Welcome back everyone. Today we're going to be talking about conditional statements in Python. So just like before, I have my notepad up. This is just a type of notepad basic text editor. You don't need anything fancy. And then I have a command prompt also open. So command prompt or terminal depending on what you're using. So in the command prompt, we will run our Python program. And then we will write our Python program in notepad in this case. So if you haven't seen the first video, I had a Python script already written and we talked about assigning variables. So that was the first lesson. And we created a file with a dot py file extension. So this is just a normal text file with a dot py file extension. And that just tells us that this is a Python script. Okay, so let's go ahead and I'll take a look at the first lesson again. So we can kind of review. So the first thing we did is use the print command. And then we printed everything inside the quotes. So this is printing a string Hello Python. So this would display on the screen whenever I run the program. The next thing we're doing is assigning a variable. So we have name and name equals, this tells us that this is a variable called name. So whatever is on the left side is the variable, whatever is on the right side is the contents that we are putting into the variable. Okay, so we are putting a string Joshua inside the variable name. So now name equals Joshua. Okay, so then we're doing another print command, and we're printing a string Hello. And then we are concatenating with this plus sign, the variable name, notice that there's no quotes around name, if there were quotes around name, then that would also be a string and it would say Hello name. However, since there's no quotes around it, and we have a variable called name, then whatever the value of name is will show up here. So this would say Hello, Joshua. And then we would concatenate again, and then add an exclamation point at the end. Notice that there's double quotes around the exclamation point. So quotation in programming really makes a difference. Make sure you're watching your quotes. Normally when I have bugs in my code, it's because I forgot a quote somewhere. And then it takes a long time to find the quote. So just be aware about quoting anything that has quotes needs a quote at the beginning and end. Don't leave one of them off. And then anything inside the quote, at least for now, we'll say anything inside the quote is a string. Okay, now notice we have another variable. So we have x equals, we have x equals one here. Well, one is not in quotes. So x equals one, this would be considered a integer. Okay, so x is equal to an integer. And the difference is with, we talked about this a little bit, whenever I use the plus symbol with two strings, I combine the strings together and kind of like a sentence. So I just put the two, you can think of it like putting two words together. So I'm putting hello and Joshua together. So you get hello, Joshua, it doesn't do math on it, it just does concatenation. But if I have x equals one, and I have y equals two, and these are integers, not strings, then I would actually do math on them. So I would have two, for example, two plus one, or two times one, and then I can, I can use that to do math. And then we can also print straight integers. But if you combine strings and integers while printing, you have to do something called casting, and we'll talk more about that later. So that's what we talked about last week. So let me clear that. And this week, we're going to talk about conditional statements. And in basically almost every programming language that I know of, conditional statements are how you start to do logic, how you make decisions in your code. So it's a really powerful concept that you need to get, and you can apply it to pretty much every programming language. So the first thing I want to do, or the most basic kind of conditional statement, is an if statement. So if, sorry, I need to talk about this, we've already set a variable x equals 10. Notice 10 is not in quotes, so it is an integer. So we're treating this as a number, number 10. So we go back to our if statement. So let's say we want to check if x equals 10. So if x equals 10, then I need to do some action. So if x equals 10, I need to do some action. If 10 is x is less than 10, maybe I need to do a different action. Or if it's greater than 10, I need to do something else. So this is really common where we're looking for the states of variables. So in this case, we can say if x equals 10, and I'll talk about that in a second, then do something. And I'll just do prints because we've already talked about prints. x is 10. So what do we have here? The first thing you might notice is a little bit strange. We have if, well, that makes sense, just if something is true. So whenever you say if it's raining, then I will use an umbrella. So if raining equals true, then use umbrella. Well, here I'm doing and then we have our condition. So if this condition is true, then do the next line. Now Python is a little bit strange in the fact that it really cares about the spacing and the lining and the line positions. So normally, in other programming languages, you might have something like if x equals 10, then do something. And then there might be brackets around it and things like that. For Python, you do not do that. So we just do if x equals 10 and then the two dots, and then print x equals 10. So we have our if, which is just saying, I want this conditional, I'm going to check something. We have our variable that we're checking and we have two equal signs. And I'll come back to that in a second. And then we have the state that we're checking the variable is in. If this line is true, then we go to the next line. If this line is false, we skip this next line. And that's the basis of all of the logic, right? So we're checking something. If it's true, do the next action. If it's not true, skip over the next action. And that seems very simple, but it's a very powerful concept. So let's go back to these double equal signs. Remember before, I said x equals 10 is a variable assignment. So if we had, for example, x equals 10 here with one equal sign, then this would also be, or it would be confusing because it would look like a variable assignment. So whenever we're doing conditional checks, we do equal equal. So this evaluates to true or false. It doesn't assign 10 to x. But if you just have one equal sign, then it does try to do, assign the value of 10 to x. So whenever you're doing conditional statements, make sure that you use the double equal sign. If you want to check if something is equal. Now, there's lots of other ways or lots of other different checks that we can use. And I'll talk about those in a second. But first, let's go on to something else. So let's say if x equals equals 10, print x is 10. So let's go ahead and try that. So again, I'm going down to command line and I'm typing Python because I have Python installed. And then I'm going to do zero zero two conditional. Now, x equals 10. And we're checking if x equals 10. So what should happen? Well, we should get some text out that says x is 10. And that's what we get. So x is 10. Okay, now what if we say x equals equals 11. Now this check is false because x equals 10, we're checking if it's 11. So we check and then nothing prints. Well, why does nothing print? This was false. So we do not go and work on the next line, we actually skip to the line after that. Okay, so if this is false, skip to the next line. It's basically the idea. Okay, so let's go ahead and go x equals 11, keep that the same. Now, it's very often. All right, so what happens if I want to know if x is 11. And if it's not 11, then I want to do something all the time. So kind of the catch all, if you always need to do something except in a particular circumstance, you can use if else. Okay, and what this means, let's say x is not 11, because that's the only thing we're checking for. So here we have if x equals 11, which it doesn't, so that would be false, we're going to skip this line. And then if else like anything else that's true, like if we didn't, if we did skip the this line, so this was false, then print x is not 11. So let me go over that again. If x equals 11 is false, we skip the next line and we go to else. And then we print x is not 11. So let me show you that. So we should get x is not 11. Okay, x is not 11 because we skipped the print x is 11 line and we went to x is not 11. Now what happens if x is 11? What do you think would happen? Do we print this line x is 11, because that would be true. And we also print x is not 11. Well, that doesn't seem right. Right. So let's go ahead and try that. x is 11. I changed this variable here. So now x is 11. And this was true. So we printed this line, and then we skip everything else. Right. So with if statements, the first thing that is true is what runs. So if you have, I'll show you another another case here in a second, but if you have many if statements put together, the first if statement that's true, the next line will run and then it will forget it won't run everything else. And then that's how you can build the logic into your program. Okay. So since we're already here, let's say I have if x equals 11, then print x is 11. If not, x is not 11. Okay. Let's change this a little bit. x is something else. Okay. So let's say I want to check for more than just 11. Maybe I want to also check if x is 20. Okay. Well, I can add an additional statement in here instead of rewriting, let's say, instead of doing something like this, where I just have if statements all over the place. Well, that looks really bad and it's a lot of extra code that we don't need. So what we can do instead that minimizes the code a little bit more is using an else if. So notice we have if to start the conditional statement and then if that's false, else is the catch all. If everything else was false, then else will always run. Okay. But I want to do another check for some condition. I want to check if x equals 20. So I can do else if and that looks like L if L if and then we just give our conditional statement like we did before. So L if x equals equals 20. Remember, I'm doing a conditional statement. So I have to use the double equal sign. And then I need to hit enter and then at least give a little bit of space. So that way, Python knows that this is the second line. So if you have everything lined up at the beginning, Python won't like this because it can't tell what should run it thinks that these two statements are equal. But we're trying to say that this print statement is underneath this if statement. Okay. So we have these spaces here in the space at the beginning is very important. So L if x equals 2020. So then I would print x is 20. Okay. And then we get to our L statement. So now let's run through this. So x currently equals 11. If we run this, what should we get x is 11 x is 20 or x is something else? Well, let's run it and see. So of course, like we expect x is 11 because this is true. And so we print x is 11 and then we do not run anything else. We just skip over everything else because we've already met our condition. Okay, so now let's do x equals 20. So what do we expect to happen? x is 20 because I went to the first if statement x equals equals 11. That's false. So I skip over this print statement. And then Lf x equals equals 20. This is true. So I print the next statement. Okay, so x equals 20. And then since that was true, I don't do a check for this last elf statement. Okay. So now let's set x equals 21. And what happens? x is something else because I went to x equals 11. This was false. So I skip over the next line. Lf x equals 20. That's false. So I skip over the print. And then I got down to the last statement and that's everything else. So x is something else. It's not 11 and it's not 20. So it's something else. Okay. So these L statements catch everything. Okay. If we remove this L statement, both of those would be false. So we would get no output. There's no text showing. Okay. All right. So that's about if statements. So let's move this back a little bit just to make it a little bit easier. The most basic form of conditional check would be if and then one condition and then no else statement. Usually you have some sort of else statement, but it really depends on what you're trying to do. Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about here, we have if and then we've already talked about if. This is else if. It always comes after an if statement. And then at the end, the catch all is else. So if everything else was false, else will always run. Okay. Okay. So there's a couple different things that we can do in terms of our conditional checks. There's a lot of them. I'll just talk about the basic ones today. One of them is we're right now we're saying x equals equals 11. So we're saying that x, we're checking that x actually equals exactly 11. But what if we don't care if x exactly equals 11? What if we want to know if x is greater than 11? Well, we can just use the greater than sign. Because in this case, we're just doing math, right? So because we have an integer, we can actually check if x is greater than 11. Okay. So I'm just going to change this so it makes sense. True. And then I'll put an l statement. Okay. So you can kind of see what's going on. If our statement is true, it'll print true. If our statement is not true, then it'll print false. Okay. Hopefully that makes a little bit more sense whenever we're running this code. So here I have x, the checking if x is greater than 11. Well, x equals 21. So it is greater than 11. So we should get true. And that's what we get. Okay. Now, what if x equals 11? So x is greater than 11. Is that true? No, that's false, right? Because x is not greater than 11. It is 11 is equal to 11. So if we want to know if something is greater than or equal to, we can use the greater than symbol with an equal symbol. And then we get this x greater than equal to 11. And that makes a really big difference because let's say you're scripting something and then you're looking for anything above 10, including 10. Well, you could just say greater than nine, or you could say greater than equal to 10. So just be aware that if it's greater than it really means greater than it doesn't mean equal to you have to tell it exactly what you want to do. Okay. So x greater than equal to 11, and x is currently 11. So let's run that. And we get true, because of course that's true, because it's equal to 11. Okay. Now, if I do 10, that it's not greater than or equal to 11. So we get a false. Okay. Right. So, so far, we've talked about just equals. I want to know if x is exactly this number. We have just greater than, which is just everything above 11, we have greater than or equal to, which is 11 or above. We can also do less than. So right now x is 10. So we can say is x less than 11. And if we run that, we get a true because it is less than 11. If we do less than equal to 11, we get a true because it's we're checking for 10. So less than or equal to 11 is still 10. 10 is still less than or equal to 11. Okay. So you can do greater than equal to you can do greater than less than equal to less than. And then another one that I like quite often is not equal to. So just like we had equal equal, if you use a exclamation point or in programming, they usually call it a bang, we can do x not equal to 11. So in this case, x is 10 is x not equal to 11. Well, that should be true. And we get true, right? So x not equal to 11 is true. So I use not equal to actually quite often whenever I'm doing different types of programs, but you can use anyone that you're comfortable with. It's much easier to start with equals at the beginning, but it really depends on what the condition is checking for. Remember, the condition is what you're checking, but then you do some action afterwards, right? So maybe if x equals 11, then I want to, you know, move Bitcoin from one account to another account or something like that, right? So I want to do some action when that state is true. Right now, we're just printing. But this is where we'll put code later that actually does a lot of actions. Okay. So those are the different types of checks. And I'll just kind of write them out here for you. I am adding a comment. So I have the hash or the pound sign at the beginning, this pound sign will not run as code, it's skipped over by Python, just kind of ignores it. So I can say, this is my note, right? Let me show you what this means for a second. So let me remove the pound sign. You can see that the color changed from blue to black. So if I run this now, I'm going to get an error. So I get an error and the error as at line three, this is my note. Well, what we can do if we want to add notes to ourselves is put a pound sign at the beginning. And then this becomes a comment. So if I run this code again, I get no error. Okay, so we use comments a lot to give notes to ourselves to remember what's going on. So I'm going to give a note about the different types of conditional checks. So this would be less than greater than equal, less than or equal to greater than or equal to and not equal. So these are some of the main types of checks that I use commonly. There's lots of other ways that you can do checking. But at least you should know these first. Okay, if you put a pound before anything, before you're the line of code, then this will be a comment and it will not be ran as code. See, I still don't get any errors. Okay. Okay. I'm going to move that off a little bit. Right. So sometimes you want to check multiple things at the same time. So we've already talked about if and then L if right. So L if x equals 12, do something else. Okay. But sometimes you want to check to like the state of a variable, two conditions of a state of a variable at the same time. Now this gets a little bit complicated. But the basic idea is I want to know if x is say x is 10 now. So I'll say is x greater than nine. And then I also want to know if it's less than 11. Right. Now it's very easy to write that I could just say x equals 10, but just go with me go with me for this example. So let's say x is greater than nine. But I also want to say x is less than 11. Okay. Now the easy thing to do would just say x equals 10. But we can also do multiple checks at the same time. Now what I'm trying to do here is say, I want to know when x is greater than nine and when x is less than 11. So what do you think I can use in the middle of this to do that? Well, just and. Okay. Now what this does is it takes two conditionals at the same time to be true. Right. So this side has to be true and this side has to be true. So x has to be greater than nine, which is true. And x has to be less than 11, which is true. Okay. So let's test that we should get true. Good. Okay. So that means that both of those things were true. Okay. And then we can actually stack these up pretty much as much as we want. So x is not equal to test. Okay. So x is not equal to some string value called test. Let's check that. So I can stack as many ands as I want, but make sure you keep your code simple. In this case, like I said, these two can just break down to x equals 10. So x equals 10 and x is not equal to test. You could probably even just remove this just x equals 10. So make sure that whenever you're writing these conditional statements, instead of stacking all these things up as much as possible, write the simplest conditional check you possibly can that covers all of your cases. Don't get, don't just keep adding more and more. Think about what conditional checks you're doing. Now that being said, you can add as many as you want. Just don't get carried away with it is my point. Okay. Now we have another one. So and is a very popular one that I use quite often. And then another would be maybe I only care if one of these checks are true. So if x is greater than nine, or x is less than 11, I want either one of those things to be true. Well, we can just use four. So let's say x, I'm going to move this from nine to 10. So I have x is greater than 10, but x is 10 right now. It's not greater than equals, it's just greater than. So this is actually false. So if x is greater than 10, or x is less than 11, this is true. But this is false. So what should we get whenever we run the program? True, right? Because one of these this one was was true. Now if we do x is less than 10, then both of those are true are false. So we get false. Okay. So using and you have multiple checks and you need both sides to be true using or if you want one of the conditional checks to be true. Okay. And then whenever you're trying to do something like testing if something is within a particular range. So here we're actually doing a check of a range of x, you can write it like this. So Python has a short code for let's say the range that I want. So in this case, I'm saying, I'm using x one time, but this is a shorthand way to write a range check, or multiple condition checks. So x less than or equal to, sorry, greater than basically it's greater than 10, but less than 20. So x is greater than 10, but less than 20. So that means that anything 10 to 20 would work. So here we have x equals 10. So it's true. If x equals 21, it's false, right? Because it's outside of this range. So if you are doing ranges, you can use a shorthand, Python has a lot of ways to reduce the amount of code you need to write. It has a lot of these kind of shorthands. But it just takes some practice to get used to them. For now, don't really worry about it. If this is your first time working with variables, go ahead and just keep something like x equals 10, or x greater than equal to 10. Okay. So just keep it simple for now. Get used to when something is true and when something is false. Always consider this logic check as true or false. That's how we're evaluating it. Now, if this is true or false, then we can do something fun in the if statements. And we'll talk more about that as we go on. Okay. So that's pretty much it for if statements today. Just build your own if statements and do a couple of different logic checks. Just use printing true and printing false to see how things are working. So keep it simple and have a good time. Thank you very much.


