How fitting that the last judgement by the Law Lords should have concerned assisted suicide, this season’s must have. Once the Supreme Court is up and running in the autumn, it will be like that of the United States, with appointments to it made on a highly politicised basis relating to issues such as this, wholly regardless of what the law actually is or isn’t.
After all, as with the US Supreme Court or the European Court of Justice, if a Supreme Court, being Supreme, says that something is the law, then it is the law, and that is just that. Just imagine what this would have done to the Attlee Government. Even statutes can be struck down, now that the judges in question are not themselves Members of Parliament.
On which note, it will no longer be possible for Lords Temporal (sitting for life, and so with nothing to lose) or Lords Spiritual (who I am told do this quite a bit) to bring flagrant injustices in the lower courts to the attention of their peers on the Bench, who then have the power to call them in.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Degrees Of It
Why the hell should people get publicly funded internships merely for having degrees? Their contemporaries have been getting up at six o’clock in the morning, in some cases for five years (full years, not half years), to pay for this.
Still, the more attention paid to internships and the like, the better. Access to things like politics and the media is now restricted to those who can work for little or no pay after university, and often during the university vacations as well. Universities, moreover, that have been thoroughly debased by the absence of the grammar schools, which has turned them from world-class academic institutions into the finishing school Seventh Forms of certain gilded playpens for the offspring of the rich.
Britain has now descended into self-parody, in which everyone who is anyone has known each other since they were 19 at the oldest, and routinely a great deal younger than that. Any figure or movement that emerges from outside the Golden Circle is completely ignored, and thus killed off. Even David Miliband or George Osborne can expect to be treated as a serious figure, something completely unimaginable when there was proper competition. Thank you, Tony Blair.
Still, the more attention paid to internships and the like, the better. Access to things like politics and the media is now restricted to those who can work for little or no pay after university, and often during the university vacations as well. Universities, moreover, that have been thoroughly debased by the absence of the grammar schools, which has turned them from world-class academic institutions into the finishing school Seventh Forms of certain gilded playpens for the offspring of the rich.
Britain has now descended into self-parody, in which everyone who is anyone has known each other since they were 19 at the oldest, and routinely a great deal younger than that. Any figure or movement that emerges from outside the Golden Circle is completely ignored, and thus killed off. Even David Miliband or George Osborne can expect to be treated as a serious figure, something completely unimaginable when there was proper competition. Thank you, Tony Blair.
Carry On, Doctor
Even the BBC may now accurately describe the BMA as “the doctors’ union”. But the BMA itself still doesn’t have the hang of this trade unionism lark. No, you are not supposed to defend working hours in excess of 48 per week. Least of all when your members’ employers don’t want them. You’ll learn…
Which Way The Wind Is Blowing
This blog is not a big fan of wind turbines. Far from being environmentally friendly, they cut up birds, and they kill both farm and wild animals by depriving them of sleep.
There is not, because there cannot be, any environmental case for re-restricting travel to the rich. Nor for arresting economic development in the poor world. Nor for eradicating, or failing to restore, high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class in general and for working-class men in particular, the economic basis of paternal authority in working-class families and communities.
You may argue that the Vestas workers have such jobs. Yes, but there are vastly more of them to be had in nuclear power and in clean coal technology, themselves safeguards against dependence on foreign oil or foreign gas (we can obtain uranium from Canada, which is as good as domestic production).
Those industries, in turn, can only be properly developed in this country under the aegis of public ownership. Which is, of course, the British ownership from which Vestas so conspicuously does not benefit. And which could again, as once it did, bind together the Union by creating communities of interest across the several parts of the United Kingdom, often in the form of companies with the word “British” in their names.
When it comes to weakening either national self-government or the Union, some things have done as much damage as the destruction of the nationalised industries. But nothing has done more.
There is not, because there cannot be, any environmental case for re-restricting travel to the rich. Nor for arresting economic development in the poor world. Nor for eradicating, or failing to restore, high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class in general and for working-class men in particular, the economic basis of paternal authority in working-class families and communities.
You may argue that the Vestas workers have such jobs. Yes, but there are vastly more of them to be had in nuclear power and in clean coal technology, themselves safeguards against dependence on foreign oil or foreign gas (we can obtain uranium from Canada, which is as good as domestic production).
Those industries, in turn, can only be properly developed in this country under the aegis of public ownership. Which is, of course, the British ownership from which Vestas so conspicuously does not benefit. And which could again, as once it did, bind together the Union by creating communities of interest across the several parts of the United Kingdom, often in the form of companies with the word “British” in their names.
When it comes to weakening either national self-government or the Union, some things have done as much damage as the destruction of the nationalised industries. But nothing has done more.
That Iraq Inquiry In Full
Blair lied.
And that lie has made him enormously rich.
There. That’s it. There is nothing further to say. And since the only purpose of this Inquiry is to arrive at that (entirely accurate) conclusion, then it may as well get on with it. If it doesn’t, then there will just have to be another one, and another one, and another one, until the correct verdict – for so it undoubtedly is – has been arrived at.
We are told, however, that this Inquiry will examine the death of Dr David Kelly. It ought not to do so. Instead, there should be the one thing that, glaringly, there has never been: a Coroner’s Inquest into that death.
And that lie has made him enormously rich.
There. That’s it. There is nothing further to say. And since the only purpose of this Inquiry is to arrive at that (entirely accurate) conclusion, then it may as well get on with it. If it doesn’t, then there will just have to be another one, and another one, and another one, until the correct verdict – for so it undoubtedly is – has been arrived at.
We are told, however, that this Inquiry will examine the death of Dr David Kelly. It ought not to do so. Instead, there should be the one thing that, glaringly, there has never been: a Coroner’s Inquest into that death.
Pentru Onoare? Pentru Patrie? Pentru Tricolor?
Only in Romanian, of course. So Romance that I can pretty much read the motto, the election slogans, and so on.
If Moldavia simply went back to Romania (assuming that she would take the poor relation), or otherwise pursued integration with the EU under overall American control, and if Transnistria became a nominally independent state effectively run by Russia, then it is not even be a matter of whether anyone would mind. Would anyone even notice?
Something similar can be said about that other cut and shunt job, Ukraine. A Ukrainian-speaking West Ukraine in the EU and NATO, for reasons best known to herself. And a Russian-speaking East Ukraine, well, not. Who would be able to tell that any change had happened?
If Moldavia simply went back to Romania (assuming that she would take the poor relation), or otherwise pursued integration with the EU under overall American control, and if Transnistria became a nominally independent state effectively run by Russia, then it is not even be a matter of whether anyone would mind. Would anyone even notice?
Something similar can be said about that other cut and shunt job, Ukraine. A Ukrainian-speaking West Ukraine in the EU and NATO, for reasons best known to herself. And a Russian-speaking East Ukraine, well, not. Who would be able to tell that any change had happened?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
