I’m getting sick of the debt downgrade issue, so let’s shift to another topic.
The title to this post may seem like a joke, but Europe’s bizarre courts have decided to trample the property rights of landlords by ruling that tenants have a “right” to satellite TV and therefore cannot be barred from installing dishes.
Here are some excerpts from the Daily Mail’s report.
It is regarded as a luxury that allows people to watch top sport and blockbuster movies from the comfort of their armchairs. But owning a satellite dish is actually a human right, according to unelected European judges. In an extraordinary ruling, lawmakers in Strasbourg have warned that banning dishes on listed buildings, social housing and even private homes could breach the right to freedom of expression… The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Britain’s discrimination watchdog, has now published new guidance warning that landlords could be at risk of being sued if they try to stop their tenants putting up a satellite dish.
We should not be surprised by this odd decision. European courts already have ruled that free soccer broadcasts are a human right, so there’s obviously a pattern of inventing rights that require the violation of other people’s property rights.
To be fair, other government entities can be equally stupid when it comes to fabricating human rights. The Finish government, for instance, decided that there’s now a human right to broadband access.
And the Bolivian government has decided that there’s a human right to stolen property.
I wonder if the politicians and judges might rethink some of these decisions if people decided that they had a “human right” to rob the homes of the political elite?
