The mother of parliaments has turned out to be swimming in a pool of corruption, the postal voting system is denounced by judges as "a fraudsters charter" and the voting system itself is roundly denounced by many as a totally unrepresentative - leading to a proposal that a referendum be held on reforming it in 2011. Now the European Court rules that the next UK elections in May or June could involve a total infringement of human rights by being the only country in Europe to refuse prisoners the right to vote.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/dec/08/ban-prisoner-votes-human-rights
This in a country with the highest prisoner population in Europe and just behind the USA in terms of per capita prison population also. Going to prison can involve a range of offences and should not be a justification for deprival of the democratic right to vote. It is a disgrace that the UK government despite being told this five years ago by the European Court has still done nothing to remedy the situation. As the Prison Reform Trust says in today's Guardian: "Had the government accepted the European court ruling over five years ago, that the blanket ban on prisoners' voting is unlawful, it would not now be in the ludicrous position of heading for a non-compliant general election," said the trust's director, Juliet Lyon. "Governments, like the rest of us, cannot simply pick and choose the laws they like."
It is not surprsing then that President Karzai laughs at Gordon Brown's and David Milliband's strictures about the actions of his government when the UK government has a pick and mix approach to human rights and the system of democratic elections. Time to get the house in order and to stop being the sick man of Europe in terms of both ignoring human rights and protecting democratic systems of election. Wonder what Polly Toynbee thinks of this?
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