Secular Concession

The Conservatives' Leader, David Cameron, spoke in Parliament today about arranged marriages being used as a means of migration to the UK.

They could have been cut by at least half at a stroke if the Conservatives had honoured their 1979 election promise to end the "concession" whereby foreign men can live in the UK through marriage.

They didn't, because of the issue of human rights.

But there's nothing about border controls in human rights legislation.

If the concept of human rights means anything it means human dignity and is either universal (see 'In our hands' - the effectiveness of human rights protection 50 years after the Universal Declaration, Strasbourg, 2-4 September 1998, page 7) or non-existent. As such, it is sometimes said that its underlying basis is in the divine.

The "bible" for the concept is Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, who was a deist. He wasn't a Christian, but he believed in a Supreme Being.

I tend to. I also tend to believe there is no such thing as "rights"; there are only good laws. The argument as to what constitutes a good law is currently being subverted by the word "rights".

Allowing foreign men (the "right") to live in the UK through marriage is not a "right". They could live, with their wives, in their own countries.

If I were a foreigner coming to these islands I would want children both in order to bolster my "right" to residence and to increase the numbers (and political power) of my group.

Being an Englishman, I don't want children....