Criminal right to vote? You can say that again

English: European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Different entities they may be but there’s a depressingly similar theme whenever the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights flex their muscles these days. A nonsense is made of democracy.

The EU? Its most vociferous opponents are still to be given a vote on their country’s place at its table. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. Then there are the Irish, made to vote twice for an EU Treaty until they provided the correct result.

And now we have the ECHR, which believes that one man, one vote is worth fighting for, as long as the man in question is a burglar, bank robber or murderer.

It is, of course, the most blindingly obvious consequence that when someone’s criminal behaviour spits in the face of the country that gives him a home, his right to any say in its governance should be temporarily forfeit. There is something so rational in this proposition that only the most gushing of bleeding hearts could imagine that Civilisation would be better served were it to be turned on its head.

Cometh the hour, alas, cometh the nitwits, prompting the suspicion that we Brits are ignoring the elephant in the room, as long as we focus on Greece and the question of  if and when it might default on its debts.

A more pertinent question, surely, is whether we should be contemplating a default of our own. For when those entrusted with administering the European Convention on Human Rights seem so hell-bent on blurring the distinctions between Strasbourg and La-La Land, maybe it’s time we were taking our ball home until common sense re-enters the building.

Moat, Mandelson and the blurring of lines

Image via Wikipedia

So some 13,500 people like a tribute Facebook page set up in the memory of Raoul Moat. Seems they rather dig the martyrdom myth slowly snowballing around a man who took one life, and wrecked two more because the world didn’t quite suit.

You can, if you wish, put this down to a social media generation in desperate need of a life, whose brains are being slowly fried by their laptops, although 13,000 people is a lot to be so dismissively bracketed together.

But then you may like to consider this: two posters on a fly fishing forum (and fly fishing isn’t a sport lacking in people with their heads screwed on) talking about Peter Mandelson in the wake of his memoirs being published…

“Thing is, as much as I’d love to loathe the man, I just can’t. He is without doubt the shrewdist political operator of our times and as such I can’t help but admire him. Totally unflappable (even when confronted by Paxman), totally in control and fully in command of his destiny, even after all the scandal”

“Whatever you might think of him, in a world of dull pasty-faced political yoofs he does add a bit of interest”

This persuades me that we’re dealing with something rather broader than misguided dimwits when we behold the homage to Raoul Moat.

I fear there is now a genuine amorality at large in British society generally; a lazy, blinkered mindset that warps wrong into right and leaves it down to each indivdual as to where the distinction is drawn.

The red light of moral relativity has begun to flash. This will not end well.

One case that’s cut and (blow-) dried

Image via Wikipedia

.

With the Raoul Moat manhunt resolved, let’s hope Northumbria Police can now focus all their efforts on the other criminal whose nefarious deeds came to the attention of a shocked nation last week.

Acting Chief Constable Sue Sim’s hairdresser.

There are two types of cosmetic surgery

Image via Wikipedia

Those of us whose medical expertise extends no farther than applying a plaster can only gaze in awe at the remarkable reconstruction of Davinia Douglass.

The 29-year-old’s face was trashed in the 7/7 bombings that hit London five years ago. The photograph of her being led away from Edgware Road Station in a ghoulish protective face mask became one of the atrocity’s iconic images.

Yet today, not even such scarring as remains can diminish the fact that a handsome young woman is once again ‘back in the room’.

Everyone responsible for this amazing come-back should take a bow, yet even as I marvel at their work, I am struck by this thought: what wonders cosmetic surgery can do when asked to restore Nature, yet what botch-ups it so often produces when asked to improve upon it.

Do you suppose the Botox brigade and those who pander to them will hear that penny drop as they contemplate the pictures of Davinia Douglass, or will it be drowned out by the clamour of ego and rustle of notes?

Police your own back yard, CBI

Image via Wikipedia

There is something vaguely serf-and-master about the Confederation of British Industry sticking its nose into the public sector by suggesting a pay freeze for police officers.

While someone will always have to decide what represents reasonable remuneration for men and women who put their life on the line every time they don uniform, my nose wrinkles somewhat when I hear such a call being made by an organisation whose closest brush with danger comes whenever it handles a stapler.

If the CBI wants to get involved with cops and robbers, it should stick to those delinquents in the City, whose own version of criminal damage we’re all paying the price for and whose complete lack of contrition can be gauged from Monday’s City AM report on how London may be losing its edge as the world’s leading financial centre.

Those at Profit Central, apparently, are wailing at increased regulation of the way they do business. You probably won’t be surprised to learn who’s moaning the most…

“Concern about the legislative burden is at an all-time high in the industry with 74 per cent of firms seeing regulation as a constraint on business over the next 12 months. Among banks this figure rose to 90 per cent and among security traders to no less than 87 per cent.”

Bless.