Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Prisoner Votes: The Definition of Irony

Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that prisoners should be allowed to vote. For many years in this country, successive UK Governments have upheld that people in prison should not be allowed to vote. The reasoning is that if you have committed a serious enough offence to warrant a custodial sentence, then you forfeit your right to vote. This proposal has had broad support, anecdotally, across the country.

The UK Government launched an appeal against this ruling, which was overturned.

The story has recently had another development this week, as now Governments will be given some leeway to decide how to implement such measures, but it is my understanding that the status quo, a blanket ban on all prisoners voting, is not acceptable.

There doesn't seem to be much comment, either politically or in the press, that this is all the ultimate definition of irony. Why? Let me spell this out.....

A group of unelected, unaccountable people from another country are overruling the desires of a democratically elected Government to intervene in the "democratic rights" of criminals.

If this was a script for a sitcom lampooning the European institutions, it would be derided as being exaggerated and not credible. This is no joke.

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