The BBC were interviewing an ex police officer today who was complaining that it wasn’t their fault because of “cuts” and they couldn’t resource their investigations properly. This is nonsense. The cases were assigned an investigation officer. He – or she – failed to do their job properly. They also don’t need “resources” to forward all of the evidence to the defence team. They fucked up. This has much to do with politicising the police and the culture in which they now operate. They have gone from not believing the “victim” to believing them unconditionally. Somewhere along the way, they lost the ability to conduct an impartial investigation of all of the relevant evidence. To do this they need to take a neutral stance of neither believing nor not believing until the evidence determines whether there is a case to answer. Then and only then, seek to charge.
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We are in the midst of a revolution in our understanding of sexual harassment and assault. We’re told, as we are often told in the midst of media-driven manias, that everything has really changed this time. As satisfying as this narrative might be for feminists on the warpath against “toxic masculinity” and conservatives who revile the sexual libertinism of the past half-century in America, it isn’t true. As long as men and women are thrown together in the workplace—and are placed in competition with each other—sex will, in part, be a means to achieve power, a weapon wielded by both men and women. The question is what we can do to mitigate the damage. The record so far—and by so far, I mean over the past four decades—is not encouraging. – Christine Rosen, Commentary Magazine. December 19th, 2017 | 55 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Some years back, I decided I had to quit the teaching profession to which I had dedicated half my life. The modern academy, I felt, was so far gone that restoration was no longer possible. Indeed, I now believe that complete collapse is the only hope for the future, but as Woody Allen said about death, I’d rather not be there when it happens. December 18th, 2017 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Of all the crimes against humanity that one can imagine, it may seem hard (or perhaps all to easy) for the visitors to this parish to imagine that, if you are an employer, offering your employees a pay rise can be regarded as legally actionable under principles of Human Rights law, and give rise to a claim for compensation. But such is the law in the United Kingdom, in defined circumstances. Those circumstances being where an employer’s principal or only motive for making an offer (regardless of it being accepted) is to get 2 or more employees to forego their rights to collective bargaining. The situation was recently highlighted in a case involving a UK branch of a German engineering company, Kostal UK Ltd. The employer had a ‘recognition agreement’ for a group of its workers with Unite (the UK’s largest Trade Union). This agreement is described as ‘binding in honour only’, and under it, the employer agreed to negotiate terms of employment for those covered by the agreement with the Union, rather than with the employees directly. it was not, by itself, legally enforceable. However, despite this ‘agreement’ being unenforceable as such, the Union’s ‘right’ to negotiate on behalf of its members is protected by a specific piece of legislation which prevents employers from making offers of different (including better) terms to two or more of its employees if they are (or are proposing to be) covered by a (non-binding) collective agreement between the employer and a Trade Union, if the employer’s motive is to go over the heads of the Union to reach an agreement with the employees represented by the Union. Under this law, it is, of course, for the employer to prove what its motive was for making any offers to its employees in these circumstances, and if the motive (or main motive) is benign, there is no liability. And the risk? An award of £3,907 per employee for every offer that is made. In the Kostal case, it came out at around £422,000 per some reports, as the employer made two offers to around 57 employees. For some bizarre reason, apparently to do with its German parent company, its first offer, made in December, included a Christmas bonus, but its second offer, made in January did not, so two offers were made and two lots of compensation (at the time £3,800 per offer) was due, twice penalising what was essentially a single course of conduct. Why is this ‘law’ in force, you may ask. The answer is that it is to protect the Human Rights of the workers, as, if an employer gets fed up dealing with a Union on pay negotiations, and tries to bypass it, so that the terms of employment of two or more employees covered by a collective agreement are no longer decided in line with that agreement, this is, according to the European Court of Human Rights, a violation of the right of freedom of association. As the judgment in this case puts it:
The judgment goes on to explain the ‘reasoning’ of the European Court of Human Rights (the Strasbourg Court):
So, lest an employer find a Union is asking for Mars and it can only offer the Moon, and it offers the Moon to Alphie and Bill, Charlie’s right to claim Mars is protected by making the employer pay compensation to Alphie and Bill for having the temerity of trying to cut them a deal, or even if the deal for Alphie and Bill is Venus plus Mars. And, lest you ask, if Alphie and Bill accept the offer, it is still enforceable against the employer. Having met someone who went through the gates of Belsen at its liberation, it is hard not to think that Human Rights law is a sick mockery of the dead. I am not saying that this judgment is outwith legal principles, it is starkly in keeping with them as they stand. With this as ‘law’, the UK has a long journey back to a Common Law that can be deduced from reason. December 17th, 2017 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I present a couple of cases from a century ago where there is little doubt about the guilt of the accused. In the first a soldier finds out that his wife is having an affair while he is away. He shoots her dead. In the second a soldier suffers shell shock and it sent home. He acts in an erratic and frequently violent manner. His wife kills their son and attempts to kill their daughter and herself. In both cases the jury returns a verdict of “not guilty”. December 17th, 2017 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
When I was in Melbourne some government body or other put on a display of ‘Aboriginal culture’ in Federation Square and advertised it all over town. I guessed in advance that it would consist of a bunch of primitives sat around bashing drums while metropolitan white folk looked on as if they were visiting a zoo. Child-like art would on display wrapped in copious quantities of mumbo-jumbo. I passed by one Saturday afternoon and sure enough, that’s exactly what it was. A more patronising exhibition I couldn’t imagine, and it must have been soul-destroying for any Aborigine who aspires to be something more than a museum piece for liberal whites. December 16th, 2017 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is no inconsistency here. Just as we would support a gay baker’s right to decline to convey a homophobic message, we support this Christian baker’s right to decline to celebrate a same-sex wedding. That is because Masterpiece isn’t really about religious liberty – apart from claims that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission itself treats the religious and nonreligious differently, something that concerned the swing Justice Anthony Kennedy at oral argument – but about freedom of speech. December 15th, 2017 | 81 comments - (Comments are closed)
An Engineer, a Mathematician and a ‘Climate scientist’ are each asked “what is 2 + 2?” The Engineer says “somewhere between 3.9 and 4.1”, the Mathematician says “4” and the ‘Climate scientist’ says “what would you like it to be?” December 14th, 2017 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today’s weird Guardian story is not directly political:
As one might expect, this is being treated as a crime:
But not everyone agrees.
