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I know I am spitting at heaven to write this, but it is high time you brough them back to earth where the rest of us live!

They have fought for good and truly righteous causes – against Apartheid, against Colour Prejudice, against Racial Discrimination, for women’s rights to vote and “equal pay for equal work”. I applaud that, but they fight for “equal rights” elsewhere, where they should not exist at all. “Rights”, yes, certainly. “Equal Rights”, certainly not! Equality can be positively unfair.

I keep saying that “we are equal only sometimes, unequal most times and different always.” What happens when we are unequal, when we are different?

Here they make a massive mistake.

 They should not be creating and trying to assert new rights for some that pre-empt the rights of others. They should see the State as the mediator between a multiplicity of different individual rights.

You can see this well illustrated in the two quite different areas I have been writing about in my posts – special educational needs and cycling.

Here, as I said in my last post, they try to create equal rights that raise people’s hopes only to see them dashed … while they make off with the dosh!

Special Educational Needs

They gave children with special needs the right to mainstream education and force fed it to them by closing over 100 special schools in the UK. I wrote in the Prologue to Death of a Nightingale “Some will want to assert it and thrive, some may assert it but be disappointed and wish they hadn’t <probably bullied>, some may want to assert it, but be denied it, and some may not want to assert it but be forced to accept it with no other realistic choice available, and some may want a different right altogether, the right to go to a special school. You also need to remember that children without special needs have their rights too.”

They are so obsessed with equalising society – homogenising it – and correcting a wrong to some children with special needs that they have subordinated the rights of all other children to them. Worse still they have not prioritised academic and gifted and talented children and not recognised the value of other different talents because they offend their dream of an equal society.

The dogma of Equality –  Dead hand of the past, you’re a dead hand to the last.

The job – and it is not easy or straightforward – should be to mediate the different rights of all children to an education that meets their needs. Instead they sold a pup to the parents of children with special needs, an expectation that in many cases could not be fulfilled.

Cyclists – same again!

If you follow my posts, it is the same with cyclists. They give cyclists the belief that they have an equal right to be on the road with the drivers of buses, lorries, vans and cars when in the UK they are all contesting for the same narrow busy urban roads and narrow twisting roads in the countryside. In London “City Traffic slower than a horse and cart” according to the Sunday Times’ front page today, congestion up 40% since 2012.

Again the role of the State should be to mediate different rights not just create them. Do Human Rights Lawyers begin to understand this? Or do they see their role as simply defending the underdog?

And they totally ignore the consequences.

They are so preoccupied with creating rights in Parliament and asserting them in the Courts that they ignore the health and safety of cyclists themselves – accidents to more and more of them and the toxic carcinogenic fumes they inhale on cycle lanes next to busy main roads. And they ignore the damage to children with special needs exposing them to bullying and depriving them of the skilled and dedicated teaching and caring many would have found in a special school.

They have also ignored the damage to children without special needs when a disruptive child or one demanding teachers’ time interferes with their education.

The European Court of Justice illustrates this again with its perverse decisions.

Annuities for men and women used to be calculated by actuaries reflecting the shorter life expectancy of men. Visit any care home and you will see clear evidence of this. The dead hand of the dogma of equality has denied men the extra annuity payments they should be receiving as they have to be treated equally with women.

Premiums for young drivers used to reflect the fact that young men are much more accident prone than young women who paid a lower premium. Again, instead of recognising inequality and difference, the dead hand of the dogma of equality denied young women that lower premium as they have to be treated equally with young men.

IN BOTH CASES – FAIRNESS OUT OF THE WINDOW

Human Rights lawyers should look to the working of the legal system that they work in.

It is high time that Human Rights lawyers put their own house in order.

They talk of Equality before the Law. HO HO. That’s only if you can afford it; and, even then, where is the equality if you are pitched against an Insurance Company, a multi-national company or, indeed, against the State itself? And in Tribunals claimants are totally vulnerable in a world governed by laws, regulations and precedent of which they know absolutely nothing.

Here’s a thought for you. On the principle of the Dock Brief, where serious points of law exist the Courts should be able to invite the legal departments in the Universities to provide a pro bono service to the public enabling their students to gain invaluable practical experience in addition to book learning; and they should also be able to invite big law firms to do the same, using their interns to provide it. Offering a no win no fee service will often offer little assistance here when the risk and cost of losing are too great.

And let Human Rights lawyers make sure that the checks and balances that keep democracy healthy are in good working order. I shall return to this.

In the UK we have barristers and solicitors – in the USA they don’t need both – this slows the process and ups the price while the meter ticks away! Where’s the justice in that?

Let me close with one area where they should be prominent in asserting Human Rights but where they are abysmally silent. In the Middle East they should fight for the equal right for all to pray to their own God – or not pray at all – in peace not war, Sunni & Shi’ite, Muslim and Christian and Jew. The text is there – the Alexandria Declaration of 2002.

My advice to them – Start work here and really earn your bread.

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CODA – RESPECT IS A TWO-WAY STREET – If I am right, and some rights are NOT equal but different and can conflict with the rights of others, what are the implications for those who possess those rights? No one should selfishly demand respect but not show it for others. 

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