Chris Cully, the Managing Director of risk & security management company, Dilitas writes exclusively for Infologue.com about The Human Rights Act. He writes:
“There arose a mighty cheer amongst all right-thinking people over the weekend, when Abu Qatada finally got his marching orders to Jordan, following eight years of legal wrangling and God knows how many millions of pounds spent to remove someone who quite openly preached hate and revulsion against his own people and the people of Great Britain”.
“Leaving aside the fact that we of this great country have been far to lenient for far too long, I began to look at who exactly benefited out of this debacle of ‘Little Big Horn’ proportions”.
“Naturally, the Qatada family and extended associates have drawn long and deep from the Well of the Unemployed and camped very comfortably at the Great Wadi of the Benefits Agency. Thus was it written that the tribe of Qatada did benefit greatly. There are also those who have used this farce to benefit their own positions and organisations and, of course, there is the legal establishment who have profited greatly”.
“Qatada’s position was, as I understood it, that he would not get a fair trial in Jordan, as evidence obtained through torture would be used against him. Ergo, his Human Rights would be abused. Thus, the great phalanx of lawyers and counsels began their inexorable movement on an almost endless legal pilgrimage between the High Court and the European Court of Human Rights”.
“It is worth noting that all the fees incurred by the Government lawyers have been paid by the hard-working, tax-paying members of the public who, as far as I can see, have very few, if any, Human Rights in comparison to Brother Qatada and his tribe”.
“As to who has paid Qatada’s fees, I do not know. That ledger would make for very interesting reading, I would suggest”.
“The more I thought about the legal element, the more it seemed to me that the continuous booting of the legal ball into touch by every court this matter came before, just succeeded in allowing the juggernaut of lawyers and hangers-on to continue issuing invoices like a production line, without resolving the issue of getting Captain Hook out of the UK”.
“Therefore, it came as no surprise that on Monday, Twitter was full of people, all of whom have the letters QC after their name, extolling the virtue of the European Court of Human Rights and what a great result for Qatada who now gets a fair trial, fawn, fawn, blah, blah. Apparently QC stands for Queens Counsel and not what everybody at Dilitas Towers thought the letters represented”.
“The Human Rights Act (HRA) and afore-mentioned court of the same name, were of course another blessing conferred upon us by His Holiness Pope Tony. The HRA gained Royal Assent on the 9th November 1998 and came into force in October 2000”.
“Naturally, this must have been a nice coincidence for Cherie Blair, QC (those initials again!) when she became, in 2000, a founding member of Matrix Chambers who specialise in, yes you’ve guessed it, Human Rights”.
“Now, being naturally cynical, in my opinion, there is something rotten in the State of Denmark”.
“As I sit typing this, it is being reported on the radio that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Jeremy Barber, mass murderer of this country, should have his sentence reviewed as his current life sentence, handed down by a British Court, is inhumane. Apparently, David Cameron is very disappointed about this result. No s@*t Sherlock. The Duke of Wellington and Churchill must be spinning in their graves!”.
“In the opinion of this correspondent, the Human Rights Act has no real benefit for the honest hard-working tax-paying people of this country. It is a piece of legislation, conceived by lawyers, drawn up by lawyers and now used by lawyers to earn substantial fees from the public purse and serve clients, who in the main, deserve nothing more than an ordinary crack of the whip and not the extended enhancements of the Human Rights Act nor the beneficence of the European Court of Human Rights”.
“Time to pull the pin on all this methinks. Dump the Human Rights Act and tell the ECHR, Adieu. If it is in Great Britain’s Bailiwick then we should deal with it here and we should decide the outcome, not be held thrall to the European Court of Human Rights”.
Opinions expressed by contributors and commentators do not necessarily reflect the views of Infologue.com or Interconnective Limited.