She has a point. As was discussed here yesterday there is a push (it’s called a “consultation” but no one is in any doubt what the desired answer is) for England to follow the example of Wales and institute a system in which unless a person objects in advance to their organs being donated after death their consent will be assumed. Why, then, should Mr Bramhall not say that he assumed that his patients were OK with him putting his graffiti tag on their livers? They didn’t sign a form objecting, did they? December 13th, 2017 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is always nice to be reminded that history has no direction. The Times reports,
Some of the Times commenters say that their dislike of smoke is so strong that they will not be returning to Austria as tourists unless the ban is reinstated. That is their choice, although it does seem to me that their understandable preference for a non-smoking restaurant could be satisfied at a more local level than that of an entire nation. December 12th, 2017 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
In order to be used for transplant, the body must be fresh, undiseased and in a hospital. Presumed consent (which is not consent) will not necessarily make more of these available. That is all beside the moral argument and that one is pretty straightforward. Assuming anyone’s consent is not consent at all. It is the nationalisation of our bodies, it is the state seizing that which it does not own. December 12th, 2017 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell launched a report commissioned by the Labour Party from GFC Economics & Clearpoint Corporation Management Ltd. I have had a quick read of it, not in any detail but enough to think that you might be interested in reading it too. Here it is: Financing Investment: Interim Report It is called Financing Investment but it does not say much about financing investment. I suppose a report called Let’s Put The National Investment Bank And The Strategic Investment Board And A Bit Of the Bank Of England All Next Door To Each Other In Birmingham And Mention It Twenty Times is better for votes in Birmingham. They’ll be able to put out a special Birmingham edition of Monopoly with that street collecting a massive rent. However there is more to this report than just more swanky government buildings in Birmingham. Branch offices in Glasgow and Cardiff are also promised. And this caught my eye:
You hear that, South East? Only in Labourland is an increase in the number of technology companies in one area seen as a “risk” in itself. But that is a mere taster. On page 47 we begin to reach the meat of the proposal. Rejoice! There is to be something called a Strategic Investment Board.
We learn that
It is nice to be reassured that private sector R&D will not be crowded out, but the very fact that the possibility is mentioned does rather imply that public sector R&D will be crowded in. Who will be deciding who gets this “investment”, and what reason have we to suppose they would be good at it? The answer is not reassuring:
Ah, “getting round the table”, I remember that. I was too young to understand all the hoo-hah about Barbara Castle’s In Place of Strife in 1969, but I can just about remember the series of increasingly ineffectual “Solemn and Binding agreements” and “Concordats” agreed between Labour governments and the unions over beer and sandwiches at No.10 as the 1970s wore on. None of them stuck. (Edit: in the comments Sam Duncan says, “So they’re basically digging Neddie and the NEB out of the dustbin and bunging them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then? That’s the Great Corbyn Plan?”) On page 48 it says,
That all sounds very nice, but why is a bunch of scientists, businessmen and trade unionists moonlighting from their proper jobs expected to be able to tell what lending is unproductive? While lending to “innovative companies” can turn out well, it is not a game for amateurs. God only knows that the banks have not always done a good job, but at least it was their job. And it is strange to see the socialists display such faith that the capitalist exploiter will act for the common good and not, for instance, draw an enormous salary augmented by backhanders to ensure that companies in which he has a well-disguised interest get all this luverly investment. On page 49:
Wha-wha-what is the Royal Bank of Scotland doing there? They’re not thinking of using money deposited by the public with RBS for this “investment”, are they? Investment specifically directed at innovative companies? That might, er, cause queues to form outside RBS branches on the morning of a Labour election victory. I have left the biggest question, where the money is to come from – because I really don’t think RBS can cover it all – as an exercise for the reader. The Labour party answer is “From the National Investment Bank, stupid.” December 11th, 2017 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
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