[Billy653]

Leave the EUROPEAN UNION end of.

This was posted from The Student Room's Android App on my GT-I9100

[Alexr115]

(Original post by Carter78)
This is probably a debate for a different thread but what do you mean a religion is granted? We're all born atheist until religion is forced upon us by our parents/upbringings.

Regardless, if you decide to follow a different religion you do typically have to prove your adherence to this new faith. Of course you don't sit an exam, but my mother (who's a priest) regularly trains "students" off hers (some of whom who were originally of different faith backgrounds) to take communion and therefore become Anglicans. This process involves them taking "classes" in bible study, theological debates etc, all to prove/demonstrate their adherence to the faith. I.e the thinking is that they might call themselves Anglicans, but they officially won't be recognised as one by the Church until they are baptised/confirmed.

There isn't and there shouldn't be anything from stopping you from being able to choose to follow a faith.

From reading your post I am interpreting what you are saying, by studying the 'religion' you then 'earn' the right to class yourself as that faith in the eyes of that religion.

My point is that being able to choose to follow a religion is not earned, that is a given.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

EDIT: Here's one for you. Say you're 16 years old, you are in prison for a minimum of 5 years. Should that person lose the right to vote?
Take into account their offence was committed before they had the 'right' to vote and they had not committed any further offences in prison, it seems illogical to lose the 'right to vote' when they never had it in the first place?

Leave the EUROPEAN UNION end of.

Good idea!!! We should follow Norway's attitude to punishment

[Carter78]

(Original post by Alexr115)
There isn't and there shouldn't be anything from stopping you from being able to choose to follow a faith.

From reading your post I am interpreting what you are saying, by studying the 'religion' you then 'earn' the right to class yourself as that faith in the eyes of that religion.

My point is that being able to choose to follow a religion is not earned, that is a given.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

Alright, I understand what you're saying.

(Original post by Alexr115)
EDIT: Here's one for you. Say you're 16 years old, you are in prison for a minimum of 5 years. Should that person lose the right to vote?
Take into account their offence was committed before they had the 'right' to vote and they had not committed any further offences in prison, it seems illogical to lose the 'right to vote' when they never had it in the first place?

Well in this case it's not that they would lose the right to vote, it's that the right wouldn't be granted in the first place when they turn 18. Morally the issue isn't suspect because they would've never enjoyed that privilege in the first place.

Kind of like banning me from growing wings and flying away. It's hardly a daily privilege I was able to enjoy in the first place.

[mmmpie]

(Original post by internetguru)
Are you saying if the leader of Syria signed something saying it was illegal not to execute 50 innocent people per day all other leaders for the rest of history in Syria would have to abide by it?

If they made a law like that they would place themselves in a difficult position, since if they obeyed it they could commit a crime against humanity, and if they didn't they would violate their own law.

[mmmpie]

(Original post by Billy653)
Leave the EUROPEAN UNION end of.

This was posted from The Student Room's Android App on my GT-I9100

This has very little to do with the EU.

[internetguru]

(Original post by mmmpie)
If they made a law like that they would place themselves in a difficult position, since if they obeyed it they could commit a crime against humanity, and if they didn't they would violate their own law.

Therefore you are a fool that does not understand that treaties are just pieces of paper that can be broken without consequence at any time.

[mmmpie]

(Original post by internetguru)
Therefore you are a fool that does not understand that treaties are just pieces of paper that can be broken without consequence at any time.

Oh dear.

International law is enforced by two mechanisms: first if you don't keep to your agreements people will stop making agreements with you, since these agreements cover everything from human rights to whether or not we allow you to buy fuel, that's not an empty threat; secondly, if you do something sufficiently bad, you warrant military intervention. That latter rarely happens, but it has been known - see World War 2 for an especially prominent example. The former is quite frequent - how often do you hear about trade embargos on the news?

There's a third mechanism, although that only applies where the rule of law is respected - like where I am and you apparently are not. Every treaty which we ratify becomes part of our own law, that's what ratification does. The European Convention on human rights, and various of it's protocols, is part of british law - both directly in the form of the Human Rights Act and indirectly via the instruments of ratification for the the ECHR and the Treaty of Maastricht.

Now in principle, parliament is sovereign and can make or unmake any law it likes. Suppose parliament decides to undo the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the ECHR. Well it would also void the treaties of Maastricht, Nice and Lisbon - so we'd be out of the EU - you may think that's a good thing but it would cripple our economy to just abruptly cease to be in the EU like that. It would also utterly destroy our credibility in the world, nobody would ever listen to the UK on human rights issues again, and we wouldn't be taken seriously on a host of other matters either. Finally, the Council of Europe, OECD, OSCE and EU would all be obliged to censure us, further slagging us off to the world and probably restricting trade both with us and with anyone that sides with us.

So, just to recap: that's our reputation ruined, our legal system in chaos, our internal economy severely damaged, trade with half the world restricted or heavily taxed, and a whole load of EU related things which you probably won't care about but I do. And you think that's "no consequences", do you?

[ApresAlkan]

(Original post by M1011)
While I'm sure your arguments are very valid, you're not going to convince me that it's worth spending a dime of my tax money on criminals, other then to lock them in a room.

They can make their own chances in life, just like the rest of us IMO. I'm nowhere near committed enough to look up a paper on this, but on a side note doesn't physics tell us (I think?) that all our actions are predetermined at an atomic level or some such? That what was going to happen will happen and all of that confusing blurb? Well perhaps that is the case, but nevertheless we have formed a society with certain boundaries and if you operate outside of those then you face consequences. We don't decide many of our characteristics (how naturally intelligent we are, how committed we are, how sociable we are), yet that doesn't mean society doesn't restrict us based on those attributes. If we can't punish a criminal for committing crime because 'they didn't choose to do it', then why can we reward someone for hard work as 'they didn't choose to do it' either?