Right. Let's see. Let's go. Let's go to Donna, shall we, John? Donna Donna has a follow up. So back in episode 912, we were talking about Apple Maps suggestions and Donna sent in a note. For quite a while, I received maps suggestions about where I might want to go. I typically noticed it when I get in the car and car play connects. It is a little weird, but it's often correct. There are some restaurants that we go to on a regular regular days for dinner. And I usually visit my mom in the evening. Interestingly, mom's suggestion is for the high school around the corner, not her name and actual address, even though she's in my contacts. And I often use maps to guide me there. So. Thanks for the feedback. And I think in this case, yeah, it is kind of creepy. So I and that these suggestions coming up, it's like, you know, I do this every day. I don't know if I really want you to remind me of it, like, you know, go to the store or go here. Yeah, yeah. I kind of like it. I mean, when I get into my car, I don't mean to discount that it would come across creepy to some.  Great. You know, because I don't even put my chiropractors address in my calendar. I know where I'm going. I do it every week. I just put it. I just write Cairo. That's it, you know, and it gets me there. But or it but it's because it knows right from my habits. As I understand it, if Apple is to be believed, and I think we can I'm choosing to believe them in this regard, and I think that's a safe choice. All of this information is stored locally on my phone. It's not like the cloud is involved in any of this. But I and I don't know how to turn it off. But I know that there are things we can do to turn it off. And the reason I don't know how to turn it off is because I don't want it off on mine. But if we go in to oh, shoot, where's my where's my iPhone here? If we go in to settings on the iPhone, right? And then go to Siri and search. This is one place that we could do this, right? And so if you go, you have suggestions from Apple about halfway down on the sort of on the first screen there. And you can have it show notifications with suggestions. I'm not sure if this is what it's going to be or not. You're going to need to do some testing on this that because that's just because I don't want to turn it off on my phone. So that's one place to do it. But also you get to go down and tell Siri what apps feed it data that it would then suggest from. So if we go down to maps, we can say we can turn off the learn from this app option, right? Right. And and then we can turn off granularly suggestions for this app, right? So my guess is that this is where you're you're going to want to turn this stuff off. Is is there there's one other place that we might want to look and that would be in settings privacy and location services. If you scroll all the way to the bottom and go to system services and then go all the way to the sort of the bottom of that and go to significant locations, you can go in there and then turn off significant locations. My guess is that this also is part of what feeds that little data.  So that's going to be my guess on this stuff. I don't know for certain, but that's going to be my guess on this is where to look.


Good evening, ladies and gentlemen... It's a great pleasure that I welcome you to tonight's McKenzie Stuart lecture, the annual lecture of the Centre for European Legal Studies here in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. I am Kenneth Armstrong, I am Director of Vigilings and Professor of European Law at the University. Cyhoedd yn gobeithio eu cyfrwyr o'r adeithio gweld yr oed yn gweithio'r enw. Mae'r adegau yn tyfnwyd o wneud o'r dewisio, yn ystod arall o'r adeithio arall o'r adeithio, ac yn ystod o'r adeithio yma yma, i wneud i'r adeithio arall o'r adeithio a'r adeithio arall o'r adeithio, of Lord Mackenzie Stewart, the UK's first judge to be appointed to the European Court of Justice. Now Lord Mackenzie Stewart went on to be the president of the court and this lecture, I think this lecture series is a fitting tribute to all the UK judges, the lawyers and civil servants who, since 1973, have played leading roles in shaping the political and judicial institutions of the European Union. Now the lecture series is generously supported by Sherman and Sterling and Sells is grateful to be able to partner with them in organising tonight's event. Now our speaker this evening is the right honourable Dominic Graves, QCMP, and he'll be known to everyone in this room although perhaps for somewhat different reasons. He was called to the bar in 1980 and was appointed QC in 2008 and in between he was elected to Parliament in 1997 for the constituency of Beckinsfield and in opposition he served as shadow attorney general, shadow home secretary and shadow justice secretary. Of course under the coalition government he was appointed attorney general and served in that role until July 2014. But I think it is perhaps his life outside of shadow cabinet and cabinet which has given Dominic Graves a heightened profile in recent months it's fair to say. His amendment to the European Union withdrawal bill is significant for two reasons. Firstly that any amendment made onto the face of the bill in the first place no mean feat and secondly because of its aim to give Parliament a legislative role in the approval of any final withdrawal agreement. Now whether we will actually get an agreement on a withdrawal may however turn out to be more difficult than we might have thought and certainly following this week's publication of the EU's draft of that agreement. But our topic tonight isn't the usual stuff of Brexit in the sense of the usual chatter about regulations, financial contributions, institutions and procedures. Rather the protection of human rights in the UK has been a preoccupation of Dominic Graves beyond the boundaries of Brexit nonetheless Brexit and the forces that are driving it do lead us back to important questions about what the protection of human rights looks like in a democracy that seems intent on going alone in the world and doing so in the name of sovereignty. So tonight's lecture is entitled what price sovereignty Brexit in human rights. So on behalf of the Centre for European Legal Studies, I now invite Dominic Graves to give the 2018 Mackenzie Stewart lecture. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for the introduction. I'm most grateful for the kind invitation that's been extended to me tonight to give this talk and it's a particular privilege that its name reflects the undoubtedly outstanding contribution Lord Mackenzie Stewart made to the development of EU law and the work of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. I think probably as a Scots lawyer he was ideally placed to bring the breadth of the United Kingdom's legal traditions to the development of EU law and in helping facilitate the court's jurisprudence on things like market regulation and fair competition he was striving to ensure that the principle of cross frontier freedom to trade and work which of course underpins the EU would operate in practice as well as in theory and his election as president of the court at a time when it was actually under a great deal of pressure I think reflected on his abilities and the respect in which are both he and our national contribution was held. So I do wonder what he would have made of the circumstances in which we find ourselves today. I have to say it's with sadness that I contemplate the events form the background against which this lecture is taking place. If all goes according to the government's plan then by this time next year our participation in the development of the European Union law will be approaching its end. Some like my colleague Boris Johnson will welcome this as the necessary step to restoring parliamentary sovereignty and nationhood it was he who described the referendum result as our independence day but others including myself will not. To my amusement I found that my concerns as to what's happening and my response to them in parliament have been earning me as an ex-attorney general the label's rebel commander and a bespectacle Che Guevara and if that's really what I have indeed become then this talk at least offers me a moment of reflection as to how I've got there and why I consider that we're at risk of losing far more than we will gain from leaving the EU. There's of course nothing settled about Brexit on which to base some definitive commentary or opinion its final form remains unclear for 20 months now we've seen the development of an unparalleled political and constitutional crisis for our country it's precipitated the fall of one government contributed last June to the failure of another to get a coherent mandate for carrying it out it divides families friends generations and political parties it's breaking apart the previous broad consensus between the mainstream political parties as to how the economy should continue to be managed this can be seen in the demand for a return to socialism in large sections of the Labour voluntary party and in the differences of view about free market economics amongst brexit supporting conservatives all facilitated by the prospect of the removal of the existing EU legal framework look at what Jeremy Corbyn had to say about that this week meanwhile like most revolutionary upheavals it's bringing economic uncertainty in its wake and it's also accompanied by a crisis of confidence in our political institutions a public are showing an increasing dissatisfaction with the way our politics are being conducted there are serious disagreements still being played out at present as to the respective roles that parliament and the executive should perform in authorising and carrying out the brexit process and we've had the vitriolic abuse heaped on members of the judiciary for ruling on part of this issue in the miller case it also threatens the unity of our country because of divergent views in different parts of the united kingdom as to how we should best proceed now i mention all these issues because they emphasize for me how the future of human rights after brexit on which i do want to concentrate this evening simply can't be isolated from the wider issues and extraordinary times in which we're living brexit constitutes a potentially profound change in our country's relationship with both our own and the international legal order with consequences that may flow from this both domestically and internationally in voting to leave the EU the majority in its repeated mantra of taking back control was making some form of demand of the government for a change in direction for the united kingdom in respect of our country's participation in building supranational legal frameworks and our willingness to be bound by them the referendum was also a demand concerning what's expected of our unwritten constitution which has become heavily entwined with the supranational frameworks the united kingdom has helped to build it's because brexit has the capacity to affect