Pictures of Lebanon at the moment, via Itinerantsphinx, who has wisely headed out of Beirut.
Yes, I have booked flights out of Beirut to Athens next month, that's the way we're coming back from Syria. Splendid
Amused by the last photo on that page though.
Almost everyone I read, most of my friends, and my fiancée, appear to see Boris Johnson as something akin to the antichrist. Me, I'm with Nosemonkey.
Someone else (I've lost the link*) said that Choosing between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson is a bit like choosing between shit and shite,
which admirably sums up how I felt. Rather Paddick than either, certainly, but that was never a real prospect, and personally I thought, and continue to think, that the shite is just marginally preferable to the shit. The heavens have not collapsed in on us, nor has the Thames risen in protest, and I rather suspect that they won't.
*ETA: via Purplecthulhu I see it was DoctorVee, who now has a followup post.
is going to involve this, all being well and there being no drastic political developments. Despite the news this morning that Bradt has republished the travel guide to Iraq, it will not involve the continuation of the Taurus railway on to Baghdad and/or Tehran. Maybe another year. Still trying to work out if coming home via Greece is remotely sensible. Probably not since I can't find any detailed information about whether the Latakia-Piraeus ferry is happening at the moment.
For the first time since about 1991, I didn't even attempt to make summer involve sitting in a muddy field in Somerset. Heigh ho. Last year was too grim and I'd rather quit while most of my memories are happy ones.
Have I lent my Firefly DVDs to any of you lot?
One in an ongoing series
[Discussing the 80th birthday of Ariel Sharon, who has now been in a coma for two years] Interviewer: "So, does he still exert any influence in Israel?"
Since I have vast amounts of actual work to do, I thought I would write something about Rowan. It's that or clean the windows. Much of it has already been said, in the press and in comments threads - I've been following Legionseagle's in particular- (ETA: Head of Legal also has a strong post on the subject) but perhaps it's worth adding my own rambling thoughts.
A minor point worth making at the outset is that there are two separate sources: The Archbishop was down to give a lecture (one of a series) in the RCJ on Thursday night. The text of that is here. I was supposed to be going (though for some reason I was under the impression it was to be in the Temple Church) but decided instead that a party in Chambers trumped an hour or so's CPD, even though it sounded marginally more interesting than most such lectures. A colleague did go, and came on afterwards: he tells me the interesting bit must have been while he nodded off briefly. Probably many others also nodded off, well, it's the end of a long working day and frankly the speech is not a model of clarity. Before the speech, however, he had trailed it in an interview on BBC Radio's World at One: the transcript of that is here. Unsurprisingly it's a little less abstruse, being intended for the fairly awake general population rather than half asleep lawyers. The difference seems obvious, but as Legionseagle pointed out Geoffrey K. Pullum at Language Log rather carelessly failed to spot the point, allowing him to claim that the Archbishop "did not say Sharia law was unavoidable". He did ([Interviewer]"your words are that the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion seems unavoidable?" RW "It seem unavoidable and indeed as a matter of fact certain provision of Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law"), just in the BBC interview rather than in the lecture Pullum was looking at.
Whichever text you take, the ideas put forward by the Archbishop seem flatly wrong. What he seems to be calling for is the recognition of supplementary, opt in jurisdictions. He says: "the criterion for recognising and collaborating with communal religious discipline should be connected with whether a communal jurisdiction actively interfered with liberties guaranteed by the wider society in such a way as definitively to block access to the exercise of those liberties". Fine. But he gives no indication about how this might work in practice and I am unable to conceive of one myself, beyond the existing possibility of arbitration by contractually binding consent. Unfortunately, the ultimate purpose of law is to resolve the real disputes of real people, and the practical answer is all that matters in the end.
There is, of course, no reason why parties cannot agree to take a civil dispute to binding arbitration before a sharia court. You can put into a commercial contract something along the lines that "any dispute will be subject to binding arbitration before such and such" and so long as you do everything in accordance with what is presently the Arbitration Act 1996 that agreement, and the result of the arbitration, will be binding and, crucially, the award of the Arbitrator will be enforceable in the Civil courts. All well and good. Equally you can decide to take any straightforward civil dispute to arbitration (or mediation, or a variety of other things) after the dispute has arisen. I wouldn't see an enormous problem with a choice of law clause (ie choosing the legal code that will govern the interpretation of the contract, whatever the forum) that dictated sharia law either. (ETA: so far as express choice of law, as opposed to an arbitration clause, it would appear not: see [1].)