I think it's time to agree to disagree either way. Neither of us operates a prison (well I assume you don't) so our opinions are pretty meaningless anyway

I maintain my original stance, but thanks for a relatively interesting conversation.

[Harry Callahan]

No. They served the crime, they can do the time, and part of the punishment is not having the right to vote. Even though I'm sure many of them don't care enough about politics to vote anyway.

[S1L3NTPR3Y]

What's the ECHR going to do if we ignore them?
They should get to Azerbaijan and Russia (who are signatories of the convection on human rights) they are the real problems, people who really do abuse human rights; prisoners voting is negligible in comparison.

[Kennedy7697]

(Original post by Stefan1991)
Prisoners are still people aren't they? If you have your vote stripped off you when you're sent to prison how can you voice your opposition to the law which put you there?

You have broken the law, so why should you choose how it is run.

[Pindar]

(Original post by Kennedy7697)
You have broken the law, so why should you choose how it is run.

That's a very stupid illogical circular argument, i.e. the idea that you must obey the laws before you can change them.

How can prisoners change the law if they are banned from voting? It simply creates the false illusion that everyone agrees with the law when those who don't are simply imprisoned and hidden away.

Ghandi didn't obey the law, Martin Luther King didn't obey the law, Nelson Mandela didn't obey the law - were they all wrong? Should they not have had their right to 'change the law' removed as a result?

Your theory is based on the assumption that governance by another with ASSUMED consent is morally right, considering that those who are put in prison by their laws are not afforded the right to give their consent - and from there you must follow the laws laid down which you may not agree with and may have no option but to break.

The whole "criminals surrender their right to vote when they break the law" argument is a fallacy. You're assuming every law is always a good law, you're assuming it's always an option for people not to break the law.

Our laws must protect every eventuality, and protections for laws which might unfairly discriminate and target certain people. By taking the power of vote away of those unfairly discriminated against, you are opening yourself to abuse of power.

Giving government the power to decide who can and cannot vote makes government illegitimate, and tyrannical, as not everyone is having their say and government can choose who can and can't since they make the laws.

By letting these prisoners to VOTE, does it harm the society in any way? No.
Does it serve any valuable purpose? No.

By letting these prisoners not vote, does it harm society? Yes. It harms our democracy, and gives government a lot of power to abuse its powers.

[Pindar]

(Original post by TheHistoryStudent)
I don't think they should be allowed to vote whilst they are in prison.

At the end of the day they're in there because they have broken the laws of the land and our society, an so whilst they're in there, they should be viewed as being outside of society, including voting for it's leaders.

Once they are out of course, then they should be allowed to vote again, as they've paid their debt, and presumably, unless they're just career criminals, should be looking for ways to integrate back into society.

But they're not "out of society", as the laws they can't vote on are directly affecting them. If anything more than they affect people normally.

Does giving the government the power to strip the vote off people they don't like serve any type of useful purpose? Apart from damaging our democracy and giving government a lot of power.

[Christofferz]

So, suddenly we're supposed to revoke human rights for people, just because they did wrong? We're gonna do wrong just to show people that have done wrong it's not ok? This is weird...

[zaliack]

(Original post by Kennedy7697)
You have broken the law, so why should you choose how it is run.

Totally agree, so woman like this shouldn't be able to vote if they are locked away on voting day!

[Hopple]

(Original post by zaliack)
Totally agree, so woman like this shouldn't be able to vote if they are locked away on voting day!

The crime there was wasting police and court time. You'd do better to argue that some people falsely convicted of something would be denied the vote (which is a pretty good argument).

[zaliack]

(Original post by Hopple)
The crime there was wasting police and court time. You'd do better to argue that some people falsely convicted of something would be denied the vote (which is a pretty good argument).

She was threatened by her boyfriend and his family into retracting her statement though, which is why I used her as an example.

[Hopple]

(Original post by zaliack)
She was threatened by her boyfriend and his family into retracting her statement though, which is why I used her as an example.

You're saying that she didn't really commit a crime, so shouldn't be denied her vote. A stronger argument is someone who even the courts (upon appeal) say didn't commit a crime. I agree with you, she shouldn't have been locked up, but the default position for wasting police and court time should be crime so it isn't as far off justice as locking up an innocent.

[zaliack]

(Original post by Hopple)
You're saying that she didn't really commit a crime, so shouldn't be denied her vote. A stronger argument is someone who even the courts (upon appeal) say didn't commit a crime. I agree with you, she shouldn't have been locked up, but the default position for wasting police and court time should be crime so it isn't as far off justice as locking up an innocent.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. I'm just trying to show that people can be imprisoned for things which don't really justify sanctioning their human rights. But of course, the miscarriage of justice argument is stronger, but it won't exactly be of use until they get deemed innocent.

[Hopple]

(Original post by zaliack)
Sorry I didn't make myself clear. I'm just trying to show that people can be imprisoned for things which don't really justify sanctioning their human rights. But of course, the miscarriage of justice argument is stronger, but it won't exactly be of use until they get deemed innocent.

Hmm, I see your point. But then it gets subjective, what crimes result in prison sentences but shouldn't, and even what crimes don't but should. There's already a lot of argument about whether prison sentences are long enough, and drugs (for personal use at least) divide opinion too.