Dominic Raab: it has been said that racists love to drape themselves in their country’s flag – and now we find he is injecting racism into his overhaul of human rights in the UK.
This Site – and others – told you years ago that if the Conservatives had a chance to modify your human rights, you would suffer. This is just one example.
Dominic Raab wants to strip human rights protections from people who have been targeted by police for ‘stop and search’ procedures and/or questioning over their immigration status.
Ethnic minority groups are far more likely to have been targeted in these ways and Raab knows it. But he still wants them to be used as excuses to deny people human rights protections.
That is racist.
We should be glad Liberty is fighting against this:
“Migrants, prisoners and people with historic ‘poor conduct’ won’t get the same rights as those with citizenship, or without a criminal record, which will have racist impacts”, Martha Spurrier, the organisation’s director, told The Independent.
“It will put over-policed communities at risk of losing their rights – even though these are the groups most likely to face a human rights violation by the state.”
The warning comes as Liberty warns the shake-up is far more draconian than expected, something obscured in recent months by public focus on Covid, Partygate and the Ukraine war.
And if you think this is bad, you can be sure that worse is to follow.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Dominic Raab: this flag-waving fascist (have you read Britannia Unchained at all?) is planning to strip you of your human rights. You probably know somebody who voted for it. Make sure you tell them how badly they will be affected!
What a nasty Christmas present!
(And how do you feel about the fact that we were kept from knowing this was about to happen until the very day?)
You can tell that a government is about to attack you when its spokespeople say forthcoming changes are “common sense”.
Dominic Raab is a long-term opponent of human rights for people who aren’t high-ranking Tories and his proposals to “reform” the Human Rights Act into a “Bill of Rights”, that allows you to do only what he and his corruption-raddled mates say, is a reflection of that.
Dominic Raab said in 2009, "I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights."
(This is why he's been made Justice Secretary)
Today he will attempt to achieve this long-held aim and announce measures to take away our hard-won human rights.
The BBC is frantically trying to cushion the blow by trying to convince us that the changes are merely part of the Tories’ ongoing racist agenda:
The government proposes changing the law to introduce specific circumstances in which a foreign national offender could not claim a right to family life in the UK to challenge their deportation.
The plans do not include proposals that would change the law concerning the potential return to other countries of migrants arriving in dinghies.
Mr Raab said: “Our plans for a bill of rights will strengthen typically British rights like freedom of speech and trial by jury, while preventing abuses of the system and adding a healthy dose of common sense.”
But you can be sure that the proposals include a lot more than simply preventing abuse of the Human Rights Act by foreign-born criminals that no court has ever allowed to happen (to our knowledge).
(Nor will it be limited to this plus a confused attack on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that doesn’t change a system currently in place.)
And how is he protecting our right to free speech when his buddy (and co-author of Britannia Unchained) Priti Patel is criminalising protest?
No – as I stated only last month, Raab’s plan isn’t to take away the Right to Family Life from criminals who didn’t have it anyway – he’s taking the Right to Family Life away from everybody – and that includes you.
Here’s a lawyer to explain:
8. In fact, human rights legislation protects us all. The HRA was introduced to "bring home" the European Convention on Human Rights – a Convention heavily supported by Churchill, to prevent states committing the kinds of horrors we saw in Germany in WW2
According to the BBC, Raab’s proposals do not constitute a departure from the European Convention (but of course the devil’s in the detail).
10. By constantly using "foreign bogie man" examples, the Tories blow a massive racist dogwhistle to convince people what they plan will only affect "them" and never you or your loved ones. Be very careful what you wish for.
In other words, this is yet another iteration of the tactic the Tories have stolen back from Nazi Germany: divide and rule. By pretending to be attacking Johnny Foreigner, they get away with imposing tight restrictions on you – and as they strip you of your freedoms, you greet them with rapturous applause.
That’s if you’re a stupid racist, of course.
There’s no point in trying to stop it, by the way. As I said in November, the Tories have a massive Parliamentary majority which means they’ll push through this attack on you, no matter how much you try to complain about it now.
