The Bitch!
OUR POPULAR WEEKLY NEWS REVIEW COLUMN
THE PURPOSE OF LAW AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ORDER!
Well
Darlings,
I don't think anyone would disagree with the
statement: we must have law and order, would they?
However how should those laws be observed? Should we
obey them strictly to the letter, or simply use them
with a lot of common sense as general guidelines? And
which of these two ways is likely to produce the best
order for society?
With this Labour government creating a record number
of laws during its term in office, most of us will
have grown up in a time when there were far fewer
laws. I know I did, and although there were not so
many laws then there was far more law and order in the
sense we like to see it. Today laws have become
cheapened, almost worthless, because so many of them
have been brought in as knee-jerk reactions by the
government to various situations - a new law within a
matter of days has been their answer to every problem,
but has never worked - and others, far too many of
them, have simply been born out of a desire to be
authoritarian whilst at the same time raising a lot of
revenue. Both of these ways have been employed with
little regard to the long term effects.
In my younger years we respected the laws, though we
may not always have obeyed them to the letter. As lads
and lasses we could often be found drinking underage
in the local pub, and some with their families from
being only fourteen years old. Of course we all knew
it was against the law, everyone knew it - especially
the landlord, but it was an accepted way of life which
did not produce the gangs of drunken hoodlums we see
on our streets today.
Because it was against the law but, with that blind
eye turned to it, a lifestyle almost permitted where
even the local bobby on the beat would be polite
enough to give us time to escape by loudly announcing
his presence whenever he popped in, as they used to in
those days, it was something we all respected. And
were we ever in any danger of having one too many, the
pub's older clientele only had to give us an annoyed
look and we reined in. There was no way we were going
to lose this privilege of showing just how "grown up"
we were by behaving badly.
Technically the law was being broken here - but in
reality it was working far better than it does today.
Observed in this manner it encouraged a way of life
that was beneficial to society as a whole. Living in
respect of the law, but being allowed to quietly
ignore it occasionally without being persecuted,
ensured those that did so learned how to behave in an
acceptable manner and were, unlike today, rarely any
trouble.
Today, with countless officials checking on our every
move in the hope of extracting revenue out of us for
the slightest infringement of a rule or regulation,
few people still live in respect of our laws,
authority, or any rules and regulations. The result is
the less than desirable society we suffer where the
law has become something to be laughed at in a game of
us against those in authority.
Whilst this modern idea of disregarding common sense
and interpreting the law according to the letter to
raise revenue will not have stopped one single crime,
it has created a society where now a whole section of
it do not in the slightest way attempt to conform, and
will often go to great lengths not to do so. Where as
kids we got our kicks out of being grown up by
daringly but responsibly drinking underage in a pub,
today they get theirs by teaming up and shocking
everyone with their drunken behaviour and vandalism on
the streets - and frequently worse as many recent
deaths have shown.
Strangely those in authority have not learned anything
from history. This being authoritarian and punitive
has all been done before, and many, many times around
the world. With it comes a natural resistance that
grows in strength. The game we play with them today is
the war we shall fight with them tomorrow, and though
it has sometimes taken a while in the end that war has
never been won by the oppressor, those in authority,
with many of them often coming to a rather nasty end.
Do we really have to go down this path here in the UK?
Do we not consider ourselves too civilised for that?
Once we were, but I fear it may not be so any longer.
Being civilised is fast going by the way. It requires
having a high state of culture and development, both
social and technological, which is marked by a
refinement in taste and manners. Well, at least we
have the technology - albeit now sometimes lagging
behind Hungary! However we cannot consider a
downtrodden and persecuted people to be in any high
state of culture and development, can we?
Where does being civilised come into penalising people
simply because they have more rubbish to dispose of,
even after recycling correctly, than will fit into the
forced on them wheelie bin? Can you see it in having
paid snoopers patrolling our streets armed with tape
measures in the hope of finding a car parked an inch
too far from the kerb so they may issue a fixed
penalty charge? How about the more than a hundred
officials who now have a legal right of entry to your
abode and, it seems, a million more other similar
impositions forced upon us these past eleven years?
Are they a refinement in taste and manners or a sign
of a high state of development? Civilised? No, they
are not. Turning the population into mere pawns to be
owned, manipulated and penalised at will is not the
sign of a civilised society. Far from it.
Maybe there is still time to save the day by utilising
some common sense - if only an inkling of that could
be recognised or learned by those in authority - I do
not know. But I do know that replacing our police with
large armies of private snoopers, and trying to set up
neighbour to spy upon neighbour in the pursuit of
control, authoritarian power, and massive revenue
gathering is not the direction in which we should be
heading. It can only end in tears.
What kind of a society are we living in when people
can be given a fixed penalty by some bod employed by
the local authority with no means whatsoever to
protest or prove their innocence in law, and where
should they not pay up they are heavily fined - not
for the actual offence but for failing to pay the
penalty? This is not justice.
When a citizen can be found guilty on the say so of
someone they possibly wouldn't even trust to mow their
lawn - and we've all seen officials like that on our
streets lately, haven't we? - and they have no legal
redress at all, it can be neither fair nor right. And
it is certainly not the once accepted British way of
doing things. But that is how far law and order has
degenerated in this country today. In such a society,
I for one cannot and do not blame any of the growing
number of people who refuse to live according to it.
Yes we must have law and order, and rules and
regulations are needed. However few of them other than
those concerning serious offences require interpreting
exactly to the letter - common sense works better, and
all of them do need to be fair by allowing those who
are accused of an offence the right to a means of
proving their innocence BEFORE any judgement is made.
In a civilised society we ask before taking something,
it is a part of the criteria: a refinement in taste
and manners. So if we were still a civilised society
should we not have been asked before having a
long-standing basic Human Right taken away from us? I
do not recall being asked, do you? Ei incumbit
probatio qui dicit, non qui negat - the burden of
proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies - is a
right the people of this country have held and
treasured for centuries, however today in many matters
concerning our local councils it is a right we no
longer hold.
That is not only sad, it may yet prove to be a
tragedy.
“The Bitch!” 4/09/08.
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