Blog

The myth of victims’ rights

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Many blog inches have gone to discussing the case of Learco Chindamo, the murderer of Philip Lawrence. The opposition to Chindamo’s being able to stay in the UK could be charitably described as shrill. Kris Stoke Newington‘s entire post reads

Hang on. This killer does not have a British passport and because of his murder conviction can never get one, yet somehow it is his “human right” to remain in the UK at the end of his sentence?!

It is all a little bit like The Daily Mail. Fortunately, the Ministry of Truth has pointed out some of the Mail‘s, ahem, oversights. Iain Dale asks a simple question in response to the Human Rights Act being cited in allowing Chindamo to remain in the UK – “What about THEIR human rights?” – what about the human rights of the family of the victim, Philip Lawrence.

There is an immediate and very strong answer from none other than Tim Worstall:

[H]e [Chindamo] won an argument under the Human Rights Act that he was entitled to respect for a family life and that removal in his case would be disproportionate. But this was secondary to his case under EU law. Under articles 27 and 28 of the EU Citizens Directive 2004, which took effect last year, an EU citizen can be expelled only on grounds of public policy, public security or public health.

So all the criticism of the Human Rights Act in this case is misplaced.

Nevertheless, people are attacking the Act more and more often and the ghastly spectre of victims’ rights has started to rear its head. There are some things that should be called victims’ rights; amongst these are effective investigation by the police, speedy resolution of the case, support from the counselling part of the police, financial compensation and keeping the media at arms’ length; not all of these apply in every case, and there may be more.

Victims do not, IMHO, have rights against the person who committed a crime and their rights to appropriate treatment and sensitivity certainly do not extend to the penal process. This is for three reasons.

Rights are not zero-sum; that is to say, there is no logical necessity for the duty of care that state owes a victim of crime resulting in that person having rights against the criminal. Put another way, we do not demand ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ or ‘a lifetime of vengeance for a life cut short’.

Secondly, victims are not special. In the case of Chindamo, I fail to see, if he is such an unpleasant character (which I dispute based on the evidence available) why I should be pleased that the problem is removed to Italy. I do not see why, judicially, a second crime on a person should be feared any more than a first crime on second else.

Thirdly, they lead to unacceptable variations in the law. If someone were to steal a Snoopy stuffed toy, you might say that it was a minor offence. If someone were to steal my Snoopy stuffed toy – my companion since birth – I would be devastated and probably be demanding blood. If I, or I think any person other than a dessicated calculating machine, were the victim of crime, they would immediately become biased to such a point that they could not make a neutral decision; they are partial.

xD.

What happened to the Smashing Pumpkins?

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Smashing Pumpkins have a special place in my heart – the first CD I ever bought was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Just goes to show that I was both cool and pretentious at a tender age. I’m listening to the new album, Zeitgeist, and it’s OK, but not up to Mellon Collie or Siamese Dream. The first track, Doomsday Clock, is fine in its own way but feels over-produced. Some tracks come over as, well, pretentious – Bleeding the Orchid, for instance – and those tracks that sound more like the Pumpkins I’m used to – Tarantula – suffer from the same over-polishing, losing the grittiness in Billy Corgan’s voice that used to be so distinctive.

Album cover for Zeitgeist by the Smashing PumpkinsSome of the later songs are, frankly, bizarre and I cannot get my head around them. Perhaps the tone of the album is set by the cover and the title, Zeitgeist. The ‘spirit of the age’ is the Statue of Liberty standing with water rising about her. I don’t think Corgan sings well about politics. Three songs, United States, For God and Country and Pomp and Circumstances, taken together give the impression that Corgan wants to be positive about the USA but can’t because of recent events.

United States runs

Revolution
Revolution blues
What will they do to me
[…]Freedom shines the light ahead
I’ll lead the last charge to bed
I said my last rights
I don’t have to run scared no more

which sounds very different from “despite all my rage/I am still just a rat in a cage” of the days of yore. Corgan changes further in For God and Country:

You can’t deny God and country
We’re fighting for our lives
You can’t deny God and country
Our souls are so aligned
In this time of God and country
We’ll take you on our side
It’s all right
My soul is so alive
With God and night
With God and country
My soul is so alive

Which could be ironic save for the last line – “my soul is so alive” – which suggests to me that the security of a position, regardless of the position, and the approval of a peer group is comforting in a difficult time.

You then have “Pomp and Circumstances”, which runs:

What was once new now gone
What was once praised now wrong
As they go, we can say we know
But what do we know
But warm sunshine and graves
Don’t we see
What’s bitter to taste

which, coupled with United States seems to be hoping that there well be some sort of revolution, perhaps to kick Corgan et al. out of their collective reverie. I hope that the personification of that revolution is not Hillary Clinton or another Democrat as that would suggest a dreadful naivete.

Aside from the fact I disagree with what I think is meant, it isn’t said well. Nevertheless, I enjoyed listening to the album. It is well made and thoughtful. It just didn’t resonate with me in the way that Mellon Collie or Siamese Dream did.

OK, I admit it. I didn’t buy Mellon Collie. I gave the money to my Mum to buy it for me.

xD.

The Daily Telegraph on Charlie Gillett

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I’d like to recommend this article in today’s Daily Telegraph on Charlie Gillett by Peter Culshaw. Mr Culshaw sings the praises of Charlie Gillett, the hugely influential host of World of Music on the BBC World Service and, until his illness last year, of the Sound of the World on BBC Radio Four. I started listening to World of Music when I bought a digital radio and then found Sound of the Worldand it is, I think, the best music programme on any radio station. It is always varied and always entertaining and has introduced me to artists that are prominent on the ‘world music’ scene that I had never heard of, not least Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure. When I did a radio show, Ozymandias is Back, at the LSE Students’ Union’s radio station, PuLSE, I frequently pinched songs that Gillett had played a couple of nights before.