so many aspects of our national life that i thought it might be worthwhile giving this topic some consideration in the context particularly of human rights but i do want to emphasize that this is a politician's view of evolving issues not an academics analysis i also want to look at how these matters are being played out at present in the debate taking place in parliament it's an interesting feature of our current debate on the future direction our country should take that when you leave aside the arguments about the economy freedom of movement immigration there is actually one thing on which most participants agree namely the importance of law for our country in reflecting developing and protecting our national identity and our well-being my brexit supporting colleagues having differing degrees signed up to the view that EU membership undermines the sovereignty of parliament in a manner which is damaging to our independence parliamentary democracy and our system of law it fits in with a national if probably principally English narrative that can be traced back to Magna Carter habeas corpus and a Bill of Rights of 1689 it emphasizes the exceptionalism of our national tradition which we can undoubtedly see recognized from a very early date in the mid 15th century we have it celebrated by Chief Justice Fortescue in his de laudibus legum angliau written in 1453 use of torture is deprecated trial by jury and due process praised and with it the uniqueness and its uniqueness to england there's even in fact an excellent section in it which i suggested in parliamentary debate might be relevant to who had the power to trigger article 50 the king of england he said cannot alter nor change the laws of his realm at his pleasure but it took a court case to sort that out and of course to this we can add the case of proclamations of 1610 in which Sir Edward Cook repeated what Fortescue had actually said 150 years earlier petition of right of 1628 the commentaries of William Blackstone Lord Mansfield's ruling in Somerset's case this national narrative has proved and is still proving at times very important it continues to act as an effective restraint on British governments trying to curb freedom when tempted to do so by threats to public order or national security we saw that over 90 and 42 day pre-charged detention just a decade ago under the last Labour government and of course it places parliament as the central bastion of our liberties the trouble is that this comforting political tradition is not necessarily supported by a detailed study of our history it's possible to find periods and instances when its norms have not been observed from northern Ireland to Kenya or Malaysia it's also been used to support opinions that are far less helpful to the rule of law as Lord Bingham defined it in his eight principles which he expounded in his 2006 lecture for parliamentary sovereignty can also be used merely as an assertion of power particularly when the executive has effective control over parliament in theory at least our constitution is that the queen acting with the assent of her lords and commons enjoys an exercise of power unlimited by any other lawful authority what the late Lord Halsham characterised as its capacity for creating elected dictatorship and it's after all what allowed Henry VIII in his act of supremacy of 1534 to use parliamentary authority to coerce subjects on matters of deepest conscience and in the last century enabled the authorisation of detention without charge under the defence of the realm act in wartime our EU membership however provides an example of how over more recent British history but particularly since the end of the second world war we've embarked on policies that have developed and changed our laws not just through domestic mechanisms but through international engagement not withstanding our pride in our national sovereignty successive British governments in the last two centuries have sought to make the world a better safer and more predictable place by encouraging the creation of international agreements governing the behaviour of states when I was attorney general I once asked the Foreign Office to tell me as to how many we were signed up they were very reluctant to provide me with a figure and finally said they refused to go back beyond 1834 but since that date they had records of over 13200 then I think the figures actually gone up to about 13500 that the UK had signed and ratified and most of those were still applicable arranged in importance from the United Nations Charter to local treaties over maritime access and fishing rights over 700 contained references to binding dispute settlement to arbitration by a court or tribunal in the event of disagreements over interpretation with the passing years these treaties be they the UN convention on the prohibition of torture the creation of the international criminal court have been dealing not just with interstate relations but with the conduct of states towards those subjects over which they exercise power now so important has been this treaty making that the ministerial code until 2015 referred specifically to the duty of civil servants and ministers to respect our international legal obligations at all times this was then deleted by the then prime minister David Cameron probably in reaction to being reminded of this point too often and probably by a me but the deletion could only be cosmetic in its effect the cabinet office had immediately to admit when the deletion was announced that it made no absolutely no difference whatsoever to the obligation because it's one of Lord Bingham's eighth principle of the rule of law if it were abandoned we would be sanctioning anarchy on the international stage in fairness successive UK governments have despite some lapses been pretty consistent in observing its principles where after all still in the midst of commemorations of the first world war which we entered explicitly to honour an international treaty obligation to guarantee Belgian neutrality what the then german chancellor was happy to describe as a scrap of paper but that's not prevented us agonising and complaining over its impact particularly in areas where it places constraints on the united kingdoms part and legislate at will on domestic matters now i don't want to get too diverted this evening by the history of our adherence to the european convention on human rights and its incorporation into our law through the human rights act however much it may have had an influence on my political career but i do put it forward as an example of an international treaty that has brought in its wake intense disagreements as to its value any reasoned examination tells me that its impact has been profound and beneficial over the years it's produced a number of landmark decisions which have challenged and halted practices which were once considered acceptable in western democracies but which would now be seen as wholly unacceptable by the overwhelming majority of the british public and despite difficulties of the enforcement of some of its judgments particularly in countries where the rule of laws previously been non-existent the Strasbourg court can show that it's been instrumental in bringing about positive changes of attitude by public authorities with a long track record of serial human rights violations and since the Brighton Declaration of 2012 negotiated by my friend and colleague Ken Clarke with a bit of assistance from me it's improved its processes reduced its backlog of pending cases and unimplemented judgments and engaged in a constructive dialogue with our own senior courts that is influencing its jurisprudence on any showing our support for the convention and the Strasbourg court has been a major achievement of british soft power on the international stage yet for all this my party which supported its creation and the later writer personal petition is still calling for a review with the possibility of replacing the human rights act with a bill of rights that might call into question our future adherence to the convention now fortunately i'm reasonably optimistic that this will not in fact happen but it is symptomatic of the discomfort of supranational court causes and the continuing dislike by some of the effect of the human rights act it's noteworthy that other mainstream parties have at times been less than forthright in upholding the obligations the convention imposes on us when it might need them to confront adverse we might need to to confront adverse public and media comment labors long silence over resolving the issue of votes for some convicted prisoners arising out of the first judgment was very telling and it's welcome to be able to note that both the government and the Labour party have shifted their position it looks likely that this issue is now resolved so it's with those thoughts in the mind that i turned the impact that the EU has had on human rights law it's clear that in the way it's developed EU law has influenced rights the legal order under the EU treaties is of the greatest importance since it provides the mechanism to ensure that the carefully agreed rules governing the interaction of nation states and european bodies are respected as the product of an international treaty the EU can only be effective and be seen to be legitimate if its own operations are considered to respect the letter and spirit of the treaties that created it furthermore the very ambitious nature of the project has produced a requirement not only for there to be the primacy of EU law over the national law of its member states in areas of EU competence but also the creation of parts of that law by its central bodies without the need for any domestically generated primary or secondary legislation at all in some cases it's obvious that such a source of law could operate abusively whatever the good intentions of its creators might be the EU's member states clearly wish that EU law should further principles of democracy and the rule of law and values found in the constitutional traditions common to the member states including those principles reflected in the european convention on human rights and other international treaties on social and economic rights to which all members are signatories as set out in the preamble to the charter of fundamental rights but those general principles therefore need protecting this is why they're now in the text in the charter which also covers the key obligations of member states in respect to the four freedoms conferred on EU citizens in the treaties it does seem to me therefore to be rather ironic that the charter should have been on the receiving end of so much vilification in the united kingdom now i can see that criticism can be made of its use to claim rights that might be considered to fall outside of the scope of the treaties altogether i experienced this as attorney general when i appeared in the supreme court for the government in chester and McGeach in 2013 where an attempt was made to use the charter to claim prisoner