Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Rape Case

 General, Media, Politics  No Responses »
May 212011
 

The news has been swamped with various items about the alleged rape of a hotel maid by Dominique Strauss-Kahn (the former head of the IMF). The alleged rapist has been paraded in front of the media wolves by the US authorities, vilified in the press with the stories containing the fig-leaf of the word “alleged”, and suffered worse in the “blogosphere”.

He has been effectively forced to resign from his job as the head of the IMF, and can pretty much say goodbye to his chances of becoming the next president of France.

Just the beginning of what he deserves, if he raped the hotel maid.

A gross injustice if he is innocent.

And as yet, we simply do not know if he is guilty or not. Despite those who believe in the old “no smoke without fire” saying, we need to wait until the trial before knowing if he is found to be guilty or to be innocent. Until his trial, he should be presumed to be innocent.

How On Earth Can He Be Innocent?

After all, the hotel maid has claimed he raped her, and identified him. Surely there can be no mistake. Actually there are a whole bunch of reasons why he may be innocent :-

  1. The maid was raped, but by someone else with a similar appearance. It is easy to imagine how a rape victim might be confused afterwards, and mistakenly accused Dominique. Perhaps it is not very likely, but it is possible.
  2. The maid is mentally unbalanced and imagined the rape. Again not that likely, but possible.
  3. Consensual sex took place, but the maid for whatever reason changed her mind after the event. Yes this does happen from time to time.
  4. The maid maliciously falsely accused him of rape. There are a variety of reasons for this, and the conspiracy theorists will like this one … if you wanted to get the head of the IMF “out of the way” because he was about to do something that would spoil your plans, there is pretty much nothing better than a false accusation of rape to do so.

None of this should be assumed of course … a woman has made an allegation of rape, and it should be treated as though it were true until it has been tested in a court of law. Indeed appropriate treatment (including counselling) could well result in additional information for a trial … whether it is supportive of the allegation, or refutes it.

How Can We Do This Better ?

At present, there is a presumably innocent man who has only just been released from prison into bail conditions that probably qualify as “house arrest”. His name is known, his family is known, and he has lost his job. All of this could happen to you whether or not you are likely to go out and commit rape (and women should note that this does include you!).

The victims of rape quite rightly get anonymity, but what about the alleged rapist ? If he or she is innocent, surely they deserve anonymity too ? Forget that you may be protecting a genuine rapist, at this point the alleged rapist is innocent.

Anonymity for an alleged rapist is the right thing to do. Difficult in practise to implement given that many will need to be kept in prison pending trial, and in cases of famous people like Dominique it may well be that their name escapes. But we should be trying to do the right thing even if it is difficult.

 

Do The Tories Want To Privatise Universities ?

 Politics  No Responses »
May 102011
 

Today a Tory let slip that some in the Tory party may be thinking of letting Universities supplement their income by offering additional places over the current quota to UK students which would be charged at the same rate as non-EU students. Of course they very rapidly back-pedalled from this position, but was it a slip or something that the Tories are planning … in a year or five ?

First of all, a little background. UK Universities are free to charge non-EU students pretty much what they want to within the constraints of supply and demand – pretty much like a business. This can be pretty lucrative for many Universities, and there is a fairly active pursuit of foreign students.

There are benefits and disadvantages to this of course. Foreign students may not always have the best possible English language skills which can conceivably have a detrimental effect on teaching. However offering a limited number of places to foreign students does have advantages that counter this – first of all exposing “native” students to foreign students widens the experience of both groups, and recruiting foreign students adds to the possible pool of expertise to hire the best researchers from.

But allowing Universities to recruit UK students on the same fees as non-EU students ? Well it might sound ok – allow the Universities to recruit students from anywhere to supplement their quota of UK students, but it is an obviously slippery slope from that. Over time the Tories could slowly cut the student quota and leave UK students with eventually little choice other than to pay the “full price” with no support for their education.

Of course the Tories claim that there are no such plans, but do we believe them ?

Osama bin Laden’s Death

 Politics  No Responses »
May 022011
 

We have all heard today about the death of Osama bin Laden. This of course is good news – whilst Al-Queda will carry on, removing their founder is certainly a blow. And who needs terrorists? But I’ve had a few thoughts from the ongoing discussions :-

  1. The celebrations of Americans at the announcement was understandable, but a touch distasteful … it may well have been necessary to kill Osama rather than bring him to justice, but celebrating any death no matter how unpleasant the man himself, is less than dignified.
  2. It is unfortunate that he wasn’t brought to justice to face an international court for crimes against humanity. Killing him was almost certainly unavoidable given his declaration he would rather be killed than captured, but he wasn’t ‘brought to justice’ – that would involve a court and being sentenced to some form of punishment.
  3. It is worth pointing out that Osama got at least part of what he wanted. Given the choice of being killed immediately or being brought to face a court and a lengthy trial, Osama wanted to be killed. Of course he would prefer to be free to create more trouble than he has already.
  4. I rather hope that the US authorities obtained some sort of permission to go into Pakistan – whether it was a blanket permission to “extract Obama” at some point, or whether it was specific authorisation for this mission.
  5. There are those who are saying that as Osama was found “hiding in plain site” as it were, then it is certain that he was being helped out by the Pakistani authorities. This is ridiculous. First of all he was hiding in a walled compound out of plain site. He was probably never in a position to be observed except by those closest to him. Secondly, whilst he may have received assistance from some individuals within the authorities in the past, that is not the same as receiving assistance from the authorities themselves … and the fact he was caught this time is an indication that his support is disappearing.