The time to complain was November and December 2019, in the run-up to that year’s general election, but people were too busy banging on about Boris Johnson “getting Brexit done” (how did that turn out, again?) and the lies about Jeremy Corbyn. I hope you weren’t part of that.
And Labour under Keir Starmer will not oppose the changes because he supports any plan to strip you of your rights to the hilt. He’s an Establishment man and a former Director of Public Prosecutions; of course he does.
I await the details with trepidation as I fear they will confirm what I have been saying since the Tories first announced their intention to restrict us with a Bill of Rights, back in 2014.
Your only course of action is simple: to educate your Tory friends about the danger they have created for all of us and beg them never to do anything as stupid as vote Tory again.
I doubt many will take up this challenge. Looking at the number of people who can’t even bear to share Tory-critical articles on the social media for fear of a bit of talkback, it seems most of them are well and truly silenced by the bullies.
But hope springs eternal.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Priti Patel: if she really wants to stop terrorism by people from foreign countries, she can do something about it right now. What she’s actually trying to do is strip YOU of your hard-won human rights.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has said the suspect in the Liverpool suicide bombing was able to exploit the UK’s “dysfunctional” asylum system – a system that she runs.
Oh, but wait! Apparently this was because he came to the UK in 2014 – when former prime minister Theresa May was Home Secretary. So it’s all her fault!
And we know that May forced Patel out of her cabinet when the current Home Secretary was found trying to operate her own foreign policy with the apartheid state of Israel, back in 2017. So there’s no love lost there.
It all seems like a burst of frantic ass-covering to This Writer.
And I’m not the only one:
#KayBurley – Priti Patel has said what happened in Liverpool was a result of a dysfunctional asylum system?
Thangam Debbonaire – That's extraordinary… the Tory Party has actually been in charge of the asylum system for the past 11 years… pic.twitter.com/il8EzVZY6g
The fact is that the Tories have been in charge of the immigration and asylum system for 11 years and have talked tough about it all the way through.
If a terrorist was allowed to stay in the UK for seven of those years – when he should not have been – then that is the responsibility of the current Home Secretary who has failed to correct the faults of previous incumbents.
If they were honest, the Tories would admit that they are trying to make us accept their sick plan to destroy UK human rights.
They say repealing the Human Rights Act would make it harder for illegal immigrants to stay in the UK – but they don’t admit that it will also remove all the other rights that protect us.
For the gory details, see what This Site has published about it here and here.
The vast majority of the rights you will lose have nothing to do with illegal immigration, asylum or terrorism.
But you can rest assured that the vast majority of you will be harmed by their loss.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
One rule for him: remember, Dominic Raab is the Tory minister who couldn’t be bothered to return to work from holiday when Kabul fell. He breaks government rules habitually yet presumes to lecture us on the law.
Remember: this is what the UK voted for:
In a move designed to strengthen authoritarianism, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said today that an overhaul of the U.K.’s Human Rights Act would include a “mechanism” to “correct” rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. We live in dangerous times as fascism looms large.
Dominic Raab has decided that if human rights judges in the UK make decisions that he doesn’t like, he will override them in blatant disregard of the rule of law.
This is what the UK voted for.
In a blatant rhetorical reversal of what actually happens, he has said that he would stop “judicial legislation” – that is, judges making UK law. But they don’t; they never have. They simply apply the law of the land to individual cases. Stopping this would be breaking the law.
You see, so-called “case law” – legal precedents set by judges – are only examples of the way the law should be interpreted when applied to particular situations, to be followed if such situations arise again in order to avoid contradiction and confusion. They are not situations in which judges take legislative power for themselves and Raab is lying by suggesting that.
But this is what the UK voted for.
He said he wanted to stop the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg from dictating law to the UK, but…
1 The Human Rights Act is British law, enforced by British Judges in British Courts 2 If our Parliament doesn’t like a judgment, then it has a mechanism to override it, it’s called Legislation 3 Blaming foreigners for it is dishonest 4 Challenging Govt is the basis of democracy pic.twitter.com/yH8YIDdPig
Human rights lawyer Jessica Simor QC said that Raab’s plan would have an effect opposite to what he was suggesting, because it would mean
more complaints going to Strasbourg and more rulings against the UK, unless the government intended to pull Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights altogether, which would be “a step into a dark place for this country and the world”
But if that happened, it’s what the UK voted for.