voting rights in EU elections it's however noteworthy that this attempt failed one can also see the court of justice of the european union may be accused at times of misapplying rights under the charter through a defect in factual reasoning and perhaps an insufficient regard for the intention of the signatories the case of tele swag and what's not article eight of the charter on data retention is such an example but the critics of the charters existence seem to me to ignore the point that without it and the general principles of EU law it embodies the risk would have been very much greater of seeing EU law being created or applied in a way that didn't respect the limits of the treaties or interfered with fundamental rights and then left individuals and legal entities without any means of redress but recognition of these benefits has been lost in the repeated denunciation of the charter as an alien document intent on imposing a form of written constitution on us contrary to our principles of parliamentary sovereignty yet on a practical level however the impact of general principles of EU law in our country does appear to me to be rather different it's been the principal driver in recent years in promoting the development of equality law and social rights for example it's due to EU law and article 21 of the charter that there are rights to protection against pregnancy discrimination equal pay for work of equal value protection against discrimination at work on grounds of sexual orientation religion and age the equality act 2010 may be a piece of parliamentary domestic legislation that would have been supported nationally in any event but it owes its origins to changes brought about by EU law in northern Ireland the lack of an equality act means that equality's protections are even more a direct result of EU membership and it's noteworthy that despite some expressions of concern on the burden on business there's never been any serious resistance to these developments and of course it's still happening in the recent supreme court decision of walker and in a spec mr walker relied on a framework directive interpreted in line with general principles of EU law of non-discrimination to disapply a provision of national law which restricted the extent to which same sex spouses could receive pension payments from pensions earned by their deceased spouse to political level i have not heard one word of criticism about this decision despite my earlier comment it's also clear that another area of importance is privacy law article 8 protects personal data and in the matter of david davis and tom watson's challenge to the data retention an investigatory powers act 2014 the court of appeal agreed with the divisional court that article 8 of the charter was more specific than article 8 of the european convention on human rights my own opinion that the final decision of the court of justice of the european union is deficient in its reasoning doesn't diminish the importance of this right in google and vital hall directive was interpreted in line with general principles of EU law the chr and the charter serves to require the payment of compensation to breaches of privacy even when these breaches could not be shown to a given rise to a pecuniary harm as EU legislation implementing the directive could not be interpreted in line with it the provision restricting compensation to pecuniary loss was disapplied again the overwhelming impression i have a public reaction to this outcome that it was positive unless one perhaps excludes the self-serving response of some sections of the media i also can't overlook the recent decision in bank harbush in the supreme court held unanimously that two provisions of the state immunity act 78 inconsistent with article 6 of the chr interestingly on the basis of those provisions went beyond what was required to give state immunity under customary international law proper force as bank harbush's claim for the failure of her employers to comply with employment law ought therefore to proceed but the ability for this to happen rested on the ability to disapply the legislation immediately because it also breached article 47 of the charter otherwise the court would have been left with simply making a declaration of incompatibility and here again i just have never heard from any of my conservative colleagues at Westminster a squeak of opposition to this decision or the fact that EU law has overridden a statute that appears on the court's reasoning to have been unnecessarily restrictive in relation to our obligations under international law finally in this brief survey the charters helped guide the legislative process to ensure that areas like workers rights in article 27 are kept in mind when the law is changed the same applies to environmental protection uh it's our 27 environmental protection in article 37 and consumer protection in article 38 of course i have to accept that there are some of my colleagues in parliament who take the view that at most the only human rights that should be protected are those in the convention and even then some wish any rights protection to be purely domestic and not subject to any international treaty obligation at all the cross party commission on a bill of rights set up by the coalition government in 2010 highlighted not to my surprise substantial philosophical difference on what constitutes human and fundamental rights that merit special protection there may be an important jurisprudential distinction to be drawn between liberties and rights and as a conservative i've always been a bit cautious about the ability to widen the scope of fundamental rights and some economic and social rights place positive duties on the state that may in theory be important aspirations but can in practice be very hard to fulfill and involve a difficult and perhaps not readily justiciable balance between competing policy areas we ought to be careful to ensure that law is not allowed to intrude too far into the realm of legitimate political choices but that said it's clear that there's grown up in the last half century areas of law particularly around equality and privacy workers rights and consumer protection that are not well covered by the convention and are seen as fundamental rights by an overwhelming section of the public so much so indeed but the present government has been at great pains to emphasise that in leaving the EU it's not its intention to diminish any of these rights currently enjoyed by UK nationals through the ackee the problem however is that the approach of the government has set out in the EU withdrawal bill really does suggest something rather different having just spent four months considering the EU withdrawal bill I have to start by applauding the skills of the parliamentary draftsmen and women who put it together I don't think I've ever seen a piece of legislation that conferred such power on the executive to change the law of the land by statutory instrument and where the entire structure was so closely interwoven that the same end could often be achieved by wholly different routes the bill proposes to take a snapshot of EU law as it stands on exit day and import it into our law thus EU directives implemented by either primary or secondary legislation to be known as EU derived domestic legislation in clause 2 EU regulations referred to as direct EU legislation clause 3 and directly affected provisions of EU law clause 4 are all to be retained in so far as not replaced by primary UK legislation on matters such as immigration, trade, customs, agriculture and fisheries but the government intends to enact before exit day but at the same time the government is then excluding the charter of fundamental rights which is not to be part of domestic law after exit day nevertheless allowing general principles of EU law to survive along with the ability to make continued reference to the charter but only in so far as it's necessary to interpret the retained EU law the principle of supremacy of EU law is going to continue post exit day as regards laws enacted prior to exit day or modified after exit day where that modification clearly intends to preserve the supremacy but schedule one paragraph three one makes clear that from exit day on there will be no right of action in domestic law for any failure to comply with any of the general principles of EU law those general principles are not defined paragraph three two then states that after exit day I quote no court may disapply quashal decide that action is unlawful because it is incompatible with general principles of EU law so the government intends to reduce both the charter and the general principles of EU law to no more than interpretive aids to retained EU law the protective rights previously provided to challenge any abuse arising from the operation of EU law evaporate leaving only the possibility of a challenge under the human rights act if the protections are covered by the convention from speaking to ministers and looking at government statements the justification tended for this is that it would be wrong as we're leaving the EU to allow any element of judicial supremacy inherent in the way EU laws operated to survive as it offends the parliamentary sovereignty we're supposed to have lost and are now restoring the alternative possibility of allowing our own supreme court to fulfil this role after exit has been dismissed it's the anomaly of the result that bothers me one of the principal complaints about EU law is that it was either forced on parliament which been obliged to enact statutes or statutory instruments as necessary to meet EU's requirements or worse still it's been directly imposed on us by the commission acting on the authority we surrendered to the EU in the treaties furthermore to try to maintain predictability we have as i've just mentioned preserving its supremacy in relation to pre-exit enacted primary domestic legislation more remarkably still we're going to treat all direct EU legislation as primary for the purpose of the human rights act see schedule eight even though a lot of it quite frankly has the character of secondary legislation and is very much technical i think i'm right in saying somebody will correct me i've found 615 implementing regulations in the area of the environment consumers and health protection alone implementing regulations are made by the EU commission using delegated authority to enact EU measures and can therefore be argued to be similar to secondary legislation in the united kingdom paragraph 19 of schedule eight has the consequence that at most such implementing regulations can be subject only to a declaration of incompatibility if they were to be in breach of the human rights act it may be many years indeed before it's all replaced with new domestic laws in the meantime those subject to retained law are going to have very limited means to challenge it in a remarkable irrigation of power paragraph one two b of schedule one leaves open the possible creation of a right to challenge retained EU