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Topic History of: Votes for prisoners inevitable Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Message
BR
The bottom line is that Prisoners will pay tax - they will use services - therefore they HAVE to have the right to vote.
Universal suffrage means just that. We cant pick and choose people on the basis of how nice they are to vote - that smacks of NAZI ideology.
One person's terrorist or criminal could be another's FREEDOM FIGHTER. Robin Hood for instance and Guy Fawkes would have never been able to have the vote
One-sided "Interview", Hirst doesn't come across well, but neither do the BBC bigots
Chris Retro
Hirst has just been on the Jeremy Vine show, Vine of course kept on missing the point over and over ("what about the human rights of the victims") to which Hirst eventually told him "Jeremy, no wonder they had to dumb down Panorama for you" effectively silencing the BBC's Golden Calf for a minute or so. They're wheeling in some "victims of crime" now, amidst the usual "filth and the fury" comments from the braindead "Angry from Kent" listeners
SJB
Did anyone notice this...?
Under the ECHR ruling each country can decide which offences should carry restrictions to voting rights.
So prisoners are entitled under European law to vote, except if their member state governments don't feel like letting them.
It's strangely reminiscent of Article 3 which prohibits torture, unless the member state thinks it's a good idea and does it somewhere secret.
Or the Article 6 rights to fair trial, unless governments don't feel like treating people as innocent until proven guilty, or don't bother about disclosing evidence against the accused etc.
Then there's the right to privacy which we all have - until the state wants to read our emails or text messages, or follow us around on CCTV.
And how about our freedom of expression (Article 10)? But don't say anything that the state fancies making illegal.
Finally, we have the Article 13 entitlement to effective remedy from the member state if it breaches any of our rights. But only if the member state can be arsed to comply with European legal decisions, like retaining DNA samples of the innocent or denying votes to prisoners.
It reminds me of that Monty Python sketch about having car insurance, but there's no actual cover. Except not funny.
Prunella Minge
Australians have been able to vote for ages, so it's only fair!