The former head of the government’s legal service, Jonathan Jones, said:
As parliament is already able to legislate to correct flaws in the law, it appeared Mr Raab was trying to use a new mechanism to allow ministers to take this step without obtaining MPs’ approval.
In other words: dictatorship.
It’s what the UK voted for.
Cambridge professor of public law Mark Elliott pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling, saying that allowing a minister to overrule a decision of the judiciary simply because he did not agree with it would cut across “principles that are fundamental components of the rule of law”.
It’s what the UK voted for.
“If that is what is in contemplation, then that is profoundly problematic,” said Prof Elliott. “Indeed it turns constitutional principle on its head.
“Ministerial power to do this would itself be deeply troubling. It would reassign a basic judicial role – interpreting the law – to ministers.
“Ultimately, this all strikes me as part of a project to enhance executive supremacy by treating courts, whether foreign or domestic, as unwelcome interlopers.
“And yet all of this masquerades as an attempt to protect parliament. The reality of this executive power project, as we might call it, is that it will be the executive that is the principal beneficiary of such changes, and the loser will be basic standards of good governance.”
It’s what the UK voted for.
You don't really expect better from Raab do you – it was only recently that he discovered he lived on an island, we know he is illiterate in Geography & maths so he's bound to be just as illiterate in comprehension & law is way too complicated for him. https://t.co/xuYPVP4uJF
Did anybody know? This Writer made clear what was going to happen in articles published before the 2019 election but I don’t have the reach of the mass media organisations who were screaming at everyone to vote Tory or else face a future of horrific Communism under Jeremy Corbyn.
It seems that, faced with such an onslaught, many people voted without thinking.
And isn’t that exactly how the Hitlers and Mussolinis of the 20th century took power?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Dominic Raab: he’s planning to strip YOU of YOUR RIGHTS, so let’s remember that he ignores the rules whenever he feels like it. Here we can see him licking his finger to turn a page, in conflict with the then-enforced rule to avoid touching our faces, and certainly not to touch things that have been handled by other people and then lick our fingers. We have let imbeciles like this impose their tyranny on us.
Remember Dominic Raab’s speech to the Tory conference, in which he promised to attack the Human Rights Act, claiming that he would remove the ability for an illegal immigrant convicted of domestic violence to avoid deportation by claiming the right to family life?
You will, of course, understand that he was using a solitary incident – that is hypothetical; it is doubtful that any court has ever allowed it to happen – to justify removing human rights from all of us.
No?
You didn’t get that from what he was saying?
If not, then here’s an expert to explain:
2. But what Raab is seeking to do is take that right away from everyone – however sustainable their claim may be – on the basis of a few that might push their luck.
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
4. The UK Borders Act 2007 effectively says anyone convicted of an offence who is sentenced to 12mths imprisonment or more will be automatically deported unless to do so would be a breach of their human rights or the Refugee Convention
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
6. It is rare that the Tribunals find that it is "unduly harsh" – usually if they do it is because there are children involved who will suffer grim consequences. Raab and Patel know this.
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
8. In fact, human rights legislation protects us all. The HRA was introduced to "bring home" the European Convention on Human Rights – a Convention heavily supported by Churchill, to prevent states committing the kinds of horrors we saw in Germany in WW2
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
10. By constantly using "foreign bogie man" examples, the Tories blow a massive racist dogwhistle to convince people what they plan will only affect "them" and never you or your loved ones. Be very careful what you wish for.
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
Of course, there’s nothing to be done about this at the moment; the Tories have a massive Parliamentary majority and the plan for this has existed for at least seven years. Worse still, Labour under Keir Starmer will never oppose the plan; he supports the removal of your rights.
The best thing you can do right now is to educate your Tory-voting friends (you’re bound to know someone, right? Otherwise, how did they win the election?) into understanding that they voted to deprive themselves of vital rights.
And those of you who are socialists need to work to rid the Labour Party of the entryists who have perverted it into the opposite of what it should be.
