Blog: Who are EU to say prisoners should vote?

What is the world coming to when, at a time of national crisis with ordinary people counting the costs of the credit-crunch and Britain going cut-back crazy in a bid to balance the country's teetering accounts, lawyers are rubbing their hands in glee as they struggle to see past the queues of prisoners waiting to claim compensation over their right to vote?

David Cameron faces a looming battle with the EU courts over prisoners' right to take part in elections, and if he loses, tens of thousands of them could join the compensation queue.

Lawyers are only enhancing their ambulance-chasing reputations further by setting up shop in prisons, encouraging inmates to seek pay-outs before the EU battle has even been lost. If it is, the ultimate cost to the taxpayer could run to more than £100 million.

And that's just the financial cost - what about the cost to our national morale when those who have shown such a monumental lack of judgement as to disregard the laws of our country, are being allowed any say at all in the way it is run?

Personally, I am getting tired of listening to individuals who have ruined lives and contributed nothing but trouble to society, bleating about their human rights. What about our human right not to be held to ransom by criminals? And what does the European Court of Human Rights really know about what British people want, need or deserve in the first place when, according to a report by the former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolfe, half the judges speak neither English nor French and can't contribute to its rulings anyway?

Since the Human Rights Act became law in 2000, it seems to have become the first resort of the lawless, and Britain now finds itself locked in an economic prison, bound by legislative chains, because of it.

David Cameron claims that moves to allow prisoners the vote make him feel physically ill and a Cabinet Office spokeswoman says: "Removing the blanket ban on prisoners voting is not a choice but a legal obligation as a result of a court ruling."

So, once more with feeling - why are we allowing important decisions regarding Britain and the rights of those who live here to be made in another country, by foreign judges who have no real idea who we are or what we want, and who aren't prepared to listen, even to our Prime Minister?

Surely it's about time to scrap the deeply flawed Human Rights Act altogether and create a British Bill of Rights, that understands and protects the interests of ordinary, decent, law-abiding citizens.

Maybe then we might see an end to the madness of the European Courts.

By Emma Suddaby