At what point does government become necessary?

(htp: Captain Ranty)

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Value for money!

Classicfm news this morning: the Monarchy costs each of us 53p a year.

53p for no President Blair, no President Brown. No President Cameron, Vice-President Clegg or President-Presumptive Miliband.

Tell you what, let's make it a quid. And here's an extra fiver from me.


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Here come the police

From the BBC

Complaints originating from social media make up "at least half" of calls passed on to front-line officers, a senior officer has told the BBC.

Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, said the number of crimes arising from social media represented "a real problem".

He said it was a particular problem for officers who deal with low-level crimes.

About 6,000 officers were being trained to deal with online offences, he said.

To my mind, the internet has poked a huge great stick into our more naive assumptions about institutions. Not that we were starry-eyed about them before the Great Linking, but the internet has exposed their failings and most institutions have been painfully slow to respond.

By the way, that’s painfully in the sense of embarrassingly painful to watch. So far the pain is ours – or perhaps I should say mine. You may think institutions are great or you may have been cynical about them forever. I don’t and wasn’t.

Yet which of these institutions has not had their image tarnished by exposure to the vast resources of the internet?

Governments, political parties, newspapers, the BBC, the FA, FIFA, the Olympics, the NHS, doctors, Oxfam, Greenpeace, WWF, Cancer Research, numerous other charities, the Royal Society, Tate Modern, the National Trust, the RSPB, the RSPCA, the NSPCC, the Royal Family, the Church of England, the Catholic Church, all major banks, the Bank of England, the City of London, the Co-operative movement, local councils, the police, social services, the Environment Agency, Defra, the Treasury, the Foreign Office, the MOD, the Met Office, numerous NGOs, the EU, the UN, major food retailers and UTC.

Yes the effect is complex, not unique to modern times and not universal, but it’s difficult to see how the somewhat precarious and irrational charisma of institutions can survive such massive amounts of easily accessed information. Presumably the only options are:-

Adapt and improve.

Censorship.

I wonder which is the preferred option?

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Secret Justice, Perverted Justice

(From "A Man For All Seasons")

I've just finished reading John le Carré's latest, "A Delicate Truth," which is about a "black ops" business that goes wrong and results in the death of innocents. But that's not why I read it.

Much of what is classified as non-fiction in history and politics should be subtitled "lies we'd like you to believe", and much thriller fiction is often "truth we can't state baldly." Now I look for nuggets of the latter.

The one that gleams out of this book is how the State is altering the very machinery of justice to insulate itself from accountability. Rather than type out the relevant passage, I found it on the website of Mark Meynell, senior associate minister at All Souls Langham Place, London. A retired diplomat turned would-be whistleblower is advised by the FCO:

"... any inquiry would have to take place behind closed doors. Should it find against you – and should you elect to bring a suit – which would naturally be your good right – then the resultant hearing would be conducted by a handpicked and very carefully briefed group of approved lawyers, some of whom would obviously do their best to speak for you and others not so for you. And you - the claimant, as he or she is rather whimsically called – would I’m afraid be banished from the court while the government presented its case to the judge without the inconvenience of a direct challenge by you or your representatives. And under the rules currently being discussed, the very fact that a hearing is being conducted might itself be kept secret. As of course, in that case, would the judgment.

"… Oh and the whistle-blowing per se would absolutely not be a defence, whistle-blowing being – and may it forever be so in my personal view – by definition a risk business."

Omitted from the above is the part where the civil servant tells him that the trial itself would be in secret until sentence was passed - and that the jury "would have to be very heavily vetted by the security services prior to selection."

We're back to the packed juries of Henry VIII, it would seem. I think my father, who fought in WWII and served in HM Armed Forces for many years afterwards would, if alive today, wonder what had happened to his country.

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World government

 

click to enlarge
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_sociopol/nwo65_04.jpg
this is part of an even more extensive graphic to be found here:
http://www.scribd.com/NWO2012/d/15764393-wordlgovmap

Academic blue-sky thinker Robin Hanson says:

The world has many problems and some of them are global [...] war, global warming, and promoting innovation [...]    a lot of these problems would get solved a lot better with a high capacity world government. Such a government could better reduce uncertainty and secrets, enforce compliance, and promote compromises between conflicting interests.

I used to think that, too. Now I want to ask, "World government - by whom, how?" Certainly some issues transcend national limitations - but would a centralised global power be the answer?

Thoughtful responses (rather than the usual lazy barracking found on the internet) would be truly welcome.

