Which country has been found to be in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights more often than any other signatory? The shameful answer is the United Kingdom, which last week stood in the dock with bowed head for the 11th time to hear the judges pronounce a verdict of guilty.
Once again – this time on the question of telephone-tapping – the British government has been told that its laws just do not stand up to close scrutiny.
Once again, the government has had to promise to mend its ways. In the past decade we have established ourselves as the worst protectors of human rights in western Europe.
How can this be so? We boast an independent judiciary, a freely elected Parliament, universal adult suffrage, freedom of movement, expression and thought.
What more can we do? A glance at the list of Strasbourg cases provides the answer: we can do more to protect the rights of the vulnerable.
The answer is to incorporate the European Convention into our own domestic law, so that it would be enforceable in United Kingdom courts.
Talking point
The biggest danger to the Olympic Games comes not from the boycotters, the bombers or the bandits of commercialism but from with its own overblown and crowded mass. [It] is likely to choke itself to death on several large and unchewable lumps of unnecessary action that simultaneously will bore witless the watching public.
Peter Corrigan on the Los Angeles Olympics
Key quote
“By all means share a bath or a shower as long as you don’t forget the object of the exercise is to use less water.”
Water Authorities Association, as drought hits Britain
