Faith Eckersall: What has this Human Rights Act ever done for us?

Presumably it’s easier to strip benefits and tax credits from the little guy than take on the hysterics who claim that unless this iniquitous act is preserved in all its pointless entirety, we are all going to hell in a handcart.

I can understand the financial motive of its biggest fans - defending all those foreign crims who don’t want to be sent packing keeps lawyers and the bosses of human rights charities in gold-plated pensions and pays the rocketing school fees.

But the time has surely come to ask, what has this Human Rights Act ever done for us?

If you’re a law-abiding UK citizen who pays his or her taxes then you won’t ever have need to use this act, because most of the ‘rights’ it enshrines are ancient ones, some stretching back to the time of Magna Carta. The rest are bolt-ons, added - in my view, anyway - to enable lawyers like Cherie Blair to get even richer, and mainly at the public expense.

We’re always being told how important and vital this act is, but is it really?

Where was the Human Rights Act when all those children in Rochdale and Oxford were being sexually abused by gangs of sadistic men?

Did this act prevent one child being from being raped, one childhood being written off?

Did it hell.

Where was the Act when Baby Peter Connelly was being abused and neglected to death by his mother and her evil household? What about HIS right to the much-trumpeted private, family life? Didn’t really happen, did it?

Where was the ‘right’ of a possible 1,200 people not to have died prematurely at the Mid Staffs Hospital Trust, because of rubbish nursing care and ineffective management?

This act doesn’t do anything to protect families whose loved ones have actually lost the right TO life - because they’ve been murdered  - just ensuring that the criminal’s right not to be deported to a harsher prison regime abroad is maintained, just as the right of ranting foreign terrorists not to be repatriated is upheld, even though they call for death and murder here. So far more than 20 foreign criminals have invoked this act, which was based originally on a declaration designed to prevent another Holocaust.

At the bottom end of the scale, the human rights act doesn’t guarantee the right of law-abiding UK citizens not to spend their days driven mental by the sound of loud music, yobs trashing their front garden or yapping dogs even though disturbance like this is regularly cited as having a health cost and certainly a financial one. It DOES afford the right not to be held in slavery but judging by the horrific numbers of young women, especially, being trafficked around the country, it appears to have failed there, too.

In short, the human rights act has done virtually nothing for ordinary people that wasn’t being done before. It HAS succoured rapists, murderers and terrorists which is why it has fallen into such disrepute.

The sooner it is reformed the better, and double shame on the spineless Cameron government for not tackling it while they can.

Fifa corruption scandal laid bare 

FUNNY how it took a woman to take down FIFA. Funnier still how so many football organisations are queuing up to give their version of ‘we knew there was something wrong’. Now the extent of FIFA’s alleged corruption is being laid bare, they can still save the day - by telling homophobic Russia they are not having the 2018 World Cup and bringing it back home, here, where it belongs, guaranteeing favourable tabloid headlines from now until England lose their first match.

PS The reason I know this ploy would work is because it’s a scientific fact that the majority of English males sincerely believe that if the World Cup is held here we will win it, because, well, we did in 1966, didn’t we?

Faith restored in humanity 

DESPITE the fears of those who cared for him, old soldier Major Thomas Leslie did not leave this world alone.

More than 100 lovely people turned up to pay their respects to this gentleman who had been a bomb disposal expert, but who had no family or close friends.

Every day we read of horrific murders, vile terrorist acts, disgusting political opportunism and all the rest of it. But every day, too, ordinary, decent people are making the world a better place, one action at a time.

Last Friday was one of those days. And every person who turned up to Bournemouth Crematorium for this funeral restored our faith in humanity.

Gay marriage victory 

WELL done Ireland for voting for gay marriage. Now, as the Guinness-loving ones are evidently in the mood for granting basic human rights, perhaps the government could amend the law to ensure that all women have access to free and legal abortion on demand?

Or doesn’t the new-found tolerance extend to the 50 per cent of the population that continues to suffer from Irish misogyny, excessive religionism and general backwardness on this situation?

Is Amal Clooney really that different from the rest of us?

WHY is Amal Clooney – described this week as a ‘walking skeleton’- so thin?

Commentators reckon she is either feeling powerless, or is attempting to maintain her husband’s interest.

I bet it’s neither. I bet it’s because Amal reckons she looks better, thinner. Which makes her no different from the rest of us!

Note: If you'd like to respond to Faith's opinion piece - and it is an opinion piece, not a news report - on the Human Right's Act, you can send us a letter here, tweet Faith at @herfaithness or comment below. The piece has been edited to remove parts of the column that were removed before publication in print and should not have appeared online.