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As if Brexit wasn't enough damage already; there is always another opportunity for the UK to isolate itself even further if they are keen. Europe - with 300 mi

by jll29 4y ago

As if Brexit wasn't enough damage already; there is always another opportunity for the UK to isolate itself even further if they are keen. Europe - with 300 million people - can set new standards that others have to implement. The UK, or what will be left of it, not so much. But the really disturbing thing about the UK is that there are many people in power to whom human rights are less important than "souvereignty". UK experts have lamented for a long time the backwards looking whining and longing for the UK's past glory (ironically, the same backward orietation is what made Russia go to war - glorifying and trying to restore USSR times).

ajvs 4y ago
What human rights are you even implying here? Because this sounds like a wild accusation.
- chalst 4y ago
  The ultras want to sever the UK's ties to European human-rights institutions, such as the ECHR.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    But isn't that organization mostly used for political persecution, only under the guise of human rights' interests? Haven't they only gone after politically-unpopular-in-the-west entities, and never after the real egregious human rights violators?
    - izacus 4y ago
      No.
    - colourgarden 4y ago
      You may have a misunderstanding of what the ECHR is. A party can make an application to the ECHR against a member state of the Council of Europe (not the same as the EU) that that member has breached an article of the agreed European Convention on Human Rights. They don't "go after" individuals.
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        I see, thank you. I now see with which organization I had confused the ECHR.
- secretsatan 4y ago
  I think they're referring to the move to repeal human rights laws in the UK
  - gadders 4y ago
    There is no move to do that. They are moving to make the UK Parliament sovereign.
    - closewith 4y ago
      The Parliament of the UK has an appalling record on human rights in Northern Ireland, where the ECHR has long been the authority to which cases are appealed. Withdrawing from the ECHR both de facto and de jure weakens the human rights protections for residents of Northern Ireland. Perfidious Albion cannot be trusted when it comes to Northern Ireland, at least.
    - tobessebot 4y ago
      The UK Parliament ratified the Treaty? How is its sovereignty violated by something it itself agreed to?
      - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
        It isn't, of course. It's just an article of faith now that anything Europe must be replaced. Anything that particularly gives something to do with Europe power is a threat to them. During the referendum, it was a different story. Just the EU that was the problem. Nobody is talking about leaving the single market, no sirree!
      - gadders 4y ago
        They gave away powers, now they are taking them back.
        tobessebot 4y ago
        This is a point you can make, but it's distinct from sovereignty being infringed. If Parliament is sovereign, it can decide to give away powers, no?
- telmo 4y ago
  For example: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/european-court-humam-right-makes-11th-hour-intervention-in-rwanda-asylum-seeker-plan https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/european-cou...
- prof-dr-ir 4y ago
  UK politicians, especially those on the right, were never big supporters of the European Convention on Human Rights and often express their desire to circumvent it (see the linked Guardian article in another comment), or to remove its applicability from UK law altogether. Supporters of human rights may find comfort in the fact that the UK is actually bound to the ECHR by various international agreements, including the Good Friday Agreement. This severely limits politicians' ability to scrap its applicability altogether, despite their repeated promises to the contrary. This excellent blog post from June summarizes all this well: https://davidallengreen.com/2022/06/oh-no-not-again-the-story-of-the-human-rights-act-and-of-the-new-bill-of-rights/ https://davidallengreen.com/2022/06/oh-no-not-again-the-stor... . Most recently the UK government introduced a "Bill of Rights". Despite its name, it changed little with respect to the applicability of the ECHR, but it does make it harder (again) for litigants to rely on the Convention in practice. (Note that the ECHR, both the court and the convention, are completely separate institutions from the EU.)
  - blibble 4y ago
    > UK politicians, especially those on the right, were never big supporters of the European Convention on Human Rights the European Convention on Human Rights was mostly drafted by a tory the modern tory party's problem with the ECHR are its ability to create new law that is not subject to democratic oversight, namely around positive obligations
chalst 4y ago
To Britain's ruling class, sovereignty means power; EU rules mean their hold on the nation is weakened. That's why the ultras got so much support from many people who came from political societies in Oxford, where Johnson, Rees-Mogg, etc., started their political careers, despite the case for Brexit being good for the UK as a whole having so many holes.
- jlokier 4y ago
  That may be true of certain political societies such as the local conservatives, I'm not sure. But Oxford is an anti-Brexit, pro-European place. The academics (there are a large number) and the locals both dislike Brexit and voted against it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36615408 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-3661540...
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    "Oxford" is being used to reference Oxford University in this context rather than Oxfordshire. I know, thoroughly confusing.
    - chalst 4y ago
      More specifically, the political societies were primarily OUCA (the student association for the Conservatives) and the Oxford Union, but also smaller debating societies like the Canning Club. It's surprising to many Brits how many of the leading lights of Brexit belonged to these groups as students.
    - jlokier 4y ago
