Who actually runs this country ?

[whiffey]

I don't believe it's anything to do with the Government, of whatever persuasion. We hear today that 9 Afghans have won a High Court ruling that the Home Secretary was wrong to deny them refugee status. This after having hijacked an airliner at gunpoint. Afghanistan is deemed too dangerous for them to be returned to. So why are British forces there keeping the peace ?

More, yet another released rapist reoffends. WHO is actually executing whose policies ? Banning piggy banks, all that craziness.

I think Westminster is just there as a front while pernicious and politically correct middlemen drag this country to its knees.

[maxximus]

and here i thought they were protecting poppy fields.

[dannydingbat]

Well, Whiffey, you are now another one who has realised what this Government is doing. What do you mean by country? If you mean England, that died years ago at the hands of our Jock cabinet (Blair, Brown, Reid and the rest) Jock MP's can vote on laws in England but we can't do anything to them in return. Every person in Scotland is heavily subsidised by the rest of us, they commit far more crime than any other part of the UK, they get all sorts of free stuff like university tuition which does not happen south of the border. Soon, you will wake up and realise that there are so many people in this country of nationalities other than English, that we will never be able to vote out this Caledonian alliance and be lost forever. [edited by AB]

[Lonnie]

I tend to agree with everything ddb said about Scots running the country, not though with his ant-scot tirade, but giving the benefit of the doubt, it may have been said 'tongue in cheek'.

I believe, and have done since about 1998, that this goverments ultimate goal, is to destroy England, with a few traitors like Two Jags in tow.

At present, they are in the process of bringing in the ' The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill', if they manage it, and it looks like they will, Hello Dictatorship, I know they've just brought in a few amendments to it, but they'll make no difference.

[maxximus]

holy harshness dingbat that's not very neighborly!

[JudgeJ]

It is interesting that the Prime Minister referred to �common sense� when commenting on the Court�s decision concerning the Afghans. TB was anxious that common sense should prevail in decisions such as this.

Common sense has nothing to do with it. The nine Afghans (and many thousands of other people, including some convicted of the most serious criminal offences) cannot be deported from this country as a direct result of the 1998 Human Rights Act. When forcing this act through Parliament the Government was warned that situations such as this, and of �travellers� claiming denial of their right to family life if they should be prevented from settling in unsuitable places, would arise. (Check Hansard for the details). They chose to ignore those warnings, dismissing them as �fantasy�.

It is therefore a bit rich of the PM to criticise judges for correctly applying a law which was introduced by his own government. This same law is now being cited when parole applications are considered. The thinking is that it would be a breach of Human Rights to deny somebody parole, even though they are still considered dangerous and have completed only a small part of their lawful sentence. The logical extension to this is that it will not be too long before the law is used to argue that criminals should not be imprisoned at all. Until and unless this law is repealed the people of this country (including the Prime Minister) can forget all about �common sense� being applied by the courts in their name.

On a final note, when mentioning common sense Mr Blair may like to consider that last year the term was removed from the list of qualities required by potential magistrates. It was, so the Lord Chancellor said, �a subjective term, meaning different things to different people�. So I think we should all ask TB what his understanding of common sense is.

[JudgeJ]

One extra point to coment on in whiffey's post. It does seem a little pernicious (to borrow one of his excellent words) and perverse that some of our citizens are living in tents in Afghanistan, whilst some Afghans are living in England in council houses, free of charge. You couldn't make it up!