Martin Kelly

Scotland's Political Class - Stamping On The People, Guid Scots Together

2009-12-04T06:31:00.005Z

Sadly, it comes as no surprise that The Copfighter-General should be reported as intending to abolish double jeopardy regardless of the Scottish Law Commission's recommendation that no significant change be made to the law, after its publication has led our tax-tit-sucking-Solons to engage in a bout of communal carpet-chewing.

According to the 'The Journal of the Law Society of Scotland',

"Conservative and Labour spokesmen both said the report was weak in not permitting past cases to be reopened".

It would appear that both of these gangs - for political parties should only ever be considered to be gangs - want the law to endorse the persecution of the citizen, and for those whose little fingers have forgotten more about the law of Scotland than their own fat, sweaty, bald, ugly, old, mean-spirited carcasses will ever know to provide justification for their desire to pass laws which, regardless of their stated intentions, will serve no purpose other than to enable the police to persecute the public. These people do not need election; they need therapy.

Does their hatred of humanity stem from having had their lunch money stolen at school? Do they harbour uniform fantasies? Is it in fact their deepest wish that a Chief Constable pat them on the head and tell them they're a good boy or girl?

To be a polis's bitch?

Why should a report be weak when it doesn't give you what you want? Can't they stomach the fact that their country's legal system is independent of government control? Do they want judges, or ghillies?

As for victims' relatives - it's time the gloves came off.

In a society in which you can get anything you want just about anytime you want, even a bride if you are so inclined, it seems to be very hard for some people to understand that criminal justice is a collective endeavour. Those who say 'We haven't got justice' when an accused person is acquitted of a crime should be reminded that they have got justice; the collective justice of the courts and society. Instead of having been pandered to, what really should have been said to some of these people a very long time ago is that the justice they've received is the only justice they're ever going to get. They might be able to dominate their wives and homes like gods if they are so inclined - but outside those strict parameters, they are little men like any others, and their shreaks of outrage at not getting what they want might elicit some sympathy for a while; until their fellows recognise that what they want is just as dangerous as the people they wish to see locked up. These people do not speak for the public. They only ever speak for themselves.

There should be a name for this legal phenomenon. It should be called 'Swire's Disease'.

Collective justice is not personal justice - if you want personal justice, become a vigilante and wait to see what happens to you. The very same politicians who have courted you and fanned the flames of your grievances will come after you with all guns blazing.

Criminal justice is not a Thatcherite endeavour. It is naturally collective. It should not be personalised, no matter how vocal some aggrieved people think it should be. This is another of those occasions when being Scottish makes me feel dirty; the thought of just how cheap and coarse and insubstantial Scottish civilisation actually is, or has become, making me wish to vomit. A soi-disant, ersatz 'Scottish Government' of those who claim to love the Scottish nation will push through legislation which will result in some Scots being oppressed, and all Scots living in fear of oppression, for no reason other than their desire to look bigger and harder than those in the other gangs; behaviour of the kind engaged in by the worst kind of blogger or redtop newspaper columnist. At least newspaper columnists have the advantage of knowing how many inches they have to work with.

Our 'Justice Secretary' (actually, by law he's only Justice Minister, but don't mention that too loudly), you know, the one who got himself arrested at a football match a number of years ago, an adept inept so adept that he managed to make himself look like Koko the Klown during his career's most public display of principle, is the worst of the lot. He is a solicitor; he should know better. The Scottish legal profession's capacity to disappoint is limitless.

I'm going for a long lie down. If anyone thinks this essay is intemperate, they should have seen what was edited out. But I am angry about this. The abolition of double jeopardy is neither necessary nor in the interests of justice. In Scotland, we have reached the stage of passing laws for no purpose other than to enable the judicial persecution of a single man. This man has done very many bad things during the course of his life, for which he is paying the penalty. Having had his day in court, it is neither just nor right that he should be forced to undergo trial once again for crimes of which he has already been acquitted. It's him today; it's you and me tomorrow. That Scotland's politicians, and I suspect its public servants, don't seem to think this way says more about them than it does about us.

Those who would play fast and loose with tradition should remember that both adjectives also apply to the symptoms of diarrhoea; and one wonders just how badly the Crown Office needs an enema.