All of that is not only permissible but happens all the time. Jewish businessmen have long taken their disputes to the Beth Din. The problem is, you have to agree to do so.
But clearly the Archbishop is on about something more than what is presently available. (Though perhaps one improvement that could easily be made is for the MCB or some such body to establish a more formal network of sharia courts than presently exists). How exactly does he propose this working? The lecture is full of woolly phrases, but I have no idea how this could be made to work for the real problems of the real clients I see. Take inheritance law. Subject to a major exception, to which I shall return, there is no reason why, let us say, a wealthy Muslim gentleman should not make a will which results in his estate being divided in precisely the same way as it would under sharia law (I have no idea what that would be, and no intention of looking it up). We have testamentary freedom in this country. I suppose he could also leave it to his executors on trust to distribute it "to such persons and charitable purposes as should benefit in accordance with the principles of sharia law" but there could be certainty problems with that, I haven't considered it too carefully. If he doesn't make a will it goes under the intestacy rules, but whose fault is that?
The major exception lies in the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 which (very broadly) allows spouses and dependants to apply to the court on the basis that (typically) Dad cut his wife out and left it all to the mistress and her children. Or, actually, cut out the mistress and the second household he had been maintaining: it's a "what's sauce for the goose &c" jurisdiction though the test for spouses is less onerous: a spouse's claim is for "reasonable provision", otherwise it is "reasonable provision for maintenance"
That's a law successive governments introduced, amended, repeated and so on as a matter of social policy, to answer a perceived (and real) common wrong. At least, they, and I, saw and see it as a wrong. So what if our deceased Muslim gentleman decides to leave his widow his second best bed and a used turnip. There are only two possible approaches. Either she gets to apply under the Act, regardless of what sharia says, or she is bound to go to a sharia court which will apply sharia law. If the latter, well, she's not getting the benefit of something others are: the right to apply to the civil courts for an order which will almost undoubtedly give her fairly generous provision under the Act. Why not? When does she get to make a choice about it?
The choice I made to make the Deceased a man, and his spouse left with nothing a woman was not unconsidered. Yes, there are cases going the other way, there have also been cases between cohabiting men and will doubtless be cases between civil partners. But the main consequence of this law, when first introduced in the 1930s, was to put women in a better position. Typically, women remain the economically weaker partners in marriages, not to mention being often physically weaker and more susceptible to actual duress. Even if the debate is in terms of people making an express agreement to go to sharia law, can we be confident such agreement is genuine and free when the areas at issue are matrimonial and inheritance matters within the context of strongly patriarchal social structures? If not express agreement, well, what exactly is to be considered? The fact that a woman is deemed (how, why?) to be muslim means she has to take her claim to sharia? This is clearly ludicrous. If she is happy with accepting the will, or with what some sharia tribunal says, well, she just doesn't bring her claim. No one can make her, the question is whether someone can make her not do so.
Take divorce. Orthodox Jews have, I believe, to have themselves divorced in the Beth Din if they are to be remarried in the faith, and I recollect that this has given rise to problems in recent years, with some women being refused the "get" by their former husbands. But this has no bearing at all on whether or not they are divorced in English civil law: they have to trot off to the Family Division in any event: it's an area that is not susceptible to resolution under the Arbitration Act. Similarly a decision of a Catholic Diocesan Rota granting an annullment has no legal effect in English law. (Typically, at least nowadays and in England, the latter requires as a matter or practice that the civil side be sorted out first, though I doubt they care whether the couple goes for a civil annullment or the probably swifter route of a civil divorce.) Is the divorced or divorcing Muslim woman to be deprived of the benefits of the Matrimonial Causes Act (which actually has a close drafting relationship with the Inheritance Act I mention above). Again, if she doesn't want them, she doesn't have to make an ancillary relief application. Much the same applies to obtaining the divorce itself: is she to be forced to obtain her divorce in a sharia court -if she can- rather than being entitled to go to the Family Division?
