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One of the central lessons of economics is that there are no solutions. There are only trade offs.
Tough US import controls on biological materials, introduced after the September 11 2001 attacks, hindered the rapid identification of the H1N1 virus because samples from infected Mexican patients had to be sent to Canada for analysis instead of the US.
Health officials said the detour highlighted how bureaucratic attempts to protect the US from terrorist attacks had backfired.
How true that is.
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Nice piece by Dizzy (even though he is a Tory).
The historical bargain here in hte UK was that there weren´t going to be many laws and those that we did have were important. So we all thought it important that we obeyed those laws that we did have.
The continental bargain was somewhat different. There would be many laws, the entirety of society would be bound by rules and regulations. But as a societal matter, most of them were ignored. To be a scofflaw was not just something necessary to get anything done but even a badge of pride.
It´s in part the clash of these two methods which so enrages about the EU. We have the imposition of these incredibly prescriptive laws (for example, the allowable ingredients of jam are now described in the criminal law….yes, the criminal law) but we also have this residual feeling that all laws are important and that all laws must be obeyed.
This isn´t a position that can be maintained. Only one of the two poles can: few laws and they´re obeyed or many laws and many are ignored.
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From the Telegraph:
It has often been claimed that the project of “ever-closer union” within the EU is over, killed when the Lisbon Treaty was rejected by the Irish, the only people who had the chance to vote on it. That’s a big mistake. The Eurocrats think integration is inevitable and essential – and they are certainly not going to let it be derailed by anything as vulgar as the fact that most of the EU’s citizens do not want it.
Perhaps the best example is an imminent change to the justice system, designed to make it easier for one state to imprison citizens who live and work in another. Under the present rules, the Government is not obliged to hand over a British citizen who has been convicted of a crime in another EU country. There are very good reasons for that. The procedures of justice are not of a uniformly high standard across the EU.
Yes, we’ve been shouting about this. A trial which you did not know about, where you were not able to present evidence, where there was no jury, in a country where the entire judicial system is entirely corrupt. But still the UK Government must hand you over to serve the sentence imposed.
No, we really do not want to be part of such a system. Forget the economics now, the very basis of civil liberty, the right to a fair trial, has now been breached. We’ve got to get out.
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Those who have interests in legislation or subjects under discussion in the Lords are supposed to declare them. Except, of course, if you are getting money from the EU:
Asked by Lord Pearson of Rannoch
To ask the Chairman of Committees whether, in view of the decision of the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Interests in 2006 (Priv 2006—07/1), the debate on 19 July 2007 (Official Report, House of Lords, cols. 402—18) and recent events, he will re-submit to the Committee for Privileges the suggestion that members of the House of Lords in receipt of a European Union pension should declare that interest in debates about European Union matters. [HL1753]
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): No.
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It’s easy enough to get terribly confused in the alphabet soup that surrounds any interaction with the European insititutions. Especially with such things as the Human Rights Act, the various European Courts and so on.
We have that old phrase, that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. I’d add a further clause, that it must be understood to be done as well. As, sadly, for all too many of us at the moment it isn’t.
For we’re told that we cannot deport a man and then the next day that we have to compensate him for keeping him in jail while we tried to deport him. Or something, I’m afraid even I’m getting confused here.
But this sounds like a rather neat solution:
Of course the Law Lords are not perfect. But they are far more capable of making decisions appropriate for Britain than the judges in the Strasbourg court. With some notable exceptions, the European judges are, to put it mildly, lightly qualified for the job of interpreting the Convention on Human Rights in a British context. Judges from Albania, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Russia, Romania and Latvia do not come from countries with a tradition of respect for the rule of law, or even much experience of it. One British observer has said that seeing how they come to their decisions is a bit like watching the East European judges in the Eurovision Song Contest. That’s an exaggeration – but you see his point.
The most incisively intelligent of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, has suggested opting out of the jurisdiction of the European Court now that the European Convention on Human Rights has been incorporated into our law. Can anyone seriously maintain that the judges in Strasbourg are more likely to reach wise decisions on how to apply human rights law in Britain than our own judges? Can it even be claimed that we would lose anything at all by reverting to the age-old system of having our own judges interpret our law, rather than having, as the ultimate authority, foreign judges who know nothing of it? To pose those questions is to answer them. The sooner we extricate ourselves from Strasbourg, the better for the rule of law in Britain.
Our judges interpreting our own laws? Something of an idea that, isn’t it? I think there might even be a word for it, a phrase….being sovereign, isn’t it?