Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

David supersized

David supersized
Originally uploaded by mafleen

...but not all
Thanks m

Sir Ian has now passed his sell-by date!

I've blogged before, here and here,  about how very senior police officers have, what appears to be,  an uncontrollable habit of failing to engage their brain before they mouth off to the press.

Sir Ian Blair, who Gordon Broon prays in aid his support for the 42 day extension of detention without charge, has today entered the arena of the prosecution of celebrities for alleged substance abuse.
Here, Blair, is commenting on the failure to prosecute Kate Moss for the  alleged use of  drugs.  Moss's photo  appeared in the Daily Mirror apparently sniffing some substance. She was subsequently  interviewed under caution and, to the surprise of no-one who knows the criminal law, refused to answer  questions put to her. With only a photograph, no forensic evidence of the nature of the substance and no admissions, the CPS had an easy task of binning the police file.Most first year law students would have done the same without difficulty. After all,  the clown Blair seems to think that the front page of the Mirror is admissible evidence.

 Fresh from admitting he "mislead"  the Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee by overstating the gravity of the terrorist threat the the UK he succeeds with ease getting this entry into  the Annals of  Chief Constable Rubbish.

Talking about the failure to prosecute Moss he continues:

And I think it's reasonable for a jury to be able to say, beyond reasonable doubt, 'I can see that behaviour, you convince me that you're taking talcum powder, because that's an unusual way to take it.

'The idea that the judge, conducting the trial of Moss should the foolish Blair been given power to prosecute, would allow such a case to go the a jury is quite preposterous. An idiot would succeed in a submission at the end of the prosecution case, that there was no case to answer!
And this clown is in charge of the police for the Metropolis and we are being asked to trust his judgement to detain those who could be innocent UNCHARGED for a period of 42 days.
One can only hope that this report in the Times, that Blair's days are be numbered, is true.

Rambler's Provence- a bit of it anyway!

Mr and Mrs Rambler have never been to rural France together.This spring we decided to spend 10 days in Provence.
easyJet flies direct from Newcastle to Nice- a splendid starting point. We had booked via the Logis de France website the first couple of days in a small village-Saint Vallier de Thiey- twenty of so kilometres north of Grasse. We intended to spend a few days there, pack up and move to another village. But as they say... the best laid plans.....When we arrived, the place was so appealing that we asked if we could extend our stay there. No problem. And the next seven days just shot by.
 And with the added benefit of no packing up


 

The village boasted 1200 inhabitants, four hundred parking spaces, a post office, two bakers, four damned good restaurants and a Sunday market. It is on the "Route Napoleon (now the Route  National 85) from Nice to Grenoble.

We were just leaving for our evening meal when this monster had stopped the traffic in the main street and was reversing, with some difficulty into the hotel car park.

It was a magnificently restored 1929 "blower" Bentley. The owner had driven over from the UK to watch, though I think not take part in, the vintage car races that were to take place in Monaco that week-end. It certainly must have been a handful to drive down the RN 85,  enormous weight,drum brakes, no power steering, but with the benefit of sat-nav!

The hotel did have a restaurant, but it attracted few local residents and lacked the  noisy atmosphere Mr and Mrs Rambler enjoy.
Within a week we had managed to eat our way through plates of salads, carpaggio , steaks, more salads and rabbit stews, washed down with delicious local wine, usually, rose or red.

I have an admission to make! Many years ago whilst still a lad-and probably under age I drank rather too much pastis. The stomach rebelled!. My memory still had the taste imprinted on it. I've never touched the stuff for nigh on forty years.
  Mrs Rambler persuaded me to try it again. I took the the first mouthful with some trepidation,but after the first the rest was too easy Memory erased!














 On Sunday afternoon we watched, what must have been the entire population play boules. Rambler quickly acquired a canine friend! Not my best side I agree!
















Our ten days vanished all too quickly. I suspect we'll both be taking the easyJet flight to Nice next year!
By the way, there are more photographs here

Fings ain't wot they used to be!

This last week I must have heard half a dozen people, who should know better, grumbling about the deterioration of the English language. They pick on a couple of pretty serious grammatical or spelling errors in the media...the BBC or the Guardian are their usual targets, and from that they haul out the conclusion that " fings definitely ain't wot they use to be".
Of course it's Tommy Rot. I know of no objective research on this topic. There is no benchmark. Without examining wot fings were like in the past, to claim they are getting worse  is merely an assertion. Rather like Baldrick's mother asserting that her son was "a handsome stud of a man". Or  Rambler claiming to be able to run faster, or drink more  than he could thirty years ago!
Common sense tells us that there were just as many goofs in the media in the 40s 50s and 60s as there are today. And that must be right.
At this point to brighter and more contentious wheel out George Orwell's 1946 piece "Politics and the English Language".

In 1946 Orwell was grumbling....

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

What I find difficult in Orwell's piece is how he limits the English language to its written form. As if  we humans can express thoughts only by writing the them down in purple prose. And woe betide  if there's a split an infinitive or hung participle. What about the spoken language?

Today most communication is by electronic means.  E-mails and text messages can deliver ideas  quickly and accurately with abbreviations which, if memory serves, have even  entered  the Oxford English Dictionary.

And if anyone really thinks that written English has gone to hell in a hand-cart can I suggest they get their hands on Julian Barnes'  Arthur and George.

The Leila Khaled principle- Revisited

One of the most stimulating-and lengthy-debates on Brian Barder's "magisterial" blog was on the post here in June 2005.

This selection  of Brian's post got me and perhaps others going.

Are you seriously saying that in such circumstances ministers should have drawn back from doing what on all other grounds needed urgently to be done, for fear of provoking a terrorist attack in Britain? The Spanish electorate came perilously close to embracing that craven doctrine. I hope that we have a firmer grip on principle.

And the debate soon moved onto whether or not, and if so to what extent, any government should change its  policy when threatened by terrorist act(s) .
My view at the time and, over the couple of years that have elapsed since 2005, has remained unchanged....... there  must be circumstances when governments will and must change policy when faced with unusual and overwhelming threats.

This issue was discussed in some detail by their Lordships in the case of The Queen on the Application of Corner House Research and Campaign Against Arms Trade  - and -The Director of the Serious Fraud Office- and -BAE Systems PLC. (pdf)
Anyone who enjoys  the arrogance and illegality of Ministers excoriated in public would enjoy Lord Justice Moses' judgement, especially his last withering  paragraph.

The court has a responsibility to secure the rule of law. The Director  [of the Serious Fraud Office] was required to satisfy the court that all that could reasonably be done had been done to resist the threat [by the Saudi Arabian government to cut  off intelligence leaving the UK open to imminent terrorist attacks]. He has failed to do so. He submitted too readily because he, like the executive, concentrated on the effects which were feared should the threat be carried out and not on how the threat might be resisted. No-one, whether within this country or outside is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. It is the failure of Government and the defendant to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies the intervention of this court. We shall hear further argument as to the nature of such intervention. But we intervene in fulfilment of our responsibility to protect the independence of the Director and of our criminal justice system from threat. On 11 December 2006, the Prime Minister said that this was the clearest case for
intervention in the public interest he had seen. We agree.

But within the forty odd pages of the judgement, the court dealt with  an issue akin to the Barder question. Their Lordships discussed  the case of Leila Khalid.

