letters

Dear David Cameron

The following two comments have been brought to my attention, I wonder if you could clarify them for me.

1. On the Politics show recently you expressed your belief that 'The moment a burglar steps over your threshold and invades your property ... I think they leave their human rights outside.’ In terms of international law, you are of course wrong, as I am sure you are aware. Until you succeed in your aim of abolishing the Human Rights Act, you are also wrong in terms of national law. Were you therefore expressing a personal desire for international law (as well as national law) to be changed in this respect; and if so, could you clarify which rights you think the burglar should 'leave behind'?

In Cameron's Britain, for example, would it be legal (and acceptable) to kill or subject to torture a petty thief if he/she crosses the threshold of your home? If not killing and torture, where would you draw the line? Perhaps you are suggesting that such people should lose their right to a fair trial, their right to be presumed innocent before being found guilty?

2. You illustrated the 'strange decisions' that the Human Rights Act has given rise to by the following example: 'For instance, you get the decision to give the prisoner hard core pornography. If you had a British Bill of Rights that had more common sense written into it, you could probably avoid having some of these things happening.'

I am surprised that your researchers have not bothered to correct you on this score and indeed that you yourself might actually believe this to be a plausible example of the HRA's effects. Dennis Nilson did indeed try to bring a claim to use the HRA to demand access to pornographic magazines but as you should know, the High Court rejected his claim. It is precisely an example of the 'common sense' nature of the Human Rights Act that it does not entitle prisoners to access hard core pornography.

If you really think there needs to be a serious debate about human rights in the UK and elsewhere, a rethinking of centuries of legal, ethical and political thought, then let us at least have this debate without resorting to falsehoods and propaganda. If it is indeed your view that human rights should no longer be regarded as universal, indivisible and inalienable, in contradistinction to international agreement and international law; and if you would be happy to withdraw this country's previous consent to those principles, then we should let the world and the country know. But letting people know in the context of a false debate about what human rights in fact mean and where they come from is doing human beings in this country and elsewhere no service at all.

I would be grateful if you could respond specifically to my questions about your comments, rather than providing me with a blanket statement on Conservative Party policy.

Thank you for your attention.

antarchi

On Saturday, Ahmedinejad made a speech about the western media distorting and fabricating news, and the BBC promptly misreported it (look at Version 1 on that page). Here's the correspondence I've had so far with them.

Dear Steve Hermann

The online story you have at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8288121.stm (Iran visit for UN nuclear chief) includes the following:

The IAEA chief arrived as Iran's president accused Mr Obama of making a "historic mistake" revealing the plant.

"The US president made a big and historic mistake," Iranian state TV quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying during a speech on Saturday.

I have looked at the report of the speech on Press TV and what it says is the following:

“[US President Barack Obama] made a huge mistake when he accused Iran of secrecy and gave rise to the recent torrent of false reports,” said President Ahmadinejad.
(http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=107711&sectionid=351020101)

Is this the part of the speech to which you are referring in your report? It is clear that Ahmedinejad is not accusing President Obama of 'making a "historic mistake" revealing the plant, he is accusing Obama of making a mistake when accusing Iran of secrecy. Please could you let me know if there is another section of the speech - not reported on Press TV - which makes the claim you have on the BBC website. It would, incidentally, be a strange claim for Ahmedinejad to make, given that Obama did not reveal the plant (even if he knew about it beforehand): the plant was 'revealed' in a letter to the IAEA by Iran's president himself.

I can also find no record of Ahmedinejad saying, as you quote him, that:

"Later it became clear that [Mr Obama's] information was wrong and that we had no secrecy."

In view of what appears to be a serious case of misquoting Ahmedinejad in the first case, please could you also confirm the context for this second quote, and that this is indeed the claim he was making. As you have presented it, the claim makes little sense, because we are not told which information was wrong. We are simply led to believe that Ahmedinejad makes strange statements. Perhaps that is your intention.

I note that you made no mention of the essence of Ahmedinejad's speech.

Thank you for your attention.