Slave Civilisations

2009-12-03T08:28:00.004Z

The collapse of Dubai's adobe slave civilisation is just as much A Good Thing as it was A Bad Thing that many British expatriates seemed to feel no compunction about being served by slaves. It would be A Very Good Thing if many such expatriates were really given the official third degree, you know, unnecessary internal body searches, that sort of stuff, the next time they land at Heathrow.

Dubai's collapse is the best hope for its slaves. While slavery will persist for as long as humanity endures, entire civilisations built on slavery just don't have the legs to keep going anymore. What does for them in the end is the mass realisation that they are slave civilisations. If there is one event in life which scares people just as much as dying, it's the thought of being enslaved.

And how the wannabe slave-owners must hate a world grown pale at the Galilean's breath, one which actually finds slavery revolting wherever it's practised!

It's pointless to even try to guess whether the telephone and the Internet would finally have done for the Roman Empire; but in a global labour market, willing slaves are hard to come by. That's why they have to be duped and lied to instead.

Scotland's New Education Minister

2009-12-03T08:18:00.003Z

Mike Russell MSP steps into the shoes vacated by Fiona Hyslop after The Tartanissimo's massive failure of political and moral courage earlier this week. He bluffed; his bluff was called; and he vented his rage on an underling.

He's some kid.

Mr. Russell is co-author of a book titled 'Grasping the Thistle', described by one critic as 'two Scottish nationalists’ calypso to the so-called ‘business community’, ‘Tally Me Ma Haggis’ if you like, lilting that when Scotland’s independent it will still be a great place to do business'.

Let's turn on the stopclock - for the privatisation of the schools.

Feeding The 5,000

2009-12-03T08:11:00.004Z

Antoher kind of miracle, I guess.

Where are these guys coming from? Don't they, like, realise that a time when people are not happy with them is not the time for them to be chanting their mantras about competition?

They might want rather more for their Christmas than their two front teeth; but there seem to be quite a lot of unhappy people about who would be made much happier by taking them right out of their heads. Time for a spot of humility, chaps. Come on.

Blair's Arrogance

2009-12-03T07:39:00.005Z

Tony Blair certainly set a few precedents while in office - one would imagine that neither Lloyd George nor Churchill would have been seen dead in a Nehru jacket while serving as First Lord of the Treasury.

Antoher way in which he has shown himself to be a changemaker is the way in which he set out to enrich himself immediately after leaving Downing Street.

'The Guardian' has attempted to penetrate his financial web. 'Web' is a good noun to describe such structures- they're sticky, and once inside them you tend to get trapped. They are also very dull, and good luck to anyone who might feel the inclination to penetrate them.

But even in this hole-in-the-corner furtiveness, Blair seems incapable of suppressing what seems to be his central psychological trait; arrogance. At the web's centre sits an entity named 'Windrush Ventures No. 3 Limited Partnership'.

For a former Prime Minister whose terms saw historically high levels of immigration to draw his bread from an entity named after an immigrant ship is the really public 'Up Yours, Blighty!' he must always have wanted to give. We'd probably have appreciated it more if he'd just given us the two fingers on Whitehall on 1st May 1997.

Hat tip - Laban Tall.

Atheist Idiocy

2009-12-02T07:41:00.004Z

This one takes the biscuit. Or perhaps the rusk.

Hat tip Mark Shea.

Justice In The New Model Scotland

2009-12-02T07:24:00.004Z

Even though there is very much of it to begin with, the abolition of double jeopardy would express all that is vicious, vindictive, mean-spirited, violent, and aggressive in the Scottish national character; a paradise for bullying policemen.

Whammy

2009-12-01T07:37:00.009Z

The writings of Tim Luckhurst, the rather bellicose Donald Sutherland lookalike and sometime film critic who now serves as professor of journalism at the University of...Kent, I think it is, sometimes merely invoke the reaction, 'Who's Tim Luckhurst?'; forcing me to remember the unpleasant occasion when he seemed to threaten to sue me. Sort of. Perhaps.

However, he has published an article on 'Comment is Free' which will hopefully come to be regarded as a classic of its kind. Of what kind is anyone's guess.