law for being invalid at the date of exit but only if the challenge is i quote of a kind described or provided for in regulations made by a minister of the crowd i don't think i can actually think of any other example of a legal right being created or denied in such a fashion by the executive and while this is all being sanctioned by parliament in the withdrawal bill itself the immense scope of the bill as you will have seen as it went through the house of commons doesn't actually provide great deal of reassurance that it's full effect of this importation of law and turning it into retained EU law has in fact been considered indeed bluntly speaking it would have been completely impossible to do it as has been commented on the bill also provides for some of the most extensive Henry the eighth powers to change primary legislation this may be inevitable in order to bring brexit about within the time constraints under which we're operating and there are sunset clauses for the use of statutory instruments but it does mean that important primary legislation such as for example again the equality act could be amended by this method within the permitted period and then there was clause nine which before we amended it in the commons as a result of my amendment allowed the government to start enacting statutory instruments to take us out of the EU in further and civil withdrawal agreement even before we actually knew what it is even changing if necessary any other part of the withdrawal bill itself to do so the same features can be seen in other legislation linked to brexit the trade bill and taxation cross border trade bill all proposed to hand large amounts of unaccountable law making power to the executive on exactly the same justification taken together they constitute in my view an undermining of the rule of law because they substitute executive discretion on questions of legal right and liability rather than enacting and defining in law the criteria for resolving questions of how the law should be interpreted thereafter the complexity of what's being attempted creates uncertainty as to how the law will operate that may bring the legal professions a lot of work but it's not exactly what Lord Bingham recommended in his first principle that the law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible clear and predictable one area in particular looks problematical it really isn't clear to me and has not been since as this started whether the continuing supremacy of retained EU law post exit allows for quashing of pre-exit domestic legislation nor what particular weight should be given to post exit cju EU authorities by our own courts assuming an intention by the government to mirror areas of EU law to maintain compatibility which seems to be the hot topic because the government keeps on talking about that at the moment as part of our negotiating strategy if such an agreement is reached it may well be that a whole new set of rules will be required and I don't find it surprising that members of the senior judiciary have expressed some concern over having to make rulings on issues that may have great political sensitivity as well as economic consequences if the choice facing a court is between regulatory consistency or divergence in an area of trade between the united kingdom and our previous partners now those are the matters on which debate in parliament have been focused apart from the debate defeat on clause nine the government listened to some of the concerns around henry the eight powers certainly in respect of remedying deficiencies in clause seven it agreed a sifting mechanism for deciding if statutory instruments made under the bill should be dealt with by affirmative or negative procedure it's promised to revisit the issue of legal certainty when the bill goes through the lords but I was disappointed that it wasn't able to do more to persuade the government to move further at least allow challenges to the operation of retained EU law to be brought if it was in breach of general principles of EU law I saw this I should emphasise not as a final way of resolving the problem but as a stop gap following the removal of the right to do this under the charter be interesting to see what happens to this when the bill is considered further by the house of lords the EU has been both an important source of law and also an important field of legal cooperation for us join the course of our membership it's helped to develop and promote the rule of law for our own benefit and of course that of our fellow member states our departure leaves a lot of unresolved issues as to how that cooperation can be maintained it's noteworthy in this context that the prime minister's recognised the importance for us as well as for the EU of continuing to participate in areas of justice and home affairs including the european arrest warrant the shengen information system needed to support law enforcement cooperation across the EU also the agreements such as those to manage asylum applications contained in the dublin framework which have underpinned attempts at creating some order in what is in fact a very complex and difficult field actually enabled us to return a significant number of asylum seekers to other EU countries equally important are the civil law measures which include matters as diverse as high value commercial litigation contact arrangements for children the recast brussell's regulations have created rules to ensure uniformity and certainty for litigating parties including the mutual recognition of judgments and their enforceability in member states including the use of injunctions all this has been of the greatest benefit in making the united kingdom an attractive place to litigate the government's position towards some of these latter measures appears to be somewhat ambivalent as it's been suggesting it may ask for new arrangements for our participation in substitution for the present ones but generally the government's intention is of wanting to remain in these type of arrangements after brexit and the possibility of doing this is reinforced by the fact that other non-eustates have been able to participate in some of them it's arguably very much in the interests of the EU that we should continue to do so but of course we're going to do it as associates or observers our ability to shape the continuing development of these laws and frameworks is going to be reduced all in fields of cooperation where our well established rule of law tradition means that we have hitherto been able to be principal leaders on them we're going to be rule takers not rule makers and I really do see this as one of the most serious side effects of brexit as an example we've rightly indicated our concern about how EU data sharing law is developing we're enacting primary legislation to give effect to the new general data protection regulations of the EU to which we provided input in our data protection bill but what's going to happen once we're outside the EU in respect of our ability to contribute to further changes it'll be gone although we'll still be required to observe those changes in all data exchanges with EU countries and ultimately horror of horrors for some of my colleagues so they may not have realized this it's going to be the court of justice of the european union that will in practice determine what is permissible and what is not and although the EU may be secondary to the role played by the council of europe in promoting human rights more generally on a continent its role has actually been substantial the EU fundamental rights agency founded in 2007 works to promote human rights within the EU playing an important role in member states where democracy and the rule of law are still newly established it's extensively used united kingdom NGOs and institutions to help it with its work the balance of competencies review carried out in 2014 by the then government described the agency's output as accurate and of good quality but after brexit we'll no longer be able to play any formal role in its work a useful element of UK soft power projection in promoting human rights will be lost so will our ability to use our EU membership for the promotion of human rights and the rule of law outside the EU it's easy to overlook the EU's role in doing this but it has had considerable leverage council regulation 12 36 2005 banned the export of instruments of torture and is now extended to death penalty drugs negotiations of trade deals with third countries have included provisions requiring human rights issues to be addressed turkey's abolition of its death penalty in 2004 was a requirement for the conclusion of its engagement with the european union in deepening relations with a viewed possible eventual membership so at the inevitable risk of being characterized as a remona i'm afraid that the analysis i've tried to carry out of the consequences of brexit on human rights law doesn't make me enthusiastic for its alleged benefits there may be a bright economic future for us somewhere outside the EU but in terms of the development of our law and the maintenance of the rule of law both here and abroad it is a revolutionary event the creator not of some new order but a potential chaos which the convolutions and oddities of the EU withdrawal bill only serve to emphasize it's a profoundly unconservative act for those ideological purists who are convinced that our laws will be improved by the removal of 45 years of foreign and newfangled accretions i think there will be disappointment the ghost of those accretions will be poltergeist lurking around to haunt them with random and unpleasant consequences for many years and the substantial legal benefits that have come from them for the majority of citizens risk being diminished or lost in uncertainty nor do i think this will be the end of the matter the reality is that over the years of our EU membership we've inevitably acted as an EU level on matters which would otherwise have featured as part of a domestic national conversation in any event it may be EU membership that has entrenched certain equality privacy and social rights in our country to the disgust of believers in untrammeled parliamentary sovereignty but might this not have happened anyway it's true that in the human rights act we proceeded with respect for our constitutional traditions in deciding on the mechanism of declarations of incompatibility rather than creating strike down powers but the idea that in 2017 we should now relegate EU derived rights to a wholly unprotected status flies in the face of evolutionary change in human society doubtless any of our forebears who frequented the court of king henry the eighth might have been surprised and appalled if they'd seen an advanced copy of the bill of rights of 1689 but that doesn't mean that their descendants in 1689 got it wrong it must at least be possible therefore that our departure from the EU a loss of the entrenched protections it entails is going to lead to a debate on how we go forward the proposal of a domestic