Britain is leading the charge against basic human rights

[Martinus]

Same shit.

[Admiral Yi]

99% of the beef with the ECHR revolves around extradition of terrorists (alleged or convicted).

Please elaborate.

[mongers]

I think much of this is just about the Tories playing to and shoring up support with Daily Mail readers.

[grumbler]

Everybody knows Ameica is the real threat to world peace, with it's hetreonormative CIS gendered white male power structure.

The fuck does Mark Harmon have to do with anything?

The sons of Heisman Trophy winners are always relevant! 

[Gups]

99% of the beef with the ECHR revolves around extradition of terrorists (alleged or convicted).

Please elaborate.

The ECHR and specifically the prohibitions on torture and the death penalties prevents the UK Govt from extraditing known or alleged terrorists to countries where that prohibition may be breached, including the US. Sometimes guarantees can be given by the transferee country and that may be sufficient to persuade the Court (e.g. the US has guaranteed on some occasions that the death penalty won't be imposed) but not in others, where the transferee country is not trusted to keep its promise.

This is regarded by much of the press and the public as forcing the UK to keep terrorists in the country. In many cases they are also illegally here. And in most cases they are not charged with any offence in the UK so are entirely free (but subject to our allegedly fascistic state surveillance apparatus).

[Admiral Yi]

Thanks Guppy.

[crazy canuck]

There's no transparency. The MoU between the Saudis and the MoJ hasn't been released because it's 'commercially sensitive' (let's not forget we dropped an investigation into corruption into arms sales to the Saudis our of national security sensitivities), add in the flag at half mast when Abdullah died and there's a difference between being an ally which is probably justifiable and being supine. And isn't there a question of a conflict of interest if the MoJ is a commercial client of the Saudi state if, for example, another corruption investigation into British-Saudi links were to proceed?

They are in the bidding process and they have said that the details of the contract will be made public if they are awarded the contract.  Why would you want them to disclose the details of their bid to their competitors during the bidding process?

[Sheilbh]

They are in the bidding process and they have said that the details of the contract will be made public if they are awarded the contract.  Why would you want them to disclose the details of their bid to their competitors during the bidding process?

Because so far this little section of our central government has signed commercial contracts with the following states, none of which have been made public:
Oman
Seychelles
Bermuda
Cayman Islands
China
Kosovo
Turkey

They won't release the MoU, or even the headings within the MoU. As I said this isn't a company that's an entirely separate entity. It is part of our prison and probation service and not a trading body. The government have admitted they don't and can't have a separate profit/loss account to confirm how much money its making.

I don't think the good commercial reasons that exist are sufficient to override the minimum sort of transparency we expect of centrally funded government bodies. And to be honest when it comes to working for the Chinese or Saudi prison and punishment systems, I actually think the public interest would demand higher than normal levels of transparency to make sure that we're not and not asking people to break standards on human rights.

Thanks Guppy.

See Abu Qatada:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Qatada