How splendid to see Police on the streets, and Magistrates’ Courts dispensing justice. The fightback, indeed. It has started here, but it must not end here.
The point cannot be made too many times that light sentences and lax prison discipline are both expressions of the perfectly well-founded view that large numbers of those convicted, vastly in excess of the numbers that have always existed at any given time, are in fact innocent. We need to return to a free country’s minimum requirements for conviction, above all by reversing the erosion of the right to silence and of trial by jury, and by repealing the monstrous provisions for anonymous evidence and for conviction by majority verdict. And we need to return to proper policing. Then we could and should return to proper sentencing, and to proper regimes in prison. But only then.
Abandonment of the existing erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, of the existing reversals of the burden of proof, of conviction by majority verdict (which, by definition, provides for conviction even where there is reasonable doubt), of the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, of both pre-trial convictions and pre-trial acquittals by the Crown Prosecution Service, of the secrecy of the family courts, of the anonymity of adult accusers in rape cases, of any thought of identity cards, of control orders, of Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, of stipendiary magistrates, of Thatcher’s Police and Criminal Evidence Act, of the Civil Contingencies Act, of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, and of the Official Secrets Acts.
Raising of the minimum age for jurors at least to 21. Extension to the rest of the United Kingdom of the successful Scottish extension of the right to serve on a jury without compromising its restriction to those with a tangible stake in society. A return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with budgetary sanctions against recalcitrant Chief Constables. Police Forces at least no larger than at present, and subject to local democratic accountability though Police Authorities composed predominantly of councillors, not by means of elected sheriffs, which, like directly elected mayors, have no place in a parliamentary rather than a presidential res publica, and are wholly incompatible with the defence, restoration and extension of the powers of jurors, magistrates and parliamentarians. Restoration of the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, along with the pre-1985 prosecution powers of the Police. Each offence to carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or of 15 years for life. A single category of illegal drug, with a crackdown on the possession of drugs, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on.
Return to the situation whereby a Bill which ran out of parliamentary time was lost at the end of that session. Restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law. Requirement that EU law apply in the United Kingdom only once it has passed through both Houses of Parliament exactly as if it had originated in one or other of them. Requirement of a resolution of the House of Commons before any ruling of the European Court of Justice, or of the European Court of Human Rights, or of the “Supreme Court”, or pursuant to the Human Rights Act, can have any effect in the United Kingdom. Restoration of British overall control of our defence capability. Removal of all foreign forces and weapons from British territory, territorial waters and airspace.
Extension to Scotland of the historic liberties, largely as set out above, which have never applied in that far more oligarchic country, where middle-class institutions and upper-middle-class power have been defined as the esse of national identity, a situation which has been made even worse by devolution’s weakening of the Labour Movement. While this may be a factor contributing to the retention of more rigorous minimum qualifications for jurors in Scotland, criteria which should be applied nationwide, nevertheless it means that, while there is an automatic right to trial by jury for serious offences in Scotland, the decision on which way to proceed in an ‘each-way’ case lies with the prosecution rather than with the defence. The Police have no power to caution and proceed entirely under the direction of the locally unaccountable Procurator Fiscal, who does not prosecute unless it is in the public interest to do so, which it is for the prosecution alone to decide and for which it does not have to give any explanation. It is extremely difficult to bring a private prosecution, far in excess of the necessary restrictions on that practice which rightly exist elsewhere. These profoundly illiberal arrangements must change.
That would be a start, anyway.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Every Little Helps
Depending on why it is done and by whom, there can be a very good case for price-fixing. But it is very high time to make the supermarkets fund investment in agriculture and small business, determined in close consultation with the National Farmers’ Union and the Federation of Small Businesses, by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax. In either case, there must be strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this are not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.
Who Do They Think They Are?
June Brown’s Who Do You Think You Are? was good until about three quarters of the way in, when someone mentioned the Spanish Inquisition. Does no one expect the Spanish Inquisition? I certainly do, and I am never disappointed. The same people who regard The Life of Brian as the last word on Jesus declare their general intellectual dependence on Monty Python’s Flying Circus by bringing up the Spanish Inquisition, which neither ever claimed or exercised any jurisdiction over non-Catholics such as Ms Brown’s Jewish ancestors.
It was staffed by clerics, but it was established, and they served, strictly at the pleasure of the Spanish Crown (perhaps it is difficult for people used to the Church of England to understand this distinction?), which had it approved on false pretences by Pope Sixtus IV. He was a repeated but unsuccessful opponent of its severity, an opposition, moreover, which has to be seen in the light of the below in order to appreciate it fully. From 1558, it imprisoned the Spanish Primate, Archbishop Caranza of Toledo, for eight years, despite repeated Papal attempts to secure his release. Furthermore, the Spanish Inquisition enjoyed popular as well as royal, but not Papal, support.
As a civil body, the Spanish Inquisition has to be compared to other civil bodies of the time; and it actually compares rather well, using torture in only two per cent of cases, and then for no longer than fifteen minutes, with only one per cent experiencing torture more than once. Of 49,092 cases between 1550 and 1700, fully 1,485, not even three per cent, ended with the death sentence, and only 776 were actually put to death by this agency, not of the Church, but of the State. On average during that century and a half, the Spanish Inquisition executed five people per year. And yet the Popes considered it unacceptably severe even in that day and age, when the English were executing anyone who damaged a shrub in a public garden, the Germans were gouging out the eyes of those who returned from banishment, and the French were disembowelling sheep-stealers.
