Letter: UK Democracy appears to mean unelected EU judges
Wednesday 16th March 2011, 6:04AM GMT.
Letter: Your correspondent Robert Jones (Shropshire Star, February 23) needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
The European Court of Justice has just decreed that insurance companies must no longer discriminate between men and women when selling annuities and motor insurance.
Heretofore men have been able to get better terms on annuities because statistically they die sooner than women and women have been able to get better motor insurance terms than men because statistically they have fewer accidents.
In future men will have to pay more for their annuities and women will have to pay more for their motor insurance – not because the Westminster Parliament says so but because the unelected, unaccountable and often unqualified so-called judges in the European Court say so.
Dreamers like Robert Jones say that “we can only achieve reform from within” the European Union, but when I asked my MP, Philip Dunne, HOW, he refused to answer the question.
He knows as well as I do that any meaningful reform can only be achieved with the unanimous agreement of all 27 member states and that the prospect of that ever happening are as likely as hell freezing.
Home Secretary Theresa May has effectively said that there is nothing that we can do about the ECJ insurance diktat, thus confirming what some of us have known for a very long time which is that whether you vote Tory, Labour or Lib/Dem what you actually get is more of the same – government by the unelected and unaccountable eurocrats in Brussels – and they call that democracy.
Christopher Gill
Bridgnorth
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Well the answer is very simple, why do we not do as France and a few other EU countries and get a bit of backbone and adhere to only the EU laws we wish to, and as them when we get fined do not pay it . All very simple backbone and the ability to say NO.
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Unfortunately nobody seems interested enough in the EU to actually do something about it come election time. For as long as people keep on voting for the same 3 parties LibLabCon the only outcome will be more of the same, as all three parties have sold out to the EU and are giving away the power the government had and at the same time giving away our democracy and our democratic right to change our government. The only way to stop this treachery to the people and the Nation State is to deny all of them our votes.
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And do we elect judges in the UK?
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No so they should not be allowed to by those we do elect to form policy that overrules the government.
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There is some ridiculous potential progression to the “we don’t agree with these laws so we won’t adhere to them” argument. It’s called anarchy. If we refuse to accept European Court rulings then why should the UK adhere to other international laws? Do we encourage our forces in combat zones to ignore the Geneva Conventions? Do we allow our citizens to disobey UK law without penalty based on their right to opt out if they choose to? Just because some of a Eurosceptic leaning object does not make the rulings wrong. It is absolutely right and proper the all countries can have some laws imposed by the international community, be that the UN, or for those member states, the European Court.
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What you are suggesting is nothing like democracy but law imposed by uncountable intuitions what’s that called these days, it used to be dictatorship.
I do not see the need for an outside agency be it UN or the EU to make our laws, the fact that they do has a direct impact on our democracy, as we the people cannot affect those agencies at the ballot box and changing our government will not change the laws.
We used to have a common law system that was based on our rights to hold our governments to account and we could also decide if we would as a society accept the laws made by our government. So in effect we did decide if we would accept or reject laws, if we felt them unjust we fought for the right of juries to find against the evidence, hence the law became unworkable. This had a controlling influence on government, it was our government and our law, we felt that we were part of the system rather than powerless serfs.
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One only has to read some of the many contributions to the letters page of the Shropshire Star to realise there are levels of ignorance regarding UK laws never mind EU or international laws. The general theme is that courts are perceived to to be lenient and inconsistent much to the anger of our fellow citizens who would sooner impose their own arbitary sentences and rulings.
Our courts sentence according to specific guidelines laid down in UK law. They do not sentence as they see fit on any given day. They will of course quite properly take into account the Human Rights Act because that is now incorporated into UK law. That our people have the facility to appeal to the European Court is also proper. Were such a safeguard not in place then all EU member states could potentially ride roughshod over their citizens with no accountability to others. Such safeguards help to prevent the development of the despotic regimes that so harmed this continent during the last century.
As for Mr Gill’s observations about unelected judges does he not realise our own judges are not elected either. That helps to separate the state from the judiciary, or would Mr Gill prefer some alternative to that with all the potentially dangerous consequences. I would suggest that Mr Gill’s own poor judgement on such matters may explain why he is now an ex MP!
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What we find is now happening is that the ECJ and ECHR are making rules that impacts on our government where not even the citizens are in agreement, this is not about controlling despotic regimes, but about weather women are safer drivers than men, in the eyes of the ECJ they are not, and thus will be charged more for their insurance. A case of historic fact being slaughtered on the alter of equality, it is utter madness to overturn proven fact with ideology.
I agree that our judges are not elected and follow the law as laid down by parliament. And it is parliaments fault that the ECHR and the ECJ dictates are superior to our own law because parliament said they were.
Democratic states are the primary holders of human rights obligations because the citizens of those states can hold the government to account. I was describing the method we have forged in Britain do do just that, where our government did not grant rights but were prevented from removing them and we the people had an input and actually the final deciding voice. Our Rights did protect us from the power of the state which was the reason for them in the first place why so many fought over the years for theses rights to be recognised.
Contrast: neither are the ECHR of the ECJ judges elected; we can vote our government out and thus replace the laws in this country, we cannot do likewise with the ECHR or ECJ. Hence both of these institutions are removed from democratic control and rather work to a set of state granted soft rights as laid down in the various Human Rights acts, many of these are not just rights but also obligations on others to pay for the rights. (Housing for example) Also they are not perfect and one set of rights is often suppressed by another at the behest of these courts. Thus contradicting their own ethos, (the right to believe and to practice religion for instance). Also in the case of the EU Chata of Fundamental rights they have reserved the power to remove any and all rights in the interest of the EU; that is a fundamental shift where the state has now decided that rights are dependant on its own interests rather than those of its citizens.
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