I shan't even bother to get into the realm of criminal law and penalties for breaches of such. The whole debate seems utterly ludicrous to me: I can conceive of no way in which the ideas Rowan seems to be espousing could actually work and I don't really understand why anyone is taking this debate seriously.
So the second objection to an increased legal recognition of communal religious identities can be met if we are prepared to think about the basic ground rules that might organise the relationship between jurisdictions, making sure that we do not collude with unexamined systems that have oppressive effect or allow shared public liberties to be decisively taken away by a supplementary jurisdiction.
But law is largely about balancing the rights and liberties of one individual with another in a given set of facts. If the supplementary system is not to be allowed to decisively take away rights, what exactly are you on about?
The rule of law is thus not the enshrining of priority for the universal/abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which it is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such, independent of membership in any specific human community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and understanding, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity - and that the only way of doing this is to acknowledge the category of 'human dignity as such' – a non-negotiable assumption that each agent (with his or her historical and social affiliations) could be expected to have a voice in the shaping of some common project for the well-being and order of a human group.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Does this mean my Muslim widow will have the right to apply under the 1975 Act or not? How do you see this working in practice?
I'd be interested to hear what anyone knows about the Canadian experiments with North American Indian supplementary jurisdictions to which the Archbishop refers.
ETA: [1] On choice of law a friend and reader points me to the Beximco Pharmaceutials case where the clause "Subject to the principles of the Glorious Sharia'a, this Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England."
was found not to work:
[40]First, it was common ground by concession that there could not be two separate systems of law governing the contract (paragraph 43). Yet, by contending that Sharia law and not English law would determine the enforceability of the agreement, the appellants were in substance contending that the agreements were governed both by English and Sharia law (paragraph 48). The judge declined to construe the wording of the clause as a choice of Sharia law as the governing law for the following reasons. First, Article 3.1 of the Rome Convention (which by s.2(1) of the Contracts (Applicable Law) Act 1990 has the force of law in the United Kingdom) contemplates that a contract "shall be governed by the law chosen by the parties" and Article 1.1 of the Rome Convention makes it clear that the reference to the parties' choice of the law to govern a contract is a reference to the law of a country. There is no provision for the choice or application of a non-national system of law such as Sharia law
[52]The general reference to principles of Sharia in this case affords no reference to, or identification of, those aspects of Sharia law which are intended to be incorporated into the contract, let alone the terms in which they are framed. It is plainly insufficient for the defendants to contend that the basic rules of the Sharia applicable in this case are not controversial. Such 'basic rules' are neither referred to nor identified. Thus the reference to the "principles of … Sharia" stand unqualified as a reference to the body of Sharia law generally. As such, they are inevitably repugnant to the choice of English law as the law of the contract and render the clause self-contradictory and therefore meaningless.
But what if had simply said that the Agreement "should be subject to arbitration by [a sharia'a court'] in accordance with the principles of the Glorious Sharia'a", or if they had nailed down that they were talking about sharia'a rules on interest? The case is worth a read.
ETFA: The Archbishop's site says "The Archbishop made no proposals for sharia in either the lecture or the interview, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law." So what exactly does he mean when he says "I have been arguing that a defence of an unqualified secular legal monopoly in terms of the need for a universalist doctrine of human right or dignity is to misunderstand the circumstances in which that doctrine emerged, and that the essential liberating (and religiously informed) vision it represents is not imperilled by a loosening of the monopolistic framework."? What is it, that thing that happens when you loosen a monopolistic framework and create a "supplementary jurisdiction"?
I had vaguely intended to return to writing stuff here, but once the tax return was complete and in, the computer decided to finally fall over and die. Not unexpected: the day I filed the return online I was feverishly praying that she would cling to life at least just long enough to submit. Which she did, just. RIP Theodora II, tolerably good and faithful servant.