The Spanish Inquisition dismissed anyone who broke its clearly set out Instructiones, and people before the secular courts in Barcelona would sometimes blaspheme in order to be sent to one of the much more humane prisons maintained by the Inquisition.
All of the above may be verified from the works of serious scholars such as Professor Henry Kamen, an English Jew, of the Barcelona Higher Council for Scientific Research and Professor Stephen Haliczer of the Northern University of Illinois. Who is to be believed? Scholars such as they? Or Monty Python’s Flying Circus?
It was staffed by clerics, but it was established, and they served, strictly at the pleasure of the Spanish Crown (perhaps it is difficult for people used to the Church of England to understand this distinction?), which had it approved on false pretences by Pope Sixtus IV. He was a repeated but unsuccessful opponent of its severity, an opposition, moreover, which has to be seen in the light of the below in order to appreciate it fully. From 1558, it imprisoned the Spanish Primate, Archbishop Caranza of Toledo, for eight years, despite repeated Papal attempts to secure his release. Furthermore, the Spanish Inquisition enjoyed popular as well as royal, but not Papal, support.
As a civil body, the Spanish Inquisition has to be compared to other civil bodies of the time; and it actually compares rather well, using torture in only two per cent of cases, and then for no longer than fifteen minutes, with only one per cent experiencing torture more than once. Of 49,092 cases between 1550 and 1700, fully 1,485, not even three per cent, ended with the death sentence, and only 776 were actually put to death by this agency, not of the Church, but of the State. On average during that century and a half, the Spanish Inquisition executed five people per year. And yet the Popes considered it unacceptably severe even in that day and age, when the English were executing anyone who damaged a shrub in a public garden, the Germans were gouging out the eyes of those who returned from banishment, and the French were disembowelling sheep-stealers.
The Spanish Inquisition dismissed anyone who broke its clearly set out Instructiones, and people before the secular courts in Barcelona would sometimes blaspheme in order to be sent to one of the much more humane prisons maintained by the Inquisition.
All of the above may be verified from the works of serious scholars such as Professor Henry Kamen, an English Jew, of the Barcelona Higher Council for Scientific Research and Professor Stephen Haliczer of the Northern University of Illinois. Who is to be believed? Scholars such as they? Or Monty Python’s Flying Circus?
Left And Right Are Both To Blame
Over in The First Post, Neil Clark writes:
Within hours of the first London riots breaking out, the debate was already being polarised, with left-wing commentators blaming Tory cuts, poverty and institutionalised racism, and right-wing observers slamming multiculturalism, poor parenting and 'community' policing. In fact both the Left and Right must take equal responsibility for the social breakdown we are now witnessing. Or more precisely, the New Left and the New Right.
The New Left, which came to dominate left-wing thinking from the late 1960s onwards, is responsible for diverting the Left's focus away from economic issues onto cultural ones: with political correctness and identity politics being put before traditional causes like public ownership. While the old, socially conservative Left, with its commitment to collectivism and solidarity, and its focus on working-class concerns, was implacably opposed to commercialism and the market economy, the New Left believed that markets and consumerism could be liberating because they broke down traditional - and, in their view, restrictive - ways of living.
A key figure in New Left thinking was Stuart Hall (the Jamaican-born academic, not the former It's a Knockout presenter), who railed against what he saw as the Old Left's cultural and economic conservatism. "If people's capitalism did not liberate the people, it nevertheless 'loosed' many individuals into a life less constrained, less puritanically regulated, less strictly imposed than three or four decades ago," Hall wrote in 1988. For the New Left, 'removing constraints' on individuals' lives was far more important than opposing consumerism. In the eyes of the New Left, someone could be categorised a 'progressive' or 'left-wing' not because he/she supported nationalisation or higher marginal rates of income tax, but because they held a suitably 'counter-cultural' stance on social issues and favoured open-door immigration.
The influence of New Left thinking on Labour could be seen when the party finally returned to power in 1997 after 18 years in opposition. There was no attempt to renationalise the railways, or indeed rein in any of the excesses of capitalism. Under New Labour we got formal equality between citizens, as same-sex civil partnerships were legalised and an Equalities and Human Rights Commission was set up, but no sense of solidarity was created because consumerism and materialism were allowed to run amok. Meanwhile, the wealth gap widened to levels not seen since before the Second World War: by 2010, Labour's last year in office, the richest 10 per cent were more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10 per cent.
In their promotion of the rights of the individual above the collective - and their desire to destroy the 'old-fashioned' post-war social democratic consensus - the New Left had ideological allies in the New Right. The free market ideologues who captured the Conservative party with the election of Mrs Thatcher as party leader in 1975 also wanted to remove what they saw as restrictive constraints. Full employment - the goal of all post-war governments up to 1979 - was jettisoned and instead 'market forces' were allowed to dictate almost every aspect of our lives. Whole communities were sacrificed on the altar of economic orthodoxy. During the Thatcher years, greed went from being one of the seven deadly sins to being actively encouraged, and as a consequence our society became coarser, more aggressive and more violent. Traditional 'One Nation' Tories like Sir Ian Gilmour could see the enormous damage these policies were doing to Britain's social fabric, but their warnings went unheeded.
