Human rights were originally designed to provide every individual with the same level of protection from the abusive and oppressive policies and practises exercised by any state.  Now human rights are too often used to provide selective individuals, often based on protected characteristics, like gender or impairment, a priority access to certain services as an absolute right regardless of actual need, and without any consideration of what it costs and the resources available.

The consideration of costs within public services has been demonised for many years, especially when it relates to services for specific individuals like health and social care. However, if we were to ever properly deliver ‘for the many, not the few’ as many people claim to support, then the consideration of cost as a whole within a resource-limited environment has to be considered.

Cost is used to reinforce notions of traditional and historic choices they may no longer be true like if people who need social care do not get the funding to live in their own home, they will be forced into a ‘cheaper’ care home against their will. The reality is with technology and the innovated delivery of support, a care home could indeed be the most expensive option. Also, this comparison of solutions does not take into account how either solution successfully meets the desired outcomes of the individual, which I believe should always be the priority.

As opposed to cost being seen as the enemy, it should be respected as the motivator of innovation and overall improvements in the delivery of outcomes. If resources were unlimited, there would have never been an incentive to assessing need and deliver individual outcomes as established solutions could endlessly grow without external threat. This could mean we may have never moved away from the long stay hospitals when social care was purely service led. The incentive to fully include people with impairments into society has to some degree been motivated by cost with an endless supply of business cases to why it makes economic sense. Take that away, and the ‘compassionate’ warehousing of people with impairments remains the viable solution.

Human rights sells itself as a friend of equality but in reality, it delivers inequality.  In order for one group to have whatever they want in a resource-limited society, another group has to suffer. Those who are vocal are always unwittingly attacking those without a voice, those a liberal or socialist society does not care about as equality is used to spread inequality.

I despise this level of vile selfishness wrapped up as equality and human rights. Human rights should be about the basic rights like communication, mobility and health for all, not a protector of the middle class elite. By refusing to consider the limited resources that exist, human rights has made fair and effective government impossible, as they are forced to balance the books of meeting the demands of the vocal minority by punishing the voiceless majority. But we live in an era where the left wing snowflake generation is happy to cause distress and suicides to get what they want with no consideration for others.