Health and safety kills off the Lear of a lifetime. Jim White writes in the Telegraph:
Earlier this week, I went with my son to see Derek Jacobi in King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse. We were so close to the action we were almost in it. It was clear that the enthusiasm expressed in Charles Spencer’s review for this paper was not misplaced: the actors delivered the poetry brilliantly, the pace crackled and fizzed.
For 50 minutes, we were entranced. Then: bang. Just as Kent had been sentenced to a spell in the stocks, the lights went out. For a moment, I thought this was a directorial ruse, and that the next scene would find him in some Tarantino-style torture chamber. But no. It was a power cut.
The house lights cranked into action, and for a minute or so, the actors carried on, the scene barely diminished by the reduced visibility. Quite right, too. As this was a show almost spartan in its freedom from special effects, there seemed no reason not to continue. The communication of the verse would have been as powerful in the gloaming.
But then a technician announced that since there had been an outage, the performance was being cancelled, for – you’ve guessed it – health and safety reasons. “Your safety,” he said, “is our number one priority.”
I struggle to know how to respond to this. Could I, perhaps, take a line or two, as suggested in my title for this post, from another of Shakespeare’s plays:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
Or could I say, begone, abominations. You are dead things that pretend to live.
So because the lights went from “stage” to “movie theater”, they decided to evacuate everyone then and there. Not wait for the power to come back, not sit and enjoy, but evacuate while the dangerous condition persists and while there’s no urgency whatsoever.
I hate the modern world sometimes.
Er, this isn’t a particularly modern thing, and I speak as a former West End chief LX.
If there was a power cut and the “house lights cranked into action”, that was actually the Emergency Lighting, which is battery supplied and has a limited endurance suitable for evacuating the theatre. Some of the West End theatres have generators (the Vaudeville does, I was there as the saying goes) and we could keep a show going on that (with very basic lighting of course). But if you’ve just got your Emergencies,then sorry, you evacuate. That’s always been the case, or at least back into antiquity; theatres have been fiercely safety-regulated for a long time because they used to burn down a lot.
Drifting into my anecdotage- we had one incident back in about 1990ish at the Duke Of Yorks when during the day we were doing teh Capital Radio Music Festival press launch and about an hour before the building site next door drilled through our service feed. We hurriedly hired the biggest generator we could, and ran the whole theatre off it, terribly exciting stuff with me nearly getting electrocuted hooking it up to the busbars (very old drilled copper strip, so you really had to wrap yourself around them to connect anything, none of this insulated tools at arms length girlieness, all good stuff.) Westminster Council let us run the press launch like that, because it was only journalists at risk, but no way were we going to be allowed to run the evening show for the public off three phase flexibles running down the alley and through the stage door with all the covers off the busbars and shit.
So has it always been.
So anyway, the “reason not to continue” was presumably that they were now on a limited and dwindling emergency lighting battery supply, and Jim White is a journalist who knows fuck all about electricity supplies and is thus talking from his fundament. “The show must go on” applies to performers, not to risking the lives of the public. You really don’t want several hundred people milling about in pitch darkness.
In a campaign to educate me my girlfriend has taken me to a string of plays at the Donmar warehouse, including Lear. I went to one play (‘the late middle classes’ – I preferred it to Lear – I find it difficult to follow the Shakespearian dialogue when its in full flow) where the actors smoked continuously on stage. I thoroughly enjoyed the naughtiness of it – maybe these theatre people were rebels too. It is sad to find out that this seems not now to be the case – maybe they were only smoking fake cigarettes.
Anyway, whats the deal with lights staying on throughout performances in cinemas? Its been going on since about the turn of the millenium, or at least thats when I first noticed it, and has been annoying me since. I thought it would have been enough just to have the ‘exit’ sign lit up.
I’ve just read a review, in “Spiked”, of “Bad Laws: An Explosive Analysis of Britain’s Petty Rules, Health and Safety Lunacies and Madcap Laws, by Philip Johnston”. The reviewer is Josie Appleton. When printed out the piece is 10 pages, quite some length for something which I think summarises all that is wrong in present day British society. It precisely explains your King Lear tragedy. Well worth a read, if you have time, that is.
AS Ian B points out, there are some good safety rules out there. The problem is we’re so surrounded by health and safety that we assume safety signs/actions/advice etc are there to protect someone’s job – not for our actual safety, and so we naturally ignore them, or think they’re unecessary. The consequence is greater danger where there is real danger.