      For clarity, most of Oxford University and Oxford the town are strongly anti-Brexit. It's also a very international place. You might not think this if you heard about all the privately-educated and often wealthy Conservative politicians who came through Oxford University. So I just wanted to clear up any impression that either Oxford town or Oxford University are like that. They aren't, and most people there are aghast and sad at Brexit. In contrast, Oxfordshire the region outside Oxford, is more pro-Brexit and much more pro-Conservative than Oxford University and Oxford town. It might have something to do with who owns land. The same contrast shows up with regard to Green policies, voting Labour, and proportional representation. Oxford town and members of Oxford University (which is a large number) typically vote Green, Lib Dem or Labour, and the Conservatives do poorly. It's politically a progressive place with an international outlook, compared with the surrounding county and the rest of the country. That hardline Conservatives are not well regarded by Oxford University members is shown by its governing body voting as a protest to refuse Margaret Thatcher an honorary degree when she was prime minister: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jan/30/thatcher-honorary-degree-refused-oxford https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jan/30/thatcher-ho...
blibble 4y ago
> Europe - with 300 million people - can set new standards that others have to implement. the EU's share of world GDP is in terminal decline (down from 30% in the 80s to about 15% today) its ability to export its legislation will be gone by 2050 (if not sooner)
- colinb 4y ago
  You seem to be getting a lot of downvoting, which is unfortunate. So clearly your use of the word 'terminal' is nonsense. You have no way of knowing that, any more than you know that China's will continue to grow or any other bit of economic crystal ball gazing, but... I am interested in your assertion about the actual numbers 1980s vs today. Can you provide a reference for that please? The direction of travel in those 40 years seems plausible to me. After all, China has definitely become a much bigger slice of the world's productivity pie than it was then so others must have a smaller ratio than they did. But the absolute numbers are kinda interesting.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > which is unfortunate it is simply a.completely non sensical post. in the 80s Europe was formed by just 12 countries, EU did not even exist, euro did not exist, Germany was two countries, there was a wall in Berlin dividing the city in east and west Berlin, USSR was a global power and we did not calculate in the global GDP more than half of the World. That's why the downvotes.
    - blibble 4y ago
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > and yet despite adding more and more countries it has continued to decline as a share of world GDP please refer to this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox You don't understand how things works and so don't understand how much wrong you are. It's like saying that when rape became a crime, rape crimes skyrocketed... BUT, since you don't know how much you don't know, I'll leave you with this USA global GDP share 1980: 25% USA global GDP share 2021: 15% China global GDP share 1980: 10% China global GDP share 2021: 18.6% China GDP per capita in 1980 was only 2% of that of USA, now it's >65%
kypro 4y ago
Do you live in London? It's just that this sounds like a very narrowminded take and one that I tend to hear from people living in London and who are culturally isolated from the rest of the UK. The UK is neither a small country or a small market. While not as big as the EU, the UK is no where near as irrelevant as you're making out. I could also make the argument that many US sites refuse to comply with EU GDPR regulation so, no, others clearly don't "have to implement" EU standards. > But the really disturbing thing about the UK is that there are many people in power to whom human rights are less important than "souvereignty". You could just as easily wrap "human rights" in air quotes here. The idea that human rights are universally agreed upon is silly. Further, even when human rights are agreed on there are always conditions to them. Yeah, you have a right to free expression so long as you don't express the wrong things. Yeah, you have a right to liberty so long as you don't do the wrong things. If you're concerned about human rights then you should also be fundamentally concerned about sovereignty because without sovereignty who exactly is deciding on the rights that should be protected? "Rights" that are prescribed upon a population without its consent can be oppressive, and right or wrong, this is clearly how a lot of people in the UK feel towards rules created by lawmakers in the EU. --- On the this topic more broadly as a Brit I am much less concerned about websites tracking me without permission because there are things I can do to prevent that. If you're concerned about data protection I'd argue you should be more concerned about the perfectly legal real-world privacy violation that you have little to no ability to protect yourself from. For example, in the UK our communication devices (internet traffic, SMS, etc) are monitored, our streets are full of surveillance cameras, supermarket self-serve checkouts implement facial recognition without our consent, the police stalk the public on social media to ensure we're not saying anything offensive. Given all of this why should I care if tesco.com has placed a tracking cookie on their site without my consent? It seems so trivial to the point that it's almost a distraction from the real privacy issues that we face as a society. I'm not going to be locked in a cage because Tesco put a cookie on their website, but what the government decides to do with the data their collecting on me who knows. The only reasonable way I can protect myself from that is by not saying things my government doesn't like online and not attending protests or other real-world events that my government may not approve of.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago

by jll29 4y ago

ajvs 4y ago

What human rights are you even implying here? Because this sounds like a wild accusation.

chalst 4y ago
The ultras want to sever the UK's ties to European human-rights institutions, such as the ECHR.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  But isn't that organization mostly used for political persecution, only under the guise of human rights' interests? Haven't they only gone after politically-unpopular-in-the-west entities, and never after the real egregious human rights violators?
  - izacus 4y ago
    No.
  - colourgarden 4y ago
    You may have a misunderstanding of what the ECHR is. A party can make an application to the ECHR against a member state of the Council of Europe (not the same as the EU) that that member has breached an article of the agreed European Convention on Human Rights. They don't "go after" individuals.
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      I see, thank you. I now see with which organization I had confused the ECHR.
secretsatan 4y ago
I think they're referring to the move to repeal human rights laws in the UK
- gadders 4y ago
  There is no move to do that. They are moving to make the UK Parliament sovereign.
  - closewith 4y ago
    The Parliament of the UK has an appalling record on human rights in Northern Ireland, where the ECHR has long been the authority to which cases are appealed. Withdrawing from the ECHR both de facto and de jure weakens the human rights protections for residents of Northern Ireland. Perfidious Albion cannot be trusted when it comes to Northern Ireland, at least.
  - tobessebot 4y ago
    The UK Parliament ratified the Treaty? How is its sovereignty violated by something it itself agreed to?
    - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
      It isn't, of course. It's just an article of faith now that anything Europe must be replaced. Anything that particularly gives something to do with Europe power is a threat to them. During the referendum, it was a different story. Just the EU that was the problem. Nobody is talking about leaving the single market, no sirree!
    - gadders 4y ago
      They gave away powers, now they are taking them back.
      - tobessebot 4y ago
        This is a point you can make, but it's distinct from sovereignty being infringed. If Parliament is sovereign, it can decide to give away powers, no?
telmo 4y ago
For example: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/european-court-humam-right-makes-11th-hour-intervention-in-rwanda-asylum-seeker-plan https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/european-cou...
prof-dr-ir 4y ago
UK politicians, especially those on the right, were never big supporters of the European Convention on Human Rights and often express their desire to circumvent it (see the linked Guardian article in another comment), or to remove its applicability from UK law altogether. Supporters of human rights may find comfort in the fact that the UK is actually bound to the ECHR by various international agreements, including the Good Friday Agreement. This severely limits politicians' ability to scrap its applicability altogether, despite their repeated promises to the contrary. This excellent blog post from June summarizes all this well: https://davidallengreen.com/2022/06/oh-no-not-again-the-story-of-the-human-rights-act-and-of-the-new-bill-of-rights/ https://davidallengreen.com/2022/06/oh-no-not-again-the-stor... . Most recently the UK government introduced a "Bill of Rights". Despite its name, it changed little with respect to the applicability of the ECHR, but it does make it harder (again) for litigants to rely on the Convention in practice. (Note that the ECHR, both the court and the convention, are completely separate institutions from the EU.)
- blibble 4y ago
  > UK politicians, especially those on the right, were never big supporters of the European Convention on Human Rights the European Convention on Human Rights was mostly drafted by a tory the modern tory party's problem with the ECHR are its ability to create new law that is not subject to democratic oversight, namely around positive obligations

chalst 4y ago

To Britain's ruling class, sovereignty means power; EU rules mean their hold on the nation is weakened. That's why the ultras got so much support from many people who came from political societies in Oxford, where Johnson, Rees-Mogg, etc., started their political careers, despite the case for Brexit being good for the UK as a whole having so many holes.

