Subject: [OCC-HEALTH] Human rights and armed forces

To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 30 June 2010 21:19
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Aminot Goodenough

If your responsibilities include the health and well being of servicemen and women, then you ought to be aware that you only need to care about these matters part-time. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the Human Rights Act does not apply to the forces on active service once they are outside military bases and hospitals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jun/30/human-rights-act-soldiers-battlefield

This means that these men and women who, we are told, are out in Afghanistan and Iraq getting killed to protect our rights to life, freedom from torture, family life and privacy, do not themselves benefit from these rights once they step outside base. If a soldier dies from heat exhaustion, or becomes deaf while firing weapons away from base, or damages his feet from ill-fitting boots worn away from base, or suffers from PTSD as a result of events that occurred outside base, then his employer will not have to be held to account, and we thought that Crown immunity had disappeared two decades ago.

To the subscribers who responded to my earlier posting (Miscalculation) with derision, I would like to suggest that one reason why occupational health seems to be rapidly plummeting into terminal decline could be that when it comes to politics, too many of us tend to bury our heads in the sand. How boring would it be if all we could discuss on this site is how often to give hepatitis B boosters! Of course this forum IS for political postings, when politics is at odds with what the profession supposedly stands for. BTW, Your human rights include the right to hit the ‘delete’ button.

Yours ever

Aminot Goodenough

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