Poll: The official I voted/election results thread
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While you of course correct it's impossible to directly attribute, let's not go the other hand go the other way & pretend we know so little about human behaviour. We should not ignore that adding serious additional financial concerns to the most vulnerable, sick, depressed & disabled will cause a percentage of them to find life no longer tolerable.
There are ways of handling the vulnerable without causing unnecessary grief or hardship, the disability assessment system was intrinsically flawed & a failure of basic compassion.
Labour was currently in the investigation stage, with a report being commission & a second part under-way when they were no longer in power.
It was the Conservatives who expanded it to include 2.5m people in receipt of incapacity benefit. If you look at the numbers for assessments they didn't start in any scale until 2011 (one year after the election).
So yes, you are partially correct - Labour did start up a system to investigate potential candidates who were suitable for benefits, but they didn't on the other hand implement it en mass & dictate the direction.
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Soldato
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Is there any empirical evidence that suicide amongst those on welfare has gone up since 2010?
I see lots of anecdotal stories in the Mirror and Guardian but unless you believe that prior to the Tories getting in last time there were no suicides amongst the poor and vulnerable then all we have is a correlation versus causation thing.
I see lots of anecdotal stories in the Mirror and Guardian but unless you believe that prior to the Tories getting in last time there were no suicides amongst the poor and vulnerable then all we have is a correlation versus causation thing.
Soldato
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Suicides in men aged 25-50 has been at epidemic levels for years, so I won't buy too much into this. Usually relating to marital issues, money etc
Only now that a few more women seem to be popping up, everyone cares.
Only now that a few more women seem to be popping up, everyone cares.
To have the kind of evidence you seem to be asking for, it would require control groups (which you don't get with national level government changes).
On the other hand we already know that poor health combined with financial concerns is highly correlated with increased stress related illness (which is in turn associated with suicide). As I mentioned previously, we know enough about the field to know that it will increase these factors.
It's another contributing factor, not the singular cause as some suggest (as it's unlikely there is one at all) but also not to be ignored as a few on the other side imply either.
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Because bigots.
Huffington Post have published a great piece on why the Human Rights Act of 1998 is so important.
It's worth a read whether you're for or against the HRA and the ECHR. It's worth remembering that a lot of Conservatives are as keen on the HRA now as they were in 1998 when they voted for it.
It's worth a read whether you're for or against the HRA and the ECHR. It's worth remembering that a lot of Conservatives are as keen on the HRA now as they were in 1998 when they voted for it.
Soldato
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Andy Burnham's "kills" are well into 3 figures, but he'll never match Blair.
I didn't say that, I was putting forward one possible explanation why "lefties" might get more riled by a new Tory govt. than "righties" would at a Labour one. Because the result will be death for people, rather than a bit of a tax cut, the stakes are much higher.
The list on that campaigning website isn't actually as interesting as the Independent link in the same post.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-people-and-there-may-be-60-more-9942735.html
The Department for Work and Pensions had (as of last Christmas) itself been investigating 60 cases of deaths of claimants since 2012. In almost all cases the blame is very heavily on the DWP (or at least on the social care system), as can be seen by reading through the examples on the Black Triangle site. Just the first four to give people a taste:
The picture being painted is that the DWP, whether by design (pressure to reduce the welfare bill) or mismanagement, is directly resulting in these deaths. I'd be very keen to know when they're going to publish the results of these investigations.
Edit: oh yeah, and this
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Written by someone from "human rights charity" Liberty - no wonder they're against repealing their biggest piece of cash cow legislation.
"Cash cow legislation"?? Christ that's cynical even for you. Because people set up civil liberties/human rights charities for the money??
The only people qualified to write a piece like that would be from a HR charity/think tank or a HR lawyer. That it's from the former shouldn't make it any less valid.
Which part of their argument do you disagree with?
I wouldn't hold your breath.
All of it!
Come on - even you can't deny that Human Rights Lawyers have done very nicely thank you out of the HRA, certainly a lot better than taxpayers have done.
Soldato
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I’m curious to see some statistics on how the HRA has actually been used.
So you're primarily against it because of cost?
As stated in the article, the HRA actually saved the taxpayer a lot of money as fewer cases are referred to Strasbourg. A lot of immigration cases were taking over ten years to resolve before the HRA.
Also, money-driven lawyers don't do human rights cases. The rates are significantly lower than for commercial work and most human rights lawyers do a lot of pro bono cases.
Detailed explaination why, or it simply comes across as "I can't give any reasons because I don't understand it, but my spiritual king; Clarkson doesn't like it & my spiritual dad; Farage doesn't either"
Here's a few examples:
- Strasbourg’s 2006 finding that axe-killer John Hirst and thousands of other convicts should be entitled to vote in UK elections. Ministers have since fought an ongoing battle to avoid implementing the judgment – which David Cameron says makes him feel physically sick.