David Cameron’s use of the “Calm Down Dear” Phrase

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 282011
 

The funniest thing about David Cameron using the phrase “Calm down dear” in Prime Minister’s question time yesterday is that everyone seems to think there are just two possibilities – that he was being sexist, or he was trying to be funny. What everyone seems to have ignored was that he was being a complete idiot too.

Whether he was being sexist or being funny – and I’m on the side that thinks he was trying to be funny – he was being an idiot trying to use a phrase that could be interpreted as condescension to women (i.e. being sexist). Ok, perhaps everyone is allowed the occasional slip up – even the Prime Minister is human after all.

But if he keeps being idiotic, we need to worry – an idiotic Prime Minister is not a good thing!

AV System in the UK: Looking at the “No” Rubbish

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 242011
 

I have commented on the Alternative Voting system propose for the UK before, but the “No” campaign stuck a leaflet through my door with some mind boggling rubbish on. So I’ll go through some of their rubbish here …

The very first thing the leaflet goes on about is just how much AV is going to cost – supposedly £250 million. I am not sure I trust their figures especially when they point out that the cost of the referendum itself is £91 million. Who is to say that this £91 million cost does not also include some of the cost of the local elections ? And they quote £130 million for the cost of electronic voting machines – who is to say that this expenditure was not planned anyway ? It may be required for AV, but it is also a way of getting the results much quicker and so would be useful under the existing system.

The “No” sayers go through a long list of things that £250 million could pay for if it was not spent on AV – 2,503 doctors, 6,297 teachers, etc. Really ? Is that per year or for all time ? And what does it matter anyway ? The other way at looking at it, is how much does this £250 million really cost us … £3.57 per person. Is that too much for a fairer voting system ?

Ok, some of you do not believe that AV is fairer, but ignore that for a moment … is it worth the cost of a slightly expensive pint of beer to make our current voting system fairer ? Of course it is.

The next thing the negative ones try to make a point out of is that “The winner should be the one that comes first”. Below this they show four men running a race. This is probably the most ridiculous comparison it is possible to make. First of all, an election is not about winning (except for the putrid politicians), but about choosing a representative to parliament (in the case we’re talking about anyway). The whole point of the electoral system is to select a candidate that best represents the interests of the people in the constituency.

The whole point of the AV system is to allow a greater chance that the representative of the people is supported by at least 50% of the constituents. Under the first past the post system, it is quite common for the elected candidate to gather so few votes that he or she is opposed by the majority of those who voted. How can such a candidate be a good representative ? To return to sport for a moment, there are plenty of sports where you have to achieve a significant margin of victory over your opponent – take tennis for example.

Even in simple races, it isn’t always the winner of a single race that wins in the end – a winner in a heat may be beaten in the final race. And even in that final race, it isn’t just the winner who is rewarded as second and third place also get a prize – admittedly this would mean three MPs for each constituency. Not such a bad idea and there’s even a historical precedence behind it as some constituencies before the 1832 Reform Act elected more than one representative.

Inside the leaflet those who prefer the status quo have compared the two voting systems with the intention of making the AV system seem as complex as possible, with the AV system explained in language that looks like it was written by a lawyer – which will result in a reflex “No thanks” reaction from most of us. But AV really is not that complex at all; it certainly is not as complex as the naysayers would have you believe.

They make a big song and dance about the fact that this AV system means an end to “one person, one vote”. And how the voters for minority parties get more votes than those who choose more popular parties. Well you could describe AV as being a system in which everyone has more than one chance to pick their choice of candidate. That is everyone – so everyone has just as many votes as anyone else.

And I would say that it is still one person, one vote, but the person has a chance to transfer their vote if the most popular candidate fails to get more than 50% of the votes cast.

Another sneaky thing they have done, is to imply that anyone voting for a minor party is going to be some kind of knuckle-dragging extremist – the leaflet specifically mentions the BNP. There are a large number of minor parties that under the current system, or even under AV are exceptionally unlikely to get a candidate elected. However it is deceitful in the extreme to claim that all supporters of minor parties are extremists – what about the Green Party, Respect Party (perhaps a little towards the extreme), Libertarian Party, Wessex Regionalist Party?

In fact a system that encourages voting for minority parties allows for more information on the policies that the people want – we can all vote for the Wessex Regionalist Party to get across the message that perhaps we want a Labour MP, but actually we would like people to consider the option to make Wessex independent.

Lastly, the leaflet plays to the anti-Nick Clegg feeling around in the country by claiming that the only party to benefit would be the Liberals under Nick Clegg and it would lead to “broken promises”. Frankly this all just too much for coherent criticism – they are campaigning on a serious issue by making pathetic political point scoring.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries