To Do list before flying: (1) Leave pipe-bomb at home…
On the eve of my flight to Boston I read this about a chap who tried to board a plane having ‘forgotten’ to remove from his bag a pipe-bomb he’d made for ‘fun’.
Where do we get these people from?
Do you blog?
Isn’t it soul-destroying? I mean, when I blog I often wonder if what I write is worth reading, whether my jokes are even remotely funny (what do you mean - what jokes?) whether I’m making any worthwhile point at all… The number of posts I’ve started but then abandoned I don’t even want to think about.
And it’s not just when I’m blogging that I feel bad about what I’m doing. When I’m not blogging I feel even worse because when I’m not blogging I feel I ought to be. And I cannot read a newspaper, hear a conversation, watch a tv programme or read a book without assessing it for blogability - that is, is there a post I could write from all this?
I’m flying to the US tomorrow for a week and I’m dreading my blog being unattended. It’s that picture of a regular reader coming to my page, realising I haven’t posted for the third day in a row and so removing me from his or her favourites list that really does it for me.
Isn’t this absurd? After all, nobody told me to create this blog and I’m certainly not earning my living from it so what’s the worry?
If you have a blog you might know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t then get one. I don’t see why you should be free of this misery.
In the meantime, I’m relieved to see that all my blog depression symptoms are well-recognised in the blogosphere. I read this ‘public service’ pamphlet and instantly recognised myself.
You might too….
(How did I do? Was that an interesting enough post? Will you come back again tomorrow? Please??)
Interpret the law - or change it?
Max Hastings writes in today’s The Guardian a response to Michael Howard’s Telegraph article yesterday in which he asks judges to bow to the will of Parliament.
Michael Howard spoke of the balancing act between counter-terrorism measures and the loss of freedom this would entail. In particular, he says that Parliament makes the laws and the judges are to interpret them but in the light of what it was Parliament was thinking when it created them. The Human Rights Acts, for example, give judges the right to second-guess - or ignore -the government’s original intentions:
The Human Rights Act, for example, gives the judiciary the authority to consider whether an Act of Parliament is proportionate to the objective it is intended to achieve - drawing them directly into political controversy.
I believe that these are essentially matters for Parliament - for elected representatives, accountable directly to the people - to decide. But, thanks to the Human Rights Act, the judges have been given the right to second-guess Parliament.
The Act has led to taxpayers’ money being used for a burglar to sue the man whose house he broke into and a convicted serial killer being given hard-core porn in prison because of his “right to information and freedom of expression”.
Michael Howard sees the two entities - Parliament and the judiciary - as separate (which they are) but one where the judiciary serves Parliament - the democratically elected voice of the people. He believes that The Human Rights Act makes it difficult for the judges to do this:
The Human Rights Act has drawn British judges into areas of political controversy through no fault of their own. It is, however, vital for the future of our country that the judiciary exercises these powers with self-restraint, recognising that Parliament, accountable as it is directly to the people, must be allowed to exercise the supreme responsibility of deciding what powers are to be conferred on the executive.
Parliament must be supreme. Aggressive judicial activism will not only undermine the public’s confidence in the impartiality of our judiciary, but it could also put our security at risk - and with it the freedoms the judges seek to defend. That would be a price we cannot be expected to pay.
Max Hastings takes a different view and deplores Mr Howard’s call on the judiciary to demonstrate more active support for government policy.
He urges that judges should hold back from exercising the discretion granted them by the Human Rights Act, to assess whether given legislation is proportionate to its objective.
He suggests that judges’ abuse of their powers - for instance in overruling the home secretary on detention cases - is improper. He says it is time for the judiciary to step back, and allow the judgment of the elected executive to prevail.
Mt Hastings suggests that the Conservatives have protested previously that the current government has a little too much power already and has ridden roughshod over its foes in the past. To ask judges not to use the legal powers they have - courtesy of the Human Rights Act - would just be more of the same with Britain turning its back on the rule of law.
It seems bizarre, if not perverse, for Mr Howard to urge them not to use the latitude they possess under the Human Rights Act. Some of us think human rights legislation is flawed, chronically vulnerable to abuse by the legal profession and undeserving plaintiffs. The European human rights convention is an extraordinarily one-sided document, which places huge duties upon its signatory states, while imposing almost no reciprocal conditions on its beneficiaries. There is a strong case for its amendment in the wholly new world which has evolved since it was drafted in 1949.