You still have three years before the next election, so what’s it to be? Get busy – or give up?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Manifesto commitment: the Conservatives made their plan to end democracy clear in their 2019 election manifesto. Every Conservative voter demanded an end to democracy and a slide into dictatorship.
Boris Johnson is getting back to business after the Covid crisis – and his business is stripping you of the liberties and freedoms your ancestors fought hard to win over the last several hundred years.
Be in no doubt: you will have lost most of your rights by the end of this Parliamentary term, and you can thank your Tory-voting neighbour for making it happen.
Included in the Queen’s Speech were announcements that all three main planks of the attack on democracy – listed on Page 48 of the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, so everybody who voted Tory absolutely supported them – are still going forward. They are:
Removing your right to protest so they can use the police and armed forces to put down any dissent.
"This law would threaten the public’s right to protest and undermine Britain’s reputation on the world stage. It is deeply illiberal and undemocratic and we will continue to campaign to stop it." @pimlicathttps://t.co/JeNRvYmxvp
Imposing dictatorship by ensuring that the courts cannot stop the Tories from breaking the law.
Government plans to *restore the balance of power between executive, legislature & the courts* are ominous threat to the ability of Parliament to hold ministers to account & the independence of our judiciary#QueensSpeech
The only one of these that has been given prominence by the mainstream media is the last – the planned repeal of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. This has been reported as meaning that Johnson would be able to call elections before his Parliament has served its full five-year term.
But it could also mean that he will allow himself to delay elections indefinitely.
The FTP Act repealed the previous electoral law that allowed prime ministers to call elections at any time during their five-year term, but demanded that they must call an election to be held after five years, no matter what.
So repealing the FTP Act means that unscrupulous prime ministers like Johnson would be able to call elections whenever they liked – or simply neglect to call them at all and remain in power indefinitely.
This is what will happen unless he specifically writes new limitations on Parliamentary terms into his new law. And why would a corrupt liar like Johnson do that when he has a majority of 80 seats in the Commons and can currently do whatever he likes without fear of punishment?
Worse still, the new legislative programme includes more attacks on democracy, the most important being the planned limitation of the right to vote to those who can afford to show the proper photographic identification.
This, Johnson claims, is to stop electoral fraud. You may assume that this is a rampant problem across the UK, but in fact it is practically nonexistent. His plan will strip the vote from around two million people:
There were 6 cases of voter fraud at the last election.
To solve this, the govt will introduce a law making that will prevent approx 2 million from voting.
This is #VoterSuppression, and Labour, Tory or anything in between, if you believe in democracy, you should oppose it.
The plan will strip votes from people who are poor and young – in other words, people who will not vote for the Conservatives at the next election. It is corrupt Tory gerrymandering to prevent the voice of the people from being heard at elections.
There were just SIX cases of voter fraud at last election. Yet these plans could disenfranchise voters who don’t have photo ID – overwhelmingly the young and the poor. Hard to escape the feeling this is an assault on democracy. https://t.co/VeOSFlSVsP
Typically of the current Tory government, its MPs tried to justify the planned law by lying to us about it. Gillian Keegan, whoever she is, claimed you need photo ID to pick up a parcel from the Post Office – and was put straight in no uncertain terms by fact-checking site Full Fact:
Gillian Keegan MP has said you need photo ID to collect a parcel from the Post Office in defence of plans to require photo ID to vote.
Many of us think valuable Parliamentary time would be better spent preventing the kind of corruption that allowed Tory cronies to gain multi-million pound contracts to provide vital supplies in the fight against Covid-19, that they were totally unable to fulfil. What happened to all that money?
— Parliament View #GetVaccinated (@parliamentview) May 11, 2021
It's a shame the Tories weren't checking IDs when Hancock gave two PPE deals worth more than £90 million to a faceless Chinese firm listed at a hotel room in Beijing.
Finally, shall we consider the misplaced priorities of these entitled Tories who have spent more than a decade manslaughtering benefit claimants without feeling any need to reform the system?
They brought in ID cards after 6 cases of voter fraud but did nothing when their policies killed 120000 disabled people.