bill of rights with protections additional to the human rights act which could adequately cover equality and privacy laws might help address the issue doubtless this debate will have opposite polls those reasonably opposed to any laws enjoying a special status and those for whom the charter of fundamental rights was the first step to an overarching architecture of entrenchment of fundamental rights and judicial supremacy in their application as I've said as a Conservative this latter view isn't mine but I really am concerned that some of my colleagues in parliament haven't even noticed the existence of this lobby or the extent to which such rights have become accepted by the public as of importance even if the public have had no reason to consider their origin or how they have been secured as brexit proceeds this debate will not be confined to Westminster the return of powers and devolved administrations the white hall and Westminster provided for in clauses 10 11 and schedule two of the bill is as we all know a source of political controversy because of the way clause 11 prevents the devolved legislatures acting any laws thereafter to modify retained EU law even if it falls within their devolved areas of competence equal opportunities except in Northern Ireland and data protection have always been reserved matters but there's no doubt the Scottish government and the Welsh assembly government have shown no hostility to rights entrenched by EU membership indeed on one view of the devolution settlements of Wales and Scotland is that human rights are a devolved matter and Wales has incorporated the united nation convention on the rights of the child into its domestic law through the rights of children and young persons Wales measure 2011 in the Northern Ireland context we continue to have the unresolved issue of implementing a special bill of rights additional to the human rights act that was provided for in the Good Friday agreement that has never been carried forward and now the Good Friday agreement quite incredibly appears to be under threat as well all these issues are likely to have a bearing on any debate on EU derived rights and the removal of protection from them as we leave and I really wouldn't wish to speculate as to where it will end up taking back control is undoubtedly a powerful idea in conditions where the decline in general confidence in institutions both national and supranational has become so marked but in an increasingly interdependent world what constitutes the benefit of exclusive control becomes harder and harder to identify the risk is that it's all largely a mirage that leaves individuals in practice fewer opportunities to enjoy a good quality of life or to obtain redress for administrative failings is also a uniquely disruptive form of change that precipitates the very reverse of quiet government which the book of common prayer has long enjoined us to pray for and which the united kingdom has traditionally aspired to deliver to its citizens the principal short term beneficiary of this is the executive as a result of its accruing more power in response to the disruption those of us who believe that a lively free and therefore successful democratic society thrives on checks and balances are just going to have to work hard to ensure that we protect and preserve a legacy of international cooperation and engagement that has done all of us in this country very little harm and undoubtedly a great deal of good thank you very much


As the House of Representatives begins the process of establishing the Sustainable Development Fund and its administrative board, stakeholders have expressed mixed reactions to some aspects of the proposal. The bill was sponsored by Abdul Razak Namdas from Adama State over the aim of ensuring effectiveness in the operations and activities of the Sustainable Development Goals as it is done globally. The bill was supported by the House leadership, hence this public carried to aggregate views from stakeholders in order to provide a legislative framework for its take-off. There must be economic wherewithal, there must be funding, because you do not create goals in isolation, you must back it up with funding to achieve those goals. And this is what this bill is about, the bill is timely and I hope the stakeholders have carefully looked into it and identified some benefits embedded in it as it will increase productivity. This bill is a challenge to us to test our commitments to ensuring the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria. There is no doubt a need to define a structure and a legal framework for its efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and sustainability. This keyed into the proposal that made some recommendations. The federal misuse of education is all being viewed as the major and sustained funding of this very important fund, which will impact on the development of all sectors covered by the exegesis to be tied to the consolidated revenue fund of the federal government. The National Population Commission wishes to state as below the proposal to establish a revenue to drive the raising of sustainable funds for the support of implementation of priority interventions and programs across relevant sectors. The proposed bill however suffered a little knock when the senior special adviser peaked holes in the establishment of an administrative board. We have the view that instead of a new management board, a sub-SEG which has overall mandate of coordinating implementation and reporting of the LGT Nigeria to United Nations should be strengthened to deliver the better on the same mandate by increasing its funding. The board when finally established will be charged with the responsibility to impose, operate and maintain the developmental goals in Nigeria. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


It is your host to welcome you into the Inner Sanctum.   Some of us have gotten the arts and crafts rage. You know, the urge to make and un-make things with our bare hands. Gadgets and copper, silver and bone.  One character drove himself into such a creative frenzy he worked himself right back into the grave. I won't tell you who or what he is because sooner or later you'll surely be seeing him around. And now for tonight's torment. Killer at large. Tonight's drama is the story of the short and unhappy life of a fugitive whose sullen face stares at us from hundreds of police posters. Read one. Mark Stribbling wanted for murder. Warning. This man is armed and dangerous. Is he guilty? Let's get our answer from Mark Stribbling. Not guilty. I was framed but good. Could happen to anybody. Come home unexpectedly for the wrong kind of wife. You're keys hardly in the door when there's a scream. Helen! Helen! But it's all over for Helen. And for you too. The killer's gone down the fire escape and so you're the patty. It's a perfect crime for the guy who pulled it. Your gun was used. The world knew there'd been bad blood between you and the missus. And there's an insurance angle. Missus Stribbling is worth ten thousand dollars to you dead. The cops won't forget that. There's enough circumstantial evidence to burn you. So you'll run. You don't face the music. You don't dare. You hide and drift all the time looking for it. Mr. Other Man. I found him. Six months and ten thousand miles later in a tourist town over the border. I found him in a club called the Casa Real. I got behind him and rammed a gun into his bed. Guess who did this? Don't turn around and don't stop smiling. Stribbling in person. I got a message for you from Mr. Stribbling. She wants you to join her as fast as you can go. Stribbling out! The long chase was over. I'd gotten my name. I ditched the gun and got away without being identified. I'd won. And I'd lost. I was really wanted for murder now. I got off the streets into another club. One with a jukebox that talked United States this time. I wanted to forget murder. I wanted to find a girl and find something to laugh about. And then one came in a door. A real looker. I watched her come right at me like she'd picked me. Just as I'd picked her. Let's go. Stribbling's the name I use. And you? Maxine. Fancy name. Can I buy you something? Coffee. Black. Black coffee for the lady, amigo. Thanks. Now can I sell you something? It depends. What are you selling? Blind packages. Like this one. For you, special.  Fool enough? What's in it? Your hammer is in that package. The one you use nailing up cough. In other words, stribbling. Your gun. Is there some kind of gag? No. Where'd you get the gun from? Out of the ash can. I saw you throw it in. Why? That's a long... Daring. Why? I want somebody to confide in somebody I can trust. Trust with what? I'll tell you some other time. Come see me tomorrow morning, room 110. The hotel keeps going. Bye now. I didn't wait for tomorrow morning. You don't when you're suddenly sitting on a cake at Dynamite labeled Maxine. I followed her out instead and tailed her through the streets. I didn't have to tail her far. Just about ten blocks to a club I recognized. The Casa Real. I'd run out of it only an hour ago. With a smoking gun in my hand. I didn't wait until morning to go to Maxine's room in the Hotel Chico. I went right to it to wait for her. Surprising. I didn't bother going up the usual way. I went up by way of the fire escape from the back. I found room 110. The window was sealed tight. I had to kick it in. Inside I found an easy chair and a deck of cards. I played solitaire. With my gun in my lap. Waiting for Maxine. Morning was an hour old when Maxine came home. She had a camera slung over her shoulder, a big one. Like she made picture taking of business. She saw me and didn't bat an eyelash. How's your solitaire game? I'm ahead.  I work nights.  