I'm about to start prep for trial in a fairly significant case, so it will probably be a while before I'm properly back. However, it seems right to record that in addition to the new machine on which I am writing now (presently named "[pashazade]-laptop" in a startling fit of originality) and Theodora III and Justinian I, two Ubuntu Dell desktop machines that will be arriving in the near future, there are two rather shy new additions to this household: Campion 
(after Edmund, but Margery Allingham fans have liberty to believe otherwise) and his mother Gertrude 
. At least I think that's Gertrude but it's difficult to tell as she presently spends most of her time hiding behind things, in particular the monitor in the photograph (Campion meanwhile seems to be emulating his namesake* and building a priest's hole in the attic, possibly also a printing press judging from the noises). They were warming to us but we took them to the vet for a check on Saturday and we were promptly put back into disgrace...
*Though I don't think Blessed Edmund actually built any priest's holes himself, Nicholas Owen did most of that.
And that's all I have to say about that. Now, time to think about the summer. Oh, and buy a ring for some reason or other.
Another year, another series. And less than five minutes in, the plan to become mortgage-free starts with them mortgaging themselves to the hilt (3.5k interest/month), no one working on the build has "worked with this material before", and they've sacked the architect. Splendid.
For the benefit of those who don't know yet, at the weekend I decided it would be a jolly fine idea to ask Pashazade to marry me, and the poor fool said yes.
Annual jaunt down to Winchester Friday, back for Frankie and Coughingbear's party last night, and now off back to Hampshire and the gathering family hordes, via mass at Westminster Cathedral. I shall be effectively interwebless until New Year, so a very Happy Christmas to everyone who reads this, whatever that may mean to you. See you on the other side, literally or metaphorically.
Obviously my wallet and all my cards -including my oystercard- would be stolen just when I'm suffering a little financial embarrassment courtesy of paying Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs their quarterly due in respect of VAT and having to rely on the credit cards until some cheques clear. It was only because I had Pashazade's Oyster card in my pocket for some reason that I didn't end up walking home from Victoria.
Classic: crossing a pedestrian crossing and fail to avoid guy staggering his way across seemingly blind drunk who abuses me for getting in his way. Get to the other side and realise my pocket was light: by that time the lights have changed, there's a stream of traffic, and he's vanished.
No BTP apparent on Victoria, and granted it wasn't their problem anyway as it wasn't on the station, but I did eventually find a phone that connected me to their ops room and they put me through to Scotland Yard. They seem to think there might be some useful CCTV cameras around but I hold out little hope. Lloyds very quick to stop cards on, as were Barclays (though their cretinous new card sentinel idea means that I can no longer use online banking either, as I need the card) but MBNA are a nightmare.
Balls. This is the second wallet I've lost this year, though the first (in Lebanon) was entirely my fault.
Pashazade is currently pissing herself with laughter at this godawful rubbish from Eversheds (RollOnFriday link but you can follow it through to the Eversheds site itself). I’m undecided whether A&O’s incredibly tedious video is worse, but someone on the board then pointed out this from Ernst and Young. People are paid to produce this shite?
I was just pootling around the Barbican website looking to see what’s on, when I came upon a listing for The Singing Ringing Tree. Sadly adults unaccompanied by a child are not allowed to attend, and I don’t think Pashazade counts. Most of the time. Blatant bloody ageism, that’s what it is. Not to mention discrimatory against those of us not blessed with children. I would write to my MP but he’s a notorious arse.
Via Liberal England:
[BBC]: A convent in Italy is being shut down after a fight between its last three remaining nuns.
So badly did relations deteriorate between the sisters of Santa Clara in Bari that the Mother Superior ended up in hospital with scratches to her face. [cont]
Somehow neither these nuns nor the ones convinced their Mother Superior is possessed by the BVM seem to fit with my memories of those I knew as a child. Though come to think of it, in most fights I’d have put my money on the Poor Clare known affectionately (and, frankly, accurately) as The Fat Nun*.
*It was a closed order but she was her convent’s external nun, charged with being its link to the outside world. Which meant she was to be found at almost every social event, enthusiastically collecting gossip.
Can anyone who has read much Agatha Christie bring themselves to believe that Miss Marple would ever allow the phrase "you were in a relationship" to pass her lips? Honestly, this series is descending to utter drivel.