'Six are too many' said Hancock about #VoterID but 120000 isn't apparently.#QueensSpeech
— Gay, Autistic, Disabled And Proud. ♿🏳️🌈 (@criptheirvote) May 11, 2021
Come to that, why isn’t the government introducing plans to end tax evasion? I mention this because the deaths of disabled benefit claimants are linked to the Tory clampdown on claims – the so-called “magic cures” that claimed hundreds of thousands of people were not disabled at all, despite volumes of medical evidence showing they were. These people were unceremoniously stripped of their benefits and many of them subsequently died. The figure of 120,000, quoted above, is a very low estimate.
The Tories spend huge amounts of money every year on their campaign to strip disabled people of their ability to survive. It is a campaign of persecution that has been more successful in eliminating the disabled than the infamous Nazi “Aktion T4” in 1930s and 1940s Germany. In comparison, they spend hardly anything on tracking the rich Tories – let’s not deny it – who have evaded their tax responsibilities in order to squirrel away trillions of pounds in tax havens abroad.
Absent from the new legislative programme are any plans to support the rights of workers with promised reforms to zero-hours contracts and the gig economy, and an end to the practice of “fire and rehire” – terminating workers’ contracts and then demanding they take new contracts with lower pay and fewer privileges:
— Prof Kailash Chand OBE FRCGP (@KailashChandOBE) May 11, 2021
“Fire and rehire” is a key element of Howard Beckett’s campaign to lead the UK’s largest union, Unite. He was in London to campaign about it while the Queen was delivering her speech:
Fire and rehire is ripping through UK workplaces – around one in ten workers face this despicable practise from unscrupulous bosses using the pandemic to destroy hard-won Ts and Cs. @BeckettUnite is in Parliament today to call an end to #FireAndRehirepic.twitter.com/wchTkUxaG4
He has also made the very obvious point that the currrent Labour leadership has no interest in looking after the interests of British workers – because Keir Starmer actually refused to oppose “fire and rehire”.
The current Labour Leader was asked to sign this and said no. It is a slap in the face to workers facing fire & rehire. He should add his name now and say sorry. He won’t. pic.twitter.com/RShGwZkI52
— NHSActivistRN 🏴 #NHSPAY15 #FBNHS (@NHSActivistRN) May 11, 2021
The oppression goes on and on:
No10 confirms it wants to remove the right of refugees to challenge immigration decisions in the High Court, in order to “increase the efficiency of the courts” and “provide clarity in the legal system”.
Long-awaited plans for reform of social care – promised by the Tories years ago – went undiscussed. There is no plan for such reforms in the current Parliamentary term.
Admittedly, Andy Burnham is right to say all parties are responsible for allowing social care to fall into the disrepair we have today; New Labour failed to do anything about it too.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham tells @cathynewman “all parties are culpable” on social care and he doesn’t “consider it radical to apply NHS principles to social care”.https://t.co/2ak1bO0VNH
He spent the whole of 2020 lying about the severity of Covid-19 and justifying his decisions to award government contracts worth billions of pounds to Tory cronies who couldn’t fulfil them. What are his words worth?
Oh, and before anyone suggests that plans to address the climate crisis show at least some hope for the Tories, they don’t:
Queen’s Speech climate measures ‘missed opportunity to show world leadership’ https://t.co/ZqJxaSpsDt
For a more detailed attack on the new legislative programme, take a look at Unite’s response (under current leader Len McCluskey). I’m sure other critiques are also available.
“This Queen's speech reveals the nasty, repressive side of this government” – @LenMcCluskey
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Priti Patel has been creating prejudiced policies to frustrate or undermine inquiries into the deaths of people held at her immigration detention centres.
That is the ruling of two judges in the immigration court (and be honest, did you even know we had one?) on Wednesday.
It relates to two friends, Ahmed Lawal and Oscar Lucky Okwurime, both from Nigeria, who were in Harmondsworth immigration removal centre when Okwurime was found dead in his cell there on 12 September 2019.
Lawal was a key witness – but the Home Office, run by Priti Patel, tried to have him deported back to Nigeria five days after the death was discovered – before he could provide any evidence.
He took the case to the High Court where a judge halted his removal.
