“All this 'give prisoners the vote' is smoke and mirrors to distract from all the other problems we are facing.

During the last election campaign the prison newspaper, "Inside Time" ran an appeal for all the prisoners to take part in a mock election (they supplied a ballot paper) to prove to the government how serious they were about it and, surprise, surprise, almost no one voted.

The vast majority of people who are in prison don't vote when they are not inside so wouldn't want to when they are locked up - but their ears have *****ed up because they heard the magic words "Uman Rights" and "compensation."

Call their bluff. Tell them they can vote in a central area during their association period (when they can have a shower, phone home or play pool) and see how many vote. Then publish the numbers.

Give them the vote. Who cares? There are enough idiots voting anyway and looking at the state of the political parties anyway, 3 shades of grey, it won't make any difference to the outcome of the election. We'll still have a rubbish government.”

“It is not the EU. Russia is contracted to follow the ECHR, Russia is not in the EU
It is a condition of membership of the EU that states must agree to be bound by the ECHR. Winston Churchill was instrumental in drawing up the Convention. Typical lefty liberal !”

“bewildered1 - I'm surprised that Russia would allow prisoner voting and even more surprised that they would contract with the EU on such an issue, or that if they breached the contract the EU would challenge them legally.
ghostwriter69 - I agree with all you say. Also that the same applies to the UK voting public generally. it is because the public are fed up with the current system that makes it so apathetic about voting and the resulting pathetic governments that we get.”

“mutton8,

if you read bewildered1s post properly you`ll see that it has nothing to do with the EU.
The European Court of Human Rights is a whole different thing.”