Culshaw does point out that the UK music industry is Anglophonic in a way that the Spanish is not Hispanophonic or the French Francophonic:

The conservative nature of British radio disappoints him. “If you think of how other aspects of life have changed – the number of foreign players in the Premiership, the diverse range of global restaurants in the high streets – radio here is pretty xenophobic.” He is puzzled that multi-million selling artists such as Spain’s Manu Chao or Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde are so rarely played on Radio 1 or 2.

In other countries I’ve been to, there is at least music sung in English as well as the native language or languages and frequently other tongues as well.

You can listen to Charlie Gillett on the World Service online.

xD.

Is the Independent plagiarising chain emails?

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I received this email from my good friend, Molly Mulready-Jones, over email on the sixth of June. It’s rather long, so it follows below. The same piece appeared in today’s Independent. The by-line on both is Carole Angier. I wonder what’s going on there. Did they commission this from Carole Angier? In which case, how did it end up doing the rounds on email a couple of weeks beforehand? Anyway, I hope you read it and I’m glad of the publicity in the Indie.

Read the rest of this post by clicking here.

Dog

I tell you my story, but I don’t tell you my name. People say ‘a dog’s life’. You can call me Dog.

I come from Africa. I don’t say where. My father leave my mother when I was very young. I don’t remember him, he never take care of me. My mother did her best, she work selling fruit in the market, but we were poor. In Africa no money, no school, so I never go to school. Sometimes my mother gone a long time and leave me with friends. They don’t treat me well, sometimes I don’t have enough to eat. Then I have to beg on the street. Already young I beg – maybe 5, 6 years old. Young.

So my life is rough from the start, maybe God want to prepare me. But he prepare me well, because my mother is a good woman. She love me and teach me good things – work hard, don’t steal, trust in God. All good things I know I learn from her. But one day she don’t come back. I ask and ask her friends, but they don’t tell me for a long time. Finally they say she died. I was maybe 10 years old. I don’t even know where she is buried, or who pay for her grave.

I still stay with the friends, but I have to beg much to survive. One day on the street a man call me to go and buy something for him. He was a black man, but French, not African – a French businessman. When I come back quick he ask me why I am not at school. I tell him my situation. After that he employ me whenever he is in my country. He become almost like a friend.

Maybe two years pass like this. One day he tell me I am a smart kid, I should go to school. He can send me to school, he say, or he can take me to Europe. What do I want to do? I have nothing in my country, so I say: Europe.

I don’t know how he fix documents for me, I never have any of my own. Maybe he say I am his son or so. Anyway we have no problem. We come to France, to Paris.

He take me to a friend, let’s call him Paul. Paul’s place is small, only one bed. I sleep on the floor. I only get to sleep in a bed when Paul is away.

Every now and then the businessman come to visit us. I ask when I can work, when I go to school, but nothing happen. Maybe he have more problem than he thought to get papers for me. In Europe you have to have papers for everything.

I take care of Paul’s place, like a servant, and he give me food and clothes, but no money. Sometimes I go into cafés and ask people for money, and sometimes they give me. But I’m not so smart now, usually I learn fast, but I can’t learn French well. I don’t know why, maybe I was scared. French people are very proud of their language, if you don’t speak it good they don’t like you.

After a few years the businessman stop coming to see us. Then Paul don’t want to keep me any more. He tell me he is going away and I can’t come with him. I stay in his room alone for a while. But then someone come and ask questions – who am I? Who do I stay with? So I leave the room and never go back. I was 16 years old.

From now on my life is so hard I don’t want to remember it. I suffer much, I tell you. For years I sleep rough on the streets, in Paris and other cities. I beg for money and food, I can’t wash much, I sleep in bus shelters, or in discos, which are free to go in after midnight. But I remember my mother. I never commit crime. I drink alcohol sometimes, already at 16, 17 I need to drink sometimes. But I never touch drugs, because I see what they make people do. I am not that kind of person.

After all this time I know lots of people like me, Africans and others, who sleep on the streets of your cities in Europe. I want to go where I can speak English, it’s my best European language. People tell me: Holland. A friend help me buy a ticket, and I go.

Holland was better than France for me, but Holland was not good either. Yes, people speak English, but not for work. So I learn Dutch, but it take long time to learn enough. I earn money cleaning in bars and clubs, but that is not enough either. I try many cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague – but more years pass and I am still sleeping rough.

I am in my 20s now, maybe half my life is over. I see the way things are going is no good. I don’t want to be on the streets any more, I must have a proper plan for my life. And I decide it must be England. Everybody speak English there. I like the English people I meet, I like the football – the best team in the world is Man United. So I speak to a friend of mine, a Dutchman. He tell me that England is not like the continent: you need documents to get there, but once you are there, there is good work. He help me. He give me a Netherlands ID and a plane ticket. I thank him again now.

The ticket take me to Belfast. In Belfast they say it is not my photograph on the ID card. I say I want to claim asylum but they say no, I cannot claim asylum in the UK. They put me in prison for 4 days and they send me back to Holland.

I tell my friend what happen. He give me a new ID card and new ticket, train this time. And this time, no problem. UK Immigration officers check my ID on the train. They say safe journey, I say thank you. Last time I have a friendly chat with Immigration. Hah!

When the train stop I ask people where we are: London! I’m happy. I don’t ask asylum, because the Belfast man tell me they don’t give it. And I don’t want asylum, I want work. My mission is not to go back on the streets again, to support myself, to survive.

I walk around London all day. And lucky for me, I see a guy I know from Amsterdam. He tell me he live in another city, I should come with him. He take me to a house where I can sleep. It’s full of people and I have to sleep on a chair, but no problem, I’m happy.

