More Zonkyness

Author: Mike Meredith

  • PM’s Questions – The Animals In The House

    If you are unlucky enough to catch our representatives in parliament during Prime Minister’s questions (Wednesday lunchtimes), you are probably aware of the MPs making loud noises during the questions and answers. When a new election looms, the noise gets louder to the point that many ordinary MPs find it difficult to ask their questions and any answers become difficult to hear.

    Personally I’m of the belief that shouting and screaming whilst someone else is trying to speak is impolite in the extreme; the MPs come across as a bunch of loud-mouthed louts who would rather shout down an opponent than actually take part in an intelligent debate. In other words the kind of yob that would be thrown out of any decent debating society for disruptive behaviour.

    It is quite possible that their behaviour is a great deal better in ordinary debates, but we do not see those as often as we see PM’s questions. Part of the image problem that MPs have is probably down to this loutish behaviour.

    The Speaker of the House is supposed to keep control and stop the worst excesses of this sort of behaviour, but he fails to do so properly – simply because he isn’t prepared to exclude the noisiest members for their behaviour. Perhaps it is about time he did ?

  • What Are Jon Venable’s Chances Of A Fair Trial ?

    We have learned over the last week that one of the killers of James Bulger, Jon Venables has had his license revoked, and is now back in prison. Of course there has been frantic speculation in the media about the reason for this, varying from drunkenness to a fight at work. It is of course worth pointing out that someone released on license from prison most commonly from a life sentence, is not free in the ordinary sense of the word as they can be re-imprisoned at the drop of a hat.

    However this weekend, the real reason has slowly slipped out thanks to the circulation wars between newspapers. First he was accused of a “serious sexual crime” and now he has apparently been accused of some kind of child pornography offence. Of course we do not actually know that he is accused of this; we merely have a newspaper claiming it is so.

    And a very irresponsible claim it is too – the newspaper editors involved obviously think that the popularity of their newspapers is more important than the safety of Jon Venables or the safety of anybody accused of child pornography offences. Plus of course it risks prejudicing those who might be called to act as a jury in their trial.

    But who cares if Jon Venables gets a fair trial ? Or some child pornographer gets knifed in prison awaiting trial ?

    Well in the later case, you could find yourself in prison awaiting trial on child pornography charges merely for letting your Windows machine get infected with a virus! The technical details of this are not of much interest here, but rest assured that if you let your machine get infected, those who control the virus can use your computer for whatever they want, which does include storing a stash of child porn. As certain unfortunate individuals have found to their cost.

    Does Jon Venables deserve to be lynched for what he has done ? Well before we answer that, which crime are we talking about ? His childhood killing of James Bulger ? Or for his alleged crime of looking at child porn ? Well there are plenty who say he deserves it for his earlier crime, but he has been punished for that – perhaps you do not agree that the punishment is sufficient, but he has been punished and the punishment is probably more severe than most people realise.

    He isn’t free. Don’t forget that.

    He may be able to walk the streets and work for his living, but he isn’t free.

    Being released on license means that he can be snatched back into prison on the flimsiest of pretexts – getting a little too involved in alcohol, perhaps getting into a fight, or even his parole officer doesn’t like his state of mind.

    So he doesn’t deserve any additional punishment for his killing of James Bulger. Don’t forget that killing him would simply end his punishment; letting him live lets the punishment go on and on.

    As for the alleged child pornography charge, he’s innocent of that and he will be until such time as a jury finds him guilty. And if he is found guilty ? If that happens he should be punished according to the law with no harsher or more lenient sentence than anyone else in the same circumstances. Which doesn’t include lynching.

    Perhaps you do not agree, but you could well agree that the media is responsible for releasing enough details about Jon Venables to make it a little easier for those who want to kill him. It may also be enough to make it difficult for any trial of Jon Venables to be fair – every jury looking at a child pornography case may well wonder if the accused is Jon; in fact there could be any number of possibly unfair trials due to come up.

    Is this right ? Does the public right to know or the public interest include possibly putting someone’s life at risk ? Or indeed risking an innocent person (and not necessarily Jon Venables) from being convicted of possessing child pornography ?

