Two kinds of justice

Heard a very interesting story at dinner the other night, about a High Court judge from Pakistan, who came to the UK to observe UK judges at work. It turned out that as the Pakistani judge observed two of his UK counterparts spending a day deliberating over one case, he creased up with laughter, explaining that in a typical day, he would hear around 50 cases, giving judgements in about 25 of them!

The story gets better- apparently an example of this judge’s brisk modus operandi involved him summoning government officials to court (some in handcuffs, threatened with contempt) in order to expedite the repayment of a widow’s missing pension. If true, I was quite impressed by the example of the widow, who’d struggled for nine years to receive her due, suddenly given justice literally overnight. It seemed a good example of justice standing up for the rights of the individual, against the slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy.

But as I thought about it more, I wondered at the summary powers of this judge. There was something almost regal about his ability to demand instant compliance from sheepish officials.

Is there a danger in dispensing justice too quickly? I suppose that one might argue that showing justice to be swift and effective has the benefit of discouraging people from vigilanteism. But in cases where a resolution can’t be found in a single day, does ‘swift justice’ risk stoking frustration by creating unrealistic expectations?

From my own experience of jury service, I saw the wheels of justice turn very slowly (albeit thoroughly). Perhaps the bottom line is that a plaintiff wants swift redress, but a defendant prefers an adequate chance to put their side of the story.

What do you think? Swift or slow?

Voting and the expense of scandal

I’ll be voting later today, and I’ve been thinking about the current political scandal at Westminster. I suspect it’ll hit the bigger parties hard in the Euro elections, and possibly give seats to smaller parties (some of whom you would never want to see in office).

It’s true that some aspects of the expenses scandal have been capitalised on by the Conservatives- the Daily Telegraph broke the story, after all.

However, all politicians claim that they’re specially equipped to represent people and work hard on their behalf. In my view, cynical and/or dodgy expense claims send something of a danger signal about politician’s attitude.

I think I’ll vote for Jean Lambert, the Green MEP. She seems very hardworking and has an impressively empty declaration of interests! Kudos to the European Parliament for making the information so easy to find.

Panopticon

Many journalists claim that “if we’re not careful, we’ll end up in a ‘Big Brother’-type society”. They’re too late. Here are two perspectives on this:

First, from Simon Jenkins

When the council can bug you for fly-tipping, when prisons can record conversations with defence lawyers, when any potentially criminal act can justify electronic intrusion – and when ministers resort to the dictator’s excuse, “The innocent need not fear” – warning bells should sound.

And a lighter, but equally powerful video

The title of this post, ‘panopticon’, refers to a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham, where all inmates can be watched from a single location, and don’t know whether they are being watched or not. The idea is that this will make them behave all the time, for fear that they could be under surveillance.

I think one of the saddest things about the ‘Big Brother state’ is that its main premise is flawed- people who are motivated to break the law aren’t really discouraged by the ‘threat’ of surveillance. So the huge price we’ve paid (selling up a massive chunk of our civil liberties) buys nothing.

First world results on a third world budget | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

First world results on a third world budget | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

 Interesting comparison of Cuban healthcare vs. UK healthcare. For me, this was a very interesting point:

The trouble with the NHS, some say, is that it is not a national health service but a national sickness service. The focus is not on keeping us well, but keeping us alive. Hospital intensive care units take priority in the public mind over diet and exercise campaigns.

Cuba is admired by public health experts in Britain and around the world for putting the horse before the cart. Unable to afford too many hi-tech operating theatres, it focuses its efforts on keeping its people well and picking up illness early – when it’s easier and cheaper to treat.

Someone once told me that because the NHS was set up just after WWII, it became incredibly good at acute care, but not so good at prevention and day-to-day stuff.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | A police state? Crying wolf wont protect civil liberties

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | A police state? Crying wolf wont protect civil liberties

Here’s what I think:

 A couple of dangerous assumptions here:

1. We used to have far fewer protections for civil liberties, so we shouldn’t complain about the present situation

2. New technology allows new intrusions to civil liberties- we should intervene in new ways because we can

I also think the writer is wrong to put (fully justified) anxieties about automatic and compulsory state collection of personal information (id cards, DNA databases etc) and the more questionable libertarian right to smoke in a public place in the same boat.