The guy tell me to go to an agency and ask for work. And I see it is true – plenty of work in England. I get a job in a warehouse straight away, order pick-up. I work two weeks, they like me, already they want me to work full-time. But this job is not in the city. I go back to the agency and get a job in the city instead. Warehouse again, I not say where.

I’m a good worker, everywhere I work they like me. So after a few weeks this company say I should work full-time too. By now I don’t sleep on the chair any more, I rent my own house and sleep in my own bed. First time in my life, I live on my own. I live on my own, and everything I have is for me. My bed is for me, my chair is for me. That is my plan, and already after 5, 6 weeks in the UK it is coming true. I can’t believe it, I tell you. And now they offer me full-time, and permanent. If I say no, maybe I lose everything. So I take the risk. I give the job centre my ID card and ask for NI number. They say, come back in a week.

I go back in a week, but nothing. For 4 months I keep going back, but always they’re still investigating my card. I work every day, overtime too. I buy good things, quality things, I enjoy my life for the first time. I pay all my bills – rent, utilities, council tax – all I pay. Council tax is big for me, but no problem. I’m glad to pay, I’m proud to pay. I keep all the receipts, I can prove to you. Never I owe a penny to anyone.

When it take so long for the NI number I worry, sometimes I have bad intentions in my mind. But I think – I’m not doing any wrong. Finally I get appointment to collect my number. My friends say I shouldn’t go, maybe they will arrest me for working illegally. I can’t believe this, I don’t know that what I am doing is so wrong. So I don’t run away, I just wait for the appointment day. Then that morning the police come and arrest me. They charge me with deception, and say I commit a crime.

From that day two years ago I am a criminal, everyone treat me like a criminal. But what did I do? I don’t hurt anyone, I don’t cheat anyone, I work hard and pay my way. But they say it is a crime. OK, I obey.

Immigration officers come and interview me. One officer says I can wait at home for my trial, but I mustn’t run away. I live at home 6 weeks not working, lucky for me I pay my landlord a month in advance. When I report to the officer, he’s surprised. ‘You’re a good guy,’ he say. ‘People like you I don’t see. I ask you not to run away and you didn’t run away. You came.’

I go to court and they sentence me: 12 months in prison. This is hard, I tell you. I don’t like prison, prison spoil your record, and I know myself I’m not a criminal. But still I obey. I don’t fight, I don’t get into any trouble. Mornings I go to school, English and computer, afternoons I work – pack instruments and load them in cars. When I finish my sentence I have £300, I work so hard. The officers like me and treat me well. They see I am not a criminal.

In prison a lady come from Croydon and tell me to seek asylum. I say, ‘This asylum I’m seeking, you won’t give it to me, so why you waste my time?’ She say, ‘That is the procedure.’ So I obey. I give more interview. Always interview, interview, don’t you know what I tell you already? I swear to God I don’t give any more interviews in my life. I don’t know what you want from me. – OK, sorry. I know you’re not Home Office. Sometimes I think everybody Home Office. Huh.

Already in prison Immigration tell me they can’t get travel document for me. That is September 2005, more than one year and a half ago. One year and a half pass, and still they say it will come. It will never come. I leave at 12, no papers, no school. Should I wait my whole life for a document that will never come? This is my story, they should look in my face and see I don’t lie. They think we all lie, but it’s not true. They should investigate! They should distinguish! They say they treat each case on its merits. That is the lie. Huh!

OK, no problem. No problem. I serve 6 months, good behaviour, my sentence is done. So it come to the day of my release. Any time I remember that day I need to cry. When I reach the gate they say ‘No. Home Office says you go back.’ I say ‘Why?’ They don’t tell me, but later I hear it’s because there’s no room at the detention centre. Whose fault is that, Home Office or me? But who serve the extra month in prison, Home Office or me?

No problem. After a month they send me to detention centre. This is better. You can have phone calls, you can walk outside. Yeah, at first it is better. But I tell you, not for long. They cheat you. You can’t make money here, like in prison, instead they take the money you have. Phone card outside cost £3.50, they take £5, mobile phone outside cost £15, they take £30, sometimes more. And what’s the difference between detention and prison? I tell you – no difference. People are monitoring you, you have CCTV on you everywhere. They decide for you, you cannot decide for yourself. Nothing. They take everything from you – your photograph, your fingerprint, your DNA, your independence. Nothing left.

And some of the officers here worse than in prison. Not all, no – I’m not like Home Office, I distinguish. Some are very good, kind, they treat you well. But we are all foreigners here, and the British don’t like foreigners. Some of the officers, I swear, the way they talk to you – as if you are an animal. As if you are not a human being, because you are illegal. Huh. I don’t want to talk much. If you are illegal you are not a human being in Britain. That is the problem.

I stay in the detention centre 6 months. Every month I get report from Immigration. Wait for document, wait for document, all they change is the date. I get crazy – we all get crazy, I tell you. Worse than prison. In prison you know – 6 months, 2 years, whatever your sentence, you serve it and you go. In detention you don’t know how long, maybe you die there. You feel you’re dying already.

And then come the worst thing. Lawyers.

I have a lawyer the police give me for my criminal case. He visit me in prison and I sign for legal aid. He keep saying he come, but he don’t come. He keep saying he write to Home Office for my case, he write to court for bail, but I don’t hear a thing. Finally I get a date for bail. A week before he come and say: ‘I see from your case you will lose. So legal aid don’t pay, I can’t represent you.’ I say, ‘Why you don’t tell me before, I find someone else!’ He say if I pay, he will represent me. That is his strategy – he tell you so late, you have nowhere else to turn.
He ask for £3000. I say – ‘You know my situation, how can I get £3000?’ I have a friend, maybe she can get £1000. But he say No. Huh! I don’t smoke, but that day I smoke nearly three package cigarettes. I lose hope. In fact, that day I nearly die.