After he gave evidence in person at an inquest in November 2020, a jury found that Okwurime had died unnaturally, as a result of neglect following a subarachnoid haemorrhage, which can rupture due to hypertension. His blood pressure reading on August 22, 2019 showed hypertension.
The jury found that this reading was not taken again due to multiple failures to adhere to healthcare policy.
Given these opportunities to repeat this basic medical test on a vulnerable person, neglect contributed to the death.
So the Home Office was responsible for the death through neglect of a person in its custody – and had tried to deport the vital witness before he was able to give evidence.
Lawal then challenged the Home Office in the immigration court, focusing on whether the home secretary can remove a potential witness to a death in custody before it is clear whether they will be needed as a witness.
The judges found fault, not only with Home Office policy at the time but with two replacement policies:
The judges found that the home secretary’s decision to remove Lawal to Nigeria was unlawful as she had failed to take reasonable steps to secure his evidence relating to Okwurime’s death before starting removal proceedings.
A replacement policy in August 2020 was also found to be unlawful as it failed to identify and take steps to secure the evidence of those who may have relevant information about a death in detention.
The home secretary’s current policy was found to be “legally deficient”. The judges found that the absence of a policy to direct what should happen following a death in immigration detention was unlawful and concluded that there needed to be such a policy.
A spokesperson for the Home Office is reported as saying that it will be “refreshing” its current processes – not changing them, notice.
I suppose we should be grateful that they didn’t say “lessons have been learned”.
I expect we shall soon find that the only lessons learned from this case are how to cover up any further deaths so we don’t find out about them.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Hypocrite: Iain Duncan Smith oversaw the deaths of thousands of unemployed, sick and disabled people who were victimised by his ‘reforms’ to the UK’s benefit system. How dare he criticise another country for doing the same to its people?
Shame on the Tory MPs who are whining because China has sanctioned them for highlighting that country’s abuses of the Uighurs!
Yes, you read that right. Shame on them, because they are hypocrites.
They seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to claim moral superiority over the government of another country for abusing its citizens’ human rights, while turning a blind eye to the fact that they are doing exactly the same to the people of the UK.
Tory MPs Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani, Tim Loughton, Neil O’Brien and Tom Tugendhat all merrily voted in support of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that will strip many of us of our human rights – and remove from all of us the right to protest in any meaningful way against further Tory atrocities against us.
Duncan Smith is well-known as an advocate of harm against his fellow UK citizens, having presided over the deaths of many thousands of benefit claimants – that occurred for no documented reason – under the cruel regime he imposed at the Department for Work and Pensions. But now he’s saying
Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice.
He was quite happy to deprive benefit claimants of their voices – and to look the other way when his policies deprived them of their lives. In their thousands, remember – not just one or two mistakes.
Attacking human rights abuses anywhere else in the world must be, for these people, an act of abominable hypocrisy.
Note also the typical reaction of the bully: these are people who sneered at us for protesting against the Police Bill and then went right ahead and voted to strip us of our rights – but when the shoe is on the other foot and they’re being singled out by China, suddenly they’re whining about how unfair it is.
Boris Johnson is, of course, the worst of the lot.
Despite being omitted from the list of UK MPs selected for sanction by China, he had the cheek to say
Freedom to speak out in opposition to abuse is fundamental and I stand firmly with them.
Fine words from the prime minister whose sickeningly draconian Police Bill strips his own people of that very freedom.
I do not wish to defend China. It’s treatment of the Uighurs is vile and should be opposed by all those of good faith. But these Tories are not opposing China in good faith. They’re trying to steal undeserved good publicity by attacking a country whose human rights abuses are – currently – worse than their own.
But it doesn’t work that way – or at least it shouldn’t.
Any attack on anybody’s rights as a human being is an attack against all of us – everywhere.
Johnson and his other little Tories might think they can take what moral high ground there is to be gained because their abuses aren’t quite as bad. But we know where that thinking leads.
The abuses become worse.
The number of people being oppressed grows.
The UK’s Tory government already fits every description of a fascist state that is worth reading. If you’re not feeling Johnson’s jackboot on your face yet, it’s just a matter of time.
