No Right

As a former critic of the European Court of Human Rights, I have to say I am impressed by the recent expansion of their remit. In granting themselves godlike powers to overrule national sovereignty they have opened up shop as the go-to destination for travellers on the grievance highway. No slight, no inconvenience, however trivial must in future be endured because they are there to fight your cause and bring much wonga raining down on your violated person.

I’d like to be taller, so I reckon the ECHR should sue my long-dead grandparents for not providing me with taller parents and the means to feed me a protein-rich diet in my developing years. Also, as it has rained almost every day since September (in my memory) my enjoyment of the golf course has been interrupted. This is climate change at its most extreme and I must be compensated for the poverty of my existence.

After all, if it is good for the elderly Swiss ladies who have just given the impetus to the ECHR’s overruling of the democratic principle, it’s good enough for me. Concerned that hotter summers meant a challenge to their lifestyle in wealthy, orderly, tidy, safe Switzerland, these ladies successfully elicited a judgement from the kangaroo court of clowns, that this was an infringement of their right to private and family life.

That’s right, the very same carriage of the ever-expanding human rights gravy train has been applied to climate change in the same way as having a pet cat allows them to block the deportation of violent sexual criminals. Only last week the deportation of a convicted Afghan flasher in London, a repeat offender, was blocked because such a crime would bring greater punishment in Afghanistan. Really? I would have thought that a regular tormentor of women would be right at home in a shithole that weaves wife-abuse into the very fabric of its meagre culture.

The court has decreed that governments have a legal duty, enshrined in international law, to not only protect their citizens from the effects of climate change, but to halt that same global phenomenon. Switzerland, they decided, had not done enough to reduce carbon emissions. Switzerland, that industrial titan of several billion inhabitants, all spewing toxic filth into the air day and night… the filthy, dirty bastards!

Over here in the UK a Brit is now in on the act and suing the Government for breaching his human rights because coastal erosion claimed his home. Kevin Jordan has been quoted as saying, “I am now what you call a climate refugee. I lost my home with no compensation. I am now in local authority accommodation. My lovely sea views are reduced to a ground floor flat looking at cars going past.” Well, boo-fucking-hoo. Have you ever heard of insurance, Kevin?

But in any case, so bloody what? Can we now sue the British government because climate change is causing millions of economically unviable, potentially dangerous sub-Saharan Africans to invade our shores? The ECHR has become an expensive joke, propped up by the abject fear of governments to challenge its rulings. The duty of lawyers is to apply the law, not to modify it, pervert it and use it in any way they see fit. Does the electorate have a human right to sue itself if it brings in a useless Labour government later this year? Not enough parking near the doors at Tesco? Surely, I have a human right to park as close to the store as I desire?

Leaving the suffocating embrace of the ECHR, and the clutches of all such over-arching international human rights legislature should be an absolute priority for any sovereign nation. It is yet another post-Brexit failure of our government to use our departure from the autocracy of the EU as a spur to develop genuine independence. Citizens of sense should be rising up against the asininity of the law and saying, proud and loud: “You have no right!”