Via Oursin, Legionseagle, and Nhw, one of they "things what I have read" posts. Curious one, in that it's the 106 books currently most tagged as unread on Librarything. I'm a bit sceptical about this, as it reflects the reading experience only of "librarything users who tag things as unread and (presumably) read, to the extent of that part of their libraries they have both entered and tagged". I suspect that adds up to a fairly small sample, possibly of people with similar reading habits, but that's just a guess. (My occasional fits of enthusiasm (plus a Cuecat) have resulted in about 1/8 of my books, chosen fairly randomly as they came off the unorganised bookshelves, being entered (same name as this account if anyone cares) and about ten books in total being tagged at all...)( For what it's worth )
While impatiently drumming my fingers waiting for a solicitor to turn up to a con that was supposed to start half an hour ago and must finish in half an hour so I can go and catch a train to Swindon for a CMC...
Six Catholic nuns have been excommunicated for heresy after refusing to leave a sect whose founder claims to be possessed by the Virgin Mary, a US diocese has announced.
Reverend Gaston Hebert, the Little Rock, Arkansas diocese administrator, said he notified the nuns of the decision on Tuesday night after they refused to recant the teachings of the Community of the Lady of All Nations, also known as the Army of Mary.
The Vatican has declared all members of the Canadian-based Army of Mary excommunicated.
There has to be at least a short story in this...
Apropos of something mostly but not completely different, I discovered yesterday, via a footnote in a paper about the text of the bible, that there are still Samaritans. 701 of them to be precise, in four families. Half of them live in a town in Israel and the other half on Mount Gezirim in the West Bank (they used to live in Nablus but moved up the mountain at the start of the first Intifada, their attitude to Israeli-Palestinian conflict being to keep their heads down, though they have passports from both the PA and Israel, and Jordan too). It seems to be a matter of some debate in Israel whether they should be counted as just another odd little sub-group of Jews, like the Falashas for instance, or as Something Else. They are, unsurprisingly, rather inbred, so all their marriages have to be approved by a genetic consultant, though they have recently decided to allow marriage out. I dislike citing wikipedia but there isn't a great deal else, beyond the links cited there.
Sorry, I'm just fascinated by tiny remnants of cultures and peoples like this, and I had no idea at all that this one still existed.
Am In Georgia. Have blisters. All otherwise well. Back sometime via Istanbul and Greece. Toodle pip.
The silly season is evidently upon us if we’re back to chasing Lord Lucan.
“[Retired Scotland Yard detective Sidney Ball] told me that I was not Lord Lucan. I said ‘I know that’,” Mr Woodgate said.
I wish people would tell me I'm not Lord Lucan more often.
Anyone, preferably London-based, got the know-how and tools to extract possibly surviving pictures from an Olympus xD digital camera card the filesystem of which I somehow appear to have corrupted?
Amid news of floods and other disasters (ok, I know Port Meadow tends to flood a bit, but I have never seen it like this, and my understanding is that it's far from being one of the worst hit parts of Oxfordshire), I have just noticed the BBC news report that one of my favourite buildings, the Great Midland Hotel at St Pancras (often confused with St Pancras itself, it is after all part of the same complex) is on fire*. Looks like a major thing, as they've closed the Euston Road. Just as (after several false starts) they had a proper plan for redeveloping it (for thos e who don't know, it has essentially been unused for years). Hopefully the damage isn't too great.
I am going to Lebanon on Wednesday, for a week. Anything for a quiet life, plus it's not too far if one wanted to get to Megiddo in a hurry....
*ETA: and it has suddenly occurred to me that in one of the Dirk Gently books the late great Douglas Adams identified it with Valhalla...
Denn der Götter Ende/ dämmert nun auf/ So - werf' ich den Brand/ in Walhalls prangende Burg.
The day after the noxious Polly Toynbee wrote an unpleasant hatchet piece in the Guardian which probably did wonders for Boris' chances in the London mayoral race, Greyarea points out today's ludicrous piece by Mike Read (and the splendid comments thereon). It's difficult to avoid wondering whether this is a parody, or perhaps some more sinister and cunning plan to bury Boris by praising him. Either that or, err, Mike Read is just a complete cock.
I do find Boris amusing, and am generally of the view that he is far more intelligent than his deliberately constructed persona suggests. But I don't particularly like the man. Trouble is, I intensely dislike Ken as well.