The New Left and New Right have together created the incredibly materialistic and atomised society in which we now live. Yet despite their political dominance, their views have never been shared by the majority of the public: as Seamus Milne, the decidedly 'Old Left' Guardian columnist has pointed out, "The assumption that the broad Blair-Cameron consensus - social liberalism combined with free-market economics, privatisation, low taxes on the rich, and a welfare safety net - reflects the centre of gravity of public opinion is completely unfounded."
The pernicious legacy of 30 years of New Left and New Right dominance can be seen on the streets of Britain today. In their book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture, Steve Hall, Simon Winlow et al argue that far from being rebellious citizens who reject the values of the age, "committed criminals in economically marginalised neighbourhoods" are, by their obsession with obtaining the very latest consumer goods, conforming to the ideology of the times. "Every street criminal we spoke to appeared to believe wholeheartedly that the good life should be understood in terms of the acquisition and conspicuous display of commodities and services that signified cultural achievement in the most shallow of terms." As if to prove their point, the rioters in London, Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere have not been taking to the streets to shout for a new economic order - as protestors have been doing in Spain and Greece - but to walk off with plasma TVs and designer trainers.
David Cameron expressed disgust yesterday at the CCTV footage of British teenagers pretending to help a victim of the rioters while actually robbing him. Speaking to the press in Downing Street, he said: "Pockets of our society are not just broken but are frankly sick." He vowed to do "whatever it takes" to put it right. But is Cameron really ready to turn nearly half a century of political dogma on its head?
Within hours of the first London riots breaking out, the debate was already being polarised, with left-wing commentators blaming Tory cuts, poverty and institutionalised racism, and right-wing observers slamming multiculturalism, poor parenting and 'community' policing. In fact both the Left and Right must take equal responsibility for the social breakdown we are now witnessing. Or more precisely, the New Left and the New Right.
The New Left, which came to dominate left-wing thinking from the late 1960s onwards, is responsible for diverting the Left's focus away from economic issues onto cultural ones: with political correctness and identity politics being put before traditional causes like public ownership. While the old, socially conservative Left, with its commitment to collectivism and solidarity, and its focus on working-class concerns, was implacably opposed to commercialism and the market economy, the New Left believed that markets and consumerism could be liberating because they broke down traditional - and, in their view, restrictive - ways of living.
A key figure in New Left thinking was Stuart Hall (the Jamaican-born academic, not the former It's a Knockout presenter), who railed against what he saw as the Old Left's cultural and economic conservatism. "If people's capitalism did not liberate the people, it nevertheless 'loosed' many individuals into a life less constrained, less puritanically regulated, less strictly imposed than three or four decades ago," Hall wrote in 1988. For the New Left, 'removing constraints' on individuals' lives was far more important than opposing consumerism. In the eyes of the New Left, someone could be categorised a 'progressive' or 'left-wing' not because he/she supported nationalisation or higher marginal rates of income tax, but because they held a suitably 'counter-cultural' stance on social issues and favoured open-door immigration.
The influence of New Left thinking on Labour could be seen when the party finally returned to power in 1997 after 18 years in opposition. There was no attempt to renationalise the railways, or indeed rein in any of the excesses of capitalism. Under New Labour we got formal equality between citizens, as same-sex civil partnerships were legalised and an Equalities and Human Rights Commission was set up, but no sense of solidarity was created because consumerism and materialism were allowed to run amok. Meanwhile, the wealth gap widened to levels not seen since before the Second World War: by 2010, Labour's last year in office, the richest 10 per cent were more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10 per cent.
In their promotion of the rights of the individual above the collective - and their desire to destroy the 'old-fashioned' post-war social democratic consensus - the New Left had ideological allies in the New Right. The free market ideologues who captured the Conservative party with the election of Mrs Thatcher as party leader in 1975 also wanted to remove what they saw as restrictive constraints. Full employment - the goal of all post-war governments up to 1979 - was jettisoned and instead 'market forces' were allowed to dictate almost every aspect of our lives. Whole communities were sacrificed on the altar of economic orthodoxy. During the Thatcher years, greed went from being one of the seven deadly sins to being actively encouraged, and as a consequence our society became coarser, more aggressive and more violent. Traditional 'One Nation' Tories like Sir Ian Gilmour could see the enormous damage these policies were doing to Britain's social fabric, but their warnings went unheeded.
The New Left and New Right have together created the incredibly materialistic and atomised society in which we now live. Yet despite their political dominance, their views have never been shared by the majority of the public: as Seamus Milne, the decidedly 'Old Left' Guardian columnist has pointed out, "The assumption that the broad Blair-Cameron consensus - social liberalism combined with free-market economics, privatisation, low taxes on the rich, and a welfare safety net - reflects the centre of gravity of public opinion is completely unfounded."
The pernicious legacy of 30 years of New Left and New Right dominance can be seen on the streets of Britain today. In their book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture, Steve Hall, Simon Winlow et al argue that far from being rebellious citizens who reject the values of the age, "committed criminals in economically marginalised neighbourhoods" are, by their obsession with obtaining the very latest consumer goods, conforming to the ideology of the times. "Every street criminal we spoke to appeared to believe wholeheartedly that the good life should be understood in terms of the acquisition and conspicuous display of commodities and services that signified cultural achievement in the most shallow of terms." As if to prove their point, the rioters in London, Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere have not been taking to the streets to shout for a new economic order - as protestors have been doing in Spain and Greece - but to walk off with plasma TVs and designer trainers.
