Human Rights - how far?

[Cyclefrance]

I have mentioned elsewhere how the European Human Rights Act is screwing up our ability to enforce other laws in the UK. An article in the news today prompted me to propose this thread:

A known arsonist was granted the right to have access to matches by the courts, as to deprive the person would have been an infringement of their individual human right to be able to light the cigarettes they smoked through habit. The person concerned had been arrested having been caught at 4.00 am one morning coating a number of cars with paint stripper. The prosecution argued that, in addition to restrictions proposed as result of the actual offence commited, as a known arsonist the accused should also be restricted access to matches as a sensible course of action, but the defence argued and persuaded the court otherwise.

Perhaps, one of the less serious examples of how the the Act works against common sense, but an otherwise reasonable illustration of the problems that it has created.

More worrying is the way the Act will be used by known and active extremists to defend their right to freedom of speech and to preach their doctrine. The UK government has introduced legislation to be able to deport/imprison those that incite hatred of and harm to our country. The trouble is it is a difficult conviction to achieve and the human rights defence is expected to see an accused person tie up the courts for several years thereby neutralising the legislation's purpose.

Is the UK alone in having such a problem? Is the Human Rights Act doing more harm than good? The rights of the majority to be protected from such risks as the two I have mentioned (and hundreds more) fall by the wayside, and that seems a nonsense to me.