Hello Law & Polity blog. Craig Murray got sent to prison - not one of the nice ones and at a vulnerable stage in life - for being an online publisher / journalist. This was willed using a set of apparently contradictory legal interpretations of categories, by as it later turned out dubious people at the nub of the polity's judicial / legislative / executive functions?
“ There is a conceit in the notion that just because a problem can be stated it thereby can be solved. Maybe this fallacy comes about by reason of human optimism, that articulating a problem means that somewhere somehow it can be remedied.”
On the origins of this notion:
Isaiah Berlin* described the central principles of Western pre-enlightenment thought and enquiry as being that 1) all genuine questions can be answered; 2) all answers to genuine questions are in principle knowable; and 3) that all those answers are compatible. He said the ‘twist’ that the Enlightenment gave these principles was that the answers were available and to be sought solely by deductive and/or inductive reason, rather than by tradition, revelation etc.
Perhaps politics just fails to ask genuine questions ;-)
Interestingly, both Berlins (the ever-questioning philosopher and the ever-questionable synth-pop band) share the attribute of having no significant connection to Berlin (the city) other than their name.
Thank you for this perceptive, engaging look at a serious and growing problem. "Problem" because it seems incapable of solution or prevention. Yet, you may think my view is the equivalent of taking a cannon to a tea party, except these politicians seems to be busy about drinks parties, and do not bother with their work of governing or trying to apply themselves to the difficulties of our modern life. Perhaps their interactions with the media have simply disintegrated into "mutual co-dependency" where they have implicitly agreed not to meddle with the others' fields of interest. These always seem to be solved with massive amounts of money while those who are devastated by their careless behaviour have no ability nor the means to address these appalling situations.
My take is simple: laws must be acted upon to prevent the apparent lawlessness today - unending lies in parliament have debased the peoples' views of law and order. (Has this given people the idea that laws no longer apply to modern life?) The media must be forced by law only to be allowed to produce the unequivocal evidence to the aggrieved party who may give permission for publication before any publicity is given to the event. Parliamentarians who have behaved so badly deserve to be barred for life from public duty. We have the laws already in place, but they seem to be disregarded and not enforced. We saw the MPs behaving so badly given £50 fines in Covid-19 lockdowns, but a student who had a party arranged for him was fined £12 000. Why did the police feel enabled to apply the laws so unequally? Perhaps we all feel there is no longer any need for decency and honesty in public life, and no longer any need to listen to any politician again.
Content is hard to regulate, but making media platforms responsible for content they *promote* may be a credible option, especially in conjunction with a law making it a crime to deliberately or recklessly mislead the public. A lot of the problems with social media are related to the widespread dissemination of outright lies. A legal approach that made platforms cautious about what their algorithms promote would go a long way towards detoxifying social media.
Hello Law & Polity blog. Craig Murray got sent to prison - not one of the nice ones and at a vulnerable stage in life - for being an online publisher / journalist. This was willed using a set of apparently contradictory legal interpretations of categories, by as it later turned out dubious people at the nub of the polity's judicial / legislative / executive functions?
“ There is a conceit in the notion that just because a problem can be stated it thereby can be solved. Maybe this fallacy comes about by reason of human optimism, that articulating a problem means that somewhere somehow it can be remedied.”
On the origins of this notion:
Isaiah Berlin* described the central principles of Western pre-enlightenment thought and enquiry as being that 1) all genuine questions can be answered; 2) all answers to genuine questions are in principle knowable; and 3) that all those answers are compatible. He said the ‘twist’ that the Enlightenment gave these principles was that the answers were available and to be sought solely by deductive and/or inductive reason, rather than by tradition, revelation etc.
Perhaps politics just fails to ask genuine questions ;-)
*See Berlin’s ‘The Roots of Romanticism’.
Berlin takes my breath away.
(Sorry.)
Hahaha!
Interestingly, both Berlins (the ever-questioning philosopher and the ever-questionable synth-pop band) share the attribute of having no significant connection to Berlin (the city) other than their name.
Maybe we can change the offence of malfeasance in public office simply to 'malfeasance in public'.
Thank you for this perceptive, engaging look at a serious and growing problem. "Problem" because it seems incapable of solution or prevention. Yet, you may think my view is the equivalent of taking a cannon to a tea party, except these politicians seems to be busy about drinks parties, and do not bother with their work of governing or trying to apply themselves to the difficulties of our modern life. Perhaps their interactions with the media have simply disintegrated into "mutual co-dependency" where they have implicitly agreed not to meddle with the others' fields of interest. These always seem to be solved with massive amounts of money while those who are devastated by their careless behaviour have no ability nor the means to address these appalling situations.
My take is simple: laws must be acted upon to prevent the apparent lawlessness today - unending lies in parliament have debased the peoples' views of law and order. (Has this given people the idea that laws no longer apply to modern life?) The media must be forced by law only to be allowed to produce the unequivocal evidence to the aggrieved party who may give permission for publication before any publicity is given to the event. Parliamentarians who have behaved so badly deserve to be barred for life from public duty. We have the laws already in place, but they seem to be disregarded and not enforced. We saw the MPs behaving so badly given £50 fines in Covid-19 lockdowns, but a student who had a party arranged for him was fined £12 000. Why did the police feel enabled to apply the laws so unequally? Perhaps we all feel there is no longer any need for decency and honesty in public life, and no longer any need to listen to any politician again.
President Makarios once smiled wryly at a visiting journalist: “You Anglo-Saxons always think that every problem has a solution.”
Content is hard to regulate, but making media platforms responsible for content they *promote* may be a credible option, especially in conjunction with a law making it a crime to deliberately or recklessly mislead the public. A lot of the problems with social media are related to the widespread dissemination of outright lies. A legal approach that made platforms cautious about what their algorithms promote would go a long way towards detoxifying social media.