David Cameron expressed disgust yesterday at the CCTV footage of British teenagers pretending to help a victim of the rioters while actually robbing him. Speaking to the press in Downing Street, he said: "Pockets of our society are not just broken but are frankly sick." He vowed to do "whatever it takes" to put it right. But is Cameron really ready to turn nearly half a century of political dogma on its head?
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
"Your Jobs Next"
Quite so.
No wonder that the Police are practically on strike even when there is a riot going on before their very eyes. They are no more pro-cuts than anyone else. Well, of course they are not. The same goes for MI5.
No wonder that the Police are practically on strike even when there is a riot going on before their very eyes. They are no more pro-cuts than anyone else. Well, of course they are not. The same goes for MI5.
Shangri-la Politics
Hand over his political role to an elected figure, indeed! And elected by whom? Why, by nothing more than the preposterous and pernicious “Tibetan Parliament in Exile”.
The present Dalai Lama was born hundreds of miles outside Tibet. The Tibetans themselves migrated to what is now Tibet from further east in China, but huge numbers of them never did and never have done. The Dalai Lama comes from one such family.
Before 1959, Tibet was not an independent state ruled benignly by the Dalai Lama and given over almost entirely to the pursuit of spirituality. Tibet was certainly ruled by the Dalai Lama, by the lamas generally, and by the feudal landlord class from which the lamas were drawn. “Dalai” is a family name; only a member of the House of Dalai can become the Dalai Lama.
Well over ninety per cent of the population was made up of serfs, the background from which the present rulers of Tibet are drawn. That system was unique in China, and existed only because successive Emperors of China had granted the Tibetan ruling clique exactly the “autonomy” for which it still campaigns from “exile”. Life expectancy in Tibet was half what it is today.
There has never been an independent state of Tibet. Likewise, the presence of large numbers of Han (ethnic Chinese in the ordinary sense) and other Chinese ethnic groups in Tibet is nothing remotely new. The one-child policy does not apply in Tibet, so the Han majority there is the ethnic Tibetans’ own fault, if they even see it as a problem. It is totally false to describe the Dalai Lama as “their spiritual leader”. Relatively few would view him as such. In particular, Google “Dorje Shugden” for, to put at its mildest, some balance to the media portrayal of the present Dalai Lama, who, moreover, has never condemned either the invasion of Afghanistan or the invasion of Iraq.
Just as pre-Communist Russia always remained the country’s true character, so very pre-Communist China remains the country’s true character. That character reveres tradition and ritual, upholds government by moral rather than physical force, affirms the Golden Rule, is Agrarian and Distributist, is now thoroughly Classical and Patristic in taking Africa seriously, and has barely started an external war since China became China five thousand years ago. It is especially open to completion by, in, through and as classical, historic, mainstream Christianity.
China has already moved from Maoism to the equal repressiveness of unbridled capitalism. While economic, or any other, dependence on a foreign power remains totally unacceptable, a further shift, the reassertion of her own culture, is to be encouraged by every means of “soft” power. Which, in reality, is truly hard power.
The present Dalai Lama was born hundreds of miles outside Tibet. The Tibetans themselves migrated to what is now Tibet from further east in China, but huge numbers of them never did and never have done. The Dalai Lama comes from one such family.
Before 1959, Tibet was not an independent state ruled benignly by the Dalai Lama and given over almost entirely to the pursuit of spirituality. Tibet was certainly ruled by the Dalai Lama, by the lamas generally, and by the feudal landlord class from which the lamas were drawn. “Dalai” is a family name; only a member of the House of Dalai can become the Dalai Lama.
Well over ninety per cent of the population was made up of serfs, the background from which the present rulers of Tibet are drawn. That system was unique in China, and existed only because successive Emperors of China had granted the Tibetan ruling clique exactly the “autonomy” for which it still campaigns from “exile”. Life expectancy in Tibet was half what it is today.
There has never been an independent state of Tibet. Likewise, the presence of large numbers of Han (ethnic Chinese in the ordinary sense) and other Chinese ethnic groups in Tibet is nothing remotely new. The one-child policy does not apply in Tibet, so the Han majority there is the ethnic Tibetans’ own fault, if they even see it as a problem. It is totally false to describe the Dalai Lama as “their spiritual leader”. Relatively few would view him as such. In particular, Google “Dorje Shugden” for, to put at its mildest, some balance to the media portrayal of the present Dalai Lama, who, moreover, has never condemned either the invasion of Afghanistan or the invasion of Iraq.
Just as pre-Communist Russia always remained the country’s true character, so very pre-Communist China remains the country’s true character. That character reveres tradition and ritual, upholds government by moral rather than physical force, affirms the Golden Rule, is Agrarian and Distributist, is now thoroughly Classical and Patristic in taking Africa seriously, and has barely started an external war since China became China five thousand years ago. It is especially open to completion by, in, through and as classical, historic, mainstream Christianity.
China has already moved from Maoism to the equal repressiveness of unbridled capitalism. While economic, or any other, dependence on a foreign power remains totally unacceptable, a further shift, the reassertion of her own culture, is to be encouraged by every means of “soft” power. Which, in reality, is truly hard power.
Monday, 8 August 2011
Like The Suckers We Are
Although he is wrong about capital punishment, Peter Hitchens writes:
What useless safety valves these new e-petitions are.
They don’t even promise that Parliament will debate the issues raised. And what they certainly will not do is restore the death penalty, sensible though that would be.
MPs are not chosen by us. They are picked by the centralised machines of the state-subsidised, billionaire-backed political parties.
