Some assorted politics for a Monday.

Congratulations to Martin Tod on being selected as the new Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Winchester. He’ll be a hard-working campaigner and would make an excellent MP.

Liberal Democrat Voice highlights David Cameron’s record as he marks his first year as Tory leader, and directs me to these articles in the Daily Mirror which highlight some amusing volte-face:

CAPITALISM
Dec 2005: Supports it. “In short, we need to campaign for capitalism. To promote profit. To fight for free trade. To remind, indeed educate our citizens about the facts of economic life.”
Jan 1 2006: Er, opposes it. “I don’t believe in ‘isms’. Words like communism, socialism, capitalism and republicanism all conjure up one image in my mind: ‘extremism.'”

CHILD TRUST FUNDS
May 4 2001: Against. “The more I thought about it, the more I realised it was an election gimmick, with drawbacks.”
Dec 15 2003: He’s for them. “The Government have been accused of promoting child trust funds as a gimmick. I think that that is a bit unfair.”

PATIENTS’ PASSPORTS
June 29 2004: He likes these. “We will say to people languishing on waiting lists that if they do go private they can take with them one half of what the operation would cost on the NHS.”
Oct 21 2005: You’ve guessed it. “I think the patients’ passport is not right, because it takes money out of the Health Service.”

Not quite politics, but I recommend this BBC News article about agnosticism (my neck of the woods).

Finally, I have signed some more petitions on the Downing Street petition engine all of which are worthy of support.

David Cameron, who is apparently the new leader of the Tories, says that Members of Parliament should not set their own salaries. Superficially, it sounds like a good idea, but I wonder if it’s anything more than a soundbite.

As I understand it, changes to MPs’ salaries are based on recommendations from the Senior Salaries Review Body, put formally passed by the Commons. Some MPs vote against their own pay raises, of course, knowing that their constituents will approve of such a stance.

Now, does anyone know the last time MPs passed a motion that differed from the SSRB recommendation? Does it happen? And when it does, do they tend to raise pay and allowances by more or less than the SSRB suggested? My suspicion is that the SSRB recommendation is always adopted, but that on occasions when it isn’t a lower level is chosen instead. If the former is the case, then Cameron’s proposal would make no difference; if the latter, it would actually result in MPs’ pay rising faster.

Ladies and gentlemen, David “Dave” Cameron.

Thank you, it’s lovely to be here. Now, I’d like to you about my cunning plan to sort out the Human Rights Act.

You may recall that we Conservatives previously suggested we’d scrap the Human Rights Act. This, it turned out, would be problematic as we back the European Convention on Human Rights. So, we’ve come up with a great way of resolving this: repeal the Human Rights Act, but replace it with something called the British Bill of Rights – a sort of “Human Rights Act”.

But our version would be different – oh yes. For a start, it wouldn’t apply to “humans” but to “British people”. No more of this Johnny Foreigner using our own laws against us nonsense. It will be for British people to use in British courts. By using the word “British” several times, we have convinced The Sun, formerly opposed to human rights, to back us. Clever, eh?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. The Human Rights Act is already a British law, codifying a largely British view of human rights, and what’s more the UK already has a Bill of Rights. Ours will be better than that, though. Ours will be a British Bill of Rights. There, I said it.

What will be in our British Bill of Rights? All the good stuff that makes us British. Obviously I can’t yet precisely say what this will be – these things have to be looked at – but I plan to set some lawyers on to the case. Lawyers are, of course, the best people to define Britishness, because having spent so much time in criminal courts they’re familiar with British life first hand. So big up the lawyers.

Some people – let’s call them pro-Europe crime-loving terrorists – will critcise me for being so vague. They may even suggest that this is a desperate attempt to have a policy on something without actually putting forward a proposal at all. Well tish, I say. Tish and pish. I shall deal with that criticism by giving an example of what I would change.

Section 12, for example, of the Human Rights Act 1998 enshrines Freedom of Expression into British law. This sort of recklessness allows Jonathan Ross to be rude about myself and Mrs Thatcher. Well that’s not very British, is it? So Section 12 would be replaced by something more precise, detailing rights and responsibilities. For example, “Subjects shall have the right to go to Wimbledon and to make lovely jam, and the responsibility not to say “wank” to the Leader of the Opposition on BBC One.” The current law is just too vague.

As it stands, the Human Rights Act upholds the rights of foreign criminals to murder us in our beds. I can’t remember which clause precisely does it, but we all know it does. My new British Bill of Rights will make clear – probably, once we’ve decided what’s in it – that we have the right not to be murdered in our beds by foreign criminals, and to demand that any violent death to which we find ourself subject should be at the hands of proper British criminals.

We need to reframe the law to promote a British view of rights, balancing liberty with security. These fancy-pants notions of inherent freedom confuse the public, encouraging them to think they have some sort of ingrained rights rather than passively accepting those the state chooses to give them. This sort of continental nonsense has no place in a country where hundreds of years of tradition dictate that people are ruled by their betters and their children ruled by the children of their parent’s betters, and their children ruled by the children of the children of their parent’s betters’ parents. Thank you.

Peter Black and Richard Allan have more.