The point about Magna Carta is that it was the first step in a long road to moving power over people's lives from state to individual - it was certainly a baron's charter though, but presumably the ability to read and write was pretty limited then (nobility and church, I should think). Since then we've had the Bill of Rights (which itself has silly bits like allowing Protestants to bear arms which would ironically be against the ECHR's freedom of religion provisions), the US Constitution (also with the occasional oddity in, and plenty of US laws are in direct contravention of ECHR) and the ECHR, each updating the ideas of the previous one, with a general movement in the same direction. The ECHR itself isn't a complete solution to state human rights abuses, since it still allows the state to do a lot of bad governing - that's down to us, the voters, to correct, but it's a good base.
Anyway I was right about having to watch the tabloids this morning:
http://www.septicisle.info/2007/05/s...after-lie.html