Archive for October, 2014|Monthly archive page
UKIP and health tourists
Filed under: Politics, Race | Tags: Malala Yousafzai, Nigel Farrage, UKIP
Leave a comment Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party said, in the aftermath of his party’s victory in the Clacton bi-election (remind me not to go there), that we should prevent people with HIV (as a proxy for all people with an illness) from coming to the country. Clearly they will make a huge call on the NHS and we should exclude them.
I find these opinions reprehensible. However, I found it ironic that on the very same day (10 October 2014), the Nobel Peace Prize was 
awarded to Malala Yousafzai, the young woman who was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan for standing up for her right to an education. After her condition stabilised she came to the UK for specialist treatment in Birmingham (and where eventually she continued her education). Now I do not know if she had private health insurance…
Picture: /Wikipedia
Autumn smoking
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Don't be a Maybe, marlboro, Pall Mall
Leave a comment 
Pall Mall’s Autumn campaign is not really anything to write home about. The packs (left) basically say, “look at me”. But what does it really mean to be a limited edition cigarette; and more bizarrely, to have unlimited taste? Surely they mean lots of carcinogenic burnt tobacco taste that burns one’s tongue and lingers longer than rivals’ brands? Or some such.
Marlboro’s Endurance Man campaign is a little clearer after the arrival of the new poster
(right). Endurance Man here has a motorbike, though he remains inexplicably riding across the desert in search of a tobacconist.
Post holiday blues in record time – European Convention on Human Rights
Filed under: International, Politics | Tags: Chris Grayling, European Convention on Human Rights, Theresa May
Leave a comment It does not take long for an awful reality to reassert itself after the summer tandem riding holiday, even if it was un-summerly and not everyone’s idea of a holiday. For example, what on earth happened in Scotland? Why did the Scots vote to stay dependent on the English elite establishment, fronted by David Cameron. One wonders whether the result would have been different had the Tory Party conference occurred before the vote rather than after it.
It was, of course, at that conference that Chris Grayling, the UK (in)Justice Secretary, announced that should the Tories win outright the next UK election, they will knowingly take us out of the European Convention on Human Rights so as to free the country from those pesky European judges who so often tell us to do things that we do not want to do, such as give votes to prisoners, allow foreign criminals into the country, prevent the extradition of undesirables (especially those with hooks as substitutes for hands) and a ban whole-life sentences for grave crimes. It does, of course, none of these things; the Strasbourg Court merely highlights incompatibilities between UK law and the Convention. See: http://www.tinyurl.com/pszhdky
But instead, we will have a UK Bill of Rights, subject to the whim of the Tory elite to decide whether any citizen’s claims
of a breach of human rights is valid or not. Not independent judges, but the likes of Grayling himself. Moreover, this elite used their conference to inform us that we have to allow ourselves to be subjugated, monitored and pacified to maintain security against the threat of terrorists that the elite has created for us through innumerable foreign wars, murder, incarceration and expropriation. The Home Secretary, Theresa May (right), told the conference that the ‘snoopers’ charter’ will be reintroduced to Parliament and passed when there is a Tory majority; but of course one has nothing to fear if one has nothing to hide.
The European Convention is not an EU institution, however. The Convention was scripted by European human rights lawyers, many of them British, in the early 1950s in the aftermath of WWII. To withdraw is to align ourselves with some of the least liberal states in the world; for example, Belarus.
Such a move will precipitate a response from the Council of Europe – which is an EU institution. Ultimately, adherence to the Convention is a reasonable condition for membership of the European Union, if not the United Nations. Of course, getting out of the EU is precisely what Tories want and these arguments play well with their illiberal supporters. It is always gratifying to hear that the Prime Minister is generously giving our European partners one more chance to see sense and allow the UK to contravene the founding treaties that enshrine the concept of the free movement of people across European borders. A right that millions of UK citizens have exploited over the years.
Pictures:
Theresa May: ,Wikipedia
European Court Strasbourg: CherryX, Wikipedia
Be informed 