    Under US law, there is the concept of ‘reckless endangerment’ whereby anyone who puts another at risk of harm is subject to possible prosecution. To me that sounds an awful lot like what the British media is currently doing to Jon Venables. I certainly believe that what they are doing is potentially dangerous not only to Jon Venables, but to others too – who can forget the Portsmouth residents trying to lynch an innocent person because he had the same name as a paedophile?

    For nothing more than increased circulation, the newspapers are cynically willing to put someone’s life at risk. Perhaps we need an equivalent of “reckless endangerment” and stick a few editors behind bars to put across the point that someone’s life is worth more than any amount of money.

  • The Effect Of Social Media On The UK Election

    I have just seen a news item on TV about what the pundits think the effect of social media (Twitter, Facebook and the like) will have on the upcoming UK election. The general consensus was that it probably will not make much difference, and I’m not going to disagree.

    What was amusing though was that they seemed to have concentrated in what the politicians might say in their tweets or on their Facebook pages – missing the point of social networking entirely. Most of us do not pay much attention to what politicians say online on various social media sites; we stick to what our usual contacts say. It is what they say that may influence how we vote in elections.

    Of course just like “water cooler debates”, it will not have a great influence over how we vote – it is just one more piece of information.

  • Assisted Suicide Is Not Euthanasia

    Today we’ve had the news that the UK’s prosecution service has issued guidelines on where people will be prosecuted in cases of assisted suicide. Basically people won’t be if they assist someone provided they stick to certain conditions. Fair enough. But there’s a bit of a problem here – we’re in danger of allowing some groups of people who wish their life to end to be allowed their wish and others not to.

    Part of the problem is the use of the phrase euthanasia which is mistakenly believed to imply “putting down” those people who are in dire straits with or without their consent. In particular people are worried that euthanasia opens the door to killing those who are inconveniently lingering. Such killings have occurred throughout history and are probably occurring today.

    Assisted suicide is not euthanasia – the key is the word suicide – it is an active decision by someone to end their life. Ordinary suicide is of course legal (at least now), but assisting someone’s suicide remains illegal. So anyone in extremis who needs help in ending their life needs to find someone who is prepared to undertake the risk of prosecution to help out.

    There are two problems with this. Firstly it limits the availability of assisted suicide to those who do have a friend or lover prepared to take the risk. Not everyone has such a close relationship with someone else, so we are essentially saying that such people have no way out of an intolerable situation – is that fair ?

    Secondly, as assisted suicide remains illegal, it is something that is carried out stealthily in private with no oversight. It is easy to see that there are any number of possible abuses here – murder could in some circumstances be disguised as assisted suicide. And we certainly do not want to make murder any easier to get away with.

    What we need is to legalise assisted suicide and require some form of procedure to make it more open and subject to oversight. In particular we need to ensure that other avenues are explored – we need to ensure that people do not opt for assisted suicide when other options are available.

    Today’s announcement was essentially the easy way out – it doesn’t give those in favour of assisted suicide what they want and neither are those opposed happy about it. Whilst legalising assisted suicide will also not make those opposed happy, they need to understand that keeping it illegal won’t stop it.

  • Stafford Hospital – Now We Know

    Today the report into the failings at Stafford Hospital was published. I admit I have not read the report, but the gist of the findings have been widely publicised in the media today. Even without reading the report, there are some immediately obvious outcomes.

    It is clear that the management of Stafford Hospital failed abysmally to fulfil their basic duty of care to the patients. Some have criticised the government targets for distracting the management from their core responsibilities. That is rubbish – it does not take a genius to realise that no matter how many targets you are meeting, if patients are dying because of inadequate care, then you are failing in your duty as a responsible manager, and as a human being.

    Personally I believe there is a clear case for the former Chief Executive, Martin Yeates to be charged with corporate manslaughter. If he had not been in charge and someone else with basic common sense had been running the hospital, then several hundred patients would not have died.

    Those campaigners complaining about the report being a total whitewash (even before they had the chance to read it in many cases!) might want to consider bringing a private prosecution against Martin Yeates – even if there is little chance of him being found guilty (corporate manslaughter is weighted in favour of the corporations), dragging him through the courts is the beginning of some sort of punishment.

    The other obvious things is that although the NHS did finally spot what was going on at Stafford Hospital, is that the NHS needs to dramatically improve the monitoring of hospitals. To some extent this has already been done, and the government has announced another inquiry into monitoring of hospitals.