[Counsel for the SFO Director] draws attention to the case of Leila Khalid in 1970 (described by Edwards, in The Attorney General, Politics and the Public Interest (1984) p.324). Khalid was a member of the PLO, in custody following her attempt to hijack an aeroplane. The PLO threatened to kill Swiss and German hostages, unless she was released. Sir Peter Rawlinson, the Attorney General accepted the advice that prosecution would increase the danger to the lives of those hostages and ordered her release. Edwards describes the decision as clearly defensible, since the Attorney General was faced with the awful dilemma of measuring the freedom and, possibly, the lives of the hostages against nonenforcement of the criminal law (p.325).
The release of Khalid was not the subject of any review by the courts. But we acknowledge that there may be circumstances so extreme that the necessity to save lives compels a decision not to detain or to prosecute. But it is for the courts to decide whether the reaction to a threat was a lawful response or an unlawful submission.

In the case of Khalid, those who had made the threat had the power to carry it out immediately; the Attorney General’s choice was to release Khalid or let the foreign nationals whose governments were in the process of negotiations be killed. Both in domestic and in customary international law [....] the law recognises the defence of duress and, in some circumstances the justification of necessity.

I'm sure it's possible to distinguish the Khaled case  from the concept of a  government "doing what on all other grounds needed urgently to be done, for fear of provoking a terrorist attack in Britain"

Faced with a threat by terrorists to to kill hundreds of innocent travellers on the London Underground, would it be acceptable for  any UK government to  tailor its foreign policy using to the Khaled defence?

The Chahal Dilemma - Revisited

Yesterday was not the best day the government lawyers have ever spent in the Court of Appeal.

The same tribunal, including the Master of the Rolls, the leading  civil judge, dealt with two cases here and here   (both pdf ). They  were to have devastating consequences on the government's ability to deport to states where fair trials and torture are commonplace.

Additionally, the court had to decide how much reliance could be placed on Memorandums of Understanding (MOU), a wheeze dreamt up in the depths of the Home Office/Foreign Office as a way to evade the European Convention on Human Rights' (ECHR) strictures on such deportations.

Both cases were appeals from Special Immigration Appeal Commission (SIAC).  Appeals from  SIAC lie only on points of law.

The first, that of  two Libyans citizens  served with deportation orders in late 2005. It was common ground that both men presented a great risk to the national security of the UK.

Although there were a number of issues argued before SIAC, the Appeal Court had a simple one to deal with. How safe would the two men be should they end up in Libya? And that meant dealing head on with  any friction between the MOU signed by the government of  Libya and  Article 3 of the ECHR

“No one shall be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"

On this point the Court of Appeal upheld the devastating critique of SIAC.

“We have accordingly come to the conclusion that although it is probable that [....] the Libyans would observe the MOU in relation to the physical treatment of the Appellants is sound, and that they would not be ill-treated in a way which breached Article 3, we cannot adopt [his] a conclusion that that would be well-nigh unthinkable. Instead we think that there is a real risk that that would happen. The need in this case to make a large allowance for the unpredictable reaction, which in the short term or occasionally diverges from the pragmatic path upon which the Libyans are set means that we cannot eliminate the real risk which we have identified. The fact that the direction of Libyan foreign relations would largely remain the same does not remove the risk. There are no domestic changes, institutions or considerations which would assist. Above all the risk is not reduced sufficiently by the monitoring system because it is at these times that its limitations would be most evident and felt.
We have to bear in mind that the monitoring system is intended to deter and check on potential breaches which can occur quite quickly, and to alert the UK’s diplomats to the problem rapidly. The diplomatic pressure which the UK could bring to bear and the responses adverse to Libya’s interests which it could deploy, would not be engaged if the monitoring were ineffective to report on possible abuse. We do not therefore have the confidence which we need to have, for the return of the Appellants not to breach the UK’s international obligations. In short there is too much scope for something to go wrong, and too little in place to deter ill-treatment or to bring breaches of the MOU to the UK’s attention.”

It's hardly surprising that  the Home Secretary has now  chucked in the towel with all other Libyan detainees  she wants to deport.

The other case involved that Jordanian citizen so beloved by out tabloids, Abu Qatada otherwise known a Omar Othman.

Again  it was common ground that Qatada presents a danger to the UK. But the issue for the court to determine was whether sending him back to Jordan would  breach of his  ECHR Article 3 right- the right to a fair trial.