Where does this assumption that collecting reams of personal data for no immediate use has some kind of benefit come from?

I think the writer is quite right to say that the debate on civil liberties should be nuanced, and that both left and right can get it wrong by being too shrill. However, he then goes on to muddy the waters with some of his own faulty logic…

Read all about it…

Even by their fairly hyperbolic standards, this is an entertainingly over-the-top headline from the Evening Standard. I wasn’t worried by it, perhaps because we live on a boat (though shortly after buying our boat, a relative asked me worriedly “but what if the Thames floods?”)

In the library

A slightly retrospective post, this. I revised for my first exam in the British Library. In theory, as an undergrad with access to the Birkbeck library, I shouldn’t really be in the British Library. However, they seem flexible on this, and the BL is much better than Birkbeck. For example, they have every book published in the UK, which beats competing with all my classmates for a few key texts. The books are closed access, though, so you have to order them in advance.

The BL also has an incredibly studious atmosphere- no pens or bags in the reading room, spacious and comfortable desks, each with their own little lamp. When I go there, I shift easily into ‘study mode’. I find it much harder to do that at Birkbeck– my distractible nature means I’m always breaking my concentration.

Keep your phone

A couple of years ago, I ‘downgraded’ to the most basic mobile phone I could get my hands on. I specifically wanted something that wouldn’t need to be ‘upgraded’ in a few months’ time. It was cheap, too.

Why do I resist the relentless upgrades? Partly a desire for simplicity, but also a worry about the consequences of the relentless demand for new mobile phones. Each mobile contains Coltan, a metallic ore used to produce the elements niobium and tantalum. The Democratic Republic of Congo contains 80% of the world’s Coltan reserves. A ticket to prosperity, you might think. Sadly, it seems that Coltan is fuelling conflict in the DRC.

John Le Carré’s recent book, The Mission Song looks at the issue of Coltan in the DRC. I’m a fan of Le Carré- I might give it a read!

[This post also came out from a chat with Sergio- sorry, Sergio, for not getting the name of the mineral right!]

Sergio’s sutainability maxim

These days, we tend to feel guilty or bad about more and more things, because they have a destructive impact on the world we share with others. Sometimes this can lead to an all-consuming anxiety, feeling like just existing as a normal person in an industrial society is a sin in itself.

How to transform this general anxiety into something more useful?

A good friend of mine, Sergio, gave me something of an answer to this last night. He said:

“When you’re thinking of doing something, and wondering whether that thing is sustainable, imagine what would happen if everyone did the same as you.”

I find this such a useful thought, because it highlights how small choices have big impacts when you look at the bigger picture.

Can you create wealth?

Many conservative thinkers talk about ‘wealth creation’ as a way of reducing poverty. I’m not so sure- to my mind, wealth is a result of distribution of resources, rather than something which is ‘created’ from nothing. I also think that poverty is a prerequisite of wealth, and vice versa.

Having said that, I recently studied (as part of my philosophy course) a good critique of economic redistribution from Robert Nozick. He makes the point that a just redistribution of wealth is not the same as an equal distribution of wealth, in his Wilt Chamberlain example.

I think that Nozick’s argument that redistributing wealth impinges on people’s rights to their ‘just entitlement’ is very compelling. It appeals to the feeling that people shouldn’t be taxed just for being wealthy. But it does rest on the assumption that the distribution of wealth was fair in the first place (!)

I’m a bit undecided on the whole tax question. I can see real value in doing things collectively (hospitals, schools, public transport…) but I also think that the state should interfere as little as possible. Perhaps that means I’m a typical voter, wanting less taxes but more services!