P.S. Here's the original Blofeld:

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In praise of Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke is the Low Life columnist for the Spectator magazine. He lives in Devon's South Hams and mixes humbly (a word he's fond of) with the ordinary, poor and raffish, reporting on them and himself with lapidary prose and that quality the ancient Chinese prized and called "human-heartedness".

 

A collection - not to be missed, we were re-reading it aloud this morning with our wake-up tea, and laughing - is available here (a gift for yourself, and maybe for some of your friends too):

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Low-Life-Middle-Aged-Search-Point/dp/1907595511/ref=sr_1_1/277-4349049-2951361?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403330788&sr=1-1&keywords=low+life+jeremy+clarke

 

 

Here (16 Aug 2003) he is helping out on the Whack-the-Malteaser stall at his sister's annual charity fete held in the local centre for those with learning difficulties:

 

After Ray, Maurice came over and tried his luck. My sister loves Maurice. He's her pet. She found him a work experience placement recently, at Tesco's, as a bread packer. Every day he packs bread until they tell him to stop, then he goes home. He loves packing bread so much, says my sister, he can't wait to go to work again the next day. Maurice was accurate with the mallet, but his timing was way off.

 

He was far too slow. By the time he'd brought the mallet down, the Malteaser had already crossed the table and been picked up, examined, and eaten by an onlooker. Maurice then walked away with the mallet in his hand, the silly arse. I didn't notice it had gone until the next customers presented themselves, and I had to close the stall temporarily to go and look for it.

 

The terrific heat was a major problem for the stall this year. This year's fun day was the day of the hottest temperature since records began. The Malteasers' chocolate coating began to melt and they stuck to the inside of the tube.

 

Customers were standing at my table, mallet raised, eyes narrowly focused on the pipe's exit, and the Malteasers wouldn't come out. The only way to shift them was to blow down the pipe. This was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, but mainly because it meant putting my head nearly in line with the mallet's descent.

 

I requisitioned Jim, gave him my supply box of Malteasers and asked him to take them inside and shove them in the fridge. 'I can't do it!' said Jim, which is the only thing Jim ever says, and he trotted away with them towards the house. Later, when I popped over to get the Malteasers out of the fridge, they weren't in there. 'Jim,' I said when I found him, 'what did you do with the Malteasers?' I can't do it!' said Jim pointing at his mouth. 'I can't do it!' Jim had only gone and scoffed the lot. I seized his face with both hands and gave him a big kiss.

 

Because with no more Malteasers to Whack, that, thank God, was that for another year.

 

His collection is subtitled "One Middle-Aged Man in Search of the Point", but like the Chinese sages, in a way he's found it, in seeing and loving.

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The corncrake cried too

A few years ago, a cold and foggy December morning found me walking back from an early medical appointment. The streets were quiet. A low winter sun rose behind a huge old beech tree towering over a scrubby piece of land. Shafts of brilliant hazy sunlight gleamed through icy fog and leafless black branches to create a scene of the most extraordinary beauty.

I stopped for a moment, wished I had a camera but walked on because there is no capturing these moments, no way to possess them.

Does the beauty of the fields delight you? Surely, yes; it is a beautiful part of a right beautiful whole. Fitly indeed do we at times enjoy the serene calm of the sea, admire the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun. Yet is any of these thy concern? Dost thou venture to boast thyself of the beauty of any one of them? Art thou decked with spring's flowers? is it thy fertility that swelleth in the fruits of autumn? Why art thou moved with empty transports? why embracest thou an alien excellence as thine own? Never will fortune make thine that which the nature of things has excluded from thy ownership.

Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy (around 524 AD)

More recently.
The street outside falls strangely silent under a brilliant summer sun. Nothing moves, no sounds, not even birds. Breathless and timeless - even the clock seems to have slowed its relentless tick. A curiously beautiful stillness but only for a moment.  A car approaches. The spell is broken.

Natural beauty is like that – impossible to grasp beyond momentary impressions. Impossible to own or take away its alien excellence. 

Then a corncrake began to call in the meadow across the river, a strange, dispassionate sound, that made him feel not quite satisfied, not quite sure. It was not all achieved. The moon, in her white and naked candour, was beyond him. He felt a little numbness, as one who has gloves on. He could not feel that clear, clean moon. There was something betwixt him and her, as if he had gloves on. Yet he ached for the clear touch, skin to skin — even of the moonlight. He wanted a further purity, a newer cleanness and nakedness. The corncrake cried too.

D.H. Lawrence – The Overtone (1933)

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