It's time to replace the ECHR

When the monochrome horrors of the camps shocked cinema audiences in Britain, when stories of brutality, atrocities and the iron boot of authoritarianism trampling democracy became current, the UK was foremost in imposing on the wayward peoples of the world a new reminder of the duties that governments and societies owe to their people. Following the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations (the name originally of the alliance fighting the Axis powers), the Council of Europe adopted the European Convention, together with a court to enforce it.

The ECHR and the ECtHR are not EU institutions but those of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe includes 47 nations and 820 million people; the EU only includes 27 of those nations and 426m of those citizens. However, the ECtHR has fallen into the same pernicious power-grab using the same pernicious method as the EU - the notion of 'dynamic' law and regulation. You sign up to potatoes, and within a few years they have changed it to include tomatoes, oranges, bananas and plums. The 'they' is of course unelected judges - and Ld Sumption featured the 'mission creep' effect in his Reith lectures last year;

Article 8 protects the human right to private and family life, the privacy of the home and personal correspondence. It was designed as a protection against the surveillance state in totalitarian regimes. But the Strasbourg Court has developed it into what it calls a principle of personal autonomy. Acting on this principle, it has extended Article 8 so that it potentially covers anything that intrudes upon a person’s autonomy unless the Court considers it to be justified.

Now, it will be obvious that most laws seek, to some degree, to intrude on personal autonomy. They impose standards of behaviour which would not necessarily be accepted voluntarily. This may be illustrated by the vast range of issues which the Strasbourg Court has held to be covered by Article 8. They include the legal status of illegitimate children, immigration and deportation, extradition, criminal sentencing, the recording of crime, abortion, artificial insemination, homosexuality and same sex unions, child abduction, the policing of public demonstrations, employment and social security rights, environmental and planning law, noise abatement, eviction for non-payment of rent and a great deal else besides. All of these things have been held to be encompassed in the protection of private and family life.

None of them is to be found in the language of the convention. None of them is a natural implication from its terms. None of them has been agreed by the signatory states. They are all extensions of the text which rest on the sole authority of the Judges of the Strasbourg Court. This is, in reality, a form of non-consensual legislation.

It is not that we have abandoned any of the fundamental rights for which our fathers fought and died, any of the rights laid out in the convention of 1950, but that the ECtHR has assumed an authority that usurps democracy. These are not decisions for judges - they are decisions for voters, and for the ballot box. Only ending this slow-motion power grab will restore democracy.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus (the disease it causes is called Covid-19) has already caused nations to look to themselves. France and Germany have banned the export of masks, gloves, alcohol sanitiser and other preventative materials - banned export to other EU nations. Shengen is about to be suspended and national borders manned again - this time with (pointless) temperature probes replacing the Tommy guns. At times of war and plague, nations reassert themselves, and people demand that their own governments look to their interests, not to those of a remote federation of unelected apparatchiks.

Update - GBP - EUR pair
===================
For anyone looking for an explanation of why the €/£ rate has gone from 1.204 last week to 1.146 today - it's the carry trade, not us, and it will work itself out - as Zerohedge has it 

If a carry trade unwind does cause the euro to surge uncontrollably against the dollar towards the $1.2-1.3 zone, the impact on the fragile eurozone economy could be devastating. For despite the euro’s weakness against the dollar, other countries have also been pursuing weak currency polices. As a result, the euro effective exchange rate (ie measuring the euro against a basket of currencies) is much stronger than the headline euro/$ exchange rate suggests. A surge in the euro from current levels as the carry trade unwinds could crush the eurozone economy. Indeed it could threaten the euro’s very existence. 

08/03/20
EU/EEA and the UK	Cases	Deaths
Italy	5883	233
Germany	847	0
France	716	10
Spain	430	5
United Kingdom	206	2
Netherlands	188	1
Belgium	169	0
Sweden	161	0
Norway	147	0
Austria	104	0
Greece	66	0
Iceland	53	0
Denmark	31	0
Czech Republic	26	0
Portugal	21	0
Ireland	19	0
Finland	19	0
Romania	13	0
Croatia	12	0
Slovenia	12	0
Estonia	10	0
Hungary	7	0
Poland	6	0
Luxembourg	3	0
Slovakia	3	0
Malta	3	0
Bulgaria	2	0
Latvia	2	0
Lithuania	1	0
Liechtenstein	1	0
Total	9161	251

The corruption at the heart of Europe's courts

I'll post on the Trade Agreement negotiating positions when we publish the UK's position paper, but for now, a little nugget for you all. It's hugely satisfying when some independent academic evidence comes along to validate a point one has been making for many years - in this case, the inherent corruption and mal-judice embodied in both the ECR and ECHR. The European Centre for Law and Justice, normally a body that campaigns on social justice issues, has just issued a research study.

The study has found that, out of the 100 judges who have served on the bench of the European Court of Human Rights in the period 2009-2019, nearly a quarter (22) have strong links to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation or to NGOs like Amnesty International and others which are funded by it. Human Rights Watch, for instance, has received $100 million from the Open Society Foundation since 2010.

Some of the NGOs receive so much of their budget from Soros that they are in effect wholly owned subsidiaries of his foundation.

The links between the judges and the NGOs are substantial. They include working for years as members of the board of directors or executive council of these NGOs; having teaching posts at institutes funded by them; being a salaried director of programs for the Open Society Foundation or associated NGOs; and undertaking other forms of paid work for them. The full list of these links can be found on pages seven and eight of the report.

And that from a decent piece from RT.