The trial process itself would not breach Qatada's Art 3 rights but

....... the use of evidence obtained by torture or ill-treatment is prohibited not just, or indeed primarily, because of its likely unreliability, but rather because the state must stand firm against the conduct that has produced the evidence, is universally recognised both within and outside Convention law.

And that disposed of the case.

The  Home Office Minister of bluster, McNulty responded foolishly

"We are seeking to overturn that point, and I believe that we will be able to secure his deportation to Jordan and we will push for it as soon as possible. In the meantime, he remains behind bars."

Should the case end up in the House of Lords, I suspect  their Lordships decision would be made before the arrival of the first tea and biscuits.
I do hope there are more sensible folk in the Home Office looking at how to deal with the likes of Qatada without trying to evade the ECHR with the nonsense of  detention without trial, Control Orders and now deportation  to states where torture is commonplace, all of which have been rightly struck down by the courts.

The larger part of Mr Justice Coleridge's speech.

It's a pity that the speech  (pdf) given by Mr Justice Coleridge to  Resolution (formerly the Solicitors Family Law Association, was  reported here and here and here   only in terms of  what he said about  the results of the "broken society" he witnesses daily in his Family Court.  Most of his speech  entitled "Family Life, Family Justice and Fairness", concentrated on the importance of the justice system in resolving the ever increasing number of  family disputes .

The family courts used to be the minority occupation of the courts, FPC (Family Proceedings Courts), county court and High Court. Indeed when the family high court judge went on circuit he finished the family work and then helped out with the civil or criminal work. Those days have long since gone. The family lists never even begin to dry up. Instead more and more cases have to be pushed further and further down the system to ensure that all, what used to be thought of as the High Court work, gets done.

And as the number of cases increase, the government has starved the legal aid system of resources.

In the field of private law, i.e. disputes within the family, we find Legal Aid, once a well resourced and efficient system available to all who needed it, now to all intents and purposes available only to the very poor and not the majority of the ordinary tax paying public. The system is simply withering away. Of course the government will trumpet the increase in the amounts now spent. But this is almost entirely accounted for by the very high cost, long and complex terrorism and fraud trials. For the ordinary, tax paying member of the  public on the average wage, legal aid is virtually non existent in family cases; killed off by government by the simple expedient of reducing or not increasing the financial threshold to such an extent that almost no one qualifies. So a system once the envy of the world is now largely history.

And he continues  his devastating critique concentrating on  public law 

In the public law field, we find a government determined to pay the publicly funded family lawyers so little that they are just giving up and turning elsewhere. In time they will disappear from the high street and they will never come back. And don’t let me hear from government that the statistics do not back this up. Of course they don’t today. Family lawyers are not going to pack up as one overnight. But talk to anyone who knows what is happening and what is going to happen in London or the provinces. They will tell you that their departments are being shunned by their partners, that they will for the time being limp along and operate in cheaper premises. But they will not recruit or be able to recruit new comers or pay the trainees. These are tomorrow’s family legal specialists. And if there are no specialist lawyers where will the specialist judges come from in ten or twenty years. There simply will not be the reservoir from which the judiciary at all levels can be drawn.

He then discusses the woeful lack of funding for both  contact centres- places where kids can see their absent parents in safety- and to assist local authorities to complete residential care assessments.  On the later, he quotes with approval the judgement of  Mr Justice Body in A Local Authority v M 2008 EWHC 162 fam.

This case demonstrates an urgent need for further consideration of the funding of residential assessments. Some arrangements need to be put in place to avoid the need for routine hearings like this on a case-by-case basis, hearings which are costly and which divert judicial resources. It is unsatisfactory if not invidious that courts charged with taking serious and sensitive decisions about children, where an under-informed decision could on occasion spell disaster, should have to choose between (a) overburdening an already over-stretched local authority or (b) denying a residential assessment to a parent for whom it represents the only hope of avoiding the loss of his or her child to adoption.