So don’t waste any sympathy on these liars. They don’t deserve it.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Dictator Johnson: like all fascists, the only rights that interest Boris Johnson are his own – which is why he has announced he intends to abolish yours – and stop the courts from ruling that anything he does is illegal.
The last week in UK politics was seismic – in terms of the changes it announced.
Boris Johnson is using the Tories huge Parliamentary majority to change our way of life, fundamentally.
Here’s what they have started. But what can you do about it?
1. The Conservatives are ending your right to protest.
And they announced it at precisely the wrong moment. After a vigil for a woman who had been kidnapped and murdered – allegedly by a policeman – turned into a riot when policemen started attacking the female participants, Home Secretary Priti Patel introduced a new law that allows police to arrest anybody for making a demonstration that is noticed by anybody else.
There’s no point in protesting if you’re not allowed to make enough noise for other people to notice it, of course.
The move has been interpreted – correctly – as an attempt to head off protests against the Conservatives’ planned political changes that will alter the UK from democracy (albeit a not-very-progressive one) into a full-blown dictatorship.
2. The Tories are giving the police huge new powers of oppression
The example I used was the new power to arrest travellers – not for committing a crime, but on suspicion that they might do so in the future. This comes with a power to confiscate their homes.
Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is full of similar increases of oppression, against people in all parts of the UK’s society, we’re told.
3. The Conservatives are continuing to turn a blind eye to crimes against women – especially if they are committed by the police
Hate crime is the trademark of Conservative governments in the UK since 2010. They have stirred up hatred against migrant workers; they’ve stirred it up against people with long-term illnesses and disabilities. Their new Police Bill will stir up more hate against minorities, while failing to protect more than half the population from crime.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill sets the penalty for attacking a statue at 10 years imprisonment. That is twice as long a term as the starting-point sentence for rape.
We discovered this in the same week that a serving police officer walked free from a court after admitting assaulting a woman who was just walking home at night, using his police training to try to wrestle her to the ground while flinging misogynistic verbal abuse at her. His colleagues had tried to ignore her complaint when she first filed it.
Oh, and after we were told the Metropolitan Police had learned its lessons from an incident when two of its officers published WhatsApp posts of them posing with the dead bodies of two murdered women, another Met officer was alleged to have sent a “vile” post about Sarah Everard, while guarding her body.
4. The Conservative government thinks giving £2.6 million to a firm based in a country that is hostile to the UK – for communications equipment (think about it) – is money better-spent than giving nurse’s an above-inflation pay rise in reward for their work against Covid-19.
5. The Tories are hoping to strike trade deals with nations across the word that violate the human rights of their citizens.
Like is attracted to like, it seems; the Tory government is ripping up the human rights of UK citizens.
6. The Conservatives have announced that they will spend billions of pounds adding 65 warheads to the UK’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The UK does not have the facilities needed to fire all of these missiles and in any case it would be madness to do so, as it would certainly lead to the destruction of the entire nation in a retaliatory nuclear inferno.
7. The Conservatives have announced an attack on democracy with a plan to change the voting system at local elections to favour them.
They are using the result of a 2011 referendum – about a different subject – to justify changing the system by which Combined Authority mayors, the mayor of London and police and crime commissioners are elected from a form of proportional representation by which those elected must be supported by more than half of the electorate to the old FPTP (First Past The Post) system by which the candidate with the most votes wins, even if supported by a tiny minority of the electorate.
8. The Tories are following through on their threat to end the separation of powers that prevents the UK from falling into dictatorship, by curbing the courts’ ability to rule government actions illegal.
Boris Johnson was caught breaking the law over Brexit and the prorogation of Parliament in 2019 – when he actually misled the Queen in order to get her to end a Parliamentary session early – and he’s butt-hurt about it.
As a result, he intends to ensure that the courts will not be able to stop him from doing anything he likes in the future – no matter how many laws he breaks.
These are just the highlights – of which the worst must be Boris Johnson’s plan to put himself and his government above the law while subjecting the rest of us to increasing oppression.
The big question now is: what are you going to do about it?
We know that a quarter of the UK’s population is 100 per cent behind Johnson because they voted for him and his party – right? Granted, a small number of them might be wavering now because of the extremism of the changes listed above – and remember, they are only events that happened last week – but there remains a significant rump of Tory support.