When I go to the court, the lawyer don’t come, and he don’t send my friend’s address either. I speak for myself, and I see the judge want to release me. But without address she can’t release me. Huh! I tell you. So I don’t get bail.

Later I try again. Would you believe what happen this time? On that day I get up early, I shower, I dress well. But they don’t come to pick me. So I go and ask what happen, and they say – the van is gone. The van is gone without me… Then the court write and say I don’t come. What! What do you expect me to do? Should I fly? Am I invisible? Don’t do that! Don’t do that to people!

After that the lawyer ask me for money again, but I finish with him. I find new lawyer – and you know what happen? He’s worse than the old one! He come and take £200 from me fast, then I don’t hear from him for a month. Every time I ring him he say, ‘Hey, hey, Mr Dog, I’m busy man, hang up the phone!’ Once I ask to speak to him, I hear him tell his secretary to say he’s not there. I hear it on the phone. People think if you are from Africa you don’t have sense. They treat you like an idiot, but I am not an idiot. Hah!

Finally I get letter saying we have court, he need £500 for barrister. My friend get me £500. How can I repay her? – but I have no choice. When we get to court, no barrister, if I don’t speak up fast maybe she never come. Then she come, but she don’t know my case well at all. She speak real quick, maybe 7, 8 minutes. That’s all.

Long time I hear nothing, and when I do I wish I didn’t. The judge say my case is nonsense. Nonsense! And he tell lies – Home Office lies, no one answer for me. Like I live in council house – not true! I live private and pay. Like I have three bank accounts. Not true!! They fit you up, they tell lies and don’t let you answer. The law has abused me, how can I trust the law? Legal aid lawyers, private lawyers, all the same. You take £700 from me and represent me like that! I have a friend in detention, his lawyer take £1600 and not represent him at all. You’re in detention, then you’re deported, what can you do? Nothing! They know. That’s what the Home Office should investigate! That’s who the criminals are!

OK, no problem. No problem. Huh.

Now I show you I remember good people too. After my Appeal was dismissed I have no hope left, no money left, nothing. But God is there. When I am on the bottom he send good people to me. I get a volunteer visitor, and I get BID – Bail for Immigration Detainees. They help me. They find a new lawyer for my case, they prepare a new bail application for me. I give thanks for them always, and I pray for them hard. If not for them…. I have no family. My friend, my visitor, BID – I take them as my family now.

But now I have to tell you bad again. Immigration are wicked, they try to frustrate you, they try to paralyse your life. As soon as you have bail hearing they give you removal date. I’m nervous, I can’t stand any more. I go to Immigration manager and say it’s 6 months, they should release me. She say – Go to Colnbrook and get tag. I say no, she should give me a tag from here. But she not agree. That day I am really annoyed, I am really worried. Some people are on hunger strike, and I join them. It’s only one day. But I say I’m not going to eat, and I don’t eat. And bang – they send me to Colnbrook. Not for tag – that’s a lie. Because I join the hunger strike, and they want to break us up.

Now I have to tell you worse. There are things, if I remember them I need to drink. I need to buy alcohol and drink.

They page me, and when I come they say they transfer me. I say, let me go and pack my bags, but they say no. They say if I don’t co-operate they will force me. Is that a way to talk? If you talk to me, talk nicely!

They take me to the van by force. Not because I resist – I don’t have the chance. I bet the manager say ‘Take that boy by force.’ And one officer – I never forget him. He hold my neck, he pull my leg – ****. He treat me worse than a criminal. I don’t forget.

OK, no problem. No problem. Huh.

I get to Colnbrook. I don’t talk much about that. They put me in a wing you’re only supposed to stay 72 hours max and they send you, but they can’t send me. That room, if I say it I need to cry. You can’t go out, only maybe 15 minutes. Security watch you all the time, you only allowed 10 minutes phone calls…. It’s a punishment. What did I do?

They move me, but still it’s bad. Not the officers, they’re good there. But Colnbrook is prison – no air, nothing. Everybody frustrated, everybody get crazy. You remember what happen at Harmondsworth? Why you think they burn that prison? Because of frustration. You think if someone is in good condition, they do that? If you put a person in a cage you spoil his mind. Huh!

I stay in Colnbrook six weeks. Then come the day I never believe will arrive: I go to court with two sureties, my friend and my visitor, my lawyer send me good barrister, and I get released. Yeah, I remember that barrister too, I thank her too. The guards give me my stuff in a big plastic bag. It’s heavy, and it’s made for criminals – you can see inside, no bomb. But I don’t care. I’m free.

That day was more than 8 months ago. For 8 months I try to keep up my spirits, to count my blessings. My lawyer work hard to get my case reviewed. I live with my friend in nice house, I sleep in a soft bed, not on the street. She help me a lot, and I help her, with her house, with her children. I try to remember that this is good. I do remember, in fact I take my life now as paradise, compared to before. But sometimes, I tell you – I can’t help it, it’s hard. I live in someone’s house again, like houseboy. I am not that type of person, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t work, I can’t pay her back, I can’t pay anything. I am dependent. Just for a bus ticket, a pint of Guinness – I have to ask her every time. And she don’t have much money either, sometimes she get upset with me. Sometimes we fight, and she say bad things to me. Then I feel she’s like everybody else, she betray me too. Sometimes, I swear, I don’t trust anyone in Britain any more – not my new lawyer, not you either – why do you want to know all this from me? Maybe you’ll put me in problem too.

I go to school, I learn English and maths, my teacher say I’m doing very good. But that is once a week, one hour or two. The rest of the time I am in the house. I sleep a lot. And always I think about my case, about how to survive, not to be in this mess-up. Always I think, think, think, round and round. I am not in prison any more, but this is prison too.

