Should deaf and mute people be banned from being councillors?

! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.

Under current election law people who are deaf and dumb are banned from standing for election.

Bournemouth Council has just gotten itself into trouble for directly quoting a 1766 electoral law which says that “lunatics and idiots” and “deaf and dumb persons” are disqualified from standing for election.  The council has apologised for using non-PC terms.

I wasn’t aware that the law banned deaf and mute people from being councillors but in these “enlightened” times is it right that we should be banning people from becoming councillors because they can’t hear or speak?  You can’t refuse to employ someone because they are deaf and mute unless there is a health and safety reason for doing so.  What about the Human Rights Act?  Would an immigrant be banned from standing if they didn’t speak English or would an interpreter be provided?

One comment

  1. Scaffold (146 comments) says:

    I don’t think having deaf and mute councellor is a problem. Becasue they do not say anything reasonable and do not listen to the voters anyway.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.