upheld the Irish constitution. It did not condemn abortion and in the case of A&B it appears to have tried to strike a balance between women's rights and the wishes of the Irish people:

The Court considers it reasonable to find that each applicant felt the weight of a considerable stigma prior to, during and after their abortions: they travelled abroad to do something which, on the Government’s own submissions, went against the profound moral values of the majority of the Irish people.

However the Court ruled that C's case was a failure of the state to legislate properly under her right of the constitution:*

‘The Court considers that the uncertainty generated by the lack of legislative implementation of Article 40.3.3, and more particularly by the lack of effective and accessible procedures to establish a right to an abortion under that provision, has resulted in a striking discordance between the theoretical right to a lawful abortion in Ireland on grounds of a relevant risk to a woman’s life and the reality of its practical implementation‘

In my view the ECHR has pulled off quite a deft trick here (if cynically you think courts judge in political terms not legal ones); subtlety changing Ireland's abortion laws without breaching legally its mandate.

Though I doubt any appreciation of the slight trick of the hand will be enough to pacify Ireland, as anti-Europe emotions are still running high; the reaction is likely to be altogether different.

*It's worth noting here, that I think a conflict arises here between the ECHR's (and EU state's) 'positive obligations' and Ireland's common law based 'classical obligations'.

Ireland's Abortion Ruling Due Today

You'd think that Ireland has suffered enough already however at just over a year since the hearing, the European Court of Human Rights will today give its judgment on Ireland's abortion laws:

The European Court of Human Rights is due to rule on whether the Irish Republic's anti-abortion laws violate women's human rights.

The case was brought to the Strasbourg-based court by three Irish women who say their health was put at risk by having to travel abroad for abortions.

The ruling could have all sorts of significant implications and the gravity of the decision is reflected by the decision of the court to issue its ruling at a public sitting rather than by a written statement.

We will know shorty whether Ireland will face another attack on its sovereignty.