I say to Home Office: After 8 months more, what are you still looking for? Still you are deporting me, still you don’t want me – what have I done? What about the things you did to me? You lie about me in a court of law, you treat me like a criminal – worse than a criminal. You treat me like a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist. I’m a foreigner, that’s all. Because I am a foreigner, you can do what you like to me. Hah!

What about the immigration lawyers that cheat me, what about the British company that cheat me too? My last salary they owe me – £1200, £1300. But when I was arrested they say that is not my name, and they take the money back. Who do the work, me or my name?

I say this to Home Office, and to anyone who read my story: I was an orphan in Africa, and a street boy in France and Holland, and the worst things in my life happen here. You come to my country first and take money away, I want to work and leave my money here. You can kill me without knife, without gun. Sometimes I feel like you already succeed.

I say to Home Office: I didn’t come here for benefit, I didn’t come here for council house or bank loan. My mission is to sweat and work and survive. If that is a crime, I serve my time for it, and more. Now I am out, but still you punish me. First I have to sign at police station, every time I go I feel shame. Then you send me to sign 40 miles away, how can I get there when I don’t work? Huh! Let me work! No benefit, just work. Even if you give me one year, I’m happy. It give me a chance. I pay back my friend, I’m independent, I hold up my head again.

That is the important thing I want to say. Let people work. If don’t want criminals, let them work. You stop them working, you make them criminals. What choice have they got? If you don’t treat people like human beings, maybe they can’t behave like human beings any more.

If you don’t listen, I swear I don’t know what I do. I am an honest person, but the way you treat people, you spoil their mind. If you provoke me much, you make me do what I don’t want to do…. I pray hard not to do it. I pray hard to keep my conditions, not to betray anyone who trust me, not to run away. No. I know in my mind what I will do. I’m prepared to die for my case, I swear. If they detain me again, I won’t cooperate any more. Never in my life will I eat. Never in my life will I call anyone – no lawyers, no friends, no one. Let them kill me! Maybe my life will end like this. It is always in my mind.

xD.

George Mason and anti-Federalism

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Today’s rain caused me to stop at Foyle’s (not that I need much of an excuse) and I picked up a copy of The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers edited by David Wootton. I would have given a lot to have lived in those times, when it seems that the polity was alive with debate about the future direction of what would become the USA. There is a lot, reading arguments on both sides of the federalism debate, that is relevant to both Britain and Europe as they go through constitutional changes and to nascent and emerging democracies.

Anyway, the first paper is George Mason’s Objections to the Constitution of Government Formed by the Convention. Reading Mason’s Objections, there is a lot to think about that leads me to think that the Constitution of the United States has not been successful – of that more below. A few selected bits:

The President of the United States has no Constitutional Council, a thing unknown in any safe and regular government. He will therefore be unsupported by proper information and advice, and will generally be directed by minions and favorites; or he will become a tool to the Senate–or a Council of State will grow out of the principal officers of the great departments; the worst and most dangerous of all ingredients for such a Council in a free country; From this fatal defect has arisen the improper power of the Senate in the appointment of public officers, and the alarming dependence and connection between that branch of the legislature and the supreme Executive.

Hence also spurring that unnecessary officer the Vice- President, who for want of other employment is made president of the Senate, thereby dangerously blending the executive and legislative powers, besides always giving to some one of the States an unnecessary and unjust pre-eminence over the others.

I cannot help but think of the influence of a particular set of neo-conservative advisers on the current administration – Wolfowitz, Perle and not least Cheney – and the malign effects of there being no-one near the President to ‘speak truth to power’ save for the sidelined Powell.

Under their own construction of the general clause, at the end of the enumerated powers, the Congress may grant monopolies in trade and commerce, constitute new crimes, inflict unusual and severe punishments, and extend their powers as far as they shall think proper; so that the State legislatures have no security for the powers now presumed to remain to them, or the people for their rights.

In short, Mason’s predictions have come to pass. Largely but by no means exclusively through the commerce clause, the power of the federal government against the state has increased dramatically, far beyond what was originally envisioned by either side.

This government will set out a moderate aristocracy: it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other.

I think that, by the terms as Mason would have used them, we can see a ‘corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy’ rather than a monarchy. The blurring of the lines between executive and legislative, with many serving or former senators looking at contesting the presidency, is the corrupt – with one eye on the presidency and looking to private interest, senators and representatives will not act in the interests of the states they are meant to represent or the union they are meant to preserve. Indeed, by my count, ten former senators or congresspersons and two former senators have filed papers with the FEC – Republican Senators Brownback and McCain and Representatives Tancredo, Hunter and Paul and Democratic Senators Obama, Clinton, Dodd and Biden and Representative Kucinich, along with various former officeholders.

As to tyrannical, the distance of lawmakers from citizens and the development of an entire apparatus for lobbying for almost every (concentrated) interest under the sun would, I think, fit the description. I think that part of the tyranny complaint is self-perpetuation, which is why Mason and other anti-federalists spoke both of the right of insurrection in certain circumstances and of the fear that a minority – a minority with a privileged position to protect – could use the provisions that protect against a ‘tyranny of the majority’ to force a ‘tyranny of the minority’.

It is an aristocracy in the sense that it is a government of those with arete – the best or most able. However, their interests are not directed to their constituents’ need but to their own and to the interests of those about them. Again, self-perpetuation is an issue.