With this camera. I've got the picture taking concession and the custody out. You saw me shoot somebody in there? I did. Then you followed me out. That's how you came to fish my gun out of that ash can, huh? That's right. Did you really trail after me to return the gun? To get an idea across to you. What idea? That I own you from now on. Body and soul and gun. Here's my life insurance policies. A picture? Pop your eyes over it, killer. It's my life insurance and your death warrant. You were fast on the trigger in the custody out last night, but I worked with a fast camera lens. How many prints of this have you got? Just the one you're holding. It doesn't flatter me. Where's the negative? In an envelope addressed to the police to be delivered if... If what? If a friend holding it doesn't see me around for a while gets to think I've been murdered for taking pictures. What are you after? Money. Every dream of having all the money in the world? Not enough to lose any sleep. Where do we get all this money? Deep into the interior. And from there, a week's climb on foot with a mule pack. Climbing Montemuelto. Montemuelto? That's a lot of climbing. The mountain goes up 14,000 feet. Real climate. Who's got all that money up there? An American originally. Ever hear of Teacher Jonas? Never. Neither had I until I went to a library. Teacher Jonas was a multi-millionaire Oklahoma oil man once. Back in 1914, before we were born, oil poured for him like rain from heaven. Then a plague killed his family, his wife, his mother, his daughter. Right after that, his only son committed suicide. Guy blows his top when hard luck plows on like this. That's just what happened to Teacher Jonas. His mind cracked. So he took himself out of the world. He packed up and climbed out as high as he could get. Teacher Jonas came to Montemuelto with everything he owned converted into cash and gold. He's up there somewhere dribbling an old lunatic of 80 with more money than he can count. How'd you tumble to teach at Jonas? Listening in on-table talk at the custody of that pilot named Wiley Scott was boasting to a companion a ship's cook from a medicalist named Genesee. Wiley was trying to get Genesee to stake him to provisions, a pair of mules and a guide. How'd Wiley find out about Teacher Jonas? The pilot did a monoplane on a run from Pampico to San Jose in Guatemala. The plane developed engine trouble, and he had to make a forced landing. You can guess the rest. How do we find Teacher Jonas? Wiley got his plane repaired. He flew over Montemuelto again, made a detailed map. Map-making's his business. He carries the map in a pouch around his middle. Job number one is scheduled for me, huh? I'm to get the map from Wiley. Maxine laid out the strategy for surprising Wiley Scott. She was going to invite herself up a decoy with me behind her. It worked just like that. Wiley opened the door. Nice of you to visit, Maxine, a real nice... Now close your mouth, Wiley, and get back inside. Get inside. What do you want? Tell them, Maxine. The map of Montemuelto. The map? Pull your shirt out and unbutton that money pouch. Sure. Drop it on the table. See if the map's in there, Maxine. It's in there. What you people are? I'll be glad to cut you in this one enough for everybody. Don't go much there for one minute.  The lady says no deal. Now, Stibling. Picture that, Miller. Since Maxine became a camera of fiends, Stibling's become a horribly negative guy. She caught him acting the killer like the show so much she ordered a repeat performance on Wiley Scott. The treasure of Montemuelto. Now she's got him climbing the highest mountain. But let Stibling tell us what's his. Besides his mind, as he bushwhacks his way to the peak of Montemuelto. There were about a day off with the wind in our faces, maybe 4,000 feet up from Montemuelto with 10,000 more to go. We had two mules along packing provisions. We also had a guide we bought ourselves in a village, a local character named Stefano, whose face spoke trouble. We needed him for map reading. But he'd need watching. Stibling. Yes, Stefano. The wind blow like a hurricane. Better we camp here. I lose time. What's wrong with a little wind? Stefano's right. We try circling that ledge. The wind will blow us off the mountain mules and all. We'll make camp here. In this marsh? Better than the ledge. At least here we're not exposed. Now try telling that to the snakes. Build a fire. Make camp, Stefano. Yes, Stibling. The order of the day, huh? You're used to taking orders. And don't ever point your gun my way by mistake. Killing me is like committing suicide. We made camp and got a fire going. And within an hour, the wind let up as suddenly as it began. Montemuelto is like that. And then riding out with the wind as it blew up trail toward the peak came a shot. Hello! Hear that, Maxime? Somebody calling to us from downed trails. Let me listen. Hello! One thing, we haven't got the mountain to ourselves. That voice. I've heard it somewhere. Can you make out where and who? Hello! It's that ship's cook from Veracruz. Genesee. The one Wiley Scott was trying to get a steak from that night in the cathedral. Must have seen the smoke rising from our fire. Well, we suppose Genesee's on the mountain before. One guess. We pumped Wiley Scott like you did, huh? And he's out to make it in his own like we are. But he doesn't make anything, Maxime. Then he appears. Do you order me to give him what Wiley got? No. Not when he appears. Not with Stefano here watching. You go down to Genesee instead. I hurried through the brush. And then after a while, I slowed down. I was stalking like a hunter's stalks. There was no sound, not all except birds screeching. No sound of Genesee. And then, all of a sudden, I heard all the sound Genesee had in him. He was screaming somewhere.  I cut the direction of the screams as fast as I could go. I reached to where Genesee figured to be. But there was no Genesee. Only a packy hole at the edge of what looked like a shimmering bed of hot sand. Quicksand. It looked like Genesee had fallen in. All I was left on was a hat sitting on the edge. But as it turned out, that was what Genesee wanted me to see. God! It came to a bit of my left-hand smashed world. Bullet is dragged into it. And Genesee, looking down on me, had been squatting in the brush with his rifle aimed and ready. You're not very bright, my friend. You're fool-easy. That hat on the edge of the quicksand was only a stage setting. How could you know I was coming down after you? Oh, these field glasses. I saw you make camp up there off the legend and come down trail after whispering with Maxine.  Maybe not. I'll lie to me, my friend. I ain't no Maxine. Roll. Roll? End of the quicksand. I ain't got any bullets to waste. Roll! Okay. Okay, if you want it like that. I rolled. Slowly. I was dumb to sure, but Genesee wasn't very bright either. Rolling, my good hand underneath closed on the 38. The 38, the shoulder host. Coming up on the roll, I shot to my hip. Genesee never even knew what hit him. I got back to camp. Maxine was all smiled. She washed my hand and tied it up. Then we all turned in for the night. The last thing in my ears was Stefano's snoring. And then her fever swabbing in my hand rose to my head. And then I passed out. I came to wondering why Stefano wasn't snoring anymore. It wasn't because he was awake, up in the box. Packing the mules like a guy making a sneak getaway in the night. I reached for my gun. My gun. My gun was gone. I see you are awake, Senor Estriblian. Look at this! Quiet! You're awake, Senorita. You need to not do nothing foolish, Senor. Stefano does not want to harm you and the charming Senorita. What does Stefano want to do? To take the mules of himself to the Senor Teacher Jonas? What do you know about Teacher Jonas? As much as you do, Senor. You see, the Senor Wiley Scott also tells Stefano everything when he asks Stefano to work for him. He's a guide to the top of Montemuelto. And there's nothing else really. I have a long way to go. Stefano had left us to what seemed sure death. In the starvation, one of those sudden quicksand beds and an animal or a snake. But we kept pushing on Maxine and me. Three nights and two days. The Maxine breaking into a laughing jag after last. Now it's a funny day. Ah, you! The tender way you're keeping me alive and... I've got to keep you alive. Even if it kills you this time. Hey, don't you scribble. I'll give you one, yes. If you only knew where I'd left that negative. I'll know. I'm keeping you alive, sure, just about. But that mud water you've been drinking and the rotten food you'll catch yourself a fever on it sooner or later and then you'll talk. You'll rave with fever and before you know it you'll let on where you left that negative.  But I had an exclusive on fever. My head was swelling in it. My hands. A hand-genesis shot. I wanted to cut it off. And then what seemed to have day from the days we ran into Stefano again. Maxine saw him first. Look! Where? Up there, hanging from the tree-gourd. Stung up by the neck and grinning like an over-joker's on him. I cut him down. The $64 question of who Stefano up was answered in a note tender was closed. What does the nurse say? I read it to you.  Signed... Wiley Scott. Wiley Scott? But I shot him through the heart and left him in a hotel club. His ghost took up where Wiley left off. Let me see that note. You've seen Wiley's handwriting before. Well, is it or isn't it? Yes. Wiley wrote this note.  You get to a point where you don't figure things out anymore. You don't think you just push on like we did to the top.  And then not much further to go. Smokes. Smokes. It's teacher Jonas's hideaway. We made it. Almost. We got a good quarter-mile yet. Did we? What? Wiley's up there. Look through these field glasses. See what I saw? Yeah. Wiley out front with a rifle standing side. We made it, but we're licked anyway. We show and Wiley or his ghost shoots us down. No. We don't do it like that. I show. Wiley draws a bean down on me. His eyes are on me. With my bare hands, I only got one hand. Get a rock.  We tried it like that. Maxine stumbling into Wiley's fumes and pulling a dead faint a hundred yards away. Me crawling on my knees and stomach from the rear with a rock. I waited until Wiley bent over Maxine and then I seeped. When Wiley came around to consciousness, I had his rifle. I rose again, I guess. How'd you come back to life? I'd stay in my room. You shot okay, but you only knocked me out. A contusion did that. I always wear a bulletproof vest. How'd you be disappeared? Short cut. I didn't indicate on the map. Any old man? Teacher Jonas, what'd you do with him? I don't see him. The old man's dead. He died this morning in his room. You killed him? Ah, I found him dying. Not that special on the old age. Your money, what about his money? That's a joke. Old Teacher Jonas told me I could have it if I wanted it bad enough, seeing as he was dying without airs. He was a real old gentleman. He was crazy, you couldn't tell. Where'd you say he kept the money, Wiley? In an iron trunk in the kitchen. In an iron trunk in the kitchen? Take care of Wiley, sibling. Maxine, wait a minute. Let her go. Stribbling, she just saved. She's gonna get it. What do you mean what she's gonna get? The house came down on Maxine. When the smoke cleared, Wiley told me what old Teacher Jonas had told him. A booby trap tooled into the iron trunk. Open the trunk to steal the money.  I'm here on the top of Monte Muerto with Wiley Scott. That negative no doubt is in the hands of the police by now. They're probably sweating their way up here. Funny thing, I don't care anymore. I'm not worrying about being hung. It's pain shooting from my hand into every part of me. And you tell me, how many times can a man die? Nothing like blowing your top in high places. Maxine and Stribbling reached the peak, all right. The peak of insanity. Poor Stribbling definitely disinterested in that picture Maxine took of him now. He figures, you can't hang a man for dying. Maro, oh sure. I had copied this dilly out of an old edition of Callaghan's catalog for climbers. Quote, sometimes the road up leaves underground. Pleasant dream. Inner sanctum has been brought to you through the facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio Service. The voice of information and education.