We then vote for them, like the suckers we are.
MPs are not afraid of us, because we obediently vote for the big parties whenever a General Election comes round.
I’ve tried telling you not to do this, but you wouldn’t listen.
What useless safety valves these new e-petitions are.
They don’t even promise that Parliament will debate the issues raised. And what they certainly will not do is restore the death penalty, sensible though that would be.
MPs are not chosen by us. They are picked by the centralised machines of the state-subsidised, billionaire-backed political parties.
We then vote for them, like the suckers we are.
MPs are not afraid of us, because we obediently vote for the big parties whenever a General Election comes round.
I’ve tried telling you not to do this, but you wouldn’t listen.
Pleasing The Base
The Chinese know perfectly well that they have to keep the Americans rich in order to keep them able to buy Chinese goods. One more very good reason to calm down.
The Tea Party Downgrade
By the Republican Party, which has clearly accepted the Tea Party's Declaration of Independence as somewhere between a welcome relief and a matter of supreme indifference.
The American system can only really sustain two parties at federal level, and each of them is therefore always very broad-based indeed, even by British standards.
But after the events of last week, each of them is now so obviously at least two parties in one that a rare, but not unprecedented, realignment has become inevitable.
The American system can only really sustain two parties at federal level, and each of them is therefore always very broad-based indeed, even by British standards.
But after the events of last week, each of them is now so obviously at least two parties in one that a rare, but not unprecedented, realignment has become inevitable.
Says It All, Really
The main cheerleader for the Syrian "demonstrators" is Saudi Arabia. Also the main backer of the neocon-favoured side in Lebanon.
A Voice Reaching Out and A Piercing Cry
Those Jews whom the Anglican Chaplain in Vienna baptised so that they could escape from the Nazis, where did they end up? Despite the fact that such Jews were included under the Nuremberg Laws and that many of them duly died in the Holocaust, most notably Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), they have never been able to settle as Jews in the State of Israel.
The State of Israel, where Sharia judges are appointed and paid by the State in order to dispense what is the law of the land to those born into certain ethnic minorities, where a whole Islamist city chooses to remain rather be transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction, where at least one parliamentarian calls openly for Jerusalem to become the capital of the Caliphate, where there are now hardly any Christians left in what was once the Christian city of Nazareth, and where no de jure (rather than de facto) recognition is accorded to Christian marriage tribunals and the like.
The State of Israel, where Sharia judges are appointed and paid by the State in order to dispense what is the law of the land to those born into certain ethnic minorities, where a whole Islamist city chooses to remain rather be transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction, where at least one parliamentarian calls openly for Jerusalem to become the capital of the Caliphate, where there are now hardly any Christians left in what was once the Christian city of Nazareth, and where no de jure (rather than de facto) recognition is accorded to Christian marriage tribunals and the like.
Superna Petimus, Indeed
Good for Dr Joel Hayward (academics called Hayward are a Good Thing, in my experience), Dean of the Royal Air Force College Cranwell. I am delighted that the occupant of that position is a critic of the ethics and legality of the war in Libya. That is entirely as it should be.
I am also given to understand that the Joint Services Command and Staff College is regularly lectured by Professor A C Grayling, author of the unanswerable Among The Dead Cities, an immensely appreciative review of which will appear in Book Three, Four or Five. I have not yet decided the order. But you will be unsurprised to learn that I have certainly decided what I am going to say.
I am also given to understand that the Joint Services Command and Staff College is regularly lectured by Professor A C Grayling, author of the unanswerable Among The Dead Cities, an immensely appreciative review of which will appear in Book Three, Four or Five. I have not yet decided the order. But you will be unsurprised to learn that I have certainly decided what I am going to say.
Christian Democracy, Social Democracy
John writes:
When I read news stories such as this one on the think tank CentreForum’s “five a day” checklist for improving parenting, I sometimes want to revert back to my former libertarianism. The welfare state sometimes has a certain busybody element to it that becomes more prominent when benefits become increasingly means tested or when they are attached to certain patronizing requirements like attending parenting classes or only purchasing certain types of food with government food subsidies.
A better course of action would be for the State to enact policies that improve the environment for raising families and leaving the rest for actual families to sort out organically. For example, supporting full employment and high wages, especially for male workers, can help strengthen families by providing the necessary economic base for paternal authority within families while at the same time obviating the need for mothers to find employment outside of the home or to put children in daycare centers. Additionally, making divorce more difficult would strike at the heart of the culture of caprice that is reflected in many of the social problems present in today’s society.
And:
It has been a while since I have written a substantive post. However, I have been doing some research of sorts and have stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove in the form of a website devoted to the study of the life and thought of the late Aldo Moro, the former Prime Minister of Italy. Tragically, Moro is mostly known for being the victim of a brutal assassination by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization. Moro was murdered by left-wing extremists because of his work to save Italian democracy by integrating the whole nation into a revitalized democratic system. Moro’s Historic Compromise with the Italian Communist Party angered Washington and Moscow, as well as the intransigent sections of the Italian Right and the Left.
As I see it, Moro’s death was a severe blow to Italy. A tremendous mediator within his own faction-ridden Christian Democratic Party, Moro may have been the only Italian politician with the ability to hold together a country that, in many respects, was only superficially united. Additionally, far from simply being a milquetoast master of compromise, Moro was also a progressive in the best sense of the word. Like other left-leaning Christian Democrats, Moro looked to the British Labour Party, and especially the government of Clement Attlee, as a source of inspiration. Moro’s vision of democracy was social democracy, not the pale imitation of democracy that has developed under plutocratic neoliberalism.