Entitled, 'Why journalism needs paywalls', ostensibly it is another of his diatribes against online journalism. Professor Luckhurst writes of British newspapers' early days that "professional reporters were hired to replace the amateur ideologues that had filled the illegal, unstamped press with political passion but few facts." While many professional journalists undoubtedly approach their work in a serious, professional manner, one can only hope that their efforts will one day overcome the best efforts made by the amateur ideologues who actually own newspapers to undermine their efforts.

Professor Luckhurst goes on to praise the decision of Johnston Press to place, inter alia, the Worksop Guardian and the Carrick Gazette behind a pay wall. Only time will tell if this decision results in the lights going out all over Worksop. But he then goes on to make an astonishing claim - "It was expected that Rupert Murdoch would be the first proprietor to admit the twin stark truths that journalism is not free and that no good has come of the nigh universal pretence that it should be. But the News Corp chairman is not the only one who has noticed that free access to online journalism has been bad for newspaper profits, bad for their editorial independence and bad for representative democracy."

One would have thought that the real danger for representative democracy is the concentration of the media in the hands of a group of people who, if they are British at all, comprise an even smaller percentage of the British public than those who actually provide online content and commentary of their own.

He writes, "(p)retending that online journalism costs nothing has left once great titles from Los Angeles to London in the same grim predicament." If those who control such 'once great titles' have followed defective business models, one would hope that their shareholders would be baying for their heads. Many things have been 'once great', and now exist no more. It is to be hoped that Professor Luckhurst is not trying to make the case that competition is good for everyone but the young people he makes his living teaching.

A propos of nothing before it, he then goes on to make what is one of the most bitterly anti-Catholic statements I can recall reading. He writes,

"Believing that links alone create value is no more rational than imagining that the mass turns comestibles into the flesh and blood of a prophet. "

Now, overlook the mistakes he's made in that sentence (I've counted two of them; 'mass' for 'Mass', and 'a prophet' instead of 'God' - further suggestions welcome). Instead, try to work out just what that has to do with anything he's written before. It just sits there. It's a wallflower at the school disco kind of sentence, feeling lonely and having nothing to do with anything around it. It's not quite as absurd a 'tarantula on a slice of angel cake'; but at least Raymond Chandler has the mitigation of writing that one deliberately. What's it doing there?

But then he goes on to write,

"In the first years of the internet era thousands of professional journalists have lost their jobs because online revenues cannot pay their salaries. Trained reporters who sit in courts and council chambers have become rare. Community reporting has been replaced by global celebrity gossip touted by PR companies. The workings of the state are no longer monitored at first hand and the electorate is deprived of information it needs to exercise choice."

One could take this to any number of places, in any number of ways. Is he actually arguing for protectionism for journalists? Perish the thought. Has every local newspaper published all dirty dealings of which it was aware, at all times and under all circumstances? Pah. If you believe that, you'll believe that the publication of The Zinoviev Letter was in fact not an attempt by a British newspaper to interfere in the democratic process.

The rest of it is in the same vein, with the last sentence - 'When accurate reporting dies it is usually replaced by gossip, prejudice and bigotry' - being particularly laughable in light of the author's immediately preceding comment on the Mass. It is gratifying to see that comments are overwhelmingly negative.

For what Professor Luckhurst does not seem to realise is that online journalism has never at any time been free; and that those who consume it, know it. One of the difficulties of having an educated population is that you can't really trust them to believe what they read in the newspapers.

St. Andrew's Day

2009-11-30T07:42:00.001Z

I wonder what St. Andrew would think of it.

I Could Be Mistaken...

2009-11-30T07:20:00.003Z

but didn't this article also appear yesterday under the name 'Kevin Smith'?

Indeed it did.

Orwelliana, 3

2009-11-30T06:46:00.005Z

The disputes of bloggers are unedifying at the best of times; when they concern the worst of times, they are diabolically ugly.

It is interesting to note the appearance of this so soon after that of this; with no mention of the latter in the former. Suffice it to say that the first might have trouble satisfying the tests of relevance and specification demanded of written pleadings in the Scottish civil courts.

Remember - he who controls the present controls the past; he who controls the past, controls the future.

LPUK...

2009-11-29T20:36:00.005Z

is not a body in respect of whose doings I can generate a speck of interest, let alone ever bring myself to vote for, but congratulations are in order to Chris Mounsey, now, apparently, its leader.