I’ve been thinking of late as to what extent, by the standards of its framers, the Constitution of the United States is successful or a failure. That particular idea I owe to my friend Jo Kibble. Many moons ago, we had a class together on whether the Attlee government was socialist or not; Jo’s argument was that ‘socialism is what the Labour party does’ and so if the 45-50 administration lived up to its promises, it would have been socialist. Part of this is the mythology that seems to surround the US Constitution. I have heard people say, with absolute seriousness, that the Constitution is ‘ordained by God’ and there is a lot of cant about the Founding Fathers – the Convention was not people coming together to argue it out, but compromising and fudging, leaving out or delaying some issues (particularly slavery) in a way that the most hardened comitologist would have to admire.

A brief aside on slavery – I understand that while Mason was a slaveowner, he wanted slavery to be abolished but did not want a provision on slavery, either way, to be included in the Constitution, which I read to be, in effect, an argument that the Constitution and, by extension, any constitution should not set policy. In a modern day setting, it would mean that the Constitution could not be used to permit or ban abortion, but also that the Second Amendment would have to be repealed.

xD.

David MacLean

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I was delighted to see this EDM submitted about David MacLean, the MP for Penrith and the Border. Mr MacLean suffers from multiple sclerosis and, while I don’t think I agree with any of his politics, for newspapers to attack him for using his MP’s allowance legitimately to allow him to effectively represent his constituents is pretty low. The text of the EDM is

That this House salutes the bravery with which the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border has for several years defied the onset of multiple sclerosis so crippling that a less determined person would have been confined to a wheelchair long ago; endorses the decision of the House of Commons Department of Finance and Administration to approve his purchase of an outdoor vehicle, from the appropriate Parliamentary allowance, to enable him to negotiate the largest rural constituency in England; and accordingly condemns the journalists and broadcasters who sensationalised this story for playing down, and in some cases not even mentioning, the devastating effects of his illness and his refusal to give in to it.

It is telling that the list of signatories covers the spectrum from John McDonnell to Andrew Rosindell.

xD.

Antony Gormley’s Blind Light at the Hayward

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The advertised part of Antony Gormley’s Blind Light exhibition at the Hayward is a room full of very dense fog. It is a remarkable installation, but of that more later. There are other parts to it which are worth seeing by themselves.

I’ve seen a lot of exhibitions that seek to use the viewer as part of the art, but none as successful as this one. It involves you, the viewer, very directly but your experience of most of the pieces is dependent on the presence and actions of others.

The first installation, Spaceship, is huge – twenty-seven tonnes of metal that fills the room. Both irregular, looking like a hunk of technology torn off an orbiting leviathan hurled to earth, and highly regular, with holes aligned on a cubic grid, you can stand up close to it, peering into holes to see the interior, but the best effect is standing back, on the stairs, watching what could, for all the world, be Iron Age humans looking in incomprehension and disbelief at this monster crammed into a small space.

Another piece is a set of boxes, with holes to approximate human orifices, based on the sizes of inhabitants of Malmö from eighteen months to eighty years old. More than anything else in the exhibition, it depersonalises the viewer. You can find boxes of the same height as yourself, but the association is uncomfortable: reduced to boxes on the basis of phyisiognomy in a field of similar, pallid, stained figures I found reminded me of concentration camps. Now, it is at times (and I mean no offence here) hackneyed to make comparisons with the Holocaust but in this case it is, I think valid. There is a meme somewhere on the interweb about the time it takes for an online discussion to descend into comparisons with Hitler. The random positioning, crowdedness and ghastly similarity to humans along with, as I said, the hint of Eugenics left me feeling that I was standing in a field of half-humans, only their measurements in a forgotten archive to remind us of their existence.

I don’t think this was Gormley’s intent; another piece is a lost-wax cast of him in a cube, so that you can see the gaps where his head and hands were, which more successfully captures the dichotomy between something that protects at the same time as restricting your freedom.

It is often better to be in chains than to be free

-Franz Kafka

While I am not certain how successful Gormley was in his aim in the field of boxes, it is nevertheless a very worthy piece of art. The main installation, Blind Light, is excellent. In essence, it is simple: a glass box filled with fog. It is, though, the densest fog I’ve ever seen. Perhaps fifteen centimetres from your face, your hand is a shape and fully outstretched it is invisible. As I said before, the presence of others is essential. When walking around the outside, people come up against the glass and interact with you while you can do the same when inside. Walking across the box is the Gormley’s most successful means of picking up on the aforementioned dichotomy. There is no feeling of danger and the new experience is quite welcome, but you have to proceed slowly, with arms outstretched, to avoid running into people. The visitors were being terribly British, with occasional cries of ‘Oh, excuse me!’ as they touched one another. While that is all fun, the water underfoot, the lack of vision and the water condensing on your clothes and exposed skin means that you are slightly on edge.

As to the title, Blind Light, it is an interesting reflection, much in line with the protection-restriction, quod me nutrit me destruit, idea that the excess of light which we need to see makes it impossible to function as the sighted would normally do.

The rest of the indoor exhibition is worth seeing, but less effective, consisting essentially of casts of Gormley’s body in different suspensions and contortions.

Outside, the sculptor of The Angel of the North goes for another grand-scale work – casts of his body again, but on rooftops and ledges around the Hayward. I’m going to go back when it’s less crowded and wander around the area taking pictures of the casts that make up Event Horizon, so more of that in another post. I would say, though, that in keeping with the guide to the exhibition, the title seems pretentious. An event horizon is the maximum limit of light from a given event, such that in proximity to a black hole all light paths lead back to the centre. This seems very much at odds with the idea of appreciation of a single event in two, apparently contradictory ways.

Event Horizon is free to be photographed – they could do no other, given that it is outdoors and lends itself to photographs. It is a shame the Hayward or the exhibitor would not allow photos within the exhibition. There are no delicate paints to be protected and it would allow further interaction with the installations, later reflection on them and the creation of mini-artworks. It’d also be a lot of fun.

xD.

