Yet another British human rights outrage

Is it me or has this country's record on human rights got worse in the last few years? As a loyal Guardian/Observer reader my grip on my newspaper, as I read it, has been turned very shaky by a long series of outrages in the last few years. The absolute scandal of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes was the tip of the iceberg. We've had the revoltingly supine attitude, and perhaps direct active involvement, of the British government to the US-led Iraq invasion, the Guantanamo jailings, rendition and torture. More recently we've had the uncovering of the brutal treatments allegedly meted out on an alleged regular basis by one of the Metropolitan Police's Territorial support units.

Now we hear that some poor sod ambled away from his job at a newsagent's and just happened to stumble into the middle of a riot and died of a heart attack following an apparent fall which has been allegedly attributed to an alleged 'assault' by police riot officers.

I don't have anything sensible to say about all this but I would like to register my utter disgust at this whole series of outrages.

Quite frankly, I'll send Jacqui Smith's husband a few tenners to watch a few more "adult movies". It matters not. What matters is that his wife and her colleagues appear to making a complete horlicks of their job. It appears that the "cure" they are giving us is worse than the disease.