“Your safety,” he said, “is our number one priority.”
Bollocks. Their number one priority was distancing themselves from any and all threat of litigation. At least they could have the guts to admit it. This culture is allowed to fester by that risk aversive, tort law happy government of ours.
I never understood the purpose of tort law. Perhaps someone could enlighten me. I was always of the view that if an actual crime had not taken place, then whatever arguing you wish to do has no place inside the nations courts.
Seems the whole horrible business could be avoided simply by having pre-agreed penalties required in all contracts, and establishing a system of independent binding arbitrators to resolve disputes (think Judge Judy).
What exactly is the point in encouraging people to demand money off neighbours, friends and businesses for civil matters, and backing this up with the courts?
As I said above, their number one priority would be getting the audience to leave before the batteries run out and everyone’s in pitch darkness.
Emergency lighting is sufficient to clear the venue, that is all. You can have a generator and keep going with shows, but generators are expensive to keep in good order; most West End ones were installed in the 70s during the great Strike Era and regular power cuts. Economically, it’s cheaper to lose an occasional show due to a rare service failure than the ongoing expense of having a generator.
So, power goes off, you clear the theatre. This is nothing new. “Your safety is our number one priority” is just politespeak for “sorry, show’s closed, fuck off”. You’d still clear the theatre if it was an anarcho-capitalist law-free paradise. At least, I would, due to the “hundreds of sheeple in the pitch dark” problem I mentioned above.
Good one Ian B. Thanks for pointing out that we are so used to the elf’n safety crowd crying wolf that we forget there are sometimes serious issues.
A recent example of the madness was back in October when some woodentop from Southampton University / Hospital advised against the dangers of apple-bobbing at Halloween. Goggles should be worn, they said, and better not to play at all…
BTW, thanks Natalie for the recent tip to the BBC Spy on the Ice documentary. Fabulous stuff.
I hadn’t realised that the edge of the ice was such an important ecological niche: now I realise why this word was in a Baltic travel guide (word buffs note: possibly the only occurrence of a quadruple vowel).
Thanks IanB, I knew it was a euphemism for something but I guess I got it wrong 😉
My OT question about tort law still stands though. I see no good coming from it at all. John Grissom advocates for it (in his fiction at least, and has argued several tort cases as a lawyer) and says “it’s the way big companies say sorry”.
If, for example, a company has poisoned your water supply, wouldn’t it be better to file criminal charges and get the directors thrown in jail for criminal negligence? Very often it seems like tort cases are not about punishing wrong doers, and more about getting that Ferrari to pay you back for that nasty stomach cancer business, or some-such.
In particular the threat of litigation is what makes private medical care beyond the reach of many. Prior to the litigation splurge America experienced in the 50s and 60s, the cost of medical care was so low that most paid their doctor cash-in-hand, with no need for insurance.
Or am I missing the point?
Jaded, I don’t think you’re missing the point. I admit to my view not being well developed on this, but at a basic level, I only see a rationale for one type of law- criminal law. That is, the law should deal with transgressions by one person against another, and that should always be by defnition a “criminal” matter.
Dispute resolution OTOH is a situation in which anarcho-capitalist leave-it-to-private-resolution-systems ideas have a lot of traction.
I’m also in favour of the abolition of non-person personality. “Companies” shouldn’t have a distinct personality that can be taken to court instead of the individuals. If somebody poisons your water, a “company” didn’t do it. Some people did it, and it’s the people who should be answerable for it.
The point of tort I thought was the concept of damages, the Latin tag being non damno sine injuria – no damages without injury. So losses could be redressed irrespective of whether criminal charges, with their higher standard of proof, were or were not brought as well. Having an offender banged up may be justice but is somewhat cold comfort.
“Injury” these days seems to include hurt feelings, which could be the subject of a thread in itself.
Criminal charges alone in the case of a company is very shaky ground – identifying the individuals concerned and their quanta of culpability would in all practicality often be next to impossible in the case of a large company. And in many cases a successful defence would be that they were following elf’n safety procedures. These would therefore be mindlessly tightened up and we get back to Natalie’s original posting.
While we are on the subject, I never understood where common law derived its authority from. My understanding is that its a private system, is based on case history, and that it deals with conflicts between individuals rather than crimes against society. But where does it get the power to summon people to court, exact punishments etc. Presumably it must have the backing of the state? Can somebody please enlighten me?
