Re: The Queen says NO !!!! : Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:28 am  

Signed the petition, no way we can talk about democracy for one set of British citizens and not for another. They are British and should be protected the same way as the rest of us regardless of the distance of their home from London. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34282

Signed the petition, no way we can talk about democracy for one set of British citizens and not for another. They are British and should be protected the same way as the rest of us regardless of the distance of their home from London. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34282

Re: The Queen says NO !!!! : Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:37 pm  

cod'ead wrote: Interesting article in today's Mirror from John Prescott on the injustices suffered by the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands After being forcibly removed from their homes and dumped in a foreign country. After years of campaigning and winning court battles, they were finally allowed by Robin Cook to return to the outer islands (Diego Garcia was still off limits), only for that decision to be reversed by Royal Prerogative. I'm not sure what the Royal prerogative really has to do with this. If we are moving on to discussing Diego Garcia, then it is a 99.9% thread drift as it has almost nothing to do with the Queen. The "prerogative" order was made by the governement, signed off by the Queen, and not the other way round. The government of the day acted pretty shabbilly in their tactics to evict the Chagossians, in order to circumvent possible UN difficulties. But, the situation is a great deal more complicated than that. In the 4 years that passed before the prerogative order was made, NONE of the Chagossians returned to the islands (which apart from Diego Garcia itself they were free to do). There has been much litigation about the case, and settlements were reached between the government and most of the Chagossians at various times. The final ruling in the UK system came not from the Queen, but by a 3-2 House of Lords ruling. Now, I do sympathise. The Court of Appeal had decided unanimously to the contray, and so if I then found a decision in my favour overturned on a 3-2 majority, I would be pretty sick, but there is no escaping that that's just an inevitable consequence from time to time of having a finite number of appellate courts and a finite number of judges. The majority view is the decision, and that has to be accepted. However the issues were then aired in Europe (and not for the first time) and the full report of the ECHR case can be read here. This is a good place to start as it gives a potted history of the whole matter. The ECHR threw the application out. I have to say that I find the reasoning unimpeachable. It also seems to me that not many Chagossians actually want to go back, and I would certainly understand that, because the whole thing started by the only major employer in the islands closing down, and so any re-settlers would basically have nothing to do, no jobs and no source of income. It would be a dead zone, and even if a few hundred did move back, it seems to me to be a plan as doomed as the Dodo, would there even be a next generation, why would any young Chagossian choose to stay on the island when there was no obvious future in doing so? I don't think there is therefore any meaningful analogy with the Falklands at all, and while I can certainly sympathise with the remaining Chagossians to a degree, it isn't some great cause celebre. Credit to the remaining combatants for whipping it up into the public eye but unlike the Dodo, the Chagossians have had full resort to the Highest Courts and the House of Lords, and now the ECHR have finally ruled against them. In a judicial system such as ours, that is final, and that's how it has to be, like it or not. Like the Dodo I'm afraid it's a dead duck.

cod'ead wrote: Interesting article in today's Mirror from John Prescott on the injustices suffered by the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands After being forcibly removed from their homes and dumped in a foreign country. After years of campaigning and winning court battles, they were finally allowed by Robin Cook to return to the outer islands (Diego Garcia was still off limits), only for that decision to be reversed by Royal Prerogative. I'm not sure what the Royal prerogative really has to do with this. If we are moving on to discussing Diego Garcia, then it is a 99.9% thread drift as it has almost nothing to do with the Queen. The "prerogative" order was made by the governement, signed off by the Queen, and not the other way round. The government of the day acted pretty shabbilly in their tactics to evict the Chagossians, in order to circumvent possible UN difficulties. But, the situation is a great deal more complicated than that. In the 4 years that passed before the prerogative order was made, NONE of the Chagossians returned to the islands (which apart from Diego Garcia itself they were free to do). There has been much litigation about the case, and settlements were reached between the government and most of the Chagossians at various times. The final ruling in the UK system came not from the Queen, but by a 3-2 House of Lords ruling. Now, I do sympathise. The Court of Appeal had decided unanimously to the contray, and so if I then found a decision in my favour overturned on a 3-2 majority, I would be pretty sick, but there is no escaping that that's just an inevitable consequence from time to time of having a finite number of appellate courts and a finite number of judges. The majority view is the decision, and that has to be accepted. However the issues were then aired in Europe (and not for the first time) and the full report of the ECHR case can be read here. This is a good place to start as it gives a potted history of the whole matter. The ECHR threw the application out. I have to say that I find the reasoning unimpeachable. It also seems to me that not many Chagossians actually want to go back, and I would certainly understand that, because the whole thing started by the only major employer in the islands closing down, and so any re-settlers would basically have nothing to do, no jobs and no source of income. It would be a dead zone, and even if a few hundred did move back, it seems to me to be a plan as doomed as the Dodo, would there even be a next generation, why would any young Chagossian choose to stay on the island when there was no obvious future in doing so? I don't think there is therefore any meaningful analogy with the Falklands at all, and while I can certainly sympathise with the remaining Chagossians to a degree, it isn't some great cause celebre. Credit to the remaining combatants for whipping it up into the public eye but unlike the Dodo, the Chagossians have had full resort to the Highest Courts and the House of Lords, and now the ECHR have finally ruled against them. In a judicial system such as ours, that is final, and that's how it has to be, like it or not. Like the Dodo I'm afraid it's a dead duck.