It really is time to put a stop to the nonsense going on at the Bill of Rights Forum. This bunch of professional do-gooders, whose job seems to be to advise those who will advise the government on a Bill of Rights, seem to want to allow anyone under the age of 18 to escape prosecution when they commit a crime.

I'm sure you're all familiar with stories about violent and disruptive youngsters who proudly proclaim "I know my rights" when teachers attempt to discipline them. They must be having a good laugh at this. This is not what a Bill of Rights is supposed to be about!

There is an age under which children aren't held criminally responsible for their actions because they aren't mature enough to understand right and wrong. At the moment, that age is set as 10. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child don't like it being that low (the BORF seem happy enough to let us all know that bit) saying anything below 12 is not acceptable. What the BORF aren't so quick to talk about is The BORF do admit that they (the UN) view ages between 14-16 as "high" (though they deem this commendable), and yet they want the age raised to 18. So the offender, in the worst cases possibly a 17 year old who has abused a child or raped a woman, will be treated with kid-gloves and emerge with no criminal record.

Follow up:

This is just an example of the lunacy surrounding the process of advising on a Bill of Rights. There seems to be more than a little ego involved in the Bill of Rights Forum with participants wanting to set Northern Ireland up as some kind of leading light for others to emulate.

The simple fact is there is a reasonably good Bill of Rights that could be emulated if it was felt necessary. It's short and to the point and it guarantees the citizen important freedom from the state in key areas. The local shower, on the other hand, are intent on using the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights as an opportunity to impose their own political objectives on an unwitting populace by dressing them up as 'rights' and manipulating the people of Northern Ireland. It's a flagrant abuse and needs to be stopped.

(Sorry for this being a day late, I was away from my PC all day yesterday. What a depressing story to come back to!)