From earlier this week, here’s Nick Clegg’s message for Human Rights Day:
The fight for global human rights doesn’t begin and end on 10 December. But Human Rights Day is a reminder of the struggles that human rights activists around the world face every single day while working to secure equal rights for those women, men and children still denied them.
No person, no country can ever truly prosper without these basic freedoms – the rights of free expression, democratic participation and equality before the law, the right to peaceful protest, the right to be educated and the opportunity to work.
These are the principles on which our country is built. What they promise for all is a better future – a chance to live with dignity, free from the shadow of violence, repression and conflict. The UK is committed to promote and protect universal human rights wherever and whenever they are threatened in every way we can.
On Human Rights Day 2014, we can each do our bit. This includes tweeting your support via #Rights365 and, most importantly, reaching out to help human rights defenders and those suffering from human rights abuses through the Amnesty International UK Write for Rights campaign.
Together, we can build the world we want – a place where social justice, political freedom and economic empowerment are a reality for all.
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12 Comments
From the man who supports secret courts and restrictions on judicial reviews. OK he removed control orders and replaced them with…… well control orders really. Being marginally better than Liebour and the Tories does make you a defender of liberal principles… There’s a vote tomorrow which will allow him to show he cares about rights of the individual over the state. I don’t think I need to consult the Oracle of Delphi to guess which way he’ll vote.
One would hope that, contemplating what he is saying here, Nick Clegg might re-consider again supporting JR-restricting measures which make it easier for the state and other public bodies to use their executive power and inertia to ride roughshod over individuals.
“No person, no country can ever truly prosper without these basic freedoms – the rights of free expression, democratic participation and equality before the law, the right to peaceful protest, the right to be educated and the opportunity to work. These are the principles on which our country is built.”
Can a country and its people truly prosper without a party of Liberal Democracy to safeguard AND EXTEND these values to include fighting for true socio-economic justice?
This Government :
1. LASPO – destruction of family law legal aid for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society (Grayling)
2. £1200 Fee for pursuing Industrial Tribunal claims – within less than a year 70% reduction in such claims, 85% reduction in sexual discrimination claims, brought in following lobbying from big business. (Grayling).
3. JR debacle (Grayling).
4. Criminal Law – no increase in legal aid lawyer fees for 10 yrs, then 8.75% cut this year, 2/3 rd’s reduction in firms doing this work by Oct next year, planned further 8.75% cut next year. One Law for the Rich facing criminal charges, another for the poor. The Law of the Land is still (currently) Innocent until proved Guilty (Grayling).
Human Rights Day – you MUST Be joking ????!!!!
Not exactly the message, which the Conservative Party purveys.
And let’s not forget the human rights of the Palestinians that are denied day after day by an Israeli government which pretends to be a Western Democracy – one of us as Mrs T would have said. It is nothing of the sort and our politicians need to be constantly reminded that its continued enjoyment of special trade privileges and its continued receipt of arms that are used against its colonial subjects are allowed by the present UK government. A fitting tribute to human rights day would be formal referral of both sides in last summer’s Gaza conflict to the International Criminal Court.
John Kelly is Vice Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine
These are great responses. Pandering to Grayling just makes UKIP’s job easier in alleging hypocrisy. That apart, we do need leadership that stands for our Constitution. Needs of ‘coalition’ politics sounding a bit like the old Official Secrets Act excuse for mediocrity – or injustice.
Steve Way, Tony Dawson, Stephen Hesketh, Cllr Nick Cotter, Richard Sangster, John Kelly and Clive all make reasonable points in their comments.
This is in contrast to the bland “media-speak” which is put into quotation marks and is credited to Nick Clegg. Are they really his words? Or is there a junior media person working for Clegg who scrapes through the calendar every week desperately looking for something on which to issue a public statement ? We have had Clegg on Formula 1 racing cars, The Clegg family Chrismas Card, Clegg promoting The Sun, Clegg wearing a “feminist” tee-shirt, Clegg sending wishes to a number of different a religious groups as and when the occasion arises, the list goes on and on.
Someone might think this the work of a serious political leader. But this is the man who does not have time to turn out at parliamentary by-elections or even comment on them, who runs away to Cornwall rather than face the media over the Autumn Statement. That was the Autumn Statement that at one day he told us was “complete and utter nonsense” and the next day he told us he was “proud to be the co-author”. I assume he did not really want us to believe that he was the proud to be the co-author of complete and utter nonsense? But then I assume when he sat in The Quad and nodded through secret courts etc he did not want us to think that he was exactly the same as other rightwing establishment politicians who have no interest in the principles of human rights.
I am not entirely sure what is meant by “economic empowerment” but I am inclined to think that if you are on a zero-hours contract then “economic empowerment” ain’t something you’ve got. Right?
yer well tell the arabs the Chinese the Russians Koreans and many more
@ Nick Cotter,
And without reading your post, many, including myself would be none the wiser.
Where is the passionate defence of access to justice? The least articulate are those who are suffering the most from a lack of advocacy on their behalf.
I despair. In 2010 I read a piece by Nick Clegg on the repositioning of the Liberal Democrat party, a party that according to him did not want people who were to the left of Labour, nor people who were former Labour supporters who because of conscience over the Iraq war, could no longer support Labour. In response to this sort of thinking, I find myself drawn more to the so called left than I could ever have imagined, because there really does seem to be no-one supporting those who can least defend themselves. Everyone seems to scrabble for some, so called, centre ground of politics which ignores their existence and the daily up hill challenges of their lives.
Grayling was of course, former SDP.
Jayne Mansfield
“….a piece by Nick Clegg on the repositioning of the Liberal Democrat party, a party that according to him did not want people who were to the left of Labour…”
Whenever I hear this sort of thing from Clegg, Laws and co it reminds me of the former Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath. In a TV interview before he died Heath commented on the Blair New Labour Government. Heath said , well let’s face it even I am to the left of Labour under Blair!