But this is an argument for altering British law, not for asking judges to forswear the influence which such law grants them today. It seems extraordinary that Mr Howard - himself a lawyer - should seek to persuade judges unilaterally to renounce duties imposed upon them by legislation, whether or not this was ill-conceived.
The thrust of Mr Hasting’s argument is the that bad law should be amended or, perhaps, removed but not simply ignored. And new laws should be created after calm debate rather than in haste.
I don’t know how unreasonable it is of Mr Howard to ask the judiciary to put national interests first. Granted, to expect them - the guardians, if you will, of the law - to ignore the law is a little unusual but maybe there is scope within the Human Rights Act for them to apply law according to more subjective criteria. In other words, the same actions committed by similar people in similar ways could be regarded differently when taking into account the conditions that are generally prevailing at the time of these actions.
Personally, I think complications multiply when Parliament - and, so, the people - have less than total control over the laws they must abide by. British laws should be made only by the British Parliament with their creators subject to the will of the British people.
A second point is that laws already in place need to be used more readily. It seems that Omar Bakri Mohammed is now not coming back to the UK because he’s been excluded using already existing laws. The truth is, Bakri and co were as dangerous before as they are now; that being so it reinforces my belief that this government didn’t act previously against such people because they didn’t want to lose Muslim votes and they are acting against them now because they don’t want to lose the rest of the country’s votes.
Very interesting point made by ex-nun Karen Armstrong in today’s The Guardian. She suggests that the Bible, Qu’ran, Torah and so on were never actually meant to be read by people in the privacy of their own homes but recited in particular, symbolic circumstances.
These ritualistic recitations - usually carried out by a holy man - put the congregation in a particular state of mind; the option to pick and choose your favourite verse to read did not, in ages of widespread illiteracy (and, of course, no printing technology) exist. She says that the experience of hearing or chanting from the texts was at least as important as the content of the texts itself:
Hitherto the scriptures had always been transmitted orally, in a ritual context that, like a great theatrical production, put them in a special frame of mind. Christians heard extracts of the Bible chanted during the mass; they could not pick and choose their favourite texts. In India, young Hindu men studied the Veda for years with their guru, adopting a self-effacing and non-violent lifestyle that was meant to influence their understanding of the texts. In Judaism, the process of studying Torah and Talmud with a rabbi was itself a transformative experience that was just as important as the content.
She is specific about the Qu’ran. ‘Qu’ran’ actually means ‘recitation’ and is designed to be read out aloud rather than cover to cover on your own. Like poetry, there is a transcendent quality that adds a special layer to the experience:
Much of the meaning is derived from sound patterns that link one passage with another, so that Muslims who hear extracts chanted aloud thousands of times in the course of a lifetime acquire a tacit understanding that one teaching is always qualified and supplemented by other texts, and cannot be seen in isolation. The words that they hear again and again are not “holy war”, but “kindness”, “courtesy”, “peace”, “justice”, and “compassion”.
When the ritual that accompanies the text’s reading is missing the reader can only approach his study on a cerebral level. The emotional and therapeutic effects of reading is lost. This leads to the problem that, if you want to blow up a bus or murder a ’sinner’ you can usually find - and focus on - those passages that appear to give you the authority to do so:
Solitary reading also enables people to read their scriptures too selectively, focusing on isolated texts that they read out of context, and ignoring others that do not chime with their own predilections. Religious militants who read their scriptures in this way often distort the tradition they are trying to defend. Christian fundamentalists concentrate on the aggressive Book of Revelation and pay no attention to the Sermon on the Mount, while Muslim extremists rely on the more belligerent passages of the Qur’an and overlook its oft-repeated instructions to leave vengeance to God and make peace with the enemy.
Unfortunately, Ms Armstrong finishes her illuminating piece with a clumsy defence of Islam (this is The Guardian, remember) and blames the media for concentrating ‘obsessively on the more aggressive verses of the Qur’an, without fully appreciating how these are qualified by the text as a whole’. With all respect to the lady, it’s the perpetrators of Muslim terrorism who have actually focussed on the aggression of the Qu’ran and distorted - I’m sure Ms Armstrong would agree - the peaceful message of the text.
If the thrust of her piece is correct it is actually Muslims - and the adherents of religion in general - who need to relearn the correct way to approach their texts rather than reporters to learn new ways of reporting on the consequences of incorrect practise.