My last post on Guido Fawkes, Paul Staines and Iain Dale

Posted on by David Landon Cole

My apologies to anyone who really couldn’t care less, but I want to set this down. This is a small blog, so this will be of little note to anyone, but I am removing my links to Guido Fawkes aka Paul Staines and to Iain Dale.

Paul Staines is dishonest. He has also allowed or encouraged a group of sock puppets to develop around him that are really very offensive to people who question ‘Guido’. It is this sort of activity that leads to calls for standards in the blogosphere. Staines seems to like to think of himself as some sort of anarcho-capitalist type. He must be the first anarchist with no sense of personal responsibility. You probably know all the objections – if not, take a look at Tim Ireland’s website. I’ve not been quite as sure about Iain Dale until the deep linking thing. I’ve emailed Iain to ask what’s happening. What confirmed it my mind was that Dale and Staines seem to have the same webmaster. If you go to Iain’s profile, you will see that one of the team members for Iain Dale’s Diary is Jag Singh. Clicking on Jag Singh’s profile will show that he is a team member for Guido Fawkes.

I’m going to do a general post about blogging which will mention Messrs. Staines and Dale. I’ll keep reading Iain’s blog – it is often rather fun and quite informative – but he’s been intellectually dishonest by stopping deep links to his blog. I’m not, though, going to bother with any more posts about what they’re up to. Iain Dale’s Dairy and Guido Fawkes 2.0 do it better than I do.

Update: Iain has been in touch to give his side of the story. Watch this space!

xD.

A holiday in San Francisco

Posted on by David Landon Cole

This might turn into rather a long post, but do please at least look at the photos. If you click on them, they’ll be larger and you can see more here.

Alice, my girlfriend, and I went to San Francisco last week on holiday, largely courtesy of some air miles from my father. San Francisco is a lovely city. Beyond the Golden Gate Bridge (of which more later) there is the TransAmerica pyramid as a landmark and Fisherman’s Wharf is fun to visit. With the possible exception of Pier 39, it’s not excessively touristy and there are parts that are just nice to walk along. Pier 39, though, does have sea lions. We didn’t make it to Alcatraz but here’s a gratuitous picture.

I’m afraid that this post will sound like I’m bitching. Alice and I had a lovely time in San Francisco. We were lucky with the weather and there’s a lot to see and do in a very pleasant and friendly city. The city somehow feels that it works (in a way that Dallas does not) and it’s easy to move around. The public transport works and, as an added bonus, there are cable cars. These run off a cable running underground and are a lot of fun to ride on. It’s a good city to be a flaneur in; lots to see, some decent coffee shops and restaurants and a general feeling of comfort and unhurriedness.

LA airport is bloody awful
The staff at LAX all wear name badges with ‘Dave 01421’ or ‘Alice 63920’; people are reduced to a number so that complaints may be easily made against them. This was probably an idea dreamed up by some exec in an office who’d never been near the shop floor as a means to facilitate praise and complaints. The human tendency is to notice the bad more than the good; the numbers would be used a lot for complaints, mostly because LAX, built for the 1976 Olympics, was never finished and it shows. Our first port of call was Los Angeles. Air pollution cannot escape LA as the city sits in a bowl. As we flew into LAX, adding to the pollution, coming back from San Francisco, we could see a grey haze floating beneath the cloud. LA is not an attractive city from the air.

Anyway, you’re never going to receive a warm welcome at an airport but an efficient one works just as well. We were near the front of the immigration control queue – I felt sorry for those at the back who had a long wait – but were still standing around for a while and I felt like shouting that when to Jumbo Jets arrive around the same time, you need more than six immigration officials.
We then had to queue again to go past a point where someone looked at the customs declaration for a second time and, bizarrely, to queue to leave the building. Queuing is a generous description for the ensuing mess up a ramp and around a corner. A couple of LAX staff were trying to sort things out but after two long queues people were not in a charitable mood.

Then things became annoying. We went to the AA desk with our e-ticket number because we were flying AA to San Francisco. Logical, no? No. AA were codesharing that flight with Alaska Air but had neglected to tell us, anyone else or put it on the displays. A walk to another terminal and Alaska told us that we had to go back to AA as we should have had paper tickets. AA passed us onto BA, with whom we booked the flights, who swore blind that we had been sent paper tickets. $150 later, we were reissued our tickets on paper that must be worth its weight in gold at those prices. When we came back and handed over our tickets to the AA desk at SF airport, we were told it was an e-ticket and not a paper ticket. Anyway, we made the Alaska Air flight but had it not been delayed we would have missed it. It is worth looking at the TSA Pledge. There is one thing missing from this: ‘efficiency’.

Customer service
People were polite and so on, but were hamstrung in what they could do. The politeness, however, is the standard. Where a bartender in the US might say ‘what would you like, sir?’ their UK counterpart might plainly ask ‘what do you want?’; neither is ruder or more polite as it’s just the way things are done. I suppose it’s a bit like this blog; flowery language and subclauses don’t change the ideas beneath any more than the query of the US bartender. We booked to go on a bus tour of Muir Woods to see the redwoods and then go to some vineyards in the Sonoma valley. It ended up that the tour we wanted wasn’t on offer any more, and we ended up going on a (very good, as it happens) tour of the Napa and Sonoma valleys. People at the tour company’s office were polite but I would rather they’d been efficient.

Why is all cheese in America the same? We stopped at Sonoma town for lunch on the tour and ate at the Cheese Factory. Can anyone tell me why the half-a-dozen varieties of cheese they had on offer to sample all tasted the same? Has anyone ever really expressed a preference for Monterey Jack over American Sharp Cheddar? I can’t believe there’s not a market for something other than variously-packaged, slightly bland cheddar. Brie, perhaps, or even stilton. I don’t believe that the A
merican palette is averse to different cheeses but the invisible hand of the market seems to have banned all trace of camembert, wensleydale and roquefort.