And if common law, including tort, is a private system then surely it is something we should approve of?
While there are of course numerous cases of tort law being abused by unscrupulous lawyers, there are conceivably situations where it is useful. There are clearly situations where the harm inflicted by a company, say BP, is material, but not so wide so as to be judged a crime against society, and not so concentrated as to have very well defined and motivated base of claimants. Tort can be useful in this case.
Any form of dispute resolution is tort law, by definition. So the only two alternatives to tort law are government regulation and rule by force. (Some might argue that that’s just one alternative.)
However, there’s more than one way to do tort law. Courts can be private. In fact, that’s exactly how Judge Judy works: the two parties agree to binding arbitration as adjudicated by Judge Judy, which is what gives Judge Judy’s rulings legal force. In principle, any tort case could be decided that way.
Also, the path of tort law can be altered by statute. An example of that would be the U.S. statute that limits the period of time over which an aircraft manufacturer is liable, which came about after Cessna was successfully sued when the pilot’s seat rail failed in a 40-year-old Cessna, leading to a crash.
Jaded, you have it completely backward. Tort law is the only legal form which makes any sense (action for injury to individuals by other individuals). Criminal law is, by definition, a transgression against the state, not againtst any person (the traditional formulation of a criminal charge is “against the peace and dignity of the state [or king]”). The victim of the crime is, at most, a complaining witness; as the victim you cannot compel the state to bring a criminal action, which is solely within the discretion of the prosecuting attorney (an employee of the state). Why anything (except possibly treason and the like) should be considered a crime against the state (which, as I already said, is what all “crimes” are) is beyond me. If you’re injured, you seek recompense from the perpetrator (the “tortfeasor”), and that’s entirely the source of (and justification for) tort law. The state has nothing to do with it.
And, incidentally, you can bring (or decline to bring) a private action in tort regardless of whether the state prosecutes the matter criminally, or even obtains a conviction. OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder, but his victim’s family successfully sued for monetary damages, and now has a lien on all of his (mostly nonexistent) assets.
At to why tort actions are maintained in the state’s courts, that’s a response to the historical reality of personal reprisals (blood feuds, etc.). Rather than having every injured person (or his family or heirs) pursuing individual vengeance, it was long ago decided to institutionalize the process for the overall good of society. Whether that was the best choice, or whether it continues to serve our needs today, are different questions, but clearly it was not an irrational choice. Personally, I would be in favor of private courts (which we now have, to some extent, with systems of arbitration), but even that requires the consent of both parties (not always possible outside of the realm of contract) and a mechanism for enforcing the judgments, which essentially means the state.
Laird, I agree with you. I just don’t understand the state-backed wallet emptying that tort law currently represents. For the most part I am not in favour of state law either.
As I said the best way I can see to take the state out of law is to simply require (or for it to become convention) for all contracts to include agreed upon methods of restitution. This may include financial penalties or anything else.
As to the application of law between two parties who have no contract, that I see as somewhat more problematic as it necessitates an external authority to which both parties may not have consented.
If both members agree there is a grievance, and agree on taking the case before an arbitrator, and both agree on which one to use then I see no problem. If one person refuses to acknowledge the grievance or see an arbitrator, then I consider it problematic. I’m not sure how to deal with that one.
The problem I am getting at is that if one citizen can force another into a legal dispute without their consent then it opens up the possibility of abuse. The other plaintiff may simply be a thief who refuses to acknowledge his crimes, but then he may simply be a man who is minding his own business and is being hit with vexatious litigation.
Is it right to allow the persecution and inconveniencing of the latter (however minor and redressed later on) in the name of capturing the former?
As primitive as it sounds the notion of going round with 4 of your biggest mates and kicking the unrepentant thief’s arse seems somehow more just to me. Of course, he may then call for arbitration on you and with your consent the circumstances which led to the arse kicking can be brought to light.
Probably not a workable system, but strangely it seems more moral to me. Maybe I’m just waffling….
Laird, your formulation (an unfortunately typical Libertarian one that tries to reduce crime to economics) reveals itself as back-assward when you consider the most fundamental crime of all- murder. A murder victim cannot bring their aggressor to court, because they are dead, and cannot receive compensation or some other dispute resolution because they are, er, dead.
