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Thread: Votes for prisoners

  1. #41
    Papa Smurf
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    Re: Votes for prisoners

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing One sort of nasty criminal that should not have had the vote?
    I don't think having the vote or not is such a big deal, most people vote for their favourite colour anyway . Having access to justice is far more important. Hard to believe that it was just over 50 years ago that a war hero (what else would you call him) was criminalised and chemically castrated for being gay. Thanks very much I don't think.

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    Re: Votes for prisoners

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    I don't think having the vote or not is such a big deal, most people vote for their favourite colour anyway . Having access to justice is far more important. Hard to believe that it was just over 50 years ago that a war hero (what else would you call him) was criminalised and chemically castrated for being gay. Thanks very much I don't think.
    Throughout history people have been jailed for opposing the current view, and the current view then is one that very few advocate now. Drugs, mercy killing, leaking public interest information are just a few of currently politically contentious issues that see people in jail and the laws that put them there may well be abolished in time, their cause may later be seen as just.

    A vote may be a miserably weak tool to give people, but it is better than nothing. My home town, birthplace of John Howard the prison reformer, could do with a councillor to speak for those in the prison and in the immigration centre. It might have prevented the immigration facility being burned down.

  3. #43
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    Re: Votes for prisoners

    An rather interesting blog by David Allen Green (some of you may have heard of him as Jack of Kent).

    He makes a couple of interesting points:
    • Giving some prisoners the vote does not mean all prisoners get the vote. This is a deliberate mis-representation on the part of the politicians opposed to this change.
    • MPs, by voting against allowing people who break the law to vote have, in fact, broken the law.

  4. #44
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    Re: Votes for prisoners

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    An rather interesting blog by David Allen Green (some of you may have heard of him as Jack of Kent).

    He makes a couple of interesting points:
    • Giving some prisoners the vote does not mean all prisoners get the vote. This is a deliberate mis-representation on the part of the politicians opposed to this change.
    • MPs, by voting against allowing people who break the law to vote have, in fact, broken the law.
    hey, I'm all for putting more MPs in prison

  5. #45
    Registered User Tiger Pants's Avatar
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    Re: Votes for prisoners

    Given the amounts paid in respect of slopping out claims in Scotland, I really can't believe the Uk government has been so stupid to continue to disallow the vote for prisoners ..... did I really just write that I can't believe the stupidity of government.

    I suppose we'll just have to sit back and wait for the claims to be settled, well a least that should keep me in a job for a while.

  6. #46
    Registered User FirstMove's Avatar
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    Re: Votes for prisoners

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    • MPs, by voting against allowing people who break the law to vote have, in fact, broken the law.
    A fundamental concept in English (and Scottish?) Law is that Parliament can't bind its successors. As such, no Act of Parliament or Treaty can stop future MPs from doing anything. If MPs have apparently done something illegal under the convention then they are effectively exercising their right to repeal it.

    As it is, the vote was not binding. I don't see how expressing an opinion can be illegal, the ECHR protects free speech.

    If you take the view that passing an Act that is binding on future Parliaments is itself illegal then joining the Common Market was illegal. Everyone who voted for that broke the law...

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