- Al Qaeda fanatic Abu Qatada was awarded £2,500 for being ‘unlawfully detained’, after being held indefinitely without trial following September 11. Then the Euro court said he should not be sent back to Jordan in case some of the evidence used against him may have come from torture. Qatada eventually left his benefits-funded life in north-west London voluntarily after Theresa May doggedly pursued him.
- Aso Mohammed Ibrahim left 12-year-old Amy Houston to die ‘like a dog’ under the wheels of his car after knocking her down in 2003 while disqualified from driving. Twice refused asylum, the Iraqi was never removed from the country by the Home Office and then, after the killing, was allowed to stay under the Human Rights Act because he had fathered two children in Britain, which judges ruled gave him a right to a ‘family life’.
- A Libyan convicted of 78 offences escaped deportation last month on the grounds he is an alcoholic. The 53-year-old man, who is protected by an anonymity order, successfully argued he would be tortured and imprisoned by the authorities in his homeland because drinking alcohol is illegal. He is now free to continue his drink-fuelled offending spree in Britain.
- In December 2013, Mustafa Abdullahi, who held a knife to a pregnant woman’s throat as he raped her, was given permission to stay in Britain, because of his family rights. The 31-year-old failed asylum seeker was jailed for ten years after he threatened to kill his victim and repeatedly assaulted her. Judges said sending him back to Somalia would breach his family rights because his mother and other relatives live in the UK.
- Rupert Massey is one of many criminals to view the convention as a tool for lining his pockets. Jailed for six years for sexually abusing three boys, he claimed the four years it took to bring him to court had left him ‘stressed’ and infringed his right to a fair trial. He was awarded nearly £6,000 – the same amount in compensation given to one of his victims.
- Rapist Akindoyin Akinshipe escaped deportation in September 2011 after judges said he had a right to a ‘private life’ in the UK. He was due to be sent to Nigeria after losing a series of appeals in Britain over his jailing for an attack on a girl of 13 when he was 15. But Strasbourg overruled, despite him not having a long-term partner or children in the UK.
- George Blake was jailed for 42 years, one for each of the MI6 agents he sent to their deaths. The Soviet spy escaped from Wormwood Scrubs and wrote his memoirs in Russia. Incredibly, he was given £4,700 by Strasbourg in 2006 because Britain breached his right to free expression by trying to stop him making money from the book.
- Lawyers for drug-addicted prisoners spotted the convention’s money-making potential – forcing the Home Office to settle out of court over claims their clients should have been allowed to use heroin substitute methadone.
- The Labour government paid out £1million after being told Strasbourg would have ruled making the convicts go ‘cold turkey’ was degrading treatment.
- Jailed murderer Kirk Dickson spent £20,000 in legal aid winning the right to father children with artificial insemination with another former prisoner, fraudster Lorraine Earlie. Judges said the ban on prisoners using artificial insemination breached the right to family life.
- Britain’s power to send foreign criminals home was hampered by the 1996 Strasbourg ruling over Karamjit Chahal, a separatist who was wanted for sedition in India. He argued that, even if somebody posed a grave threat to national security, they could not be sent back to a country where they might be ill treated. Since then, thousands of convicts and fanatics have been able to stay on these grounds.
- Centuries-old rules outlawing marriage between children and their parents-in-law were swept aside in a 2005 ruling. Strasbourg deemed the right to marry was infringed in the case of a 37-year-old woman who wanted to wed her 58-year-old father-in-law.
- William Danga, who raped and molested two girls while fighting deportation, used Article 8 of the HRA to remain in this country. The Congolese asylum seeker was jailed for ten years for raping a 16-year-old. He used his children to stay in Britain and attacked two other children after his release from prison.
- There remains public outrage that Euro judges ruled three IRA terrorists shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988 were wrongly killed. This was despite the fact the trio were an experienced hit squad with long terror records who had left a car filled with explosives across the border in Spain. The SAS soldiers believed they were ready to detonate the bomb, but it turned out their mission was reconnaissance.
Sorry it's all negative but that's because the HRA hasn't really done much positive stuff (that wouldn't have been done anyway, because contrary to some leftist views we were not eating and raping each other in the street prior to 1998)
This case demonstrates exactly why we don't need to replace the HRA. The HRA unambiguously states that the UK only needs to consider Strasbourg rulings. Strasbourg ruled that all prisoners should be allowed the vote and the UK ignored this ruling.
There's also been plenty of more agreeable victories too. They just don't tend to get reported in the tabloid press.