Criminal law is not a transgression against the State; it is, in its most basic form, punishment enacted by a community on behalf of the transgressed against. The idea goes back to our most primitive tribal societies, when there is no recognisable “State” to transgress against. It is the community getting together and saying “Ugbug did bad thing, we punish him”. As societies get more complex, that gets more formalised and you end up with criminal law.
Thus criminal law notably focusses on punishment and deterrence, not compensation or “dispute resolution”. In criminal law, there is a clear victim and aggressor, not a dispute, and the court focusses not on debating who is right, but in attempting to confirm whether the accused is the aggressor.
To use a current example, Joanna Yeates doesn’t have a tort dispute with whoever her murderer is. She is dead. The community is attempting to find the murderer (via formalised systems) so he can be punished. This is the most basic form of law in human society. The crime is not against the State, it is against Joanna Yeates. The mob[1] now seeks vengeance on her behalf, and that is entirely appropriate. A tort model makes no sense at all in relation to such a situation- and this is why hardcore libertarian/anarchist approaches that attempt to redefine crimes as disputes are entirely inadequate.
[1] A law system comes into existence when a mob (tribe, community) agree to enact collective vengeance on behalf of any of its members who suffer various transgressions.
Laird, just had a big comment smitted, so while we wait, I’ll say this; that if you want a model of tort and only tort, one is left to wonder who prosecutes murders. The victims can’t. Do we say that if the murder doesn’t matter enough to some others, it is fine to leave it unpunished? Think of an old lady; no family or friends, murdered by burglars. Who will sue?
The other issue that divides criminal and civil law is that in crimes, usually the perpetrator is unknown and/or denies guilt. In civil law, the parties are known and agree that they are involved. The criminal is forced into court denying his involvement; the court decides not on a “dispute” but whether the man in the dock is the guilty party in an act which is already agreed by all to be criminal.
The civil model is not at all applicable to acts of criminality. To say it is “the only legal form which makes any sense” seems to me to border on the perverse. If anything, we should be looking for ways to abolish the civil law.
Two words: backup generators.
We’ve gotten really far off topic here, and I don’t think this is the appropriate venue for an extended philosphical discussion of criminal law, but in response to Ian’s comment I’ll just say three things: (1) Most actions which are “already agreed by all to be criminal” also fall into the realm of tort, so treating them also as “crimes” is just needless “piling on”. It’s unnecessary expansion of state power. (And conversely, most things which don’t constitute a tort [i.e., “status” crimes of juveniles, consensual “victimless” crimes such as prostitution, etc.] shouldn’t be “crimes”, either.) (2) The tortfeasor who denies culpability is just as much “forced into court” by the tort claim process as is a criminal defendant. That’s why I said that a “private” court system (arbitration) could have only have limited applicability, generally in the context of contracts. (3) Ian’s point about the murder victim without family or heirs to seek restitution is fair enough, I suppose, and that might be a circumstance in which state involvement is appropriate (society certainly doesn’t want murderers running around unpunished); I’ll have to think about that more. But why should that unusual case be the reason for state involvement in criminal prosecutions in the vast majority of cases where that’s not an issue? If we want less state in general, cutting back on its involvement in the criminal process is a sensible place to start.
Laird, my smit argument covers this. It’s not just murder. Assault, rape and indeed theft do not fit the tort model. They are not disputes between contracting parties.
To be blunt about it, I don’t want compensation from my mugger. I want the bastard breaking rocks on Devil’s Island. The idea of compensation via tort is part of a consistent libertarian mental block that attempts to reduce everything to economics.
Crime and Punishment, that’s the thing.
You want vengeance, Ian, not restitution or compensation. There’s a significant difference. But if it’s vengeance you’re after (and I don’t have a problem with that per se), handle it yourself. Why do you need (or even want) the state to exact your vengeance for you?
And you’re confusing breach of contract with tort. A tort is, by definition, non-consensual harm between non-contracting parties. You say that personal injury (murder, assault, rape*) “do not fit the tort model”, but that’s only because they’re volitional actions. Accidental personal injury is the quintessential tort claim, and for centuries has been recognized as being compensable with monetary damages. It’s only the element of intentionality which converts them into what you consider “crimes”. But while that element could logically enter into a jury’s monetary award calculus, why does it change the fundamental nature of the penalty from restitution/compensation to state-imposed vengeance? You’re entitled to be “made whole” (to the extent that can be accomplished monetarily), but not more, at least not more when you call upon the state to provide it. And what is gained from the fiction that the “crime” has been committed against the state?
