Tessa Mayes

Monday

Tessa Mayes

One human right should not be able to extinguish another human right

From our UK edition

The Human Rights Act (1998) has a big fan base. In legal, political and celebrity circles there is much enthusiasm for it. Yet the law is not giving us the rights and freedoms we need, because each right can be played off against another. We’ve been losing our human rights in the name of human rights. In the mid-nineties I began chronicling and campaigning for a right to free speech while challenging the Human Rights Act. I couldn’t understand why Britain, a country renowned for its tolerance, was clamping down on the right to free speech (Article 10) including what newspapers published, in the name of a right to privacy (Article 8).  The reason was said to be the rise of stories concerning the private lives of public figures.

Saturday

Tessa Mayes

Has the smoking ban reduced heart attacks?

From our UK edition

It’s four months since the smoking ban was imposed in England, and most smokers I’ve met in that time seem to be quietly adapting. A friend wants to buy Suck UK’s unisex Smoking Mittens. If you have not come across them before, they are gloves that have a metal hole in them for your cigarette so you can keep warm when smoking outside in the winter. They cost £15 and, as my friend says cheerfully, ‘You never know, if it gets really cold, Silk Cut may sponsor white and purple balaclavas with silver puff holes.’ But if many smokers seem to be adapting to the ban, there is still plenty of strong opposition. Groups like Forest continue to campaign for the right to smoke.

Saturday

Tessa Mayes

Stars in their eyes

From our UK edition

To download a podcast about Tessa Mayes's experiences with the celebrity Scientologists, click here. ‘A culture is only as great as its dreams and its dreams are dreamed by artists,’ wrote L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in 1969, 15 years after he formed the church itself. So, in a sense, the Scientologists have only been true to their founder’s intentions in the ever greater emphasis they now put on the famous. If you’ve seen the ordinary-looking Scientology shopfront on the Tottenham Court Road, the London Celebrity Centre comes as a pleasant contrast: it is an impressive, six-storey, cream Victorian building in Bayswater, adorned with balustrades.

Saturday

Tessa Mayes

Big Brother is coming

From our UK edition

Two weeks ago, Tony Blair told the road-toll petitioners by email that his government was not trying to impose ‘Big Brother surveillance’. That was accurate, if disingenuous. The real Big Brother doesn’t announce himself. He comes creeping up on you, by stages, until you realise that you are being snooped on, scrutinised and spied upon in all sorts of ways that would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago. Take the powers of the taxman.

Saturday

Tessa Mayes

Sex offenders in schools: old news

From our UK edition

Scandals have anniversaries, too, and another has just passed. In January 2006, it emerged that the Education Department (DfES) had authorised Paul Reeve — a man who had a police caution for viewing child pornography and was on the Sex Offenders Register — to be employed as a PE teacher in a school in Norwich. In May 2005, civil servants advised Kim Howells, an education minister at the time, that the man should be given only a warning, was not a risk to children, had not been convicted of an offence and that no child had been harmed. Reeve had not been put on what is still called ‘List 99’, the department’s blacklist, even though he was on the Sex Offenders Register. More cases were quickly uncovered.