What can I say, pretty much does what it says on the tin. There is an guest post at Harry's Place calling for support to extend abortion rights to Northern Ireland. NI is currently a member of the league of draconian states with abortion only allowed where the mothers life or permanent health is deemed to be at risk.
A cross party group of MP's are launching a bid to give NI women the same rights as women in the rest of the UK. Please do support them. The move is lead by the lovely Dianne Abbott (she's the Labour MP who sits on This Week with Michael Portillo for the Tories on BBC1) who said "When it comes to abortion rights, Northern Ireland women are effectively second class citizens: they don't have the same rights as women in England and Wales and Scotland and they even have fewer rights than women in the Republic of Ireland".
Please do email Mrs Abbott with a message of support if you can, and, as it will be a free vote, it is vitally important that you email your own MP to ask for their support for this bill. Unfortunately, my MP appears to be a hardcore religious freak who has opposed all civil rights legislation in the past including the HFE bill.
The NI parties, all of which oppose the extension, claim that they oppose the bill because the people of NI are against it. In response, here is a snippet of a speech made by the Canadian PM on the introduction of the civil marriage act (gay marriage) "the rights of minorities [must] not [be] subjected--never [be] subjected--to the will of the majority. The rights of [those] who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers, and these rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority."
If every person in NI is against abortion the fact will still remain that it is a basic right that should be granted to everyone. MP's have a responsibility to protect citizens rights, not to rule by majority opinion.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
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“The rights of minorities [must] not [be] subjected--never [be] subjected--to the will of the majority. The rights of [those] who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers, and these rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority."
Yes but then one could quite easily apply this argument to in regard to the unborn. Obviously the majority supports legalised abortion in this country. But is it right to do away with a human life for the sake of convenience? Our whole society has adopted the same self-serving view, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right.
But I think the most objectionable thing in your post was the word ‘lovely’ to describe that very unlovely Olympic-scale hypocrite, Ms Diane Abbot. She herself has admitted that sending her son to a £10,000 p.a. private school in direct opposition to her own noisy public statements was “indefensible”. Well then, one would have thought she would have since changed her strange opinions about education or else shoved her son into one of the sink schools she urges on others. Failing that, she should have resigned her untenable position as a public representative. But of course, ours is a frivolous and debased political culture so she has not been expected to do any of these things.
By the way, I would say the same about Dave Cameron who opposes selection on merit and who can easily afford to pay fees but who uses Blair-style methods to get his child a place in an oversubscribed good State school which ought to have gone to a child from a poor home who would otherwise be deprived of a good education.
You call your site “Dreaming of simplicity” presumably because you want to cut through the bullshit and expose the bullshitters. But you don’t even attempt to do it. Our governing elite's vast, despicable hypocrisy about schooling is their weakest point, the place at which their dishonesty and selfishness is most perfectly exposed. But you seem to be just another sycophantic, conventional political commentator who fails even to notice it.
"one could quite easily apply this argument to in regard to the unborn. Obviously the majority supports legalised abortion in this country. But is it right to do away with a human life for the sake of convenience?"
Yes, I must admit I did realise after I made the post that I had just called 50% of the population a minority. To clarify, by minority I meant the few women who do want an abortion. As for the life of the unborn, I am of the belief that as the foetus (embryo, baby, or whatever you wish to call it) is living off another person and cannot yet sustain itself the rights of the mother (who obviously is self sustaining) are more important. I understand that you may believe different and since my beliefs on this are unlikely to be changed I shall not attempt to change yours.
As for Diane Abbott, she is the Labour representative on the BBC show This Week and it is on that I base my opinion that she seems like a nice (or 'lovely') person. I am not going to try and defend her decision to send her kid to a private school when she can't even do so herself. However, in my opinion, if you do not wish to send your child to a faith school then you may have to send them to a private school if you want them to get a good education. That said, I doubt that is the case in London where I assume she lives bearing mind her constituency is in London. Far from not criticising this, I think that it is a stinging indictment of New Labour.
As for not criticising politicians hypocritical use of private schools, it is simply something that has not come to my attention as no cases have been reported lately. However, rest assured, if and when another case of a politician doing so crops up I will blog on it as education is something that concerns me quite a bit.
If you look at some of my past posts, you will notice that despite being a Labour sympathiser, I have consistently criticised Brown and his government in addition to the other parties.
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