This is simply too funny for words…

Vandals continue attacks on beavers

BEAVERCREEK | City officials wish they could be doing other things.

But Thursday, for the fifth time since July, they dealt with the aftermath of statue defamers and pranksters.

This time, four beavers were targeted.

How the journos and sub-editors have kept a straight face here is anyone’s guess - I suspect the only way to get through and article like this is to deadpan it completely, but you just have to love quotes like:

“If someone steals a beaver, we will chase them down,” he [Beavercreek police Sgt. James Wuebben] said. “If someone defaces a beaver, we will chase them down and charge them.”

Only, as they say, in America.

Check the news today and you’ll see articles at the BBC - “Judges urged to consider security” - and at the Guardian - “Judges to be told to act on deportations” - both of which set out the suggestion, by Charlie Falconer, that a new law could be introduced which would tell judges exactly how they should interpret the Human Rights Act when ruling on the legality of attempts to deport certain individuals on grounds of national security.

Falconer, speaking on the Today Programme on Radio 4, said:

"I want a law which says the home secretary, supervised by the courts, has got to balance the rights of the individual deportee against the risk to national security,"

Now this suggestion raises one of three possibilities:

1. Falconer is an idiot who does not understand the law, which seems unlikely as he’s both a barrister and the present Lord Chancellor;

2. Falconer thinks we’re all a bunch of idiots who do not understand the law – certainly possible; or

3. This is yet another attempt by a government minister to look like he knows what he’s doing when, in fact, neither he, the government or even the rest of our current political ‘elite’ including the opposition parties, have the foggiest idea what to do at the moment when it coming to dealing with issues raised by the recent terrorist attacks on London; but are desperately trying to convince the public that they are doing ’something’ – which, along with option 2, seems the most likely explanation.

Now let’s be clear what the present legal position here really is:

1. Foreign nationals can be legally deported if they are considered to pose a threat to national security. This does not require any new laws as the powers to do this are included in the 1971 Immigration Act and are also covered by article 32 of the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees as follows:

Article 32. Expulsion

1. The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order.

2. The expulsion of such a refugee shall be only in pursuance of a decision reached in accordance with due process of law. Except where compelling reasons of national security otherwise require, the refugee shall be allowed to submit evidence to clear himself, and to appeal to and be represented for the purpose before competent authority or a person or persons specially designated by the competent authority.

3. The Contracting States shall allow such a refugee a reasonable period within which to seek legal admission into another country. The Contracting States reserve the right to apply during that period such internal measures as they may deem necessary.

2. The sole obstacles to such deportations presented by the European Convention on Human Rights are the requirements, under article 6, that an individual facing deportation has the right to due process and a fair hearing of their case – which is only as it should be in any civilised society – and a prohibition, under article 3, on deportations to countries where the deportee would be at risk of being subjected to torture – which, again, is only what you would expect from a civilised society.

3. Article 3 of ECHR is both clear and explicit in its provisions and states that: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. This has been interpreted, correctly, by the courts as meaning not only that torture is illegal in the UK but that it would be equally unlawful to deport someone to a country which is known to use torture and where they would be at risk of being tortured. National security does not come into it in the slightest; the only duty this places on the government when seeking to deport someone on grounds of national security is to find somewhere to send where they are not at risk of being tortured although this obvious presents a problem in the case of individuals with a known or suspected connection to radical Islamic groups as it is extremely difficult to find a country that will take them anyway, let alone one which has a satisfactory Human rights record.

4. On this basis and because of the way article 3 of ECHR is written, it is not legally possible to override the conditions in places on the courts; there is no legal basis for making an exception to the ‘no torture’ rule on grounds of national security. Moreover, article 17 of ECHR states that:

Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for in the Convention.

In other words, not only is it not possible to amend article 3 but it is also not possible to place an interpretation on it which would limit its application. Falconer’s suggestion that legislation could be used to compel judges to give ‘equal weight’ to considerations of national security when ruling on a legal challenge to a deportation order on the grounds that this would violate the individual’s rights under article 3 would not be lawful under the provisions of article 17. Far from allowing the government to speed up the process of deporting individuals it considers to pose a threat to national security, any such law would either be thrown out when the case reached the Law Lords, which one inevitably would, or failing that it would be overruled by the European Court of Human Rights when it reached that level – either way any deportations which relied on this proposed new of Act of Parliament would be jammed up in legal argument for several years and at considerable expense to the taxpayer.

Falconer’s suggested law is little more than an expensive retirement plan for high-priced Human Rights lawyers who’ll, quite literally, be able to live high on the hog for years off their fees for such a case – not that I suppose that matters to him, personally, as by the time this whole business comes to its inevitable conclusion and the law gets overturned in the European Courts, he’ll have long since retired from government and will be living it up on his ministerial pension, yet another thing for which we, the humble taxpayer, will be footing the bill.

Of all the fatuous suggestions made by politicians in recent weeks, this ranks amongst the worst – not least as it comes from someone who holds a senior ministerial office without ever having been elected, which, yet again, highlights the urgent need for reform of the House of Lords.

Time for a quote, then:

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." - George Eliot…

…Charlie, take note.