Apropos of something a bit different, Liberal England asks why on earth either a back bench committee of MPs or HM Government should concern themselves with how local authorities satisfy their statutory duty to collect rubbish regularly. If central government doesn't allow local councils to decide how they collect people's rubbish, what will it allow them to do?
.
Interesting post by Craig Murray on a rather different kind of topic from his usual: challenging the general view that seems to be being taken by all -including, it appears, by HMRC- that it's somehow appalling that two young British women might go on trial and possibly to prison for drug smuggling in the awful land of Foreign. As Murray points out (a) Ghana is a fairly stable democracy and there is nothing particularly wrong with its judicial system, it is insulting and patronising to assume otherwise without evidence, (b) the cocaine trade which is beginning to cause real problems there is largely the fault of demand in the developed world (and drugs policy here), (c) it's a bit difficult to believe the girls can have thought the bag was empty: 7lb is a noticeable weight, so there is clearly a case to be answered.
ETA: this isn't about drugs policy incidentally: actually I tend to the libertarian view that we'd do better to legalise the lot and let people go to hell as they choose. But for the present, trafficking is an offence under the laws of both Ghana and the UK, as a result of international policy largely directed in the developed world, yet continues to happen, largely because of demand in the developed world. Also if there are any criminal practitioners reading this (Ruthie?) I'd be interested in their views of what might actually have happened -in practice what might the charge and possible sentence have been- had they been picked up at Heathrow rather than in Ghana.
ETFA: Murray's comment on the Cahill and Smith case some years back may sound harsh. but ask anyone who has done any backpacking whether they could possibly fail to notice 40kg of heroin in their luggage -when most airlines ban bags weighing more than 25kg because they consider it too heavy for baggage handlers.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal in a rather peculiar case which has already achieved some notoriety in the legal profession is now available on Bailii. I don't think I've ever read a report of a High Court judge being criticised so heavily, and personally, by the Court of Appeal. For various reasons I shan't comment further, though I do recommend the read-in transcript at para 17 on.
So, how does this blogging thing work again?
As many of those who know me well are aware, I am not by nature an early riser. Nor am I particularly pleasant to know on rising or for some time thereafter, be it early, middle or late.
People tend to assume as a result that I don't like mornings. This is quite wrong: I love being up in the early morning, at least when the weather is decent. I'm just not very good at actually doing it.
For some reason I woke up before 6 this morning, and on looking out of the window and realising the weather was actually fairly decent, by comparison, decided to do something I've wanted to do for a while: rather than faffing around for an hour or two, just have a coffee and cycle straight into work and from there go swimming at the Oasis open air pool (which is only about five minutes walk away). I've only known about the place for a month or so: I think I first read about it in an article by Sedley LJ in the LRB where he mentioned his habit of swimming there every morning, but since then several people have mentioned it. The showers and changing rooms are a bit scuzzy but since there's a perfectly good shower in chambers that doesn't really fuss me, and actually swimming in a heated open-air non-chlorinated pool (and at local authority prices at that), in England, in the heart of central London, without having to faff up to Hampstead Heath and the Ponds or anything, is worth any number of scuzzy changing rooms.
So I did. Even the traffic wasn't too bad at that time (one of the reasons I habitually don't leave until 9.30 at the earliest is that I try and avoid cycling through the height of the rush hour). Swam for an hour in the early morning sun, with just a few other people in the outside pool (there's an inside one as well), had a leisurely breakfast in Soho at Maison Bertaux, and was working in chambers earlier than I'm out of the shower on a normal day. Must do this more often.
... in England, given the so-cunningly-timed introduction of the ban on smoking, are clearly the Clerk of the Weather's attempt to prove he has a truly unpleasant sense of humour. Either that or punishment for Gordon Brown. (But I thought Gordon Brown was our punishment for Tony Blair.)
Never mind. I shall persist in my stand against this government's roughshod trampling of civil liberties.. oops, sorry, wrong page, that's a rant for another day about something or other. I may not like the ban but this (the petition for JR referred to in the post, not the post itself, obvs) is clearly balls and I hope the costs order reflects that.
Going back to the weather, I bet the AELTCC wish they'd pulled their collective fingers out re sorting out that roof on the show courts at Wimbledon. This must be shaping up as one of the worst Wimbledons, weatherwise, of recent history, and I suspect I am not the only one whose interest has waned as a result.
