The whole purpose of Human Rights is to protect unpopular and nasty little people that the public either through spontaneous or, more commonly, manufactured dislike, find obnoxious and who, if left to their own devices would treat more oppressively than those who are regarded universally popular or more deserving of our goodwill.

The difficulty we have is that the information we receive as individuals which allow us to arrive at an informed opinion is managed and promulgated by those whose political and commercial existence is determined by the wishes of that same majority.

Thus, newspaper editors will not lend support to unpopular minorities since to do so will alienate their readership and impact upon their profit margin. Politicians will not openly support minorities deemed unpopular with the electorate since to do so has obvious consequences at the ballot box. Often, it will be the Kelvin Mackenzie's of this world who will determine who is or is not flavour of the months and go to print on it from which the political establishment will respond to what they perceive to be the popular will as measured in the editorial section of the Mail or the Sun.

In other words, your view of the world and those who inhabit it is determined by those who have the monopoly on the information you are permitted to receive to arrive at an independent or directed perception of others.

I realise I am labouring the blindingly obvious and I mean no disrespect in feeling it necessary to do so but it is important to realise that no government of whatever colour has any right to demand that its citizens trust it or to believe that it always tells the truth. Those who choose to do so in blind faith in its motives and good intentions run the risk of being led blindfold straight to the slaughterhouse!

That Mr Qatada has succeeded in his appeal is, in my view, an indication that we have a judiciary that is willing and able to assert its independent status within the realm against a government that has mobilised every resource at its disposal to rid itself of someone it does not like, against whom it has no evidence of criminal behaviour in this country who has been deprived of his freedom by the state for no other reason than he says things the government does not like and who fears that others may agree with him. With the enormous and extensive coercive powers of the criminal law at its disposal the government has not found a single suitable charge upon which to arraign him before a court of competent jurisdiction to face trial by his peers.

It demonstrate to me that if the aim of people like him is to subvert our democracy by goading weak politicians into ever increasing acts of legislative authoritarianism in the mistaken belief of accruing some electoral advantage by 'doing what the people elect them for' then he will have done more than Philip of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler combined. That the court has been able to protect people like him says a great deal more about the values professed rather than practiced by those we elect.

Human rights are for the protection of the individual against the might of the state. Whatever the state has to say about Human Rights is usually in its capacity of a serial offender who complains of his treatment at the hands of those task it is to adjudicate on them. It follows that whatever complaints are uttered by a Prime Minister or a Secretary of State as a result of an adverse judgment have no greater weight, force or credibility than that of the common offender who leaves the court complaining of the severity of his sentence.

......... against whom it has no evidence of criminal behaviour in this country who has been deprived of his freedom by the state for no other reason than he says things the government does not like .........[/url]