Lawyers are regularly seen as "fat cats" earning large, often unmerited, salaries. But those who are involved in family cases have perhaps the most difficult job of all. I certainly ran a mile from the work. I was always happier dealing with your "honest villain". Representing children or their parents in family proceedings  not only presents difficult intellectual challenges, but also the most difficult personal ones.

The power of prayer...let the children die.

Madeline Kara Neumann

Hundreds of thousands of Christian worshippers will be trooping into their churches this Sunday. Without exception they will acknowledge the  existence of an invisible deity. A deity with absolute power over the world as we know it. A network of priests, bishops, archbishops, deacons, will be on hand to help the believers. No doubt they will emphasise the power of prayer to heal the sick, and that  the "desire of the righteous to will be granted".

As this claptrap pours forth  from thousands of pulpits, the worshippers  should think of the an 11 year old girl, Madeline Kara Neumann. Madeline died an horrific death....not much less painful that Christians used to inflict on non believers centuries ago. She was suffering from Diabetic ketoacidosis.   The terminal symptoms include vomiting, severe abdominal pain, extreme weakness and air hunger. It is a condition that is relatively easy to treat.  Madeline's parents, Dale and Leilani, held a blind belief that prayer would cure their child.
"We stayed fast in prayer.... We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering"...and of course she died.
Four cheers for James Randi here

We can easily say that Dale and Leilani Neumann were simply stupid. Perhaps so, but more importantly, they – and we – have been swindled by the priests, and society continues not only to tolerate them, but to support them by granting them exemptions from the regulations and ignoring their folly and arrogance.

An astonishingly, Madeline was not the only child to be allowed to die by god fearin' folk in the US.

A few days earlier 15 month old Ava Worthington died after her parents, with the same  nonsensical belief in the power of prayer as the  Neumanns,  refused to administer a simple regime of antibiotics to their child. Ava was suffering from bronchial pneumonia.
Her parents have now been charged with manslaughter.

But the Wisconsin statute applicable  to the Neumanns is interesting.

Wisconsin state statute 948.03(6),  provides against failing to act to protect children from bodily harm. It contains an exemption for what it refers to as " Treatment through prayer." To wit: "A person is not guilty of an offense under this section solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method of healing … in lieu of medical or surgical treatment."

It's difficult to see  either a moral or ethical argument to support this  parental behaviour.  But surely the Wisconsin statute belongs to another age.......!

The Rambler and "Thought for the Day"

I normally grumble when the Today Programme interrupts its current affairs with "Thought for the Day". But I listened to  Rev. Dr. Allan Billings' contribution on 31st March with increasing interest.
He adopts the same position as I do. In a short paragraph below,  he demolished the idea that Cardinal O'Brien and  other members of the Catholic Church  were peddling over Easter . They   cannot discriminate between the few cells of an embryo and a mature human life.

"The objection to creating embryos is on the grounds that an embryo is a human life and should be accorded the same rights as mature human life. I find this unconvincing. To treat a microscopic bundle of cells as if it were a mature human being seems to me to be a failure in discrimination. An acorn may be a potential oak tree, but there is a difference between the two."

This is an important issue. But it seems that the debate is being conducted with little or no knowledge of what actually is being proposed- what those scientists at Newcastle University are up to.
The best starting point is the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's (HFEA) booklet " Hybrids and Chimeras available from their website here (in pdf 880kb).

Whatever your view, the idea that human/animal embryos  will create  "Frankenstein"or some other kind  of   monster is just  plain nonsense. Within  eight pages  of the HFEA's booklet  the science is described in fairly straightforward language. As a non-scientist, I even ended up with a basic understanding of the difference between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA!

What the BBC doesn't report!

Anyone interested in what's really going on in Iraq could do worse than read the daily McClatchy reports.
This one emphasises  just how powerful the illegal invasion of Iraq five years ago has made Iran.