jlokier 4y ago
That may be true of certain political societies such as the local conservatives, I'm not sure. But Oxford is an anti-Brexit, pro-European place. The academics (there are a large number) and the locals both dislike Brexit and voted against it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36615408 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-3661540...
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  "Oxford" is being used to reference Oxford University in this context rather than Oxfordshire. I know, thoroughly confusing.
  - chalst 4y ago
    More specifically, the political societies were primarily OUCA (the student association for the Conservatives) and the Oxford Union, but also smaller debating societies like the Canning Club. It's surprising to many Brits how many of the leading lights of Brexit belonged to these groups as students.
  - jlokier 4y ago
    For clarity, most of Oxford University and Oxford the town are strongly anti-Brexit. It's also a very international place. You might not think this if you heard about all the privately-educated and often wealthy Conservative politicians who came through Oxford University. So I just wanted to clear up any impression that either Oxford town or Oxford University are like that. They aren't, and most people there are aghast and sad at Brexit. In contrast, Oxfordshire the region outside Oxford, is more pro-Brexit and much more pro-Conservative than Oxford University and Oxford town. It might have something to do with who owns land. The same contrast shows up with regard to Green policies, voting Labour, and proportional representation. Oxford town and members of Oxford University (which is a large number) typically vote Green, Lib Dem or Labour, and the Conservatives do poorly. It's politically a progressive place with an international outlook, compared with the surrounding county and the rest of the country. That hardline Conservatives are not well regarded by Oxford University members is shown by its governing body voting as a protest to refuse Margaret Thatcher an honorary degree when she was prime minister: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jan/30/thatcher-honorary-degree-refused-oxford https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jan/30/thatcher-ho...

blibble 4y ago

> Europe - with 300 million people - can set new standards that others have to implement. the EU's share of world GDP is in terminal decline (down from 30% in the 80s to about 15% today) its ability to export its legislation will be gone by 2050 (if not sooner)

colinb 4y ago
You seem to be getting a lot of downvoting, which is unfortunate. So clearly your use of the word 'terminal' is nonsense. You have no way of knowing that, any more than you know that China's will continue to grow or any other bit of economic crystal ball gazing, but... I am interested in your assertion about the actual numbers 1980s vs today. Can you provide a reference for that please? The direction of travel in those 40 years seems plausible to me. After all, China has definitely become a much bigger slice of the world's productivity pie than it was then so others must have a smaller ratio than they did. But the absolute numbers are kinda interesting.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > which is unfortunate it is simply a.completely non sensical post. in the 80s Europe was formed by just 12 countries, EU did not even exist, euro did not exist, Germany was two countries, there was a wall in Berlin dividing the city in east and west Berlin, USSR was a global power and we did not calculate in the global GDP more than half of the World. That's why the downvotes.
  - blibble 4y ago
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > and yet despite adding more and more countries it has continued to decline as a share of world GDP please refer to this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox You don't understand how things works and so don't understand how much wrong you are. It's like saying that when rape became a crime, rape crimes skyrocketed... BUT, since you don't know how much you don't know, I'll leave you with this USA global GDP share 1980: 25% USA global GDP share 2021: 15% China global GDP share 1980: 10% China global GDP share 2021: 18.6% China GDP per capita in 1980 was only 2% of that of USA, now it's >65%

kypro 4y ago

Do you live in London? It's just that this sounds like a very narrowminded take and one that I tend to hear from people living in London and who are culturally isolated from the rest of the UK. The UK is neither a small country or a small market. While not as big as the EU, the UK is no where near as irrelevant as you're making out. I could also make the argument that many US sites refuse to comply with EU GDPR regulation so, no, others clearly don't "have to implement" EU standards. > But the really disturbing thing about the UK is that there are many people in power to whom human rights are less important than "souvereignty". You could just as easily wrap "human rights" in air quotes here. The idea that human rights are universally agreed upon is silly. Further, even when human rights are agreed on there are always conditions to them. Yeah, you have a right to free expression so long as you don't express the wrong things. Yeah, you have a right to liberty so long as you don't do the wrong things. If you're concerned about human rights then you should also be fundamentally concerned about sovereignty because without sovereignty who exactly is deciding on the rights that should be protected? "Rights" that are prescribed upon a population without its consent can be oppressive, and right or wrong, this is clearly how a lot of people in the UK feel towards rules created by lawmakers in the EU. --- On the this topic more broadly as a Brit I am much less concerned about websites tracking me without permission because there are things I can do to prevent that. If you're concerned about data protection I'd argue you should be more concerned about the perfectly legal real-world privacy violation that you have little to no ability to protect yourself from. For example, in the UK our communication devices (internet traffic, SMS, etc) are monitored, our streets are full of surveillance cameras, supermarket self-serve checkouts implement facial recognition without our consent, the police stalk the public on social media to ensure we're not saying anything offensive. Given all of this why should I care if tesco.com has placed a tracking cookie on their site without my consent? It seems so trivial to the point that it's almost a distraction from the real privacy issues that we face as a society. I'm not going to be locked in a cage because Tesco put a cookie on their website, but what the government decides to do with the data their collecting on me who knows. The only reasonable way I can protect myself from that is by not saying things my government doesn't like online and not attending protests or other real-world events that my government may not approve of.

MattPalmer1086 4y ago