The Bill of Rights -A Waste of Time

As a regular commuter into the City of Belfast it is simply impossible to not notice the massive amount of expense that the Human Rights Consortium has poured into the attempts to set up a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.You simply only need to look at buses with slogans like "There are more peacewalls here than ever before- Make it right" among others to realise this.All this however has left me with a lot of questions one being what difference is a Bill of Rights going to make these objectives.To be honest I cannot see how it can make the slighest difference.I cannot for the life of me figure out how a Bill of Rights will sort out the problems at interface areas.Can you really imagine people in the Ardoyne/Ballysillian for example settling their grievances because of a Bill of Rights?Of course not these greivances will take time no amount of legislation is going to alter that.

Also is there anyone who truly believes that the Unionist community in Northern Ireland is going to gain anything out of this Bill of Rights.Well lets look at the parties who are in favour of a Bill of Rights .Sinn Fein and the SDLP .What is the Unionist position well the TUV,DUP and the UUP are all dead set against it.Hardly a glowing recomendation of the "shared " aspect of a Bill of Rights.On top of this we have to look at the concessions that the Unionist community has given up over the past 30 years in the name of equal rights 1)control of Stormont which is now a "powersharing" executive 2) the imposition of 50/50 quota into the police based not on merit but on religion 3) the taking down of statues and ending of the right to fly the Union flag in the Limavady and Bannbridge Councils.These are just 3 examples of what Unionists have had to give up for rights.

Furthermore we have to rememeber the fact that a Bill of Rights only reflects the period in history that it was written in.Look at the American Bill of Rights one of the ammendments is that "every man has the right to bear arms." This reflects the circumstances of the American nation in the 18th Century when weapons were needed for protection but has gone on to latterly cause problems in many states.In this way a Bill of Rights in Northern Ireland will reflect the needs of 2008 not the needs of future generations.

Finally in conclusion in my own view we have to many rights in our lifes anyway in Northern Ireland for example we have the EU Charter of Human Rights as well as countless laws passed thorough the House of Commons.This laid to a case the other week were a Food critic was sent to court on the basis that a chef was "hurt" by the report surely the food critic was just doing the job they were paid to do!