Eating out
Talking of food, we had some great meals out, largely due to the strength of the pound against the dollar, and Plouf and John’s Grill come recommended. The seafood in San Francisco is great – lots of clams, mussels, sea bass and swordfish. I know American food is often knocked for being poor quality (as above) but there are some really good restaurants around. Plouf on Belden Place was a lot of fun. A French restaurant, it had a good menu and a wine list with new and old world wines and a cheery French waiter (the French for clams is ‘palourdes‘) who did seem very happy with his lot in life. Clams and mussels provencale were great – I forget what else we had, but the shellfish was very good. Belden Place is a side street with restaurants all along. It’s slogan is ‘Where the locals go’; I don’t know how true this is, but there were plenty of American accents and its location in the financial district makes me think that it’s aimed at the business community. Anyhow, a meal with wine and the works for two came to about fifty quid total. If anyone can tell me more about Belden Place (if any San Franciscans are reading this…), I’d love to know. We went back to Belden Place, to an Italian called Tiramisu. While it was fine, I was annoyed because the first waiter claimed there was no house white and was generally snotty; the second one (who appeared, I’m guessing, because the other didn’t want to deal with us) explained that there was a house chardonnay, pinot grigio and something else. Anyway, he brought a bottle and it was fine. Decorations a bit dodgy – supposedly Pompeii-esque murals with cracks added. The thing with the first waiter annoyed me – it made me feel ill at ease and that the restaurant didn’t want casually -dressed people in it. The pretention and, frankly, snobbishness wasn’t great. John’s Grill, which features in The Maltese Falcon, was great. It was what I’d call classic American cooking at its best – simple ingredients of good quality, well cooked. Steak, chips and creamed spinach, plenty of a good rose and definitely worth going to. Book ahead though – it was busy.

We did things other than eating…
You can very easily see why Berkeley sustains a left-wing population. On a fine day, sitting on its lawns, walking through its woods or using its amazing facilities (the student union and centre are probably half the size of the entire LSE) makes you want to do more than just live to work. Seeing the privations of some in the Bay Area while you were a student at Berkeley would provide a spur to want to do something about it.

I did get a kick from thinking that Adelstein and Bloom would have walked on those paths at one point. Yes, many fine minds, but those two are important to me. I bought myself a homburg at a shop in Berkeley. Not, sadly, from Mars Vintage Thrift.

The richest country in the world
I mentioned the privations of some. There seem to be a relatively large number of homeless people in San Francisco. I hope this doesn’t come over as strange, but here goes. I wish I was both a better and more confident photographer of people, hopefully in the Steve McCurry style of rapid, unposed, intimate photos. You can’t do a huge amount individually, but I really felt that few people actually saw the homeless; everyone seemed so used to bypassing the homeless that it was automatic. Maybe some photos of people living on the streets of a wealthy city in abject poverty, with little or no healthcare or prospects of a job or housing, would move people a little.

You do sometimes see a lot in the features of people. A lot of the homeless in San Francisco had unkept, matted hair and weather-beaten faces that can give good, expressionful shots. Some, though, by their clothes and the style of their actions, unaccustomed to the streets, and a greater despair in their eyes, gave the impression of having recently lost their homes. Certainly, foreclosing and repossessions are increasing sufficiently in the US that the papers are predicting a subprime lending bubble collapse. Maybe it was an attempt to maintain dignity in a situation that many would consider to be impossible undignified that made it different.

Maybe it’s the nasty feeling that there, but for the grace of God, go I; a lot people on the streets have histories of mental health problems. There is a local version of the Big Issue, the Street Sheet, that has potential, particularly as mainstream newspapers aren’t great, to provide a distinctive coverage of news, perhaps including municipal news, that could make it a better seller; for now, it seemed to concentrate to much on homelessness issues. The idea is to give the homeless and former
ly homeless a voice; this could be done while making more money for the vendor. As an aside, I met a chugger who was collecting for a charity that did microfinance in Colombia, Ecuador, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh – and the US.

The Golden Gate Bridge
I went, with camera, to the recreational pier to take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. The Bridge is a fascinating structure. It has a definite beauty in the curve of the cables but it is the way in which it closes the Bay, adding a finality to the land before the Pacific, that has allowed it to become a loved piece of architecture. It was initially opposed as it would have spoilt the landscape. The way in which it connects to the land is interesting – it’s different at each end – and the girders in the supporting towers make fascinating patterns.

I managed, I think, some decent shots of the bridge with the sun setting behind; after all, it’s pretty straightforward to take a decent photo given the setting. I actually enjoyed taking pictures of the birds more. I think there must have been an updraft of air in front of the pier as a lot of birds were flying and gliding along just in front of me. It’s quite wonderful to have birds flying past a few feet in front of you. You start to see the attraction to prisoners of keeping birds; they give a sense of freedom and being able to ‘shake the surly bonds of earth’. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this will save you more of my prolix.



MoMA in SoMa
We went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) which is in South of Market (SoMa). I wasn’t sure about some of the collection (Alice was sure that some of it was a wind-up) but they had a really interesting room on design of objects like typewriters, chairs and coffee makers. All very mundane items, but with the potential to be beautifully designed. The website for MOMA has a good interactive guide to various artists called Making Sense of Modern Art. It has given me a few ideas that, if I have time, I might work on.

I’ll sign off here. We had a great time. After a few weeks of work that were pretty soul-destroying, it was good to be able to spend some time with Alice and to rest. Unfortunately the lines under my eyes are returning already. I’d like to go to Muir, Sausalito and Yosemite and so may well pass through San Francisco again.

xD.