Our human rights have been taken away

[Soph7777]

I know it's for a good cause.

I know it's to save lives.

But our basic human rights have been taken from under us, in the short space of a week.

I find this part most of all the scariest.

I'm really struggling mentally with government control to this extent.

How long can this last before people lose their minds and rebel?

I agree Iwanna. It was teachers for a while. People move on to next.

"Our right to be unhappy about the restrictions of our freedoms" It feels like sitting in a lifeboat and listening to someone complain that the seats are too hard.

@LastTrainEast

I completely agree.

It also highlights a complete disconnect from the physical reality of implementing those rights and upholding them on a daily basis. The law, or the 'right' is an organic, alive entity enshrined in an intellectual prism from which we can study, contemplate and analyse it but it exists primarily as a lived experience.

Gosh, I sound quite woke there. I don't mean to. Just not able to express my thought as clearly as I would like.

Our rights are under threat btw, but not from this. Before this happened it was decided that women should no longer exist and most people didn't notice.

please share exactly what human right has been removed?

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1 contains the text to which I will now refer.

Article 5 has been somewhat compromised for all of us and severely* compromised if you happen to be mentally-ill, I said upthread "I fear for the mentally-ill who risk being sectioned by a single overworked doctor who may be working outside his/her specialism because the safeguarding requirement for two doctors to sign off on sectioning a patient has been suspended".

• Article 11 has been suspended outright.
• First protocol Article 2 has been compromised, and effectively suspended for some people, by the closure of schools and universities. Not all children have internet access and many university students cannot study because they lack equipment and lab access.
• First protocol Article 3 has been suspended outright.

The loss of personal liberty required for social distancing is not the only human rights suspension here, and is by no means the most worrying.

OP, you have absolutely nothing to worry about regarding the government not giving our rights back when this is all over... because I promise you they will be bloody DESPERATE too!

This situation is costing them a fortune - from paying for lost wages, to the halt of major construction projects, to low of tourism, to bailing out airlines... etc etc
honestly they will be desperate for the country to get back to work, get out there spending money etc,

The government were loath to lock the country down because of financial fears - at first they were going along the route of 'herd immunity' but realised they had no choice.

Don't worry - we will be back living our lives before we all know it. But for now we've all got to do our part and lock down 👏🏽

@LastTrainEast Before this happened it was decided that women should no longer exist and most people didn't notice.

I don't recognise your handle from FWR. You are welcome to join us.

I don’t think you really understand the definition of human rights. You remind me of my children when they were younger who claimed their human rights were being abused when they couldn’t have something they wanted.

By taking the action they are taking, they are actually protecting our rights (and often better than we could do for ourselves). they just have to priorities those rights or rather recognise the order of priorities that makes some rights possible.

For example,

You can have great freedom of movement rights but they are meaningless without access to transport or means to move.

You can have great educational resources but meaningless if your community is struck down by measles and no one is vaccinated and you don't have basic healthcare.

We are also part of a global pandemic so there has to be an alignment ona global level, no?

Being wary when you see the police overstepping their bounds and trying to enforce "rules" that they've made up themselves that go above and beyond what the govt has required is not picking on key workers for no good reason. They have a job to do and a right to do it. They do not have the right to make their own laws.

Molly is correct about the govt though, they delayed doing this for as long as possible and will be keen to stop it as soon as possible because people stuck at home are for the most part not doing the economy any good. The govt has committed to covering wages for some people - they will not want to extend that any longer than necessary.

please share exactly what human right has been removed?

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1 contains the text to which I will now refer.

• Article 5 has been somewhat compromised for all of us and severely compromised if you happen to be mentally-ill, I said upthread "I fear for the mentally-ill who risk being sectioned by a single overworked doctor who may be working outside his/her specialism because the safeguarding requirement for two doctors to sign off on sectioning a patient has been suspended".
• Article 11 has been suspended outright.
• First protocol Article 2 has been compromised, and effectively suspended for some people, by the closure of schools and universities. Not all children have internet access and many university students cannot study because they lack equipment and lab access.
• First protocol Article 3 has been suspended outright.

The loss of personal liberty required for social distancing is not the only human rights suspension here, and is by no means the most worrying.

Who is sectioning designed to protect?

It is designed to stop the patient harming themselves. I understand that it is a much more complex situation and for people experiencing MH issues I don't want to appear to trivialise their concerns but what about a reverse of this? A known person struggling in their community couldn't access safe, warm accommodation with the medicine they needed because there weren't two signatories on a document.

I know that is simplifying a complex area and I repeat, I really don't want to support an argument or discourse that minimises these very real concerns - I am just thinking that atm people are having to think in broader terms and taking a conservative approach in order to protect vulnerable people.

OP, you have absolutely nothing to worry about regarding the government not giving our rights back when this is all over... because I promise you they will be bloody DESPERATE too!

