It isn’t just university students who can be described as ‘snowflakes’, apparently. A move is afoot to include ‘trigger warnings’ in Hansard, the official Parliamentary record, to protect MPs and peers of a more delicate disposition why might be upset by the use of offensive words and phrases by some of their fruitier colleagues. The Independent has more.
A move to include offence trigger warnings on the official parliamentary record has been criticised at Westminster, amid fears it could have a chilling effect on what members say.
Concerns over adding the alert feature to Hansard online were raised across the Lords, with accusations it amounted to “a clear breach of centuries of convention” on free speech at Westminster.
The upper chamber heard the measure stemmed from a proposal by the House of Lords Inclusion and Diversity team.
A key complaint raised by peers was the lack of consultation and that approval had not been sought of the House.
Peers have previously hit out at attempts to silence them after raising concerns in Parliament over housing transgender prisoners in women’s jails, leading to them being contacted by a Westminster watchdog following complaints.
This was despite them being covered by parliamentary privilege – a right dating back more than 300 years that allows them to freely express their views in the upper chamber.
Criticising procedural changes being made without prior consultation or agreement, Tory former Cabinet minister Lord Forsyth of Drumlean said: “For example, only today, I learned that there is a proposal to have trigger points in Hansard where what members say may have been considered to have caused offence, and so someone would put something in to that effect.”
He was supported by fellow Tory peer Lord Cormack, who said: “Far too much is happening in this place without proper consultation.”
Worth reading in full.
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“The right to a fair trial presupposes the existence of impartial judges.”
For once, I find myself agreeing with the unconscious bias industry. No such thing as impartiality. The arbiter is part of the outcome.
Trying to politicise it?
That happened when the Rule of Law was abandoned with Acts of Parliament – such as race, sex discrimination – giving some groups of society advantages backed by the State and legal system that others don’t have, and which can be used by the State or others for political, ideological reasons, gain, or just malice and spite.
Under the Rule of Law, it must be clear when a particular action by a citizen breaches the law, so they know they are acting illegally and in any case their action can be shown in a Court to be in breach.
The so-called hate crime act makes it an offence if just one person is offended by an action. So it is not the action that causes the breach, it is the reaction. This leaves it entirely unclear to a citizen whether their action is illegal. If nobody claims offence it isn’t, if someone does it is – and there is no time limit. The Gestapo can turn up weeks, months, years later because somebody read or heard about what was said and is “offended”.
The Rule of Law, like our other Common Law Rights no longer exists.
Yes, I think David Starkey makes this point too that “rights” laws give minorities a higher level of “justice” than everyone else: that is, if I understand him, that the minority rules the majority. For instance, a rapist who can’t be deported and the majority are expected to subsume him.
Off-T.
No articles dealing with this so it has landed here.
An absolutely fascinating article which outlines were this country is headed if we don’t pull our fingers out in the next few years. Target date is 2030 as i keep stating.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-leading-global-test-bed-ai-enforcement/5877274
“Klaus Schwab convinced him – as well as his compatriot the King of England – that this is the future. “If you want to keep your job for the next four years you had better set about it right away” warn his minders.
An upright turbocharged goose step march into state controlled surveillance; big data; central control and a subservient brain damaged social constituency – is what is actually being announced by the British prime minister.
The Guardian newspaper boldly announces
“Keir Starmer will launch a sweeping action plan to increase twenty fold the amount of AI computing power under public control by 2030.”
Hello, there’s that infamous 2030 date looming up again. Everything is supposed to be in place to have achieved full spectrum dominance over freedom loving members of the human race by that date”
The area where AI seems to have the most potential is in snooping and censoring and generally making our lives more difficult – it doesn’t matter too much if it makes mistakes one way or another, it’s a case of “never mind the quality, feel the width”.
Luckily (!) we won’t have enough electricity to keep the lights on in 2030, let alone run AI systems
Lol
The internet is powered by unicorn farts
Correct.
Interesting to see that nuclear reactors are OK for powering AI installations but not steel plants or chemical works… which actually create real wealth and proper jobs.
It would be extremely helpful if the author had at least summarized what he’s criticizing. Or maybe at least provided a link. As It stands, I have no idea what he’s writing about save that he’s opposed to something.
The nice thing about human rights is that their definition is often vague enough that it can be interpreted to mean anything. The COVID era right to life included force masking people, enforcing certain distances between them and regulating who might legally meet whom under what circumstances, all claimed to be motivated by the state protecting people’s right to life by ensuring that they wouldn’t come into harmful contact with other people.
Likewise, a right to life, that is, to enjoyment of human rights, had the ECHR find that the Swiss state was not doing enough to combat climate change to protect elderly climate activists from the dreadful consequences of heat waves in summer in Switzerland, a country not exactly known for its hot climate because it’s location in the Alps.
Hence, if Hermer wants to intertwine rule of law and human rights, he most likely simply wants to make arbitrary unaccountable political decisions about stuff, eg, end all deportations of foreign criminals because of their right to whatever suggests itself and – at the same time – send any British people who critcize this to jail for incitement to whatever comes to mind first.
To import ‘human rights’ into the notion of the rule of law is misconceived
The important thing for our rulers about “rights” is that they are in the gift of the government. This is in contrast to freedom, which belongs to each individual. This is the reason for the interesting modern fact that as “rights” proliferate, freedom diminishes, and government power increases.
I like what the incomparable US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has to say about “human rights” and the law: that rights should be understood as conferring freedom from government interference rather than entitlement to government benefits.
What they want is courts run by and for the elites. That way lies perpetual socialism snd no freedom.
Surely, the law was politicised by Blair in 1997?
ECHR, Supreme Court? Lefty judges?
Wasn’t Lord Hermer the guy who pressed for the prosecution of Tommy Robinson for a civil offence which is unusual for the AG to
do? Presumably Robinson had no human rights to appeal to such as being kept in perpetual solitary confinement!
Going to the source of Human Rights, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I can find no actual rights at all, only well meaning aspirations. No wonder they have become so malleable for politicians and so lucrative for lawyers.
The last paragraph and Southport so much for lawyers