The Cannibalistic Entropy Of Anglo-Saxon Capitalism

2009-11-29T19:48:00.004Z

Will Hutton has written a very nice wee piece on the necessity of Cadburys remaining in British hands. Glad to see someone agrees with me.

As is only to be expected, some of the more predictably Pavlovian type of freemarketoids are having a go at him in the Comments. No group of potential slaves ever embraced slavery so warmly as economic liberals. One would weep, if one were not laughing.

The way in which British assets have been swallowed up by the protectedly ravenous is not merely pillage; it's a direct result of Anglo-Saxon capitalism's cannibalistic approach to the economy. Dog must not merely eat dog; dog must own dog he plans to eat.

Inevitably, this has resulted in a cannibalistic entropy. We have no significant industrial base any more, a victim of foreign competition. Or not, as the case may be. It is hard to see how industries in countries that don't provide subsidies can compete with those from countries that do. Trade carried out on such terms cannot be labelled 'competition', for only one side is competing. It's like a boxing bout in which only one pugilist is permitted gloves or a gumshield.

Once the industry's gone, you have to rely on provision of services as a means of generating national income, always a risky business. Most services traded in the UK are completely unnecessary. Adam Smith, the old Pie in the Sky Fairy himself, would turn in his grave at the thought of an economy in which the principal motor of economic activity is the haircut.

Being unsustainable, the businesses that supply them can't of course be sustained. It was to the demographic that believes that their unnecessary service really is the better mousetrap which will have the world beating a path to their door that Lord Sugar spoke a few home truths not so long ago; and if his delivery lacked finesse, he can't really be criticised for stating the bleedin' obvious.

What's left, when you can't make things and can't serve people? The answer is very straightforward; sell the shirt off your back, a policy to which successive British governments have surrendered themselves with abandon. It's a pity they've felt it necessary to surrender the rest of us to it as well. Those who lead Britain will not be happy until absolutely nothing in the United Kingdom is owned by the British anymore. Cannibalism and entropy might both be phenomena, but that does not mean that they should ever have been considered as policies.

Dissension And Critique

2009-11-29T18:09:00.004Z

I don't read Damian Thompson's commentaries upon religious affairs with any degree of regularity; a quick scan of his short post on the most recent Irish clerical abuse scandal reminds me why.

The scandal will not, as Mr. Thompson seems to believe, make 'the Catholic Church even more loathed in Ireland than it already is'. This is because it is not loathed in Ireland. Some Irish loathe it; most don't seem to. If the Irish loathe their Church, the high level of Mass attendance in the Irish town I visit infrequently would seem to make the loathing not unlike that found in a love-hate relationship; a folie a deux, rather than a folie de Dieu.

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, one should always be aware of the Devil's love of coteries and factions; the reason I gave up reading Mr. Thompson was because of what I considered to be his extreme partisanship in favour of traditional rites, and his labelling of 'The Tablet' as 'The Bitter Pill'. Such sarcasm cannot be considered to be the action of a person interested in conciliation, or indeed dialogue. However, his reference to 'the mean-spirited Jansenism of the Irish Church and the Irish clerical diaspora' is too brusque to pass unremarked.

Jansenism is a heresy; if he is aware of heresy ever having been preached by an Irish clergyman, he should report it to the proper authoritites. To misuse terms with precise meanings merely to prove a point is an extremely sloppy use of language.

Similarly, while many of them might have not been a Telegraph blogger's sort of chap, over the course of time the 'Irish clerical diaspora' so casually dismissed by Mr. Thompson might not have provided the actual backbone of Catholicism on the mainland, but they have certainly been its ribs. In many cases, they are the ones who built the churches to which many in the Anglican Communion seem to wish to return, despite nobody ever having been stopping them from doing so whenever they've felt like it. Whilst one would rejoice at the conversion of a single Anglican who comes over to Rome as a result of the Pope's overture, presumably also with their wife and their altar-rails, it really shouldn't be forgotten that, in many parts of England, it's been the Irish lads who've kept the show on the road.

Glasgowman!

2009-11-28T07:39:00.006Z

(Inspired by yesterday's rather fraught journey to work)

Faster than a speeding bullet, Glasgowman rips off his shirt to reveal the giant letter 'G' tattooed on his chest in biro!

