YORKSHIRE Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered 13 women across the north of England, says that keeping him locked up is an infringement of his human rights and he wants to be set free.
No surprise there. Earlier this week, Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg, of West Yorkshire Police, told this newspaper that killers and rapists were regularly using the human rights laws to escape justice in a way that was "callous, heartle
ss and deeply offensive".
And as Harry Smelt, husband of Olive Smelt, who narrowly survived after being battered with a hammer by Sutcliffe, aptly put it: "He didn't give the victims many human rights, did he?"
Jacqui Smith immediately condemned the move and said she opposed Sutcliffe's release. But what has it got to do with her? She's only the Home Secretary.
In truth, the decision on Sutcliffe's future will be taken not by the people's elected representatives, but by unaccountable judges in London and Europe.
Ultimately, if a judge from Bratislava, sitting in Strasbourg, decides Sutcliffe should be free to roam your neighbourhood, he will be released – and there's nothing you or your government can do about it.
It is no use the Home Secretary complaining – it was her government which handed over control of our criminal justice system to a cabal of unelected, unrepresentative activist lawyers.
The result has been a catastrophic collapse of public confidence in our system of justice.
We can no longer protect our borders, deport foreign-born jihadi lunatics or even keep dangerous killers and rapists in jail.
Det Chief Supt Gregg's comments were prompted by the case of rapist and paedophile Michael Clark, who used the Human Rights Act to demand housing in Leeds shortly before raping and killing a 14-year-old neighbour.
Didn't that poor child have any human rights? Under the present rules, the answer is no – or rather, any rights she may have had were considered secondary to Michael Clark's rights to continue preying on vulnerable children.
Is it any wonder that the Human Rights Act is the most despised piece of legislation on the statute book?
Word for wordCLEAR a space while I clamber aboard my hobby horse.
In her memoirs, currently being serialised in the newspapers, Cherie Blair writes of being "overwhelmed by the enormity" of discovering that she was pregnant, aged 45 while living in Downing Street.
No she wasn't. Enormity doesn't mean big or enormous; it means "extreme or monstrous wickedness" as the Oxford English Dictionary has it.
So you could talk of the enormity of the crimes of Fred West or Harold Shipman. But the enormity of becoming pregnant? I don't think so.
Despite the fact that some people describe Mrs Blair as the "Wicked Witch", I doubt she actually meant what she wrote.
Another constantly misused word is "prevaricate", which doesn't mean to delay or put off – that's procrastinate. Prevaricate is to speak or act falsely with the intent to deceive.
So all those journalists on the posh papers and the BBC who accused Gordon Brown of "prevaricating" over the election last year were not claiming he was dithering, as he clearly was, but that he was lying about it, a much more contentious, and potentially libellous, claim.
Dismiss me as a pedant if you will, but the constant misuse of these and many other words transforms the wonderfully sharp tool that is the English language – our nation's greatest gift to the world – into a blunt and ineffective instrument.
As a result, even well-educated people, such as LSE graduate Cherie Blair – supposedly one of Britain's finest lawyers – are incapable of expressing themselves with any clarity or precision.
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