Because of the dramatic and controversial circumstances of Moro’s murder (including a wide array of conspiracy theories that rival those surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination), I gather that most people are more familiar with his death than with his life. This is an unsurprising yet unfortunate state of affairs, as Moro was an important thinker in addition to being a politician. I hope to be able to present my own thematic posts focusing on interpretations of different aspects of Moro’s thought and its significance for our own time.
In the meantime, I highly recommend the website of the Academy of Historical Studies – Aldo Moro, along with its blog, as a resource for those interested in Aldo Moro and his life and work.
When I read news stories such as this one on the think tank CentreForum’s “five a day” checklist for improving parenting, I sometimes want to revert back to my former libertarianism. The welfare state sometimes has a certain busybody element to it that becomes more prominent when benefits become increasingly means tested or when they are attached to certain patronizing requirements like attending parenting classes or only purchasing certain types of food with government food subsidies.
A better course of action would be for the State to enact policies that improve the environment for raising families and leaving the rest for actual families to sort out organically. For example, supporting full employment and high wages, especially for male workers, can help strengthen families by providing the necessary economic base for paternal authority within families while at the same time obviating the need for mothers to find employment outside of the home or to put children in daycare centers. Additionally, making divorce more difficult would strike at the heart of the culture of caprice that is reflected in many of the social problems present in today’s society.
And:
It has been a while since I have written a substantive post. However, I have been doing some research of sorts and have stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove in the form of a website devoted to the study of the life and thought of the late Aldo Moro, the former Prime Minister of Italy. Tragically, Moro is mostly known for being the victim of a brutal assassination by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization. Moro was murdered by left-wing extremists because of his work to save Italian democracy by integrating the whole nation into a revitalized democratic system. Moro’s Historic Compromise with the Italian Communist Party angered Washington and Moscow, as well as the intransigent sections of the Italian Right and the Left.
As I see it, Moro’s death was a severe blow to Italy. A tremendous mediator within his own faction-ridden Christian Democratic Party, Moro may have been the only Italian politician with the ability to hold together a country that, in many respects, was only superficially united. Additionally, far from simply being a milquetoast master of compromise, Moro was also a progressive in the best sense of the word. Like other left-leaning Christian Democrats, Moro looked to the British Labour Party, and especially the government of Clement Attlee, as a source of inspiration. Moro’s vision of democracy was social democracy, not the pale imitation of democracy that has developed under plutocratic neoliberalism.
Because of the dramatic and controversial circumstances of Moro’s murder (including a wide array of conspiracy theories that rival those surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination), I gather that most people are more familiar with his death than with his life. This is an unsurprising yet unfortunate state of affairs, as Moro was an important thinker in addition to being a politician. I hope to be able to present my own thematic posts focusing on interpretations of different aspects of Moro’s thought and its significance for our own time.
In the meantime, I highly recommend the website of the Academy of Historical Studies – Aldo Moro, along with its blog, as a resource for those interested in Aldo Moro and his life and work.
The Right Getting It Right
Alex Brummer writes:
The idea that we should allow the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to decide on the creditworthiness of the United States, or for that matter any other sovereign government, is preposterous. Standard & Poor’s and the two other main credit-rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have a long record of making wrong judgments. As commercial organisations, funded by the big banks and corporations, they too often have a vested interest in reaching the conclusions demanded by their paymasters.
Yet during the current sovereign debt crisis, which was sparked last year in Greece and has now spread to Italy, Spain and the almighty United States itself, the pronouncements of these agencies have become regarded as holy writ. And because the markets react to their pronouncements on debt and creditworthiness, they have in their way been as much responsible for the volatile trading on share, bond and foreign exchange markets as any of the irresponsible actions of governments. When trading resumes today, for example, we can expect Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade America from the coveted ‘AAA’ rating to ‘AA+’ to have a savage impact.
The question is why? And the answer is that the credit rating agencies are now seen as the only arbiters prepared to spell out just how serious the global debt crisis really is.
Europe’s leaders have lost all credibility after a series of sticking-plaster bail-outs which have failed to save countries in the eurozone. The U.S. government’s disastrous delays in tackling its budget crisis means its statements of reassurance are not worth the paper they are written on. Meanwhile, the official, taxpayer-funded organisations charged with policing global financial affairs – the Paris-based OECD, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – are mistrusted because they have been so slow and timid in their reactions to the debt crises that have brought the world economy to the precipice once again.
As a result of all this, the credit-rating agencies and their pronouncements are given far more authority than they deserve. The truth is that the agencies have extremely chequered reputations. In the run-up to the two-year banking crisis that began in 2007 with American sub-prime mortgages – in which vast quantities of loans were made by U.S. banks to homeowners who could never pay them back – these very agencies declared toxic sub-prime loans to be of the finest quality, deserving the gold standard ‘AAA’ rating.
Why? After looking into the matter, the view of the U.S. Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations was that the agencies, including Standard & Poor’s, were in the pockets of Wall Street and the banks. Those who came up with the sub-prime ratings had enjoyed lavish entertainment courtesy of bankers and were paid handsomely by them for their reassuring verdicts. Senator Carl Levin’s committee concluded that the agencies’ failings had not only helped to hide the true extent of the problem, but had also meant worthless sub-prime loans spread through the entire financial system. ‘AAA ratings were attached to products later revealed to be little better than junk,’ said the committee.
