Dear Editor
In my Oxford entrance exam in 1976, one of the first questions on the General Paper was ‘How many rights do you have?’ I wrote down ‘none’ and started to explain that rights could exist only if everyone believed and lived in accordance with the same set of responsibilities.
At this point I decided the risk of annoying whoever set that particular question was too great and answered other questions instead. However, responsibilities rather than rights is something I considered then and still consider to be essential to our national wellbeing. It seems to me that rights without responsibilities leads to bankruptcy, loneliness, ill health, criminality, feral children and unhappiness to name but a few of the ills afflicting our country.
I recently read through the European Convention on Human Rights and the first thing that struck me was that everyone in the ‘jurisdiction of the High Contracting Parties is secured the rights and freedoms within section 1 of the convention’ with no obligation to:
⁃ be truthful
⁃ earn a living
⁃ pay their taxes
⁃ support themselves and their families and dependents
⁃ look after their own health and wellbeing and that of their dependents
⁃ educate themselves and their families to understand the issues that matter for the nation (economics, science, food and farming, energy and power, engineering, business, mathematics, religion, government and the law etc)
⁃ be kind, considerate and neighbourly and most particularly to those who cannot look after themselves
⁃ recognise the equal value of all other humans whatever their sex, age, colour or religion.
I wonder whether some of our more thoughtful politicians might consider replacing the ECHR with a Human Responsibilities Act or would they be ousted by the lawyers, trades unions and rent seekers who’ve made their fortunes exploiting the rest of us?
Carol Atkinson
York
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