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A Bill Of Rights Written By Social Workers
The government is planning a new Bill of Rights and possibly a written Constitution for Britain. Northern Ireland looks set to be the testing ground for the first draft of the Bill, much as Scotland was used to test the doomed Poll Tax in the 1980s.
The Bill due to be imposed on the people of the Province gives an idea of what Britain's Bill of Rights and Constitution might look like. Unlike the American documents, any British Bill of Rights is unlikely to be drawn up by a brains trust of the great men of the day: Instead, the earliest indications confirm our suspicions that the British Constitution will be written by activist lawyers and social workers.
According to a report in the Observer this weekend, the Ulster Bill of Rights will enshrine the rights of a partner to take time off from his or her housework. Lazy husbands and wives who don't do their share of cleaning and ironing could be charged with violating their partner's constitutional rights.
Is this an early April Fools' Day joke in the Observer? One would think so. But here's what the Observer's draft copy says:
'All workers, including those working in the home or in informal employment, are entitled to rest, leisure, respite and reasonable limitation of working hours, as well as appropriate provision for retirement.'
The Conservatives' legal advisor warns that divorce proceedings could be initiated based on the Bill and argues that it represents an unacceptable invasion of private space.
The Bill also sees Northern Ireland's Travelling Community's rights enshrined in law for the first time: "Everyone has the right to choose a nomadic or sedentary lifestyle and to change from one lifestyle to the other", it reads.
In case you, like half the population of Ulster, are choking on your Guinness, bear in mind that there is a more serious side to the Bill of Rights. It proposes raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 16 and eventually 18.
Yes, as Britain is wracked with anger and bewilderment following the murder of a young woman by a group of drunken fiends aged from 15-17, it makes perfect sense to introduce a bill that will absolve these savages from responsibility for their evil actions.
This recommendation is likely to go down like a lead balloon with the people of Northern Ireland: In Britain, where barely a week goes by without news of a gang of feral teenagers kicking or stabbing a victim to death in unprovoked attacks, it will be met with ridicule. Indeed, only this weekend the head of the Metropolitan Police in London warned that violent crime by teenagers was a threat almost as great as terrorism in the capital.
The Bill of Rights, which will be published later today has already had a cold welcome from two of Northern Ireland's most influential groups. The Catholic Church's representative is boycotting the launch as his recommendation that human rights be considered to begin with conception was ignored by his colleagues on the committee; the DUP, Ulster's largest political party, is also staying away, complaining that the report gives "more rights to trees than unborn children."
Earlier this year, the Church of Ireland's newspaper questioned why such a Bill would be required.
"A Bill of Rights - at least a quasi-constitutional type of document - would in fact be more inclined to put law into a straitjacket than does more usual legislation, which by nature is more of a 'living instrument'," said the Gazette.
"Then again, Bill of Rights advocates speak of the "particular circumstances" of Northern Ireland, but making specific rights for people in Northern Ireland, taking account of the divisions in society, could only end up enshrining those very divisions in law - the ultimate underwriting of sectarianism.
"Furthermore, a Bill of Rights is not needed in order to ensure freedom from discrimination and parity of esteem among all the people of Northern Ireland, as the same advocates suggest; ordinary legislation can cope with such matters."
Northern Ireland's Assembly will not have the right to reject the document, which will be debated in the British Parliament. Interesting. Worth watching this story, not only for the theatre of the absurd that is Northern Ireland's politics and "human rights" scene, but also for the likely introduction of such a consultative process and bill in the rest of the United Kingdom.