We should not be surprised by this damning verdict. After all the very same agencies were still providing the U.S. energy company Enron with a top rating up to three days before it collapsed in the world’s then biggest industrial bankruptcy. They also gave a clean bill of health to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – semi-official, but privately owned U.S. bodies set up to expand home ownership and the availability of mortgages – despite warnings from the legendary American investor Warren Buffett that they were broke. Within days Fannie and Freddie were taken into public ownership by President George W. Bush’s administration.
It is partly in response to these notorious mistakes that the rating agencies have become much more aggressive in delivering downgrades to both corporations and nations. European leaders were furious that, when Portugal was seeking to resolve its budgetary problems last year, Moody’s, out of the blue, delivered a devastating downgrade, leading to charges from the country’s leaders of ‘economic terrorism’. The subjective nature of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt is reflected in the fact that its two rivals, Moody’s and Fitch, announced last week that they were not minded to change the ‘AAA’ rating.
In truth, as holder of the world’s reserve currency, America has less to fear from a downgrade than almost any other country in the world. Precedent suggests that a downgrade will not necessarily be critical for the U.S. dollar. Japan, for example, is currently rated at ‘AA’ (two notches down on Britain and one below the U.S.) yet its currency the yen is still among the most sought-after in the world. S&P’s downgrade may look like a poke in the eye for the United States. But with luck, it could in the end damage the future credibility of the credit rating agencies – they are in more urgent need of reform than America itself.
The idea that we should allow the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to decide on the creditworthiness of the United States, or for that matter any other sovereign government, is preposterous. Standard & Poor’s and the two other main credit-rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have a long record of making wrong judgments. As commercial organisations, funded by the big banks and corporations, they too often have a vested interest in reaching the conclusions demanded by their paymasters.
Yet during the current sovereign debt crisis, which was sparked last year in Greece and has now spread to Italy, Spain and the almighty United States itself, the pronouncements of these agencies have become regarded as holy writ. And because the markets react to their pronouncements on debt and creditworthiness, they have in their way been as much responsible for the volatile trading on share, bond and foreign exchange markets as any of the irresponsible actions of governments. When trading resumes today, for example, we can expect Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade America from the coveted ‘AAA’ rating to ‘AA+’ to have a savage impact.
The question is why? And the answer is that the credit rating agencies are now seen as the only arbiters prepared to spell out just how serious the global debt crisis really is.
Europe’s leaders have lost all credibility after a series of sticking-plaster bail-outs which have failed to save countries in the eurozone. The U.S. government’s disastrous delays in tackling its budget crisis means its statements of reassurance are not worth the paper they are written on. Meanwhile, the official, taxpayer-funded organisations charged with policing global financial affairs – the Paris-based OECD, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – are mistrusted because they have been so slow and timid in their reactions to the debt crises that have brought the world economy to the precipice once again.
As a result of all this, the credit-rating agencies and their pronouncements are given far more authority than they deserve. The truth is that the agencies have extremely chequered reputations. In the run-up to the two-year banking crisis that began in 2007 with American sub-prime mortgages – in which vast quantities of loans were made by U.S. banks to homeowners who could never pay them back – these very agencies declared toxic sub-prime loans to be of the finest quality, deserving the gold standard ‘AAA’ rating.
Why? After looking into the matter, the view of the U.S. Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations was that the agencies, including Standard & Poor’s, were in the pockets of Wall Street and the banks. Those who came up with the sub-prime ratings had enjoyed lavish entertainment courtesy of bankers and were paid handsomely by them for their reassuring verdicts. Senator Carl Levin’s committee concluded that the agencies’ failings had not only helped to hide the true extent of the problem, but had also meant worthless sub-prime loans spread through the entire financial system. ‘AAA ratings were attached to products later revealed to be little better than junk,’ said the committee.
We should not be surprised by this damning verdict. After all the very same agencies were still providing the U.S. energy company Enron with a top rating up to three days before it collapsed in the world’s then biggest industrial bankruptcy. They also gave a clean bill of health to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – semi-official, but privately owned U.S. bodies set up to expand home ownership and the availability of mortgages – despite warnings from the legendary American investor Warren Buffett that they were broke. Within days Fannie and Freddie were taken into public ownership by President George W. Bush’s administration.
It is partly in response to these notorious mistakes that the rating agencies have become much more aggressive in delivering downgrades to both corporations and nations. European leaders were furious that, when Portugal was seeking to resolve its budgetary problems last year, Moody’s, out of the blue, delivered a devastating downgrade, leading to charges from the country’s leaders of ‘economic terrorism’. The subjective nature of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt is reflected in the fact that its two rivals, Moody’s and Fitch, announced last week that they were not minded to change the ‘AAA’ rating.