Don't be so sure of that. Our rights go beyond being allowed out of the house. Article 11 and First Protocol Article 3 would be very convenient for a Government to forget about. And of course it would save LAs and the NHS some money if they could permanently dispense with all that pesky safeguarding that's been relaxed in Schedules 8-10 and 12 of the Coronavirus Act 2020, after all it would only hurt the mentally-ill and the disabled, who many people don't think of as being fully-human and won't care about.

@PrincessConsueIaBananaHammock

Your view appears to be shaped by your experiences growing up in a different, authoritarian society. I wonder if you can see that people who have grown up in a capitalist, liberal society may have a better experience of what their government might do and the realities of that world.

I am a little bit better fed up of the 'wisdom' of people who actually only know their own reality and try to project that wisdom on to everyone else regardless of their circumstances. In every society, no matter how totalitarian, history has taught us that the freedom to think independently can always be found. It comes from the self.

Who is sectioning designed to protect? It is designed to stop the patient harming themselves.

And others. And it's often misused.

safe, warm accommodation

If you're a woman, a psych ward is anything but safe. We are talking about involuntary detention here, if a patient wanted admission to the ward, one doctor would be sufficient to assess clinical need. I repeat, we are talking about someone being locked in the ward, that should need two doctors to sign for that.

My experience helps me understand why others are worried and not dismiss them as pathetic,selfish snowflakes.

On a personal level I don't believe this will ever become permanent, at least on the movement side because we live in a capitalist country, and capitalism needs people on the streets.

@bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg

I really don't want to minimise anyones' s experiences here. I am just trying to think practically, what can people do under these circumstances. They are unexpected, which doesn't mean we shouldn't have a plan and think about them. I also think that with vulnerable groups of people there often are strategies in place but they are kept private to protect people. Perhaps locking people in makes some people feel more secure (all door openings might be recorded and logged).

I think, as much as anything, we're all human (even the bloody guv'mint). None of us have lived through this before (and I say that having been through SARS and CJD). There have been mistakes made, there will be mistakes made, and we need (especially the bloody guv'mint) to learn from them, to be able to better cope in the future.

DH has a favourite saying, I can't remember who it's from 'never ascribe to malice what could also reasonably be ascribed to incompetence'. I think it could apply in spades.

As the current crisis subsides, I absolutely agree, we have to be vigilant to ensure that what was perhaps a reasonable (or perhaps not) curtailment of our freedom, isn't allowed to live on unquestioned and unchecked.

And yes, there does need to be vehement advocacy for minority and vulnerable groups to ensure they are not sacrificed on the alter of crowd control, while understanding just how overburdened some essential services (like the NHS) are right now. Before we're anywhere near to what is likely to be the peak.

Oh and my experience also contributes to the WTF incredulous feeling I get when I see posters screaming for more restrictions,more reporting, eager to ring the police on their neighbours,friends,family, asking for the army or martial law. That is definitely a very subjective,personal side effect I agree.

And for me too, Princess. I keep thinking "you don't realize what you're asking for". If it's temporary and as limited as it can be, fine, but seeing people eager to dob their neighbors in and see "delinquents" rounded up and punished is alarming.

Excellent post, mbosnz.

@PrincessConsueIaBananaHammock

&

@TheProdigalKittensReturn

I don't disagree with either of you, there. My concern is that we trade an illusion of freedom or abstract version of it that only protects some for a reality of control for everyone (or certainly the most vulnerable). The solution to my mind is to keep an eye on the basics and keep them alive.

It's delicate balance during a crisis, and I'm more alarmed at the public's willingness to err on the side of round up your neighbors and assume the police have your best interests at heart than I was when this thread started, even though I started very much in disagreement with the OP due to things she said in her last thread.

Perhaps locking people in makes some people feel more secure (all door openings might be recorded and logged).

Some patients do ask to be placed on the locked ward because they don't trust themselves not to leave and try to harm themselves. Being suicidal is no fun, believe me.

I'm not talking about voluntary in-patients though. "Sectioning" refers to people who don't want to be on the ward being detained against their will. People should not be detained against their will lightly, and the need for two doctors to co-sign on that detention is a safeguard against a malicious or incompetent doctor detaining someone needlessly. At this time, with the NHS under stress, the chance of a single doctor making a mistake (e.g. through working outside their area of expertise because of staffing shortages) is higher. Therefore the need for two doctors should have been kept to protect patients against that. Remember that m the case of a female patient we are talking about putting her against her will in an environment where she's at high risk of rape, has no access to the emergency pill, and will be disbelieved as a "nutter" when she reports rape, this decision should not be left to just one doctor.

Yes, at the moment I find the public's reaction (including the aggressiveness on here for anyone who dares to complain, question or struggle) more scary than the steps the Government are taking. That might change ,or not.

Btw,I haven't left the house since the 20th so questioning AND following guidelines is possible no matter how much people insist to ignore that.

The thing about psych wards is that they aren't actually very safe for women on them at all. Which is one of many reasons why it should not be easy to force them into that situation against their will be sectioning them.