If the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia were a proper court of law, the charges against him would have been dismissed long ago. Unfortunately, it is a highly politicised organ, created on the initiative of the very states which attacked Yugoslavia in 1999, and whose judges have disgraced themselves by bending the rules to facilitate the prosecution's task. In 2004, the judges imposed defence counsel on Milosevic, even though the ICTY's charter states that defendants have the right to defend themselves, and even though they knew he was too sick to stand trial. On February 24 2006, at the prosecution's insistence, they rejected Milosevic's request to be transferred to a heart clinic: he died a fortnight later.

It is corrosive of the core values of western civilisation for the chief Hague prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, now to say that Milosevic escaped justice by dying, for this assumes that "justice" means not due process but a guilty verdict. The day we start to believe that we will have abandoned the rule of law completely.

I am surprised that a simple internet trawl qualifies as investigative journalism for David Aaronovitch (PR man to Europe's nastiest regimes, G2, November 30), especially since the "trails" he follows about me are ones which I announce at the bottom of my own articles.
But I wonder if Aaronovitch's Googling led him to use as a source an article entitled "Can a lobbyist for dictators work as a journalist?", a recently posted attack on me which is almost identical to his own. The home page, Ukrainian Archive, which has links to all the western-backed "pro-democracy" groups in Ukraine itself, also carries virulently antisemitic articles about the Jewish proclivity for rape, and about how the gas chambers at Auschwitz could not have existed. If I am being simultaneously attacked by a former communist who now supports George Bush's wars, and by raving Jew-baiting Ukrainian nationalists, I must be doing something right.
John Laughland

Why, with half our youngsters going to university, we still need to import migrants to fill all these skilled jobs.

‘That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
‘That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;

‘That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;

‘That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

‘That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;

‘That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;

‘That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;

‘That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders;

‘That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;

‘And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.’

Or, from the Petition of Right: ‘No freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseized of his freehold or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.’

All of this led to the USA's even harder, clearer and more codifed defences of free debate, protection against arbitrary arrest and the punitive billeting of troops, not to mention the right to bear arms which, technically, all British subjects still possess (though see my 'Brief History of Crime' for a discussion of how this important liberty has been bureaucratically revoked by stealth). And that is why, despite a startling Germanic culture of bureaucracy and over-willing acceptance of authority, English liberty has survived as well as it has (though now much under threat) in the USA. It has also survived (in different conditions and with different) in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The simple point is that humans can only be free where the state is restrained. 'Human Rights' being an attempt to codify a secular morality on the basis of competing group rights, actually strengthens the state by making the courts the umpires in this competition. It also gives the courts the power to legislate, because its showy vagueness allows them to 'interpret' various phrases to their own satisfaction.

Now, it is true that the US Supreme Court has managed to do this with bits of the Bill of Rights, notably the phrase 'cruel and unusual' (itself taken from the 1689 English Bill). But this is obviously intellectually shabby, as no serious person could imagine that the men who drafted this thought that the death penalty was cruel or unusual, or intended that meaning to be conveyed. But it is so much easier to do with the various universal declarations, European Conventions, Canadian Charters and now the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

This last is full of horrible weasel phrases whose effect is often quite different in practice from its apparent meaning. Nobody may be deprived of his possessions ‘except in the public interest’ (Article 17) which is as tough as wet tissue-paper. The rights of freedom of expression and to privacy ('private life') inevitably conflict. The right to marry and found a family conflict with non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, which alter the meaning and status of the word 'marry'. The promises of religious 'diversity' make all faiths equal, thus diminishing the role of the one faith which has actually defined Europe and shaped its distinctive civilisation- Christianity.

For example, he argued that the loss of 100,000 public sector jobs would not have a huge impact on a 30 million-strong job market. We predicted yesterday that this comment would prove inflammatory; that does not invalidate the observation. As for Lord Young’s point that the cuts will only reduce government spending to 2007 levels, that falls into the category of speaking truth unto power. It casts doubt on both the Coalition’s references to a bold reduction in the size of the state and hysterical Left-wing claims that the public sector is being dismantled.