In truth, as holder of the world’s reserve currency, America has less to fear from a downgrade than almost any other country in the world. Precedent suggests that a downgrade will not necessarily be critical for the U.S. dollar. Japan, for example, is currently rated at ‘AA’ (two notches down on Britain and one below the U.S.) yet its currency the yen is still among the most sought-after in the world. S&P’s downgrade may look like a poke in the eye for the United States. But with luck, it could in the end damage the future credibility of the credit rating agencies – they are in more urgent need of reform than America itself.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
The Transfiguration
I cannot improve on the words of Fr Dwight Longenecker:
"At the Transfiguration Christ's glory is revealed to the Apostles in the midst of Elijah and Moses because they were given the same grace: Moses on Mt Sinai, and then Elijah on Mt Horeb (and did you know that Horeb is just another name for Sinai?) So Elijah went to the same holy mountain where Moses had encountered God. But their epiphanies were complementary. Moses beheld God in the earthquake, fire and thunder on the mountain. Elijah in the still, small voice. Both pointed to the coming of Christ the Tiger. He who comes with the power and majesty of God, but in the form of the meek and gentle Master. He is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God."
Those of us whose spirituality is centred on Eucharistic Adoration should make a particular effort to keep all the Feasts of Our Lord, in the Extraordinary Form where discontinued in the Ordinary, and whichever of the Eastern Rites if not featured in the Latin.
"At the Transfiguration Christ's glory is revealed to the Apostles in the midst of Elijah and Moses because they were given the same grace: Moses on Mt Sinai, and then Elijah on Mt Horeb (and did you know that Horeb is just another name for Sinai?) So Elijah went to the same holy mountain where Moses had encountered God. But their epiphanies were complementary. Moses beheld God in the earthquake, fire and thunder on the mountain. Elijah in the still, small voice. Both pointed to the coming of Christ the Tiger. He who comes with the power and majesty of God, but in the form of the meek and gentle Master. He is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God."
Those of us whose spirituality is centred on Eucharistic Adoration should make a particular effort to keep all the Feasts of Our Lord, in the Extraordinary Form where discontinued in the Ordinary, and whichever of the Eastern Rites if not featured in the Latin.
War Crimes Against Britain
The bombings of Hiroshima (66 years ago today) and Nagasaki were anti-British no less than anti-Japanese acts, designed to prevent the War from instead being ended by the British re-conquest of the Empire in Asia and the Pacific, the end to which the British Pacific Fleet had been cheered into Sydney Harbour because it was not the American one that had been expected to turn up and require that Australia and New Zealand cut all trading and migration ties to Britain, abolish the monarchy, adopt American spelling, teach American rather than British history in schools, and so on. Those remain key American objectives.
Vacation, Indeed
Cameron and Osborne, too rich to care, and with nothing in their experience to relate income to work.
Here are a few for you: are their official town and country residence liable for Council Tax, do they pay it themselves, and do they pay their own utility bills? I think that we can all guess the answers to those ones.
Here are a few for you: are their official town and country residence liable for Council Tax, do they pay it themselves, and do they pay their own utility bills? I think that we can all guess the answers to those ones.
Poor Standards
A white, Republican, warmongering President could of course spend whatever he liked. Only when a black Democrat wants to spend the money on giving poor people healthcare does there suddenly arise a problem.
Who are these people, anyway? And considering their record, why does anyone pay the slightest attention to them?
Who are these people, anyway? And considering their record, why does anyone pay the slightest attention to them?
Peeling Away
Unbelievable. And yet all too believable. David Cameron wanted a foreign citizen to head by far this country's largest police force (indeed, one of the world's), which in addition to its local duties also has nationwide responsibility for counter-terrorism, with all the intelligence access that that entails, and for the security of the Royal Family.
Time was when Metropolitan Police Commissioners were people who had already been things like Governor-General of Canada or what have you. And Chief Constables were drawn from the local squirarchy. Imperfect, of course. But nevertheless a reminder that the police are civilians, paid to do what, if the circumstances arose, we would all do, and we would all be entitled to do, for free.
Time was when Metropolitan Police Commissioners were people who had already been things like Governor-General of Canada or what have you. And Chief Constables were drawn from the local squirarchy. Imperfect, of course. But nevertheless a reminder that the police are civilians, paid to do what, if the circumstances arose, we would all do, and we would all be entitled to do, for free.
Don't Go Dutch
One sixth of Dutch Reformed clergy are now agnostics or atheists, and they preach their views openly. The unappealing nature of liberal theology, together with the vastly higher birthrate among those who hold to the old-time religion, have combined to make the Orthodox Calvinist heirs of a nineteenth-century secession, once outnumbered six to one, equal to the DRC in terms of weekly churchgoers. But, despite recent disestablishment, it is the DRC that is treated as the norm by the media, with increasingly calamitous consequences for the fundamentally Christian character of the economy, society, culture and polity of the Netherlands. Or, at least, of the historically Protestant North.
Classical Christianity is also the basis of this State and of all three of its political traditions But independent research has found very large proportions of the women among the Church of England’s clergy to be doubters of or disbelievers in key points of doctrine. Two thirds deny “that Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin”. One quarter denies the existence “of God the Father Who created the world”. Assuming a woman on the episcopal “team” in each diocese, of those with privileged access to the media and other organs of national life as the voice of the Christianity professed by seventy-two per cent of Britons, at least one eighth would be agnostics or atheists.
Parliament should just say no.
Classical Christianity is also the basis of this State and of all three of its political traditions But independent research has found very large proportions of the women among the Church of England’s clergy to be doubters of or disbelievers in key points of doctrine. Two thirds deny “that Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin”. One quarter denies the existence “of God the Father Who created the world”. Assuming a woman on the episcopal “team” in each diocese, of those with privileged access to the media and other organs of national life as the voice of the Christianity professed by seventy-two per cent of Britons, at least one eighth would be agnostics or atheists.
Parliament should just say no.
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