June 3rd, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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It is astonishing that a potential law could even reach the stage of being voted on in the USA that says if you witness or ‘become aware’ that neighbours or friends have broken the law with narcotics (which presumes you are a competent judge of that), you will be compelled by law to denounce them to the police. Failure to do so means prosecution and the threat of a two year sentence yourself if convicted of simply minding your own business. Even if you disagree with the drug laws, you will be threatened with prison if you do not actively help enforce them against other people. I have met Congressman Sensenbrenner and I am shocked that he could have come up with such a profoundly authoritarian and illiberal law like this. He explained his support for the ghastly Patriot Act was purely a temporary emergency measure, pointing to the sunset clause as proof of that. Well if this* is his idea of reasonable legislation then I fear that I see all his motivations in a dramatically different light. Turning neighbour against neighbour like this was how communist states maintained power in the Eastern bloc and anyone putting their name to such a law should be seen for the enemy of civil society that they are, turning people who just wish to be left alone into coerced informers for the state. Truly disgraceful. *= to see details, enter HR1528 in the search box, then check the enter bill number button, then press search June 1st, 2005 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
The US Supreme Court today overturned the obstruction of justice conviction of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm. This comes too late, of course, to save Andersen, which was largely destroyed by the conviction, but it nonetheless injects some common sense back into the rules around withholding information from the government (it can be legal, you know, a fact which the SCOTUS felt the feds needed to be reminded of) and document disposal (a topic on which I spend far too much of my time).
The Andersen case was of a piece, really, with Martha Stewart’s conviction. Both were convicted, essentially, of failing to cooperate in their own prosecution. Give Martha cred for serving her time, but I wonder if she wouldn’t have won out on appeal. Eventually. May 31st, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems like we are getting there. The serious press is starting to understand the threat posed by the nationalisation of personal identity dressed up as a populist system of “ID Cards” This devastating quote appeared in an article in the New Statesman, house magazine of the British political left:
One hopes the message is now starting to get through to Labour MPs, and they may find important other things to do rather than vote for the second reading (the first non-formal stage) in parliament. May 28th, 2005 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
A very small silver lining to the very large dark cloud that overshadows these violent times is that the war on drugs – that is to say the “war” on a particular form of unhealthy behaviour – no longer gets the prestige it once did. I think someone is feeling left out.
They called it Operation Overlord? May 28th, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
As you can see from the photo, below, that I snapped at London’s Fenwick department store yesterday, the hype of supposed miracle wrinkle potion Creme de la Mer is not letting up. And why would it, when there are women like the one who told the Sunday Telegraph’s Elizabeth Day that she spends £850 per week – that’s $1700 US – on the cream so that she can rub it over her whole body?  This is, clearly, madness. But what is even more mad is that people are so gullible. People tell themselves that if it did not work, the government would not let it be sold. Yet another instance of people relying on the state to do the critical thinking they should be doing for themselves. Sure, all that is lost in this case is a lot of cash, but it never stops frightening me that people are so eager to give up responsibility for their own choices. Of course, cosmetics are not the only area of peoples’ lives where they actually want to be freed from engaging their brains, but it is the one that concerns us here. Day’s article tells us that the British Advertising Standards Authority – the main body that is supposed to “protect” consumers from cosmetic products (in the US, that’s the Food and Drug Administration) – last week “heavily criticised” cosmetics firm Estée Lauder for:
But reducing the appearance of something and actually removing it are two different things. The fact is that – as beauty editor Kathleen Baird-Murray writes in How to Be Beautiful:
Further, the Advertising Standards Authority holds that if a cream causes actual physiological changes to the skin – such as real, permanent removal of wrinkles – then it is medicine and needs to be regulated as such. One sad claim in Day’s article comes from a London PR person, Barbara Dodds, who says:
In which case, Barbara Dodds is a fool, and it is up to her to curb her reckless and ridiculous buying habits. I am all for shouting it from the rooftops if a product does not work, but a lowering of expectations is clearly in order for far too many women. Fine, spend £850 per week on Creme de la Mer, but don’t come crying to the nanny state when it doesn’t turn you into Heidi Klum. Cross-posted from beauty blog Jack & Hill May 18th, 2005 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mark Steyn comments here on the absurdity of trying to legislate to make our charming youth appear less menacing by stopping them from wearing hooded tracksuit tops of the sort familiar in any major city. As he goes on to write, the attempt by the government to try and regulate this sort of thing suggests the government has a terrible naivety about the ability of the State to improve things like manners and standards of conduct by brute force of law:
As Steyn points out, the habit of wearing hoods, large baseball caps and the like is in part a rebellion against the gazillions of CCTV cameras which now festoon so many of our town centres, shopping malls, public buildings and even, so the government hopes, our countryside. The law of Unintended Consequences, as Steyn says, applies. If you treat the populace like kids being minded by nannies in a creche, some of them will try and hide from nanny the best way they can. Of course, there is no reason why owners of private premises cannot enforce dress codes, as happens in pubs which ban people from wearing soccer shirts etc. However fair or unfair, owners should be allowed to insist on the dress code and behaviour they deem fit. Perhaps this government might try to treat us like reasonably intelligent adults. You never know, the habit might catch on. May 17th, 2005 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
The indefatigible Radley Balko has a nice roundup of latest regulatory nuttiness from across the world, including my personal favourite, a rule in Italy stating that dog-owners must walk their furry friends at least three times a day. Tremendous stuff, the sort of law that would make the land of Julius Ceasar and Enzo Ferrari proud. Joking aside at this lunacy, we are surely far beyond the point at which it is possible to subject this sort of regulatory mania to Monty Python-style satire. How on earth can one excite the anger of people against this sort of thing when it appears that the humourless berks who want to pass these rules feel no shame, no sense that they are infantilising the public? May 4th, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Two recommendations. First, a general recommendation for this news site. It is the work of a law firm, and there is a definite bias in the direction of news stories about internet law, intellectual property matters, and such like. You will not get relentless civil liberties based complaint about the way things are going, the way you do here, but you will, if you tune in regularly, learn quite a lot about the legal facts around which such arguments rage. If there is a general message, it is: It’s complicated! Call us before you do anything! Fair enough. Here is yet another example of how to do Internet business. They ‘advertise’ themselves and their services, not by having silly adverts saying, e.g.: “It’s complicated! Call us before you do anything!”, but by giving away helpful and informative content where that is only one of the subtexts. And second, a particular recommendation for this article from last week, which explains what the ID card argument is all about. → Continue reading: A national electronic database – what ID cards are really about April 27th, 2005 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a name for a country where the police tell us what the law ought to be, and give us heavy hints which way to vote. It is called a police state. In a constitutional monarchy such as ours, the police keep the Queen’s peace and uphold the laws as they are; they do not bluster and threaten the public for publicity, nor do they enter the political process and shill for attempts to change that constitution. Your resignation would be appropriate. Before you go and do something even more repugnant. .gif) April 17th, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an excellent article on the Social Affairs Unit blog called Civil liberties cannot be defended selectively, by Joyce Lee Malcolm. As the culture and meta-contextual assumptions of liberty have decayed amongst the intellectual and activist elements of British society, the institutions supporting liberty for so long have been revealed to have no foundations and are thus unable survive the torrent of events such as Hungerford or even the 9/11 terrorist attacks in another country. As the Joyce Lee Malcolm article points out, the so called ‘opposition’ and even the vast majority of the media have abdicated their role in seriously questioning the disassembly of ancient civil rights for decades, whilst the rights to self-defence, trial by jury and double jeopardy are steadily abridged. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the British system, which for so long survived and thrived by using the custom of liberty as its bedrock, has shown its fatal weakness. Defending civil liberties in the UK is becoming harder and harder because not only have the institutional means for doing so been effectively swept away, so few British people even understand upon what their now largely illusory liberties were based. March 31st, 2005 | 100 comments - (Comments are closed)
You may well have heard this point made before, and I surely have myself, but it nevertheless made me grin, again, today:
Those are the concluding words of Precaution with the Precautionary Principle, published (pdf only but in both French and English) by the Institut Economique Molinari. My thanks to Cécile Philippe of the IEM for the email that pointed me to this publication, and to this conclusion. March 30th, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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