Watch him leap onto public transport blind drunk at ten o' clock in the morning!

Marvel at how The Big G shouts sectarian slogans while frightening elderly passengers with overt and inappropriate expressions of intimacy!

Wonder at how he stumbles off the bus and shambles away in search of his nemesis, the archvillain Respectability!

He'll die young, either violently or through self-abuse - but he's Glasgowman, and his legend will live forever!

The Cochabamba Samba In Coatbridge

2009-11-28T07:26:00.004Z

Let's see.

The Scottish Parliament gets power to raise taxes.

They screw up the budget, and have to call in the IMF.

The IMF demands that everything that isn't screwed down be pillaged out to the private sector.

And Scots end up paying more for their water, because, you know, the market is always more efficient, blah, blah, etc.

The Cochabamba Water Wars of 2000 took place in a far away country of which we've known nothing; until now.

Mandelson And Modernity

2009-11-28T06:58:00.004Z

In today's 'Telegraph', Charles Moore asks the following questions of Peter Mandelson -

"Has he driven forward the necessary task of modernising and moderating a party that desperately needed to be able once again to run the country? Or has he pushed our public life into a culture of chicanery, political lies and the circumvention of parliamentary democracy? The answer is, both."

As far as Mandelson's concerned, it would appear that the process of 'modernisation' involves ripping the Labour Party to shreds and selling out its historic base, while later having head waiters being suitably servile towards you, and being invited to Rothschild shooting parties, when you are awarded the medieval title of 'Baron' for your efforts.

As ever, modernisation is good for you; but not for me.

The Cumbria Floods Recovery Appeal

2009-11-27T08:23:00.002Z

The details are here.

Hat tip Martin Meenagh.

Five Simple Rules Regarding The Reading Of Lawbooks

2009-11-27T07:59:00.006Z

Firstly, when buying a lawbook you must realise that you will be spending fifty pounds on a product with a shorter shelflife than a pint of milk. If it has not already been superceded in the interval between taking it off the shelf and bringing it to the till, it will probably have become dated by the time you've put your wallet back in your pocket and archaic by the time you've got home.

Secondly, disputes between academic lawyers are of strictly limited intellectual interest. One never hears of disputes between academic tilers or academic carpetfitters, and perhaps with good reason; it is hard to understand why the squabbles of academic lawyers should be treated as being of a different class and degree.

Thirdly, the writing of lawbooks involves both the writer and the reader buying into the legal fiction that the work covers all the bases. With the best will in the world, no academic lawyer will ever be able to cite every precedent that has ever been issued on their topic, if only because so much precedent goes unrecorded. They do not, indeed cannot, record what the law actually is, but only what the writer thinks the law is at a particular point in time and space.

Fourthly, lawbooks sometimes have a disturbing tendency to mirror their authors' prejudices. Such books do not record what the law is, but what the writer would like it to be at every point in time and space.

Lastly, no matter how intensively researched, no matter how many hours have been put into its drafting and redrafting, the completed work is likely to be almost wholly devoid of literary merit. The small print on your bus ticket is likely to make for a better read than the book which explains how it came to be there. This is usually not the fault of the writer, but of the subject matter. Yet so vital is the law that such books will always have to be written. Accordingly, both writer and reader should view them as penance.

The Persecution Of Gary McKinnon

2009-11-27T07:05:00.003Z

So Alan Johnson, that plain-speaking man of the people, will not intervene to prevent a vulnerable person being extradited to another country to face allegations regarding actions which may, or may not, have been carried out in this one.

This is the political equivalent of a school bully roughing up a calipered classmate for their lunch money; in my view a Pilate-like self-absolution, and an abuse of power for no purpose apparently higher than really sticking the boot into someone weaker than yourself.

Johnson certainly seems to be one of the less appealing specimens of humanity on the public scene. He must know that to deliver an Asperger's sufferer into the Federal prison system might by and of itself be cruel and unusual punishment. He must know that in the Darwinian world of custody, the weak are automatically the prey of the strong. Yet none of this seems to matter to that old trade unionist.

He seems to have the survival instincts of a sewer rat.

A Cultural Failure

2009-11-27T06:42:00.004Z

While having the greatest sympathy for those who were abused by clergy in Ireland, there are perhaps some others who should be taking a very hard look at themselves.