Well, that was fun. Apart from the bit about standing in freezing rain with my boots full of cold water queuing for the bus to Castle Cary station from 7.15 to 9.30 AM today. And now to bed, as I've had about ten hours sleep total since Thursday morning.
Eh?. What?. Read the second link having particular regard to the comments of David Greene of Civitas on the conclusions of the Rowntree Report in the first link: David Green, director of research group Civitas, said some people in the UK were finding it hard to compete with the newcomers. He said all the extra labour was keeping wages low and making it harder for people to work their way out of poverty.
(When I heard him on Today this morning I confused him with that appalling shit Andrew Green of "Migration Watch UK" and was rather concerned at the thought a mainstream thinktank like Civitas had picked up such a loon. To be fair I don't think he's quite of that order, on the other hand in his Today piece one could be forgiven for being confused between the two.)
Odd bit of spam today. Well, I thought it was spam and so did Gmail, but the curious thing was that it was well tailored: for a sort of Librarything/"books you might like" predictor coupled with amazon, sent to my livejournal email and not obfuscated in any way: the English was a little broken but not of the incoherent stream of drivel model. I dithered a bit before hitting delete (rather than unmarking as spam and then hitting delete - does that actually make a difference? I assume gmail's spamfilter learns, and if so that seemed almost... unfair. The really odd thing is that their "taster" book prediction was for something of which I actually am rather fond: Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. Outfit called nearsky.com, if anyone's interested, which whois tells me is, um, owned by an outfit which itself has an .ru domain. Hmm.
I have been arsing around with setting up a local mail server recently, for no particularly good reason other than that I was bored and felt I wanted to understand this stuff a bit more. (a Getmail/Dovecot IMAP /Postfix setup if anyone cares). In the course of doing that and also trying to set up a vpn client to log into work's machines I somehow managed to completely screw up everything that had anything to do with the internet at all: this came as no surprise as I have no real clue what I am doing (it doesn't really matter as I want to do a complete reinstall soon and everything is backed up to the nines). Rather more surprisingly I managed to figure out how I had managed to completely cock it all up and undo it fairly quickly. This pleases me.
In other news, or rather, other rhetorical questions, why does chaos break out in Lebanon every time I am on the brink of buying a flight there?
The Court of Appeal judgment in the Chagos Islanders (Diego Garcia) case and its predecessor, the Divisional Court judgment (and for completeness see also the 1999 and in particular 2000 judgments in the previous litigation and Ousley J's judgment on a separate issue) make fairly interesting reading, not only for lawyers and those interested in civil liberties or constitutional law but also for historians.
The whole sorry history of the affair is fairly lengthy and all of the judgments above, particularly the more recent Divisional Court one, go into it in detail. Shortly put, back in the 60s the US wanted a nice big airbase in the Indian Ocean: at the time, I guess, to keep an eye on China but it's been important in the US's more recent adventures as well. We had an appropriate island to offer, unfortunately it had some people on it. Actually, that seems to have passed some people in the FCO by: witness this, from Laws LJ's judgment in Bancoult No 1, at para 13:
There is a manuscript note by another official which comments on this minute. It refers to "a certain old fashioned reluctance to tell a whopping fib, or even a little fib, depending on the number of permanent inhabitants". A note dated 24 August 1966 to an official, Mr D A Greenhill, quotes a minute from the Permanent Under Secretary (I assume at the Colonial Office). The Permanent Under Secretary unburdened himself thus:
'We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee (the Status of Women Committee does not cover the rights of birds).'
This attracted a comment from Mr D A Greenhill, who spoke the same language:
'Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius etc. When this has been done I agree we must be very tough and a submission is being done accordingly.'
(There's a lot of this kind of attitude in the memos recorded in the judgments, which I confess to finding blackly comic. I'm particularly fond of the refreshing candour of 'the territory is a non-self-governing territory and there is a civilian population even though it is small. In practice, however, I would advise a policy of 'quiet disregard'—in other words, let's forget about this one until the United Nations challenge us on it.'