[*]

The Today Programme ran a 6 minute segment on corruption in Afghanistan.

"We are fighting in Afghanistan in order to build a more stable society there." says Evan Davies in his introduction. (So that's clear then, for anyone who wondered what on earth our boys were doing there)

On he goes: "... Transparency International has Afghanistan as the 159th most corrupt country. Now this is not just a matter of the usual significance, as it would be anywhere.[!?] It seriously undermines attempts for the government we are fighting to support to gain the respect of the citizens..."

Us, us us.

Then he went on to question the Afghan deputy minister for rural rehabilitation in the most patronising, colonial way, about corruption in Afghanistan, and what were the government doing to fight it, and wasn't it worse there than anywhere else in the world. (And shouldn't they be ashamed of themselves).

People are right to be angry, that some MPs have taken public money to pay for things that frankly, few can afford... Politicians have done things that are unethical and wrong. This is public money; taxpayers' money. As MPs, we should never forget that simple fact.

David Cameron

Mr Cameron... uses the housing allowance to pay the mortgage on his £750,000 house in his Oxfordshire constituency.

The Tory leader has no mortgage on his house in London, which is said to be worth £2 million.

He comes from a well-off family and his wife Samantha is the daughter of a land-owning baronet.

From the Daily Mail

Members must ensure that claims do not give rise to, or give the appearance of giving rise to, an improper personal financial benefit to themselves or anyone else.

From the Green Book 2009: a Guide to Members' Allowances

letter to DC

Dear David Cameron

Since the commons expenses are supposed to cover expenses incurred in carrying out parliamentary duties, and are not supposed to be a source of profit, I assume that we can expect you to hand your Oxfordshire property over to the taxpayer when you have ceased to be an MP. Minus, of course, anything you have yourself invested in the property.

While you are in the business of cleaning up Parliament, I hope also that you will encourage all Conservative MPs, at least, to follow suit. Those of us in the country earning less, on average, than the amount claimed by MPs for living expenses, are also very angry. We represent about 50% of the working citizens in the country which you are hoping to lead; and we would like you to deal not only with the corruption of people charging and double-charging for things that we cannot afford - and would have to pay for ourselves if we wanted to own - but also with people who are extremely well-off, well-paid through our taxes, and yet who find it appropriate to send us their mortgage bills.

Can you understand why a hard-working person who earns a fraction of the amount that you are earning, whose work is no less valuable (in the true sense) than the work you do, should feel outraged that you are buying a second property for yourself, with our money, as an 'expense' claim?

Yours sincerely
antarchi

"In this Mesopotamian prescription of a plague on all their houses we must not forget though the opponents of the war back home as well. For while many may feel vindicated by what subsequently happened, it was their hand wringing and magnification of every set back or mis-step that played a key role in undermining the political will to achieve more in southern Iraq."

Mark Urban, in his War and Peace blog

And then in his reply to the Medialens editors, he elaborates further:

see her reply below

Dear Joan Bakewell

I could not bring myself to listen to your interview, although I had intended to. So I am limited to writing to you about the fact that you thought it appropriate in any way to run it - plus the fact that I clearly did not miss anything 'new' (as I had suspected), or this would have been reported in the 'news'.

on their refusal to air the Gaza fundraising appeal

Dear Helen Boaden, and others

I am writing to express my disgust at the BBC's unbalanced coverage of the Gaza conflict - culminating in your decision to ensure that the DEC fundraising effort for the victims in Gaza is less successful than it needs to be.

The Guardian thinks that war crimes are only 'war crimes', and that it is perfectly permissible to invite 'war criminals' to the Hay Festival, since they are not war criminals. That much was also plain from Michael White's account of George Monbiot's attempt to attempt a citizen's arrest of John Bolton. All just a bit of a joke. So I wrote to ask him what was so funny.

George Monbiot's charge sheet can be found here
His reply below
Mine to him

Dear Michael White

I wonder whether you think that there is any difference between John Bolton and the Nazi war criminals. Your article would suggest not, but it would be useful for readers who find it hard to draw a clear distinction if you were to explain: