Latest news with #MikeGodwin
The Sun
3 days ago
- General
- The Sun
Hermer and Starmer are drunk on concept of international law…and their blind faith to it is leading us down dark path
THE longer a political argument goes on, US lawyer Mike Godwin wrote back in 1990, the greater the probability that it will end with a comparison with the Nazis. It is inevitable, in other words. If 'Godwin's Law', as it has come to be termed, was true 35 years ago, it is even more so now. 4 4 Attorney General Lord Hermer has become the latest to make the jibe, during a lecture at defence think-tank the Royal United Services Institute. In it, he compared the arguments of those who want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — which includes Reform UK and many Conservatives as well as ex-Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption — to those of Nazi lawyers who rejected international law. To be fair to Hermer, he didn't quite call Nigel Farage or Kemi Badenoch 'Nazis', but he did accuse them of naivety, suggesting that they would embolden dictators like Vladimir Putin. Chemical warfare Only human rights treaties, he asserts, stand between us and a return to fascism. I don't know what world Lord Hermer is living in, but Russia's membership of the ECHR didn't exactly stop Putin bumping off his enemies, invading Crimea and waging chemical warfare on the streets of Britain with the Skripal poisonings. It was only when he attempted to annex the rest of Ukraine in 2022 by blasting its cities and sending in the tanks that the Council of Europe, which oversees the ECHR, finally had enough and suspended Russia's membership. At the time there were more than 17,000 cases pending against Russia before the European Court of Human Rights. So much for the effectiveness of international law. Meanwhile, as we have seen over and over again, the ECHR is being used by activist lawyers to frustrate the deportation of illegal migrants — serious criminals and terrorists among them. If your child doesn't like the chicken nuggets available back home in Albania, or if your conviction for sex offences against children will make you unpopular back in Iraq, deporting you is, apparently, a terrible breach of your human rights. Starmer signs deal with Mauritius to hand over Chagos Islands The 'right to a family life' now seems to mean pretty well anything, including the right to run a criminal gang in Britain. This is as far from the original intentions of the ECHR as could be imagined. Those who drafted it in 1950 would be turning in their graves if they knew what it had become. Hermer and Starmer are simply drunk on the concept of international law The convention, as written then, contained relatively few clauses but ones on which most of humanity could agree, such as a prohibition against torture. It didn't even ban the death penalty. Over the years, however, it has been expanded via various protocols, many of them highly political. Activist judges have been able to interpret the convention how they wish, using something called 'living instrument doctrine'. Democracy doesn't seem to count for much. Unlike the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which predates the ECHR by two years and declares that 'the will of the people shall be the basis of government', the ECHR provides no such assurance. That is why it must go. It has become an instrument for an elite band of lawyers to rule over the rest of us, suppressing democratic will. Not that this will cut much ice with the likes of Hermer and Keir Starmer. They won't want to dump the ECHR, or other such structures of international law, because they, of course, are members of that elite — it would be like turkeys voting for Christmas. Again, to be fair to Hermer, he did acknowledge that there are some problems with the ECHR, and suggested it might have to be renegotiated. But we have had endless amendments and they have ended the same way — with ever more protocols giving activist judges ever more powers. Hermer and Starmer are simply drunk on the concept of international law. Even when they can see its faults they can't pull themselves away from it, can't bring themselves to ask whether Britain really needs to be a member of every supra-national treaty and body. They end up being suckers for the devious agendas of people who populate those bodies. Lord Hermer's big idea is 'progressive realism', which he defines as 'a rejection of the siren song that can sadly now be heard in the Palace of Westminster, not to mention some sections of the media, that Britain abandon the constraints of international law in favour of raw power'. 4 Perverse ruling But we have already seen where a blind faith in international law leads: for example, to the outrage of the Chagos Islands being given away to Mauritius, a country which has never had ownership of the islands. The Chagos Islands, by the way, were uninhabited before European settlement. But then came the perverse ruling of a body called the International Court of Justice and Starmer, of course, could not bring himself to argue against it. Russia's membership of the ECHR didn't exactly stop Putin bumping off his enemies, invading Crimea and waging chemical warfare on the streets of Britain with the Skripal poisonings The result is not just a multi-billion-pound bill for UK taxpayers to lease back our military base: we have handed sovereignty of a strategic group of islands to a country which is becoming increasingly friendly with China — a nation whose autocratic government doesn't give a damn for human rights. That is where a pedantic following of international law gets you. As Mike Godwin argued, comparing everyone and everything you don't like to the Nazis belittles the Holocaust. But the beneficiaries of Hermer and Starmer's progressive realism aren't exactly lovers of freedom and democracy. On the contrary, a blind faith in international law is leading Britain down a dark path.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
May is water safety awareness month
GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT)– May is Water Safety Awareness Month and whether you're heading to the beach or just taking a dip in the neighborhood pool, it is important to make sure you're being aware and safe in the water. 'Water is an environment that we don't spend a lot of time in every single day of our lives. So, it's very foreign to a lot of people, and we are in such a water rich area that we have a lot of opportunities to interact with it. So, safety has to be paramount,' Director of Aquaventure in Greenville Mike Godwin.' 'Drowning with children is the number one cause of accidental death for children under the age of 5 and we are so passionate here at Goldfish at turning that statistic around,' Regional Manager of Goldfish Swim School in Greenville South Carolina Tiffany Keyser said. For all the training that children and adults do in the water, it is crucial for them to learn how to get out safely. For some, swim lessons can start as early as four months old, the same age that babies can start holding their head up on their own. 'Very important for children to understand that they need to learn how to safely climb out of a pool or a body of water if they were to fall in,' Keyser said. 'They need to practice how to efficiently do back floats so that they can breathe oxygen. That's the number one thing that we always want to teach is how to do a really great back float.' Experts said even if you are a trained swimmer, you need to be aware of what body of water you are swimming in and know your limits. 'We have to understand what our skill limits are. As adults, that's a little bit easier, but for kids, that's on the parents. The parents really have to understand what the limits of their child's swimming ability is,' Godwin said. 'I would say that, if you're taking your child to any kind of swim lesson program, make sure it's an established program that understands what they're doing.' Local swim lessons are available at Aquaventure in Winterville or for young children, you can check out the Goldfish Swim School with multiple locations across the country and one regional location in Greenville, S.C. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
