No to prisoners votes petition launched
February 7, 2011 3 Comments
Priti Patel, Member of Parliament for the Witham constituency has launched a no to prisoners votes petition. At this point I have to register an interest. Priti is a friend of mine and has been for years. I helped (if you can call it that) with her election last year. I have a huge amount of respect for her and the issues she campaigns on. I also share many of her views on law and order and crime and punishment.
I previouslu interviewed prisoners votes campaigner John Hirst on the subject of prisoners votes, which you can access here. Priti had fairly robust views in a Tory Radio exclusive here, as did Andrew Bridgen MP.
Whether or not denying prisoners the right to vote runs contrary to the ECHR may not be the point in the matter If the British public want their elected representatives to do something an unelected body has told them not to do could soon become the big issue. I have said Prisoners Votes will give Cameron a headache. I think he may well be reaching for the Nurofen at any moment!
Tory Radio 
Priti Patel is an elected member of parliament and has a duty to uphold the law, not to subvert it when it doesn't agree her or perhaps "makes her physically sick" like her terribly sheltered leader. The Council of Europe "nudged" The UK Parliament to put the mechanisms in place NOW, not when 650 law-breaking MPS decide to do the right thing not go fr the populist vote. Priti Patel who? Never heard of her before this, is she trying to make a mark by oppressing the already oppressed? Any citizen ho has to live under the state has the right to choose it. Period.
No actually an elected member of Parliament has a duty to uphold parliamentary sovereignty and can quite legitimately suggest that parliament has every right to suggest the ECHR is wrong on this matter.
650 law breaking MPs? Really care to list why there are 650 law breaking MPs? Any citizen who had to live under this state has the right t choose it? 12 year olds? Members of the Lords? They don't.
I have registered a complaint with gopetition in relation to the libel upon me by Priti Patel, as it occurred outside of Parliamentary privilege she is fair game. I am pleased that I have more followers on Twitter than she has support on her petition. History is repeating itself, John Lennon said he was more popular than Jesus Christ. I am more popular than Priti Patel. The thought of this will probably make her "physically ill" like David "a sheltered life he leads" Cameron.