In another thread you suggested that we “have a complete rethink” about the entire concept of a legislature. I suggest that you do the same thing with respect to the concept of “crime”. Step outside the box.
* “Theft” most assuredly does fit the tort model.
My smit comment still hasn’t turned up, and I deleted a para from my other comment that said something along these lines-
The point about the criminal law is that it evolved out of mob action against transgessors, not out of some kind of restitutional system, and that’s a pretty good pragmatic strategy. I can’t prove a “right” here; as discussed on other threads, we know from Hume that you can’t “prove” anything regarding rights. You can at best derive a non-aggression principle, but agency remains arbitrary, as does the form of response when the said principle is broken. So I can’t prove anything, but neither can you.
So I turn to general human principles. When a person has committed a transgression, the mob have a common agreement to turn on the transgressor and punish them. There are generally three elements- firstly, punishment. Secondly, deterrence. Thirdly, public safety (get him off the streets, either by incarceration or execution). None of these can be satisified by a restitutional model, which is why it fails.
If you look at crime tarriffs, they combine the three elements. People want punishments to “fit the crime”; they also want them to be sufficiently severe to deter. And thirdly, they want the bastard locked up to stop him perpetrating again. The issue of restitution doesn’t usually come into it, since most criminal acts cannot have a rationally calculated restitution. Murder, assault, rape. Care to put a monetary value on them? You can’t. Can you have some other form of restitution? What will compensate for a rape, or being crippled, or disfigured? Nothing will. It’s simply apples and oranges.
You are fixating on crimes against “the State”, but that is just a legalese. In the core crimes- murder, violence, theft, rape, the crime is clearly against a person and that is how the mob sees the crime, even if a lawyer sees it differently. A coherent state legal system is just the formalisation of the principle of “mob punishment”. Imagine a group shipwrecked on an island. They have no “government” and no “state”. They have no written “laws”. But then one guy rapes a woman, and what happens? They get together, hunt him down, and kick the living shit out of him. They might even execute him. Because they see him as a criminal, not somebody in a dispute.
By means of a thought experiment… what if we were to somehow magically to do away with the state, would the the mob justicedescribed by IanB be an acceptable substitute? For example the blokes living down the rape victim’s road kicking the living shit out ofthe rapist… it’s effectively the same punishment as we have with state involvement (we lock all the crooks up to beat the living shit out of each other) but without all that nasty police stuff.
Ian, I see that your “smited” comment has turned up*, and it contains nothing unexpected.
I don’t dispute anything you say about the historical roots of our criminal justice system. I’m saying that it should be rethought.
First of all, all of your points are directed toward crimes involving personal injury, for which monetary recompense is admittedly difficult (impossible?) to calculate. But that doesn’t have anything to do with “crimes” which do not involve physical harm to the victim. Why should any such actions be within the realm of the criminal justice system? But they are.
And as to crimes involving personal injury, retribution does not restore the victim to his previous state; in fact, it does nothing useful for the victim at all. Monetary damages, imperfect as they may be, nonetheless provide him (or his heirs) something tangible. And, as you point out, it is the victim who has been harmed, not society writ large. Why is “mob vengeance” (however sanitized by formal criminal procedure) a desirable alternative?
Your comments speak primarily to punishment and deterrence. Given the abysmally low rates of arrest and conviction for serious crimes, I question how much of a deterrent effect criminal law really has. Certainly modern peneologists are asking that question, and most appear to now focus on rehabilitation, not deterrence or retribution. To me this seems a more effective approach to reducing the incidence of crime, and one which could be handled in better ways than the current penal system.
Your desire for Old Testament-style retribution is understandable, but is an emotional response rather than a rational one. Again, I invite you to step outside the box and reconsider your prejudices. Tradition is useful, and not to be set aside lightly, but it is certainly not sacrosanct.
* A problem I have with the Smitebot is that whenever he sees fit to release a comment it goes into the thread at the time of its original submission, rather than at the time of its release. Which means that it appears far up in the thread and can easily be missed, unless one reviews all the previous posts (which I rarely do). Perhaps our hosts would consider changing the process so that posts released from Smitebot purgatory could show up in the thread as of the time of their release, not submission?
Is tethering against the Terms of Service of mobile phone companies? Which ones allow it?
That little poem is so true. It speaks the life. Our lives are so fragile, like candles. 🙁
Nice article.The content is very funny.Great post.Thanks!….