About a third of those who are left are children who are too young to have their opinions taken seriously by the political elite.
That leaves around half the UK’s population to stand up for democracy.
But the question remains: How do you protect your freedoms when your right to do so is being taken away?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Travellers: this is a council-run traveller site, so it looks orderly enough. But a proposed law means that even here the police could confiscate travellers’ homes, if officers don’t like the look of them.
Roma (or Romani); travellers; gypsies; diddycai; tinkers if you like. There are plenty of words for these almost universally maligned people.
They have a bad reputation because some of them are trespassers who will camp on any land, whether it is privately-owned or common, some of them are dirty and will leave their campsites filthy with litter, and some of them are prone to criminal behaviour.
In 1930s Germany, Hitler ramped up already-existing anti-gypsy laws to establish the pre-supposition that they were a “nuisance”, that they were criminal by their nature (so it follows that the authorities were allowed to assume they were criminals without them actually having to commit a crime), and that they should be moved on from encampments that were considered to cause a disturbance to the rest of the German population (in Hitler’s Germany, they were moved on into concentration camps where they were murdered in a holocaust that was every bit as brutal as the attempted genocide of the Jews).
Boris Johnson has been stealing policies from Hitler, it seems. Just take a look at his plans for travellers, as written into the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that has just won its first major vote in the House of Commons. Here’s Ian Dunt to explain it to you:
Quick thread on an aspect of the policing bill which has been under-discussed: the provisions on trespass. This section targets Gypsies and Travellers.
Previously, police could take action against Gypsies and Travellers if they had done something wrong. They had to have "caused damage to the land or to property on the land or used threatening, abusive or insulting words".
And they do not need to have done anything at all. The police officer just needs to suspect that significant damage or disruption "is likely to be caused".
There. Police only need to assume that, because a traveller is there, they are likely to engage in criminal activity, and they can then treat that traveller as if they had been seen to commit such an act (even though they haven’t).
In other words: You do not actually need to have done anything. All that is required is that the police *suspect* you will do something.
It’s like “pre-crime”, as described in the movie Minority Report, which turns the law on its head, allowing people to be arrested on the basis of predictions that they will commit crime. In the film, these predictions were not necessarily accurate. In this law, there isn’t even a requirement to be.
So on the basis of a suspicion that a Gypsy or Traveller might in future insult someone, they can take away all their belongings.
To recap: on sight of a traveller, the police may confiscate everything they own. And what will happen to them then? An arrest for vagrancy?
Sure, they can challenge. They can get their day in court. But at that moment when the police officer arrives, they can take everything from them if they do not comply with their demand that they leave.
This bill is massive. Hundreds of pages. And everywhere you look you find draconian powers, handed to police, to do as they damn well please, targeting the most vulnerable and marginalised people in the country.
It sets innocent people up to be criminalised because of who they are, which is a well-recognised form of prejudice. Suppose Johnson targeted Jews. It would be an attack on these people because of who they are, not what they do. That is what we have here.
It isn’t quite racism, and it can’t be anti-Semitism, but the lesson of Hitler tells us it is just as bad.
Oh, and by the way, illegal traveller encampments could have been made a thing of the past if only local authorities had obeyed a 1968 law (the commenter below was adrift by a few years) that ordered them to provide standing sites for travellers to camp:
Back in the 1970's laws were passed where every council had to provide sites for travellers. This law was ignored by majority of Tory led councils – Petty Patel seems totally unaware of this law – the councils are the criminals for not providing the sites. https://t.co/gw6ImwL7Ly
The Caravan Sites Act of 1968 led to the creation of 400 sites, but was ignored by many local authorities. I recall Powys County Council dragging its heels over demands for such sites within the last 10 years.
By breaking the law, council leaders (many of whom, I have no doubt, are Conservatives) made it possible for the current Conservative government to create the current legislation that demands that they be treated as criminals for no reason at all.
The Bill is sponsored by Priti Patel, who is already running concentration camps for refugees from foreign countries.
Where do you think she’ll open her first concentration camp for travellers? And what will they do next?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