These behaviours seem to have been so widespread, and of such duration, it seems impossible to believe that no member of the Dail, no editor of the 'Irish Times' or senior correspondent at RTE, and no Attorney-General of the Republic of Ireland would have been unaware of them, even as whispers. The scandal of Irish clerical abuse betrayed a shocking structural flaw in De Valera's almost De Maistrian conception of what Ireland, and the Irish, should be. The cultural autarky he attempted to create has swallowed itself on account not of its superiority, but its conceit.

The Catholic Church in Ireland failed these people; and so did Ireland herself, for Ireland and her good image were deemed to be somehow more valuable than the innocence of Irish children.

A Cumbrian Christmas

2009-11-25T08:40:00.003Z

The devastation that the rains have wreaked on our neighbours in Cockermouth and Workington seems to be being met by The Great British Public with something approaching apathy.

Whenever there is a natural disaster in the Third World, the BBC can't get Huw Edwards or George Alagiah on the spot quickly enough, and Oxfam has got the disaster appeal going while the bodies are still warm. The Cumbrian floods have been a natural disaster by any definition - on last night's 'Ten o' Clock News', I saw a lady named Shelley Doyle, the mother of a nine day old boy, explain that she has been told that she will be unable to return home for six months. Ms. Doyle has become a displaced person, a refugee in our midst. Where are the public appeals to help her?

Last night, it occurred to me that it would be a very good and nice thing if the British blogosphere could do its bit for these folk - something like 'A Cumbrian Christmas', a bit of seasonal goodwill to ensure that the weans get toys, and that everyone gets a slap up feed with plenty of leftovers. Would anyone out there be in the least bit interested in putting differences of ideology, and historic, purposeless personality clashes, to one side for a month and helping?

Knicker Salesman Blasts School System

2009-11-25T08:38:00.002Z

Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks & Spencer, advances his credentials as an educationalist.

Orwelliana, 1

2009-11-25T08:04:00.005Z

One is entitled to feel as sceptical of those who feel themselves outraged by the apparent deceit, if not downright criminality, exposed by 'L' Affaire Climategate' as one does of the whole climate change hoopla itself. It is a subject over which I cannot generate a speck of interest.

Throughout its history, just about all the Earth has done is heat up and cool down. It's no big deal. What some libertarians cannot seem to understand is that their notions of liberty, specifically those affecting their consumption habits, might one day have to change in tandem with it. That seems to be a very big deal indeed.

The climate change johnnies who may have been trying to either fiddle the evidence, or who didn't seem to know how to use their own models, or who seem to have discussed courses of conduct regarding their potential responses to Freedom of Information requests which could have swerved on to the wrong side of the law, were of course acting rationally. Gaia gives them their bread and butter, so every course of action to keep going the myth that she is being damaged by verminous humanity is fair game. They're only human themselves - what else could we possibly expect of a false religion's priests?

Remember - he who controls the present controls the past; he controls the past controls the future.

Orwelliana, 2

2009-11-25T07:52:00.006Z

"The Vicar of Bray, though he was well-equipped to be a leader-writer on 'The Times', could hardly be described as an admirable character" -

George Orwell, 'A Good Word for The Vicar of Bray'.

Alas, defences of Wikipedia seem to make no impact on 'Times' leader-writers. That '(t)he persistent decline in the number of Wikipedia editors' might be a consequence of Wikipedia editors having to find other things to do with their time in the middle of the worst economic conditions experienced for several generations does not seem to occur to them. By and of itself, it provides no proof of any actual flaw in the Wikipedia model. By and of itself, it provides no proof any actual lack of interest in Wikipedia. By and of itself, it provides no actual evidence of a lack of competence among Wikipedia's users. As the intellectual elitist, windy ghoul and misanthrope E. H. Carr might have put it, Wikipedia's existence is a threat to elite control of knowledge, and therefore of reasoning; a very direct charge in the face of which its critics and snipers remain mute.

'The Times', an intellectual staple of boyhood, has been going downhill for some years now. Just about the only succour one can gain from this decline is that Orwell's vision of its leader pages becoming the shop window of Newspeak is unlikely ever to come true.

Remember - he who controls the present controls the past; he who controls the past controls the future.