)
The islanders were chucked off, to Mauritius and elsewhere, and in recent years have been trying to undo all this: the 1971 Ordinance that originally banned them was overturned in Bancoult No 1, after which Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary appeared to accept the decision, saying that new arrangements would be made and he didn't seek to defend the actions of the 1960s government. But when the new Indian Ocean Immigration Order came in in 2004 -after Cook's departure of course- it made being in the islands without a permit an offence punishable by three years in prison, and it became clear they were never going to be allowed home. It is entirely coincidental that B52s and Stealths were flying from Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq in the intervening years, and vague and unsubstantiated allegations that Diego Garcia is a hub for "extraordinary rendition" flights are of course utterly beneath contempt. Nevertheless, Mr Bancoult of the islanders renewed his campaign (and in the meantime the President of Mauritius threatened to take his state out of the Commonwealth if the UK Government did not reconsider).
Well, the islanders won in Bancoult No 2 at first instance as well, and now the Court of Appeal has upheld the Divisional Court. Given that Sedley LJ was one of the three members of the court I suspect that the Government rather expected that: if your case is going to rely on the proposition that the exercise of the Royal Prerogative outside the UK in matters of colonial governance is not subject to judicial review he's hardly the man you want. When you had Laws first time round, you surely begin to suspect the Listing Office of political views. Turns out, unsusprisingly, that it is: at para 64: the royal prerogative, while the common law accords it a very large area of judgment and discretion in colonial matters, is not unlimited or unreviewable
. There's a fair bit on legitimate expectations (arising out of what Cook said after Bancoult No 1) as well. On to the Lords, I suspect, but there's a pretty good chance they'll do no better there. Good. In the meantime, this may, oddly enough, have some relevance to a case I'm working on (bearing in mind that there are many CDTs and similar for whom the Crown in Privy Council can legislate and several of them are in the business of fiscal efficiency, to use a polite term).
And if the title of this post is drawing a blank, get thee to the IMDB.
The goat a man was ordered to marry in Sudan has died, apparently after eating a plastic bag, and not before she, err, gave birth to a kid. What caught my attention was that this became one of the BBC's biggest stories ever, so far as the internet new site is concerned. Truly we live in the end times.
At some point I may return to posting more than random linkage. Just not yet.
Yesterday Channel 4 News broke the story that on top of the already-known fuck-up over junior doctors' job applications, the new system was appallingly insecure. On Today this morning the government line was "not insecure, leaks".
As today's Snowmail doesn't quite put it, while drawing the obvious line to the threatened ID and NHS information networks: balls.
The junior doctor job application scandal deepens. The government is trying to hide behind the idea that some malicious leaker is responsible for disclosing all the details of those trying to find junior hospital doctoring jobs, and that this is why their personal details were so widely available on the internet.
Our own researches prove that it was the NHS IT systems that were blatantly insecure. Indeed, we have now found other aspects of their IT that are wide open to abuse. Details of a conference attended by consultants and doctors several months ago disclose the addresses, telephone numbers, mobile phones, email addresses, of some of the most prominent doctors in Britain.
It is increasingly obvious that ministers and civil servants have lost control of the security of their own IT systems. The only minister to speak thus far, Lord Hunt, has merely entered his conviction that it's all down to some malicious leaker.
There have been no leaks. There has simply been a wholesale breakdown of security, as Victoria Macdonald will be reporting. But as we shall also be indicating, this raises the whole spectre of the insecurity of ID cards and the IT systems that are supposedly designed to protect personal information.
Strong words, but deserved, I reckon.
... and, yes, they're going to have a baby,,,
For all of us who occasionally dip into the Have Your Say section of the BBC News Site and watch in horrified fascination, there is now Speak You're Branes (though the address, "ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.c
A collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar.
All the comments quoted were found on the BBC "Have Your Say" site. Yes, people really have written them. On purpose as far as I can tell.
(Via Booklectic)
Not sure I've ever seen McLoud quite so unenthused. I rather see his point: what they've done isn't much to my taste either, though the full-height hallway is good. What they've done with the gallery and the swiming pool is a travesty, though I'm not as bothered by the dome on the tower as he is, though it does make it look a bit like a Sikh temple. The whole upper area is a bit weird.
Good to see one where the staggering thing about the money is how little it cost though.
Basil the Cat isn't very impressed either.