{"id":26132,"date":"2014-06-04T08:23:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26132"},"modified":"2014-06-04T09:16:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T14:16:12","slug":"its-clearly-time-for-the-the-something-must-be-done-act-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/06\/04\/its-clearly-time-for-the-the-something-must-be-done-act-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s clearly time for <em>The Something Must Be Done Act 2014<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A post by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.legalcheek.com\/2013\/12\/the-something-must-be-done-act-2014\/\" target=\"_blank\">David Allen Green<\/a> from last year that prefigures the political landscape of today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; all this statutory output is subject to the tiresome jurisdiction of the courts \u2014 the High Court will quash delegated legislation and use \u201chuman rights\u201d jurisprudence to interpret the word of parliament out of recognition. Something must be done.<\/p>\n<p>So this Act is a modest proposal for our legislators and public officials. Once it is passed, no other legislation will ever be necessary and the meddlesome courts will be neutered. This would be a Good Thing.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with Section 1:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Crown shall have the power to do anything, and nothing a Minister of the Crown does will be <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ultra_vires\" target=\"_blank\"><em>ultra vires<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That should shut up the High Court for a while with their judicial review decisions.<\/p>\n<p>But adding a second section to the Act will make sure that Ministers will act in the interests of all of us. So for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2 provides:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe power given by Section 1 of this Act shall include the banning of things by any Minister of the Crown.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But what things can be banned? Well, here\u2019s Section 3:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe things to be banned referred to in Section 2 of this Act shall be the things which a Minister of the Crown says are bad for us.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which in turn leads us to Section 4:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cWhat is bad for us for the purposes of Section 3 shall be determined by a Minister of the Crown with regard either to (a) headlines in the tabloid press of the day and\/or (b) the headlines the Minister of the Crown would like to see in the tabloid press tomorrow.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Section 5 will then provide:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cAny person<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>(a)  voicing opposition to a determination made under Section 4 of this Act; or<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>(b)  acting in breach of a ban made under Section 1 of this Act, shall be deemed to not care about the children and\/or to be soft on terrorism.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Act should also include the following power at Section 6 so that any emerging issues can be addressed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cIn the event something must be done, a Minister may at his or her discretion choose a thing to do, and the thing chosen shall be deemed as the something that must be done.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This discretionary power, however, is subject to Section 7:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe thing chosen under Section 6 shall not have any rational or proportionate relationship to any intended objective.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The way a lot of ministers carry on, you&#8217;d think this act had already been promulgated&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post by David Allen Green from last year that prefigures the political landscape of today: &#8230; all this statutory output is subject to the tiresome jurisdiction of the courts \u2014 the High Court will quash delegated legislation and use \u201chuman rights\u201d jurisprudence to interpret the word of parliament out of recognition. Something must be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,57,9,28],"tags":[213,463],"class_list":["post-26132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-humour","category-law","category-media","tag-newspapers","tag-parody"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Nu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26138,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26132\/revisions\/26138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}